Religion Commons^™

Treasure-Seeking Then And Now, Richard Bushman

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Last August I attended the BYU conference on the Mark Hofmann documents where I had an opportunity to reflect on what the documents meant to me. After searching my thoughts and testing my feelings, I came to the conclusion that they meant very little. They did not mean much when they first came out, and their fall from historical authenticity had little effect on me later. That may sound like a strange confession from one who was writing on the early life of Joseph Smith at the very moment the "Salamander" and 1825 Joseph Smith letters came to light, with …