Mark Hofmann Fools the Prophets

Mark Hofmann was a disillusioned Mormon who was able to fool the leaders of the LDS church into believing that his forgeries were authentic historic documents about Joseph Smith’s Restoration of the Gospel. In fact, the forgeries related embarrassing stories about the origins of the LDS church, such as that Joseph Smith communicated with a salamander when he dug up the gold plates. In an effort to hide the forged documents from the public eye and the membership at large, the church seemed to legitimize the documents by purchasing them both directly and indirectly for thousands of dollars and then quickly hiding some of the damning documents away. Hoffman went public with his “historical discoveries,” and, as a result, the church attempted to mitigate the damage by defending the embarrassing issues revealed in these documents.  However, these purported historical discoveries were a complete hoax and, had they been revealed as such earlier, the contents of these documents would not have required any defense or justification.