What is the M2C Citation Cartel?  One of Jonathan Neville’s biggest issues is with the traditional Book of Mormon scholars is what he calls the M2C Citation Cartel. These scholars won’t accept any Book of Mormon geography theories outside the Mesoamerican theory.

https://youtu.be/9hqhjyx0eBY

GT: It's funny to me that you call it M2C, because I've had a Baja guy on. I've had Malay. Everybody, except for Heartlanders, anybody who has any sort of other theory believes there are two Cumorahs.

Jonathan: Right.

GT:  And so it's funny to me that you referring to M2C as meso, only.

Jonathan:  That's right.

GT:  That applies to pretty much everybody else.

Jonathan:  That's a really good point. And I've addressed that a few times, but I'll explain why I did this.

...

GT:  I mean, you could probably argue that Book of Mormon Central and Interpreter are children of FARMS. Would that be a good way to say it?

Jonathan:  Yeah, you could say that. I call them a Potemkin village, because they have these storefronts. You have Book of Mormon Central, FAIR LDS, Interpreter, Meridian Magazine, and they all look like different entities, but it's all one village. It is all the same interlocking people.

GT:  Okay.

Jonathan:  And that's the M2C citation cartel. I call them the M2C because the Mesoamerican and two Cumorahs, but none of those guys go with the Baja guys, or the Thailand or Malaysia, or even the Peru or Panama guys. Those guys are not part of the M2C citation cartel. If you want to publish something in the Interpreter, or BYU Studies, or Book of Mormon Central, it has to at least be consistent with M2C, the Mesoamerica two Cumorahs theory. I'll give you an example of that, and I have to emphasize this, because I really feel this way. I love those guys. I like every one of them that I've ever met, and I respect their scholarship. I appreciate what they do. I think in terms of facts, I really like what they've come up with in doing historical research or archaeology, whatever. It's the conclusions that they derive from those facts that I don't agree with.

Find out how he is peer-reviewing their work. Check out our conversation….

Jonathan Neville takes issue with those who support Mesoamerica theory in exclusion of others.

Don't miss our other conversations with Jonathan!

639:  Allow Multiple Views, Even non-Historical

638:  Jonathan Edwards Influence on Book of Mormon

637:  "Evidence of Composition is Evidence of Translation"

636: Explaining Mormon DNA-Archeology

635: The Final Battle

634: Pros & Cons of Vague Geography

633: Why Limited Geography is Wrong?

632: Lehi's Atlantic Crossing?

631: M2C Citation Cartel

630: Was Joseph Really Editor?

Joseph Smith was listed as the editor of many newspapers in his day. Some people attribute things about Book of Mormon geography to him in these newspapers, but Jonathan Neville disputes the idea that Joseph Smith endorsed these geography claims.

https://youtu.be/u_BEKZiL5aM

Jonathan: [Joseph Smith] visited John Bernhisel and shortly thereafter Bernhisel bought these two books about Central America that he gave to Wilford Woodruff to give to Joseph Smith. Bernhisel and Joseph Smith had been corresponding because Bernhisel was buying property in Nauvoo. They'd written a few letters back and forth. So, when Woodruff took these Stevens and Catherwood books, two big thick volumes on his trip from New York to Nauvoo. Wilford Woodruff read these books. He wrote about them in his journal and said, "They're fascinating," and all this. It turns out Wilford Woodruff had an especial interest in history and geography. He had read other of Steven's books when Stevens was traveling in the Middle East. So, naturally, he was interested in these books about Central America, as well.

Jonathan:  So he [Woodruff] goes to Nauvoo. At some point, a thank you note was written from Joseph Smith to Bernhisel. Joseph Smith didn’t write it, but it thanked him for these books. It said something, words to the effect that, this is the most accurate history or something, referring to the Book of Mormon.

Jonathan:  So, that led people to assume Joseph Smith had actually read the books, and was endorsing them as the history of the Book of Mormon. It was about eight months, almost a year later, when these articles appeared in the Times and Seasons, that quoted from the Catherwood books. So, ever since then, pretty well, since at least the 1850s or so, after Joseph died, people assumed he wrote those articles.

Jonathan:  When I dug into this, I said, "Well, in the first place, the articles were anachronistic because they refer to ruins that post-dated a Book of Mormon times. So, the articles themselves were incorrect and we know that now. It was just speculation. So, I thought, "Would Joseph Smith really be that obviously wrong about the geography of the Book of Mormon?  When I started looking at this history, where Winchester had been writing about it, and he'd written many other anonymous articles in the Times and Seasons, I thought, "Well, this is just kind of a continuation of a pattern."

...

GT:  I mean, that's kind of what Bruce Van Orden says in Nauvoo, that Joseph Smith's name was on everything, but he didn't do anything.

Jonathan:  That's right. Bruce and I, actually it's interesting, because I had published that book about the time Bruce and I were talking about all this. We were kind of negotiating with each other about how much was Winchester and how much was Phelps. But it was obvious that it wasn't Joseph Smith and it wasn't John Taylor. I found a thing that Wilford Woodruff wrote in the same time period, where he said, "Joseph's is so busy, he hardly has time to sign his name to the things we prepare for him to sign," because he was the mayor of Nauvoo, and all these other things. When I saw that, I thought, "Well, how is he going to be sitting around writing these long articles about Stevens and Catherwood or editing them, or even approving them. So in my book, I pointed out there, I found a couple of instances where Joseph didn't even know what was in the Times and Seasons until after it was published and he read it.

GT:  And that had his name on it or something.

Jonathan:  Yeah, his name, at the very end, after, in March, when he took over-- what had happened is, in January, when they got rid of Winchester, they received a revelation. It's not in the Doctrine & Covenants, but a revelation that the Quorum of the Twelve should take charge of the Times and Seasons. That's when Joseph kind of did it.

I’m excited to introduce Jonathan Neville. He is an expert on the Heartland geography theory of the Book of Mormon.  In this first episode, we’ll get acquainted with him,find out his Church history background, and find out that he was originally a proponent of the Mesoamerican geography theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRCLwpnHRfQ

GT:  Well, weren't you originally a meso guy? Didn't you tell me that? You were all on board with meso, and then you switched? Tell us about that.

...

Jonathan: when I was at BYU, I took classes in Book of Mormon, of course. I had a class from John Sorensen. I had a real fascination with all of the Central American stuff.

GT:  And John Sorensen is the Dean of Meso, right?

Jonathan:  Right. He wrote the book, Mormons Codex, which is kind of his final book, a big thick book, all about the Mesoamerican ideas. I visited Central America in subsequent years in many areas, and so I was all in. I used to go to the FARMS conferences. I've read all the FARMS stuff. I have all the BYU Studies all the way back from the 80s and so on.

...

Jonathan:  Part of it was, I guess, being deferential to my professors. Because all of the BYU professors taught the Mesoamerican stuff back then. I'd read all the books. I used to see I have a huge collection of everybody who's published anything on Mesoamerica. It wasn't until I met Rod--actually, I saw a presentation by Wayne May, before I met Rod. I thought, "Wow, I've never heard of this stuff before." But I was kind of skeptical, because he threw a lot of stuff on the wall some of it sticks and some doesn’t.

GT:  Wayne May you're talking about.  

Jonathan:  Wayne May.  Since then I've gotten to know him really well and appreciate much more of what he's been doing. But, at the time, it was just one of those things, a gospel tangent, you could say. But, when I met Rod, it was a little different, because he said, "If you really want to understand this stuff, you should come on a tour." I thought, "Well, I've been to all seven continents, I've been all over the world on various activities for work or for pleasure or education." I thought, "I've never been to Ohio really. I've driven through it." So, I went on his tour.

GT :  On Rod's tour.

Jonathan:  On Rod's tour. Rod and Wayne were there. It just totally blew my mind, really. I just had never even conceived of the Book of Mormon in that setting before. But we went to the museums. I saw the artifacts. I saw the explanations and so on. So, I asked Rod, "Well, this seems so obvious. How did we ever end up in Central America?"

...

Jonathan:  He said, "It's because of these articles in the Times and Seasons in 1842." I had been familiar with those, because they're in the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. So, everybody assumed that Joseph wrote these articles. That's where I kind of put on my lawyer hat, so to speak, and said, "I want to analyze this like a case, and mystery," you could even say.  Who wrote these articles? So, I really delved into that.  That was my first foray into church history in any detail. That's why I came up with the Benjamin Winchester approach. My assumption is, based on the historical evidence, that Benjamin Winchester wrote those articles and was sending them out to Nauvoo for William Smith to publish in the Times and Seasons. That was kind of my first introduction to the whole apologetic thing, because I met with some of the apologists.

GT:  What year was this, approximately?

Jonathan:  I'm going to guess around—-what would it have been? 2016, 2015, something like that.

GT:  Oh, so you're a recent...

Polygamy skeptics love to claim that D&C 132 is a revelation forged by Brigham Young, and note the revelation wasn’t written in Joseph Smith’s handwriting.  They conveniently forget that almost every revelation was written by scribes.  We’ll look into this charge with Mark Tensmeyer and see if there is evidence of a forged revelation. Is D&C a forged revelation?

https://youtu.be/6zRxyB3dBHo

GT:  Very good.  All right. Well, let's move on to one of the big issues with polygamy skeptics: section 132. A lot of people I know say, "It wasn't written by Joseph." Obviously, Joseph didn't write much. Most things were written by scribes.

Mark:  Almost everything was written by scribes.

GT:  Yeah, which, it seems like the skeptics seem to fail to acknowledge [that fact.] So, let's talk about 132.

Mark:  Right. So we talked about that. What we have is we have the manuscript in the handwriting of Joseph Kingsbury. Now, Joseph Kingsbury, he's involved in a couple of ways. One, he's the legal husband of one of Joseph's plural wives, Sarah Ann Whitney, and he marries her after Joseph marries her as a plural wife and at Joseph's request. So, the idea is that him being Sarah's husband would mean that she was not available for courting or anything like that. So, there's that and he's also the widower of Sarah's sister, Carolyn. The sister, her sister, Carolyn had died, and he had married her. Joseph had promised to seal him to Carolyn to as part of this arrangement, sealing for eternity to Carolyn.

Mark:  He's also the employee of his father-in-law, Newel K. Whitney, Bishop Whitney. He's a clerk. The story is that after Hyrum gets this revelation, like I said earlier, he wants to show it to people and wants them to think that this is great and so forth. He shows it to, shortly after it's committed to paper. He shows it to Bishop Whitney. Bishop Whitney wants a copy of it, and they allow him to.  Now the thing is, Newel K. Whitney kept the running collection of manuscripts of Joseph's revelations and had for a long time. Oliver Cowdery and the scripture committee that compiled the Doctrine & Covenants in 1835, borrowed from Newel K. Whitney's collection. So, he had canonized, and he had uncanonized revelations. He had a collection of them. So, it's not unusual that he would, and a few other people did. So, it's not unusual that he would ask for it, and given [that] Whitney's obviously an insider into polygamy, as is Joseph Kingsbury. It's not unusual that they would be involved. So, one of the things that people will argue is well, Joseph Kingsbury is not one of Joseph's known scribes. That would be significant if this was Joseph's personal copy. It wasn't. William Clayton, who was one of Joseph's known scribes scribed the original copy. This was a copy that was kept by the Whitneys. Brigham Young eventually asked for it in like 1847/1848 at Winter Quarters. Before he does Newell K. Whitney's son, Horace makes two copies of it, which the family keeps. Those copies are now in the Church History Library.  You can review them, and they are word for word the same as the Kingsbury manuscript.

Mark:  So, I really don't see any evidence that the Kingsbury manuscript is a later fabrication. Joseph Kingsbury testified to all this both in an affidavit and then also in the Temple Lot [case.] The argument made by a lot [of people] is that "Well, he didn't he wouldn't swear to testimony in the in the Temple Lot case."  But, he affirmed it. He says in there, contrary to how it reads the RLDS abstract, he never said that he was afraid of perjury. He just said that it was his preference to affirm his testimony, rather than to swear it. He's asked a lot of things throughout about whether he'll swear to things that are not even controversial, like when he became a High Priest and things like that. He won't swear to that, either. It's just,

Polygamy skeptics love to point out that DNA evidence has ruled out Joseph as the father of several possible polygamous unions.  But is there no evidence of polygamous pregnancies in Nauvoo?  Did John C. Bennett perform abortions?

https://youtu.be/RE4MSXnYVjU

GT:  All right. So, another couple of the topics that I'd like to address are the rumors about Dr. John C. Bennett and abortion, that he was stopping pregnancies with abortion. Can you tell us about that?

Mark:  My understanding on that is that there's basically two sources on that. There's a source, I'd have to find it. It came out in the trials of the men that were associated with John Bennett. They were going through his excommunication process and they either did it right away or he left the Church and left town before they had the chance to [excommunicate him or] he resigned. He claims he resigned and then left town. So, it's really when his own associates who are involved with him, so Chauncey Higbee, Justice Morse, Lyman Littlefield, those individuals who are involved with him, when they're put on trial in the High Council, that a lot of this stuff comes out. Some of the women that testified that John Bennett had told them, or one of them had them that if a pregnancy occurred as a result of their activities, then John Bennett would be able to take care of [it.] He'd be able to remove the baby. He knew how to do that as a doctor. He could terminate the pregnancy. So, there's that source. Then the other source is also years later. It's at least the 1880s. It's Sarah Pratt.  She says that in an interview with Salt Lake Tribune, that John Bennett had an instrument he had used to perform abortions for Joseph Smith. So, those are pretty much the sources on that.

GT:  So, we don't have any documented record of any abortions that actually happened. These are more rumors. Is that right?

Mark:  Um, well...

GT:  I guess it should be pointed out that abortion, there was no legality issues.

Mark:  There was no legality for plural wives, either, technically speaking.

GT:  But, there weren't any laws against abortion is what I'm trying to say, were there?

Mark:  Were there? I don't know. It was…

GT:  I don't think those happen until much later.

Mark:  It might have been.

...

Mark:  if we're talking about John Bennett as an explanation for why we don't have any real sure documentation of any offspring of Joseph....

GT:  Yeah, that's where I really wanted to go.

Mark:  …Bennett doesn't really work for that, because he's out of the picture by April or May 1842, which is really early in the game. At that point, Joseph's has like eight or 10 plural wives. Most of them either don't live in Nauvoo--I think all of them either don't live in Nauvoo, or they have a legal husband. So, theoretically, there's not really a reason for them to hide a pregnancy. They have a legal husband who is aware of the plural marriage. So, there's not really a reason to hide it. It doesn't arouse suspicion that they would become pregnant.

Mark:  But, really, it's 1843 is when Joseph is married. In the middle of 1843, he's married to the Partridge sisters, and Lucy Walker and Melissa Lott. [These are] younger women that actually stay at the Mansion House, in his house. John Bennett is out of the picture long before that.

GT:  Okay.

Mark:  Yeah. So I don't think that that really works. Is it possible that John Bennett [performed abortions?] I mean, I've got to admit my bias as a believing member, that I don't like the idea of Joseph Smith doing abortions. Objectively speaking, I can't really discount it. But I don't think the evidence is so strong that we should say it did happen. I mean, we really just have one source that says that John Bennett sugg...

Joseph Smith was involved with Fanny Alger in some type of “girl business” probably around 1836, and Oliver Cowdery referenced this in 1838.  What other types of evidence exists of Kirtland era polygamy?  Mark Tensmeyer will tell us more.

https://youtu.be/nRSDVljKRZs

GT: I'd like to start out talking a little bit about some of the Kirtland-era rumors about polygamy. So, what I thought we could do is start with the 1831 revelation. Mark, could you give people a little background on what that is and give us some details on it?

...

Mark:  So, a lot of times, the 1831 revelation is called the Lamanite revelation. There are pretty much two sources on this. One is a contemporary source,1831, from Ezra Booth, who is one of the first anti-Mormons, one of the first groups to leave the Church and then dedicate themselves to trying to disprove the Church. He says that at one point, he says that there was a thing where Joseph told some of the elders that were going on a mission in 1831, to the Native American people to take wives of the Lamanites, and such.  So, William W. Phelps, years and years later, during the Utah period, produced a document that he didn't claim to be an original from that period, but a reproduction copy of a revelation that Joseph gave him in 1831, where it says to take wives of the native people.  The implication being that since some of the men were married, that the Lamanite women they'd be taking as wives would be plural wives. So, that's pretty much the sources on that.

GT:  So, it's pretty late source with Phelps as far as producing this?

Mark:  I believe Phelps evidently reproduced it from memory. I don't know that he claimed to have a copy or something of that document that he copied the paper off of it. I don't know too much about it. But it definitely comes from the Utah period. Now, there is some support in that the Ezra Booth account. Even there, that doesn't mean that it's supposed to be all the men that we're supposed to take wives.  I'd have to look at it. I know Martin Harris is one that was married, and he might have been the only one. He, of course, was estranged from his wife by that point. So, I don't know.  I think it's one of those maybe. I mean, it's one of those things that, for my purpose of trying to show that yes, polygamy is a real thing that Joseph Smith did. I mean, that's not something I would hang my hat on at all. But, once you've established evidence from Nauvoo, that polygamy is something that Joseph Smith did, then something like this seems a bit more plausible. It seems a bit more possible that it might be.

GT:  I was just going to say, Dr. Larry Foster from Georgia Tech, he's non LDS. He's been one that really kind of goes along with this 1831 revelation.

Mark:  I haven't looked into it too deeply. That's been my understanding that that's it. I'm open to the idea. But I think it's mostly late sources, and the contemporary source, I think the idea of Joseph expressing to these missionaries to take wives of Native American women, I think there's good possibility that that's true, but I don't know that necessarily he meant for married men to take additional wives, when that there may or may not be the case. I don't know.

GT:  Okay, interesting. Let's move on to the Fanny Alger scrape, affair, whatever you want to call it, and then how Oliver Cowdery testified over that.

Check out our conversation….

Mark Tensmeyer details polygamy evidence from the Kirtland period.

Don't miss our previous conversations with Mark!

624: 3rd Party Polygamy Evidence

623: Nauvoo-era Polygamy Evidence

622:

The LDS and RLDS Churches have fought about Joseph Smith’s polygamy for a century.  Is there 3rd party polygamy evidence that could settle this?  Mark Tensmeyer discusses polygamy evidence outside the two churches that can help settle the matter as to whether Joseph Smith practiced polygamy.

https://youtu.be/LcTTUhPVuYQ

Mark:  Another section, after William Marks is dead, there's one of the apostles by the name of Zenas Gurley, Jr, whose father was very instrumental in founding the LDS Church. He's wanting to get to the bottom of this.  I think it's 1880s and William Marks is dead at this point, but Leonard Sobey, who was the other member of the High Council, he did not become a Brighamite. He followed Rigdon and after Rigdon's church fell apart, he just sort of stayed out there and remained unaffiliated, but still believed. He goes out to Leonard Sobey and asks him, "What happened? What really happened?"

Sobey said, "Hyrum Smith read a revelation on plural marriage. As near as I can recall, it's the exact same revelation the Utah church put out.”

GT:  Oh, wow. That would sure be nice to throw out if you're a polygamy skeptic. That's after June 27, 1844.

Mark tells about other RLDS or even Bickertonite members who concede Joseph practiced polygamy.  Check out our conversation on polygamy evidence….

Mark Tensmeyer discusses 3rd-party evidence that corroborates polygamy.

 

 

What polygamy evidence is there in the Nauvoo period? Mark Tensmeyer will tell us about the Sarah Pratt case, Hyrum Smith before the high council, and other evidence polygamy was secretly practiced by Joseph Smith in the Nauvoo period.

https://youtu.be/R0LJeGcbvag

Mark:  There is the deal where in January 1844, Joseph and William Law are holding a city council meeting, and William Law is questioning a witness. He asked him, "Well, what did we talk about? What did you and I talk about on that day?"

Mark: "We talked about the doctrine of plurality of wives, the rumors about it. It's really messing up families. It's causing a lot of pain to a lot of people." And William Law says there on the record, "…and don't you think there's some truth to those things because Joseph and Hyrum blew up the matter before the High Council, and the Elders quorum?"

Mark:  And so Joseph responds by saying, "A man who promises to keep a secret and doesn't, cannot be trusted in anything."

GT:  Meaning that Wil[liam] broke a secret.

Mark:  That William broke a secret. Yes, he did. So, what secret did he break? So, it kind of inadvertently [discussed polygamy.] It's after that, that things really start to fall out between Joseph and the Laws. William Law starts the Reformed Church, and a number of people join.

...

Then, of course, William Law, his attack on there, it's really two-pronged. The one thing he does is he files criminal charges against Joseph in Carthage for unlawful cohabitation with Mariah Lawrence and others. That goes before a grand jury. A grand jury indicts. People in that grand jury include active elements, including people from the Mormons. It includes Daniel H Wells. It includes William Marks. He's there as part of it. It includes Willard Griffith.

GT:  The grand jury includes all these people?

Mark:  It includes Mormons, and they say that there was probable cause. They indict him. So, they say that there is probable cause that these charges against Joseph Smith are true. They bound him over for trial in October 1844. Now, of course, that trial never happens. We know why. Because Joseph died before that, but had Joseph not been killed in June 1844, then there would have been a full-on trial about polygamy. So that trial that Joseph was put on trial almost happened.

Mark:  Yeah. Of course, the other thing they do is they publish The Expositor. The Expositor says a few things about polygamy. It says things like, they're taking these women and it exaggerates some things. "They are leading them out into the wilderness, if they say no, and all kinds of things." But what it also has is it has three affidavits by Austin Coles, William Law and Jane Law. William Law says, "Hyrum gave us revelation. It allowed for people taking plural wives." Jane Law says it did and it said he can take up to 10. Doctrine and Covenants section 113 doesn't say you can take up 10, but it does mention 'if a man takes 10 wives and they are virgins…' it says that one point.

Then Austin Coles has an affidavit in there. His is detailed. He said, "Late last summer, Hyrum Smith read a revelation to the High Council. The first part said that if a person was sealed up to eternal life, and they could not lose their exaltation unless they commit murder." Then, it talks about how Abraham and Jacob, their doctrine in taking plural wives. It says that it allowed for a man to take plural wives. So, he gives a description that's actually really good summary of Doctrine & Covenants Section 132 as we know it. It's brief, but a pretty comprehensive summary there.

We talk about other evidence in Nauvoo as well. Check out our conversation….

Mark Tensmeyer details Nauvoo-era polygamy evidence.

Don't miss our previous conversations with Mark!

I think most people agree that polygamy was practiced secretly in Nauvoo.  Polygamy skeptics like to blame it on Brigham Young, but even if that were true, what types of secret evidence would we expect to see?  Would that apply to Joseph if he was secretly practicing polygamy as well? 

https://youtu.be/McB1kRr8N28

Mark:  Yeah, you have the strongest kind of evidence. So again, since polygamy is something that was being denied openly while being practiced privately, you're going to have, basically, a few kinds of evidence. You're going to have, (I would say) four kinds of evidence. And it's important to look at all of these. You're going to have privately held evidence that are private records by the people that are participating, that are pro-polygamy that are faithful. You're going to have that.

GT:  Faithful to the LDS Church.

Mark:  Yes, faithful to LDS. Because somebody who is faithful is not going to talk openly about polygamy at that time. They're not going to do it.

...

Mark:  They're people, a lot of times, it's because of polygamy, that they're dissenters. That's what's turned them off. Other times it's other reasons that they've been turned off and since they have this, they're going to use this as retaliation. It's going to be that. So you're going to have those. Those are going to be your contemporary evidences. It's going to fall into those two categories. Those are really the only reasonable expectations.

GT:  Dissidents.

Mark:  Then, you're going to have later evidence from friendly people who are participants that are going to talk about it after the secret's out. Then, the fourth category, I think this is a very good, big, important one to talk about, is third party evidence. So, this is going to be accounts from people, usually later, after the secret's out, who are neither anti-Mormon dissenters or pro-polygamy. So, people who have no reason to want to discredit Joseph Smith, [nor] who want to attack to Joseph Smith, and have no reason to want to promote that he was a polygamist.

Mark:  Now you asked about rules about evidence. There is another thing about hearsay. It's called the statement against interest. If somebody says something that goes against their interest, that carries some weight. So, we can look at some of the contemporary evidence.

We get into more detail.  Check out our conversation…. 

Mark Tensmeyer discusses 4 kinds of evidence we should expect to find about Nauvoo polygamy.

Don't miss our previous conversations with Mark.

621: Did Cochranites Start Mormon Polygamy?

620:  RLDS positions on Joseph's Polygamy

619:  Polygamy Rules of Evidence

Polygamy skeptics claim that a religious group out of Maine introduced LDS apostles about spiritual wifery, and those apostles (not Joseph) introduced polygamy into the Church.  Is there good evidence for this?

https://youtu.be/0BfiizDxFos

Mark:  So, what they is that they come up with this new narrative that the Quorum of the Twelve were rogue, pretty much from the beginning. So, around here is where, as far as I've been able to tell, and I'd be interested in seeing documentation and maybe someone can show talking otherwise, this is when they say, "Well, the Quorum of the Twelve, they've encountered and they're influenced by the doctrine of the Cochranites during their missionary travels in the early to mid-1830s, in May. [This is] another group of people that practices spiritual wifery.

GT:  Yeah, the Cochranites, I'm glad we're talking about that because that is a big issue.

...

Mark: He [Jacob Cochran] gets put on trial for lewdness in 1819, and Jacob Cochran goes to jail for four years. During that time, the movement kind of falls apart. A lot of these very charismatic movements, they fall apart when their leader is no longer available. Charismatic movements are started around one person.  It happens a lot.  People thought that was going to happen to Mormonism, and it didn't.

GT:  Right.

Mark:  But, for a lot of these, especially smaller groups, then that that's what happened, and it did. So, what happened is, is that there's a couple of groups that still have congregations up, through the 18--, I don't know for the next few decades. Jacob Cochran gets out of prison, and he doesn't really lead a church anymore, even the church that still kind of believes his doctrine. He has a group that he wants to go settle in New York, and they go. I haven't really heard what really happened with that. So that's pretty much it.

GT: The Cochranites only lasted for a decade? Is that what you're saying?

Mark:  Their heyday is only about three years long. And then they're around...

GT:  So, 1816 to 1819. So, this pre-dates the First Vision.

Mark:  I think they are around. There are remnant groups that are around into the 1840s in the area, but nowhere near to the same size. It is interesting. One of the things that the two elders say a lot is that the area is just totally turned off to gifts of the Spirit type things or any of those things that Mormonism [supports], like revelation.

...

Mark:  I mean, you can look at circumstantial evidence and connections in a lot of other places, too. Another one that Richard and Pamela Price may have said was that there's Augusta Cobb, who's Brigham Young's second plural wife. She gets baptized by Samuel and Orson in that mission in Boston before they go to Saco. But it's a day or two after that they baptize her that there's that incident in Boston, where there was those Cochranite people expressing Cochranite doctrine in a meeting that they had. So, they say, "Well, that means that she was a person that was well acquainted with Cochranism."  I really don't see that really being a connection. Again, Agnes Coolbrith is also in that same group that gets baptized. She's actually from that area. She actually becomes a plural wife to Joseph Smith. So, if you're going to argue circumstantial evidence and exposure leads to this and that, then I think that's a much stronger connection than anything.

GT: To Joseph.

Mark:  Yeah, to Joseph.  So, when it comes to the Cochranites, that's something I don't particularly find compelling. There's another thing they say is, "Well, the apostles did foot washing in England. You even have William Clayton, who has never been there so they must have picked up that and footwashing from the Cochranites, which they did.