The Greek Psalter incident (Caswall, 1842)

A hostile clergyman reported that Joseph called a Greek psalter a dictionary of Egyptian hieroglyphics; the story fits a pattern but rests on one adversarial witness.

What the Church claims

Henry Caswall's story is not evidence about Joseph Smith. It rests on a single hostile clergyman, it was denied in print at the time, and it does not show that Joseph could not tell one ancient script from another.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Holds up. The account rests on a single hostile clergyman, it was denied in print at the time, and Foster's review found four specific problems with the telling. The claim that it shows nothing about Joseph's ability to read scripts is well supported. It holds no more strongly than that, because the visit itself is not in doubt and something was said.

The record

  • Henry Caswall, an Anglican clergyman, wrote in The City of the Mormons (London, 1842) that on 19 April 1842 he showed Joseph a c.600-year-old Greek psalter; Joseph reportedly said it 'ain't Greek at all, except, perhaps, a few words' and that it was 'a dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics' with 'reformed Egyptian' interpretations, and Mormons present then sought to buy the book. Caswall says he had laid aside clerical dress.
  • Craig Foster (BYU Studies 35:4, 1995) lists four problems: the Times and Seasons said Caswall introduced himself as an Episcopal minister; his 'coarse, plebeian' Joseph contradicts other descriptions; the 'ain't' dialogue is caricature; and the Times and Seasons said Joseph declined to handle the book. Foster concludes the visit happened but the interview 'was not as Caswall described it'.
  • John Taylor answered Caswall in the Times and Seasons of 15 October 1843, and Caswall repeated the story in his 1843 The Prophet of the Nineteenth Century; both are reported by Foster rather than examined here.

The moving target

  • 1843-10-15: Denied Caswall's account and characterized him as a hostile minister.

The exchange

Craig Foster (BYU Studies 1995); FAIR

Caswall is a single, hostile, self-interested witness whose account changed and whose portrait of Joseph is caricature; the Church replied at the time.

The answer: All fair, and the episode should not carry weight on its own. But the reply does not deny that Caswall met Joseph or that a Greek book was shown, and the content of the alleged statement - 'reformed Egyptian', an Egyptian 'dictionary' - matches what Joseph demonstrably did with the Kinderhook plates a year later and with the papyri. It is corroborative color, not evidence in itself.

What they get right: Foster's points about the changed details and dialect are well taken.

Craig Foster, BYU Studies 35:4 (1995); FAIR

The incident appears in no Nauvoo diary, no newspaper and no account by any of the several people Caswall places in the room. A public humiliation of the prophet in front of witnesses would not have gone unrecorded.

The answer: This is largely right, which is why the claim is rated as holding up. The one place it overstates is the silence: Caswall's pamphlet was answered in Nauvoo at the time, so the Saints knew of the story and thought it worth denying, and a denial is not an absence. The defensible position is the narrow one — a single hostile visitor's anecdote, uncorroborated and written to sell a portrait of Joseph as a buffoon, cannot settle anything about Joseph's abilities in either direction, and skeptics who lead with it are relying on the weakest kind of source this site accepts anywhere else.

What they get right: Caswall's own narrative shows Caswall setting a trap and then controlling the telling of it, which is exactly the objection skeptics raise about apologetic sources.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

On its own the story is weak: one embittered clergyman, writing for an anti-Mormon audience, in dialect. Its only value is consistency with better-attested behavior: Joseph's 'Egyptian alphabet' and his reported comparison of the Kinderhook plates with it. A site that prizes accuracy should present it as an anecdote of uncertain reliability.

The apologetic case

A partisan account with demonstrable inaccuracies, contradicted in print at the time, cannot establish anything about Joseph's abilities; even Caswall's own narrative shows Caswall setting a trap and controlling the telling.

What would change this

An independent account of the 19 April 1842 meeting; conversely, corroboration by a second witness would raise its weight.

Closely related

Sources

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