Mark Hofmann: forged documents bought by prophets

Between 1980 and 1985 the First Presidency and Church historians bought dozens of Mark Hofmann's forgeries, several designed to embarrass the Church, without detecting them.

What the Church claims

Church leaders are seers with the gift of discernment.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Contested. A genuine discernment failure by the First Presidency, but one whose force depends on a strong reading of 'seer' that apologists reasonably reject.

The record

  • Hofmann forged, among others, the 'Anthon transcript', a blessing from Joseph Smith to his son Joseph III naming Joseph III successor, an 1830 'salamander letter' from Martin Harris describing folk magic, and a Joseph Smith treasure-hunting letter to Josiah Stowell; 'Hofmann deceived not only Church leaders and historians... but also... other experts'.
  • On 1985-10-15 Hofmann's bombs killed Steven Christensen and Kathy Sheets in Salt Lake City; he pleaded guilty on 1987-01-07 to two counts of second-degree murder plus theft by deception and fraud.
  • Dallin H. Oaks (1987) acknowledged that Gordon B. Hinckley told a 1985-10-23 press conference the Church had acquired 'forty-some documents' from Hofmann 'by purchase, donation, or trade', that Hinckley personally purchased two, and that the Stowell letter, salamander letter and Joseph Smith III blessing were made public months before the bombings.
  • Oaks framed the episode around media 'innuendo' of suppression and defended the Church's document acquisitions as a 'divine mandate to acquire and preserve' its history.

The moving target

  • 1985-10-23: Church acquired forty-some Hofmann documents in good faith; nothing suppressed.
  • 1987-10: Forgeries were a deliberate attempt to rewrite early Church history; the Church was a victim, not a suppressor.
  • n.d. (2018+): Hofmann deceived leaders, historians, archivists and outside experts alike.

The exchange

Oaks 1987; Church History Topics; Richard Turley, Victims (1992)

Discernment is not omniscience: forensic examiners, the FBI's document experts and secular dealers were all fooled; prophets never claimed to detect forged ink. The Church did not hide the damaging documents but published them and preached faith in spite of them.

The answer: True as far as it goes, and critics overstate when they say the Church 'suppressed' the salamander letter. The narrower point stands: apostles met Hofmann, negotiated with Hofmann, bought a document (the Stowell letter) precisely because it was embarrassing, and treated forgeries designed to undermine Joseph Smith as authentic. A body claiming the gift of discernment showed none; the standard 'we are fallible men' answer applies but again concedes the point.

What they get right: The Church's own historians published the documents and later commissioned a candid institutional history (Turley).

Church History Topics; Dallin H. Oaks, 'Recent Events Involving Church History and Forged Documents' (1987)

Buying the documents was ordinary archival practice. The Church routinely acquires material about its own history, paid roughly market value, and used normal channels and outside experts.

The answer: Routine acquisition does not explain the pattern. The items the Church moved on fastest were the ones that would have been most embarrassing in public, and several were handled quietly by leaders acting personally rather than through the archive. Hofmann's whole business model depended on that response being predictable, and for four years it was. The claim under test is discernment. A seer who cannot identify a forger across a desk is not thereby disproved as a witness of Christ, but the strong version taught over the pulpit — that leaders are given to detect deceivers — does not survive the episode.

What they get right: Nothing Hofmann sold changed a doctrine or a scripture, and the Church published the salamander letter in the Ensign rather than burying it.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

The Hofmann affair is a controlled experiment in prophetic discernment. Men sustained as seers examined, purchased and in some cases praised documents forged by a member who intended to damage the Church's founding narrative. Their failure was ordinary; their office promised more. The episode also shows the institution's instinct to acquire potentially damaging documents and control their disclosure, an instinct Oaks defended as a mandate to preserve history.

The apologetic case

The Church behaved as a responsible archive: it bought or accepted documents, examined them, published the sensitive ones, and cooperated with police. Its leaders were deceived by a forger who fooled every expert, and no doctrine or scripture was altered as a result. Revelation is about salvation, not document authentication.

What would change this

Evidence that leaders expressed contemporaneous doubts about the salamander or Stowell letters on spiritual grounds before forensic exposure.

Sources

An independent project. Not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with any organization cited here. Summaries are written here; short quotations are attributed and linked. Every page names its sources so that it can be corrected, and every page can be challenged.