Oracles and Talismans, Forgery and Pansophia: Joseph Smith. Jr. as a Renaissance Magus

[David Waltz]

In Bill Hamblin's review of “Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection” Dialogue, 27/3 (1994), by Lance S. Owens, he comments on the following work in footnote #10:

 

>>Robert R. Smith, "Oracles and Talismans, Forgery and Pansophia: Joseph Smith. Jr. as a Renaissance Magus." This 191-pnge unpublished manuscript (dated August 1987) was widely circulated through the Latter-day Saint "underground." Although idiosyncratic. it is informed and perceptive and contains a number of interesting ideas. It should at least have been consulted by someone studying the relationship between Mormonism and the esoteric traditions.>> (William J. Hamblin, “'Everything Is Everything': Was Joseph Smith Influenced by Kabbalah?", FARMS Review of Books, 8/2 - 1996, p. 254.)

 

I tried to find a copy of this work online, but with no success, and was wondering if anyone has access to a digital copy.

 

Thanks much in advance...

 

 

Grace and peace,

 

David

Edited October 19, 2017 by David Waltz
To correct typos

[DonBradley]

What kind of rascal would write such a thing?!

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, David Waltz said:

In Bill Hamblin's review of “Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection” Dialogue, 27/3 (1994), by Lance S. Owens, he comments on the following work in footnote #10:

 

>>Robert R. Smith, "Oracles and Talismans, Forgery and Pansophia: Joseph Smith. Jr. as a Renaissance Magus." This 191-pnge unpublished manuscript (dated August 1987) was widely circulated through the Latter-day Saint "underground." Although idiosyncratic. it is informed and perceptive and contains a number of interesting ideas. It should at least have been consulted by someone studying the relationship between Mormonism and the esoteric traditions.>> (William J. Hamblin, “'Everything Is Everything': Was Joseph Smith Influenced by Kabbalah?", FARMS Review of Books, 8/2 - 1996, p. 254.)

 

I tried to find a copy of this work online, but with no success, and was wondering if anyone has access to a digital copy.

.......................

There is nothing online, but copies are available as follows:

Smith, Robert F., “Oracles & Talismans, Forgery & Pansophia: Joseph Smith, Jr. as a Renaissance Magus,” Aug 1987 draft, copy in Marquardt Papers, Univ. of Utah Special Collections, Accession 900, Box 97, Folder 7; copy in BYU Lee Library, Special Collections, Americana Collection, BX 8600.1 .Sm64o 1987. 

However, that was a very early draft, and is far outdated by my subsequent work.

[The Nehor]

It is not the leprechauns and dragons I was hoping for but bringing wizards in is getting closer.

Edited October 19, 2017 by The Nehor

[David Waltz]

Hi Robert,

 

What a pleasant surprise to learn that the author of the work I was seeking is a frequent poster here.

 

Now, could you elaborate on your "subsequent work". I am looking for solid answers to Quinn's, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, and I suspect your work in this area would be helpful.

 

 

Grace and peace,

 

David

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, David Waltz said:

................................ 

Now, could you elaborate on your "subsequent work". I am looking for solid answers to Quinn's, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, and I suspect your work in this area would be helpful.

 ...............................

Mike Quinn (whom I greatly respect as an historian) had a copy of my Aug 1987 draft, cited it, but also plagiarized from it.  In a later version of my book, I do refer to some mistakes made by Quinn in his 1st ed.  For example, I said:

"In his Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 1st ed. (1987), 58-65, D. Michael Quinn has likewise played fast and loose with the astrological significance of dates in Joseph's life."  I was comparing Mike's comments on the dates to that of the late Grant Palmer, both of whom completely missed the tight correlations with Jewish dating -- neither of them knew anything about the Jewish calendar, so missed the point.  Palmer (as "Paul Pry Jr."), had been satisfied to take an inaccurate look only at the phases of the Moon and the Autumnal Equinoxes and their potential connection to treasure hunting and witchcraft, overlooking nearly everything else in  the midst of hasty, superficial, and negative assessments.  That is, in the Spring of 1985, Palmer consulted with Seth Jarvis of the Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City for the calculation of full and new moons, but he misused the figures thus obtained from Jarvis.

[strappinglad]

Robert, did you change your middle name or are there 2 different people?

[David Waltz]

Hello again Robert,

 

I am very interested in the work you are doing in this genre. Have you published your 2nd edition yet? Do you have digital formats of your efforts?

 

What do you think of the criticisms of Quinn's book (1st and 2nd editions) published by a number of FARMS contributors (Gee, Hamblin, James, Peterson, et al.)? I am pretty sure I have read all of them, but do not feel that I have a good enough grasp of all the issues involved to competently assess their critiques. I find it quite interesting that Richard Bushman in his, Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling, seems to accept many more of Quinn's conclusions than the aforementioned FARMS contributors.

 

If you are willing to share some your work with me, my email is:

 

Akakius2SC@gmail.com

 

Grace and peace,

 

David

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, strappinglad said:

Robert, did you change your middle name or are there 2 different people?

No.  My friend Bill Hamblin (or the typesetter) got the middle initial wrong.  I have also been confused with a Mormon novelist with  the same middle initial.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, David Waltz said:

...................................... 

I am very interested in the work you are doing in this genre. Have you published your 2nd edition yet? Do you have digital formats of your efforts?

 

What do you think of the criticisms of Quinn's book (1st and 2nd editions) published by a number of FARMS contributors (Gee, Hamblin, James, Peterson, et al.)? I am pretty sure I have read all of them, but do not feel that I have a good enough grasp of all the issues involved to competently assess their critiques. I find it quite interesting that Richard Bushman in his, Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling, seems to accept many more of Quinn's conclusions than the aforementioned FARMS contributors.

.............................................

I constantly use elements of that research product, but have no plans to publish it as a body.  I like the reviews which have been published on Quinn's work, but think that a more anthropological approach is required to bring coherence to any approach to Cosmic Joe (as I sometimes call Joseph Smith).  As far as the historians go, I prefer the work of both Richard Bushman and Jan Shipps in explaining Joseph to us.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, David Waltz said:

What do you think of the criticisms of Quinn's book (1st and 2nd editions) published by a number of FARMS contributors (Gee, Hamblin, James, Peterson, et al.)? I am pretty sure I have read all of them, but do not feel that I have a good enough grasp of all the issues involved to competently assess their critiques. I find it quite interesting that Richard Bushman in his, Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling, seems to accept many more of Quinn's conclusions than the aforementioned FARMS contributors.

I can't speak for Robert, but I found many of the criticisms quite apt. Although people then distorted (IMO) the nature of the criticisms as if they were dismissing all Renaissance or related views. Reviewers have to deal with the arguments an author did present and not arguments they could have presented. As such, I find Quinn's book extremely flawed but perhaps an important step in bringing the topic to light.

Without rereading all the reviews from the 90's I'll just say my main problem was that Quinn didn't really contextualize the parallels he raised. Often he finds a parallel and then speculates as to a potential misreading Joseph might have done. He also really doesn't have a terribly helpful theoretical scaffolding in which to place his parallels. The problem of his use of the term "magic" is pretty well known for instance.

That said the book was pretty valuable in publicizing a lot of these ties. (Like you I didn't know Robert had penned that earlier work nor that Quinn had plagiarized from it) However I don't take Quinn too seriously as establishing a lot. Rather I see his value as getting later people to look more carefully at some of the topics. Although I think there's a ton more that can and should be investigated. In general though when I see a reference to Quinn that doesn't engage the sources directly I get pretty nervous. There's simply tons of problems with the presentations Quinn makes. There's a lot of meat there, but Quinn as chef didn't do a good job with it IMO.

 

Edited October 19, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Benjamin McGuire]

It's worth noting that much of what Lance Owens wrote about Joseph's use of Hebrew is entirely dependent on his incorrect assessment of Louis Zucker (his Dialogue article "Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebre), 3/2, 1968). Zucker only had access to a single edition of the Seixas grammar (which created some issues for him), and drew some wrong conclusions. Owens doesn't understand some of what Zucker wrote, and makes the errors worse. With the texts easily accessible on the internet these days, it's easy enough for anyone to have a look and see much more material than Zucker had available to him in 1968. So, for example, Owens quotes Zuker as follows:

Quote

 

In the Seixas manual (p. 85), this Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 is given along with a "correct" word-for-word translation: "In the beginning, he created, God, the heavens, and the earth." Seixas would not have introduced in his oral instruction a translation entirely alien to the conventions of his own textbook. Zucker comments on Smith's strange translation of the verse: "Joseph, with audacious independence, changes the meaning of the first word, and takes the third word `Eloheem' as literally plural. He ignores the rest of the verse, and the syntax he imposes on his artificial three-word statement is impossible." 136

 

Owens then comments:

Quote

But Zucker (along with Mormon historians generally) ignored another exegesis of this verse--an exegesis which was a basic precept of Jewish Kabbalah from the thirteenth century on and which agrees, word for word, with Joseph's reading. 137 In the tradition of Kabbalah, Bereshith bara Elohim was most emphatically not an "artificial three-word statement," as Zucker implied.

Owens misunderstands Zucker, and he also doesn't have any idea of what Seixas does in his grammar. Page 85 of the 1834 edition of the Seixas grammar (noted above) presents just such a breakdown of the first word of the Bible as Joseph uses, introducing a prefix, and a suffix (called, just as Joseph calls it, a 'termination') leaving the middle of the word as the root. So while Seixas does provide a translation of the Hebrew word, he also breaks the word into those three component pieces, and then refers the reader to the Lexicon entry for reshith (Seixas references the Gibb's lexicon, and Joseph had in his possession an 1828 Gibbs student lexicon - the shorter edition). Joseph's explanation is linked to the grammar, and his Hebrew instruction, making the argument that Owens raises far less likely than Owens thinks.

https://books.google.com/books?id=wkRAAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=false

At any rate, those interested can find the earlier edition here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=g0YDAAAAMAAJ

There was a much later edition in 1852, which I also have, but isn't really all that useful for these discussions.

 

 

[clarkgoble]

31 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Joseph's explanation is linked to the grammar, and his Hebrew instruction, making the argument that Owens raises far less likely than Owens thinks.

Owens paper was embarrassingly bad. Way back when I ran the Morm-Ant mailing list there was an interesting debate between Bill Hamblin, Joe Swick, Brent Metcalf, myself and a few others on Owens paper. Again the FARMS reviews were misrepresented as I mentioned. There's a difference between the topic and the argument. Owens made horrible arguments. There are stronger arguments one can make regarding Kabbalism. But most of them end up being elements that pre-date 12th century Kabbalism but were utilized and often reinterpreted by Kabbalists.

I am fine with the idea that ideas largely lost in Christianity until the Renaissance persisted in Kabbalism. With the rediscovery or at least popularization of old texts from especially late antiquity in the Renaissance these lost elements became part of the west again. I have zero problem with these Renaissance elements coming to Joseph via Masonry and other traditions much as Protestantism gave him a lot of elements that also were distorted and needing correction.

It's also worth noting that the Kabbalistic reference in the TImes and Seasons  that Owens mentions was identified. (I believe by Bill Hamblin, although I'd have to check to be sure) At the time of the reviews (going by memory here) it wasn't known. Owens claimed Alexander Neibaur was familiar with Kabbalism on the basis of that quote. That's almost certainly false. He copied it from a book by Manasseh ben Israel called the Sefer Nishmat Hayyim. It wasn't from any Kabbalistic text at all.

If you look at the treatment of Genesis 1:1 in the Zohar it uses a pretty different explanation that Owens suggested as well.

By and large Owens was a neo-gnostic and was making an apologetic for such a reading of Smith. As I recall he left the Church shortly after his article and became an Unitarian minister teaching his particular form of neo-gnosticism.

Edited October 19, 2017 by clarkgoble