Kevin Christensen

I met her twice... an amazing woman, and great talent. Kevin C. Tooele, UT

See the important collection of essays edited by Noel Reynolds, Early Christians in Disarray, which demonstrates the loss of covenant very early. They make a strong collective case that Hellenization was not the cause but a consequence of the apostasy, and that Hellenization made the survival of Christianity possible, after the loss of priesthood and covenants, and various plain and precious things. Barker's The Older Testament and Nibley's "The Enoch Figure" in Enoch the Prophet" argue, in different ways, for the antiquity of the Enoch tradition. Barker points out in her "The Fragrant Tree' essay in "The Tree of Life" conference proceedings the geography of Jerusalem in 1 Enoch predates Hezekiah's tunnel. Which suggests that the traditions it reports have roots that predate Isaiah. And Barker has essays in the Great High Priest and Temple Mystism that make a case that Platonism imported Temple ideas from Ezekiel via Pythagoras. I find specificity in details makes stronger arguments than abstract labels and blanket dismissal. FWIW. Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

Regarding "zero empirical data", it helps to understand that Empiricism is an ideology that itself defines what counts as data based on assumptions that are not empirically based. Or as Ian Barbour put it, in one of my favorite books, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study of Science and Religion: I've long thought it compelling that Kuhn's most important criteria for paradigm choice [what actually gives a meaningful structure to scientific revolutions], that is, puzzle definition and testability, accuracy of key predictions, comprehensiveness and coherence, fruitfulness, simplicity and aesthetics, and future promise are equivalent to what Alma offers in Alma 32. FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

My point in citing The Man Who Would Be King is to show what happens when people make overreaching claims of authority to secure conformity, whether that do so naively (as often happens in every human community, time and place, as the Perry Scheme teaches me to expect) or as a conspiracy, in Carnahan's case. What should I expect of Latter-day Saint leadership is a different issue than what some people claim for Latter-day Saint leadership, and what some people demand from them, or report that "this is not what I was taught." So, "Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom," is a very different admonition than, "Trust me. If I heard it church, it is beyond question." I read all the verses in D&C 1 in context, and that full context resists the very misreading that annoys you. "This is mine authority and the authority of my servants." Both kinds of authority are spelled out in detail. D&C 1 does not say of Latter-day Saints leader that: Rather the opposite. A significant question is, why do some readers skip over the relevant verses that bluntly spell out weaknesses, errors that will be made manifest, and that revelation comes from time to time based on inquiry and expedience, and jump to an over-reaching reading of just D&C 1:38? In the Myers-Briggs Type indicator, SJ personality types clearly have a tendency to respect authority and tradition, and to favor conformity and sameness. As with the Perry Scheme, that describes human characteristics, not Latter-day Saint peculiarity. A better reading of Amos 3:7 is "surely the LORD God with do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" ought to consider the underlying Hebrew. Should I just stop with "What I was taught" or seem to remember by whomever in Sunday School, or, like Abraham, "seek to possess greater knowledge," and "seek out of the best books words of wisdom," not just "seek out of official publications words of orthodoxy"? In cultural context, the Hebrew tells me that the prophets ought to provide knowledge of the Council in Heaven (something Joseph Smith did in fact, provide), NOT that I should expect them all to be omniscient and inerrant, and eager to pour that knowledge into my waiting palm, according to my personal whims. D&C 1 overall does not blur the lines. Rather, people who want absolute certainty without effort, blur the lines. And that tendency is common to humanity, to human development, not due to any Latter-day monopoly on overreach. Consider the opposite of the way D&C 121 encourages the Latter-day Saint priesthood holders to behave: Who does that that picture bring to mind? Anyone prominent? Some people want their authorities to be perfect, as that removes from their lives any personal responsibility to think for themselves or question themselves. See Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (New York Harper and Row, 1951). The strength of the ''True Believer" mode is the zeal such persons possess, with an accompanying willingness to sacrifice all things, if necessary, for the cause. Hoffer claims that no mass movement ever succeeded without such people. The weaknesses of the mode derive from its rigidity, the tendency to polarized thinking and brittIe background expectations. True believers can demonstrate what Joseph Smith referred to as a "zeal that is not according to knowledge." A number of the most vocal critics of the Church are former true believers, who when their too-brittle faith shatters, become true anti-believers. That is, they change direction but not their character. The claim of the Book of Abraham by the Latter-day Saint scholars is that it is a translation, not the original. I have many books and have read many papers on the topic. I personally think the Book of Abraham is one of the strongest parts of the restoration. And frankly, when I read stuff that purports to blow down the entire edifice of Latter-day Saint belief via some Book of Abraham issue, I don't find myself impressed. Inevitably, these days, I observe that there are telling gaps in what they tell me. For example, I like the big FARMS volume on old Abraham Traditions that match the Book of Abraham, a large body of details that fretting over what "by the hand of Abraham" implies, does nothing to solve. I can see how they see and why, but they don't ever account for what I see. You ask, "When the church speaks of Revelation from God, what do you think that even means?" I find this relevant: Mark reports that Jesus says of this parable, "Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?" The revelations are not going to be received and nurtured in the same way, nor contextualized nor interpreted in the same way, nor will the same seed produce the same harvest in every case. I have long been interested in the ones who produce the best and most impressive harvests. And I did a study of the Latter-day Saint claims of religion in the context of World Religions and came up with this: https://oneclimbs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/model_of_experience.pdf And personally, what I have experienced as revelation in my own life has born impressive harvests. I consider sitting next to Brent Metcalfe at a Sunstone back in 1999, when he described how he was driving in Salt Lake and just realized all at once that all of faith and belief was a sham. If I had trusted his insight into reality whole while just driving around Salt Lake City as decisive, I consider a great many books and experiences that I subsequently encountered and I personally value, and recognize that had I taken his view, I would not have even known what I was missing. But in holding on to my initial personal witnesses, not just for the moments in which they occurred, but the harvest over many seasons that came as a result, I cherish what has come of them. My own expectations of prophets, I don't think are lower, but are more accurate, and produce realistic expectations. Again, "anomaly emerges against a background of expectation." So "What should I expect?" is a question that leads to checking one's own eye for beams, which in turn, leads to clearer vision. When I personally searched and discovered that the Bible contains at least 28 distinctive tests for True and False prophets, I was a bit startled to realize that anyone could have done what I did, and no one had. I was not included to toss it all in the garbage, because, after all, no one taught it to me at church. Is what I learn on my own initiative of no worth, compared to what some person with no notable exertion or qualifications utters? So when I see something that strikes me as inaccurate, I see people in process, humanity doing what humans in process do, not gathering grievances to use for leverage. When I see you say "the church exploited what people thought" I consider that the Greek behind "church" is "eklesia" which refers to an assembly, a gathering of people, of individuals of all kinds, who behave in human ways. So I see people in the assembly doing what they themselves thought best, rather than people who knew better exploiting the ignorant for malicious personal gain. The church consists of individual people, and is not a personified monolithic Entity that acts from a single unified malicious motive. You ask, Sure, if you realize that I always consider questions like these as particularly telling in light of two things. First, Kuhn's observation that all paradigm choice involves deciding "Which problems are more significant to have solved?" And second, this passage from an art book by Betty Edwards that to me remains the single most important insight I have discovered relative to why people differ on issues of faith and life. First, The Latter-day Saint Temple ritual openly speaks of "becoming priestesses." Clearly, "never" is wrong. And then Apostle Oaks spoke in a General Conference a few years back on how when any woman in the Church accepts any calling, that calling involves their use of Priesthood authority because "What other authority could it be?" Second, Since such things obviously happen, clearly God does not prevent such things. I have a brother and a best friend whose spouses left them to enter into series of such relationships. One eventually left off that decade long series and entered into a temple marriage. The other did not but remains in the other life style. The Latter-day Saint faith operates under the principle that "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." The recent legislation in Utah supporting Gay rights has been cited as exemplary, and the cooperation of the church was involved. The leaders obviously do not recommend such relationships, and cite the proclamation on the Family in relation. Neither question, to me, engages what Hugh Nibley called "The Terrible Questions." I've been attending 12 Step Meetings for a little over 20 years, and one thing I notice is that typically a third to a quarter of those attending and sharing disclose same sex desires and experience. In SA, many of these are men who are striving to stay in a heterosexual marriage, and in SAA, I see some who want to stay in a same sex marriage or relationship. I do not assert that being gay is addiction, but that someone who is gay is just as vulnerable to addiction as someone bi or straight. One of the defining characteristics of sex addiction is the feeling that "sex is my most important need." (Again, think of Kuhn and Edwards: "Which problems are most significant to have solved?" and what do we decide is most important?). It happens that physiologically speaking, addiction happens because at some point in life, a dopamine and other brain chemical "hit" became so profound as to trick the body into treating the cause of that hit to as equivalent to survival, as a physical need, rather than something optional even if desired. (For the details, see the video "Pleasure Unwoven: The Science of Addiction"). It happens that 12 Step Recovery actually addresses and heals the physiological changes in the brain that underlie addiction. The group support and boundaries adopted helps a person go without long enough for the body to heal of the increased desire, and the "searching and fearless moral inventory", story sharing that reduces shame, and dismantling of grievance stories removes feelings of entitlement, actually changes the way a person thinks and allows them to respond to threats by considering experience and consequences, rather than being launched into acting out by "triggers" and deal with consequences later. The point of this is to demonstrate that I know from personal experience that assuming that the existence of heterosexual marriage demonstrates the unfairness of God in allowing some people sexual fulfillment while eternally condemning others to permanent frustration is not accurate. In many cases, due to a range of physical and emotional issues, people in a heterosexual marriage may choose to go without in order to preserve family relationships. They can best do if they have found a way to understand and feel that "sex is not my most important need, but is optional." So, "Which problems do I see as most significant to have solved?" That God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that the Restoration is Real, that the Book of Mormon is authentic, and that the Book of Abraham is very very cool indeed. And also that beyond the boundaries of the Latter-day Saint community that "For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true." (Alma 29:8) FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

You are welcome. Given, as you say, that "The problem for many is the issues that are leading them away from the church were never presented as best thinking at the time. The problem is these issues were claimed to come from God himself not man’s best guess." I often think back to a moment in the film of Kipling's, "The Man Who Would Be King", when Michael Caine's character, Peachy Carnahan, asks Sean Connery's character, Daniel Dravot, "Would you rather follow a man or a God?" The context for the question was after a skirmish in which a Afghan arrow had appeared to strike Dravot, but had only become planted in a thick leather strap on his uniform. For convenience, they decide to let it be thought that Dravot was a God. Encouraging that expectation smooths their path for a time, but eventually leads to their downfall. Expectations are very important because, as Kuhn observes, "Anomaly emerges against a background of expectation." I notice the passive voice as you state the problem. "These issues were claimed to come from God himself, not man's best guess." Who specifically made the claim? Where did the expectation originate? My understandable frustration and inevitable protests through life that that "It is not what I expected!" or "It is not what I want!" ought not distract from the possibility of my personally asking "What should I expect?" Might there be a beam in my own eye that I could remove, and thereby, obtain clearer vision? Asking whether something is Real is very different than asking if something is what I expected or something I wanted. What should I expect from Latter-day Saint leadership? When I asked "What should I expect?" I had no trouble finding numerous statements akin to the formal statement of "mine authority and the authority of my servants" in Doctrine and Covenants 1:6 and not a text that I had to seek in the archives. Verses are rather blunt and for me, set my expectations appropriately. Just last week, I watched a Becoming Brigham video which covered the failure of the Kirtland Bank, in which one of the embittered Apostles told Joseph Smith that he thought God would never permit the Bank to Fail. Joseph Smith responded that he had never made such a claim. The Apostle responded, "But that is what I thought!" So, where to such expectations come from? So I can also ask, "What should I expect from Human Development? " So I have also been enlightened by the Perry Scheme of Cognitive and Ethical Growth Reading this, I notice that one of the most common claims in Latter-day Saint culture comes not from D&C 1:30 (Which expressly does NOT say "one and only true church," but something very different, a relative well-pleasingness relative to notions associated with the Biblical images of "true and living" and presenting therefore, a very different set of expectations) but from an unavoidable position in human ethical growth. Over a dozen years ago, in "Sophic Box and Mantic Vista") I was able to show that Joseph Smith, by precept and example, strives to get us to Position 9. I also learned from the Perry Scheme that progress is not inevitable, but that people may respond to the tensions and uncertainties, and the "opposition in all things" in life by regressing, rather than progressing. Knowing these things sets my expectations in a very different way than I see in many exit narratives, which often feature "Why did not one tell me this or that"! or "Why did this or that person do or say something that failed me or hurt me?" I expect the Latter-day Saints to be humans on a life journey, flawed and in process, not finished products whose intellectual and mortal failings disprove the entire system and culture. I understand that you resent me, though I have seen a range of exit narratives, many of which do not involve bitterness, but in just expressing our own points of view, how we see the world, which stories we tell as paradigmatic examples, and expressing our values and such, we are all involved in self-justification. Our own self justifications are entwined with the lives we chose to live. So Socrates commented that "An unexamined life is not worth living." I got involved in apologetics in significant measure because I friend of mine left the church back in 1976, and I wanted to understand that better. I find it notably ironic that many writers on the topic of departing from Latter-day Saint culture insist that what she bluntly told me is expressly not why most leave the church. (If it's the truth, why isn't there more truth in it?" aimed at the behavior of some in her little branch, and "I want to do what I want to do, without anyone telling me." Due to my different journey, I see LDS things differently, yes. And I take the time to explain exactly why I disagree, which necessarily involves spelling out my reasons for doing and thinking what I do. We do have a presidential example of what happens when a person decides to surround himself with people, who as far as possible who never challenge his preconceptions and desires, who indeed, compete to flatter him the most even on camera, and we saw how last week he threw a tantrum when an interviewer asked him for evidence, for transferrable, objective grounds for his self-justification, besides his subjective judgement on voting. He called her names and walked out. Very presidential. Joseph Smith, I notice, is radically different, far more tolerant, pictures a far more loving God, and declares that people are judged against their own life context, what they have, Christian or Heathen or whatever, and not against what they have not. And he said "By proving contrarieties, truth is made manifest," truth being "knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come." I seek to understand the contrarieties, and by so doing, see more clearly both myself and life. FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

Concerning "for many it doesn't line up with what they were taught or how they read things," Science has progressed since Aristotle, and there have been many shifts in thought along the way. I recall and consider Whitehead's comment: Change happens with life. Accepting that necessary for moving from Position 2 of the Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth, to moving to Position 9. The idea that nothing should ever change from what I first heard whomever say is an immature position I ought to outgrow, not leverage for self-justification and bitterness, as though I was born with an inherent entitlement that all my teachers should be omniscient and perfect so that I never have to change my thoughts on any topic or have to endure any human imperfection as a price for living. As though God owes me an unchallenging life, rather than say, an environment in which I am likely to be tested to the breaking point. As though I deserve a God who says, "If ye love me... nevermind. What does it matter? Any standards I give would frustrate someone. So do whatever you feel like doing, and I will take responsibility and clean up the mess someday." Joseph Campbell noted that one of the purposes of a mythology is to "sustain a social order". Exit narratives have a role in defining a exited community, just as conversion narratives play an important role for the Latter-day Saint committed. Grievance stories have a role in defining many communities. For example, "They are eating the dogs," is a grievance with implications for which community is acceptable in American society, and which is not, despite the easily discoverable fact that they weren't actually eating the dogs. The false narrative was shared because telling that story generates outrage, defines boundaries, and helped to sustain a particular social order. So people sharing the story even after it had been debunked do so in support of a particular social order. (The woman who first posted it soon found her dog and investigators found no other evidence.) The willingness to share a grievance story that has no factual support tells me more of the sharer of the story than the subject of the story. One of the notable insights of Twelve Step communities is that they understand the importance of "Dismantling the Grievance Story" to better understand themselves and to have a better self-defined story, to help participants shift from a "victim" narrative (and the accompanying sense of entitlement), to a "survivor" narrative, with an accompany sense of having endured real ordeals, and having grown through it. It is related to "removing the beam from one's own eye before rushing to judgement," to see clearly. It is akin to George Bailey deciding that his grievances and personal frustrations, however valid, are simply not as important as the significance of his relationships. That showed that his painful sacrifices were not pointless, but meaningful. So if a litmus test for self-justification in moving from one community to another, with the accompanying change in social standards and social boundaries that comes, is based demonstrable falsehood and misunderstanding, what does that say about the validity of the test? Was Othello's test for Desdemona's virtue valid or not? Or is it only important that Othello was sincere and truly felt hurt and betrayed? If such a litmus test is so commonly accepted in certain circles, and is a visible part of their shared mythology and obviously functions to sustain and justify a particular social order, does that mean no one should question or try to correct it? Is what people feel and want of their chosen society is more important than what is actually correct? When I was a small child, my father took us to see the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur quarry. There, as a child with an imperfect understanding, I saw bones in the rocks. And though the science has changed drastically over the years from what I was first taught, one thing has not changed at all. The bones were real. Progress and change in understanding has not changed that, any more than than the roots and chutes and leaves and branches that radically change the appearance of the original seed means that the one who first showed me the seed and planted it, must have been deceived or a liar because the seed changed. Is it embracing falsehood a path to freedom? Or does the knowledge of the truth make us free? FWIW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

The actual publication in 1842 said "a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into [Joseph Smith's] hands from the catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called "The Book of Abraham, written by Own Hand, upon Papyrus." (See John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham, page 1, citing the original 1842 heading. The "purporting to be" is important, as is the fact that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a papyrus that said "written by his own hand" would still say "written his own hand" because that is what a responsible copyist does. And it also happens that Joseph Smith possessed much more papyrus than has survived, thanks to the Chicago fire. Tim Barker did an important presentation called "The Answer Under Our Heads". https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/2020-fairmormon-conference/the-answer-under-our-heads For all of the detail, figures, and commentary Barker provides, at the center of it all is one very clear observation about information provided by Tanner and Heward in an early Dialogue essay claiming that the Book of Abraham is a bogus translation from the Hor Book of Breathings. Tanner and Heward made the important observation that Joseph Smith directed Rueben Hedlock to fill out gaps in the engraving for Facsimile 3 (the hypocephalus) with some characters from the Hor Book of Breathings and a figure from elsewhere. Unlike the previous 50 years of commentators, Tim Barker notices that while Heward and Tanner match up characters from the Hor Book of Breathings to marginal characters in the Egyptian papers, they did not match up to their influential thesis the fact that Joseph Smith's comments in the annotated portions of the published, reconstructed facsimile plainly show that Joseph Smith openly declares that had expressly NOT translated those characters (taken from the Hor Book of Breathings). That means that the source of the Book of Abraham must be something else, despite long standing assumptions to that effect by a great many critics. As to the Hor Book of Breathings, it is related to but distinct from the Book of the Dead. Nibley was the first to point that out. Nibley also pointed out that the Book of the Breathings is one link in a long line of documents that is essentially an Egyptian Endowment, a temple ritual, notably akin to the Latter-day Saint temple endowment. (See Nibley, An Egyptian Endowment). Nibley also pointed out in 1981 in the first edition of Abraham in Egypt that "The evidence that has led experts in the past 10 years to recognize the close ties between the old Abraham Apocrypha and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, especially with reference to the pictures in the latter, effectively eliminates the one argument against serious reading of the Book of Abraham. Now the show is on the other foot: How was Joseph Smith to know that an authentic Abraham Apocryphon should not be without visible affinities to the Book of the Dead?" (Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 40, in the long and detailed chapter, "Abraham and the Book of the Dead.") Margaret Barker points out that Genesis 1 closely maps to the erection of the tabernacle in Exodus. (See Temple Theology: An Introduction, 16-21). It is a ritual drama, a performance, not a geology text. Indeed, in one of his last publications, Nibley pointed out that our Book of Abraham account includes stage directions. (See "Abraham's Creation Drama.") No matter how many people misread Genesis 1 as history (the famous example, Bishop Usher was an text interpreter, not an eye witness of the original events) does not bind believers in the Bible and Christianity to the uninformed interpretations of misinterpreters. Nor must the Noah story be interpreted as global, any more than the plague of locusts that "covered the face of the whole earth" (Exodus 10:13-15) means that they covered all continents, rather than "the Land of Egypt". There is huge difference between reading for understanding and reading for leverage. The same seed, planted in different soils, nurtured in different ways, can produce vastly different harvests. "Know not this parable? How then shall ye know all parables." It is ironic that passing an exit narrative based on a popular set of misreadings, while posturing as scornful of the ignorant, so often demonstrates that the question of just who is demonstrating ignorance by their readings is an open question. The real problem, as Joseph Smith explained, is that creeds say "Hitherto thou shalt come, and no further." We can all learn more, and understand better. Even our testimonies do not bestow perfect knowledge, (Alma 32) but rather, just valid "cause to believe" that we are engaged with something real. FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

Free of charge. For information on locations, times, speakers, and registration, see https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2026-small-plates-of-nephi-conference I will be presenting on a Saturday Morning Session. "Plain, Precious, Lost, Restored." FWIW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

Archimedes famously said that "Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world." There is a difference between looking for leverage, and looking for understanding. I frequently point out that the formal statement of "mine authority and the authority of my servants in D&C 1 tries to accurately set our expectations of LDS Leaders. The difference between citing Marion G. Romney or Joseph Fielding Smith on the location of Cumorah and citing Mormon and Moroni's descriptive passages is that Mormon and Moroni are eye-witness, and General Authorities Romney and Smith and others are later interpreters, whose interpretations, I notice, never deal with the details of Mormon's and Moroni's descriptions. Since I do not place Romney and Smith on an inappropriate pedestal, I cannot be impressed by your attempts to topple them and the Book of Mormon against a standard of infallibility that D&C 1 expressly tells me not to adopt. I am impressed by Sperry, Palmer, and Sorenson, and Brant Gardner, and Larry Poulson, because they carefully consider what Mormon and Moroni provided. See Sperry's telling discussion here: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol4/iss1/30/ Sorenson labored to gather all of the relevant verses which must be accounted for to solve the puzzle of the New World Book of Mormon setting in places like this: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/54/ That is, he notices verse in Mormon 6:6 that describes the plates as being taken from the Nephite Cumorah, but never states exactly where they were buried, and they notice the location must make sense relative to the story of This is something that none of those LDS authorities who unquestioningly passed along the received tradition have ever done. So, really, how much authority do they have on that particular issue? Do they discuss the movements relative to a candidate Land of Desolation, a Narrow Neck, City of Lib, destructions in 3 Nephi, evidence for the rise and fall of literate civilizations, a narrow neck of land that extends from the Sea East to the Sea West that divides the land southward from the land northward, the account of Limhi's explorers and the time and distance constrained by the movement of Alma's people? I notice that far from committing its readers to received traditions as unquestionable, the Book of Mormon cautions us with the story of Old World disciples who, on a topic like "the other sheep" supposed that they understood, and did not ask, and therefore, were not taught. Sorenson also made a serious attempt to consider a wide range of interpretations in the Source Book and to provide a way to evaluate them against essential details that any model ought to account for. And he produced detailed work in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon and his final work, Mormon's Codex, both of which also deal with cultural and archeological issues. And other well informed authors have tweaked his interpretations, notably on the issue of directions. See the work of Larry Poulson and Brant Gardner. And also Jerry Grover on Geology and accounting for the destructions in 3 Nephi, and also the recent and revolutionary LiDar surveys, and the linguistic evidence for Egyptian, Hebrew and Phoenician evidence Brian Stubbs has compiled? Sterling McMurrin famously dismissed the Book of Mormon based on an insight gained, not from his notable education, but adopted when he was "younger than I can remember." As bright as McMurrin was, not only did he never read Mormon's Codex, having died before he could, but he never actually read the Book of Mormon. Just who actually has authority ought not be assumed, but explored. But we all get to decide which questions are worth exploring. FWYW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

I occasionally post this because I find it so useful. The Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth. When I was living in Kansas, Veda Hale sent me this summary she created and used for a Sunstone Presentation analyzing Levi Peterson's novel, Canyons of Grace, in its light. I used it extensively in my response to Riska's Deconstructing Mormonism in an Interpreter essay. I made the case that by precept and example, Joseph Smith tries to lead us to Position 9. FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, KS

Mormon and Moroni, both of whom, recorded relevant eye-witness descriptions of the hill and its environs, were also prophets who reported personal encounters with the Risen Lord. If President Romney was doing something other than affirming received tradition, then it should be easy to reconcile the eye witness descriptions with the New York Hill. That, as Sperry and others point out, leads to problems. On the other hand, if we can take seriously the Lord's formal statement of "mine authority, and the authority of my servants" in D&C 1, that "inasmuch as they erred, it might be made known," and "inasmuch as they sought wisdom, they might be instructed," then comparison of the New York Hill's physical description with the Book of Mormon eye witness description might actually tell us something. The story in 3 Nephi where the Risen Jesus explains that his Old World disciples "supposed they understood" who and where the "other sheep" were and because they did not ask, were not informed. The reason I cited Sperry's essay is that he actually considers the implications of the eye witness accounts compared to the "supposed" identity of the New York Hill. Supposing that Elder Romney "must have known" does not conform to the D&C 1 formal statement, nor does just name dropping a conclusion deal with the issues raised by the eye witness accounts provided by Mormon and Moroni. Beyond the problems that Sperry acknowledged and addressed, more research has been done, and many more geographical passages (well over 500 hundred passages) and relationships have been studied since, and as Sorenson aptly points out, they all need to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I see no reason to suppose that those who ignore that puzzle, based on their uncritical statements of earlier Latter-day Saints who also demonstrably ignored the puzzle, are doing anything other than supposing they understood, and did not ask. So where, exactly, is their basis of secure authority? FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

Notice the problem with the phrase "Tolkien's, Lewis's and others [paracosms] are unique..." Unusual, maybe. Published fantasy authors may be relatively unusual in the general population, but given large populations, we have lots of them. Scott Card imagined the original "Ender's Game" novelette while daydreaming on a grass lawn at BYU. He's still putting out lengthy novels. I also see a problem with treating the Book of Mormon as an adolescent creation, let alone something that can be characterized and explained as something typical, ordinary, no big deal. There is a difference between imagining an appealing fantasy world and gaining a large fan following. The "lig" root in religion" shares meaning with ligaments, which bind us together. The Book of Mormon is just a bit of fun, but something adherents accept as binding and as describing reality. I consider Robert Rees's essays on Joseph Smith compared to other notable writers of the American Renaissance. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V35N03_91.pd A follow up sequel. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/joseph-smith-the-book-of-mormon-and-the-american-renaissance-an-update He concludes this essay with this: Then we have the kind of narrative techniques used in the Book of Mormon, the use of type scenes and allusions, whose importance and significance were first pointed out for modern readers by Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative in 1981. Alan Goff has written many important essays showing the sophistication demonstrated in the Book of Mormon, drawing on Alter. And he also reviewed Mark Thomas's Digging in Cumorah, which approached the Book as a 19th Century fiction, while at the same time drawing on Alter's work, published 151 years late to be of use to Joseph Smith. And more recently, Matthew Bowen has been exploring "onomastic" word play in the Book of Mormon, which complicates things further for an adolescent author. And this on top of the kinds of Hebrew techniques Welch and Parry and others have done, while underneath all of that managing to give different authors different word prints, and drawing on the Early Modern English patterns that champsatch and Ryan have been observing. Other conspicuous problems emerge in things like "Survivor Witness and the Book of Mormon" by Thomasson and Hawkins: https://scripturecentral.org/archive/presentations/report/i-only-am-escaped-alone-tell-thee-survivor-witnesses-book-mormon Where did Joseph Smith learn the survivor witness pattern? And learn hypnosis, metal work, engraving, and while also chopping down 5000 trees, split rails for fences, uproot stumps, plant and harvest crops, making maple syrup, , etc.dig wells, working with family and neighbors to pay the bills necessary to keep their property? Leisure for either elaborate daydreaming and time and money for delving into esoteric books And where did he learn the theories of warfare that Nibley has compared to his personal experience in WWII, the theories of Clauswitz, and that Daniel Peterson compared to modern theorists like Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung, and others. And how about NDE experience patterns, as well as how experience changes the survivors over time? I wrote about that decades ago. And if Joseph Smith is drawing on the Mound Builder mythos, and books like View of the Hebrews, why contradict its basic premises far more often than it parallels them? (See Welch's 1984 essay on that.) And why do subsequent editions of MIchael Coes' "The Maya" have more and more in common with the Book of Mormon, rather than less and less. Why did not the LiDAR surveys undercut the Book of Mormon picture? There are some readers to dismiss the Book of Mormon as simple, but that is because they do not engage the more sophisticated readers of the text. Ann Taves, for instance, mentions only bulk and chiasmus as potential, but not serious obstacles. It is the magicians trick of misdirection. Over many years of engaging with the critics, I find that the Book of Mormon gets far more difficult to explain than any of them come close to acknowledging. One of the few who bothered to read the defenders work (John Charles Duffy) admits that he dismisses it all a priori, and explains it all away via a pair of metaphors, rather than detailed engagement. FWIW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

On the business of looking to Joseph's cultural environment to explain the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, would like to call back to Ben McGuire's response to Rick Grunder's extensive work on such parallels> See McGuire, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/finding-parallels-some-cautions-and-criticisms-part-one https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/finding-parallels-some-cautions-and-criticisms-part-two Also, on the notion of Joseph Smith as responding to Thomas Paine, I have to consider some of Nibley's essays in The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled, (a title that refers both to history and the present continuity of the ancient ideas). https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/80/ Look closely at "Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic" and "Paths that Stray: Some Notes on Sophic and Mantic" and consider just how far back we find thinkers like Thomas Paine, and consider that being educated in Paine's day was education in the Greek and Latin classics. I find myself continually delighted by Alexander Campbell's complaint that "the Book of Mormon resolves all the great controversies" as though relevance to current controversies is the last thing one would want or expect in a divine book. Would you be impressed that a book was both "irrelevant and incomprehensible and therefore, must be inspired?" And I see a great difference between Joseph Smith being able to discourse on everyday life among the Nephites as though Joseph had lived among them, and Joseph preaching in response to contemporary controversies. Details of every day life, clothing, animals, modes of travel, warfare and manner of worship require immersion in a different culture, not present culture, for which immersion is consequence of being alive, not of research into or careful creation of something different. My issue with the Lucy Mack Smith quote on that topic is that none of those who take the quote as a key to explaining the Book of Mormon address the problem with that late edited passage (not a contemporary diary entry), is that the passage mentions things that that Book of Mormon does not describe, and that if Joseph could amuse his family that way on those topics, why did he never do it again? And for that matter, why did they not appear in the Book of Mormon? J. K. Rowling and J. R. R Tolkien produced all sorts of details about the characters and their histories outside of the novels. Joseph Smith as imaginative author could certainly have done the same on many occasions. But he never did, unless you count the Zelph campfire gossip, recorded differently by several participants as such, which I don't. I also notice that Joseph's 1982 history, for the awkwardness of expression, does indeed carefully include many apt scriptural references (as the late Matthew Brown demonstrated at FAIR in detail), but that history came after Joseph and Sidney Rigdon has been intensely focused on the Bible for the previous year. It is not evidence of Joseph's abilities three or four years previously. FWIW, Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

I think they are human and misinformed. For example, Bob Crocket several times here used a Joseph Fielding Smith quote from 1937, and which was reprinted in the Church News in the 1950s. That quote emphasized that some traditional Saints were disturbed in their faith by suggestions by people like the Washburns that were suggesting that a close look at Book of Mormon texts, purporting to be written by actual eye-witnesses, such as Mormon himself, on the topic of the Hill seemed not to describe the New York Hill, but rather, a location in Mesoamerica. The ones who raised the question were those who paid close attention to what the eye witnesses, Mormon and Moroni, had to say. Sidney Sperry, for instance, published an essay called "Where there two Cumorahs?" that looked at the implications of Book of Mormon passages and stories that put the Cumorah and Shim in a geographic context with specific relationships. But I find it telling that those who like to pile up a string of authorities who assert the sure knowledge of the identity of the New York drumlin and the Book of Mormon hill, never address the issues of when and by whom the tradition started, and especially that such authorities never actually address the relevant Book of Mormon passages, the eye-witnesses, whose authority on that topic, deserves some attention and respect. And I notice that the Joseph Fielding Smith quote, while showing concern that some were disturbed in their faith by the then new suggestions, he showed no concern whatsoever for people who might find the new suggestions faith promoting. Joseph Smith himself noted this tendency among the Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith also noted that the problem with "creeds" was that "Creeds say 'Hitherto thou shalt come, and no further." The cost of further light and knowledge is old preconceptions. If you refuse to pay that price, you cannot progress. And D&C 1 spells out "mine authority and the authority of my servants" by saying "inasmuch as they erred, it shall be made manifest, Inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed." Our faith is not presently constrained by a Big Book of What to Think. Rather, we believe in ongoing revelation. FWIW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

Regarding the quotes Plains offers, Bob Crockett used to line these and others like them up against the notion that the New York Hill must be the Book of Mormon hill. One thing that all these statements, and others like them, such as the Joseph Fielding Smith quote from the 1930s, reprinted in the 1950s, and the authorities who present them have in common is that none of deal directly with the Book of Mormon statements regarding the location of the Hill. All presume that the tradition, as tradition, must be correct. No further inquiry is necessary or desirable. Rather like Bacon on earth centric cosmology: The formal statement of "mine authority and the authority of my servants" has this: Not discussing this formal statement masks the essential issue of whether the notion that "they must have known!" is built on a firm foundation, or upon sand. And I can think of one self-proclaimed authority who as a notable tell regarding a lack of careful and attentive research that goes "A lot of people are saying." I am far more interested in what the best informed and most insightful people are saying. I also notice that Jesus states that all judgement should begin by being self-critical. Removing the beam from one's one eyes first. "Then shall ye see clearly." It is that point at which the Father of the Scientific Method, Bacon, went wrong in debating with Copernican Theory. His "Don't theorize!" declaration is telling. Especially since that shows a determination to not bother to imagine how might things look to an observer who happened to live on a tilted and rotating earth that orbited a sun, and how that view might better explain planetary motion. The problem is "all theory is data laden." And if we are not aware of how our theories affect the selection and interpretation of data, we tend to be blind to other possibilities. Historically, the identification of the New York hill as Cumorah, came out of popular culture Latter-day Saint readings, not from any early statements from Joseph Smith, either as revelation from an angel, a subsequent revelation, or from a close reading of relevant Book of Mormon passages. And just because early Latter-day Saints after several years, began to re-use a name for the New York hill, one very notable fact of their human culture is that names get reused. Joseph Smith himself was a junior Joseph as well as a Smith, a notably common name. I grew up in Bountiful Utah, which I never mistook for either the Bountiful on the South Coast of the Arabian Peninsula where Nephi built a ship, nor with the Bountiful location discussed in 3 Nephi where the Risen Lord visited a temple. No one has fits over whether there is more than one Bountiful. All that is necessary is to pay attention to context, and to not assume that names uniquely emanate from things and are subsequently both unique and the same to all observers. Names, rather, are social conveniences. The notion of whether the Book of Mormon Cumorah/Shim may not be the same as the New York drumlin where Joseph got the plates came from close readers of the Book of Mormon. The Washburns offered a proposed internal map in 1937, drawing the ire of Joseph Fielding Smith, a notable scriptorian who never supported his defense of the traditional readings by addressing the Book of Mormon passages that raised the issue in the first place. Rather, he deferred to tradition. He did not re-examine the key sources to understand or defend the tradition. BYU's Sidney Sperry wrote an essay titled "Were There Two Cumorahs?" which actually does discuss several the scriptural passages that raise questions about the accuracy of the traditional identification, as though the eye-witness accounts from Book of Mormon prophets might be more reliable than Kirtland and Nauvoo interpretations or subsequent repetitions of a conclusion that obviously never bothered to cite or account for those passages. Sorenson's An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon is an important book, but is low resolution compared to his culminating Mormon's Codex. And we also have things like Gardner's books, Poulson's work, Jerry Grover on Geology, Brian Stubbs on linguistic influence, and such, that improve and refine his book on some key issues. Notably directions. Plus we have the competing Heartlanders, and Baja, Florida, Delaware, Malay Peninsulas, and so forth, none of which I see as serious competitors. All paradigm debates involve deciding "Which problems are more significant to have solved?" and "Which paradigm is better?" So I find it important to consider how do competitors decide "which problems are more significant to have solved?" and how do they measure "Which paradigm is better?" Those questions are decided in a large measure by theory and preconception, rather than completely by evidence. And we have things like the LiDAR surveys that revolutionized Mesoamerican Archeology overnight, in the direction of the Book of Mormon depictions, rather than undercutting them. As to "Joseph had years to build his Lehite paracosm", in connection with the Lucy Mack Smith paragraph that many people use to portray Joseph as being an imaginative story-teller. First Samuel Taylor wrote in Rocky Mountain Empire how his BYU teacher, Wilfred Poulson, privately managed to collect copies of every book listed in the Manchester Library, that would supposedly allow him to reconstruct Joseph Smith's intellectual environment, and show how he managed to compose the Book of Mormon. A problem with that is, the collection is not sufficient to account for the Book of Mormon, even if the Smith's were members, which they were not. It was not a public library, but a subscribers library. Most of the translation was done in Harmony, which had neither library, nor book store. And as William Hamblin showed, books were expensive, and the Smith's were hard pressed and busy with physical work. When chopping down trees, pulling out roots, splitting rails for fences and constructing fences, along with planting, harvesting, making maple syrup, digging wells, etc, they could not be reading. We have accounts of Joseph's money digging neighbors, who clearly believed he had something worth ransacking the house to find, but they never reported finding stacks of books, note books and paper drawings. Indeed, from the Book of Pukei, Abner Cole's contempory and local parody of the Book of Mormon, we get a view of what his neighbors imagined he would produce, most notable for being nothing like the Book of Mormon. And even Cole named Joseph Smith an "ignoramous"< not a "notorious bookworm." I know from personal experience that book worms are recognized as such by non-reading school mates and neighbors. And it happens that the famous Lucy Mack Smith quote, Ann Taves wrote: The problem is that the Book of Mormon has no detailed descriptions of their dress, manner of traveling, the animals on which they rode, nor details of their cities or details of buildings. Why not? The Book of Pukei has more details of dress, traveling, and animals, and even diseases. If you look closely something seems off. And while the Book of Mormon does describe their mode of warfare and manner of worship, we have no record of Joseph giving such recitals to anyone for the rest of his life on any of these topics. Why not? If he could do it as a teenager, why not as adult, particularly if his audience was so appreciative and spell-bound? And if his family had eye-witness experience of Joseph transparently inventing stories, why would they go along with him. as though it were all real, at such great personal cost? I often imagine Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail in the winter after months of privation and isolation, saying to a co-conspirator, "Tell me again how much money we will make." I do not have to imagine Joseph and Hyrum reading the Book of Mormon while in Liberty Jail, facing death, because they actually did it. And there is this: So, the claim that Joseph Smith was capable of spinning stories and constructing a personal mythology does not have contemporary evidence. Just a late report with evident editorial influence, which leaves important unresolved tensions in the claims it makes. Taves combines her claims about the Smith household experience with judgements from neighbors. But it seems to me that these are judgements about stories of the Book and the Angel and his visions from the period when it was all scandalous, and not about Book of Mormon stories. Taves misapplies them by combining them with the later comments attributed to Lucy Mack Smith about family gatherings discussing what Joseph learned and experienced in his sessions with Moroni. If the Book of Mormon claimed no direct ties to Old World cultures via Nephites, Mulekites, and Jaredite voyages, I might have issues with relevant Old World evidence, I might worry about Roper using Old World sources. But it claims them, and that means such evidence deserves to be weighed. Or to use the Parable of the Sower, am not adverse to planting the seeds in the best soils I have available, nurturing them carefully over time, and considering the ongoing harvest. I don't see any profit in putting them down on rocks, scorching them with a magnifying glass under a hot sun, and saying, "See! I told you the seeds were bad." FWIW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT