Richard Bushman - People Asked Him Anything

[cinepro]

Richard Bushman conducted an interview of sorts over on Reddit, where commenters were free to "Ask Him Anything" and he could respond to whichever questions he felt like.

 

Here are some of the highlights.  I combined some posts and answers, and edited them for context and readability.  I recommend checking the original conversation for the full context (and to make sure I didn't change the meaning in the transposition).

 

On the Book of Mormon translation process:

 

That is a pretty good summation of Skousen. However, not everyone agrees with him. Brant Gardiner has another view that allows for more input from Joseph. I am less concerned about the technique of translation that I am about the content. The Book of Mormon has a lot of nineteenth-century Protestant material in it, both in terms of theology and of wording. I am looking for an explanation of how and why it is there. I don't think it is enough to say JS absorbed it from his environment. It is too complex and to far beyond his cultural range. But it is there, and we need to explain why and how. Right now it seems possible that the Joseph gave us exactly what he got by his inspiration, but that what was given him went beyond what the Nephite prophets wrote on the plates. The text was augmented in some way.

 

--------------------------------------------

 

All I can say here is that while reading Alma in the Book of Mormon I began to google long phrases from the sermons, and they came up in sermons in very much the same doctrinal context. All the talk about Jesus in the Book of Mormon, its glory we would say, has a 19th century ring to it. In my opinion, we should become the experts on this material and figure out what it tells us about translation and the nature of the text.

 

 

 

If I remember correctly, in RSR you did not include the story about Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail commanding the guards to be silent as recounted by Parley P. Pratt (and included in the2011 Relief Society/Priesthood Teachings of Joseph Smith manual).

Why did you omit this? Is there anything inherently untrustworthy about Pratt's account? Or is it that there aren't any sources other than Pratt?

 

 

I will confess I am a little suspicious of overly dramatic accounts. We are all so inclined to embellish our stories. In general I tried to avoid accounts written long after the fact. To use them properly you have to consider all the forces bearing on the story-teller when he finally put it down. I leave out a lot of material written in the 1860s and 1870s for that reason. A second account of the incident would have made a big difference.

 

 

There are many people with a fraction of your knowledge of church history that throw up their hands and give up. They say looking any further into the truthfulness is futile, because what they've come to know negates the possibility of truth. What fundamental difference is there in those who let the knowledge negate their faith and those who let knowledge sustain it?

 

For me that is the question of the hour. It is hard to explain. People on each side dream up explanations of the other. The believers say you must be sinning; the unbelievers say you are biased by your background and emotional factors. I don't know the actual answer. I have come recently to ask people how they feel about Christ. If they still value him, I think they will be okay. But many have given up on Christ and even on God. Their problem in other words is a Christian, not just a Mormon, problem. I don't know why that happens. People are left without a spiritual anchor of any kind. My hope is that wherever they land they will have the strength to reconstruct a belief they can live by. I don't like it when anti-Mormonism becomes their religion. That is not a good way to live.

 

Yes you do risk losing your faith if you dig deep. It has happened to lots of people. But that does not mean you should not dig. You don't want to feel that if you turned over every stone, somewhere there would be a snake. You have to be willing to look at everything or your faith will be shaky. My own belief is that if you run into a problem, you should plunge right into the center of it and learn all you can. Problems that are lit up with knowledge are often less scary than problems lurking in the shadows.

 

Contradicting the standard narrative of church history is a delicate matter. People get disturbed and the questioner feels rebuffed. I ran into this problem at Claremont where the graduate students offended Church members with their expert knowledge on the New Testament when it ran against the standard views. I think two things have to be kept in mind. If your secret wish is to be an iconoclast, to break the images, church members will sniff that out. Or if you want to parade superior knowledge as some of the Claremont students did, you will meet resistance. If your wish is to help people understand our history better, you are more likely to be accepted. My second suggestion is be prepared. In a sense you have to begin each comment with the phrase "there is reason to believe . . . " If you challenge someone's long held opinion, they will want to know where you got that. What reason do you have to make such an assertion. You can't simply tell them it is well known, or you found it on the internet, or that some critic came up with this information. You need to know where in the sources this new data can be found. If you are claiming JS looked in a hat to translate you had better know that Emma Smith said this in an interview with her son. That will not only add authority to what you are saying, but take the sting out of your claims. Then you can look at the document together and figure out what it means.

 

 

[sunstoned]

Thanks for posting Cinepro.  The link is to a very interesting conversation.  Bushman for the most part is a straight shooter.

[why me]

Here are some more interesting quotations:

 

We are in a period of transition with regard to our history. The narrative is in the process of reconstruction. Right now that means there is the standard, comforting story, and then a series of controversies. Teachers are wondering how many of the surprises can be brought up in Sunday School without disrupting the spiritual purposes of the class. In time I think this problem will go away. All the controversial questions will be absorbed into the standard narrative and we won't have a sense of two tracks. We will explain that Joseph Smith looked in a hat to translate just as now we say he looked in a stone box to find the gold plates. There are already lots of surprising things in the standard narrative. We will simply flesh that out. We must, however, not relent in getting all this material included. We want the story we tell each other to be based on the best possible historical evidence. Any shrinking from that mandate will only lead to more problems down the road. I think the Church is trying to create that kind of comprehensive, accurate narrative. In a few years there won't be any more surprises.

 

And this answer about if the GAs were informed or knowledgeable about church history:

 

They were not for many years, but recently they have had to get up to speed. The recent Church historians have done a great job of informing the Brethren. The gospel topics were a surprise to many. They are often charged with concealing the truth. I think the fact is the old narrative was all they knew. I don't think that all believe we have to tell the whole story. Why bring all that up they are wont to say. But those on the side of transparency are prevailing.

 

I have said in the past that the GAs was not hiding history. But in fact, they may not have known church history very well. And it seems to be the case. We tend to think evil of those we wish to create as evil. But it seems that they were not exactly knowing church history either.

 

Also, there will come a time when the controversies will not be controversies anymore as people become more educated in church history. I have to say that the lds church is doing a wonderful job in educating its members about history. It will only get better as time goes on. There will come a time wihen the lds will be very educated about their history, more so than catholics or protestants who like many mormons are ignorant of their churches histories also.

Edited July 27, 2015 by why me

[Joshua Valentine]

I have said in the past that the GAs was not hiding history. But in fact, they may not have known church history very well. And it seems to be the case. We tend to think evil of those we wish to create as evil. But it seems that they were not exactly knowing church history either.

 

Also, there will come a time when the controversies will not be controversies anymore as people become more educated in church history. I have to say that the lds church is doing a wonderful job in educating its members about history. It will only get better as time goes on. There will come a time wihen the lds will be very educated about their history, more so than catholics or protestants who like many mormons are ignorant of their churches histories also.

 

Part of me agrees with you that the GAs are affected by the official history just as any member.  They've grown up with it, just as other members have.  So they recapitulate it themselves as GAs and the cycle continues.

 

However, another part of me hears about how many (not all) of these details of history were more openly communicated, at least in parts of the LDS culture (if not outside Utah, perhaps) before Correlation.  So that would seem to indicate that the GAs (at least the older ones who lived in Utah) would know about this information, although obviously not all of it. So they could still be surprised by some of it.

 

As for whether there will come a time when there are no new surprises, it completely depends on whether the leadership go into this "whole hog" or not.  The essay on the Priesthood/Temple ban on black men and women makes me wonder.  But they are still just starting.  Only time will tell.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Joshua Valentine

[Freedom]

Thanks for posting. In reference to general authorities not knowing history, it is important to remember that they are just regular people and their position in the church is a calling without any formal training. They do not go to a general authority training center or enroll at BYU to earn a bachelors of general authoritying. They are doctors, lawyers, insurance salesmen, school teachers, and computer programmers. I recognize that I now very little about our doctrine and history compared to may people here, but I am considered a scholar of these disciplines in my area. This does not reflect the depth of the my knowledge, but rather the shallowness of it among the vast majority of the members. Few people read scholarly articles. The knowledge many of us have here is the result of a hobby of reading. Most people come home from work and watch tv, or garden, or work on their cars. They spend weekends cleaning, skiing, or reading a novel. We can criticize GA's for not knowing more about our history, but they will likely not have to exert too much energy to discover that we have not spent sufficient time serving the families we home teach, or helping out with the scouting program or a host of other worthwhile activities. 

[why me]

Part of me agrees with you that the GAs are affected by the official history just as any member.  They've grown up with it, just as other members have.  So they recapitulate it themselves as GAs and the cycle continues.

 

If one goes back to the 70s or even the early nineties, more was written in the ensign about certain topics such as the first vision or the translation process. However, church history may have been not that known. First, not many people were writing about church history. Leonard Arrington did in the seventies. But how many read his essays and books and how many are still around today? So, I do think that there was a neglect of church history as it began to stress more faith based lessons. But I am sure that many did read or skim through Bushman's book on Joseph Smith.

 

I can't blame the people in charge for doing this. I  know of no church that has sunday history lessons for their members. The lessons are usually gospel centered. So, why would the lds church be different? However, I do see a day where mormons will know a great deal about their history more than the average person of other churches. I  suppose that unlike catholics, protestants etc, mormons are being more or less forced to know their history. To some extent the critics won but since lds history is a faith enhancer when one sees the complete picture of what it entails.

Edited July 27, 2015 by why me

[rpn]

Here for the takeaways

 

http://www.wheatandtares.org/17915/richard-bushman-on-mormonism/

[Senator]

Oh, Bro. Bushman, surely you jest......

[rpn]

Isn't there a fair amount of evidence that most leaders didn't know much about the history themselves --- why should they be any different than the members or for that matter earlier leaders.  (I'm always struck by the fact that three separate presidents assigned someone to look into the source for the priesthood ban, giving a strong suggestion that the info was not being transmitted on the front burner.)

 

And within the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, there are different views on whether and how to address historical things, such that a consensus on the subject must be difficult.   (The it- may- be- true,- but -it- isn't -useful crowd compared to the truth- is- truth -better-to -inoculate  crowd aren't easily reconciled, after all.)

[cinepro]

An English teacher at BYU shares his less than enchanted response.

[KevinG]

An English teacher at BYU shares his less than enchanted response.

 

Part of me wants to admire Bushman and Young for the well thought out dialogue.  Then I remember that it's a Historian and an English Teacher trying to tell us how to understand Prophets and Apostles.  Sigh.

[rpn]

I think the not enchanted response really distorts what bushman did --- he was discussing his own sorting out, not giving advice about how to do it.

[Nevo]

An English teacher at BYU shares his less than enchanted response.

 

If those answers work for Professor Young, that's great. They don't work for me. Richard Bushman is certainly correct when he says that "the Book of Mormon has a lot of nineteenth-century Protestant material in it, both in terms of theology and of wording." Appeals to Margaret Barker and chiasmus and the alleged presence of 15th-century syntax in the text don't change that. The question confronting the believer, as Bushman rightly observes, is "how and why it is there."

[sunstoned]

Richard Bushman presented well thought out responses to the many questions that he received.  His scholarship approach to research is refreshing.  He also asked about as many questions as he answered, which was a clear indication that he feels that their room for more research and more discussion.  Mr. less than a enchanted response seemed to have his panties in a wad because Bushman just didn't parrot the standard whitewashed faithful storyline.  

 

They should have taken Bushman to Sweden. 

[why me]

If those answers work for Professor Young, that's great. They don't work for me. Richard Bushman is certainly correct when he says that "the Book of Mormon has a lot of nineteenth-century Protestant material in it, both in terms of theology and of wording." Appeals to Margaret Barker and chiasmus and the alleged presence of 15th-century syntax in the text don't change that. The question confronting the believer, as Bushman rightly observes, is "how and why it is there."

And yet, Bushman is still a faithful member of the lds church. I think that he has faith in the narrative about how the book came to be. He also believes that Joseph could not have written it.

 

Bushman:  I think the Book of Mormon is a marvel. I don’t think you can make a case based on historical evidence that Joseph Smith could have written the book. It is entirely too complicated and produced with so little experience. In my opinion that does not allow you to jump immediately to the conclusion that the book was divine. I tell people it was either a work of genius or it was inspired. By genius we mean something that exceeds normal human capacities. That is certainly true for the Book of Mormon. See Wallace Bennett’s book, Leap of Faith for an extended presentation of this view.

 

The greater question is: who wrote it? It seems obvious that Joseph could not have written it and yet, he was willing to be persecuted and loose his life over it. It is a strange human narrative that Joseph presents for us. And as a good historian should do with his students, bushman leaves the questioning up to us after looking at the evidence of the work itself in terms of authorship.

 

Plus we still have the 11 witnesses to contend with.

Edited July 28, 2015 by why me

[why me]

 

Richard Bushman presented well thought out responses to the many questions that he received.  His scholarship approach to research is refreshing.  He also asked about as many questions as he answered, which was a clear indication that he feels that their room for more research and more discussion.  Mr. less than a enchanted response seemed to have his panties in a wad because Bushman just didn't parrot the standard whitewashed faithful storyline.  

 

They should have taken Bushman to Sweden. 

I do think that sweden was just a little overdone by the critics at that time. Knowing some members from sweden, the impact was less than presented by the critics.

 

However, bushman is a lecturer who has a critical mind. And as such, he always leaves room for questioning especially since the facts so far leave open much room for debate. Such is history and interpretation. Christianity itself could do with a questioning process also. As would Islam and various other faith traditions. People have accepted standard religious narratives meant to build faith. Bushman is critical of memory decades after the event, and yet, the gospels would fall into this category. Certainly there is much to question there, something many christians fail to do even when being critical of the book of mormon.

 

Why should mormons be the only faith that needs to do a socratic questioning process? And yet, this seems to be the case. Certainly when one looks in the catholic faith, if one would do a socratic questioning process over its history, we just may find some very serious facts that may affect faith. Likewise for the various protestant sects. Not a very christlike history during the religious wars between catholics and protestants. Such wars would make MMM seem like a grain of sand in human misery.

 

I do believe that when the lds church presents its own faith based interpretations the lds will be stronger in faith and less depended on secular understandings and more focused on the spiritual experiences that they receive as members, confirming its truth.

Edited July 28, 2015 by why me