Luman Walters - Golden Plates influencer?

[mapman]

16 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

What would the grimoire you mention be? The accounts of Luman reading unintelligible jargon from a Latin book? It seems that he had a text of some sort, and that this text was a part of his conjuring act. I've no idea if that book was ancient scripture, Cicero's Orations or a handbill from a French circus. But he had something, written in jargon, or another language as he and others searched for treasure in Palmyra, and the Hill Cumorah specifically.

I don't expect that Walters, had he truly studied in Paris, would have met directly with someone like de Sacy. But it is probable that he would have known others who were familiar with de Sacy's popular writings and ideas on the relationship between oriental religious texts and freemasonry. Yes, it is speculation, but somehow we need to explain why we find many parallels between Enoch lore and literature and early Mormonism. The argument is always that Joseph, or anyone in America before 1823, could not have had access to the Book of Enoch. I don't believe that is true. If Walters was in Paris in 1818 as claimed, he would have been very close to the center of that conversation.

We really have no idea which grimoire was. The most popular grimoires were Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia or the various grimoires based on it. Abner Cole made the joke that it was Cicero's orations, but we don't know what it actually was.

Speculations are all fine and good, but they don't actually explain anything. In my opinion, it is going to be fruitless to try to show that Joseph Smith was aware of specific texts in the 1820s. The ascension of Enoch through the heavens is a common theme in esotericism (it appears in other places like Kabbalastic texts such as the Zohar and John Dee's revelations). I tend to think that Joseph Smith was more aware of esoteric traditions that permeated some segments of antebellum America than most Mormons have thought, but I don't think that we can trace these influences to just one person or text.

Edited December 18, 2016 by mapman

[mapman]

15 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I agree that a lot of the conversation about Luman here is speculative. However, there is a decent case for the possibility that JS or someone made the plates.

1. JS and others had dug on the hill later called Cumorah many times and found nothing. They had also dug in lots of other places and hills in the area and found nothing. That JS suddenly had success locating a buried treasure suggests the possibility that it was something besides authentic buried treasure.
2. JS allowed people to handle the plates covered but no one could see them. It's possible that he believed God had commanded this unreasonable restriction because the plates didn't look authentic or at least didn't look like the golden plates JS described. I say unreasonable because there is no obvious reason for people to be able to handle but not to see the plates.
3. Josiah Stowell saw the corner of the plates uncovered as JS passed them to his mom through the window the night he brought them home. He described what he saw as a stone of greenish caste. This is incongruent with what the three witnesses saw in vision and what the eight witnesses described.
4. The eight witnesses possibly had a visionary experience. Lucy remembers that an "ancient nephite" delivered the plates to them in the grove where they saw them. John Whitmer said that a supernatural power caused the plates to be shown to him. Burnett reported that Martin Harris said that the every person who had ever seen the plates, including the eight witnesses and Joseph, had saw them in vision, and for that reason the 8 had been hesitant to sign the witness document but JS had persuaded them. D&C explains that it is only by God's power that the plates are shown to anyone. The above aspects suggest a vision-like experience, which would explain why the 8 describe a visually-convincing, physical artifact that is otherwise unattested, except by Mary Whitmer (see 5).
5. Mary Whitmer describes seeing an older gentlemen showing her the plates right as she was considering kicking JS to the curb (pretty impressive). The experience falls in the realm of vision as it abruptly ended with the mysterious disappearance of the man and plates.
6. Later, when JS had authentic artifacts that he believed contained writings of ancient prophets, he eagerly displayed the Egyptian papyri for visitors, etc. There is an obvious incongruency here. The best offered with the plates is to heft them or handle them under a handkerchief and then they disappear for good while the papyri are put on public display.
7. There are numerous connections between the Masonic legend of Enoch and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, so many that both faithful and completely secular scholars have acknowledged the validity of the connections. A significant part of the legend is Enoch's vision of the gold plate and subsequent manufacture of it. If the legend affected JS significantly enough to shape how he related his sacred experiences, there is a real possibility that this aspect of the legend inspired him as well.

 

What I mean by evidence are historical sources from people involved in the events under consideration. No one close to the golden plates ever suggested that they believed that the plates were manufactured by Joseph Smith, thus there is no evidence. What you seem to be doing is deductive reasoning based off the assumption that what Joseph Smith claimed (an angel helped him find an actual ancient record) can't be true, therefore we need to find another explanation that contradicts the historical sources. Most historians I think would just bracket the issue of whether there was an actual ancient record in his possession because it hinges on religious claims like the existence of angels, and it isn't a historian's job to decide whether angels and visions are real or not. If I were to write about these events, I might say that Joseph Smith's followers and the treasure diggers believed the golden plates existed, but it would be inappropriate to go further than that if I am working in the realm of scholarship and evidence. I personally believe that the Book of Mormon is a rendition of an ancient record given to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni, but I don't believe that because I think the historical sources prove it.

[Benjamin Seeker]

1 hour ago, mapman said:

No, this is not correct. The source you are citing is from a journal entry from Elizabeth Kane in 1873 reporting what Artemisia Beaman Snow had told her. None of the Beamans knew Walters until after he had moved to the Palmyra area. We know that Walters was in the US in 1818 from the incident where he escaped jail, and he moved to Palmyra in the early 1820s, so Artemisia was just passing along what she had heard about his travels that had allegedly happened several years earlier (other sources show that the story going around was that he left when he was a minor, so that would have been the late 1790s/early 1800s). I'm not going to say that he didn't go to Europe, but we should be reasonably skeptical about these stories without good evidence for them.

I'm not inclined to put much confidence in the accuracy of the details mentioned in this source because of its being second-hand report of things that had happened decades earlier, and since things like it saying that he was "son of a rich man living on the Hudson South of Albany," which simply is not accurate. It also disagrees with other sources about him being "sent" to Europe, in contrast to the other accounts that say that he ran away from home when he was young and his family didn't know where he went.

Thanks for the clarifications on that source. I have to agree that there's plenty of room for skepticism surrounding what this guy claimed or what people said about him. Eventually someone will have to really look for evidence from Europe on the possibility of his education there.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Benjamin Seeker

[Benjamin Seeker]

8 hours ago, mapman said:

What I mean by evidence are historical sources from people involved in the events under consideration. No one close to the golden plates ever suggested that they believed that the plates were manufactured by Joseph Smith, thus there is no evidence.

Fair enough. I've never investigated to see if anyone contemporary, close or distanced, accused JS of making plates, so good point here. For example, Josiah Stowell's "stone of a greenish caste" doesn't tell us anything about the plates' origin, but it does suggest that what JS brought home that evening did not appear like he and other witnesses described.

Quote

What you seem to be doing is deductive reasoning based off the assumption that what Joseph Smith claimed (an angel helped him find an actual ancient record) can't be true, therefore we need to find another explanation that contradicts the historical sources.

You don't quite have me pegged here. It's not that JS' claims can't be true. Originally coming from an assumption that I was to take JS' claims at face value, I have gradually changed my approach as time and time again I have seen that his claims need to be examined closely and often prove to be more complex or somewhat different than what he intended to be understood (ex. 1838 history's treatment of money digging and method of BOM translation). Further, the more I learned about the BOM, the more I learned about its non-ancient content, some of which is not convincingly explained by translation theory alone. These factors and my own experience with revelation led me to approach JS's claims about the BOM more carefully and to not overlook some of the details I've laid out in my list regarding the physical appearance of the plates. 

 

Edited December 19, 2016 by Benjamin Seeker

[Gervin]

On 12/16/2016 at 2:32 PM, mfbukowski said:

Not sure about this one.  I don't see it applies at all.  Joseph did not take the plates to a scholar- Martin Harris took a reproduction of a few "charactors" to a charlatan professor.  

In what way was Charles Anthon* a charlatan**?

*Graduated with honors from Columbia College in 1815, and, after studying law, was called to the bar in 1819.  Never practiced.  Appointed the next year as assistant professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia. In 1830, made a full professor and the headmaster of the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School.  Produced a large number of classical works for use in colleges and schools and wrote A Manual of Greek Literature from the Earliest Authentic Periods to the Close of Byzantine Era.

 ** a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Gervin

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Gervin said:

In what way was Charles Anthon* a charlatan**?

*Graduated with honors from Columbia College in 1815, and, after studying law, was called to the bar in 1819.  Never practiced.  Appointed the next year as assistant professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia. In 1830, made a full professor and the headmaster of the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School.  Produced a large number of classical works for use in colleges and schools and wrote A Manual of Greek Literature from the Earliest Authentic Periods to the Close of Byzantine Era.

 ** a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill.

Quote

 

In February 1828, Martin Harris, a farmer from Palmyra, New York, visited the Prophet Joseph Smith, who was then residing in harmony, pennsylvania, where he had just begun to translate the Book of Mormon (see Book of Mormon Translation By Joseph Smith). Smith had earlier turned to Harris for financial backing for the translation; now Harris came to Harmony to take samples of the reformed Egyptian characters from the gold plates (cf. Morm. 9:32), thereafter to obtain scholarly opinion about their authenticity. Smith gave Harris a copy of some of the characters, along with a translation, which Harris then presented to at least three scholars in the eastern United States. The most important of these, given the nature of the inquiry, was Charles Anthon, an acclaimed classicist at Columbia College.

The two men's accounts of the meeting differ. Harris said that Professor Anthon gave him a certificate verifying the authenticity of the characters but that when Anthon learned that Joseph Smith claimed to have received the plates from an angel, he took the certificate back and destroyed it. Anthon, for his part, left written accounts in 1834 and 1841 in which he contradicted himself on whether he had given Harris a written opinion about the document. In both accounts, apparently to dissociate himself from appearing to promote the book, he maintained that he told Harris that he (Harris) was a victim of a fraud. Modern research suggests that, given the state of knowledge of Egyptian in 1828, Anthon's views would have been little more than opinion. Whatever the case may be about a written statement from Anthon, Harris returned to Harmony ready to assist Joseph Smith with the translation.

 

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Anthon_Transcript

"Modern research suggests that, given the state of knowledge of Egyptian in 1828, Anthon's views would have been little more than opinion."

Quote

 ** a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill

Sounds about right to me.

Edited December 19, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Rajah Manchou]

4 hours ago, Gervin said:

Not sure about this one.  I don't see it applies at all.  Joseph did not take the plates to a scholar- Martin Harris took a reproduction of a few "charactors" to a charlatan professor.  

But we can be pretty certain the original characters, not the plates, were seen by other experts.

Lucy Mack Smith said it had been agreed that Martin should take the characters to the East “and through the country in every direction” and on his way should call upon “all who are professional linguists to give them an opportunity of showing their talents in giving a translation of the characters,” 

First there was Luther Bradish, a successful lawyer and diplomat (spy) who was also one of the few Americans at that time to have travelled in Egypt and the Middle East. This guy has his own fascinating history as one of America's first graffiti artists.

http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/05/188968426/the-boomerang-graffito-or-bad-bad-luther-b

And then Samuel Mitchill. 

Mitchell was the country’s leading student of the Rosetta Stone, an ancient stele with writing in three languages that had earlier been discovered and decoded. Thus Mitchell had an intense interest in hieroglyphic writing. And Mitchell had been studying the origins of the American Indians for several years and “had painstakingly developed his own two-races theory of ancient America,” Brother Bennett said. “His interest in the history of the ancient American Indian was therefore at a peak when Harris showed him this transcript.” (source)

Harris did seek the opinions of respected experts, and Joseph encouraged him to do so.

[Rajah Manchou]

8 hours ago, mapman said:

No, this is not correct. The source you are citing is from a journal entry from Elizabeth Kane in 1873 reporting what Artemisia Beaman Snow had told her. None of the Beamans knew Walters until after he had moved to the Palmyra area. We know that Walters was in the US in 1818 from the incident where he escaped jail, and he moved to Palmyra in the early 1820s, so Artemisia was just passing along what she had heard about his travels that had allegedly happened several years earlier (other sources show that the story going around was that he left when he was a minor, so that would have been the late 1790s/early 1800s). I'm not going to say that he didn't go to Europe, but we should be reasonably skeptical about these stories without good evidence for them.

I'm not inclined to put much confidence in the accuracy of the details mentioned in this source because of its being second-hand report of things that had happened decades earlier, and since things like it saying that he was "son of a rich man living on the Hudson South of Albany," which simply is not accurate. It also disagrees with other sources about him being "sent" to Europe, in contrast to the other accounts that say that he ran away from home when he was young and his family didn't know where he went.

It wasn't just Beaman Snow. If the swearing necromancer known by Brigham Young was the same as the swearing mesmerist described by Beaman, then we have a second source agreeing that this person: had put himself in possession of all the learning in the States, —had been to France, Germany, Italy, and through the world, —had been educated for a priest and turned out to be a devil. [...] I never heard a man swear as he did. He could tell that those plates were there, and that they were a treasure whose value to the people could not be told; for that I myself heard him say.

Is there any question that Young was talking about Luman Walters? I guess we can never know with 100% certainty, but I wouldn't expect there were two European-educated swearing occultists in Palmyra looking for golden treasure at the same time.

Edited December 19, 2016 by Rajah Manchou

[hagoth7]

On 12/13/2016 at 5:56 PM, mapman said:

...The "Book of Pukei," a satire, says that he had Cicero's Orations in Latin but told the treasure diggers it had stories about buried treasure. That seems kind of far-fetched to me...

You think Cicero's writings alluding to the discovery of a precious record seems far fetched?

Why be so quick to dismiss?

In the context of Nephite history, when you consider a broad number of historical facets (that I won't derail this thread with)...the claim that Cicero's writings allude to a latter-day discovery of ancient scripture isn't that far fetched at all.

Instead, taking everything in context, including the scope, breadth, and lasting influence of Cicero's writings, and especially considering the role of the man who helped Cicero produce them, what would be more surprising is if such writings *never* hinted at an eventual Nephite record.

Edited December 20, 2016 by hagoth7

[Calm]

On 12/17/2016 at 11:42 AM, mfbukowski said:

This fits not only the history but the theology imo, taking Taves' views into account...

It is something new and I tend to appreciate that.

[hope_for_things]

On 12/17/2016 at 8:21 PM, Benjamin Seeker said:

I agree that a lot of the conversation about Luman here is speculative. However, there is a decent case for the possibility that JS or someone made the plates.

1. JS and others had dug on the hill later called Cumorah many times and found nothing. They had also dug in lots of other places and hills in the area and found nothing. That JS suddenly had success locating a buried treasure suggests the possibility that it was something besides authentic buried treasure.
2. JS allowed people to handle the plates covered but no one could see them. It's possible that he believed God had commanded this unreasonable restriction because the plates didn't look authentic or at least didn't look like the golden plates JS described. I say unreasonable because there is no obvious reason for people to be able to handle but not to see the plates.
3. Josiah Stowell saw the corner of the plates uncovered as JS passed them to his mom through the window the night he brought them home. He described what he saw as a stone of greenish caste. This is incongruent with what the three witnesses saw in vision and what the eight witnesses described.
4. The eight witnesses possibly had a visionary experience. Lucy remembers that an "ancient nephite" delivered the plates to them in the grove where they saw them. John Whitmer said that a supernatural power caused the plates to be shown to him. Burnett reported that Martin Harris said that the every person who had ever seen the plates, including the eight witnesses and Joseph, had saw them in vision, and for that reason the 8 had been hesitant to sign the witness document but JS had persuaded them. D&C explains that it is only by God's power that the plates are shown to anyone. The above aspects suggest a vision-like experience, which would explain why the 8 describe a visually-convincing, physical artifact that is otherwise unattested, except by Mary Whitmer (see 5).
5. Mary Whitmer describes seeing an older gentlemen showing her the plates right as she was considering kicking JS to the curb (pretty impressive). The experience falls in the realm of vision as it abruptly ended with the mysterious disappearance of the man and plates.
6. Later, when JS had authentic artifacts that he believed contained writings of ancient prophets, he eagerly displayed the Egyptian papyri for visitors, etc. There is an obvious incongruency here. The best offered with the plates is to heft them or handle them under a handkerchief and then they disappear for good while the papyri are put on public display.
7. There are numerous connections between the Masonic legend of Enoch and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, so many that both faithful and completely secular scholars have acknowledged the validity of the connections. A significant part of the legend is Enoch's vision of the gold plate and subsequent manufacture of it. If the legend affected JS significantly enough to shape how he related his sacred experiences, there is a real possibility that this aspect of the legend inspired him as well.

 

This is great stuff, thanks for sharing.  There is another account that I just read in Natural Born Seer, that was new to me.  I don't have the book handy at the moment, so I'll have to look it up again, but this was an account of some individuals that wanted to see the plates and told Joseph they didn't care about his warning that they would be harmed or killed if they saw the plates.  One of the men quickly pulled the cover off the plates and saw something like a brick underneath and then Joseph admitted he was playing a trick on the two individuals.  It was a very interesting account, I hadn't heard before.  

[Gervin]

On ‎12‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 7:27 PM, mfbukowski said:

"Modern research suggests that, given the state of knowledge of Egyptian in 1828, Anthon's views would have been little more than opinion."

Anthon did nothing more than give his opinion, which is exactly what Harris asked of him:

On ‎12‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 7:27 PM, mfbukowski said:

now Harris came to Harmony to take samples of the reformed Egyptian characters from the gold plates (cf. Morm. 9:32), thereafter to obtain scholarly opinion about their authenticity.

A person isn't a "charlatan" simply because they give an opinion when asked.

If, according to Harris' allegations, Anthon rescinded an (alleged) affirmation of the characters, then he is simply a liar - not a charlatan.

But we can test whether Anthon was a con - or a liar - or not.  Your link states, unequivocally, that the Anthon Transcript is "an authentic sample of characters that were inscribed on the gold plates and thus one of the few tangible evidences of their existence."  So, test Anthon's credibility - or lack thereof - in the light of today's research and understanding of Egyptian characters - or "reformed" Egyptian characters, if anyone actually has a working definition of what that means.  Anthon could not have credibly said that the characters he saw were reformed Egyptian.  A charlatan he is not.

[mfbukowski]

57 minutes ago, Gervin said:

Anthon did nothing more than give his opinion, which is exactly what Harris asked of him:

A person isn't a "charlatan" simply because they give an opinion when asked.

If, according to Harris' allegations, Anthon rescinded an (alleged) affirmation of the characters, then he is simply a liar - not a charlatan.

But we can test whether Anthon was a con - or a liar - or not.  Your link states, unequivocally, that the Anthon Transcript is "an authentic sample of characters that were inscribed on the gold plates and thus one of the few tangible evidences of their existence."  So, test Anthon's credibility - or lack thereof - in the light of today's research and understanding of Egyptian characters - or "reformed" Egyptian characters, if anyone actually has a working definition of what that means.  Anthon could not have credibly said that the characters he saw were reformed Egyptian.  A charlatan he is not.

Your opinion. I really don't care to argue about semantics. You can win he brownie point if you like

[Benjamin Seeker]

3 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

This is great stuff, thanks for sharing.  There is another account that I just read in Natural Born Seer, that was new to me.  I don't have the book handy at the moment, so I'll have to look it up again, but this was an account of some individuals that wanted to see the plates and told Joseph they didn't care about his warning that they would be harmed or killed if they saw the plates.  One of the men quickly pulled the cover off the plates and saw something like a brick underneath and then Joseph admitted he was playing a trick on the two individuals.  It was a very interesting account, I hadn't heard before.  

If you can find it, I'd love to have a reference for this.

[ksfisher]

On 12/18/2016 at 1:53 PM, Benjamin Seeker said:

Fair enough. I've never investigated to see if anyone contemporary, close or distanced, accused JS of making plates, so good point here. For example, Josiah Stowell's "stone of a greenish caste" doesn't tell us anything about the plates' origin, but it does suggest that what JS brought home that evening did not appear like he and other witnesses described.

 

Why are you giving precedence to Stowell's account of what he glimpsed (it sounds like from what you wrote that this was only a brief glimpse) over the testimony of the other witnesses?

Edited December 20, 2016 by ksfisher

[stemelbow]

On ‎12‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 1:48 PM, mapman said:

I've done quite a bit of research into his life. His name was actually Luman Walter, but on the newspaper articles written about him and his connection to Joseph Smith he is called Luman Walters, so that is what most historians call him. His father was a Revolutionary War veteran, and his family were the founders of a few towns in northern Vermont. He moved to Wayne County, New York, in the early 1820s. His family had a tradition of practicing folk medicine with herbs and things, and this was his primary occupation, and became fairly famous for it when he moved further south near Canandaigua. One medical journal mocked some of their colleagues by comparing them to Walter in 1853: "give our somewhile competitor, Dr. Walters, the celebrated 'witch doctor,' of Canandaigua, an education, dress him in broadcloth, polish up his boorishness and reform his profanity, but leave him the same unmitigated scamp he now is, and according to this scale of qualification, he would not merit expulsion from the oldest, most venerable, and most thoroughly organized of our state societies." His obituary described him as "an eccentric but successful practitioner of medicine."

Walter was involved in treasure digging, apparently owned a grimoire, and claimed to have traveled to Europe in his youth where he was trained in the occult. He was thought to have mystical powers by the local treasure seekers and they would sometimes hire him to help them look for things, and in my opinion he could definitely be one way that Joseph Smith was exposed to the occult. In any case, there is no evidence that he was a religious person, so I don't think he necessarily had anything to do with Joseph Smith's claims to have received new scriptures.

Are there any accounts of actual interaction between the young Joseph and Walter?  When you suggest, "in my opinion he could definitely be one way that Joseph Smith was exposed to the occult" which leaves me with the impression if there was anything between them it wasn't much.  Was it "influence" as he helped influence and create an atmosphere of treasure digging and the occult.  or influence as in personal influence, Joseph learned from him, and perhaps saw him as a teacher of some sort? 

[Benjamin Seeker]

6 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

Are there any accounts of actual interaction between the young Joseph and Walter?  When you suggest, "in my opinion he could definitely be one way that Joseph Smith was exposed to the occult" which leaves me with the impression if there was anything between them it wasn't much.  Was it "influence" as he helped influence and create an atmosphere of treasure digging and the occult.  or influence as in personal influence, Joseph learned from him, and perhaps saw him as a teacher of some sort? 

There are at least two accounts of direct interaction, which are cited previously in the thread.

Edited December 20, 2016 by Benjamin Seeker

[stemelbow]

32 minutes ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

There are at least two accounts of direct interaction, which are cited previously in the thread.

Well I'm missing something.  I'm not seeing them. 

[mapman]

On 12/18/2016 at 3:53 PM, Benjamin Seeker said:

Fair enough. I've never investigated to see if anyone contemporary, close or distanced, accused JS of making plates, so good point here. For example, Josiah Stowell's "stone of a greenish caste" doesn't tell us anything about the plates' origin, but it does suggest that what JS brought home that evening did not appear like he and other witnesses described.

You don't quite have me pegged here. It's not that JS' claims can't be true. Originally coming from an assumption that I was to take JS' claims at face value, I have gradually changed my approach as time and time again I have seen that his claims need to be examined closely and often prove to be more complex or somewhat different than what he intended to be understood (ex. 1838 history's treatment of money digging and method of BOM translation). Further, the more I learned about the BOM, the more I learned about its non-ancient content, some of which is not convincingly explained by translation theory alone. These factors and my own experience with revelation led me to approach JS's claims about the BOM more carefully and to not overlook some of the details I've laid out in my list regarding the physical appearance of the plates. 

 

Sorry if I misunderstood where you are coming from. I appreciate the interesting conversation we've had on this thread! I think we are in agreement that we can understand the Book of Mormon better if we take into account the 19th century context of its production.

[mapman]

On 12/18/2016 at 10:01 PM, Rajah Manchou said:

It wasn't just Beaman Snow. If the swearing necromancer known by Brigham Young was the same as the swearing mesmerist described by Beaman, then we have a second source agreeing that this person: had put himself in possession of all the learning in the States, —had been to France, Germany, Italy, and through the world, —had been educated for a priest and turned out to be a devil. [...] I never heard a man swear as he did. He could tell that those plates were there, and that they were a treasure whose value to the people could not be told; for that I myself heard him say.

Is there any question that Young was talking about Luman Walters? I guess we can never know with 100% certainty, but I wouldn't expect there were two European-educated swearing occultists in Palmyra looking for golden treasure at the same time.

I don't know that you are understanding what I am saying. All of these sources including Brigham Young come from years after he supposedly went to Europe. None of the people that said that he went to Europe were in the position to know that for themselves, so all it can prove is that it is what Walters told people. Like I have said, it is possible that he went, but I think we should be skeptical because it bolstered his claim to have occult powers which he was making money off of.

[mapman]

19 hours ago, hagoth7 said:

You think Cicero's writings alluding to the discovery of a precious record seems far fetched?

Why be so quick to dismiss?

In the context of Nephite history, when you consider a broad number of historical facets (that I won't derail this thread with)...the claim that Cicero's writings allude to a latter-day discovery of ancient scripture isn't that far fetched at all.

Instead, taking everything in context, including the scope, breadth, and lasting influence of Cicero's writings, and especially considering the role of the man who helped Cicero produce them, what would be more surprising is if such writings *never* hinted at an eventual Nephite record.

Well, I'll admit that I pretty much know nothing about Cicero, but I am pretty sure that Cicero's Orations is an actual book that you can read, so I guess you could look to see if there is anything resembling the Book of Mormon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catiline_Orations

The context is Abner Cole mocking Walters for supposedly reading out of Cicero but thinking it was about ancient Americans because he didn't understand Latin, so I don't know why we should take that very seriously.

[mapman]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

Are there any accounts of actual interaction between the young Joseph and Walter?  When you suggest, "in my opinion he could definitely be one way that Joseph Smith was exposed to the occult" which leaves me with the impression if there was anything between them it wasn't much.  Was it "influence" as he helped influence and create an atmosphere of treasure digging and the occult.  or influence as in personal influence, Joseph learned from him, and perhaps saw him as a teacher of some sort? 

Abner Cole in his satirical "Book of Pukei" portrays Joseph Smith as the successor of Walters as the local magician. There are also some accounts from the affidavits collected decades later from people in the Palmyra area that show that Joseph probably knew him fairly well. Walters was also brought in by the treasure diggers to help them to try to take the plates from Joseph. Things get really ambiguous when trying to determine what happened exactly during this time period, but from my point of view it is certainly possible that Joseph looked up to Walters when he was younger, but when he began to meet with Moroni, he was told to stop seeing the plates as treasure and not to associate with the treasure diggers, so they went from friends to enemies by the time translation of the Book of Mormon had started. I don't see any connection between what we know about Walter's beliefs and practices and Mormonism (though people on here are wildly speculating about all sorts of things Walters could have taught him that aren't supported by historical sources).

Edited December 20, 2016 by mapman

[hagoth7]

3 hours ago, mapman said:

Well, I'll admit that I pretty much know nothing about Cicero, but I am pretty sure that Cicero's Orations is an actual book that you can read, so I guess you could look to see if there is anything resembling the Book of Mormon...

Yes. I could.  As could others

For good reason, I choose instead to start building here:

Hint#1: Cicero lived contemporary with Hagoth (whose largest ship sailed northward).

Hint#2: Cicero's new scribe/chief servant was acquired as a slave *in the north* shortly after Hagoth's first ship returned from the north.

Hint#3 Cicero's newly-acquired chief servant was called a newcomer, who subsequently introduced to Europe a form of shorthand that matches Nephite writing character for character. (If you find that hard to believe, feel free to take a brief glance at what was offered in my earlier post.)

So although I could give "Orator" and/or "On the Orator" closer reads, I've read enough of that duo's numerous writings over the last few years to know that they frequently echo Nephite themes. So I'm not too concerned about whether Abner was spot-on accurate in identifying which of Cicero's many writing(s) Luman happened to cite. The point is that Luman cited Cicero in the context of Joseph bringing forth the Nephite record. And based on the above, such a connection ought not be dismissed so lightly. 

3 hours ago, mapman said:

The context is Abner Cole mocking Walters for supposedly reading out of Cicero but thinking it was about ancient Americans because he didn't understand Latin, so I don't know why we should take that very seriously.

So Cole was mocking and being dismissive. Understood. An unfortunate part of human nature.

? With things of considerable value, is there some reason you and I should follow suit?

Or might we instead choose a better way? 

Edited December 21, 2016 by hagoth7

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, mapman said:

Abner Cole in his satirical "Book of Pukei" portrays Joseph Smith as the successor of Walters as the local magician. There are also some accounts from the affidavits collected decades later from people in the Palmyra area that show that Joseph probably knew him fairly well. Walters was also brought in by the treasure diggers to help them to try to take the plates from Joseph. Things get really ambiguous when trying to determine what happened exactly during this time period, but from my point of view it is certainly possible that Joseph looked up to Walters when he was younger, but when he began to meet with Moroni, he was told to stop seeing the plates as treasure and not to associate with the treasure diggers, so they went from friends to enemies by the time translation of the Book of Mormon had started. I don't see any connection between what we know about Walter's beliefs and practices and Mormonism (though people on here are wildly speculating about all sorts of things Walters could have taught him that aren't supported by historical sources).

I respect you skepticism, and it is important to always be thorough, but I'm not seeing the need for quite so much here. I think boards like this are a great place to explore possibilities. There is no one here that would go to print with it.

Let's say Luman did go to Paris as so many have claimed and was the "L Walter" identified by Quinn returning from Europe in 1821. I don't see any harm in such speculation on an online message board, so long as we acknowledge it as such. I think we've been careful to do that here.

[Gervin]

6 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Your opinion. I really don't care to argue about semantics. You can win he brownie point if you like

It's a small point, I suppose, to defend the character of some dead guy.  Even smaller to impugn that character because of a lack of credibility in your faith's origin-narrative.

A healthier interest in logic might be beneficial.