What Kind of Reality for the Plates, on a Tavesian Hypothesis?

[clarkgoble]

2 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I'm not sure why she didn't specify the source in her footnotes, but in the text I quoted she cited Webb's Monitor. Here is an 1818 version of the monitor that does talk about Enoch making a gold triangular plate: https://books.google.com/books?id=rDAiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270&dq=thomas+webb+monitor+enoch&source=bl&ots=DLtjeDrL0V&sig=BBbm6cGZYBseMe4-GLfJo6tkwTU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLk-zFnofXAhUN8GMKHSlaA34Q6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=thomas webb monitor enoch&f=false

Thanks. I'll check that out. That makes it work somewhat better, but still not as a parallel for original topic for Taves. Also while this version matches the Masonic Encyclopedia version I mentioned, it's still a plate in the sense of centerpiece of a temple with a name rather than plates as analogous to Book of Mormon. But I do appreciate your finding that.

[Benjamin Seeker]

18 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Thanks. I'll check that out. That makes it work somewhat better, but still not as a parallel for original topic for Taves. Also while this version matches the Masonic Encyclopedia version I mentioned, it's still a plate in the sense of centerpiece of a temple with a name rather than plates as analogous to Book of Mormon. But I do appreciate your finding that.

I think I can easily use the legend of Enoch as a loose possible precedent that inspired JS to make plates in a Taves-like hypothesis. Sure,  the details don't line up perfectly, but the general premise flows smoothly. Enoch saw a sacred golden plate in vision and was commanded to construct it. JS could have been inspired by the legend, saw his own gold plates in vision and felt compelled to construct them. This scenario is given room to be a possibility by the various pieces of evidence showing the legend's influence on early Mormonism.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[clarkgoble]

4 minutes ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I think I can easily use the legend of Enoch as a loose possible precedent that inspired JS to make plates in a Taves-like hypothesis. Sure,  the details don't line up perfectly, but the general premise flows smoothly. Enoch saw a sacred golden plate in vision and was commanded to construct it. JS could have been inspired by the legend, saw his own gold plates in vision and felt compelled to construct them. This scenario is given room to be a possibility by the various pieces of evidence showing the legend's influence on early Mormonism.

Note that the text you provided doesn't say that though. It was built in commemoration of the vision but doesn't claim it was copying what was in the vision. In particular it doesn't say the triangle of gold with the name of God on was in the vision.

A better source if Taves can't find any in the esoteric tradition is to just look to the Bible.

Heb 8:5 "...who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the Tabernacle. For He said 'See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain'."

There's medieval expansions on this idea, especially in mystic Judaism (given it's very platonic nature). However there's no evidence Joseph was exposed to such ideas. There's lots after the middle of the 19th century, but again finding it in the US from around 1800 - 1830 is the trick. 

But for Taves thesis to work, we need not just the idea of heavenly things and earthly things being an image. Rather we need the more explicit idea of heavenly writing being duplicated on earth. That's rather key. Merely finding inspiration in dreams is fine, but really isn't much of a parallel. 

The more interesting approach might be to turn to Joseph's later works. I mentioned the Nauvoo temple (which I actually think Taves mentions in one of her writings - although I could be wrong). The other interesting one is the relationship between the two creation accounts in the JST which is somewhat similar to Philo's middle platonism. So Moses 3:4-5 says that creation was done spiritual but not yet physically.  That's much similar to what Taves is arguing, although again not an example of people doing it. (Since in this case God does both the physical and spiritual creation)

 

[Benjamin Seeker]

57 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Note that the text you provided doesn't say that though. It was built in commemoration of the vision but doesn't claim it was copying what was in the vision. In particular it doesn't say the triangle of gold with the name of God on was in the vision.

A better source if Taves can't find any in the esoteric tradition is to just look to the Bible.

Heb 8:5 "...who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the Tabernacle. For He said 'See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain'."

There's medieval expansions on this idea, especially in mystic Judaism (given it's very platonic nature). However there's no evidence Joseph was exposed to such ideas. There's lots after the middle of the 19th century, but again finding it in the US from around 1800 - 1830 is the trick. 

But for Taves thesis to work, we need not just the idea of heavenly things and earthly things being an image. Rather we need the more explicit idea of heavenly writing being duplicated on earth. That's rather key. Merely finding inspiration in dreams is fine, but really isn't much of a parallel. 

The more interesting approach might be to turn to Joseph's later works. I mentioned the Nauvoo temple (which I actually think Taves mentions in one of her writings - although I could be wrong). The other interesting one is the relationship between the two creation accounts in the JST which is somewhat similar to Philo's middle platonism. So Moses 3:4-5 says that creation was done spiritual but not yet physically.  That's much similar to what Taves is arguing, although again not an example of people doing it. (Since in this case God does both the physical and spiritual creation)

 

I can't help but feel that past 30 minutes could have been spent more productively, but I found some evidence (and I imagine there is more as I stopped as soon as I found this) that Enoch's legend with him seeing the vision of the plate and then making it existed in American Masonry before the 1820s.

John Colby, an evangelist in New England, published a memoir in 1838. In it he talks about learning the legend from some freemasons (even though he wasn't one), in 1813.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Eygt2Xlko7AC&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=where+he+was+shown+a+triangular+plate+of+gold&source=bl&ots=EGps5OTIeN&sig=9K2s5dDHVRfD-kWNjzyOTF1sGts&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8vIPjz4fXAhVLzGMKHVI2CXkQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=where he was shown a triangular plate of gold&f=false

Edited October 23, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[clarkgoble]

33 minutes ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I can't help but feel that past 30 minutes could have been spent more productively,

I've felt like that a few times too. But it is interesting finding the sources. Thanks. It doesn't address my other criticism but it does address the vision/plate issue.

[Benjamin Seeker]

6 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I've felt like that a few times too. But it is interesting finding the sources. Thanks. It doesn't address my other criticism but it does address the vision/plate issue.

It's the story of my life!

 OK, the source does specify that in Enoch's vision there were "some characters" on the plate, which he then engraved on the plate he made. I think I'm doing pretty alright.

[clarkgoble]

The characters on the plate though are the name of God (the tetragrammatron or potentially some permutation of those terms depending upon the degree of Kabbalistic influence on the masonic legend). So it's not really a record or text about something. Rather it represents the culmination of this temple in knowing the name of God. This is significant in the Enochean tradition, especially 3 Enoch. Elements of that persisted in the Renaissance through various means but most of those texts were later discoveries. 1 Enoch of course is the big debatable one but 3 Enoch's more merkabah tradition was largely lost. The Enoch legend in the masonic tradition, while different, does have elements of the merkabah or hekhalot literature including the rooms or palaces. The gold plate is analogous to the throne of god or the ark of the covenant in terms of procession. 

So don't get me wrong, there are lots of interesting things that could influence Joseph in other ways. I'm just skeptical it works for Taves. The big difference was that Enoch was making a temple and the emphasis is all on the making of the temple with this as a part. There is an empahsis on writing, but it's on the pillars. Now one thing others have brought up is an interpretation of some of the papyri in terms of the Enoch legend. 

Contra some apologists (such as this old FARMS review of Brooke) I think there's influence here. Just not of the sort sufficient to make Taves' case. 

I should note that the pillars of Enoch as a source for the Book of Mormon is a pretty old claim, going back to the 19th century. So I don't want to dismiss it out of hand. Brooke brought it up as a more broad parallel to the hermetic tradition (which he defined very broadly) which I found a bit dubious too. Some of Brooke was excellent other parts were very weak (such as this one) and others yet embarrassing (claiming the Kirtland Banking failure was tied to hermetic conceptions of counterfeiting) 

[kiwi57]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

There certainly is room for debate, but the evidence is somewhat strong that the legend at least affected how people told the story. The stone lid is described as having arches on its underside in one account. Another account has the plates and other artifacts atop pillars. More tangential to the Enochian legend but explicitly Masonic, the plates have the square and compass on the cover in another account.

Here are the lecture notes from a presentation on the topic by scholar Cheryl Bruno that I believe covers everything I just mentioned.

http://www.academia.edu/14586250/The_Book_of_the_Law_Masonic_Usages_in_the_Story_of_the_Coming_Forth_of_the_Book_of_Mormon

Well, when Ms Bruno describes Dan Vogel as a "Mormon writer and historian," I'm not inspired with confidence as to her accuracy or impartiality.

Sure, the Liahona was a pot of manna. Where does she get this stuff?

It's all just a bit too fanciful. Sorry.

[Rajah Manchou]

4 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

So don't get me wrong, there are lots of interesting things that could influence Joseph in other ways. I'm just skeptical it works for Taves. The big difference was that Enoch was making a temple and the emphasis is all on the making of the temple with this as a part. There is an empahsis on writing, but it's on the pillars. Now one thing others have brought up is an interpretation of some of the papyri in terms of the Enoch legend. 

Jason Colavito proposes the Masonic version of the story was a combination of accounts of Enochian pillars from sources like Josephus and accounts of the emerald tablets in Hermetic tradition, mostly in Arabic histories. Both accounts are of Hermes/Enoch inscribing wisdom into metal or stone and caching it underneath a temple of some sort to preserve it through a period of destruction. It would be difficult to cleanly isolate the two accounts in the mind of an 19th century Mason. There would have been a lot of overlap. 

"But our author is here relying on a very late development of the Enochian Two Pillars story from Flavius Josephus (Antiquities 1.68-71), which Masons inherited from a corrupt version reported in Petrus Comestor’s Historia Scholastica in which Tubal Cain built pillars of wisdom. It becomes overly complex to rehearse the whole history, but suffice it to say that George Oliver, writing in the Antiquities of Masonry (1823) took the Masonic tradition and fed back into it the Emerald Tablet of Hermes story from Arabian Hermeticism (in which a tablet of wisdom was found in Hermes’ tomb—a claim dating back to an eighth century text by Jabir ibn Hayyan) and, following the Arabian identification of Hermes with Enoch, made Enoch the savior of antediluvian wisdom in an underground temple. In this temple he placed a golden triangle (shades of Pythagoras) inscribed with divine characters." (source)

[Benjamin Seeker]

5 hours ago, kiwi57 said:

Well, when Ms Bruno describes Dan Vogel as a "Mormon writer and historian," I'm not inspired with confidence as to her accuracy or impartiality.

Sure, the Liahona was a pot of manna. Where does she get this stuff?

It's all just a bit too fanciful. Sorry.

I thought that one was weak too. I much prefer the ball in which Enoch placed all the maps of the world and set on top of his brass pillar. The ball also acted as an oracle. That sounds nearly exactly like the Liahona to me.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V27N03_15.pdf

[mfbukowski]

I have been thinking about this and just happened to be reading in 3 Nephi 5 where Mormon is actually writing on and making the plates.

At that point they were not "sacred", they were just plates with writings of prophets on them.

And then I thought about section 138 which was just a revelation and vision and eventually it was written down and later was canonized.

And then I started wondering how any of this process differed from what Taves is talking about, how we can take the mundane and make it sacred.

Or even meeting a mate, and then having a relationship, then we enter the temple and get sealed and that sealing makes the relationship "sacred"

 

What's the difference if any??  I mean what's the problem with Taves' point from this perspective?

[mfbukowski]

On 10/23/2017 at 10:24 PM, Benjamin Seeker said:

I thought that one was weak too. I much prefer the ball in which Enoch placed all the maps of the world and set on top of his brass pillar. The ball also acted as an oracle. That sounds nearly exactly like the Liahona to me.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V27N03_15.pdf

Unless you go to USC I guess.  I am a UCLA man myself

This is the main idol at USC, the real opposite of the liahona   (just kidding!)

[hope_for_things]

43 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I have been thinking about this and just happened to be reading in 3 Nephi 5 where Mormon is actually writing on and making the plates.

At that point they were not "sacred", they were just plates with writings of prophets on them.

And then I thought about section 138 which was just a revelation and vision and eventually it was written down and later was canonized.

And then I started wondering how any of this process differed from what Taves is talking about, how we can take the mundane and make it sacred.

Or even meeting a mate, and then having a relationship, then we enter the temple and get sealed and that sealing makes the relationship "sacred"

 

What's the difference if any??  I mean what's the problem with Taves' point from this perspective?

This is a great comment, and I'm thinking along these same lines.  Did the authors of our scriptures know that their words would be used many years after their deaths as sacred scriptures?  How does something become sacred to someone?  

Isn't it all just a matter of the value that we place on the words, or the events, this is what makes them sacred to us.  Objects, experiences, words, people, places, times, sounds, sights, memories, passions, traditions, etc. all these things are sacred to us.  I think what makes them sacred is the subjective experiences and emotions we associate with these things. 

Its all within the realm of the experiential, and I would agree with you that this applies to the Taves hypothesis nicely.  What Joseph was doing became sacred to he and his followers and many people today.  This is not based on an objective reality about the historicity of the BoM, but rather its based on the experiences of people with the text and the mythic stories about the origins of the translation process.  It really doesn't need to have any direct link to facts about the plates to be something sacred.  

However, I will mention, that since the sacred is experiential, that things can also lose their sacred status through experience as well.  So as a matter of fairness to those who don't view the BoM as sacred, their perspective about the BoM is equally as valid as for those that find the BoM to be sacred.  

 

 

[mfbukowski]

52 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

This is a great comment, and I'm thinking along these same lines.  Did the authors of our scriptures know that their words would be used many years after their deaths as sacred scriptures?  How does something become sacred to someone?  

Isn't it all just a matter of the value that we place on the words, or the events, this is what makes them sacred to us.  Objects, experiences, words, people, places, times, sounds, sights, memories, passions, traditions, etc. all these things are sacred to us.  I think what makes them sacred is the subjective experiences and emotions we associate with these things. 

Its all within the realm of the experiential, and I would agree with you that this applies to the Taves hypothesis nicely.  What Joseph was doing became sacred to he and his followers and many people today.  This is not based on an objective reality about the historicity of the BoM, but rather its based on the experiences of people with the text and the mythic stories about the origins of the translation process.  It really doesn't need to have any direct link to facts about the plates to be something sacred.  

However, I will mention, that since the sacred is experiential, that things can also lose their sacred status through experience as well.  So as a matter of fairness to those who don't view the BoM as sacred, their perspective about the BoM is equally as valid as for those that find the BoM to be sacred.  

 

 

Yes I agree.

Again it boils down to, from my perspective, that experience as we experience things IS "reality" for us and there is no way to get out of our own perspectives to see it in a way that is not our perspective.  Every observation, every thought "in our heads" relies on our personal perspectives about them.

Of course our perspectives change, but that is another matter.  

Yes of course we see the same "things"- chairs tables cars etc "out there" but we cannot help but see them from our perspectives.   It is our physical brains and our social experience which interpret every experience we have.   There is no difference between the way things "appear" to us and their "reality" except when we make obvious perceptual mistakes like taking a mirage for water or an optical illusion, poor lighting, etc.  Those errors resolve themselves under other conditions- when we understand the illusion- the mirage is found to be sand, a ruler shows us that the optical illusion is just that, etc.

Let me ask you this- that paragraph to me is precisely the same as the Rorty quote below.  I love the fact that you are a "newbie" in understanding this way of thinking and have had problems with the Rorty quote.

Does that italicized paragraph above make it clearer than the Rorty statement?

I had a buddy who's greatest wish as a kid was to own a Rolls Royce.  He bought one eventually and drove it proudly with the top down.  To him it was a symbol of status and would earn him respect.

What actually happened is that if he stopped at a signal light, on many occasions people would yell foul things at him and on more than one occasion would actually spit on the car or at him at a cross walk .

Different strokes for different folks- he now drives a small SUV and is as inconspicuous about his wealth as he can be.

I am trying to find the words which communicate the point to someone who has never seen "reality" that way before.  I have been seeing it Rorty's way now for 50 years and what seems obvious to me seems to be so hard for others to see until they actually "see" it and then it is almost a life-changing experience.

So yes we create what we define as "sacred".  As a child I thought it horrifying to think that a person would touch the Sacred Eucharist without having their fingers consecrated and being an ordained Catholic priest.  I was taught that.  No one could touch the host but the priest.  The chalice in which they were placed had to be lined in pure gold.  In fact as an altar boy, I would place a flat golden kind of dish or plate beneath the chin of people as they received communion lest any tiny crumb of Eucharist fall and touch the ground.

http://www.texascatholicsuperstore.com/Gold-Plated-Communion-Paten-p/20572.htm

Now Catholics are just physically handed the Eucharist and they put it in their own mouths, not worrying about crumbs etc.  Often plain bread is used and no one cares about crumbs.  The social pattern for what is "sacred" has altered, and is as it is believed to be.  The PERSPECTIVE, socially, has changed.

During the Viet Nam war, half of Americans thought it was for saving Freedom and the other half thought it was an immoral war.   Different beliefs and different perspectives = different realities.   And of course the same thing is happening today.

So does that italicized paragraph make it easier than the Rorty quote?

Thanks

Edited October 30, 2017 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

On 10/23/2017 at 11:24 PM, Benjamin Seeker said:

I thought that one was weak too. I much prefer the ball in which Enoch placed all the maps of the world and set on top of his brass pillar. The ball also acted as an oracle. That sounds nearly exactly like the Liahona to me.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V27N03_15.pdf

I confess that doesn't sound like the liahona to me. There are far better parallels in Nibley's old paper from the 60's "The Liahona's Cousins" (bits of which ended up in chapter 9 of Since Cumorah) Directors are pretty common in many stories and legends - especially given the role of a compass and its mystery in the ancient world. The general term for all this is belomancy or the use of arrow like objects for divination.  As Nibley notes, "Whenever divination arrows are described, they are invariably found to have writing on them, like the Zuni 'word-painted arrows of destiny.'"

The key thing is that objects like the Liahona aren't uncommon. If a critic wants to get around the usual apologetic "how could Joseph have known that" they can always postulate some traveler who'd spent time in Arabia as a direct influence. They've done that before and it makes far more sense than very loose connections within masonry.

If one is determined to look to masonic parallels rather than more obvious ones then it's the symbols of the rod and staff to which one should look. These remain prominent in the endowment as tokens of kingship (although they're so symbolic I doubt most notice they are what they are doing unless they've read about them). And of course we know from the D&C's address to Martin Harris that Joseph was aware of at least some of the broad set of traditions involving divining rods. The difference between a divining rod and the liahona is pretty minor. The liahona is basically just combining a divining rod(s) with a ball. i.e. a seer stone combined with a divining rod. Both are used in the period of the Book of Mormon's production.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Again it boils down to, from my perspective, that experience as we experience things IS "reality" for us and there is no way to get out of our own perspectives to see it in a way that is not our perspective.  Every observation, every thought "in our heads" relies on our personal perspectives about them.

Of course our perspectives change, but that is another matter.  

This paragraph is much easier for me to understand than the Rorty statement.  As someone who didn't study philosophy and is new to these ideas I think the word truth was a real hang up for me.  I always thought there was only one kind of truth in the world, and that is the literal factual kind of truth.  Truth or fiction is the binary kind of thinking I had, so the Rorty quote would confuse me there and the overall flow of the quote is worded in a way thats difficult for me to understand.  I like the use of the term reality better because reality just seems like its subjective and varies from person to person.  Where as truth to me always used to seem like the answer to a mathematical equation as I never before could comprehend that fiction and art and philosophy contained "truths".  

The other part about this that I still have a hard time with is it seems like Mormonism is constantly conflating religious truths with things that are scientifically testable and confusing the two together.  Case in point, the BoM can be true independent of whether their existed golden plates or whether Nephites existed in history, yet so many Mormons including the leaders and apologists won't accept this perspective.  They insist that these facts about history must be true in order for the BoM to have religious value. 

To tie this to our discussion, the sacred nature of the BoM is linked directly to these attributes.  Its almost like a reverse math equation.  People have an experience with the BoM that makes the book sacred to them, and because of this subjective sacred experience about the book they make the flawed assumption that this personal experience about the book means that statements about the origins of the book must also be factual evidence that ought to be testable and affirmed through scholarly disciplines.  They make a category error in this way and I think this is part of a major flaw in the Mormon tradition that is largely influenced by the response of Mormonism during second great awakening to contemporary critiques of religion and it continues today with a tendency towards skepticism of the academy and certain scholarly disciplines that bring religious traditions into question.  

This is all unfortunate because as you've articulated before there are impulses within Mormonism that speak to a more universal and contextual understanding of truth and of an approach to truth that is seeking it wherever it can be found.  I think another major influencing factor on Mormonism was the Brigham Young years and the isolationist society created in Utah with a strong fear of the outside world.  I think Armand Mauss' thesis about Mormonism going through times of assimilation and retrenchment is a good study in how there are ebbs and flows of this phenomenon throughout the history of Mormonism.  

 

 

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

This paragraph is much easier for me to understand than the Rorty statement.  As someone who didn't study philosophy and is new to these ideas I think the word truth was a real hang up for me.  I always thought there was only one kind of truth in the world, and that is the literal factual kind of truth.  Truth or fiction is the binary kind of thinking I had, so the Rorty quote would confuse me there and the overall flow of the quote is worded in a way thats difficult for me to understand.  I like the use of the term reality better because reality just seems like its subjective and varies from person to person.  Where as truth to me always used to seem like the answer to a mathematical equation as I never before could comprehend that fiction and art and philosophy contained "truths".  

The other part about this that I still have a hard time with is it seems like Mormonism is constantly conflating religious truths with things that are scientifically testable and confusing the two together.  Case in point, the BoM can be true independent of whether their existed golden plates or whether Nephites existed in history, yet so many Mormons including the leaders and apologists won't accept this perspective.  They insist that these facts about history must be true in order for the BoM to have religious value. 

To tie this to our discussion, the sacred nature of the BoM is linked directly to these attributes.  Its almost like a reverse math equation.  People have an experience with the BoM that makes the book sacred to them, and because of this subjective sacred experience about the book they make the flawed assumption that this personal experience about the book means that statements about the origins of the book must also be factual evidence that ought to be testable and affirmed through scholarly disciplines.  They make a category error in this way and I think this is part of a major flaw in the Mormon tradition that is largely influenced by the response of Mormonism during second great awakening to contemporary critiques of religion and it continues today with a tendency towards skepticism of the academy and certain scholarly disciplines that bring religious traditions into question.  

This is all unfortunate because as you've articulated before there are impulses within Mormonism that speak to a more universal and contextual understanding of truth and of an approach to truth that is seeking it wherever it can be found.  I think another major influencing factor on Mormonism was the Brigham Young years and the isolationist society created in Utah with a strong fear of the outside world.  I think Armand Mauss' thesis about Mormonism going through times of assimilation and retrenchment is a good study in how there are ebbs and flows of this phenomenon throughout the history of Mormonism.  

 

 

Yes! This is it, we are in agreement, you have it. It is a category error that leads to all the confusion because few are educated enough in philosophy or argumentation to see the problem. And then we have the ambiguity of the word truth. Amazingly DandC 93 actually accounts for the ambiguity in speaking of Truth by speaking about it existing in spheres, because everyone is still stuck in Cartesian philosophy and doesn't understand what that could mean. And that could not have come from Joseph it wasn't even understood clearly in his time.

So we have it all right there in black and white and nobody has a clue about what we have. That was my experience 38 years ago when I found the church. I saw it instantly but nobody seemed to have a clue what I was talking about. It's getting better. But if it was truly understood we could have a philosophy that would take over secularism and actually could fill the Earth. Our way of thinking thinking is not secular but it is perfectly compatible with areas of contemporary philosophy which are considered to be secular.

So really we don't know what we have as a people.

So thanks for the help.

Edited October 31, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Benjamin Seeker]

19 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I confess that doesn't sound like the liahona to me. There are far better parallels in Nibley's old paper from the 60's "The Liahona's Cousins" (bits of which ended up in chapter 9 of Since Cumorah) Directors are pretty common in many stories and legends - especially given the role of a compass and its mystery in the ancient world. The general term for all this is belomancy or the use of arrow like objects for divination.  As Nibley notes, "Whenever divination arrows are described, they are invariably found to have writing on them, like the Zuni 'word-painted arrows of destiny.'"

The key thing is that objects like the Liahona aren't uncommon. If a critic wants to get around the usual apologetic "how could Joseph have known that" they can always postulate some traveler who'd spent time in Arabia as a direct influence. They've done that before and it makes far more sense than very loose connections within masonry.

If one is determined to look to masonic parallels rather than more obvious ones then it's the symbols of the rod and staff to which one should look. These remain prominent in the endowment as tokens of kingship (although they're so symbolic I doubt most notice they are what they are doing unless they've read about them). And of course we know from the D&C's address to Martin Harris that Joseph was aware of at least some of the broad set of traditions involving divining rods. The difference between a divining rod and the liahona is pretty minor. The liahona is basically just combining a divining rod(s) with a ball. i.e. a seer stone combined with a divining rod. Both are used in the period of the Book of Mormon's production.

Edit: Snarky comment retracted. Let’s just agree to disagree.

Edited October 31, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[clarkgoble]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

Edit: Snarky comment retracted. Let’s just agree to disagree.

I think you missed my point. Why do we need the masonic parallel when we have demonstrated parallels with Joseph Smith's use of balls and sticks for divination?

The problem with the parallel from Dialog you mentioned is that the ball isn't brass. The main feature, as I mentioned, were the two pillars (designed to prevent loss due to natural disaster - especially flood) where important writing was preserved (telling where the treasure was). The pillar of brass then had secrets of liberal arts including masonry on it. The marble pillar actually was, according to the Webb account that Dialog is quoting, damaged. Homer in that paragraph we discussed earlier does say, "He also placed a ball containing maps of the world and universe on top of the brass pillar which also served as an instrument 'for improving the mind and giving it the most distinct idea of any problem or proposition." As you noted. Search for the quoted phrase and you'll not find any hits despite all of Webb's texts being available online from various sources.

The problem is that when you look for the reference to the ball, it's not in the Webb they quote and footnote. (Pages 249-51) In a later footnote they also mention the hollow sphere, with the reference to  Adamson's "The Treasure of the Widows Son."  Unfortunately I can't find a copy anywhere.

My suspicion is that this is a mangling of the masonic tradition where two pillars mimicking Enoch's pillars are by the porch entrance of the temple. The pillars contain the constitutions of the masonic chapter. There are two spheres - one a map of the earth on one side and the other a star maps of the stars as seen from earth. These are then given traditional pythagorean/platonic interpretations. These are discussed in most accounts of masonry with various variants. (It's not always Enoch who builds these)

So my suspicion is that somehow Homer just conflated some issues. 

Here's a picture of what is being described from the Masonic Dictionary. 

 

[Benjamin Seeker]

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think you missed my point. Why do we need the masonic parallel when we have demonstrated parallels with Joseph Smith's use of balls and sticks for divination?

From the data I've looked at, it appears that Masonry was part of Joseph Smith's and his family's culture. There is every reason to look to Masonry for better context and understanding of where JS was coming from. In fact, speaking of rods, JS had a snake cane, and in Masonry their is a tradition of Adam taking a branch of the garden of Eden that got passed down to Moses and then to Aaron, and it was in the shape of a snake. If you haven't listened to the Mormon Expression podcast episodes on Mormonism and Masonry I highly recommend it. Their is in depth discussion of the conflation of Masonry and folk magic and the Smith family's involvement in Masonry.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem with the parallel from Dialog you mentioned is that the ball isn't brass.

But their is sufficient proximity to a brass pillar, hieroglyphics, and a gold plate. There is no need to imagine that in order for something to be influential it would have to be exactly the same. I would expect some variation, especially if JS sincerely believes this is coming through revelation, giving license for adaptation and innovation.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The main feature, as I mentioned, were the two pillars (designed to prevent loss due to natural disaster - especially flood) where important writing was preserved (telling where the treasure was). The pillar of brass then had secrets of liberal arts including masonry on it. The marble pillar actually was, according to the Webb account that Dialog is quoting, damaged. Homer in that paragraph we discussed earlier does say, "He also placed a ball containing maps of the world and universe on top of the brass pillar which also served as an instrument 'for improving the mind and giving it the most distinct idea of any problem or proposition." As you noted. Search for the quoted phrase and you'll not find any hits despite all of Webb's texts being available online from various sources.

It's just on page 50 of the Webb's Monitor I linked to earlier.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem is that when you look for the reference to the ball, it's not in the Webb they quote and footnote. (Pages 249-51)

The foot note actually said page 83. Pages 249-51 were for a discussion of the Enoch legend with the discussion of the globes being earlier. I'm sure they are quoting a different published version than the one that I found and linked to earlier. Anyways, it's on page 50.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

In a later footnote they also mention the hollow sphere, with the reference to  Adamson's "The Treasure of the Widows Son."  Unfortunately I can't find a copy anywhere.

I couldn't find the book Joseph Smith and Masonry online either. It's probably at a library someplace, but there are plenty of other sources.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

My suspicion is that this is a mangling of the masonic tradition where two pillars mimicking Enoch's pillars are by the porch entrance of the temple. The pillars contain the constitutions of the masonic chapter. There are two spheres - one a map of the earth on one side and the other a star maps of the stars as seen from earth. These are then given traditional pythagorean/platonic interpretations. These are discussed in most accounts of masonry with various variants. (It's not always Enoch who builds these)

So my suspicion is that somehow Homer just conflated some issues. 

Here's a picture of what is being described from the Masonic Dictionary. 

 

I don't think Homer is conflating. I've seen this globe referenced as part of the Enoch tradition in multiple sources on Mormonism and multiple sources on Masonry. I'll go poking around and find some of them and report back.

[clarkgoble]

11 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

From the data I've looked at, it appears that Masonry was part of Joseph Smith's and his family's culture. There is every reason to look to Masonry for better context and understanding of where JS was coming from. In fact, speaking of rods, JS had a snake cane, and in Masonry their is a tradition of Adam taking a branch of the garden of Eden that got passed down to Moses and then to Aaron, and it was in the shape of a snake. If you haven't listened to the Mormon Expression podcast episodes on Mormonism and Masonry I highly recommend it. Their is in depth discussion of the conflation of Masonry and folk magic and the Smith family's involvement in Masonry.

I'm pretty familiar with the issues and don't deny in the least the huge influence of masonry on Joseph Smith and others such as Brigham Young. Indeed it's far more extensive than most people realize and pops up in very weird places even in the early Utah period. It's just that on these particular points that I get skeptical. 

I'm not sure it's conflating folk magic and masonry since they were pretty wrapped up together. Indeed speculative freemasonry largely develops out of renaissance conceptions of magic, the art of memory, hermeticism and so forth. I think the term "magic" is deeply problematic though so I try to avoid using it. It cause, I think, no end of problem for Quinn for instance. But it also tends to mislead people given how pejorative the term is. (Why is our sacrament or the Catholic communion not magic whereas a druid or hermetic ceremony is magic?)

Part of the issue is that there's what's formally masonic and what is largely in the culture around speculative masonry. (This becomes much more pronounced in the second half of the 19th century as masons start writing books looking at broader parallels to masonic ideas - Albert Pike's writings being a great example) Likewise there's reasonable reasons to think that hermetic and theurgical platonist writings were often tied to the culture. There's reasonably strong evidence that Joseph was exposed either directly or indirectly to such ideas - particularly some of Thomas Taylor's translations of major platonic writings. All of these then influence the phrases and ideas Joseph uses.

So for example many have brought up Kabbalistic parallels. And of course Kabbalism enters the Christian esoteric tradition in the Renaissance in various ways. However Kabbalism itself is heavily influenced by theurgical platonism to the degree it's probably best seen as a type of theurgical platonism (much like hermeticism is). You can see strong elements of this in say Mosiah 15 when read theurgically rather than the much weaker fitting attempt to read it as modalism. (An apologist would tie this back to early Merkabah or Hekhalot literature but the structural elements are theurgical)

11 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

But their is sufficient proximity to a brass pillar, hieroglyphics, and a gold plate. There is no need to imagine that in order for something to be influential it would have to be exactly the same. I would expect some variation, especially if JS sincerely believes this is coming through revelation, giving license for adaptation and innovation.

The question is how much variance still makes a parallel a parallel. If we're saying something is an influence when it really have very little in common with the element in question, how can we say it's an influence? It's that issue I'm largely bringing up. That's especially the case when there are elements we know Joseph used and emphasized like seer stones and divining rods that fit so much better. i.e. in this case exactly what work is this parallel even doing theoretically?

In other words the issue isn't whether this could have influenced Joseph. The question is given a selection of parallels which are most likely to be the influence.

11 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

It's just on page 50 of the Webb's Monitor I linked to earlier.The foot note actually said page 83. Pages 249-51 were for a discussion of the Enoch legend with the discussion of the globes being earlier. I'm sure they are quoting a different published version than the one that I found and linked to earlier. Anyways, it's on page 50.

But again that is the description of a literal globe as I mentioned (and provided a picture of) not what Homer describes.

11 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I couldn't find the book Joseph Smith and Masonry online either. It's probably at a library someplace, but there are plenty of other sources.

You mean Durham's? It's pretty widely available. I have a copy somewhere. Here's a version without page numbers. It's pretty dated though. I tend to get nervous when people point to that rather than primary sources. Anderson's is pretty old too but isn't available anywhere. I'm pretty skeptical when someone references these without referencing a primary source though for a claim of a parallel. Although most of the point Durham makes are pretty straightforward and clear masonic elements.

11 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I don't think Homer is conflating. I've seen this globe referenced as part of the Enoch tradition in multiple sources on Mormonism and multiple sources on Masonry. I'll go poking around and find some of them and report back.

At a minimum his footnotes don't say what he claims they say. Which is a good reason to be extremely skeptical of Homer. As I've said before when evaluating papers we can't argue for what the author could have said but rather in terms of the arguments they actually presented.

Perhaps someone can argue for this claim but I'm pretty skeptical. In any case as I said there are pretty straightforward examples of things Joseph was familiar with that are very close matches for the Liahonah. (Magnetic compass, divining rods, seer stones, crystal balls)

 

Edited November 1, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Benjamin Seeker]

43 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm pretty familiar with the issues and don't deny in the least the huge influence of masonry on Joseph Smith and others such as Brigham Young. Indeed it's far more extensive than most people realize and pops up in very weird places even in the early Utah period. It's just that on these particular points that I get skeptical. 

I'm not sure it's conflating folk magic and masonry since they were pretty wrapped up together. Indeed speculative freemasonry largely develops out of renaissance conceptions of magic, the art of memory, hermeticism and so forth. I think the term "magic" is deeply problematic though so I try to avoid using it. It cause, I think, no end of problem for Quinn for instance. But it also tends to mislead people given how pejorative the term is. (Why is our sacrament or the Catholic communion not magic whereas a druid or hermetic ceremony is magic?)

Part of the issue is that there's what's formally masonic and what is largely in the culture around speculative masonry. (This becomes much more pronounced in the second half of the 19th century as masons start writing books looking at broader parallels to masonic ideas - Albert Pike's writings being a great example) Likewise there's reasonable reasons to think that hermetic and theurgical platonist writings were often tied to the culture. There's reasonably strong evidence that Joseph was exposed either directly or indirectly to such ideas - particularly some of Thomas Taylor's translations of major platonic writings. All of these then influence the phrases and ideas Joseph uses.

So for example many have brought up Kabbalistic parallels. And of course Kabbalism enters the Christian esoteric tradition in the Renaissance in various ways. However Kabbalism itself is heavily influenced by theurgical platonism to the degree it's probably best seen as a type of theurgical platonism (much like hermeticism is). You can see strong elements of this in say Mosiah 15 when read theurgically rather than the much weaker fitting attempt to read it as modalism. (An apologist would tie this back to early Merkabah or Hekhalot literature but the structural elements are theurgical)

The question is how much variance still makes a parallel a parallel. If we're saying something is an influence when it really have very little in common with the element in question, how can we say it's an influence? It's that issue I'm largely bringing up. That's especially the case when there are elements we know Joseph used and emphasized like seer stones and divining rods that fit so much better. i.e. in this case exactly what work is this parallel even doing theoretically?

In other words the issue isn't whether this could have influenced Joseph. The question is given a selection of parallels which are most likely to be the influence.

And as Masonry as a whole appears to be a huge influence, the oracular ball of maps is just one thread of many. Obviously the liahona could have been inspired by any of things you mentioned, the Masonic globe, none of the above or all of the above.

43 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

But again that is the description of a literal globe as I mentioned (and provided a picture of) not what Homer describes.

After some digging, I haven’t found anything to clarify this yet. 

43 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

You mean Durham's?

No, you were looking for Adamson’s essay essay from this book. Maybe you just didn’t see in the footnote that the essay was part of a larger work.

43 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

It's pretty widely available. I have a copy somewhere. Here's a version without page numbers. It's pretty dated though. I tend to get nervous when people point to that rather than primary sources. Anderson's is pretty old too but isn't available anywhere. I'm pretty skeptical when someone references these without referencing a primary source though for a claim of a parallel. Although most of the point Durham makes are pretty straightforward and clear masonic elements.

At a minimum his footnotes don't say what he claims they say. Which is a good reason to be extremely skeptical of Homer. As I've said before when evaluating papers we can't argue for what the author could have said but rather in terms of the arguments they actually presented.

Perhaps someone can argue for this claim but I'm pretty skeptical. In any case as I said there are pretty straightforward examples of things Joseph was familiar with that are very close matches for the Liahonah. (Magnetic compass, divining rods, seer stones, crystal balls)

 

Even if Enoch isn’t connected to the globe, which I’m not convinced of yet, but maybe there are just too many sources in Mormonism’s connection to Masonry depending on each other, there is just such a great combination of elements that are also found in early Mormonism including a gold plate, the real name of God, heiroglyphics, oracular map globes, brass records, pillars and arches (see Oliver Cowdery’s and Luck Mack’s descriptions of Joseph finding the plates, I believe), snake canes, cipher symbols (see Phelps’ early letter on the Adamic language), sacred cave vaults, etc. I just don’t see any reason not to suspect the possible influence, especially in proximity to so many others, some of which have been verified.

[Benjamin Seeker]

28 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm pretty familiar with the issues and don't deny in the least the huge influence of masonry on Joseph Smith and others such as Brigham Young. Indeed it's far more extensive than most people realize and pops up in very weird places even in the early Utah period. It's just that on these particular points that I get skeptical. 

I'm not sure it's conflating folk magic and masonry since they were pretty wrapped up together. Indeed speculative freemasonry largely develops out of renaissance conceptions of magic, the art of memory, hermeticism and so forth. I think the term "magic" is deeply problematic though so I try to avoid using it. It cause, I think, no end of problem for Quinn for instance. But it also tends to mislead people given how pejorative the term is. (Why is our sacrament or the Catholic communion not magic whereas a druid or hermetic ceremony is magic?)

Part of the issue is that there's what's formally masonic and what is largely in the culture around speculative masonry. (This becomes much more pronounced in the second half of the 19th century as masons start writing books looking at broader parallels to masonic ideas - Albert Pike's writings being a great example) Likewise there's reasonable reasons to think that hermetic and theurgical platonist writings were often tied to the culture. There's reasonably strong evidence that Joseph was exposed either directly or indirectly to such ideas - particularly some of Thomas Taylor's translations of major platonic writings. All of these then influence the phrases and ideas Joseph uses.

So for example many have brought up Kabbalistic parallels. And of course Kabbalism enters the Christian esoteric tradition in the Renaissance in various ways. However Kabbalism itself is heavily influenced by theurgical platonism to the degree it's probably best seen as a type of theurgical platonism (much like hermeticism is). You can see strong elements of this in say Mosiah 15 when read theurgically rather than the much weaker fitting attempt to read it as modalism. (An apologist would tie this back to early Merkabah or Hekhalot literature but the structural elements are theurgical)

The question is how much variance still makes a parallel a parallel. If we're saying something is an influence when it really have very little in common with the element in question, how can we say it's an influence? It's that issue I'm largely bringing up. That's especially the case when there are elements we know Joseph used and emphasized like seer stones and divining rods that fit so much better. i.e. in this case exactly what work is this parallel even doing theoretically?

In other words the issue isn't whether this could have influenced Joseph. The question is given a selection of parallels which are most likely to be the influence.

But again that is the description of a literal globe as I mentioned (and provided a picture of) not what Homer describes.

You mean Durham's? It's pretty widely available. I have a copy somewhere. Here's a version without page numbers. It's pretty dated though. I tend to get nervous when people point to that rather than primary sources. Anderson's is pretty old too but isn't available anywhere. I'm pretty skeptical when someone references these without referencing a primary source though for a claim of a parallel. Although most of the point Durham makes are pretty straightforward and clear masonic elements.

At a minimum his footnotes don't say what he claims they say. Which is a good reason to be extremely skeptical of Homer. As I've said before when evaluating papers we can't argue for what the author could have said but rather in terms of the arguments they actually presented.

Perhaps someone can argue for this claim but I'm pretty skeptical. In any case as I said there are pretty straightforward examples of things Joseph was familiar with that are very close matches for the Liahonah. (Magnetic compass, divining rods, seer stones, crystal balls)

 

I'm giving up on some of the Durham claims. It seems like everyone cites Durham for the globe being metal, containing maps, being made by Enoch, and being placed on the brass pillar. I thought I'd seen a Masonic source connecting the globe to Enoch, but that was just a false memory it appears.

I think you're right. The only Masonic tradition of globes I can find are globes on the top of Solomon's Temple pillars, not Enoch's (see discussion of the globes for an explicit statement that the globes were not on the "diluvian pillars" in Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry). They were meant as maps according to Masonic sources, and according to Webb they did prompt the mind in a revelatory fashion (they are sacred relics).

So, some of globe's parallels to the Liahona can be discarded, at least in my mind, including being metal, being atop a "brass pillar," and containing maps (though it still serves as a map in Masonic tradition). 

Would I still contribute influence? I think the oracular nature is still pretty hot, but otherwise it's a lot less significant of a parallel now. Now that I'm thinking about it, this is probably why Cheryl Bruno doesn't mention it in her analysis of the Enochic legend and Mormonism. It's just not part of the legend.

Good call, Clark.

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I'm giving up on some of the Durham claims. It seems like everyone cites Durham for the globe being metal, containing maps, being made by Enoch, and being placed on the brass pillar. I thought I'd seen a Masonic source connecting the globe to Enoch, but that was just a false memory it appears.

Yup. Like I said it's dated. Plus it never was really intended to be the groundwork of all this scholarship. More a speech just introducing a topic in a fairly loose way. What happened is that people then just refer to it without really looking a primary sources which leads to no end of distortion. I strongly advise people to always look up the original sources with Quinn or Nibley too -- lots of places similar problems happen there. There are some authors I trust the footnotes for. Then there are those I've found enough errors that I never trust them. (To be fair to Nibley this is primarily a problem with his stuff never intended for publication that FARMS republished although it's also an issue in some of his Improvement Era stuff -- The stuff in Enoch and the World of the Jaredits or the second half of The Ancient State one has to particularly be careful with.)

What's more frustrating is that there are areas of Masonic influence that are deeply undeveloped scholarly. There were a couple of books people were writing on the subject that they then dropped. In particular the influence of Masonry on all sorts of aspects of Brigham Young's life is a topic where tons could be written about. It's constantly surprising to me how little has been written. For some reason people focusing in on Masonry tend to focus on the obvious connection to the endowment and then a little bit to the Book of Abraham and the martyrdom (Joseph's final cry and the influence among masons against Joseph Smith) and little else.

3 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

No, you were looking for Adamson’s essay essay from this book. Maybe you just didn’t see in the footnote that the essay was part of a larger work.

No I was just confused as Durham's essay has the same title. I'm also not sure what other essays were in Joseph Smith and Masonry other than Adamson's essay. I think Durham's was but I've not been able to even find a table of contents to be sure. In any case it's old enough that I think people again should be going to the primary sources.

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2017 by clarkgoble

[why me]

Sometimes, the simple story is the truth. It happened just as Joseph said it happened. First, Joseph could not have predicted that the book of mormon would have been a success, if he conjured it up. So much work for a whim of a chance that he would find 11 people to confirm it. Not to mention that the marrative his mother tells in her book of how the book came to be and joseph's response to the book of mormmon. Then, we have emma and her testimony of the book. Quite improbable if the author's thesis is true.

Sometimes we complicate the uncomplicated. Here is the premise: either the book is true as claimed by joseph ir it isn't. It is a black white narrative. No gray area is possible. Also, it is quite common during the postmordern age to attack religious narratives that claim truth. This is just one more example. However, the Quran cannot be attacked. It is left untouched because of the consequences of what can happen to a person who does give it a critique that may affect the believers in the book.

Mormons need to start defending their holy book and not buy into every apostate theory that they may come across or give it the time of day. The postmoderns wish the church to fall...to further the cause of relativism and securalism and to further the claim that enlightment truths can no longer be believed, especially christianity and with it mormonism.

Edited November 2, 2017 by why me