Nick Frederick on New Testament -- BOM intertextuality

[Ryan Dahle]

13 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I totally agree with you here.  It seems like a good term to use.  However, I have interacted with some people on this board who claim to not believe in anything supernatural, and the way the distinguish this is by saying that God works using natural means, so by definition anything God does is natural, we just don't understand it.  Makes everything natural, but it makes it more difficult to communicate on topics like this.

Exactly. I don't see any reason to quibble about the term. It serves its intended purpose just fine. It's not a term I would use in teaching a Sunday school lesson at Church, but it works very well to communicate about extraordinary phenomena with those who don't share my particular religious beliefs. 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Ryan Dahle

[hope_for_things]

22 hours ago, churchistrue said:

What a fascinating podcast interview Laura Hales with Nick Frederick.  http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2018/08/22/intertextuality-book-mormon/

This is a topic I am keenly interested in and write about a lot, so I wrote up a blog post on it.

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/nick-frederick-new-testament-in-the-book-of-mormon/

I listened to the podcast and read your blog post and I was very pleased.  One thing you mention in your blog post a couple times is that he's doing this research "from a faithful perspective" and I disagree with your assessment.  I don't recall him ever mentioning faithfulness in his research.  I think he's essentially tabling the question of historicity and just comparing the text and making observations about these comparisons.  When he discussed the Gold Plates text as one text and the 19th century English BoM text, he gives that comparison as an option that some people could construct, but then he never refers back to that paradigm, because he doesn't make any attempts to evaluate what might have been constructed on the Gold Plates text. 

His entire study is focused on what the text of the BoM says.  I think this is a very smart approach and the best approach for members in the future.  Rather than trying to look at the text as what Joseph Smith was saying or even what an ancient Nephite is saying, its all about what the BoM text is saying.  We have the text, if we put aside the concerns about how Joseph dictated it and look at what the text is doing there are many interesting insights. 

I thought the insight about how the text often presents the voice of God/Jesus in a more Johannine style even when its drawing on texts from Matthew or other gospels was a particularly interesting insight.  Other scholars have commented on the high Christology found in the BoM before, and this detailed observation shows even more evidence to support that reading.  

Very interesting stuff, I was impressed by this scholar and the way he conducted his research, this is the kind of BoM research that I think works very well going into the future and I was pleased to hear that BYU is publishing this as well.

 

[blueglass]

It's a good podcast.  Frederick talks about how difficult it felt originally with this view on seeing clear new testament passages in the book of mormon and he was talked down by his peers.  Now with Spencer Fluhman of Maxwell institute pushing the book of mormon, temple ceremonies, book of abraham, as "inspired eclecticism" the opportunity is opening up.  Terryl Givens calls Joseph an "inspired aggregator" that revelations such as the book of mormon, jst, other revelations are absolutely not creation ex nihilo.  As we see the book of mormon more as a "wafting" revelation of an inspired jazz improvisational work there will be more good fruits from the research.  It's speaks well to BYU academic freedom that Frederick can keep his employment at BYU and come out front saying the New Testament came first, and then the book of mormon draws from it as an inspired 19th century christian midrash trying to answer the origin of the native americans.  As we read the 1832 history by JS in his own handwriting it is interlaced with a ton of new testament passages.  

[hope_for_things]

1 minute ago, blueglass said:

It's a good podcast.  Frederick talks about how difficult it felt originally with this view on seeing clear new testament passages in the book of mormon and he was talked down by his peers.  Now with Spencer Fluhman of Maxwell institute pushing the book of mormon, temple ceremonies, book of abraham, as "inspired eclecticism" the opportunity is opening up.  Terryl Givens calls Joseph an "inspired aggregator" that revelations such as the book of mormon, jst, other revelations are absolutely not creation ex nihilo.  As we see the book of mormon more as a "wafting" revelation of an inspired jazz improvisational work there will be more good fruits from the research.  It's speaks well to BYU academic freedom that Frederick can keep his employment at BYU and come out front saying the New Testament came first, and then the book of mormon draws from it as an inspired 19th century christian midrash trying to answer the origin of the native americans.  As we read the 1832 history by JS in his own handwriting it is interlaced with a ton of new testament passages.  

This is one reason I describing the texts Joseph produced as modern Midrash.  Its also great to see how the influence of the old guard apologists has diminished, and this type of scholarship is one more example of that.  

I can be very comfortable discussing and finding value in the BoM in this kind of a context, even though I'm essentially agnostic.  

[Ryan Dahle]

14 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

We don’t have any witness accounts of the JST production that Joseph used Clarke’s biblical commentary, yet we have modern scholarship that clearly shows a dependence.  We really have two options here, either Joseph was excellent at memorization, or he used a KJV during the translation process.  I guess the third option is the supernatural explanation.

I'm not really all that familiar with the production of the JST. As far as I know, there aren't a lot of accounts that describe the details of its production. Perhaps there aren't any that really get into it other than journal entries that describe the participants accomplishing the task in vague terms. Also, to my knowledge we don't have any statements that Joseph wasn't using any reference materials to help facilitate his inspired revision/commentary/expansion of the Bible. In contrast, we have Emma, who acted as scribe and witnessed the translation take place at various stages, say that Joseph wasn't using any reference materials. And then we have dozens of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hand accounts that intimately discuss the BofM translation, but never mention anything about a Bible. 

There is good reason to think that Martin and Oliver and the Whitmers were all still somewhat uncertain about Joseph's ability during the translation process. We have Martin switching out the seer stone. We have Oliver asking for further confirmation about the truthfulness of Joseph's work, which led to D&C 6. I think that Joseph's use of a Bible during the translation process of the BofM would likely have raised eyebrows in a way that it never would have for the JST. They were completely different types of translation projects. Joseph would have needed a Bible on many occasions in the BofM translation. 1 Nephi, lots of 2 Nephi, Mosiah, and lots in 3 Nephi. I highly doubt that him frequently using the Bible to translate large sections of the BofM wouldn't have elicited comments and questions about the process. 

I think these are the scribes (a few are only likely, but not certain): 

•Martin Harris

•Oliver Cowdery

•David Whitmer

•Emma Smith

•John Whitmer

•Samuel Smith

•Christian Whitmer

•Rueben Hale

And these are some of the other known observers to the translation:

•Peter Whitmer Sr.

•Mary Whitmer

•Catherine Whitmer

•Peter Whitmer Jr.

•Elizabeth Ann Whitmer

•Michael Morse

•Sarah Hellor Conrad

•Isaac Hale

•Joseph Knight Sr.

I have a hard time thinking that none of these individuals would have mentioned anything to anyone if Joseph were using a Bible to aid his translation of the BofM. And then we have the manuscript evidence that champatsch had mentioned, which you didn't address. So I think you are comparing apples to oranges. An absence of evidence for the use of commentary in the JST isn't at all the same thing as an absence of evidence for the use of a Bible in the translation of the BofM.

[hope_for_things]

25 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think that Joseph's use of a Bible during the translation process of the BofM would likely have raised eyebrows in a way that it never would have for the JST. They were completely different types of translation projects. Joseph would have needed a Bible on many occasions in the BofM translation. 1 Nephi, lots of 2 Nephi, Mosiah, and lots in 3 Nephi. I highly doubt that him frequently using the Bible to translate large sections of the BofM wouldn't have elicited comments and questions about the process. 

Just to be clear, it wasn't Joseph's use of a Bible in the production of the JST that would be problematic, it would be the borrowing of language from Clarke's commentary that would raise eyebrows.  As for accounts of the production of the JST, I would agree with you there aren't many descriptions that I can think of.  That said, I think the BoM and the story of how it came to be with the angel and the plates is a much more interesting story and would have received much more attention than just a reworking of the bible, which was never even published in Joseph's lifetime.  

31 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I have a hard time thinking that none of these individuals would have mentioned anything to anyone if Joseph were using a Bible to aid his translation of the BofM. And then we have the manuscript evidence that champatsch had mentioned, which you didn't address. So I think you are comparing apples to oranges. An absence of evidence for the use of commentary in the JST isn't at all the same thing as an absence of evidence for the use of a Bible in the translation of the BofM.

This is a conundrum when I try to picture how Joseph accomplished what he did.  Did all of scribes directly witness Joseph putting his head in his hat, or was Joseph out of view with some or most of the scribes?  We only have a few people that claimed to see this process first hand.  It does present an interesting question.  I have heard there are many people with great abilities to memorize the bible, and I wonder if Joseph wasn't one of those people with excellent memorization skills.  I honestly can't imagine him memorizing the Isaiah passages well enough to construct that portion of the BoM.  I wonder how many scribes worked on those Isaiah passages specifically, as they seem like the most difficult ones to reproduce from memory to me.  

 

[blueglass]

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

This is one reason I describing the texts Joseph produced as modern Midrash.  Its also great to see how the influence of the old guard apologists has diminished, and this type of scholarship is one more example of that.  

I can be very comfortable discussing and finding value in the BoM in this kind of a context, even though I'm essentially agnostic.  

One of opportunities I see going forward is how mormon scholars deal with the intersection of textual criticism of the new testament (Bart Ehrman) and the book of mormon.  The Book of mormon includes problematic texts like the bloody sweat of luke 22 in mosiah 3, and long ending Mark16 passages in mormon 9, and tons of late John's high christology gospel interwoven with matthew in 3Nephi.  Also the book of mormon does not include just a random dispersal of new testament or biblical language and phrases like the book Late war, it also has themes, doctrinal passages, and story models which follow new testament ideas. It's clear that this is not God inspiring an ancient Alma or Nephi to use new testament letters from Paul or John - this is seer stone second sight as revelation not unveiling of encrypted demotic runes like a lost Nestle-Aland greek text to english translation.  

[blueglass]

10 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I have heard there are many people with great abilities to memorize the bible, and I wonder if Joseph wasn't one of those people with excellent memorization skills.  I honestly can't imagine him memorizing the Isaiah passages well enough to construct that portion of the BoM.  I wonder how many scribes worked on those Isaiah passages specifically, as they seem like the most difficult ones to reproduce from memory to me.  

What do you think of the really late associate of Gilbert, Lorenzo Saunders account?   1887 so long after, but he was 17 or 18y/o at the time and a student of Oliver.    "I was frequently at the house of Joseph Smith from 1827 to 1830. That I saw Oliver Cowdery writing, I suppose the "Book of Mormon" with books and manuscript laying on the table before him; that I went to school to said Oliver Cowdery and knew him well."  

[jkwilliams]

Just now, blueglass said:

What do you think of the really late associate of Gilbert, Lorenzo Saunders account?   1887 so long after, but he was 17 or 18y/o at the time and a student of Oliver.    "I was frequently at the house of Joseph Smith from 1827 to 1830. That I saw Oliver Cowdery writing, I suppose the "Book of Mormon" with books and manuscript laying on the table before him; that I went to school to said Oliver Cowdery and knew him well."  

Interesting, but a late source. Do you have a reference for this?

[blueglass]

14 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Interesting, but a late source. Do you have a reference for this?

Sure.  It's a Jack Welch piece, with all 202 translation excerpts.  https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/welch/2016-04-11/welch_the_miraculous_translation_of_the_book_of_mormon_opening_the_heavens.pdf

#194 is the Saunders.

Other favorites of mine is #157 with Joshua M'Kune where he says Joseph's miracle boy was going to translate the plates.

“Joseph Smith, Jr. told him that (Smith’s) first-born child was to translate the characters, and hieroglyphics, upon the Plates into our language at the age of three years; but this child was not permitted to live to verify the  prediction.”

Also #161 by W. R. Hine, who says Joseph was going to find a translator in Philadelphia to translate them for him.  A 1099 contract job, or maybe profit sharing? 

"About the spring of 1828, Jo . . . said he had found some metal plates which would be of great use to the world. He had them in a box in a hand-kerchief which he carried in one hand. I said, “Let me see them.” Jo Smith said they must first be sent to Philadelphia to be translated. He said the only man in the world who could translate them lived there. "

Edited August 24, 2018 by blueglass

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Just to be clear, it wasn't Joseph's use of a Bible in the production of the JST that would be problematic, it would be the borrowing of language from Clarke's commentary that would raise eyebrows. 

Yeah, I get that. I said the use of the Bible in the Book of Mormon translation would raise eyebrows. When it comes to the JST, the use of the Bible would of course be natural. And I agree that the Clarke's commentary raises eyebrows. However, considering how little we know about the JST production process, the assumption that such a commentary wasn't used isn't nearly as reliable as the assumption that a Bible wasn't used in the BofM traslation (for reasons stated in my last post).

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

As for accounts of the production of the JST, I would agree with you there aren't many descriptions that I can think of.  That said, I think the BoM and the story of how it came to be with the angel and the plates is a much more interesting story and would have received much more attention than just a reworking of the bible, which was never even published in Joseph's lifetime.  

I don't see this as really affecting the issue. Yes there are reasons we don't have as much documented evidence for the production of the JST as for the BofM. But the point is that you simply can't make equivalent absence-of-evidence arguments when the two situations are drastically different in regard to what evidences are available in the first place, despite what is causing the disparity in available evidence. 

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

This is a conundrum when I try to picture how Joseph accomplished what he did.  Did all of scribes directly witness Joseph putting his head in his hat, or was Joseph out of view with some or most of the scribes?  We only have a few people that claimed to see this process first hand.  It does present an interesting question.  I have heard there are many people with great abilities to memorize the bible, and I wonder if Joseph wasn't one of those people with excellent memorization skills.  I honestly can't imagine him memorizing the Isaiah passages well enough to construct that portion of the BoM.  I wonder how many scribes worked on those Isaiah passages specifically, as they seem like the most difficult ones to reproduce from memory to me.  

I think Elizabeth Ann Whitmer's description of what took place gives us a fairly good clue as to how accessible the translation was for others in the house to witness it:

112. Elizabeth Whitmer Cowdery, as recorded by William E. McLellin (1870)

Quote

I cheerfully certify that I was familiar with the manner of Joseph Smith’s translating the book of Mormon. He translated the most of it at my Father’s house. And I often sat by and saw and heard them translate and write for hours together. Joseph never had a curtain drawn between him and his scribe while he was translating. He would place the director in his hat, and then place his face in his hat, so as to exclude the light, and then [read the words?] as they appeared before him.”

Moreover, I think the problem with assuming that Joseph had this type of memory is that it is very rare. I don't personally know anyone that could rattle off 12 consecutive chapters of Isaiah, at least not without a ton of time spent trying to memorize it. Then you have the diversity of allusions/quotations to both OT and NT. And then, under your theory, you have to account for all the other things Joseph needs to keep track of. I think this line from Robert A. Rees is relevant:

Quote

While many critics disagree about Joseph Smith's character, there is almost universal agreement that he had an unusually creative and energetic imagination. Fawn Brodie wrote that "the rare quality of his genius was due not to his reason but to his imagination. He was a mythmaker of prodigious talent." 17 Harold Bloom, one of the preeminent humanistic scholars of our generation, has praised him as having an "extraordinary capacity for speculative development." 18 Yet, what we know of Joseph Smith at the time he produced the Book of Mormon reveals no proclivity for artistic expression. That he was imaginative there is no doubt, but that he had the ability write a five hundred-page fictional narrative there is substantial doubt. There is an enormous difference between being able to conceive of something imaginatively and being able to shape it into a unified, complex, and concrete artifact. Many of us may think of wonderful novels we would like to write or symphonies we would like to compose, but only those with true gifts are able to produce novels or symphonies. (pg. 90)

Similarly, there is a difference between having a good memory, and then being able to memorize 12 consecutive chapters of Isaiah. I suspect Joseph could have committed something like that to memory, if he spent enough time at it, but for the vast majority of people, this type of memorization takes a lot of time and effort. Ever seen someone get ready for a play? It takes constant rehearsals, usually audibly, for the words to stick in our minds.

Think of all the things Joseph would have needed to remember and keep track of in the text, while at the same time dictating it in a way that is coherent and really brilliant. The battles, the geographical details, the source texts, the different voices of characters, the EModE, the migrations, the chronology, the narrative details, the characters and locations, the development of doctrines, the apostate movments, etc.

I can honestly say that I don't know a single person alive today that I think could do something like this. There are brilliant authors like Tolkien and Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson who have created massive, consistent worlds, but I don't think any of them could have dictated their masterpieces in one take without relying on notes or references. So you have to assume both unusually brilliant creativity and an exceptional memory, and then assume Joseph had a combination of these abilities in a way that is really unprecedented, especially for 23 year old farmer with limited education. I'm not sure why people think that this naturalistic explanation is even remotely plausible. It isn't. 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

31 minutes ago, blueglass said:

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

I have heard there are many people with great abilities to memorize the bible, and I wonder if Joseph wasn't one of those people with excellent memorization skills.  I honestly can't imagine him memorizing the Isaiah passages well enough to construct that portion of the BoM.  I wonder how many scribes worked on those Isaiah passages specifically, as they seem like the most difficult ones to reproduce from memory to me.  

What do you think of the really late associate of Gilbert, Lorenzo Saunders account?   1887 so long after, but he was 17 or 18y/o at the time and a student of Oliver.    "I was frequently at the house of Joseph Smith from 1827 to 1830. That I saw Oliver Cowdery writing, I suppose the "Book of Mormon" with books and manuscript laying on the table before him; that I went to school to said Oliver Cowdery and knew him well."  

The footnote information is quite important, I think:

Quote

195. Lorenzo Saunders, Statement, Naked Truths about Mormonism, 2. A variety of sources agree that Oliver Cowdery taught school in the Palmyra area. Lucy Mack Smith reports that he boarded with the Smiths. Therefore, it hardly seems unusual that a schoolteacher would be working at a table with books and manuscripts. In addition, Joseph Smith was in Pennsylvania during this time (1828–29 school year), and he and Oliver Cowdery had not yet met

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Ryan Dahle

[jkwilliams]

15 minutes ago, blueglass said:

Sure.  It's a Jack Welch piece, with all 202 translation excerpts.  https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/welch/2016-04-11/welch_the_miraculous_translation_of_the_book_of_mormon_opening_the_heavens.pdf

#194 is the Saunders.

Other favorites of mine is #157 with Joshua M'Kune where he says Joseph's miracle boy was going to translate the plates.

“Joseph Smith, Jr. told him that (Smith’s) first-born child was to translate the characters, and hieroglyphics, upon the Plates into our language at the age of three years; but this child was not permitted to live to verify the  prediction.”

Also #161 by W. R. Hine, who says Joseph was going to find a translator in Philadelphia to translate them for him.  A 1099 contract job, or maybe profit sharing? 

"About the spring of 1828, Jo . . . said he had found some metal plates which would be of great use to the world. He had them in a box in a hand-kerchief which he carried in one hand. I said, “Let me see them.” Jo Smith said they must first be sent to Philadelphia to be translated. He said the only man in the world who could translate them lived there. "

Thanks for that. I hadn't seen that before, and there are a lot of insights in the testimonies collected.

[jkwilliams]

21 minutes ago, blueglass said:

Sure.  It's a Jack Welch piece, with all 202 translation excerpts.  https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/welch/2016-04-11/welch_the_miraculous_translation_of_the_book_of_mormon_opening_the_heavens.pdf

#194 is the Saunders.

Other favorites of mine is #157 with Joshua M'Kune where he says Joseph's miracle boy was going to translate the plates.

“Joseph Smith, Jr. told him that (Smith’s) first-born child was to translate the characters, and hieroglyphics, upon the Plates into our language at the age of three years; but this child was not permitted to live to verify the  prediction.”

Also #161 by W. R. Hine, who says Joseph was going to find a translator in Philadelphia to translate them for him.  A 1099 contract job, or maybe profit sharing? 

"About the spring of 1828, Jo . . . said he had found some metal plates which would be of great use to the world. He had them in a box in a hand-kerchief which he carried in one hand. I said, “Let me see them.” Jo Smith said they must first be sent to Philadelphia to be translated. He said the only man in the world who could translate them lived there. "

I thought this from Martin Harris was interesting:

Quote

The way that Smith made his transcripts and transcriptions for Harris was the following. Although in the same room, a thick curtain or blanket was suspended between them, and Smith concealed behind the blanket, pretended to look through his spectacles, or transparent stones, and would then write down or repeat what he saw, which, when repeated aloud, was written down by Harris, who sat on the other side of the suspended blanket. Harris was told that it would arouse the most terrible divine displeasure, if he should attempt to draw near the sacred chest, or look at Smith while engaged in the work of decyphering the mysterious characters. This was Harris’s own account of the matter to me.

 

[jkwilliams]

55 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The footnote information is quite important, I think:

Saunders' testimony is that he was frequently at Joseph Smith's house from 1827 to 1830, so he would have been around during the translation. The important takeaway here, as Welch acknowledges, is that it isn't correct to say that Joseph and Oliver weren't working with manuscripts. Welch is arguing that manuscripts were present but were not related to the translation. How he would know that is anyone's guess.

Edited August 24, 2018 by jkwilliams

[blueglass]

38 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Similarly, there is a difference between having a good memory, and then being able to memorize 12 consecutive chapters of Isaiah. I suspect Joseph could have committed something like that to memory, if he spent enough time at it, but for the vast majority of people, this type of memorization takes a lot of time and effort. Ever seen someone get ready for a play? It takes constant rehearsals, usually audibly, for the words to stick in our minds.

Think of all the things Joseph would have needed to remember and keep track of in the text, while at the same time dictating it in a way that is coherent and really brilliant. The battles, the geographical details, the source texts, the different voices of characters, the EModE, the migrations, the chronology, the narrative details, the characters and locations, the development of doctrines, the apostate movments, etc.

I can honestly say that I don't know a single person alive today that I think could do something like this. There are brilliant authors like Tolkien and Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson who have created massive, consistent worlds, but I don't think any of them could have dictated their masterpieces in one take without relying on notes or references. So you have to assume both unusually brilliant creativity and an exceptional memory, and then assume Joseph had a combination of these abilities in a way that is really unprecedented, especially for 23 year old farmer with limited education. I'm not sure why people think that this naturalistic explanation is even remotely plausible. It isn't. 

If the miracle of evolution can produce the mind of Salt Lake City's own Kim Peek, or a Pearl Curran, we can have a Joseph Smith which could recite section 132 from memory on demand.  I really smile at the tension in the history between Emma's statement that Joseph "could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter", and Harold Bloom, or Michael Coe's religious genius statements.   Bloom:  "I can only attribute to his genius or daemons his uncanny recovery of elements in ancient Jewish theurgy that had ceased to be available either to Judaism or to Christianity, and that had survived only in esoteric traditions unlikely to have touched Smith directly."  I think that is why we have popular movies like Limitless with Bradley Cooper, where we aspire for a quick path to super intelligence or extra ability to push us forward.  Seer stones are out of style.

Pearl Curran

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/patience-worth-author-from-the-great-beyond-54333749/

They offer a course here at John Hopkins on spontaneous composition.  They go over the book of mormon:

https://summer.jhu.edu/courses/public_fileDownload.asp?path=2176.pdf

Kim Peek with 98% reading retention 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/kim-peek-the-real-rain-man

 

[Ryan Dahle]

13 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

42 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The footnote information is quite important, I think:

Saunders' testimony is that he was a student of Oliver Cowdery from 1827 to 1830, so he would have been around during the translation. The important takeaway here, as Welch acknowledges, is that it isn't correct to say that Joseph and Oliver weren't working with manuscripts. Welch is arguing that manuscripts were present but were not related to the translation. How he would know that is anyone's guess.

Ummm... no.

Welch's argument appears to be that Saunders was in the home of Joseph Smith Sr. (in Palmyra), and that he saw Oliver there working there (surrounded by books and manuscripts), and just assumed that Oliver was preparing drafts of the Book of Mormon (which probably only occurred to Saunders later in life after  disputations over the BofM's authorship were in full swing). Oliver didn't teach students in Harmony or Fayette, where the translation took place. He had already finished the school term in Palmyra before he left for Harmony in the spring of 1829. And I don't think he ever went back to teach in Palmyra. So Saunders was almost certainly discussing his observation of Oliver while Oliver was still in the Smith home in Palmyra, before Oliver had even met Joseph (before April 5, 1829).   

[jkwilliams]

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Ummm... no.

Welch's argument appears to be that Saunders was in the home of Joseph Smith Sr. (in Palmyra), and that he saw Oliver there working there (surrounded by books and manuscripts), and just assumed that Oliver was preparing drafts of the Book of Mormon (which probably only occurred to Saunders later in life after  disputations over the BofM's authorship were in full swing). Oliver didn't teach students in Harmony or Fayette, where the translation took place. He had already finished the school term in Palmyra before he left for Harmony in the spring of 1829. And I don't think he ever went back to teach in Palmyra. So Saunders was almost certainly discussing his observation of Oliver while Oliver was still in the Smith home in Palmyra, before Oliver had even met Joseph (before April 5, 1829).   

FYI, here's the original Saunders statement in full. Note that it doesn't necessarily say that he saw Oliver at the Smith house. Joseph and Oliver were finishing up the translation in the summer of 1830 at the Whitmer home, not far from Palmyra:

Quote

HILLSDALE COUNTY, State of Michigan. 
   Lorenzo Saunders being duly sworn deposes and says: That I reside in Reading, Hillsdale County, State of Michigan; that I was born in the town of Palmyra, Wayne County, State of New York, on June 7, A. D. 1811, and am now seventy-six years of age. That I lived in said town of Palmyra until I was forty-three years of age. That I lived within one mile of Joseph Smith at the time said Joseph Smith claimed that he found the "tablets" on which the "Book of Mormon" was revealed. That I went to the "Hill Cumorah" on the Sunday following the date that Joseph Smith claimed he found the plates, it being three miles from my home, and I tried to find the place where the earth had been broken by being dug up, but was unable to find any place where the ground had been disturbed. 

That my father died on the 10th day of October, A. D. 1825. That in March of 1827, on or about the 15th of said month I went to the house of Joseph Smith for the purpose of getting some maple sugar to eat, that when I arrived at the house of said Joseph Smith, I was met at the door by Harrison Smith, Jo's brother. That at a distance of ten or twelve rods from the house there were five men that were engaged in talking, four of whom I knew, the fifth one was better dressed than the rest of those whom I was acquainted with. I inquired of Harrison Smith who the stranger was? He informed me his name was Sidney Rigdo[n] with whom I afterwards became acquainted and found to be Sidney Rigdon. This was in March, A. D. 1827, the second spring after the death of my father. I was frequently at the house of Joseph Smith from 1827 to 1830. That I saw Oliver Cowdery writing, I suppose the "Book of Mormon" with books and manuscript laying on the table before him; that I went to school to said Oliver Cowdery and knew him well. That in the summer of 1830, I heard Sydney Rigdon preach a sermon on Mormonism. This was after the "Book of Mormon" had been published, which took about three years from the time that Joseph Smith claimed to have had his revelation.
     [Signed.]      LORENZO SAUNDERS, 
     [Seal.]
Sworn and subscribed to before me this 21st day of July, A.D. 1887.
            LINUS S. PARMELEE,
     Justice of the Peace of Reading, Mich.   

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by jkwilliams

[hope_for_things]

2 hours ago, blueglass said:

One of opportunities I see going forward is how mormon scholars deal with the intersection of textual criticism of the new testament (Bart Ehrman) and the book of mormon.  The Book of mormon includes problematic texts like the bloody sweat of luke 22 in mosiah 3, and long ending Mark16 passages in mormon 9, and tons of late John's high christology gospel interwoven with matthew in 3Nephi.  Also the book of mormon does not include just a random dispersal of new testament or biblical language and phrases like the book Late war, it also has themes, doctrinal passages, and story models which follow new testament ideas. It's clear that this is not God inspiring an ancient Alma or Nephi to use new testament letters from Paul or John - this is seer stone second sight as revelation not unveiling of encrypted demotic runes like a lost Nestle-Aland greek text to english translation.  

I think the only real direction compatible with the scholarly evidence is similar to the BoA catalyst theory.  Calling all the productions of Joseph inspired revelations, rather than ancient and historical.  But it will also take a major adjustment for orthodox Mormons to recognize that the gospel texts aren't historical accounts by contemporaries to Jesus, but rather written generations past for theological purposes, and that these texts don't harmonize, but that they reflect the opinions and concerns of their authors and followers.  This is a major change for an orthodox person.  What is scripture, is the important question, and how do we read scripture in order to get value from it without just confirming our own biases.  

 

[Steve J]

24 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Saunders' testimony is that he was a student of Oliver Cowdery from 1827 to 1830, so he would have been around during the translation. The important takeaway here, as Welch acknowledges, is that it isn't correct to say that Joseph and Oliver weren't working with manuscripts. Welch is arguing that manuscripts were present but were not related to the translation. How he would know that is anyone's guess.

Just a few questions/points..

1. 1887 seems like a late recollection. Especially when you take into accounts his other statements that he saw saw four men and a mysterious person.. and then the brother of Joseph Smith states that one of them was Sidney Rigdon. This puts the rest of his account under suspicion. Also, according to him we have this grand conspiracy that will later involve hiding, secrets, sleight of hand, etc.. but they repeatedly just left their working materials and manuscript in the open in front of a non-conspirator repeatedly over multiple times/years. Other reports during this period have JS, Oliver Cowdery, and others (possibly Sidney Rigdon) hiding out at nights in the forest, caves creating and writing down the manuscript. But according to Saunder's he just saw them all with books and manuscripts hanging out together preparing and writing it down.. Somehow that rumor and knowledge did not catch on or he felt that it was not important to state until 1887.  

2. The fact that for most of the time period Joseph Smith was not at the house, but in Pennsylvania. 

3. The statement is that he saw Oliver Cowdery writing... it makes no mention of Joseph Smith. Unless you are arguing that Cowdery wrote the BOM(or at least parts of it) w/o JS and JS then dictated that part in his words... 

[Kevin Christensen]

18 minutes ago, blueglass said:

If the miracle of evolution can produce the mind of Salt Lake City's own Kim Peek, or a Pearl Curran, we can have a Joseph Smith which could recite section 132 from memory on demand.  I really smile at the tension in the history between Emma's statement that Joseph "could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter", and Harold Bloom, or Michael Coe's religious genius statements.   Bloom:  "I can only attribute to his genius or daemons his uncanny recovery of elements in ancient Jewish theurgy that had ceased to be available either to Judaism or to Christianity, and that had survived only in esoteric traditions unlikely to have touched Smith directly."  I think that is why we have popular movies like Limitless with Bradley Cooper, where we aspire for a quick path to super intelligence or extra ability to push us forward.  Seer stones are out of style.

Pearl Curran

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/patience-worth-author-from-the-great-beyond-54333749/

They offer a course here at John Hopkins on spontaneous composition.  They go over the book of mormon:

https://summer.jhu.edu/courses/public_fileDownload.asp?path=2176.pdf

Kim Peek with 98% reading retention 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/kim-peek-the-real-rain-man

 

Regarding the Book of Mormon compared to Curran, there was an essay in Sunstone on that back in the 80s, reprinted with a teeny change in American Apocrypha, and drawn on by Ann Taves.  I discussed that sort of thing in my review of Taves in Interpreter no long ago, and in turn, I referred to this essay by Richard L. Anderson:

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=939

Who has this to say about Curran's book:

Quote

The Sorry Tale

This justly forgotten novel impressed American reviewers of the World War I generation but can only be reviewed as sterile bombast today. Its notoriety came from author Pearl Curran’s story of receiving dictation of poetry and historical tales from the spirit of a “Puritan spinster” called Patience Worth.⁵⁶ The first awe-struck reviews were naively requoted in a recent Mormon journal article. The book is ambiguous about its fictional character, subtitled “A Story of the Time of Christ,” but it contains speeches predicting that “words spoken here without the walls of Bethlehem” shall yet speak “through time and ages.”⁵⁷ Supporters of The Sorry Tale argued minute historical accuracy for its scenes, so its quality is evaluated here.

Mrs. Curran’s editor stated the plot as follows:

Christ himself is the outstanding and speaking character, though the central figure is a son of the Emperor Tiberius by Theia, a dancing slave, who names him Hatte. He is born outside the walls of Bethlehem on the same night in which Christ was born, and the two lives move on parallel paths to the tragedy on Calvary, where Hatte also is crucified, being the person known as the “unrepentant thief.”⁵⁸

This contrived story grinds through five hundred pages of simplistic narrative and tedious dialogue before featuring Jesus. The whole is subvictorian prose at its predictable worst, where tears are dropping jewels and bosoms regularly heave. Despite Mrs. Curran’s claim of “panoramic” moving pictures in her mind, The Sorry Tale notably lacks social and physical details. If they are mentioned, the score for accuracy is low. For instance, Mrs. Curran claimed to envision “the ark as it was at that time, restored,” but this relic had long since disappeared from Jewish scripture and history.⁵⁹ The Roman governor sat in an oriental court, with “vested virgins” dancing before him, and Jesus shocked the masses by dining with the Pharisees, though they are known in the Gospels and Josephus as popularly respected. The unhistorical “eye of the needle” gate is described, with the physically implausible act of the camel inching through it on his knees.⁶⁰

If this Tale cannot recreate settings, what is its picture of Christ? The free and rapid dictation shows a patchwork of events from the Gospels—their historical integrity is flaunted in random chronology and modified message. The canonical five loaves and two fishes diminishes to “two fishes and a loaf,” and the miraculous is next subtracted. Although all Gospels detail how five thousand were physically fed, The Sorry Tale gives a sentimental version of how hunger vanished as the crowd was overwhelmed with truth. The close is an unrealistic platitude on Jesus’ lips: “for the body crieth out only when the spirit is barren.”⁶¹ Since the Tale reports no resurrection, the natural crescendo of Christ’s teachings is the Last Supper and the Garden, but here the reader meets no suffering Savior. Emotive prose changes the grim night arrest to a pregnant dawn; the bloody sweat is reduced to a footnote while Christ’s insuperable burden becomes a pleasant prayer about “supping sweet the cup.” This storybook Jesus gently wanders back to his Apostles, “pausing to pluck a branch and kiss it, plucking up a stone, to smile and leave it fall.”⁶²

The Sorry Tale spins overdone human tragedy but fades out the divine tragedy of Christ’s atonement for sin. Its Jesus teaches an unstructured “kingdom of love” but drops out the realities of sin and salvation, church and ordinances. Such oversimplified humanism does not match the Christ of the Gospels.

The Book of Mormon is something else again.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsbug, PA

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, blueglass said:

What do you think of the really late associate of Gilbert, Lorenzo Saunders account?   1887 so long after, but he was 17 or 18y/o at the time and a student of Oliver.    "I was frequently at the house of Joseph Smith from 1827 to 1830. That I saw Oliver Cowdery writing, I suppose the "Book of Mormon" with books and manuscript laying on the table before him; that I went to school to said Oliver Cowdery and knew him well."  

That sounds reasonable to me honestly.  I've often suspected that one reason translation efforts went so much quicker with Oliver is that he was more involved in the creation of the narrative than Martin was.  I could imagine them working as co-creators of the text.  I just don't know if this squares up with the idea that so many other scribes helped in the process as well.  Its an interesting question though, and when you think about it in contrast with the production of the JST, where Rigdon was heavily involved and they were using the Clarke biblical commentary as source material, I can more easily picture people at a table with reference materials, working on the BoM.  

[Steve J]

2 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

That sounds reasonable to me honestly.  I've often suspected that one reason translation efforts went so much quicker with Oliver is that he was more involved in the creation of the narrative than Martin was.  I could imagine them working as co-creators of the text.  I just don't know if this squares up with the idea that so many other scribes helped in the process as well.  Its an interesting question though, and when you think about it in contrast with the production of the JST, where Rigdon was heavily involved and they were using the Clarke biblical commentary as source material, I can more easily picture people at a table with reference materials, working on the BoM.  

Do you really think that would make it easier? Seems like multiple people input would make it much more difficult, time consuming, and we would easily see these splits...Have you ever tried to write a paper in group? My experience that it is much more difficult

[Ryan Dahle]

27 minutes ago, blueglass said:

If the miracle of evolution can produce the mind of Salt Lake City's own Kim Peek, or a Pearl Curran, we can have a Joseph Smith which could recite section 132 from memory on demand.  I really smile at the tension in the history between Emma's statement that Joseph "could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter", and Harold Bloom, or Michael Coe's religious genius statements.   Bloom:  "I can only attribute to his genius or daemons his uncanny recovery of elements in ancient Jewish theurgy that had ceased to be available either to Judaism or to Christianity, and that had survived only in esoteric traditions unlikely to have touched Smith directly."  I think that is why we have popular movies like Limitless with Bradley Cooper, where we aspire for a quick path to super intelligence or extra ability to push us forward.  Seer stones are out of style.

Pearl Curran

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/patience-worth-author-from-the-great-beyond-54333749/

They offer a course here at John Hopkins on spontaneous composition.  They go over the book of mormon:

https://summer.jhu.edu/courses/public_fileDownload.asp?path=2176.pdf

Kim Peek with 98% reading retention 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/kim-peek-the-real-rain-man

Sure, you can always ascribe Joseph Smith's ability to extraordinary human capacity. But how many people have been able to do the types of things he did? I don't know how Pearl Curran produced her literature, but it certainly didn't seem to be at all normal. Same thing with Peek. There are probably only a handful of people who have ever been able to do anything like what Joseph Smith did with producing the Book of Mormon, and I think in each case there are important differences. For instance, no one remarked on Joseph's extraordinary memory or literary abilities until after he published the Book of Mormon. If there were rumors of savant-like intelligence all along, or indications that his brain had some abnormalities that gave him special gifts/limitations, that would be one thing. But we don't have any reports of the young prodigious Joseph Smith. In fact, those around him found him to be rather uneducated and unrefined, even if he did have a good deal of native intelligence. 

If you have to place Joseph Smith in a very rare category of individuals to explain his production of the Book of Mormon, and then minimize the important differences between him and those other individuals, then I think that definitely provides good cause to believe that a miracle really might have taken place, just as he claimed. Not absolute proof, but a good reason to believe and to seek for spiritual confirmation.

[Steve J]

From my personal experience, I have gushes of creativity and writing when I have something in my mind and I can spill it all out on ink. Now if you are arguing that they got together and JS explained some ideas and then they gave him some pointers here or there about where to focus or mention than that is I guess possible... But to me, a committee system would be something that would slow down the creation of literature and create many issues that I personally don't think we see with the BOM