Dr. D. Michael quinn has passed away

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

It is very hard to get through to people who have their minds made up.

 

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

11 hours ago, rongo said:

3) receiving the Second Comforter not dependent on the Second Anointing

 

All three, but only a bit on #2.

I'd be interested to hear why you think the Second Comforter is dependent upon the Second Anointing (or vice versa?). I have been under the impression that the SC was something conferred upon a person at the Lord's instance, and in His own time, while the SA was conferred at the Church's. And that they are unrelated.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Stargazer

[strappinglad]

Has there ever , in the Church , been a posthumous excommunication ? If not, why not ? 

[strappinglad]

Is the SC like the confirmation in that we are told to receive the Holy Ghost but the actual receipt thereof will /can happen some time later? 

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

I'd be interested to hear why you think the Second Comforter is dependent upon the Second Anointing (or vice versa?). I have been under the impression that the SC was something conferred upon a person at the Lord's instance, and in His own time, while the SA was conferred at the Church's. And that they are unrelated.

I'm not where I can provide quotes on my phone.  But read how Joseph described it.

Second comforter is more than just seeing the Savior.  Joseph described it as handling something and having the Savior introduce you to the Father, something that D&C 84 states cannot be done without all the ordinances.  Joseph also taught that to go on a mountain top and talk with God face to face required a King and Priest (SA).

It's true ordinances aren't required to see the Savior.  They are to be in his physical glorified presence.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, InCognitus said:

That, and polygamy, and temple ordinances, and a few others (although it has been at least 20 years since I've last had conversations with RLDS remnants, so maybe that's changed).

Thelona Stevens (the late, very prominent RLDS lady) used to tell me that the only temple ordinance she thought would be practiced in the coming RLDS temple would be washing of the feet.

[Rain]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I wonder about the factuality of such claims. I once knew a man who claimed to have had a visitation by the Savior. Observing his behavior over time I began to think that he had been making it up in order to gain recognition from those of us he revealed this to.

With regards to the 2A, if someone told me that they had received the second anointing, unless there were some reasonable cause for revealing it, I would assume they were lying to me. It just seems like something that one would hold close and keep sacred.

You would think, but some people are awfully open about patriarchal blessings so I wouldn't put it past them to be open about other things.

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I feel for him because his family left him when he discontinued belief.

Considering the extreme he went to in suing the Church, I would be cautious assuming it was simply change of his belief that caused the fracture. It is possible that is what happened as I have heard some spouses say they would leave a marriage if their spouse no longer believed, but it might have been aggression on his part to have them join him in disbelief that contributed more or something else. 

[Calm]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

The only unrecoverable sin being the sin against the Holy Ghost, it must be the case that anyone whose membership is withdrawn who hasn't committed the unpardonable sin may obviously be pardoned.

And since that would be dependent on their ability to comprehend and fully accept the Holy Ghost, an internal experience, we probably shouldn’t make any judgment about a particular individual having committed it or not, imo. Perhaps this might be revealed to someone by God, but for the rest of us recognition that is not our stewardship is wise. 

[CA Steve]

23 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 

It is quite possible that Elder Packer did not actually know the answer.  It is a huge mistake to assume that the General Authorities know everything.  That is demonstrably not true.

In my case his response directly implied he knew the answer. "You don't need to know that" would require him knowing what "that" meant.

Edited April 25, 2021 by CA Steve

[Fair Dinkum]

On 4/23/2021 at 3:28 PM, Scott Lloyd said:

I think your response to the investigator may have had more to do with your own callow naïveté at the time than with direction from the Church. 

Haha not just naïveté but callow naïveté.  Your reply reminds me of the assailant who plunged the knife into his victim with a smile on his face and then asks his victim to say thank you.  I could just as easily call your attempt at gaslighting and rewriting reality as your own callow naïveté Scott.  Your bind-spot is your unyielding defense of the church even when it needs to be questioned. 

You have a habit of making large leaps in judgement to draw conclusions that support your worldview, it does not make your perspective true. But I’m willing to amend my position. Please provide evidence that the church taught the general membership that Smith placed a rock in his hat as an means to translate the Book of Mormon pre 1975 which is the year I returned from my mission and I will gladly eat crow.  Any link to a lesson manual, Ensign, Improvement Era or Friend will suffice.  

 

By by the way, I’ll just leave this here to assist you in building your case for my callow naïveté.

Quote

In imitation of the true order of heaven whereby seers receive revelations from God through a Urim and Thummim, the devil gives his own revelations to some of his followers through peep stones or crystal balls.

— Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p 566,

Quote

"While the statement has been made by some writers that the Prophet Joseph Smith used a seer stone part of the time in his translating of the record, and information points to the fact that he did have in his possession such a stone, yet there is no authentic statement in the history of the Church which states that the use of such a stone was made in that translation. The information is all hearsay, and personally, I do not believe that this stone was used for this purpose. The reason I give for this conclusion is found in the statement of the Lord to the Brother of Jared as recorded in Ether 3:22–24. These stones, the Urim and Thummim which were given to the Brother of Jared, were preserved for this very purpose of translating the record, both of the Jaredites and the Nephites. Then again the Prophet was impressed by Moroni with the fact that these stones were given for that very purpose. It hardly seems reasonable to suppose that the Prophet would substitute something evidently inferior under these circumstances. It may have been so, but it is so easy for a story of this kind to be circulated due to the fact that the Prophet did possess a seer stone, which he may have used for some other purposes." -Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 3:225–26.

 

Quote

“Miffed at the discovery and forcible discontinuance of his secret enterprise, Cole sought to defame Joseph Smith and his work. He described the Prophet in degrading terms and explained the Book of Mormon as a deception growing out of the family’s use of “peep stones” to dig for hidden treasure guarded by evil spirits. He claimed that Joseph concocted the idea of finding a book from the suggestion of a vagabond conjurer named Walters who had participated with the Smiths in their digging ventures. Cole laid the groundwork for the theme of deception, indolence, and irreligion that was to characterize descriptions of Joseph Smith in subsequent non-Mormon writings.” (Dean Jessee - Sep. 1979 Ensign](https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/09/joseph-smiths-reputation?lang=eng))

Quote

“We would applaud such strong-mindedness were it not that on the very next page she accepts the stories of the same witnesses regarding "seer stones, ghosts, magic incantations, and nocturnal excavations."”(Nibble - No ma'am that is not my History)

Quote

1978 Deseret News Interview with La Grande Richards on Joseph’s Seer Stone

---

 

WALTERS: Well I thought somebody said that Joseph Fielding had had Joseph Smith’s seer stone.

RICHARDS: No. We don’t have that.

WALTERS: You don’t have that?

RICHARDS: No.

WALTERS: Oh.

RICHARDS:: We have got some of the early writings of the Prophet Joseph and things of that kind, and testimony of when Joseph Smith performed a plural marriage for them, but – things of that kind in the Historian’s office. But we have [unintelligible] church.

VLACHOS: Is the seer stone in the historical department?

RICHARDS:: We don’t have a seer stone. That went back with the plates when [unintelligible]

WALTERS: Oh! Okay, I hadn’t heard that. I see. I thought that somebody said that it was still out there somewhere.

VLACHOS: Do you know what it looked like?

RICHARDS: What?

VLACHOS: Do you know what the stone looked like?

RICHARDS: No. I’ve never seen it. And I don’t think there is any living man who has seen it.

Quote

“It is true that the average Mormon knew almost nothing about such matters, but then the General Authorities were equally ignorant -- none of them were historians or theologians.  The new Church Historian, Leonard Arrington, was bringing a bunch of professional historians to SLC and the Church Archives in the 1970s, and among them was Quinn.  We can now see the results of that early work to bring LDS history into the 20th and 21st centuries.  It is a process which took time” - Robert F Smith

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[Stargazer]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

And since that would be dependent on their ability to comprehend and fully accept the Holy Ghost, an internal experience, we probably shouldn’t make any judgment about a particular individual having committed it or not, imo. Perhaps this might be revealed to someone by God, but for the rest of us recognition that is not our stewardship is wise. 

Agreed! I certainly don't think I would know enough about anyone to make any judgement regarding this.

[InCognitus]

2 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

By by the way, I’ll just leave this here to assist you in building your case for my callow naïveté.

Quote

In imitation of the true order of heaven whereby seers receive revelations from God through a Urim and Thummim, the devil gives his own revelations to some of his followers through peep stones or crystal balls.

— Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p 566,

Quote

That's a rather selective use of quotations from McConkie.   First, read the entire entry in Mormon Doctrine under Peep Stones (in context), and compare that to his article on the Urim and Thummim:

Quote

Peep Stones

See DEVIL, REVELATION, URIM AND THUMMIM. In imitation of the true order of heaven whereby seers receive revelations from God through a Urim and Thummim, the devil gives his own revelations to some of his followers through peep stones or crystal balls. An instance of this copying of the true order occurred in the early days of this dispensation. Hiram Page had such a stone and was professing to have revelations for the upbuilding of Zion and the governing of the Church. Oliver Cowdery and some others were wrongly influenced thereby in consequence of which Oliver was commanded by revelation: "Thou shalt take thy brother, Hiram Page, between him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me, and that Satan deceiveth him." (D. & C. 28:11.)  (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.565 PEEP STONES)

Note that McConkie describes crystal balls and peep stones as imitation to "the true order of heaven". 

Here's a portion of the entry under the Urim and Thummim topic, and notice what he says about Seer Stones:

Quote

Joseph Smith received the same Urim and Thummim had by the Brother of Jared for it was the one expressly provided for the translation of the Jaredite and Nephite records. (D. & C. 10:1; 17:1; Ether 3:22-28.) It was separate and distinct from the one had by Abraham and the one had by the priests in Israel. The Prophet also had a seer stone which was separate and distinct from the Urim and Thummim, and which (speaking loosely) has been called by some a Urim and Thummim. (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, pp. 222-226.)

President Joseph Fielding Smith, with reference to the seer stone and the Urim and Thummim, has written: "We have been taught since the days of the Prophet that the Urim and Thummim were returned with the plates to the angel. We have no record of the Prophet having the Urim and Thummim after the organization of the Church. Statements of translations by the Urim and Thummim after that date are evidently errors. The statement has been made that the Urim and Thummim was on the altar in the Manti Temple when that building was dedicated. The Urim and Thummim so spoken of, however, was the seer stone which was in the possession of the Prophet Joseph Smith in early days. This seer stone is now in the possession of the Church." (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p. 225.)  

(Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.818 URIM AND THUMMIM)

So is a "peep stone" the same thing as a "seer stone"?  McConkie wouldn't think so. 

This was one of the things that I found problematic with Early Mormonism and the Magic World View too:  Quinn favored making a connection to the occult (the imitation) when the exact same objects or symbols had a perfectly acceptable meaning in "the true order of heaven".   For instance, of Joseph Smith's "dove and olive branch medallion", Quinn explains in the caption that the "olive tree was governed astrologically by Jupiter and the dove by Venus".  He thus links what is obviously a Christian symbol of peace, purity, and the Holy Ghost, to the occult.  And Quinn did the same with Joseph Smith's serpent-headed cane, saying that "the serpent was one of the animals which both Saturn and Jupiter governed", and the only religious connection that he could imagine of a satanic motif.  Why not make the obvious biblical connection to the prophet Moses and his staff, or the rod of Aaron that was changed into a serpent through the power of God?  Such a staff, or cane, would be symbolic of a prophet of God.  The serpent is also a symbol of Christ, since the serpent of brass was lifted up on a pole by Moses, so that the Israelites could be healed from their bites from poisonous serpents.   There were simply too many instances of that kind of bias application in his book for me to find it credible.  As I said earlier, he had to bend and twist his evidence to fit his premise since his main support that came from the Hofmann forgeries could not longer be used.

Edited April 25, 2021 by InCognitus

[Fair Dinkum]

On 4/23/2021 at 3:30 PM, smac97 said:

 

So do you still stand by the assertion that the Church "freely acknowledges" Joseph Smith's "folk magic connections?"  Seems like a substantial mischaracterization.  If I'm wrong, then please show me where the Church has done this.

Thanks,

-Smac

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng

 

Quote

When he married Emma Hale in 1827, Joseph was on the eve of realizing himself as a prophet. He may still have been involved in magic, but he was sincere when he told Emma’s father that his treasure-seeking days were over. Magic had served its purpose in his life. In a sense, it was a preparatory gospel. ^{2 - Richard Busman}

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[smac97]

13 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Quote

So do you still stand by the assertion that the Church "freely acknowledges" Joseph Smith's "folk magic connections?"  Seems like a substantial mischaracterization.  If I'm wrong, then please show me where the Church has done this.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng

No reference to "folk magic" in there.

There's this:

Quote

What did seer mean to the young prophet and his contemporaries? Joseph was raised in a family that read the Bible, which mentions seers repeatedly. In 1 Samuel, for example, the writer explains: “Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer” (1 Samuel 9:9).

The Bible also mentions people receiving spiritual manifestations by means of physical objects such as rods, a brass serpent on a pole (which became a widespread symbol of the medical profession), an ephod (a part of the priestly clothing that included two precious stones),⁵ and the Urim and Thummim.

“Seeing” and “seers” were part of the American and family culture in which Joseph Smith grew up. Steeped in the language of the Bible and a mixture of Anglo-European cultures brought over by immigrants to North America, some people in the early 19th century believed it was possible for gifted individuals to “see,” or receive spiritual manifestations, through material objects such as seer stones.

The young Joseph Smith accepted such familiar folk ways of his day, including the idea of using seer stones to view lost or hidden objects. Since the biblical narrative showed God using physical objects to focus people’s faith or communicate spiritually in ancient times, Joseph and others assumed the same for their day. Joseph’s parents, Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, affirmed the family’s immersion in this culture and their use of physical objects in this way, and the villagers of Palmyra and Manchester, New York, where the Smiths lived, sought out Joseph to find lost objects before he moved to Pennsylvania in late 1827.

For those without an understanding of how 19th-century people in Joseph’s region lived their religion, seer stones can be unfamiliar, and scholars have long debated this period of his life. Partly as a result of the Enlightenment or Age of Reason, a period that emphasized science and the observable world over spiritual matters, many in Joseph’s day came to feel that the use of physical objects such as stones or rods was superstitious or inappropriate for religious purposes.

In later years, as Joseph told his remarkable story, he emphasized his visions and other spiritual experiences. Some of his former associates focused on his early use of seer stones in an effort to destroy his reputation in a world that increasingly rejected such practices. In their proselyting efforts, Joseph and other early members chose not to focus on the influence of folk culture, as many prospective converts were experiencing a transformation in how they understood religion in the Age of Reason. In what became canonized revelations, however, Joseph continued to teach that seer stones and other seeric devices, as well as the ability to work with them, were important and sacred gifts from God.

As I see it, for nearly every correct and holy principle there is a corollary corruption of it, a counterfeit.

So a seer stone on the hand hand, and a crystal ball on the other.

The rod of Aaron on the one hand, a magic wand on the other.

"Talitha cumi" on the one hand, a magical incantation / magic words on the other.

Daniel Peterson has some interesting thoughts on the questionable use of terminology ("magic") in this context:

Quote

{O}ne of the common questions many people have asked about Joseph Smith: how much did a “magic world view” influence the Prophet and his account of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon? Even in his own lifetime, Joseph faced accusations of being embroiled in superstition and “folk magic” from skeptical neighbors and adversaries. Today historians debate the extent to which Joseph and his family participated in early nineteenth-century folk magic culture and what this participation may have meant for Joseph personally and as the leader of a new religious movement. Some have argued that the young Joseph was deeply influenced by this “magical” culture that saw legitimacy in the use of “magical” devices such as divining rods and seer stones. According to these scholars, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon can be seen, in part, as the direct result of Joseph participating in this “magic world view.”

Others, however, have argued for a nuanced view that, for example, calls into question the common terminology (“magic,” “magical”) historians today use to describe the folk practices in which Joseph and the Smith family sometimes participated. The main problem with this language is that it is too easy to manipulate. As one scholar has written, “The plasticity of magic, its pliable and permeable nature, has made the concept readily adaptable as a polemical and ideological tool, especially when coupled with the long-standing stigma attached to the notion.”

Still, others dispute that “folk magic,” as it is commonly defined, played any prominent a role in the foundational claims of Joseph Smith. Whatever the case, some practices, such as the use of crystals or other stones to channel miraculous visionary experiences, which some scholars call “magical,” were not necessarily seen by early nineteenth-century American Christians as incompatible with biblical faith or ordinary life.
...

According to this way of thinking, classifying certain practices as “magical” as opposed to “religious” runs the risk of imposing modern views on people of the pre-scientific past, when they may well not have conceptualized their behavior or activity in such a binary way. As Richard Bushman, one of Joseph Smith’s leading biographers, has recently observed, looking closely at historical folk practices, it is clear that for nineteenth-century Yankees, like the Smith family,

magic and Christianity did not seem at odds with one another. The combination was altogether too common in the nineteenth century for it to invalidate Joseph Smith’s more conventional religious claims. [For early Latter-day Saints] and for many Christians, folk traditions and religion blend. To call the two incongruous seems more like a matter of religious [or ideological] taste than a necessary conclusion.

...

Or, as historian Wouter J. Hanegraaff has put it, there is no real meaningful distinction between “religion” and “magic” when writing about history. Any attempt to make this distinction “belongs to the domain of theological polemics . . . and cannot claim any scholarly foundation.”

Historians have also recently pointed out that the extent of Joseph Smith’s involvement in folk magic during his youth, or at least the influence such had on the young seer, may have been exaggerated over the years due to authors uncritically repeating outdated or questionable arguments. As Bushman in 2016 has written,

At present, a question remains about how involved Joseph Smith was in folk magic. Was he enthusiastically pursuing treasure seeking as a business in the 1820s, or was he a somewhat reluctant participant, egged on by his father? Was his worldview fundamentally shaped by folk traditions? I think there is substantial evidence of his reluctance, and, in my opinion, the evidence for extensive involvement is tenuous. But this is a matter of degree. No one denies that magic was there, especially in the mid-1820s. Smith never repudiated folk traditions; he continued to use the seer stone until late in life and used it in the translation process. It certainly had an influence on his outlook, but it was peripheral—not central. Biblical Christianity was the overwhelming influence in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. Folk magic was in the mix but was not the basic ingredient.

So the "folk magic" stuff seems more polemical than anything else.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

[Fair Dinkum]

27 minutes ago, smac97 said:

No reference to "folk magic" in there.

There's this:

As I see it, for nearly every correct and holy principle there is a corollary corruption of it, a counterfeit.

So a seer stone on the hand hand, and a crystal ball on the other.

The rod of Aaron on the one hand, a magic wand on the other.

"Talitha cumi" on the one hand, a magical incantation / magic words on the other.

Daniel Peterson has some interesting thoughts on the questionable use of terminology ("magic") in this context:

So the "folk magic" stuff seems more polemical than anything else.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

As you know the church often speaks through surrogates but this here is also acknowledgement  https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/40

I could also throw in the church essay on BoM translation where the church also acknowledges the seer stone and its connection to Smith treasure seeking, aka folk magic

Edited April 25, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[InCognitus]

54 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

As you know the church often speaks through surrogates but this here is also acknowledgement  https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/40

That's a rather ambiguous statement in Lucy Mack Smith's history.  I know how Quinn used it (and Dan Vogel just quotes Quinn), but consider what Stephen E. Robinson says about this in his review of Quinn's book in BYU Studies, volume 27:4, page 92:

Quote

Another major flaw in Quinn's work is his overly generous sense of what constitutes evidence and proof. For example, he takes Lucy Mack Smith's denial of magical practices to be proof of such practices. Lucy's exact words were, "let not my reader suppose that because I shall pursue another topic for a season that we stopt our labor and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing Magic circles or sooth saying to the neglect of all kinds of business" (54). This Quinn ingenuously interprets as an admission that they did practice these very things, but without stopping their labors and neglecting all kinds of business! If I suggest the reader need not suppose I spend my entire summer vacation lying on a beach in Tahiti eating bon-bons, that hardly constitutes testimony that I spend any part of my vacation so doing. The ironic character of such statements has to be obvious to anyone not desperate for evidence--any evidence.

And this is how William Hamblin views the same text:

Quote

Here is how I interpret the referents in the text.

Now I shall change my theme for the present [from a discussion of farming and building to an account of Joseph’s vision of Moroni and the golden plates which immediately follows this paragraph]. But let not my reader suppose that, because I shall pursue another topic [Joseph’s visions] for a season, that we stopped our labor [of farming and building] and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing Magic circles or sooth saying to the neglect of all kinds of business [farming and building, as the anti-Mormons asserted, claiming the Smiths were lazy]. We never in our lives suffered one important interest [farming and building] to swallow up every other obligation [religion]. But, whilst we worked with our hands [at farming and building] we endeavored to remember the service of, and the welfare of our souls [through religion].

Thus, as I understand the text, Lucy Smith declares she is changing her theme to the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. In the public mind, that story is associated with claims that the Smiths were lazy and involved in magical activities. By the time Lucy Smith wrote this text in 1845, anti-Mormons were alleging that Joseph had been seeking treasure by drawing magic circles. She explicitly denies that they were involved in such things. She also denies that the Smiths were lazy. She wants to emphasize that, although she is not going to mention farming and building activities for a while, these activities were still going on. Quinn wants to understand the antecedent of “one important interest” as “trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing Magic circles or sooth saying” (p. 68). I believe that the antecedent of “one important interest” is “all kinds of business,” meaning farming and building. Quinn maintains the phrase to the neglect of means that they pursued magic to some degree, but not to the extent that they completely neglected their farming. I believe that the phrase to the neglect of means that they did not pursue magic at all, and therefore did not neglect their farming and building at all: they were not pursuing magic and thereby neglecting their business.

I understood Lucy the same way as Hamblin.

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Haha not just naïveté but callow naïveté.  Your reply reminds me of the assailant who plunged the knife into his victim with a smile on his face and then asks his victim to say thank you.  I could just as easily call your attempt at gaslighting and rewriting reality as your own callow naïveté Scott.  Your bind-spot is your unyielding defense of the church even when it needs to be questioned. 

You have a habit of making large leaps in judgement to draw conclusions that support your worldview, it does not make your perspective true. But I’m willing to amend my position. Please provide evidence that the church taught the general membership that Smith placed a rock in his hat as an means to translate the Book of Mormon pre 1975 which is the year I returned from my mission and I will gladly eat crow.  Any link to a lesson manual, Ensign, Improvement Era or Friend will suffice. 

By by the way, I’ll just leave this here to assist you in building your case for my callow naïveté.

Your quotations, including that surreptitiously recorded interview of LeGrand Richards (not a Deseret News interview as you falsely allege), make my case that the General Authorities did not know anything about the seer stone and its actual use by Joseph in his translation.  And thanks for quoting me on that.  Scholars who looked at the actual sources knew very well how the translation was done, seer stone and all.  Since Joseph Fielding Smith and his son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie were not historians, they had no idea what the facts were.  Naïveté can overwhelm any of us, and I myself once had a number of silly notions about such matters.  All of us need to be able to learn new things and to jettison the nonsense.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

As you know the church often speaks through surrogates but this here is also acknowledgement  https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/40

I could also throw in the church essay on BoM translation where the church also acknowledges the seer stone and its connection to Smith treasure seeking, aka folk magic

As Jan Shipps and other non-LDS scholars agree, magic is only part of religions.  It is not separate from religion.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 4/24/2021 at 5:21 PM, Stargazer said:

I'd be interested to hear why you think the Second Comforter is dependent upon the Second Anointing (or vice versa?). I have been under the impression that the SC was something conferred upon a person at the Lord's instance, and in His own time, while the SA was conferred at the Church's. And that they are unrelated.

The First Comforter is Jesus Christ, the Second Comforter is the Holy Spirit.  When Jesus ascended to his Father, the Holy Spirit took his place (on Pentecost).  John 14:16.

[JustAnAustralian]

17 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The First Comforter is Jesus Christ, the Second Comforter is the Holy Spirit.  When Jesus ascended to his Father, the Holy Spirit took his place (on Pentecost).  John 14:16.

Other way around according to the guide to the scriptures https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/gs/comforter?lang=eng

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

That's a rather ambiguous statement in Lucy Mack Smith's history.  I know how Quinn used it (and Dan Vogel just quotes Quinn), but consider what Stephen E. Robinson says about this in his review of Quinn's book in BYU Studies, volume 27:4, page 92:

And this is how William Hamblin views the same text:

I understood Lucy the same way as Hamblin.

Taking only one item in that fashion is not sound historical research.  One must take the full panoply of magical references in Smith's life as grist for the mill of explanation and description.  Both Mormons and anti-Mormons should feel obligated to place such issues in real context.

[InCognitus]

5 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Taking only one item in that fashion is not sound historical research.  One must take the full panoply of magical references in Smith's life as grist for the mill of explanation and description.  Both Mormons and anti-Mormons should feel obligated to place such issues in real context.

I agree, and I don't discount the Smith's involvement in the common practices and beliefs of that place and time.  But I also take into account the things that were said against them, some of which was prepared by Philastus Hurlbut (in his affidavits) and signed by others.  That statement from Lucy is just plain ambiguous to me when taken out of the context of her narrative.  I can certainly see how it could be taken either way.  

[Robert F. Smith]

48 minutes ago, JustAnAustralian said:

Other way around according to the guide to the scriptures https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/gs/comforter?lang=eng

The scriptural citations there do say that Jesus is a Comforter, but only one scripture speaks of a second (another) Comforter -- which Jesus says he will send when he leaves (that's what John 14:16 is about).  John 14 has Jesus telling his apostles what will happen when he leaves.  And that promised Second Comforter comes at Pentecost.  Scripture is normative.  Commentaries are not.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

I agree, and I don't discount the Smith's involvement in the common practices and beliefs of that place and time.  But I also take into account the things that were said against them, some of which was prepared by Philastus Hurlbut (in his affidavits) and signed by others.  That statement from Lucy is just plain ambiguous to me when taken out of the context of her narrative.  I can certainly see how it could be taken either way.  

Taking Lucy's statement in isolation leads nowhere.  It is only when we read statements by those who knew Joseph well, and when we read collateral accounts of that time and place that we begin to get an accurate picture.  We can entirely ignore both Lucy Mack and Philastus Hurlbut and still come up with some very sound conclusions on the world of young Joseph.

A good place to start is Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (if you want to understand Joseph, you must read it through, including the footnotes), and then to acquaint oneself with the LDS Gospel Topics discussions of seerstones and the like (prepared by professional LDS historians).

Non-LDS historian Jon Butler said:

Quote

“...magic and Christianity in colonial America were not generically different entities but were subsets of the same phenomenon – religion.”  Butler, “"Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600-1760," American Historical Review, 84/2 (April 1979):319; cf. 318, re “the survival of European occult or magical practices in the American colonies.”

The late non-Mormon scholar Mircea Eliade argued that the popularity of "occultism" seems to have risen in modern times in direct proportion to the diminution of interest in sacramental liturgy and mysticism by normative, Western Christianity --  Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (1976), 58-68.

Another late non-Mormon scholar William F. Albright pointed out that "the prophets were originally called ro'im, 'diviners' (I Sam. 9:9)" -- a synonym of hozim (Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan [1968], 215 [= 187 in London ed.]), both of which are normally translated "seers" (cf. II Sam 24:11).

A good deal of talk back in the day focused on Joseph as a "glass looker" or scryer, and he even suffered a pre-trial on that basis in 1826 in Bainbridge, New York, but was allowed to take “leg bail.”*  Joseph is said to have been deeply involved early on in sorcery or necromancy ("consultation with ghosts"), including the conjuring of spirits and the sacrifice of animals in search of buried treasure.**  There is eighty-year-old Orson Saunders in the New York Herald, June 25, 1893, recalling that his uncle Benjamin Saunders of Palmyra had passed on to him the story of Joseph's acquisition of the golden plates: "The place seemed on fi[r]e," he said. Joseph found "an enormous toad . . . squatting on the" Book of Mormon plates, which suddenly expanded in size, becoming "a flaming monster with glittering eyes, until it seemed to fill the heaven." The account included demons and devils as well. Benjamin Saunders had earlier provided a similar but friendlier account to an RLDS inquiry, Sept 17, 1884 (Kelley Interview, RLDS Archives).  Treasure-hunter Willard Chase (brother of Sally Chase), who was connected with the Saunders family by marriage, was the source of the transforming toad story in E. D. Howe's exposé Mormonism Unvailed (1834).  David Whitmer stated in the Aug 7, 1875, Chicago Times, page 1, col 3, that the angel (like Saunders’ "flaming monster") hurled Joseph "to the plain below," and this comports with Joseph’s mother Lucy Mack Smith’s own account of Joseph’s first visit to the hill: He “reached forth” to “take” the plates, “but was hurled back to the ground” (L. F. Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book, 347). Joseph’s scribe Oliver Cowdery earlier said that, at that moment, “a shock was produced upon his system, by an invisible power which deprived him, . . of his natural strength” (Messenger & Advocate, 2/1 [Oct 1835]:198).

LDS scholar Tom Alexander pointed to a number of divine and revelatory interpretations given to odd events in the early Mormon community -- including the spectacular Leonide meteor shower on the night of 13 November 1833# -- and Richard Bushman recounted an early exorcism by Joseph Smith Jr.##  Even later in life, we find Joseph Smith making a prophecy while holding a cup of water in his hand.  Is this an example of biblical divination via water in a cup, as perhaps done by Joseph in Egypt?+  Such items, along with the suggested use by the Cowderys of witch-hazel rods from the time of the "Woodscrape" affair in 1801,++ and the October 24, 1841, dedication by Orson Hyde (with a rod) of the Holy Land for the Gathering of Israel, through the suggestion that Brigham Young "witched" the location for the Salt Lake Temple with Oliver's rod July 28, 1847,+++ raise what some see as serious questions about the underlying nature of Mormonism – some concluding that such close association with "magic" reveals Joseph Smith Jr and his Church to be pagan or counterfeit.

If this be so, how then are we to deal with the early Christian belief in a Jesus who used a wand to raise Lazarus from the dead?  Jesus as a magician and rodsman!?***  The Apostle Paul as a classic shaman or magician?###  Does this invalidate Christianity? 

* The original bill of costs and charges for the 1826 trial or arraignment were discovered decades ago by the late Wesley P. Walters and his friend Fred Poffarl, and are now in possession of the Chenango County Historian  (www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=3854439 ).  The trial transcript was published several times over a century ago, but the location of the original is now unknown.  Based on unpublished research of the late Dale Morgan, Joseph was charged with or tried on violation of "An Act for apprehending and punishing disorderly persons," passed 9 Feb 1788 (Laws of the State of New York, 1788, Chapter XXI): ". . . all Persons, who not having wherewith to maintain themselves, live idle without Employment, . . and all Juglers and all Persons pretending to have Skill in Physiognomy, Palmestry, or like crafty Science, or pretending to tell Fortunes, or to discover where lost Goods may be found . . . shall be deemed and adjudged disorderly Persons; and it shall and may be lawful for any Justice of the Peace to commit such disorderly Persons (being thereof convicted before him, by his own View, or by the Confession of such Offenders, respectively, or by the Oath of one or more credible Witness or Witnesses) to the Bridewell or House of Correction, of such City or Town, there to be kept at hard Labour, for any Time not exceeding sixty Days, or until the next General Sessions of the Peace to be holden in and for the City or County in which such Offence shall happen. . . .  [If] the Justices [at the General Sessions of the Peace] shall, on Examination of the Circumstances of the Case, adjudge such Person to be a disorderly Person within the Intent and Meaning of this Act, they may, if they think convenient, order such disorderly Person to be detained and kept in the said Bridewell or House of Correction to hard Labour, for any further Time not exceeding six Months; and during the Time of such Confinement, to be corrected by whipping, in such Manner and at such Times and Places, as, according to the Nature of such Persons Offence, they in their Discretion shall think fit."  Cf. Chapter CXCII (13 Apr 1819).  Thanks are due Richard Van Wagoner for calling this item to my attention (from the Stanley Ivins papers).  See W. Walters, "Joseph Smith's Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trials," Westminster Theological Journal, 36/2 (Winter 1974):123-155. 

** Consult the transcripts of the oral histories done in Palmyra, New York, by anthropologist Gordon C. Thomasson, of Wesley Alan Cotes, and of his brother-in-law, Tobias Edwards (both in BYU Library, Special Collections).

# T. G. Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Changing Nature of Mormon Religious Experience," Church History, 45 (1976):56-69.  The Leonide shower is an artifact of the Temple-Tuttle Comet.

## Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984), 154, citing Roberts, HC, I:82.  Cf. John W. Welch, ed., Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844 (2005).

+ Roberts, HC, V:84-86, cited in P. H. Corbett, Hyrum Smith, Patriarch, 279.  Cf. Roberts, CHC, II:181-182; the magus Nostradamus used the same technique.  This type of augury is known as “lecanoscopy,” and the ancient Egyptian and Coptic terminology for such an endeavor is well-attested: Demotic šn-hn = Coptic šenhin, "inquiring-of-cup, divination" -- W. Vycichl in Atiya, ed., Coptic Encyclopedia, V:1507 (citing Erichsen, Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden [1954]); Griffith, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, 38 (1900), 86; W. Erichsen, Demotisches Glossar, 514, lower; Crum, Coptic Dictionary, 685b; cited in J. Černý, Coptic Etymological Dictionary, 285; Budge, Amulets and Talismans (1930), 445-449; so in Gen 44:2,5 (Joseph Smith Jr being the putative descendant of Joseph of Egypt, II Nephi 3:15).

++ David M. Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont 1791-1850 (1939/ 1948).

+++ Reed C. Durham Jr and John A. Tvedtnes have commented on the rods given to each of the Twelve in 1835, and that Apostle Hyde witched the location for his prayer on Mt Olivet with his rod (see Durham’s April 20, 1974, MHA Presidential address, "Is There No Help for the Widow's Son?").  See the Journal History for that date (and see discussion and photos of such canes/rods by Val Brinkerhoff, http://incider.byu.edu/vwb/symbol/slcTemple.htm ).  Wilford Woodruff was present; cf. Anthon H. Lund Journal, 5 July 1901 (LDS Archives), cited by D. Michael Quinn in  BYU Studies, 19 (1978):82, n. 17.

*** Robin M. Jensen, “The Raising of Lazarus,” Bible Review, XI/2 (April 1995):20-28,45.  The earliest depictions (beginning in the mid-2nd century) show Jesus with a wand there, and for other miracles, e.g., water to wine at Cana, raising the widow’s son at Nain, the multiplication of loaves & fishes, etc.  Jensen cites especially Thomas Matthews, The Clash of Gods (1993), 54-91 (“The Magician”).

### John Ashton, The Religion of Paul the Apostle (2000).

Edited April 26, 2021 by Robert F. Smith