How the Book of Mormon Came to Pass

[Benjamin McGuire]

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

it was Charles Anthon that first made the connection between Humbodlt and the gold plates. He described an element on the transcript taken from the plates as a "rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Aztec calendar given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to reveal the source.” (1834) or "a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac" (1841).

Let's get the context of the statement Anthon made:

Quote

It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, who arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calender given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived.

It seems to me that the similarity between Humboldt and the manuscript Harris had was that there was a circle divided into sections with strange characters in them. That is the limit of the similarity. And then we have the greek and roman letters, etc. Yeah, not getting the same confidence that you have here.

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

"Not a single American" reading The Star in the East would have any idea about Kircher's theories or the contents of his books? Are you sure?

Yeah, quite sure.

You keep making statements like this without ever backing it up with information that would be specific to the two sources.

Buchanan's works (the volume you show in your list) was published in 1812. Anyone can find it here. The only mention of Kircher in his complete works is the same mention we have already been discussing - the footnote in the appendix. The idea of the relationship between languages was a common notion in the time period between Kircher publishing his China Illustrata (1667) and Buchanan publishing The Star of the East (1809). Is there anything that Buchanan says that has to be linked to Kircher instead of any of the subsequent authors in between? It doesn't seem to me to be that way.

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

The Jareidtes speak Adamic as far as I can tell from commentary. That would be the antediluvian lingua humana from the Garden.

And yet, this is commentary - there is nothing in the text about this, is there. The problem here is this is more than a little deceptive on your part. What did Kircher think the original language was? What did Buchanan think it was?

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Again, I'm not saying that gold plates Nephi is related to Kircher's Nephi. But there are three other characters in the Book of Mormon named Nephi. It becomes more like a hereditary name right? Like I said a few times, I think the Kircher Nephi is more a coincidence.

If it is coincidence, then it is an irrelevancy to this discussion. And yet you keep bringing it up as if it means something.

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Jason Colavito has an interesting theory, that the Barrachius Nephi manuscript was authentic, but it contained Egyptian magic and other material that was not fit for a Jew and would have embarrassed Kircher.

This was the thing that Kircher wrote in his letters to delay publication (indefinitely as the case was). This isn't Colavito's theory. He is just quoting Kircher.

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

So Kircher changed the name of the Hebrew Barrachius Nephi to the Egyptian Arabic Abenephius and put off publishing the manuscript. He then plagiarizes material from other Arabic sources like Wahshiyya and attributes it to Abenephius. 

And generally, the standard understanding (of the few scholars who have engaged this topic) goes in a different direction - that is, Kircher's source was a collection of these other authors, and not a singular author's text.

10 hours ago, Zosimus said:

I keep having to repeat this. I don't believe Kircher was a source for the gold plates narrative. I don't believe Kircher's Nephi and the gold plates Nephi are related. None of this is my theory, as you keep saying. Its the theory of the author of the book in the OP. I am not Lars Nielson. 

And yet, you are the one who keeps repeating the claims. If we search this forum, we keep finding Kircher coming up in these discussions that don't involved Lars Nielson. So why do you keep bringing this up if Kircher has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon?

I can tell you a little of what I see. You want to connect all of these different ideas - but you can't do it immediately in Joseph's environment, so you find the ideas that you want to use and then try to find a way to create a possible (even if highly unlikely) path to Joseph Smith so that you can claim that the argument is plausible. You have no idea, of course, on how to make the connections likely ...

[Zosimus]

50 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And yet, you are the one who keeps repeating the claims. If we search this forum, we keep finding Kircher coming up in these discussions that don't involved Lars Nielson. So why do you keep bringing this up if Kircher has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon?

 

That's what I said isn't it? I'd researched this before Lars published his book. I discussed with others, both on this forum and in other places, and I came to my conclusions which I shared above. I don't believe there are kirchersisms in the Book of Mormon. I don't believe Kircher's Nephi is related to the gold plates Nephi. Notice how I stopped posting about Kircher several years ago? Notice how we've been discussing for weeks now, and I hadn't mentioned Kircher a single time until this thread encouraging people to discuss Lars Nielson's theory about kircherisms in the Book of Mormon was posted? I shared that I once had the same idea, but came to the conclusion that I don't believe there are kircherisms in the Book of Mormon. 

I still find plausibility there for some things, and I'm still open to new research and discussion. But as I see it now, there's nothing new (for me) in Lars Nielson's book.

Quote

I can tell you a little of what I see. You want to connect all of these different ideas - but you can't do it immediately in Joseph's environment, so you find the ideas that you want to use and then try to find a way to create a possible (even if highly unlikely) path to Joseph Smith so that you can claim that the argument is plausible. You have no idea, of course, on how to make the connections likely ...

That's correct. I didn't see a path between Kircher and Joseph Smith. I also didn't see a path between John Smith and Spaulding. I came to the conclusion that there was no connection.

[Zosimus]

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yeah, quite sure.
You keep making statements like this without ever backing it up with information that would be specific to the two sources.

Are you surely sure? Washington Irving's History of New York mentions Kircher's theory of Egyptian settlements in America.

"I pass over the supposition of the learned Grotius, who, being both an ambassador and a Dutchman to boot, is entitled to great respect, that North America was peopled by a strolling company of Norwegians, and that Peru was founded by a colony from China—Manco or Mungo Capac, the first Incas, being himself a Chinese: nor shall I more than barely mention that father Kircher ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians"

After looking through the dozens/hundreds of references to Kircher in American publications before 1830, I'm confident many literate Americans in the 1810s/1820s knew of the learned "Father Kircher" so I'll go a step further with my earlier claim and say that two of the three "learned men" that commented on the gold plate characters knew of Kircher and his ideas. 

1. Luther Bradish, a Palmyra native who was shown the gold plate characters by Martin Harris was Washington Irving's literary agent (according to Richard Bennet). I'd guess Bradish had read Irving's History of New York and learned of (if he didn't already know) Kircher and his ideas about Egyptian settlements in the Americas.

2. Samuel Mitchill, who was also shown the gold plate characters by Martin Harris, knew of Kircher and his publications. From Mitchill's The Medical Repository (1818):

"Athanasius Kircher gives an example of this: A man during a plague at Naples, observing something at the window, went there, and was stung in the nose by a hornet; the sting was left sticking in the wound; the part swelled, and the tumefaction gradually increasing, and the poison penetrating into the vital parts, he died on the second day, of the plague. Mercurialis had before told Kircher, that flies, during the prevalence of plague, saturated with the juices of the sick and the dead, and passing immediately after into the neighbouring houses, have at the same time infected the provisions with their nastiness, and given the contagion to those who ate them." (p 211)

Also from Mitchill:

"I know there are very learned men, such as Kircher, Langius, Mangetus and Valsineri, who believe the cause both of the plague and of pestilential diseases, to be a congeries of exceedingly minute worms."  (p 325)

Given his interests and his knowledge, and the popularity of The Star in the East, I think it is highly unlikely that someone like Mitchill didn't know the ideas of both Buchanan and Kircher.

Edited April 29 by Zosimus

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 4/29/2024 at 4:36 AM, Zosimus said:

Are you surely sure? Washington Irving's History of New York mentions Kircher's theory of Egyptian settlements in America.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Irving's history mentions Kirchner:

"I more than barely mention that father Kircher ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians, Budbeck to the Scandanavians, Charron to the Gauls, Juffredus Petri to a skaiting party from Friesland, Milius to the Celtae, Marinocus the Scicilian to the Tomans, Le Compte to the Phoenicians, Postel to the Moors, Martin D'Angleria to the Abyssinians; together with the sage surmise of De Laet, that England, Ireland, and the Orcades, may contend for that honour.

In the same section, Irving also mentions in the same chapter the theories of Lopez de Gomara, Juan de Leri, Grotius, Marco Polo, Plato, Paracelsus, Dr. Romayne, Buffon, Helvetius, and Darwin. It is the only mention of Kircher, and Irving is telling his readers that Kircher is nonsense - not as nonsensical as an argument that America is Marco Polo's Zipangri, or Plato's Atlantis. That there are some people who know about Kircher isn't in question. The problem is that this isn't common knowledge or understanding. And we can see in this example that Kircher is being dismissed.

So which of these is the most influential? I should note that the Darwin that Irving mentions is not the one that we all know, but his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and that while Irving spends 16 words dismissing Kircher, he spends most of a page on Darwin.

The problem that you still aren't recognizing is that just because there are these mentions doesn't elevate these writers and thinkers into common awareness. No one is going to read Irving and suddenly develop an interest in reading Kircher (even if Kircher was available). It just isn't happening. On the other side of the coin, Erasmus Darwin's grandson, Charles Darwin, becomes a household name (and continues to be one). Hardly anyone has heard of Kircher or Erasmus Darwin. Everyone has heard of Charles Darwin. Washington Irving was incredibly influential - but his influence doesn't promote Kircher - any more than it promotes any of these other figures who you probably have never looked into. This is the reason why electronic searches aren't helpful. They don't provide perspective on their results. You are, as I continue to note, providing mentions of Kircher. You aren't providing any discussions of his theories. No one is trying to advance Kircher's views. No one is defending his propositions. He is a figure of the past that isn't relevant to the present.

On 4/29/2024 at 4:36 AM, Zosimus said:

After looking through the dozens/hundreds of references to Kircher in American publications before 1830, I'm confident many literate Americans in the 1810s/1820s knew of the learned "Father Kircher" so I'll go a step further with my earlier claim and say that two of the three "learned men" that commented on the gold plate characters knew of Kircher and his ideas. 

I wouldn't disagree with this. I would simply say that it is an irrelevancy. It is a meaningless conjecture. If we all agree that Kirchner has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon, then lets drop the discussion of Kircher. It gets old arguing about something that everyone agrees is irrelevant.

On 4/29/2024 at 4:36 AM, Zosimus said:

1. Luther Bradish, a Palmyra native who was shown the gold plate characters by Martin Harris was Washington Irving's literary agent (according to Richard Bennet). I'd guess Bradish had read Irving's History of New York and learned of (if he didn't already know) Kircher and his ideas about Egyptian settlements in the Americas.

No one can read Irving and learn of Kircher's theories beyond the single statement that we find there. Anyone who adopts their ideas about the settlement of the Americas from Irving is not going to use Kircher as a source.

On 4/29/2024 at 4:36 AM, Zosimus said:

2. Samuel Mitchill, who was also shown the gold plate characters by Martin Harris, knew of Kircher and his publications. From Mitchill's The Medical Repository (1818):

"Athanasius Kircher gives an example of this: A man during a plague at Naples, observing something at the window, went there, and was stung in the nose by a hornet; the sting was left sticking in the wound; the part swelled, and the tumefaction gradually increasing, and the poison penetrating into the vital parts, he died on the second day, of the plague. Mercurialis had before told Kircher, that flies, during the prevalence of plague, saturated with the juices of the sick and the dead, and passing immediately after into the neighbouring houses, have at the same time infected the provisions with their nastiness, and given the contagion to those who ate them." (p 211)

Again, this doesn't actually tell us anything does it. Someone can be aware of Kircher, have read some Kircher, and reference it. The challenge is that Mitchill being aware of Kircher's Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiosae luis, qui pestis dicatur, doesn't tell us anything about Mitchill knowing much of Kircher's theories of language and world population following a universal flood. The title of Kircher's work, when translated into English is: Physico-Medical Examination of the Contagious Pestilence Called the Plague. This book was the results of Kircher's efforts to use a microscope to look at the blood of persons with the plague. So you can say that Mitchill is familiar with Kircher and his work - but since that work was very broad, it is impossible to tell from this quotation much beyond what we actually learn here.

On 4/29/2024 at 4:36 AM, Zosimus said:

Given his interests and his knowledge, and the popularity of The Star in the East, I think it is highly unlikely that someone like Mitchill didn't know the ideas of both Buchanan and Kircher.

The Star of the East says nothing about Kircher, other than he wrote an illustrated guide to China (China Illustrata).

This is why these references aren't particularly useful information. They don't really tell us very much. Everything else is your conjecture. Your set of assumptions. And as I noted, we can just let it drop if it doesn't mean anything to you.

 

[Nevo]

On 4/27/2024 at 9:01 PM, Zosimus said:

Sheesh, if that's just a taste, I can't wait to see the rest. Especially the Hyrum parts

Yeah, that wasn't just a taste. I said that at the start of the post but then ended up putting in just about everything I had. 🤷‍♂️

My main point about Hyrum is that his attendance at Moor's Charity School was relatively brief, probably less than 18 months. He wasn't there for four years, getting an "Ivy League" education, as Randall Bell claimed in a couple of podcasts last year.

Behrens has Hyrum entering Moor's in 1811, based on the chronology Lucy Mack Smith gives in her narrative (Bushman accepts Lucy's dating too). But Dan Vogel has noted that the family doesn't appear on tax assessment records in Lebanon, New Hampshire, until 1813, suggesting that they "arrived after the assessment of 1812 and before the assessment of 1813, which were conducted every May" (EMD 1: 663; see also, Anderson, Lucy's Book, 169, 296n33; Van Wagoner, Natural Born Seer, 25, 30ff; Esplin, "Hyrum Smith," in Walker, ed., United by Faith: The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family, 123). So it appears likely that Hyrum entered Moor's in the fall of 1812.

Lucy Smith related in her draft history: "the typhus fever came into Lebanon and raged there horribly among the rest who were seized with this complaint complaint were my my oldest daughter Sophronia who was sick 4 weeks next Hyrum came from Hanover <sick> with the same disease then Alvin my oldest and so on till there was not one of my Family left well save Mr S Smith and myself."

Lavina Fielding Anderson notes here that "the Smith family was most likely afflicted from the late summer or fall of 1812 (Hyrum’s school was in session) to the late spring of 1813, as dated by the availability of Dr. Nathan Smith at Dartmouth. (He went to Yale after the spring of 1813.)" Behrens claims Hyrum returned home from Hanover in March 1813, but that is just a guess. He may well have come home earlier than that, perhaps when the second quarter ended in February 1813. Dr. Nathan Smith wrote in a letter in March 1813: "[F]our of my children have lately been affected by the prevailing epidemic, but by the Divine Goodness have nearly recovered. I believe this country has never before been visited by sickness which has carried off so great a number of adult persons in so short a time. In some towns of this vicinity which contain perhaps from 1000 to 1500 inhabitants they have buried over 50 persons since last January. The disease has not yet much abated either in its violence or frequency of attack. We hear of new cases every day, and almost every day brings me an account of the death of some friend or acquaintance" (quoted in Van Wagoner, Natural Born Seer, 36).

Hyrum stayed at home during the 1813–14 school year. Hyrum was listed on a school record at the start of the 1814-15 school year as charity scholar studying arithmetic (arithmetic and English grammar were the typical course of study for second-year students). His family moved to Norwich, VT, sometime after May 1814 and before May 1815—Van Wagoner guesses the move took place in the fall of 1814—but it's possible that Hyrum continued attending after the move (there were other students at the school from Norwich). However, he wasn't present for the annual examination in August 1815. And his name does not appear in records for the 1815–16 school year either.

Records from the 1813–14 school year show that it was common for students to come and go from one session to the next. During the first quarter, from 30 Aug to 20 Nov 1813, there were 44 students; during the second quarter, from 21 Nov 1813 to 12 Feb 1814, there were 35 students; during the third quarter, from 14 Mar to 4 Jun 1814, there were 61 students; and during the fourth quarter, from 5 Jun to 20 Aug 1814, there were 57 students.

So Hyrum was probably at Moor's for less than a year and a half altogether. Perhaps as few as 7 or 8 months if he stayed home to work on the farm after the move to Norwich (which seems probable under the circumstances). He very likely studied reading and writing in his first months at Moor's in 1812–13 and added arithmetic (and perhaps English grammar) during his second year at Moor's in 1814–15. Hyrum almost certainly didn't study Latin or the Greek New Testament, which was reserved for third- and fourth-year students.

William L. Davis thinks that Hyrum would have studied John Walker's Rhetorical Grammar in his freshman year at Moor's, and would have studied Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the latter part of his sophomore year, "which, among numerous other lessons, would have exposed Hyrum to the fundamental techniques of sermon composition and pulpit eloquence, including explicit instructions on the method of laying down heads" (Visions in a Seer Stone, 31). Davis thinks this because these books were listed in the Dartmouth College's freshman and sophomore curriculum in 1824, and Davis believes that Moor's followed the same curriculum as Dartmouth. I highly doubt it. Some of the students at Moor's studying "reading" were only 6 or 7 years old. I don't think it's plausible that they were studying college-level texts in rhetorical grammar and sermon composition techniques.  

The evidence suggests that Hyrum probably received a "common school" education similar to his siblings (and his mission journals would seem to confirm it). Hyrum would have attended weekly chapel services while at Moor's, so he probably heard dozens of Congregationalist sermons, but he would not have learned Arminian theology or cosmology or ancient language studies, as Behrens claims in his article. Behrens's fantasy that John Smith's unpublished and long forgotten lectures on natural philosophy and theology influenced the future development of Mormon doctrine—via Hyrum—is totally without merit. As is Randy Bell's statement that Hyrum was "the real intellectual giant behind Mormonism." If Hyrum tutored 7-year-old Joseph after the latter's leg surgery based on Hyrum's first months at Moor's school, he may have been able to teach him some of the rudiments of reading and writing but that's about it.

Edited May 6 by Nevo