Plan A for the Book of Mormon

[_Kishkumen]

I have started a new thread about my theory regarding the origins of the Book of Mormon.

Does your theory account for the actual text of the Book of Mormon? The complete narrative, not just bits and pieces.

Regards,
MG

Quite deliberately not, MG. I am talking about Plan A for the Book of Mormon, whereas your religious interest is squarely identified with Plans B/C. Plan A is the plates as a Masonic hoax to pitch Palmyra as the location of a new Grand Lodge for New York. The Morgan Affair in 1826 set off an anti-Masonic hysteria that made the topic too hot to handle. The re-unification of the two Grand Lodges of New York as a single Grand Lodge with a clear center in NYC meant there was no need for Smith’s plan at all. For my purposes, the Book of Mormon narrative is beside the point. I am accounting for the importance of physical plates from the beginning. This was a Masonic treasure designed to attract Masonic attention. By the time the translation of the lost manuscript started in 1828, Joseph had already moved on to a new plan (Plan B). That does not mean, however, that Freemasonry is not still present in the Book of Mormon as the text eventually came to be (Plan C). It is.

[_Gadianton]

So in addition to creating plates, he would need to create all these other artifacts? Why would he believe this would even be possible? Did he know someone who had done something similar?

[_Kishkumen]

So in addition to creating plates, he would need to create all these other artifacts? Why would he believe this would even be possible? Did he know someone who had done something similar?

I don't know about that, Dean Robbers. He may have only ever planned to produce the plates in order to get the project off the ground. He probably stopped short of doing the rest when he found it very difficult with his meager resources to produce the plates prop.

[Guest]

I think this is an interesting hypothesis because it shows how Smith does not have to have been either a genuine prophet or else an uneducated farm hand who somehow had the chutzpah to deliberately plan an elaborate religious hoax. This hypothesis shows how Smith might have worked his way into an elaborate religious con after starting out with a simpler and easier scheme.

It was always a little bit eyebrow raising, if skeptics are honest, to suggest that uneducated farm hand Joseph Smith just took it into his head to set up as a Judeo-Christian prophet in the Old Testament mold. I mean, even if Smith didn't have such delusions of grandeur that he really thought he was such a prophet, for a guy like him to think he could pull off a prophet con on any significant scale would still be pretty delusional, normally. Sure, people with delusions like that aren't so rare, but usually they're also too incompetent to live up to their delusions of expert con-artistry (let alone actual prophethood). Successful con artists have to be shrewd and cunning. They need to be good at coldly assessing how real people think and decide, and hard-nosed people who are good at that don't usually invest lots of effort in unrealistic fantasies. Daydreaming wannabes are the marks, not the con men.

A scheme to just start a Masonic lodge in an upstate town, on the other hand, would be chicanery on an easily plausible scale for an uneducated but ambitious farmhand with a fascination for mystery and ritual. Once young Smith got the taste of picturing himself as a Worshipful Master knowing all the great Masonic secrets and respected by all his small-town neighbors, then it's not so hard to imagine him gradually raising his bids, like the old woman in the folktale about the wish-granting fish, until being a successful fake prophet began to seem like an achievable goal.

I think it's perfectly consistent with hard-nosed con artistry to recognize when a scam might have legs and to be willing, once costs have been sunk anyway and there are fall-backs prepared, to think big and take it to the next level. The somewhat implausible thing about Smith hatching a scheme to go from farmhand to prophet is only the idea of the whole scheme being conceived in one big step. Once you can see how the scheme could have evolved in stages from smaller schemes then it all makes easy sense.

For that matter Smith might have come to dream of being a real prophet, since as I've said before it seems to me that Smith's notion of prophethood inherently blurred the line between genuine revelation and deliberate fraud. Sincerely believing that you are the sole channel of divine revelation on Earth is such an egotistical belief that I don't think it qualifies for the benefits of doubt that we usually accord to sincerity. Sincere belief that you are The Prophet is a degenerate limit of sincerity that does not really count.

Anyway the fraud theory was always easier for most people to swallow than the prophet theory, but this hypothesis makes the fraud theory considerably easier to swallow still.

[_Physics Guy]

Whoops, double post.

[Guest]

A scheme to just start a Masonic lodge in an upstate town, on the other hand, would be chicanery on an easily plausible scale for an uneducated but ambitious farmhand with a fascination for mystery and ritual. Once young Smith got the taste of picturing himself as a Worshipful Master knowing all the great Masonic secrets and respected by all his small-town neighbors, then it's not so hard to imagine him gradually raising his bids, like the old woman in the folktale about the wish-granting fish, until being a successful fake prophet began to seem like an achievable goal.

I think it's perfectly consistent with hard-nosed con artistry to recognize when a scam might have legs and to be willing, once costs have been sunk anyway and there are fall-backs prepared, to think big and take it to the next level. The somewhat implausible thing about Smith hatching a scheme to go from farmhand to prophet is only the idea of the whole scheme being conceived in one big step. Once you can see how the scheme could have evolved in stages from smaller schemes then it all makes easy sense.

Moreover, I think that such a Masonic scheme should be viewed as not simply Joseph Smith's alone, or perhaps even his in the first place; the topic should be pursued with the hypothesis that it was a group project. We tend to look at Joseph Smith as he wanted us to do--as the towering genius who was at the center of it all. There are, however, plenty of indications that early on this was not the case. Joseph was part of a group. His family was a part of a group. Many members of this group were involved in the treasure digs. Who decided what to look for? Was it always the treasure seer? What do we make of Abner Cole's parody, when it puts a mysterious book in the hands of Luman Walter? Why were Smith family hopes initially invested in Alvin? Why was Joseph Smith not originally thought to be the person who would translate the book? Why did Joseph himself at one time say that his son would translate it? Why did the other treasure diggers try to get the plates from Joseph? Because they were part of the Gold Bible Company and felt cheated by their partner?

2. Now Walters, the Magician, was a man unseemly to look upon, and to profound ignorance added the most consummate imprudence, -- the summons of the idle and slothful, and produced an old book in an unknown tongue, (Cicero's Orations in latin,) from whence he read in the presence of the Idle and Slothful strange stories of hidden treasures and of the spirit who had custody thereof.
3. And the Idle and Slothful paid tribute unto the Magician, and besought him saying, Oh! thou who art wise above all men, and can interpret the book that no man understandeth, and can discover hidden things by the power of thy enchantments, lead us, we pray thee to the place where the Nephites buried their treasure, and give us power over "the spirit," and we will be thy servants forever.

Joseph Smith, Jr., Martin Harris and others, used to meet together in private, a while before the gold plates were found, and were familiarly known by the name of the "Gold Bible Company." They were regarded by the community in which they lived, as a lying and indolent set of men and no confidence could be placed in them.

In regard to their Gold Bible speculation, they scarcely ever told two stories alike.

From Volume II No. 1 of the Centennial Memorial Edition, "Naked Truths About Mormonism" of December 1888:

Oliver Cowdery was then [1828] a part-time coppersmith who possessed a considerable skill in preparing copper engraving plates for the old-fashioned hand printing presses of that period.

He had most recently found some employment in this line of work and related tasks at Canandaigua, but, following the untimely death of his employer, young Cowdery lodged first with his brother and then with his cousins (the Joe Smith family of Manchester) and there became a sometime participant in the infamous "Gold Bible Company."

[Guest]

Lucy Mack Smith's brother, Stephen Mack, the founder of Pontiac, MI., was raised earlier as an example of the sort of enterprising and successful person Joseph sought to become. He was also very close to the story of the "Detroit Manuscript," which was found by Col. Abraham Edwards of Detroit, an associate of Stephen Mack, in the final days of February in 1823. The Detroit Manuscript, as it came to be called, was an old book of some 3-400 pages, which was written mostly in characters that locals did not recognize. When more learned men examined the text, it was concluded to be a Catholic document in Irish and Latin. As in the case of the Anthon transcript, the Detroit Manuscript was first sent to Dr. Mitchell of New York for examination.

http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/ ... 01RBSt.htm

In the same year as the discovery, and this is to show you what kind of standing Abraham Edwards had:

In 1823 this was accomplished by the passage of law which permitted the election of 18 men from whom the President of the United States was to select nine persons to form the legislative council.

FIRST ELECTION OF LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL WAS IN 1823

At the first election held under this law in 1823, Abraham Edwards [of the Detroit Manuscript], Solomon Sibley [business partner of Stephen Mack], Louis Beaufait, Ebenezer Reed, William Brown, Wolcott Lawrence, Hubert Lacroix, Laurent Derocher, Benjamin F. Stickney, Francis Navarre, Harry Conant [business partner of Stephen Mack], Stephen Mack, Roger Sprague, Joseph Miller, John Stockton, Zephaniah W. Bunce, William H. Puthuff and Robert Irvin, Jr., were elected and their names sent to the president.

Out of this number the president appointed the following nine persons to constitute the first legislative council of Michigan: Abraham Edwards, Stephen Mack, William H. Puthuff, Wolcott Lawrence, John Stockton, Roger Sprague, Zepheniah W. Bunce. Hubert Lacroix and Robert Irvin, Jr.

Of the body so constituted, Abraham Edwards was chosen president and was elected to the same office by the succeeding councils for eight years. He also held the office of Indian agent for the Indians of Northern Indiana and St. Joseph County, Mich., and was appointed register of the land office for the western district of Michigan.

The point of this is to show you that the man who produced the Detroit Manuscript was not just some schmo; he was one of the most prominent men of early Michigan, and he was an associate of Stephen Mack.

Taken from p. 1446-7 of The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Vol. 2.

[_Physics Guy]

If the Masonic scheme were not originally Smith's alone then that makes his step to get into it even smaller and thus still more easily plausible. He might have started out as a mere gofer going along for the ride with ostensibly older and wiser co-conspirators, and then begun to realize that he was smarter than they were and didn't actually need them.

I think that this theory does raise the question raised by all theories in which Smith had help: how did Smith keep his helpers under his thumb when the money began to roll in? If they were there in the beginning when he was just a small fry, why didn't they do more to contest his primacy later on?

The question is hardly a show-stopper. The most plausible answers to me do seem, however, to involve Smith having some kind of big advantage which the others all recognized, at least eventually, such that they all figured they were going to do better by riding Smith's coattails than by trying to supplant him. I suspect his edge was just that he was smarter than they were, and enough so that they couldn't help recognizing it. That doesn't entail supposing that Smith was a towering genius. I think his confederates were not very bright.

Or maybe they were just more cautious than he was, and were happy to let him take the main risks by being the front man. It was Smith who ended up getting lynched, after all. But maybe again this is too much reconstructing things from hindsight. Either way, though, the confidence to get things done instead of dreaming and dithering has its risks but is an important asset in a lot of enterprises. If that's what Smith brought to the gang, and not only intelligence, then that's also something that would have put him at the top.

Anyway, the fact that Smith did eventually emerge as the kingpin suggests to me that if he had help, or even if he started out as only a cabin boy on the pirate ship, Smith himself still played a predominant role from fairly early on in the scheme.

[_honorentheos]

Not smarter. More charismatic.

There is plenty of evidence in the early writings, some of which made it into the D&C, that showed tension between Smith and Cowdery among others. It's not an accident that the Church split into two bodies less than two years after forming with Smith and Rigdon in Kirkland, and Cowdery and the Whitmers in Jackson County, Missouri. The three witnesses were a power sharing scheme that kept getting eroded away but you can see that Smith was the charismatic face while Cowdery appeared to be the more refined mind. John Whitmer seemed pragmatic while David was scheming. Martin Harris seems to have been used as much as he tried to use others...

With the arrival of Rigdon in the fall 1830 the power already shifted, the use of the three witnesses to call the first twelve apostles was another act of power sharing that ultimately undermined them. John Bennett's rise and fall from prominence, and ultimately Smith being lynched with only some members of his family remaining loyal of the original group all are evolutions in a story not unlike so many others who climbed and schemed their way into power to be brought down by it because they couldn't stop gulping down more.

A real, honest historical presentation of Smith's life would rival a show like the Sopranos.

[_Dr Exiled]

One cannot forget that Smith was large in stature and a good looking guy. The ladies loved him and guys are attracted to those who do well with the ladies. He was also athletic, not afraid to fist fight and could supposedly out-wrestle his dupes. I picture him as kind of a rock star athelete that used that status to his advantage.