Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

[dan vogel]

I don't follow the logic of that. Since others stole from the Masons, Joseph Smith didn't steal from them? Is it the word "steal" that bothers you? Perhaps Shulem should use "appropriated"?

I don’t see what is so complicated about it. Nobody says that Vergil “stole” from Homer. It really oversimplifies what is going on when artists adapt elements from earlier works of art.

Moreover, Shulem’s purpose is obviously polemical, not about understanding or illuminating. Polemics drive his work.

I'm Okay with "adapt." So long as we know where it came from.

[Moksha]

What about the charge that the hats were borrowed from the Baker's guild, the aprons came from the Lido de Paris in Las Vegas, and the veils were ripped off from Salome when she was asking for the head of John the Baptist? Seems like some apologetic explanations are in order.

[Shulem]

I don’t see what is so complicated about it. Nobody says that Vergil “stole” from Homer. It really oversimplifies what is going on when artists adapt elements from earlier works of art.

Moreover, Shulem’s purpose is obviously polemical, not about understanding or illuminating. Polemics drive his work.

I'm Okay with "adapt." So long as we know where it came from.

Would that qualify Smith's actions as *adapting* other men's wives for his own purposes? Or bottom line, isn't it just thievery? Everyone is guilty of a little thievery of some kind, wouldn't ya say? Musicians steal words and riffs for their own music and that might be considered a little thievery. Writers do the same damn thing.

U dudes may now hand your wives over to brother Joseph of your own free will so he can't be blamed for stealing them. Smith loves women (and girls 14+) so it's time to appropriate your wives for his use and pleasure.

Hand over your wives! That includes you!! And don't complain about it.

ugh

[Kishkumen]

I'm Okay with "adapt." So long as we know where it came from.

It all comes from somewhere, and often we can identify the source. Homer and other early Greeks were influenced by the civilizations and literatures of empires to the east of them. Homer invokes the Muse, and apparently the Muse had a lot of friends in Mesopotamia.

[Shulem]

I'm Okay with "adapt." So long as we know where it came from.

It all comes from somewhere, and often we can identify the source. Homer and other early Greeks were influenced by the civilizations and literatures of empires to the east of them. Homer invokes the Muse, and apparently the Muse had a lot of friends in Mesopotamia.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Joseph Smith purchased Egyptian burial papyri not knowing what he was talking about and pretended to speak for it. He knowingly made crap up and lied. That was his nature -- he was a liar and a thief -- constant. And, a butcherer insomuch as he took sacred art that was robbed from a tomb and cut the nose of a god of Egypt in order to cover his tracks in making up crap he pretended to translate. He knew it was the *Masonic* jackal god of Egypt and ordered the nose hacked off because he's a liar and a thief! Then he hid up that vignette and it was never to be seen again. Think about that!!

[dan vogel]

Kishkumen,

So we can say that Joseph Smith was keying into anti-Masonic views of 1829 that dated Masonry to the Garden of Eden, but we can't imagine Joseph Smith possibly seeing an apostate Masonry coming from Cain based on the views of an author in 1823.

The anti-Masons were saying the same thing without Oliver’s baggage. You were using Oliver’s mention of Cain as unique and therefore evidence of Joseph Smith’s knowledge of Oliver. Anti-Masonic rhetoric includes Satan and is closer to the Book of Mormon than Oliver.

LOL. OK. You don't think so. Just think, though, Joseph Smith is a mythographer! Why is his creativity limited, in your mind, to what other people were doing with the material? I mean, I don't see him as simply taking from others. I see him creatively working with phenomena in his environment. This is the kind of thinking that really baffles me. I see it in apologists and in some critics. It is this way of narrowly reading the evidence and missing the forest for the trees. Joseph Smith wrote myths. He did not just copy down myths from others, and he actually, even on the occasions that he cribbed things from the Bible, reworked them. I am sorry, but you lose me at a very fundamental level in the way you read.

It is Okay to see Joseph Smith as creative and offer it as an interpretation, but when you are testing competing interpretations of evidence, it’s best to stick close to sources and arguments that can be demonstrated. In this situation, we are testing: How to Distinguish between Anti-Masonry and Anti-Spurious Masonry, or Oliver vs. anti-Masons.

OK. Well, I don't think there is any need to pursue your narrow reading of Joseph Smith's views and abilities any further. So there is that.

It’s not meant to be taken personally. I just don’t have the patience to convince you that the money digging is both irrelevant and fallacious. The juice is not worth the squeeze

[tagriffy]

It's difficult to know what Joseph Smith had in mind, but the Book of Mormon links the latter-day secret combinations with the ancient ones and describes them as unitary. The secrets were revealed to Cain by Satan and transmission came by the records or revelation. The Book of Mormon's Gaddiantons were described as ebbing and flowing depending on the wickedness or righteousness of the Nephites. Thus the Book of Mormon warns Jacksonian America not to let the secret combination get above them or it could prove the overthrow of the free government. So it's more than just rhetoric.

Thank you. I have to think about this before I can ask intelligent questions about it.

With apologies for taking so long...

Would it be a fair summary to say that it was more than just rhetoric but still less than actual equivalence?

[Kishkumen]

The anti-Masons were saying the same thing without Oliver’s baggage. You were using Oliver’s mention of Cain as unique and therefore evidence of Joseph Smith’s knowledge of Oliver. Anti-Masonic rhetoric includes Satan and is closer to the Book of Mormon than Oliver.

No, I am saying that there were those like Oliver who dated the origins of Freemasonry back much further than Solomon. I noted the interesting coincidence of Oliver's focus on Cain's apostate Masonry. What I am saying here is I am not convinced that you are right, and when all of the evidence is taken into account, it may be that Joseph Smith was a lot more knowledgable about Freemasonry than you give him credit for, and that he was not a two-dimensional anti-Mason as you argue focusing almost exclusively on the Book of Mormon and other ambiguous (in my view) references.

It is Okay to see Joseph Smith as creative and offer it as an interpretation, but when you are testing competing interpretations of evidence, it’s best to stick close to sources and arguments that can be demonstrated. In this situation, we are testing: How to Distinguish between Anti-Masonry and Anti-Spurious Masonry, or Oliver vs. anti-Masons.

LOL. OK, yes, I am actually very aware of how to treat evidence, but I thank you for affirming principles that are well known. Not only should we stick to the evidence, we should take all of it into account, and be very careful when we read it. Moreover, it is possible to read the same evidence in different ways.

It’s not meant to be taken personally. I just don’t have the patience to convince you that the money digging is both irrelevant and fallacious. The juice is not worth the squeeze

I think you get me wrong here. I don't take it personally. I am actually telling you how I view things differently from you as a historian. You are a historian. I am a historian. We don't have to do things in exactly the same way. If the juice is not worth the squeeze to you personally, that does not mean that all historians need to feel the same or that you are necessarily right.

[Fifth Columnist]

What I am saying here is I am not convinced that you are right, and when all of the evidence is taken into account, it may be that Joseph Smith was a lot more knowledgeable about Freemasonry than you give him credit for, and that he was not a two-dimensional anti-Mason as you argue focusing almost exclusively on the Book of Mormon and other ambiguous (in my view) references.

Your reference to "all of the evidence" implies that you are relying on additional evidence that Dan is not. What additional evidence are you relying on?

[Kishkumen]

Your reference to "all of the evidence" implies that you are relying on additional evidence that Dan is not. What additional evidence are you relying on?

Some of it is stuff that Dan rejects for his own reasons, other parts are things Don has dug up.