Mercury wrote:LifeOnaPlate wrote:I agree that some LDS publications have the same tendency, no doubt. This does not, however, vindicate Brodie's approach or conclusions.
Please enlighten me on wht LDS publications do not follow this pattern you mention.
Since we are specifically discussing "history" I'll discuss a few examples. Writing history necessarily involves selection. There is a literal "art" to historical inquiry and construction. The "past" is not a collection of ready-made bricks waiting to be dug from the earth and placed on display as "objective truth." Historians work with historical data and attempt to shape it into narrative (or at least chronology). As noted, people who create historical accounts can do violence to data, misrepresent information, omit crucial aspects of evidence by ignorance or even on purpose, stack the deck, etc. I've seen pro and anti LDS books do this.
I believe Brodie started with the premise that angels, gold plates and miracles from God don't really exist, that Joseph Smith was a fraud. This approach reminds me of what Dale Morgan famously pointed out in a letter to Juanita Brooks:
With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith's story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church. (Morgan to Brooks, Dec. 15, 1945. See John Phillip Walker, ed., Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History (Signature Books, 1986), p. 87.
Nibley's screed on Brodie's book wasn't his best work (it is entertaining, though). It contains some assertions with which I heartily disagree, but despite its flaws he still raises very good and critical points on what information critics of JSmith include in their accounts and what historical records receive the highest billing. One would rightly keep in mind that Nibley does believe angels, gold plates, etc. are possibilities. On Joseph Smith and his critics he said:
The only authority for what John says is John, and the only acceptable authority for Joseph Smith's story is Joseph Smith, not the Whitmers or Willard Chase or Pomeroy Tucker. Some critics, for example, seem to think that if they can show that a friend or enemy of Joseph Smith reports him as saying that he was visited by Nephi, they have caught the Prophet in a fraud.15 It has, moreover, long been an axiom with anti-Mormon writers that if Joseph Smith's enemies tell wildly conflicting stories about him, that does not prove that they are lying, but that he deceived and tricked them all! ("Censoring the Joseph Smith Story," Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass, pp. 55—101.)
First, I disagree with Nibley's statement that "the only acceptable authority for Joseph Smith's story is Joseph Smith." I do, however, place Smith's account of his own experience as a crucial starting point. The closer to the event the better, etc. Still, it is his account. Other accounts should be weighed by how the informant came to their conclusions, how late the account is, where it was published and why, etc. These questions apply equally to JSmith's account. Then we can try to discover what the most credible telling is. at the least we can accurately show what some people claimed about the event. Nibley aptly points out how historians can re-interpret pretty much anything to fit their already-constructed theory. If Smith's words contradict the words of his critics, he must be lying, not them, etc.
Bushman noticed a similar thing in regards to how people treat Smith's first vision accounts. After quoting the 1832 account he said:
...however cleverly managed, the passage captivates a reader, making it hard to doubt Joseph's sincerity. Inserting too much of language like this into a secular account would diffuse the search for Book of Mormon sources and turn attention to Joseph's desire to comply with the will of heaven. Mormons, on the other hand, love every word of it. In this sense, believing historians are more inclined to be true to the basic sources than unbelieving ones. (Richard Bushman, "The Recovery of the Book of Mormon," Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins by Noel B. Reynolds.)
I see a tendency to downplay some of the best Book of Mormon witness statements in favor of more convoluted ones in attempts to show the unreliability of the former. The point is, historians get to make decisions on what to include, not to include, and how to interpret what they include. There is nothing really wrong with this, it seems rather unavoidable. It is up to the historian to attempt fairness and accuracy, but "objectivity" is something that remains to be shown as absolutely possible.
To return to your previous question, though, regarding "what LDS publications do not follow this pattern you mention," I don't see any history books that don't follow a pattern of selection, Some do so better than others, in my opinion. I just finished one, Kathleen Flake's
The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, (University of North Carolina Press). I strongly recommend this book as far superior, historically speaking, to Brodie's
No Man Knows.