He can't be serious: Joseph and the Book of Abraham

[_CaliforniaKid]

Trevor,

I don't think our views are really all that dissimilar. It seems to me that the difference is merely terminological: I am using the phrase "pious fraud", whereas you prefer to call it shamanic "performance". I honestly don't see a huge difference between the two, except that the former might sound more offensive. I would accept both characterizations as accurate reflections of some aspects of Joseph Smith's behavior.

Best,

-Chris

[_Trevor]

I don't think our views are really all that dissimilar. It seems to me that the difference is merely terminological: I am using the phrase "pious fraud", whereas you prefer to call it shamanic "performance". I honestly don't see a huge difference between the two, except that the former might sound more offensive. I would accept both characterizations as accurate reflections of some aspects of Joseph Smith's behavior.

I suspect that is true. But, this is a case where the devil really is in the details, and I think it is worth considering alternatives to the concept of the pious fraud. The word 'fraud' does have certain negative connotations that, while fitting in some cases, may obfuscate rather than illuminate in some ways. You may be right that in some instances a more pejorative description of Joseph Smith's activities is difficult to get around and perhaps undesirable to whitewash through neutral terminology. With certain provisos, however, it would be useful to explore the terrain without fraught terminology to see where it gets us.

[_Sethbag]

Given that all religions on earth are manmade and not literally true, any converion, any proselyting, at all by these religions could be called fraud. That's probably not that useful a term, however, since it sounds like a Bernie Madoff kind of action, rather than an honestly-intended act of religious proselyting by a person who believes their religion to be true, even if it really isn't.

So I guess I do agree that there ought to be a better term than "fraud" for it.

However, there still really has got to be some allowance for the degree of culpability in deceit. I proselyted on my mission for two years, which turns out all to have been total
hogwash, however I fervently believed it to be true at the time. I was mistaken, not malicious.

I was reading "No Man Knows My History" on the plane this afternoon as I flew back out to New Hampshire, and read the account reported by Brodie (I don't recall upon what source this was based) of Joseph opening an empty box and claiming the plates were in there, and the truly faithful and righteous would see them. It was a classic "Emperor's New Clothes" routine. If this story describes something that really happened, then you have to consider Joseph's "performance" as in a completely different class than my missionary proselyting. I didn't know the church wasn't true at the time, but Joseph knew full well that there were no plates in that box.

And, really, I would have to consider Joseph's actions in cases like this to have been far closer to the Bernie Madoff type of fraud.

Actually, I'm going to stage a partial retreat here from the position I started out agreeing to. In religious discussion in general maybe fraud isn't a good term, but in the case of Joseph Smith, I can't really think of a better one.

The real problem is whether Joseph started to believe his own con. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, and as I read in Brodie's book on the plane, it's entirely possible for success to have made Joseph believe his own schtick.

In particular, Brodie mentioned the revelation (now section 4 I believe) that Joseph gave to his father after the 116 pages were lost. The revelation "worked" with his Father, and may have opened new vistas to Joseph - may indeed have shown him a future path that he hadn't seen or recognized before. As he gave revelations, made pronouncements, etc. and these were accepted and believed by people, it not only emboldened Joseph to do this some more, it may even have lead him to believe that he really did have the backing of God.

Seriously. Joseph pronounces some kind revelation to someone. They swoon, have some kind of euphoric experience, and Joseph Smith, who believes in the supernatural, and spirits, and all that sort of thing, comes to believe that the person's response was proof that God had in fact supported the things Joseph had said.

So he becomes, literally, a pious fraud. He's still making it up, but he comes to believe that, basically, whatever he makes up is actually true and proper, and supported by God.

[_Sethbag]

I've been to a pentecostal Christian meeting before where the preacher got people so whipped up in a "spiritual" frenzy that he went up to people and touched their forehead or whatever and the people collapsed in a sort of religious euphoria, with tears, shaking, and all the rest of it. I've seen this done with my own two eyes.

Now, here's the thing. The preachers who did this were really working some deep human psychological mechanisms that got the people all worked up into a sort of frenzy, and when the people swooned, it wasn't really any Holy Ghost working on them. It could all have been explained by psychologists, IMHO. I've had somewhat similar experiences before entirely unconnected with religion, and can recognize the parallels.

Now, consider the preacher. He gives a fiery sermon. He believes the content of his sermon is true, and backed by an actually-existing God. He goes and touches the forehead of some person who subsequently collapses in religious ecstasy.

What is going through this preacher's mind? I am not 100% sure, although I had one experience on my mission that is pretty darn close to this, but I believe if it was the first time, that preacher might be thinking something like "holy crap, this actually works!" It reinforces their beliefs. After that, you couldn't possibly convince this guy he's spouting nonsense. No, not when he's actually seen it firsthand, and, better yet, actually done it. Having touched the foreheads, and caused people to crumple to the ground, he now believes to his very core that God really has empowered him.

It's very possible that Joseph Smith had similar such experiences. As he made pronouncements, revelations, etc. and they were believed and acted on by first a handful, then dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands, he might very well have come to believe literally all of his own claims to divine authority. After all, he says things, and does things, and it really does affect people - God must be behind that, right?

[_Trevor]

It's very possible that Joseph Smith had similar such experiences. As he made pronouncements, revelations, etc. and they were believed and acted on by first a handful, then dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands, he might very well have come to believe literally all of his own claims to divine authority. After all, he says things, and does things, and it really does affect people - God must be behind that, right?

I once saw a youtube video in which a critic of faith healers demonstrated the means by which the healers, by striking the afflicted on the forehead in the right way, created the sensation that the person had been touched by a special power. He proceeded to pronounce that he had thus unveiled the fraud being perpetrated by faith healers. From my perspective, his conclusion is contingent upon the assumption that all of these faith healers know that this technique is nothing more than the sum of its mundane aspects.

To understand the technology behind a religious claim is not to prove that those using the technology are conscious frauds. The use of technology in the performance of religious cult has been around since antiquity. Those who wish to denigrate a religious practice or practitioner focus on the technology and claim that its use proves the practitioner and practice are illegitimate.

I would submit that part of the scandal of Joseph Smith, for believers and non-believers alike, is their embarrassment at confronting the technology. Take, for example, the controversy over the GAEL, KEP, and the Book of Abraham. Certain faithful apologists have an obvious discomfort when they are exposed to the nuts and bolts of Smith's translation method. Since Joseph's practices are so far afield from methods that they deem acceptable, they cannot abide by the compelling evidence that the collection of documents related to the Book of Abraham are indeed the most useful materials in understanding how Joseph translated the Book of Abraham.

For this reason, there must be a missing papyrus. The GAEL and KEP can have nothing to do with the actual process of translation. Joseph Smith will continue to be portrayed reading the Gold Plates like you and I read the newspaper. The truth is far too off-putting for most respectable, educated, contemporary people to stomach, and so the apologetic "translates" the scandal of Joseph's actual method into something that most people are more likely to find respectable.

[_Sethbag]

I 100% agree with you, except that I don't believe that the KEP and GAEL represent the method Joseph used to invent the Book of Abraham. I other words, I don't believe that Joseph really did copy one Egyptian character from the BoB, then really did believe that that one character meant some paragraph from the Book of Abraham. I believe that these characters were just props that he used to impress his followers, and make them believe that he was a true prophet.

So at some level, he had to know that he was lying to people - that he was pretending, and making stuff up, and deceiving people. Just like when he supposedly showed the 8 witnesses the empty box and pulled an Emperor's New Clothes on them - he didn't actually believe that the plates really were in the box, or that the plates even really existed.

But I believe he may have been able to rationalize all of his deceptions by observing that the things he said to people had a very real effect. He may have interpreted those reactions as proof that God really was behind him, and that he was therefore justified in telling people whatever it took to keep them listening to and following him.

"I'm lying to you, but it's for your own good, because the lies get you to listen to the other things I have to say, which really are from God."

It's lying to people for the Lord.

[_Trevor]

I 100% agree with you, except that I don't believe that the KEP and GAEL represent the method Joseph used to invent the Book of Abraham. I other words, I don't believe that Joseph really did copy one Egyptian character from the BoB, then really did believe that that one character meant some paragraph from the Book of Abraham. I believe that these characters were just props that he used to impress his followers, and make them believe that he was a true prophet.

For all but a tiny minority of those who were interested in them, hieroglyphs, in Smith's day, were believed to be a repository of ancient mysteries to which only kings and priests were privy (and didn't Joseph style himself a king and priest?). I find it completely consistent with his conception and "creation" of ancient languages that Joseph Smith believed that a single hieroglyph might contain an abundance of information. Consider, for example, the supposed compactness of information contained in the "language" of the Gold Plates. Consider also the notions of written language and its power implicit in the Smith family magical papyri. Look too at the dissection of characters in the Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar and their signification in varying degrees (which might be analogous to degrees of initiation into hieratic knowledge).

I recommend you read, if you have not already, Erik Hornung's The Secret Lore of Egypt. There you will get a nice overview of the beliefs and assumptions that informed the mystical view of Egypt which Smith seems to have shared.

[_Sethbag]

Yes, but how do you get from that to Joseph actually believing that some hieratic character that he copied from the BoB having the meaning "I, Abraham, did go up to such and such a mountain, and pray to the Lord, and the Lord said unto me such and such, and blah blah blah, yada yada yada."

Do you really think that Joseph actually believed the specific ties he showed his scribes between the character on the BoB and the parts of the Book of Abraham he ascribed to them?

Do you think that Joseph really believed that the facsimiles mean the specific things he said they did?

Or do you just believe that Joseph would have known that hieroglyphics were thought to have some expansive and secret meanings (and probably he believed that too), and then leveraged that belief into the demonstrations he gave to his followers? In other words, he could give his follower some hocus pocus, knowing that they would be likely to believe his story?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Trevor,

I'm actually more in agreement with you than Sethbag about the KEP. I don't know if Smith believed the Book of Abraham was a true translation or not, but I do believe he saw himself as engaged in a pious project whether by "shaping reality" or otherwise. I know Don sees (or at least used to see) Joseph Smith's attitude as basically cynical, but I don't. In my mind, the "pious" aspect of "pious fraud" needs to be given its due weight.

-Chris

[_Runtu]

Trevor,

I'm actually more in agreement with you than Sethbag about the KEP. I don't know if Smith believed the Book of Abraham was a true translation or not, but I do believe he saw himself as engaged in a pious project whether by "shaping reality" or otherwise. I know Don sees (or at least used to see) Joseph Smith's attitude as basically cynical, but I don't. In my mind, the "pious" aspect of "pious fraud" needs to be given its due weight.

-Chris

Honestly, I don't know what to make of Joseph sometimes. A lot of what he did can only be seen as cynical and self-serving, but then he turns around and does something that seems genuinely "pious." Maybe the moral of the story is that human beings are complex, and to see Joseph as either all basically cynical or basically pious is too simplistic.