Did FARMS/MI ever give a critical review of Bushman's RSR?

[_Polygamy-Porter]

On a celestial thread about Grant Palmer's book, Daniel Peterson quickly looked up and posted the SIX reviews of Palmer's one book, Insider's view of Mormon origins.

My apologies. They haven't installed the alarm bell and the fireman's pole in my house yet, so I'm still sometimes a bit slow to respond to demands for my participation here while I'm sleeping or otherwise engaged.

Here are the reviews that we published of Grant Palmer's book:

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=2&id=513

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=2&id=512

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=1&id=533

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=2&id=510

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=2&id=511

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=2&id=514

Now. This is as far as I'll go toward producing a Cliff's Notes version for those here who will demand it: I think that the most spectacularly weak portion of Grant Palmer's book was also the one portion of it where he could claim some originality. That was his attempt to link the Moroni story with E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der goldne Topf. I can't think of any serious scholar, Mormon or non-Mormon, nor even any serious critic, who has found it even remotely convincing. And for good reason.

Yet, later in the thread when I asked him if such a review had been done on Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling, he said:

As a matter of fact, yes.

However, when I asked for a link to the review, he snapped at me with this:

Find it yourself, PP. I'm not your research assistant.

It's almost like Daniel has some personal vendetta against Grant Palmer. Did someone close to Daniel leave the church due to Palmer's book?

Perhaps Palmer the seminary teacher who gave a poor grade to one of Daniel's sons?

[_Doctor Lars C Umlaut]

It's almost like Daniel has some personal vendetta against Grant Palmer. Did someone close to Daniel leave the church due to Palmer's book?

Perhaps Palmer the seminary teacher who gave a poor grade to one of Daniel's sons?

If I'm not mistaken, [personal information deleted]. Perhaps Palmer's excellent book played a role in his loss of faith.

[_Polygamy-Porter]

It's almost like Daniel has some personal vendetta against Grant Palmer. Did someone close to Daniel leave the church due to Palmer's book?

Perhaps Palmer the seminary teacher who gave a poor grade to one of Daniel's sons?

If I'm not mistaken, [personal information deleted]. Perhaps Palmer's excellent book played a role in his loss of faith.

HOLY Jesus.

If this is true, this is a historic moment in the history of mo'pologetics.

Can this be confirmed?

[_sethpayne]

HOLY Jesus.

If this is true, this is a historic moment in the history of mo'pologetics.

Can this be confirmed?

Perhaps this is a conversation best left for PMs?

I don't think [deleted] are appropriate topics for public discussion.

[_Polygamy-Porter]

HOLY Jesus.

If this is true, this is a historic moment in the history of mo'pologetics.

Can this be confirmed?

Perhaps this is a conversation best left for PMs?

I don't think [deleted] are appropriate topics for public discussion.

OK fine.

Someone PM me confirming this please.

[_MsJack]

PP:

FARMS reviewed RSR here.

That appears to be the only review of RSR. Dan also did an essay on "Reflections on the Reactions to Rough Stone Rolling and Related Matters" in that same issue of the Review, here.

[_Doctor Lars C Umlaut]

It's almost like Daniel has some personal vendetta against Grant Palmer. Did someone close to Daniel leave the church due to Palmer's book?

Perhaps Palmer the seminary teacher who gave a poor grade to one of Daniel's sons?

If I'm not mistaken, [personal information deleted]. Perhaps Palmer's excellent book played a role in his loss of faith.

Anyone curious about the information that has been deleted here, please feel free to PM me.

[_harmony]

PP:

FARMS reviewed RSR here.

That appears to be the only review of RSR. Dan also did an essay on "Reflections on the Reactions to Rough Stone Rolling and Related Matters" in that same issue of the Review, here.

So they published 6 reviews of Insider and 1 review and 1 essay for RSR.

Did Insider really generate that much fear?

[_Willy Law]

PP:

FARMS reviewed RSR here.

That appears to be the only review of RSR.

Author seems quite star struck by Bushman. Not exactly the same treatment or respect given to Brother Palmer.

"Harvard-educated, Bushman began his teaching career at Brigham Young University. But he soon shifted to teaching at Brown, Boston, and Delaware before ending as Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia University. He is known and highly respected within professional circles. More than any other Latter-day Saint, he has risen to the top of the American history profession. With his emphasis on early American history, no one has ever been better equipped or situated to write the biography of Joseph Smith.3 In addition, Bushman is a skillful literary craftsman and an especially adroit essayist."

[_Daniel Peterson]

Richard Bushman is, it's true, in a very different league as a historian and scholar than Grant Palmer is.

So they published 6 reviews of Insider and 1 review and 1 essay for RSR.

Did Insider really generate that much fear?

No.

I was looking for a reviewer, but having a difficult time finding one. Everybody was too busy. (Almost always with the Joseph Smith Papers project, which had a major, urgent, and looming deadline at the time.) Then, out of the blue, several of the people who had turned me down sent in reviews. (There were actually four, plus a brief statement from the Smith Institute. Jim Allen's response came in too late, and was published in a subsequent number of the Review.) I thought they were all interesting and distinctive, and they were all written by significant and accomplished scholars, so I published all of them.

This has happened on a few prior occasions, but, in those cases, generated only two or three reviews.

***

To the best of my knowledge, nobody in my immediate or extended family or circle of friends and acquaintances has been affected in any way, in terms of religious belief or commitment, by anything ever written by Grant Palmer . . . or Jerald and Sandra Tanner, or Walter Martin, or Ed Decker, or any other critic of the Church.

***

It was difficult to find reviewers for Richard Bushman's book, too, for the same JSP-related reason but also and primarily because so many of us know him. For example, I'm speaking for him in his summer graduate student seminar at BYU later this week, and I've spoken for him before, at least twice, down in Claremont. (It was quite a different matter, incidentally, with regard to Grant Palmer, the self-proclaimed historical "insider," whom nobody knew, though one historian could remember having had him in a class many years back.) Reviewing a friend's book can be awkward, unless the reviewer intends simply to write hagiography.

Given the importance of Richard's book -- which, by the way, I really, really like -- I would like to have had multiple perspectives on it. But the normal practice is one review per book, and, despite considerable effort on my part, only one came in for Rough Stone Rolling, and I decided to let that suffice.

That said, though, a careful reader of the FARMS Review will be aware that there was more said in it about Richard's book than was said merely in the one review and in my relevant introduction. And a few are much more critical of it than I am.

***

I didn't hasten to do PP's research for him because I don't regard him as a serious conversation partner, and because his perpetual adolescent incivility doesn't incline me to do any favors for him.