I read this on reddit so i'll just reproduce that post, if that's okay. The reddit post author is a redditor named "ImTheMarmotKing," someone whose posts i have read and enjoyed on reddit for a long time.
Brian Hales gives Dan Vogel's new Joseph Smith Biography 2/5 star review (self.Mormon)
submitted 2 hours ago by ImTheMarmotKing
The review is on Amazon, and Vogel's response is on Facebook. I'm pretty sure linking either would get me caught in the spam filter, so reproducing both below.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... ource=link
Brian Hales:
Joseph Smith and his followers portrayed as caricatures
The theory promoted throughout CHARISMA UNDER PRESSURE describing Joseph Smith as a “pious fraud” fails to accommodate the historical Joseph Smith in two important ways.
First, it fails to account for Smith’s creation of the Book of Mormon. Charisma does not bestow the composition and oratory skills needed to create a 269,320-word book with 207 name characters, 77 storylines, 149 geographic locations, 45 socio-geographic groups, 63 sermons comprising over 87,000 words, 100 distinct titles for God, and over 170 new English proper nouns. And importantly, not a single full sentence of his original dictation has been edited since the word stream was spoken, written, and immediately delivered to the printer.
In his writings, Dan Vogel describes Joseph Smith as a “pious fraud,” but frauds don’t produce books like the Book of Mormon; only actual authors with literary skills can do that. This fact is ignored throughout Vogel’s works, including CHARISMA UNDER PRESSURE. Assuming Smith had the skills also ignores dozens of eyewitness accounts declaring he didn’t—an issue CHARISMA fails to address, let alone resolve.
The second glaring problem involves how Vogel portrays the people around Joseph Smith as gullible dupes who couldn’t detect what Vogel easily can see nearly 200 years later: Charisma empowered Smith to deceive all those Mormons. While some of Smith’s followers might have been that naïve, the vast majority were skeptical and devout Christians.
The historical record supports that women like Eliza Snow and Zina Huntington and men like John Taylor and Brigham Young, would not have been fooled by a charismatic male as easily as Vogel portrays. I think Fawn Brodie would agree: “The best evidence of the magnetism of the Mormon religion was that it could attract men with the quality of Brigham Young, whose tremendous energy and shrewd intelligence were not easily directed by any influence outside himself.” The scenarios depicted through CHARISMA seem comic-book-like, where Smith’s followers behave differently than genuinely sincere and skeptical religionists would have behaved.
It appears that the version of Joseph Smith portrayed by Vogel is a caricature and inadequate. Neither is it clear Smith’s followers would have been so blinded by “charisma under pressure” to Smith’s true motives if they were what Vogel declares them to have been. Caution is advised for anyone tempted to embrace the version of Smith (and his followers) portrayed in CHARISMA UNDER PRESSURE and Vogel’s other writings.
Dan Vogel:
Brian Hales gives my new book two-out-of-five stars on Amazon
In fact, he has nothing good to say about the book. His unbalanced review should alert readers that they are dealing with an extremely partisan critique. He doesn’t want to discuss my book—and there is plenty to discuss—and, in fact, there is no indication that he actually read the book. Instead, he wants to discuss his recent hobby horse, where he declares the naturalistic explanations for Joseph Smith’s production of the Book of Mormon are inadequate and therefore Smith’s claims about its supernatural origin are true. By the way, believers in the Koran make the same argument. What Hales doesn’t seem to realize is that his assessment is subjective; he can’t say Joseph Smith could not have dictated the book without divine help. More importantly, scholars can’t say that either.
Rehashing Book of Mormon debates was beyond the scope of “Charisma under Pressure.” I deal with this topic in my first biography of Smith, which Hales has neglected. In fact, Hales doesn’t deal with the actual text of the Book of Mormon. Instead, he throws out enumerations of the book’s contents designed to dazzle the unwary. How could Smith, who lacked “composition and oratory skills needed to create a 269,320-word book,” although his subsequent revelations (said to be given in his own language in his weakness, D&C 1:24), as well as his early correspondence, are on a par with the Book of Mormon. Indeed, this ability to adopt the divine voice almost at will was a source of his charisma.
According to Hales, Smith could not have produced a 531-page text that includes “207 name characters,” although most of these characters are mere names or are two-dimensional villain and heroes caricatures; “77 storylines,” although many of these are implausible, contradictory, incomplete, or downright silly; “149 geographic locations,” although none have been located in the real world and without apologetic special pleading are unrealistic in distances; “45 socio-geographic groups,” some of which are mere names among either the Nephites in the land of Zarahemla or Lamanites in the land of Nephi; “63 sermons comprising over 87,000 words,” although its hard to imagine a person raised in New York’s burned-over district, who had deeply religious parents, who attended revivals, who participated as a Methodist exhorter, who planned to become a religious leader himself, being unable to sermonize, not to mention that these sermons, despite displaying at times a simple eloquence, are nevertheless didactic and strongly reflect the revival language of Smith’s environment; “100 distinct titles for God,” although many names come from the Book of Mormon’s use of the King James Version of the Bible, which occupies about 15% of the text; “over 170 new English proper nouns,” although Smith demonstrated his facility of inventing names in his fake translation of the Egyptian papyri. Finally, Hales declares that “not a single full sentence of his original dictation has been edited since the word stream was spoken, written, and immediately delivered to the printer.” This is not exactly true since over 4,000 changes have been made since 1830, mostly to correct bad grammar and, in a few instances, to correct errors of fact and doctrine.
Hales asserts that “‘pious frauds’ don’t produce books like the Book of Mormon; only actual authors with literary skills can do that”—as if the two are mutually exclusive. He needs to inform himself about the work of Bart Ehrman, especially “Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.”
Hales thinks that because some of Smith’s contemporaries shared his subjective assessment of Smith’s literary abilities, he has evidence that Smith could not have produced the Book of Mormon. First, the Book of Mormon is not a literary production; it’s an oral production, which explains why some of the prophets in the book complain about their inability to write in contrast to their ability to sermonize under inspiration (2 Nephi 33:1; Ether 12:23-24). Smith himself played up his lack of education, while at the same time vigorously pursuing knowledge—showing that he was no ordinary farm boy. Second, while some noticed Smith’s lack of formal education and were not impressed, others immediately fell under his spell and hung on his every word—which I dealt with in the introduction in great detail. Third, my book discusses Smith’s ability to move audiences through the spoken word, although he was not a trained orator like Sidney Rigdon. Fourth, the Book of Mormon was comprehensible to Smith's contemporaries, not requiring an advanced education to read, especially to those steeped in the Bible, and it certainly didn’t require a high degree of literary skill to dictate it.
Hales thinks one of the shortcomings of “Charisma under Pressure” is that it doesn’t resolve or explain how Smith could have written the Book of Mormon to the satisfaction of the apologists, while ignoring the fact that the apologists haven’t solved the many literary and historical anachronisms, not to mention the lack of archaeological confirmation, to the satisfaction of the critics. He fails to acknowledge the subjectivity of his argument and that the critics’ position is on much firmer ground.
The second problem, as Hales sees it, is that I portray Smith’s early followers as “gullible dupes” because they couldn’t detect the fraud. First of all, Smith believed in his mission, believed he was inspired, and was willing to use deception on occasion to advance his cause. So there was nothing to detect in their interactions with Smith. Never do I portray Smith as a base deceiver, but as an extremely skilled deceiver, which he had honed as a treasure seer. Hales concedes that while some of Smith’s followers may have been “naïve, the vast majority were skeptical and devout Christians.” He doesn’t know that, but it’s irrelevant. Experience has shown that one doesn’t have to be gullible, uneducated, or a lapsed Christian to be taken in by a charismatic leader or join a cult. It’s naïve to say someone like Brigham Young couldn’t be manipulated. Even the most sophisticated people have blind spots. For every Brigham Young, there were dozens who saw Smith differently. Again, Hales wants to turn the discussion into a subjective assessment of Smith.
He accuses me of portraying Smith’s followers as “behaving differently than genuinely sincere and skeptical religionists would have behaved.” On the contrary, I believe I was fairly neutral about Smith’s followers, allowing them to tell their own stories. I was less concerned about their conversions than with how they interacted with Smith afterward. Frankly, I don’t know how Hales can say that since I humanize Smith and his followers by showing their disputations and wrangling. It wasn’t a simple matter of Smith dictating a revelation and everyone following. That would be a caricature or “comic-book like” story. Instead, my book focuses on the politics involved with Smith’s leadership role. First-generation Mormons were nothing like current Mormons.
Obviously, Hales is a hardened apologist and intolerant of even the most charitable position a naturalist can take with regard to Joseph Smith. As with my first biography, the apologists will undoubtedly show up to intentionally lower the book’s ratings. Ultimately, they failed because, almost twenty years later, “Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet” enjoys 4.5 stars on Amazon.
