Manetho, Josephus, and the Book of Abraham

[Rivendale]

A silly mathematical joke might actually be worthwhile for historians. The "number" denoted by the lowercase i is defined by the arbitrary rule that i times i is equal to -1. This makes no sense in terms of the kind of arithmetic that you can do with apples or patches of carpet measuring so-wide by so-long, but it turns out to be a self-consistent game rule. It's an artificial game rule for an abstract kind of multiplication that doesn't match how carpet areas behave, but it turns out that it does match how a lot of other real things behave, in more abstract ways, so i is used constantly in physics. Mathematicians call ordinary numbers "real numbers", in contrast to the bizarre artificial "numbers" like i, which are called "imaginary numbers". Math and physics like to use "numbers" of the composite form a + i x b, where a and b are ordinary "real" numbers. These composite concepts are called "complex numbers". So one could say that history is complex: partly real and partly imaginary. It's a stupid joke, but maybe not completely stupid, because using the language of exact sciences might be a subtle way to assert the valid claim that history—especially ancient history—is an important and serious discipline even though some of its subject matter isn't real.

Anyway, Smith was doing two layers. He was writing a 19th century idea of what ancient historians would have written as history. I think this might push any honest component of his intentions into the unfathomable. If real ancient historians were in the first place writing a "complex" mixture of myth, metaphor, and fiction, with or without some notion that what they wrote also happened in some sense, and then we allow Smith to be mixing more myth and metaphor and fiction on top of all that, by using his imagined ancient historians in the complex ways that real ancient historians used their history, then I at least don't feel confident in ruling out anything whatever as something that Smith might have been intending to express.

So I'm willing to believe that Smith was not only committing a fraud, but was also trying to do something honest, though non-factual, with his imaginary ancient history. My problem, though, is that I don't have much faith in our ability to pin down any honest thing in particular that Smith might have been trying to do. Practically anything seems to be equally possible. So even if fraud wasn't the only thing Smith was doing, it seems to be the only thing he was doing that is worthwhile discussing. Everything else seems too nebulous. If Thucydides made things up, and Nephi is a made-up Thucydides, then I can't rule out anything that Smith might have been trying to express via Nephi.

In short....Dan Vogel's pius fraud theory.

[malkie]

A silly mathematical joke might actually be worthwhile for historians. The "number" denoted by the lowercase i is defined by the arbitrary rule that i times i is equal to -1. This makes no sense in terms of the kind of arithmetic that you can do with apples or patches of carpet measuring so-wide by so-long, but it turns out to be a self-consistent game rule. It's an artificial game rule for an abstract kind of multiplication that doesn't match how carpet areas behave, but it turns out that it does match how a lot of other real things behave, in more abstract ways, so i is used constantly in physics. Mathematicians call ordinary numbers "real numbers", in contrast to the bizarre artificial "numbers" like i, which are called "imaginary numbers". Math and physics like to use "numbers" of the composite form a + i x b, where a and b are ordinary "real" numbers. These composite concepts are called "complex numbers". So one could say that history is complex: partly real and partly imaginary. It's a stupid joke, but maybe not completely stupid, because using the language of exact sciences might be a subtle way to assert the valid claim that history—especially ancient history—is an important and serious discipline even though some of its subject matter isn't real.

Anyway, Smith was doing two layers. He was writing a 19th century idea of what ancient historians would have written as history. I think this might push any honest component of his intentions into the unfathomable. If real ancient historians were in the first place writing a "complex" mixture of myth, metaphor, and fiction, with or without some notion that what they wrote also happened in some sense, and then we allow Smith to be mixing more myth and metaphor and fiction on top of all that, by using his imagined ancient historians in the complex ways that real ancient historians used their history, then I at least don't feel confident in ruling out anything whatever as something that Smith might have been intending to express.

So I'm willing to believe that Smith was not only committing a fraud, but was also trying to do something honest, though non-factual, with his imaginary ancient history. My problem, though, is that I don't have much faith in our ability to pin down any honest thing in particular that Smith might have been trying to do. Practically anything seems to be equally possible. So even if fraud wasn't the only thing Smith was doing, it seems to be the only thing he was doing that is worthwhile discussing. Everything else seems too nebulous. If Thucydides made things up, and Nephi is a made-up Thucydides, then I can't rule out anything that Smith might have been trying to express via Nephi.

Complex math gets ... complicated. Imagine:

[Philo Sofee]

A silly mathematical joke might actually be worthwhile for historians. The "number" denoted by the lowercase i is defined by the arbitrary rule that i times i is equal to -1. This makes no sense in terms of the kind of arithmetic that you can do with apples or patches of carpet measuring so-wide by so-long, but it turns out to be a self-consistent game rule. It's an artificial game rule for an abstract kind of multiplication that doesn't match how carpet areas behave, but it turns out that it does match how a lot of other real things behave, in more abstract ways, so i is used constantly in physics. Mathematicians call ordinary numbers "real numbers", in contrast to the bizarre artificial "numbers" like i, which are called "imaginary numbers". Math and physics like to use "numbers" of the composite form a + i x b, where a and b are ordinary "real" numbers. These composite concepts are called "complex numbers". So one could say that history is complex: partly real and partly imaginary. It's a stupid joke, but maybe not completely stupid, because using the language of exact sciences might be a subtle way to assert the valid claim that history—especially ancient history—is an important and serious discipline even though some of its subject matter isn't real.

Anyway, Smith was doing two layers. He was writing a 19th century idea of what ancient historians would have written as history. I think this might push any honest component of his intentions into the unfathomable. If real ancient historians were in the first place writing a "complex" mixture of myth, metaphor, and fiction, with or without some notion that what they wrote also happened in some sense, and then we allow Smith to be mixing more myth and metaphor and fiction on top of all that, by using his imagined ancient historians in the complex ways that real ancient historians used their history, then I at least don't feel confident in ruling out anything whatever as something that Smith might have been intending to express.

So I'm willing to believe that Smith was not only committing a fraud, but was also trying to do something honest, though non-factual, with his imaginary ancient history. My problem, though, is that I don't have much faith in our ability to pin down any honest thing in particular that Smith might have been trying to do. Practically anything seems to be equally possible. So even if fraud wasn't the only thing Smith was doing, it seems to be the only thing he was doing that is worthwhile discussing. Everything else seems too nebulous. If Thucydides made things up, and Nephi is a made-up Thucydides, then I can't rule out anything that Smith might have been trying to express via Nephi.

In short....Dan Vogel's pius fraud theory.

I think that's pretty darn apt.

[Marcus]

A silly mathematical joke might actually be worthwhile for historians. The "number" denoted by the lowercase i is defined by the arbitrary rule that i times i is equal to -1. This makes no sense in terms of the kind of arithmetic that you can do with apples or patches of carpet measuring so-wide by so-long, but it turns out to be a self-consistent game rule. It's an artificial game rule for an abstract kind of multiplication that doesn't match how carpet areas behave, but it turns out that it does match how a lot of other real things behave, in more abstract ways, so i is used constantly in physics. Mathematicians call ordinary numbers "real numbers", in contrast to the bizarre artificial "numbers" like i, which are called "imaginary numbers". Math and physics like to use "numbers" of the composite form a + i x b, where a and b are ordinary "real" numbers. These composite concepts are called "complex numbers". So one could say that history is complex: partly real and partly imaginary. It's a stupid joke, but maybe not completely stupid, because using the language of exact sciences might be a subtle way to assert the valid claim that history—especially ancient history—is an important and serious discipline even though some of its subject matter isn't real.

Anyway, Smith was doing two layers. He was writing a 19th century idea of what ancient historians would have written as history. I think this might push any honest component of his intentions into the unfathomable. If real ancient historians were in the first place writing a "complex" mixture of myth, metaphor, and fiction, with or without some notion that what they wrote also happened in some sense, and then we allow Smith to be mixing more myth and metaphor and fiction on top of all that, by using his imagined ancient historians in the complex ways that real ancient historians used their history, then I at least don't feel confident in ruling out anything whatever as something that Smith might have been intending to express.

So I'm willing to believe that Smith was not only committing a fraud, but was also trying to do something honest, though non-factual, with his imaginary ancient history. My problem, though, is that I don't have much faith in our ability to pin down any honest thing in particular that Smith might have been trying to do. Practically anything seems to be equally possible. So even if fraud wasn't the only thing Smith was doing, it seems to be the only thing he was doing that is worthwhile discussing. Everything else seems too nebulous. If Thucydides made things up, and Nephi is a made-up Thucydides, then I can't rule out anything that Smith might have been trying to express via Nephi.

In short....Dan Vogel's pius fraud theory.

A pious fraud who got a 14 year old girl to marry him by threatening her family, along with all the other women--some already married whose husbands he dispatched to clear the way, two who were his foster children, and dozens of others--all married behind his wife's back. Fraud? Yes. Pious? Not so much.

[drumdude]

In short....Dan Vogel's pius fraud theory.

A pious fraud who got a 14 year old girl to marry him by threatening her family, along with all the other women--some already married whose husbands he dispatched to clear the way, two who were his foster children, and dozens of others--all married behind his wife's back. Fraud? Yes. Pious? Not so much.

The sham re-marriages done for Emma after she “authorized” the marriage without realizing he had already done it behind her back…

Do you need to know anything else about Joseph Smith’s character? If he had really seen Jesus he would have the balls to tell Emma the truth.

[Kishkumen]

A silly mathematical joke might actually be worthwhile for historians. The "number" denoted by the lowercase i is defined by the arbitrary rule that i times i is equal to -1. This makes no sense in terms of the kind of arithmetic that you can do with apples or patches of carpet measuring so-wide by so-long, but it turns out to be a self-consistent game rule. It's an artificial game rule for an abstract kind of multiplication that doesn't match how carpet areas behave, but it turns out that it does match how a lot of other real things behave, in more abstract ways, so i is used constantly in physics. Mathematicians call ordinary numbers "real numbers", in contrast to the bizarre artificial "numbers" like i, which are called "imaginary numbers". Math and physics like to use "numbers" of the composite form a + i x b, where a and b are ordinary "real" numbers. These composite concepts are called "complex numbers". So one could say that history is complex: partly real and partly imaginary. It's a stupid joke, but maybe not completely stupid, because using the language of exact sciences might be a subtle way to assert the valid claim that history—especially ancient history—is an important and serious discipline even though some of its subject matter isn't real.

Anyway, Smith was doing two layers. He was writing a 19th century idea of what ancient historians would have written as history. I think this might push any honest component of his intentions into the unfathomable. If real ancient historians were in the first place writing a "complex" mixture of myth, metaphor, and fiction, with or without some notion that what they wrote also happened in some sense, and then we allow Smith to be mixing more myth and metaphor and fiction on top of all that, by using his imagined ancient historians in the complex ways that real ancient historians used their history, then I at least don't feel confident in ruling out anything whatever as something that Smith might have been intending to express.

So I'm willing to believe that Smith was not only committing a fraud, but was also trying to do something honest, though non-factual, with his imaginary ancient history. My problem, though, is that I don't have much faith in our ability to pin down any honest thing in particular that Smith might have been trying to do. Practically anything seems to be equally possible. So even if fraud wasn't the only thing Smith was doing, it seems to be the only thing he was doing that is worthwhile discussing. Everything else seems too nebulous. If Thucydides made things up, and Nephi is a made-up Thucydides, then I can't rule out anything that Smith might have been trying to express via Nephi.

Fascinating, and worthy of much reflection. For a long time, I have thought that the Book of Mormon was more like an ancient epic than an ancient history. An epic is a kind of poetic reflection on the past that is also a fabrication. Vergil’s Aeneid is filled with various bits of “lore” about ancient Italy and it incorporates lots of founding myths, anecdotes, and stylistic conventions that are riffing on the works of Homer, and in that way it provides the Romans their own poetic founding myth. At the same time, it is incredibly artificial and disconnected from anything approaching actual history. The Book of Mormon is Vergil in the KJV style. Its worst sins in the eyes of our age is that it claims to be about the actual past and, worse yet, about a people whose origin, we feel today, he had no right to opine on.

[Kishkumen]

The sham re-marriages done for Emma after she “authorized” the marriage without realizing he had already done it behind her back…

Do you need to know anything else about Joseph Smith’s character? If he had really seen Jesus he would have the balls to tell Emma the truth.

I agree that polygamy was and is bad business. Unconscionable in the way Joseph Smith did it, but also just a poor model of marriage for any society.

At the same time, I don’t find it very useful to try to understand everything about Mormonism through the lens of Joseph Smith’s apparent character flaws in individual areas, as though all we need to know is that he lied about this, that, or the other, to write the whole thing off.

All that is, in my view, is an inversion of the simplistic and naïve thinking that some people lean heavily on in order to become and stay LDS. Replace simple and naïve with simplistic and cynical, and there one is: the disillusioned but no more enlightened ex-Mo.

I don’t like Brigham Young, but I think he was somewhat more realistic than most when he disassociated Joseph Smith’s moral character from the religion he founded. Joseph Smith himself also understood that people would demand him to be the two-dimensional “saint” they felt a prophet should be but that he would always fail at being.

Whether one buys into the LDS thing or not, human culture does not come out of ideal situations and ideal people. Although it is nearly irresistible to obsess over the moral character of others, there are times when that concern can become oppressive, and those who insist on doggedly pursuing the question almost seem to be relishing in the failures of others to their own detriment. That is something that I know I have to be on my guard against in myself.

[Marcus]

what Smith did wasn't 'marriage,' poorly done or otherwise. He was a sexual predator. Your whole example is yet more severity softening, and by your own words for an external reason unrelated to the actual events.

It's like saying domestic violence is a poor model for problem-solving in society. But look at how well the guy plays pro football, and don't be so quick to judge his character, especially if you've ever lost your temper.

[Physics Guy]

For a long time, I have thought that the Book of Mormon was more like an ancient epic than an ancient history. An epic is a kind of poetic reflection on the past that is also a fabrication. Vergil’s Aeneid is filled with various bits of “lore” about ancient Italy and it incorporates lots of founding myths, anecdotes, and stylistic conventions that are riffing on the works of Homer, and in that way it provides the Romans their own poetic founding myth. At the same time, it is incredibly artificial and disconnected from anything approaching actual history. The Book of Mormon is Vergil in the KJV style. Its worst sins in the eyes of our age is that it claims to be about the actual past and, worse yet, about a people whose origin, we feel today, he had no right to opine on.

Huh. That does ring a bell. In particular the first few books by Nephi, getting Lehi and family to America, do read more like an Odyssey or an Aeneid, with action and declamations, than like the mostly stodgier recitations of Old Testament history. The closest the Old Testament seems to come to Homeric epic, I would say, is in the exodus from Egypt and maybe in David fighting Goliath. But in both those Biblical stories there is so much emphasis on God's miraculous assistance that the human characters are more chorus than heroes. Smith seems to give more active roles to his heroes; God gives them only guidance and a magical item or two, like Greek gods discreetly supporting their protegés.

My first thought was that Smith's retro-ancient epic stands out for having first-person narration. That's not Biblical; the only first-person Old Testament work that springs to my mind is Ecclesiastes, and it's a sermon, not a story. A narrator-protagonist like Nephi doesn't sound like an ancient epic to me, either, but ancient epics were at least nominally first-person, in featuring the poet as a frame narrator who occasionally speaks in first person about the epic itself, including its inspiration by a divine muse.

How much exposure to classical literature might Smith have had? The classics were revered as an essential part of education and culture in Smith's time, but perhaps not in his place. Could he have absorbed enough of the genre of classical epic that it might really have influenced the Book of Mormon along with the King James Old Testament—and perhaps to a greater degree than Smith himself might have realised?

[Marcus]

You might be interested in W. Davis' piece, then. In his opinion, Smith was considerably influenced by Bunyan's storytelling. Here's a quick overview of his article in the LA Review of Books:

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/149066

Parallels between Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and the Book of Mormon have not gone entirely unnoticed. As early as 1831, Eber Howe, in his anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed, noted the use of names — “Desolation” and “Bountiful” from Pilgrim’s Progress reappear in the Book of Mormon — but most observations have been similarly limited in scope or suffered from lack of a systematic methodology. Bunyan wrote upwards of 60 books, tracts, and pamphlets, including Grace Abounding, A Few Sighs from Hell, Holy War and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, and these texts provide extensive narrative parallels to the Book of Mormon, often containing unique characteristics shared only by Bunyan and Smith.