Converts to Limnor's Book of Mormon Origins?

[Gadianton]

Scaffolding is a special kind of a framework, a temporary framework that goes away when the final structure is complete.

[Limnor]

Scaffolding is a special kind of a framework, a temporary framework that goes away when the final structure is complete.

True. And when scaffolding stays up too long, people mistake it for the building.

[Morley]

Scaffolding is a special kind of a framework, a temporary framework that goes away when the final structure is complete.

True. And when scaffolding stays up too long, people mistake it for the building.

And it’s invariably ugly.

[malkie]

Scaffolding is a special kind of a framework, a temporary framework that goes away when the final structure is complete.

It has a good pedagogical pedigree

[I Have Questions]

I've used the word "scaffolding" in conjunction with the word "template" which runs parallel to "framework".

Well no. You’ve mistakenly used the word “scaffolding” instead of using more accurate words like “framework” “basis” “foundation” “draft” etc.

I came up with the context in regard to how I chose to use this word. The ways I've used this word are independent of any other application of the word.

I wholeheartedly agree. Although I don’t think you realise what you just said about yourself.

[Physics Guy]

Perhaps Limnor has explained this somewhere and I missed it, but I wonder why Smith (or anyone else) would write the Book of Mormon as an extensive roman à clef in the way Limnor proposes. For my part, I can think of three possible reasons; I'm just not sure whether they are strong enough motivations for someone to do all that writing.

The first reason is just that having a story to copy, except with changes of names and setting, is a bit like having a real geography, such as Shulem's candidate of the Delmarva Peninsula, as a model for a fictional setting. Tying your story to something you already know well helps you keep your fiction consistent, so that all its parts hang together properly. It also ensures that no part of what you write can turn out to be impossible, because everything you write is something that actually did happen, under different names.

As far as that reason is concerned, the hidden story doesn't have to be any real history involving the author. It could be anything that the author knows well. It could be real history from any place or time, it could be a relative's anecdote, it could be the Odyssey or The Three Little Pigs. A story about one's own recent past is likely to occur to a self-centered person.

A second reason for writing a coded story could be to communicate with other people who can decipher the code. If Smith and Rigdon and a few others were in a conspiracy together, proclaiming a scripture in which a Rigdon-figure falls into line behind a Smith-figure, and ends up doing all right because he accepts his subordinate place, would be an effective way to tell the whole gang that Smith was taking over and that they'd better play along.

Yeah, Smith could just have sent letters to call the gang together for a secret meeting to sort out the pecking order, but broadcasting the coded message over a public channel would have made it harder for anyone to talk back to Smith. It would also have let him address all his fellow conspirators without necessarily revealing to any of them just who the others all were. This might have been important, say, if one of Smith's main advantages over someone like Rigdon was that Rigdon wasn't sure how many henchmen Smith had in the movement.

Finally, I don't put it past Smith or anyone in his circle to have believed that writing the Book of Mormon was a magical spell, like sticking pins in a voodoo doll, that would somehow make things happen in the real world.

Perhaps Smith could have written a coded Scripture for entirely different reasons from these, but these reasons do seem at least plausible to me. I also think that they're all compatible with each other, and that Smith could have acted on any or all of them without having to formulate them consciously and explicitly. To act on the second reason, for example, Smith would only have had to be thinking about the fact that the people in the inner circle would read his output with particular interest. The step of writing to them in particular could follow automatically. Acting on the first reason, and copying a known story, is a cheat that will occur to anyone who feels pressure to deliver a story and can't think up a new one in time. And if you've got a certain kind of magical world view, any natural mechanisms can easily be seen as part of the magic, while the magic can be attempted with a feeling that it doesn't hurt to try, without necessarily being certain it will work.

[Limnor]

It also ensures that no part of what you write can turn out to be impossible, because everything you write is something that actually did happen, under different names.

-snip-

A second reason for writing a coded story could be to communicate with other people who can decipher the code. If Smith and Rigdon and a few others were in a conspiracy together, proclaiming a scripture in which a Rigdon-figure falls into line behind a Smith-figure, and ends up doing all right because he accepts his subordinate place, would be an effective way to tell the whole gang that Smith was taking over and that they'd better play along.

-snip-

It would also have let him address all his fellow conspirators without necessarily revealing to any of them just who the others all were. This might have been important, say, if one of Smith's main advantages over someone like Rigdon was that Rigdon wasn't sure how many henchmen Smith had in the movement.

-snip-

I also think that they're all compatible with each other, and that Smith could have acted on any or all of them without having to formulate them consciously and explicitly. To act on the second reason, for example, Smith would only have had to be thinking about the fact that the people in the inner circle would read his output with particular interest.

I’ve highlighted your points above as very insightful and complementary to my theory.

What I haven’t yet explained fully is the role of the book as a “confessional.”

A bit of evidence for “why” names were encoded can be seen in the D&C model—the group and their actions were being hidden from outside prosecution and possible legal action regarding assets.

Whatever happened with Alvin (in my allegorical retelling, explained in Mosiah 7:26) provided a binding moment, a secret combination, and turned it into leverage. By “translating” that act into “revelation” and encoding it into the book, Joseph made acknowledgment of the role others’ played an instrument of authority—anywhere else it would be called blackmail. What started as a coded confession hardened into “scripture,” and the scripture, in turn, fixed the new order in place.

So, I don’t think it began as sacred for most—if not all—of them. The book reads as closer to politics than prophecy—a way for Joseph to seize control of the circle that had began with Rigdon’s “3rd Epistle of Peter” model. That model, within my allegorical explanation, was intended to be employed as a means to justify Rigdon’s unique theology and claims to leadership—even seership—as a prophet of the restoration of the ancient order. The book becomes the mechanism of consolidation of power: a story that re-writes the hierarchy and sanctions it through ancient “proof.”

Joseph recognized that whoever had the “gift and power of God” or “interpreters”, when he read that part in the unredacted version, is the inheritor of the title translator, seer, and prophet, and he seized on the opportunity, and bound a group together that would support his claims.

[malkie]

It's possible that I've missed it, but I don't remember seeing, in this topic, any discussion of the failed attempt to sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon in 1830 in Canada. How does this fit with your ideas about the origins and coded content of the book, Limnor? Is it relevant at all?

That attempt and the later explanation of its failure exposed a concept that I think has been troublesome to some folks:

... the following revelation came through the stone: ‘Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of man: and some revelations are of the devil.’

An Address to All Believers in Christ

The idea that Mormon god's prophet could not always reliably distinguish his own ideas from those of his god, or, for that matter, from Satan, is troubling. [Note: reminder about how Joseph did not directly identify the personages he saw in the First Vision - could they have been emissaries of Satan?]

Some may also find the introduction, once again, of "the stone" to be troubling.

Limnor: if you prefer any discussion arising from these ideas to be taken out of this thread, please say so and I'll start another topic.

[Marcus]

True. And when scaffolding stays up too long, people mistake it for the building.

And it’s invariably ugly.

Amen to that.

[Limnor]

It's possible that I've missed it, but I don't remember seeing, in this topic, any discussion of the failed attempt to sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon in 1830 in Canada. How does this fit with your ideas about the origins and coded content of the book, Limnor? Is it relevant at all?

That attempt and the later explanation of its failure exposed a concept that I think has been troublesome to some folks:

... the following revelation came through the stone: ‘Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of man: and some revelations are of the devil.’

An Address to All Believers in Christ

The idea that Mormon god's prophet could not always reliably distinguish his own ideas from those of his god, or, for that matter, from Satan, is troubling. [Note: reminder about how Joseph did not directly identify the personages he saw in the First Vision - could they have been emissaries of Satan?]

Some may also find the introduction, once again, of "the stone" to be troubling.

Limnor: if you prefer any discussion arising from these ideas to be taken out of this thread, please say so and I'll start another topic.

I don’t mind, malkie. First, I’ll agree that trusting in a revelator who couldn’t tell whether it was God or the devil that provides revelation is a risky endeavor, yes.

That said, while I don’t see the copyright sale in Canada as central the composition, I do have some thoughts about what happened and why.

First, a note about how international copyright law worked at the time. U.S. and Canadian (British) copyrights were completely separate.

So if the revelation had “worked,” Joseph really could have made twice the money: once by selling the Canadian rights for whatever a publisher there would pay, and again by keeping full ownership and profit from the U.S. edition. From that perspective it probably felt like a low-risk, high-reward opportunity.

The odd part is that international copyright law made the whole plan impossible from the start—but I doubt anyone in their circle understood that.

Something else worth noting is that Joseph had already been warned in earlier revelations not to use his “gift” to chase money or worldly gain. The Lord, in those early texts, is very explicit: don’t use the gift “for filthy lucre”—and by extension, don’t try to sell inspired material.

So when the Canada revelation failed, that prior warning actually gives some insight into Whitmer’s later comment that “some revelations are of God, some are of man, and some are of the devil.”

From Whitmer’s perspective, the failure wasn’t random, it was an understanding by Whitmer, and oddly a confession by Joseph, that the revelation had been “from the devil,” to satisfy his desire for filthy lucre, exactly the temptation he had been warned about.

Another question is why Whitmer spilled—my view is that Whitmer had been “in on it” from the beginning, so he was looking for an opportunity to place himself in a position of leadership by exposing Joseph as a false prophet through that event to the world while maintaining the book as legitimate.