John Gee, Historian

[_sock puppet]

Gee is full of crap.

[_DarkHelmet]

This creates major problems (as if there aren't enough already) for the Book of Mormon. How did all those KJV translation errors and word for word plagiarisms get into the Book of Mormon if Joseph Smith was totally ignorant of the Bible?

[_CaliforniaKid]

John Gee:

[Joseph Smith] seems never to have read the apocrypha in his life.

JST Manuscript:

The Songs of Solomon are not inspired writings.

for what it's worth, Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs) isn't part of the Apocrypha. It's actually part of the regular Protestant canon.

As a side note, Joseph Smith is not the only one who rejected the canonicity of this rather risque love poem. Martin Luther said the same thing about it. Most Protestants held that Solomon's seductive ode to a sexy lover was actually a metaphor for Christ's love for the Church. But this reading didn't work for people like Smith and Luther who insisted on reading scripture literally. Possibly Smith's scribe Sidney Rigdon informed him of Luther's view that the book was not inspired.

[Guest]

for what it's worth, Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs) isn't part of the Apocrypha. It's actually part of the regular Protestant canon.

As a side note, Joseph Smith is not the only one who rejected the canonicity of this rather risque love poem. Martin Luther said the same thing about it. Most Protestants held that Solomon's seductive ode to a sexy lover was actually a metaphor for Christ's love for the Church. But this reading didn't work for people like Smith and Luther who insisted on reading scripture literally. Possibly Smith's scribe Sidney Rigdon informed him of Luther's view that the book was not inspired.

Yes, Celestial Kingdom, I was actually aware of its place in the canon. Gee argues that Smith did not read the Apocrypha because God told him those works were of questionable inspiration. We should then suppose, I imagine, that he never read the Song of Solomon too? I don't think so, particularly when he quotes to the Song of Solomon in his revelations (D&C 5:14 [revealed at Harmony in 1828], 109:73-74). Likewise, arguing that Smith did not read the Apocrypha because God apparently told him not to retranslate it (D&C 91) doesn't work.

Gee wants us to think Smith never read a passage he didn't translate or find through careless flipping around until he finished his translation of the Bible. If he didn't translate it, and we can't find a witness (including his own witness) that he read it, to Gee Smith did not read it.

That extreme position is held by no one but Gee and whoever will seek to jump on his bandwagon for polemical purposes. The sum of the evidence, even in the witnesses Gee uses, should rather lead us to think that Smith's contemporaries believed that he knew and read the Bible much less than they did. It should not lead us to conclude that Smith never read the Bible and knew nothing of it.

I should have written that out, but I hoped folks would put it together.

[Guest]

There is an elephant in this room that needs to be addressed, and that is Moroni 10:3-5:

3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Gee is asking his reader to believe that, contrary to the instruction Moroni gave by inspiration from God to Moroni's readers regarding the search for truth and inspiration in scripture, God would simply tell Joseph Smith up front, "Hey, don't read that, it's not inspired."

Maybe it was not God's wisdom that he should read them? I don't think that's so. Otherwise, there would be no point in reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it at all. I take this to mean that if it is wisdom in God that the Book of Mormon should come to a reader, and s/he reads it, then God will tell him/er by the Holy Ghost that it is true.

[_Kevin Graham]

Well this is actually something David Bokovoy said to me years ago on the MAD board. don't have an exact quotation but he said essentially the same thing Gee just said.

[_Kishkumen]

Well this is actually something David Bokovoy said to me years ago on the MAD board. don't have an exact quotation but he said essentially the same thing Gee just said.

I don't know what David Bokovoy's position is now. Do you?

In any case, if you are able to dig up exactly what he said, I would appreciate it.

I would be surprised if it were as extreme as Gee, but it is possible, I suppose.

[_Always Changing]

Possibly Smith's scribe Sidney Rigdon informed him of Luther's view that the book was not inspired.

I was surprised to see this coming from you. What documentation do you have to that effect? I thought the evidence for Rigdon and Joseph Smith knowing each other before the book was published was inconclusive. Unless you wanted to say Oliver Cowdery. Joseph Smith warned people off of the Deuterocanon because he didn't want them to see hints of Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees in the Book of Mormon.

[Guest]

To continue with the evidence against Gee's ridiculous position regarding Joseph Smith's utter ignorance of the Bible, let's look at Joseph Smith's 1832 account of the First Vision, I think this nails the coffin of Gee's apologetic completely:

At about the age of twelve years my mind became seriously imprest with regard to all important concerns for the welfare of my immortal Soul which led me to searching the scriptures believeing as I was taught, that they contained the word of God thus applying myself to them and my intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations led me to marvel excedingly for I discovered that they did not adorn their profession by a holy walk and Godly conversation agreeable to what I found contained in that sacred depository this was a grief to my Soul thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart concerning the sittuation of the world of mankind the contentions and divisions the wickedness and abominations and the darkness which pervaded the minds of making my mind becoming exceedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins by searching the scriptures I found that mankind did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament and I felt to mourn for my own sins and for the sins of the world for I learned in the scriptures that God was the same yesterday to day and forever that he was no respecter of persons for he was God....

Here Joseph Smith says that he began searching the scriptures at the age of twelve and continued to do so through the age of fifteen. He did so extensively enough to conclude that the world's people were living in a state of sin and that he was too. He did so sufficiently to conclude that no one was following the gospel of Jesus as it was described in the New Testament. In other words, if we are to trust our best, earliest source on Joseph Smith's personal process leading up to the First Vision--which is Joseph Smith himself writing in 1832--then we have to conclude that, whatever others may have believed regarding Joseph's acquaintance with the Bible, Joseph is in his own words telling us about a period of intense study of two or more years in the New Testament and perhaps also the Old.

Whatever Gee is up to, it does not include a responsible handling of this evidence. Maybe he does not know this account of the First Vision?

In any case, Gee is obviously wrong to conclude that Joseph Smith was completely ignorant of the Bible and did not read it before he worked on the JST. The evidence to the contrary is conclusive, in my opinion.

[_Tom]

Joseph Smith never read the Bible before he translated the Book of Mormon, did not even own one, and was ignorant of it. He seems never to have read the apocrypha in his life.

http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2015/03/on-latest-anti-mormon-attack-on-book-of.html

Gee is underplaying the extent of Joseph Smith's exposure to and familiarity with the Bible before he translated the Book of Mormon. The 1832 version of the first vision creates problems for Gee's argument.

P. Barlow discusses this issue in Mormons and the Bible (see pages 10-15 here).

Edited: I see that Kishkumen has quoted from the 1832 version, so I have removed my quotation of the same.