Don Bradley on the Lost 116-pages

[_krose]

WWJP? (What would Jesus post?)

I think... lolcats. Lots and lots of lolcats.

[_Kishkumen]

Chris, I'm sure you thought of this before, but if you haven't, perhaps this might be useful to you in some way.

Those are fantastic insights, Sethbag.

Thanks for sharing them.

[_Nightlion]

We all have a relative tipping point in such things. Who has read Don's source? You simply question it out of hand or have you read what he is referencing with that guy who interviewed Joseph Sr?

I don't think I have much more to contribute to this topic Nightlion, but if you are interested in the source you can find it here here.

If you search the page for tabernacle it is the second reference. Read it and I'm sure you'll find it interesting.

Thanks,

Hasa Diga Eebowai

Thanks.
Searched but found no tabernacle information.?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Nicely said, Seth. I agree.

[_lulu]

I guess this leads to the question, which is harder, to establish credibility as a Seer or Prophet by demonstrating possession of an interesting rock, or to establish it by claiming God appeared to one in secret and gave them his personal authorization?

It would depend on the audience, one narrative for the Smiths, Harris's, Knights and Whitmers, who were into treasure seeking, a new one when others start to join the church through missionary work who were more Restorationist (not that the 2 groups could not overlap).

Dale Morgan suggests as much when he makes clear that the Book of Mormon was the first origin narrative and the First Vision was a subsequent origin narrative.

Now, when the First Vision narrative began and was then elaborated, Joseph Smith was facing some challenges to his position and was speaking to a different audience than when he started with the Book of Mormon.

[_Tobin]

Finally, I think as a general observation, it might just be best to let the 116 pages be forgotten. From a believers perspective, God didn't think them all that important, after all He was willing to chuck them in favor of the current Book of Mormon. From a critics perspective, Joseph Smith seemed really nervous about trying to reproduce them, probably for a good reason.

Now you're just being catty.

And being incorrect. The 116 pages and the sealed sections (as will many other records) will come forth at some future date. I know you don't believe it, but just wait and see.

[_lulu]

the magic, treasure hunting and the religious, were part and parcel to the same, a single 'organic' phenomenon?

That is the question. David Hall in Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England argues that there was not a separation between folk practice and religion for the people, time and place he studies, a period before Joseph Smith and a different location.

I think an answer to the question, at least for Lucy, might be in the “unexpressed” part of the following statement.

“Now I shall change my theme for the present but let not my reader suppose that because I shall pursue another topic for a season that we stopt our labor and went <at> trying to win the faculty of Abrac drawing Magic circles or sooth saying . . .” Lucy’s Book, 323, Preliminary Manuscript

This statement has 3 elements but I am mostly concerned with the 1st two.
1. The changed theme/another topic
2. Winning the faculty of Abrac, drawing Magic circles, sooth saying
3. Smith laziness

We focus on #2, the Abrac, magic circles, sooth saying

But what was #1, the changed theme/ another topic, that Lucy feared would lead readers to #2 and then to #3? I don’t think it was #3 because #3 is acknowledged.

If #1 was religious, I think you would have a good argument that Lucy made no separation between the folk practices and religion. But it’s not patently obvious what #1 was.

I have never seen the Preliminary Manuscript and it is my understanding that some of the pages have been reordered so I’m not sure what the new theme/another topic is.

In the critical edition, the next time the Preliminary Manuscript picks up, (except for Joseph Smith, Sr. vision #6 which the ed. says comes from a different location in the Prel. Man., 324) it relates Joseph Smith, Sr. vision #7, 330. But it is hard to see, at least for me, that talking of Joseph Smith, Sr.’s visions would lead to accusations of laziness although it is possible. But Joseph Smith, Sr.’s visions aren’t a new topic either, Lucy has already talked about them.

After the 7th vision, the critical edition has the Prel. Man. taking up Lucy’s version of the visit of Moroni which is of course the beginning of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, 335. Is this the changed theme/new topic that flows to folk practices and accusations of family laziness?
I’ve come across a # of references in secondary sources (I’ve never traced them back to the primary sources) that the seers stone(s) were necessary to conjure up Moroni and locate the plates.
The plates contained the fullness of the everlasting gospel, a religious topic.

One line of reasoning would be that Lucy saw the use of Abrac, magic circles and sooth saying as bringing forth the fullness of the everlasting gospel, that is the Book of Mormon and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is the changed theme/new topic that was so connected with the folk practices. Thus, she made no distinction between folk practice and religion but saw folk practice as the way to get the pure religion she sought from heaven outside of the Bible.

PS Haven’t read CK’s article yet to which he posted a link. This thread is turning into a great “panel” on early Mormonism.

[_DonBradley]

Elphaba,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, including how my tone impacted your willingness to hear what I had to say. That impact is a good thing to be reminded of...

by the way, great username!

Don

[_DonBradley]

All,

Here is what I was going to post last night:
________________________________________________________________

Let me offer a bit of perspective on this presentation, that may be useful in assessing it.

The presentation tried to cover a lot of ground. It dealt with five areas--the sources on the lost pages, the possibility of a Nephite "Ark of the Covenant" or equivalent, who filled the role of high priest, the story of Aminadi, and the story of the finding of the interpreters--in 40 minutes, and is abstracted from a book that will cover the contents of the lost pages at much greater depth (150-200 pages on this, and about 100 on the history surrounding the manuscript loss itself).

I'm also currently producing a Master's thesis on the topic, working under committee members who were initially skeptical I could reconstruct much of the lost narrative and who are now convinced I can. In the weeks prior to FAIR, I labored over my"Pillars of my Faith" talk, into which I ended up pouring an exorbitant amount of time, because I had to distill so much into so little time, and because I considered it so important. During this period I also applied for a fellowship I had just learned about, to help fund the writing of my book. This required jumping through a lot of hoops.

Although the FAIR talk was on a topic I know very well, I'd hoped to fully write out and polish my text, and to have a PowerPoint covering each point I made and displaying the relevant sources. With everything else going on, I wasn't able to get it to this point, despite staying up all night the night before I delivered it.

This talk, like every human communication, was framed with its audience and context in mind. My audience was other believing Latter-day Saints, and ones of the sort who are interested in LDS history and scripture, with a particular eye to apologetics. I'd proposed to speak on the temple in the lost 116 pages, a topic with several sub-topics; so I felt I ought to hit on each of those. But my time frame--about 40 minutes--meant I'd need to cover each only briefly. This necessity, and speaking to an audience of fellow Latter-day Saints, to whom I did not need to justify taking the Book of Mormon text seriously and looking at the biblical narrative as its appropriate background, dictated that I would neither 1) try to deal with every in and out and nuance of the biblical tradition (which is not my area in any case) in searching for biblical allusions in the text nor 2) explain this "omission."

I am not, as I've said before, a natural apologist. Rather than spend my time crafting a case for something, even something I believe in and value, I prefer to be digging into the data and learning things I didn't already know. Discovery, not defense, is my natural mode. However, as I mentioned at last year's Kinderhook plates presentation, I sometimes find things in my scholarship that offer a new perspective on issues of controversy and therefore have potential value in apologetics.

If the conference of the Foundation for Apologetics Information and Research is not an appropriate place to draw these out a bit, then I am at a complete loss to what would be an appropriate venue for it.

While some of the findings of my work on this subject have potential apologetic value, my methodology is not apologetic; and not one of the arguments to be presented in the text of my book depends on acceptance of an ancient (or 19th century) context for the book's production. I began my work on the topic as very much a nonbeliever, and one looking for connections between the text and Joseph Smith's environment. Some of my findings in that research, and related research on Joseph Smith, led me to reconsider issues of faith and religious experience that I've long wrestled. I thus now approach the text as a Latter-day Saint. This shift has not greatly affected my methodology for reconstructing elements of the lost text, because the evidence for those contents remains the
.
same.

If I were a textual critic studying the Gospel of John's account of Jesus' resurrection, my evidence for the earliest text, and my means of determining it, would remain precisely the same even if I changed my view on the historicity of the Resurrection itself. Similarly, my work isn't trying to determine the historicity of the Book of Mormon's lost contents; it's trying to determine what those contents were. The resulting findings may then, possibly, play into discussions over the book's historicity, but that would be a secondary use of the reconstructive work.

In the Introduction to the my M.A. thesis I lay out the approach I'll be taking therein, discussing various approaches and finally settling on methodological agnosticism regarding faith claims and using an approach suggested by religious studies scholar Robert Orsi in taking seriously the world of the scriptural text under analysis.

I assume, with a good deal of justification, that the Book of Mormon narratives are going to be substantially self-consistent. I also set the text's narrative against the backdrop of the narrative it sets itself against--that of the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Mormon makes numerous direct references to biblical figures and events, and more often offers allusions to these, frequently--as explored by several other scholars--in complex ways. (See, for instance, the various analyses of the exodus pattern in the Book of Mormon, and other analyses of the book's biblical allusions--e.g., the work of Alan Goff.)

My arguments for the lost pages' contents, like textual critics' arguments about the earliest readings of the Gospels, don't assume either the historicity or ahistoricity of those contents. My purpose is to establish, by methods that can be accepted by people from various perspectives on the book's origin, what was in the earliest manuscript.
_______________________________________________________________

by the way, just a note about the (relatively rare) occasions when I give someone the kiss off in online discussion. When I do this, it almost always has a background in my being frustrated with myself for spending time here that I simply don't have. For whatever reason I'll feel like I should respond to something someone has said, but I'll realize that I don't have the time to do this adequately, or I'll be frustrated with how much time I've already put into it (or both). Giving someone the kiss-off at that point is a frustrated attempt to extricate myself from the discussion and avoid spending further time on the message boards instead of in the important things I'm running behind on in real life.

Hopefully I'll do better at managing my time, won't kick myself, and won't do that again. But if I do, don't take it too personally. Just tell me to take a hike and get back to the things I feel I need to be doing.

Ciao,

Don

[_DrW]

Thanks for posting a bit of explanation and background.

Very thoughtful.