As Regarding SeattleUte's BoA Question I

[Sleeping in EQ]

From SeattleUte:

EQ, let me ask you this. Do you see any significance to the following distinction?

The OT: The Pentateuch (very generally) conceived at a time before widespread and highly developed written language among the Hebrews; reducing the folk tales to a writing was part and parcel of the organic process by which the Hebrews developed a sophisticated written language; ultimately, there was a redactor who came along and edited and organized the stories and sayings. This process was cumulative and occurred over centuries.

The B of A: The B of A was generated in a short time frame, by a single highly literate man pretty much fully in command of English, a highly developed language, such man purporting (apparently) to render a translation of ancient documents in the space of such short time frame.

It seems to me the OT winds up a genuine hitorical artifact. I can see that the BofA, in contrast, could be called the product of a deliberate fraud. But after 170 years and a movement comprised of several million people coming to organize themselves and achieve self-identity around Mormons scriptures including the B of A maybe the distinction is now one without a difference, and the B of A and the OT are alike genuine historical artifacts. To me what matters a lot is how the Mormon Church regards and represents the B of A to its members.

Hope this makes sense.




From Me:

I think it does make sense. Your question is a good one, and I could spend a ridiculous amount of time answering it. Instead I’ll take a shot at brevity and hope that it’s close enough to the mark.

The way I read it, you are entertaining the plausibility of two compounding existential arguments, but find your own perspective in a related, but still distinct, third. The two arguments you find plausible are both of categorization (i.e. that a particular object, subject, or process is best or perhaps exclusively considered to be of a type) and origin, and are interlinked. In this case they are that “Joseph Smith is/was a fraud” and that the “Book of Abraham is/was a fraudulent object that evidences that fact.” You seem willing to make correlative spiritual judgments on these matters as well, but I’ll get to that momentarily.


The argument that you’re most willing to set your feet in, though, is lurking behind your statement that “what matters a lot is how the Mormon Church regards and represents the B of A to its members.” It seems to me that while this argument moves away from questions of origin on one level—you are clearly concerning yourself with a question of representation that transcends the history of the Mormon Church since the BoA, that accounts for fruits as well as roots—on another level it invokes the “original” difficulties of both Joseph Smith and the BoA, for it is these difficulties that are suggesting to you a need for greater forthrightness in the Church’s representation. You then nuance your argument by suggesting that the way an object (or collection of objects) such as the OT or BoA is produced and taken up by readers may help transform it into something of more (and by logical extension, less) legitimacy (hence my differentiating use of “is/was” above). You could be moving into the realm of value judgment here if you are arguing for value along with fact. I think that you are making both judgments, as I sense a humanism in your comments that I see paralleled in a more general way in those of William James. Specifically, that rank and file Mormons are not in a position to evaluate the BoA because they experience it in a way that conflates its existential and spiritual qualities and/or obscures understandings of them. Therein, in my estimation you argue that the Church is not only counter-factual but also immoral because of its conflated representations. In this line of thinking you could then argue that Mormons’ problematic experience of the BoA is facilitated (and perhaps, caused?) by their own culture with its tendency to reinforce conformity to the views and expectations of Church leaders who cultivate interpretations of objects such as the BoA, and do so in what they believe to be a furtherance of their own interests. Herein I believe you are positioning knowledge as both an existential and value-based palliative for the problematic conflation of the existential and spiritual in representation (and by extension, in reception).