A Few More Sunstone West Highlights

 I promised to provide a few more highlights from Sunstone West, so here goes.  Friday evening's plenary session was the panel on the Mormon women's oral history project.  All the panelists were good, but I particularly enjoyed Lauren Kennard's discussion on "Defining the Relationship", which was full of humorous gems.  One woman, at fifteen, accepted a marriage proposal from a missionary whose name she didn't even know.  Another woman was unimpressed with some guy she dated until she met his parents, and then she fell in love... with him, of course.  ;-)  Another panelist described how when a Stake President in Hawaii decided that the Relief Society bank account would be incorporated into the stake's general fund, the women complied... but not before spending all their excess funds on a large, fancy dinner for all the women!

I got 2 hours of sleep Friday night because I was revising my paper for oral presentation.  Suffice to say, Saturday was a long day.

Saturday morning I chaired Jacob Rennaker's session, in which he discussed the Qumran community's use of scriptural texts as a starting point for receiving new scripture and new revelation, and compared this to Joseph Smith's revision of the King James Version of the Bible.  It was a fascinating presentation and discussion. Perhaps we should start a Qumran-style revelation-Bible-study group here on campus.

Saturday afternoon I had lunch with Don Bradley.  Don is frighteningly brilliant.  When he publishes all the things he's working on, there won't be any discoveries left to make.  Then I'll be out of a job and I'll have to find another discipline.

Don was part of another standout session  that afternoon, the book panel for Persistence of Polygamy: A Mormon Anthology.  Among other things, Don argued that Joseph Smith's relationship with Fanny Alger was sexual, but also was a formal marriage.  The full book, when published, will be a collection of essays from top-flight historians, covering everything from Joseph's Kirtland-era polygamy to polygamous Community of Christ converts in present-day India.

My own sessions went well.  I presented on American Indian delegations to Nauvoo in a dual session with Bryan Cottle.  Most of the delegations were composed of traditionalist Indians who had been allied with Britain against the US until the War of 1812, after which Britain gave up its New World ambitions and left the Indians hanging out to dry.  The Indian delegates to Nauvoo were apparently looking to Joseph Smith and the Mormons to fill the political vacuum left after the British pullout, and to serve as their white patrons and military allies against the US.  Joseph declined the offers of military alliance for public relations reasons, but his words and actions during the period suggest that his refusal may have been intended as a temporary deferral rather than a long-term commitment.

Saturday evening I participated in the panel on CGU's Mormon Studies program.  It is enough to say that great work is being done at CGU.  One thing we didn't talk about in the panel is the school's present financial trouble, which recently resulted in at least one controversial layoff and some other cutbacks.  The school isn't at risk of closure or anything, but like other institutions, it has suffered greatly due to the economic downturn.

If You Missed Sunstone West, You Missed Out!

Last night ended another Sunstone West Symposium.  It come off wonderfully, despite a few initial hurdles.  Apparently, when Mary Ellen Robertson arrived on Friday afternoon to prepare for the Symposium, the maintenance people on campus hadn't set anything up yet.  They explained that two nice young men in suits with nametags that said "Elder" had come by and notified them that the event was cancelled!  Fortunately Mary Ellen had come early enough to get things set up in time.  Thanks to Mary Ellen for all her hard work in making the Symposium a success, despite the apparent sabotage!

Friday evening, prior to the first session, I had the pleasure of dining with Bryan Cottle, Don Bradley, Newell Bringhurst, Tom Kimball, and Mike and Ken Reed.  Tom told me over dinner that Grant Palmer had been very hurt by the comments recently made about him at MADB, and really appreciated my standing up for him there.  I was extremely happy to hear that something good had come from my involvement in that fiasco, since it was pretty costly for me in terms of emotional investment and personal relationships (not to mention time spent online instead of on homework).  Tom provided me with a complementary copy of Grant's book, for which I'm very grateful.

After dinner, Tom told the following joke:

Q: What are crows?
A: Seagulls that refused to eat crickets in the pre-existence.

It sufficeth  me to say, I have a new favorite Mormon joke.

I'll share my thoughts on some of the individual sessions in a later post.

Why the LOST Island Is Actually a Giant Turtle

One of the writers of LOST once joked that the island may ultimately turn out to be a giant turtle.  But what if it wasn't a joke?

We now know that the evil spirit that inhabits John Locke had a "crazy mother" once upon a time.  We also know that the island moves.  And it has been implied that Jacob and his evil counterpart may not be native to the planet.  Given the LOST writers' interest in mythology, I think much of this story may actually be based on the traditional Iroquois creation myth, which goes like this:

Long before there were human beings, there were Sky People. They dwelled in the celestial world. In those days there was no sun. All light came from the large white blossoms on the celestial tree that grew in front of the Lodge of the Sky Chief. This Sky Chief had married a young wife. In time, this wife, Sky Woman, began to show signs that she would soon bear a child.

There was a troublesome being, called Firedragon, in the Sky World. Firedragon was always spreading rumors. Now he whispered to Sky Chief that the child who was about to be born would not be his. In a fit of anger and jealousy, Sky Chief uprooted the great celestial tree in front of his lodge. He pushed his wife through the hole where the tree had once stood.

Sky Woman fell rapidly down toward the vast dark waters below. The birds, feeling sorry for her, flew underneath and gently supported her, breaking her fall and carrying her slowly downwards. At the same time, the water animals hurried to make a place for her. Turtle said that he would support a world on his back. The sea animals plunged down into the water looking for some earth. Muskrat succeeded and came up with a large mouthful of earth, which he placed on Turtle's back. The light from the blossoms of the fallen celestial tree shone through the hole where it had stood and became the sun. When Sky Woman landed, everything was in readiness for her, with grass and trees beginning to grow.

Sky Woman gave birth to a daughter. When this daughter grew to womanhood, she began to be with child. No one knows whether her husband was Turtle or West Wind, but she gave birth to two remarkable twin boys–one good and one evil. The Good Twin was born in the usual way. But the Evil Twin was in a hurry and pushed through his mother's side to be born. In doing so, he killed his mother.

Sky Woman buried her daughter, and plants miraculously began to grow from various parts of the daughter's body–a tobacco plant, a cornstalk, a bean bush, and a squash vine. This was the origin of all the plants that would be most important to the human beings who would come later.

The Good Twin and the Evil Twin quickly grew to manhood. As soon as they were grown, they proved true to their names. The Good Twin began creating all sorts of good things: plants, animals, medicinal herbs, rivers, and streams. The Evil Twin began to spoil his brother's work., putting rapids and boulders in the rivers, creating poisonous plants, thorns and briars, diseases, and monsters. The Good and Evil Twins fought against each other to see who would predominate in creation, but the Evil could never overcome the Good. Finally the Good Twin created human beings to enjoy all the good things he had made for them. And that is how it all began.

So, a woman from the sky comes down and takes up residence on the back of a giant turtle-turned-island, and has twin boys, one good and one evil, by the latter of whom she is killed.  One of the twins is continually creating, the other perverting and destroying, and they struggle for dominance over the world.

Okay, so the island probably won't turn out to be on the back of a giant turtle.  But the fact that one of the writers even suggested such a possibility may indicate that they may have been keeping this myth in mind.

A Footnote to the Debate Over Nibley's Footnotes

A while back, Ron Huggins wrote a fairly devastating critique of Hugh Nibley's use and abuse of his sources.  More recently, Huggins's critique was critiqued by Shirley Ricks in the FARMS Review.  My critique of the critique of the critique follows.

In her entire lengthy article, Ricks does not respond to any of the specific examples Huggins offered. She spends a considerable amount of time discussing issues with which Huggins was unconcerned-- specifically, incomplete or inaccurate citations. Huggins was more interested in cases where Nibley misused or misrepresented his sources. These issues are almost entirely glossed over in the FARMS response.

The FARMS response is also largely an argument from authority, mostly just citing the assessments of Mormon scholars who think Nibley was right more often than he was wrong. It also makes a pretty lame dig at Huggins when it assumes that the reason he compared Nibley's translations with the published translations of professional scholars was that he lacked confidence to do his own translations.  (One suspects he would have been criticized for hubris had he used his own translations as the standard for comparison.)

Unlike Ricks, I tend to agree with Huggins's assessment of Nibley's footnotes. In Nibley's essay, "Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers," I found many of his statements about the KEP manuscripts to be false and misleading.  Brent Metcalfe's reaction to the essay was similar. In a letter to Wesley P. Walters, Nibley's Egyptology teacher Klaus Baer characterized Nibley's apologetics in terms strongly reminiscent of Huggins's view: "Much of it seems to be obfuscatory in the extreme, tending to pick on asides, quotes out of context, and opinions emitted by the large penumbra of semi-scholarly types (and crackpots) that hang around the fringes of Egyptology -- and are, of course, much attracted by such things as the Book of the Dead."  Baer identified five specific examples of misrepresentation from just a few pages of one of Nibley's works.

I think it's important to acknowledge that Nibley did a lot of good, was extremely knowledgeable, and had many talents and virtues.  His work is very useful for suggesting future directions of study.  But in my opinion, his work must also be used very critically and with careful attention to his sources.  It cannot generally be taken for granted that he accurately represented what they say.

Top Ten Reasons to Major in History

10. History graduates get jobs in many different industries.  (Coffee, groceries, infantry...)
9. Unlike the living, the dead don't get mad at you for gossiping about them.
8. Think of how fascinated your friends will be when you point out all the historical errors in Gladiator!
7. If we know the mistakes of the past, we can make more original ones in the future.
6. Why watch the HBO special when you can piece together the same story from dusty archival materials?
5. Even though no one will ever read your book, just having been published is totally worth the years of work.
4. People will have more incentive to emulate their heroes when they discover they had affairs and did drugs.
3. Sure, the money's better in fiction writing.  But it's not as much of a challenge.
2. If you really make it big, you might get to be in a documentary some day.

And the number 1 reason to major in history is,

1. Learning about the careers of historical people will help you decide what to study when you go back to school!

Joseph Smith's Prophecies of the Overthrow of the United States

One of the tragedies of historical study is that there are many items in private collections that we historians simply do not have access to. The Spink Shreve Galleries recently sold off a large collection of important Mormon documents, and fortunately put some images and excerpts online. This offers a rare glimpse of some documents that we otherwise might not know existed. Among the items sold is a July 6, 1849 letter from Ursula B. Hascall to her sister Ophelia. The letter says in part,

I call upon you to repent of your sins and flee to this ... I call upon you thus that you may rise up and say Ursulia you knew all this ... Ophelia did I not spew the profhecy spoken by Joseph Smith by the authority of Jesus Christ concerning the overthrow of the United States - the destruction of the states as a nation is just as sure as the sun will ever rise and set - it is near at hand, it is all ready to burst upon it.

This letter provides interesting additional confirmation for a prophecy that Joseph Smith uttered on at least three known occasions in 1843 and 1844: once while dining with Stephen Douglas in Carthage, Illinois, once before the US Congress, and once during a meeting of the Council of Fifty. On the first occasion, when dining with Douglas, Smith reportedly said,

I prophesy in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints in the state of Missouri and punish the crimes committed by her officers that in a few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted, and there will not be so much as a potsherd left for their wickedness in permitting the murder of men, women and children, and the wholesale plunder and extermination of thousands of her citizens to go unpunished, thereby perpetrating a foul and corroding blot upon the fair fame of this great republic, the very thought of which would have caused the high-minded and patriotic framers of the Constitution of the United States to hide their faces with shame. (DHC 5:393-94)

On the second occasion, before Congress, Smith "prophesied, by virtue of the holy Priesthood vested in me, and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that, if Congress will not hear our petition and grant us protection, they shall be broken up as a government, and god shall damn them. And there shall nothing be left of them - not even a grease spot" (Millennial Star v.22, p. 455).

On the third occasion, in the Council of Fifty, Smith reportedly "prophecied the entire overthrow of this nation in a few years" (George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995], 129).

Mormonism is often viewed as an unreservedly patriotic and quintessentially American movement.  While this is partly true, there is also a strong Mormon tradition of prophetic critique of the United States.  In good Puritan style, the early Mormons viewed the United States as a chosen but apostate people, and themselves as the "saving remnant".  Klaus Hansen has described this as a "higher patriotism".  Their allegiance was to the United States as it is meant to be, rather than to the United States as it actually is.  The prophetic critique of America remained popular among Mormons until after the revocation of polygamy in 1890, after which the Church undertook to revise its image in a more patriotic direction.

Red Jacket's Reply to a Christian Missionary

When the Reverend Mr. Cram came to Buffalo Creek, New York in 1805 to convert the Seneca Indians there to Christianity, the Seneca Chief Red Jacket answered him in the following very eloquent reply (read the full version here):

Brother, our seats were once large and yours were small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country, but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us.

Brother, continue to listen. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a Book. If it was intended for us, as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that Book, with the means of understanding it rightly. We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the Book?

Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great difference between His white and His red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that He has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for His children; we are satisfied.

Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.

Brother, you say you have not come to get our land or our money, but to enlighten our minds. I will now tell you that I have been at your meetings and saw you collect money from the meeting. I can not tell what this money was intended for, but suppose that it was for your minister; and, if we should conform to your way of thinking, perhaps you may want some from us.

Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest, and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.

It appears that Mr. Cram got pwn3d.

As a sidenote, my own pluralistic philosophy of religions is very similar to Red Jacket's in several respects.

Did Joseph Smith Teach a Limited, Tehuantepec Book of Mormon Geography?

Some Mormon scholars have pointed to an 1842 Times and Seasons article as evidence that Joseph Smith believed in a limited geography. There are two problems with this. First of all, the article was very probably written by John Taylor rather than Joseph Smith. And secondly, it is debatable to what extent the article actually promotes a limited geography. It quotes a lengthy excerpt from a book called Incidents of Travel in Central America, which is claimed as evidence for the Book of Mormon. At the end of the excerpt the author says that the Nephites "lived about the narrow neck of land, which now embraces Central America, with all the cities that can be found." This statement seems to indicate that the "narrow neck of land" described in the Book of Mormon is neither the isthmus of Panama nor of Tehuantepec, but embraces all of Central America. At the very least, this requires a much larger Book of Mormon geography than apologists have tried to read into the Book.

Jeff Lindsay recently put a somewhat different spin on this issue. Lindsay argued that because the 1842 editorial approvingly quoted a Toltec legend according to which the Toltecs were Israelite migrants from the time of Moses, this shows that Smith was open to the idea of “other migrations” to the New World besides those described in the Book of Mormon. But again, I think this is a misreading. The editorial actually takes the Toltec tradition as evidence of the Lehite migration, not of some “other” migration. The article says that the Toltec tradition comes “near the real fact”– i.e., the fact related in the Book of Mormon, that Lehi and his family were Hebrews who departed from the Red Sea and traveled to the Americas.

A second editorial in the Times and Seasons has been cited in support of a Tehuantepec geography, as well. The editorial says,

Since our 'Extract' was published from Mr. Stephens' 'Incidents of Travel,' &c., we have found another important fact relating to the truth of the Book of Mormon. Central America, or Guatimala [Guatemala], is situated north of the Isthmus of Darien and once embraced several hundred miles of territory from north to south.-The city of Zarahemla, burnt at the crucifixion of the Savior, and rebuilt afterwards, stood upon this land as will be seen from the following words in the book of Alma:-'And now it was only the distance of a day and half's journey for a Nephite, on the line Bountiful, and the land Desolation, from the east to the west sea; and thus the land of Nephi, and the land of Zarahemla was nearly surrounded by water: there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward.' [See Book of Mormon 3d edition, page 280-81.]

William J. Hamblin has written of this excerpt, "Since the internal geography of the Book of Mormon places Zarahemla south of the narrow neck of land, the editorial implies that the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, rather than Panama, was the Book of Mormon narrow neck of land." (JBMS 2/1, pp. 161-197). Actually, the editorial exhibits no awareness that the Book of Mormon "places Zarahemla south of the narrow neck of land." The mention of the isthmus of Darien (known today as Panama) actually implies that it, rather than Tehuantepec, was being identified with the narrow neck of land. Unlike Hamblin, the Times and Seasons editorialist did not have John Sorenson's geographic guidelines to work from.  Sorenson's guidelines should not be used as a lens through which to interpret nineteenth century leaders' statements about Book of Mormon geography.

These editorials may indeed reflect a view that Nephite civilization was more or less limited to Central America and its environs. However, there is no belief here in a specifically Tehuantepec geography, nor is there openness to "other migrations" to the Americas. Presumably, North and South America were still conceived as the lands northward and southward, and the natives of both continents were still assumed to be Lamanites. And however the editorials are to be interpreted, we also cannot assume that they reflect Joseph Smith's own views until some evidence of Smith's authorship can be adduced.

Every Child an Atheist?

On a long drive the other day, I entertained myself by listening to episode 39 of Mormon Expression, titled "Atheism and the Church". I was struck by a comment made by one of the interviewees to the effect that "all children are born atheists, and do not believe in God until they are taught to do so."

While this is probably true, I couldn't help but wonder as to its relevance. As an argument for atheism, it strikes me as ill-considered. Children have to be taught a lot of things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they would be better without those things. In cases where children grow up with little or no "input" from other humans, they end up basically living like animals, in some cases developing mental and emotional deficiencies. A certain amount of instruction and learning is required for any person to function effectively and to develop a sense of intrinsic human self-worth.  So the fact that religious knowledge is acquired rather than inherent does not make it any less valid than, say, scientific knowledge, which is also acquired.

If we really want to appeal to the "state of nature" as having some kind of normativity, perhaps we should look to the state of nature of societies rather than of individuals.  Unlike individuals, primitive societies seem to default to a sort of magical, shamanic worldview.  This is true even for societies separated by vast oceans, with very different languages and ways of life.  Are atheists prepared to endorse and embrace such worldviews?

The truth is that it is inherently problematic to appeal to an ideal "state of nature" to support any idea or belief system.  The "state of nature" has been used throughout human history to justify racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and-- yes-- religion.  In almost every case, those things we thought were "natural" turned out to be neither universal nor eternal-- all of them had a beginning, and all of them have exceptions.  And why should "nature" have any normativity for us, anyway?  Humans have invented all kinds of "unnatural" things that turned out to be good, true, and useful, whereas many "natural" things (like spiders, disease, and natural disasters) are not very nice at all.

Ironically, this atheist appeal to nature is actually based on a very religious kind of logic, in which we try to get back to a kind of primitive golden age that is assumed to be somehow better than the present. These primitivist mythologies can sometimes serve useful purposes, but they can also be very misleading.  As an argument for atheism, I don't think they do us much good.

I'm an INTP

Just took the Myers-Briggs personality test, and was impressed with how well the results fit me. I came up as an INTP: Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving. (I came up as INTP in a Typealyzer analysis of my blog, as well.) According to Joe Butt (ha, how's that for a last name?),

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them. ... INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to almost anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves... An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition.
...
Mathematics is a system where many INTPs love to play, similarly languages, computer systems--potentially any complex system. INTPs thrive on systems. Understanding, exploring, mastering, and manipulating systems can overtake the INTP's conscious thought.
...
When present, the INTP's concern for others is intense, albeit naive. In a crisis, this feeling judgement is often silenced by the emergence of Thinking, who rushes in to avert chaos and destruction. In the absence of a clear principle, however, INTPs have been known to defer judgement and to allow decisions about interpersonal matters to be left hanging lest someone be offended or somehow injured.

David Keirsey calls INTPs "architects", and adds the following:

Architects are rare - maybe one percent of the population - and show the greatest precision in thought and speech of all the types. They tend to see distinctions and inconsistencies instantaneously, and can detect contradictions no matter when or where they were made. It is difficult for an Architect to listen to nonsense, even in a casual conversation, without pointing out the speaker's error. And in any serious discussion or debate Architects are devastating, their skill in framing arguments giving them an enormous advantage. Architects regard all discussions as a search for understanding, and believe their function is to eliminate inconsistencies, which can make communication with them an uncomfortable experience for many.
...
Architects often seem difficult to know...Once caught up in a thought process, Architects close off and persevere until they comprehend the issue in all its complexity. Architects prize intelligence, and with their grand desire to grasp the structure of the universe, they can seem arrogant and may show impatience with others who have less ability, or who are less driven.

An arrogant, oblivious, intuitive analyzer who loves debate but hates interpersonal conflict. That's pretty much me to a "T". :)

5% of Muslim Americans Support Al Qaeda

The Pew Forum recently published a study titled, "Little Support for Terrorism Among Muslims". Among other things, the study revealed that "Very few Muslim Americans hold a positive opinion of al Qaeda -- only 5% give the terrorist organization a favorable rating, while 68% express an unfavorable view, including 58% who describe their view as very unfavorable. About one-quarter (27%) decline to offer an opinion." Okay, so kudos to those who rated it "very unfavorable". Obviously they are the majority. But, really? 5% gave it a favorable rating, and 27% aren't willing to offer an opinion, and these results are supposed to be comforting? I find it disturbing that there are even that many. That's one in twenty who support Al Qaeda!

According to the website, the most likely to endorse terrorism are the young, African Americans, and the highly devout.

I was also a little surprised to note that while three-quarters of US Muslims say violence against civilian targets is never justified, Pakistan actually beats us in that category by about 10%. Less disturbing but still unacceptable is this one: "fewer than half of Muslim Americans -- just four-in-10 -- accept the fact that groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Roughly a third (32%) express no opinion as to who was behind the attacks, while 28% flatly disbelieve that Arabs conducted the attacks."

What does one do with information like this? Obviously I think that panic, anger, and bigotry are inappropriate responses. Those reactions will only aggravate the situation. But how do we improve these numbers? Or should we just ignore them, and go about our normal business?