Jim Lucas & Jonathan Neville think revisions need to be made to the Gospel Topics Essays. They also critique Richard Bushman’s scholarship. Check out our conversation…
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GT 00:28 All right, well, I’ve kept you guys a long time. Any last thoughts you guys want to share, any new things you’re working on? Anything we missed?
Jonathan 00:36 Oh, I’m working on some pretty awesome stuff. But we don’t want to get into that.
GT 00:42 Besides your art?
Jonathan 00:43 I have a book coming out called the “Rational Restoration,” that takes this narrative about Joseph Smith, that expands it even more. Because one of the things that critics say is “Oh, the whole idea of the Restoration is irrational. And the nature of God,” and all this. I go through. I have about, I don’t know, 60 or 70 re-frames about how to look at life in general, as well as the Restoration, but through the eyes of the restoration, and how it’s the fulfillment of Christian aspirations for centuries. And they can’t see it, because of the way it’s been presented to them. And because their ministers have an income to defend too, that’s an element of it. But I think that the Restoration was presented to Christianity, almost in a way to provoke a reaction, instead of to demonstrate how they are fulfilling the aspirations you guys have been talking about for centuries. And that’s how I’m trying to reframe that part of it. But have lots of other re-frames.
GT 01:41 And that’ll be out next week?
Jonathan 01:43 They’ll be out before September.
GT 01:44 Oh, wow. That’s pretty quick.
Jonathan 01:45 I’d say it’s over a year late.
GT 01:47 You’re pretty prodigious with all the books you’ve come out with.
Jonathan 01:50 Well it’s been really interesting, because this one, we had pre-sold it last summer. And in response to various feedback I’ve gotten, because I have a few people read some of my stuff, and other developments in the church…
GT 02:04 Well it’s faster than the 15 years Richard Turley took on his second book.[1]
Jonathan 02:09 Yeah. But he was researching a lot of details. Whereas I’ve done some thick books with lots of research, but this one is intended to be more of putting it all together, I guess, you could say, and expanding it beyond these issues of church history, like this narrative of Joseph Smith. That’s not really a question of how do we interpret church history? It’s a different narrative way to understand these things. And I think that’s what is needed more than anything else. So I finally decided, Okay, I’m going to put some time into this. I’ve looked at rationality from a lot of perspectives, a lot of different non-LDS perspectives, not even Christian perspectives, to try to wrap it all into one great whole so to speak. And to me, it is very rational, the whole thing is rational. It’s awesome. I’m really excited about that book. But I also have a career as a full-time artist. So, I’m spending a lot of time doing art, and it’s hard to balance it all. That’s why I say before September, I’ll have it done.
Bushman Strengths/Weaknesses
GT 03:08 That’s cool. Jim?
Jim 03:11 I need to circle around and make my little thing about Richard Bushman. I had the privilege of working as one of Richard’s readers on Rough Stone Rolling.
GT 03:26 Really?!
Jim 03:27 Yes. He said,
Jonathan 03:28 He’s in the acknowledgments.
Jim 03:29 I’m acknowledged in there.
GT 03:30 Oh wow, I did not know that.
Jim 03:32 So he’d send me his drafts. And he had several people, I mean I was certainly not alone. But I’d comment on them and so forth. So, I feel like I have little insight into the production of Rough Stone Rolling. And I can say that, even Richard, who was trying to go back and go through every source that there was to make a really comprehensive book, even Richard Bushman doesn’t know everything. No human being can know all this stuff. No human being can have done deep dives on every single piece of historical source.
GT 04:15 Right.
Jim 04:16 It’s just not possible. So, you have to rely on the work that other people have done in certain areas.
GT 04:22 Well, and he seemed to be really responding to Faun Brodie.
Jim 04:25 Yeah, yes, he was very much. He was very consciously responding to Faun Brodie. He saw Rough Stone Rolling as the next iteration to No Man Knows My History. In fact, he selected his publisher, because it was the same publisher who had published No Man Knows My History.
GT 04:51 John Turner’s coming up with the next one. Did you guys know that?
Jim 04:53 Yes, yes. He’s very consciously looking at things like that. But the thing is, he went through every source, but he couldn’t do a deep dive into every single source. It’s just humanly impossible.
GT 05:11 It’s funny, the biggest complaint I hear about, outside of the FIRM Foundation, about Richard Bushman’s work, is he didn’t dive deep enough into polygamy. And it’s like, that book was already long enough, and you want us to dive deep into polygamy?
Jim 05:27 No, but the point is, is that even Richard in Rough Stone Rolling, had to rely on other people who had done research in the areas. And so in the chapter on the Book of Mormon, that was because he had kind of covered that already sort of in Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, his earlier book.
GT 05:53 Right.
Jim 05:54 That was not one of his deep dives. So, when you cite, Rough Stone Rolling to say, oh, but stone in the hat, Rough Stone Rolling, I can tell you that he did not do the kind of deep dive research into the sources that we did in this book, because that was not his focus. That was something you just had to have that in there to help tell the complete story. He was much more focused on Joseph’s broader environment, Joseph’s personality, plural marriage, even though people complain that there’s not a lot about plural marriage. There’s a lot about plural marriage.
GT 06:33 See, I’ve got to tell you when I read Rough Stone Rolling, that was my first big deep dive into Church history. And even though people complain about polygamy, like that stuff made me sick to my stomach. I was like, ugh.
Jim 06:47 Oh, yeah, no, no. Richard told me once that a man had told him that Rough Stone Rolling was Church history for people with hair on their chests. He liked that. He thought that was a funny reaction. But it’s not just funny as a joke, but he felt that was a lot of people’s reaction to it. But my point is that I think that, I’d caution people citing Rough Stone Rolling, especially the Book of Mormon chapter, as some kind of gospel doctrine. Because I can tell you that that was not a chapter that he did a deep, deep, deep dive into. He was doing deep, deep dives into some other stuff in Rough Stone Rolling, which was stuff that hadn’t been covered. He felt before like the cultural context, personality and things like that. That’s what he was really working on.
GT 07:51 The whole money in the ginseng and stuff. I was like this is great! It makes a lot more sense.
Jim 07:56 That was the kind of history that hadn’t been put out before. Whereas the Book of Mormon origins that had been plowed ground, so he was relying on the other people for that particular aspect of the book. And he was focused on other things that hadn’t been brought out in the histories of Joseph Smith, so much before. That was where he did the deep dive. By 2005, when it was published, Mike Quinn, Mormonism and the Magic World View came out in 1987, and a lot of other stone in the hat work had come out since then, following on Mike Quinn. I see Mike Quinn as being the real instigator of this new trend in Church history to focus on the folk magic stuff. So that stuff was well developed by the time.
GT 08:55 And Sandra Tanner.
Jim 08:56 And Sandra Tanner. But that was all well developed by the time Richard got around to writing Rough Stone Rolling. I don’t know if Richard would agree with my take on it. But I just would emphasize that on the stone in the hat issue, I think it’s not fair to cite, Rough Stone Rolling like it’s Gospel Doctrine, because it wasn’t the focus of that book for Richard. And I’ve just had lots of discussions about this with him subsequently.
GT 09:35 And he endorsed your book, so it can’t be all bad. Right?
Jim 9:38 I would say, Jonathan always likes to talk about multiple working hypothesis. Richard is very pro-multiple working hypothesis.
GT 09:50 Well, and Steve Pynnaker mentioned, and I read Rough Stone Rolling and I did not remember this. There’s a footnote in there about the Malay theory. I was like, What? That’s in Rough Stone Rolling?
Jim 10:02 Yeah.
GT 10:02 He’s very open.
Jim 10:04 He’s very open. He wants to try to cite all the sources and so forth. I would just add that. That would be my comment, to put Rough Stone Rolling in a larger context. And of course, he’s got his book on the gold plates coming out in September. So, we’ll see what he has to say about that, 20 years after Rough Stone Rolling. So anyway, to put Rough Stone Rolling in a a larger context. Which again, as Jonathan has mentioned, it seems to be a habit on this particular topic. And people do it on other topics, too. But there seems to be this tendency to narrow in, zero in on the stone and the hat statements, and but not put them in their larger context, not understand what was behind it, why the person was saying it, how it fit into the larger picture of things that was going on, around the people making these particular statements. And the Gospel Topics essay are very poor on this. Of course, they’re limited in length. So, the obviously that was a difficulty too, but they are very poor on giving context.
Critiquing Gospel Topics Essays
GT 11:28 So your guys biggest issues are translations with the Book of Mormon? I’m sure Jonathan has a big problem with DNA. Am I right?
Jonathan 11:37 With DNA?
GT 11:38 Yeah. Ugo Perego’s Gospel Topics essay?
Jonathan 11:41 You know, I haven’t really gotten into that.
GT 11:43 You haven’t gotten into that? Are there any other ones that you think are poor?
Jonathan 11:47 Oh, on the essays?
GT 11:48 Yeah.
Jonathan 11:49 Oh, okay. I didn’t understand. I think I’ve really criticized the gospel topics one, but the one on Book of Mormon geography is another one that’s a problem. Because when it first came out, it had several factual errors in it. So I did a blog post and pointed them out. And three weeks later, they revised it. They accepted some of my criticisms by omitting the erroneous material, but they retain some of it that’s also still erroneous.
GT 12:19 Isn’t their statement, “We’re agnostic on geography and quit looking at it?” [Chuckles]
Jonathan 12:25 Sort of, but they don’t say anything about Cumorah to begin with. And I think they say there’s never been any revealed geography. And that’s what my critics say to me. Well, there’s no evidence of revelation to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. I said, Well, there’s no evidence of revelation about John the Baptist either. He just appeared. And they went to the Hill Cumorah. They went in the repository. It wasn’t a matter of revelation. What do you call it? It’s a red herring or their strawman thing to say there’s no revelation. It was experience. They don’t go around talking about the revelation of Peter, James and John, because that would make it a spiritual, immaterial thing. Instead, they said it was actually Peter, James and John. That’s how it is with the Hill Cumorah.
GT 13:12 So the geography?
Jonathan 13:14 Geography, translation. DNA, I do have some problems with the essay, the way it’s presented.
GT 13:19 I’m not surprised.
Jonathan 13:20 I haven’t analyzed it in detail.
GT 13:22 Any others?
Jonathan 13:24 I did a criticism of another one I can’t even remember now.
GT 13:28 How did you like their polygamy?
Jonathan 13:31 Well, like I say, I haven’t done a deep dive on that. When I have looked into it. I’ve read some of these journals from the young girls in Nauvoo and stuff. And I thought, does anyone have teenage daughters who have written journals about being in love with movie stars and stuff? And I started thinking, I don’t know how credible all this stuff is. I know Brian Hales has gotten into it in a lot of detail. And I’ll defer to him on it. I mean, I’m not going to say, because I haven’t studied it, if he’s wrong about any of it. But I suspect there was a lot of embellishment about it.
GT 14:05 Kathryn Daynes that was the other person that wrote on polygamy. I just remembered.
Jonathan 14:09 Yeah. But again, for me, it’s people who object to it, is more of a cultural objection than a religious objection. Because, as I say, I’ve been around the world and other cultures where it’s not a big deal. And they can’t understand why anti-Mormon critics think it’s a big deal. It’s hard for us to be objective about our own culture. Right? Because we think our standard, it’s like my issue with China.
GT 14:34 Everybody’s always right about themselves.
Jonathan 14:35 Yeah. Well, a lot of people I know are really critical of the Chinese government, for example. But I’ve lived there. I’ve seen how people live. They’re happy. They have great lives. And so, I have a different perspective on that just because of having experienced that. And it’s the same if you live in a culture where polygamy is common and accepted, it’s not the same problem as living with it here in the US. And I think if you lived in ancient Israel, no one would even question it. Right? So that’s, in a nutshell, my take on polygamy. I haven’t gotten into it enough detail to is to assess the sources.
Jim 15:10 So just to be clear, my research is not as broad or as deep as Jonathan’s. I’ve been focused on the translation of the Book of Mormon. My only Gospel Topics essay that I would like to see extensively rewritten would be the one on translation. But I would say, just to be clear again, we are advocates. It’s true. Because we’re trying to rebalance the scales. It’s fallen so far, the consensus has fallen so far over onto the stone in the hat, that we’re having to emphasize and argue for the Urim and Thummim, we feel just to bring the balance back. So if they were to rewrite the Gospel Topics essay, with an emphasis on what Joseph and Oliver said, but wanted to mention the stone in the hat stuff. I mean, that’s in the historical record. It should be mentioned. So, we’re not saying expunge that from the historical record, and just ignore it. But we’re just putting it back into balance. And don’t omit the two primary eyewitnesses’ statements on your issue that you’re writing about.
GT 15:23 Okay.
Jim 15:26 We’d like people to make informed decisions as a summary. And my model is the FAITH model. Right? The facts, assumptions, inferences, and so on. And that’s because everybody should be dealing with the same facts. If one group says, well, we’re not going to consider these facts, because they contradict our agenda, that’s an illegitimate approach. And so that’s why we don’t favor saying you shouldn’t read David Whitmer, because he’s a liar. That’s not what we’re saying at all. But we’re saying consider all the contexts. But we are saying, if you’re going to omit anybody don’t omit Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. That defeats the whole point. If you’re only going to look at one or two sources, start with those two. Don’t start with Emma Smith and David Whitmer. That’s not where to start. And I mean, to go back to this essay that Joseph Smith III wrote in 1886. So maybe we kind of relate to him because he was a lawyer, also.
{GT laughs}
Jim 17:30 He had this simple statement. I can’t remember. It’s quoted in here, but I’m not going to look it up. But he basically says, “Who are the two primary witnesses?” Joseph the seer and Oliver Cowdery were the two primary witnesses. So, we should give them credibility over somebody who was, at best, an occasional observer is basically I’m paraphrasing something. But basically, that’s the point, Joseph Smith III made when he came to the conclusion that there’s just no basis for the stone and the hat stuff. We’ve got to go with the Urim and Thummim, despite what was in the essay that he published, purporting to be an interview with his mother. Which I might say that we also address in the book, why Joseph Smith III may have elaborated on the interview. And I think I could see his justifications, and I can accept his justifications for why he might have done that. And we discuss that in the book also.
GT 18:39 I know I need to let you go. Are you working on other projects, Jim?
Jim 18:43 I am. Yeah. If somebody would like to fund a movie. I’m trying to make a movie.
GT 18:50 Oh, really? About Who killed Joseph Smith?
Jim 18:53 No, no, no. No, this is a wholly different, wholly different thing. It’s I have a story I’ve written that’s a Halloween haunted house movie.
GT 19:10 Is it Mormon related?
Jim 19:11 None. Absolutely not. But It’s got lots of pro-life and Christian undertones. I moved here to Utah with the intent of just quickly wrapping up this book, and then moving on to that. And I’m still trying to wrap this up.
GT 19:32 You’re still on your book tour.
Jim 19:34 Still on the book tour, but someday, we’re going to get back to making “All Hallows Day Eve.”
GT 19:40 Okay. And are you guys selling those hats? Are you trying to sell them?
Jim 19:43 You can get them on Boyd Tuttle’s Digital Legend website.
GT 19:47 Is that who published your book? Digital Legends?
Jim 19:49 Yeah. So you got your Urim and Thummim on the front, but the key thing is the back. No stone in the hat.
Jonathan 20:01 This is Team Urim and Thummim. But again, we don’t see this as a contentious thing at all. It really is a matter, I use the phrase of clarity, charity and understanding. Because we want clarity, first of all, so everybody’s on the same page as far as the facts goes. And then charity, we acknowledge other people have different interpretations. That’s not a problem. And we seek to understand one another. That’s how in my view, we can get to this point where there’s no more contention, like King Benjamin talked about. Because once we get to that point, we can have rational conversations. Nobody gets mad about anything. There’s no anger involved. We’re just working together to improve our lives and the lives of those around us in our society and do it through the gospel. It’s pretty simple, really. It’s too bad that people feel an ownership of their ideas that they feel they have to argue about and contend about. And all we’re trying to do is say, if you’re hiding evidence or withholding evidence, then we have a problem with that. But if you have a different interpretation, that’s fine with us. Does that make sense?
Jim 21:10 I mean, I’ll give you a quick example. So Don Bradley, a person that I think we all have a lot of admiration and respect for. So I had a long conversation about this with him. Now I may be misrepresenting him. So if I am-
GT 21:30 Don I need to get you back on here so you can refute Jim Lucas.
Jim 21:35 You can correct me and probably say many other brilliant things. But basically, what he said, he says, “I agree that the Urim and Thummim were the primary interpretation devices. That’s what God intended.”
GT 21:49 That’s what Don says?
Jim 21:50 That’s what Don says, But he said, I have to allow that maybe the seer stone was available as a backup. And doi you know what? I can go with that. As long as you recognize the Urim and Thummim, that God intended that to be the primary method of translation. Maybe you want to have a little something for the seer stone, like Joseph Smith III said. If Joseph used the seer stone, it became kind of like a Urim and Thummim to him. You’ve got to allow that maybe, possibly. But then he said, evidently, the chief instrument was the Urim and Thummim. So there’s room to allow something for the seer stone, I wouldn’t agree with it. I wouldn’t believe it myself. But I’m okay with, with people who say, yeah, there’s so many seer stone accounts, there’s had to be something involved there. We think the demonstration hypothesis, and then the revelation hypothesis, he may have taken the stones out of the Urim and Thummim and put it in his hat to get a revelation, like Doctrine and Covenants, was it 14, 16, 17? It says they came through the Urim and Thummim. You don’t need the gold plates to get those revelations. So, Joseph could have taken the stones from the Urim and Thummim, and put them in a hat so nobody could see them, because he was commanded not to show them to anybody, and gotten revelations like that. People could look at that and assume maybe that was the seer stone and assume he was using his hat for other things. So I mean, we could deal with some other little variations and that. But my strong argument is that you have to take all of the sources, and you have to put them into context.
Jonathan 23:47 As he’s been talking, there’s one other point about all this that we omitted, and that is the narrative of the plates. And a lot of people have pointed out there was no, even “Mormonism Unveiled,” they said, why do they even have the plates if they didn’t use them for translating. But in the Doctrine and Covenants, if we read in D&C 10, the Lord said, don’t keep translating, or don’t re-translate the book of Lehi. Instead, you have to translate the plates of Nephi. Well, how would Joseph have[known?] That was a ridiculous revelation if Joseph wasn’t using the plates because he wouldn’t know what place he was translating if he was just reading stuff off of the stone. And then Moroni’s direction to him to not look at the sealed portion. Also doesn’t make sense because if he wasn’t using the plates, he wouldn’t have any reason to look at a sealed portion anyway. So, all the narrative of the plates, the messenger having him in his backpack on the way to Cumorah and all that, none of that narrative makes sense if he was just reading words off the stone. There’s the what I call the talisman theory, what’s the other one? The idea that it inspired him by having the plates in proximity?
Jim 24:55 There’s a word. What’s the word? Talisman? Catalyst!
GT 25:01 Catalyst Theory.
Jonathan 25:02 Catalyst Theory. But to me, that’s a real stretch. But even that doesn’t explain the revelation in D&C 10 about Joseph Smith translating the engravings on the plates of Nephi. Because he wouldn’t have had any reason to distinguish between the plates. Of course, as you know, and the readers have seen me before, I think he didn’t have the plates of Nephi at that time, and he didn’t get those until he went to Fayette. And that’s why the revelation, the Lord told him, don’t keep translating these plates. You have to translate the plates of Nephi. That’s why he gave those abridged plates to the messenger who took them to Cumorah, where you picked up the plates of Nephi and took those to Fayette. That’s why he translated those up there. But the whole narrative of the plates, the critics have pointed that out, that the idea that they had to record these plates in the first place, Mormon had to abridge them, they had to preserve them for all these years, hide them from their enemies, and then give them to Joseph Smith. He had to preserve him and hide him from people trying to steal them. Also, they could just sit there, under a cloth or outside, they even say. It doesn’t make any sense. And so, if I was looking at this objectively, I would say the stone in the hat refutes everything Joseph said about the plates. And that’s another reason. Let’s put it this way. That’s another factor to consider when you’re evaluating multiple working hypotheses. What’s plausible? What makes sense? So that’s just one that came up when he was talking. We don’t have time to elaborate.
GT 26:34 Why don’t you show everybody the book again? It’s By Means of the Urim and Thummim. James Lucas, Jonathan Neville.
Jim 26:44 Restoring Translation to the Restoration is the subtitle.
GT 26:49 It’s available on Amazon. Is it Digital Legend or Digital Legends?
Jonathan 26:54 Digital Legend.
GT 26:55 It does not have an S. Because I think there’s another website that has an S.
Jonathan 27:03 I assume it’s at Deseret Book?
Jim 27:06 Yes.
GT 27:07 Oh, I didn’t know that.
Jonathan 27:08 They’ve ordered a lot of it.
Jim 27:11 I’m not sure if it’s on the shelves of every one yet.
GT 27:15 It’s like Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History. It’s under the brown paper bag.
Jim 27:21 We actually haven’t gone to a Deseret Book to look.
GT 27:24 I think Larry Foster, he had the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. And he went to Deseret Book and it was like, “Well, we’ve got it behind the counter here.”
Jonathan 27:34 Really?
GT 27:34 We don’t want to put that on the shelf.
Jonathan 27:36 Well, this is definitely a faithful narrative. So there’s no reason for it to not be on the shelf.
GT 27:45 All right. Well, James Lucas, Jonathan Neville, thank you so much for being here on Gospel Tangents. We’ll have to get you back on sometime.
Jonathan 27:51 Thank you for having us. We enjoyed it. Thank you.
[1] The book is called “Vengeance is Mine,” and is about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3PgVwo9
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