Category: Mormon History

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Fundamentalists and Cutlerites (Part 5 of 8)

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In this episode, Steve Shields and I discuss some of the larger and smaller Mormon groups: fundamentalists and Cutlerites. Many of these fundamentalists practice polygamy.

Steve:  The FLDS has 8,000 to 10,000. The Apostolic United Brethren and has 8,000 to 10,000, somewhere in that range. Those are the two largest organized groups, organized structural institutions. I’ve heard numbers of 50 or 60,000 fundamentalist Mormons all told. There’s either some smaller, like the Centennial Park–I don’t want to call them a group because the Centennial Park priesthood affiliation, maybe as a way to talk about those. You’ve got Naylor and Nielsen. You’ve got the guy up in British Columbia, Winston Blackmore. He’s actually incorporated as the Church of Jesus Christ (Original Doctrine). That’s their corporate filing in Canada. He’s got 500 or so. Nielson and Naylor and Blackmore have been kind of doing some, they’ve not merged per se, but some cross affiliation because Nielsen and Naylor’s problem with the Jeffs family was very similar with Winston’s. So frankly, in all of the fundamentalist Mormons, there’s very little doctrinal difference, if any at all. It has to do with priesthood authority. Who has the legitimate line?

GT: I talked with Anne Wilde and one things that she said was really the largest group are what she would call independent or unaffiliated.

Steve: That’s right. Most of them are unaffiliated but they do fellowship with each other. You’ve got a large following: Fred Collier, Tom Green and others who believe in what they called the patriarchal order. Every father is a patriarch over his own family and has full authority to ordain his children, the male children.

We’ll also discuss the only other Mormon group that has an endowment ceremony in the temple.  They are sometimes referred to as the Cutlerites, named after Alpheus Cutler.

Steve: Alpheus Cutler’s church has always been small, and they do not proselytize. They don’t believe in that. Alpheus Cutler is said to have been given a revelation that in the last days there will only be two and from that small branch, God will redeem Zion. So, they don’t worry too much about that. They’re getting older.

GT: They’re the ones who still have a temple ceremony. Is that right?

Steve: Yes, they do. The upper room work is conducted in their building in Independence. I’ll say on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean every day or every week necessarily. I don’t know any more about it than that. Nobody does except them and I respect that. I’m very curious, of course.

How big are they?  Check out our conversation….

Steve Shields discusses Mormon polygamists and Cutlerites, the only other Mormon group with a temple endowment ceremony.
Steve Shields discusses Mormon polygamists and Cutlerites, the only other Mormon group with a temple endowment ceremony.

Check out our other conversations with Steve!

227: Conspiracy Theories:  William Smith, Samuel Smith, James Strang(Shields)

226: Sidney’s Unsung Role in Restoration (Shields)

225: Steve’s Shields Own Divergent Path

224: Who Owns the Temple Lot? (Shields)

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Was Adam Clarke Source of JST? (Part 5 of 5)

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A few months ago, Dr. Thomas Wayment made headlines in the Mormon community when he came out with news that the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible relied heavily on Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary.

Thom:  A student assistant of mine, Haley Wilson-Lemmon, was working for me about four years ago now. And I’ve worked on the JST my whole career. It’s been interesting because it makes a claim to originality, at least modern Mormons claim that. And so, I’ve been probing it throughout my career. And, I had begun to think that Joseph Smith used a variety of sources, but I hadn’t nailed it down. And so, I said to Haley, I think you should take Buck’s Theological Dictionary. I think you should take Thomas Scott’s Notes and I think you should take Adam Clarke and start comparing it to a series of test passages in the JST and just see what crops up because I’m suspecting there’s influence, but I don’t know.

And she comes back, and we look at the column of Adam Clarke and it’s overwhelming. There are some strong parallels. And so, over the course of about 12-14 months, Haley compared every single JST to all of these and we have a massive amount of data, and sure enough it. It’s very clear. It’s conclusive that Joseph Smith used Adam Clarke. And when I say use, I want to stick by that term. This isn’t him simply saying, “Okay, here’s three sentences in Clarke. I’m going to copy it out and call that inspiration.” It’s not that. He has words that come from Clarke that now come into kind of an expanded sentence that Joseph has created. Clarke will recommend flipping the order of verses and Joseph will do that. Weird words like unicorn in Isaiah, Joseph will go to [Clarke] to realize that’s not unicorn. And so, he’ll add [Clarke]’s statement about it or he’ll say, this is re’em.

What implications does that have for Latter-day Saints of faith?

Thom:  That’s really been how the conversation has kind of taken life, which in some ways is unfortunate. In some ways it is a good moment for pause. What I see as a scholar is it’s confronted a narrative about the JST that people have, that the JST is a moment of absolute revelation. No other influences happened that he was giving us the Bible as it was originally. And if you had that view, it’s going to be a hard thing. And, yet as a historian, it’s unfortunate. Joseph never made that claim. He never tells us that the Lord commanded him to start it. There is no revelation that currently exists where he is directed or says he was directed to go translate the Bible. We find him recording a commandment to work on Matthew but not Genesis. And so, in this sense, he never canonized it.

He never, if you will, said, “This is the original Bible.” And during this time, he has another statement that we refer to as a revelation. “Seek ye out learning from the best books.” And for heaven’s sakes, that’s what he’s doing it. It’s really a practical process. I suspect that there are other sources. I suspect it’s not just Clarke and in the coming years, I’ll play that hand a little more broadly. But this is him working on the Bible. For the Latter-day Saint who feels confronted by this, we know he studied Hebrew after this. He’s trying to engage both his role as prophet, so he owns the text in one sense, but he continually feels like, “I need some training.” And Clarke is a really good resource of the day and a modern scholar wouldn’t feel that and I don’t feel that, but of the day it’s very good and I think he comes to trust Clarke. I think later he says, “Well, maybe I could learn Hebrew. And he does some work in Hebrew in Kirtland 1835 period. And I think again, like he went with the Book of Mormon, he went to Luther Bradish, he goes to Charles Anthon and others to say, “Can you help me?” Or, “Can you translate this?” He has a scholarly component in every one of his translations and that to me seems pretty normal. But, maybe to the modern believer it might confront a narrative of faith that they had that was an absolute point.

Check out our conversation….  If you’re interested in a transcript of this conversation, click the Yellow Subscribe button on our website at GospelTangents.com, or you can pick up a book at our Amazon page!

Dr. Thomas Wayment says Joseph Smith relied on Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary for many of JST changes.
Dr. Thomas Wayment says Joseph Smith relied on Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary for many of JST changes.

Check out our other conversations with Dr. Wayment!

236: Fixing Known Biblical Errors (Wayment)

232: Juvenile Jesus a Jerk? Apocryphal Stories Say Yes (Wayment)

230: Christmas Legends: Herod, Wise Men, the Star (Wayment)

228: Separating Fact and Fiction on Birth of Christ (Wayment)

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Fixing Known Biblical Errors (Part 4 of 5)

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Joseph Smith wrote Article of Faith 8: “We Believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.”  But has anyone ever identified these errors?  BYU professor Dr. Thomas Wayment has identified known biblical errors, such as this one!

Thom:  1st John 5:7, that verse is forged in our Bible. When you go to Sunday School and you read 1st John 5:7, there is no scholar on the planet, I believe that would say that verse is original. We know when it’s forged. We know why it’s forged and so that’s comes out.

GT:   See, I’ve done a lot of Mark Hofmann stuff. So, this is fascinating to me. So tell me about that. What does the verse say and why do you say it is forged?

Thom:  It’s a trinitarian verse, and what I mean by that is it says that there is God the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And so, the verse is forged, and I should have looked up the exact date on this.* But, we know exactly the century when this happens. There’s no manuscript prior to that. And when it happens, we believe it’s probably written in the margin at first, like “This is what this means,” or something and somebody migrates that into the text. So, in our King James [Bible], it’s a fascinating story how we have it. The person who put together the Greek text for our King James Bible went to his local ecclesiastical leaders and said, “This verse isn’t in my manuscripts.” And they produce a manuscript for him that has it, that’s a forgery itself. And say, “You better put this in.” We are confident this is a forged verse.

This is going to be a very cool conversation. We’ll talk about biblical errors known by scholars, and which versions of the Bible are the best.  This is a conversation you won’t want to miss!  Check out our conversation….

Dr. Thomas Wayment of BYU has a modern translation of the New Testament that updates and fixes known errors.
Dr. Thomas Wayment of BYU has a modern translation of the New Testament that updates and fixes known errors.

Check out our other conversations with Dr. Thomas Wayment!

232: Juvenile Jesus a Jerk? Apocryphal Stories Say Yes (Wayment)

230: Christmas Legends: Herod, Wise Men, the Star (Wayment)

228: Separating Fact and Fiction on Birth of Christ (Wayment)

 

*Later in conversation he says it was in the 14th century.