A new Joseph Smith biography ‘John G. Turner, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of An American Prophet’

[Philo Sofee]

... we know for a fact that Joseph did consult “books or manuscripts” because of the verbatim KJV Bible content.

That is the clincher. Smith copied extracts from other texts, verbatim or altered, into the text he presented as the Book of Mormon.

End of.

He also slavishly quoted and used Jonathan Edwards....rather extensively.

[I Have Questions]

That is the clincher. Smith copied extracts from other texts, verbatim or altered, into the text he presented as the Book of Mormon.

End of.

He also slavishly quoted and used Jonathan Edwards....rather extensively.

I haven't heard of Jonathan Edwards, nor how Joseph used his material. Please could you provide some more information about that?

[Fence Sitter]

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a North American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian, and is widely regarded as one of the most important and original philosophical theologians in American history. I am not aware of Joseph Smith ever quoting Edwards extensively, and I would be very interested to see any such examples if they exist. What we do know is that Smith owned, by 1844, A Review of Edwards’s Inquiry into the Freedom of Will by Henry Philip Tappan, indicating that he was certainly aware of Edwards and his ideas. That said, Smith’s own teachings on agency suggest he would have fundamentally disagreed with Edwards’s position on the will.

[huckelberry]

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a North American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian, and is widely regarded as one of the most important and original philosophical theologians in American history. I am not aware of Joseph Smith ever quoting Edwards extensively, and I would be very interested to see any such examples if they exist. What we do know is that Smith owned, by 1844, A Review of Edwards’s Inquiry into the Freedom of Will by Henry Philip Tappan, indicating that he was certainly aware of Edwards and his ideas. That said, Smith’s own teachings on agency suggest he would have fundamentally disagreed with Edwards’s position on the will.

I am not aware of direct use of Edwards but the general tenor of Book of Mormon Christianity is rather more reminiscent of Edwards than some later DC attitudes. One might consider Edwards was influential and the free will thing probably not the main part of his influence.

[Physics Guy]

The Eight testify to having seen plates but handled “leaves", specifically the leaves that had been translated. If “leaves” is just a synonym for plates, here, and they were indeed allowed to handle the plates, why only those that had been translated? And why switch to the synonym, anyway, and introduce a subtle ambiguity in the testimony, right at the most crucial point, about handling?

I think they might only have handled the paper leaves on which Smith’s translation was written.

This would also account for their testimony that the plates had “the appearance of gold”. People who had felt the cold weight of gold would just say it was gold, or at least that it had the weight of gold as well as the appearance. And, on the other hand, people who had seen things that looked like gold, but then handled them and found their weight or texture unlike gold, would not say that they had the appearance of gold, and leave it at that, because it would be misleading.

The mention of hefting is also odd, if the Witnesses had handled the actual plates individually. Each plate cannot have been very heavy, especially if these were plates that could be described as leaves. Hefting suggests lifting the whole bulk of them in a block, so it would be odd to mention this if one had handled the individual plates. If one had only seen plates from a distance, and lifted a covered box that was supposed to contain them, but handled some paper pages, then this would fit the wording of the Statement naturally.

It would not be weird for Smith to let his witnesses handle his pages of writing. These would have been the first version of the Book of Mormon, and the fruit of Smith’s labor. Why not pass them around to the family?

[bill4long]

Here is what Peterson thinks of it…

Professor Harper predicts that Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of An American Prophet will replace Brodie’s famous biography as the interpretation of Joseph Smith favored by people who reject Joseph’s religious claims.  However, Dr. Harper finds serious fault with Dr. Turner’s book, especially in two regards:  One is its treatment of plural marriage.  The other is its discussion of the witnesses and of the translation of the Book of Mormon.  I will focus here on the latter.  I could not possibly agree more strongly with Harper’s criticism than I do.  I was simply astonished at Professor Turner’s casual dismissal of the relevant historical evidence…

It is worth noting at this point that what Peterson classes as “historical evidence” is actually “what a few of Joseph Smith’s family and friends said”. We all know witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. It deteriorates further when those witnesses have close ties to the person they are seeking to support with their testimony. And it deteriorates further still when their testimony is gained in a group and coordinated fashion by an individual with a vested interest in it. Professor Turner it seems, prefers actual historical evidence, the kind that can be tested. And Turner is a believing Presbyterian, so cannot be dismissed as an atheist, nor as an anti-Mormon.

I've been watching all the Mormon Stories episodes and have come to really like John Turner as a historian and as a guest.

[bill4long]

Turner was asked about the witnesses at his 2024 MHA presentation and he made a pretty funny comment about how they're almost all Smiths and Whitmers and that's apparently supposed to be very convincing. I'm probably badly butchering what he said, but it was something like, "I'll remain unconvinced even if twenty more Smiths and Whitmers testify to it."

And John Turner has a certain dry kind of wit that's hilarious to me when he says stuff like that.

[bill4long]

The "evidence" would mean something if Joseph were being observed continuously both before and during translation sessions. Who can tell what "books or manuscripts" Joseph consulted while not being observed. Otherwise, to me, it's very weak "evidence" to say that he didn't consult any documents.

Well we know for a fact that Joseph did consult “books or manuscripts” because of the verbatim KJV Bible content. Whether he consulted more than the KJV Bible, such as the Pilgrim’s Progress when “translating” the Abinadi story, is not known.

One of the worn out apologetic chestnuts trotted out since the dawn of time: how could the Book of Mormon have been produced by an uneducated farmboy in 60 days. Blah blah blah. The question is loaded with assumptions of course and is laughable on its face given the Smiths' history. Lately, Mormon apologist Brian Hales likes to ask, "but where did the words come from?"

During the watching these John Turner episodes, something occurred to me that never occurred to me before. Late in life Emma Smith claimed that Joe never used any source materials and never had any books with him while dictating the Book of Mormon. Indeed where did the words come from. Well, Joe and perhaps some accomplices made then up over the course of three years at least. That's not hard to explain. But that's not the "puzzling" part. What about the "no source materials while dictating" claim?

Forget about the novel text of the Book of Mormon. Instead, consider the ripped off KJV text (including errors) that's included in the Book of Mormon.

1. Was Joe's KJV laying on the table when dictating the KJV text, invalidating Emma's claim of "no books"? (What else might have been stashed in between the pages of the KJV?)

2. If not, then Joe had to have memorized long portions of KJV text and demonstrates that he had excellent memorization skills. (Which he would have learned as an exhorter with the Methodist church. They used to do things like memorizing the entire Gospel of Matthew.)

3. Or, if this whole thing was really a supernatural affair, and the Seer Stone produced the KJV text (errors and all), why did the Stone render the KJV translation errors? Some "ghost committee" doing sloppy work?

Indeed, where did the KJV words come from?

I'm looking at you, Brian Hales.

[MG 2.0]

Turner was asked about the witnesses at his 2024 MHA presentation and he made a pretty funny comment about how they're almost all Smiths and Whitmers and that's apparently supposed to be very convincing. I'm probably badly butchering what he said, but it was something like, "I'll remain unconvinced even if twenty more Smiths and Whitmers testify to it."

And John Turner has a certain dry kind of wit that's hilarious to me when he says stuff like that.

He uses that line repeatedly. He used it at the Sunstone Conference up at the UofU this last summer in his keynote address.

Probably gets him some laughs every time.

Regards,
MG

[Morley]

Turner was asked about the witnesses at his 2024 MHA presentation and he made a pretty funny comment about how they're almost all Smiths and Whitmers and that's apparently supposed to be very convincing. I'm probably badly butchering what he said, but it was something like, "I'll remain unconvinced even if twenty more Smiths and Whitmers testify to it."

And John Turner has a certain dry kind of wit that's hilarious to me when he says stuff like that.

He uses that line repeatedly. He used it at the Sunstone Conference up at the UofU this last summer in his keynote address.
Probably gets him some laughs every time.

I think Mark Twain said it first:

"And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me they have seen the plates too; and not only seen those plates but “hefted” them, I am convinced. I could not feel more satisfied if the rest of the entire Whitmer family had testified.”