Radio Free Mormon: Magic and the Book of Mormon (We Need Dan Vogel's Help!)

[_Chap]

If memory serves, there are several places in the Book of Mormon where this type of instance occurs. It's like Smith corrected himself after making the mistake of saying something he didn't quite mean to say.

Yup - in fact he did it quite a few times. You just have to go to the online Book of Mormon and type "in other words" in the search window. And that shows you a whole long list of them ...

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... m?lang=eng

I wonder how that distinctive 'correction feature' might relate to efforts to do statistical analysis of the possibility of different authorial voices being identified in the Book of Mormon?

Also, are we supposed to believe that people writing with difficulty on gold plates wrote so sloppily that they needed to do this kind of thing, while the biblical authors never did?

[_Shulem]

Dan Vogel!

Where are you? We need you now more than ever.

Please.

[_Shulem]

What did Emma know? She was closer to Joseph than anyone (most of the time). Perhaps she was aware of the TRICK? Or perhaps she suspected not everything was on the up and up.

I wonder if Dan Vogel or other Book of Mormon scholars have new insight on Emma keeping secrets with Joseph about his translation magic?



Note the broom in the painting as if everything is clean and tidy.

[_Shulem]

Where the hell are you, Grindael?



“The Palmyra Peeker” by grindael

[_Shulem]

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Mormon THINK

Now, most historians, Mormon or not, who work with the sources, accept as fact Joseph Smith's career as village magician. Too many of his closest friends and family admitted as much, and some of Joseph's own revelations support the contention.

Click the link to see what Dan Vogel has to say:

Was Joseph Smith a magician?

[_Shulem]

RFM mentioned the tie pin in his podcast. Here is more information, courtesy of Dan Vogel:

Chapter 4 Slippery Treasures

Nevertheless, Harris also related an instance that occurred shortly after Joseph procured his stone and in which the young scryer demonstrated his abilities. While Harris was sitting on the top rail of one of the Smiths’ fences one day, picking at his teeth with a tie pin and talking with Joseph Jr. and Northrop Sweet, who had married one of Harris’s nieces, Harris accidentally dropped the pin among the straw and shavings on the ground below him. After the three searched for it unsuccessfully, Harris suggested that Joseph use his stone to find it. Joseph took the stone from his pocket, placed it in his “old white hat,” and put his face into the hat. “I watched him closely to see that he did not look to one side,” Harris said. “He reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick, and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me. I know he did not look out of the hat until after he had picked up the pin.” These proofs separate Smith from the group of self-deluded treasure seers, for they were either true demonstrations of his seeric gift or evidence of his talent for deception. In any event, Harris was persuaded by Smith’s demonstration.

It was NOT real magic!

It was not the Spirit of God!

Tricky Joe had means whereby he could see through the white hat into the grass. Perhaps a trick flap or a hole in the top of the hat in which he could open and see as clear as day. Such a device could also be used to sneak in notes to read the Book of Mormon while translating!

Folks, Joe Smith was a damned fraudster.

[_honorentheos]

Or he found and palmed the pin earlier when the three of them were searching for it. Then, with the hat over his face, he reached down with the pin in hand, dropped it to "reveal" it, and then picked it back up. It's evidence for his being skilled in slight of hand tricks.

[_Shulem]

Or he found and palmed the pin earlier when the three of them were searching for it. Then, with the hat over his face, he reached down with the pin in hand, dropped it to "reveal" it, and then picked it back up. It's evidence for his being skilled in slight of hand tricks.

Yes, that is entirely possible.

[_Stem]

I think a question that might be raised here is why? Why would Joseph try and fool his wife and the scribes into thinking he was translating, when as ready believers, he could have just produced the record without them? He could have taken the plates, demanded to sit by himself in a locked room or something, and write up the Book of Mormon himself. THe product could have been the same, and he could have gotten the believers to believe just the same, theoretically. He even could have done the same with the witnesses. Why the need to go through the trouble of making it appear he was looking at a stone rather than looking at notes on a page in his hat? It seems the notes themselves were already the story.

Did he need help writing the story since he couldn't compose a coherent letter himself? Since he needed that help did he trick his scribes into thinking he was dictating a story from God, rather than from his own notes or his own imagination?

In planning this ruse, I don't know what he thought he was gaining. You would think he could have conjured up the book, claiming the plates and magic tools inspired him, and credulous believers would have believed just the same. I'm just not sure it works very well.

[_Shulem]

He could have taken the plates, demanded to sit by himself in a locked room or something, and write up the Book of Mormon himself.

Yeah, he could have done that. But it seems he was more interested in creating a show whereby he could demonstrate his ability to perform miraculous things, woo his followers, and cement his reputation as a seer. Later, Smith, so it seems, did take an individual approach to translate and impress others with his ability to translate Egyptian:

Mr. SMITH replied that he had, when Mr. CHANDER presented the fragment which had been partially interpreted. Mr. SMITH retired into his translating room and presently returned with a written translation in English, of the fragment, confirming the supposed meaning ascribed to it by the gentleman to whom it had been previously presented.

No hat. No stone. No tricks. Smith simply "retired" to his translating room and then came back with the information -- easy peasy lemon squeezy.