New Book Honoring Midgley

[Moksha]

Peterson, who serves on the FARMS’ Board of Directors also didn’t tell his readers that FARMS was involved with promoting Hofmann’s forged documents. These scholars accepted the Salamander Letter as an authentic document, but they went much further. Although the Letter contained a devastating blow to the Mormon Church, FARMS scholars became apologists for it. They whitewashed its contents so that it would appear acceptable to the Mormon people. In a FARMS Update entitled Moses, Moroni, and the Salamander, we find the following:

Martin Harris’ letter [the Salamander Letter]...has dismayed some people. Harris talks of a “white salamander” which was “transfigured” into “the spirit” otherwise known to us as the Angel Moroni… as new research is showing, the salamander has been thought for millennia to have supernatural and extraordinary powers.

Obviously, much has changed culturally since 1830. Some of us may wince at the suggestion that an angel of God should be associated with, or described as, a salamander. But to people then, no image or description would better fit the appearance of a brilliant white spiritual being, once a valiant soldier, now dwelling in a blazing pillar of light, shockingly pure and glorious, speaking with the voice of God while flying through the midst of Heaven, than the salamander! Moroni should be flattered. Still, it was predictable that people would not understand this.

https://www.veneermagazine.com/01-18/01 ... olves.html

The White Salamander was held in such veneration by FARMS, that even today we can think of Dr. Louis Midgley as having the keen aspect of this same salamander.

[Lem]

Wow, moksha, following your links, I found this

FARMS (a research group composed of LDS scholars, but which at the time had no formal connection to the LDS Church) published several articles which examined the Salamander Letter, such as "Why Might a Person in 1830 Connect an Angel With a Salamander?"[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamander_letter

My goodness. They do get led around, don’t they? It does explain why thoroughly debunked topics like dowsing and NDEs continue to show up. Not to mention the current obsession with “eyewitnesses.”

[Lem]

Wow, moksha, following your links, I found this

FARMS (a research group composed of LDS scholars, but which at the time had no formal connection to the LDS Church) published several articles which examined the Salamander Letter, such as "Why Might a Person in 1830 Connect an Angel With a Salamander?"[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamander_letter

My goodness. They do get led around, don’t they? It does explain why thoroughly debunked topics like dowsing and NDEs continue to show up. Not to mention the current obsession with “eyewitnesses.”

From your link, Moksha:

In the FARMS publication, Why Might a Person in 1830 Connect an Angel With a Salamander?,9 the staff reported that they had found “further evidence in favor of the authenticity of the [Salamander] Letter” in the portion of the Letter that mentioned short hand Egyptian.

Actually, the appearance of these words in the Salamander Letter did not help establish its authenticity. On the contrary, it only demonstrated that the forger of the Letter plagiarized these words from a letter by W. W. Phelps, which was published in Mormonism Unveiled.

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the Watson letter Saga? You’d think people would learn.

[Tom]

Speaking of Louis Midgley, when he was opining up a storm in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon (and the same journal through its several renamings) before they shut that thing down, and he had to find a new venue to take potshots at anti-Mormons and “cultural Mormons,” he wrote: “My interest in [anti-Mormon] literature goes deeper than a mild curiosity for the odd leaflet, tract, or book that happens to come along. One might even say that I am hooked on the stuff.”

He confessed: “I have even corresponded with some of those ‘antimormonoids.’ My wife warns me about the utter futility of such behavior. And she is not mollified by my descriptions of the amusing side of anti-Mormon literature. Responding to her remonstrances and entreaties, I occasionally resolve to leave the stuff alone. But then a newsletter will arrive in the mail or a rumor will surface and I will begin to rationalize: what harm can come from having a look at some unsavory details about the latest unpleasant quarrel among the antimormonoids, or from glancing through a tract, or writing just one more letter? And then, like one who cannot pass the swinging doors of a bar, I am back into it again.”

He admitted that “there is, in addition, an informal network of Latter-day Saint aficionados who are both fascinated and amused by anti-Mormon literature. They render to each other mutual support and encouragement; they even anxiously minister to the needs of those tempted to backslide. For example, I consult my phone messages al Brigham Young University and there it is-a message with some juicy news about still another amusing or not so amusing anti-Mormon outrage or some lurid detail about the factional warfare going on between the likes of Decker and the Tanners, and I am once again off the wagon.”

When I first read that something got Dr. Midgley “off the wagon,” I had to appeal to the God google to find out what “off the wagon” might mean. What I discovered is that Dr. Midgley was an addict who frequently lapsed into consuming large quantities of anti-Mormon literature (after periods of sobriety in which he swore off the stuff) and then wildly blasting away at those “antimormonoids.”

I am not making this up. These words were written by Dr. Midgley in Provo when he earned a living as a BYU political science professor paid from church tithing funds.

[Philo Sofee]

I must confess that I've likely read six of the festschrift pieces, although I suppose some of the essays may have been revised or updated. They include:

"Thomas Hobbes’s 'A Discourse of Laws,'" Noel B. Reynolds

"The Book of Mormon as a Resurrected Book and a Type of Christ," George L. Mitton

"Memory and Identity in the Book of Mormon," Steven L. Olsen

"A Familiar Eternity," Ralph C. Hancock

"An Essay on the One True Morality and the Principle of Freedom," Alma (misspelled as "Alan" on the Eborn Books page] Don Sorensen

"Separated but Not Divorced: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Its Uncomfortable Relationship with Its Polygamous Past," Craig L. Foster

I do look forward to the family photographs and the bibliography, although I must admit that it's disappointing that the bibliography is selected rather than comprehensive.

So it appears that a lot of this book is just rehash materials... is that anyway to "honor" someone? Trying to make it bigger, better, but with old already published and done materials? I dunno...

[Tom]

I must confess that I've likely read six of the festschrift pieces, although I suppose some of the essays may have been revised or updated. They include:

"Thomas Hobbes’s 'A Discourse of Laws,'" Noel B. Reynolds

"The Book of Mormon as a Resurrected Book and a Type of Christ," George L. Mitton

"Memory and Identity in the Book of Mormon," Steven L. Olsen

"A Familiar Eternity," Ralph C. Hancock

"An Essay on the One True Morality and the Principle of Freedom," Alma (misspelled as "Alan" on the Eborn Books page] Don Sorensen

"Separated but Not Divorced: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Its Uncomfortable Relationship with Its Polygamous Past," Craig L. Foster

I do look forward to the family photographs and the bibliography, although I must admit that it's disappointing that the bibliography is selected rather than comprehensive.

So it appears that a lot of this book is just rehash materials... is that anyway to "honor" someone? Trying to make it bigger, better, but with old already published and done materials? I dunno...

It’s a bit of an insult. Publishing the volume through Eborn is a second insult.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

It’s now been six days since we were kind enough to point out the publishing errors on the website, and they remain unresolved. How is this honoring the Midge with festshwiftyness?

- Doc

[Shulem]

It’s now been six days since we were kind enough to point out the publishing errors on the website, and they remain unresolved. How is this honoring the Midge with festshwiftyness?

- Doc

I doubt they will be fixed anytime soon and that failure to correct them is intentional. Peterson loves to piss people off and he knows that those errors are just agitating people on this board and he's loving it. That is what he lives for. He's obsessed with it all.

Isn't that right, Dan?

[Moksha]

... in the portion of the Letter that mentioned short hand Egyptian.

I think I located this ancient mention:

Apologists in the donut shop say
(Whey oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh)
Shorthand Egyptian
Shorthand Egyptian.

Celebrate Lou Midgley!
(Whey oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh)

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

It’s now been six days since we were kind enough to point out the publishing errors on the website, and they remain unresolved. How is this honoring the Midge with festshwiftyness?

- Doc

I doubt they will be fixed anytime soon and that failure to correct them is intentional. Peterson loves to piss people off and he knows that those errors are just agitating people on this board and he's loving it. That is what he lives for. He's obsessed with it all.

Isn't that right, Dan?

I don’t think it bothers us a bit. It’s funny because he doesn’t actually care enough to not half-ass this tribute, and it shows. Where a little editorial work would’ve been required, he couldn’t muster two "F"s to do it.

That’s the real tribute.

- Doc