How are we to take D. Michael Quinn's writings?

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_mocnarf
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Post by _mocnarf »

Daniel Peterson wrote:Thank you for the clarification.

As to the "questions": I've explained that the various reviews that I've cited, including the one that Stephen Ricks and I wrote and published in Sunstone, offer quite sufficient grounds, in my judgment, for distrusting Mike Quinn's academic work. Opinions will differ, of course. But I think my explanation suffices to account for my position. I will not be lured again into an interminable discussion (which will inevitably end up focused on my defective personality and deficient character) with my stalker.


As a lurker here, I must say it will be nice not to have to wade through so much of your balderdash and twaddle.
_guy sajer
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Post by _guy sajer »

Daniel Peterson wrote:My loss of faith commenced with the first edition of his book on Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, when I wrote a review of it for Sunstone. The more I looked at his book, the more it melted away. I began to have doubts, and those doubts grew with time.


With a little tweaking, the above becomes, "My loss of faith commenced with subsequent readings of the Book of Mormon. The more I looked at this book, the more it melted away. I began to have doubts, and those doubts grew with time. I understand that this may seem threatening to some of you and . . . well, reality doesn't always match our hopes and desires."

A little bit of critical self-reflection, Dan, and you can see how this exact same kind of argument can be turned against you.

Is this a legitimate argument, or a legitimate justification, for losing one's belief in Mormonism?

It's a lesson you'd be well advised to internalize, particularly the part about reality not always matching our hopes and desires.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
_Daniel Peterson
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Post by _Daniel Peterson »

Plainly, Guy Sajer, despite your brilliance and your remarkable scholarly achievements, the deliberate irony of what I wrote sailed several miles over your head.
_guy sajer
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Post by _guy sajer »

Daniel Peterson wrote:Plainly, Guy Sajer, despite your brilliance and your remarkable scholarly achievements, the deliberate irony of what I wrote sailed several miles over your head.


Deliberate??

Oh yeah, right, yeah that's the ticket.

Nice recovery Doc.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
_Rollo Tomasi
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Post by _Rollo Tomasi »

Daniel Peterson wrote:With Stephen D. Ricks. “The Mormon as Magus.” Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, by D. Michael Quinn (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987). Sunstone 12 (January 1988): 38-39.

It was actually Issue No. 63 (not 12).

I read your review, and the majority of it seemed to quibble about Quinn's use of the words "magic," "magical," and "occult."

Quinn noted the same thing in his response that immediately followed your review, part of which I quote here:

Mike Quinn wrote:The Ricks-Peterson review seems to be arguing without any substantiation for a unique dimension to early Mormon use of seer stones, divining rods, amulets, astrological guides, healing objects, house charms against evil spirits, and parchments inscribed with symbols from previously published handbooks of magic (or would Ricks and Peterson call them handbooks of religion?). The Ricks Peterson review assumes that these early Mormon activities bore no real relationship as phenomena to identical practices throughout early America and even by some of Joseph Smith's neighbors. In other words, since Joseph Smith did it, the activity was by definition not magic, or folk magic. Ricks and Peterson do not seem to be seriously advocating the abandonment of "magic" as a term to describe the activities of Pharaoh's court, or of Simon Magus, or of John Dee. Nor do they seem to object to the standard use of the term "folk magic" to describe treasure digging ceremonies by other early Americans who did not happen to be numbred among Joseph Smith's family and other Mormon leader. This effort at redefinition seems simply to originate in the demand to see manifestations of Mormonism and its leaders as beyond any comparative categories. For Joseph Smith and others in America and throughout the world, identifiably magic objects and activities have been part of their religious quest, but that fact does not remove the objects and activities from the category of the magical, nor does it lessen the religiosity and divinity of the quest.
...

Ricks and Peterson have misread the book in a number of respects. For example, they complain, "In a single footnote paragraph ([p.] 131) at least a half dozen 'occult' parallels are cited to the name Moroni." To the contrary, that footnote begins with Hugh Nibley in citing non occultic parallels to the name Moroni, to which another reader has added that Moroni was the capital on the island of Grande Comore. Even though my book emphasized occult-magic parallels, it presented differing evidence and viewpoints. Ricks and Peterson also indicate that I tried to establish a link between the Vermont "Wood Scrape" in 1802 and treasure-digging in Palmyra in the 1820s based on distant cousin relationships. On the contrary, I began the discussion of various familial links by observing that the Palmyra newspapers of 1819 and 1824 verify the presence of a Justus Winchell in Palmyra, corroborating the claims of Vemont residents (long disputed by Mormon apologists) that Winchell of the Vermont Wood Scrape later associated with the Smith family in treasure digging at Palmyra.
"Moving beyond apologist persuasion, LDS polemicists furiously (and often fraudulently) attack any non-traditional view of Mormonism. They don't mince words -- they mince the truth."

-- Mike Quinn, writing of the FARMSboys, in "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," p. x (Rev. ed. 1998)
_Daniel Peterson
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Post by _Daniel Peterson »

guy sajer wrote:Deliberate??

Oh yeah, right, yeah that's the ticket.

Nice recovery Doc.

I don't really think that I could have been any more obvious without simply ruining the joke. But, plainly, for your sake, I should have tried.

gramps got it (Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:59 am, on the first page of the thread). But you're right: I should never forget about the slower students.

I apologize.
_Daniel Peterson
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Post by _Daniel Peterson »

Rollo Tomasi wrote:I read your review, and the majority of it seemed to quibble about Quinn's use of the words "magic," "magical," and "occult."

Scarcely a "quibble."

There's a large literature (in anthropology, classical philology, comparative religions, etc.) on how and whether to use terms like magic. I spent two months in a small NEH seminar at Princeton in 1994 (led by the Princeton New Testament scholar John Gager, but including people from classics, philosophy, religious studies, Islamic studies [me], etc.) that was entirely devoted to the question. The unanimous consensus of the group: The term magic is too vague to be useful, and cannot be salvaged.

I thought Quinn's response a poor one, incidentally, but it's water long under the bridge, and if you prefer to take his side -- which I have not the slightest doubt that you will -- I really couldn't care less. If I valued your opinion of my life and work, I would long since have slit my wrists.
_Rollo Tomasi
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Post by _Rollo Tomasi »

Daniel Peterson wrote:There's a large literature (in anthropology, classical philology, comparative religions, etc.) on how and whether to use terms like magic.

None of which is mentioned in your review, of course.

I thought Quinn's response a poor one, incidentally ...

It was much better than your review. Your main thrust (as Quinn points out) seems to be redefinition.
"Moving beyond apologist persuasion, LDS polemicists furiously (and often fraudulently) attack any non-traditional view of Mormonism. They don't mince words -- they mince the truth."

-- Mike Quinn, writing of the FARMSboys, in "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," p. x (Rev. ed. 1998)
_Daniel Peterson
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Post by _Daniel Peterson »

Oh what the heck. A comment or two won't hurt.

Mike Quinn wrote:The Ricks-Peterson review seems to be arguing without any substantiation for a unique dimension to early Mormon use of seer stones, divining rods, amulets, astrological guides, healing objects, house charms against evil spirits, and parchments inscribed with symbols from previously published handbooks of magic (or would Ricks and Peterson call them handbooks of religion?). The Ricks Peterson review assumes that these early Mormon activities bore no real relationship as phenomena to identical practices throughout early America and even by some of Joseph Smith's neighbors. In other words, since Joseph Smith did it, the activity was by definition not magic, or folk magic.

Such a thought never entered our minds. We don't think the term magic can be defined with sufficient precision to be useful anywhere. Whereas it's a useful pejorative, it conveys little if any exact content.

Mike Quinn wrote:Ricks and Peterson do not seem to be seriously advocating the abandonment of "magic" as a term to describe the activities of Pharaoh's court, or of Simon Magus, or of John Dee. Nor do they seem to object to the standard use of the term "folk magic" to describe treasure digging ceremonies by other early Americans who did not happen to be numbred among Joseph Smith's family and other Mormon leader.

On the contrary, we have argued in print that the term magic should simply be abandoned in serious scholarly work, as useless. See, for example, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, “Joseph Smith and ‘Magic’: Methodological Reflections on the Use of a Term,” in Robert L. Millet, ed., “To Be Learned is Good If...” (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1987), 129-147, which was published a year before the 1988 Sunstone review of Quinn appeared.

And we're far from alone in this. It's not a peculiarly Mormon point of view; we're merely reflecting arguments advanced elsewhere with no reference to Mormonism at all. (Princeton's John Gager, for example, has expressly made a similar case, and he is one of the leading authorities in the world on "magic" in the classic and late antique Mediterranean.)

Mike Quinn wrote:This effort at redefinition seems simply to originate in the demand to see manifestations of Mormonism and its leaders as beyond any comparative categories.

No such motivation animated us then, and no such motivation has ever animated me. There are even a few comparative references to Joseph Smith in my biography of Muhammad, published earlier this year.
_Rollo Tomasi
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Post by _Rollo Tomasi »

Daniel Peterson wrote:
Mike Quinn wrote:The Ricks-Peterson review seems to be arguing without any substantiation for a unique dimension to early Mormon use of seer stones, divining rods, amulets, astrological guides, healing objects, house charms against evil spirits, and parchments inscribed with symbols from previously published handbooks of magic (or would Ricks and Peterson call them handbooks of religion?). The Ricks Peterson review assumes that these early Mormon activities bore no real relationship as phenomena to identical practices throughout early America and even by some of Joseph Smith's neighbors. In other words, since Joseph Smith did it, the activity was by definition not magic, or folk magic.

Such a thought never entered our minds. We don't think the term magic can be defined with sufficient precision to be useful anywhere. Whereas it's a useful pejorative, it conveys little if any exact content.

In your review you concede Joseph Smith's use of seer stones, divining rods, amulets, and parchments, as well as his searching for buried treasure. But instead of using the words "magic" or "occult" to describe these activities, you argue for the use of "religion," "poplular religion," or "folk religion." Don't you think that a bit of a stretch?
"Moving beyond apologist persuasion, LDS polemicists furiously (and often fraudulently) attack any non-traditional view of Mormonism. They don't mince words -- they mince the truth."

-- Mike Quinn, writing of the FARMSboys, in "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," p. x (Rev. ed. 1998)
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