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.