Meh. It is about what one would expect. It is pleasantly surprising inasmuch as Bradshaw is not obviously behaving like a jerk, and he actually doles out some praise for the book, which is much more than one would often get out of Hamblin, Midgley, or Peterson. When they feared a book, they made sure not to say practically anything positive about it. Bradshaw is to be commended for giving at least some of the praise due. Of course, he also admits, and accurately, that the authors of the book know a heckuvalot more about Freemasonry than he does.
And this leads to him making the usual conceptual errors that he could not see because he incapable or, perhaps, afraid. Like most LDS apologists who approach this topic, and much like Bushman when dealing with the topic of magic in the past, Bradshaw erects artificial barriers between Masonry and Christianity. Since most of his readers carry the same inaccurate views, he can get away with this unnoticed by the uninformed and unwary. But esoteric Christianity and Freemasonry overlap very much, and this of course is why the contradictions and lapses that Bradshaw sees in the book exist mostly in his mind or his apologetic pose. Yes, Christian and Masonic themes overlap in early Mormonism, and it can be difficult to tell at times which wellspring Smith is drawing from. Bradshaw seems to exploit the overlap to erase Masonic interpretations as much as he can. If you recognize that Masonry abounded in esoteric Judeo-Christian themes and stories, then some of Bradshaw’s sifting is rendered pointless. People understand the Christian influences on Joseph Smith, so Bruno et alii did not need to write THAT book. They wrote one with the Masonic interpretation because that had not been done quite as well as this one does the job.
Bradshaw, I guess, insists that the Masonic exists only where a Christian option is absent? What sense does that make in early nineteenth century Freemasonry?
This part really had me chuckling.
For example, William J. Hamblin, Daniel C. Peterson, and George L. Mitton have noted that:[51]
the differences between the two stories are far greater than the alleged similarities: Enoch is not mentioned in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. The main Enochian text is inscribed on a stone pillar[52][—an idea that the Masons derived and elaborated from Jewish and early Christian traditions[53]], not on golden plates. The gold plate in the Enoch story was a single inscriptional plate, not a book; it was triangular rather than rectangular; and it contained the ineffable name of God, which plays no role in the Book of Mormon story.[54] … Joseph’s golden plates were in a small stone box, while Enoch built a huge underground temple complex with “nine arches” and a huge “door of stone.”[55] And whereas the Book of Mormon is composed of history and sermons, Enoch’s pillar contains “the principles of the liberal arts, particularly of masonry.”[56]
That is a ludicrous treatment of the parallels between the two stories. Indeed, these gentlemen, and I suppose Bradshaw, as he agrees with them, do not think parallels of this kind are worthwhile unless they come from ancient Mesoamerica or some such. If it comes from Freemasonry nothing less than identical items have to be found in both passages in order for there to be any evidence of influence. Reading this I really have to wonder what Bradshaw thinks of some of Don Bradley’s other ideas. After all, the thing that ties together the Book of Mormon and the Enoch story is the TEMPLE!!!
D’oh!
Oh, dear me. It turns out that Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon and the Masonic Enoch legend are very much about finding ancient relics related to the TEMPLE.
So sad when these guys trip over themselves in rejecting something cool and inspiring right in front of their faces because of their absolute insistence that Joseph Smith must stay in the tidy box of religion as these apologists and their timorous readers conceive of it.
I am sure Bradshaw is an amazingly smart fellow and all, and it is therefore all the more unfortunate that he can’t see how he contradicts himself all over the place in his review. Well, as you said, Doctor Scratch, maybe he will fix the glaring errors before the final version. But, seriously, talking up Don Bradley on the initiatic nature of the First Vision as though this were somehow totally at odds with a Masonic reading. That is quite an amazing boner.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
