Don Bradley on Book of Mormon presentation at MHA

[Anonymous]

I’m pasting this from another site so it’s not linked to anything official from MAD or MHA. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to envision all these heavy-hitters discussing these ideas.

Quote:

Don Bradley At MAD wrote:

At last year’s Mormon History Association conference, Ann Taves, a distinguished scholar of religious studies at UCSB, presented a paper, now published, on “History and the Claims of Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Materialization of the Golden Plates.”

Taves, a non-Mormon scholar, has taken up a challenge laid down by Richard Bushman and Terryl Givens. The argument by Bushman and Givens is that the nature of Joseph Smith’s claim to have the Nephite golden plates is such that one must either fully accept it or think that he was a fraud: i.e., there is no middle ground on which to reject Joseph Smith’s claim to have the Nephite plates while accepting his sincerity. This is an argument I’ve also made myself, in various discussions online, going back several years.

Taves rejects the idea of a necessary dichotomy here and wonders whether non-LDS scholars like her can do all of these four things at once: 1) accept the evidence for the materiality of what Joseph Smith presented to others as the plates; 2) accept Joseph Smith’s sincerity in believing that this object was, in fact, the sacred Nephite golden plates; 3) accept Joseph Smith as mentally healthy non-“delusional” person; and 4) yet not believe–i.e. not think that Joseph Smith actually had ancient golden plates.

Taves thinks there is a way to reconcile these four things. In making her case she brings together two ideas that are new to discussion of this topic. First, she invokes the idea, manifest in various religious traditions, that a mundane object can become sacred. Second, she uses the idea, from Heidegger, of “skilled seeing.”

The first idea here is that sacred objects become sacred somehow, and that they may begin as mundane objects and then, through a process accepted by believers, become something more, something sacred. The clearest example she offers is the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, through which it is believed that the sacramental bread and wine are transformed in an utterly real, if non-chemical, way into the body and blood of Christ. While Taves doesn’t try to identify an equivalent process in Mormon theology, via which one substance can become another or the mundane can become the sacred, she suggests that just as various other religious traditions have processes by which one thing can be changed into something different and holier, Joseph Smith could well have believed in divine processes that could fill an equivalent role.

Second, Taves accepts the idea of Joseph Smith as a seer, but in secular terms. The Heideggerian notion of “skilled seeing” is that some gifted individuals can see the potential in ordinary life that others do not. Artists and visionaries of various types fit this category. Michaelangelo, for instance, could look at a block of stone and (reportedly) see the Madonna and Child within it: he saw himself as merely chipping away the rock that surrounded it to “liberate” the potential that was already there. Similarly, Taves thinks Joseph Smith was a kind of visionary who saw potential where others could not. In this case, the idea is, Joseph saw the potential for a mundane object to be transformed into the sacred golden plates through some process that, in his belief system, was efficacious.

Taves’s hypothesis is that Joseph Smith made plates, or a stand-in for plates, and then transformed them, or believed God or the angel transformed them, into the golden plates.

In presenting this idea, she uses another analogy, this time to a narrative in the Book of Mormon itself: that of the brother of Jared. She sees an equivalence, or at least a parallel, between the brother of Jared making stones and offering them to God for his sanctifying, illuminating touch and Joseph Smith making plates and then similarly presenting them to God for sanctification and transformation. Joseph Smith’s faith here, as she sees it, would not be a passive faith but an active faith: the plates would not just appear; he had to take a hand in helping to “materialize” them.

A couple things about her presentation surprised me. First, it was extremely well presented, and she made a better argument for the possibility of a scholarly middle-ground position on the plates than I had thought possible. I was particularly surprised by the analogy to processes in other traditions of transforming the mundane into the sacred. Second, one of the respondents, the very LDS Steve Harper, praised Taves more than I would have expected for having taken the plates’ materiality and Joseph Smith’s sincerity so seriously. He also said, as I understood him at least, that he thought Taves’s theory had risen to Bushman and Givens’s challenge–that it succeeded in giving a secular explanation for the golden plates that was consistent with the historical data but didn’t require Joseph Smith to be deluded or insincere. Harper then challenged Taves to try to extend her hypothesis to give a secular explanation also for the Book of Mormon’s text, which, as he noted, it does not yet account for, and which he observed was more difficult to account for than the accounts of people seeing and handling the plates.

I’d be interested in seeing some thoughtful engagement with Taves’s effort (with the emphasis here on the word thoughtful), particularly from people who either heard her paper or who take the time to read it through (since my summary of her ideas is necessarily brief and may interpret her in ways different than she intended).

Based on an engagement with the full paper…

*Does Taves succeed in offering an academic middle ground that maintains secular distance while still embracing Joseph Smith as non-deluded and religiously sincere? Why, or why not?

*Would a hypothesis like this successfully provide more common ground on which believers and sympathetic nonbelievers could talk about Joseph Smith and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon?

– When I posted on this topic the other day on Facebook, my friend Steve Fleming, who works with Ann Taves as his doctoral advisor, says that her acceptance of the existence of (some kind of) plates and of Joseph Smith’s sincerity gave them more common ground that allowed him to speak more straightforwardly with her as a believer. Would the hypothesis, if adopted by more non-LDS academics (and possibly others) similarly facilitate positive communication across faith positions? Or is this perhaps an exception, with other effects likely being more prevalent?

*When I posted this on Facebook I also had one LDS friend weigh in as accepting Taves’ hypothesis while also embracing the reality of the Nephites. Would such a combination of beliefs place an individual within or without the scope of Latter-day Saint faith?

I’m fascinated (as I’m sure is obvious) with how Taves’s approach might change, or not change, the discussion between those who embrace Joseph Smith having dug the ancient Nephite plates out of Cumorah and those who do not.

So, lastly…

*Is this a forward step for the larger scholarly discussion on the coming forth of the Book of Mormon? How so and how not? What impact do you think it will it have?

Don

[Anonymous]

First, I’ll say that I really appreciate any effort that allows people to communicate in a respectful way. Though to me this feels a lot like mental gymnastics level 100 difficulty – but maybe that’s what’s required for the people committed to having respectful conversation. Here’s my take:

Ann wrote:

1) accept the evidence for the materiality of what Joseph Smith presented to others as the plates; 2) accept Joseph Smith’s sincerity in believing that this object was, in fact, the sacred Nephite golden plates; 3) accept Joseph Smith as mentally healthy non-“delusional” person; and 4) yet not believe–i.e. not think that Joseph Smith actually had ancient golden plates.

Taves’s hypothesis is that Joseph Smith made plates, or a stand-in for plates, and then transformed them, or believed God or the angel transformed them, into the golden plates.

I just can’t resolve those statements. It’s one thing to say, “Hey, I made this book out of tin sheets and God blessed it and transformed it into an ancient record”, and it’s another thing to create a book of tin plates, and then believe that not only did God transform the plates, but that he also sent an angel to give them to you in the first place. Removing your own hand in the creation/transformation process fits the textbook definition of delusional.

To me, it fails the Bushman/Givens test, and the rest falls down somewhat. I actually think it works better for someone like L Ron Hubbard, who acknowledges the creation of an object (the e-meter) that is then endowed with special divine properties.

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