Years before Brodie wrote No Man Knows My History, BH Roberts wrote two manuscripts, one short and one long, in which he argued that it was both possible and probable that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. I read them both (the short one is an executive summary of the longer one) nearly 20 year ago, and they’re in a box in the basement, but as I recall, Roberts’ conclusions are based on (a) a detailed analysis of parallels between the BoM’s portrayal of ancient peoples within its narrative and the supposed facts about Indian origins that Ethan Smith presents in Views of the Hebrews, and (b) the nature and complexity of the BoM plot compared to the writing skills of people of Joseph’s time who had Joseph’s background. A friend of mine handled BH Roberts’ papers at the University of Utah, and he attests to the fact that his later writings do indicated that he’d jettisoned his belief that the Book of Mormon was a ancient document, though FARMS has tried to distort this truth.

It’s worth noting that there are many people who believe that Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon who still believe that it has spiritual worth. People also believe in the documentary hypothesis of Torah authorship that dates its origin in the 6th century while while maintaining the scriptural value of the Torah. People who know that the book of Daniel was altogether a fabrication of 2nd-century Alexandrian Jews, but still look at Daniel as scripture. Believing that the Book of Mormon was a 19th century creation is not inconsistent with believing that it is the word of God manifested through scriptures.

And if a prominent GA can hold that belief, it cannot be too heretical a belief.

This is the current theory that is prevalent among academics who care enough to have a theory: The ideas about Indian origins put forward by Ethan Smith in Views of the Hebrews were prevalent enough in upstate New York, that Joseph would not have had to read Views of the Hebrews in order for the BoM narrative to reflect its contents. Nevertheless, it is possible, if not probable, that Joseph or someone with whom he closely associated read Views of the Hebrews. The MoM’s religious concepts are consistent with those discussed in the religious conflicts on New England’s Second Great Awakening. There is no evidence for BoM peoples or their written languages in archeology, preserved writings, known history, or extant DNA lines. Verdict: Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon.

I do believe in the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon, but it’s worth noting that every fact enumerated in the the academic view is incontrovertible.

When my wife and I were students at BYU, a religion professor told the class, “Nobody who’s studied the issue in-depth has ever come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was capable of writing the Book of Mormon. When she told me this, I put post-it notes in about 15 spots where BH Roberts articulates his conclusions that it’s both possible and probable that Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, and gave her the book to go back and talk to her teacher. He told her that he know about the BH Roberts texts, and just kind of equivocated, saying something to the effect of, “Yeah, well, you know, it’s complicated.” I have a serious problem with people on the church payroll behaving in this kind of way. This professor was basically lying to promote faith.

This goes way too far. Geographers and astronomers needn’t engage the flat-Earth theory in order to do serious scholarship.

nasamomdele: But in light of your description, how do you explain the generally poor reception of RSR among scholarly circles?

When we read biographies, we want more than just a list of names, dates, and places. We want expert, supported opinions on the issues surrounding the subject of the biography, especially the controversial. Authors who skirt such issues do so at their own peril, because readers are likely to think that the author took the easy way out. And the more that readers think that an author has taken the easy way out, the less seriously they take the book.

I think that Bushman has to leave a bunch of Joseph Smith controversies open-ended, because faithful Mormon opinions are indefensible on a scholarly level. In my opinion, critics were quick to dismiss Bushman because, in spite of all his candor, they felt that he left too many questions open. Also, I think that critics (like Bushman himself) wanted RSR to top Brodie, and they didn’t feel that it did, so perhaps their expectations were too high.

I do not believe that the critical reception will determine the status of the book over time. In fact, reviews can impact initial sales, but they seldom directly impact the long term viability of a book. Nobody but Mormons cite initial reviews of Brodie’s bio when they assess the quality of her book.

I’m reminded of a contemporary review of Dickens’ Great Expectations that I read. It treated Dickens like he was just another reasonably prominent author, concluding that Great Expectations was worth reading because it was Dickens’ best book to date. But who offers this generally positive review as evidence that Great Expectations is a masterpiece of English literature?

Apologetics may not deserve equal standing, but I think it is fundamentally requisite that any scholarly conclusion take into account what is not logically impossible in order to approach being established as a serious theory. Otherwise, one must assume prejudice.

But in light of your description, how do you explain the generally poor reception of RSR among scholarly circles?

In real scholarship, the conclusions must be validated by peers and experts, a consensus can reached by people arguing, and that consensus changes radically over time. In apologetics, the conclusions are fixed outside the realm of scholarship, and the apologists barrow whatever scholarly methods they can muster in defense of those conclusions, the purpose being to demonstrate that it is not logically impossible to hold to the defended conclusions in spite of the verdicts of scholars.

For example, apologists argue that belief in the Book of Mormon as ancient history is plausible because the Mormon church teaches that it’s ancient history, not because there is a preponderance of evidence in its favor. If the church ever stops teaching that the Book of Mormon is ancient history, then expect the apologetics to cease.

It simply is not credible of you to insist that apologetics get equal standing with scholarship. This is also an intellectually immature position.

Your test for intellectual maturity will be whether you can still acknowledge that it has merit quite apart from your own aversion to it.

Sometimes the best scholarship will completely piss you off and you may never agree with it. Your test for intellectual maturity will be whether you can still acknowledge that it has merit quite apart from your own aversion to it.

This is also true of apologetic scholarship.

This view represents small-minded, provincial Mormonism at its worst. Aside from the fact that very little of her biography is actually given over to explanations of Joseph’s miraculous powers, this view fundamentally fails to grasp the non-Mormon approach to Joseph. Specifically, the average non-Mormons reading Brodie’s biography don’t consider for even a second that Joseph had miraculous powers. Indeed, they’re not even curious about whether he had miraculous powers. They either (a) don’t admit the possibility of miracles or (b) they don’t admit the possibility of uniquely Mormon miracles. Thus, the question of “explaining away” Joseph’s miraculous powers never even arises.

Anti-Mormons tend exhibit this same weakness as Mormons on this front: They, too, perceive Brodie primarily as someone explaining away miracles. But Mormons and anti-Mormons make up a small part of the audience to which No Man Knows My History appeals. Mormons and anti-Mormons alone are not a profitable audience, and they could not keep No Man Knows My History perpetually in print by a major publisher for more than 6 decades.

The average non-Mormon reading No Man Knows My History approaches Joseph Smith the same way that I approach (say) Mohammed. When I read about Mohammed, I don’t entertain the slightest possibility that he worked the miracles that are attributed to him. This doesn’t make me anti-Muslim; it makes me non-Muslim. And since I’m always already pre-disposed to disbelieve in Mohammed, explanations of his miracles don’t explain anything away. They simply explain.

An example: a guy with whom I worked knows something about Joseph from books that he’s read like American Jesus and some tome offering a Marxist take on the Jacksonian era (I can’t recall the title). He recently learned that Joseph had been a treasure digger. He related to me that when he learned this, he had an “ah-ha” moment relating to Joseph’s finding of the buried Golden Plates. There was never a question of explaining the Golden Plates story away. This guy had simply supposed that Joseph Smith was a delusional lunatic. After all, what kind of an moron just up and claims to have found Golden Plates (aside from the sanitized fantasy Joseph of Sunday School)? But once he found out about the treasure digging, Joseph Smith made more sense to him.

There is a history of buried-treasure seeking that precedes Joseph’s discovery of buried Golden Plates. And there’s a history behind all of Joseph’s accomplishments; e.g., the yankee conception of the mound-builders and the popular idea of Indian origins as captured in the writings of Ethan Smith. This is the history that Fawn Brodie tells, and she paints a believable picture of Joseph Smith as a man who transforms America’s religious landscape through his own immense energy and the sheer force of his personality, becoming America’s foremost religious reformer. Nobody did this before Fawn Brodie. That’s why she’s credited with inventing the Joseph Smith biography.

Some day, this guy with whom I worked will probably read Brodie. He’s an immensely intelligent and well-read man (2 Harvard degrees; 1 Oxford Degree). If you offered him your critique of Brodie’s book, he’d roll his eyes and never give you another thought. Hopefully, he wouldn’t generalize this impression of you to all Mormons, and he’d remember that there actually were Mormons willing to engage in intelligent discussions about Mormon scholarship.

And another thing: If you frame the discussion of Joseph Smith in terms of whose explanation of Joseph is more credible, then you’ve set yourself up to lose. Scholars still have some work to do to explain the miracles of early Mormonism, but Mormon apologists must do even more work to lift their current explanations of alleged early Mormon frauds to a level of reasonable credibility; e.g., the Kinderhook Plates, Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, the Book of Abraham, Zelph, and Joseph’s propositioning of other men’s wives. The “plausible explanation” approach to Joseph is a losing proposition for Mormons, and it’s counter-productive to try to answer Brodie by arguing that you don’t find her explanations persuasive when so many of our own are in complete shambles.

And, come on: Have you even read Remeni? His bio is a fine introductory piece on Joseph, but it’s written to meet the non-controversial standards of survey history. Remeni never intended it to be in the same league as Brodie or Bushman or Hill, and it’s just silly for you to hold it up as an example. Your attempt to do so does not strengthen your argument. On the contrary, it demonstrates (yet again) that you don’t know enough about Joseph Smith biography to determine what is and is not relevant to the argument at hand. This throw-mud-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks approach to arguing is hardly evidence of a serious mind at work.

I read On the Road last year. You’re taking him to mean what you want him to mean. (If you’re surprised that Bushman find’s Brodie to be more interested in Joseph than she is in Mormonism, then I’m not sure what to say). Listen to Bushman’s podcast with John Dehlin.

And liking Bushman’s book doesn’t make you intellectually mature, though you’re arguments against Brodie do indicate that you’ve got some growing up to do in terms of stepping outside of the Mormon worldview to come to grips with real and realistic perceptions that thinking non-Mormons have of Mormons and Mormon history. Scholarship ain’t a sit-com. It’s not there to cater to your predispositions. Sometimes the best scholarship will completely piss you off and you may never agree with it. Your test for intellectual maturity will be whether you can still acknowledge that it has merit quite apart from your own aversion to it.

As David Clark (#19) pointedly pointed out, the term naturalist history is not original to me (nor, I freely admit, much of what I wrote here about Brodie. The difference is my humble blog contributions here are not hailed as groundbreaking, original, or definitive, as Brodie’s was and is.) “Bracketing,” despite your distaste for it, is a term I appropriated from Bushman himself. Perhaps you are not familiar with the term “naturalism,” as applied to history, and is widely used, is because its province is confined to questions of religion and religious figures? It would be a non sequitur for Doris Kearns Goodwin to say she is writing “naturalistic” histories of Presidents. If we believed our presidents were divine, there might be other kinds. (Perhaps after the election of President Obama, secular messiah, we will need to make the distinction…)

Your example of the Genoese’s astrological biography could still be naturalistic depending on his use of astrology. I have not read it of course, but it could be an interesting organizing principle which need not completely mar his work. Better examples to consider would be the Iliad or the Aeneid. Here we have events depicted as historical which also have mythic components. How should we treat these? Some rejected the entire tales as completely invented, up to and including the existence of the city of Troy. Schliemann of course proved them wrong, but that doesn’t mean, if there was a Troy, that there must also be an Athena.

I do not see how you can deny this great gulf in how Mormon history is presented. DeVoto certainly sees it the way I see it. Dale Morgan did too. I cited enough information from Fawn Brodie’s correspondence that indicated which side she wanted to be on. She expected, even welcomed, criticism from the Church. Perhaps a citation from something Dan Vogel recently wrote will illuminate his motives with his own work:

When you debate with the apologists it’s not them you have to convince—it’s the disinterested or questioning lurkers. The apologists’ goals are to create reasons to keep members from leaving the church, but our goal should be to keep people from joining and validate those who want to leave anyway.

Here is how Bushman puts it in On the Road With Joseph Smith:

A few empathetic historians like Jan Shipps have written with great insight about early Mormonism, but more often than not, skeptical historians brush Joseph Smith’s writings aside as banal or vapid. Fawn Brodie, author of a widely accepted biography of Smith, found his religion faintly ridiculous. Her No Man Knows My History summarized his teachings only to dismiss them as derivative or strange. She could not explain why thousands of converts to Mormonism devoted their lives to building a Zion in the Great Basin, or what was so enthralling in Smith’s vision of a God who was once a man. A more recent biography, Dan Vogel’s The Making of a Prophet, intensely scrutinizes the Book of Mormon but finds nothing compelling or profound in it. (p.125)

A little more on Brodie he writes on page 102:

Brodie has shaped the view of the Prophet for half a century… Nothing we have written has challenged her domination. I had hoped my book would displace hers, but at best it will only be a contender in the ring, whereas before she reigned unchallenged.

And one more on page 115:

Long ago I said on a radio interview that Fawn Brodie cuts Mormons out of her book. There was no room for believers among her readers unless they accepted the status of idiots and dupes.

You can see where I get the idea he isn’t too fond of Brodie’s work, though of course he doesn’t ever come out and say so, so I could be wrong.

On the other hand, when it comes to the reception of the LDS faithful, overall he was pleasantly surprised at how well-received the book was in LDS circles; he was braced for a much more hostile reception. He talks about the large crowds awaiting him in the firesides he did in Utah, and how amazed he was that a scholarly biography was on the shelves at Costco (which is where I had to fight off lots of other people to buy my copy).

In other words, the LDS people came to him, in droves, and proved they did not demand airbrushed hagiographies of their founding Prophet. The world, however, was a different story. Bushman talks about how stung he was by Larry McMurtry’s ignorant and contemptuous review of his book in the New York Times Review of Books, and wonders if he even read much of his biography at all:

The biggest disappointment is that McMurtry did not find a thing in the book to cause him to reconsider—or even to see a problem in—his understanding of Joseph. My guess is that he read only the first part of the book and the sections on plural marriage. That is all he talked about… Nothing else about the Prophet interested him.

It wasn’t any better in academic circles. He describes his reaction to a review from a professor friend of his, Laurie Mafflie-Kipp:

The review tells me that we cannot expect a positive reaction to the biography—or to Joseph Smith—from scholars. As Laurie says, an epistemological gap yawns between my view of the Prophet and that of most academics. Believing Mormons stand on the other side of a gulf separating us from most educated people. . . . I had hoped my book would bridge this gap, but after this review, I can see it will go only part way. I will be consistently seen as a partisan observer. (p. 102)

And after one of many panels he held on the topic, he writes:

I posed the question whether a book about Joseph Smith written by a Mormon can be useful to non-Mormons. I thought, of course, it could until George Marsden said this is a biography for Mormons only, a theme repeated at the John Whitmer panel last week. Too sympathetic, bordering on the apologetic, I guess they have concluded. In my heart of hearts, I say to myself, you don’t like it because you don’t like Joseph Smith. You want him to be an impostor and a scoundrel; and when I make him something more, you conclude I am an apologist. . . . Joseph Smith is simply too far off the map for serious consideration. Anyone who tries to bring him back on the map must be a partisan.

The Harvard religious historian Robert Orsi, who also writes empathetically, has observed that his critics object to his sympathetic portrayals of people’s religious faith and practices. The fact that he is a substantial scholar with standing in the profession makes him all the more dangerous and annoying to the skeptics.

We do not create this divide by our refusal to welcome these flawed portraits with open arms, causing people to think we’re members of a cult; it is already there; our efforts only expose the pre-existing biases:

Mormons want Joseph to get the respect he never had before. I think that instead I am digging up the many layers of suspicion bordering on scorn. We get treated politely most of the time, so we live under the illusion Joseph is looked on respectfully. My serious effort to present him as a notable and honorable man brings out the hidden disrespect… The reactions to RSR show just how deep the gulf is. Mormons, including myself, think we are speaking rationally and persuasively about the Prophet when outsiders think we are in left field. We get treated politely most of the time, so we live under the illusion Joseph is looked on respectfully. (p.80-81)

It is not the Mormons, for the most part, who are knee-jerk and closed-minded about depictions of Joseph Smith.

On one side, you have people who, either because they actively want to destroy faith (e.g., Dan Vogel), or because they want to curry favor with worldly intellectuals (e.g., Fawn Brodie) must assume that Joseph Smith could not be what he claimed he was. Any other assumption will do, except for the one obvious to believing Mormons. And on the other side, you have people who either set the question aside, or meet Joseph where he claimed he was and his believers put him. This is not a non-Mormon/Mormon divide, nor is it a “faithful”/”unfaithful” history divide, since I have cited examples of non-Mormon, non-believing historians and writers who “bracket” Joseph Smith’s truth claims, such as Robert Remini or Douglas Davies. Perhaps you can think of better terms than strong and weak naturalism to describe this phenomenon, but the gulf nevertheless exists. Bushman knows. His memoir recounts how it bit him over and over again.

There are new things to be said. I’m looking forward to the next chapter in the attacks and defenses on the Book of Abraham. But let’s not kid ourselves. Most of the positions are well nailed down by now.