This is the last installment of Our Foundation Stories, I promise!
As a child, I heard the story of the restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods this way: In May of 1829 Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were praying in the woods about baptism and had John the Baptist appear to them, put his hands on their heads, and recite the following, currently found in D & C Section 13: Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins…”
Some time later, Joseph and Oliver again were in the woods and John, James, and Peter appeared to them, put their hands on Joseph’s and Oliver’s heads, and restored the Melchizedek priesthood.
Certain details were fuzzy here, but I got the gist. Joseph and Oliver were ordained like every other 12 year old boy I knew, even dressing up for the occasion, as Church art depicted. (Can you imagine an imageless Church manual? We would have to use our own imaginations!)
I later majored in history at BYU, where I learned to distinguish primary from secondary sources, and to assign relative weights of reliability to certain primary accounts over others based on many factors like whether the person writing was an eyewitness to the events described, length of time between the event and its recording, potential motives of the writers, etc.
When I turned this rudimentary training on the sources describing the stories above, I found the records to be vague and contradictory, more so than in the case of Joseph’s different accounts of the First Vision. This is partly because Joseph had a co-participant, Oliver Cowdery, who left his own account of these experiences, and that many other early Church members wrote as if they did not hear of these ordinations until 1834 or 1835. Cowdery’s account is especially interesting, as he mentions only one occasion of priesthood bestowal, only one priesthood, only one angel visiting, and declines to name the angel as either John the Baptist or Peter, James, and John. (Note that the Church has added an “s” to “holy angel(s) in the link to the Oliver Cowdery account above to soften the ambiguity, under the guise of correcting “spelling, grammar, and punctuation”. Compare to the wording here)
Parley Pratt, John Corrill, Lyman Wight, and David Whitmer each leave accounts which make it appear that the Melchizedek or Higher Priesthood was first revealed to the church in a June 1831 conference, and was unknown before that time.
So where did our contemporary story of two separate priesthood bestowals come from? It appears that the line upon line development of church doctrine made clear after the organization of the church that two priesthoods, arranged hierarchically, were necessary for Church governance. Revelations included in the Book of Commandments (later renamed The Doctrine and Covenants) were edited later to include references to both priesthood bestowals. (Editing revelations was a common practice in the early years of the Church.)
B.H. Roberts of the Seventy even attempted to fix a timespan for the second bestowal of the priesthood to the period between the May 15 first bestowal and the end of June 1829, based on some conjectures flowing from assumptions based on the edited revelations (e.g. Section 27). This is likely where our sense of certitude on the subject comes from.
My questions are these:
Since I, and probably many others, were raised in the Church with the very definite, specific chronology for two separate priesthood bestowals, and this appears (although La Mar Petersen, Bill Hartley, and Larry Porter have attempted to rescue the Roberts chronology) to be highly questionable given the testimony of the sources, what do we do with this story?
Does the restoration of priesthood/authority need to have been a literal laying on of hands by resurrected beings in the same order in which 12 year old boys and 18 year old men experience it in the contemporary Church?
Does imagining that things happened this way make it easier for LDSaints to serve confidently in the Church, fulfilling their callings, learning to love God and their neighbor?
Could God have restored priesthood by an act of will, divine fiat?
Why do we rely on these stories as told and recounted in our secondary literature?
This difference between the fragments of history we have, and the mythology we are taught is very difficult. I fall on the side of innocent hand-me-downs of culture though. A lot of this stuff grew to the proportion of Paul Bunyan proportions. Joseph Smith was 40 feet tall, could chop down trees with a single stroke of his axe, and he had a giant blue ox named babe for a pet. Yet it all really started with a much less romantic, simple woodsman.
Is it ok that it might not have been exactly like the sunbeam lesson? For me it is. I wish they just didn’t go there to begin with. That’s the hard part — the dramatic reversals. My wife did not survive this transition. She left the Church. I’m ok with it being a little sketchy, with JS and others trying to follow an inspired idea and possibly missing the mark at times. There’s still a phenomenal list of deep and profoundly divine concepts that came out of the restoration. Priesthood authority can be one of them too.
It just doesn’t seem like it was all so neat and tidy as it is in the paintings
I took a class from Larry Porter and during the class he shared documents he found exciting. One that he brought up with that Oliver Cowdery left a testimony of receiving the priesthood under Peter, James, and John in his own handwritting in front of a book. He read it in class. He did not bring it up in context of any controversy.
Of course I wish I had a reference. The reason it stuck out in my mind is because I had met with the Bickertonites which base their truth claims around this discrepency. Having Oliver specifically mention Peter, James, and John really stood out. Of course that was years ago and I wish I had a perfect memory. I remember it being an 1835 reference, or there abouts. I can’t remember anything else and of course I’m afraid I’m misremembering.
Larry C. Porter also has a very good article on the timetables of the restoration of the priesthoods in the December 1996 Ensign: “The Restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods”, http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1996.htm/ensign%20december%201996.htm/the%20restoration%20of%20the%20aaronic%20and%20melchizedek%20priesthoods.htm but it tends to follow the traditional storyline.
My big dilemma is whether or not it’s ethical to teach the “standard” but incorrect version to my own children, or opt for the revisionist version.
“Is it ok that it might not have been exactly like the sunbeam lesson? For me it is. I wish they just didn’t go there to begin with.”
Is it ok that it isn’t exactly like it was in the sunbeam lesson? This is OK for most people. Is it ok that is didn’t happen like it was taught in the institute or gospel doctrine class? This is where more people have problems.
“That’s the hard part — the dramatic reversals. My wife did not survive this transition. She left the Church.”
The problem here is that the church now seems afraid to tell the real story. If they push to change the traditional story to match the facts, they will be advertising that the traditional story has been way off. If they stick to the traditional story, some people leave the church when they hear the real story.
A few years ago BYU Studies published a pretty evenhanded compilation of documents related to the restoration of the priesthood. Not sure if this works as a link: http://byustudies.byu.edu/shop/pdfsrc/35.4Cannon.pdf?zoom_highlight=brian+cannon+priesthood+restoration+documents
When any event takes place it can be difficult to reestablish the details of the event event when it is only weeks or months old, let alone years. When I write in my journal I find this lack of memory annoying, so the best remedy is to keep records the same hour or day an event occurs.
It seems to me that some have a mindset that the truth isn’t being served and the only way to overcome that is to have undeniable record keeping. The problem with this approach to history is that young, uneducated individuals living in rural America didn’t follow that ideal. I would imagine this kind of cluttered history is common and historian learn to deal with it as a fact of life. The way they do it, in the absence of ideal recording keeping, is to assemble the history with “secondary facts” based on the sources they have. It appears this is how the church historians dealt with the coming forth of the M Priesthood. Was it reasonable to have done it this way? Isn’t this a standard practice among historians? In hindsight how would you have done it?
Nevertheless, a swing back to the “correct” story, including in church manuals, is simply inevitable. The biggest problem is getting to the “correct” story; it’s all very confusing and incomplete. The details are just not all there, and it seems evident that JS and OC didn’t really understand the nature of the keys, what the significance was or what to do next about it for several years. Restoration would have been a lot easier if JS had found a handbook of instruction rather than the BOM (which he also seemed to misunderstand at times). Frankly, all that makes it so much more credible to me. The simplistic idea is too neat to be factual. Life just doesn’t happen that way. I know people are surprised by that, but like any church, some of our foundational stories are mythic in how they are portrayed, and I agree that it’s got a downside. But creating myths is also human nature.
>>> Cowdery’s account is especially interesting, as he mentions only one occasion of priesthood bestowal, only one priesthood, only one angel visiting, and declines to name the angel as either John the Baptist or Peter, James, and John
Okay, I’m remembering better thanks to the link provided. The reference Oliver Cowdrey made in his own handwriting didn’t mention Peter, James, and John (I remembered that wrong) but mentioned specifically John the baptist. That was the issue with the Bickertonites. They believed “the angel” Cowdrey mentions elsewhere was Moroni. But Cowdery left a record in his own handwriting that it was John the baptist who bestowed the lesser priesthood on him in 1835.
Here is the quote that was in his own handwriting:
“He [Joseph Smith] was ordained by the angel John, unto the lesser or Aaronic priesthood, in company with myself, in the town of Harmony, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, on Fryday, the 15th day of May, 1829″
he later says: “After this we received the high and holy priesthood”
(This is obviously very vague, but I don’t buy the argument that if it’s not specifically mentioned it didn’t happen. I also don’t buy the argument that if there is a contradiction in the sources that it means it’s made up. Both arguments seem silly to me. We are all very human and sources almost always contain some contradictory material. Heck, I can’t get a non contradictory story out of what happened on my projects 10 minutes ago most of the time. That doesn’t mean someone is lying or the incident was made up.)
This is a first hand account, it tells us specifically it was John the Baptist, and it tells us specifically it was the Aaronic or lesser priesthood which implies a higher priesthood existing in Oliver’s mind. It specifically talks about a second incident later, even if it gives no details at all. So while it’s not conclusive proof (history NEVER is) it would seem to be sufficient to support Joseph Smith’s own account in all the particulars that matter and I think you are overstating the reality of the historical record with your post above. At a minimum something like this needs to be mentioned for people to consider all sides.
Now I realize we could make the case that Oliver made it up later just like Joseph did and/or they colluded. And if we are hell bent on disbelieving, we will. This view doesn’t not “contradict” the historical record either, obviously.
But, John, I think you go way too far to say “Why do we rely on these stories as told and recounted in our secondary literature?” (Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean here. I thought Oliver’s handwritten account would count as a primary source. Remember, I’m not a historian, so forgive me if I’m not understanding.)
Now I don’t want to get into an argument over the multitude of ways we can interpret the first hand sources and how they do sometimes contradict (as is normal in any type of history). I would prefer we just all admit that there is plenty to believe or disbelieve and it’s not a matter of fact one way or the other, as I feel this post suggests.
“But Cowdery left a record in his own handwriting that it was John the baptist who bestowed the lesser priesthood on him in 1835.”
I mistyped this. I meant to say “But Cowdery left a record in his own handwriting that it was John the baptist who bestowed the lesser priesthood on him *according to his own 1835 account*.
I just want to note that the fact that I made a mistake like this and that it is contradictory to what I just said is positive proof that contradictions don’t mean the person was lying or what they said was made up. Pretend, for a moment, that I didn’t catch my error and it just stayed this way and that scholars, years later, were talking about how misinformed I was to think Oliver Cowdery received the priesthood *in* 1835. But in fact it was just a typo.
There is an implication that this story or any story pertaining to the Church that is not fulled with explicit, verifiable, undeniable facts has somehow a sinister element to it. Either it is supposed not true, someone is hiding something, or is not exactly as advertised. This story, like many others was formulated many years ago using the best information at the time and by some of the people who more directly knew about it.
One of the difficulties of history is it becomes interpretive when evidence is not present or is lacking in detail. Unless new evidence is uncovered to the contrary, why don’t we just go with the prevailing thinking instead of trying to revise it to suit ourselves?
Jeff Spector - I agree with you and Jared on this. Historical fact is an oxymoron.
John asks: “Does imagining that things happened this way make it easier for LDSaints to serve confidently in the Church, fulfilling their callings, learning to love God and their neighbor?” Maybe in some cases it does; myths can create patriotic fervor where the true story only creates doubt. Isn’t that a key problem with the current war vs. WWII (message control is lacking today whereas in WWII, there was a black & white mythology)?
JS seemed to understand 2 things that may be unpalatable concepts to some: 1) the need for physical ritual to teach spiritual lessons symbolically (e.g. he couldn’t literally show them the face of God, but he could symbolically teach them how to purify themselves to enter God’s presence), and 2) the need for connection to previous generations of followers throughout time through shared rituals and experiences that lead to salvation.
After studying other topics in the Church, and comparing them to how they are taught at their most basic “primary” level - I am convinced that this subject is just one of many that are presented in such a way. After much contemplation, I am left to believe that order is imperative in presenting and teaching the Gospel to all of us…
The LDS Church has mastered this skill. The Church, has only the responsibility to teach the first four principles of the Gospel - that’s it. The purpose of this, is to administer the Gift of the Holy Ghost. It is only through the Holy Ghost that a testimony is received.
Once an individual “receives” the Spirit — ultimately, they have “the” teacher that will lead them into greater and deeper understanding of all these things.
I realize that this sounds very simplistic, but I honestly feel - that much more understanding and perspective are possible “through” the Spirit - than will ever be available by sifting through so many accounts, opinions, speculations, etc…
Yet, I too - enjoy asking many of these very same questions and enjoy the comments and discussion that they afford the truth seeker:-)
tDMg
LdsNana-AskMormon
I would encourage you to click on my name to begin studying the restored priesthood.
If mormonism is truth it should stand up to any test? right?
Joe P.
Kind of like asking a Red Sox fan what they think of the Yankees.
Jeff Spector,
Your response is nonsensical. When the facts don’t support your beliefs you are left with setting up a strawman argument. I’m not falling for it…
Instead I hope someone will actually look at the facts.
God bless…
Joe
Joe P. - nice try, but the lack of evidence is not the evidence of what is lacking. I find your research biased and unhelpful. Phrases like these are needlessly provocative and paranoid:
- “Mormons are led to believe” - sounds like there is a conspiracy theory afoot and that Mormons are unwitting dupes.
- “Mormonism teaches that for churches to act without this authority is a grievous sin.” Really? I don’t recall being taught that it is a ‘grievous sin’ for other teaches to act without priesthood authority, for what else can they do since they do not have it? This is inflammatory hyperbole.
- “The evidence shows that the LDS teachings regarding a restored priesthood authority originated many years after the founding of the church, and that they were subsequently added to the early revelations and history.” The absence of evidence is not evidence to the contrary. During the restoration, teachings were evolving as they became understood. It was simply not as cut and dried as some would like to think, ironically, since some of those same individuals are the ones who seemingly lacked the imagination to understand that the first time they heard the history and now feel disillusioned and angry about it.
Those of us on this site are generally very familiar with the dates and details your site includes, and yet many of us have concluded differently.
# 12 Well Behaved
Based on my experience in the church your comment is right on.
The best evidence the church has for its historical claims is whether or not members receive the gift of the Holy Ghost through the priesthood administration it offers at the time of baptism. If members receive this gift then the priesthood is authentic, end of story. I understand the difficulty the untidiness of church history can cause. But when one experiences the manifestations of the Spirit all these problems are swallowed up and of no concern.
Joe P.
Likewise, I’m sure. Heavens, don’t fall for what I say. You’ve obviously fallen far enough….. The fact is, you are what many of us refer to as an Anti-Mormon.
“Those of us on this site are generally very familiar [with the facts]…and yet many of us have concluded differently.”
Hawk, please consider writing a post on this idea. This is something we all need to hear a lot more about.
Bruce N. - I thought we’d just threadjack this one instead :). JK
Joe P:
Your argument on this thread is as well thought out and you’ve made as much effort to understand all sides as you did with our last discussion about what Mormons believe about the nature of God. Good luck, my friend.
My comments are now being moderated.
If you are going to censor what I say I’m done.
Titus 3: 9But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. 10A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; 11Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.
God bless you all…
Joe, Joe,
Before you get too bent out of shape, please understand there is currently a technical problem with the site which is not allowing any of us with admin privileges to free up any comments in the filter. Typically, things get caught up there because of too many embedded links. So, it is not on purpose. When our site is fixed. we can free it up providing it isn’t nasty.
But, please. If you wish to contribute to the discussion, please leave the anti-mormon rhetoric at the door. We’ve all heard it, seen it and have tired of it. We want a dialog here not a spouting off of 200 year old material.
#16–I would find it more helpful if you critiqued the content rather than the style of Joe P.’s link. “Mormons are led to believe” isn’t all that inflamatory.
The statement, “Mormonism teaches that for churches to act without this authority is a grievous sin” is fairly well supported by the “Presumptuous and blasphemous” SWK quote given in the link. You call it ‘inflammatory hyperbole’, I’d call it simple re-stating of SWK. You can say that SWK was misquoted or wrong or that we don’t emphasize or teach that any more, but I don’t see the ‘inflammatory hyperbole’.
Regarding “The evidence shows that the LDS teachings regarding a restored priesthood authority originated many years after the founding of the church, and that they were subsequently added to the early revelations and history.”, I think the evidence does show this. A better word choice may have been ‘evolved’ instead of ‘originated’ or that ‘CURRENT LDS teachings regarding preisthood authority originated many years after..’. Either way, a poor word choice isn’t all that inflammatory to most people.
Bill,
“Either way, a poor word choice isn’t all that inflammatory to most people”
Except there are many people who are looking for every opportunity to be critical of the church for one thing or another. One person’s poor word choice is another’s fodder.
13) Joe P.
It Mormonism is tru, it should be witnessed of by the Holy Ghost to sincere seekers who have paid the price. As for me it has. Strongly. Repeatedly. Undeniably. The rest are details. Nothing trumps God speaking directly to my soul.
#7 comment–I think your observation is quite astute. Why didn’t these guys, before doing anything, write up a handbook of all the steps needing to be done to make this organization perfect, and reminding them to record everything as it happened, and/or to have a clerk run around with them day and night, to make sure it was recorded as it happened. Then, if they’d have just stayed in the same place for several years, instead of all this frantic running from place to place, it would have been much easier to keep a current history of everything so that we wouldn’t have so much to complain about how sloppily they recorded, and didn’t record, everything. But, then all the fun of our complaining about how we would’ve done it so much better would’ve been done away, and the anti-Mormons would have to have come up with a whole bunch of other stuff to worry us about.
One of John Nilsson’s points in the OP was to ask this question.
“Since I, and probably many others, were raised in the Church with the very definite, specific chronology for two separate priesthood bestowals, and this appears (although La Mar Petersen, Bill Hartley, and Larry Porter have attempted to rescue the Roberts chronology) to be highly questionable given the testimony of the sources, what do we do with this story?”
First, it’s entirely unfair to not be willing to at least acknowledge Joe’s points. I realize that for many of you this is old news, you’ve already studied the historical documents and came away convinced that there is no smoking gun. (I sometimes wonder for the TBM if any amount of evidence could be enough) However, just because you found what to you is a plausible explanation for why this history is “confused at best”, doesn’t mean you’re right. Spiritual manifestations are only good for the receiver, so stating that priesthood restoration must be true, (as taught in the manual) because God told you so is absolutely worthless to anyone else trying to discover the facts here.
As someone who has tried to walk a very tight line between being labeled a simple heretic to an outright anti-mormon, let me try and give my perspective on John’s question.
The church has always known the time frame of Peter, James, and John’s literal restoration of the priesthood is problematic. For many years our manuals simply stated that the restoration of the MP occurred sometime after the AP restoration. However, the JS manual used today in priesthood and R/S went a step further and put a date range on the event. (I personally think they should have stuck with their original MO and left it open) By doing that, they have invited the types of questions we are all dealing with now.
What should John do with the story? In other words, is it right to deliberately teach a correlated historical perspective, which is unsubstantiated by the historical record, to the members of the church? (Please don’t confuse the difference between teaching a concept, such as “the priesthood was restored”, with teaching history.) To me, the answer is fairly straight forward. If you believe it was restored, then you can state that and tell why it was important. Don’t invent history to make your point. I actually think this is Joe’s main point. To put a date range on the event without good evidence to back it up, is inventing history. Much of the criticism aimed at the church today is result of us teaching correlated historical events. All the while knowing that in reality there was much more to the story and knowing the additional information would put a different light on the history. My mother used to say that any communication with the intent to deceive is a lie. Lies should not be part of teaching people the gospel.
Please don’t insult my intelligence by making claims that the church hasn’t engaged in deceptive communications about its history. I could make a long list, but most all of you have read enough to know of what I speak. That too is “old news”…
This simply is a non-issue to me. I’ve read all the complaints, and they just aren’t valid from the perspective of a history teacher. As I’ve said elsewhere, history is messy. We live in a day when everyone seems to be conscious of recording everything as it happens. That just wasn’t the case throughout most of history.
I couldn’t care less that we don’t have a date for the restoration of the MP, and I don’t care a bit that the Church has tried to move away from a vague “it happened sometime” to their best educated guess. ***That happens ALL THE TIME in the compilation of history when an exact date is not known.*** If the Church is condemned for this, so should almost every (if not every) historian who has ever lived. Good heavens, that’s why the term “circa” exists - and that term is employed liberally in the study of history with absolutely no charge of conspiracy or deception.
I have debated whether or not to make this comment, but I feel like it needs to be said:
Joe P, the comment that is frozen in moderation right now contains links to 2 videos that are explicitly and directly created as rebuttals to the Mormon conception of God, the Father, and Jesus, the Christ. Within the first minute of the first video, a verse in the Pearl of Great Price is misquoted on the screen - blatantly misquoted with no way to view it as an accident, but written as if it is an exact quote. That is not a good way to start what is presented as a sincere effort to expose the incorrect teachings of Mormonism. It is a BLATANT example of the video producers (at the very least) bearing false witness - and of knowing it is false witness while bearing it. There is NO way to view it as an honest mistake. All your protestations notwithstanding, it is the height of hypocrisy to use those tactics when commenting on a thread where you condemn inexactness in historical detail.
This blog is dedicated to open and courteous conversation even among people whose beliefs differ radically. It is not dedicated to blatant and egregious, unrepentant lying, especially when charging others with deception. That goes beyond motes and beams and enters into a realm that simply is abhorrent.
Ray,
“This simply is a non-issue to me.”
What exactly is a non-issue? The questions I asked have nothing to do with whether or not the Melchizedek Priesthood was restored in the way church publications have indicated. That is not possible for anyone to know.
My questions have to do with why the story is presented the way it is. Why is it so important to have two separate priesthood bestowals, so much so that we put credence in an event which has comes down to us with less detail than Joseph Smith pontificating on the origins of Zelph the white Lamanite?
Hawkgrrl,
Thanks for attempting to answer my questions. I do think some people “need” the mythic renderings we have inherited from the correlation era of the 1960s to face the world as an active Latter-day Saint with confidence.
Bruce,
“But, John, I think you go way too far to say “Why do we rely on these stories as told and recounted in our secondary literature?” (Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean here. I thought Oliver’s handwritten account would count as a primary source. Remember, I’m not a historian, so forgive me if I’m not understanding.)”
I guess what I’m getting at is why we rely on the interpretations of B.H. Roberts instead of the statements of Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith, or their contemporaries in Church manuals? Larry Porter’s quoting of Oliver was helpful, but I think most Church members could handle reading that statement in a church manual instead of in an institute, or BYU religion class.
Ray,
I’m going to say this as nicely as I can.
Just because this and many other issues with messy history are not an issue for you, doesn’t mean they are not for others. I realize you were a history teacher and therefore you understand that history is messy. Don’t you think, as a history teacher, that the members of the church have a right to be taught “all the history” and let them decide what to believe?
Ray, please reread my post, I think you’ll see that I agreed with you concerning the important thing being the concept. As a history teacher, you of all people should appreciate the value of giving all the historical information available when teaching history to adults. Deliberately picking what to teach and what to leave out in-order to push a certain point is “deliberately” dishonest. Again I refer you to my post about deception.
As for your point about all historians being guilty of inventing history, I’ll refer you to another quote from my mother. “Just because Johnny jumps off a bridge, does that mean you need to?” The issue of the MP restoration is far messier than just a simple date, but I think you already know that…
Peace
John,
I meant the furor over the exact date. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
“It is a BLATANT example of the video producers (at the very least) bearing false witness - and of knowing it is false witness while bearing it.”
“There is NO way to view it as an honest mistake.”
“It is not dedicated to blatant and egregious, unrepentant lying, especially when charging others with deception. That goes beyond motes and beams and enters into a realm that simply is abhorrent.”
Ray, you came down on Joe P. pretty hard. Your comments may have been completely justified, but it would be nice for the rest of us to be able to see the evidence and decide for ourselves. Can you provide the link to the offending material?
“Ray, As a history teacher, you of all people should appreciate the value of giving all the historical information available when teaching history to adults. Deliberately picking what to teach and what to leave out in-order to push a certain point is “deliberately” dishonest.”
Doug, I’ve said this in the past on another thread, but it is impossible in a limited time frame when covering extensive time periods or complicated concepts to give “all historical information available”. As a history teacher, I appreciate that fact. It can’t be done. In fact, “deliberately picking what to teach and what to leave out in-order to push a certain point” is precisely the definition of teaching history in just about every history class in the world - no matter the level of that instruction.
I do oppose deliberate changing of historical detail, but there is a huge difference between that and choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore (and when to be ambiguous and when to make a best guess) - just as it is in a courtroom for both defense and prosecuting attorneys - just as it is in a hospital for attending doctors - etc., etc., etc. That’s my point: Teaching and presenting history ALWAYS is subjective and NEVER is comprehensive.
>>> I guess what I’m getting at is why we rely on the interpretations of B.H. Roberts instead of the statements of Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith, or their contemporaries in Church manuals?
John, I’m not sure I really undestand what you are getting at. Are you saying that the link you gave follows the B.H. Roberts timeline (”weeks later” it says. kinda vague.) and that it should have instead said “we don’t know how long” because that would be more accurate to the primary sources based on what we know today?
The link you gave was to a summary and certainly seems like an inappropriate place to start quoting primary sources and explaining the historical source issues that are common to all such sources.
Also, how many people are qualified to skillfully handle primary sources correctly according to scholarly means but also for a general audience. If someone trusts a secondary source in devotional material doesn’t that sort of make sense? I assume you are not pushing for the LDS church to stop writing develotional material unless they get scholars to do it so that they are 100% above reproach. Such a standard could be passed by no religion… or any organization I’d imagine. (I also assume you don’t buy the standard DAMU argument that the LDS Church should be held to an impossible standard because they claim to be “true.” That’s irrational, of course.)
I guess I’m not sure what you are really asking here, can you clarify a bit more? Offline would be fine if this is getting off topic and too complex.
A specific example: When I taught about The Civil War, I tried hard to do so in a way that showed both the good and bad of both sides, but all I could do is scratch the surface of “all the historical information available”. It was available for any of my students to find and read and study, if they chose to do so, but there was no way for me to even begin to approach comprehensive instruction.
Another example: Mormon was blunt in saying that there was no way to record even 1/100th of the history he had before him - so he “pick(ed) what to teach and what to leave out in-order to push a certain point”. Iow, he was a typical historian.
#34 - Bill, not here. If someone else wants to do so, that is their right, but I won’t post a link to the videos. I won’t help spread intentionally dishonest material like that.
#32 - Doug, I forgot to thank you for the laugh at the beginning of your comment. That was funny.
History is messy?
Yes, history is messy but we are not talking about when Joseph had his first kiss. These are fantastic claims about super-natural beings visiting you and giving you the very power of God. I was raised with black and white versions of these stories only to later learn that the tales being told would change and be polished up so as to be more presentable. But that’s OK we are told because what is important is that they evoke a spiritual response that means they are true. And who told us those feelings were spiritual manifestations? Why, the same people who were busy polishing up the stories.
Nice.
It is only appropriate to question the credibility of a fantastic story that continues to change. I am a member who was given myth and told it was fact. Why would the leaders do that? What were/are they afraid of?
Ray,
I understand that you don’t want to propagate the link. As it stands, however, you’ve made some pretty strong statements against someone based on info that most of us can’t see. If you are right about the info, your statements were probably justified. If you are wrong, you were way out of line.
Can someone else here confirm your assertions?
Are you an administrator? Can you put up the link and then take it back down?
#39 - “Why would the leaders do that? What were/are they afraid of?”
Those are two very different questions, and the first does not lead necessarily to the second. In my experience, the only “fear” of most volunteer / lay teachers is not understanding something well enough to answer deep questions. Most of the time, however, there hasn’t been “fear” - only differing levels of understanding (allowing for people to present what is “myth” to some as “fact” in their minds) or a belief that individuals need to reconcile these things for themselves. In this case, especially, when dealing with a judgment of others, I think charity is a very good rule of thumb - for those who believe it to be fact AND those who believe it to be myth.
Doug G. - “just because you found what to you is a plausible explanation for why this history is “confused at best”, doesn’t mean you’re right.” This is an excellent point, and I hope we can all have the humility to accept that. Frankly, you can interpret the evidence and lack of evidence either way, and you may be right that TBM will see it one way and someone prone to disbelief will probably see it the other way; the facts themselves don’t settle the matter. The historical record is ambiguous and even ambivalent.
My own belief is that the restoration of the MP was originally viewed by OC and JS as less significant than the restoration of the AP because AP happened first. I don’t believe JS fully understood the difference between AP & MP for the next few years, or that MP was greater than AP, if he ever fully understood it. The written record is very sporadic during this period.
Similar is the evolution of the endowment. It’s quite clear JS fully expected the “endowment” to happen in Kirtland and eventually he did some of the preparatory work toward it, but he didn’t fully understand what it entailed or how to convey the concepts in a symbolic manner that would encompass the spirit of the endowment and be able to be carried off after his death by other members (able to be replicated). He pretty clearly was expecting it to be more of an event that he prepared people to experience than a ritual for individuals to repeat with symbolic significance, again based on my reading of the history. I could be totally wrong, but it’s how I see it anyway.
If you want to see Joe’s site, click on his name. It is, however, clearly an anti-Mormon site, so buyer beware. I’m not sure if his home site also contains the links referenced. The comment is stuck in moderation due to having multiple links.
#40 - Bill, I understand that, but all I can give you is my word.
The producers doctored a verse from the PofGP; it couldn’t have been more blatant. I recognized it as soon as they posted it, but I also checked the PofGP just to make sure. There is no way it was an honest mistake. It was not a horrible twisting of Mormon doctrine, but it as a blatant and intentional misquote.
Again, all I can do is promise what I wrote was accurate. You have my word.
Ray,
“Doug, I’ve said this in the past on another thread, but it is impossible in a limited time frame when covering extensive time periods or complicated concepts to give “all historical information available”. As a history teacher, I appreciate that fact. It can’t be done. In fact, “deliberately picking what to teach and what to leave out in-order to push a certain point” is precisely the definition of teaching history in just about every history class in the world - no matter the level of that instruction. “
Ok Ray, but if this is fair then a non-believing person should have the right to show the history in the light of the evidence that they find compelling to make their point. We shouldn’t be offended by this tactic, or label the person as “anti-mormon”. After all, they’re doing the same thing from a different perspective.
I’m having a little struggle with your concept of everyone having a bias and therefore making anything anyone teaches from history suspect. While I certainly understand that bias exists, I think the historians that get the most respect are the ones that can teach historical events without the bias showing through. Again, you can’t give the church a pass for deliberately correlating its history to paint a picture they know is incorrect. I’m not going to go into all the correlated history because you already know they did and it was not done by accident. It’s also the core of why so many are angry with the church, it isn’t the messy history my friend, it’s the deliberate effort to suppress it…
“it’s the deliberate effort to suppress it…”
and that’s where we disagree. I’m fine with that disagreement, so let’s let this die. Agreed?
Hawkgrrl,
Thanks for your post; I actually don’t disagree with your premise. The AP restoration certainly seems to figure much more importantly in the restoration to JS and others then the MP restoration…
Ok Ray, I need to go to bed anyway…
Doug,
I’m glad you brought this issue up as, and I really mean this from the bottom of my heart, I feel it’s the only real difference between you and me (or between yours and my views of the LDS Church.)
You said, “What should John do with the story? In other words, is it right to deliberately teach a correlated historical perspective, which is unsubstantiated by the historical record, to the members of the church?”
If we answer “yes, it’s wrong” here, we have now eliminated basically all history, period. Granted this date range in question is “more open” then, say, D-Day, to be sure. It’s also “more open” then, say, the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood or the visit of Moroni. But a great many things we get taught in history as if they are fact have a lot less to go off of then this date range you are upset over and calling a deception. And we’re talking true scholarly historian stuff compared to non-historian correlated manuals here! So they deserve even more “slack” then the “facts” we get taught in our history textbooks and classes.
You said: “Don’t invent history to make your point. To put a date range on the event without good evidence to back it up, is inventing history.”
But Doug, that’s just it. 100% of history, all of it — literally all of it — is “invented” in the sense you use the term here. That’s because it’s all guess work based on he said, she said. One history professor of mine said, “my job is to read gossip.” For that’s what history really is. There is not an ounce of history known for absolutely certain. If we have to be certain before we print it, we’d never print any of it.
Many people labor under the mistaken impression that history is “known.” It most certainly is not. It is all about degrees of confidence based on triangulation of sources which are often contradictory.
Heck! How would you teach Shakespeare according to your standards? Scholars can’t even agree on *who he was* or *if he even existed as a real person*! (There is a majority view and that’s what gets taught in schools, of course, as if it’s fact.)
On a personal note, I just recently studied the death of the baby of one of my ancestors. The date they (the parents) recorded for the death is a day off from the death recorded in History of the Church. Furthermore, the names of the parents don’t match exactly. Because of that, I can’t, with confidence, be sure that we’re talking about the same baby and parents from both sources, though the odds that two babies with such similar parental names happened to die a day apart is very very low.
But am I being deceptive if I tell people “my ancestors and the death of their baby is recorded in history of the Church”? Of course not. But let me assure you that is how I explain it to people rather than take the time to explain how I derived it all.
So your question, to even be considered reasonable, has to be reworded to “how certain should it be before they print it.” But now we’re in an impossible situation because it’s all just a judgment call and thus we can be assured not everyone will agree with the decision. And in the case of Mormon history in particular, there is so much bias and desire to ‘debunk’ it or ‘prop it up’ on both sides that there is literally no such thing as an unbiased person who takes a look at it. All have a personal investment in it, either to see a way to dismiss it or accept it.
If the people putting the correlated material together decide, after studying it out as best they can within their deadline and for their level of education in history, that they have sufficient confidence in the timeline suggested, shouldn’t they print it? Does this really mean they are doing something untruthful?
Yet you will *feel* that they being untruthful because, due to your brain feeling certain over that which is uncertain, you will have a tendency to believe that if they were being honest they would have came to the same conclusion as you. This is called the narrative fallacy, by the way, and it’s a well researched human failing. We are an unfair race due to our problems with the narrative fallacy. We cannot conceive the possibility that those that we disagree with aren’t lying when reviewing the same set of facts but come to a different conclusion than us.
There is nothing that can be done about this problem but let people make their best judgments and cut them slack. It’s the ‘cut them slack’ that you are not doing and that I am.
It is impossible for them to ever actually make everyone happy because they are dealing with something as imprecise as history. And for the DAMU crowd, there will ALWAYS be ways to make them look like they are lying if only by virtue of the fact that there will always exist multiple interpretations of sources. Due to the narrative fallacy, the mere existence of an alternate interpretation will always be interpreted as lying by those that don’t agree.
Doug, this is not a small issue. It runs to the heart of everything you and I believe (or disbelieve) in. This issue alone accounts for every difference between how we look at the world, God, religion, and the LDS Church.
>>> It’s the ‘cut them slack’ that you are not doing and that I am
Clarification to be sure this doesn’t get taken wrong. I do not mean “in all things” but limit this to LDS History. I’m just saying it is the reason LDS history bothers me so much less than it bothers Doug.
“And in the case of Mormon history in particular, there is so much bias and desire to ‘debunk’ it or ‘prop it up’ on both sides that there is literally no such thing as an unbiased person who takes a look at it.” The key issue with this bias in interpreting the history of Mormonism is simply that no one has really attempted it who was truly neutral. Thus far, no one has been sufficiently interested. Bushman’s RSR is the best we have currently because he at least states his view openly, and he does present the (contradictory) facts without glossing over what is ugly or sticky. It’s possible this will change in time as more universities become interested in studying Mormonism as has recently begun happening.
>>> Ok Ray, but if this is fair then a non-believing person should have the right to show the history in the light of the evidence that they find compelling to make their point. We shouldn’t be offended by this tactic, or label the person as “anti-mormon”. After all, they’re doing the same thing from a different perspective.
They should be held to the same standards, yes. Joe P’s issue isn’t that he’s being held to a different standard, it’s that he puts words into others mouths about that they personally believe, etc. That is what makes him a an anti-Mormon — his intolerance. I has nothing to do with his particular take on history. One can present their negative view of LDS history or doctrine in a tolerant way or an intolerant way. You are a good example, Doug, of how to do it tolerantly. (Tolerance has nothing to do with holding back.)
Ray,
I watched the first few minutes of all the videos on the home page of the site that Joe P. referenced, but didn’t see the offending material. Can you give me a little hint? Something like ‘3rd video in the list’ or something like that? Which verse in the PoGP is misquoted?
>>> It’s possible this will change in time as more universities become interested in studying Mormonism as has recently begun happening.
Hawkgrrl, I have to disagree with you on this. The very nature of Mormonism makes it impossible to be unbiased on. It makes it impossible to be “not too bias” on. We will never see a neutral history of the LDS Church IMO.
Bill, I didn’t check for the videos on the actual site. I looked at it very briefly, but I’m not interested in sites like that. The video in the comment that got stuck in moderation was about our belief in Jesus, and the misquoted verse was Abraham 3:27.
Bill, The videos appeared to be YouTube or similar videos. I just looked and can’t find anything on the site that looks like the ones he linked in his comment.
Ray,
Thanks–I found the thing that you are complaining about. I think that you owe Joe P. an apology.
The quote comes directly from the Gospel Principles manual that is shown in the video. The reference to Abraham 3:27 was from the text of the Gospel Principles manual. No–the quote itself is not Abraham 3:27, but this is at worst a simple misunderstanding. Gospel Principles says:
Our Father said, “Whom shall I send?” (Abraham 3:27). Two of our brothers offered to help. Our oldest brother, Jesus Christ, who was then called Jehovah, said, “Here am I, send me” (Abraham 3:27).
This is what is quoted in the video. It is wrongly implied in the video that this text is a quote from Abraham 3:27 rather than just being derived from Abraham 3:27.
So we have a minor error in a citation that still correctly describes the teachings of the church. Why on earth would you get so worked up about it? I think its clear that you over-reacted.
Not the same one, apparently, Bill. E-mail me the link to the video you found, so I can check it out. Send it to fam7heav at juno dot com.
If the one he linked was an original one that was edited to be correct in an updated one, I will retract my assertion. I need to see the video first, however.
I remember learning from a teacher at the institute about this. His idea was that the priesthood was simply restored by the voice of God, as it says in the D&C. The funny thing is, to some people, this really matters. I think it’s interesting and I love to talk about it, but it doesn’t change my belief and gratitude for the gospel.
Ray,
Let me first just apologize to you if I was wrong on the video.
Click on Joe P.’s name on post #13 and then edit the url to go to the main ‘.org’ site. There are ‘introductory online videos’ on the left side of the page. The first one (Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith) is the one that I thought you were talking about. 3 minutes and 19 seconds into the video they make a quote from Gospel Principles look like it was a quote from Abraham 3:27.
When any event takes place it can be difficult to reestablish the details of the event event when it is only weeks or months old, let alone years. When I write in my journal I find this lack of memory annoying, so the best remedy is to keep records the same hour or day an event occurs.
Hey, I feel your pain. I often am interviewing disinterested witnesses about events and they give me radically different accounts of the same event, often from married people sitting next to each other in the same car.
Typically, things get caught up there because of too many embedded links. So, it is not on purpose Which happens to my posts all the time. Then I have to go in and moderate my own posts
My own belief is that the restoration of the MP was originally viewed by OC and JS as less significant than the restoration of the AP because AP happened first. I don’t believe JS fully understood …
Joseph Smith said as much about his understanding of many things.
But am I being deceptive if I tell people “my ancestors and the death of their baby is recorded in history of the Church”? Of course not.
Excellent example. Hits home because my daughter Robin was born on the Sixth of July. For a number of reasons, we tend to emotionally react to it on the Fourth of July and I tend to get confused and think she was born on the Fifth. Every year since she died in 1977.
I would, obviously, be seriously offended if someone accused me of getting the dates wrong on purpose.
Ahh, I need to just quote Nick Literski right here.
Heck, Nick, if you are reading this line of posts and comments, could you do a post on historical narratives. Your earlier comment on trial experience, witnesses and historical narratives (and the way so many of them are after the fact by second hand or third hand sources with an axe to grind) would make an excellent post all in itself.
I need to bow out of this conversation for now. Spending too much time.
But I wanted to add one thing that it occurred to me last night might be taken wrong in what I wrote above.
When I tell Doug that cutting slack to the LDS church or not cutting slack is the difference between him and me, it might sound like I think I’m making some indepth analysis of Doug with piercing insight. I want to be clear that that was not my intent.
In actuality, the reason I feel so comfortable drawing such a conclusion is because it is my perception of the difference between any two people on two sides of a question that has no definitive provable answer. (Which basically anything controversial and a great many non-controversial things.) One will have the null hypothesis one way and one the other and there isn’t much else going on. The rest of the arguments usually mean very little.
And I am just as guilty as anyone of creating a narrative fallacy in my head and then holding people responsible for it and assuming they are lying if they didn’t draw my conclusions. I still have to fight off that feeling when I read unbelieving Mormon historians such as by Todd Compton. I intellectually know he is not trying to deceive people but my little inference engine in my brain constantly looks at every thing he leaves out or slants and colors with his words and can’t help but feel he’s lying and being deceptive.
But then I have to kick myself and remind myself it just isn’t true. He’s as honest as I am. He just sees the world through different eyes than I do. And ultimately the difference between his interpretation of history and mine seems to (I personaly believe) boil down to what we feel moral outrage over the most. So the difference ultimately seems to be rooted in something not based on reason after all.
Anyhow… I can’t write any more. I have been planning to write a post about this for a long time and after writing what I did above, to Doug, and feeling like I did such a sloppy job (even considered deleting it but finally decided not to and just let my words stand regardless of whether they were a well formed and cleary explained thought or not) I decided to start on the post(s) that will explain myself better.
I promised myself I was not going to get into this mess of apologetic responses, but then Bruce has to attack one of the nicest, most considerate people I know. Todd is anything but a “unbelieving Mormon historians”(sic). Hell, even the church leaders use Todd as their poster boy against Jon Krakauer, who BTW is an unbelieving historian of all things Mormon. Jan Shipps is a unbelieving historian of things Mormon. She has made this quite clear publicly and is a very happy Methodist. Bruce have you ever heard Todd say he does not believe in Mormonism as his religion? If not I think you had better apologize. As for his historical work. I know of no one with more than half a brain who thinks Todd is anything less than an excellent and honest historian.
Jan Shipps is a unbelieving historian of things Mormon. She has made this quite clear publicly and is delightful in person.
Stephen,
I am sure Jon Krakauer is also a pleasant person. My point is that we attack people with in our own faith and label them recklessly. Jan and Jon have both gone on record saying they do not believe in the Mormon church as we Mormon’s think of belief in our religion. Jan is a wonderful person and I think of her as a friend. She has helped the church on many levels and I am grateful for this, but she does not believe in our faith as we do. In no way was I suggesting Jan is anything but the salt of the earth, but why would one label Todd as unbelieving? In no way am I attacking Jan, I am pointing out a difference in a religious faith. As for a historian, I think Jan is one of the finest. Her “New Religious Tradition” is one of my favorite books and I think is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Mormonism. Jan’s “Prophet Puzzle” is one of the best articles ever written about Joseph Smith and it changed my idea of our founding prophet.
“All have a personal investment in it, either to see a way to dismiss it or accept it.”
Bruce, I suppose I disagree with you, Ray, and a few others on this site in terms of the possibilities of objectivity. The first part of your sentence above is not connected to the second part. I have known many people who have a personal investment in historical issues who could honestly go either way regarding the validity of the Church’s claims, that is, they are willing to stick with the Church as an investigator or member while continuing to put together the most complete picture of what happened in the past as possible. You, Ray, and others on this thread seem to assume that anyone’s frame of reference is equal to bias in the pejorative sense.
While everyone certainly has a frame of reference, I cannot see that everyone has a bias. I’m sure that all of you historical relativists still have life commitments based partly on your sifting of various kinds of evidence, historical, spiritual, experiential, etc. I’m also sure that you would say some historical accounts are closer to the truth than others, and that books written on other emotionally loaded topics like the Holocaust can be written about more objectively by a trained historian than an amateur neo-Nazi or employee of the Anti-Defamation League.
The binary thinking of us vs. them exemplified on this thread, the circle the wagons, historically defensive “Haun’s Milling” posture of everyone that writes about historical topics having an axe to grind is not exemplified by the explosion in solid Mormon Studies monographs which have been published in the last two decades, and by the resurgent scholarly interest in these topics.
My point in this post was, the story of the priesthood bestowals AS A STORY, AND AS PRESENTED IN OUR CHURCH MANUALS, is weak at best. If I had been asked to write a term paper in my senior history seminar on the development of another religion, say Seventh Day Adventism, with sources like the ones we use to support the second bestowal, I would have had to take note of the fact that the sources only started mentioning this around 1834 or 1835, and that this coincided with an elaboration of church organization which made a second visitation more desirable. I would also have to take note of the practice at the time of editing revelations, which raises further questions. It seems more like a theological elaboration on the order of “well, we have two priesthoods now, so there must have been two separate founding events way back then.”
My question based on my point was, WHAT DO WE DO AS LATTER-DAY SAINTS with the correlated Church story and all it was designed to support theologically when we know it is a weak story? Keep telling it the correlated way? Tell it with caveats? Rethink the concept of the priesthood, its transmission, its importance?
These are open questions for me.
My mother used to always say: “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.” That never made a whole lot of sense to me until I heard the phrase “the truth will out,” which is a more accurate reflection of what happens IMO. I don’t believe there is a wide-spread conspiracy to suppress truth, although I do believe some individuals like to weave mythical narratives that, frankly, they themselves probably believe. Does that make it a lie? Or just optimistic “it coulda happened this way” storytelling? I’m not inclined to judge. But the simple fact is that over time factual truths emerge and evolve and are reinterpreted. So, accounts in secondary (non-scriptural) church sources will continue to shift. We should all realize that we are surfing rather than standing on terra firma when we are talking about history. Church history, family history, American history, World history, our own personal history. It’s all subject to this.
#59 - Thanks, Bill. That looks like the same basic presentation, but I don’t remember the reference to the Gospel Principles manual at the very beginning. (The initial comment that was in moderation was just two links - no “comment” at all - and now is gone, so I can’t go back and compare.) Perhaps they are different versions; perhaps I was distracted at the very beginning and missed the quick reference to Gospel Principles; I can’t say for sure, so I’m not going to hold to the harshness of my original comment about that particular point.
You also asked why I “over-reacted”. That deserves a response, given the overall context of this thread.
I have dealt with truly anti-Mormon groups for over 20 years. I have seen everything that they say (all of it) - and I have seen it in many, many different forms. It hasn’t changed a bit in 20 years. I have seen all kinds of levels of sincerity, and I have seen all kinds of levels of understanding. I am fine with those who simply are misinformed and act out of sincere love and concern, but I have a very difficult time with those who know the nuances of our actual beliefs and intentionally choose to ignore those nuances and paint with a broad, prejudicial brush - who claim to act out of true Christlike love while engaging in duplicitous and deceptive and mean-spirited attacks. Generally, it’s not any one thing; it’s the totality of the blatant distortions that frustrate me and cause my ire.
I have dealt previously with Joe’s group. They have been around for long time, and they know better than to present much of what they do in the way they present it. Before looking at the link in the comment I had gone to the site, seen who it was and perused a bit to see if they still were the same organization I remembered from my past - twisting things they knew better than to twist. (For example, one of their favorite ploys is to quote controversial statements from long ago - even ones that were not generally accepted even when they were first said - and present them as standard Church doctrine. Another tactic of some groups with whom I have dealt is to change scriptural citations to say what we teach, making the defense you did - that it was an innocent attempt to make their point in the easiest, quickest way. The issue is that they know the reader / hearer isn’t making that distinction - that the audience really believes that what is being presented is actual canonized scripture. I have seen that over and over and over again, and sometimes it is downright disgusting and vulgar.) The web site is full of these things - things that I know the leadership understands but prints anyway.
That was on my mind when I viewed the video and, I’m sure, was the reason why I reacted as I did. I simply despise that organization and its tactics, and Joe was the one who took the brunt of my frustration.
Again, I do apologize if I simply missed the reference to Gospel Principles at the beginning - if the one you linked is the same one I saw. That particular group should know better than to attribute it the way they did, but it simply was the proverbial straw last night for me. I really did debate whether or not to comment at all, and I probably should have avoided it altogether.
“You, Ray, and others on this thread seem to assume that anyone’s frame of reference is equal to bias in the pejorative sense.”
#65 - John, I never said that, and it was not my intention. There is no “pejorative” in my actual perception; I simply think it is impossible for anyone to present ALL the historical evidence in any limited presentation, so they have to pick and choose what to present - and those decisions are made based on their purpose. That is not meant pejoratively, since I do it, as well.
Sorry - I didn’t have time to read all the comments yet. I just wanted to respond to the question “Does the restoration of priesthood/authority need to have been a literal laying on of hands by resurrected beings in the same order in which 12 year old boys and 18 year old men experience it in the contemporary Church?”
I would say that we don’t really know, and it doesn’t really matter. We know that in order for us mortals to receive priesthood ordinances, we do need the physical laying on of hands. We also need to physically partake of other ordinances, like our baptism, confirmation, initiatory, and endowment.
I strongly feel that full and complete understanding of WHY we must partake in these ordinances in this way during this life is not something that is for us to understand with our mortal minds. I do believe that seeking for truth is necessary, and good, but demanding a complete understanding of it in a specific time frame will more often lead to frustration, doubt, and too much reliance on human logic. We have a level of understanding, but it does not compare with the scope of God’s understanding.
We have been given instructions about how to administer certain ordinances, and we follow them. Whether or not the restoration of the priesthood “needed to have been a literal laying on of hands by resurrected beings” is not important to understand now, in my opinion. Please don’t take this to mean I disagree with discussing it as such on this blog. I think this is a completely appropriate topic and even commendable for bringing up, provided the purpose is not to sway faith.
In my time on this board, I have learned so much about how well informed people deal with disturbing pieces of history. Bruce, Ray and others have my profound respect as they are willing to defend their beliefs in an open forum, such as this, and take the brunt of many of us heretics and apostates. I certainly understand Ray’s weariness at having to answer the same questions year after year.
I think where I part ways with many of the orthodox believing members are the historical events that the church doesn’t take issue with, but conflict with what they once taught. When I first learned of some of these issues, I fully expected to go to LDS.org or FAIR/FARMS type apologetic sites and find straight out denials of the particular issue. Instead I found that they accepted the same historical documentation I had been confronted with, but put a believing spin on it. Much as Ray, Bruce, and Hawkgrrrl do here. What that told me was that the evidence was indeed legitimate, not a Mark Hoffman type fabrication.
For the sake of those who think I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill, allow me to give a couple of simple examples. As a missionary serving over 25 years ago, I taught out of what was commonly referred to as the rainbow discussions. We were required to memorize these word for word and were informed the reason we needed to get it exactly right was to ensure we didn’t teach non-members false doctrine and thereby offend the spirit. These discussions came with flip chart pictures depicting the events we were teaching. In the “C” discussion, third concept, we were instructed to show the picture of JS translating the gold plates while explaining to the investigator that Joseph accomplished this work by the gift and power of God. A picture paints a thousand words for the investigator, therefore imagine my shock to learn that the translation was actually accomplished by JS putting his head in his hat and staring at a peep stone. This head in the hat methodology is backed up by no less than six primary sources and is generally accepted by most LDS historians including Bruce.
The fourth concept is no better. It states that while Joseph and Oliver were translating the BoM, they constantly sought divine inspiration and frequently went to the woods to pray. During one of these times Peter, James, and John appeared to them and restored the MP. The church had us teach this concept and timeline, knowing full well that no historical account was available to back this up. It’s very possible that the understanding of needing the higher priesthood didn’t come until well after the church was organized. Ray and Bruce call this acceptable; I call it making up history. Call me picky, but that’s different then picking and choosing what to tell, its deliberately painting a picture of events that we don’t have any record of happening. We can go back and forth all day on what actually occurred in 1829, and none of us will ever know for sure. I’m not arguing the validity of whether the MP was restored; I just think missionary discussions and other official church publications should pick historical events to relate instead of fabricating them…
Doug G. - I totally agree with you, but I also wonder how much of that was a byproduct of the “assurity” generation of black & white thinkers in the 50s (who created those discussions). My parents were taught from those earlier discussions, and even growing up a couple decades later, they would say things to me that they were taught by the missionaries that I would tell them are not what I was taught at church, and that those things were speculative. There was a real focus for a time on “having all the answers” that I think is no longer viewed as necessary, thank goodness! But you are right that it creates an inconsistency. The best thing about the changes in the missionary program that I have seen is an ever increasing focus on flexibility and sticking with the basics only. Although the artwork issue is always problematic. The artwork is impactful, and when it is inaccurate, there are often not better alternatives readily available.
I say omit artwork that is inaccurate from all teachings, but there could be inaccuracies that we don’t know are inaccurate yet. Even so, if we know something to be inaccurate, it shouldn’t be presented in teaching. Frankly, I don’t even like those paintings of JS in the grove with the enormous tree trunks that make it look like he’s praying in the redwood forest. The trees are just not that big there and not that type of tree.
If I may, I wish to give some insight as a non-believer and one who has studied history extensively. First, I do beleive that everyone who writes history does so with a given bias. I also think there is far too much information far too often to include in brief studies. Is this an excuse to pick and choose all evidence on a given side? And does our bias lead us to certain bits of evidence we wish to include or leave out? Can this be overcome?
Well, yes, it can be overcome. Despite our personal bias, we must attempt to present the past for what it was, and not for what we want it to be. Reading through this thread it seems many are willing to ignore the very real possibility the leaders of the church have favorably altered the history to their cause rather than present it as what really happened. They are then presenting a very biased history, which is in large part why so many leave the church and feel they were lied to.
To me, if the church were determined to present the truth, it would in all phases– historically as well as spiritually. Certainly, since I am not a believer in LDS doctrine I do not feel the need to have my faith uplifted, but I wonder if that is why so many are willing to overlook the discrepencies in the historic record.
To those that claim that since history is messy and we cannot ever know what exactly happened, I say that is a cop out. No, we cannot ever go back to it and see it happen, but we can piece together history, and get a good idea of it. When I look at the questions presented here, historically, it is problematic why the leadership chooses to present a chain of events that is not backed up by the what the record has left us.
I’ll end by saying I mean not to rouse anger, only to present my point of view.
Michael, I have no time right now, but I really appreciate the tone and perspective. Honestly, I don’t think we differ much in the long run in our perspectives on this issue. Frankly, I don’t think the leadership (or I) care enough about what we see as the tiny details to spend time trying to get an exact detail 100% right - when we beileve a generality will suffice. People can differ as to what constitutes “tiny details”, obviously, but that is another disucssion entirely.
Michael - I wouldn’t excuse deliberate white-washing to obscure actual facts, but in this case, I also don’t see the major significance of when the MP was restored. Did it have to be prior to the church’s organization? Not necessarily. Giving a possible date range, which is all the church did, is not very misleading in my perspective. Did it happen? Yes, according to the statements. The only real open question is when. And my personal view is that the when isn’t that significant. It’s only become significant because the myth-builders imbued it with significance in their earlier speculation.