Hebrew Voices #183 – Early Mormonism Revealed: Part 1

Transcript

Dan Vogel: Joseph Smith put out to the people that he’s just dictating God’s words, or that he’s dictating the words on the stone. Privately, he has a different definition of revelation that is more liberal, more nuanced, than what he let out.

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Nehemia: So, I’m back with Dan Vogel, who I consider to be the greatest living historian on early Mormonism, if not one of the greatest. I don’t think it’s exaggeration to say you’re the greatest living historian on early Mormonism, and that’s for this reason, Dan. The way I look at it is, in scholarship, in academia, there are consumers and producers. And most people, I think, who write on early Mormonism, I could be wrong, I think they are consumers of the documents. And you’re actually a producer of the documents. Not in the sense of that forger Hofman, but in the sense of, you go, and you hunt them down and you edit them and then publish them. So that now I don’t have to go and look in some newspaper from 1830 that, if I’m lucky… today I can find it online, but back then, good luck. You actually have now made it available, so now I can find out, okay, what are the sources?

Now, somebody could argue that you didn’t do a correct job of… they could always argue that, and I’m sure you would say there’s mistakes you made. Everybody has that. But you’ve made these sources available, and then your conclusions are based on the sources, rather than going to dig up sources to back up what you want to argue or what you believe or something. Which is what, frankly, some people do in every field, let’s be honest.

So, all right, so, we talked about the first vision. And before we go on, I want to bring up this and I want to get your thoughts on it. So, I am now convinced, after the research I’ve done, which I admit is relatively limited in scope, mainly preparing for this interview… I’ve been doing research for the past year. Actually, first I did the research, and I’m like, “Okay, I got to talk to this guy.” This is the guy I’ve got to talk to. And hopefully, I’ll do an interview with Royal Skousen one day because he’s another guy… I’m really fascinated in his work.

I’m convinced that everybody in Old Testament and New Testament studies, and probably Islamic studies, but I don’t know enough about that, should be forced to take a class on early Mormonism and study it, because there are things that we can learn from early Mormonism that we can apply to these other fields. And I’ll give you an example, and I want your thoughts on it. So, there’s a big… not even a debate; there’s a big discussion about Paul in the New Testament, which letters he wrote. And they’ll say, “Well, Paul wrote this letter, but that letter is either a forgery or it was written by one of his disciples, depending on your perspective.” And the reason is, he uses the same energy as Paul, but in a completely different way. And so, that’s not Paul’s terminology; his student heard that term and he’s using it in a different way.

And I look at early Mormonism, and look, I’m not a Mormon, I don’t believe in Mormonism. So, from my perspective, I accept the critical approach that says, Joseph Smith just pretty much made it all up. And if Joseph Smith made it all up, and he’s saying about the First Vision, “It was the Lord.” And then it’s the father and the son, and those are very different things… I think they are. And then in the Book of Mormon he’s anti-Masonic, but later he joins the Masons. I mean, this is textbook stuff that you would say, “Well, no, that was written by Joseph Smith.” If you were coming from a New Testament studies or Old Testament studies, “Joseph Smith wrote that, but Oliver Cowdery must have written that,” or some other guy, right? Who knows? “Because they have different approaches to Freemasonry, or they have different approaches to what the First Vision was.”

A great example is something I wrote to you in messages before this interview, which to me is an incredible example, is this idea of what happens when you die. So, in the Book of Mormon, there is eternal damnation, eternal punishment. And then in the Doctrine and Covenants… tell us about that one, because that’s incredible! You would have to say in medieval studies or Old Testament / New Testament studies, that there’s two different authors. But we know there’s not two different authors, or at least we think so, right?