Angel to Money Digging

[_moksha]

I know I sound very ignorant on the subject which I am, but I haven't really put filters on my information intake. I just don't have Bushman's book. His books aren't free like Book of Mormons and to have it around reading it would cause contention in the family. I wondered if any of you cared to fill me in how Joseph's money digging activities are different than what is described in "The North Pole Press." Also, do apologists recognize these other sources and try to explain why "North Pole Press" paints a different picture or do they just say that everything else is a lie?

Fortunately, this book is available a quite a few public libraries. by the way, there is nothing wrong with the NorthPole press. It is merely the nature of that press to employ candy cane coatings to the material to make it extra yummy.

[_Runtu]

Well the presumption is the Joseph or any other prophet were conistantly misleading. And God might expect more but people are human. In what areas do you think Smith lied? I think his life was fairly open and honest but for the polygamy issue. Of course, that assumes that his claims of supernatural intervention were true stories.

Open and honest? Are we talking about the same Joseph Smith?

The man seemed consumed with the need for secrecy.

Made-up names in the D&C.
Secret meetings of the Council of Fifty (indeed, the organization's existence was a carefully guarded secret)
His secret anointing as king of the world.
Secret (I mean "sacred") temple ceremonies with death oaths for those who might be tempted to reveal them.

I don't know. I'm not seeing the open book version of Joseph. I'm seeing the one who rightly said, "No man knows my history."

Secret names were for safety reasons. But yes, I would add that after plural marraige the Nauvoo period became a period of subtefuge and secrecy.

Jason

Most of the secrecy stems from the introduction of polygamy, but then things got a little paranoid, you'd have to say. I wonder if he actually believed his own press releases. Did he really think his little council of fifty was destined to rule the world? I really have no idea, but I get the sense that he felt he was at least semi-invincible.

[_Quantumwave]

One question that I have wondered about for sometime, but restrained myself from ever asking at FAIR is this: If Joseph had been visited by an Angel from an early age and was slated to receive ancient records and be the Prophet of the new dispensation, why did he ever get involved in money digging efforts, (which I assume was the early 19th Century equivalent to being a scam artist)?

I am somewhat hesitant to ask that question now, because it is so provocative, but I would really like to hear a reasonable answer.

Hi moksha,

I dug a little information out of Quinn's book and for what it's worth, Quinn was of the opinion that “treasure-seeking in no way discredits Joseph Smith or his family.”

In his book “Early Mormonism and the Magic World View” Quinn devotes most of the first chapter establishing the wide-spread belief and practice of the occult among New-Englanders during the last of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, with special mention of activity around Palmyra during the 1820s reported in the newspaper.


At the beginning of chapter two, Quinn points out that society’s response to folk-magic was that every colony and later, state had enacted laws against divination, and that “many early-Americans regarded participation in the folk magic of treasure-seeking as disreputable.” He goes on to write:

To the present, this evangelical and rationalist view has dominated any discussion about whether or not members of the Smith family in general (and Joseph Jr. in particular) engaged in the treasure-quest. In this sense, early anti-Mormon authors and modern LDS apologists shared the assumption that if Mormonism’s founding prophet engaged in “money-digging,” then his religious claims could be discredited. However, the substantial evidence of their participation in treasure-seeking in no way discredits Joseph Smith or his family. This was even the view of some of their neighbors who had no interest in the family’s religious claims. Magic and treasure-seeking were an integral part of the Smith family’s religious quest.

Like I say, for what it's worth.