Jonathan Neville’s double standard on the Book of Mormon witnesses
|
Tags: Bias confirmation, Daniel Peterson, Hill Cumorah, Hypocrisy, Self-awareness, Three Witnesses
In one of Jonthan Neville’s latest blog posts—coarsely titled “Rejecting the witnesses”—he criticizes Daniel Peterson’s list of recommended books to strengthen faith. Neville writes:
Observant readers will also note that Neville just engaged in a massive double standard:
Neville says that he “want[s] people to accept the witnesses as reliable and credible,” when they mentioned the hill Cumorah. But Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer’s calling was to be witnesses of the translation of the Book of Mormon, and on that matter Neville insists that you disregard anything they said that doesn’t match his idiosyncratic views on that subject.
Oliver, Martin, and David were not witnesses to Book of Mormon geography or the destruction of the Nephites; they never saw anything regarding those subjects. It’s perfectly legitimate to evaluate their views on the location of Cumorah carefully and cautiously. Neville, however, would have us wholly accept everything they said about Cumorah, regardless of context, while at the same time allowing just a handful of select statements from Oliver Cowdery (and only Oliver Cowdery) and rejecting everything else.
Jonathan Neville’s hypocrisy shines so brightly one could place it on a rocky shoreline to warn ships at night.
—Peter Pan
They’re all great books in many respects, especially if you believe/teach M2C and SITH. But only one of them is completely faithful to the witnesses.Neville continues his pattern of discourteously referring to Daniel Peterson as “Dan” (as if they were close friends) and disparaging the Interpreter Foundation for daring to have a name that Neville believes is somehow prideful or supercilious.
That fits with the approach taken by Dan and the rest of the M2C citation cartel (along with the SITH-sayers). They want people to accept the witnesses as reliable and credible—except for what they said about Cumorah.
When it comes to Cumorah, our M2C scholars, such as Dan, want people to think the witnesses were ignorant speculators who misled the Church until they, the scholars, came along to straighten things out.
It’s a patently self-serving, arrogant position for these scholars to presume they know more than Joseph, Oliver, their contemporaries and successors. But what can we expect from a group of intellectuals who publish under the The Interpreter rubric?
Observant readers will also note that Neville just engaged in a massive double standard:
Oliver, Martin, and David were not witnesses to Book of Mormon geography or the destruction of the Nephites; they never saw anything regarding those subjects. It’s perfectly legitimate to evaluate their views on the location of Cumorah carefully and cautiously. Neville, however, would have us wholly accept everything they said about Cumorah, regardless of context, while at the same time allowing just a handful of select statements from Oliver Cowdery (and only Oliver Cowdery) and rejecting everything else.
Jonathan Neville’s hypocrisy shines so brightly one could place it on a rocky shoreline to warn ships at night.
—Peter Pan
Posts
What about the witness of the Three Witnesses to a newspaper in 1830 that the Lehites landed on the shore of Chile?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/OH/miscohio.htm
(Search for Chili)
That article published in the Ohio 𝑂𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝𝒉 (a non-Mormon newspaper) in late 1830 reported on the four missionaries who had come to the Kirtland area with the message of the Book of Mormon. Those missionaries were Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer Jr., Parley P. Pratt, and Ziba Peterson. The article claims:
Delete"This new Revelation [i.e., the Book of Mormon], they say is especially designed for the benefit, or rather for the christianizing of the Aborigines of America; who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of Manasseh, and whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chili 600 years before the coming of Christ, and from them descended all the Indians of America."
I don't have any reason to doubt the accuracy of the reporting. The questions that need to be asked include: If the location of Lehi's landing was revealed by God, why isn't there a written revelation? Why do we only know about it from a non-Mormon newspaper? Of the Three Witnesses, why is only Oliver Cowdery (possibly) connected to this claim?
It seems more likely to me that the landing spot was conjecture by early Saints (possibly Parley Pratt, because his brother Orson made the same claim early on). In that case, it would be similar to early Latter-day Saint assumptions that the hill in New York was the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon.
Historical records need to be treated with caution. This is an example of that.
I agree that it is most likely the 3 Witnesses did make this claim to that Newspaper, and I also agree that does not prove they were correct, but surely it should be considered possible.
DeleteI find the claim by Frederick Salem Williams more convincing: “Perhaps it was prophetic that the angel showed our progenitor, Dr. Frederick Granger Williams, the vision in which he saw Lehi's landing place in South America. This vision was received in the Kirtland Temple which is constructed on land that he donated to the Church for that purpose.”
So this fellow is claiming that his ancestor Frederick G Williams received the well known "30 degrees South Latitude" statement as a revelation to himself during the Kirtland Temple dedication in which he also saw an angel.
This claim is made in the book “Stalwarts South of the Border” page 778.
https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/208512-stalwarts-south-of-the-border?viewer=1&offset=0#page=1&viewer=picture&o=&n=0&q=
(one has to sign into a familysearch.org account to view this)
"𝐼 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 3 𝑊𝑖𝑡𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑁𝑒𝑤𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑟…"
DeleteThe Three Witnesses, as a group, were not in Ohio in late 1831; only one of them (Oliver Cowdery) was. Oliver was one member of a group of four missionaries who were on the Lamanite Mission to Missouri. That statement (assuming that the report is accurate) could have come from any one of them, and the history of the claim of a Chile landing site points most reasonably to Parley P. Pratt. It is a series of very large leaps to get from that newspaper report to "the Three Witnesses made this claim."
The quote you provided from Frederick G. Williams is another example of how historical documents and claims need to be treated carefully and cautiously. The fact that some of Williams’s descendants, 149 years later, believed that document was a revelation from God tells us nothing (other than it’s a family tradition). When one examines the provenance and history of the letter, the claim that Williams’s belief that Lehi landed in Chile was based on revelation seems very unlikely. See this analysis by Frederick G. Williams III:
https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/did-lehi-land-chile
I say that the Three Witnesses said this because of the paragraph before the Newspaper quote I gave:
Delete"To convince the world that this record and prophecy is a Divine Revelation, three men, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris, have subscribed their names to an article in this "Book of Mormon," solemnly declaring that they saw an Angel come down from heaven, who showed them those plates, and made known to them it was given by inspiration, and "they know of a surety it is true," &c. &c."
Then the next paragraph says:
"This new Revelation, ****they**** say is especially designed for the benefit, or rather for the christianizing of the Aborigines of America; who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of Manasseh, and whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chili 600 years before the coming of Christ, and from them descended all the Indians of America."
So I have thought that ****they**** is referring to the Three Witnesses. But to be fair, it could be referring to men spoken of earlier in the article:
"These men have brought with them copies of a Book, known in this region by the name of the "Golden Bible," or, as it is learned on its title-page, "The Book of Mormon."
Reading the article in context, it seems pretty clear (at least to me) that the antecedent to “they” was the missionaries in Kirtland.
DeleteWhen I hear the tired, old canard of, "scholars and intellectuals are duplicitous devils bent on leading the Church astray", I think of Elder Ballard's remarks to CES instructors from some years ago. Well, let me fast-forward a little: President Nelson comes to mind, sharing that when he wanted to improve his understanding of Scripture, G̶̶̶o̶̶̶d̶̶̶ ̶̶̶r̶̶̶e̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶a̶̶̶l̶̶̶e̶̶̶d̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶H̶e̶b̶r̶e̶w̶ ̶̶̶l̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶u̶̶̶a̶̶̶g̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶ ̶̶̶h̶̶̶i̶̶̶m̶̶̶ ̶̶̶w̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶l̶̶̶l̶̶̶ ̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶n̶̶̶u̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶c̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶d̶̶̶ ̶̶̶c̶̶̶o̶̶̶m̶̶̶p̶̶̶l̶̶̶e̶̶̶x̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶y̶̶̶ he hired Hebrew scholars to teach him. It's like he was following Elder Ballard's counsel:
ReplyDelete"For you [Seminary and Institute instructors] to understand the doctrinal and historical content and context of the scriptures and our history, you will need to study from the “best books,” as the Lord directed. The “best books” include the scriptures, the teachings of modern prophets and apostles, and the best LDS scholarship available (emphasis added)."[1]
In this context, he specifically mentioned the 11 Gospel Topics Essays as an example of the Brethren's "making extraordinary efforts to provide accurate context and understanding of the teachings of the Restoration." Saints hadn't yet been published, or he would probably have included that as well. At a later date, he quipped that he is:
"...a General Authority, but that does not make me an authority in general!". He then went on to lament that "I worry sometimes that members expect too much from Church leaders and teachers—expecting them to be experts in subjects well beyond their duties and responsibilities. The Lord called the apostles and prophets to invite others to come unto Christ—not to obtain advanced degrees in ancient history, biblical studies, and other fields that may be useful in answering all the questions we may have about scriptures, history, and the Church..."[2]
I take that second statement to mean in part, that apostles and prophets are allowed to opine on whatever they like, but when they have spoken about things beyond what their mantle covers, it is certainly not doctrinally binding. It is also reasonable to allow their humanity to manifest itself in ways that are normal for the rest of us, i.e., perpetuating assumptions and traditions as fact. Later corrections of those assumptions and traditions (the Book of Mormon has a lot to say about traditions!) do not threaten their divine authority. But it is unfair of us to impart some kind of pseudo-infallibility to every syllable uttered, every word penned. And it is most disingenuous to do so with just the bits and pieces that seem to confirm our favorite hobby-horses.
I will take faithful, measured, well-done scholarship over the Mormon-Nationalism endorsed by Neville's H1C* any day.
[1] MR Ballard, "The Opportunities and Responsibilities of CES Teachers in the 21st Century", 2/26/2016 (churchofjesuschrist.org)
[2] MR Ballard, "Questions and Answers", BYU Devotional, 11/14/2017 (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/m-russell-ballard/questions-and-answers/)
*Heartland-One-Cumorah Citation Cartel.
One more thing regarding Church scholars. I should add that in my recent stake conference, Elder QL Cook stated that he, personally, has reviewed every page produced in the Joseph Smith Papers project. Based on his remarks, I am satisfied that he recognizes all the unstated nuance, subtlety and vagary inherent in conveying simply the complexities entailed in such histories. (from my notes of that meeting)
Delete"When it comes to Cumorah, our [Heartlanders], such as [Neville], want people to think the [scholars] were [wilful deceivers] who misled the Church until they, the [Heartlanders], came along to straighten things out."
ReplyDeleteOnce again it is absurdly easy to show that Neville's statements apply more to himself and his fellow Heartlanders than to those he seeks to malign.