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Literacy, Imitation, and Literary Borrowing in Early Mormon History

Recent academic discussions about the composition of the Book of Mormon and the concept of translation in Joseph Smith, Jr.’s worldview have tended to revolve around the question of what Smith meant by the use of the term translation when dictating his texts. Although most attempts to explain early Mormon concepts of translation in relation to Smith’s texts have focused on data pulled from the texts themselves, no single theory has yet to reach a consensus. Two broad theories have tended to attract the most scholars and represent the clearest divide. The first argues that Smith produced his texts in the same way as any linguistic translation occurs—including either Smith himself doing the work of translating the text or some kind of divine translation for Smith—and the second that Smith enjoyed the broader semantic possibilities of the term translation, allowing it to mean more than a 1:1 correspondence between two languages.[1]

Others have approached the question of the production of Mormonism’s texts by focusing on how outsiders portrayed Smith’s intellectual abilities.[2] Since most portrayals of Smith as “illiterate” in this literature are sometimes read as pointing to his inability to produce a text like the Book of Mormon, this argument is found most often in writing with a devotional leaning and meant rhetorically to separate him from the composition of the Book of Mormon, rather than engaging directly with the literary and historical contexts of the literature that Smith produced. The desire to defend rather than to analyze has often stifled academic exploration primarily because the main goal is to provide just enough evidence for a plausible defense rather than an attempt to understand all of the historical data.

While doing research for a related project I recently stumbled onto a newspaper article circulated during the earliest years of Mormon history, in 1831, which includes an appended correction to the article’s mischaracterization of Smith’s literacy.[3] This article suggests there is still much to discuss about early public perceptions of Smith’s involvement in the production of the Book of Mormon in the months and years soon after its publication. This also presents an opportunity for scholars in Mormon studies to more directly engage with the literature on literacy in late colonial and early national Anglo-American history. Very few publications in Mormon studies have attempted to contextualize early Mormon history with what is known about the trends in early national literacy of Smith’s youth.

An essential part of studying the history of the book in early America has been the estimation of literacy rates at different points of colonial and antebellum history. Since the Smith family was originally from New England—Smith himself was born in Sharon, Vermont in 1805—New England literacy rates at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries have a direct bearing on our understanding of the younger Smith’s abilities. Literacy is defined as one’s ability to both read and write,[4] and it should be obvious that for the texts Smith produced in the late 1820s, Smith’s ability to read and engage with print culture are more relevant to his abilities and knowledge than writing. Smith relied heavily on scribes for most of his textual productions during his lifetime, a common approach to composition and publishing in early America that allowed cultural “outsiders” to engage in print culture.[5] It is also important to take his writing abilities into account as well, since they have a bearing on the question of his overall literacy (i.e. his ability to read and write). As we find in the response to the article “Mormonites” below, Smith’s “friend and relative…says that the statement made in our article which appeared in ours of week before last, that Smith could neither read or write, is untrue.” All of the historical data available to us, except for the pejorative declarations by some of his early critics who did not have firsthand knowledge, indicates that Smith could both read and write in 1829.

The first broadly successful attempt to estimate literacy rates in Anglo North America, and still the study cited most often, is Kenneth Lockridge’s Literacy in Colonial New England.[6] Lockridge focused his quantitative analysis on whether or not a person could sign their own name and this became an established approach to literacy rates in early America.[7] This has been rightly criticized as a too restrictive approach to literacy in colonial and early national America,[8] but other data points have proven helpful in buttressing the evidence of signatures depending on the demographic being studied.[9] These numbers also focus on early Americans’ abilities to write, not read, suggesting to historians that while estimates help to show that by the end of the eighteenth century at least 90 percent of white male New Englanders knew how to write, even more knew how to read. By the end of the colonial period white women had similar rates as white men.[10] Since early Americans first learned how to read before they were taught how to write, it would make sense that many more students in early Anglo-America would accomplish the first step to literacy while not as many would successfully learn the second step.[11]

What do these methods say about Smith’s literacy? First, we know that Smith could sign his own name as early as 1829 but certainly much earlier than that since his signature by then indicates years of practice.[12] Smith’s cousin, George Albert Smith, reported in 1857 in his autobiography that in the fall of 1828 Joseph Smith, Sr. sent a letter to Asael Smith and three or four of his sons (Smith, Jr.’s uncles) with “information that his son Joseph had had several remarkable visions.” Not long after, Smith, Sr. sent his letter the family received a letter from Smith, Jr. “in which he declared, that the sword of vengeance ^of from ^the the Almighty hung over this generation, & that except they repented, & obeyed the Gospel, and turned from their wicked ways, humbling themselves before the Lord, it would fall upon the wicked, & sweep them from the earth ^as with the besom of destruction.”[13] It is possible that Smith, Sr. helped Smith, Jr. to compose this letter, since his earlier letter to the family worked functionally as a primer for the one Smith, Jr. would send, but it is more likely that Smith composed the letter entirely by himself because he was already dictating new scriptural productions as early as July 1828 and forming his own prophetic voice.[14]

A key piece of evidence of Smith’s composition of the fall 1828 letter is its echo of Cicero’s Sword of Damocles, that “the sword of vengeance…hung over” them.[15] Although the wording is not the exact same, probably reflecting George Albert Smith’s memory of the letter, it is striking that George Albert Smith would remember this specific imagery. Smith, Jr. also echoed the Sword of Damocles in a revelation in March 1829, in a portion of Doctrine and Covenants 5:19 that was later edited out of the published version. This suggests that George Albert Smith’s memory of the contents of the letter is accurate and that Smith was a capable writer as early as 1828.

Later, on January 16, 1830, Smith entered into an agreement with Martin Harris that allowed Harris to try to recuperate the money he paid to have the Book of Mormon printed. Oliver Cowdery wrote out the agreement while Smith only signed the document.[16] Smith’s personal journals, which he started almost three years later in November 1832, support the notion that although he preferred having others write for him, he was perfectly capable of doing it himself. He wrote brief entries each day from November 28 until December 6, 1832, but did not write again until October 4, 1833.[17] Beginning with the October 6–12, 1833 entry, Smith wrote short parts of his journal entries and then had a scribe finish them for him,[18] but from the November 25, 1833 entry on it was almost always a scribe that wrote in his journals.[19]

Smith more than fits the academic criteria for being literate. As early as July 1828 he was already dictating complex revelations, writing letters, and producing new literature. What we learn from the following document, specifically, is significant because even though the author was under the incorrect impression that Smith could not read his name or write—and therefore he would have been completely illiterate—they still believed that his natural talent and retentive memory could have helped to assist him in the process of composing the Book of Mormon. It is a given in early American education that children were memorizing hymns, catechisms, and full chapters of the Bible.[20] It is not unlikely that Smith would have also had chapters of the New Testament committed to memory from his days in school and through his reading and engagement with Bible culture during 1810–1829. The evidence from his textual productions suggests that he was most familiar and comfortable with the gospels of Matthew and John and was able to recall portions of those books as he dictated new revelatory texts.

Introduction and Transcription

Edward D. Barber, “one of the most radical of the Anti-Masons,”[21] edited the Middlebury Free Press from 1831­–1834 and then co-edited the paper with Elam Jewett from 1834–1837.[22] In the August 3, 1831 issue Barber reprinted an article from the neighboring “Hartford (Conn.) Intelligencer”[23] that provides new insight into the specific details that were being shared with the public about Mormonism in its earliest years. Scholars are used to seeing early sources claim that Joseph Smith, Jr. was uneducated and illiterate, but many have noted that these comments were more likely rhetorical invectives meant to malign Smith’s public character rather than accurately portray his abilities.[24]

Although William Davis has recently shown that Smith spent more years in common school than historians have most often assumed,[25] he was still not an educated, cultured, erudite college graduate or professional. However, historians should not allow assumptions about Smith’s education to distract from his clear compositional abilities. These are becoming clearer through the close study and analysis of his literary productions,[26] and through the discovery of new sources that help us to understand that some of our assumptions are based on second or thirdhand pejorative accounts in early Mormon history.

Middlebury Free Press, August 3, 1831

Mormonites

We have always laid it down as a maxim, “let superstition alone, and it will do no harm.” Keeping this saying in view, we have heretofore forborne to mention a sect of religious fanatics known by the name of Mormonites. But, as this new sect has been introduced to the attention of the public, through the medium of the contemporary press; and as we are personally acquainted with its history from the commencement, we have concluded to give our readers a brief account of Mormonism.

In the year 1828, one Joseph Smith, of Palmyra, Wayne county, New-York, pretended to have found a number of gold plates, from which, by assistance of a pair of spectacles found with the plates, he said he could read certain revelations from God. He said these plates contained what he termed the Book of Mormon;—which consisted of several unpublished books of the Holy Scriptures, such as the Book of Mormon; the Book of Nephi, &c. &c.

This Jo Smith was a young man, so illiterate that he could not read his own name in print.[27] But being a person of some natural talents, he could with his spectacles on, read so fluently from his plates, by placing them in his hat, and his hat over his eyes, that he succeeded in gulling an honest, wealthy farmer of Palmyra, of the name of Martin Harris, into the belief, that these plates contained a revelation from Heaven; and Jo Smith was at least a prophet, who only was “worthy to open the book.” Jo once showed one of the plates, (or said he did, but no one ever pretended to have seen them,) and the result was, he was deprived, for six months, of the power of reading them.[28]

Finally, after frequent and fervent pray- [page change] er, Jo’s spectacles were restored to sight, and he again permitted to open the book. Jo had, during his spiritual blindness, by the assistance of some one, committed several chapters of the New Testament to memory; and the better to carry on his deception with the deluded Harris, had inquired and found out the words inserted by the translators; (which are distinguished by Italics, both in the New Testament and the Old.) So, that in order to convince Harris that he could read from the plates, Jo deposites [sic] them in his hat applies spectacles, and refers Harris to a chapter in the Bible which he had learned by rote: and which he read from the plates with surprising accuracy; and what astonished Harris most was, that Jo should omit all the words in the Bible that were printed in Italic. And, if Harris attempted to correct Jo, he persisted that the plates were right, and the Bible was wrong.

Jo possessed a remarkably retentive memory; and having convinced Harris beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was commissioned by the Almighty, to reveal some hidden mysteries, he commenced translating, and Harris commenced transcribing, as Jo dictated; and to avoid mistakes, Jo required his amanuensis to read what he had written; and nothing was allowed to pass, until Jo pronounced it correct. It must go as Jo said,—sense or nonsense.

But before a translation was completed, the Lord informed Jo. (or, at least, so Jo said,) that the work must be published. As Jo was possessed of no funds, the expense, of course, must fall upon Harris; who accordingly made application to the printers in Palmyra. One*[29] of them refused to have any thing to do with the concern. The other made a charge, which Harris’ unfledged zeal could not, at first, encompass, with his purse, without too hard a stretch of the strings. But, as he grew in faith, his purse-strings became more elastic; and, in 1830, the Book of Mormon was published.”

As is usually the case with new systems, however absurd, Mormonism found quite a number of deluded followers.—Jo and Martin, of course, were the principal leaders. Jo, by some revelation from above, as he pretended, was informed that there was a ‘Promised Land’ for him and his disciples, in the West. This information was communicated to the deluded Mormonites, who immediately took up a line of march for New-Connecticut, or the Western Reserve, in the State of Ohio. There they found a tract of land which they deemed the “Land of Promise.” But some of the wicked owners refused to sell it; and thus the Mormonites were deprived of their ‘inheritance.’ They however, occupied what part of it they were able to obtain, living, and sharing all their goods in common.

Many miracles were pretended to be wrought among them. They professed to receive direct communications from the Deity. At one time, a young man gave information to his brethren, that he was about to receive a message from heaven; and specified the time and place. At the appointed time, they repaired to the spot designated; and there, they solemnly assert, a letter descended from the skies, and fell into the hands of the young man who was expecting to receive the message;—the purport of which was, to inform him that he was about to be called to preach Mormonism, and to exhort him to increase his faith.[30] The deluded Mormonites declare their most solemn belief that this letter was written in heaven, by the finger of the Almighty: and the youth who pretends to have received it, says, the writing was in a round Italian hand, and the letters were in gold;—he attempted to copy it; but, as fast as he wrote, the letters disappeared from the original, until it entirely vanished.—Some of them pretend to have received a ‘white stone, on which is written a new name, which no man knoweth save him that receiveth it.”†[31] Revelations, ii, 17. Some of them pretend to see these stones moving about in the air, and others to hear them rolling about the floor; at such times, they spring and jump about, trying to catch them,—till some one, more fortunate than the rest, succeeds. But, when one of these stones is caught, no man can see it “save him that receiveth it.”

The Mormonites have among them an African, (or, Garrison, would say, an Africo-American,)[32] who fancies he can fly.—Caesar at one time, took it into his head to try his wings: he accordingly chose the elevated bank of Lake Erie as a string place, and, spreading his pinions, he lit on a tree-top some fifty feet below, sustaining no other damage than the demolition of his faith in wings without feathers.

The land of promise in Ohio, not exactly suiting Martin Harris and Jo Smith, they have lately discovered another Promised Land in the valley of the Mississippi; whence they, together with most of their followers, some 50 or 60 in number, have Departed.

As to their Creed, it is similar to that of the Mahometans: “God is great and Jo Smith is his prophet.” They pretend to believe the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments; and say the book of Mormon is but a continuation of God’s Word. They believe that they are visited by the Holy Ghost; that they are commissioned to cast out devils, and work miracles; and report such stories as those above related of them, with the most solemn asseverations of truth.

As most of the Mormonites have emi- [page change] grated to their new “Land of Promise, in the “far west,” it is to be hoped that we shall hear from them but very seldom; and, as the wilderness to which they are bound is an ample field for meditation and reflection, our earnest desire is that they may be restored to right reason.—Hartford (Conn.) Intelligencer.

The Middlebury Free Press, August 17, 1831

A friend and relative of the founder of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith, says that the statement made in our article which appeared in ours of week before last, that Smith could neither read or write, is untrue. Let us have the truth and nothing but the truth in all cases.

[1] For examples of the former see Royal Skousen, “Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript,” in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), 61–93; and Brant A. Gardner, Traditions of the Fathers: The Book of Mormon as History (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 29–35. For a recent example of the latter see Jared Hickman, “‘Bringing Forth’ the Book of Mormon: Translation as the Reconfiguration of Bodies in Space-Time,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, eds. Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2020), 54–80.

[2] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 72f.

[3] As far as I have been able to tell this newspaper article has not yet been published or included in any previous academic treatment telling the story of the dictation of the Book of Mormon. It is not included in any of the following: Larry E. Morris, A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents (5 vols.; Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996–2003); Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011); Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Vintage Books, 2005); Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (Provo: Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2015); Michael Hubbard MacKay and Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones (Provo: Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2016).

[4] Cf. Karen A. Weyler, Empowering Words: Outsiders and Authorship in Early America (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2013), 7; and E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press and American Antiquarian Society, 2005), 365.

[5] Weyler, Empowering Words, 42. See also Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

[6] Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York: Norton, 1974).

[7] Cf. Hester Blum, The View from the Masthead: Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea Narratives (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 28–29, nt. 31.

[8] Blum, The View from the Masthead, 26–32; David D. Hall, Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 79–96; Ross W. Beales and E. Jennifer Monaghan, “Literacy and Schoolbooks,” in A History of the Book in America, Volume On: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and American Antiquarian Society, 2000), 380–387; Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (Expanded Edition; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 121–126.

[9] In her study about the place of sailors in early American literary culture, Hester Blum focuses on five sources of data in reconstructing literacy among early Anglo-American sailors: “signature estimates, charitable organization surveys, naval library records…mechanics’ library histories” and “written narratives of sailors themselves.” Blum, The View from the Masthead, 27.

[10] Beales and Monaghan, “Literacy and Schoolbooks,” 380.

[11] Cf. E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press and American Antiquarian Society, 2005), 344.

[12] See “Agreement with Isaac Hale, 6 April 1829” in The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–June 1831, eds. Michael Hubbard MacKay, et al (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2013), 28–34.

[13] History of George A. Smith, circa 1857–1875, page 2, George A. Smith Papers, 1834–1877, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[14] MacKay, et al, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 1, 6.

[15] MacKay, et al, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 1, 17. See Colby Townsend, “Rewriting Eden with the Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith and the Reception of Genesis 1–6 in Early America” (MA Thesis, Utah State University, 2019), 89–90.

[16] MacKay, et al, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 1, 104–108.

[17] Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 1: 1832–1839 (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2008), 9–12.

[18] Jessee, Esplin, Bushman, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 1, 12–19.

[19] For the cases where Smith later wrote in his journal rather than a scribe see Jessee, Esplin, and Bushman, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 1, 24, 28–29, 34–37, 62–64, 135.

[20] See Townsend, “Rewriting Eden with the Book of Mormon,” 81–83.

[21] Andrew S. Barker, “Chauncey Langdon Knapp and Political Abolitionism in Vermont, 1833–1841,” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Sept. 2000): 449.

[22] Barker, “Chauncey Langdon Knapp and Political Abolitionism,” 449, 452.

[23] This is probably the Anti-Masonic Intelligencer published in Hartford from 1828–1831 and edited by Noble Davies Strong. See Edgar J. Wiley, Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, and of Others Who Have Received Degrees, 1800–1915 (Middlebury: Published by the College, 1917), 29. The paper Strong edited was referred to colloquially as the Hartford Intelligencer. See Boston Masonic Mirror (Boston, MA), February 12, 1831, 260.

[24] See William L. Davis, Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 194–195.

[25] William Davis, “Reassessing Joseph Smith, Jr.’s Formal Education,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 2016): 1–58.

[26] See especially Davis, Visions in a Seer Stone. Cf. Colby Townsend, “Rewriting Eden with the Book of Mormon,” 75–131.

[27] See the correction in the August 17, 1831 issue of the Middlebury Free Press transcribed below.

[28] This might be in reference to Smith allowing Harris to take the initial 1828 manuscript to his home in Palmyra in 1828 where it was then lost. Smith claimed to have had the plates and his spectacles taken from him as punishment by God.

[29] The author included the following footnote: “The editor of the Hartford Times, last week, classed the Mormonites with the Anti-masons. We therefore mention the fact, that the anti-masonic printer, in Palmyra, refused to print the Mormon Bible; and it was printed by the publisher of the Wayne Sentinel, a masonic paper.”

[30] There are thematic connections here to the earliest revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. See section 11 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Cf. Townsend, “Rewriting Eden with the Book of Mormon,” 102–107.

[31] The author included the following footnote: “The reader is here referred to the Mark Master’s degree in Freemasonry. We are of the opinion that even Gideon will confess the striking resemblances between Mormonism and Masonry. What…”

[32] According to W. Paul Reeve, this man’s name was Peter, although commonly known as “Blake Pete.” Communication with author, August 10, 2020. See Matt McBride, “Peter,” accessed September 24, 2020, https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/peter#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-2920%2C-230%2C9035%2C4595.

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Sensationalism? Nauvoo and the Angst of Tradition

Book reviews, especially as done back and forth among the academic community, are not always the friendliest areas of engagement but for the most part are professional and informative for a broad audience. Most often they are a reliable space where readers can quickly turn to get a sense of the feeling of a book and what it has to offer them as they figure out whether or not to spend their money on that volume or another. Fortunately, for readers, the author, and the publisher, Benjamin E. Park’s The Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier has enjoyed praise from across the spectrum of lay and academic reviewers. From what I can tell almost every review has been positive or constructive except one.

Dr. Susan Easton-Black, then Susan Lindsay Ward Easton, completed her Ed.D. at Brigham Young University in 1979. Her dissertation, “Developmental Approach to Counselor Education: Progressive Model for Training Institutions,” evaluated the training models of counselors—”elementary school, secondary school, college, community agency, and in some instances, church setting” (p. 2)—and argued that counselors at the time received adequate intellectual training but were not shown how to implement that training in real life situations and therefore struggled to complete their tasks. The goal of her dissertation was to implement new methods in the curriculum of the counselor training master’s program at Brigham Young University in 1978, the year she started working at BYU.

One might wonder how an education scholar with no peer-reviewed publications as sole author (that I am aware of) in the field of early American history would get to the point where she felt comfortable enough to write such a condescending and belittling review, if we are generous enough to call it that, of a book written by a scholar trained at the University of Cambridge in early American history. According to the review, Park is a sensationalist who “uses few dates, his documentation is infrequent…and his summaries are superficial.” Beyond that, Park “pick[s] and choos[es]…facts” that “support [his] perspective.” If true, these critiques would seem to be detrimental to a book that hopes to shift scholarship and general knowledge about early Mormonism and American religion toward new horizons.

In her comments Easton-Black offers one possible way to explain the disparity between her approach to Nauvoo and Park’s. According to her, it is precisely that their perspectives are dissimilar that drives the problem. That is, surely, a key part of the disagreement, but it appears that Easton-Black is unaware that in the field of history perspective is not the key driving factor. Perspective, again, is an issue but the word should not be misunderstood as it applies here. Easton-Black does not have training in the historical method, did not go through a rigorous program of historical training at the graduate level, and is known for her approach to Mormon history through unsourced and oft-repeated anecdotes in her travels and love for Nauvoo and tourist destinations.

The fact that she is not a trained historian and shifted from a degree in education to teaching early Mormon history at BYU in the Religious Education department does provide key context to understand the divide. As another review has recently noted, many historians in Religious Education at BYU—historians who do not have graduate training in history or its related fields—have for years painted the Nauvoo period of Mormon history in strokes and brushes that don’t particularly reflect the reality of the historical moment. That review portrays the feeling of loss for the author when she realized that the Nauvoo she visited as a teenager was lost, “buried under layers of other people’s sentimentalized and grandiose pretensions.” It is disingenuous of Easton-Black, for example, to suggest that Kingdom of Nauvoo is infrequently sourced when pages 288–319 of the book are strictly covered in endnotes and her “review” provides her audience with two endnotes. One to cite the book and the other to cite a presentation Park gave at BYU.

Easton-Black suggests that readers will question Park’s ability to be a scholar because, as she implies, his book does not tell the truth. She had ample time and space in the review to offer specific responses to why “historians in yesteryear” rejected the depiction of Nauvoo, as she suggests, in their writing. She could have also clarified how those scholars would have been able to write better histories than a historian today when they did not have the important manuscripts now provided by the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Her previous work will unfortunately be the one not viewed as scholarly in generations to come, and “the truth” in the coming generations will rest more firmly on evidentiary ground than what can be found in the work of previous generations.

In a passing comment, Easton-Black also disparages Park’s education by suggesting that his graduate mentor did not train him well, “wondering who had been his mentor.” Michael O’Brien, Park’s mentor a Cambridge, might not be well known to Easton-Black but he is to any scholar deeply interested in the study of early American history. O’Brien won the Bancroft prize in 2005 for his two-volume set Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life in the American South, 1810–1860, besides being nominated twice for the Pulitzer prize, among other awards he received during his academic career. While this may seem like a minor note it actually highlights the disconnect between Easton-Black and the important work done in broader early American history.

Final Thoughts

Some readers of the blog have noted that my posts have been, over the past couple of years, fairly negative toward the Religious Education department and related organizations. I would prefer that it wasn’t this way. I would prefer to not write the above response and others like it. But, as long as some members of the Religious Education department continue to write similar reviews of books that in reality, outside of that small group, are receiving broad praise for their contributions, these kinds of posts will remain relevant. It is far better to keep the broader readership in Mormon studies informed than to keep completely silent on these topics. In this case, I would hope and expect that most readers who stumble upon Easton-Black’s review will be able to read between the lines for what her “review” really is: an opportunity simply to ask: “Where is the author’s knowledge that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the Lord revealed his words to him?” Boundary maintenance is the function for this review and others like it, and with the supposed expansiveness of Mormon theology you would hope that the culture itself would allow scholars to be just that: scholars.

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The Problem of Claiming Liberal Bias in Biblical and Mormon Scholarship

Blake Ostler’s 1987 essay on the Book of Mormon as a modern expansion, by Joseph Smith, of an ancient source has been an important part of academic discussion within Mormon studies for over thirty years. Early responses were negative, leading Ostler to walk back some of his arguments in the original essay. Since those early criticisms in the late 1980s and up until the early 2000s it seems that Ostler’s theory has come to enjoy new life with both academic and lay Mormon audiences as a way to engage the Book of Mormon as history but also account for many of the historical issues in its pages as well.

Responses to Ostler’s paper are good examples, though, of a common flawed argument in Mormon studies that I would like to highlight. This regularly happens when scholars with a more traditionalist bent engage in knee-jerk reactions to new academic material that they are uncomfortable with. In this case, I will comment on the response to Ostler linked above, Stephen Robinson’s paper “The “Expanded” Book of Mormon?” First, though, a look at Robinson’s own scholarship on early Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha will help to both contextualize and problematize his response to Ostler.

Robinson was, as he mentions at the beginning of his paper, trained in biblical studies at Duke University in North Carolina, a prestigious institution known for rigorous training and academic standards. Because of Robinson’s training and engagement within his field he was a part of the important two-volume set edited by James Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. He was one of the editors of the Apocryphon of Ezekiel and the editor of both the Testament of Adam and 4 Baruch. I cannot overstate the importance of these two volumes for the development and growth of the study of Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha; Robinson was lucky to be involved in such a project and his work on each of the three texts represents good scholarship for the time that the volumes were published. Although many things have changed in the field since the 1980s, the volumes are still recommended and for the most part reliable. Anyone who wishes to understand early Jewish and Christian texts outside of traditional canons should own these books.

In his introduction on the Testament of Adam, for example, Robinson discusses the dating the dating of this text in standard, academic jargon. There are three separate sections to the Testament that were written at a different time by different authors, and in its final form the text dates to sometime around the middle or late third century CE. Robinson argues for a final “Christian redaction,” to the text because “the testament is familiar with the Christian traditions found in the New Testament and must therefore be dated after, say, A.D. 100” (Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:990). Robinson argues that the text’s original language is Syriac, an ancient dialect of Aramaic used by early Christians. These are important notes for understanding the historical composition of a book that claims to have authorial connections, at least in part, to Adam, the first man of the book of Genesis.

The fact that Robinson uses the presence of Christian traditions in the New Testament as a key part of his argument about the dating of the Testament is key to understanding Robinson’s response to Ostler. I assume that it would be awkward for the reader if I were to argue that Robinson denies predictive prophecy in his essay. In this case, his application of the basic methods and tools of modern critical scholarship on the Testament of Abraham would mean that he was jumping to conclusions, that the “hidden assumptions” at the core of his argument were unfounded and therefore his entire dating of the Testament of Adam needed to be rejected. He wasn’t leaving any room for a divine element in the construction of the Testament, only human and natural elements, and therefore limiting the evidence he was willing to look at. Why should we also, then, take at face value the important work he and others before him had done toward understanding the multiple authorship of the text? The text doesn’t say it was written by multiple authors, it provides a prophecy whose authorship is explicitly tied to Adam.

I hope that to each person who reads this post the above seems absurd. The years of training and deliberations behind the scenes of Robinson’s writings would have included taking into consideration all kinds of different historical, literary, and textual considerations into account for him to make the judgment that the Testament of Adam was written not by Adam but possibly (although now very unlikely) first Jewish authors with later Christian redactors. Language, ideas, and texts do not appear in vacuums, they all grow organically within specific social, political, and historical moments, and it is clear from the evidence that Robinson’s dating of the Testament of Adam is grounded in sound historical scholarship. What does this suggest about Robinson’s response to Ostler, though?

The hypothetical responses to Robinson’s work above come directly from Robinson’s response to Ostler’s paper. According to Robinson, Ostler had a naturalistic bias which clouded his judgment. Ostler can’t be right in his observations because he hasn’t considered that if he were to reframe the anachronistic sections of the Book of Mormon as being “predictive prophecy,” then he would understand that characters in the Book of Mormon could easily have known the theological developments that occurred not in the New Testament but in the centuries after within developing Christian theology.

Robinson appears to cut down the strength of his own work when he says, “It should be noted that the rejection of predictive prophecy is characteristic of the secular approach to the scriptures, for the exclusion of any supernatural agency (including God) from human affairs is fundamental to the methodology of most biblical scholarship.” Maybe if Robinson was here to discuss this issue he would say that his work on the Testament of Adam is different because it isn’t canon; it isn’t the Book of Mormon and therefore it doesn’t require the same kind of treatment. That might be true for an individual within the Mormon faith community in a devotional setting, but for anyone who wishes to seriously engage the compositional history of any given text the fact that a faith community includes it in its canon is irrelevant to the question of when the text was written.

The major breaking point, then, between what Ostler was attempting to do in 1987—similar to what many scholars within Mormon studies today are trying to do—and what Robinson did in his response in 1989 are drastically different. Ostler was attempting to engage seriously with the problems of historical anachronisms within the Book of Mormon. Although he was also trying to make that work with his belief that the Book of Mormon is still ancient in its origins, the primary effect of his approach was to take seriously the historical issues in his understanding of the authorship of the Book of Mormon. Robinson’s approach was purely devotional and apologetic since he desired Ostler and his readers to read predictive prophecy eisegetically into the text of the Book of Mormon. He never demonstrated how the Book of Mormon characters came to understand Jesus’s atonement the way they did through predictive prophecy, he just assumes that this is the catch-all problem of liberal scholarship and once you apply belief in predictive prophecy then everything is taken care of.

On the contrary, this cop-out answer in certain traditionalist Mormon circles is too heavily applied as a response to sound historical scholarship. For example, Monte Nyman, one of Robinson’s contemporaries at BYU, used this cop-out (like others before him) to argue against critical scholarship on Isaiah. “Actually, the authorship issue revolves around one’s acceptance or rejection of divine revelation” (Nyman, “Great are the Words of Isaiah”, 254). This isn’t even close to being an accurate portrayal of the issue in regards to either Isaiah studies or work on the Book of Mormon. H. G. M. Williamson, one of the most influential scholars on the study of Isaiah (meaning that his work is meticulous, careful, and encompassing), responding to this line of reasoning in his study The Book Called Isaiah (page 2), that

“in view of repeated accusations, it should be emphasized that this opinion [multiple authorship of Isaiah] is not necessarily motivated by a wish to circumvent the possibility of predictive prophecy. Indeed, there remains plenty of ‘prediction’, both general and specific, within Deutero-Isaiah itself, for example, if the bulk of Isaiah 40–55 is to be dated before the end of the period of Babylonian exile, and indeed it has frequently been maintained that part of the purpose of the concluding chapters of Isaiah was precisely to answer the problems raised by the apparent failure of these predictions to be borne out by the experience of the return and post-exilic restoration.”

Just like the apologists of the middle of the twentieth century that Williamson responded to, Robinson himself assumes too much about the methods that Ostler employs in his essay. Robinson attacks the devotional and theological straw man that he constructs while acting like the conversation wasn’t about strict historical discussion. Unfortunately, it seems like some of the personal and intellectual attacks on Ostler made him move away from some of his earlier, more sound historical observations about the literary construction of the Book of Mormon. It is unfortunate that he did not continue on the more reliable path that he set out for himself and others in 1987, but this might reflect a shift more toward theological construction than historical and therefore a different project than his earlier paper seems to have been out to do.

In any case, Robinson’s accusations against Ostler were totally unfounded and could be used against his own sound scholarly work on early Christian pseudepigrapha like the Testament of Adam. The evidence within that text is clear that the author was engaging with a Christian audience in a post-NT world, incorporating texts, language, and ideas that grew organically in specific social and historical contexts that then influenced the composition of the Testament. No one should ever use Robinson’s own arguments regarding Ostler’s essay against his work on the Testament, but at the same time no one should ever take Robinson’s response to Ostler’s paper seriously either. Fortunately, over the last twenty years or so more and more academic and lay Mormons have found that Ostler’s essay is essential to their reconstruction of understanding the Book of Mormon the more they learn about its internal and external problems. I would hope, though, that the knee-jerk reaction within Mormon academic circles to claim that scholars studying biblical texts and scriptures unique to Mormonism would leave behind the idea that at the heart of the issue is a belief or non-belief in predictive prophecy. Not only is it not true, it is a distraction that enables scholars like Robinson and others to not engage with the actual substance of sound, historical scholarship. Scholars should be able to expect better.

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The Curious Announcement of Donald Parry’s Editorship for Biblia Hebraica Quinta

Back in 2009 BYU University Communications announced that Donald W. Parry, professor of Asian & Near Eastern Languages, had been selected as the editor for the book of Isaiah of the prestigious Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), the official scholarly critical edition of the Hebrew Bible used around the world. To put that into perspective, BHQ will be, on completion, the fifth edition of the famous Biblia Hebraica originally published in 1906 under the editorship of Rudolf Kittel. The academic study of the Hebrew Bible for over the last century has been driven by this edition and its legacy is huge. The announcement that Parry was going to be “one of about two dozen editors from the world wide community and one of only a few from the United States,” was a seemingly huge step forward for the academic study of the Bible within Mormonism. Seemingly.

The problem is, it doesn’t look like there was ever an official announcement from Deutsche Bibel Gisellschaft that Dr. Parry would be one of the two dozen editors. The Deseret News ran the story a couple of times in the summer of 2009, the Daily Herald ran it that May, and it was referenced again in the Deseret News later that year. The only officially named editor in BHQ for the book of Isaiah is Arie van der Kooij of the Universiteit Leiden.

Recently, Dr. Parry published an important new book, Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants, in the Supplements to the Textual History of the Bible through Brill, one of the most prestigious publishing houses in biblical studies. The study itself could indicate that Dr. Parry has been doing the kind of background work necessary for a text-critical edition on the book of Isaiah, but, again, it is not clear if Dr. Parry is one of the official editors of BHQ. After searching online for any indication that this was the case from any source that did not simply go back to the announcement at BYU, which seemed to have Dr. Parry as its sole source, was not fruitful. And, if one takes a quick look at Dr. Parry’s publicly available CV, he does not have his supposed editorship of the BHQ listed there although he does have his most recent publications as well as forthcoming projects listed.

Based on the above I have to wonder about the possibility of each of the following scenarios in relation to the 2009 announcement:

(1) Dr. Parry was never assigned as “one of about two dozen editors” of the BHQ. Maybe this means that Dr. Parry thought he was going to be assigned and jumped the gun a little too early before finding out that was not the case. Maybe Dr. Parry loves the study of Isaiah so much that he believed things were moving in that direction. Or, maybe less likely, Dr. Parry made it up and there was never any direct indication from the BHQ team that he would edit Isaiah. In any case, if this is true then the 2009 announcement was based on someone claiming Dr. Parry was assigned as an editor when he wasn’t. That’s obviously problematic.

(2) Dr. Parry was assigned to edit Isaiah for the BHQ but then removed himself from the project. I find this highly unlikely. Not only has Dr. Parry continued to do extensive research on the text of Isaiah (see the link to his recent volume) that is directly connected to creating a text-critical edition, it would be foolish and surprising for a scholar in this field to willingly drop themselves from this weighty of a publication. If this was true then the 2009 announcement was accurate but a follow-up announcement indicating he had taken himself off of the project was never published, likely because of the awkwardness of announcing publicly that he had taken himself off the project.

(3) Dr. Parry was assigned to edit Isaiah but then the assignment was revoked. If this is the case then it would be interesting to understand why. Why would such a high profile assignment, something that would have taken serious deliberations by a committee to decide upon, be taken away? What would a scholar need to do for that to happen? Nothing has been announced in Dr. Parry’s past or recent scholarship that seems to be problematic (although his more devotional publications show a completely different person and/or side to Dr. Parry). This would also mean that there was no follow-up announcement in Deseret News or at BYU that Dr. Parry was no longer an editor on the project.

(4) Dr. Parry was never assigned on the main team of two dozen editors but instead to assist the main editor, Arie van der Kooij. If this is true, and it is probably the most likely of the four options I have outlined here, then that means that the original 2009 announcement was inaccurate. Dr. Parry was not one of the two dozen main editors of the BHQ, but on a broader team that would assist those editors. It means that his role was greatly amplified for the press announcement than what it was in reality. If this is the case then it would be even more necessary to understand who the original source for the 2009 story was out of BYU because that person was telling barely a half-truth. And by all accounts, it seems like Dr. Parry was the source for the announcement. In the original link the author said at the end of the write-up “For more information, contact Donald W. Parry at (801) 422-3491.” Assuming that is or was his office phone at BYU, I wonder how Dr. Parry would explain the situation if he was to respond.

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BYU Religious Education’s Investment in Its Students

A major theme over the years at the Faith Promoting Rumor blog has been the department of Religious Education at Brigham Young University. Because BYU is known around the world as a religious university with a dedication to promulgating knowledge about the current and past state of religion in society, as well as training and preparing it students for the workforce, it would be natural to expect the university to house a department analogous to, say, the department of Theology at Notre Dame University, the department of Religious Studies at Brandeis University, the department of Religion at Baylor University, or the Catholic University of America’s School of Theology and Religious Studies.

This is not to say that BYU has to be “of the world,” but BYU itself recognizes the centrality of academic integrity and accredability to its mission. Since religion courses are part of the “University Core” of requirements (basically BYU’s general education requirements), one might assume that BYU is investing in a pool of professors in Religious Education that have training and expertise directly relating to the courses that they teach. This is important because BYU understands that it is training students to go on to jobs around the world, as well as prepare undergraduates for graduate work at prestigious universities around the globe. Two signs on campus at BYU intentionally welcome visitors and newcomers with the following slogans: “Enter to learn, Go Forth to Serve,” and “The World is Our Campus.” Coming at the question of how BYU invests in its students through the selection of faculty in Religious Education from the perspective that BYU is part of a broader academic community, it should go without saying that BYU would want to select only those who have the most relevant training for teaching students at the university level about religion in both its Church History and Doctrine and Ancient Scripture departments.

What would a potential faculty member in this sense look like? What makes them prepared to teach these courses? The requirements included in job postings at BYU for full-time faculty positions are all pretty similar: a potential hire must have a PhD in the specific area of expertise for the job or in a related field; they must be willing to teach a certain number of courses a year; they must be actively publishing research in their area of specialization; and most job descriptions end with the range of specializations that would qualify the person for the position. This list is both a good and a bad thing when it comes to Religious Education at the university. A quick description of the course requirements in the department will help to clarify.

First, according to the university’s website, all religion courses required for graduation must be taken at the Provo campus. No courses taken at other BYU campuses or in LDS Institutes qualify. The number of religion credits may vary depending on the number of transfer credits each student has, but all incoming freshman at the university will be required to take 14 credits in Religious Education (which amounts to seven classes altogether). Among those fourteen, and for every student regardless of credits transferred, it is required that each student takes four specific courses (with their departments): The Eternal Family (Church History and Doctrine), Foundations of the Restoration (Church History and Doctrine), Jesus Christ and the Everlasting Gospel  (Ancient Scripture), and Teachings and Doctrine of the Book of Mormon (Ancient Scripture). There are exceptions to the requirements of the first, third, and fourth courses—you can substitute them for other courses—but the differences are minimal.

The content taught in these courses—courses again required of every student that wishes to graduate from BYU—suggests that students should be able to expect a short list of specific qualities they would find in their professors. The professors (1) will have a PhD from an accredited university that is relevant to the course, (2) will be engaging with other specialists in their field by researching, writing, and publishing their work that allows others to engage with and critique what they have found or are arguing, and (3) that the university and department have done their due diligence in selecting the very best from a broad range of applicants. Unfortunately, it appears that departmental politics and a lengthy history of an aversion to “worldly” academic study have allowed a certain perspective to retain authority in Religious Education in regards to hiring new faculty members. This is seen among other things, for instance, in the fact that many of the faculty members in Religious Education who have received Continuing Faculty Status (BYU’s soft version of academic tenure) have been allowed to do so despite having little to no peer-reviewed publications in their respective fields.

Currently, there are 74 faculty members, 1 visiting faculty, and 24 part-time or Seminaries & Institutes employees listed on the faculty directory. Of the 74 faculty 6 of them are women (8%), a dismal number given the fact that many qualified women have applied for job openings and been rejected on grounds that might question the role of sexism if they took place in other university settings. While there are several faculty members in the department who have degrees that are relevant to the subject matter they teach, many of them have doctoral degrees in Computer Science, Educational Leadership, Family Studies, or, in one case, claims to have a PhD in Biblical Studies from an unaccredited bible college, ultimately a degree that would not count as fulfilling the PhD requirement in the job posting at BYU today. Many other faculty members were trained in Early American History, Religious Studies, Early Christianity, Archaeology, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible, etc. Not all of these faculty members continue to engage directly with their fields upon getting hired at BYU, though, a focus that one would expect to find in any other academic setting.

There is a saying sometimes heard in the halls of Religious Education soon after a new hire is beginning to settle in: the faculty members there have a “higher purpose” in their teaching and that “it takes about five years to wash away the PhD.” This is unfortunate because if not for the PhD degree faculty members never would have been hired by the university in the first place. The effect of this mentality is seen on the CVs of the majority of the professors in the department (if they have a CV at all!). Most of them play inside baseball to the extent that they are not even engaging with the academic conversations of their fellow Mormon scholars but mostly writing and publishing the same thing over and over again for a devotional Mormon audience in Deseret Book (and its smaller imprints), Cedar Fort, self-publishing, or other related venues that allow them to circumvent the very foundation of the training that made them qualified for their jobs: peer-review.

To what extent does BYU ‘s department of Religious Education invest in their students? Currently it is not in providing faculty high in academic quality. To be sure, as previously mentioned, there are wonderful exceptions to that rule, but of the 74 faculty members how many of them fulfill the description in the regular job posting? The department also focuses on student evaluations that presumably show the high quality of spiritual engagement students are receiving, but I am skeptical that the evaluations really say what the department heads think they say. It is much easier for undergraduate students to take a 2 credit course that, if taken by the right professor, will have a minimal impact on their time and reading schedules, potentially freeing up time to socialize and do other things. One or two of those professors might also provide an abundance of hugs to their students, creeping out some students and exciting others. Stating in a course evaluation that one class was more or less “spiritual” might actually mean that it was more or less like their experience in church attendance where little intellectual effort is required. How can the department heads be sure that the evaluations actually represent the perfect blend of both spiritual and intellectual development, especially when many of the courses taught by less-qualified faculty present content more closely related to a glorified seminary or institute class? LDS youth experience a four-year cycle of information at church that becomes more and more familiar to them as they get older, and it is obvious why the focus is more devotional than intellectual at church. At a university, though, in a department where every student has to take and pay for required courses, students should expect to learn new things they’ve never heard before and be stretched intellectually. If department heads would look closer at the evaluations they might notice a trend in non-Religious Education courses about how students felt more fulfilled learning new things and experiencing the world a little differently for once.

The majority of the faculty in Religious Education voted against the current curriculum taught in Religious Education several years ago but it was implemented anyway. One might hope for a future BYU Religious Education where faculty members are better trained and vetted from relevant doctoral fields. These scholars would ideally work in a better version of Religious Education that focuses on the intellectual development of its students in ways similar to related departments at Notre Dame, Brandeis, Baylor, and the Catholic University of America. It would only take the realization of a few of the administrators at BYU and in the department of Religious Education to make these much needed changes. Unfortunately, echoing Thomas W. Simpson’s recent work on the history of Mormonism and its response to higher education, this “seems destined to elude [them] until the millennium, indefinitely postponed, comes at last.”

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The BYU Honor Code Office and the Idea of Reasonableness

Those aware of the similarities and differences between Brigham Young University-Provo (BYU), Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-I), and Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYU-H) have grown accustomed to knowing that while BYU may have some interesting tendencies in its culture surrounding dress, grooming, standards in the apartments, and prior aversion to caffeinated beverages (they’ve progressed on that, yay), none of their wackiness comes close to what can be seen at BYU-I. There, in Rexburg, Idaho, students are not allowed to wear shorts at all (except and only when engaging in a sport for a class) anytime of the year. Recently, photos of the difference in the clothing cheerleaders are allowed to wear at both universities have been highlighted online and in social media.

BYU’s Honor Code Office has been in the news over the last several years for a handful of problematic practices and relationships between it, the Title IX office, and the private but recently decertified (because of these practices) BYU Police. In the wake of these revelations the BYU Title IX and Honor Code offices has shifted, attempting to rebrand themselves as aware of the systemic and cultural issues that are found on campus and highlighted in recent media coverage, and some have felt that the efforts of a few in the new office are noteworthy and suggest that real change might be coming soon.

It is in this context that I present to you few excerpts from the recently revised BYU Honor Code website. At first reading these seem to be a lot more appropriate in a BYU-I context, and show a surprising lack of self awareness in the way that they present answers to faculty questions about Dress & Grooming. Does this sound like the kind of appropriate change that will actually make a difference on campus at BYU, or does it sound more like the change is leaning toward BYU-I? I’ll you decided the answer to that question. The office clearly wants faculty to include the university’s Dress & Grooming standards on their syllabus (why doesn’t the university have that as a policy?), and they not only treat the adult students at the university like irresponsible ten year old children, the new website reads like an uncomfortable exercise in guilt tripping faculty to get after the students. While, again, that does appear to be a part of BYU’s history, does this sound more like BYU or BYU-I?

1. Question: Is a student’s fashion or overall appearance really my responsibility? Isn’t that the job of the Honor Code Office? Answer: Dress and grooming are often reiterated tenets of the Honor Code. The Board of Trustees regards all members of the BYU community as representatives of the Church and the University, and they have a definite view of how such representatives should look. They ask everyone in the community to take an active role in this matter and faculty members are key figures in this community. In short, yes! It is your responsibility and everyone else’s, too.

2. Question: One of my male students has shoulder-length hair; but when he comes to class, he keeps it tucked up under a cap. I told him I wouldn’t give him credit until he got it cut. He’s protesting that I can’t do that. Can I? Answer: Faculty members certainly can! They are the stewards for everything that happens in their classroom. Of course, faculty members credibility is enhanced if they are up front about their personal support of the university’s Dress and Grooming standards, such as placing a clear statement in their syllabi, and/or making appropriate introductory comments on the first day of class.

3. Question: One of my female students has shaved her head. Do I have a responsibility here? Answer: Yes, faculty have a responsibility in this situation! A girl shaving her head, a guy dying his hair bright blue, or any other extreme fashion is not appropriate for representatives of the Church and the University.

4. Question: One of my male students wears black clothing and eye shadow to class; and his fingernails are at least half an inch long. What can I do about it? Answer: That sort of appearance is not appropriate for a BYU student, particularly a male. It is suggested that a faculty member 1) invite the student in for a confidential interview to explain the issue concerning the student’s appearance and teach a principle; or 2) if the student seems unreceptive, contact the Honor Code Office. Also, faculty may take their own action, such as prohibiting attendance at class, until the necessary adjustments are made. Of course, this would be simplified if there had already been a clear statement in the syllabus, or otherwise, regarding support of the university’s Dress and Grooming Standards.

5. Question: In my eight o’clock class, one of the guys always shows up half-asleep and with a face full of scruffy whiskers. Isn’t that a violation of dress and grooming standards? How can I help him? Answer: A male student is required to shave at least every 24 hours. Although it’s conceivable that he’s within the limit according to the letter of the law, he is certainly marginal relative to the spirit of it. Why not have a confidential visit with him to discuss it, and challenge him to do better. If he has a scruffy attitude to go along with his appearance, give the Honor Code Office a call.

6. Question: One of my female students has a tongue post. You can’t really tell until she tries to talk; then it becomes very obvious. It must be a violation of some kind. What should I do about it? Answer: The only body piercing sanctioned by BYU Dress and Grooming Standards is a maximum of one per earlobe for women. No body piercing is sanctioned for men. A tongue post is not appropriate for either gender. Arrange for a confidential interview. Tell the student how you feel about that choice, and teach a principle. The faculty member may remind the student that class attendance may be prohibited, if necessary, and the Honor Code Office is available to help.

7. Question: I’m a male faculty member, and I do a lot of my teaching in a “pit”-style classroom. The raised seating reveals some sights that are downright embarrassing. It would really help if all of my students were in compliance with Dress and Grooming Standards; but I’m very uncomfortable approaching offending female students. Can the Honor Code Office help? Answer: It is best to cover the topic adequately in the syllabus and introductory comments at the outset; then follow up with general public comments along the way. If there are still have offenders who don’t “get it,” give the Honor Code Office a call. They will take it from there.

8. Question: Some of my students come to my class on the upper campus in P.E. clothing. They say it is “BYU issue”, so it’s legal, but the shorts are well above their knees. Is that appropriate? Answer: No! Although P.E. issue is appropriate for the course or activity for which it was issued, it is not appropriate for general wear in any other academic or public area. Invite the student in for a confidential interview, point this out, and teach a principle. Let the Honor Code Office know if they can help.

9. Question: A guy in one of my classes wears sideburns clear to the bottom of his earlobes. His hair is cut above his ears and collar, but it always looks windblown. His shorts come to the knee, but he has hairy legs. And not only that, on the warmer days, he wears sandals without socks! He and I have talked about his appearance, but he claims he is in full compliance with BYU Dress and Grooming Standards. I disagree. Which one of us is right? Answer: It sounds like he has a good case. Trimmed sideburns to the bottom of the ear lobe are permitted, along with hair which is off the ear and collar. Shorts to the knee and sandals, even without socks, are allowed. No mention is made of a windblown hairstyle or hairy legs in the Honor Code.

10. Question: Although I support the BYU Honor Code, I really don’t want to get involved with the hassle of enforcing Dress and Grooming standards in my classes. How can I help without getting bogged down in the details?Answer:

– Be a personal example.
– Publish a clear statement supporting the Honor Code in your syllabus.
– Be vocally supportive in your classes.
– Call the Honor Code Office, or the Student Honor Association (SHA), if either of them could help.

P. S. Yes, I noticed that I never said anything about BYU-H except to include them in the grouping of BYU campuses (there are more, actually). Do they do anything? I assume that they are at least allowed to wear shorts.

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Early Anglo-American and British Descriptions of Native American Skin Color: Updating a Recent Paper

The Book of Mormon Studies Association is soon going to host its third annual conference, again in Logan, Utah at Utah State University from October 11–12, 2019. Having attended each of the two previous conferences I can simply state that the conference is growing and there have been many papers presented at the various sessions that have been thought-provoking, sparking ideas or at least responses to ideas I might not have considered if I had not attended.

One of those came the first year the conference was held, 2017, as a bright PhD student in the History department at the University of Utah, Jeremy Talmage, presented a paper entitled, “Black, White, and Red All Over: Race and the Book of Mormon.” In his presentation Talmage seemed to be arguing that readers of the Book of Mormon had for the previous 187 years had been misreading the text all along. While the Book of Mormon might describe the Lamanites as having a “skin of blackness” (2 Ne. 5:21) no one in early American history had called Native Americans “black” that he could find. He had searched all over in newspapers and books and had found nothing. So, early on in the book’s history readers of the Book of Mormon had imposed images of Native Americans onto the text’s description of the Lamanites and readers had been simply following that mistake ever since. The book never called them “red,” which is something you might expect in the early national period because that was the most common term used to describe Native Americans.

During the Q&A after the session the room seemed a little confused Talmage’s paper. He had argued based on one of the connections between Lamanites and Native Americans that the majority of readers since the book was published had mistakenly read the Lamanites as Native Americans, but what about all of the other connections? He claimed that the prevalent reading was mistaken but didn’t offer an alternative. I raised my hand and asked about other descriptions in the Book of Mormon that seem to be pretty clear connections to rhetoric used often in the early national period to describe Native Americans, like the constant reference to their “idleness” or being “idle” (cf. 1 Ne. 12:23; 2 Ne. 5:24; Alma 24:18), living “in the wilderness, and dwelt in tents” (Alma 22:28) and the counting of time as based on the number of “moons” (Omni 1:21). I asked that if you take the descriptions of the Lamanites holistically and include more than just the blackness or darkness (the more common phrase in the Book of Mormon) of their skin color doesn’t the book seem to intentionally be describing them in ways reminiscent of early nineteenth century Native Americans?

Although I failed to also include at the time the fact that Joseph Smith, Jr. believed that the Book of Mormon Lamanites were Native Americans, and that in Doctrine and Covenants 30:6 Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer, Jr. are said to go on a mission to the nineteenth-century Lamanites (the Native Americans; see also Doctrine and Covenants 3:20; 49:24), Talmage agreed with me. The other descriptions of the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon do make it pretty clear that the Lamanites were the predecessors to the Native Americans. I was dumbstruck and did not know how to follow up because it seemed so contradictory to his entire thesis, then the session ended and we all headed on our way.

Since then I have seen a few people reference Talmage’s paper as if his conclusions are set in stone, particularly that, as Thomas Wayment put it in the BYU Religious Education Review (Winter 2018): 7, Talmage showed “that early Americans, including Joseph Smith, consistently described American Indians as red-skinned, not black-skinned (as in the Book of Mormon).” Like most historical topics, the actual picture of early American descriptions of the color of Native American skin is much more complicated than what Talmage presented in his paper. After about the fourth or fifth time I saw another person share Talmage’s claim I decided to look a little closer at early American literature to see what I could find.

Unfortunately, as tends to happen in Mormon studies fairly often, rather than double and triple checking Talmage’s work others were simply accepting it and moving forward as if it was an established conclusion. This is one of the reasons why the Book of Mormon Studies Association’s annual conference has not really included the public (although it has not only been lay Mormons who have cited Talmage’s paper), because the papers share preliminary work and not necessarily well-established and publishable essays. Many of them are simply not yet at the stage where the scholars have engaged critically with other scholars in their field on what they have written, which is why they present at conferences like these.

I will update Talmage’s claim that no one in early America, as far as he could tell, ever described Native Americans as black or having a skin of blackness with only three sources that I found in my research in a relatively short amount of time. The first source comes from the travels to America in 1795, 1796, and 1797 of Irish explorer Isaac Weld. His travel accounts were published soon after his travels and sold so well that by 1799 there was a second edition already in print. In the ensuing decades Weld’s travels were reprinted in William Fordyce Mavor’s twenty-eight volume series A general collection of voyages and travels, including the most interesting records of navigators and travellers, from the discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492, to the travels of Lord Valentia, originally published between 1796–1801 in London and 1796–1803 in New York. In Weld’s description of the Native Americans he comments in Volume XXIV on some of the similarities and differences between their “complexion” and European complexions. He notes that Native Americans “commonly” have “a copper color” complexion, but he goes on to complicate this generalization. According to Weld the complexion of Native American skin is copper,

“but…varies in the most surprising manner; some of them having no darker skins than the French or Spaniards, while others are nearly black. The contemplation of this fact, has induced many French missionaries, and other persons, who have resided for a considerable time among the Indians, to suppose, that their colour does not naturally differ from that of the nations of Europe, but that the darkness prevalent among them is to be solely attributed to their use of unguents, and to their constant exposure to the ardent rays of the sun, and the smoke of wood fires. It is indeed a well known fact, that their complexion at their birth is much lighter than in their advanced years; and it is equally true, that they endeavour, by every means in their power, to render their skins dark, imagining it will contribute greatly to the improvement of their personal appearance;”

Mavor goes on to comment on Weld’s description by providing the example of, “The Missisaguis, residing in the vicinage of the lake Ontario, are represented as the darkest of any Indians seen by our traveller, in the course of his researches; yet, even among these, are several individuals, whose complexions are comparatively light, which seems to corroborate Mr. Weld’s assertion, that the variety of hues is more particularly confined to certain families than to the tribes. The least variety is among the females, few of whom are darker than what we term a dirty copper-colour” (Mavor, A general collection of voyages and travels, 144–145; this is also quoted in Christopher Kelly, A New and Complete System of Universal Geography [London: Thomas Kelly, 1819], 554.). In the second decade of the nineteenth century this popular traveler, Isaac Weld, wrote a nuanced description of Native Americans. Although his writings did not greatly influence popular rhetoric about the color of Native American skin, the fact that he was engaging with European views prior to his own writing, and soon after Mavor’s engagement with Weld’s description, highlights the fact that not all Europeans accepted the idea that all Native Americans were simply “red.” Some were actually viewed as having a similar tone as Europeans, and others were considered to be black.

Hugh Williamson, a resident of New York writing for The Philosophical Magazine and Journal in 1816, wrote an article entitled, “Observations on the Hypothesis of some modern Writers, that America has been peopled by a distinct Race of Men and Animals; with some Proofs arising from the Natural History and Appearances of the new Continent in favour of the Mosaic Account of the Deluge.” While it seems pretty certain that Williamson would have disagreed with some of Weld’s and Mavor’s descriptions of the Native Americans, he too complicates Talmage’s claim that early Americans simply described Native Americans as “red.”

After noting that the extreme differences in skin color found throughout Europe are not exactly found in America, Williamson bases his understanding on the effect geography can have on skin tone, stating that

“Although no part of America is fitted to the production of a black skin, nor would many parts of this continent be expected to produce a skin perfectly fair, among the original inhabitants; we are not to believe, as some writers have alleged, that the American Indians are all of one colour. Their skin is tinged with a variety of shades between white and black; but there are Indians, as we are told, above the latitude of 45 degrees north, who are nearly white; and there are Indians in Guiana and Brazil, at a distance from the coast, whose skins are very dark.”

Hugh Williamson, “Observations on the Hypothesis of some modern Writers, that America has been peopled by a distinct Race of Men and Animals; with some Proofs arising from the Natural History and Appearances of the new Continent in favour of the Mosaic Account of the Deluge,” in Alexander Tilloch, ed., The Philosophical Magazine and Journal: Comprehending the Various Branches of Science, the Liberal and Fine Arts, Geology, Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce, Vol. XLVIII for July, August, September, October, November, and December, 1816 (London: Printed by Richard and Arthur Taylor, 1816), 205–207.

For Williamson the biological reality of the color of Native American skin is on a spectrum between white and black. Native American tones might not get as light or as dark as what Williamson says you might see in Europe, it is problematic to simply state that they are all of one color. There is much more of a variety than some of his contemporaries then, and clearly many today, seemed to believe.

The third and final source describes a Native American who likely had Vitiligo, a condition where an individual loses the pigment in their skin. According to the author, Mr. Benedict, the Native American was happy about his turn to white, although, as Benedict describes, there were still certain parts of his body that had remained black:

“The following is an extract of a letter from Mr. Benedict, of Lebanon, to the Rev. President Stiles of Yale College, giving an account of a remarkable change in the complexion of an Indian.“This Indian is about forty years of age; he calls himself by the name of Samuel Adams, and was born at Frammington in the State of Connecticut; he is tall and well made, his hair is long and coarse, and of the pure Indian black, but grows out of a skin as white as a lily. He tells me that he began to whiten about two years before I saw him, which was in July 1786; the white first appeared upon his breast, and gradually spread from thence. I carefully examined him, and found him to be entirely white, excepting the prominent parts of his face, viz., his forehead, cheek bones, nose, and about his chin, which were of the pure Indian colour, and I think darker than common for that nation; the colors in his face did not form a shade by running into each other, but were both of them entire to the very line of contact, and exhibited a very grotesque appearance. His arms were white, but his hands were pyed, and his fingers the natural Indian color; it was the same with his feet as with his hands, they were interspersed with the natural tawny; his toes were black, but his legs and thighs are wholly white: what is worthy of observation is, that the white is perfectly natural, and very fair for an Englishman. I compared him with fourteen or fifteen other persons who were at my house, of both sexes, and he was visibly the fairest: he told me, that he enjoyed an uninterrupted state of health both before and since he began to whiten. He appears pleased with his transmutation; but, alas! he is still Indian enough to disregard his promise, and to intoxicate himself with spirits. By information of others, who have seen him since these observations were made the remaining black still continues to disappear.””

“American News,” in The Literary Magazine and British Review (January, 1789): 72–73.

For all of the authors quoted above Native American skin tones were viewed in the early national period as more complex than Talmage’s paper suggested. For one author some Native Americans are as fair as some Frenchmen or Spaniards, and some others are black. This blackness of skin can be attributed to their habits, their standards of beauty (another connection to the Book of Mormon, although the Book of Mormon assumes the opposite; cf. 2 Ne. 5:21), or to their exposure to the sun.

For the second author most Native Americans fall somewhere on a spectrum of lighter or darker reddish-brown skin, but, as the author says, “Their skin is tinged with a variety of shades between white and black.” And, finally, the third author viewed the change in one Native American’s skin color from black to white as something of an oddity, mentioning often that his health continued to be okay throughout the change, and unaware that some people can lose skin pigmentation.

Each of these sources offer a counter-narrative to the one presented by Jeremy Talmage at the Book of Mormon Studies Association conference in 2017. It is unfortunate that several authors since Talmage presented his paper have treated it as if held set conclusions, and hope that scholars within Mormon studies would be more careful moving forward to not simply accept the claims of a conference presentation but constructively engage with them and seek to complicate them more thoroughly by more rigorous recourse to the historical record.

Edit: I was completely unaware until this morning that Jeremy Talmage’s paper, “Black, White, and Red All Over: Skin Color in the Book of Mormon,” was going to be published today in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 28 (2019): 46-68.

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Your Help Please: Who Was Surveilling Leonard Arrington While He Worked at BYU?

Leonard Arrington is known for producing some of the most important scholarly work on Mormonism during the twentieth-century, and for being the father or grandfather intellectually speaking of almost every historian of Mormonism over the last several decades. The first academic to be given the title “Church Historian” by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (no one who previously  held the position was a trained historian), he worked in that position from 1972-1982 and was, with many of his colleagues in the history department of the LDS Church, subsequently moved to Brigham Young University to help start the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History. Arrington’s departure from the historical department of the church and move to BYU came after it went public that there were disagreements and some infighting within the church hierarchy over what kind of history should be allowed to be written, who should be allowed to write it, and what kind of access to the historical manuscripts held by the church should be allowed to not only outsiders but insiders as well. This is all well documented in Arrington’s book Adventures of a Church Historian.

One interesting note that I recently came across in Arrington’s papers, that I have not seen mentioned in his diaries or a recent biography, is the possibility that Arrington was spied on while teaching at Brigham Young University in order to ensure that he wasn’t teaching anything too liberal. This is fascinating in light of the fact that at least a few employees in BYU’s Religious Education department had the same experience as recently as four years ago. If it is true that Arrington was also recorded then this suggests a decades-long tradition of BYU professors being recorded and spied on. That maybe this has happened not just every once in a while when a rogue administrator has feelings similar to Ernest Wilkinson’s, but a continuous attempt since Wilkinson to have near complete control over what is presented in the classroom.

The document itself is only a small piece of scratch paper. In Arrington’s hand the document says:

“Acc. to Jay Bell, David Handy was asked to spy on me at BYU class with a tape. 6/12/98”

I have a good idea who Jay Bell is, may he rest in peace. I do not know for sure, though, who David Handy might be. If you know who he is would you be able to share either here or send an email to yakovbentov at yahoo dot com? Thank you in advance for your help.

 

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The Authorship of Isaiah Revisited: A Response to Daniel Ellsworth

A few days after my recent post about the Isaiah that Nephi could not have known, Daniel T. Ellsworth’s article on the authorship of Isaiah from an LDS perspective was posted over at Mormon Interpreter. Although only four days apart, the timing was accidental and in a way fortuitous, neither of us knowing that we were going to be posting on the same topic. I wasn’t sure what to expect with Ellsworth’s piece, but I think that there are a few things that are worth briefly responding to here.

Once I was able to sit down and read through all of Ellsworth’s post, I was glad to find a more thorough and positive engagement with contemporary scholarship on the development of the Book of Isaiah than has been customary in the past from various FARMS and BYU approaches, as I explained in my previous post. Ellsworth thinks that, “despite some compelling textual reasons to question the critical scholarly consensus around the dating of the material comprising the book of Isaiah, I believe it would be a tremendous mistake for Latter-day Saints to simply discard scholarly approaches to the book of Isaiah out of a desire to defend the historicity of the Book of Mormon.” Laying aside the pretentiousness of claiming to know textual difficulties of Isaiah better than scholars who not only read the book primarily in Hebrew, but compare at length all of the manuscripts of Isaiah as part of their career, I was glad to see that Ellsworth is inviting other Latter-day Saints to think deeper about this scholarship and not simply write it off out of a desire to defend the Book of Mormon.

I was even more impressed that Ellsworth not only cares about, but has clearly spent time gathering literary parallels from secondary sources between the book of Isaiah and other Israelite literature that traditionally dates to about the same time or a little while after Isaiah. Ellsworth turns to important studies by serious scholars like Richard Schultz,[1] Marvin Sweeney,[2] and Joseph Blenkinsopp[3] in order to understand this literature and the reasons why scholars share the view that Isaiah is not a unified whole, and why the division of the text is much more complicated than the simple tripartite division of Isaiah 1-39, 40-55, and 56-66. This point was a major aspect of my previous post, showing that much of Isa. 1-5, 13-14, 24-27, and 34-39 were not written by Isaiah of Jerusalem, and that the rest of the chapters in that section of the book would not have had the form they currently do in any pre-exilic context.

For the most part Ellsworth’s article is exemplary for at least the tone and engagement that I would hope to see more of within Mormon studies on the issue of the authorship of Isaiah. Where Ellsworth falls short, though, is in his understanding of why scholars view many parts of Isaiah as being written by later authors and in his partial and carefully selected examples of parallels between Isaiah and other prophetic or scriptural texts.

Ellsworth focuses much of his post on connections between the book of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah in order to make an argument that all of these prophets were contemporaries so Jeremiah likely had Isaiah, or Isaiah and Micah shared common themes or Micah was dependent on Isaiah. These connections are wonderful to know about and are important to keep in mind but are only a small part of the larger literary problem of the book of Isaiah as a whole. For instance, as I noted in note 39 in my previous post, Deutero-Isaiah is dependent throughout its sixteen chapters on post-exilic writings. This alone would have been good enough reason for me as an editor of the journal to have Ellsworth make major revisions to his essay. To leave out these studies while focusing so much on connections between Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah is irresponsible at best and gives the audience the wrong impression. This is a major failing of Ellsworth’s essay.

The work of Benjamin Sommer[4] and Patricia Tull Willey,[5] among others, has more than solidified the observation that Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah is dependent on post-exilic writings. This is not because scholars and Mormons bring different assumptions to the table when exploring these issues, Mormon beliefs about the authorship of Isaiah are actually not different from other traditional assumptions on this topic. What is different is how open an individual student is to reevaluating assumptions in the light of new evidence. Not all believing Mormons who engage with scholarship on Isaiah continue to have the same assumptions as Ellsworth about the authorship of Isaiah afterward, and many who enter the field for a career understand that some of the basic arguments he makes throughout his post are much more nuanced than he assumes. Are these students no longer Mormons because they don’t share the same assumptions as he does?

Ellsworth claims, as many before him have, that a part of discarding Isaianic authorship of Isa. 40-66, and some other specific sections of Isa. 1-39, requires that one does not believe in predictive prophecy. On the contrary, you have to read predictive prophecy into the text of Deutero-Isaiah to view it as authored by Isaiah of Jerusalem. This has already been discussed heavily in the literature, at least as far back as S. R. Driver’s An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament:

“In the present prophecy there is no prediction of exile: the exile is not announced as something still future; it is presupposed, and only the release from it is predicted. By analogy, therefore, the author will have lived in the situation which he thus presupposes, and to which he continually alludes.”[6]

Ellsworth, and unfortunately many others since scholars were responding to this argument over 120 years ago, unfortunately misunderstands the scholarly position on this issue. It is not that Mormonism provides a new context for understanding predictive prophecy, but rather the struggle for any reader to correctly understand whether or not a text is predicting this or that about the future. Scholars do not deny the possibility that the author of Deutero-Isaiah was writing, in some respects, before the fall of the Babylonian empire and that this author predicted salvation for the exiled Israelites and a return to their land coupled with a rebuilding of the temple. Rather, that is at the very center of most composition theories. Many scholars have argued that the failed aspects of Deutero-Isaiah’s predictions (and there were successful parts of the predictions as well!) brought on the responses now found in Isa. 56-66.[7] You have to ignore a very large amount of research in order to sustain the idea that scholars simply date texts late because they don’t accept predictive prophecy. A similar mistake would be to attach too much “predictive prophetic” weight to Doctrine and Covenants 130:14-17, where Joseph Smith could be read as saying that Jesus’ second coming would happen around late 1890, Smith’s 85th birthday. It may or may not be clear to some readers today that wasn’t the intention, but there were still people who expected the second coming in 1890.[8] There are more balanced approaches one can take to predictive prophecy than to simply state that as a difference between Mormons and scholars.

Another point Ellsworth makes throughout his post is that a prophet’s viewpoint can change after a decades long prophetic career, but he never gives any examples of this, ancient or modern. It seems to be a tacit assumption that Isaiah is a good example of this, but hopefully that is not the case because of obvious circular reasoning that would need to be involved in that argument. In any case Ellsworth does not explain his reasons for this view other than stating them.

Ellsworth also suggests something unique that Mormons bring extra resources for: that texts change and are revised at a significant level over several years. This is not something unique to Mormonism, and the ideas that were core to solidifying this perspective within Mormonism were widespread in early 19th century American Protestantism. Bibles signified to their readers that the italics in the King James Version were supplied because the words were not found in the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts, leading to assumptions that the italics signified scribal or copying mistakes. Major mistakes in poor quality printing at the beginning of the American republic also led to many people being cautious about which printings to buy and who to buy from. You didn’t want to get a copy of a Bible with a lot of mistakes and somehow be led astray. Those concepts are the historical backdrop to the eighth article of the Mormon faith, and Mormonism has not continued to heavily contribute to those scholarly explorations or help advance them in many significant ways.

All of these points are important, but after reading Ellsworth’s essay I was left with a little bit of hope for potential future studies in Mormon apologetic circles on issues of biblical authorship. At least, until I read the comments. Ellsworth’s essay made a few people slightly angry, but most of all they brought out some of Ellsworth’s true feelings about academic inquiry into the authorship of Isaiah. For Ellsworth, “The reason critical scholars have to believe in multiple authorship is, they operate with a completely different set of assumptions that necessitate the invention of multiple authors. I have no reason to believe that the Isaiah material in the BoM is post-exilic.” He has no reason, after engaging with Blenkinsopp, Sweeney, J. J. M. Roberts, or any of the others he found no reason whatsoever to see how much of Isaiah was written during or after the Babylonian exile.

Ellsworth claims in the comments section that, “I don’t see any reason to believe that any of the BoM Isaiah material is post-exilic. I can’t take the critical scholarly view at face value, because I reject the assumptions that require late dating of that material. If those Isaiah passages were written in late Biblical Hebrew or had some other compelling reason for late dating, I might chalk their BoM presence up to some brilliant midrash on the part of Joseph Smith, or some similar explanation.” This is where the ability to study the text in Hebrew would have come in handy for Ellsworth. As David Bokovoy has noted,

“Unlike what we find in the first half of the book of Isaiah, Aramaic has heavily influenced the language in Isaiah 40-66. Not only does this fact provide compelling proof that the material in 40-66 was written by other authors, it shows that these authors were living in a time when Jews were speaking Aramaic. Aramaic became the international language used by the Assyrians to govern their empire in the eighth century. But Jews living in Jerusalem during the time of the historical Isaiah spoke Hebrew. This explains why Hezekiah’s envoy pleaded with the Assyrians to make terms in Aramaic so that the people listening would not understand what was said (2 Kings 18). It also explains why we do not see any Aramaic influence in the material connected with the historical Isaiah.”[9]

Not only did Aramaic influence the language of the author of many of the passages in Isaiah identified as post-exilic, we also have examples of post-exilic Hebrew all throughout the chapters as well. Bokovoy goes on again to provide a quick example of post-exilic Hebrew, but refers his readers to Shalom Paul’s commentary on Isaiah 40-66 and to the more extensive examples of post-exilic Hebrew he has listed there.[10] The issue is, in my view, an overconfidence based on limited engagement and experience with the in-depth and thorough conversations that are not only currently going on in scholarly circles but that have been going on for several hundred years. I think the more appropriate approach, which seems like it was almost made a part of Ellsworth’s essay, comes from Grant Hardy on the very question of Deutero-Isaiah:

“A more promising avenue for the faithful, it seems, is to acknowledge that we probably know less about what constitutes an “inspired translation” than we do about ancient Israel.”[11]

And by this Hardy does not mean that we cannot know anything about ancient Israel, or that the “(always tentative) results of scholarship” mean that scholars have not made any discoveries that will stand the test of time. On the contrary, the achievements of scholars should be recognized for what they are. When scholars can agree with one another, when it is their job to find places to disagree with current and past paradigms, and maybe even create new ones, this is not only significant but also something that laypeople can think more about and engage with. This means that there is a vast literature that is ready to be studied and is just waiting to be read.

 

[1] Richard L. Schultz, Search for Quotation: Verbal Parallels in the Prophets (JSOTSup 180; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).

[2] Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39: With an Introduction to Prophetic Literature (The Forms of the Old Testament Literature, XVI; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996); and Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 40-66 (The Forms of Old Testament Literature; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016).

[3] Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Yale Bible, 19; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); and Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible, 19a; New York: Doubleday, 2002); and Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56-66: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible Bible, 19b; New York: Doubleday, 2003).

[4] Benjamin D. Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66 (Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

[5] Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah (SBL Dissertation Series, 161; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).

[6] S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (International Theological Library; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1898), 237; also quoted in H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 3.

[7] For example, see Konrad Schmid, The Old Testament: A Literary History (Tranls. Linda M. Maloney; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 167-169.

[8] Adding to this were several other statements from Joseph Smith that the second coming could potentially happen around 1890 or so. See Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1938), 238.

[9] http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson-part-2/ (Last accessed 9/23/2017).

[10] Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary (The Eerdmans Critical Commentary; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), especially pp. 43-44.

[11] Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 69.

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The Isaiah Nephi Could Not Have Known: A Response to Dr. Kent Jackson

In a recent essay[1] Dr. Kent Jackson has discussed the problem of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. While this issue has been discussed sporadically for around a century,[2] it has rarely been given the kind of attention that the issue deserves. It has been an important and fairly well known problem, but the attention to detail required for both understanding the composition of the Book of Isaiah (which alerts one to the problem of the block quotations in the Book of Mormon) and the use of Isaiah throughout the text of the Book of Mormon have rarely been utilized in a single work.[3] Sidney Sperry’s writings on the issue were often very polemic,[4] and rather than engaging faithfully with the scholars of his day he tended to summarize their work through a purely negative lens. He utilized common negative assumptions about the work of other scholars but it was clear he had not fully engaged critically with their ideas, often mischaracterizing them. Unfortunately, that has continued to be a part of Mormon scholarship on Isaiah.[5]

Jackson’s essay focuses on two important questions dealing with Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: the dependence of the language of the Book of Mormon Isaiah on the King James translation of the same chapters, and the sections of the Book of Mormon that are dependent on chapters in Isaiah written after 600 BCE.[6] While there are some things about Jackson’s essay that I really appreciate there are other things that I hope can be corrected in future studies in Mormonism on the question of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.

 

The King James Translation of Isaiah and the Book of Mormon Isaiah

 

In regards to the first question Jackson is careful in noting various views within Mormon scholarship itself, rather than to attach value to one understanding over another. It is obvious that he has read and engages with the studies of B. H. Roberts, Daniel H. Ludlow, Monte S. Nyman, Grant Hardy, and Royal Skousen. He gives supporting reasons for several of their views and accurately summarizes their work, and then offers three brief responses to the question of why the Book of Mormon Isaiah is nearly identical to the King James Version Isaiah.

His first response is theological,[7] stating that God intended for the words to be the same. Shifting at the end he offers a historical perspective: that if the Isaiah passages were in different wording then it could have hurt the credibility of the Book of Mormon for potential converts. This claim is questionable at best, especially in light of the various new translations that were being offered at the time. Alexander Campbell[8] created his own translation of the New Testament, and Noah Webster, of the famous Webster’s Dictionary, also created his own. These are only two of many new translations of the Bible in early 19th century America. New Translations and variant wordings would not have been the issue that could have ruined the credibility of a religious book. Rather, the Book of Mormon was already in a tough spot because many thought of it as a replacement to the Bible, not a companion of it. Those who would later convert likely would have barely if ever noticed the differences in language between the Book of Mormon Isaiah and the King James Isaiah if they were different. If they had noticed them the same reasons Jackson gives for the two potentially being different would have made sense to them: Joseph Smith had supposedly translated the record into contemporary, plainer English. The fact that Smith and many of his followers recognized the need for a new translation of the Bible only months after the first publication of the Book of Mormon confirms this and if the Book of Mormon Isaiah had been different from the KJV Isaiah that could have been utilized as an apologetic in favor of the book.

The second and very brief response Jackson offers is that the possibility of Joseph Smith and his scribe taking out a Bible and copying directly from it for the Isaiah chapters cannot be ruled out. From a historical-critical perspective the most likely way that the Isaiah chapters got into the Book of Mormon in the form of the KJV is because they were copied from the KJV, and the most likely way they did that was that Smith read the chapters from the copy to his scribe and made changes as he went.[9] The “textual evidence”[10] Royal Skousen uses in order to see this as unlikely does not adequately grapple with the wealth of evidence that a Bible was used. Skousen’s argument that the Isaiah passages on the earliest manuscripts of the Book of Mormon do not follow chapter divisions but instead content-based units is mostly inaccurate.[11] Except for 2 Ne. 6-8 (=Isa. 49:24-52:2) all of the Isaiah quotations start and end at the beginning and end of a current chapter divider. All of Isa. 49 was already quoted in 1 Ne. 21, so the fact that 2 Ne. 6 starts in Isa. 49 and not at the beginning is a moot point. The reason the chapter divisions are not reflected directly on the earliest manuscripts is because the text of Isaiah was still being dictated to the scribe. Similar to how Joseph Smith later worked on his revision of the Bible, and as already noted, Smith read and edited the biblical chapters as he dictated them to the scribe. The fact that none of the witnesses ever mentioned whether or not there was a Bible during this process does nothing to fact that the translation is from the KJV and that, even as one of Skousen’s students point out, the Book of Mormon agrees almost completely with the KJV against other English translations of that period.[12]

Jackson’s third response is a little less nuanced than his approach to answering how the King James language got into the Isaiah chapters of the Book of Mormon. In this response Jackson is firm in following what some of the witnesses of the production of the Book of Mormon later claimed. Smith saw the words of the Book of Mormon on the interpreters and dictated the text to his scribe. In this way instead of reading the Isaiah text directly from a Bible God placed the words on the interpreters for Smith to read aloud. This means that Smith was still functionally reading the text from the KJV, but not from the KJV. This response is a mixture of historical and theological observations in order to support the witnesses’ statements, and the idea that the text of Isaiah (or the Book of Mormon) appeared on the interpreters was recently rejected by most of the panel of Mormon scholars at a conference at Utah State University.[13]

It is important to note, before moving on to Jackson’s summary of the authorship of Isaiah, that the fact that the King James translation of the Isaiah chapters is not the only part of the overall issue. As has been pointed out since the first days after the Book of Mormon appeared in print, the Book of Mormon is also dependent throughout on the New Testament. This does not simply mean the explicit citation of New Testament passages in 3 Nephi, but rather the common use of New Testament phrases and ideas all throughout the Book of Mormon, from the beginning of the book in 1 Ne. 1 to the end in Mor. 10. Ideas, concepts, language, and narrative structures can all be traced within the Book of Mormon itself. This is not a question of Smith utilizing the King James Bible as a storehouse of English expression; instead, this ties the text of the Book of Mormon to the King James translation in a much more meaningful way. The Book of Mormon narrative is actually dependent on the King James translation for its composition, not just for its religious expression, and its authorship is inextricably bound to someone who was intimately familiar with the KJV as his or her sacred text.

Besides this important point, the Book of Mormon is aware of several other texts from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament that it technically should not know. It is aware of both Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah (Isa. 40-55 and 56-66 respectively), contrary to the assumption of many scholars (including Jackson), that the book is only aware of chapters from Isa. 1-55.[14] The Book of Mormon is also dependent in numerous places, sometimes explicitly, on Ezekiel, Malachi, Zechariah, and several other post-exilic Hebrew prophets. The issue of anachronistic texts being in the Book of Mormon only expands the closer one compares the Book of Mormon and the Bible.

 

The Authorship of Isaiah

 

In Jackson’s words, “some scholars believe that some of the chapters of the current book of Isaiah were not written by that prophet but by one or more different authors long after Isaiah’s time–in fact, after the time that Lehi and his family left Jerusalem.”[15] While it is true that these chapters would have been written after Isaiah was alive, and after Lehi and his family left Jerusalem, Jackson’s description that only “some scholars” have this view is not accurate. First, it is by far the majority of scholars today that view much of the Book of Isaiah as having been written well after Isaiah’s time, and much of it well after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians.[16] It is a bit gratuitous to use the language that Jackson does here in this part of his essay, both in the use of “some” and “believe,” which unfortunately only continues to its end. Scholars from all different kinds of backgrounds, including more traditional and more progressive approaches, all agree that the composition history of Isaiah is complicated and that much of Isaiah cannot go back to the Isaiah of Jerusalem himself.

Jackson next claims that multiple authorship theories for the Book of Isaiah have no support from any ancient manuscript.[17] This is not entirely accurate either. On the contrary, scholars have recognized for at least the last half-century that the large gap between Isa. 33 and 34 on the Great Isaiah Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QIsaa) is evidence that anciently the book was viewed as being separated at least in half.[18] Jackson even mentions this manuscript at this point in his essay without noting the fact that scholars have used this as support for the authorship theory, as well as basic literary-critical observations. I will return to that later, the important thing to keep in mind is that Jackson is already showing his limited awareness of contemporary Isaiah scholarship (even dating back to the 1960s and 1980s). Even though Jackson cites the recent commentaries by Joseph Blenkinsopp and Shalom Paul, throughout the rest of his essay he will make it obvious that he is more familiar with the other traditionally minded works he has cited, that of LaSor, et al (1969), and Harrison (1982), than with more contemporary critical research.[19] This is a significant point if Jackson and others hope to grapple with the theological implications of the Book of Mormon being dependent on texts written in or near Jerusalem well after Nephi supposedly leaves for the New World. If scholarship on the authorship of Isaiah has created a problem in chronology and availability of Isaiah for the Book of Mormon, then it is of prime importance that those studies are correctly understood and explained. Unfortunately, Jackson has not excelled at either of those points.

Although the composition of Isaiah is a complicated and hotly debated area of study there are several observations that can be made about general agreements between contemporary scholars. First, almost all scholars who specialize in the study of the book of Isaiah agree that Isaiah of Jerusalem did not write most or all of the following chapters of the book: 1-5, 13-14, 24-27, 34-35, 36-39, 40-55, and 56-66. The superscription in 1:1 was written as an introduction to the entire book, all of the other 65 chapters,[20] and although many scholars think that some of the material in the first chapter might date back to Isaiah of Jerusalem no one thinks that text would have resembled what we now see in Isa. 1 at all. The superscription in 2:1 works as an introduction to the first part of the book of Isaiah, and was either meant to introduce Isa. 2-4 or 2-12.[21] Much of Isa. 2-5 cannot be identified with Isaiah of Jerusalem, especially in its current form. There are many verses in these chapters that were at the very least added to or edited by later redactors. The authorship of this section of the book is also complicated by issues like the parallel text between Isa. 2:2-5 and Micah 4:1-4.[22] Even though some scholars attribute some verses in Isa. 2-5 (chapter 5 is often seen as tied literarily to 6-12, not 2-4, but dates later than Isaiah),[23] the majority of this section of the book shows clear signs of redaction and authorship that date much later than Isaiah of Jerusalem.[24]

It is unlikely that Isaiah wrote any of Isa. 13-14, but if he did then his work was nothing like the shape, form, and content that the chapters are in now.[25] The chapters were written by someone familiar with the fall of Babylon and were influenced by the anti-Babylonian poetry in Jer. 50-51,[26] and satirically point at the Babylonian king and his errors, comparing him to the star of the morning. Isa. 13-14 were written at the very earliest in the 6th century BCE, at least several decades after Lehi, Nephi, and the rest of the family leave Jerusalem.

Chapters 24-27[27] and 34-35[28] were both written around the same time as Isa. 40-55 (post-exile in Babylon). 24-27 is thought to be a proto-apocalyptic text, although some scholars have said that term is misleading,[29] that completely and drastically intrudes on the flow of chapters 23 and 28. These chapters also borrow from texts that make it impossible for them to be written by Isaiah of Jerusalem.[30] Chapters 40-55 have been recognized thoroughly as having been written much later than Isaiah of Jerusalem,[31] and it is even more clear than 24-27 that these chapters are dependent on several other post-exilic texts, including Jeremiah, post-exilic psalms, Nahum, and several others.[32] There is no possibility for there to be a historical core of chapters 40-55 that could have existed in pre-exilic times because the literary structure and message of this section of the book is so tightly connected.[33] The text separates almost in half between 40-48 and 49-55,[34] and the structure and dependence of the separate units on post-exilic literature highlight the fact that this whole section of the book of Isaiah was written in the post-exilic period. Isa. 56-66 was likewise written well after the prophet Isaiah lived in Jerusalem.[35]

To return to Jackson’s essay, I have to wonder how familiar Jackson really is with scholarship on Isaiah. Even though it is clear to almost all of the scholars noted above that there are numerous places throughout Isa. 1-39 that simply cannot date prior to the 6th century BCE, Jackson says, “These chapters [First Isaiah] clearly fit within the period of time in which they purport to have been written, in the late eight century BC.”[36] He can also state that, “the literary style of chapters 40-66 differs from that of the earlier chapters,”[37] without ever noting all of the connections that scholars have made in the similarity of style between Isa. 13-14, 24-27, and 34-35, to name only the major chapters.[38] It is pretty clear, if you are familiar with the relevant scholarship on Isaiah, when you read Jackson’s essay that he is not very familiar with said scholarship even though that is a major aspect of his essay.

 

Summary/Conclusion

 

It is important to know what current and past scholars on Isaiah have said about the authorship of Isaiah if one is going to approach this important issue in Book of Mormon scholarship. The Book of Mormon explicitly quotes all of Isa. 2-14, 29, and 48-54, besides numerous other parts of Isaiah that are not explicitly quoted, including an allusion to Trito-Isaiah in 2 Ne. 9:14. Isa. 2-5 would not have been available to the Nephites in anything close to the form that it is now in the Bible. Isa. 13-14 would not have been available to them either because they were both written in the late 6th century BCE, but Isa. 14:12-15 is alluded to by Lehi in 2 Ne. 2:17. It goes without saying that Isa. 48-54 simply would not have been available to any pre-exilic Israelites. That observation is based on very clear criteria, not the least of which is the fact that these chapters are clearly dependent on post-exilic literature.[39]

Although it would seem that although Isa. 2-5, 13-14, and 48-54 are the only chapters effected by the observations of contemporary scholarship on the authorship of Isaiah, chapters 6-12 also show signs of later redactional activity.[40] For example, H. G. M. Williamson has argued that, “Deutero-Isaiah composed Isa. 11:11-16 to round off chapters 6-11,”[41] and Blenkinsopp, among others, has argued that the poem preceding verses 10-16, Isa. 11:1-9, is of a later date.[42] If these observations are accepted then that means that all of Isa. 11 would also not have been available to Israelites prior to early 6th century BCE. The argument that verses 10-16 are later additions to the chapter is secure, the relevant data for that argument is clear and scholars agree they are later. Verses 1-9 do not share as wide acceptance, but there are scholars who agree with Blenkinsopp. There are many other parts of Isa. 6-12 that we could note are later redactions or additions to the text. The fact that Nephi quotes every word of Isa. 2-14 is problematic, but Jackson chose not to note this important detail for his audience.

The Isaiah that Nephi and his descendants might have known would not have included a lot of the chapters that are explicitly quoted in the Book of Mormon. This is an obvious issue and one that deserves serious and honest attention. But to be completely honest anyone attempting to understand this problem, or especially to explain it to others, needs to include the influence of all of the other chapters of the King James Bible on the Book of Mormon. There are multiple other post-exilic texts that directly influenced the writing of the Book of Mormon but for those there is no reason or way to try to argue for earlier authorship. Besides these post-exilic Hebrew texts, there are thousands of places in the Book of Mormon that have been influenced by the New Testament. Instead, it is better to recognize the full influence that the KJV had on the writing of the Book of Mormon and to deal more honestly with that. The fact that these other later texts are not only present in the Book of Mormon but effected its composition undermines the attempt to argue for a core of Isa. 48-54 that was written in pre-exilic times. Instead, the comprehensive data should tell researchers like Jackson to find other explanations for why Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah have influenced the authorship of the Book of Mormon. This does not mean that these observations should dictate one’s personal beliefs. These observations are not inherently theological, but instead fall under the realm of inquiry of the disciplines of history and religious studies. These fields observe and comment on what humans have done in the past, not what deities have done.

Jackson failed to understand or possibly even acquaint himself completely with current scholarship on Isaiah. In his work he felt the need to formulate ad hoc hypotheses to explain how Deutero-Isaiah got into the text of the Book of Mormon, mostly relying on the theories of other scholars within Mormonism. The problem, besides the fact that he didn’t adequately explain scholarship on Isaiah to his audience, is that he never tried to incorporate the rest of the text of the Book of Mormon in the overall picture, providing a misleading description for his readers about how to think about this issue. Many readers still think the KJV only influenced the language of the translation of the Book of Mormon, but that is primarily because previous scholars have completely ignored the wide-ranging and complicated relationship between these two important, and large, texts. I would suggest that Jackson’s approach does not give a reason for faith, the title of the collection of essays his is published in, but will only lead more people to question the transparency and honesty of scholars at BYU and within the wider faith tradition. This doesn’t need to be so, if only these scholars would take their subject and their audiences more seriously as adult and ready thinkers.

 

[1] Kent P. Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” in Laura Harris Hales, ed., A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University and Deseret Book, 2016), 69-78.

[2] Among others see B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God: III The Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: The Deseret News, 1909); and Sidney Sperry, “The Text of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon” (Unpublished Master’s Thesis; Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1926); and H. Grant Vest, “The Problem of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” (unpublished Master’s Thesis; Brigham Young University, 1938); and Wayne Ham, “A Textual Comparison of the Isaiah Passages in the Book of Mormon with the Same Passages in the St. Mark’s Isaiah Scroll of the Dead Sea Community” (Unpublished Master’s Thesis; Provo: Brigham Young University, 1961); and John A. Tvedtnes, Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon (FARMS Preliminary Reports; Provo: FARMS, 1981); and David P. Wright, “Joseph Smith’s Interpretation of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter 1998), 181-206.

[3] The work of David Wright, mentioned previously, is different from the other studies in that he is both fully aware of the composition and literary history of the book of Isaiah and how that affects a reading of the Book of Mormon.

[4] See especially Sperry, Answers to Book of Mormon Questions (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1967), 73-97.

[5] Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 69. Jackson argues in his paper that scholars view Deuteron-Isaiah as exilic or post-exilic because they don’t believe in prophecy.  See also the positive approach to Isaiah scholarship in Joseph Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).

[6] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 70.

[7] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 71.

[8] Campbell was a minister with similar views about the need for a restoration of Jesus’s primitive church as Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon (Rigdon was originally a part of Campbell’s religious movement before joining Mormonism), but a well known critic of Smith’s religious activities.

[9] Skousen argues this in his essay, “Textual Variants in the Isaiah Quotations in the Book of Mormon,” in Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch, eds., Isaiah in the Book of Mormon (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998), 377, although he thinks the biblical text is coming from the seer stone and not from Smith reading them from a copy of the Bible and dictating the changes he was making.

[10] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 71.

[11] Skousen, “Textual Variants in the Isaiah Quotations,” 378-379.

[12] Skousen, “Textual Variants in the Isaiah Quotations,” 376.

[13] http://chass.usu.edu/news/translation-conference (Last accessed 9/9/2017)

[14] Cf. the allusion to the “robe of righteousness” of Isa. 61:10 in 2 Ne. 9:14. This phrase is found only in this passage in the King James Version.

[15] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 71.

[16] See the studies cited later on in this post.

[17] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 71-72.

[18] Craig A. Evans, “The unity and parallel structure of Isaiah”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2 (April 1988), 132. Evans quotes the work of William Brownlee from 1964, and his argument that the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) supports the previous authorship theories of scholars that Isaiah’s of Jerusalem’s writings only go up to Isa. 33. See also H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 15-16.

[19] The dichotomy used here of “traditional” and “critical” has in no way the intention of being polemical. Rather, the earlier works by LaSor, et al, and Harrison attempt to follow more traditional understandings of the composition of Isaiah than to look at the text in a new light in order to understand how it came about. That is an express concern of theirs.

[20] Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-4 and the Postexilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 171; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 28-30; H. G. M. Williamson, Isaiah 1-5: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary (International Critical Commentary; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2006), 15; J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah: A Commentary (Hermeneia–A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 11-12; H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 153-154, see nt. 83; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Yale Bible, 19; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 175-176; Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39 with an Introduction to Prophetic Literature (The Forms of the Old Testament Literature, XVI; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 71; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12: A Commentary (A Continental Commentary; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 3; Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12: A Commentary (Second Edition, Completely Rewritten; The Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), 1-10; Ulrich F. Berges, The Book of Isaiah: Its Composition and Final Form (Transl. Millard C. Lind; Hebrew Bible Monographs, 46; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012), 41-44.

[21] Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 146-148; Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12, 87-88; Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, 97; and Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 189; Roberts, First Isaiah, 35; Williamson, Isaiah 1-5, 163-165; Sweeney, Isaiah 1-4, 30-31.

[22] Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12, 49-56; Sweeney, Isaiah 1-4, 164-174; Berges, The Book of Isaiah, 58-61; Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 144. See also Roberts, First Isaiah, 39-43.

[23] Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, 127.

[24] Sweeney, Isaiah 1-4, 183-184; Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 154, 228-229; Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, 109-111.

[25] Most scholars are pretty certain that Isa. 13 was written near the end of the 6th century BCE, before the fall of Babylon to Persia and Cyrus’s rule, and Isa. 14 in the post-exilic period after Babylon’s. See Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, 214-215; and Roberts, First Isaiah, 194, 201; and Wildberger, Isaaiah 13-27: A Continental Commentary (Transl. Thomas H. Trapp; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 16-18; and Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 157-175; and Sweeney, Isaiah 1-4, 44-46.

[26] Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 277.

[27] Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 346-348; Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, 312-313; William R. Millar, Isaiah 24-27 and the Origin of Apocalyptic (Harvard Semitic Monographs, 11; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976), 118-120; Roberts, First Isaiah, 306-307; and Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27, 445-447; and Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 175-177; Berges, The Book of Isaiah, 161ff.

[28] Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 243, places the authorship of Isa. 34-35 closer to Trito-Isaiah (Isa. 56-66) than to First Isaiah or even Deutero-Isaiah. See also Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 450-451; and Berges, The Book of Isaiah, 228-231; and Roberts, First Isaiah, 432; and Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39, 322, 327-329, 348.

[29] Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 346.

[30] See J. Todd Hibbard, Intertextuality in Isaiah 24-27: The Reuse and Evocation of Earlier Texts and Traditions (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe, 16; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); and J. Todd Hibbard, “Isaiah 24-27 and Trito-Isaiah: Exploring Some Connections,” in J. Todd Hibbard and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, eds., Formation and Intertextuality in Isaiah 24-27 (Ancient Israel and Its Literature, 17; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 183-199.

[31] See any of the previously listed commentaries or monographs.

[32] See Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66 (Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); and Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah (SBL Dissertation Series, 161; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).

[33] Grant Hardy has also noted the difficulty in accepting this idea when he said, “William Hamblin has suggested that the problem might be alleviated if we regard Second Isaiah as a prophet contemporary with Nephi, but even this is not an entirely satisfactory solution,” in Understanding the Book of Mormon, 69.

[34] See John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, Volume 1 (International Critical Commentary; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2006), 5; and Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 40-66 (The Forms of Old Testament Literature; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 19; and Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible, 19a; New York: Doubleday, 2002), 59-60; and Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40-55 (Hermeneia–A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 4-5; and H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 25.

[35] See any of the previously listed commentaries or monographs, and much more, for information on why scholars view these chapters as not being authored by Isaiah.

[36] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 72.

[37] Jackson, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” 73.

[38] Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, wrote an entire book examining how Isa. 40-55 influenced the editing of the whole book of Isaiah, including all of the chapters in Isa. 1-39.

[39] Isa. 48:6 is dependent on Jer. 33:3; Isa. 48:10 is dependent on Jer. 9:6-8; Isa. 48:12-20 is dependent on Ps. 81:6-17; Isa. 48:20-22 is dependent on Deut. 32:1-5 (Deuteronomy was written no earlier than the mid-seventh century BCE); Isa. 49:1 is dependent on Jer. 1; Isa. 49:7-22 is dependent on Pss. 2; 72; Isa. 49:13-18 is dependent on Jer. 2:32; Isa. 49:26 is dependent on Ezek. 21:2-12; Isa. 51:16-21 is dependent on Lam. 2:13-19; Isa. 52:1-7 is dependent on Nah. 2:1-3; Isa. 52:12-53:12 is dependent on Jer. 10:18-25 and 11:19; Isa. 54:1-4 is dependent on Jer. 10:17-25; Isa. 54:1-12 is dependent on Hosea 1-3. For these and numerous other identified passages (many other connections are not noted here) see Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture, 321-325; and Willey, Remember the Former Things.

[40] Grant Hardy also points to this issue in Understanding the Book of Mormon, 69.

[41] Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah, 141. Isa. 11:10 is also of later provenance. See also Berges, The Book of Isaiah, 33, 113-115; and Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 266-267.

[42] Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, 263-264.