The Joseph Smith Conference at the Library of Congress is over now. (I'd mentioned it last week) It sounds like it was a mixed bag with some excellent talks, some so-so talks from people one expected more from, and then a little bit of embarrassment at the end. Allow me to make a few comments, even though I've not yet seen the webcast. (Many are reportedly going to be up for download as video or mp3s shortly)
First let me point people over to By Common Consent with the reaction of some there and then discussion about it. Justin Butterfield also has his comments up.
The main complaint, it seemed, was that some talks were simply out of place given the kind of academic conference that was going on. John Clark talked about mesoAmerica and the Book of Mormon, but that ended coming off as apologetics unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I think part of growing up as a culture entails that we not be so insecure about what people think about us. That also means recognizing that many of our premises aren't shared. At a conference like this one probably ought speak from common ground rather than do apologetics. (i.e. speak in a way that both believers and unbelievers can be comfortable) I've not heard John Clark's talk yet, but from all I've heard it turned off a lot of people. (I'm sure that wasn't Dr. Clark's intent, mind you)
Some also suggested that that this went the other way. A few mentioned Randall H. Balmer's talk was fairly critical of Joseph Smith and Mormon theology. Also at the end was the embarrassment I mentioned. Roger R. Keller responded to Douglas J. Davies' claim that as a word religion we're failing and not in the least fulfilling Rodney Stark's prediction from ten years ago. We are, in Davies' word, too American for the rest of the world. (I tend to think there's a lot of truth to that - our achilles heel as a religion and culture is provincialism) However Keller, presumably reacting to Balmer and Davies criticisms kind of embarrassed things by bringing up authority and getting more into a "testimony mode." Ugh. Not the best way to respond.
Of course I wasn't there and I may think considerably differently once I hear the conference. I'm only going on third hand accounts.
The most exciting part of the conference was, by most accounts, Margaret Barker. She's been the "darling" of Mormon apologists for a fairly long time now. Apparently she wasn't really that familiar with Mormonism until fairly recently. However her particular brand of theology certainly does offer numerous parallels to Mormon thought. Sadly I've heard mixed things about whether her talk will be up for download. I certainly hope it will.
Even if the conference wasn't quite the success some might have hoped for, I think it does speak to the maturing of Mormon scholarship. I think, with time, Mormonism will become less provincial as well. The issue of missionary work in the 3rd world will demand it, if nothing else. (As will the fact of more members outside of the US West than inside) I also think that some Mormon insecurity regarding "outsiders views" will pass. Already I think we've seen that Evangelicals and Mormons can dialog without the "anti" term being thrown around. There are still some who see scholarship critical of the faith (in the negative sense of the term) as almost personal attacks. That'll ebb as we get further and further past the historical period of strong persecution of Mormonism. I think that we, as a people, still haven't grasped that we're not the persecuted minority of the sort we once were. That's not to deny often silly and mean spirited attacks on our faith. But it's just not the way it once was, and I don't think our collective mindset has adjusted yet.
Nice analysis of the conference and reactions thereto.
Margaret Barker spoke directly on the topic that her 2003 BYU Devotional Address only suggested. "Do the revelations to Joseph Smith fit in that context, the reign of King Zedekiah, who is mentioned in the beginning of the First Book of Nephi?" She commented "If prophets revealed the past as well as the future, the revelation of history to Joseph Smith is not out of character." "Enoch traditions could have been very important in 600 BCE, just as the revelation to Joseph Smith implies." "Imagine my surprise when I read the account of Lehi's vision of the tree whose _white fruit_ made one happy, and the terpretation that the Virgin of Nazareth was the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh. This is the Heavenly Mother, represented by the tree of life, and then Mary and her Son on hearth. This revelation to Joseph Smith was the ancient Wisdom symbolism, intact, and almost certainly as it was known in 600 BCE." (Here she footnotes Daniel Peterson's Nephi and His Asherah in JBMS 9.2) Later she discusses the Narrative of Zosimus and footnotes John W. Welch's paper, and then talks about The Great Angel's thesis and reception, and notes that "The older religion in Israel would have taught about the Messiah, and so finding Christ in the Old Testament is exactly what we should expect, but something obscurred by incorrect reading of the scriptures. This is, I suggest, one aspect of the restoration of "the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them" (1 Nephi 13:40)."
I'm quoting a printout of Margaret Barker's "Response to Terryl Givens," which she kindly provided me at the conference.
Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA
Have you heard, Kevin, if her talk with be available as an MP-3? I meant to download the interview she gave to KUER last month but forgot. Unfortunately they now only keep a month's worth of archives to Radio West. C'est la vie. I'm sure that wouldn't have been that technical.
I don't know whether the MP-3 for Margaret's talk will be available. Living out in Pittsburg, I am out of the loop on most things. I had not even heard of the KUER interview. But the conference was designed to produce a book.
Kevin Christensen
Pittsburg, PA
Ben Huff, president of the SMPT was at the conference and has his thoughts up at Times and Seasons.
I was at the conference. Sorry I hadn’t checked your site recently, Clark. I had some comments to make on both Bushman’s presentation and Ben’s response. Since the good folks at Times and Seasons have seen fit to ban me, I cannot comment on Ben’s post there. I might as well make my comments here:
First, Bushman’s presentation was by far the most engaging and most interesting. There were some responses to presentations that were comparable, but none of the presentations themselves came close.
Bushman introduced his planned approach to Joseph’s history by drawing an analogy to Columbus. Bushman adopted a post modern (I hate that word, but I’m not as familiar with schools of history as I am with philosophy, so if you’ve got a better word I’m happy to use it) approach to analyzing Columbus. Columbus can be considered a minor explorer sponsored by Spain who discovered Hispaniola but never set foot on the North or South American continents. Or he can be considered the discoverer of the New World. Bushman described Columbus as detachable from either tradition, and presumably, he believes that the question of whether Columbus discovered the New World is not the kind of question that can be answered by the facts.
Bushman then discussed the different historical milieux and traditions used to explain Joseph Smith. These ranged from the Mormon view of him within the prophetic tradition reaching back to Moses and Abraham to Alexander Campbell’s view of Joseph within the tradition of false prophets dating back to the priests in Pharaoh’s court with whom Moses contended to Quinn’s view of Joseph within the tradition of folk magic. Bushman also talked about the 20th century tendency to localize Joseph Smith to Palmyra, Manchester, and Harmony that began with Riley’s The Founder of Mormonism, continued in Brodie’s biography, and reached its apex in Vogel’s recent biography. Bushman spoke of these as diminishing Joseph Smith compared to the books that take a longer view, and claimed that these are a dead end.
The most surprising thing was that Bushman himself asked his respondents whether they thought that his approach was soft-headed relativism. Their response was, “No.” Allow me to take up the “yes” answer to Bushman’s question.
First of all, whether Columbus discovered “The New World” depends on how we define the term New World. Of course, there is less consensus about how to define New World than there is about how to define Hispaniola. Thus, while everybody agrees that Columbus discovered the latter, there is some dispute over whether he discovered the former. There’s nothing detachable here, we just have competing criteria. This is the first instance of “soft-headedness” (to use Bushman’s term) that I site.
Second of all, Joseph either believed that God gave him the authority to restore Christ’s authority to the earth or he didn’t. If he believed it, then he was either deluded or he was not. If he did not believe it or if he was deluded, then the unique basis of the LDS priesthood power is bogus. Facts will always underdetermine a person’s mental state, so that history cannot definitively answer this question. Yet historians have made and continue to make reasonably strong cases that Joseph did not believe that God gave him the authority to restore Christ’s authority. Bushman seeks to push such histories into the dustbin by appealing to Joseph’s place within a longer view of religious history. And thus, he attempts to justify something like the standard Mormon line in answer to questions like, “How likely is it that Joseph Smith was a lecher?”
Thus, Bushman seems to want to answer the question “How likely is it that Joseph Smith was a lecher?” by saying, “When viewed in the prophetic tradition, very low.” But this begs the question, because what we are trying to determine by asking the question in the first place is exactly whether Joseph belongs in that tradition. Thus, I contend that the legitimacy of Joseph’s prophetic calling does not hinge on the tradition that he belongs to, but vice versa. It is Bushman’s tendency to get the cart before the horse that I sight as my second instance of “soft-headedness.” It simply won’t do to justify Joseph relative to some religious tradition with no independent basis for adopting that tradition.
Well argued, Arturo.
"Arturo" I've not yet heard the MP3s. So I can't comment on your specific analysis, beyond agreeing if this is indeed his point of view, that it seems wrong on the face of it. I plan on downloading them to my iPod tonight and listening to them on my jog tomorrow. So I may have comments tomorrow night - time barring.
My sense though is that you are applying the relativist label incorrectly. I tend to think that relativism is the great boogey man of philosophy we label others with. Since nearly every major philosopher denies the relativist label (or their interpreters do) I tend to think that prima facie when someone appears to be a relativist our duty is to read closer.
Now there certainly is a group of LDS scholars who tend to see religious scholarship as appropriately taking up many traditions. But this isn't relativism. This is simply saying that debates about what tradition (or framework, to invoke Carnap) to use can get rather pointless quickly. To make an analogy to philosophy, we can debate who is right, the neoPlatonists, the pragmaticists, the Peirceans, the neo-Kantians, the empricists, the positivists, the naturalized epistemologists and so forth. But we can also take ones position for granted and continue on from that point.
From prior discussions with certain figures in LDS scholarship, I suspect this is the point. Further, one can also ask how figures like Joseph Smith function in society.
To draw an analogy that isn't in the LDS tradition, we can with Martin Luther King Jr. focus on his adultery, plagerism, and some of the questions of his religiosity. Or we can take a longer term picture and ask how he functions in a sign within a certain tradition. Surely that question isn't inappropriate. And, from that bigger picture, it seems that it is this question of function that is more significant than the questions of the facticity of his life.
Now I'm definitely not trying to draw a connection between Joseph Smith's sex life and Martin Luther King Jr's sex life. Far from it. Nor am I saying questions of the historical facts of his life are irrelevant (for either figure). Far from it. I'm merely wondering if perhaps you aren't misreading Bushman on this point. I'd be very surprised if he was actually taking a relativist position. Nor do I think he'd say that questions of what tradition to adopt are irrelevant.
But I'm obviously speaking from ignorance. So take my comments as pure conjecture. Just that when relativism pops up in a discussion I tend to think it one step away from invoking the Nazis.
BTW - since I mentioned Carnap. Your feelings seem quite at odds with Carnap's conception of frameworks. Yet I thought you were quite the Carnap person with strong positivist leanings. How do you reconcile your views?
Although my second point deals with Bushman’s attempted relativism, I actually do not base my argument against it on the fact that it is relativism. I think that my argument is rather clearly independent of the fact that Bushman is espousing relativism. Thus, my emphasis is more on the soft-headedness of it all.
Carnap’s relativism is the only form of relativism that is cogent. But it is a highly qualified relativism. Basically, Carnap sets up a criteria according to which competing frameworks can be compared. His concept is relativistic insofar as he isolates certain questions (internal questions) to their framework, but he does allow for external questions.
Your mentioning Carnap brings to mind a conversation that I had with Ben Huff at the bloggernacle get-together about his PhD dissertation which deals with McIntyre’s virtue ethics. McIntyre falls down because he fails to defeat the naturalistic fallacy. Ben was entirely unacquainted with Carnap’s argument for the validity of the naturalistic fallacy. Not that this is Ben’s problem. I’ve never read anything about about the naturalistic fallacy that seemed aware of Carnap’s argument, though it is, to my mind, definitive. Carnap is usually treated as a fossil or (when put in a positive light) a pioneer in probability logic; this means that his ideas are seldom actually engaged. I remember the chapter on positivism that I read in one of my gender studies text books. It mentioned that Carnap was a prominent positivist and then went on to describe a bad parody of positivism that basically put positivists on the same moral ground as white supremacists. The teacher insisted that I distorted positivism, though she’d never read so much as a single primary work on positivism. When I told her that Kuhn’s book on science was originally published as one of a series of positivist monographs (not that this makes Kuhn a positivist—he’s not), she called me a liar. Part of this is because the teacher and the authors of this textbook (and other similar textbooks) were just plain stupid. But part of this is also the backlash against the term positivist. Blake Ostler was also willing to attack positivism without any grounding in it at all, and he’s not stupid.
Well your complaints about Carnap I can relate to. I think the same about Peirce, who I think is unfairly neglected (except his contributions to logic and occasionally semiotics) However his actual positions are typically glossed or erroneously presented.
I went back and read your prior exchange on Carnap (under your other nom de plum of David Landrith). You have me intrigued. Any good resources going through Carnap's argument? I'll confess I've not seen it. Do you have Scott Soames' history of analytic philosophy? (Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century)
As for Bushman, I'm downloading it right now.
Just a note to other readers, here's a nice overview of the naturalistic fallacy.
I should also add that I'm about halfway through Bushman's talk. I think my initial guess was close, although a little off. What he appears to be arguing is a hermeneutic point about what forms the horizon for an interpretation of Joseph Smith. By limiting the horizon we end up with discussions like Dan Vogel's. (Interestingly while he alludes to it, he doesn't mention Vogel's intentionalist fallacy in applying Joseph's writings to his personal life)
This is quite different from Kuhn's paradigms or Carnap's frameworks. Rather it is, I think, tied to how the interpretation of any text depends upon its context. It is thus a fairly valid criticism of unduly limiting context. In effect it isn't relativism at all but contextualism. You can see this with some interesting comments on Brooke's The Refiner's Fire who Bushman favorably mentions extends the context for understanding to include the Renaissance. He likewise mentions Harold Bloom's famous (among Mormons) comments linking Joseph Smith to Kabbalism. All of these figures Bushman suggest "enlarges Smith and gives him scopes." He see this as an indicator that even non-Mormons can expand the horizons used to interpret Smith.
BTW - interestingly the responses and question and answers are not in the MP-3 stream. I don't know why that is. It sounds like that was where the issue of relativism came up.
After the responses to Bushman there was a Q&A session where audience questions were supposed to have been answered. This is where relativism came up.
Bushman said that none of the audience questions dealt with the theme of his presentation, so he'd answer them online (I submitted a question and I still await my online reply). Bushman then posed a question to his colleagues; specifically, did any of them think that he was simply espousing soft-headed relativism? Everyone basically said no, and followed on with a few remarks. That was the beginning and the end of the discussion on relativism and soft-headedness. Being the disagreeable sort of fellow that I am, I found this to be entirely unsatisfactory, and that is what prompted me to offer my own argument here. But that said, I don't wish to derail the thrust of my argument by confusing it with a critique on relativism in general, or even with questions of whether Bushman was espousing relativism. I view both of these to be quite independent from the argument I offered above.
Carnap's argument for the naturalistic fallacy compares (a) languages which allow normative conclusions to follow from factual premises with (b) languages that don't. In his usual fashion, he's uninterested in discussing weather the naturalistic fallacy is really a fallacy, since that's exactly the kind of question that he views as meaningless and external to any given framework. Instead, he looks at (a) and (b) as competing frameworks. He then concludes based on his analysis that languages that block normative deductions from factual premises possess a richer semantic toolbox and allow for a greater degree of granularity in meaning. Rather than run afoul of the naturalistic fallacy himself, he does not bother to conclude that this makes it preferable. But he does say that this makes it more useful, and leaves the readers to conclude whether and under what circumstances they should adopt useful linguistic frameworks. I'll shoot you the publication info on this essay when I get home from work. It's one of Carnap's responses to a critic in the Schilpp volume on devoted to him.
I guess I'd say, after listening to the talk, that I just don't think he is coming close to the issue you say he is. The appeal to Columbus is simply to show that interpreting Columbus purely from within the era he lived is misleading. It misses the significant meaning that arose around Columbus in the America of 1776 where he became the grandfather of the nation. That is part of understanding him.
With regards to the leecher issue. I think that can be dealt with, but his point is that to really address that one has to keep both the big picture and the small picture in mind. While obviously he did't address this, I think one might well say that contemplating the meaning of 19th century Mormon polygamy one must address its Biblical roots. To simply see Joseph purely as a figure of 1840 sleeping with multiple women is to miss something essential in the interpretation.
Meridian has up a nice overview of Bushman's talk. (Hat tip Dave) It's useful in that it gives a brief overview of the respondents where the MP-3 doesn't contain their comments.
But my point is exactly that the big picture that is kept in mind must be, in part, determined primarily by how one accounts for the facts, not vice versa. (And here my Russellian/Enlightenment tendencies rear their ugly head). I don't see a significant difference between Bushman's approach and (say) shoehorning the past into preconceived notions with ad hoc explanations. This is what I'm referring to when I say that Bushman is putting the cart before the horse.
Incidentally, the intentionalist fallacy is neither a formal nor an informal fallacy as such. There are circular arguments from environment (e.g., so-and-so did such-and-such because he hated his dad, and so-and-so obviously hated his dad since he did such-and-such), but since such things are circular, there is no separate need to introduce a separate fallacy. If there are problems with Vogel's interpretations of Joseph's environment and their impact on his output, they should be addressed on their own merits or demerits. The term intentionalist fallacy barrows the rhetorical force of other fallacies, while delivering nothing more than a tired phrase used to justify interpreting texts in ways that are obviously at odds with how the author intended them. At any rate, even if we assume its validity, Vogel does not run afoul the intentionalist fallacy, since he does not limit himself to Joseph Smith's state of mind when assessing (for example) the Book of Mormon.
Also, on Columbus, my point is that Bushman is simply incorrect in his claim that there is anything detachable about Columbus's history. Bushman wants to use this detachability to place a wedge between the man and his place in history. Bushman's purpose in driving this wedge is to separate the man from his place in history in order to consider some notion of an essential person who casts a different historical shadow (if you will) based on which historical peg one hangs him on. As I've said above, this puts the cart before the horse. But my point in attacking how Bushman handles this is to block the analogy from the get-go. Essentially, with Columbus, there is no question of historical shadow, just a question of how one defines the term New World.
It seems to me that the intentionalist fallacy is a perfectly good fallacy. So I'm not quite sure of your point. If I take a fictional text of an author and presume to interpret the author's mind in light of that text, I think that I'm using untrustworthy means. So I tend to find Dan's approach in many places deeply problematic. Not to mention that he seems to think he can know Joseph's mind better than I think the evidence warrants. Although I'd have to read the whole book to really be able to critique it with any reliability.
I just don't see that Bushman is pidgeonholing the past with ad hoc explanations. Could you be more specific as why you think he is making that point? As I said, he spoke very favorably about the method of Brookes, Quinn, and Bloom preciesly because they expanded the context - even though to a Mormon none of those are necessarily very favorable. (Well, Bloom less so)
It's the cart before the horse thing. Brookes, Quinn, and Bloom arrive at their traditions based on their view of the facts, as does Brodie and Vogel. Quinn, for example, didn't say, "Gee, I wonder what Joseph looks like through the light of folk magic" the way that Grant Underwood seemed to say (in his response), "Gee, I wonder what Joseph looks like as a Tibetan Monk." Bushman seems to want to justify approaches to Joseph based on their tradition, and not justify traditions based on facts. This is why he wants to say that that Quinn is better than Brodie or Vogel independent of the facts.
As far as Vogel, I don't disagree with your critique of his psychologizing. But notice that once you say things like, "Not to mention that he seems to think he can know Joseph's mind better than I think the evidence warrants," you begin to criticize his biography on its merits (or demerits, as in this case.) and there is no need for phantoms like "the intentionalist fallacy." This is why I say that even if we assume its validity, citing "the intentionalist fallacy" adds nothing substantive to a dialogue.
Once again, I just don't see Bushman arguing what you say he is arguing. Surely we agree that facts need interpreting and don't somehow speak for themselves. Further the context in which the facts are interpreted dramatically changes their meaning. That seems fairly uncontroversial. I don't quite see this "car before the horse" bit. Exactly where is he doing this?
Surely you'd agree that context matters? It almost is as if you are arguing against contextualism in interpretation.
Regarding Vogel, the intentionalist fallacy is just the name for a kind of reading beyond where the evidence warrants. I'm not quite sure why you're uncomfortable with the term.
BTW - I think Quinn most precisely did ask whether folk magic would inform us regarding Joseph Smith. This in turn opened up new facts that had been obscured up to that point.
We've gotten pretty far afield from my original argument to the extant that we're no longer even talking about it. Even so, I'll answer the issues you've posed in your latest comment with the caveat that, at this point, I don't see how our discussion has much to do with my original argument.
Quinn approached folk magic because the facts were already there for both early Mormons and the milieu in which they worshiped. To the extant that Quinn asked the question of how folk magic would inform us, it was because he was already connecting the dots. He didn't just pick folk magic out of thin air and say, "let's try this one on for size." (I like his book quite a lot, but I still tend to think that it was something of an exercise in Mark Hoffman apologetics; thus, there is a small element of truth in the FARMS critique of it.) By contrast, Grant Underwood seems to doing exactly that (pulling examples out of thin air) when he asked how Joseph Smith can be interpreted in light of Tibetan monks.
Bushman emphasizes tradition to the extant that he believes that there is something more legitimate about Quinn than Brodie by virtue of his incorporating tradition and her excluding it. He does not seem to be making an "other things being equal" kind of argument about facts vs. tradition. It follows from this that there is something legitimate about taking a view of his relationships with women that runs counter to facts, provided that one tries to fit it into the appropriate tradition. This is why I say that Bushman has inverted the relationship between facts and the tradition. The former is much more determinative of the latter than vice versa.
As far as the intentional fallacy, what the evidence warrants is often up for grabs, and reasonable people may disagree about what is warranted. I object to the term fallacy being attached an otherwise reasonable position just because it's something that we disagree with. If there is a substantive disagreement, then it should be discussed in substantive terms rather than simply attaching labels to it that imply that someone is doing something that is fundamentally at odds with reason.
Note that I didn't hear the responses, so I didn't hear what Grant Underwood said. I'm just dealing with Bushman's comments in his presentation.
I honestly don't see Bushman saying we ought to include what "runs counter to the facts." However the facts themselves are certainly open to interpretation and different traditions *will* interpret them differently.
Regarding the intentionalist fallcy, I don't think it is ever warranted to determine an author's beliefs from what he writes in a story. The author may external to the story give warrant for such interpretations. But then it is those external facts which are relevant and not the story. To argue otherwise is, I feel, to fall into the worst kind of Freudian view of texts. I don't think, for instance, we ought infer anything about Kafka purely on the basis of say "The Metamorphisis."
Regarding having gone far afield, I'm not sure we have. It seems to me that after listening to Bushman's talk I just don't see him as doing much controversial. I don't see him as endorsing anything like postmodernism. Just contextualism with the point that the context for any historical figure can't be unduly limited.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you are basically taking the opposite point of view. Which is fair. It just seems to me that you are requiring there to be a strong fact - theory divide that I don't see supportable.
I have listed to all the Library of Congress talks posted on the LDS Church web site, but was disappointed to not find the talks by John Clark or John Welch. Can anyone tell me why these talks were not included, and where I might find copies of these talks?
Secondly, I enjoyed most of the talks given at the conference, but found Margaret Barker's talk to be extremely interesting. I wish she could have talked longer. I will most certainly be ordering her books. I did wonder, however, if the "Plain and Precious Truths" removed from scripture according to Nephi were from the 600 BC era or the New Testament era. Her description of the Josiah's purging of the temple and the changes to scripture by the Deuteronomists was most interesting. I found Kevin Christensen's document describing Barker's finding to also be most interesting. I would be interested in knowing, however, how the removal of plain a precious truths from scripture as described in 1st Nephi can be applied to the Old Testament when I read Nephi's comments as applying to a church that would form after Christ's death and the death of the original 12 Apostles.
Thanks for your assistance,
P.S. Kevin Christensen, if you see this, please let me know how to contact you. Much to my disappointment, I just learned you moved from Lawrence.
Kevin Price
Lawrence, Kansas
price@ku.edu
Hi Kevin P.,
While the prophecy in 1 Nephi 13 does indeed refer to the loss of plain and precious things after the death of the apostles, Jacob 4:14 refers to certain of the Jews, hostile to the prophets, who despised the words of plainness and who became blind because they looked "beyond the mark." Comparisons with Ezekiel 9 on the "mark" as the priestly annointing, and with sources ranging from 1st Enoch to Jeremiah on the blindness also makes it clear that Jacob 4 has reference to losses at the time of Lehi and Jeremiah, which came as part of the reforms of Josiah and the Deuteronomists. I've got an essay on the implications of Jacob 4 up at the FARMS site, and also in "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament" in the current FARMS Review. At this posting, that is also available at FARMS. Notice that Margaret's reference to 1 Nephi 13:40 not in reference to the losses at the time of Josiah, but in reference to the restoration of authentic teachings from the time of Josiah via the Book of Mormon and the Dead Sea Scrolls and various non-canonical writings that inform her work in books like The Great Angel.
Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA
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