Symposium Summaries in the Church News

Scott Lloyd published an article in the Church News with a few summaries of presentations from the recent Religious Education symposium, including Matthew Wilcox's excellent paper on the early writings of Gordon B. Hinckley. A summary of my paper was also given:

Joseph T. Antley: "Joseph Smith's Providential Youth"

A "medley of spiritual influences and environmental factors" influenced the Prophet Joseph Smith in his early youth, and that influence ultimately led to the first Vision and subsequent visitations from the angel Moroni, Joseph T. Antley said in his paper prepared for the Religious Education Student Symposium at BYU on Feb. 19.

Joseph Smith's family's inherent religious ideology combined with the evangelical revivals that frequented the Palmyra, N.Y., area in his boyhood led him to worry about his salvation and pray about which church to join, leading to his vision of the Father and the Son, Brother Antley said.

"Similarly, I argue that treasure-seeking folklore and a religious atmosphere that encouraged radical departures from orthodox religion spurred the Prophet's visions of Moroni," he said. "My ultimate argument is that Joseph Smith's youth was providential; the Lord placed the Prophet in the perfect family and place in order for him to be receptive to his early visions."

The Prophet's father and mother, Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, were both religiously minded, and each sought the religion of the New Testament, but they were both disappointed in the sects of the day, Brother Antley noted in his paper.

"Without doubt Joseph Smith's most prominent influence was his family," he said. "He inherited and emulated the spiritual quests and inclinations of his parents and grandparents. Unlike them, Joseph provided the long-sought answers.… Joseph's visions gave purpose to a wandering family and gratified their spiritual hunger. Lucy Smith remembered the visions causing their family 'the sweetest union of happiness … and tranquility reigned in our midst.' The family perhaps even expected the visions. Joseph's cousin remembered their grandfather Asael remarking that he 'always knew that God was going to raise up some branch of the family to be a great benefit to mankind.'"

Student Religious Education Symposium - Follow-up

The Student Religious Education Symposium was last Friday, and I presented my paper, "Joseph Smith's Providential Youth: The Cultural and Religious Environment that Prepared the Prophet for His Early Visions." A lot of friends came to see it, which was unexpected. All in all I think the presentation went pretty well, and it was a fun experience.

My paper was also one of the few chosen for publication, and will appear this fall in a volume published by the Religious Studies Center.

Lucy Mack Smith and the Faculty of Abrac

In the first draft of Lucy Mack Smith's Biographical Sketches, Lucy Mack Smith dictated the following (punctuation and capitalization added):

Now I shall change my theme for the present. But let not my reader suppose that, because I shall pursue another topic for a season, that we stopped our labor and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing magic circles or sooth saying to the neglect of all kinds of business. We never during our lives suffered one important interest to swallow up every other obligation. But, whilst we worked with our hands, we endeavored to remember the service of, and the welfare of our souls.

The significant phrase is, "But let not my reader suppose that...we stopped our labor and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing magic circles or sooth saying to the neglect of all kinds of business."

In my opinion, the text is a clear admittance that the family participated in folk magic, something common to most rural Americans at the time. However, in Bill Hamblin's review of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, which is subsequently quoted in the FAIR Wiki article on the subject, he argues that Lucy Mack Smith was denying that the family participated in those activities.

Dr. Hamblin states,

Here is how I interpret the referents in the text.

Now I shall change my theme for the present [from a discussion of farming and building to an account of Joseph's vision of Moroni and the golden plates which immediately follows this paragraph]. But let not my reader suppose that, because I shall pursue another topic [Joseph's visions] for a season, that we stopped our labor [of farming and building] and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing Magic circles or sooth saying to the neglect of all kinds of business [farming and building, as the anti-Mormons asserted, claiming the Smiths were lazy]. We never in our lives suffered one important interest [farming and building] to swallow up every other obligation [religion]. But, whilst we worked with our hands [at farming and building] we endeavored to remember the service of, and the welfare of our souls [through religion].

Thus, as I understand the text, Lucy Smith declares she is changing her theme to the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. In the public mind, that story is associated with claims that the Smiths were lazy and involved in magical activities. By the time Lucy Smith wrote this text in 1845, anti-Mormons were alleging that Joseph had been seeking treasure by drawing magic circles. She explicitly denies that they were involved in such things. She also denies that the Smiths were lazy. She wants to emphasize that, although she is not going to mention farming and building activities for a while, these activities were still going on. Quinn wants to understand the antecedent of "one important interest" as "trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing Magic circles or sooth saying" (p. 68). I believe that the antecedent of "one important interest" is "all kinds of business," meaning farming and building. Quinn maintains the phrase to the neglect of means that they pursued magic to some degree, but not to the extent that they completely neglected their farming. I believe that the phrase to the neglect of means that they did not pursue magic at all, and therefore did not neglect their farming and building at all: they were not pursuing magic and thereby neglecting their business. [1]

Hamblin's interpretation seems to be amiss and Quinn's spot on. Lucy Smith doesn't deny that the family participated in these activities. Were that her motivation, one would think that she would do it a more direct, less ambiguous way. The phrase "one important interest" clearly draws the reader back to the phrase "the faculty of Abrac, magic circles and soothsaying." Dr. Hamblin is right, however, that Lucy Smith was responding to the allegations of the Smiths' laziness; but her argument is clearly that, although the family participated in folk religion, it did not occupy their time at the expense of more important things. She is not stating that the family did not believe in folk magic or participate in treasure-seeking.

This is clear from the historical record, because the family did believe in and participate in at least one of these. Drawing magic circles was a common treasure-seeking ritual (see my treasure-seeking rituals topical guide), and during the time period that Lucy Smith is describing, the family were avid believers in and practitioners of treasure-seeking. According to Porter Rockwell, Lucy Smith and his mother regularly sat and discussed their treasure-dreams.[2] Both friends and enemies described Joseph Smith, Jr. as a treasure-seer (including Lucy Smith in her Biographical Sketches). Antagonistic accounts describe both Joseph Jr. and Joseph Sr. utilizing magic circles in their treasure-quests, and there is no reason to doubt it; if one was searching for buried treasure in the early nineteenth century, magic circles were considered a necessity.

Since the family clearly believed in treasure-lore, and likely believed in other aspects of folk religion (as most rural Americans did), it seems silly to claim that Mother Smith was alluding to anything else in her account. The most clear interpretation, in the context of the statement and in light of the historical record, is that the family believed in folk magic, but did not let it occupy their time over more important endeavors (i.e., farming). Richard Bushman, one of the most knowledgeable historians of early Mormonism (if not the most knowledgeable), agrees with this.[3] He also devotes considerable attention in his biographies to the family's involvement in ritualistic treasure-seeking.

Dr. Hamblin wrote his review a decade ago, so I don't know if he still maintains that argument. But we needn't, in our effort to defend the reputation of the Prophet, spurn anything that suggests that the family was less than perfect, assuming that one considers participation in folk religion (particularly during the time period) a fault, a presentist judgment which seems erroneous in itself. And, in my opinion, this issue hurts the credibility of the FAIR Wiki.


[1]. William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394.

[2]. See Elizabeth Kane’s journal (1872), published in Normal R. Bowen and Mary Karen Bowen, eds., A Gentile Account of Life in Utah’s Dixie, 1872-1873, (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, 1995), 73.

[3]. Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 50-51.

Tartarus and the Angelic Prison in Early Christianity

Readers may be familiar with the Tartarus of Greek mythology, the realm below the underworld Hades. Tartarus was where the Titans and other figures who offended the gods were imprisoned. In the later versions, those imprisoned in Tartarus were violently tortured for their sins and crimes.

In the first few centuries B.C., the Enochian Jewish traditions borrowed the Greek names for the post-mortal realms and applied them to their own cosmos, and the early Christians subsequently inherited the concepts from them. Before we explore exactly what Tartarus was, we should distinguish it from the other realms in early Christianity. Hades, as in Greek mythology and Judaism, was the generic underworld; it was the general post-mortal abode of spirits. The traditional Christian concept of hell, on the other hand, was Gehenna, which the Gospel of Mark describes as "the fire that never shall be quenched" (Mark 9:43). Sinners would not be cast into Gehenna, however, until after the end of the world and God's final judgment.

Tartarus should not be confused with Hades or Gehenna. Tartarus, in at least some early Christian circles, was quite separate from Gehenna, despite their similar attributes. Tartarus was considered the realm where God's rebellious angels were imprisoned. (I should add a disclaimer here that later Gehenna became synonymous with Tartarus in Christianity, as evidenced in the pseudepigraphal Apocalypse of Paul. The concept of the angelic prison, however, was still understood.)

In the New Testament itself, the word 'Tartarus' appears only once:

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. (2 Peter 2:4-5)

The verse is actually an allusion to the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch, which itself is an embellishment of the fallen angel tradition from Genesis:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. ... There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-2, 4)

As of a result of the "sons of God" (synonymous with "angels," "Watchers," and "holy ones" in other literature) sinning and producing offspring, God floods the earth and saves only Noah and his family. The Book of Enoch, which was compiled between 400 and 200 B.C., clarifies that God subsequently imprisoned these "sons of God" and flooded the world to destroy their abominable children.

According to 1 Enoch, God places the archangel Uriel "in charge of the world and Tartarus" (1 Enoch 20:2). Enoch subsequently sees Tartarus in vision:

I saw terrible things--a great fire burning and flaming there. And the place had a narrow cleft (extending) to the abyss, full of great pillars of fire, borne downward. Neither the measure nor the size was I able to see or to estimate. ... And he [Uriel] said, "This place is a prison for the angels. Here they will be confined forever." (1 Enoch 21:7, 10)

Although 1 Enoch is a pre-Christian text, it is significant because many early Christians considered the Book of Enoch to be inspired scripture. The New Testament's Epistle of Jude even quotes 1 Enoch directly (Jude 1:14-15), and also alludes to the angelic prison:

And the angels which kept not their first cestate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. (Jude 1:6)

The same concept is repeated in 1 Peter:

By which also he [Christ] went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. (1 Peter 3:19-20)

Jude quotes directly from 1 Enoch concerning the Tartarus tradition, and both 1 and 2 Peter clearly allude to the text. This combined with the quotations and allusions in other early Christian texts (such as the Epistle of Barnabas) and the statements of early Christian leaders (including Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria) demonstrate 1 Enoch's wide appeal among early Christians and its scriptural status.

And because of 1 Enoch's status in scripture, combined with statements in the New Testament and other early Christian literature on the concept, it's clear that the concept of Tartarus was a widespread belief among early Christians. Aside from the heaven and hell reserved for mortal saints and sinners, there was another foreboding realm reserved for those divine beings who rebelled against God.

In early Christianity, Tartarus was the angelic prison, the hell for the disobedient sons of God "whose souls are punished and bound there forever" (1 Enoch 22:12).

Joseph Smith and the Divine Council of the Gods

In 1844, Joseph Smith described the divine council of the gods in the last two sermons before his martyrdom:

"Thus the head God brought forth the gods in the grand council. ... In the beginning, the head of the gods called a council of the gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it."

"It read first, "In the beginning the head of the Gods brought forth the Gods," or, as others have translated it, "The head of the Gods called the Gods together." The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take [that] view of the subject, it sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness and perfection of the Gods."

The concepts of the plurality of gods and the divine council are evident in the Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, and Book of Abraham as well:

"I said unto the Spirit: I behold thou hast shown unto me the tree which is precious above all. And he said unto me: What desirest thou? And I said unto him: To know the interpretation thereof—...and he spake unto me as a man speaketh with another. ... And it came to pass that I saw the heavens open; and an angel came down and stood before me; and he said unto me: Nephi, what beholdest thou? And I said unto him: A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins." (Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 11:9-15)

"And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever." (Moses 3:1-2)

"And the Gods said among themselves: On the seventh time we will end our work, which we have counseled; and we will rest on the seventh time from all our work which we have counseled." (Abraham 5:2)

"According to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods before this world was, that should be reserved unto the finishing and the end thereof, when every man shall enter into his eternal epresence and into his immortal rest." (Doctrine and Covenants 121:32)

This is amazing because Joseph Smith made these statements and produced these inspired texts long before scholars began to recognize the divine council scenes in the Old Testament. Now, in books by modern biblical scholars, you will find identical statements. Virtually all modern scholars of the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern religion recognize that the ancients believed in a divine council of gods, ruled over by a single Most High God.

This is extraordinarily divergent from the beliefs of traditional Christianity. How did Joseph Smith recognize this? No scholar, Christian or Jewish, was contending for this concept in the early nineteenth century.

Those who have researched the divine council motif in ancient Near Eastern texts will immediately see how spot-on Joseph Smith was. It's absolutely extraordinary. It's clear and undeniable evidence that Joseph Smith was actually a prophet receiving inspired instruction from God.

Beginning a new paper

Next month at the Religious Education symposium I'm presenting my paper "Joseph Smith's Providential Youth," which discusses Joseph Smith's religious influences and how they shaped his early life, which with any luck will also be chosen for publication. I also recently submitted my paper "Early America's Treasure-Quest: The Effort to Recapture the Supernatural in the American Northeast" to the Thetean, BYU's student historical journal. I won't find out about that until mid-March, but I'm hopeful.

But now that I've finished up both of those projects, I've decided to start something new. Since I want to pursue a career in early Christian studies, I figured it's about time the papers I try to get published have some relevance in that field. So my project right now is on the plurality of gods in early Christianity. I'll be exploring things such as:

• New Testament passages like Paul's "many gods and many lords" (1 Cor. 8:5) and his antagonistic "god of this aeon" (2 Cor. 4:4), as well as the debate over the interpretation of John 1:1.
• Beliefs of early Christian authors (Origen in particular comes to mind).
• Early Christian interpretations of Psalm 82.
• Angels and "sons of God" in early Christian thought.
• The significance of the Logos in Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic traditions.
• The pre-Trinitarian Christian Godhead and the independent divinity of the Father and Son.
• Deification in early Christianity.
• The archons of the Gnostic traditions.

My thesis is that early pre-Nicene Christians were not radically monotheistic like many of their Jewish cousins, as they believed in the existence of multiple divine powers which they often called 'gods.'

2010 BYU Student Religious Education Symposium

My paper, "Joseph Smith's Providential Youth," was accepted for the 2010 BYU Student Religious Education Symposium. I had two reviewers, one of which lauded me for "breaking new ground" and "answering questions [that are] being asked," while the second reviewer said there wasn't "too much new mentioned" and that it should only be presented in an "abbreviated fashion."

So if you're into presentations that break new ground without mentioning much new, come by the Wilkinson Center on February 19 and watch me talk for 15 minutes.

Treasure-seeking Rituals Topical Guide - Updated

I've updated the Treasure-seeking Rituals Topical Guide, which is a collection of quotations from eighteenth and nineteenth century sources demonstrating the rituals and lore of early American treasure-seeking.. This version includes a few more sources as well as the correction of some typographical errors. Pending readers pointing out errors or suggesting texts not already included, this will likely be the last update.

Download topical guide as a PDF.

Treasure-seeking in the Bible

In my last post I demonstrated how early Mormons may have read ritualistic treasure-seeking into the Book of Mormon. But it was more than early Mormons that read treasure-seeking into their scriptures. According to town-historian Caleb Butler in Massachusetts in 1848, "the most devout, pious and godly Christians" participated in treasure-seeking, and we know that Palmyra, NY's treasure-seekers saw no conflict between religion and the treasure-quest. These Christian treasure-seekers would also often carry a Bible with them on the treasure-quest in order to ward off the guardian.

It seems likely that those same Bible-carrying, treasure-seeking Christians would have read certain biblical passages as references to this phenomenon and, perhaps in some instances, even interpreted them as approval. Examples include:

"Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures." (Job 3:20-21)

"If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD." (Proverbs 2:4-5)

"And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel." (Isaiah 45:3)

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." (Matthew 13:44)

"And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with ausury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents." (Matthew 25:25-28)

It seems impossible that any Christian engaged in the treasure-quest could read these passages without being reminded of their midnight digs.

From Captain Kidd to Gadianton Robbers: Treasure-seeking in the Book of Mormon

A few weeks ago, I published online my Early American Treasure-seeking Rituals Topical Guide, which provides pages of source quotations from nineteenth century American newspapers, town histories, journals, etc., that describe or allude to the supernatural aspects of treasure-seeking in the early Republic. A universal theme in treasure-seeking, mentioned as early as 1729 by Benjamin Franklin and pervading New England until the mid- to late 1800s, was that buried treasure was always protected by a treasure-guardian -- often a demon -- and that the guardian could sink the treasure deeper into the earth or move to another location in order to keep the treasure-seeker from finding the cache.

With that in mind, let's examine these passages from the Book of Mormon, published in 1830 in Palmyra, New York, where treasure-seeking was a common phenomenon, and only a few years after Joseph Smith had been deeply involved in treasure-seeking as a seer.

"Behold, we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land. O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them. Behold, we are surrounded by demons, yea, we are encircled about by the angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls. Behold, our iniquities are great. O Lord, canst thou not turn away thine anger from us? And this shall be your language in those days." (Helaman 13:34-37)

In this text, Samuel tells the people that the Lord will curse them for rejecting the prophets by allowing the people to be surrounded by demons and making their treasure slippery so that it disappears. The passage is ambiguous about whether it is the demons themselves who move the treasures.

Something similar happens a few centuries later:

"And these Gadianton robbers, who were among the Lamanites, did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again." (Mormon 1:18)

It seems almost certain that passages such as these would have encouraged early Mormon treasure-seekers. Since many early Mormons were treasure-seekers or at least believed in treasure-seeking superstitions (such as the Smiths, Martin Harris, Josiah Stowell, the Knights, Porter Rockwell, and probably Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmers), it seems doubtful that they could have read about treasure being buried and sinking into the earth without relating it to their own treasure-quests.

The Book of Mormon also provided an answer to one of the treasure-seekers biggest dilemmas: not finding treasure. Although treasure-seeking was a nightly occurrence in early America's Northeast, buried wealth was very seldom found. Early Americans who engaged in treasure-seeking might be compared to modern Americans who buy lottery tickets. They were encouraged by the rare report of a successful dig.

Typically the failure in finding treasure was blamed on a mistake in the rituals -- most often by someone breaking the silence charm by speaking before they had the treasure in their hands. But the Book of Mormon offered another, more Christianized answer: the Lord has cursed the land and the treasures buried in it: "And behold, if a man hide up a treasure in the earth...no man getteth it henceforth and forever." (Helaman 12:9)

For early Mormon treasure-seekers, passages like this changed the idea of the treasure-quest in their mind. Whereas previously they had searched for the buried treasures of Captain Kidd, Spanish explorers, and ancient Indians, hindered only by the malevolent treasure-guardian and the complex rituals involved to bypass him, early Mormons began to understand the buried treasure they searched for as the buried wealth of the ancient Nephites and Lamanites, kept from the greedy treasure-seekers through God's ancient curse he put on the land: "For behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them." (Helaman 13:36)