Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Index/Chapter 2

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Claims made in "Chapter 1: Vagabond Visionaries"

A FAIR Analysis of: One Nation Under Gods A work by author: Richard Abanes Index of claims: Claims made in "Chapter 2: Moroni, Magic, and Masonry"

Claims made in "Chapter 3: From Profit to Prophet"

Note: This is a review of claims and/or responses to misrepresentations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found in this work. The inclusion of an author's work here does not imply that he or she is "anti-Mormon," or that none of his or her works have value. Those who do not wish to examine the claims contained in what some would consider an "anti-Mormon" work are advised to proceed no further.

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Claims made in "Chapter 2: Moroni, Magic, and Masonry"

Claim

• Why are "LDS documents...strangely silent" about Joseph Smith's activities between 1820 and 1823?

Author's source(s)

• Author's opinion.

Response

• Just how much documentation does the author think exists on the activities of a 14 to 17-year-old farm boy living on the frontier during this period? The Church didn't even exist during this time, therefore there would be no "LDS documents."
• Absurd claims

Claim

• Did Moroni claim that the golden plates were "buried in the hill Cumorah, just outside the village of Manchester?"

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Response

• The hill near Joseph's home was not called Cumorah by the angel Moroni, nor was it named Cumorah at the time that Joseph received the plates. The name Cumorah was applied later, as a result of Joseph finding the plates there.

Claim

• Was the angel that appeared to Joseph originally named "Nephi" instead of "Moroni?"

Author's source(s)

• Oliver Cowdery, Times and Seasons, April 15, 1842, vol. 3, no. 12, 753.
• 1851 edition of the Pearl of Great Price, p. 41.
• Joseph Smith 1832 History cited in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents vol. 1, 29-30.

Response

• Moroni's visit/Nephi or Moroni
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 55

Claim

•  Author's quote:"Obviously, if the angel in Smith's room spoke about Moroni, then he certainly could not have been Moroni.

Author's source(s)

• Jessee, vol. 1, 393.

Response

• The book is referring to Joseph's 1832 account, in which he states:

"an angel of the Lord came and stood before me and it was by night and he called me by name and he said the Lord had forgiven me my sins and he revealed unto me that in the Town of Manchester Ontario County N.Y. there was plates of gold upon which there was engravings which was engraven by Maroni & his fathers the servants of the living God in ancient days and deposited by the commandments of God and kept by the power thereof and that I should go and get them."

• Note that Joseph is not citing Moroni's words—he is describing a summary of the event that happened. In other words, this passage does not indicate that Moroni referred to himself in the third person.
• The endnote states that Orson Pratt simply called Moroni "an Angel of God" in 1840, and that this somehow proves that the name "Moroni" was not known. However, the name "Moroni" was published in a number of sources prior to 1840, including the anti-Mormon work Mormonism Unvailed in 1834.

Claim

• Did Oliver Cowdery say that the First Vision took place in 1823 when Joseph was in his 17th year?

Author's source(s)

• Oliver Cowdery, "Letter III," Messenger and Advocate, December 1834, vol. 1, no. 3, 41-43.
• Oliver Cowdery, "Letter IV," Messenger and Advocate, February 1835, vol. 1, no. 5, 77-80.

Response

• First Vision/Accounts/Oliver Cowdery not aware of First Vision in 1834-35
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 34

Claim

• Does Joseph's brother William associate Moroni's visit with a revival?

Author's source(s)

• William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism cited in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, vol. 1, 494.

Response

• First Vision/Accounts/William Smith said First Vision was an "angel"
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 35

Claim

• Did George A. Smith merge the First Vision and Moroni's visit?

Author's source(s)

• George A. Smith, Journal of Discourses, vol. 12, 334. (November 15, 1863)

Response

• First Vision/Accounts/George A. Smith said First Vision was an "angel"
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 35

Claim

• Did Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph's mother, say that the First Vision was of the angel in 1823?

Author's source(s)

• Lucy Mack Smith, "Preliminary Manuscript" of Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for many Generations, cited in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, vol. 1, 289-291.

Response

• Lucy and the angel
• First Vision/Accounts/Prophet's mother said First Vision was of an "angel"
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 35

Claim

• Did Joseph engage in "ritual magic and divination?"

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Response

• Joseph Smith/Occultism and magic
• Presentism
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 45, 351n144

Claim

• Was Joseph Smith a "money digger?"

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Response

• Joseph Smith/Money digging
• Presentism
• This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 24

Claim

• Did Joseph use a "peep stone" to search for buried treasure?

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Response

• Joseph Smith/Seer stones

Claim

• Was Joseph's father a "firm believer" in witchcraft and the supernatural?

Author's source(s)

• Fayette Lapham, "Interview with the Father of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, Forty Years Ago. His Account of the Finding of the Sacred Plates," Historical Magazine (May 1870) cited in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, vol. 1 458.

Response

• Presentism

Claim

• Did Martin Harris say that Joseph was associated with a company of money diggers?

Author's source(s)

• Brooke, 362, endnote #2
• Martin Harris, "Mormonism-No. II", Tiffany's Monthly, August 1859, vol. 5, 164.

Response

• Joseph Smith/Money digging

Claim

• Did Joshua Stafford say that Joseph's family "told marvelous stories about ghosts, hob-goblins, caverns, and verious other mysterious matters."

Author's source(s)

• Joshua Stafford cited in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH, 1834), 258. (Affidavits examined).

Response

• The Hurlbut affidavits—Joshua Stafford

Claim

• Did "most of the residents" of Palmyra and Manchester consider the Smith family a "close-knit clan of occultists?"

Author's source(s)

• "Gold Bible, No. 3," Palmyra Reflector, February 1, 1831, cited in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, vol. 2, 242.

Response

• Joseph Smith/Occultism and magic

Claim

• Did William Stafford state that Joseph used a seer stone to see "the spirits in whose charge these treasures were, clothed in ancient dress?"

Author's source(s)

• William Stafford cited in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH, 1834), 238. (Affidavits examined).

Response

• The Hurlbut affidavits—William Stafford

Claim

• Did Joseph Capron state that Joseph encouraged others to participate in money digging in order to obtain wealth?

Author's source(s)

• Joseph Capron cited in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH, 1834), 259. (Affidavits examined).

Response

• The Hurlbut affidavits—Joseph Capron

Claim

• Did William Stafford state that Joseph believed that the state of the moon determined the best time to obtain treasures?

Author's source(s)

• William Stafford, cited in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH, 1834), 238. (Affidavits examined).

Response

• NOTE: Stafford's testimony was given on Dec. 8th, 1833—three years after the publication of the Book of Mormon.
• The Hurlbut affidavits—William Stafford

Claim

• Did Joseph Smith make animal sacrifices to "appease whatever spirits might be guarding the buried treasure?"

Author's source(s)

• Emily M. Austin, Mormonism; or, Life among the Mormons, 32ff quoted in Wesley P. Walters, "Joseph Smith's Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trials," Westminster Theological Journal (Winder 1974), vol. 36, 125.

Response

• Even most early hostile accounts about Joseph say nothing about "animal sacrifices."
• 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. off-site PDF link
• See esp. Table 16a]

Claim

• Did Hiel Lewis claim that dogs, cats and other animals were sacrificed?

Author's source(s)

• Hiel Lewis, Amboy Journal, June 4, 1879 quote in Tanner and Tanner, Mormonism, Magic and Masonry, p. 33.

Response

• Hiel Lewis' account was fifty years after the fact.
• Even most early hostile accounts about Joseph say nothing about "animal sacrifices."
• 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. off-site PDF link
• See esp. Table 16a]

Claim

• Did Joshua Stafford say that Joseph showed him a piece of wood from a box of money that had "mysteriously moved back into the hill?"

Author's source(s)

• Joshua Stafford, cited in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH, 1834), 258. (Affidavits examined).

Response

• NOTE: Stafford's testimony was given Nov. 15, 1833—three years after the publication of the Book of Mormon.
• The Hurlbut affidavits—Joshua Stafford

Claim

• Why did LDS historian Reed C. Durham state that the Freemasonry legend of Enoch "seem transformed into the history of Joseph Smith, so much that even it appears to be a kind of symbolic acting out of Masonic lore?"

Author's source(s)

• Reed C. Durham, "Is There no Help for the Widow's Son," Presidential Address, Mormon History Association Conference, April 20, 1974.

Response

• Temples/Endowment/Freemasonry

Claim

• Did Joseph Smith adapt Masonic rituals for the temple endowment?

Author's source(s)

• No source provided.

Response
 Internal contradiction: If Joseph adapted Masonry for temple ritual, then why (as claimed below) did he fill the Book of Mormon with anti-Masonic views, as claimed below? Are we to believe he was both pro- and -anti-Masonic?

• Temples/Endowment/Freemasonry

Claim

• Does the Book of Mormon denounce Freemasonry by condemning "secret combinations," "secret signs," and "secret oaths?"

Author's source(s)

• Alma 37:30
• Helaman 3:23
• Ether 9:6
• Helaman 6:22
• Helaman 6:26

Response

•  Internal contradiction: If the Book of Mormon is so anti-Masonic, why did Joseph (as claimed above) then adapt Masonry for temple ritual? Are we to believe he was both pro- and -anti-Masonic?
• Book of Mormon/Anachronisms/Gadianton masons

Further reading

A FAIR Analysis of Critical Works

• American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows— (Index of claims)
• An Insider's View of Mormon Origins — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
• Ashamed of Joseph: Mormon Foundations Crumble
• Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism/Inside Today's Mormonism — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Behind the Mask of Mormonism
• Specific works/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
• Specific works/By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus
• Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism
• Covering Up the Black Hole in the Book of Mormon
  • Answering Mormon Scholars, Vol. 1
  • Answering Mormon Scholars, Vol. 2
• Decker's Complete Handbook on Mormonism
• Early Mormonism and the Magic World View — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Specific works/Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism
• Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History
• From Captain Kidd's Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism
• In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith — (Index of Claims)
• Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
• Inventing Mormonism: Tradition and the Historical Record
• Is the Mormon My Brother?
• Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
• Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon (2nd edition)—(Index of claims)
• Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reexamined
• The Kingdom of the Cults (Revised) — (Index of claims)
• Leaving the Saints
• Letters to a Mormon Elder
• Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church — (Index of claims)
• Mormon America: The Power and the Promise — (Index of claims)
• The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power — (Index of claims)
• The Mormon Mirage: Seeing Through the Illusion of Mainstream Mormonism
• Mormonism 101—Index of claims
• Mormonism (Kurt Van Gorden)
• Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? — (Index of claims)
• The Mysteries of Godliness—A History of Mormon Temple Worship
• Nauvoo Polygamy — (Index of claims—Use of sources—Prejudicial language—Presentism—Mind reading—Censorship—Romance—Assumptions—Magick)
• New Approaches to the Book of Mormon
• New Mormon Challenge
• No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith — (Index of claims)
• One Nation Under Gods — (Index of claims—Use of Sources—Prejudicial language—Absurd claims—Presentism—Mind reading—Rewording—Omissions—Sarcasm)
• The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844
• Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example — (Index of claims)
• Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess
• The Changing World of Mormonism — (Index of claims)
• Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
• Under the Banner of Heaven — (Index of claims)
• Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture