Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Early Mormonism and the Magic World View

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To learn more about responses to: D. Michael Quinn

Wiki links	Early Mormonism and the Magic World View — (Index of claims) "LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904" The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power — (Index of claims) Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example — (Index of claims)
Online	Duane Boyce, "'A Betrayal of Trust (Review of The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, by D. Michael Quinn)'," FARMS Review 9/2 (1997). [147–163] link John Gee, "'An Obstacle to Deeper Understanding' (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)'," FARMS Review 12/2 (2001). [185–224] link 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 12/2 (2001). [225–394] link Klaus J. Hansen, "Quinnspeak (Review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review 10/1 (1998). [62–66] link Gregory L. Smith, "Feet of Clay: Queer Theory and the Church of Jesus Christ," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 43/3 (5 March 2021). [107–278] link George L. Mitton and Rhett S. James, "A Response to D. Michael Quinn's Homosexual Distortion of Latter-day Saint History (Review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review 10/1 (1998). [67–104] link Rhett S. James, "'Writing History Must Not Be an Act of Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)'," FARMS Review 12/2 (2001). [395–414] link Stephen D. Ricks and Daniel C. Peterson, “Joseph Smith and ‘Magic’: Methodological Reflections on the Use of a Term,” in Robert L. Millet, ed., To Be Learned Is Good If . . . (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1987), 129–147. Matthew Roper, "Unanswered Mormon Scholars (Review of Answering Mormon Scholars: A Response to Criticism Raised by Mormon Defenders)," FARMS Review of Books 9/1 (1997): 87–145. [{{{1}}} off-site] (page 87–145; see especially section "Joseph Smith and 'Magic'")
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Response to "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View"

A FAIR Analysis of: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, a work by author: D. Michael Quinn

The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View by D. Michael Quinn

Jump to details:

• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 1: Early America's Heritage of Religion and Magic"
• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 2: Divining Rods, Treasure-Digging, and Seer Stones"
• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 3: Ritual Magic, Astrology, Amulets, and Talismans"
• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 4: Magic Parchments and Occult Mentors"
• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 5: Visions and the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon"
• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 6: Mormon Scriptures, the Magic World View, and Rural New York's Intellectual Life"
• Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 7: The Persistence and Decline of Magic After 1830"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 1: Early America's Heritage of Religion and Magic"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 21 - Were books on magic and the occult readily available on the 19th century frontier?
• Response to claim: 26-27 - The author equates "jugglers" with "conjurors"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 2: Divining Rods, Treasure-Digging, and Seer Stones"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 37 - Oliver's "gift" is originally defined in a revelation as the gift of "working with the rod"
• Response to claim: 38 - Oliver Cowdery's father was "later identified as a Vermont rodsman"
• Response to claim: 39 - Luman Walters is claimed by the author to have been "identified by Palmyra neighbors as a conjuror and Smith's mentor"
• Response to claim: 56 - Joseph was convicted in 1826 of being a "disorderly person" because he was a "glass-looker"
• Response to claim: 57, 400n226 - Hugh Nibley wrote that if the court record were genuine, that it would be "the most devastating blow to Smith ever delivered"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 3: Ritual Magic, Astrology, Amulets, and Talismans"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 76-79 - Joseph is claimed to have considered the date April 6th to have "astrological significance" as the "DAY-FATAL-ITY"
• Response to claim: 84, 424 n145 - The book repeatedly claims, citing Francis King, that Barrett's The Magus "played an important part in the English revival of magic"
• Response to claim: 84, 424 n146 - "Barrett's Magus "created an immediate sensation. . . . Barrett's book and teachings were also widely available to Smith's generation"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 4: Magic Parchments and Occult Mentors"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 5: Visions and the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 6: Mormon Scriptures, the Magic World View, and Rural New York's Intellectual Life"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 180 - "The British Museum's library has never had a 3-to-1 ratio of books to London's population, yet that was the book-resident ratio of a bookstore in rural New York state in 1815"
• Response to claim: 182 - The author claims that the cost of books described in the advertisements in upstate New York in the 1820s ranged from "44 cents to a dollar each"
• Response to claim: 187 - "Antoine Faivre has also emphasized Barrett's book in the general European revival of magic during the first decades of the 1800s"
• Response to claim: 206 - It is claimed that Joseph gave Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball divining rods as a symbol of gratitude for their loyalty

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 7: The Persistence and Decline of Magic After 1830"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 298 - The author attributes Joseph's idea of God having a physical human form to the Jewish mystics who practiced Kabbalah
• Response to claim: 338n2, 339n60 - The author claims that the Encyclopedia of Mormonism "was an official product of the LDS Church"

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Source Analysis, Sorted by Page Number

Index of Claims

A FAIR Analysis of: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, a work by author: D. Michael Quinn

Apologetics

21

Source interpretation
In an effort to show that books on magic were readily available on the frontier, the author makes some estimates. After estimating that a single book peddler "was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year," the author then concludes that "by the early 1800’s there were thousands of peddlers." The author also claims that “‘some peddlers also stocked clandestine works’” and that therefore, “if local stores would not supply occult publications to American farmers, book peddlers were there to fill the need.”

Author's source(s)

Source Analysis
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

• For a detailed response, see: Peddlers of occult books on the frontier?

}}

26-27

Source interpretation
The author states that,

New York state's law provided punishment for "Disorderly Persons," whose definition included "all jugglers [conjurors], and all persons pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover lost goods." (the amendation of "conjurors" is the author's)

Author's source(s)

Source Analysis
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

• For a detailed response, see: Jugglers or conjurors?

}}

182

Source interpretation
The author claims "bookstores near Joseph's home" in the 1820s were selling "thousands" of books that ranged from "44 cents to a dollar each."

Author's source(s)

Source Analysis
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

• For a detailed response, see: Availability of cheap magic books?

}}

298

Source interpretation
The author claims that Moshe Idel wrote that the Zohar 'is manifestly anthropomorphic', and that Gershom Scholem wrote of the Cabala's 'almost provocatively conspicuous anthropomorphism'.

Author's source(s)

Source Analysis
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

• For a detailed response, see: Anthromorphism in Kabbalah

}}

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The Author of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View and LDS apologetics

Use of sources

A FAIR Analysis of: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, a work by author: D. Michael Quinn

Throughout the revised edition, the author often refers to the efforts of LDS apologetics related to his own works. He appears to have a particular issue with a review of the first edition of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View written by LDS scholar Bill Hamblin. This page addresses specific claims made by the author related to LDS apologetics.

47

The author(s) of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View make(s) the following claim:

The author claims that apologists "extend the broadest possible latitude to sources they agree with, yet impose the most stringent demands on sources of information the apologists dislike."

FAIR's Response

401

The author(s) of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View make(s) the following claim:

The author refers to "a deceptive statement by FARMS polemicist Louis Midgley" and refers to the "fundamental dishonesty" of his claim.

• The author states, "In my opinion, Midgley is an LDS polemicist without scruples..."

  Author's sources:
  

1. Midgley, "F.M. Brodie—'The Fasting Hermit and Very Saint of Ignorance': A Biographer and Her Legend," FARMS Review of Books, FARMS, 19967, no. 2:225n287.

• Midgley, "Playing with Half a Decker: The Countercult Religious Tradition Confronts the Book of Mormon," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, FARMS, 5:144n56 (1993).

FAIR's Response

• The author is making a personal attack on Dr. Midgley—this is the type of behavior that critics often accuse FARMS of.
• The statement that the author takes issue with is this:

There are no newspaper accounts, letters or diaries that hint that Joseph Smith as 'farm boy' was a 'treasure' seeker prior to the publication of such charges by Obadiah [sic] Dogberry (aka Abner Cole) beginning in June and July 1830."

• The author claims that there is a "fundamental dishonesty" in the above statement because Dr. Midgley three years earlier had claimed to have read articles by Madsen, Wesley Walters, and Marvin Hill "about the manuscript documents of this 1826 court action against the treasure-seeking of Joseph Smith, the farm boy."

About this work

Quinn must have begun his research when he still had the Hofmann letters and the salamander to serve as the rock of his hypotheses. It was those solid, indisputable historical documents that would give credibility to the rest of his data and make his case come together....With the salamander letter and other Hofmann materials, Quinn had a respectable argument; without them he had a handful of fragmented and highly speculative research notes.
—Stephen E. Robinson, "Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, by D. Michael Quinn," Brigham Young University Studies 27 no. 4 (1987), 94–95.

...writers are certainly "dishonest or bad historians" if they fail to acknowledge the existence of even one piece of evidence they know challenges or contradicts the rest of their evidence. If this omission of relevant evidence is inadvertent, the author is careless. If the omission is an intentional effort to conceal or avoid presenting the reader with evidence that contradicts the preferred view of the writer, that is fraud, whether by a scholar or non-scholar, historian or other specialist. If authors write in scholarly style, they are equally dishonest if they fail to acknowledge any significant work whose interpretations differ from their own.
— D. Michael Quinn, "Editor's Introduction," in The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past, ed. D. Michael Quinn (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), xiii, n. 5

I have not checked every reference in Quinn's book, but every reference that I have checked has been inaccurate in some way. In some cases Quinn has misinterpreted the source. In some cases he proof texts the quotation, and a fuller reading of the text undermines his case. And sometimes he is just plain wrong.
—{{John Gee, "Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 185–224 (footnote 23)}}

Reviews of this work

John Gee, ""An Obstacle to Deeper Understanding""

John Gee,  FARMS Review of Books, (2000)

With the publication of the second edition of this work, therefore, the tone of Michael Quinn's writing takes on a distinctly defensive quality. He uses the opportunity to settle any scores with anyone he feels may have slighted,32 misrepresented, or criticized him in the past, particularly anyone who has ever viewed his work negatively. His hubris in this is, at times, breathtaking. Oddly, for a self-proclaimed "Mormon apologist," Quinn chose not to take issue with any of the anti-Mormons who have recognized his work as an attack on Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Does he agree with them?) On the other hand, anyone who has the temerity to question his infallibility is, in Quinn's view, ipso facto a "polemicist." To Quinn, accordingly, those who criticize him "don't mince words—they mince the truth" (p. x). They engage in "astonishing misreadings" (p. 334 n. 31; cf. 59), "distortions" (p. 337 n. 52), "dishonest polemics" (p. 341 n. 20), "intentional misrepresentation" (p. 334 n. 31), and a "religiously polemical campaign, not scholarly discourse" (p. 334 n. 31). (Ironically, these terms give a good description of Quinn's own work.) Quinn admits that if one of the reviewers whom he vociferously attacks had agreed with him, "I could regard him with compassion" (p. 403 n. 248). Thus those of us who do not subscribe to the dictum "When Michael Quinn speaks, the thinking has been done" will have to settle for being dismissed as "polemicists." He seems much like a soldier who, dazed in the battle, insists on attacking his comrades and is surprised that they consider him a traitor to the cause and treat him as such. Thus, in his second edition, if Quinn comes across as an apologist for anything, it is as an apologist for himself.

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William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic"

William J. Hamblin,  FARMS Review of Books, (2000)

Quinn's overall thesis is that Joseph Smith and other early Latter-day Saint leaders were fundamentally influenced by occult and magical thought, books, and practices in the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is unmitigated nonsense. Yet the fact that Quinn could not discover a single primary source written by Latter-day Saints that makes any positive statement about magic is hardly dissuasive to a historian of Quinn's inventive capacity.4 As we shall see, Quinn is quite capable of surmounting this dearth of evidence by sheer invention.

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Rhett S. James, "Writing History Must Not Be an Act of "Magic""

Rhett S. James,  FARMS Review of Books, (2000)

D Michael Quinn's revised and enlarged 1998 edition of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View makes its finest contribution as a resource about how selected Americans believed in "magic" within the complex of cultural varieties found in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Quinn shows himself an energetic collector of information, and his magic corpus will be of interest to anthropologists and folklorists. Quinn's new 600-page edition includes 217 pages of notes, covering nearly as many pages as the main text and notes combined in his first 228-page edition. He increases the main body of his text by nearly one hundred pages and his introductory comments by more than a dozen pages. The 44 pages illustrating Mormon relics remain much the same but with improved reproduction. Quinn's style of presentation is tight, sometimes even compressed, and his tone is businesslike and sometimes to the point. Parts of some chapters read like essays, many of which can stand by themselves. His treatment of information is occasionally uneven and given to sweeping generalizations and speculations not supported by documentation. Sometimes his research is not thorough, which leads him into errors that could easily have been avoided.

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BYU Studies, "Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, by D. Michael Quinn"

Stephen E. Robinson,  BYU Studies 27/4 (1987)

In the past several years there has been a noticeably growing interest in alternative explanations for Mormon origins. Perhaps this is due to a certain lingering uneasiness that the present theories of cause are inadequate to explain the magnitude of the effects. At any rate, the most recent attempt to find a more satisfying explanation for Joseph Smith and the religion he founded is D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. The major strength of Quinn's book is the incredible breadth of its research. The bibliography appended to the main text is no less than sixty-seven pages in length and lists a multitude of arcane and often inaccessible volumes, including even rare medieval manuscripts. A second strength of the book for the non-Mormon reader is a total lack of any pro-Mormon bias. Although he is a Latter-day Saint, and despite his modest statement of faith in the introduction (xviii–xix), Quinn is clearly no LDS apologist. There is not a single page of the main text that would appear to be motivated by loyalty to the Church or its doctrines or to be apologetic of the Church's interests.

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BYU Studies, "Review of Michael Quinn, Mormonism and the Magic World View, 1st ed."

Benson Whittle,  BYU Studies 27/4 (Fall 1984)

Magic is real; it works. Readers of Michael Quinn's new book must be prepared to accept this or never understand the argument. In the absence of direct experience, or of a scientific appreciation of magic, a kind of imaginative leap is probably advisable. We would need to walk into hilly, heavily wooded country interspersed with fields and roads, with head and heart wide open, trying in a most receptive way to realize that everything seen is materially connected to things invisible, and by these latter intermediaries to each other. It would be necessary to befriend and be befriended by witches, soothsayers, and magi and to take them seriously as friends and as divines. In so doing we might get glimpses of Joseph Smith, the young treasure-seer, his face buried in a hat which he holds upside-down in his hands, a stone in the bottom of it. We accept his seership, which eventually yields a treasure. We see the Smiths take up the hearthstones in their living room, enabling Joseph to conceal his find there. We watch as one disgruntled treasure-hunting colleague, Alva Beaman, demands to see or share the trove: taking up his divining rod, the resolute rustic promptly "witches" the whereabouts of the "golden plates." Everyone present shares something that Michael Quinn calls "the magic world view." All know that magic is real.

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BYU Studies, "Review of Michael Quinn, Mormonism and the Magic World View, 1st ed."

William A. Wilson,  BYU Studies 27/4 (Fall 1987)

Because I know the circumstances surrounding the establishment of Mormonism only in a general way, I shall leave to the professional historian the task of commenting on those circumstances as they are presented by D. Michael Quinn in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. In what follows, I shall discuss the book from the point of view of the general reader for whom Quinn says he intended the work and from the point of view of my own discipline, folklore.

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