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Claim
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Response
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Author's sources
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180
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- Author's quote: 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.
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- The author again exaggerates the availability of the occult books he insists—without evidence—were available to Joseph Smith in the early 1800s.
- "In 1976, when the population of London proper was 2,700,000, the British Museum Library contained approximately eight million volumes, with a ratio of 2.96-to-1. But, is Quinn seriously claiming that frontier New York had a greater book-to-person ratio than contemporary London? Or that education, book reading, and scholarship were higher in Palmyra than London? Can anyone take this assertion seriously?"
- 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. [{{{url}}} off-site]
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182
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- 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."
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- The author grossly underestimates the cost of books in Joseph Smith's world, especially the esoteric and occult books which he claims were an influence.
- Availability of cheap magic books?
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187
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- The book further claims that "Antoine Faivre has also emphasized Barrett's book in the general European revival of magic during the first decades of the 1800s."
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- The author distorts his source, and neglects to mention that the influence of The Magus would come well after Joseph Smith's early years in New England.
- "In reality, rather than emphasizing it, Faivre mentions Barrett's book in one sentence, in passing: 'a compilation destined to be a great success heralds the occult literature to come: The Magus (1801) by Francis Barrett.'"
- 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. [{{{url}}} off-site]
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206
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- It is claimed that Joseph gave Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball divining rods as a symbol of gratitude for their loyalty.
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