lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (05/28/84)
In his article relating Joseph Smith's "The Book of Moses" to the Enoch texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Russell Anderson stated, Although there were no copies of the Book of Enoch in Joseph Smith's time, several versions have been found and published. Russell also fixed Smith's production of this work around 1829. Consider then the following excerpt from THE OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA, edited by James H. Charlesworth: It took another century before copies of 1 Enoch finally arrived in Europe. They were brought in 1773 by J. Bruce, the adventurous Scottish traveler to Africa. Nothing occurred until 1800, when Silvestre de Sacy, in his "Notice sur le levre d'Henoch" (in MAGAZINE ENCYCLOPEDIQYE 6/1, p. 382), first published excerpts form the book together with Latin translations of chapters 1, 2, 5-16, and 22-32. In 1821 Lawrence issued the first English version of the work. In 1853 Dillmann published a translation which aroused much interest in the work. That 1821 date is provocative, although I don't know whether it's necessary to invoke outside sources to understand Smith's productions from a secular viewpoint. I was still interested in these purported correspondences, and Charlesworth doesn't include the "Book of Giants" in his work, referring the reader rather to Milik. I found THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS 1947-1969, by Edmund Wilson. It had a heading of "Mormonism" near the back. This turned out to be part of a section entitled "General Reflections". Here is the keynote of this authors assessment of Mormonism: Here we have had growing up, as it were, right under our noses, in our familiar American West and as lately as the last century, the cult of a swindler, a charlatan and an unscrupulous and insatiable lecher, and the establishment, based upon it, of a solid and respectable church, which now flourishes with huge ugly sacred buildings, a Tabernacle and a Temple, its special educational system and its international missionary service, on the basis of fraudulent and nonsensical scriptures and the legend of Joseph Smith the martyr, as well as of the able management and the inculcation of discipline contributed by his successor Brigham Young. He characterizes the Book of Mormon as "a farrago of balderdash". The Library had a copy of the Book of Mormon, which I riffled through. An Appendix lists upwards of a hundred names which "originate in the Book of Mormon", with a sprinkling of Biblical names mixed in. The Library did not have "The Pearl of Great Price", which contains "The Book of Moses". I also did not find Milik's book on the Dead Sea Enoch, so I'm at a Dead End in my pursuit of an independent critique of Russell's scriptural comparison. David Dyer-Bennet, in his positive reception of Russell's article, stated, ... this sounds infinitely more like 'evidence' for SOMETHING than any other religious argument I've heard on this net. I'll agree that it "sounds like" evidence, but I invite David to examine the supposed scriptural correspondences that Russell provided in his article. Many of them bear only the vaguest thematic resemblance. If you combine this weakness with the blatant and self-serving (whether consciously so or not) misstatement I mentioned above, and the general background of Smith's writings, I think you'll see that sounding like evidence is not the same as being evidence. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew
dsaker@iuvax.UUCP (05/30/84)
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Lew Mammel - Hey! I'm impressed by your library search. This sort of
amateur scholarship is great. Thank-you for doing something that I would
probably never have got around to.
I too had some doubts about when various texts first became available in
Europe, England & America.
What Russell Anderson presented as evidence is impressive IF the claims at
the start-up to it all are true. You have cast a great doubt on that IF.
I mean, if Russell's statement about the availability of the Enoch stuff
is false, then the supports standing underneath the claims for Joseph Smith
are shaky.
Thanks generally for excellent articles.
Daryel Akerlind
...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!dsakerruss@dadlab.UUCP (Russell Anderson) (05/31/84)
I would like to thank Lew for pointing out my over zealous statement that the Book of Enoch did not exist in 1829. However his further comments were a general attack on the church and did not respond to the basics of the issue. I included a lot of material that provided a comparison between the Book of Moses by Joseph Smith and the Enoch fragments translated by Milik. Lew attacked those additional comparisons as not being very stong, and I agree. I thought the extra information would be appreciated but I could have just as well have left it out. The only critical issue is that Mahijah, as an individual was, verified in the setting as Joseph Smith had put him. Now Lew may feel a need to attack Mormonism in general, but the question that was being discussed was revelation knowledge. I took that to mean any type of revelation knowledge and presented the example from the Book of Enoch as a verifiable example of knowledge that only could have been revealed. To brand Joseph Smith as a charlatan does not answer the question as to where this revelation knowledge came from, or the rest of his accomplishments. I am sorry that this will probably be my last response on this or any issue since I will be leaving the net tomorrow. Give me the benefit of the doubt in your flames. Russell Anderson tektronix!dadlab!russ