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| − | __NOTOC__
| + | #REDIRECT [[Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Early Mormonism and the Magic World View]] |
| − | {{FAIRAnalysisHeader
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| − | |title=[[../]]
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| − | |author=D. Michael Quinn
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| − | |noauthor=
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| − | |section=Index of Claims
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| − | |previous=<!-- [[../Overview|Overview]] -->
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| − | |next=[[../Use of sources|Use of sources]]
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| − | |notes={{AuthorsDisclaimer}}
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| − | }}
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| − | | |
| − | ==Index to claims made in ''Early Mormonism and the Magic World View''==
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| − | This is an index of claims made in this work with links to corresponding responses within the FAIRwiki.
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| − | {{BeginClaimsTable}}
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| − | ====21====
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| − | *{{AuthorQuote|...it is reasonable to estimate that this one peddler was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year...by the early 1800's there were thousands of peddlers.}}
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| − | *The book then asserts that Weems was selling these volumes "door-to-door in the rural areas of the South" to individual "farmers."
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| − | *{{AuthorQuote|...some [book] peddlers also stocked clandestine works'" and therefore, "if local stores would not supply occult publications to American farmers, book peddlers were there to fill the need.}}
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| − | *The author miscites his source, doubles the cited figure, and conflates book peddlers with all peddlers.
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| − | *The author attempts to portray a wholesaler supplying multiple bookstores as representative of one of thousands of wandering book peddlers. He again seeks to bolster his absurd claim that multiple occult texts were easily available in New England in the 1800s.
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| − | *[[../Use of sources/Book peddlers|Peddlers of occult books on the frontier?]]
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| − | *J. R. Dolan, The Yankee Peddlers of Early America (New York: Bramhall House, 1964).
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| − | ====26-27====
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| − | *"Disorderly Persons" "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''."
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| − | *(italics added, the amendation of "conjurors" is the author's)
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| − | *The author wants the reader to read "juggler" as "conjurer," i.e. as a practitioner of magic. In context, it is clear that those referred to are those who attempt to extract money from others by deceit, not the practice of 'magic.'
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| − | *[[../Use of sources/Jugglers or conjurors|Jugglers or conjurors?]]
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| − | *''Laws of the State of New-York, Revised and Passed at the Thirty-Sixth Session of the Legislature'' (Albany: Southwick, 1813), 1:114
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| − | ====67====
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| − | *From the first edition (D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987), 67. [i.e. 1st edition]):
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| − | <blockquote>
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| − | "...how extensively Barrett's Magus circulated in the United States during the early nineteenth century is unknown."
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| − | </blockquote>
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| − | *From the second edition (D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 84. [i.e. 2nd edition]):
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| − | <blockquote>
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| − | "... Barrett's Magus "created an immediate sensation. . . . Barrett's book and teachings were also widely available to Smith's generation [in America]."
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| − | </blockquote>
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| − | *The author provides no new citations or data between editions. Yet, he alters his claim—without evidence, and despite his cited sources—to suit his thesis.
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| − | *{{FARMSReview | author=William J. Hamblin| article=That Old Black Magic: Review of D. Michael Quinn. Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition|vol=12|num=2|date=2000|start=225|end=394 }}[http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=364 *]
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| − | *{{attn}}
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| − | ====76-79====
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| − | *Joseph is claimed to have considered the date April 6th to have "astrological significance" as the "DAY-FATAL-ITY."
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| − | *This claim is also cited in ''Becoming Gods'' p. 38, 345n100.
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| − | ====80====
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| − | *The book repeatedly claims, citing Francis King, that Barrett's ''The Magus'' "played an important part in the English revival of magic."
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| − | *The author cites a work referring to an occult book that was not republished ''in England'' until fifty years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, yet does not inform the reader that this citation can have absolutely nothing to do with "early Mormonism."
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| − | *"But what "revival of magic" is King discussing? The revival of the late, not the early, nineteenth century. This is clear from the fact that the only specific example of Barrett's influence on a magic revival that King discusses is Frederick Hockley, who reprinted Barrett's book in 1870."
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| − | *{{FR-12-2-16}}
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| − | ====180====
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| − | *{{AuthorQuote|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.
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| − | *"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?"
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| − | *{{FR-12-2-16}}
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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.
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| − | *[[../Use of sources/Cheap magic books|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.
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| − | *"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.'"
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| − | *{{FR-12-2-16}}
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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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| − | *The claim was also used by the author of [[One Nation Under Gods|''One Nation Under Gods'']]. See: [[One Nation Under Gods/Use of sources/Divining rods to Kimball and Young]]
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| − | ====298====
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| − | *The author claims that "Moshe Idel wrote that the Zohar 'is manifestly anthropomorphic'."
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| − | *The author claims that "Gershom Scholem wrote of the Cabala's 'almost provocatively conspicuous anthropomorphism'."
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| − | *The author wants to attribute Joseph's idea of God having a physical human form (anthropomorphism) to the Jewish mystics who practiced Kabbalah. But, the author twists and distorts his source, which clearly states that the anthropomorphism of God is only allegorical in Kabbalah.
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| − | *The author uses his sources to make it appear as if Kabbalah has a literal, rather than allegorical, conception of God in a human form.
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| − | *[[../Use of sources/Anthromorphism in Kabbalah|Anthromorphism in Kabbalah?]]
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| − | *Moshe Idel, ''Kabbalah: New Perspectives'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 107.
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| − | *Gershom Scholem, ''Kabbalah'' (New York: Quadrangle, 1974), 141.
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| − | ====338n2, 339n60====
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| − | *Encyclopedia of Mormonism "was an official product of the LDS Church."
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| − | *The author wants to make the Encyclopedia of Mormonism an 'official' work, when the book, its editor, its authors, and publisher all assert that it is not.
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| − | *[[Official Church publications]]
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| − | *No source provided.
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| − | {{EndClaimsTable}}
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| − | | |
| − | =Further reading=
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| − | {{FAIRAnalysisWiki}}
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