Hebrew Voices #192 – Early Mormonism on Trial

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #192 - Early Mormonism on Trial, Nehemia welcomes back Dan Vogel to discuss the uncovering of Joseph Smith’s court hearing documents, his background digging for treasure using seer stones, and the influence of folk magic on early Mormonism.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #192 – Early Mormonism on Trial

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Dan: Only the apologists that seem to have come from another century. They’re the old apologists. They’re the bad apologists, the apologists that really…

Nehemia: I don’t feel like I, as an outsider, should make a judgment about who are the good and bad apologists, but…

Dan: Oh, I will.

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Nehemia: I’m back with Dan Vogel, the greatest living historian of early Mormon history, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating there. At least that’s my view on it.

Dan: Joseph Smith didn’t answer any of that. Never answered his relatives, never answered the neighbors, never disputed the magic or money digging or seer stone or anything. Never said a word. All he did is publish his own version.

Nehemia: Well, I think he made a statement about how, “Well, if I was a money digger, I wasn’t a very successful one, because I only made $14.” Didn’t he say something like that?

Dan: Yeah, and the only time he ever mentions money digging is to imply that he was nothing but a digger.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm. Tell us about the money digging. So, we alluded to it a few hours back.

Dan: He only dug… “I dug, and I talked to the guy out of doing it anymore, and we quit,” you know.

Nehemia: So, money digging… the audience who isn’t familiar with this will have no idea what that is. Tell us about money digging. Let’s go. And this has to do with the Mound Builder Myth, doesn’t it?

Dan: No, not so much. Yes and no. But there were treasures from the Indians that they don’t…

Nehemia: There were actual treasures from Indians…

Dan: That were hidden. They believed like there was a golden throne…

Nehemia: Did anybody ever find gold? Let’s find out…

Dan: No.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Nobody ever found anything, really

Nehemia: Okay, so, there is this whole culture of, every time there’s a hill, they believe it’s manmade… and that’s why I connect it to the Mound Builder Myth. And then there’s gold in that hill, and so people are going back over 100 years… before Joseph Smith, we have, I think, Thomas Jefferson or somebody… Or maybe not 100 years, but decades before, he’s describing how people are out in the countryside and they’re digging holes, wasting their time, looking for treasures.

Dan: Yeah. Benjamin Franklin.

Nehemia: Benjamin Franklin, okay.

Dan: Yeah. Jefferson dug in the mountains, and…

Nehemia: I meant Benjamin Franklin, sorry.

Dan: He’s an archaeologist, kind of. But Benjamin Franklin, yeah, he talked about people consulting astrologers for the best time to dig for money. And they would look for various things, and seers… Joe Smith wasn’t the only one putting a stone in his head. They were more than you think, anyway. In his own neighborhood, there were several people that had stones. There was Sally Chase, who was the main seeress, a neighbor of his, that had a green stone, that would look in her stone. There was William Stafford down about a mile south of their farm. He had a seer stone also, and one of his sons had a seer stone. There was Samuel Lawrence. Samuel Lawrence was one of the major seers in the area that actually went up on the hill with Joseph Smith and said he saw the plates in his stone. So, there were seers around; Joe Smith wasn’t an oddity. But it was a competition, that… I argue that he was trying to win. This was his major goal in life at this time, was to be the best seer in Manchester.

Nehemia: Okay. So, there’s this whole culture, they believe that the Native Americans, what they call the Indians, have buried treasures in the ground. Actually, some of them have to do with the pirate, I forget his name, that he buried stuff.

Dan: Well, there’s Captain Kidd, Bluebeard…

Nehemia: Okay. So, that could be a pirate buried… So, either one of the pirates buried stuff in the ground, or the Indians buried stuff in the ground, and these people who are dirt poor… Look, I mean, I look at this like, people play the lottery today, and they spend their children’s lunch money, literally, in some cases, on the lottery, because they’re like, “My life is so horrible. I just want to strike it rich to change my life.” And I think; is there something to that? That these people, who are just so poor, and they think, “If I could just find some gold, my life would be so much better.”

Dan: They’re desperate.

Nehemia: Yeah, it comes from desperation, I think, to some extent.

Dan: Yeah. So, they got paid for doing it sometimes.

Nehemia: Yeah. But the people paying them are thinking, “Boy, I could change my life if we could just find some Indian silver.”

Dan: Yeah, so, what makes you start digging, and where do you dig? And those kinds of questions come up. But back then people buried their valuables. They buried…

Nehemia: So, that was a real thing that happened; not believe, they actually did. Okay.

Dan: There were no banks around in some of these places, out in the country, especially. And they were afraid of thieves, and they would bury their treasures or money. People would know… you know, “Old man so and so, he died, but where is his money? He must have buried it somewhere on his property.” And they would try to find it. And they would look for other things like minerals, you know, even salt, they would look for salt, and they would look for whatever they needed. And they would use divining for all sorts of things… lost objects… Somebody says: “Oh, I lost my cows. I can’t find my cows. Where are my cows? Let’s go ask Joseph to look in his stone and find my cows.” And they would try different seers sometimes, and one would be better than another, and one would start having a better reputation. And one method, let’s say, it was mentioned by a couple of the early sources, and that’s during an 1830 trial. Abraham Benton said that the rumor was that Joseph Smith had stolen some of the stuff and then pretended to find it.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm. And there was a thing in the law about pretending to find things. Tell us about that.

Dan: Well, there was the statute on the New York books that said that. And the law just assumed you were fake. Okay? They didn’t assume, “Oh, there’s true and false ones.” And when Joe Smith went to trial, his defense was, “I’m a real one.” Well, that didn’t work. But it was anybody pretending to discover lost money or… I forget the exact wording now, but it’s all sorts of… “juggling” is the one term they use.

Nehemia: And “juggling” doesn’t mean what it means today. It meant…

Dan: Oh yeah, not juggling. Juggling situations and people and things and…

Nehemia: Juggling basically meant to scam, if I understand correctly. Right?

Dan: A what?

Nehemia: A scammer; someone who’s deceiving someone.

Dan: Yeah. A con.

Nehemia: A con man. Yeah, okay. So, they had this belief that you could dig and find treasures, and you went to supernatural agents who would look into a stone… So, did Joseph Smith invent the thing of putting the stone in the hat? Or did other people do that?

Dan: Well, other people did it.

Nehemia: Okay. So, that was just a thing at the time.

Dan: Yeah. And they had different kinds of stones. Some were transparent. They would hold transparent ones up to the light.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: And Sally Chase had a greenstone set in a paddle, like a little wooden tiny paddle, so she could hold it.

Nehemia: And that was one of the neighbors.

Dan: Yeah. That was one of the neighbors. One of his competitors. And as one account says that he looked into her stone to find his first stone, and he found that stone, but it didn’t quite work. But the stone that he finally got, that brown one that’s in the church archives today, was found while digging a well on the Chase property.

Nehemia: Why do you believe that it was a well and not a…

Dan: I don’t necessarily do.

Nehemia: …and not a money hole?

Dan: It probably was a money hole.

Nehemia: Okay, that sounds more likely.

Dan: …says that it was a well.

Nehemia: Right. So, let’s go back to Philastus Hurlbut. There’s this ex-mormon in 1830… what is it, 1832 or something?

Dan: 1833 and 1834, he went and…

Nehemia: So, he goes around to Joseph Smith’s neighbors and says, “I want you to tell me what happened,” and then sign it as an affidavit. And this is to discredit Joseph Smith, explicitly.

Dan: Yeah. Yes.

Nehemia: I think he says he’ll wash his hands in the blood of Joseph Smith, or something. This guy hates Joseph Smith.

Dan: He believed the Spalding stuff; he was a sincere believer. He didn’t make it up. The people were testifying that it was a similar story long before he came along, and he came along and heard it, and he just collected… “Hey, can I get your statement on that,” kind of a thing. And he collected statements. He didn’t make up the Spalding theory to destroy Joseph Smith. He actually lost his testimony based on some of that information.

Nehemia: So, that’s the book… I actually read all of your footnotes, I think all of your footnotes, of Mormonism Unveiled. That was a book published in, I think, 1834 by E.B. Howe, who was upset because his wife converted to Mormonism, right?

Dan: Right.

Nehemia: So, he’s upset, and he says, “I’m going to publish all these statements from Philastus Hurlbut,” who was not a doctor, his name was “Doctor”.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: That itself is a crazy story. His name is Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, but his name is “Doctor”. So, E.B. Howe publishes these because he’s upset that his wife has converted to a religion he doesn’t believe in, and he wants to discredit Joseph Smith. So, the apologists like Stoddard, I think, would say… I think she does say… “Why should I give up my faith? Dan Vogel says we should believe Philastus Hurlbut. He hated Mormons. Why would I listen to somebody who hates Mormons?” It’s essentially an ad hominem argument. Talk to me about that.

Dan: Well, first of all, E.B. Howe, before his wife joined and his sister joined…

Nehemia: Sister as well.

Dan: He was already publishing in his newspaper, the Painesville Telegraph, and he was publishing statements about the Mormons that were critical. He also got a document from somebody, probably a guy named Abner Cole in Palmyra, that had ten Palmyra residents’ signatures, talking about Joseph Smith’s money digging. So, this is way before Philastus Hurlbut even was converted or anything. So, E.B. Howe was already doing that. So, people in northern Ohio, with the Mormons, already have heard about the money digging claims from ten residents that they didn’t include the signature when they published the document.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: Residents testifying that Joseph Smith, and his father, were money diggers, and they wanted to know more about that. So, they hired Philastus Hurlbut. They hired him, actually, and helped pay for his trip to gather these statements. And they were upset with the Mormons, of course, in their community, and they heard these things. And they wanted more, and to publish it… whether they were positive or negative, it doesn’t really matter, because their neighbors are doing it.

So then, Stoddard and these kind of apologists have a circular definition, in a way, going. These people are biased against Joseph Smith. Well, how do you know they’re biased? Because they said something against Joe Smith. You know, it’s like, you can never say anything against Joseph Smith and not be biased. So…

Nehemia: Well, I mean, Philastus Hurlbut was obviously biased against Joseph Smith.

Dan: What about the neighbors?

Nehemia: So, all the neighbors who had positive things… we don’t have their affidavits, right?

Dan: Well, so there’s a former friend of the Smiths who also said negative things.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: He stated that Philastus Hurlbut came into the neighborhood and collected affidavits, but he didn’t collect one from him because he didn’t criticize the Smiths hard enough. And…

Nehemia: Okay. Alright, so he’s admitting there’s a…

Dan: So, the neighbors are saying, “Oh, Joe Smith and his father drank too much.” Especially the senior Smith was a drunkard, a devoted drunkard. But Lorenzo Saunders over here, he would say, “Yeah, they drank. Not any more than the rest of us.”

Nehemia: Okay. You know, if you spoke to my neighbors from when I was a kid, they would say, “Oh, those are the jerks who never put their dog on a leash, and the dog used to poop on our yard.” And, you know, that’s actually probably true. But then the positive things they wouldn’t have known, because we didn’t necessarily share that stuff with them, right? Or I certainly didn’t. And I guess in the country, neighbors are different than in the city. Like, I have neighbors who I’ve never met. In the city it’s kind of, you know… a bit different maybe, in some cities, anyway.

So, here’s my concern. So, if you went, you could collect a whole bunch of documents. There wouldn’t be affidavits, because nobody had that concept, but you could collect a whole bunch of documents about Jews drinking Christian blood. Have you heard of the blood libels? You know what that is?

Dan: Blood? Wasn’t that…

Nehemia: There’s a…

Dan: Didn’t Paul have a story about that?

Nehemia: Who did?

Dan: The apostle Paul. Isn’t there a story about some kind of thing…

Nehemia: I don’t know that story. What I’m referring to is, there’s something from history called the blood libels.

Dan: Okay.

Nehemia: And it was an accusation that Jews would kidnap Christians and slaughter the children and use their blood to make unleavened bread on Passover. And this is such a pervasive anti-Jewish trope, that it goes back at least a thousand years, and you’ll find it in modern Saudi newspapers reported as fact. They’ll give you the name of the specific Christian child in Egypt who was kidnapped and murdered by the Jews.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And it’s utterly preposterous, because Jews don’t even eat cows blood, let alone children’s blood.

Dan: Right.

Nehemia: So, if somebody were to bring that to me and publish a book about it, I’d say, “Okay, those are anti-Semites. I don’t take anything they say seriously.” And you can say, “How do you know they’re anti-Semites?” Because they say these horrible lies about Jews. So, I know there’s a difference between what we’re talking about, but I understand where they’re coming from. They’re saying, “Well, those people are anti-Mormon. Of course they say that.” So, help me explain the difference to myself and the audience.

Dan: It’s a closed system altogether. There’s no way to ever get any negative evidence in there.

Nehemia: No, I understand…

Dan: How would I ever prove it with this system of argument?

Nehemia: Well, no. But then you have somebody like Richard Bushman… is it Richard Bushman?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Who is, from what I’ve seen in his interviews… I don’t know if this is still true, these might have been old interviews. Where he does temple work and he’s a good stand… is he still alive?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: From what I understand, he’s a member of the Mormon Church in good standing, right?

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: So, it’s hard to accuse him of a bias. You can accuse him of liberalism, which is what Stoddard does.

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: I don’t know Stoddard per se, but people from that perspective will say, “Okay, they’re liberals and they’re trying to undermine our faith with their liberal agenda.” Okay, fine. But you can’t say they’re anti-Mormon or anti-LDS, whereas you could definitely say that about Philastus Hurlbut. So, why do you do what you do? That’s a more fundamental question.

Dan: I don’t consider myself an anti-Mormon because I’m not trying to de-convert anybody. I’m not interested in de-converting Mormons.

Nehemia: So, why do you study this history?

Dan: I’m only interested in dead Mormons.

Nehemia: Okay!

Dan: Mormons from the 19th century. That’s as far as I go. I just want to find out what happened.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: What is the most probable reconstruction of the past that we can construct? What is the most defensible position you can take on whatever issue? What’s the most defensible position? It doesn’t mean that’s what happened. Nobody can go back and get there, you know? Nobody can go back and verify. There’s no time machine, there’s nothing. The best we can do is to get the most defensible interpretation. And…

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: …until we get further information. We might discover some documents. It’s not highly likely, but… During my lifetime I’ve seen some discoveries of a lot of documents, so I can’t say it’s not impossible, but there’s a lot of people looking nowadays.

Nehemia: Well, like one of the important documents… I don’t know if this is in your lifetime or not. I don’t know how old you are, but I’ve heard you talk about, and heard Bushman talk about… or read in his book, the 1826 trial, or the 1826 hearing, whatever you want to call it.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, for over a century, Mormon apologists said that didn’t happen. Joseph Smith wasn’t put on trial or didn’t have a hearing in 1826 for illegally looking into a seer stone. And then tell us about the guy in the 70’s who found the bill. I mean, it’s…

Dan: Well, you know… the knowledge of Joseph Smith’s 1826 trial was not known until like the 1880’s or late 1870’s. There were three separate publications of the trial. The transcript of the trial record itself… It’s not a trial, technically. I mean, they use “trial”, but it’s a preliminary hearing.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: And the conclusion of the hearing is always in dispute. I mean, the apologists…

Nehemia: Well, what was the hearing about? Why did he have a hearing?

Dan: Okay, so, we’d have to back up a little bit even before this, but in October of 1825, Mr. Smith’s claims… because nothing happened… but his talent for finding treasures. And when they wouldn’t get them, they would say they were enchanted, and they slipped away. They got slippery and slipped. The evil spirit moved the treasure or some sort of excuse. But there was enough evidence somehow, either through what I described before as stealing cows and finding them again or whatever… Joe Smith built up a career that spread a lot further than his little community, and this gentleman named Josiah Stowell, a well-to-do farmer in Chenango County, New York, which is about 150… is like directly north from that Harmony… along the Susquehanna River. You know, there’s a Susquehanna River goes around the great bend of that mountain and then goes up north through New York and a couple of counties… there’s Windsor, and then it goes to Colesville, where this gentleman named Joseph Knight, who’s also a money digger, lived. And the next county, Shenango County, that’s Josiah Stowell. And both of these gentlemen are well-to-do, and they make friends with Joe Smith even before Mormonism. Joseph Knight actually gets converted later. But, not so sure about Josiah Stowell. Maybe, maybe not. It’s not certain.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: But if he did, he never pursued it very far. So, Josiah Stowell, he hears about Joseph Smith 150 miles away, being a seer. And, actually, he probably got a letter from his son, Simpson Stowell, who lived in Manchester. Now, Josiah Stowell is only interested in buried treasure and seers because he has spent the previous summer… and this is like October when he gets to Joe Smith’s home, he spent the previous summer digging in Harmony, Pennsylvania. And he knows Isaac Hale, and Isaac Hale’s family, and they may have even been boarding with them at this time, before the second time. But this time they’re up there, they have heard about a treasure in this bend mountain. In the mountain…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: They heard about a treasure being there, and a seeress named… all we know is Odol. Odol. This seeress lady had pinpointed some area in that mountain and they were digging, and Josiah Stowell hired a group of men to go with them. And they were digging and digging and digging, and nothing happened, and they finally gave up. Then he goes home, and he finds, probably, a letter from his son talking about Joseph Smith, this great seer, and he goes all the way there and hires Joseph Smith. Joe Smith gave an exhibition of his skill by looking at his stone and describing his outhouses and homes back in Chenango County. And there’s ways that psychics have of doing that kind of stuff.

Nehemia: Or maybe the stone really worked, and he could see what the outhouse looked like.

Dan: There’s always that possibility.

Nehemia: And isn’t there somebody… you had a friend who is a scholar who said that? What was his name? You know who I’m talking about. Who believed that…

Dan: Oh, D. Michael Quinn.

Nehemia: Yeah, the Magical World View; he wrote a book about.

Dan: Yeah. He wrote the book…

Nehemia: And he was a devout Mormon, right?

Dan: He was a devout Mormon, if you can see that. Joseph Smith…

Nehemia: Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. Okay.

Dan: This is a second edition. I’m using it because I’m preparing a video on part of the topic, but on the magic part. So, Joe Smith knows Simpson Stowell, and, I mean, he must have described where he came from, his home and stuff, or he said it in such vague terms that Josiah Stowell applied his own interpretation on things.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: And that’s usually how psychics do what is called cold reading, or hot reading, which is having knowledge that the other person doesn’t think you have. But…

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: So, there’s those ways, and then there’s… well he really saw it in his stone, but never was able to recover any treasure.

Nehemia: That was inconvenient. I’ve heard you say, “He should have used the stone to find the missing 116 pages.”

Dan: Exactly. Wow, that’s pretty good. You’re pretty quick.

Nehemia: That’s a good point. That’s a really good point.

Dan: Yeah. So, that’s true, why didn’t he just find the 116 pages or…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: Or when it really mattered, it didn’t work, because he wasn’t in control…

Nehemia: Right. And then the other example I’ve heard you give, which is a pretty… if I was a Mormon, this would really bother me, is, he sent the people to Canada to sell the copyright, and they went to the wrong city or something.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Nehemia: He should have looked in the stone and said, “Where do we go?”

Dan: Or he went from Harmony, Pennsylvania, up to Colesville to meet with Joseph Knight Sr. to ask for financial help, but Knight wasn’t home.

Nehemia: Mmm. Okay. And that wasn’t a trivial trip back then.

Dan: It seems like he should have looked in his stone first to see if he was there.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Nehemia: Anyway, so Josiah Stowell goes to Manchester in October 1825 and hires Joseph Smith and his father. And they all go down, they go down back to his home, and he gets some other diggers… there’s 11 people altogether, and they go down the Susquehanna to Harmony, Pennsylvania and start digging there. And then Joseph Smith says that it’s no longer there. It has slipped down the hill to another location, and they start digging there. And for a long time there were holes, like, five different holes around that hill. And one of the holes was still there in the early 1900’s, and a Mormon from Utah went there and photographed a guy standing in that hole.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: And wrote on the bottom of the photograph, “Mormon money hole.”

Nehemia: So, this is an important point. This isn’t just Philastus Hurlbut, who hates Joseph Smith, who’s saying this. We have Mormons that are corroborating some of the details here.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: I feel like we could actually corroborate more details about this story than we can about the history of the Book of Mormon, right? Like, I can show you where… I mean, you might say something like, “I don’t believe the Red Sea was split by Moses,” but I can show you where the Red Sea is.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: But I can’t show you where… what is the one in… the big city of the Nephites that actually has a Hebrew meaning…

Dan: Zerahemla?

Nehemia: Yeah… Zarahemla, which means seed of mercy. Like, he might have just gotten lucky with that name, I don’t know, because that’s actually… that’s one of the names that actually has a Hebrew meaning. So, where’s that city? We don’t know. But here, in the case of the holes, you can say, “Here’s a picture of the hole.” So, somebody was digging those holes, right?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s almost like you can corroborate more details of Joseph Smith’s money digging days than you can of the Book of Mormon itself, right?

Dan: Well, so far. So, there’s nothing… they have like one spot that they get excited about.

Nehemia: Yeah, Nahum in Eastern Arabia. Yeah. You’re gonna have to do better than that. So, I want to read two passages from the Book of Mormon. You talked about how the treasure slipped down, so…

Dan: Yeah, it’s in the book.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, it’s in the Book of Mormon! I couldn’t believe that! So, Helaman 13:31, “And behold, time cometh that he curseth your riches, that they become slippery, that you cannot hold them, and the days of your poverty you cannot retain them.” And then Mormon 1:18, “And these Gadianton robbers,” which I assume is related to the tribe of Gad or something.

Dan: Well, it’s the kind of forerunners of the Masons.

Nehemia: Right, because they’re the ones with the secret combinations. But the word gadianton, I think he took from the word gad, which has to do with gdud. Which is… could be bands of robbers, although I don’t know that he had that much Hebrew knowledge, but I don’t know. “And these Gadianton robbers who are among the Lamanites did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth, and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them nor retain them again.” In other words, you’re hiding your stuff in the ground to keep it from the Gadianton robbers; when you go to look for it, it’s moved. And now Joseph Smith comes along, looks into his hat with the stone, and he says, “Oh, it’s over there. We can find it, you know, 1,500 years later.”

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: But then when you actually get to that spot, it’s slipped again, is what you’re saying.

Dan: There’s a curse.

Nehemia: And so, how did Michael Quinn, as a believing Mormon, how… he believed this, right? He believed that there were treasures in the ground that would slip when you would get too close to them, right? I mean…

Dan: Yeah, well, he believed that magic and religion are one and the same thing, basically, and if you believe one, why can’t you believe the other? You know, if it takes faith to believe in the miracles the Bible describes, or miracles you even hear about in early Mormonism, why is it different? Why is this different than that?

Nehemia: Right. Look, and there’s something to be said for that. Meaning, one definition of magic is somebody else’s religion, right?

Dan: Right.

Nehemia: Now, there are religions that have a category of magic which is forbidden or permissible, depending on what your religious view is. But… it’s not that easy to define magic, right?

Dan: No, it’s not, it’s…

Nehemia: Yeah. So, okay.

Dan: It’s kind of a cultural thing, and you arbitrarily define it and decide what is orthodox and what is not.

Nehemia: But there are also ancient religions, or even maybe some modern ones, where magic is orthodox and is accepted.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, it’s complicated. Like in Judaism, obviously, and Christianity, magic is forbidden, yet there’s people who are devout who engage in magic or… even what they would say is magic, so it’s complicated.

Dan: So, he understood, and I understand, that the folk magic, that a lot of the magic is Christian magic. The books that these people would be reading are mixing the Kabbalah, you know…

Nehemia: Oh, I know about Kabbalah. That’s Jewish mysticism, which in many cases is just magic.

Dan: Right. So, a lot of the English books take a lot of their information from the Kabbalah, in the early Latin versions of magic, and all these things that have developed to Joseph Smith’s time, the books that he had access to, like Francis Barrett… these are people in London. Francis Barrett’s The Magus, it had all sorts of descriptions of magic, signs, symbols, things like that. Talismans that you can use to ward off evil spirits and things like that. And the Smith family owned magic parchments, three magic parchments that were…

Nehemia: Which have Hebrew on them.

Dan: They have…

Nehemia: So, let me demonstrate for you and the audience how pervasive Kabbalistic magic is in modern Judaism. The State of Israel had to pass a law making it illegal to offer someone an amulet in exchange for their vote. They had to pass a law to define that as bribery, because it was a standard practice in certain communities to say, “If you vote for this political party, we will give you this amulet that will give you different positive… it’ll make you rich, or it’ll make your children healthy, or it’ll cure you of cancer.” So, they actually had to pass a law to define that as bribery because it was so pervasive. And frankly, it still goes on.

Now, that’s not everybody in the Jewish world, but it was parties that were buying votes by… and how much does it cost to make an amulet? A few cents, right? You just have to have a rabbi make a blessing over it and you’ve got an amulet. Maybe a few dollars, because you have to have somebody sit and write a parchment. Or maybe you print the amulet, and they don’t know the difference.

So, that’s today in the 21st century! This is something that in Jewish history… and I look at amulets as magic. I would think that’s the quintessential example of magic. There are debates between rabbis about what’s in an amulet, like a famous debate in the 18th century between these two rabbis in Hamburg about… the one rabbi’s amulet has forbidden things in it. But the question about, “Wait a minute, why are you even doing amulets in the first place?” Nobody even talks about that in this particular event.

So, now translate into the Christian world; the influence of Kabbalah, and particularly the amulets, is profound. I was at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and they have all these Hebrew amulets that have nothing to do with Jews, like, the name Jesus is in the amulet. And it’s clearly people whose Hebrew isn’t even that good writing the amulets.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: You could tell from the script that it’s not somebody with Jewish training who wrote the Hebrew letters. So, you have Kabbalah having a profound influence on the Christian world, and some of that pouring over into Christian magic. So, Joseph Smith is growing up in this environment where this stuff is pervasive…

Dan: Yeah. I’m studying the parchments that were handed down. They’re called layman, but they’re like little parchments, and they were kept in a bag and kept around the neck…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: … to ward off evil spirits. And one of them is titled “Holiness to the Lord…”

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: … on three sides of it, and then the Tetragrammaton at the bottom. And then another one, “Saint Peter Bind Them” is the short title that we give it, but it has a long thing and it’s about Peter binding the evil spirits and protecting the magician so that he can get the treasure.

Nehemia: Wow, okay.

Dan: So, when the treasure is located, now they have to get it out of the ground without it slipping away. And so…

Nehemia: Because treasures are slippery. So, let’s go back. He’s with Josiah Stowell, and he’s helping him find a silver mine or something like this. And how does he end up in court?

Dan: Well, so that lasts about a month, and they end that project in failure. And so, Josiah Stowell hires Joseph Smith who’s like, 20 years old… 19, 20 years old, to work on his farm and to keep on looking for treasures along the Susquehanna River up north near his home. And while he’s doing that, and Joe Smith’s taking money for it, one of his relatives gets upset.

Nehemia: $14 a month, right?

Dan: That’s what Joe Smith later said.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: That he got paid, I don’t know.

Nehemia: So, this is important. Joseph Smith doesn’t deny he was involved with digging for treasure for Josiah Stowell, he just says, “Well, I was a technician. I was a laborer.”

Dan: In his official history, he makes it sound like he was digging, and it was never profitable. And he finally prevailed upon Josiah Stowell to stop. Well, why would a digger have anything to do with… Why would you stop him from digging if you’re still getting paid? The fact is that he was the leader of that group. He was the seer; everybody was following his instructions of where to dig. He suppresses that information in his official history. So, he’s less than forthcoming. And that’s his answer to E.D. Howe’s book. That. That’s all he gives. He doesn’t respond to it honestly, really, and tries to cloud it over without really addressing the exact facts of what happened.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: It’s an official history, and not to be trusted, really.

Nehemia: Okay. Well, so I think what I can say from my perspective is, Joseph Smith was biased and so was E.D. Howe. And if you look at enough sources, you can try to figure out what was going on. I think that’s what you do.

Dan: That’s what we have to do.

Nehemia: And if you’ve got…

Dan: It’s not a simple matter of saying, “Joseph Smith and all these Mormons are telling the truth, and all these non-Mormons are telling the lies.”

Nehemia: If you’ve got David Whitmer saying he’s still using the seer… David Whitmer saying his problem is he’s not using the seer stone, which was the true source of revelation. Then, okay, I guess the seer stone thing is real, and now we have a picture of it, so… All right, so he’s looking for treasure with the seer stone, and how does that land him in a preliminary hearing in 1826?

Dan: Josiah Stowell’s nephew, actually, Peter Bridgeman, he gets upset, and on behalf of the family he writes out a complaint, you know, on Joe Smith. There’s a warrant issued for his arrest, and he gets arrested. And he goes before this Justice Albert Neely, a justice of the peace in South Bainbridge, now Afton, Chenango County, New York, and he’s tried. So, we have the transcript of the trial. And some people testified against him, some people testified on his behalf. Josiah Stowell testified in Joe Smith’s defense, saying that he believes that Joe Smith has a gift, and he talks about that Joe Smith saw his house from all the way from Palmyra, New York, and…

Nehemia: And this is nothing to do with Philastus Hurlbut.

Dan: Nothing!

Nehemia: This is a transcript that was published by three different sources.

Dan: Three different sources by Albert Nealy’s niece.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: Who went to Utah in the 1880’s to be a missionary to the Mormons.

Nehemia: So, let’s acknowledge some bias there, that she wants people to leave Mormonism and become Evangelical Christians, or whatever she was. So, you could say she made the whole thing up, but then someone corroborated the prices that were quoted.

Dan: You got it! That’s it.

Nehemia: So, tell us that; that’s the most… that’s an incredible piece of evidence! Like I said, it’s the kind of thing that you would dream to find, this kind of thing in Christian history, you know, the… Imagine if we found the… what do we call it? The lumberjack who cut down the tree that was carved to make the cross for Jesus. Imagine that kind of, like, level of information. We couldn’t even fantasize about finding that. And we find the bill in the courthouse in New York. I mean, it’s… and it’s the same as what was published in the 1870’s or whatever, right? From Albert Neely’s niece.

Dan: Right. So, like I said, it was published three different times, showing that this niece had something. She claimed it was… she either had the whole docket book that Albert Neely used to record his cases, or she had torn the pages out and they published those, and which got lost, probably in the fire in Utah, in one of the churches of the last person that published it. And there’s reading… there’s little variants. You could tell the person’s having a hard time reading some parts and… and the apologists flat out just said, “Oh, it’s forged. It’s not real. It’s all an anti-Mormon lie.”

So, this went on… I mean, I had the whole transcript of different people testifying, and what Joseph Smith did, talked about slippery treasures and things like that. And you have to also remember that even at this point when it’s published, why would an anti-Mormon write this and make Josiah Stowell testify that Joseph Smith is a true prophet? He really could see in his stone, and he found treasures and another that slipped away. And another guy testified in Joseph’s behalf the same way. They’re testifying in Joseph’s behalf, that he can use that stone.

Nehemia: I don’t know, people lie all the time.

Dan: … like that.

Nehemia: So, I’ll answer that. And I think it’s probably authentic, right?

Dan: Right.

Nehemia: But the answer would be, well, people lie, and part of the way they lie is they say something positive about somebody else that includes a lie within it.

Dan: Mm-hmm.

Nehemia: In order for you to say, “Well, why would somebody make that up about Nehemia?” You know, half of it is positive because they want to slip in the part that’s negative, right? So, could it be a lie? It’s entirely possible the whole thing is a lie and there was no 1826… I guess you really can’t say at this point there was no 1826 hearing because of the document that was found in the 70’s. Let’s talk about that.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: You could say the testimony was fabricated, and that what they were really talking…

Dan: Hard to believe that they would write anything positive about Joseph Smith’s gift with the stone, that Josiah Stowell believed it.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: He mentioned other evidences that he had to believe that Joseph Smith had a true gift. But it doesn’t work for me.

Nehemia: And I agree with you, with the little I know about it, but I can understand where the apologist is going to come up with… Because look, the apologist felt the thing in their heart that said Joseph Smith is a true prophet. So, now they have to deal with that reality and say, “I know he’s a true prophet. How do I explain away?” Because here’s the bottom line. It sounds really…

Dan: First of all, this doesn’t make him a false prophet.

Nehemia: No, but let’s be honest here. Here’s the real issue. Tell me if this is wrong. So, Joseph Smith is looking for treasures of gold using a seer stone, and there are spirits that protect over the treasures and move them around.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Gold plates protected by a spirit called Moroni, and Moroni is moving the treasure around. And why do I say moving it around? When he first went there, he took it out of the hole… Am I wrong about this?

Dan: No.

Nehemia: And he looked down and it was gone. It was back in the hole or something like that.

Dan: Yes, you’re right.

Nehemia: So, it sounds exactly like the treasures. And then Richard Bushman would say, yeah…

Dan: It is exactly like the treasures.

Nehemia: So, Richard Bushman would say, “Yeah, God was preparing him for the discovery of the gold plates.” So, he does say that, that God was preparing… who else would find the gold plates and believe the angel Moroni, except somebody who had experience with spirits, or believed in spirits?

Dan: There is a connection. And you would… the Stoddards have to deal with… Well, he used the same stone that he translated the Book of Mormon with later to earlier find treasures that slipped away and never found any treasures. How do you explain that? If it didn’t work, then, now why do you think it worked here?

Nehemia: Because the treasures weren’t real, and the Book of Mormon was real. I don’t know what they would say, maybe. I don’t know.

Dan: Okay.

Nehemia: I don’t know.

Dan: That’s why they didn’t want the stone being used… one reason. The other reason is, Joe Smith said the spectacles were preserved specifically to…

Nehemia: Ah, okay.

Dan: Why would he change instrument?

Nehemia: Right.

Dan: It’s because he didn’t plan on using the spectacles even to begin with in the story at all. But that’s another…

Nehemia: We’ll get back to the spectacles, because that is an interesting part of the story, but… So, tell…

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: The document in the 70’s, that’s important.

Dan: Yeah. So, the Mormon apologists are denying that the trial took place. We have Hugh Nibley, the great Mormon scholar, linguist, at BYU, saying it would be the most damning evidence ever. But I don’t believe that’s true.

Nehemia: That didn’t age well, that he said that. He probably shouldn’t have backed himself into a corner like that.

Dan: Yeah, he didn’t need to say that. So, Wesley Walters, my friend Wesley Walters, the Presbyterian minister, he’s very interested in Mormon history. He decided he was going to try to find records associated with that transcription. He tried to find the transcription, but he found it was probably burned in the fire in Utah.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: So, he decided there has to be other county records of this. This probably was the personal docket book. If Neely had it, then his niece had it and took it to Utah… it wasn’t the county record.

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: It’s his personal docket book. And so, he says, “Well, there’s got to be other records in the county,” and that’s what he went after. And he started looking and looking and looking. And finally… because they moved records around over the hundred or so years. He finally found that they were located in the basement of the jail, and he went there, and as it happens, they were in cardboard boxes. You know, they usually have them folded up into little transcriptions and then tied together in bundles.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: And they had them tossed in a cardboard box up against a wall underneath a window that was leaking. And they were soaking wet. He found them. You know, you have to find the right bundle, and then you have to go through the bundle. You find the bill that Albert Neely sent the county. He also found the bill that the arresting constable sent the county.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: And he laid them out and took photographs of them. And he was with another gentleman, and they were so worried that these were going to perish. What are they going to do with them? Fold them up? They weren’t sure if they told anybody they were there, that they would be there when they came back, because they might get stolen or something. So, they did remove them from the jail, which was not very cool, but they removed them. And I think they took them to a preservation university somewhere to preserve.

Nehemia: Do they still exist, those documents?

Dan: Yeah, I’ve seen them. I went there and I looked at them myself.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: They are water damaged on one side, which is the reason I wanted to see them in person, because the stain was so dark brown that I couldn’t read all of the writing. And so, I had to go and see it in person to make the best transcription I could.

Nehemia: Has the Joseph Smith Papers published these documents?

Dan: Yes.

Nehemia: They have!

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Wow!

Dan: They’re online under like legal…

Nehemia: Okay, that’s cool.

Dan: “Legal Section” and there’s a “New York Section”, and then you can go to the year, 1826. They also have the records for the 1830 trial.

Nehemia: Wow!

Dan: Which proves that the 1826 trial took place, because they were retrying them on the same charges.

Nehemia: So, the people who published the Joseph Smith Papers, which is part of the church, they’re not denying this took place.

Dan: Nope!

Nehemia: Okay.

Dan: Only the apologists that seemed to have come from another century. They’re the old apologists. They’re the bad apologists, the apologists that really…

Nehemia: I don’t feel like I, as an outsider, should make a judgment about who the good and bad apologists, but…

Dan: Oh, I will, because…

Nehemia: And you come from a Mormon background, you can do that. I don’t feel like that’s my place.

Dan: It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to everybody concerned. Besides this…

Nehemia: If the word fundamentalist didn’t mean something else in the Mormon context, I would use that. So, we can’t.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: We can’t, because it means something else.

Dan: They’re not fundamentalists.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Dan: They’re not “fundamental-ists.”

Nehemia: Right. Not “big f” fundamentalists.

Dan: Yeah, they are the earlier thinking type Mormons that don’t care what anything says. They’re just going to proclaim this is the way it should be.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Dan: I wish it to be this way. Therefore, it is this way, you know.

Nehemia: Wow.

Dan: And they’re not trained. They don’t have any training. They haven’t… they don’t…

Nehemia: Well, this is an open invitation to the Stoddard lady to come on this podcast and give responses to all these points. I’d actually love to hear her, and maybe someone will share this with her, and she can come and explain. And I’ll be respectful, right? I mean… you know, within my religious tradition, I am, in a sense, a fundamentalist. I’m also a critical scholar, right? So, like I said, I wear two hats, and I’m comfortable with that dichotomy. You know, I believe Moses wrote the Torah, or it was revealed through Moses, let’s put it that way more precisely. You know, Joshua also was involved. So, I want to respect people who are coming from a devout perspective, but I also want to hear what the truth is. Anyway, thanks so much for all your time.

Dan: Thanks for having me.

Nehemia: I hope we are able to broadcast all of this. We’ve been recording at this point, guys… I think this is a personal record for me. We’ve been recording for… I want to say… almost like 7.5 hours or something like that. So, thanks so much.

Dan: All right.

Nehemia: All right. Shalom, goodbye, thank you. Shalom to your wife.

Dan: Yes, sure.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!

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VERSES MENTIONED
Helaman 13:31 (Book of Mormon)
Mormon 1:18 (Book of Mormon)

BOOKS MENTIONED
Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
by Dan Vogel
Charisma under Pressure: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1831–1839
by Dan Vogel
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
by D. Michael Quinn

The Magus (1801)
by Francis Barrett

Book of Jubilees

Book of Zohar

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices Episodes
Hebrew Voices #164 – A Karaite Jew on Mormonism: Part 1
Support Team Study – A Karaite Jew on Mormonism: Part 2
Hebrew Voices #183 – Early Mormonism Revealed: Part 1
Support Team Study – Early Mormonism Revealed: Part 2
Hebrew Voices #190, Mormon Chains of Authority: Part 1
Support Team Study: Mormon Chains of Authority: Part 2

OTHER LINKS
Dan Vogel’s YT channel
FAIR Mormon Apologetic Site
The Joseph Smith Papers

The post Hebrew Voices #192 – Early Mormonism on Trial appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.