2020 Joseph Smith Papers Conference

The Church History Library in Salt Lake City is hosting its 2020 conference.

Panel 1: Interpreting

Spencer McBride: James Arlington Bennett as a supporter and future vice-president for his candidacy. Butterfield as representative of Joseph Smith Jr, original attorney for the US govt during the bankruptcy hearings. The core problem is avoiding the 2nd extradition request from Missouri.

Shannon Kelly Jorgensen: George Bachmann (sp?) in Carthage, Illinois, against John C Bennett.

Stephanie Steed, Brett D Dowdle, Angela Thompson and Stephanie Steed also participated.

Q&A:

• focus on JSJr is broadened by connecting him to women, people of color
• it's a tough place to start with the people being so many
• Joseph Smith Jr did meet with Indians in Nauvoo as they passed through

Panel 2: Power Networks

Paul Reeve, "I Dug the Graves" 

Afro-American Jane Elizabeth Manning was baptized 1842, followed by her brother Isaas Lewis Manning (+1913) that same December baptized, in Connecticut, but went to Nauvoo in 1843, eventually joined the RLDS in London, Ontario, then moved to Utah, rejoining Jane, and switched back to LDS, became baptized again.

Recollections about Nauvoo''s Mansion House, where they had lived during the first days in Nauvoo, gave them new clothes lost, hired to work at the Mansion house (laundress & cook), but called him a prophet and would have laid their life down for them.

Sister Sarah also joined, as well as brother Peter, but also mother and aunt.

About 25 black people were in Nauvoo at this point in time, in a city of almost 12,000 people. Smith Jr was convinced that blacks only had worse socio-economic situations, not genetic. But Smith Jr was not a racial abolitionist, later suggest reimbursing for freeing of slaves. Separation of the races in marriage had his support. Priesthood Ordination was rare, but it was not systematic back then and roughly 1/3 held that of the white men.

Manning dug fake graves for Hyrum and Joseph; the actual bodies of the two were in the basement of the Nauvoo Mansion house. Manning then helped Emma move the bodies to the old log house of the river.

"Uncle Isaac" and "Aunt Jane" was their names in the later articles in the Salt Lake Herald of 1899 in Utah ("First Negroes to Join Mormon Church"). Brigham Young had defined Manning's race as cursed theologically; but Manning's personal connection with the Prophet somehow undercut that notion.

Brian Stutzmann, Conflict with Warsaw

Warsaw, Hancock County, Illinois was the nemesis of Nauvoo. Demoine Rapids in the Mississippi required lightening the road. Thomas Sharp initially supported that railroad, as the cost was about 500k$ a year at that time. Nauvoo refused to participate because of the economic depression, after effects of 1837, Isaac Galen had only sold them on land only because of the no-money down; the railroad did not have such conditions.

Wrote a history of Warsaw, Illinois, quite hostile to Thomas Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal, an anti-Mormon newspaper.

Derek Sainsbury, Cadre for the Kingdom

Joseph Smith Jrs electioneers. Smith Jr advocated aristarchy (-> Council of 50) and theodemocracy.

Editorial in Times and Seasons, The Government of God July 15 1842 (Friday) in Nauvoo.

The Campaign, the Kingdom and the Assassination. Smith Jr wanted to be president in the US, or in Texas, California or Mexico, if necessary.

600 electioneer missionaries went out. Example Joseph A Stratton, electioneered in the East, hopefully thereafter England.

William I Appleby former judge, democratic Whig, saw in Smith Jr the solution to injustice and corruption, believed that the Mormons had been predicted by Daniel, published 2,000 copies of a 24-page book interpreting this.

Franklin Richards made a pillar of stone as a testimony to God's plans.

Q&A

• Smith Jr had to distance himself to abolitionism and race mixing initially (1836), but by the presidential platform was supporting open racial vision (1844), the former in AT and the latter in the NT; Brigham Young 1852 speech is racist, no doubt
• Smith Jr's attempt at presidency is a move for religious freedom, gave the president power to intervene if religious freedom was not protected; context of the Bible riots of Philadelphia, Wenton letter of 1842 was supportive but in 1844 the Mormons had been let down
• Sharp tried to recruit support for the Expositor (June 1844), supports a call to arm to defend the press in Nauvoo; almost every issue he was arguing against Smith Jr; the Warsaw library has the complete Warsaw Signal newspaper issues digitally online
• Marshall, Turning point of Thomas Sharp
• Century of Black Mormons (.org), first temple endowed of mixed-racial ancestry in 1845, probably passing as white

Panel 3: Financial Networks

Elizabeth Kuehn: Was JSjr bad at business?

Admits that the shares were HUGE for the time

Sharalyn Howcroft: The Red Store Book

Oct 1842 and Oct 1843 Emma Smith worked as a clerk at the store

Jeffrey Mahas: Labor Disputes and building of Nauvoo Temple

People who were exploiting build the temple were still happy to be exploited

No single critical question; all hunky-dory; so much for science 

Correlating Population with Bank Solvency

In the previous post we discussed two assumptions about Hill et al's 1977 argument regarding the prudence of opening a savings society in Kirtland in 1836. Recall that they had used Coover's enumeration of Ohio banks to conclude that the population in Kirtland should have been sizeable enough to support a modest bank. The presupposition of this claim is, as I noted

• Population size is a good predictor for bank success.

In this post I want to break down the claim that is wrapped in this statement into its constituent parts. The current formulation, though not an inappropriate assumption based on the data that Hill et al had used to make their case, sounds too statistical in nature, while the argument that Hill et al had in mind was in all likelihood more qualitative.

The basic observation is that banks require specie to operate. Specifically, they have to have specie to have their bank notes accepted and to make loans to customers (where the interest charged is part of the income that the bank produces). The way banks obtain specie, other than by accepting deposits, is to take down payments for subscribed stock that they issue. In my dissertation I detail some of the rules of how subscriptions worked and how much of the stock value had to be paid in as specie by what point during the subscription period by the subscribers [RCK15, 230-238] and I replicate the information from Coovers' research in the appendix [RCK15, 425f]. 

Since there is no residency requirement for subscription, subscribers can come either from 

• within the community wishing to have a bank; 
• or can be American financiers, usually at that point in time from the East Coast, 
• or Europeans engaged in trade with the US who wish to park their profits from their trade within the Americas within the US of A. 

Europeans here means wealthy non-Americans and in the majority, British traders. Though the world economy was rapidly moving toward integration---Joseph Smith Sr had been exporting East Coast Ginseng root to China in the years before Joseph Smith Jr had been born [RCK15, 79]---the wealthy traders from Africa, India or the Far East were not involved in American frontier banking.

As Charles Clifford Huntington showed in his 1915 thesis, A History of Banking and Currency in Ohio before the Civil War (available at the Internet Archive), there was much concern about capital flight in Ohio in the 1830s, due to the large number of financiers from the East Coast and even from outside the country proper that were involved in buying Ohio banking stock (Hunt15, 137f). In fact they owned over 70%, US$3.35 million of the US$4.73 million in capital stock in the state, before March of 1834 [RCK15, 233], as researched by the Cincinnati Republican.

There were examples of banks completely supported by the community, such as the infamous Owl Creek bank; or the Bank of Wooster that failed in spite of $150,000 paid-in stock and a leverage of 1.29 [RCK15, 245]; but the more typical case was the Ohio Life Insurance & Trust Company, who had only three residents of Ohio among its twenty board members and was held, in the words of the Ohio Monitor of March 14, 1836, "by the Wall Street gentry of New York" [RCK15, 234]. The company had given loans totalling almost US$2 million in 67 counties of Ohio, which were secured with some US$4.34 million worth of real estate---a very different league from the banks of Wooster mentioned above or of West Union, which had $20,000 of species at 2.42 leverage when it failed.

With this information at our fingertips, we can now note two things:

• For the successful banks, the majority of the capital stock was held by out-of-state financiers.
• Banks that were predominantly funded from within the community failed during the banking crisis of 1837.

Again, the Bank of Wooster is the most interesting example. Its was chartered in February of 1834 with US$100,000 and immediately oversubscribed by its population by 25% [Hunt15, 141]. In 1837, with a leverage of 1.29, it was almost stellar, $150,221 paid in for a circulation of $194,289 notes. Perhaps the easiest way to explain this is the lack of expertise? 

Population and Bank Support

In their 1977 paper, Hill et al. The Kirtland Economy Revisited (BYU Studies Vol 17, 4, Article 2) argued that the idea of founding a bank such as the Kirtland Safety Society was an appropriate idea based on the size of Kirtland and the number of other banks in existence in other communities.

Kirtland at this time was one of the larger communities in northern Ohio---a number of smaller communities already possessed banks. Judging from the successful experience of other banks in Ohio, one with as little as $20,000.-- in paid-up capital, Kirtland probably could have supported a modest bank. (433)

In a footnote they go on to enumerate some of the locales with banks that Hill et al had in mind.

... smaller banks in northern Ohio included Warren (3), Ravenna (2), Canton (2), Salem, Youngtown, Elysia, Ashtabula, and Cuyahoga Falls. Cleveland, which had perhaps twice as many people [as Kirtland, RCK] had eleven [sic RCK] banks. (433 Fn 61)

In my dissertation,  where I discuss this argument (246), I argued that this exposition was misleading on multiple grounds. But in order to fully counter the claim by Hill et al, one needs to first explicate the argument structure. And in order to explicate the argument structure, we need to make clear that this argument is trying to support the larger notion that the creation of a bank, as endeavored by the Church leadership in 1836 was a reasonable thing to undertake and had all of the appearances of success on its side. 

So the argument structure goes something like this:

• Warren had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Warren had three banks.
• Raven had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Warren had two banks.
• Canton had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Canton had two banks.
• Salem (Ohio) had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Salem had one bank.
• Elysia had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Elysia had one bank.
• Ashtabula had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Ashtabula had one bank.
• Cuyahoga Falls had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Cuyahoga Falls had one bank.

The inductive leap of this assumption then is that towns with smaller populations than Kirtland had between one and three successful banks in 1836. We will call this argument Min1-3

(Note: The bank of West Union, which is the one of $20,000 capitalization, is not in this list. Perhaps it was not possible to arrive at population data for West Union?)

The argument in the case of Cleveland goes in the other direction.

• Cleveland had double the population of Kirtland.
• Cleveland had twelve banks.

The inductive leap here is that Kirtland should be able to support six successful banks. We will call this argument Max6.

Combining these two inductive leaps Min1-3 and Max6, we can now create another inductive leap, to wit:

• Kirtland's population sized should have supported at least one to three banks (Min1-3) and possible as many as six banks (Max6).

We will call this argument Kirtland-1-3-6. 

Hill et al are arguing that the Church leadership made this same sequence of inductive leaps. They have no documentary proof for this, but it is a reasonable imposition: the members of the Church leadership were well connected with political leaders and the legislature; furthermore, they had taken out loans before and engaged in real estate speculation, a task that required banking connections during the boom times of the federal land sales [RCK15, 248f]. Assuming Kirtland-1-3-6 and the absence of any banks in Kirtland in 1836, at all, it was a reasonable idea to found one and to expect it to succeed.

The first problem is that the argument is prefixed by the assumption that Hill et al interpreted the data given in Coover correctly. Unfortunately, as I argued in my dissertation [RCK15, 247], that is not the case. Coover's list gives all the banks known for Ohio between 1803 and 1866, not just the banks operating in 1836 time. In fact, since Coover was a collector of banknotes, all that can be said is that at some point someone issued a note with the name of a bank located in one of these cities (and some people made notes for non-existent banks, as Coover pointed out). 

As I pointed out in my dissertation [RCK15, 247], the following banks have to be removed from the list, because we know nothing about when and how successfully they operated:

• Two of the three banks in Warren.
• Both banks in Ravenna.
• One of the banks in Canton.
• The bank in Salem.
• The bank in Youngstown.
• The bank in Elysia.
• The bank in Ashtabula.
• The bank in Cuyahoga Falls.
• Ten of the twelve banks in Cleveland.

In terms of inductive evidence that is a slaughter. 

But there are further problems. There are two key unstated assumptions in this argument:

1. Population size is a good predictor for bank success.
2. Past success is a good predictor for future success.

The first is wrong on the observation, as spelled out in my dissertation, that a lot of the money in Ohio banking was from out-of-state, both financiers of the East Coast [RCK15, 244] as well as Europeans doing import/export business with the United States. In the 1830s, the United States was effectively a third-world country, running a huge trade deficit on its import of goods and export of raw and somewhat processed materials. Because these problems were common to all of the frontier states, the situation was the same in Michigan for example.

The second one seems like a reasonable slogan, but one could only have agreed to that assumption with respect to a bank if one was ignorant of the then-brewing storm regarding small bills in general (New Jersey and Maine in 1835 forbidding small bills, Virginia & Maryland & Pennsylvania purging small bills from their monetary system at the same time). Furthermore, the no-bank Democrats had just won dominance in the legislature of Ohio, they had been cool on charters for bank for a while now, and they had passed no charters in 1836 by the summer, pointing to the unused potential for capitalization in the existing charters [RCK15,234f]. Ohio was also pressuring its bank during the spring of 1836 with threats of taxation should they not strive to remove the small bills from circulation, with all $3 bills phased out by July 4, 1836. 

Perhaps even more importantly, President Andrew Jackson on July 11, 1836 had issued his famous specie circular via the Treasury, which eliminated local banknotes as method of payment for purchasing federal lands and insisted on hard specie. Professional cashiers left the frontier banks after this circular, unless their fianciers promised additional monetary support, as Henry Dwight of Massachusetts did to H.K. Sanger, who was cashier at the Bank of Michigan [RCK15,244].

Post Scriptum

It is not entirely clear when the Church leadership decided to go ahead with the plan for the Kirtland Safety Society. Oliver Cowdery was already traveling to New York to inquire into credit for printing plates in August of 1836. The revelation promising resolution to the financial plights (v5) that is now Doctrines & Covenants 111 was given in Salem, Massachusetts, August 6th, 1836. The letter that reports the decision was printed in the Messenger & Advocate in September 1836.  

Points that I did not make clear with reference to this argument in my dissertation include that the Kirtland Safety Society was anything but modest [RCK15, 250], and the number of Cleveland banks in the research by Coover on Ohio Banking Institutions from 1913, on which the observations were based, is twelve not eleven.

Argument Structures around the Kirtland Safety Society

While historians want to be both educated and corrected by their sources, it is often difficult to pin down that that exactly means. In the following, I want to look at a few examples of how this plays out in the case of the economic history of the Kirtland Safety Society (this is Chapter 10 in my dissertation).

The backbone of course is the chronology. Many narratives already fall apart due to not aligning with the basic chronology of the matter. Of course the selection of what elements to include in the chronology brings us back to the problem of enplotment.

It is important to realize that a chronology is not a sequence of dates, but a sequence of dated events. The distinction is crucial, because dates are just chronometric units, while events have actors and properties and are enmeshed in a event sequence, as well as a geometric positioning. The chronometric units have a canonical order, but it is independent of all semantic contents---which is precisely what makes them units.

Perhaps it is best to first to tease apart the pieces that can go into a historical argument. For an intentional action, we have to presuppose some kind of script, that is, a codification of the "usual" way to do this. This would be the usual way from the point of view of the contemporaries, of course, not from the point of view of the historian. 

The "usual way" is typically distilled in some form from another event that has a similar structure. As Eduard Meyer pointed out (1912) [cited in the dissertation], it is this compare-and-contrast operation that is at the root of the historical research effort for distinguishing the common from the unusual. In the Kirtland case, I used the Owl Creek Bank, which did occur in Ohio about two decades before the Mormon arrival, as well as the Old Bank of Michigan, in which Joseph Smith~Jr's uncle Stephen Mack had participated. In the end it was the cross-comparison between these three instances that provided the fodder for the historical reconstruction.

These three elements were underpinned on the one hand by a history of banking in Ohio, mainly a sequence of state legislature actions and bank foundations (which had to be chartered by the legislature), and a history of the more global economic settings both in Ohio proper and in the US. This was the place for wealthy East Coast magnates and European importers, mainly from England, that had a strong influence on the money supply. This was also the place for Jacksonian interventionism at the national level and the ins and outs of the federal land sale that had such an impact on the monetary supply. All of these lines had their own event sequence with its own "arc" so to speak, mostly expressed as supporting or blocking specific aspirations on the legislative side and injecting or removing money on the financiers' side. 

The final element was the chronology of the creation and dissolution of the Kirtland safety (anti-)banking society itself. The comparison with the other banking charters in Ohio as well as with the Owl Creek Bank highlighted the inversion of the order of steps (charter last) as well as the enormous leverage that had been prototypical of other bank failures in the past and would eventually be outlawed in 1839 by the legislature, requiring 1:3 at the most.

For all of these elements, the observation of the overdetermined asymmetry of causation was in effect. For example, only a small fraction of the notes issued by the Kirtland society survived, supporting reconstructive efforts such as simulations how many bills of which type might have been issued. Also, the stock subscription book survived, allowing to determine which families of the Mormon elite had taken out the most stock and subscribed how much of their money. Some newspaper editorials and similar statements survived, but many other actions and their direct and indirect effects remain inaccessible, lost to time.

Some Birthday Stories

Consider this story template to generate yes/no questions:

On May 12, [2020//1930/1890], [Emma/Charles] celebrated their [10th/20th/40th/80th] birthday in London. When their sibling [Charles/Emma] ate the [cake/pony/Faberge egg/iPhone], the birthday child cried. Does that surprise you?

Stories are surprising when the mix of ingredients does not go together. Some of these incongruencies would be temporal: An iPhone in 1930 (or a dodo bird at any of the offered points in time, having become extinct in the 16th century already). 

Some of these incongruencies would be structural: eating a pony or a Faberge egg is hard work and could not be accomplished quickly. 

Some of these would be social conventions surrounding emotions: a 40-year old man in 1890 London, that is Victorian society, would be expected not to cry over the loss of a birthday present, but a 40-year old woman may well be expected to. 

Some of these might be unusual but acceptable: though a Faberge egg cannot be eaten (despite what it name seems to imply to a noun tagger), it is also an odd present for a 10-year old (possibly excepting upper aristocracy). Eventually, as the age of the celebrated person increases, the presence of a sibling itself becomes unlikely without additional information.

Meandering and the Asymmetry of Overdetermination

The meandering nature of historiographical reconstruction has occurred to anyone who has worked in that field at all. One starts out at a general topic, such as the sources of a historical painting or the origins of Mendelian experimentation, and finds oneself, a couple of units of effort later, in the middle of contemplating the household receipts and textual editions (not to mention X-rays of the painting under consideration) or computing the total number of pea plants that the Moravian monetary garden (plus glass house) might have held or the names and origin of Mendel's four assistants (mostly lay brothers).

How did one get there?

Perhaps the most straightforward suggestion is afforded by David Lewis and his observation on the asymmetry of overdetermination of actual worlds (1973). The observation here is the plurality of traces that causal events leave and the point is to allow the philosopher by comparison to establish the causal relationship with respect to the effects. 

At issue is not the correctness of Lewis' observation per se but the proposal that actions in the real world that are causal leave a plurality of traces that extend into the historical record in a bewildering variety of ways. (The image of ripples on a pond is usually exercised at this point in the discussion.) All the same, time is the great destroyer and as the spans increase and other ripples chase across the pond, the traces become effaced. The artist's studio has disappeared, and so have his tools, materials and assistants; the Mendelian fields and glasshouse, should they have survived at all, were preserved only due to the conservative nature of the institution where he experimented. The historian is thus faced with "temporal cluster bombing" that works counter to the very tracing of the effect chains the historian wishes to undertake. At the same time, if the event was "big" enough (the extinction of the dinosaurs by meteorite comes to mind) the large number of traces prevents the erasure of every single detail---too much shocked quartz, too much iridium, too little volcanic activity in the Deccan traps.

My mother still remembers where she was and what she was doing the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, even though she was then an Austrian teen. It would be difficult to erase all traces, to spill damnatio memoriae on all the causal lines, that reverberated through the global village of modern media when that US president died. Diaries, letters, mementos, not to mention an avalanche of conspiracy theories all take their origin in that event. 

It is this situation that is both the possibility of performing historiographical research over the ages and the impossibility of focusing the ontology of investigation up front, as the lack of readier-made traces and the ability to decide between competing interpretations will push the historian farther and farther down the causal chain to refute some of the interpretations (and herein lies the underdetermination of historical reconstruction, as Tucker pointed out) and strengthen the others (where the notion of strengthening may be related to Lewis' similarity metric, a point that needs further analysis). Here Lewis' points of world become relevant again. 

The Hanse in London

The Hanse operated the so-called Stalhof (the Steelyard) in London in the 15th and 16th century.
In addition to the information on Wikipedia, linked above, there is also a talk on Project Gutenberg, by Reinhold Pauli, on the Hansische Stahlhof in London, held in Bonn on March 11th, 1856, but published in a newspaper in Bremen.

Contextual Interpretation

I am trying to put together lists of examples that show why munging together large amounts of textual data can often run afoul of tricks and traps that do not assist in historical analysis, or perhaps other digital humanities as well.

• Shifts in the Meaning of Words 
• "mother-in-law" in Pride and Prejudice actually means the stepmother (Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction, p.53)
• "making love" means for a man to be talking with an unmarried woman in Victorian England (e.g. Ginger Susan Frost, Promises Broken: Courtship, Class, and Gender in Victorian England, 1995, p69) with the intent of espousing her

• Humorous/Insulting/Derogatory uses of Words
• "nunnery" in Hamlet means a brothel in Elizabethan slang
• "bitch" in rap music

These specific cases are instances of the discourse being not identified properly, e.g. in its mode or in its temporal delineation. But there are more detailed comments we can make about the discursive nature and the context of statements give a suitable example.

James Fenimore Cooper on Steamboats colliding with Folklore

This would have made a nice footnote in the book, though of course it is a narrative one and not a historical source in the strict sense of the word.

Hugh C. MacDougall, who edited the Gutenberg copy of The Lake Gun,  the short story where the following paragraph appears in, dates the story to 1850, gives it a decidedly political context, and points to a visit of Cooper in Geneva College (now Hobart College) on Lake Seneca sometime between 1840-1844, when Cooper's son Paul was studying there, as the origin of the "local knowledge" such as it is.

"I haven't seen that ere crittur now"—Peter always spoke of the tree as if it had animal life—"these three years. We think he doesn't like the steamboats. The very last time I seed the old chap he was a-goin' up afore a smart norwester, and we was a-comin' down with the wind in our teeth, when I made out the 'Jew,' about a mile, or, at most, a mile and a half ahead of us, and right in our track. I remember that I said to myself, says I, 'Old fellow, we'll get a sight of your countenance this time.' I suppose you know, sir, that the 'Jew' has a face just like a human?"

"I did not know that; but what became of the tree?"

"Tree," answered Peter, shaking his head, "why, can't we cut a tree down in the woods, saw it and carve it as we will, and make it last a hundred years? What become of the tree, sir;—why, as soon as the 'Jew' saw we was a-comin' so straight upon him, what does the old chap do but shift his helm, and make for the west shore. You never seed a steamer leave sich a wake, or make sich time. If he went half a knot, he went twenty!"

Two ideas that I find curious here are that the novelty of the steamboats, which rubs oddly with this American form of the legend of the "Wandering Jew", is expressed narratively as a form of resistance to be encountered. Nevertheless, when encountered, the supernatural remains superior, going faster than the engine-powered boat.

Explanation in the Golden Bough

In describing the Arician Grove, Frazer writes--all quotes from the two-volume Golden Bough (Vol 1, Vol 2) edition of 1894:

Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier. 

This strange rule has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. (GB-1894, v1, p.2) 

And then Frazer goes on to spell out what his concept of explanation is.

It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity, then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. (p.3)

Frazer assumes a structural equivalence across the human race for the "first crude philosophy of life", which is the origin of the "custom" we wish to explain. This assumption allows us to go wide and search other times and places (i.e. "elsewhere") and discover the structural similarities of the customs practiced in other places and at other times. Frazer sees the customs or "institutions" as responses to "motives".  [RCK: it is quite possible that Frazer does not distinguish between institutions and customs much, as one of the meanings of the Latin word "institutiones" is "custom", e.g. Cicero, Attic Nights.]

Thus if the motives so isolated led to comparable customs and institutions across time and space, and these motives can be shown to be present in classical antiquity, it is probable to assume that they led to similar outcomes, i.e. "the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi".

In order to understand the Frazerian notion of motives, we need to look to this Paragraph 2 (pp.7-), titled Primitive Man and the Supernatural, where Frazer expounds his theory of the relationship between primitive man, the supernatural and causality, especially with reference to the task of influencing the agricultural necessities of rain and sunshine (cf. (p.13) below).

A savage hardly conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the natural and the supernatural. To him the world is mostly worked by supernatural agents, that is, by personal beings || acting on impulses and motives like his own, liable like him to be moved by appeals to their pity, their fears and their hopes. In a world so conceived he sees no limit to his power of influencing the course of nature to his own advantage ... [his tools being, RCK] prayers, promises, or threats [which, RCK] may secure him fine weather and an abundant crop from the gods .... (pp.8-9)

In the limit, this similarity ends in the notion of incarnation:

... and if a good should happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in his own person, then he need appeal to no higher power; he, the savage, possesses in himself all the supernatural powers necessary to further his own well-being and that of his fellow man. (p.9)

But this is not the sum-total of Frazer's conceptual tools; for side-by-side with it is that precursor, the "germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency" (p.9), as Frazer sees it, namely sympathetic magic.

One of the principles of sympathetic magic is that any effect may be produced by imitating it. (p.9)

To choose two agricultural examples that Frazer cites.

In Thüringen the man who sows flax carries the seed, in a long bag which reaches from his shoulders to his knees, and he walks with long strides, so that the bag sways to and fro on his back. It is believed that this will cause the flax crop to wave in the wind. (p.10)

In the interior of Sumatra the rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks. (p.10)

These illustrations also provide the general pattern of explanation that Frazer has in mind. The activity alludes via symbolism to a property of the object under consideration, and understanding the example means understanding the relationship between the activity and the intended property.

But Frazer is quite right that this use of symbolism in sympathetic magic is fundamentally instrumental; it is not itself pointing to a separate agency.

Thus we see that in sympathetic magic one event is supposed to be followed necessarily and invariably by another, without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency. This is, in fact, the modern conception of physical causation; the conception, indeed, is misapplied, but it is there none the less [sic RCK]. Here, then, we have another mode in which primitive man seeks to bend nature to his wishes. (p.12)

This also elucidates that Frazer considers the motives to be primarily influence over social--e.g. enemies; cf (pp.11f)---and especially natural phenomena:

 Of all natural phenomena there are perhaps none which civilised man feels himself more powerless to influence than the rain, the sun, and the wind. Yet all these are commonly supposed by savages to be in some degree under their control. (p.13)

Frazer of course knows his examples too well to make the mistake of drawing the lines too clearly between sympathetic magic and supernatural agency (p.12), and will comment on this problem when looking at specific examples:

The Fountain of Baranton ... in the forest of Brecilien, used to be resorted to by peasants when they needed rain; they caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it on a slab near the spring [i.e. sympathetic magic]. (p.15)

In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the rain-making god [i.e. supernatural agency RCK];  and in time of drought his priests carried the stone in procession, and dipped it in a stream. (p.14)

There is a lonely tarn on Snowdon called Dulyn or the Black Lake, lying "in a dismal dingle surrounded by high and dangerous rocks." A row of stepping stones runs out into the lake; and if any one steps on the stones and throws water so as to wet the farthest stone, which is called the Red Altar, "it is but a chance that you do not get rain before night, even when it is hot weather." In these cases it is probable that, as in Samoa, the stone is regarded as in some sort divine. (p.15)

In Navarre the image of St Peter was taken to a river, where some prayed for him to rain, but others called out to duck him in the water. Here the dipping in || the water is used as a threat; but originally it was probably a sympathetic charm .... (pp.15f)

Thus, explanation needs not only pay attention to the action as such, but also to the intended form of influence being exerted: is there a supernatural agency involved, which is threatened, propitiated, or merely leveraged---compare the New Caledonian ancestor represented through a dug-up skeleton, who functions as a conduit to the sky, i.e. "They [the New Caledonian rain makers, RCK] supposed that the soul of the departed took up the water, made rain of it, and showered it down again." (p.16)
Or is a non-agentive entity leveraged as part of the symbolism. The Servian girl turned into the Dodola--a fertility goddess dressed in grass, herbs and flowers only--does not herself become divine in the process (p.16), though she represents the "spirit of vegetation" and the drenching with water is imitative of rain. In a lurch, a passing stranger will do as a visiting god or spirit (p.17) and be treated as such (p.16).

The problem of explanation remains that not all aspects of a ceremony may be elucidated in this fashion in all cases. Consider the scenario of the floating harrow.

In the district of Transylvania, when the ground is parched with drought, some girls strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across the field to a brook, where they set it afloat. Next they sit on the harrow and keep a tiny flame burning on each corner of it for an hour. Then they leave the harrow in the water and go home. (p.17)

We already have some of the infrastructure to suggest pieces for the interpretation. Naked women symbolize spirits, and the cultural implement put into the water expresses the need of the parched ground for rain. However, it is unclear what the flames burning on the corners (they have to be tiny because the harrow is most likely wooden) and the hour of floating in the brook is supposed to accomplish. Is the carrying of the harrow over the field from the to the brook part of the ritual or part of the description? Is the age difference between the leadership and the performers ritually relevant (wisdom vs fertility) or pragmatic (someone needs to know what to do, but is too old to do it themselves)? Thus, there are different levels of matching quality that need to be kept in mind. (The rainmaking ceremony of the Diyerie of South Australia, with its bleeding and large stones and putting the stones into the trees fifteen miles or more away is another case with oddities; cf. (p.20).)

Sometimes even the experts cannot agree.

A peculiar mode of making rain was adopted by the heathen Arabs. They tied two sorts of bushes to the tails and hind-legs of their cattle, and setting fire to the bushes drove the cattle to the top of a mountain, praying for rain. This may be, as Wellhausen suggests, an imitation of lightning on the horizon. But it may also be a way of threatening the sky .... (p.20) 

Frazer gives the example of West-African rain-makers threatening the sky with fire (p.20).

Keeping tabs on Frazer

I have begun putting together the bits and pieces for my next research undertaking. I want to see if the inductive argument in Sir Frazer's Golden Bough (Vol 1, Vol 2 from 1894) is plausible.

Specifically, we want to verify Frazer's argument by encoding all of the ethnographic literature that he piles up and then seeing

• if the model selection algorithm that he uses can find the argument that he makes from the cases that he presents (internal validity)
• if the model selection algorithm that he uses finds other arguments as well, using the same case material (internal decisiveness)
• in the case of model ambiguity, whether Frazer selected the best model, most likely in the minimal-message reformulated sense of Ockham's Razor (internal conciseness)

More on what we mean by model selection in a future post.

This is distinct from showing that Frazer's argument is consistent with current or even past research agendas (communal validity). In fact, few today will share his assumptions about the uniformity of religious belief of an Aryan Race, which entails

... every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by reference to them. (Preface, p.viii, ed. 1894)

Frazer himself uses this stance to downplay the reports in the old literature vis-a-vis the cultural context in which the non-literate peasantry has been reared.

... and so it has come about that in Europe at the present day the superstitious beliefs and practices which have been handed | down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race. (p.viiif)

The idea for the title so far has been "The Logic of Sympathetic Magic: Taking a Leaf from Frazer's Golden Bough". I think it's funny, too.

William Heth Whitsitt's Sidney Rigdon MS, (Part 1)

William Heth Whitsitt's Sidney Rigdon MS, (Part 1) a long paper on how Rigdon must be the author of the Book of Mormon, based on the alignment with Disciple theology, by a Southern Baptist theologian.

I ended up not using this in my book.

Carson and the Pseudo-Archeologists

Presidential candidate Ben Carson made use of his Seventh-Day Adventist convictions to interpret the Pyramids as grain silos, provoking reactions from many archeologists, such as Kristina Killgrove, who pointed out not only various issues with the claim but also to general recent efforts in combating pseudo-archeology in the first place. The most interesting of these are the initiative to review pseudo-archeological work in archeological reviews and the link to a Fall 2015 university course on that problem.

My take-home quote for right now is

In the second review, The Ancient Alien Question, archaeologist Jeb Card points out, as does Feder, that the origins of this idea lay in Victorian mysticism and Theosophy, a movement that “blended hermetic magic, spiritualism, Western curiosity ab[o]ut Eastern religion, colonial racism, and misconceptions of evolution into a worldview of root races, lost continents, and ascended masters who originated on Venus or other worlds.

A New York geography for the BoM

An old friend of mine, specialist in Indian languages, pointed me to this map comparison from a book by Verne Holley,  unfortunately out of print, which suggests that Joseph Smith Jr tried to write the local history during the American Antiquities of the area he grew up in.

The alignment of the names is quite fascinating; I suspect that Joseph Smith Jr must have felt like a linguistics scholar when decoding how the names had changed over time.

"Uncle" Dean Broadhurst now hosts the third edition of Holley's work from 1998, where the Spalding manuscript theory is used as the basis of the discussion that Holley pursues.

Mildenberger über Heilsgeschichte

Mildenberger emphasizes that the term itself is of 19th century origin (Erlanger Theologican J. Ch. K. v. Hofmann), even if pietistic Biblizism in the style of J.A. Bengel and F.Ch. Oetinger as well as the Federationtheology of the 16th century prefigure the notion (sp.1584).

Mildenberger notes that the premise to such thinking is accepting all of history as one reality, which only begins to take place in the 2nd half of the 18th century (sp.1584). Here, Heilsgeschichte effectively replaces metaphysics for dogmatics (sp.1584) and has to find a profile in comparison to world history.

Already in Hofmann's work the curious move, that Salvation History has existence independent of any knowing subject surfaces here (p.1585). Key criticisms of this position are Bultmann [presumably Geschichte und Eschatologie?, 1955?] and O. Cullmann's Heil als Geschichte, 1965.

Salvation history finds use in conservative positions that insist on the verbal inspiration of the Biblical writings, coupled with a modern notion of history, which is then intended to counter the historical critical reconstructions of the Biblical narratives.

Hier ist die mehr oder weniger streng gefaßte Vorstellung der Verbalinspiration mit einem modernen Verständnis geschichtlicher Tatsächlichkeit verknüpft. (sp.1585)

 However, Mildenberger indicates the problems that this approach has.

Heilsgeschichte als Systematisierung des biblischen Erzählens von Gottes Handeln erweist sich ## darin als problematisch, daß sie die biblischen Erzählungen in einen diesen fremden Zusammenhang einer einzigen Geschichte bringen will. Dabei kommt ein dem biblischen Reden fremder Begriff von Tatsächlichkeit und zeitlicher Kontinuität ins Spiel, der die biblischen Erzählungen auf einen hinter diesen liegenden Tatsachenzusammenhang hin befragt. ... dieser konstruierte Tatsachenzusammenhang (soll dann, RCK) als Heilsgeschichte die objektive Grundlage des Glaubens sein.  Die moderne Geschichtskonstruktion tritt an die Stelle des biblischen Redens, wo auch die einzelnen Inhalte der biblischen Erzählung entnommen sind. (sp.1586)

No approach of Salvation History can escape the assumption that history can be interpreted at all as such a unified process (sp.1586).

Die Bestimmung der Gesamtwirklichkeit als Heilsgeschichte setzt voraus, daß Geschichte überhaupt als sinnvoller zielgerichteter Gesamtzusammenhang erfasßt werden kann. Das ist aber ein keineswegs selbstverständliches Wirklichkeitsverständnis. (sp.1586)

Mildenberger proposes to drop the use of the term altogether (sp.1586).

Bibliographie

Friedrich Mildenberger, Art. Heilsgeschichte, RGG4, Band 3, sp.1584-1586.

• O. Cullmann, Heil als Geschichte, 1965.
• R. Bultmann, Geschichte und Eschatologie, 1955?
• Karl Löwith, Meaning in History, 1949 (= Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 1953).
• R. Koselleck, Art Geschichte, V-VII, GGB2, 647-717.

Dr Julius von Schlosser online

Austrian Julius Ritter von Schlosser (1866-1938) was in charge of the k.u.k. kunsthistorische Hofmuseum, and as such well versed in Art History. He published an important set of art historical documents and studies, many of which are now available on the Internet archive.

• Die abendländische Klosteranlage des früheren Mittelalters, 1889.
• Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der Karolingischen Kunst, 1892 (first alternate, second alternate).
• Quellenbuch zur Kunstgeschichte des abendländischen Mittelalters. Ausgewählte Texte des vierten bis fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1896 (alternate).
• (with David Müller and David Kaufmann), Die Haggadah von Sarajewo. Eine spanisch-jüdische Handschrift des Mittelalters, 1898. (alternate)
• Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance : ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sammelwessens, 1908. (alternate)
• Lorenzo Ghiberti's [1387-1455] Denkwürdigkeiten (I commentarii) zum ersten Male nach der Handschrift der Biblioteca nazionale in Florenz vollständig hrsg. und erläutert, 1912.
• Die Wandgemälde aus Schloss Lichtenberg in Tirol, 1916.
• Carl Friedrich von Rumohr's Italienische Forschungen, 1920.
• Unsere Musikinstrumente: Eine Einführung in ihre Geschichte, 1922 (alternate).

Schlosser was also a fan and translator of Benedetto Croce, whose writings he translated with permission (see also the dedication in Italienische Forschungen of 1920 to Croce).

• Benedetto Croce, Goethe, 1920.
• Benedetto Croce, Dante's Dichtung, 1921.
• Benedetto Croce, Randbemerkungen eines Philosophen zum Ersten Weltkrieg 1914-1920, 1922.

After the death of Franz Wickhoff, Schlosser and Hermann took over the inventory of illuminated manuscripts of Austria; however, not all of the volumes are available online. The inventory is interesting however, since then Austria included Istria and Dalmatia.

• Franz Wickhoff (Hrsg), Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften in Österreich,
• Hans Tietz, Band II: Salzburg, 1905.

Consecration and Stewardship Revelations

In addition to D&C 42, the core revelation for the Law of Consecration and Stewardship,  there are other revelations relevant to stewardship and consecration.

• D&C 48 [received at Kirtland, Ohio, March 10, 1831] discusses the process of land procurement for the Saints, both around Kirtland and in the (yet undisclosed) Zion.
• D&C 51 [received at Thompson, Ohio, May 20, 1831] discusses the process by which Bishop Partridge is supposed to accommodate the newly arriving Eastern Saints.
• The organization by the Divine Laws is not optional, but necessary (vv.1f)
• Partridge is to appoint the "portions, every man equal according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs" (v.3).
• Partridge fills out a certificate for each portion, that designates that assigned as the man's inheritance, which he will lose if he "transgresses and is not accounted worthy by the voice of the church" (v.4).
• Consecrated stuff belongs to the work of the church, even if someone leaves; only their deed stays with them (v.5).
• All this shall happen without violating the laws of the land (v.6).

to be continued

The farmer's guide in hiring and stocking farms...

Arthur Young, premiere English agronomist, correspondent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on farming matters, wrote this book

The farmer's guide in hiring and stocking farms...

both for the gentleman farmer and for the husband man.

A most fascinating read.

Salvation History through Blood and Family Ties

It was with quite some shock that I realized that Joseph Smith Jr believed that he was a biological descendant of the Patriarchs through Ephraim. The stance of the LDS Church on this issue is expounded in a complicated article in the Ensign from 1991, written by Daniel H. Ludlow, editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Ludlow does a good job writing up the issue; the complexity hails from the fact that lots and lots of words have to be reworked to mean new things they never meant before, in order to make the theory come out. Of course, it is a modern day interpretation of what Joseph Smith Jr may or may not have meant, so we will have to recontextualize it afterwards.

Ludlow's Argument

Ludlow first tries to sort out the general terminology.

... for the literal seed of Abraham are the natural heirs to the remarkable promises given anciently to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

Terms like literal descendants of Abraham by birth, tribe of Israel, house of Israel, lineage, and Gentiles are sometimes confused, and some terms have a range of meanings, referring to different ideas in different contexts.

Ludow works with the equivalence of Abraham -- Hebrew; Isaac -- Israelite; Juda -- Jew. Ludow argues that via his other wives, Abraham had children other than Isaac: Ishmael, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Though the Midianites are thus literal seed of Abraham, they are not Israelites, much less Jews---though all Jews are Israelites and thus literal seed of Abraham.

In this context, Ludlow cites the Book of Abraham (3:14), a work whose translation from Egyptian papyri Joseph Smith Jr had begun in Kirtland in 1835 (the papyri have since been identified as funerary texts depicting Isis and Osiris). [On early criticism of the translation see Stenhouse's Rocky Mountain Saints, New York, 1873, who engaged an Egyptologist from the Louvre; and Franklin S. Spalding's Joseph Smith Jr as Translator,  New York, 1912, who received assistance from noted scholars like James H. Breasted or Flinders Petrie. See also Stephen E. Thompson on Egyptology and the Book of Mormon in Dialog 1995, pp.143ff.]

Ludlow emphasizes that lineages, esp. in patriarchical blessing, indicate blood lines, and are important for the privilege they convey, that is, "special promises and blessings attendant thereto". Thus it is important for patriarchical blessings that their lineage identifications "are not simply tribal identifications by assignment."

Ludlow then gives a long list of scriptural passages, OT and NT, which speak of the importance of lineage. Interestingly, of all of St Paul's letter to the Romans, the only passage cited is the one that insists on the preeminence of the Jews with respect to the Gentiles,  but not the elimination of that distinction in Christ.  This approach to inheritance goes counter to much of the arguments that St. Paul makes, whose insistence that neither Greek nor Jew, that is, neither Gentile nor Israelite matters for the story of salvation he is expounding. It is often claimed that Joseph Smith Jr is, like many Protestant reformators, inspired by Paul; but in this familial focus Smith Jr clearly is not. (I owe this point to Rahel Kahlert.)

Oddly, Ludlow lists Galatians (3:14), which clearly says that "That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ", not through the descent of blood. The baptism into Christ makes one partake of Abraham's seed, says Paul (3:26-29): "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

In the Book of Mormon, the following passages are considered relevant by Ludlow:

• 1 Nephi: 1 Ne. 22:1–28.
• 2 Nephi: 2 Ne. 6:5–18; 2 Ne. 9:1–3; 2 Ne. 30:1–8.
• Jacob: Jacob 5:1–77; Jacob 6:1–4.
• Helaman: Hel. 15:1–17.
• Mormon: Morm. 7:10.

A look at Doctrines and Covenants shows that the development of this interest belongs in the Kirtland period, as the topic begins with D&C 45.

• D&C 45:24–25
• D&C 58:45
• D&C 86:8–9*
• D&C 90:8–11*
• D&C 96:7;
• D&C 109:57–67 (D&C 109:57–58, 60, 67*)
• D&C 110:11–12
• D&C 113:7–8
• D&C 132:30

There is also a quote from the Mt-Retranslation that Joseph Smith Jr and Sidney Rigdon pursued in 1831 in Kirtland, Ohio.

• JS Mt Translation (JSTP Mt) of Mt 23:39-24

The problem remains that even passages like the Book of Abraham, 2:9-11, which hails from 1835, have a very non-blood interpretation. It is difficult to suss out the direction that a statement like

in thy seed after thee (that is to say, the literal seed, or the seed of the body) shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even with the blessings of the Gospel

is supposed to be read in. In a sense, it inverts St Paul in Galatians, where by the acceptance of the Gospel, and baptism into Christ, all are made to Abraham's seed. Clearly it is Abraham's literal seed that makes this possible. 

Ludlow then "interviews" Church presidents and authorities to give more understanding. 

Apparently, President Joseph Smith Fielding felt that those that had joined the Church in the present days had a mix of Gentile and Israelite blood in their lineage. In this way, the Church is gathering the House of Israel.

The great majority of those who become members of the Church are literal descendants of Abraham through Ephraim, son of Joseph. 

President Spencer W. Kimball wrote

The Lamanite is a chosen child of God, but he is not the only chosen one. There are many other good people including the Anglos, the French, the German, and the English, who are also of Ephraim and Manasseh. They, with the Lamanites, are also chosen people, and they are a remnant of Jacob. 

This all could be read in a spiritual vein as well, in the sense of Galatians 3, but Brigham Young's talk of veins makes that impossible.

Will we go to the Gentile nations to preach the Gospel? Yes, and gather out the Israelites, wherever they are mixed among the nations of the earth. … Ephraim has become mixed with all the nations of the earth, and it is Ephraim that is gathering together. …

If there are any of the other tribes of Israel mixed with the Gentiles we are also searching for them. … We want the blood of Jacob, and that of his father Isaac and Abraham, which runs in the veins of the people. …

Crucially, Brigham Young notes in the same discourse,

The Book of Mormon came to Ephraim, for Joseph Smith was a pure Ephraimite, and the Book of Mormon was revealed to him.

Since it is crystal clear that Joseph Smith was from New England stock hailing from Old England, this is a rather surprising statement, and Ludlow turns to this point next.
Again, President Joseph Smith Fielding explains

In this Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, the gospel came first to the Gentiles and then is to go to the Jews. However, the Gentiles who receive the gospel are, in the greater part, Gentiles who have the blood of Israel in their veins. There is a very significant statement in the words of Moroni as recorded on the title page of the Book of Mormon that it was ”[Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and his up unto the Lord, … ‘To come forth … [in due time] by way of the Gentile. …’

But in the title face of the Book of Mormon,  it says

Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile.

Thus, the issue of being of the house of Israel while being a Gentile is not really addressed here. This makes it doubtful that in April of 1829, Joseph Smith Jr had already decided that he was a descendant of Joseph.

The main argument for that is the 2 Neph 3, which says, as President Joseph Smith Fielding reminds the reader in the passage quoted by Ludlow, that

“How did the Book of Mormon come forth? By the hand of Joseph Smith. Yet we read in the Book of Mormon [see 2 Ne. 3:7–15; 2 Neph 2, p.67 in BoM 1830] that Joseph Smith is the descendant of Joseph who was sold into Egypt by his brethren, ....

What makes all of this so confusing is that the LDS leadership holds on to the Romans story of the Olive Tree (filtered through Jacob 5, which is expanded to fit in the fall of the Lamnites and the Nephites), and admits of the possibility of joining through faith. As Joseph Smith Fielding said:

Those who are not literal descendants of Abraham and Israel must become such, and when they are baptized and confirmed they are grafted into the tree and are entitled to all the rights and privileges as heirs.

But what then is the necessity of the mixed blood assumptions that are applied to the majority of the Saints?

The great majority of those who become members of the Church are literal descendants of Abraham through Ephraim, son of Joseph.

On top of that, they in some sense deny the "special" nature of the natural descendants, because it is the obedience to the commandments and the faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that are decisive; whoever lapses here, cannot use their lineage to inherit (1 Neph 17:35; Rom 9:6). The big difference, according to Ludlow, is that Ephraim is responsible for performing the work of the Restoration and for directing it. Again, President Joseph Smith Fielding states

The members of the Church, most of us of the tribe of Ephraim, are of the remnant of Jacob. We know it to be the fact that the Lord called upon the descendants of Ephraim to commence his work in the earth in these last days. We know further that he has said that he set Ephraim, according to the promises of his birthright, at the head. Ephraim receives the ‘richer blessings,’ these blessings being those of presidency or direction. The keys are with Ephraim. It is Ephraim who is to be endowed with power to bless and give to the other tribes, including the Lamanites, their blessings.

(The allusion of the "richer blessing" here is to KJV Gen 48:19f.)

Discussion

Clearly there are all sorts of problems here. 

One issue that was already bothering the Jewish interpreters of the story of Joseph was the fact that Ephraim and Menasseh as sons of Asanet, an Egyptian girl whose father was the priest Potifera, could not have been Jewish. This has to do with the fact that the Jewish interpreters were projecting the laws of Ezra and Nehemia, that Jews have Jewish moms, back into Patriarchical times (cf. Karin Hügel, in her queer readings of Joseph, p.92, makes). Thus Joseph is made to marry an adopted niece of his to bring forth Ephraim and Menasseh.

Die Israelit_in Dina, eine Halbschwester Josefs, wäre die Tocher Jakobs und Leas, hätte also eine andere Mutter als Josef, und Sichem, der Sohn eines Hiwiters, käme aus einem kanaanäischen Stamm. Asenat wäre also Josefs Nichte gewesen.

[The Israelite Dina, a half-sister of Joseph, would be the Daughter of Jacob and Leah, thus had a different Mother than Joseph, and Sichen, the Son of a Hiwite, would come from a canaanite tribe. Asenat would have been Joseph's niece, then. translation RCK]

The biggest issue remains why it was not sufficient to be counted among the seed through the Gospel; perhaps it was not sufficient to be non-Israel in that sense?

 

May 1837 complaint against Frederick G. Williams

In the First Minute Book, p.226, there is an interesting complaint against Frederick G. Williams and several other members of the church leadership from May of 1837, when the banking crisis was hitting the US hard.