Towards the end, however, there was a paragraph of interest:
When Smith produced the Book of Mormon, he did not sit down and carefully compose and revise his narratives the way most authors do. Adapting a practice from folk magic, he placed a seer stone in the bottom of an upturned hat, held his face to the hat to block out light, and then proceeded to dictate the Book of Mormon to a scribe, without reference to texts or notes. In approximately sixty working days, he completed the Book of Mormon – a work in excess of 500 printed pages – and did not return to revise the text, beyond minor adjustments (mostly spelling and punctuation). Yet, the work contains a highly complex and powerful narrative structure that remains internally cohesive. The significance of the work, in literary terms, is that the text of the Book of Mormon represents a first draft – one with little revision to Smith’s original stream of narrative creation. Few authors have ever attempted a comparable feat.I don't think I had heard before that the Book was dictated in such a peculiar way; or if I had, I had forgotten. My recent assumption was that Joseph Smith had written it in private, working with the gold plates in front of him. (Before they disappeared back into heaven, or whatever.)
So is there somewhere else to confirm this?
Well, the grandly named "Institute for Religious Research," an American Christian evangelical set up of unclear size which seems to devote much of its time to trying to convince Mormons to become mainstream Christians, appears to confirm it, with a drawing to illustrate:
But can I trust this Christian group in its account? Well, yes it seems I can, because a long article from the Journal of Mormon Studies at Brigham Young University acknowledges that much of it came this way:
During the translation process, the witnesses were able to observe, in an open setting, the following:Reading this reminded me of how the Quran is supposed to have been a recited, received text as well.
•Joseph Smith placing the interpreters (either the Urim and Thummim or the seer stone) in a hat and placing his face into the hat;
•Joseph dictating for long periods of time without reference to any books, papers, manuscripts, or even the plates themselves;
•Joseph spelling out unfamiliar Book of Mormon names;
•after each dictated sequence, the scribe reading back to Joseph what was written so that Joseph could check the correctness of the manuscript;
•Joseph starting a dictation session without prompting from the scribe about where the previous session had ended.
And this, I realised, explains why both books are incredibly dull to read.
Yeah, yeah, I know: the Quran is supposed to be like powerful poetry in its original Arabic and loses a lot in translation. (I have read Karen Armstrong's book Muhammad - A Biography of the Prophet recently, and that is how she explains it anyway. I must give a review of the book soon.) But as I have noted before on this blog, you can get great narrative stories in the Bible that can keep your interest; yet in comparison reading either the Quran or the Book of Mormon (in the short periods I have tried) is perfectly described as "chloroform in print," as Mark Twain said of the Mormon source.
Is it any wonder this is the case when they were both composed via lengthy dictation?
It's also somewhat amusing to realise that a modern, influential religion was derived, literally, from a man talking into his hat.
I wonder if parts of the Bible weren't conceived in a similar (oral) fashion. I'm not sure how much we are supposed to look at the various sayings and speeches of Christ in this manner, for instance, but certainly some evangelicals seem to insist that they are written exactly verbatim, as they happened.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the oral method necessarily leads to dullness. Of course, prior to the Enlightenment phenomenon of mass literacy, oral literature was very much the thing. Some people, you will observe, are extraordinarily good off-the-cuff speakers. And you may remember that story about St Augustine's surprise on seeing St Ambrose read from the Bible without even moving his lips: practices of reading and writing and recital can vary quite a lot over time.
As for the Gospels, I think it is fair to say there is an assumption that there was an oral tradition of sayings of Jesus for a while before they were put down in writing (perhaps not for all that long), but I don't think anyone thinks the bits around the original sayings have a sole person dictating the story style original.
ReplyDeleteThe point of my post is really that editing and revising makes for much better later reading...
Depends how good an off-the-cuff speaker is really.
ReplyDeleteYou could look at it as an example of improvised literature (plenty of other examples, see for example the modern example of improvised stand up comedians), or surrealist literature (one way of accessing the unconscious is to just write immediately what comes into your head; Paul Bowles used this method), or even spirit writing (W. B. Yeats once wrote got his wife to act as a 'medium' and he collected the results into a book.)
Anyway sounds like what Smith did was a combination of standard sermon-style, with the possible influence of early spiritualism thrown in.
(I wouldn't disagree with your interpretation of the Gospels btw).
I think a lot of people do offer a simplistic interpretation of the Gospels - you know, Christ says and does all this stuff, and then an Apostle diligently records it, and what we read in the Gospel is indeed... Gospel truth (ignoring all the problems about faulty memory, differing interpretations on Christ's actions, etc). I mean I assume a fundamentalist evanglical interpretation would tend to fall back on this.
ReplyDeleteThe diligent recording of Christ's sayings and speeches is interesting though - not only in all four gospels, and their quoting in various letters by the Apostles, but also in the Gospel of Thomas. It does seem to indicate a strong oral tradition and a powerful early wish to record these sayings and speeches.