{"id":4019,"date":"2007-08-10T01:14:33","date_gmt":"2007-08-10T05:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=4019"},"modified":"2008-08-22T15:47:42","modified_gmt":"2008-08-22T19:47:42","slug":"friends-in-strange-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2007\/08\/friends-in-strange-places\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends in Strange Places"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is surely one of the more unexpected voices to go to bat for Joseph Smith: Harold Bloom in his 1992 book The American Religion<\/a>, which gave serious (if unconventional) consideration to Joseph Smith’s role as a religious figure and which famously described him as a “religious genius.” As sort of a post-script, in the March 2007 issue of Sunstone<\/i> there was a two-page essay by Bloom entitled “Perspectivism and Joseph Smith<\/a>.” I can’t say I follow every remark in the essay, but I do appreciate his continued interest in Joseph Smith. Here are a few points Bloom makes in the essay. <\/p>\n

The more I brood on Joseph Smith, I become uncertain whether Mormon or “Gentile” perspectives can encompass him. Something is always missing, as he himself prophesied. We don’t know him.<\/i> I’d like to think we know him better after Rough Stone Rolling<\/i>, but I’m not sure that’s what Bloom is getting at. In any case, Bloom certainly thinks there is a lot more to the task of getting to know Joseph than most commentators allow.<\/p>\n

As an outsider, I wonder if the Mormons are not in danger of becoming just another American mainline Protestant denomination.<\/i> Somehow I think Bloom may be truly unique in this concern. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, of course, but if he’s right we’ll all be surprised, won’t we?<\/p>\n

Perhaps this essay should be retitled: “The disenchantment of Joseph Smith.” All enchantment–erotic, spritual, literary–depends upon partial or incomplete knowledge. I believe Joseph when he says we don’t know him; to me, it is the most important statement of his life. You can’t routinize Smith: the Mountain of Names, when it was shown to me, transcended any reaction I could summon.<\/i> Interesting response. Myself, I call it the Server Under the Mountain, and I usually think of Arthur C. Clarke’s story The Nine Billion Names of God<\/a> when it crosses my mind. Perhaps it was the link to temple work that made such an impression on Bloom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is surely one of the more unexpected voices to go to bat for Joseph Smith: Harold Bloom in his 1992 book The American Religion, which gave serious (if unconventional) consideration to Joseph Smith’s role as a religious figure and which famously described him as a “religious genius.” As sort of a post-script, in the March 2007 issue of Sunstone there was a two-page essay by Bloom entitled “Perspectivism and Joseph Smith.” I can’t say I follow every remark in the essay, but I do appreciate his continued interest in Joseph Smith. Here are a few points Bloom makes in the essay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}