{"id":44722,"date":"2023-05-12T11:20:22","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T18:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=44722"},"modified":"2023-06-02T10:46:04","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T17:46:04","slug":"sherlock-holmes-mormons-and-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2023\/05\/sherlock-holmes-mormons-and-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"Sherlock Holmes, “Mormons”, and Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The only other “And Philosophy” essay of mine that mentions the Church is in\u00a0Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy,\u00a0<\/em>though I don’t discuss the obvious thing: the second half of “A Study in Scarlet” where evil Mormons use Danites to terrorize women in marriages with lecherous older men (incidentally, when a young’un, I read a version of “A Study in Scarlet” that cut out the “Mormon” bits as unnecessary, and – at the time – I didn’t even notice they were missing; it wasn’t until much later in life I found out about the evil Mormon\/Danite section).
\n
\nRather, I mentioned (in passing) our Church as a group with a (theoretically) open canon of scripture, whereas Sherlock Holmes has a (basically) closed canon.<\/p>\n

Of course, even when a canon is \u201cclosed\u201d that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s totally determined; there are always those pesky soft edges.\u00a0 What to do with the two Doyle stories that appear in French editions of \u201cThe Complete Works\u201d but are omitted from English editions because it\u2019s not clear the \u201cwell known investigator\u201d mentioned (but otherwise nameless) in both tales is Sherlock?<\/p>\n

Or what about the several stories about Sherlock such as \u201cHow Watson Learned the Trick” – written by and published during Doyle\u2019s lifetime yet were never admitted to the \u201ccanon\u201d (to say nothing of the stories written by his son, which were intended to serve as new canon but were never accepted by the readers).<\/p>\n

Of course, things \u201coutside\u201d the canon influence our perceptions of canon.\u00a0 Holmes likely rarely wore a deerstalker cap, but actor William Gillette portrayed Holmes with one, so that\u2019s how we picture him now.<\/p>\n

However, think of our tradition.\u00a0 While we revere Joseph Smith, not everything he wrote or said is \u201ccanonized.\u201d\u00a0 Some sections of the D&C are smaller sections of longer letters or discourses.\u00a0 So, like how not all of Doyle\u2019s Sherlock writings are considered \u201ccanon\u201d, we have a similar issue, where not all writing attributed to an authoritative prophet are canon either.<\/p>\n

While one might say the big difference is that in Holmesian canon, the readers\/fans\/experts determine canon, whereas in our Church the leadership does.\u00a0 But the lines there are, of course, not so clearly defined.\u00a0 Many things became canon due to popularity, so that the leadership merely reflected popular will. On the other hand, there are times when leadership imposed canon on something, but it took a while to \u201ctake\u201d (so to speak) or not take amongst the laity.\u00a0 And these dynamics play out whether we\u2019re talking about the LDS tradition, Sherlock Holmes, or even Star Wars (after Disney bought it, Disney declared everything up to that point except the movies non-canon \u2013 but some things from the old canon were so popular they\u2019ve found their way back in despite that).<\/p>\n

And, to bring it back to the LDS connection and Holmes, the most fascinating of Holmesian \u201capocryphal\u201d texts is when Doyle, before Holmes proved popular, wrote a play in three acts called \u201cAngel of Darkness\u201d \u2013 starring Doctor Watson battling evil Mormon Danites in America and finding love along the way.\u00a0 While some Holmesian experts have tried to save the latter half of \u201cA Study in Scarlet\u201d (as it is clearly wildly exaggerated at best and outright false at worst) as either \u201ctrue in the Holmes universe\u201d or \u201cthe murder\u2019s self-serving lies as told to Watson who wouldn\u2019t know any better\u201d, no one tries to figure out how this play might fit into the canon.\u00a0 Like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, it\u2019s just too wildly contradictory to the rest of the accepted canon to work.<\/p>\n

Draw whatever lessons from all that you want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only other “And Philosophy” essay of mine that mentions the Church is in\u00a0Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy,\u00a0though I don’t discuss the obvious thing: the second half of “A Study in Scarlet” where evil Mormons use Danites to terrorize women in marriages with lecherous older men (incidentally, when a young’un, I read a version of “A Study in Scarlet” that cut out the “Mormon” bits as unnecessary, and – at the time – I didn’t even notice they were missing; it wasn’t until much later in life I found out about the evil Mormon\/Danite section).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44722","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\/10405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44722"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44931,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44722\/revisions\/44931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}