{"id":48071,"date":"2024-10-19T03:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-10-19T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=48071"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:48:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:48:40","slug":"some-admissions-of-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/10\/some-admissions-of-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Admissions of Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the markers of being the cool intellectual member is that you know where all the bodies are buried. I remember as a middle schooler cross-checking <\/span>The Godmaker<\/span><\/i>\u2019s <\/span>Journal of Discourses <\/span><\/i>references and feeling like I was the recipient of arcane, secret knowledge. Of course, now the Internet has shouted everything from the rooftops\u00a0 and most people knows about the big tough issues (e.g. pretty much all Latter-day Saints know about Joseph Smith\u2019s polygamy now<\/a>). But still, there are some more niche issues that are still primarily the purview of the more well-read class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And with the Internet it is becoming easier to become part of said class. While in the past you essentially had to have access to a university library to be well-read in Church issues, now primary sources abound on the Internet\u2013if you can filter out all the noise, at this point organization is the primary hindrance. To this end, I have found the BH Roberts Foundation\u2019s <\/span>Mormonr pages<\/span><\/a> very useful both in summarizing these issues and presenting scans of the actual primary sources involved so that I can read them for myself and make up my own mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[Full disclosure, I very occasionally do some work for the BH Roberts Foundation with their surveys, but they don\u2019t know that I\u2019m writing this].<\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve schlogged through these primary sources there are a number of \u201ctough issues\u201d that I realized I had misperceptions about since I only had a passing familiarity with them and never did a deep dive like I have for other \u201chard issues.\u201d So, in the spirit of humility, here is my list of misconceptions that were corrected. Some of them were in the direction of \u201cthis is worse than I thought,\u201d some of them were in the direction of \u201cthis wasn\u2019t as bad as I thought,\u201d and some of them weren\u2019t in any direction in particular.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Adam God Theory<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Before I thought Adam-God was an eccentric doctrinal hobby horse of Brigham Young<\/a> that was mentioned a few times. I since realized that It was more deeply incorporated into Church teachings (including in the St. George Temple) than I thought; it wasn\u2019t an occasional oddity in General Conference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One more thought on this; I know this is controversial, but we believe much more eccentric things (not that eccentric is bad or inaccurate) than Adam-God, we\u2019ve just gotten used to them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blood Atonement<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t know that Brigham Young distanced himself from Blood Atonement later in life, but by the same token I didn’t know that versions of it were taught into the 20th century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Changes to the Temple Endowment<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t know that in the 19th century the washings and anointings involved a lot more water and were done in tubs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kolob<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I wasn’t aware of the speculation that Sirius is Kolob.<\/span><\/p>\n

Teachings on Animal Spirits<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I learned what has become one of my favorite Joseph Smith quotes of all time: \u201c<\/span>I suppose John saw beings there, that had been saved from ten thousand times ten thousand earths like this, strange beasts of which we have no conception <all> might be seen in heaven.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Women and the Priesthood<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t know about Junia, the \u201cfemale apostle.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Black Saints and the Priesthood\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t know there were Black Branch Presidents pre-Revelation who didn’t hold the priesthood. Potentially interesting precedent in regards to the women\u2019s leadership question.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Black Saints and the Priesthood (Joseph Smith era)<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know that Elijah Abel was of predominantly European ancestry. In my mind\u2019s eye I always envisioned him as being primarily Black.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know that the \u201ccaught in the barn\u201d episode was a very late, third-hand account.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Joseph Smith and Fraud Allegations<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know there were so many contradictory accounts about the outcome of the glasslooker trial.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Joseph Smith\u2019s Pre-1830 Education<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I had accepted the line that Hyrum Smith briefly attended Dartmouth (not that I dove really deep into the subject), so it was interesting to see that wasn\u2019t actually the case.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Joseph Smith\u2019s Polygamy<\/a> and Multiple Accounts of the First Vision<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t learn anything substantive that was new, but I just thought I\u2019d call these articles out for their excellent use of summary tables. They provide a fairly definitive and easy to follow listing of various aspects of Joseph Smith\u2019s polygamy and multiple accounts of the first vision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Slavery in Utah<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Not to downplay the significance, but 1) there were fewer slaves in Utah than I thought, and 2) I assumed slavery in Utah was more or less the same as Southern slavery; I wasn\u2019t aware of the legal differences in terms of rights given to slaves. Again, this isn\u2019t to downplay this particular mark in our history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Latter-day Saints and Nazi Germany<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

The Church comes out better looking than I thought. I had this vague idea that the Church never condemned Nazism because they wanted to keep an even keel with the German governing authorities, but that’s incorrect, and there’s much more to be credited for in regards to the Church\u2019s behavior than I thought. Of course \u201cwhat did you do in WWII\u201d legacies can be complicated for religious leaders (e.g. see the controversy about Pope Pius). A pet peeve of mine is when people who have never had an off-diagonal, edgy, or unpredictable political opinion in their life insist that <\/span>they<\/span><\/i> would not have thought twice about giving the finger to the SS and being marched into the camps. On the other hand, I did not know that J. Rueben Clark was into <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/span><\/i>. (And I read Quinn\u2019s biography right after my mission, so I somehow missed that).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BH Roberts\u2019 Testimony<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Before I had this vague notion that there was a reasonable chance that BH Roberts was a non-historicist in regards to the Book of Mormon, but after reading through the sources I really don\u2019t think that\u2019s a defensible position.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the markers of being the cool intellectual member is that you know where all the bodies are buried. I remember as a middle schooler cross-checking The Godmaker\u2019s Journal of Discourses references and feeling like I was the recipient of arcane, secret knowledge. Of course, now the Internet has shouted everything from the rooftops\u00a0 and most people knows about the big tough issues (e.g. pretty much all Latter-day Saints know about Joseph Smith\u2019s polygamy now). But still, there are some more niche issues that are still primarily the purview of the more well-read class.\u00a0 And with the Internet it is becoming easier to become part of said class. While in the past you essentially had to have access to a university library to be well-read in Church issues, now primary sources abound on the Internet\u2013if you can filter out all the noise, at this point organization is the primary hindrance. To this end, I have found the BH Roberts Foundation\u2019s Mormonr pages very useful both in summarizing these issues and presenting scans of the actual primary sources involved so that I can read them for myself and make up my own mind.\u00a0 [Full disclosure, I very occasionally do some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48071","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\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48071"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53088,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48071\/revisions\/53088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}