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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #194 - Pious Fraud, Nehemia and Dan Vogel discuss a shared concept in early Mormonism and rabbinical Judaism about lying for the Lord, what biblical studies can learn from Mormon history, and the dangers of the “idealist” fallacy.

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Nehemia: And for me, the takeaway from early Mormon history, what my whole interest in this really has developed into is, we’ve got to be really careful making the types of arguments we’ve been making, because we have this case of early Mormonism where there are these evolutions of ideas within, like you said, the same month the book came out, he’s saying the opposite in what later becomes Doctrine and Covenants.

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Nehemia: I’m back with Dan Vogel, the greatest living historian of early Mormon history, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating there, at least that’s my view on it. So, I want to respect people who are coming from a devout perspective, but I also want to hear what the truth is, and then I want to think about how this applies to other situations. For me, that’s the bottom line. How can I apply this?

And I want to I want to tell you one of the things, Dan, that I take away from this. We have all these ideas in biblical studies, Old Testament and New Testament, that are completely undermined by what happened in Mormonism. And I’ll just give you an example. I have no doubt whatsoever that Joseph Smith Jr. wrote the Book of Mormon, that he created it out of his own imagination, and that the Doctrine and Covenants were created out of his own imagination.

Yet they sound like they were raised by two different authors. One of them is… I mean, we started, and we didn’t get to it… before the discussion about what it means “eternal damnation”. Eternal damnation on its face in the Book of Mormon means, if you don’t have the right beliefs and do the right things, you’re going to hell for eternity. But then in Doctrine and Covenants, he explains, “No, it means you’re going to be punished by the Eternal One, by God, and eventually end up in some kind of heaven.” So, how could that be the same author? But it is.

Dan: And so soon.

Nehemia: Yeah… within a few years, he’s… within a year, even, he’s giving a different story…

Dan: The revelation you just quoted…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: …is given the very month the book comes off the press.

Nehemia: That’s amazing! So, now when I look at a document and I say, “Oh, this was …” and this is a real example.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: I say, “Well, how could this have been written by Maimonides in the 12th century, because Maimonides in his Systematic Theology says X, Y, Z, and you realize, well, okay, even though he was a systematic theologian, he’s also a human being, and in some context, he’s being systematic, and in other contexts he’s not.” And that’s really important for historical study of documents, not just the Bible, but for historical philology. We have this tendency… and I know you quote, and I want you to talk about this, there’s a concept you talk about here, a certain fallacy, I forget what it’s called, that people aren’t really consistent.

Dan: Right. The Idealist Fallacy.

Nehemia: The Idealist Fallacy. So, we employ…

Dan: The Idealist Fallacy is that you hold the ideal view of humans, and the ideal view of humans is that they’re always consistent. And so, you argue, “Well, Joe Smith couldn’t have said that because that contradicts what he said over here.” And you go, “Therefore, he didn’t mean that, he meant something else.” And then you tried to spin it and try to harmonize.

And my position is, well, that’s an apologetic position to demand that Joe Smith never contradict himself. “He’s always consistent.” And to use consistency as the rationale for your very difficult interpretation to accept… like with Masonry. How could he be anti-Masonic in the Book of Mormon and then join Masonry in Nauvoo? That’s contradiction, so therefore the Book of Mormon is not anti-Masonic.

Nehemia: Or it wasn’t written by Joseph Smith. That’s the other option, right?

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Maybe Sidney Rigdon was anti-Masonic, and he duped Joseph Smith, who actually… because that’s one of the claims, that not only is Joseph Smith a Mason, but he came from a Masonic family, right? Isn’t there a whole discussion about that?

Dan: His brother, we know, was a Mason.

Nehemia: So, if his brother was a Mason, that means, by implication, maybe he was a Mason. How could he be anti-Masonic in the Book of Mormon? And it seems like