Radio Free Mormon: 187: “Borrowed Robes”–The JST’s Reliance on the Adam Clarke Bible Commentary

Finally, “17 points of the true church” gets a much needed reboot! So glad you went into detail on the meat of the arguments, instead of skirting around them like some other podcasts. Thanks.

Funny that you mention Mormon Doctrine. Because that was a 20th century parallel to JST: another example where a Mormon prophet claims revelation, but they actually plagiarised a very famous Bible commentary (or commentaries). The Mormon Doctrine example is less well know, because BRM was not “THE prophet”, so could not publish his books as revelation, but that is implied: his authority is that he is an apostle, end of argument.

The best example of BRM’s plagiarism is probably his teachings on Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, and the age of the earth. These are foundational to all his teaching, not just to how he sees the gospel, but also to why he rejects science with such confidence. As you are know, BRMs views on the creation came from his father in law, who got them from well known Protestant commentaries on the creation and flood stories (Price’s The New Geology, Morris’s The Genesis Flood, etc.) But the teachings are presented as revelation, right down to the phrasing, hence plagiarism.

As you also no doubt know, until the 1920s, Mormonism officially had no view on evolution, and could even be seen as favourable toward it. The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion had an excellent paper on the topic – sorry, can’t find the reference now, but I found it in my university library back in 1988, so it’s before that date. The paper examined official statements on five doctrines, and showed that the average member believes the opposite of official church statements. One of the five topics was evolution. As late as the 1960s the Improvement Era published pro-evolution articles: But that changed when Joseph Fielding Smith became top guy. (I used to keep photocopies of such articles back when I tried to believe that the church was pro science.)

For the details of how JFS got his creationist views from Protestant books, see the Dialogue article “Mormonism and the New Creationism” by David H. Bailey. Sunstone in October 2004 covered similar material. Bailey draws particular attention to the argument “No Adam, no fall; no fall, no atonement; no atonement, no savior.” which so impressed JFS that variations of this argument appeared in his and Bruce’s writings. That is exhibit “A” for plagiarism.

Just as with Joseph Smith and the Adam Clarke commentary, it might at first seem that these similarities are coincidences: after all, a young Earth was a common belief, and the link between Adam and Jesus comes from Paul. But as with Smith and Clarke, when you see the number of parallels between JFS and those creationist books, and the fact that JFS changed Mormon belief after reading those books, it’s pretty clear that he got the ideas from the books and not from God. But then like a good plagiarist he does not credit the Protestants. but passed the ideas off as something he was just inspired to say.

More recent plagiarism parallels are the temple changes, which come from market research, but are passed off as revelation. I am sure that every revelation can be traced to a mundane source if we look hard enough. But as good plagiarists, the prophets never acknowledge their sources.

You are probably aware of the parallels, but I thought them worth pointing out anyway.

This is an excellent observation, Ryan.

It is, of course, hard to say exactly what Joseph Smith read and didn’t read from the ACC (Adam Clarke Commentary).

One of the apologetics being attempted even now is that there were famous issues (even in Joseph Smith’s day) addressed by the ACC (and other commentaries); issues such as the late addition of the Johanine story about the woman taken in adultery; the Johanine Comma; and the long ending of Mark.

All these things were “in the air” and much more significant than the minor modifications borrowed by Joseph Smith.

So the apologetic is becoming that if Joseph Smith didn’t amend his scriptural productions to reflect these bigger theological/scriptural issues, then it shows he really didn’t rely “that much” on the ACC, if at all.

It is a specious argument, I think, depending as it does on the unspoken premise that unless Joseph Smith adopted every change in the ACC (or at least these three big examples); then he could not have adopted any of them.

Obviously one doesn’t have to borrow every idea in a commentary in order to borrow some things.

And one doesn’t have to borrow everything from only one commentary when there are multiple commentaries available in the community with much of the same information.

But most importantly of all, I think, is that one doesn’t have to have the contents of the original Bible manuscripts themselves revealed in order to make concomitant corrections when available commentaries already contain the information.