Publication Raises Questions About Maxwell Institute’s Path

The July 2023 issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, a publication of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU, included an interesting review of the book Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon, written by William L. Davis and published in 2020. This book attempts to explain Joseph Smith’s ability to create the Book of Mormon by drawing on the oratorical traditions of the early American republic, particularly the practice of extemporaneous religious preaching by pastors and revivalists of the era. Davis argues that such methods would have been sufficient to explain Joseph’s ability to dictate large portions of the text without the need for any written aids, and attempts to detail the various ways in which Joseph might have become an expert in the techniques.

Such an argument is on its face a repudiation of the Latter-day Saint assertion that the Book of Mormon was translated directly by the gift and power of God. The review published in the JBMS, however, seems impossibly sanguine about its congruence with Latter-day Saint truth claims. The reviewer, Grant Shreve, wrote: “No telling of the Book of Mormon origin story is complete without mention of the seer stone, the hat, the barrier between orator and scribe, and the rhythms of the dictation. What Davis does, however, is make the performance itself integral to the style and shape of the book. In his hands, this foundational scene of creation comes thrillingly alive as a vital factor in the making of the Book of Mormon. As Davis takes care to explain, this approach to understanding the Book of Mormon is not intended to foreclose orthodox accounts of the book’s creation. Rather, it offers ‘a framework for both believers and nonbelievers to account for the production of the Book of Mormon, while also accommodating and carefully reflecting on the textual and historical evidence.’”

The review continues with its glowing praise of the book’s “meticulously argued” contention that Joseph Smith could have created the Book of Mormon through mnemonic and rhetorical devices, focusing specifically on the concept of “laying down heads,” the practice of giving a topical outline of a discourse beforehand- something Davis argues is a unique feature of extemporaneous oratory that provided Joseph Smith the ability to accomplish the prodigious feats of memory necessary for the creation of the Book of Mormon as depicted in eyewitness testimony. The reviewer does note, however, that “given the limited number of examples from Smith’s own oeuvre and the intense focus on this single technique, there is not enough extant textual evidence to generalize to this degree”- something that seemingly undercuts the entire premise of the book, but which passes as an aside in this breathless review that concludes by approvingly citing Fawn Brodie’s notorious attempt at a biography of Joseph Smith (although confusing the publication date), and stating that “the thesis of Visions in a Seer Stone is deceptively simple but no less revelatory for its simplicity. Davis provides a framework that deepens available naturalistic accounts of the process by which the Book of Mormon was created, enabling those who read the book as a nineteenth-century text composed through natural means to connect its content to the conditions of its creation.”

That a publication of the Maxwell Institute is promoting works that directly oppose the most fundamental claims of Latter-day Saint history and doctrine raises questions about the trajectory of the Maxwell Institute during a time when BYU is attempting the difficult task of reconciliation between the standards of secular academia and its own purpose as a religious institution dedicated to studying the world through the lens of the restored Gospel. The Maxwell Institute has been criticized in the past for some activities which have raised concerns about its ability to adhere to that standard, including its employment of vocal LGBT activists Blair Hodges and Connor Meyers (who goes by the pseudonym Calvin J. Burke) and its association with disaffected Mormon Studies scholar Benjamin Park. Amidst these continuing concerns, the former executive director of the Maxwell Institute, Spencer Fluhman, departed the Institute this April.

The review can be accessed here.

Written by: Joseph Addington

Opinion Editor at the Cougar Chronicle

The opinions in this article are those of the author.

The Cougar Chronicle is an independent student-run newspaper and is not affiliated with Brigham Young University or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.