AS THE WORDS OF A BOOK THAT IS SEALED: THE BOOK OF MORMON AS ESOTERIC MALE (HI)STORY
“Was not Joseph Smith a money digger?” Yes, but it was never a very profitable job for him, as he only got fourteen dollars a month for it.
NO ANTEBELLUM PROPHET of Smith’s social standing gave us a book quite like the Book of Mormon: a comprehensive literary, theological, social, and cultural mission statement and missionary tool that spoke with considerable force to a restive faction in American and European society, becoming the basis for a world religion. In the midst of the Morgan affair, Smith, as I will attempt to show, used romance as the flagship for his Masonic ideas. Ironically, the Book of Mormon spoke rather profoundly to unsuspecting women of Evangelical sensibility. Fanny Stenhouse is a case in point. In her memoir Tell It All: The Tyranny of Mormonism, she describes her conversion and then protracted emancipation. Her polemic notwithstanding, she was seduced, in a sense, by the Mormon elders, eventually into polygamy. Their message may well have been inclined, though possibly not designed, “to deceive an uninitiated person.” A variety of shocking blasphemies are “hidden from the convert whom it was desirable,” Stenhouse writes, “to impress with the idea that Mormonism was only a development of Christianity.” In her view, much of Smith’s early religious writings, especially his confession of faith (thirteen articles in total), had been purposely ambiguous, intelligible only to the initiated. She was also correct, it seems to me, to suspect that “if Polygamy were to be relinquished, it would still be found that Mormonism had really very little in common with other sects, and very much that was completely antagonistic to them.”1
A nuanced reading of the Book of Mormon might have saved Stenhouse a lot of grief. The book lauds the virtues of the mischievous, the hidden and mysterious. It is written in a secret dialect of Egyptian, a “sealed book” to “learned” readers of all stripes.2 Jesus, upon his visit to the New World, quotes a passage in John concerning “other sheep” and then explains its hidden meaning: “And they [his Old World audience] understood me not, for they supposed it had been the Gentiles: for they understood not that the Gentiles should be converted through their preaching” (p. 486). The book has Jesus repeating the phrase “they understood me not” over and over. In the final chapter, it says that one “may know the truth of all things” and then only by the “power of the Holy Ghost” (p. 586; emphasis mine). That Smith and his disciples were not obliged to be perfectly candid seems to have been lost on Fanny. What did she expect from a book and people obsessed with mystery and beating around the (burning) bush?
Mormon elders who saw the likes of Fanny come and go had another agenda. The Book of Mormon can be seen as a fine specimen of Masonic fiction, a clever weaving of biblical and fraternal analogue meant to provide a temporary male-female lodging until more suitable (patriarchal) accommodations could be erected. Evangelicals who mistook Mormonism for a mere development of Christianity (in part because of either not reading or mistaking the Book of Mormon for warm Christian pietism) would figure it out when they crossed the threshold to the temple in the 1840s and afterward—just as Fanny did. Scholars of Mormonism have never quite grasped this, that the Book of Mormon and the temple constitute a ritualist continuum, one literary, the other literally the House of the Lord. The Book of Mormon functioned in much the same way as the Ark of the Covenant: as a portable locus of Masonic worship in the antebellum wilderness. It was more or less as Tolstoy thought, a case of lies for a good purpose—but Masonic in nature.
Carnes explains that “those with lively enough imaginations could experience something like an initiation without ever becoming a lodge member. During the nineteenth century, fiction provided boys and men another kind of encounter with the initiatory motifs of fraternal ritual.”3 In the great bulk of these male or Masonic-inspired fictions, as Carnes has shown, the initiate is portrayed as immature and unmasculine at first but able to overcome adversity, nearly dying at the hands of an angry father figure, only to be saved by his own emergent masculinity (p. 125). Scott Abbott’s Fictions of Freemasonry offers much startling evidence that suggests all such Masonic writing had a tendency to indulge in a kind of necessary but benign historical deceit. (Alas, there is no way to sugarcoat it, but the great religions are in no position to throw stones.) What soon becomes clear is that history and fiction in Masonic literature form a Gordian knot that cannot simply be untied, a fact that patriarchy’s defenders down through the ages have used to great advantage to spread their message of manhood found.
Masonic histories are pure invention. The Rosicrucian history, Fama Fraternitatis (1614), was the first such apology for the faith and the model for three centuries for what Abbott calls “reams of [Masonic] fiction.”4 James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Free Masons, containing the History, Charges, Regulations etc. of the most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity, the eighteenth-century English Masonic history (1723) is an example, making no attempt to be true to the facts.5
Some within the order objected to such poetic license. The philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte took exception to what he considered to be a “web of deceit,” chastising Masonic apologists for going too far. Abbott explains that “much of the century’s Masonic activity is inextricably entwined with various legends, stories, novels, and even frauds.”6 Fichte objected to the ingenuity of Berlin Mason Ignatius Aurelius Fessler in particular, suggesting that the wisest course of action vis-à-vis Masonry’s cultured despisers was a clear statement of fictional intent. Misrepresentation would surely open a floodgate of biting criticism. Although Fessler agreed in principle, he could not quite bring himself to ignore the short-term benefits of dressing fable in historical garb. “No fiction!” was his reply to Fichte (cited on p. 29). In other words, too much candor would only hurt the movement. And let critics say what they will, fiction was a more compelling argument in the final analysis. “No history!” was perhaps what Fichte meant or should have said. “The desire for supporting, indeed legitimizing, historical roots was strong in the eighteenth century, as it has always been.” Abbott goes on to explain. “This is evident in the eight competing, variously influential theories concerning the origin of eighteenth-century Masonry…. So in one sense Fessler was justified in rejecting Fichte’s recommendation that his ‘history’ be labeled story…. Like many religious innovators, the founders of the most successful Freemasonic branches used Fessler’s kind of (hi)story to establish legitimacy and to express their principles” (pp. 29–30). Masonic fiction per se had the same modus operandi, the difference a matter of degree not kind. François de Salignac de La Fenelon’s Aventures de Télémaque (1699) is generally thought to be the first bona fide Masonic novel. Andrew Michael Ramsay’s Les Voyages de Cyrus (1727) and Jean Terrasson’s Sethos (1730) complete the Masonic literary triumvirate. (The great bulk of Masonic-inspired history and/or fiction owes an indirect debt to Terrasson in particular.) The first Masonic novelist to incorporate decidedly Christian themes was Carl Friedreich Bahrdt, in his fictional history of Jesus Christ, entitled Ausfuhrung des Plans und Zweckes Jesu (Explanation of the plan and purpose of Jesus, 1784–1792).7
The Book of Mormon can be seen as Masonic (hi)story or fiction. Most critics fail to grasp the significance of the title page of the 1830 edition, which identifies Smith as the book’s author.8 (Alexander Campbell was the first to notice this, but not the last.)9 The text under the title reads: “AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI.” Two ensuing paragraphs underscore this. And yet “By Joseph Smith, Junior, author and proprietor” appears in bold type at the bottom. (Whether Fichte would have considered such a caveat sufficiently clear is difficult to say.) The matter seems more than a simple case of Smith claiming the rights of authorship (the orthodox Mormon explanation) or lying in order to dupe readers and fill his pockets (the contention of some critics).10 Smith’s authorial ambivalence could also be seen as standard Masonic practice and thus done with the best of intentions.
In fact, we do not need Masonry to get the Mormon prophet out of this jam. If guilty of mere religious invention, then he is in some very good company. Jewish and Christian history—that in the Bible, at least—operates according to the same principle. Donald H. Akenson’s book, Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, for example, shows that the core books of the Hebrew Scriptures—the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings—constitute an inventive reworking of Hebraic legend by a fictitious author-editor. Ironically, and without realizing it, to be sure, Akenson echoes Fessler, opining that invention is the essence of the very best (indeed prescient) history. “Inventors do not create,” Akenson is careful to note, “for creation is to make something where there was nothing. Inventors use what is at hand, and then they add something of their own genius, whether it is new ways of recombining old elements, or tiny little improvements in existing parts so that what otherwise would not work does; or they take out their tools and make a part of new design and suddenly everything works.”11
In the Bible, he continues, “we have that rarest of occurrences in … history, namely, an independently-attested cause for a biblically-evidenced effect” (p. 63). Likewise, the success of the great Genesis-Kings superimposition (the core books of the Hebrew Bible and the imaginative reconstruction of a single writer), Akenson observes, hinged on that author’s ability to appear to be a mere editor. “For the storyteller, for the historian” he continues, “it probably was not relevant whether they [readers] understood what was romance: the fiction, the narrative as a whole, communicated the author’s point. That the first real historian in world history later had his text turned into sacred writ—indeed, many subsequently declared it to be the word of God—is not an honour he sought” (p. 61). Had Fessler only been this wily, German Masonry might not have lost Fichte. In any event, Masonic deceit pales in comparison to the ancient Jewish and early Christian elevation of myth to the level of history in the Old and New Testaments. In fact, the famous biblical scholar Albert Schweitzer, author of the seminal Quest of the Historical Jesus, took his cue from Bahrdt’s controversial Masonic history of Jesus but came down on the side of Fichte, turning the Masonic rationale for historical pretense on its head and arguing that the invention of the Gospels effectively removed the historical Jesus from the realm of objective investigation.12
Falsely claiming an ancient tradition or text as one’s own goes at least as far back as the ancient Hebrews, who employed a variety of archaizing techniques (very effectively) and a fair bit of mythological piracy to lend credence to their cause. Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible, his person no doubt a figment of Hebrew imagination. The evidence for the Egyptian captivity is scant; the Exodus is so much allegorical wishful thinking on the part of Babylon’s Jewish exiles; and the Hebrew Bible is in large part a pastiche of Mesopotamian lore reorganized to suit nationalistic dreams of elites. The first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis lack any foundation in historical fact, whereas “the customs and conditions described in Genesis 12–50 present data indigenous to the second millennium,” that pericope rising to the level of mere plausibility.13 Jesus fares no better than Moses and the Patriarchs, the New Testament not much better than the Old. The founder of Christianity’s existence is a matter of historical record, but the important events of his religious life—his miracles and resurrection—find no such support outside the Gospels.14
We know that the early Christian apologists expropriated the Hebrew past. Justin Martyr’s rejoinder to his Jewish critic Trypho that passages about Jesus are contained “in your Scriptures, or rather not yours, but ours” had the desired effect. Ignatius purported that the Hebrew prophets observed Sunday rather than the Jewish Sabbath, and Justin even suggested that Jesus had been “known in part even by Socrates,” extending Christianity’s sphere of influence to include ancient pagan wisdom.15 Such historical deceit merely endeavored to respond to the widely held classical belief in the truth of ancient systems of belief and practice (p. 34). Christianity’s preeminent cultured defenders manufactured historical antecedents to ward off such accusations of mere invention (p. 40). Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History and likewise Augustine’s City of God, Jaroslav Pelikan explains, “translated apologetics into history; but the history was not merely the account of the succession of the church from the apostles, but the whole way of divine providence” (p. 41).
What, then, was Fichte’s problem? Fessler had pursued a time-honored course of fictional misrepresentation in the interest of institutional longevity and the dissemination of the larger suprahistorical truth. This much is clear: history favors Fessler, not Fichte.
The secular world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literature made few attempts to resist the temptation to fudge the books in order to sell copies. Travelogues were notorious. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is a case in point. The preface to the original 1719 edition reads: “The Editor believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it.” Robinson Crusoe was not intended merely to titillate but to edify, a story told with “a religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men always apply them.”16 Great controversy surrounded the book. Some believed that Defoe had published (as his own?) a manuscript written by the earl of Oxford while a prisoner in the Tower. There was even talk that the two men conspired to publish a fraudulent history. William Lee, in the introduction to the 1863 American edition, had this to say: “’Tis as reasonable to represent one kind of Imprisonment by another, as it is to represent any Thing that really exists by that which exists not. Had the common way of writing a man’s private History been taken, and I had given you the conduct or Life of a man you knew … all I could have said would have yielded no Diversion, and perhaps scarce have obtained a reading, or at best no attention, the Teacher, like a greater, having no Honour in his own country” (cited on p. xiii).
The first to take a firm stand against Bible-inspired fiction were Puritan and Evangelical divines. “As a result of Christians’ deeply rooted view of the Bible as sacred and inviolable,” David Reynolds explains, “Biblical fiction appeared later and in lesser quantity than other kinds of religious fiction.”17 Even the most daring biblical fictionalizers in America (such as Joseph Holt Ingraham, author of Captain Kidd and several religious fictions) were reticent to invent stories based on the Bible with the same reckless abandon as Freemasons like Bahrdt. Evangelical anti-Masonry coincided with a religious holy war against biblical romance, too.18 Revivalists accused the genre of being dishonest, undemocratic, and even immoral, upholding Plato’s accusation that novelists were even bigger liars than poets. As late as 1847 the North American Review continued to attack religious fiction, although many within Evangelical ranks had been beguiled by a steady stream of religious invention: “There is a general distrust of works commonly called religious novels. We usually find in them either an intolerable infusion of doctrinal theology, or a mixture absolutely revolting of earthly passion and spiritual pride; so that it may be deemed lucky, if they are only tedious and uninteresting.”19
Protestant novelists tried to allay fears by rhetorically denouncing fiction themselves, insisting theirs were (hi)stories of the most unequivocal sort. Allene Stuart Phy in an essay appropriately titled “Retelling the Greatest Story Ever Told: Jesus in Popular Fiction,” explains that “the majority of the first American novelists, despite formidable opposition, valiantly defended their vocation by insisting that their stories were based on fact, which they then pretended to take pains to authenticate…. The novel was still suspect and only succeeded in gaining admittance into the more upright homes when it started assuming the masks of history, biography, and New Testament Christianity.”20 Avoiding the charge of unadulterated invention by means of a number of ingenious tropes, authors prefaced their works with disclaimers of any fictional distortions, identified their purpose as highly moralistic in nature, and employed such literary devices as epistolary narrative to simulate reality. The Jesus of these dramatic and creative retellings, Phy goes on to explain, was thus, “a Jesus of American culture, stripped of ‘theological accretions’—trimmings that have, the authors often believe, made him distasteful and incomprehensible, that have obscured the vitality of his personality and the force of his message. In this manner traditional Christianity has been sacrificed to a bland and colourless American religious pluralism” (p. 76). Phy credits two Unitarians, William Ware and Samuel Richardson, as the cofounders of a “flourishing genre in American popular literature” (p. 45). Ingraham’s famous The Prince of the House of David, of which the author claimed to be merely the editor, figures prominently, written with high hopes of “convincing one son or daughter of Abraham to accept Jesus as the Messiah, or convince the infidel Gentile that He is the very Son of God and Creator of the world” (p. 47). (Ironically, the narrative structure is the same as that in Captain Kidd.) Incidentally, we know that Smith expressed great fondness for Ingraham’s writings, particularly Captain Kidd—though one book does not a reader make.21
All this sheds considerable light on the issue of the Book of Mormon’s historical claims, as well as the thorny issue of the book’s alleged similarities to Solomon Spaulding’s romance Manuscript Found, which contemporaries thought Smith had plagiarized. Spaulding and Smith employ the same Masonic trope, that of the quest for the long lost book, but the two narratives are quite different. There is no truth to the charge that Smith plagiarized Spaulding. Let us be careful, however, not to suppose that Smith and Spaulding were two American princes of Serendip, discovering by dint of accident and sagacity a Masonic mythological treasure trove of which neither had any prior knowledge.22 Royal Arch Masonry may have been their muse.
Abbott has shown that in Goethe’s Masonic novel Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, for example, the central theme is novelist cum treasure hunter and novel as treasure.23 The 1821 edition of the Travels contains the following introductory poem:
And so I raise old treasures,
Most curious in this case;
If [I] do not count them gold,
They are still metals.
One can smelt, one can separate,
Becomes pure, can be weighed,
May many a friend joyfully
Coin it himself in his own image.
(cited on p. 60)
In the 1829 edition, the Masonic legend of the quest for gold is expounded. Novelist and treasure hunter are one and the same, magical stones and divining rods instruments of the Almighty—though the aspirant is mindful not to misuse them or misconstrue the search for gold (knowledge) as a means of obtaining material riches. The Masonic novelist, it says, “works with a slippery medium” (cited on p. 62), and so he is wary lest he sink to the level of the disreputable treasure hunter. In the narrative, Felix, Wilhelm’s traveling companion, retrieves from a crevice a little box described as old in appearance, made of gold, about the size of an octavo volume—a “splendid little book” (cited on p. 63). It comes with a key and a stern warning: the uninitiated and superstitious dare not touch it. The 1829 edition of Wilhelm Meister’s Travels was about the size of an octavo volume. No mere accident.
Does this not evoke the Book of Mormon, a Masonic work of autobiographical and cultural imagination, the literary basis for a recovery of lost male mystery and virtue on a grand scale? Smith’s can be seen as an octavo volume, the Book of Mormon a surrogate for Masonic ritual and literary-based rite of passage. Carnes explains that “those with lively enough imaginations could experience something like an initiation without ever becoming a lodge member” and that “fiction provided boys and men another kind of encounter with the initiatory motifs of fraternal ritual.”24 Smith provided male readers with a veiled literary means of disentanglement from the female sphere of moral dominance that had left some cold and forced others to journey the emotional path to adulthood without any parental assistance or male role model. Boys raised by women will seek some form of “masculine identity,” Carnes opines. “The psychological impulse that gives rise to initiation,” he goes on to explain, “is a human constant: Nineteenth-century fraternal ritual and a specialized literature for men developed such powerful initiatory themes because Victorian society exacerbated in this country a nearly universal distinction in adult gender roles” (p. 125).
FIGURE 28 Florine of Burgundy, Templar Knight and Faithful Companion of Sweno the Dane
Robert Freke Gould, A Library of Freemasonry (London: John C. Yorsten, 1911), 5:108b.
That said, the Book of Mormon also invited women to read it in earnest and thus participate in hitherto exclusively male rites of passage. A book, unlike a lodge, cannot discriminate. Women as well as men were not only free but encouraged to peruse its pages. The Book of Mormon narrative even includes women as equal participants in its many veiled Masonic raisings. Smith’s Masonic vision, then, his reasons for publishing the Book of Mormon, went well beyond merely satisfying some exclusively boyish need for adult male role models; he sought a comprehensive and more inclusive knitting of father to mother, son, and daughter and vice versa according to an adoptive Masonic lodge system. A temporary abode and literary place of male-female worship, the Book of Mormon would suffice, moreover, until something more permanent could be erected. And, as will be seen, the temple would ultimately steal the Book of Mormon’s thunder, the latter becoming simply and exclusively a missionary tool that, read out of context, gave new converts entirely the wrong impression of what was in store for them and to what they had indentured themselves—a consequence, perhaps, of Smith’s Fesslerian aversion for fiction.