From: wcsa@cbnews.cb.att.com (Willard C. Smith)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Anti-Mormons and the Tanners' Methodology
Keywords: Tanner, BoA, Quinn
Date: 16 Nov 92 13:47:53 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T


As I re-examined the lengthy series (which Glenn Clapp posted to the Net),
I discovered several cases where the Tanners misrepresented the intent of
the review.  For example, in Glenn's reproduction the Tanners state:

    John Gee argues that the Book of Breathings "is addressed to no
    Egyptian god; rather it is addressed to a human individual and
    reminds him of promises made to him and thing he has experienced."
    (_Review of Books of the Book of Mormon_, vol4, p. 100) While this
    diversionary tactic may be technically correct, those who take the
    time to read the text will find that the deceased is promised help
    from Re (the sun god), Uto (the cobra goddess), Nekhbet (the vulture
    goddess), Geb (the earth god), ..."

The Tanners are charging that Gee is presenting a diversionary tactic,
but it is actually the Tanners who are misrepresenting Gee's intent. On
pages 99 thru 103, Gee is actually examining Larson's expertise in
Egyptian. He points out that Larson probably could not correctly pull
the hieratic signs from the papyrus, he could not correctly identify the
contents of various Egyptian texts correctly, his attempts of
translating Egyptian text are incompentant, and his reconstruction of
Fascimile No 1 is not only obscene, it is impossible. In the midst of
this examination Gee states:

   Contrary to his [Larson] assertion that the Book of Breathings
   contains "prayers to pagan Egyptian gods" (pp. 120, 138) the Joseph
   Smith Book of Breathings is addressed to no Egyptian gods; rather it
   is addressed to a human individual and reminds him of promises made
   to him and things he has experienced.

Clearly the Tanners have distorted the context of Gee's review. In
addition they have attempted appeal to one's prejudices by stating that
the deceased is promised help from various gods and goddesses. Since the
beginning of the Christian era, Belivers in Jesus Christ have referred
to various classical gods such as Venus, Apollo, Mars, etc., not because
they believed in their existance, but rather because references to them
actually refer to attributes which these gods were suppose to control.
References to Venus were actually related to one's love life, and Mars
was suppose to control one's prowess in War. I would have been much more
impressed if the Tanners had told us exactly what the attributes of Re,
Uto, Nekhbet, and Geb were suppose to be. Instead the Tanners apparently
decided to cloud the meaning of the passage.

In another case, the Tanners have not told the entire truth concerning
Larson's attempt to reconstruct Joseph Smith Papyrus I.  They state:

   John Gee argues that the reconstructed drawing appearing in Charles
   Larson's book makes no sense: "Not only is his restoration of Joseph
   Smith Papyrus I obscene, it is impossible... the reconstruction is too
   crude to have been done by a good artist." (_Review of Books on the
   Book of Mormon_, vol. 4, pp. 101-102) While Mr. Gee labels Larson's
   reconstruction as "obscene" and "impossible," he neglects to mention
   the fact that it was based on the statements of two noted Egyptologists,
   Klaus Baer and Richard A. Parker.

Apparently this is not entirely correct. Larson did not exclusively follow
the statements of Baer and Parker. Larson apparently did his own cut and
paste approach from many different sources. Gee makes this very clear:

   Can Larson produce another papyrus (as opposed to a temple wall)
   where the figure on the lion couch is ithyphallic? Can he show any
   authentic Egyptian drawing where anyone wearing breeches is
   ithyphallic?

Gee follows up on this with a footnote that states:

   Larson's reconstruction otherwise follows that of Edward Ashment, but
   it is significant that Ashment did not make this mistake. See Edward
   H. Ashment, "The Facsimilies of the Book of Abraham: A Reappraisal,"
   _Sunstone_ 4 (1979): 39. Larson's view of Ashment is ambivalent at
   best. He cannot seem to make up his mind whether Ashment is "a
   respected LDS Egyptologist" (p. 128), a fellow apostate (pp. 147-78),
   or one of a number of "LDS apologists" (p. 164). When Ashment agrees
   with Larson, Larson speaks well of him; when Ashment does not, Larson
   does not.

The Tanners claims not withstanding, it is clear that the Larson's
recreation is not based on the statements of Baer and Parker, but is
generally based on the work of Ashment with some cutting and pasting from
others.  This leads right into yet another example of Tanner distortion.

The Tanners proceed to misrepresent Edward H. Ashment's material:

   We have already quoted Michael Rhodes concerning the "obvious
   modifications" in Facsimile No. 1. Edward H. Ashment also frankly
   discussed Joseph Smith's false restorations:

The distortion is obvious to anyone who has taken the time to read
Edward Ashment's "The Facsimilies of the Book of Abraham: A Reappraisal"
(full source cited above). Ashment essentially believes that Joseph
Smith's interpretation of Facs No. 1 was correct, the problem was that
when Joseph Smith and Reuben Hedlock attempted to reconstruct the
already damaged facsimilie they made a number of mistakes. Ashment
described what he felt the reconstruction should look at while noting
that Mormons rejected the notion of infallibility on the part of Joseph
Smith. The point is that Ashment would not have labelled Joseph Smith's
attempt to accurately restore Facsmilie No. 1 as a "false restoration"
since no deceit was intended. The repeated use of the term "false
restoration" can be attributed only to the Tanners' inciteful :-) intent.

-=-=-

I would like to be permitted to make one more observation on the
methodology of the Tanners, since they have been "pushed" over and over
by various Anti-Mormons on the net. That observation is based on
something that happened several years ago.  Back in 1977, D. Michael
Quinn (then fresh out of Yale with a Ph.D. in history) wrote anonymously
a very interesting booklet called "Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Distorted
View of Mormonism: A Response to _Mormonism - Shadow or Reality?_"

The booklet was interesting for a number of reasons. It was cleverly
written (as though to a friend) and seemed rather friendly and easy to
read. But when one looked closely it was clear that the writer had
prepared a rather important examination of the Tanner's methodology. In
summary, Quinn accused the Tanners of distortion in three important
areas: They distorted the presentation of primary sources, their
methodology was very distorted, and their interpretations seemed to be
based on their predisposed prejudices rather than on an attempt to be
objective.

Quinn demonstrated that they distorted the presentation of primary
sources by doing two things: First, they tended to emphasis words and
phrases that were not emphasised in the original. He showed one example
where they elicited one meaning from a text by emphasising some of the
text, but when you took the emphasis away and looked at the context, an
entirely different meaning appeared. Second, the Tanners would remove a
statement from context, apply their assumptions to the quotation and
thus obtain their interpretation.

Quinn then examined the Tanners' interpretative methodology. He pointed
out a number of cases where they applied false logic in order to come to
their conclusions. He pointed out a number of cases where the evidence
could actually be taken several different ways, but that the Tanners'
were predisposed to take it in only the most negative way. And finally,
Quinn provided several examples where the Tanners had utterly failed to
follow any recognized methodology in order to derive their conclusions.
For example, historians have for a long time considered the problems of
different versions of the same incident from the same individuals and
have considered ways in which the various accounts can be weighed and
judged. The Tanners utterly failed to follow this or any other proper
methodology.

Finally Quinn came very close to challenging the Tanners' intellectual
integrity. He did this by citing a number of examples where they
apparently knew that additional evidence contridicted their
interpretation, but that they ignored the evidence anyway (for polemics'
sake).

When this booklet came out in 1977, the Tanners (according to Sam Weller)
demanded that Sam sell them the entire stock. Tanner later claimed that
he wanted to include a copy of his refutation with each copy of the
booklet.

When Quinn's booklet came out, I had been spending a lot of time reading
books on Historial Methodology, such as _The Historian's Craft_ and
_Historical Methodology_. I understood what Quinn was driving it. He
wasn't trying to provide a point by point refutation of the Tanners, he
was examining their methodology and showing why it resulted a Distorted
view of Mormonism.

In February 1978, the Tanners finally published their response
"Answering Dr. Clandestine: A Response to the Anonymous LDS Historian."
IMHO the Tanners' response failed because First, they failed to defend
their methodology, and Second, they in fact recomitted the same errors
that Quinn pointed out in the first place.

For example, Quinn pointed out that the Tanners were "often guilty of
the *non sequitur*: in otherwords the conclusions arrived at are not
supported by the evidence." Quinn used the example of the 1826 trial
as a prime example. When the Tanners responded they proceeded to claim
such things as Purple's accounts were "court records" when in fact they
were not and when in fact they have a number of contradictory statements.
The Tanners essentially wanted to reject the Benton statement and relied
solely on the much older Purple statement because it supported *their*
point of view. Thus even in their response, they recomitted the error of
*non sequitur*.

In yet another example, Quinn pointed out how the Tanners attempted to
accuse Joseph Smith of acting dishonestly because he attempted to
practice polygamy before he had in fact received a revelation on Plural
Marriage. Quinn pointed out that the Tanners should have known that
Joseph Smith had received earlier revelations on the subject that they
had been referred to much earlier. The Tanners' responsed, they essentially
admitted that they knew about this and in fact emphasised their knowledge
of this earlier revelation. The implication for anyone who could see
past the Tanners' polemics was that they had knowingly and unjustly accused
Joseph Smith of wrong doing.

What distinguished the Tanners' response, in my mind, is that it really
addressed very little in Quinn's booklet. In fact, all their response
seemed to do was provide a soap box on which to address issues of their
own choosing. It is for this reason: Quinn's review and the Tanners'
response that I have great difficulity in accepting the truthfulness of
anything that the Tanners put in print. IMHO the Tanners can be simply
placed in the same catagory as the gossipy periodicals that afflict us
all with their outragious headlines at the supermarket checkout stand.
-- 

              Willard C. Smith
  Oh God, Make my Words Palatable and Sweet, | att!cbnews!iwtgo!wcsa
   Because I Might have to Eat all of Them.  | wcsa@iwtgo.att.com
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc