Exorcisms

The first miracle of Joseph Smith's new church was an exorcism. Now not all latter-day saints know what to make of exorcisms, but it's definitely a recognized practice in the New Testament, The Book of Mormon and elsewhere.

If you've heard the story of how Joseph cast a devil out of Newel Knight, there's a good chance it sounded pretty straight forward. The LDS Church, as it just so happens, likes to present its history in a clean, easy to swallow format fit for children - even if its for adults.

I, however, suggest we look at a more complete version of this miraculous exorcism as described by Dan Vogel, who takes into account a number of witness testimonies (emphasis mine).

"... when [Joseph] Smith asked him to pray, Newel begged to be excused. Like his father, he may have considered prayer to be a private matter and found his first attempt at public prayer embarrassing and difficult. Despite Smith's encouragement, Knight insisted on delaying his vocal prayer until morning when he could go into the woods.

"The next day, Knight attempted several times to pray vocally but experienced great difficulty. He began to feel a flood of emotion: anxiety, guilt, confusion, and finally panic. By the time he returned to his house, 'his appearance was such as to alarm his wife very much.' A desperate Newel anxiously asked his wife to bring Smith to him. 'I went and found him suffering very much in his mind,' Smith recalled, 'and his body acted upon in a most strange manner. His visage and limbs [were] distorted and twisted into every possible shape and appearances, and finally he was caught up off the floor of the apartment and tossed about most fearfully.' ...

"... Knight was unable to speak during his convulsions, for Smith reports that when he took hold of Knight's hand, 'almost immediately he was able to speak.'
"... Newel earnestly requested Joseph to cast the devil out of him. In front of eight or nine people who had gathered to witness the scene, Joseph said, 'If you know that I can, it shall be done.' Then Joseph rebuked the devil, commanding it 'in the name of Jesus Christ' to depart from Newell, upon which the latter 'saw the Devil leave him and vanish from his sight.'

Newel recalls levitating at this point:

"I felt myself attracted upward and remained for some time enwrapped in contemplation insomuch that I know not what was going on in the room. By and by I felt some weight pressing upon my shoulder and the side of my head; which served to recall me to a sense of my situation, and I found that the Spirit of the Lord had actually caught me up off the floor, and that my shoulder and head were pressing against the beams."

"... When Smith is brought to trial in South Bainbridge and Colesville in July 1830, Knight testifies that Smith had cast the devil out of him, but is evasive when asked to describe what the devil looked like. ... Apparently, he was less evasive in his home town, for Joel K. Noble, who presided over the trial in Colesville, remembered that Knight 'swore in open court [that] Jo. Smith cast a devil out of him ... and said how [the] devil looked. Said devil was a body of light..."

 "So I just cast it the fuck out right then and there! Easy!"

"... others remembered that Knight gave additional details. In the earliest account of the incident, [Martin] Harris said to Abner Cole in June 1830 that the devil, whom Smith had cast out of Newel, was of 'an uncommon size.' According to a later source, Joseph Knight Sr. and Josiah Stowell testified that they had seen the devil as well. Once testified that he saw 'a devil as large as a woodchuck leave the man and run across the floor,' while the other said he saw the devil leave the possessed and 'run off like a yellow dog.' neither witness said that Knight specifically described the devil's appearance, only that he had given an approximation of its size. This was confirmed by William R. Hine, a resident of Colesville, who said that Knight's testimony before Justice Noble was that 'Smith had cast three devils out of him. ... The first was as large as a woodchuck, the second was large as a squirrel, the third about the size of a rat.' When the judge asked what became of them, 'Knight said that they went out at the chimney.'" Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, pp. 496-98.

Demon woodchucks and their pals? I fucking hate them. Floating on the ceiling in ecstasy? Fucking love it. Thoughts on whether this miracle is legit? I think I'll go eat some ice cream.

Quick Guide to Continued Belief

This comes from the Internet.

"[T]hose who have been led by the Letter to a CES Director to abandon their faith, should, in my view, reconsider those Mormon claims and the abundant historical support that’s available for them. They simply haven’t studied enough." -Daniel C. Peterson, fairmormon.org. 

Mormonism: a gospel "so simple even a child could understand" but so nuanced only a person with the equivalent of a PhD of study of church history could actually convince themselves was true. But what do I know? I'm just another apostate.

P.S. If you're not following Just Another Apostate on Facebook, you probably should.

The Bible - Joseph's translation

One of the absolute worst Bible translations out there today is the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), also known as the Inspired Version (IV).

Without any rigorous recourse to ancient texts in ancient languages, Joseph took to correcting the Bible and replacing the truths that had unfortunately (or by the cunning wiles of the Devil) been lost over the centuries. He remixed and deleted based on whatever (spiritual?) whim had taken him, but the real miracle of the project was how much Joseph added. He threw in entire chapters at times.

Some people have asked why we don't use this version of the Bible - myself among them. One would think that a scriptural project commanded by God to his prophet would qualify as canonical, right? God says "Hey, fix the Bible!," Joseph does it, and yet the LDS Church doesn't use it. Very weird.

Some say it's a copyright issue. The Community of Christ owns the copyright, so we can print it. Sucks, right? But just because the Community of Christ owns the copyright doesn't mean LDS Mormons can't buy it, does it? Why does the LDS Church have to own the copyright at all? This is about learning the true content of the Bible, not about which church is making money from scripture sales. Or at least it should be.

FAIR offers up another very interesting reason why we LDS saints can't adopt the JST: it "would be a stumbling block to converts." Too much newness for the new recruits. We wouldn't want to scare them off with the truth! I mean, we can believe Joseph's version is the most badass of the them all, but don't you dare tell any investigators or new converts about it until they're thoroughly convinced they're in The One True Church! It's not dishonest, it's practical.

"Holy shit, this book is awful!"

But isn't it silly that anyone should worry about this at all? The LDS version of the KJV has all sorts of JST footnotes and we even have some made up chapters published in their entirety in The Pearl of Great Price. That should be enough for any good saint. Why would anyone want the complete, unabridged version? People can be so greedy.

Anyway, what we really need is a modern translation of the JST! Something that fixes all the errors Joseph left in... But I doubt we'll get it.