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Early Mormonism and the Magic World View by: D. Michael Quinn

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Publisher: Signature Books
Release date: 30th November, 1997
Media: Paperback

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Rating: - Finally the puzzle falls into place

I am a member of the Mormon church, I have served my two year mission, married in the temple, served in various church leadership positions and been a full on believer. There are many things in the Mormon history that are fantastical, strange and mystical and of these claims the Golden Plates story has been perhaps the most enticing and delicious. This book pulls back the curtain on our founding story, not in a malicious or salacious way but , for me, in a grinding fact by grinding fact manner that took my breath away and left my already shattered faith washed clean away. This book and its excellent research should be read by anyone wishing to understand, investigate and contextualise the gold plates, peep stones and early doctrine of the Mormons. This information will not be made available by the church nor by most of its well meaning but unknowing members and missionaries. This has shocked me. It is excellent though it should be read in sections as it is so full of referencing and depth of research that it's hard to assimilate it all. Quinn does have his biases but the facts are meticulously researched.

Rating: - A great accomplishment--but seriously flawed

The most important thing to say about D. Michael Quinn's treatment of LDS origins and folk magic is that it is the essential work on the subject. Anyone honestly interested in Mormonism has to read this book: there is no substitute. What Quinn has accomplished with his scholarship is absolutely unparalleled in the field. The modern student really cannot understand the LDS movement without studying Quinn's book.

It is also vital to recognize what Quinn has sacrificed for the sake of truth in this treatment. Many Mormons are excommunicated--but usually they are doctrinally disaffected. Quinn is a believing Mormon whose scholarship cost him his fellowship with the LDS Church. This may not reflect well on the church, but it certainly says a lot for Quinn.

Having given these truths appropriate primacy, I turn critical. Quinn has done something amazing in this book--but he could have done it much better. Indeed, as I read and reread it, I was astounded by how such an insightful investigator and thorough scholar could also be such a bonehead. And I still don't understand it to this day.

In this context, I must take pains to protest that Quinn's faults are not those preached by his enemies in the LDS polemical establishment. Almost always, when he is involved in a dispute with one of these, he is in the right. His command of information involving Mormon origins is truly breathtaking, and his critics are generally reduced to redesigning the rules of evidence in every case in order to discredit him. Quinn rightly resents these tactics--which leads him into one of the superficial faults of this edition of the book. He is constantly addressing, in annoying asides, the critiques of these disreputable opponents: it interrupts the course of his argument and renders his tone unbearably peevish. He should give these characters the attention they richly deserve--that is, none. Those unreflective Mormons who can be swayed by their arguments will never be swayed by the force of his, and the rest of his readers won't even be aware of the determined nescience these creatures so shamefully represent.

What really hurts is that Quinn can be so damn dumb about details. The earliest interpretation he can attribute to the IHS that appears on some magical documents--and on the vestments of Catholic priests--is the "In hoc signo" of Constantine. But any Catholic schoolboy knows that IHS can also represent iota-eta-sigma, the first three letters of Jesus' name in Greek. Quinn refers to scholar Ioan Petru Culianu as a "she"--but "Ioan Petru" is "John Peter" in Romanian. These details--largely irrelevant to Quinn's principal argument--multiply so insistently that the literate reader draws back and is almost ready to dismiss the book as a whole.

Similarly, Quinn's style is frequently painful. One particularly repulsive habit is conveying substantive information about a figure after a demonstrative adjective. "This Mormon polemicist.... This German immigrant...." This native speaker of the English language wonders if Quinn just learned it a year before writing the book.

Finally, Quinn's analysis of the relationship between Joseph Smith's magical sources and the distinctive features of LDS theology is the shallowest part of the book--where it really should be the most profound. The reader is essentially left to provide this analysis for himself.

I complain because I was hoping for a more perfect book--a more exalted treatment, if you will. But of all books available, this is the best. Quinn deserves our sincere gratitude for what he has done. He has not so much revolutionized our comprehension of the Restored Gospel as restored it to its original condition.

Rating: - Review the reviewer

This section of Amazon is for those who have clicked: "I have read this book and wish to review it."

And yet we have the following admission in a review (from the New York individual listed at the bottom of the review page) which denounces Quinn's book:

"But wait, you say, what about the *arguments* themselves? I don't know--I never read the first edition all the way through, and I'll probably never read this one through either. No doubt this confession would throw Quinn into a righteous fit of hair-pulling. But what can I say? I've neither the time nor the energy nor the background knowledge to begin to adjudicate the mountains of magical evidence he provides. "

This person has clicked in agreement that he has read the book, but then admits that he has not? Why is this denunciation of Quinn's book permitted to serve on Amazon as a "review" when the author of the review has admitted that he has not read the book in question? Can someone who has not read the book actually qualify as a reviewer?

Rating: - The role of folk magic and the esoteric in Mormonism

This book is a landmark in the history of Mormon origins. The amount of research which Dr Quinn has put into this is remarkable. Not only are insights into the early LDS church fascinating but the evidence is presented with invaluable and reliable references. As Quinn later demonstrates in the two volumes of Mormon Hierarchy he really knows his subject in a huge amount of depth and detail. This book is essential not only for the student of early Mormonism but also anyone interested in the role of folk magic and the esoteric in nineteenth century America.

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