My email address is rbssman(AT)gmail(DOT)com. I will be more than happy to send what I have.

One of the exciting things for me is to see you young scholars working on Mormon History with such enthusiasm. I would love to see you, Ben, Amanda or Loyd continued work on the Pratt’s and place it within the larger American setting. Rick Grunder’s “Mormon Parallels” is a invaluable resource for finding what was being said and written in and around the Smith’s and Pratt’s environment. As Rick has written, to look at this information takes nothing away from Smith or other early Mormons. When we study Jesus or the other writers of the New Testament how can we understand them with out a knowledge that Jesus was quoting the teachings of the prophets before him or John of Revelation was using imagery from ancient Hebrew accounts of the creation?

I can give you examples from “Mormon Parallels” of the Onieda community defending their sexual practices in almost the same language the Mormons used in explaining polygamy. The ideas of eternal matter, positive take on the body, spirits in the beginning with God, and Christ spirit with God from the beginning are all ideas that were available to the Pratt’s and Smith.

This is a wonderful time to live in when we have works like Rick Grunder’s available or the Codex Sinaiticus online. We now have an opportunity to take our studies to a higher level.

If you don’t mind, I’d also like to see the info Joe has. Your post is strongly related to the topic of a post that I’ve been dreaming up, so now I’m curious about the effect Parley’s body-sanctification beliefs may have had on a particular population of LDS.

Also, although Amanda has argued that Parley’s beliefs weren’t as game-changing as your excerpt originally suggested, I wonder if Mormons are the last large American religious group that shies away from the mainstream Christian view you summarized above without collapsing into something more like hedonism.

Oh, and I am moving to Scotland in September for a one-year program; should be fun.

http://www.mormontimes.com/studies_doctrine/church_history/?id=9551

Ben, are you moving to Scotland? I think you will love the country. My wife was on her mission in Scotland and loved it.

Reading the article makes you paper sound much more dogmatic than you excerpt above. My guess is your paper is much too sophisticated to be cut down to a short article. I hope you are able to make the entire paper available.

Amanda’s comments seem to be on target in looking at the environment Smith and Pratt developed these ideas about man and God. I appreciate her thoughts.

If you want to send me a private email I would be happy to send you the information on Pratt and his affection.

Concerning the BoM’s teaching of “natural man”–Mosiah gives a pretty depraved view of man, at least rhetorically. To be honest, I think our highly optimistic view of the body can be squared with the BoM, but it is safe to say that at least rhetorically the scripture is pretty limiting when it came to speaking of the flesh, no?

it does make nice apologetic points to argue that Joseph Smith wasn’t even that knowledgeable about what the Book of Mormon contained (as part of an argument that he therefore didn’t or couldn’t have written it).

I agree that this is a strong piece of information, and it’s a case that is fairly easy to make. Smith very rarely referenced the Book of Mormon in his sermons–not what one would expect if he had created the book himself. He probably only read it when he was preparing new editions. In any case, he was clearly much more comfortable using the Bible. I think it may lose some appeal for apologists given the centrality of the Book of Mormon in LDS life over the past 60 years or so. In other words, it may be more work than it’s worth in an apologetic context to make the case that the Book of Mormon is supremely important while simultaneously arguing that Joseph Smith was not that familiar with it.