I recently became aware of a massive new book that has carefully documented some possible sources for scenes from the Book of Mormon. Of particular interest is the dream of Nephi with its rod of iron and other features. What follows is a book review by Joseph Johnstun.
Title: Mormon Parallels: A Bibliographic Source
Author: Rick Grunder
Publisher: Rick Grunder Books
Genre: Non-fiction
Year Published: 2008
Number of Pages: 2088
Binding: n/a (CD-Rom Included)
ISBN10:
ISBN13: 978-0-9814708-0-1
Price: $200.00
Reviewed by Joseph Johnstun
In his February 1831 review of the Book of Mormon, Alexander Campbell
famously wrote, “This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote
on the plates of Nephi, in his book of Mormon, every error and almost
every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years. He decides all
the great controversies;—infant baptism, ordination, the trinity,
regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement,
transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious
experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal
punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of free masonary,
republican government, and the rights of man.” (“Delusions.” Millennial
Harbinger, 2 [7 February 1831]: 93.) Many Mormons today who read this
statement from Campbell can readily see several of his statements as
true, but because of unfamiliarity with what was going on in the
backwoods of New York in the 1820s, Campbell is often chuckled at and
then dismissed. A new work seeks to show that such is not only the case
with the Book of Mormon, but with early Mormon doctrine, as well.
After 25 years of collecting and selling rare books, manuscripts, maps,
and images, and using what he calls his “short but sumptuous catalog of
my quarter-century club” (10), Rick Grunder (www.rickgrunder.com) has
published notes from five hundred of the most significant items he has
personally handled related to the development of Mormonism. Mormon
Parallels: A Bibliographic Source is an astounding 2088 pages of 8.5 x
11 inches, including introduction and lengthy bibliography. It has
hundreds of 18th and 19th century illustrations, daguerreotypes, maps
(with a few 20th century ones mixed in), to which the author spared no
expense. It has been printed in a limited edition of only 400 copies,
sold exclusively through Bear Hollow Books (www.bearhollowbooks.com) of
Salt Lake City, Utah for $200. While the limited edition and the price
are nothing new to Mormon scholars and collectors, the format is: Mormon
Parallels is an e-book.
Squeezed onto one disc, every Mormon Parallels CD-ROM is signed and
numbered by Grunder. It is organized as one large .pdf document, rather
than numerous smaller ones, to allow the end user to search the entire
text for key words or phrases. The entries are alphabetical by author,
rather than topic, because, as Grunder notes, “many entries individually
treat a variety of subjects.” (48) Also to assist in this, the author
seems to have taken special awareness of phrases that would be looked
for that might not necessarily be mentioned as such in the text, and
provided a sub-heading in the document for that topic (i. e., “baptism
for the dead,” or “word of wisdom”). In doing so, Grunder has done away
with the need for an index at the end, instead allowing the reader to go
from reference to reference. The reader is also assisted by numerous,
albeit very subtle, hyperlinks throughout the text to related items
within the e-book. Using either Adobe Acrobat’s Bookmark panel, or, for
Mac users, the Sidebar pane in Preview, breaks down the 500 items in
groups of 25, alphabetical by author, and a quick click reveals the 25
within any group. Another click on a title will instantly put the reader
on the entry. One of the greatest benefits to publishing this work as an
e-book is the images. They are many, and they are beautiful. And while
many are small, the resolution is high enough that it is not until
zooming beyond 300% that there is any distortion.
Stating his thesis as “a very large part of what many of us have thought
comprised the essence of Mormonism actually appeared in Joseph Smith’s
immediate world before it became part of Mormon language or thought”
(16), Grunder produces a staggering amount of evidence that leaves no
doubt in his reader’s mind that such is the case.
Citing everything from Adair’s History of the American Indians to
Masonic exposés to Zion’s Herald, the scale of Grunder’s work is
overwhelming, and completely demolishes the hypothesis that Joseph Smith
received revelation ex nihilo. “The ready presence of Joseph's very
real, inescapable culture”, he writes in the introduction, “is too
overwhelming to ignore, yet we have not acknowledged it like we should.
. . . True faith deserves a full spectrum, and it is entirely
appropriate to pursue its origins from all periods of history. Yet
wherever modern parallels negate claims to exclusively ancient origins,
one must be willing to see that fact, and to consider modifying one's
claims without feeling that faith is necessarily compromised. Such
intellectual adjustments have succeeded well throughout Mormon history.”
(25) When writing of what the meaning of these numerous parallels are,
Grunder holds, “Many statements which appear in Mormon studies are
incorrect or insufficient because the writers overlook extensive
environmental data which have always been available in many hundreds –
ultimately thousands – of original, primary sources.” (26) “[I]s it any
more righteous, or ethically and economically justifiable to beat the
bushes of past millennia for parallels to Mormonism, than to observe
seriously the surprising things which flourished in the immediate,
sacred splendor of Joseph's personal grove?” (25)
The biographical and bibliographic work alone is a a masterpiece. His
four entries on Lorenzo and Peggy Dow (entries 118-121) not only show
their importance to early Mormons, but also provide a small biography of
this neglected 19th century couple. “Lorenzo had a tremendous effect
upon grass-roots American religion of the early nineteenth century”
Grunder writes. “Countless children were named after this monumental
revivalist, including Brigham Young's brother (Lorenzo Dow Young) and
future Church President Lorenzo Snow.” (487-488) As an aside,
EarlyLDS.com lists 13 different men named Lorenzo Dow, with another 48
named Lorenzo. To illustrate the prominence of this all but forgotten
man, Grunder quotes a sermon from later Lorenzo Snow in 1838, wherein
Snow said that he preached in a town in Missouri, and all that was
required to obtain the largest chapel to preach in was to give his first
name. “Such was the power,” he concludes, “of the name ‘Lorenzo Dow,'
even in Missouri, four years after the famed evangelist had died in the
District of Columbia.” (488)
Among the most interesting of Grunder’s entries is his work on Lehi’s
dream related to Rochester, New York in the late 1820s (“Reynolds
Arcade”, entry 350). While modern-day visitors might have no difficulty
viewing Rochester as a dark and dreary wasteland, the author begins his
Mormon parallels in a series of articles, reminiscences and histories on
the Rochester area’s reputation as a major fruit growing region. He
quotes an 1838 account of the area, stating “that the various kinds of
hardy fruits, such as the apple, pear, plum, quince, cherry, &c., are
the best varieties and easily cultivated; and that many of the more
delicate fruits, such as peaches, apricots, nectarines, grapes &c.,
attain a size and richness of flavour rarely equaled in our northern
latitudes. Of these facts a visit to the Rochester fruit-markets at the
proper seasons will convince any observer, and show that the southern
shore of the Ontario is emphatically A FRUIT COUNTRY.” (1371, Emphasis
in original.) As travelers from the east on the Erie Canal approached
Rochester, they crossed over the Genesee River on an 802-foot stone
aqueduct. The horse towpath became very narrow at this point, “so narrow
that horses had to be hitched one in front of the other.” (1375) The
danger at this point became very real, and the Laws of the State of New
York determined that this path should be “protected on the out side by a
substantial, but plain iron railing” to prevent horse and rider from
tumbling into the churning Genesee. (1375) A few blocks downriver from
the iron rod-protected aqueduct roars the 100-foot drop of the Genesee
Falls. One visitor to the falls in 1812 described “beholding this mighty
sheet of water take its awful leap of nearly one hundred feet, far below
the common level of the surrounding country, into a deep channel
excavated by its own power through a bed of limestone for more than
three miles, running smoothly along in a surpentine [sic] course until
it passed beyond our vision.” (1381) Grunder states that according to an
1824 dictionary, a “gulf” “was not a flash-flood desert canyon or wadi
of Lehi’s Arabia, but more appropriate to Joseph Smith’s immediate
world, ‘a bay; a whirlpool.’” (1383) “I have stood at this very spot
after heavy rains”, Grunder writes, “when the river was dirty and full,
the color of coffee and cream. I have exclaimed to myself in an
unguarded moment, ‘Truly, this is the fountain of filthy water in
Nephi’s dream!’” (ibid)
While these are all very interesting comparisons, the image of the brand
new Reynolds Arcade will convince even the most stout believers of
Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling that the image of that structure could
not but have been present in his mind a few weeks after visiting it when
he translated the portion of the Book of Mormon dealing with the “great
and spacious building”. (1399) Grunder writes that the building was
“nearly ninety feet tall, nearly a hundred feet wide. The Arcade,
described in the pamphlet at hand as ‘the most magnificent structure
west of Albany . . . ,’ was built by Abelard Reynolds, politician and
Freemason, one of the ten wealthiest men of Rochester, at a cost of
$30,000.” (1395) Taller than any other building in Rochester, it was
only two blocks from the Erie Canal aqueduct across the Genesee, and
“the Arcade was indeed all doors and windows by the standards of that
time. Its tower atop four stories of offices and shops commanded a view
not only of ‘the farms and forest in the vicinity’, but – more to the
point – of the poorest laborer tenements in town, across and down the
adjacent Genesee. The city’s underprivileged looked up from their
‘jumble of shacks and cheap rooming houses’ on Water Street to the tall
structure crowning the richest block of the business district on the
other side of the river – filled with entrepreneurs, clothiers and the
most stylish merchants – and they came to understand that they were no
longer part of ‘better’ society as a whole.” (1397)
There are occasions when Grunder gets carried away in telling the
history of a book or manuscript, and readers can almost see him in their
mind’s eye lifting his fingers from his keyboard to pause for a moment,
and then type something similar to the line that he does for Peggy Dow’s
Vicissitudes Exemplified: “However, the more tedious tome which you are
presently reading is supposed to focus on Mormon parallels, so on to
business . . .” (1399, ellipsis in original.)
In the process of reading this work, I found myself wishing for two main
things: a table of contents listing each entry, and that it were a
physical book. The table of contents would serve two purposes; first, it
would allow for a more thorough perusal of the work, and secondly, it
would provide a shopping list for bibliophiles that could be copied,
pasted, and printed out, instead of having to be retyped. Regarding the
physical book idea, Grunder anticipated that not all of his readers are
as adept at reading from a computer monitor, and some would wish to
back-up so expensive a digital object, and has thus provided that each
purchaser is licensed to make one back-up digital copy, either on their
computer or on a disc (no word on an iPhone app), and also to make a
printed copy. Using a print-on-demand service, each purchaser can then
have his or her own multi-volume copy to sit down with on a Sunday
afternoon.
Alexander Campbell’s statement regarding the Book of Mormon discussing
“every error and almost every truth discussed in New York” during the
1820s is completely validated by Mormon Parallels. “It really does not
matter whether Joseph Smith actually read any specific manuscript or
book,” Grunder concludes, “because an entire culture is on display. No
single one of these writings was essential to the work of Joseph Smith,
and this Bibliographic Source hangs upon no individual concept – upon no
particular text. It is, rather, the very existence of the Mormon
parallels which these sources display – in such great number,
distribution, and uncanny resemblance to the literary, doctrinal and
social structures which Joseph formed – which may command our
attention.” (37-38)
Mormon Parallels is so large, so deep, and so thorough, that it becomes
nearly impossible to decide what to read first, what to quote, or what
to use in a review. A bound copy could help on those Sunday afternoons
by letting it flop open to any given page. But taken as a whole, Rick
Grunder’s magnum opus is always interesting, occasionally wandering, but
absolutely amazing. It is one of those rare works that should excite
both followers and detractors of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.
Clearly, “‘Joseph Smith could not have known,’ is no longer a reasonable
option.” (39)
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today(Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
