Is the Book of Mormon Straussian?
Surprising evidence for a bizarre claim
Content warning: This post is highly esoteric and requires a LOT of context to fully make sense. It heavily features both Mormonism and Straussianism, which I understand many people may not care about or possibly dislike. If that’s you, feel free to skip and I’ll try to make it up to you soon.
Last week, Tyler Cowen linked to an interesting tweet storm on the Book of Mormon, arguing that for such an influential religious text, its contents receive puzzlingly little scholarly attention.
Unlike Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s plays, or the Meditations of Aurelius, it is the stunning stamp of the educated man to HAVE NOT read the Book of Mormon… Whether it be Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, George Lucas, or Jordan Peterson, they will refer to mythologies, canonical words, pseudographica, and literature the world over but I’ll be damned if they ever, ever, ever refer to any content within the sheets of paper of this book!
The thread is interesting throughout, not least because it makes so many bizarre-sounding claims with what (by Twitter standards) appears to be genuine earnestness.
One claim in particular has got me thinking long and hard about Leo Strauss again, and it may be the most bizarre of all. I don’t know who Speed Read Dan is, but he seems to be implying that the Book of Mormon is Straussian.
A brief refresher
A few essential points are necessary before we move forward, but you may need more to really get it. If you do, I’ll throw out my “Context is that which is scarce” link for a third time. To go even deeper, I strongly recommend the work of Arthur Melzer, who I will be referencing in quote blocks within this section to expedite the groundwork and hopefully facilitate my core arguments.1
1. What did Strauss believe
Leo Strauss … argued that, prior to the rise of liberal regimes and freedom of thought in the nineteenth century, almost all great thinkers wrote esoterically: they placed their most important reflections “between the lines” of their writings.
2. Straussianism seems really weird today
Today we cherish the “open society” where the whole phenomenon of secrecy and concealment is fundamentally suspect in ways that it was not in the past. We practice a morality, an epistemology, even a metaphysics of democratic openness, attributing the highest value, the truest knowledge, and the greatest reality to that which is public, disclosed, and available to all. In politics we seek “transparency,” in business “publicity,” in academics “publication.”
3. But it’s probably true
It turns out that, once one begins to look, one finds a surprising amount of historical evidence in support of this theory. To give just a few examples here—more will follow—the famous Encyclopedia of Diderot makes mention of esotericism in at least 20 different articles, including one expressly devoted to the topic “Exoteric and Esoteric.” The historical ubiquity of esotericism is also reported by Condorcet (see 1955, 46, 64, 90, 108–109, 136–38) and by Rousseau, who speaks of “the distinction between the two doctrines so eagerly received by all the Philosophers, and by which they professed in secret sentiments contrary to those they taught publicly”
4. And for good reasons
They [pre-modern thinkers] did so [wrote esoterically] for one or more of the following reasons: to defend themselves from persecution, to protect society from harm, to promote some positive political scheme, and to increase the effectiveness of their philosophical pedagogy.
5. The implications are huge
If it is true that most earlier thinkers wrote esoterically, then obviously we had better know that. If we don’t, we risk cutting ourselves off, in one degree or another, from the genuine teaching of over two thousand years of Western philosophy.
I’m really excited about this.
Historical context
Joseph Smith was born in 1805 in what Francis Scott Key famously called “the land of the free” (1814). But while the movement he formed now holds a reputation for intense patriotism, Smith’s lived experie… err, his personal background suggests it didn’t exactly fit that description by today’s standards.
According to Smith, initial attempts to share his religious convictions
excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this was common among all the sects—all united to persecute me.
Since avoiding persecution is the classic motivation for esotericism, this description lends some tentative plausibility to the Speed Read Dan hypothesis. Might these early experiences have prompted Joseph to minimize conflict and controversy by adopting a more indirect approach?
I’m tempted to go all-in with this line of reasoning since from a certain angle, it really does seem compelling.
We could go beyond Smith’s own accounts of persecution to argue that the broader culture was censorious enough for Straussian ideas to be “in the air” in a way Smith might intuitively grab onto and use.
We could invoke high-status, authoritative quotes from within mere years of the date Smith published the Book of Mormon to argue that with respect to certain opinions, America may have been more repressive than Europe:
In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond them.
We could wax poetic about the grave injustices Smith suffered as a religious minority and how they intensified throughout his life, something an elite episcopalian man like Francis Scott Key could never understand. Wikipedia was ready to back me up on this:
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was characterized sociologically by a disproportionately large number of high status Americans as well as English immigrants; for example, more than a quarter of all presidents of the United States have been Episcopalians.
We could be charitable and stop well short of fully privilege-shaming Mr. Key (which is indeed best to avoid generally, in my opinion), and still note that slavery was legally protected in the United States during this era and that the Star-Spangled Banner itself only began to take on its broad cultural resonance toward the end of the century, perhaps in part because enough Americans doubted the words Northern abolitionists mockingly adapted to “the land of the oppressed”…
As I said, I am very tempted to do this, but I’m not going to.
A different kind of Straussian
Keep in mind, Jesus was a speaker willing to be killed for his beliefs, and the simple take that “oh he hid it because he was afraid of being cancelled”, that doesn’t seem to fit the story right?
Tyler Cowen (19:30), on Jesus’ unique form of Straussianism2
In my opinion, the persecution → Straussian obfuscation story doesn’t quite fit here in a straightforward manner. Apart from being willing to be killed for his beliefs, Smith clearly envisioned himself as inhabiting a specific kind of prophetic role nearly antithetical to being classically Straussian.
Here is one emblematic quote, which speaks almost directly to how Smith perceived his role in relation to persecution:
I am like a huge, rough stone rolling down from a high mountain; and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force against religious bigotry, … Thus I will become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty.
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 3043
Far from evading or even bracing for persecution, Joseph Smith appears to have embraced the metaphor of head-on collision. Backed as these words are by the indisputable actions that culminated in his martyrdom, we would be hard-pressed to conclude that he put a lot of emphasis on using sneaky, clever language to avoid worldly punishment. Or at least, if he did, he was really bad at it.
I have additional support I could elaborate relating to how Smith conceived of himself and his calling for those interested, but I think it suffices to say that the guy probably had a more subtle relationship to Straussianism that didn’t primarily involve writing cryptic messages himself.
Plain and precious things
To explore how Smith’s movement does relate to Straussianism, it helps to establish where the Book of Mormon stands in relation to the Bible. That means it’s time to give the people what they want, and close in for some juicy textual analysis.
Latter-day Saints conceive of the Bible as having many teachings that were forgotten over time, lost truths which are affirmed and restored by the BOM.
This belief comes directly from verses such as 1 Nephi 13:40, which reads,
And the angel spake unto me, saying: These last records, which thou hast seen among the Gentiles, shall establish the truth of the first, which are of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them.
Whether or not this points to Straussianism depends a lot on how we interpret the phrase “taken away from them”. Who is doing the taking here and in what sense?
The LDS church typically emphasizes errors in the translation process, but this stance is based on a definition of translation much broader than even many of its members may fully appreciate. Their website explains,
In Joseph Smith’s day, the word translate didn’t just mean to take something from one language into another; it also could mean to transfer, convey, interpret, or explain.
In my view, this opens the possibility that the lost portions mentioned refer, at least in part, to ideas hidden by Straussian encoding of the Biblical source texts rather than simple misrendering from the original Hebrew or Greek.4
Decoding the Bible
In fact there are a number of highly significant BOM passages that are essentially Straussian readings of the original Bible. Consider this verse from John 10 (KJV),
14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
The Book of Mormon alleges, in the voice of Christ himself, that this was an example of dissembling the true target, one of the main techniques of esoteric communication outlined by Arthur Melzer.
Here’s an excerpt, with bracketed context added:
21 And verily I say unto you, that ye [the people in ancient America] are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
22 And they [his disciples in Jerusalem] understood me not, for they supposed it had been the Gentiles; for they understood not that the Gentiles should be converted through their preaching.
23 And they understood me not that I said they shall hear my voice; and they understood me not that the Gentiles should not at any time hear my voice—that I should not manifest myself unto them save it were by the Holy Ghost.
24 But behold, ye have both heard my voice, and seen me; and ye are my sheep, and ye are numbered among those whom the Father hath given me.
Many other examples exist, particularly in the writings of Isaiah, which are featured at length in the Book of Mormon and are heavily encouraged reading within the faith. One of the foremost characters in the Book of Mormon notes,
Now I, Nephi, do speak somewhat concerning the words which I have written, which have been spoken by the mouth of Isaiah. For behold, Isaiah spake many things which were hard for many of my people to understand; for they know not concerning the manner of prophesying among the Jews.
Is this unusual manner of prophesying at least partly Straussian in nature? One of the most prominent doctrinal authorities in LDS history seemed to think so. In “Ten Keys for Understanding Isaiah” he wrote,
One of the reasons many of the Nephites did not understand the words of Isaiah was that they did not know “concerning the manner of prophesying among the Jews.” (2 Ne. 25:1.) And so it is with all Christendom, plus many Latter-day Saints.
Nephi chose to couch his prophetic utterances in plain and simple declarations. But among his fellow Hebrew prophets it was not always appropriate so to do. Because of the wickedness of the people, Isaiah and others often spoke in figures, using types and shadows to illustrate their points. Their messages were, in effect, hidden in parables. (2 Ne. 25:1–8.)
For instance, the virgin birth prophecy is dropped into the midst of a recitation of local historical occurrences so that to the spiritually untutored it could be interpreted as some ancient and unknown happening that had no relationship to the birth of the Lord Jehovah into mortality some 700 years later. (Isa. 7.)
Burying highly significant information in the middle of a text is another of Melzer’s esoteric techniques.5 Crazy as it seemed at the outset, I think there’s a legitimate case for a Straussian element to Mormon scripture.6
Invitation
Most translations [of the Bible] that we Americans read, not reading the Greek of that time, they’re designed to be very Sunday School friendly, very chatty, very narratively based, easy to read… but the gospels are these super radical documents and the events in them are so strange… it’s a radical, revelatory in a literal sense book that everyone should read.
While Speed Read Dan may or may not have been thinking along these lines when he wrote his strange and wonderfully eccentric tweets, I think he was right in at least this respect: more people, scholars and autodidacts alike, should read the Book of Mormon and seriously study it.
There may be more there than you think.
Whenever you see bold in a quote block the emphasis is mine. And seriously you should read Arthur Melzer.
In my opinion, a Straussian interpretation of some of Christ’s teachings is well-supported. See also chapter 4 in Arthur Melzer’s “Philosophy Between the Lines”.
Of course, from a certain point of view the Straussian encoding is what saved these portions of the Bible from being edited out of the translation entirely.
More broadly, many LDS interpretations of the Old Testament have the flavor of a particular style of Straussian reading in which both a valid surface interpretation (i.e. exoteric) and a more essential esoteric meaning coexist, with the latter extending beyond its texts' literal or historical dimension.
Albeit mainly in the sense of decoding the esotericism of the Bible into some fairly radical doctrinal arguments.
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is not uncommonly cited among rationalist-adjacent circles. It states that readers tend to be able to easily identify mistakes about their own field of research in popular news coverage or essays, while simultaneously abstaining from reasonable skepticism about the accuracy of news coverage for fields the reader is unfamiliar with.
That is, we tend to assume that anyone who can write engagingly and who comes off as confident and knowledgeable is correct, even though our priors on accuracy ought to be largely informed by how accurately the writer represents the field in which the reader has firsthand experience.
So, with that having been said: I am used to reading coverage of Mormon precepts, cultural attitudes and religious beliefs which border on the absurd for their inaccuracy and frequent leaps in logic. It is not universal, but it is common.
Because of this pattern, I was pleasantly surprised to read this well-informed, clearly researched piece on the BoM. It’s a low bar, but every claim checked out and there were no obvious errors. Is it possible that you could be LDS? If not, kudos. I’m impressed.
Mormons certainly have a public vs private set of beliefs, and that can be considered esoteric or Straussian. This was more pronounced in the polygamist era, but continues to this day with "milk before meat". However, Joseph Smith seems more like an anti-Straussian American Kabballist figure than anything else. Masons and esoterics were quite interested in Egyptology and the connection to the patriarchs. Joseph buys a mummy and publishes the Pearl of Great Price. Or consider his translation of Corinthians which discusses heavenly and earthly bodies (Celestial and Terrestrial), and to which he explicitly adds a third: Telestial. Other people are reading between the lines and he is popularizing those ideas.