Jonathan Neville’s “Anathema” and Support of Critics of the Church

Jonathan Neville has recently responded to my reviews of his shoddy scholarship in the Interpreter, with my rejoinder published alongside demonstrating the flaws in his response and his utter failure to defend his work. I offer one additional rejoinder here, based on comments he has made elsewhere.

In another interview with Steven Pynakker, Neville offered a “preview” of his response. While Pynakker framed the discussion as brought about because “some people… with a little bit more visibility, have gone after [Neville],” but that is a misleading premise. I have offered reviews of Neville’s work, not the man himself. This is akin to Neville accusing me of being “obsessed” with him because his name appears in a review of his works — and yes, that actually happened. While I am flattered that anyone thinks I am someone with any visibility in scholarly fields at all (I am left to assume that Pynakker was referring to the venue more than myself), Pynakker and Neville need to be able to distinguish criticisms of the work from the worker. (Elsewhere on my blog, I have stated that Neville is a critic of the Church for his troublesome statements regarding Church leadership, and he has been involved in dishonest businesses in the past, but none of that factored into the responses to which they were referring).

During this interview, Neville makes fallacious claims. Around the three-minute mark, he claims that the seer stone translation “originated as an anti-Mormon concept,” citing Mormonism Unvailed. This is blatantly ridiculous. References to the seer stone date back at least five years before Mormonism Unvailed, with newspapers in 1829 discussing it. In 1830, Josiah Stowell defended the translation of the Book of Mormon in a court of law and stated it was done by placing the seer stone in the hat. In 1831, Richard McNemar wrote in his journal that Oliver Cowdery told him the Book of Mormon was translated by placing a seer stone in a hat. These are all cited in my rejoinder to Neville; but he takes it one step farther in this video that deserves calling out. (It is all the more ironic given Neville’s defense of Mormonism Unvailed’s affidavits attacking Joseph’s character in his book A Man That Can Translate, as I pointed out in my review and rejoinder.)

Immediately following this remark, Neville states that the seer stone is an “occult instrument” that is “anathema to Christians and, frankly, it’s kind of anathema to me.” Calling the seer stone an occult instrument is at odds with how Joseph’s contemporary Christians actually viewed the stone, as well as disregarding Wilford Woodruff’s claim that the seer stone was found by revelation. As I have likewise pointed out in my review, many early Latter-day Saint leaders and modern Church leaders have discussed Joseph’s use of a seer stone. By claiming this is an “anathema,” Neville inadvertently is stating that these prophets and apostles all believe something that is accursed, while he follows the “supposed” “Christian” view.

This is in stark contrast to his written response, claiming that it is acceptable for Latter-day Saints to believe that “Joseph Smith (and/or confederates) composed the text and Joseph read it surreptitiously, recited it from memory, or performed it based on prompts or cues.” I discuss this in my rejoinder, and would argue that this should be the true anathema for Latter-day Saints (this is, after all, the actual position taken by anti works such as Mormonism Unvailed, which Neville continuously misrepresents to state that it is about the seer stone). Yet again, Neville has shown that his distaste for the seer stone is so strong that he is willing to make this a matter of faith rather than a historical Book of Mormon.

Finally, Neville introduces a “rough sketch” of a painting he made that demonstrates his “Demonstration Hypothesis.” This painting’s historical framing will be fundamentally flawed, however, since the event it purports to depict actually is linked to the “spectacles” and not the seer stone, as I discuss in my review and rejoinder.

Ultimately, even in brief, Neville continues to fail to offer any sound response to a single criticism of his work.