By March 26, 2012
So my adviser, Ann Taves, has approved my final “throughline” for me to send out to the rest of my committee. Let me clarify. The way Ann likes to do it, is for her students to write the initial prospectus, then do all the research and then write a second prospectus. She calls the second prospectus a “throughline” or a chapter by chapter detail of your arguments.
By January 20, 2012
My dissertation committee felt I sort of gave them a bait and switch at my prospectus defense. I had spent three years telling them I wanted to compare Mormonism to medieval Christianity (which I’m still doing) but for my prospectus I was now talking about Mormonism and Neoplatonism. They found this all rather confusing and wanted brainstorm other angles I could take. In the midst of all this, my medieval advisor exclaimed, “I know what your thesis should be. It should be how Christian Mormonism is. This is all thoroughly Christian, it’s just not Protestant.”
What is Christian depends on one’s point of view. Medieval Christianity was very different from Protestantism. As I’ve noted around here a few times, Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 presents a very different picture of traditional Christianity than do Protestants.
By October 28, 2011
Here I basically place the work of Quinn, Brooke, and Owens within the context of Christian Platonism that I described in my earlier posts (3.1 and 3.2). It’s not an in-depth discussion of the sources, but more of an overview.
By October 21, 2011
Here I summarize a group of books that reevaluate the work of Frances Yates. It was Yates’ work on Renaissance Hermeticism that was the foundation for Brooke’s Refiner’s Fire. Thus the reevaluations of Yates, I argue, help us to better situate Mormonism in the history of Christianity. I had considered writing individual reviews but since they interweave it worked to analyze them together. I may do individual reviews of some of these works later.
By October 17, 2011
So I’m still writing prospectuses (or is it prospecti?) My committee technically passed off my first prospectus in December but did so with reservations. I’ve been working on placating those ever since. Also, the way my adviser Ann Taves likes to do it is to write an original prospectus, then do all the research, and then write another one at that point. I certainly haven’t completed my research but I’m getting there. My point is though I’m still working at this but I don’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels.
Anyway, the latest draft weighed in at 55 pages and 230 footnotes. I’m thinking of doing three posts of some of the introductory material. Here’s number one: [note: a fair amount of this is Ann’s wording]
“The Presence of God: Early Mormonism and Neoplatonism”
By August 31, 2011
So I decided to read Robert Ritner’s ?The Breathing of Hor among the Joseph Smith Papyri,” [1] for reasons I’ll discuss below. Wow. Where do I begin? As I’ve mentioned several times, I’m working on late Neoplatonic influence on early Mormonism and the primary innovations that the late Neoplatonists made to Neoplatonism was theurgy. To learn theurgy, Iamblichus spent considerable time studying in Egypt; Egyptians ritual played a significant role in Imablichus’s ritual theology. In fact, Iamblichus wrote his De Mysteriis (the principal exposition on theurgy) as “Master Abamon,” an Egyptian priest.[2]
By April 11, 2011
Adolf von Harnock asserted the famous paradigm that early Christianity was corrupted by Greek philosophy. He pointed to the Gnostics as the extreme form of that corruption but asserted that Christianity as a whole was tainted. The way he described the effects of Plato on Christianity would have been (and indeed was) appealing to Mormons.
By March 26, 2011
So after researching Proclus’s influence on Christianity these last few months and some conversations with my adviser, Ann wanted me to write up a new proposal. Ann really stresses that dissertations/books ought to have one clear thesis and thus we thought it best to go with the Neoplatonic one over the medieval Catholic one. I do still plan on arguing that Mormonism was a rejection of Protestantism, that crypto-Catholic ideas and practices persisted in folk practices that JS drew on, and thus Mormonism looks more Catholic than Protestant. But I’m arguing that Christian Platonism informs the direction of JS’s religiosity. Anyway, here’s my latest write up.
By November 28, 2010
Here’s some more of my prospectus that deals with the issues of pre-Reformation survivals. Some of this I’ve posted around here already but I contextualize it here a little differently.
By November 25, 2010
Ann Taves, my adviser, signed off on me sending this out to my committee a few days ago. The whole things is over 30 pages so I just include the first part here.
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