Many thanks to friend of JI, WVS, for his thoughtful review! You can purchase the book from UNC Press HERE.

“Regardless of what one believes about its historical or sacral authenticity, the Book of Mormon reveals important information about nineteenth-century American culture, particularly regarding oral culture and the formation of American literature among the non-elite classes of democratic-minded citizens, whose voices often emerged through the spoken word along religious avenues and byways.”(ix)

“I will be exploring how the textual phenomena and internal evidence within the pages of the Book of Mormon reach outside the text to engage with the pervasive oratorical training, practices, and concerns of Smith’s environment in early nineteenth-century America. I believe that this information, for believers and nonbelievers alike, reveals valuable insights about the life of Joseph Smith, his background and religious experiences, as well as the cultural context in which he grew up. I invite the reader to join me in that journey of discovery.”(xi)

Thus, William L. Davis sets the stage for his study of the Book of Mormon, Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020). i-xiii, 1-250. Notes, bibliography, index.

Bill Davis comes at his subject from an academic background in theater and performance studies (PhD, UCLA 2016). One expects that for this sort of book, a degree in religious studies, literature, or  American history, would be more natural. However, since much of early Mormon culture was oral culture, the latter sometimes intentionally avoiding the written word, performance studies is a discipline that can extend traditional methodologies as it has productively done in the study of the New Testament for example.

Davis begins his study with a rehearsal of, in succinct terms, what might be registered as “magic” in the cultural world of Joseph Smith’s early years, including seer stones, treasure hunting and other esoteric beliefs and practices.  Such beliefs and practices were part of the Seeker ethos, one that sought truth through many avenues, including the use of mystical objects transformed from the everyday to the occult to the religious. Here Davis observes the underground beliefs that continued from the middle ages, suppressed by the Reformers but never truly excised, in a “white” magic that was still present alongside the “black” and that the esoteric, even the deeper Christian practice (though not present in the “church” perhaps) was available for the blessing and protection of the initiated.(10-11)

I found Davis’s discussion of preaching in Joseph Smith’s New England home world cogent and useful to his thesis that performative aspects of Christian preaching may have influenced Smith’s own education and thought on inspiration and communication (ch. 2). Davis does interesting work in extending these ideas to the Palmyra era and Smith’s exposure to Methodism and the revival in particular.(56, 58) I see this work as a valuable adjunct in understanding early Mormon teaching practice, not just from Smith but from other prominent figures in the Latter-day Saint movement in Ohio, Nauvoo and later. Davis’s use of the King Follett Sermon (ch. 4) as an illustration of the extemporaneous preaching technique of preparing a mental “skeleton” of a speech prior to delivery opens a wide range of examples for his discussion of preaching styles, in particular autobiographical preaching. Davis sees these styles as hints of Smith’s technique in producing the Book of Mormon or at least he reads the many preaching texts in the book by such lights. The details here are alone worth an exploration of the Visions in a Seer Stone.

The technical heart of Visions in a Seer Stone is chapter 6 where Davis uses the preceding work to consider the text of the Book of Mormon, and whether there is important evidence that it was a premediated work. The territory here is fascinating and I appreciated the authors careful work in constructing a thesis that he uses to conclude (163) in part that

“the evidence points to a different but related history of the production of the Book of Mormon. The ubiquitous presence of nineteenth-century compositional techniques, the pervasive residue of contemporary sermonizing strategies, and the saturation of the work with nineteenth-century concepts, phraseology, and vocabulary all point directly and specifically to Joseph Smith as the source and assembler of these narrative components. Moreover, the evidence reveals that behind the project lay a systematic approach of careful planning and preparation, which, in turn, suggests that Smith spent a significant amount of time in the creation of the work.”

Davis sees the years 1823-1827 as the period when Smith constructed the outline of the Nephite story, whether by instruction from the angel and use of his revelatory instruments or some other method. (177)

I recommend this work on several levels, not least of which is the way it brings sermon studies into the center of early Mormon historical work. It stands apart from much previous work on the Book of Mormon and Davis does not fail to engage that work. That alone perhaps makes Visions worth a careful reading.