Ron Huggins wrote an interesting paper several years ago arguing that the Gold Plates/Moroni story evolved from Joseph Smith's activities searching for Captain Kidd's treasure. Although I reserve judgement over the persuasiveness of this argument (I have my own thesis that I am working on), I found a couple things that strengthen Huggins' position. As you may remember, I found a map of the Cumoros Islands with the names of Comore and Meroni *predating* the publication of the Book of Mormon.Another discovery comes from treasure lore of Captain Kidd burying not merely treasure, but a Bible. In Washington Irving’s short story “Kidd The Pirate,” published in Tales of a Traveler (New York, 1825) we read the following “old song”:
My name is Captain Kidd,Irving writes, “[Kidd] gained the Devil’s good graces by burying the Bible.” (214)
As I sailed, as I sailed—
I had the Bible in my hand,
As I sailed, as I sailed,
And I buried it in the sand
As I sailed.—
According to Ellen E. Dickinson, Joseph Smith was reported to have memorized a song very similar to this:
It is said that Joseph at an early age could read, but not write; and when quite young committed these lines to memory from the story of Captain Kidd, the notorious pirate, which seemed to give him great pleasure,Although Huggins cites Dickinson's report (p. 37), he does not mention the stanza Washington Irving quotes. It seems probable that young Joseph's song included a stanza of Kidd's buried Bible.
My name was Robert Kidd
As I sailed, as I sailed;
And most wickedly I did
As I sailed, as I sailed.
Found this rendition of the song online:
I hate to say it, but it seems to me these are the sort of tenuous connections you might be criticizing if they were being employed by LDS apologists in order to bolster ancient authenticity of the BoM or summat. That said, it is still interesting enough to me. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, Blair. You make a good point. But as I said, "I reserve judgment over the persuasiveness of this argument (I have my own thesis that I am working on)." If someone wishes to revise/build upon Huggin's thesis, this parallel might be worth looking into. I personally don't intend to (at least for now). My current studies are taking me another direction--but I thought this was worth informally posting here on my blog. Finding parallels like these is a great start, but it is hardly a good place to *end* one's research.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete