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APPENDIX A
SCRIPTURALIZING PROCESS
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READERS should begin at the hole in the center of the word SCRIP ¤ TURE.
(They may also turn to the two-page illustration at the beginning of this book.)
What is scripture is a matter now being given serious thought outside the
traditions that scripture itself has generated. That is, rather than explain scripture
from some tradition that builds metatext into its answer—something like
explanations based on speech genres, as in, “scripture is the Word of God given to
Man,” or, “scriptures are folktales used by Man to control people”—we ought to
see that scripture is a folk notion. It is not an analytical one. What is scripture? It
is a relationship between text and metatext, and a very unique one: between them
some power is corralled and generates all that is diagrammed in the upward
expanding spiral given above METATEXT. The downward spiral is also blown
from its engine. That spiraling up and down describes the SCRIPTURALIZING
PROCESS, which to think of properly should be envisioned as stabilizing TEXT-
METATEXT as much as it is generated by that relationship. Underneath TEXT
you will find what scripture-readers seek for, in their reading of so much
METATEXT: the original meaning, the ur-text, the critical edition, what the
author or God really meant, even some magic powers to be gained by having the
true, original, or authentic reading at last. Restorationists seek here for “original”
forms, and to use them to map various landscapes—biographical, somatic, social,
geographical—of readers. It is important we don’t limit our notion of TEXT and
METATEXT to things composed in words and letters. If one’s congregation
takes up the titles, phrases, social roles and speech styles found in some TEXT,
then that congregation is METATEXT. They may generate written commentary,
but that does not make them more METATEXT than before.
This first volume is mostly concerned with Restoration efforts to find in
the Bible the Old Time Religion, and the next volume watches them map that
religion onto the pages of the Book of Mormon and onto the bodies and
biographies of readers of that SCRIPTURE. This brings up the question: What is
the Book of Mormon? Do you mean the 1830 edition, the 1837 edition, the
1981 version, or the oral text spoken by Joseph Smith so long ago, or the pile of
plates “having the appearance of gold” said to be buried in the Americas
somewhere? Or is it the meaning of these things, what someone interprets them
to say about life, liberty, and the pursuit of salvation? The TEXT- METATEXT
relationship unfolds the folk term SCRIPTURE, making it suitable for analysis;
freeing us from folk questions. When realized, we see we are really dealing with
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tornados when we hear believers speak of The Scriptures.
Maybe you want to get at “what it really means” by seeking some more
original text? You merely follow projections from a “scripture imaginary” to a false
foundation, deceived into thinking you might no longer be dealing with signs
needing interpretation, but actually are at reality that interprets itself. Your endless
search underwrites the upward spiral of METATEXT, telling us what TEXT
means, and what sorts of people know such things. The Book of Mormon is
SCRIPTURE, then, and neither exclusively TEXT nor METATEXT. That is,
the phrase-title names a relationship, stabilizing it for some readership between
these two levels of text.
The stream of sound is, in a most basic way, broken into characters printed in ink
on a page. Without this basic fracturing by transcription and, in the modern era,
in publication, TEXT cannot generate social movements. This Text Fracturing creates stable METATEXT which are, as we move “upward,” linked to
communities of interpretation and circulation. Copies of a text are the most
stabilizing of METATEXT, giving the appearance of a single work carrying some
single meaning to be interpreted correctly by readers of dispersed copies of TEXT.
Their interpretations are not copies, however. Upward from that disjuncture of
form and interpretation, we find minor errors in copies, and then named editions:
the 1830, the Nauvoo, etc. Text Fracturing also occurs in the creation of dictionaries and encyclopedia which cut up phrases and re-arrange them according
to alphabetized nouns; by indexes to break some word or phrase from sentence
context and mark it as important enough to be listed and given a page reference; in
topical guides that label parts of the text and refer to it. These and other subtle
fracturing can be seen in Book of Mormon editions, as verse numbers were
introduced in 1879, allowing TEXT to be referred to in fragmentary patches; in
chapter introductions brought inside TEXT; as footnotes divide up narrative and
tie it to other TEXT. Thus the KJV Bible became METATEXT for the Book of
Mormon, and vice versa. Volume Two traces how “Mormonism” was built from
this relationship.
Moving upward, after editions and copies circulate, the groundwork for a
social imaginary has formed. Here we find Audience Versions, explicit editions for teens, children, missionaries, parents, scholars, students, and so forth.
Assumptions about the respective reader’s psychology, purposes for use, and
market presence filter into METATEXT at this point. Volume Three mostly
takes up the history of these editions and the social realities they create, and
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explains the ways that markets shape METATEXT. With these Versions we have ventured into social space. The spiral thus generates another dimension, labelled
“Social Persona, Voicing” and marked with an arrow to the box identified as
“Generative Field.”
Social relations are here introduced into readings of text, proliferating
METATEXT and linking them to roles and identities. Thus, priests to interpret
the TEXT by creating METATEXT arise, or preachers and teachers to find
believers in it. Here again we see METATEXT describing more than “words on a
page,” but also one’s “state of mind” as a “believer” in something about TEXT (it
being “true,” for example). A group may congregate under a name (perhaps taken
from TEXT), and membership in it encourages the creation of cultural capital
(carried in one’s body, voice or biography). Really the focus of Volume Three,
cultural capital is distributed in notions of “worthiness” or “power” and so on. It
is used to rank members according to a hierarchy loosely anchored in TEXT.
While this first volume traces the initial movement from Restorationists to
Mormons, the second volume treats the Generative Field in greater detail,
reconstructing how LDS apostles first circulated METATEXT pamphlets that
were later voiced by dlders delivering a “message” enunciating “Mormonism.”
Those at the “top” of the field, like apostles, are typically also those who create
METATEXT circulated in the voices of lower ranked members; or, when you
find yourself voicing another’s words, consider yourself their possession. At some
point, to return to generalities, they and their followers tend to collapse
METATEXT into TEXT, just as authoritative voices find their way into mouths
of adherents. Very often some schism will attend this substitution or collapse.
Priestly or apostolic METATEXT may become new SCRIPTURE for some new
movement or rising generation, and the SCRIPTURALIZING PROCESS
continues to spiral upward and downward. Volume Three further explores how
capital is created in this Field, and identities are performed, with hierarchies
expanding; heresy becoming possible, and movements speaking of Reformation,
Correlation and Restoration abound. These social relations are created by and
creative of METATEXT, but are bound to TEXT in such ways as to give us
SCRIPTURE.
It is important to keep in mind that METATEXT exist only in as much
as TEXT exist to speak about, to comment upon, or otherwise report, explain, or
expand. Thus, much of the reverence granted SCRIPTURE may bleed into other
METATEXT, and these may take on almost a quasi-scriptural quality, being
regarded as worth preserving, studying, and commenting upon, perhaps even
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starting a new movement for these purposes. For example, a sermon by Joseph
Smith or Brigham Young or Orson Pratt expounding upon the Book of Mormon
(and thus its METATEXT) may take on almost canonical reverence, being bound
in leather, published in critical editions, enjoying scholarly commentary and
priestly advocacy. The process is not one way, but is a spiral, generative of social
imaginaries or “faith communities,” (i.e., cultures). At any point some
METATEXT can become the TEXT that becomes SCRIPTURE for some new
group.
If we follow METATEXT upward, past the spin-off Generative Field, we
find fragmentation of various kinds. METATEXT fragment into speech genres:
first with Audience Versions, and then into sermons, prayers, liturgy, translations, simplifications, commentary, curriculum, and other genres bound to speech events
where a specific audience hears and recirculates METATEXT. Listeners may
return home and record in diaries and journals what they learned from a sermon,
or experienced in a ritual, or doubted about a lesson. METATEXT further
fragments into reported speech, as “Intertextual Usage In Defined Spaces” begins
to link phrases, terms, and styles with audience identities. For example, LDS
teenagers are asked to memorize passages from the Book of Mormon, and to
“apply” these stripped-out sayings “to their daily lives,” in effect using the TEXT
as a prospective map for one’s biography or body. Rankings of good and bad sorts
of persons are re-introduced into TEXT by such METATEXT, allowing reader
identification with textual characters, and textual characterizations to form into
social stereotypes. One may call another group “Lamanite” or “Zoramite,” or a
person “Korihor,” presupposing one’s interlocutor is familiar enough with TEXT
to link the name to circulationg stereotypes and apply them to living persons.
(The Generative Field should not be viewed as distinct from rising spiral, so much
as another dimension of it; a sort of fractal image of ongoing processes). TEXT is
further fractured into quotes stripped from and recited in sermons, for instance.
Phrases may be used for book titles or for advertising commodities, or memorized
and given as apothegms of wisdom or to “inspire” people. This level fractures
words, phrases, styles and “forms” from TEXT and locates them inside other
institutions, like schools, churches, shops, hospitals, and government facilities.
Stylistic features most prominent in TEXT—and distinct from common,
“unmarked” speech—may also give rise to METATEXT and social roles. For
instance, sermons that take on “thee” and “thou” or grammatical endings like say–
eth and did-st; or familiar phrases like “It came to pass” are used to sell BYU
Football tickets; sometimes for ironic effect by juxtaposition, or for poking fun at
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TEXT (“And it came to pass that I, Daymon, being of goodly parents, beseech
thee to partake of this donut”). This is the sort of thing that gave us the early
satires on the Gold Bible. As stylistic fracturing occurs, then, TEXT can be
exposed to oblique criticism by ironic tropes, or mocking use of its phrases, style,
or perhaps “archaic” language. Here undercurrents of discontent are stirred by
TEXT itself, as it fractures throughout society, and is taken up by figures who
appear to use TEXT for purposes other than those it is read, by someone, as God
originally intended. One might write a salesman’s manual using the Book of
Mormon as a guide text, or management potboiler, or some diet plan. Such
METATEXT opens TEXT up for alternative readings, challenges, criticism.
Others may write fan fiction using markers of style, building plot outward from
proper names, and start a movement, becoming its authoritative leader. While
Volume Two watches Mormons build maps that link the Book of Mormon to the
Bible narrative, Volume Three tracks how the Book of Mormon was employed to
generate social landscapes. These further intergrate TEXT with dependent but
socially implicated METATEXT, as bodies, biographies, markets and books
increasingly mingle.
As we move upward into METATEXT we find further fracturing, as the
world referred to by TEXT has been sufficiently distributed through a culture by
virtue of METATEXT. Thus, the world of the Nephites can be re-imagined in
fan fiction, its authors writing “pseudepigrapha”; computer games created that
explore the world of Zarahemla; lucrative sentimental or scoffing musicals created,
plays adapted, and television shows piloted. Even amusement parks may be
constructed, and tours of sacred sites conducted as landscape takes on things
referred to in TEXT. Obviously, a market has been created in these imaginings,
and the market is not without effects on TEXT. Where tourists can be taken,
safely, comfortably and profitably, for example, may also provide us tours of places
said to be found in the pages of the Book of Mormon. Thus, there are no tours of
“Book of Mormon Lands” conducted in San Francisco, California, nor in the
Atacama desert of Chile, or the jungles of Panama. One can find tours of various
Mexican locales already prepared with an infrastructure for American tourists and
profitably conducted. Not surprisingly, further TEXT fracturing occurs as
markets gather to organize TEXT by METATEXT that conform to the logic of
capitalism.
After the world referred to by the text has fragmented into commodities,
tours, computer games, musicals, jewelry, teddy bears, and so much religious
kitsch, then we find emerging scholars of varying intellect who find a niche in a
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division of labor, spending their minds on the world imagined in the text. Thus,
Mormon archaeologists show up with funding sufficient to conduct extended digs,
organize conferences and publish journals. Critics of TEXT also emerge to
challenge the claims (METATEXT) made by scholars and apologists. More
METATEXT results, as do more ways of “being” involved with the scripture: as a
believer, skeptic, reader of it as “literature,” literalist, fundamentalist, aphorist, and
so forth. Historians may come along and explain the “origins” or “influences” of
some thing or another on the SCRIPTURE. These are identities (social roles) tied
to the way TEXT-METATEXT can be recalibrated by a Generative Field and to
the capital to be claimed, created, and destroyed by those inhabiting some field.
For example, one may be an instructor of history at Brigham Young University
and write books about how LDS Church structure is found in the pages of the
Book of Mormon, or is not. Or that Maya DNA matches Jewish DNA, or does
not. Or that some stele shows a scene depicted in TEXT. Critics and doubters
may respond, and in their responses they also create hierarchies, orthodoxies,
heretics and so forth, in a “secular” posture.
Finally, at the top of the page, we reach the utter limit of fragmentation of
TEXT, as it becomes so general as to be knit into the world itself: our phrases, our
notions of good and evil, jurisprudence, economy, politics, diets, fashions, sexual
habits, growth and maturation rates, language, celebrity, sport, and on and on.
Here METATEXT has simply become common, daily life, as Christians or
Muslims or Jews gather to this or that land, and make calendars and governments
and so much from TEXT that becomes “normal” and taken for granted. The
scripture called “The Bible” has faded into and become just such a reality,
although, obviously there is some book we insist really is the Bible. Where does it
stop, though? Surely not at the page’s end. Thus, many imagine foolishly that if
they reject the Bible and become atheists, they are no longer bound into that bible
world. But in their reaction they continue the cycle marked by the Generative
Field, and more often than not simply replace one scripture for another; say,
Darwin’s Origin of Species, or something by Richard Dawkins, or Stephen Hawking. Copies circulate, priests emerge, METATEXT circulate, and heresies
and orthodoxies established and re-established, spiraling upward and downward
through culture-history. If one imagines stepping out from the scripture of the
Bible, one is deceived: it cannot be done, for even your notions of freedom,
liberation, and “breaking away” were constructed by that scripture. Bodies,
biographies, social relations, landscapes, and much else is METATEXT to it, and
these are less easily doubted than TEXT. No addition of METATEXT or TEXT
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is sufficient to stop the spiral, so that you can get off. What must be thought out,
however, is how to use the process of scripture-making to create a world we’d
prefer, rather than one merely inherited from ancestors, fallible humans, often
foolish and wicked on bad days, cat scratch crazy for weeks at a time.
The process that generates SCRIPTURE is given extra oomph under the
practices of Restoration. As we see in this volume, that term translates
METATEXT into social realities, making, as it were, the Word flesh. Restoration
can be understood as collapsing METATEXT into some imagined text (e.g., what
the Bible originally meant). It then advocates the uptake of fragments broken
from METATEXT into one’s own life: becoming a disciple, practicing biblical
baptism, dietary laws, and so forth. It is an implicit theory of scripture, but rather
than write a book about it, its practioners embody it.
Rather than Reformation, or its slyer sister Restoration, we need a new
book to behold, and to reorient ourselves upon: where rather than spinning so
many yarns to bind others with, our yarns weave tapestries and carpets, tapa cloth,
harps, and many happy evenings where truth, lands, ourselves, and a good story
are at-one. The history I give in these volumes, starting with this one before you,
is what I believe can provide greater consciousness of the scriptural spiral. With
keener consciousness one might work more carefully inside that whirlwind, rather
than simply spin with it. Just as a theory of gravity does not immediately provide
for one’s escape, however, neither does the diagram, history, and raised
consciousness—together a waking up to the mesmerizing spiral, or a turning away
from some ancient column of fire—these do not immediately provide escape from
its dizzying spin. Having a theory of gravity, however, leads to its testing by
practical means. After a few centuries, we learn how to escape earth’s gravity, and
not merely temporarily as when we leap in the air and fall again to the ground.
Rather than leap and find ourselves falling on others attempting a leap, often from
swampy ground, shifting sands, and criss-crossing conveyor belts, we might
someday escape from the gravity of the Bible. It will still be there, of course, but
distant and observed. I suspect, however, this will only occur when we’ve done the
math, built the parts, trained some astronauts and aimed ourselves at a glowing
orb in the Heavens. We need, in other words, something to aim at; where we can
set our minds on ground not spinning around so many scriptures, priesthoods,
orthodoxies, pain, sacrifice, violence, money, kitsch and meaningless identity
politics. It can be done: for it was done long ago when scholars and priests made
the stuff that became our bibles. A thousand years after they worked, other
scholars and priests made SCRIPTURE central to their political and economic
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Reformation, thence to our modern world where the bible has fractured into all of
us. When we read the Book of Mormon, it is with its long fingers pointing the
way through, and sometimes obscuring, its TEXT.
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AS IF YOU CARE . . .
THE AUTHOR somehow got a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania by writing a
(longish) dissertation on the history of language use in Mormonism. It begins in the
1880s anti-polygamy raids of the Mormon Underground, surveys the fractures of the
modern church, ending in a history and analysis of the Priesthood Correlation program.
This work, The Last shall be First and the First shall be Last: Discourse and Mormon History
(2007) is further explored in an award-winning series on the LDS blog,
ByCommonConsent.org. Copies of the dissertation can be downloaded there. Yes, for
free. He has since published The Book of Mammon: A book about a book about the
corporation that owns the Mormons (2010). The basis of award-winning podcasts for
MormonStories.org, the “cross-genre” book has been called “awesome” and “awful” (by
the same reader). It draws on his (brief) employment in the bizarre cubicle world that is
LDS Church corporate headquarters.
Daymon’s strange The Abridging Works (2012) presents the Book of Mormon in a reader-
friendly sequence he supposes it was composed in long ago, by ancient authors giving us a
kind of epic and personal history. Essays in that volume sketch out theories of translation,
an argument against the tradition of Large and Small Plates, and pose other—to him,
anyway—interesting puzzles, and even a few possible solutions. Shamelessly, he self-
publishes his books and even designs covers for them. More essays and funny stuff like the
1950s Beehive Girls Manual can be found on his blog,
www.daymonsmith.wordpress.com. You cannot follow him on Twitter.
The awesome illustration/diagram/whirlwind of the Scripturalizing Process was created by
the hand of Amber J. Smith. You’ll have to figure out the cover illustration on your own.
copyright 2013 daymon m smith vol.1
