Those of us who were around in the late '60s and read the then new Dialogue, Journal of Mormon Thought, will remember the articles published there by Michael Coe, Mayan archeologist. Basically he said, "there's no such thing as Book of Mormon archeology." A big shock to some of us who had been preaching the BoM in South America a couple of years earlier.

Coe died September 25 at age 90.
https://news.yale.edu/2019/10/08/michael-coe-influential-archaeologist-helped-unlock-secrets-mesoamerica

Already had doubts after 2 years of mission misogyny and failing to find that "putting my education on the altar of sacrifice" wasn't working out for me.

I imagine his articles are online. I think I can find the Dialogue ones if anyone is interested. I used to have every issue of Dialogue up until the mid-90s when we finally stopped subscribing.

Thank you Michael, for helping so many of us to pull off the blinders and see the world of Joseph Smith as it really was.

Wait, wait... He was the man who translated the Nephite glyphs, wasn't he?

That was, of course, a joke. He was indeed a great man because he made the major breakthrough in translating Mayan glyphs.

He was indeed a great man who contributed something of great worth to humanity: understanding!

Thanks for reminding us, Phantom Shadow.

Tom in Paris

never heard of her ~



how she died OPie ? ~

The article is found in Dialogue 8:2, Summer 1973.

"Mormons and Archeology: An Outside View."

Or listen to Dehlin's Mormon Stories podcasts with Coe:
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/michael-coe-an-outsiders-view-of-book-of-mormon-archaeology/

Remember that the discovery of the Book of Abraham papyri was around 1968 with Dialogue publishing articles about them in 1969. Those were heady times.

And Dallin Oaks was a member of the editorial board. In those far distant days he was our Great White Hope.

Oaks was, or appeared to be, a different man back then. I have a relative who worked closely with him back then and has been astonished by his gradual transformation into the ogre we see today.

Steve Benson made a similar observation. I believe he quoted someone else as being astonished at the sudden personality change when Oaks became an Apostle.

I believe there were both sudden and gradual changes. His curremt overbearing smugness reminds me in some ways of the late great Packer. In other words, nothing like an apostle of Jesus Christ.

I think you may be right on both points: the sudden and gradual change in Oaks' demeanor, and his eventual resemblance to Packer.

You'll recall that soon after Oaks was made an apostle, he told someone (Benson) with regard to Packer that "it's tough to stage manage a grizzly bear." That understandably infuriated Packer.

A few years later I mentioned to another relative of mine (the one I mentioned above worked with Oaks in his legal/judicial capacity; the one to whom I'm referring now worked his way fairly high in the church, worked frequently with Packer in that capacity, and was sharing with me his understanding of Q12 dynamics) that Oaks seemed like a clone of Packer. This rising church leader replied that that was possible and that the Q12 did indeed assign long-term roles to the younger apostles. In his view, it was entirely conceivable that having insulted Packer, Oaks was instructed to assume the same "enforcer" role.

If that is correct, then there would have been a fairly sudden change in Oaks' behavior after he was ordered to reinforce Packer's position followed by a gradual evolution as Oaks became the reactionary he was ordered to emulate. That would explain why Oaks now appears a reincarnation of the old grizzly bear.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/10/2019 12:17AM by Lot's Wife.

him having to portray one type of person in order to move up the ladder in the secular legal profession (Univ. of Chicago Law School, clerking for Chief Justice Warren, working at Kirkland & Ellis, teaching law at Univ. of Chicago, appointment to Utah Supreme Court by a Democrat governor, etc.)

Once that track of personal advancement was no longer in play, Oaks no longer needed to portray the persona of an objective, fair-minded, intellectually honest professional that would be appealing to those people who would be in a position to move him up the ladder or block his advancement.

As he often has indicated, once he became an "Apostle" the church became his client for life, and a different persona was needed to take on this role. Just look at how willing he was to create bullsh*t spin out of whole cloth to explain away the Salamander Letter when he thought it was a real thing. He's a partisan advocate/hack now. That's his role now. And it may get him to the pinnacle of power in LDS, Inc.,... probably a position he has craved all his life.

Persona changes like this are among the classic earmarks of an unprincipled narcissistic/sociopathic personality.