DOCUMENTED HISTORY BY CONSENSUS?

In a FaceBook exchange dealing with his video, Dan reproduced this slide from a 2012 presentation that I gave at Sunstone:

One wonders why Dan would use this illustration instead of bolstering his position by providing additional manuscript data. Everyone knows we don't create documented history by consensus. Documentation is important (I realize I keep saying this).

I have puzzled why so many accomplished scholars would say “yes” to the question whether Joseph Smith practiced polyandry. The supportive evidence is so ambiguous and limited. It seemed critical thinking has been lost.

Then I realized that, in their writings, everyone on the "yes" list portrays Joseph Smith as an adulterer and hypocrite. It seems authors who believe he was a fraud are quite easily convinced. For them, assuming Joseph would try to add a plurality of husbands to a plurality of wives doesn't seem to require much evidence.

The problem is that Nauvoo pluralists saw polygyny as the restoration of a religious practice. In contrast, polyandry is not (and never has been) an accepted religious practice by the worlds largest religions (see Romans 7:2–3).

Therefore, it seems it would have been more difficult to convince Nauvoo polygamists that polyandry was acceptable than to convince the writers listed in the “yes” column. We should add Dan Vogel's name to this list.

This illustrates one of the many problems polyandry proponents face. There is no context for the alleged behavior that would have been far more controversial than a plurality of wives. No one has really addressed this disconnect. With only ambiguous supporting evidence, the case is hardly decided, despite Dan's videos.

Solid documentation tells its own story while ambiguous evidence requires biased storytellers to embellish it to make it seem useful (sometimes in long videos).

There will eventually be a scholarly critical review published regarding the evidence of polyandry. It might be wise to await that review before drawing conclusions on this topic.

Transparency is better than rhetoric.