Skip to main content

Full Text - A Star in the West (1816)

Image
By Mason

 Elias Boudinot’s A Star in the West was published in 1816, and it pulled together a wide range of claims meant to show that Native Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. Reports from missionaries, travelers, and colonial officials were quoted to support the idea that certain customs, words, and traditions pointed back to an Israelite origin. The book treated the American continent as a stage where scattered Israel might one day be gathered and restored, and it framed Native history through a mixture of biblical interpretation and early national speculation.


Its relevance to the Book of Mormon is usually tied to those shared assumptions. An Israelite ancestry for Indigenous peoples was presented as plausible. A migration across the ocean was imagined. Themes of division, warfare, scattering, and eventual renewal were emphasized. These same patterns appear in the Book of Mormon, so A Star in the West has been viewed as part of the environment that made such a narrative feel possible. The parallels don’t prove direct borrowing, but they show how common these ideas were in the decades before Joseph Smith dictated the text.


Full transcription will be available soon...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Mormon" Trademark is About to Expire

By Mason
 The request for Mormon Stories to rebrand has spread quickly through Mormon spaces. Followers learned that the LDS Church had reached out with claims that the podcast was infringing on the “Mormon” trademark. The demand leaned on the legal idea that the Church owns the word.  The request was shared on social media by @mormstories, but those posts seem to have been removed. Fortunately, copies of the email were  shared on reddit. But there is a significant detail sitting behind this entire dispute. The Church will have to renew the "Mormon" trademark in the 2026 to 2027 window.  Source: USPTO database When that time comes, they must prove that they still use the word “Mormon” in active commerce. USPTO rules are clear on this point. A trademark only survives if the owner can show that it is still printed on actual goods or services that are still being sold or distributed. The official guidelines spell it out at uspto.gov under “ Keeping your registration alive .” He...
3 comments
Read

Are You Temple Worthy?

By Mason
Temple worthiness isn’t just about "good behavior" in Mormon teaching. It’s a gate that determines who qualifies for the highest blessings the religion offers. The church teaches that only people judged worthy can enter the temple, make covenants, and receive the ordinances that lead to exaltation, which is the belief that humans can become like God and live forever with their families in the celestial kingdom.  This makes worthiness interviews a spiritual checkpoint that can shape someone’s identity, their standing in the community, and even their hope for eternity.    Are You Worthy to Enter a Mormon Temple? Are You Worthy of the Mormon Temple? Yes No Restart Enter the Temple
6 comments
Read

Code Names and Church Finances

By Mason
Members of the Mormon church are expected to give ten percent of their income as tithing. It’s treated as a basic requirement of faithful membership. But even though members contribute a significant portion of their earnings, they aren’t given a clear accounting of how that money is used.  The Utah church does not release detailed budgets, financial reports, or yearly accounting. Members of the church donate fully on trust, without the kind of transparency they would expect from almost any other major charitable organization. Ensign Peak This lack of transparency became harder to overlook during the Ensign Peak investigation. For years the church separated its investment funds into thirteen shell companies and failed to fulfill federal reporting requirements.  The SEC found that this structure used by the church was designed to conceal the true size and unity of Ensign Peak’s holdings.   Per the SEC's 2023 report: " The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced c...
Post a Comment
Read

Early Mormon Criticisms - 2: The Book of Pukei

By Mason
This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some quick context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding. Part 1 can be read here In 1830 a man by the name of Abner Cole published a criticism of Joseph Smith called the Book of Pukei in the Palmyra Reflector, published under the name "Obadiah Dogberry Esquire".   Cole had access to Grandin’s print shop and saw early pages of the Book of Mormon before the public did. His reaction took the form of a mock scripture that rewrote Joseph Smith’s story into a  joke. That choice wasn’t random. He was simply recounting the events surrounding Joseph smith in a pseudobiblical style, Cole shows us that he likely recognized the Book of Mormon as part of that same genre. Events Parodied in The Book of Pukei     1. Angel Moroni – Cole rewr...
Post a Comment
Read

A Covenant People - 1: Magnalia Christi Americana

By Mason
There is a very distinct moral rhythm that drives the entire storyline of the Book of Mormon. This is often referred to within the church as the “pride cycle.”     It goes something like this: When the people remember God, they live peacefully and prosper. Their obedience brings material success and national stability. Then, wealth and comfort begin to shift their focus. Pride replaces gratitude. The people start to divide into social classes, persecute the poor, and boast of their own strength. As pride spreads, the society grows corrupt. Prophets warn them to repent, but their voices are ignored or mocked. Eventually, destruction comes through war, famine, or internal collapse. Suffering drives the people to humility. They remember God again, repent, and the Lord blesses them with peace and prosperity. Then the cycle restarts. This pattern is repeated continually from the beginning of the Book of Mormon and is claimed to be the direct result of covenant with God. That when ...
Post a Comment
Read

Early Mormon Criticisms - 1: Caution Against the Golden Bible

By Mason
This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a real historical excerpt and some quick context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding. For this first article, we are going to look at one of the first known in-depth public criticisms of the Book of Mormon, which appeared before the book itself was publicly available.  On February 20, 1830, Cornelius Camden Blatchley, a New York physician and writer known for his skeptical views on organized religion, published an article titled “Caution Against the Golden Bible” in the New-York Telescope . Written only weeks before the Book of Mormon’s official release in March of that year. Most of his arguments are still being used to this day. The Complaints Presented by Blatchley He specifies reading the Title page as well as   pages 353–368 of the original Book of Morm...
Post a Comment
Read

What is the CES letter?

By Mason
In 2012, Jeremy Runnells was struggling with questions about LDS history that he couldn’t reconcile with what he had learned growing up. He had served a mission, gone to BYU, and lived his life inside of Mormonism, but the sources he was reading didn’t line up with the version he’d been taught. When he spoke with a Church Educational System director about it, he was asked to write his concerns in one place so they could review them together. He sat down and did exactly that. He pulled notes, checked references, and laid out the issues in a document that ended up more than eighty pages long. He sent it back expecting a follow-up. The follow-up never came. That unanswered list of questions eventually became known online as the CES Letter. In April 2013, he shared his document to reddit on r/exmormon under the title “Letter to a CES Director.” The file spread fast because it pulled together problems that members usually encounter one at a time. Runnells later said he wrote it to underst...
1 comment
Read

There Is No Curse, Part 2: The Curse As Culture

By
In Part 1 of this essay miniseries, I laid out how, if we are to believe that the curse of Laman wasn’t not related to skin color - as was the assumption for most of the history of the LDS church - that there is zero evidence for any of it. In other words, all of the "curse" can be explained naturalistically with no divine intervention and therefore no cause for the Nephites to assign one to them. LDS scripture, however, does not stop at describing a Lamanite “curse.” It describes two other divine generational judgments: a “curse of Ham,” and a “curse of Cain.” Here’s the scriptural precedent for both other curses:
Post a Comment
Read

There Is No Curse, Part 4: Who I Am

By
I felt closer to God when I finally stopped believing in Him.  Let me explain. When I was a kid, I’d sit in church and listen to people talk about God as if he was real . I say “he” because God was also defined as a male, and that definition supposedly came from thousands of years of tradition. God was like me : he had feelings or grief and joy; he wanted me to be happy; he had ambition and plans for me, just like I did for myself. What a wonderful thought that a Supreme Being had me in mind! But God was also “He.” I say that because the title implied a king, nobility, and sovereignty. God was not like me : He was omnipotent; He knew better than me; He was always in control; He wasn’t flawed like me; He didn’t make mistakes; He knew the end from the beginning. I couldn’t ultimately know God, but He wanted me to draw close to Him.   According to the traditions I grew up in, the way we approached God was through “righteousness,” aka, doing good things and avoiding bad things....
Post a Comment
Read

The 14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet - A Response

By Mason
   In 1980, Ezra Taft Benson delivered a devotional at BYU that outlined what he called the “ 14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet. ” The message spread widely within the church and shaped how Latter day Saints came to understand prophetic authority. Even if someone never read the original talk, the ideas appeared in lessons, leadership trainings, and casual conversation across generations. The fundamentals build a system that places the prophet above every competing source of guidance. When read together, they create a model of obedience and hierarchy that rests on the idea that one man speaks for God. 1. The prophet is the only person who speaks for God in everything  This first principle elevates one individual above all other voices. If only one man speaks for God, then any disagreement with him becomes a spiritual issue rather than a difference in interpretation. The structure relies on absolute trust in a single leader. 2. The living prophet is more important than script...
Post a Comment
Read
Link copied!