Hofmann wasn't yesterday, and Joseph saw a pillar of fire

Yesterday I posted "Hofmann's haiku: The Broo Jerroo," recounting a dream about Mark Hofmann, the notorious forger of Mormon historical documents. The dream was 20 years ago, and the Hofmann affair was another 20 years before that, but I posted about it yesterday -- yesterday being the key word here.

What had reminded me of the Hofmann dream was my post of the day before yesterday, "Baggu ash-ni fire-dwell a gog ifluaren bansil este repose." The post's title consists of nonsense words that can be interpreted in more than one way, and the same was true of "The Broo Jerroo," the haiku Hofmann wrote in the dream. In the "Baggu ash-ni" post, I discuss Joseph Smith's account of his First Vision, specifically as a text which Mormon missionaries memorize and share with potential converts, and I mention that "in some early accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision, the pillar is described as being fire rather than light." In fact, I think there's like one obscure manuscript where fire was crossed out and replaced with light. The official version has light, and that's the version of the story known by Mormons and shared by missionaries. My emphasis on the pillar-of-fire version was motivated by my attempt to decipher the nonsense words -- the same thing that would inspire me to post about Hofmann the next day.

This morning, I wanted to listen to something while driving, so I played part of one of the episodes of the "LDS Discussions" series with John Dehlin and the pseudonymous "Mike." (The whole series is highly recommended, by the way, as some of the smartest and most-even handed "anti-Mormon" content out there -- though that's perhaps damning it with faint praise!)

What I listened to was the first 15 minutes or so of an episode called "Problems with Personal Revelation":

Most of the series deals with Joseph Smith and the origins of Mormonism, but the episode before this one (which I haven't listened to) dealt with the subject of "Failed Prophecies After Joseph Smith." At the beginning of this episode, they talk briefly about how popular that last episode was, and Mike says this about it:

We're looking at, really for one of the first times in the series, . . . the modern Church, and I think . . . it's something that impacts us today, when we talk about Russell M. Nelson or Dallin H. Oaks or the Mark Hofmann stuff, which I know didn't happen yesterday, but it's modern times.

But my own post about Mark Hofman stuff did happen yesterday.

They then get into the main topic, personal revelation, and one of the guests on the program, who goes by Nemo, explains how missionaries use the First Vision story to demonstrate that divine revelation is available to anyone -- and how they later have to walk that back a bit:

I'd say that's the reason [Mormon missionaries] start out with the First Vision and the idea that God came and spoke to a poor 14-year-old farm boy, Joseph Smith. . . . God will speak to anyone because he'll speak to this dirt-poor farm boy of just 14 years old, so he would speak to you as well.

But then the rest of the missionary discussions are about managing expectations as to why he won't appear to you in a fiery pillar above your head, you know, above the brightness of the sun -- because that's what he did for Joseph but, no, we then have to explain that it's through the whisperings of the Spirit, etc. etc.

"Above the brightness of the sun" is a direct quote from the canonized account of the First Vision, as presented by missionaries. The section they quote begins with "I saw a pillar of light" -- but here Nemo refers instead to "a fiery pillar," which is something Mormon missionaries never say when telling the First Vision story.

I thought this pillar-of-fire variant of the First Vision, together with the Hofmann-wasn't-yesterday comment, was enough of a coincidence to be worth noting.