Klaus Hansen

LDS scholar quoted in An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins to support the book’s argument that Joseph Smith’s theology and cosmology reflect antebellum thought rather than ancient revelation. The book cites Hansen writing that “the progressive aspect of Joseph’s theology, as well as its cosmology, while in a general way compatible with antebellum thought, bears some remarkable resemblances to Thomas Dick’s Philosophy of a Future State,” a work whose second edition appeared in 1830. The surrounding passage notes that Smith owned a copy of Dick’s book and that Oliver Cowdery quoted lengthy excerpts from it in the Messenger and Advocate in December 1836 — using Hansen as a credentialed witness for the Thomas Dick resemblance.

Context: Klaus J. Hansen (1931–2020) was a historian of Mormonism, longtime professor at Queen’s University in Canada, and author of Quest for Empire (on the Mormon political Kingdom of God / Council of Fifty) and Mormonism and the American Experience.

Where this appears

• An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins — quoted as a scholarly authority on the parallels between Joseph Smith’s cosmology and Thomas Dick’s Philosophy of a Future State.