Seriously, Waters, this is so stupid. Nowadays historians don't approach subjects like Joseph Smith trying to make a case for his being a knowing fraud or not. They will often talk about the first vision as if it really happened because that is part of the story. That doesn't mean they really believe it happend. They may discuss the evolution of the first vision story but not belabor it.
Nowadays pretty much everyone with credentials and horsepower to write an admired biography of Paul, Muhammad, Luther, Joseph Smith, etc., assumes that things like heavenly visitations don't really happen.
Yes, Brodie's biography is quite unusual. It's admired more as 1) a ground breaking study that continues to influence, and 2) a work of art, than as a biography per se.
Here's the bottom line. Whether Joseph Smith was a "knowing fraud" isn't important to just about everyone on the planet except you. Really, who cares about his subjective state. It's speculative. What do you mean anyway? The legal definition of fraud? I could endlessly quibble on either side of the fraud question if you gave me any permutation of hypothetical facts about Joseph Smith.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be.
—Paul Auster
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