Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith's Theology

Dialogue has a rich and long history covering Mormonism’s founding prophet Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith’s teachings and the development of Mormon theology have had a lasting impact on religious and cultural history. Exploring the curated topics below can provide a more detailed understanding of different perspectives and scholarly discussions on Joseph Smith’s life, teachings, and historical context.

A Reflection on Joseph Smith’s Restorationist Vision of Truth

Ryan D. Ward

Dialogue 55.2 (Spring 2022): 93–102
The way of viewing truth in the Church differs from the common philosophical concept of truth as something that corresponds to the historical or present facts of a given situation.

Was Joseph Smith a Monarchotheist? An Engagement with Blake Ostler’s Theological Position on the Nature of God

Loren Pankratz

Dialogue 55.2 (Spring 2022): 37–72
Joseph Smith’s teachings on God found in his preaching at the April 7, 1844 general conference, known as the King Follett Sermon, and Smith’s Sermon in the Grove, given at a meeting held just east of the Nauvoo Temple on June 16, 1844, have appeared to many to give strong support to this view. There, he taught that God was not always God but developed into God over time.

Praise to the Man: The Development of Joseph Smith Deification in Woolleyite Mormonism, 1929–1977

Cristina Rosetti

Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 41–65
However, the 1886 Revelation and subsequent statement also raised their own doctrinal questions that were continually developed through the lineage that became Woolleyite Mormonism. Namely, why was the resurrected Joseph Smith present alongside Jesus Christ at the meeting with John Taylor?

The Secular Binary of Joseph Smith’s Translations

Michael Hubbard MacKay

Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 1–40
The debate about Joseph Smith’s translations have primarily assumed that the translation was commensurable and focuses upon theories of authorial involvement of Joseph Smith.

“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making

Fiona Givens

Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.

Salvation through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment

Benjamin E. Park

Dialogue 43.2 (Summer 2010): 1–44
A discussion of the theology of the body being combined with the spirit for various different reasons.

Joseph Smith and Process Theology

Garland E. Tickemyer

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 75–88
Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints.

The Limits of Naturalistic Criteria for the Book of Mormon: Comparing Joseph Smith and Andrew Jackson Davis

William Davis

Dialogue 53.3 (Fall 2020): 73–103
Davis compares the two men, saying “Davis, like Smith, was raised in a poor household and received little formal education—Davis, in fact, would claim to have received only “little more than five months” of schooling.”

Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon: Co-Founders of a Movement

Steven L. Shields

Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 1–18
Shields argues that if you deny or dismiss Sidney Ridgon’s contributions to the early church, then the scripture canon during this time would need to be reinterpreted.

Pedagogy of Perfection: Joseph Smith’s Perfectionism, How It was Taught in the Early LDS Church, and Its Contemporary Applicability

Richard Sleegers

Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 105–143
Richard Sleegers contrasts 19th century Protestant teachings about salvations to what Joseph Smith taught about life after death.

A Documentary Note on a Letter to Joseph Smith. Romance, Death, and Polygamy: The Life and Times of Susan Hough Conrad and Lorenzo Dow Barnes

William V. Smith

Dialogue 49.4 (Winter 2016): 87–108
The history behind a letter that was written by missionary Jedediah Morgan Grant to Joseph Smith, which contained information about Susan Hough Conrad and her brief love writings with a missionary who was serving in England named Lorenzo Dow Barnes.

Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures

Keith Parry

Dialogue 18.4 (Winter 1984): 65–80
Shortly after the church was organized, one of Joseph Smith’s main priorities during his lifetime was preaching to the Native Americans, who he believed to be the descendants of the Lamanites.

Joseph Smith's Life

Why the Prophet is a Puzzle: The Challenges of Using Psychological Perspectives to Understand the Character and Motivation of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Lawrence Foster

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 1–35
This article will explore how one of the most open-ended psychological interpretations of Smith’s prophetic leadership and motivation might contribute to better understanding the trajectory of this extraordinarily talented and conflicted individual whose life has so deeply impacted the religious movement he founded and, increasingly, the larger world.

Joseph Smith and the Structure of Mormon Identity

Steven L. Olsen

Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 89–100
Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision has taken priority in structuring Mormon identity, despite the existence of different versions. This article explores why that version is so meaningful to Latter-day Saints, reflecting on the symbolic strucutre of the account.

JOSEPH SMITH'S EXPERIENCE OF A METHODIST "CAMP-MEETING" IN 1820

D. Michael Quinn

Dialogue E-Paper July 12, 2006
As an alternative to myopic polarization, this essay provides new ways of understanding Joseph's narrative, analyzes previously neglected issues/data, and establishes a basis for perceiving in detail what the teenage boy experienced in the religious revivalism that led to his first theophany

The Reliability of the Early History of Lucy and Joseph Smith

Richard Lloyd Anderson

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1971): 13–28
Mormon history is a part of this magnificent proliferation of data and research techniques. Its own archives are in the midst of classification by professionally competent standards. There is hope for a new era, in which Mormon and non-Mormon may meet on the common ground of objective fact.

Cunning and Disorderly: Early Nineteenth-Century Witch Trials of Joseph Smith

Manuel W. Padro

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 35–70
When we assess Joseph Smith’s early trials as if the word “pretended” indicated deliberate deception on Joseph’s part, we miss the larger picture.

"’I Never Knew a Time When I Did Not Know Joseph Smith": A Son's Record Of The Life And Testimony Of Sidney Rigdon

Karl Keller, editor; John Wickliffe Ridgon

Dialogue 1.4 (Spring 1966): 15–42
Not very long after the death of Sidney Rigdon, the influential preacher and compatriate to Joseph Smith in the first years of the Church, his son, John Wickliffe Rigdon, wrote an apology for his father.

Scared Sacred: How the Horrifying Story of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Can Help Save Us

Stephen Carter

Dialogue 49.3 (Fall 2016): 75–88
Probably the most destabilizing piece of historical information most Mormons come across is Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew

Louis C. Zucker

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 41–55
Zucker describes the efforts that Joseph Smith went through to study Hebrew. Joseph Smith’s personal behavior was apparently not changed, but in other aspects in later years there is evidence that Joseph Smith was using Hebrew language structure

Mrs. Brodie and Joseph Smith | F. L. Stewart, Exploding the Myth about Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet

Max H. Parkin

Dialogue 3.3 (Fall 1968): 142–145
In response to Fawn Brodies’s biography of Joseph Smith, F.L. Stewart published a book called Exploding the Myth About Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.

Governor Thomas Ford and the Murderers of Joseph Smith

Keith Huntress

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1969): 41–52
Member and non members have criticized Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois for his inability to save Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Huntress was arguing that Governor Ford had a lot of difficulties that he had to deal with at that time.

Rediscovering the Context of Joseph Smith's Treasure Seeking

Alan Taylor

Dialogue 19.4 (Winter1986): 18–28
Taylor identifies the history behind the Smith Family and treasure seeking. During the 19th century treasure seeking is associated with both greed, but also obtaining spirtual knowledge like in Joseph Smith’s case.

The Administrative Role of the Presidency: The Founding Prophet: An Administrative Biography of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Ronald E. Romig

Dialogue 25.3 (Fall 1992): 197–198
RLDS Church Archivist Ronald E Romig expected The Founding Prophet: An Administrative Biography of Joseph Smith, Jr. to be exclusively about Joseph Smith. Instead Maurice L. Draper who was both a member of the RLDS Quroum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency, focused more on different adminstrative situations in the RLDS church.

The Emma Smith Lore Reconsidered

Linda King Newell

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 1984): 69-76
Emma spent her remaining years far removed from the associates who had helped shape the events of that first decade of the Nauvoo period. Like those around her, she did not always react rationally nor did she always make decisions in those trying years that others would have wished her to make.

Emma Smith Through Her Writings

Valeen Tippetts Avery

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 2016): 75–88
Emma Hale Smith's adult life spanned more than a half century from the 1820s to 1879.

The Locations of Joseph Smith's Early Treasure Quests

Dan Vogel

Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 197–231
Vogel uses firsthand accounts of people’s reactions to Joseph Smith’s treasure digging.

Fate and the Persecutors of Joseph Smith: Transmutations of an American Myth

Richard C. Poulsen

Dialogue 11.4 (1977): 63-70
In the 1950s there was a book published call Fate of the Persecutors of Joseph Smith, which contains stories that have been part of folklore that have been passed down discussing what happened to the people who helped kill Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith's First Vision

For an overview of our First Vision Coverage, enjoy this video of Dialogue Topics: First Vision.

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At the hands of an incensed mob, Joseph Smith was murdered, early summer, 1844. The instant he died The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was given cultural birth. No meeting of a required six members, no ecclesiastical approval from any council or governing body could have given the Mormon Church its operational base as did the death of Joseph Smith. Now the Mormons had a martyr.[1]

The history surrounding this incident has received much attention from both Mormon and non-Mormon writers, but perhaps a more far-reaching and certainly more complex ramification of the martyrdom than mere documented historical details of the event can supply is a group of stories centering on those who participated in the murder. These tales, collected and published in a curious but popular volume entitled The Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith, by N. B. Lundwall, reflect a powerful current in the mainstream of Mormon folk belief.[2] The stories, which in their particulars are peculiarly Mormon, are nonetheless part and parcel of a larger body of legend which has clear antecedents in American folk belief.

According to Lundwall, these stories, which he called "historical data,”[3] show that those who persecuted the prophet met grotesque and untimely deaths. For example, in an interview with Lundwall, George C. King of Garland, Utah, reported the gruesome details of the suffering and death of one who had reputedly helped murder Joseph Smith. According to King:[4]

The statement of Seth Howe had a lasting impression on me as he related: 'My grandfather was one of the leaders of the mob which murdered Joe Smith.' I questioned him further as to what became of his grandfather afterwards. He related that following the assassination of Joseph Smith his grandfather never saw a well day, although he lived for several years afterwards. His condition grew progressively worse and physicians of the day who called to attend him were unable to diagnose it as any known affliction, but his suffering was so intense that he frequently expressed the desire to obtain poison to end it all. His family very carefully kept anything of that nature out of his reach and at his final demise he actually had rotted alive, finally dying in intense agony.

While a prisoner in the jail at Liberty1 Missouri, March 20, 1839, Joseph Smith wrote that God had assured him that, “Cursed are all those that shall lift up the heel against mine anointed. . . .”[5] Such curses are common in folk literature[6] and, according to these popular stories, Joseph's curse, or his reporting of the curse, had flesh and blood implications.

According to J. C. Cox, one Jack Reed, an avowed participant in the murder of Joseph Smith, met a horrible fate. In a diary entry Cox recorded that Reed had taken ill, suffering from a strange ailment. According to an Indian friend, Reed's flesh was worm-riddled and was a sight no white woman could be allowed to see:

He was literally eaten alive by worms. His eye balls had fallen out, the flesh on his cheeks and neck had fallen off, and though he could breathe he could take nourishment only through an opening in his throat.

Pieces of flesh as large as two hands had reputedly fallen from different parts of his body.[7]

In the same entry Mrs. Cox asserted that Brigham Young had cursed the mob, saying that the participants would "utterly rot before they died."[8]

Ironically, some of the mobsters reportedly came to Utah, where they continued to suffer under the curse. About a pitiful old man living near Bedue Creek on the upper Weber River, Thomas Nichols wrote that:[9]

The lower part of one ear was gone, a part of the left side of his nose had rotted away, and there were other repulsive sores on his face. He showed me his hands. There was very little solid flesh on them. I expressed my sympathy for him and he said his feet were worse than his hands. I asked him what had caused all this trouble and he replied: 'I don't know unless it was a curse God had placed on me.’ He said some men had told him that was it, because he was with the men who killed Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet.

On some of those involved in the murder the curse began working immediately. From the Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt we learn that an Iowan named Townsend had participated in the martyrdom. A shot from Joseph Smith's pistol wounded him in the arm; soon the arm began to rot and was finally amputated. However, the operation did not stop the strange rotting and eight or nine months after the operation Townsend died, "having literally rotted alive." Before dying, Townsend confessed he knew Joseph Smith was a prophet.[10]

Such deaths were not meted exclusively to those who murdered Joseph Smith. Many men who either persecuted the Mormons in the East and Midwest or who tormented Mormon missionaries met similar fates. Some were killed in bizarre falls, gored by rams, buried alive[11] or horribly crippled. Others froze to death, died of drunkenness[12] or were shot.[13]

About some of those involved in the martyrdom, Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill note:[14]

A persistent Utah myth holds that some of the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith met fittingly gruesome deaths-that Providence intervened to dispense the justice denied in the Carthage trial. But the five defendants who went to trial, including men who had been shown to be leaders in the murder plot and others associated with them, enjoyed notably successful careers.

They go on to explain that:[15]

The only principals involved in the Carthage trial who seem to have been stalked by tragedy in their later careers were the prosecutors, the sheriff, the judge and the governor.

But the central problem in these stories of death by divine retribution is not a historical consideration, but rather a problem growing from the Mormon ethos, from the unconscious self-image[16] the Utah Mormon subculture has fostered and nurtured. Although the incident around which these stories revolve, the actual murder of Joseph Smith1 is historically true, the stories Lundwall compiled are probably not historically authentic.[17] Some historians immediately respond to them by dismissing such "clap-trap" as the ravings of fanatics, which cannot be historically corroborated. However, as William A. Wilson has noted:[18]

What we must remember is that what actually happened is often less important than what we think happened. We [virtually all of us, since we all belong to many folk groups] are motivated not by actual fact, but by what we believe to be fact.

For example, one of the most widely shared folk beliefs among Utah Mormons concerns the coming of the Saints to the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847. Many Wasatch-front Mormons believe that Brigham Young and his company were led to the valley much the same way Moses and the children of Israel were led to the "Promised Land." This belief embodies what I have called the Mormon Migration Myth.[19]

Although there is liberal historical evidence that the Mormons knew exactly where they were going long before they left Nauvoo, cajoling, educating, arguing and scoffing do little to convince the folk of their "sins against history." On the contrary, many Mormons are ever-ready and willing to bear testimony of the "fact'' that the Saints were led purely by revelation. The point again is that in the folk mind the things the folk bear witness to are every bit as historical as the fact that a Georgia peanut farmer was elected President of the United States in 1976. The folk of the Mormon sub-culture make little distinction between folk history and empirical history; indeed, to them no distinction exists. Thus, whether Lundwall' s claims are historically true or not, they are certainly true in the minds of the Mormon folk; since the tales are psychologically true, the question of their historical authenticity is not an important consideration here. Because the tales Lundwall printed exist in variants and are believed to be true by the tellers, they are legends. Whether or not they have a historical base, they are certainly "mythically" true.

Though the folk versions of the fate of Joseph Smith's persecutors may not be empirically authentic, they are part of a larger body of myth by no means limited to Utah. Richard M. Dorson has reported a similar curse and its accompanied divine retribution in a small town on Lake Michigan's Green Bay. Two brothers, the McDonalds, after a drunken knife fight during which they killed one man, were pulled from jail by an insane mob, hung, dragged through the streets of town by their necks and finally incinerated in a house of prostitution. Thereafter their remains were hung from two jack pines. According to Dorson, "Few legends spawned in American history can match the story of the lynching of the McDonald boys at Menominee, Michigan, in 1881."[20] Folk belief has it that the mob who lynched the brothers was cursed by Father Menard, a Catholic priest. Says Dorson[21]

No trial was ever held, no arrests were even made, of the ringleaders. But it would not be correct to say that they never received justice. Sentence had been passed even before they reached the crossing sign with the dying men. Father Menard, whose church stood only a block away from the courthouse, pleaded with the gang to desist, as they careened down Main Street. When the bloodied men laughed at his face, he denounced them with this curse: that all who rode the bodies would die with their boots on. So say the French and Irish Catholics. Men of other faiths feel that divine vengeance visited the curse on the lynchers.

Tradition says that all of the mob died with their boots on, some in very bizarre and unexpected ways.[22] Interestingly, it was a belief founded in Christian zeal which spawned and passed on these tales in oral tradition in much the same way the stories about Joseph Smith's murderers passed among Mormons.

Thirteen years after Dorson collected this Michigan legend he heard another American variant. When attending a seminar on ,, American Folktales" with Hector Lee at Chico State College during the summer of 1959, Dorson heard Lee relate a "Narrative of the lynching of Lookout Bridge," which occurred in 1901 in Gouger's Neck, California. According to Dorson, the Gouger's Neck tale contained "the same skeletal themes" as the Menominee legend:[23]

The town resentment against a family of halfbreed ruffians, their arrest, the storming of the jail, a fight and the lynching, the exoneration of the lynch party, and their macabre deaths. In the phrase of the elderly townspeople, 'Hell overtook 'em, every one of 'em.' One walked in front of a train, another developed a cancer of the throat, a third died from a rotting in the stomach as if he had been kicked there.

Lee's legend from Gouger's Neck is similar in tone and consequence to stories circulated among Mormons about the deaths of the persecutors of Joseph Smith. Obviously, the death by rotting was also present in the Gouger's Neck tale.

Similar tales have been circulated in American tradition for centuries. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his tale, "The Gentle Boy," a story of Quaker persecutions by the Puritans, mentioned the activities of the Friends, noting that because of their religious zeal, which greatly annoyed the Puritans, "in the year 1659, the government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect with the crown of Martyrdom."[24]

Speaking of John Endicott, governor of Boston, and others who persecuted the Quakers, Hawthorne wrote that:[25]

The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less deep because they were inactive, remembered this man [Endicott] and his associates in after times. The historian of the sect . . . recounts the judgments that overtook them, in old age or at the parting hour. He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and in madness; but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome disease, and 'death by rottenness,' of the fierce and cruel governor.

The "death by rottenness" which Hawthorne mentions here is again similar to the supposed fates of many of the persecutors of Joseph Smith. Showing that he relied on history for such comments, Hawthorne mentioned "the historian of the sect" and seems at times to be quoting him directly.

The historian Hawthorne referred to was probably William Sewel, whose two-volume work, The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress, of the Christian People Called Quakers, was published in 1823. In his work Sewell specifically discussed the death of Endicott, attributing to him "a loathsome disease, insomuch that he stunk alive, and so died with rottenness, his name being like to give a bad savour through ages to come."[26]

The reason why people tel1 and believe such stories as those surrounding the Menominee murders, the Gouger's Neck lynching, the hanging of Quakers by Puritans and the murder of Joseph Smith may never be fully known. However, it is likely that most of these tales are told to reinforce cultural norms and beliefs through a process folklorists call communal re-creation. That is, tales, jokes, legends, folksongs and other forms may be borrowed from one culture by another, then reshaped to conform to the norms (be they historical, religious, national or otherwise) of the new group. Such re-creation has taken place on many levels among the Mormons.

One of the most widely collected and studied folk beliefs in the United States is a cluster of tales, familiar to most Latter-day Saints, told of the ministry of and visitations by The Three Nephites1 those holy figures from the Book of Mormon who, like John of the New Testament, were allowed to dwell on the earth in the flesh until Christ's return. Stories of Nephite intervention in man's affairs, often to aid a Mormon in need, circulate widely in the Church. According to William A. Wilson, "the essential truth of the Nephite stories ... lies not in their actual truth or falsity but in the vision they give to those who believe them. . . ."[27]

The "vision" in Mormondom is that Latter-day Saints are God's chosen people and that he will do much to protect, succor, buoy up and sanctify his children.

In the years immediately following the martyrdom, Mormons were consistently on the defensive.[28] It is then possible that the Saints adapted the instances and consequences of legend in oral tradition (like those told by the Quakers of God's retributions against the Puritans) to their own peculiar circumstances. As underdogs on the American frontier, the stories of the destruction of their enemies by a protecting God easily reinforced the belief that Mormons were the chosen; that the Creator would protect his children against the outrages of an unenlightened world, as he did Abraham, Moses, Job and even the Puritans; that in the hour of darkness the children could always look to the Father.

In those early days after the martyrdom, the tales told of the killers' deaths may have had a practical value foreign to the minds of modern Mormons. They created and reinforced group solidarity in the face of real as well as imagined dangers. But this does not explain the popularity of such stories among faithful moderns. Mormons of the twentieth century, as a subculture, are probably as conscious of the past (not necessarily the historical past) of their forebears, as any other folk group in the United States. They look with pride to the blood and tears of handcart companies, to privations, winter sufferings, persecutions by mobs and armies—because through all this the Saints have endured. Besides their obvious appeal to the macabre and the sensational, the dark stories of suffering and death meted out upon the killers of the Prophet affirm to a new generation of Mormons that the past is real, that the consequences of the martyrdom had effects and repercussions that the world still feels and will feel "unto the third and fourth generation."

Even more important than the viability of the past to modem Mormons is its glorification. One can believe that the past was real without being enlightened; but if one can trace the benevolence of the Lord in his acts among ancestors, then the past transcends historical considerations. As stated earlier, these stories are told and believed to reinforce a cultural norm; thus, in the telling, the horrors accruing to the ungodly become positive reinforcements of a lifestyle introduced by the Prophet himself. And in the telling, reading and believing of the legends, the past forever remains the present.

Folklore is a vibrant force in the lives of most Mormons, a force that helps identify cultural roots while helping the people cope with present and future. And very like]y an understanding of the Mormon ethos can best be attained through a study of Mormon folklore.[29] Mormons, like other American folk groups, have augmented and adapted legends from oral as well as written tradition to their own peculiar problems and circumstances. In this respect, the peculiarities of Latter-day Saints have been and will be shared by other American folk groups to explain, reinforce and defend cultural norms.

[1] This idea seems reinforced in a statement made by Willard Richards and John Taylor, who were in jail at Carthage with the Smiths at the time of the murder. In a letter of instruction and information to the president of the British Mission dated July 9, 1844, they said about the murder, "It will call down the wrath and indignation of all nations upon the perpetrators of the horrid deed, and will prove the truth of the saying, The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church'." Found in the Documentary History of the Church 7:174–175.

[2] The copies of the book in the BYU Harold B. Lee Library are among the most used in the building. Dog-eared, liberally marked and well worn, the volumes themselves testify of their use.

[3] See N. B. Lundwall, The Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: No Publisher Listed, 1952), frontispiece. Lundwall's collection is actually a body of raw folk narrative waiting for objective interpretation.

[4] Ibid., p. 297.

[5] Ibid., p. 113.

[6] Folk motifs concerning such curses include M411.3, Dying Man's Curse; M411.4, Man pursued by hatred of the gods; M411.41, Curse by a god; M411.7, Curse by spirit; M411.8, Saint's (prophet's) curse; M411.18, Curse by priest. These motifs and their numbers are taken from Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), see volume 5.

[7] Lundwall, pp. 295–296.

[8] Ibid., p. 296.

[9] Ibid., p. 298.

[10] Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, 4th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1950), pp. 424-425.

[11] Lundwall, p. 72.

[12] Ibid., p. 321.

[13] Ibid., p. 314.

[14] Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), p. 217.

[15] Ibid., p. 219. For an interesting and insightful treatment of the martyrdom and Joseph Smith's status as hero from a folkloristic point of view, see Clifrton Holt Jolley "The Maryrdom of Joseph Smith: an Archetypal Study," Utah Historical Quarterly 44 (Fall 1976), 329-350.

[16] Alan Dundes has recently noted that, "Folklorists should study folklore, not for its own sake (though it is fascinating), but because folklore offers a unique picture of folk. In folklore, one finds a people's own unselfconscious picture of themselves. Folklore as an autobiographical ethnography permits the folklorist to see a people from the inside-out rather than from the outside-in." See Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1975), p. xi.

[17] Because these legends are formularized (the deaths are strikingly similar, as are the circumstances surrounding them), and exist in variants in oral tradition, they are very likely folk narratives. This point will be further substantiated as the article progresses. For definitions of folklore per se and discussions of its types and forms see Jan Harold Brunvand, The Study of American Folklore (New York: Norton, 1968), and Alan Dundes, The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: PrenticeHall, 1965).

[18] William A. Wilson, "Folklore and History: Fact Amid the Legends,'' Utah Historical Quarterly 41 (Winter 1973): 54.

[19] See my article entitled, '"This is the Place': Myth and Mormondom," Western Folklore 36 (July 1977): 246-252.

[20] Richard M. Dorson, Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of the Upper Peninsula (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 169.

[21] Ibid., pp. 173–174.

[22] Dorson recorded the death of one lyncher as follows: "Bob Stephenson, who furnished the rope, died first, within a year after the lynching. A fire started in his lumber yard, among piles of four foot slabs, then used to fuel the lake boats. The space of a wagon road separated the two flaming piles, each several hundred feet long. Stephenson wanted his men to go between the piles and tip them over, to save the slabs. Neither they nor Randall, the fire chief, would enter the inferno."

"'By God, haven't you got guts enough?' asked Stephenson."

"He walked in between the piles with a hose. Flame swept across his face. He opened his mouth and gasped for air. Stephenson was full of whiskey. He inhaled some flame and his alcoholic breath caught fire. He ignited, like a human blow-torch. 'Boys, I'm done for,' he sobbed." (pp. 174-175).

[23] Richard M. Dorson, "Debate over Trustworthiness of Oral Traditional History," Folklore: Selected Essays (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), pp. 217-218. See Hector Lee, "The Shadows from Lookout Bridge" (a television script broadcast from Radio Station KPA Y, Chico, California, 9 January 1960), bound with other scripts in the series under the title "Campfire Tales of Northern California" (1959), 41, no. 13.

[24] Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Gentle Boy," Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches, ed. Hyatt H. Waggoner (San Francisco: Rinehart Press, 1970), p. 69.

[25] Ibid., pp. 69–70.

[26] William Sewel, The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Benjamin and Thomas Kite, 1823), vol. 1, pp. S97-598.

[27] Wilson, p. 55.

[28] Such a defensive posture very probably led to the massacre at Mountain Meadows. See Chapter 2, "Defense of Zion," in Jaunita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, for a discussion of the defensive attitudes of early Utah Mormons.

[29] See William A. Wilson, "The Paradox of Mormon Folklore in Essays on the American West, 1974-1975, Charles Redd Monographs in Western History, no. 6, ed. Thomas G. Alexander (Provo; Brigham Young University Press, 1976), pp. 127-147, for a study of Mormon folklore in general. Wilson carefully makes the point that we can learn at least as much about Mormons by studying their folklore as by studying their history or their literature. The article was reprinted in Brigham Young University Studies 17 (Autumn 1976): 40-58.

[post_title] => Fate and the Persecutors of Joseph Smith: Transmutations of an American Myth [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 11.4 (1977): 63-70
In the 1950s there was a book published call Fate of the Persecutors of Joseph Smith, which contains stories that have been part of folklore that have been passed down discussing what happened to the people who helped kill Joseph Smith. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => fate-and-the-persecutors-of-joseph-smith-transmutations-of-an-american-myth [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:27:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:27:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16786 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

The Significance of Joseph Smith's "First Vision" in Mormon Thought

James B. Allen

Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 29–46
In this early article, Allen shows that the First Vision was not well known during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. It became well known after the Prophet’s death, which is when missionaries started to teach about it for the first time.

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 18080 [post_author] => 2531 [post_date] => 2018-05-04 15:09:00 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-05-04 15:09:00 [post_content] =>

In the year 1838 Joseph Smith began writing his formal History of the Church. The history commenced with the now famous account of what has been termed the “first vision,” in which he told of the appearance to him, in 1820, of two heavenly personages. The vision, according to the Mormon prophet, came as a result of his prayerful inquiry concerning which church to join, and in it he was forbidden to join any of them, for all were wrong. While not specifically named in the story, the two personages have been identified by Latter-day Saints as God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ; Joseph Smith indicated that the one said of the other, “This is My Beloved Son, Hear Him!”

This singular story has achieved a position of unique importance in the traditions and official doctrines of the Mormon Church. Belief in the vision is one of the fundamentals to which faithful members give assent. Its importance is second only to belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. The story is an essential part of the first lesson given by Mormon missionaries to prospective converts, and its acceptance is necessary before baptism. The nature and importance of the vision is the subject of frequent sermons by church members in all meetings and by General Authorities of the Church in semiannual conferences.

Not only is belief in the first vision of primary importance to Mormonism, but the story of the vision has what might be termed a number of secondary, although highly important, utilitarian functions. Joseph Smith’s original purpose in writing the story was apparently to help demonstrate his reasons for not joining any church. In our time, however, it is used by church leaders and teachers to demonstrate for believers many other aspects of the Mormon faith: the idea that God actually hears and answers prayers; the concept that there is a personal devil who tries to stop the progress of truth; and, perhaps most fundamental of all, the Mormon doctrine that the divine Godhead are actually separate, distinct, physical personages, as opposed to the Trinitarian concept of traditional Christianity.

The person who would understand the history of any institution must be concerned not only with chronology, but also with an understanding of what the people in that institution were thinking, what they were being taught, and how these ideas compare with presentday thought. In connection with the story of the vision, then, it is important to ask certain questions: When was it first told? When was it first published? Did it have the significant place in early Mormon thought that it has today? If not, when did it begin to take on its present significance in the writings and teachings of the Church? Some thoughts on these questions might open the door to a better understanding of Mormon history and also demonstrate by example the gradually changing pattern of thought which one would expect to find in any church.

Public Knowledge of the Story

According to Joseph Smith, he told the story of the vision immediately after it happened in the early spring of 1820. As a result, he said, he received immediate criticism in the community. There is little if any evidence, however, that by the early 1830's Joseph Smith was telling the story in public. At least if he were telling it, no one seemed to consider it important enough to have recorded it at the time, and no one was criticizing him for it. Not even in his own history did Joseph Smith mention being criticized in this period for telling the story of the first vision. The interest, rather, was in the Book of Mormon and the various angelic visitations connected with its origin.

The fact that none of the available contemporary writings about Joseph Smith in the 1830’s, none of the publications of the Church in that decade, and no contemporary journal or correspondence yet discovered mentions the story of the first vision is convincing evidence that at best it received only limited circulation in those early days. In February, 1830, for example, a farmer who lived about fifty miles from Palmyra, New York, wrote a letter describing the religious fervor in western New York and particularly the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. No mention was made, however, of the idea that Joseph Smith had beheld Deity.[1] The earliest anti-Mormon literature attacked the Book of Mormon and the character of Joseph Smith but never mentioned the first vision. Alexander Campbell, who had some reason to be especially bitter against the Mormons because of the conversion of Sidney Rigdon in 1830, published one of the first scathing denunciations of Joseph Smith in 1832. It was entitled Delusions: An Analysis of the Book of Mormon. It contained no mention of the .first vision. In 1834 E. D. Howe published Mormonism Unvailed [sic], which contained considerable damaging material against Joseph Smith, including letters of the Mormon apostate Ezra Booth, but again no mention of the first vision. In 1839 John Gorrill, another Mormon apostate, published a history of the Mormons, but he made no reference at all to Joseph Smith's claim to having conversed with the members of the Godhead. In 1842 J. B. Turner published Mormonism in All Ages, which included one of the most bitter denunciations of the Mormon prophet yet printed, but even at this late date no mention was made of the first vision.[2] Apparently not until 1843, when the New York Spectator printed a reporter's account of an interview with Joseph Smith, did a nonMormon source publish any reference to the story of the first vision.[3] In 1844 I. Daniel Rupp published An Original History of the Religious Denominations at Present Existing in the United States, and this work contained an account of the vision provided by Joseph Smith himself. After this time non-Mormon sources began to refer to the story. It seems probable, however, that as far as non-Mormons were concerned there was little, if any, awareness of it in the 1830’s. The popular image of Mormon belief centered around such things as the Book of Mormon, the missionary zeal, and the concept of Zion in Missouri.

As far as Mormon literature is concerned, there was apparently no reference to Joseph Smith’s first vision in any published material in the 1830’s. Joseph Smith’s history, which was begun in 1838, was not published until it ran serially in the Times and Seasons in 1842. The famous “Wentworth Letter,” which contained a much less detailed account of the vision, appeared March 1, 1842, in the same periodical. Introductory material to the Book of Mormon, as well as publicity about it, told of Joseph Smith's obtaining the gold plates and of angelic visitations, but nothing was printed that remotely suggested earlier visitations. In 1833 the Church published the Book of Commandments, forerunner to the present Doctrine and Covenants, and again no reference was made to Joseph's first vision, although several references were made to the Book of Mormon and the circumstances of its origin. The first regular periodical to be published by the Church was The Evening and Morning Star, but its pages reveal no effort to tell the story of the first vision to its readers. Nor do the pages of the Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate, printed in Kirtland, Ohio, from October, 1834, to September, 1836. In this newspaper Oliver Cowdery, who was second only to Joseph Smith in the early organization of the Church, published a series of letters dealing with the origin of the Church. These letters were written with the approval of Joseph Smith, but they contained no mention of any vision prior to those connected with the Book of Mormon. In 1835 the Doctrine and Covenants was printed at Kirtland, Ohio, and its preface declared that it contained “the leading items of religion which we have professed to believe.” Included in the book were the “Lectures on Faith,” a series of seven lectures which had been prepared for the School of the Prophets in Kirtland in 1834-35. It is interesting to note that, in demonstrating the doctrine that the Godhead consists of two separate personages, no mention was made of Joseph Smith having seen them, nor was any reference made to the first vision in any part of the publication.[4] The Times and Seasons began publication in 1839, but, as indicated above, the story of the vision was not told in its pages until 1842. From all this it would appear that the general church membership did not receive information about the first vision until the 1840's and that the story certainly did not hold the prominent place in Mormon thought that it does today.

Importance in Early Missionary Work

As far as missionary work is concerned. it is evident that here, too, the story of the first vision had little, if any, importance in the 1830's. The best missionary tool in that day was apparently the Book of Mormon, and most early converts came into the Church as a result either of reading the book or of hearing the “testimony” of others who declared their personal knowledge of its authenticity. Such important early converts as Parley P. Pratt, Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball all joined because of their conversion through the Book of Mormon, and none of their early records or writings seems to indicate that an understanding or knowledge of the first vision was in any way a part of their conversion. John Corrill tells of his first contact with the Mormons through Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, and Ziba Peterson. These were the famous missionaries to the “Lamanites” of 1830. Their message concerned the Book of Mormon, but Corrill reported nothing of having heard of a prior vision.[5] When Parley P. Pratt converted John Taylor in 1836, the story he told him was of the angelic visitations connected with the Book of Mormon, of the priesthood restoration, and of the organization of the Church. There is no evidence that anything was said of the first vision. Rather, Taylor was converted on the basis of the Book of Mormon and the fact that Mormonism taught certain principles which he had already concluded were essential and which he had been waiting to hear someone preach.[6] The first important missionary pamphlet of the Church was the Voice of Warning, published in 1837 by Parley P. Pratt. The book contains long sections on items important to missionaries of the 1830's, such as fulfillment of prophecy, the Book of Mormon, external evidence of the book's authenticity, the resurrection, and the nature of revelation, but nothing, again, on the first vision. It seems evident that, at least in the 1830's, it was not considered necessary for prospective converts to Mormonism to know the story. It is assumed, of course, that if they believed in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, as well as the other claims of Joseph Smith to divine authority and revelation, the story of the first vision would not have been difficult for them to believe once they heard it.

To summarize what has been said so far, it is apparent that the story of Joseph Smith's first vision was not given general circulation in the 1830's. Neither Mormon nor non-Mormon publications made reference to it, and it is evident that the general membership of the Church knew little, if anything, about it. Belief in the story certainly was not a prerequisite for conversion, and it is obvious that the story was not being used for the purpose of illustrating other points of doctrine. In this respect, at least, Mormon thought of the 1830’s was different from Mormon thought of later years.

A possible explanation for the fact that the story of the vision was not generally known in the 1830's is sometimes seen in Joseph Smith's conviction that experiences such as these should be kept from the general public because of their extremely sacred nature. It is noted by some that in 1838 he declared that his basic reason for telling it even then, eighteen years after it happened, was in response to “reports which have been put in circulation by evildisposed and designing persons” who had distorted the facts.[7] Furthermore, the young prophet said that he had been severely rebuffed the first time he told the story in 1820; and since it represented one of his most profound spiritual experiences, he could well have decided to circulate it only privately until he could feel certain that in relating it he would not receive again the general ridicule of friends.

Perhaps the closest one may come to seeing a contemporary diarist's account of the story is in the journal of Alexander Neibaur, which is located in the L.D.S. Church Historian's office. Hugh Nibley, grandson of Neibaur, makes the following commentary:

The writer's great-grandfather, a Jew, one day after he had given Joseph Smith a lesson in German and Hebrew asked him about certain particulars of the first vision. In reply he was told some remarkable things, which he wrote down in his journal that very day. But in the ensuing forty years of his life . . . Brother Neibaur seems never once to have referred to the wonderful things the Prophet told him—it was quite by accident that the writer discovered them in his journal. Why was the talkative old man so close-lipped on the one thing that could have made him famous? Because it was a sacred and privileged communication; it was never published to the world and never should be.[8]

Nibley takes the point of view that the story of the vision was not told in those early years because of its sacred nature. With reference to Neibaur's journal, however, it must be observed that Neibaur did not become associated with Joseph Smith until the Nauvoo period, in the 1840's, and that the experience referred to did not take place until well after other accounts of the vision, including Joseph Smith's, had been written and published.

New Evidence of Limited Circulation in the 1830’s

In spite of the foregoing discussion, there is some interesting evidence to suggest the possibility that the story of Joseph Smith's first vision was known, probably on a limited basis, during the formative decade of church history. One of the most significant documents of that period yet discovered was brought to light in 1965 by Paul R. Cheesman, a graduate student at Brigham Young University. This is a handwritten manuscript apparently composed about 1833 and either written or dictated by Joseph Smith. It contains an account of the early experiences of the Mormon prophet and includes the story of the first vision. While the story varies in some details from the version presently accepted, enough is there to indicate that at least as early as 1833 Joseph Smith contemplated writing and perhaps publishing it. The manuscript has apparently lain in the L.D.S. Church Historian's office for many years, and yet few if any who saw it realized its profound historical significance. The mere existence of the manuscript, of course, does nothing either to prove or disprove the authenticity of the story, but it demonstrates the historical fact that in the early l 830's the story of the vision was beginning to find place in the formulation of Mormon thought.[9] It might be noted that Fawn Brodie suggests that the story of Joseph Smith's first vision was something which he invented sometime after 1834.[10] If Mr. Cheesman's discovery is authentic, Mrs. Brodie's argument will have to be revised.

Another document of almost equal importance has recently been brought to light by a member of the staff at the Church Historian's office.[11] It is located in the back of Book A-1 of the handwritten manuscript of the History of the Church (commonly referred to as the “Manuscript History”). The writing of the “Manuscript History” was personally supervised by Joseph Smith, beginning in 1838, although it is not known who actually transcribed each part of the work. Under the date of November 9, 1835, the story is told of a visit to Joseph Smith by a man calling himself Joshua, the Jewish Minister. The conversation naturally turned to religion, and it is recorded that the Mormon prophet told his guest “the circumstances connected with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, as recorded in the former part of this history.”[12] From reading the “Manuscript History,” therefore, as well as the printed History of the Church, one would get the impression that at this time Joseph Smith related only the Book of Mormon story. In the back of the book, however, is a most curious and revealing document. It is curious in several ways. First, it was apparently written in 1835 by someone other than Joseph Smith, for it records the day-to-day events in the prophet's life in the third person, as if it were a scribe recording them as he observed them. Next, it is not written in the finished style that characterizes the “Manuscript History,” indicating that it was not intended for publication without some revision. Finally, in order to read the document, one must turn the book up-side-down, which suggests that the manuscript certainly was not intended to be part of the finished history. In short, it is almost certain that the document in the back of the book comprises the original notes from which the “Manuscript History” was later compiled, and is actually a daily account of Joseph Smith's activities in 1835, as recorded by a scribe. The importance of the manuscript here lies in the fact that the scribe wrote down what Joseph Smith said to his visitor, and he began not by telling the story of the discovery of the Book of Mormon, but with an account of the first vision. Again, the details of the story vary somewhat from the accepted version. but the manuscript, if authentic, at least demonstrates that by 1835 the story had been told to someone.

The only additional evidence that Joseph Smith's story was being circulated in the 1830's is found in reminiscences of a few people who were close to Joseph Smith in that decade. While reminiscences are obviously open to question, for it is easy for anyone, after many years, to read back into his own history things which he accepts at the time of the telling, some of them at least sound convincing enough to suggest that the story might have been circulating on a limited basis. In 1893 Edward Stevenson published his reminiscences. He first saw Joseph Smith in 1834, and, according to Stevenson:

In that same year, 1834, in the midst of many large congregations the Prophet testified with great power concerning the visit of the Father and the Son, and the conversation he had with them. Never before did I feel such power as was manifested on these occasions. . . .

Although a mere widow's son, I felt proud and blessed of God, when he honored us by coming under our roof and partaking of our hospitality. . . . We were proud, indeed, to entertain one who had conversed with the Father and the Son, and been under the tuition of an angel from heaven. . . .[13]

Lorenzo Snow heard Joseph Smith for the first time when he was seventeen years old. Years later he recalled the experience in these words:

As I looked upon him and listened, I though to myself that a man bearing such a wonderful testimony as he did, and having such a countenance as he possessed, could hardly be a false prophet. He certainly could not have been deceived, it seemed to me, and if he was a deceiver, he was deceiving the people knowingly; for when he testified that he had had a conversation with Jesus the Son of God, and talked with Him personally, as Moses talked with God upon Mount Sinai, and that he also heard the voice of the Father, he was telling something that he either knew to be false or to be positively true.[14]

If this statement is accurate, it means that Joseph Smith was telling the important story in 1831. When reading the statement in context, however, it will be immediately noted that Snow did not say that he heard Joseph tell the actual story - only that he heard him testify that he had conversed with the Son and heard the voice of the Father. Other reminiscences may be found which would indicate that the story was being told in the 1830's, but at this point the extent of the telling is not clear, and the weight of evidence would suggest that it was not a matter of common knowledge, even among church members, in the earliest years of Mormon history.

The Story Becomes Scripture

The question for historical consideration, then, is when and how did the story of Joseph Smith assume its present importance, not only as a test of faith for the Mormons, but also as a tool for illustrating and supporting other church doctrines.

It seems apparent that after Joseph Smith decided to write the story in 1838 the way was clear for its use as a missionary tool. It is not known, of course, how generally the membership of the Church knew of the story by the end of the decade, but in the year 1840 Orson Pratt published in England a missionary tract entitled Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records. This early pamphlet contained a detailed account of the first vision which elaborated upon several details that Joseph Smith touched on only briefly. Joseph Smith's account was published in 1842. In the same year Orson Hyde published in Germany a pamphlet entitled A Cry From the Wilderness, a Voice from the Dust of the Earth. This also contained an elaborate account of the vision. It is evident then that in the early 1840's the story of Joseph Smith's first vision took its place alongside the story of the Book of Mormon as a missionary message, and it is possible that Joseph Smith's decision to write it in 1838 was a sort of “go ahead” for this action.

By the 1850's the story of the vision had become an important part of church literature. In 1851 it appeared in the first edition of the Pearl of Great Price, published in England by Franklin D. Richards. This volume was accepted as one of the “standard works” of the Mormon Church in 1880.[15] By this time, obviously, the story had become well known both to members and non-members alike and was being used as a basic missionary tool.

Utilitarian Functions

A more difficult question to answer concerns the various utilitarian functions of the story. Present-day Mormons use it to demonstrate such things as the factual existence of Satan, the doctrine that God can hear and answer prayers, and especially the concept of God and Christ as distinct and separate physical beings. It is clear, of course, that Joseph Smith taught these doctrines, but it is of special interest to note that, as far as any recorded material reveals, he never used the story of his vision specifically to illustrate them.

When did church members begin to make such use of the story? Apparently the early teachers of the Church relied upon scriptural evidence alone to demonstrate the Mormon doctrine of God, and not until well into the Utah period did they begin to use Joseph Smith's story to illustrate it. One of the earliest recorded sermons to make this use of the story was given by George Q. Cannon on October 7, 1883. Said President Cannon:

Joseph Smith, inspired of God, came forth and declared that God lived. Ages had passed and no one had beheld Him. The fact that he existed was like a dim tradition in the minds of the people. The fact that Jesus lived was only supposed to be the case because eighteen hundred years before men had seen him. . . . The character of God—whether He was a personal being, whether His center was nowhere, and His circumference everywhere, were matters of speculation. No one had seen him. No one had seen any one who had seen an angel. . . . Is it a wonder that men were confused? that there was such a variety of opinion respecting the character and being of God? . . . Brother Joseph, as I said, startled the world. It stood aghast at the statement which he made, and the testimony which he bore. He declared that he had seen God. He declared that he had seen Jesus Christ. . . .

After that revelation faith began to grow up in men’s minds and hearts. Speculation concerning the being of God ceased among those who received the testimony of Joseph Smith. He testified that God was a being of body, that He had a body, that man was in his likeness, that Jesus was the exact counterpart of the Father, and that the Father and Jesus were two distinct personages, as distinct as an earthly father and an earthly son.[16]

Probably there were earlier sermons or writings that used the story of the first vision to demonstrate the Mormon doctrine of God. Evidence indicates, however, that they were rare in these early days and that only gradually did this use of the story find place in the traditions of the Church. Suffice it to say that by the turn of the century the device was regularly used. James E. Talmage, for example, in his Articles of Faith, used the story to illustrate the Godhead doctrine, and Joseph Fielding Smith, in his Essentials in Church History, makes a major point of this doctrinal contribution. In 1961 the official missionary plan of the Church required all missionaries to use the story in their first lesson as part of the dialogue designed to prove that the Father and the Son are distinct personages and that they have tangible bodies.

Comparison of the Accounts

As the story of Joseph Smith's vision was told and retold, both by himself and other persons, there were naturally some variations in detail. The account written about 1833 told of his youthful anxiety over the “welfare of my immortal soul” and over his sins as well as the sins of the world. Therefore, he declared,

I cried unto the Lord for mercy for there was none else to whom I could go and to obtain mercy and the Lord heard my cry in the wilderness and while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord in the 16th [see footnote] year of my age a piller of light above the brightness of the sun at noon day came down from above and rested upon me and I was filled with the Spirit of God and the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph my son Thy Sins are forgiven thee, go thy way walk in my Statutes and keep my commandments behold I am the Lord of glory I was crucifyed for the world.[17]

In this story, only one personage was mentioned, and this was obviously the Son, for he spoke of having been crucified. If Edward Stevenson's account is correct, however, he heard Joseph Smith say in 1834 that he had seen both the Father and the Son.

In 1835 Joseph Smith's scribe heard him tell the story to a visitor. As recalled and recorded by the scribe, the Mormon leader's words were II nearly as follows”:

Being wrought up in my mind respecting the subject of Religion, and looking at the different systems taught the children of men, I knew not who was right or who was wrong but considered it of the first importance to me that I should be right in matters of so much moment, matter involving eternal consequences. Being thus perplexed in mind I retired to the silent grove and there bowed down before the Lord, under a realising sense (if the Bible be true) ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened, seek and you shall find, and again, if any man lack wisdom, let of God [sic], who giveth to all men liberally & upbraideth not. Information was what I most desired, at this time and with a fixed determination to obtain it. I called on the Lord for the first time in the place above stated, or in other words, I made a fruitless attempt to pray My tongue seemed to be swollen in my mouth, so that I could not utter, I heard a noise behind me like some one walking towards me, I strove again to pray, but could not; the noise of walking seemed to draw nearer; I sprang upon my feet and looked around. but I saw no pe.son, or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking. I kneeled again, my mouth was opened and my tongue loosed; I called on the Lord in mighty prayer. A pillar of fire appeared above my head; which presently rested down upon me, and filled me with unspeakable joy. A personage appeared in the midst of this pillar of flame, which was spread all around and yet nothing consumed. Another personage soon appeared like unto the first: he said unto me thy sins are forgiven thee. He testified also unto me that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I saw many angels in this vision.[18]

In this account Joseph emphasized the difficulty he had in uttering his first prayer, and the “noise of walking” seems to suggest the evil opposition which became an essential element in the official version of the story. Furthermore, he told of having seen two persons, although one preceded the other. The two persons looked alike, and the second assured him that his sins had been forgiven. The most unusual statement, however, is Joseph's declaration that he saw many angels in this vision.

When Joseph Smith finally wrote, or dictated, the “Manuscript History” in 1838, he told of his great uneasiness in the midst of the religious confusion of 1820 and his quest to determine which of the churches was right. After reading James 1:5 he retired to the woods and began to pray. In this account he told of a force of darkness which tried to stop him from proceeding, then the appearance in a pillar of light of two personages. When the light appeared, the force of darkness left. One of the personages said to Joseph, “This is my beloved Son, hear him.” The crux of the message from the Son was that he should join none of the churches of the time, for all of them were wrong. “When I came to myself,” he said, “I found myself lying on my back looking up into Heaven.”[19] The story as told in Joseph Smith's published history of 1842 and in the Pearl of Great Price does not differ appreciably from his manuscript history.

The account published by Orson Pratt in 1840 contains a great deal of amplification upon the story as told by Joseph Smith.[20] He describes in more detail, for example, the problems running through young Joseph's mind when he was “somewhere about fourteen or fifteen years old.'' The appearance of the light is described in more vivid detail, and the whole account takes on a more dramatic air than any recorded story told by Joseph himself. Describing the light, for example, Pratt wrote:

. . . as it drew nearer, it increased in brightness, and magnitude, so that, by the time that it reached the tops of the trees, the whole wilderness, for some distance around, was illuminated in a most glorious and brilliant manner. He expected to have seen the leaves and boughs of the trees consumed, as soon as the light came in contact with them; but, perceiving that it did not produce that effect, he was encouraged with the hopes of being able to endure its presence. It continued descending, slowly, until it rested upon the earth, and he was enveloped in the midst of it. When it first came upon him, it produced a peculiar sensation throughout his whole system; and, immediately, his mind was caught away, from the natural objects with which he was surrounded; and he was enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages.[21]

According to this account the young man was informed that his sins were forgiven and that the “fullness of the gospel” would be made known to him in the future. Neither of these statements is contained in the Pearl of Great Price account, but the first one is included in both the 1833 and 1835 manuscripts.

The Wentworth Letter, published in 1842, and Rupp's history, published in 1844, contained identical but very short accounts of the vision. The force of opposition was not mentioned, and the description of the visitation was shorter than in Joseph's earlier account. He told, however, of seeing two personages while he was “enwrapped in a heavenly vision” and said that “they” told him that all religious denominations were believing incorrect doctrines. The idea that the “fullness of the gospel” should be given to him in the future was recorded here, in agTeement with Orson Pratt's account.

Orson Hyde's account, published in 1842, is similar to the stories told by Joseph Smith and Orson Pratt. The two personages were not defined or quoted directly, but they were said to exactly resemble each other in their features, and the promise to reveal the fullness of the gospel was mentioned.

The several variations in these and other accounts would seem to suggest that, in relating his story to various individuals at various times, Joseph Smith emphasized different aspects of it and that his listeners were each impressed with different things. This, of course, is to be expected, for the same thing happens in the re-telling of any story. The only way to keep it from changing is to write it only once and then insist that it be read exactly that way each time it is to be repeated. Such an effort at censorship would obviously be unrealistic. Joseph apparently told his story several times before he released it for publication. People who heard it were obviously impressed with different details and perhaps even embellished it a little with their own literary devices as they retold or recorded it. Joseph himself wrote at least two different accounts for publication. These were printed the same year in the same periodical, yet differed somewhat in their emphasis.

In this connection, four accounts are especially interesting, for they each suggest that, although two personages appeared in the vision, one preceded the other. The 1835 story is apparently the earliest that makes this distinction. In 1843 J ose-ph Smith told the story to a non-Mormon editor, who later quoted him in an article in the New York Spectator. As quoted by the editor, Joseph Smith said:

While thinking of this matter, I opened the New Testament promiscuously on these words, in James, ‘Ask of the Lord who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not.' I just determined I'd ask Him. I immediately went out into the woods where my father had a clearing, and I kneeled down, and prayed, saying, “O Lord, what church shall I join?'' Directly I saw a light, and then a glorious personage in the light, and then another personage, and the first person said to the second, “Behold my Beloved Son, hear Him.'' I then addressed this second person, saying, “O Lord, what church shall I join?” He replied, “Do not join any of them, they are all corrupt.” The vision then vanished.[22]

The third contemporary account to repeat the idea that one personage preceded the other is the diary of Alexander Neibaur. Writing on May 24, 1844, Neibaur said that Joseph Smith had told him that day of his early quest for religion. In Neibaur's words, Joseph Smith “. . . went into the woods to pray. kneels himself down . . . saw a fire toward heaven come nearer and nearer; saw a personage in the fire; light complexion, blue eyes, a piece of white cloth drawn over -his shoulders, his right arm bear [sic]; after a while another person came to the· side of the first.”[23] A fourth reference to this idea is seen in the diary of Charles L. Walker on the date of February 2, 1893. Walker wrote of hearing John Alger declare in “Fast meeting” that he had heard Joseph Smith relate the story of the vision, saying “that God touched his eyes with his finger and said, ‘Joseph this is my beloved Son, hear him.' As soon as the Lord had touched his eyes with his finger he immediately saw the Saviour.”[24] The latter, of course. is only reminiscence, but together with the earlier narratives it demonstrates at least that a few people had this concept of the vision as it gradually took its place among the fundamental teachings of the Church. Other variations may be noted in all the foregoing documents.

Additional accounts by people close to the Mormon prophet would undoubtedly reveal similar variations and amplifications. Through it all, however, there seems to be no deviation from Joseph Smith's apparent intent in telling the story in the first place: to demonstrate that he had had a visitation from Deity and that he was told that the religions of his day were wrong . The account published in the Pearl of Great Price in 1851 has become the standard account and is accepted by the Mormons as scripture.

Summary

This paper has been an attempt to trace the significance of the story of Joseph Smith's first vision in the development of Mormon thought. It seems apparent that if Joseph Smith told the story to friends and neighbors in 1820, he stopped telling it widely by 1830. At least it can be demonstrated that the public image of Joseph Smith and his spiritual experiences did not include the story of the first vision. Throughout most of the 1830's the story was not circulated, either in church periodicals or missionary literature. About 1833, however, Joseph Smith apparently made a preliminary attempt to write the story, but this account was never published. In 1835 he was willing to tell the story to a visitor. There is further evidence, based on reminiscences, to suggest that the story was known on a limited basis in the 1830's, but it is clear that it was not widely circulated. Non-Mormon accounts of the rise of the Church written in the I830's made no mention of the story of the vision. It is apparent, furthermore, that belief in the vision was not essential for conversion to the Church, for there is no evidence that the story was told to prospective converts of the early 1830's.

In 1838, however, Joseph Smith decided to write the story for publication, and within a few years it had begun to achieve wide circulation within the Church. It was published first in 1840 by Orson Pratt as a missionary tool, and two of Joseph Smith's own versions were published in 1842. Since then both Mormon and non-Mormon writers have made reference to it when dealing with the history of the Church. The story was accepted as scripture by the Mormons in 1880.

When it was first told, the story of the vision was used primarily to demonstrate the concept that Joseph Smith had been visited by Deity and that he had been told that all contemporary churches were wrong. After Joseph's death, however, members of the Church gradually began to appreciate its usefulness for other purposes. By the 1880's, if not earlier, it was being used in sermons as support for the Mormon doctrine of God, although Joseph Smith himself never used the story for that purpose.

In conclusion, this essay perhaps demonstrates the need for new approaches to Mormon history by sympathetic Mormon historians. Can we fully understand our heritage without understanding the gradual development of ideas, and the use of those ideas, in our history? It has been demonstrated that an understanding of the story of Joseph Smith's vision dawned only gradually upon the membership of the Church during his lifetime, and that new and important uses were made of the story after his death. In what other respects has the Mormon mind been modified since the 1830's? What forces and events have led church leaders to place special emphasis on special ideas in given periods of time? What new ideas have become part of the Mormon tradition since the exodus from Nauvoo, or even in the twentieth century; what old ideas have been submerged, if not forgotten; and what ideas have remained constant through the years? In short, the writing of Mormon history has only begun. As in the case of other institutions and movements, there is still room in Mormonism for fresh historical scholarship—not necessarily for the apologist, although he will always be necessary and will always make an important contribution, and certainly not for the debunker. What is needed, simply, is the sympathetic historian who can approach his tradition with scholarship as wen as faith and who will make fresh appraisal of the development of the Mormon mind.

[1] The letter is reproduced in William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen, eds., Among the Mormons (New York, 1958), p. 28.

[2] It is probable that Professor Turner had not seen Joseph Smith’s written account of the vision when he was preparing his book, for both were published the same year. Turner shows familiarity with the earlier publications of Church history and would certainly have included the history published in the Times and Seasons if he had seen it. Orson Pratt’s account, published in 1840, may also have escaped him as he prepared his manuscript, for Pratt’s work was published in England for circulation there.

[3] A quotation from the article appears later in this study.

[4] See N. B. Lundwall (comp.), A Compilation. Containing the Lectures on Faith (Salt Lake City, n.d.). It is interesting to observe, in connection with the general question of how certain precise teachings of the Church in the 1830’s differed from those of today, that in The Lectures on Faith the Father is defined as a “personage of glory and power,” the Son is defined as a “personage of tabernacle,” and the Holy Spirit is defined as the mind of the Father and the Son (See Lecture Fifth). As far as the vision is concerned, the only possible allusion to it is in Section I of the Doctrine and Covenants, which reads, “Wherefore I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jr. and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments; and also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things unto the world.” The same statement is in the 1833 Book of Commandments, but most would agree that it hardly constitutes a direct reference to the first vision.

[5] John Corrill, Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (St. Louis, 1839), p. 1.

[6] Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Salt Lake City, 1961), pp. 136-151.

[7] B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, 1946) , vol. 1, p. 1; Paul R. Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts Relating Joseph Smith’s Early Visions” (Master’s Thesis, College of Religion, Brigham Young University, 1965), pp. 4-7.

[8] Hugh Nibley, “Censoring Joseph Smith’s Story,” Improvement Era (July, 1961), p. 522.

[9] For a transcription of the entire document, see Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts,” Appendix D.

[10] Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (New York, 1946), p. 25.

[11] The document was brought to the attention of this writer in June, 1966, and he had the opportunity to examine it. Since the document is bound with the “Manuscript History,” it is unusual that someone had not found it earlier and recognized its significance. It seems apparent, however, that, as in the case of Cbeesman’s document, few if any people have been aware of it. The fact that the use of the “Manuscript History” is highly restricted, due to its extremely high value, and that any research done in it is done through a microfilm copy could help account for the fact that researchers generally had not discovered what was in the back of the book.

[12] Compare with Roberts edition, History of the Church, vol. II, p. 304.

[13] Edward Stevenson, Reminiscences of Joseph, the Prophet (Salt Lake City, 1893), pp. 4-5.

[14] Quoted in LeRoi C. Snow, “How Lorenzo Snow Found God,” Improvement Era (February, 1937), p. 83.

[15] T. Edgar Lyon, Introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City, 1955), p. 209; James R. Clark, The Story of the Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City, 1955), pp. 186-221.

[16] Journal of Discourses, XXIV, pp. 340-341.

[17] As transcribed in Cheesman, ‘‘An Analysis of the Accounts,” p. 129. Note that Mr. Cheesman interpreted the handwriting in the original manuscript as saying that this event took place in the 16th year of Joseph’s age. In private conversation, Mr. Cheesman indicated that the original document actually was not dear—the number could have been either 16 or 14, but 16 appeared to be more likely. In Joseph Smith’s 1838 account, he said it happened in the 15th year of his age. Orson Pratt and Orson Hyde both said that it happened when Joseph was “somewhere about fourteen or fifteen years old.” The Wentworth letter said “when about fourteen years of age.” Joseph’s brother, William Smith, wrote that the Smith family’s concern with the prevailing religions of the day came when Joseph was about seventeen. (See William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism, Lamoni, Iowa, 1883.) William, however, did not record the story of the first vision. He related the religious revival which he described to the discovery of the Book of Mormon. The only contemporary account to date the vision in a definite manner as occurring in the spring of 1820 is that written by Joseph Smith in 1838.

[18] “Documentary History of the Church” (MS), located in L.D.S. Church Historian’s Office. From a separate section in the back of Book A-I, pp. 120-121.

[19] For a transcribed copy of the handwritten manuscript, see Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts,” Appendix A.

[20] For a copy of the Pratt story, see Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts,” Appendix C.

[21] O. Pratt, An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions, and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records (Edinburgh, 1840), p. 5.

[22] New York Spectator, September 23, 1843, as quoted in Preston Nibley, Joseph Smith the Prophet (Salt Lake City, 1946), p. 31.

[23] As quoted in Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts,” p. 29.

[24] Diary of Charles L. Walker, as quoted in Cheesman, “An Analysis of the Accounts,” p. 30.

[post_title] => The Significance of Joseph Smith's "First Vision" in Mormon Thought [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 29–46
In this early article, Allen shows that the First Vision was not well known during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. It became well known after the Prophet’s death, which is when missionaries started to teach about it for the first time. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-significance-of-joseph-smiths [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:28:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:28:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18080 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

A Comment on Joseph Smith's Account of His First Vision and the 1820 Revival

Peter Crawley

Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 106–107
Ever since people first heard of the First Vision, the events surrounding it has been clouded by controversy. Crawley comments with historical references that help to clarify this controversy.

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Since the controversy surrounding Joseph Smith's account of his first vision and the 1820 revival apparently is still alive (e.g. the Williams-Bushman exchange in letters to Dialogue, Autumn 1970), perhaps one further comment is not inappropriate.

Presumably all agree that some kind of revivalistic activity occurred in western New York in 1819-20. The problem, if any, that remains is whether these occurrences were big enough and near enough to be consistent with Joseph Smith's description. In this regard it would seem instructive to consider the experiences of a western New York contemporary of Joseph Smith.

David Marks lived in Junius, fifteen miles from the Smith farm, from 1815 until he began itinerant preaching in 1821. He was born in Shendaken, Ulster Co., New York, 4 November 1805, seven weeks before Joseph Smith. And at the ripe old age of 26 he published his memoirs: The life of David Marks . . . Written by himself (Limerick, Me., 1831). In the intervening fifteen years before his death in 1845, Marks rose to prominence among the Freewill Baptists, serving, for example, as the first director of. their publishing concern and as a founder of their Home Mission Society. (Two editions of an expanded version of Marks' memoirs, edited by his wife Marilla Marks, were published in 1846 and 1847. Both his 1831 and 1846 memoirs were taken from a journal Marks kept from the time he began preaching in 1821. The parts referred to below are the same in the three editions; references are to the 1831. For an evaluation of Marks' career see Free Baptist Cyclopaedia (Chicago, 1889; 383ff) and The Centennial Record of Freewill Baptists (Dover, 1881; 29ff, 39ff and passim).

During his twelfth year a religious awareness sparked in Marks that grew to a driving conviction that his life should be devoted to the Lord's work. At his thirteenth birthday, his parents, impressed with his commitment and believing him fit for the ministry, sent him to Providence, Rhode Island, a distance of 368 miles, to attend a free school there. Marks walked twelve days to reach Providence, only to discover that room and board at the school were not free; so after a two-day rest, he returned to Junius, reaching his home twenty-five days after he left it. (pp. 26-27)

Before leaving for Rhode Island, Marks had applied to the Calvinistic Baptist Church in Junius for baptism, and after his return, in the spring of 1819, he was rejected because of his reservations about certain Calvinist doctrines. That July, Zabulon Dean, a Freewill Baptist who had heard of Marks and his situation, came to Junius to meet Marks; and, satisfied that he was worthy, Dean persuaded the Junius Baptists to accept Marks, and he was baptized into that congregation 11 July 1819. Six days later Marks attended the Benton Quarterly Meeting of the Freewill Baptists in Phelps, 18 miles from his home, where he witnessed five baptisms and was received as a member (pp. 28-30).

"After this, Elder Dean and brother Wire frequently preached in Junius, and a good reformation followed their labors." In the fall Dean and his associates baptized fifteen in Junius who first united with the church in Phelps and then in January 1820 formed an independent church in Junius of which Marks became a member. For several months the little congregation thrived, then dwindled as a number of its members “turned aside after Satan” (p. 30).

On the 1st of January 1821, Marks went to Benton and Milo, about 25 miles south of Junius, "where a good revival was progressing," meeting with various congregations in that area for three weeks. He returned to his home, paused there for two days, and then set out for Ontario, 30 miles to the northwest, to attend an "extra quarterly meeting." Heavy snow made this a difficult trip; after trudging 13 miles, Marks' frozen feet forced him to stop and complete his journey the following day. From Ontario Marks traveled with Zabulon Dean to Benton, Milo and Poultney. and for several days he tarried at Dean's home in Benton. (pp. 31-32) Marks' return to Junius was greeted with his parents' objections to further travel, so for some weeks he remained at home working for the family. Eventually, however, his yearning to be out proclaiming "the glad tidings of salvation" so reached his parents that they agreed to let him go once again. "At this time," Marks relates, "a great revival was progressing in Brutus and Camillus, twenty miles from Junius. [Camillus is about 30 miles to the east.] Feeling anxious to see this work, and labor in it according to my ability, I left home, walked fifteen miles to Brutus, and tarried the night among strangers" (pp. 33-35). For a month Marks moved about the Brutus-Camillus area attending some forty-four meetings, the latter part in the village of Elbridge, "where the revival was progressing powerfully." And on the 17th of April 1821 he returned to his parents' home, determined to take up itinerant preaching full time and as far away as "God's spirit should direct, or Zion's need require" (pp. 38-39). It is interesting to note that Marks refers to his travels up to this point as "confined to a few towns in the vicinity of Junius" (p. 39).

Now, of course, one can not attribute the experiences of David Marks to Joseph Smith. But Marks' narrative demonstrates that during the two years from the spring of 1819 to the spring of 1821 at least one western New York boy the age of Joseph Smith ranged over a fair-sized area in the process of participating in certain religious revivals, and that some of these revivals were publicized widely enough for him to hear of them in his home town. And it points up the fallacy in dogmatically requiring Joseph Smith's "the place where we lived" to lie within 10 or 15 miles of the Smith farm. Marks, at least, in 1831 could refer to an area including towns 30 miles to the east and to the west of his home as "the vicinity of Junius."

[post_title] => A Comment on Joseph Smith's Account of His First Vision and the 1820 Revival [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 106–107
Ever since people first heard of the First Vision, the events surrounding it has been clouded by controversy. Crawley comments with historical references that help to clarify this controversy. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => a-comment-on-joseph-smiths-account-of-his-first-vision-and-the-1820-revival [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:29:08 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:29:08 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=17485 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Eight Visions of the First

Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen

Dialogue 49.3 (Fall 2016): 151–155
Shiffler-Olsen turns Joseph Smtih’s first-person First Vision accounts into poetry.

Joseph Smith and Scripture

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Derived from Joseph Smith Jr.’s four accounts of the First Vision

And how shall I know it?
In the 16th year at about the age of twelve
I was about at this time, in my fifteenth year,
an obscure boy of no consequence
of a little over fourteen years of age.

My mind seriously impressed
with the glorious luminary of the earth
rolling in majesty through its courses
and I stood—
a man walking forth upon the face
thereof.

II.

I discovered all important concern,
convinced of my sin and feeling to mourn,
found I did not come unto the summum bonum
of perfection. My heart exclaimed,
“Well hath the wise man said!”
I knew not who was right.
The beast of field, fowls of heaven,
fish of waters;
are they all together wrong?

III.

Strength and beauty wrought up in my mind.
I considered upon these
in their bounds
a power and intelligence so exceeding great
        that maketh and bindeth,
        marvelous even:
spirit   and truth.
I seek such to worship.

My mind called to great feelings,
a deep and pungent
uneasiness
somewhat partial to believing.
I felt desire in the midst of this war—
so great the tumult it was impossible
for a person
young as I was
and so unacquainted with men and things
to come to any certain
conclusion.

IV.

I often said to myself, what is to be done?
I began to reflect upon the importance
      of being
aloof.      At length I discover
I must remain    in darkness
and confusion          or else.
Could God be believing,
     as if author of a church?

Being thus perplexed
in mind, I most desired
to call out amidst my anxieties—

retired to the silent
woods to make
the attempt.
Kneeled down on the morning
of a beautiful day
in a secret previously
designed place
early and began
a fruitless attempt.
In other words,
for the first time with fixed determination,
having looked around—
my swollen tongue in my mouth
—I cried,
finding myself alone.

There was none else.
To whom could I go?

VI.

Which is it?

behind me a noise like some person
walking
but could not draw nearer
I sprung up but saw no thing
to seize upon,
could not speak
overcome and astonishing—
my tongue thick
as if doomed in that
great alarm
by some enemy of destruction
I had never before felt,
ready to sink
to the power of despair and abandon.
To whom if any
being?

VII.

I saw,
believing to obtain
and he spake
my name.

My mouth opened, and liberated
I cried my cry:
enwrapped
in a brilliant wilderness of light,
the world gracefully taken
away in a pillar
like flame in the air, yet nothing
consumed.
And a personage, come quickly
calling me—
another in the cloud
all draw near me,
many whose brightness defy all glory
entered in.

And receiving, I cannot write,
was filled
in the midst of unspeakable ungodliness,
forgiven.

VIII.

Noon opened,
resembling a promise
eclipsed the glory of my heart above me
with a likeness.

I, my glorious spirit,
saw
saying,
“Marvelous!”

And he, “I am.”

And again,
lying on my back, I came to
find myself in the 16th year
of my 14 years of age,
early in the spring
looking into the sun.

[post_title] => Eight Visions of the First [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 49.3 (Fall 2016): 151–155
Shiffler-Olsen turns Joseph Smtih’s first-person First Vision accounts into poetry. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => eight-visions-of-the-first [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:29:56 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:29:56 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18933 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Joseph Smith, Thomas Paine, and Matthew 27:51b–53

Grant Adamson

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 1–33
Despite its alleged antiquity, jutting back centuries before the Common Era, and its predominant setting in the Americas, the Book of Mormon contains several Matthean and Lukan additions to Mark made in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.

A Commentary on Joseph Smith’s Revision of First Corinthians

Kevin L. Barney

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 57–106
Although Smith desired to publish the new translation, circumstances were such that publication at that time was not possible.

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The Book of Mormon was published in March 1830, and the following month on April 6 the fledgling Church of Christ was organized. Two months later during the month of June in that year Joseph Smith and a series of scribes (primarily Sidney Rigdon) undertook a new scriptural project, consisting of a revision of the King James Version of the Bible. This new project at the time was commonly referred to as the “new translation” and began with the vision of Moses (which is customarily understood to be the beginning of the new translation) and would conclude just over three years later on July 2, 1833.

Although Smith desired to publish the new translation, circumstances were such that publication at that time was not possible. After Smith’s death in 1844, a majority of Church members eventually followed Brigham Young to the Great Basin of the Intermountain West, but a significant minority rejected Young’s leadership and remained in the Midwest. This included Smith’s widow, Emma Hale Smith, who was in possession of the manuscripts for the new translation as well as the marked Bible that indicated where certain revisions were to go. Eventually these materials would reside with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the RLDS Church), which would publish an initial edition under the title Holy Scriptures—Inspired Version in 1867 and in subsequent publications. Most of the Mormons in what would become Utah did not have a clear understanding of this scriptural project, and due to denominational competition, they did not trust the RLDS Church publications.

This state of affairs would eventually change in the 1960s and 1970s when Robert J. Matthews, a Latter-day Saint, pursued research for his doctoral dissertation on the new translation. Because of this work, RLDS Church leaders gave him access to the manuscripts in their archives, and he was able to demonstrate and confirm that the RLDS Church had been responsible with the manuscripts and in their publications. As a consequence, LDS interest in the new translation grew substantially, and when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church) published a new, in-house edition of the KJV Bible in 1979, they included extracts from the new translation, both in footnotes and in a special appendix for longer passages. In this publication the new translation was designated the Joseph Smith Translation, or JST for short, and I shall follow that naming convention in this article.

A persistent question relating to the JST has to do with what its emendations represent. Are they all textual restorations (in English)? Is the text a kind of embedded commentary? Are there different types of changes in different passages and if so, what are the various possibilities?

I propose to attempt a provisional answer to this question by evaluating every JST emendation to an entire book of the Bible, something that I do not believe has been done before (at least not in print). This still will not provide a definitive answer to the question, as the JST can vary considerably in different sections of the project, but it will perhaps at least provide a start toward a better understanding of the types of revisions made in the JST.

For this reason I propose to use the book of 1 Corinthians. This book was dictated just a little over halfway through the project as a whole, so the project was at a mature state by this time, and Smith had not yet experienced the burnout he seemed to feel after he returned to the Old Testament and faced a large number of very lengthy books.

We shall begin by reviewing the history of scholarship on the nature of the JST revisions. I will then propose a more complete paradigm of different types of revisions attested in the JST. I will then evaluate every JST revision to 1 Corinthians and assign each passage to one or more types of revisions in the paradigm. And finally, I will review the results and suggest what they might mean for our understanding of the JST more broadly.

History of Scholarship on JST Revisions

The late Bob Matthews (mentioned above), a longtime professor in Religious Education at Brigham Young University, offered some initial classifications of the JST in his seminal A Plainer Translation (taken from his PhD dissertation), when he suggested that there are several different possible ways to understand a given JST emendation:

To regard the New Translation [i.e. JST] as a product of divine inspiration given to Joseph Smith does not necessarily assume that it be a restoration of the original Bible text. It seems probable that the New Translation could be many things. For example, the nature of the work may fall into at least four categories:

Portions may amount to restorations of content material once written by the biblical authors but since deleted from the Bible.
Portions may consist of a record of actual historical events that were not recorded, or were recorded but never included in the biblical collection.
Portions may consist of inspired commentary by the Prophet Joseph Smith, enlarged, elaborated, and even adapted to a latter-day situation. This may be similar to what Nephi meant by “Likening” the scriptures to himself and his people in their particular circumstance. (See 1 Nephi 19:23–24; 2 Nephi 11:8).
Some items may be a harmonization of doctrinal concepts that were revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith independently of his translation of the Bible, but by means of which he was able to discover that a biblical passage was inaccurate.[1]

Note that Matthews clearly intended for this list to be suggestive and not exhaustive, by framing it expansively with such words as “could be many things,” “for example,” “may,” and “at least.”

Similarly, Philip Barlow in his classic Mormons and the Bible suggests six different possible ways to understand JST emendations:

Long revealed additions that have little or no biblical parallel, such as the visions of Moses and Enoch, and the passage on Melchizedek;
“Common-sense” changes (e.g., Genesis 6:6 “And it repented the Lord that he had made man” is revised in Moses 8:25 to read: “And it repented Noah, and his heart was pained that the Lord had made man.” God, being perfect, needs no repentance.);
“Interpretive additions,” often signaled by the phrase “or in other words,” which Smith appended to a passage he wished to clarify;
“Harmonization,” in which Smith reconciled passages that seemed to conflict with other passages;
“Not easily classifiable”; many changes are not easily classified; one can observe only that frequently the meaning of a given text has been changed, often idiosyncratically;
Grammatical improvements, technical clarifications, and modernization of terms. These were by far the most common type of change in the JST.[2]

A slightly revised version of the Matthews list was published by Scott Faulring, Kent Jackson, and Matthews himself in 2004, as follows, suggesting that a given JST emendation may be:

Restoration of original text.
Restoration of what was once said or done but which was never in the Bible.
Editing to make the Bible more understandable for modern readers.
Editing to bring biblical wording into harmony with truth found in other revelations or elsewhere in the Bible.
Changes to provide modern readers teachings that were not written by original authors.[3]

Most recently, Thomas Wayment has offered his version of the broad categories of JST changes as follows: (1) expansions of biblical narratives, (2) edits to make the text of the Bible more understandable, (3) harmonizations between the Gospels, (4) additions of new discourses that appear to have the modern reader in mind, and (5) expansions of narrative to include new theological insights.[4]

Toward a More Complete Paradigm

The lists of broad types of changes made in the JST provided by earlier scholars are useful from a big-picture perspective, but they are not sufficiently detailed to be able to account for every JST emendation in a given text. For example, the influence of italicized text on JST revisions is widely acknowledged and not controversial, yet none of these descriptions get into that level of detail. Below I propose a paradigm of JST revisions, which is grounded in the treatments set forth above[5] but which also provides more detail with the aim of being able to account for every JST emendation in a given text.

Paradigm of JST Revisions

Paradigm Designation	Description	Explanation and/or Illustration
A-1	English Paraphrases of KJV Text in General	The most common type of change made in the JST is to paraphrase the KJV text with other English words. This amounts to an intralingual translation^a of the Jacobean English of the KJV into other, often more modern, English text. As a control for these kinds of changes I will often consider the import of the underlying Greek text and compare modern English translations—not because Smith was working with the Greek (he was not, unless through secondary sources) but as a way of evaluating the cogency and probity of the English Smith chose to use.
A-2	English Paraphrases of KJV Text Based on Suspicion of Italicized Text	Italics in the KJV were not used for emphasis but, among other things, to mark words that did not have a specific counterpart in the original language text but were necessary for the text to make sense in English. Smith and his scribes were aware of this usage, and the Joseph Smith marked Bible used during the translation project often crossed italicized words out, so a suspicion of italicized words was an engine that drove JST emendations.^b
A-3	English Paraphrases of KJV Text Based on Modernization	Editing to make the Bible more understandable for modern readers. Grammatical improvements, technical clarifications, and modernization of terms.
A-4	English Paraphrases of KJV Text Based on Assimilation	Assimilation is a common concept in New Testament textual criticism generally but does not seem to have been previously considered or applied by JST scholars. The JST text sometimes assimilates to other wording that is nearby, better known, or arguably works better in the emended passage.
A-5	English Paraphrases of KJV Text Having Non-Original Textual Variants	Revelation 2:22 reads as follows: “Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.” In lieu of “a bed,” the JST reads “hell.” There is ancient textual evidence for the following readings: prison, a furnace, illness, sorrow. The problem is that being tossed into a bed doesn’t sound like such a bad punishment, so the JST and a number of ancient scribes posited worse fates. In fact, however, being cast into a bed here is a Semitic idiom for a bed of illness, and it really is a punishment. Smith’s impulse here parallels what the ancient scribes did in trying to make sense of the passage.^c
B	Midrashic Commentary	I see midrashic commentary as being analogous to the targumin, the pesharim, and the genre of “Rewritten Bible” attested among the Dead Sea Scrolls. For example, in Matthew 4 when Jesus is tempted the text has the devil taking Jesus places. The JST reworks all of these passages to have the Spirit move him about. The point of this is to make a commentary on the text, to the effect that the devil does not have power to physically move the Son of Man around, an issue that simply wasn’t a concern to the original writer.^d
C-1	Harmonizations within the Biblical Text	“Editing to bring biblical wording into harmony with truth found . . . elsewhere in the Bible”^e in which “Smith reconciled passages that seemed to conflict with other passages.”^f
C-2	Harmonizations with Modern Revelation	“Changes to provide modern readers teachings that were not written by original authors.”^g
D	Long Additions with Little or No Biblical Parallel	These kinds of passages occur primarily near the beginning of the project in the book of Genesis, as with the visions of Moses and Enoch and the passage on Melchizedek.
E	Textual Restorations	These are actually quite rare. Probably the most commonly cited possible example is Mathew 5:22: “But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.” Both the JST and 3 Nephi 12:22 omit the words “without a cause,” which are a translation of the Greek adverb eike, meaning something like “rashly,” “thoughtlessly,” or “unjustly.” Textual evidence suggests that the adverb was not original to the text but was added in an attempt to soften the morally stark rigor of the original wording.
F	Secondary Sources	An existing translation or commentary would have the potential to be a secondary source that Smith and his scribe consulted. For purposes of this study I have compared only four of the more likely possible secondary sources: (1) the Alexander Campbell translation,^h (2) the Adam Clarke Commentary,ⁱ (3) the Coverdale Bible,^j and (4) John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes.^k There are numerous other potential secondary sources, but this sampling of several among the most likely to be an influence should suffice for present purposes.^l
G	Not Easily Classifiable	Many changes are not easily classified; one can observe only that frequently the meaning of a given text has been changed, often idiosyncratically.

a. For the concept of “intralingual translation” see David J. Shepherd, “Rendering Fiction: Translation, Pseudotranslation, and the Book of Mormon,” in The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement, edited by Francis J. Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002), 367–95.

b. See for instance Kent P. Jackson, “The King James Bible and the Joseph Smith Translation,” in The King James Bible and the Restoration, edited by Kent P. Jackson (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 197–214.

c. In general, see Kevin L. Barney, “The Joseph Smith Translation and Ancient Texts of the Bible,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19, no. 3 (Fall 1986): 85–102.

d. This is inclusive of the Robert J. Matthews and Robert L. Millet category of “inspired prophetic commentary.” My intent is to be neutral as to whether any given revision is “inspired” or “prophetic”; I prefer to use the term “midrashic,” which is descriptive of the type of comment being made.

f. Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 51–53.

g. Faulring, Jackson, and Matthews, Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible, 10.

h. Alexander Campbell, ed., The Sacred Writings of the Apostles and Evangelists of Jesus Christ, Commonly Styled the New Testament, translated by George Campbell, James MacKnight, and Philip Doddridge (Buffalo, Va. [now Bethany, W.Va.]: Alexander Campbell, 1826.

i. Adam Clarke, The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 6 vols. (New York: Emory and Waugh, 1831). Recent research has shown that several dozen JST revisions seem to have been influenced by the Adam Clarke Commentary. See Haley Wilson and Thomas Wayment, “A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation” Journal of Undergraduate Research, Mar. 16, 2017, available at http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296.

j. Myles Coverdale, The Bible, that is the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament, faithfully translated into English (Antwerp, Belgium: Merten de Keyser, 1525).

k. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: Ward, Lock, Boden, 1706).

l. Wesley’s Explanatory Notes, the Adam Clarke Commentary, and the Alexander Campbell translation have been cited as perhaps the most likely secondary sources available to Smith, given for all three their easy availability, for Clarke and Wesley their grounding in the Methodist tradition, and for Campbell Rigdon’s close association with the translator. See Ronald V. Huggins, “Joseph Smith’s ‘Inspired Translation’ of Romans 7,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 162–63. See also Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon, “A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020). I also selected the Coverdale Bible as it may have been significant in the “Ships of Tarshish” variant in the Book of Mormon; see Ronald V. Huggins, “‘Without a Cause’ and ‘Ships of Tarshish’: A Possible Contemporary Source for Two Unexplained Readings from Joseph Smith,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 157–79.

An Analysis of All JST Revisions to First Corinthians

[Editor's Note: For specific font use within this section (e.g., crossed out words, underlined words), please see PDF below]

As previously indicated, at this point I intend to review every JST revision to the book of 1 Corinthians and assign each textual revision to one or more types of textual change as set forth in the Paradigm of JST Revisions. In these scriptural passages from the KJV, text deleted in the JST will be struck through and text added in the JST will be given in bold underline.

1. 1 Corinthians 1:1

Paul, called to be an apostle, called of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

The KJV reflected a fashion in Bible translation of the time of using italic type to represent English words that did not directly correspond to a word in the original language. Joseph Smith and his scribes were aware of this practice, and accordingly tended to view italicized words in the English text with a significant sense of suspicion. An excellent study published over a decade ago by Thomas Wayment and Tyson Yost concludes, based on a review of the four Gospels, that on average the JST altered 29 percent of italicized words, removed altogether an additional 21 percent, and retained without revision just under 50 percent.[6] Therefore, the presence of italicized words often acts as an engine for the development of emendations to the KJV text.

Sometimes the only point to a JST emendation is to avoid the use of the italicized words. The very first JST change in 1 Corinthians falls under this category. KJV 1 Corinthians 1:1 begins “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ,” which the JST emends to “Paul an apostle, called of Jesus Christ.” This type of example helps to explain why the fashion of using italic type for this purpose eventually died out in most modern English translations. The copula “to be” is not literally present in Greek, where it is implied, but it is necessary in English. Putting the copula in italics may have seemed like admirable transparency to the translators of the time, but the actual effect was to promote the notion of translation as a mechanical, verbum pro verbo process and to cause confusion and misunderstanding among ordinary Bible readers.

Paradigm Classification A-2 (Suspicion of Italicized Text).

2–3. 1 Corinthians 1:4–5

I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by of Jesus Christ;

That in every thing ye are enriched by of him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;

The English translational tradition is split pretty evenly between “by Jesus Christ / by him” and “in Jesus Christ / in him.” The wording “by Jesus Christ” as in the KJV seems to suggest that Christ is the agent that conveys the grace of God to man. The more literal rendering of the Greek preposition en, “in Jesus Christ,” suggests that Christ is himself the grace that God has given us. Although Smith changes “by” to “of” rather than “in,” he seems to be making this same point.

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

4. 1 Corinthians 1:10

Now I beseech you, brethren, by in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

The Greek preposition dia + genitive can be rendered “through,” “by,” or “in.” Although “by” is the most common choice in the modern English translational tradition, over a dozen translations render it “in” with the JST (such as the New International Version).[7]

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

5. 1 Corinthians 1:12

Now this I say, that every one many of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.

KJV “that every one of you saith” is a rendering of the Greek hoti hekastos humon legei “that each of you says.”[8] Although indeed a literal rendering of the Greek text, the English of the KJV is awkward, because if every one is saying “I am of Paul,” how is it that every one is also saying “I am of Apollos”? The Greek notwithstanding, for the expression to read well in English it needs to be distributive, as in “some say X, others say Y” or “one says X, another says Y.” By reducing the exhaustive “every one” of the KJV to something less than that, “many,” the JST allows for this more natural way of reading the passage.[9]

There are fifteen English translations that move away from a literal rendering of the Greek substantive to a clearer presentation of the English, as illustrated by the following example:

TLB[10]: Some of you are saying, “I am a follower of Paul”; and others say that they are for Apollos or for Peter; and some that they alone are the true followers of Christ.[11]

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

6. 1 Corinthians 1:24

But unto them which are called who believe, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

For the JST emendation to make sense, one must read the previous two verses: “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” Paul has just stated that the Jews require a sign and Christ crucified is to them a stumblingblock, and the Greeks seek after wisdom and Christ crucified is to them foolishness. So the qualification “who believe” in verse 24 is to confirm that that verse is not talking about just any Jew or Greek, but one who has become a believer in the Savior.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

7. 1 Corinthians 1:26

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called are chosen:

The KJV is quite awkward here. For the sense, see the NRSV: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Since it’s in italics, there is no actual passive verb at the end of the verse meaning “are called,” and that verb can be read as being inconsistent with the nominal form “calling” earlier in the verse. This emendation seems largely motivated by the fact that the changed words are in italics.

Paradigm Classification A-2 (Suspicion of Italicized Text).

8. 1 Corinthians 1:27

But For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

The beginning of verse 27 is meant to show contrast with verse 26, so the conjunction alla is variously rendered “but,” “but rather,” or “instead.” Smith sees the verse as a continuation of and parallel with the preceding verse, and so he assimilates the first word of this verse to the first word of the prior verse, “for.”

Paradigm Classification A-4 (Assimilation).

9. 1 Corinthians 1:28

And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are mighty:

The KJV is contrasting “things that are” with “things which are not.” Literally the KJV is contrasting simple existence with nonexistence, but that is not actually Paul’s point; he is instead contrasting things that are considered to be something with things that are considered to be nothing. A more common type of modern English translation reads “to bring to nothing what the world considers important” (CJB). The VOICE uses the word “significant” and the TLB uses “great.” The JST’s “mighty” (representing ta ischura, which is assimilated from the prior verse) is making the same clarifying point.

Paradigm Classifications A-1 and A-4 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Assimilation).

10. 1 Corinthians 2:11

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but except he has the Spirit of God.

The KJV is indeed a literal translation of the Greek text. Paul is saying that just as only the spirit of man within him can know the things of a man, only the Spirit of God can know the things of God. Taken in isolation, this formulation appears to foreclose the possibility that a man could ever know the things of God, since a mere man is by no means himself the Spirit of God. Yes, only the Spirit of God knows the things of God, but the JST provides that a man may possess the Spirit of God and thereby know the things of God as well. That this is indeed what Paul meant to express is made clear in the following verse: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” Other passages in the letter make it clear that this is Paul’s meaning, such as 3:16: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” The JST avoids the temporary impression Paul gives that man can in no wise know the things of God and essentially collapses verse 11 with verse 12 so as to make it clear that man may indeed receive the Spirit of God.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

11. 1 Corinthians 3:2

I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear receive it, neither yet now are ye able.

This is a change that was motivated in the first instance by the italics but which also reflects an English paraphrase. The Greek has oupo gar edunasthe, “for you were not yet able.” Many translations render something like “for you were not yet ready.” Three actually match the JST by using the word “receive,” as in the NASB: “for you were not yet ready to receive it” (so also the NKJ and OJB). So here the concern with italics also leads to an English paraphrase of KJV text.

Paradigm Classifications A-2 and A-1 (Suspicion of Italicized Text and English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

12. 1 Corinthians 3:15

If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall may be saved; yet so as by fire.

Paul’s wording seems to suggest that salvation shall be a certainty for all people in all cases. The JST pulls back on that idea, making salvation a possibility rather than a sure thing in all events. Paul was assuming a Christian believer who would otherwise be a proper subject of salvation, not just any human being irrespective of her relationship with the Savior. As this is not made explicit in the text, the JST avoids a potential misunderstanding here.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

13. 1 Corinthians 3:17

If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; but the temple of God is holy, which temple Temple ye are.

The word “temple” appears three times in this verse, and the JST manuscript seems to capitalize the third occurrence only. It is not clear whether this was an intentional change or an aborted one, and if intentional what nuance he sought to clarify by the change. Perhaps temple was left lowercase when it was the “temple of God,” but was changed to uppercase when referring to his readers as temples, but the intent behind the change (if the change in fact was intentional) remains unclear.

Paradigm Classification G (Not Easily Classifiable).

14. 1 Corinthians 4:2

Moreover it is required in of stewards, that a man be found faithful.

The KJV renders en tois oikonomois literally as “in stewards,” but arguably “of” (as in the JST) would be the more natural idiom in English rather than “in.” Nineteen translations use “of stewards” as in the JST, such as the WEB: “Here, moreover, it is required of stewards, that they be found faithful.”[12] Two translations use “among” (as in DRA, “among the dispensers”), and a number of others rework the sentence to avoid this construction altogether.

The ubiquity of the word “of” in modern translations postdating the JST suggests that “of” may also have existed in translations predating the JST, and indeed that is the case in the Coverdale Bible: “Now is there no more requyred of the stewardes, then, that they be founde faithfull.”

Paradigm Classifications A-1 and F (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Secondary Source).

15. 1 Corinthians 4:4

For though I know nothing by against myself; yet am I am not hereby justified: but he that who judgeth me is the Lord.

There are several changes made to this verse. The addition of “though” simply correlates with “yet” and emphasizes the contrast between the first and second parts of the verse. The switch from “am I” to “I am” is merely stylistic, and the modernization of the relative pronoun from “that” to “who” is a common type of updating found in the JST. The most significant change is emending “by myself” as a rendering of the first-person reflexive pronoun in the dative case, emauto, to “against myself.”

The “I know nothing by myself” of the KJV to a modern reader suggests that Paul’s knowledge does not arise from himself alone but from external authorities or instrumentalities, such as, say, the Holy Spirit. But this is manifestly not the meaning of the expression, which is archaic for “I know nothing against myself” as the JST correctly emends it, meaning in effect “my conscience is clear.” Although a handful of English translations retain the traditional “by myself” of the KJV, twenty-four have “against myself” with the JST, and all others rework the wording in some way to express the same concept.

Paradigm Classifications A-3 and A-1 (Modernization and English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

16. 1 Corinthians 4:5

Therefore I judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

The JST turns Paul’s instruction to his readers into a statement applicable to himself. It is unclear what point Smith intended to make with this emendation.

Paradigm Classification G (Not Easily Classifiable).

17. 1 Corinthians 5:3

For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit I have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that who hath so done this deed, as though I was present,

The JST emendation moves a clause for the sole purpose of avoiding the italicized “concerning” and modernizes the personal relative pronoun.

Paradigm Classification A-3 and A-2 (Modernization and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

18. 1 Corinthians 5:4

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my have the spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,

In verse 3 Paul talks about being absent from the Corinthians in body but present in spirit. In verse 4 the words “my spirit” hark back to verse 3 and essentially mean “I am with you in spirit.” But the KJV rendering is very awkward here: “when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The KJV is simply too sparse to make Paul’s point sensical and clear in English. The JST emendation makes the reference to “spirit” here to the Lord’s spirit, not Paul’s, which perhaps is a reflection that Paul uses pneuma (“spirit”) to refer to the Holy Spirit far more often than he does of the spirit of a human being.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

19. 1 Corinthians 5:12

For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye they judge them that are within?

Here Paul is saying that God himself will judge outsiders, so the Corinthian Saints should not bother with that but rather should concentrate on judging insiders, i.e., their fellow Christians. The KJV translates verse 12b as a statement of what they are already in fact doing: “do not ye judge them that are within?” But if that were true, there would be no need for Paul to raise the point. Paul was not saying this is what you already do, but rather this is what you should be doing, as in the NET: “Are you not to judge those inside?” Since the KJV as written makes little sense, the JST moves the verb from second-person plural to third-person plural, as a statement of current reality that outsiders were in fact judging the Christians.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

20. 1 Corinthians 6:12

12. All these things are not lawful unto me, but all these things are not expedient: all . All things are not lawful for me, but therefore I will not be brought under the power of any.

That the KJV does not use quotation marks has created a misunderstanding as to who is speaking what words in this passage. Without quotation marks, the entire verse appears to be a statement of Paul’s, which then nonsensically has Paul contradicting himself twice in short order. The JST avoids these contradictions by adding a negative to the assertion “all things are lawful unto me” in both places it occurs. If the entire verse were spoken by Paul from his own perspective, the JST would then harmonize the statements in the verse and make them consistent.

We have here a situation where Paul is quoting his opponents and disagreeing with them. In fact, there is no contradiction because “all these things are lawful unto me” is not Paul’s own point of view but a quotation from the Corinthian point of view. (Since the quotations in this verse come at the beginning of successive sentences, the KJV method of marking a quotation with capitalization is of no assistance here.) Actual quotation marks would have made this clear, as in the CJB:

You say, “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but as far as I am concerned, I am not going to let anything gain control over me.

Without the use of quotations marks in the KJV, there is really no way to appreciate the repeated change of voice within this one verse. With that understanding, the JST becomes comprehensible as an attempt to make the statements within the verse (assuming they are all from Paul) coherent by harmonizing them.

Paradigm Classification C-1 (Harmonization [within the Biblical Text]).

21. 1 Corinthians 6:18

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth committeth is without the body: but against the body of Christ, and he that who committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

The verb “commit” works more naturally in English with “sin” than does “do,” and so the JST assimilates “doeth” to the “committeth” later in the verse. What does it mean to sin “without [i.e., ‘outside’] the body?”[13] That formulation in the KJV is completely unclear, and so the JST turns it into the more comprehensible “against the body of Christ.” Since there is no longer a contrast between general sins and fornication, the adversative “but” becomes the conjunction “and.”

Although I believe the change from “doeth” to “committeth” is most likely an assimilation to “committeth” later in the verse, the modern English form “commits” appears in both the Campbell translation, which has “every sin which a man commits is without the body,” and Wesley’s Explanatory Notes, which has “every sin that a man commits against his neighbour terminates upon an object out of himself.”

Paradigm Classifications A-3, A-4 and F (Modernization, Assimilation and Secondary Source).

22–23. 1 Corinthians 7:1–2

1. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me, saying: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.

2. Nevertheless, I say to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

1 Corinthians 7 begins with a crux interpretum: does the second half of verse 1 (“It is good for a man not to touch a woman”) represent Paul’s own statement or a quotation of a statement from Corinth? The Greek text itself gives no indication either way. While there are scholars on both sides of the question, something of a modern scholarly consensus has developed in favor of the Corinthian quotation view. Reasons for this position include the structural similarity of 7:1 with other secure Corinthian quotations (such as 8:1), that 7:1b as a Pauline statement would contradict what Paul would have regarded as a divine ordinance: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18), and that the Corinthian quotation reading goes all the way back to Origen.[14]

In translation the clearest way to mark this as a Corinthian statement would have been to use quotation marks, but the KJV does not use quotation marks at all. Quotations are sometimes marked in the KJV by capitalization (usually preceded by a comma), and while this method results in ambiguity (because it cannot mark a quotation at the beginning of a sentence, where the first letter is already capitalized, and it does not mark the end of a quotation) it does often successfully mark the beginning of a quotation. Since the italicized “It” is capitalized, in KJV usage this would appear to mark the beginning of a quotation, thus making verse 7:1b a statement from Corinth.

This passage provides a good illustration as to why the common LDS assumption that JST revisions necessarily reflect textual restorations is incorrect. Below is the Greek text for this passage, with words corresponding to the JST revision added and given in bold underline:

Peri de on egrapsate moi legontes kalon anthropo gunaikos me haptesthai.

Dia de lego tas porneias hekastos ten heautou gunaika echeto kai hekaste ton idion andra echeto.

The common LDS assumption would be that the words legontes (“saying”) and lego (“I say”) were original to the Greek text. Over time, these words dropped out of the text for some reason; the JST then restored them (in English) and is therefore a textual restoration.

This would be a misapprehension of what is going on here. The JST does not presuppose ancient variants in the Greek text; rather it provides clarified meaning at the English level. The JST revisions here are providing the functional equivalent of the quotation marks that are missing in the KJV text: “saying” is in effect the equivalent of an open quote mark, and “I say” is in effect the equivalent of a close quote mark. The JST here does not work at the Greek textual level but at the English translational level, and in doing so it corrects a weakness inherent in the KJV text (lack of quotation marks).

It is the responsibility of the translator to present Paul’s meaning in a correct way in English. There are seventeen older translations that, like the KJV, use capitalization to suggest a quotation here. The modern English equivalent to introducing the passage with legontes would be to put the second part of verse 1 within quotation marks, showing that those words should be ascribed to the letter Paul had received and not to Paul himself. And of the sixty English translations available at biblegateway.com, twenty-one do indeed use quotation marks here. Another three reach the same result a different way. The DLNT creates the same effect by using a dash, and the MSG creates the same effect by turning the sentence into a question. The ERV paraphrases as follows: “You asked if it is better for a man not to have sexual relations at all.” So forty-one of sixty translations (over 68 percent) are functionally in accord with the JST (and many of the remaining translations are simply ambiguous on the question). Some translations explicitly take the passage as having precisely the meaning the JST rejects. The TLB has “Now about those questions you asked in your last letter: my answer is that if you do not marry, it is good.” The NLT has Paul’s answer as “Yes, it is good to abstain from sexual relations.” But this is a minority view; the increasing consensus of modern scholarship takes verse 1 as a quotation from Corinth, just as the JST does.

So the JST clarifies that 7:1b is indeed a quotation, a position that is widely accepted. And the addition of “I say” in verse 2 is then essentially the equivalent of closing that quotation by giving the adversative de in that verse an appropriately strong force (as if to render it “on the contrary”).[15] This has nothing to do with textual variants in ancient manuscripts; it is rather a matter of correct presentation in English.

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

24. 1 Corinthians 7:5

Defraud Depart ye not one from the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

The word “defraud” is indeed an accurate translation of the Greek verb apostereo (“rob, despoil”), but in English it’s a very obscure way to make the point Paul is trying to make here, which is more like “do not deprive each other of marital rights,” or more pointedly “do not refuse sex to each other.” The JST makes the concept clearer while still reflecting Smith’s typical conservatism in making the fewest letter changes necessary (i.e., note how close English “depart” is to KJV “defraud”).

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

25. 1 Corinthians 7:6

But I speak this And now what I speak is by permission, and not of by commandment.

The first change seems to be a simple paraphrase, and a number of other English translations have “by commandment” rather than “of commandment” at the end of the verse.

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

26. 1 Corinthians 7:9

But if they cannot contain abide, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn that any should commit sin.

The first change is an English paraphrase. The expression (ei ouk enkrateuontai) the KJV obscurely rendered “if they cannot contain” means “if they do not have power over their passions.”[16] The word “abide” is simply an alternative to the KJV “contain” as a way of expressing the exercise of self-control. At the end of the verse the verb purousthai does indeed literally mean “to burn.” Some have taken the verb here to mean “to burn in hell,” but most take it as “for their passions to burn.”[17] The JST then takes this to its logical consequence, that if the couple lets its passions burn they would likely give in to such passions and commit sin as a result.

Paradigm Classification A-1 and B (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Midrashic Commentary).

27. 1 Corinthians 7:26

I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be remain, that he may do greater good.

The JST gives a reason why it would be better for an unmarried man to remain such—so as to be in a position to do greater good.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary)

28. 1 Corinthians 7:28

But and if thou marry, thou has not sinned; and if a virgin Virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you for I spare you not.

The KJV rendering here is awkward and does not adequately convey the sense of the passage. The KJV’s “But and if thou marry” is overliteral; virtually all modern translations delete the word “and” here with the JST, such as the NRSV’s “But if you marry.” The “but I spare you” seems to say that even though Paul is telling them they will have troubles in the flesh if they marry, that’s okay, go ahead and do it. But that is manifestly not Paul’s meaning here, which is why the JST adds a negative to the clause. What Paul is actually saying is that by his counsel he is trying to spare them that result, as clearly expressed in the NRSV: “Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that.” The JST adds a negative to avoid the misimpression the KJV gives, which was manifestly not what Paul meant to convey.

Note that the KJV following the Textus Receptus reads “and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned,” with an anarthrous parthenos “a virgin.” The original text most likely reads “the virgin” (he parthenos) with a definite article. (The definite article was probably omitted by some copyists for a perceived lack of propriety in keeping it.) The JST capitalizes “Virgin” here. The reason for the capitalization is not clear, and conceivably it was meant to mark the noun as definite. But the JST retains the English indefinite article “a,” so in my view this revision does not amount to a textual restoration.[18]

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

29. 1 Corinthians 7:29

But I speak unto you who are called unto the ministry. For this I say, brethren, the time that remaineth is but short,: it remaineth, that both that ye shall be sent forth unto the ministry. Even they that who have wives shall be as though they had none; for ye are called and chosen to do the Lord’s work.

Although the JST makes a complex series of changes here, the revisions all support a simple idea: that the condition of those having wives being as though they had none is not a general statement applicable to all but applies specifically to those sent forth into the ministry, which provides a limitation as to class (ministers only) and as to time (only for the temporary duration of such ministry).

Paradigm Classifications A-3 and B (Modernization and Midrashic Commentary).

30–33. 1 Corinthians 7:30–33

And they that it shall be with them who weep, as though they wept not; and they that them who rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that them who buy, as though they possessed not;

And they that them who use this world, as not abusing using it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.

But I would, brethren, that ye magnify your calling. I would have you without carefulness. For he He that who is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; therefore he prevaileth:

But he that who is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife; therefore there is a difference, for he is hindered.

There are a number of revisions to this passage. The archaic use of “that” as a relative pronoun is modernized to “who.” The structure of these verses is changed from a more direct expression (e.g., “and they that weep”) to an indirect one (e.g., “and it shall be with them who weep”) so as to mesh better with verse 29b “that both they that have wives be as though they had none” (emphasis added). In verse 31 “abusing” is changed to “using” to match the “using” in the first part of the verse so as to make the terms parallel (as in verse 30 “weep//wept” and “rejoice//rejoiced”).[19] In verses 32 and 33 the JST adds clauses to make it abundantly clear that verse 32 (not being married) reflects the superior condition in this context over verse 33 (being married).

Paradigm Classifications A-3, A-1 and B (Modernization, English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Midrashic Commentary).

34. 1 Corinthians 7:36

36. But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin whom he hath espoused, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will hath promised, he sinneth not: let them marry.

There is an ambiguity in this verse. Most translations take it as referring to a man’s decision to marry a woman, where ten parthenon autou (“his virgin”) refers to a fiancée, but it is possible, though less likely, that those words in this passage are referring to a father’s decision to allow his virgin daughter to marry, as explicitly suggested by a half dozen translations, such as the NASB:

But if any man thinks that he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter, if she is past her youth, and if it must be so, let him do what he wishes, he does not sin; let her marry.[20]

Some translations, in order to be more explicit about how the text should be read, expressly identify the virgin as the man’s fiancée, as in the ERV:

A man might think that he is not doing the right thing with his fiancée. She might be almost past the best age to marry. So he might feel that he should marry her. He should do what he wants. It is no sin for them to get married.

Other translations that do this are the CJB, NLT, NRSV, NRSVA, NRSVACE, and VOICE. (The ESV also does it, using the word “betrothed”). The JST is in accord with these translations, making the relationship explicitly one of a man to his fiancée, not a father making a decision about his virgin daughter.

Paradigm Classifications A-1 and A-2 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

35. 1 Corinthians 7:38

So then he that giveth her himself in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her himself not in marriage doeth better.

Verse 38 correlates with verse 36. The KJV “giveth her” contemplates a virgin daughter is in view, which is a minority position; most translations take it as referring to a man marrying his own fiancée as in verse 36, and the JST is in accord, replacing both italicized occurrences of “her” with “himself.” DARBY even uses the very word “himself”: “So that he that marries himself does well; and he that does not marry does better.” So again, this is an emendation motivated by italics that also serves as an English paraphrase.

Paradigm Classifications A-1 and A-2 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

36. 1 Corinthians 8:4

As concerning therefore the eating of those things that which are in the world offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.

The JST here simply moves some text and modernizes the pronoun.

Paradigm Classification A-3 (Modernization).

37. 1 Corinthians 9:24

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but all run—only one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.

The JST here intends no change in meaning but simply attempts to convey the sense in a more modern framing.

Paradigm Classification A-3 (Modernization).

38. 1 Corinthians 10:11

Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, also and for an admonition for those upon whom the ends end of the world are shall come.

Paul assumed that the end of the world was imminent. At the time Smith was dictating his changes to the text in 1832, the world had not ended, meaning that the end of the world had not actually been imminent at the time Paul dictated this text. So the JST harmonizes the text with actual history in a way reminiscent of what the JST does in Matthew 24.[21]

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

39. 1 Corinthians 10:23

All things are lawful for me, but for all things are not expedient: all things are not lawful for me, but all things edify not.[22]

This is similar to 1 Corinthians 6:12, where the lack of quotation marks in the KJV makes the passage hard to follow and the JST attempts to remedy that. For the difference quotation marks make, consider the NRSV: “’All things are lawful,’ but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.”

Paradigm Classification C-1 (Harmonization [within the Biblical Text]).

40. 1 Corinthians 10:24

Let no man seek therefore his own, but every man another’s wealth good.

The Greek of this passage is medeis to heautou zeteito alla to tou heterou hekastos, literally “let no one seek that of himself, but let each [seek] that of another,” where “that” is a rendering of the Greek neuter article to. To what does the neuter article mean to refer here? In a general sense it must have some connotation such as “benefit.” The KJV’s “wealth” was originally an appropriate translation, as the word was used in the now obsolete sense of “well-being” or “welfare” (compare to the archaic English term weal, meaning “well-being”). Unfortunately, due to linguistic drift, over time the word “wealth” has come to mean “an abundance of material possessions or resources,” which is manifestly not the meaning of the word in this passage.[23] Accordingly, the JST modernized the text with “good.” Fourteen other translations indeed use “good” here (such as the NET: “Do not seek your own good, but the good of the other person”), and a couple others use “well-being.”

Paradigm Classifications A-1 and A-2 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

41. 1 Corinthians 10:27

If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast eat, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake.

Here the concern with italics combines with the common JST principles of conservatism[24] and assimilation. In lieu of the italicized “to a feast,” the JST suggests “eat,” which is assimilated from “eat” (esthiete) later in the verse and involves only two English letter changes from the word “feast.”

Paradigm Classifications A-4 and A-2 (Assimilation and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

42. 1 Corinthians 10:33

Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved.

This change was motivated by the italics. The passage reads better in English without repeating the word “profit,” as in the NRSV: “Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.”

It is possible that the addition of “the” before “many” in this position was influenced by the Campbell Translation: “Even as I please all men in all things; not seeking my own advantage, but that of the many, that they may be saved.”

Paradigm Classification A-2 and F (Suspicion of Italicized Text and Secondary Source).

43. 1 Corinthians 11:10

For this cause ought the woman to have power a covering[25] on her head because of the angels Angels.

For a woman to have “power” (as the KJV literally renders exousia) on her head is simply incomprehensible; what does it mean? Many translations render something like “a sign of authority,” which is better but still unclear. A number of translations clarify that what was meant was a tangible covering of some type that a woman was to wear on her head, as in the ICB: “So that is why a woman should have her head covered with something to show that she is under authority. And also she should do this because of the angels.” Or, it may be that the head covering represents a protective power.[26] Some form of the word “covering” is also used in the AMP, CEV, ERV, GW, GNT, ICB, and TLB, while CJB has “The reason a woman should show by veiling her head that she is under authority has to do with the angels.” The noun exousia here is an abstract term standing for the concrete, and the JST emphasizes the concrete aspect of the word.

Note that there is a possibility the “covering” word choice was influenced by the Adam Clarke Commentary: “Theophylact explains the word, to exousiazesthai sumbolon, toutesti, to kalumma ‘the symbol of being under power, that is, a veil, or covering.’”

Paradigm Classification A-1 and F (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Secondary Source).

44. 1 Corinthians 11:19

For there must be also heresies divisions among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

The KJV renders the Greek haireseis with its English derivative, “heresies,” but here the sense is one of dissensions arising from a diversity of opinions and aims, a nuance that the JST “divisions” captures well. The CJB, GNT, NET, and NLT all also use “divisions,” and the MSG uses the form “divisiveness.” Other translations use a variety of synonyms, the most common of which is “factions.”

It is possible that the word choice of “divisions” was influenced by either the Adam Clarke Commentary, “Their difference in religious opinion led to a difference in their religious practice, and thus the Church of God, that should have been one body, was split into sects and parties. The divisions and the heresies sprung out of each other,” or by Wesley’s Explanatory Notes: “There must be heresies—Divisions.”

Paradigm Classification A-1 and F (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Secondary Source).

45. 1 Corinthians 11:20

When ye come together therefore into one place, this is is it not to eat the Lord’s supper.?

Here the italicized “this is” leads Smith to turn the disapproving statement of Paul into a rhetorical negative question, making the same point but arguably with greater force.

Paradigm Classification A-2 (Suspicion of Italicized Text).

46. 1 Corinthians 11:21

For But in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken.

The change made here from “for” to “but” simply coordinates this verse with the change made in the immediately preceding verse.

Paradigm Classification A-2 (Suspicion of Italicized Text).

47. 1 Corinthians 11:29

For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation condemnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.

“Condemnation” is a suitable synonym for “damnation” here as a rendering of the Greek krima. Indeed, BDAG suggests that krima heauto esthien should be rendered “eat condemnation upon oneself,”[27] and the CEV has “If you fail to understand that you are the body of the Lord, you will condemn yourselves by the way you eat and drink.” The expression means to eat and drink so as to incur the judgment/punishment/condemnation of God. It is not entirely clear why Smith felt the need to make the word substitution here. One possibility is that the word “damnation” may have been perceived as a final judgment from which no repentance would be effective, whereas “condemnation” was perceived as a state of judgment from which repentance was yet possible, but whether this nuance was intended is speculation.

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

48. 1 Corinthians 12:1

Now concerning spiritual gifts things, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

The Greek has peri de pneumatikon. The gender of the adjective is ambiguous, as it could be either masculine (“spiritual people”) or neuter. Most favor the neuter reading. The most straightforward way to translate the neuter adjective would be “spiritual things,” as the JST suggests. Several translations do the same (CJB, DRA, JUB, WEB, WYC, and YLT).

Paradigm Classifications A-1 and A-2 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

49. 1 Corinthians 12:31

But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto I say unto you, nay; for I have shewn unto you a more excellent way therefore covet earnestly the best gifts.

By “a more excellent way” Paul meant to refer the reader ahead to his discourse on love in chapter 13. The JST revises the verse to make the “more excellent way” refer back to what he has already expressed in the letter.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

50–55. 1 Corinthians 14:2, 4, 13, 14, 18 and 21

[Global change throughout chapter]: an unknown another tongue.

Here the italicized “unknown” leads to a midrashic comment, suggesting that Paul was not necessarily talking about glossolalia. This could also be taken as an English paraphrase. Probably the most common way this is rendered in modern English translations is simply as “a tongue” or “a language” with no modifying adjective, but since this tongue is obviously not one’s native language, “another tongue” as the JST has it would seem to be an appropriate clarifying adjective. The HCSB, NOG, and WEB have “another language,” the ICB “a different language,” the ISV “a foreign language,” and the NCV “different languages.”

Paradigm Classifications A-1, A-2 and B (English Paraphrase of KJV Text, Suspicion of Italicized Text and Midrashic Commentary).

56–57. 1 Corinthians 14:34–35

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak rule; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak rule in the church.

This passage has long been considered difficult by modern Christians, since only the most conservative Christian sects disallow women from speaking in church at all. Further, Paul himself in this very letter (1 Cor. 11:5 and 13) takes it for granted that it is proper for women both to pray and to prophesy in church, which seems strangely inconsistent with this passage. Therefore, if the passage were genuinely authentic, it would appear that something else is being communicated here in accordance with the context of the situation (known to the author and the addressees but not to us). The JST resolves this problem by replacing the difficult verb “speak” with the verb “rule,” which allows for substantially more participation by women in the life of the Church, even if a limitation remains.

Many scholars are of the view that verses 34–35 were not original to the letter but reflect a later addition, primarily because the Western textual tradition (and some non-Western texts) place these verses after verse 40 rather than after verse 33 as here, suggesting they were a later addition to the letter.[28]

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary)

58. 1 Corinthians 15:10

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but for I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Translations generally render the conjunction alla with “but,” “instead,” or “on the contrary.” The JST changes the second half of the verse from a contrast with the first to a reason for the first.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary).

59. 1 Corinthians 15:24

Then Afterward cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.

“Afterward” is simply a synonym for “then.” Several modern English translations use “after” or “afterward” here.

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

60. 1 Corinthians 15:26

The last enemy, that shall be destroyed is death, shall be destroyed.

There are two possible ways to account for the generation of this emendation. First, it might be based on the italicized words “that” and “is.” Smith and his scribes often crossed italicized words out in the Joseph Smith–marked Bible and considered the import of the passage without the italicized words, which in this case would be as follows:

The last enemy shall be destroyed death.

A simple and obvious way to make sense of that would be to move the word “death” forward, put it in apposition with “the last enemy” (using commas), and thereby make “death” clearly the subject of the verb “shall be destroyed.” In such a case the revision would be explained entirely by the italics and would result in the reading preserved in the JST:

The last enemy, death, shall be destroyed.

But it is also possible that this particular reformulation was influenced by the Adam Clarke Commentary: “The last enemy, Death, shall be destroyed.” Note that the wording is identical, except that the JST did not capitalize “Death.”[29] But the Clarke Commentary tends to be used for more technical, lexical, and linguistic purposes. If this revision were indeed based on the Clarke Commentary, Smith’s reliance on that source here seems to have been rather random. It is to be hoped that Thomas Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon’s forthcoming study on the Clarke Commentary will provide some insight into the apparent randomness of the JST usage of that source here.[30]

Paradigm Classification A-2 and F (Suspicion of Italicized Text and Secondary Source).

61. 1 Corinthians 15:27

For he saith, when it is manifest that he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, and that all things are put under, him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which of the father who did put all things under him.

The sense of this verse is more clearly expressed in the NRSV: “For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’ But when it says, ‘All things are put in subjection,’ it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him.” Smith seems to be putting this into the future, is perhaps influenced by the italicized “him, it is,” and also seems to misread “excepted” as “accepted.”

Paradigm Classification B and A-2 (Midrashic Commentary and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

62. 1 Corinthians 15:31

I protest by your unto you the resurrection of the dead; and this is my rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily, though I die.

The first revision explicitly connects this passage with the general topic of this portion of 1 Corinthians 15, which is the resurrection of the dead. The second takes Paul’s statement “I die every day!,” which is a description of his hardships on their behalf and obviously not to be taken literally, and expresses it in a way that may be read literally, and thus is a literalizing of Paul’s expression.

Paradigm Classification B (Midrashic Commentary)

63. 1 Corinthians 15:37

And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that which shall be, but bare grain, it may be of wheat or some other chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

This is largely a modernizing revision, changing “that” to “which,” changing “bare grain” to simply “grain” (gymnos kokkos [“bare grain”] means only grain as opposed to the plant itself), and deleting the word “chance,” which here is simply archaic for “whether.” The italicized “grain” at the end appears also to have been an influence.

Paradigm Classification A-3 and A-2 (Modernization and Suspicion of Italicized Text).

64. 1 Corinthians 15:40

There are also celestial Celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial Terrestrial, and bodies Telestial: but the glory of the celestial Celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial Terrestrial is another, and the Telestial, another.

On February 16, 1832, Smith received the vision found in Doctrine and Covenants 76, which was inspired by his work on the JST of John 5:29. A couple weeks later Smith dictated the revisions to 1 Corinthians 15, and in verse 40 he harmonized the text to match Doctrine and Covenants 76 by adding the neologism “Telestial” to the Latinate terms “Celestial” and “Terrestrial” and by capitalizing all three technical terms. This is a classic illustration of harmonizing the biblical text to conform to one of Smith’s modern revelations.

Paradigm Classification C-2 (Harmonization with Modern Revelation).

65. 1 Corinthians 15:46

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual which is natural first, and not that which is spiritual, but afterwards, that which is spiritual.

This appears to be a simplifying paraphrase. The KJV structure is “not spiritual first, but first natural, then spiritual,” and the JST simply omits the first clause, simplifying to “first natural, then spiritual.”

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

66. 1 Corinthians 15:52

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last sound of the trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The word salpinx can mean a “trumpet” itself, but it also can refer to the sound made or signal given by a trumpet, i.e., “trumpet-sound.” BDAG takes the word here in the latter sense: “at the call of the trumpet blown by God’s command.”[31] There are five translations that explicitly take the word as the JST does, as referring to the sound of the trumpet, as in the ISV: “In a moment, faster than an eye can blink, at the sound of the last trumpet. Indeed, that trumpet will sound, and then the dead will be raised never to decay, and we will be changed.” (The others are AMP, CEV, GW and NOG.)

It is possible that the addition of “sound” in the JST was an assimilation to the use of “sound” later in the verse, which then had the effect of creating a chiasm:

A at the sound

B of the trump

B' for the trumpet

A' shall sound

The expression “sound of the trumpet” also occurs fifteen times in the KJV Old Testament, so the JST emendation here could be an assimilation to that Old Testament usage.

Paradigm Classification A-1 and A-4 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Assimilation).

67. 1 Corinthians 16:9

For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and but there are many adversaries.

The conjunction between the first and second part of the verse is the Greek kai, which is commonly rendered into English as “and,” and a majority of translations indeed translate it that way. But the first part of the verse is positive while the second is negative, which suggests that kai should be given more adversative force here. There are seven translations that join the JST in rendering the word “but” (CEV, NABRE, NET, NLV, OJB, VOICE, and WE), as well as others that use some other adversative (“although,” “even though,” “yet”).

Paradigm Classification A-1 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text).

68. 1 Corinthians 16:20

All the brethren greet you. Greet ye one another with an holy kiss salutation.

The Greek word philema does indeed mean “kiss,” as a sign of fraternal affection that was commonly given in the early Christian community. The JST updates the gesture culturally with the blander “salutation.” But the JST is not alone in suggesting such a cultural updating. Other translations suggest here “warm greeting” (CEV), “special greeting” (ERV), “shake hands” (PHILLIPS), “loving handshake” (TLB), and “holy embraces” (MSG). The specific word “salutation” is assimilated from verse 21.

Paradigm Classification A-1 and A-4 (English Paraphrase of KJV Text and Assimilation).

Summary of Results

Having worked our way through the entire Joseph Smith Translation of 1 Corinthians, what kinds of changes did we find there? Below I give an accounting of the types of changes made in the JST of 1 Corinthians by paradigm classification.

By my count the total number of verses modified in the JST of 1 Corinthians is sixty-eight. Several of these verses are logically grouped together into “passages” (including three groups of two verses, one group of four verses, and one group of six verses), thus resulting in fifty-seven passages. Of these fifty-seven passages, thirty-four fell into a single category on the paradigm, twenty fell into two categories on the paradigm, and three fell into three categories on the paradigm, thus giving us eighty-three total categories of change within those fifty-seven passages (i.e., 34 + [20 x 2] + [3 x 3] = 83). The following chart shows the allocation of those eighty-three types of changes among the paradigm categories.

Allocation of JST Revisions among Paradigm Categories

Paradigm Designation	Description	Total Occurrences	Percentage of Total Occurrences (%)	Remarks
A-1	English Paraphrases of KJV Text in general	26	31.33	This was the most commonly attested category, coming in at almost one-third of all JST emendations. I was genuinely surprised by how many of these revisions seemed sensible in light of the Greek text and found parallels in modern English translations.
A-2	English Paraphrases of KJV Text based on Suspicion of Italics	16	19.28	Suspicion of italicized text was a very significant category, accounting for almost 20 percent of JST emendations. Although this percentage is somewhat less than that found by Wayment and Yost in their study of JST treatment of italics in the Gospels, it is nonetheless substantial and suggests that a suspicion of italicized text was a constant concern throughout the JST project. One possible conclusion from this is that it was a bad idea for the KJV to use italicized text in this fashion, as it led to substantial misunderstanding, and indeed modern translations have not followed this practice.
A-3	English Paraphrases of KJV Text based on Modernization	8	9.64	The impulse to modernize the archaic KJV text was reflected in just under 10 percent of JST emendations to 1 Corinthians, suggesting that that was a significant concern of the JST project, even if the JST did not attempt anything approaching a consistent emphasis on modernization of the language.
A-4	English Paraphrases of KJV Text based on Assimilation	6	7.23	Assimilation accounted for just over 7 percent of JST revisions, suggesting that Smith was very much attuned to the surrounding text as he made his revisions.
A-5	English Paraphrases of KJV Text having Non-Original Textual Variants	0	0	This category was unattested in 1 Corinthians.
B	Midrashic Commentary	16	19.28	Midrashic commentary comes in at almost 20 percent and so is a very significant type of change made in the JST of 1 Corinthians.
C-1	Harmonizations within the Biblical Text	2	2.41	Harmonizations within the biblical text will be far more common in the Gospels. The two occurrences here reflected attempts to make verses sensical that were unclear due to the fact that the KJV does not use quotation marks, and its older system of attempting to mark quotations is often inadequate.
C-2	Harmonizations with Modern Revelation	1	1.19	Although there was only a single example in this text of a harmonization with modern revelation, that example was a significant one: adding the neologism “telestial” to the Latinate terms “celestial” and “terrestrial” so as to conform this text with D&C 76.
D	Long Additions with Little or No Biblical Parallel	0	0	This category was unattested in 1 Corinthians.
E	Textual Restorations	0	0	This category was unattested in 1 Corinthians.
F	Secondary Sources	6	7.23	I have noted six cases where the JST revision is paralleled by a secondary source (over 7 percent), but it does not necessarily follow in each case that the secondary source was a true influence. So in 1 Corinthians 6:18 I believe the change from “doeth” to “committeth” was due to assimilation from “committeth” later in the verse and not the use of the modern English form “commits” in the Campbell translation and Wesley’s Explanatory Notes. The possible example of secondary source influence in 1 Corinthians 10:33 strikes me as more of a fluke than a conscious influence. The change from “in stewards” to “of stewards” in 1 Corinthians 4:2 could reflect secondary source influence, or it could simply be a change that reflects the more natural euphony of “of stewards” in English. 1 Corinthians 15:26 strikes me as something of a toss-up between a revision based solely on the italics and one derived from the Clarke Commentary. The revisions to 1 Corinthians 11:10 and 11:19 strike me as the most likely illustrations of this category (the others being somewhat more equivocal), but even those are not certain examples. On the other hand, I only reviewed four possible secondary sources and there are many other potential sources that could profitably be reviewed. So the six examples I have cited here might be overstated in one respect but understated in another.
G	Not Easily Classifiable	2	2.41	That we only needed to include two passages in the catch-all “not easily classifiable” category suggests that the paradigm as a whole is sufficient to account for most JST emendations to the KJV text.
Total		83	100.00

Concluding Thoughts

The distribution of JST revisions among the paradigm classifications in 1 Corinthians is illustrative, but not necessarily characteristic, of other portions of the JST. 1 Corinthians would have been produced roughly in the middle of the JST project. The purposes of the project developed over time, and Smith’s stamina for generating revisions started strong but seemed to flag toward the end, particularly after Smith returned to the Old Testament. But this does represent a significant illustrative subset of the JST (i.e., an entire New Testament book) and suggests that many different kinds of things are going on in the project, which therefore requires an eclectic approach by those seeking to understand it.

Before undertaking this project, I was of course generally familiar with the JST, but I had never undertaken this kind of a focused consideration of a substantial amount of JST text (i.e., an entire book) all at once. This was a new experience for me. And my overarching reaction was that I was impressed. Not that the JST is perfect; of course it is not. But it is thoughtful, and Smith obviously worked hard to make sense of textual puzzles that were not immediately clear to him. And most of the time he did pretty well with those puzzles. And he did so with minimal resources: perhaps seven years of public schooling,[32] possible consultation with his scribes, and occasional use of secondary sources.

As impressive as I found Smith’s effort to be generally, there were also mistakes and misunderstandings along the way. In the three-year project as a whole Smith dictated literally thousands of changes to the KJV text, and it is simply unreasonable to think that he never made a change based on a mistaken understanding of the text. There are several such examples in 1 Corinthians itself (in particular under my Midrashic Commentary category). But in a way, even the mistakes he made supported his general and basic point, to the effect that the KJV had become too difficult for many ordinary Bible readers to read with full comprehension. So, for instance, the practice of using italic type to reflect English words without specific warrant in the Greek text no doubt was well intentioned, but in the end it turned out to be a bad idea, and modern translations wisely do not follow that precedent. That the KJV did not use actual quotation marks was a problem, and so when Smith sometimes misunderstood the text for the want of quotation marks, he was demonstrating how problematic that lack was by his own errors. When the diction and syntax of the KJV were beyond Smith such that he struggled to correct them, the fact of such a struggle was in itself a demonstration of the larger point Smith sought to make with this project.

Many Latter-day Saints assume that all JST revisions fall under Paradigm Classification E, Textual Restorations. However, based on our current understanding of the history of the New Testament text, not a single JST emendation to 1 Corinthians makes any sense as a textual restoration. Given that many of the JST emendations were in their own way impressive, I believe it would be a good thing to wean people from widespread but completely unsustainable assumptions of 100 percent textual restoration. If Church scholars do not take the initiative to correct this massive misunderstanding, some day in the not too distant future those scholars will be drafting a Gospel Topics essay on the subject.

So in the end, whether Smith was successfully correcting the KJV or trying and failing (or realistically some of each), both the successes and the failures supported his basic point, that the KJV had over time become too archaic and too hard for ordinary Bible readers to read with full comprehension, which has only become more true over the 180-plus years since Smith completed the JST. That is a proposition I believe we can all agree with.

I would hope that students would be able to see what Smith did with the JST as a model for their own engagement with the scriptures. Smith was willing to get deep into the weeds in a way I simply do not see in the average Sunday School class. Much of what he did involved seeing and pointing out anomalies in the text[33] and trying to resolve them, anomalies that the average student of the scriptures does not even notice. Smith’s resolutions to those anomalies sometimes worked impressively well, and other times not so much, but the important thing was the way he rolled up his sleeves and really tried. That, it seems to me, is a worthy model for us all to follow.

Appendix A

Abbreviations of Bible Translations Used in this Article

AMP Amplified Bible

ASV American Standard Version

CEV Contemporary English Version

CJB Complete Jewish Bible

DARBY Darby Translation

DLNT Disciples’ Literal New Testament

DRA Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition

ERV Easy-to-Read Version

GNT Good News Translation

GW God’s Word Translation

HCSB Holman Christian Standard Bible

ICB International Children’s Bible

ISV International Standard Version

JUB Jubilee Bible 2000

KJV King James Version

MSG The Message

NABRE New American Bible (Revised Edition)

NASB New American Standard Bible

NCV New Century Version

NET New English Translation

NIV New International Version

NKJ New King James Version

NLT New Living Translation

NLV New Life Version

NOG Names of God Bible

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

NRSVA New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

NRSVACE New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

OJB Orthodox Jewish Bible

PHILLIPS J.B. Phillips New Testament

TLB The Living Bible

VOICE The Voice

WE Worldwide English (New Testament)

WEB World English Bible

WYC Wycliffe Bible

YLT Young’s Literal Translation

(All translations are available at biblegateway.com)

^[1] Robert J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A History and Commentary (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1985), 253. For a very similar list published the same year as the Matthews list, see Robert L. Millet, “Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A Historical Overview,” in The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, edited by Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 43–45.

^[2] Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 51–53.

^[3] Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004), 8–11.

^[4] See Thomas A. Wayment, “Intertextuality and the Purpose of Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible,” in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources, edited by Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 75.

^[5] I did not reflect the concept of actual history not recorded or included in the Bible, for while that may be a useful category for the sake of completeness, in the absence of a textual source it strikes me as unlikely that we would be able to determine that something was historically said or done. I also did not separately include Barlow’s “common-sense changes” or “interpretive additions,” as I would group such items under the broad category of Midrashic Commentary.

^[6] Thomas A. Wayment and Tyson J. Yost, “The Joseph Smith Translation and Italicized Words in the King James Version,” Religious Educator 6, no. 1 (2005): 51–64.

^[7] The Anchor Bible also has “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 136.

^[8] “The word hekastos, ‘each,’ must not of course be pressed to the effect that every single member has associated himself with one of the groups mentioned.” Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, translated by James W. Leitch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1978), 33.

^[9] Alternatively, the JST emendation could represent a common JST tendency to avoid hyperbolic statements. I am indebted to Julie M. Smith for this observation.

^[10] Abbreviations of Bible translations are used as given in Appendix A.

^[11] Similarly, the Anchor Bible has “What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I side with Paul!’; another, ‘I side with Apollos!’; or ‘I side with Cephas!’; or ‘I side with Christ!’” See Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 136.

^[12] The Anchor Bible also has “of stewards.” See Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 209.

^[13] Some translations understand the first part of the verse as a Corinthian slogan and therefore put it in quotation marks, as in the NET.

^[14] For discussion, see Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 498–500.

^[15] Thiselton, First Epistle, 501.

^[16] Thiselton, 514.

^[17] Thiselton, 514.

^[18] See Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (New York: United Bible Society, 1971 [1975 Corrected Edition]), 555.

^[19] The KJV translates these terms differently because the first is a rendering of chraomai (“to use”) and the second is a rendering of the related compound verb katachraomai (“to use fully”). A number of modern translations similarly conform the second verb to the first as the JST does here. The NRSV renders “and those who deal with the world as if they had no dealings with it.”

^[20] Other examples are the ASV, DLNT, GW, JUB, and NOG.

^[21] See Kevin Barney, “Harmonizing the Text with History,” By Common Consent (blog), June 4, 2011.

^[22] The words “for me” (moi) that appear twice in this verse are not original but crept into the text by assimilation from 6:12. So instead of “all things are lawful for me” the text should read simply “all things are lawful.” The JST deletes the second “me” but keeps the “for,” changing “all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” to “all things are not lawful for all things edify not.” So it is just a coincidence that the JST deletes a word that was not original to the text. See Metzger, A Textual Commentary, 561.

^[23] I am indebted to Craig Blomberg for this observation.

^[24] By “conservatism,” I mean the tendency of the JST to replace English words with other English words with the fewest changes in English letters possible, such as feast → eat here or defraud → depart (keeping the de- compound) in JST 1 Cor. 7:5.

^[25] The difficult word exousia (“power”) in this verse is glossed by kalumma (“a veil”) in a number of versional and patristic witnesses. This is obviously not the original text but shows that the JST is approaching the passage in a way similar to many ancient writers. See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 562.

^[26] Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 189.

^[27] Frederick William Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 567, commonly stylized as BDAG.

^[28] See for instance Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987), 697–710, and Philip B. Payne, “Fuldensis, Sigla for Variants in Vaticanus, and 1 Cor 14.34–5,” New Testament Studies 41, no. 2 (1995): 240–62.

^[29] We cannot make too much of this lack of capitalization, because as Kent Jackson has observed, Smith dictated the changes to his scribe without stopping to clarify matters of capitalization. See Kent P. Jackson, “Joseph Smith’s Translation of the New Testament,” in New Testament History, Culture, and Society: A Background to the Texts of the New Testament, edited by Lincoln H. Blumell (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2019), 710.

^[30] Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon, “A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020).

^[31] Danker, Greek-English Lexicon, 911.

^[32] William Davis, “Reassessing Joseph Smith Jr.’s Formal Education,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 49, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 1–58.

^[33] For this concept, see Kevin Barney, “The JST as an Issue Spotting Exercise,” By Common Consent (blog), Feb. 20, 2019, .

[post_title] => A Commentary on Joseph Smith’s Revision of First Corinthians [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 57–106
Although Smith desired to publish the new translation, circumstances were such that publication at that time was not possible. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => a-commentary-on-joseph-smiths-revision-of-first-corinthians [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:32:08 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:32:08 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=26371 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Revisiting Joseph Smith and the Availability of the Book of Enoch

Colby Townsend

Dialogue 53.3 (Fall 2020): 41–106
Regarding the discussions in Mormon studies and other literary sub-fields related to contemporaries of Smith, the availability of ideas about 1 Enoch and some of the actual content were far more complicated than has usually been assumed in past scholarship.

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 26726 [post_author] => 3172 [post_date] => 2020-11-04 01:45:27 [post_date_gmt] => 2020-11-04 01:45:27 [post_content] =>

The book known as 1 Enoch has enjoyed an unwieldy amount of influence since it was originally written in separate parts by different authors from about 200 BCE to 50 CE.[1] Some sections of the book were written prior to the composition of the biblical book of Daniel while others were written well after it.[2] The book influenced the thought of several authors of New Testament writings,[3] early Jewish Rabbinic and Christian patristic sources,[4] and some medieval sources,[5] and then disappeared in the West around the eighth century CE.[6] Partially preserved in Aramaic, the original language of the book, it is only known in its complete form today in Ethiopic manuscripts. It is designated 1 Enoch to distinguish it from 2 Enoch, an ancient Jewish text preserved in old Slavonic, and 3 Enoch, a text written in Hebrew centuries after both 1 and 2 Enoch.[7]

Too often scholars have assumed that for 1 Enoch to have any influence on an English-speaking author in the modern era the entire book needed to be available to them, specifically Richard Laurence’s 1821 English translation.[8] This essay will complicate this assumption by examining the availability of portions of 1 Enoch in English from the early eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. This is important historical context for scholars who study the influence of 1 Enoch on William Blake (1757–1827), John Flaxman (1755–1826), Thomas Moore (1779–1852), Richard Westall (1765–1836), William Hayley (1745–1820), Lord Byron (1788–1824), and Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844), among others.

This essay will primarily contextualize Joseph Smith’s textual work in his “Extract of the Prophecy of Enoch,” added in his “translation” of the Bible to the brief mention of Enoch in Genesis 5 that constitutes Moses 6:24–7:69 in the LDS canon. I will provide a brief historiographical survey and examine previous work on the subject and then analyze the general knowledge about 1 Enoch during the period 1715–1830 in both British and early Anglo-American history. I show that the relevant portions of 1 Enoch for Smith’s writings were far better known and broadly discussed than has previously been recognized. During this period English-speaking audiences would have been familiar with the story of the fallen angels and their marriage to human women. They understood this story to be about the separate lineages of Cain and Seth: the sons of God were Seth’s children and the daughters of women were Cain’s. Miscegenation—the marrying of people from different racial types—was assumed to be the major breach of the covenant between God and the group known as the sons of God. This ties directly to Smith’s rewriting of Genesis 1–6 in the book of Moses.

Historiography

Explaining the presence of themes and images from 1 Enoch in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been puzzling in a variety of scholarly fields. For instance, scholars have long debated how it was that William Blake could have been familiar with the contents of 1 Enoch in his work during the first decades of the nineteenth century. In his 1978 essay, “A Jewel in an Ethiop’s Ear,” G. E. Bentley, Jr. assumed that Blake could not have known the contents of 1 Enoch until after 1821 when Laurence’s translation was published.[9] Blake had been working on several illustrations based on passages in 1 Enoch in the years prior to his death, and produced a handful of drawings although he never finished the project. In 1994 John Beer responded to the ongoing discussion by arguing that, “There is, however, one further place of publishing which has apparently been overlooked by everyone who has looked at the problem—including even the 1821 translator, Richard Laurence.”[10] Beer quoted an article in the February 1, 1801 issue of the Monthly Magazine printed in London titled, “Concerning the Writings and Readings of Jude.”[11] In this short piece the anonymous author was able to discuss several non-canonical texts that the author of Jude quoted in his epistle and summarize some of the contents of 1 Enoch 1–22.[12] The author of the essay provided translations they made based on the Latin text that Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy had previously made available in France. Therefore, according to Beer, some of the content and general substance of 1 Enoch could have been known to English-speaking audiences as early as 1801, and, most importantly, this made available the relevant section for Blake’s project.

In actuality, as Susan Matthews has shown, portions of 1 Enoch had been available in English translation since the beginning of the eighteenth century, making it possible that English readers like Blake could have had access to parts of 1 Enoch well before 1801.[13] In his 1700 publication Spicilegium SS. Patrum, Johann Ernst Grabe published Greek fragments of parts of 1 Enoch.[14] These were translated into English by a Mr. Lewis and published in 1715 in his book The History of the Seventy-Two Interpreters in a section titled “The History of the Angels, and their Gallantry with the Daughters of Men.”[15] As I will show further below, these three texts offer only a small glimpse to what was available about 1 Enoch in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century English reading circles. There were far more sources published in both Britain and America at that time that support the idea that Blake and others could have had access to at least parts of 1 Enoch when they produced their art and writings.

Similar to Blake studies, scholars in Mormon studies have long assumed that Joseph Smith Jr. could not have been aware of 1 Enoch because Laurence’s translation was only made available in 1821 and Smith began working on his revision of Genesis in the latter half of 1830. Hugh Nibley first popularized this issue in a series of articles published in the LDS Church’s periodical Ensign from October 1975 to August 1977.[16] In the series Nibley made connections between the Enochic text Smith added to the King James Version of Genesis 5 and ancient Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha.[17] The overarching assumption throughout Nibley’s essays was that if you could show that the concepts, language, and motifs in the “Extract of the Prophecy of Enoch” could also be found in ancient Jewish and Christian sources, then there was no other way to describe Smith’s additions to Genesis 5 than as divinely inspired. How could he, a poor, uneducated farm boy,[18] have come to know about these ancient traditions except through revelation?[19]

It became more difficult for scholars to passively accept Nibley’s prior conclusions with the publication in 1987 of D. Michael Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View,[20] and even more so with the expanded and revised edition of the book in 1998.[21] In the second edition, Quinn added fourteen pages to the first part of chapter 6, “Mormon Scriptures, the Magic World View, and Rural New York’s Intellectual Life.” Quinn’s additional material explored the potential direct or indirect availability of ideas and documents about the biblical figure of Enoch to Smith during 1830 and early 1831 while he revised the first six chapters of Genesis.

In a lengthy section Quinn responded directly to several of Nibley’s claims. Nibley had commented at length on the unlikelihood of Smith having access to a copy of Richard Laurence’s English translation of 1 Enoch. Because the book was only printed in England, and so recently, Nibley argued that it was unlikely if not impossible for Smith to have had access to the English translation. In responding to Nibley’s previous work Quinn noted that Laurence’s Book of Enoch had another printing in 1828. Nibley did not know this at the time of writing his article, because even the British Museum Library’s published catalog mentioned no imprint between 1821 and the 1833 “Second edition, corrected and enlarged.” However, published five years after Nibley’s article, the more comprehensive National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints showed that the 1833 edition actually “corrected and enlarged” an 1828 reprinting of Laurence’s Enoch translation. Only one copy of this 1828 imprint now survives, Quinn noted, and it is in the New York Public Library according to his source.[22]

Quinn made what appeared to be a significant discovery. The question of the availability of Laurence’s translation of 1 Enoch had moved from the possibility of only one printing being available to Smith to two printings, the 1821 and 1828. Besides these printings, Quinn made it clear in the revised chapter that Nibley downplayed the interest in 1 Enoch during this period. There were several volumes, some available in print in Smith’s area, that not only mentioned Laurence’s new translation, but there was also a commentary on the Bible, “which discussed Laurence’s Book of Enoch.”[23]

While he may not have investigated the sources that Quinn cited in his book, Salvatore Cirillo depended heavily on Quinn in his master’s thesis, completed in 2010 at Durham University.[24] Cirillo’s thesis has been cited in several articles that explore the availability of Laurence’s Book of Enoch to Smith, but it has not always been taken very seriously.[25] In a section entitled “Access to Materials,” Cirillo reviewed Nibley’s book in ways similar to Quinn. In response to Nibley’s argument that 1 Enoch was unknown in America up to the time Smith created the “Extract of the Prophecy of Enoch,” Cirillo quoted Quinn’s statement that there was an 1828 printing of Laurence’s Book of Enoch. According to Cirillo, Quinn wrote that “Laurence’s 1821 translation had another printing in 1828 just in America.”[26] Quinn did not actually note that this publication was “in America.”[27] Instead, as noted above, Quinn wrote, “Laurence’s Book of Enoch had another printing in 1828.” In paraphrasing Quinn’s passage, Cirillo misquoted him. He replaced “Book of Enoch” with “1821 translation” and added “just in America” at the end. Besides the obvious issues of misquotation, there is also the problem of locating this printing.

In the relevant sections of the National Union Catalog quoted by Quinn, in volumes 55 and 318, information is provided about the publication of the Book of Enoch and the publications of Richard Laurence, respectively. Quinn pointed to the following entry in volume 55, page 313:

Bible. O. T. Apocryphal books. 1 Enoch. English. 1828. Laurence.

The book of Enoch the prophet, an apocryphal production supposed to have been lost for ages, but discovered at the close of the last century in Abyssinia. Oxford. 1828. 8°

NBi 0041105 NN

The final line is the catalog’s assigned number for this printing and indication that it is only found in the New York Public Library (NN). It is not clear how exactly Cirillo got the idea that the 1828 printing listed here was printed in America; the catalog states that it was published in Oxford. There is also no note, as Quinn suggests, that the second edition printed in 1833 was a corrected and enlarged version of the 1828. All that the entry for that printing states is, “2d ed., cor. and enl.”

One might expect to be able to locate this copy in the New York Public Library, but it does not exist. The Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division does not have any record of ever having an 1828 printing of Laurence’s Book of Enoch.[28] Nor is it the case that the New York Public Library had a copy of an 1828 printing of the Book of Enoch and then later removed it from their holdings. A catalog published in 1928 by the Library specifically listed their holdings in Ethiopic and Amharic up to that year.[29] In this catalog there are two entries on page 42 about the Book of Enoch that were printed in 1838: one in Ethiopic and the other in English.[30] The National Union Catalog only lists one version of the 1838, the English edition. It is possible that this second Ethiopic edition of Laurence’s Book of Enoch was mistakenly marked as the 1828 entry in the National Union Catalog because there is no evidence that an 1828 printing ever existed outside of the National Union Catalog itself. Unfortunately, Quinn’s discovery only leads to a dead end.

Jed Woodworth followed Nibley’s lead during a summer seminar at Brigham Young University by attempting to situate Smith’s “Extract of the Prophecy of Enoch” with specific themes in 1 Enoch, mainly by comparing and contrasting the depiction of God in the two texts.[31] Later, while working on his biography of Smith, Richard Bushman relied on Woodworth’s paper to provide historical background for his comments on Smith’s “Extract.”[32] This led Bushman to the inaccurate claim that up to 1830 “modern biblical commentators on Enoch had been restricted to the five verses in Genesis and the three in the New Testament that speak of Enoch’s genealogy, prophecy of judgment, and ascent into heaven without dying.”[33] Bushman was aware of Quinn’s work on the issue and rejected the idea that Smith might have had access to a copy of Laurence’s Book of Enoch, assuming that Smith could only have known the contents of the book if he had a complete copy.[34]

This assessment, however, is incorrect, and contemporary scholars of Mormonism must revise their understandings of the place of Enochic literature in Europe and America prior to Smith’s revision of the Bible in 1830 according to new research. The new evidence shows that biblical scholars writing in English and other European languages had access to multiple extra-biblical sources on Enoch since at least the medieval period, and in 1601 Isaac Casaubon expanded these sources when he copied extracts from the Greek text of 1 Enoch in the Chronography of George Syncellus.[35] These extracts were then used and made popular by scholars like Joseph Scaliger the next year.[36] Besides this, medieval and Renaissance scholars long had access to references to 1 Enoch in multiple sources.[37] In the next section I will analyze the extent to which I have been able to locate the availability of information on 1 Enoch in English sources printed in Britain and the United States in the century leading up to the 1820s.

The Availability of Enoch in English, 1715–1830[38]

There are numerous English translations, summaries, and media reports about the contents of 1 Enoch printed between 1715 and 1830. English authors had much more of 1 Enoch available to them than just the reference in Jude or a few scattered references in patristic literature. In 1715 Mr. Lewis published an English translation of portions of 1 Enoch taken from the Greek provided in Dr. Grabe’s Spicilegium SS. Patrum,[39] including twenty pages from portions of 1 Enoch 1–22. In 1712, just before Lewis’s publication was in print, an English translation of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was printed in America,[40] and this text explicitly cites 1 Enoch and discusses many of its themes. It was reprinted again in America soon after and became a popular source for scholarly treatments of world history at the time.[41] Johann Fabricius published his famous Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti in 1713. Fabricius was the first to gather together ancient Jewish and Christian texts under the term pseudepigrapha, which he coined.[42] There is a reason he chose such a pejorative name (“false writings”) for his collection.

Several of Fabricius’s contemporaries actually believed that the texts were authentic and could be verified as genuine ancient scripture worthy of inclusion in the Christian canon. The most vocal of these after Fabricius’s initial publication was William Whiston, successor of Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Besides translating Flavius Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, Whiston compiled many of the texts Fabricius labeled pseudepigrapha, translated them into English, and published them in 1727 as A Collection of Authentick Records Belonging to the Old and New Testament.[43] His text included ten pages of English translation of 1 Enoch and an extended argument in fourteen pages defending the authenticity of the book. The work published by Scaliger, Fabricius, and Whiston would make English audiences for the next hundred years aware that the “prophecy of Enoch,” quoted by the author of the epistle of Jude, was at least partially accessible to them and their contemporaries.

In 1732 John Chapman, a priest of the University of Cambridge, alluded to 1 Enoch in his book Remarks on a Book Intitled, Christianity as old as the Creation as “an antient Apocryphal Book of Enoch, part of which is still preserv’d, giving a large account of the Angels, their Conduct, and Punishment.” Pointing his readers even further to that book he suggested that if they were interested in “see[ing] a fuller account of this Story” to “consult Syncellus, Joseph Scaliger, Heidegger, and Fabricius,” and he provided references to each of the previous publications.[44]

In 1739 the abbé Antoine Banier published The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients.[45] In this volume Banier described how an interpretation based on the Septuagint of Genesis 6 developed in antiquity wherein giants were the offspring of angels and the daughters of men. He noted how the Septuagint, Philo, Josephus, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, and even rabbis and Muslims had adopted it.[46] Next, he described how 1 Enoch contributed to the widespread influence of this idea, and that it was a very ancient book. Although a “heretical” story, Banier provided a brief account of the narrative of the fallen angels as found in 1 Enoch. His summary incorporates the passages of the book that had recently been published in English by Mr. Lewis and William Whiston.[47]

In 1747 a group of British authors published a multi-volume set titled An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time.[48] In the first volume one of the compilers wrote about the history of the world from the Creation to the Flood and noted that copies of 1 Enoch were then believed to be in Ethiopia and that a Mr. Peiresc had “used his utmost endeavours to get it from thence, but to no purpose.” In the body of his commentary on the history of the world, the compiler noted “That Enoch was a prophet, and that some prophecy of his was preserved, either in writing, or by tradition . . . appears from the passage quoted thence by St. Jude. However, the piece under the title of The Scripture of Prophecy of Enoch, of which we have some fragments extant (B), is allowed to be a manifest forgery; though several of the fathers had a better opinion of it than it deserves.”[49] In note B the author refers the reader to the publication of these fragments of 1 Enoch by Joseph Scaliger and in J. Goar’s edition of George Syncellus’s Chronography.[50]

In 1752 John Jackson attempted to reconcile all of ancient world history in his Chronological Antiquities by closely examining the major sources he had access to, including the Bible and numerous other texts from antiquity. In the first volume he discussed 1 Enoch, including Syncellus’s “Extracts” of the book, and noted how it was “frequently cited” in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine.[51] He argued, with the eleventh-century author George Kedrenos, that the descendants of Seth occupied an area in the upper hills around Eden and the children of Cain in the lower country. Around the year of the world 1000 Seth’s “sons of God” fell in love with some of Cain’s “daughters of men.” This led to a “lawless tyranny” in Babylon and the ancient Near East,[52] tyrannical because it was not a patriarchal government. Seth’s descendants apostatized and “Injustice, Violence, and Wars ensued.”[53] Accordingly, righteous Enoch preached to them in an attempt to save them from wickedness, but their disdain for his preaching was too intense and they turned to violence. Enoch was translated to heaven before they could harm him.

In 1768 an article was published in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure that discussed “Whether the Patriarchs, before the Flood, had delivered their Knowledge by Tradition? and, Whether Enoch wrote before that Period?”[54] In this essay the anonymous author summarizes the references to 1 Enoch in the patristic literature and responds to the ongoing debate about whether Enoch actually wrote a book, handed down traditions that were later written into a book, or even possibly existed as oral tradition up to the time of the writing of Jude. The author believed that Enoch had written a book and summarized some of the contents of 1 Enoch then known.

Readers across the British American colonies throughout December 1773 would open their newspapers to read about how James Bruce had gifted one of his three manuscript copies of the Ethiopic 1 Enoch to the king of France. Readers in Britain were made aware in September.[55] On December 1 and in the days following, audiences throughout Pennsylvania would have learned in the Pennsylvania Gazette that “Letters from Paris mention, that the Sieur Guys, of the Academy at Marseilles, Secretary to the French King, has had the honour to present to his Majesty, on the part of the Chevalier James Bruce, a celebrated English Traveller, with whom he corresponded, an Abyssinian manuscript, which contains the Prophecy of Enoch. His Majesty has ordered that this manuscript, of which St. Jerome makes mention, and which the late Sieur Colbert had searched for in vain, shall be deposited in his Library.”[56] The same text was printed in the Maryland Gazette on December 9,[57] and on December 16 it was printed in the Virginia Gazette and the Rind’s Virginia Gazette.[58] Bruce would publish his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in 1790 throughout Great Britain,[59] and the same year American citizens would be treated to an abridged version of the publication printed in New York.[60] Both versions describe Bruce’s discovery of 1 Enoch.

In 1782 the third edition of William Alexander’s The History of Women was published in London.[61] Alexander’s history began with the antediluvian women of the Bible. He described how soon after Cain and his family were exiled following the death of Abel it did not take long for the group “to abandon themselves to every species of wickedness.” They were then known as the Daughters of Men because of their actions, and Seth’s righteous line was called the “Sons and Daughters of God.”[62] Seth’s descendants lived on a hill near Eden and Cain’s down in the valley. After a time, one hundred and twenty of Seth’s sons heard music at the bottom of the hill and decided to investigate, and, after seeing beautiful naked women dancing, they were tempted to return from time to time and eventually decided to intermarry with Cain’s line.

According to Alexander, this story “gave birth to an opinion, that by the Sons of God were meant Angels,” and that this version of the story was based on “a forgery, called the Prophecy of Enoch.”[63] In a lengthy footnote Alexander provided a summary of the first part of 1 Enoch that by that time was common knowledge. The guardian angels were enamored by the human women they watched over and made a secret oath to go together and marry the women that they would choose. Their offspring became giants who eventually began to eat humans, which caused the human cries to go up to God. In time, God sent four archangels down to bind and imprison the angels in the earth and to destroy the giants. This wickedness led to the Flood.[64]

By 1783 enough of 1 Enoch was available to English readers that the author Samuel Hoole (1757–1839) wrote a lengthy poem based on the angel Azazel of 1 Enoch.[65] At the beginning of the original publication a three-page “Advertisement” was added to provide context for the readers of the poem, since “many Readers may be unacquainted with Azäel, the chief Agent in the machinery of the . . . Poem.” According to the author of the advertisement, “It was supposed by Josephus, Philo Judæus, and several others, that Angels, before the flood, were enamoured of women; but this opinion was chiefly propagated by a forgery entitled The Prophecy of Enoch.”[66]

Further, the “watching angels, fell in love with [the daughters of men], and proposed to one another, that they should go down, and attach themselves to the daughters of Eve.” The author of the advertisement knew the names of several of these angels and provided enough context for the reader of the poem to be familiar with the contents of most of the Book of Watchers, or 1 Enoch 1–36. Hoole’s poem shows a deep awareness of the contents of 1 Enoch and portrays the uneasiness of the relationships between the fallen angels and their human wives.

A shift in individual opinion about the story of the fallen angels and the daughters of men is found in William Hayley’s 1786 publication A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids.[67] After first attacking and dismissing the story, Hayley reverts his position and states that “I was grossly mistaken in my conjectural account of antediluvian virginity,” and that a new discovery made by a renowned traveling friend “destroys my hypothesis.”[68] Bruce, Hayley’s friend, had written him a letter from Spain explaining the discovery and how he could “clearly prove that the fragment . . . must have proceeded from the pen of Enoch himself . . . and that he can demonstrate, by unanswerable arguments, that this fragment was contained among those very writings of Enoch which the pious Tertullian declared he had perused.”[69] Although much of what Hayley wrote about this story in his Essay is disconnected from the reality of Bruce’s discovery,[70] it does offer another example of the widespread knowledge about what Bruce had found.

By 1797 the Encyclopædia Britannica included an entry on Enoch that listed contemporary approaches to explaining the relationship between Jude 14–15 and 1 Enoch. According to the editors, “The question is, whether the apostle took this passage out of any particular book written by Enoch, which might be extant in the first ages of the church? whether he received it by tradition? or lastly, by some particular revelation?”[71] After describing some of the ancient Christian patristic commentary on 1 Enoch, the editors turn to Scaliger and then Greek and rabbinic traditions. These three options for interpreting the relationship between the epistle of Jude and 1 Enoch remained normative until at least 1830.

Although many British and American publications had already previously engaged extensively with 1 Enoch up to the year 1800, more direct analyses on the text began to appear in earnest in 1801. In the February 1801 issue of the Monthly Magazine; or, British Register, an anonymous author wrote “Concerning the Writings and Readings of Jude.”[72] The author provided a detailed history that engaged with several ancient pseudepigrapha, including Fourth Ezra, the Assumption of Moses, and 1 Enoch.

1 Enoch received special attention, and the author described seventeenth-century failed attempts to discover a full copy of the book in Ethiopia until the discovery made by Bruce. Since Bruce left a copy of 1 Enoch in Paris, another one in London, and kept one in his own possession, it was no wonder that scholars would be interested in seeing these copies for themselves. The author of the essay provides an English translation of “extracts” from 1 Enoch that are designated in the modern scholarly chapter and verse system as 1 Enoch 1:1–2:3; 6:1–13:10; 14:8–15:11; 22:5–7; and 32:1–6, which he made based on the Latin translation of C. G. Woide. Woide had himself traveled to Paris to make a copy of the manuscript of 1 Enoch Bruce had deposited there.[73] That year, 1801, the Monthly Magazine also featured two more essays that either mentioned or directly commented on 1 Enoch, one published in March and the other in May.[74]

Not long after this publication in 1801 parts of 1 Enoch were again translated into English and published to a broad audience, this time in both Britain and America. In January 1806 the Orthodox Churchman’s Magazine and Review published an essay on the “Apocryphal Book of Enoch” by an anonymous author only identifying himself as “W.”[75] The author begins by assuming that all of the journal’s readers are familiar with the passage in Jude that references a prophecy of Enoch and how the Ethiopians have long had this prophecy in their canon in 1 Enoch. The author notes the failed attempts in the seventeenth century to obtain a copy of the Ethiopian text and the successful recovery by Bruce of his manuscripts.

This author likewise mentions Dr. Woide’s travel and copying of the manuscript of 1 Enoch in Paris, and how the source for his English translation is the French scholar M. de Sacy, who “has published some extracts of this book.”[76] The bulk of the essay is a fresh English translation of 1 Enoch, and the contents included are slightly different from that found in the 1801 publication. W. translated 1 Enoch 1:1–9; 6:1–8:4; 22:5–7; and 32:1–6 and made a few errors in the identification of chapter headings. The article was reprinted in the February 1808 issue of the Churchman’s Magazine in New York.[77]

Several more references to 1 Enoch were made in 1801,[78] 1806,[79] 1809,[80] 1810,[81] 1811,[82] and 1813[83] in both Britain and America. In 1812 1 Enoch was mentioned in several entries in Charles Taylor’s edition of Calmet’s Great Dictionary of the Holy Bible.[84] Under the entry for “Angel,” the editor of the dictionary assumed the readers were aware of 1 Enoch when they noted, “it is true, we find many angels called by their names in the book of Enoch; but that is of no authority.” Later, under the entry on “Demon,” the editor noted that “The apocryphal book of Enoch, and some passages of the LXX . . . misled several of the ancient fathers, to assert that angels and demons had certain subtile bodies, and particular passions which consist only with material substance.” They went on to argue that angels are immaterial and that those angels who “kept not their first estate” were sent directly from heaven to hell without ever having physical forms. Under the second entry on “Enoch” the editor noted the quotation of 1 Enoch in Jude 14–15 and is the exact same as the text found in the 1797 printing of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The editor then went on to describe different religious and geographical traditions about the character Enoch. Finally, under the entry on “Jude” the editor went away from the opinion in the entry on “Enoch” and suggested that Jude might have understood what was inspired within 1 Enoch and what was not.

In 1815 Robert Mayo borrowed material from Banier’s 1739 The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients to describe the fallen angels and 1 Enoch.[85] That same year T. Bensley printed The Works of Nathaniel Lardner in London and the first volume included Lardner’s Credibility of the Gospel History. He looked closely at the writings of various early Christians in order to examine what books of the Bible were quoted as authoritative in early Christianity. In the section on Tertullian he spent a significant amount of time on the epistle of Jude and its quotation of 1 Enoch. He noted that the book was also quoted in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and was dependent on William Whiston’s 1727 publication of these texts.[86] He later noted that Origen quoted 1 Enoch as scripture, but also that Origen stated that the early church as he knew it did not view 1 Enoch “as divine.”[87]

The eminent and well-known commentator on the Bible[88] Adam Clarke mentioned 1 Enoch several times in the final volume of his commentary on the New Testament.[89] First, he mentioned the book in the preface to 2 John among other non-canonical writings that early Christians had cited. Alluding to 1 Enoch and others, Clarke wrote, “some . . . are come down to the present time, but are convicted of forgery by the sentiment, the style, and the doctrine.”[90] In his preface to Jude he quoted heavily from the work of Johann David Michaelis, an eighteenth-century biblical scholar, to explain how it was unclear whether or not Enoch had written a book and if he was actually a prophet.[91] In any case, in his commentary on Jude 14–15 Clarke noted that 1 Enoch “is still extant among the Abyssinians.”[92]

More announcements about 1 Enoch were made in both America and Britain. The Republican Compiler announced on November 29, 1820 that the renowned biblical scholar Wilhelm Gesenius was working on a translation of 1 Enoch from “the Abyssinian language.”[93] Only a few months later the Maryland Gazette announced on July 26, 1821 the publication of Laurence’s translation,[94] and the next year started to see book-length responses to 1 Enoch. John Overton’s Inquiry into the Truth and Use of the Book of Enoch explicitly responded to Laurence’s work and built upon it by examining how nineteenth-century Christian scholars might appropriate aspects of the Book of Enoch into their understanding of early Judaism and Christianity.[95] Ultimately Overton found the Book of Enoch to be useful and informative in dozens of ways and recommended that his readers form their own opinions of the book by using their own judgment.

In 1822 several British newspapers announced the coming publication of Thomas Moore’s 1823 The Loves of the Angels and its literary dependence on the Book of Enoch.[96] In 1823 Thomas Tomkinson’s grandson published in Britain his predecessor’s late-seventeenth-century book A Practical Discourse, Upon the Epistle, by Jude.[97] In it Tomkinson (1631–1710) mentioned the contemporary seventeenth-century approaches to understanding what it was that Jude 14–15 was quoting—whether it was a book, a tradition, or a revelation—and used the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs to argue that the biblical patriarchs had a book of Enoch since they clearly quoted from one in the Testaments. That same year the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine published an excerpt of the first couple chapters from Laurence’s Book of Enoch.[98]

The year 1825 witnessed an explosion of popular and scholarly publications that either discussed or were dependent on 1 Enoch. The Works of the Right Hon. Lord Byron were published in Philadelphia, and included in volume five of that collection was Byron’s “Heaven and Earth, A Mystery.”[99] Byron explicitly referenced 1 Enoch, noted that it was preserved by the Ethiopians, that angels and humans could not intermarry because mortals “are sent Upon the earth to toil and die; and they [angels] Are made to minister on high.”[100] He also noted, agreeing with the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century consensus, that Genesis 6 was about Cain’s and Seth’s lines intermarrying.

An article was printed that year in the Christian Observer that, although brief, engaged with much of the contemporary knowledge about 1 Enoch.[101] The book was quoted by Jude and several early Christians but then lost, partially rediscovered by Joseph Scaliger in George Syncellus’s Chronography. Some people believed 1 Enoch was a forgery based on Jude, some seventeenth-century scholars argued it could be a Greek translation of a Hebrew or Aramaic original, and Ludolph failed in his attempts to discover it and it was left to Bruce to make the discovery. Laurence translated and published Bruce’s text, and the anonymous author ended the essay by providing a summary of the contents of the Book of Enoch.

That same year Thomas Hartwell Horne’s An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures was published in Philadelphia,[102] and it incorporated much of the same content as the previously discussed essay except that Horne argued that 1 Enoch was a second-century CE forgery and that the author of 1 Enoch was dependent on the book of Daniel for style and other aspects of their new composition.

Continuing in 1825, James Sabine responded to a book by Walter Balfour in a series of lectures.[103] Both theologians were focused on explaining hell and the end of the world and disagreed about whether or not 1 Enoch could be helpful in understanding early Jewish and Christian ideas about these topics. Sabine argued that Enoch and Noah prophesied about impending retribution on the wicked and the righteous, and Enoch particularly prophesied about destruction.[104] Sabine argued that whether or not the current Book of Enoch, which he implied both he and Balfour had copies of in America but that Balfour had “scarcely glanced” at, was exactly the same as the book that Jude quoted or had been corrupted. For Sabine, what mattered was that the book represents early Jewish thought on Sheol and retribution.[105] In his response to Sabine, Walter Balfour was not interested just in ancient Jewish interpretation but whether or not the writers of apocryphal texts had been divinely inspired or if their ideas had support in the Bible.[106] It is significant that two authors engaged in a public debate in Boston in 1825 both had access to the full text of 1 Enoch.

In 1826 S. S. Schmucker argued that 1 Enoch was a forgery based on Jude 6 and 14–15 and that since the story of the fallen angels had nothing to do with Enoch in the Bible, its forger took the idea for the book from Jude 6.[107] A similar idea about 1 Enoch also influenced Archibald Alexander’s The Canon of the Old and New Testaments Ascertained. Alexander noted in his book that in the past the canonicity of the epistle of Jude had been challenged because of its quotation of a few apocryphal sources, especially 1 Enoch. He denied that this makes any difference for Jude’s authority because Jude does not say he quoted any book from Enoch, and even if he did, Paul quoted from pagan authors all the time without imputing any canonical status to them.[108]

In 1826 two articles on the Book of Enoch were published in the Classical Journal in Britain.[109] The anonymous “Remarks on Ancient Chronology” was hopeful that the new translation of 1 Enoch, presumably Laurence’s translation, would help to explain the antediluvian history of the Bible and was aware of the fragments that were available prior to the printing of Laurence’s book.[110] The second essay explicitly cited Laurence’s translation and found no reason to agree with Laurence that Enoch did not author the book himself.[111] Instead, he relied on Jackson’s 1752 Chronological Antiquities to argue against Laurence on several points, believing that 1 Enoch was written during the times of the patriarchs.

In July 1827 the National Gazette, published in Philadelphia, reprinted an announcement of the sale of Bruce’s personal library due to his recent passing. “It includes the Book of Enoch,” stated the editorial, “which was first brought into Europe by Mr. Bruce. The three copies of it originally belonging to him (one of which is in Paris, and the other at Oxford), are all that are known to exist of it on our continent.”[112] Back in Britain a book-length investigation into 1 Enoch by J. M. Butt was published.[113] Butt argued that the book quoted by Jude was in fact 1 Enoch, since that was the common assumption in early Christianity by all those who had the book. He then argued from internal and external evidence that it was authored sometime during the reign of Herod.[114] He also explored dozens of other questions related to 1 Enoch and possible reasons why the book was denied entrance into the canon in early Christianity.[115]

That same year John Oxlee published letters he had written to Richard Laurence about his recent publications on apocryphal texts.[116] Oxlee argued against the then common argument that Jude did not necessarily view 1 Enoch as an inspired text similar to how Paul quoted Menander and others without viewing their works as divine. Oxlee stated that Jude does not reference 1 Enoch as some heathen poet but a significant Hebrew patriarch. Similar to how the author of Matthew quoted single verses from the eminent Hebrew prophet Isaiah, it would not be logical to argue that Matthew only found those specific verses inspired but not the whole book.[117] Oxlee agreed with some other commentators that the book was written sometime between the Babylonian exile and the first century CE.[118] By the late 1820s many commentators were already advancing conclusions about 1 Enoch that would become standard academic approaches to the text by the twentieth century.

There were more references in English literature to 1 Enoch in 1828[119] and 1829,[120] and in 1830 there were several significant publications. One briefly mentioned 1 Enoch to observe that it was “of too little value to be preserved,”[121] and another that Enoch was the first astrologer, Abraham a celebrated magician of Chaldea, having inherited “knowledge of the heavenly bodies” from Enoch, and how 1 Enoch was one among at least a couple of other writings from the patriarchs that were lost.[122] This adds a potentially new way of understanding why Joseph Smith Jr., as well as other early American authors, would focus on expanding the biblical stories of Enoch, Abraham, and the patriarchs.

In July 1829 a review article on Laurence’s, Oxlee’s, and Butt’s books was published in the British journal the Christian Observer.[123] The next February the National Gazette announced the contents of that month’s publication in the Christian Observer’s American counterpart, the Religious Magazine.[124] This single article distilled into one place all of the major scholarship on 1 Enoch up to that point. The author himself believed strongly that the book was written in the second century CE, but he noted that other scholars believed it was written sometime between the Babylonian exile and the first century CE. He discussed all of the major early Christians who commented on 1 Enoch, its loss in late antiquity, the belief by the seventeenth century that it was in Ethiopia and the failure of Peiresc and others to locate a copy, and the eventual discovery by Bruce.

The author described the history from Bruce to Laurence and the various efforts to get the text into wider circulation by de Sacy and Gesenius until Laurence’s successful publication. He described how scholarly approaches to the complicated compositional history of 1 Enoch had already become sophisticated by the early nineteenth century. First Enoch was not just one single book but multiple books that had been brought together into one. He took issue with some of the textual emendations that Laurence made throughout his version of the book and then proceeded to describe in detail the contents of the different books scholars at the time identified had been edited together to form 1 Enoch. In all there were nine separate and distinct books. The author then promised to look at the dating of 1 Enoch closer in a future publication.[125]

Conclusion

This paper has highlighted the fact that, contrary to previous treatment of the subject, interest in 1 Enoch did not die down during the period between Bruce’s discovery of the book to 1800, or from then until Laurence’s translation of the full text of 1 Enoch in 1821. In fact, interest continued to steadily grow, with multiple independent English translations of Syncellus’s excerpt of the book becoming available in print up to about 1800. Much of that literature was reprinted in the early United States within only a few years, and then in the 1820s there was an explosion of interest in the book in both Britain and the United States, leading up to Joseph Smith’s work in the latter half of 1830. It is fitting that Smith would focus on the character of Enoch for an expansive retelling of Genesis since from 1825 onward so much attention was paid to 1 Enoch in both Britain and the United States.

The documents analyzed in this paper also show that it was possible for a general English-speaking audience to have access to at least the general story found in the Book of Watchers from multiple sources, and those suggest that there was a robust shared tradition about the lost book of Enoch. This tradition, which would have been both textual and oral, dealt with fallen angels, secret oaths by the angels (or Seth’s children) to go against God’s will, a vision Enoch had of all of history from the Creation to the future destruction of the world, the idea that Enoch was part of an early tradition of scribes and scribal culture, that he or God had to fend off wicked enemies who would not accept the gospel, and that the book was a second-century CE forgery based on the epistle of Jude.

Of utmost importance in analyzing these printed texts is that scholars today recognize that these publications do not represent all of what was available in print during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the transatlantic book trade, nor do they represent fully the conversations that English speakers were having about Enoch in both Britain and the United States. We do not have direct access to the conversations that Protestants would have had on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis about biblical subjects that they found important, so we must rely on the fragmentary historical record that remains. This paper has only analyzed a fraction of what would have been available in print, and future work should consider British and early Anglo-American manuscript sources to see how the book of Enoch was discussed and, in the case of revivals and weekly sermons, performed in British and early American contexts.[126] Regarding the discussions in Mormon studies and other literary sub-fields related to contemporaries of Smith, the availability of ideas about 1 Enoch and some of the actual content were far more complicated than has usually been assumed in past scholarship. More recent work in Blake studies has highlighted the fact that Blake did not need to rely solely on Laurence’s 1821 Book of Enoch in order to perform his work, and it would be advisable for Mormon studies to begin a shift toward recognizing the same in early Mormon history.

^[1] James C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 16 (Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 1984). Throughout this essay I will refer to the full text of this book as 1 Enoch when generally referring to the historical book and the Book of Enoch when referring to Richard Laurence’s 1821 publication of the text.

^[2] George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 37–82 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 58–59.

^[3] R. H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, Volume II: Pseudepigrapha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 180–81; and Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality, Early Judaism and Its Literature 44 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016).

^[4] Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 122–59.

^[5] Frederick M. Biggs, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: The Apocrypha, Instrumenta Anglistica Mediaevalia 1 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), 8–10.

^[6] E. Isaac, “1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, edited by James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 8.

^[7] See F. I. Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,” in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 91–221; and P. Alexander, “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch,” in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 223–315.

^[8] Richard Laurence, The Book of Enoch The Prophet: An Apocryphal Production, Supposed to Have Been Lost for Ages; but Discovered at the Close of the Last Century in Abyssinia; Now First Translated from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: At the University Press for the Author, 1821).

^[9] G. E. Bentley, Jr., “A Jewel in an Ethiop’s Ear,” in Blake in His Time, edited by Robert N. Essick and Donald Pearce (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 230. See also Susan Matthews, Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 228, n. 47.

^[10] John Beer, “Blake’s Changing View of History: The Impact of the Book of Enoch,” in Historicizing Blake, edited by Steve Clark and David Worrall (Houndmills, UK: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 167.

^[11] Anonymous, “For the Monthly Magazine. Concerning the Writings and Readings of Jude,” Monthly Magazine 11, no. 1, Feb. 1, 1801, 18–23.

^[12] There are 108 chapters today in 1 Enoch. The modern chapter and verse system was set by R. H. Charles in his work on 1 Enoch. See R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 163–281.

^[13] Susan Matthews, “Blake, Hayley and the History of Sexuality,” in Blake, Nation and Empire, edited by Steve Clark and David Worrall (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 93.

^[14] Joannes Ernestus Grabius, Spicilegium SS. Patrum ut et Haereticorum, Seculi poft Chriftum natum I. II. & III. (Editio Secunda; Oxoniae: E Theatro Sheldonaiano, 1700).

^[15] Mr. Lewis, The History of the Seventy-two Interpreters–to which is added, the History of the Angels, and their Gallantry with the Daughters of Men, written by Enoch the Patriarch. Published in Greek by Dr. Grabe, made English by Mr. Lewis (London, 1715), 175–96. See also Adam Clarke, An Account of the English Translations of all the Greek and Roman Classics, and Ecclesiastical Writers (London: Printed for W. Baynes, 1806), 16.

^[16] Nibley published his work on 1 Enoch in thirteen parts in the Ensign. All of them were brought together in Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, vol. 2 (Provo: Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1986).

^[17] For more on the pseudepigrapha see Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, xxi–xxxiv; and George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005).

^[18] Nibley, Enoch the Prophet, 6, 112–13. On this issue see Colby Townsend, “Rewriting Eden with the Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith and the Reception of Genesis 1–6 in Early America” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 2019), 75–131.

^[19] See Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, vol. 5 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988), 31.

^[20] D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987).

^[21] D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998). All subsequent citations refer to this edition.

^[22] Quinn, Early Mormonism, 191.

^[23] Quinn, 191.

^[24] Salvatore Cirillo, “Joseph Smith, Mormonism and Enochic Tradition” (master’s thesis, Durham University, 2010).

^[25] See Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David J. Larsen, In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel (Salt Lake City: Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014), 45, n. 96; and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David J. Larsen, “Ancient Affinities within the LDS Book of Enoch, Part One,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 4 (2013): 10, n. 25; and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “Sorting Out the Sources in Scripture,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 9 (2014): 255–56, n. 156, and 259, n. 169; and Cheryl L. Bruno, “Congruence and Concatenation in Jewish Mystical Literature, American Freemasonry, and Mormon Enoch Writings,” Journal of Religion and Society 16 (2014): 4, n. 8.

^[26] Cirillo, “Joseph Smith, Mormonism and Enochic Tradition,” 73. According to Cirillo’s footnote, this quotation is found in Quinn, Early Mormonism, 191.

^[27] Quinn, Early Mormonism, 191.

^[28] Kyle R. Triplett, librarian in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Division, email message to author, Oct. 4, 2017.

^[29] George F. Black, Ethiopica & Amharica: A List of Works in the New York Public Library (New York: New York Public Library, 1928).

^[30] The National Union Catalog also claims that the library had a copy of the 1821 printing, but both the 1928 catalog and their current catalog do not support the notion they owned a copy in the twentieth century.

^[31] Jed L. Woodworth, “Extra-Biblical Enoch Texts in Early American Culture,” in Archive of Restoration Culture: Summer Fellows’ Papers, 1997–1999, edited by Richard L. Bushman (Provo: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, 2000), 185–93.

^[32] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 591, n. 51.

^[33] Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 138.

^[34] Bushman, 591, n. 52.

^[35] Ariel Hessayon, “Og King of Bashan, Enoch and the Books of Enoch: Extra-Canonical Texts and Interpretations of Genesis 6:1–4,” in Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England, edited by Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 31.

^[36] Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, II: Historical Chronology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 544–45, 685–86.

^[37] Reed, Fallen Angels, 160–89.

^[38] Many of the dates associated with the documents cited in this section represent the specific year the edition was printed that I have access to. Some of the documents had been previously published or borrowed much of their information from prior sources.

^[39] Mr. Lewis, The History of the Angels, and their Gallantry with the Daughters of Men.

^[40] Robert Grosthead [Grosseteste], The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, The Sons of Jacob. Translated out of Greek into Latine, by Robert Grosthead, Sometimes Bishop of Lincoln: And out of his Copy into French and Dutch, and now English. The Three and Fortieth Edition (New York: Printed and Sold by William and Andrew Bradford, 1712).

^[41] Robert Grosthead [Grosseteste], Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs: The Sons of Jacob (Boston: Printed by T. Fleet and T. Crump, for Eleazer Phillips in Charlestown, 1716).

^[42] Johann Albert Fabricius, Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti: Collectus castigatus, testimoniisque, censuris et animadversionibus illustratus à Johanne Alberto (Hamburg: C. Liebezeit, 1713).

^[43] William Whiston, A Collection of Authentick Records Belonging to the Old and New Testament. Translated into English (London: Printed for the Author, 1727). I have modernized the archaic long s (which looks like this in modern typeset: ſ ) in all quotations in this paper. Spelling and grammar are retained.

^[44] John Chapman, Remarks on a Book Intitled Christianity as old as the Creation, With Regard to Ecclesiastical Authority (Cambridge: Printed at the University Press for Cornelius Crownfield, 1732), 33. Names italicized in the original.

^[45] Abbé Banier, The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, Explain’d from History, Vol. I. Translated from the Original French (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1739).

^[46] Banier, Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, 120.

^[47] Banier, 121.

^[48] An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time. Compiled from Original Authors; with A General Index to the Whole, 65 vols. (London: Printed for T. Osborne, 1747–1766).

^[49] An Universal History, 1:36. See also pages 400–01 in the second volume.

^[50] J. Goar, ed., Georgii monachi quondam Syncelli chronographia et Nicephori patriarchae breviarium chronographicum, Corpus byzantinae historiae 15 (Roma, 1652).

^[51] John Jackson, Chronological Antiquities: or, the Antiquities and Chronology of the Most Ancient Kingdoms, from the Creation of the World, for the Space of Five thousand Years. In Three Volumes (London: Printed for the Author, 1752), 1:60.

^[52] Jackson, Chronological Antiquities, 60–61.

^[53] Jackson, 62, nn. 6–7.

^[54] Anonymous, “To the Proprietors of the Universal Magazine. Gentlemen, I here send you an Inquiry on a Question of Some Importance, Whether the Patriarchs, before the Flood, had delivered their Knowledge by Tradition? and, Whether Enoch wrote before that Period?” Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure 43 (1768): 252–54.

^[55] Jackson’s Oxford Journal, no. 1065, Sept. 25, 1883, 1.

^[56] Pennsylvania Gazette, no. 2345, Dec. 1, 1773, 2.

^[57] Maryland Gazette 29, no. 1474, Dec. 9, 1773, 1.

^[58] Virginia Gazette, no. 1168, Dec. 16, 1773, 1; and Rind’s Virginia Gazette, no. 397, Dec. 16, 1773, 3.

^[59] James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773, 5 vols. (Edinburgh: Printed by J. Ruthven, 1790).

^[60] Samuel Shaw, An Interesting Narrative of the Travels of James Bruce, Esq., into Abyssinia, to Discover the Source of the Nile. Abridged from the Original Work (New York: Reprinted for Berry and Rogers, 1790); and Samuel Shaw, An Interesting Narrative of the Travels of James Bruce, Esq., into Abyssinia, to Discover the Source of the Nile: Abridged from the Original Work, 2nd American ed. (Boston: Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1798).

^[61] William Alexander, The History of Women, from the Earliest Antiquity, to the Present Time, Vol. I, 2 vols. (London: Printed for C. Dilly and R. Christopher, 1782).

^[62] Alexander, History of Women, 30.

^[63] Alexander, 31–32.

^[64] Alexander, 32.

^[65] Samuel Hoole, Aurelia; or, The Contest: An Heroi-Comic Poem; in Four Cantos (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1783).

^[66] Hoole, Aurelia, v.

^[67] William Hayley, A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids. In Three Volumes, Vol. II (Dublin: Printed for Messrs. White, Byrne, Cash, and Moore, 1786).

^[68] Hayley, Essay on Old Maids, 14–15.

^[69] Hayley, 15.

^[70] Matthews, “Blake, Hayley and the History of Sexuality,” 92–93.

^[71] Encyclopædia Britannica; Or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, The Third Edition, In Eighteen Volumes, Greatly Improved, Vol. VI (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. MacFarquhar, 1797), 674.

^[72] Anonymous, “Concerning the Writings and Readings of Jude,” Monthly Magazine; or, British Register 2, no. 1 (Feb. 1801): 18–23.

^[73] Anonymous, “Writings and Readings of Jude,” 20–23.

^[74] Anonymous, “To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine,” Monthly Magazine; or, British Register 2, no. 2 (Mar. 1801): 132; and Anonymous, “Remarks on the Book of Enoch,” Monthly Magazine; or, British Register 2, no. 4 (May 1801): 300–01.

^[75] W., “Apocryphal Book of Enoch,” Orthodox Churchman’s Magazine and Review 10 (Jan. 1806): 24–28.

^[76] W., “Apocryphal Book of Enoch,” 25.

^[77] W., 68–71.

^[78] Asia, “On the Prophecy of Enoch,” in The Baptist Annual Register, for 1801 and 1802, Vol. 4, edited by John Rippon (London: Sold by Button and Conder, 1803), 845–50.

^[79] George Pretyman, An Introduction to the Study of the Bible (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Kimber, Conrad, and Co., 1806), 333. Pretyman notes the belief that 1 Enoch was a forgery of the second century CE.

^[80] Abraham Rees, The Cyclopædia; Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, Vol. XIII, 41 vols. (Philadelphia: Published by Samuel F. Bradford, 1806–1820). See the entry under “Enoch.”

^[81] William Cave, A Complete History of the Lives, Acts, and Martyrdoms of the Holy Apostles, Vol. I (Philadelphia: Published by Solomon Wiatt, 1810), 333–40.

^[82] W. R., “The Prophecy of Enoch,” in The Baptist Magazine for 1811, Vol. III (London: Sold by W. Button, 1811), 485–90.

^[83] Elijah Parish, Sacred Geography: Or, A Gazetteer of the Bible (Boston: Published by Samuel T. Armstrong, 1813); and The Archaeologist, “On the Book of Genesis,” Monthly Magazine; or, British Register 35, no. 3 (Apr. 1801): 214–17.

^[84] Charles Taylor, Calmet’s Great Dictionary of the Holy Bible, Historical, Critical, Geographical, and Etymological. Vol. I, 4 vols. (Charlestown, Mass.: Printed and Sold by Samuel Etheridge, 1812). The volume is not paginated.

^[85] Robert Mayo, A New System of Mythology (Philadelphia: Printed for the Author, 1815), 40–41.

^[86] Nathaniel Lardner, The Works of Nathaniel Lardner, D.D., in Five Volumes, Vol. I (London: Printed by T. Bensley, 1815), 458.

^[87] Lardner, Works of Nathaniel Larder, 551, 557.

^[88] See Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon, “A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020).

^[89] Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, Vol. VI (New York: Published by Andrew Sargeant, 1819).

^[90] Clarke, Holy Bible, n.p. Emphasis in the original.

^[91] See Johann David Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. IV, 4th ed. (London: Printed for F. C. & J. Rivington, 1823), 393.

^[92] Clarke, Holy Bible, n.p.

^[93] Republican Compiler (Gettysburg, Pa.) 3, no. 12, Nov. 29, 1820, 1.

^[94] Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer 77, no. 80, July 26, 1821, 3.

^[95] John Overton, Inquiry into the Truth and Use of the Book of Enoch, as to its Prophecies, Visions, and Account of Fallen Angels (London: Printed for the Author, 1822).

^[96] Derby Mercury (England) 91, no. 4711, Oct. 23, 1822, 1; and Leeds Intelligencer and Yorkshire General Advertiser 70, no. 3565, Nov. 4, 1822, 4; and Thomas Moore, The Loves of the Angels: A Poem (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Orme, and Brown, 1823); and Thomas Moore, The Works of Thomas Moore, Esq., Complete in Six Volumes, Vol. VI (New York: Published by G. Smith, 1825), 6–102.

^[97] Thomas Tomkinson, A Practical Discourse, Upon the Epistle by Jude (Deal, UK: Printed for James May, & Joseph Gandar by J. B. Underdown, 1823).

^[98] “The First Chapter, and Part of the Second, of the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, Containing the Passage Cited by Jude,” The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for the Year 1823 (London: Printed by T. Cordeux, 1823), 239–40.

^[99] Lord Byron, The Works of the Right Hon. Lord Byron. In Eight Volumes–Vol. V (Philadelphia: R. W. Pomeroy, 1825), 227–68.

^[100] Byron, Works of Lord Byron, 248, 251.

^[101] Y., “To the Elders of the Christian Observer,” The Christian Observer, Conducted by Members of the Established Church, for the Year 182[5], being the Twenty-[Fifth] Volume (New York: Reprinted and published by Samuel Whiting, 1825), 558–560.

^[102] Thomas Hartwell Horne, An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, Volume I, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: Published by E. Littell, 1825).

^[103] James Sabine, A Reply to “An Inquiry into the Scriptural Import of the Words Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna . . . by Walter Balfour” in a Series of Lectures (Boston: Printed by Ezra Lincoln, 1825).

^[104] Sabine, A Reply, 47, 53.

^[105] Sabine, 74.

^[106] Walter Balfour, A Reply to Mr. J. Sabine’s Lectures on the “Inquiry” into the Scriptural Import of the Words Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna (Boston: Howe & Norton, 1825), 91–93.

^[107] S. S. Schmucker, An Elementary Course of Biblical Theology, Translated from the Work of Professors Storr and Flatt, with Additions (Andover, Mass.: Printed and Published by Flagg & Gould, 1826), 125–26.

^[108] Archibald Alexander, The Canon of the Old and New Testaments Ascertained; or, the Bible Complete with the Apocrypha & Unwritten Traditions (New York: Princeton Press, Printed and Published by D. A. Borrenstein, 1826), 254–55, 261–62.

^[109] Anonymous, “Remarks on Ancient Chronology, &c.,” Classical Journal 34, no. 67 (1826): 103–13; and J. M. B., “Remarks on the Prometheus of Æschylus and the Book of Enoch,” Classical Journal 34, no. 68 (1826): 290–305. It is possible that the same author wrote both of these essays. The Classical Journal was available for purchase in the states from the early nineteenth century onward. See “Literary Rooms,” Evening Post (New York), June 8, 1815.

^[110] Anonymous, “Remarks on Ancient Chronology,” 108.

^[111] J. M. B., “Prometheus of Æschylus and the Book of Enoch,” 297–98.

^[112] National Gazette (Philadelphia) 7, no. 2043, July 7, 1827, 1.

^[113] J. M. Butt, The Genuineness of the Book of Enoch Investigated (London: Printed for L. B. Seeley and Son, 1827).

^[114] Butt, Genuineness of the Book of Enoch Investigated, 3–4.

^[115] Butt, 12–14.

^[116] John Oxlee, Three Letters Humbly Submitted to the Consideration of the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Cashel, on the Recent Apocryphal Publications of his Grace (York, UK: Printed by Thomas Wilson and Sons, 1827).

^[117] Oxlee, Three Letters, 105–06.

^[118] Oxlee, 107.

^[119] Lord Bolingbroke, “Important Examination,” Correspondent (New York) 3, no. 11, Apr. 5, 1828, 165–67.

^[120] J. P. Dabney, Annotations on the New Testament: Compiled from the Best Critical Authorities, and Designed for Popular Use. Part II: The Epistles of Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude (Cambridge, Mass.: Hilliard and Brown, 1829), 560; and Anonymous, “Hints on the Antiquity of Languages, and on the Origin of Alphabetic Writing,” The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art. January to June, 1829 (London: Henry Colburn, 1829), 433–36.

^[121] Warren Skinner, Essays on the Coming of Christ (Boston: Printed by G. W. Bazin, 1830), 110.

^[122] R. R. Madden, The Mussulman (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830), 32, 47.

^[123] Anonymous, “Review of Works on the Book of Enoch,” Christian Observer (London) 29, no. 331 (July 1829): 417–26.

^[124] National Gazette and Literary Register (Philadelphia) 10, no. 279, Feb. 4, 1830, 3; and Anonymous, “The Book of Enoch,” Religious Magazine or Spirit of the Foreign Theological Journals and Reviews (Philadelphia) 4, no. 26 (Feb. 1830): 394–400.

^[125] Anonymous, “Review of Works on the Book of Enoch,” Christian Observer (London) 29, no. 332 (Aug. 1829): 496–503. See also “Answers to Correspondents,” Christian Observer (London) 29, no. 332 (Aug. 1829): 647.

^[126] See Sandra M. Gustafson, Eloquence Is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), xvi, 140–70.

[post_title] => Revisiting Joseph Smith and the Availability of the Book of Enoch [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 53.3 (Fall 2020): 41–106
Regarding the discussions in Mormon studies and other literary sub-fields related to contemporaries of Smith, the availability of ideas about 1 Enoch and some of the actual content were far more complicated than has usually been assumed in past scholarship. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => revisiting-joseph-smith-and-the-availability-of-the-book-of-enoch [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:32:46 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:32:46 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=26726 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Source of the Book of Abraham Identified

Jerald Tanner

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 92–97
A description of the alleged Egyptain papyri used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Abraham

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The following evidence that one specific fragment, the “sensen” text, was used by Joseph Smith in obtaining the Book of Abraham was submitted by Grant Heward (who has studied Egyptian on his own and reports that he was recently excommunicated for his views on Joseph Smith’s ability to translate Egyptian) and Jerald Tanner (who heads Modern Microfilm, Co., a, professedly antiMormon publishing house). Their work is followed by translation of the sensen text by Professor Richard Parker and finally by a discussion of the present state and best future direction of studies of Joseph Smith’s work with Egyptian by professor Hugh Nibley (scholarly defender of the Mormon faith whose continuing argument for the divine origin of the Book of Abraham based on external evidences in the Abrahamic tradition is appearing serially in the Improvement Era).

It now appears that the papyrus fragments recently recovered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints include the text used by Joseph Smith in his efforts to translate the Book of Abraham. The fragment in question (see illustration No. 1) was identified in the February, 1968, Improvement Era (bottom of p. 40-1) as “XI. Small ‘Sensen’ text (unillustrated).” It would seem that Joseph Smith studied this fragment and concluded that it was written by Abraham. Then Joseph, or his scribes, copied down a character or two at a time and to the right of each character rendered a translation of its meaning. These translations comprise the original manuscript version of the Book of Abraham. (See illustrations Nos. 2 and 3.)

Dr. James R. Clark of Brigham Young University provides this description of the manuscripts:

As a matter of fact there are in existence today in the Church Historian’s office what seem to be two separate manuscripts of Joseph Smith’s translations from the papyrus rolls, presumably in the hand writing of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery; neither manuscript contains the complete text of the Book of Abraham. as we have it now. One manuscript is the Alphabet and Grammar. . . . Within this Alphabet and Grammar there is a copy of the characters, together with their translation of Abraham 1:4-28 only. The second and separate of the two manuscripts contains none of the Alphabet and Grammar but is a manuscript of the text of the Book of Abraham as published in the first installment of the Times and Seasons, March 1, 1842.[1]

All of the characters in the first two rows on the papyrus fragment shown in illustration No. 1 can be found attached to the portion of the Book of Abraham in Joseph Smith’s “Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar.” Illustration No. 3 pro vides a comparison of characters from one of the handwritten manuscripts with the characters as they appear on the original papyrus.

A photograph of the first page of the second manuscript of the Book of Abraham is found on page 179 of James R. Clark’s Story of the Pearl of Great Price. Dr. Clark writes,

I have in my possession a photostatic copy of the manuscript of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s translation of Abraham l: I to 2: 18. This manuscript was bought by Wilford Wood in 1945 from Charles Bidamon, son of the man who married Emma after the death of the Prophet. The original of this manuscript is in the Church Historian’s Office in Salt Lake City. The characters from which our present Book of Abraham was translated are down the left-hand column and Joseph Smith’s translation opposite, so we know approximately how much material was translated from each character.[2]

This manuscript begins with the statement, “Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacomb[s] of Egypt.” This manuscript is more extensive than that in the “Alphabet and Grammar.” Illustration No. 4 compares characters from this manuscript with those in the third line of the papyrus fragment.

Joseph Smith apparently translated many English words from each Egyptian character. The characters from fewer than four lines of the papyrus make up forty-nine verses of the Book of Abraham, containing more than two thousand words. If Joseph Smith continued to translate the same number of English words from each Egyptian character, this one small fragment would complete the entire text of the Book of Abraham. In other words, the small piece of papyrus pictured in illustration No. 1 appears to be the whole Book of Abraham!

This evidence raises several problems. One is that the Egyptian characters cannot conceivably have enough information channels (component parts) to convey the amount of material translated from them. Another is that the papyrus fragment in question dates from long after Abraham’s time, much nearer, in fact, to the time of Christ. But most important, the Egyptian has been translated, and it has no recognizable connection with the subject matter of the Book of Abraham. The February, 1968, Improvement Era identifies the fragment as a small, unillustrated “Sensen” text. Sensen means “breathings,” and the papyrus fragment has been identified by reputable Egyptologists as a portion of the “Book of Breathings,” a funerary text of the late Egyptian period.

It is interesting to note that not only the manuscripts of the Book of Abraham but also Facsimile No. 2 includes portions of this “Book of Breathings.” Evidently the original of Facsimile No. 2 was damaged. That portions of it were unreadable or had fallen away is evident from a drawing found in Joseph Smith’s “Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar” (see illustration No. 5A). The missing areas on this drawing have been filled in with insertions from other documents to make Facsimile No. 2 as it now exists (see illustration No. 5B for a photograph of Facsimile No. 2 as it was published in the Times and Seasons in 1842; notice that the missing areas have been filled in). The area at the top showing a god in a boat was evidently copied from the fragment of papyrus labeled in the February, I 968, Improvement Era (p. 40-D) as “IV. Framed (‘Trinity’) papyrus.”

The Egyptian words meaning “Book of Breathings” have been inserted into other blank areas shown in illustration 5A. These words come from line four of the same fragment of papyrus which Joseph Smith used as a basis for the text of the Book of Abraham. Illustration 5B shows that characters have been copied from lines two and three of the same papyrus fragment. One group of characters from line two was copied twice along the edge of Facsimile No. 2. The characters which follow around the edge were taken from line three.

[1] James R. Clark, The Story of the Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City, 1962), pp. 172-173.

[2] James R. Clark in Pearl of Great Price Conference, December 10, 1960 (Brigham Young University, Extension Publications, 1964 Edition), pp. 60-61.

[post_title] => The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Source of the Book of Abraham Identified [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 92–97
A description of the alleged Egyptain papyri used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Abraham [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-joseph-smith-egyptian-papyri-translations-and-interpretations-the-source-of-the-book-of-abraham-identified-2 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:33:55 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:33:55 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=17798 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

A Hint of an Explanation | Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: an Egyptian Endowment

Eric Jay Olson

Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 74–75
Review of An Egyptian Endowment by Hugh Nibley, which discusses the papyri that Joseph Smith allegedly used to help translate the Book of Abraham. Hugh Nibley decided to state his case, but allow readers to form their own conclusions after reading it.

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This long-anticipated book by Hugh Nibley on the Joseph Smith Papyri continues his latest efforts to open our minds to the ancient world. Nibley has focused his wide-reaching scholarly interests on an exposition of an aspect of Egyptian religion and has made a valuable contribution to the few books available which give the amateur an exposure to the culture of forgotten peoples.

Nibley restricts his discussion primarily to two of the papryi, Numbers X and XI, which are remnants of an example of the genre of Egyptian funerary texts commonly called "books of breathing." P. JS XI is the document quoted in the so-called Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar (EAG) where it is presented as the source of part of the Book of Abraham. Much discussion has centered around this identification because it is attributed to Joseph Smith, but does not stand up under scrutiny by any trained translators. Nibley (Chapter I) adds more arguments to his article in BYU Studies, in which he claimed that Joseph Smith was not responsible for the production of the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar; rather it should be assigned to the speculative efforts of "the brethren in Kirtland," who sought to follow in Joseph's footsteps and reproduce his work. Whether his additional evidence will quiet the storm centering around the connection between the EAG, the Book of Abraham, and Joseph Smith remains to be seen. Since the various arguments produced are mainly to justify the proponent's previously confirmed convictions about the veracity of Joseph Smith's productions, it is doubtful.

Chapter 2 presents an elaborate interlinear translation of the two papyri, with line-by-line facsimile of the original hieratic text, hieroglyphic transcription, both right to left and then, for the convenience of the English reader, from left to right, followed by a phonetic transcription and word by word translation. To this are added notes to explain the options available to the translator. I am disturbed by the frequent proof-reading errors which mar an otherwise very worthwhile effort. For example, on the first page of the chapter, the labels of the columns are reversed. In the transliteration; there are several inconsistencies, such as the word for “on” being given as both hr and hr. Also various superscript numbers are scattered around without accompanying footnotes or explanation. However, this is the first time in recent memory that the literate Mormon has been presented with such an extensive exposure to the background of the translated word. This will contribute greatly to helping us see the tentativeness of any translation of an ancient text, and the number of decisions that must be made before a completed translation is produced.

The next chapter is a discussion of possible ways to understand the nature of a translation. The ultimate purpose of a translation is to provide a reader in one language with a similar intellectual experience had by a reader in another language. The production of a translation must take into consideration the different cultures of the respective readers. Translators can either strive to produce one-to-one correspondence between words in a sentence or they can attempt to reproduce a similar meaning which communicates with the reader's experience. For example the German sentence, "Der Apfel faellt nicht weit vom Baume ab," can be translated either "The apple falls not far away from the tree," or "He's a chip off the old block." The problem is really insurmountable when we attempt a similar enterprise between cultures as fundamentally different as Egyptian and American. The differences are so radical that we can only suspect them in most cases. Nibley has helped place our discussion in perspective by drawing attention to this problem. A translation of a Book of Breathings as presented in Chapter 2 is still foreign to most modern readers. His claim that it presents an "Egyptian Endowment" hints at another translation.

The remainder of the body of the book gives the fruits of Nibley's efforts to find meaning in the Egyptian symbols that will be understandable to one of our culture. This is Nibley at his most characteristic, drawing on his wide exposure to the primary and secondary literature of the ancient world. He has made extensive use of the so-called Books of the Underworld, a corpus of Egyptian literary productions which elaborate on the activities of the denizens of the underworld. This material has recently been tapped by Egyptologists like Erich Hornung as a valuable source for insights into how the Egyptian understood the nature of his gods and the way he related to them. Nibley has brought together much material that will give all a detailed exposure to the Egyptian world. Scattered throughout this section are numerous drawings and illustrations taken from original Egyptian material (although the source is not always given) which give an exposure to Egyptian religious scenes. Their connection to the text, however, is often loose—possibly an attempt to illustrate the Egyptian style, as Nibley claims (p. 3), in which figures used often have only a remote connection with the text.

A further attempt to expose us to the Egyptian world of religious concepts and its remnants is provided in the Appendix, where Nibley has shown six documents that follow the pattern that he has adduced from the Book of Breathings.

Nibley avoids providing a summary and conclusion to the material he has presented. His purpose was "not to prove a case but to state one," providing the reader "with information to help him make up his own mind." And it is with great control that the reviewer has resisted the temptation to improve on Nibley' s resolve. For always behind any such summing up lies the necessity to refer to the ceremonies of the Mormon temples, to which part of the readers of this journal will not have been initiated. Suffice it to say that there are obvious parallels apparent to those exposed to both and Nibley has made a valuable contribution by providing us with the material which will allow some of us at least to draw our own conclusions.

The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment. By Hugh Nibley. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975. xii+ 305 pp. $14.95.

[post_title] => A Hint of an Explanation | Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: an Egyptian Endowment [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 74–75
Review of An Egyptian Endowment by Hugh Nibley, which discusses the papyri that Joseph Smith allegedly used to help translate the Book of Abraham. Hugh Nibley decided to state his case, but allow readers to form their own conclusions after reading it. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => a-hint-of-an-explanation-the-message-of-the-joseph-smith-papyri-an-egyptian-endowment-by-hugh-nibley [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-13 00:08:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-13 00:08:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=17016 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Joseph Smith: "The Gift of Seeing"

Richard Van Wagoner

Dialogue 15.2 (Summer 1982): 48–68
Van Wagoner and Walker focus on the seer stones that Joseph Smith used in the Book of Mormon translation process.

Joseph Smith's Legacy

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Analysis of eyewitness accounts of the Book of Mormon translation is long overdue. Studies of the statements of early witnesses[1] have not attempted to clarify the method of translation, even though testimony is occasionally contradictory, often tainted with bias, always sketchy. We retrace history's footsteps to the scene of the translation in pursuit of better understanding of how the Book of Mormon was translated.

The primary witness to the translation of the Book of Mormon record is the translator himself. But Joseph Smith's procedural descriptions are too brief and general to be of much help. In an 1831 Church conference in Orange, Ohio, Joseph's older brother Hyrum requested a firsthand account of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. The Prophet vetoed the idea: "It was not intended to tell the world all the particulars of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon; it was not expedient for him to relate these things.”[2] Joseph maintained this close-mouthed attitude on the subject of the translation throughout his lifetime. His first recorded account of the process, in an 1833 letter to N. E. Seaton, is typically terse: "The Book of Mormon is a record of the forefathers of our western tribes of Indians, having been found through the ministrations of an holy angel, and translated into our own language by the gift and power of God.”[3]

In 1835 he gave an even more abbreviated version to "Joshua the Jewish Minister": "I obtained them [the plates] and translated them into the English language by the gift and power of God and have been preaching it ever since."[4] Joseph’s 1838 account in the Elder’s Journal adds the additional detail of U rim and Thummim assistance: "Moroni, the person who deposited the plates . . . told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them. I obtained them, and the Urim and Thummim with them, by the means of which I translated the plates and thus came the Book of Mormon.”[5]

The Prophet's 1842 description of the translating procedure, in the Wentworth Letter, is no more specific: "Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record, by the gift and power of God.”[6] Public interest in Church history, stirred by this letter, impelled the Times and Seasons to initiate an 1842 serial publication of the Prophet's history of the Church, which provides an amplified statement on Book of Mormon translation: "Immediately after my arrival there [Harmony, Pennsylvania] I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummirn I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived at the house of my wife's father in the month of December [1827], and the February following.”[7]

The Prophet's final statement about translation procedure, in a 13 November 1843 letter to James Arlington Bennett, adds little more to our understanding of the process: "By the power of God I translated the Book of Mormon from hieroglyphics; the knowledge of which was lost to the world: in which wonderful event I stood alone, an unlearned youth, to combat the worldly wisdom, and multiplied ignorance of eighteen centuries.”[8]

To find exactly what the Prophet meant in his repeated insistences that the plates were translated through the medium of Urim and Thummim by the gift and power of God, we must tum to other eyewitness accounts. Martin Harris[9] served Joseph as the first of several scribes in the work of translation.[10] His description of the method of translation is specific, though we have it only at second hand. Edward Stevenson, later of the First Council of Seventy, recorded the testimony of his friend Harris:

The Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he used the seer stone. . . . By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin, and when finished he would say, "Written," and if correctly written that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used.[11]

Martin served as scribe only between 12 April 1828 and 14 June 1828, when his part in the loss of the first 116 pages of completed manuscript cost him the privilege of further transcription.

The second scribe to serve Joseph was his wife, Emma. In 1879 Emma, interviewed by her son Joseph Smith HI concerning important events in early Church history, explained, "In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us . . . . The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen table-cloth, which I had given him to fold them in."[12] Emma's service as scribe, interrupted as it must have been by the necessity of household chores, was at best brief. Her handwriting is not found on any original manuscript material now available.[13]

Full-time transcription did not become possible again until a young schoolteacher, Oliver Cowdery, arrived 5 April 1829. Cowdery wrote in 1834: "These were days never to be forgotten-to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven. . . . Day after day I continued uninterrupted to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record, called ‘The Book of Mormon.’”[14] Shortly after leaving the Church in 1838, Oliver expanded his description of the translation process: "I have sometimes had seasons of skepticism, in which I did seriously wonder whether the Prophet and I were men in our sober senses, when he would be translating from plates, through 'the Urim and Thummim,' and the plates not be in sight at all."[15] When Cowdery returned to the Church in 18481 Reuben Miller recorded in his diary that Oliver confirmed his testimony to the Council Bluffs, Iowa, Saints: "I wrote with my own pen1 the entire Book of Mormon [ save a few pages], as it fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph Smith1 as he translated it by the gift and power of God, by means of the Urim and Thummim, or as it is called by that book, 'holy interpreters’”[16] (The bracketed material is Cowdery's).

After approximately two months of translating at the Isaac Hale home in Harmony, Pennsylvania, Joseph was invited by a friend of Cowdery, David Whitmer, to continue the translation work at his father's farm on the north end of Seneca Lake near Fayette, New York. Thus the Whitmer family witnessed the Book of Mormon translation process as the manuscript grew day by day throughout June 1829. Elizabeth Ann Whitmer, who married Oliver Cowdery in 1832, recorded in 1870, when she was fifty-five: "I cheerfully certify that I was familiar with the manner of Joseph Smith's translating the Book of Mormon. He translated the most of it at my Father's house. And I often sat by and saw and heard them translate and write for hours together. Joseph never had a curtain drawn between him and his scribe while he was translating. He would place the director[17] in his hat, and then place his face in his hat, so as to exclude the light.''[18]

David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, served as scribe during this brief period. He provides us with more specific information about the translation procedure than any other person. In 1887 he published a booklet in Richmond, Missouri, entitled An Address to All Believers in Christ, which includes this detailed description:

I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated by Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.[19]

Whitmer reiterated that account on many occasions, explaining the translation process in a consistent fashion: "Joseph did not see the plates in translation, but would hold the interpreters to his eyes and cover his face with a hat, excluding all light, and before him would appear what seemed to be parchment on which would appear the characters of the plates on a line at the top, and immediately below would appear the translation in English."[20] In an 1881 interview with the Kansas City Journal, David Whitmer even details characteristics of the seer stone (multiplied by an enthusiastic reporter into two stones):

I, as well as all of my father's family, Smith's wife, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris were present during the translation. The translation was by Smith, and the manner as follows: He had two small stones of a chocolate color, nearly egg shaped and perfectly smooth, but not transparent, called interpreters, which were given him with the plates. He did not use the plates in the translation, but would hold the interpreters to his eyes and cover his face with a hat, excluding all light.[21]

Whitmer explicitly confronted the general confusion between the seer stone and the Nephite "interpreters," or Urim and Thummim, when he tried to set the record straight through a friend, Edward Traughber:

With the sanction of David Whitmer, and by his authority, I now state that he does not say that Joseph Smith ever translated in his presence by aid of U rim and Thummim; but by means of one dark colored, opaque stone, called a 'Seer Stone,' which was placed in the crown of a hat, into which Joseph put his face, so as to exclude the external light. Then, a spiritual light would shine forth, and parchment would a pp ear before Joseph, upon which was a line of characters from the plates, and under it, the translation in English; at least, so Joseph said.[22]

Other early witnesses tend to corroborate Whitmer' s account. Joseph Knight, Sr., a close friend of Joseph Smith, recorded an account of the translation process, possibly as early as 1833: “Now the way he translated was he put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkened his Eyes then he would take a sentence and it would appear in Brite Roman Letters then he would tell the writer and he would write it then that would go away the next Sentence would Come and so on."[23]

Emma Smith's father, Isaac Hale, provides a valuably frank perspective of the translation process because of the hostility he came to harbor toward son-in-law Joseph Smith during the few months the translation proceeded in the Hale home: "The manner in which he[Joseph Smith] pretended to read and interpret, was the same as when he looked for money-diggers, with a stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the Book of Plates were at the same time hid in the woods.''[24]

Michael Morse, husband of Emma Smith's sister, Trial Hale, described the procedure as he witnessed it, a description remarkably consistent with previous accounts. He is quoted in 1879 by W.W. Blair, of the RLDS First Presidency:

When Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon, [Morse] had occasion more than once to go into his immediate presence, and saw him engaged at his work of translation.

The mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face, resting his elbows upon his knees, and then dictating word after word, while the scribes—Emma, John Whitmer, O. Cowdery, or some other wrote it down.[25]

These eyewitness accounts to the translation process must be viewed in proper perspective. Most were given in retrospect and may be clouded by the haze of intervening years. Many were reported second hand, subject to skewing by nonwitnesses. Yet there are persistent parallels among these scattered testimonies. Consensus holds that the "translation" process was accomplished through a single seer stone from the time of the loss of the 116 pages until the completion of the book. Martin Harris's description of interchangeable use of a seer stone with the interpreters, or Urim and Thummim, refers only to the portion of translation he was witness to—the initial 116 pages. The second point of agreement is even more consistent: The plates could not have been used directly in the translation process. The Prophet, his face in a hat to exclude exterior light, would have been unable to view the plates directly even if they had been present during transcription.

A mental picture of the young Joseph, face buried in a hat, gazing into a seer stone, plates out of sight, has not been a generally held view since the early days of the Church. The view raises some difficult questions. Why, for example, was such great care taken to preserve the plates for thousands of years if they were riot to be used directly in the translation process? Is it possible that they were to serve primarily as evidence to the eleven witnesses of the Book of Mormon that the record did in fact exist?

The concept of a single seer stone is another problem area, for we have been taught since the Prophet's day that the Urim and Thummim were used. The term itself is problematic. The Book of Mormon does not contain the words "Urim and Thummim." Ammon describes the instrument as "the things . . . called interpreters"—"two stones which were fastened into the two rims of a bow" which were" prepared from the beginning" and "handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages" (Mosiah 8:13, 28:13-14). Joseph Smith adds in the Pearl of Great Price that "God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book" Joseph Smith—History 1:35). Furthermore, the Nephite interpreters were not referred to as Urim and Thummim until 1833, when W.W. Phelps first equated the two in the first edition of the Evening and Morning Star: “It was translated by the gift and power of God, by an unlearned man, through the aid of a pair of Interpreters, or spectacles—(known, perhaps in ancient days as Teraphim, or Urim and Thummim)."[26]

That the Prophet should have used a seer stone rather than the Nephite interpreters is puzzling in itself. Martin Harris' s 1875 mention of convenience in using a seer stone may refer to the fact that by all accounts the Nephite interpreters were large.[27] An additional reason for using the seer stone Harris conveniently omits, since it directly involved him. David Whitmer explains that after Martin Harris lost the first 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript,

. . . the Lord . . . took from the prophet the Urim and Thummim and other wise expressed his condemnation. By fervent prayer and by other wise humbling himself, the prophet, however, again found favor, and was presented with a strange, ovalshaped, chocolate-colored stone, about the size of an egg only more flat, which, it was promised, should serve the same purpose as the missing Urim and Thummim. . . . With this stone all of the present Book of Mormon was translated.[28]

When Zenas H. Gurley, editor of the RLDS Saints' Herald, interviewed Whitmer in 1855 and specifically asked if Joseph used his "'Peep stone' to finish up the translation,” David replied that

he used a stone called a "Seers stone," the "Interpreters" having been taken away from him because of transgression. The "Interpreters" were taken from Joseph after he allowed Martin Harris to carry away the 116 pages of Ms of the Book of Mormon as a punishment, but he was allowed to go on and translate by the use of a "Seers stone" which he had, and which he placed in a hat into which he buried his face, stating to me and others that the original character appeared upon parchment and under it the translation in English.[29]

Whitmer's accounts also find support in the Historical Record of the Church: “As a chastisement for this carelessness, the Urim and Thummim was taken from Smith. But by humbling himself, he again found favor with the Lord and was presented a strange ovalshaped, chocolate colored stone, about the size of an egg, but more flat which it was promised should answer the same purpose. With this stone all the present book was translated.”[30]

Joseph had apparently possessed this seer stone for several years before using it in the translation process, despite the accounts of a divine “presentation.” Willard Chase, a neighbor of the Smiths in Palmyra, New York, relates how the stone was discovered on his property.

In the year 1822, l was engaged in digging a well. I employed Alvin and Joseph Smith to assist me. . . . After digging about twenty feet below the surface of the earth, we discovered a singularly appearing stone, which excited my curiosity. I brought it to the top of the well, and as we were examining it, Joseph put it into his hat, and then his face into the top of his hat. . . . The next morning he came to me, and wished to obtain the stone, alleging that he could see in it; but I told him I did not wish to part with it on account of its being a curiosity, but I would lend it.[31]

Confirmation of Chase's account is made by Martin Harris in 1859: "Joseph had a stone which was dug from the well of Mason Chase twenty-four feet from the surface. In this stone he could see many things to my certain knowledge."[32] Wilford Woodruff, writing in 1888, recalled that Joseph Smith found the "sears stone . . . by revelation some 30 feet under the earth."[33]

Severa] accounts document that Joseph often carried the Chase seer stone on his person between 1822 and 1830. In an 1826 trial, “on the request of the court he exhibited the stone. It was about the size of a small hen's egg, in the shape of a high-instepped shoe. It was composed of layers of different colors passing diagonally through it. It was very hard and smooth, perhaps by being carried in the pocket."[34] Martin Harris in 1859 recalled an incident that occurred in the early 1820s:

I was at the house of his father in Manchester, two miles south of Palmyra village, and was picking my teeth with a pin while sitting on the bars. The pin caught in my teeth and dropped from my fingers into shavings and straw. I jumped from the bars and looked for it. Joseph and Northrop Sweet also did the same. We could not find it. I then took Joseph on surprise, and said to him—I said, "Take your stone." I had never seen it, and did not know that he had it with him. He had it in his pocket. He took it and placed it in his hat—the old white hat— and placed his face in his hat. I watched him closely to see that he did not look to one side; he reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me. I know he did not look out of the hat until after he had picked up the pin.[35]

A third attestation of the Prophet's possession of a seer stone is the difficulty between Joseph and the family of his 1825 employer, Josiah Stoal, a difficulty which apparently arose from Joseph's reputation with such a stone. According to the Prophet's mother, Stoal "came for Joseph on account of having heard that he possessed certain keys by which he could discern things invisible to the natural eye,"[36] and engaged him to seek Spanish treasure near the Susquehanna River. Stoal, who later became a member of the Church, related that the young Joseph, who was in his employ for some five months, "pretended to have skill of telling where hidden treasures in the earth were by means of looking through a certain stone. "[37] Joseph explains the incident in some detail in the Pearl of Great Price:

In the month of October, 1825, I hired with an old gentleman by the name of Josiah Steal, who lived in Chenango county, State of New York. He had heard something of a silver mine having been opened by the Spaniards in Harmony, Susquehanna county, State of Pennsylvania; and had, previous to my hiring to him, been digging, in order, if possible, to discover the mine. After I went to live with him, he took me, with the rest of his hands,[38] to dig for the silver mine at which I continued to work for nearly a month, without success in our undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentleman to cease digging after it. (Joseph Smith—History 1:56)

Though Stoal professed "implicit faith" in Joseph's psychic abilities, the Stoal family remained unconvinced. In 1826, Peter Bridgeman, a nephew of Stoal's wife, preferred charges against Joseph Smith as a "disorderly person and an imposter"—charges evidently referring to Joseph's "glass looking" psychic abilities. Though the full court record has not yet been discovered and recorded accounts of the trial fail to agree on all points, there is consensus that the Stoal family became convinced that Josiah Stoal was squandering his resources and urged him to stop.[39]

Another account corroborating Joseph's habit of carrying a stone on his person comes from Lucy Smith, the Prophet's mother: "That of which I spoke, which Joseph termed a key, was indeed, nothing more nor less than the Urim and Thummim, and it was by this that the angel showed him many things which he saw in vision; by which also he could ascertain, at any time, the approach of danger, either to himself or the Record, and on account of which he always kept the Urim and Thummim about his person."[40] Since the Urim and Thummim was too large, by all accounts, to be concealed on Joseph's person, Mother Smith must have been referring here not to the Nephite interpreters but to the Chase seer stone.

That a seer stone was divinely prepared for Joseph's use is suggested in the Book of Mormon. Alma 37:23 reads: "I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations." "Gazelam," with a slight difference in spelling, is identified, in three sections of the Doctrine and Covenants (78:9, 82:11, 104:26, 43), as Joseph Smith. W. W. Phelps, scribe and personal friend to tile Prophet, declared in Joseph Smith's funeral sermon that the Prophet was "Gazelam" in the spirit world.[41]

The Prophet related in his Pearl of Great Price account that during Moroni's first conversation with him 23 September 1823, "the vision was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it" (Joseph Smith—History 1:42). Joseph does not relate how the vision was opened to his mind, but parallel accounts indicate that it may have been through the Chase seer stone.[42] Martin Harris recalled in 1859: "Joseph had before this described the manner of his finding the plates. He found them by looking in the stone found in the well of Mason Chase. The family had likewise told me the same thing."[43]

Willard Chase, on whose property the stone was discovered, points out that in 1827 Joseph Smith, Sr., explained to him "that some years ago, a spirit had appeared to Joseph his son, in a vision, and informed him that in a certain place there was a record on plates of gold; and that he was the person that must obtain them. He [Joseph Smith] then observed that if it had not been for that stone, he would not have obtained the book. "[44]

Henry Harris, an acquaintance of the Smith family, confirms these accounts: "He [Joseph Smith] said he had a revelation from God that told him they were hid in a certain hill and he looked in his stone and saw them in the place of deposit."[45] Further corroboration is provided by W. D. Purple, who had taken notes for Judge Albert Neely during Joseph Smith's 1826 trial: "Smith, by the aid of his luminous stone, found the Golden Bible, or the book of Mormon."[46] And in 1856, after attending a meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Deseret, Judge Hosea Stout recorded in his journal that “President Young exhibited the 'seer's stone' with which the Prophet Joseph discovered the plates of the Book of Mormon.”[47]

The Prophet's 1838 account of the manner in which he discovered the plates, though it makes no mention of the Chase seer stone, does not preclude its use: "Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the Book of Mormon was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County, New York, being dead, and raised again therefrom, appeared unto me, and told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them."[48] The seer stone could have been the medium through which Moroni's instructions were given. The fact that the Smith brothers who shared Joseph's bedroom were not disturbed by Moroni's visitation adds support to the possibility of a seer stone vision.

Lest the Prophet's omission of mention of such matters be taken as proof they did not occur, it should be noted that his hesitation to divulge details of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon might be expected in light of the vitriolic public reception of his accounts of sacred matters. If the early response of a non believing Methodist minister as recorded in the Pearl of Great Price is typical, it is obvious why Joseph would hesitate to provide detailed disclosure: "I took occasion to give him an account of the vision which I had had. I was greatly surprised at his behavior; he treated my communication not only lightly, but with great contempt, saying it was all of the devil, that there were no such things as visions or revelations in these days; that all such things had ceased with the apostles, and that there would never be any more of them" (Joseph Smith—History 1:21). Given that sort of reaction, it is not surprising. that Joseph seldom discussed the Chase seer stone, and showed it only to trusted associates.

Historical evidence indicates that he retained possession of this stone for a brief period after the completion of the Book of Mormon translation. In early 1830, Martin Harris, who had consented to finance publication of the book, was unable to come up with the necessary funds quickly. Hyrum Smith and others became impatient and suggested that Joseph send some of the brethren to Toronto, Ontario, to attempt to sell the copyright. David Whitmer records the Prophet's use of the seer stone in seeking inspiration on the matter:

Joseph looked into the hat in which he placed the stone, and received a revelation that some of the brethren should go to Toronto, Canada, and that they would sell the copy-right of the Book of Mormon. Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery went to Toronto on this mission, but they failed entirely to, sell the copy-right, returning without any money. Joseph was at my father's house when they returned. I was there also, and am an eye witness to these facts. Jacob Whitmer and John Whitmer were also present when Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery returned from Canada. Well, we were all in great trouble; and we asked Joseph how it was that he had received a revelation from the Lord and the brethren had utterly failed in their undertaking. Joseph did not know how it was, so he enquired of the Lord about it, and behold the following revelation came through the stone: "Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of man; and some revelations are of the devil.”[49]

Oliver Cowdery, after he had been excommunicated from the Church, related his own account of the 1830 revelation

that some among you will remember which sent Bro. Page and me, so unwisely, to Toronto, with a prediction from the Lord by "Urim and Thummim," that we would there find a man anxious to buy the "First Elder' s copyright." I well remember we did not find him, and had to return surprised and disappointed. But so great was my faith, that in going to Toronto, nothing but calmness pervaded my soul, every doubt was banished, and I as much expected that Bro. Page and I would fulfill the revelation as that we should live. And you may believe, without asking me to relate the particulars that it would be no easy task to describe our desolation and grief. Bro. Page and I did not think that god would have deceived us through "Urim and Thummin [sic]," exactly as came the Book of Mormon.[50]

David Whitmer indicated that the seer stone was later given to Oliver Cowdery: "After the translation of the Book of Mormon was finished early in the spring of 1830 before April 6th, Joseph gave the Stone to Oliver Cowdery and told me as well as the rest that he was through with it, and he did not use the Stone anymore."[51] Whitmer, who was Cowdery's brother-in-law, stated that on Oliver's death in 1848, another brother-in-law, "Phineas Young, a brother of Brigham Young, and an old-time and once intimate friend of the Cowdery family came out from Salt Lake City, and during his visit he contrived to get the stone from its hiding place, through a little deceptive sophistry, extended upon the grief-stricken widow. When he returned to Utah he carried it in triumph to the apostles of Brigham Young's 'lion house.’”[52]

Whatever the exact circumstances of its acquisition, the Chase seer stone remained in Brigham Young's possession until his death in 1877.[53] Hosea Stout described in detail the stone President Young displayed to the University of Deseret Board of Regents on 25 February 1856, "a silecious granite dark color almost black with light colored stripes some what resembling petrified poplar or cotton wood bark. It was about the size but not the shape of a hen's egg.''[54]

This same seer stone was carried by President Wilford Woodruff to the dedication of the Manti Temple in 1888: "Before leaving I consecrated upon the Altar the sears stone that Joseph Smith found by Revelation some 30 feet under the earth carried by him through life."[55] Another description of the stone was given by Richard M. Robinson when he returned from a Southern States mission in 1899 and presented a strange coin he felt might be of Nephite origin to President Lorenzo Snow. Robinson relates that President Snow

went and got the money purse or leather bag that President Young had brought to the Rocky Mountains with him, also the Seer Stone and said, "This is the Seer Stone that the Prophet Joseph used. There are very few worthy to view this, but you are." He handed the Seer Stone to me and I couldn't express the joy that came to me as I took that stone in my hands. Words are not equal to the task of expressing such a sublime joy! He then told me to hand the Seer Stone to my wife and I handed it to her. He then blessed us with the greatest blessing I have ever heard fall from the mouth of man!

The Seer Stone was the shape of an egg though not quite so large, of a gray cast something like granite but with white stripes running around it. It was transparent but had no holes, neither in the end or in the sides. I looked into the stone, but could see nothing, as I had not the gift and power of God that must accompany such a manifestation.[56]

Though we seldom hear the Chase seers tone mentioned in the Church today, it remains in the possession of the First Presidency. Joseph Fielding Smith, as an apostle, made clear that "the Seer Stone which was in the possession of the Prophet Joseph Smith in early days . . . is now in the possession of the Church."[57] Elder Joseph Anderson, Assistant to the Council of the Twelve and long-time secretary to the First Presidency, clarified in 1971 that the "Seer Stone that Joseph Smith used in the early days of the Church is in possession of the Church and is kept in a safe in Joseph Fielding Smith's office. . . . [The stone is] slightly smaller than a chicken egg, oval, chocolate in color."[58]

The final word as to what happened to the Nephite interpreters or Urim and Thummim is usually thought to be the Pearl of Great Price account in Joseph Smith—History 1:59-60:

At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. . . . By the wisdom of God, they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished by them what was required at my hand. When, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them I delivered them up to him: and he has them in his charge until this day, being the second day of May, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight [italics added].

Though "them" in this account could refer solely to the plates, Patriarch Zebedee Coltrin, an early acquaintance of Joseph Smith, related in an 1880 high priests' meeting in Spanish Fork, Utah, that he had once asked Joseph what he had done with the Urim and Thummim and that "Joseph said he had no further need of it and he had given it to the angel Moroni. He had the Melchizedek Priesthood, and with that Priesthood he had the key to all knowledge and intelligence. "[59] Joseph Smith apparently did not have the Nephite interpreters after the completion of the Book of Mormon translation; Moroni had them in his possession when they were shown to the Three Witnesses in June 1830. David Whitmer explained to Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith in 1878 that he, Martin Harris, and Oliver Cowdery, in fulfillment of a promise made in Doctrine and Covenants 17:1, were shown "a table with many records or plates upon it, besides the plates of the Book of Mormon, also the Sword of Laban, the Directors—i.e., the ball which Lehi had—and the lnterpreters."[60]

If the Nephite interpreters were in fact returned to Moroni before June 1830, as the evidence strongly suggests, then why are so many references made to "Urim and Thummim" in Church history after this date? Wilford Woodruff's journal entry describing a Quorum of the Twelve meeting held 27 December 1841 in Nauvoo shows the problem: "The Twelve, or part of them, spent the day with Joseph the Seer, and he confided unto them many glorious things of the Kingdom of God. The privileges and blessings of the priesthood, etc. I had the privilege of seeing for the first time in my day, the Urim and Thummim [italics added].”[61]

Yet Brigham Young, attending the same meeting, recorded:

I met with the Twelve at brother Joseph's. He conversed with us in a familiar manner on a variety of subjects, and explained to us the Urim and Thummim which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters. He said that every man who lived on the earth was entitled to a seer stone, and should have one, but they are kept from them in consequence of their wickedness, and most of those who do findone make an evil use of it; he showed us his seer stone [italics added].[62]

Which apostle was mistaken? Was there actual confusion of objects or simply confusion of terminology? We suggest that the discrepancy results from the popularity of Urim and Thummim terminology. Jane Manning James, a black convert living in Joseph's Nauvoo home, uses the "Urim and Thummim” terminology in her autobiographical reminiscence:

One morning I met Brother Joseph coming out of his mothers room he said good morning and shook hands—with me. I went in to his mothers room she said good morning bring me that bundle from my bureau and sit down here. I did as she told me, she placed the bundle in my hands and said, handle this and after I had done it she said sit down. Do you remember that I told you about the Urim and Thummim when I told you about the book of Mormon, I answered yes mam. She then told me I had just handled it, you are not permitted to see it, but you have been permitted to handle it. You will live long after I am dead and gone and you can tell the Latter-day Saints, that you was permitted to handle the Urim and Thummim.[63]

Lucy Clayton Bullock, wife to Brigham Young's clerk, Thomas Bullock, also tells of "seeing the urim and thummim" during the Nauvoo period.[64]

The brother apostles Orson and Parley P. Pratt relate separate accounts of the Urim and Thummim being used to 11translate" the book of Abraham from the Egyptian papyri. Parley was quoted in 1842 as having said: "The Pearl of Great Price is now in course of translation by means of the Urim and Thummim and proves to be a record written partly by the father of the faithful, Abraham, and finished by Joseph when in Egypt."[65] Orson added in 1878: "The Prophet translated the part of these writings which, as I have said, is contained in the Pearl of Great Price, and known as the Book of Abraham. Thus you see one of the first gifts bestowed by the Lord for the benefit of His people, was that of revelation, the gift to translate, by the aid of the U rim and Thummim."[66] Wilford Woodruff similarly associates the Urim and Thummim with the translation of the Egyptian papyri: "The Lord is blessing with power to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom of God; to translate by the Urim and Thummim ancient records and hieroglyphics old as Abraham or Adam."[67]

In short, the term "Urim and Thummim" appears repeatedly. Joseph Smith's personal secretary, William Clayton, records that in 1843 Hyrum Smith “requested Joseph to write the revelation [on celestial marriage] by means of the Urim and Thummim [italics added], but Joseph in reply said he did not need to, for he knew the revelation perfectly from beginning to end."[68] President Heber C. Kimball testified in 1853, after the Chase seer stone had been brought to Salt Lake City by Phineas Young: "Has Brother Brigham got the Urim and Thummim? Yes, he has everything that is necessary for him to receive the will and mind of God to this people."[69]

In addition to Joseph's use of a seer stone in "translation" work with the Book of Mormon and the book of Abraham, evidence suggests that several of the early revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants may have come through this medium. Orson Pratt, who lived for a time in the Prophet's home, related in 1878 "the circumstances under which revelations were received by Joseph . . . he [Elder Pratt] being present on several occasions of the kind. . . . At such times Joseph used the 'seer stone' when inquiring of the Lord, and receiving revelations, but that he was so thoroughly endowed with the inspiration of the Almighty and the spirit of revelation that he often received them without any instrument or other means than the operation of the spirit upon. his mind.”[70] Headings to eight sections in the present LDS Doctrine and Covenants—3, 6, 7, 11, 14-17—describe revelations received from July 1828 through June 1829 by “Urim and Thummim.” David Whitmer, who stated he was ''present when Brother Joseph gave nearly every revelation that is in the Book of Commandments,”[71] records "Brother Joseph giving the revelations of 1829 through the same stone through which the Book was translated. . . . He then gave up the stone forever.”[72]

Revelations given through the seer stone at the Whitmer home in Fayette, New York, during 1829include not only sections 14 through 171 but also section 18. Headnote references, which were not added until the 1921 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, list sections 14-17 as having been given through "Urim and Thummim” but David Whitmer also mentions the 18th section (which directs him and Oliver to select the first Quorum of the Twelve) as having come through the Chase seer stone.

Section 10:1 describes the "power given unto you to translate by the means of the Urim and Thummim." But the reference to Urim and Thummim ·is a retrospective addition which does not appear in the original revelation in the Book of Commandments (Chapter IX).[73] This change first appeared in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (section 36:1). The Prophet's handwritten 1832 account of his early history says "the Lord had prepared spectacles for to read the Book,"[74] and he did not begin to use the phrase "U rim and Thummim" to describe his translation vehicle until after W. W. Phelps equated the interpreters with the “Urim and Thummim” in an 1833 Evening and Morning Star article.

President Joseph Fielding Smith thought all "statements of translations by the Urim and Thummim" after 1830 "evidently errors."[75] If by "Urim and Thurnmim" we mean exclusively the Nephite interpreters, President Smith is correct. A more feasible explanation, however, is advanced by Apostle Orson Pratt: "The Urim and Thummim is a stone or other substance sanctified and illuminated by the Spirit of the living God, and presented to those who are blessed with the gift of seeing."[76] Evidence suggests that the Prophet Joseph Smith used the term "Urim and Thummim" in a much broader fashion than we have become used to. After Martin Harris had lost the 116 pages of completed Book of Mormon manuscript, Lucy Smith said that Moroni appeared to Joseph and demanded the return of the Nephite interpreters. The Prophet responded:

I did as I was directed, and as I handed them to him, he remarked, "If you are very humble and penitent, it may be you will receive them again; if so it will be on the twenty-second of next September [1828]." After the angel left me I continued my supplications to God, without cessation, and on the twenty-second of September, I had the joy and satisfaction of again receiving the Urim and Thummim, with which I have again commenced translating, and Emma writes for me.[77]

Though Joseph's account appears at first glance to refer to the return of the Nephite interpreters, an 1870 statement by Emma Smith indicates that Joseph in all likelihood meant the Chase seer stone: "Now the first that my husband translated was translated by the use of the U rim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost, after that he used a small stone, not exactly black, but was rather a dark color.”[78]

Another Joseph Smith application of the term "Urim and Thummim" to mean "seer stone" is recorded in the journal of Wandie Mace, a Nauvoo acquaintance of the Prophet. Mace explains that a group of Church members in England had been using two seer stones in exploring "magic or astrology." These two stones, often referred to as the "Sameazer Stones," were given to Joseph Smith's cousin, George A. Smith, who brought them to the Prophet in Nauvoo. Mace records that “Apostle Smith gave them to Joseph the prophet who pronounced them to be a Urim and Thummim-as good as ever was upon the earth-but he said, 'They have been consecrated to devils.’”[79]

These stones could not have been the Nephite interpreters, yet Joseph specifically calls them "U rim and Thummim." The most obvious explanation for such wording is that he used the term generically to include any device with the potential for "communicating light perfectly, and intelligence perfectly, through a principle that God has ordained for that purpose," as John Taylor would later put it.[80]

Though a seer stone is referred to many times in the early days of the Church as "Urim and Thummim," the reference is not always to the Chase seer stone. The Prophet used several seer stones during his lifetime. One of the accounts of his 1826 trial in New York records testimony that "Prisoner [Joseph Smith] laid a book up on a white cloth, and looking through another stone which was white and transparent. . . . Prisoner pretended to him that he could discover objects at a distance by holding this white stone to the sun or candle; that prisoner rather declined looking into a hat at his dark colored stone, as he said that it hurt his eyes."[81]

Philo Dibble, a friend of Joseph Smith who made early replicas of the Smith brothers' death masks, preserved a third stone used by the Prophet in Nauvoo: "At the time of the martyrdom, [Dibble] rescued a small seer stone, at the Nauvoo Mansion House, from falling into the hands of the apostates. He brought this seer stone across the plains. Later, as curator of church history, he showed the death masks, the seer stone, and other items of historical value on his lecture tours throughout the territory of Utah."[82] Though a description of this stone is not given, it is definitely not the Chase seer stone, which was still in the possession of Oliver Cowdery. It may well be the same stone that the Prophet showed to the Quorum of Twelve in 1841, which Wilford Woodruff referred to as the "Urim and Thummim" and which Brigham Young called a seer stone.

Brigham Young documents that Joseph had more than one seer stone: "I met with President W. Richards and the Twelve on the 6th. We spent the time in interesting conversation upon old times, Joseph, the plates, Mount Cumorah, treasures and records known to be hid in the earth, the gift of seeing, and how Joseph obtained his first seer stone [italics added].[83]

Joseph Smith further expanded the meaning of "Urim and Thummim" on April 2, 1843, in response to a William Clayton question:

God and the planet where he dwells is like crystal, and like a sea of glass before the throne. This is the great Urim & Thummim whereon all things are manifest both things past, present & future and are continually before the Lord. The Urim & Thummim is a small representation of this globe. The earth when it is purified will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim & Thummim whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom or all kingdoms of a lower order will be manifest to those who dwell on it. and this earth will be with Christ Then the white stone mentioned in Rev. c2 v17 is the Urim & Thummim whereby all things pertaining to an higher order of kingdoms even all kingdoms will be made known and a white stone is given to each of those who come into this celestial kingdom, whereon is a new name written which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it. The new name is the key word.[84]

Though all events surrounding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon are not yet fully known, some things seem clear: Joseph Smith discovered a "singular-looking seer stone" in 1822 which not only served as a medium through which, according to numerous descriptions, all of the present Book of Mormon was translated but which also played a vital role in the discovery of the Nephite record. "Urim and Thummim," the traditional nomenclature for the Nephite interpreters which were used as the medium for translating the 116 Book of Mormon manuscript pages Martin Harris lost, has a broader meaning; any mechanism capable of eliciting the mind and will of God can correctly be referred to as "Urim and Thummim." Apparent historical discrepancies between references to the Nephite interpreters and the prophet Joseph Smith's seer stones evaporate once this generic use of "Urim and Thummim" is understood. Whatever the actual device used, the Prophet in 1842 provided the most important insight about his Book of Mormon translation: "Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift and power of God.”[85]

[1] Two excellent discussions of primary sources are James E. Lancaster, "By the Gift and Power of God—The Method of Translation of the Book of Mormon," Saints’ Herald 109 (15 Nov. 1962):798-817, and Robert F. Smith, “Translation of Languages," a 1980 unpublished account of primary sources respecting the Book of Mormon translation, privately circulated by the author.

[2] Minutes of general conference, 25 Oct. 1831, cited in Far West Record, p. 13, Historical Department Archives, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT; hereafter cited as LDS Church Archiv.es.

[3] Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, B. H. Roberts, ed., 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1974), 1:315. Hereafter referred to as History of the Church.

[4] Warren Cowdery, Manuscript History of the Church, Book A-1, pp. 121-2, LDS Church Archives.

[5] Elder’s Journal 1 (July 1838): 43.

[6] Joseph Smith, "Church History," Times and Seasons 3 (March 1842): 707,

[7] Joseph Smith, "History of Joseph Smith," Times and Seasons 3 (May 1842): 772.

[8] Times and Seasons 4 (Noy. 1843): 373.

[9] Harris, a family friend of the Smiths, was one of the few persons outside the family to know of the "plates of gold" prior to their retrieval from the Hill Cumorah in 1827.

Joseph Knight, Sr., close friend and neighbor of the Smith.' s, also knew of the plates: "I went to Rochester on business and returned by Palmyra to be there about the 22nt of September I was there several days I will say there was a man near By By the name of Samuel Lawrence he was a Sear and he had Bin to the hill and knew about the things in the hill and he was trying to obtain them he had talked with me and told me the Conversation he had with the personage which told him if he would Do right according to the will of god he mite obtain the 22nt Day of September next and if not he never would have them. Now Joseph was some afraid of him that he mite be a trouble to him he therefore sint his father up to Sams as he called him near night to see if there was any signs of his going away that night he told his father to stay till near Dark and if he saw any signs of his going you till him if I find him there l will thrash the stumps with him" (Joseph Knight, Sr., untitled and undated manuscript in LOS Church Archives written between the last date of entry mentioned in the manuscript, 1833, and Knight's death in 1847).

Brigham Young in 1855 mentioned an additional person, "a fortune-teller ... who knew where those plates were rud. He went three times in one summer to get them . . . the same summer in which Joseph did get them . . . . He had not returned to his home from the last trip he made for them more than a week or ten days before Joseph got them." (The Journal of Discourses. Reports of Addresses by Brigham Young and others, 26 vols. (Liverpool and London: F. O. and S. W. Richards, 1853-86), 19 July 1857, 5:55. Hereafter cited as Journal of Discourses.

[10] Dean C. Jessee, "The Original Book of Mormon Manuscript," BYU Studies (Spring 1970): 259-78, lists the scribes as Martin Harris, Emma Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Reuben Hale, John Whitmer, and David Whitmer. The Prophet's brother, Samuel H. Smith, is also mentioned as a scribe in the Kirtland Letterbook, 1829-35, pp. 1-6, LDS Church Archives.

[11] Edward Stevenson, "One of the Three Witnesses," Deseret News, 30 Nov. 1881. Reprinted in Millennial Star 44 (6 Feb. 1882): 86-87.

[12] Saints' Herald 26 (1 Oct. 1879): 289-90.

[13] Jessee, "Original Manuscript," pp. 276-77.

[14] Messenger and Advocate 1 (Oct. 1834): 14.

[15] Oliver Cowdery, Defense in a Rehearsal of My Grounds for Separating Myself from the Latter Day Saints (Norton, OH, 1839); also Saints' Herald, 54 (20 May 1907): 229-230.

[16] Reuben Miller Diary, 21 Oct. 1848, LOS Church Archives. Also Deseret News, 13 April 1859.

[17] In Book of Mormon editions from 1830-1920, Alma 37:24 read "directors" instead of the present "interpreters." RLDS Book of Mormon editions have retained the original and printer's copies reading of "directors."

[18] Original not available; cited in William. McLellan letter to "My Dear Friends," from Independence, Missouri, February 1870, of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, MO; hereafter cited as RLDS Church Archives. Reference courtesy Robert F. Smith.

[19] David Whitmer, An Address to AU Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: n.p., 1887), p. 13.

[20] Kansas City Journal, 5 June 1881.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Saints’ Herald 26 (15 Nov. 1879): 341.

[23] Joseph Knight, Sr., account, LDS Church Archives.

[24] The Susquehanna Register, 1 May 1834. Cited in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painsville, OH: Eber D. Howe, 1834), p. 77.

[25] Saints’ Herald 26 (15 June 1879): 190-91.

[26] Phelps was Church printer in Independence, Missouri, and editor of the Evening and Morning Star. He was also publisher of the Book of Commandments and while living in Joseph Smith's Kirtland home, assisted the 1835 First Presidency in compiling the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

[27] William Smith, the Prophet's brother, described the interpreters as "too large for Joseph's eyes; they must have been used by larger men (William Smith interview by J. W. Peterson and W. S. Pender, 4 July 1891, reported in The Rod of Iron 3 (Feb. 1924): 6-7; Saints' Herald 79 (9 March 1932): 238. Professor Charles Anthon, retrospectively recalling Martin Harris's description, agreed: "These spectacles were so large that if a person attempted to look through them, his two eyes would have to be turned towards one of the glasses merely, the spectacles in question being altogether too large for the breadth of the human face (Charles Anthon letter to E. D. Howe, 17 Feb. 1834, in Mormonism Unvailed, p. 17). Though Anthon's account seems exaggerated, Martin Harris relates that the lenses were "about two inches in diameter, perfectly round, and about five-eighths of an inch thick at the centre . . . . They were joined by a round bar of silver, about three--eights of an inch in diameter, and about four inches long, which with the two stones, would make eight inches" Harris read proofs of this article before publication and verified the accuracy of the reporting. (Joel Tiffany, Tiffany's Monthly, June 1859, pp. 165-66.)

[28] Chicago Inter-Ocean, 17 Oct. 1886. Also Saints' Herald 33 (13 Nov. 1886): 706.

[29] "Questions asked of David Whitmer at his borne in Richmond Ray County Mo. Jan. 14-1885 relating to book of Mormon, and the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS by Elder Z. H. Gurley," holograph in LDS Church Archives. Another supportive account is a Whitmer interview recorded in the Chicago Tribune, 17 Dec. 1885: "The plates were never restored to Joseph—nor the spectacles, but a different Urim & Thurnmim—one oval or kidney-shaped—a seer's stone, which he placed in his hat, and, face in hat·, he would see character and translation on the stone."

Whitmer's account is also corroborated by William E. McLellan, an early member of the Quorum of the Twelve: "After the 116 pages were lost Joseph translated the rest of the Book of Mormon with a stone," Saints' Herald 19 (1 Aug. 1872): 473.

[30] The Historical Record. Devoted Exclusively to Historical, Biographical, Chronological and Statistical Matters, p. 632, LDS Church Archives.

[31] Howe, "Mormonism," pp. 24142. The use of seer stones in upstate New York was not unusual. The Wayne Sentinel, 27 Dec. 1825, relates: "A few days since was discovered in this town, by the help of a mineral stone (which becomes transparent when placed in a hat and the light excluded by the face of him who looks into it, provided he is fortunes favorite) a monstrous potash kettle in the bowels of old Mother Earth, filled with purest bullion."

[32] Tiffany’s Monthly, June 1859, p. 163.

[33] Wilford Woodruff Journal, 18 May 1888, holograph in LDS Church Archives.

[34] W. D. Purple's account in The Chenango Union, 3 May 1877, cited in Francis W. Kirkham, A New Witness For Christ in America, 2 vols. (Independence, MO: Zion's Printing and Publishing Company, 1951), 2:365.

[35] Tiffany’s Monthly, June 1859, p. 164.

[36] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith The Prophet, And His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool: Published for Orson Pratt by S. W. Richards, 1853), pp. 91-92.

[37] Fraser's Magazine, February 1873, pp. 229·30.

[38] Martin Harris adds that Stoal's "hands" included "Mr. Beman (Alva), also Samuel Lawrence, George Proper, Joseph Smith, jr., and his father, and his brother Hiram Smith," Tiffany's Monthly (June 1859), p. 164.

[39] The trial, reported in Fraser's Magazine, February 1873, and Chenango Union, 3 May 1877, has long been disputed. But in 1971 Judge Neely's bill of costs for the trial ($2.68) was discovered. This document designates Joseph Smith as "the glass-looker" and charges him with a "misdemeanor" (Marvin S. Hill, "Joseph Smith and the 1826 Trial: New Evidence and New Difficulties," BYU Studies (Winter 1972): 222-33.

Joseph Smith's cousin, Church Historian George A. Smith, was apparently referring to this case when he related in 1855 that Joseph Smith "was never found guilty but once . . . the magistrate, after hearing the witnesses, decided that he was guilty, but as the statutes of New York did not provide a punishment for casting out devils, he was acquitted" (Journal of Discourses, 2:213).

[40] Lucy Mack Smith, Sketches, p. 106.

[41] Joseph Smith Funeral Sermon in W.W. Phelps Papers, LOS Church Archives. In a 10 April 1854 letter to Brigham Young, Phelps, who served as Joseph Smith's scribe in Kirtland, Ohio, states that Gazelam refers to "The Light of the Lord," Brigham Young Letter Collection, LOS Church Archives.

[42] An interesting account related by Joseph Knight, Sr., suggests that Emma Smith's involvement in the recovery of the plates on 22 September 1827 was shown in vision through the Chase Seer Stone: "Joseph says when can I have it [the Nephite Record} the answer was the 22nt Day of September next if you bring the right person with you Joseph says who is the right person the answer is your oldest Brother But before September Came his oldest Brother Died [Alvin died 19 November 1823] then he was disappointed and did not [k]now what todo but when the 22nt day of September came he went to the place and the personage appeared and told him he could not have it now But the 22nt day of September next he might have the Book if he brot with him the right person Joseph says who is the right person the answer was you will know then he looked in his glass and found it was Emma Hale daughter of old Mr. Hale of Pennsylvany," Knight manuscript, LOS Church Archives.

[43] Tiffany's Monthly, June 1859, p. 169.

[44] Cited in Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, pp. 246--47.

[45] Henry Harris Affidavit cited in Kirkham, New Witness, 1:133.

[46] Chenango Union, 3 May 1877.

[47] Juanita Brooks, ed., On The Mormon Frontier, The Diary of Hosea Stout, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press/Utah Historical Society, 1964), 2:593.

[48] Eider's Journal, 1 (July 1838): 43.

[49] Whltmer, Believers in Christ, pp. 31-32.

[50] Cowdery, Defense, p. 229. An important distinction here is that though Cowdery writes, "through 'Urim and Thummin,' exactly as came the Book of Mormon," David Whitmer's description of the same medium refers to the seer stone. Eyewitness accounts corroborate Whitmer's account.

[51] Whitmer, Believers in Christ, p. 32.

[52] David Whitmer interview in Des Moines Daily News, 16 Oct. 1886.

[53] President Brigham Young's estate included two seer stones. His daughter, Zina Young Card, in a letter to her cousin, Apostle F. D. Richards, related: "There is a matter that I wish to lay before you, that weighs upon my mind, and seems very important to me. I refer to some very sacred articles I bought at the sale of my father's persm:1al effects,—articles that never should have been given up to the idle gaze; but being brought out, my mother and myself felt it a wish of our hearts to get them, that their sacredness might not be sullied.

"They are: two sear-stones and an arrow point. They are in the possession of President Woodruff now, and very properly too, but I feel dear cousin, that they should ever be the property of the President of the Church, and not of individuals; that at his demise, they are not retained as they were before among 'personal effects,' but considered ever the legitimate property of God's mouth-piece," Zina Young Card to F. D. Richards, 31 July 1896, F. D. Richards Letter Collection, LDS Church Archives.

[54] Brooks, Hosea Stout, 2:593.

[55] Wilford Woodruff Journal, 18 May 1888, LOS Church Archives. Though the reason for the consecration is not given, Orson Pratt related in 1873 that through the medium of Urim and Thummim, "which the Lord God has ordained to be used in the midst of his holy house, in his Temple . . . books of genealogy, tracing individuals and nations among all people back to ancient times will be revealed," Journal of Discourses, 16:260.

[56] "The History of A Nephite Coin," a personal experience of Elder Richard M. Robinson of Grantsville, Utah, recorded 30 Dec. 1934, LDS Church Archives.

[57] Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1956), 2:225.

[58] David C Martin, Restoration Reporter, 1 (June 1971):8.

[59] High Priests Record, Spanish Fork, Utah, September 1880, p. 128, LDS Church Archives.

[60] Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith to President John Taylor and Council of the Twelve, 17 Sept. 1878, cited in Millennial Star 40 (9 Dec. 1879): 772.

[61] Wilford Woodruff Journal, 27 Dec. 1841, LDS Church Archives.

[62] Elden J. Watson, ed., Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 27 Dec. 1841. Also in "History of Brigham Young," Millennial Star, 26 (20 Feb. 1864): 118.

[63] Jane Manning James Autobiography, p. 19, holograph in LOS Church Archives. Reference courtesy of Linda King Newell.

[64] Lucy Clayton Bullock, Biographical sketch, LOS Church Archives.

[65] Millennial Star, 3 (July 1842): 47.

[66] Journal of Discourses, 25 Aug. 1878, 20:65.

[67] Wilford Woodruff Journal, 19 Feb. 1842.

[68] Statement of 16 Feb. 1874, cited in B.H . Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century 1, 6 vols. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1965), 2:106.

[69] Journal of Discourses, 13 Aug. 1853, 2:111.

[70] ''Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith," Millennial Star 40 (16 Dec. 1878): 787.

[71] David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in the Book of Mormon (Richmond, MO: n. p., 1887), p. 3. Also All Believers in Christ, p. 30.

[72] Whitmer, Believers in the Book of Mormon, p. 3.

[73] Robert Woodford, "Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants." (Ph.D. dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1974), presents strong evidence that section 10 was given in May 182.9 as originally recorded in the Book of Commandments and not in the summer of 1828 as stated in the heading of current editions of the Doctrine and Covenants.

[74] Kirtland Letterbook, 1829-35, pp. 106.

[75] Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:225.

[76] N. B. Lundwall, Masterful Discourses of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962), p. 452.

[77] Lucy Mack Smith, Sketches, p. 126.

[78] Emma Smith Bid.am.on to Emma Pilgrim, 27 March 1870, RLDS Church Archives. Joseph described the interpreters in his 1842 Wentworth Letter as "two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow.'' But Martin Harris described them in an 1859 Tiffany's Monthly interview as "white, like polished marble, with a few grey streaks."

An interview with David Whitmer ('The Golden Fables," The Chicago Times, 7 Aug. 1875) clarifies this confusion by explaining the interpreters as "shaped like a pair of ordinary spectacles, though much larger, and at least haif an inch in thickness, and perfectly opaque save to the prophetic vision of Joseph Smith."

[79] Wandie Mace Journal, p. 66, microfilm in LDS Church Archives. Priddy Meeks, a Nauvoo acquaintance of Joseph Smith, recorded in his journal, Utah Historical Quarterly, 10 (Oct. 1842): 80: "It is not safe to depend on peepstones in any case where evil spirits have the power to put false appearance before them while looking in a peepstone . . . . That is my experience in the matter; aJso the Patriach Hyrum Smith . . . stated that our faith was not strong enough to overcome the evil influences."

Imitative use of a seer stone in the early days of the Church was demonstrated by Book of Mormon witness Hiram Page who, in September 1830, "had in his possession a certain stone, by which he had obtained certain 'revelations' concerning the upbuilding of Zion, the order of the Church, etc., . . . many—especially the Whitmer family and Oliver Cowdery—were believing much in the things set forth by this stone." (History of the Church, 1:110). Doctrine and Covenants 28:11 responded for Oliver Cowdery: “Thou shalt take thy brother, Hiram Page, between him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me, and that Satan deceiveth him.”

[80] Journal of Discourses, 24 June 1833, 24:262-63.

[81] Frazier's Magazine, Feb. 1873, pp. 229-230.

[82] Millennial Star 11 (Jan. 1849): 11-12.

[83] Manuscript History of the Church, 6 May 1849, Church Archives. The Quorum of the Twelve Minutes of this date record that the Brethren spent the "evening in conversation upon many little incidents connected with finding the Plates, preserving them from the hand of the wicked, & returning them again to Cumorah, who did it &c, also about the gift of seeing & how Joseph obtained his first seer stone. Treasures known to exist in the earth of money&, records."

[84] William Clayton Diary, 2 Apr. 1843. Cited in Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah: BYU Press, 1980), p. 169.

[85] Joseph Smith, "History of the Church," Times and Seasons 3 (March 184.2): 707.

[post_title] => Joseph Smith: "The Gift of Seeing" [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 15.2 (Summer 1982): 48–68
Van Wagoner and Walker focus on the seer stones that Joseph Smith used in the Book of Mormon translation process. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => joseph-smith-the-gift-of-seeing-2 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:35:49 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:35:49 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16341 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Joseph Smith, An American Muhammad? An Essay On the Perils of Historical Analogy

Arnold H. Green and Lawrence P. Goldrup

Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 46–58
Since around the time as the martyrdom, Joseph Smith has been compared to Muhammad who was the founder of Islam. Green and Goldrup presents evidence for how Islam and the church are different.

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 17466 [post_author] => 3076 [post_date] => 2018-04-30 19:30:58 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-04-30 19:30:58 [post_content] =>

Analogy is a fashionable device which many authors employ to embellish otherwise bland expositions, and few writers can resist the urge to compare certain individuals with what they regard as legitimate historic parallels. The role of the first president of the United States has become so proverbial that the initial leader of many a modem republic has been labeled the "George Washington" of his country. An even more intriguing example of this practice is the attempt to picture Joseph Smith as an American Muhammad. Although Joseph Smith had been associated with many historical and literary figures, including so unlikely a character as Don Juan,[1] he has been most seriously depicted as a backwoods American version of the seventh-century prophet from Mecca. H. A. R. Gibb, an eminent authority on Islam, recently observed that Muhammad has traditionally been "portrayed as an epileptic, as a socialist agitator, [or] as a proto-Mormon."[2] What follows is a brief review of the development of this analogy, an exposition of its major points, and an attempt to determine its validity.

Growth of the Analogy

The major source of the comparison is almost certainly to be found in the works of pious writers who felt the need to expose Joseph Smith and Mormonism, the exposés usually contending that both Joseph Smith and Muhammad different little from preceding "impostors" and "deluders."[3] A review of prominent heretics would then usually follow the explanation that the Yankee Seer was simply the most recent in a long procession. From the beginning, these lists of infamous frauds often included the name of Muhammad. Joseph Smith's "extreme ignorance and apparent stupidity" were identified by E. D. Howe in 1834 as well-worn cloaks in the "wardrobe of impostors. They were thrown upon the shoulders of the great prince of deceivers, Mohammed, in order to carry in his train the host of ignorant and superstitious of his time."[4] Curiously, a minor source of the comparison may be an utterance attributed to Joseph Smith himself. In 1838, dissident Mormon apostle Thomas B. Marsh formally testified to having heard the Prophet boast that

he would yet tread down his enemies, and walk over their dead bodies; and if he was not let alone, he would be a second Mohammed to this generation, and that it would be one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean; that like Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was, 'the Alcoran or the Sword,' so should it be eventually with us, 'Joseph Smith or the Sword.'[5]

Although this threat was quite probably a mere fabrication by the disgruntled Marsh,[6] biographers often considered it authentic. Henry Caswall in 1842, James H. Hunt in 1844, and W. S. Simpson in 1853 all quoted Joseph Smith as comparing himself to Muhammad.[7]

Soon the latter-day vilifiers tired of their more narrow Muhammad-Joseph Smith comparison and broadened their attack to include a comparison of Mormonism with Islam. C. Snouck Hurgronje has called his tactic "crytomohammedanism." "The Roman Catholics," he explained. "often vilified Protestantism by comparing the Reformed doctrine to that of Mohammedanism."[8] Writing at the request of the Anglican Church's Young Men's Society, W. S. Simpson concluded that Mormonism "bears in many respects a striking resemblance to Mahometanism, especially as to its sensual character, its founder, and its pretended revelations.”[9] Although intended on at least one occasion as a tribute,[10] the analogy was soon escalated by subsequent writers so that by 1851 it had received top billing in two anonymous publications: "The Yankee Mahomet" and The Mormons: The "American Mahomet."[11] In the same tradition, there appeared after the tum of the century Jennie Fowler Willing's On American Soil; or Mormonism: The Mohammedanism of the West and Bruce Kinney's Mormonism: the Islam of America.[12]

The more encompassing comparisons between Mormonism and Islam continued to emphasize the similarity between Muhammad and Joseph Smith: virtually every commentator acknowledged the perfect match, some commentators spoke of a "backwoods" Muhammad and others of a "bourgeois" Muhammad. "The student of Mormonism," wrote ex-Mormon T. B. H. Stenhouse in 1873, "will be struck with the similarity of experience and claims of Joseph Smith and Mohammed."[13] Among the first to be so impressed were such flamboyant globetrotters as Jules Remy, Sir Richard F. Burton, and Wilhelm Wyl, all of whose travelogues became standard sources for subsequent works on Mormonism. Except for Sir Richard Burton, none of these nineteenth-century writers possessed sufficient knowledge of Islam to draw more than a superficial parallel.

After 1900 the comparison attracted the attention of writers who were not only more familiar with Muhammad but who approached the issue with a much more soundly prepared background and thus advanced some hypotheses which deserve careful analysis.

In 1906 D. S. Margoliouth, a pioneering orientalist, was intrigued with the analogy. His important biography, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, contains frequent references to Joseph Smith.[14] Six years later, Eduard Meyer, one of the most respected scholars of his day, published his Ursprung und Geschichte der Mormonen.[15] Though primarily an authority on ancient religions, Meyer was equally fascinated by modern religions. "Of the many new religious movements originating in our time," he wrote, "Mormonism very early awakened my interest, especially because of its surprising and close resemblance to the historical development of Islam" (OHM, i). In 1932 George Arbaugh, despite an introductory acknowledgment that "similarities between Islam and Mormonism have been misunderstood and exaggerated," equated the two religions in his Revelation in Mormonism.[16] Soon after, the comparison received its most exclusive attention in an article by Hans Thimme, a Protestant clergyman and Islamicist.[17] Finally, Georges Henri Bousquet added a better-than-average understanding of Mormonism to his intimate acquaintance with Islam in order to compare the two faiths in several publications.[18]

Certainly, not all of the above examples reveal a similarity in purpose and design in either the Joseph Smith-Muhammad or Mormonism-Islam comparison and therefore do not all qualify as legitimate analogies. Many early authors such as E. D. Howe and Alexander Campbell were more interested in using the comparison to call Joseph Smith an impostor and Mormonism a deception. Nevertheless, such serious students as Burton and Arbaugh, and particularly, Margoliouth, Meyer, Thimme, and Bousquet have dealt with specific examples of similarity. It is primarily in the works of these writers that the analogy receives its most complete development.

Since no one author has touched on all aspects of the analogy, we will present a composite comparison of similarities of personal experience, historical development, and religious cfogrna between the two religious leaders and religions. The significant points of comparison can be listed as follows:

Prophetic Powers. Hippolyte Taine noted the anxiety which in each case preceded the initial revelation,[19] and Margoliouth likened the effect of Muhammad's conversations with Jews and Christians to Joseph Smith receiving "an early impulse from his observations of the differences between rival sects."[20] Commenting on Muhammad's vision of Gabriel, Eduard Meyer observed that the manifestation was "similar to the first vision of Joseph Smith, when God the Father and his son appeared" (OHM, 48). Hans Thimme saw a parallel between Gabriel's visit to Muhammad and Joseph's vision of the angel Moroni. With regard to the sincerity of the revelation, Thimme concluded that "Mohammed and Joseph Smith both felt themselves to be real prophets" ("MI," 158, 159). John Hyde, however, felt that Joseph "imitated Mohammed in his pretended mission and revelations"[21] and suggested that each seer willfully concocted his tales of vision. Pierre Vinçard advanced a bolder and more questionable thesis when he asserted that the revelations of both were caused by epileptic fits.[22] Meyer observed that the "illiterate" Mormon seer exercised the same domination over his assistants, including the much better educated Rigdon, which Mohammed exercised over Abu Bekr and Omar (OHM, vii), and Margoliouth speculated that Joseph Smith convinced the witnesses that they had seen the gold plates in much the same manner as Muhammad convinced his uncle Hamzah that he had seen Gabriel Margoliouth also claimed that both men made only safe prophecies, Muhammad in predicting a Byzantine victory over Persia and Joseph Smith in forecasting the Civil War.[23]

Restored Religion. Richard Burton in City of the Saints said that "Mormonism claims at once to be like Christianity[,] a progressive faith, . . . and like EI Islam, . . . a restoration by revelation of the pure and primaeval religion of the world" (p. 383). Meyer observed that "both Mohammed and Joseph Smith considered their revelations to be in perfect agreement with the older ones, which they were only continuing and supplementing—all being the 'word of God'" (p. 58). Thimme accepted this observation but qualified it by asserting "that both acknowledged the Old Testament and the New Testament as divine revelation, but that they both, on account of their imperfect knowledge, alter the teachings of the Bible by subject additions and arbitrary changes" (p. 159). Finally, Thimme amplified Meyer's observation by pointing out that

the idea of Joseph Smith is that the Old Testament and the New Testament are given to the Old World. But God did not neglect the people of the western hemisphere. . . . Joseph Smith believes, therefore, that he received the divine teaching for the Indians and the white colonists in the states . . . just as Mohammed understood the Koran as the revelation of the divine will for the Arabs. (p. 163)

Sacred Book. After reviewing the historical development of each seer, Thimme concludes that "we can understand also that the products of their prophetical work, the Koran and the Book of Mormon, are very similar indeed" (p. 162). Meyer observed that "Joseph Smith brought forth a Bible for America" while Muhammed received "a Bible for the Arabs," although he judged that "the creation of Joseph Smith stands far beneath the Koran which is bad enough" (p. 52). An alternate view is offered by an anonymous reviewer for Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1851. The writer felt that Smith had produced "a book superior to that of the Arab Prophet; deeper in its philosophy, purer in its morality, and far more original."[24] Ruth and Reginald Kauffman compared the Book of Mormon's "epic force" to the Koran's "lyric quality."[25] Arbaugh debated which volume of Latter-day Saint scripture ought to be labeled the "Mormon Koran," contending that "the Doctrine and Covenants more than the Book of Mormon approximates the Koran's place of influence" (RM, 98n). Bousquet agreed, calling the Doctrine and Covenants "le Qoran du Prophete Joseph Smith."[26]

Material Religion. "While their [Joseph Smith and Muhammad's] first revelations were more or less thoroughly devoted to matters of religious concern," observed Thimme, "their later products are more and more devoted to matters of this world" ("MI," 162). Meyer also noted "that one may follow in the case of both Prophets a progressive degeneration, a transition from a stage of genuine vision to a later stage of purely fictional inspiration (OHM, 56). Both seers defended themselves against these charges of prophetic fictionalism, and herein writers found additional points of similarity. Margoliouth compared Muhammad's boast to a skeptic "that no one without divine aid could compose so well" with Joseph Smith's challenge to William E. McClellin who "endeavored to write a commandment like unto one of the least of the Lord's, but failed,"[27] and Arbaugh repeated the story, identifying an-Nadr b. al-Harith as "the McClellin of Islam" (RM, 87n). Like Meyer, the Kauffmans charged that "each [seer] received revelations when revelation was convenient to his material comfort,"[28] although Richard Burton, reacting somewhat protectively to these attacks on the two prophets' so-called material revelations, observed that though "their exceeding opportuneness excites suspicion . . . of what use are such messages from heaven unless they arrive à propos?"[29]

Sensual Religion. Meyer claimed that "both Joseph Smith and Mohammed used a word of God to settle their private needs and most intimate love affairs," often finding it necessary to "set aside older revelations when circumstances were altered" (OHM, 120). This was later echoed by Bousquet.[30] In interpreting Joseph Smith's revelation on polygamy, Wilhelm Wyl explained that "the prophet needed a religious mantle to cover his sins and quiet Emma." He then compared the incident with a timely revelation permitting Muhammad to marry the wife of his adopted son.[31] “In the case of both Mohammed and Joseph Smith," said Meyer, "the sensuality of their lives grew continually stronger, and . . . the means for satisfying it actually appeared as divine commands" (OHM, 37). Indeed, Charles Mackay remarked that "Joseph appears . . . to have had as great a penchant for a plurality of wives as Mahomet himself,"[32] and Ray B. West wrote that "Joseph saw heaven as a place of genuine reward. Like the prophet of Islam, Mohammed, . . . he saw paradise very much as the Moslem conceived it."[33] Finally, Jennie F. Willing observed that "both systems are polygamous; and promise their votaries a sensual, material heaven."[34]

De-emphasis of Christ. Arbaugh thought that "the hopes of the 'one mighty and strong' [Cf. D&C 85:7] shows how Mormonism can approximate Islam's doctrine of the hidden Imam," thus failing to emphasize Christ (RM, 157). Caswell concluded that, "like Mahometanism, Mormonism possesses many features in common with the religion of Christ. . . . But it has cast away that Church which Christ erected . . . and has substituted a false church in its stead."[35] Mrs. Willing charged that "both give our Lord Jesus Christ a place in the divine galaxy. though in each system the special prophet goes far beyond Him in authority.”[36] Finally, Thimme accused both religions of rejecting what he considered Christianity's most important concept:

that human nature is thoroughly corrupted by sin and that it carries out the will of God, not on account of its power, but on account and in spite of its helplessness through God's enabling grace . . . . Mormonism and Islam both lack this message of the cross. ("MI," 167)

Social, Political, and Economic Community. Both movements, observed Thimme, "claim for their revelation and their books universality. Both, therefore, teach the contents of their message . . . not only in their own country but throughout the entire world" ("MI," 163). Meyer wrote that "Mormonism was to be a new religion for the entire world," and that "other churches were to make way for [it] . . . just as other sects were set aside by Mohammed and Islam" (OHM, 64). John Hyde remarked that Joseph Smith, having become "the chief of a second Medina ... wished to extend the resemblance still further, and aspired to rule the continent,"[37] or as Meyer put it "as Arabia was to be the inheritance of the Muslims, so was America to become the inheritance of the Mormons" (OHM, 57). This implies a a religious community with socio-religious as well as political and economic dictums, an idea first articulated by Bousquet[38] and recently amplified by the French Marxist, Maxime Rodinson:

In both cases we are dealing with a theocracy prescribed by the originator of the religion: God, through his Prophet, legislates all areas of life for a community of faithful which is called upon to become a political and economic entity.[39]

"Mormonism is one of the most boldly innovating developments in the history of religions," added Arbaugh. "Its aggressive theocratic claims, political aspirations, and use of force, make it akin to Islam."[40] Parenthetically, Thimme charged that each faith "uses not only peaceful means of missionary preaching but also holy war" ("MI," 164).

Prophetic Succession. Meyer, mentioning the rival claims put forth at the time of Joseph's death, remarked that "the family was actually pushed aside just as was Ali, the heir of Mohammed, through the first caliph" (OHM, 134). Bousquet hinted at the similarity between the outcome of the respective succession controversies. In each case, the larger, so-called orthodox group ("Utah Mormons" and "Sunni Muslims") retained the elective principle, whereas the subsequent]y-formed splinter group ("Reorganites" and "Shi'i Muslims") insisted on hereditary succession in the family of the prophet.[41] Then "after some warfare and struggle," added Thimme,

the Mormons gave up their old political ideas and accommodated their customs and habits to the general rules of the continental state . . . just as also the Mohammedans in the course of their development were forced to separate their political and religious universalism . . . and to give up the old ideal of a united Mohammedan world government. ("MI," 165-66)

Jennie Willing foresaw this loss of secular power as the beginning of total disappearance. "Mohammedanism is doomed," she prophecied. "It is losing its African and European possessions. . . . Mormonism has also had its death-stab . . . [due to] the incoming of loyal American citizens."[42]

The Analogy Considered

An analysis of the various points of the analogy reveals two types of flaws: outright errors and gross oversimplifications. In the former category, the allegations that Mormonism is unChristian, that Joseph Smith occupies a more exalted position than Jesus in Mormon theology, that Mormon proselyting employs the idea of holy war,[43] and that either Islam or Mormonism is likely soon to disappear are obviously the result of wishful and inaccurate thinking and may be summarily dismissed. Some other points are worthy of comment.

While it is true that the revelations or the Koranic suras which Muhammad received while at Medina are markedly less theological than the earlier Meccan suras, it is not correct that the later revelations of Joseph Smith are "more and more devoted to matters of this world." The later portion of the Doctrine and Covenants, notably sections 76, 88, 93, 101, 107, 110, 120, 121, 131, and 132, contain some of the most important contributions to Mormon theology. Indeed these later writings when contrasted with the earlier revelations appear to be much less devoted to temporal matters. It is equally erroneous to state that Joseph Smith and Muhammad had the same view of Paradise. As Bousquet correctly noted,[44] Mormonism tends to anticipate eternity as an extension of mortality, where family ties continue; but for Mormons, that anticipation harmonizes with their goal of attaining godhood through eternal progression. A concept such as the Celestial Kingdom as set forth in D&C 76:50-70 although admittedly materialistic in one sense is rather far removed from the sensual Muslim ideal of the righteous reclining upon couches in the shade of trees bent low with ripened fruit while drinking from goblets of silver and crystal (Koran 76: 12-22). In all fairness, one must add that this passage is often taken symbolically, although such a reading does not negate the sensual overtones. Further, there is no basis for equating the "Hidden Imam" with the "one mighty and strong." The Shi'i "Imam" or the Sunni "Mahdi" is a messianic figure, prominent throughout Muslim literature, who will at his coming revolutionize the world as well as Islam. On the other hand (except for those in apostate groups), Mormon theologians have rarely concerned themselves with the "one mighty and strong." The few who have, have interpreted the scripture as referring to a future presiding bishop who will "set the Church in order" under the direction of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles.[45] Finally, while some may argue that Christ is de-emphasized in Mormonism, to argue that the de-emphasis approximates that found in Islam where Christ becomes just another prophet is to betray one's ignorance of both Islam and Mormonism.

Oversimplifications[46] constitute a second kind of error. It is perhaps justified, for example, to compare the respective visions of Muhammad and Joseph Smith since each prophet claimed to behold a heavenly personage or personages; but with that, the comparison ends. The forty-year old Muhammad thought he saw the angel Gabriel although he was deeply confused and disturbed until his wife, Khadija, convinced him that it was of God. The Mormon seer spoke of several manifestations, each of which according to him brought clear answers to specific questions. It is also significant that Joseph experienced his first vision at age fourteen, seven years before he married Emma Hale who therefore could have had no influence on his early prophetic career as did Khadija on Muhammad.

It is likewise true that each prophet gave his followers a book. Beyond that, however, it is difficult to draw a precise comparison between the one sacred volume of Muhammad and the three canons of scripture compiled or translated by Joseph Smith. While comparisons between the Koran and the Book of Mormon are especially strained, a comparison of the Doctrine and Covenants with the Koran has some validity.

Polygamy would seem to be a key aspect of the analogy, but here in particular the comparison involves an oversimplification. As noted by Bousquet,[47] Muhammad simply retained (and even curtailed somewhat) a marriage custom familiar to the Arabs, whereas Joseph Smith introduced a new and alien institution into his monogamous culture.

Finally, it would be misleading to suppose that Joseph Smith's political role closely paralleled that of Muhammad. The latter began an empire that eventually supplanted the existing states of the Middle East. Accordingly, some Islamic Iegists held that Muslims dwelling in areas ruled by infidels (dar al-harb) must emigrate to the pale of Islam (dar al-Islam). Joseph Smith served as major of Nauvoo and aspired to the Presidency of the United States, but in practice if not in theory he cautiously remained within American political traditions. The Doctrine and Covenants (101:77), moreover, all but canonizes the Constitution of the United States and admonishes Mormons to respect the laws of any land in which they may reside.

Several comparisons remain which appear to be both legitimate and significant: a period of anxiety; a revealed, ethnically-oriented yet potentially universal religion represented as being consistent with preceding scriptures; an economically cohesive theocracy guided by inspiration through the prophet; and schism over the question of succession and relinquishment of direct political authority. These comparisons, though, are also very general, so much so that they could apply to many religious figures or movements, but when these are coupled with the oversimplifications (visions of angels, sacred books, polygamy, and political power), they constitute in the minds of many a rather well-founded parallel. In order to complete our assessment of the analogy, it is thus necessary to tum from an analysis of content to an analysis of method.

In referring to Joseph Smith as an "American Muhammad," many writers, wanting only to flavor their narratives with a literary metaphor, probably mean no more than that each prophet fulfilled approximately similar historical roles. The only difficulty with such a use of analogy is that biases toward Muhammad seem to crop up whenever praise or blame is imputed. Before acknowledging that Joseph Smith possessed as much "moral courage" as Muhammad, for example, one must first agree that the Arab Prophet was unusually courageous. Likewise, in order to concur that Joseph's actions were "equally as devious" as those of Muhammad, one would have to assume that the Messenger of Allah was a sneaky fellow. Since historical writing is a form of literature, historians are allowed a degree of poetic license. It is only when used for purposes beyond this metaphorical level that analogies begin to be misleading.

One is, for example, a bit skeptical of those who have interpreted parallels between the teachings of Islam and Mormonism as evidence that Joseph Smith borrowed certain dogmas from Muhammad.[48] Richard Burton pursued this theme at considerable length in his City of the Saints. Mormonism, he said, "is imitative to an extent that not a vestige of originality appears" (p. 410). He even retraced the origin of various dogmas, mentioning such sources as the Illuminati and the Druses. From Islam, according to Burton, Joseph obtained the ideas for polygamy and a physical resurrection. The apostolic title, "Lion of the Lord," he added, was "literally borrowed from El Islam" (p. 410). The ways in which these ideas were "literally borrowed," however, were not specified, and it would be difficult to document the notion that Joseph Smith knew much about Islam beyond Muhammad's name. Bousquet and Thimme investigated this possibility, but the latter confessed that "we do not see any traces of mutual influence and formal connection" ("MI," 155).

Hans Thimme, the chief advocate for another vanat10n of the basic analogy, was particularly guilty of faulty methodology. In the words of Peter Geyl, he treated "a mental convenience as if it were an objective thing."[49] He proposed an investigation of "the question of the system or type of religion; whether perhaps Mormonism and Islam belong together as one peculiar type," and he concluded in his summary that as "representatives of the same principle, Mormonism and Islam belong together" ("MI," 166-67). It is for this reason that Thimme insisted on the exclusion of Mormonism from Christianity because of its tendency to undervalue human sinfulness. He thus created for the two faiths a special category based on the idea that neither recognizes original sin—surely an arbitrary reason for divorcing a denomination from its Christian heritage and pairing it with Islam. Thim.me appears to have employed what he called comparative religion primarily for the purpose of sectarian polemics. Reminiscent of early anti-Mormon writers, his special category was simply a device for equating the two religions in order to discredit the one by associating it with the other. Individual dogmas of the two faiths might constructively be contrasted to delineate the similarities and the differences, but no classification of Mormonism can be meaningful which denies its essential Christianity.

In putting the analogy to still another use, Eduard Meyer showed the strong influence of Hegel's idea of the Zeitgeist or time spirit, a dialectical force moving through history and determining the course of events. Although the trend of development is upward and linear rather than cyclical, its rate may vary considerably from region to region. It is therefore possible for similar conditions, persons, and events to evolve in historical circumstances widely separated by time and space. In his introduction, Meyer cautioned that his explanation "will be comprehensive only if the reader keeps in mind the picture of very primitive ways of thinking in the midst of a culture which is highly developed in many of its other forms" (OHM, v). In other words, seventh-century Arabia and nineteenth-century frontier America were on the same "primitive" level, and so the Zeigeist produced nearly identical movements in Islam and Mormonism. This helps explain why Meyer insisted that "neither Joseph Smith nor Mohammed were towering personalities" (OHM, ii). In such a Weltanschauung as Meyer's there are few heroes; there are mainly lumps of human clay molded by the forces of history. In fact Meyer did not undertake the study of Mormonism for its own sake, but rather for what it could teach him about Islam, whose origins were much more obscure. "This new religion grew up during the nineteenth century," he observed, "so that we can pursue its origin and history by means of rich, contemporary sources. . . . The forms under which it appeared gave reason to hope for important conclusions regarding the understanding of Mohammed and his religion" (OHM, 1). He added that "there is hardly a historical parallel which is so instructive as this one; and through comparative analysis both [Islam and Mormonism] receive so much light that a scientific study of the one through the other is indispensable” (OHM, 44).

Meyer's use of the analogy risks violating the traditions of historical methodogy in two important ways. First, it ignores the widely divergent circumstances which separated nineteenth-century America from seventhcentury Arabia. Secondly, it shears both Muhammad and Joseph Smith of their individuality by suggesting, as Peter Geyl put it, "that an identity exists between the processes of history and those of organic nature."[50] Certainly neither Islam nor Mormonism can exempt itself from academic scrutiny, but by intimating that two weak-willed prophets were produced by identical, primitive historical situations and that conclusions about the one can be attributed almost unconditionally to the other, Eduard Meyer was clearly in error. A balanced study should neither ignore the historical context nor compromise individuality for the sake of a facile generalization. For all our emphasis on similarities, we must not fail to recognize important differences.

Mormonism and Islam Contrasted

The final portion of this essay will consider dissimilarities which our writers, so anxious for their analogy to be accepted, have either minimized or ignored. Meyer spoke of "numerous small differences," such as the idea of continuous revelation in Mormonism as against the Islamic belief that revelation ended with Muhammad (OHM, 54). The differences are nevertheless profound. We suggest the following three areas of contrast.

The core of religion is the concept of God, and on this issue the two prophets moved in opposite directions. Islam's most significant contribution was the convincing of a people who worshipped many gods that there was only one God. Although there is some evidence that it initially pictured Allah only as the chief diety (summotheism), Muhammad's faith soon emerged as one of the most uncompromising monotheisms the world has ever known. The gravest sin a Muslim can commit is shirk (ascribing partners to Allah). Muslim writers frequently level this charge against Christians for their belief in the Trinity, although Ibn Taymiya and his spiritual descendants, the Unitarians of Saudi Arabia, severly condemned the popular Muslim concept of tawassul or entreaty through a wali or saint as shirk. Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, not only insist that the Godhead is composed of three distinct personages but hold as well that by adhering to divine principles men can attain godhood (D&C 132:20, 37). This concept led Sterling McMurrin to call Mormonism "a thoroughgoing pluralism."[51] Also, Muslim orthodoxy gradually explained away hints of anthropomorphism in the Koran, insisting that God is outside of time and above human attributes. Conversely, Mormonism teaches that God is eternally progressing but materially embodied. Moreover, Islam views the universe without equivocation as the creation of God, having its origin and its only claim to existence in the divine mind; yet Mormonism holds that matter per se is coeternal with God, who "organized" the universe rather than created it.

The germane concept of man's relationship to God demonstrates a second point of divergence. Religions vary in the extent to which their deity is approachable, and in Islam the gulf between God and man is wide indeed. Allah is unknowable (at least in the pre-sufi period), and even though Sufis can achieve a kind of mystical union with God, no Muslim can ever hope to behold Him. This popular conception of wasila or a special relationship with God was also condemned by Ibn Taymiya as it has been by the Unitarians in their attempt to reestablish the spiritual values and practical ideals of pristine Islam. In Mormonism the gap narrows considerably as it does, of course, in all Christian groups. Men are literally considered in Mormonism to be spiritual offspring of God; and although the Father is presently exalted far above His children, they have not only the power to know Him but the possibility to become like Him. Further, predestination triumphed over free will in Muslim theology so that orthodox Islam views human actions as being determined by the will of God. Yet Mormonism has remained an uncompromising advocate of free agency and of the necessity for works in addition to grace and faith.

Finally, Islam has no clergy, and its theology provides no role for ordained clerics. Despite the development of the 'ulama' or theological and legal expert, there is no central hierarchy which can speak for Islam as a whole. On the other hand, virtually all male Latter-day Saints are ordained to the lay clergy, for the institution of the priesthood is the core of Mormonism and the rite of ordination is considered necessary for individual salvation. Furthermore, the Mormon Church is administered by a highly organized, rigidly centralized ecclesiastical government which can and does speak for all Mormons. It is remarkable that two religions reputed to be so similar should be structured so differently. It is even more remarkable that almost none of those who have compared the two faiths admitted the existence of such obvious differences.

Conclusions

In summary, to call Joseph Smith an American Muhammad or Mormonism the Islam of America is to draw an analogy that obscures and minimizes the very important differences that exist. While two out of every three points of comparison are either untrue or oversimplified, the very analogy itself is an oversimplification. Islam is an umbrella for numerous sects and legal rites that are set apart one from the other as radically as Mormonism is set apart from other Christian sects. Thus in even considering the analogy one must isolate those features that are common to all these divergent sects, and as one will have observed this has not been in all cases possible. Rather than having employed constructively the tool of historical analogy, those writers utilizing this analogy have all too often merely revealed their own preconceptions, born of dogmatic or philosophic bias. However poetic it may be to designate Mormonism as the "Islam of America," the analogy has in the final analysis contributed little to an understanding of either religion.

[1] A chapter of Wilhelm Wyl’s Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and His Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Pub. Co., 1886) is entitled “The Don Juan of Nauvoo.” Hereafter cited as Wyl.

[2] Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, second ed., 1962), p. 23.

[3] Alexander Campbell, “Delusions,” Millennial Harbinger (Bethany, Va.), 2 (1831), 85. Cf. also Campbell’s Delusions, an Analysis of the Book of Mormon (Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1832), p. 5.

[4] History of Mormonism (Painesville, New York: pub. by author, c. 1834), p. 12. In 1831, Alexander Campbell ("Delusions," p. 85) likened Joseph Smith to Sabati Levi, a "false messiah" of the seventeenth century who eventually accepted Islam. Campbell wrote, "We have been thus particular in giving a few of the incidents of the life of this imposter . . . because of some remarkable analogies between him and the present New York imposter." Howe, however, seems to have been the first to compare Joseph Smith directly with Muhammad.

[5] Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1948), III, p. 167n; hereafter cited as DHC.

[6] Orson Hyde, who seconded Marsh's allegations in 1838, had a change of heart the following year and confessed that unspecified portions of the affidavit had been invented by Marsh. (DHC, III, pp. 167-68n; see also Joseph Fielding Smith, Essentials in Church History (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1950), pp. 225-27.

[7] Rev. Henry Caswall, The City of the Mormons: Or, Three Days at Nauvoo in 1842 (London: Rivington, 1842), p. 77; hereafter cited as Caswall; James H. Hunt, Mormonism: Embracing the Origin, Rise and Progress of the Sect (St. Louis: Ustick and Davies. 1844), p. v; William Sparrow Simpson, Mormonism: Its History, Doctrines and Practices (London: A. M. Pigott, 1853), p. 33; hereafter cited as Simpson.

[8] Mohammedanism: Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present State (New York: Putnam's, 1916), p. 18.

[9] Simpson, p. 57.

[10] James G. Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, wrote on Nov. 7, 1842, that the Mormon Prophet "indicates as much talent, originality, and moral courage as Mahomet, Odin, or any of the great spirits that have hitherto produced the revolutions of the past ages." In this case, Joseph himself seems not to have resented the reference, for soon after he proposed to the Nauvoo City Council "that we recommend our fellow citizens to subscribe for the New York Weekly Herald” (DHC, IV, pp .477-78).

[11] The first appeared in the American Whig Review, n.s. 13 Gune 1851), 554-64. The second was published by the Office of the National Illustrated Library (London, 1851). The author of this volume has been identified as Charles Mackay by Leonard J. Arrington in "Charles Mackay and his 'True and Impartial History' of the Mormons," Utah Historical Quarterly, 36 (Winter, 1968), 24-40. 1n a later work Mackay suggested "God is great, and Joe Smith is his prophet" as a formula for Mormon worship in Life and Liberty in America (London; Smith, Elder, 1859), I, 223.

[12] Louisville: Pickett Pub. Co., 1906 (hereafter cited as Willing); New York, Revell, 1912.

[13] The Rocky Mountain Saints (New York: Appleton, 1873), pp. 2-3.

[14] London: Putnam's, 1906; third ed., 1923; hereafter cited as Margoliouth.

[15] Halle: Verlag von Max Niemeyer, 1912; English edition, The Origin and History of the Mormons, with Reflections on the Beginnings of Islam and Christianity, translated by Heinz F. Rahde and Eugene Seaich (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah, 1961); hereafter cited as OHM.

[16] Revelation in Mormonism: Its Character and Changing Forms (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1932; reprinted 1950), p. vii; hereafter cited as RM.

[17] “Mormonism and Islam,” The Moslem World, 24 (April, 1934), 155-67; hereafter cited as “MI.”

[18] ln 1934-35, Bousquet devoted three articles to Mormonism: "Le Mormonism contemporian," Outre-mer, 7 (1935), 150-71; "Une theocratic economique," Revue d'economie Politique, 50 (1936), 166-45; and "L'eglise mormonne et ses livres sacres," Revue de l'histoire des religions, 130 (1936), 219-55. He later consolidated these in to Les Mormons (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1949). More recently, he discussed the analogy in "Observations sociologiques sur les origines de l'lslam," Studia lslandica, 2 (1945), 61-88.

[19] "Taine's Essay on the Mormons," translated by Austin E. Fife, Pacific Historical Review, 31 (Feb. 1962), 51-52.

[20] Margoliouth, p. 76.

[21] Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (New York: Fetridge, second ed., 1857), p. 308; hereafter cited as Hyde.

[22] Pierre Vinçard in the introduction to M. Etourneau’s Les Mormons (Paris: Bestel, 1856), p. v.

[23] Margoliouth, p. 134.

[24] 3 (October 1951), 701.

[25] The Latter-day Saints: A Study in the Light of Economic Conditions (London: Williams & Norgate, 1912), p. 332; hereafter cited as Kauffman.

[26] “L'eglise mormonne et ses livres sacres," p. 232.

[27] Margoliouth, p. 134.

[28] Kauffman, p. 331.

[29] The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California (New York: Harper, 1862), p. 405.

[30] “Observations sociologiques sur les origins de l’Islam,” p. 78.

[31] Wyl, p. 83.

[32] The Mormons, (London, 1851), p. 125.

[33] Kingdom of the Saints (New York: Viking Press, 1957), p. 113.

[34] Willing, p. 4.

[35] Caswell, p. 2.

[36] Willing, p. 4.

[37] Hyde, p. 308.

[38] In 1936, Bousquet wrote, “Au point de vue sociologique, nous trouvons un parallélisme frappant dans l’emploi de la revelation comme moyen de mener une communauté religieuse primitive” (“L’église mormonne et ses livres sacrés,” p. 233).

[39] “The Life of Muhammad and the Sociological Problem of the Beginnings of Islam,” Diogenes, 20 (Winter, 1957), 48.

[40] Arbaugh, p. vii.

[41] "L'eglise mormonne et ses livres sacres," p. 238.

[42] Willing, p. 5.

[43] In making this accusation, Thimme ("MI," p. 164) possibly had reference to the Danites, but this is not clear.

[44] Une theocratic economique," p. 109.

[45] Cf. Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl, The Doctrine and Covenants Commentary (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., revised ed., 1954), pp. 528-30. The emphasis which the "Church of the Firstborn" and the "Church of the Firstborn of the Fullness of Times" put on this scripture may also be mentioned. In this sense and in the spirit of analogy, one might refer to Joel Lebaron as the "Mahdi of Mormonism."

[46] In this regard, we would agree with the conclusion reached by Wilfred Cantwell Smith after comparing Islam with Christianity: "On careful inquiry matters that seemed at first glance to correspond turn out in fact to diverge in subtle and unexpected ways: the more thoroughly one investigates two systems the more apparent it becomes that parallels are only approximate." "Some Similarities and Differences between Christianity and Islam: An Essay in Comparative Religion," in Kritzeck. and Winder, eds., The World of Islam (London: Macmillan, 1959), p. 47.

[47] Cf. Winifred Graham, The Mormons: A Popular History from Earliest Times to the Present Day (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1913), pp. 299–300; and Edward P. Hingston, ed., Artemus Ward’s Lecture on the Mormons (London: Chatto & Windus, 1882), p. 20.

[48] Debates with Historians (Cleveland: World, 1958), p. 154.

[49] "In that identification," Geyl explained (Debates with Historians, p. 152 ), "the human factor is overlooked, and it is with the human factor that history is, above all, concerned." In this regard, Samuel Eliot Morison accused Marxist historians of the "mass murder of historical characters" by treating them as "puppets of social and economic forces." "Faith of a Historian," American Historical Review, 56 (January, 1951), 270.

[50] The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1960), p. 8.

[51] [Editor’s Note: Although this footnote is in the text, there was not a footer footnote provided in the PDF).

[post_title] => Joseph Smith, An American Muhammad? An Essay On the Perils of Historical Analogy [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 46–58
Since around the time as the martyrdom, Joseph Smith has been compared to Muhammad who was the founder of Islam. Green and Goldrup presents evidence for how Islam and the church are different. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => joseph-smith-an-american-muhammad-an-essay-on-the-perils-of-historical-analogy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:36:24 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:36:24 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=17466 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

The Law Above the Law | Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith

Jerry Jensen

Dialogue 10.1 (1975-1976): 84–86
Review of Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith coauthored by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill regarding the trial of Joseph Smith and his brother’s Hyrum deaths. Jensen argues that this book is a mustread for anyone who is interested in ‘Mormon history, philosophy, and the law.’

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“The murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage, Illinois, was not a spontaneous, impulsive act by a few personal enemies of the Mormon leaders, but a deliberate political assassination, committed or condoned by some of the leading citizens in Hancock County." Thus begins the chapter, in Carthage Conspiracy, titled, “Murder . . . by a Respectable Set of Men.” From the beginning it is apparent that authors Dallin Oaks and Marvin Hill have escaped the traditional, legendary approach to the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

For the most part, traditional Mormon accounts of the Smiths' martyrdom do little more than relate the salient facts of June 27, 1844, at Carthage Jail, and label the murderers a "mob." A mob they undoubtedly were that day, but such a constant characterization fosters their anonymity and allows members of the faith, on the theory that persecution is the fate of Saints and martyrdom the fate of prophets, to regard early Mormons as capable of no wrong and anti-Mormons as capable of no good. It is an exploited misconception.

Nonetheless, the leaders of that "mob" were subsequently arrested and tried for murder, in a case scarcely mentioned in Mormon histories. For the first time, Carthage Conspiracy, undertakes an in-depth analysis of People v. Levi Williams and in doing so makes three significant contributions to Mormon historiography.

First, the fact that a trial ever took place at all will surprise some, but the fact that the trial was conducted by a competent judge in a judicial manner, with a good prosecuting attorney, will astonish many. Presiding was Judge Richard M. Young, a former United States Senator, who was "probably the best known and most experienced of the justices of the Illinois Supreme Court." For the prosecution was Josiah Lamborn, a former Illinois Attorney General, who was regarded as "one of the most colorful, successful, and feared criminal lawyers of his day," and who "had a reputation for winning impossible cases."

Second, the fact that the defendants were men of respectability and had notably successful careers following the trial shatters the "mob" concept and the “persistent Utah myth” that the fate of the persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith was tragic. For example, following the trial the most out-spoken anti-Mormon of the day, Thomas C. Sharp, went on to become an educator, lawyer, mayor, candidate for Congress, and judge of Hancock County, where he was "greatly es teemed." Another defendant became president of the Arizona territorial legislature, and another became the United States' Attorney for the eastern district of Missouri. Hardly tragic, and hardly the type of people we generally tend to associate with a "mob."

Third, regard for the law was a fundamental element in the Mormon non-Mormon conflict while the Mormons occupied Nauvoo. Many examples of Mormon political and economic hegemony can be cited, but when Joseph Smith had the Nauvoo Expositor’s printing press destroyed, “this act infuriated the non-Mormons of Hancock County, who saw it as a final act of contempt for their laws." As one citizen expressed, following the martyrdom, "Why be so concerned that extralegal process was used against the Smiths when law had been long dead in the county?"

Details of the trial obviously constitute the major portion of the book. All the while the reader has the benefit of Oaks' legal commentary as he analyzes the legal arguments, explains the law, and criticizes the attorney's handling of the case. For the lawyer and layman alike, it is an interesting treatise.

The theory by which the prosecution had to link the defendants to the murders was conspiracy; for without conspiracy only the man who pulled the trigger would be guilty. But the task of proving conspiracy with unfriendly witnesses in a hostile environment was extremely difficult and not made easier by Church leaders' refusal to help. For the sake of peace not even Apostle John Taylor, one of the two men with the Smiths at the time of their deaths, would testify at the trial, and he went to unusual lengths to avoid being subpoenaed.

This may very well provide a fundamental key to understanding why non-Mormon witnesses seemed to know more than they told, and why the non-Mormon jury voted for an acquittal. "If peace was so important to the Mormons that they wouldn't press for convictions, why should the non-Mormons risk their future accord with powerful groups in the county in order to convict men like Thomas C. Sharp, especially when a conviction would almost surely shatter the uneasy peace in Hancock County?"

One of the highlights of the book is the treatment given the philosophical questions posed by the issues at trial: "What is the ultimate source of authority in a democratic society—who should have the final say?" Should men seek their guidance from a "higher law"—a law above the law? Should "jurors, as spokesmen for the community, enforce the law . . . (or should) they excuse the crime by recourse to a supposed higher law of popular approval?"

Carthage Conspiracy discusses these questions exclusively in the introduction and concluding chapter, providing the answers of such noted authorities as Henry David Thoreau, John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Roscoe Pound. However, the reader is advised to be alert throughout the entire book for some of the most perspicacious answers—those provided by the very participants in the trial themselves. The treatment afforded the attorney’s, defendant’s, and witnesses’ own statements is excellent.

Nonetheless, the book does have one weakness, and that is in the paucity of parallels between the acts of the anti-Mormons and the Mormons. Better perspective to just what kind of people the citizens of Hancock County were facing would have been given had the authors devoted a chapter to similar Mormon acts. If only a scintilla of the evidence regarding the Danites, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Bill Hickman, or the perpetrators of Mountain Meadows Massacre is true, it is quite likely some Mormons, and Mormon leaders, would not fare any better under close scrutiny than do the defendants.

Notwithstanding the above, the authors are to be commended for their analytical approach and the contribution they make to a more objective understanding of Mormon history. In the Preface, they state, "We have tried to look at the trial as a significant legal event in Mormon and American history.11 Though the book will undoubtedly have a greater drawing among Mormon historiographers than strictly American historiographers, the authors' goal, in this reviewer's opinion, has been admirably achieved. First, because they have examined a trial which provides an insight into the nature of law, justice, and civil disobedience, not only on the pre-Civil War, western frontier, but in the American democratic society. Second, because they have provided much new and needed information regarding an important aspect of Mormon history.

For those who like their history salted with a little philosophy, this book is suggested reading. For those who like Mormon history, philosophy, and the law, this book is a "must."

This book has not been the authors' first venture into Mormon legal history. Carthage Conspiracy picks up where Oaks left-off in an article titled, "Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor" (Utah Law Review 9 (1965), 862). Hill has written an article titled, "Joseph Smith and the 1826 Trial: New Evidence and New Difficulties” (BYU Studies, Winter 1972, p. 223). If the authors are open to suggestions for their next book, may I suggest they begin where Hill left off with Joseph Smith's 1826 trial.

Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith. By Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. 249 pp,. $7.95.

[post_title] => The Law Above the Law | Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 10.1 (1975-1976): 84–86
Review of Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith coauthored by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill regarding the trial of Joseph Smith and his brother’s Hyrum deaths. Jensen argues that this book is a mustread for anyone who is interested in ‘Mormon history, philosophy, and the law.’ [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-law-above-the-law-carthage-conspiracy-the-trial-of-the-accused-assassins-of-joseph-smith [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-04 14:38:35 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-04 14:38:35 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=17000 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Governor Thomas Ford and the Murderers of Joseph Smith

Keith Huntress

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Thomas Ford, Governor of Illinois from 1842 to 1846, saved the credit of the state, fought bravely against financial and civil chaos, wrote "one of the two or three remarkable books. written in the state during the formative period,”[1] worked through his last illness in a courageous: endeavor to leave some kind of estate to his children—and is remembered only as one of the villains in a drama far greater than his own. Ford was a perceptive and intelligent man; dying, he foresaw what his ultimate reputation would be. Toward the end of his History of Illinois he wrote,

. . . the author of this history feels degraded by the reflection, that the humble governor of an obscure state, who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years, stands a fair chance, like Pilate and Herod., by their official connection with the true religion, of being dragged down to posterity with an immortal name, hitched on to. the memory of a miserable impostor.[2]

Many judgments of Ford's conduct during the struggle in Hancock County in 1844-1845 have been moderately or severely critical.[3] Fawn Brodie condemns Ford as "weak."[4] John Hay said that he was "plagued by the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet.”[5] Though Joseph Smith himself relied upon Governor Ford for protection, and seemed not unfriendly to a man who, he wrote, "treats us honorably," and "continues his courtesies," the opinion of the Mormons after the Smith murders was strongly condemnatory.[6] The governor was accused of ignoring warnings of the evil intentions of the militia—an accusation certainly correct—and of being party to the murder plot.

It is easy to condemn Governor Ford for his conduct at the time of the murders. He was the chief executive of the state, he was on the scene, and yet the murders took place. But few people realize or realized the difficulties under which he labored. Any full study of the murders of the Smiths must consider the ·society which demanded and condoned those murders, and the conditions, so different from our own, within which that society operated. In that June of 1844 Governor Thomas Ford faced really insuperable difficulties.

In I 842 the state of Illinois was still frontier territory,· facing all the troubles of a changing and expanding society with few settled traditions, financial or social, from which to operate. A series of sanguine speculations and an almost unbelievably rickety financial structure had resulted in a state government that was bankrupt in everything but hope .and name. When Ford was elected governor in 1842,

. . . the state was in debt about $14,000,000 for moneys wasted upon internal improvements and in banking; ,the domestic treasury of the state was in arrears $313,000 for the ordinary expenses of government; auditors' warrants were freely selling at a discount of fifty percent; the people were unable to pay even moderate taxes to replenish the treasury, in which not one cent was contained even to pay postage to and. from the public offices; . . . the banks, upon which the people had relied for a currency, had become insolvent, their paper had fallen so low as to cease to circulate as money, and yet no other money had taken its place, leaving the people wholly destitute of a circulating medium, and universally in debt. . . .[7]

This lack of a circulating medium of exchange is made more vivid by Ford's testimony that the half-million or so people of Illinois in 1842 possessed only two or three hundred thousand dollars in good money, about fifty cents apiece on the average, "which occasioned a general inability to pay taxes.”[8] The Mormons in Nauvoo were continually recording difficulties in collecting a couple of dollars, or even fifty cents, in good money, and Robert Flanders has noted[9] that bonds for deeds and other evidences of land ownership were commonly used as currency in Nauvoo. This simple lack of an acceptable currency made difficult business transactions of ordinary life, encouraged counterfeiting, and made possible all kinds of chicanery.

Another major problem of the state was transportation. The Mississippi was a great highroad, but the interior of the state was a wilderness of trails and rutted lanes. In 1841, on a day when the price of wheat was one dollar a bushel in Chicago, the price in Peoria was forty cents.[10] Springfield is but one hundred miles from Nauvoo, yet the Sangamo Journal for July 4, 1844, a week after the murders of ·the Smiths, reported only rumors of troubles in Hancock County. The railroads and the telegraph were only a few years away, but in 1844 the tired horseman and the mired wagon could have stood for symbols of the state.

The cow-town Westerns of the movies and television have almost obscured the fact that violence was a major factor on the American frontier long before Dodge City and Tombstone. Illinois' history was typical enough. The almost legendary bandits of Cave-in-Rock were eliminated early in the century, and in 1816 and 1817 regulators had whipped and run out of the state rogues who, according to Ford, had included sheriffs, justices of the peace, and even judges.[11] But as late as 1831 a gang almost controlled Pope and Massac counties, and even built a fort which had to be taken by storm by a small army of regulators. In 1837 occurred the better-known riots at Alton. A mob threw into the river the press of the Alton Observer, an Abolition newspaper r published by Elijah Lovejoy. Lovejoy and a member of' the mob were killed in a subsequent clash, and a second press destroyed. At about the same time Ogle, Winnebago, Lee, and De Kalb counties all suffered from "organized bands of rogues, engaged in murders, robberies, horse-stealing, and in making and passing counterfeit money.”[12]

In 1841 in Ogle County a family of criminals named Driscoll shot down a Captain Campbell, of the respectables of the county, before the eyes of his family. Driscoll and one of his sons were convicted of the murder by a kangaroo court. "They were placed in a kneeling position, with bandages over their eyes,· and were fi ed upon by the whole company present, that there might be none who could be legal witnesses of the bloody deed. About one hundred of these men were afterwards tried for the murder and acquitted. These terrible measures put an end to the ascendancy of the rogues in Ogle County.”[13]

One would think that the violence at Carthage Jail in 1844 would have sickened the people of the state, but the conflicts that followed in Hancock County were by no means the only disturbances to trouble Governor Ford. Another small civil war took place in Pope and Massac counties in 1846. The militia of Union County, called in to keep the peace, refused to protect the suspected bandits and left the counties to the government of regulators, who, as always, began by terrorizing known criminals, moved to threatening the suspected, and ended hated and feared by honest and peaceful men.

A party of about twenty regulators went to the house of an old man named Mathis. . . . He and his wife resisted the arrest. The old woman being unusually strong and active, knocked down one or two of the party with her fists. A gun was then presented to her breast accompanied by a threat of blowing her heart out if she continued her resistance. She caught the gun and shoved it downwards, when it went off and shot her through the thigh. . . . The party captured old man Mathis, and carried him away with them, since which time he has not been heard of, but is supposed to have been murdered.[14]

Of Hancock County itself Ford wrote: "I had a good opportunity to know the early settlers of Hancock county. I had attended the circuit courts there as States-attorney, from 1830, when the county was first organized, up to the year 1834; and to my certain knowledge the early settlers, with some honorable exceptions, were, in popular language, hard cases."[15]

All of these citations, and they could be multiplied, show clearly that the murders at Carthage Jail fitted a fairly common pattern. The people of Hancock Countv, of a good many places in Illinois in 1844, were not horrified at the idea of taking the law into their own hands. That had been done before by neighbors and friends, and would be done again. Thomas Ford was trying to govern a state without money, without effective transportation, and with no effective way of rallying public support in areas of the state not directly involved in the Mormon troubles. In a society where violence becomes commonplace, domestic peace must largely depend upon speed of communication and transportation. Local feuds, riots, even revolts, are best handled by forces not themselves directly involved and therefore relatively objective in their actions. In 1844, in Hancock County, the non-Momrons were bitter partisans, and they were judges, jury—and executioners.

We have enough violence, of course, in our own time, with wars declared and undeclared, and with demonstrations, riots, and assassinations. But there are differences. Our acts of violence tend to be the result of pitting group against government of some kind, or individuals against individuals. In Illinois in the 1840s the conflicts were between groups, or between groups on one side and individuals on the other. Today there is a tacit understanding that the government, using the National Guard or the Army, can always repress group violence if it becomes too threatening; in the mid-nineteenth century the central government left these problems to the states, and the state governments were frequently almost powerless or were strongly partisan on one side or the other of each conflict.

III

If we search for causes of these resorts to violence in Illinois, there is no lack of possibilities. Criminals are always with us, quick to take advantage of weakness in government, of unstable currency, of flimsy jails, of poor communications. And common crime is not only harmful in itself; it begets crime through success—and through retribution.

Another cause for violence may well have been simple boredom, with its concomitant yearning for any kind of action. Anyone who reads the letters and records of the mid-nineteenth century is struck by how often a writer dropped whatever he had in hand and set off on some vaguely motivated journey, and by how easy it always was to attract a crowd.

William Daniels, who wrote an eyewitness account of the Smith murders, began his story:

I resided in Augusta, Hancock county, Ill., eighteen miles from Carthage. On the 16th of June I left my home with the intention of going to St. Louis. . . .

The next morning a company of men were going from . . . [Warsaw] to Carthage, for the purpose, as they said, of assisting the militia to drive the Mormons out of the country. Out of curiosity, as I had no particular way to spend my time. . . .”[16]

Daniels, setting out from his home on the sixteenth of June, was a witness of the murders eleven days later, and apparently never did arrive in St. Louis.

Sheriff J. B. Backenstos supplied a list of those whom he supposed to have been active in the "massacre at Carthage."[17] Backenstos was not present at the murders and was using hearsay in these accusations, which could not have been proved in court. He listed about sixty men as ,active participants. Of these sixty, six are listed as having "no business," two as "land sharks," one as "loafer," and one Major W. B. Warren as ''a damned villain"—apparently his full-time occupation·. Out of about sixty men, ten apparently had no occupation known to the sheriff, and ten others were farmers at a season of the year when farming might have been expected to take all of a man's time.

The best pictures of the boredom, the deep inner need for excitement, for some kind of action, are in the writings of Mark Twain. Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a river town close to Warsaw and Nauvoo. One of the most famous passages of American writing, and one of the best, could have been a description of Warsaw, though it was Hannibal that Mark Twain wrote of:

After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then; the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores, with their splintbottomed chairs tilted back against the walls, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep— with shingle shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about the "levee” a pile of "skids" on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them. . . . Presently a film of dark smoke appears . . . instantly a Negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, "S-t-e-a-mboat a-comin'" and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. . . . Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten more minutes the town is dead again and the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.[18]

In Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain shows us a town in Arkansas, but the description, and particularly the bored cruelty at the conclusion, fit into the picture of possibilities for violence in any Mississippi river town:

There were empty drygoods boxes under the awnings and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives and chawing tobacco and gaping and yawning and stretching—a mighty ornery lot. . . . You’d see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs . . . and pretty soon you’d hear a loafer sing out, “Hi! so boy! sick him, Tige!” and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear and three or four dozen more a-coming, and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they'd settle back again till there was a dogfight. There couldn't anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over, like a dog-fight—unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.[19]

From September 1845 until well into the spring of 1846 a substantial part of the population of Hancock County seems to have done little except to harass the Mormons.[20] If only the loafers and poor farmers had been bitter against the people of Nauvoo, the Mormons could perhaps have lived on in Hancock County without very great problems, but the respectables of Warsaw and Carthage made common cause with the "butcher boys.” The new religion was feared and condemned, of course, since any new religion is necessarily built upon a belief in the inadequacy of established tenets, but Nauvoo was also a threat to Warsaw's trade and to Carthage's position as county seat.[21] When it became obvious that Nauvoo's voters were. a bloc to be directed as he chose by Joseph Smith, and when the Prophet declared himself a candidate for the Presidency, the old settlers united against the new. The Mormons, strangers and isolates, had to face a county, a population, accustomed to the idea of violence, contemptuous of government, filled with hate, and armed.

It was deeply ironical that the beginning of the end came with the destruction of the press of the Nauvoo Expositor. In Alton, a few years before, the mob had twice destroyed presses belonging to the Abolitionist Lovejoy. They rioted against the freedom of the press. In Nauvoo the Mormons did the destroying, and the mob rioted for the freedom of the press. In truth, of course, the mob cared nothing for the abstract freedom of the Bill of Rights; it hated Abolitionists and Mormons, and did them both to death.

Governor Ford first became closely involved with the Mormon troubles on June 17, 1844, when a committee of men from Carthage waited on him in Springfield and asked that the militia of the state be called out to keep the peace in Hancock County. There was reason for their fear. The Mormons had destroyed the press of the Expositor on June 10; the very next day a mass meeting at Carthage adopted the following resolutions:

Resolved . . . that we hold ourselves at all times in readiness to cooperate with our fellow citizens in this state, Missouri, and Iowa, to exterminate—UTTERLY EXTERMINATE, the wicked and abominable Mormon leaders, the authors of our troubles.

* * * *

Resolved . . . that the time, in our opinion, has arrived when the adherents of Smith as a body, shall be driven from the surrounding settlements -into Nauvoo; that the Prophet and his miscreant adherents should then be demanded at their hands, and if not surrendered, A WAR OF EXTERMINATION SHOULD BE WAGED, to the entire destruction if necessary for our protection, of his adherents.[22]

Ford, listening to the delegation from Carthage, made the first of three fateful decisions; he would go to Carthage and see himself what the situation was. This was a perfectly sensible thing to do, but it made possible the murders of the Smiths. If the governor had stayed in Springfield the Smiths would not have surrendered; only Ford's personal guarantee of protection persuaded Joseph Smith to ride to Carthage and give himself into custody.

Ford had to find out what the situation was, but Joseph Smith was under no illusions as to the attitude and plans of the mob. When Ford, after hearing the Mormon side of the Expositor affair, demanded that the Smiths surrender to the magistrate at Carthage, Joseph Smith stated the situation very accurately, and appealingly, in a letter dated June 22, 1844:

. . . we would not hesitate to stand another trial according to your Excellency's wish, were it not that we are confident our Hves wou]d be in danger. We dare not come. Writs, we are assured, are issued against us in various parts of 'the country. For what? To drag us from place to place, from court to court., across the creeks and prairies, till some bloodthirsty villain could find his opportunity to shoot us down. We dare not come, though your Excellency promises protection. Yet, at the same time, you· have expressed fears that you could not control the mob, in which case we are left. to the mercy of the merciless. Sir, we dare not come, for our lives would be in danger, and we are guilty of no crime.

You say, "It will be against orders to be accompanied by others if we come to trial." This we have been obliged to act upon in Missouri; and when our witnesses were sent for by the court (as your honor promises to do) they were thrust into prison, and we left without witnesses. Sir, you must not blame us, for "a burnt child dreads the fire." And although your Excellency might be well-disposed in the matter, the appearance of the mob forbids our coming. We dare not do it.[23]

Joseph Smith's plan to leave for the far West, his crossing the river to Montrose, and his final decision to return and give himself up to the law were crucial for his life but were unknown to Governor Ford, who would probably have been best pleased had that plan been followed.

The Smiths arrived in Carthage at about midnight, June 24-25. They were exhibited to the militia the next day, were charged with riot—the Expositor case—and were released on boil. Joseph and Hyrum Smith were immediately rearrested on a trumped-up charge of treason,[24] and were not released on bail; they were committed to the county jail “for greater security.”

At this point Ford made his second crucial decision: he did not interfere in the jailing of the Smiths. In his History Ford gives a detailed explanation which is persuasive as to the technical legality of the charges and of his position, but which has little to do with the facts of the matter and the murderous intention of the mob. The magistrate in Carthage refused to accept bail on the charge of treason, and, without the kind of hearing required by law, committed the Smiths to jail in the midst of their enemies. A different kind of governor might have overborne the magistrate and freed the Smiths, but Ford had been a lawyer and a judge. He felt that, as governor, he was only another citizen of the state, with peculiar responsibilities, of course, but with those responsibilities sharply delimited. "In all this matter," wrote Ford,

the justice of the peace and constable, though humble in office, were acting in a high and independent capacity, far beyond any legal power in me to control. I considered that the executive power could only be called in to assist, and not to dictate or control their action; that in the humble sphere of their duties they were as independent. and clothed with as high authority by the law, as the executive department; and that my province was simply to aid them with the force of the State.[25]

A more forceful and less legalistic chief executive could almost certainly have freed the Smiths; indeed, Ford wrote of the planned trip to Nauvoo on June 27. ''I had determined to prevail on the justice to bring out his prisoners and take them along."[26] If he could have persuaded the magistrate to release the prisoners on the twenty-seventh, he could have done the same thing on the twenty-fifth. But this begs the question. A more forceful and less legalistic chief executive would have been likely, in those times, to have been more violently anti-Mormon than was Ford. Governor Boggs of Missouri would probably not have hesitated to override a magistrate, but neither would he have hesitated to authorize the killing of the Smiths.

Once the prisoners were in Carthage Jail, events moved rapidly to the tragic ending. Visitors came and went; a pair of pistols was left with the prisoners; there was something of the feeling of a state of siege. Ford told Joseph Smith that he could not interfere with the slow—and in this case partial—process of the law. Ford had planned to take the Smiths to Nauvoo if he went there on the twenty-seventh, but on that morning the governor changed his mind— and this was his third crucial decision. He wrote, "I had determined to prevail on the justice to bring out his prisoners, and take them along. A council of officers, however, determined that this would be highly inexpedient and dangerous, and offered such substantial reasons for their opinions as induced me to change my resolution."[27]

It is interesting and significant that in his History Ford passed over this decision as rapidly as possible, did not give the "substantial reasons" of the officers, and moved immediately to the story of the expedition. Had the Smiths been taken to Nauvoo they might have been shot on the road, or they might have been killed in a trumped-up attack in Nauvoo if the original plan to take the whole militia to that city had been followed. That would have meant war. If the Smiths had been taken along with the small company that finally made the journey, they might very well have been kidnapped by the Nauvoo Legion. It is hard to believe that had the Smiths once returned to Nauvoo they would have been willing to come back to Carthage and the jail; they had seen and heard the mob and knew what justice to expect from everyone but the governor.

The rest of the story is familiar to anyone who has studied Mormon history. The governor, having decided to leave the Smiths in jail, ordered almost all the militia to be disbanded. He left with a small force for Nauvoo, where he made a hurried speech to the assembled citizens and exacted a pledge against violence. In the meantime the militia from Warsaw had marched north toward Golden's Point and had been met "at the shanties" with the governor's order to disband, and the news that the governor had left Carthage for Nauvoo and that the Smiths were still in Carthage Jail. John Hay's retelling of the story is probably accurate; his father was with the troops and knew all the men, and the story must have been told and retold in Warsaw:

Colonel Williams read the Governor's order . . . Captain Grover soon found himself without a company. Captain Aldrich essayed a speech calling for volunteers for Carthage. “He did not make a fair start,” says the chronicle [it would be interesting to know what chronicle Hay referred to] “and Sharp came up and took it off his hands. Sharp, being a spirited and impressive talker, soon had a respectable squad about him. . . .” The speeches of Grover and Sharp were rather vague; the purpose of murder does not seem to have been hinted. They protested against "being made the tools and puppets of Tommy Ford.'' They were going to Carthage to see the boys and talk things over. . . .

While they were waiting at the shanties, a courier came in from the Carthage Grays. It is impossible at this day to declare exactly the purport of his message. It is usually reported and believed that he brought an assurance from the officer of this company that they would be found on guard at the jail where the Smiths were confined; that they would make no real resistance—merely enough to save appearances.[28]

And so the men from Warsaw, led by Sharp, Grover, and Davis, and welcomed by the Carthage Grays under Frank Worrell, rushed the jail, disarmed the guard, and murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Governor Faro heard the news when he met messengers two miles outside of Nauvoo; for safety's sake he took the two messengers with him back to Carthage, so that the knowledge of the murders would be kept from the people of Nauvoo as long as possible.

Everyone expected a war. The anti-Mormons had been violent enough, and the Mormons had been accused by their enemies so often of being bloodthirsty outlaws that the accusers had come to believe their own lies. In this case, the Mormons quite typically followed the advice of John Taylor, and kept the peace. But Ford, expecting the worst, felt that he could trust neither the Mormons nor the murdering Gentiles, and retreated to Quincy in a panic.[29] His feelings about the murders he put into a letter to Nauvoo, of July 22, 1844:

The naked truth then is, that most well informed persons condemn in the most unqualified manner the mode in which the· Smiths were put to death, but nine out of every ten of such accompany the expression of their disapprobation by a manifestation of their pleasure that they are dead.

The disapproval is most unusually cold and without feeling . . . called for by decency, by a respect for the laws and a horror of mobs, but does not flow warm from the heart.

The unfortunate victims . . . were generally and thoroughly hated throughout the country, .and it is not reasonable to suppose that their deaths has produced any reaction in the public mind resulting in active sympathy; if you think so, you are mistaken.[30]

Ford obviously foresaw the continuing persecution which resulted in the Mormon War of 1845 and the evacuation of Nauvoo.

How far, then, can Governor Ford be held responsible for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith?

Ford arrived at Carthage on the morning of June 21. He discovered that Hancock County was already at the point of civil war, with approximately 1,700 men of the combined militia threatening to attack Nauvoo, which was defended by the Nauvoo Legion, 2,000 strong. His first act was to place the men of the militia under their regular officers and to get pledges of support from those officers. He then demanded the surrender of the Smiths for their part in the Expositor affair, which was the immediate cause of the threatened struggle. He then asked for and received the state arms from the Nauvoo Legion. After the Smiths were committed to jail, Ford met with the officers of the militia to consult on the next steps to be taken. He disbanded the militia, rode to Nauvoo with a small party, and pleaded with the Mormons to keep the peace. Then he was faced with the fact of the murders.

It seems obvious that Ford's primary concern was not to save the Smiths but to avoid civil war. He felt that he had to push for the surrender of the Smiths partly because of the legal requirement, but also because their immunity from punishment after the Expositor affair made furious the old settlers of Hancock County. He first put the militia under their regular officers in an attempt to enforce discipline, and then, finding the officers as bad as the men, discharged almost the whole militia, feeling that they would be less dangerous as individuals and that many would· return to their homes. He took the state arms from the Nauvoo Legion in order to relieve the fears of the old settlers, and then discovered that those fears were mainly pretended and that the old settlers themselves were the real danger. Ford felt a responsibility for the Smiths—he had guaranteed their safety—but when he had to choose between leaving the Smiths and making another effort for peace he chose to meet what he thought was his first responsibility.

No one can tell what might have happened, but there seems every reason to believe that if Ford had stayed in Springfield and the Smiths had remained at Nauvoo, civil war would have occurred; that if Ford had arranged for the Smiths to escape to Nauvoo, civil war would have occurred; that if Ford had taken the Smiths with him to Nauvoo, civil war would have occurred. He did none of these things, and civil war occurred. The old settlers of Hancock County did not want peace and would not have peace. Hay reports of the Warsaw militia on the last grim march to Carthage, "These trudged . . . towards the town where the cause of the trouble and confusion of the last few years awaited them. . . . The farther they walked the more the idea impressed. itself upon them that now was the time to finish the matter totally. The avowed design of the leaders communicated itself magnetically to the men, until the whole company became fused into one mass of blood-thirsty energy.”[31]

Those writers who have called Ford weak, and who have pointed out, quite correctly, that he changed his mind during those last days of Carthage, have never suggested just what Ford should have done to save the Smiths and prevent the war. The governor tried almost everything in his endeavor to keep the peace; it was not his fault that nothing worked.

The mob wanted Joseph Smith dead and the Mormons out of Illinois. Even after the Smiths were killed and the Mormons leaderless, civil war broke out the next year and the Mormons were finally expelled. The lesson that Thomas Ford learned is given in his History:

In framing our governments, it seemed to be the great object of our ancestors to secure the public liberty by depriving government of power. Attacks upon liberty were not anticipated from any considerable portion of the people themselves. It was not expected that one portion of the. people would attempt to play the tyrant over another. And if such a thing had been thought ·of, the only mode of putting it down was to call out the militia, who are, nine times out of ten, partisans on one side or the other in the contest. The. militia may be relied upon -to do battle in a popular service, but if mobs are raised to drive out horse thieves, to put down claim-jumpers, to destroy an abolition press, or to expel an odious sect, the militia cannot be brought to act against them efficiently. The people cannot be used to put down the people.[32]

Ford failed to save the lives of the Smiths, and he failed to prevent civil war. It is doubtful whether anyone, given that time, that place, those people, could have succeeded.

[1] T. C. Pease, The Frontier State, 1818–1848 (Chicago: A. C. McClurg Co., 1922), p. 316.

[2] Thomas Ford, History of Illinois, from its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847 (Chicago: S. Griggs & Co., 1854), p. 360.

[3] See, for instance, George T. M. Davis, An Authentic Account of the Massacre of Joseph Smith . . . (St. Louis, 1844), pp. 18-19, 32, 39; John S. Fullmer, Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith . . . (Liverpool, 1855), pp. 9–12; Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell . . . (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966), pp. 129, 135.

[4] Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1945), p. 388.

[5] John Hay, “The Mormon Prophet’s Tragedy,” Atlantic Monthly, December, 1869, p. 673.

[6] B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Deseret Book Co., 1962), VI, 565, 609. [Editor’s Note: This footnote is footnoted in the original, but not in the actual text, so I placed it here.]

[7] Ford, History of Illinois, p. 445. The accuracy of Ford’s description is supported generally by Pease, The Frontier State . . . , and in Alexander Davidson and Bernard Stuve, A Complete History of Illinois from 1673 to 1873 (Springfield: Illinois Journal Company, 1874), pp. 465 and passim.

[8] Davidson and Stuve, op. cit., p. 278.

[9] Robert B. Flanders, Nauvoo, Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965) p. 127.

[10] Pease, op. cit., p. 389.

[11] Ford, op. cit., pp. 232–33.

[12] Ford, Ibid., p. 246.

[13] Ford, Ibid., pp. 248–49.

[14] Ford, op. cit., p. 442.

[15] Ford, Ibid., p. 406.

[16] William M. Daniels, A Correct Account of the Murder of Generals Joseph and Hyrum Smith . . . (Nauvoo, 1845), p. 4.

[17] Roberts, ed., op. cit., VII, pp. 143–44.

[18] Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Boston: James R. Osgood Co., 1883), pp. 63–65.

[19] Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1958; Riverside Edition), pp. 117–19.

[20] Hosea Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, ed. Juanita Brooks (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1964), I, pp. 64–117.

[21] Brodie, op. cit., pp. 258–59; Flanders, op. cit., pp. 102, 307.

[22] Roberts, ed., op. cit., VII, 123.

[23] Roberts, ed., op cit., VI, 540.

[24] For declaring martial law in Nauvoo and calling out the Nauvoo Legion. But when Ford arrived in Carthage he discovered that the militia had been called out by the constables. No one ever suggested that the constables be arrested for treason.

[25] For, op. cit., p. 338.

[26] Ibid., p. 340.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Hay, op. cit., p. 674.

[29] An unpublished manuscript by a Mrs. Marsh of Carthage, kindly sent to me by Professor Douglas Wilson of Knox College, gives a quite different picture of Ford's flight from that which he himself gives in his History. Ford was apparently not physically courageous, which may have been one of the determining factors in the whole tragedy.

[30] Roberts, ed., op. cit., VII, 204.

[31] Hay, op. cit., p. 674.

[32] Ford, op. cit., p. 249. My italics.

[post_title] => Governor Thomas Ford and the Murderers of Joseph Smith [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1969): 41–52
Member and non members have criticized Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois for his inability to save Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Huntress was arguing that Governor Ford had a lot of difficulties that he had to deal with at that time. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => governor-thomas-ford-and-the-murderers-of-joseph-smith [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-05-20 23:26:59 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-05-20 23:26:59 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=17659 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

The Psychology of Religious Genius: Joseph Smith and the Origins of New Religious Movements

Lawrence Foster

Dialogue 26.4 (Winter 1993): 1–22
The analysis that follos is an admittedly speculative personal reflection on elements that need to be kept in mind in understanding the psychological dynamics of Joseph Smith's creativity.

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 11738 [post_author] => 2231 [post_date] => 2018-04-10 16:00:31 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-04-10 16:00:31 [post_content] =>

The nature of genius—especially religious genius—is an elusive and controversial topic. Great and recognized creativity in fields such as art, science, or politics has been the subject of extensive investigation without leading to clear and generally agreed upon criteria for assessing and accounting for such achievement. Religious genius, especially the prophetic objectivity. Adherents to new faiths often accept at face value prophetic claims to having had direct communication with the divine, while naive critics and apostates in equally one-dimensional fashion tend to see nothing but fraud and delusion in such claims. Neither approach begins to do justice to complexities that characterize the classic foundational phenomena that noted American psychologist William James explored so convincingly in his still unsurpassed analysis of the psychology of religious genius, The Varieties of Religious Experience.[1]

This essay focuses on one particularly well-documented case of religious genius—that of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, founder of a rapidly-growing religious movement that now numbers more than 8 million members worldwide. Joseph Smith's motivation and the psychological dynamics that made possible both his successes and failures have proven highly controversial, both in his own time and today. Critics of Smith such as Fawn Brodie have often found him opaque and disingenuous. They have speculated that his was a highly conflicted personality with enormous powers to rationalize his own impulses as being the will of God. Devout Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, have often ignored whole areas of Smith's personality and actions, creating an almost unbelievable paragon who could do nothing wrong as he consistently attempted to do God's will. Despite the apparent polarization of opinion, recent scholarship increasingly has seen Smith as a complex figure who nevertheless creatively attempted to come to terms with and fuse seemingly conflicting elements within his personality and his world into a new synthesis.[2]

The analysis that follows is an admittedly speculative personal reflection on elements that need to be kept in mind in understanding the psychological dynamics of Joseph Smith's creativity. I begin with some general observations on the nature of great religious creativity and prophetic leadership, drawing on the work of scholars such as William James, Anthony F. C. Wallace, Kenelm Burridge, and others. The core of the article then presents a new hypothesis about one possible element in Joseph Smith's psychology that might help explain some of his most puzzling and disturbing actions associated with his concerted effort to introduce plural marriage among his followers during the last three years of his life. Finally, I ask whether the hypothesis about Joseph Smith's psychological characteristics may help us in understanding the psychological dynamics of other great prophets and foundational religious figures throughout history.

I

Great religious creativity, as many scholars have argued, always begins with a problem or complex series of problems that the future prophet finds deeply disturbing. To use psychological jargon, "cognitive dissonance” is always present. Individuals who eventually become prophets find this dissonance more disturbing than do many of their contemporaries, and they seek with unusual intensity to try to make sense of both their personal lives and their world. The dissonance for religious geniuses—as opposed to geniuses in art, science, or politics—focuses with unusual intensity on value conflicts and inconsistencies. Ultimately, as anthropologist Kenelm Burridge suggests, the prophetic figure attempts “to initiate, both in himself as well as in others, a process of moral regeneration.”[3]

How does this process take place in the prophetic figure? Anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace has presented a classic description of the way in which new religions—or as he calls them "revitalization movements" originate in a context of high social disorder and perceived stress.[4] Based on a consideration of hundreds of different groups on five continents, Wallace concludes: "With a few exceptions, every religious revitalization movement with which I am acquainted has been originally conceived in one or several hallucinatory visions by a single individual. A supernatural being appears to the prophet-to-be, explains his own a!,ld his society's troubles as being entirely or partly a result of the violation of certain rules, and promises individual and social revitalization if the injunctions are followed and the rituals practiced, but personal and social catastrophe if they are not.”

Wallace observes that thereafter the "prophet feels a need to tell others of his experience, and may have definite feelings of missionary or messianic obligation. Generally he shows evidence of a radical inner change in personality soon after the vision experience: a remission of old and chronic physical complaints, a more active and purposeful way of life, greater confidence in interpersonal relations, the dropping of deep-seated habits like alcoholism. . . . Where there is no vision (as with John Wesley), there occurs a similarly brief and dramatic moment of insight, revelation, or inspiration, which functions in most respects like the vision in being the occasion of a new synthesis of values and meanings.”[5]

One need not accept the value judgment Wallace makes when he refers to such visionary ,experiences as "hallucinatory'' (that is, not literally true) to accept his general description of what happens in such instances as strikingly similar to the case of Joseph Smith. Young Joseph, though highly talented, was at loose ends initially—viewed by some as a pleasant and outgoing ne'er-do-well who spent much of his time hunting for hidden treasure. The series of visions he had in his teens ultimately led to the transformation of his life and the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although surviving accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision are far from consistent on points of detail, such as whether one or several figures appeared to him, they do indicate that young Joseph was deeply disturbed by the competing claims to religious truth that were being put forward in his area. Joseph was bright enough to understand that such mutually exclusive claims simply could not all be true. Eventually he would conclude that he had been specially called by God to introduce a new religious synthesis that would integrate and supercede all previous ones.[6]

All this is well-known among scholars of Mormon history. But what were the psychological dynamics that led young Joseph to see visions and be open to the notion that he was specially called by God to lead the way in developing a new synthesis of truth, and later a new social system, including polygamy? To place this issue into a larger context, let us return to the perspectives of William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience and realize that religious prophets, including Joseph Smith, are in some sense, at least initially, "sick/' "disturbed," or "abnormal." Successful, as opposed to unsuccessful, religious prophets eventually work through their psychological disturbance by creating a new synthesis, but the intensity of their drive always continues to owe something to the magnitude of the problems they feel they have escaped by developing their new understanding of reality.

James is particularly eloquent in discussing the psychology of religious genius in individuals. for whom “religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever." Genius in such individuals, according to James, is frequently associated with "symptoms of nervous instability."

Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychic visitations. . . . Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions. and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fa11en into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence.[7]

James explains how psychological disorder may contribute to greatness in a person who also has a "superior intellect":

The cranky person has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief and action; and when he gets a new idea, he has no rest till he proclaims it, or in some way "works it off" . . . Thus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce . . . in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders. with their intellect. Their ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age.[8]

James also emphasizes that even if religious inspiration may often occur in psychologically unstable or disordered individuals, that fact does not necessarily discredit the fruits of such inspiration. He quotes Dr. Henry Maudsely’s statement:

What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to work by means of complete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particular purpose. It is the work that is done; and the quality of the worker by which it is done, that is alone of moment; and it may be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in other qualities of character he was singularly defective—if indeed he were a hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric or lunatic.[9]

James concludes that the only ultimate test of the validity of religious inspiration is practical—in Jesus' words, "By their fruits ye shall know them." He concludes: "li there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity.”[10]

One final observation needs to be added before we can briefly explore one possible approach to understanding Joseph Smith's psychological states and how they may have influenced some of his most controversial beliefs and actions. The line between health and illness, between normal mood swings and those that might be called extreme, is a fine one indeed. It is often difficult for a contemporary psychiatrist who has worked closely with a patient to make an accurate diagnosis. To diagnose with confidence someone long dead, even when extensive records exist on his or her life, is far more difficult and speculative. The observations that follow are therefore intended to be suggestive, not definitive. These observations will have served their purpose if they open up new possibilities for better understanding aspects of Joseph Smith's beliefs and behavior that might otherwise appear opaque or incomprehensible.

II

My ongoing interest in the psychology of Joseph Smith's religious experience and its impact on his actions has been greatly stimulated by nearly two decades of intensive research as a non-Mormon scholar into the origin and early development of plural marriage among the Latter-day Saints.[11] Initially, I tried to separate my concerns about Joseph Smith's religious and sexual drives, avoiding reductionistic approaches while attempting to make sense of the extraordinarily complex religious and social phenomena associated with the early development of the Mormon movement. Clearly Joseph Smith, like any dynamic personality, can be analyzed using a variety of different psychological and other perspectives. How convincing any one such approach can be as an explanation of what actually made him tick remains highly questionable since reality is always far more complex than any single way of conceptualizing reality can be.[12]

Ultimately, however, the psychological question continued to recur. Why did Joseph Smith feel so preoccupied with introducing plural marriage among his followers during the last three years of his life between 1841 and 1844 that he eventually put many other vital aspects of his prophetic leadership at risk? Was there some hidden psychological key that could help make sense of this seemingly obsessive drive? As difficult as understanding the introduction of polygamy may have been, it ultimately proved not to be the most challenging task. A variety of factors including biblical precedent, concerns for expanding kinship ties in a socially chaotic environment, and Joseph Smith's own strong sex drive all made plural marriage an idea with considerable power for the Mormon prophet in Nauvoo, Illinois, during the early 1840s.[13]

The most intractable problem associated with the early development of polygamy, instead, was something else. One curious bit of evidence simply did not make sense. William Marks, president of the Nauvoo Stake high council and a man of unquestionable honesty and integrity, emphatically insisted that Joseph Smith had said: “This doctrine of polygamy or Spiritual-wife System, that has been taught and practiced among us will prove our destruction and overthrow.” According to Marks, Smith went on to say that he had been “deceived, in reference to its practice,” that it was “wrong,” and that Marks should go to the high council and prefer charges against all who practiced the doctrine, while Joseph would “preach against it, with all my might, and in this way we may rid the church of this damnable heresy.”[14]

Apart from this remarkable statement from a man of unimpeachable honesty, there is evidence from both LDS and RLDS sources that Joseph Smith may indeed have talked about abandoning polygamy near the end of his life. In Mormon Enigma, a superb biography of the Mormon prophet's wife Emma Hale Smith, Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery refer to the minutes of an 1867 meeting within the RLDS church in which a man named Hugh Herringshaw stated that he had "heard Joseph tell the 12 that they must abandon polygamy and turned to Brigham Young and asked if he was willing to do so. Young said he had been asleep. Then Joseph spoke upon the matter as only he could talk denouncing the doctrine of polygamy. Brigham replied that he and Taylor had determined what course they would pursue.”[15] A year earlier, in 1866, Brigham Young had conceded in a carefully qualified statement, "Joseph was worn out with it, but as to his denying any such thing I never knew that he denied the doctrine of polygamy. Some have said that he did, but I do not believe he ever did."[16]

I believe that these and other reports that could be cited accurately reflect the tenor of statements made by Joseph Smith during the last months of his life. If Smith did indeed talk to Marks and to his closest associates among the Twelve about possibly stopping polygamy, such statements are extraordinary in the context of 1844 Nauvoo. For three years, Joseph Smith had engaged in a major, carefully orchestrated effort to introduce plural marriage among his closest followers in the Quorum of the Twelve and other high church councils. He himself had led the way by taking at least sixteen wives besides Emma in a full physical sense during that time. He had put enormous pressure on unwilling associates such as Heber C. Kimball and Orson Pratt to accept the belief and practice, and as many as thirty of his closest associates had taken plural wives under his influence, committing themselves in very tangible form to the new beliefs and practices.[17]

How under such circumstances would it even have been conceivable for Joseph Smith to talk about rejecting plural marriage without forfeiting all. credibility with his closest associates? One could understand why he might have feigned such an intent with an associate such as William Marks, who opposed polygamy, but if he actually spoke in such terms to members of the Twelve who were already living in polygamy, how could such statements possibly be explained? Was Smith, as some of his previously most loyal followers at the time asserted, losing touch with reality during his final months in Nauvoo?[18]

A compelling psychological approach to explaining this and other puzzling features of the Mormon prophet's behavior during this period was suggested to me by a Mormon psychiatrist, Dr. Jess Groesbeck.[19] For nearly two years, I dismissed his suggestion as reductionistic, but gradually the explanatory power of the interpretation came to seem more and more compelling to me. Groesbeck argued that many aspects of Joseph Smith's behavior, especially during the last years of his life, appeared strikingly similar to behavior that psychiatrists associate with manic-depressive syndromes. Although one could understand that any individual under the pressures Joseph Smith faced might have experienced substantial mood swings, in the Mormon prophet's case those mood swings appear so severe that they may be clinically significant. Groesbeck also pointed out that there is substantial evidence that tendencies toward manic-depression tend to be inherited. Although many people are aware that one of Joseph Smith's brightest and most appealing sons, David Hyrum, tragically lapsed into insanity and spent the last years of his life in a mental institution, few realize at least six other male descendants of the Mormon prophet also have suffered from psychological disorders, including manic-depression.[20] The possibility that Joseph Smith himself may also have been subject to similar tendencies cannot be discounted.

What are some of the characteristics of psychological mania, and how do such states reflect themselves in behavior? According to Harold I. Kaplan and Benjamin J. Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/IV:

The critical clinical feature for a manic episode is a mood that is elevated, expansive, or irritable. The associated symptoms include hyperactivity, pressure of speech, flight of ideas, diminished need for sleep, increased self-esteem to the point of grandiosity, extreme distractibility, short attention span, and extraordinarily poor judgment in the interpersonal and social area. . . .

The person speaks more rapidly, thinks more rapidly, or moves more rapidly. The person frequently requires much less sleep and has apparently limitless energy. Many people with a manic illness feel that they are highly creative during these attacks. The reason, in part, is because there is a flooding of consciousness with ideas and associations that at times are imaginative and creative but that at other times are idiosyncratic and of little artistic merit. . . .

Although the elevated mood is often described as euphoric and cheerful and having an infectious quality, it is characterized by an absence of selectivity and an unceasing driven quality. Mania is also characterized by an extremely poor frustration tolerance, with resulting heightened irritability. A manic patient may be quite humorous, good natured, and friendly until frustrated in some trivial way. The good humor then promptly disappears and is replaced by anger and even rage. . . .

The increased activity often takes the form of sexual promiscuity, political involvement, and religious concern. . . .

The manic episode may or may not include psychotic symptoms. The impairment of judgment may not be sufficiently severe· to justify a psychotic diagnosis. Delusions and hallucinations are not unusual. The-context is usually consistent with the dominant mood. It is quite common for the person to communicate with God and to have it revealed ·that he or she has a special purpose or mission. Patients frequently describe themselves as an “organ” of God through whom God speaks to the world.[21]

In the various forms of manic-depressive illness, the manic highs alternate in bipolar fashion with periods of depression.[22] Current diagnostic opinion, described by psychiatrists Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison in their synthetic study Manic-Depressive Illness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),[23] emphasizes that manic-depressive illness expresses itself in an extraordinarily complex variety of forms, on a spectrum of intensity ranging from relatively mild, cyclothymic ups and downs that would be hard to distinguish from normal mood swings to extreme highs and lows that clearly display full-blown psychosis.

At the extreme end of the manic-depressive spectrum, the bipolar I form of the syndrome, individuals feel the full force of manic excitement or depressive despair. During their manic phases, they feel invincible and often do outrageous things. In full psychotic manias, individuals lose touch with reality, experience delusions and hallucinations, and lack any sense of judgment in interpersonal relations. At the other extreme, depression can become so severe that individuals can come to feel utterly hopeless and eventually may commit suicide if not treated.

A milder form of manic-depressive illness, bipolar II, typically involves recurrent depressions alternating with brief "hypomanic" (less than manic) periods of several days to a week or more when they feel mildly euphoric and full of self-confidence and energy.

It is often very hard to determine whether an individual is experiencing the bipolar II form of manic-depression needing treatment or just a normal period of enthusiasm or low spirits, but the recurrent nature of the experience is diagnostically important. In the mildest, cyclothymic forms of the manic-depressive spectrum, the distinction between normal expressions of enthusiasm or low spirits and those suggesting illness is particularly difficult to determine.[24]

III

How do descriptions of psychological mania square with Joseph Smith's actions during the last three years of his life in Nauvoo between 1841 and 1844? To anyone who has worked closely with the records of the Mormon prophet's life during those final years, the parallels are striking. Only a few key elements can be highlighted here, especially as they relate to his involvement with introducing the belief and practice of plural marriage among his closest followers.

Most obvious is the Mormon prophet's extraordinary expansiveness and grandiosity throughout this period. During the last year of his life, to mention only the most well-known examples, Smith served as mayor of Nauvoo and head of his own private army, became '"'king" of his secret Kingdom of God that he anticipated would eventually encompass all of North and South America, ran for president of the United States (that effort was cut short by his martyrdom), and was the "husband" in some sense of dozens of wives.[25] About a year before his martyrdom, he declared: "Excitement has almost become the essence of my life. When that dies away, I feel almost lost."[26] Those who supported Joseph Smith during his last years were impressed by his sense of divine mission and his feeling that he was discovering the very secrets of the universe. Those who opposed him, including some of his previously most loyal lieutenants such as William Marks and William Law, thought instead that he had slipped his moorings and become a "fallen prophet," unfit to lead the church he had founded.

In no area were Joseph Smith's manic qualities more evident than in his efforts to introduce and practice polygamy during the last three years of his life. The point at which Joseph Smith began systematically to introduce polygamy to his closest associates has strong suggestions of mania. As Danel Bachman, summarizing the account by Helen Mar Kimball, wrote:

Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and John Taylor [key members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who were returning from England] arrived in Nauvoo on July 1, 1841. . . . Joseph Smith was waiting at the landing with a company of horsemen. As soon as the missionaries disembarked from the boat, he rushed them to dinner at his home, not even giving them time to visit their own families. Vilate Kimball thought that this discourtesy continued after dinner when Smith brought the entire party to the Kimball home. The Prophet, wrote Helen Kimball, "seemed unwilling to part with my father and from that time kept the Twelve in Council early and late." Helen. said her mother "never dreamed that he was during those times revealing to them the principles of Celestial Marriage" or that her trials were about to begin.[27]

If the initial systematic attempt to introduce the concept of plural marriage among his closest associates bespeaks possible manic enthusiasm on Joseph Smith's part, his subsequent surge of activity with the sixteen or more women with whom he appears to have sustained sexual relations as plural wives (the full number may have been much greater) is even more suggestive of the hypersexuality that often accompanies manic periods. Some earlier writers such as Fawn Brodie, who have closely investigated the evidence on Joseph Smith's plural relationships, have suggested that he was in effect essentially a lusty, good-natured libertine giving vent to impulses that more cautious individuals keep under better control. I have increasingly come to the conclusion, however, as did Brodie upon later reflection, that this argument cannot adequately explain the extent of Smith's sexual relationships and activities. Something more surely was involved.[28]

Clinically significant manic episodes often alternate with correspondingly deep states of depression. Once again it must be noted that many individuals experience mild depression and that such states of mind are not uncommon during periods of severe stress. Whether such periods of depression were clinically significant in Joseph Smith's case remains debatable. That he did have periods of severe depression and discouragement during the last years of his life is, however, indisputable.

One such period was described by one of his plural wives, Mary Rollins Lightner. She recalled Smith saying:

I am tired, I have been mobbed, I have suffered so much from outsiders and from my own family. Some of the brethren think they can carry this work on better than I can, far better. I have asked the Lord to take me away. I have to seal my testimony to this generation with my blood. I have to do it for this work will never progress until I am gone for the testimony is of no force until the testator is dead. People little know who I am when they talk about me, and they will never know until they see me weighed in the balance in the Kingdom of God. Then they will know who I am, and see me as I am. I dare not tell them, and they do not know me.[29]

Although this was recounted many years later, it seems to reflect accurately the spirit of many of Joseph Smith's private statements during his last days, including those in which he allegedly expressed doubts about polygamy. His sermon of 7 April 1844 at the funeral of King Follett may appropriately serve as his own epitaph. In this sermon, he described his glorious vision of men progressing to the achievement of full godlike powers. He declared in his conclusion, which George A. Smith said referred to plural marriage, "You never knew my heart; no man knows my history; I cannot tell it. I shall never undertake it. If I had not experienced what I have, I should not have known it myself. . . . When I am called at the trump of the archangel, and weighed in the balance, you will all know me then."[30]

Here, it seems to me, was a profoundly lonely man, poignantly aware of the inability of the world (or even himself) to understand the underlying significance of his ideas and mission and seeing with stark clarity that he was about to be overwhelmed by forces he had helped set loose but which were beyond his control. Throughout his life, Joseph Smith was painfully aware of his singularity and never able to escape it.

Where does all this leave us with regard to understanding the dynamics of Joseph Smith’s psychology and its impact on his beliefs and practices? It must be emphasized again that the analysis presented here about Joseph Smith's possible tendencies toward manic-depressive mental states is not intended as anything but an hypothesis. It is in no way intended to reduce the mystery—and the greatness—of Joseph Smith's accomplishments. Even if this hypothesis be true, the ultimate question remains not the origin of Smith's genius but the fruits of that genius.

To restate one of William James's observations, "If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity."[31] It may be that only individuals whose inhibitions are bypassed by various forms of mania may be able to convince themselves and others that their insights emanate directly from God or other higher spiritual powers.

It must further be emphasized that individuals with manic-depressive tendencies can be extremely effective leaders, especially during times of crisis. One striking example is Oliver Cromwell, the great Puritan general and leader of England during the 1640s and 1650s, who never lost a battle and who dealt with a host of issues that would have destroyed any lesser person.[32] A related example, Abraham Lincoln, who was subject to recurrent depressive states (though probably not manic-depression), nevertheless showed extraordinary creativity in handling the most intractable crisis the United States has ever faced and has been recognized by both scholars and the general public as the greatest president this country has ever had.[33] And in the twentieth century, Winston Churchill, himself with the cyclothymic tendencies that ran throughout his distinguished lineage, led England to victory over the Nazis in World War II at a time when an individual with less manic drive might well have assumed that defeat was inevitable.[34]

Thus William James's insistence that the fruits of religious inspiration must be considered apart from the sources of such inspiration must be seriously considered. Even if cyclothymic or manic-depressive psychological states may arguably have provided much of the occasion for Joseph Smith's remarkable creativity, the validity of the product of that inspiration must be judged on its own merits. Nonbelievers no doubt will still continue to see Joseph Smith's creativity as a product of his own fertile mind, but devout Saints may equally well see that creativity as an emanation from the divine.[35]

IV

If this hypothesis about the impact of possible manic-depressive tendencies on Joseph Smith's complex religious creativity holds up under scrutiny, does it also suggest any new insights for understanding the creativity of other great foundational religious figures and the origins of new religious movements as well? Although a fuller investigation, both cross-culturally and cross-temporally, would be necessary to establish how frequently manic-depressive states may have influenced foundational religious figures, a convincing argument can be made that such figures have sometimes exhibited behavior that could be described as. manic-depressive and that such a hypothesis may help explain otherwise puzzling aspects of their prophetic careers.

Among the individuals I have studied most intensively who exhibited behavior suggesting manic-depression are Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker movement, and John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the perfectionist community at Oneida, New York. The candid reminiscences of Ann Lee in the rare 1816 Testimonies of the Life, Character, Revelations and Doctrines of Our Ever Blessed Mother Ann Lee, and the Elders with Her, vividly describe how she was subject both to periods of extraordinary euphoria when she had visions of walking with Jesus Christ as her Lord and Lover and seeing glory after glory, as well as other visions in which she felt herself living literally in the uttermost depths of hell with those in unbearable suffering and torment.[36] As historian Clarke Garrett has suggested in a sophisticated reconstruction using contemporary evidence, Lee's untimely death at age forty-eight in 1784 may not only have been due to the physical and mental abuse she had suffered, but also to heavy drinking associated with severe depression during the last year of her life.[37]

The thoroughly documented case of John Humphrey Noyes is even more suggestive of manic-depression. Indeed, historian Michael Barkun, who has worked extensively with manuscript materials relating to Noyes's early life, has argued that Noyes may provide almost a classic illustration of the manic-depressive syndrome.[38] Noyes's emotionally devastating three weeks in New York City in May 1834, for example, saw him swing from extraordinary euphoria and direct self-identification with Christ to the depths of depression in which he was unable to sleep, wandered the streets among down-and-outers and prostitutes at night, and consumed copious amounts of cayenne pepper and other stimulants to try to convince himself that he really existed.[39] Throughout Noyes's subsequent career, though he never faced such near-total collapse, he continued to experience wide mood swings. Whenever serious crises would develop in his Oneida Community, for example, he would go away, sometimes for months or years at a time, leaving responsibility for straightening out problems to trusted subordinates.[40]

In their pathbreaking study Manic-Depressive Illness, psychiatrists Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison discuss as illustrations four other important religious leaders who appear to have exhibited manic-depressive tendencies.[41] Most notable and well-documented of their cases is that of Martin Luther, the initiator of the Protestant Reformation and founder of the Lutheran movement. As Luther himself and his biographers such as Roland Bainton, Haiko A. Oberman, Erik Erikson, and H. G. Heile have shown,[42] he was subject at times to periods of the most profound depression, with even psychotic and suicidal components, going back to childhood. At other times, he experienced periods of exhaltation and extraordinary energy, during which he showed an astonishing verbal and literary productivity.

In many ways similarly complex was George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, better-known as Quakers. Fox, like some other key Quaker leaders such as James Nayler, was subject to extreme mood swings with apparently psychopathological elements. William James, for instance, cites the entry in Fox's Journal when he describes feeling called to go to Litchfield in the middle of winter, take off his shoes, and walk through the town during market-day crying out, "Woe to the bloody city of Litchfield! Woe to the bloody city of Litchfield!" Yet Fox was an enormously capable and level-headed person at other times, and his organizational efforts were largely responsible for the Quakers being the only significant religious group originating during the period of the Puritan Revolution to survive to the present.[43]

Sabbatai Sevi, whose messianic claims convulsed much of the Jewish community of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the seventeenth century, is another figure who illustrated classic manic-depressive behavior, with sharp alternation between days of anguish and ecstasy. Gerschom Scholem's magisterial study of Sevi's life and impact leaves no doubt about his wide mood swings and the tremendous emotional impace of the “frenzied ecstasy” that his associate Nathan of Gaza helped channel into a powerful millenarian movement.[44]

Emmanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist, philosopher, and mystic whose ideas profoundly influenced a variety of movements from nineteenth-century spiritualism to more recent new age and occult groups, also exhibited manic behavior and wide mood swings after his mid-fifties. He began having a series of dreams, ecstatic visions, and trances that led him to spend the last third of his life producing a prolific series of writing, including Heaven and Hell, from Things Heard and Seen.[45]

Beyond such cases, one cannot help speculating that the most influential of all religious founding figures, Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ by his followers, may have been subject to manic-depressive tendencies. Of course, the primary records are so limited and the accretions of interpretation so great that almost nothing can be stated with historical certainty about Jesus except that he lived and had a profound impact on those who knew him best. Nevertheless, if one could look freshly at the reported events of Passion Week, for example, one might at least wonder whether such activities may not suggest manic-depressive behavior. Jesus' actions riding into Jerusalem on .a donkey while ecstatic followers spread their garments and leafy branches in front of him on the road and shouted Hosanna, or scourging the money changers from the temple, when juxtaposed with Jesus' profound depression shortly before his final arrest when he felt that his soul was "very sorrowful, even unto death” (Mark 14:34), "and being in agony . . . his sweat became like great drops of blood falling on the ground” (Luke 22:44), could raise the question of whether something more than normal mood swings may have been present during Jesus' experience as well.[46]

Irrespective of whether any particular foundational religious figure may or may not have experienced cyclothymic or manic-depressive states, the question nevertheless remains how and why such states may contribute to great creativity, especially religious creativity. Let us touch briefly on the question of the relationship between manic-depression and artistic creativity, before returning to the question of its role in religious prophetic leadership. In a recent investigation of the links between artistic creation and mood disorders, for example, psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison found that in forty-two award-winning playwrights, poets, and novelists, rates of treatment for emotional illness (mainly depression or manic-depression) were vastly more common than one would expect in the general population. For example, whereas only 5 percent of the general population had ever been treated for a major depression, Jamison found that 13 percent of the novelists, 28 percent of the poets, 38 percent of the artists, and 50 percent of the playwrights she interviewed in depth had undergone such treatment.[47] Why should this be the case?

At a session on the creative mind at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco in 1989,

panelists argued that at the heart of artistic expression lies the process of change: changes in mood, in perception, in energy levels. "The creative process involves a cycle of disruption and re-integration in response to stress," said Frederick J. Flach. . . . If it is true that the cycle occurs in all of us . . . it is also true that some people—artists—undergo it more frequently. In some of them, the process of re-integration after disruption fails. "Mental illness," suggested Dr. Flach, "is a failure in the regulation of this process."[48]

Even more than in other types of artistic creativity, religious creativity shows what a fine line separates insanity and social disorganization from ecstasy and the highest visionary reorganization of the individual and society. The prophet, as Kenelm Burridge suggests, is both a dangerous and a necessary person, an adventurer who puts himself at risk in order to try more fundamentally than the average person to make sense of his confusing world. As Burridge notes: "It is not appropriate to think of a prophet as reduced in size to a schizophrene or a paranoid, someone mentally sick. In relation to those to whom he speaks a prophet is necessarily corrupted by his wider experience. He is an ‘outsider,’ an odd one, extraordinary. Nevertheless, he specifically attempts to initiate, both in himself as well as in others, a process of moral regeneration."[49]

The result in many cases is only partially successful. Perhaps one reason that prophets so often face martyrdom or early death is that they have attempted to take on too much. Like Moses, they may be able to lead their followers to the edge of the promised land yet be unable to enter it themselves. Just as for every positive genetic mutation there are hundreds that are destructive, so too, I would argue, for every successful prophet there are hundreds of other would-be prophets who fail to realize their promise.[50] And even "successful" prophets often fall short of their ideals. Although prophets' experiences are deeper and richer than those of their followers, prophets, even the greatest of prophets, are not omniscient. Inevitably they are striving toward goals that to some extent can never be fully achieved.[51]

[1] The edition cited here is William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: New American Library, 1958). I am grateful to Syracuse University Press for permission to use some material in this article that first appeared in my book Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons (copyright 1991 by Syracuse University Press).

[2] For an early call to consider Joseph Smith in all his complexity, see Jan Shipps, "The Prophet Puzzle: Suggestions Leading Toward a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Joseph Smith," Journal of Mormon History 1 (1974): 3-20. Especially revealing recent treatments are Gary James Bergera's articles "Joseph Smith and the Hazards of Charismatic Leadership," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 6 (1986): 33-42, and "Toward 'Psychologically Informed' Mormon History and Biography," Sunstone 16 (Dec. 1991): 27-31. For some of the classic psychological reductionist accounts, see Isaac Woodbridge Riley, The Founder of Mormonism: A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1902); Bernard De Voto, "The Centennial of Mormonism," American Mercury 19 (Jan. 1930): 1-13; Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, 2d. ed. Rev. and enl. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 418-21; and Louis J. Kem, An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias—the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 137-43. Marvin Hill, "Secular or Sectarian History? A Critique of No Man Knows My History,” Church History 33 (Mar. 1974): 78-96, analyzes the tendency toward psychological reductionism that is present in Brodie's revised edition. For treatments of Smith as a paragon who could do no wrong, see almost any of the works published by official Mormon publishers such as Deseret Book.

[3] Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (New York: Schocken, 1969), 162. For a compelling example of Burridge's analysis of a single cult leader, see his Mambu: A Study of Melanesian Cargo Movements and Their Social and Ideological Backgrounds (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

[4] Anthony F. C. Wallace, "Revitalization Movements," American Anthropologist 38 (Apr. 1956): 264-81. For the work that most directly influenced Wallace's formulation of his "revitalization movement" theory, see his The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Vintage, 1972). A revealing attempt to use Wallace's theory to deal with the dynamics of American religious history is William G. Mcloughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

[5] Wallace, “Revitalization Movements,” 270-71.

[6] For a summary of some of the major issues involved with Joseph Smith's "first vision" experience and a bibliographic essay on major studies, see my "First Visions: Personal Observations on Joseph Smith's Religious Experience," Sunstone 8 (Sept.-Oct., 1983): 39-43. More recent studies such as Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), have expanded our understanding of the social context of Smith's religious concerns but have added little to our understanding of the psychological dynamics of his religious experiences. For a preliminary listing of studies that could be used to reconstruct the visionary components of later products of Smith's religious creativity such as the Book of Mormon, see my Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 294-97; and Scott C. Dunn, "Spirit Writing: Another Look at the Book of Mormon," Sunstone 10 (June 1985): 16-26.

[7] James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 24.

[8] Ibid., 36.

[9] Ibid., 33. Brigham Young made a similar point in a sermon on 9 November 1856, when he reported how, shortly after he became attracted to Mormonism, he responded to a man who attacked Joseph Smith's character at every conceivable point. Young told the man that he had never seen Smith and did not know his personal character, but that the doctrine was what mattered. "He may get drunk every day of his life, sleep with his neighbor's wife every night, run horses and gamble, I do not care anything about that, for I never embrace any man in my faith. But the doctrine he has produced will save you and me, and the whole world; and if you can find fault with that, find it" (Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. [Liverpool, Eng.: LDS Bookseller’s Depot, 1855-86], 9: 77-78).

[10] James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 37. James’s acute sensitivity to the implications of abnormal psychology for profound religious experience may have been due, in part, to the fact that he had also experienced many of the extraordinary states about which he wrote. See Harvey Mindess, Makers of Psychology: The Personal Factor (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1988), 35-44.

[11] For an account of how my interests in this area developed, see “A Personal Odyssey: My Encounter with Mormon History,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 (Autumn 1983): 87-98. My major findings are reported in Religion and Sexuality and Women, Family, and Utopia.

[12] On this point, see Foster, "Personal Odyssey," esp. 96-97. A rather apologetic example of how Joseph Smith's experiences could be analyzed using the perspectives of Freud, Jung, Adler, Ego Psychology, Erik Erikson, and so forth is T. L. Brink, "Joseph Smith: The Verdict of Depth Psychology," Journal of Mormon History 3 (1976): 73-83. More revealing of the substantial contribution that different analytical approaches can offer in understanding one complex personality is Mindess, Makers of Psychology, 147-68.

[13] See Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 125-46, and Women, Family, and Utopia, 124-33.

[14] Letter of 15 June 1853, printed in Zion’s Harbinger and Baneemy’s Organ 3 (7 July 1853): 52-54. Marks reaffirmed this statement in a letter dated 23 October 1859 that appeared in the first issue of the True Latter-Day-Saint's Herald (1 Jan. 1860): 22-23, and in a letter to Hyrum Faulk and Josiah Butterfield on 1 October 1865, in the archives of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, Missouri (hereafter RLDS archives).

[15] Council of the Twelve Minutes, Book A, 6 Apr. 1865-12 Apr. 1889, RLDS archives, as quoted in Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith—Prophet’s Wife, “Elect Lady,” Polygamy’s Foe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 179.

[16] Brigham Young address, 8 Oct. 1866, as quoted in Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 179. In support of the idea that Joseph Smith may have seriously considered ending polygamy in Nauvoo, it may be significant that he apparently did not take additional plural wives himself after November 1843. Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 179.

[17] For the most important accounts of this process, see Charles E. Shook, The True Origin of Mormon Polygamy (Cincinnati: Standard, 1914); Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma; Foster, Religion and Sexuality and Women, Family, and Utopia; Danel Bachman, “A Study of the Mormon Practice of Plural Marriage before the Death of Joseph Smith," M.A. thesis, Purdue University, 1975; Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1976); and Brodie, No Man Knows My History.

[18] In a profound reflection based on his extensive study of Joseph Smith and his role in Mormon Nauvoo, Robert Bruce Flanders explores this possibility in his "Dream and Nightmare: Nauvoo Revisited," in F. Mark McKiernan, Alma R. Blair, and Paul M. Edwards, eds., The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History (Lawrence, KS: Coronado, 1973), 141-66. On page 152, for example, Flanders speculates that “in 1844, Smith was losing control of many of his affairs, and perhaps of himself.”

[19] Personal conversation with R. Jess Groesbeck in May 1988 immediately following Valeen Tippetts Avery's Mormon History Association Presidential Address1 which was subsequently published as "Irreconcilable Differences: David H. Smith's Relationship with the Muse of Mormon History," Journal of Mormon History 15 (1989): 3-13. For Groesbeck's published speculations, see his "The Smiths and Their Dreams and Visions: A Psycho-Historical Study of the First Mormon Family," Sunstone 12 (Mar. 1988): 22-29. I am grateful to Dr. Groesbeck for sharing with me other unpublished materials he has written about Joseph Smith's psychology.

[20] For discussions of David Hyrum Smith's case, see Valeen Tippetts Avery, "Insanity and the Sweet Singer: A Biography of David Hyrum Smith, 1844-1904,” Ph.D. diss., Northern Arizona University, 1984; Avery, "Irreconcilable Differences"; and Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 288-95. Of the six other male descendants diagnosed as having mental disorders, one committed suicide at about age forty-five after showing signs of manic-depression, and another, who had been diagnosed as schizophrenic (dementia paradoxia), also committed suicide. Documents in my possession from a living associate of the Smith family. Name withheld by request. On 22 May 1993 in Lamoni, Iowa, I corroborated examples of manic-depression in the family with a Joseph Smith, Jr., descendant.

[21] Harold I. Kaplan and Benjamin J. Sadock, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/IV, 4th ed. (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1985), 761.

[22] It is also important to note that some individuals apparently are subject only to depressive states. Treatment of such individuals is handled differently from treatment of those who experience manic-depressive states.

[23] For a recent popular treatment of the subject that is also utilized here, see Patty Duke and Gloria Hochman, A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness (New York: Bantam, 1992). The presentation in the following paragraphs is highly compressed. Anyone interested in understanding the full dimensions of manic-depressive experience, should closely consult Goodwin and Jamison's fascinating 938-page analysis. To an extent rare in medical texts, it conveys the personal dimension of the manic-depressive spectrum, with both its positive and negative elements.

[24] Even with living individuals, diagnosis of manic-depression is difficult because the symptoms can mimic other types of mental disorder. Reliable diagnosis of someone no longer living is even more difficult, particularly if the symptoms are mild. If Joseph Smith suffered relatively mild forms of manic-depression, knowing whether his behavior represented normal volatility of mood or possible illness would be difficult to determine with any degree of conclusiveness. I have, nevertheless, been encouraged to pursue the manic-depressive hypothesis by positive reactions from both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars. For example, Kay Redfield Jamison, in a letter to me on 7 May 1992, responded to the preliminary version of my argument in Women, Family, and Utopia, 161-66, by saying: “[Y]ou make a very convincing case. It has always seemed that Joseph Smith would be a likely candidate.”

[25] For discussions of this period of Joseph Smith's life, see Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Period I, ed. Brigham H. Roberts, 6 vols., 2d ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1948), vols. 4 and 5; Brigham H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century I, 6 vols., (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), vol. 2; Brodie, No Man Knows My History; Donna Hill, Joseph Smith: The First Mormon (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977); Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965); Klaus H. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967); Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma; Foster, Religion and Sexuality; and Bachman, “Plural Marriage.”

[26] Sermon on 14 May 1843, as reported in Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church 5:389.

[27] Bachman, “Plural Marriage,” 179, based on Helen Mar Whitney, “Scenes in Nauvoo,” Woman’s Exponent 10 (15 Aug. 1881): 42.

[28] Although this was the emphasis in the original edition of No Man Knows My History, Brodie’s “Supplement” to the second, revised and enlarged edition in 1971, pages 405-25, increasingly emphasizes theories of psychological disorder in trying to explain the Mormon prophet’s behavior.

[29] Mary Rollins Lightner, Remarks at Brigham Young University, 5, 14 Apr. 1905.

[30] Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star 5 (Nov. 1844): 93. See the letter of George A. Smith to Joseph Smith III, 9 Oct. 1869, as reproduced in Raymond T. Bailey, “Emma Hale: Wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1952, 84.

[31] James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 37.

[32] Both Robert S. Paul, The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964, and Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York: Harper, 1972), convincingly document Cromwell's manic-depressive tendencies. Cromwell's manic-depressive behavior is also discussed in H. Belloc, Cromwell (London: Cassell, 1934); Antonia Fraser, Cromwell: The Lord Protector (New York: Knopf, 1973); and W. D. Henry, "The Personality of Oliver Cromwell," Practitioner 215 (1975): 102-10.

[33] All the standard biographies of Lincoln discuss his depressive tendencies and the problems they caused for those who had to deal with him, See especially James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945); R. W. Hudgins, “Mental Health of Political Candidates: Notes on Abraham Lincoln,” American Journal of Psychiatry 130 (1973): 110; and Stephen B. Oates, With Malic Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: New American Library, 1977). Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 358, note that although Ronald R. Fieve, Moodswing: The Third Revolution in Psychiatry (New York: William Morrow, 1975), describes Lincoln as a “mild bipolar manic-depressive,” “the evidence of hypomania is far less clear-cut than for his serious depressions.”

[34] For discussions of Churchill's sharp alternation between periods of depression and high energy, tremendous drive, and sometimes questionable judgment, see Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1991); John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Touchstone, 1991); A. Storr, Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind (New York: Grove Press, 1988); and Lord C. M. W. Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1966).

[35] Of course, any effort to use psychological theories to understand major religious figures inevitably will be dismissed as "reductionistic" by devout believers. But the manic-depressive hypothesis appears to me to be less reductionistic than many other psychological approaches, because it does not imply any necessary judgment about the quality of the product of the experience. Furthermore, as Anthony F. C. Wallace noted to me in a letter of 4 August 1992 after reading an earlier draft of this article, "One advantage of the [manic-depressive} hypothesis is that it answers, to some degree at least, the tricky question of timing. Why did the prophet have his revelation just when he did rather than months before or later? In a sense the choice of date becomes random, a function of the cyclical mental evolution of the prophet's mood."

[36] Testimonies of the Life, Character, Revelations, and Doctrines of Our Ever Blessed Mother Ann Lee, and the Elders with Her (Hancock, MA: J. Talcott & J. Teming, Junrs., 1816). Other primary sources also make this point clearly. For secondary starting points that suggest these issues, see Ann White and Leila S. Taylor, Shakerism: Its Meaning and Message (Columbus, OH: Fred J. Heer, 1904), and Edward Deming Andrews, The People Called Shakers: A Search for the Perfect Society, new enl. ed. (New York: Dover, 1963).

[37] Clarke Garrett, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion: From the Camisards to the Shakers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 195–213.

[38] Barkun indicated to me that after reading one of his papers on Noyes, a psychiatrist commented to him that Noyes's experiences provided almost a classic example of the manic-depressive syndrome. See Michael Barkun, '"The Wind Sweeping Over the Country': John Humphrey Noyes and the Rise of Millerism," in Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, eds., The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1987), 153-72; and “The Visionary Experiences of John Hymphrey Noyes,” Psychohistory Review 16 (Spring 1988): 313–34.

[39] John Humphrey Noyes's graphic description of the episode was published in his Confessions of John H. Noyes. Part I: Confession of Religious Experience, Including a History of Modern Perfectionism (Oneida Reserve, NY: Leonard, 1849). For other primary evidence relating to his extremes of emotion, see the edited collections by George Wallingford Noyes, Religious Experience of John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community (New York: Macmillan, 1923), and John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community (New York: Macmillan, 1923), and John Humphrey Noyes: The Putney Community (Oneida, NY: By the Author, 1931). The most relevant secondary studies of Noyes are Robert Allerton Parker, A Yankee Saint: John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935), and Robert David Thomas, The Man Who Would Be Perfect: John Humphrey Noyes and the Utopian Impulse (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977).

[40] One of the reasons for Noyes's success in staying in control of the Oneida Community throughout virtually its entire existence was his willingness to step aside during periods of crisis until his loyal associates were able to resolve major problems by appealing to his authority and principles in his absence. If such flexibility were more common among charismatic figures, perhaps fewer of them would be killed or deposed.

[41] Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 360-63.

[42] Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: New America Library, orig. ed. 1950); Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New York: Image, 1992); Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1962); and H. G. Haile, Luther: An Experiment in Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

[43] James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 25-26. For similar examples, see The Journal of George Fox, rev. ed. by John L. Nickalls (London: Religious Society of Friends, 1975). Tendencies toward emotional excess among early Quakers are thoroughly documented in standard scholarly treatments of the movement, including William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism, 2d ed. rev. by Henry J. Cadbury (York, England: William Sessions Limited, 1970), and John Punchon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers (London: Quaker Home Service, 1984).

[44] Gerschom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, trans. R. J. Zwi Wesblowsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). On page 126 Scholem describes Sevi's symptoms, "with almost absolute certainty," as "manic-depressive."

[45] Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 362-63, present evidence that Swedenborg's major visionary experience at age fifty-six was associated with an attack of acute mania. For vivid descriptions of Swedenborg's role as a seer and his subsequent impact, see Slater Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism (New York: Pocket Books, 1972); J. Stillson Judah, The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967); and Colin Wilson, The Occult (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).

[46] Many scholars have been unwilling to deal frankly with early Christianity using the same criteria they apply to the analysis of other religious movements. Jesus, in particular, is always treated as sui generis. If Jesus and some other figure are reported to have done something descriptively similar, the framework used for analysis often is quite different.

A case in point relates t-o the Quaker James Nayler. Scholars readily agree that psychological excess characterized his behavior on 24 October 1656 when he rode into Bristol while followers sang and chanted, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel," and spread their garments before him. Nayler, one of the most eloquent of the early Quaker leaders, was punished for his "blasphemy" by brutal whipping, imprisonment, and having his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron before saying, shortly prior to his death: "There is a spirit which I feel, which delights to do no evil nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things in hope to enjoy its own in the end." For a detailed analysis of this episode, see the chapter on "Nayler's Fall" in Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, 241-78.

If orthodox Christianity asserts that Jesus must be viewed as both "wholly man" and "wholly God," then perhaps scholars should at least consider whether the full complexity of human psychological dynamics, with both its heights and depths, may not have characterized his life as well.

[47] Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 1989, A2, A6, based on Kay Redfield Jamison, "Mood Disorders and Patterns of Creativity in British Writers and Artists," Psychiatry 52 (May 1989): 125-34. Also see Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 332-56, and Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993). Ibid., 240-6, raises the question whether treatment of manic-depressive disorders may inhibit some forms of great creativity. As with almost every aspect of manic-depressive illness, there are no simple answers. Also see Kay R. Jamison et al., “Clouds and Silver Linings: Positive Experiences Associated with Primary Affective Disorders,” American Journal of Psychiatry 137 (Feb. 1980): 198-202.

[48] Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 1989, A6.

[49] Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth, 162.

[50] A recent analysis, for example, argues that many of the post-World War II problems of the Bruderhoff religious movement were due to the depressive tendencies of Heine Arnold, who led the group from 1957 to 1982. Julius Rubin, "The Society Syndrome: Depressive Illness and Conversion Crisis in a Christian Fundamentalist Sect," KIT Newsletter 5 (Mar. 1993): 6–8. Rubin’s larger study Forsaken by God: Religious Melancholy and the Protestant Experience in America is scheduled for publication by Oxford University Press in fall 1993.

[51] This point, which is central to my analysis of religious leadership, is also developed in my article "James J. Strang: The Prophet Who Failed," Church History 50 (June 1981): 182-192, and in Religion and Sexuality, 245-47.

[post_title] => The Psychology of Religious Genius: Joseph Smith and the Origins of New Religious Movements [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 26.4 (Winter 1993): 1–22
The analysis that follos is an admittedly speculative personal reflection on elements that need to be kept in mind in understanding the psychological dynamics of Joseph Smith's creativity. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-psychology-of-religious-genius-joseph-smith-and-the-origins-of-new-religious-movements [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:38:04 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:38:04 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11738 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith

Edgar C. Snow, Jr.

Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 233–247
Snow puts Joseph Smith squarely within Joseph Campbell’s famous work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is also known as the heroes journey.

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 11642 [post_author] => 2660 [post_date] => 2018-04-09 03:46:11 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-04-09 03:46:11 [post_content] =>

In the spring of 1985 I received a telephone call from my local stake high councilor requesting that I give a talk to the Stake Aaronic Priesthood around a campfire at an annual stake camping trip. He wanted me to talk about Joseph Smith or the restoration of the priesthood. I accepted. At the time I was reading Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism with great interest and a heightened sense of the adventure of the Smith family in bringing forth the Book of Mormon.

I soon discovered that a campfire surrounded by twelve-to-eighteenyear-old boys was not the place for profound statements about the doctrines of the priesthood or the achievements of Joseph Smith. Rather I realized that adventure stories from Joseph's life held the attention of these young men in the midst of hooting owls, a blazing fire, and thoughts of nighttime escapades.

While standing in front of a crackling fire, I told many tales, including the discovery of the golden plates, the escape from Liberty Jail, and the shootout at the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. To my amazement these stories became magical spells holding the gaze of all present. I felt somehow during this ritual of storytelling that we became one organism much the same way a congregation may feel spiritual oneness during a church conference while standing in unison singing 11We Thank Thee, 0 God, for a Prophet." Instead of producing a "near-death experience" for the Stake Aaronic Priesthood, youth as well as their leaders, by talking theology, a "near-life experience" occurred when I told stories.

That these stories had such a life-affirming effect should not have surprised me. I remember as a Mormon youth preferring story over theology. I also remember as a missionary receiving a group letter from my home ward Primary; one little girl told me to "Be sure and bring home some good missionary stories." That telling such stories is what Mormonism at its heart may be—and should be—is further evidenced by recent papers given at Sunstone symposia: Richard Bushman's "The Stories of Our Lives: Narrative and Belief In Mormondom" (Washington, D.C., 1990) and Eugene England's “Book of Mormon Conversion Narratives, or Why We Should Stop Doing Theology and Tell Each Other Stories" (Salt Lake City, 1990). My purpose in this essay is to suggest one of many possible approaches to Joseph Smith and Mormonism, namely, Joseph as a faith-story Hero and as disseminator of Hero faith-stories. I rely on Joseph Campbell’s popular Jungian Hero model from The Hero with a Thousand Faces[1] with slight modifications.[2]

When I use the term "faith-story,"[3] I refer to the term "myth." When once asked whether a myth is a lie, Joseph Campbell replied that a myth is a metaphor.[4] He explained that myth functions as a metaphor because myths are told, believed, and lived not because of their historical veracity, but because of their poetic power to reconcile us to the mysteries of existence and awaken our own inner spiritual potential. They accomplish this by explaining transcendent truths—difficult to articulate—in the form of a story and/or a ritual which is not only easy to articulate, but which explains the ineffable through tangible symbols.[5] Therefore, exploring the mythological Joseph Smith has nothing to do with proving or disproving the actual events of his historical life. Rather it has a lot to do with exploring the stories told about him and by him and their use and meanings. That Joseph is an actual historical figure should not detract from the power of the myths he lived and those told about him any more than Abraham Lincoln's or John Kennedy's historical reality detracts from the myths they lived and which were created from their lives.[6] I acknowledge the contributions regarding myth previously made by students of Mormon thought and history[7] and hope that my comments may further efforts to understand and appreciate the power of myth in our shared religious tradition.

Before looking at the Joseph Smith story and Mormonism as Hero myths, it is necessary to set forth the elements contained in the Campbell model of the Hero myth.

The Hero Model

Campbell summarizes the elements of the Hero myth as follows:

The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return. . . . The mythological hero, setting forth from his commonday hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hem may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strange]y intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him—his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).[8]

According to Campbell, the Hero myth awakens in listeners the untapped powers of the unconscious. The Hero represents everyone in his or her individual quest for personal identity and happiness. The Hero may in fact be an actual explorer who discovers a new world or a legendary character who discovers an imaginary world. For Campbell heroes symbolically discover the inner world of their own psyche and invite listeners to follow their own call to adventure. The Hero's call is a call to leave the ordinary world to seek an authentic life. The trials are our inner fears of self-discovery. The boon recovered is the wholeness of our soul. Our return to the ordinary world with a self-actuated soul inspires others to make their own journey.

The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon

The version of the story early Mormons told of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon as reconstructed by D. Michael Quinn and others[9] works as a powerful myth of the Herds journey, calling each listener on his and her own spiritual adventure. I rely on Quinn's reconstructed version for this reason, as well as because it is probably more accurate history in most respects. Current trends in the LOS church to de-emphasize Joseph Smith[10] may reflect the inability of a de-mythologized Joseph Smith story to inspire[11] as much as reflect our attempts to placate criticisms of "Joseph worship." Lest my essay be construed as "Joseph worship," let me say that emphasizing the Joseph Smith story for its mythic qualities does not necessarily present a deified view of Joseph, nor does it replace the worship of Jesus Christ.

Separation

The Call to Adventure

According to the Campbell Hero model, all heroes face a moment of awesome portent in which they realize the signs of their vocation as Hero in a call to ad venture. The call to ad venture for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is the visitation of Moroni to Joseph. On Sunday night, 21 September 1823, apparently after an unsuccessful attempt at treasure digging, Joseph prayed in his room with the express purpose to communicate with a divine messenger, perhaps using his seer stone and the Smith family magic amulets and parchments in connection with his prayer. His major concern seemed to have been to obtain forgiveness of sins, perhaps so that he might once again meet the purity standards required of a seer and thereby obtain success with another attempt to find treasure.

Joseph's room filled with light revealing the presence of a divine being who referred to himself as Moroni. Moroni's message, delivered three times that evening, was that Joseph had been called of God to undertake a task of tremendous importance such that his name would be had for good and ill among all nations of the earth. Joseph was called to retrieve a set of golden plates from a hill known as Cumorah[12] near his home and translate the record for the benefit of humankind. Supernatural aids were hidden with the plates to help Joseph complete the ordeal of translation. He was told he would be tempted by his own indigent circumstances and past experience to obtain the treasure for his own gain, but that he was to withstand this temptation and follow all instructions given him to obtain the plates. In vision, Joseph saw the exact spot where the plates lay in the hill.

Supernatural Aid

Heroes typically find that the gods provide them with certain unsuspected supernatural aids to assist them in their adventure. The supernatural aids unsuspected supernatural aids to assist them in their adventure. The supernatural aids given to Joseph in the pursuit of the golden plates and its translation may have been the Smith family amulets and parchments, the seer stone he had previously found while digging for a neighbor's well, and the interpreters found with the plates. The seer stone had enabled Joseph to venture forward in his vocation as neighborhood seer and treasure hunter and thereby aided him in his quest for the golden plates.

Threshold of Adventure

The day after Moroni's visit, Joseph went to the forested hill Cumorah he had seen in a vision and found, with the help of his seer stone, the spot where the plates were buried under a stone. Both the forest and mountains/hills are appropriate adventure encounter realms and are consistently used for that purpose in myth, according to Campbell.[13] The dark depths of forests and visionary heights of mountains and hills provide a glimpse of the risky path of the Hero into forbidden areas of the psyche and the potential vision acquired after such a quest.[14]

Initiation

Road of Trials

Upon finding the location of the plates, Joseph likely drew a magic circle around the stone with the ceremonial Smith family dagger and consulted his amulets and parchments. With a long branch Joseph lifted the stone to find the golden plates glistening in a stone box along with the interpreters (Urim and Thummim), a large breastplate, the sword of Laban, and the Liahona-the holy relics of ancient Nephite kings. Joseph's astonishment was matched only by his fear at actually uncovering such a treasure. He reached for the plates three times but was unable to grasp them. He cried out, "Why can't I obtain this book?" Joseph had heard of the enchantment which guarded such treasures but was surprised at his inability to remove the plates. Moroni appeared suddenly from the stone box, perhaps appearing from the form of a toad or some other amphibian,[15] and shocked or struck Joseph, rebuking him for desiring the plates for riches and for failing to keep God's commandments.[16] Campbell's comparative mythological and dream motif analysis indicate that the toad/dragon symbol may in fact represent Joseph's encounter with the fearful guardians of his own psychic recesses and that the golden plates as a symbol may in fact represent Joseph's own soul potentialities which can only be obtained after surviving heroic trials.[17] Moroni also assumes a dual role of guardian presence in this story and mentor figure in successive visits to the hill.

Moroni indicated that Joseph could try to obtain the plates the same date the next year if he brought his brother Alvin with him. Joseph had failed his first trial to overcome greed, but anxiously awaited his next opportunity.

Joseph's family believed his story and took great interest in his adventure. Joseph's former treasure-hunting partners (Moroni had told Joseph to leave their employ) and some of his neighbors also believed his story. His older brother Alvin was especially anxious about the plates because of the role he might play in obtaining them. Two months later, however, Alvin died. His last words were to Joseph: "Do everything that lies in your power to obtain the Record. Be faithful in receiving instruction, and in keeping every commandment that is given you. Your brother Alvin must leave you." Alvin's loss was great because of the love the Smiths felt for him as well as the fear that Joseph, without Alvin, would not be able to pass the tests to get the plates. Joseph did not know what to do.

The next year, on 22 September 1824, Joseph returned to the hill alone. Rumors had been circulating that either the Smiths or their former treasure-hunting partners had exhumed Alvin's remains to fulfill the requirement that Alvin be present at the next meeting with Moroni; Joseph Sr. had printed newspaper notices in an attempt to dispel that rumor and eventually opened Alvin's grave to disprove it. Moroni asked Joseph at this 1824 meeting where Alvin was Joseph replied that Alvin was dead. Moroni then said Joseph could have the plates if he brought the right person with him next time. Joseph asked, "Who is the right person?" Moroni said, “You will know."

On or before 22 September 1825 Joseph again attempted to get the plates by bringing a former treasure-digging partner named Samuel Lawrence. Joseph took Lawrence to the hill and determined that Lawrence was not the right person and apparently failed to visit with Moroni or obtain the plates.

The following year, on 22 September 1826, Joseph visited the hill again and Moroni told him that he had only one more chance to get the plates: he must keep the commandments and get married. Joseph looked in his seer stone and discovered that Emma Hale was the woman he was to marry and bring with him to get the plates the next year.

Meeting the Goddess

After many trials the Hero is faced with an ultimate challenge which, if resulting in triumph, enables him to return with a boon to restore the world. The ultimate challenge may take many forms, and most often results in a sacred marriage with the goddess-mother of the world, or atonement with the father-creator, or the exaltation and divinization of the Hero himself.

For Joseph's adventure of the discovery of the Book of Mormon, his triumph could be viewed as the sacred marriage, which also takes the mythic form of bride-theft. Joseph met Emma after moving to Pennsylvania to work with Josiah Stoal's treasure-hunting partnership and the couple fell in love. Emma's father knew of Joseph's treasure-digging activities and strongly disapproved of Emma's seeing him. Joseph had turned to his treasure-digging associates to help him win Hale's approval, but met no success. For love and to fulfill Moroni's requirement, Joseph eloped with Emma in January 1827, risking the alienation of her parents.

Campbell has attempted to show in many myths that the sacred marriage may represent the coming to knowledge of the Hero of all things that can be known, and may be associated with the discovery of gold or other wealth.[18]

Retrieval of the Ultimate Boon

Joseph and Emma "borrowed" Joseph Knight's wagon early on the morning of 22 September 1827 and drove to the hill. Emma stayed and prayed as Joseph climbed Cumorah and retrieved the plates. Details of this final, successful visit with Moroni are non-existent, but Joseph returned with the plates and published them to the world as the most correct book on earth with the express purpose to bring Jew, Indian, and gentile to Jesus Christ, to resolve contemporary gospel doctrine disputes, and to explain the mystery of the ruins of a once great people who anciently inhabited the Americas.

Return

Although specifics of the last interview with Moroni are not available, details of Joseph's return with the plates indicate the further trials he had to overcome as Hero to bring the boon of the Book of Mormon to the world. One version indicates that as he ran through the forest evil spirits tried to stop him, lashing him with tree limbs in a storm. Subsequent stories which took place during the translation process of hiding the plates from inquisitive neighbors—actually former treasure-hunting partners looking for their share in the find of the golden plates treasure—are equally as adventurous, as well as the trials of the dictation of the text and its final printing. But since these stories are generally familiar to Mormons and of less mythic appeal, I will not repeat them.

Mythical Application of the Book of Mormon Story

Non-Mormon psychologist T. L. Brink has discussed aspects of the connection of Joseph's treasure digging with the discovery of the Book of Mormon in order to analyze Joseph's psychological profile. His conclusions are equally as valid to explain the mythic-psychological effect of treasure digging on Joseph's ultimate vocation as prophet. Comparing Joseph's explorations with seer stones and treasure digging to Carl Jung's analysis of an alchemist's attempt to use a philosopher's stone to change lead to gold, Brink indicates:

The gold which the alchemists sought was but a symbol of spiritual perfection which they hoped to achieve in themselves. From this perspective we may say that even if Joseph Smith had engaged in money-digging as a youth, this in no way proves him to have been an imposter. The technique of using a magic stone in order to obtain gold can be seen as a spiritual quest for perfection. Therefore, from a Jungian perspective, a young money-digger is not necessarily a swindler in the making. He may be a prophet in the making.[19]

Joseph's experience with treasure digging and his only treasure find, the Book of Mormon, did not yield riches for the Smith family, contrary to their expectations. Joseph's treasure-digging experiences and publication of the Book of Mormon did, however, bring spiritual wealth to the Smiths and the soon-to-be-founded Mormon church. After Joseph's trial in 1826 for being a "disorderly person and a juggler" (under a statute similar to vagrancy statutes today which particularly included a prohibition against treasure-digging seership[20]) Joseph and his father, Joseph Sr., lamented that young Joseph had not used his prophetic gifts for greater uses. The message of the myth seems clear: listeners may find themselves in a heroic search for the boons of the material world and yet find heretofore unexplored paths to inner spiritual growth, follow them, and find a treasure to be retrieved and shared to restore their own soul and the world.

The current use of the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon by Mormons is almost entirely limited to missionary discussions and history texts, albeit in biblical-rationalized terms. I do not recall hearing the story used as a faith-story or myth told in a testimony meeting to inspire the listener. As I will later discuss, the story of Joseph, the plan o.£ salvation, and the first vision are the living myths. currently told by Mormons rather than the story of the golden plates. I hope my suggestions will! enable us to use the story of the golden plates—as it appears to have been originally told—as a living myth in our faith discussions.

The First Vision as Hero Myth

The mythic potentiality of the first vision has elsewhere received significant attention and will only be briefly treated in this essay.[21] The first vision, although officially recorded in 1838 and discussed in private circles before that time, did not become a pronounced faith story told by Mormons until the 1880s.[22] My discussion does not involve a detailed account of the different versions of the vision or a harmonization[23] of them in an attempt to reconstruct the story as first told, because it was not first told by Joseph or other Mormons for its mythic appeal, and also because the story is well known and is currently used for its mythic appeal.

The first vision is typically the first story told to non-Mormons interested in joining the LOS church. It has been described as the" central means by which Joseph Smith and others explained to themselves and others 'who we are.' In telling this story, Joseph was acting not as historian but as myth maker.”[24] It is a shared experience by all Mormons and is used as the sacred form for Mormons in explaining their own heroic quest for truth and their adventure of faith and discovery of the treasure of testimony.

The first vision story follows the Campbell Hero pattern fairly closely. Joseph's readings in scripture (James 1:5) and attending revivals resulted in his call to adventure. He physically separated himself to a grove of trees to pray. He was visited by an evil force which bound his tongue; presumably this trial was overcome by his faithful struggle to continue his prayer. After this initiation, Joseph was then released from the invisible force that held him and he beheld a vision of angels; including the Son and Father. Joseph experienced atonement (reconciliation) with the Father when he was told his sins were forgiven him. The ultimate boon retrieved by Joseph was the knowledge that the true church of Jesus Christ would be restored through him. Joseph then returned to the world to share the knowledge gained from this adventure of the spirit.

As I remarked earlier, new Mormon converts often narrate their conversion experience along the lines of the first vision story and see themselves as bearers of a great boon to a reluctant world. More seasoned Mormons often find that they are spiritually reawakened when they hear the new convert's story of Hero quest and reflect on their own conversion and experience a renewal engendered by the teller of the conversion faith-story.

Joseph Smith’s Restoration as Restoration of the Hero Myth

As the work of Hugh Nibley and the FoW1dation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) have documented/ the message of the Restoration as told by Joseph's visions1 restored ancient texts1 and restored ancient rituals can be compared to similar ancient visions1 texts, and rituals with apologetic and exegetical benefits.[25] These comparisons also lend themselves to mythic analysis. Such an analysis may provide a Jungian collective unconscious framework (or some other psychological framework) for explaining the parallels and thereby negate their direct apologetic use as confirmatory evidence of Joseph's prophetic abilities. But even Jungian psychological explanations (and perhaps others) can be harmonized with the Mormon doctrine of the pre-existence of humankind—the equivalent of the Jungian collective unconscious—and could explain the uniformity of archetypes discovered by Jung and others in all cultures.[26]

Regardless of the apologetic use of such parallels, the core faith story of Mormonism, the plan of salvation, and its ritual form, the temple endowment, follow the Campbell Hero pattern. I choose not to discuss the endowment but suggest that temple-going Mormons read Hugh Nibley's The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri[27] and John Lunquist’s “The Common Temple Ideology of the Ancient Near East”[28] to see the extent to which Mormon temple ritual fits the Campbell Hero pattern.

The story of the plan of salvation in narrative form can be told by nearly any child in Primary. Before we were born, we lived with heavenly parents. Our call to adventure took place in the heavenly council when we sided with Jesus and Michael against Lucifer and a third of the heavenly host. After this conflict, we left them to come to earth to undergo mortal initiation consisting of trials often caused by Satan and his followers.

Mormons have specific and general forms of supernatural aid during this quest. Aside from visions, dreams, and other experiences, we believe that our patriarchal blessings are a specific aid guiding us in our quest. The Holy Ghost is also a gift given (Campbell points this out as well[29]) to guide us on our search for the exaltation of our soul through (a) sacred marriage, (b) personal atonement with the Father (reconciliation through repentance), and (c) resurrection after death and return to the heavenly family (apotheosis) to jointly share in exaltation's boon.

The plan of salvation myth is clearly taught in Mormonism with the express purpose of enabling each individual to discover his or her divine nature (the call), join the community of faith (separation), and endure trials of keeping the commandments, persecution, and mortal sorrow, with the hope of a triumphant, heroic return to God's presence.

The Life of Joseph Smith as Hero Myth

Joseph Smith's life, a life viewed by Mormons as having been lived according to the myth of the plan of salvation, also follows the Hero path in its typical tellings.

The Hero's call to adventure for Joseph's life as a prophet can be viewed as the combination of his divine call in the pre-existence-as evidenced by his (a) statements,[30] (b) restored textual prophecies,[31] and (c) a family prophecy[32] plus the first vision and discovery of the golden plates.

The supernatural aid given Joseph consisted of the Holy Ghost, his seer stones/Urim and Thummim, the Smith family parchments, amulets, and other paraphernalia, and constant revelatory experiences and visitations.

The trials of Joseph are numerous and well known: his leg operation as a child; the Kirtland, Ohio, tar and feathering; the "trials of Missouri/' specifically, Liberty Jail; false imprisonments and trials; and finally his brutal death in a Carthage, Illinois, jail.

The telling of the Joseph story also includes a meeting with the goddess and apotheosis.

While polygamy is no longer taught or sanctioned in the mainstream church, it nevertheless has current mythic meaning and potential. While polygamy has been previously viewed as having been instituted (a) by Joseph at God's command (D&C 132), (b) by Joseph's lust,[33] (c) by Joseph's desire to broaden his family experience,[34] or (d) as a reaction to the breakdown of the traditional family in the nineteenth century,[35] polygamy as Joseph's meeting with the goddess makes mythological sense as a part of his Hero quest.

In addition, the Joseph Hero cycle also includes the story of his apotheosis. Joseph died a martyr's death and was called home again to a place where his enemies could no longer harm him. Beyond the veil, Joseph continues to lead and direct the church and sits with the exalted prophets of old. His restoration benefits us below and he continues to lead and direct above in the Kingdom of God: "Mingling with Gods he can plan for his brethren/ Death cannot conquer the Hero again.”[36]

Conclusion

At a minimum, I think the foregoing Hero myth analysis of Joseph Smith confirms Richard Bushman's conclusion that "[i]n the final analysis, the power of Joseph Smith to breathe new life into the ancient sacred stories, and to make a sacred story out of his own life, was the source of his extraordinary influence."[37] Bushman's conclusion that "[t]he strength of the church, the vigor of the Mormon missionary movement, and the staying power of the Latter-day Saints from 1830 to the present [1984] rest on the belief in the reality of those events" is undoubtedly true, but given the phenomenon of the "closet doubter" in the church,[38] one wonders if Bushman's observation might be broadened so that the strength of the church partially rests on the psychological response of its members to the mythic elements of the· sacred stories of Joseph Smith and the church and the mythic boon they brought to humankind as Hero. [39]

A reviewer of Dean Jessee's compilation The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith recently commented that as a result of such fine research by Jessee and others we are now making real progress in our" search for the historical Joseph,"[40] alluding to Albert Schweitzer’s groundbreaking In Search of the Historical Jesus. Perhaps one day soon a reviewer will speak of the growing body of literature proposing mythological approaches to Joseph and Mormonism and say we are now making real progress in our “search for the mythological Joseph and his church." At that point, our experience of Joseph's narratives and other faith stories of our tradition will have called us to the soul's high adventure and we will have embarked on our own spiritual heroic quest.

[1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Pantheon Books, 1949), hereafter Thousand Faces.

[2] Campbell’s approach is being closely examined in part because of the controversial nature of his interdisciplinary methods and conclusions. See, for instance, Daniel C. Noel, ed., Paths to the Power of Myth (New York: Crossroad, 1990). Other approaches to Hero myths include the Freudian approach, exemplified by Otto Rank in The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, trans. F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe (New York: Journal of Mental Disease Publishing, 1914), and a myth-ritualist approach exemplified by Lord Raglan, The Hero (London: Methuen, 1936), both of which have been reprinted (Raglan’s work only partially) in Robert A. Segal, ed., In Quest of the Hero (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

[3] Suggested by C. Robert Mesle, “Scripture, History and Myth,” Sunstone 4 (Mar.-Apr. 1979): 49-50.

[4] Joseph Campbell, in Phil Cousineau, ed., The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 134-36, hereafter Hero's Journey.

[5] This concept can be found in virtually ail of Campbell's works. See, for instance, Jose.ph Campbell and Bill Moyers, Tire Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 31, 55. Of course, other definitions of "myth" work as well and as poorly. Mircea Eliade, Otto Rank, Ernst Cassirer, Giorgio de Santillana, Hertha von Dechend, Claude Levi-Strauss, Robert Graves, Hugh Nibley, Lord Raglan, James Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Victor Turner, among others, have given varying definitions to "myth" and have different theories on the origin and function of myth.

[6] See, for example, Morton T. Kelsey, Myth, History and Faith (New York: Paulist Press, 1974), 14-34. The obvious problem with myths about historical figures is that new historical findings may undermine their mythic stature, as evidenced by the recent findings of plagiarism in Martin Luther King's doctoral dissertation, However, such an effect reveals the concerns of Joseph Campbell that myths not be viewed as history lest they lose their life (see Thousand Faces, 249.) New historical findings which may seem unsavory from a doctrinal point of view, such as the folk magic activities of the Smith family, may nevertheless yield a more fruitful field of mythic understanding, as I attempt to demonstrate in this· essay. Mormon treatments of the Smith family folk magic have focused on presenting these incidents in a theologically acceptable way for twentieth-century Mormons by minimizing their effect on the origins of Mormonism or by explaining them as mere context. As discussed later in this essay, T. l. Brink, a non-Mormon, has suggested that Joseph's interest in treasure digging should be seen as a positive step in his development as a prophet and search for spiritual perfection. See T. L. Brink, “Joseph Smith: The Verdict of Depth Psychology,” Journal of Mormon History 3 (1976): 73-83. See also Ronald W. Walker, “The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting,” Brigham Young University Studies 24 (Fall 1984): 461-72; Marvin S. Hill, "Money-Digging Folklore and the Beginnings of Mormonism: An Interpretive Suggestion," Brigham Young University Studies 24 (Fall 1984): 473-88; Richard Lloyd Anderson, "The Mature Joseph Smith and Treasure Searching," Brigham Young University Studies 24 (Fall 1984): 489-560; Bushman, Beginnings, 69-78; D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987).

[7] Mythological treatments of Joseph Smith's experiences and Mormonism in general have been suggested by Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Brink, “Depth Psychology,” 73-83; James E. Faulconer, "Scripture, History and Myth," Sunstone 4 (Mar.-Apr. 1979): 49-50; C. Robert Mesle, "History, Faith and Myth," Sunstone 7 (Nov.-Oec.1982): 10-13; Lawrence Foster, "First Visions," Sunstone 8 (Sept.-Oct. 1983): 39-43; and Clifton Jolley, "The Martyrdom of Joseph Smith: An Archetypal Study," Utah Historical Quarterly 44 (Fall 1976): 329-50.

[8] Campbell, Thousand Faces, 30, 246.

[9] Unless stated otherwise, all reconstructions of the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon are based on Quinn’s Magic World View, 112-49. Although his work is speculative, Quinn’s reconstruction of how the early stories about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon were told (as opposed to what actually happened) are substantiated by early sources friendly to the church. Bushman argues convincingly that an accurate reconstruction of how event relating to the coming forth of Book of Mormon actually occurred is difficult. See Bushman, Beginnings, 70.

[10] See, for instance, how this trend is reflected in Dallin H. Oaks, “Witnesses of Christ,” Ensign 20 (Nov. 1990): 29-32.

[11] See Campbell's discussion of the death of myth when viewed solely as biography in Thousand Faces, 249. Ironically, accounts told to early converts by Joseph Smith (see Dean C. Jessee, ed., “Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History,” Brigham Young University Studies 17 [Fall 1976]: 29-39) contained details of treasure digging and folk magic in the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon whereas later version by him ignored those elements or admitted them defensively. See, for example, Richard Van Wagoner and Steve Walker, “Joseph Smith: ‘The Gift of Seeing,’” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (Summer 1982): 48-68.

[12] Whether Joseph called the hill "Cumorah" has been much discussed. See William J.Hamblin's arguments that Joseph did not identify the hill with Cumorah in "An Apologist for the Critics: Brent Lee Metcalfe's Assumptions and Methodologies" in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6 (1994), 1:476-80. David Whitmer's testimony, however, is clear that both he, Joseph, and Oliver Cowdery met Moroni on the road to Payette where Moroni said he was "going to Cumorah'' in the direction of the hill where the plates were found. See the interviews cited by Milton V. Backman, Jr., in Eye-Witness Accounts of the Restoration (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1986), 120.

[13] See, for instance, Campbell, Thousand Faces, 43; Campbell, Hero's Journey, 11-12.

[14] Campbell, Hero’s Journey, 8-12.

[15] That the so-called "Salamander Letter" is a Mark Hofmann forgery does not change the detail of the amphibian as shown by Quinn, Magic World View, 128n5.

[16] Other accounts indicate that Joseph was able to lift the plates from the stone box, but that after placing them to the side of the box, he looked into the box for additional treasure and found that the plates had disappeared. Moroni told him then that because he had disobeyed the commandment to not lay down the plates and because of his greed, the plates would not be delivered to him and he would have to wait another year to receive them. Quinn, Magic World View, 123-24.

[17] See Campbell, Thousand Faces, 51-53. Others have also indicated that the golden plates and the Boole of Mormon both may represent spiritual ideals as mere objects, regardless of the reality, content, or historicity of the text. See, for instance, A. Bruce Lindgren, "Sign or Scripture: Approaches to The Book of Mormon," in Dan Vogel, ed., The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990)

[18] See Campbell, Thousand Faces, 116. Although Campbell deals mainly with male heroes, the sacred marriage may also represent the same coming to knowledge for females as well as males.

[19] Brink, "Depth Psychology," 80.

[20] See, for instance, Wesley P. Walters, Joseph Smith’s Bainbridge, N. Y. Court Trials (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, n.d.).

[21] See, for instance, Mesle, "History, Faith and Myth,'' 13; Shipps, Mormonism, 32; and James B. Allen, “Emergence of a Fundamental: The Expanding Role of Joseph Smith's First Vision in Mormon Religious Thought," Journal of Mormon History 7 (1980): 43-61.

[22] Allen, “First Vision.”

[23] l will use details from each of the different versions in my discussion. The different accounts are readily available. See, for instance, Dean C. Jessee, "Early Accounts of the First Vision," Brigham Young University Studies 9 (Spring 1969): 275-95,

[24] Mesle, "History, Faith and Myth," 13.

[25] See, for instance, Hugh W. Nibley [Stephen D. Ricks, ed.], Enoch thee Prophet (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1986); and C. Wilfred Griggs, "The Book of Mormon as an Ancient Book," in Noel B. Reynolds, ed., Book of Mormon Authorship (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982), 75-101.

[26] Other approaches to myth may shed further light on these issues. Structural approaches, as developed by Claude Levi-Strauss and others, may suggest that the Restoration through Joseph Smith of ancient narratives and ritual is a restoration of mythemes that reconcile the same binary opposite phenomena that were reconciled anciently; even though the ancient narratives and rituals may or may not have formal correspondence with the narratives and ritual restored through Joseph.

[27] Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1975).

[28] In Truman G. Madsen, ed., The Temple in Antiquity (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984), 53-76.

[29] Campbell, Thousand Faces, 72-73.

[30] See Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1980).

[31] Both the Book of Mormon and Joseph’s inspired revision of the Bible contain prophecies about the rise of a prophet named Joseph. See 2 Ne. 3:5-16; JST Gen. 50:26-36.

[32] Brigham H. Roberts, ed., The History of the Church (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978), 2:443.

[33] See Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945).

[34] Brink, "Depth Psychology," 82.

[35] See Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).

[36] W. W. Phelps, "Praise to the Man," no. 27, Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latt.er-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985).

[37] Bushman, Beginnings, 188.

[38] See D. Jeff Burton, “The Phenomenon of the Closet Doubter,” Sunstone 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1982): 34-38.

[39] Although most Mormons and non-Mormons tend to accept or reject the Joseph Smith story based solely on empirical/ historical grounds, many rank-and-file Mormons I have known appear to have an unarticulated mythic sense of his story and yet use orthodox language when discussing it even though they do not have a conventional "testimony" of the reality of Smith's experiences. Whether Mormon general authorities respond or have responded in a mythic manner while nevertheless maintaining a more orthodox posture is more difficult to determine. Although a matter of controversy, B. H. Roberts apparently came to view his belief in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's production of it in a mythic sense as a psychological event of profound reality, although perhaps non-historical See Brigham D. Madsen, ed., Studies in the Book of Mormon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 23-24. Similarly, while discussing the Book of Abraham with Thomas Ferguson1 Apostle Hugh B. Brown is reported to have agreed with him regarding the non-historical nature of that book, evidently revealing a possible mythic interpretation of it. See Stan Larson, "The Odyssey of Thomas Stuart Ferguson," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23 (Spring 1990): 55-93.

[40] See the review of Marvin S. Hill in Brigham Young University Studies 25 (Summer 1985): 117-25.

[post_title] => One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 233–247
Snow puts Joseph Smith squarely within Joseph Campbell’s famous work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is also known as the heroes journey. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => one-face-of-the-hero-in-search-of-the-mythological-joseph-smith [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 19:38:36 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 19:38:36 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11642 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1

Is Joseph Smith Relevant to the Community of Christ?

Roger D. Launius

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 58–67
I spoke as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints/Community of Christ. As a result, I had a decidedly different perspective on Joseph Smith than my co-panelists.

EDUCATION	PEDAGOGY
Principle = Knowledge	Ordinance = Experience
Repentance, new life, resurrection	Baptism, washed clean, out of water
Pure life, overcome sins of generation	Washing, blessings on bodily parts
Act righteously with power given, stewardship from small to great	Anointing, preparatory king and priest
Set apart from the world, discipline over body, searching for truth, faithfulness	Priesthood garments, wear always, constant reminder, protection, etc.
Line upon line, growth in priesthood power, strong against temptations of Satan	Endowment, going from room to room, learning, clothing, covenants
Marriage for eternity, fidelity, family, offspring	Temple marriage, sealing, blessings
. . .	. . .
ALL: preparing to meet and be like God	ALL: preparing to meet and be like God

Claimed Place of Digging Sought	Geographic Location	Kind of Treasure	Approximate Date
Joseph Smith, Sr., farm	On hill immediately east of Smith home; northeast quadrant of Manchester, N.Y., Lot 1.	Kegs of gold and silver; chests of gold and silver	1822-25
Joshua Stafford farm	In orchard; portions of Manchester, N.Y., Lots 7 and 9.	Money	1822-25
Clark Chase farm	On "Old Sharp" Hill; in northwest quadrant of Manchester, N.Y., Lot 2.	Treasure	1822-25
Benjamin Tabor farm	On "Miner's Hill"; in southeast quadrant of Manchester, N.Y., Lot 2.	Golden furniture	1822-25
Randall Robinson farm	In Oquago Mountain, Harmony, Penn.	Gold plates	1824-25
Joseph McKune, Sr., farm	On "Hill Cumorah"; in northwest quadrant of Manchester, N.Y., Lot 85.	Gold or silver mine	Nov. 1825
"Deacon Attleton" property	Possibly Charles Atherton land on South Bainbridge, N.Y., Lots 60 and 63.	Gold mine	Nov. 1825-March 1826
Abraham Cornell Property	Northeast quadrant of South Bainbridge, N.Y., Lot 62.	Silver mine	1825-26 (?)
Josiah Stowell property	South Bainbridge, N.Y., Lot 36.	Treasure box	1825-26 (?)
Hill northeast of Josiah Stowell's home	Northeast quadrant of South Bainbridge, N.Y., Lot 59.	Treasure	No date
Monument Hill	Northwest area of Windsor Township, N.Y.	Gold	Nov. 1825-March 1826
"Yoemans" property (?)	Possibly Windsor, N.Y., Lot 11.	Money chest	Nov. 1825-March 1826
Windsor, New York (?)	South end of Ouaquaga Mountain (possibly Lots 17, 18, 19).	Salt	No Date
Windsor, New York (?)	Half mile west of Susquehanna River, near southwest side of Ouaquaga Mountain.	Captain Kidd's money	No Date
Windsor, New York (?)	Four miles west of Windsor, on road to Binghamton.	Silver	No Date
Joseph Knight, Sr., farm	Colesville, N.Y., Lot 100 (formerly Lot 2).	Pot of money	1826-27
Bostwick Badger farm	Colesville, N.Y., Lot 58 (formerly Lot 72).	Salt spring	1826-27 (?)
Joseph Capron farm	Northwest of Capron home; in southern portion of Manchester, N.Y., Lot 1.	Chest of gold watches	1827, before Sept.

Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith's Theology

A Reflection on Joseph Smith’s Restorationist Vision of Truth

Truth Revealed Anew

Truth as an Independent Agent

Truth as the Action of Embodied Humanity in History

Jesus as the Truth

God’s Glory as Truth

An Expanded Restorationist View of Truth

Was Joseph Smith a Monarchotheist? An Engagement with Blake Ostler’s Theological Position on the Nature of God

An 1840 Sermon of Joseph Smith

The King Follett Sermon

Sermon in the Grove

Conclusion

Praise to the Man: The Development of Joseph Smith Deification in Woolleyite Mormonism, 1929–1977

The Lorin C. Woolley Statement

Mingling with Gods

The Office of the Holy Ghost

Gods Above Gods Infinitely

Conclusion

The Secular Binary of Joseph Smith’s Translations

The Book of Mormon

Early Revelations

Pure Language Document(s)

The Kirtland Egyptian Alphabets

Chart 6

Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet and the Book of Abraham

Esotericism and Symbolic Translation

The Prison of Language

“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making

Reclamation of Divine Collaboration

Reclamation of Ecclesiastical Collaboration

Salvation through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment

Bodily Religions

Early LDS Views of the Body

Eternalizing Matter and Materializing Spirit

The Preexistence and the Embodiment of Power

Divine Embodiment

The Cultivation and Exaltation of Human Affections

The Temple and Domestic Heaven

Conclusion

Joseph Smith and Process Theology

The Problem of Evil

Evolutionary Struggle, Staged or Real?

Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge

Finitism in Restoration Theology

Present Trends in Utah

Conclusion

A Selected Bibliography on Process Theology

The Limits of Naturalistic Criteria for the Book of Mormon: Comparing Joseph Smith and Andrew Jackson Davis

Comparing American Seers

The Poughkeepsie Seer

Fixations on Idiosyncratic Criteria

Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon: Co-Founders of a Movement

Pedagogy of Perfection: Joseph Smith’s Perfectionism, How It was Taught in the Early LDS Church, and Its Contemporary Applicability

Conceptual Notes

1: Historical Context: Protestant View of Perfectionism; Search for Certainty of Salvation

2: Joseph Smith’s Own View on Certainty and Perfection: The Pinnacle of Salvation

3: Outward Forms: Joseph Smith’s Search for Fitting Ordinances: A Pedagogy of Perfection

4: Extension of Teachings and Blessings to the Saints Abroad—Gathering Reversed

Conclusion and Suggestions: Pedagogy of Perfection: The End in Mind and Education Toward That End

A Documentary Note on a Letter to Joseph Smith. Romance, Death, and Polygamy: The Life and Times of Susan Hough Conrad and Lorenzo Dow Barnes

Lorenzo Barnes

Susan Hough Conrad

Romance

Polygamy

Conclusion

Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures

Joseph Smith's Life

Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: The First Indian Mission

Joseph Smith’s History: The First Indian Mission

Joseph Smith’s History: The Missouri Years

Joseph Smith’s History: Nauvoo

Indians and the Book of Mormon in the Joseph Smith Years

Missionary Work with the Indians and the Building Up of Zion

Mormons and Indians in a Gentile Polity

Brigham Young and the Indians: Some Basic Continuities

Parley P. Pratt and the Present

Why the Prophet is a Puzzle: The Challenges of Using Psychological Perspectives to Understand the Character and Motivation of Joseph Smith, Jr.

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