Fall 2002
The Fall 2002 Issue presents a series of essays that explore significant themes and figures in early Mormon history, particularly focusing on the Kirtland years and the implications of Joseph Smith's teachings. H. Michael Marquardt examines the life of Martin Harris during the Kirtland years from 1831 to 1870. Gary James Bergera discusses the earliest eternal sealings for civilly married couples, exploring the church's evolving views on marriage and family relationships. Stephen C. Taysom analyzes Joseph Smith's legacy, particularly concerning polygamy and the creation of Mormon public memory from 1852 to 2002, revealing how these narratives have shaped the church's identity over time. Mark D. Thomas offers a form-critical analysis of Joseph Smith's 1823 vision of the Angel Moroni, while Earl M. Wunderli critiques the notion of a limited geography for Book of Mormon events. And much more!
Martin Harris is known for being a Book of Mormon scribe, witness, and financier. However, little is known about his activities while living in Kirtland, Ohio, for over thirty-five years. This article will present what…
During the early 1840S, founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith introduced members of his young church to the ordinances of baptism for the dead (1840), eternal marriage (1841), and eternal proxy marriage (1842). These ordinances, and the doctrine underpinning them, united Smith’s beliefs in obedience to divine law, the importance of mortality, and the eternal nature of the family.
In 2 Kings 22, the priest Hilkiah sends word to Josiah the King: “I have found a book.” Hilkiah had been busy locating funds to compensate the work crews refurbishing the temple, when suddenly the…
Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):9a–128
I am a literary critic who has spent a professional lifetime reading, teaching, and writing about literary texts. Much of my interest in and approach to the Book of Mormon lies with the text—though not just as a field for scholarly exploration.
Historians have long believed that history does not consist simply of recounting the past according to the Rankean ideal of telling it “as it really was.” The process of researching, selecting, and emplotting historical evidence within a narrative structure is often idiosyncratic, and may be employed to further a host of goals. Within communities, history represents a way of appropriating the past in order to serve the needs of the present. Maurice Halbwachs’s work emphasizes the role history plays as the “collective memory” of a community. Halbwachs argues that “no memory is possible outside frameworks used by the people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections.” This process involves the retention of useful historical emplotment points coupled with the suppression of those “facts” which threaten to undermine a community’s structures.
This paper will examine the vision or purported vision of the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith on the night of 21-22 September 1823, announcing the location of the gold plates containing the Book of Mormon. The 1839 history of Joseph Smith contains by far the most detailed description of the vision, but there are details in this account which could not have occurred prior to 1834. The process used here (as in New Testament “form criticism”) will be to distinguish the original historic core of the visionary narrative and experience from later anachronistic redactions. Finally, if Joseph Smith did see what he claimed to see on that night, what does that represent—a dream, a representation of a being actually in his room, an altered state of sight, etc.?
Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):127–168
DURING THE PAST FEW DECADES, a number of LDS scholars have developed various “limited geography” models of where the events of the Book of Mormon occurred. These models contrast with the traditional western hemisphere model, which is still the most familiar to Book of Mormon readers.
Over the course of some thirteen years I was involved in an intense “affair” with a woman other than my wife. My long-term affair with Fawn McKay Brodie, literary in nature, involved the research and…
Recently, Latter-day Saint artists and writers in New York City have been searching for ways to recognize one another. I don’t mean recognize in the sense of honoring, but recognize as in encountering one another’s…
In April of 2001 I directed ten of my students in an hour-and-fifteen minute workshop production of the rough beginnings of a play I’d writ ten. I’d been immersed in research and writing for eight…
Americans may be on the eve of a preemptive attack on a foreign country, ostensibly to protect ourselves from potential future attacks. Our nemesis, Saddam Hussein, is known to be evil, having gassed his own…
On the long tether of a day in June
Beyond the Zion swamps, the prisoned palms
Of four men opened toward a promised land.
And yet, below the shadows of limestone
Joseph thought again, I am going
Like a lamb to the slaughter.
Glen Leonard’s long-awaited history of Nauvoo is friendly history at its finest. It gently questions some deeply held beliefs about the Saints’ tumultuous sojourn at the fringes of western Illinois. The writing is read able…
After decades of neglect by scholars, theologians, and even rank and-file Latter-day Saints, the Book of Mormon may be finally getting its due. Recently, several books have under scored the importance of this controversial work…
In the winter after the martyrdom of her sons, Joseph and Hyrum, Lucy Mack Smith dictated a history of her family to Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, a sympathetic schoolteacher in Nauvoo. Two copies were made…
