Mormon Studies Commons^™

1844-1845, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

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1830, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

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1841, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

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1832, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

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"O Lord, My God", Sheldon Lawrence

BYU Studies

Joseph Smith’s dying words have always intrigued me. I like them, in part, for what they don’t say. The expression lacks a verb and thus neither asks nor confesses nor praises nor questions. It is not a plea for extended life or safety. It is not the dying command of a captain to attack or take cover. We find no last instructions to the Saints or final declaration of love and loyalty. But rather as the hot lead balls tore through the prophet’s body, as he staggered at the window’s edge and fell into the tragic fulfillment of his last …

Joseph Smith And The United Firm: The Growth And Decline Of The Church's First Master Plan Of Business And Finance, Ohio And Missouri, 1832-1834, Max H. Parkin

BYU Studies

The United Firm was a business management company established by Joseph Smith (founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) that oversaw both the Church's economic pursuits, such as maintaining properties, and some spiritual matters, such as publishing revelations and planning the city of Zion. Its board of managers essentially fulfilled roles later taken on by Church leaders when quorums were created. The term "United Firm" does not appear in the scriptures, and therefore the organization's role has been misunderstood and underestimated. One of Joseph Smith's pseudonyms for the United Firm was the United Order, but the United …

"It Seems That All Nature Mourns": Sally Randall's Response To The Murder Of Joseph And Hyrum Smith, Jordan Watkins, Steven C. Harper

BYU Studies

Sally Carlisle was born in New Hampshire in 1805. She married James Randall, and they settled in Warsaw, New York, where they had two sons, George and Eli, and converted to Mormonism. They moved to Nauvoo in 1843. A collection of Sally’s letters addressed to friends and family has been preserved. The letter she wrote July 1, 1844, less than a week after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, has a remarkable provenance (see sidebar).

The "Beautiful Death" In The Smith Family, Samuel Brown

BYU Studies

Despite thoughtful attempts by Douglas Davies to situate death at the center of the Mormon “culture of salvation,” the exploration of death in early Mormonism has been somewhat limited to date, particularly as it relates to the Smith family and the earliest years of Mormonism. Against this relative silence stands the testimony of the Smiths themselves, who were deeply concerned with questions of mortality. Joseph Smith was unequivocal on this point during his 1843 funeral sermon for James Adams: “All men know that all men must die. What is the object of our coming into existence then dying and falling …

Junius And Joseph: Presidential Politics And The Assassination Of The First Mormon Prophet. By Robert S. Wicks And Fred R. Foister, Susan Sessions Rugh

BYU Studies

Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister. Junius and Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2005.

Joseph Smith: The Making Of A Prophet. By Dan Vogel, Kyle R. Walker

BYU Studies

Dan Vogel. Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004.

The Archive Of Restoration Culture, 1997-2002, Richard Lyman Bushman

BYU Studies

When I first began work on Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling in 1996, I realized that reconstructing the cultural environment of the Prophet would be one of my largest tasks. I could scarcely conceive how to go about probing the huge quantities of sermons, newspapers, journals, pamphlets, books, artworks, and private diaries that possibly bore on the restoration of the gospel in the 1820s through the 1840s. Yet the culture of that period bore directly on the success of the young church under Joseph Smith’s leadership. People would never be able to grasp theological ideas that were entirely foreign to …

Not For Tourists: Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, David J. Whittaker

BYU Studies

Richard Bushman’s Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

"Will The Murderers Be Hung?": Albert Brown's 1844 Letter And The Martyrdom Of Joseph Smith, Timothy Merrill

BYU Studies

Albert Brown’s November 11, 1844, letter from Nauvoo to his New York relatives adds significantly to the historical record of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom. Brown wrote from the perspective of one loyal to Joseph Smith. When studied in connection with antagonistic accounts published earlier in BYU Studies, readers of the letter can sense the views, loyalties, and hostilities of the bitterly divided factions that swirled around Joseph Smith as they once did around Jesus Christ.

"Lightning Out Of Heaven": Joseph Smith And The Forging Of Community, Terryl L. Givens

BYU Studies

Several weeks ago I received an email from someone who identified himself as a BYU student doing a research paper on the Prophet Joseph Smith. He asked, “Would you be kind enough to share with me what you feel the impact of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon on the world has been?” This was an important question, so I took time framing my reply. I wrote, “It was big.” However, upon reflection, I decided against sending that email. I did not want to do most of his work for him. I thought perhaps I would now revisit that …

Are Christians Mormon?: Reassessing Joseph Smith's Theology In His Bicentennial, David L. Paulsen

BYU Studies

Harold Bloom, the self-proclaimed “unbelieving Jew” and distinguished scholar, recently characterized Joseph Smith as “a religious genius,” stating that the religion Smith founded “is truly a biblical religion.” More recently, Carl Mosser has written concerning the doctrine of that religion: “Mormonism’s heresies are legion; they are also very interesting and often unique in the history of heresy.” Biblical or heretical? Of these two reactions, the charge of heresy has been far more common, especially among conservative Christian critics, who consistently draw a circle that leaves Joseph’s Mormonism out.

Joseph Smith As An American Restorationist, Richard T. Hughes

BYU Studies

Richard Bushman’s wonderfully expansive paper “Joseph Smith’s Many Histories” reminds us in forceful ways of the historical complexity that helped create the Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith. Bushman also reminds us that while historical complexity is embedded in history, it embeds itself as well in the hearts and minds of human beings who discover the various realities of history and then appropriate those realities for their own purposes. As an illustration of this point, Bushman tells the story of Christopher Columbus— how his standing as the grandfather of the United States was neither acknowledged nor celebrated until after 1776.

Joseph Smith And The Past, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

My thoughts on Joseph Smith’s interest in past worlds cluster into three sections. The first deals with the challenge of evaluating and assessing Joseph Smith’s recoveries of texts or views from past worlds or civilizations. The second develops a list of ways in which the past functioned in Joseph Smith’s process of continuing revelation. The third focuses on the dynamic link between the past and the present in Joseph Smith’s concept of priesthood authority and its restoration.

Joseph Smith In A Personal World, Dallin H. Oaks

BYU Studies

My subject is Joseph Smith in a personal world. My lens is primarily a personal one—his impact on me and believers I have known during my lifetime. I will also discuss Joseph Smith’s own personal world and his impact on his acquaintances and friends. A major focus will be Joseph Smith’s role as a prophet and his teachings on the reality of revelation. By prophet I mean one who speaks for God in revealing divine truth to others. By revelation I mean God’s communication to man—to prophets and to every one of us, if we seek.

Part 5: Joseph Smith And The Making Of A Global Religion, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

Spawned in the Burned-over District of upstate New York and classified by historians for decades as a western American church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now faces the challenge of broadening its scope and its reach into many countries of the world. In this context, scholars have examined some of the more poignant challenges that Latter-day Saints face in making the transition from being a regional sect to becoming a global religion in terms of teachings, practices, language, and cultural differences. What does it take, beyond a burgeoning membership, to become a bona fide world religion? To …

Part 1: Joseph Smith In His Own Time, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

As scholars look back on Joseph Smith two hundred years after his birth, several historical questions capture their immediate attention. How was Joseph Smith shaped or constrained by his moment in history? How much was Joseph Smith a product of his own time? To what extent can he be explained in terms of the prevailing attitudes of his day? Is it more illuminating to think of him as a critic or as a product of American culture? Should he be seen as an American prophet or in a larger world setting? In many areas of historical inquiry, America as an …

Attempting To Situate Joseph Smith, Grant Underwood

BYU Studies

Undergirding Richard Bushman’s insightful paper is a profound recognition (and a reminder) that histories are the creations of authors, not photographs of the past. Every aspect of writing a history, from the selection of sources to the interpretation of those sources bears the imprint of the author. The profoundly precarious and contingent character of all reconstructions of the past led Roland Barthes to quip that biography is “a novel that dare not speak its name.” Clearly, this is an overstatement, but it does warn us away from an unhealthy critical complacency when engaging in studying written histories.

Part 2: Joseph Smith And The Recovery Of Past Worlds, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

Almost beyond measure, Joseph Smith was spiritually and intellectually occupied with the past. He worked insatiably from 1828 to 1835 on his translations of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, the Old and New Testaments, and the Book of Abraham. He drew great knowledge and strength from the revelations received by past prophets and patriarchs, and he sought to see as they had seen and to know as they had known. In considering Joseph Smith’s recovery of past worlds, the following chapters address several questions. What are modern scholars to make of Joseph Smith’s efforts to recover past …

Joseph Smith: Prophecy, Process, And Plenitude, Terryl L. Givens

BYU Studies

Joseph Smith was an explorer, a discoverer, and a revealer of past worlds. He described an ancient America replete with elaborate detail and daring specificity, rooted and grounded in what he claimed were concrete, palpable artifacts. He recuperated texts of Adam, Abraham, Enoch, and Moses to resurrect and reconstitute a series of past patriarchal ages, not as mere shadows and types of things to come, but as dispensations of gospel fullness equaling, and in some cases surpassing, present plenitude. And he revealed an infinitely receding premortal past—not of the largely mythic Platonic variety and not a mere Wordsworthian, sentimental intimation—but …

Joseph Smith And Preexilic Israelite Religion, Margaret Barker

BYU Studies

Terryl Givens has set Joseph Smith in the religious and cultural context of his time and raised many important issues. I should like to take a few of these issues and set them in another context, that of preexilic Jerusalem. I am not a scholar of Mormon texts and traditions. I am a biblical scholar specializing in the Old Testament, and until some Mormon scholars made contact with me a few years ago, I would never have considered using Mormon texts and traditions as part of my work. Since that initial contact I have had many good and fruitful exchanges …

Part 4: Joseph Smith And The Theological World, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

While Joseph Smith lived in what could be called early nineteenth-century Protestant America, many of his teachings, though bearing a close resemblance to biblical Christianity, stood in stark contrast with the theologies of other religions. Distinctively, he insisted on the need for modern and continuing revelation. While Joseph Smith never thought of himself as a theologian, his experiences and declarations have theological implications. What theological answers did Joseph Smith offer the world? What problems do those answers solve? What problems do they raise? Authors in this part also address the issue of divine discourse beyond the Bible and the odyssey …

Joseph Smith Challenges The Theological World, David Paulsen

BYU Studies

In his illuminating book The Story of Christian Theology, Roger Olson states:

Christian theology does not begin at the beginning. That is, Christian theology began well after Jesus Christ walked the earth with his disciples and even after the last disciple and apostle died. . . . The apostles [had] tremendous prestige and authority. . . . While they were alive, there was no need for theology in the same sense as afterward. Theology was born as the heirs of the apostles began to reflect on Jesus’ and the apostles’ teachings to . . . settle controversies about Christian …

Joseph Smith's Theological Challenges: From Revelation And Authority To Metaphysics, Richard J. Mouw

BYU Studies

In his published dialogue with the Evangelical theologian Craig Blomberg, Stephen Robinson observed that one of the factors that makes it so difficult for Mormons and Evangelicals to understand each other is the issue of terminology. The theology of the Latter-day Saints, he noted, has not been shaped by the same developments that Protestants have experienced since the days of the Reformation. This means, Robinson said, that “Latter-day Saints are generally quite naïve when it comes to the technical usage of theological language.”

World Religion: Dynamics And Constraints, Douglas J. Davies

BYU Studies

Mormonism as a world religion and Joseph Smith as its originating prophet furnish the subject of this paper. A brief theoretical reflection on approaching The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides both an opening context for the quantitatively focused debate on Mormonism’s potential for growth into world religion status and an introduction for a more extensive consideration of several factors of a more qualitative kind that may foster or inhibit that development. The paper then ponders the issue of identity in relation to Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith's Many Histories, Richard L. Bushman

BYU Studies

In 1992 my wife, Claudia, published a book titled America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero. The book argued that until the American Revolution, Columbus was almost completely neglected in histories of the British colonies. Not until three centuries after the fact did North Americans honor him as the discoverer of America. Even in 1792, it required a stretch of the imagination to give him the credit, since he never touched foot on the North American continent and for centuries the British had distanced themselves from the hated Spanish exploiters of the New World. But …

The Worlds Of Joseph Smith Gallery Display, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

A display of books, manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts was assembled to accompany “The Worlds of Joseph Smith” conference at the Library of Congress. Twelve items in this display came from collections in the Library of Congress; three from the Library-Archives of the Community of Christ in Independence, Missouri; two from the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; and thirteen from the LDS Church History Library, Archives, and Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.