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Full-Text Articles in Religious Education
Joseph Smith, Responses To Early Missionaries Topics In Byu Studies
Joseph Smith, Responses To Early Missionaries Topics In Byu Studies
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
Following closely on the heels of a recent double-sized issue on Mormons and film, the latest issue of BYU Studies contains a landmark study by historian Max H Parkin entitled “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.” Never before have the historical documents been so thoroughly and masterfully marshaled to give readers a heightened appreciation for the importance of the “United Firm” in the early Church. Along with all else that Joseph Smith was revealing and directing during these years, the consecrated legacy …
Occasional Papers Spotlights The Book Of Mormon
Occasional Papers Spotlights The Book Of Mormon
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
The latest issue of the Maxwell Institute’s Occasional Papers (number 5 in the series) focuses exclusively on what Joseph Smith called “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion”—the Book of Mormon. As M. Gerald Bradford, editor of the series and associate executive director of the Maxwell Institute notes, “the papers in this volume show that the Book of Mormon can be studied and understood from a wide variety of scholarly disciplines.”
Worth Repeating: “The Book Of Mormon As A Mesoamerican Record”, John L. Sorenson
Worth Repeating: “The Book Of Mormon As A Mesoamerican Record”, John L. Sorenson
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
The Nephite account is a record that resembles in form, nature, and functions—in scores of characteristics, in fact—what we would expect in an ancient Mesoamerican codex, a type of document that was utterly unknown to Joseph Smith.
Repetitive Resumption In The Book Of Mormon, David E. Bokovoy
Repetitive Resumption In The Book Of Mormon, David E. Bokovoy
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
One of the most important contributions of biblical scholarship since the time of Joseph Smith has been the recognition and analysis of editorial activity in the Old Testament. Like the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Mormon is a compilation of several literary sources produced under the auspices of ancient editors or redactors. Significantly, one of the primary signs of editorial activity in the Old Testament, a technique known as repetitive resumption, is also attested in the Book of Mormon.
The Joseph Smith Papers Project, Ronald K. Esplin
The Joseph Smith Papers Project, Ronald K. Esplin
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
The Joseph Smith Papers Project seeks to do for Joseph Smith what has been done (and is being done) for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other important early Americans: Make their papers easily accessible and more intelligible by publishing them in a carefully prepared, comprehensive scholarly edition. Historians rely on documents to gain insight into the facts, relationships, and other realities of the past, the raw materials from which they construct their narratives and interpretations. The task of scholars functioning as documentary editors is to help readers and other scholars understand the documents without getting too much in …
Joseph Smith’S Plea As Communal Lament, Dan Belnap
Joseph Smith’S Plea As Communal Lament, Dan Belnap
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
To complement the premiere issue of Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, which will be sent to our subscribers, we asked Dan Belnap, whose article appears in the first issue, to briefly expand part of his topic for Insights.
Anderson Speaks At Third Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture
Anderson Speaks At Third Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
With the intent of probing the lives of Christ and Joseph Smith, Richard Lloyd Anderson, emeritus professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, gave the third annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture, held March 20, 2009. Anderson discussed the reliability of the documentary process by which we know of events in the New Testament and in the early years of the Restoration.
Wordprint Analysis And Joseph Smith’S Role As Editor Of The Times And Seasons, Paul Fields, Matthew Roper, Atul Nepal
Wordprint Analysis And Joseph Smith’S Role As Editor Of The Times And Seasons, Paul Fields, Matthew Roper, Atul Nepal
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
One of the issues that swirls around discus- sions of Book of Mormon geography is the rightful place the editorials in the 1842 Times and Seasons must take. The story of the editorials begins with Joseph’s receipt of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood’s Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chaipas, and Yucatan, published in 1841. In early 1842, the Times and Seasons published several enthu- siastic articles that drew attention to the discoveries of Stephens and Catherwood in Central America and compared them favorably with the Book of Mormon. Two of these articles were signed by the editor, while …
Early Book Of Mormon Writings Now Online
Early Book Of Mormon Writings Now Online
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
The most extensive collection of writings about the Book of Mormon published between 1829 and 1844 has been made available as an online database. The collection, 19th-Century Publications about the Book of Mormon (1829–1844), includes nearly 600 publications and close to one million words of text. It is intended to comprise, insofar as possible, everything published during Joseph Smith’s lifetime relating to the Book of Mormon. Under the auspices of Digital Collections at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library, this ambitious project can be accessed at lib.byu.edu/dlib/bompublications.
New Jst Electronic Library Offers Added Features
New Jst Electronic Library Offers Added Features
Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: Electronic Library brings together a wealth of information and recent scholarship on Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. The electronic library, produced by the Religious Studies Center and the Maxwell Institute, also includes high-resolution images of every page of the original manuscripts, images and transcriptions of the earliest copies made from those manuscripts, and a collection of recently published studies based on the manuscripts. A short introductory essay precedes each manuscript. This collection also includes the entire 851-page book Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, edited by Scott H. Faulring, Kent …
"None That Doeth Good", Walker Wright, Don Bradley
"None That Doeth Good", Walker Wright, Don Bradley
BYU Studies
The First Vision has been a center of both faith and controversy. While millions of Latter-day Saints affirm it as the beginning of the Restoration, others see it as an ever-growing fish tale. The multiple accounts of the First Vision vary in detail, with Joseph Smith’s earliest written account (1832) lacking some of the elements found in his later accounts. However, some of these elements—particularly the appearance of God the Father as part of the First Vision experience—are laced throughout Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. These historical threads ultimately culminate in his translation of Psalm 14, which weaves together …
A New Witness To The World, By Robert A. Rees (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2020), Lane Welch
A New Witness To The World, By Robert A. Rees (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2020), Lane Welch
BYU Studies
This book provides a series of essays that analyze and contextualize the text of the Book of Mormon while providing Professor Rees’s faithful perspective on the text. Though each essay stands on its own as a separate work, the later essays, handling the context of Joseph Smith’s work as a nineteenth-century American writer, do reference and build off one another. These later essays handle the backgrounds and processes of various American writers contemporary to Joseph Smith, providing an effective survey of the literary milieu into which the Book of Mormon first entered; the earlier essays are more focused on the …
An Experiential Pathway To Conversion, Robert K. Christensen, Matthew D. Wride, Neil R. Lundberg
An Experiential Pathway To Conversion, Robert K. Christensen, Matthew D. Wride, Neil R. Lundberg
BYU Studies
Joseph Smith’s formal education did not extend beyond the third grade. His life did not extend beyond the final years of his thirties. The person he became and his work in restoring the gospel of Jesus Christ, however, extend into eternity. John Taylor observed that “Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”
Joseph Smith For President: The Prophet, The Assassins, And The Fight For American Religious Freedom By Spender Mcbride, Jordan T. Watkins
Joseph Smith For President: The Prophet, The Assassins, And The Fight For American Religious Freedom By Spender Mcbride, Jordan T. Watkins
BYU Studies
In Joseph Smith for President, Spencer McBride provides an illuminating and reader-friendly account of Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign. McBride, who is a scholar of American religious and political history and an associate managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, firmly situates the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within antebellum contexts. In doing so, he contributes to a body of scholarship that examines the early Saints’ experiences in ways that shed light on and correct assumptions about American historical developments. In one recent example, which addresses some of the same themes, Benjamin E. …
Mormon Studies: A Critical History By Ronald Helfrich Jr., Roger Terry
Mormon Studies: A Critical History By Ronald Helfrich Jr., Roger Terry
BYU Studies
This short but dense critical history of Mormon studies is unique in several ways. First, author Ronald Helfrich Jr. is a self-described “Gentile” scholar who spent “probably far too many years,” including a year as a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at Brigham Young University, researching and writing this history. Second, the book is surprisingly thorough. I have been the editorial director at BYU Studies for the past sixteen years and thought I had a fairly decent grasp of Mormon studies, past and present, but Helfrich repeatedly describes the work of historians and other scholars with whom I …
The Hathor Cow, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
The Hathor Cow, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Figure 5 in Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham, a figure of an upside-down cow, is identified by Joseph Smith with this elaborate explanation.
How The Book Of Mormon Reads Ancient Religious Texts, Kristian S. Heal, Zach Stevenson
How The Book Of Mormon Reads Ancient Religious Texts, Kristian S. Heal, Zach Stevenson
BYU Studies
The Book of Mormon turned the Latter-day Saints purposefully toward ancient religious texts. Early converts connected the Book of Mormon with lost texts recorded in the Bible. The space left by these lost books could be filled by the Book of Mormon. But not by the Book of Mormon alone. There was room to spare, and with it, a growing desire not only to find lost scriptures that were known but also to restore lost scriptures that were until then unknown (see D&C 9:2). This fervor was centrifugal, compelling Joseph Smith and others to seek out and reveal ancient texts …
Introduction, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
Introduction, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
The Book of Abraham is accepted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an inspired or revealed translation of the writings of the biblical patriarch Abraham. Joseph Smith began the translation of the text after he acquired some Egyptian papyrus scrolls and mummies in summer 1835. Canonized as scripture by the Church in 1880, the book narrates an account of the patriarch’s near-sacrifice at the hands of his idolatrous kinsfolk, his journey into Canaan, the covenant he entered into with God, and his visions of the premortal world and the Creation. Although a short book of only …
Shinehah, The Sun, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
Shinehah, The Sun, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
One of the astronomical terms defined in the Book of Abraham is Shinehah, which is said to be the sun (Abr. 3:13). Earlier in the Book of Abraham, the “god of Shagreel” is identified as the sun as well (Abr. 1:9). The context of these passages suggests that Shagreel is a West Semitic name or word while hinehah is an Egyptian name or word, although this is not explicit in the text.1 We do not know how Joseph Smith intended the word Shinehah to be pronounced; whether, for instance, shine-hah or shi-ney-hah or some other way. However it is pronounced, …
Egyptianisms In The Book Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
Egyptianisms In The Book Of Abraham, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
One way of determining whether the Book of Abraham is a translation of an underlying Egyptian document or whether it was originally composed in English is to see if the text contains what might be called Egyptianisms, or literary and linguistic features of the Egyptian language. The presence of Egyptianisms in the text of the Book of Abraham “might indicate some knowledge of Egyptian on Joseph Smith’s part.” Because “Egyptian was not really understood in Joseph Smith’s day,” any knowledge of Egyptian Joseph Smith may have possessed could only have come by revelation.
The King Follett Discourse: Pinnacle Or Peripheral?, James E. Faulconer, Susannah Morrison
The King Follett Discourse: Pinnacle Or Peripheral?, James E. Faulconer, Susannah Morrison
BYU Studies
On March 8, 1844, fifty-five-year-old King Follett, an early convert to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, was killed in a well-digging accident. On April 7, as part of a general conference of the Church in Nauvoo, and in response to the request of Follett’s family, Joseph Smith memorialized him with a sermon about the general subject of death and the dead. Smith said his sermon, a revelation on the origins of God and the divine potential of human beings, was about “the first principles of consolation.” Though Smith mentions Follett by name only early in the sermon, referring to …
The Book Of Mormon Translation Process, Grant Hardy
The Book Of Mormon Translation Process, Grant Hardy
BYU Studies
Joseph Smith did not offer many details about the translation process for the Book of Mormon, other than affirming that it was done through “the gift and power of God.”1In 1831, at a Church conference where he was invited to share more information, he declined, saying that “it was not expedient for him to relate these things.”2 Along with the golden plates, he had been given a set of Nephite “interpreters” (Mosiah 8:13; Ether 4:5), which he described as “two stones in silver bows” (JS–H 1:35), apparently looking something like a pair of glasses or spectacles. According …
New Age, Old Revelation, George M. Marsden
New Age, Old Revelation, George M. Marsden
BYU Studies
First let me say something about my point of view—which I can do with a personal story. I first met Richard Bushman in 1974 when I was spending a semester in the Boston area, and in order to get area library privileges, I had a nominal affiliation with Boston University. Someone arranged a meeting for Richard and me at his impressive office. I knew him only as the author of an excellent book on Colonial America. So when we met, we did what historians do and exchanged accounts of what we were working on. I said I was working on …
First Vision Controversies, Ann Taves
First Vision Controversies, Ann Taves
BYU Studies
When I accepted this invitation to speak, I expected that I would focus on the methods that Steven Harper and I used to compare and discuss the different accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision. We were both quite pleased with the process because we found that careful juxtaposition of the accounts allowed us to agree on the historical data and present a case for our different interpretations. If you look at the published version of our conversation, however, you’ll see that when we attempted to date events that Smith mentioned in his 1838 history, Steve tended to argue for 1820 …
When Did Joseph Smith Know The Father And The Son Have “Tangible” Bodies?, John W. Welch
When Did Joseph Smith Know The Father And The Son Have “Tangible” Bodies?, John W. Welch
BYU Studies
Joseph Smith learned many things in the First Vision—it was a burst of knowledge that poured down upon him in the spring of 1820. Particularly, he was greeted by two divine beings, “whose brightness and glory defy all description.” The first of the two, “pointing to the other,” said, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (JS–H 1:17). Joseph then listened as Jesus spoke. That experience gave more authoritative answers to questions about the Godhead than anyone in the world had received since the vision of Stephen, who saw a heavenly vision of Jesus, “the Son of man standing on …
Joseph Smith And Modernism, Richard Lyman Bushman
Joseph Smith And Modernism, Richard Lyman Bushman
BYU Studies
One of the questions we ask about Joseph Smith’s First Vision is, What did visions mean in those days? How did Smith understand his encounter with God? The most established interpretation is that questions about the churches prompted Smith to pray. He was confused by the melee of voices coming from ministers of various denominations and wanted guidance. When the heavenly personages appeared, he asked them which church to join, and they replied none of them. His prayer was answered.
How Governor Thomas Ford's Background, Choices, And Actions Influenced The Martyrdom Of Joseph Smith In Carthage Jail, Stuart Rulan Black
How Governor Thomas Ford's Background, Choices, And Actions Influenced The Martyrdom Of Joseph Smith In Carthage Jail, Stuart Rulan Black
Theses and Dissertations
Thomas Ford was the governor of Illinois at the time of Joseph and Hyrum Smiths’ martyrdoms in Carthage Jail in 1844. Before his tenure as governor, Ford’s professional life included service as an attorney and judge throughout Illinois. His background in the legal field gave him a unique perspective which may have influenced his career as governor of Illinois from 1842-1846. Although Governor Ford is relatively well-known for his association with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its history, his background and the bearing it had on the martyrdom of the Smiths has received relatively little attention …
Raising The Stakes: How Joseph Smith’S First Vision Became All Or Nothing, Steven C. Harper
Raising The Stakes: How Joseph Smith’S First Vision Became All Or Nothing, Steven C. Harper
BYU Studies
Joseph Smith (1805–1844) inhabited a visionary world and belonged to a visionary family.1 At about age twelve, he began to worry about his soul and started searching the Bible. As he compared the scriptures to the Christian denominations where he lived in western New York State, he found discord. For two or three years, he worried about “the darkness which pervaded the minds of mankind.” He became “exceedingly distressed” and “convicted” of his sins, a problem compounded by his inability to find any “society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new …
The Day Joseph Smith Was Killed, Alex D. Smith
The Day Joseph Smith Was Killed, Alex D. Smith
BYU Studies
Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed on June 27, 1844, in the recently constructed jail in Carthage, Illinois. Years later, local resident Amanda Benton Smith recorded her own account of the events of that day. Twenty-eight years old and a mother of six, Amanda was the wife of Carthage Grey captain Robert F. Smith—the militia officer responsible for protecting the Latter-day Saint prisoners and defending the town. In her reminiscence, Amanda describes learning of the Smiths’ deaths and draws a vivid picture of the vacant Hancock County seat as local citizens fled to the countryside in anticipation of the Latter-day …
“You Had Better Let Mrs Young Have Any Thing She Wants”, Matthew C. Godfrey
“You Had Better Let Mrs Young Have Any Thing She Wants”, Matthew C. Godfrey
BYU Studies
It was a cold, blustery day in Commerce, Illinois—a town pressed up against the Mississippi River—in November 1839. As the rain poured from the sky, a small skiff appeared on the river, approaching Commerce (later renamed Nauvoo) from Montrose, Iowa Territory. A woman huddled in the vessel, trying to protect a small bundle in her arms from the elements. The rain, coupled with the spray from the river, soaked both the woman and the bundle, which was a two-month-old baby. Despite the rawness of the day, the woman was determined to reach Commerce, hoping to visit the tithing office of …