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Joseph Smith

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 10: May – August 1842

May 18, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Nauvoo is getting busy. This volume contains 623 pages but covers only a four month timespan. Two of the biggest things that happened were the excommunication of John C. Bennett and rumors of Joseph Smith’s involvement in an assassination attempt on Lilburn W. Boggs. When Bennett left Nauvoo, Joseph became the mayor which made him even busier. For further context, this time period is covered in pages 453 – 477 of Saints, Voume. 1.

This volume features 105 documents out of nearly 400 available for this time period. Other documents are available at the Joseph Smith Papers website. However, as always, the footnotes and editorial information on each document make the book well worth having. Some of the items featured in the book are Nauvoo city scrip signed by Joseph Smith, a poem written by Eliza R. Snow for Joseph Smith, and the only known revelation giving instructions for performing a plural marriage. There are also notes from a number of sermons he gave. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 10: May – August 1842

Filed Under: Book reviews, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Polygamy, Temples

FairMormon Conference Podcast #57 – Brian C. Hales, “Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon”

May 8, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/p/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2019-Brian-Hales.mp3

Podcast: Download (77.8MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Brian C. Hales, Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon

Brian C. Hales is the author or co-author of seven books dealing with plural marriage—most notably the three-volume, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology (Greg Kofford Books, 2013) He and his wife Laura are the current webmasters of JosephSmithsPolygamy.org. Presently, Brian is working on two book-length manuscripts dealing with Joseph Smith’s treasure seeking and the authorship of the Book of Mormon. He served a mission to Venezuela for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for fourteen years. Brian is also past president of the Utah Medical Association (2013) and the John Whitmer Historical Association (2015).

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

May 5, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

2020 Interpreter Foundation Conference

 

Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

September 18-19, 2020
Brigham Young University, Tanner Building, Room 251
(If temporary COVID-19 restrictions preclude gathering on campus, we will hold the conference virtually. For late-breaking news, watch this website.)

Presented by
The Interpreter Foundation
Brigham Young University Department of Ancient Scripture
Book of Mormon Central
FairMormon

Because we believe that the Book of Moses includes authentic history, the possibility of evidence for that belief interests us as scholars. Although the primary intent of Joseph Smith’s translations is to meet the needs of modern readers, not to provide precise matches to texts from other times, we consider significant patterns of resemblance to ancient manuscripts that the Prophet could not have known and of unexpected conformance to conditions imposed by an archaic setting as potential indicators of antiquity that are best explained when the essential element of divine revelation is acknowledged. [Read more…] about Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

Filed Under: Administrative notices, Bible, Book of Moses, Evidences, Joseph Smith, News from FAIR, Priesthood, Prophets

FairMormon Conference Podcast #56 – Matthew C. Godfrey, “Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church”

April 23, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/p/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2019-Matthew-C.-Godfrey.mp3

Podcast: Download (85.9MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Matthew C. Godfrey, Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church

Matthew C. Godfrey is a general editor and the managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers. He holds a PhD in American and public history from Washington State University. He has contributed to several Joseph Smith Papers volumes, including Documents, Volume 2; Documents, Volume 4; Documents, Volume 7, and the forthcoming Documents, Volume 10, and Documents, Volume 12. He is the author of Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 (2007), which was a co-winner of the Mormon History Association’s Smith-Petit Award for Best First Book. He is also the co-editor of The Earth Shall Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (2019). Matthew has published articles in Agricultural History, The Public Historian, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly, Mormon Historical Studies, and various collections of essays. His research interests and expertise include environmental history, business and financial history, and the history of Zion’s Camp.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

FairMormon Conference Podcast #54 – Larry Morris, “The Eight Witnesses”

April 3, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/p/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2019-Larry-Morris.mp3

Podcast: Download (78.6MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Larry Morris, The Eight Witnesses

Larry E. Morris, an independent writer and historian, is the author of A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). He was previously an editor with both the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and the Joseph Smith Papers. He is the co-editor, with John W. Welch, of Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness (Maxwell Institute, 2006) and has published articles on Mormon history in BYU Studies, the FARMS Review, the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, the Journal of Mormon History, the Ensign, and the New Era. He is also quite interested in early Western history and is the author of In the Wake of Lewis and Clark: The Expedition and the Making of Antebellum America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); The Perilous West: Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); and The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition (Yale University Press, 2004). Larry and his wife, Deborah, live in Salt Lake City and have four children and eight grandchildren.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

FairMormon Conference Podcast #52 – Elizabeth Kuehn, “The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841”

March 2, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/p/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/2019-Elizabeth-Kuehn.mp3

Podcast: Download (74.6MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Elizabeth Kuehn, The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841

Transcript available here.

Elizabeth Kuehn received her Bachelor of Arts in History from Arizona State University and her Masters of Arts from Purdue University in History, with a focus on religious history and women and gender studies in early modern European history. She entered a doctoral program in History at the University of California, Irvine, and became a PhD candidate there in 2011.

Since 2013, she has worked as a documentary editor and historian on the Joseph Smith Papers Project based at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is a co-editor of several documentary editions of the Joseph Smith Papers, including Documents Volume 5: October 1835-January 1838 and Documents Volume 6: February 1838 – August 1839, both of which were published in 2017. She is currently the lead editor on Documents Volume 10: May to August 1842, forthcoming in spring 2020.

For the last six years her research has specialized in the Latter-day Saint community in Kirtland, Ohio and the financial records of Joseph Smith. More recently she has worked on controversies in Nauvoo in 1842, including Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy proceedings and plural marriage. She has worked to bring greater inclusion of women and representation of their experiences to the Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast, Women

Book Review: The Rise of the Latter-day Saints: The Journals and Histories of Newel Knight

February 18, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Newel Knight lived from September 13, 1800 to January 11, 1847. He met Joseph Smith in 1826 and remained close friends with him until Joseph’s death. He was directly involved in some of the early events in church history, so his autobiography and journals are valuable to historians. However, these have only been available in manuscript form, in several different versions, which have made them difficult to use. This book amalgamates them in a coherent form and provides a transcription that can be better understood and cited.

The book splits Knight’s writing into five parts, covering different chronological periods of his life. Each section has an introduction with a biographical summary. Editorial remarks are given in footnotes, and spelling and punctuation are generally retained, except in cases where the editors felt clarification was necessary (which to me seemed inconsistent, and in at least one case, possibly incorrect[1]).

There are many things included that are important, such as a letter from Joseph Smith that has not been published in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, Christ’s appearance in the Kirtland Temple[2], many accounts of healings, the aftermath of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and the exodus from Nauvoo. Despite his human imperfections, Knight comes to life as a role model worth emulating with his tremendous faith, even during discouragement, and always remembering to be grateful for the blessings that followed.

I found this particular episode of 1839 in Nauvoo to be very interesting, involving his wife Lydia: [Read more…] about Book Review: The Rise of the Latter-day Saints: The Journals and Histories of Newel Knight

Filed Under: Book reviews, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Marriage, Priesthood, Prophets, Resources, Temples, Testimonies, Women

FairMormon Conference Podcast #50 – Matt Roper/Kirk Magleby, “Time Vindicates the Prophet”

January 17, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/p/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019-Matt-Roper-and-Kirk-Magleby.mp3

Podcast: Download (90.7MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Matt Roper/Kirk Magleby, Time Vindicates the Prophet

Transcript available here.

Matthew P. Roper (M.S. in Sociology, Brigham Young University) was a resident scholar and research assistant for the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Studies at Brigham Young University. He is now a Research Associate at Book of Mormon Central.

Kirk Alder Magleby is the Executive Director of Book of Mormon Central.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: Anti-Mormon critics, Archaeology, Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Evidences, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Geography, Joseph Smith, LDS History, LDS Scriptures, Podcast, Questions

FairMormon Conference Presentations to go with the “Introductory Pages of the Book of Mormon” Come Follow Me Lesson

January 5, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

This is a little late, but it came to me while sitting in Gospel Doctrine today that we have had several good FairMormon Conference presentations over the years that go along with today’s lesson. Perhaps they can still be of benefit to someone in their personal study. Here are the ones that came to mind:

  • In 2004, the late historian Richard Lloyd Anderson gave a talk about the Book of Mormon witnesses, entitled “Explaining Away the Book of Mormon Witnesses.”
  • In 2017, Keith Erekson, who is the director of the Church History Library, talked about “Witnessing the Book of Mormon: The Testimonies of Three, Eight, and Millions.”
  • And in 2019, Daniel Peterson spoke about the little known women who were also witnesses of the Book of Mormon as part of his presentation on “‘Idle Tales’? The Witness of Women.”

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Lesson Aids, Women

Book Review: The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture

December 19, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have probably never thought of the Pearl of Great Price as controversial. The Book of Mormon, yes—it has been under attack practically since the night Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith. Yet, Givens and Hauglid [1] use this book to argue that the Pearl of Great Price is even more so. Unfortunately, the majority of the effort goes into attempting to prove the point, and it leaves the book less than faith-promoting. It does have some bright spots, however.

The book begins with the assertion that “without the Book of Mormon, the Church of Jesus Christ would lose its principal evangelizing tool and its most conspicuous sign of Smith’s prophetic vocation but relatively little of its doctrine.… With the Doctrine and Covenants, the church would lose a good bit of its ecclesiology—organization templates and guidelines for church government and its offices—but would not suffer a devastating loss of the deeper theological underpinnings of its faith.” [2] I found these statements to be very surprising. The Book of Mormon has enough unique doctrine in it for Tad Callister to devote an entire chapter of his recent book to it, and in several places Givens admits that doctrine found in places like the Book of Moses was first taught in the Book of Mormon. In addition, the Doctrine and Covenants contains a great deal of unique doctrine, in spite of the removal of the Lectures on Faith (which the book points out is commonly thought to have been the Doctrine of the Doctrine and Covenants). A comparison of our edition with that of the Community of Christ shows some of what would be missing without it.

The book goes on to make its point: “Mormonism, in other words, is absolutely inconceivable apart from this collection of scriptural texts that provided the faith’s theological core from the beginning but only received canonical recognition in 1880. At the present moment, controversies regarding multiple accounts of Smith’s ‘First Vision,’ as well as the origins of the text of the Book of Abraham, have brought unprecedented attention to this hitherto largely neglected work. The consequence is that the Pearl of Great Price represents at one and the same time the greatest vulnerabilities and the greatest strengths of the Church of Jesus Christ.” [3] As I argue below, this is quite an overstatement. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture

Filed Under: Anti-Mormon critics, Apologetics, Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Book reviews, Doctrine, First Vision, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Prophets

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