Joseph the uneducated farmboy

This one tends to give me less worry than other things. Just look at the baby Jesus narrative, talk about mind blowing. I still love the idea of the nativity story even as I scratch my head at the wonderment of it all.

The uneducated part also fit Abraham Lincoln’s narrative, and dove tails transcendentalism. Joseph was less educated then many of the Founding Fathers. He was a homespun farm boy. Ignorant, No. Broadly read and studied, No.

Going back to the Jesus narrative – he is both of royal birth and impoverished. Which is it? He was the long awaited Messiah, who was rejected by his own people? Religion thrives on paradox.

The one I wish we could focus on, are the many people of that time 1820’s and 1830’s who also had manifestations about starting new religions. That is an area where we might serve the world better if we acknowledged that Joseph was one of many. To me it’s an inspiring idea that God was trying to talk to his children.

Back in college we had to take a course called “History and Philosophy of Education” as part of the major. Our professor tried to make it as interesting as possible and met with some limited success. You’re absolutely right, Joni – in Joseph’s day he was probably about as educated as his peers. He was probably taught to read using the KJV, another very common practice and likely the only book owned by most families. The uneducated farmboy thing has never really flown with me, and I have used the argument of Biblical and BoM prophets as being less educated than JS. Granted, it does not appear that any of them singularly wrote a volume like the BoM – but if we believe the narrative, neither did JS. Without the influence of books (which he actually did appear to have some access to), TV, and video games is it possible an active imagination could have made up the BoM? In my mind absolutely. Just because the translation process only took a few months is not an indicator of whether or not it’s made up – he had his whole life until that point (about 25 years) to have developed the stories in his mind.

Just to be clear, I am not saying JS did make up the BoM, but I am not dismissing the possibility. My belief and hope is that the BoM was inspired of God.

he was probably about as educated as his peers.

I agree with this, but before we let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction, I think it’s worth asking “who where his peers?”. JS was raised in a frontier farm family, and the son of a man (JSsr) who was a financial failure and who maybe liked the bottle a little too much. By the time JSjr came around, the boys had to be hired out to neighbors for manual labor just to keep up the payments on the rented farm. While JSjr was literate and obviously intelligent, he was a far cry from wealthy, non-frontiersman, who studied at places like Harvard to become professional religious leaders.

In all likelihood, he was no where close to the education level of the average child of the same age in the US today.

I agree that it’s an exaggeration to call him an ‘uneducated’ farmboy, but it’s closer to the truth than calling him ‘educated’.

Yeah, I could have been more clear about who I think his peers were and I agree with your assessment. His peers were similar poor, rural farm boys who likely didn’t have access to a school and probably didn’t have time to go anyway because farming in those days before modern machinery was a full time full family occupation.Uneducated? Maybe. Poorly educated? Maybe. Less educated than similar poor farm kids of the time? Probably not, and depending on the efforts and abilities of his family he could have been more educated than his peers.

DJ wrote:

Just because the translation process only took a few months is not an indicator of whether or not it’s made up – he had his whole life until that point (about 25 years) to have developed the stories in his mind.

I know this isn’t directly what the OP is about, but in strict technical terms, the BOM translation may have taken about 3 months, but that was broken up over the course of about 18 months. It also involved at least 3 different places and many more people than I’d been taught. I learned this information this past summer on a church history tour with DH. He was a little surprised at how long the translation took given that we’re always taught it was 3 months. The publication took about 2 years after that if I’m remembering correctly.

I bring this up because everyone uses the 3 months + uneducated farm boy = JS couldn’t have written the BOM. Not disputing that, just making sure everyone has correct info to base that statement off of.

DJ wrote:

Just because the translation process only took a few months is not an indicator of whether or not it’s made up – he had his whole life until that point (about 25 years) to have developed the stories in his mind.

I know this isn’t directly what the OP is about, but in strict technical terms, the BOM translation may have taken about 3 months, but that was broken up over the course of about 18 months. It also involved at least 3 different places and many more people than I’d been taught. I learned this information this past summer on a church history tour with DH. He was a little surprised at how long the translation took given that we’re always taught it was 3 months. The publication took about 2 years after that if I’m remembering correctly.

I bring this up because everyone uses the 3 months + uneducated farm boy = JS couldn’t have written the BOM. Not disputing that, just making sure everyone has correct info to base that statement off of.

Excellent points.

You nailed it Ray. I have known people that were not well educated, but you could tell they were VERY smart.

And likewise I have known some highly educated people who couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.

Stop talking about me when I am not around. I have always found paper bags frightening.