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Has the church stated an opinion of this is him or not? Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
wayfarer wrote:
Of course it’s “Primary”. What else is there when many of the leaders continue to insist on “milk” before “meat”? I note with some degree of interest that this piece is in a ‘Department’ called ‘What We Believe”. Thus, it’s entire purpose is the indoctrination of the members. Preserving the hagiographic images of Joseph Smith, particularly the beatific one on the upper right of page 9 is meant to leave an emotional imprint of “Joseph Smith is a prophet of god”.When you actually look at the early photos of Joseph Smith, as touched up as they are, they often aren’t nearly as impressive. Just like the life, when examined in detail.
I am not surprised the church continues this hagiography. They have said, so many times, that the truthfulness of the church depends entirely upon the story of Joseph Smith. Yes, he was a remarkable individual, but as well, he was plagued with human failings that, if these were discovered about one of the “brethren” today, would be cause for outright excommunication.
Being the recipient of indoctrination is fine by me in this case because it is good.I think Joseph’s life is very impressive and I don’t know of anything he did that would warrant excommunication. We must keep in mind that the rules were different back then.
Yes, my previous view of Joseph was broken, but he was an awesome prophet.
Welcome back, Shawn. Shawn wrote:…I think Joseph’s life is very impressive and I don’t know of anything he did that would warrant excommunication. We must keep in mind that the rules were different back then. …
Hmmm?
*Statutory rape?
*Adultery?
*Blatant WoW violations?
*Having a bar in his house?
*Questioning the ecclesiastical authority
*Calling the Catholic church “the whore of all the earth?”
*Not wearing garments?
*Shady and dishonest treasure digging business deals?
Shall I go on?
Quote:but he was an awesome prophet.
Sure. I can agree with that. But, I do believe he would be excommunicated in today’s LDS church.
cwald, Shawn said “the rules were different back then” – and almost everything on your list fits that disclaimer – especially the last six, when viewed from the lens of that time. Shawn didn’t say, “if he had done them today, under the current church rules”. Also, just to beat that dead horse into the ground, four of the things on the list can be said about you, and you still are a member of record.
I’m not going to try to defend some of what he did, but give Shawn a break on this one.
Old-Timer wrote:I haven’t read the article, so this comment is about only the pictures used.
I won’t defend an idealistic, Disney-esque portrayal of him overall or visually, since I believe it would be awesome to have more realistic portrayals, but I will point out that there are only a “stock” of pictures available to be used in a magazine article. Using pictures in a magazine is important to people (publishers and readers), but they also pose the practical problem of being able to use only what’s been used previously – since nobody commissions new pictures for magazines. Thus, in that kind of forum, history is preserved largely in only the way it has been preserved previously – until new pictures are produced for something other than a magazine.
When most people believe there is no need for more pictures, the cycle continues.
Umm… This is a very charitable attitude.
But given the church publishes the Ensign and have an ‘official’ pack of pictures, it would be very easy to commission painters to do it in a more realistic way. Surely the paintings are a product of the church approach… Not the other way round.
Shawn wrote:I think Joseph’s life is very impressive and I don’t know of anything he did that would warrant excommunication. We must keep in mind that the rules were different back then.
Yes, my previous view of Joseph was broken, but he was an awesome prophet.
I thought the rules did not change. That God was never changing. So Joseph may have been a spectacular individual in many aspects, but by todays standard which are suppose to be the same as the ones Adam had, Joseph is out of the church in a second.
So to use the idea that the rules were different back then we have to assume something changed. It sounds like you are saying the church adapted to social norms and pressure as time went on so what we do now was not acceptable back then or vis versa. Actually I think that is a very correct statement.
johnh wrote:Has the church stated an opinion of this is him or not?
No. The RLDS Church hasn’t either. It’s not likely that either church ever will, because it is essentially impossible to come up with any definitive proof based solely on the study of the photo. Someday, if another photo shows up, that is also indicated to be JS and it is of the same person in the photo, then that would likely tip the balance. But another outcome is for another photo to show up that is not of the same person, but is also possibly JS.
Short of another daguerreotype, we will never know.
However, I believe it is JS, or, as has been stated in one study of the photo, if it isn’t JS, it is a person that looks a lot like JS.
There is a pretty good book on the subject:
The book is a decent overview of the various images that have been proposed to be JS, including the one linked above. It’s scientific in parts and pseudo scientific in others, but still the best work on the subject that I know.
There’s another JS photo I came across, looking older. But the image was too big. I suspect the first, larger image is JS.
Quite a handsome man, actually. But not blonde.
Now here’s a question… are they both the same image?
Here’s the famous (confirmed) image. It’s evidently been touched up a lot. Some people say he looks effeminate in this, but I think it’s as much to do with the repainting and restoration (no pun intended). I suspect the other images I posted look more like him. This one’s a bit weird. Notice the distortions in the eyes and facial shape. Not natural IMHO.
[img]http://www.thecenters.org/images/groups_photos/joseph%20smith%20002.jpg [/img] Here’s the larger one I was talking about in a cropped form. The full image shows his entire body – Old-Timer wrote:, but give Shawn a break on this one.
Okay.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2
Times were different back then. Marrying someone in their early teens is unacceptable today, but was totally acceptable in his time. (Even in the early 20th century marriages at 15 or 16 were not uncommon)
So I’m giving him a pass on that one.
However, there were things that he did that were seen as wrong at the time, which is why they were hidden.
I have heard that some statues of Jesus Christ in South Korea have Asian eyes and Asian facial features. I think that’s quite nice, actually, and I certainly don’t view it as a deceptive portrayal. If the LDS Church actively suppressed the known photos of Joseph Smith, I might have a problem with modern renditions of him. But this is just artistic freedom. The physical appearance of Joseph Smith is not an LDS article of faith. I once went to the Wikipedia article on Joseph Smith and saw the standard portrait of him. Then I clicked on the German version of the article and was shocked to see an early photograph of Joseph Smith that I had never seen before. His hair was arranged in a way that was apparently quite stylish in the 1840s but today looks like something from the Munsters. If this photo appeared on the cover of every Book of Mormon, I think the LDS church would be somewhat smaller today.
SamBee, Neither of those last two images are JS. The standing one is a politician from the time. The one “famous” picture is confusing because it is a daguerreotype. However, it is a daguerreotype of a painting. The earlier photo you posted is the one I find most compelling.
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