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I can see little references to this, but not a dedicated thread. (Correct me if I made a mistake). I finished Greg Prince’s biography of David O. McKay,…finished Bushman’s book Rough Stone Rolling,…amd reading “Insiders View” now,…next one is “Sacred Covenant” and then going to read some of the books by Michael Quinn…
But,…I remember a few years ago reading/hearing about the JSP. It was suppose to be different because they were suppose to publish real history.
Can you all tell me what you know, what you have found, and so forth?
Are the JSP an apologetic rebuttal?…or something different?
I have no information, and figured I might get a jump start if I learned what others may or may not know….
I love the JSP project, and the people that are compiling the volumes are excellent historians. I know a few of them, and they are all over the board politically and theologically. It absolutely is not classic, traditional, orthodox apologetics. It has been a reason for some of the changes that have been implemented recently, as well as the driving force behind most of the new essays, and I suspect it will lead to more changes – along with the current focus on publishing unfiltered records and actually examining them.
From what I understand, it is a release of documents in their original form. It is a way to provide access to these documents that have been locked away in the vault for so long.
From what I understand the title is descriptive. It isn’t a history book (or set of books). It is first and foremost all of the documents about Joseph Smith. There may be some history/context setting, but the papers themselves are the main “character” in the book. I do like how they have a picture of the document, then transcribed on the right. It is all online also. This allows you to search for words, which is nice. Go glance for yourself and see
http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/” class=”bbcode_url”> Thanks for the replies. I am going to check this out — really have a look see. Now, some of you have probably given the JSP a good hard look (and I am going to do the same). Does it show the stuff that is not so favorable in his favor?
On PBS for a little while there, I saw programming where they were going over the JSP. The program was devotional–very much so–at least the ones I saw. From their perspective, they were approaching it from “The Prophet” starting point, as though that fact had already been established.
I know I’m rehashing this, but just want to gather opinions as best I can. I am probably about 3 months out from getting into it. I have lots of other books lined up first…and it takes time to really get through those.
I’m not at home right now with access to our volumes. If I recall correctly, though, the project did something that downgraded it in my mind. Re. polygamy: Since there are no documents or records to support the traditional specific claims of the church, they filled in with introductory or framing editorial comments. A kind of, “Let’s catch the reader up. So God commanded polygamy, and then….” I was really disappointed. I’m sure that, overall, they’re doing good work and getting a lot of stuff organized and out there. But if this is really about the documents, then just stick to the documents.
This is off the cuff for me. If I can find the quote later, I’ll add it. And if I’m dreaming, I’ll delete the post.
There is some editorializing, and it obviously is not gong to be from an adversarial viewpoint, but it isn’t all peaches and cream and sunshine, either. These are “faithful” LDS historians, but they aren’t all orthodox, literalists. As an example, the essay on the Priesthood ban is partly a result of this project – and it said clearly that the ban was a product of the racism of the time, even if it couldn’t say it quite that explicitly.
Fwiw, I believe this project also is partially responsible for some of the recent statements regarding endowed women having Priesthood authority and power and all females exercising Priesthood power in their callings- and I see more movement in that area as things like this continue.
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