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Well, lately I’ve been enjoying reading the Book of Mormon. I like it better than the Bible. I am not necessarily feeling the spirit when I read it, but it does give me comfort. A nagging thought as I read it is whether JS really did TRANSLATE it, or if he made it up as he went along. I was reading material in 1st or 2nd Nephi when a dying Lehi tells his youngest son Joseph that a prophet named Joseph, whose father was named Joseph, will come forth at some point in the future as a prophet. Was Joseph Smith prophesying about his seership out of a conflict of interest in translating the Book of Mormon, or was it truly a prophesy from Lehi as he quoted Joseph who was sold into Egypt as the record suggests?
Another thing that has me questioning Joseph Smith is the Fannie Alger situations. It sounds like JS was a rather libidinous individual, and many pedophiles and adulters in religion have justified infidelity by an appeal to plural marriage. I wonder if that is why plural marriage was such a part of our history — justification after JS’s libido got the better of him.
Also wearing as I read the BoM is the geography of it, and the names given to the different people’s. The Mayans and the Incas are not referred to at all. Nor are Lamanites or Nephites mentioned in any texts outside of Mormonism.
Also bothersome is the part where Nephi writes that the Lamanites were cursed with dark skin so the Nephites wouldn’t mix with them. That seems to have its roots in racist ideas that wouldn’t fly if the BoM was to come forth as a new book of scripture in our day.
I also struggle with JS’s practical motives. He clearly believed he was a prophet, and put a lot of effort into distributing his religion with the printing of the BoM, his preaching, and all he endured to bring forth the gospel.
What are your thoughts on Joseph Smith? Do you believe he was a prophet? Or just someone who believed he was?There’s a lot to unpack. I’ll give the disclaimer now, which applies to everything I write… these are just my opinions and my opinions are going to change over time. With regards to the BoM, I see Nephi as Joseph inserting himself into the story. At least the first few books in the BoM make more sense to me when I read it through that lens. In that light, the first few books of the BoM tell us more about Joseph Smith than they do about Nephi, Lehi, etc.
SilentDawning wrote:
I wonder if that is why plural marriage was such a part of our history — justification after JS’s libido got the better of him.
That’s my take. I’m sure it’s far more complex than that. Joseph was a part of the restorationism movement but I think where he differed is that he saw the church was eternal, reaching not just back to Christ but all the way back to Adam. Some of the biblical patriarchs and kings practiced polygamy so it’s plausible that Joseph believed polygamy needed to be restored.
That said, I think the there are several chicken or the egg issues to work out. Did Joseph believe in a need to restore polygamy before he started practicing it, or did he engage in extramarital dalliances before he believed in the need to restore polygamy. It’s plausible that justification for affairs is what led to Joseph’s particular brand of restorationism.
Maybe Joseph wasn’t interested in restoring the church or was interested in restoring the church but only the same way other restorationist movements were (to the time of Chirist) but the justifications for the affairs forced Joseph’s hand to dip into the Old Testament to restore things, then all of a sudden the church is eternal and needs to be consistent from Adam to present day.
Chicken or egg. I don’t suspect we’ll ever know for sure but I have my opinions.
SilentDawning wrote:
Also wearing as I read the BoM is the geography of it, and the names given to the different people’s. The Mayans and the Incas are not referred to at all. Nor are Lamanites or Nephites mentioned in any texts outside of Mormonism.
To be fair, it could be a scenario where we’re giving people a name that they did not give themselves. For example, we call them Mayans but they may have called themselves Chontal, Mopan, K’iche’, etc. Even those alternate names for Mayans came later and aren’t necessarily what the ancient peoples called themselves.
The same goes for the BoM writers. They didn’t necessarily call people by the names we call them today. They could have said “Jaredites” where we say “Olmec.”
That’s just names though. I think the greater challenge are the timelines. Which nations have the populations that are referred to in the BoM and where did they align with the timelines presented in the BoM?
SilentDawning wrote:
Also bothersome is the part where Nephi writes that the Lamanites were cursed with dark skin so the Nephites wouldn’t mix with them. That seems to have its roots in racist ideas that wouldn’t fly if the BoM was to come forth as a new book of scripture in our way.
If it was to avoid “mixing” I find myself wondering when relationships between people with different skin colors became taboo. First we’d have to establish that there were two different groups in pre-Columbian America with vastly different skin tones. If that’s not the case, no need to concern ourselves further.
After that we’d need to establish when attitudes to not intermix with people with different skin tones became a thing within pre-Columbian cultures. Interracial relationships haven’t always been taboo for all cultures. When it comes to racism, the Nephites appeared to have a lot in common with 19th century Americans.
SilentDawning wrote:
What are your thoughts on Joseph Smith? Do you believe he was a prophet? Or just someone who believed he was?
I believe we’re all prophets. It’s more a matter of whether we cede that innate power to others or whether we claim it for ourselves. I also believe that it’s on a gradient; we can claim all of that power for ourselves on some subjects, cede all the power to others on other subjects, and have some mixture of both on yet other subjects.
I have been impacted lately by the description that Bro. Givens gave for JS: JS was not afraid to get things wrong. JS was a “speculative thinker.” He was “pushing boundaries, asking new questions trying often by a process of trial to test new ideas and insights and challenge conventional religious thinking.”
SilentDawning wrote:
A nagging thought as I read it is whether JS really did TRANSLATE it, or if he made it up as he went along. I was reading material in 1st or 2nd Nephi when a dying Lehi tells his youngest son Joseph that a prophet named Joseph, whose father was named Joseph, will come forth at some point in the future as a prophet. Was Joseph Smith prophesying about his seership out of a conflict of interest in translating the Book of Mormon, or was it truly a prophesy from Lehi as he quoted Joseph who was sold into Egypt as the record suggests?
Nibbler said, “he saw the church was eternal, reaching not just back to Christ but all the way back to Adam.” I think that JS was the first correlation committee in that we was trying to create consistency forwards and backwards. If JS is a prophet then revelation to him is the same as revelation to Adam or Abraham or Peter Right? It is all the word of God, right? JS seemed to feel empowered to place these revelations in the mouths of other historical figures. These revelations are then shoehorned back into the scriptural canon. A huge example of this is the mentions, doctrines, and specific prophecies of JC placed in pre-Christian times. JS Christianized the pre-Christian era!
SilentDawning wrote:
I also struggle with JS’s practical motives. He clearly believed he was a prophet, and put a lot of effort into distributing his religion with the printing of the BoM, his preaching, and all he endured to bring forth the gospel.
I look at JS as something of an inspired artist with religion being his medium of choice. He’s like the Bob Ross of starting new religions. He assembled his materials from his environment and arranged them in creative and enterprising ways. Along the way he would make some mistakes but in Bob Ross fashion “anything we don’t like, we’ll just turn into a happy little tree or something, because as you know, we don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.”
JS was a prophet. It was part of his identity, like Bob Ross is an artist. Bob Ross isn’t faking or making it up even if the landscape that Bob Ross is painting is not to be found anywhere but the mind of Bob Ross and the canvas that he is painting on. JS was a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator. Both JS and Bob Ross created with their art.
Quote:
JS was a prophet. It was part of his identity, like Bob Ross is an artist. Bob Ross isn’t faking or making it up even if the landscape that Bob Ross is painting is not to be found anywhere but the mind of Bob Ross and the canvas that he is painting on. JS was a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator. Both JS and Bob Ross created with their art.
Who is (was) Bob Ross?SilentDawning wrote:
Quote:
JS was a prophet. It was part of his identity, like Bob Ross is an artist. Bob Ross isn’t faking or making it up even if the landscape that Bob Ross is painting is not to be found anywhere but the mind of Bob Ross and the canvas that he is painting on. JS was a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator. Both JS and Bob Ross created with their art.
Who is (was) Bob Ross?
Google him, or even better look him up on Youtube. There is also a Bob Ross FAST channel on some services. “Happy clouds.”
He was so much like most other visionary religious revolutionaries that it could be a template with only minor alterations: incredibly complex with “something” that translates as charisma and attractiveness (no matter physical looks). I love his self-description of a rough stone rolling – and I wish we honored that more.
SilentDawning wrote:
What are your thoughts on Joseph Smith? Do you believe he was a prophet? Or just someone who believed he was?
I believe that JS put the hat of “prophet” on as much as he put the hat of “husband” on or “farm laborer” on.
I think he was the type to “try on” and “immerse self in” different frameworks – from the nature of God, the nature of divine relationship (“Sealing” doesn’t always equal “Plural Marriage” and we tend to conflate the 2 concepts because BY and other leaders did later on in history), and priorities.
I think that Joseph Smith felt compelled to prioritize translation efforts over family survival (being explicitly supported by other families over and over).
I think that he deceived himself as much as he deceived those who followed him (which is a pitfall for many charismatic leaders) and that deception actually happened. I can see JS and the saints being booted from Nauvoo for community tension reasons a whole lot more then the “we’re being persecuted” card.
I think it is splitting hairs to try to determine whether JS actually was receiving a religious framework (with scripture) from God or processing his trauma and lifelong story using a descriptive framework with God as a starring character.
I believe that Joseph Smith believed he had a message from God and that he was called to the work of translating the Book of Mormon and restoration. Since I am hopeful that God exists at all, I am personally more skeptical that God had that specific a plan for humanity, for the saints, for Joseph Smith. Your mileage may vary.
Lately I wonder if JS was lazy. It would be a heck of a lot more fun to write a book of scripture and travel around preaching than the hard labor that typified the time in which he lived..particularly since he was poorly educated and had no educational opportunities. More fun to be a grass roots preacher on most days, and have your basic needs met by others. In fact his envy of the learned and their lifestyles may well be the source of some of the anti intellectual sentiments we hear about in the Book Of Mormon. Just a thought. Still struggling with the whole JS thing. I just finished reading king Benjamin’s discourse and was impressed with the wisdom packed content. If he dreamed all that up he was doing a good job.
I think it would be difficult to make a case for laziness – and distrust of the rich and the highly-educated is rampant in pretty much all religious texts, certainly including the Bible. (I would argue that specific distrust has merit without scriptural qualifiers like humility and charity) I think that JS was more fearful of being “just like everyone else” and going down into the history pages as what he would define as “a nobody”. I think this fear made him stand out enough for Emma Hale to consent to marry him and probably drove him to run for president (among other actions).
SilentDawning wrote:
I also struggle with JS’s practical motives. He clearly believed he was a prophet, and put a lot of effort into distributing his religion with the printing of the BoM, his preaching, and all he endured to bring forth the gospel.What are your thoughts on Joseph Smith? Do you believe he was a prophet? Or just someone who believed he was?
What are your thoughts on Joseph Smith?I’ve been thinking a lot about Joseph Smith lately. SD’s post encouraged me to document what I’m thinking. Or, try to at least.
This is an interesting person. This is a complicated person. Can you imagine trying to write a book that purports to document for history, the
life, travels & history of a people that lived anciently? And in the process, have this document survive 190+ years? This was in a time when
approximately 20% were literate. So, approximately 80% of the early converts believed based upon the testimony of others or the direct voice
of JS. Then over the next 190 years, the church will grow to over 17,255,000 people worldwide. Even if 50% were “true blue” & fully active,
the numbers are astounding to think about.
Do you believe he was a prophet?Or, just someone who believed he was?
My answer to both questions is yes. In my own simple way, I do believe. I am complicated in my belief.
I do not consider myself “true blue or fully active”. I am a rebel within a cause. If given the opportunity, I could (& would) argue any lesson,
talk or principle given at church. So, I remain silent. (Usually.)
Joseph is an interesting character in our common history. I would of loved to talk with him face to face.
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