Author: Steven C. Harper
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199329494
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
This is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. It's the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Joseph Smith, the church's founder, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in spring of 1820 when he was about fourteen, was answered with a vision of heavenly beings. Appearing to the boy in the woods near his parents' home in western New York State, they told Smith that he was forgiven and warned him that Christianity had gone astray. Smith created a rich and controversial historical record by narrating and documenting this event repeatedly. In First Vision, Steven C. Harper shows how Latter-day Saints (beginning with Joseph Smith) and others have remembered this experience and rendered it meaningful. When and why and how did Joseph Smith's first vision, as saints know the event, become their seminal story? What challenges did it face along the way? What changes did it undergo as a result? Can it possibly hold its privileged position against the tides of doubt and disbelief, memory studies, and source criticism-all in the information age? Steven C. Harper tells the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered accounts of Smith's experience and how Smith's 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smith's experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.
Author: H. Michael Marquardt
Publisher: Smith Research Associates
ISBN: 9781560851080
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
For more than 150 years the story of Mormon origins has been rewritten to a point where only fragments remain of the original. This book restores much of the human drama and detail. Moving from village to village, the Joseph Smith, Sr., family lived in constant poverty. When in 1825 Joseph, Sr., a cooper, defaulted on the family's final mortgage payment, he and his nineteen-year-old son, Joseph Jr., traveled 100 miles south to Pennsylvania to join a band of money diggers on a desperate hunt for buried Spanish treasure. Following this ill-fated quest, father and son returned near-penniless to New York to face eviction. They resettled in a small Manchester cabin where young Joseph later saw angels-not unlike his father and other contemporaries-and eventually found hieroglyph-inscribed sheets of gold, which his former money-digging associates repeatedly tried to steal. During this turbulent time Joseph Smith was brought to court three times for crystal gazing, eloped with a former landlord's daughter, watched as his mother and siblings were excommunicated from the Presbyterian church, published his translation of the hieroglyphs, founded the Church of Christ, saw a potential convert forcibly abducted by her minister, and eventually sought refuge in Ohio where he changed the name of his church and its place of origin.
Author: Linda King Newell
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252062919
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Winner of the Evans Biography Award, the Mormon History Association Best Book Award, and the John Whitmer Association (RLDS) Best Book Award. A preface to this first paperback edition of the biography of Emma Hale Smith, Joseph Smith's wife, reviews the history of the book and its reception. Various editorial changes effected in this edition are also discussed."--back cover.
Author: Jan Shipps
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252014178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
Mormonism is one of the fastest growing, most misunderstood, and most debated religions of recent times. Even the simple act of defining WHAT Mormonism is (or should be) has been filled with controversy. The author reconstructs the signal events of early Mormonism as perceived from INSIDE the faith.
Author: Fawn M. Brodie
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0679730540
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The first paperback edition of the classic biography of the founder of the Mormon church, this book attempts to answer the questions that continue to surround Joseph Smith. Was he a genuine prophet, or a gifted fabulist who became enthralled by the products of his imagination and ended up being martyred for them? 24 pages of photos. Map.
Author: David Persuitte
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786484039
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Just as a growing interest in millennialism at the turn of this century has rejuvenated religious debate and questions concerning the fate of the world, so did Mormonism develop from millennial enthusiasm early in the nineteenth century. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and a provocative, even controversial figure in history, declared that he had been given the authority to restore the true church in the latter days. The primary source of Smith's latter-day revelation is The Book of Mormon, and to fully understand his role as the founder of the Mormon faith, one must also understand The Book of Mormon and how it came to be. Unfortunately, the literature about Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon is permeated with contradiction and controversy. In the first edition of this impressive work, David Persuitte provided a significant amount of revealing biographical information about Smith that resolved many of the controversies concerning his character. He also presented an extensive comparative analysis positing that the probable conceptual source for The Book of Mormon was a book entitled View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America, which was written by an early New England minister named Ethan Smith. Now in an expanded and revised second edition incorporating many new findings relating to the origin of The Book of Mormon, Mr. Persuitte's book continues to shed much new light on the path Joseph Smith took toward founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Author: Steven Craig Harper
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199329478
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
This is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. It's the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Steven C. Harper tell the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered several accounts of Joseph Smith's experience of his first vision and how Smith's 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smith's experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.
Author: William Alexander Linn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 696
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Book Description
Author: Lyndon W. Cook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
Author: W. Paul Reeve
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 549
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Book Description
Covering its historic development, important individuals, and central ideas and issues, this encyclopedia offers broad historical coverage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia helps readers explore a church that has gone from being an object of ridicule and sometimes violent persecution to a worldwide religion, counting prominent businesspeople and political leaders among its members (including former Massachusetts governor and recent presidential candidate Mitt Romney). The encyclopedia begins with an overview of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—six essays cover the church's history from Joseph Smith's first vision in 1820 to its current global status. This provides a context for subsequent sections of alphabetically organized entries on key events and key figures in Mormon history. A final section looks at important issues such as the church's organization and government, its teachings on family, Mormonism and blacks, Mormonism and women, and Mormonism and Native Americans. Together, these essays and entries, along with revealing primary sources, portray the Mormon experience like no other available reference work.
