Item Detail
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18193
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7
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18
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English
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Joseph Smith's Many Histories
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BYU Studies
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2005
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44
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no.4
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3-20
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The context in which Joseph Smith is placed determines how people view him. Throughout the nineteenth century, nearly all views of Joseph combined an American context with a broader transnational context. Mormons linked Joseph with the history of biblical prophets while critics assigned Joseph to a place among fanatics and false prophets. In 1903, I. Woodbridge Riley's doctoral thesis argued that Joseph Smith was nothing more than a product of a particular moment in American history. Riley also began the scholarly trend of viewing Smith through psychological interpretation, a tradition continued by Fawn Brodie and Dan Vogel. Others in the twentieth century went beyond the "colorful fraud" explanation of Joseph in revisiting the nineteenth-century transnational approach. Bushman discusses the history in which Joseph found himself. In his first encounters with various identities, Joseph must have been confused. The First Vision was likely seen initially as merely an extraordinary personal conversion, not as a prophetic initiation. After being able to locate lost objects by using a seer stone, Joseph must have seen himself within the history of magic or even something greater. Until the Charles Anthon experience linked him to a passage in Isaiah, Joseph no doubt felt lost as an unlearned translator. The Book of Mormon itself finally clarified his identity further by linking him with previous prophetic figures, helping Joseph to resolve three disparate identities--visionary, seer, and translator--and placing himself as the Lord's Prophet. Bushman concludes that in viewing Joseph Smith, we must try to understand his self-perception and that any strictly American view of Joseph's origins is insufficient to place a prophet who viewed himself connected to a much larger historical context.
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Camelot's Crucible : The Historiographic Context for Refiner's Fire
Dreams as Revelation
Joseph Smith Jr. : Reappraisals After Two Centuries
Joseph Smith's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit Contrasted with Cartwright, Campbell, Hodge, and Finney
Mormon Parallels : A Bibliographic Source
The Historian's Craft : A Conversation with Richard Lyman Bushman
Twenty Years After “Paradigms Regained,” Part 2: Responding to Margaret Barker’s Critics and Why Her Work Should Matter to Latter‑day Saints -
Believing History : Latter-day Saints Essays
Delusions : An Analysis of the Book of Mormon ; with an Examination of Its internal and External Evidences, and a Refutation of Its pretences to Divine Authority
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
Joseph Knight's Recollection of Early Mormon History
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Joseph Smith : The Making of a Prophet
Mormonism In All Ages : Or, The Rise, Progress and Causes of Mormonism
Mormonism : The Story of a New Religious Tradition
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
Opening the Heavens : Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820-1844
The American Religion : The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation
The Founder of Mormonism : A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr.
The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon
The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith
The Prophet Puzzle : Suggestions Leading Toward a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Joseph Smith
The Refiner's Fire : The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844
Tolstoy and Mormonism