Item Detail
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20405
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3
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15
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English
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Walking on Water : Nineteenth-Century Prophets and a Legend of Religious Imposture
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Journal of Mormon History
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Spring 2010
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36
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no.2
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Salt Lake City, UT
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Mormon History Association
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160-204
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This article discusses the folklore that Joseph Smith staged an attempt to walk on water in order to verify his claims of prophethood, but that the attempt was shown to be fraudulent. This story exists in many different variations, with different attempted miraculous demonstrations and different religious figures in question. The author concludes, "Ultimately, the walking-on-water legend stands as a symbol of belief and skepticism—representing, to believers, persecution of the truth and, to skeptics, exposure of fraud. Brodie and others regard it as a symbol that accurately represents a self-proclaimed prophet's character, but to Latter-day Saints, Christian Israelites, Fisherites, and followers of the Universal Publick Friend—or any other religious group whose leader is thus portrayed—such tales are a symbol of the types of falsehood and slander that have been created to discredit their prophet by making him or her look like a fraud... However one interprets the legend, it is a lingering echo of the hubbub that arose in reaction to the rise of prophets in the modern world."
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