Item Detail
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27217
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0
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0
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English
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Deconstructing the Sacred Narrative of the Restoration
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An Eye of Faith : Essays in Honor of Richard O. Cowan
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Provo, UT
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Religious Studies Center, BYU
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235-255
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The purpose of this essay is to deconstruct one of Mormonism's most important sacred narratives, specifically its narrative of the Restoration of the gospel, a narrative that includes fundamental events such as Apostasy, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and the establishment of Zion. This narrative of the Restoration is important both because it was one of the earliest narratives to develop and because its evolution can be tracked with a fair amount of precision due to the sources available. This essay will examine the narrative of the Restoration by examining three specific sources: the revelations preserved in the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith's 1833 N. C. Saxton letter, and Parley P. Pratt's 1837 publication A Voice of Warning. [...] While disparate in voice and genre, all three sources share seven common elements that serve to establish the narrative of the Restoration. [From the text]