Item Detail
-
30475
-
4
-
6
-
English
-
The Muhammad–Joseph Smith Comparison: Subjective Metaphor or a Sociology of Prophethood?
-
Mormons and Muslims : Spiritual Foundations and Modern Manifestations
-
Provo, UT
-
Religious Studies Center, BYU
-
111–33
-
"The comparison of one individual to another can occur in a variety of literary or social contexts. It is in an essentially historical vein, for example, that a number of authors have attributed to Lafayette the aspiration to become the George Washington of France. By contrast, it reflected the rough and tumble (not to say the crudeness) of partisan politics when former Vice President Spiro Agnew referred to Senator Charles Goodell of New York, a conservative turned liberal, as “the Christine Jorgenson of the Republican Party.” Comparisons can also represent attempts at humor, as, for example, when Wilhelm Wyl, in an irreverent biography of Joseph Smith, entitled his chapter on the Illinois period “The Don Juan of Nauvoo.” Of course references of this sort are often superficial and are usually fleeting, although a few of them—like Lafayette as a George Washington—occasionally do manage to get passed on from one generation to the next. Rarely does a comparison receive the supreme tribute of being taken seriously, whereupon it is elevated from a rhetorical to an academic level and may even come to be regarded as the demonstration of a scientific principle. One of the few comparisons in this class is that which depicts Joseph Smith as an American Muhammad. What follows is an attempt to determine how and why this analogy developed and whether it belongs to the realm of metaphor or to that of science." [Author]
-
History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I : History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Himself
L'Église mormonne et ses Livres Sacrés
Mormonism : Its History, Doctrines, and Practices
The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California
The Origin and History of the Mormons : With Reflections on the Beginnings of Islam and Christianity
The Rocky Mountain Saints : A Full and Complete History of the Mormons