Completed in May 1996 as part of my Religious Studies degree at the University of Sunderland, this dissertation about Joseph Smith was awarded top marks.  It discusses the background and the early years of Joseph Smith before going on to look at the arguments against his basis for the LDS church...

Contents - 

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One - The First Vision: Revivalmania (i) Religious Migration: a historical perspective (ii) The First Vision Controversy

Chapter Two - Magic as a means of Discovery: Money Digging Speculation (i) A historical perspective (ii) Joseph's magical world (iii) The seer stone controversy

Chapter Three - The Book of Mormon: Fact or Fiction (i) A lost race (ii) The golden plates (iii) The Urim & Thummim (iv) 'Reformed Egyptian' (v) The lost manuscript

Conclusion

Bibliography

**PLEASE NOTE THAT PLAGIARISM IS A CRIME AND WILL NOT BE TOLERATED - THIS WORK CONTAINS NO APPENDIX AND AN INCOMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY**

Acknowledgements - 

The following appeared on my acknowledgements page ... "I would like to thank my mother for her Christian perspective, my father for his Mormon perspective, and the Mormon Missionaries who visited me for the inspiration for this dissertation."

Introduction - 

Within the pages of this dissertation I aim to explore Joseph Smith, Jr., the mythmaker.  Joseph grew up in an age of religious revivals, magical arts and old colonial legends, all of which may have contributed to the 'translation' of the Book of Mormon, and the eventual founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  There is no intention to explore in depth the doctrines and traditions of the Church.  Rather, I would like to suggest that the culture in which Joseph grew up was the perfect way to establish the basis for a new church.  

In the first chapter my plan is to discuss the revivals, the newly established churches and the charismatic way in which followers were easily converted to the new faiths.  Following the historical perspectives, I would like to suggest that Joseph's first vision of 1820 may have been just a fantasy, based entirely on his knowledge of what was going on around him, in his environment.

Chapter two will shift towards the occultism themes that some claim Mormonism to be based on.  Magic and religion were much intertwined in the early nineteenth century and this chapter will discuss how.  Although money digging was considered fraudulent, it was very much persisted during Joseph's time.  There would have been hardly anything in it for Joseph to claim that what had in fact been discovered on evil, magical terms, had really come from the one true God.

With chapter three I will delve into the mysteries surrounding the Book of Mormon.  The legends of a lost race were persistent and Joseph may have first wanted to write a 'factual' historical account about them, using his vivid imagination.  This section will discuss why this may have been, and if it was the case, the reasons why he may have changed his mind and chosen to write a religious history instead. 

The concluding chapter will aim to summarize the aspects of the dissertation.  With this I hope to show that, although nobody will ever be able to say for sure that the Mormon Church is false, there are reasons for suggesting that it may have been.  Obviously I do not want to claim that there is no way it can be a real Church of God, but the many various discrepancies would allude that it may be false, a way that the young, ambitious, imaginative and creative Joseph Smith, Jr., thought that he may leave his mark on the world. 

Chapter One -

(i)

If it is to be believed by Mormon sources the Smith family were very religious, although there was no one church to which they belonged for any considerable amount of time (Hughes 1986: 5).  Joseph, Sr., considered himself to be a "seeker", a person searching for the truth but unable to find it in any one particular church.  Perhaps it was this, combined with the religious revivals which plagued rural New York at this time, that helped Joseph Smith, Jr., create a new church.

Religious revivals were in abundance at the time Joseph was growing up.  There was a lapse from the old churches which were full of schisms.  Between 1814 and 1830 the Methodists split in four different directions.  The Baptists split into Reformed Baptists, Hard-Shell Baptists, Free-will Baptists, Seventh-day Baptists, Footwashers, and many other obscure sects (Brodie 1971: 12).  Unfettered religious liberty began producing a whole host of new religions.

Carried along in this religious migration came those who professed to be godly.  Isaac Bullard wore nothing but a bearskin girdle and gathered a following of "pilgrims" in 1817 in Woodstock, Vermont, not too far from the old Smith farm.  A man seemingly before his time, he taught free love and communism, regarded washing as a sin and boasted that he had not washed his clothing in seven years.

Then there was Ann Lee, the Mother of the Shakers.  She believed herself to be the reincarnated Christ and had fled New England's indignation with her celibate community.  Her sect flourished and spread in the fertile religious atmosphere of New York State.  Just thirty miles from Palmyra, the home town of Joseph, was Sodus Bay and it was here that the Shakers built community halls in 1826.  It is even remotely possible that the young Joseph may have spent an evening at one of their dances, watching them dance madly before falling exhausted to the floor, speaking incoherently, presumably in tongues.  Although there were myths that followed them wherever they went, such as castrating their males and practising infanticide, they did possess a certain dignity, one which came from their cleanly habits and intense industry.

In Jerusalem, just twenty-five miles from Palmyra, ruled Jemima Wilkinson, the "Universal Friend", who also thought herself to be the Christ.  Jemima had authority over her followers with revelations from heaven and she swore she would never die.  Her chief aide, whom she called the Prophet Elijah, would tie a belt around his waist, and when his belly swelled in protest he was alleged to receive many prophetic visions.

Obviously the likes of Bullard, Lee and Wilkinson were eccentrics, the more conspicuous personalities on the purple fringe of organised religion.  Trained preachers were rare in this part of the world as the settlers preferred personality to diploma from the men who called them to God.  In 1817 the Baptists actually boasted that of all the preachers in New York state, west of the Hudson, only three had ever been to college.

Palmyra was at the centre of what became known as the "burnt over" district.  Religious enthusiasm was literally being burnt out of people as one revival after another swept through the area.  The revival conversions were generally fiery, and although there is no detailed description of the revivals which occurred in Palmyra between 1824 and 1827, when they were at their wildest, it is not impossible to assume that they may have almost matched the pathological intensity of those that occurred in Kentucky at the turn of the century.  Revivalists knew their hell intimately, including geography, climate and vital statistics, and painted the sinner's fate so hideously that crowds surged forward to be born again.

Yet revival conversions were always subsequently short-lived.  Where the excitement of religious fervour was at its most wildest it would appear that it resulted in nothing more than a reaction that was so extensive and profound, that the impression left on many minds was that religion was no more than a mere delusion.  The new churches inevitably lasted for a very short time, often no more than three or four months.  But these years, which coincided with Joseph's adolescence and early manhood, were the most fertile in American history for producing new prophets. William Miller, in the same decade that Joseph announced his intentions, proclaimed that Jesus would return to earth in March 1843 and usher in the new Millennium.  John Humphrey Noyes was converted to the theory that the Millennium had already begun, and so revealed his own plans for a community based on Bible communism, free love, and scientific propagation.  Joseph was not alone in his mission but he was the only prophet destined for some form of real glory.

This growing multiplicity of sects at the beginning of the nineteenth century made the decision about who was right more difficult.  For Berger, in The Sacred Canopy, the Protestant could depend only upon the conversion experience for support within the church.  If this was true, then we can see that it must have been extremely difficult for those American's outside the churches, as they had no faith-confirming experiences.  If conversion never came they must have been devoid of any contact with the divine.  Others must have been so confused by the many contradictory religious claims, much as Joseph reportedly was, that they were not certain where or whether a God was made manifest.

It was not only Joseph who found conversion difficult.  Other early Mormons had similar difficulties.  George A. Smith reported that after attending many revivals he was the only one of his group who was not converted and he was sealed up to damnation by the Congregationalists.  Warren Foote went to Methodist camp meetings but could not find God.  Lewis Barney insisted that all religions were a hoax, that all preachers were hypocrites, and they all preached only for money and popularity (Hill 1984: 483).

(ii)

So the young Joseph was very much exposed to the revivals, and to the men and women claiming to be prophets and revelators, and I believe this may have been a propagating factor in the founding of a highly questionable new religion.  The Revivalists, and especially those who claimed to be prophets and revelators, often substantiated their claims by saying they had received dreams or visions directly from God.  Of course these could never be proven to be true or false.  The history of the Latter-day Saints begins with such a vision, but Joseph himself wrote and dictated more than one account of this which makes its authenticity largely debatable. 

"It all began in the year 1820, when a young man named Joseph Smith, Jr., went into a wooded grove to pray."  These are the words, translated into a host of languages, with which Mormon Missionaries begin recounting the story of Joseph Smith's first vision.  For contemporary Mormons belief in the vision is second only in importance to belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth.  This vision prepared the way for the appearance of other heavenly personages, especially the 1823, and other subsequent, appearances of Moroni and the eventual delivery of the golden plates and their translation as the Book of Mormon.

At first the vision was not given the importance in Mormon theology that it would later achieve.  Published accounts of the vision were slow to appear, and it was not until 1832, some twelve years later, that the first account was written.  For years Mormon Missionaries placed the Book of Mormon, and not the first vision of the Father and Son, at the centre of their message to the world.

For Fawn Brodie the twelve years that elapsed could only mean that Joseph had fabricated his vision of 1820.  It is possible that when Joseph started dictating his history it was to provide a starting point for his prophetic career that would counter the charge that he was a money digger and charlatan turned prophet.  Backman (1971: 122) reveals that non-Mormon newspapers of 1830 were already making references to Joseph's claim that he had been visited by God, but this is probably because this is when the Church was officially established.  The earliest recorded recital of the first vision was dictated to Frederick G. Williams between July and November 1832.  This was followed in 1835 by a version, recorded by Oliver Cowdery, recited to a "Jewish minister", Robert Matthias.  The 1838 version is believed to be the most significant for Mormons. This was dictated by Joseph to James Mulholland.  There is also a very insignificant record of the vision to be found in a letter written to John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat, in 1841.

It is natural that Joseph would choose to shape his narrative into a traditional form of spiritual autobiography in the 1832 account, for this was familiar both to him and his contemporaries.  Joseph and his neighbours doubtless heard many accounts of the conversion of souls who had strayed, but through grace had been "born again", in the religious revivals they had participated in.  Most of these were delivered orally although dozens of such "born again" experiences of Joseph's contemporaries were eventually published.

What is interesting about these is that there appears to be a pattern peculiar to the conversion experience itself.  The sinner becomes aware of his wickedness; he turns to prayer and study of the Holy Writ for solace, but generally encounters some form of Satanic opposition; a period of sincere prayer, usually in woods or some other secluded area, coincides with a supernatural epiphany during which he sees or senses the presence of Christ; forgiveness of sins is achieved and he undergoes a spiritual change; he is then led to proclaim his conversion and new found witness for Christ to others; and though he still falters from time to time, his ministry begins (Lambert 1980: 34).

There is no doubt that Joseph was familiar with many of the spiritual accounts of his contemporaries in New York.  It seems that one Jacob Knapp, who later became a Baptist minister, had an experience in 1816 which is so similar to Joseph's, as are the others, that one must wonder whether Joseph's was true.  There is the possibility that all the experiences were made up conversion experiences in later years as conversion techniques to recruit new members.  If all did have such experiences which they believed to be true, then they could not have all been from one single divine source for they all looked for the true God and joined different sects.  Also, we must remember that Joseph was not the only person told by a divine authority to restore the Christian Church in the early nineteenth century. 

Each of the different narratives of the first vision demonstrates a similarity in general content and a notable difference in particulars.  A study of the various accounts suggests that Joseph emphasized something different on each occasion.  One notable aspect of the first vision controversy is the significant literary alterations in the accounts.  It can be said that the literary, structural and stylistic changes reflect Joseph's changing understanding of the event.  It could also demonstrate that Joseph moved from writing of his allegedly transcendent experience as a young man influenced by the Protestant tradition of spiritual autobiography, to writing profoundly of the event as Leader, Restorer and Prophet of a new religious movement.

The history that Joseph dictated to Williams in 1832 was written in the exalted prose used by his contemporaries.  He began:

A History of the life of Joseph Smith Jr an account of his many marvilous experience and of all the mighty acts which he doeth in the name of Jesus Christ [sic] the son of the living God of whom he beareth record ... (Backman: 155) 

Joseph was very conscious of the importance of his account of the alleged event.  It would seem that he could not resist the temptation to attempt to match his rhetoric view to the event, particularly when doctors of divinity were recounting events of supposedly less importance in even higher sounding phrases.  He had other similarities with the spiritual autobiographies of his contemporaries.  Like them he found himself becoming "seriously imprest with regard to the all important concerns for the wellfare of my immortal soul".  After being filled with the love of God, he, like his contemporaries, suddenly found nature transformed, and he wrote about,

the sun the glorios luminary of the earth and also the moon rolling in their magesty .. these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotent and omnipreasant power ..

Consistent with Protestant tradition there is only one personage in the 1832 account and there is also a phrase which makes his vision markedly different to others of the time according to Lambert: "but [I] could find none that would believe the hevenly vision".  Lambert believed this to imply that Joseph had told his listeners something more than he was to include in this first account, and that this is only revealed in later accounts, but he may just have meant exactly what he said, with no hidden implications.

The 1832 account is strongly reminiscent of similar records by other spiritual men.  In a somewhat melodramatic language Joseph recounts his experience as if it was primarily a vision granted to assure him of his personal redemption, and not to assure him of the apostasy of all the churches and the need for restoration, as it later became.

By 1835 Joseph seems to have come to a better capacity for expressing the uniqueness of his experience.  The language and structure appear to be more appropriate to the prophetic role he may have created for himself and the destiny of the Restored Church.  The emphasis shifts from forgiveness for his own personal sins to a greater concern regarding the "different systems" of religion in the world.  He introduces into the 1835 account a satanic influence and the unique experience of seeing two personages, as well as angels, in his vision. By 1832 the Mormon Church had been established for two years, so surely there is no reason why Joseph couldn't have included these details in the earlier account?  Obviously this new detail is why "none ... would believe the hevenly vision", but he had a further three years in which to compile a story that would immediately separate his experience from those of the many others in the burned over district.  This, couples with the more simple and confident style of narration, can suggest that Joseph wanted his Church to seem more significant to the common man, to make it seem different, and himself more spiritual.

The transition from farm-boy to prophet was complete by the time Joseph dictated his 1838 account of the first vision.  One of the first apparent differences between this and the previous two versions is its restrained, matter-of-fact style.  One cannot even say that the change in style is merely a matter of the passage of time, that the experience became faded, because the same narrative includes a remarkably full and complete description of the angel Moroni, a heavenly manifestation from 1823, yet also vividly recalled in the greatest detail.

Perhaps it can be said that because the language is simpler, and less embellished; because of the space given to the central events occurring; because the concern became about which church was right, rather than Joseph's own sin, the whole historical understanding of the founding of a whole new religious tradition, is possibly fabricated.  If Joseph had not changed his first account the story could be believable, but with so many discrepancies occurring the factual structure has become rather weak.

Other factors should be taken into account if it is to be said that the vision was nothing more than a young mans ambitious dream.  There is not only the fact that similar visions were commonplace in New York at the time, but also Joseph stated that he was persecuted for his vision.  Palmyra newspapers do not even mention it until 1830.

Lucy Mack Smith and other close relatives appear to have either ignored the vision or confused it with the visit of the angel Moroni in 1823.  The Tanner's (Hill 1982: 38) show that Wesley Walters discovered the Session Records at the Western Presbyterian Church of Palmyra reveal Lucy, and some of her children, to have been active members from 1824 until 1828, eight years after Joseph was supposedly told that all the churches were an abomination.  Was this because the Smith family refused to take Joseph seriously, or is it more likely that Joseph did not tell them because there was nothing to tell anyway?  What makes the fabrication theory more feasible is that in 1879 Michael Morse, a brother-in-law of Joseph, testified that Joseph himself sought membership in the Methodist Church of Harmony, Pennsylvania, in 1828.  This is hardly the behaviour of a man who has had some spiritual visions renouncing all churches, and is in the possession of the Book that will restore the true Church.

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©E J Durrant 1996

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