Preaching Manuals, The Eighteenth Century, Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Smith

The Sermon Culture of the America prior to Joseph Smith’s advent was dominated by several important figures. Certainly the most well known of the 18th century was Jonathan Edwards. While Joseph Smith rarely penned much of anything, and never wrote down a sermon, he had stock topics that he returned to with some frequency.

KFD5 (the Sermon in the Grove) and Display Postscript

I’ve been using LaTeX to construct typographical facsimiles for Joseph Smith (JS) sermon docs. The packages available to create “critical texts” are pretty feature rich, but limited in how text can be manipulated. Twenty odd years ago, Steve Jobs started NeXT Computer. The display technology was a breakthrough in a number of ways. One thing it allowed was the possibility to form and shape text like never before. Drag and drop on steroids. Pushing text around, shrinking/growing font size, moving text and characters upside down, sideways, curving it, writing sideways in margins. It was perfect for projects like mine. But it died and nothing like it seems to be available now. This is just a wish for it to return.

Joseph Smith Papers Journals vol. 2

Trek on over and see J. Stapley’s review. It’s excellent.

Happy Christmas and New Year to All

May the holidays be pleasant and meaningful and the Christ find place in your homes and hearts. See you in January.

Those Ad Men

Lately I’ve been reading the Deseret News and that has reminded me again of the fun advertisements you find in old newsprint. One of my favorites is from the Exponent around 1890 or so. The ad proposes the benefits of “taking” a spoonful of sodium hypochlorite at bed time. You get a cleansed palate and sweet stomach. No morning breath there! Sodium hypochlorite goes by a different name in your pantry now. Bleach. Yum.

This next is not an ad, but it appears with the DNews ads in 1857:

——–
DIED
In this city, of influenza, October 2, TAMSON VILATE, daughter of Phillip and Elizabeth Margetts, aged 10 days.

“Dearest sister, thou hast left us,
Here thy loss we deeply feel;
But ’tis God that has bereft us,
He can all our sorrows heal.”
——–

The Providence of God is a view many Latter-day Saints share without much examination. The sisterhood thing is also very interesting.[1]

A lot of the early DNews “ads” were lost and found stuff but here’s an interesting one that is not:

NOTICE.
JOHN H. PICKNELL is always on hand at C. Taylor’s slaughter house to kill beeves for $1 per head, and will pay a good price for hides.
N.B. Tripe and cow heels always on hand.

A possible Christmas gift guys! Cow heels for your sweetheart.
————
[1] The words are frequently quoted in Protestant death notices in the 19th century. They come from a hymn by L. Mason usually under the title “Death of a Schoolmate.”

Association for Documentary Editing 2012 Summer Institute

Institute for Editing Historical Documents

The 2012 Summer Institute for Editing Historical Documents will be held 5–9 August at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Institute will be funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission through a grant to the Association for Documentary Editing.

The Riches of Parley Parker Pratt

Franklin Thomas Pomeroy[1] an LDS missionary to the Southern States in the 1890s encountered one John A. Peel. Peel was an eyewitness to the death of Parley Parker Pratt. It’s this fortuitous encounter that led to the present account of Parley’s last words found in the “Journal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” It’s interesting things like this that you’ll find in two new books on LDS Apostle Parley P. Pratt.

Lived Religion – Lived History

I’ve been hearing the words “lived religion” a lot for the last couple of years or so and it brings something interesting and valuable to that table. The table of religious studies and religious history. But it’s not a new idea. Today in particular I think of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the crack in the world that started there and still echoes through our lives, though many of us do not feel it.

Call for papers: ADE.

The Association for Documentary Editing invites proposals for papers, roundtables, and/or panels for the organization’s 34th annual meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia, 9-11 August 2012. See http://documentaryediting.org/meeting/index.html.

The Mormon Naturalist

[Cross posted at BCC.]

No this isn’t a post about Steve Peck, much as I think that would be fun. Instead, its in the vein I’ve been sort of mining lately. I hesitate to use the tired “Mormonism and Science” title, but what the heck. Why not?

History and Documentary Editing – Urgent

For those of you into Mormon history, documentary editing projects, etc. I encourage you to click the link and get involved. In my opinion it’s a worthy cause. Protecting the relatively small dollar amounts devoted to editing projects like the George Washington papers and history in the schools in this time of state and federal belt-tightening is worth it, and doesn’t impact that goal. Keeping these small projects underway is vital for many reasons and the practice of making such things into scapegoats by a chicken congress (excuse my French) is par for the course. Give them a little backbone.

http://historycoalition.org/2011/12/02/fy-12-federal-funding-decisions-at-final-stage-action-needed-now/

Toward a Theology of the Material

[Cross-posted at BCC. But it seems oddly Abrahamic, so here it is again.]

[I was just sitting here - thinking about where the fun speculations of 19th century Mormonism might lead, and this is what came out. Excuse its ragged form.]

Mormonism has a uniquely materialist bent. It posits that the material is necessary for complete happiness.[1] That while the world is biphasic, physical and spiritual, both are material.[2] Modern physics divides much of its attention between the very large (cosmology) and the very small (quantum phenomena). In the large, physics tells us of a universe whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere and yet expanding. That expansion is apparently going on forever, never to stop.

Joseph Smith Papers, Journals Vol. 2.

The Church Historian’s Press offers the second volume in the journals series of the Joseph Smith Papers. Volume editors Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith and Richard Lloyd Anderson bring us Joseph Smith’s journals from the period December 1841 to April 1843.

The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 2.

The period covered by the journals was one of great importance and included political and infrastructure development of Nauvoo (including the temple), the establishment of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, the transition of the Times and Seasons to official Church organ, the printing of the Book of Abraham, the inauguration of the temple ceremonies (most of them) and proxy baptism for the dead, the quorum of the anointed, the extradition attempt and underground, the rise of the twelve apostles, polygamy, a much better though less personal account of JS’s doings and sayings and much more. During the period JS’s journals were recorded by Willard Richards, his private secretary and chief chronographer, William Clayton, Erastus Derby[1] and a few pages by Eliza R. Snow, the latter three only during the first year of the volume. That period is important for historical reasons, but as a documentary record perhaps the most interesting aspect is the now open availability of the journal record for the period from the famous “Book of the Law of the Lord.”

The Grand Unification Theory

[Cross-posted from BCC]

In physics, the holy grail in the present moment is a theory which explains, with the power of prediction, the fundamental things. The things of the small universe (weak force, strong force, electricity, magnetism) the quantum world, and the things of the big universe – essentially gravity. The historical inspiration for this frenzy was the achievement of the Scotsman, James Clerk [pronounced "Goble"] Maxwell. Maxwell proposed a version of this business, which unites the formerly disperate understandings of electricity and magnetism:

Maxwell's Unified Theory

This is a rich explanation which both predicts and accounts for much of what happens in your daily life – from the operation of your cell phone, computer and television – to how your eyeglasses and contact lens behave.[1]

Switching Servers

boap.org will be switching servers in the next few weeks. If you notice any bugs, you can respond on this thread and we’ll try to fix them.