W. W. Phelps and Mother in Heaven

This is not really about the idea of a Mother in Heaven, indeed it is only tangential to a very small part of that issue. Also it tangentially skims the issue of Joseph Smith’s funeral sermons. Nevertheless, I think it is a valuable bit of evidence about one of the early popularizers of Mormon doctrine or doctrinal interpretations, namely William Wines Phelps.

When Souls Had Wings – Givens and Preexistence

I’ve been having a look at Terryl Givens’ latest effort: on preexistence in western thought. So far it seems to be quite good.

Printing the Sermons of Joseph Smith

A comprehensive discussion of any text will often address imprints in various levels of detail. No exception here. Surprisingly, the technical details of the enterprise of printing Joseph Smith’s sermons seem to be better known for 19th century efforts than those of the 20th century. No 19th century LDS church texts focused entirely on JS’s sermons. His published Sermon-texts are scattered in various 19th century venues including magazines, newsprint, and a few books and some of these only give Reader’s Digest versions. (In another post, I hope to address a related issue, reference to Smith’s sermons.)

Albert Brisbane – Joseph Smith and Eschatology

This post has been sitting around for a while, has something to do with Joseph Smith’s sermons, and in particular funeral sermons, because it poses some questions on the idea of community and eschatology, and I don’t have time to work on it more right now, so here it is.

Mormon communal adventures of the 19th century played out against a range of American civil experimentation. A major difference was the underlying eschatology of Mormonism.

Joseph Smith pushed (via revelations like Doctrine and Covenants 42) the idea of community into the lives of early Mormons, but he also pushed it into the afterlife (an early version of this is D&C 78:6 – later versions were based on sealing). Echoing Swedenborg (by coincidence rather than intent it seems) he infused doctrine with community and family.

Short Review: The Joseph Smith Papers Revelations and Translations (first volume in the series)

Just a short review of the R&T volume. I’ve been so busy with school matters that if I don’t do it now, I’ll forget again. (I’ve altered some of the verbiage here to correspond with Constance Lewis’s comment below.)

This volume: 23×40cm, you’ll need to use the tall shelf. Weighing in at 7lbs 10oz, you won’t want to take it jogging or haul it in the brief case very far. There are 707 standard pages, with front matter numbered in Roman. Pages are of high quality matte finish acid free paper. Color and format of the dust jacket follows the initial volume of the Papers, volume 1 of the journals series. At $99.95 retail, a bargain.

Martin Luther, Matthew – and the Devil

Last night I was working away on the sermon book and I wanted to use Luther’s remark that even Matthew in writing the gospel named for him was influenced by Satan. But, then I could not for the life of me recall where I read that. I tried checking around in my books, did a google search, but I cannot seem to find it. So, I need some help. Anyone know a source for this? Or am I completely wrong and it was someone else who said this. But it does sound like something Luther might have said. I can almost picture the Latin version of the phrase but I can’t remember where it came from. Help!