Stemmata for the Funeral Sermons of Joseph Smith

Here’s an example for one of the funeral sermons.

Preaching event at the top. Arrows represent text dependence.

This particular sermon was published in full a comparatively large number of times. The more times in print the more complicated the variorum. In this particular case, one excerpt has appeared (just in recent years) over a hundred times in Church conferences and literature. That is rather unusual and somewhat odd, given the earth shaking stuff you *could* come up with. The stemma reveals the most influential editor: MS2. It is not always easy to identify the real editor of published Church documents and in the typesetting era often more than one set of hands dealt with a given text like this one. Complete texts of Joseph Smith’s sermons tend to be published by the Church at large during in a cycle very similar to this one. Aside from reprinting certain standard imprints like Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and a few independently published versions of the sermons, new “official” imprints stopped after 1952.

Joseph Smith Papers Journals Vol. 2 Collectors Edition

This one is now available in the leather format of vol. 1 and the volumes in the other series (except for Histories). At $165, it’s expensive, but if your tastes run that way, there are 394 numbered copies. Go for it here.

Joseph Smith, Sermons, and Lived Religion

From the late colonial period to the time of Joseph Smith, important forces were at work that changed the nature of preaching. Most sermons in the late colonial period were read. Whether from small briefs carried into a pulpit, scribbled notes on a quarter sheet of foolscap, or carefully fleshed out thoughts in tempered script, preachers expanded from their notes or read word for word, but in general followed a written pre-planned text. There is a paper trail there.[1]

Calling All Document Freaks! Program for the 2012 ADE Annual Meeting in Charlottesville, VA

During August 9-11, 2012, the Association for Documentary Editing will be holding its Annual Meeting in Chalottesville, VA. Plenary speaker is Peter Hatch.
Registration details will follow.
Program:

[I thought this was interesting: The Devil is in the Details: Scholarly Editors and those who skim the surface of our collections and popularize half-truths, Candace Falk, Emma Goldman Papers, University of California, Berkeley. Also: “One of Gen. Andrew Jackson’s Hitherto Unpublished Letters Unearthed!”: The Promise and Perils of Using Printed Newspaper Texts where the Manuscripts do not Survive, Thomas Coens, Papers of Andrew Jackson, University of Tennessee.]

Sermons, More Sermons and Funeral Sermons

Sermons in antebellum America were both innovative and derivative. While disestablishment opened wider the doors of American Religious Culture to the radical, it also strengthened the radical establishment (by that I mean the unsettled Methodists and Baptists). Preachers naturally came in similar breadth and hence their sermons found all sorts of niches in which to settle.

We are dependent on the egos or concerns of the preachers themselves (for the most part) to see what they preached and where and when they did it.

Joseph Smith Papers Project — Introduction of Histories Volume 1 — Live Blog

Here at the CHL, waiting for the festivities to start. I’ll add things as they happen.

So here we are on the 4th floor of the CHL, waiting for things to start. I’m listening to Ardis type on her cool bit of tech — she’s like a machine gun compared to me — you know, fast.

Seven minutes to go.

Mark Ashurst-McGee putting out the originals. iphone lens is dirty, sorry.

Matt Grow welcomes. JS histories from 1832 to 1844. Having some technical difficulties.

Cover of Volume 1 Histories

Matt notes JSPP online additions from Community of Christ archives. See JosephSmithPapers.org

Mark: Originals on the table.

Showing the ripped-out signature.

Richard Jensen: revelation — a record is to be kept among you. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and finally John Whitmer asked to keep records. JW asked to do history, but reluctant to do so without a “commandment” — (a revelation of obedience).

JS, working with Frederick G. Williams puts together a short retrospective.

Others involved: Phelps, Partridge, Corrill, Cowdery, First Presidency.

Volume 1 of Histories focuses on documents where JS has involvement. History drafts that somehow had JS oversight at least.

Mark showing JS letter book one. Contains JS’s first retrospective history.

Mark shows 1834-1836 history.

Mark shows 1838 draft history. Looks like a gathering torn out of a book early in 1833, turned it inside out and started writing in 1839. Copied into book used for 1834-36 history (turned upside down and backwards first). Became volume A-1 and source for Times and Seasons serial history. A-1 has more stuff (via Willard Richards) than appears in T&S.

Mark shows a copy of Rupp, Orson Pratt’s “several remarkable visions” Howard Coray’s deadend workup, other stuff.

What value does “Histories” add? Use of originals, various technologies, to get best version they could. Doc analysis in the volume is new and important.

Editor Karen Davidson: Coray Fair copy A-1 in First Presidency vault. Either JS or Coray decided to shorten and be less defensive and hostile. Coray stuff is a major bonus.

Differences between Rupp and Wentworth. Just before he died, JS saw Rupp’s book. Importance of Pratt’s several remarkable visions in writing of Wentworth and Rupp.

Charts: docs, scribes, coverage, dates produced.

There’s a Stemma! YES!! Life is good.

Nathan W. A year from now all of H1 online? Other stuff within a week or so. Coray draft copy (in H1) and fair copy (not in H1) will be online.

Mark and others answer various questions from trouble makers like Jonathan Stapley.

One of the most interesting things in the presentation to me was the probability that the 1832 history used a precursor manuscript. I’m guessing a reconstruction might be done. Just guessing.

Here's a graphic of the projected printed volumes. Note a second oversized volume. Excellent stuff forthcoming.

Documentary and Critical Editions

Mary-Jo Kline’s A Guide to Documentary Editing has been a standard for years. Even in earlier editions of the book she noted the coming of the the e-edition and despite all the questions of permanence, distribution and accessibility, it, and its associated new techniques, will be a dominant force in the world of editing. I think it’s possible that it will replace print in that genre. The recent announcement of Scholarly Editing in electronic form only and by necessity the same for its content shows how far we have come. New editing software based in html, xml, LaTeX and so on brings both new and old formats to bear.

I like a wonderful cloth-bound-quality-paper book as much as the next person. But the day of low demand dense textual scholarship finding an exclusive place in that format seems to be at an end. Better get used to it folks.

With much of the grub work on chapter 10 of the book nearly finished, I’m contemplating what might come for publication. There is still considerable work ahead in checking documents, fleshing out sermon edition notes and then there are formatting issues I’ve put off in a few of the later chapters <grin>. What is the future then? I’ll probably try shopping some chapters around. But there are matters I don’t want to compromise on. One of those is formatting and facsimiles. To say nothing of color. I wonder.

In the meantime, over at BCC I’ll have a pre-conference series running: The Presiding Bishopric. Starting on the 18th and running about every two days in 6 parts. It has some fun stuff from the Joseph Smith Papers.

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.

KFD5: The June 16, 1844 Discourse

Sometimes called the “Sermon in the Grove,” this speech is the last of the Sunday sermons of JS.
I really don’t have too much to say about this right now except that the manuscript evidence is fascinating. Of course you’re reading a text geek here. The manuscript development up to publication in the Deseret News is just downright cool. The variants after that are interesting to me, but the fun part so far is in 1844 and 1855-6. I think that this will result in some changes in the way we see this discourse and its content as a Church (ok, that’s probably over-stepping things, but it is fun stuff). Anyway, it’s a very interesting text and I promise to display some of this as I get things more settled with the gene-critical stuff. Over at BCC I’m going to put up some of the genetic text for KFD2 (King Follett sermon to you) or KFD1, sometime after things die down over there.

Voice and Print – Sermon and Book and Media

Writing somehow reconstitutes (imperfectly and incompletely) a sermon (or any speech) into the three dimensional world. Printing that manuscript fixes that representation much more firmly and reliably, confidently, by making available many copies, exact duplicates, of that thought once expressed orally.

What about the hypertext world? It seems like a retreat. Going backwards somehow. Yes, the website is still there tomorrow, displaying the things that were there yesterday. But the webpage may be edited without trace. The text that was there yesterday may actually be different (even improved) today. But permanence, confidence, is left bleeding on the altar of technology. I exaggerate a little. Books were distrusted in the beginning and for good reason. In the environment of type blocks, sameness was not the rule.

Will the book die? Can the technoverse find a lasting replacement? Independent of server death, ISP disappearance, disk crashes and DVD aging?

A CD is a set of golden plates. You need a seer stone (disc drive) to access it. Unfortunately CDs don’t get Divine anti-aging blessings.

Then there’s the question of authorship. This isn’t the 1800s when the author was king, the center of the textual world. These days it’s the reader. The rabble interprets, creates meaning. That disease even reaches the canon. Oh well.

All of this is a little bit of what I’ve been wondering about as I try to finish up chapter 9 and jump into chapter 10. I mean, how to distribute the final product? Technology always wins. I love Gutenberg, but he may be dead.

Salt Lake City ADE Conference Reminder

The Association for Documentary Editing Salt Lake City, Utah conference is getting close. Should be good with JSPP participation. Details at the link.

Richard Turley and William Slaughter Talk About Their New Book, “How We Got the Book of Mormon.”

Assistant Church Historian and Recorder Richard E. Turley and coauthor William Slaughter of the LDS Church Historical Department were kind enough to answer a few questions about their new book, How We Got the Book of Mormon. Deseret Book, 2011. Cloth, ISBN13: 978-1-60908-062-4. $34.99. We’ll be posting a review of the book shortly.

Rejuvenated: Brigham, Heber and Co. in New York, 1843.

One of the interesting things about the Manuscript History of the Church, is its blending of sources to create a narrative of events in early Mormonism. Sometimes this effect is submerged by the 1850′s historians decision to unify the text by writing in the first person, as though Joseph Smith himself had penned it. Not an acceptable practice today, it was a common technique among writers of annals and “autobiographies” at the time.

Summertime and Recycling #10: D&C 107. Part 8

Continues Part 7
Joseph Smith founded two new priesthood offices early in 1835, the Twelve Apostles and the Seventy. While the apostleship had been presaged before the formal organization of the church (D&C 18) the first formal ordinations took place in February 1835. The apostles felt the need for some more detailed direction regarding their standing and duty in the church and asked Joseph Smith for such direction. Heber C. Kimball noted the experience in his journal as follows: