Joseph Smith’s Birthday – Celebrate it Much?

We generally do a little bit of celebration on Joseph Smith’s birthday and I’m curious if anyone out there might do the same. We usually make a cake and that’s about it. On the 200th anniversary, we got more into it, with a quiz (by me) a dinner by my wife and various fun signage around the house + a sing in or at least everyone sang happy birthday that year.

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The Value of a Sermon Critical Edition. Part 2.

[Cross posted from BCC.]

In part I, I tried to lay out a few of the issues surrounding the problem of recovering a sermon delivered in the period of early Mormonism and what that might mean. Part of this problem is contiguous with subjectivity (mental events) vs. objectivity (external events) at several points in the process of delivery, perception and recording. This in turn is connected to the technical problem of recording sermons in the era. Discussing this results in a rehash of some things from part I but what the heck.

Inspired History

With Christmas closing in, I’ve been wondering about what we might mean in regard to history as it relates to faith. Can history be faith-promoting?

The Value of a Sermon Critical Edition. Part I.

The reconstruction of a sermon is a task we cannot perform. Even as we contemplate it, many imponderables arise.

Are we reconstructing the experience of some person who heard the sermon? Or perhaps the sound that arrived at a certain location in the sermon’s venue? What of the environment during the address? How about changes in volume, tone, inflection, pitch (and were these intentional or environmental)? The speaker’s body movements, facial expressions, pauses, speed of delivery. All these things and many more could be observed by a listener and may be intentional on the part of the speaker in conveying the message of the speech act. Do we seek to determine what was “in the mind of the speaker” or what was in the mind of a listener or listeners? Are those ever in sufficient alignment that completion of one task completes the other?

Final Exam

1. The Jewish hope that the coming of Elijah would solve the Talmudic mysteries of the Rabbi’s was a far too narrow one for Joseph Smith, though he shared a similar hope in the events of the eschaton.[Reference?]

2. Who besides Joseph Smith connected Elijah to Matt 16:19?

General Question: What of Group Editing?

[Cross posted from BCC.]

I think most Latter-day Saints accept as normative the idea that Church publications which are often published say under an approval banner of the First Presidency are actually group projects, or documents authored by a person or group and then edited by some group of people. This kind of thing goes back a long way. For instance the well-embedded Godhead document of 1916 (“The Father and the Son. A Doctrinal Exposition of the First Presidency and the Twelve.”) was a Talmage production, but with editorial changes by the FP and Q12. In other words, a group production.

Augustine vs. Maximus

“The Spirit does not generate a will that is not willing, but he transforms into deification a will that has the desire for salvation.”[1]

Does this describe Mormonism?