Joseph Smith Papers new web content

Plus notes on the pivotal volume 6.

https://mailchi.mp/ldschurch/new-documents-available-online?e=e07d0d0a1f

Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: Plural Marriage Rev (D&C132) -podcast at Gospel Tangents

The other day I had a chance to sit down with Rick Bennett who operates the Gospel Tangents podcast. We talked about my new book on Doctrine and Covenants section 132. Rick’s a great interviewer and I hope I came across ok. Rick said that the episode may be out soon, so watch for that. I’ve done a couple of other interviews and there are a few more coming up. You can find Gospel Tangents here.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Modern Missionaries

Here is an excerpt of a report by a General Authority who toured several LDS missions in the Southern and Eastern United States.

I can justifiably praise the humility, obedience, and on the whole, industry of the missionaries in these missions . . . but when these virtues are named, speaking of the missionaries as a whole, you name the sum of their qualifications for missionary work, and there are serious defects in their “equipment” for the work required of them; among which may be suggested first, the lack of knowledge amounting to almost total ignorance of the current religious thought of the present day, with a consequent lack of ability to make any application of our religion to modern thought, or what is of any immediate interest to people . . . the existence of a “boyish” conception of things . . . . inadequate education . . . not in terms of academic achievement as much as a lack of ability to read with ease the most common books, to speak grammatically, to say nothing of speaking coherently, logically or forcefully . . . there is a serious lack of training in simple “good manners” . . . on the whole, this reveals our deficiencies as a community on which is laid the responsibility of instructing the whole world in . . . moral and religious matters.[1]

Discuss.

———–
[1] Edited for length, a certain harshness, and with some silent summary.

Here’s a short Interview I did about the D&C 132 book.

Click and listen if you will: https://gregkofford.com/blogs/news/q-a-with-william-v-smith-for-em-textual-studies-of-the-doctrine-and-covenants-the-plural-marriage-revelation-em

George Laub and the Spiritual Roots of Human [Existence]

Yes, I went there. Nearly. George Laub (1814-1880) was an early Mormon convert who spent some time in Nauvoo. While there, he took notes of speeches by early leaders of the Church, including Joseph Smith. Laub left second order summaries of those notes in a little journal/reminiscence produced between 1845 and 1857.[1]

Jonathan Edwards Center Reception

Those of you within striking distance of New Haven may be interested.

The Jonathan Edwards Center has been given larger, newly renovated spaces by Yale Divinity School, and we invite you to a reception to help us celebrate and officially to open our new home. Please join us on February 22, 2018, 4:00-6:00 p.m., in the lower level of the northeast wing of the Divinity School. Attendees can enjoy refreshments, tour the facilities, meet our staff and research fellows, and view a special exhibit of original Edwards artifacts kindly provided by Rev. Robert Rafford of Middlebury, Connecticut. Door prizes include copies of Edwards volumes signed by the editors.

Please RSVP by February 15 to 2034325341.

Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

My book on Doctrine and Covenants section 132 will arrive, February 27, 2018 from Greg Kofford Books. I’m looking forward to it at least. Here’s the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/textualstudies132/

Or @TextualStudies132

Here’s the cover.

Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 6 Editors Talk about the volume.

Lead editor, Mark Ashurst-McGee, gives an overview of the period for the volume.

Documents 6 is an especially important volume in the Documents series, covering the period where the Saints exit Kirtland and establish Far West, Missouri. There is an explosion of revelation during this 1838–1839 period and of course, the Mormon–Missouri War is represented in the volume, along with Danites, Hawn’s Mill, Crooked River, Liberty Jail, and the exodus to Commerce, Illinois. Take a look as the editors give more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjLTIocks0c&feature=em-subs_digest

Women of Faith Vol 4 Meet the editors and authors.

Jonathan Edwards Center Upcoming Lecture

The Jonathan Edwards Center presents a lecture by Prof. Michal Choinski Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland “A Preacher in the Hands of Statisticians: A Stylometric Analysis of Jonathan Edwards” Jonathan Edwards Dining Room Yale Divinity School Tuesday, Sept. 26 12:00-1:15 p.m. This presentation focuses on ways in which stylometry can contribute to the study of Edwards’s corpus, particularly sermons. An intoduction to the quantitative method of text analysis is followed by the outcomes of three stylometric experiments: on typology in Edwards’s writings; on the sentiment-analysis of the word “God”; and on evidences of Edwards’s sometime editor Thomas Foxcroft. Prof. Choinski is author of The Rhetoric of the Revival: The Language of the Great Awakening Preachers (2016) and co-editor of Cognitive Linguistics in Action: From Theory to Application and Back (2010).

Presiding Bishopric, VI.

Final Installment

Summarizing and expanding a bit here. Responsibility profiles for the PB have varied. In the 1970s they became more deeply connected with the Church’s youth organizations. Eventually that role was withdrawn and they now function in supervising Church business matters including real estate, commercial corporate interests, humanitarian operations, etc. though at present the Presiding Bishop sits on the Church PEC, hence he is a discussion partner in youth issues.[1]

Presiding Bishopric, V. The First Presiding Bishops.

The First Presiding Bishop, Newell K. Whitney

After the death of Joseph Smith in June 1844, it became clear that the Latter-day Saints would leave Illinois. The majority of Nauvoo Saints went west with the apostles, and they needed assistance in dealing with those who required food, transportation, and shelter. In the lay over region called Winter Quarters, near present day Omaha, Nebraska, the need was great enough in 1846 that small wards of roughly 500 persons were created with a bishop for each.[1] As Utah was established a similar pattern developed but the office became richer yet.

Church leaders finally appointed a Presiding Bishop in 1847, Newell K. Whitney. Whitney was one of the first bishops in the church, but this was a new assignment. As Presiding Bishop, Whitney served without counselors until his death in 1850. At the same time, Whitney presided over a corps of other bishops that developed over time: “traveling bishops,” who moved among various communities, stake bishops who operated within the boundaries of one stake, general bishops, who supervised various stakes, regional bishops, who moved among the Mormon communities, regulating the work of “located” bishops in those communities and collecting donations-in-kind for redistribution.

When Whitney died in 1850, Edward Hunter became his successor:[2]

Presiding Bishopric, IV.

With the revelations of November 1 and 11, 1831 helping to define the role of the bishop,[1] you can see that the road was being paved for more bishops in the Church. As temporal ministers, it was only a matter of time before more were called as Church population increased (when Partridge was called there were about 150 members in Ohio). At first, two population centers developed: Zion (Missouri) and Kirtland (Ohio). Bishop Partridge was a leading voice in governance in Zion. At the end of 1831, another bishop, Newel Kimball Whitney, was called for the Kirtland area (by that time Ohio membership numbered about 1,500) and among other things to work in tandem with Partridge in the United Firm (UF — the Church “corporation” if you will). Partridge, Whitney and their counselors formed an important financial administrative body in the firm. Whitney was relatively well off and his business operations in Kirtland became the heart of the firm there.[2]

Presiding Bishopric, III.

Doctrine and Covenants section 68 contains important material regarding bishops. It is also interesting its textual evolution. I’ll begin by considering a proto-version of verses 13 through 24 (as they appear in Revelation Book 1, Joseph Smith Papers Manuscript Revelations volume) and then I’ll look at the current text of the D&C. In the RB-1 text, observe that the blue text is omitted from the current edition. In verses 13-24 in the current imprint, the text in red is additional text added to the 1831 revelation—this additional text appeared first in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.

Presiding Bishopric, II.

Mormon Bishops, much like their post-New Testament counterparts did, evolved several classes of duties. Those duties augmenting or adding to those outlined or suggested in the precursor to D&C 42 and various additions like D&C 51. D&C 107 is a revelation of many historical parts, several of those being in the segment from verse 58 onward. That segment for the most part was given November 11, 1831. There the first ordained Mormon bishop, Edward Partridge,[1] learned a bit more about the relation of the office to other Church officers and his duties regarding Church discipline. The relevant part of the revelation originally read something like this: [see RB-1.]