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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Book For Historians, November 30, 2002
This review is from: The Words of Joseph Smith (Hardcover)
This book is an absolute must for anyone studying Joseph Smith. To ignore this book would be like biographizing Lincoln, and ignoring the Gettysburg Address. It is a collection of the 173 Nauvoo discourses of Joseph Smith, covering the years 1839-1844. It is an interesting mixture, since the Prophet wore so many hats. We normally see him as Prophet, Seer and Revelator, but he was also Mayor, General, and Presidential Candidate and was a Husband, Father and Lover. This book opens up Joseph Smith and we hear him as the early saints heard him. For example, on 180-181, James Burgess includes some of the Prophet's rhetorical "Oh no!" and "Oh yes!" flourishes. Sometimes we sand down Joseph Smith, thinking that he has some rough redneck edges. But I imagine that he would be quite a personable speaker. Judging from these notes, I am quite convinced of it. I confess that we do have the "distance problem." We have a few autograph manuscripts, so we must work through the scribes. Then again, this is no different than the Socrates-Plato perplexity, and we still recognize Socrates as a great thinker nonetheless. The gem of this book is the six contemporary accounts of the King Follet Discourse. You see how the early historians amalgamated the text into a seamless whole, and can see that there was no deception involved with the synthesis of the talks into one whole. The book is divided among the five years, 1839-1844, with the spectacular notes placed at the end of each year-section. This novelty allows of easy access to the information, and makes the book thoroughly user-friendly. This is one of my favorite books. I continually refer to it to double-check the talks in the official History of the Church, and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Admittedly, it is a technical book, and not for casual reading, but for the serious hard-core scholar, it is a library essential. This book is not an end all to the Joseph Smith question, but it brings us closer to a solution.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Words of Joseph Smith, September 26, 2010
Although the book itself is invaluable, the Kindle version has one major flaw -- All of the links, regardless of the entry date, go to the footnotes for 27 Jun 1839. This decreases it's value as an electronic resource as those who own the printed version know that the footnotes for this book are a major reason to own it. Unless this error is remedied, I would not rank this electronic version higher than two stars.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good book for the source of Joseph Smith's actual words, May 19, 2000
This review is from: The Words of Joseph Smith (Hardcover)
This is an excellent book which uses contemporary journal accounts to give a presentation of what Joseph Smith, Jr. ^really^ taught in his sermons. The general practice of the 1840's was to have scribes who scribed speeches, sermons, etc., as they were being given in order to preserve an account of such things. The source documents which are quoted in this book come from the collection of journals in the archives of the LDS church. The history of these documents is important in that when the division between the RLDS and LDS churches occurred after the death of Joseph Smith in Illinois in 1844, most of these journals were "arrested" from the possession of Smith's widow, Emma, by Brigham Young. She applied to receive them back but was denied. As a result, these journals made the trek west to Utah with the group that went there and became what is now known as the LDS (or "Mormon") church. The book contains most of the recorded sermons and remarks made by the prophet during the 1839-1844 time period (the last 6 years of his life). However, some of them may not be completely accurate considering there is recorded court testimony by those who worked in the LDS historian's office after Joseph Smith's death to the effect that many of Joseph Smith's recorded sermons and history were altered to give credibility to some of the doctrines which the new leadership was wanting to teach. The largest amount of "changes" occurred, however, when the LDS official published accounts of Joseph Smith's history and teachings were made, using many of the journal accounts in this book as source texts. You will find that in many cases those "official" published sermons and statements read very differently than the journal accounts in this book. It was found by going back to these journals that such things as the alleged 1844 "Rocky Mountain Prophecy" never occurred. The true wording of the prophet's statement gave no indication that the Latter Day Saints were ever to go to the Rocky Mountains. (And, as a point of fact, most of them didn't.) A most interesting thing about this book of the prophet's teachings is that you will find no mention whatsoever of the doctrine of polygamy, which the Utah LDS later taught and claimed came from Joseph Smith. In this book you ^will^ however find his denunciation of the doctrine of polygamy as well as his repeated proclamation of innocence with regard to the accusations people were making against him at the time, namely of committing adultery in the name of religion and having several "secret" wives. Within the footnotes of this book, however, you will find that the LDS editors make several attempts to pin the polygamy doctrine on Joseph Smith though there is no such actual reference to it in the text. As a 4th-great nephew of Joseph Smith, I greatly appreciate the painstaking work of the editors in preserving the exact wording (including original punctuation and spelling) of the journal accounts that were available to them. Everyone of RLDS background or beliefs should be very interested in this book as it is the most accurate source available for the prophet's Nauvoo sermons.
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