Remember, He Was a Prophet

Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Martin Luther King Jr., Jonathan Edwards, Mark Twain, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Joseph Smith Jr.: all are the subjects of well-funded and well-executed documentary editing series. Few would dispute the historical and intellectual significance of these men and women, with one glaring exception.

Since he burst onto the scene with the 1830 publication of what some termed the “Gold Bible,” non-Mormon writers have depicted Joseph Smith as a charlatan, a dangerous political and military threat, and a licentious polygamist. Some have admired his pluck and charisma, but few have found it necessary to carefully examine his ideas. Even today, when presidential candidacies and Broadway musicals have reinforced Mormonism’s significance within American culture and politics, Joseph Smith’s writings attract very little respect outside of the church he founded. “No one outside of the Mormons is taking Joseph Smith seriously,” lamented Richard Bushman after the publication of his biography of the Mormon prophet. At best, to most non-Mormons, Bushman observed, Smith was a “phenomenon,” not an original or creative religious thinker or leader.¹ Also, unlike the other above-named figures, Smith left behind precious few handwritten letters, diaries, and other personal writings. He did not write out his sermons, and scribes retained notes of only a few of his many discourses.

Nevertheless, due to his church’s emphasis on record-keeping, there remains an enormous corpus of documents related to Joseph Smith and the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Those include diaries (mostly kept by Smith’s clerks), letters, scriptural manuscripts, and a host of ecclesiastical and administrative documents. Several years ago, the Joseph Smith Papers project (hereafter JSP) published the first of an estimated twenty volumes of these writings, divided into five series: Documents, Journals, Revelations and Translations, Histories, and Legal and Business Records. The editors describe the Documents series as the core of the entire project, presenting in chronological sequence Smith’s correspondence, revelations, sermons, editorials, and other materials.

For those hoping for penetrating new insight into Smith’s personality or character, the JSP volumes will largely disappoint. “Extensive as the papers of Joseph Smith are,” write the editors in a general introduction, “they do not afford readers unobstructed access to his mind and heart” (J1, p. xxxviii). For the most part, we glimpse Joseph Smith as refracted through the work of scribes and editors. Moreover, the JSP includes only those documents created by Joseph Smith himself or by those he authorized and directed, not the much larger body of materials related to Smith’s activities. For an understanding of certain subjects (including plural marriage and the development of Mormon ritual...