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The Joseph Smith Papers Volume 1 Available for Pre-Order!

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Book cover

“The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Vol. 1: 1832-1839” is available for pre-ordering at Deseret Book.  The description reads:

“The Joseph Smith Papers project is the single most significant historical project of our generation.”  —Elder Marlin K. Jensen, LDS Church Historian

Joseph Smith is known to history as the founder and first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The publication of his papers, 200 years after his birth, will open a window on a life filled with what he called “marvelous experience.”

For one who had little schooling, Joseph Smith left an extensive legacy of letters and other written records. Now, the full collection of that documentary heritage is being made widely available.

The Joseph Smith Papers is not a “documentary history” project composed only of important documents relating to Joseph Smith. Instead, it is a comprehensive “papers” project that will publish, according to accepted scholarly and documentary editing standards, all documents created by Joseph Smith and by those whose work he directed.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project will eventually constitute approximately 30 volumes, organized into six series. This first volume is a part of the Journals Series.

Volume by volume, you can build and enhance your personal library with these crucial studies of the life, leadership, and legacy of Joseph Smith.

In the works for several decades, The Joseph Smith Papers will be the largest, most authoritative collection of original Smith documents in the world, replacing and transcending many earlier published works.

With access to texts not previously available, and certainly never in one collection, the Papers project provides new information and insights about Joseph Smith, early Mormonism, and nineteenth-century American religion.

Documents include correspondence, journal entries, revelations, translations, discourses, official histories, court cases, and business dealings—qualitatively researched and carefully annotated.

Although vast in scope, the aim of the Project is relatively simple: to make available to general readers and scholars the sources essential to the study of Joseph Smith—the religious leader, the city builder, the pioneer, the husband and father—a truly visionary man.

The ambitious Joseph Smith Papers is the inaugural publishing project of The Church Historian’s Press and sets new standards for the organization and editorial presentation of historical documents by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In recognition of the high scholarly standards being employed in all phases of this project, The Joseph Smith Papers Project has earned an endorsement by the National Archives’ National Historical Publication and Records Commission (NHPRC).

For more information on The Joseph Smith Papers Project, visit JosephSmithPapers.org.

Temple imagery in “Gabriel’s Revelation” Discovery

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Gabriel's Revelation or "Dead Sea Scroll in Stone"

Gabriel's Revelation or "Dead Sea Scroll in Stone"

The scholarly world is aflutter over the latest discovery of a 3-foot tall tablet being called “Gabriel’s Revelation,” “Hazon Gabriel,” or the “Vision of Gabriel.”  It contains 87 lines of Hebrew text written in ink on stone, and has been dated to the first century BCE.  The tablet was found near the Dead Sea in Jordan around 2000, and has been associated with the Qumran community who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.  For this reason, it has been called a “Dead Sea scroll in stone.”  An exciting discovery, indeed.

The discussion has been primarily about a certain line of the text which tells of a messiah dying and resurrecting in three days (line 80).  Many scholars are pointing to this as evidence of a resurrection theology in existence in Judaism before the coming of Jesus Christ, therefore raising questions of the conception among some that a messianic 3-day resurrection was a uniquely novel Christian principle.  This is not news to Latter-day Saints, who already firmly believe that Christianity has been known and practiced since Adam (see Moses 5:6-8).

But I want to look at this text from a different angle than that which is making the headlines.  Since this text has been categorized as an apocalyptic text, the Greek apokálypsis meaning “lifting of the veil” or end of days, delivered from the angel Gabriel, it is likely that we should find temple imagery here too.  And we are not left wanting.  [Read more…]

Service on Earth & Worship of God

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Planet Earth

The account of the garden of Eden in Genesis is a very interesting story indeed.  We learn much about the experiences of our first parents and their interactions with God.  It was a very intimate relationship, one in which God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the garden (Gen. 3:8).

When Adam was first placed in the garden of Eden, he was given a charge to take care of it:

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (Gen. 2:15)

The Hebrew word for “dress” is avad, which means to work, labor or serve.  Closely related is the word avodah, which means service.  Even at this early date man was given a stewardship over the earth, and to take good care of it, even while it was still paradisaical! When Adam and Eve transgressed the law of God and fell they were sent from the garden into the dreary world, but with the same charge of stewardship:  [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 4

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Front Wall, Right Part, Tutankhamun's Burial Chamber - god Anubis, on left, leads Tutankhamun before goddess Hathor, on right, who gives the breath of life to King Tut through the nostrils with the ankh. The symbols of life, prosperity, time and eternity are directly over Tut's head.

(Continued from Part 3)

In the last parts of our series on the Egyptian hieroglyph of the ankh, and other related symbols, I’d like to look at where these symbols are found on the extant portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri, related documents, and the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, to see if Joseph Smith was correct in any of his interpretations, or even on the right track.  I’ve written a brief into to these documents here.

As we’ve noted before, the themes that show up in the rituals of the Egyptians have unique parallels to our modern temple practices and ordinances.  This is not to be interpreted as an adoption of pagan rites, plagiarism of ancient rituals, or a belief in Egyptian polytheism, for the Egyptians had a corrupt imitation of the true order of God, and Joseph knew it.  Indeed, such attacks leveled at Joseph might actually be counterintuitive to our critics’ position, for such would mean that Joseph understood what he was looking at in the papyri, yet such inspired translation is precisely what our critics claim he could not do.  Note that the field of Egyptology had just recently been born in the 1820s, and the reading of hieroglyphics was only barely in its infancy in Europe at the time Joseph was translating the papyri in the 1830s, ruling out any scholarly approach to reading the papyri.  The critics have yet to explain, therefore, if Joseph did not receive the temple ordinances by revelation from God, and he could not read the papyri, then how did he teach temple rites that have remarkable parallels to the Egyptians which were written on the papyri?  Could he read the papyri or couldn’t he?  Either way our critics find themselves in a quandary.

Instead of being detrimental to Joseph, such a connection between the papyri and the temple actually serves as evidence of his divine calling, and that he was inspired to translate the papyri.  As in many instances of the early experiences of the prophet, Joseph had a question about something that he experienced in his life, and inquired of the Lord about it ((See the history behind the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and baptism)).  What followed was a restoration, through revelation, of the true and perfect ordinance or teaching of that particular thing.  The papyri quite possibly were such a springboard for the restoration of the temple endowment, as H. Donl Peterson has noted:  [Read more…]

Brief Intro to the Joseph Smith Papyri and Book of Abraham

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Original papyrus of Facsimile 1 (Joseph Smith Papyrus I). Acquired by the LDS Church in 1967. (Click for a larger view)Note:  This was going to be the next part of the series on the Egyptian ankh, and its relationship with the papyri and Book of Abraham, but I thought an intro to these first would be a better place to start.

Let’s return again to the subject of the ankh, and related symbols, that we’ve briefly studied, and look to see if these symbols figure at all on the Joseph Smith Papyri.  As we’ve seen, these particular hieroglyphs have a strong connection to temple themes, being bestowed by the Egyptian gods in a manner reminiscent of the way eternal life is portrayed symbolically in the temple today.  But do these symbols appear on the papyri from which the Book of Abraham was translated, or in the facsimiles, and what does that mean?  [Read more…]