Product Description

Volume 1 of the Journals series is the first of approximately thirty volumes that will constitute The Joseph Smith Papers. It features Joseph Smith s first five journals, which give the reader an appreciation for Smith s character, his private piety, and his sense of mission. These journals, covering the years 1832 1839, also convey his perspective on the spiritual manifestations experienced in the Kirtland, Ohio, temple, the origins of the Mormon War in Missouri, and the founding of what would become Nauvoo, Illinois the Mormon city on the Mississippi.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25133 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 506 pages

Review
The highest documentary editing and production standards have been applied here, matching those of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and comparing favorably to large-scale presidential papers projects. . . . Any academic library with collections in American religious history will want to start collecting this set. David Azzolina (University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Philadelphia), Library Journal, 15 February 2009 --David Azzolina University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Philadelphia

This first volume in the upcoming 30-volume series is a monumental achievement in so many ways. It provides both content and context it relates what Joseph wrote, and gives the modern reader a glimpse at what was going on around him. And, in many ways, it represents a major step in Mormonism's emergence into the light of the 21st century. . . . this volume, and, I suspect, the ones that will follow, will constitute one of the greatest contributions to the lore of Mormonism's founder that we've seen in some time. This is a book well worth owning, if only for its appendices and other notes. This is a treasure trove. Dive in. I think you'll like it a lot. Jeff Needle, The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Vol. 1: 1832-1839, LDS Book Lovers, comment posted 10 Jan. 2009 --Jeff Needle, LDS Book Lovers

[Journals, Volume 1] contains generous background information, abundant annotations (recommending a variety of primary and secondary sources), illustrations, and maps. . . . these volumes may I live to see the release of the entire series will be indispensable for the next generation of scholars on Mormon history. John Turner, Joseph Smith Papers, Religion in American History, comment posted 23 January 2009 --John Turner, Religion in American History

About the Author
The Joseph Smith Papers will be a comprehensive edition of extant Joseph Smith documents featuring complete and accurate transcription with both textual and contextual annotation. They will present the earliest handwritten and published texts of the foundational documents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including Joseph Smith's correspondence, journals, sermons, court cases, and business dealings. In addition, the Papers will contain minutes of important church councils, reproductions of the scriptural canon as it existed during Joseph Smith's lifetime, official histories, and records pertaining to church institutions that were under Joseph Smith's direction or that reflect his personal instruction and involvement. Many of these essential primary documents have never been published. 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.

Customer Reviews

The Most Important Book Ever Published About Mormon Founder, Joseph Smith
Here we have the inaugural volume in the monumental enterprise of publishing everything that Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844) ever wrote or dictated during his short life. This will doubtless become the most important book or series of books ever published about Joseph Smith and his life, far exceeding the value of every biographical work skeptical (such as Faun M. Brodie's venerable No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith), hagiographical (such as Francis M. Gibbons's popular Joseph Smith: Martyr-Prophet of God) or scholarly (such as Richard L. Bushman's impressive and moving Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling).

Smith is unquestionably one of the most significant historical figures in American history. For good or ill, his legacy is with us, and continues to alternately inspire or anger, fascinate or titillate, move or amuse millions. And yet, with all that has been written about him, the man himself and his work continues to defy pat description or characterization. For someone who wrote and spoke so much he is really a closed book in many respects. To the everyman he is an enigma, to the Evangelical anathema (as we saw in 2008 from a major U.S. Presidential candidate), but to the rare observer he is an object of deep curiosity and serious study whether you believe his doctrine or not. For example, Smith has been called "the founder of a new religious tradition" comparable to Moses or Mohammed, and a "genius" by the eminent Yale critic and humanist, Harold Bloom, who noted Smith's "uncanny recovery of elements in ancient Jewish theurgy that had ceased to be available either to Judaism or to Christianity, and that had survived only in esoteric traditions unlikely to have touched Smith directly." (Harold Bloom, The American Religion, page 101.) This book will appeal to the thoughtful observers in the tradition of Bloom.

This work reminds me in many ways of two previous collections of documents, Early Mormon Documents (Volume 1) and its four successor volumes from well repected Mormon critic Dan Vogel, published between 1996 and 2003, and more recently the one-volume Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844 (Documents in Latter-Day Saint History) from sympathetic scholar John W. Welch. What I like about both of these series--and the present volumes on the Smith Papers--is the fact that the reader is presented with original documents and left to his or her own interpretations. To be sure, Vogel, Welch and the editors of the present volume offer their respective footnoted interpretations, but it is the documents themselves which are the precious jewels of these books. I concur wholeheartedly with Welch's insightful comment that "a generation from now, few people will care how various historians in our day have interpreted the past. . . But the original documents convey testimonies that will always be of the utmost interest." (from Welch's Introduction).

With this new collection in hand and access to other original documents, the day should be long past in studies of Mormon Church history, when any reader possessed of reasonable intelligence should put much further credence in the rarified theories of professional historians or sectarian critics. Few academic writers have ever been honest enough to "proclaim their malefactions" - their personal bias - in their writing, pretending, instead that their work is "scientific." What many historical writers - both apologists and critics - fail to admit is that, "A fact is a fact", until you begin to string two or more facts together. Then it becomes a work of the imagination and not a science.

In courtroom parlance, the reader of this book and its succeeding volumes will be able to hear the trial witness and, like jurors, to make up his or her own mind as to weight and credibility, unfiltered by the officious interpretations of believers, critics or professional historians. I say, let the documents speak for themselves!

Additional comments:

1. This volume is beautifully put together with a fine binding and layout. Editorially, the documents themselves are placed in the primary stage, with a minimum of editorial or contextual commentary, which is as it should be. The focus is on the precious original documents themselves, not on any fleeting commentary.

2. Previous commentators have noted the lack of an index in this volume. To those who are patient to await subsequent volumes, this lack is inconsequential. It is hoped that eventually this collection will be searchable digitally.

The Original Documents in Entirety at Long Last!
Finally, the unadulterated original documents of Joseph Smith are available to the interested reader! The beauty of this work is not in all of the support information (which is substantial, and useful) but in that I, the casual reader of Mormon history, finally have access to documents that were difficult (prohibitively so for me) to get to.

As I mentioned above, there is a substantial amount of back matter and introduction to the documents. Some might argue that these materials are biased, and therefore "taint the readers' view" of the documents. I think that the extras in this volume are as even handed as can be expected. Even if there is bias - and I have heard separately both anti-Mormon and pro-Mormon bias arguments - in the glossary or introductions or notes, the readers have the pure documents in their hands to make judgments for themselves!

I have been dismayed in the past by historical material published in connection with the church, such as in the case of the multi-volume "History of the Church" which was pieced together from many documents by church historians who were forced to make judgments on what things were important to include and how to phrase things in first person Joseph Smith. Don't get me wrong, the "History of the Church" is a valuable tool and includes many documents, but it lacks the scholarly rigor and modern standards that the Joseph Smith Papers project has. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I am glad that I can purchase a document collection without the bias inherent in somebody selecting only certain entries or doctored by others trying to piece things together.

I'll say it again, finally the original papers so I can read and judge for myself!

An exciting glimpse into a library of books to come
This is the first of a projected set of 30 books of documents associated in some way with the prophet Joseph Smith, and the first volume of the Journals series. It covers his journals dating from November 28, 1832 to October 15, 1839, along with introductions to the Joseph Smith Papers project and the Journals series.

The project claims as its roots the collection of Joseph's papers during his lifetime and then continuing after his death, and first published in book form as "History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I: History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Himself." This was eventually followed by "The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith" in 1984 and "The Papers of Joseph Smith" in 1989 ("Volume 1: Autobiographical and Historical Writings") and 1992 ("Volume 2: Journal, 1832-1842").

It was then decided to expand the project, using a new set of standards and a staff of editors, historians, and researchers to produce an ambitious set of six series including Journals, Documents, History, Legal and Business Records, Revelations and Translations, and Administrative Records. When it is completed, it will be available in book form as well as a more extensive online version, which can be used by anyone from secular scholars to interested church members to study the life of Joseph Smith and the foundations of the church he restored.

The content of this first volume is a subset of the journals published in 1992, so there is actually nothing new here. However, it should be a more reliable transcription, having been produced under the new editorial standards. It also contains more background and reference material to help the reader better understand the context of the journal entries. This includes a chronology covering the years of the journal, a geographical directory and maps covering all the places mentioned, a pedigree chart, a biographical directory containing most of the people mentioned, ecclesiastical organizational charts, a glossary, an essay on the sources used, a list of works cited, and a table giving corresponding section numbers for various editions of the Doctrine and Covenants.

The one thing missing is an index. In its place is an explanation stating that there will be a cumulative index published in the last volume of the series, but that a searchable index of volume 1 is available on the project web site. While it would have been nice to have an index included in the volume, it seems more convenient to have an index covering all the journals, and an offer has been made on the web site to provide bound copies of the volume 1 index on request.

Only a very small portion (about 35 of over 1,500 manuscript pages) of the journal entries were actually written by Joseph Smith himself. Some of it was dictated, but the vast majority was written by clerks based on their own observations, and usually in the first person (which has caused some confusion from the way they were used in the "History of the Church"). This makes it more difficult to see what Joseph was thinking and feeling, but it also gives us the advantage of having a large number of sermons reported - Joseph apparently never spoke from written texts or even an outline, and instead "depend[ed] entirely upon the living God for everything he said on such occasions." (page xlvi.)

The text is presented using an elaborate system of markup, showing who the writer was, describing the source medium (such as "hole burned in paper" and "28 lines blank"), indicating letters and words that were crossed out or inserted, etc. This gives the reader about as good an idea as possible as to what is on the page, short of actually seeing it (but there are a few example photos in the book, and there are many more available at the project web site). Each journal is described in detail, including its provenance, and there are photographs of each accompanied by a quill to provide a sense of their relative sizes. There is also a historical introduction for each journal, describing what was going on during the time covered.

The entries range from the mundane (29 June 1839 - "Saturday at home principally") to significant events and revelations, many of which will be familiar to readers of the Doctrine and Covenants, such as the dedication and visions at the Kirtland Temple in 1836. There are plenty of editorial notes and annotations throughout the text explaining the context and giving more details, such as the words of hymns that were sung on certain occasions and what happened between entries.

An interesting example has to do with the Leonid meteor shower on November 13, 1833 - "I was awoke by Brother Davis knocking at door saying Brother Joseph [p. 18] come git and see the signs in the heavens and I arrose and beheld to my great Joy the stars fall from heaven yea they fell like hail stones a litteral fulfillment of the word of God as recorded in the holy scriptures and a sure sign that the coming of Christ is clost at hand." A footnote explains that it was reported across the country by newspapers, and taken by many as a sign that the Second Coming was imminent. It includes some descriptive quotes from various newspapers and there is also a full page engraving to show what it may have looked like.

Two of the journals overlap from September 3 to 11, 1838. The latter journal continues through October 6, and may have been intended to be used as legal evidence of Joseph's whereabouts during that time. It was written by James Mulholland, who was living with the Smiths, and contains entries such as "Saw him at home about sunrise, all the forenoon, and at noon. In the evening again about 8 oclock." (October 4, 1838.) For the entries that overlap with the preceding journal, it is interesting to compare them with the much more detailed accounts of George W. Robinson.

This first book, while not providing much that is new for those that have the earlier journals volume, gives an exciting glimpse into a library of books that promises to provide unprecedented insight into the life of Joseph Smith and the early days of the church. To paraphrase one of the editors, once the papers are published, no one will have an excuse to produce irresponsible or shoddy scholarship about Joseph Smith. And anyone with even the slightest interest in church history should find that by using this book they are able to better understand the events that transpired in a way that you can't get from reading historical fiction or even biographies.