Joseph Smith Biography

As Sunday School continues to cover the initial chapters of "the Joseph Smith story," I think a good Sunday School post will be to highlight the most recent complete Joseph Smith biography and give links to several short biographical essays I'm aware of that are available online. The book is Joseph Smith (Viking, 2002, in the Penguin Lives series) by Robert Remini, a noted non-LDS scholar who has published respected biographies of other 19th-century Americans (see my review of Remini's book). Remini's effort is notable for being short and up-to-date, produced by an acknowledged historian, and one which is, for the most part, acceptable to both apologists and critics.

As for online biographical essays, I know of the following:

1. The Prophet Joseph Smith, the EOM article by Richard L. Bushman and Dean C. Jessee. It includes a nice map showing the various journeys of Joseph during his lifetime.
2. Joseph Smith, a short essay by Mark Scherer, the RLDS Church Historian.
3. Joseph Smith, Jr., the Wikipedia article, which includes a host of links to other Mormon history articles as well.
4. Joseph Smith - History, an excerpt from the History of the Church, written by Joseph himself in 1838 and later canonized as part of the Pearl of Great Price.
5. The Wentworth Letter, another short account written by Joseph himself, this one in 1842. It includes a short description of the Book of Mormon and a statement of basic Mormon beliefs which was later canonized as the Articles of Faith.
6. A short chronology, from Donna Hill's Joseph Smith: The First Mormon (itself a fine biography if a bit dated, published in 1977).

I'll also post these as links under the Remini book icon on the left sidebar.

Comments

[Ronan]

I read your review of Remini. If I remember correctly, FARMS weren't so positive.

You might add the Church history Institute manual which I find to be pretty good.

The one thing that bugs me about the Saints' understanding of Joseph is that we have no sense of the "why". For example, we all know about the "persecutions" but do we understand why people so hated the Mormons? Typically, we place such things on a cosmic level, good vs. evil. There was more going on. There's a human story in there too.

[Dave]

Ronan: Arrington and Bitton actually addressed the topic of "why so much persecution?" in their Mormon Experience, p. 46-53. See my oblique reference to that discussion here.

[Nate Oman]

Leonard et al. _The Story of the Latter-day Saints_ also has a pretty good discussion of this. What is interesting to me is that to the extent that Mormons make the it-was-all-evil-against-good argument they are ignoring what is in the D&C itself, where there are several revelations that declare the Saints were attacked in part because of their own wickedness. Certainly, there is evidence to suggest that they were not ideal neighbors in Missouri or Nauvoo, which is not to deny the fact that there were any number of rather opportunistic and bigoted folks who made political hay out of attacking the Mormons.

[Ronan]

My point was not that it hasn't been discussed, but that if your only exposure to Mormon history is through "Our Heritage", then you would be clueless. Most Mormons don't read Arrington, or Leonard.

[Justin]

FYI: Today's Meridian Magazine reprints a BYU Studies essay on Joseph Smith by Richard Bushman.

[Dave]

You are spot-on as usual, Justin. Bushman's remarks are doubly interesting for the insight they give into what we can expect from his upcoming JS biography.