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Finally, in exploring what Martin Marty refers to as the Book of Mormon's "revelatory appeal," Givens highlights the Book's role as the engine behind what may become the next world religion."--BOOK JACKET.
Just as a growing interest in millennialism at the turn of this century has rejuvenated religious debate and questions concerning the fate of the world, so did Mormonism develop from millennial enthusiasm early in the nineteenth century. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and a provocative, even controversial figure in history, declared that he had been given the authority to restore the true church in the latter days. The primary source of Smith's latter-day revelation is The Book of Mormon, and to fully understand his role as the founder of the Mormon faith, one must also understand The Book of Mormon and how it came to be. Unfortunately, the literature about Joseph Smith and The Book...
This is Volume II of an epic, multi-volume work entitled The Quest for the New Jerusalem: A Mormon Generational Saga, which combines family, Mormon, and American history, focusing upon how the author’s ancestors were affected by their conversion to the Mormon religion. In Volume I, four of the author’s ancestral families—the Carters, Hammonds, Knowltons, and Spencer’s—and the ancestors of Mormon Church founders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, are followed from the time they enter the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England in the 1600s down to the early 1800s. Their private lives are described, as well as how they are affected by such events and situations as King Philip’s War, t...
The eminent historian Richard Bushman here reflects on his faith and the history of his religion. By describing his own struggle to find a basis for belief in a skeptical world, Bushman poses the question of how scholars are to write about subjects in which they are personally invested. Does personal commitment make objectivity impossible? Bushman explicitly, and at points confessionally, explains his own commitments and then explores Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from the standpoint of belief. Joseph Smith cannot be dismissed as a colorful fraud, Bushman argues, nor seen only as a restorer of religious truth. Entangled in nineteenth-century Yankee culture—including the skeptical Enl...
The sources of Joseph Smith's literary works remain the most enigmatic aspect of Mormon history. Smith's "translation projects," the Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, the Inspired Bible and Book of Abraham, include prophecies, visions and allusions to the ancient biblical prophet Enoch. Before Joseph Smith began writing his visions of Enoch, Oxford professor Richard Laurence revived interest in the prophet through his 1821 English translation of the ancient text, the Book of Enoch, known as 1 Enoch. For decades, some historians have denied that Joseph Smith ever had access to the Book of Enoch, but many reserve the possibility that it directly influenced Smith's works. The author of this book documents the many similarities between the Book of Enoch and Smith's Mormon texts. Using source analysis and historical context, the author identifies the uniquely Mormon words, storylines, imagery and concepts that appear in Richard Laurence's translation of the ancient religious text.
Were indigenous Americans descendants of the lost tribes of Israel? From the moment Europeans realized Columbus had landed in a place unknown to them in 1492, they began speculating about how the Americas and their inhabitants fit into the Bible. For many, the most compelling explanation was the Hebraic Indian theory, which proposed that indigenous Americans were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. For its proponents, the theory neatly explained why this giant land and its inhabitants were not mentioned in the Biblical record. In Old Canaan in a New World, Elizabeth Fenton shows that though the Hebraic Indian theory may seem far-fetched today, it had a great deal of currency an...
The core of Mormon belief was a conviction about actual events. The test of faith was not adherence to a certain confession of faith but belief that Christ was resurrected, that Joseph Smith saw God, that the Book of Mormon was true history and not philosophy, and that Peter, James, and John restored the apostleships.
A presentation of the various techniques and strategies used by Mormon missionaries. Based on the author's firsthand experience in Mormonism.