Published articles by Susan Staker
John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, 2021
After purchasing papyrus and mummies (at least one a female), Joseph Smith spends July and August... more After purchasing papyrus and mummies (at least one a female), Joseph Smith spends July and August 1835 on an Egyptian “Alphabet” and then a “Grammar and Alphabet.” Before Abraham takes center stage, Joseph constructs a female character called Kahtoumun, daughter of Ham, discoverer of Egypt “beneath, below, under” water, founder of a “royal family in the female line.” Joseph arguably spends more time on Queen Kahtoumun than any other female in his entire oeuvre, making her the vehicle for a startling range of investigations that summer. First, the female is proxy for investigating a lineage from Adamic, the pure language of the first fathers, to the hieroglyphics of Egyptian. Then, after “patriarchs” and “high priests” enter the text, “all or any woman” signifies rather conventionally “mother” or “the earth yielding its fruit” and “beneath, second in right or in authority or government.” And finally, sexual danger— “a principle that is beneath, disgusting, not fit” and “exceeding bad adultery” and “going down into misery even Hell.” (Charges of adultery, polygamy, fornication are lodged against Joseph in the matter of Fanny Alger as the female makes this exit that summer.)
John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, 2021
Generally Joseph Smith’s secret marriages are told in retrospect. He publicly denies the practi... more Generally Joseph Smith’s secret marriages are told in retrospect. He publicly denies the practice and extracts promises not to tell. A handful of texts survive (dictated by Joseph or in his own hand) and stage his “courting” 1842-1843. Failure with Nancy Rigdon, success with Sarah Ann Whitney, and a last stand with Emma.] How these texts, and others, survive is as much the story as their content--from scandalous expose to a family cache, not destroyed as commanded. Along this arc, I trace Joseph’s language of happiness/desire and of obedience (with rewards and punishments)—familiar sentiments becoming extravagant, and dangerous.
Writing Mormon History: Historians and Their Books, 2020
My background in Mormon history and an overview of my methodology for writing about Joseph Smith.... more My background in Mormon history and an overview of my methodology for writing about Joseph Smith.
In Writing Mormon History: Historians and their Books, ed. Joseph W. Geisner (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2020), 329-64.
Autobiography and Joseph Smith. Tracing seer backstories for the story of priesthood restoration... more Autobiography and Joseph Smith. Tracing seer backstories for the story of priesthood restoration (John the Baptist plus Peter, James, and John) published and canonized in Mormonism's Pearl of Great Price.
Explores Jesus God and Father God as characters in Joseph Smith's translations and revelations Ju... more Explores Jesus God and Father God as characters in Joseph Smith's translations and revelations June-September 1830.
A reading of the portion of the Book of Abraham translated and published in 1842. Thoughts on ho... more A reading of the portion of the Book of Abraham translated and published in 1842. Thoughts on how this portion of the translation situates itself within the events in Nauvoo in 1842, including polygamy and the founding of the Relief Society
Utah historical quarterly. Vol. 49, no. 3 (summer 1981)
Conference Presentations by Susan Staker
John Whitmer Historical Association, 2023
In the wake of Oliver Cowdery’s 1838 excommunication, Joseph Smith begins the autobiography canon... more In the wake of Oliver Cowdery’s 1838 excommunication, Joseph Smith begins the autobiography canonized in Utah, his final work on the project a year later in Nauvoo. Joseph never takes this history beyond fall 1830 when he sends Oliver west to find the New Jerusalem. After narrating events before Oliver’s arrival, Joseph settles into a structure for the autobiography: a chronological arc of revelations dictated from 1828 to 1830 (mostly to Oliver), each with a new introduction. That Joseph includes 1835 versions for the Doctrine and Covenants, often revised, makes the telling strange. Most of the revisions Joseph makes in 1835, again with Oliver as scribe, re-imagine the 1828-1830 texts. Joseph’s 1838/1839 introductions amplify these changes. Many details, both in Joseph’s story of angel and gold plates and in revised early revelations, are first previewed in letters about Joseph’s early history written and published by Oliver beginning in September 1834, with Joseph’s input. This paper reexamines the arc of Joseph’s autobiographical projects against this early and continuing confluence of collaboration and negotiation—Joseph and Oliver, first and second.
Mormon History Association, AAR NW Conferences, 2023
Recently Richard Bushman and others have revisited Joseph Smith’s “encounter with skepticism,” e... more Recently Richard Bushman and others have revisited Joseph Smith’s “encounter with skepticism,” each citing Lucy Smith’s memory that Asael, Joseph’s universalist grandfather, “threw Tom Pains age of reason into the house and angrily bade him read that untile he believed it.” Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (1794-1824) was a runaway bestseller, much read and hated in America for its sharp Bible takedown. Still readers encountered Paine’s celebration of “historical criticism”and organized their defenses around his popularizing. Joseph’s 1829 work on the Book of Mormon unfolds in the shadow of this debate, whether or not he reads Paine’s book.
In a first surviving scene from Joseph’s book, King Benjamin reads to his son Mosiah from two records, their brass plates version of the Old Testament and their own “plates of Nephi.” Soon Benjamin passes this cache of sacred artifacts to Mosiah, initiating an unbroken line of seer characters, who read, write, translate, interpret, and edit ancient records on the edge of the King James Bible. Joseph’s counter to Paine and his ilk comes into view by following these seers and their recurring tableaus of reading and writing along the arc of Joseph’s Book of Mormon dictation plot. By way of his canny knack for deploying narrative to investigate problems both religious and personal, Joseph explores not only how to live better sacred stories, but how to write better Bibles. Ironically Joseph and Paine seem often in alliance.
John Whitmer Historical Association Meetings, 2021
Link to video of panel at JWHA: https://youtu.be/W4gfFRy_jRU
After purchasing four mummies with ... more Link to video of panel at JWHA: https://youtu.be/W4gfFRy_jRU
After purchasing four mummies with papyrus (happily at least one female), Joseph Smith, working with Oliver Cowdery and William W. Phelps, spends July and early August 1835 on an Egyptian "Alphabet" and then a "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language." There Joseph lines in a female character called Queen Kahtoumun, daughter of Ham, discoverer of Egypt, founder of a royal female line. Joseph spends more time on Kahtoumun than any other female in his canon. That summer, she overshadows even Abraham, who first appears in late July and only gradually takes over. So why have we lost her? Mere shards of her story make it into Joseph's canonized Book of Abraham. She survives in the texts marginalized by historians and apologists alike. Still Queen Kahtoumun remains a marvelous gift to we historians, Joseph's vehicle for a startling range of explorations.
Script and slides for presentation at John Whitmer Historical Association meetings, 22 October 2021.
Joseph Smith Papers Conference, 2021
This is the script for my presentation at 2021 JSP conference. Here is link to the presentation:... more This is the script for my presentation at 2021 JSP conference. Here is link to the presentation: https://youtu.be/f5VV8pCTCmc
Abstract: The conventional story for origins of the office of church patriarch has Joseph Smith Sr. ordained to the position in December 1834 (or perhaps December 1833). Contemporary records describe Joseph Sr. along with several others being ordained to the position of assistant president in December 1834. But there are no surviving contemporary accounts of his ordination to the office of patriarch.
In truth, the terms “patriarch” and “patriarchal” first survive within Joseph Smith’s textual chronology during the summer of 1835 within his early work on the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language. The terms make it into two additional projects Joseph takes up in late September and early October 1835: portions of the Book of Abraham and a collection of blessings, titled with a misleading date, “The Book of Patriarchal Blessings 1834.” Oliver Cowdery is scribe, and collaborator, on the summer Egyptian work, the patriarchal blessing book, and a restart of Joseph’s journal in late September, which begins: “This day Joseph Smith, jr. labored with Oliver Cowdery, in obtaining and writing blessings.”
The 1835 patriarchal blessing book is the earliest surviving source describing “patriarchal” blessings, and, signalled already by its title, is at the back of much confusion that persists about the office and practice. Blessings dated from 1833 through late summer 1835 are found first in the September 1835 patriarchal blessing book (and in backdated minute books in the handwriting of Oliver’s brother Warren, begun no earlier than February 1836). The blessings dated December 1833 and 1834, often cited in the conventional story of origins, appear first in Oliver’s blessing book. But even this early manuscript does not plot the origin story commonly told for the office and the practice.
This paper will trace a backstory for “patriarch” and “patriarchal” along the textual chronology of surviving documents made or supervised by Joseph. In particular, I will focus on the developing story made by the arc of Joseph’s (and Oliver’s) work within the Egyptian project and the Book of Patriarchal Blessings 1834—from 1835.
The Egyptian documents have been published by the Joseph Smith Papers Project in print and online. The 1835 patriarchal blessing book as a textual object is not available on the JSP site. Instead JSP publishes online individual blessings from the 1835 blessing book (and others from the 1836 minute book) in the documents series, each appearing under the date it is said to be given according to the 1835 source. (Michael Marquardt has followed the same strategy in publishing blessings from the blessing book.) This paper will consider challenges caused by this set of decisions. To get at the emerging stories associated with “patriarch” and “patriarchal” requires considering the fuller 1835 context, and Oliver’s structuring of the important (and wonderfully weird) 1835 book.
Joseph Smith Papers Conference, 2019
Early on Joseph Smith comes to deploy “authoritative characters” as tools for epistemological in... more Early on Joseph Smith comes to deploy “authoritative characters” as tools for epistemological investigations and practical problem solving, accumulating an ever more complex and intertextual platform for his innovative religious stories with their associated theologies. This means a generous attention to character construction within Joseph’s rich library of stories is the crucial first step for any accounting of Joseph Smith or a story of Mormon origins. In Nauvoo, Joseph tells striking new stories for two recurring characters along the arc of his investigations—Enoch, a translated angel whose star is falling, and Adam, identified as the archangel Michael, a resurrected angel whose star is rising. Tracking Joseph’s explorations of these angels, their backstories and their fortunes in Nauvoo, brings into view an emerging landscape where Joseph plots his stories in Nauvoo.
Surviving texts from late 1840 and early 1841, including “Instruction on Priesthood,” dictated by Joseph and read at October conference, and discourses in December and January captured in private journals, provide a singular opportunity to glimpse Joseph in the midst of creation, and talking about the logic of his narrative economy. Focusing on the stories of Enoch and Adam in these texts foregrounds a fulcrum in Joseph’s explorations—his attention to the “body” and its organizing importance within a cosmic story for heaven and earth, a story without beginning or end. Because Enoch is translated, has no body, he is become a ministering spirit for the terrestrial kingdom. Adam with his resurrected body presides over the human family, at a council before the beginning (Michael now father, not warrior), at two Adam-ondi-Ahman councils at beginning and the end, and in the middest where he sends down angels whenever necessary. Adam is mediator, a gateway between the human family and Jesus with his Father. These stories for Adam and Enoch radically revise Joseph’s earliest work, where translated beings, with Enoch as the star example, are Joseph’s vehicles for imagining men gone to heaven.
Joseph’s explorations of angels and bodies are dynamic and fluid during these crucial months, creating as many problems as they resolve. But in such messy textual sites imagined for his “authoritative characters,” Joseph always finds God’s secrets and his future. So many possibilities can be seen falling into place. Gods with bodies. A timeline without beginning or end, no creation, only organizing and reorganizing. Joseph in the company of archangels finding a prospect for his own prominent success where others, including Enoch, Moses, even Jesus, have failed. A framework for new rituals and practices involving the body—baptism for the dead, endowment as drama, plural marriage.
Presentation at John Whitmer Historical Society meetings 2016. The story of translated men and En... more Presentation at John Whitmer Historical Society meetings 2016. The story of translated men and Enoch's city as a backstory for Joseph Smith's 1832 revelation The Vision.
Presentation for Sunstone West January 2015. A meditation on strategies for apology. From a pan... more Presentation for Sunstone West January 2015. A meditation on strategies for apology. From a panel responding to Book of Abraham article in Gospel Topics on lds.org. Draft form.
Presentation at Sunstone Symposium 2015. A seers story for how to read. An exploration of the eco... more Presentation at Sunstone Symposium 2015. A seers story for how to read. An exploration of the economy of Joseph's narrative imagination based on his work on the Book of Mormon.
A personal essay about my seminary teacher and friend. Presented at Sunstone NW in Seattle, Fall... more A personal essay about my seminary teacher and friend. Presented at Sunstone NW in Seattle, Fall 2015.
Books by Susan Staker
Susan Staker, editor
Paperback / 494 pages / 0-941214-92-3 / $26.95
The Diaries of Wilford Woodr... more Susan Staker, editor
Paperback / 494 pages / 0-941214-92-3 / $26.95
The Diaries of Wilford WoodruffFrom Connecticut, where Wilford Woodruff was born in 1807, to San Francisco, where he was befriended by the cosmopolitan Bohemian Club before dying in 1898, Woodruff’s life was unpredictable. The same man who consulted scientific texts for the cultivation of fruit trees for his personal garden was equally known for his apocalyptic vision on a Navajo mesa in Arizona in 1880. The man who balanced his ledger with penny-accuracy modeled buckskin temple robes to friends on his birthday and accepted from Brigham Young, as a birthday gift, one of Young’s daughters as a wife.
Woodruff became president of the Mormon church while hiding from federal marshals. Convinced that non-Mormons, or “gentiles,” would be smitten by the calamities promised in the Bible, he bided his time in exile until Mormonism prevailed. However, as the Parousia was delayed, he eventually decided to compromise with the United States.
To complement the exhaustive ten-volume Wilford Woodruff diary series and index published by Signature Books as a limited edition, Susan Staker has condensed the highlights of Woodruff’s revealing personal narrative into one readable volume, along with prefatory information, annotation, and appendices.
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Published articles by Susan Staker
In Writing Mormon History: Historians and their Books, ed. Joseph W. Geisner (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2020), 329-64.
Conference Presentations by Susan Staker
In a first surviving scene from Joseph’s book, King Benjamin reads to his son Mosiah from two records, their brass plates version of the Old Testament and their own “plates of Nephi.” Soon Benjamin passes this cache of sacred artifacts to Mosiah, initiating an unbroken line of seer characters, who read, write, translate, interpret, and edit ancient records on the edge of the King James Bible. Joseph’s counter to Paine and his ilk comes into view by following these seers and their recurring tableaus of reading and writing along the arc of Joseph’s Book of Mormon dictation plot. By way of his canny knack for deploying narrative to investigate problems both religious and personal, Joseph explores not only how to live better sacred stories, but how to write better Bibles. Ironically Joseph and Paine seem often in alliance.
After purchasing four mummies with papyrus (happily at least one female), Joseph Smith, working with Oliver Cowdery and William W. Phelps, spends July and early August 1835 on an Egyptian "Alphabet" and then a "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language." There Joseph lines in a female character called Queen Kahtoumun, daughter of Ham, discoverer of Egypt, founder of a royal female line. Joseph spends more time on Kahtoumun than any other female in his canon. That summer, she overshadows even Abraham, who first appears in late July and only gradually takes over. So why have we lost her? Mere shards of her story make it into Joseph's canonized Book of Abraham. She survives in the texts marginalized by historians and apologists alike. Still Queen Kahtoumun remains a marvelous gift to we historians, Joseph's vehicle for a startling range of explorations.
Script and slides for presentation at John Whitmer Historical Association meetings, 22 October 2021.
Abstract: The conventional story for origins of the office of church patriarch has Joseph Smith Sr. ordained to the position in December 1834 (or perhaps December 1833). Contemporary records describe Joseph Sr. along with several others being ordained to the position of assistant president in December 1834. But there are no surviving contemporary accounts of his ordination to the office of patriarch.
In truth, the terms “patriarch” and “patriarchal” first survive within Joseph Smith’s textual chronology during the summer of 1835 within his early work on the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language. The terms make it into two additional projects Joseph takes up in late September and early October 1835: portions of the Book of Abraham and a collection of blessings, titled with a misleading date, “The Book of Patriarchal Blessings 1834.” Oliver Cowdery is scribe, and collaborator, on the summer Egyptian work, the patriarchal blessing book, and a restart of Joseph’s journal in late September, which begins: “This day Joseph Smith, jr. labored with Oliver Cowdery, in obtaining and writing blessings.”
The 1835 patriarchal blessing book is the earliest surviving source describing “patriarchal” blessings, and, signalled already by its title, is at the back of much confusion that persists about the office and practice. Blessings dated from 1833 through late summer 1835 are found first in the September 1835 patriarchal blessing book (and in backdated minute books in the handwriting of Oliver’s brother Warren, begun no earlier than February 1836). The blessings dated December 1833 and 1834, often cited in the conventional story of origins, appear first in Oliver’s blessing book. But even this early manuscript does not plot the origin story commonly told for the office and the practice.
This paper will trace a backstory for “patriarch” and “patriarchal” along the textual chronology of surviving documents made or supervised by Joseph. In particular, I will focus on the developing story made by the arc of Joseph’s (and Oliver’s) work within the Egyptian project and the Book of Patriarchal Blessings 1834—from 1835.
The Egyptian documents have been published by the Joseph Smith Papers Project in print and online. The 1835 patriarchal blessing book as a textual object is not available on the JSP site. Instead JSP publishes online individual blessings from the 1835 blessing book (and others from the 1836 minute book) in the documents series, each appearing under the date it is said to be given according to the 1835 source. (Michael Marquardt has followed the same strategy in publishing blessings from the blessing book.) This paper will consider challenges caused by this set of decisions. To get at the emerging stories associated with “patriarch” and “patriarchal” requires considering the fuller 1835 context, and Oliver’s structuring of the important (and wonderfully weird) 1835 book.
Surviving texts from late 1840 and early 1841, including “Instruction on Priesthood,” dictated by Joseph and read at October conference, and discourses in December and January captured in private journals, provide a singular opportunity to glimpse Joseph in the midst of creation, and talking about the logic of his narrative economy. Focusing on the stories of Enoch and Adam in these texts foregrounds a fulcrum in Joseph’s explorations—his attention to the “body” and its organizing importance within a cosmic story for heaven and earth, a story without beginning or end. Because Enoch is translated, has no body, he is become a ministering spirit for the terrestrial kingdom. Adam with his resurrected body presides over the human family, at a council before the beginning (Michael now father, not warrior), at two Adam-ondi-Ahman councils at beginning and the end, and in the middest where he sends down angels whenever necessary. Adam is mediator, a gateway between the human family and Jesus with his Father. These stories for Adam and Enoch radically revise Joseph’s earliest work, where translated beings, with Enoch as the star example, are Joseph’s vehicles for imagining men gone to heaven.
Joseph’s explorations of angels and bodies are dynamic and fluid during these crucial months, creating as many problems as they resolve. But in such messy textual sites imagined for his “authoritative characters,” Joseph always finds God’s secrets and his future. So many possibilities can be seen falling into place. Gods with bodies. A timeline without beginning or end, no creation, only organizing and reorganizing. Joseph in the company of archangels finding a prospect for his own prominent success where others, including Enoch, Moses, even Jesus, have failed. A framework for new rituals and practices involving the body—baptism for the dead, endowment as drama, plural marriage.
Books by Susan Staker
Paperback / 494 pages / 0-941214-92-3 / $26.95
The Diaries of Wilford WoodruffFrom Connecticut, where Wilford Woodruff was born in 1807, to San Francisco, where he was befriended by the cosmopolitan Bohemian Club before dying in 1898, Woodruff’s life was unpredictable. The same man who consulted scientific texts for the cultivation of fruit trees for his personal garden was equally known for his apocalyptic vision on a Navajo mesa in Arizona in 1880. The man who balanced his ledger with penny-accuracy modeled buckskin temple robes to friends on his birthday and accepted from Brigham Young, as a birthday gift, one of Young’s daughters as a wife.
Woodruff became president of the Mormon church while hiding from federal marshals. Convinced that non-Mormons, or “gentiles,” would be smitten by the calamities promised in the Bible, he bided his time in exile until Mormonism prevailed. However, as the Parousia was delayed, he eventually decided to compromise with the United States.
To complement the exhaustive ten-volume Wilford Woodruff diary series and index published by Signature Books as a limited edition, Susan Staker has condensed the highlights of Woodruff’s revealing personal narrative into one readable volume, along with prefatory information, annotation, and appendices.
In Writing Mormon History: Historians and their Books, ed. Joseph W. Geisner (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2020), 329-64.
In a first surviving scene from Joseph’s book, King Benjamin reads to his son Mosiah from two records, their brass plates version of the Old Testament and their own “plates of Nephi.” Soon Benjamin passes this cache of sacred artifacts to Mosiah, initiating an unbroken line of seer characters, who read, write, translate, interpret, and edit ancient records on the edge of the King James Bible. Joseph’s counter to Paine and his ilk comes into view by following these seers and their recurring tableaus of reading and writing along the arc of Joseph’s Book of Mormon dictation plot. By way of his canny knack for deploying narrative to investigate problems both religious and personal, Joseph explores not only how to live better sacred stories, but how to write better Bibles. Ironically Joseph and Paine seem often in alliance.
After purchasing four mummies with papyrus (happily at least one female), Joseph Smith, working with Oliver Cowdery and William W. Phelps, spends July and early August 1835 on an Egyptian "Alphabet" and then a "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language." There Joseph lines in a female character called Queen Kahtoumun, daughter of Ham, discoverer of Egypt, founder of a royal female line. Joseph spends more time on Kahtoumun than any other female in his canon. That summer, she overshadows even Abraham, who first appears in late July and only gradually takes over. So why have we lost her? Mere shards of her story make it into Joseph's canonized Book of Abraham. She survives in the texts marginalized by historians and apologists alike. Still Queen Kahtoumun remains a marvelous gift to we historians, Joseph's vehicle for a startling range of explorations.
Script and slides for presentation at John Whitmer Historical Association meetings, 22 October 2021.
Abstract: The conventional story for origins of the office of church patriarch has Joseph Smith Sr. ordained to the position in December 1834 (or perhaps December 1833). Contemporary records describe Joseph Sr. along with several others being ordained to the position of assistant president in December 1834. But there are no surviving contemporary accounts of his ordination to the office of patriarch.
In truth, the terms “patriarch” and “patriarchal” first survive within Joseph Smith’s textual chronology during the summer of 1835 within his early work on the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language. The terms make it into two additional projects Joseph takes up in late September and early October 1835: portions of the Book of Abraham and a collection of blessings, titled with a misleading date, “The Book of Patriarchal Blessings 1834.” Oliver Cowdery is scribe, and collaborator, on the summer Egyptian work, the patriarchal blessing book, and a restart of Joseph’s journal in late September, which begins: “This day Joseph Smith, jr. labored with Oliver Cowdery, in obtaining and writing blessings.”
The 1835 patriarchal blessing book is the earliest surviving source describing “patriarchal” blessings, and, signalled already by its title, is at the back of much confusion that persists about the office and practice. Blessings dated from 1833 through late summer 1835 are found first in the September 1835 patriarchal blessing book (and in backdated minute books in the handwriting of Oliver’s brother Warren, begun no earlier than February 1836). The blessings dated December 1833 and 1834, often cited in the conventional story of origins, appear first in Oliver’s blessing book. But even this early manuscript does not plot the origin story commonly told for the office and the practice.
This paper will trace a backstory for “patriarch” and “patriarchal” along the textual chronology of surviving documents made or supervised by Joseph. In particular, I will focus on the developing story made by the arc of Joseph’s (and Oliver’s) work within the Egyptian project and the Book of Patriarchal Blessings 1834—from 1835.
The Egyptian documents have been published by the Joseph Smith Papers Project in print and online. The 1835 patriarchal blessing book as a textual object is not available on the JSP site. Instead JSP publishes online individual blessings from the 1835 blessing book (and others from the 1836 minute book) in the documents series, each appearing under the date it is said to be given according to the 1835 source. (Michael Marquardt has followed the same strategy in publishing blessings from the blessing book.) This paper will consider challenges caused by this set of decisions. To get at the emerging stories associated with “patriarch” and “patriarchal” requires considering the fuller 1835 context, and Oliver’s structuring of the important (and wonderfully weird) 1835 book.
Surviving texts from late 1840 and early 1841, including “Instruction on Priesthood,” dictated by Joseph and read at October conference, and discourses in December and January captured in private journals, provide a singular opportunity to glimpse Joseph in the midst of creation, and talking about the logic of his narrative economy. Focusing on the stories of Enoch and Adam in these texts foregrounds a fulcrum in Joseph’s explorations—his attention to the “body” and its organizing importance within a cosmic story for heaven and earth, a story without beginning or end. Because Enoch is translated, has no body, he is become a ministering spirit for the terrestrial kingdom. Adam with his resurrected body presides over the human family, at a council before the beginning (Michael now father, not warrior), at two Adam-ondi-Ahman councils at beginning and the end, and in the middest where he sends down angels whenever necessary. Adam is mediator, a gateway between the human family and Jesus with his Father. These stories for Adam and Enoch radically revise Joseph’s earliest work, where translated beings, with Enoch as the star example, are Joseph’s vehicles for imagining men gone to heaven.
Joseph’s explorations of angels and bodies are dynamic and fluid during these crucial months, creating as many problems as they resolve. But in such messy textual sites imagined for his “authoritative characters,” Joseph always finds God’s secrets and his future. So many possibilities can be seen falling into place. Gods with bodies. A timeline without beginning or end, no creation, only organizing and reorganizing. Joseph in the company of archangels finding a prospect for his own prominent success where others, including Enoch, Moses, even Jesus, have failed. A framework for new rituals and practices involving the body—baptism for the dead, endowment as drama, plural marriage.
Paperback / 494 pages / 0-941214-92-3 / $26.95
The Diaries of Wilford WoodruffFrom Connecticut, where Wilford Woodruff was born in 1807, to San Francisco, where he was befriended by the cosmopolitan Bohemian Club before dying in 1898, Woodruff’s life was unpredictable. The same man who consulted scientific texts for the cultivation of fruit trees for his personal garden was equally known for his apocalyptic vision on a Navajo mesa in Arizona in 1880. The man who balanced his ledger with penny-accuracy modeled buckskin temple robes to friends on his birthday and accepted from Brigham Young, as a birthday gift, one of Young’s daughters as a wife.
Woodruff became president of the Mormon church while hiding from federal marshals. Convinced that non-Mormons, or “gentiles,” would be smitten by the calamities promised in the Bible, he bided his time in exile until Mormonism prevailed. However, as the Parousia was delayed, he eventually decided to compromise with the United States.
To complement the exhaustive ten-volume Wilford Woodruff diary series and index published by Signature Books as a limited edition, Susan Staker has condensed the highlights of Woodruff’s revealing personal narrative into one readable volume, along with prefatory information, annotation, and appendices.
Paperback / 388 pages / 1-56085-154-6 / $21.95
Mormon MavericksSome left, some stayed. Each one found some aspect of their church’s history, doctrine, policies, or politics that they could not reconcile with their own personal ethics. Some felt burdened by the conflict, while others embraced it. A few were reticent, even apologetic about their disagreements. Others were barnstormers. Each possessed some quality that destined him or her to ride at the fringes rather than at the center.
Mormon Mavericks summarizes a few famous flashpoints in Mormon history; more importantly, it provides a telling study in human nature. Each contributor is an expert in his or her discipline, and all approach their topic with equal doses of sympathy and objectivity.
The following mavericks are featured in this collection of biographical essays:
Fawn McKay Brodie
Juanita Brooks
Thomas Stuart Ferguson
Amasa Mason Lyman
Sterling M. McMurrin
John E. Page
Sarah M. Pratt D. Michael Quinn
William Smith
Fanny Stenhouse
T. B. H. Stenhouse
James Strang
Samuel Woolley Taylor
Moses Thatcher
1979 Deseret Book Company
First organized in 1878, The Primary is a children's organization and an official auxiliary within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It acts as a Sunday School organization for the church's children under the age of 12.
Surviving texts from late 1840 and early 1841, including “Instruction on Priesthood,” dictated by Joseph and read at October conference, and discourses in December and January captured in private journals, provide a singular opportunity to glimpse Joseph in the midst of creation, and talking about the logic of his narrative economy. Focusing on the stories of Enoch and Adam in these texts foregrounds a fulcrum in Joseph’s explorations—his attention to the “body” and its organizing importance within a cosmic story for heaven and earth, a story without beginning or end. Because Enoch is translated, has no body, he is become a ministering spirit for the terrestrial kingdom. Adam with his resurrected body presides over the human family, at a council before the beginning (Michael now father, not warrior), at two Adam-ondi-Ahman councils at beginning and the end, and in the middest where he sends down angels whenever necessary. Adam is mediator, a gateway between the human family and Jesus with his Father. These stories for Adam and Enoch radically revise Joseph’s earliest work, where translated beings, with Enoch as the star example, are Joseph’s vehicles for imagining men gone to heaven.
Joseph’s explorations of angels and bodies are dynamic and fluid during these crucial months, creating as many problems as they resolve. But in such messy textual sites imagined for his “authoritative characters,” Joseph always finds God’s secrets and his future. So many possibilities can be seen falling into place. Gods with bodies. A timeline without beginning or end, no creation, only organizing and reorganizing. Joseph in the company of archangels finding a prospect for his own prominent success where others, including Enoch, Moses, even Jesus, have failed. A framework for new rituals and practices involving the body—baptism for the dead, endowment as drama, plural marriage.