By August 28, 2020
By Mark Ashurst-McGee
In the previous installments of this series, I have given a brief history of the research Don Bradley and I have been conducting over the last three decades on the Kinderhook plates episode in early Mormon history.
By August 27, 2020
By Mark Ashurst-McGee
As explained in the previous installment (2 of 4), I had found what I believed to be the source of the content of Joseph Smith’s translation of the Kinderhook plates: The Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL).
By August 26, 2020
By Mark Ashurst-McGee
See here for the previous installment.
So, as I was saying, in the spring of 1996 I delivered a presentation at MHA in which I argued that Joseph Smith did translate (mistranslate) a portion of the fraudulent Kinderhook plates but that he had attempted this translation by secular methods. (For the basic outline of the argument, see the previous installment.)
A few months after the presentation, I found the source of the content of the translation.
It was in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language.
By August 25, 2020
Mark Ashurst-McGee is Senior Research and Review Editor for the Joseph Smith Papers and a long-time friend of the JI. He is a co-editor (with Michael Hubbard MacKay and Brian M. Hauglid) and contributor to the recently published Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (UofU Press), which we highlighted in a recent guest post.
If I remember it correctly, I started studying the Kinderhook plates episode in the fall of 1990, soon after I completed my mission and returned to BYU—and there found the magnificent run of BX8600 books in the 4th-floor stacks of the Lee Library. I spent countless hours between there and the old Special Collections (with its stunning window view of Mount Timpanogos).
A decade earlier, historian Stan Kimball had obtained permission to conduct destructive testing on the one extant Kinderhook plate—in order to determine whether it was ancient or modern. In the late nineteenth century, men from Kinderhook, Illinois, claimed that the plate had been fabricated there in 1843 and then planted near a decomposed skeleton in a nearby American Indian burial mound. This was all in preparation for the excavation and “discovery” that followed. The problem was that, according to the History of the Church, when Joseph Smith was shown the plates he believed they were genuine and even translated a portion of their inscriptions. So, were the plates genuine or bogus? ancient or modern? The destructive testing conducted in 1980 conclusively demonstrated that the plate and its inscriptions were a 19th-century fabrication.
By February 1, 2019
Since the time I began working on my current book project on early Book of Mormon reception history, there have been individuals who have called what I am doing women’s history. I am certainly not offended by someone saying I do women’s history, I am not opposed to women’s history. I think women’s history does significant and important compensatory work to fill a historical chasm empty for too long. My Master’s thesis was clearly women’s history, I have done consistent work in that field, as well as the discipline directly informing other work that I do.
However, I’m always interested in the formal and informal categories that we construct to order the historical field and I’m wondering what makes something women’s history? As editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Joseph Spencer, introduced my recent article here for the Maxwell Institute, he complimented my work (thanks) and summarized the article: “how early converts—and especially women—approached the text of the Book of Mormon.” I suspect Joe wanted to highlight one of the things present in my article that is often absent in Mormon History, women. However, the “especially women” gave me pause. That pause has only expanded as I have heard others describe my current work as women’s history.
By January 30, 2018
This post comes from Cristina Rosetti, a Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside and is a Mormon Studies Fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Her dissertation examines spiritualism and fundamentalist Mormonism.
As new charges and depositions against Warren Jeffs surface, the FLDS is once again in the journalistic spotlight. This even includes a Buzzfeed article by Anne Helen Petersen who captured the way former members of the FLDS are returning to Short Creek (referred to as the ?Crick? by residents and frequent visitors alike), to rebuild a community that was left in ruin following the capture of Jeffs. [i] By any measure, they are succeeding. These are stories matter because they are often missing from work on Mormon fundamentalism. But, there are still other narratives and methods of story-telling that remain absent.
Most people, Mormon or otherwise, who read popular writings on fundamentalism are not aware of how we got here. To be fair, capturing the complex history of fundamentalism requires more space than many journalists are afforded (try writing the entirety of LDS history in one essay, even long-form). Writing on Mormonism is so centrally focused on an unbroken Priesthood lineage that began with Joseph Smith and ends with the current President of the LDS Church that other histories are left behind. The powerful testimonies from members of the Council of Friends, the compelling writings of Joseph Musser, and the lives of current fundamentalist leaders and Prophets are absent. These absences create a void in Mormon history that leave room for spectacle and causes outsiders to wonder how people like Warren Jeffs happened. It also leaves people assuming that all fundamentalists adhere to the same beliefs and practices.
By February 1, 2017
Over the past week, scholars and news outlets have linked the Mormon past to the present Muslim-targeted immigration ban. They point to the 1879 Evarts Circular, in which Secretary of State William Evarts urged foreign governments to help restrict Mormon emigration from their countries. The above writers ask Mormons to remember their immigrant-persecuted-past and show compassion to those in the present.
These calls are noble. Yet, there is more to the Mormon-Muslim immigrant past than these articles articulate. The Evarts Circular was not the only federal action against Mormon immigration. Two legislative currents, federal legislative battles over the existence of polygamy in the 1880s and the federalization of immigration legislation, followed Evarts’ Circular. These forces coincided in the 1891 federal immigration law when legislators banned “polygamists” from crossing into America’s borders while increased funding established federal border regulation. At the same time, the 1891 law gave refugee status to immigrants fleeing from religious persecution. You’ll have to wait for a forthcoming post about the legal developments between the Evarts Circular and the 1891 law. You’ll also have to trust me when I say that the 1891 polygamy-immigration ban targeted Mormons (although this Los Angeles Times article might serve as some consolation in the meantime).[1]
By January 30, 2017
I had a different post planned for this week, but I’ll save it for a time that feels less urgent.
I’m going to speak candidly and personally, as a historian, a unionized public-sector educator, a woman, a Mormon, a white Eastern liberal elite, and a born-American citizen. (Just so you know where my intersectionalities lie). It’s abundantly clear that the election results and Trump’s inauguration have abruptly ushered us all into a new political and cultural landscape.
By January 29, 2017
Image courtesy of Ardis Parshall, keepapitchinin.org.
Some recommended reading from Juvenile Instructor bloggers and friends on the history of Mormonism and/as refugees:
By August 23, 2016
History enrollments are on the decline nationwide. There are a number of possible explanations for this. At my institution, the popular explanations number two, one a broader assumption that’s difficult to document and the other the result of internal campus politics. The first is that the economic slump has made students increasingly hard-nosed and career-focused when they think about what they’re going to do with their education. The second is that another department began a program that has sucked away a number of students who once majored in history with an eye toward law school.
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