Early Mormon Documents Hardcover - 1996

From the publisher

As historians continue to sort through the beginnings of Mormonism, Dan Vogel s comprehensive inventory of all relevant primary documents is an unparalleled achievement. In this first of a multi-volume series, Joseph Smith s family Emma, Katharine, Lucy, Joseph Sr., William, and others recount how they became convinced of his high calling, feeling the spirit of God like a burning fire shut up in [their] bones. These narratives are carefully presented in their original forms with full documentation and annotation.

As confidantes, the Smith family were intimately acquainted with their son s and brother s extraordinary supernatural encounters. Their narratives form an Urgeschichte that they repeated with considerable consistency over the years, despite the fact that Joseph s published autobiography, which became the accepted, canonized version, differs significantly in several areas.

He found the book, which was inscribed in an unknown script on gold leaves, hidden in a stone box with a pair of eye-glasses, the lenses of which were made of diamonds the size of an English crown only slightly thicker. By looking through the glasses, then at an opaque seer stone placed in a hat, the book s script appeared as illuminated English words. He published his translation as the Book of Mormon. Later, in a friend s bedroom, Joseph was impressed to ordain elders and to organize a new church. Almost immediately his followers performed miracles, beginning with a dramatic levitation and exorcism which inaugurated the restoration of primitive Christianity."

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