Joseph Smith

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Portrait of Joseph Smith, Jr. (circa 1842)

Joseph Smith Jr [ ˈdʒoʊzɪf ˈsmɪθ ] (born December 23, 1805 in Sharon , Windsor County , Vermont , USA ; † June 27, 1844 in Carthage , Illinois ) was the founder of the Church of Christ . He is considered a prophet in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , the fellowship of Christ, and all other Mormon churches .

Life

Origin and early youth

The Joseph Smith Birth Memorial

Joseph was born the fourth of eleven children to Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Smith (née Mack) in Sharon, Vermont . His family believed in the Bible. The parents worked as traders and farmers. The family often faced economic difficulties. Because of business failures and crop failures, she moved several times within the northeastern United States in the hope of finding a better life after each new start. The Smith family supplemented their low incomes by doing treasure hunting for a fee .

Joseph Smith also participated in the treasure hunt. In this context, he claimed that he had the ability to use a "seer stone" to track down hidden treasures. To do this, he put a "seer's stone" into a white cylinder and thereby obtained clues as to where the treasures should be hidden. At the age of eight he suffered from a bone infection in his leg that nearly resulted in amputation. The leg was saved with an operation that was unusual and extremely painful for the time. Smith suffered from this illness all his life with a slight limp.

Origins of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Christ

The events that eventually lead to the establishment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began, according to Smith, in 1820. Joseph Smith gave his view of things in a report he wrote in 1838, the first part of which is now called “ Joseph Smith - Life Story ”forms part of the book Pearl of Great Price , one of the canonical writings of the Church he later founded. In it he claims that in the spring of 1820 God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in response to a prayer in the forest . This happened near his parents' home in Manchester , New York . This event is known as the " First Vision ".

He further reported on 21 September 1823 a heavenly being had appeared as an answer to a prayer, who called him by name, as a messenger of God with the name that he Moroni introduced and brought him God's order, a book of gold plates to translate, which contain "the fulness of the everlasting gospel" and are kept in a hill called Cumorah near Manchester.

In 1826 Smith was convicted of " disturbing people and imposturing ". Around this time Joseph Smith was working on his father's farm and as a wage laborer in the wider area. On September 22, 1827, Joseph Smith was allowed to take the gold plates to complete a translation of what became known as the Book of Mormon . Since he could only read and write little, he dictated his translation of the text written in “Reformed Egyptian” into English to helpers through a curtain .

A 19th century image showing Joseph Smith being tarred and feathered by the “ mob ” .

With financial help from wealthy neighbor Martin Harris , one of the helpers and one of the three witnesses who testify to have seen the plates, the translation of the gold plates - the first edition of the Book of Mormon - was published in Palmyra in early 1830 , New York , printed and published March 26th. On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith organized the Church of Christ with six other founding members. In 1831 he moved the Church to Kirtland, Ohio , and two years later to Missouri . In the meantime, on March 24, 1832, he was tarred and feathered by the “ rabble ” in Hiram .

As part of the process of " restoring " the Church of Jesus Christ, Smith claimed that a multitude of people appeared to him. They would have had messages for him, gave him priesthood authority, or shared other instructions from God. They appeared to him as resurrected beings. Joseph Smith is venerated as a prophet among Mormons .

Imprisonment, running for president and death

Joseph Smith spent December 1838 through April 1839 in Liberty Prison , Missouri, on charges of high treason . He founded the city of Nauvoo in 1839 at Flecken Commerce on the Mississippi River in Illinois , where he established himself as a merchant and innkeeper . The city received its own statute from the state of Illinois ; Joseph became mayor and made himself lieutenant general of the militia he founded , the Nauvoo Legion .

From 1842 until his expulsion, Smith was a member of Nauvoo Lodge, Illinois, one of the many Masonic lodges of the time. Hence the assumption that Smith was inspired by the Masonic symbolic language when designing the temple ordinances, since the ordinances for the temples of the church only received their final form after this time.

In 1844 , Smith ran for President of the United States . As mayor, Smith ordered the destruction of the printing blocks and printing press of the Nauvoo Expositors newspaper on June 10, 1844 by a joint resolution of the city council, which consisted mainly of members of the Church , as this was viewed by the group as a public nuisance. The paper had written in its first and only issue of the Church, and Joseph Smith in particular, that his polygamous way of life was objectionable and that he was a "fallen prophet." This attack by Smith on the freedom of the press led to his arrest by Governor Thomas Ford .

Grave of Joseph, Emma (wife) and Hyrum Smith (brother) in Nauvoo

On June 27, 1844, Smith was lynched while on remand in a Carthage prison by an angry crowd . He was fatally hit by several bullets while trying to jump out of the window. Shortly before, he had used a Masonic distress signal to convince members of the Masons who were in the crowd to assist him. This made him the first US presidential candidate to be murdered during the election campaign.

Marriages and offspring

On January 18, 1827, Joseph married Emma Hale of Harmony , Pennsylvania . The wedding took place in secret, as Emma's father was against it. The couple had nine children:

  • Alvin Smith (1828-1828)
  • Twins Thaddeus and Louisa Smith (1831–1831)
  • Joseph Smith III (1832-1914)
  • Frederick Granger Williams Smith (1836–1862)
  • Alexander Hale Smith (1838-1909)
  • Don Carlos Smith (1840-1841)
  • Male child ( stillborn 1842)
  • David Hyrum Smith (1844-1904)

In addition, twins Joseph Smith Murdock (1831–1832) and Julia Murdock Smith (1831–1880) were adopted.

Smith practiced polygamy . The spread of polygamy was one of the factors that led to rifts between Joseph Smith and several leaders of the Church of Latter-day Saints from 1837 onwards. From 1840 to 1844 Smith was " sealed " to "by conservative estimates" 30 to 40 women . The youngest, Helen Mar Kimball, was 14 years old, the oldest, Fanny Young, 56 years old. After Joseph Smith married Louisa Beaman and before marrying other single women, he was sealed on 12 and 14 women who were already married (see Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, Signature Books, Salt Lake City , 1997, pp. 4–6; Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy, 1: 253-276, 303-348). Emma found this condition excruciating. It has not yet been clarified whether this was linked to a sexual relationship or just a religious connection “for eternity”. There are no known children from those marriages; DNA tests on the offspring of these women showed negative results .

criticism

The Evangelical Church does not recognize the works of Joseph Smith, particularly the Book of Mormon , as additional scriptures.

Newspapers described Smith as a forger as early as 1829 , a view still shared today by many Protestant Christians and critics of religion.

Jerald and Sandra Tanner , critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , refer to Joseph Smith as a forger, but also as a charlatan and a Freemason .

The journalist Christopher Hitchens compared Smith to Mohammed , since z. B. cited both extensively from other works (including the Old Testament ), both were married several times and both were persecuted because of their religious beliefs and had to flee. Joseph Smith was fortunate to live in an area that was very religious and had Native American burial mounds with grave goods, so he had an explanation for the origin of the gold plates.

See also

Portal: Mormonism  - Articles on Mormonism

literature

Web links

Commons : Joseph Smith  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files
Wikisource: Joseph Smith, Jr.  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ D. Michael Quinn: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. 2nd Edition. Signature Books, Salt Lake City 1998, ISBN 1-56085-089-2 , p. 136 (English).
  2. ↑ Mössmer: The Mormons: The Saints of the Latter Days. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-491-69409-4 , p. 20 ff.
  3. ^ Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. Knopf, New York 2005, ISBN 1-4000-4270-4 , pp. 49-51 (English).
  4. ↑ David Persuitte: Joseph Smith and the origins of the Book of Mormon. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, North Carolina 2000, ISBN 0-7864-0826-X , pp. 33-53.
  5. ↑ John L. Brooke: The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, pp. 152-153 (English).
  6. ^ D. Michael Quinn: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. 2nd Edition. Signature Books, Salt Lake City 1998, ISBN 1-56085-089-2 , pp. 43-44 (English).
  7. ↑ Harris (1833, pp. 253-54); Hale (1834, p. 265); Clark (1842, p. 225); Turner (1851, p. 216); Harris (1859, p. 164); Tucker (1867, pp. 20-21); Lapham (1870, p. 305); Lewis & Lewis (1879, p. 1); Mather (1880, p. 199) (English).
  8. ↑ www.churchofjesuschrist.org: Joseph Smith - Life Story
  9. ↑ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Ed.): Precious Pearl . Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 68.
  10. ↑ a b c Christopher Hitchens , Deceiving Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Mormons. Welt.de , June 3, 2007, accessed on August 27, 2017 .
  11. ↑ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints : From the Life of Joseph Smith. ( Memento of September 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved March 23, 2011.
  12. ↑ The Restoration of Everything. www.churchofjesuschrist.org, 2017, accessed December 18, 2019 .
  13. ↑ www.churchofjesuschrist.org: Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration
  14. ^ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon , revised and expanded new edition of the edition from 1932, Munich 2003, 951 pages, ISBN 3-7766-2161-3
  15. ↑ Andrew Jenson: Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Salt Lake City 1901, p. 698; Mervin B. Hogan: Freemasonry and the Lynching at Carthage Jail. Salt Lake City, pp. 10 f .; Times & Seasons. July 15, 1844 (5: 585); Orson Whitney: Life of Heber C. Kimball. Salt Lake City 1888, p. 26; Cecil McGavin: Mormonism & Masonry. Salt Lake City 1956, p. 17.
  16. ↑ www.churchofjesuschrist.org: The plural marriage in Kirtland and in Nauvoo
  17. ↑ www.evangelisch.de: “Unbridgeable differences” with the Mormons
  18. ↑ Bushman, 2005, pp. 82-83, 88-89 (describing the editorial reaction to the publication of the Book of Mormon); Brodie, 1971, pp. 16-17; Richard J. Mouw: The Possibility of Joseph Smith: Some Evangelical Probings in Neilson, Givens, 2008, 189.
  19. ↑ www.utlm.org: The Changing World of Mormonism ( here as PDF; 17.58 MB ; English)
predecessor Office successor
- President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
1830–1844 		Brigham Young
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, Joseph Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder and first prophet of the Mormons
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Sharon , Vermont
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1844
Place of death Carthage , Illinois