Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Preface


A FAIR Analysis of:
Criticism of Mormonism/Books
A work by author: George D. Smith
 Chapter 1

Claims made in Preface

Page Claim Response Author's sources

ix

 Joseph was inspired by Napoleon's Egyptian discoveries
  • No source provided.

Egyptian influence? (edit)

ix

 Joseph proposed a tryst with Sarah Ann Whitney
  • Joseph Smith to "Brother and Sister, [Newel K.] Whitney, and &c. [Sarah Ann,] Nauvoo, Illinois, August 18, 1842, Joseph Smith Collections, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), Salt Lake City, Utah
  • Full text of the letter may be viewed at Letter from Joseph Smith to the Whitneys (18 August 1842) (Wikisource)

Whitney "love letter" (edit)

ix

 Joseph age 36, versus Sarah 17
  • No source provided

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

ix

 Joseph's letter to Sarah Whitney was analogous to Napoleon's passionate love letter to Josephine.
  • Author's opinion.

Whitney "love letter" (edit)

Womanizing & romance (edit)

x

 Joseph had a "predilection" to "take an interest in more than one woman."
  • Author's opinion.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

x

 Napoleon's Egyptian findings "lit a fire in Smith that inspired even the language of his religious prose."
  • No source provided.

Egyptian influence? (edit)

xi

 "Little did Napoleon dream that by unearthing the Egyptian past, he would provide the mystery language of a new religion."
  • Author's opinion.

Egyptian influence? (edit)

xii

 "Beyond his quest for female companionship...."
  • Author's opinion.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

xii

 "...Smith utilized plural marriage to create a byzantine structure of relationships intended for successive worlds."
  • No source provided.

xii

 Joseph "was arrested for destroying a local press"
  • The destruction of the press was a decision ordered by Joseph as mayor with the approval of the Nauvoo city council. Joseph was charged with riot because of the press' destruction, released on bail, and offered to pay a fine if necessary. He was rearrested on a capital charge of treason.
  • Nauvoo Expositor
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

xii

 "Whether Joseph's wife Emma, consented to any of these marriages remains a mystery. She was aware of at least five of her husbands wives whom she sent away..."
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

xiii

 "Smith's wives remain unacknowledged in the official History of the Church..."
  • No source provided.
xiii "...today, in official Mormon circles, Smith's granting of favors to chosen followers, allowing them to take extra women into the home, is rarely mentioned."
  • No source provided.

xiii-xiv

 "extant records constitute a secret chronicle, an addendum...to the carefully edited official history from which any mention of the topic has been expurgated for the early period."
  • No source provided.

xiv

 "After 1890, when polygamy went underground again, it became difficult to access records."
  • No source provided.

xiv

 "The cyclical nature of this suppression of information, first in Illinois and later in Utah, left a brief window in Mormon history from which most of the documentation has been recovered."
  • No source provided.

xiv

 "because the history of polygamy in Nauvoo was never officially rewritten, even during the period of openness, Joseph Smith's initiation of the practice has remained in an historical penumbra to this day."
  • No source provided.

xiv

 Joseph "courted and eloped with his first wife."
  • No source provided.

xiv

 "The topic [of polygamy] was already on Joseph's mind, even in the 1820s."

Psychobiographical analysis of Joseph Smith

  • No source provided.

xv

 "...these same polygamists continued marrying to the point that they had acquired an average of nearly six wives per family. This model became the blueprint for forty years of Utah polygamy."
  •  Internal contradiction: p. 289: "the typical Utah polygamist whose roots in the principle extended back to Nauvoo, had between three and four wives."
    Prevalence of polygamy
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

xv

 "suppressed history"
  • No source provided.

xv

 Nauvoo "a more or less insignificant river town"
  •  Internal contradiction: p. 2: Nauvoo was "a bustling Mississippi River town with several thousand inhabitants." And, ultimately only Chicago was a larger city in all of Illinois.[1]
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

xv

 "sources which somehow survived both neglect and contempt so that we are able to know both the facts of the matter and the behind-the-scenes human emotions"
  • No source provided.

xvi

 Mormon "grandparents considered [polygamy] requisite for heaven."
  • No source provided.

Endnotes

  1. [note]  Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House/University of Illinois Press, [1979] 1992), 69. ISBN 0252062361. off-site
  2. [note]  Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House/University of Illinois Press, [1979] 1992), 69. ISBN 0252062361. off-site
Retrieved from "http://104.237.154.152/answers/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo_Polygamy/Preface&oldid=32803"