‘We’re going to look at everything’: An 18,000-page monument to Joseph Smith, Jr.

Joseph Smith Jr. was born Dec. 23, 1805 — 218 years ago. And he was killed by an armed mob 39 years later, on June 27, 1844.

The anniversary of his birth today may be lost in preparing for Christmas — something that Daniel Peterson, professor emeritus of Arabic and Islamic studies at BYU, suggested was by no means inappropriate, since Latter-day Saints worship Jesus Christ, not Joseph, “and don’t want to suggest otherwise.”

Yet it was precisely this man’s lifelong focus on Jesus Christ which motivates members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world to commemorate Joseph Smith’s abbreviated life.

Joseph Smith by age 24 had published the Book of Mormon, and organized what Latter-day Saints consider to be a restoration of Christ’s ancient church. At age 26 Smith established frontier newspapers, and at 28 he began one of America’s first adult education programs — with a university started in Nauvoo, Illinois by age 35. During this span of time, Joseph Smith also published a book of revelations, sent out missionaries as far as Jerusalem, built two temples, founded one of the largest cities in Illinois aside from Chicago, and ran for President of the United States on an abolitionist platform — the same year his life was cut short, with four young children still at home, alongside his wife Emma who was pregnant.

In the years since Smith’s death, people have both applauded and denounced his legacy — in line with what Latter-day Saints believe to be prophetic words spoken to Joseph Smith at an early age: that his name would be “both good and evil spoken of among all people.”

That’s why this year’s completion of the 27-volume, 22-year Joseph Smith Papers project is so significant, according to a number of historians who spoke to the Deseret News.

Historical details accessible to all

Members of the church and anyone else with interest now have “the opportunity to see firsthand without the filtering” primary sources in great detail, former Assistant Church Historian Richard E. Turley Jr. told the Deseret News.

“Every document that we know of that was produced by or under the direction of Joseph Smith, or written to him directly, has been published with annotations,” summarized Church Historian Elder Kyle S. McKay, at an event this last summer announcing the project’s completion.

The exhaustive documentation effort began in 2001, at the pace of around two volumes per year. The resulting 27 volumes feature what one scholar calls “anything of substance” in the prophet’s words and communications. Yet those printed volumes represent only a subset of the 7.4 million words and 18,822 pages of documents available online.

“For a man who only lived 38 years and didn’t like to write,” Turley said, Smith left a “substantial corpus” of written information available today — more so than one might expect from a typical farm boy in early 19th century America.

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This includes 1,306 journal entries, 643 letters and 155 recorded revelations — all freely available and searchable by keyword at josephsmithpapers.org, thanks to full transcriptions of each manuscript, along with introductory explanations, reference material and 49,687 footnotes providing additional context.

“The church has done everything they can to make it accessible,” said Kathleen Flake, the Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia. “People should not be afraid because of its size.”

“There’s no Latter-day Saint interested in history who’s not going to be super excited when they first sit down for a weekend going through the website,” suggested BYU professor Christopher Blythe, who helped edit several volumes of the project.

A new era of Joseph Smith scholarship

The project “started with the principle we’re going to look at everything” and not steer away from any issue, professor Richard Bushman, the Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, told the Deseret News in an interview.

“They stated the facts exactly as they are,” he remarked — adding that they were “clear and measured. They handled it all.”

Similar papers projects have been done for all the American founding fathers, starting with the Papers of Thomas Jefferson in the 1940s. While the Jefferson project is still unfinished after more than 80 years, the Smith papers were completed by a large research team in just over two decades, thanks to the generous support of business leaders and philanthropists Gail Miller and her late husband, Larry.

This support allowed for a more in-depth and intensive process now widely regarded among scholars of documentary editing as a new “gold standard.”

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“I have been astounded by the thoroughness of the editing process and the painstaking ways in which the scholars have annotated the text and added clarification here and there where it was needed,” remarked Laurie Maffly-Kipp, the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She added, “I would say it ranks with the best kinds of scholarly sources I’ve seen.”

Spencer McBride, Associate Managing Historian on the Joseph Smith Papers, called the research accompanying each published document “perhaps the best feature” of the project for how it helps the reader make sense of each text in a historical context — arguing that the “annotation itself is often groundbreaking scholarship in and of itself.”

Bushman acknowledged that some academics had wondered previously about how much information was being made available by the Church of Jesus Christ about Joseph Smith. Greater historical transparency among Latter-day Saints, Kathleen Flake explained, is “part of the larger change in how everyone handles history since the 1970s” — noting that “the church is part of a larger history in that regard.”

This has resulted in newly improved “friendly relations with all the best scholars throughout the world,” Bushman added, as they see the church investigating comprehensively the totality of the prophet’s life and prolific work. That also means “we’re in a position to really state our case and be taken seriously by scholars everywhere.”

“The church didn’t want to hide anything about Joseph Smith,” underscored Laurel Thatcher Ulrich earlier this year, a Pulitzer Prize winner in history and the 300th Anniversary University Professor, Emerita, at Harvard University. “They felt confident that if the actual records, the primary sources, were available, responsible scholars would consult them.”

The establishment of this documentary database now, Flake said, “requires anyone who refers to Joseph Smith’s words or work to see the entire document, not just the same one or two sentences that get used and have been used for the last 200 years.”

Less study as the danger, not more

“The great factor we are missing is context,” Turley said, reflecting on a digital age where people tend to get most of their information in soundbites or social media feeds.

“If someone reads a snatch of the prophet’s writing somewhere and gets an interpretation that doesn’t sound right,” he continued, “my encouragement is to go to the papers and see what he said directly, and then to understand the context of what he said.”

“That’s not to say there aren’t challenging parts of this history,” Flake acknowledged, but “the more you know about it, the less challenged you are about it.”

“Most people stop halfway into the question,” she added, but “if you keep reading, a lot that is misunderstood becomes explained. That’s true of all history.”

One former mission president recalled the repeated heartbreak of his missionaries in witnessing people dissuaded from learning more after being initially excited to hear about the restored gospel. The turning point was coming across a dismissive allegation online so often “based on incomplete information that is not fully contextualized.”

“In a court of law,” the former attorney pointed out, “when you see only a partial picture you cannot fairly judge what really happened in a given situation.”

After hearing people say for decades that it’s “dangerous to study church history,” Turley has been trying to help people see that the problem in his mind “is not studying church history. The problem is studying it too little.”

“An act of confidence” 

“We’ve had people who have known a lot about Joseph Smith for a long time,” Bushman said, “the scholars aren’t surprised by anything that critics of the church might bring forward.”

Even so, the thoroughness of the Joseph Smith Papers project can feel daunting or intimidating to some, he added. “There was a risk in saying we were going to look at everything,” Bushman reflected, “but we went ahead and did it in the confidence that even if we looked at every fact that is troublesome,” the prophet Joseph “would still stand up. He wouldn’t get knocked down.”

Bushman called this “an act of confidence on the church’s part” and the part of everyone involved — and one that should instill fresh confidence in members of the church seeking to learn more about the prophet’s life. “Latter-day Saints can be confident everything has been looked at — we don’t have to be frightened for something coming out of the bushes one day.”

“I can’t tell you how many times students and others tell me they are nervous about the church’s history,” Blythe said, “I really don’t think they need to be.”

Blythe agreed there is something “bold” about the Joseph Smith Papers initiative. “If you were going to publish every aspect of anybody’s life, you’re going to find some aspect of ‘oh, you shouldn’t have done that.’”

It’s also “another world, 150 years ago” he acknowledged, involving ideas and actions that challenge some people. Yet even after reading every page of the 27 volumes, Blythe added, “I don’t think there’s much that should trouble people about the history of Joseph Smith.”

“If there’s any claim our church isn’t transparent,” just invite people to go to the website for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, Blythe said.

Separating fact from allegation. The danger with limited context, Bushman explained, is how much of the perception of a single act in history can be influenced by feelings of suspicion or anger. “Every statement of fact is entangled in an attitude — there aren’t just simple facts, they’re always presented in some way or another.”

“So, it’s possible that if you’re feeling angry with Joseph Smith or disillusioned with Joseph Smith, to tell a story that makes him look bad,” Bushman said — expressing concern with those who are “taking all the material they can and making it as bitter and poisonous as possible.”

“But when these stories are put in another framework,” he continued, the prophet “doesn’t look so bad. We see him how he fits in.”

By looking “at the larger picture,” Bushman said, “all those troublesome facts are drained of their poison.” This allows people to differentiate between actual facts versus what the scholar called “embittered neighbors trying to dump on the Smith family.”

“Lots of people can distort information no matter what information is available,” said Susan Easton Black, retired professor of church history from BYU.

“So, it’s how you interpret it.” Compared with those who view historical details through “an eye of faith,” Black pointed out, others have now been given “more information to sift through” and paint whatever picture they want.

In a religious context, she added, even good “source material can never supplant faith and your personal knowledge.”

A monument to a life

The arduous work to prepare these documents, according to Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, will make Latter-day Saints “more effective in telling the story of the ongoing restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in all the world as we move into the future.”

Thanks to this project, Gail Miller said, “Joseph Smith will be known by billions.”

“The more I learn about the prophet, the closer I feel to him.” Christopher Blythe added.

Bushman suggested that “resilience was the character quality that most set Joseph Smith apart — “he suffered so many setbacks, persecution, impoverishment, loss of children’s lives, apostasy, attacks from all over the place — and he just would not give up. He just held on through it all.”

Every year on December 23, the children of Susan Easton Black get together for a “happy birthday party for Joseph.”

“And everyone who comes — no matter where they are on their life’s journey — knows where their mother stands.”

Correction: Joseph Smith was killed on June 27, 1844, not July 27 as the article originally reported.