Title: Joseph Smith’s Prophetic Ministry Compiled by: Richard Holzapfel

Publisher: Deseret Book

Genre: Non-Fiction/Historical

Year Published: 2009

Number CD’s: 17

Total Length: 19 Hours

ISBN10: N.A.

ISBN13: 978-1-60641-060-8

Price: $44.95

Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton

Click Here to Order

I first learned of the Deseret Book CD set “Joseph Smith’s Prophetic Ministry” near the time of the death of Truman Madsen who was well known by many Latter-day Saints for his talk set “Joseph Smith the Prophet.”

This reinforced in my mind a question asked by Richard Bennett at the beginning of the second talk in the “Prophetic Ministry” set. “So much of a biographical nature has been written lately on the life of the prophet Joseph Smith, that one may well wonder if there is anything new or important left to say about him.” (CD 2 Track 1) This is a question worth asking and using to evaluate this set. With so much that has been said and recorded and that is being sold at LDS bookstores on the prophet Joseph Smith, is this set necessary, relevant , and worth the price?

I am now going to state something of a “disclaimer.’ These talks are meant to be informative. Much of the information that is shared in them is based on recent research, especially work related to the “Joseph Smith Papers Project.” Some of what is said in these talks, according to the compiler Richard Holzapfel, challenges traditional, often mythic ideas about Joseph Smith. This being said, it may be important to some to note that these talks are also Devotional in nature, some more than others. The speakers are all “faithful” scholars and the “faithful” are their audience. The speakers make no attempt to be critical of Joseph Smith or any aspect of his life or teachings. They are not even neutral observers. They are defenders and apologists and repeatedly bear their testimonies of the divine nature of Joseph Smith’s mission. If you want a more liberal approach to Joseph Smith and his life then these CD’s are not for you.

The talks in this set were given as a lecture series at BYU during the middle part of 2008. The speakers were editors and staff members of the Joseph Smith Papers project or BYU religion professors. With the exception of the first two talks, which cover Joseph Smith’s birth to the year 1830, each speaker was given one year in the life of Joseph to cover from 1831 to 1844. The majority of the speakers sum up most of their assigned year’s events in the first or last few minutes of the talk, and then spend the remaining time focusing on one or two major historical events or doctrinal themes from that year. Some speakers focus more on history, others on doctrine.  A couple of the talks focus as much on what was going on in the church in general that year, with less focus on Joseph himself. The most notable of these is talk 12,

“1839: The Missouri Exodus,” by William Hartley. In his talk he recounts personal experiences from the diaries and reminisces of a number of early Latter-day Saints, such as Levi and Mosiah Hancock, telling of their ordeals with the mobs and what they went through as they left Missouri for Illinois in the winter of 1839. He barely even mentions Joseph Smith who was in Liberty Jail during this time period; that experience is covered in talk 11, “1838: Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail,”

by Alexander Baugh.  The talks are all fairly long in duration. The shortest is 47 minutes long, two are just shy of an hour, the rest are between 65 and 79 minutes long (80 minutes is the maximum length on a standard CD).

Richard Holzapfel, the listed “compiler” of this set, gives three of the

talks: the first, “1805-1819: Joseph Smith, The Early Years,” talk 14,

“1841: The Nauvoo Temple,” and the 17th and last talk, “1844: The Prophet’s Last Charge.” I want to highlight just a few points from each of his talks. The first talk actually doesn’t spend too much time on the activities of Joseph and his family in “The Early Years,” although some brief biographical and character information is given. Holzapfel spends some time discussing prophecies about Joseph Smith’s mission, Joseph’s statement “no man knows my history,” the Joseph Smith Papers Project and other publishing efforts that have attempted to create a true picture of the character of Joseph Smith, early Latter-day Saint feelings about Joseph, and setting up the rest of the talk series.

Several things in this talk impressed me. Right at the beginning of his talk Holzapfel quotes Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner’s 1905 BYU devotional address and refers to her as “one of his [Joseph Smith’s] plural wives.” Seeing as how studiously the Church tries to avoid mentioning polygamy and Joseph Smith together, I found this public acknowledgement, right at the very beginning of the first talk in the set, even if very brief, to be interesting.

Holzapfel spends several minutes discussing the three expected messiahs, or “anointed servants,” in Hebrew scripture and lore: the “Messiah Ben Judah” (for Christians this is Jesus Christ), “the Messiah Ben Levi/Aaron,” and the “Messiah Ben Joseph/Ephraim.” He states that this “Messiah Ben Joseph” is “identified in many ancient Jewish documents and possibly…the Old Testament itself.” Holzapfel says that “it may well be that Joseph Smith should be identified as the third expected Messiah.” This is an interesting theory, and one that I know has been put forth by other Latter-day Saints, but I would have liked a few citations and something more firm to support his views than the vague “identified in many ancient Jewish documents and possibly…the Old Testament itself.” (CD 1 Track 2)

The statement from this lecture that I found the most interesting is one that some Latter-day Saints may find a bit startling. At the beginning of the third chapter of the CD, Holzapfel makes the following admission:

“   Some early Latter-day Saints, and some early efforts by those

Latter-day Saints, have, with good intention, tried to provide us a rather sanitized version of the prophet’s life. Believing that such a telling of the story would serve the Kingdom best… These authors tended to emphasize the positive, the remarkable, and the sensational, while downplaying the human foibles…forgetting that the scriptures themselves provide a rather frank portrait of the Lord’s people including His servants the apostles and the Prophets…their successes are all the more marvelous because we have come to know them as real humans, with human weaknesses as they grapple with the struggles and temptations so common to us all…In a certain sense the Joseph Smith of memory, for at least some Latter-day Saints, has become a marble statue perched on a high pedestal, beyond our reach and totally lacking the human characteristics that endeared him to the faithful when he was simply known as ‘Brother Joseph.’” (CD 1, Track 3)

Some of the publications that he states were good efforts for their time but now are known to contain errors and statements contributed to Joseph but not actually said by him are “The Life of Joseph Smith” by George Q.

Cannon and sons, “The History of the Church” compiled by B.H. Roberts, and “Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith” by Joseph Fielding Smith. It is interesting to contrast Holzapfel’s statement to two 25-30 year old statements made by Ezra Taft Benson and Boyd K. Packer. President Benson

said:

“The best biography on Joseph Smith to date was one done by one who knew him and who served the Church as an apostle and member of the First Presidency. I refer to George Q. Cannon’s inspiring work, *The Life of Joseph Smith.*” (“God’s Hand in Our Nation’s History” BYU Devotional, 28 March 1976, p. 10) President Packer said, speaking about a scholar who had emphasized the human nature of Joseph Smith, “What that historian did with the reputation of the President of the Church was not worth doing.  He seemed determined to convince everyone that the prophet was a man.  We knew that already.  All of the prophets and all of the Apostles have been men.  It would have been much more worthwhile for him to have convinced us that the man was a prophet.” (“The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect” in “Charge to Religious Educators”, 3rd ed.

p. 65) It will be interesting to see if Brother Holzapfel’s statement is a signal of a possible change in the official approach to writing about the life of Joseph Smith.

Holzapfel’s second talk is “1841: The Nauvoo Temple”: a more accurate name for it might be “Richard Holzapfel interprets Doctrine and Covenants section 124,” because his focus is on that section and how it applies to the Nauvoo Temple more than it is on the complete story of the temple, the endowment or on the introduction and development of temple ordinances. Don’t get me wrong, Doctrine and Covenants 124 is a long section that is definitely worth analyzing. This talk is worth listening to; it was interesting and informative and I think that most listeners will enjoy it and learn from it. I also realize that Holzapfel, as a faithful and conservative Mormon scholar, is going to, out of propriety, be careful when speaking of things that he and Church members hold sacred and indeed has covenanted to speak carefully of these things. That said, I felt like Holzapfel was only “skipping stones” with this talk, just barely breaking the surface of a much deeper subject. I think that Holzapfel could have given a fuller picture of the role of the temple and Temple ordinances in Nauvoo then he did without offending Church members or speaking inappropriately. He could have done this by citing any of the many records left by the participants in the introduction of temple ordinances in Nauvoo.

One weakness in this talk occurs about six minutes into the first track. Holzapfel describes the Nauvoo Temple this way:

“We might see (the Nauvoo Temple) as a composite, multi-use building. The first floor being more like a…conference center, the second floor…like a MTC, and the attic which would be reserved for temple ordinances. Very much like the Hong Kong Church property, or the New York City property where you have chapels and seminaries and institutes in New York City in the Temple, all in one building, a multi-use building.” (CD 14, Track 1)

Comparing the Nauvoo temple to a modern “multi-use building/temple” is to me an anachronism.  The idea that the New York, Hong Kong, or other similar temples are like the Nauvoo temple just does not fit with the 1840’s understanding of temples and the endowment. First of all, in these modern structures, the parts of the building, temple, chapel, school, etc., are distinct and separate, they even have separate entrances. The Nauvoo temple had no such divisions or separate entrances. In the 1840’s there were no “temple recommends” required to enter the building, and the idea that temples were more strictly for giving endowments and other ordinances did not yet exist; this would not come about until the late 1800’s after several temples were completed in Utah. It would also be false to say that the Nauvoo temple attic was “reserved for temple ordinances,” as many of the Church leaders and Nauvoo priesthood quorums had offices in the attic. To the saints in Nauvoo it was completely appropriate to use the same building for sacred ordinances, church services, and even dances and other recreations and consider all of these uses to be a part of the same great purpose of building the Kingdom of God. The phrase “multi-use building” would never have occurred to them

Holzapfel’s last talk and the last in the set is talk 17 “1844: The Prophet’s Last Charge.” This was Holzapfel’s best talk. In it he speaks about Joseph’s teachings on exaltation, his council meetings with Church leaders in 1844, the Council of Fifty and the Kingdom of God, the calling of “Kings and Queens, Priests and Priestesses,” Joseph’s and Emma’s receiving of their second anointing (although he does not actually use the phrase, he does speak of the event), and of the actual meeting in March of 1844 that is now usually spoken of as “The Last Charge Meeting.” Holzapfel frequently quotes Wilford Woodruff in this talk. One of this talk’s highlights is his playing in its entirety the Wilford Woodruff recording. This recording was made by Woodruff onto a wax cylinder on 19 March 1897 and is the earliest recording by an LDS prophet. In the recording Woodruff bears his testimony of “The last Charge” by Joseph Smith and of his introduction of the endowments in Nauvoo. If you have never heard this recording it is almost worth getting the set just to hear it.

As much as I enjoyed this talk I had a couple of issues with it. As with his previous talk it left me wanting more. It had good information but could have been better. I think it would have benefited by more discussion of the meetings of the Council of Fifty and the Anointed Quorum. Some of these meetings were recorded by participants and if he had quoted these men and women it would have really added depth to this talk. A second problem, at the end of his talk Holzapfel says that he is going to quote, “a recent document, that will be published shortly, that has been found” (talk 17, track 7).  He then quotes a document written by Orson Hyde in 1844 that is about this last charge meeting. I hate to burst his thunder but this “recently discovered document” has been available for at least a decade. It was quoted by Truman Madsen in his second set of talks on Joseph Smith that was given in the 1990’s, It was quoted by Thomas S. Monson in his talk at the Nauvoo Temple dedication in 2002, and it was printed in the book “Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed” that was published in 2005 by Signature Books. Still this was a good talk which showed a willingness to discuss items and events once considered taboo by Church leadership.

There are a few more things to note about the Holzapfel talks. His are the most “Devotional” of all of the talks, and they are the most “weepy.” He gets emotional in all of his talks, several times in each in fact. I realize that for some people weepiness shows sensitivity to the spirit and that for them this will actually make his talks better. Some more conservative people may criticize me for criticizing him. I have no real problem with people getting weepy in testimony meeting, that’s a more acceptable setting for such things. But for me when one is giving what is supposed to be a more scholarly discussion, repeated weepiness is distracting at best. Besides, even President Spencer W. Kimball is quoted as having said that “you shouldn’t have to cry when you bear your testimony.” (as reported in a CES training talk by Jeffery Marsh, audio tape in possession of reviewer)

Talk 2 is “1820-1829: Joseph Smith and the First Principles of the Gospel,” by Richard Bennett. The title of this talk pretty much explains it all. Bennett speaks about how Joseph was tutored on the “first four principles and ordinances of the gospel,” during the years 1820-1829. He explains that Joseph was taught these principles by heavenly messengers, revelations , and through the process of translating the Book of Mormon.

Talk 3, “1830: The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible,” is by Kent Jackson. He starts by briefly covering how the printing of books was done in 1830’s. Then Jackson discusses the reasons for having a “Joseph Smith Translation,” and moves into the added teachings and doctrines

that the Church has because of the “JST.”   He makes one point that may

surprise some church members, which I think is worthy of some discussion. He states that Joseph performed:

“Editing to make the Bible more understandable for modern readers… There were many instances, in fact the single most common kind of change that the prophet Joseph Smith made in the text was to make the reading easier, to simplify or to modernize…those kind of changes aren’t found in the footnotes to our Church edition of the Bible… The changes that the prophet made to reorganize the grammar, or to make the text a little easier to read, or to modernize things, those changes were not considered a high priority and so we don’t have these in the footnotes of our Bible…much of the prophet’s work was done to simplify and to modernize the text,” (CD 3, Chapter 4)

He then points out what some of these changes are including, “’wot’ to ‘know’, every time it appears,” “’an’ to ‘a’ before words that start with an H,” “’saith’ to ‘said’,” the change of old style relative pronouns such as “that” and “which” to the more modern and common “who,”

“Ye,” and “Thou,” and “Thee” changed to “You.” After listing many of these changes he states that Joseph made these changes “to put them more in line with common speech that people use…I think that we can get the idea that it was his intention to modernize and simplify.” Some may yawn at this and say “so what,” but I find this to be interesting. I can think of many times in my life that I have been taught in Church that translating the scriptures into modern English is a sure sign of apostasy.  I have had priesthood leaders tell me that is one way to know that the LDS Church is true and the RLDS/Community of Christ is not, because they have attempted to modernize the language in their scriptures.  As recently as 2008 in General Conference the Latter-day Saints have been told of the importance and respectfulness of the King James English. But if I understand Jackson correctly, Joseph Smith did not feel bound by such language. A similar study worth consulting is Royal Skousen’s “Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon,” in which he outlines how Joseph Smith modernized the usage of many of the terms listed above as he worked on the second and third editions of the Book of Mormon. I will find it interesting if any discussion of scriptural language usage in the Church comes about because of this lecture and Skousen’s work.

Jackson also points out that some of Joseph’s “corrections” are not really fixes at all, but rather they are Joseph’s attempts to clarify cultural differences from an ancient Hebrew text to a modern western viewpoint.  As an example, he points out that whenever Paul speaks of greeting one another with “an holy kiss,” Joseph changes it to “greet all the brethren with a holy salutation.” Jackson then points out that in the Mediterranean world it is okay for men to greet each other with a kiss, and that Paul probably “got it right” and that Joseph’s change was a “cultural adaptation made in the text” to “make it more relevant” to the modern Latter-day Saint reader.  He also spends some time on what happened to the “New Translation Manuscripts” after 1830 up to the modern times, how they are used by the LDS Church now, and how some of these materials ended up in the Pearl of Great Price.  This was a great talk and is worth listening to. It should be noted that although Joseph did a lot of other things in 1830, not the least of which was starting the Church on April 6th, none of these are given any time in the lecture. The full 63 minutes is spent on the JST. I realize that this is a big subject and Jackson handled it well, but it would have been nice to have at least a brief summary of the other events of the year 1830 in the life of Joseph Smith.

Grant Underwood has two talks in this set: talk 4, “1831: A Flood of Revelations,” and talk 6, “1833: Expulsion from Zion.” Of the two, I found “Expulsion from Zion” to be the more interesting talk.  It was not his discussion of the expulsion that caught my interest, but his discussion of the “Word of Wisdom” at the beginning of the talk. He starts by speaking of the Brigham Young account of Emma being upset because she had to clean up the tobacco spittle after priesthood meetings and of her asking Joseph to get a revelation about this. Then he says, “No doubt that was a part of it. I’d like to add to that, enrich that background a little bit. Much less known to the Latter-day Saints is that the ‘temperance movement’…was alive and well, not only throughout the United States…but (also) in Kirtland.” (CD 6, track 1) He then discusses the “Kirtland Temperance Society” which included in its active membership a number of early Latter-day Saints and Joseph’s subscription to “The American Revivalist and Rochester Observer,” which included a number of articles on temperance and health. He then says, “Can we not broaden the background of the ‘Word of Wisdom’ to consider the experiences there in Kirtland and the sentiment that was abroad in the land?” This is an interesting discussion because several LDS scholars in the 1970’s got into some trouble with “the brethren” for doing this same thing, suggesting that while the “Word of Wisdom” was revelation, that it also had a naturalistic background rooted in the temperance movement of the time. It will be interesting to see if the Church has reached a point where this kind of discussion can be entertained.

After this he discusses a number of other “Word of Wisdom” issues that may surprise some modern Latter-day Saints. He talks about how the application of the “Word of Wisdom” has evolved over time: how the meaning of the phrase “strong drinks” did not mean then what it means now, that back in the 1800’s it meant liquor with a high alcoholic content and that drinks with a low alcoholic content were not considered to be a violation of the “Word of Wisdom” as they are today. He discusses the various uses of wine and alcohol in the Church in the 1800’s, how the use of water in the sacrament came about, and even the production of wine by Church members. This was again a very interesting discussion, one of the very best in the whole set. It will give many an entirely new view of this revelation, and may really shock some Saints.

I want to say one thing about Grant Underwood’s talks. They were great, I really enjoyed them, they were some of the most scholarly and interesting talks in the set. But, they were so full of information that when my wife listened with me she complained that she kept getting lost in the details. I address this and offer ways I think the publisher could ameliorate such issues later in the review.

Robert Woodford gave talk 5, “1832: Joseph Smith and Doctrine and Covenants 76.” This was a good talk that was full of lots of interesting information. My wife had one major complaint as we listened to it together. While Woodford’s information was good, his delivery style was the driest and most monotone of all of the talks. This made it a little harder for her to follow.

Talk 7 is,“1834: Joseph Smith and Zion’s Camp” by Alexander Baugh who also gave the talk on CD 11, “1838: Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail.” Baugh is one of the speakers who spent most of his time retelling historical events. The first two thirds of the Zion’s Camp talk explains the camp’s background, gathering, traveling, and what happened when they arrived in Missouri. Baugh then talks about the aftermath of the camp. He quotes Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff to explain why Zion’s Camp was a success even if they did not achieve their objective. He speaks of the problems with Sylvester Smith and quotes a letter from Joseph Smith where he stated that he fully expected the Saints to return to Jackson County on September 11th 1836 if they remained faithful. He briefly addresses the idea that Zion’s camp prepared the Saints for the Kirtland Temple experience and set up the calling of the first General Authorities. In the next to last chapter of this talk Baugh mentions the organizational changes that occurred in the First Presidency in 1834. He concludes his talk by speaking about what he calls “the culminating event for 1834 for Joseph,” the giving by Joseph Smith Senior of Patriarchal Blessings to his family.

Talk number 8 by J. Spencer Fluhman is titled “1835: Priesthood and Church Government.” It is a lively and interesting talk that traces the early development of the governing bodies and rules of the Church focusing on the calling of the Quorum of the Twelve, the changing understanding of terms such as “Apostle,” “Elder,” “Bishop,” and “Patriarch,” and the revelations and other developments that took place in 1835. To me one of the most significant aspects of this talk was Fluhman’s discussion of the idea that most modern Latter-day Saints have mistaken ideas about how the governing structure of the Church developed. He states that far too many modern Saints assume that the rules and structure for running the Church came out in one great whole and have been a constant ever since. Not so, he says. The government of the Church, the connected revelations, our understanding of them, and application have evolved over time. He quotes President Packer to help make his case and them makes the following statement: “The revelations…did not force themselves on the early saints, rather only as the Church leaders were ready and asking did they move into new periods of ecclesiastical development and understanding. So looking back we should expect that the development of Church government, as a process, was more *rooted in human agency*, more drawn out, and more dynamic then some of us imagine.” (CD 8, track 3) Don’t take what I am saying too far. Fluhman doesn’t teach that the government of the Church developed independent of God or revelation; he does teach that human agency was more involved than most Saints realize. For instance, Fluhman points out that early Church leaders, including Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, “instinctively drew on the models (of church government) that they knew.” As an example, he says that “when the revelations now appearing as section 20 called for quarterly conferences in the Church, the early Latter-day Saints instinctively called them ‘General Conferences.’  What most of us don’t know though is that quarterly ‘General Conferences’ had been a staple of early Methodist Church government. “(CD 8, track 4) He also spends some time comparing the development of the Church government and forms of worship to the development of protestant church government and forms of worship, the rejection of Catholic forms of worship and governance by Americans at the time, and how this all ties into the Church and the feelings and ideas of early Church members. This was a very interesting and educational talk that will give a new understanding of the development of Church government to most of its listeners.

Talk 9, “1836: Joseph and the Kirtland Temple Experience,” by Steven Harper, is the shortest of all of the talks in the set with a running time of 47:42. Harper starts his talk with Joseph’s vision of Moroni in

1823 and Moroni’s quoting of the prophecies relating to the return of Elijah and the restoration of priesthood keys. He then spends time explaining Doctrine and Covenants sections 84 and 88 and the other instructions given to the Saints commanding them to build a temple. When he gets to the actual dedication he spends a lot of time reviewing D & C 109, the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple. He then covers some of the meetings that occurred in the week following the dedication including the 3 April 1836 meeting that led to the reception of D & C 110. He concludes with some information relating to the beginning of temple work.

This talk has a direct parallel in the Truman Madsen set, the major difference being that of focus, between Harper’s talk on the Kirtland Temple and Madsen’s talk on the Kirtland Temple. Harper focuses on the history and doctrines behind the building of the Kirtland temple, spending very little time on the actual dedication services. He includes almost no mention of the visions and miracles that various church members reported in relation to the event. Madsen, on the other hand, spends most of his time discussing the day of dedication and reporting the various spectacular and miraculous experiences connected with the dedicatory services.

Talk 10 is by Ronald Esplin, the managing director of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. His talk is “1837: Joseph Smith and the Kirtland Crisis.” This talk is one that is quite topical now. What I think that most people will find interesting about this talk is Esplin’s explanation for the 1837 crisis in Kirtland.  He states that it is an error for the Kirtland crisis to be “connected almost exclusively to the failure of the (Kirtland) bank, or to the economic panic of 1837…the economic difficulties. But in fact it started in their prosperity the year before.” (CD 10, track 1) The real reason for the crisis he says was that “it was a test of understanding prophetic leadership, what is the role of a prophet…is a prophet for preaching to us on Sunday…or is a prophet for leading a community of gathered saints into a new way of organizing ourselves where all of our labors work together to build the kingdom of God on the Earth.” (CD 10 track 1) I would be curious to know the date that this talk was delivered on, and how close it was in relation to the Church’s announcements supporting Prop. 8 and the various reactions to it. The idea of whether or not a prophet should speak to and command on political, social, and other such issues has been a hot one recently due largely to the Church’s stand on Prop.

8. Esplin supports the conservative viewpoint that a prophet can and should speak on these matters and that the Church members should follow the prophet’s counsel. This could make this talk controversial for some.

In Talk 13, “1840: Joseph Smith Goes to Washington,” Ronald Barney begins by explaining the significance of the Joseph Smith Papers, and then sets up the historical context for Joseph’s trip to Washington by giving some of the historical events that were going on, including the beginning of the “Underground Railroad,” and the banishment of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia to Oklahoma. Among the more interesting points of this talk are Barney’s challenging of two of the more mythic events of Joseph’s trip to Washington. First he reads the oft told story of Joseph’s rescuing of a runaway stagecoach while traveling to Washington, thus saving the lives of the passengers including some members of Congress. He then points out that the version of the story that is most often told was based on an account written by Robert D.

Foster who was NOT present when the event took place, even though he wrote his account as if he were an eye witness. Barney then explains that there are provable mistakes in Foster’s account. He then reads a contemporary account by Elias Higbee who was there. Higbee still records that Joseph did climb out and save the coach, but by the time he did, several people had already jumped out of the coach. He mentions that Joseph was thanked, but mentions nothing about Joseph stopping a woman from trying to throw her baby out of the coach or of Congressmen wanting to officially thank Joseph and then recanting when they learned his identity.

The other major point I found interesting was Barney’s speaking of the visit by Joseph to Martin Van Buren . Most Latter-day Saints can quote by heart Van Buren’s statement: “Your cause is just but I can do nothing for you.” In Latter-day Saint lore Van Buren comes out as one of the major bad guys, ranking nearly as high as Governors Boggs and Ford.

Barney reads reports from the time that downplay Joseph’s visit to the president and stress his visit to Congress. He states that not a single one of the many Van Buren biographies even mention the visit between Van Buren and Joseph and that no mention of it can be found in the official Van Buren papers. The earliest surviving contemporary account Barney has found that gives details of the visit, besides the statements by Elias Higbee, was not written until 16 years later. It is a letter, by former Illinois Governor John Reynolds, who introduced Joseph to Van Buren. Reynolds paints a much more sympathetic reception of Joseph by those in Washington then we usually hear. Barney then explains that most scholars consider Van Buren to have been “an honorable man, and a remarkable politician.” He also gives background on the politics and history of the time that shows that Van Buren was doing all he could just to hold the country together through a variety of important issues including slavery-related tensions, an economic crisis, and problems with Great Britain that some feared would lead to war. He also says that politically and legally, there was little Van Buren could do at the time to help the Latter-day Saints without violating the principle he and his political party held most dear, states’ rights. It was just not worth the problems it would have caused the country for Van Buren to help the “insignificant” Latter-day Saints. Barney even states that he believes that Joseph did not even expect to get help when he went to Washington, but that he went purely to fulfill revelation now found in section 101 of the Doctrine and Covenants. This talk will really cause the listeners to reevaluate their preconceived ideas about Joseph’s trip to Washington and their opinions about Van Buren.

Talk 15 is “1842: Attempts to Extradite Joseph Smith to Missouri,” by Andrew Hedges. The talk is informative and Hedges’ speaking style is engaging. I think that most listeners will enjoy this talk and learn something new. I just have one major complaint about it. I realize that the style of this lecture series was to pick one or two topics per year and focus on them. I realize that it is impossible to cover everything Joseph did each year. I realize that in the previous talk Holzapfel already covered the Nauvoo Temple and briefly touched on the introduction of the Temple ordinances. I realize that my own interests bias me. But if you are going to pick “the” major event from Joseph’s life for this year, as big as the attempts to extradite him to Missouri and the John C. Bennett defection mess were, I do not see how anyone serious about Joseph Smith scholarship could address the year 1842 without at least briefly mentioning the introduction of the Endowments on Wednesday the 4th of May of that year, the formation and meetings of the “Anointed Quorum,” and the furtherance of polygamy. All of which by the way, connect to the Bennett defection and his attempts to extradite Joseph to Missouri.

Talk 16, “1843: Doctrines, Covenants, and Sweet Consolation,” is by Robert Millet. His talk focuses on the doctrines introduced by Joseph Smith in that year, especially on the significance of the teachings relating to eternal marriage, eternal life, and how the temple and priesthood give “the power…to secure families forever.” It’s a good talk but for those wanting to know about the historical impact of and reactions to the introduction of these doctrines, it is worth noting that Millet spends more of his time explaining what these doctrines mean now than he spends on the history behind them or their application in Joseph’s day.

Let me air out a few complaints I have about the technical aspects of this series. The first is a complaint I make whenever I review a Deseret Book Talk on CD. I hate the fact the pre-produced Deseret Book introduction of the speaker, which includes music and the voice of some DB producer or staffer reading off the name of the speaker and the talk, is part of the same track as the first segment of the talk. I hate these introductions. I always try to skip over them. Covenant Communications CDs have them on a separate track from the talk which makes doing this

much easier. I wish Deseret Book would do the same.   With this series

this problem went beyond the normal annoyance it has for me. Usually a Deseret Book CD is introduced with the same standard, mundane music track. These talks, however, all start with a slow instrumental rendition of the LDS sacred hymn, “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer.” I don’t know for certain what Deseret Book’s intention was, but for me and my wife it was a blatant attempt to manipulate our emotions and force us to “feel the Spirit” as the talks started. I would much rather let such feelings come naturally.

There are a few more items that, in my mind would have improved the user friendliness of this set. It would have been nice to have had some sort of track listing included with the CD’s or clamshell box that stated the content of the CD’s. Along with this, some sort of readable presentation of notes and citations would have been nice. This series is

long: seventeen talks running from 60 to 80 minutes for a total of nineteen hours. Some of the talks are fairly complex and cover a lot of history and doctrine. A few of them could be hard to follow for some listeners (this was my wife’s biggest complaint when she listened to the talks with me).  There are easy solutions for doing this. Two recent John Bytheway CD’s, also Deseret Book publications, came with downloadable PDF or Power Point presentations of slides and notes to accompany and enhance the talks. A similar thing with this set would have been *VERY* nice. Even a small booklet in the clamshell case would have been helpful.

Another suggestion for Deseret Book, please make the tracks shorter. Most of the tracks in this series are around ten minutes in length; some were in the low teens. When you are searching for a particular quote or spot in a talk, this is too long. Tracks of two to three minutes would be much more helpful. I would also recommend to Deseret Book (on the outside chance that someone in their management reads this) that they make these talks available for purchase as MP3’s on their website. If they did this it would help them appeal to younger tech savvy listeners and make available the option to purchase the whole set or selected talks from within the set. They already have sample clips from the set on their website; it wouldn’t be that hard to put the complete MP3’s up for sale. Oh well, I’ll just keep dreaming.

So then, with so much said I must answer my original question, “is this set necessary, relevant , and worth the price?” My answer is yes. While I had my issues with some of the ideas, conclusions, and omissions of the speakers, and while some of the information is not as new as the speakers would like to think that it is, this set does provide an overall synthesis of information and ideas that will be new for most members of the Church. I think that it will teach them, and challenge some of their  preconceived ideas about Joseph Smith and Church history without challenging their testimonies. How does this set relate to the Madsen talks from the 1970’s and 90’s? While I would not say that this set challenges or refutes Madsen, it certainly puts forth a Joseph Smith who is a little less mythic, a little more human, easier to relate to, but who is definitely still a prophet. The price may seem high to some, but when single CD talks from Deseret Book sell for fifteen dollars each, $44.95 for seventeen CD’s comes out to only $2.65 per CD. If this set will teach you something new, it’s worth the price.

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