Library / The Pearl of Great Price
Pearl of Great Price
Joseph Smith—History
Reading the 1838 account as the document it is
Joseph Smith—History 1; compare James 1:5; Malachi 4:5–6; Acts 2:17–2145 min4 sections
The canonised account of the Restoration's first decade, dictated in 1838 for a specific purpose and audience. Read as a document — with its date, its occasion and its intended readers in view — it is both more interesting and more defensible than it is when read as a neutral chronicle.
- Author
- Joseph Smith, dictated principally to scribes including James Mulholland
- Date
- Begun 1838 in Far West, Missouri; continued in 1839; first published in the Times and Seasons from 1842
- Place
- Missouri and Illinois; the events are set in Palmyra and Manchester, New York, and Harmony, Pennsylvania
- Audience
- The public — explicitly written to correct 'the many reports which have been put in circulation'
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Apologetic history in the first person
By the end you should be able to
- State why the 1838 account was written, from its own first paragraph.
- Trace the structure of the document and say what each part is doing.
- Explain what Moroni's four quotations were meant to establish.
- Read the account's own admissions of weakness as evidence rather than as embarrassment.
Why the account exists
It says so in the first sentence, and it changes how the rest reads.
1Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation by evil-disposed and designing persons, in relation to the rise and progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all of which have been designed by the authors thereof to militate against its character as a Church and its progress in the world—I have been induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts, as they have transpired, in relation both to myself and the Church, so far as I have such facts in my possession.
2In this history I shall present the various events in relation to this Church, in truth and righteousness, as they have transpired, or as they at present exist, being now the eighth year since the organization of the said Church.
This is a document with a job. It was begun in 1838, in the middle of the Missouri conflict that would end with an extermination order and four months in Liberty Jail, and its stated purpose is to answer public accusations. That is not a reason to distrust it; it is a reason to read it the way one reads any purposeful document — attentive to what it emphasises, what it passes over, and who it expects to be arguing with.
| Verses | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 1–4 | The occasion, and the family's move to Palmyra |
| 5–13 | The religious excitement, the confusion it produced, and James 1:5 |
| 14–20 | The First Vision |
| 21–26 | The reaction — persecution, and the comparison to Paul before Agrippa |
| 27–54 | Moroni's visits, the plates, and four annual visits to the hill |
| 55–65 | Marriage, Martin Harris, and the Anthon episode |
| 66–75 | Oliver Cowdery, the translation, and the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood |
The question, and the verse that answered it
A fourteen-year-old with a genuinely reasonable problem.
8During this time of great excitement my mind was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness; but though my feelings were deep and often poignant, still I kept myself aloof from all these parties, though I attended their several meetings as often as occasion would permit.
10In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?
11While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
12Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did.
The problem as stated is not a crisis of belief. Joseph believes there is an answer; what he cannot do is adjudicate between parties who all cite the same Bible and reach different conclusions. Verse 12 names the deadlock precisely: 'the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.'
Principle
The Restoration begins with a question that scripture alone could not settle, answered by a method scripture itself prescribed.
James 1:5 is the hinge. The boy does not abandon the Bible; he takes one of its instructions seriously enough to act on it literally, and the whole Restoration follows from that. The pattern — study it out, then ask, then act on the answer — is stated again as a general rule in D&C 9:7–9.
Joseph Smith—History 1:11–13 · James 1:5–6 · D&C 9:7–9 · Moroni 10:4–5
The Greek of James 1:5
Moroni, and four quotations
The visit is framed as prophecy coming due, not as a novelty.
On the night of 21 September 1823 Moroni appeared three times, repeating the same message word for word, and then a fourth time the following day. What he quoted is as significant as what he said: four passages from four different parts of the Bible, chosen to establish that what was about to happen had been on the books for a long time.
| Passage | What it supplies |
|---|---|
| Malachi 3 and 4 | Elijah's return, with a variation Joseph records carefully: the promises made to the fathers planted in the hearts of the children. This becomes the doctrinal basis for temple and family-history work. |
| Isaiah 11 | The Lord setting His hand a second time to recover His people — a second gathering, distinct from the return from Babylon. |
| Acts 3:22–23 | Peter on the prophet like Moses, and on the times of restitution of all things. Moroni said the prophet was Christ and the day had not yet come. |
| Joel 2:28–32 | The outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh — 'this was not yet fulfilled, but was soon to be.' |
46By this I knew that Satan would try to tempt me (in consequence of the indigent circumstances of my father's family), to get the plates for the purpose of getting rich. This he forbade me, saying that I must have no other object in view in getting the plates but to glorify God.
53At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates… I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger, and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived, neither would it, until four years from that time.
54Accordingly, as I had been commanded, I went at the end of each year, and at each time I found the same messenger there, and received instruction and intelligence from him at each of our interviews, respecting what the Lord was going to do.
Four years of annual appointments before anything is handed over. Whatever else this is, it is not a story engineered for momentum — and the reason given for the delay in verse 46 is a warning about the motives of a poor farm boy who had just been told about buried gold.
What the account admits
The passages an apologetic history had no obligation to include.
A document written to 'disabuse the public mind' could reasonably be expected to present its author well. This one does not, consistently, and the admissions are worth cataloguing because they cut against the simplest explanation of the text as self-promotion.
- He describes himself as guilty of 'levity' and of 'foibles of human nature' and 'a disposition to commit such [foolish errors] as was offensive in the sight of God' (v. 28).
- He records that the vision cost him — that he was persecuted for it as a boy, and 'though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true' (v. 25).
- He records the loss of the 116 pages only obliquely here, but the revelation that followed it — D&C 3 — is a rebuke preserved in the canon.
- He describes going to the hill the first year with 'the purpose of getting rich' in his mind, and being refused (v. 46, 53).
- He records that his father believed him immediately (v. 50), which is a claim easily checked against the family's testimony, and was.
“I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true.”
Verse 25 sets the claim beside Paul before Agrippa: Paul was mocked and called mad, and 'yet all this did not destroy the reality of his vision.' The comparison is doing argumentative work — it moves the question away from whether the account is believable and onto whether disbelief was ever evidence of anything.
Where the account continues
- D&C 13John the Baptist's words, 15 May 1829, recorded verbatim — the point at which the history moves from vision to authority.
- D&C 20:1The organisation of the Church, 6 April 1830, after the authority was in place rather than before.
- D&C 128:20–21Joseph's own later summary of the messengers, written in 1842 — a much longer list than JS—H contains.
To consider
- 01The account was written to answer accusations. Which parts read as though they were written for that purpose, and which read as though they were not?
- 02Moroni chose four passages that were already in every Bible in Palmyra. Why start there rather than with something new?
- 03Four years passed between the first visit and receiving the plates. What is that delay for?
What this lesson holds
The Restoration began with a boy taking a biblical instruction literally, which makes revelation continuous with scripture rather than a replacement for it.
Moroni framed the entire errand inside prophecy that was already canonical, so that the Restoration would be recognised as fulfilment rather than innovation.
Authority was restored before the Church was organised, and by personal ministration rather than by claim.
Check your reading
5 questions01Why does the 1838 account say it was written?
02What was Joseph's actual problem before the First Vision?
03What is notable about Moroni's quotation of Malachi?
04How long between Moroni's first visit and Joseph receiving the plates?
05Who restored the Aaronic Priesthood, and when?
Where to go next
Sources
- Joseph Smith—History 1 — The primary text.
- The Joseph Smith Papers, Histories Volume 1 — The 1838–1856 history manuscript in its documentary context
- Gospel Topics Essay, "First Vision Accounts"
- Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth