bcspace wrote:Again, Brother Space, when Sylvia Sessions Lyon affirmatively states her belief that Josephine was fathered by Joseph Smith, that's not jumping to conclusions. That's taking her statement at face value.
Not by a long shot because you are not fully quoting the statement which would provide another possibility or noting other possibilities as well even in for foreshortened quote.
Okay, tell me why Sylvia Session Lyon would believe that Joseph Smith fathered Josephine, while simultaneously believing they never had sexual intercourse.
In addition, the statement is
1) 23 years after the fact.
2) Communicated 3rd hand.
"It was said 23 years after the fact and communicated third hand," said someone who thinks the Bible is reliable history of actual events.
It was not "third hand." Josephine said her mother told her that. That's second hand, and it was made under reliable circumstances (reliable that the statement was actually made and actually believed by the person who said it). Stating that another man is the father of your child, while you were legally married to someone whom your child had assumed was her father, is not the kind of thing you just do on a whim. Particularly at a time in American history when sexuality was not openly discussed, and it would have been scandalous in the society of the time to be admitting such things.
Also, it was 23 years later about an extremely significant event. I realize you would like to discuss LDS history and truth claims in a vacuum, as if every observer is totally naïve about common human experience. But most parents do in fact remember the circumstances under which their children were conceived, even when their children are grown. It's a little more significant of a memory than what you had for breakfast on Tuesday 23 years ago.
The significance of the conception would be even more so if the mother believed the father was a prophet of God, making the conception extra super duper special.
And if Sylvia was mistaken about the paternity, it means she had a clear recollection of having sex with Joseph Smith around when Josephine was conceived, but Sylvia also had sex with Windsor around that time (the latter explaining the actual paternity).
So you be sure and articulate a reason to believe anything else.
Regarding the full quote, what is meant by "daughter of Joseph Smith" in light of such facts as, for example, Heber J Grant was said to be a "son of Joseph Smith" because his mother was also sealed to him?
No, because you can't impute the metaphorical meaning of a third party to Sylvia. Just because a completely different person used the term "son of Joseph Smith" in a different context does not justify assuming that Sylvia under totally different circumstances just meant that.
This would be like asserting that because the LDS Church teaches that we are children of God, and Jesus is the Son of God, God is the literal biological father of every one of us. Do you want to go there?
The other insurmountable problem you've got is that Sylvia said this only to Josephine, and only on Sylvia's deathbed. Those are circumstances indicating Sylvia waiting to reveal a great truth about Josephine individually. If Sylvia had said this openly, publicly to not only Josephine, but to all of of Sylvia's children, then it would look like Sylvia meant this in a symbolic sense. But there is the slight problem that nothing like that ever happened.
