Revisionist history project to be launched by LDS Corporatio

[_Jason Bourne]

Church elder Marlin K. Jensen says the establishment of the Church Historian's Press underscores the value church leaders place on history.

LOL!

I have discussed LDS history with Elder Jensen. His words are sincere. He is all for an open history, he likes Bushman's book and he believes we have nothing to fear from our history. He is one of the most sincere and honest men I know.

[_Doctor Steuss]

It would be awesome if they only printed the journals/letters/documents.

From what I've read, the approx. 30+ volume set will contain some high-def photos of the originals with side-by-side typed script, and others will just be the typed script. It will supposedly have Joseph's journals, diaries, correspondence, revelations, discourses, legal documents, administrative, and on...

I'm sure there will be some vetting (i.e. some documents will be excluded due to repetition, and I wouldn't completely be surprised of there were "colorful" documents excluded).

Some samples:

But great and marvelous are the works of the Lord and the mistries of his Kingdom which he shewed unto us which surpasse<s>th all understanding in glory and <in> might and in dominion which he commanded us we should not write while we were yet in the spirit and are not lawful for man to utter neither is man capable to make them known for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the holy ghost <Spirit> which God bestows on those who love him and purifies themselves before him to whom he grants the privelege of seeing and knowing for themselves that through the power and manifestation of the spirit while in the fles<h> they may be able to bear his presence in the world of glory and to God and the Lamb be glory and honor and dominion for ever and ever Amen

Sidney Rigdon

Joseph Smith Jr


3Hyram Portage County Ohio Febry 27th 1832

Behold thus saith the Lord unto you my servants that I have chosen Lincoln to be a servant unto me wherefore verely I say unto you lit him be ordained and receive the articles and covenants which I have givin unto you and some of the commandments that he may go forth and proclaim my gospel whithersover I will send him in the congregrations of the wicked and in asmuch as he is faithful I will prosper him even so Amen

March 8th, 1832
Chose this day and ordained brother Jesse Gause [p. 10]

3 TEXT: This revelation is crossed out with an X indicating that it is not to be printed.

tried: if he came off victorious. he seemed angry and manifested a malicous sprit towards the Mayor and further he saith not.

Orson Pratt

Subscribed and sworn to before me Willard Richards, clerk of the Municipal Cour of the City of |–| Nauvoo Jany 15 1844 [p. 2]

I for one am pretty excited about this.

[_Jason Bourne]

OK. So the unanimous opinion from this Board is that the Church should not publish its history.

Gee, I've been following this Board for over a year now and all I read is demands that the Church publish its history. You guys are really twits. Posting anonymously, I guess you can say whatever you want.

rcrocket

Yep

DAMN COWARDS WE ARE.

I guess the Danzig case though shows us what happens when one speaks out in the LDS Church. For personal reasons I thus remain a damned hypoccite and coward.

Have a jollly day Crocket.

[_Jason Bourne]

A few questions/thoughts.

1) Is this going to be strictly controlled by the Church or have some autonomy (loosely speaking)?

2) Are they going to print just the documents are they going to do commentaries/analysis (of the mentioned Joseph Smith papers?

---2A) If so, will it be purely apologist commentators or will there be critics involved?

A real professional peer review process would be nice.

Peer review by whom?

Good point. No objective scholar would touch the claptrap emanating from this new group.

Do you really know anything about the potential 26 volume Joseph Smith papers?

My understanding is they will be teh unedited writings of Joseph Smith, not filtered or edited at all.

[_Blixa]

Church elder Marlin K. Jensen says the establishment of the Church Historian's Press underscores the value church leaders place on history.

LOL!

I have discussed LDS history with Elder Jensen. His words are sincere. He is all for an open history, he likes Bushman's book and he believes we have nothing to fear from our history. He is one of the most sincere and honest men I know.

I'm glad to hear this, Jason. It would be very interesting to talk to him and maybe I'll get that chance at some point.

[_rcrocket]

What would really be nice is if the LDS archives were digitized and available online for scholarly research. The archives are chock full of fascinating historical documents and materials and while the archivists and other staff are extraordinarily kind and helpful it does inhibit access to have them still bound by geographical location.

Blixa, in your experience what other organizations are analogous to the LDS archival methods?

Also, is there a sense of hiding or restricting access, document destruction, etc?

What do you think of the Church's publication in 2002 of the DVD volumes with hundreds of thousands of pages of original material for research? Histories, minutes, drawings, council and quorum meetings, letter books, papers, journals. I see no mention of that publication here; I wonder what other organization with which Blixa is so familiar did something like that in 2002.

Really, now, I'd like a reaction to that material. Was it valuable? Or, was the Church really "hiding" its archives by publishing them?

rcrocket

[_moksha]

What would really be nice is if the LDS archives were digitized and available online for scholarly research. The archives are chock full of fascinating historical documents and materials and while the archivists and other staff are extraordinarily kind and helpful it does inhibit access to have them still bound by geographical location.

You know BYU technicians have been at the forefront of scanning and digitalizing many ancient documents. They have the technology.

[_rcrocket]

OK. So the unanimous opinion from this Board is that the Church should not publish its history.

Gee, I've been following this Board for over a year now and all I read is demands that the Church publish its history. You guys are really twits. Posting anonymously, I guess you can say whatever you want.

rcrocket

Actually, Bob, I think that the near unanimous opionion from this board is that the Church should publish "honest" history.

In terms of numbers of pieces of of paper published, the Church's Historian's office has (1) published more raw original pages that authored works -- by many tens of thousands of pages and (2) offers its archives to virtually any researcher with very little restriction. I am in the archives often and nobody asks me whether I am a member, and I have never been restricted. I can tell you that most major universities, by comparision, make it more difficult to get into their special collections than the Church's collections. I have attempted to research university collections of restricted materials and can't get into them because of their age (modern -- living people still discussed therein).

[_rcrocket]

What would really be nice is if the LDS archives were digitized and available online for scholarly research.

Again, they have been. Over 400,000 pages were published on DVD in 2002.

[_rcrocket]

Yep

DAMN COWARDS WE ARE.

I guess the Danzig case though shows us what happens when one speaks out in the LDS Church. For personal reasons I thus remain a damned hypoccite and coward.

Have a jollly day Crocket.

Saying evil anonymous things about the church while living a double life on Sundays is hypocritical and cowardly. I just can't see any justification for it. Plus, you occasionally use your anonymous bully pulpit to defame people with real names -- myself included.