Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

[_Roger]

Nevo wrote:

This is why you have no credibility on this subject, harmony. Despite your constant abuse of the Prophet regarding his relationship with Fanny Alger, you've evidently never undertaken even a modest study of the subject (otherwise you'd have heard of Danel Bachman).

This is the kind of thing that is irksome. Who cares whether anyone has heard of "Danel Bachman" or not? And yet you divert attention away from teh real question (affair or marriage) by attempting to paint your opponent as either lazy or unlearned.

Here's some facts:

harmony did not invent Oliver Cowdery's testimony.
Oliver Cowdery indeed called the association between Smith & Alger a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair."
Oliver Cowdery is also believed by LDS when he testifies to seeing plates.
Oliver Cowdery is either mistaken or correct in his assessment of the Alger incident--iow he is not making it up since he had no axe to grind as is the typical charge placed on so many others who made similar claims.

Given the virtual necessity (from an LDS perspective) that Cowdery was indeed mistaken, I would expect to see some sort of recorded retraction or apology on something as serious as accusing the prophet of adultery--especially as a pre-condition to reinstatement. Yet there is nothing of the kind that I am aware of... just the flat statement that he in fact "stood Joseph to the face" about the matter.

I doubt that "even a modest study of the subject" would shed any significant additional clarification on Oliver's statement other than that he "was apparently unaware that Fanny Alger had become the first plural wife of Joseph Smith."

If he was "unaware" of such a thing why was he not immediately set straight on the matter?

[_Seven]

Nevo wrote:

So in D&C 68:12 when the Lord tells the elders "to you shall be given power to seal" you're saying that the elders weren't, in fact, authorized to use that power? The Lord was going to give them the power to seal people up unto eternal life but under no circumstances were they to do so—at least not until Elijah returned in 1836.

Not exactly....Your earlier comment (on the minutes of the meeting) you were stating the Saints believed they had the sealing power prior to 1836. The part I bolded above is how I view the meeting and section 68.

What I am saying is that they were preparing for the restoration of this sealing power. It was prophesied that Elijah would restore these keys. It's not surprising if Joseph would prepare the Elders for this future sealing power. It is my understanding that Joseph was teaching the Elders that they would have this power to seal. Not that they already had the keys to do so.

This section of scripture in D & C 68 does not say they currently had the sealing power:

9 And he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.
10 And he that believeth shall be blest with signs following, even as it is written.
11 And unto you it shall be given to know the signs of the times, and the signs of the coming of the Son of Man;
12 And of as many as the Father shall bear record, to you shall be given power to seal them up unto eternal life. Amen.

The coming of Elijah was so important that the ancient prophet Malachi had prophesied of it centuries earlier, and the Savior had repeated the prophecy to the Nephites (see Malachi 4:5–6; 3 Nephi 25:5–6; 26:1–2). Elijah came to commit to Joseph and Oliver the keys of sealing—the power to bind and validate in the heavens all ordinances performed on the earth. The restoration of the sealing power was necessary to prepare the world for the Savior’s Second Coming, for without it, “the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming” (Joseph Smith—History 1:39).

Going back to your earlier comments-

Nevo wrote:

It is not clear to me that Joseph did not have authorization to perform plural marriages prior to Elijah's visit. Toward the end of his life, Joseph seems to have interpreted Elijah's visit primarily (exclusively?) in terms of sealing parents and children. Elijah was sent, he said, "to seal the children to the fathers & the fathers to the children" (10 March 1844).

I don't understand why the evolution of how and when the word "sealing" was used to connect families and allegedly misunderstood by Joseph has any direct relevance to the problem section 132 presents for the Fanny Alger relationship. (but it's late and I'm very tired)
Wouldn't any type of sealing arrangement require the proper keys to perform the ordinance with authority?
(which the opinion of Prince on the evolution of sealings is really more speculation since Nauvoo polygamy was secret and the evidence of his assertions are fragmentary)

What is a problem, is the conditions of the law revealed in section 132 that required sealing keys to enter polygamy. When did Joseph receive those keys if it wasn't from Elijah in 1836?

[_truth dancer]

Did anyone think Joseph Smith was married to Fanny when they were caught in the barn?

It seems to me that after Oliver gave wise advice to his friend Joseph to stop his dirty, nasty affair, if there was a marriage Joseph Smith would have told him that it was God sanctioned sex... any evidence of this?

Who else besides Joseph Smith and Fanny knew about Joseph Smith's extramarital activities prior to 1836? Emma and Oliver.. anyone else?

It seems quite reasonable that Joseph Smith told everyone after he was caught that Fanny and he were "married", (to excuse his affair) so of course people would believe Fanny was a wife of Joseph Smith. The fact that some people believed Joseph Smith and Fanny were married has more to do with how well Joseph Smith could convince his devotees that his affair was directed by God than any evidence there was some sort of ritual with the sealing keys prior to the affair.

And of course, is it quite reasonable to me that Joseph Smith and Fanny did have a sealing ceremony at some point after he was caught, which would obviously be a reason for the assumption that they were married. This says nothing about the affair in 1833.

What would be more significant to me is to know how people viewed the "affair" when it was happening, but seems to me Joseph Smith tried to keep his affair secret. The lies begin.

The bigger question... where is God in all this mess? God is giving Joseph Smith all sorts of personalized revelations, telling individual men where to go on missions, putting words in the bottom of a hat for Joseph Smith to read to create the Book of Mormon, giving very specific direction for the running of the church but the one most important doctrine/ritual for eternal life, the ultimate covenant for exaltation is left a jumbled, confusing, debacle.

One would think that the restoration of this quintessential doctrine would at the very least not appear as a man covering his butt after he was caught having an affair with his children's sixteen year old nanny.

Let's really think about this for a sec... Joseph Smith has a vision where an angel with a flaming sword comes down and tells him to meet up with the nanny, so he takes the sixteen year old out to the barn, tells her God wants him to marry her, they have some sort of ceremony and proceed to have sex in the barn?

Seriously? Is this how God restores the most important requirement for eternal life?

And, my last question... What is up with a God so interested in the sex life of Joseph Smith? Of all the concerns, challenges, horrors and sorrows of our world, God is demanding/commanding Joseph Smith have secret sex with a girl in the barn?

I'm sorry but the whole thing is nonsense.

~td~

[_Paracelsus]

----------------
they have some sort of ceremony and proceed to have sex in the barn?
----------------
I'm sorry but the whole thing is nonsense.

~td~

- some sort of ceremony -

Can we call it foreplay?

[_harmony]

And who is Bachman, that I should bet my eternal salvation on his guess?

This is why you have no credibility on this subject, harmony. Despite your constant abuse of the Prophet regarding his relationship with Fanny Alger, you've evidently never undertaken even a modest study of the subject (otherwise you'd have heard of Danel Bachman).

You misunderstand my point, Nevo, which is why your own credibiity is leaching ever so quickly into the soil.

Bachman has no authority. None. Why should I believe a word he says? Why should I bet my eternal salvation on what he says, especially when all I see is him trying to excuse Joseph for dropping his drawers in the barn with a teenager?

Try again, without the personal attack this time.

[_beastie]

I previously mentioned that some early LDS church leaders thought that the act of intercourse itself could count as some sort of marital covenant. I was correct that I had read this information in Mormon Polygamy, pages 10, and then the footnote on page 16.

Page 10

Confusion over the exact nature and extent of Joseph Smith’s involvement with Fanny Alger has remained to this day. That there was a sexual relationship seems probable. But was Smith’s association with his house servant adulterous, as Cowdery charged? Or was she Smith’s first plural wife? Apostle Heber C Kimball, many years later, introduced Fanny’s brother John Alger in the Saint George Temple as “brother of the Prophet Josephs first Plural Wife”. And in 1899 church leaders performed a proxy marriage for the couple. “The sealings of those named,” a temple recorder noted of Alger and the then other women listed, “were performed during the life of the Prophet Joseph but there is no record thereof. President Lorenzo Snow decided that they be repeated in order that a record might exist; and that this explanation be made.”

If Smith and Alger were sealed in a plural marriage as 1899 church leaders were persuaded, who stood as witness for the ordinance? Who performed the ceremony? In the absence of an officiator or witness, did God himself seal the couple, or did Smith, as God’s only legitimate earthly agent marry himself to Alger? Smith did not claim publicly the power to “bind on earth and seal eternally in the heavens” until 3 April 1836, perhaps one year after the Alger incident (D&C 110: 13-16). Could he have viewed her as his common law wife, married by connubial relationship rather than by wedding ceremony?

The footnote from page 16:

Apostle Willard Richards in December 1845 entered into such a plural marriage with Alice Longstroth (my insert, he’s referring to “marrying” someone as a common-law wife by having sexual relations without a ceremony performed). His 23 December diary entry reads: “At 10 P.M. took Alice L[ongstroth] by the [hand] of our own free will and avow mutuall acknowledge each other husband & wife, in a covenant not to be broken in time or Eternity for time & for all Eternity & and called upon God. & all Holy angels - & Sarah Long[stro]th to witness the same.”

Apostle Abraham H. Cannon noted in his 5 April 1894 diary that both George Q. Cannon and Wilford Woodruff approved of such arrangements. “I believe in concubinage,” George Q. is recorded as saying, “or some plan whereby men and women can live together under sacred ordinances and vows until they can be married.” Woodruff responded to Cannon’s suggestion, “If men enter into some practice of this character to raise a righteous posterity, they will be justified in it.”

Here’s an earlier thread discussing concubinage:
http://www.mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3 ... &view=next

All these explanations must be viewed as “after the fact” attempts to justify Joseph Smith’s behavior, since Joseph Smith remained silent on the topic.

It’s telling just how far believers will go to create justifications for Fanny Alger, including sanctioning sex outside the formal bonds of marriage (ie, concubinage). As has been noted many times by critics, if a religious leader of any other religion or group engaged in the sexual behavior of Joseph Smith, Mormons would be the first to loudly condemn it, and likely roll their eyes at the attempts of believers to justify the behavior.

[_Pokatator]

It’s telling just how far believers will go to create justifications for Fanny Alger, including sanctioning sex outside the formal bonds of marriage (ie, concubinage). As has been noted many times by critics, if a religious leader of any other religion or group engaged in the sexual behavior of Joseph Smith, Mormons would be the first to loudly condemn it, and likely roll their eyes at the attempts of believers to justify the behavior.

Exactly, so where is whyme?

[Guest]

I believe the Fanny Alger relationship was carried out under the rubric of polygamy. This is something I presented evidence on at MHA, which Nevo has alluded to.

As I went over at MHA and will also be publishing, Jenson put Fanny's name on his list of Joseph Smith's wives because Eliza R. Snow wrote the name on a list she provided him. ERS also reported to Jenson that the blow up over Fanny (Emma's discovery of the relationship) occurred while Eliza lived in the Smith's Kirtland home, which was in 1836.

This all has implications:

1) Eliza, who knew Fanny and was in the home at the time the relationship became known, was confident that the relationship was a marriage--so confident she was willing to give Fanny's name to the world as that of a 'sister wife.'

2) The August 1835 Article on Marriage precedes and therefore does not respond to the discovery of Joseph Smith's relationship with Fanny Alger and must therefore be referring to something else altogether.

3) The relationship of Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger was discovered after Eliza moved into the Smith home in Spring 1836 and thus likely began after Smith began performing priesthood wedding ceremonies in public in the fall of 1835 and could have even post-dated the April 1836 Elijah experience in the Kirtland temple. This timing considerably bolsters the plausibility of a marriage. (for what it's worth, I find Levi Hancock's account not entirely reliable--for one thing I can't imagine Joseph and Fanny having a relationship under Emma's nose for over three years without a pregnancy or discovery.)

I'll just drop these as thoughts here, without quotations, references, or complete arguments since the whole thing will be published by the John Whitmer Historical Association as a chapter in the forthcoming compilation Mormon Polygamy: From Joseph Smith to the Fundamentalists.

Don

[Anonymous]

The part I bolded above is how I view the meeting and section 68. What I am saying is that they were preparing for the restoration of this sealing power. It was prophesied that Elijah would restore these keys. It's not surprising if Joseph would prepare the Elders for this future sealing power. It is my understanding that Joseph was teaching the Elders that they would have this power to seal. Not that they already had the keys to do so.

The only problem with this is that the sealing power described in the October 1831 conference, and again in Section 1 and Section 68, was exercised before 1836.

Writes Gregory Prince: "Within days of the October 1831 general conference, elders holding the High Priesthood began to exercise their newly conferred authority and sealed entire congregations to eternal life." Examples are provided from the journals of Reynolds Cahoon and Jared Carter. Prince continues: "Other instances of group sealings occurred in April 1832 (performed by Joseph Smith) and in August and September 1833 (performed by Lyman Johnson). By this time the practice of sealing individuals rather than groups had begun, and while no instances group sealings have been found after 1833, individual sealings increased dramatically. The first known instance occurred in January 1833 at the opening of the School of the Prophets" (Prince, Power From On High, 162-63). Examples multiply from there—including Joseph Smith's 1842 marriage ceremony to plural wife Sarah Ann Whitney, which contained the words: "let immortality and eternal life henceforth be sealed upon your heads forever and ever" (164).

What is a problem, is the conditions of the law revealed in section 132 that required sealing keys to enter polygamy. When did Joseph receive those keys if it wasn't from Elijah in 1836?

I disagree with your claim that the sealing keys restored by Elijah were required to practice polygamy. I don't think plural marriage and eternal marriage were necessarily synonymous in Joseph's mind in the 1830s. I think Joseph felt authorized to practice polygamy whenever he was commanded to do so.

I've already pointed out that Joseph believed he had the priesthood authority to perform marriages prior to Elijah's visit and that he did so. Less than a month after he solemnized the marriage, on 24 November 1835, between Newel Knight and Lydia Bailey, he married Edwin Webb and Eliza Ann McWethy, recording in his journal: "I sealed the matrimonial ceremony in the name of God, and pronounced the blessings of heaven upon the heads of the young married couple" (13 December 1835, in The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 1: 1832–1839, 121-22).

I am satisfied that Joseph Smith believed that his marriage to Fanny Alger had divine sanction. Arguing that it wasn't a valid marriage because it did not meet the requirements of Section 132 is rather like arguing that Joseph's First Vision wasn't a valid theophany because it didn't meet the requirements of D&C 84:21-22.

[_Nevo]

I'll just drop these as thoughts here, without quotations or references, since I will be publishing it all in my chapter in a forthcoming book to be put out by the John Whitmer Historical Association, Mormon Polygamy: From Joseph Smith to the Fundamentalists.

Thanks for that, Don. I was hoping you'd stop by this thread as you know a great deal more about this than I do. I look forward to reading your forthcoming article.