De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

[_LDSToronto]

Spurven, very interesting. The term you translated to "Golden Bible" - how loose is that translation? I always thought that "Golden Bible" was a derogatory term and find it odd that Joseph himself would refer to the plates with that term.

H.

[_Runtu]

Spurven, very interesting. The term you translated to "Golden Bible" - how loose is that translation? I always thought that "Golden Bible" was a derogatory term and find it odd that Joseph himself would refer to the plates with that term.

H.

Maybe he said "Golden Plates" or something like that. Remember, the author was not a native English speaker. The author is probably remembering the words as he processed them, not necessarily as they were said verbatim.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Spurven, very interesting. The term you translated to "Golden Bible" - how loose is that translation? I always thought that "Golden Bible" was a derogatory term and find it odd that Joseph himself would refer to the plates with that term.

H.

I don't have the book. For some odd reason they wouldn't let me take it home. /sarcasm

Seriously, I didn't copy the section into my notes in the original language, which was Danish, rather I did an on the fly translation to save time.

The "seed" term was in juxtaposition with the line before it. The explosive growth of the corn (here I think I mistranslated corn. I bet it should have been grain. Like I said, loose translation. I stand by the larger meaning, though. I read Danish easily.) comes from the seed, so I am betting I got that one.

I have Golden Bible in quotes, and I do remember it being in English in the original. So English was either rather familiar to Danish speaking upper class Norwegians (which it wasn't) (History note: Jensen is said to be from Christiania (Oslo) in Norway which is theoretically tied to Sweden at this time (1840s) and Danish is still largely the written language, so it is very possible Jensen is a native Norwegian, and a native Norwegian speaker. However, he is described in De Amerikanske Sekter as Danish, and he doesn't incorporate any early "Norwegianisms" in this limited selection, so he is either purely Danish, or Norwegian and part part of the Norwegian intelligentsia <at the time heavily experimenting with creating a written Norwegian>. To a Norwegian writer around 1900, he would have been indistinguishable.) or it was a term explicated earlier in the text of Jensen's work. As to why Joseph Smith would use the term? I am pretty sure Jensen is writing a later recollection, or perhaps it was a gentile term. However, Golden Bible it is.

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

Sorry 'twas an attempt at humour - using your phrase to pretend that Joseph was confessing to making the Book of Mormon up himself.

It was clever AND funny (to me) before I started having to explain it...
Apologies.

It was funny!

[_DrW]

Spurven,

Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.

It would be great if this find could be put into context with some background on the original text, an English translation, perhaps a text image or two, some commentary, and published on a blog post so it could be referenced.

LDS Church leaders and apologists want others to give a great deal of weight to contemporary accounts regarding early Mormonism, especially as controlled, edited, and made available by the Church and its apologists.

It would be great to be able to reference contemporary firsthand accounts quoting Joseph Smith himself freely stating that the whole thing was a fraud, especially a fraud from which he admits benefiting.

Well done.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Spurven,

Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.

It would be great if this find could be put into context with some background on the original text, an English translation, perhaps a text image or two, some commentary, and published on a blog post so it could be referenced.

LDS Church leaders and apologists want others to give a great deal of weight to contemporary accounts regarding early Mormonism, especially as controlled, edited, and made available by the Church and its apologists.

It would be great to be able to reference contemporary firsthand accounts quoting Joseph Smith himself freely stating that the whole thing was a fraud, especially a fraud from which he admits benefiting.

Well done.

I really don't care about Sekter, but if I can find a copy of Jensen's work I would be pleased. I could spend a long time in this one archive, and there are many others. Not to mention Jensen's work predated Sekter by about 50 years. There is no connection between the emigrant periods, interest in American spirituality, and anything Jensen would have been connected with.

I will do a review of some other religious tracts of the same period, look at travelogues from the 1840's, and see if Jensen is referenced. Google isn't helping me at all on Sekter or with Jensen's work. I have some contacts who are very familiar with both periods in a couple departments on both sides of the Atlantic. However, I can hand off a fax of Sekter to whoever wants to publish if I can get permission from the archive.

Sekter is not very accurate on many details of Mormonism and seems to be openly hostile. It is attempting (in this section) to warn potential emigrants away from Utah and the missionaries then active in Copenhagen (Mormonism was illegal in Norway-Sweden at the time). If this selection of Jensen is the sole example of his writing, it seems weak to me. Why bother with this obscure quote? Why Jensen is interesting:

1. Jensen is contemporary.
2. Jensen claims to have met and conversed with Joseph Smith.
3. Jensen claims to have been in Nauvoo.
and more importantly
4. Jensen is writing at a time where the US has yet to show up on the Scandinavian radar. That is to say his readership would have been limited. This was two decades before the Scandinavian Age really started. This means that Mormonism is very obscure in Scandinavia at this time (the first Elders won't show up in Copenhagen until 1850, unofficially as early as 1845 in the form of visiting native converts). Thus anything Jensen is writing will be much less likely to be propagandistic against the church as would follow in later decades.
5. From what I can see the Joseph Smith section plays no huge part in the larger book. In other words, the Joseph Smith visit is an interesting anecdote, or side note in his book, which according to Sekter was a investment/travelogue. Jensen had no reason to smear Smith, despite his negative opinion of him.
6. I am skeptical that this selection encompasses everything Jensen had to say about Nauvoo, Mormonism, or Joseph Smith. Also, seeing the quotation in greater context would be nice.

[_DrW]

Spurven,

Thanks for the extended response. If you have some time, could you say a bit more relative to your comment below?

(Mormonism was illegal in Norway-Sweden at the time).

We used to live in Germany and attended the Branch in Bremen. I have spent time with several other Mormons (not as missionaries) working in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and know a bit about Norway's league with Denmark, the 19th century war between Norway with Sweden, move from Catholicism to Evangelical Lutheran (Church of Norway) after the reformation, etc. But I have never heard anything like this from any of the Mormons I knew or met in Europe.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Spurven,

Thanks for the extended response. If you have some time, could you say a bit more relative to your comment below?

(Mormonism was illegal in Norway-Sweden at the time).

We used to live in Germany and attended the Branch in Bremen. I have spent time with several other Mormons (not as missionaries) working in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and know a bit about Norway's league with Denmark, the 19th century war between Norway with Sweden, move from Catholicism to Evangelical Lutheran (Church of Norway) after the reformation, etc. But I have never heard anything like this from any of the Mormons I knew or met in Europe.

I'm going from 8 year old memory, but when Mormonism came to Scandinavia, the State Church of Sweden pressed the Riksdag to outlaw its preaching and outlaw worship services. Technically, one could BE a Mormon, but local officials and others would do their best to harass members. Even common folk unattached to the establishment would hound Mormons, to the extent that members would be fired from their jobs and violence against them was common and encouraged. The hatred of Mormonism lasted until the 1920s and in the US, it continued. Scandinavian emigrants disliked and considered Mormon converts who emigrated to Utah as traitors. I remember reading in a letter once that some Swedish Mormon emigrants missed having their countrymen around, moved to one of the Dakotas, but were chased out by other Swedes and Norwegians. Mormon were heavily persecuted, blamed somewhat for the exodus, and reviled.

Elder Widstoe's mother, born over near the Lofeten Islands and living in Oslo for a time, fled Norway in this wave.

Denmark saw it differently and allowed Mormon missionaries to preach in Copenhagen at first and later the whole country. Copenhagen was at this time a vitally important trade hub and a sort of capital for Scandinavia. The Church had enormous success here and eventually Scandinavian converts made up more than a third of foreign immigrants moving to Utah (behind the British Isles). Young attempted to mix them with non-Scandinavians in Utah with limited success.

[_DrW]

Spurven,

Great information.

Thanks for taking the time to write it down.

Hope you will be able to do more research on the subject of the OP and return and report.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Would you provide scanned copies of the text? I appreciate your input, but have had enough of eye witness accounts to various interesting stories.

Thanks.