De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

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_Yoda

Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Yoda »

LDSToronto wrote: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.

This was what struck me. The term, "gold Bible", was readily used among critics of Joseph Smith and the Church.

ETA---That being said, Spurven, this is an incredible find! Please keep us informed of your added research. This is really interesting stuff!
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Spurven Ten Sing »

DrW wrote: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.

I will return and report. Thanks for the praise!
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_Blixa
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Blixa »

Spurven Ten Sing wrote:
DrW wrote: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.

I will return and report. Thanks for the praise!


Please do. It may seem like a tiny thing, but there are some potentially interesting aspects to your find.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
_Spurven Ten Sing
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Spurven Ten Sing »

Just curious, Blixa, what are they? I don't think it's worth all that much.
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Blixa »

Spurven Ten Sing wrote:Just curious, Blixa, what are they? I don't think it's worth all that much.


For the reasons you already outlined about Jensen's account. It's an early and (possibly) unknown description of Joseph Smith and Nauvoo and seems likely to have no agenda attached. It's nothing groundbreaking, but may have the potential to add to other accounts of the place and person.

Spurven's good reasons wrote: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.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
_Mike Reed
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Mike Reed »

Spurven Ten Sing wrote:Late last year, I was finally granted access to some whaling archives here in Norway.

Good stuff. As your research on this continues to develop, you should consider submitting a paper proposal to MHA or JWHA. As you may already know, both historical associations award student travel grants.
_moksha
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _moksha »

Spurven Ten Sing wrote:I am in the process of finding the book and learning more about Jensen and will write more as it develops.



Are there any other clues to help the missionaries track it down first?
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _MCB »

moksha wrote:
Spurven Ten Sing wrote:I am in the process of finding the book and learning more about Jensen and will write more as it develops.



Are there any other clues to help the missionaries track it down first?
Clean those libraries, clean those libraries, hup!! hup!! Off to the library we go. Look over those shelves, under the jacket. Out we go, to a great bonfire of anti-Mormon lit.

Google googley books. The library preservation society marches against the momishes. Googley google books!!
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _moksha »

"'Good-natured Sven A. Wiman can manage a cautious grin when his married daughter relates...how when he returned home each evening from his part-time employment in various used book stores throughout Sweden he would produce an anti-Mormon book and then proceed to burn it. Sweden, you learn, has literally no end of anti-Church books, and Elder Wiman set himself up as a one-man cleanup committee to destroy as many of these diatribes against the Church as possible' (Deseret News, Church Section, May 16, 1953, p. 10).

"In 1965 we were visited by a student from Brigham Young University who had recently completed a mission for the Mormon
church in Texas. He related that while on his mission he was instructed to see that books critical of the Mormon church were removed from libraries. He said that he was told to take a set of new Mormon books—furnished by the church—to each library and offer them in exchange for their old books dealing with Mormonism. He said that the project was very effective in Texas, and that many of the critical books were removed from the libraries by this method. That such a project was actually carried out by some Mormon missionaries has now been verified by the Mormon writer Samuel W. Taylor. He stated:

"'...I wonder how many good-will tours by the Tabernacle Choir would be required to repair the damage done to the Mormon image when Playboy, with its enormous circulation and impact on young people, published the fact that Mormon missionaries were engaged in a campaign of book-burning? The item was a letter from a librarian of Northampton, Mass., Lawrence Wikander, published first in the American Library Association's Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May, 1963,...Wikander told of two Elders arriving at his library to inspect the index of Mormon material. They offered a list of "more up-to-date material" and after delivering it made the following proposition:

"'Now that we had these books which told the truth about their religion, undoubtedly we would like to discard other books in the library which told lies about the Mormon Church. Other libraries, they said, had been glad to have this pointed out to them.

"'Following the expose...a friend of mine tried to find out how extensive the missionary book-burning campaign had been. A number of returned missionaries from both domestic and foreign missions admitted that they had participated in it, but data as to when and how and by whom the project had been originated was, understandably, unavailable.

"'Self-appointed Comstocks among us have for years been dedicated to the unholy quest of seeking out and destroying books considered unfavorable.... My brother Raymond was approached by a zealot offering a number of rare Mormon books bearing library stamps; the devout saint blandly admitted stealing them to protect the public, but said he was sure that Raymond, would not be harmed' (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1967, p. 26)."

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/changech2.htm
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
_Spurven Ten Sing
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Re: De Amerikanske Sekter: Unknown Joseph Smith Account?

Post by _Spurven Ten Sing »

moksha wrote:
"'Good-natured Sven A. Wiman can manage a cautious grin when his married daughter relates...how when he returned home each evening from his part-time employment in various used book stores throughout Sweden he would produce an anti-Mormon book and then proceed to burn it. Sweden, you learn, has literally no end of anti-Church books, and Elder Wiman set himself up as a one-man cleanup committee to destroy as many of these diatribes against the Church as possible' (Deseret News, Church Section, May 16, 1953, p. 10).

"In 1965 we were visited by a student from Brigham Young University who had recently completed a mission for the Mormon
church in Texas. He related that while on his mission he was instructed to see that books critical of the Mormon church were removed from libraries. He said that he was told to take a set of new Mormon books—furnished by the church—to each library and offer them in exchange for their old books dealing with Mormonism. He said that the project was very effective in Texas, and that many of the critical books were removed from the libraries by this method. That such a project was actually carried out by some Mormon missionaries has now been verified by the Mormon writer Samuel W. Taylor. He stated:

"'...I wonder how many good-will tours by the Tabernacle Choir would be required to repair the damage done to the Mormon image when Playboy, with its enormous circulation and impact on young people, published the fact that Mormon missionaries were engaged in a campaign of book-burning? The item was a letter from a librarian of Northampton, Mass., Lawrence Wikander, published first in the American Library Association's Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May, 1963,...Wikander told of two Elders arriving at his library to inspect the index of Mormon material. They offered a list of "more up-to-date material" and after delivering it made the following proposition:

"'Now that we had these books which told the truth about their religion, undoubtedly we would like to discard other books in the library which told lies about the Mormon Church. Other libraries, they said, had been glad to have this pointed out to them.

"'Following the expose...a friend of mine tried to find out how extensive the missionary book-burning campaign had been. A number of returned missionaries from both domestic and foreign missions admitted that they had participated in it, but data as to when and how and by whom the project had been originated was, understandably, unavailable.

"'Self-appointed Comstocks among us have for years been dedicated to the unholy quest of seeking out and destroying books considered unfavorable.... My brother Raymond was approached by a zealot offering a number of rare Mormon books bearing library stamps; the devout saint blandly admitted stealing them to protect the public, but said he was sure that Raymond, would not be harmed' (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1967, p. 26)."

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/changech2.htm

I've never seen anything like this. Amazing. WOW
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