He was a sign of his times.

[yellowstone123]

Many Mormons talk about presentism when talking about Joseph Smith Jr. as if we’re judging him with today’s standards. Okay, let’s review Joseph’s life and others who lived in the same time and area.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy born in 1802. Became a Presbyterian Minster and wrote articles against slavery. He moved to Illinois to protect his printing press from pro slavery mobs. In 1837 a pro slavery mob from Missouri shot him to death in Illinois. John Quincy Adams said his murder rocked the nation.

Ralph Emerson born in 1803. His writings and philosophy have been sought out not only in America but world wide. United States high school teachers introduced his writing to their students.

Joseph Smith Jr. born 1805. He met with Jesus Christ and God the Father. He translated golden plates written in reformed Egyptian. In 1844 Brigham Young would give speeches to groups about Joseph becoming President of the United States. He was killed by an anti polygamy mob in 1844 in Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln born in poverty in 1809. In 1844 he would travel the area and speak to groups and ask them to vote for Whig candidate Henry Clay. Lincoln would become President of the United States in 1861 which resulted in a rebellion by the southern states. Lincoln would be assassinated at the beginning of his second term.

[drumdude]

It looks so ridiculous next to real historical events.

[Rick Grunder]

Josiah Quincy (1802-82; Harvard, 1821; Mayor of Boston, 1845-49). "The Bowdoin prizes for this year, have been awarded to the following young gentlemen:—To Josiah Quincey, Jr. of Boston, Senior Class, a First Prize; to Ralph Emerson, of Boston, Senior Class, a Second Prize . . . ," 1821. Visited Joseph Smith in company with Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams in May 1844:

The prophet referred to his miraculous gift of understanding all languages, and took down a Bible in various tongues, for the purpose of exhibiting his accomplishments in this particular. Our position as guests prevented our testing his powers by a rigid examination, and the rendering of a few familiar texts seemed to be accepted by his followers as a triumphant demonstration of his abilities. It may have been an accident, but I observed that the bulk of his translations were from the Hebrew, which, presumably, his visitors did not understand, rather than from the classical languages, in which they might more easily have caught him tripping. [Quincy, Figures of the Past (Boston, 1873), 385-86]

[High Spy]

You forgot Edgar Alan Poe.

[yellowstone123]

Thank you for the additional postings.

I’m sure if the legislature were filled with women who were born in the first decade of the ‘1800s polygamy it would have died out in the late 1840s.

The Republican Party would begin in the late 1850s to bring the end the twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery.

[Dr. Shades]

Many Mormons talk about presentism when talking about Joseph Smith Jr. as if we’re judging him with today’s standards.

The people in Joseph Smith's day judged him by the standards of Joseph Smith's day AND KILLED HIM.

[BeNotDeceived]

Smith was a total douchebag all ought to revile... an immoral predator, iniquitous opportunist looking to scam poeple and a professional con-man and charlatan worthy of our disgust and shame!

[Physics Guy]

The people in Joseph Smith's day judged him by the standards of Joseph Smith's day AND KILLED HIM.

This seems like an important point. Insisting that only contemporary standards can apply can't be a good position for Mormons. If we can condemn Smith's contemporaries for lynching him then we must be able to condemn his crimes, too.

[sock puppet]

Smith was a total douchebag all ought to revile... an immoral predator, iniquitous opportunist looking to scam poeple and a professional con-man and charlatan worthy of our disgust and shame!

I met with some old chums from high school recently, the Friday night before Christmas. All 6 of us were TBMs, seminary grads, return missionaries. Four of us have since stopped believing. As the evening progressed, and some formalities receded, the jovial nature of ribbing one another like we once had done as teenagers began to emerge. One of the ex-Mo's was pushing the envelope of the 2 TBMs pretty hard. One of them, obviously miffed and in a somber voice, intoned: "what would Jesus do?" To which one of the other ex-Mo's replied, "that's not the question. The question is, 'what would Joe Smith do?' " Laughter erupted among the ex-Mo's, but even the 2 TBMs realized that question was in form a license to engage in debasing behavior.

[sock puppet]

The people in Joseph Smith's day judged him by the standards of Joseph Smith's day AND KILLED HIM.

This seems like an important point. Insisting that only contemporary standards can apply can't be a good position for Mormons. If we can condemn Smith's contemporaries for lynching him then we must be able to condemn his crimes, too.

I too will say that is a good--maybe, a great--point made by Dr. Shades, and a great follow up point made by Physics Guy.

When Joseph Smith in his late 30s (i.e., in the 1840s), the typical age difference between spouses was less than 5 years. In 1850, it was 4.55 years. It rose to almost 5 years (4.97) by 1870, but has fairly consistently dropped to be just about 2.3 years in the ensuing 130 years (to the year 2000). https://paa2008.populationassociation.org/papers/80695. So, how does Joe compare? Although married to Emma, he bigamously "married" young Mormon girls--Helen Mar Kimball more than 20 years his junior. For a woman born in 1828, as Helen was, the typical man she married was just 5 years her senior. When Helen was just 14, the 37 year old predator named Joe "married" her, promising if she married him her entire family would have eternal life. Do the math. That's a 22 to 23 year difference in age. On the American frontier in the 1800s, women ages 15-19 were twice as likely to marry as their non-frontier counterparts. https://www.bu.edu/econ/files/2023/04/B ... _Norms.pdf page 32 However, does Nauvoo in the 1840s really count as the frontier? Mormons are all too anxious to remind us of how large a population and how civilized life in Nauvoo was at the time. Western Illinois hadn't really counted as the frontier since 1820. Id. at page 29. Quite simply, the facts do not bear out the common LDS claim that it would not have been unusual for a 37 year old man to marry a 14 year old girl in 1843 Illinois, especially when illegal for an already-married man and under the coercive effect of a promise that all of the young girl's family would go to heaven if she married him.

How common was it for a man in his late 30s to marry, just 4 days apart, sisters, Emily, nineteen, and Eliza, twenty-three? Probably impossible to find statistics bearing out how common such was given that it was virtually unheard of.

In the span of 25 years (1819-1844), Joseph Smith was involved in 190 criminal proceedings and civil lawsuits in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois. He was the plaintiff that initiated 20 civil cases, winning 9, having 10 dismissed and lost 1 at trial. He was the defendant against whom the cases were brought in 48 other cases; he lost 29 such cases. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/intro ... litigation. If this was common for an American in those 25 years, litigation must have been America's chief industry.

How many mayors (or other office holders) in the 1840s ordered the constable to destroy a printing press? In the decades leading up to the Civil War (1861-1865), there were many threats and violence committed against editors of newspapers that ran abolitionist editorials. Even a mob on Nov. 7, 1837 that destroyed Elijah Lovejoy's printing press for the Alton Observer, included and was organized in part by Usher F. Linder, the anti-abolitionist attorney general of Illinois. However, Linder did not use the authority of his office to do so.

Joseph Smith's scoundrel behaviors were not, even by the times in which he lived, the norm, nor acceptable. The Mormon God did not just pick a defective human, but one of the most defective, despicable and deplorable humans of his era to be His mouthpiece. To the LDS defenders, I say that you should check your facts before defending Joseph Smith.