I was thinking about the book last week. I read it twice... Now I think, it was so full of... (). Oh, Where did Talmage got all that stuff from?. Some members even think that he actually wrote it by speaking personally with J himself ! - The closest I can think of Joseph writing TBM.

When I read it (many years ago) I couldn't find one original idea in the whole book. Maybe I missed something, but I thought it was a verbose rehash of the New Testament Gospels.

I was expecting so much more. I was expecting fresh insights into the personality and philosophy of Jesus, since (as I was taught) Jesus was in residence in the SL Temple while Talmadge was writing it. Of course everybody who told me that now says they never said it.

It is possible that Talmadge "saw" Jesus. He had a little help from herbal supplements.

The only original idea that I remember was Talmage "revealing" that Jesus' DOB was April 6, 0001

I'm sure I read somewhere that it's thought Jesus was born around 4 AD, some time around September.

I have no idea now where I read it, what it's based on and whether it's credible, but it amused me to think that our whole calendar could be out by several years.

Sorry, tangent.

ETA went on a Wikipedia quest and found out the consensus is actually that he was born a few years BC, not AD. So I'm wrong (and so is Talmadge).

It amuses me more that Jesus was probably born several years "before Christ".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2015 05:50PM by finnan haddie.

Talmage didn't even get the scene at the tomb right. Around 1978 I read several pages and discarded the idea of reading more.

My 8 year old son wrote better fiction than that.

HH =)

Do they still have it as one of the books Missionaries are to have with them as they serve? We did, 1960's. Had to have it as part of the mission and read in it each day, like the scriptures.

My Mom told me that JET had met with Jeebus in the SL temple before he wrote the book.

As a dumm Mormon kid I had no reason to doubt the source of his inspiration.

As an adult exmo I learned that he had experimented with 'hashich' and I suddenly realized that dope was a more believable source of his inspiration.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2015 08:57PM by Shummy.

My TBM cousin gave me that book about 10 years ago.

I read a few pages and threw it in the trash can.


Pretty much sums it all up for me.

The Dr. spends too much time trying to convince the reader that he has a big vocabulary. It's in that horrible Victorian style of taking a whole page to describe something simple. Believe it or not when it first came out there was a supplemental glossary/dictionary that was sold with it, because of course the great unwashed didn't have as big of vocabulary as the Dr. did.

But you know an even worse book is Marvelous work and a wonder. It is a polar opposite. The authors couldn't be more different. LGRichards barely graduated high school. He came from a time when an education was still practically worthless (maybe it still is?...lol) Literature just wasn't his thing.

I felt cheated that on my mission we were only allowed to read two publications other than the "scriptures." They were "Jesus the Christ" and "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder." Both were rubbish. We used to walk around while tracting, saying rude things about "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder." I actually spent some time reading newspapers and weekly news magazines in order to have an idea what was happening in the world. It's how I found out about Kent State and Woodstock and PLO terrorism. But it made the ZL angry that I was doing it.

I'm surprised Jesus would hang around with all of that second hand smoke, maybe Jesus smokes too.

Dad had it and A Marvelous Work and A Wonder in his small library of MORG books. I never once felt the urge to crack them open....and he never suggested I read them or any scriptures...so I didn't.

RB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2015 11:09AM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

As I understand it, Talmage was assigned to write the book by the existing First Presidency. He did most of his writing in an office in the SLC Temple. Without looking it up, I vaguely recall that he was not an ordained apostle when he wrote the book.

I think that the assignment by the FP and working in a temple office is where the extrapolation for working closely with Jesus while writing the book comes from. I remember an old "joke" that when Talmage was finished, he asked Jesus to sign the biography.

Talmage, Widstoe and Roberts were considered the top scriptorians of their day, with a young Joseph Fielding Smith trying to crash the party.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2015 11:09AM by lvskeptic.

Jesus the Christ was the final move in establishing the Jehovah-Christ doctrine and erasing the theology in the Lectures on Faith.

I loved reading JTC.

On my mission, When my other options were mostly even worse.

I'm a compulsive reader and limiting my reading options for two years was one of the primary reason I'm not a mormon today. I think the one I hated the least was Marvelous work, JTC was second least hated.

I couldn't get through it. People would talk about how wonderful it was, and how intelligent Talmage was. But it read like a boring sunday school lesson with some big vocabulary words added.

Darn, I haven't even thought of that book in over twenty years. It went the way of all of my Mo books except for the scriptures and a hymnal. I kept them because they went with me to 'Nam and they were a gift from my wife.

this book was required reading on my mission. I loved it. LOVED IT. Because it was the only time that modern leaders said something of substance that could pass off as insight into something factual.

Sure it was all BS, but he was the tolkien of mormonism.

A friend of mine always talked about Talmage plagiarizing in Jesus the Christ.

Anyone have a comment on this accusation?

There's more written in Islam's Quran on Jesus, than in the Bible, So really plagiarizing should be blamed on the Canaanites and Jews who took Horus' story and Gilgamesh's and Mithra's and made them their own. It, the stories and teachings of Rabbi Jesus, was only "added" upon by Islamists and then by Joseph Smith and Talmage.

Talmage's main reference was "The Life of Christ" by English theologian Frederic W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S published by Cassell & Company, Limited, 1891. The good Dr. Farrar was Archdeacon and Canon of Westminster, and Chaplain in Ordinary to Queen Victoria.

Talmage made a number of "literary corrections" when involved with the 1920 major revision of the BoM. Royal Skousen points out that some of them should not have been made. Of course, Talmage was guided by the Holy Ghost whereas Skousen was merely studying the original and printers manuscripts to determine what was actually intended to be written.