I read Tom Sawyer when I was in middle school. Ever since then, for some reason, I've always associated Tom Sawyer with Joseph Smith in the back of my mind.

It's almost like Joseph Smith is what I imagine Tom Sawyer would have become if he had grown up and decided to go into the religion business.

Anyone else see it, or am I just doing the Five Points of Fellowship here with nothing but air behind the curtain?

In my mind I see J Smith more as the Pied Piper of Hamlin. He led many people astray with his nonsense.

It was Samuel Clements who compared the Book of Mormon to chloroform in print. I wonder what he'd make of your assessment?

As for the character Tom Sawyer, he was a rogue though. :)

The way he manipulated others into doing his chores by making them think that he was doing them a favor? I can see that morphing into getting revelations telling them that God has great blessing in store for them...if they please God...and the surest most best way to do that is to, you know, pay that money to Joseph Smith and invest in that property that Joseph Smith wants and to give Joseph Smith that daughter that he's been talking to you about...and, well, not that any of that is for Joseph Smith, mind you, of course not! He's just God's humble servant and representative on earth who is making it possible for you to earn those great blessings.

Then there are the treasure hunts and "adventures." It's so easy to imagine the Tom Sawyer character pretending to get messages in a rock telling him where to find buried treasure.

Tom Sawyer was a more affable character for a kid. He was endearing, for a literary figure.

Can't say the same for Smith other than the way he's been romanticized by TSCC.

From Mark Twain's book, "Roughing it," Ch. 16, he gave us this bit of practical immortality:

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."

;o)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2018 09:01AM by Amyjo.

Not to go 'off topic' on your thread, but I did mention Pied Piper of Hameln. He, like Tom Sawyer, was a fictional character.

There was a very real woman named Gluckel of Hameln, who lived around the same time as the legendary Pied Piper did, who was considered the modern day Anne Frank for hers and subsequent generations to come. She was a diarist, and one of the earliest known ones (and female,) to write about life in Saxony Germany during the 17th and early 18th centuries. :)

"Glückel of Hameln (also spelled Glückel, Glüeckel, or Glikl of Hamelin; also known as Glikl bas Judah Leib) (c.1646 – September 19, 1724) was a Jewish businesswoman and diarist. Written in her native tongue of Yiddish over the course of thirty years, her memoirs were originally intended to be an ethical will for her children and future descendants.[1] Glückel's diaries are the only known pre-modern Yiddish memoirs written by a woman.[2] The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln provide an intimate portrait of German-Jewish life in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries and have become an important source for historians, philologists, sociologists, literary critics, and linguists.[3][4]" (wikipedia)

I am reminded of my Yaqui heritage. Now I could be in error, but my dad and his four brothers, when they'd get together, would tell the rest of us about how their father was a fugitive Yaqui warrior who was trying to flee the war between the Yaquis and the Mexican government and settled there in Nacozari, where my dad was born, and then moved to Cumpas, where most of the other kids were born, a total of 13, with only 5 making it to adulthood.

The five brothers would talk about The Yaqui conception of the world being considerably different from that of other European-Mexican and European-American groups. For example, many Yaqui understand that the universe is composed of overlapping yet parallel dimensions; distinct worlds or places, called aniam, or so my dad and my uncles said.

The claim was that there are nine or more different aniam, and sometimes they'd try to name them all. Each of these worlds has its own distinct qualities, as well as forces. Much Yaqui ritual is centered upon perfecting these worlds and eliminating the harm that has been done to them, especially by humans.

My dad and my uncles, after a few beers, would bemoan the fact that in the past, many Yaqui combined their native ways with the practice of Catholicism, and had come to believe that the existence of the world depends on the annual performance of the Lenten and Easter rituals. That always got a laugh out of them.

I eventually did some research and found that the Yaqui religion, which is a syncretic religion of old Yaqui beliefs and practices, and the Christian teachings of Jesuit missionaries, relies upon song, music, prayer, and dancing, all performed by designated members of the community. They have woven numerous Roman Catholic traditions into the old ways and vice versa.

For some reason, flowers are very important in the Yaqui culture. According to Yaqui teachings, flowers sprang up from the drops of blood that were shed at the Crucifixion. Flowers are viewed as the manifestation of souls.

Now I'm not claiming to be Yaqui, but who knows, I might be!

elderolddog Wrote:
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> Now I'm not claiming to be Yaqui, but who knows, I
> might be!

All this time I thought you were a Don Quixote and yet you were a Don Juan.

Nagaleste!

If he was their Tom who was Brigham?

I think Tom Sawyer is an example of a unique American character--the charming rogue who "gets away with stuff" but in the end has a good heart; that's also why Harold Hill is an American classic in 'The Music Man'--he's a con-artist but ultimately becomes a good person in spite of himself.

Joseph Smith *could* have possibly been like that, but he got blown away in Act III....

Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote:
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> Joseph Smith *could* have possibly been like
> that, but he got blown away in Act III....

Operating Thetan III.

J. Smith imploded.

Life is stranger than fiction, or so it seems.

Truth be told.

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Life is stranger than fiction, or so it seems.

Ziontological life is for sure. Boring Stranger Things.