I remember looking at various drawings and paintings of Joseph Smith from the Nauvoo era. One thing that caught my attention was the most amaturish artwork showed Joseph with a big round belly and a fat neck and chin. It gave me the impression Joseph was fat but the church painted him as a lean and mean wrestler.

Well, I was right because in an interview with William Law (owner of the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper) this was mentioned about Smith:

"How was it with Joseph's wrestling?"

"The forces of the prophet in this line have been exaggerated. My brother Wilson wrestled once with him and he laid him down on the floor like a baby. Wilson could throw a lead bar much farther than Joe could. But Wilson was an uncommonly fine and strong man, over 6 feet. He could hold a weight of 56 pounds on his little finger and write his name on the wall in big letters. Joseph was flabby; he never worked at anything and that probably made him so. Rockwell did everything about the house."

..didn't manually work after the age of what 20 years...to busy coning the masses of guillable's with his tall tales, lies, and schemes. I guess it worked, but you tend to be flabby after all that good eatin', lavish livin', and not working. Look at the current profit...not much has changed.

due to his leg surgery? Kinda makes his football run through the woods with 200 lbs of gold under his arm seem even less plausible.

What better way to look virile and AlphDoglike that to have lots of affairs and then threaten to destroy those women if they tell?

What we are told is that they were not to tell of the "practice" but the real secret was the inability to consummate those "practices".

Maybe those "marriages" really were dynastic after all...

IMHO.

kill him for being a degen. Oops.

It would really be ironic if he secretly liked the boys. There's a lot about Joe we'll never know. Either way he sure didn't live today's law of chastity.

If I'd had the internet back then and knew about the 14 year-old-girls, I'd have left even sooner than I did.

Monson looks like he puts away the groceries. Not much muscle definition that I can tell.

What about his stick pulling prowess? Some wrote that he couldn't be beaten. Maybe they meant his little factory stick.

Ron

VofR: You are correct that JS's flabbiness is not relevant to whether he was who he claimed to be, but I think Rubicon's main point was of the church's portrayal of him. JS is always portrayed as lean, chiseled, and handsome. Like many things the church whitewashes or inaccurately portrays, this appears to be another one. And that was Rubicon's main point.

You don't have 200 angry people risking injury, death, or going to jail themselves to kill you for nothing. Joseph Smith and his brother wielded a large amount of power. I think the mob thought the Nauvoo Legion would march on Carthage and bust Joe out of jail and they wanted the Joe out of the game for good to stop his abuses.

It's too bad Joseph didn't live long to be sentenced to prison and he was also be tried for treason which was a capitol offense. This would have tarnished the reputation of Joseph Smith badly. Being killed by a unlawful mob only imortalized him.