The other day I was reminiscing about all things BOM. Mostly how I've yet to read the whole thing through. I'm thinking about the lack of veracity, plagiarization. Repetitive "and it came to pass" lunacy, the painful snooze factor, Joe's head in a hat and the like...
Here's my question...Why?
What was his motivation FROM THE VERY BEGINNING? Was it to make money off of sales? Did he need scripture to back up his stupid church? Was it ego? And how can such a false book be so mysteriously popular? I think most TBM's accept the BOM for its "parts" and not for the book as a "whole"...

I'm ranting but I wonder if there are incriminating statements made by JS or others as to his early reasoning...

You can theorize, but you won't be able to definitively pin it down.

I'm just getting into "Rough Stone Rolling" now. Problem is so many of the references were written years/decades later.

The way Bushman is telling it, there's loads of magical beliefs and people having visions. JSJ isn't the only one with these "abilities". Some of JSJ's visions have similar wording to those printed in the papers near where he lives. "In a glare of brightness, exceeding ten fold the brilliancy of the meridian sun" sounds very familiar but was written by another visionary in the neighborhood, named Asa Wild. Sally Chase has a seer stone with which she claims she can find treasure. (She even tries to find JSJ's golden plates.)

Could be his claim of finding golden plates might have started as trying to establish bona fides. He was putting himself out there as a seer for hire, while living in a neighborhood full of seers, visionaries and treasure seekers.

Who knows what the real story is? I think smart people could come up with several theories that fit the interviews, affidavits and memoirs that have surfaced. (You have to do some guess work because some of them contradict.)

What we do know is that the official History of Joseph Smith changed and evolved over time, indicating it wasn't set in stone or the truth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2013 08:23PM by crom.

My quote was not Asa Wilde, but a Unitarian preacher associated with the Palmyra Academy. Asa Wilde's vision was the father and son descending in a pillar of light (also familiar).

I assumed that what he wanted, more than anything, was to be respected, admired, and worshiped. So he started a religion so that he could be the revered, beloved prophet. He wanted to be a rock star before there were rock stars.

And he did it, too--he even included rampant womanizing and a tragic early death.

Brilliant little bastard, actually.

He was making a living "moneydigging", using occult powers to find hidden treasure. And when he would fail to find any, he had excuses based upon how well protected the treasure was magically. But there was only so long he could keep up the excuses before people would realize he was a fraud. He needed to find a treasure.

So, one day he did. A book made of gold plates. But no one else could see it, because....it was too sacred! Yeah, that was it! It was so sacred that anyone (other than Joseph) who looked at it would die.

What was it about? Um....stories about...um...the Indians who used to live in the area, the ones who made the book (and about whom Joseph had been inventing stories his whole life, according to his mother). Oh, you aren't interested in Indians? Well, the weren't just Indians, they were descendents of the Hebrews! That's why the book is so sacred!

Brilliant thought mysid!

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2013 05:19PM by fossilman.

His lies were like a snow ball rolling down a hill. They just kept growing.

IMO (for what it's worth), he did it for money, power, and sex. The same reasons the leaders keep it up to this day.

He was a mummy's boy and wanted to please her!

Here's a quote by Lucy Mack Smith:

"I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any ever lived upon the face of the earth—all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy, eighteen years of age, who had never read the Bible through in his life"

Chicks

I was browsing around Deseret Book while waiting for a movie to start and found the Lord Of The Rings trilogy in the same area labeled "LDS Fiction."

Made me wonder if Joseph Smith was like many fictional authors--a person wanting to tell imaginative stories and make a living from it.

I think he needed a career to get Emma's father off his back. The story about Native Americans being one of the lost tribes of Israel was popular at the time and he decided to write about that. Kind of like writing about vampires a few years ago or the current trend toward zombies.

I think he found writing to be a little more difficult than he thought it would be and he got a little help from his friends. At some point they expanded the idea to include a church. It's genius really. The church sells the book and the book sells the church.

Unfortunately for everyone, Joe became a rock star and like a lot of rock stars he believed his own PR and started to gather groupies. Celestial groupies.

Sun Myung Moon, L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, Joseph Smith...what were ANY of their motivations?

Sorry, Mormons, all those nut jobs said they had a claim on the one & only truth and convinced a lot of people.

I'm sure many thesis have been written....

Easy money. He didn't like manual labor.

yup, to avoid real work,

then the adoration and the women were added perks that just kept the deal rolling

Money for nothin' and chicks for free.

He was poor, didn't like manual labor and had an active imagination. No doubt he saw some example of someone else making money from writing a book. The whole thing evolved rather by chance and happenstance, he taking advantage of each opportunity that arose... At first they were peddling the book, just selling it, hoping it would appeal to the popular sentiment.. the origin of Native Americans was a hot subject. For a while, he thought his mission was to convert the Native Americans. That wasn't too successful, so he watched for other opportunities.. and noticed how gullible everyone was and how eager they were to follow him. Bingo! Let's start a religion, and I'll be the prophet! They seem to be buying it! Now I need to create back-story....

The book was obviously made before a lot of the back-story. That tips us off to the fraud.

I remember reading somewhere that Joe Smith once said: "Any way to get up a living."