History of the Church (History of Joseph Smith)

From The Encyclopedia of Mormonism

See this page in the original 1992 publication.

Author: Searle, Howard C.

The seven-volume history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints titled History of the Church covers less than two decades and might better be titled "The History of Joseph Smith." It is the official History of the Church's founding generation, still in print and still widely used. The motivation for compiling this early history was fourfold: (1) to obey a commandment of the Lord (D&C 21:1); (2) to preserve a record of the Church for later generations (see Record Keeping); (3) to combat and correct anti-Mormon publications; and (4) to provide a written record as a protection against false accusations and lawsuits (see Smith, Joseph: Legal Trials of Joseph Smith).

Although the responsibility for keeping a History of the Church was delegated to the Church recorder and historian, Joseph Smith was the prime motivator. He selected able men, gave them regular encouragement and instruction, and provided space for them in his home or store. Because of his lack of formal education, Joseph Smith depended on others to do most of the actual writing of both the sources and the completed history. More than two dozen scribes and writers are known to have assisted him.

After several early attempts, Joseph Smith and his clerk, James Mulholland, began this history at Commerce, Illinois, on June 10, 1839 (HC 3:375-77). Originally titled "The History of Joseph Smith," it began with a first-person account of Joseph Smith's early visions (see Visions of Joseph Smith), which had been written in the spring of 1838 (HC 3:25-26). Although little of the subsequent history was dictated or written by the Prophet himself, writers used his diaries where available and retained the first-person narrative style throughout.

A series of scribes, clerks, and Church historians labored sporadically on the history for nearly twenty years, through difficult periods of persecution, pioneer travel, and western colonization. Written as annals rather than narrative history, the manuscript version fills six large journals called the "Manuscript History of the Church." Willard Richards, appointed as Joseph Smith's "private Sect. & Historian" on December 21, 1842, compiled most of the history-over half after the death of Joseph Smith on June 27, 1844. With the assistance of his adopted son and clerk, Thomas Bullock, Richards completed the narrative to March 1, 1843, before his own death in 1854. It was left to George A. Smith, his successor as Church Historian, to compile the history of the martyrdom of joseph and Hyrum Smith, expand notes of the Prophet's sermons, and continue the narrative into August 1844, when Brigham Young was sustained to lead the Church.

The Church published this history serially in its periodicals, first in the times and seasons at Nauvoo and then in Salt Lake City's Deseret news from 1852 to 1857. The seven-volume version published by the Church today is a product of the editing of B. H. Roberts of the Seventy, who worked intermittently on the project from 1902 to 1932. Because it quotes extensively from letters, minutes, and diaries of the day, the History of the Church has often been referred to as the Documentary History of the Church, or DHC.

Emphasizing the role of God in human affairs, this history falls within the Judeo-Christian tradition of "providential history." Because it was not written in a literary vacuum, it exhibits characteristics and flaws commonly found in the history and biography of its day: unacknowledged ghostwriting, edited sources, and a lack of balance. The most frequent distortion is the changing of an associate's third-person description of Joseph Smith's words and actions to a first-person account attributed to Joseph Smith, thereby conveying a false sense that he wrote it. Nonetheless, resting as it does on extensive documents from the period and compiled by persons who were eyewitnesses to the events, the factual content of the history has proven reliable.

[edit] Bibliography

Jessee, Dean C. "The Writing of Joseph Smith's History." BYU Studies 11 (Summer 1971):439-73.

Jessee, Dean C. The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, 1984.

Jessee, Dean C. The Papers of Joseph Smith, Vol. 1. Salt Lake City, 1989.

HOWARD C. SEARLE

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