To Hell in a Handbasket
Jopseph Smith and the Golden Treasure
When I was a little girl growing up in Utah, the Joseph Smith story was told to us as much or more than the stories of Jesus. It all seemed so "normal" to us. But then Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny seemed normal too. It wasn't until I started down the road from religion to reality that I discovered how much of the REAL Joseph Smith story we WERN'T told about. Either the church leaders knew many of us would shout "BULLSHIT" and walk if we found out or, perhaps the leaders are just used to covering things up and "lying for the Lord."
When decided to actually learn about the church I belonged to and read material other than what the church promoted, I was not only stunned but felt quite duped. The REAL Joseph Smith story was a fantasy filled myth and sham. Not only that, it was idiotic. It was hard to find accounts that were as unbiased as possible. The church whitewashes and glosses over incidents and other Christians groups have their own agenda "you are not the real Christians we are." So after a lot of digging through all accounts, here is a condensed version of the REAL Joseph Story.
To understand this story and understand why so many people believed this nonsense, you have to look at the religions, atmosphere, and strange beliefs prevailing at that time. The area of Western New York had more than it's share of religious cults, and in fact after many waves of religious revivals, it earned the name "The Burned Over District. What ever it was, isolation, ignorance, or boredom, ordinary people turned into seers and mystics.
The three Fox sisters of Hydesville created a stir when they claimed to hear tapping from beyond the grave. They gave exhibitions of "communicating with the dead" creating the role of the modern medium. There was another group of followers of Jemima Wilkinson who was a preacher. She woke from an illness and claimed her body was now inhabited by the "Publik Universal Friend." Each new sensation created a stir some fading away and some gaining momentum. This is the world JS grew up in. Going from revival to revival and feeling the Holy Spirit......wanting to be part of something grand. This was the time and place Joseph Smith grew up in. Right smack dab in the middle of Looney Town.
Joseph Smith was born in 1980 in Vermont. His dad had screwed up a business venture exporting ginseng to China (which seemed like something doomed to fail because I think China is where ginseng comes from....I may be wrong). They then moved to Palmyra New York and were quite poor. As a teen, the family converted from the Seekers to the Presbyterians and with so many churches preaching, I am sure he was as confused as anyone.
Joseph claims that he "went into a grove of trees, prayed, and was visited by God and Jesus who told him no chuch was true and they wanted him to start a new one." (But, unlike the version I heard as a child where he "told his family right away and they believed him because he was such a good boy, the tale of the vision did not come out till much later and had several versions.) He then went on his merry way and had three visits over the next few years, by the ghost of a dead Indian warrior names Moroni. During this time also Joseph spent time learning from and traveling with a traveling magician and diviner. This magician claimed he could find water and buried treasure using magic stones. Eventually the magician left town and Joseph carried on the practice using his own magic stones. (remember, most Mormons are either not aware of his background in magic and fantasy, or have conveniently decided to ignore it).
Joseph and his dad both became involved in treasure hunting, "money digging" and or "glass looking" and eventually Joseph was brought to trial in 1826 and convicted of "glass looking" and swindling people out of money.
When Joseph Smith was 17 the angel(ghost) Moroni told him about some other buried treasure, two golden plates which was a record of ancient indian people. Accrding to the tales the angel visited Joseph different times until he was older in 1827 and then allowed to gig up the golden plates.
Now, to get perspective on this, along with the manic religious fervor going on at the time, there was also a fervor regarding indian artifacts. People were looking for and finding ancient burial mounds and other indian relics and selling them. Wild tales and stories started regarding these artifacts and who they ancient people were. There is also another tale apparently told By Joseph himself about a "magical white toad or salamander" guarding the treasure of the plates. This tale was later supressed as well as Joseph's earlier adventures in money digging and jail time. At some time in his youth Joseph even apprenticed with a traveling magician.
In the meantime, rumors of Smith's treasure hunting and divining abilities grew and he and his dad were hired by someone for 3 dollars a day to look for buried Spanish treasure on his property. Unfortunately no treasure was found because Joseph stated that "the treasure had sunk deeper due to an enchantment." At that point his employers lost faith in him. His dad left and Josepf stayed behind because he had fallen in love with Emma Hale. Emma's father was not pleased though because he was one of the men conned by Joseph and testified at his trial. Joseph and Emma eloped and went to live with his parents the same year he was to finally receive the plates.
Joseph started "translating" the gold plates by sitting behind a curtin with his head buried in a hat using the two magic stone to "see the words." His wife, Martin Harris, and Oliver Cowdery helped as scribes.
Now, lets take a minue to summerize: A young boy with a reputation of treasure seeking and doing con jobs with his dad, whom also apprenticed with a traveling magician, first claims a ghost of a dead warrior visits him. He then claims to have found gold plates which he can show no one. He is taken to court for a swindle and then elpoes with one of the prosecution's witness's daughters. Then he "translates" this golden book no one is allow to see, behind a curtin by putting two "magic" stones in a hat abd burying his face in it. Sometimes the "plates" were not even present (like they were at all). Wow, next people will say they think Jack and the Beanstalk is real too.
During this translation process Martin Harris's wife Lucy, who felt her husband had been conned (rightly so since Martin morgaged his farm to help in the effort) took 116 pages of the translation and "lost them." Apparently to expose Joseph for an idiot. Joseph stated God punished them for losing the pages and would not let him translate them again (apparently he knew it could not duplicate it since he was making it up as he went.) Eventually the book was finished a wild story about the coming of Israelites to America. And conveniently, the angel warrier took the golden plates up to heaven before everyone could see them. The story goes that the of his scribes were allowed to "see" the plates as witnesses but the actual account was "they saw it in their minds."
Continued in part 3, Mormonism's Early Years
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