A Tale of Two (or Three) Josephs, and the Magic Sperm Theory

Matt Palmer

Editorial Note: While the authors of this blog respect one another and enjoy contributing thoughts and various points of discussion, they may not always be in agreement. Nevertheless, in the spirit of shedding light and perspective on divisive topics, we release this essay in mutual interest, trusting it can be a useful text in providing greater understanding to a complex narrative, despite any factual limitations it may or may not include. 

I feel that every day that goes by where lies are repeated about Joseph Smith a fresh injustice is inflicted on him. Much has been written and researched concerning Joseph’s participation or lack of participation with polygamous and polyandrous relationships. Put me firmly in the camp that claims that Joseph never did this practice. I believe Joseph only had one wife, Emma, whether you count spiritual wives, sealings or whatever. I do not believe Joseph introduced this doctrine or this practice. To believe that, I would have to believe that Joseph was the most bold of liars and perjurers.  

More talented researchers than I have combed through the record, and opinions are varied. My approach as an attorney is somewhat different. What I will show in this essay is only this: that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints deliberately lies and deceives concerning Joseph’s alleged polygamy and has continually lied for well over a century. I believe this point is worth consideration alone.

The church has put itself in an awkward position concerning Joseph. Joseph repeatedly, continually, and adamantly denied practicing polygamy in public, as we will see below. The church left itself with two options: 1) they could admit that Brigham Young was a wicked man who undermined Joseph, or 2) they could paint Joseph Smith as a liar and a lecher and Brigham Young as merely a man who walked in Joseph’s footsteps. They have gone all in on option 2, and they knowingly besmirch the memory of the same prophet they claim to uphold as God’s answer to over a millennium of darkness. The Father of all lies is behind this lie as much as any other deception.

In order to portray LDS church teachings about polygamy and Joseph, I will cite from saints, Volume 1. In an article dated August 17, 2018, published on ChurchOfJesusChrist.org, the LDS church headline states, “newly released Saints Volume 1 provides honest look at church history.” Link here. The full title of the work reads Saints: 1815-1846: The Standard of Truth. The article states “Saints illuminates aspects of Church history that have been lesser known or misunderstood. It includes details and context that are important for understanding topics like violence in Missouri and Illinois, plural marriage in the early Church, the Kirtland Safety Society, and many more.”

 I believe it is fair claim that the contents of Saints is what the Church wants members, and others, to believe about this early period of church history and Joseph’s involvement with polygamy. The title alone would make it fair to judge their teaching by its contents. I will contrast that with one particular account drawn from In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd M. Compton, which includes many statements concerning Joseph’s alleged polygamy made from Utah in the late 1800’s. The two accounts paint very different pictures about Joseph.

The Case of Zina Huntington

Zina Huntington would become the General President of the Relief Society of the LDS church from 1888 to her death in 1901. She was a church officer and a polygamous wife of Brigham Young. She claimed to have been a polygamous wife of Joseph Smith. Her statements concerning Joseph Smith’s practices seem like they should be at the center of any historical work from the church concerning Joseph’s practices, as her over decade long tenure as General Relief Society President makes her an especially prominent figure, and, based on the tendency of LDS faithful to hold up general authorities as standards of righteousness and reliability, I would contend that her statements should bear more weight to the LDS faithful concerning the claims surrounding Joseph’s alleged practices. Furthermore, given her standing as a church officer, and the fact that she is mentioned repeatedly in Saints Volume 2, I find it impossible to believe that those who wrote Saints were unacquainted with her claims about Joseph.

The index for Saints, Volume 1 contains one entry for Zina, and here is that entry in its entirety, as linked on their website:

“Joseph’s efforts to bless and heal the sick did not end the spread of disease in Commerce and Montrose, and some Saints perished. As more people died, eighteen-year-old Zina Huntington worried that her mother would succumb to the illness as well.

Zina cared for her mother daily, leaning on her father and brothers for support, but soon the entire family was sick. Joseph checked on them from time to time, seeing what he could do to help the family or make Zina’s mother more comfortable.

One day, Zina’s mother called for her. ‘My time has come to die,’ she said weakly. ‘I am not afraid.’ She testified to Zina of the Resurrection. ‘I shall come forth triumphant when the Savior comes with the just to meet the Saints on the earth.‘

When her mother died, Zina was overcome with grief. Knowing the family’s suffering, Joseph continued to attend to them.

During one of Joseph’s visits, Zina asked him, ‘Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over on the other side?‘

‘More than that,” he said, ‘you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.‘

‘Have I then a Mother in Heaven?’ Zina asked.

‘You assuredly have,’ said Joseph. ‘How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?‘”

No mention is made of Zina as a polygamous wife of Joseph in Volume 1, and Zina is not listed elsewhere in the index for Saints. In Volume 2 of Saints, it is mentioned that Zina “had been a plural wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.” See Page 549. You can see more entries concerning Zina Huntington in Volume 2 of Saints at this link under the title “Young, Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs.” Volume 2 contains various entries concerning Zina’s work within the Relief Society as well as her interactions with family. Clearly, the church believed that Zina was worthy of using as an example of female leadership and service.

However, In Sacred Loneliness contains many details that Zina Huntington alleged concerning her marriage with Joseph must have been deliberately left out of Saints. Everything that follows is quoted from Chapter 4, “Nauvoo Polyandry.” Compton claims that “Zina is one of the best documented of Joseph Smith’s plural wives; she kept a diary intermittently throughout her life and wrote a number of autobiographical sketches.”

Compton states: “While ‘official’ Mormon biographies have Zina marrying Smith and Young after she left Henry, her marriages are so well documented that one is forced to reject this sequence and confront the issue of Nauvoo polyandry. Her biography sheds a great deal of light on Smith’s and Young’s polyandry, but these relationships were still so complex that Zina’s marriage history often remains puzzling, despite the comparative wealth of evidence that illuminates it.”

However, I contend it is essential to keep in mind that the documentation we do have was NOT kept contemporaneously with the events recorded. Zina never, never mentioned being married to Joseph Smith while he was alive. Her claims came much later down the road, long after Joseph’s murder prevented him from defending himself from the accusations, and only once Brigham Young’s influence loomed heavy over these tales.

Zina joined the LDS church in 1835. She was baptized by Hyrum Smith at the age of 14. Later, in 1840, Zina was 19 years old and dating her first husband, Henry Jacobs, when she alleges that Joseph Smith taught her the doctrine of plural marriage and proposed to her. Compton records: “despite her religious reverence for the Mormon leader, she either flatly rejected his proposal or put him off.” However, “Smith was always persistent in his marriage proposals, and rejections usually moved him to further effort, so he continued to press his suit with Zina at the same time that she was courting Henry. And Smith usually expressed his polygamous proposals in terms of prophetic commandments.”

In 1841, Zina married Henry Jacobs. This is when things get interesting. “Zina learned soon afterwards, undoubtedly to her complete astonishment, that Smith had not given up. Again according to family tradition, she and Henry saw Smith soon after the marriage and ‘asked why he had not come … he told them the Lord had made it known to him she was to be his celestial wife.’ Once again Zina was plunged into a quandary. Smith told them that God had commanded him to marry her. However, he apparently also told them they could continue to live together as husband and wife. According to family tradition, Henry accepted this, but Zina continued to struggle.” (ellipsis original)

According to Compton, Zina resisted still, but Smith persisted. “Zina remained conflicted until a day in October, apparently, when Joseph sent Dimick to her with a message: an angel with a drawn sword had stood over Smith and told him that if he did not establish polygamy, he would lose ‘his position and his life.’ Zina, faced with the responsibility for his position as prophet, and even perhaps his life, finally acquiesced. The usual date for the marriage is October 27, and throughout her life Zina commemorated her marriage to Smith on this date.”

She was seven months pregnant with Henry Jacobs’ child on the date she claims she was married to Joseph Smith.

After noting that Zina claimed that she was not simultaneously married to both Joseph and Henry, Compton points out some flaws in her claims. “This wedding, soon after the marriage to Jacobs, does not harmonize with Zina’s later explanation for her relationship with Joseph: ‘I was married to Mr. Jacobs, but the marriage was unhappy and we parted.’ This suggests the following sequence: wedding to Jacobs; unhappy marriage; parting; marriage to Joseph Smith. But, as one can see, Henry and Zina had not been married long when Smith proposed to her polyandrously, so they would have had little opportunity for an unhappy marriage by that time. In addition, Zina and Henry stayed married, cohabiting, throughout Smith’s life. Thus Zina’s explanation for her marriage to Smith may be a ‘revision’ of history to gloss over her simultaneous marriage to both men. It is certain that the marriage was not unhappy enough to cause the couple to stop living together during Smith’s lifetime, or for years after his death.”

As mentioned above, Zina never seemed to speak or write about her marriage to Joseph during his lifetime: “Almost nothing further is known about Zina’s marriage to Joseph Smith. The problems and enigmas of all of Smith’s marriages apply here. Nothing specific is known about sexuality in their marriage, though judging from Smith’s other marriages, sexuality was probably included. We do know that Zina and Henry continued living as husband and wife, though Henry was often absent on missions. Zina’s emotional reaction to the marriage was one of awe: ‘It was something too sacred to be talked about; it was more to me than life or death. I never breathed it for years.’”

If you think that was weird, it only gets far, far more strange after Joseph dies. “First, there is a family tradition that Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and the rest of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles approached the widows of Joseph Smith and offered themselves as husbands. Smith reportedly had asked the apostles to do this if he should die. Thus Young and Kimball, in approaching Smith’s wives, were not simply adding numerous wives to their own polygamous families as quickly as possible; they may have been acting out of a sense of responsibility to their fallen leader. It is certain that many of Smith’s widows did marry members of the Twelve. Brigham married between seven and nine of them; Kimball married approximately eleven.”

Thus, most of the evidence concerning Joseph’s alleged polygamous and polyandrous practices came decades after the fact to women who happened to be married to Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball. This is a cross examination goldmine. None of these women, none of them, ever claimed or wrote about being married to Joseph prior to his death. The record as we have it, is of numerous wives of Brigham and Heber, decades after the fact, raising their hands and claiming to have been Joseph’s wives decades earlier. And all of this surfaced after Joseph Smith III began his ministry and claimed that Joseph never taught or authorized plural marriage.

Compton even wonders aloud: “It is not known how Brigham’s and Heber’s offers of marriage were phrased. In the family traditions there is some emphasis on the choice of the widow. However, the preponderance of Joseph Smith’s widows marrying Young and Kimball, the two most powerful men in Mormonism, is striking. One also wonders how these two approached the polyandrous wives of Smith who were still living with their ‘first husbands.’ Some of Smith’s polyandrous wives remained married to their first husbands for time, though they were eventually sealed to Smith for eternity in the Nauvoo temple. . . . Others of the polyandrous wives were sealed to church leaders for time, then remained living with their ‘first husbands. . . . Church leaders felt that a proxy marriage to Smith in the Nauvoo temple was necessary, and this always entailed a sealing for time to the man standing proxy; therefore, a nonmember could not perform the proxy marriage. Accordingly, to be sealed to Joseph Smith in the temple, one had to be sealed to someone other than the non-member first husband for time.”

Yet again, thing are more strange with Zina: “However, in Zina’s case, the logic breaks down. Her ‘first husband’ was a faithful church member in good standing, an active seventy, the veteran of numerous missions. He would be capable of standing proxy for Joseph Smith in the temple, as is evidenced by the fact that he did perform rituals in the Nauvoo temple. However, for reasons that are not completely clear, Brigham Young pressed his suit with Zina. According to family traditions, ‘President Young told Zina D. if she would marry him she would be in a higher glory.’ However, Zina was already sealed to Joseph Smith, so it is not clear how being sealed to Brigham for time would improve her chances for eternal salvation. In any event, Brigham approached her after Smith’s death and she apparently married him for time in September 1844. Nevertheless, she remained married and cohabiting with Jacobs, which would be consistent with Smith’s practice of polyandry.”

Later, Brigham would send Zina’s first husband, Henry, on a mission when the church was in Winter Quarters on its way to Utah. With Henry away, Brigham then told Zina it was time for her to live with him as his polygamous wife. Compton notes: “This method of practicing polyandry contrasted sharply with Joseph Smith’s. Smith had never required any of his polyandrous wives to leave their first husbands and never lived openly with any of his polyandrous wives. Another problematic aspect of Zina’s relationship to Young was that they apparently did not write Henry and tell him of the development.”

Ultimately, Zina would commit to being only Brigham’s wife. She told Henry to stay away from her, despite his repeated pleas to return as her husband and his expressions of love for her. Said Compton: “one might understand Zina preferring Brigham to Henry, one has to sympathize with Henry, considering how the divorce was effected–while he was far away, and after the polyandrous ‘second’ husband himself had sent him on a mission.”

Compton goes on to describe the conditions of Zina’s marriage to Brigham. “Her relations with Young were friendly and warm, but lacked the day-to-day intimacy of a monogamous marriage. Much-married men like Brigham and Heber, almost by necessity, seemed to make social calls on their individual wives. Zina wrote on October 26, ‘BY called and gave me an invitation to come up to his house tomorrow.’ On the next day ‘I attended a very agreeable viset [sic] at his house.’ A polygamous husband could not share a wife’s daily tasks, so often Zina’s brothers helped her. ‘I white washed the room. Oliver assisted me. Took up the floor &c,’ Zina wrote one day.”

It likewise appears that Zina received only minimal financial support from Brigham. “Zina invariably described Brigham as very kind, a man who provided for her as best he could. However, she leaned on Dimick and other relatives for financial support and worked hard to earn money herself.” Further: “In the spring of 1850 Zina apparently moved from the fort to a lot and lived in her wagon again for a time. On April 16, she began to live in a house that might have been crude and primitive, for this is when she broke down in tears. Then she moved to Brigham’s Log Row in December and lived with Harriet Cook for a time.”

Likewise in 1850, Zina was pregnant with her and Brigham’s daughter, Zina Presendia Young. Compton writes: “In early March 1850 Zina, eight months pregnant, recorded in her journal, ‘My health quite poor & the 13th Chariton was taken with the measles.’ Soon after this she wrote, ‘No one will know the hours of paneful [sic] loneliness that I saw by day & by night.’ Once again, despite Brigham’s kindness, he was not there with Zina in a moment of difficulty and loneliness. Polygamy, almost by definition, implied an absentee husband, despite the husband’s good will and spiritual prestige.”

Perhaps this would be a good time to scroll back up to where I quoted Saints Volume 1 about Zina. Go ahead and go to the indices of both volumes of Saints and read everything they wrote about her before coming back here and considering the questions I’m about to pose here.

Why was none of this in Saints? Zina was the General President of the Relief Society for about 13 years!  Is none of this woman’s story relevant to the telling of an “honest look at church history,” to quote the church’s own statements about Saints? Do her statements paint a vastly different, and more scandalous, picture of the claims regarding Joseph Smith’s practices than were disclosed in Saints? Have you ever seen stories like these discussed in your meetings at church, despite sitting in numerous lessons about church history and Nauvoo and polygamy? Why do you think that is?

 If, on the one hand, Zina is a credible witness to these events, then you have been misled about who Joseph was and what he did with other men’s wives. If, on the other hand, a woman who served as the General President of the Relief Society for 13 years, and was a polygamous and polyandrous wife of Brigham Young, is not a credible witness, and that is why her story is scrubbed from Saints, then what does that tell you the authors of Saints think about the credibility of church officers throughout that period? Someone is lying here.

Even where Joseph’s alleged polyandrous practices are discussed in Saints, they tell the story of Mary Lightner, whose husband, Adam, was not a member of the church, and she claims that Joseph only proposed that they be sealed for eternity, which would not have taken affect until both of them were dead, and would not involve any claims to anything resembling a carnal marriage in this life. See Saints Volume 1 at 444-446. They were careful to avoid any allegations that Joseph was having sex with women who were married to their husbands at the very time Joseph was sexually active with them.

Such allegations are common as documented throughout In Sacred Loneliness. “Eighteen of Joseph’s wives (55 percent) were single when he married them and had never been married previously. Another four (12 percent) were widows. One, Agnes Coolbrith Smith, was the widow of his younger brother, Don Carlos, making this a strict Levirate marriage. However, the remaining eleven women (33 percent) were married to other husbands and cohabiting with them when Smith married them. Another woman, Sarah Ann Whitney, married Smith, then married another man soon after in a civil, ‘pretend’ marriage.” Id. at Prologue. We will remove all ambiguity from these claims once we get to the Magic Sperm Theory.

And it only gets worse from here.

Joseph’s Alleged Secrecy            

The position that Saints took regarding Joseph’s polygamy is that he was instructed to practice it in secret. “Since learning about plural marriage during his inspired translation of the Bible, Joseph had known that God sometimes commanded His people to practice the principle. Joseph had not acted on this knowledge immediately, but a few years later an angel of the Lord had commanded him to marry an additional wife. After receiving the commandment, Joseph struggled to overcome his natural aversion to the idea. He could foresee trials coming from plural marriage, and he wanted to turn from it. But the angel urged him to proceed, instructing him to share the revelation only with people whose integrity was unwavering. The angel also charged Joseph to keep it private until the Lord saw fit to make the practice public through His chosen servants.” Saints Volume 1 at 291.

Saints claims that circa 1841 Joseph “knew the practice of plural marriage would shock people, and he remained reluctant to teach it openly. While other religious and utopian communities often embraced different forms of marriage, the Saints had always preached monogamy. Most Saints—like most Americans—associated polygamy with societies they considered less civilized than their own. Joseph himself left no record of his own views on plural marriage or his struggle to obey the commandment. Emma too disclosed nothing about how early she learned of the practice or what impact it had on her marriage. The writings of others close to them, however, make clear that it was a source of anguish for both of them. Yet Joseph felt an urgency to teach it to the Saints, despite the risks and his own reservations. If he introduced the principle privately to faithful men and women, he could build strong support for it, preparing for the time when it could be taught openly.”

Around 1842, Saints claims Joseph “taught the principle of plural marriage to a few more Saints and testified of its divine origin. The previous summer, less than a week after the apostles returning from England arrived in Nauvoo, he had taught the principle to a few of them and instructed them to obey it as a commandment of the Lord. While plural marriage was not necessary for exaltation or the greater endowment of power, obedience to the Lord and a willingness to dedicate one’s life to Him were.” At 443.[1]            

Later circa 1843-1844, Saints claims “They and the others who practiced plural marriage never referred to it as polygamy, which they considered a worldly term, not a priesthood ordinance. When Joseph or someone else condemned ‘polygamy’ or ‘spiritual wifery’ in public, those who practiced plural marriage understood that they were not referring to their covenant relationships.”

However, any narrative that merely holds that Joseph secretly taught and practiced polygamy ignores a mountain of evidence that Joseph was not secretive about polygamy. Joseph explicitly, publicly, and repeatedly voiced opposition to the doctrine or practice of polygamy or spiritual wifery. Here is a fairly exhaustive list from the writers at exoneratejoseph.com.

 I will list some of Joseph’s denials that I find to be more persuasive. All but the first come from the link above, which appear in quotation marks below.

• From Section 101 of the 1835 edition of Doctrine and Covenants, removed later by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in the case of death, which either is at liberty to marry again.”
• “October 15 1841  Published in the Times and Seasons reprinted from an article published in the St. Louis Atlas: ‘The mormons..it is a faith which they say encourages no vice no immorality… neither polygamy nor promiscuous intercourse.  It has been stated in public journals that we hold all things in common, or that we have a community of goods, also of wives.  These charges we positively deny: for we hold to no such things nor ever did.’”
• “April 10 1842  Preaching to a large congregation: ‘We have thieves among us, adulterers, liars, hypocrites… God would command you not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covet or deceive, but be faithful over a few things…”  Joseph preached and pronounced a “curse upon all adulterers and Fornicators, and unvirtuous persons and those who have made use of my name to carry on their iniquitous designs’”
• “May 26 1844 ‘For the last three years I have a record of all my acts and proceedings, for I have kept several good, faithful and efficient clerks in constant employ; they have accompanied me everywhere I have been and have carefully written down what I have done and what I have said; therefore my enemies cannot charge me with ant day, time or place, but what I have written testimony to prove my actions; and my enemies cannot prove anything against me… you will know who are liars and who speak the truth.  Another indictment has been got up against me.  It appears a holy prophet has arisen up [William Law], and he has testified against me [polygamy]…  I had not been married scarcely five minutes, and made one proclamation of the Gospel, before it was reported that I had seven wives.  This spiritual wifeism!  Why, a man dares not speak or wink, for fear of being accused of this… [William Law] swears that I have committed adultery.  I never had any fuss with these men until that Female Relief Society brought out the paper [Voice of Innocence] against adulterers and adulteresses…. I have rattled chains before in dungeons for the truth’s sake.  I am innocent of all these charges and you can bear witness of my innocence…. what a thing it is to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one.’”

I encourage you to review all of the statements in the above list and compare what Joseph repeatedly said with the narrative Saints has constructed about him. There is no fair means by which one can claim that Joseph secretly taught and practiced polygamy. He was either the boldest of liars and a brazen sociopath, or he is being maligned and defamed day after day by the LDS church. Either way, the church has proven fully content to intentionally mislead the faithful by presenting carefully selected facts that withhold the full picture. They are simply lying to us.

It still gets worse.

The Magic Sperm Theory

There are various women, other than Emma Smith, who professed to have born children to Joseph Smith. This is no secret. In fact, there have been DNA studies to try and prove or disprove these claims. This article contains a short list of supposed descendants of Joseph that were disproved using DNA: DNA Shows Joseph Smith was Irish, Deseret News, August 8, 2008.

More recently, in 2019, a study was published that investigated claims that Josephine Lyon, born 1844, was Joseph’s daughter through an alleged polyandrous marriage to Sylvia Sessions, Resolving a 150 year-old paternity case in Mormon history using DTC autosomal DNA testing of distant relatives. It seems Sylvia Session signed a deathbed affidavit in 1882 claiming that Josephine Lyon was fathered by Joseph. The short of it is this: Josephine Lyon was conclusively ruled out as a descendant of Joseph. To my knowledge, every single alleged descendent put to the test has been conclusively ruled out as a descendant of Joseph, other than the children of Emma.

Let’s consider the implications here. Of course, for anyone to claim that Joseph Smith was the father of her child required a woman to allege that she has sexual intercourse with Joseph. Joseph and Emma had 11 children together, two adopted, so we know he was fecund. This leaves us with two, and only two conclusions about the women who claimed to be mothers of Joseph’s children.

First possibility: these women are shameless, malicious liars.

Second possibility: this requires all of the following be true in each and every case of claimed parentage by a woman other than Emma: a) the woman in question had unprotected sex with Joseph, b) this woman also had unprotected sex with another man in the same window of conception for the child in question, c) in each and every case it was the other man’s sperm that fertilized the mother’s egg. Given that Joseph was capable of impregnating Emma on at least 9 occasions, and was never able to impregnate any of his alleged polygamous wives, he must have had some magic sperm indeed!

Let’s not hear any nonsense such as, “well Joseph must have been careful when he had sex with these women,” or “Joseph’s polygamy was just a matter of eternal sealings; these weren’t sexual relationships.” The woman claimed they were pregnant by him. These woman went around telling people that Joseph did the deed in such a way as to reproduce. That is a very plain and very salacious allegation, and there are no two ways about it. Either Joseph was a remarkable crack shot, so to speak, or there was a freaky and licentious nightlife scene in Nauvoo that was also withheld from mention in Saints, and these women were sleeping with so many men they couldn’t tell who the father was and had something to gain by claiming it was Joseph.

Now let’s suppose that Joseph’s sperm was not so magical as to have an affinity for only one of his wives at the expense of all others. What does that tell us about the veracity or mendacity of the Utah Mormons when it came to Joseph? What were they willing to say to cover for Brigham and Heber’s claims that polygamy and polyandry were inspired?

In Conclusion

The purpose of this essay was not to prove that Joseph Smith did not practice or teach plural marriage, although I have expressed my belief that he did not. You can dig into any of the volumes on that topic and decide for yourself. There is a vast literature on the topic available.

I am simply pointing out that what the LDS church teaches about Joseph must be a lie. There is a tale of two or three Josephs here. Joseph One: The church wants us to believe that Joseph secretly practiced polygamy with a pure heart and be ignorant of any of the more sordid accusations. Joseph Two: The Brighamite Mormons from Utah accused Joseph of marrying and bedding other men’s wives regularly, while those women still lived with their original husbands. They accused him of saying angels would murder him if they didn’t give in to his demands for marriage and leveraging his status as a prophet to bring more women into his life. They falsely claimed to have his children. They accuse him of public denials that were nothing more than deceptions and lies via manipulative word games. Joseph Three: Joseph denied the practice of polygamy, and his friends spoke up in defense of his character. I will be one of those friends.

The church’s current version of Joseph does not square with the church of the 19^th century’s Joseph. And neither of those squares with Joseph in his own words. Why has the church chosen to paint a different picture than the historical record shows? Are they ignorant of the accusations that LDS church officers made against Joseph? Are they ignorant of his denials? Are they crafting a story using limited information with the intent of shaping the narrative away from more damning accusations that force one to decide whether Joseph or the Brighamites were the most contemptable and wicked of people? At what cost does this come?

Does the Lord countenance a lie? If a lie is appropriate about one thing, where does it rightfully stop? What is each of our obligation to truth? What is the church’s obligation to truth? Or, is it as the Savior said to the churchmen of His day: “ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there was no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:44.

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[1] One peculiar item regarding Joseph’s practices is the timing of his sealing to Emma, his only contemporaneously documented wife. Saints states that “[i]n late May 1843, Emma and Joseph were sealed together for eternity in a room above Joseph’s store, solemnizing at last what they had long desired.” At 492. However, Compton claimed the following: “[a]s we trace the trajectory of Smith’s marriages, we see that he apparently experimented with plural marriage in the 1830s in Ohio and Missouri. Detailed records are not extant, but the evidence, when weighed carefully, suggests that these were probably authentic plural marriages. In 1841 Smith cautiously added three wives. But in 1842 he married eleven wives in the first eight months of the year. . . . However, during the first half of 1843, Joseph married fourteen more wives, including five in May. After July his marriages stopped abruptly, with only two exceptions in September and November.” This puts his sealing to Emma somewhere around wife number 15 to 30, if I count correctly. Why Joseph waited to be sealed to anywhere from 14-29 other women before being sealed to Emma seems like a question worth answering. Alas, Saints is silent on this topic.