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Why Was Joseph Smith Really Tarred And Feathered?


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I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure Craig is just arguing that the mob was motivated by allegations of sexual impropriety, not that said allegations were true.

I'm trying to seek an understanding of their motivations...understanding that the claimed mob motivations that the church purports do not paint a factual picture of the events in question. Clearly they were motivated due to Joseph's land grab...but they also came prepared to castrate Joseph....clearly there were other motivations at hand. Eli's claim to such explains why a Dr. was brought to perform the castration. But I acknowledge that I could be completely wrong...as could the perceptions of believers who hold a position contrarry to mine.

Those that suggest that this wasn't motivated to revenge inappropreate sexual advances need to explain why the mob was prepared to perform a castration on a Joseph if he hadn't been involved in some sexual indiscresion. This would then and I would have been a highly unlikely consequesce for merely trying to take control of land. In other words, castration is usually the result of sexul inappropreiateness.

Edited by Craig Paxton
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lol

I was more talking about this part..

Mentioning unnamed and unsourced stories about people leaving because their name was misspelled or that the Church didn't help them with their financial problems really perpetuates the misconception that people always leave the LDS Church only for trivial reasons.

I think it's safe to say no individual apostate regards his personal reasons for apostasy as being trivial. Whether or not they are, in fact, trivial is a subjective judgment.

The point the quoted material makes — and illustrates with the examples given — is that the reasons for apostasy are many and varied. That is quite true, even today.

In other words, people find all sorts of excuses for falling away. There doesn't appear to be one overarching reason, then or now.

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it wasn't before his leaving it was after his leaving. The author was Myrtle Stevens Hyde. Both and I would agree that we wouldn't be fine with our wife being married off to another man, but neither of us are Orson Hyde and it isn't our place or a historian's place to say that it was right or wrong.

I own this book...I'll have to dig it out and take a look...

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I think it's safe to say no individual apostate regards his personal reasons for apostasy as being trivial. Whether or not they are, in fact, trivial is a subjective judgment.

The point the quoted material makes — and illustrates with the examples given — is that the reasons for apostasy are many and varied. That is quite true, even today.

In other words, people find all sorts of excuses for falling away. There doesn't appear to be one overarching reason, then or now.

Scott it leaves the impression that believers leave over trivial matters....which is seldom the case.

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I disagree. That it's seldom the case, that is.

I will grant that all or virtually all apostates think they had substantial reasons for apostatizing.

Thank you for policing the "thinking" of other people...It's always good to know that you are here as the final arbitor of apropriate reasons for apostacy.

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Clearly they were motivated due to Joseph's land grab...but they also came prepared to castrate Joseph....clearly there were other motivations at hand.

Not necessarily. Castration is one of the ultimate humiliations for a man. Their thinking needn't have gone any deeper than that.

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Apparently after Orson returned from his mission there was a second sealing ceremony performed between Joseph and Marinda Hyde in May 1843. Evidence of this second ceremony are referenced as (Marinda Hyde affidavit, 1 May 1869, Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Books, 1:5, LDS Archives). I know many of these affidavits from Joseph's wives were meant to show they were "fully" wives of Joseph but I haven't seen any such details from Marinda.

If Orson had given prior permission would they need to have a second ceremony? Why would the wife of a Apostle, who had already bore him 3 children, need to enter into a polygamist marriage with Joseph while Orson was obviously faithfully serving in Jerusalem?

Phaedrus

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In other words, castration is usually the result of sexul inappropreiateness.

Not historically.

Historically castrastion was used as the ultimate form of humiliation for men.

White men did it to black men when no sexual innapropriateness occurred. It was also a common practice among native americans (though usually after the man was dead).

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If Orson had given prior permission would they need to have a second ceremony? Why would the wife of a Apostle, who had already bore him 3 children, need to enter into a polygamist marriage with Joseph while Orson was obviously faithfully serving in Jerusalem?

Phaedrus

It's definitely odd.

Did miranda ever live with JS as husband and wife? What happened between her and Orson after he returned? I honestly have no idea.

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Apparently after Orson returned from his mission there was a second sealing ceremony performed between Joseph and Marinda Hyde in May 1843. Evidence of this second ceremony are referenced as (Marinda Hyde affidavit, 1 May 1869, Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Books, 1:5, LDS Archives). I know many of these affidavits from Joseph's wives were meant to show they were "fully" wives of Joseph but I haven't seen any such details from Marinda.

If Orson had given prior permission would they need to have a second ceremony? Why would the wife of a Apostle, who had already bore him 3 children, need to enter into a polygamist marriage with Joseph while Orson was obviously faithfully serving in Jerusalem?

Phaedrus

To answer this-and I don't fully have the answer-would be to take this thread in a whole new direction. Non-LDS assume that Joseph took all these women as wives in every sense of the word. The truth, of course, is more complicated. Many if not most (some say all) of these marriages were more along the lines of an adoption or a legacy marriage. We don't do those anymore, and I don't know enough about the theology behind them to really speculate how they worked. But it seems clear that many of the husbands did not object to their wives being sealed to the Prophet. In fact, most attended the sealing ceremony.

It seems to me that if their wives were going to be wives in every sense of the word to another man, even the prophet, that they would not have been so open to the proposition.

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