Eternity Only Sealings?

[T-Shirt]

17 hours ago, juliann said:

The only way to wiggle out of this is to consider her a liar or mentally ill.  

No it isn't, not even close.  False dichotomy.

Edited February 9, 2017 by T-Shirt

[JulieM]

35 minutes ago, T-Shirt said:

Because they already knew.  They knew their mother had been sealed  to Joseph Smith after his death.  There wasn't anything substantial that could have been misinterpreted as scandalous about that.  It was something that was openly shared.  What they didn't know, that Sylvia had kept secret, was that Sylvia had been sealed to Joseph in a prior ceremony, while he was still living. 

That makes no sense.  Read what Sylvia told Josephine again.  Josephine already knew she was Joseph's eternal daughter (from the second sealing).  So why would that have been a secret that no one else knew?

Also, I'm sure there were some insiders who knew about the first sealing (who sealed them)?  It makes much more sense that the secret no one knew was that Sylvia believed Josephine was Joseph's biological daughter.  

Why is it so important to you to prove that Joseph didn't have relations with Sylvia?  After all, she was his wife.

Why are you ok with the men having relations with more than one woman but not a woman doing the same?

Edited February 9, 2017 by JulieM

[JulieM]

58 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

I came into this thread a bit late, and it looks like all the best references have been provided.
I really like this one from JAHS below:

My issue with this whole situation concerning eternity only sealings is this:  This historically noted practice is being misapplied by many to make people feel better.

And a lot of that comes back to Brian Hales who says on his site "Any of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages where sexuality is not documented could have been an eternity-only sealing including eleven of his fourteen sealings to women with legal husbands."

I take issue with the idea that because polygamy troubles so many and we want Joseph to not be guilty of the same supposed practices we accuse Brigham and others of we start making the "could have beens" into the "here's what happened".

Were there eternity only sealings?  Documentation appears to say there were.
Did Joseph have any?  Documentation is sketchy and most of his marriages ceremonies were not documented as to the type or wording used.
So all we are doing by claiming any of Joseph's marriages were for eternity only because they trouble people for various reasons (polyandry, teenagers etc) is attempting to remove our own cognitive dissonance.

Did Joseph have relations with Helen Kimball?  Fanny Alger?  Zina Huntington?  Mary Rollins Lightner?
Or were they eternity only sealings with no relations?
We don't know, and stating that any we don't like were eternity only with no record of the ceremony isn't history, it's false rationalizing.

Thanks for responding JLHPROF!

From what I've read and studied, you sum things up nicely (and accurately).

Sounds like we simply do not know if any of Joseph's sealings were for eternity only.

[JLHPROF]

4 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Thanks for responding JLHPROF!

From what I've read and studied, you sum things up nicely (and accurately).

Sounds like we simply do not know if any of Joseph's sealings were for eternity only.

So that leads to the better question - why are we insisting that they are?  What is our motivation for applying a designation not in evidence to his plural marriages?
I think we all know the answer to that.

For me it makes much more sense that Joseph was instituting the same practice that Brigham Young and his successors institutionalized in Utah.  He never intended plural marriage to take some different form not  in evidence.  In my opinion, had Joseph lived, polygamy would have looked exactly as it did under Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and the other apostles.
Pretending Joseph had other intentions for polygamy is not in historical evidence and we should not be implying as some do that Joseph only intended eternal sealings with no marital relationship in this life.

Edited February 9, 2017 by JLHPROF

[T-Shirt]

10 minutes ago, JulieM said:

That makes no sense.  Read what Sylvia told Josephine again.  Josephine already knew she was Joseph's eternal daughter (from the second sealing).

I think this might be where your confusion comes from.  Since Josephine was born prior to the known sealing, she would not have been considered to have been Born in the Covenant as her siblings were.  She didn't know she was sealed to Joseph Smith as she was born before the proxy sealing that was more commonly known.

[JulieM]

1 minute ago, T-Shirt said:

I think this might be where your confusion comes from.  Since Josephine was born prior to the known sealing, she would not have been considered to have been Born in the Covenant as her siblings were.  She didn't know she was sealed to Joseph Smith as she was born before the proxy sealing that was more commonly known.

Maybe JLHPROF can clarify or correct me if I'm mistaken, but I understood that in the early days of the church, when a man (Prophet or otherwise) sealed himself to a woman for eternity (even if she was legally married to another man and had kids with that husband), all her children were his in the eternities.

 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, rpn said:

 

There is good evidence that Helen Mar Kimball (the 14 year old) had no idea that her marriage would prevent her from going to the dances with her friends (as she wrote in a letter).  She thought she was giving her family exaltation.   If she'd been intimate with JS then how wouldn't she know that things had changed radically about her social status?  So that argues for eternity.

CFR the marriage preventing dance attendance...not that I disagree with the conclusion, I am just wondering if you have possibly confuse two separate issues.  If I am wrong, I need to familiarize myself with that source.  The one dance we know, I believe, she was forbidden to go to, it was because of the presence of "blacklegs".  Her father didn't want her brother to go as well.  She attended a number of dances in the first six months of her marriage prior to this one and was involved in some social activities such as theatre and choir afterwards with no known exclusion from other safe dances.  if I have got the timeline right.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Calm

[T-Shirt]

15 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Why is it so important to you to prove that Joseph didn't have relations with Sylvia?  After all, she was his wife.

I could ask the same question of you.  Frankly, it doesn't matter to me, one way or the other, but I find it striking that so many people, (mostly critics) seem to be so certain that the case is closed.  I disagree, and frankly, feel that their bias is showing.  What is important to me are the facts of the matter and, in my opinion, there is another very logical way to interpret the evidence.  That needs to be pointed out.  There is no clear conclusion to this.  People will interpret the evidence as they choose. As for me, I am content to let the matter rest as unknown but will stand up and make an argument for another viable possibility anytime someone makes the claim that the case is closed.

Quote

Why are you ok with the men having relations with more than one woman but not a woman doing the same?

I don't believe I have shared my opinion on this matter.

[Gray]

12 hours ago, cdowis said:

Dan Vogel is insistent on this argument.  He got a bit peeved with me when I pointed out that another interpretation of her statement is that, with her being sealed for eternity to JS, that she considered JS as the girl's "real" father,  albeit not the biological father.  FYI, this happens all the time that a child is sealed, but not to the natural father, as happens with illegitimate or adopted children.  

We have to see things through her eyes that her temporal father was  just  temporary.

I don't find that argument convincing or realistic at all. There would be no reason to keep that information secret until her deathbed. Also, it might be significant that she was named Josephine to being with - named after the one who Sylvia assumed was the father. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Gray

[T-Shirt]

14 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Maybe JLHPROF can clarify or correct me if I'm mistaken, but I understood that in the early days of the church, when a man (Prophet or otherwise) sealed himself to a woman for eternity (even if she was legally married to another man and had kids with that husband), all her children were his in the eternities.

 

Only children born after the sealing.  Children born before the sealing would not be.

[juliann]

3 hours ago, rongo said:

Hugh Nibley makes a good point in his writings about the priesthood ban with respect to Pharaoh. He wrote that matriarchal societies make determining fatherhood uncertain, whereas in both matriarchal and patriarchal societies, there is never any doubt about who the mother is. When priesthood is through male descent, one must be able to 100% determine patriarchal descent. In polyandrous societies (such as parts of Nepal), there is doubt as to exact fatherhood. I remember reading about these Nepalese arrangements in anthropology in college. The purpose is to keep land (inherited by brothers) in the same family by having brothers married to one woman, but it does make determining the father inexact. 

It is an intriguing thought that Pharoah's line through Egyptus (the pioneer mother) may be a factor in the priesthood ban relating to him and his descendants. Nibley examines the trouble with matriarchal societies, including polyandrous ones, when priesthood is transmitted lineally through patriarchal lines. 

First, Mormon polygamy isn't comparable to historical practices, it is inextricably related to sealings.  It also side stepped lineage through adoption/sealings to selected men,  so I find an appeal to descent rather ironic. This got to the point that BY arranged for a woman to temporarily marry another man to provide children because of a sterile husband. One of the advantages to women was that they could choose men, and if they didn't like him, there was easy divorce and other men. Descent wasn't exactly the point....

[JulieM]

11 minutes ago, Calm said:

CFR the marriage preventing dance attendance...not that I disagree with the conclusion, I am just wondering if you have possibly confuse two separate issues.  If I am wrong, I need to familiarize myself with that source.  The one dance we know, I believe, she was forbidden to go to, it was because of the presence of "blacklegs".  Her father didn't want her brother to go as well.  She attended a number of dances in the first six months of her marriage prior to this one and was involved in some social activities such as theatre and choir afterwards with no known exclusion from other safe dances.  if I have got the timeline right.

I've read about the blacklegs and warnings too, but I think she was kept from doing more than going to where they were.

Here is from Hale's site:

"After Catherine Lewis left the Church, she reported Helen saying, “I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony.”12 Assuming this statement is accurate, which is not certain, the question arises regarding her meaning of “more than a ceremony?”

At least two possibilities exist. One interpretation is that she is referring to sexual relations. However, LDS Historian Spencer Fluhman observed that Helen’s “reminiscences convey little social interaction with Joseph Smith after the marriage, let alone an intimate physical relationship.”13 To date, there is no evidence pointing to a sexual relationship between Helen and Joseph.

A second explanation, which is corroborated by Helen’s poignant poem, is that the ceremony prevented her from associating with her friends as an unmarried teenager, causing her dramatic distress during their thirteen month plural marriage (May 1843 to June 1844). Her verse: “Bar’d out from social scenes by this thy destiny / And o’er thy sad’nd mem’ries of sweet departed joys / Thy sicken’d heart will brood and imagine future woes, / And like a fetter’d bird with wild and longing heart / Thou’lt dayly pine for freedom and murmor at thy lot” reflects frustrations from her inability to laugh, dance, and socialize with her peers, who subsequently shut her out from their group enjoyments and good times."

[JulieM]

15 minutes ago, T-Shirt said:

Only children born after the sealing.  Children born before the sealing would not be.

I know that's the case now, but we don't practice polyandry anymore in the church.

So, who would the children be sealed to for eternity from polyandrous marriages (those born before their Mother was sealed)?  No Father?

You believe that until 1882, Josephine believed she wasn't  sealed to any Father?

Edited February 9, 2017 by JulieM

[T-Shirt]

8 minutes ago, JulieM said:

I know that's the case now, but we don't practice polyandry anymore in the church.

So, who would the children be sealed to for eternity from polyandrous marriages (those born before their Mother was sealed)?  No Father?

 

They weren't sealed to anyone. It was the same then as it is now.  Any children born before a sealing would have to have a separate sealing performed to seal them to the parents. Sealings were not retroactive.  Josephine was sealed to Joseph Smith by virtue of the original sealing while he was living, but she did not know it and neither did her siblings.

Edited February 9, 2017 by T-Shirt

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, T-Shirt said:

Because they already knew.  They knew their mother had been sealed  to Joseph Smith after his death.  There wasn't anything substantial that could have been misinterpreted as scandalous about that.  It was something that was openly shared.  What they didn't know, that Sylvia had kept secret, was that Sylvia had been sealed to Joseph in a prior ceremony, while he was still living.  The reason she kept this secret was for the protection of Joseph, those involved and the entire Church.  Everything Joseph did was turned into scandal regardless of the truth.  To avoid the appearance of scandal and misinterpretation, she kept it a secret.  This was the case with all of Joseph's sealings while he was living, it wasn't anything new.

Of course they did, that is human nature.  People want to impute the most salacious interpretation they can think of.  This is partly why she kept it secret.  All of the accounts Vogel shares, (and there aren't that many) you will notice, are rumors.

She may or may not have interpreted it that way, there is nothing, "clear" about it, except to those wo have already made up their minds and choose to ignore pertinent facts.

You should be careful to follow your own counsel here, it is wise counsel.

I agree with you about following the counsel of taking the whole picture into account.  In doing this I try to read the evidence as well as the arguments of multiple different historians to try and determine which I find the most credible.  If you consider the opinions of these experts, both Mormon and non-Mormon ones, I think you'll find that most agree with the interpretation that Josephine believed she was the biological daughter of Joseph Smith.  Even Brian Hales, who would love to disagree with this interpretation because it would help his cause and the hypothesis he's been promoting, doesn't dismiss this interpretation. 

[rongo]

16 minutes ago, juliann said:

First, Mormon polygamy isn't comparable to historical practices, it is inextricably related to sealings.  It also side stepped lineage through adoption/sealings to selected men,  so I find an appeal to descent rather ironic. This got to the point that BY arranged for a woman to temporarily marry another man to provide children because of a sterile husband. One of the advantages to women was that they could choose men, and if they didn't like him, there was easy divorce and other men. Descent wasn't exactly the point....

One point was "spiritual eugenics" (in theory --- in practice, it was messy and not always for the spiritual best). 

In a roundabout way, women had some sway in impacting the system because of the competition for wives. This meant that young men needed to have their act together spiritually, ecclesiastically, professionally, etc. to be competitive with the older "Church-influential" men. Not exactly comparable to the "lost boys" effect in modern Mormon offshoot polygamy, but somewhat similar. Deadbeats or duds were at a large competitive disadvantage, so there was some pressure to get their acts together (not a bad thing, on its face, but starkly harsh in social Darwinian terms).

[JulieM]

15 minutes ago, T-Shirt said:

They weren't sealed to anyone. It was the same then as it is now.  Any children born before a sealing would have to have a separate sealing performed to seal them to the parents. Sealings were not retroactive.  Josephine was sealed to Joseph Smith by virtue of the original sealing while he was living, but she did not know it and neither did her siblings.

I guess I'd like that clarified (how it took place back then for those children involved in a polyandrous marriage/sealing).  Maybe  JLHPROF can explain it 

I think Phebe was sealed by proxy to Joseph (as her Father) and that was unnecessary.  So it gets confusing, IMO.

Either way, Sylvia's 1st sealing to Joseph had to have been known by others (insiders or the one who performed the sealing), so it wasn't a secret that no one else knew about. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by JulieM

[JLHPROF]

2 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Maybe JLHPROF can clarify or correct me if I'm mistaken, but I understood that in the early days of the church, when a man (Prophet or otherwise) sealed himself to a woman for eternity (even if she was legally married to another man and had kids with that husband), all her children were his in the eternities.

 

This has been a hotly debated question almost since sealings were introduced.
And I don't think an official answer from the Lord has been given.

So we are left to apply the best reason we can to the principles behind it.

1. We know that when a deceased husband's wife was resealed to someone for time the new husband was required to covenant that any offspring from that marriage would be delivered up to the eternal husband.  That is in several records and relates to a Levirate marriage.

2. Brigham Young clearly taught that children in the eternities would belong to the husband to whom the wife was sealed.  This by implication would mean that the children go with their biological mother in the next life.

[T-Shirt]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I agree with you about following the counsel of taking the whole picture into account.  In doing this I try to read the evidence as well as the arguments of multiple different historians to try and determine which I find the most credible.  If you consider the opinions of these experts, both Mormon and non-Mormon ones, I think you'll find that most agree with the interpretation that Josephine believed she was the biological daughter of Joseph Smith.  Even Brian Hales, who would love to disagree with this interpretation because it would help his cause and the hypothesis he's been promoting, doesn't dismiss this interpretation. 

First of all, it is not a matter of tallying up the score of various opinions.  Second of all, I have not dismissed any interpretation. I am simply pointing out the fact that there is more than one way to look at this.  There is significant evidence, in my opinion, that keeps getting glossed over that should not be ignored.

Josephine may or may not have thought she was the biological daughter of Joseph Smith, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what Sylvia meant, and frankly, we can't know this for sure.  I think both interpretations have merit, but as stated before, I will point out the other interpretation anytime someone claims the evidence "clearly" points to their favorite conclusion.

[juliann]

4 hours ago, cdowis said:

I do not believe that in such matters of the heart and emotion, logical and rational thought cannot always be expected.  I assume you are familiar with the concept of hyperbole.  You use one phrase to build your whole argument, but I see it as dramatic hyperbole, and you see it as an admission of adultery.

The FACT is that she was not the biological daughter of JS, and all of the twists and turns of your argument cannot dispute that simple fact.  The antiMormon view is that JS was an adulterer with the knowledge of the community and they accepted that relationship.  And that the Lord Himself continued to maintain JS prophetic role in the church.  IOW, just another false prophet, false religion.

You can choose that JS was a immoral adulterer, or that this was a sealing only relationship.

I have made my choice, and apparently you have done so as well..

 

As I said, this is all about present day attitudes towards women rather than what happened in previous and very unusual times.  Despite the false dilemma, what is truly mystifying in this stance is that JS can (and will be) considered to be an adulterer because he was with other women who were not his legal wife by any reasonable definition. Only members are going to give him a pass on that. To then carve out a special category that the same behavior was adultery if the woman was married is bizarre. 

[JAHS]

1 hour ago, JLHPROF said:

I came into this thread a bit late, and it looks like all the best references have been provided.
I really like this one from JAHS below:

My issue with this whole situation concerning eternity only sealings is this:  This historically noted practice is being misapplied by many to make people feel better.

And a lot of that comes back to Brian Hales who says on his site "Any of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages where sexuality is not documented could have been an eternity-only sealing including eleven of his fourteen sealings to women with legal husbands."

I take issue with the idea that because polygamy troubles so many and we want Joseph to not be guilty of the same supposed practices we accuse Brigham and others of we start making the "could have beens" into the "here's what happened".

Were there eternity only sealings?  Documentation appears to say there were.
Did Joseph have any?  Documentation is sketchy and most of his marriages ceremonies were not documented as to the type or wording used.
So all we are doing by claiming any of Joseph's marriages were for eternity only because they trouble people for various reasons (polyandry, teenagers etc) is attempting to remove our own cognitive dissonance.

Did Joseph have relations with Helen Kimball?  Fanny Alger?  Zina Huntington?  Mary Rollins Lightner?
Or were they eternity only sealings with no relations?
We don't know, and stating that any we don't like were eternity only with no record of the ceremony isn't history, it's false rationalizing.

To me the fact that Joseph Smith may have consummated the plural marriages with single women is not an issue; after all bringing forth seed was one of the reasons for it.

I think what most people might have an issue with are whether or not he consummated the polyandrous sealings. Hopefully those were for eternity only. 

[JLHPROF]

4 hours ago, cdowis said:

The FACT is that she was not the biological daughter of JS, and all of the twists and turns of your argument cannot dispute that simple fact.  The antiMormon view is that JS was an adulterer with the knowledge of the community and they accepted that relationship.  And that the Lord Himself continued to maintain JS prophetic role in the church.  IOW, just another false prophet, false religion.

You can choose that JS was a immoral adulterer, or that this was a sealing only relationship.

I have made my choice, and apparently you have done so as well..

 

False dichotomy.
I choose that she was his wife, whether for time and eternity or eternal sealing only we do not know.
And if she was his wife for time then any relations whether they produced a child or not were legal and legitimate.
So I reject "sealing only" or "adulterer" as the only viable options.

[JLHPROF]

2 minutes ago, JAHS said:

I think what most people might have an issue with are whether or not he consummated the polyandrous sealings. Hopefully those were for eternity only.

I can understand that.  I don't agree with those people, but I understand that.
I don't think we are viewing the marriages as Joseph and the other participants viewed them.  And until we do we are just putting our own bias on the relationship.
We say "polyandrous".  Did the participants consider it such?

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

I came into this thread a bit late, and it looks like all the best references have been provided.
I really like this one from JAHS below:

My issue with this whole situation concerning eternity only sealings is this:  This historically noted practice is being misapplied by many to make people feel better.

And a lot of that comes back to Brian Hales who says on his site "Any of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages where sexuality is not documented could have been an eternity-only sealing including eleven of his fourteen sealings to women with legal husbands."

I take issue with the idea that because polygamy troubles so many and we want Joseph to not be guilty of the same supposed practices we accuse Brigham and others of we start making the "could have beens" into the "here's what happened".
 

You are missing the critical issue.

It is not polygamy itself,  but that some of the marriages were to women who were already married, and whether there were intimate relations with those married women.  Was jS committing adultery or were these sealing only wives.

[juliann]

17 minutes ago, rongo said:

One point was "spiritual eugenics" (in theory --- in practice, it was messy and not always for the spiritual best). 

In a roundabout way, women had some sway in impacting the system because of the competition for wives. This meant that young men needed to have their act together spiritually, ecclesiastically, professionally, etc. to be competitive with the older "Church-influential" men. Not exactly comparable to the "lost boys" effect in modern Mormon offshoot polygamy, but somewhat similar. Deadbeats or duds were at a large competitive disadvantage, so there was some pressure to get their acts together (not a bad thing, on its face, but starkly harsh in social Darwinian terms).

I'm sure this was in play to some extent. But remember that the history we are comfortable with has come through male perspectives, even to the point that "families" were considered a valid counting method for participation in polygamy rather than counting the women as individuals. Now that more accounts are coming out, some of those male polygamists were also duds. It has really surprised me to see accounts of young girls willingly marrying older dirt poor men, knowing they were in for a life of poverty. We tend to measure polygamy through the lives of the elite only.