Latter-day Saint Perspectives

The Interview:  Tune in as Laura Harris Hales interviews Sharalyn D. Howcroft on Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources, a new book that carefully analyzes essential texts that are repeatedly used by historians as they reconstruct Mormonism’s founding era. Scholars have frequently mined early Mormon historical sources for the information that they contain, though with little attention to source criticism. A noteworthy exception is the work of Dean C. Jessee. Jessee’s examination of The History of the Church showed that unlike the subtitle of its first six volumes—Period I: History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Himself—the history was written by a dozen different scribes and clerks, not Smith. Although Smith started the history, his office staff quickly assumed most of the burden of production, barely half of it was completed at the time of Smith’s death in 1844, and it took many more years before it was finished. Jessee’s scholarship showed the necessity of understanding authorshi