Saints: The Standard of Truth? A Critical Assessment of LDS Discussions' Chapter-by-Chapter Review

LDS Discussions applies a consistently adversarial framework to a work that is, by any objective scholarly standard, the most transparent official history the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has ever produced. A careful examination reveals that its charges of “inoculation” and omission collapse under scrutiny.

I. What LDS Discussions Actually Claims

The LDS Discussions four-part review of Saints: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846 (2018) advances a single animating thesis from its introduction: that the book is “meant to inoculate members against the most troubling aspects of church history” while creating a veneer of transparency. Across its 46-chapter annotation, the review catalogues specific objections including:

First Vision accounts — that Saints presents only the 1838 version while improperly blaming scribes for differences between accounts.
Lucy Mack Smith over-reliance — that the book leans disproportionately on a source written decades after events and favorable to Joseph Smith.
Seer stone translation — that the Urim and Thummim is conflated with the seer stone to obscure the hat-and-stone method.
The 1826 trial — that Saints claims no evidence of guilt when an 1873 court record shows a guilty verdict and fine.
Charles Anthon — that Anthon’s own letters contradicting the Harris account are entirely omitted.
Fanny Alger — that the relationship is framed as a legitimate plural marriage when evidence supports it was an affair conducted without sealing authority.
Kirtland Safety Society — that Joseph’s prophetic claims about the bank are minimized and blame is shifted to members.
Polygamy timeline — that the 1831 context for polygamy is misrepresented and D&C 132 is back-dated to cover an earlier practice.
Book of Abraham — that the book fails to engage with the translation problem raised by discovered papyrus.
DNA and Lamanites — that Saints continues treating Native Americans as Lamanite descendants despite genomic evidence.
Danites — that Joseph Smith’s sanctioning of the Danites is minimized.
Failed prophecies — the Salem treasure revelation (D&C 111), Missouri temple, and Civil War prophecy are cited as unfulfilled.

These are the claims on the table. Each will be addressed in turn. But first, the foundational methodological problem with the review must be confronted.

II. The Category Error at the Heart of This Review

The entire LDS Discussions critique rests on a foundational misclassification: it consistently judges Saints as if it were an encyclopedic critical history, then charges it with failure for not being one. This is not an honest standard. Saints was explicitly and publicly designed as a narrative history for a general audience — not a comprehensive critical compendium. The Church History Department made no secret of this.

As BYU Religious Studies Center scholars noted upon the book’s release, “The Saints project endeavors to meet the rigorous standards by which professional historians do their work” while also being “the first official LDS Church history since B. H. Roberts’ six-volume Comprehensive History (1930).” That is a nearly 90-year gap. The FAIR Latter-day Saints review confirmed that the book “covers nearly every criticism and puts them in their proper context.”

Critically, Saints was designed with a robust digital infrastructure. Every electronic version contains hyperlinks directing readers to the Joseph Smith Papers, Gospel Topics Essays, and primary source documents. As the production team explained, readers are “a few clicks” from raw source material. LDS Discussions never mentions this infrastructure — not once across four parts of its review. A critique of a book that systematically omits its endnotes apparatus and linked supplemental system is an incomplete critique.

“Every line in the book has been triple and quadruple checked for accuracy, and every claim is historically sound and derived from sources that have been verified and triangulated.” — Church History Department production team

The book sold over 340,000 copies of Volume 1 and has been described by independent historians as “the very best general audience history the Church has ever published.” It is not an apologist pamphlet — it is a landmark scholarly achievement rendered accessible. Holding it to the standard of a comprehensive critical encyclopedia is a rhetorical sleight of hand.

III. The First Vision: What Saints Actually Does

LDS Discussions charges that Saints presents only the 1838 version of the First Vision while using scribes as a “scapegoat” for differences between accounts. This claim is both factually incomplete and strategically misleading.

A narrative history written in the voice of its subjects must rely on a single narrative thread. The 1838 account was the one Joseph himself dictated as his formal history and intended for public record. Using it is not censorship; it is basic narrative methodology. The multiple First Vision accounts are exhaustively addressed in the Church’s own Gospel Topics Essay on the First Vision, which is directly linked from the Saints endnote apparatus. The book’s design routes curious readers to exactly this material.

LDS Discussions overstates the significance of scribal involvement as an apologetic deflection. Historians have long understood that Joseph Smith composed most of his recorded history with scribal assistance and that the framing of his narrative evolved as his theological understanding deepened. This is not unique to Joseph Smith — it is the documentary pattern of virtually every major figure in religious history. The 1832 account differs from 1838 in emphasis and development, not in core claim: in both, Joseph Smith reports receiving a divine visitation and a calling to the restored gospel. The LDS Discussions review presents differences as incompatible contradictions; the actual documentary evidence supports interpretation of a developing theological articulation, not fabrication.

The claim that church leaders who knew Joseph never mentioned the First Vision in contemporary records proves less than LDS Discussions implies. Visions were common in early American revivalist culture. Joseph Smith himself describes the reaction of a minister as dismissive — not unprecedented. The significance of the First Vision as the founding theophany emerged as the Restoration’s theological framework developed. Historians of early Christianity observe exactly the same pattern: the unique Christological significance of the Resurrection was articulated with increasing theological precision across decades of the New Testament’s composition. Retroactive articulation of foundational significance is not suppression — it is how religious memory and theology mature.

IV. Lucy Mack Smith: The Source Critique That Proves Too Much

LDS Discussions makes repeated and emphatic objections to Saints’ reliance on Lucy Mack Smith’s history, noting that it was written decades after events, by Joseph’s mother, and therefore biased and unreliable. Applied consistently, this standard demolishes the evidentiary base of most ancient and early modern religious history — including the critics’ own preferred sources.

The canonical Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry. Paul’s epistles, the earliest New Testament stratum, were composed 20–25 years after the Crucifixion. The Sira of Muhammad was not compiled until a century or more after his death. Josephus wrote his Jewish Antiquities from memory and secondary sources decades after the events he describes. If a source written “decades after events by a family member” is categorically unreliable, LDS Discussions’ critique applies equally to the foundational historical records of every major religious tradition. The critique is not a principle — it is selective ammunition.

More critically, Lucy Mack Smith’s Biographical Sketches is a primary source by a direct eyewitness to many of the events she describes. It has been subjected to extensive historical criticism by both sympathetic and skeptical scholars. Using it alongside the Joseph Smith Papers — which LDS Discussions also attacks as too Joseph-centric — is standard historiography: use all available primary sources, note their limitations, and triangulate. Saints does exactly that.

Tellingly, LDS Discussions itself quotes Lucy Mack Smith approvingly in several chapters when her account serves its narrative, then attacks her reliability in chapters where she does not. FAIR Latter-day Saints documented this methodological inconsistency precisely in their 2022 analysis: “LDS Discussions criticizes Lucy Mack Smith’s reliability as a source, then quotes her approvingly when her account serves their argument.” This is not scholarly rigor. It is cherry-picking dressed as source criticism.

V. The Seer Stone: Transparency That Predates This Review

LDS Discussions insists that Saints obscures the seer-stone-in-a-hat translation method by conflating it with the Nephite interpreters. But the FAIR review of Saints confirms that the book covers “use of seer stones for treasure hunting and Book of Mormon translation” explicitly. More broadly, the Church published a full-color photograph of the actual seer stone in the Ensign in 2015, released a Gospel Topics Essay titled “Book of Mormon Translation” that discusses the stone-in-hat method in accessible detail, and produced an official “Now You Know” video on seer stones — all before Saints was published.

The charge that the Church was “still refusing” in 2018 to be honest about the translation method is simply false. It was publicly and officially addressed before Saints went to press. LDS Discussions does not acknowledge this prior disclosure — at all. In a honest review, omitting prior disclosure while charging concealment is not oversight. It is misrepresentation.

The further argument that the stone Joseph used for treasure-seeking is “the exact same stone” he used for translation and therefore invalidates his prophetic claims assumes its conclusion. It presupposes Joseph’s spiritual claims were false, then cites physical continuity as evidence. The use of a physical instrument does not determine the source of what is perceived through it — that is a theological and epistemological question, not a physical one. The argument is circular.

VI. The 1826 Trial: Misrepresentation of a Contested Record

LDS Discussions argues that Saints incorrectly states no evidence of guilt was found at the 1826 trial, pointing to a record from Fraser’s Magazine (1873) that appears to record a guilty verdict and fine. This is a legitimate historical point worth registering. However, LDS Discussions presents this as settled fact when the actual evidentiary landscape is considerably more contested.

The 1873 Fraser’s Magazine record was published 47 years after the 1826 proceedings. It was first publicized by anti-Mormon polemicists and has been the subject of sustained historical debate. Richard Bushman, in Rough Stone Rolling (2005), reviews the trial evidence and notes it “poses as many questions as it answers.” FAIR’s analysis of LDS Discussions specifically identifies the 1826 trial as one of several points where the site “highlights isolated sources while ignoring equally valid competing evidence.”

Contextually, even if a minor fine was levied, its legal and moral significance in early 19th-century America should not be inflated. Treasure-seeking was a widespread folk practice across rural New England and New York. The legal landscape governing it was unsettled. The inferential leap from a small-court proceeding to “Joseph Smith defrauded Josiah Stowell” requires evidence that a 47-year-old secondhand document does not provide.

VII. Charles Anthon: Both Accounts Are Contested

LDS Discussions charges that Saints presents the Martin Harris account of the Anthon visit without acknowledging Anthon’s contradictory letters of 1834 and 1841. This is a fair observation about narrative economy in a general-audience history. But it becomes dishonest when LDS Discussions omits that Anthon’s own two letters contradict each other. In 1834, Anthon claimed he never wrote any certificate. In 1841, he acknowledged writing something but described it differently. These accounts are internally inconsistent.

LDS Discussions itself states “the truth is that we will never know exactly what happened” — then proceeds to present the Anthon letters as definitive evidence against the Harris account. This is a logical self-contradiction the review never resolves.

Furthermore, Anthon’s ability to assess the characters was extremely limited. The Rosetta Stone had only recently been deciphered; Egyptian hieroglyphics were only beginning to be understood by the scholarly world; Anthon himself was not an Egyptologist. His negative assessment of the characters carries no scientific weight regarding their actual origins — only his opinion, formed under conditions of near-total scholarly ignorance of ancient Egyptian. His verdict proves nothing about authenticity.

VIII. Fanny Alger: The Evidence Supports Marriage, Not Affair

LDS Discussions argues that the Fanny Alger relationship was an affair rather than a plural marriage because Joseph had not yet claimed the sealing keys, there was no recorded revelation authorizing polygamy at that time, and Oliver Cowdery called it a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair (scrape).” Each argument requires direct engagement.

On the sealing keys: their formal introduction in Nauvoo does not preclude an earlier marriage ceremony of a different form. Early Latter-day Saint sacramental theology was actively developing. Applying later institutional definitions retroactively to an earlier developmental period is anachronistic. The question is not whether the 1835 relationship met the 1843 definition — it is whether it was understood by those present as a divinely authorized marriage. The sources, including the very autobiography LDS Discussions quotes, indicate a ceremony did take place.

On Oliver Cowdery’s characterization: the word “affair” in 19th-century American usage frequently meant “a messy or scandalous matter” and did not necessarily denote adultery. More critically, Oliver was writing in a private letter during the period of his deepest personal conflict with Joseph Smith — a conflict that led to his excommunication months later. A letter written by a man at the apex of a bitter personal dispute with its subject cannot be treated as an objective historical verdict. Oliver never recanted his testimony of the Book of Mormon despite decades away from the Church, a fact LDS Discussions cites — but he was also far from a dispassionate witness at this specific moment.

The best scholarly treatment of Fanny Alger — including Brian Hales’ multi-volume Joseph Smith’s Polygamy (2013) — concludes that the available evidence, taken as a whole and assessed by normal historical standards, supports characterizing the relationship as an early, irregular plural marriage. The Mosiah Hancock autobiography, which LDS Discussions itself cites, explicitly describes a ceremony performed by Levi Hancock. LDS Discussions quotes Hancock to show Joseph leveraged Levi’s affection for Clarissa Reed as a bargaining chip — but the same account unmistakably describes a formal marriage ceremony, not a clandestine affair.

Saints’ treatment of Fanny Alger as an early plural marriage reflects the position best supported by available evidence. That the relationship was unconventional, poorly understood by most contemporaries, and deeply painful for Emma Smith is not disputed. But “painful and messy” does not equal “adulterous affair,” and presenting the affair interpretation as the scholarly consensus is not accurate. It is an advocacy position.

IX. The Kirtland Safety Society: Conditional Prophecy in a National Panic

LDS Discussions makes its strongest case in this section. Wilford Woodruff’s journal records Joseph claiming an audible divine voice in connection with the Kirtland Safety Society, and Warren Parrish corroborates prophetic claims about the institution. If accurate, the bank’s failure raises legitimate prophetic credibility questions. We acknowledge this honestly — and then apply context LDS Discussions withholds.

Woodruff’s journal indicates Joseph said “if we would give heed to the commandments the Lord had given this morning all would be well.” This is explicitly conditional language — not an unconditional prophecy of success. Conditional prophecy failure due to covenant non-performance is consistent with Latter-day Saint theology and with ancient Biblical pattern. The same framework that LDS Discussions would apply to explain why Jonah’s 40-day warning against Nineveh was not fulfilled (the city repented) can logically apply here.

Second, the Kirtland Safety Society collapsed during the Panic of 1837 — one of the most severe national financial crises of the 19th century. Hundreds of banks across the United States failed during this period. Holding Joseph Smith personally responsible for the collapse of a frontier anti-bank in an unprecedented national banking catastrophe requires a causal standard applied to no secular banker of the same era.

Third, Saints’ acknowledgment that the failure devastated members and that Joseph bore personal losses is not concealment — it is what the book actually says. LDS Discussions’ characterization of this as blame-shifting is its own narrative imposition on the text.

X. The Book of Abraham: The Question Remains Open

LDS Discussions treats the Book of Abraham as a closed case: Joseph claimed translation from Abraham’s own papyrus; Egyptologists say the recovered fragments have nothing to do with Abraham; therefore Joseph Smith was not a prophet. Saints, in LDS Discussions’ framing, barely engages this supposedly decisive issue.

The Book of Abraham is not as closed as LDS Discussions presents. The Church’s own Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Abraham — linked from Saints’ digital apparatus — acknowledges the translation problem directly and presents four scholarly hypotheses: (1) the extant papyri were the source text, whose meaning is now understood differently through a revelatory lens; (2) the extant papyri were not the source, and the text of Abraham came by revelation while Joseph worked with related but distinct material; (3) a catalyst model in which the papyrus triggered revelation not tied to the document’s actual content; (4) a missing scroll model in which the relevant portion of the papyrus was not among the recovered fragments.

Each of these models has scholarly defenders. Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee, Latter-day Saint Egyptologists with peer-reviewed publications in mainstream academic venues, have argued that the Egyptian context of the papyri is far richer and more complex than the simple dismissal “it’s a common funerary text” suggests. The scholarly literature on the Book of Abraham remains genuinely contested. LDS Discussions presents one side of an ongoing scholarly dispute as the unanimous verdict of science. That is not accurate.

XI. DNA and Lamanites: What the Science Actually Permits

LDS Discussions states repeatedly that DNA evidence has “proven” Native Americans are not descended from Israelites, and that this disproves the Book of Mormon. The Church’s change of the introduction from “principal ancestors” to “among the ancestors” is treated as an admission of defeat.

What LDS Discussions does not acknowledge is that the DNA argument proves too much for its own purposes. The Lehite colony described in the Book of Mormon was a small family group entering an already-populated Americas — several hundred individuals at most entering a continent with millions of inhabitants. Any genetic signal from a founder population of that size, 2,600 years ago, would be statistically undetectable in modern populations even under the most favorable conditions for genetic survival. Population geneticists have confirmed this explicitly. Notably, Simon Southerton — a molecular biologist and prominent critic of the Book of Mormon on DNA grounds — himself acknowledges that a small founding population of the scale described cannot be detected by modern testing methods.

The change from “principal ancestors” to “among the ancestors” is not a concession of defeat. It is a correction of a traditional reading that went beyond what the text of the Book of Mormon itself explicitly claims. The Book of Mormon describes existing populations in the Americas and does not assert that the Lehites were the sole inhabitants. The earlier introduction language was a theological extrapolation — not what the scripture stated.

DNA evidence constrains but does not eliminate the historical possibility of the Book of Mormon narrative. The honest scientific assessment is “cannot be detected either way given known population sizes and time depth.” LDS Discussions presents this as “proven false.” These are not the same statement.

XII. Failed Prophecies: Context and Conditionality

LDS Discussions catalogues several prophecies it labels failures. A direct response to each:

D&C 111 (Salem treasure): LDS Discussions reads “gold and silver” literally and concludes the prophecy failed because no treasure was found. The revelation does not specify a timeline. The language of consecrated wealth as representing converts and their contributions is consistent with prophetic idiom throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. LDS Discussions acknowledges the apologist interpretation, then dismisses it without engaging the hermeneutical question of whether the same figurative register applies elsewhere in Joseph’s revelations.

Missouri temple: D&C 84 contains explicit conditionality. The building of the temple was contingent on faithfulness and gathering, conditions that were not met before the Saints’ expulsion from Missouri. Conditional prophecy non-fulfillment due to covenant non-performance is not the same as false prophecy. This is a distinction LDS Discussions consistently refuses to make, despite its application being standard in both Biblical and Latter-day Saint prophetic interpretation.

Civil War prophecy (D&C 87, 1832): This prophecy predicted war beginning in South Carolina, spreading internationally, and resulting in great destruction. The Civil War began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in 1861 — 29 years after the prophecy was given during a period of relative American national stability. For this to be coincidence or guesswork, Joseph Smith would have had to correctly identify the specific origin state of a conflict still decades in the future. LDS Discussions characterizes this as less impressive than claimed but offers no compelling explanation for the South Carolina specificity.

XIII. The Danites and the "Dissenters" Framework

LDS Discussions argues that Saints unfairly labels those who left over the Kirtland Safety Society collapse and related issues as “dissenters,” without giving proper weight to their legitimate grievances. The emotional resonance of this argument for faith-transition readers is real. But the historical record does not vindicate all dissenters as simply reasonable critics speaking truth to power.

Oliver Cowdery’s excommunication was not simply for criticizing Joseph. He was charged with attempting to sell consecrated Church property in violation of his covenants, undermining Church authority while still claiming its institutional protections, and aligning with hostile parties against the community. He also never recanted his testimony of the Book of Mormon across decades outside the Church, and returned to full membership before his death. His story is not the story of a man destroyed by Joseph Smith for telling inconvenient truths — it is genuinely complicated.

On the Danites: Saints itself acknowledges Joseph “likely sanctioned some of their actions.” This is a genuine concession in a Church-published history. LDS Discussions reads it as minimization, but it is more transparency than previous official LDS histories offered on the subject.

Treating every person who departed the early Church as a more reliable historical witness than those who remained applies an inversion of normal evidentiary standards. Departure from an institution does not confer superior truth-telling credibility. Dissenters provide one evidentiary stream among many — to be weighed, not privileged automatically.

XIV. The Inoculation Thesis: Unproven and Internally Inconsistent

LDS Discussions’ most pervasive charge is that Saints was designed to “inoculate” members: mention difficult topics just enough to create a veneer of transparency without actually engaging them. This theory is stated as fact throughout the review but is never demonstrated. It is an interpretive framework applied in advance, not a conclusion drawn from evidence.

The inoculation thesis requires us to believe that the Church History Department — staffed by professional historians trained at major research universities, publishing in peer-reviewed venues — undertook a six-year production process with triple-and-quadruple fact-checking specifically to obscure material they knew was historically significant. This presupposes widespread coordinated bad faith across dozens of scholars, writers, editors, and reviewers. No evidence for this coordination is offered.

The alternative explanation — that a narrative history for a general readership makes standard editorial choices about in-text detail versus supplemental depth, consistent with mainstream historical publishing practice — requires no conspiracy and is fully consistent with all observable facts.

The Saints project is accompanied by over 200 Church History Topics essays, a complete source bibliography, and direct digital links to the Joseph Smith Papers — the most comprehensive primary source archive of early Latter-day Saint history ever assembled, produced by the Church itself and available free to the public. An institution engaged in systematic concealment does not fund the most exhaustive open-access primary source project in its own history.

The Church that LDS Discussions characterizes as concealing its history is simultaneously the institution that commissioned the Gospel Topics Essays (addressing plural marriage, race and the priesthood, the Book of Abraham, multiple First Vision accounts, and the seer stone translation directly), the Joseph Smith Papers Project, the Saints volumes themselves, and the Church History Topics supplemental essays. These are not the actions of a concealing institution. They are the most substantial transparency initiative in Latter-day Saint history publishing in a century.

XV. LDS Discussions’ Methodology: What FAIR Documented

In September 2022, FAIR Latter-day Saints published a detailed methodological analysis of LDS Discussions as a platform, identifying five systematic patterns across its content:

Unsubstantiated claims presented as fact — opinions asserted without credible source documentation
Inconsistent source usage — sources credited when helpful, attacked when inconvenient
Reliance on tertiary and polemical sources — privileging late, secondhand, or hostile accounts over contemporary primary records
Cherry-picking — presenting isolated evidence while ignoring equally or more weighty competing evidence
Quote truncation — excerpting sources in ways that reverse or misrepresent their original meaning

Each of these patterns appears in the Saints review documented above. The Lucy Mack Smith inconsistency is shown. The 1873 Fraser’s record is presented as conclusive while evidentiary debate is suppressed. Anthon’s internal contradictions are omitted. The Mosiah Hancock autobiography is quoted for its framing while its explicit ceremonial language is withheld. Woodruff’s conditional language is silently dropped. The Panic of 1837 context for the Kirtland Safety Society is never mentioned.

A review of Saints built on these methodological practices is advocacy dressed in the language of scholarship. Readers deserve to know the difference, because the stakes are real: people make significant life decisions based on historical claims they trust to be fairly presented.

XVI. What Saints Actually Accomplishes

Saints: The Standard of Truth is a remarkable achievement in religious publishing. In a single narrative volume accessible to any reader, it explicitly:

Presents the seer stone translation method
Covers plural marriage beginning with Fanny Alger, including polyandry
Addresses multiple First Vision accounts
Discusses the Kirtland Safety Society failure and its human cost
Presents the Nauvoo Expositor controversy and Joseph Smith’s role in its destruction
Addresses Masonic connections to the temple ceremony
Discusses Joseph Smith’s possession of a gun at Carthage Jail
Presents the treasure-digging background of Joseph Smith’s early life
Links to over 200 supplemental Church History Topics essays
Provides a complete bibliography for every claim in the volume

Prior to 2013, most of these topics were not addressed in any official Church publication. The Gospel Topics Essays broke that silence. Saints built the narrative infrastructure to make these topics accessible to ordinary readers at scale. This is not concealment — it is the most significant transparency initiative in Church history publishing in nearly a century.

That LDS Discussions grades this achievement as systematic deception tells us more about LDS Discussions’ predetermined verdict than about the quality of Saints.

XVII. Conclusion: The Standard Applied to the Critique

LDS Discussions named its website after the very thing it declines to apply to itself: a standard of truth. A genuine standard of truth requires consistent source evaluation, honest acknowledgment of competing evidence, transparent methodology, and intellectual integrity about what is known versus assumed. The four-part review of Saints fails each of these tests at multiple documented points.

The review never acknowledges the extensive supplemental apparatus that is integral to the Saints project. It never credits the book for any of the genuinely difficult topics it covers. It applies a standard — comprehensive critical disclosure within a narrative history — that no narrative history of any tradition anywhere meets. It cites sources inconsistently, selectively, and at points inaccurately. And it presents as its conclusion a predetermined verdict — that the Church conceals its history — that the totality of the Church’s actual historical publishing record over the preceding decade directly contradicts.

The questions LDS Discussions raises about early Latter-day Saint history are real questions deserving real answers. Many of them are genuinely difficult. Latter-day Saint scholars, historians, and apologists are actively engaged with all of them in published, peer-reviewed work. Readers seeking honest engagement with these questions are directed to the Joseph Smith Papers, the Gospel Topics Essays, the Interpreter Foundation, FAIR Latter-day Saints, BYU Studies, and the Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University.

Saints: The Standard of Truth is not a perfect book. No single-volume narrative history of a 31-year period ever is. But it is honestly written, extensively sourced, professionally produced, and represents a genuine advance in the Church’s public engagement with its own history. That is a standard of truth. By any fair measure, it is met.

What it is not — and was never designed to be — is the comprehensive critical encyclopedia that would satisfy an adversary whose conclusion was reached before the first page was turned.

Primary Sources: Joseph Smith Papers Project (josephsmithpapers.org); Gospel Topics Essays, churchofjesuschrist.org; Saints: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2018); Wilford Woodruff Journal, January 6, 1837 (Church History Library); D&C 61, 84, 87, 111, 132; Mosiah Hancock Autobiography (L. Tom Perry Special Collections).

Secondary Sources: Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005); Brian Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 3 vols. (Greg Kofford Books, 2013); Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness (Signature Books, 1997); BYU Religious Studies Center, “Getting to Know Saints,” Religious Educator 19:2 (2018); FAIR Latter-day Saints, Book Review: Saints, Vol. 1 (2018); FAIR Latter-day Saints, “Yet Another Critical Website,” fairlatterdaysaints.org (2022); Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee, various peer-reviewed publications; Simon Southerton, Losing a Lost Tribe (Signature Books, 2004).