As promised, here is a first post on John Turner’s Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (Yale Univ. Press, 2025). This is about as good an objective biography (neither anti- nor apologetic) of Joseph Smith as we’re going to get. It comes in with under 400 pages of text, making it readable in a way that Rough Stone Rolling wasn’t. Go read my earlier post Is It Worth Reading Mormon History? for a few historical preliminaries.
I imagine most readers are fairly familiar with the Joseph Smith story in New York (First Vision, angels and plates, seer stones and Book of Mormon text, founding of the LDS Church). So rather than try to summarize the book’s narrative, I will below list a few quotations that jumped out at me as I read the book, about one per chapter, along with my commentary.
“Smith’s enduring success was unlikely in the extreme” (p. 3). With little formal education, he authored (dictated, translated, whatever) a book that remains both popular and controversial two hundred years later, founded a church that continues to grow, and established a city in Illinois that for a brief period rivalled Chicago in size. His notoriety, along with his controversial legacy, is why we continue to get new biographies of him. It’s why a historian like Turner undertakes yet another JS biography.
Young Joseph “could feel nothing” at religious revivals (p. 21). “I will take my Bible and go out into the woods and learn more in two hours than you could if you were to go to meeting two years” (p. 28). You might call this the pre-charismatic Joseph, one that most of us might strongly agree with. I am not at all attracted to modern-day Evangelical over-the-top emotional preaching or Evangelical Jesus rock services. I am inclined to think most of us would learn more from reading a modern New Testament translation for two hours than by attending LDS adult Sunday School class for two years.
I’m going to throw in a longer quotation from Chapter 3, “Plates,” to show the author’s direct approach to controversial issues, in this case whether Joseph had actual ancient plates or some sort of object that he fashioned himself. After briefly giving the pros and cons, Turner states:
Along with an acknowledgment of the scanty evidence for this critical episode in Joseph Smith’s life, readers deserve an author’s best sense of what transpired. In this case, it is that Joseph did not have the golden plates. When someone refuses to show a hidden, valuable object to others, the simplest explanation is that he does not possess it. (p. 40)
So Turner is laying his cards on the table. Mainstream Mormons are quite likely to disagree on the existence of ancient plates, while most non-LDS readers find Turner’s tentative conclusion rather obvious. But by noting “scanty evidence” and clearly labeling his conclusion as an opinion, Turner doesn’t force mainstream LDS readers into a corner. I’m sure he wants mainstream Mormons to be comfortable buying and reading his book.
“Saunders and other neighbors confirmed Lucy Harris’s allegation that her husband beat her” (p. 41). Martin Harris is not a particularly sympathetic figure. Here’s an interesting quotation:
On one visit to the Smith house, Harris lost a pin with which he had been picking his teeth. No one could find it. “Take your stone,” Harris requested. Joseph took one of his seer stones, placed it in his “old white hat — and placed his face in the hat.” Then, without looking, Joseph reached out his hand and found the missing pin. (p. 41-42)
That sure sounds like a con. Martin wasn’t just a wife-beater, he was a gullible wife-beater.
“The three men — Harris, Cowdery, and David Whitmer — signed a statement, probably composed by Cowdery, stating that an angel had shown them the plates and the engravings on them” (p. 59). I’ve never seen an attribution of authorship of the Three Witnesses text before. Cowdery is a reasonable guess, but the “probably” in the quotation shows it’s just a guess. But let’s be clear: there are not three witness statements. The details each gave in other places, noted in Turner’s discussion, are not identical. I am aware of no document that Cowdery or some other person actually drafted and the three men actually signed, contrary to what Turner states in the quotation (“signed a statement”). All we have is a printed text at the front of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, with the names of the three men printed below it. For all we know, one or more of them might have been initially surprised by the printed statement, either because it left out things they experienced or because it offered statements or conclusions not part of their experience.
Joseph Smith “is the most successful creator of scripture in American history by a wide margin” (p. 71). On the other hand, as the reader is no doubt aware, the Book of Mormon remains controversial, even within the Church. Turner does not dwell on this, but offers a short paragraph signaling the book’s shaky status:
Archeologists have not discovered sites or inscriptions that closely match the Book of Mormon narrative. The DNA of Indigenous Americans does not reveal Hebraic ancestry. Linguistic elements of the Book of Mormon that resemble Hebrew could reflect the influence of the Bible, not original elements of Jaredite or Nephite culture. There are also a host of anachronisms in the text, from the presence of horses in ancient American civilizations to the incorporation of New Testament material in portions that predate those texts. (p. 67)
He adds the understated conclusion that “the consensus of non-Latter-day Saint experts is that the Book of Mormon’s narratives are fictional rather than historical.” In a footnote he adds that “Latter-day Saint scholars have intelligent answers to many of these objections.” A minor quibble here: it’s not like there are two separate and distinct camps of scholars, LDS who defend the party line and non-LDS who uniformly reject the Church’s many claims for the book. There are LDS scholars who reject some LDS claims and there is a range of opinion among non-LDS scholars who criticize it (on various grounds).
“Joseph had stopped using his seer stone as a conduit for his revelations. He now dictated the words of the Lord in a trance-like state without the stone, hat, or any other device” (p. 82). This was toward the end of 1830. Most commentators sort of breeze over this shift, as if it’s just the normal thing for a Christian prophet to do, a regular occurrence, an established procedure. Not at all. The use of seer stones in this context is unique. There is no clear rationale offered by the Church for why Joseph needed seer stones in the first place or why, if they were so effective at channeling God’s will or a stream of words, that Joseph ever set them aside. Until recently, the Church worked hard to avoid any discussion of seer stones.
The fact that no succeeding senior LDS leader (deemed “prophets, seers, and revelators”) has successfully used a seer stone as Joseph did seems to undercut the whole notion that there was any efficacy to any seer stone. It’s not like LDS Presidents, upon taking office, undertake a “seer stone year” to get the hang of doing revelation, then set them aside. The only LDS official to use the seer stone method other than Joseph was Hiram Page, and Joseph rejected his writings/revelations as spurious (discussed by Turner at p. 82).
These quotes are from the first hundred pages of the text and take us to the dawn of 1831, when Joseph and most of the early Mormon converts relocate to Ohio. I’ll cover the Ohio and Missouri material in my next post, followed by a third post on the momentous Nauvoo period.
Wheat & Tares 
Dave B,
Thanks for sharing this summary. I hope to read this book this weekend.
My perspective is the founding of the church changed Joseph Smith and the longer Smith was involved in “building Zion” the more distant he became from the “boy prophet” he once was. A thing that stands out to me is how different the Doctrine & Covenants reads from the Book of Mormon, especially after 1830. First there was the move to Kirtland and then the focus on establishing Zion in Missouri. These activities consumed Smith and I believe changed him, or otherwise brought out character traits that clouded his prophetic gift.
For after 1830 Smith changed from being a prophet – meaning a person who reveals God’s word – to being a promoter who constantly gave his followers something to believe even when the last promise went unfulfilled. The LDS mythology of Joseph Smith is that he was persecuted and this is the reason for his struggles. A more truthful history is that Smith was a charismatic yet erratic leader and he constantly over promised and under delivered, and then blamed others for falling short. But give Joseph Smith credit for always trying again, and again, and again, until he ran out of friends who would protect and cover for him.
Back to the “boy prophet” role, The Book of Mormon is in a different language than the Doctrine & Covenants. What explains this? A simple obvious example is the word “plainness”. This word is used 10 times in The Book of Mormon and is a favorite word of Nephi and commonly used in the “Small Plates” of The Book of Mormon. The word appears once in the Doctrine & Covenants and it is in section 133 that was written in November 1831. As I mentioned, once Smith got involved in “building Zion” it seems the Lord no longer prioritized plainness, and in fact the religion taught by Joseph Smith became increasingly complicated.
The problem with explaining away The Book of Mormon is that there no rational explanation. If Joseph Smith wrote it he did it with a grammar and vocabulary that was unique to him. If others wrote it you have the mystery of who and how did the subterfuge escape discovery?
John G. Turner has been criticized as an apologist (from the x Mormon folks) and as anti-LDS by some believers (or so he claimed on Mormon Stories). And my reading of the book pushes me to believe that I can see a reason for both of these criticisms. You are usually doing a pretty good job as an historian if you can get both sides to criticize you. So I give credit to the author for this. However, I don’t know whether this is evidence that he is a thorough and fair historian or whether he is an author who knows how to sell books.
“He now dictated the words of the Lord”
IDK, Terryl Givens called that “absurd and childish,” so I’m not sure whether it’s a faithful or unfaithful perspective.
Regardless, I’ve been impressed with what I’ve read of the book so far. Turner’s writing style seems so…readable? A bit odd, when you consider this was published by a university press and Rough Stone Rolling was a “popular” work.
Joseph’s usage of seer stones shows a perfect progression as he matured as a seer.
He starts off using them in ways that were common according to the folklore of the time and place.
When he gets the interpreters that came with the plates he learns to use such devices in ways that are more appropriate to the purposes of the Kingdom.
After which he uses his own seer stone in a way that demonstrates fluency in his gift.
He finally matures in his gift of seership to the degree that he no longer relies on such devices; it’s as if his own mind becomes a veritable urim and thummim.
All of that said, it should be noted that the scriptures point to the idea that every faithful latter-day saint may become as fluent as Joseph was in the spirit of prophecy and revelation given enough time and experience on their part.
I just finished listening to the Smith-Pettit Lecture Dr. Turner gave at this year’s Sunstone Symposium. In compressing the substance of this biography into a single-hour address, Turner focused on the alliterative parallel of “plates and polygamy.” He drew behavioral comparisons between the younger Joseph claiming to possess the golden plates and an older Joseph rolling out polygamy. Interesting to see his observations on Smith’s risk taking, the leader’s willingness to double down, and his practice of crafting revelations convenient to his needs at the time.
It’s great to see a new biography out from an accomplished scholar–especially one who is an outsider and poised to be objective. Having listened to his Sunstone address, and especially his lively Q&A after, I appreciate Turner’s flair for good communication and relatability. Some scholars are able to synthesize incredible amounts of research in their own mind but fail to turn that knowledge into accessible prose. Not sure if or when I’ll have the time to read this latest biography, but the buzz seems really good. Thank you for the initial summary, Dave B.