Memory and Lucy Mack Smith – Part III

In addition, to clarify the idea of Church Records regarding Joseph Smith, it should be kept in mind what as printed on LDS.org Church website under “Sources Used in This Book” describing the current published “Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith” the third and fourth paragraphs:

“The way in which these sermons were recorded is very different from the way sermons were recorded for later Presidents of the Church. Church Presidents who came after Joseph Smith used scribes to record in shorthand their addresses to Church members. When electronic recording devices, such as tape recorders and TV or motion picture film, became available, these were used to record the precise words delivered by Church leaders. During the lifetime of Joseph Smith, however, shorthand was not in widespread use. Therefore, the sermons he delivered were recorded imprecisely in longhand, generally by scribes, Church leaders, and other Church members. Almost all of Joseph Smith’s addresses were given extemporaneously, without prepared texts, so the notes taken by those who listened to him constitute the only record of the discourses. While some lengthy reports of his addresses exist, most are summarizations of the messages delivered by the Prophet. Unfortunately, there is no record for many of the discourses given by Joseph Smith. Of the more than 250 sermons he is known to have delivered, reports or notes taken by scribes or others cover only about 50 of the sermons given.”

This is not to lessen what we have, only to understand much is summarization, as all writings tend to be that were written “after the fact,” as was the information Lucy Mack Smith is credited with writing—the overall information is accurate, exact details were often questionable since they were based on memory.

Also, under the “Rules of Transcription” in “The Joseph Smith Papers” project, the following is stated: “Text transcription and verification is therefore an imperfect art more than a science…Even the best transcribers and verifiers will differ from one another in making such judgments. Interested readers may wish to compare the transcripts with the images of the documents on this site to understand how these transcription rules have been applied.”

This is not stated here in brief to suggest in any way the inaccuracy of Church history or any document in that historical record (or doctrinal information within the Book of Mormon), but only to point out what is taken for granted today, and therefore used as judgment by most people as in Lucy Mack Smith’s comments, were not arrived at in the past as we understand they are today. Almost all such records of the past dealing with side issues (i.e., geographical locations, what some claims another said, etc.) were reliant on memory, and memory is faulty at best (this is true even when reading old journals). 

This is one of the reasons so many people have spent their entire careers at BYU and elsewhere in pouring over these ancient documents to make certain we have as accurate an understanding of the past as possible. But unless one pours over original documents, vets through investigation the process of documentation and pathway to current knowledge, it is unwise to use past quotes, other than the actual scriptural record, as support for a viewpoint. This is especially true when one gets that information from a theorist (one promoting a viewpoint), which is a major problem today that we have in understanding the past.

As B. H. Roberts in 1909 wrote: “the generations who succeed us in unfolding in a larger way some of the yet unlearned truths of the Gospel, will find that we have had some misconceptions and made some wrong deductions in our day and time. The book of knowledge is never a sealed book. It is never ‘completed and forever closed;’ rather it is an eternally open book, in which one may go on constantly discovering new truths and modifying our knowledge of old ones” (B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God, 3 vols., Vol 3, pp503-504, The Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1909). 

We can say now that this observation pertains equally today to our continuing efforts to know the Book of Mormon better, both through study and also by faith.

Again, on the Church website, it states: “Today, we learn about the past through incomplete pieces of history. As we study these records, we must remember that they do not represent the entirety of the past. From our perspective in the present, the past is mostly gone. The people have passed away; their experiences have ended. However, pieces of the past remain—letters, diaries, records of organizations, material objects. Today, we can learn about the past only indirectly through the pieces that remain. Information is always lost between the past and the present. We must study the records that do survive while remembering that they do not represent the entirety of the past.

Consider one example: When Joseph Smith preached a sermon to the Saints, he typically had no prepared text, and no audio or video recording was made. Though a few in attendance may have written notes or reflections, even fewer of those notes survive. Thus, we cannot claim to know everything Joseph Smith ever said, though we can, for instance, quote Wilford Woodruff’s notes about Joseph’s sermon” (Keith A. Erekson, “Understanding Church History by Study and Faith,” Church History Library Director, Salt Lake City

Erekson (left), an award-winning author, teacher, and public historian, appointed the Church Library Director in 2014, also wrote: “From our perspective today, we obviously know more than participants did about the outcome of the past, but we also know far less about their experience of living in it. The people who lived in the past belonged to their own times and places and circumstances. To have charity for their differences and empathy for their experiences, we must begin with humility about our own limitations. It requires humility not to judge people in the past by our standards. It requires humility to admit we do not know everything, to wait patiently for more answers, and to continue learning. When new sources are discovered that provide new insight into things we thought we knew, it requires humility to revise our understanding.”

The point to all of this is that telling a story after-the-fact, always leaves the door open to interchange of circumstances between what is common knowledge at the time of the retelling compared to what was known during the unfolding of the event. As an example, for many years after WWII, the mere mention of the Battleship Missouri (Big Mo) in a conversation could hardly be told without mentioning that it was the ship on which the Japanese surrender was held—even if the event of the story being told occurred before the surrender.  When telling the story of buying a new car, one can hardly keep from mentioning that it was the car that was stolen the following year—even though the story preceded the theft. We add words of explanation when a future event or knowledge is known. That after-the-fact the hill near Palmyra was later called the hill Cumorah by early Church members does not meant it was so called initially—or at any time—by Joseph Smith. But those telling the story later would probably use the name then known—the hill Cumorah—in place of “the hill” which is the term Joseph is known to have used, which would make sure to a listener which hill was meant (there were many moraine hills in the area around Palmyra). It is only natural that both Lucy Mack Smith and Martha Coray would use Cumorah to clarify for any reader that was the hill meant.

As Erekson stated in his five points at the end of his article under: “A Pattern for Learning by Study and Faith: [item 2] “Plant the seed in our minds and hearts through careful reading and reflection. (Is this a piece of the past or a story told later? …What evidence supports it?)