Posted on 06/30/2008 6:25:14 PM PDT by Utah Girl
Viewers of tonight's season premiere of "History Detectives" will learn that a book about the horrors of "Female Life Among the Mormons" is a work of fiction.
And the woman who owns the 1856 volume will be "disappointed" by that news.
"History Detectives" (8 p.m., Ch. 7) is a fascinating series in which historical objects are examined to determine if they're authentic. (Tonight's other two segments feature a World War II diary and a coin shot by Annie Oakley.)
In the case of the 1856 book about the horrors of Mormon polygamy, Marcie Waterman Murray of Stanfordville, N.Y., bought it at an auction and wants to know who wrote it. (There's no author listed.)
"I was very moved by this book. It really stayed with me a long time. I've become fascinated with it," Murray says.
What stayed with her is a barbaric account, written in the first person, of a young woman who married a Mormon elder in New York and traveled to Utah with Brigham Young. She suffered the "abominations" of polygamy and the "degradation it imposes on females."
That includes one account of a misbehaving wife who was stripped nude, tied to a tree and whipped until "blood ran to the ground."
Enter Tukufu Zuberi from "History Detectives."
"You don't know if this is a real book. You don't know if it's really from the 19th century. You don't know what it is," Zuberi said in a phone interview with the Deseret News. "But it is a document which definitely offers a skewed view toward marriage among Mormons.
"It puts (women) on the level of being slaves. You can take it as something that's either laughable, looking at it today, or something that really provided fuel for those who were anti-Mormon back in the 19th century."
Without detailing the entire episode, Zuberi quickly discovers that this is not a genuine history. Among other things, it purports to tell the story of Joseph Smith's death and gets it flat-out wrong.
And the show's conclusions are clear. "It seems that our book is little more than pulp fiction, and shot through with historical errors," Zuberi says in the show.
The segment briefly outlines 19th-century LDS history, including the effort to demonize Mormons.
"Someone could write it today in order to kind of speak badly of the Mormons," Zuberi said. "Someone could've written it then to speak badly of the Mormons. And that's our task — to find out."
He does his best to track down the author, including using "some high-tech stuff to determine who wrote the book and determine the authenticity or lack thereof."
"This one I was surprised by. The Mormon story has a lot of twists and turns."
In 21st-century Utah, "Female Life Among the Mormons" seems silly, even campy. But, obviously, the book's owner thought — perhaps hoped — it was genuine.
Upon learning that it's fiction, she gasps and says, "I'm actually a little disappointed. But I'm glad to know the truth."
But it certainly seemed as if she would've been more glad if Mormon women really had been tied to trees and whipped.
Couldn’t begin to answer that question. I can tell you this, the HS is present in churches where the Triune God is worshiped. Not in some groups that denies such.
Shootin’ his own...
Fitting....
Well said.
Interesting source you selected, many interesting articles including...
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Cults/mormon.htm
It is also ironic that since your “prophet” damned all true Christian faiths as being from the devil and until the past couple of decades the idea of ridiculing the pastors from non mormon churches was part of your temple service, that you would select a trinitarian evangelical site for a resource...
Joe also told me the only joy he has in hell is laughing at the suckers who believed his tripe.
I have to agree with that. He was quite eloquent. It's a pity, though, that he had to throw so much untrue chaff in with a little wheat of truth.
Is this secret code?
Talmage said that the Holy Ghost "is a personage of Spirit" (A. of F., p.42; see D.& C. 130:22), but later he claimed an immaterial being or body cannot exist (Ibid., pp. 43, 48). Which is it?
The Holy Spirit is one of Father spirit children who has not yet been born into the earth life.
How can the HS be a god not having become mortal to learn the discipline of the ordinances and receive its physical body? Why doesn't the HS have a name like Jesus or Lucifer? Where does it say in the bom that the HS is a spirit child of god (Adam?), why couldn't it be from one of the other gods?
In the Lectures on Faith, published in the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835, it was declared that there were only two personages in the Godhead—the Father and the Son—and that the Holy Spirit is the mind of the Father and the Son.
Milton R. Hunter said that the "crowning Gospel ordinance requisite for Godhood is celestial marriage ... obedience to this law is absolutely necessary in order to obtain the highest exaltation in the Kingdom of God" (The Gospel Through the Ages, pp.118-19). According to mormon theology, then, it would have been impossible for the Holy Ghost to have obtained Godhood, since he had no body with which to obey the law of "celestial marriage." In a revelation given by Joseph Smith we read: "Broad is the gate, and wide the way that leadeth to the deaths; and many there are that go in thereat ..."(Doctrine and Covenants 132:25).
Brigham Young said that the devil was "a being without a body, whereas our God has a body, parts, and passions. The Devil was cursed and sent down from heaven. He has no body of his own...." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p.331). What did the HS do wrong to be denied a body?
Mormon apostle John Widtsoe said that the Holy Ghost "is the third member of the Godhead and is a personage, distinct from the Holy Spirit. As a personage, the Holy Ghost cannot any more than the Father and Son be everywhere present in person" (Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, pp. 76-77).
If you know the truth and are deceiving others, that is very bad. As it is, you have either been deceived or you are deceiving.
Well F, problem is I don't know which mormon doctrine on the Holy Spirit is the real doctine. Here you have a spirit child without going through the ordinances or celestial marriage becoming a god without a body, taught to be either a mind or a spirit enitity then being separated from the Holy Ghost! Which teaching is real so I know which one to be deceptive with!
From what I have read on seen so far, I haven't seen a true Christian who is against Mormonism. I've seen a lot of blather and bigotry from a lot of scudders her who wouldn't know a real Christian if he saw one.
BTTT
You pick........
Brillianht rejoinder if I ever saw one.
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