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Guide Home > Early LDS History > Journal of Discourses

Additional Topics

The following are additional topic areas related to Journal of Discourses. If there is a bracket number after the topic, that number indicates how many actual articles there are related to that subject. If the link for the topic is not live, it simply means the topic is a 'planned area' for future growth.

FAIR Resources

These links are either to Web pages hosted on the FAIR Website, or to FAIR Papers. FAIR Papers are short articles about specific topics or questions, written by members of FAIR. These articles can be downloaded and read in PDF format and are intended to be distributed by e-mail or print for the general use of our patrons. (To read FAIR Papers you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader. It can be downloaded free from the Adobe Web site.) Click on a title below to visit a FAIR Web page or to read the latest version of a FAIR Paper.

Michael Parker, "Did Brigham Young Say that He Would Kill an Adulterous Wife with a Javelin?," (Mesa, Arizona: FAIR, November 2004) Anti-Mormon critics frequently comb through 19th century writings and sermons looking for comments that can be used to disparage Latter-day Saint leaders. Their goal is to persuade members, investigators, and those outside the Church that those leaders were undeserving of any claim to divine inspiration and that consequently the Church itself must be false. Such snippets can only achieve the intended shock value when pulled from their literary and cultural environments. One frequently-used comment was made by Brigham Young in 1865. In an address delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, President Young spoke of being able to put a javelin through an adulterous wife's heart. Standing alone, such as statement is shocking to readers today. What eager critics fail to do is to explain then context in which this was given, particularly the Biblical allusion to Numbers 25:6-15. In his paper, Parker discusses this and other statements involving "blood atonement" and shows how modern anti-Mormons misrepresent the statements of early Church leaders.

Ensign Articles

These articles cited below provide information on the topic of this page. The Ensign is one of the official publications of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When you click on one of the article links below, you are whisked to the article found in the archives of the Church's Web site.

Gerald E. Jones, "I've been reading the Journal of Discourses with a great deal of interest and pleasure, but I notice that they are not printed by the Church. Can you tell me how authoritative I should consider them to be?," Ensign, August 1978.

Other Resources

The resources listed below are related items available on the Web that should be of interest. These links are to information not located on the FAIR Web site.

"Cumulative Table of Contents," Journal of Mormon History (2002) A cumulative table of contents for the first 28 volumes of the Journal of Mormon History.

Journal of Discourses. The complete Journal of Discourses on-line.

Journal of Discourses. PDF version of the Journal of Dicourses. This set includes modernized spellings and punctuation corrections.

Journal of Discourses. HTML versions of the Journal of Discourses. This set includes modernized spellings and punctuation corrections.

Journal of Discourses. PDF scans of the original printed editions of the Journal of Discourses.

Michael R. Ash, The Journal of Discourses.

W. John Walsh, Are Brigham Young's Sermons Scripture?.

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Last Updated April 27, 2008
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