Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (619425)	7/14/2011 7:01:27 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576266

I read a great biography of Joseph Smith. If you look at him as a great American con man, perhaps the greatest, he was really a remarkable individual. He deserves a movie treatment! How many con men have founded a religion, had it stick and grow, charged all the members of that religion a 10% tithe, told them that God told him to institute polygamy when he got a hard-on for some of his worshiper's daughters, Etc? A religion that now has TWO candidates for president? This was the book - supposedly the BEST non-official version: amazon.com Like all really convincing con men, Smith eventually convinced HIMSELF. Besides just the ridiculousness of his whole tale, Smith claimed the tablets were written in "Reformed Egyptian". It was just at the time that a lot of ancient stuff was being discovered in Egypt. Some of it was touring near him, and the guy running the tour heard Smith could READ "Ancient Egyptian". So, he brought him the hieroglyphics for translation! Smith "translated" them, cooking up a story that related to and supported HIS cockamamie religious tales. At the time, no one could dispute him. Of course, shortly the Rosetta stone was found and hieroglyphs were translated too. Someone did the ACTUAL translation of the text, which was a warehouse inventory or something! But, like today's Republicans, he talked fast and got past it. He could STILL find people DUMB enough to become Mormons! Who are pretty much all Republicans TODAY! "A Timeless Classic in Mormon Studies, April 2, 2001 By Missing in Action (Idaho Falls, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) This review is from: No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (Paperback) I've consummed a library of books on Mormon studies, and had held off on reading "No Man Knows My History" because I had already read a considerable quantity of biographical material on Joseph Smith. I capitulated at last only because it is among the most well known books on early Mormon history. I am so glad I did. No book could have pulled it all together and made sense of it all as well as Fawn Brodie's book. It is as valuable today as it was when it was first written over half a century ago. None of the objective scholarship of recent years contradicts her conclusions, but rather validates her, page after page after page. Her insight is piercing, her style is almost poetic, and her message is powerful. It is not any easy book for a Mormon to read, as is evidenced by some of the reactionary attacks Brodie receives in some of the reviews already written. The faithful do not want to hear that Joseph Smith was an "evolutionary revolutionary," his doctrine growing with his ego and sense of personal magnificence. But this is no mean swipe at the character of Joseph Smith...if anything, you come away with a sense of awe at the creative genius, the charismatic giant that he must have been. If he brought scorn and violence upon himself and his people, it was a measure of the power he produced and the fear that he struck in lesser men with whom he shared his time and space. Nevertheless, Brodie's exploration of the world of Joseph Smith and the context within which his doctrine evolved is brilliant. She is adept at recognizing the role that projection has played throughout his career, beginning with the Book of Mormon, and continuing on through all of his other writings, including the History of the Church. Ms. Brodie says it best herself in the opening lines of Chapter 19: "A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become." Or as is so often the case, "less what a man was than what he wished he had become." To one who has studied the role of paradigms in shaping the way we interpret our world, Brodie's book makes the most beautiful sense. To one who's faith is at stake, however, her book may serve to threaten the idylic, heroic legend of Joseph Smith that has been carefully nurtured since his murder in 1844. This is among the finest pieces of historical literature I have had the priveledge of reading. Her scholarship and writing and fearless approach to tackle controversial issues with objectivity and sensitivity is matched only by Juanita Brooks in the realm of Mormon studies. This is a book not just to read, but to consume."