Footnotes
JS, Journal, 13 Dec. 1841 and 21 Dec. 1842; Orson Spencer, “Death of Our Beloved Brother Willard Richards,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 16 Mar. 1854, [2].
Deseret News. Salt Lake City. 1850–.
Jessee, “Writing of Joseph Smith’s History,” 456, 458; Woodruff, Journal, 22 Jan. 1865.
Jessee, Dean C. “The Writing of Joseph Smith’s History.” BYU Studies 11 (Summer 1971): 439–473.
Woodruff, Wilford. Journals, 1833–1898. Wilford Woodruff, Journals and Papers, 1828–1898. CHL. MS 1352.
“Letters to and from the Prophet,” ca. 1904, [3], Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL.
Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.
See the full bibliographic entry for JS Collection, 1827–1844, in the CHL catalog.
Footnotes
Letter from James Arlington Bennet, 24 Oct. 1843, underlining in original.
JS, Journal, 9 and 13 Nov. 1843. In a December letter to Bennet, Willard Richards stated that “the Generals reply was dictated.” (Willard Richards, Nauvoo, IL, to James Arlington Bennet, Arlington House, Long Island, NY, 15 Dec. 1843, copy, Willard Richards, Journals and Papers, CHL.)
Richards, Willard. Journals and Papers, 1821–1854. CHL.
Willard Richards, Nauvoo, IL, to James Arlington Bennet, Arlington House, Long Island, NY, 15 Dec. 1843, copy, Willard Richards, Journals and Papers, CHL; see also James Arlington Bennet, Arlington House, Long Island, NY, to Willard Richards, [Nauvoo, IL], 1 Feb. 1844, Willard Richards, Journals and Papers, CHL.
Richards, Willard. Journals and Papers, 1821–1854. CHL.
JS and his associates, including Phelps, had demonstrated an enduring interest in ancient languages for well over a decade. About a week after this letter was mailed, JS and Phelps collaborated on a pamphlet addressed to Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys that also included a variety of phrases in foreign languages with corresponding translations. (“Part 1: 2 October–1 December 1835”; “Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts”; General Joseph Smith’s Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys, ca. 21 Nov.–3 Dec. 1843.)
“Letter from Joe Smith,” New-York Commercial Advertiser (New York City), 7 Dec. 1843, [2]. When the newspaper printed JS’s 13 November 1843 response, the editor informed readers that the printers were instructed to “‘follow copy’ in every particular—to make no change, even of a letter or a comma.” The editor’s preface to the letter mocked, “The prophet’s missive is a strange specimen of mingled shrewdness, ignorance, impudence and folly—the latter quality being chiefly manifested in the fact that the letter has been written. It is not cunning of Joe to lay himself out on paper; for surely a man of his divine pretensions should be able to spell and to write grammatically.”
New-York Commercial Advertiser. New York City. 1831–1889.
“For the Times and Seasons,” Times and Seasons, 1 Nov. 1843, 4:371–375; “Singular Mormon Movements,” New York Herald (New York City), 10 Jan. 1844, [1]; “Letter from Joe Smith,” New-York Spectator (New York City), 9 Dec. 1843, [1]; “The Mormons,” Niles’ National Register (Baltimore), 3 Feb. 1844, 355–356. The Times and Seasons published its November 1843 issue around late December 1843.
New-York Spectator. New York City. 1804–1867.
Niles’ National Register. Washington DC, 1837–1839; Baltimore, 1839–1848; Philadelphia, 1848–1849.
This likely refers to the Egyptian king discussed in the biblical book of Exodus. (See Exodus chap. 5.)
Nebuchadnezzar II was the king of Babylon who conquered Jerusalem around 587 BC. (See 2 Kings 25; and Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, bk. 10, chap. 8, vv. 1–2, in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, 229–235.)
Josephus. Vol. 4, Jewish Antiquities, Books I–IV. Translated by Henry St. John Thackeray. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930. Reprinted 1978.
Alexander III, also known as Alexander the Great, ruled the ancient Greek kingdom Macedon from 336 to 323 BC. (Cartledge, Alexander the Great, 16.)
Cartledge, Paul. Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past. New York: Vintage Books, 2005.
Muhammad, the religious leader and founder of Islam, lived during the sixth and seventh centuries AD.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a military leader who seized control of France in 1799 and ruled as emperor between 1804 and 1814. (See Schom, Napoleon Bonaparte, 203–221, 333, 697–700.)
Schom, Alan. Napoleon Bonaparte. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
See 1 Kings 18:17–40.
This phrase appears as “pagans of Juggernaut” in the versions of the letter published in the Nauvoo Neighbor and the New-York Commercial Advertiser. It refers to Ratha Yatra, a religious ritual performed at the Jagannath temple in Puri, India, in which thousands of devotees transported massive wooden chariots containing forms of the Hindu deities Jagannath (anglicized as “Juggernaut”), Balabhadra (also called Balarama), and Subhadra. In 1811, Anglican chaplain Claudius Buchanan published a popular account of the ritual, in which he compared Jagannath to the Canaanite god Moloch (alternately spelled Molech), who was worshipped through idolatry and chronicled in the biblical book of Leviticus. Buchanan described gruesome scenes, in which he witnessed devotees willingly crushed by chariots as a sacrifice to the Hindu gods. (“For the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 6 Dec. 1843, [3]; “Letter from Joe Smith,” New-York Commercial Advertiser [New York City], 7 Dec. 1843, [2]; Eck, Banaras: City of Light, 290; Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia, 26–35; see also Amos 5:26.)
New-York Commercial Advertiser. New York City. 1831–1889.
Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999
Buchanan, Claudius. Christian Researches in Asia: With Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental Languages. 2nd Boston ed. Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong, 1811.
Martin Luther, a German Augustinian theologian, helped instigate the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century. (See MacCulloch, Reformation: A History, 111–119.)
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking Penguin, 2004.
John Calvin, an influential French theologian, played a significant role in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. (See MacCulloch, Reformation: A History, 230–245.)
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking Penguin, 2004.
John Wesley, an eighteenth-century English theologian, founded the Methodist movement within the Church of England. (See MacCulloch, Reformation: A History, 675–676.)
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking Penguin, 2004.
Father and son Thomas Campbell and Alexander Campbell were American theologians who contributed to the formation of the Restoration or Stone-Campbell Movement in the 1830s. (See Foster et al., Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 112–134, 138–142.)
Foster, Douglas A., Anthony L. Dunnavant, Paul M. Blowers, and D. Newell Williams, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004.
The leviathan, referred to in the Old Testament, was a giant and dangerous sea monster. (See Job 40:15–41:26; Psalms 74:13–14; 104:26; and Isaiah 27:1.)
In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a three-headed, fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s head, and a serpent’s head, as well as the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent. (See d’Aulaire and d’Aulaire, D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, 129.)
D’Aulaire, Ingri, and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire. D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. New York: Doubleday, 2017.
See Daniel 2:34–35, 45; and Revelation, 30 Oct. 1831 [D&C 65:2].
These characters appear in copies of a document—referred to as the “Egyptian Alphabet”—that JS and his associates produced in 1835 and that were later associated with the Book of Abraham. One copy of this document identifies the first character’s transliteration as “Jah-oh-eh,” signifying the earth; the second character’s transliteration as “Flo-ees,” signifying the moon; and the third character’s transliteration as “Flos-isis,” signifying the sun. When the Book of Abraham was published in 1842, the words “Jah-oh-eh” and “Floeese” appeared in explanations of various figures found in an illustration published with the text. In the version of JS’s letter to Bennet published in the Nauvoo Neighbor, the translation appears as: “O the earth! the power of attraction, and the moon passing between her and the sun.” (Egyptian Alphabet, ca. Early July–ca. Nov. 1835–B; Book of Abraham and Facsimiles, 1 Mar.–16 May 1842; “For the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 6 Dec. 1843, [3].)
These Hebrew words can be transliterated as “haelohim yera’.” In the version of the letter published in the Nauvoo Neighbor, the characters were transliterated as “haueloheem yerau,” reflecting the distinctive Sephardic Hebrew spelling system taught by Joshua Seixas, who had tutored church leaders in the language in 1836. In the King James Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes, this Hebrew phrase was translated as “Fear God.” (“For the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 6 Dec. 1843, [3]; Ecclesiastes 12:13; see also Historical Introduction to Letter to Henrietta Raphael Seixas, between 6 and 13 Feb. 1836; and Riches de Levante, Hexaglot Bible, 3:652–653.)
Riches de Levante, Edward. The Hexaglot Bible; Comprising the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in the Original Tongues. . . . 6 vols. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901.
In the New Testament book of 1 John, this Greek phrase is translated as “God is light” and can be transliterated as “ho theos phos es[t]i[n].” (1 John 1:5; see also Riches de Levante, Hexaglot Bible, 6:770–771.)
Riches de Levante, Edward. The Hexaglot Bible; Comprising the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in the Original Tongues. . . . 6 vols. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901.
This German phrase means “God give us the light.”
Assuming Phelps inadvertently left out a diacritical mark over the “e,” this Portuguese phrase means “Lord Jesus Christ is freedom.” If he intended to leave off the diacritical mark, the phrase would be translated as “Lord Jesus Christ and freedom.”
This French phrase means “God defends the right.” (“Latin and French Quotations and Phrases,” in Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, 230.)
Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language: Containing Many Additional Words Not to Be Met with in Former Pocket Editions, Accented for Pronunciation. . . . London: T. Noble, 1849.