| Joseph
Smith suggested by
Paul Spiteri
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| Religions Leader |
originally Joseph Smith, Jr.
American
prophet whose writings, along with the Bible, provide the theological foundation
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon
denominations.
Smith grew up in western New York at a time of intense
religious revivalism. He was a literate but unschooled lad from a large family,
and his neighbours at Palmyra, N.Y., remembered him as a diviner who dug for
buried treasure. One day in the woods, at the age of 14, Joseph Smith
experienced what he conceived to be an intense spiritual revelation of God and
Jesus Christ. In 1827 he claimed that an angel had directed him to buried golden
plates whose engraved surfaces contained a history of the American Indians
describing them as descendants of Hebrews who centuries earlier had sailed to
North America by way of the Pacific. This Book of Mormon he translated from “reformed Egyptian” with the aid of
special stones. Published in 1830, the book was offered by him as scientific
evidence of his divine calling. Most non-Mormon scholars, however, regard the
book as a collection of local legends of Indian origin, fragments of
autobiography, and current religious and political controversies (especially
that connected with the Anti-Masonic movement), all transformed with remarkable
ingenuity into a religious document.
Text from Britannica.com
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