Joseph Smith Jr's Kevo

Daguerreotype
Evidence suggests, the Prophet's son Joseph Smith III, submitted a photographic copy of his father's daguerreotype to the Library of Congress in 1879. A daguerreotype is a small unique image that can only be duplicated by being re-photographed. Clear reproduction presented a problem because the majority of daguerreotypes in 1844 were only the size of a large postage stamp. The Library of Congress copy is an 8×10 inch print, which would be an obvious enlargement of a small original daguerreotype.

This 1879 duplication was done with film and equipment that by today's standards would seem quite primitive. It has been retouched around the hair, coat, on the cravat-or necktie-and the vest. Joseph's pompadour hairstyle, considered fashionable at the time , has been poorly frisked or masked along the outline. This retouching has caused the loss of softer, finer, transitional hair between the parted sections. Joseph's face seems free of any artistic retouching, but there is an overall "grainy" quality that causes the image to be less than one might expect from a photograph. This "graininess" is probably due to the gross enlargement from the original daguerreotype, however there is a startling photographic quality to the eyes.

This photo may be all that is left of the original image, as the daguerreotype has not been found. It was good that Joseph's son saw the need to safeguard his father's photograph with this copy so that over 150 years later we can now see what Joseph Smith really looked like.

It is believed by a few that this photograph is merely a painting. Careful study of the data compiled by experts shows this belief to be incorrect. Much excitement has come from the comparative studies of this image and a death mask made of the Prophet just after his death. Experts in Facial Surgery, Forensic Pathology, Plastic and Facial Reconstruction, Art, Art History, Archival, and Photographic History, have put together information that not only substantiates the photographic nature of this image, but sheds new light on the history of Joseph Smith in a unique and extraordinary way.

Josiah Quincy, a prominent New England citizen who later became the mayor of Boston, visited Joseph Smith two months before his death. Many years later he wrote about the people who had most impressed him during his life. Regarding Joseph Smith, he wrote,
It is by no means improbable that some future text-book, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet.

John Taylor, one of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who survived the event that killed Joseph and almost himself, wrote an account of the event and a eulogy to the Prophet, which are founded in Doctrine and Covenants 135.
"Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it" (v. 3). He added that the names of Joseph and Hyrum Smith "will be classed among the martyrs of religion; and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon, and this book of the Doctrine and Covenants of the church, cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world" (v. 6). The martyrdom, he said, fulfilled an important spiritual purpose: Joseph "lived great, and died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord's anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated!" (v. 3).

The Latter Day Saint movement views his death as a martyrdom as the Christian term for martyr refers to someone being killed because of their religious views.

In the modern media
• In film, Joseph Smith has been portrayed by several actors including Vincent Price (Brigham Young), Dean Cain (September Dawn), Jonathan Scarfe (The Work and The Glory), Nathan Mitchell (Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration) and Richard Moll (Brigham).
• Smith was the subject of the cover of Newsweek Magazine, dated October 17, 2005. The cover was a reproduction of a stained-glass window portraying the First Vision. Many opinions on Joseph Smith were quoted, ranging from LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley to Mark Scherer, official historian of the Community of Christ.
• On TV, Joseph Smith's life was portrayed in the South Park episode All About Mormons in 2003. Joseph Smith was also featured as member of the Super Best Friends, a superhero-type group of various major religious leaders and gods, on an earlier episode.
• A PBS documentary called "The Mormons" aired April 30 and May 1, 2007. Additional airings may be available.

Smith left ambiguous or contradictory succession instructions that led to arguments and disagreements among the church's members and leadership, several of whom claimed rights to leadership.

An August 8, 1844 conference which established Young's leadership is the source of an oft-repeated legend. Multiple journal and eyewitness accounts from those who followed Young state that when Young spoke regarding the claims of succession by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he appeared to look or sound like the late Smith. Although many of these accounts were written years after the event, there were contemporary records. Historian D. Michael Quinn wrote:
The Times and Seasons reported that just before the sustaining vote at the afternoon session of the August meeting, "every Saint could see that Elijah's mantle had truly fallen upon the 'Twelve.'" Although the church newspaper did not refer to Young specifically for the "mantle" experience, on 15 November 1844 Henry and Catharine Brooke wrote from Nauvoo that Young "favours Br Joseph, both in person, manner of speaking more than any person ever you saw, looks like another." Five days later Arza Hinckley referred to "Brigham Young on [w]hom the mantle of the prophet Joseph has fallen."
Most Latter Day Saints followed Young, but some aligned with other various people claiming to be Smith's successor. Some waited for Smith's son, Joseph Smith III, to assume leadership of the church despite his young age at the death of his father. The church had published a revelation in 1841 stating "I say unto my servant Joseph, In thee, and in thy seed, shall the kindred of the earth be blessed", and this was widely interpreted as endorsing the concept of Lineal Succession. Documentary evidence indicates also that Smith set apart his son as his successor at various private meetings and public gatherings, including Liberty and Nauvoo. Indeed, Brigham Young assured the bulk of Smith's followers as late as 1860 that young Joseph would eventually take his father's place. That year, the younger Smith became leader of what was to later be incorporated as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now called the Community of Christ church) in the Midwest, made up of scattered church members not having journeyed west with Young, including Smith's widow Emma and two of Joseph III's brothers.

In addition, Smith's Vice Presidential running mate Sidney Rigdon formed the Church of Jesus Christ, headquartered in Greensburg, Pennsylvania with a few more congregations scattered throughout the area.

Many of these smaller groups were spread throughout the midwestern United States, especially in Independence, Missouri, and several remain viable as religious groups. Issues relating to the succession crisis are still the subject of discussion and debate.

Translation of the Book of Abraham

Smith stated that he translated the Book of Abraham from papyrus rolls. Although it is accepted that Smith bought the papyri from an Irishman named Michael Chandler in 1835, these hieroglyphics were not able to be translated at the time until the discovery of the Rosetta stone. The originals were thought by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to have been destroyed in a Chicago fire. Fragments of the papyri turned up in one of the vault rooms of the New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art. In November of 1967 the Deseret News of Salt Lake City reported the rediscovery of the papyri. Egyptologists have pointed out that Smith's purported translation is not, in fact, a translation. Dr. Archibald Sayce noted, "It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud....Smith has turned the Goddess [Isis] into a king and Osiris into Abraham." (For a counter to this assertion, see Abraham in Egypt, Hugh Nibley, Deseret Book Company, 1981, pp. 133-141). James H. Breasted wrote, "To sum up, then, these three fac-similies of Egyptian documents in the 'Pearl of Great Price' depict the most common objects in the mortuary religion of Egypt. Joseph Smith's interpretations of them as part of a unique revelation through Abraham, therefore, very clearly demonstrates that he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian Writing and civilization." Arthur C. Mace, assistant curator of the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote, "The 'Book of Abraham,' it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication....Joseph Smith's interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end." Samuel Alfred Brown Mercer, of the Western Theological Seminary, and author of an Egyptian grammar, stated, "[Smith] knew neither the Egyptian language nor the meaning of the most commonplace Egyptian figures....the explanatory notes to his fac-similes cannot be taken seriously by any scholar, as they seem to be undoubtedly the work of pure imagination".

In the Ensign, an official publication of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Michael D. Rhodes, a researcher in ancient scriptures from Brigham Young University counters the assertions made by various experts regarding the translation of the Book of Abraham. He asserts that Egyptians "often placed vignettes next to texts that bore no relationship to them" and that it was not uncommon for all of the illustrations on a scroll to appear at the beginning, with the text following in a distant portion of the document. "Thus, the text that gave rise to the book of Abraham could have been located elsewhere on the same papyrus" and has yet to be found. However, this hypothesis ignores the fact that the papyrus from facsimile 1 has been conclusively shown to have originally adjoined several other fragments in the collection and bear no resemblance to the writings of Abraham (they are portions of the Book of the Dead).

Lastly, Rhodes states that several accounts of Abraham's life have been recovered since Smith's time and that The Book of Abraham compares favorably with them. According to LDS scholar Hugh Nibley, one non-Mormon scholar, E.A.W. Budge, stated that Smith's Book of Abraham was "clearly based on...some Old Testament apocryphal histories." As Nibley points out, the Old Testament apocryphal histories to which the document so closely corresponds were not available in Joseph Smith's time, and were available in the British Museum only to Budge himself nearly eighty years later. Critical scholars have noted that LDS researchers have succumbed to "parallelomania" in finding parallels to prove their points, and largely dismiss the explanations given by Rhodes and Nibley.

During his adult life from the time he began translating the Book of Mormon in 1827 until his death in 1844 Smith introduced a large number of religious teachings. Although a number of his teachings are similar to doctrines circulating during his lifetime, several are unique to Smith.

Nearly all Smith's teachings had some root in the King James Version of the Bible, or his interpretation or elaboration of it. However, he believed in other scripture, and that in some instances, the Bible was translated incorrectly. Thus, he restored temples, orders of priesthood, and other elements of the Bible that he felt had been wrongly abandoned by protestant Christianity as part of a Great Apostasy. Much of this restoration is presented in the Doctrine and Covenants, which is described as modern scripture.

In many cases, Smith's doctrines or interpretations of the Bible, as well as his own revelations, placed him at odds with mainstream Christianity. For example, he publicly rejected mainstream Christianity's long-standing formulation of the Trinity as recorded in the 4th century Nicene Creed.

In what has come to be known as the Wentworth letter, Joseph Smith, Jr. wrote and sent a list of the basic beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to "Long" John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat. These articles of faith were subsequently published in Times and Seasons, a newspaper published by the church (see Articles of Faith (Latter Day Saints)).

Smith met Emma Hale in 1825 when he boarded with the Hales while he was employed in a company hoping to unearth buried treasure. Although the company was unsuccessful, Smith returned to Harmony several times seeking Emma's hand. Isaac Hale, Emma's father, refused to allow the marriage so the couple eloped across the state line to South Bainbridge, New York, present day Afton, New York, and were married on 18 January 1827, by the Village of Afton, New York Justice of the Peace. The couple initially moved to the home of Smith's parents on the edge of Manchester Township near Palmyra.

During the early portion of their marriage, Joseph and Emma Smith had the following children:
o June 15, 1828, Alvin, who lived only a few hours.
o April 30, 1831, twins, Thaddeus and Louisa, who died hours after their premature birth.
o April 30, 1831, twins Joseph and Julia. These were the children of Julia Clapp Murdock and John Murdock. Murdock, upon his wife's death in childbirth, gave the infants to the Smiths (who had just lost their own twins) to adopt.

The couple later had four additional sons:
o November 6, 1832, Joseph Smith III
o June 29, 1836, Frederick Granger Williams Smith
o June 2, 1838, Alexander Hale Smith.
o November 17, 1844, David Hyrum Smith, born after Joseph's death.