Logan Molyneux

Discussion of Joseph Smith is about to take a turn toward the scholarly -- and, church leaders hope, toward the historically accurate.

Beginning in October, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will publish the more than 5,000 documents it has gathered relating to its founder, Joseph Smith Jr. The documents range in length from a single page to many pages, and they will be published, along with transcriptions and annotations, in a 30-volume series called "The Joseph Smith Papers."

The "Papers" project is not a documentary history including all documents relating to Joseph Smith. But it will be a comprehensive collection of all existing documents produced by Smith or under his direction, including journals, letters (including letters written to Smith), legal documents and many others.

"We believe that anybody in the future who writes about Joseph Smith will have to go through 'The Joseph Smith Papers,' " said Ron Barney, co-editor of one of the project's volumes and the church's spokesman for the project. "Some people in the past have been loosey goosey with what they say about Joseph Smith, but that will no longer fly. They may disagree, but they'll still have to go through 'The Joseph Smith Papers.' "

The papers will be published over the next several years under the publishing title The Church Historian's Press, a new imprint created by the LDS Church to publish works related to its origin and growth. Eventually, the papers will also be made available online. No other projects have been announced for the imprint, but church historian Marlin K. Jensen said in a news release that future projects will be for the benefit of church members and scholars alike.

"This is an invitation for anyone interested in the history of the church to read the foundational documents related to its beginning and development," Jensen said.

'Extraordinarily important'

Historian and scholar Jan Shipps, who is not LDS but has studied the faith for most of her career, said the "Papers" project is "extraordinarily important" because it will allow anyone an intimate view of Smith's spiritual and secular life. She said of all LDS Church publications, only the "History of the Church" volumes, compiled in the early 1900s by B.H. Roberts, can compare.

"It's breaking new ground, there's no doubt about that," Shipps said. "It will be basic to everybody who's going to do Mormon studies. Everybody will have to necessarily consult these volumes."

Shipps said she's noticed a lot of interest in the project among her fellow academics, including among scholars who are not church members. She said the project's importance is not limited to members of the LDS Church.

Smith "is the founder of a new religious tradition," Shipps said. "And as such, he is important not only for people who believe and who are LDS, but he is important because if you study his life, you can learn how religions come into existence. It's very important in terms of religious studies."

This project is different from other LDS Church-produced volumes in that it has sought outside scrutiny and approval. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission, a division of the U.S. government's National Archives and Records Administration, endorses projects that meet its standards of historical documentary editing, and has endorsed the "Papers" project. Additionally, a national advisory board that includes three non-LDS scholars is overseeing the project. Board member and Yale University professor Harry S. Stout said receiving the NHPRC's endorsement is significant.

"It means they follow the same documentary editing conventions as other approved projects," said Stout, who is general editor of a similar project of early American theologian Jonathan Edwards's papers. "That means you don't substitute words, you don't paraphrase anything, you don't delete something if you think it's embarrassing. They're following all those conventions and bringing in outsiders as kind of quality checkers."

Previous volumes about Joseph Smith, such as a collection of his teachings by former church president Joseph Fielding Smith and the manuals of Smith's teachings for use in LDS Church priesthood and Relief Society meetings this year, have been meant for spiritual instruction and have not sought endorsement by outside committees. But even with the NHPRC's endorsement, Barney said there are bound to be some who see the "Papers" project as inevitably biased in favor of Smith.

"We recognize that we may get tagged with that kind of thing," Barney said. "And I guess the proof's going to be in the pudding. We believe that we can produce this material in a more objective light than any other, and we believe the information we produce will be in the most correct context possible. We believe this project will withstand the kind of scholarly scrutiny that is applied to other projects of this kind."

In the past, the LDS Church has reacted sensitively to challenges to its official version of church history and doctrine. In 1993, the church excommunicated five scholars and disciplined another who had publicly challenged church positions. Since then, the church has not renewed the contracts of some BYU professors who challenged church positions.

But Stout said adhering to the NHPRC's standards will ensure the volumes are accurate and professional, not controlled. He said he's seen some of the early volumes that will be published, and described them presenting Joseph Smith "warts and all."

"There's sections in there that don't make him look all that good," Stout said, including some about Smith's contemporaries' disapproval of his plural-marriage teachings. "And I would think if there was any selective editing going on to make him look better, those fragments wouldn't have appeared."

Decades of editing

The most important parts of the "Papers" project, Barney said, are "context, context, context." He means that reading handwritten, sometimes scrawled texts is hard enough, but sometimes understanding what the author intended requires lots of historical and religious context. To ensure that there are no errors and that any interpretation is correct, the project has been many years in the making.

It started in the 1960s with the work of Dean Jessee, who began compiling and transcribing selections from Smith's papers. More than 30 years later, he had published three volumes of Smith's papers, enough to attract the attention of church leaders, who authorized an expanded effort. Now there are more than 40 scholars and editors listed on the project's Web site, www.josephsmithpapers.net.

"Manpower has made it so we can do things that we previously couldn't," Barney said. "Technology has made it so we can do things we couldn't do otherwise. And generous funding, from the church and also from [Utah businessman] Larry H. Miller, who has created an endowment for this project."

The technology to which Barney referred is imaging and document software that make it possible to capture and manipulate texts. Most transcriptions are done by no fewer than three sets of eyes. Most transcribers use high-resolution color scans that can be enhanced and magnified, but the final transcriptions are compared to the original document itself by a specialist with access to special tools such as ultraviolet light and microscopes.

Then the transcriptions are annotated by scholars with knowledge in one of the projects six emphases: journals, documents, revelations and translations, history, legal and business, and administrative. The annotations are there to add important context or explain such things as "interlinear inclusion or marginalia," Barney said, meaning things written between lines or in margins. That way, if anything is crossed out or added in the document, readers can have some sense of how the original text read.

This lengthy process has yielded many valuable discoveries, a couple of which managing editor Ron Esplin details in his essay "Why a Joseph Smith Papers Project Now?" posted on the project's Web site. For instance, pioneer historians transcribing one of Smith's journals read that his wife, Emma, "had another child" and then added that the child hadn't survived because no one knew of it. What Smith really wrote is that "Emma had another chill," such as those caused by malaria.

Other documents are much more difficult to decipher, and the project's reading of the text differs greatly from others previously produced. One such document, some hastily scrawled notes from an account Smith gave of one of his arrests, had previously been interpreted to say Smith appeared before a "spiritually minded circuit judge and a few fit men." The project's editors have now concluded the text actually says a "spindle-shanked circuit judge and a few fat men." Esplin writes, "Far from praising them, in this instance Smith was mocking those involved who had caused him such trouble -- a reading not out of harmony with other accounts of his sometimes defiant stance toward detractors and adversaries."

Church history to the fore

The "Papers" project and the publishing imprint are part of a larger effort by the church to emphasize the great value it places on its history. Church members are encouraged to obtain a testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet who restored God's church to the earth. The vast majority of what is now the church's doctrine was taught and recorded by Smith, especially in a volume of LDS scripture known as Doctrine and Covenants.

The church is also in the middle of constructing a 230,000-square-foot Church History Library just east of the church's Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City. The new library will be completed in spring of 2009 and will house 270,000 books, pamphlets and magazines as well as 240,000 original, unpublished records.

"These documents are the crown jewels of Mormonism," Jensen said. "The truthfulness of Mormonism is inextricably tied to its history, and it is in our best interest to preserve these records and make them available to those who wish to study the origins of this remarkable faith."

The library will have a large area open to the public as well as 10 archival storage rooms and two subzero-temperature vaults. The vaults, kept at minus 4 degrees, are there to keep motion-picture film, rare books, some newspaper items and other material in pristine condition. Some items will be available in an open library area and others will be available only in special reading rooms at patron request.

Stout, the Yale professor, praised the church's willingness to devote time, manpower and money to the preservation of history. The Jonathan Edwards project on which he is now working was started more than 50 years ago and has taken much longer than he expects the Smith project will.

"I think it's a top-of-the-line edition, and they're launching it in the way it should be done," Stout said. "And I hope they finish it in a lot less than 50 years."