Joseph Smith

Life

In New York, Smith co-founded a church and published The Book of Mormon. After minister Sidney Rigdon and his followers converted, Smith moved to Ohio to join them.

Smith urged followers to settle in Independence, Missouri, but hostile residents forced them out. He organized a militia to retake the town, but disbanded it when his small, cholera-stricken force faced superior opposition. Back in Ohio, Smith built a house of worship as his following grew, but polygamy and an illegal bank led to denunciations and legal troubles.

Smith fled to Far West, Missouri, until a Mormon militia, provoked by vigilantes, looted and burned three towns. After his followers fired on the state militia, the governor ordered them expelled. Smith was arrested for treason but later escaped.

In Illinois, Smith founded a new city and temple, but his secret polygamy led some close associates to denounce him. When dissenters published a paper exposing him, he ordered their press destroyed. Facing arrest, Smith declared martial law and mobilized his militia, prompting the state militia to mobilize in response.

Smith fled to Iowa but soon returned, accepting the Illinois governor's assurances of protection if he surrendered. Expecting to receive bail, Smith learned he also faced treason charges for declaring martial law. When locals, aware of Smith's history of jailbreak, heard he was guarded by only a few men, they stormed the jail. After initially assuming his own men had come to rescue him, Smith defended himself from the lynch mob, using a smuggled pistol to wound three, before he was shot and killed. His murderers, fearing the arrival of Smith's followers, fled the scene.

Early years (1805–1827)

Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805, in Vermont to Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. One of eleven children, Smith was a descendent of the influential colonial minister John Lothropp (1584–1653). Joseph's maternal grandfather, Solomon Mack (1732 – 1820), self-published a memoir about his own conversion experience.

Smith's childhood was marked by hardship. Joseph Sr.'s drunkenness was a source of embarrassment. When seven-year-old Joseph Jr. underwent painful surgery for a leg bone infection, the boy refused alcohol. He used crutches for three years and walked with a slight limp thereafter. After Joseph Sr. fell for a ginseng swindle followed by years of crop failures, the Smiths lost the family farm and were forced to travel 300 miles (480 km) west to frontier Western New York, where they took out a mortgage on a small farm.

The Smiths engaged in folk magic, a relatively common practice in that time and place. Joseph, his father, and his older brother Alvin hunted for treasure under the direction of a seer named Luman Walters. Before Walters left professing he lacked sufficient power, he singled out young Joseph Smith as the young man who might be able to find the treasure. After Walters left, the Smiths continued using folk magic and a seer stone to look for buried treasure.

Joseph, his family, and his acquaintances consistently listed September 21, 1823, the equinox, as a pivotal night in his life; the next day, he told his father that he had been visited in the night by a supernatural being who revealed the location of a nearby treasure. The Smith family believed in prophetic dreams or visions; both parents and his maternal grandfather had previously reported such dreams.

Just weeks later, Alvin complained of stomach pains and called for a doctor who treated him with mercury salts. The substance lodged in Alvin's digestive system, and multiple other doctors were helpless to dislodge it. Alvin, only 25, died from mercury poisoning due to medical error. Joseph Sr. and Jr.'s trust in authorities was further shaken when the Presbyterian minister presiding over the funeral suggested Alvin had gone to hell. The family became divided by faith: Joseph and his father refused to join the church, while Joseph's mother and siblings joined.

Writing a book and founding a church (1827–1830)

In October 1827, Smith and Emma permanently moved to Pennsylvania, funded by a relatively prosperous neighbor, Martin Harris in exchange for a share in Smith's upcoming book. There, Smith began dictating a text to wife Emma until April 1828, when Martin Harris took over dictation.

The process broke down after Smith allowed Harris to take possession of the only copy of the first 116 pages of manuscript, which were subsequently lost. Smith ended the dictation process, explaining that an angel had taken away the plates as punishment for having lost the manuscript pages.

On June 15, Emma and Joseph's first child, a son, was born but died the same day. Joseph joined his wife's church, the Methodists, becoming an "exhorter" for the group. He continued as a Methodist until one of his wife's cousins objected to inclusion of a "practicing necromancer" on the Methodist class roll, and Smith left the group.

Smith's first revelation, which he and followers interpreted as a direct communication from God, announced that the material covered in the lost pages, which had been translated from the plates of Lehi, would be replaced by new translation drawn from the plates of Nephi. Smith resumed dictation of the book to Emma in September 1828, In April 1829, he was joined by Oliver Cowdery, a distant cousin from Vermont who had also dabbled in folk magic. The two worked on the manuscript, later moving into the home of Cowdery's friend Peter Whitmer, where they completed it.

Smith dictated by using the same chocolate-colored seer stone he had used previously for treasure hunting placed in a hat.

Dictation was completed about July 1, 1829. The completed work, titled the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra and first advertised for sale on March 26, 1830.

Less than two weeks later, on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ, and small branches were established in Manchester, Fayette, and Colesville, New York. As in 1826, he was arrested and charged with being a "disorderly person". Although he was acquitted, he was again arrested, this time transported to Broome County, where he was again acquitted by a three-judge panel. He and Cowdery fled to escape a gathering mob.

Success and schism in Ohio (1831–1838)

Church co-founder Oliver Cowdery and others left New York for Ohio. There they encountered the hugely-popular Campbellite minister Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon, who had long preached a Restoration of the true church, converted to the new movement, bringing along over a hundred followers. Rigdon's conversion dramatically swelled the ranks of the new organization. Rigdon visited New York, where he had extensive personal conversations with Smith. With growing opposition in New York, Smith announced a revelation that his followers should gather at Kirtland, Ohio.

Smith moved to Kirtland in January 1831. There, many of Rigdon's followers practiced Christian communism by sharing "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". In 1831, Smith began to privately teach the practice of polygamy, according to a variety of sources including apostles Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, and Lyman E. Johnson. Levi Lewis, Emma's cousin who had known Smith and Harris in Harmony, accused Smith of trying to seduce local girl Eliza Winters. According to Lewis, he had heard both Smith and Harris say that "adultery is no crime". That year, Smith told twelve-year old Mary Rollins that God had commanded him to take her as a wife; she would later be recognized by the church as one of Smith's plural wife in February 1842 at the age of 23.

The John Johnson family was baptized into Smith's church, including fifteen-year-old Marinda Johnson. For seven months, Smith and Rigdon lived at the Johnson farm. On March 24, 1832, a mob dragged Smith and Rigdon from their beds, beat them badly, and then tarred and feathered them. Simonds Ryder, writing in the 1860s, argued the attack was precipitated by recent converts having learned their property was to be placed under the church's control, a motivation corroborated in by S.F. Whitney.

Unlike Rigdon, Smith was tied to a board and stripped naked so a doctor could perform a castration. When the doctor refused to go through with the procedure, the mob tried to force poison down Smith's throat, chipping a tooth in the process. Despite the attack, Smith preached to his congregation the following morning and performed baptisms. His infant adopted son Joseph Murdock died of measles, the fourth child the Smiths had lost; his family linked his death to him being exposed to the cold during the attack.

Strife and war in Far West, Missouri (1838–39)

By 1838, Smith had abandoned plans to reclaim the city of Independence and instead declared the town of Far West as the new "Zion". In Missouri, the church also took the name "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", and construction began on a new temple. In the weeks and months after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West, thousands of Latter Day Saints followed them from Kirtland. Smith encouraged the settlement of land outside Caldwell County, instituting a settlement in Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess County.

Since 1830, Smith's claims about the golden plates had been corroborated by statements from the Three Witnesses: Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer. In December 1837, Harris was excommunicated after denouncing Joseph Smith as a financial fraudster over the bank scandal, while Whitmer and Cowdery were excommunicated for dissent in April 1838. In June 1838, a secret group called the Danites was formed to deal with dissenters who had split with Smith. A letter was addressed specifically to the principal dissenters: Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, John Whitmer, William Wines Phelps, and Lyman E. Johnson. The letter demanded the dissenters vacate the county, warning "depart, or a more fatal calamity shall befall you." The letter — later known as the "Danite Manifesto" — displayed the signatures of eighty-three Mormons, including that of Joseph Smith's brother, and fellow member of the First Presidency, Hyrum, but not Joseph or Rigdon. The letter had the desired effect, and the few named dissenters quickly fled the county. That July, Smith wrote in his diary that the Danites were a force to "put to right that which is not right, and to clense the Church of every great evil".

Beginning in 1838, Smith told followers that, as a teen, he had been visited by "two personages" that he identified as God and Jesus. According to his 1838 account, the young Smith asked the personages which church was correct and was told that all were wrong.

Political and religious differences between old Missourians and newly arriving Latter Day Saint settlers provoked tensions between the two groups, much as they had in Jackson County. By this time, Smith's experiences with mob violence led him to believe that his faith's survival required greater militancy against anti-Mormons. Tensions between the Mormons and the native Missourians escalated quickly until, on August 6, 1838, non-Mormons in Gallatin, Missouri, tried to prevent Mormons from voting, and a brawl ensued. The election day scuffles initiated the 1838 Mormon War. Non-Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms, while Danites and other Mormons pillaged non-Mormon towns.

Rule in Nauvoo, Illinois (1839–1844)

Many American newspapers criticized Missouri for the Haun's Mill massacre and the state's expulsion of the Mormons. Illinois then accepted Mormon refugees who gathered along the banks of the Mississippi River, where Smith purchased high-priced, swampy woodland in the hamlet of Commerce. He attempted to portray the Mormons as an oppressed minority and unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for help in obtaining reparations.

Smith also attracted a few wealthy and influential allies, including John C. Bennett, the Illinois quartermaster general. Bennett used his connections in the Illinois state legislature to obtain an unusually liberal charter for the new city, which Smith renamed "Nauvoo". The charter granted the city virtual autonomy, authorized a university, and granted Nauvoo habeas corpus power—which allowed Smith to fend off extradition to Missouri. Though Latter Day Saint authorities controlled Nauvoo's civil government, the city guaranteed religious freedom for its residents. The charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion, a militia whose actions were limited only by state and federal constitutions. Bennett and Smith became its commanders, and were styled Major General and Lieutenant General respectively. As such, they controlled by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois. Smith appointed Bennett as Assistant President of the Church, and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's first mayor.

The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the dead in 1840, and in 1841 construction began on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering lost ancient knowledge. An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fullness of the priesthood"; and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing". The endowment resembled the rites of Freemasonry that Smith had observed two months earlier when he had been initiated "at sight" into the Nauvoo Masonic lodge. At first, the endowment was open only to men, who were initiated into a special group called the Anointed Quorum. For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society, a service club and sorority within which Smith predicted women would receive "the keys of the kingdom". Smith also elaborated on his plan for a Millennial kingdom; no longer envisioning the building of Zion in Nauvoo, he viewed Zion as encompassing all of North and South America, with Mormon settlements being "stakes" of Zion's metaphorical tent. Zion also became less a refuge from an impending tribulation than a great building project. In the summer of 1842, Smith revealed a plan to establish the millennial Kingdom of God, which would eventually establish theocratic rule over the whole Earth.

Arrest and death at hands of a mob

By early 1844, a rift developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates. Robert D. Foster, a physician and general in the Nauvoo Legion, returned home to find Smith with his wife Sarah; She later confessed that Smith had preached polygamy and attempted to seduce her. After Joseph Smith made similar proposals to William Law's wife Jane, Law threatened to expose Smith unless he went before the High Council to confess and repent. On January 8, 1844, Smith removed Law from the First Presidency.

In March 1844, Smith secretly organized the Council of Fifty and tasked it with deciding which national or state laws Mormons should obey, establishing its own government, and finding a site where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond the control of other governments—perhaps in Texas, Oregon, or Mexican-controlled California. On March 9, Smith preached a sermon on the plurality of gods—a doctrine the dissenters regarded as polytheistic blasphemy. On April 18, the Council unanimously elected Smith as "Prophet, Priest, and King".

Also on April 18, Smith excommunicated the dissenters from the church, alleging they were plotting to kill him. In response, Law and others formed the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which taught Smith was once a true prophet but had since fallen into sin. On May 23, Law and Foster testified before the grand jury in Carthage, which issued indictments against Smith for "adultery, fornication, and perjury". On May 26, Smith responded with another public denial.

On June 7, the dissidents published the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, a four-page tract which "exposed" Smith's secret practice of polygamy and his intention to establish a theocracy. The paper similarly decried Smith's recent doctrines of many Gods". Arguing the Expositor would provoke a new round of violence against the Mormons, the Nauvoo City Council declared the newspaper a public nuisance, and Smith ordered the Nauvoo Legion to assist the police force in destroying its printing press. During the council debate, Smith vigorously urged the council to order the press destroyed, not realizing that destroying a newspaper was more likely to incite an attack than any of the newspaper's accusations. On June 11, a warrant was issued for Smith's arrest on the charge of inciting a riot resulting in the destruction of the Expositor. Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident call to arms from Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal and longtime critic of Smith.

Immediate aftermath and burial

Immediately following Smith's death, non-Mormon newspapers were nearly unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic. Conversely, within the Latter Day Saint community, Smith was viewed as a martyred prophet.

After a public funeral and viewing of the deceased brothers, Smith's widow—who feared hostile non-Mormons might try to desecrate the bodies—had their remains buried at night in a secret location, with substitute coffins filled with sandbags interred in the publicly attested grave. The bodies were later moved and reburied under an outbuilding on the Smith property off the Mississippi River. Members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church), under the direction of then-RLDS Church president Frederick M. Smith (Smith's grandson), searched for, located, and disinterred the Smith brothers' remains in 1928 and reinterred them, along with Smith's wife, in Nauvoo at the Smith Family Cemetery.

Legacy

Modern biographers and scholars agree that Smith was one of the most influential, charismatic, and innovative figures in American religious history. In a 2015 compilation of the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time, Smithsonian ranked Smith first in the category of religious figures. In popular opinion, non-Mormons in the U.S. generally consider Smith a "charlatan, scoundrel, and heretic", while outside the U.S. he is "obscure".

Within the Latter Day Saint movement, Smith's legacy varies between denominations: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and its members consider Smith the founding prophet of their church, on par with Moses and Elijah. Meanwhile, Smith's reputation is ambivalent in the Community of Christ, which continues "honoring his role" in the church's founding history but deemphasizes his human leadership. Conversely, Woolleyite Mormon fundamentalism has deified Smith within a cosmology of many gods.

Memorials to Smith include the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City the former Joseph Smith Memorial building on the campus of Brigham Young University as well as the Joseph Smith Building there, a granite obelisk marking Smith's birthplace, and a fifteen-foot-tall bronze statue of Smith in the World Peace Dome in Pune, India.

Succession crisis and split into denominations

Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis within the Latter Day Saint movement. He had proposed several ways to choose his successor, but never clarified his preference. The two strongest succession candidates were Young, senior member and president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Rigdon, the senior remaining member of the First Presidency. In a church-wide conference on August 8, most of the Latter Day Saints present elected Young. They eventually left Nauvoo and settled the Salt Lake Valley, Utah Territory.

Nominal membership in Young's denomination, which became the LDS Church, surpassed 17 million in 2023. Smaller groups followed Rigdon and James J. Strang, who had based his claim on a letter of appointment ostensibly written by Smith but which some scholars believe was forged. Some hundreds followed Lyman Wight to establish a community in Texas. Others followed Alpheus Cutler. Many members of these smaller groups, including most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III and formed the RLDS Church (Community of Christ), which has about 250,000 members.

Family and descendants

The first of Smith's wives, Emma Hale, gave birth to nine children during their marriage, five of whom died before the age of two. The eldest, Alvin (born in 1828), died within hours of birth, as did twins Thaddeus and Louisa (born in 1831). When the twins died, the Smiths adopted another set of twins, Julia and Joseph Murdock, whose mother had recently died in childbirth; the adopted male twin died of measles in 1832. In 1841, Don Carlos, who had been born a year earlier, died of malaria, and five months later, in 1842, Emma gave birth to a stillborn son.

Joseph and Emma had five children who lived to maturity: adopted Julia Murdock, Joseph Smith III, David Hyrum Smith, Frederick Granger Williams Smith, and Alexander Hale Smith. Some historians have speculated—based on journal entries and family stories—that Smith fathered children with his plural wives. However, in cases where DNA testing of potential Smith descendants from plural wives has been possible, results have been negative.

After Smith's death, Emma was quickly alienated from Young and the LDS leadership. Emma feared and despised Young, who in turn was suspicious of Emma's desire to preserve the family's assets from inclusion with those of the church. He also disliked her open opposition to plural marriage. Young excluded Emma from ecclesiastical meetings and from social gatherings. When most Mormons moved west, Emma stayed in Nauvoo and married a non-Mormon, Major Lewis C. Bidamon. She withdrew from religion until 1860, when she affiliated with the RLDS Church headed by her son, Joseph III. Emma maintained her belief that Smith had been a prophet, and she never repudiated her belief in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

Polygamous wives

Smith reportedly began teaching a polygamy doctrine as early as 1831. Although the church had publicly repudiated polygamy, in 1837 there was a rift between Smith and Cowdery over the issue. Cowdery suspected Smith had engaged in a relationship with teenager Fanny Alger, who worked in the Smith household as a serving girl. Smith insisted that he had never committed adultery, "presumably", historian Bushman argues, "because he had married Alger" as a plural wife.

In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman, and during the next two-and-a-half years he secretly married or was sealed to about thirty or forty additional women. Ten of his plural wives were between the ages of fourteen and twenty; others were over fifty. Ten were already married to other men, though some of these polyandrous marriages were contracted with the consent of the first husbands. Evidence for whether and to what degree Smith's polygamous marriages involved sex is ambiguous and varies between marriages. Some polygamous marriages may have been considered solely religious marriages that would not take effect until after death. In any case, during Smith's lifetime, the practice of polygamy was kept secret from both non-Mormons and most members of the church. Polygamy caused a breach between Smith and his first wife, Emma; historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich summarizes by stating that "Emma vacillated in her support for plural marriage, sometimes acquiescing to Joseph's sealings, sometimes resisting".

Views and teachings

Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational restorationism. He taught that the true Church of Christ had been lost in the Great Apostasy but was restored by the Book of Mormon. Smith promoted the Jewish Indian theory that some Native Americans are descendants of the ancient Israelites.

Foundational teachings

Joseph Smith taught that he had been visited in the night by a being who revealed the location of a nearby treasure.

Early accounts mention the possibility that the encounter took place in a dream. In 1829, a local newspaper account claimed Smith "had been visited in a dream by the spirit of the Almighty" and was "thrice thus visited". In an 1832 account, Smith similarly taught that "being exceedingly frightened, I supposed it had been a dream of vision, but when I considered, I knew that it was not." In a January 1835 account, Smith described lying awake in bed when the visitation by an unnamed angel occurred. According to this account, he "saw in the vision the place where [the plates of gold] were deposited."

Early accounts describe the visitor as a 'spirit' or a 'ghost', while later accounts mention a deceased man who had become an angel. D. Michael Quinn writes "It was not customary to use 'angel' to describe a personage who had been mortal, had died, and was returning to earth to give a message to someone. An 1830 article argued that that Smith "made a league with the spirit, who afterwards turned out to be an angel". Vogel concludes "The word 'angel' is anachronstic to the 1823 setting".

By the mid-1830s, the being was described by the name Moroni, while later accounts mentioned the name Nephi. A hostile account published in 1834 identified the guardian as an old man named "Moroni". In the 1835 printing of a revelation reportedly given in September 1830, the being who visited Smith was identified as Moroni, the figure from the Book of Mormon. In Smith's 1838 account, he described Nephi (not Moroni), an "angel of light" who "had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen ... His hands were naked and his arms also a little above the wrists .... Not only was his robe exceedingly white but his whole person was glorious beyond description". Many of Smith's followers taught that Smith had encountered both Moroni and Nephi, but in the 1870s, decades after his death, Smith's followers concluded the name "Nephi" had been an error; Subsequent printings changed "Nephi" to "Moroni".

Earliest accounts describe Smith's failed attempt to recover the treasure through the lens of folk magic. Willard Chase, a treasure-digging neighbor, recalled Joseph Sr telling him in 1827 about an attempt to recover the treasure years prior, where Joseph Jr. dressed in black clothes on a black horse had briefly obtained the treasure, only to lose it for failing to follow instructions.

Early Ohio teachings

In June 1830, Smith dictated a revelation in which Moses narrates a vision in which he sees "worlds without number" and speaks with God about the purpose of creation and the relation of humankind to deity. This revelation initiated a revision of the Bible which Smith worked on sporadically until 1833 but which remained unpublished until after his death. He may have considered it complete, though according to Emma Smith, the biblical revision was still unfinished when Joseph died.

In the course of producing the Book of Mormon, Smith declared that the Bible was missing "the most plain and precious parts of the gospel". He produced a "new translation" of the Bible, not by directly translating from manuscripts in another language, but by amending and appending to a King James Bible in a process which he and Latter Day Saints believed was guided by inspiration; Smith asserted his translation would correct lacunae and restore what the contemporary Bible was missing. While many changes involved straightening out seeming contradictions or making small clarifications, other changes added large interpolations to the text. For example, Smith's revision nearly tripled the length of the first five chapters of Genesis into a text called the Book of Moses.

In 1831 in Kirtland, Ohio, Smith's revision of the Gospel of Matthew was published in an undated broadsheet as "Extract from the New Translation of the Bible". His revision of Genesis, chapters that now make up the Book of Moses, were first published in the church newspapers Evening and Morning Star and Times and Seasons in the 1830s and 1840s.

Smith gave varying types of revelations. Some were temporal, while others were spiritual or doctrinal. Some were received for a specific individual, while others were directed at the whole church. An 1831 revelation called "The Law" contained directions for missionary work, rules for organizing society in Zion, a reiteration of the Ten Commandments, an injunction to "administer to the poor and needy" and an outline for the law of consecration. Smith temporarily instituted a form of religious communism, called the United Order, that required Latter Day Saints to give all their property to the church, to be divided among the faithful. He also envisioned that the theocratic institutions he established would have a role in the worldwide political organization of the Millennium.

At first, Smith's church had little sense of hierarchy, and his religious authority was derived from his visions and revelations. Though he did not claim exclusive prophethood, an early revelation designated him as the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as Moses". In 1831, Smith introduced the High Priesthood and taught that its recipients would be "endowed with power from on high", fulfilling a desire for a greater holiness and an authority commensurate with the New Testament apostles.

Evolving authority claims

In the mid-1830s, Smith's teaching expanded his claim to authority over an increasingly-hierarchical church. In February 1835, Smith issued revelations to begin naming Apostles and to markedly increase the authority of the high priesthood. Smith said he and Cowdery had received authority to do so during past in-person meetings, years prior, with a litany of biblical figures. After an 1838 split with Cowdery, Smith reported having met God and Jesus, two physical beings, in childhood.

After church members in Independence, Missouri were violently expelled from their homes, Smith dictated a revelation calling upon him to raise an army to "Redeem Zion" and serve as its commander-in-chief.

On February 14, 1835, a "meeting was called for the camp of Zion to be assembled, to receive what was called a Zion's blessing". Smith and the Three Witnesses named twelve men to the office of "Apostle", while other members of the Zion's Camp force were ordained to the priesthood office of "Seventy".

While the High Priesthood dated to 1831, Bushman reports it received little public attention and was not an office of authority until March 1835. That month, Smith, the President of the High Priesthood, issued a revelation declaring that the High Priesthood "holds the right of presidency, and has power and authority over all the offices in the church". The revelation held that "All other authorities, or offices in the church, are appendages to this priesthood". Originally called simply the "High Priesthood", it later became known as the "Melchizedek Priesthood", named for the biblical priest Melchizedek.

Smith taught a hierarchy of three priesthoods—the Melchizedek, the Aaronic, and the Patriarchal. Each priesthood was a continuation of biblical priesthoods through lineal succession or through ordination by biblical figures appearing in visions. By 1835, the "lesser priesthood" was referred to as the Aaronic Priesthood.

In 1835, Smith and his followers published the Doctrine and Covenants featuring an updated version of an 1830 revelation. The text added in 1835 mentioned visits by Moroni, John the Baptist, patriarchs Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, and Michael or Adam, and the apostles Peter, James and John.

Late teachings

Smith first taught the doctrine of Baptism for the Dead at the funeral sermon of a deceased church member, Seymour Brunson. In a letter written on October 19, 1840, to the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (who were on a mission in the United Kingdom at the time), Smith refers to the passage in 1 Corinthians 15:29 (KJV):

I presume the doctrine of 'baptism for the dead' has ere this reached your ears, and may have raised some inquiries in your minds respecting the same. I cannot in this letter give you all the information you may desire on the subject; but aside from knowledge independent of the Bible, I would say that it was certainly practiced by the ancient churches; and Saint Paul endeavors to prove the doctrine of the resurrection from the same, and says, 'Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?'

LDS Church scripture expands further upon this doctrine and states that such baptisms are to be performed in temples. Vicarious baptism is performed in connection with other vicarious ordinances in temples of the Church, such as the endowment and celestial marriage.

Book of Abraham (1842)

In 1835, Smith encouraged some Latter Day Saints in Kirtland to purchase rolls of ancient Egyptian papyri from a traveling exhibitor. He said they contained the writings of the ancient patriarchs Abraham and Joseph. Over the next several years, Smith dictated to scribes what he reported was a revelatory translation of one of these rolls, which was published in 1842 as the Book of Abraham. The Book of Abraham speaks of the founding of the Abrahamic nation, astronomy, cosmology, lineage and priesthood, and gives another account of the creation story.

The Book of Abraham text is a source of some distinct Latter Day Saint doctrines, which Mormon author Randal S. Chase calls "truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ that were previously unknown to Church members of Joseph Smith's day." Examples include the nature of the priesthood, an understanding of the cosmos, the exaltation of humanity, a pre-mortal existence, the first and second estates, and the plurality of gods.

In 1968, Egyptologists determined the Book of Abraham papyri were from the Egyptian Book of Breathing, with no connection to Abraham.

In popular culture

In 1940, Vincent Price portrayed Smith in the film Brigham Young. In 1999, a PBS documentary on Smith's life was adapted from the book American Prophet. The network's show Frontline detailed Smith's life in an episode titled "The Mormons" in 2010. In the 2003 South Park episode "All About Mormons", the character of Joseph Smith was voiced by Matt Stone. In the musical Book of Mormon, Smith was variously portrayed by Lewis Cleale, Ron Bohmer, and Christopher Shyer. In 2022, Andrew Burnap portrayed Smith in the miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven. The 2024 psychological horror film Heretic featured extensive discussion of the life of Joseph Smith.