19th Century Bible Commentaries

In an attempt to get an idea of how Joseph Smith Jr would have read the Bible, I started looking at Bible commentaries available online that either Joseph Smith Jr or the preachers that he encountered might have read. I choose 1827 as my somewhat arbitrary cut-off date, since that is the beginning of the Book of Mormon translation effort; Joseph Smith Jr received the plates in September of that year.

Whole Bible Commentaries

• Joseph Benson, an early Methodist minister and friend of John Wesley, wrote a Commentary on the OT & NT
• Adam Clarke (1760?-1832), a British Methodist theologian and supporter of Wesley, wrote a six-volume commentary.
• Thomas Coke (9 September 1747 - 2 May 1814) was the first Methodist Bishop and is known as the Father of Methodist Missions. He wrote a six-volume commentary (1801-1803).
• John Gill (November 23, 1697-October 14, 1771) was an English Baptist, a biblical scholar, and a staunch Calvinist. Between 1746 and 1763, he wrote An Exposition of the New Testament (3 vols., 1746-8), and an Exposition of the Old Testament (6 vols., 1748-63).
• Robert Hawker (1753-1827) was a Devonian vicar of the Anglican Church and the most prominent of the vicars of Charles Church, Plymouth, Devon. His grandson was Cornish poet Robert Stephen Hawker. He wrote a book of Biblical notes called Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary.
• George Leo Haydock (1774-1849), scion of an ancient English Catholic Recusant family, was a priest, pastor and Bible scholar. His edition of the Douay Bible with extended commentary, originally published in 1811, became the most popular English Catholic Bible of the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Matthew Henry (18 Oct 1662 - 22 June 1714) was an English Presbyterian minister who wrote a renowned commentary on the whole Bible, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708-10, known also as Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible), which went up to Acts and was completed by like-minded authors after his death in 1714. A more compact version, Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible was published in 1706 already.
• Matthew Poole (1624 - 1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian. His English annotations on the Bible were republished until 1840.
• Charles Simeon (24 September 1759 – 13 November 1836), was an English evangelical clergyman, and founder of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (now known as the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People or CMJ) in 1809. His major opus the Horae Homileticae was published in London starting in 1819, with many editions and reprints.
• John Trapp, (5 June 1601, Croome D'Abitot - 16 October 1669, Weston-on-Avon), was an English Anglican Bible commentator. His large five-volume commentary is still read today and is known for its pithy statements and quotable prose.
• John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and an Arminian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield. His Notes on the New Testament (1755) are enlightening.

New Testament

• Johann Albrecht Bengel (24 June 1687 – 2 November 1752) was a Lutheran pietist clergyman and Greek-language scholar known for his edition of the Greek New Testament. The other great work of Bengel, and that on which his reputation as an exegete is mainly based, is his Gnomon Novi Testamenti, or Exegetical Annotations on the New Testament, published in 1742.
• William Burkitt (25 July 1650 in Hitcham, Suffolk, England - 24 October 1703, Essex) was a biblical expositor and vicar in Dedham, Essex, England. Burkitt is known for his Bible commentary, Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament (Gospels published 1700, Acts to Revelation published 1703).

Contemporaries of Joseph Smith Jr

• Albert Barnes (1789-1870), from Rome, New York, graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1823, but did not begin publishing his Notes until the 1830s, AFAIK.
• Joseph Sutcliffe (+ 1854) wrote his commentary after retiring as a Wesleyan circuit preacher at age 74 in London; it was published around 1836.

John Corrill on the first Eight Years of Mormon History and his Departure

John Corrill, who was nominated to be Third Bishop in Missouri in Joseph Smith Jr's,
Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson County, Missouri, 25 June 1833, wrote A brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints, Richmond, MS, 1839. In this pamphlet, Corrill detailed his own conversion process. Corrill was struck by the continuous calling of prophets within the Biblical narratives, which made him wonder why that charisma had ceased (p.10). Corrill met the eleven witnesses personally, and felt there was no reason to demand more of them then he had of the Bible, whose authors he trusted though he had never met them (p.11). Corrill also discovered the same books as missing and thus felt that the canon was not as closed as he had assumed (p.13). Corrill also noted that in the prophetic and apocalyptic literature, the act of shutting a book indicated that new books would be a sign of the coming fulness of time (p.13); so if he was waiting for the fulness of time, the unveiling of such a book would be expected. Habakkuk 2,2 even predicted the use of tables in the KJV (ibid).

Hab 2,2: And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision, and make it plaine vpon tables, that he may runne that readeth it. 

Corrill also pointed to Ezekiel 37,15-21, which prophesied that there would be two records [though the text speaks just of sticks, RCK], one for the house of Judah, and one for the house of Jacob, and that the gathering of the records would gather Israel back together (p.13).

Ezek 37,15-21: The word of the Lord came againe vnto me, saying; Moreouer thou sonne of man, take thee one sticke, and write vpon it, For Iudah and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another sticke, and write vpon it; For Ioseph the sticke of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions. And ioyne them one to another into one sticke, and they shall become one in thine hand. And when the children of thy people shall speake vnto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew vs what thou meanest by these? Say vnto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the sticke of Ioseph which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellowes, and will put them with him, euen with the sticke of Iudah, and make them one sticke, and they shall be one in mine hand. And the stickes whereon thou writest, shalbe in thine hand before their eyes. And say vnto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen whither they be gone, and will gather them on euery side, and bring them into their owne land. 

Corrill can rightly say that, under these presuppositions, the Book of Mormon hardly struck one as a strange idea.

This [i.e. the Book of Mormon, RCK] looked to me very much like the record of Joseph in the hand of Ephadins (kept by his seed) that should be joined to the record of Judah (our Bible) for the restoration of the house of Israel, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel [cf. Ezekiel 37,15-21, RCK], as quoted above. ( p.13) 

Corrill also points to some of the stranger places of the Patriarchal blessing of Jacob for his sons in Genesis, esp. the bough that reaches across the wall (Gen 49,22;26) and the promise to Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen 8,11;20) [probably Gen 48,16 & 19 RCK] that they should be a plurality of nations in the middle of the Earth (p.14). (For a near-contemporary rebuttal of this interpretation, see Prof. Turner's Mormonism in all ages, New York 1842, pp.185-190.)

On this subject [i.e. the doctrines of the Gospel, RCK] the Mormons believe in the same Go, and in the same Saviour, and the same Gospel that other professors do; and they believe as firmly in the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments as any other people. They look upon their new revelations only as bringing about the fulfillment of the Bible. (p.14) 

The main difference between them [i.e. the Mormons, RCK] and other professors on the Gospel is, that they believe rather more firmly in the promises of God, especially those that require great faith for their fulfillment, than others do. Where the Scriptures hold out fair promises to the believers, they believe those promises will be fulfilled, just in proportion to their faith. (p.14) 

These promises [e.g. Mark 16,15-18; John 14,12-14; James 5,13f; RCK], the Mormons believe, are plain and sure, and the only reason why Christians do not enjoy them is, because they are wanting in faith. (p.15) 

Corrill then turns to an enumeration of the scriptural references of a gathering in the last days, such as in Ezekiel 37; Isaiah 2 and 11; Micha 4; Jeremiah 16; or Ephesians 1 (p.15), and found the expectation convincing.

In terms of the morality of it, Corrill was struck by the condemnation of the whoredoms of David and Solomon [though this sounds suspiciously like a retro-projection given the polygamy of later times, but the book was published in 1839, RCK] (p.16).

Corrill claims that the old inhabitants of Jackson County were willing to sell when the number of the Mormons increased, but that the Mormons were poor and had no ability to buy the offered lands (p.19).

The people of Clay [county, RCK] gave the Mormons employment, and paid them good wages; and by their industry they made themselves comfortable, with the exception of some families that found it difficult to get shelter. The number driven out was about twelve hundred. (p.20)

Corrill gives a detailed description of the cost of effort and the size of the temple in Kirtland, and descriptions of the interior, before admitting that he was in charge of finishing the construction during the summer of 1835 (pp.21-22).

After sketching the various organizing bodies of the church (p.24) and hoping that they would check and balance each other (p.25), Corrill notes that the New Testament was somewhat unclear on the priesthood other than the one of Melchizedek and Jesus in the letter to the Hebrews, and that thus ``every man is left to judge for himself'' (p.25).

Corrill gives an indication of the desperate economic situation in Kirtland after the temple had been completed.

Notwithstanding they [i.e. the church, RCK] was deeply in debt, they had so managed to keep up their credit, so they concluded to try mercantile business. [This is puzzling, because the United Firm was doing mercantile business back in 1834 already. RCK] Accordingly, they ran in debt in New York and elsewhere, some thirty thousand dollars, for || goods, and shortly after, some fifty or sixty thousand more, as I was informed; but they did not fully understand the mercantile business, and withal, they suffered pride to arise in their hearts, and became desirous of fine houses, and fine clothes, and indulged too mcuh in these things, supposing for a few months that they were very rich. They also spent some thousands of dollars in building a steam mill [never heard that before, RCK], which never profited them anything. They also bought many farms at extravagant prices, and made part payments, which they afterwards lost, by not being able to meet the remaining payments. They also got up a bank, for which they could get no charter, so they issued their paper without a charter, and, of course, they could not collect their pay on notes received for loans, and, after struggling with it awhile, they broke down. (Corrill 1834, pp.26-27) 

Eventually, Smith and Rigdon had to escape their obligations to Missouri, and moved to Far West in March or April of 1838.

Corrill then gives a rough overview of the Missouri War, and the eventual expulsion of the Mormons. Corrill puts some of the blame for the escalation on the arrival of Smith and Rigdon from Kirtland (p.29), who now began to move against dissenters directly or indirectly, on the one hand through claiming God's support against their enemies (p.29), and through Rigdon's ``salt sermon'' (p.30), and indirectly through supporting the formation of what would eventually become known as the Danites (pp.30-32), a situation Corrill compared to a monarchy (p.32).

By July 4th, Rigdon was preaching a war of extermination as the response to vexations (p.32), and by election time, the Danites and their gentile neighbors were at each others' throats (p.33). In the context of the lack of support from the governor regarding the expulsion of the Mormons from Dewitt (p.35) and Carroll county (p.36), the Mormons were ready to turn against the internal dissenters as well.

Now they meant to do it [i.e. take care of themselves, RCK], for they found that they could get help from no other quarter. Moreover, they said, that they had out that several members of the church had dissented in feeling, and were operating against them by carrying evil reports to their enemies, thereby increasing the excitement, and endangering their lives; and now, they were determined to clear them out or spill their blood in the streets; moreover they meant to make clean work now, and expel the mob from Davies and then from Caldwell county. (p.34) 

After a public meeting on Monday, following a Sunday sermon by Joseph Smith Jr on sentiments as quoted above, on Tuesday armed Mormons went into Gallatin and Grindstone Fork, among other places, to carry of property, burn a store and plunder (p.37).

I heard nothing from the leaders, but in the camp it was said that they meant not only to scatter the mob, but also to destroy those places that harbored them; that Gallatin and Millport were of that number; that the time had arrived for the riches of the gentiles to be consecrated to the house of Israel, but they mean to confine themselves to the mob characters in their plundering. They conjectured that mob after mob, as they termed it, would arise against them, which they would have to subdue, one after another, even till they should reach St Louis, where Wight said he meant to winter. (p.38) 

By Friday of the same week, the Mormons were plundering and cabin burning in Davies county (p.38).

It appeared to me also that the love of pillage grew upon them very fast, for they plundered every kind of property they could get hold of, and burnt many cabins in Davies, some say eighty, and some say one hundred and fifty. (p.38) 

A group of arsons called the ``Destructionists'', under the leader, the ``Destroying Angel'', were gathered, to set Buncum on fire when the militias left it behind (p.38).

After briefly sketching how Far West was surrounded (40), where the extermination order from Boggs (p.41) was ignored and the leaders thrown in jail (p.42), Corrill mentions a few more religious details (pp.45-48), before closing his pamphlet and taking his leave from the church.

I have left you, not because I disbelieve the bible, for I believe in God, the Saviour, and religion the same as ever; but when I retrace our track, and view the doings of the church for six years past, I can see nothing that convinces me that God has been our leader; calculation after calculation has failed, and plan after plan has been overthrown, and our prophet, seemed not to know the event till too late. If he said go up and prosper, still we did not prosper; but have labored and toiled, and waded through trials, difficulties, and temptations, of various kinds, in hope of deliverance. But no deliverance came. The promises failed, and time after time we have been disappointed; and still were commanded, in the most rigid manner, to follow him, which the church did, until many were led into the commission of crime; have been apprehended and broken down by their opponents, and many have been obliged to abandon their country, their families, and all they possessed, and great affliction has been brought upon the whole church. What shall we say to these things? Did not your prophet proclaim in your ears that the day was your own, and you should overcome; when in less than a week you were all made prisoners of war, and you would have been exterminated, had it not been for the exertions and influence of a few dissenters, and the humane and manly spirit of a certain officer [i.e. General Lucas, cf. p.42, RCK]? (p.48) 

Atwater on Ohio's Antiquities

Caleb Atwater's 1819 memoire in the Archaeologia Americana (Vol I, 1820), entitled Description of the Antiquities discovered in the State of Ohio and other Western States (Uncle Dale Broadhurst has excerpts of Atwater's memoire, too, of course), works with a tri-partition of the antiquities, based on who produced them (p.111).

• Indians of the Present Days
• Europeans
• the Mound Builders 

Atwater is familiar (p.113) with the theory that the Indians came via the Bering Strait and does not reject it at least. 

Atwater knows that the French were operating a colony in Indian country from a book by a French Jesuit, published in Paris in 1655 (p.115). It is this almost 300 years of intercourse with the Europeans that explains the intermingling of European artifacts in the finds at Indian antiquities (p.115), specifically medals which the French explorers placed (p.117), several inches across and made out of metal, when the French claimed a fort, tumulus or river mouth for the French crown. Atwater is of course aware that not all medals need to have been placed where they were retrieved, and cites some Spanish examples (p.119).

Finds of European antiquities were not limited to medals.

Swords, gun barrels, knives, pickaxes, and implements of war, are often found along the banks of the Ohio, which had been left there by the French, when they had forts at Pittsburgh, Ligonier, St. Vincents, &c. (p.119)

From a condemnation of the various forms in which such finds are placed---e.g. Roman coins---(pp.119f),  Atwater then points out that anything with alphabetical writing on it found so far was European in origin.

 In one word, I will venture to assert, that there never has been found a medal, coin, or monument, in all North America, which had on it one or more letters, belonging to any alphabet, now or ever in use among men of any age or country, that did not belong to Europeans or their descendants, and had been brought or made here since the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. (p.120)

In terms of civilization, Atwater considers the Mound Builders to be between the present-day Indians and the Europeans (p.120)

a people far more civilized than our Indians, but far less so than Europeans (p.120)

As a result, their material culture is of general interest,

to the Antiquarian, the Philosopher, and the Divine (p.120)

Atwater considers the

total absence of all historical records, or even traditionary accounts respecting them (p.121)

an interesting feature, before noting that they are found all over the habited world.

They [i.e. these Antiquities, RCK] were once forts, cemeteries, temples, altars, camps, towns, villages, race grounds, and other places of amusement, habitations of chieftains, videttes, watch towers, monuments, etc. These ancient works, especially the mounds, both of earth and stone, are found in every quarter of the habitable world. (p.121)

Atwater believes that the mound builders came from Asia and clashed with the ancestors of the modern-day Indians somewhere on the eastern side of the Alleghanies (p.122). Moving westwards,

a few small works are occasionally found, especially in Genesee county [this is the 1820 Genesee county!]; but they are few and small, until we arrive at the mouth of the Catarangus creek (p.122)

Atwater then notes that these works increase in density and size from the Lake Erie down to the "Mexican Gulph" as one proceed southwards. (p.122) Atwater was clear about the fact that the depth of burial allowed the distinction between present-day Indians (shallow) or Mound Builders (several feet deep) for material artefacts and skeletons (p.125).

Atwater discredits the idea that a polished piece of marble [a clear sign of a civilization like the Roman or Greek, RCK] was found in Medina county, Ohio; taking it instead to be

a composition of clay and sulphate of lime or plaster of Paris (p.126)

Atwater then turns to individual notable sites, beginning with the Ancient Works near Newark, Ohio (p.126).

Indian Monument Discussions

In an off-cuff remark, J.B. Turner, Mormonism in All Ages (1842), p.190, jokes that the missing tribes must have been hiding in a Symmes' Hole, referring thereby to one of the 19th century Hollow-Earth proponents.

Captain Symmes had not been the first to suggest this idea in 1818, but he found especial notice, and some of his followers, such as James McBridge, the pioneer, published a book of his theory, Symmes's theory of concentric spheres : demonstrating that the earth is hollow, habitable within, and widely open about the poles (1826), and pushed for explorations to find such a passage.

Uncle Dale Broadhurst, as always, has the scoop on how these musings turn up in early and later Mormon history. Ezra Booth had claimed (in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 1834, p.127) that Joseph Smith Jr felt the Northern tribes were in the polar regions, separated by ice and mountains from the rest of the world; and the revelation that was printed in the Evening and Morning Star (May 1833) soon thereafter, writes:

And the Lord even the Savior shall stand in the midst of his people, and shall reign over all flesh. And they who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord, and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves, and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence. [= D&C 133:26]

Which may not be as clear as we would like it to be, but the north and the rocks and the ice are all there, at any rate.

Dale Broadhurst also argues that the fact that the July 1832 edition of the Evening and Morning Star can cite another article that refers to the theory of Capt. Symmes without any explanations indicates that Symmes was considered common knowledge at this point.

That the Symmes theory was well known in all religious circles of the time is best highlighted by the mention that the Rev. McCalla made in his closing arguments on pedobaptism against Alexander Campbell, where McCalla eschewed discussing the issue again "until an opponent would come from the regions discovered by Captain Simmes", as reported in (Richardson 1870, 2:86).

James McBride was involved in questions of Indian Monuments in other ways as well. He had made drawings that found their way into Squier and Davis' landmark 1848 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, with which the Smithsonian inaugurated their Contributions to Knowledge series. Even though a landmark in its description, that work was still dominated by the assumption that a different race than the then-living Indians had built the monuments.

In addition to relying on other's artwork, Squier and Davis used travel descriptions to identify what to map, for example, Thaddeus Harris' The journal of a tour into the territory northwest of the Alleghany Mountains ; made in the spring of the year 1803 : with a geographical and historical account of the state of Ohio ; illustrated with original maps and views, printed in Boston in 1805. Or the descriptions of H.M. Brackenridge's Views of Louisiana : containing geographical, statistical and historical notices of that vast and important portion of America (1817) printed in Baltimore.

They also relied on Caleb Atwater's 1819 memoire in the Archaeologia Americana (Vol I, 1820), entitled Description of the Antiquities discovered in the State of Ohio and other Western States (Uncle Dale Broadhurst has excerpts of Atwater's memoire, too, of course). [Interestingly enough, in that very volume of the Archaeologia Americana, pp.325ff and then pp.333ff, there are discussions on the Indians coming from Asia, mostly due to similarities of physical features. Of course, as some of the authors point out, some people were trying to have the Indians come from Plato's Atlantis (p.340), e.g. Mathieu of Nantes RCK] They may have used Secretary Joseph Moulton and John Yates' History of the state of New-York : including its aboriginal and colonial annals, 1824, as well.

Harris' account was reprinted in volume 3 of Reuben G. Thwaites twenty-plus volume collection, Early Western Travels 1748-1846, printed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1906. Reuben G. Thwaites was an American historian and friend of Frederick Jackson Turner, who would travel the Ohio River for "color" in the way that 19th century military historians like Delbrück would walk battle fields.

KJV Terminology in Mormonism

I just realized that the title of "president" is an apocalyptic one, and is the role that Daniel had in the reign of King Darius (Daniel 6). (This is not mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, either in the article on the Concept of the Presidency nor in the article on the President of the Church.)