Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet [Hardcover]

This book is an exhaustive overview of the origins of Mormonism, focusing primarily on Joseph Smith's production of the Book of Mormon. As such, Vogel's title does not really match the book's content, as at least two thirds of the book is devoted to a detailed, blow-by-blow commentary on the BofM's contents. Hence, I would not call this a biography in the classic sense. Vogel assumes that Smith is the BofM's author. I have no problem with this. But he also assumes that the characters and situations in the book are largely autobiographical, a view that is speculative at best. This assumption leads to some very tenuous conclusions, and causes much of the text to read like "psychobiography." Not that this is a bad thing, but this approach has already been done (and done better) by others. (see Anderson's _Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith_.) But the real problem with Vogel's book is that it is simply too long for what it accomplishes. Editors at Signature Books should have helped Vogel shave off the most speculative conclusions and tangential digressions in his manuscript in order to find the five-star 300 page book lurking within. As it is, it is a three-star 700 page book. I had high hopes for this work, but I cannot recommend it without reservation.

This is one of the best and most detailed biographies about the early life of Joseph Smith. The book ends in 1831 when Joseph Smith goes to Ohio. Vogel gives the best possible secular interpretation of Jospeh Smith. Vogel states up front in the introduction that he does not believe in the super natural and interprets Joseph Smith from that point of view. Vogel deals far better with the complexities of Joseph Smith than do other secular biographies of Joseph Smith such as Fawn Brodies biography that states Joseph Smith was simply a con artist from the beginning and may have started to believe in his own prophetic calling. Instead of simply being a fraud, Vogel believes Smith sincerely believed himself to be a prophet but that Smith was willing to use deception in order to convince other people of his calling. Vogel makes the case that Smith likely did have some sort of spiritual awakening in 1820/1821, which later became known as Smith's First Vision. Vogel believes that Smith had a desire to unite his family spiritually, and therefore used "golden plates" story to unite both religion (which was appealing to his mother) and folk magic (which was appealing to his father). Vogel believes that through looking for buried treasure Smith learned to convince people he had a supernatural gift. Later Smith would use his gift of persuasion to convince people he was a prophet.

Vogel also meticulously goes through the Book of Mormon verse by verse demonstrating an immense knowledge of the Book of Mormon. Vogel attempts to show where Smith came up with many of the stories contained in the Book of Mormon. However I believe in some ways this is one of the books most major weaknesses. Vogel gets a little to bogged down in trying to figure out where the stories of the Book of Mormon came from. Some of the parallels he draws from Smith's enviroment and the Book of Mormon is a little weak, such as finding parallels between some of the Book of Mormon stories and the war of 1812.

Another weakness I believe is how Vogel deals with the eight witnesses of the Book of Mormon. He makes a case that the witnesses did not actually physically see the plates, but rather that it was a spiritual experience. Although there is some evidence for this possibility, Vogel does not treat the different statements that make the experience sound like a physical experience adequately.

Vogel has been criticized for frequently speculating in the book. Vogel does in fact use words such as "may have," "could have," "probably," and other such phrases many times. Although I can see why that is a criticism, Vogel was left with little other option since he does not believe in the super natural. Vogel does believe Smith "may have" made some plates out of tin, but what else could Vogel say on that point since he does not believe the gold plates ever existed?

I highly recommend this book to any serious student of Joseph Smith. I would also recommend reading Richard Bushman's book "Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism" which covers the same period and gives a different point of view.

Dan Vogel proved a masterful editor of the five-volume Early Mormon Documents, and perhaps his encyclopedic knowledge of the primary sources is part of the problem with this biography. Vogel knows the young Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon inside and out, but he doesn't seem to know how to summarize what he knows--or to ignore what he only supposes.

Vogel's thesis is that Joseph Smith's motivation for founding a new religion arose in conflicts that occurred within his semi-dysfunctional family. While there is undoubtedly truth to this notion, Vogel insists on taking us through the Book of Mormon blow-by-blow to explicate his argument. Some of his conclusions are clever and perceptive, others in-the-ballpark possible, and some (at best) strained. For instance, in Vogel's reading, the Book of Mormon account of Lamanites forcing women and children to eat the flesh of their husbands and fathers while restricting the prisoners' access to water is supposed to illustrate Smith's "oral rage" at his father "mixed with the fever, thirst, and torture of childhood surgery." (374) There's always something poignant about religious skeptics putting their trust in this sort of psychobabble.

Readers can expect a good deal of autobiography in a first novel, but they should also expect a good deal of fiction. Vogel occasionally seems annoyed when there is no obvious autobiographical hook on which to hang his notions. On one occasion, he suggests that a portion of the Book of Mormon is "perhaps...literary license"(211). Well, yes, literary license is what novels are about.

Furthermore, Vogel's knowledge of the Bible is weaker than he imagines, and his solution of picking up the nearest commentary frequently leads him astray, especially when he believes its opinion is so obviously correct that it requires no citation. For instance, he argues (with Edward Gibbon) that Luke "specifically said" that the darkness at Christ's crucifixion was "caused by an eclipse...astronomically impossible during paschal full moon." (286) But Luke 23: 45 says no such thing. In another place, Vogel announces, on the basis of no cited authority, that the mention of Melchizedek in Psalm 110 was "intended as a statement about Israelite rulers who were seen as kingly priests."

Any serious student of Mormonism will find much of profit in this biography. For example, Vogel notes every error and anachronism that he finds in the Book of Mormon--a considerable heap by page 557. But as biography--and especially readable biography--Vogel's attempt is overly long and overly speculative.