S2E7 Oral History and D&C 135

Standard of Truth

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat

Religion & Spirituality

5 • 709 Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How should we deal with oral history that does not have any accompanying documents? Most people have powerful and important stories in their family history and we respond to one listener’s question about the validity of family history stories that do not have reliable sources to verify the events. Richard shares a personal experience of family oral tradition that drifted into some inaccuracies. This discussion leads to a wider examination of the unique section of the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 135. This tribute to Joseph and Hyrum Smith was written very shortly after the terrible events of Carthage and added to the 1844 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants that was in production at the time of their murders. In the 1981 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, this memorial to Joseph and Hyrum Smith was attributed to John Taylor. In the 2013 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, that attribution was removed. We discuss the authorship of this powerful section of the Doctrine and Covenants. If you have any questions or possible topics of discussion for upcoming podcasts, please email us at: [email protected]

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmont,
0:08.0	where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
0:12.6	and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church
0:19.6	and grow it by way of visions,
0:22.6	manifestations, and miracles.
0:31.1	Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Garrett Dirkmont,
0:36.5	and I'm joined by Professor Richard
0:37.9	Leduke. Thank you, Garrett. In this week's podcast, we want to start off with an email
0:42.8	that kind of provides a jumping off point for kind of a larger discussion. So the email says,
0:49.6	my question is, how do historians deal with oral history not authenticated by any written documentation?
0:56.0	So this is a great question.
0:58.0	It's a much more complex question.
1:00.0	I mean, if anyone ever tries to give you a really simple answer to a question, you know, A, they're obviously not a historian because we have to talk for about 15 minutes and then say nothing. And then when you get
1:11.1	to the end of it, you're like, did I learn anything? And the answer is going to be no. So gear up for
1:16.2	that. But the, um, the, that's some foreshadowing for the next 25 minutes. Yeah. Well, really for the entire
1:21.5	podcast season. But um, so there's a couple aspects of this. And we did, we covered this a little bit in our very first
1:28.6	episode where we talked about, you know, how can you know essentially what happened in the past?
1:33.2	And, and one of the issues surrounding that is we are talking about religious events. And that was,
1:42.9	in particular, this woman's question was,
1:45.7	was in particular surrounding, you know, what about, you know, the oral history of a miraculous
1:51.4	event that happened in a family? I can tell you right now that there are miraculous events
1:57.3	that have happened in my family that are recorded nowhere because even though I read journals
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.