Advisory Board Alan L. Wilkins, chair James P. Bell Donna Lee Bowen Douglas M. Chabries R. Kelly Haws Robert L. Millet Involving Readers Noel B. Reynolds in the Latter-day Saint Editor in Chief John W. Welch Academic Experience Church History Board Richard Bennett, chair 19th-century history Brian Q. Cannon 20th-century history Kathryn Daynes 19th-century history Gerrit J. Dirkmaat Joseph Smith, 19th-century Mormonism Steven C. Harper documents Frederick G. Williams cultural history Liberal Arts and Sciences Board Barry R. Bickmore, co-chair geochemistry Eric Eliason, co-chair English, folklore David C. Dollahite faith and family life Susan Howe English, poetry, drama Neal Kramer early British literature, Mormon studies Steven C. Walker Christian literature Reviews Board Eric Eliason, co-chair English, folklore John M. Murphy, co-chair Mormon and Western Trevor Alvord new media Herman du Toit art, museums Angela Hallstrom literature Greg Hansen music Emily Jensen new media Gerrit van Dyk Church history Specialists Casualene Meyer poetry editor Thomas R. Wells photography editor Ashlee Whitaker cover art editor STUDIES QUARTERLY BYU Vol. 54 • No. 3 • 2015 ARTICLES 4 From the Editor 6 John Milton, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon Robert A. Rees 19 Affinities and Infinities: Joseph Smith and John Milton Rosalynde Welch 32 The Kirtland Safety Society and the Fraud of Grandison Newell: A Legal Examination Jeffrey N. Walker 149 “Hard” Evidence of Ancient American Horses Daniel Johnson ESSAY 181 Stranded in the Stars Sheldon Lawrence POETRY 180 Aliens Susan Howe COVER IMAGE 221 The Temple, a Holy School BOOK REVIEWS 184 Beholding the Tree of Life: A Rabbinic Approach to the Book of Mormon by Bradley J. Kramer Reviewed by Richard Dilworth Rust 188 Brigham Young: Sovereign in America by David Vaughn Mason Reviewed by Roger Terry 193 All That Was Promised: The St. George Temple and the Unfolding of the Restoration by Blaine M. Yorgason, Richard A. Schmutz, and Douglas D. Alder Reviewed by Bruce C. Hafen 198 Saints Observed: Studies of Mormon Village Life, 1850–2005 by Howard M. Bahr; and Four Classic Mormon Village Studies edited by Howard M. Bahr Reviewed by Todd L. Goodsell 207 The Journey of a People: The Era of Restoration, 1820 to 1844 by Mark A. Scherer; and The Journey of a People: The Era of Reorganization, 1844 to 1946 by Mark A. Scherer Reviewed by Alonzo L. Gaskill 215 Dead Wood and Rushing Water: Essays on Mormon Faith, Culture, and Family by Boyd Jay Peterson Reviewed by Mark Brown BOOK NOTICES 218 Reaching the Nations, volumes 1 and 2 Diary of Two Mad Black Mormons Conversations with Mormon Historians From the Editor ear Readers, D Ten years ago, people around the world marked the bicentennial of Joseph Smith’s birth. In June 2005, a two-day conference was convened at the Library of Congress, which I attended with my wife, pictured above; two major biographies were published; and a handy resource of crucial primary sources about the key events of the Restoration (Opening the Heavens) was published. Since then, eleven volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers have appeared. Dozens of groundbreaking studies have been published, many in BYU Studies, about Joseph Smith’s first vision and his many legal encounters. Monumental works on the translation of the Book of Mormon have been produced. Thus it is with great pleasure that we bring out at this time another strong issue featuring new information and important insights about the Prophet Joseph Smith. Much is known about Joseph Smith that was not known ten years ago, and there is still more to come. More than ever before, people are agreeing that the innovative and spiritual achievements of Joseph Smith are difficult to discount. As Josiah Quincy, a prominent nineteenth-century American, mused in 1883, the Mormon prophet’s “powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen” would long be remembered (BYU Studies 39, no. 4, p. 71). Recently, Christian theologian Stephen H. Webb stated, “He was unmatched in the nineteenth century in his capacity for spiritual won- der and his talent in synthesizing so many aspects of Christianity that 4 BYU Studies Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2015) From the Editor V 5 had fallen into fragmentation and disuse” (America: The National Cath- olic Review, online). One role of BYU Studies for over half a century has been to meticu- lously analyze documents, to publish new insights, and to appreciate with awe all that Joseph Smith accomplished under extreme adverse conditions, basically in only fifteen years (1829–44). Is there anything really like what he did, except perhaps in the rare cases of a few incon- trovertible geniuses? And even there, the comparisons with Joseph Smith do not generate complete comparables. In previous volumes of BYU Studies, Joseph Smith has been profit- ably compared with Herman Melville, Søren Kierkegaard, John Calvin, and others. Here in this issue, he is compared with John Milton in a pair of enlightening essays, each drawing attention to similarities and differences from intriguingly different perspectives. These comparisons sharpen awareness of important features in the life of Joseph Smith and his place in the world that would otherwise likely go unnoticed. This issue presents an array of rigorous book reviews and a sub- stantial study about horses in pre–Columbian America, but a majority of its pages are dedicated to the most definitive analysis to date of the demise of the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837. This story is more com- plicated than even extensive historical studies have previously grasped. This article, presented in four parts, is necessarily long, but its exhaus- tive documentation rewards diligent readers. This complicated scenario shows Joseph Smith and his faithful brethren using competent lawyers, accomplishing the construction and financing of the Kirtland Temple, repaying virtually all of their debts, and facing pernicious opposition. The opposition, especially of one Grandison Newell, is now documented beyond doubt, showing how he unscrupulously became the eventual owner of the Kirtland Temple. Evidence surrounding crucial junctures such as these allows people to focus with confidence on the inward values of Joseph’s theological, humanitarian, spiritual, and prophetic contributions. While much of this data remains to be diligently processed, under- stood, and integrated, millions shall know Brother Joseph again, better than ever before, aided by the great outpouring of scholarship about the Prophet in the past decade. Engraved portrait of John Milton (1608–1674), by William Faithorne (c. 1620–1691). Courtesy Special Collections, University of Leicester. John Milton, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon Robert A. Rees n my Introduction to Mormonism class at Graduate Theological IUnion in 2013, among other topics we discussed the Book of Mormon and its possible provenances. The assignments for the class included my article “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance,” in which I compare Joseph Smith with his illustrious con- temporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman in terms of their respective literary imagination, talent, authorial maturity, education, cultural milieu, knowledge base, and intellectual sophistication.1 In that article, I attempted to demonstrate that each of these authors enjoyed a much greater advantage in all of these categories in com- parison with Joseph Smith at the time he published the Book of Mor- mon. Further, I argued that even if Joseph had been blessed with all of the advantages of his contemporary authors, the time, conditions, and circumstances under which the Book of Mormon was produced were insufficient for the composition of such a lengthy, complex, and elabo- rate narrative as the history of the Nephites and Jaredites. In a follow- up article, I took the comparison one step further by examining each of these writers’ magnum opus and all of the study, preliminary drafts, critical responses, and written works that preceded them.2 That is, the 1. Robert A. Rees, “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 35, no. 3 (2002): 83–112. 2. “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance: An Addendum,” publication pending. BYU Studies Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2015) 7 8 v BYU Studies Quarterly major work of each of these writers has a history, one that allows us to trace its evolution from inception to completion. In my original article, I spoke of what Melville scholars refer to as his “try works.” The image, found in chapter 96 of Moby-Dick, refers to the two large kettles or “try pots” situated on the decks of nineteenth- century whaling ships that were used to “try out” or reduce whale oil by boiling the blubber. One of the ways in which try works functions is as a metaphor for the process of writing, the refining fire of paring, condensing, and rewriting required to reduce a work to its essential plot, structure, and style and to boil away the rhetorical blubber that plagues most authors, especially in their early years. In this sense, it stands for the process a successful writer must go through in order to refine and perfect his or her writing. Thus, for Melville, the five novels he wrote prior to Moby-Dick (Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, and White-Jacket) constitute the try works that prepared him for the more complex rhetor- ical style, universal themes, and timeless scope of Moby-Dick as well as the subtleties and other stylistic refinements that constitute the novel’s amazing power and ontological density. The process was essentially the same and can be demonstrated from the historical record for the other writers of the American Renaissance. In my Graduate Theological Union class, one of my students, Ryan Eikenbary, who had significant experience studying and analyzing John Milton’s Paradise Lost, argued that a more plausible comparison with Joseph Smith in terms of authorial composition was not writers of the American Renaissance but rather John Milton, who dictated his great epic poem in some ways similar to Joseph Smith’s dictation of the Book of Mormon.