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Joseph Smith's Gold Plates: A Cultural History

Autor Richard Lyman Bushman
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 5 dec 2023

În cadrul studiilor de istorie religioasă și sociologie a culturii americane, Joseph Smith's Gold Plates ocupă un loc central, oferind o perspectivă academică riguroasă asupra unuia dintre cele mai controversate obiecte de cult din modernitate. Considerăm că abordarea propusă de Richard Lyman Bushman transcende dezbaterea teologică tradițională, alegând să trateze „plăcuțele de aur” nu prin prisma veridicității lor metafizice, ci ca pe un obiect cultural activ, care a modelat identitatea unei comunități globale. Recomandăm acest volum publicat de Oxford University Press pentru modul în care reușește să cartografieze fascinația constantă — de la vânătorii de comori din secolul al XIX-lea până la artiștii contemporani — față de aceste artefacte care au stat la baza The Book of Mormon.

Cititorii familiarizați cu A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon de Larry E. Morris vor aprecia modul în care Bushman completează analiza documentară cu o istorie a reprezentărilor și a imaginarului colectiv. În timp ce Morris se concentrează pe sursele primare, Bushman extinde cadrul narativ către impactul vizual și simbolic, integrând 23 de ilustrații care documentează evoluția estetică a plăcuțelor. Merită menționat că acest volum reprezintă o rafinare a temelor explorate de autor în lucrările sale anterioare, precum Joseph Smith sau Mormonism. Dacă în The Refinement of America Bushman analiza procesul de civilizare a spațiului american, aici el aplică aceeași rigoare sociologică asupra „revrăjirii” lumii moderne prin intermediul sacrului material. Tonul este unul echilibrat, oferind o sinteză valoroasă pentru cei care doresc să înțeleagă cum un obiect descris de Smith în 1823 a generat sute de articole de presă și o întreagă tradiție iconografică.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780197676523
ISBN-10: 0197676529
Pagini: 264
Ilustrații: 23 black and white
Dimensiuni: 236 x 165 x 27 mm
Greutate: 0.51 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte cercetătorilor și studenților la istorie sau teologie, dar și cititorilor interesați de rădăcinile culturii americane. Veți câștiga o înțelegere profundă a modului în care un obiect religios devine un simbol cultural durabil. Este un studiu esențial despre relația dintre credință, skepticism și materialitate, scris de cel mai respectat istoric al mormonismului, oferind un context academic solid dincolo de mitologie.


Despre autor

Richard Lyman Bushman este profesor emerit de istorie la Columbia University și un specialist de renume mondial în istoria colonială americană și mormonism. Format la Harvard University, Bushman a predat la instituții de prestigiu precum Brigham Young University și University of Delaware. Cariera sa de excepție a fost recunoscută prin premiul Bancroft pentru lucrarea From Puritan to Yankee. Expertiza sa vastă, care îmbină rigoarea academică a unui istoric de elită cu o înțelegere fină a fenomenului religios, l-a consacrat ca pe o voce autoritară în studiul vieții lui Joseph Smith și al originilor Bisericii lui Isus Hristos a Sfinților din Zilele din Urmă.


Descriere

Renowned historian Richard Lyman Bushman presents a vibrant history of the objects that gave birth to a new religion.According to Joseph Smith, in September of 1823 an angel appeared to him and directed him to a hill near his home. Buried there Smith found a box containing a stack of thin metal sheets, gold in color, about six inches wide, eight inches long, piled six or so inches high, bound together by large rings, and covered with what appeared to be ancient engravings. Exactly four years later, the angel allowed Smith to take the plates and instructed him to translate them into English. When the text was published, a new religion was born. The plates have had a long and active life, and the question of their reality has hovered over them from the beginning. Months before the Book of Mormon was published, newspapers began reporting on the discovery of a "Golden Bible." Within a few years over a hundred articles had appeared. Critics denounced Smith as a charlatan for claiming to have a wondrous object that he refused to show, while believers countered by pointing to witnesses who said they saw the plates. Two hundred years later the mystery of the gold plates remains. In this book renowned historian of Mormonism Richard Lyman Bushman offers a cultural history of the gold plates. Bushman examines how the plates have been imagined by both believers and critics--and by treasure-seekers, novelists, artists, scholars, and others--from Smith's first encounter with them to the present. Why have they been remembered, and how have they been used? And why do they remain objects of fascination to this day? By examining these questions, Bushman sheds new light on Mormon history and on the role of enchantment in the modern world.

Recenzii

In the tradition of his magisterial biography of Mormonism's founder, Richard Bushman's history of Joseph Smith's Gold Plates begins with two earnest questions: how do we make sense of our subject in the context of its time and place in history? And how does that nineteenth-century culture so marvelously elucidated ultimately fail to fully explain the enigma-in this case those baffling gold plates? We see here a virtuoso historian at work who is not afraid to share his wonder as much as his learning. That combination of historical command and intellectual humility makes Bushman a joy to read.
Joseph Smith's Gold Plates is a riveting cultural history of American religion's most enigmatic objects. Richard Bushman has long been known as the leading voice in Mormon studies for his skillful research, incisive analysis, and stylish prose. This book is true to form. For anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the history of Mormonism and American culture, it is indispensable.
This engaging and sometimes playful book explores an almost two-century-long obsession with proving or disproving the reality of a mysterious set of metallic plates that Joseph Smith claimed to have found in glacial hill in upstate New York. Bushman excels in capturing the inner compulsions and assumptions of the witnesses, writers, artists, and historians who have responded to the plates, showing that over time 'the golden plates' have indeed become enchanted.
No other writer has so clearly and concisely gathered together the many treatments of Smith's gold plates, and Bushman's work is an important contribution in this sense, among others.
An excellent treatment of an important subject. Highly recommended.
Bushman's amicable monograph offers an intriguing case study of how people over the last two centuries have responded when the spiritual and the material are fused.
This book is of interest to those fascinated by the Mormon tradition and anyone studying the world's various religious histories. Comparable stories abound and are an essential aspect of religious traditions.

Notă biografică

Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University and the author of many books, including Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling and Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction. He has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Charles Warren Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center, and the American Antiquarian Society. He co-founded and is chairman of the Board of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts.