Questions and Answers, 8 May 1838
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Source Note
JS, Questions and Answers, , Caldwell Co., MO, 8 May 1838. Featured version published in Elders’ Journal, July 1838, pp. 42–44. For more complete source information, see the source note for Elders’ Journal, Oct. 1837.
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Historical Introduction
On 8 May 1838, JS prepared responses to a collection of questions he and other church leaders were asked approximately six months earlier while traveling from , Ohio, to , Missouri. The leaders had embarked on the trip in September 1837 in order to locate new gathering places for the and to organize church affairs in Far West. JS explained that on the journey, they held public meetings and were asked questions “daily and hourly . . . by all classes of people.” Upon his return, JS prepared a list of twenty questions—ranging from how the gold plates were discovered to whether the church practiced polygamy—and then published the list in the November 1837 issue of the Elders’ Journal, promising that the next issue would include answers to the queries. The next issue was not published until July 1838, after JS relocated from to and the periodical was reestablished in Far West.JS’s journal entry for 8 May 1838 notes that he spent “the after part of the day, in answering the questions proposed.” He may have begun developing answers at the time the questions were asked in late 1837, perhaps in the public meetings the church leaders held in towns and villages in , , and along the way to . JS noted that the meetings “were tended with good success and generally allayed the prejudice and feeling of the people, as we judge from the treatment we received, being kindly and hospitably entertained.” Whatever the tone of JS’s initial oral responses to interested non-Mormons, he adopted a playful attitude in his written answers for the Latter-day Saint audience of the July 1838 issue of the Elders’ Journal. It is unknown whether JS or others continued working on the answers after 8 May 1838. Because the original document is apparently not extant, it remains unclear whether JS wrote the answers himself or relied on a scribe.
Footnotes
In obedience to our promise, we give the following answers to questions, which were asked in the last number of the Journal.
Question 1st. Do you believe the bible?
Answer. If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does. For there are none of the religious sects of the day that do.
Question 2nd. Wherein do you differ from other sects?
Answer. Because we believe the bible, and all other sects profess to believe their interpretations of the bible, and their creeds.
Question 3rd. Will every body be damned but Mormons?
Answer. Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent and work righteousness.
Question 4th. How, and where did you obtain the book of Mormon?
Answer. Moroni, the person who deposited the , from whence the book of Mormon [p. 42]
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