But then I don’t see any real problem with the Peter, James, and John visit having come after the organization of the Church and the first ordinations to the office of elder. There is no word of revelation assigning the office of elder to the “higher priesthood” in any way until 1832 (D&C 84), and no official assignment of the office to the “Melchizedek Priesthood” until 1835 (D&C 107). Indeed, there seems to have been little concern, in the earliest days of the Church, that the offices be associated with anything like “priesthood.” They were understood, it seems, to be offices simply of the restored Church of Christ. It was only with the 1830-1835 era that the question of priesthood arose.

The problems begin, I think, not when we raise the possibility that there were redefinitions of the offices and their relationship to the priesthood, but when we raise the possibility that Joseph Smith was lying to us when he said that these events took place. I trust the events happened as and when Joseph describes them as happening, and so I’m not at all concerned that the authority of the priesthood has not been restored; how all the details work out is for us to figure out and enjoy.

So, the chronology, as I see it:

- May 1829, Oliver and Joseph are visited by John the Baptist
- April 1830, The Church is organized with deacons, teachers, priests, and elders
- July (or so) 1830, Oliver and Joseph are visited by Peter, James, and John
- June 1831, The first version of the endowment and hence the first ordinations to the high priesthood
- September 1832, The first revelation describing a lower and a higher priesthood, along with assignments to these two priesthoods of the various offices of the Church, is given
- March 1835, The first revelation assigning the names of “Aaronic” and “Melchizedek” to the two priesthoods is received
- April 1836, Further messengers appear to Joseph and Oliver in the Kirtland Temple

And so on.

Digging around, I’ve only been able to find one primary source that connects the flight from the mob directly with the appearance of Peter, James, and John. And it can be found in Hyrum Andrus’s compilation They Knew the Prophet. I quote:

Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, comps., They Knew the Prophet, p.14-15
In a conversation I heard between Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Oliver Cowdery was spoken of. Joseph said, “Poor boy!”
He then said that at Colesville, New York, in 1829, he and Oliver were under arrest on a charge of deceiving the people. When they were at the justice’s house for trial in the evening, all were waiting for Mr. Reid, Joseph’s lawyer. While waiting, the justice asked Joseph some questions, among which was this: “What was the first miracle Jesus performed?”
Joseph replied, “He made this world, and what followed we are not told.”
Mr. Reid came in and said he wanted to speak to his clients in private and that the law allowed him that privilege, he believed. The judge pointed to a door to a room in the back part of the house and told them to step in there. As soon as they got into the room, the lawyer said there was a mob outside in front of the house. “If they get hold of you they will perhaps do you bodily injury; and I think the best way for you to get out of this is to get right out there,” pointing to the window and hoisting it.
They got into the woods in going a few rods from the house. It was night and they traveled through brush and water and mud, fell over logs, etc., until Oliver was exhausted. Then Joseph helped him along through the mud and water, almost carrying him.
They traveled all night, and just at the break of day Oliver gave out entirely and exclaimed, “Oh, Lord! Brother Joseph, how long have we got to endure this thing?”
They sat down on a log to rest, and Joseph said that at that very time Peter, James and John came to them and ordained them to the apostleship.
They had sixteen or seventeen miles to go to get back to Mr. Hale’s, his father-in-law’s, but Oliver did not complain any more of fatigue.
(Letter of Addison Everett to Oliver B. Huntington, February 17, 1881, Young Woman’s Journal, II (November, 1890), pp. 76-77.)

That’s the only primary source that marks a direct connection. The experience has to be fleshed out a bit by reference to a number of other texts and resources to get the whole story. But this makes the direct connection you asked about. Here is a quick bibliographical list of other places to look to make all the connections:

Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 1:40, 43-44, 97.
Dean Jessee, Paper of Joseph Smith, 1:231.
Scott Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 3-4.
George Watt, Journal of Discourses, 10:303, 23:183.
Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, 163, 240-241.
Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy, 18.
The Messenger and Advocate, Oct 1834, p. 15.
D&C 24; 26; 27:8, 12; 128:20

I hope this helps.

My apologies, then: I’ve not yet done it. I will begin taking it up tomorrow morning, and then I’ll post what I find here.

I love the quote from Reed Smoot (US Senator) ” I would rather be a deacon in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints than be president of the United States” I think his quote puts the importance of this lesson in perspective.

Starting with an intro from the manual repeating Olivers words that “Our souls were drawn out in mighty prayer” etc…indicating that John the Baptist answered this humble plea and then indicating that we will learn together the how, why, when and where to this. I plan to pose 7 specific questions (close to yours) to the sisters who will be split into 7 study groups. Give them half the lesson time to come to conclusions together with the help of supplemental materials I will provide (i.e. The Mortal Messiah, Gods Greatest Gift, New Testament Commentary, Encyclopedia of Mormonism,Mormon Doctrine, Lesson Manual, Scriptures)and then use the other half of the time for each group to present their conclusions. Planning to end the lesson focusing on 2 take-aways regarding 1) Legal Administrator= Proper Authority=One True Church and 2) the lesson of Humility as discussed by Pres. Monson on the LDS Living website under this lesson. Thanks so much for your direction!
Oh, and to RobertC….men respond better to factual questions, women respond better to questions regarding the application of those facts
end

However, I suggest that you think about teaching as I usually do: Read through the material that piques your interest, making notes as you do. Then choose a few things, perhaps one or two, that seem to you could be the center of a lesson. Finally, create your lesson around those few ideas.

Of course, as I understand teaching—and I have been called wrong often enough on this point—one studies and studies and studies and studies and then goes into the classroom without any kind of determined plan, allowing the Spirit to pick and choose among all the details studied (and the details, of course, not studied). (This is, by the way, a model I found best formulated in Elder Gene R. Cook’s book, Teaching by the Spirit.) I don’t, by this comment, mean to suggest that everyone must teach that way; I just mean to explain why it is that my lesson notes here look the way they do.

But I think you’ve both raised some interesting questions. If you are interested, I can make them into a separate post to try to generate some discussion.

I am teaching the next lesson on the Holy Ghost in a few weeks. I was reading it today, and it just so happens to start it off with the account of John the Baptist appearing to Joseph and Oliver. Perhaps they were just using this lesson to build up to the next? Maybe they felt like John the Baptist’s appearance would take the entire lesson to discuss and share that they decided to make it into it’s own chapter. I don’t know. Thanks for your insights. It’s nice to read everyone’s comments, too.

First, one person mentioned the New Mormon Studies CD-ROM as a good source for finding original documentation for statements attributed to Joseph. I actually have to disagree. I’ve found that the LDS Gospel Library 2006 is a much better resource, primarily because it has Ehat & Cook’s Words of Joseph Smith. I have both programs and use them both extensively, but I’ve found that they are good for very different reasons, and I think that LDS Gospel Library is better in this case.

Second, mention is made there of the Joseph Smith Papers project, or rather, a question is raised about whether it will pay attention to things edited by Joseph Smith. With the major developments of that project that have been announced over the past few weeks, that can be affirmatively answered now: one can trust that all these problems of attribution to the Prophet Joseph are going to be treated responsibly in the JSP project, and items edited by Joseph are to be included (the “document” series “will publish in chronological order all Joseph Smith correspondence, revelations, reports of discourses, and other documents (notices, notes, editorials) for which Joseph Smith is author or assumed author”). I highly recommend taking a look at the site for the project: this is without question the most important thing that has ever happened in Mormon historiography. The site: http://josephsmithpapers.net/Default.htm.

http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/10/the-murder-of-zacharias/

I’ll deal only with your #1 here, and I’d like to deal with it on a textual level.

TPJS was compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith, and, to be honest, not very well by today’s standards. He did not distinguish between sources he used, nor did he provide textual notes to mark the hands of the editors of Joseph’s words, but he simply inserted anything that might be attributed to Joseph Smith into a single, undifferentiated volume. The result is less than satisfactory today.

This quotation is a perfect example of why this methodology is unfortunate. The teaching comes from Times and Seasons, the Church’s newspaper in Nauvoo. It comes from an article without an attributed author, hence generally assumed to have been penned by the editor. Since Joseph was the editor of the paper at the time (September 1842 it was published, and Joseph had assumed editorship in April of the same year), Joseph Fielding Smith simply assumed that it was Joseph’s work and so quoted from it in TPJS.

However, I think there is good evidence that it is not Joseph’s work. The style of argumentation is very different from that of Joseph; the word choice is also quite different from Joseph’s usual style; and the article makes reference to Joseph Smith in the third person (and not in the way that Joseph sometimes did). It seems quite likely to me that the article did not originate with Joseph, though he may have edited it.

Of course, what if Joseph really did author the article? Am I to understand that fidelity to the Church means that I must consider this statement from the article as historically infallible—”Thomas, one of the twelve, was run through with a lance, on the coast of Coromandel, in the East Indies”? Such an approach to newspaper rhetoric, speculatively reconstructed martyrdoms used to flesh out an argument, and editorial complexities seems a bit odd to me.

I wish there were an easy answer to your question (and I, too, apologize to Joe for the threadjack), but if there is, I’ve not found it. As you also believe, my relations to my fellow Saints are more important than the intellectual beliefs that I hold, so I have to find a way to hold my beliefs that doesn’t damage my relations to the Saints. Sometimes that means just keeping my mouth shut. There are worse things than believing that Zacharias was designated to serve as the high priest. Sometimes it means saying, “Yes, but what about this?” and proposing an alternative. I really ought not to allow those I love to engage in anti-Semitism without showing them an alternative. Of course, the second of these can be done in a variety of ways depending on whom I am speaking to.

I doubt that I am saying anything that you don’t already know well, so I doubt that this is very much help. The problem is that, perhaps arrogantly, I don’t think there is another answer.

1. I had always understood the decree to kill the children under two to apply only to the village of Bethlehem and its surroundings (Matthew 2:16), not to all of Israel. Unless John was living in or close to Bethlehem, I don’t think he would have been in danger.

Apparently Joseph Smith taught that Zacharias was the officiating high priest, presumably basing that on Luke’s account. However, Luke’s account only says that Zacharias was chosen to offer incense before the veil of the temple, something done twice every day, but not by the high priest. It doesn’t tell us that he was chosen to enter the Holy of Holies, something done only once a year by the high priest. Since Joseph doesn’t seem to claim revelation as his source, I assume he was simply mistaken about Zacharias being chosen to perform the duties of the high priest.

2. That John the Baptist was designated to restore the Aaronic Priesthood suggests that he plays a special role in regard to that priesthood. So his ordination may have required something that Zacharias couldn’t have done. However, this seems to me to amount to reasonable speculation more than anything else.

3. The distinction Joseph Fielding Smith makes between the Aaronic and the Levitical priesthoods seems to me not to be a difference. Is there a textual basis for what he says?

Until we get to “the Jews failed to recognize John and rejected him,” I have little difficulty. However, I don’t think that describes the Jews of Jerusalem in Christ’s day. For one thing, many Jews came to John for baptism. For another, the “Jews” of Jerusalem were not a unified group of which it could be reasonably said “that group rejected Jesus.” Some did. Some didn’t. Some didn’t know much about him.

1. From New Testament Seminary Student Manual: 1987, Unit One, Week 2, page #17,
Zacharias – The prophet Joseph Smith taught: “When Herod’s edict went forth to destroy the young children, John was about 6 months older than Jesus, and came under this hellish edict, and Zacharias caused him mother to take him into the mountains, where he was raised on locust and wild honey. When his father refused to disclose his hiding place, and being the officiating high priest at the Temple that year, was slain by Herod’s order, between the porch and the altar, as Jesus said.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938], p. 261) Matthew 23:35

From New Testament Seminary Student Study Guide: 1999, Lesson #3, page #11
“The prophet Joseph Smith taught that when Herod had the children aged two and younger in the land killed (see Matt 2:16-18), John’s mother hid him in the wilderness, and John’s father was killed because he would not tell where John was hidden.” (See Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], p. 261; see also Matt 23:35.

2. From Answer to Gospel Questions, Joseph Fielding Smith, Vol V, page #2.
“Zacharias did not have certain Authority: The Lord was pleased not to reveal the name of the angel who ministered to John. The reason Zacharias could not ordain John is because of the fact that John received certain keys of authority which his father Zacharias did not possess. Therefore this special authority had to be conferred by this heavenly messenger, who was duly authorized and sent to confer it. John’s ordination was not merely the bestowal of the Aaronic Priesthood, which his father held, but also the conferring of certain essential powers peculiar to the time among which was the authority to overthrow the kingdom of the Jews and “to make straight the way of the Lord.” Moreover, it was to prepare the Jews and other Israelites for the coming of the Son of God. This great authority required a special ordination beyond the delegated power that had been given to Zacharias or any other priest who went before him, so the angel of the Lord was sent to John in his childhood to confer it.”

3. From Doctrines of Salvation, Joseph Fielding Smith, Vol 3, page 86-89
John’s Priesthood Levites held the Aaronic Priesthood: The Aaronic Priesthood is divided into the Aaronic and the Levitical, yet it is but one priesthood. This is merely a matter of designating certain duties within the priesthood. The sons of Aaron, who presided in the Aaronic order, were spoken of as holding the Aaronic Priesthood; and the sons of Levi, who were not sons of Aaron, were spoken of as the Levites. They held the Aaronic Priesthood but served under, or in a lesser capacity, than the sons of Aaron.

The authority of the priesthood was manifest in the days of the Savior’s coming. By virtue of the priesthood held by Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, the angel appeared to him.

“Why John was Chosen to Restore Aaronic Order: There are several very significant matters connected with the conferring of the Aaronic Priesthood upon Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, which may briefly be discussed:
1. The reason John the Baptist was sent from the heavens to confer the Priesthood of Aaron is that there was no one among mortals with the keys of that authority. Had there been, then there would have been no necessity for a restoration of this authority, and John would not have been sent.
2. It was John the Baptist who held the presidency of this priesthood in the days of his ministry as the forerunner of Jesus Christ. As a Levite, and his authority coming to him by divine right of descent, he was the rightful presiding priest of the Aaronic order in Israel. This authority came to him by lineage, and the Lord has made it known that John “was baptized while he was yet in his childhood and was ordained by the angel of God at the time he was eight days old unto this power, to overthrow the kingdom of the Jews, and to make straight the way of the Lord before the face of his people, to prepare them for the coming of the Lord, in whose hands is given all power.” (D&C 84:28)

Had the Church of God been in existence with the Jews in that day, instead of the Jews being in a dreadful state of apostasy, then John the Baptist would have taken his proper place as the presiding priest of the Aaronic order. But they recognized him not and failed to understand his authority, even as they failed to comprehend the authority of our Lord. The authority of John was that which was conferred upon Aaron and which came down by right of lineage to Eleazar and his posterity after him; (Ex 28:1, 40-43; 29:4-9; Num 3:1-4) but the Jews failed to recognize John and rejected him. By right of his authority John laid the foundation for the overthrow of their kingdom, or power, which was based on a false foundation. Had they accepted John then also would they have accepted Christ, the Lord, their rightful King and the great High Priest of their salvation.”

I am teaching this lesson in HP later today, and trying to makes sense of the “least in the Kingdom of Heaven” interpretation by Joseph Smith.

Unfortunately for my own case, I don’t know of any particular manuscript that connects the two events explicitly except for D&C 128:20. There are manuscripts that tie the ordination to the flight from the mob, and there are manuscripts that tie the devil’s being cast out to the flight from the mob, but no one text spells out all the details. But I think a very strong case can be made. Perhaps the two must-read secondary treatments of these issues, for now, are Bushman’s Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism and Quinn’s The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. BYU Studies published a brief engagement with the latter in 1995 or 1996.

Yes, it is clear that I will at some point have to work all the details out from the manuscript sources themselves and make the argument. In the meanwhile…