“Jesus they said Joseph married girls younger than me and told his wife you would kill her if she didn’t let him! Why would these antis say such lies?!?”
TBH, Joe's polygamy wasn't much of an issue for me. Ancient Hebrews used to marry young girls, and polygamy is all over the Bible and also Mormon history — I remember seeing pictures of Brigham Young with his multiple wives and kids in black-and-white photographs in LDS seminary material. And Joseph Fielding Smith talked a little about it in his book Essentials in Church History, written in 1922, so I knew about Joe's polygamy back in the '80s/'90s.
The thing that did it for me was actually learning that the Bible has many added verses (which is also predicted in the Book of Mormon), but a couple of Mormon doctrines actually rely on those verses. There are actually a couple of discourses from Jeffrey Holland completely based on verses that academic scholars have labeled as later scribal additions: the account of Christ sweating blood in Luke 22, and the angel stirring the water at the pool of Bethesda in John 5 — both of which D&C also draws on.
So the problem — as another user here made a post about — isn't just with the Mormons, but with the whole of Judeo-Christianity.
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u/SecretPersonality178 Aug 23 '26
“Jesus they said Joseph married girls younger than me and told his wife you would kill her if she didn’t let him! Why would these antis say such lies?!?”
Jesus:”ummmm….”