Friday, December 1, 2017

Mark Ashurst-McGee's, A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet, now available online for free download


I have a very important announcement to make: as of today, Mark Ashurst-McGee's thesis, A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet (2000), is now available online for free download.

Last week, I pointed out to the Utah State Univeristy's Digital Commons that the above master's thesis was missing from their "ALL GRADUATE THESES AND DISSERTATIONS" site. To my surprise, I received an email that they would soon make the thesis available, and today, they informed me that they have done so.

Back in May, a good friend of mine provided me with a PDF copy of Mark's thesis, but it was an image only scanned document which does not allow text to be copied. The new USU PDF document is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) based, which allows text copying (and pasting), and makes citations so much easier.

The document may be downloaded via THIS LINK

Mark Ashurst-McGee's master thesis is one of the most important contributions on the history of Joseph Smith Jr. as it relates to his involvement in certain aspects of 'folk magic' and 'occult' practices. Mark sees Joseph's participation in such practices as a preparation for his eventual calling as God's chosen prophet for the restoration Christ's Church which had fallen into apostasy, becoming a church in name only, having no divine authority. The following is from the abstract of the thesis:

Joseph Smith Junior, founder of the Mormon faith, presented himself to America and the world as a prophet with the same powers as the widely known prophetic figures of the Bible. Like Moses and Elijah, he made God's will known to humankind. Before assuming this role, Smith had used divining rods and then seer stones to find underground water, buried treasure, lost items, and stray livestock. This thesis charts Joseph Smith's progression from rodsman to seer to prophet. (Page iii)

This thesis is a must read for those who have even just a minor interest in Mormonism.

ENJOY !!!


Grace and peace,

David

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