"Raise Up Seed to Thy Brother"- The Ideologically Levirate Marriage of Joseph, Emma, & Alvin Smith
This presentation proposes that Joseph Smith believed his firstborn son Alvin held special rights to the golden plates because Joseph saw himself as fulfilling the biblical levirate law—raising up seed to his deceased brother Alvin, who had been present when Moroni first appeared and died shortly thereafter. The speaker uses abductive reasoning to argue that Joseph's marriage to Emma was itself an adaptation of this ancient practice, making their union spiritually polygamous from the start. This hypothesis offers explanatory power for several puzzles in early Mormon history, including Joseph's outsized expectations for his firstborn son, his need to marry Emma before obtaining the plates, and the later development of proxy work for the dead and plural marriage.
Don Bradley is an American historian specializing in the origins of the Latter-day Saint movement and the early history of the Book of Mormon. His meticulous archival research and innovative historical methodology have shed new light on some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the founding events of Mormonism. He is best known for his groundbreaking work reconstructing the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript. ¶ Bradley’s book The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon's Missing Stories (2019) represents years of detective work piecing together what the lost manuscript likely contained. Using contemporary accounts, textual analysis, and historical context, Bradley reconstructed the narrative of Lehi and his family that was contained in the Book of Lehi—the portion translated by Joseph Smith and lost by Martin Harris in 1828. His work has been widely praised for its scholarly rigor and its contributions to understanding early Mormon history. ¶ Bradley’s faith journey has been marked by both departure and return. After leaving The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he found his way back to faith in part through the influence of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, whose integration of religious belief with rational inquiry resonated with his scholarly temperament. Lincoln Cannon, founder and first president of the MTA, performed Bradley’s rebaptism—a meaningful connection between his intellectual and spiritual homecoming. Bradley has spoken openly about how his historical research, rather than undermining his faith, ultimately contributed to his decision to return. ¶ Bradley has presented his research at numerous academic conferences, including the Mormon History Association and FairMormon. He has contributed to scholarly journals and collaborative volumes on Latter-day Saint history. His work on the lost pages has influenced how scholars understand the structure and content of the Book of Mormon, as well as the translation process Joseph Smith employed. ¶ His research touches on themes relevant to transhumanist thought, particularly regarding the nature of knowledge, the recovery of lost information, and the relationship between faith and empirical inquiry. Bradley’s methodology demonstrates how careful scholarship can illuminate religious origins while respecting the complexity of belief—a model for integrating scientific and spiritual approaches to understanding human experience and potential.
Transcript
Speaker 1
Joseph Smith once said that the menu is a very important thing. In the King Phollet discourse, that to understand something, the design of something, we need to go back to the beginning. And in that sermon, he tried to take us back to the beginning of the creation. Today, I’m going to try to take you back a little bit to the beginnings of Mormonism.
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And by the way, I Because I get neck tension, I went for a quick walk right before this. I’m still catching my breath, so you should have done that a little earlier.
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Joseph Smith predicted that his first son would acquire the Book of Mormon’s golden plates and accompanying relics. And that his son would read the plates, their sealed portion, and even be seen sporting the sword of Laban. Many of Joseph’s neighbors and Emma’s relatives reported hearing this. On June 15th, 1828, this child was born to Joseph and Emma, their first. This baby, whom they named Alvin, breathed a few hours and passed on. Why did Joseph Smith believe such big things about this child?
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I’ll offer a hypothesis today or a model to account for Joseph’s outsized expectations. A model I hope will illuminate numerous other aspects of Mormonism, including polygamy and Mormonism’s concept of proxy work by the living for the dead.
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First, a word on method. Restoration history has a lot of gaps, and this is one of them. No sources state specifically, explicitly, why Joseph had these expectations, but there are implicit clues that we can use to infer that. This involves forming hypotheses and testing them against our evidence. That mode of reasoning is called abduction, but this kind of abduction is only a felony if it’s done very, very poorly. So hopefully that won’t be the case today.
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Abductive reasoning is also called inference to the best explanation. So the idea is to present a model That can explain the data well. The quality of a model can be assessed based on how simple the model is. The simpler, the better. how well it grows out of the existing evidence, and how much data it can explain.
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Today, I’ll present my hypothesis conversationally Saving systematic documentation for a published paper instead of a 15-minute talk, and I’ll let you judge for yourselves.
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The hypothesis I propose Is that Joseph Smith believed that his son Alvin had special right to the plates because his brother Alvin had had special right to them. Joseph regarded his son Alvin as a son by proxy of his brother Alvin. In other words, Joseph saw himself as living the Bible’s leveret law by which a man could raise up seed to a dead brother, and the fruit of that effort was this son, Alvin.
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I developed here a wedding picture to illustrate my hypothesis. As much as that looks like Mrs. and Mrs. Smith is actually Mrs. and Mrs. Smith. The happy thrupple here. Alvin is in black because he’s the only one in the relationship who has already passed on by the time it occurs. However funny they may have thought it was to pose for this picture, my argument about these three is quite serious.
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And my hypothesis of their leveret relationship grows out of the curious story of Joseph Smith’s family’s relationship to the Book of Mormon’s Golden Plates. You know that on the night of September 21st, 22nd, 1823, Joseph Smith says an angel Appeared in his room to tell him where to find the golden plates. What you may not know is that Alvin was sleeping in that very room at the time.
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Later that day, Joseph Visited the hill to find the golden plates and then told stories about this to his family, including Alvin. In fact, according to Joseph’s mother, Alvin was the member of the family who had the greatest excitement. about this, and he told Joseph to do whatever he had to do to obtain those plates.
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Then, two months after Joseph’s first visit to the hill and excavation of the plates, Alving died. The following year, the angel told Joseph he could not obtain the plates because he did not bring the right person to the hill with him, Alvin. To get the plates, he needed to bring Alvin with him.
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Three days later, on September 25th, Joseph Smith Sr. published a notice in the Palmyra paper that he had exhumed Alvin. It’s unclear exactly why, but perhaps the Smiths explained how perhaps the Smiths hoped, against hope, that if an angel said Alvin could get the plates then Alvin could actually be raised from the grave to do as the angel had instructed. Who knows? Alvin, however, remained dead.
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If Alvin was the one to get the plates, what was Joseph to do about the fact that Alvin was dead? The next two years, Joseph visited the hill on the appointed day, but returned home empty-handed. He didn’t have the right person with him. Then in 1827, Joseph makes a breakthrough.
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Some eight months before his next visit to the Hill, Joseph rushes down to Harmony, Pennsylvania, and convinces Emma to become his wife. He gave two reasons to others for this marriage, each of them connected with Alvin. Joseph told his mother that he wanted to marry Emma because he had been very lonely since Alvin had died. He told others that he needed to marry Emma in order to obtain the plates, and could only obtain them by bringing her with him to the hill on the appointed day as his wife.
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On Joseph’s final visit to the hills, September 22, 1827, Emma joined him and he acquired the plates this time But Emma was likely not the only one who accompanied him. The average human gestation period for a first child, 274 days. Emma gave birth to their son Alvin 267 days after they got the plates, a week shorter than the average gestation. Thus, most probably, Joseph and Emma were joined on the hill by a fellow traveler in Emma’s womb, who, given the venue here, we shall call Alvin the next generation.
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Joseph Smith’s reported need to marry Emma to obtain the plates is a historical puzzle that begs for explanation. I believe that the concept of leveret marriage can begin to explain what’s going on.
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So the law of leveret marriage is given in Deuteronomy 25. And basically, it states that if a man has a married brother who dies without children, the living brother is to marry the widow and raise up seed to the name of the deceased. The first child of the new marriage being considered the deceased brother’s child.
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One key facet of this law clearly did not apply to Joseph and Alvin, since Alvin at the time of his death had not yet married. Let’s bracket that facet of the law for the moment. Look at the others to see how they would have applied, and then we’ll go back to that one.
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So, first, Joseph was Alvin’s brother, check. Alvin had died, Czech. Alvin was childless, Czech. The child of Joseph and Emma we’re talking about here was their first child, Czech. The child was, in the most literal way possible, raised up to the name of the deceased, as indicated in Deuteronomy 25. as Joseph’s brother had been Alvin Smith, so his first child was in turn Alvin Smith as well.
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For Joseph to have raised up seed to his deceased brother Alvin Would have required adaptation of Deuteronomy’s Leveret Law.
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But if we look at the Bible, we find the Leveret Law practiced only In adapted form. So the story of Ruth and Boaz is a story of the Leverett Law. Ruth was a widow. And she does not actually marry her deceased husband’s brother. She marries rather another near kinsman as opposed to the brother.
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There’s the very curious story of Tamar. So failing the brother fulfilling this duty, she turns to the father. Now nowhere in Deuteronomy does it say the father can raise up seed to the deceased. So she’s adapting the principle of the Leverett Law to her circumstances.
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Joseph, in turn, adapted the law based on a principle he extracted from it, the principle of the living acting as proxy for the dead. What I’m proposing, Joseph saw is that if the principle of proxy salvation on which Leverett marriage is based is valid, then this principle had other valid applications as well. If Joseph could procreate on Alvin’s behalf, he could first marry on Alvin’s behalf to make that possible.
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I’ll name a few other cohering data points today that fit with Joseph leveretly marrying on behalf of Alvin. First, it’s not merely hypothetical that Joseph believed in practicing the Leverett Law and adapting the Leverett Law. When Joseph’s brother Don Carlos dies in 1841, Joseph practices the Leveret law by marrying the widow, but he also adapts it since his brother already had living children by her.
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Second, Joseph also taught Leverett marriage to his other brother, Hiram. Again, they practiced the law in adopted form, with Hiram filling the proxy function. Not on behalf of a biological brother, but on behalf of his deceased brother-in-law, Robert B. Thompson, who again, in this case, had living children.
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Third, in conjunction with proxy procreation for the dead, Joseph also institutes proxy marriage for the dead. Hiram not only attempts to beget children for Robert Thompson by proxy, but he also married by proxy for Robert Thompson, standing in for Thompson’s eternal marriage sealing to Mercy Thompson.
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Fourth, Joseph’s revelations on marriage, including Jacob 2 in the Book of Mormon that deals with polygamy, and Doctrine of Covenants 132. are connected to leveret marriage. So polygamy in Jacob II is linked with the phrase raising up seed. Which phrase is used elsewhere in Scripture only to describe the Leveret Law.
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In Joseph’s only public acknowledgment, he doesn’t really come forward and say much about polygamy during his life. In his only public acknowledgment of section 132, Joseph said it was given in response to a New Testament passage about Leveret marriage. And the Revelation itself in verse 16 quotes that same passage.
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Further, Hiram introduced The Revelation DNC 132 to the Nabu High Council by explaining that, quote, the law that a man shall take his brother’s wife and raise up seed unto him, as it was in Israel, must again be established. Thereby linking plural marriage and leveret marriage, which after all is a spiritual form of plural marriage. The woman has a husband on earth and a husband in heaven.
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So our hypothesis here has great explanatory power. Among other things, it can explain how Jefferson got the plates despite Alvin’s death. So he got the plates by, in a sense, bringing Alvin with him to the hill, bringing the new Alvin he had procreated by proxy, and bringing himself as Alvin’s proxy.
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So follow this. It’s a riddle, right? Who is the father of Alvin’s son? Obviously, Alvin. Yet Joseph was the father of Alvin’s son. If Joseph had fathered that child standing in Alvin’s shoes, or perhaps pants. For child fathering purposes and plate skating purposes, Joseph was Alvin.
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Second, this hypothesis explains why Joseph needed to marry in order to get the plates. It’s not just some random requirement. It’s related to the goal. It’s a means.
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Third, it explains Joseph’s remarkable expectations for his son Alvin. As Alvin’s senior son, Alvin Jr. , or Alvin the next generation. Inherited Alvin’s full right to the plates and relics.
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Fourth, the hypothesis also helps to explain the genesis of proxy work for the dead in Mormonism. Leveret marriage is the first introduction. In the canon of the concept of proxy work. Indeed, Leverett marriage is the only clear instance of the idea of Proxy work by the living for the dead in the Bible.
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Even though the term baptism for the dead is used, it’s grammatically ambiguous and may simply mean, and most scholars interpret it to mean. Baptized in the semblance of death, so like buried in a watery grave, right? So, this is the biblical example of proxy work for the dead, Leverett marriage. So Joseph had that idea very early on, but not in the form of baptism for the dead, but marriage for the dead, procreation for the dead.
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The hypothesis also helps to explain the origin of Mormon polygamy. So there’s this great little story about Richard Bushman. Hearing a lecture by Richard Anderson, whose daughter is here. And Richard Anderson was making the argument that Some of the 35 Joseph Smith plural wives identified by Todd Compton weren’t really Joseph Smith plural wives. Only 31 of them were. And Richard Bushman got up afterward and said, that’s great, Richard, but what really interests me is the transition from one to two. Right? That’s the big jump, right?
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Except If this theory that I’m proposing is correct, for Joseph there was no transition from one to two. Rather than starting out in a monogamous marriage and transitioning into a polygamous marriage, Joseph, as far as he was concerned, was always in a polygamous marriage.
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Another implication can be seen by the fact That the marriage was spiritually Polyandres. So for those of you who don’t know Polyandres, here she is on her gravestone. You can’t read it very well. But I looked for this name, right, just to be funny. And guess what? Polly Bradley Andres was from the area in Connecticut that my dad’s ancestors trace back to before they were in the Midwest. So, we were supposed to put a picture up of an ancestor. Maybe this is it, right? So.
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Otherwise, polyandrous means having more than one husband. So polygynous is having more than one wife. Polygamy is more than one marriage, right? But there would be two potential kinds. More than one wife, more than one husband, polyandry, more than one husband.
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Nearly all of Joseph’s early Nauvoo marriages were polyandrous. The woman involved had two husbands. Joseph’s Leveret marriage to Emma gives this a precedent. The first polygamous marriage in the Restoration was initially not Polygynous, but Polyandras. Polyandry, not polygyny, is our original restoration polygamous prototype. Go ahead and cheer, Blair.
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The last implication requires us first to ask: did Emma know she was participating in what Joseph intended to be a leveret marriage? Seems likely to me that she didn’t, right? One of the more troubling aspects of Joseph’s polygamy was his secrecy in keeping it from Emma. If the Leverett theory of Joseph’s marriage to Emma is correct, His later secrecy about his polygamous activities may follow a pattern set in the very beginning of their marriage, to wit. Perhaps he kept from Emma not only that he had multiple spouses, but also that she did.
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If so, this would not only be funny, it would also add another dimension to understanding why Joseph felt so comfortable seeing their marriage. in the context of polygamy, while Emma never did. They lived psychologically in two different marriages. Hers to him had always been monogamous. His to her had always been polygamous. For him, it’s no big change, no change at all.
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From the very start, Joseph worked to do for the dead what the dead could not do for themselves, and that, fundamentally, Is much of what the faith he founded is all about. Thank you.