 Joseph Smith once said that in the King Fowlet 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 tie to take you back a little bit to the beginnings of Mormonism. And by the way, I guess 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. 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 sort 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. My 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 leverant law by which a man could raise up seed to a dead brother, and the fruit of that effort was this son Alvin. I developed here a wedding picture to illustrate my hypothesis. As much as that looks like Mrs. and Mrs. Smith, it's actually Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The happy threeple here. Alvin isn't 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, and my hypothesis, their leverant relationship, grows out of the curious story of Joseph Smith 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, which you may not know is that Alvin was sleeping in that very room at the time. 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. Then two months after Joseph's first visit to the hill, an excavation of the plates, Alvin 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. 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 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. 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. 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. On Joseph's final visit to the hill, September 22nd, 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. Joseph Smith's reporting need to marry Emma to obtain the plates is a historical puzzle that begs for explanation. I believe that the concept of leverant marriage can begin to explain what's going on. So the law of leverant 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. 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. So first, Joseph was Alvin's brother, check. Alvin had died, check. Alvin was childless, check. The child of Joseph and Emma we're talking about here was their first child, check. 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. For Joseph to have raised up seed to his deceased brother Alvin would have required adaptation of Deuteronomy's leverant law but if we look at the Bible we find the leverant law practiced only in adapted form. So the story of Ruth and Boaz is a story of the leverant 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. 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 leverant law to her circumstances. 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 leverant 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. I'll name a few other co-hearing data points today that fit with Joseph leverantly marrying on behalf of Alvin. First it's not merely hypothetical that Joseph believed in practicing the leverant law and adapting the leverant law. When Joseph's brother Don Carlos dies in 1841 Joseph practices the leverant law by marrying the widow but he also adapts it since his brother already had living children by her. Second Joseph also taught leverant marriage to his other brother Hiram. Again they practice the law in adapted 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. 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. Fourth Joseph's revelations on marriage including Jacob II in the book of Mormon that deals with polygamy and Doctrine and Covenants 132 are connected to leverant marriage. So polygamy and Jacob II is linked with the phrase raising up seed which phrase is used elsewhere in scripture only to describe the leverant law. In Joseph's only public acknowledgement he he doesn't really come forward and say much about polygamy during his life and his only public acknowledgement of section 132. Joseph said it was given in response to a New Testament passage about leverant marriage and the revelation itself in verse 16 quotes that same passage. Further Hiram introduced the revelation dancing 132 to the Nabuchai 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 leverant marriage which after all is a spiritual form of plural marriage. The woman has a husband on earth and a husband in heaven. So our hypothesis here has great explanatory power among other things that can explain how Joseph's have 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. 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 father child fathering purposes and plates getting purposes. Joseph was Alvin. 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. 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. 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 Leveret marriage is the only clear instance of the idea of proxy work by the living for the dead in the bible. 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 Leveret marriage. So Joseph has that idea very early on but not in the form of baptism for the dead but marriage for the dead procreation for the dead. 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 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. Another implication can be seen by the fact that the marriage was spiritually polyandrous so for those of you who don't know polyandrous here she is on her gravestone you can't read it very well but I looked I for this name right just to be funny and guess what Poly Bradley Andrus was from the area in Connecticut that my dad's ancestors traced 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 otherwise polyandrous means having more than one husband so polygenous is having more than one wife polygamy is more than one marriage right but there will be two potential kinds more than one wife more than one husband polyandry more than one husband nearly all of Joseph's early Navu marriages were polyandrous the woman involved had two husbands Joseph's levered marriage to Emma gives this a precedent the first polygamous marriage in the restoration was initially not polygenous but polyandrous polyandry not polygeny is our original restoration polygamous prototype go ahead and cheer blur the last implication requires us first to ask did Emma know she was participating in what Joseph intended to be a levered 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 levered 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 it perhaps he kept from Emma not only that he had multiple spouses but also that she did 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 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