History of the Church

Is there an electronic version of the History of the Church Volumes? If so where do you find it and why is it not in the Gospel Library since so many of the lessons refer to it?

Is this what you are looking for?
Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I don't know about Windows 8 but "Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" is available in the Gospel Library. To get it I searched for "Our Heritage" and then was given the option to download it into Gospel Library. I found it in the Family collection in the Android version.

The seven-volume History of the Church is posted here:
https://byustudies.byu.edu/hc/hcpgs/hc.aspx

With the advent of newer and better histories, this original seven-volume history is really no longer used, although it is indeed referred to in many existing lesson manuals.

Quoted from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... LDS_Church

History of Joseph Smith was initially published as an official publication of the LDS Church. Although Roberts's History of the Church has never been granted "official history" status, it nonetheless is widely used in the church and is often cited in the sermons and magazine articles written by general authorities and other church leaders.

In 1851, extracts from what would become History of Joseph Smith were published in a church publication entitled Pearl of Great Price.[citation needed] This book was canonized by the LDS Church on October 10, 1880. The portion of History of Joseph Smith that was canonized consists of Smith's recitation of events between his birth in 1805 and May 1829 and is officially entitled Joseph Smith–History.

Although History of the Church is no longer an official publication, it is the most-cited source in two histories of the church which are official publications of the LDS Church: Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Church History in the Fulness of Times.

There's also an ebook version from Deseret Book that's on sale right now.

If you want to get straight to the source, I've found perusing http://josephsmithpapers.org/ to be very enlightening. The "Reference" menu item at the top of the main page is a good place to start.

Available for free in many popular formats here:

https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTh ... EditionPdf

I downloaded the kindle format and when you run kindle on your device and go to settings there is a special kindle email address created for you. Email the .mobi file to this address and it will automatically be added to your library!

That would be A Comprehensive History of the Church (Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) BH Roberts. I keep hearing about 7 volumes, but when I had a late 40's edition one of those was some sort of directory I think. Unfortunately I donated mine to a meetinghouse library during a move. Although I read below comments claiming there are now "better" histories, this is hardly relevant and highly subjective. Roberts among other things made extensive footnotes and citations found nowhere else. In fact his footnotes could fill an entirely separate set of volumes alone. Furthermore, he runs down in text and footnotes fountains of tangental, secular information on local political and legal conflicts and battles that put the church's struggles, particularly those of Joseph Smith, in a much clearer focus than the mostly rosey, faith-promoting legends of later works by overt LDS apologists and romanticists.

A fully searchable online version, footnotes and all, of this work would be an immense help I would think, even more so than the newly release "histories" and papers of Joseph Smith, which are so partisan and internal that they show LDS history in a near vacuum.

On a related note, why is it LDS search engines are so unintelligent, unintuitive, and uncomprehinsive? I'm no coder, but why shouldn't I be able to go to a single site, or at least a single search dialogue for any given LDS site, and particularly LDS Library, punch in "Jesus Wept" and have it spit out chapter and verse, having searched all scriptures, all manuals, hymn books, conference talks, newsroom articles, proclamations, and anything anywhere in the LDS universe of online data? I can find this sort of stuff faster just backing out to Google and running a search.

roycelerwick wrote:That would be A Comprehensive History of the Church (Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) BH Roberts. I keep hearing about 7 volumes, but when I had a late 40's edition one of those was some sort of directory I think. Unfortunately I donated mine to a meetinghouse library during a move. Although I read below comments claiming there are now "better" histories, this is hardly relevant and highly subjective. Roberts among other things made extensive footnotes and citations found nowhere else. In fact his footnotes could fill an entirely separate set of volumes alone. Furthermore, he runs down in text and footnotes fountains of tangental, secular information on local political and legal conflicts and battles that put the church's struggles, particularly those of Joseph Smith, in a much clearer focus than the mostly rosey, faith-promoting legends of later works by overt LDS apologists and romanticists.

A fully searchable online version, footnotes and all, of this work would be an immense help I would think, even more so than the newly release "histories" and papers of Joseph Smith, which are so partisan and internal that they show LDS history in a near vacuum.

I grew up reading both the History of the Church as compiled and published by the Apostles after JS death and the BH Roberts Comprehensive History of the Church and even have a grandmother that was visiting back east as an 18 year old Girls and saw BH Roberts talk where he dedicated those volumes to the church at the 1930 General Conference (thrill of my life to have found that in her journals) - BH Roberts talked at the funeral of my Willey Handcart pioneer GGGGrandfather. I have a deep and abiding love for BH Roberts and his contributions to our Theology and history. BUT, his history is completely superseded and while many footnotes exist and sources exist, the many, many, many, many, many volumes written since are better, more focused on periods of time and more comprehensive. Sorry, that's just facts.