The family bible of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, has made its way to market.
The book contains the only know full Joseph Smith family tree, which includes a seventh son who died at birth and was never named. The book was was sold by the family in 1979 and has been in private hands since.
The only other known copy of a Joseph Smith family bible, one belonging his brother Hyrum, is in the special collections of Brigham Young University.
The book is being offered by Ken Sanders Rare Books of Salt City who says of its rarity:
This bible is a unique artifact of 19th century LDS history and arguably the rarest Mormon book, because of the Smith family provenance. By comparison, there were 5,000 copies of the 1830 first edition of the Book of Mormon printed, which regularly sell between $45,000-$100,000. There are twenty-nine known copies of the ‘The Book of Commandments’ of which the last known sale was at $1.7 million dollars.
BTW: This is the same Ken Sanders who stars as the ‘biblio-detective’ in Allison Hoover Bartlett’s recent book The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
Story at abc4.com
Previously on Book Patrol:
The Book Wizard of Salt Lake City