Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
This is like the question of whether the civil war was caused primarily by the slave question.
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Do you mean in the sense that one has to surmise Joseph's motives, the mob's motives, and so on to establish the cause of his death?
That's certainly not all there is to the question, and the value of the question is not, I think, in finding some definitive answer. For me, the value is in discovering what other questions are evoked, and in seeing how Joseph's actions do or do not fit historical criteria for martyrdom, and what Mormon's often avow about his death.
Eusebius certainly didn't just throw up his hands and go, "There's no way to know their motivations or to know what caused their deaths, so the whole notion of martrydom is useless."
That's a cop out.