"This simply could not be done without the resources the Millers have provided," Esplin said. "With their help we can do more, do it quicker and do it better. We could not do it on this scale or with this richness without their help."

Miller's chief role, he said, is to accelerate the project. In addition to funding, he has contributed the same hard-nosed, bottom-line business sense that made it possible for him to build a car-sales empire, preserve the Jazz franchise and finance the Delta Center.

For one thing, he has pushed the editors to complete the project by 2015.

"I suggested we try to finish while Dean Jessee is still around," Miller said.

Jessee, in his early 70s, is the project's general editor.

Miller is also the financial backer of a historical fiction film about the founding of the church, "The Work and the Glory." He announced last week he will fund two sequels based on a series of books by the same name.

Along with a symposium planned next month at the Library of Congress — "The Worlds of Joseph Smith" — scholars see an increased interest in the founder of the LDS Church.

Miller, of course, welcomes the interest, although he knows some are nervous about the scrutiny of the man church members revere as a prophet who claimed to see God and Jesus Christ.

"Joseph can and will stand up to any degree of scrutiny he's put under," Miller said. "I haven't read as much as these scholars, but the more I read, it's clear the more we know and understand him the clearer it will become that he was who he said he was."

One scholar who anonymously reviewed plans for the Smith Papers project wrote, "Joseph Smith continues to be an enigma to many, and it's time we get to know him better."

That's music to the ears of Miller, who said he particularly enjoyed a new arrangement of "Praise to the Man" during general conference last weekend. The treatment emphasized the line "Millions shall know Brother Joseph again."

"The arrangement had the choir sing that line three times," Miller said. "That made my day."

---

E-mail: twalch@desnews.com