030 How Has Canonizing/De-Canonizing Happened in the Doctrine & Covenants?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Woodward (00:05):
Because of our location in time and good record keeping, we
are privileged to have an up closeand personal view of the production of
modern scriptural canon, and as we getinto it, it's a bit of a rollercoaster.
From its first publication in1835 to its current version today,
the Doctrine and Covenants hasundergone major additions, deletions,

(00:27):
rearrangements, and textual changes.
In today's episode of Church HistoryMatters, we'll take a ride through the
history of this iterative productionof the Doctrine and Covenants, from its
earliest 1833 version, known as the Bookof Commandments, to its 1835 version,
which added new revelations and sevenmajor theological lectures known as the

(00:48):
Lectures on Faith, to the 1844 version,which added a few crucial revelations
and was the last version most of thebranches of the Restoration agreed upon
after Joseph's death, to the 1876 version,which contained massive additions and
rearranging, to the 1921 version, whichdecanonized the Lectures on Faith, and

(01:08):
finally to the version we use today, whichunderwent revisions as recently as 2013.
So please keep your arms and legsinside at all times as we now embark
on our tour of the ongoing storyof the Doctrine and Covenants.
I'm Scott Woodward, and myco-host is Casey Griffiths.
And today we dive into our sixthepisode in this series dealing with

(01:29):
Joseph Smith's non-Book-of-Mormontranslations and revelations.
Now let's get into it.
Hello, Casey Griffiths.

Casey Paul Griffiths (01:37):
Hello, Scott.
How you doing?

Great.
How you doing, man?

I'm great.
Just raring, ready to go to talk aboutthe Doctrine and Covenants once again, so.

You seem like a guy who's always ready to talk about
the Doctrine and Covenants, Casey.

I love the Doctrine and Covenants.
It's my favorite.
I mean, I love all thescriptures, but you know.

I think you kind of let it slip there real quick.
I think, I think you Freudianshowed us that you prefer
the Doctrine and Covenants.
That's cool.
You know, respect.
No judgment.
Respect.

I teach the Doctrine and Covenants, so I am
a little partial towards them.

Totally.
Totally.
Well, we're excited.
This is our second episode on ourdiscussion about the Doctrine and
Covenants as part of a broader seriesabout revelations and translations that
are other than the Book of Mormon, andyou pointed out really well last episode
that these are all interconnected.
We're kind of going through themsequentially, but that's not the

(02:30):
reality of how they came about.
It was Book of Mormon, and as the Book ofMormon's coming about, there are questions
that are being asked, and we get someof the early revelations of the Doctrine
and Covenants during that time period.
We then also talked about theJoseph Smith Translation, and that
was huge in terms of influence onthe Doctrine and Covenants, right?

Yeah.

About half of the Doctrine and Covenants is revealed during the
time that Joseph is working on the JosephSmith Translation, and not by coincidence:
It's actually direct cause and effect.
The Bible is inspiring him to askquestions, the answers to which become
revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.
And so this is all kind of happeningright on top of each other.

Yeah.

But as we pointed out last episode, the Doctrine
and Covenants is not yet done.
It's still what we call an open canon.
And so let's talk about that.
First of all, let's reviewwhat, Casey, is the difference
between scripture and canon?
What do we mean by that?

Okay.
This is a big part of our model, isscripture versus canon, and what the
relationship between the two is, and Ithink the major question we're dealing
with today is, how does canon develop?

Yeah.

We use the definition of scripture that the
Lord himself gives in section 68of the Doctrine and Covenants,
which I will again read here.
The Lord is speaking to severalindividuals who later become apostles,
but aren't at this point, and He says,“Whatsoever they shall speak when moved
upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture,shall be the will of the Lord, shall be

(03:55):
the mind of the Lord, shall be the wordof the Lord, shall be the voice of the
Lord and the power of God unto salvation.”Now, that is a broad definition,
but basically anything spoken by thepower of the Holy Ghost is scripture.

Yeah.
And you can hear thatin sacrament meeting.
Like, people can sharescripture that are 10 years old.
Like, they can speak and testify with whatNephi calls the tongue of angels, right?

Yeah.

But that's not the same thing as canon.

A woman gets up in your ward and shares a story
about how she overcame her cancer.
That's scripture, if it's done by thepower of the Holy Ghost, according
to the Savior's own definition.
But that definition is so broad,it can cause us problems because
we can't accept everything asscripture that people claim to.
What if a person's lying?

(04:43):
What if they misunderstood andthey weren't actually speaking
by the power of the Holy Ghost?

Yeah.

So in order to have some control, we introduced
a second term, which is canon.
And the definition we use for canonis a rod for testing straightness.
That's literally whatthe word canon means.
It's Greek.

A rod for testing straightness.

A rod for testing straightness.
The Bible dictionary says it's nowused to denote the authoritative
collection of the sacred books usedby the true believers in Christ.
In the Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter-day Saints, the canonical
books are called the standard works.
So scripture is this huge, huge categorythat could encompass everything from
something that Moses said to somethingthat, like you mentioned, a 10 year old

(05:25):
says when they're bearing their testimony.
But canon is stuff that we know isscripture and we use as a measuring rod
to figure out what is or isn't scripture.

Yeah, as Elder McConkie, he says it like this
standard works are the standard ofjudgment and the measuring rod,” he uses
that phrase, “against which all doctrinesand views are weighed.” And then he
says, “And it does not make one particleof difference whose views are involved.
The standard works always takeprecedence.” They always take precedence.

(05:56):
And so he says wise people anchortheir doctrine on the standard
works rather than, like, quotationsfrom individuals, even if those
quotations, he says, are from apostlesor quoted in General Conference.
Like, if you really want to be solid,then you're going to anchor your
doctrine in what's canonized in thestandard works because that's where
it's official and, as President Hugh B.
Brown said, it's bindingonce it's in there.

(06:18):
But you introduced a nicephrase I liked last episode.
You said the harmonized canon.
What does that mean?

Yeah.
So even going further than saying weuse the scriptural canon, I would say
we use the harmonized scriptural canon.

Meaning?

And all that means basically is even if you can
find it in the scripture canon.
. . Scott Woodward: Yeah.
If you can only find it in one place—

Yeah.

—we're not saying it's wrong.
We're saying be cautious with it.

Be cautious.

The Lord repeats ideas over and over and over again.
And you should be able to find severaldata points in the scriptures where
the same principle’s taught ratherthan just relying on one point.
If I have a person come to me and say,“Hey, this scripture says this,” and it
doesn't say anything like that anywhereelse in the scriptures, I'm not saying

it's wrong (07:02):
I'm saying be cautious.

Yeah.

Scriptures can be easily misunderstood.
They can be misinterpreted.
And we don't think thescriptures are perfect.
They can be wrong.
There can be errors in the way theywere transcribed or misunderstandings,
or sometimes we take a prophetsharing their opinion as revelation.

Yeah.

I think it's 1 Corinthians 7:14 where Paul basically
says, concerning this subject, I haveno revelation, but here's what I think.
Here's my judgment.

Yeah.

So it's better for us to find it in multiple places in the
scriptures than to just use one point.
So we would say the harmonizedscriptural canon is what we would
use as the standard for truth.

I love that.
And once that clicked in my mind,that idea, I started finding
apostles and prophets teachingthat point over and over again.
Like here's one from Harold B.

Lee (07:48):
He said, “With respect to doctrines and meaning of scripture,
let me give you safe counsel.
It is usually not well to use asingle passage of scripture in
proof of a point of doctrine.
To single out a passage of scriptureto prove a point is always a
hazardous thing,” he calls it.
It's a hazardous idea.
And so every verse, President Boyd K.

(08:08):
Packer said, “whether oft quoted orobscure,” must be measured against
other verses to bring what he callsa balanced knowledge of truth.
And maybe in a different series we shouldgo into a bunch of examples of that.
But for today's purposes, that'sprobably sufficient, though.
Canon is different than scripture.
It's more official.
It's more binding.
It's more useful to try to get to a clearand confident measure of what's true—

Yeah.

—but even canon itself needs another level of
internal harmonization, right?
The harmonized canon.
I love that concept.

And let me say another point that just comes
to mind while we're talking here.

Yeah.

Revelation and the harmonized canon are the two
things we use to guide us, and oneshouldn't take precedent over the other.
For instance, you've heardof John Krakauer's book
Under the Banner of Heaven.

Yeah.

It was even turned into, like, a TV
miniseries and things like that.

Yeah.

And to get ready for the TV miniseries, because I
thought my students would have a lot ofquestions, which they had no questions.
I don't know if very manypeople watched it, but.
. . Scott Woodward: Nobody cares.
Yeah.
John Krakauer's big argument in hisbook is, in a church where anybody
can get revelation, that's crazy.
Like, how do you know that aperson's revelation comes from God?

(09:18):
Under the Banner of Heaven is about agroup of people who left the church and
claimed that they did so because Godtold them to, and then they committed
a series of murders, some of which werereally gruesome, because God told them to.
Well, what Krakauer is missingis that Latter-day Saints
believe that revelation is alwaysmeasured against scriptural canon.

Yeah.

So if you're thinking God told you to
kill your wife, which is what theLaffertys said God told them to do—

Oh my goodness.

—that's clearly in contradiction to
the scriptural canon, right?

Right.

And he's missing half the equation of how
Latter-day Saints discern God's will,which is one part revelation and
one part measuring it against theharmonized canon to see if it's right.

I think he was missing a lot more than that.

He, well, yeah, I mean, the whole book's a mess, to be
honest with you, and maybe we ought tospend an episode going through everything
that's wrong, because it is astoundinghow much he gets wrong in his book.
But I digress.
I just want to add whatyou said with Harold B.
Lee to another prophet.
This is Joseph Fielding Smith.
He said, “My words and the teachingsof any other member of the Church, high

(10:23):
or low, if they do not square with therevelations, we do not accept them.
Let us have this matter clear.
We have accepted the four standard worksas the measuring yardsticks or balances
by which we measure every man's doctrine.”

Yeah.

So just another person saying, basically, yeah, we use
the standard works as the yardstick.

Yeah.

This is how we know if scripture is scripture, if it
actually is inspired by the Holy Ghost.
If it doesn't match the harmonizedcanon, then it's really not
something that came from God.

Yeah, and this is a very important safeguard, right?
Because the reality is that even apostlesand prophets, as Doctrine and Covenants 1
says, are weak and simple servants, right?
Now, there's some very impressiveapostles, in my opinion, but the Lord
calls them all weak and simple, and hesays that they are error prone, and even
sometimes sinful, right there in D&C 1.
And so the underlying assumption is thathumans are human and we make errors.

(11:19):
Even humans that are called by God to beHis servants are going to make errors.
And so we need some standard by which tomeasure correctness and truth, and that's
what we call the canon, or the harmonizedcanon, as we're talking about it.

Yeah.

I want to just segue into today's discussion
by quoting from Steve Harper.
We mentioned him in our last episode.
Great article called “That They MightCome to Understanding: Revelation
as Process,” and we'll link tothat again in our show notes for
this episode as we did in our last.
He said, “Prophets will continue toguide us as we continue to receive

(12:04):
revelation actively in an ongoingquest for light and knowledge.
They may amend the scriptures by theHoly Spirit as Joseph Smith did, when
they discern ways to communicate withtoday's global congregation more clearly.
The prophets have made changes tothe scriptures throughout history,
including in this dispensation.
The recent publication of a criticaledition of Joseph Smith's new translation

(12:27):
of the Bible shows that he made thousandsof changes to the biblical text as well.”
And we talked about that in the JosephSmith Translation episodes of this series.
“We can choose to recoil in ignorance anddisbelief from such facts,” Steve says,
“or we can rejoice that we live in a timeof wonderful discovery of our scriptural
texts.” And then he says, “Perhaps wecan learn from history about how to

(12:49):
approach this moment of enlightenment.
European scholars in the earlymodern period,” which is, like, 1500
to 1800, “began to study the Biblecritically, using historical, textual,
and linguistic analyses to assessthe composition of biblical texts.
They discovered that the oldest sourcematerials for the Bible show the influence
of several writers of what we casuallycall the Books of Moses, all written

(13:14):
from different periods and perspectives.”This is what's called the Documentary
Hypothesis in biblical scholars.
It's really interesting.

Yes.

He then continues, “It became obvious that the biblical text had
been revised and redacted again and again.
As evidence and arguments mounted thatbiblical texts had been composed in a more
complicated process than many believershad assumed, some concluded that mortal
influence on scripture making precludedthe possibility that the Bible was

(13:42):
divinely inspired.” Ooh, if humans havehad their fingerprints all over the text,
then we cannot accept it as inspired.
He says, “Other people retrenchedthe other way behind fundamentalism,
the idea set forth by a group ofAmerican Protestants in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries that theBible is inerrant.” So they go to the
other extreme saying, no, it's notunder question as to its inspiration.

(14:04):
It's actually flawless.
It is flawless.
No errors.
He then concludes, “These two campscreated a false dilemma, unnecessarily
concluding that the scriptures must beeither divine or human texts.” And that's
a dichotomy that we're trying to break.

Yeah.

Like, there's just human involved with the divine
together in scripture—that scriptureis a collaboration between humans
and God, and whenever humans areinvolved, you're going to find error.
We ought to expect it.
This should be baked into ourassumptions about scripture.

Yeah.

And as we do so, I’ve found that that helps all of this
actually land a lot more gently, andwe approach scripture with a more
nuanced sense of both faith and reason.
We're able to see God working withflawed humans, both in scripture
and in the production of scripture.
And as President Packer said, whenyou see that process up close,

(14:57):
that actually strengthens faith.
You're watching what God doesand how He works with humans.
And ultimately, that'sactually pretty inspirational.

Yeah.
I agree that, you know, we take theseassumptions from childhood that, you
know, the scriptures come directly fromGod, and as we transition into adulthood,
we have to have a more nuanced and morecomplex understanding of how it works.
And I'm 100 percent in agreementthat understanding the process
doesn't hurt your faith.
It helps your faith.
It helps you understand the beautyand power of how God can work through

(15:29):
a number of different people andmake a difference in their lives
through this process of creation.

Yeah.

And in the last episode we spent a long time
talking about canonization, howsomething goes from being scripture
to being part of the scriptural canon.

Yeah.

In this episode we're going to introduce another
term, which is decanonization.

Ah, shoot.

That's how something goes from being part of the scriptural
canon to being back to being scripture.
It's still good, but it's notpart of the measuring rod.
The reason why the Doctrine andCovenants is so valuable is, like we
said, it's scripture in formation.
We're seeing a book of scripture becreated before our eyes, and it's being

(16:11):
done under the direction of prophetsand apostles, and every generation
or so they do go back and review itand basically make changes to it.
So I thought what we’d do today isgo through the different editions of
the Doctrine and Covenants and justkind of show you how the changes
to the Doctrine and Covenants overtime have been an illustration

(16:32):
of how things become canonized.
How could they go from being scriptureto being part of the scriptural canon?
And, at the same time, how thingscan sometimes be decanonized, go from
being part of the canon back to beingscripture for a number of different
reasons, none of which are particularlysinister or anything of that nature.

So our burning question of the day is, how is the canonization and
decanonization process illustrated in thedevelopment of the Doctrine and Covenants?
Is that about right?

That is right.
Well put.
Let's just walk through the differenteditions of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Okay.

So let's start with the most basic.
It was very, very rare that JosephSmith would go off by himself
and come back with a revelation.

Yeah.

In fact, it almost never happened
because he always had a scribe.
He would not write the revelationshimself: He would dictate the revelations,
and another person would write it down.
And so the first thing is, whathappens to these papers that the
scribe initially wrote them on?
Almost none of thoseoriginal papers exist.

Yeah.

There are a couple rare examples.
For instance, section 100 ofthe Doctrine and Covenants.
This is a revelation JosephSmith and Sidney Rigdon receive
in Perrysburg, New York.
We think the original paperthat they wrote the revelation
on is at the Harold B.
Lee Library in Utah.
And I'm not saying it's cryptic.
You can go over and look at it.
They display it all the time.

(18:08):
But most of the time what would happenwas is these original papers would
be taken and copied into a manuscriptrevelation book by John Whitmer.
And I'm giving a plug for John Whitmerhere because I'm a member of the John
Whitmer Historical Association, anda couple years ago we interviewed
all the founders of the JWHA, andmost of them made the joke that John
Whitmer was a really lousy historian.

(18:29):
Well, if you go by writing history,John Whitmer was a lousy historian.
He only produces one history.

Yeah.

It never really gets published, and the
history itself is not good.

Joseph Smith said as much.

Yeah, Joseph Smith said—poor John Whitmer,
like, Joseph Smith writes him andsays, can you give us your history?
I know it's not very good, butwe should at least have a copy.

Yeah.

By that standard, he is a bad historian, but if you're
taking him as the church recorder,which is another important part of
being a historian, not writing history,but recording things, he's awesome.
John Whitmer is great.
So maybe he was a bad historianbecause he was so busy copying the
revelations, which he does intothese manuscript revelation books.

There you go.

So you can actually, if you go to the Joseph
Smith Papers site—and let's takeD&C 20: crucial, key revelation.

Okay.

They have two examples there of two early members
of the church, Algernon SidneyGilbert and Harry Brown, who both
copied Section 20 on their own.
Then you have the manuscript revelationbooks, where John Whitmer took the
revelation and copied it into thebook so that they would all be in one
place, so that when they decide tocreate a new book of scripture, the

(19:40):
Book of Commandments, the Doctrineand Covenants, it's all there.
So thanks to John Whitmer,and as a recorder, top notch.
He's great.

Good job, John.

These manuscript revelation books were
among the earliest editions ofthe Joseph Smith Papers published.
You can actually get a facsimileedition that's, like, a page-by-page
photograph manuscript revelation book.

Yeah.

And in most cases, that's the earliest version of the
revelations that are available to us.

Okay.
Let me just summarizewhat you're saying here.
So whoever Joseph's scribe was wouldwrite down the revelations that Joseph
Smith dictated, but we have very few ofthose original, like whatever they were
writing on, like that didn't make itto modern day, with a few exceptions.

Yeah.

But John Whitmer took all of those originals, and he wrote them
down, copied them, recorded them intoa manuscript revelation book, and that
is what we have mostly to go off of interms of “originals.” Is that correct?

Yeah.
In most cases, that's the earliest versionof the revelations that are received.

Okay.

Again, there's a couple exceptions like section 100.

Yeah.

If you go to the Joseph Smith Papers and look up
a revelation, they usually have theearliest copy there, and most of the
time it's the manuscript revelation book.

Okay.

Another exception would be section 20, which
actually appeared in a newspaperbefore it was found anywhere else,
so that's the earliest copy, andit's in this newspaper that's there.

Okay.

But John Whitmer is commanded to take these manuscript
revelation books—they hold a conferencein November of 1831, and they're literally
dealing with the question of shouldwe create a new book of scripture?
According to the participants in theconference, most people were in favor.
There were a couple ofpeople that weren't.
The most prominent one is David Whitmer.
David Whitmer, one of the witnessesof the Book of Mormon, actually

(21:23):
says, I think these revelationsaren't intended for the world.
Joseph Smith asks the Lord and gets arevelation that's now section one that
says these are intended for the world.

Yeah.

And they make the decision to go ahead and publish it.
But originally it's not going to becalled the Doctrine and Covenants.
It's going to be calledthe Book of Commandments.

Yeah.

They decide to publish the Book of Commandments
in Missouri because that's wherethey're going to build the city
of Zion, and they're setting uptheir printing operation there.
So John Whitmer and Oliver Cowderyare instructed to take the manuscript
revelation books to Missouri, and thereput together the Book of Commandments.
And they're working on the Book ofCommandments, and we run into problems.

(22:00):
In fact, Scott, if I were to ask youwhat is the most, when it comes to
monetary value, valuable artifactfrom early Latter-day Saint history
besides the printer's manuscriptof the Book of Mormon, what would
you guess is the most expensive?

I would say an original copy of the Book of Commandments.

That is correct.

Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths: They are very, very rare. (22:19):
undefined
The last one that sold soldon the open market for 1.
7 million dollars.

Oh, my word.

If you can get one of these, good job.
If you find one at your localGoodwill or Deseret Industries—

Snag it.

—take it home, and put it in a box, because it's
going to be worth a couple things.

Isn't that so funny?
Because what's that original quote whenJoseph asked that council in Hiram,
Ohio, right—they're at the Johnson farm,having that conference about publishing
this text, and he asks the brethren whatvalue they would put on the revelations
that have been received, right?
And then he—doesn't he say, I'mtrying to get his exact quote here,
that “these revelations are worththe riches of the whole earth”?

Yeah.
The conference voted that therevelations were “worth to the church
the riches of the whole earth.”

One-point—what was it?
1.7 million?

Yeah.
They're worth at least $1.7million at this point now.

So there are some rare book people who would pay
one-point lots of million dollars.

Yeah.

So they're not quite caught up yet to Joseph Smith's
estimation of the value of therevelations, but we're getting there.
We are getting there.

So why is a Book of Commandments worth so much?
It's because they're really rare.

So rare.

And why are they really rare?
Well, originally they voted to publishseveral thousand copies of the Book of
Commandments, but—this is probably awell known story: the printing press
that they're working with in Missouriis attacked by a mob in July of 1833.
The mob destroys the printing pressand destroys most of the copies of the

(23:57):
Revelation that were being printed there.
In fact, if it hadn't been for a coupleheroic early members of the church—

Yeah.

—who ran in and saved some of the revelations,
we might not have any copies ofthe Book of Commandments at all.

Wow.

The two most well known ones are Mary and Caroline Rollins.
Mary said that her and her sisterran into the print shop while it
was being destroyed, they grabbed acouple copies of the revelations, and
then they ran into a cornfield andlaid down on top of the revelations
while the mob was looking for them.

Yeah.

She says that Oliver Cowdery took some of these copies
that she had saved and bound them,and she got her own copy of the Book
of Commandments because she saved it.
They weren't the only ones, either.
There were other members of the church,too, like a guy named John Taylor.
This is not the John Taylor.

Different John Taylor.

This is a different John Taylor—he’s a 20-year-old
convert of seven months from Kentucky.
He said, “I asked Bishop Partridgeif I might go out and get some
copies of the Book of Commandments.
He said it would most likely costme my life if I attempted it.
I told him I did not mindhazarding my life to secure
some copies of the commandments.
He then said I might go.” So he sneaksup to the print shop, he grabs as many

(25:05):
copies as he can, and then he runs out.
In fact, he says, “A dozen men surroundedme and commenced throwing stones at me,
and I shouted, ‘Oh, my God, must I bestoned to death like Stephen for the
sake of the word of the Lord?’ The Lordgave me strength and skill to elude them
and make my escape without being hitby a stone.” And he ends his account
by saying, “I delivered the copies toBishop Partridge, who said I had done a
good work and my escape was a miracle.

(25:27):
These, I believe, are the onlycopies of that edition of the Book of
Commandments preserved from destruction.”

Wow.

So he's wrong, Mary and Caroline Rollins saved some copies,
too, but because of that, there's very,very few that are even able to be bound.

Yeah.

And if you can find one, like I said, hang on to it
because it's worth a lot of money.
I've seen one.
I was working on a book on objects.
Can I mention my book here?

Yeah.

50 Relics of the Restoration.

Yeah.

The Community of Christ has a copy of the Book of
Commandments that has Joseph Smith'ssignature in it, and I was alone with
it, photographing it for a couple hours.
I could have just slipped it inmy pocket and got out of there,
but where would I have sold it?

It's because you're a good person, Casey.
You wouldn't do a thing like that.
You're a good person.

I don't know.
I'm also afraid of punishment.
But if you had a copy of the Bookof Commandments, and you can buy
facsimile copies, they're nottough to find, you'll notice that
it actually ends in mid-section.
So they were printing and they hadmade it to what is today section
64, verse 36, and that's wherethe Book of Commandments ends.

(26:30):
In fact, the Book of Commandments thatthey have on the Joseph Smith Papers
site is Wilford Woodruff's Book ofCommandments, and you can actually see
where he took the next page, which wasblank, and continued writing the text.
So it's an incomplete work.
It's kind of a failure tolaunch for the revelations.

Okay, so part one is Book of Commandments.
And this confused me forever, but thereason it's called Book of Commandments
is because the word commandmentswas their word for revelations.
Like, I didn't get that for so long.
I was like, “Why is it calledthe Book of Commandments?
Are you supposed to be looking forcommandments in there?” But each
individual revelation was considereda “commandment,” and so—like, in

(27:08):
D&C 1 where the Lord will say,I spoke to Joseph Smith, verse
17, and “gave him commandments.
[I] also gave commandments to others.”Verse 37, famous scripture, “search
these commandments, for they are trueand faithful.” Like, the way that the
Lord's using that word is equivalentwith, synonymous with, revelations.
So Book of Commandments, Book ofRevelations, to-may-to, to-mah-to, or

(27:29):
as we say in Idaho, tomato potato, so.
. . Okay, so what comes afterBook of Commandments?
So that's destroyed.
Most copies are destroyed.
That's 1833.

(27:49):
What happens next?

Most copies are destroyed, and the printing
press is destroyed, so they regroup.
In 1835, two years later, they decideto publish an updated and improved
version of the Book of Commandments.
They've received severalmore revelations since then.

Yeah.

And they also want to go back and kind of
more carefully go through them.
So this happens in Kirtland, Ohio,which is a little bit safer at the
time, and they publish a collectionof revelations that for the first time
is called the Doctrine and Covenants.

Whoa.

Now, the actual origin of the name reflects kind of
the structure of the book itself, too.
The Doctrine and Covenants has allthe commandments given in the Book
of Commandments and more, but alsoincludes the Lectures on Faith—

Yeah.

—which are a series of theological lectures given in Kirtland.
In fact, if you look at an 1835Doctrine and Covenants, the first part,
where the Lectures on Faith are, itactually says, “on the doctrine of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-daySaints, originally delivered before
a class of elders in Kirtland, Ohio.”So the “doctrine” in Doctrine and

(28:54):
Covenants is the Lectures on Faith.
Then, if you look at Part 2, Itwill say “Part 2, the covenants
and commandments of the Lord.”

Doctrine and Covenants.

That's where the name comes from.

So now covenants is becoming the word equivalent with
commandments, which is the wordequivalent with the revelations.

Yeah.

So you’ve just got to follow this lexicon
that's being laid out there.

Yeah.
And I should be clear that the covenantswas the bigger part of the book.
The Lectures on Faithwere the first 74 pages.
The following 179 pages were thecommandments and covenants of the Lord.
So the commandments and covenantswere always more prominent, but some
church members don't realize thatthe Lectures on Faith were a major
part of the Doctrine and Covenants.

(29:36):
In fact, they're what early church memberswould have referred to as the doctrine
when they were referring to this book.

Yeah.

The Lectures on Faith hang in there until
the 1921 edition, and we'll talkabout that in a few minutes.

Okay, so the doctrine in this case means teachings, right?

Yeah.

It's not like all of the eternal truths that we believe
are in the theological lecturesAnd then all the revelations are
something other than eternal doctrine.
That's not it, right?
So in this case doctrine means teachings.
Here's some lectures.
Here's some theological lectures.
And then the secondpart is the revelations.

Yeah.

Okay, so lectures on theology combined together
with the revelations given toJoseph Smith, together called
That's 1835.

Yeah.

Okay.

And the other thing is in 1835 there were
a lot of key revelations givenabout the structure of the church.
So section 107 appears in 1835.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: That is a huge revelation. (30:29):
undefined

Yes.

That denotes the presiding quorums of the Church,
the First Presidency, the Twelve,the Seventy, the presiding bishopric,
the patriarchs, so on and so forth.

Yeah.

And they do go back to earlier revelations, and just like you
mentioned in our earlier episode, theykind of harmonize everything together.

Yeah.
And this was front loaded, right?
This revelation along with section1 and section 20, the ones that were
a little more regulatory in nature.
Section 1 is the preface, and then section20, and then that was followed immediately
by what we call today section 107 becauseof their regulatory nature, their broad
applicability to the whole church.
Those were front loaded.

(31:07):
So it was organized differently, right?
It was organized by almost theserevelations of the most importance
to the whole church would be inthe front of the covenants part
of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Yeah.

Whereas today we just order them chronologically, correct?

Yeah, today's Doctrine and Covenants
is roughly chronological.
There's a couple exceptions.

Yeah.

But this was, just like you said, in order of importance.
You’ve got to know the articlesand covenants of the Church.
That's going to go early on.

Yeah.

Section 107, which describes the government
of the Church, is going to go on.

Okay.

And it also, like we said, has this huge
section on the Lectures on Faith.
And that is really the beginning.

Okay.

The Book of Commandments is kind of a
failure-to-launch situation.
The Doctrine and Covenants is sustainedby the entire church, and this is where it
formally enters into the scriptural canon.

So do they have, like, a meeting where they all sustain it?

Yeah.
Yeah, they do.
In a book called How We Got theDoctrine and Covenants, it's by Rick
Turley and Bill Slaughter, came outa couple years ago, they actually
document August 17th, 1835, there's asustaining vote, and here's what they

record (32:10):
“On August 17, 1835, a general church assembly convened to take into
consideration of the labors of Joseph'swriting committee had been charged with.
In the afternoon of the conference,Joseph Smith and Frederick G.
Williams being out of town at thetime, the other two committee members,
Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon,became responsible for presenting
the new volume to those assembledand obtaining their views of it.

(32:32):
One by one, the several authorities andthe general assembly, by a unanimous
vote, accepted the labors of the committeeand testified to the book's truth.
With that vote, the Doctrine and Covenantsbecame the Church's third standard work
along with the Bible and the Book ofMormon.” We don't have the Pearl of
Great Price yet, but on August 17th,1835, the Doctrine and Covenants went
from being scripture to being canon, andnow we’ve got three books of scripture.

(32:55):
We're off to the races.

I love that.

They decide, while Joseph Smith is alive,
to produce a new edition of theDoctrine and Covenants, which, again,
demonstrates it wasn't a finished work.
In 1844 they have done enough workto produce a new version of the
Doctrine and Covenants, which hewsvery closely to the 1835 edition.
In fact, almost word for word,except for minor corrections and

(33:30):
stylistic changes, it's the same.

So 1844 is basically the same as 1835, but with stylistic changes.

The minor changes, again, that idea that they're
correcting, they're trying to get itright, it's going to be pretty much
the same, but then something happens inthe summer of 1844 that causes another
addition to the Doctrine and Covenants.
And when I say 1844, mostpeople are thinking not of
They're thinking of the martyrdomof Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

(33:58):
So before they publish the Doctrine andCovenants, which they do in the fall,
Joseph and Hyrum are killed in June.

Yeah.

They are able to add in a final section that's entitled “The
Martyrdom of Joseph Smith and His BrotherHyrum.” This commemoration, which is today
section 135, has a complicated history,too, because you might have noticed until
recently in the Doctrine and Covenants,it says this was composed by John Taylor.

Yeah.

Then, in the newest edition of the Doctrine and
Covenants, it doesn't say that.

Yeah.

It's partially because it was an assumption
that John Taylor had written it.
John Taylor never claimedto be the sole author.
He probably was one of the authors,but John Taylor was pretty badly
wounded at Carthage Jail, too.
And it's possible he collaboratedwith some people, so they took John
Taylor's name off just so they wouldn'taccidentally leave out somebody

(34:46):
who may have collaborated with him.

So right now it's an anonymous author.

Yeah.
There are several new items added tothis: section 101, section 111—section
101 and 102, both revelations regardingthe redemption of Zion, were not included
in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.
They're included here.
And then they add in a coupleother sections that have to
do with baptism for the dead.

(35:10):
And the 1844 one doesn't get a ton ofattention, but it's important because
this is the Doctrine and Covenants thatall Restoration movements agreed on.
This is where, for instance,the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints and Communityof Christ diverge from each other.
And the 1844 Doctrine andCovenants is where we all agreed.
In fact, the next version of theDoctrine and Covenants, which comes

(35:31):
out in 1876, is seriously affected byCommunity of Christ, the RLDS Church,
whatever you want to call them.

Wait, wait, so 1844 did add a few revelations to it.

Yeah.

Tweaked some things.
And it is the final version of theDoctrine and Covenants that all
restoration movements agree on.

Yeah, pretty much.

Pretty much.
Pretty much.
I know that that's a littlebit complicated, but.
. . Casey Paul Griffiths: It's complicated because people don't realize there are
hundreds of restoration movements, andeverybody has kind of their own thing.
There's so many.

But yeah, the major restoration movements, at least
the biggest ones, and I hope I'm nothurting anybody's feelings by saying that.

Yeah.
I was just thinking, you and I werein Independence last month together,
Independence, Missouri, with severalof these restoration branches.
Wonderful people.
We made some good friends.
I remember asking one of them about theDoctrine and Covenants, and he said,
“No, we don't have the Doctrine andCovenants as one of our standard works.
We only use the Book of Commandments.”

Yeah.

I thought that was interesting.
So, yeah, there's variety there.

There's variety.
Maybe I shouldn't have evenbrought that up, but it's there.

It's there.
Okay.

Next version of the Doctrine and Covenants, 1876.
And this is the big one.

Yeah.

This is where probably the biggest changes are
made since 1835, before or since.
Orson Pratt oversees it.
One of the things he does that we'refamiliar with now is he reorganizes
it so that it's roughly chronological.

Yeah.

So instead of having the most important sections at the
first, now it's roughly when were theyreceived, and they're given an order.
So you can kind of seethe development as well.

Yeah.

But Orson Pratt also adds in 26 new sections
to the Doctrine and Covenants.

That's a lot of sections.

That's a lot.
And some of these sectionsare key sections that are a
really, really big deal to us.
For instance, section 2, which talks aboutElijah and his return, it's an excerpt
from Joseph Smith—History, that's there.

Yeah.

Section 13, the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood,
this is added for the first time.
Section 109, the dedicationof the Kirtland Temple.
Section 110, the appearanceof Christ, Moses, Elias, and
Elijah in the Kirtland Temple.
Section 121, which is the sectionevery one of my students writes
their paper on, is included becauseOrson Pratt includes it as well.

(37:44):
And one key pattern you can see asto why he includes these sections
is he's including them underthe direction of Brigham Young
in response to the RLDS church—

Yeah.

—which has been founded by this point, and is basically
claiming that they're the church, andthey're saying that they operate by
authority because the RLDS church wasorganized by people who had been ordained
when Joseph Smith was the prophet.
Brigham Young and Orson Prattinclude a number of sections,
like section 13 and section 110,which talk about priesthood keys.

Yeah, it seems like the two themes, the major two
biggies, are priesthood and temple.

Yeah.

And those are points of contention between us and the
Community of Christ at that time,or the RLDS Church at that time.

Yeah.

Because they're going to go away from the temple, right?
They're going to go away from the templeordinances as practiced in Nauvoo.

Yeah.

And in some ways delegitimize those.

Yeah.

And so this is the rebuttal back in some ways.
It's like, no, these arerevelations Joseph received.
Now let's canonize themto show their legitimacy.

Yeah.
Yeah.
The RLDS/Community of Christ practiceno form of the temple ordinances—

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: —as we understand them. (38:52):
undefined
Even baptisms for the dead.
These sections are there to kind ofsay, yep, the temple ordinances do have
foundations and do priesthood keys.

Yeah.

And there's a couple other things.
Now, probably the most controversialof the sections added is section 132.

Yeah.

And this is also our first example of decanonization.
So in 1835, when the Doctrineand Covenants was published,
there was an article on marriage.
It wasn't considered a revelation.
It was a declaration on marriage.
It's not something that they're claimingwas received by direct revelation.
It's something that a group of responsiblechurch leaders set down and wrote to

(39:30):
explain the church's view on marriage,which is what the article on marriage did.

Yeah.

Now, Orson Pratt removes the article on marriage.
He decanonizes it, and he adds into thecanon section 132, which is the revelation
on eternal marriage, and maybe morecontroversially, plural marriage as well.

Also a major point of contention with the RLDS church at

that time (39:52):
Did Joseph Smith actually introduce plural marriage or is
this a Brigham Young invention thathe's pinning back on Joseph, right?

Yeah.

So 132 is the proof that this came originally with Joseph.

Yeah.
And 132 is key.
I mean, we've done a wholepodcast on section 132—

Yeah.

—and how it establishes basically that plural
marriage and eternal marriage both comefrom Joseph Smith, that they were not
theological innovation that he justcame up with, they were a revelation
given to him by commandment by God.

Yeah.

Now one last addition, and that is they add in
section 136, which is a revelation givento Brigham Young at Winter Quarters.
And so I don't know if this was forthe RLDS church or not, but it was
just basically to show that JosephSmith's successors in the presidency
would also add to the Doctrine andCovenants, and this is one of the most
prominent examples, the other one beingSection 138, which comes from Joseph F.

(40:46):
Smith.

Okay.

So 1876, big year for the Doctrine and Covenants.
First example of decanonization, wherethe article on marriage is removed.

Do you think it was removed because it could
appear to be in conflict with 132?

Yeah, I think.
I also think that in theirmind, a revelation is more
significant than a declaration.

Okay.

We kind of danced around this a little bit, but
the implication with a declarationis that a bunch of church members
got together and under the influenceof the Holy Ghost wrote it.

Okay.

A revelation is kind of what we talked about before,
where it's a commandment given directlyfrom God to a church leader, in this case
Joseph Smith, and they felt like thatwas more significant, that it replaced
the article on marriage, essentially.
And it was received afterthe article on marriage.
The article on marriageis written in 1835.
Section 132 is a revelation given in 1843.

(41:36):
So it does sort of supplant everythingthat the article on marriage said.

Yeah.
Okay.
Makes sense.

Okay.
So 1876 is a big year andmassive amounts of material.
The biggest year fordecanonization, though, is 1921.

(42:03):
1921, a scripture committee consistingof Joseph Fielding Smith, John A.
Widtsoe, and James E.
Talmage is appointed to oversee a newedition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Okay.

They add to the Doctrine and Covenants
Official Declaration 1, which endsthe practice of plural marriage.

And here's the big thing (42:20):
they take out the Lectures on Faith.
So this is the most significantinstance of decanonization.

They took out the doctrine of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Yeah, yeah, they basically do.
But now, there's plenty of doctrine,and so they just keep the title, but
the Lectures on Faith are removed.

Okay, why?
Why did they.
. . Why do they take outthe Lectures on Faith?

This is still sort of controversial.

Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Lectures on Faith are early. (42:45):
undefined

Yeah.

And they're never presented to the church as revelations.
They're instructions.
They're theological lectures.
They're pretty open andtransparent about this.

Yeah.

When Joseph Fielding Smith is asked later on why
the Lectures on Faith were removed,here's the reasons he stated:
This is a 1940 interview he gives.

Okay, so 19 years later.

Yeah.
Yeah.
So, 1.
He says the lectures were neverreceived by Joseph Smith as revelation.

True.

2.
The lectures were only instructionsrelative to the general subject of faith
and are not the doctrine of the church.

Okay.

3.
The lectures are not complete concerningtheir teachings on the Godhead.
That's true.

Yeah.

One of the lectures, lecture five, says that the
Father is a personage of spirit andtalks about the Holy Ghost as the mind
of God, not like He's a separate person.
And so here's PresidentSmith's reason number 4.
“It was thought by Elder James E.
Talmage, chairman of the committeeresponsible for the lectures’ removal,
that to avoid confusion and contentionon this vital point of belief on the

(43:44):
Godhead, it would be better not tohave them bound in the same volume with
the commandments and revelation.” Now,can I add in a personal aside here?

Yeah.

I took a class from Joseph Fielding Smith's
grandson, Joseph Fielding McConkie.

Okay.

And in the class he asked each of us to give a presentation,
and I chose the Lectures on Faith.
And Brother McConkie, who wouldalways like, quote, “My dad
said,” and “My granddad said,”because his dad was Bruce R.
McConkie and his granddad was JosephFielding Smith, said a couple times
that he felt like the Lectures onFaith should have never been removed

(44:19):
from the Doctrine and Covenants.

Interesting.

So I'm giving my presentation in class, and I get to
this point of why were the Lectures onFaith removed, and I made the statement,
the Lectures on Faith were removedby a scripture committee consisting
of Joseph Fielding Smith, James E.
Talmage, and John A.
Widtsoe because of somequestionable doctrine.
And I said that, and Joseph FieldingMcConkie shot out of his chair

(44:41):
and started, like, yelling at me.
It was so scary.
But the thing I rememberhim saying specifically was,
“There's no wrong doctrine!
My granddaddy got outvoted!”And I was like, I will say
whatever you want me to say, man.
I'm just so scared right now.

What do I got to do for a good grade?
You just tell me.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Yeah, what do I got to do? (45:01):
undefined
But that was his opinion, andagain, this is all hearsay, but I'm
guessing that was what was passeddown from his granddad and his dad.
And he, again, went over thesediscrepancies and said there's easy
ways to reconcile them, so we shouldhave just kept the Lectures on Faith in.
And I should add, by the way,that when we're decanonizing, all

(45:21):
we're doing is taking somethingfrom the canon and removing it.
We're not saying it'snot scripture anymore.
I still use the Lectures on Faith inmy classes, especially Lecture Three.
Lecture Three was quoted extensively inGeneral Conference on several occasions.
Everybody should readthe Lectures on Faith.
All they were saying was thatwe're not going to use the Lectures

(45:44):
on Faith as a measuring rod.
And again, whatever Brother McConkiesaid, there may have been some controversy
about the Lectures on Faith being removed.

Definitely.
Okay, let me give you some quotesfrom the Lectures on Faith, listeners.
Here you go.

Okay.

At the end of every lecture, there's
always questions and answers.
It's kind of this Q&A, back and forth.
What's this called?

The catechism.

Yeah, it's kind of like a catechism, yeah.
So here you go.
How many personages arethere in the Godhead?
I'll give you all a second to answer thatquestion in your mind, and then I'll give
you the answer from Lectures on Faith.
Okay, correct answer?

Two (46:18):
the Father and the Son.
And now turn the page a few pages here.

Question (46:24):
“Do the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit constitute the Godhead?” Answer:
“They do.” That sounds like three.
It sounds like three.
“Do the Father and the Son possess thesame mind?” Answer: “They do.” “What is

the mind?” Answer (46:39):
“the Holy Spirit.” So, yeah, there's doctrine like that that
can seem a little—and these are writtenmost likely by Sidney Rigdon, right?
Joseph Smith's fingerprints seem tobe on one or two of these lectures,
but mostly seems to come from Sidney.
So there is ambiguous authorshipadded to that, some sketchy—like,

(47:02):
what are you supposed to do withthat doctrine about the Godhead?
Compare that, for instance, to 2 Nephi 31,“The Father the Son and the Holy Ghost are
one,” or 3 Nephi 11 where Jesus preachesabout the Godhead, about the three, right?
Just—I can see why there was somecontroversy as to what to do with that.

Yeah.

And yeah, there you go.
The answer was, what ifwe just decanonize it?
We're not saying that it's not valuable.
We're just saying that it's not canon.

It's not canon.

This is not the standard by which we are going to measure doctrine.

Right, right.
And I want to go on record assaying I love the Lectures on Faith.
I think everybody should read them.
I think they're great.
Joseph Smith sustained them,if he didn't write them.
He may have written some of them.

Yeah.

But I also think Elder Talmage and
the committee were right.

Yeah.

I think the Lectures on Faith are scripture
but maybe not a measuring rod tobe used to test other scripture.

Yeah.

So the 1921 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants is
our biggest example of decanonization.
The Lectures on Faith are removed.
That is by far far the biggestremoval of material from the Doctrine
and Covenants in its history.

Yeah, that's a big chunk.

We don't get another edition of the Doctrine and
Covenants until 1981, and this onewe've also mentioned extensively.

Okay.

It adds in sections 137 and 138, which were originally
placed in the Pearl of Great Price.
That is Joseph Smith'svision of his brother in the
Celestial Kingdom and Joseph F.
Smith's vision of the visitof Christ to the spirit world,
which is—I love section 138.
It's in the running for my favoritesection of the Doctrine and Covenants.
It's so, it's—

So good.

If we don't add anything to the Doctrine and
Covenants, it is the perfect way to endthe scriptures because it's this big
reunion where Adam and Eve and all thefaithful prophets are sent by Christ to
teach the gospel in the spirit world.
I love it.
I'm so glad they added it.
But it's also a good example ofnot something that was brand new.

Yeah.

We did add something brand new, Official Declaration 2,
but by 1981, I mean, section 138 wasreceived in 1918, so that's several
decades of it kind of being out there.
It's percolating.

Yeah.

It's being used a lot by members of the church, and the
First Presidency and Twelve recognized,hey, this is super significant.

Yeah.

It probably needs to go from being scripture to canon.
It's a measuring rod we should use.

Right.

And I will say most of our knowledge about the postmortal
spirit world is section 138 stuff.
It's totally invaluable.

Yeah.
It actually reveals new doctrine.

Yeah.

So in other words, the truthfulness of the teachings
in 138 couldn't be measured by othercanonized scripture very well because
it's actually breaking new ground.
He's asking questions that wereprompted by scripture, right?
Peter's statements about Jesus going intothe spirit world that left him questioning
some things about exactly how that worked.

Yeah.

And that leads to an explosion of insight that
clarifies doctrine and then addssome stuff we didn't even know.
So, yeah, when it's new doctrine like thatthat came to the president of the church,
and then later on, another president ofthe church then later says, we’d like
to propose this for canonization, like,that's exactly how it works, right?

Yeah.

Revelation to a prophet, later canonized by another
prophet, sustained by the church.
Booyah.
Yeah.

Absolutely.
Yeah.
So glad it's there.
And that is technically, 1979,1981, the last time we went through
the formal canonization process.
Official Declaration 2,137, 138 are added to it.
But it's not the newest editionof the Doctrine and Covenants.

Ah, shoot.

The newest edition of the Doctrine
and Covenants is from 2013.
It's 2023 as we're recording this.
It's less than 10 years old.
And this one was big, too.
There weren't any canonizations made, butit might surprise people to know that 75
sections of the Doctrine and Covenantswere changed in the 2013 edition.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.
So, whoa, what does that mean?
What was changed?

Well, this is where our discussion of canon becomes
tricky, too, because we would saythe text of the revelations is canon,
but the historical introductions,the little italicized introduction
before each section, is not canon.

Yeah.

And that's actually where most of the changes came from.
You can go to the Joseph Smith Paperssite and download a PDF that actually
highlights in yellow all the parts of theDoctrine and Covenants that were changed.
And just so you don't have to, but youcan if you want to, I have looked through
every single page, and almost all thechanges are in the section headings.

Ah, so the revelations themselves were not really touched.
There's a few, like, tweaks, right?

There were a couple changes made.

Yeah.

There were a couple changes made, and I'll
go through those in just a second.

Okay.

But for the most part, it was, hey, we were
doing the Joseph Smith Papers, wegot more accurate information, it
seems like this section was actuallyreceived here instead of here.
For instance, section 99 chronologicallyshould be somewhere in the 70s of
the Doctrine and Covenants, it wasjust misdated when they put it in.

Yeah.

They chose not to change any section numbers because by
this point we've been using the sectionnumbers since 1876, so we kept them there.

We'd have to overhaul all the curriculum that ever
references any of these sections ifwe change the numbers of the section.

Yeah.

That'd be a problem.

But that doesn't mean that these supporting
materials aren't important.
For instance, Official Declaration1 and Official Declaration 2
didn't have any kind of historicalintroduction prior to 2013.
Now they do.
And it's the closest we get to an officialstatement on the end of plural marriage,
which is Official Declaration 1, andthe end of the race and temple policy in

(52:45):
the church, which you and I have done, Idon't know, six episodes on talking about.

Full series on, yep.

But it is significant that they chose to include
a historical introduction to OfficialDeclaration 2 that basically said Joseph
Smith did allow several people of Africanancestry to be ordained to the church,
and it was stopped after Joseph Smith.

Right.

And it also states this
believed that a revelation from Godwas needed to alter this practice
and prayerfully sought guidance.
The revelation came tochurch President Spencer W.
Kimball.” And that's a big dealbecause I would point out that Official
Declaration 2 is not the revelation.

Yeah.

It's an acknowledgement of the revelation.
But this historicalintroduction is acknowledging
a revelation did come to him.

Yeah, that's good.

Now, there were changes made to the actual canon
of the Doctrine and Covenants, too.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Is this going to be pretty major?
Some major changes to the text?

Casey Paul Griffiths: Fasten your seatbelts, okay? (53:41):
undefined

Oh, shoot.

This could wreck some testimony, so hang in there, okay?
So.
. . all right, here we go.
So, section 35, verse 13, was changedfrom “thrash the nations by the
power of my spirit” to “thresh thenations by the power of my spirit.”

Wait, wait, wait.
It was changed from thrash to thresh.

Yeah, so thrash, T H R A S H, to thresh, T H R E S H.

Okay.
Which is more of a winnowing term, right?
Of grain.

Yeah.

Right?
To thresh grain.

Yeah.
A kid I grew up with put D&C 35:13 becauseto say “I will thrash the nations by the
power of my spirit” sounds like we aregoing to beat the nations into submission.
When they looked at the earliest copy ofthe revelation, it seemed like the term
thresh, which is an agricultural term.
It just means you separate the useful partof the plant from the non-useful part.

(54:40):
Like, if you've ever shuckedcorn, you've threshed.
That's a change that happensto the canonical text.

So your friend who put that on his missionary plaque, that
was a little, uh, humiliating for himthat he's now, he's a humble farmer
rather than some classroom bully.
Good job.

Casey Paul Griffiths: I hope he's doing okay. (54:56):
undefined

Yeah.

Yeah.
I'll reach out to him and see ifthis totally wrecked his testimony.

Perfect.

And then the other changes are things like, I mean.
. . Scott Woodward: Hyphenated words.
Yeah.
In D&C 127:12, “the Church of JesusChrist of Latter-day Saints” with a
lowercase t in the “the” was changed to“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints” with a uppercase T in the“the.” They did that in several places.
They also did that in 136:2and Official Declaration 1.

(55:25):
Like I said, we'll post in the shownotes all the changes that were made.
It's mostly semicolons, dashes,and periods that were removed.
They did change the spelling ofJames Covel in section 40, but it's
because we found census records.
We think his name was always spelledwrong, and so we tried to align it
with that, but nothing major, is whatI'm saying here, in the 2013 edition.

Oh, okay.

It does just show, though, that, like they said,
the Doctrine and Covenants is living.
It's dynamic.
If we can find stuff that's wrong, we'llcorrect it, but we didn't find very much
in the canonical text that was wrong, sowe didn't really make that many changes
to it, but we did make some changes.

And this is all fruits of the Joseph Smith Papers Project,
right, where now we've got, like, highlytrained historians combing through as
original manuscripts as we can get—

Yeah.

—looking at census records, looking at
all the historical context.
And from that, we only get a few changes,mostly in the historical introductions—

Yeah.

—and then just some grammatical stuff, it sounds like,
in the actual revelations themselves.
Is that a fair summaryof what you just said?

Yeah, totally.
Minor changes to the text, which hashappened in every edition of the Doctrine
and Covenants as they've tried to weedout all the mistakes that come into it.

So our burning question of the day today was, how is
the canonization and decanonizationprocess Illustrated in the development
of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Yeah.

And Casey, you've taken us on a journey today.
This is very interesting.
There's been a lot of changes from firstattempt to publish Joseph's revelations
in 1833 with the Book of Commandmentsuntil what we have today in the 2013
edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Yeah.

I guess my final question for you is, therefore, what?
Like, why should this matter?
Why should we care asmembers of the church?
I mean, this is our scripture.
Of course it matters on thatlevel, but like, I don't know,
what does this do for you?
Why is this valuable?
What do you want to say about that?

Well, I think the major takeaways are this
We've emphasized this in both episodes,but scripture is given all the time.
Anybody that speaks through the power ofthe Holy Ghost is receiving scripture.
2.
Canon is how we measurewhat genuine scripture is.
And canon is more rare when there's anaddition made to it, but that's because
canon is something that takes a littlewhile to actually be established as canon.

(57:47):
We didn't put Joseph F.
Smith's revelation into theDoctrine and Covenants immediately;
we took it out for a test drive.
We spent a couple decades mullingit over, thinking about it, using
it in our teachings before werealized it's such a big deal.
It needs to be part of the canon.

This is section 138.

Section 138.

Yeah.

And the last thing I would say, and you've said
this so eloquently so many times, isthat scripture is living and dynamic
and changing, and the Doctrine andCovenants illustrates that, that it
really shouldn't cause you any heartburnif they come out with a new edition of
the Doctrine and Covenants and there'schanges to the text, because we're doing
the best we can to try and get it right.

Yeah.

The whole process has been incredibly transparent—

Yeah.

—where they've published all the changes that they've
made, they've publicly announced whenthey were going to canonize or decanonize
something, or even in the case of the2013 edition, if they made the smallest
change, I mean, even the deletion of aperiod to the commandments, that they've
publicly stated they're doing that.

Yeah.

Now, in the future, because scriptures are electronic now
and publishing them electronically isn'tas arduous as publishing them in print,
it's possible we could get a new editionof the Doctrine and Covenants with more
frequency than we have in the past.
In the past, it's been kind of aonce-in-a-generation occurrence.
It's possible that couldchange in the future.

Yeah.

But one of the things members of the church need
to remember is that the Doctrineand Covenants is being created.
We'll canonize things.
It's possible we could decanonize things.
We should expect that to happen.
It's living.
It's dynamic.
It's changing.
And that's a great thing.
That's a wonderful thing that every memberof the church should be thrilled about to
get to participate in the creation of newscripture, which anybody can participate

(59:30):
in, and the creation of new canon, whichwe also get to participate in in our
role as sustaining members of the church.

Yeah, I love that.
That's well said.
We heartily endorse theDoctrine and Covenants.
We sustain it.
Casey, you've written anentire commentary on it.

Yeah.

I am, as of 2023, when we're recording this, partway
through a video commentary on that, andall of our resources can be found on
doctrineandcovenantscentral.org, alongwith other scholars like Steve Harper
and Susan Easton Black and others, wherewe're trying to bring together the very
best resources to understand what cansometimes be a challenging book, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths: It's a little bit harder. (01:00:06):
undefined
It's not as user friendly as someof the other books of scripture.

Scott Woodward (01:00:11):
Try to provide all the historical background and context as
to what brought about the revelations,what questions spurred the revelations.

Casey Paul Griffiths (01:00:18):
Yeah.

And then what did the verses mean in the context of
the time in which they were given.
So it does take a lot of work,but I think you'd agree it's
work that's well worth it.

Casey Paul Griffiths (01:00:27):
Absolutely, yeah.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters.
In our next episode, we shift gearsinto Joseph Smith's last major
translation project, The Book of Abraham.
And there is perhaps no more controversialbook of scripture which came through
the Prophet Joseph than this one.
We'll walk through the history of itscoming forth and introduce just what

(01:00:54):
exactly some find problematic and faithchallenging about this book today.
If you're enjoying Church HistoryMatters, we'd appreciate it if you
could take a moment to subscribe, rate,review, and comment on the podcast.
That makes us easier to find.
Today's episode was produced andedited by Scott Woodward, with show
notes and transcript by Gabe Davis.

(01:01:14):
Church History Matters is a podcastof Scripture Central, a nonprofit
which exists to help build enduringfaith in Jesus Christ by making
Latter-day Saint scripture and churchhistory accessible, comprehensible,
and defensible to people everywhere.
For more resources to enhance yourgospel study, go to scripturecentral.org,
where everything is availablefor free because of the generous

(01:01:35):
donations of people like you.
And while we try very hard to behistorically and doctrinally accurate
in what we say on this podcast, pleaseremember that all views expressed in
this and every episode are our viewsalone and do not necessarily reflect the
views of Scripture Central or The Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Thank you so much for beinga part of this with us.

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