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Articles/Essays – Volume 33, No. 3
Textual Tradition, the Evolution of Mormon Doctrine, and the Doctrine & Covenants | H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Commentary
H. Michael Marquardt published his early monographs with anti-Mor mons Jerald and Sandra Tanner, but these works exhibited higher scholarly standards than the Tanners’ work. Marquardt co-authored Inventing Mor monism: Tradition and the Historical Record[1] with anti-Mormon pastor Wesley Walters, which had the distinction of being one of few books from Signature or Smith Research Associates to receive a positive review in the FARMS Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, with Richard Bushman as the re viewer.[2] That Marquardt could receive a good review from a scholar of Bush man’s stature and a specialist in the New York era of Mormonism shows the quality of his scholarship. Marquardt is a tenacious and wide-ranging researcher with a keen eye for de tails; moreover, he is not strident in his scholarly judgments. He has his own perspectives (as do all scholars), with which Mormons may agree or disagree, but they are expressed mildly and tied closely to carefully marshaled evidence.
Marquardt’s strengths as a re searcher are fully in evidence in The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Commentary, which publishes the earliest extant text of each section of the Doc trine and Covenants. The author notes any revisions in subsequent printings (in the 1833 Book of Commandments and 1835 Doctrine and Covenants) and makes textual, historical, and doctrinal comments on the changes. While Mormon historians have long known that Joseph Smith made numerous revisions to his original revelations, never before have the original texts and subsequent revisions been collected in a book available to the general public. The result is a fascinating, very important book that should come to be accepted as a basic reference work.
What is most surprising about this book is the fact that nothing like it has been done before. The author remarks in his preface: “Revelation is so central to Mormonism that one might assume the study of original texts is an exhausted field. The truth is that, with few exceptions, such a study has yet to begin” (p. xi). On first glance, this would seem very strange: Mormons are generally profoundly interested in Joseph Smith and his revelatory writings. A serious interest in these revelations would cause any trained scholar (and there are many such in contemporary Mormonism) to examine the original documents behind the familiar texts. Yet there has been no comprehensive book on the texts and revisions of the Doctrine and Covenants. “Conservative” Mormon books have generally turned a blind eye to the textual variations. Mormon scholar Robert Woodford examined the revisions in “The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants,” but this 1974 BYU Ph.D. thesis has never been published. Perhaps the best discussion of the revisions is in RLDS Church Historian Richard Howard’s Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their Textual Development, but Howard considers the Doctrine and Covenants in only a few chapters of his book.[3]
The reason for this scholarly lacuna is undoubtedly the fact that textual variations in the Doctrine and Covenants have become one of the “taboo” subjects in Mormon studies, since a study of these revisions re quires a complex view of revelation, and church leaders clearly are uncomfortable with the kind of theological exploration that will be necessary to face that complexity. Therefore, though the LDS church and BYU have enormous resources, it falls to an independent researcher and a regional press to write and publish such a book as this.
In The Joseph Smith Revelations, Marquardt has done a thorough and reliable job of reproducing the earliest text for each revelation. As a result, we experience the excitement of coming to terms with a heretofore unknown primary text. Communing with the revelations in their original format, without verse numbers, sometimes in the scribe’s ungrammatical format, opens up new dimensions of their poetry and power. The revisions are fascinating, showing the development of Joseph Smith’s vision and the growth of the nascent church organization. Many important revelations not canonized in the present Doctrine and Covenants are included, including one beautiful prophecy that was a “translation” of the speaking in tongues that was common in the nineteenth-century church (Document 107).
Nevertheless, The Joseph Smith Revelations is not a perfect book. My central criticism of it focuses on occasional shortcomings in Marquardt’s analysis. Sometimes he gives extensive and valuable analysis of reasons for re visions, as in the sections on church organization (where earlier texts on church government were anachronistically revised to include recently developed church offices [LDS D&C 20, 42]); on Joseph’s expanding prophetic mission (LDS D&C 5); on the developing theology of the interpreters or Urim and Thummim (LDS D&C 17); on the substitution of Frederick Williams for Jesse Gause (LDS D&C 81). However, Marquardt is sometimes content merely to point out revisions, as in the case of Document 98 (LDS D&C 83), where he discusses the manuscripts for the revisions but not the content changes relating to widows and or phans. Another interesting change Marquardt leaves without comment occurs in Document 48 (part of LDS D&C 42), which was revised in 1835 to include women as well as men in church law.
Sometimes Marquardt belabors the obvious, ending a discussion with a conclusion that the 1833 or holograph text is more primary than the 1835 text (as in Document 2, LDS D&C 4). It would be safe to take such a conclusion for granted and simply discuss why the change was made. Occasion ally, he overstates a position. For instance, in the case of Williams being substituted for Gause, Marquardt mentions that this is the single case in which the official LDS edition of the Doctrine and Covenants admits a textual change, but he takes issue with how it does so. However, the LDS church should be commended for, in at least one case, admitting an important textual change in a revelation. Hope fully future official editions will note all important revisions (as, from the standpoint of honesty, they should).
Sometimes Marquardt unaccountably overlooks important discussions of revisions in the secondary literature (which he certainly knows well—the book includes a full, valuable bibliography). For instance, in his discussion of the revisions in LDS D&C 8 which reinterpret Oliver Cowdery’s folk-magical divining rod in the biblical context of Aaron, one would expect a reference to D. Michael Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View[4] to buttress the assertion that the original text referred to a divining rod. (Marquardt is correct, I believe, but this point may be controversial for some readers and so deserves scholarly support.) His discussion of the “ecclesiastical” textual revisions also would have benefitted by referring to the important work of Quinn and of Gregory Prince on the early development of offices in the LDS church.[5] One interesting progression in the 1835 re visions is to make language referring to non-Mormons less judgmental. In a passage added to the text of LDS D&C 5, apocalyptic language referring to non-Mormons becomes “less vindictive, more accommodating to the feelings of outsiders,” in the words of Howard (p. 155). We see Joseph Smith growing in maturity and concern for the feelings of non-Mormons. Marquardt could have profitably cited Howard in this context.
I found the format of Marquardt’s revision sections difficult in one respect. They are not placed by the pas sage from which they developed, and since the original text has no verse numbers, one has to search for their counterpart in the original text section. This is especially critical when text has dropped out of the original document because there are no italics or markers to guide us in the original text. While I enjoy reading the original text without verse numbers, the problem of identifying the exact location of revisions and deletions might have been ad dressed in some way.
Two quibbles: first, to my taste, Marquardt has overused bracketed words in the original texts to identify persons mentioned and point out nonstandard spellings. It is often obvious from introductory material and con text who persons are, and non-standard spellings are part of the personality of the writer or scribe. I prefer the non-bracketed clarity of the holographic text whenever possible. In addition, Marquardt’s discussions of the complexity of texts behind a revelation sometimes become convoluted and hard to follow.
Nevertheless, even if Marquardt’s book is not perfect (and no book is), it is still extremely valuable, and his analyses often give important insights into why the texts were changed.
The Mormon reading the book as a whole—even without Marquardt’s analyses—will be faced with many questions about how revelation was and is received. I believe that oversimplified views of revelation—the view that revelation is absolute and unmixed with any limited human com ponent—will not square with Joseph Smith’s method of revising his revelations. Certainly, this will come as a surprise to Mormons with no idea of the Doctrine and Covenants’s textual history who have “absolutist” ideas of revelation. Such Mormons need not reject the idea of revelation, but they will need to explore models of revelation that are more complex and consistent with the evidence. Certainly the idea that any revelation has both a human component and a divine component seems non-threatening. In fact, D&C 1 (Marquardt Document 73) supports such an idea: “these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.” The inspiration is from God, but the language is of man, and fallible. The difficulty is that many see revelation as 99.9% God and .1% man. The textual tradition of the Doctrine and Covenants shows that the human component in Joseph Smith’s revelations is much higher than that and, thus, that even documents headed “Thus saith the Lord” have time-and-place-specific cultural and historical perspectives. Howard writes, “If the total meaning of revelation is beyond human comprehension, then it follows that any attempt to ex press this imperfect understanding also will be less than perfect. . . .Scriptures reflect the growth of the prophets and of the faith communities to which they minister. Couched in human language, they reflect patterns of thinking and life of the places and times in which they were written” (p. 215). Such a view is not an attack on revelation; it is a defense of revelation, granted the complexity of the documentary and historical evidence.
Marquardt has produced an extremely interesting, valuable, and important book. Certainly, there is room for discussion and disagreement on specific details in interpretive sections of this book. But The Joseph Smith Revelations is easily the most important book on the Doctrine and Covenants now available. It is a key book for understanding Joseph Smith’s revelatory process. It will be the essential reference book on that scripture for years, and no Mormon, or serious student of Mormonism, should be without a copy.
The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Commentary, by H. Michael Marquardt (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999) xxvii + 411 pp., $44.95 hardback.
[1] [Editor’s Note: In the PDF, these footnotes start at 4] (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994). This publisher is closely connected with Signature Books.
[2] FARMS Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6.2 (1994): 122-33. Bushman sugges that the mild tone of the book shows that Marquardt, not Walters, was the dominant shaper of the book.
[3] Richard Howard, Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their Textual Development (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1969); I cite the revised edition of 1995.
[4] D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 37-38.
[5] See D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Sig nature, 1994) and Gregory Prince, Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1995).