Book of Commandments

In fact, yeah, there's reason to believe that John Whitmer is the one who wrote verse one.

Since the discovery of the Book of Commandments and Revelations manuscript of section 20, which we didn't have for many years, it showed that verse one was actually an introductory head note written by early church historian John Whitmer, something he did for several of the Revelations.

And this is how John Whitmer writes.

Let me quote him in a different place.

By the way, we learned on Friday that Brunson has the- What did he say? Ten Commandments, I think.

The Book of the Commandments.

He owns one of only two private copies.

Yeah.

Casey, drop us into the context.

So section 23 was originally five really short sections in the Book of Commandments.

So the Book of Commandments is the 1833 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

That's the very first attempt they have to publish it.

And these show up in here as chapters... 17 to 21 in the 1833 Book of Commandments.

But when the Doctrine and Covenants was published in 1835, two years later, they just decided to combine all these together and created the section that we're familiar with today.

And it's been that way ever since.

Hmm

... with different publications and the Book of Commandments compared to the Doctrine and Covenants-

Hmm

... compared to later editions of the Doctrine and Covenants.

She starts collecting hymns, and, and they're ... soon they're moving to Fayette, and then they move to Kirtland, and she sends the hymns in the mail to William W. Phelps and Edward Partridge in Independence, Missouri, who are printing the Evening and the Morning Star newspaper-

Mm-hmm

... and putting together the Book of Commandments.

A mob attacks them in Ju- in 1833, July of 1833, destroys the press, and she loses everything she worked on.

This part of the Revelation is recorded in the manuscript Revelation books, which you can find on the Joseph Smith Papers website.

It's included in the 1833 Book of Commandments.

The rest of the Revelation was written according to Joseph in the September following.

So this happened in August.

So If you go to the Joseph Smith papers and you look up the earliest version of this revelation, which is in what was called the manuscript revelation books, they take the original paper and copy it into this book so that John Whitmer usually did this.

He was the church historian.

So they could take it and get it printed as the Book of Commandments.

What's received there is, like we mentioned, around verses 1 through 5, verse 14, and parts of other various verses.

And so you can document...

I mean, you can-- We have the 1833 Book of Commandments.

We have the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.

I bet you could ask, uh, Claude, or Grok, uh, or ChatGPT, or whatever else is out there, I bet you could ask, "Could you please take this section of the 1833 Book of Commandments, the section that becomes in 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, and present it to me to where all the added or changed words are color-coded? So if it's completely added, it's in red.

If it's been changed, it's in blue, and print that out for me as a, as a graphic." I bet you anything that there's probably people in our channel right now rushing to their favorite AI, and before this program is over, somebody'll post, um...

What, what section would that...

Which one? See, I don't, I don't even have my LDS scriptures up here.

Um, but it's the section that had over 400 words added or deleted, uh, in regards to the priesthood between 183- 1833 Book of Commandments and 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.

Now, the revelation doesn't mean that the story happened the way it says it happened, but the revelation suggests that something happened that prompted the-- this revelation to be given.

And the revelation was published apparently, this one, the sixty-seven, in at least as early as eighteen thirty-three in the, um, the book of Commandments is what I'm seeing, right? So if that is correct, then I think there might be something to it.

Do you know in the modern D&C what section we're talking about?

Sixty-seven.

See the heading to section one.

W.W. Phelps had recently established the church printing press in Missouri.

Uh, they decided to publish the revelations of the Book of Commandments, print ten thousand copies.

Because of unforeseen difficulties, again, revelation and discernment, they ended up reducing that to just three thousand copies.

And Joseph Smith later marks this conference by writing, "During this time, we had much of the power of God manifested among us.

The Holy Ghost came upon us and filled us with joy unspeakable, and peace, and faith, and hope, and charity abounded in our midst." Then he puts in these three revelations, which, again, were, were originally all separate in The Book of Commandments, which comes out in 1833, then get combined into one revelation in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, and have been that way ever since.

So really, three separate revelations, each at one.

There's about four verses each, but combine them together, and that's where you got section 30.