Textual Tradition, the Evolution of Mormon Doctrine, and the Doctrine

176 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought readers often cannot go to the primary ther information on his own publica- sources themselves. While it reports tions and on the history of the Univer- the experiences of the faculty members sity of Utah, the Aspen Institute, the most involved in poignant detail, it U.S. Commissioner of Education's of- does not—and cannot—tell each par- fice, and Mormon intellectual life ticipant's side of each event. Certainly would have been a welcome addition. one might argue that administrators' Early in Matters of Conscience, Mc- versions of these events were writ Murrin describes an incident in the large and require no other telling: after 1930s in which the LDS church dis- all, their narratives about what hap- solved the general board overseeing pened and what was at stake won. The the young men's organization in order personal aspect of their experiences, to remove Erickson and Beeley, who though, remains largely untold due to were well respected in the community the polarized circumstances the book but deemed too heterodox by conserv- reports. Waterman and Kagel give atives in the church hierarchy. George voice, powerfully, to the narratives Thomas, president of the University of that lost, and they trace out the larger Utah, summed it up this way: "They implications of these events for a burned down the whole barn to get rid university—and church—increasingly of a couple of rats." After telling the given to orthodoxy. That story needed story, McMurrin underlines his point: to be told, promptly. The longer histor- "Now I think that should be pre- ical view will take time, as it becomes served; and if it isn't preserved here, I clear to what degree they—and Mc- don't know where it will be" (MC 55). Murrin—are right in their conclusion Such anecdotes do indeed need to be that a conservative course inhospitable told. The greatest accomplishment of to the ideals of liberal education has ir- these two books is just that: they take revocably been set. readers inside the everyday, local, The one limitation of the McMur- flawed, human exchanges of which in- rin and Newell volume also has to do stitutions are made. If the diagnosis of- with stories untold. McMurrin's can- fered by Waterman and Kagel seems did recollections do make one curious almost apocalyptic, it may be precisely what other participants had to say; because they, unlike McMurrin (over after all not everyone (at least not fifty years their senior), see little room Joseph Fielding Smith or the National or affection for unconventional, loyal Education Association) agreed with thinkers in Mormonism. him. A bibliographic essay with fur- Textual Tradition, the Evolution of Mormon Doctrine, and the Doctrine & Covenants The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Wives of Joseph Smith, winner of the Commentary, by H. Michael Marquardt 1997 best book award of the Mormon (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999) History Association. xxvii + 411 pp., $44.95 hardback. H. Michael Marquardt published Reviewed by Todd M. Compton, au- his early monographs with anti-Mor- thor of In Sacred Loneliness: The Pluralmons Jerald and Sandra Tanner, but Reviews 177 these works exhibited higher scholarly sequent revisions been collected in a standards than the Tanners' work. book available to the general public. Marquardt co-authored Inventing Mor- The result is a fascinating, very impor- monism: Tradition and the Historical tant book that should come to be ac- Record4 with anti-Mormon pastor Wes- cepted as a basic reference work. ley Walters, which had the distinction What is most surprising about this of being one of few books from Signa- book is the fact that nothing like it has ture or Smith Research Associates to been done before. The author remarks receive a positive review in the FARMS in his preface: "Revelation is so central Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, to Mormonism that one might assume with Richard Bushman as the re- the study of original texts is an ex- viewer.5 That Marquardt could receive hausted field. The truth is that, with a good review from a scholar of Bush- few exceptions, such a study has yet man's stature and a specialist in the to begin" (p. xi). On first glance, this New York era of Mormonism shows would seem very strange: Mormons the quality of his scholarship. Mar- are generally profoundly interested in quardt is a tenacious and wide-rang- Joseph Smith and his revelatory writ- ing researcher with a keen eye for de- ings. A serious interest in these revela- tails; moreover, he is not strident in his tions would cause any trained scholar scholarly judgments. He has his own (and there are many such in contempo- perspectives (as do all scholars), with rary Mormonism) to examine the orig- which Mormons may agree or dis- inal documents behind the familiar agree, but they are expressed mildly texts. Yet there has been no compre- and tied closely to carefully marshaled hensive book on the texts and revi- evidence. sions of the Doctrine and Covenants. Marquardt's strengths as a re- "Conservative" Mormon books have searcher are fully in evidence in The generally turned a blind eye to the Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Com- textual variations. Mormon scholar mentary, which publishes the earliest Robert Woodford examined the revi- extant text of each section of the Doc- sions in "The Historical Development trine and Covenants. The author notes of the Doctrine and Covenants," but any revisions in subsequent printings this 1974 BYU Ph.D. thesis has never (in the 1833 Book of Commandments been published. Perhaps the best dis- and 1835 Doctrine and Covenants) and cussion of the revisions is in RLDS makes textual, historical, and doctrinal Church Historian Richard Howard's comments on the changes. While Mor- Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their mon historians have long known that Textual Development, but Howard con- Joseph Smith made numerous revi- siders the Doctrine and Covenants in sions to his original revelations, never only a few chapters of his book.6 before have the original texts and sub- The reason for this scholarly la- 4. (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994). This publisher is closely con- nected with Signature Books. 5. FARMS Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6.2 (1994): 122-33. Bushman suggests that the mild tone of the book shows that Marquardt, not Walters, was the dominant shaper of the book. 6. Richard Howard, Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their Textual Development (Inde- pendence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1969); I cite the revised edition of 1995. 178 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought cuna is undoubtedly the fact that tex- on Joseph's expanding prophetic mis- tual variations in the Doctrine and sion (LDS D&C 5); on the developing Covenants have become one of the theology of the interpreters or Urim "taboo" subjects in Mormon studies, and Thummim (LDS D&C 17); on the since a study of these revisions re- substitution of Frederick Williams for quires a complex view of revelation, Jesse Gause (LDS D&C 81). However, and church leaders clearly are uncom- Marquardt is sometimes content fortable with the kind of theological merely to point out revisions, as in the exploration that will be necessary case of Document 98 (LDS D&C 83), to face that complexity. Therefore, where he discusses the manuscripts though the LDS church and BYU have for the revisions but not the content enormous resources, it falls to an inde- changes relating to widows and or- pendent researcher and a regional phans. Another interesting change press to write and publish such a book Marquardt leaves without comment as this. occurs in Document 48 (part of LDS In The Joseph Smith Revelations, D&C 42), which was revised in 1835 to Marquardt has done a thorough and include women as well as men in reliable job of reproducing the earliest church law. text for each revelation. As a result, we Sometimes Marquardt belabors experience the excitement of coming to the obvious, ending a discussion with terms with a heretofore unknown pri- a conclusion that the 1833 or holo- mary text. Communing with the reve- graph text is more primary than the lations in their original format, with- 1835 text (as in Document 2, LDS D&C out verse numbers, sometimes in the 4). It would be safe to take such a con- scribe's ungrammatical format, opens clusion for granted and simply discuss up new dimensions of their poetry and why the change was made. Occasion- power. The revisions are fascinating, ally, he overstates a position. For in- showing the development of Joseph stance, in the case of Williams being Smith's vision and the growth of the substituted for Gause, Marquardt nascent church organization. Many mentions that this is the single case in important revelations not canonized in which the official LDS edition of the the present Doctrine and Covenants Doctrine and Covenants admits a tex- are included, including one beautiful tual change, but he takes issue with prophecy that was a "translation" of how it does so. However, the LDS the speaking in tongues that was com- church should be commended for, in at mon in the nineteenth-century church least one case, admitting an important (Document 107). textual change in a revelation. Hope- Nevertheless, The Joseph Smith fully future official editions will note Revelations is not a perfect book. My all important revisions (as, from the central criticism of it focuses on occa- standpoint of honesty, they should). sional shortcomings in Marquardt's Sometimes Marquardt unaccount- analysis.

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