There has not always been a Doctrine and Covenants. It has a history and can best be understood by those who know that history. Robert Woodford, a great scholar of the Doctrine and Covenants, described how we tend to think of it as a “tidily defined book, quietly resting with the other scriptures.” But the story of how those revelations were written, prepared for publication, and moved through various states until they reached our present edition is the story of trying to keep up with a flood of revealed knowledge.
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Learn more. This is an excerpt from Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants: A Guided Tour Through Modern Revelations. Read the book for the rest of the story.
Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants: A Guided Tour Through Modern Revelations. Pages 1–10, © 2008 Steven C. Harper. Published under license from Deseret Book Company.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher. Without limiting the author and publisher’s exclusive rights, any unauthorized use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is strictly prohibited.
The early Saints delighted in the Prophet Joseph’s revelations. They read them over and over, committing some to memory. They copied the manuscripts of the most important or personal ones and then copied the copies. They treasured these documents.
The growing number of missionaries needed the revelations in their ministry, but copies could only be made by hand when the missionaries happened to be at Church headquarters or crossed paths with someone who had a hand-copied manuscript of an earlier manuscript. Access was limited, and the potential for errors great. The Saints needed to publish the revelations.
In November 1831 Joseph Smith gathered Church leaders to the home of John and Elsa Johnson in Hiram, Ohio, to discuss how best to publish the revelations he had received and written.
Printing in America had recently boomed. Religious and political groups were publishing newspapers, pamphlets, and books, reaching wider audiences than ever before with the printed word. Should the Saints tap into that power?
The Lord had already commanded the experienced editor William Phelps to be a printer for the Church (D&C 57:11). A committee of talented writers drafted a preface. But it was the Lord’s book, and he revealed what he called “my preface unto the book of my commandments, which I have given them to publish unto you, O inhabitants of the earth” (D&C 1:6). Joseph spoke the words slowly, and Sidney Rigdon wrote them down, but they originated in the mind of Jesus Christ in response to specific circumstances, thus making the Doctrine and Covenants “the only book in the world that has a preface written by the Lord Himself.”
“In that preface,” said President Ezra Taft Benson, “He declares to the world that His voice is unto all men (see D&C 1:2), that the coming of the Lord is night (see D&C 1:12), and that the truths found in the Doctrine and Covenants will all be fulfilled (see D&C 1:37–38).”
He also indicts the world in its present state. “They seek not to establish his righteousness,” the revelation said in condemnation of the earth’s inhabitants:
but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.
D&C 1:16
Contextualizing Selfishness
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer of American life, was touring the States when the Lord gave this revelation. He observed what the Lord decried and called it individualism.
The problem was not riches.
Writing a decade later, Ralph Waldo Emerson called it self-reliance. “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature,” Emerson wrote. “Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.” He did not want to be told of what he called “my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor?” he asked. “I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.”
Historians see in this period “the installation of ambition as the one common good.” Public worship, according to Emerson, “lost its grasp on the affection of the good and the fear of the bad.” Antagonism, partisanship, and aspiration to acquire property and power grew to become false gods. Religion too often assisted rather than checked these worldly ambitions. A popular 1836 tract was called The Book of Wealth; in Which It Is Proved from the Bible, That It Is the Duty of Every Man to Become Rich.
By the time Joseph Smith and his brethren began making plans to publish the revelations, “pride of self, once the mark of the devil, was now not just a legitimate emotion but America’s uncontested god.” That is just what the Lord indicated in his preface to the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 1:16).
Such attitudes defied the living God who gave revelations to Joseph Smith. The Lord did not will poverty for the earth’s inhabitants. On the contrary, he wanted to give his children “greater riches, even a land . . . flowing with milk and honey,” and promised that “if ye seek riches which it is the will of the Father to give unto you, ye shall be the richest of all people, for ye shall have the riches of eternity” (D&C 38:18, 39).
The problem was not riches but reliance on the arm of the flesh. The increasingly popular myths of the self-made man sounded arrogant in the ears of the Lord, whose children seemed adamant to do things their “own way” (D&C 1:16). “The riches of the earth are mine to give,” he said to the Saints in a variety of ways, “but beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old” (D&C 38:39). As creator and owner of the earth and its fulness, it was contrary to the Lord’s will that one person should possess his wealth in excess of any other (D&C 49:20). All were to look to the poor and administer to their relief (D&C 38:34–35), acknowledging that all their wants and needs were generously supplied by his bountiful hand (D&C 59:15–21).
It was selfishness that the revelations rejected. Instead, the Lord offered an alternative he called Zion, and the work of building Zion became the work of the revelations.
Book of Commandments
With Zion on their minds, Joseph Smith gathered Church leaders at the Johnson home in Hiram, Ohio, in November 1831 to advance the plan for publishing the revelations.
Oliver Cowdery asked how many copies the Lord wanted in the first edition of the Book of Commandments. The brethren voted for ten thousand, an extraordinarily large print run for such a project, and twice as many as the first printing of the Book of Mormon. They were willing to impoverish themselves to make the revelations widely available.
He invited them to obtain a testimony for themselves.
“Inasmuch as the Lord has bestowed a great blessing upon us in giving commandments and revelations,” Joseph asked his brethren, “what testimony they were willing to attach to these commandments which should shortly be sent into the world.” He invited them to obtain a testimony for themselves that the revelations were divine, perhaps something similar to the ministering angel and heavenly voice experienced by the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.
There was hope among the brethren for such a witness but also fear. The testimony they received, therefore, came another way. Speaking through Joseph, the Lord exposed their secret thoughts and intents:
Your eyes have been upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and his language you have known, and his imperfections you have known; and you have sought in your hearts knowledge that might express beyond his language; this you also know.
D&C 67:5
He invited the brethren to choose the wisest among them to duplicate the simplest revelation. Joseph’s history says that William McLellin “endeavored to write a commandment like unto one of the least of the Lord’s, but failed.”
This experience, this hands-on attempt to compose in the Lord’s voice, proved much to the brethren present. They signed their names to a statement that the revelations were true.
It may be hard for modern readers to fully appreciate their actions. A poorly educated, twenty-six-year-old farmer was planning to publish ten thousand copies of his revelations that called his neighbors idolatrous, commanded them to repent, and foretold calamities upon those who continued in wickedness. Joseph was, by his own admission, no writer. He felt imprisoned by what he called the “total darkness of paper, pen, and Ink and a crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect Language.” He thus considered it “an awful responsibility to write in the name of the Lord.”
Yet the Lord had given him that responsibility. He had “called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments” and declared to Joseph that “this generation shall have my word through you” (D&C 1:17; 5:10).
Joseph did not suppose that he could receive the revelations perfectly.
Joseph hoped that his brethren would help shoulder the burden. Would they testify to the truthfulness of the revelations? Their initial fears were replaced by faith as the Lord demonstrated again that he spoke through Joseph.
These men based their conviction on the manuscript Book of Commandments lying before them. They knew Joseph’s language. They knew his imperfections. And they knew that in his written revelations they heard the voice of God. They were willing to testify to the world that they knew the revelations came from God.
These men were going all the way to Zion. As the conference continued:
the brethren arose in turn and bore witness to the truth of the Book of Commandments. After which br. Joseph Smith jr arose & expressed his feelings and gratitude.
Far West Record, November 1–2, 1831
He loved the friends who sustained him in his heavy responsibility.
Editing Changes to the Doctrine and Covenants
That responsibility included editing the revelations for publication. Joseph Smith dictated a revelation in December 1832, and Sidney Rigdon wrote it down. Frederick Williams then transcribed it. Orson Hyde copied this transcription. John Whitmer then recorded Hyde’s copy. Only a few of the revelations made their journeys to publication so circuitously, but not one of them was a pristine production.
The Lord spoke in Joseph’s imperfect language (D&C 1:24). And then Joseph usually spoke to a scribe, who wrote the words, which were then copied into books and then edited before being published. Not only were changes, both intentional and unintentional, made at every step, but Joseph did not suppose that he could receive the revelations perfectly, nor did the Lord ever set that standard.
It is important that the revelations are true, not that they are flawless.
Joseph and his appointed brethren (see D&C 70:1–4) edited the revelations repeatedly based on the same premise that governed their original receipt, namely that Joseph represented the voice of God as He condescended to speak in what Joseph called his own crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect language.
Noting that some critics present the editorial changes made to the revelations as evidence that they are not true, then-Elder Boyd K. Packer observed:
They cite these changes, of which there are many examples, as though they themselves were announcing revelation, as though they were the only ones who knew of them. Of course there have been changes and corrections. Anyone who has done even limited research knows that. When properly reviewed, such corrections become a testimony for, not against the truth of the books.
Boyd K. Packer, Conference Report (April 1974): 137.
The scholars editing the Joseph Smith Papers are intimately acquainted with all the known manuscript versions of the revelations and their printed history. Each of these scholars believes in the revelations and delights in their truths.
Though some less-informed critics claim and others assume that the revelations cannot be true because they have been edited, their logic is faulty. If it were not, then the Bible would have to be abandoned, too.
It is important that the revelations are true, not that they are flawless. After the Lord explained that distinction in section 67 at the November 1831 conference, none of Joseph’s brethren were upset that the revelations were at once both true and in need of improvement. They simply resolved that Joseph “correct those errors or mistakes which he may discover by the holy Spirit” and bore their solemn testimonies that they knew the revelations were true.
They never had a chance to get that far.
Meanwhile, William Phelps established the Church’s press across from the courthouse in Independence, Missouri. Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer took him the manuscript of the Book of Commandments, a few other revelations, and money to print them, and they stayed on to assist him.
The Church’s limited resources meant that they had to scale back the projected print run of the revelations to three thousand. But they never had a chance to get that far.
In July 1833, antagonistic settlers of Jackson County, Missouri, demanded that William Phelps cease printing what they called “pretended revelations from heaven” and destroyed the press and Phelps’s home. Brave Saints preserved some uncut pages, which were later bound. Thus only a few incomplete copies of A Book of Commandments were actually published.
The revelations kept coming, however, and the Saints bought a new press and set it up in Kirtland, Ohio. There, in September 1834, the Church appointed Joseph Smith to head a committee to prepare his revelations for publication in an expanded form.
History of the Doctrine and Covenants: Becoming Canon
The committee worked hard to prepare the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph was away in Michigan in August 1835 when other members of the committee appeared before a general Church assembly to seek the Saints’ common consent for the book to become canonical scripture.
Oliver Cowdery held up a printed but not yet bound copy of the Doctrine and Covenants and asked the Saints for their consent to publish it. William Phelps said:
that he had examined it carefully, that it was well arranged and calculated to govern the church in righteousness, if followed [it] would bring the members to see eye to eye. And further that he had received the testimony from God, that the Revelations and commandments contained therein are true, wherefore, he knew assuredly for himself having received witness from Heaven & not from men.
Kirtland Minute Book, August 17, 1835, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
John Whitmer, who transcribed many of the revelations for Joseph Smith, followed with a similar expression of certainty, adding “that he was present when some of the revelations contained therein were given, and was satisfied they come from God.”
Others followed. Levi Jackman:
arose and said that he had examined as many of the revelations contained in the book as were printed in Zion, & as firmly believes them as he does the Book of Mormon or the Bible and also the whole contents of the Book, he then called for the vote of the High Council from Zion, which they gave in favor of the Book and also of the committee.
Kirtland Minute Book, August 17, 1835, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
Newel Whitney rose and testified that he knew the revelations “were true, for God had testified to him by his holy Spirit, for many of them were given under his roof & in his presence through President Joseph Smith Junr.”
This process of consent continued, endowing Joseph’s revelations with canonical status. It culminated with a consensus “of all the members present, both male & female, & They gave a decided voice in favor of it.”
A testimony of the Twelve Apostles that the revelations came from God for the benefit of mankind was published in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, which was sent to Cleveland for binding. This testimony is included in the Explanatory Introduction to the current edition.
Subsequent Editions
In 1844, the First Presidency announced plans to publish a second edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, adding seven revelations to the 1835 edition, including today’s sections 103, 105, 112, 119, 124, 127, and 128.
For years they had been raising money to procure the paper and skilled printers. Joseph had proofread the revelations. The Nauvoo Neighbor newspaper announced that the new edition would be off the press in about a month.
That was two weeks before Joseph Smith was murdered, and the tragedy, in which publisher and apostle John Taylor was severely wounded, delayed publication until later that year. By then the 1844 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants included the stirring eulogy to Joseph that is now section 135.
The next several editions were published in England, the first of those by Wilford Woodruff in 1845 during his second apostolic mission to Great Britain. Because some dissident Saints designed to publish first in Great Britain, Wilford rushed the book to press in order to beat them and secure the copyright. That became an important advantage for the Church, as the printing used for the first British edition was duplicated several times, including for shipments to the Saints in Utah, before a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was finally typeset in 1876.
1876 edition
Orson Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles edited the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. Under President Brigham Young‘s direction, Elder Pratt made extensive changes that dramatically influence how we read the book today. He added several of Joseph’s revelations and one of Brigham Young’s, amounting to twenty-six new sections, including:
- 2
- 13
- 77
- 85
- 87
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 113
- 114
- 115
- 116
- 117
- 118
- 120
- 121
- 122
- 123
- 125
- 126
- 129
- 130
- 131
- 132
- 136
1879, 1880, and 1908 editions
Elder Pratt rearranged the order of the sections and divided them into verses. In 1879, he published another edition in England, adding footnotes but no new sections.
Using Elder Pratt’s 1879 typesetting, the Church published the Doctrine and Covenants in Utah in 1880 as part of the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. The Church reprinted this edition at least twenty-eight times, adding in 1908 President Woodruff’s declaration to end the practice of plural marriage (now Official Declaration–1).
Orson Pratt’s painstaking and inspired work on these editions is monumental. His editorial fingerprints are still found in the most recent edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.
1921 edition
In 1920, President Heber J. Grant appointed several of the apostles to arrange a new edition, which was published in 1921. They revised the footnotes and set the type in double columns on each page.
They also removed seven lectures on faith that had been included since the 1835 edition. These examples of systemic theology were originally delivered to Church leaders in Kirtland, Ohio, as they prepared their hearts and minds for the solemn assembly in the Kirtland Temple. The lectures never claimed the status of revelation. They are still available in a number of free-standing editions but are no longer part of the canonized scripture of the Church.
1981 edition
Later, the First Presidency appointed a committee of apostles to direct the publication of a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants that was published in 1981. Featuring an extensive critical apparatus, including completely revised footnotes and enhanced study aids, it included sections 137, 138, and Official Declaration–2.
In one sense these three texts complete the Doctrine and Covenants. They reveal how the Lord has included every soul, living and dead, of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, in his plan for the salvation and exaltation of all mankind. These three texts finish what section 1 announced the Doctrine and Covenants would do, that is, testify that the Lord’s “eyes are upon all” and manifest his willingness “to make these things known unto all flesh” (D&C 1:1, 34).
But in an important sense the Doctrine and Covenants remains open. As a contemporary of Joseph put it, this book of scripture shows us “that God is, now was; that He speaketh, not spake.” The future of the Doctrine and Covenants is as exciting as its past.
Further reading
- Come Follow Me 2025: Doctrine & Covenants
- Joseph Smith’s First Vision
- Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations
- Joseph Smith Quotes
- Joseph Smith’s Teachings About Jesus Christ
Brief History of the Doctrine and Covenants resources
- Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants: A Guided Tour Through Modern Revelations (Deseret Book)
- Revelations in Context (Church History)
- Historical Introduction, Doctrine and Covenants, 1835 (Joseph Smith Papers)
- Doctrine and Covenants: Overview (BYU RSC)
- Steven C. Harper’s D&C Posts (Blog)
One reply on “A Brief History of the Doctrine & Covenants”
Brother Harper, have you ever considered why the first nine verses of DC 10 were not included in DC 3?