Catalog of Doctrine and Covenants Documents

If we treat the Doctrine and Covenants as a broader literary phenomenon within American religious history, corresponding literature expands well beyond present editions of the Doctrine and Covenants. This work of scripture has served the two largest churches within the larger Mormon movement, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ, in many editions since first published in the 1830s. Various other groups than these two churches adopted the Doctrine and Covenants without editions fully differentiated from those produced by Latter-day Saint and Reorganized/Community of Christ editors. In studying the Doctrine and Covenants as literature, we will have to consider what belongs to this category.

From the start, the individual works compiled into a published edition of the Doctrine and Covenants have included standalone revelatory texts, alternatively called “commandments,” “revelations,” and “covenants” by Joseph Smith and his associates. Additionally, various administrative and institutional documents also joined the revelations as sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. Because revelations constitute a distinct form of Joseph Smith’s writings and the primary genre of Doctrine and Covenants material, Smith’s unpublished revelations deserve consideration as literary auxiliaries of the Doctrine and Covenants.

A Catalog of Revelatory Works

The original Doctrine and Covenants was conceived as a published compilation of Joseph Smith’s revelations, meaning the textual representations of dictated revelatory prose Smith received and presented as direct inspiration from God—a “book of commandments.” Although non-revelation texts joined the compilation over time, the principal literary mode of the Doctrine and Covenants remained this revelation posture. Like European composers whose ecclectic works of music have been catalogued by musicologists, Joseph Smith’s revelation works merit cataloguing within a system that facilitates access to this particular literature. Such a catalog would have to include any works presented in editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, the chief vehicle for publishing Smith’s revelations.

The following presents an attempt at such a catalog of Joseph Smith’s revelations as well as a content inventory of all sections ever published in the Doctrine and Covenants. On the whole, the catalog will enhance the study of the Doctrine and Covenants as a scriptural and literary phenomenon and of Joseph Smith’s prophetic writing style of revelations.

The catalog includes documents that:

• have been published as a section, body text, or supplement to any of the major editions of the Doctrine and Covenants
• have been prepared by an editorial authority for publication in the Doctrine and Covenants
• have been an authoritative manuscript with special relevance to the Doctrine and Covenants or any of the foregoing texts
• have been composed and presented by Joseph Smith within his literary mode of written revelation

Special Notations

The first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (1835) divided individual revelations and other entries into “sections” and numbered paragraphs, which resembled other legal documents of the time. All subsequent editions maintained sections, not chapters. Documents that appear in latest Latter-day Saint and Community of Christ editions are noted with the section symbol (§) followed by the corresponding section number. Where Latter-day Saint and Community of Christ section numbers agree, only the shared number is listed without additional notation (e.g., § 5 refers to the document that appears as section 5 in both Latter-day Saint and Community of Christ editions). When both churches’ editions employ a section number that differs from each other, the Latter-day Saint number is listed first, followed by a slash and the Community of Christ number (e.g., § 3/2 refers to the document that appears as section 3 in the Latter-day Saint edition and section 2 in the Community of Christ edition). When only the Latter-day Saint or Community of Christ edition published the document as a section, the section number is followed by the subscript label _LDS to indicate the Latter-day Saint edition and the subscript label _CC to indicate the Community of Christ edition (e.g., section 111 in the Latter-day Saint edition is a different text than section 111 in the Community of Christ edition; § 111_LDS refers to the Latter-day Saint section 111, whereas § 111_CC refers to the Community of Christ section 111).

Items that have been removed from the Doctrine and Covenants and no longer bear a section number are included with footnotes explaining their previous publication history.

^* (:59–69, 71–72, 74–75, 78–87, 89, 91–92, 99–100)

^** (:1–58, 70, 73, 76–77, 88, 90, 93–98)

^† Contrary to the Joseph Smith Papers order, § 7 is placed before § 8–9 because: (1) considers the mention of Moses being translated in Alma 45 to occasion the inquiry into the status of John; (2) timeline of the translation of Alma 45 corresponds well enough with the approximate date of § 7; (3) the setting of § 7 has Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery debating the doctrine of translation, which makes it logical that Cowdery would observe the translation of John's parchment as a departure from Book of Mormon translation, a possible reason for the qualifiers opening § 8 about what Cowdery could expect of the gift to translate; (4) favors Smith's memory of the sequence of events between § 7–9 over John Whitmer's later order; (5) only place in extant fragments of the original Book of Mormon manuscript in Smith's handwriting is Alma 45:22, which could correspond to the approximate timing of § 8–9 and close to the Alma 45 passage about Moses's translation; if this marks the moment of Cowdery's attempted translation, this would mean § 7–9 were received within a short interval; (6) the shorter interval of production accounts for difficulty on the part of Smith and Cowdery to date these revelations but not in ordering them; (7) intertextually, the texts of § 7–9 make more sense in this sequence that with § 7 wedged between § 8–9 as John Whitmer orders them.

^†† The earliest heading for this document associates it with Wayne County, New York, and a date of 1830, but this was unlikely to have been prompted by Joseph Smith's Bible revision of the New Testament, since Smith still worked from the Old Testament through all of 1830. The prompt likely included Sidney Rigdon and James Covel meeting Smith. Whereas Covel did not prompt a revelation until early 1831, Rigdon objected to infant baptism, the content of 1 Corinthians 7:14, and Rigdon's interviews with Smith in December 1830 could have spurred the question. § 35, received in December 1830, directed Rigdon to assist Smith on the Bible revision, lending circumstantial evidence to a setting of inquiring into a New Testament passage. Had this been the case, a date for § 74 of 30–31 December 1830 would be less likely than closer to Rigdon's arrival.

^††† Published in RLDS editions as § 108A until dropped in 1990.

^†††† Published in RLDS editions as § 107 until dropped in 1990.

^‡ Provenance questionable.

^‡‡ Published in RLDS editions as § 109 until dropped in 1990.

^‡‡‡ Published in RLDS editions as § 110 until dropped in 1990.

^‡‡‡‡ Published in RLDS editions as  113 until dropped in 1990.

^° Published in RLDS editions as § 123 until dropped in 1970.