D&C 121:38-42
This
passage is an extract from a letter dictated by Joseph Smith to Alexander McRae,
Mar. 20, 1839, while they were confined in the Liberty jail. The original letter
is now located in the HDC.
The
letter was first published at Nauvoo in the Church’s Times and Seasons 1
(May, 1840): 99-104. A differing version if it was published in the Church’s Millennial
Star 17 (January, 1855): 52-56, and is the version found in the History of
the Church, and in the D&C.
An
article in the LDS Saints’ Herald 43 (June 3, 1896): 354-359 charged
that the 1835 M.S. version had been changed and corrupted, and that the
references to a plurality of Gods (a doctrine then rejected by the RLDS) had
been added. The article includes a parallel of the two versions showing the
differences. The problem with the argument is that they were mistaken as to
which version had been altered. From 1854-1856 LDS historians were completing
the “History of Joseph Smith” begun by Joseph Smith in 1839. Rather than using the
T.S. version of the letter, they used the original then in their possession. The
M.S. published the original in 1855. It was, then, the T.S. version which had
been altered, not the M.S. version. The two references to the plurality of Gods
were deleted from the original in 1840, not added to the original in 1855.
This
fact is one evidence that the concept of a plurality of Gods was being discussed
in private several years before Joseph Smith was prepared to put it in print in
1842 with the publication of the Book of Abraham.
In
the following parallels the changes in the two plurality of Gods references are
enclosed in brackets.
D&C
121:28: . . . nothing shall be withheld, [whether there be one God or many Gods,
they shall be manifest: all thrones and dominions, principalities and powers,
shall be revealed and set forth upon] all who have endured . . .
T.S.:
. . . nothing shall be withheld, [when all the glories of earth and heaven,
time and eternity shall be manifest to] all those, who have endured . . .
D&C
121:32: . . . which was ordained in the midst of the Council of [the Eternal God
of all other Gods,] before this world was . . .
T.S.:
. . . which was ordained in the midst of the council [of heaven in the presence
of the eternal God,] before this world was . . . (Van Hale, Mormon Miscellaneous
Note Cards, 3 vols. [Sandy, Utah: Mormon Miscellaneous, 1985], 1:30)