Commenting on W. W. Phelp's recollection, written on August 12, 1861, of a purported revelation of Joseph Smith from July 17, 1831, Smoot and Passantino wrote:
There are several remarkable but also
problematic aspects of this text, the most glaring of which is the fact that
Phelp’s account of this revelation and its reception was given three decades
after the reported event. This makes the text a late, secondhand recollection,
not a source directly from the Prophet himself. Indeed, by his own explicit admission,
none of the elders at that time had the means to record any such revelation,
obliging Phelps to give President Young only the “substance” or “part” of the
text. It is unknown if Phelps was copying an earlier manuscript or composing this
draft from memory, but the latter appears more likely. If this version is a
copy, then where is the original? How much longer after the event was that original
composed? And how can we be sure Phelps’s copy is faithful to that original? If
Phelps was recalling the revelation, how sure can we trust him after three
decades to capture verbatim what Joseph might have spoken on that occasion?
These and other questions diminish our confidence that we can unreservedly
attribute this revelation to the Prophet.
There is also something to be said
about the fact that the contents of this revelation appear to reflect the
contemporary influence of the tumultuous opening of the Civil war in 1861. The
language of verse 6 of the revelation, which speaks of “ungodly and daring men”
rising up in violence to bring about “the destruction of the government” and “the
death and misery of many souls” resonates with how Latter-day Saints reacted to
the outbreak of the war. Of course, in what is now section 87 of the Doctrine
and Covenants, Joseph Smith prophesied on December 25, 1832, with chilling
specificity and fulfillment that civil war would consume the United States and
that war would eventually pour out across the globe. So we cannot rule out the
possibility that the Prophet may have given another earlier prophetic utterance
pertaining to the coming calamity. But it could just as easily be that Phelps’s
memory, if not also the specific language of his version of the revelation, was
influenced by both the outbreak of the war during which he was writing as well
as the language of the canonical revelation, which also thunders with
apocalyptic language reminiscent of Phelps’s text.
|
Revelation, December 25, 1832 (D&C 87) |
Revelation Attributed to Joseph Smith, July 17, 1831(?), as
recorded by William W. Phelps |
|
. . . And it shall come to pass also, that the remnants who are
left of the land, will martial themselves <and> |
Verily I say unto you that the day of vexation and vengeance is
nigh at the doors of this nation, when wicked, ungodly and daring men will
rise up in wrath and mighty, and go forth in anger, like as the dust is
driven by [a] terrible wind; and they will be the means of the destruction of
the government, and cause the death and misery of man[y] souls, but the faithful
among my people shall be preserved in holy places, during all these
tribulations. |
There is, finally, the matter of the
revelation instructing the elders to, in due time, take for themselves “wives
of the Lamanites and Nephites.” This aspect of the revelation has engendered
considerable interest among scholars for the potentially significant implications
it holds for Joseph Smith’s introduction of plural marriage. “While one must
view the document cautiously,” writes one historian, “if Phelps was correct this
disclosure may constitute Mormonism’s earliest formal approval of plural marriage.”
(Hardy, Doing the Works of Abraham, 35) Was Joseph in fact receiving
instruction about or otherwise hinting at the restoration of this practice as
early as 1831? It appears possible. Regulations for polygamy appear in the Book
of Mormon (Jacob 2:28-30), and later sources indicate that plural marriage was
on the Prophet’s mind much earlier than when he formally entered the practice;
kindled, according to some of these accounts, by his early work on the translation
of the Bible, where he encountered depictions of biblical figures taking
multiple wives. (Stephen O. Smoot and Brian C. Passantino, Joseph Smtih’s
Uncanonized Revelations [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book, 2024], 146-47)
H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph
Smith Revelations: Texts & Commentary (Salt Lake City: Signature Books,
1999), 374, says that Phelps recorded this text “evidently from memory” but
provides no further elaboration. The key piece of evidence that Phelps most
likely wrote this text from memory is found within the letter itself, where
Phelps mentions how none of the elders at the meeting where this revelation was
received had pen or paper to record the revelation. (Ibid., 153, n. 6)
In
another recent work, Clair Barrus noted that the purported revelation contains
a number of anachronisms, such as the fact that
[I]t mentions that Zion will be
redeemed, but the concept of redeeming Zion wouldn’t occur until after fall 1833
when the saints were forcibly removed from Jackson County. (Clair Barrus, “Prologues
to Plurality: A Study of Joseph Smith’s Revelations on Marriage,” in Secret
Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, ed. Cheryl L. Bruno [Salt
Lake City: Signature Books, 2024], 7 n. 29)