Friday, November 24, 2023

Van Hale on the text of 121:38-42 and the Doctrine of the Plurality of Gods

  

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)