Friday, June 7, 2024

Issues Concerning the Accuracy of W. W. Phelps's August 12, 1861 Recollection of a July 17, 1831 Revelation Attributed to Joseph Smith

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> also <shall> become exceeding angery, and shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexing vexation. And then with the sword, and by bloodshed, the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine and plague, and earthquakes, and thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabinants of the earth be made to feell the wrath and indignation <and> of the chasning hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations, that the cry of the saints, and of the blood of the saints, shall cease to come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, from the earth, to be avenged of their enemies. Wherefore, stand ye in holy places and be not moved until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen.

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)