User:Hydrangeans/draft of D&C 132

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D&C 132
Heading and first verse in the 1891 Liverpool edition
DateJuly 12, 1843
Place of originNauvoo, Illinois
Scribe(s)

Doctrine and Covenants section 132, also called the 1843 revelation,[1] the revelation on celestial marriage,[2] the plural marriage revelation,[3] D&C 132, or section 132, is a section of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants (D&C). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) regards the D&C as scripture,[a] and the denomination canonized D&C 132 in 1876. The section has been included in each edition of its D&C ever since. The text now known as D&C 132 was first penned on July 12, 1843. Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement (sometimes also called Mormonism) and president of the Church of Christ (by that time renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), dictated the text, and Wlliam Clayton scribed it.

Smith's followers at the time considered him a prophet who dictated revelations understood to be as if from the voice of God. The text of D&C 132 is given from such a first-person point of view, as if it is God speaking.

Background[edit]

Part of a series on the
Doctrine and Covenants
Title page of 1835 edition
Sources and sections
Related topics

As founder of Latter Day Saint movement, or Mormonism, and the Church of Christ (renamed in 1838 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), Smith and his followers believed that he was a prophet of the Christian God who acted as God's representative and mouthpiece according to divine inspiration.[4] Smith often promulgated teachings by dictating what he and his followers accepted as revelations from God, generally phrased in the first-person from the perspective of deity.[5]

Beginning sometime in the 1830s in Kirtland, Ohio or in the early 1840s in Nauvoo, Illinois,[b] Smith secretly initiated a practice of religious polygamy (also called celestial marriage and later called plural marriage).[6] By 1844, almost a hundred people in Nauvoo were secretly involved in polygamy,[7] and rumors and gossip about polygamy spread throughout the community.[8]

Also during this time in Nauvoo, Smith articulated a theology which emphasized turning families into "eternal units" through a ritual "sealing" ordinance which he taught would enable familial relationships, including marriage and parenthood, to continue after death, connecting all people together in a "human family".[9]

Smith married several polygamous wives in Nauvoo without disclosing he had done so to Emma Hale Smith, who was his first and only publicly acknowledged wife.[10] Emma Smith likely knew about Smith's polygamy by 1842 or 1843.[8] She temporarily accepted polygamy by May 1843, selecting four women for Joseph Smith to plurally marry and allowing some of his polygamous wives to move into the Smith home, but she soon changed her mind and demanded Smith's other wives leave.[11]

On July 12, 1843, at the Nauvoo Red Brick Store, Hyrum Smith (Smith's brother) encouraged Smith to dictate a revelation on polygamy. Hyrum was initially hostile to polygamy when he heard about it through rumors but had since come to accept and endorse it.[12] With a scribed revelation, Hyrum believed he could persuade Emma the way he had been persuaded. Joseph Smith was skeptical and warned Hyrum, "You do not know Emma as well as I do," but nevertheless agreed to dictate a revelation.[13]

With William Clayton scribing, Joseph Smith dictated, a sentence at a time, for three hours.[14] Some portions of the text may have been known to Smith in the 1830s.[15] Before dictating, Smith told Clayton and Hyrum that he "already knew the revelation perfectly from beginning to end".[16] The resulting manuscript comprised about 3,300 words,[17] and it was ten pages long.[14]

Summary[edit]

CONTENT

Textual history[edit]

Either later that day on July 12 or the next day, Newel K. Whitney received Joseph Smith's permission to make a copy of the text, which Whitney had Joseph C. Kingsbury transcribe.[18] The Kingsbury copy is eight pages long.[19] Willard Richards transcribed another copy,[20] based off of Kingsbury's.[21] Several contemporaneous transcriptions likely circulated in Nauvoo, though how many is not known.[22]

A few days after the document's dictation and transcription on July 12, Joseph Smith permitted Emma Smith to destroy the original manuscript scribed by Clayton.[23]

CONTENT

"All other extant versions are based on the Kingsbury copy."[24]

Reception history[edit]

Nauvoo[edit]

After Joseph Smith finished dictating the revelation on July 12, 1843, Hyrum took the copy Clayton transcribed and that same day visited with Emma Smith in an attempt to persuade her to accept polygamy as a divine doctrine.[25] Emma was unpersuaded and answered that she "did not believe a word of it".[26] When Hyrum returned to the Red Brick Store where Smith and Clayton had remained and reported what had happened, Smith answered, "I told you you did not know Emma as well as I did."[27]

CONTENT

(Emma's extremely negative reaction, see Park and maybe Newell and Avery as well? Van Wagoner likely treats it as well, and Bringhurst)

Between one and two hundred people in Nauvoo may have been aware of the 1843 revelation, but how many adherents either accepted or rejected it while in Nauvoo is not known.[28]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints[edit]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) canonized the text in 1876, adding it to its Doctrine and Covenants as section 132.[29]

[]

D&C 132 remains part of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants in the twenty-first century; leadership cites its content on the believed divinity of gender roles, and its verses that describe marriage as eternal are popular among Latter-day Saints, but the denomination tends to gloss over the portions that are explicitly about polygamy.[30]

Community of Christ[edit]

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (later renamed to Community of Christ) has never canonized the text of D&C 132 or included it in its Doctrine and Covenants.[31]

Section 132 of Community of Christ's Doctrine and Covenants is an unrelated text produced as a revelation given through church president Frederick Madison Smith.[32]

Fundamentalist Mormonism[edit]

"The issue in the 1970s and 1980s centered on interpretations of Doctrine and Covenants 132:7" (more context in paper itself, see page 128n110)[33]

Interpretation[edit]

CONTENT

(Kinship and expanding meanings of family)[34]

(Culmination of Smith's Abrahamic society project)[35]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Community of Christ also includes the D&C in its scriptural canon, but the two denominations' versions differ in content. The document canonized as section 132 in the LDS D&C has never been included in Community of Christ's D&C.
  2. ^ As Park (2020, p. 63) summarizes, "the precise origins of the practice remain murky". For an extended argument in favor of Smith attempting polygamy in the 1830s, see Bradley (2010, pp. 14–58). For a view that the doctrine and practice emerged in Nauvoo in 1840, see Park (2020, pp. 62).

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Hardy (2007, p. 57).
  2. ^ Gordon (2002, p. 22).
  3. ^ Smith (2018, passim).
  4. ^ Bushman & Jessee (1992); Bowman (2016).
  5. ^ Bushman (2005, pp. xx–xxi).
  6. ^ .
  7. ^ Park (2020, p. 63).
  8. ^ a b Hendrix-Komoto (2022, p. 65).
  9. ^ Foster (2010, pp. TBD).
  10. ^ Grua et al. (2021, p. 461).
  11. ^ Park (2020, p. 152); Grua et al. (2021, p. 462).
  12. ^ Park (2020, pp. 152–154); Grua et al. (2021, pp. 457, 463).
  13. ^ Newell & Avery (1994, p. 151).
  14. ^ a b Grua et al. (2021, p. 463).
  15. ^ Bachman (1978, pp. 23–26, 32)
  16. ^ Hardy (2007, p. 60).
  17. ^ Park (2020, p. 152).
  18. ^ Smith (2018, p. 15); Grua et al. (2021, pp. 464–465).
  19. ^ Grua et al. (2021, p. 457).
  20. ^ Smith (2018, p. 15).
  21. ^ Grua et al. (2021, p. 467n576).
  22. ^ Smith (2018, p. 17).
  23. ^ Smith (2018, p. 15); Grua et al. (2021, p. 464).
  24. ^ Grua et al. (2021, p. 467).
  25. ^ Park (2020, p. 153).
  26. ^ Bringhurst (2010, pp. to be inserted).
  27. ^ Newell & Avery (1994, p. 152).
  28. ^ Hardy (2007, pp. 66, 66n103).
  29. ^ Bringhurst (2010, p. 60)
  30. ^ Park (2020b).
  31. ^ Donoghue (2017).
  32. ^ The Doctrine and Covenants (2017, pp. 198–199).
  33. ^ Watson (2007, p. 128n110)
  34. ^ Foster (2010, pp. needs to be inserted).
  35. ^ Park (2020, pp. 152–154).

References[edit]

  • Bachman, Danel W. (1978). "New Light on an Old Hypothesis: The Ohio Origins of the Revelation on Eternal Marriage". Journal of Mormon History. 5: 19–32. ISSN 0094-7342.
  • Bowman, Matthew (March 3, 2016). Dailey, Jane (ed.). "Mormonism". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.
  • Bradley, Don (2010). "Mormon Polygamy Before Nauvoo? The Relationship of Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger". In Bringhurst, Newell G.; Foster, Craig L. (eds.). The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy. The Persistence of Polygamy. Vol. 1. John Whitmer Books. pp. 14–58. ISBN 978-1-934901-13-7.
  • Bringhurst, Newell G. (2010). "Section 132 of the LDS Doctrine and Covenants: Its Complex Contents and Controversial Legacy". In Bringhurst, Newell G.; Foster, Craig L. (eds.). The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy. The Persistence of Polygamy. Vol. 1. John Whitmer Books. pp. 59–86. ISBN 978-1-934901-13-7.
  • Bushman, Richard L.; Jessee, Dean C. (1992). "Smith, Joseph: The Prophet". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-879602-0.
  • Bushman, Richard Lyman (2005). Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4270-4.
  • Donoghue, David (September 22, 2017). "Missing Revelations". Saints Herald: A Community of Christ Blog. Archived from the original on November 29, 2022.
  • Foster, Craig L. (2010). "Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 and Joseph Smith's Expanding Concept of Family". In Bringhurst, Newell G.; Foster, Craig L. (eds.). The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy. The Persistence of Polygamy. Vol. 1. John Whitmer Books. pp. 87–98. ISBN 978-1-934901-13-7.
  • Gordon, Sarah Barringer (2002). The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-century America. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4987-1. (see 22–24, 96, 236)
  • Grua, David W.; Rogers, Brent M.; Godfrey, Matthew C.; Jensen, Robin Scott; Nelson, Jessica M., eds. (2021). "Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132]". The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, Volume 12: March–July 1843. Church Historian's Press. pp. 457–478. ISBN 978-1-62972-888-9.
  • Hardy, B. Carmon, ed. (2007). Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-5906-5.
  • Hendrix-Komoto, Amanda (2022). Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific. Studies in Pacific Worlds. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-1-4962-3346-2.
  • Marquardt, H. Michael (1999). The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text and Commentary. Signature Books. ISBN 978-1-56085-126-4.
  • Mohrman, K. (2022). Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U. S. Nationalism. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1-5179-1129-4. (possibly just 38–42)
  • Newell, Linda King; Avery, Valeen Tippetts (1994). Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (2nd ed.). University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06291-4.
  • Park, Benjamin E. (2020). Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. Liveright. ISBN 978-1-324-09110-3.
  • Park, Benjamin E. (May 14, 2020b). "How an 1843 Revelation on Polygamy Poses a Serious Challenge to Modern Mormonism". Religion Dispatches. Archived from the original on April 3, 2023.
  • Smith, Merina (2013). Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy: The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830–1853. Utah State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87421-917-3.
  • Smith, William Victor (2018). Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation. Greg Kofford. ISBN 9781589586901.
  • The Doctrine and Covenants. Herald Publishing House. 2017. ISBN 978-0-8309-0866-0.
  • Van Wagoner, Richard S. (1992). Mormon Polygamy: A History (2nd ed.). Signature Books. ISBN 1-56085-057-4.
  • Watson, Marianne T. (2007). "The 1948 Secret Marriage of Louis J. Barlow: Origins of FLDS Placement Marriage". Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 40 (1): 83–136. doi:10.2307/45227157. ISSN 0012-2157. JSTOR 45227157.

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