Hello Friends! I’m getting into a better groove - had several kinks to work out between the corroborated project and my D&C Annotated project but I’m picking up momentum again.
Here is D&C 21-30.
I thought it might be nice to share with you a little what I’m learning besides just throwing these new sections at you. With the annotated projects, what I’m learning is probably more intuitive but it occurred to me that you might not reach the same conclusions that I’m making without being a part of the project or seeing my more lengthy annotations that are not in these preliminary drafts so … here are some observations.
The more I pour through original texts — I often go through 5-6 versions of each section that were published or written between 1820 and 1844 before producing these texts — the more I’m convinced that Joseph was not actively involved in changes made to the D&C. Sure, he oversaw the project and was generally aware of what was going on — I think even as a historian, I have to assume that much. However, there are virtually no instances of other brethren making changes to the text that he himself reversed later. In the last twenty sections of the D&C, I can’t think of a single instance when Joseph undid a change that Oliver Cowdery made - and this DESPITE the fact that Orson Pratt vehemently attacked Cowdery for making unauthorized changes in 1835 edition that needed revising. Surely, D&C 101 (the old monogamy) section was one of these changes, but it’s difficult to find other instances so far — maybe I’ll find more in some of the meatier chapters now that this issue is in the forefront of my attention — but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were very few. I remember seeing a couple in D&C 76 that went back and forth a little but … very few indeed.
Even though I’m going through all of these texts to track changes, I’m not changing the 1844 “original” text in these last several sections — I’ll be making more revisions later. For instance, punctuation is unchanged in these last dozen or so sections but I will not retain that in the annotated versions for several reasons, not the least of which is that Joseph seems to have had almost zero input on the punctuation AND the punctuation is awful. Beyond not being standardized in the early nineteenth century, it is confusing to someone with a strong grammar background precisely because it makes no sense and it is very inconsistent. The punctuation is similarly bad to the spelling and is primarily the product of Ebeneezer Robinson through the first 25% of the D&C (he also did the 1837 and 1840 Book of Mormon punctuation). Although, no modern saints seems to have issues with changing original spelling (and that occasionally changes the meaning), many more people stress over the punctuation. I’ll address this more later but … I didn’t realize how bad it was until I really dove deeply into analyzing it.
The systematic effort to change the scripture style into modern English becomes more and more apparent the more I review the original transcripts. Section 30, an amalgamation of revelations given as blessings, is a great example of that. Most everything was old English “thee/thou” style grammar in the original but nearly every instance of that style was changed. One notable exception stands out as glaring when retaining “thou” instead of modifying it to “you” and it comes across as quite jarring to the reader (it’s likely a scrivener oversight considering a few dozen other instances were changed and this was the only exception). Some sections retain the old English and other sections change all of the old English to modern English and other sections change only the most awkward of phrases. That probably depended on which team member was editing the grammar — but at the end of the day, even the original old English grammar is problematic, using “thou” (singular) in situations where the context is clearly plural and would have used “you” even in old English. Similarly, verb conjunctions are inconsistent and improper from an old English grammar perspective and show the human element entering into the revelation rather than disclosing some high-level, hidden spiritual truth as some seem to search for. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve looked long and hard for those several times, but disappointingly, even my degree in logic and thousands of pages of science fiction/fantasy writing fails me in trying to imagine some scenario when the odd grammar could actually be pointing toward an understanding that is different from the one to be found in simply converting the awkward text to modern English.
Perhaps most importantly, I’m seeing more and more what Joseph meant when he was teaching about the process of learning to understand revelation. He never spoke about precise grammatical chunks or phrases (in this context). He spoke of concepts and ideas being revealed. Changes of this nature are uber common in the early versions of the D&C. D&C 42 (or PB/HB) probably epitomizes this type of change — where new phrases were added to explain the original intent of the revelation or to reflect new changes made by newer revelations (usually outlining administrative changes). This type of change always reminds me of the original Enoch revelations in Moses where God cries. That was changed to have Enoch crying only and then God crying only and then God and Enoch both Crying and then God telling Enoch to stop crying. This shows a prophet trying to find the best way to explain what he saw and struggling to get the details to come out just … perfectly. John Taylor complained about this in my new two volume of The Forgotten Teachings (audio version). He had to try several times to record a teaching of Joseph’s (a controversial one for Missouri saints, by the way) where John Taylor couldn’t write it down as clearly as Joseph wanted without trying several times.
Take care and God bless!