The founding claims
The Revelations That Were Edited
The same revelations read differently in 1829, 1833, and 1835. The originals are on the Church’s own website.
The point in one sentence
Revelations presented as the received words of God were later rewritten, expanded, and republished with the changes unmarked, and you can verify this yourself on the Church’s own Joseph Smith Papers site in about ten minutes.
The window where the words changed
The revelations were dictated between 1828 and the early 1830s, copied into manuscript books by scribes, and carried to Missouri to be printed as the Book of Commandments. A mob destroyed the press in 1833 with the printing unfinished, and two years later the collection was republished in Kirtland as the Doctrine and Covenants. Between those printings, Joseph and his associates went back through the texts.
Seven years from voice to book
Every date below is from the Joseph Smith Papers, the Church’s own documentary project.
Source: Joseph Smith Papers, historical introduction to the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants
That middle step is not a critic’s characterization. Here is how the Church’s own project describes what the committee did:
Joseph Smith Papers, historical introduction to the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants
The editors of the Doctrine and Covenants also made a focused effort to update the revelations to reflect changes in church government, structure, and doctrine that had occurred since the revelations were first dictated.
Offices that did not exist when a revelation was dictated, the high priesthood, the high council, were written into it before publication, with the revelation still carrying its original date. The example the introduction gives is a February 1831 revelation revised to name an office established four months later and a council organized three years later.
The introduction, Joseph Smith PapersThe Joseph Smith Papers hosts every layer: the manuscripts, the 1833 printing, and the 1835 revision, side by side. That is what makes this page possible. Nothing here compares a critic’s claim against the Church’s text. It compares the Church’s text against the Church’s text.
Check it yourself: the gift that became the first gift
In March 1829, before the Book of Mormon was finished, Joseph received a revelation about his gift. Here is the earliest surviving copy, in Oliver Cowdery’s handwriting, hosted by the Church:
Revelation, March 1829, earliest copy (circa April 1829)
he hath A gift to translate the Book & I have commanded him that he should shall pretend to no other gift for I will grant unto him no other gift
The spelling and the crossed-out word are in the original. One gift. No others. Stated twice.
The manuscript, on the Church’s siteThe same revelation as it reads in the Doctrine and Covenants today, D&C 5:4
And you have a gift to translate the plates; and this is the first gift that I bestowed upon you; and I have commanded that you should pretend to no other gift until my purpose is fulfilled in this; for I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished.
“A gift” became “the first gift.” “No other gift” became “no other gift until it is finished.” By the time of the revision Joseph was revising the Bible, and the Book of Abraham was ahead of him. The promise that aged badly became a promise that did not.
D&C 5It was not just one verse
The revelation now printed as D&C 27 was received around August 1830, and the early copies are short: instruction about the sacrament, wine, and little else. The expanded version that members read today first appears five years later. Here is the paper trail, every piece of it hosted by the Church.
Joseph Smith Papers, historical introduction to Revelation, circa August 1830 [D&C 27]
editors’ note, Church project
What it establishes: The same introduction records that the 1835 printings "included two additional paragraphs" and that the earliest surviving text of the expanded version is the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants itself. The early manuscript is about wine and the sacrament. It says nothing about priesthood.
The manuscript and the note, Joseph Smith PapersDoctrine and Covenants 27:8, as printed today, inside the expanded portion
revelation dated 1830; text first extant 1835
What it establishes: John the Baptist ordaining Joseph and Oliver: the scriptural anchor of the Aaronic priesthood restoration.
D&C 27Doctrine and Covenants 27:12, the same expanded portion
revelation dated 1830; text first extant 1835
What it establishes: Peter, James, and John ordaining Joseph and Oliver: the anchor of the Melchizedek priesthood restoration. Neither sentence appears in the early manuscripts of this revelation.
D&C 27Hold what that sequence means. The two most important events after the First Vision, angels physically restoring the priesthood, enter the printed revelations as an unmarked expansion of an 1830 text about sacramental wine, made for the 1835 edition. The page on the restoration traces the same pattern through the sermons and church records of those years.
What is true on the other side
The Church does not hide any of this. The Joseph Smith Papers is a Church project, it publishes every version side by side, and its editors annotate the differences. If you want the originals, the Church is where you get them, and this page could not exist without that work.
A believing member can also hold that God may authorize a living prophet to expand or revise earlier revelation. That is a coherent position, and plenty of thoughtful members hold it.
The problem with that answer
The revised text does not say revised. It is printed as the revelation, dated to the original event, in the same voice, with no marking where the 1835 hand entered the 1829 sentence. A reader of the Doctrine and Covenants has no way to know, from the book itself, which words came from the moment and which came later.
The words changed. The quotation marks did not.
If the words of a revelation can be rewritten years later while still being presented as what was received, then “the revelation says” means less than it appears to mean.
The common rebuttals
“God can tell his prophet to revise or expand an earlier revelation. Line upon line.”
Taken on its own terms, this is coherent, and it is the position many thoughtful members hold. Notice what it cannot explain: the revisions do not say revised. The 1835 text is dated to the original event, printed in the same first-person divine voice, with no mark where the later hand entered. Line upon line describes new revelation added to old. It does not describe old revelation quietly rewritten and still presented as what was received on the original day. And it says nothing about the direction of the one edit you can check in ten minutes: a promise that had aged badly, no other gift, became a promise that had not, no other gift until it is finished, at exactly the time Joseph was producing other translations.
“The scribes wrote imperfectly. Joseph was just correcting their errors.”
A scribal correction fixes spelling, grammar, a misheard word. The earliest copy of the March 1829 revelation states the limit twice in one sentence, a gift, no other gift, and a mishearing does not produce the same statement two ways. And no theory of scribal error covers D&C 27, where the change is not a corrected word but two added paragraphs carrying the priesthood restoration, absent from every early manuscript.
“The revelations were always in Joseph’s own language. D&C 1 itself says they were given to his servants ‘after the manner of their language.’”
That verse is real, and it is the strongest version of the defense, because it concedes the point this page is making. If the words were always Joseph’s, chosen and re-chosen as he saw fit, then “the revelation says” is a statement about Joseph’s drafting as of its latest revision, not about what a divine voice said on a given day. That is exactly the conclusion: these are texts their author kept current. The defense and the criticism describe the same documents.
What this means
Strip this page to what you can hold in your hands. A revelation from March 1829 promised Joseph one gift and no other, twice in a sentence, in the earliest copy the Church possesses. Six years later the same revelation, still dated 1829, still in the voice of God, promised something usefully different. A revelation from August 1830 about sacramental wine grew two paragraphs by 1835, and the paragraphs it grew are where angels restore the priesthood in canonized scripture.
The revelation that limited Joseph to one gift was revised by the man it limited, at the moment the limit was in his way, and the revision still carries the original date.
Every claim this faith makes eventually rests on the revelations. The manuscripts, published by the Church itself, show what kind of documents those are: not transcripts of a divine voice, but working texts, edited as circumstances changed, with the edits presented as the original. You do not have to take anyone’s word for which kind they are. The Church has published the receipts.