PAPER

A Stable Textual Tradition: Manuscript Evidence, Chain of Custody,
and the Provenance of Doctrine and Covenants Section 132


Abstract
This study reframes Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 not as a purely theological artifact but as a document within a recoverable manuscript tradition, demonstrating that methods typically applied to ancient texts can yield meaningful results when applied to modern religious sources. Employing textual criticism, source stratification, independence of attestation, and chain-of-custody analysis, this paper argues that the documentary record reflects a stable textual tradition originating with Joseph Smith in July 1843 and that claims of posthumous alteration under Brigham Young are not supported by the extant manuscript evidence or contemporaneous testimony. The analysis draws on Joseph Smith’s personal journal, William Clayton’s diary, the Kingsbury manuscript, Whitney family copies, affidavit literature from both adherents and dissenters, and the Nauvoo Expositor. The convergence of hostile, independent, and insider sources on the document’s content and origin strengthens the evidentiary case for its authenticity and undermines the alteration hypothesis.
I. Introduction
Few documents in the history of American religious movements have generated as sustained a controversy as Doctrine and Covenants Section 132. The text, presenting itself as a revelation given through Joseph Smith on July 12, 1843, addresses the theological foundations of celestial marriage and authorizes the practice of plural marriage.[1] Its authenticity has been contested since the nineteenth century, particularly among the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ)[2] and minority critics skeptical of Smith’s involvement in polygamy.[3] The central counter-narrative holds that the document was fabricated or materially altered by Brigham Young and his associates after Smith’s death in 1844, in order to provide theological legitimacy for a practice Young himself wished to perpetuate.
The historiographic stakes are significant. If Section 132 is a genuine Smithian document transmitted faithfully, then Joseph Smith was the originator of Latter-day Saint plural marriage. If the text was fabricated or substantially altered, then the manuscript tradition contains a fraud of unusual scope and coordination. These are not equally supported positions. This study argues that Doctrine and Covenants 132 reflects a stable textual tradition originating with Joseph Smith in July 1843 and that claims of later alteration under Brigham Young are not supported by the extant manuscript evidence or contemporaneous testimony.
A note on terminology: for the purposes of this study, “alteration” refers to substantive textual modification affecting meaning, as distinguished from minor scribal variation inevitable in manuscript transmission. “Fabrication” denotes the wholesale invention of a document without an authentic precursor. “Interpolation” refers to the insertion of passages into an otherwise authentic text. These distinctions matter because the alteration hypothesis, in its various forms, must specify which of these occurred — and each carries a different evidentiary burden.
Three bodies of evidence are examined in turn: (1) the origin event and primary manuscript chain, from William Clayton’s dictation through the Kingsbury copy and Whitney custody; (2) independent corroboration from contemporaneous sources, including hostile witnesses and dissenting accounts; and (3) the internal textual argument against deliberate alteration, drawn from the criterion of editorial dissonance. The study concludes with an evaluation of the alteration hypothesis and a statement of the study’s contribution to the broader historiography of American religious documents.
II. Methodology
This study applies four analytical methods standard to the historical-critical examination of documentary religious sources.
Textual criticism involves comparison of extant manuscript copies, including William Clayton’s Nauvoo journal entries preserved in the Church History Library, along with later copies and editorial transmissions of the text,[4] the Kingsbury transcript,[5] the Whitney family copies made by Horace Whitney,[6] and the 1852 Utah publication[7] — to assess the degree of textual stability across the transmission chain. Where copies can be compared, they bear directly on claims of alteration.
Source stratification distinguishes between contemporaneous sources (those produced within weeks or months of the event) and retrospective sources (memoirs, affidavits, and testimonies recorded years or decades later). Contemporaneous sources carry greater evidentiary weight in historical reconstruction. Where contemporaneous and retrospective sources converge, the convergence strengthens credibility. Where they diverge, the divergence requires explanation.
Independence of attestation requires that corroborating sources demonstrate both chronological and social separation from later institutional control. In the case of the July 12, 1843 revelation, the strongest independent witnesses are not later Utah publications, but hostile or dissenting Nauvoo-era sources that predate the 1852 announcement and cannot plausibly derive from Brigham Young’s circle.
Most notably, the Nauvoo Expositor publication (June 1844),[8] produced by dissenters including William Law, explicitly accuses Joseph Smith of teaching and practicing a secret plural marriage doctrine grounded in a written revelation. As a hostile publication produced prior to any Utah-era codification, it constitutes independent corroboration of the existence of such a document.
Additional corroboration appears in the testimonies of early dissenters such as William Law and Austin Cowles, both of whom rejected Smith’s teachings yet affirmed the presence of a plural marriage revelation or doctrine in Nauvoo.[9] Their statements are particularly probative because they emerge from individuals who had broken with Smith and had no incentive to support later institutional claims.
Together, these sources establish that knowledge of a written or semi-written plural marriage revelation circulated among insiders and dissenters in Nauvoo prior to 1844. Because these attestations originate outside the later Utah leadership and, in some cases, in direct opposition to it, they provide a genuinely independent line of evidence that cannot be reduced to a single institutional transmission stream.
Chain-of-custody analysis traces the physical document from its creation through successive custodians: from Clayton’s dictation to the Kingsbury copy, to Newell K. Whitney’s custody, to Willard Richards’s copy, to Brigham Young’s acquisition at Winter Quarters (1847),[10] to the 1852 public disclosure in Utah. Gaps or breaks in this chain, or evidence of interpolation at any point, would weaken the case for authenticity. Conversely, a coherent, well-attested chain of custody supports it.
III. The Origin Event: July 12, 1843
The most proximate evidence for the revelation’s origin is the contemporaneous record of its creation. Joseph Smith’s personal journal contains the entry for July 12, 1843:
Wednesday July 12 Receivd a Revelation in the office in presence of Hyrum, & Wm Clayton.[11]
This entry establishes that Smith understood himself to have received a revelation on that date, in the presence of two named witnesses. More substantively, William Clayton’s diary entry for the same day provides a detailed account of what was produced:
This A.M, I wrote a Revelation consisting of 10 pages on the order of the priesthood, showing the designs in Moses, Abraham, David and Solomon having many wives and concubines &c. After it was wrote Presidents Joseph and Hyrum presented it and read it to E[mma] who said she did not believe a word of it and appeared very rebellious.[12]
Clayton’s account is a contemporaneous source of high evidentiary value. It specifies the physical length of the document (ten pages), its subject matter (plural marriage in relation to biblical precedent), the process by which it was produced (dictation to a named scribe), and the immediate domestic reaction from Emma Smith. Clayton’s role as Joseph Smith’s private secretary and confidential clerk is well established, and there is no contemporaneous evidence to suggest this entry was fabricated or retrospectively altered.
The reference to Emma’s reaction — her disbelief and resistance — is particularly significant. It introduces personal conflict that would have been an obvious liability for any later promoter of the revelation. The preservation of this detail, embarrassing to the narrative of a divinely sanctioned and peacefully received revelation, is consistent with a contemporaneous private record rather than a promotional document.
IV. The Manuscript Chain: Kingsbury, Whitney, and the 1852 Publication
Within one or two days of the revelation’s production, Newell K. Whitney requested a copy. Joseph C. Kingsbury, an associate within the ecclesiastical networks of Nauvoo, was asked to produce the transcript. Kingsbury’s 1886 account describes the process in careful detail:
Bishop Newel K. Whitney handed me the Revelation… the day [after] it was written or the day following and stating what it was asked me to make a copy of it. I did so, and then read my copy of it to Bishop Whitney, who compared it with the original to which he held in his hand while I read to him. When I had finished reading, Bishop Whitney pronounced the copy correct and Hyrum Smith came into the room at the time to fetch the original. Bishop Whitney handed it to him. I will also state that this copy, as also the original are identically the same as published in the present edition [1876] of the Book of Doctrine and Covenants.[13]
A reviewer applying standard source-critical pressure will note that the Kingsbury manuscript rests on an 1886 retrospective account describing an 1843 copy of a now-lost original — a chain that, considered in isolation, would warrant caution. The evidentiary weight of this manuscript tradition, however, does not rest on Kingsbury’s statement alone. It derives from the triangulation of three independent lines: Kingsbury’s retrospective account, corroborated by Clayton’s near-contemporary diary entry and his later written confirmation; the Whitney custody line, representing an independent physical preservation history; and the Horace Whitney copies, produced before Young’s acquisition of the document and now held in the Church History Library, which are textually consistent with both the Kingsbury transcript and the 1852 publication. No single line is conclusive; their convergence constitutes the argument.
William Clayton confirmed the Kingsbury copy’s accuracy in a statement reproduced by Andrew Jenson:
Towards evening Bishop Newel K. Whitney asked Joseph if he had any objections to his taking a copy of the revelation; Joseph replied that he had not, and handed it to him. It was carefully copied the following day by Joseph C. Kingsbury… The copy made by Joseph C. Kingsbury is a true and correct copy of the original in every respect. The copy was carefully preserved by Bishop Whitney.[14]
The Clayton original was destroyed within weeks of its creation — a circumstance that, taken in isolation, cannot establish falsification and is consistent with the destruction of sensitive documents in Nauvoo’s politically volatile environment. What matters for the textual-critical question is whether the surviving copies faithfully reproduce the destroyed original. Clayton’s affirmation of Kingsbury’s accuracy, combined with the collation method Kingsbury describes — reading aloud while Whitney followed the original — provides a meaningful procedural basis for that conclusion.
The subsequent custody history is traceable. Newell K. Whitney retained the Kingsbury copy. Willard Richards made an additional copy from Kingsbury’s version.[15] In March 1847, at Winter Quarters, Brigham Young requested Whitney’s copy.[16] Helen Mar Kimball, in an 1885 account, records her husband’s journal entry for March 14, 1847: “By father’s request I went and copied an important document, which took me the greater part of the day and into the night.”[17] Before transferring the document to Young, Whitney ensured that a duplicate was retained within the Whitney family. Horace Whitney produced two copies, which are now held in the Church History Library. These copies are textually consistent with the Kingsbury manuscript and the 1852 publication.
Historian Lyndon Cook summarizes the transmission: “Newel K. Whitney preserved the Kingsbury copy of the revelation. In March of 1847, at Winter Quarters, Brigham Young asked Bishop Whitney for the Kingsbury copy, which transcript was published in 1852.”[18] The chain of custody, from Clayton’s dictation through Kingsbury, Whitney, Richards, and the 1852 Utah publication, is continuous and internally consistent. No documentary evidence of interpolation or substantive textual modification at any point in this chain has been identified.
V. Independent Contemporaneous Corroboration
The evidentiary case for the revelation’s authenticity is substantially strengthened by its corroboration from sources that are independent of, and in several cases actively hostile to, the institutional interests of Brigham Young’s circle. This section examines three categories of independent attestation: dissenter testimony, High Council records, and dissemination among non-Utah observers.
A. Hostile and Dissenter Sources
William Law presents the strongest case of independent corroboration. Law was second counselor in the First Presidency who broke with Smith in early 1844,[19] founded the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,[20] published the Nauvoo Expositor, and did not follow Brigham Young after Smith’s death. His institutional trajectory places him entirely outside Young’s circle and gives him no motive to fabricate or corroborate a document that Young allegedly manufactured. As a hostile contemporary and dissenter, Law provides the strongest form of independent attestation: a witness whose credibility as a critic of Smith’s polygamy would have been strengthened, not served, by denying the revelation’s Smithian origin.
In the Nauvoo Expositor of June 7, 1844 — published while Smith was still alive — Law stated:
I hereby certify that Hyrum Smith did, (in his office,) read to me a certain written document, which he said was a revelation from God, he said that he was with Joseph when it was received. He afterwards gave me the document to read, and I took it to my house, and read it, and showed it to my wife, and returned it next day. The revelation (so called) authorized certain men to have more wives than one at a time, in this world and in the world to come.[21]
This testimony is contemporaneous (1844), adversarial in its framing, and published before Smith’s death — conditions that rule out coordination with any posthumous Young-orchestrated fabrication. Jane Law provided a corroborating affidavit.[22] Law’s description of the document’s content — authorizing plural wives “in this world and in the world to come” — is consistent with the text of Section 132 as subsequently published.
Law’s 1887 recollection, though retrospective, adds further texture. When asked about Emma Smith’s response to the revelation, Law reported that she said: “The revelation says I must submit or be destroyed. Well, I guess I have to submit.”[23] This recollection is consistent with the specific content of Section 132 verses 54 and 64, which address Emma’s required compliance. The correspondence between Law’s memory of Emma’s words and the actual text of the document strengthens rather than weakens the case for the document’s authenticity; Law, who rejected the revelation’s divine authority, had no institutional motive to fabricate this alignment.
B. Nauvoo High Council Records
David Fullmer, a member of the Nauvoo High Council, recorded in the Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Book an account of Hyrum Smith reading the revelation to the High Council:
Dunbar Wilson made inquiry in relation to the subject of plurality of wives, as there were rumors about respecting it, and he was satisfied there was something in those rumors, and he wanted to know what it was. Upon which Hyrum Smith stepped across the road to his residence, and soon returned bringing with him a copy of the revelation on celestial marriage given to Joseph Smith July 12, 1843, and read the same to the High Council, and bore testimony to its truth.[24]
Additional High Council members and stake leaders — including James Allred, Thomas Grover, William Huntington, Aaron Johnson, Leonard Soby, and Austin Cowles — left records confirming the document’s dissemination among Nauvoo’s civic and ecclesiastical leadership.[25] Apostle George A. Smith, in an 1871 statement, affirmed: “In 1843 the law on celestial marriage was written, but not published, and was known only to perhaps one or two hundred persons.”[26] This estimate, from an insider source, describes the document as a written text in circulation during Joseph Smith’s lifetime — not a later confabulation.
C. Wider Nauvoo Testimony
Several other Nauvoo residents left records indicating direct contact with the document. Mercy Rachel Thompson recalled being entrusted with the physical document “for some four or five days.”[27] Lucy Walker testified that she saw the written revelation while residing at the Nauvoo Mansion.[28] These testimonies, drawn from individuals not uniformly aligned with Young’s faction, reinforce the conclusion that knowledge of the plural marriage revelation extended beyond Smith’s immediate confidants during his lifetime.
VI. The Internal Textual Argument: Criterion of Editorial Dissonance
Textual criticism offers a standard method for evaluating whether a document has been subject to editorial manipulation: the criterion of embarrassment, adapted here to what may be termed the criterion of editorial dissonance.[29] The operative principle is that editorial activity—whether fabrication, interpolation, or redaction—typically moves toward coherence, institutional reinforcement, or reputational protection.[30] In cases of deliberate redaction, passages that complicate or undermine these aims are more likely to be genuine survivals than later insertions, since a fabricating editor would have had clear motive to suppress or remove them. The preservation of such material is therefore more consistent with transmission than with fabrication.
 
Sections 51–66 of D&C 132 are particularly instructive on this criterion. These verses address, in considerable intimate detail, Emma Smith’s awareness of plural marriage, her resistance to it, the specific terms of the compliance demanded of her, and the circumstances of Joseph’s marriages to additional wives. The material is not theologically general; it is personally specific, domestically contentious, and presents Joseph Smith in the unflattering position of a husband whose wife “did not believe” the revelation — as later record confirms — and required coercion to comply.[31]
If Brigham Young or his associates had fabricated or substantially altered the document after 1844, the inclusion of this material would have required a deliberate editorial decision to preserve content that (a) exposed Smith’s domestic life to scrutiny, (b) generated sympathy for Emma rather than for institutional authority, and (c) served no evident theological or institutional function for Young’s purposes. The alteration hypothesis cannot easily explain why a fabricator would introduce, or retain, material of this character. The criterion of editorial dissonance thus weighs against interpolation: these verses are more consistent with an authentic record of Smithian marital conflict than with a posthumous fabrication designed to legitimate polygamy in general terms.
This argument does not constitute proof of authenticity in isolation, but it is a meaningful and underexamined textual consideration. It is strongest when combined with the manuscript evidence: the same verses appear in the Kingsbury transcript, the Whitney copies, and the 1852 publication, ruling out a late-stage targeted insertion.
VII. Evaluation of the Alteration Hypothesis
The most comprehensive articulation of the alteration hypothesis is found in works produced within the RLDS tradition, particularly a 1900 volume by Willard Smith (no relation to Joseph Smith).[32] The core claim is that Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and others began polygamy practice in Nauvoo, sealed women to Joseph for eternity and to themselves for time, and subsequently coordinated the retrospective testimony of these women to establish Joseph’s posthumous authorization of the practice.
This hypothesis faces several significant evidential challenges.
First, the alteration hypothesis requires coordination across numerous independent and, in some cases, adversarial witnesses. The corroborating testimonies examined in this study come from sources with divergent institutional allegiances. William Law, in particular, had every reason to deny rather than confirm the revelation’s Smithian origin — his credibility as a critic of Smith’s polygamy depended on distancing the practice from legitimate Smithian authority. That Law’s testimony corroborates the document’s existence and content during Smith’s lifetime constitutes a significant evidentiary challenge for the fabrication thesis.
Second, the hypothesis lacks documentary evidence of a specific alteration event. No manuscript showing insertions, corrections, or discrepancies between pre- and post-Young versions of the text survives. While the absence of such evidence cannot, in isolation, establish that no alteration occurred — documents can be replaced rather than edited — it must be weighed alongside the positive evidence of textual consistency across independently preserved copies. The Horace Whitney copies, produced before Brigham Young’s acquisition of the document and now in the Church History Library, are textually consistent with both the Kingsbury manuscript and the 1852 publication. The convergence of independently preserved lines is the stronger affirmative argument.
Third, the hypothesis requires that women who attested to marriages with Joseph Smith during his lifetime were either deceived or complicit in fabrication — claims for which the evidentiary standard is high and for which the 1900 Willard Smith volume does not provide adequate documentation.[33] The hypothesis also fails to account for the contemporaneous corroboration from hostile witnesses, who had no motive to participate in or support such a fabrication.
Fourth, and most significantly, the internal textual features of Section 132 — particularly verses 51–66 — are inconsistent with the editorial interests that would have motivated fabrication. As argued in Section VI, the criterion of editorial dissonance weighs against the interpolation hypothesis on precisely the passages where fabrication would most clearly have served Young’s alleged purposes.
Finally, the observation that Section 132 was not written in Joseph Smith’s own hand — a circumstance sometimes cited as suspicious — fails to account for the standard documentary practice of the period. Virtually all of Smith’s revelations were dictated to scribes.[34] The use of William Clayton for the original document is precisely what the contemporaneous evidence describes and is consistent with the broader pattern of Smithian revelation production.
VIII. Conclusion
The manuscript tradition underlying Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 exhibits the characteristics of a stable documentary transmission rooted in a July 1843 origin event. The chain of custody from Clayton’s dictation through the Kingsbury copy, Whitney family preservation, and 1852 publication is coherent and internally consistent. Contemporaneous corroboration from hostile and independent sources — particularly the pre-death testimony of William Law, published in the Nauvoo Expositor — establishes that the document’s content was known during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and described in terms consistent with the subsequently published text. Internal textual features, particularly the intimate and institutionally inconvenient material of verses 51–66, are inconsistent with the editorial interests that would have motivated a posthumous fabrication.
The suppression of the Clayton original remains a genuine limitation of this analysis; no argument from surviving copies, however internally consistent, can fully substitute for the destroyed primary source. This limitation is substantially mitigated, however, by the convergence of independent manuscript lines and contemporaneous testimony, none of which derives from a single institutional channel. The alteration hypothesis, as articulated in earlier RLDS interpretive traditions prior to the Community of Christ’s subsequent doctrinal reassessments of Joseph Smith’s plural marriage, which modified and adopted that Joseph Smith indeed originated, and practised plural marriage,[35] lacks supporting manuscript evidence, requires coordination across independent and adversarial witnesses, and fails to account for pre-death dissenting testimony corroborating the document’s existence and content.
This study’s contribution lies not in rehearsing a traditional attribution but in applying to a nineteenth-century American religious document the methods typically reserved for ancient manuscript traditions. Treating D&C 132 as a document within a recoverable manuscript tradition — rather than purely as a theological claim — opens the question of its provenance to the same evidentiary standards applied to other disputed historical texts. The result is that the document’s transmission, when examined through textual criticism, source stratification, independence of attestation, and chain-of-custody analysis, supports the conclusion that Section 132 originated with Joseph Smith in the summer of 1843 and was transmitted with substantial fidelity through the succeeding decades. That this finding can be reached through method rather than through confessional commitment is, perhaps, its most significant implication.


[1] Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132], p. 1, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-july-1843-dc-132/1
[2]  Saints’ Herald, I (May, 1860), 103, quoting the Amboy, Illinois Times. 
[3] Joseph Smith Monogamist / Anti-Polygamy Revisionist Movement
[4] William Clayton, William Clayton’s Journal: A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of “Mormon” Pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1921), entry for July 12, 1843, https://archive.org
[5] Blessing to Joseph Kingsbury, 23 March 1843, p. 15, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/blessing-to-joseph-kingsbury-23-march-1843/2
[6] Horace K. Whitney, journal entry, March 14, 1847, in Horace K. Whitney Papers, MS 3497, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
[7] D&C Section 132
[8] Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844, p. 1, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/nauvoo-expositor-7-june-1844/1
[9] Austin Cowles, Affidavit, Nauvoo Expositor 1, no. 1 (June 7, 1844): 2.

Available at http://signaturebookslibrary.org/nauvoo-expositor/.

[10] Horace K. Whitney, journal entry, March 14, 1847, describing the copying of a document from the Kingsbury manuscript surrendered by Newel K. Whitney to Brigham Young at Winter Quarters, Horace K. Whitney Papers, MS 3497, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
[11] Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 2, 10 March 1843–14 July 1843, p. 307, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-2-10-march-1843-14-july-1843/315
[12] William Clayton, Journal, July 12, 1843, rep. George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 110
[13] Joseph C. Kingsbury, Affidavit, May 22, 1886, MS 3423, CHL
[14] William Clayton, Affidavit, February 16, 1874, MS 3423, Church History Library
[15] Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132], p. 4, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-july-1843-dc-132/4
[16] Horace K. Whitney, journal entry, March 14, 1847, Horace K. Whitney Papers, MS 3497, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, describing copying from “the Kingsbury MSS surrendered by Bishop Newel K. Whitney to Pres. Brigham Young at Winter Quarters.”
[17] Helen Mar Kimball, “Scenes and Incidents at Winter Quarters,” Woman’s Exponent 14, no. 4 (July 15, 1885): 31
[18] Lyndon W. Cook, Joseph C. Kingsbury, Provo, Utah: Grandin Book Co., 1985, 79.
[19] Lawrence R. Flake, Prophets and Apostles of the Last Dispensation (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2001), 243–45.
[20] Beam, Alex. American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014.
[21] William Law, affidavit, May 1844, published in “Affidavits and Certificates,” Nauvoo Expositor (Nauvoo, IL), June 7, 1844.
[22] William and Jane Law, Affidavit, May 4, 1844, in Nauvoo Expositor 1, no. 1 (June 7, 1844): [2]
[23] Clayton, Journal, 12 July 1843; see also William Clayton, Affidavit, Salt Lake Co., Utah Territory, 16 Feb. 1874, [4], copy, Joseph F. Smith, Affidavits about Celestial Marriage, CHL. According to William Law, Emma Smith, at an unknown time, complained to him about the revelation: “She said once: ‘The revelation says I must submit or be destroyed. Well, I guess I have to submit.’” (“Dr. Wyl and Dr. Wm. Law,” Salt Lake Daily Tribune, 31 July 1887, [6], italics in original.)
[24] David Fullmer, Affidavit, June 15, 1869, Affidavits About Celestial Marriage, 1869-1915, MS 3423, CHL
[25] 
[26] George A. Smith, “Discourse by President George A. Smith,” August 13, 1871, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: Albert Carrington; London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1872): 213–214
[27] Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132], p. 6, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org. Statement found within site footnotes
[28] Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132], p. 6, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org. Footnote 28.
[29] John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), esp. discussion of the criterion of embarrassment.
[30] Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), on redactional tendencies toward theological coherence; see also Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (New York: HarperOne, 2005).
[31] Joseph F. Smith, Affidavits on Celestial Marriage (late 19th-century compilation of Nauvoo reminiscences, including recollections attributed to William E. McLellin), Church Historical Department.
[32] Willard J. Smith, Joseph Smith, Who Was He?, in G. T. Harrison Papers (ACCN 1351), box 14, folder 5, J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections, University of Utah.
[33] Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints v. Church of Christ (Temple Lot Case), U.S. Circuit Court for the Western District of Missouri, testimony and depositions (1887–1894), especially affidavits concerning Nauvoo plural marriage practice.
[34] Joseph Smith Papers Project. Revelations, Letters, Reports of Discourses, Editorials, Minutes of Meetings, and Other Documents. Documents series introduction. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org
[35] Russell, William D. “The LDS Church and Community of Christ: Clearer Differences, Closer Friends.” Articles/Essays, vol.36, no.4. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought., https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-lds-church-and-community-of-christ-clearer-differences-closer-friends/