I’m currently a graduate student in philosophy, but I’m pretty heavily involved in Mormon studies—writing papers, presenting at conferences, etc. (I have my first book coming out sometime in the next few months). This project on the Doctrine and Covenants has grown out of a few interpretive questions I’ve had about the place of the D&C in the larger setting of “uniquely Mormon scripture.”

So, no, I’m not an historian. I do philosophy and theology, almost always focused on scripture. Where history is necessary for getting at the meaning of a text, I do history. And that means that I do a lot of history. :)

(1) I’m nothing of an expert on this first question, but what I’ve gleaned in my reading is something like the following. Usually, people looking for a “commandment” came to Joseph, and then he asked on their behalf—somehow—through the Urim and Thummim (read: seer stone). He would then dictate what was received. I assume there is more to say about all that, but I’m not familiar enough with the source material—or have not looked at it with that question in mind—to give a better answer.

(2) The April 10th date is, so far as I am aware, only to be found in the Book of Commandments and Revelations. The only commentary on the D&C that provides that date is Steve Harper’s, since he was already familiar with the BCR by the time he was producing his commentary. (If you look at earlier articles and studies of D&C 20, there is a good deal of speculation about when it was received.)

This comment is kind of a tangent to your original post, but I’ll share anyway.

At the start of your second section (“Before section 20″) you state, “From section 3 through section 19, there seems to have been a rather standard understanding of what constituted a revelation.” I think this not only applies as a church, but perhaps to us personally as individuals.

I think it is easy to get used to God answering our prayers and providing us with “revelation” in very specific ways. I know when I am looking for revelation in my life it always seems to come in the same basic fashion every time (ie no booming voice or angels with trumpets). However, if we really have faith that revelation can come in forms other than our “standard understanding” perhaps they will. Perhaps we receive revelations due to our current understanding of the gospel.

Thus, the better we understand the gospel, the more ways we open ourselves up for God to speak with us in a variety of different ways.

Reading this all over again, I see that I could have done a better job picking my first quote. I should have included this sentence:

As it turns out, he had been informed that he was to write up some kind of foundational or organization document, some kind of constitution for the Church.

So the outcome of this was a “revelation or commandment to Oliver specifically, about how he should go about building up the Church”? (Emphasis mine this time.)

I don’t know anything about this incident, but it sounds like he set out to write a constitution for the church and ended up writing marching orders for himself.

Thanks for the post, by the way. I really enjoyed it.

Oliver did so, quite faithfully, and produced a document that he titled the “Articles of the Church of Christ.” Oliver’s “Articles” were primarily quotations from the Book of Mormon, strung together so as to form a kind of handbook for the building up of the Church.

With this?

Interestingly, Oliver’s document does not speak in this more abstract, institutional voice. It is specifically labeled a revelation or commandment to Oliver specifically, about how he should go about building up the Church.

Are these references to the same document?