What D&C 132 Actually Reveals About Revelation

A scholarly response to LDS Discussions’ critique of Doctrine and Covenants Section 132

LDS Discussions’ blog post “What D&C 132 Tells Us About Revelation” advances a central thesis: that Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 was manufactured by Joseph Smith on July 12, 1843 — improvised under domestic and ecclesiastical pressure, tailored to coerce Emma, and therefore evidence of a broader pattern of fraudulent revelation-making. The argument is written with rhetorical confidence, but it rests on selective reading, misrepresentation of the historical record, and a consistent failure to engage the scholarly literature that directly answers its claims. This response addresses each major argument in turn, marshaling historical documentation, stylometric analysis, theological context, and the testimony of Joseph Smith’s opponents as well as his followers.

I. The “Convenient Revelation” Framework Is Not an Argument

LDS Discussions opens by cataloguing occasions when Joseph Smith received revelation during moments of conflict or crisis, then infers that these circumstances render the revelations suspect. The logical structure of this argument deserves careful attention before any specific claim is examined.

The reasoning commits what philosophers call the genetic fallacy: dismissing a claim based on its circumstances of origin rather than its content and evidence. Every major prophetic figure in the biblical record received divine communication during crisis: Moses at the burning bush after forty years of failure; Isaiah in the year King Uzziah died; Paul on the road to Damascus in full fury against the Church. The critic who argues that “convenient timing” discredits revelation has unwittingly discredited virtually every scripture in the biblical canon.

Furthermore, the premise mischaracterizes D&C 132’s own stated genesis. The revelation does not claim to have originated in a crisis moment in 1843. Joseph stated explicitly — confirmed by his scribe’s own account — that the content was already known to him long before it was written. The 1843 event was documentation of pre-existing knowledge, not the origination of it. This is the first critical distinction that LDS Discussions’ framework entirely overlooks.

II. The “Memorized Revelation” Claim: What the Evidence Actually Shows

LDS Discussions treats William Clayton’s account as its most damaging piece of evidence. The relevant passage reads: “Hyrum very urgently requested Joseph to write the revelation by means of the Urim and Thummim, but Joseph, in reply, said he did not need to, for he knew the revelation perfectly from beginning to end.” LDS Discussions concludes from this that Joseph was improvising — confabulating a 3,200-word text “on the fly.”

But this reading inverts the plain meaning of Clayton’s words. Joseph did not say he would compose the revelation without the stone; he said he already knew it — that it had been received previously. The statement “I know the revelation perfectly from beginning to end” is not the language of a man about to improvise. It is the language of a man who had been living with a received text long enough to internalize it. LDS Discussions never explains why this straightforward reading should be abandoned for the counterintuitive one.

The scholarly record supports this interpretation with independent corroboration. Sealing doctrine — the theological backbone of Section 132 — appears as early as 1831 in Joseph’s introduction of the high priesthood, where the original purpose of the sealing power involved binding persons “to eternal life.” D&C 76, received in 1832, deploys the “Holy Spirit of Promise” in precisely the way Section 132 would later elaborate. Joseph’s 1836 Hebrew language studies demonstrably shaped terminology like “eternal lives” found in D&C 132:22–24. These are traceable threads of theological development documented years before 1843.

Scholar William V. Smith, writing in an Interpreter Foundation-reviewed treatment of the revelation’s sources, finds consistent alignment between the text of Section 132 and Joseph’s private teachings documented in Heber C. Kimball’s diary entries from earlier in that same year. William Clayton’s own later account described the dictation as taking place sentence by sentence over several hours — the paced, careful process of a person recovering and articulating a previously received text, not the frenetic improvisational performance that LDS Discussions’ reading requires.

LDS Discussions acknowledges the apologetic possibility that Joseph “remembered the basic parameters of the revelation and expanded upon it when dictating.” But the argument then becomes self-defeating: if Joseph could expand on received content without the seer stone, the entire “on the fly fabrication” thesis evaporates. The apologetic concession that LDS Discussions reluctantly acknowledges is, in fact, the historically documented account.

III. Provenance: The Documentary Evidence Includes Joseph’s Enemies

LDS Discussions implies, without quite stating, that the revelation may have been shaped late to serve particular purposes. The actual documentary record demolishes this suggestion. The chain of custody for D&C 132 is among the best-documented of any early Latter-day Saint revelation, and critically, key corroboration comes from Joseph Smith’s opponents.

William Law — who broke with Joseph Smith, co-founded the Reformed Church, and published the Nauvoo Expositor (the paper that led directly to Joseph’s arrest and death) — recorded that Hyrum Smith read him “a certain written document, which he said was a revelation from God” that “authorized certain men to have more wives than one at a time.” His wife Jane Law provided corroborating affidavit testimony. William Law had every motive to fabricate evidence against Joseph Smith. He had no motive to corroborate the existence of a revelation he despised.

The documentary chain runs as follows. Joseph C. Kingsbury made a handwritten copy of Clayton’s original on July 13–14, 1843, and affirmed decades later that “this copy, as also the original, are identically the same as published in the present edition [1876] of the Doctrine and Covenants.” Willard Richards made a further copy. Mercy Rachel Thompson kept the written revelation for “four or five days.” Lucy Walker saw it at the Nauvoo Mansion. Seven members of the Nauvoo High Council — including those who later rejected polygamy — reported Hyrum Smith reading them a copy and testifying to its authenticity in August 1843.

The stylometric evidence is equally decisive. Scholars employed Stepwise Discriminant Analysis examining 221 function words across Joseph Smith’s revelatory writings, Brigham Young’s writings, and those of various scribes. The conclusion: “no stylometric evidence that Brigham Young or any other potential candidate provided the words in the text of the revelation.” When Section 132 was divided into its plural marriage and non-plural marriage portions and analyzed separately, both segments aligned statistically with Joseph Smith’s known revelatory voice. The claim that Brigham Young fabricated or substantially altered the text has no evidentiary foundation whatsoever. (Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, “Historical and Stylometric Evidence for the Authorship of Doctrine and Covenants 132”)

IV. What LDS Discussions Refuses to Engage: Section 132 Is Primarily About Eternal Marriage

Perhaps the most significant analytical failure in LDS Discussions’ treatment of D&C 132 is that the article barely mentions what the revelation is primarily about. As Craig L. Foster observed in an Interpreter Foundation review, critics consistently reduce Section 132 to “the plural marriage revelation,” thereby missing that “there is much more to Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 than just plural marriage” and that “there is a rightful place and doctrinal cohesion for all of the teachings in this pivotal revelation.”

The official heading of the section describes it as relating to “the new and everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant.” Section 132 opens not with polygamy but with the foundational question: “how is it that thou shalt abide my law, that thou mayest receive the fulness of my glory?” (v. 3). What follows is a systematic theology of the sealing ordinance — the doctrine that covenants made by proper authority are binding in eternity, that family relationships are not severed at death, and that the highest degree of exaltation is predicated on the eternal marriage covenant.

These doctrines are the theological foundation of Latter-day Saint family theology to this day. The eternal nature of the family, celestial marriage, the sealing of parents to children across generations, the principle that “whatsoever you seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven” (v. 46) — all derive from Section 132. They are not contested doctrines; they are the lived spiritual core of Latter-day Saint practice across the globe.

LDS Discussions’ article, in focusing almost exclusively on the revelation’s polygamy and Emma-related passages, produces an analysis as incomplete as evaluating the Sermon on the Mount solely by examining one subordinate clause. The theological substance of the revelation — its original, coherent, and transformative vision of eternal family relationships — goes entirely unaddressed.

V. The Abraham/David/Solomon Objection: A Failure of Textual Precision

LDS Discussions argues that D&C 132 is internally incoherent because it justifies the polygamy of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon, while the Book of Mormon condemns David and Solomon’s plural wives as “abominable.” The argument, while frequently made, requires a careless reading of both texts.

First, Jacob 2:30 in the Book of Mormon explicitly preserves the Lord’s prerogative to command plural marriage: “For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.” The condemnation in Jacob 2 targets the unauthorized, lust-driven practice of plural marriage by men acting on their own desires — not divinely commanded plural marriage. This distinction is not an apologetic invention; it is in the text. LDS Discussions quotes Jacob 2 in its treatment of the topic but never quotes verse 30, the very verse that resolves the supposed contradiction.

Second, D&C 132:38–39 does not absolve David and Solomon of all sin. It specifies what their sin was: David’s transgression was the murder of Uriah and the taking of Bathsheba “from him” (v. 39), not his other divinely given plural marriages. 2 Samuel 12:8 records the Lord explicitly stating: “I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom.” The Lord’s own declaration in the Hebrew scriptures affirms that some of David’s plural wives were divinely given. Solomon’s condemnation similarly targets the idolatry introduced through foreign wives (1 Kings 11:3–4), not plural marriage per se.

The supposed contradiction dissolves under textual scrutiny. The key exculpatory verse in Jacob 2 is one LDS Discussions does not quote in its full context.

VI. The Emma Smith Passages: Covenant Language, Not a Death Threat

LDS Discussions treats D&C 132:54–55 as a direct threat of physical annihilation against Emma Smith, presenting it as evidence of Joseph’s willingness to wield “the voice of God” as a tool of domestic intimidation. The passage reads: “And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.”

First: The word “destroyed” in D&C 132 is used in multiple contexts that plainly do not refer to physical death. Verses 41–44 use “destroy” for those who commit adultery after sealing. Verse 54 uses it for Emma’s failure to abide covenant obligations. FAIR’s documented analysis is correct that the term functions consistently throughout the revelation to mean deprivation of exaltation or severe spiritual consequence — precisely consistent with covenant theology elsewhere in the Doctrine and Covenants, where “destruction” routinely carries non-physical meaning (cf. D&C 19:15–17, where similarly severe language is explicitly clarified as referring to spiritual rather than physical suffering).

Second: Verse 54 must be read alongside verse 51, which directs Emma not to partake of what Joseph “offered unto her.” William Clayton’s June 23, 1843 journal entry — which LDS Discussions itself cites — makes clear that Emma was at that moment “disposed to be revenged on him for some things” and that Joseph feared she would seek her own plural relationships. The commandment in verse 54 to “abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else” is most naturally read as protecting Emma from a course whose consequences would have been spiritually catastrophic.

Third: Joseph’s enemies had every incentive to publicize any genuine physical threat against Emma. No such publicization occurred. Emma Smith herself — who did not accept the revelation, who openly opposed polygamy, and who eventually denied that Joseph had taught it — lived until 1879. She never claimed that she had been threatened with death. Her reaction to the revelation was anger, not terror.

Fourth: LDS Discussions’ argument that Joseph was “customizing” the revelation in real time — inserting knowledge of recent events into a supposedly pre-existing text — is circular. It assumes improvisation in order to use the Emma-specific content as evidence of improvisation. But the same content equally supports the apologetic reading: that Joseph, who had known the revelation for years, was articulating the Lord’s pre-existing response to a domestic situation that had been developing throughout the 1840s. The argument proves nothing without first establishing what it sets out to prove.

VII. Why Was the Revelation Not Recorded Before 1843?

LDS Discussions treats the absence of an earlier written record as evidence that no earlier revelation existed. This inference is historically naive.

Joseph F. Smith stated the revelation was “not initially designed to go forth to the church or to the world” when it was finally written. Doctrine and Covenants Central’s historical context documentation confirms it was written “for a special purpose, by the request of the Patriarch Hyrum Smith.” The reason for the 1843 writing is historically documented: Hyrum needed a written text to present to Emma. The revelation was not recorded earlier because plural marriage was deliberately kept private during the period before it was officially acknowledged within the Church.

This pattern has direct analogues in prophetic history. Many of the Hebrew prophetic traditions were delivered orally for years or decades before commitment to writing. The existence of a written text is not and has never been the criterion by which revelation is dated. Joseph’s plural marriages prior to 1843 were conducted under principles he had received and communicated to the women involved — at the time, not retroactively. The “angel with a drawn sword” accounts, cited by multiple wives independently, were contemporaneous with the marriages themselves.

VIII. Occam’s Razor Cuts the Other Way

LDS Discussions invokes Occam’s Razor as its closing argument. The invocation is rhetorically effective but logically misapplied. Occam’s Razor is a principle of theoretical parsimony: among competing hypotheses that explain the same evidence equally well, prefer the simpler one. It is not a license to dismiss evidence that complicates a preferred narrative. Applying it honestly requires accounting for all of the evidence.

The fabrication hypothesis must account for the following, all of which LDS Discussions’ article either misrepresents or ignores entirely:

• Stylometric analysis demonstrating that both the plural-marriage and non-plural-marriage portions of Section 132 match Joseph Smith’s revelatory style and not Brigham Young’s or any other candidate’s.

• Corroborating testimony from William Law — Joseph Smith’s enemy and the founder of the opposition church — confirming the revelation’s existence and content in mid-1843.

• Seven Nauvoo High Council members, including those who subsequently rejected polygamy, attesting to Hyrum Smith reading them the revelation in August 1843.

• The theological coherence of Section 132’s eternal marriage doctrine with pre-1843 teachings on the sealing power, documented in D&C 76 (1832), Joseph’s 1831 high priesthood introduction, and Heber C. Kimball’s 1843 diary entries.

• The complete absence of any historical claim by Emma Smith — who had every reason and motive to make it — that she was threatened with physical death.

• Multiple independent manuscript copies whose content was attested as consistent from 1843 through the 1876 publication, including attestation by opponents of the doctrine.

The hypothesis that subsumes all of this evidence without multiplying ad hoc explanations is the one supported by the documentary record: Joseph Smith received the principles of Section 132 earlier than 1843, internalized them thoroughly, and dictated them under Hyrum’s request in July 1843 as a written text for Emma. This is exactly what Joseph claimed, exactly what his scribe recorded, and exactly what both supporters and enemies of Joseph Smith corroborated.

IX. The Question LDS Discussions Does Not Ask

Conspicuously absent from LDS Discussions’ treatment is any engagement with the doctrinal content of Section 132 on its own terms. If Joseph Smith fabricated D&C 132, he also fabricated — in the same document — the theological framework that constitutes the most distinctive teaching of Latter-day Saint theology: the eternal nature of the family, the binding efficacy of priesthood covenants beyond death, the possibility of becoming like God through covenant faithfulness, and the sealing of marriages and families in eternity.

The critic who wants to explain Section 132 by fraud must explain not only the polygamy passages but these passages as well — and must explain why the most doctrinally rich, theologically coherent, and spiritually generative material in the entire Doctrine and Covenants happened to emerge from the same improvised performance that also produced the convenient domestic-pressure passages. The simplicity of the fraud hypothesis collapses precisely here. It cannot account for the quality, the internal coherence, or the theological originality of what it claims was invented under pressure in a brick-store office on a July afternoon in Nauvoo, Illinois.

X. Conclusion

LDS Discussions’ article on D&C 132 is built on a series of unargued assumptions: that Joseph fabricated revelations, that circumstantial timing is evidence of invention, that the absence of early written records disproves earlier reception, and that “destroy” means physical annihilation in a covenantal theological text. When these assumptions are replaced with careful engagement of the historical evidence, the argument dissolves.

The documented chain of custody for Section 132 runs through Joseph’s enemies as well as his friends. The stylometric evidence points unambiguously to Joseph Smith’s authorship. The theological content coheres with documented pre-1843 teachings on the sealing power. The “threat” against Emma is covenant language consistent with usage throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. The Abraham/David/Solomon contradiction is resolved by the Book of Mormon verse that LDS Discussions never fully quotes. And the eternal marriage doctrine — the primary theological substance of the revelation — goes wholly unaddressed.

What D&C 132 reveals about revelation, when examined with scholarly rigor and honest engagement of all the evidence, is not the pattern of convenience and fraud that LDS Discussions proposes. It reveals a complex theological vision received and developed over years, documented with exceptional evidentiary support, corroborated by the Prophet’s enemies, and preserved in a text whose internal coherence and doctrinal originality remain among the most remarkable in the American religious tradition.

Sources and Further Reading

• Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 3 vols. (Greg Kofford Books, 2013)

• “Historical and Stylometric Evidence for the Authorship of Doctrine and Covenants 132,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. interpreterfoundation.org

• Craig L. Foster, “Much More than a Plural Marriage Revelation,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. interpreterfoundation.org

• FAIR Latter-day Saints, “Emma Smith in Doctrine and Covenants 132.” fairlatterdaysaints.org

• FAIR Latter-day Saints, “Contradiction between Jacob and D&C 132.” fairlatterdaysaints.org

• “The Provenance of D&C 132 is Documented,” Mormon Polygamy Documents. mormonpolygamydocuments.org

• Doctrine and Covenants Central, Historical Context of D&C 132. doctrineandcovenantscentral.org

• LDS Discussions source article: “What D&C 132 Tells Us About Revelation.” ldsdiscussions.com