Doctrine and Covenants

Week 9: Sidney Rigdon; the gathering; the office of Church Historian

Sections 35–40, 47

7 November 2024

Notes and slides will be posted after the class has been held.

• David W. Grua, “Joseph Smith and the 1834 D. P. Hurlbut Case,” BYU Studies 44, no. 1 (2005): 33–54. Grua examines the notorious ex-Mormon apostate Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, his attempt to destroy the early Church, and the legal case brought against him for threatening to kill Joseph Smith.

• Matthew Roper, “The Mythical ‘Manuscript Found’,” FARMS Review 17, no. 2 (2005): 7–140. Roper reviews (and decimates) modern attempts to tie the origins of the Book of Mormon to Sidney Rigdon.

• Church leaders and scholars are so confident that there is no connection between Solomon Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found” and the Book of Mormon that they’ve reprinted the Spaulding manuscript numerous times. In the 1990s, Brigham Young University printed Spaulding’s book in its entirety: Kent P. Jackson, ed., Manuscript Found: The Complete Original “Spaulding Manuscript” (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 1996).