A manuscript found in the First Presidency's vault -- characterized by Assistant Church Historian Richard E. Turley Jr. as "a major documentary discovery" -- was discussed May 22 by four scholars from the Church History Department before a gathering of some 400 church history enthusiasts here.

"The Book of Commandments and Revelations" was the topic of the opening plenary session of the 44th Annual Mormon History Association Conference meeting through May 24 at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Conference Center.

Turley, who chaired the session, noted that the manuscript will be featured in the next volume of the project, to be published this fall. Readers will be able in that volume to examine full-size photo images of each of the manuscript's pages, with typescripts on facing pages.



The four speakers at the session are all editors in the Joseph Smith Papers project.
Robert J. Woodford said President Gordon B. Hinckley authorized the research of historical documents in possession of the First Presidency, including the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR). He said it proved to be "the manuscript collection of revelations that Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer took to Missouri in November 1831, from which to publish the Book of Commandments," forerunner to the Doctrine and Covenants."

"Additional revelations were entered into the volume as they were received, and the BCR was also used as one of the sources for the revelations printed in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants," Woodford noted. "Hence, the BCR contains the earliest surviving manuscript versions of many of Joseph Smith's revelations, and the only pre-publication manuscript copies of some of them."

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