Revisiting the School of the Prophets and the Revelation that Established it – Part III

Continuing from the previous post, regarding who wrote the lessons delivered in the School of the Prophets. We concluded the last post on the meeting held in the translation room of the Kirtland
Temple on the same day following the receiving of Section 88 of the D&C.
    Now, another point Reynolds makes in his lengthy article that was sent to us by one of our readers is that Joseph Smith was not in Kirtland at the time of the School of the Prophets, which was held in the Winter of 1833 and until the Spring of 1834, so could not have written the Lessons in the school

    However, Joseph was in Kirtland in December 1832 when he received the 88^th Section of the D&C, in which the “Solemn Assembly” (D&C 88:70) was introduced to the Prophet by the Lord, what was later called the School of the Prophets, to which was immediately called the conference of High Priests that assembled in the translating room in Kirtland, Ohio, on the very same day—27 December 1832, to discuss the revelation and the school, as outlined above.

Consequently, we should recognize that the revelation, in which the School was commanded by the Lord to Joseph Smith, and the meeting Joseph called of the Church leadership to discuss the revelation and its various parts, including the School, was discussed, occurred under the direction of Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Ohio.
    According to Bruce A. Van Orden, in his article Sidney Rigdon (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, p1233), states: “In 1834 Rigdon assisted in recruiting volunteers for Zion's Camp and, while Joseph was away on that undertaking, had charge of affairs in Kirtland, including the construction of the temple. He was a leading teacher at the Kirtland school and helped arrange the revelations for publication in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. Under the Prophet's direction, Sidney helped compose and deliver many of the doctrinally rich Lectures on Faith. He often preached long, extravagant biblically based sermons, notably one at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple. In the persecution that followed the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society, Rigdon, along with Joseph Smith and other Saints, fled for their lives to Far West, Missouri, in 1838. There Rigdon delivered two famous volatile speeches, the Salt Sermon and the Independence Day oration, both of which stirred up fears and controversy in Missouri and contributed to the Extermination Order and the Battle of Far West. With Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Rigdon was taken prisoner and locked up in Liberty Jail, but was released early because of severe apoplectic seizures” (emphasis in original). 
    Note the comment above: “Under the Prophet's direction, Sidney helped compose and deliver many of the doctrinally rich Lectures on Faith. Not only is this consistent with Church leadership of today, it is consistent with Joseph Smith’s leadership of his day, and suggests to us that Sidney Rigdon did not, on his own, create and write the Lectures on Faith that were delivered in the School of the Prophets.
    Also stated in Van Orden’s article, found in the Harold B. Lee Library, he states: “In the summer of 1831, Joseph, Sidney, and other leaders journeyed to Independence, Missouri, which a revelation identified as the location of the latter-day Zion and the New Jerusalem. Sidney was instructed to dedicate the land of Zion for the gathering of the Saints and to write a description of the country for publication.
    Upon their return to Ohio, Joseph and Sidney resumed the translation of the scriptures, and on February 16, 1832, they jointly received the vision of the degrees of glory that is now Doctrine and Covenants Section 76. In March 1832 they were brutally attacked by a mob and tarred and feathered. Sidney received head injuries that occasionally affected his emotional stability for the rest of his life. His friend Newel K. Whitney said that thereafter he was "either in the bottom of the cellar or up in the garrett window" (Daryl Chase, Sidney Rigdon: Early Mormon, University of Chicago,1931, p115).
    Rigdon took an active part in the founding of Nauvoo and in 1839 accompanied Joseph Smith to Washington, D.C., to present the grievances of the Saints to the federal government. He was elected to the Nauvoo City Council and served also as city attorney, postmaster, and professor of Church history in the embryonic university projected for the city. Despite his many appointments, however, he was nearly silent during this time and often sick. He was accused of being associated with John C. Bennett and other enemies of the Church in their seditious plans to displace Joseph Smith, but this he always denied. He did not endorse the principle of plural marriage, although he never came out in open opposition to it.
    Joseph Smith eventually lost confidence in Rigdon and in 1843 wished to reject him as a counselor, but because of the intercession of Hyrum Smith, retained him in office.” This is included not to demean Sidney Rigdon, but to show, even in his most important assignments, he was involved with Joseph Smith, not in absence from him.
    Continuing with the scribes, George W. Robinson, a son-in-law of Sidney Rigdon, became general recorder in 1837 (HC 2:513). He accompanied Joseph Smith in visiting Church settlements in northern Missouri and kept a brief record captioned "The Scriptory Book of Joseph Smith, Jr.," so named because it was a repository for various “scripts,” or written texts, most of which recorded in April 1838 that document the events leading up  to the excommunications of Church leaders Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer. Robinson was released in 1840 when he moved across the river from Nauvoo.
    It is also known that added to these men who acted as scribe to Joseph, the Prophet used numerous others for his letters, journals, personal history and business records, making the total 14 in all—a list that sounds like a “Who’s Who” of early Mormon history, i.e., W. W. Phelps, William Clayton, James Mulholland, George W. Robinson, Willard Richards, Warren Parrish, Thomas Bullock, and Robert B. Thompson—with only Bullock, Richards and Clayton staying in the Church the entire time.
    All of these men helped to create a “monumental amount of history” to which we owe a great deal and to which both the early Church and today rely on to better understand the workings of Joseph Smith’s time and the doctrines of the Church as have been passed down to us.

    According to Nick Newman, (“Scribes Recorded Prophet’s Words,” Deseret News, Faith Section, January 28, 2010), “Despite their contributions, the Prophet said the one thing that hampered the keeping of his history was that so many of his scribes fell away or died.” The list is saddening: Whitmer, Rigdon, Parrish and Robinson all left the church, never to return.
     Cowdery, Williams and Phelps were ex-communicated but came back into full fellowship, though Williams was ex-communicated in absentee while on a special unknown mission for Joseph Smith, and wrongly accused, which the Prophet reinstated immediately upon returning from his absence. And Thompson and Mulholland died in Illinois. As a side note, Whitmer even took some of the documents with him on the way out of the church. This leaves only Richards, Bullock and Clayton stayed in the church the whole time.
    What is remarkable in all of this is that despite all the problems, the fact Joseph had to rely on so many others to write down his thoughts, ideas, directions and history, and getting it all recorded to fulfil the revelations and commandments that he do so, yet not having enough hours in the day to accomplish it all himself, and not having the writing and grammar skill that is far more common in our day than his, he still accomplished and compiled a record, albeit through others, that has lasted this nearly ninety years, providing us with a consistent and understandable record of all these events.
    Where we should be grateful for its existence, some tend to want to quibble over who did what and exactly how. This is not only true of the Book of Mormon and early Church history, but also of the Biblical scriptures and ther numerous events of antiquity—consequently, whose actual handwriting on any one document, lesson, or record should never be the point of any commnet, since it is so well known that Joseph had all these scribes that recorded his writing for him.

    Obviously, then, in the case of early LDS record keeping, it was not perfect by any means, and consisted of the personal input of numerous people while Joseph dictated and assigned the process, but the Joseph Smith Papers “have been very careful to try and understand all of these things on their own terms in the context in which they were originally created. This can be very important in terms of understanding some things in church history.” What we have today is a very complicated though imperfect record, but the its very existence testifies to the importance Joseph Smith placed upon it and the constant calling of his scribes to carry out the work he dictated and assigned them.
    Our apologies for making this subject so long, but it seemed prudent to quote all these Church sources in some detail to show that what one person might think is a “smoking gun” as Reynolds claims in his article, is simply what it really is, one person’s opinion, albeit based on some lengthy research, but still just speculation or assumptions that seem to deliberately ignore what everyone at the time well understood—Joseph Smith wrote little but directed and dictated much. Consequently, when you have numerous people more or less saying the same thing, chances are there is some weight behind it—not always, but in this case, Reynolds’ singular opinion has no more credence than another person’s opinion, or in this case, many people’s opinions who are not aligned with the subject in any way, but have each approached the subject from their own viewpoints and their own research based on known facts.