The Gift of Tongues: The Propagation of Sermon Texts in Mormonism

In spite of all the talk about remembering what we feel in a sermon experience, not what we hear, as valid as that may be, it is the text that reigns supreme. Recreating a sermon is not possible. But recording the words spoken on the occasion may be valuable. From the very beginning of Joseph Smith’s career, it was the text that trumped all other things. The Book of Mormon saga places the text in the role of savior, preserver and founder of language and true religion. It was to be expected that Mormons would keep records, and by commandment.

Stemmata for the Funeral Sermons of Joseph Smith

Here’s an example for one of the funeral sermons.

Preaching event at the top. Arrows represent text dependence.

This particular sermon was published in full a comparatively large number of times. The more times in print the more complicated the variorum. In this particular case, one excerpt has appeared (just in recent years) over a hundred times in Church conferences and literature. That is rather unusual and somewhat odd, given the earth shaking stuff you *could* come up with. The stemma reveals the most influential editor: MS2. It is not always easy to identify the real editor of published Church documents and in the typesetting era often more than one set of hands dealt with a given text like this one. Complete texts of Joseph Smith’s sermons tend to be published by the Church at large during in a cycle very similar to this one. Aside from reprinting certain standard imprints like Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and a few independently published versions of the sermons, new “official” imprints stopped after 1952.

KFD5 (the Sermon in the Grove) and Display Postscript

I’ve been using LaTeX to construct typographical facsimiles for Joseph Smith (JS) sermon docs. The packages available to create “critical texts” are pretty feature rich, but limited in how text can be manipulated. Twenty odd years ago, Steve Jobs started NeXT Computer. The display technology was a breakthrough in a number of ways. One thing it allowed was the possibility to form and shape text like never before. Drag and drop on steroids. Pushing text around, shrinking/growing font size, moving text and characters upside down, sideways, curving it, writing sideways in margins. It was perfect for projects like mine. But it died and nothing like it seems to be available now. This is just a wish for it to return.

The Grand Unification Theory

[Cross-posted from BCC]

In physics, the holy grail in the present moment is a theory which explains, with the power of prediction, the fundamental things. The things of the small universe (weak force, strong force, electricity, magnetism) the quantum world, and the things of the big universe – essentially gravity. The historical inspiration for this frenzy was the achievement of the Scotsman, James Clerk [pronounced "Goble"] Maxwell. Maxwell proposed a version of this business, which unites the formerly disperate understandings of electricity and magnetism:

Maxwell's Unified Theory

This is a rich explanation which both predicts and accounts for much of what happens in your daily life – from the operation of your cell phone, computer and television – to how your eyeglasses and contact lens behave.[1]

KFD5: The June 16, 1844 Discourse

Sometimes called the “Sermon in the Grove,” this speech is the last of the Sunday sermons of JS.
I really don’t have too much to say about this right now except that the manuscript evidence is fascinating. Of course you’re reading a text geek here. The manuscript development up to publication in the Deseret News is just downright cool. The variants after that are interesting to me, but the fun part so far is in 1844 and 1855-6. I think that this will result in some changes in the way we see this discourse and its content as a Church (ok, that’s probably over-stepping things, but it is fun stuff). Anyway, it’s a very interesting text and I promise to display some of this as I get things more settled with the gene-critical stuff. Over at BCC I’m going to put up some of the genetic text for KFD2 (King Follett sermon to you) or KFD1, sometime after things die down over there.

Voice and Print – Sermon and Book and Media

Writing somehow reconstitutes (imperfectly and incompletely) a sermon (or any speech) into the three dimensional world. Printing that manuscript fixes that representation much more firmly and reliably, confidently, by making available many copies, exact duplicates, of that thought once expressed orally.

What about the hypertext world? It seems like a retreat. Going backwards somehow. Yes, the website is still there tomorrow, displaying the things that were there yesterday. But the webpage may be edited without trace. The text that was there yesterday may actually be different (even improved) today. But permanence, confidence, is left bleeding on the altar of technology. I exaggerate a little. Books were distrusted in the beginning and for good reason. In the environment of type blocks, sameness was not the rule.

Will the book die? Can the technoverse find a lasting replacement? Independent of server death, ISP disappearance, disk crashes and DVD aging?

A CD is a set of golden plates. You need a seer stone (disc drive) to access it. Unfortunately CDs don’t get Divine anti-aging blessings.

Then there’s the question of authorship. This isn’t the 1800s when the author was king, the center of the textual world. These days it’s the reader. The rabble interprets, creates meaning. That disease even reaches the canon. Oh well.

All of this is a little bit of what I’ve been wondering about as I try to finish up chapter 9 and jump into chapter 10. I mean, how to distribute the final product? Technology always wins. I love Gutenberg, but he may be dead.

Rejuvenated: Brigham, Heber and Co. in New York, 1843.

One of the interesting things about the Manuscript History of the Church, is its blending of sources to create a narrative of events in early Mormonism. Sometimes this effect is submerged by the 1850′s historians decision to unify the text by writing in the first person, as though Joseph Smith himself had penned it. Not an acceptable practice today, it was a common technique among writers of annals and “autobiographies” at the time.

Summertime and Recycling #7. D&C 107. Part 5.

Continuing part 4.
Here we give the “second” revelation of November 11, 1831 in comparison with the KRB text. The KRB text is in the hand of Frederick G. Williams and it suggests more strongly that indeed the November 11 revelation is two revelations. Observe that the text never uses the word “quorum.” My use of the word in reference to these texts is only to provide context. The word would not appear in Joseph’s revelations until the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. Moreover, during his lifetime, it would be used in a much looser way than LDS use it now.

Summertime and Recycling #5. D&C 107. Part 3: More Background.

We continue our discussion of the November 11, 1831 revelation (see part 1 and part 2) with the second portion, in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery.

Summertime and Recycling #4. D&C 107. Part 2: Beginning of the Nov. 11 Revelation.

We continue from part 1 with what is essentially that portion of the text of the (second) revelation of November 11, 1831 in the hand of John Whitmer.[1]

Summertime and Recycling #3. D&C 107. Part 1: Background.

This will keep the vacation going!——–

Section 107 of the LDS Doctrine and Covenants is often quoted as fundamental in determining succession in the presidency of the church (indeed, it was so quoted in the post martyrdom conference of August 1844). It plays a role in outlining the organizational structure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as some other parts of the post-Joseph Smith Mormon diaspora. The focus of D&C 107 is priesthood structure and church government. It is a remarkable document for many reasons and I will not try to cover each aspect of the text in these posts.

The Value of a Sermon Critical Edition. Part 5. (Some Examples.)

[Cross-posted from BCC.]

Here is part 4.

Bibliographical disciplines have divided up into various specialties and during the last several decades the dominant Anglo-American textual theories have splintered into a variety of approaches modeled on various ideas with roots ranging from multivalued and fuzzy logics to epistemology, philology, physics, biology, etc., which coexist in some tension.[1] This means that no matter what approach a critic or editor takes he or she is bound to fall victim to a thrashing by somebody. The good side of this is a wide open field for expression. One hopes that *someone* likes the result.

This time I want to give a few examples of various ways texts are presented. These will range from classical presentations where the editor is concerned with laying out both editorial decisions and the available alternatives, to a clear text format where the presentation records a smooth, clean (easily quotable) grammatically correct text whose relationship to manuscripts or other editions is essentially hidden from the reader or if not that extreme, at least annotation is placed in back matter.

Buried in Manuscripts

I haven’t had much time to post stuff lately, mostly because of boring old work, but I’ve also been doing my share of working with manuscripts related to Joseph Smith’s sermons. One tends to get a narrow focus when hunting for commas and doing handwriting ID, etc. Lately I’ve been dealing with Joseph’s sermon delivered at the stand in Nauvoo, May 12, 1844. This sermon falls in an interesting category, easily placed with crisis things like D&C 113 and meant to position Joseph securely in the queue of biblical prophetic tradition with techniques ranging from misreading bible texts (he references his polyglot again) at the same time advertising the sermon as a follow on to KFD2 (the famous King Follett Discourse).

The Value of a Sermon Critical Edition. Part 4.

[Late cross-post from By Common Consent]
[Part 3 is here.]

The terminology used in textual studies has changed as the philosophy of the nature of texts has changed and it also varies depending on the methodological branch being considered. So, I’m going to avoid the technical language as much as I can. Also, I’m leaving out a lot, believing that brevity is the soul of something or other.

The idea of reconstructing a text from fragmentary or variant sources is an old one. In early biblical studies the process of attempting to move from fragments of early manuscripts to an autograph or something near it became known (1885) as “lower criticism.” The idea could be applied to other ancient texts or modern ones. But the study of texts since the 19th century, originally obsessed with the idea of actually rebuilding the autograph, or original text, has changed, methodologies bifurcating in the process.

Listening too Carefully

Today in our Sunday meeting we were treated to two excellent talks, one by a recently returned missionary, the other from a high councilor (yes it was good). While I was inspired by both, I find I have developed a disease of sorts. I listen too carefully. This disease may have come upon me as a result of my work on the Joseph Smith sermons. I now *read* way too carefully (mostly because I have to compare published versions of a text – and reading for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, paragraphing, etc., etc., etc. is both irritating and unfortunately habitual). But also I find myself listening too carefully now.