When I was on my mission, there were a few hot commodities on the book market that most of the missionaries wanted to get their hands on. Foremost among them were Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, with bookstores in Nauvoo, Illinois being the location in my mission where missionaries could find these books. I picked up both books there while I was serving in the Nauvoo Stake, though later that same day the mission president explicitly banned Rough Stone Rolling and had his brother-in-law come as a visiting seventy to reinforce the ban. I didn’t read Rough Stone Rolling until I was home as a result, but when my companion was sick for a few weeks around that time, I did study Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It had a major impact as one of the sources through which I was introduced to the Prophet’s teachings.

Fifteen years later, Greg Kofford Books has published the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith: Revised and Expanded Edition as an effort to reclaim the book from complete obsolescence. The folks who created the book, Alonzo L. Gaskill and Richard G. Moore, recently discussed it at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a copost to the full interview.

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith: Revised and Expanded Edition

The authors offered insight into why they felt that creating this book was necessary:

We both loved the original Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (TPJS) and had memorized many of the quotes attributed to the Prophet Joseph. However, with the Joseph Smith Papers project, that volume largely found itself on the “outs,” not trusted as it once was. We wanted the Prophet’s teachings to still be accessible—but as correct as possible. Hence, the 10-year project to create a new version of this once very popular text.

The new volume is a nice way to access the teachings of Joseph Smith connected to a familiar and beloved resource that can be physically held. The book places Joseph Fielding Smith’s compilation in a side-by-side comparison with the original sources, making it easy to compare and to read a more accurate source. As the authors explained:

We’ve corrected those, identifying quotes “attributed” to Joseph that turned out to be the words of another person (but attributed to him). We’ve also provided the original words that, in some cases, Joseph Fielding Smith expanded into a quote (drawing on only a few words).

So, our version of TPJS makes clear what was actually recorded of Joseph’s teachings and what is not actually Joseph Smith but someone else’s words (in the original TPJS).

We discovered that some of the statements found in TPJS were edited and expanded by early Church historians after they arrived in Utah. Perhaps they were there when Joseph Smith spoke and remembered some of what he said, even though the handwritten notes from that occasion were sparse.

While that was not unusual in the nineteenth century, the focus on original sources and accuracy have continued to come to the forefront since then, requiring a higher standard.

(As a side note, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith was obsolete and not trusted long before the Joseph Smith Papers project existed. The publication of volumes like The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (1980) and The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (1985) already addressed the major shortcomings of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, supplanting the older volume before I was even born.)

One of the most striking aspects of the interview, however, is the intense level of defensiveness the authors displayed about the validity of their project when the Joseph Smith Papers project exists. As they note,

The Joseph Smith Papers project was of incalculable value to historians, authorities, speakers, teachers, and members. However, the volumes are expensive and not readily accessible in hardcopy. Additionally, as valuable as the website is, finding specific quotes on the site can be very challenging. …

Thus, we have made available the “best of” Joseph’s teachings in a single volume—many of which (though not all) are in the JSP volumes. This will help those who want to quote him accurately but do not have ready access to all the volumes.

I find this somewhat misleading. As I mentioned above, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith was obsolete by the 1980s. As such, the Joseph Smith Papers project has no reason to create a new version of the book in any form. This is doubly true, given that they already offer a page on their website that links out to Sources for Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Thus, when Alonzo Gaskill “twice inquired of the Joseph Smith Papers folks to make sure I wasn’t stepping on their toes” and “they assured me that this was not part of their planned work,” I don’t doubt that a new version of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith is not planned as a part of their work.

What I do doubt is that there is not a book that makes available the “best of” Joseph’s teachings in a single volume in the works by the Joseph Smith Papers. Ever since plans for the revised and expanded edition of The Words of Joseph Smith suddenly disappeared from existence online, I have believed that Joseph Smith Papers took the project under their wings with plans to publish it as a book after the main series was finished. The fact that the Church Historian’s Press is also planning to publish a select teachings of Eliza R. Snow book (I’m still eagerly waiting for that one) makes it even more likely that they would do something similar for Joseph Smith. While I have no direct confirmation of the project, I still suspect something of the sort will happen, just not as a new edition of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

In any case, for more about the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith: Revised and Expanded Edition head on over to From the Desk to read the full interview with Alonzo L. Gaskill and Richard G. Moore.