Appearance
Priesthood Restoration
The CES Letter opens this section with a truncated Richard Bushman quote:
"The late appearance of these accounts raises the possibility of later fabrication."[1]
It stops mid-paragraph. Bushman raised the fabrication possibility in order to dismiss it. His next sentences explain Joseph's silence as reflecting "pride" and fear of disbelief, concluding the pattern looks "more like a refurbished memory than a triumphant announcement."[2] The CES Letter made Bushman say the opposite of what he argued.
From there, the section builds six numbered claims toward a single thesis: the priesthood restoration was invented years after the fact and retroactively inserted into Church records.[3]
If the priesthood restoration was fabricated in the mid-1830s, why were hostile newspapers reporting angelic ordination claims in 1830?
A half-quote that reverses the source
The Bushman truncation isn't a minor formatting choice. It's the section's opening move. It tells the reader: even faithful historians concede this might be a fraud.
Bushman conceded nothing. He raised the objection, examined it, and rejected it. Cutting him off mid-paragraph turns a defense into an indictment.
Absence of evidence is doing all the heavy lifting
The core logic: if it really happened, why wasn't it written down sooner? The 1833 Book of Commandments doesn't mention John the Baptist or Peter, James, and John -- so the events must not have occurred.[4]
The Book of Commandments was a revelation collection, not a history. It wasn't designed to narrate foundational events.
Joseph wrote almost nothing before 1832. The absence of a written account in a publication that wasn't meant to contain one proves nothing.
One disaffected witness, presented as definitive
David Whitmer's late-life denial of angelic ordination is offered as though it settles the question. But Whitmer was excommunicated in 1838 and spent decades disputing Church authority structures.
Multiple early members contradicted him. His testimony is evidence -- but the CES Letter treats it as a verdict.
Hostile newspapers were reporting it in 1830
The Painesville Telegraph reported in November 1830 that Oliver Cowdery "pretends to have a divine mission, and to have seen and conversed with Angels." Its December issue added that Cowdery claimed "credentials, written and signed by the hand of Jesus Christ."[5]
The Palmyra Reflector followed in February 1831, reporting that Joseph "received a commission from God" and Cowdery had "frequent interviews with angels."[6]
Hostile witnesses. No motive to fabricate pro-Mormon evidence. Eighteen months before the CES Letter's alleged earliest date.
Joseph's 1832 history lists two distinct priesthood conferrals
Joseph's earliest personal history, dictated in the summer of 1832, lists "the reception of the holy Priesthood by the ministring of Aangels to adminster the letter of the Gospel" and "a confirmation and reception of the high Priesthood after the holy order of the son of the living God."[7]
Two conferrals. Both angelic. Ranked among the four most important events of the Restoration.
The CES Letter dismisses this as "a glancing reference at best." Joseph called it one of four events worth recording in his first history.
The paper trail starts in 1829, not 1835
"It wasn't until the 1835 edition Doctrine & Covenants that Joseph and Oliver backdated and retrofitted Priesthood Restoration events to an 1829-30 time period -- none of which existed in any previous Church records."[4:1]
The boldest factual claim in the section. Also the most clearly wrong.
Oliver's June 1829 letter to Hyrum Smith references apostolic calling using D&C 18 language -- before the Church existed. The April 1830 Articles and Covenants call Joseph "an apostle of Jesus Christ," a title requiring divine ordination.[8][9] Oliver published a detailed Aaronic Priesthood restoration account in the Messenger and Advocate in October 1834 -- months before the 1835 D&C.[10]
You don't pre-announce a fabrication in a public newspaper.
The D&C 27 expansion wasn't a rewrite -- it was a second revelation
The CES Letter points out that D&C 27 contains twelve verses absent from the original 1833 Book of Commandments. This is true. Joseph did expand the text.
But both Joseph and Newel Knight -- who was present -- stated the expanded content was received in September 1830, weeks after the initial August 1830 revelation.[11] The Joseph Smith Papers editors confirm the two-stage composition.
The CES Letter presents one revelation that was altered. The documentary record shows two revelations that were combined.
Every detail in the expansion matches what earlier independent sources already documented. That's corroboration, not fabrication.
Oliver Cowdery never recanted
Oliver was excommunicated in 1838. He spent ten years outside the Church, practiced law independently, and had every reason to expose a fraud if one existed.
In 1846 he wrote to Phineas Young: "Had you stood in the presence of John, with our departed brother Joseph, to receive the Lesser Priesthood -- and in the presence of Peter, to receive the Greater... you would feel what you have never felt."[12]
At his 1848 return in Kanesville, he testified the angelic messenger declared: "This priesthood shall remain on earth unto the end."[13] A decade of estrangement. No recantation.
Why no polished account before 1832?
The CES Letter treats gradual documentation as proof of invention. But Joseph wrote almost nothing before 1832. His first journal attempt lasted nine days; he described writing as being confined in "a narrow prison."[14]
He also had a practical reason for silence: "We were forced to keep secret the circumstances of our having been baptized, and having received this Priesthood, owing to a spirit of persecution which had already manifested itself in the neighborhood."[15]
The absence of early written accounts reflects a man who didn't write -- not the absence of early events.
Priesthood and office are not the same thing
The CES Letter asks: if Peter, James, and John ordained Joseph in 1829, why did Lyman Wight ordain him again in 1831?[16]
Because the June 1831 conference involved ordinations to the office of high priest -- not initial conferral of priesthood authority. The conference minutes record Joseph ordaining Wight before Wight ordained Joseph at the same meeting.[17] That sequence makes sense for exchanging office ordinations. It makes no sense for initial priesthood conferral.
Joseph himself taught: "All priesthood is Melchizedek; but there are different portions or degrees of it."[18] Apostleship in 1829, elder in 1830, high priest in 1831, temple keys in 1836. Sequential authorization, not contradiction.[19]
Bottom line: The CES Letter says no one heard about priesthood restoration before 1832. Hostile newspapers were reporting angelic ordination claims in 1830. Joseph's own 1832 history lists two distinct conferrals. Oliver Cowdery maintained the account through a decade of excommunication. The "late fabrication" theory requires ignoring the documentary trail that predates it.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Priesthood Restoration," p. 80, quoting Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 75. ↩︎
Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 75-76. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Priesthood Restoration," no. 1, p. 81. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Priesthood Restoration," no. 5, p. 83. ↩︎ ↩︎
"The Golden Bible," Painesville Telegraph, November 16, 1830; "The Golden Bible, No. 2," Painesville Telegraph, December 7, 1830. Reprinted in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996-2003), 2:271, 274-275. ↩︎
"Gold Bible, No. 6," Palmyra Reflector, February 14, 1831. Reprinted in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 2:256. ↩︎
Joseph Smith, History, ca. Summer 1832, Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/1 ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery to Hyrum Smith, June 14, 1829. See Larry C. Porter, "The Priesthood Restored," in Studies in Scripture, Volume 1: The Doctrine and Covenants, ed. Robert L. Millet and Kent P. Jackson (Sandy, UT: Randall Book, 1984), 35-36. ↩︎
"Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ" (April 1830), later D&C 20:2. ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery, Letter to W.W. Phelps, Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate 1, no. 1 (October 1834): 14-16. ↩︎
Newel Knight's journal records the expanded portions of D&C 27 as revealed to Joseph in September 1830. See Larry C. Porter, "The Restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods," Ensign (December 1996): 30-47. ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery to Phineas Young, March 23, 1846. Published in "Oliver Cowdery," Improvement Era 2, no. 10 (October 1899): 829-830. ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery, testimony before the Kanesville high council, October 21, 1848. Recorded in Reuben Miller's journal. See Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Reuben Miller, Recorder of Oliver Cowdery's Reaffirmations," BYU Studies 8, no. 3 (1968): 277-293. ↩︎
Dean C. Jessee, "The Writing of Joseph Smith's History," BYU Studies 11, no. 4 (1971): 439-473. ↩︎
Joseph Smith, History, 1838-1856, volume A-1, 17. Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/17 ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Priesthood Restoration," no. 6, pp. 83-84. ↩︎
"Minutes, circa 3-4 June 1831," Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-circa-3-4-june-1831/1 ↩︎
Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 180. ↩︎
John S. Thompson, "Restoring Melchizedek Priesthood," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 62 (2024): 263-318. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/restoring-melchizedek-priesthood ↩︎