Backdating & Retrofitting
The claim:
"Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery changed the wording of an earlier revelation when they compiled the 1835 Doctrine & Covenants, adding verses about the appearances of Elijah, John the Baptist, and Peter, James, and John as if those appearances were mentioned in the earlier revelation in the Book of Commandments, which they weren't."[1]
"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; including Doctrine & Covenants' precursor, Book of Commandments, nor the original Church history as published in The Evening and Morning Star."[2]
The Doctrine and Covenants is one of the Church's books of scripture, made up of revelations Joseph Smith dictated. Its first printing, in 1833, was titled the Book of Commandments; a mob wrecked the press before the job finished. An enlarged 1835 edition carries the name it has now. The verses at issue are in that 1835 edition, and they name the angels who ordained Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. Priesthood, in Latter-day Saint belief, is the authority that makes a baptism count. If the verses recording its restoration were forged, the Church's claim to that authority goes with them.
The charge is a forgery accusation with a specific date on it. In 1835, the argument goes, Joseph and Oliver wrote those angel verses fresh, slid them into a revelation that was supposed to have come years earlier, in 1830, and printed the result. They dressed up an 1835 invention as an 1830 event, and (the claim continues) nothing about it appears anywhere in the Church's records before that. They backed the story into the past.
Whether the priesthood story shows up late in the record is a separate question, and the companion article handles it. This charge is harsher. It says the dates and events were manufactured after the fact and then made to look old.
The revelation got longer
One revelation really did get longer, much longer.
The revelation is the one we now call Doctrine and Covenants Section 27. In the 1833 Book of Commandments it was short, only about two hundred words, almost all of it practical instructions about what to use for the sacrament. By the 1835 printing it was nearly four times longer. The new material named angels, Moroni, Elijah, John the Baptist, Peter, James, and John, and described the priesthood each of them conferred. Roughly two-thirds of the 1835 version has no surviving copy older than 1835.[3] The Church's own historians at the Joseph Smith Papers document this plainly; it is not something the faithful side disputes or hides.
So the CES Letter has the textual fact right. Then it swaps one claim for a much bigger one. It takes "the published wording of this revelation got longer" and treats it as proof that "the whole thing was made up in 1835." To make the second one stick, you have to explain away the dates, the events, and even the enemies that were already on the record well before then.
The date was printed in the book they call empty
The CES Letter's picture is that the 1830 timeframe was pinned on later, in 1835, to make a new invention look old. But the 1833 Book of Commandments already dates that revelation to September 1830. The date is right there in the older book.[3:1] A forger backdating an event in 1835 does not need to reach into a book printed in 1833 to do it, because the date he wants is already there.
The records tell a plainer story about Section 27. Joseph and others wrote that the revelation came in two parts: a first portion in early August 1830, and the rest a few weeks later, in September. Joseph said so in his own history, and Newel Knight, who sat in the August meeting himself, described the same two-part timing. The September 1830 material simply was not printed until the 1835 collection came together.
For the early Church, a long delay between when Joseph received a revelation and when it finally saw print was the ordinary course of things. The account of the First Vision was not in a book ordinary members could read until 1842 and did not become official scripture until 1880. The words now in Section 13, about the lower priesthood, were not canonized until 1876. Many revelations sat unpublished for decades. "Received in 1830, printed in 1835" describes the normal life of an early Latter-day Saint revelation.
Key Point
The 1833 Book of Commandments prints a September 1830 date on this revelation. If that date was invented in 1835, it was in print before the invention happened.
The enemies wrote it down first
The CES Letter's strongest single line is that none of this "existed in any previous Church records." The phrase assumes that the only people writing about Joseph Smith in those years were members of his own church. They were not. Some of the earliest reports of these very claims came from people who despised him, and they wrote them down years before 1835.
Open a local newspaper from late 1830, and the claim is already there in the columns. The Painesville Telegraph, run by an editor who would soon help put one of the first anti-Mormon books into print, told its readers in November 1830 that Cowdery "pretends to have a divine mission, and to have seen and conversed with Angels."[4] These editors were trying to expose Joseph Smith, not protect him. They had every reason to say "this is a brand-new story he just made up" if that were true. Instead they did the opposite: they put the angelic-authority claim into print, in their own mocking voice, four to five years before the 1835 collection the CES Letter blames.
Those 1830 newspapers do not name John the Baptist or Peter, James, and John. They report angels and a divine commission in general terms; the specific named figures come later. So the hostile press does not prove every detail was fixed in 1830. What it does destroy is the blanket claim that nothing was on record before 1835. Joseph and Oliver were publicly claiming angelic authority while their enemies watched, and their enemies wrote it down.
By 1832, the claim was in the Church's own records too. When Joseph sat down in the summer of 1832 to write his first history, he listed the great events of the Restoration, and among them was receiving priesthood "by the ministring of Aangels."[5] That was on paper a full three years ahead of the supposed 1835 retrofit.
An 1829 document reaches a year further back than even the 1830 newspapers, predating the organized Church, and in it Oliver Cowdery is calling himself "an Apostle of Jesus Christ."[6] You cannot make yourself an apostle by writing the word next to your name; the title only means anything if Cowdery already believed that authority had come to him from somewhere. The forgery has nowhere comfortable to sit. Put it in 1835 and the 1832 history is in the way. Put it in 1832 and Cowdery's 1829 title is in the way, sitting there before there was a Church to defend or a reputation to repair. The full timeline lays out the whole chain of early documents.
You are looking in the wrong book
The CES Letter treats the 1833 Book of Commandments as a complete inventory of what the early Saints believed: whatever the book does not mention had not happened yet. Both halves of that assumption are wrong.
The book was never finished. On July 20, 1833, a mob in Independence, Missouri, smashed the printing press, scattered the type, and threw the pages into the street while the Book of Commandments was still being printed. Two girls, ages fifteen and thirteen, ran out and rescued armfuls of loose sheets from the wreckage.[7] What survives is a partial print run cut short by violence, not a careful, complete edition. Treating its table of contents as the final word on what early members knew gets the history backwards.
And the book was the wrong kind of book to begin with. The Book of Commandments was a collection of revelations, the words Joseph dictated as the voice of the Lord. It was not a history of his life or the Church's beginnings. It contains no account of the First Vision, no account of the angel Moroni, no story of how the gold plates were found, translated, or returned, and nothing about the Book of Mormon witnesses. Nobody argues those events were fabricated just because they are absent from the Book of Commandments. Looking there for a John the Baptist scene is like combing a cookbook for the story of how the kitchen was built. You are searching the wrong kind of book.
The book makes apostle claims of its own. It calls Joseph Smith "an apostle of Jesus Christ," and it addresses Cowdery in the language of an apostle's calling.[8] Apostleship has to come from somewhere; in this framework, with no living apostles around to do the ordaining, it presupposes that authority was received from God. So the very book the CES Letter holds up as proof that priesthood restoration is missing already assumes it.
The change was announced, not hidden
The whole charge depends on secrecy, and this is where it runs out of room, because the editing of the revelations was about as public as church business in that era ever got.
Before the 1835 collection was printed, a Church conference in November 1831 voted, on the record, to let Joseph review and correct the wording of the revelations before they were published. The early Saints knew their leader was refining the texts; later Church leaders discussed it openly for decades afterward. Far from being a scandal somebody buried, revising the language of a revelation between printings was the routine work of getting the texts ready, done out in the open and approved by a vote.
It was also written into the Church's own scripture before any of the alleged backdating took place. In November 1831, four years before the 1835 printing, a revelation that became the preface to the Doctrine and Covenants said the commandments were given to imperfect men "in their weakness, after the manner of their language," and that "inasmuch as they erred it might be made known."[9] In other words, the Church's own canon said up front that revelations come through fallible human language and may be corrected. The CES Letter's unspoken rule, that any change to a revelation's wording proves it was fake, is a rule Joseph's scripture had rejected, in writing, years before the change in question.
The gaps in the 1835 text
The thin spots are real. Roughly two-thirds of the 1835 wording of Section 27 has no earlier surviving copy. The specific names, John the Baptist and Peter, James, and John, and the specific dates first appear in the written record in 1834 and 1835, years after the events they describe. An official Church History Topics essay grants that the early Saints' understanding of priesthood "developed over time and with the aid of continued revelation."[10] And the documentary trail for the priesthood restoration is thinner than for the First Vision or the Book of Mormon, partly because it began as a private event between two men by a riverbank, and private events leave fainter tracks.[11]
The CES Letter's blunt version is not the strongest one, either. The most thoughtful critics stop short of accusing Joseph and Oliver of a deliberate lie. They suggest instead that the two men genuinely thought God had given them authority, while the precise names, dates, and details only firmed up across the early 1830s, as the young Church reached for something solid to build on.
The critic Grant Palmer puts the careful version at its narrowest: you will not find detailed accounts naming John the Baptist or Peter, James, and John in any journal, letter, or printed page until the mid-1830s.[12] It is a claim about when the named figures got written down, and it concedes far more than the CES Letter's flat "nothing existed before 1835." It also leaves a loose end: the plain angelic-authority claim keeps surfacing earlier than the mid-1830s, in friendly and hostile sources alike, and Cowdery, who spent a decade excommunicated, never once backed away from it. That scholarly case has a section of its own in the in-depth version.
Grant all of that, and the believing case is still standing, just standing on more careful ground than the quick version a member grows up hearing would put it on. Yes, the published account picked up its names and specifics across the early 1830s. There is a wide canyon between "the wording grew" and "the whole thing was invented in 1835 and backed into the past," and the CES Letter needs you to step across it without noticing it is there.
Edited, not fabricated
The accusation equates two different acts: a published revelation getting longer, and a prophet fabricating events and disguising the date. The record will not carry that. The date was already in the older book. The angelic claim was already in hostile newspapers, in Joseph's 1832 history, and in Cowdery's 1829 self-description. The book the CES Letter calls empty was an unfinished collection of revelations smashed mid-printing, and it already calls Joseph an apostle. And the editing it treats as secret was approved by a public vote and written into scripture before it happened.
Whatever remains unsettled in this question, one piece of evidence stays solid. The priesthood theology the CES Letter says was retrofitted was already in print, in the Book of Mormon, before any retrofit could have started. Alma writes of the high priesthood "after the order of Melchizedek"; the Nephites receive authority to baptize.[13] That book was finished and on the table in March 1830, all 588 pages of its first edition; Joseph had dictated it the year before, in roughly sixty working days.[14] However early a critic dates the supposed forgery, the book predates it, doctrine and all. So the reader worried by the gaps has somewhere firm to set his feet.
Want the full case, including the strongest arguments the critics make and every source? Read the in-depth version.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Priesthood Restoration," no. 3, pp. 81-83. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Priesthood Restoration," no. 5, p. 83. ↩︎
"Revelation, circa August 1830 [D&C 27]," historical introduction, Joseph Smith Papers. The editors note: "Early manuscripts, including the copy featured here, contain only the first portion of the combined revelation as published in 1835... Although an earlier manuscript may have existed for the September portion, the earliest extant text for the expanded version of the revelation is the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants." Joseph Smith stated the revelation "was written at this time [early August 1830], and the remainder in the September following." The introduction also notes that "the versions published in 1833 in The Evening and the Morning Star and the Book of Commandments specified 4 September 1830 as the date" (citing "A Commandment Given, September 4, 1830," The Evening and the Morning Star, March 1833). https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-circa-august-1830-dc-27/1 ↩︎ ↩︎
"The Golden Bible," Painesville Telegraph (Painesville, OH), November 16, 1830. Reports Oliver Cowdery "pretends to have a divine mission, and to have seen and conversed with Angels." The article also reports that Cowdery and his associates claimed ordinances had not "been regularly administered since the days of the Apostles." Reprinted in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents, 5 vols. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996-2003), 2:271. http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/oh/painetel.htm ↩︎
Joseph Smith, History, circa Summer 1832, p. 1. Joseph Smith Papers. The history was written between July 20 and September 22, 1832, in Joseph Smith's hand and that of scribe Frederick G. Williams. The four cardinal events listed are: (1) "the testamony from on high"; (2) "the ministering of Angels"; (3) "the reception of the holy Priesthood by the ministring of—Aangels to adminster the letter of the Gospel—the Law and commandments"; and (4) "a confirmation and reception of the high Priesthood after the holy order of the son of the living God power and ordinence from on high to preach the Gospel." https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/1 ↩︎
"Articles of the Church of Christ" (1829 manuscript by Oliver Cowdery). Cowdery describes himself as "an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." See Scott H. Faulring, "An Examination of the 1829 'Articles of the Church of Christ' in Relation to Section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants," BYU Studies 43, no. 4 (2004): 57-91. https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/an-examination-of-the-1829-articles-of-the-church-of-christ-in-relation-to-section-20-of-the-doctrine-and-covenants ↩︎
On the July 20, 1833 destruction of the W. W. Phelps press in Independence, Missouri, which interrupted printing of the Book of Commandments before binding was completed, see Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 222-223; and the editorial introduction to "Revelation Book 1" at the Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-1/2 . The rescue of unbound sheets by Mary Elizabeth Rollins (age 15; born April 9, 1818, per her Joseph Smith Papers biographical entry, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/mary-elizabeth-rollins-lightner) and her younger sister Caroline Rollins (age 13; born 1820) is documented in Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner's later reminiscences. ↩︎
Book of Commandments 24:3 (1833), later Doctrine and Covenants 20:2. The 1833 text reads: "Which commandments were given to Joseph, who was called of God and ordained an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of this church." See "Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830 [D&C 20]," Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/articles-and-covenants-circa-april-1830-dc-20/1 ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 1:24-28 (received November 1, 1831). "Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding. And inasmuch as they erred it might be made known; And inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed; And inasmuch as they sinned they might be chastened, that they might repent..." ↩︎
"Restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The essay states: "During the first few years after the Church was organized, Joseph Smith and other early members of the Church did not use the terms Aaronic Priesthood or Melchizedek Priesthood to describe the authority they received. Their understanding of priesthood developed over time and with the aid of continued revelation." https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/restoration-of-the-melchizedek-priesthood ↩︎
The reason the pre-1835 trail is thinner than other foundational LDS claims is partly genre: priesthood restoration was originally a private event between two men in a wooded area near the Susquehanna, not a public claim documented for public record. Private events leave thinner trails than public ones. The First Vision has more personal narrative across more years; the Book of Mormon has 588 printed pages (1830 first edition) of public textual artifact; the Witnesses have signed published statements with cross-confirmation across decades. The priesthood restoration, by comparison, has scattered references in personal histories and letters, a documented expanded revelation, and a series of post-1834 published accounts. ↩︎
Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002). Palmer argues: "Accounts of angelic ordinations from John the Baptist and Peter, James, and John are in none of the journals, diaries, letters, or printed matter until the mid-1830s." The statement is defensible if "mid-1830s" includes 1834 and if "ordinations from John the Baptist" requires the specifically named identification, but is substantively narrower than the CES Letter's blanket "none of which existed in any previous Church records" claim. ↩︎
See Alma 4:20 (Alma "confined himself wholly to the high priesthood of the holy order of God"); Alma 13 (extended treatment of the high priesthood after the order of Melchizedek); Mosiah 18:17 (baptism by "power and authority of God"); 3 Nephi 11:25; 12:1 (Nephite apostles receive authority to baptize). The Book of Mormon was published in March 1830 and contains explicit priesthood theology — pre-dating any disputed canonical revisions and any priesthood-restoration "retrofitting" period on any reconstruction. ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon: 'Days [and Hours] Never to Be Forgotten,'" BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018). Establishes the roughly 60 working-day timeline (Welch computes 57 to 63 available full-time working days) for the Book of Mormon dictation in 1829, primarily April through June 1829, before the period the priesthood-restoration backdating claim addresses. ↩︎