During his lifetime, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offered many discourses for the instruction of his followers. He lived prior to the active use of shorthand methods and so he relied on followers to record his teachings as best they could. From the beginning of his religious leadership, he tried to encourage the Church he orgainized to keep records of all official matters. The imperative was carried out with varying success. More often than not it is personal diaries and journals that furnish us with a record of Joseph Smith's extemporaneous speeches. Nevertheless the Church did keep records of many important matters such as Joseph Smith's revelations and the decisions of various Church tribunals. Unfortunately, Joseph's sermons were often simply noted by phrases like "President Smith gave much valuable instruction" with little or no detail of what was said.
As the Church expanded however, more skilled note-takers became associated with Joseph Smith and we find by 1843 that there are several listeners who left significant records of his doctrinal statements and teachings. With multiple accounts available it is sometimes possible to approximate Joseph's exact words on a particular subject.
For the period from 1830 through 1833 the sources of Joseph Smith's public remarks for the most part are the official Church minutes. This record is meager.
Records for the period 1834 through 1838 are of variable frequency but are generally more extensive than those of the previous three years.
For the period from 1839 through 1844, many primary sources of Joseph's public remarks have been published in The Words of Joseph Smith, (hereafter WJS).1
We have used the sources found in WJS to begin our collection of teachings of Joseph Smith for the period 1839-1844 (we have not used the complete archive in WJS, just those which in our judgement have some doctrinal impact) together with a few other sources from writings and private meetings. We have divided the texts by topic and where multiple accounts exist of the same sermon we have placed the different records in parallel columns, hence the title of this work. As we collect more records we will gradually add to the present corpus. We have added some notes to the records to point out links between discourses and various themes that run through his teachings.
Of course one of our principal goals is to illustrate the effect the translation the book of Abraham had on Joseph Smith's thought and instruction. We believe the present collection shows that ideas from the book of Abraham 2 played a significant role in his teachings to the Saints during the period following its translation (post 1835).
We have divided the collection into segments for the years 1830-33, 1834-1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843 and 1844. You can go to the pages for these years by clicking on the links below:
1. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, (Orem, Utah: Grandin, 1991). Church historians who compiled the history of Joseph Smith made every effort to collect copies of Joseph Smith sermons. The different accounts of the same sermon were then amalgamated with varying results. See Howard C. Searle, "Early Mormon Historiography: Writing the History of the Mormons," Ph.D. Dissertation, UCLA, 1979. p. 270ff.
2. See A Joseph Smith Commentary on the Book of Abraham, (Provo, Utah: BOAP, 1999).