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Reliable D&C commentary?


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The sister I minister to would like some kind of commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants that gives context and history for when the revelations were made and sections added etc. from trustworthy sources like "BYU professors".   She is a big studier  so books for the general public are good, but she likes scholarly works as well. 

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Rain said:

The sister I minister to would like some kind of commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants that gives context and history for when the revelations were made and sections added etc. from trustworthy sources like "BYU professors".   She is a big studier  so books for the general public are good, but she likes scholarly works as well. 

 

Any suggestions?

These are very good:

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/articles/new-doctrine-and-covenants-study-resources

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The Joseph Smith Papers Project has a reference of when each revelation was received/recorded/dictated and it's associated chapter in various editions of the Doctrine and Covenants (as well as its precursors) 

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/back/corresponding-section-numbers-in-editions-of-the-doctrine-and-covenants

She can then link through from each revelation to get historical context etc. 

 

edit: Looks like Dan beat me. I guess this is why I should refresh before posting :P

Edited by JustAnAustralian
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I am not sure what you mean by reliable. It is not like there are a lot of evil doers spending hundreds of hours producing unreliable commentaries. I don't think you would go wrong with anything published withing the past 30 years. Deseret Books has a long list of books for sale. If they are looking for history, a commentary may not be the place to go as it would only provide enough context for a particular revelation but brevity invariably leads to a distortion of the facts since history is complicated. A book like Rough Stone Rolling would be a great starting point. 

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7 hours ago, Rain said:

The sister I minister to would like some kind of commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants that gives context and history for when the revelations were made and sections added etc. from trustworthy sources like "BYU professors".   She is a big studier  so books for the general public are good, but she likes scholarly works as well. 

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

Try "Come Follow Up" on BYU TV.  It is a follow up on the weekly Come Follow Me" with some "star" profs. and the episodes are on the same subjects as the Come Follow Me stuff. But the lessons are not what I would call "scholarly" - there are children and teens in the small audiences, and they come up with questions which seem canned, but I still find the lessons quite valuable

https://www.byutv.org/comefollowup

It's kind of fun to see the profs as plain old sunday school teachers instead of scholars- but all of their knowledge just gives even the most mundane subject matter a good spiritual foundation.

This is not really scholarly stuff but hits the high points every week --it is a pretty good lesson., quite a bit better I think than the Come Follow Me lessons out of the book.

 

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7 hours ago, Derl Sanderson said:

I would trust Steven Harper with my brother-in-law's restored 1965 Mustang. First rate, faithful scholar and excellent writer (not my brother-in-law ... Harper!).  This book is a good one!

Do you have a picture (of the Mustang, I mean: Not of Steven Harper or of your brother-in-law, though both, I'm sure, are tremendously photogenic! ;):D)?

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On 1/3/2021 at 4:42 PM, Rain said:

The sister I minister to would like some kind of commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants that gives context and history for when the revelations were made and sections added etc. from trustworthy sources like "BYU professors".   She is a big studier  so books for the general public are good, but she likes scholarly works as well. 

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

The new resources from Doctrine and Covenants Central may be of interest. 

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On 1/3/2021 at 4:42 PM, Rain said:

The sister I minister to would like some kind of commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants that gives context and history for when the revelations were made and sections added etc. from trustworthy sources like "BYU professors".   She is a big studier  so books for the general public are good, but she likes scholarly works as well. 

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

I love the “Doctrine and Covenants Made Harder” and all the other “made harder” books. It isn’t  commentary, rather it is a book full of well thought out questions that very rarely come with answers.

https://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Covenants-Made-Harder/dp/0842528725/ref=nodl_

I personally find commentary books boring, the expanded insights provided in commentaries don’t stick with me. the questions posed in the “made harder” books spark genuine interest and it forces the reader to ponder themselves and come up with conclusions.

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28 minutes ago, Fether said:

I love the “Doctrine and Covenants Made Harder” and all the other “made harder” books. It isn’t  commentary, rather it is a book full of well thought out questions that very rarely come with answers.

https://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Covenants-Made-Harder/dp/0842528725/ref=nodl_

I personally find commentary books boring, the expanded insights provided in commentaries don’t stick with me. the questions posed in the “made harder” books spark genuine interest and it forces the reader to ponder themselves and come up with conclusions.

I really like the Book of Mormon one.

She is very different in her studies though.  She used to teach Methodist Sunday School before she became a member.  My husband and son ministered to her first.  One day they talked to her about studying something and she pulled out this big stack of books. She does not do this half hearted! Lol.  She loves commentary book, but doesn't just assume they know all.  

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On 1/6/2021 at 8:23 AM, Rain said:

I really like the Book of Mormon one.

She is very different in her studies though.  She used to teach Methodist Sunday School before she became a member.  My husband and son ministered to her first.  One day they talked to her about studying something and she pulled out this big stack of books. She does not do this half hearted! Lol.  She loves commentary book, but doesn't just assume they know all.  

Reminds me of my similar background in a church called the Church of Christ.  When I joined the Church in 1989 I was given a big stack of "anti-Mormon" books and used an even larger stack of books, one or two at a time, of Church history books from the ward library... the ward librarian let me check them out for free... to delve more into that background.  Sometime around that same time I also became aware of a digital collection of books called the "Personal Gospel Library" that could be purchased at the Deseret bookstore for about $50 which had the whole collection of Church history books plus another version written by B,.H. Roberts as well as a LOT of other good books and since I had about an hour each way commute to work on a train where I could read comfortably I was able to get through all of those in about a year or so and then I started to read through them again.  I particularly enjoyed reading the Church history books written by Joseph Smith and read through that 3 times and started again a 4th time before my commute situation changed.  I was able to see and understand a lot better about how the D&C came together as Joseph wrote in his daily or almost daily journals.  I've heard the books written for the Joseph Smith Papers project sheds some more light on some more material that wasn't covered as well in his Church history books but I haven't read any of those books yet, but I feel I got a pretty good sense of things from the Church history books I did read.  I was hungry for that knowledge and kept reading until I felt sufficiently satisfied.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This sister told me she would like to get "Joseph Smith's Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion from the Joseph Smith Papers", but we are not finding it anywhere in paper form.  Does any one know if it is even available in that form and if so where?

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22 hours ago, Rain said:

This sister told me she would like to get "Joseph Smith's Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion from the Joseph Smith Papers", but we are not finding it anywhere in paper form.  Does any one know if it is even available in that form and if so where?

I believe that publication is available in electronic form only.  

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