The Know

Historical evidence linking Doctrine and Covenants 132 to Joseph Smith is strong.1 However, efforts to disassociate Joseph Smith from its origins persist today. Some claim that this text was an invention of Brigham Young or some other designing individual.2 Textual analysis, however, provides considerable evidence that this revelation on celestial marriage is an authentic document originating from the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Stylometry is a form of complex statistical analysis used to examine writers’ linguistic patterns. Since all authors use certain function words (such as and, the, of, any, and so on) in patterns distinct to themselves, it is possible to create style profiles from an author’s known writings that can distinguish his or her writings from those of other authors. Like fingerprints, these wordprints are unique to each author. Thus, by comparing the known stylistic profiles of candidate authors to the style found in a text of disputed authorship, it becomes possible to determine quite conclusively which person was, most likely, the author of that text.

Stylometry has proven to be an effective tool in answering questions about texts of disputed or unknown authorship.3 For example, this tool was used to determine that James Madison was the probable author of twelve disputed essays in the Federalist Papers.4 It has also been applied to many other texts, including some of Shakespeare’s alleged plays, certain books of the New Testament such as the books of Acts and Revelation, and also the Book of Mormon.5 A recent study has applied stylometric analysis to the revelation on marriage found in Doctrine and Covenants 132.6

The Data Sets Created and Analyzed

For this study, researchers collected thirteen bodies of texts and compared each with Doctrine and Covenants 132 (see figure 1). These texts were drawn from personal writings and other materials that are known to have been authored by the following writers: Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, William Clayton (the clerk who claimed to have first recorded section 132 as dictated by Joseph Smith), Joseph Kingsbury (who made a copy from Clayton’s document), Willard Richards, Thomas Bullock, Orson Pratt and Brigham Young. Those writings were used to create a style profile for each of these writers. Writing samples were also taken from known revelations of Joseph Smith given in Ohio (sections 38–57) and in Illinois (sections 124–26). Samples of non-revelatory writings attributed to Joseph Smith but scribed by others were also included in the sample used to create the stylistic profile of Joseph Smith.

Next, Doctrine and Covenants 132 was divided into two parts: a plural marriage part (verses 1–3, 29–40, 61–66) and a non-plural marriage part (verses 4–28, 41–60). This was done to determine if internal distinctions of style exist within the two parts of this revelation.

Researchers then used a resampling technique that randomly selected 6,000 samples of 2,500 words each, drawn from each of the thirteen groups of identified texts as well as from both parts of Doctrine and Covenants 132. To create word-use profiles, the researchers then counted the occurrences of 221 different function words. To identify the combinations of the function word frequencies that best distinguish the sets from each other, they then used stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA).7 Using these combinations of function word frequencies, they compared the two parts of section 132 to the candidate authors’ sets of texts.8 This all yielded strong conclusions.

The Results

Figure 1 shows the distance, or differences, found to exist between the style present in each candidate author’s texts when compared with the stylistic wordprint found in Doctrine and Covenants 132. That degree of distance or dissimilarity is metrically known as Mahalanobis distance. In figure 1, the texts that are the most similar to section 132 are found at the bottom of the chart, while the more dissimilar ones are at the top.  

Figure 1. The shorter bars indicate less Mahalanobis distance—and thus, greater similarity—between those texts (and authors) and the text in Doctrine and Covenants 132.

As seen on this chart, the wordprints found in Joseph Smith’s revelatory sections coming from the early Kirtland years and from the following Nauvoo period are the most similar to Doctrine and Covenants 132.

Moving up the chart, Joseph Smith’s doctrinal epistles and instructions (sections 127–28), Brigham Young’s revelatory texts, and the Joseph Smith letters scribed by William Clayton are more dissimilar and are nearly twice as far from section 132 as are Joseph Smith’s other revelations.

The personal writings of all the other candidate authors are even more distinctly dissimilar to the text of section 132 since their writings are over two times and nearly three times farther from section 132 than Joseph Smith’s revelatory sections.

Next, researchers compared, with greater sensitivity, the five sets of texts in figure 1 that have the greatest degree of similarity with Doctrine and Covenants 132. Those five sets include (1) Joseph Smith’s early and (2) later revelations, (3) his epistles and doctrinal instructions or teachings, (4) Brigham Young’s revelations, and (5) Joseph Smith’s letters scribed by William Clayton. Figure 2 is a three-dimensional graph with 99.9 percent confidence ellipsoids around the samples to display the results. Only the five sets of texts closest in style to section 132 are shown here since all the other data sets are so far away that they can be easily eliminated for failing to display the same authorial style as section 132.

Figure 2

Function A, seen on the left side of figure 2, is the combination of word frequencies that identifies the greatest distinction among all the data sets. This function separates Joseph Smith’s early revelations in Doctrine and Covenants 38–57 (black) and later revelations in sections 124–26 (red) from material scribed by William Clayton (blue) and Joseph Smith’s epistles and instructions in sections 127–31 (green). This suggests that Joseph Smith’s revelations have their own distinct style even when compared to the Prophet’s other writings such as letters and reports of his teachings.

Function B, seen on the right side of the figure, identifies the next greatest distinction among the data sets: it separates Brigham Young’s authorial style in his revelations (light blue) from Joseph Smith’s revelatory style. Brigham Young’s personal writings are not even close to Joseph Smith’s style, so they did not make it into figure 2 at all.

Function C then shows the dimension having the next greatest distinction among the data sets and separates Joseph Smith’s non-revelatory letters scribed by Clayton (blue) from the Prophet’s epistles and doctrinal instructions as found in Doctrine and Covenants 127–31 (green).

Altogether, this figure shows in three dimensions how these five bodies of texts clearly separate, stylistically, from each other.

Finally, Figure 3 then shows how each of the five data sets in Figure 2 compares with Doctrine and Covenants 132 as that revelation is separated into its two parts—that is, its non-plural eternal marriage part and its plural eternal marriage part. The style in both parts of section 132 is thus not only seen to be closer to each other than to any of the other five sets but also is far closer to the stylistic measurements of the early revelations than to any of the other four somewhat similar sets of texts.

Figure 3

Moreover, both parts of D&C 132 are not meaningfully distinctive in style from each other, while they are closer in style to the set of early Joseph Smith revelations given in Ohio. The two parts of Doctrine and Covenants 132 and the early Joseph Smith revelations are next closest to the later Joseph Smith revelations given in Nauvoo, but the two parts of section 132 are not at all close to Joseph Smith’s non-revelatory materials, which are of a different genre. Moreover, both portions of section 132 are far from the writing in Brigham Young’s personal letters or from the writings of anyone else considered in this study (which are so far away that they are outside this cube). It is apparent that both parts of section 132 clearly group with other known revelatory texts from Joseph Smith and are significantly distinct from Brigham Young’s revelatory texts, which also have a style of their own.

Summary of Stylometric Results

In sum, the results of stylometric analysis show the following:  

• There is no meaningful distinction in style between those parts of Doctrine and Covenants 132 that discuss plural marriage and those that do not. The style of this revelation on eternal marriage is internally consistent.
• Stylistic evidence does not support the claim that any of the other candidate authors (Brigham Young, William Clayton, Hyrum Smith, Willard Richards, Thomas Bullock, Joseph Kingsbury, or Orson Pratt) wrote all or part of section 132. The personal writings of all the candidate authors are distinctly dissimilar to the text of section 132.
• The revelatory material from Brigham Young was nearly twice as far from the style of Doctrine and Covenants 132 as from the known revelatory material of Joseph Smith that come from Ohio (sections 38–57) and Nauvoo (sections 124–26).
• The authorial style in Doctrine and Covenants 132—both the non-plural marriage and plural marriage parts—aligns most closely to the Ohio revelations of Joseph Smith from 1831 and next to those given in Nauvoo.
• The stylometric evidence is consistent with the traditional teachings and beliefs about the origin of section 132 consistently held by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Why

Stylometric evidence is consistent with historical evidence firmly linking Joseph Smith to the revelation on marriage. The style of Doctrine and Covenants 132 is closest to Joseph Smith’s other revelations, with which it shares a similar and distinctive voice. Notably, the analysis shows no meaningful distinction in style between portions of the revelation that discuss plural marriage and that which do not.  

The results also do not support theories that seek to distance the Prophet’s teachings from the principles, doctrines, and practices of eternal marriage and plural marriage during his lifetime. The stylistic congruence between Doctrine and Covenants 132 and other known revelations of Joseph Smith is consistent with the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Joseph Smith’s death until today. Close stylistic similarity to Joseph Smith’s revelations from Ohio in 1831 (sections 38–57) lend support to evidence from later historical sources that trace the origins of Joseph Smith’s understanding of the marriage covenant’s eternal nature, including plural marriage, to the Ohio time period, although it could not be practiced until later.9

How early might Joseph Smith have inquired of the Lord about the principle of eternal marriage and even of plural marriage? In June 1829, Joseph encountered and soon published the guiding principle of plural marriage as he brought forth these words found in the Book of Mormon: “For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none. . . . For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things” (Jacob 2:27, 30). In addition, between December 1830 and March 1831, Joseph worked on the inspired version of Genesis 5:22–24:42, where he encountered the importance of plural marriage in establishing the house of Israel through the approval of plural marriage during the three patriarchal generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Should the Lord command, exactly the same limited requirement could apply to the restoration and restitution of the house of Israel in the dispensation of the fullness of times, bringing with it all the temple blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

While the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints no longer authorizes the practice of plural marriage, the precious doctrine of eternal marriage has been restored in the latter days in the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph Smith taught that the keys of the kingdom that were restored through him would make possible “a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories should take place, and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time . . . in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:18). Section 132 teaches that the sealing power was restored and bestowed upon Joseph Smith and that the keys and use of this power are carefully controlled and administered, for “there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred” (132:7).

This revelation also teaches that the eternal union of family relationships can extend beyond the grave. Eternal family relationships can be established when a faithful man and a faithful woman as husband and wife are sealed together for time and eternity by the keys of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood and the sealing powers of Elias and Elijah, which were restored to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Those keys have been retained and passed down from Joseph Smith to his successors, most recently to President Dallin H. Oaks. Those keys are administered in the temples of the Church today. We simply would not have our understanding of the eternal nature of family units, of the sealing power of the holy priesthood, or of the temple blessings of eternal marriage without this revelation.

Doctrine and Covenants 132 holds a uniquely significant place in Latter-day scripture. It provides an understanding of essential gospel covenants made available only through the Restoration. It stands as a fulfillment of the Lord’s early assuring promise to the Prophet Joseph Smith that “this generation shall have my word through you” (Doctrine and Covenants 5:10).