Reception

stay the winds— & let the prayers of the Saints to heaven appear

T fuses Bullock’s petition with Clayton’s purpose clause, creating a causal sequence no eyewitness records.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S01.4

com: but little more than the brute beast

T resolves Bullock’s abbreviation as “consequently” and selects Clayton’s comparative rather than Woodruff’s equality.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S04.2

if I should. be the man to comprehend: the God & I com: them to your heart

T combines Richards’s explaining with Clayton’s sealing formula into a fuller epistemic claim than any one eyewitness records.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S06.2

If I do not do it I have no right to revelation. inspn.

T selects Clayton’s strongest consequence, a duty to renounce prophetic claims, and expands its objects.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S06.3

What kind of a being was God in the beginning

T splices Clayton’s next-topic question and Bullock’s later proof announcement into the conscience argument, creating the received transition.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S07.5

lay down his body & take it up

T fuses Clayton’s “life” and paternal comparison with the other witnesses’ “take it up again.”

independent pass (Codex Sol) S10.2

it is plain beyond comprehension.

Bullock, the only witness at this point, wrote 'comprehension'; the printed text reads 'disputation'. Smith records the substitution as Bullock's own, made while preparing T. The two are near opposites: 'beyond comprehension' concedes that the doctrine exceeds the hearer, 'beyond disputation' claims it is settled. The received text has the confident reading and the manuscript the diffident one.

Smith, p. 290 n. 43

Roshed the head

T supplies a grammatical parsing of the third element of *Bereshit* that no report has: 'Sheit, gramatical termination.' The eyewitnesses stop at 'the head', and Clayton records the question 'sheet where do it come from—' unanswered. The printed explanation therefore represents editorial tidying of an argument the reports leave incomplete.

Smith, p. 291 n. 48

is the true meaning. of the word—

T inserts 'Baurau, signifies to bring forth' into the Genesis 1:1 analysis. Smith states flatly that this does not reflect the sources at this point, though the word does appear later in several of them. The effect is to move the argument about *bara* forward, so the received text has the creation verb glossed before Joseph Smith reaches it; Clayton's struck 'Barau' a few words earlier is the only manuscript trace anywhere near it.

Smith, p. 291 n. 49

sheet where do it come from

T turns Clayton’s question into an asserted grammatical gloss unsupported by another eyewitness.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S15.4

contemplated the creation of the worlds that was created at that time

T selects Clayton’s plural worlds against Woodruff and Richards’s singular world.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S16.2

an old book in the Latin Greek Hebrew & German

T adopts Clayton’s identification of the polyglot as a New Testament, absent from the other eyewitnesses.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S17.1

I shod. not have brot. up this wod only to shew that I am right

T serializes Bullock’s and Clayton’s likely parallel rationales as two distinct statements.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S17.6

same as you wod. organize a Ship

T selects Bullock’s technical “organize” over Clayton’s “build,” shaping the received creation analogy.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S18.2

that nothing can destroy they never can have an ending they exist eternally

T follows Clayton’s relative-duration formulation and omits Bullock and Richards’s explicit no-beginning claim.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S18.3

Make a man appear a fool before he gets through if he dont believe it

T converts Clayton’s third-person taunt into Joseph’s first-person threat.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S19.4

their Spirits coexisted with God

Bullock has 'coexisted with God', Clayton 'existed coequal with God'. T follows Clayton against Bullock, and so the printed text carries 'coequal' here even though it carries 'immortal' three lines earlier. This is the sentence from which the later tradition took its language: Smith traces the Utah redactors substituting 'co-equal' throughout and B. H. Roberts replacing it with 'co-eternal' in 1907–09. Coexistence asserts only that the spirits were there; coequality asserts parity.

Smith, p. 139; Smith, p. 140; Smith, p. 171

All the spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement

T relocates Clayton’s S22 enlargement claim to close S21, shaping the ring argument’s received conclusion.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S21.4

the greatest responsibility that God has laid upon us to seek after our dead—

Clayton has 'when his commandments touch us'; T prints 'teach us'. Touching and teaching are different relations between the commandment and the hearer, and the printed reading is the likelier misreading of a longhand hand than the reverse. Woodruff and Richards both report the surrounding thought as being about God's view of time rather than about commandments at all, so no eyewitness supports T's reading.

he has got to say that the Sun does not shine while he sees it he has got to deny J. C. when the heavens are open to him—

T shifts Bullock's present-tense 'are open' to 'were open,' making the opening of heaven narratively prior rather than standing open at denial.

independent adjudication of Lane A unsure call 5

when a man begins to be an enemy he hunts him—

Bullock's object is third person: the apostate hunts his victim, whoever that is. T reads 'me'. Woodruff and Clayton both have the first person in their neighbouring clauses, so the printed reading has support in the sense of the passage but not in the sentence Bullock wrote. The effect is to make a general statement about apostasy into a statement about the danger to Joseph Smith, six weeks before Carthage.

In my Fars. mansion there are many mansions &c

Bullock has 'my Father's mansion', Woodruff 'my father's Kingdom', T 'my father's house'. Only T agrees with John 14:2. Bullock's singular mansion containing many mansions is the sort of thing a hand taking dictation produces, and he struck a false start immediately before it; but the printed correction to the King James wording is an editorial act, not a report, and it is what fixed the familiar form of the quotation in the tradition.

for your husband has gone to wait until the resn.

T inserts an editorial parenthesis identifying the death in question. No report has it, and it is not speech: it is the printed text supplying for a reading audience the context a hearer in the grove already had. It is recorded here because it is one of the few places where the composite's editorial voice is visible on the page.

Mothers you shall have your Children for they shall have it—

Bullock's 'they shall have it' has no antecedent; T resolves the pronoun to 'eternal life'. Woodruff and Richards both have the promise without any such clause, so the resolution has no manuscript warrant. It is a small editorial decision with a doctrinal result: what the reports leave a dangling pronoun, the received text makes a statement about infant salvation.

& be living in the burng. of God—

Bullock, the only witness here, wrote 'burng.'; T prints 'learning'. Burning belongs to the sermon's Isaiah 33 language, in which God dwells in everlasting burnings and the risen enter them; learning belongs to nothing in the discourse. The likeliest account is a misreading of Bullock's own hand in the print shop, and its effect is to replace an image of glory with an image of instruction at the climax of the promise to mourning mothers.

the Baptism of Water witht. the Baptism of Fire & the H G. attending it are necy

T states both that water baptism alone 'is of no use' and that the three 'are necessary'. Bullock, its source here, has only the necessity; Richards calls the three inseparably connected, which is a claim about their relation rather than about the worthlessness of one; and Woodruff, who does say John's baptism was good for nothing alone, was not used in the composite. The strengthening in the printed text therefore does not come from the reports it was made from.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S34.1; upheld in the second pass (cursor-grok-4.6-high, data/REJECTIONS.md); adjudicated by the principal 2026-09-15

I call upon all to say I— (shouts of I)

Bullock has a call to the whole congregation and a general assent. T restricts the call to the German speakers and makes them warrantors of the translation. The narrowing converts a rhetorical appeal into a claim of corroborated expertise, and no report supports it. Richards's nearest clause has Joseph Smith calling on all men to repent, which is a different act.

I rejoice in hearing the test of my aged friend—

Two changes in one clause. JSP flags Bullock's 'hearing' as possibly 'bearing', and T prints 'bearing'; more consequentially, T pluralises 'friend'. Smith identifies the singular as a reference to Sidney Rigdon, who had spoken at length earlier in the conference, and reads the plural as an editorial decision taken during the August 1844 succession crisis to avoid appearing to endorse Rigdon's standing. The plural is in no report.

JSP B n. 85; Smith, p. 43; Smith, p. 287 n. 89; Smith, p. 298 n. 89

when I am called at the trump & weighed in the balance you will know me then

T sides with Bullock against Richards and heightens the promise with “all” and the ark-angel.

independent pass (Codex Sol) S35.6