Mormon Book Reviews – An Interview With Denver Snuffer
The following interview of Denver Snuffer was conducted by Steven Pynnaker on April 14, 2026 and was originally posted to the MBR YouTube channel. Steven Pynnaker: Welcome to Mormon Book Reviews: “Where an Evangelical Encounters the Restoration.” I’m your host, Steven Pynnaker, and I’m very excited about this guest of mine that has returned to the channel. His name is Denver Snuffer, and I’ve gotten to, I feel, become friends with him over the course of the last few years. The interview that we did with him—still—people still bring up to me. When I was at the Journal of Mormon Polygamy Conference last month, I had quite a few people come up to me, tell me how much they enjoyed that interview. So years later, that conversation still resonates in a lot of spaces, and I’m really honored and privileged to have Denver coming back on the program. Before we get started in the interview, I just want to let people know this is my very first interview in our new temporary studios. Our home has been torn down as of last week, and we are expecting for the new home to be delivered later this month. So we, Mom and I, want to ask/thank you for all your thoughts and prayers during this stressful time, but we’re grateful to be at our neighbor’s house, and we’re grateful to have a place that we can record some further important episodes here on MBR. Denver Snuffer, welcome back to the program. Denver Snuffer: Well, it’s good to see you again. I never like or enjoy being interviewed, but, you know, I’m willing to do it, and I’m grateful to talk to you again. I was glad to meet your mom. SP: Yes, Denver got to meet my mom, and that was great. She was really enjoying meeting him, as well, and hopefully, if he gets his way out to Florida, or we get back out there to Utah, we’ll have dinner sometime. I did want to say, too, that we’re, interestingly enough, we were supposed to tape this morning, and some things came up on Denver’s end, but actually, I think it was a blessing in disguise. Because shortly after, when we were supposed to tape our episode, Dr. Benjamin Park, he posted a video about Denver Snuffer and his “movement,” and I asked Denver to review it, and he is going to, but we’re gonna do that at the end of the interview. The main reason: at Thursday, I was having dinner with a friend, and he shared with me some new Scriptures that have been produced by this Covenant Christians movement. And I want to share with everybody this website real quick, just so people can see this, so they can… And I will have a link to this. It’s a… “What is a Covenant Christian?” is the question that’s asked, and this tells you everything about it. And there’s some really interesting things that you can… Lots of resources that you can use to find things, as well as a place that you can actually purchase these Scriptures that we’re gonna talk about. But before we get into that (we will revisit this site), but we actually wanted to talk about these Scriptures. So I was having dinner Thursday night with a friend. He shares with me these Scriptures. I text Denver. I’m like, Oh my gosh, like as I’m reading, going through it, it’s some of the most beautiful Scriptures I’ve ever seen and handled, and I was thoroughly impressed with them. And Denver was so kind to come on to talk about it. And I know you’re busy with the conference you just did this weekend. So, Denver, tell us, just share these Scriptures, because they’re astonishing, and tell us why you think these are so important. DS: Well, I’m actually holding the three-volume set up. I think you can see it on camera. There’s three volumes. Volume one is called the Old Covenants. Volume number two is called the New Covenants, and volume number three is called the Modern Covenants. The Scriptures that have been put together in the past (our leather, three-volume set of Scriptures) needed to be reprinted because material has expanded. There’s more to be included now. And the project included originally (when we were looking to put a set of Scriptures into print), we were looking for certain specifications to be made. The specifications were provided by a book reconstructionist who looked at the Royal Jongbloed Press out of the Netherlands and the quality of the work that they did, and he provided a list of specifications for the first set of leather-bound Scriptures. And a printer in India who really wanted to get into the Bible-binding business agreed to match all of the specifications, and the first set was printed in India. And because he was trying to get into the market and because we were very price-sensitive, the first set was printed by a startup (not a startup printer, but a startup Bible publisher) in India. Then enough demand was created over the years since that first printing that we needed to do a second printing, and the decision was made on the second print to go ahead and go to Jongbloed in the Netherlands and see what they could do for us in terms of the best printer in the world at binding Bibles. Could they do our project for us, and what would it cost? Now, it’s probably five times as much money for the three volumes in the second print than it was for the first print. However, they literally are some of the best-bound, highest quality materials that you can get from any place in the world. They are printed on 100% cotton and linen paper that’s provided out of France. The leather coverings come from England. The printing is done in the Netherlands, and they are meticulous. The copies all get gilded on the edge, but in addition to gilding, they also spray the edges so that on top of the gilding, there’s also paint. The gilding is intended to be a barrier against insects eating the paper. SP: Okay. DS: The gilding will wear off. (It’s actually metal; it’s gold. It will wear off by repeated use.) So Jongbloed puts ink on/over the top of that so that if the gilding wears off, there’s still a barrier for the insect through the ink. SP: Okay, so as I was paging through it the other day, I noticed that at one angle you look at it, it’s gold. I don’t know if you can pick it up on the camera, but at another angle, it actually turns red. Is that the paint? DS: It does turn red on every single leather-bound volume that is not blue, but in the blue volumes (and I’ve got blue leather coverings), they are the only ones that get a blue paint on top of the gilding. So mine has blue ribbons, blue leather, and then the blue overspray. All of the rest of them have red ribbons, have red overspray on top of the gilding; and it doesn’t matter if you get black, if you get brown/tan, or if you get red, it’s still gonna be red overspray and red ribbons. Blue is the only one that’s an exception. SP: Well, that’s the one I want to get because my favorite color is blue. So, Denver, why did they decide to… I mean, because again, these are not inexpensive, and you’re not making a profit off of these, so there’s none of that going on. What made you decide to go to that level of Scriptures at that price point? Because it’s not inexpensive. But the quality is astonishing at the same time. So how do you balance those two? DS: Yeah, there’s probably a little bit of history that informed my agreement with the people that were putting it into print, and that comes from Galileo, who wrote a text that got him in trouble with the Vatican. The Vatican gathered up and destroyed… I think there are only three copies of the book that remained after the censorship and the book-burning that was done, but I think two of those are in the Vatican archives; but one of them managed to get over the Alps and survived, and as a consequence, the book remains in print through today in various languages because a copy survived. These are intended—by the materials that got used and by the binding and the effort that got put together—these are intended to be able to go into daily use and survive daily use for five centuries. We wanted a durable product so that some amount of what it is that we do will survive on into future generations. And so I was persuaded that we make a run of books that are survivable, durable, everyday usable, and still be something that would be around for generations. I expect my grandkids and great-grandkids will use these very same volumes that I’m using (and marking up, by the way). And so it was durability, it was survivability, it was permanency that persuaded me. There were other people who just fell in love with the quality of the book that was being put out by… I mean, Jongbloed prints Bibles. Their primary forte is the production and sale of Bibles in various languages for various denominations; and just the quality of the book… If you pick up one of their Bibles, you have the same reaction that you have when you look at one of these sets, that is, that it feels like a very important, durable book. The other thing that… The pitch size on the first set was, I believe, 9.2. These are 11 pitch size, so they’re much larger print. They’re easier to read. There are some people who strain their eyes to read the first edition. These were made larger in part because that was the model that Jongbloed used in other Biblical print jobs that they had done with other versions of the Bible to make it readable, to make it like an actual text that you’re going to use and let it inform you. SP: That’s so interesting to me. Before we get actually into the content of these Scriptures, Denver, was there anything else about the production that you wanted to go into? By the way, what I’m also interested in is the fact that this is a company that publishes Bibles. Was there any pushback to publishing other Scriptures that were not part of the (if you will) “mainstream” Christian canon? DS: We’ve run into that issue with other printers. We did not run into that issue with Jongbloed. We’ve had people outright say they’re not interested, and it’s for religious reasons. Jongbloed did not take that attitude, and they are the best. I just think that it’s foolish for someone who is in the business of printing and publishing to allow a religious bias to prevent them from practicing their craft. Jongbloed didn’t do that. SP: Okay, so that’s good to know. There’s other people out there, other groups, of course, that are producing scripture within the Restoration. And just to make you aware of it, this is a company that apparently does not discriminate against the Restoration, so that’s good on them that they understand the importance. And also sounds like, to me, they’re a good company probably to work with. DS: Very good. The one thing that they did require, however, was a minimum order because it takes so much to set up and do a run of a print and a binding of a book. There’s a minimum order, and we had to have multiple thousands of volumes printed. However, they were willing to count the total run of volume 3, volume 2, and volume 1 as meeting their minimum order quantity. So we didn’t have to get that quantity for each one of the three volumes; we just had to get that for the total of all of them combined. And because they are expensive and because it did present a financial challenge, one of the things that was done is before any contract was let, a pre-order was done. People who were interested could put their name in that they were willing to buy. They had to make a deposit. They either had to pay for it in full or they had to pay for at least half before and half upon delivery. And so the funds were gathered. Jongbloed required 50% of the print job to be paid upon placing the order and 50% at delivery. And so we had to gather the funds. There had to be enough interest. The number of people that were willing to pre-order and pay didn’t allow for a whole lot of excess copies to be made. A few people stepped up and agreed to fund additional copies to be printed that were unsold, and as a consequence of that, there are still some available sets for purchase. There aren’t a lot of extra; there are some. But also, you know Benchmark Books: They bought 10 copies, and they are selling their 10 copies. They ordered in advance when they heard it was becoming available. So there are still a handful that are available. But at that conference yesterday, I think they sold another dozen or so copies of the sets. So, you know, day by day the number diminishes. I assume we will have yet another printing at some point in the future. And I assume that the future printing will run like this one. That is, the demand will have to be there. People have to pre-order, and people will have to make a deposit. But I don’t know how long it’ll be between the two. It’s been years after the first run of leatherbound Scriptures before these got printed. But I’m sure there will be more editions printed at some point in the future. It’s also available as print-on-demand. But when you’re dealing with these kinds of texts, this volume is going to be substantially bigger in a print-on-demand, because they’re using cellulose paper. And so the size of the volumes are gonna be significantly bigger and far less portable than they are in the leather-bound edition. But you can get them through Amazon as a print-on-demand set if what you want is just the information. SP: Just the actual text itself; you can get print-on-demand that way. Okay, that’s good to know for people. So we’ll have a link in the description to that Amazon link. So for those of you who just want the content, you’ll be able to do that. Now, question I have is, I have your previous set that one of your friends graciously sent to me, and I’ve had the opportunity to go through those Scriptures. And those are actually, I thought that those volumes were pretty impressive as well. If somebody were to have this, the previous set, and now what would be the reasoning you would… What’s the difference between that set, and have there been changes made, additions? DS: Yes. SP: Maybe talk a little bit about some of the… Compare and contrast the two, the previous edition and this new one. DS: Well, yeah, there have been additions made. But in addition to it including more material, when the first edition of the Scriptures were printed… The Book of Mormon, for example, when it was originally put out as a volume didn’t have chapters; it didn’t have verses, but it did have paragraphs—actually, it did have chapters—but it had paragraphs. The numbering and the versification of that didn’t happen until several editions later. And I think it was Orson Pratt who was responsible for adding the chapters and verses. And when he did that, he more or less mirrored what the King James writers had done with staccato verses. You know, they’re short; they’re almost concepts or phrases, as opposed to sentences. And so, when you become familiar with the Scriptures, and you’ve bought them from Deseret Book, and you’re using King James Bibles and LDS chapters and versification, you would see the Scriptures laid out in one format. We laid out that first edition in paragraphs, mirroring the original Book of Mormon paragraph identification, and we numbered the paragraphs. That created a difficulty for anyone that had spent a lot of time studying the Scriptures. If you’ve got a verse and a chapter in mind/in your memory, to translate that from chapters into verses, paragraphs into verses, it becomes difficult. So, one of the things that has been done in this new leather set… I’m gonna see if I can get it close enough to the camera to see it, but on the one side of the page, there is red traditional numbering that you would find in any King James version of the Bible. On the same page, but opposite when you open it up, is the RE (the Restoration Edition) chapter and paragraph identification. In the column, the paragraphs appear and the numbering for the paragraphs are there, but inside each of the paragraphs, the verses appear. And for example, on this page, there is a paragraph, or excuse me, a new chapter nine. I don’t know if you can see that. SP: Yeah, I see there’s a new chapter nine. Yep. DS: Yeah, and all of the traditional numbering (verses and chapters), all of them are included in this new edition. They’re in red, and the verses are superscripts, and the chapters begin with a large number in red that tells you what chapter you’re looking at, but we also include our own identification by chapter and paragraph number. SP: Just to clarify, so basically you’re using your chapter, your breakdowns of the paragraphs, but then you’re including the versification of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints edition of the Book of Mormon (just keep in mind, of course, the RLDS has their own thing going on when it comes to those as well). But so basically, if you are a person who uses The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints versification, you’ll be able to use this and cross-reference it. DS: Yeah, the navigation tools that you would be familiar with in a King James Bible or in an LDS Book of Mormon are all included in this edition in the red lettering inside the text, with the chapter orientation on the top left-hand side, the RE new numbering orientation [on the] top right-hand side, but all of the paragraph numbers are included. So you can find a citation. If someone is trying to get you to look at 1 Corinthians 6:13, you can find that easily using the red superscripts and the red chapter identification. But you’ll also find, since the letters were written with ideas in mind, all of the letters are a single chapter in the RE edition. But if you still want to go to King James versification, it’s all included. And so in terms of navigation, these are a lot easier than the first edition. And if you’re talking to someone who has a traditional Bible or who is acquainted with LDS chapters and verses, it’s far easier to give them a cite. “Well, where do you find that in the Scriptures?” Now we have an easy way to say you can find it here. Before, you just had to pick up both books and look at them carefully in order to find the wording where the one and the other is duplicated, because the citations were not replicated. We did our own chapters and paragraphs. SP: Okay, interesting. So I guess for me, the question would be, and for a lot of people in the audiences who maybe have their own version of the Book of Mormon and Doctrines and Covenants (maybe their triple combo or their quad, whatever you want to call it), what would you say, what makes this series that your movement has created that’s highly informed by your work and your translations and stuff, what would you say, what makes this a better translation, maybe gives a better, fuller understanding of the Restoration? Is this something that’s not only for people that are part of your movement, but this can be used for anybody who believes in restoration of Scriptures? How would this help inform them? DS: Yeah, I think there are a number of things that distinguish this set from anything that has gone on before. The first point I would make is that on the 7th of December 1830, Joseph Smith (and this is a revelation that appears both in the Doctrine and Covenants as section 35, but it’s section 18 of our Teachings and Commandments—but it’s D&C 35), in this revelation, in December of 1830, Joseph Smith was getting a revelation that was received, addressed to Sidney Rigdon and mentioning Joseph Smith, and it states this, And a commandment I given unto you [that’s Sidney Rigdon] that you [Rigdon] shall write for him [that’s Joseph Smith], and the scriptures shall be given, even as they are in [mine] own bosom, to the salvation of [mine] own elect (T&C 18:6). That commences a process that has become known as the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, but that is mentioned in over 15 revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, and I’ve marked all of them as I’ve gone through. The effort that Joseph and Sidney Rigdon made to get through the Bible and to write it as it appears in God’s own bosom resulted in a number of things that… LDS members would identify the Pearl of Great Price Book of Moses as a separate set of Scripture; that’s part of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. The Pearl of Great Price includes Matthew chapter 24; that was part of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. There was a revelation about the three degrees of glory that is known as Doctrine and Covenants section 76. That was not part, but was inspired by the translation of the book of John and an inquiry being made about the afterlife (because it appeared that there couldn’t be just a single division of heaven and hell). And so Doctrine and Covenants section 76 came as revelation, not as part of the translation of the Bible, but as an independent revelation inspired by the translation of the Bible. There’s another revelation that comes. This one is in February of 1831, so we’re now a few months after that. This is in Doctrine and Covenants 42, but it’s section [26] in ours. It includes this as part of that revelation, You shall ask, and my scripture shall be given as I have appointed (T&C 26:15) and so on. So it’s being mentioned again in a revelation in both LDS Scriptures and in ours. There’s another one, which is section 45 of the Doctrine and Covenants, section 31 of our Teachings and Commandments: …it shall not be given unto you to know any further than this, until the New Testament be translated, and in it all these things shall be made known. Wherefore, I give unto you that you may now translate it, that you may be prepared for things to come, [and] truly I say unto you that great[er] things await you. (T&C 31:13). And it goes on from there. Well, the effort that Joseph Smith had made to produce this resulted also in Joseph Smith warning that if the fullness of the Scriptures (and that’s what he called his Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, together with the Book of Mormon; they together comprised it—not the Bible, [but] the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, together with the Book of Mormon), he said, “If the fullness of the Scriptures are not received by the Church, then it would yet fall.” When Brigham Young led the Mormon refugees out of Illinois, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible remained in the possession of Emma Smith. She would later gift it to the church her son Joseph Smith III led. Joseph Smith III would let the (then the) Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints put into print the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, and that’s the one that most people have become acquainted with. However, it has been in recent times that the actual Joseph Smith translation material (in fact, I’ve got a set of that in the other room here) became actually available. So we can see what Joseph did. We can also see that some of what he did got left out. And we know that the committee of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, when they put the JST into print, the committee made changes: they deleted some of what he had done; they added some things that they believed belonged in there. So when the actual original material Joseph had left us became available, the effort was made to gather the actual work that Joseph Smith had done on the Bible as the text to be used in these Scriptures. In addition, while putting the Joseph Smith translation into the text, it was also… Everyone who’s acquainted with Joseph’s Nauvoo-era talks knows that Joseph just spontaneously, while giving a talk in Nauvoo, would say, “Here’s a quote…” and he would say, “I could give a cleaner translation or meaning of this.” He corrected some things in Ezekiel; he corrected some things in the New Testament—and he just did this spontaneously. Well, the conclusion that we made was “In for a penny, in for a dollar”: If we’re gonna get what Joseph Smith did to clarify the Scriptures as they appear in the Lord’s own bosom, we put in also all of the Nauvoo-era additions, corrections, or restatements that Joseph provided to Bible passages. So the most complete and the most inclusive—including the Nauvoo-era talks—version of the Joseph Smith translation of the Old and New Testaments are what are the source material for the Old Covenants and the New Testament portion of the New Covenants. SP: Okay, so that’s really interesting. So that’s a very fascinating approach that you took. So in one sense, what you’re saying is Joseph Smith’s final word on a particular verse is what you put in your edition. Is that correct? DS: Yes. Yeah. And as far as I know, no one’s ever done this. SP: No. DS: Therefore, this is—to the extent that you want to honor Joseph Smith and respect the work that he had done—this is the most correct and the most inclusive of anything that has ever been put into print. SP: Okay. So, and again, I also want to talk a little bit about… Because obviously, people think, “Well, Denver Snuffer, Denver Snuffer!” But this is a group effort that’s being done here. DS: Yeah. SP: So maybe talk about that as well, that this is not Denver Snuffer coming up from Sinai with pure Scriptures, but you’re… This is a collaboration that you’re doing, and you’re seeking consensus on this as well. DS: This is a massive effort, a research project that involved dozens and dozens of people on each part of the book, and a division of labor and proofreading; and all of the versification was done by volunteers that went through meticulously to cross-compare and to make sure that the text that was going to go into the printer was correctly aligned with the correct verses and the correct chapters, both for the RE version and the KJV LDS chapters and versification. The research project included consultation with volumes of research. The Book of Mormon text, which we haven’t talked about yet, required an enormous amount of effort by multiple parties consulting with numerous source materials, much of which became available both through Royal Skousen’s set of research books, as well as The Joseph Smith Papers publication of manuscripts and revelation texts—and all of those materials became available while we’re doing this project. In addition, the first effort… When a preliminary Joseph Smith translation of the Bible effort rolled out at a conference in St. George, Utah (preliminary to getting the Scriptures adopted and approved at a conference), the first publication of that resulted in a fellow stepping forward who essentially had made it his life’s work for over a decade to meticulously go through the Joseph Smith translation. He looked at what had been done in that first St. George conference publication, and he said, “We’ve relied way too much on what the RLDS Church published as the Joseph Smith translation, and we have not picked up on the fact that they were not faithful/their fidelity wasn’t to the Joseph Smith effort, it was to their own sensibilities.” And so he had (and he then provided) numerous corrections, and that led in turn to fixing what had been done as an initial proposal, and then re-looking at everything and re-examining it, at which point the Nauvoo-era corrections were also concluded as an appropriate addition. And so it got put out, it was put into the hands of hundreds and hundreds, thousands of people who had access to it to evaluate it before any vote would be taken to adopt it, and in that process, more improvements and more study was made. The Book of Mormon is a whole different subject than the Bible, because the Bible is the Joseph Smith translation. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand: Royal Skousen has spent half a century looking at every single edition of the different versions of the Book of Mormon. The entire printer’s manuscript… Joseph Smith dictated a translation, but that copy of the translation was not trusted in E. B. Grandin’s hands. Everything that was in that translation was hand-copied to the printer’s manuscript. We had 100% of the printer’s manuscript available, and it’s in The Joseph Smith Papers, it’s in the Skousen seven-volume effort; you can see every word of that printer’s manuscript. The original translation got put into the cornerstone of, I think it was the Nauvoo House, and then it was left there in the cornerstone to rot, and only about 22% of that survived. But from the 22% of that that did survive, you can look at that, and you can look at the printer’s manuscript, and we know that the copyist for the printer’s manuscript made a mistake about every page and a half. SP: Okay. DS: Then the printer’s manuscript got typeset, and since we’ve got 100% of the printer’s manuscript, and we still have facsimile copies of the first edition, we know that the print shop: #1: Supplied 100% of the punctuation. That was done by John Gilbert, who was employed at E. B. Grandin’s shop. None of the punctuation was done by Joseph Smith or by anyone who was affiliated with the Restoration. It was done by a guy that worked as a printer. And so one of the things, when we did the Book of Mormon, we looked carefully at the punctuation. We eliminated all of the punctuation we could get away with eliminating. We tried not to superimpose an interpretation through the punctuation. For example, there have been scholarly debates that have raged for a century and a half about Joseph Smith’s shifting viewpoint of the Trinity, that the Book of Mormon was originally a Trinitarian text, and that Joseph progressed in his understanding/his theology until he became something other than Trinitarian by the time you arrive at Nauvoo. I look at Lectures on Faith, where Joseph Smith is not a Trinitarian and is consistent with what he would later say in Nauvoo, and using Lectures on Faith as the guide, I repunctuated all of the Trinitarian… I call them “Trinitarian commas.” I got it repunctuated so that it was consistent to read it in the new punctuation, consistent with what’s in Lectures on Faith. And as a consequence, my suggestion is that since John Gilbert was a traditional Christian and a Trinitarian, John Gilbert is responsible for that debate, not Joseph Smith; and that I fixed the debate simply by changing punctuation. SP: Okay, can you give an example of that? Because I think that’s really an important thing that you’re bringing out here, because of course, many people describe the Book of Mormon as being pretty orthodox in its Christian beliefs, and very Protestant, and also arguably, I’ve actually argued that the Book of Mormon is arguably more Trinitarian than the New Testament. I want to get… Give me an example here, because I find this really intriguing. DS: Well, here’s the problem. If I’d known you were gonna ask that question, I’d have the verse at my hand. But I can tell you this. You will find it if you read Abinadi and his explanation and his doctrinal description given by Abinadi as he’s being tried for his life in the text of the Book of Mormon. Compare what you’ve got in a traditional Book of Mormon with Abinadi’s defense to the version of the Book of Mormon that we print in Volume 2, the New Covenants, and you will see that the Trinitarianism is resolved simply by replacing punctuation. SP: Okay, that’s… I think that’s important. I’m really glad you brought that out because I think that’s a different approach that I would like to share this with other Book of Mormon scholars. Honestly, I would… Denver, if I were you, I would consider maybe even submitting a paper to the Book of Mormon Studies Association about your finding because I think that’d be a really interesting approach that you’re taking to the Book of Mormon and looking at it through a different lens. DS: Well, I might do that, but it… The only reason I would consider doing that is if I thought it would be helpful to someone else. I’m not really interested in notoriety. SP: I get it. But I think that’s an important contribution you’re making to the Book of Mormon scholarship, too. DS: Well, I’ll give some thought to that. Now, having said that about the Book of Mormon, it was always Joseph Smith’s intent to publish the New Testament and the Book of Mormon together. You saw that in our first edition of the Scriptures. That is true in this one as well. The first thing you encounter in Volume 2 is the New Testament that appears as the start, and the second thing that you’ll find in Volume 2 is the Book of Mormon in the form that we have—insofar as it is possible to do so—corrected, repunctuated, and included. And then in Volume 2, there is also what is called A Glossary of Gospel Terms. All three of these are in Volume 2. The Glossary of Gospel Terms is an explanation of language or meanings that you find in Scripture as an effort to help clarify how to understand something and how the word usage is appeared. It’s actually quite a theological exposition, and I think, for example, if someone were to do nothing more than to take the Glossary of Gospel Terms and read it from front to back, you would get a better theological education than you get from some divinity schools. Just reading from the index, these are the words that get defined in the context… And I’ll just… the Glossary. I’ll just read you a handful: Aaronic Priesthood, Abominable/Abomination, Accountability, Accountability, Age of, Accuse, Adam, Adam-ondi-Ahman, Added upon, Adoption, Adultery, Agency… …and that’s the beginning of the A’s. I’ll skip to K’s: Keeper of the Gate Keys, Keys of the Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Kingdoms, Know the Lord, Know/Knowledge. Skipping to S’s: Sabbath Day, Sacrament/Lord’s Supper, Sacred Embrace, Sacred Information, Sacrifice, Saint, Salem, and so on. So each of those has an entry. Some of those entries are a page or two or more. Some are short and brief, but all of them are intended to help someone understand what the Scriptures mean. So Volume 1: Joseph Smith Translation, Old Testament. Volume 2: New Testament Joseph Smith Translation, Book of Mormon, and Glossary of Gospel Terms. Now, one other thing I’m gonna pause and point out, Volume 2 ends on a signature. So that’s the last page of Volume 2. Volume 1 doesn’t end on a signature. There’s over 20 pages in the back that don’t have anything on it but lined pages to allow you to make notes. So if you want to write notes into your Scriptures, you have over 20 pages in Volume 1 that you can use to add or write down or memorialize anything that you want to put into the Scriptures, including, if you choose, a genealogy of you and your family. Volume 3, which we haven’t gotten to yet but we will get to in a moment, ends much earlier on a signature. So there’s about 40 pages in the back of Volume 3 that are nothing more than lined pages that you can use to write your own entries and make whatever things you think suitable for preservation in the back of your Scriptures. So you have notes available in Volume 1 and Volume 3, and 2 ends on a signature so that there is no lined paper there. SP: Well, let’s get to Volume 3, because what I find so interesting is I was caught off guard when I was going through these Scriptures, and I was like, “Wait, we have two sets of Book of Mormon in this set?” So explain to us the third volume, what this is all about. DS: Okay, first, it’s called the Teachings and Commandments, which is in contrast to Doctrine and Covenants. You know that the doctrine in the Doctrine and Covenants was Lectures on Faith. SP: Yes, yes. Absolutely. DS: So theLectures on Faith have gone back into Teachings and Commandments. They were removed from the D&C, I think in 1928 [1921], without a vote of the people. They were canonized in 1835. They were never de-canonized, they were just deleted. I think Bruce R. McConkie made a point of that at one point and said that “they were adopted as scripture, and they are scripture.” Although they aren’t in any LDS Scripture, they are in our Teachings and Commandments. So the first thing you’ll find in the T&C (the Teachings and Commandments) is that the Joseph Smith History has been greatly expanded. We’ve taken what he was doing to recreate the early history of the Church—after John Whitmer stole the history he had been keeping, and therefore, after Whitmer, and Cowdery, and Harris, and John Whitmer (David Whitmer’s brother) had left in rebellion against Joseph in Missouri—Joseph set about in 1838 to rewrite a history for the Church. That is what we’ve come to know as the Joseph Smith History, because it is a rewriting and a recreation in 1838 of what had gone on but had been kept by John Whitmer. He still had copies of his earlier revelations; they were separate, but he wove the narrative to put into the Joseph Smith History his earlier revelations. So the Joseph Smith History in the Teachings and Commandments, Volume 3, is greatly expanded. And you’ll find that within the Joseph Smith History in the Teachings and Commandments—which is T&C section 1—it also includes what has been, by the LDS, put into the Joseph Smith History: Doctrine and Covenants sections 2, 3, 10, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 19, 21, 22, and 23. All of those are now part of the Joseph Smith History, woven in as he wove it in when he was writing his history. So that’s the first thing you’ll encounter: greatly expanded history by Joseph Smith. Then you’ll find that Joseph Smith’s revelations are included; however, they do not take the form that they take in the LDS version. Joseph Smith got a revelation; Oliver Cowdery went out to Missouri and took those with him. He would typeset (at a press that they had bought) a compilation of those revelations that he called the Book of Commandments. When he was compiling the Book of Commandments, Oliver Cowdery thought it was his prerogative to exercise some editorial control and to add his contributions. And so the Book of Commandments took the revelations by Joseph and expanded them to include material Oliver Cowdery thought wise to be included within them. The press got destroyed. The Book of Commandments, while it had been gathered together, didn’t survive to be in print. However, bootleg copies were smuggled out, and the bootleg copies made their way back to Kirtland where they had a press. And in 1835, the material that had been edited by Oliver as the revelations then were turned over to a committee headed by Sidney Rigdon—and Rigdon felt a similar liberty. And so he and a committee that put together the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835 made further editorial changes to Joseph Smith’s revelations as they rolled out the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. In the meantime, separate from the committee working on the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith took personal responsibility for and exercised complete editorial control over Lectures on Faith, so that when it went to the press, it went to the press with the Lectures on Faith being the very first part of the book (first part, larger print—and it was the “doctrine”), followed by smaller print—editorially-revised from Oliver and Sidney and a committee—the revelations given to Joseph Smith. Then that compilation was presented to and approved by a vote of a conference in Kirtland, Ohio and became the Doctrine and Covenants, a volume of Scripture that was accepted by the church. And it has been in that form that it has come down through the LDS Church, and we inherited that as the Doctrine and Covenants, minus the Lectures on Faith after 1928 [1921]. We went back and re-looked—because the original revelations are now available—we went back and looked and eliminated everything that had been added to the original Joseph Smith revelation by Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, or the committee, so that the revelation that gets blown up in the Doctrine and Covenants gets cut down in the T&C. And one example that I can point out pretty quickly is what becomes section 27 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Well, section 27 of the Doctrine and Covenants is section 8 in the Teachings and Commandments, and (as you can see) it’s two paragraphs. And you can go online and find this stuff. If you want to see the difference between what Joseph received as a revelation and what the LDS Church publishes after Oliver, Sidney, and the committee puts out, just compare section 8 of the T&C with section 27 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and you’ll find that the original revelation there (like many of the others, if you do a cross comparison) is significantly reduced in volume and more modest in content, with less grandiose reference to Peter, James, and John, and others that were added by folks who wanted to improve, I guess, the psychological effect upon the reader. We’ve gone back to the original. We’ve gone back and looked at the minimum of what Joseph Smith had actually received as his revelation. SP: So, I’m curious because, you know, why would you do that? If Joseph was okay with these expanded revelationsm why shouldn’t everybody else be okay with it? What’s your process of doing this? DS: For the same reason that Joseph was okay with giving 116 pages of the original manuscript to Martin Harris: Joseph was persuadable, and Joseph… He was told, “You’re no good at reading what’s in the hearts of men.” (He was told that after he had had the failure with the 116 pages.) Joseph was persuadable, and as a consequence of that… You know, look at the office of high priest, for example. The office of high priest (if you examine it in a biblical setting) is an Aaronic priesthood office held by Aaron and the oldest son/ grandson/great-grandson of Aaron to function in the Aaronic priesthood, performing the rites of the law of Moses. That’s what the high priest was. The idea of a high priest really fascinated Sidney Rigdon, and Rigdon really, really, really wanted a high priest office, which becomes—in the LDS Church—it becomes a Melchizedek priesthood office that is elevated above everything, excepting only an apostle or a president of the high priesthood. But technically, Joseph should never have been persuaded by Sidney. And I view a lot of what has happened within the Restoration as an accommodation that Joseph Smith was willing to make for the benefit of the people he was called upon to lead. So why would we go back and look only at the original statement in the revelation God presumably gave to Joseph Smith? In part, it is a way of saying we respect everything that Joseph did as a prophet, and we respect everything that God said to him directly. But the fact that Joseph Smith entertained other people’s notions—including Martin Harris’ insistence on taking the 116 pages—suggests to me that the prudent course is to look at what God said to Joseph and confine ourselves to that, and to let the persuasions that may have informed other things go, even if Joseph Smith was okay with it. SP: Interesting. Now, the question then, some people would say, well, Joseph was a fallen prophet. Are you saying that Joseph was a flawed man? But still, I mean, it’s just, he’s a human being, right? So you’re saying that Joseph was—at the same time—was operating in the prophetic, but also could make mistakes, maybe with the selling of the copyright in Canada, the lost 116 pages. It seems to indicate that you’re willing to say that Joseph was more fallible than maybe a lot of people are willing to accept. DS: He was human, and therefore, any of us who are human are necessarily, therefore, fallible. There is no such thing as an infallible mortal. And I believe, when Joseph vouched for the doctrine in the Doctrine and Covenants, and when Joseph in… He was lamenting this, about how much of the criticism against him was unjustified, but some of the things that he had done or said could be criticized, but there’s no flaw, there’s no error in the revelations. I take that statement by Joseph—and it’s in one of his Nauvoo-era talks: “there’s no mistake in the revelations; they’re trustworthy”—I take that to mean that he’s counseling us, through the years between then and now, to stay focused on the revelations and to allow him… I mean, why did he leave and cross the Mississippi River headed west in 1844 in June? Why did he turn around and return? I mean, was his instinct to depart, and to go and to try and make the restoration continue in another venue (perhaps among the Native Americans, to whom one of the groups to whom the Book of Mormon was addressed)? Was that the right instinct? Was returning to Nauvoo the wrong one? Was his observation that if his life is no use to his friends, it’s no use to himself? What do we make of that? I mean, Joseph clearly hoped not to be going to his death but resigned himself that that’s perhaps the outcome. And it was the outcome. I don’t think Joseph vouched for all of the editorial additions that were made in the 1835. If you read the sequence of sustaining votes and the vouching, Joseph Smith vouched for the Lectures on Faith—the doctrine. Other people vouched for the Book of Commandments/ Doctrine and Covenants content. And so our effort is to try and find exactly what did God say to Joseph in the revelations? And can we isolate that enough to feel confident it actually came from God, is reliable, is what was said to him originally? And if we have to deal with the clutter of what someone else threw in, we would just as soon not do so. Therefore, we did the research to find what was the original text, and we preserved the original text. Nothing else. SP: Okay, so I’m really curious here. So, did you take the same approach, applying modern biblical scholarship to, for instance, the New Testament? Like, in your New Testament, is the long ending of Mark in there, or do you take that out? Like, what kind of approaches are you taking? Because we know that there were things that were added to the English versions that weren’t in the original manuscripts. How did you approach those verses? DS: From our perspective, those issues—while they may be legitimate, and while they may be worth looking into—we were relieved of any responsibility for that when Joseph Smith went through the Joseph Smith translation. Therefore, if what we regard to be a prophet is revising the canonical text and saying, “This is what is in the Lord’s own bosom, in His own heart,” that’s the text that we want to rely upon. There are a lot of things about the biblical text… I mean, Bart Ehrman’s work on the Christological debates in the second and third century, resulting in the alteration to support one viewpoint about Christ versus another viewpoint actually corrupting the Scripture, I mean, those are really interesting ideas that, you know, you want to pause and give some attention to. But we feel Scripture entrusted into the hands of a prophet becomes an independently reliable source of material that we can trust, much like Moses reconstructed the original narrative of the Creation going back to Adam in the Pentateuch, and much like Ezra reconstructed the Bible after the Babylonian exile. The Bible has been reconstructed, rewritten, reclaimed multiple times, and Joseph Smith was given the assignment to do the same thing. And therefore, we can look at all of the debates. We can look at the German school and the various sources—the priestly source, the Jehovistic source, the Elohistic source, the Deuteronomist source—and entertain all of the analysis that people have done on textual criticism or higher criticism, and let that inform us in one way or another. But in terms of our Scripture, we’re gonna trust the prophet. SP: Well, that’s really interesting because, of course, Joseph was the one that even said that the German translations were very accurate. So that has to inform the conversation a little bit too. And so you have all this data and information, and here is Denver Snuffer, and here are people in the community, you know, collaborating on this process. Did you guys have, like, debates about some of this stuff? I mean, how do these conversations look? And also, I’m curious too, Denver, you know, with the King James Translation of the Bible, all the names of the people that participated in the translation were listed. Do you guys have a similar thing with your Scriptures as well? Two questions. DS: No, the people who participated, participated voluntarily, and some of them insisted on their anonymity, and some of them were indifferent about whether their names were attached or not. And so the effort that was made, it was really a research project. And yeah, there was a lot of spirited discussions during the process. And there were times when—because the research had disclosed a lacuna in the record, which had been filled in by what we considered as a group to be an unreliable source—the debate was, do you leave the lacuna? Do you adopt what may be unreliable? Or do you supply a replacement? Or how do you deal with that? And so, yeah, there was a lively discussion. The net result was: We take the minimalist view; we want as reliable a source of material as is possible. And that means, if anything appears to have been potentially an inappropriate insertion or an inappropriate elaboration, then leave it out. And ultimately, after years of effort and years of review, ultimately, it was presented to the Lord in a prayer that I offered on behalf of the committee. And we got an answer from the Lord to that prayer about the content of the Scriptures, including corrections that were made by the Lord, removing some of the material that we had tried to make work, and replacing it with something different. And both the prayer that was offered at the end of the project and the answer that we received at the end of the project are in the Teachings Commandments, Volume 3, explaining what we were allowed, instructed, commanded, or required to add and required to delete. That’s all in the Teachings and Commandments. In addition, we had, in the original version that we put out… Some of the uncertainties resulted in us putting a bracket and inserting words that were our cumulative and ultimately unanimous decision of the solution. So, there were brackets, and inside the brackets, there was the solution that we had come to—and it required unanimity; it would not go in if it wasn’t unanimous. Nevertheless, we recognized that despite unanimity, it belonged in a bracket. One of the things we were told in the answer was that we could remove the brackets. Another thing that we were told is that the work of coming up with modern English was accepted, and we were allowed to go on with that effort to make a modern English explanation, but we were cautioned: “You cannot change the content. If you’re going to adopt a modern English version, you must be certain about the content, and if you remain uncertain about a modern English version, then leave it or come back to me, and I’ll tell you how to fix it.” So, the Scriptures got done, got published, got approved, got voted on, but after that, there was still an effort on the Book of Mormon to convert the text into a modern English version. That took years further. The work of Royal Skousen included consultation with an early modern English scholar: “Elizabethan Shakespearean early modern English.” He was a scholar that was acquainted with how the word usages during the translation of the Book of Mormon related to an earlier era and not to the time (the modern English being spoken at the time of Joseph Smith). Therefore, some of the word usages, phrases, colloquialisms that got incorporated into the Book of Mormon text in 1830 had a different meaning from what the words mean to us in modern English, and that fellow who was a consultant with Royal Skousen was hired to assist with a number of issues in the modern English version to help convert it into modern English. After four years of effort to make the Book of Mormon read in modern English, the project was turned over to me. When it was turned over to me, it was still (in my view) a long way from what it needed to be if we were gonna accomplish the task. And so I set about looking at it, praying about it, and trying to have it make sense. One of the things, for example, that was still in the modern English version when it was turned over to me was, And it came to pass… SP: Mm-hmm. DS: And it came to pass, depending upon the context of the paragraph that it precedes, could best be put, “Later,” or different context, it could better be put, “As a consequence.” SP: Okay. DS: Or it could be, “And so we see.” It depends on the context of what is going to follow after and it came to pass. In some places, all it means is “later,” and sometimes the later is like “much later,” like, And it came to pass: that could be a month later, it could be a year later, it could be some time span in between. But what they’re signaling in the text (And it came to pass) is something that the next paragraph will help you understand. So, I went through the entire thing, cover to cover, and in my view, in my understanding (I suppose I could say, “in my experience” or “in my testimony”), I got a lot of help from inspired readings that allowed me to understand the text in a way that I could not attain to without that assistance. At times, the ideas were flowing so quickly that it would be a cryptic restatement and then highlighting because it needed to be clarified. And I got through the entirety of the text, went back, started with the highlights, then I realized that I really ought to look at the highlighted text in context of what was going on; ultimately went all the way back, and went all the way through trying to expand and contextualize. My first… I got it in a Microsoft Word format. My first pass-through reduced the Microsoft Word format (the number of pages) by about 45 pages. Then I went through it again, and it was restating exactly the same thing, just in simpler, clearer, more terse language that a modern reader would understand much more readily. By the time I had gone through it and gone through it and gone through it, it got to the point where there were changes that needed to be made to update some specific things, and I sent it back to the people who were doing that who had turned it over to me, with instructions that I asked them to follow because I was getting text blind. I was seeing things that I thought were there because I’d read it, and read it, and re-read it, and re-edited it, and re-edited it. I sent it back to them with instructions about making a handful of specific changes that I wanted them to make, including getting rid of “Messiah” and “Messianic,” and going back to “Christ” and “Jesus” in places because this is an English-language version that will largely be read by English-language people. There are some places where Messiah ought to remain, but for an English reader, generally, it should be otherwise. And so I had them do some changes or some corrections that could be done largely by “search and change,” but there were details they needed to pay attention to. They did that and turned it back to me. I went through it two more times, and then I believed it was done. And at that point, I was presenting it for approval by the Lord. I got told that it was not approved, that I needed to go through it again one more time, cover to cover; and then I went through it a final time, and during that final—I don’t remember what these were—but during that final read-through, there were about a dozen things that still needed to be and were rendered differently and more clearly, and that became what we call the Covenant of Christ. The Covenant of Christ is a modern English version of the Book of Mormon. It appears in Volume 3 because it’s modern. It appears in Volume 3 as part of the Modern Covenants. And this allows you to open up anywhere you want to in the Book of Mormon: Alma chapter 12. You can go to the Covenant of Christ, and you can go to Alma chapter 12, and you can read at the same time Alma chapter 12, verse 9: And now Alma began to expound these things unto him, saying…And in modern English: Alma began to elaborate, saying: It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless, they are laid under a strict command…they shall not impart — Many people are given knowledge of God’s mysteries; however, they’re placed under a strict command to only discuss that part of His word He allows to be given to mankind, only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him.corresponding to their obedience and diligence given [heed and diligence given] to him. (Alma 9:3 CE) So, if you want to double-check the translation into modern English: in Volume 2, you can leave it open, and you can read Book of Mormon; and in Volume 3, you can leave it open, and you can compare phrase by phrase, word by word (Volume 2 and Volume 3 of the Book of Mormon versus the Covenant of Christ), and you can get as granular as you want in examining it. So, the Teachings and Commandments, Volume 3, include original Joseph Smith material; in addition, Lectures on Faith; in addition, when the LDS Church went through the Scriptures and published their new copyrighted version with the improved footnotes in 1980, the head of the committee, as I understand it (certainly one of the members of the committee, in any event) was Bruce R. McConkie, who wrote many of the chapter headings. Bruce R. McConkie wanted… It got leaked out; I don’t know if there’s any official statement of this, but it was a buzz at the time. I was still down at BYU, so you know, there were insider leaks. (For goodness’ sake, President Kimball’s son was on the faculty.) Bruce R. McConkie, on that committee, wanted to include the entire letter that was written from Liberty Jail. Instead, the Doctrine and Covenants had excerpted Doctrine and Covenants section 121, Doctrine and Covenants section 122, and Doctrine and Covenants section 123, which were clips from the letter from Liberty Jail; and Bruce R. McConkie lost the argument, I think in part because they did not want to re-number Doctrine and Covenants sections. So the D&C still includes only excerpts from the Liberty Jail letter. The Teachings and Commandments have the entire letter Joseph wrote from Liberty Jail, including everything that you see in the Doctrine and Covenants 121, [12]2, and [12]3. All of it is in there. It’s embedded inside the letter. So in that sense, we’ve expanded what Joseph did by adding Lectures on Faith, expanded by the entire letter from Liberty Jail, and Joseph Smith had revelations that were not included in the Doctrine and Covenants that we could see were authentic and could see what was originally written; those were added. And in addition, Joseph Smith… One of the very few talks Joseph ever wrote that was delivered during the Nauvoo era, and on the occasion of the talk being given, I believe he was ill or his throat was sore, so the talk was actually read by one of his clerks. But the content: We have 100% of that talk that Joseph prepared. That talk is also included as a section of the Teachings and Commandments. In addition, we’ve grabbed a few of Joseph’s… We call them “proverbs,” but it’s really quotable quotes, little witticisms that Joseph Smith delivered. We’ve gathered those in, and we’ve made them the Proverbs of Joseph Smith. And then there’s a group of sayings that I put into some… I don’t know which book it was in, but it was a group of sayings. Those got put in also as a group of Proverbs of Denver Snuffer. And then revelations that had been received during the effort we made to get the Scripture Project done; a prayer that was offered to try and secure for us a covenant; a covenant language that was given to us by the Lord; and then going right up to and including revelations received about the Covenant of Christ; and then, ultimately, the Covenant of Christ; and the delivery to us of a new name that was received by revelation is, I think, the last one of the revelations in the Modern Covenants, just before the Covenant of Christ. Let me see if I can tree that real quick. This is 21 December 2024, and it’s included as section 185 of the T&C: This is what you shall say to the people: I give to you a name to distinguish you from others, and you shall call one another by this name: COVENANT CHRISTIANS because you…hold a covenant with me that make you my followers deserving of my protection. But my protection does not only defend, but also corrects, reproves, disciplines and guides you along that you may be mine indeed. So that’s the final revelation in the T&C. It’s section 125 [185]. Following it is the Covenant of Christ. So that’s volume 1, 2, and 3. SP: Well, that’s phenomenal, and I’m so glad you’re able to get really deep in the weeds. And I have a few questions for you, because I think it’s important for people to understand the process. And what I find so fascinating is, on one hand, you’re kind of taking the scholarly approach—where you have a committee, and you’re going through the text, and you’re having conversations—but then there’s the revelatory aspect of this too. Some people would just go and say, well, why not just ask for the revelation? Why even go through all the process of going through a committee? Why can’t you just have all this revealed to you? And then others would be like, Well, why don’t you just do the scholarship and not have any revelation? DS: Hold on. It’s precisely what the Lord told Oliver Cowdery when he tried and failed to translate the Book of Mormon plates: “You took no thought except to ask. You’re supposed to study it out in your own mind first, and then ask” (see JSH 13:26). What I have found is that to get revelation requires that you do the hard work first. I have spent, on some subjects, years of study before I felt that I was entitled to take it to the Lord. And after years of study and taking it to the Lord, what I have found is that He will respond, and He will correct me when I’m wrong, and He will confirm it when I’m right. But some of the most important things that I have learned have been as a result of an honest, diligent, lengthy effort to study it out, reach a conclusion, only to find out that I am in fact wrong, and that then something follows that comes from God. But it doesn’t come gratuitously, and it doesn’t come easy. So we took seriously the revelation to Oliver, and we studied it out as thoroughly, as completely… We deserved to get an answer from God because we had paid the price beforehand to approach the Almighty and ask, “Did we get it right? And if not, will you correct us?” So that’s why. SP: Okay. And does these volumes, does it include the Book of Abraham? DS: Yes. SP: Okay. So what was your approach to, like, that Scripture? Because that’s so interesting, is because you actually have kind of the translation process where we have, like, the individual characters and then a translation that would later then be part of the Book of Abraham. How did you approach the Book of Abraham? DS: Okay. I gave a talk (I believe the talk is now a book). The title of the talk… I gave this one at a conference in Aravada, Nevada (Aravada, Nevada—which is a combination of Arizona and Nevada. It was way down south. Steph and I took a hike, and we walked out of Nevada, into Arizona, and then turned around and came back again. A lot of cactus down there.) The talk, “Religion of the Fathers,” explains… It’s a long talk. I think it was over three hours of talking and explaining. And so I would commend to you (if you’re really interested in how we approached the Book of Abraham) that talk, which took a great deal of study and a great deal of effort. Briefly—and without really covering what’s in that talk—when you go through Genesis (the Joseph Smith Genesis text), there is this expansion of material about Adam. There is this expansion of material about Enoch. There is an expansion of material about Melchizedek. And there is an expansion of material about Moses. But there’s nothing that materially adds to Abraham. And yet, Abraham is the Father of the righteous—which is another subject I intend to address, at length, in July of this year at a conference that’s set in Colorado. And I think that one is gonna push back the understanding about Abraham and Abraham’s role further. But I think the Book of Abraham is really something that… What Joseph Smith should have done is to just take it and stick it into the Genesis account as an elaboration on the life of Abraham, and not to have left it as a dangling, separate matter; because I think it belongs within the Genesis narrative. So what we have done in the Old Covenants in Genesis (when we get to Abraham) is there’s a note stuck into the text in red. SP: Oh, yeah. DS: Yeah. This is… It would be in the King James Version: Genesis chapter 12, about verse 16. We stick in a red little note. I don’t know if you can see that. Let me see if I can… Oh, right there. Where am I? SP: Okay. Yeah, I see it. Yeah. Oh, by the Book of Abraham. Oh, okay. And then… DS: Yeah, that’s where the narrative of the Book of Abraham belongs. The Book of Abraham—you should read the talk, “The Religion of [our] Fathers”—the Book of Abraham was actually not written in Egypt. It was written before he enters into Egypt. And the criticisms of the Book of Abraham about what was going on and how he’s describing the lay of the land and the human sacrifice, all of that took place in Mesopotamia on a trip through territory occupied by Egyptophiles who were imitating what was going on in Egypt; but they’re not in Egypt, and Abraham is not in Egypt. And one of the things that the Egyptian scholars have missed is the fact that this is completely preliminary to Abraham’s entry into Egypt. Read “The Religion of the Fathers.” It’s available through… Well, you don’t have to pay anyone; you can go to my website, www.denversnuffer.com, look at downloadables, “The Religion of the Fathers” is… You can download a PDF and read it there. SP: Okay. DS: We’ve done a… I’ve done a whole lot more with the Book of Abraham than people probably have imagined. But it’s in our Scriptures, and it’s there for a reason; and I believe it belongs in Genesis. And it fills in a missing component of Old Testament narrative that Joseph Smith omitted—I believe by inspiration, as he was going through the Genesis account—but it gets added at a later time, I think through inspiration and revelation, and I think it belongs in Genesis and not as a separate text. But we took… There was a meeting, there was a conference, there was a vote; the vote was collected, and while the book of Abraham was approved for inclusion, the vote did not agree to put it into Genesis. And so it’s in the Scriptures, it’s referenced in Genesis as belonging at that spot, but the vote did not put it there, so it’s not in Genesis. SP: Okay, well thank you for sharing that process. That’s really fascinating to me to hear this, and hear it from you. Was there anything else, because I wanted to… I did want to ask you about Benjamin Park and the video he put out today. But before we do that, was there anything else about these Scriptures that you wanted to highlight or talk about? DS: I have been going through and transcribing notes. I taught gospel doctrine for like three decades in the LDS Church, and as a consequence of that, I made a lot of marks in a LDS quad combination (large print, by the way). And I’ve gone through, and I’ve been in the process of transcribing notes and cross references from earlier versions of the LDS Scriptures into these new ones that we have. And in the process, the cross-referencing has taken me everywhere, back and forth, and in and out. And I’m not saying this as some sort of prideful boast; I’m just saying that this is my observation: These Scriptures are better than anything I have ever had access to. They are more complete. They are more valuable. They are more understandable. They really are… If you’re talking about any branch of the Restoration, of what they’ve done with the Scriptures, these are the respectful, the most complete, the most usable with all of the cross-referencing that is made that allows you to get into both; and as I’ve transcribed the notes, I’ve just been in awe of all of the effort that all of the people have made in order to make this stuff possible. I mean, I accept accountability for the revelations that got put in here, or the Covenant of Christ that got put in here, the Testimony of St. John that got added; and anyone want to throw rocks at that, they can throw ‘em at me. But the rest of the effort and the meticulous work that has been done, the research that has been done, it deserved to get the attention of the Lord and to get Him to respond—because the saints got condemned when they weren’t paying respectful attention to the Scriptures. They got condemned in September of 1832: …your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief… By the way, “unbelief” is a term that we define in the glossary. It’s a specific word with a specific meaning. …and because you have treated lightly the things [which] you have received, which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation rests upon the children of Zion, even all, and they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon, and the former commandments which I have given them, not only to say but to do according to that which I have written, that they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father’s kingdom. (T&C 82:20) We took seriously the condemnation. We took seriously the idea that something needed to be done to reciprocate and to say, “Yeah, we’re under condemnation, but is there anything we can do to emerge from out/from under that condemnation? Is there any way that you would allow a group to escape that condemnation by showing the deference?” And that deference isn’t acquired simply by sitting back and saying, “Tell us, Jesus, what you want us to write.” It requires the kind of sacrifice, the kind of applied effort, the kind of studious, long-suffering that was required of the committees that work on this stuff and all of the people that contributed to the process. And at the end of that very difficult journey, I tried to estimate the amount of time: It was about a century of man-time spent working directly to get this done. I believe we qualified to receive the voice of the Lord, and I believe we got it. And therefore, I have no hesitation about saying that this is the best set of Scriptures that I believe have ever been produced. And among other things, one of the things the Lord has said about this. These specific Scriptures: These scriptures are sent forth to be my warning to the world, my comfort to the faithful, my counsel to the meek, my reproof to the proud, my rebuke to the contentious, and my condemnation of the wicked. They are my invitation to all mankind to flee from corruption, repent, and be baptized in my name, and prepare for the coming judgment. (T&C 177:3) I think the only reason we have those words given to us by the Lord is because of the effort that went into making these. This was no small effort, and this isn’t Denver Snuffer acting like he’s a big man. I’m a small part of an effort that the Lord respected, and I was instrumental only in helping put it together and guide it. The effort and the price and the legitimacy of all of this is dependent upon dozens and dozens of people spending years of effort, with numerous hours every week, repeated meetings, numerous conferences, efforts to get it out and to get it criticized and to get feedback from the people that would ultimately be adopting it. It was not a small effort. It’s taken a decade and a half, and it’s taken a century of man-hours to get it done. So when I say they’re the best I believe I have ever laid my hands on, I’m saying that because they’re the best that I have ever laid my hands on. SP: I love it, and I can vouch for this, folks. I’ve had the opportunity to befriend some of the people who’ve been part of these projects, and their attention to detail and how seriously they’re taking this, is… I can vouch for that. I’ve had/spent hours off the record, on phone calls, and had taped interviews with various people. I want to commend the great work that they do. And I think, obviously, Denver—a lot of people like to put this all on you, but obviously—you’re a person, much like Joseph, who needed good people around him to help with this work, and it sounds… DS: I couldn’t do it. Yeah. SP: Couldn’t do it on your own, and I think Joseph recognized that as well. I thank you again for discussing this. I think this is really important. You know, I tell people that part of the purpose of this channel is for scholars to be able to watch it 50 years from now, knowing that we don’t have an agenda. We’re just trying to get information out, and I think this was a very insightful conversation. Before I let you go, I did send you that Benjamin Park video, and I think it’s actually, honestly, Denver, I think it’s a God thing. I think originally we were supposed to tape this morning, and it didn’t work out, and next thing you know, Benjamin puts this video out, and I thought, this must be the reason why. So Denver, I’d like for you to just talk a little bit about it. I want to pull it up here real quick too, just so that people can see, and I’ll have a link to it, as well. But yeah, if you go on to Benjamin Park’s YouTube channel, he just posted this video earlier today about Denver: “The Denver Snuffer Movement Explained in 20 Minutes.” Denver, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. DS: Well, I don’t take offense at people’s honest efforts to try and restate or explain something, and I mean, if I were grading him on the spirit with which he approached it, I’d give him an A. I’d give him an A! If I were grading him on the accuracy of the material, I would say it’s a C. It’s dated; he’s not up-to-date. He hasn’t stayed with it, and he’s borrowed an idea; and this is a problem with Mormon history, generally. I’ll illustrate it with a little story that I have told before: Brigham Young and the saints are leaving Nauvoo, Illinois, and they’re heading parts unknown in the West. And the likelihood is that the original target was Oregon; it is possible that the original target was California, but it was certainly not the Great Basin. And they struggle, and they suffer, and they’re hungry. And finally, with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever afoot, and with exhaustion of materials, and with the planting year fast expiring—I mean, you’re now July 24th in 1847—you’re struggling into a barren, salted desert with a very sick Brigham Young, and at that point, “Oh hell; this is the place,” stick the cane in the ground, and then we’ll start celebrating. In fact, they didn’t have the ability to get any farther. So, here you’ve got someone that is aiming in that direction to try and get an objective achieved, who winds up over here instead. And what the historians now do is they take the story of winding up here, and they tell it in reverse back to where they started from; and “faith in every step” and “this is the place” is the crossroads; it is Zion. It is “beneath the shadows of the everlasting hills.” And so we hear that week after week, and we celebrate—not as the ridiculous, pathetic, tragic end of a journey… I mean, at least it was Mexico. At least you’d escape those scoundrels back east that were so opposed to you. It was liberation, except the Treaty of (oh, what is it?) Guadalajara? The treaty that ceded it to the United States happens almost immediately after they arrive at a godforsaken salt flat desert. And so in reverse, what the historians try to do is to turn that into a narrative, and that narrative appears to be purposeful from the outset. And it’s not disappointment; it’s triumph. It’s not, you know, stumbling through illness into a tragic end; it’s revelation and God. And the narrative is completely recast. The point of that story is to say, if you were to ask those directly participating at the moment, they would never tell you the story that the historians tell you about the migration from Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City and the settling in Salt Lake City. That was, in short, a spontaneous blunder that resulted in, “Now we’ve got to write a history about it, so let’s make it seem purposeful!” It wasn’t at all. The thing I would criticize Benjamin about is that he’s reading into me purposes that have never existed, okay? I didn’t set about to put together a set of Scriptures. Those ideas to do something to try and repent, came from two completely—it was actually three; so let me say, “two,” and then I’ll describe the third—two completely different groups of people who were looking at the Scriptures and saying, “Look what’s rolling out. We’re getting The Joseph Smith Papers. We’ve got something that Royal Skousen is producing. We’ve got a source of material that we really ought to take a careful look at.” And so one group was going through all of the Scriptures trying to get it right, and another group spontaneously and independent of them was going through and trying to get the Scriptures right. At the same time, there was a third individual who was himself trying to get it right, and that third individual learned about one of the groups, and he joined that group, so his independent work then got subsumed within one of the two groups. These people were working on this for several years, independent of me. I had no intent to participate in any of this. I had no idea it needed to be done. This was people inspired, they believe, by the Spirit of God to lead them to try and fix a problem and to emerge out of condemnation. So, I hear a rumor that some of the people who have been meeting with our group of folks are working on trying to fix the Scriptures. I hear a rumor, and I’m kind of satisfied that someone’s doing something, and I’m at least curious—we may not ever publish it, or we may publish it as a commentary; we may just make it available as a PDF—but I commend the effort. So, I hear about it, and then it’s in a December timeframe (I don’t remember which year this was). One of the two groups approaches me, and they deliver to me what they believe to be a reconstruction that’s more accurate of the Scriptures, and I was pleased to see that. Then, within one week, the other group that had been working on the Scriptures (completely separate from them) comes to me and says, “We have an improved version, a more accurate version of the Scriptures.” And sure enough, they’re two completely independent, different efforts. So, I’m not going to take the time to soldier through two different editions. I schedule a meeting, and it was during the Christmas holidays of that year. I got both groups to meet together at my law office and to bring their two different versions, and we sat down, and we looked at it, and I said, “I want this effort to be combined if we’re gonna do something with this. Let’s combine the efforts together.” And so these two independent groups began to work together, and what they discovered is they… Some had isolated one problem, some problems had been identified by both groups, and some had been identified only by the other group—but all of them were issues that required further effort, at which point, a united effort began for the very first time to go through and to solve all of this. And having heard about it, we had more people join in the effort. I got people to work together. I got them to adopt a “unanimous” mandate. The “majority” wouldn’t work; we’re talking about Scripture! I got them to agree that if we could not unanimously agree on something, that we would either eliminate it or we would leave it alone. I managed to get what was potentially a contentious, argumentative, divisive effort to be united, collegial, and a group effort that led to an outcome. I didn’t drive the boat. I didn’t drive the effort. For any historian to impute a motive, a desire, an ambition to me is actually quite opposite to the truth. I have one and only one interest and that is to obey the Lord insofar as I can understand what it is that the Lord wants from me or expects from me. But past that, I have no goal, I have no ambition, and there are numerous things that I had been asked to do and that I have done that I don’t find enjoyable or preferred. To me, this entire effort is an unwanted sacrifice that I’m making out of devotion to God and not out of any hopes that I’m of any significance at all. I’m interested in pleasing the Almighty with the choices I make and the things that I do, but I’m allowing Him to be the one that controls. I don’t have any ambition. The structure that… I have looked at all of the churches—and it doesn’t matter which one it is or how small it is; I’ve looked at all of them—as soon as you introduce a profit motive, you’re inviting corruption, ambition; you’re inviting people to want to get ahead and to put other people beneath them. We don’t have a structure, we don’t have a hierarchy, and I don’t consider myself above any single member of what we are doing as Covenant Christians. If we get a revelation, I’m just as bound to it as someone else is; and the content of a revelation may be better understood by someone else than it is understood by me. I’ve had people explain revelations that have come through me to have meanings that I didn’t understand when I received it, but readily see the wisdom, the understanding, the light, and the truth in what they have pointed out by it. I am not a big, ambitious, religious leader. I was content to remain a Latter-day Saint until they kicked me out, and I’m content to associate with the good people that are trying to follow God that have gone to the trouble of helping to put this set of Scriptures together. So, the one criticism that I would level at him and at everyone else that has, you know, commented on it is that they have badly, badly misunderstood me. They do not understand at all what I’m about. I’m a follower of the Lord, trying hard to please Him by the choices I make and the tasks I undertake; and many of them come at a price of my time, my effort, my resources, my energy that—left to my own—I’d never undertake. So, having said that, he made the… Okay, I shouldn’t be that emotionally connected to it. He made, in passing, a comment about the Passing the Heavenly Gift and “published for a profit” motive. That book wasn’t advertised. It doesn’t make money. The purpose of publishing it was to try and reclaim the testimony in the Restoration of a son who had strayed from belief in the validity of the Restoration into, essentially, agnosticism. And the book was written to try and help him and others similarly situated. It was not done… I mean, if he knew… I don’t make money on books. I’m a… I’m working for a living, and I spend money to get things done. I wouldn’t allow any of the books to be advertised. I don’t do book signings. I don’t do book promotions. And even the content of the earlier books were written while I was an active Latter-day Saint. They were done to try and promote faith in the church and in the validity of what the church was teaching—only to find out that after The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord Through the Veil had been out and in print for some time, they had the “Boise Rescue,” with Richard Turley and Dallin Oaks going up and denouncing the Second… They’ve actually changed the footnote in the LDS Scriptures to eliminate the reference to the Second Comforter as Jesus Christ, and they denounce the Second Comforter as a heresy. The book remains exactly like it was written when I was an orthodox, faithful member, as an archaeological preservation of an earlier theology that has subsequently been rejected by the LDS Church and denounced by them as another heresy. So, I guess I was doomed. Anything that I adopted, it was doomed to become heretical because the brethren insist that the brethren alone… It’s just the brethren that matter. And that’s sad, as well. I hate to see the LDS Church in the decline that it is in presently: doctrinally, historically, numerically. I hate to see the decline. I think that their preservation benefits Utah, Idaho, Arizona, even California, Nevada. I think a strong LDS Church is good for social order and good families and good life. And they’re pissing all that away, unfortunately. Anyway, that’s… I don’t like him imputing a motive. There is no profit to be made. His history is a little dated. And beyond that, I would have to get really granular, and we’d have to go through it one by one. But that’s just the overall bird’s-eye-view. SP: Yeah, I appreciate it. And by the way, if Benjamin wanted to get in touch with you, would I be able to get your… DS: Of course! SP: …contact information to him? Okay. So, Benjamin, I just want to let you know, I can facilitate a conversation if you’d kind of like to get to know Denver. I’ve spent hours with him off camera and on camera. And to me, it’s really important, you know, as people who are documenting history, that if we have the opportunity to speak to the person we’re writing about or doing work on, I think it’s always great to take advantage of that opportunity to kind of get a fuller picture. And that’s what we try to do here at MBR. So, hopefully we can facilitate a conversation with you and Benjamin. I just have one quick question, and then we’re gonna wrap this up. I just, you know, I’m really intrigued because your movement, I’ve been following for a very, very long time, way before I ever thought about doing a podcast or anything. I’ve always found you to be an interesting person. I’ve always found our interactions to be delightful. I see behind you, you have a picture of the Nauvoo Temple, and you have a picture of the Salt Lake Temple. DS: Yeah! SP: And I just wanted to ask you what your thoughts are with your movement in relation to temples. DS: I expect we will build one. One of the things that we learned in a passing comment from the Lord in a revelation is that His people are always commanded to build a temple. We believe that we will ultimately need to construct a temple, and I don’t think we’ll build more than one ever. I don’t think it’s appropriate to build more than one ever. And that the content of the temple really does need to be a house of the Lord; and for it to have legitimacy, I believe the Lord needs to come and to visit it. It is His house, after all, and I’m anticipating that we will receive a command to do so. A group of women have, on their own, begun to collect contributions, and there is a fund that is set up to which people can contribute, but they are doing that independent of me. But if a command is given, I expect to be involved in getting the project completed. And I do think that there was something… I don’t think that Joseph got to the point of completing what needed to be restored when he was working in Nauvoo. I think there was work left yet in his day, but some of it did get put on the ground in Nauvoo, and the LDS Church has perpetuated (although they’ve really reduced, and they’ve really edited, and they’ve really condensed, and they’ve really discarded what was there at the beginning). In fact, Steve, you ought to come over to the Colorado talk—Grand Junction, Colorado—where I’m gonna pick up and talk about this, about stuff related to this very subject. The fact is that a temple needed to be restored, and in that 1841 revelation where the Lord talks about “restoring again that which has been taken from you, even the fullness,” it required a temple to be built—which is another thing about Benjamin’s comments: I didn’t think the LDS Church was going to be put under condemnation because of me, and I didn’t think I was all that significant. And what he uses as a little highlight to quote from me is actually what I was told by the Lord. He had planned something that I was unaware of. I learned about it after the fact, and that statement by the Lord after the fact was intended… By way of background, I wrote The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord Through the Veil for my family. I did not intend that book to ever get into print. When I finished with the manuscript and I put it away, I felt condemned because it was now hidden in a drawer. As a result of prayer, I reluctantly took the manuscript and gave it to a fellow. He was the head of publication at Deseret Book. He had previously been the president of Bookcraft, and he was the head of publication, son of an apostle, someone I knew from law school. I took the manuscript to him because he was the head of publication, and he told me that it would take about 30 days to let me know—because they have readers, and the readers will get through it quickly, and they’ll either decide “yea” or “nay.” 30 days came and went, I heard nothing. About day 45, I called him, and I asked him, “What’s up?” And he said, “Yeah, can we have a little longer?” And I said, “Well, yeah. Sure.” I didn’t know how quickly they turned around most people’s books, except I was told that. And so, it appeared to me from what I was told that this was now an exception, and maybe that was something that would result in print. I was sort of half thinking, “I hope it doesn’t get into print because there’s some personal stuff in that book, and I don’t really look forward to having my space invaded.” I got a call at about the two-month mark. We talked again about the three-month mark, about the four-month mark, about the five-month mark. It took seven months before Deseret Book declined to publish The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord Through the Veil because they believed the content to be too sensitive to be put out on the market. But they encouraged me to go ahead and to try and find someone to put it in print; they just didn’t want to deal with something that they considered that sensitive. Ultimately, it was turned down by a second publisher down in American Fork. They’ve since been acquired by Deseret Book—like all the publishers are because they don’t want competing publication of LDS material to go on. And it wasn’t until a law school classmate of mine who had founded his own publishing company said, “Oh, I’ll publish it for you.” And I said, “Well, I don’t want it advertised. I don’t want to do book signings. I don’t want it really becoming a commercial product.” He said, “So what you’re talking about is really a vanity press.” And I said, “Well, it’s really for my family. I’d like to get it into print and give it to my kids.” So, he persuaded me that he could get it into print, and we could do it anonymously—well, not “anonymously,” but without attracting attention. So it took a while. It’s a lot more work to put a book into print than to write a book. It took quite a while to be able to get it into a format, but he told me, “You have to pay for the cost of publication. You have to pay for the cover art. You have to pay for a review by a book editor. And you have to do all of that before we’ll put it out.” And so, I sunk a whole lot of cost into getting the thing into print before it ever saw a conclusion and made its way into print. And so, from my perspective, this was an enormous financial hole to print a vanity piece for my kids and my grandkids. So we submit the manuscript to this print-on-demand company out in North Carolina called BookSurge. And while it is in the hands of the BookSurge folks, Amazon—the world’s largest bookseller—purchases BookSurge so they can do print-on-demand books. And it rolls out The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord Through the Veil as a phrase or a word or a title that will show up on any search on anyone’s computer anywhere in the damn world because Amazon has put it in their inventory of stuff. And so dozens, dozens, hundreds of people searching “the Second Comforter” stumbled across a book titled, The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord Through the Veil. I mean, Amazon’s acquisition of the print-on-demand thing changed this quiet little vanity piece into something… SP: Interesting. DS: Yeah, I mean, it… I don’t know, I haven’t looked for years. Last time I looked, there were over 20,000 copies that had sold in an LDS book… “Bestseller” today is like 4,000. I was actually horrified by the turn of events. And I felt then (I still feel now) like my space got invaded. I think people who, from a distance, look at what I’m involved with and make a complete misreading of me. They have no idea who I am or what I’m about. They have no idea that I’m far more inconvenienced and put upon, and left to my own, I would be far more private than any of this stuff allows me to be. And I have a lot of discomfort. And I do it not because I expect to be understood; I don’t. But I can tell you, my kids read nonsense about me on the Internet that is so belittling, demeaning, misreading that because my kids know who I am, understand who I am, they just laugh about it. I don’t defend myself, because the people that I care about know what nonsense they’re putting out about me. And, you know, I let it be. Just it’ll “out” eventually. SP: Interesting. DS: I’ve enjoyed time that we’ve spent together… SP: Absolutely. DS: …but I feel like you have been more open, less prejudging, more curious, less presuming that you can, you know, impose a stereotype on someone and willing to say, “Hey, define yourself.” SP: Yep! DS: And that’s kind of refreshing in this area of religion. Because in religion, strongly held opinions are gospel truth, even when they’re nonsense. SP: Absolutely. No, I agree with you entirely, Denver. First of all, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And I would like to get out to Colorado for your conference. I think that would be… I’ve always been wanting to get out to some…. DS: It’s in July. SP: …you know, and of course, I really enjoy the people of your movement, Covenant Christians. And let’s just pull up that website one more time for everybody real quick, so they know where to go. Yeah. And so you guys have been using the term “Covenant Christian” for over a year now, from my understanding, and it was done at one of your conferences last year. And so it’s not, you know… They were referred to in the past as the Remnant, or as Snufferites, or whatever. But actually, these are Covenant Christians. That’s their name. And so I think people, we need to respect them and use the name that they have been given. And this is their website with all their different resources on here, including where you can actually order these Scriptures that we talked about. So Denver, anything else about this website that we need to be aware of, or any other links that you would like for me to put in the description as well? DS: Well, there’s www.denversnuffer.com where you can… SP: I’ll put that in there. DS: Yeah, you can access for free all of the papers. A great deal of the material is available as a PDF downloadable there. SP: Wonderful. And of course, folks, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars for these Scriptures either. They’re actually available for you to read today. And so check that out, because not everybody has that extra money. But for those of you who do, there will be links in the description for the few remaining copies that do exist. And just remember the most important thing is this: All the voices of the Restoration will be heard here on Mormon Book Reviews. The post Mormon Book Reviews – An Interview With Denver Snuffer appeared first on Restoration Archives Blog.