BYU Studies volume 48, number 3, features a special series of articles examining the recently published Book of Commandments and Revelations, the first volume of the Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith Papers. The BCR contains the earliest surviving manuscript versions of many of Joseph Smith’s revelations and the only prepublication manuscript copies of some of them. The BCR also contains seven revelations never published as part of the scriptural canon of the Church. These articles, written by members of the Joseph Smith Papers editorial team, flesh out the importance of the BCR in more detail than is found in the printed edition itself. They discuss the dating of the revelations, notes given in the BCR that were not transferred to the Doctrine and Covenants, and other contextual details that give us insight into the revelations themselves.
Jessie L. Embry looks at twentieth-century LDS history through the lens of church sports in “‘Spiritualized Recreation’: LDS All-Church Athletic Tournaments, 1950–1971.” Embry discusses how the tournaments served spiritual purposes as well as how the end of the all-church sports program mirrors Church growth and internationalization. Jill Mulvay Derr and Karen Lynn Davidson, editors of Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry, share a handful of Snow’s more than five hundred poems along with historical context and insightful commentary. Even though book reviewers always mention the fact that publishing phenomenon Stephenie Meyer is a “Mormon housewife turned novelist,” Jana Riess finds it intriguing that they miss most of the LDS themes in her novels. In “Book of Mormon Stories That Steph Meyer Tells to Me,” Riess explores the theological underpinnings of Meyer’s popular fiction.
