Writings
Writings shows the surviving physical evidence behind each faith's texts: manuscripts, scrolls, and inscriptions. Every entry keeps three dates apart: when the text was composed, when this copy was made, and when it was found. Both the tradition's view and the critical view of each text's date appear side by side.
Last reviewed:
What are the three dates?
Every entry gives the date the text was composed, the date this copy was made, and the date this copy was found. The first is given twice, as the tradition holds it and as critical scholars date it. Where a date does not apply or is not reliably known, the entry says so in words. How ancient texts are dated explains the methods.
By faith
- Buddhism (10 entries)
- Christianity (10 entries)
- Hinduism (10 entries)
- Islam (10 entries)
- Judaism (10 entries)
- Latter-day Saints (10 entries)
Timeline of the entries
Entries run from the oldest copy to the newest. Each bar is when the copy was made; each diamond is when it was found. Both composition views of each text are in its entry, and under "More dates" here.
The Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls (Judaism)
Copy made: late 7th to early 6th century BCE, when the amulets were inscribed on the dating of Barkay and Yardeni.
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Found: 1979, when Gabriel Barkay excavated the amulets from a burial cave at Ketef Hinnom, Jerusalem. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, the Torah, which contains the blessing, given at Mount Sinai. Critical scholars: No source used here gives a year for the blessing itself, so this row is left blank.
The Joseph Smith Papyri (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: third century BCE to first century CE, when the church's essay says the papyri were written.
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Found: 1817 to 1822, when agents of Bernardino Drovetti took the papyri from tombs at Luxor. The text's date, tradition: 1835 to 1842, when the church teaches Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham, with no year in the sources used for Abraham's own writing. Critical scholars: 1835 to 1842, the Book of Abraham composed in Smith's time, as the Egyptologist Robert Ritner reads it.
The Bairat edict of Ashoka (Buddhism)
Copy made: no year is carved on it.
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Found: found in 1840 by a captain named Burt on a hill next to the town of Bairat, in the Jaipur State of India. The text's date, tradition: taught by the Buddha during his 45 years of teaching, which ended with his death in 544 BCE by the Theravada reckoning. Critical scholars: no later than the reign of Ashoka, probably in the third century BCE.
The Nash Papyrus (Judaism)
Copy made: second century BCE, the usual dating of when the papyrus was written.
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Found: 1898 or 1902, when the papyrus was bought in Egypt. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, for the giving of the Torah at Sinai, which holds the Ten Commandments and the Shema. Critical scholars: about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources, among them the Exodus and Deuteronomy passages with the Decalogue and the Shema.
The Great Isaiah Scroll (Judaism)
Copy made: 150 to 100 BCE, when the scroll was copied, by handwriting.
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Found: 1947, when Bedouin of the Ta'amra tribe found it in Cave 1 near Khirbet Qumran. The text's date, tradition: The statements consulted date the book of Isaiah by reign, generation, or century, not by calendar year, so this row is left blank. Critical scholars: about 740 to 540 BCE, the writing of the book's two main parts as Theodore Friedman dates them.
The Library of Congress Gandharan scroll (Buddhism)
Copy made: between the first century BCE and the first century CE by radiocarbon.
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Found: the Library says it came from a group of materials unearthed in Gandhara in the 1990s, with no findspot recorded. The text's date, tradition: No statement consulted, from any branch, gives a date for this text. Critical scholars: The sources used give no date for the text's composition, and this one copy gives only a latest date.
The British Library Gandharan scrolls (Buddhism)
Copy made: provisionally the first half of the first century CE.
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Found: No find record is known. The scrolls were reportedly found in a clay jar at an unknown place. The text's date, tradition: No statement consulted, from any branch, gives a date for these texts, which are about twenty-six separate works. Critical scholars: The sources used give no composition date for most of the texts, and a ruler's name in one text shows only that the text was composed during or after his reign, not when this copy was made.
The Khotan Dharmapada (Buddhism)
Copy made: probably the second century CE.
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Found: became known in 1892, when portions reached Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard in Khotan. The text's date, tradition: each verse spoken by the Buddha on a particular occasion during his 45 years of teaching, which ended with his death in 544 BCE by the Theravada reckoning. Critical scholars: Oskar von Hinuber holds that some verses may reach back to a very early period and that material was added over a long span.
Papyrus 52 (Christianity)
Copy made: 100 to 150 CE as first given by Colin Roberts.
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Found: bought in Egypt in 1920. The text's date, tradition: near the close of the first century CE, by the apostle John. Critical scholars: the 90s CE, by an author the text does not name.
The Bamiyan manuscripts in the Schoyen Collection (Buddhism)
Copy made: the 2nd to the 8th or 9th century CE by handwriting.
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Found: No excavation record exists, and the years given for the find differ between sources. The text's date, tradition: The Tibetan and Tiantai accounts consulted (the second turning, the select gatherings, the five periods) give no date for the earliest Mahayana sutras. Critical scholars: around the beginning of the common era for the earliest Mahayana sutras.
The Dura-Europos Gospel harmony (Christianity)
Copy made: no later than 256 or 257 CE.
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Found: excavated on March 5, 1933, at Dura-Europos. The text's date, tradition: Eusebius says Tatian formed a combination of the Gospels, the Diatessaron, and in his Church History (book 4, chapter 29) gives no year for it. Critical scholars: about 172 to 180 CE if it is Tatian's Diatessaron.
Papyrus 75 (Christianity)
Copy made: 175 to 225 CE as long used.
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Found: The find is not documented. The codex belongs to the Bodmer group, presumed to come from one discovery in Upper Egypt in the early 1950s. It was published in 1961, sold in 2006, and given to the Vatican Library. The text's date, tradition: John: near the close of the first century CE, by the apostle John. Critical scholars: John: the 90s CE, by an author the text does not name.
Papyrus 46 (Christianity)
Copy made: about 200 CE.
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Found: found in Egypt about 1930. The text's date, tradition: from the end of the 40s CE. Critical scholars: the 50s CE for Paul's own letters, 1 Thessalonians about 50 CE.
Papyrus 66 (Christianity)
Copy made: about 200 CE as usually given, with published dates running from the early 2nd to the 4th century CE.
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Found: The find is not documented. The Bodmer papyri are presumed to come from one discovery in Upper Egypt in the early 1950s, though scholars do not agree on the extent of that group and some doubt that all of it came from one discovery. The bulk of this codex arrived in Geneva in 1955. Its first fourteen chapters were published in 1956. The text's date, tradition: near the close of the first century CE, by the apostle John. Critical scholars: the 90s CE, by an author the text does not name.
Papyrus 45 (Christianity)
Copy made: 3rd century CE as usually given.
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Found: found in Egypt about 1930. The text's date, tradition: from the beginning of the second half of the first century CE. Critical scholars: from about 70 CE.
The En-Gedi Leviticus scroll (Judaism)
Copy made: third or fourth century CE, when the scroll was made, by radiocarbon dating of the parchment.
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Found: 1970, when archaeologists found it in the Holy Ark of the ancient synagogue at En-Gedi. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, for the giving of the Torah at Sinai, which holds Leviticus. Critical scholars: about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources, among them the Priestly source, found mostly in Leviticus.
Codex Vaticanus (Christianity)
Copy made: 4th century CE.
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Found: Not a find: the Vatican Library had it by 1475. Its place of origin is unknown, and no source consulted traces it any earlier. The text's date, tradition: per the Orthodox Church in America: most likely the end of the 40s CE for 1 and 2 Thessalonians, near the close of the first century CE for John. Dei Verbum, the Chicago Statement, and the Westminster Confession give no year. Critical scholars: from about 50 CE.
Codex Sinaiticus (Christianity)
Copy made: 2nd to 3rd quarter of the 4th century CE.
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Found: brought to Constantin von Tischendorf's attention at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, in 1844. The text's date, tradition: per the Orthodox Church in America: most likely the end of the 40s CE for 1 and 2 Thessalonians, near the close of the first century CE for John. Dei Verbum, the Chicago Statement, and the Westminster Confession give no year. Critical scholars: from about 50 CE.
The Cairo Genizah and leaf T-S 12.182 (Judaism)
Copy made: 6th or 7th century CE, the lower, Greek writing of Psalm 22 that the bar marks, with the upper, Hebrew poem about the 10th century CE.
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Found: 1896 to 1897, when Solomon Schechter examined the Genizah in Cairo and brought the Taylor-Schechter Collection to Cambridge. The text's date, tradition: The statements consulted give no year for Psalm 22 (21 in the Greek numbering), the psalm the lower text renders in Greek, so this row is left blank. Critical scholars: The sources used here date no single psalm, so this row is left blank, as the tradition row is.
The Gilgit manuscripts (Buddhism)
Copy made: about the 6th to the 8th or 9th century CE by handwriting.
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Found: found by chance in 1931 near Gilgit, with no record of the first digging. The text's date, tradition: The Tibetan accounts of the code used here (84000's Vinaya overview, which says the Buddha introduced each rule) give no date for the code as a whole. Critical scholars: about the 2nd through the 6th century CE for the monastic code of the Mulasarvastivada school.
The Khoh charter of Maharaja Sarvanatha (Hinduism)
Copy made: 533 to 534 CE.
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Found: by 1879, when Cunningham published a translation of the plates. The text's date, tradition: The sources used here give no year for the epic's composition, which they credit to the sage Vyasa. Critical scholars: 500 BCE to 400 CE.
The Birmingham Quran manuscript (Islam)
Copy made: 568 to 645 CE for the parchment.
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Found: 1930s according to the Cadbury Research Library. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Sana'a palimpsest (Islam)
Copy made: 578 to 669 CE for the parchment of one detached leaf likely from the codex.
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Found: 1972 or 1973. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Muratorian Fragment (Christianity)
Copy made: eighth century CE, or possibly the seventh.
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Found: identified by Lodovico Antonio Muratori in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, in 1700. The text's date, tradition: The beginning of the list is lost and its writer is unknown, and the sources consulted record no church teaching about its writer or date. Critical scholars: the end of the second century CE or the start of the third.
The Veal Kantel inscription (K. 359) (Hinduism)
Copy made: 7th century CE.
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Found: by 1885, when Auguste Barth published it. The text's date, tradition: ISKCON Educational Services, a Vaishnava source, credits the poet-sage Valmiki and says some Hindus place Rama in the Treta Yuga, the second of four ages of the world, while others place him far more recently; it gives no year for either. Critical scholars: about 750 to 200 BCE.
Qaf 47 and Berlin Ms. or. fol. 4313 (Islam)
Copy made: 606 to 652 CE.
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Found: The sources used here do not say when or how the codex was found. Corpus Coranicum lists its provenance as Egypt, and Shoemaker calls it of Cairene provenance. The earliest record in the sources used here is a plate in an album that Bernhard Moritz published in 1905, which printed an image of it while it was kept in the Khedivial Library in Cairo. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Dadhimati Mata inscription (Hinduism)
Copy made: 608 CE.
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Found: The 1911 to 1912 edition says the slab was found lying upside down in a corner of the temple hall. It gives no year and no finder, and it lists two earlier publications. The text's date, tradition: 6th to 9th century CE. Critical scholars: about 400 to 800 CE across three estimates.
British Library Or. 2165, the Ma'il Quran (Islam)
Copy made: 640 to 799 CE.
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Found: 29 April 1879. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Tubingen Quran codex (Islam)
Copy made: 649 to 675 CE for the parchment.
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Found: 1864. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Hamburg papyrus codex (P. Hamb. Arab. 68) (Islam)
Copy made: late 7th or early 8th century CE.
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Found: 1909 to 1914, the acquisition window the editors propose, not a find date. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Islam)
Copy made: 670 to 700 CE.
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Found: end of the 18th century CE. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Dome of the Rock inscriptions (Islam)
Copy made: 72 AH, 691 or 692 CE.
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Found: Never lost, as Estelle Whelan reported in 1998: the inscriptions are part of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Britannica says the year 72 AH. The text's date, tradition: 610 to 650 CE. Critical scholars: 610 to 705 CE.
The Nepal Pali pages (Buddhism)
Copy made: the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 9th century CE.
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Found: found by Cecil Bendall in December 1898 in a bundle of old leaves in Nepal. The text's date, tradition: in the year of the Buddha's death, 544 BCE on the Theravada count, when the monk Upali recited the monastic code at the first council. Critical scholars: The sources consulted give no scholarly date for these two chapters of the Pali monastic code (Cullavagga 4 and 5) in particular.
The Ibn Lahi'a roll at Heidelberg (Islam)
Copy made: 775 to 825 CE, a band drawn here.
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Found: by 1906. The text's date, tradition: 715 or 716 to 790 CE, the traditional dates of Ibn Lahi'a's life. Critical scholars: No source used gives a method for dating the reports as a written collection.
The Nepal Skandapurana (Hinduism)
Copy made: 810 CE.
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Found: 1898 to 1899 CE. The text's date, tradition: The statements consulted give no year for the Skandapurana. Critical scholars: 550 to 650 CE.
The Cambridge Parameshvaratantra (Hinduism)
Copy made: 819 to 859 CE, by different readings of the colophon year 252.
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Found: Cambridge University Library acquired it on 3 February 1875, as a gift from Daniel Wright. Cecil Bendall wrote in 1883 that Wright was given it, with a handful of other fragments, when an old temple in the durbar was cleared during his stay in Kathmandu. The year of the clearing and the temple are not given in the sources used. The text's date, tradition: The Shaiva Siddhanta statements consulted give no year for the Parameshvaratantra. Critical scholars: The sources used give no composition date for the Parameshvaratantra.
The Heidelberg papyri of Wahb ibn Munabbih (Islam)
Copy made: 229 AH, July 844 CE by Raif Georges Khoury's conversion.
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Found: by 1906. The text's date, tradition: 654 or 655 to 732 CE, the traditional dates of Wahb's life. Critical scholars: the start of the second half of the 8th century CE, drawn as 750 to 800 CE.
The Diamond Sutra of 868 CE (Buddhism)
Copy made: 11 May 868 CE, as the date printed in the scroll's closing note converts.
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Found: the cave found in 1900 by Wang Yuanlu. The text's date, tradition: The Tibetan and Zen accounts consulted (the second turning, the Jeta Grove setting) give no date for the Sanskrit sutra, which is what the strip marks. Critical scholars: the second or the fourth century CE, with arguments made for each.
The Aleppo Codex (Judaism)
Copy made: about 930 CE.
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Found: 1947 to 1958, from the hiding of the codex in Aleppo to its delivery to the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, for the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Critical scholars: about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources.
The Kaufmann Mishnah (Judaism)
Copy made: 10th to 12th century CE.
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Found: acquired by David Kaufmann in 1896. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, the Oral Torah given at Sinai, to about 200 CE, the Mishnah compiled. Critical scholars: about 200 CE, drawn as 175 to 225 CE, for the Mishnah's editing, with no year from the scholars cited for the origin of the Oral Torah's contents.
The Leningrad Codex (Judaism)
Copy made: about 1008 to 1009 CE, on Ben Outhwaite's reading of the colophon.
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Found: Not a find: the codex was made in Egypt about 1008 to 1009 CE for a private owner, passed through other owners, and later drew the notice of the collector Abraham Firkovich, who died in 1874. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, for the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Critical scholars: about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources.
The Nepal Ramayana of Samvat 1076 (Hinduism)
Copy made: about 1020 or 1154 CE.
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Found: 1898 to 1899. The text's date, tradition: ISKCON Educational Services, a Vaishnava source, credits the poet-sage Valmiki and says some Hindus place Rama in the Treta Yuga, the second of four ages of the world, while others place him far more recently; it gives no year for either. Critical scholars: about 750 to 200 BCE.
The Didache Codex (Christianity)
Copy made: June 11, 1056 CE, as the scribe's closing note gives it.
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Found: found by Philotheos Bryennios in Constantinople in 1873. The text's date, tradition: No church teaching on the Didache's date or writer appears in the sources consulted. Critical scholars: about 100 to 120 CE in a 2007 reference work, and around 100 CE or a little after in Dale Martin's lecture.
The Samaritan Pentateuch (Judaism)
Copy made: 1211 CE, per the John Rylands Library.
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Found: Not a find, and no record of how this copy came to the Library was found. The text's date, tradition: Not drawn: the two traditions give dates for different events, the Jewish one for the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the Samaritan one for the entry into Canaan, so they cannot share one bar. Critical scholars: about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources.
Tripitaka Koreana (Buddhism)
Copy made: 1237 to 1248 for the carving.
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Found: Never lost: held by Haeinsa Monastery since about 1398, after the carving and a first storage on Ganghwa Island. The text's date, tradition: The canon gathers many texts, so no single year applies, and the sources used give none for the collection. Critical scholars: The canon gathers texts translated over more than a thousand years, so no single year applies.
The Munich Talmud (Judaism)
Copy made: 15 December 1342 CE, the Bavarian State Library's conversion of the colophon's date, 17 Tevet 5103.
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Found: not a find: in the Bavarian State Library since 1803, and in Germany since the end of the 15th century. The text's date, tradition: about 1300 BCE, the Oral Torah given at Sinai, to about 500 CE, the Talmud compiled. Critical scholars: about 200 to 700 CE, the Talmud made and edited, with no year from the scholars cited for the origin of the Oral Torah's contents.
Five Sharada Bhagavadgita manuscripts at BORI (Hinduism)
Copy made: 1376 CE for the oldest of the five.
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Found: 1875 to 1884. The text's date, tradition: about 3000 BCE, when Krishna spoke it on the eve of the war. Critical scholars: about 300 to 100 BCE.
The Mahabharata Shalyaparvan of 1392 (Hinduism)
Copy made: 12 November 1392 CE.
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Found: The sources used here do not say when or how the National Archives in Kathmandu acquired the volume or when this reel was filmed, though the Nepal-German project's page gives 1970 to 1975 for its filming of the Archives' whole collection. The text's date, tradition: The sources used here give no year for the epic's composition, which they credit to the sage Vyasa. Critical scholars: about 500 BCE to 400 CE.
The Yongle Kangyur of 1410 (Buddhism)
Copy made: 1410 CE for the edition, and the date Helman-Wazny's table lists for the folio.
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Found: one folio received by the University of Michigan in 1924 from a New York fur trader. The text's date, tradition: The Kangyur gathers some 900 works, so no single year applies. Critical scholars: On 84000's account, texts brought from India continued to be translated into Tibetan for several hundred years, so no single year applies.
The Paippalada codex at Tubingen (Hinduism)
Copy made: 1419 or about 1550 CE.
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Found: 1873 to 1876. The text's date, tradition: No date for the Paippalada Samhita: none of the statements used here gives one, and none from Paippalada brahmans themselves was found. Critical scholars: about 1500 to 500 BCE for the Vedic corpus, of which the Atharvaveda is a part.
The Rigveda manuscripts at Pune (Hinduism)
Copy made: 1464 CE as the UNESCO nomination gives it.
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Found: This site gives no single find date for the 30 copies, and no acquisition year for most of them, because it could not match the nomination's numbers to the 1916 catalogue's entries. The Government of Bombay's search for manuscripts began in 1868, and the 1916 catalogue heads the Kashmir birch-bark copy 1875-76, the years of George Buhler's tour of Kashmir. The text's date, tradition: No single date: the Mimamsa and Arya Samaj statements used here, which hold the Veda was not composed, give no year. Critical scholars: about 1400 to 400 BCE for the Vedic literature as a whole, the Rigveda being the oldest part.
The printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: circa August 1829 to circa January 1830, the printer's manuscript, copied from the dictated manuscript for the typesetter by three scribes.
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Found: Not a find: the copy was made in 1829 and 1830, and the Joseph Smith Papers editors trace its owners from Oliver Cowdery to 2017. The text's date, tradition: about 600 BCE, the church's date for one group's departure from Jerusalem, to about 421 CE, the church's date for Moroni, the last Nephite prophet in the Book of Mormon. Critical scholars: April 7, 1829, which Fawn Brodie gives as the start of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery's work on the Book of Mormon, to the first week in July 1829, by which she writes the manuscript was finished.
The original (dictated) manuscript of the Book of Mormon (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: April to June 1829, the original manuscript, dictated by Joseph Smith to scribes.
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Found: 1882, when Lewis Bidamon opened the Nauvoo House cornerstone and found the manuscript, which Joseph Smith had placed there on 2 October 1841, damaged by water. The text's date, tradition: about 600 BCE, the church's date for one group's departure from Jerusalem, to about 421 CE, the church's date for Moroni, the last Nephite prophet in the Book of Mormon. Critical scholars: April 7 to the first week of July 1829, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery's work on the Book of Mormon manuscript, which Fawn Brodie dates and holds Joseph Smith produced.
The Characters Document (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: about 1829 to 1831, when the sheet with the title Caractors was made.
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Found: 1871 to 1888, from the first reports of this sheet or a similar one with the Whitmer family to David Whitmer's death, when he owned it. The text's date, tradition: December 1827 to February 1828, when Joseph Smith says he copied characters from the plates in Pennsylvania. Critical scholars: December 1827 to February 1828, borrowed from the tradition row's reading of Smith's account for the making of the characters.
The 1830 first edition of the Book of Mormon (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: March 1830, the first printing of the Book of Mormon, on sale from 26 March 1830.
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Found: Not a find: the edition was sold from 26 March 1830, so no discovery applies. The sources used trace one copy's later path, Georgetown's, which passed through Jesuit schools in New York before it reached the library of Woodstock College. The text's date, tradition: about 600 BCE, the church's date for one group's departure from Jerusalem, to about 421 CE, the church's date for Moroni, the last Nephite prophet in the Book of Mormon. Critical scholars: April 7 to the first week of July 1829, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery's work on the Book of Mormon manuscript, which Fawn Brodie dates and holds Joseph Smith produced.
The Witness Statements (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: about February 1830, when Oliver Cowdery copied the Three Witnesses' statement at the end of the printer's manuscript, the earliest surviving copy.
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Found: Not a find: the statements were printed in the book from 1830, and the earliest handwritten copy, in the printer's manuscript, passed from Oliver Cowdery to David Whitmer before 1850, to the Whitmer family, to the Reorganized Church, now Community of Christ, in April 1903, and to the Latter-day Saint church in 2017. The text's date, tradition: late June 1829 to early 1830, the writing of the Three Witnesses' statement after the experience the Three describe. Critical scholars: late June 1829 to early 1830, borrowed from the Joseph Smith Papers editors for the writing of the Three Witnesses' statement.
The Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: June 1830 to July 1833, Joseph Smith's revision dictated and written down.
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Found: Not a find: the manuscripts passed from Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, in 1867 to Joseph Smith III and the Reorganized Church, now Community of Christ, and on March 5, 2024 to the Latter-day Saint church. The text's date, tradition: June 1830 to July 1833, when the Latter-day Saint church teaches Joseph Smith dictated the Bible revision, with no church year given for any ancient text it restores. Critical scholars: 1830 to 1833, H. Michael Marquardt's dates for Smith's Bible revision, which he and Kevin Barney read as a revision of an English text.
Revelation Book 1 (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: About March 1831 to July 1835, the revelations copied into the book and later edited.
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Found: Not a find: the Joseph Smith Papers editors say the book likely stayed with church leaders after 1835, and separated leaves were bought by the Reorganized Church, now Community of Christ, in 1902 and acquired by the Latter-day Saint church in 2024. The text's date, tradition: 1828 to 1834, the revelations dictated by Joseph Smith, which the Latter-day Saint church teaches came from God. Critical scholars: July 1828 to April 1834, the revelations dictated by Joseph Smith, whom H. Michael Marquardt holds responsible for the content of every message.
The Book of Commandments (1833) (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: late 1832 to July 1833, when the book was typeset and printed by W. W. Phelps & Co. in Independence, Missouri.
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Found: Not a find: the surviving copies are hand-bound from sheets rescued from the 1833 attack, and the Joseph Smith Papers trace the featured Wilford Woodruff copy to the Latter-day Saint church's Historian's Office in 1854, with continuous custody by that church since. The text's date, tradition: 1828 to 1834, when Joseph Smith dictated most of his written revelations, which the Latter-day Saint church holds came from God. Critical scholars: 1828 to 1834, borrowed from the Joseph Smith Papers editors for the dictation of the revelations.
The Book of Abraham Manuscripts (Latter-day Saints)
Copy made: about July to November 1835 for the three Kirtland copies, and February to March 1842 for the Nauvoo copies, when the surviving manuscripts were written.
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Found: 1937, when Wilford C. Wood bought Manuscript C, the Kirtland copy kept by Emma Smith's family, and gave it to the church that year. The text's date, tradition: 1835 to 1842, when the church teaches Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham, with no year in the sources used for Abraham's own writing. Critical scholars: 1835 to 1842, the Book of Abraham composed in Smith's time, as the Egyptologist Robert Ritner reads it.