40 years ago today - Jan 11, 1979-Thursday

[Leonard Arrington]
Jim Allen was in this morning and said he had had a conversation with Ellis Rasmussen yesterday. Ellis and the group in the [BYU] College of Religion have been working on the new set of scriptures that is being prepared. It is well along. He reported to Jim two or three interesting things.

1. The two revelations accepted in conference a couple of years ago-the one by Joseph Smith and the other by Joseph F. Smith-are being placed in the new edition of the Doctrine & Covenants as new sections.

2. The letter of the First Presidency on the priesthood revelation of June 9, 1978, will be in the new edition of the D&C as Official Declaration No. 2.

3. Bruce McConkie is writing new introductions or editorial notes to each of the sections. The publication is still some months away [October 1981].

Brother [G. Homer] Durham ... said Brother [Boyd K.] Packer is worried about our frank acknowledgment of the different versions of the accounts of the First Vision [in new book _The_Mormon_Experience_].

[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]