Documents volume 1 has
the earliest Joseph Smith documents in
The Joseph Smith Papers series.
It has letters that Joseph Smith writes, letters that he receives,
dozens of revelations.
Also, there are minutes of meetings that he participated in
that you can see how it shapes this early history of the Church.
What a difficult prospect it was to translate
the Book of Mormon to produce this new Church
and present these revelations from God,
because there was opposition everywhere.
There was opposition from the areas we commonly think of,
from people who were opposed to the Church.
But there was also opposition from places you wouldn't expect,
from opposition from within the Church,
in fact, from some of his closest friends.
Hiram Page found a stone
and upon which writing would appear that he believed were
revelations from God. And Joseph has to go and deal with this.
And he finds that the Whitmers
and Oliver Cowdery and are not very easily persuaded.
And so it's one of these early challenges to
the proper authority.
And you can see in Documents vol. 1 how Joseph goes about trying
to resolve this. And in the September conference of 1830,
he is able to persuade people that he is the only avenue
for receiving revelation.