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The Olivet Discourse — Joseph Smith—Matthew and Matthew 24

Standing disclosure — KJV-overlap material. This page reports verbal correspondence with the King James text as textual fact, including where the correspondence follows the KJV’s English translation. What that correspondence implies about the origin of the Joseph Smith—Matthew text — in any direction — is an external question outside this wiki’s scope. Both Joseph Smith—Matthew 1 and Matthew 24 are hosted corpus books and legal reference points; the wiki maps their internal world, states the divergences exactly, and leaves the origin of the parallel to the reader (per the wiki’s standing editorial position on Book-of-Mormon ↔ KJV overlap).

What the frozen text does and does not say. The frozen Joseph Smith—Matthew 1 carries no superscription or attributing note beyond its chapter heading and verse markers — the header and the 55 verse markers carry the chapter’s name, and no verse of the chapter names Matthew, Joseph Smith, or a translation. So this page does not import the extra-textual framing that the passage is a revision of Matthew’s chapter; it reports only what the two frozen texts show: they narrate the same discourse — one speaker (Jesus), one occasion (the Mount of Olives), one audience (the disciples, privately) — and diverge in the ways catalogued below. Because the text gives no account of the relationship between the two renderings, the origin question is out of scope in both directions, and all records here are asserted_by: wiki (the text names Daniel, Noah, and Moses, but never names Matthew as a source).

The corpus hosts the Mount-of-Olives prophecy in three renderings whose setting verse names the mount: Matthew 24, Mark 13, and — fuller, and with several of the same sayings at different points — Joseph Smith—Matthew 1; Luke 21 gives a fourth synoptic parallel whose setting verse places the exchange at the temple rather than on the mount. This page pairs Joseph Smith—Matthew 1 with Matthew 24, the rendering it tracks phrase by phrase, and cites Mark 13 for distribution checks. Both open with Jesus leaving the temple and predicting not one stone left upon another; both move to the Mount of Olives and the disciples’ private question; both answer with the same catalogue of signs — deceivers, wars and rumors of wars, tribulation, the abomination of desolation, the darkened sun, the sign of the Son of Man, the fig tree, the days of Noah, the faithful servant. Where they part is instructive and exact: the Joseph Smith—Matthew rendering begins one verse earlier (at what Matthew sets as 23:39), splits the discourse into a stated two-fold application — first “concerning the Jews”, and “again” upon the last days — carries the gospel-preached saying inside that second application where Matthew has it before the abomination, names the abomination of desolation twice rather than once, and qualifies “the elect” with “according to the covenant” (1:20, 22) in material where Matthew writes only “the elect”. This page lays those divergences down as textual facts and links the discourse to the corpus’s own last-days material.

Account

The two renderings, side by side

Both texts open on the same scene. Jesus departs the temple, the disciples come to him about its buildings, and he predicts its ruin. Matthew gives the prediction once: “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). Joseph Smith—Matthew gives it with one phrase that has no Matthew counterpart — “there shall not be left here, upon this temple, one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:3; [Textual] ) — and prefaces the whole with a saying Matthew places at the close of the previous chapter (see the boundary note below).

Both then move to the mountain and record the disciples’ private question. Matthew: “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Matthew 24:3). Joseph Smith—Matthew widens the same question and glosses its final term: “what is the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world, or the destruction of the wicked, which is the end of the world?” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:4; [Textual] ) — “the end of the world” is defined, inside the question, as “the destruction of the wicked,” a gloss that recurs once, at 1:31 (“then shall the end come, or the destruction of the wicked”). The chapter’s closing verse carries it in fused form: 1:55 reads “the end of the wicked”, not the gloss itself.

From there the two run the same signs. The opening command is word-for-word — “Take heed that no man deceive you” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:5 / Matthew 24:4) — and so nearly is the first sign, the deceivers who come saying “I am Christ” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:6 / Matthew 24:5; [Textual] ) — as is much of the catalogue that follows. Long stretches track the KJV closely: the fig-tree parable (1:38–39 / 24:32–33), the days of Noah (1:41–43 / 24:37–39), the one taken and the other left (1:44–45 / 24:40–41), and the faithful-and-evil-servant close (1:47–54 / 24:43–51) are near-verbatim.

The boundary — where the rendering begins

The two renderings do not begin at the same verse. Matthew opens chapter 24 at the temple departure (Matthew 24:1); the saying “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” is the last verse of the previous chapter, Matthew 23:39, spoken in the temple. Joseph Smith—Matthew opens with that saying instead — “ye shall not see me henceforth and know that I am he of whom it is written by the prophets, until ye shall say: Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:1; [Textual] ) — extends it (“in the clouds of heaven, and all the holy angels with him”), and carries the disciples’ reaction, which Matthew 23:39 does not: “Then understood his disciples that he should come again on the earth, after that he was glorified and crowned on the right hand of God” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:1). So the Joseph Smith—Matthew rendering starts one verse earlier than Matthew’s chapter division, carrying the 23:39 saying into the discourse. This is a textual fact of where each rendering sets its boundary, not a claim about how the two came to differ.

The two-fold application — and where the sayings stand

Joseph Smith—Matthew states, in the middle of the discourse, that the signs apply twice — once to the destruction of Jerusalem, and “again” to the last days: “Behold, these things I have spoken unto you concerning the Jews; and again, after the tribulation of those days which shall come upon Jerusalem, if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe him not” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:21). Matthew’s single sequence carries no such stated pivot; the clause “if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not” stands at Matthew 24:23 without the “concerning the Jews; and again” framing ([Textual] ).

Two further textual facts stand with that stated division:

The material with no Matthew counterpart — “the elect according to the covenant” and the coda

The phrase in the heading above stands verbatim in the chapter: where Matthew 24:24 reads “they shall deceive the very elect”, Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:22 reads “they shall deceive the very elect, who are the elect according to the covenant” ([Textual] ). The same qualifier stands at the shortening of the days: Matthew 24:22 reads “for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened”, Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:20 “for the elect’s sake, according to the covenant, those days shall be shortened”. Those two are the chapter’s only carriers of the exact phrase “according to the covenant”; across the whole frozen corpus it stands at seven distinct verses — the two here, Enos 1:17 and Alma 60:34 in the record, and Hebrews 8:9, Jeremiah 31:32, and 2 Chronicles 34:32. The possessive “mine elect” — which no verse of Matthew carries — stands three times in this chapter: at 1:27, in the form “mine elect’s sake” at 1:29, and at 1:39. Five further verses of the frozen corpus carry it, and one of them sits close to 1:27: Moses 7:62 reads “to gather out mine elect from the four quarters of the earth” where 1:27 reads “so likewise shall mine elect be gathered from the four quarters of the earth”. The other four are Isaiah 42:1, Isaiah 45:4, Isaiah 65:9, and Isaiah 65:22.

Two further additions have no Matthew counterpart at all and so are reported here without a paired reference (they cannot be registered as connections):

The corpus’s own last-days material

The Book of Mormon carries its own second-coming and destruction-of-the-wicked material, and it overlaps the Olivet signs in idiom rather than in extended wording. The contact this page registers is the signs catalogue: Moroni’s prophecy of the day the record comes forth reads “there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places” (Mormon 8:30) — the same wars-and-earthquakes cluster the discourse gives at Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:28–29, which reads “And they shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars” and “there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places”. The comma pointing separates Mormon from the discourse, not the discourse from Matthew: both Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:29 and Matthew 24:7 read “earthquakes, in divers places” with the comma, and Mormon runs the phrase unpointed. The Matthew side differs instead in person and spelling — “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars” (Matthew 24:6) against the discourse’s “they shall hear”, with “rumours” in the u-spelling. This pairing is registered below as ⚖️ interpretive, because the shared run is a common apocalyptic idiom (see the distribution note on that record), not a distinctive phrase.

It is not the record’s only verbal contact with the chapter. Under the shared-run measure set out in the Significance section below, Mormon 8:30 shares one run of five words with Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:29. Two further contacts stand in the record’s last-days material: Alma 40:13 shares a run of the same length with Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:54, reading “there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth” where the discourse closes “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”; and 2 Nephi 23:10 shares ten words in two runs with Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:33, reading “the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” against the discourse’s “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light” — a sign the catalogue above lists. Neither is registered here, and the reason is distribution rather than distance: “the sun shall be darkened” stands at five distinct verses of the frozen corpus and “and the moon shall not” at six, 2 Nephi 23:10 being the record’s rendering of Isaiah 13:10, which carries those words identically; and the weeping-and-gnashing close is the hosted Matthew text’s own (Matthew 24:51).

The corpus’s other last-days language runs thematically parallel without a registrable shared phrase, and is cross-referenced here rather than registered: the “destruction of the wicked” the discourse names (1:4, 1:31; in fused form at 1:55, “the end of the wicked”) meets the corpus’s burning-of-the-wicked material — “the day cometh that shall burn as an oven … and the day that cometh shall burn them up” (3 Nephi 25:1), “the world shall be burned with fire” (Jacob 6:3); and the discourse’s “heaven and earth shall pass away; yet my words shall not pass away” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:35; Matthew 24:35 reads “but my words”) meets the risen Christ’s expounding “even until the elements should melt with fervent heat, and the earth should be wrapt together as a scroll, and the heavens and the earth should pass away” (3 Nephi 26:3). These are thematic contacts; the pass-away run in particular stands in both hosted texts, differing in case at the point each carries it — “heaven and earth shall pass away” mid-sentence at Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away” at the head of Matthew 24:35 — so it is noted, not scored.

Significance

Read as two renderings of one discourse, the pair is most useful for what its divergences are consistent about. The divergences catalogued above pull in one direction: toward an explicit two-fold reading of the Mount-of-Olives signs. The stated pivot at 1:21 (“concerning the Jews; and again … upon Jerusalem”) is not an isolated addition — it is matched by the doubled abomination of desolation (1:12, 1:32), the gospel-preached-then-end saying standing inside the last-days application (1:31) where Matthew has it before the abomination (Matthew 24:14), the repeated “destruction of the wicked” gloss on “the end of the world” (1:4, 1:31; fused at 1:55 as “the end of the wicked”), and the covenant-qualified “elect” (1:20, 1:22).

The pattern governs that set of divergences, not every difference in the chapter. Three substantive differences sit outside it: Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:11 reads “he that remaineth steadfast and is not overcome” where Matthew 24:13 reads “he that shall endure unto the end”; Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:26 reads “the light of the morning” where Matthew 24:27 reads “the lightning”; and the protection clause “whoso treasureth up my word, shall not be deceived” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:37) has no Matthew counterpart at all. The consistency of the first set is a describable fact about the rendering; whether those differences represent an interpretation of Matthew, a fuller original, or something else is exactly the origin question the wiki leaves to the reader.

The discourse also gives the corpus its through-line on the last days. The signs it lists — deceivers, wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, tribulation, the darkened sun, the sign of the Son of Man in the clouds, the gathering of the elect — meet the Book of Mormon’s own last-days material in Moroni’s account of the day the record comes forth (the wars/rumors/earthquakes catalogue, which carries fires, tempests, and vapors of smoke the discourse’s list does not: Mormon 8:29–31) and in the burning-of-the-wicked material of 3 Nephi 25–26 and Jacob 6. Those neighbors are the record’s. Verbal proximity is a separate question from thematic neighborhood, and one measure of it can be reported exactly. Count the runs of four or more consecutive words shared between any verse of Joseph Smith—Matthew 1 and any verse of the frozen corpus outside the chapter, with case and pointing set aside, the longest run taken first, no word counted twice, and Matthew 24 set aside as the paired rendering. The five largest totals that search returns are Matthew 23:39, 24 words in four runs with 1:1; Luke 13:35, 22 words in four runs with the same verse; Luke 12:46, 20 in three with 1:53; Luke 12:39, 20 in three with 1:47; and Mark 13:8, 19 in three with Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:29 — “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom”, “there shall be famines”, and the earthquakes-in-divers-places run (Mark reads “earthquakes in divers places”, the discourse “earthquakes, in divers places”; the comma is the whole difference). Two facts about that list are worth stating plainly: the verse at the top of it is the boundary saying treated above, which the stated set-aside does not cover, and the longest single run the search returns anywhere belongs to Mark 13:6, all fifteen of whose words stand in 1:6 apart from the pointing. Mormon 8:30 shares a single run of five words, the earthquakes run with 1:29; its wars-and-rumors wording aligns with 1:28, where the stretch the two hold in common falls below the four-word floor. The one contact firm enough to register is the wars/earthquakes catalogue; the rest are thematic and cross-linked, not padded onto the page.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. The Olivet signs-catalogue and Moroni’s last-days catalogue can be read as the same list applied to the corpus’s own coming-forth. The textual facts: the discourse gives “wars, and rumors of wars … famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:28–29; cf. Matthew 24:6–7), and Moroni prophesies that the record will come in a day when “there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places” (Mormon 8:30). The shared run “earthquakes in divers places” is the anchor. What keeps this interpretive, not textual, is distribution: that exact run (comma-variant included) stands at four corpus verses — Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:29, Matthew 24:7, Mark 13:8, and Mormon 8:30 (verified by search of the frozen corpus) — so it is a shared apocalyptic idiom, not a distinctive pairing. The reading that Moroni deliberately echoes the Olivet catalogue is offered for the reader to weigh; the co-occurring signs are the evidence, and the origin of the shared idiom is out of scope.

Key references

Messiah · The Coming Forth of Scripture / the Sealed Book · Index · Connections

Sources

Joseph Smith—Matthew 1 (all 55 verses) and Matthew 24, both hosted corpus books; Matthew 23:39 and Matthew 25:1 for boundary facts; Mark 13 — 13:1–4 for the Mount-of-Olives setting, 13:6 and 13:8 for the shared-run collation, 13:14 for the “abomination of desolation” distribution check, 13:24 for the darkened-sun carrier list; Luke 21:5–7 (with 21:37) for the fourth synoptic parallel’s setting and Luke 21:10 for the nation-against-nation carrier list; Luke 12:39, 12:46, and 13:35 for the shared-run collation; Mormon 8:29–31, 3 Nephi 25:1, 3 Nephi 26:3, and Jacob 6:3 for the record’s own last-days material; Alma 40:13 and 2 Nephi 23:10 (with Isaiah 13:10) for the record’s other verbal contacts with the chapter; Enos 1:17, Alma 60:34, Hebrews 8:9, Jeremiah 31:32, and 2 Chronicles 34:32 for the “according to the covenant” corpus census; Moses 7:62, Isaiah 42:1, 45:4, 65:9, and 65:22 for the “mine elect” corpus census; Helaman 14:20 and Ezekiel 32:7 for the darkened-sun and moon carrier lists.

Every scripture quotation on this page is taken verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its verse and checked against the source this session (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1; Matthew 23–25; Mark 13; Luke 12–13; Luke 21; Mormon 8; 3 Nephi 25–26; Jacob 6; Alma 40; Alma 60; Enos 1; 2 Nephi 23; Helaman 14; Moses 7; Isaiah 13, 42, 45, 65; Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 32; Hebrews 8; 2 Chronicles 34). The one quoted string on the page that is not verse text is the chapter’s own name, “Joseph Smith—Matthew” — its em-dash matching the frozen chapter’s heading and verse markers, which is where that name stands. Class determination (per the wiki’s standing editorial position on Book-of-Mormon ↔ KJV overlap): the frozen text carries no superscription or attributing note beyond the corpus-standard chapter header and verse markers, and no verse of the chapter names Matthew, Joseph Smith, or a translation, so the wiki does not import the extra-textual revision-of-Matthew-24 framing; from the frozen text alone the two texts render the same discourse (one speaker, one occasion), and the text gives no account of their relationship — this fits neither the named-source class (a) nor the two-occasions same-speaker class (b), and is treated with the class-(c)-equivalent discipline: correspondence and variants reported as textual fact, origin out of scope in both directions, asserted_by: wiki on every record (the text names Daniel, Noah, and Moses, never Matthew). The standing KJV-overlap disclosure is placed once, at the head of the page. Distribution claims — each counted as distinct frozen verses over the whole corpus and each verified by search of it this session — “abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” at four (JS—M 1:12, 1:32; Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14); “earthquakes in divers places” at four, comma variant included (JS—M 1:29; Matthew 24:7; Mark 13:8; Mormon 8:30); “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” at four (JS—M 1:29; Matthew 24:7; Mark 13:8; Luke 21:10 — the first three carry the run inside a sentence in lower case, Luke opens its clause with “Nation shall rise”); “according to the covenant” at seven, two of them in this chapter (JS—M 1:20, 1:22; Enos 1:17; Alma 60:34; Hebrews 8:9; Jeremiah 31:32; 2 Chronicles 34:32); “mine elect” at eight, three of them in this chapter (JS—M 1:27, 1:29, 1:39; Moses 7:62; Isaiah 42:1, 45:4, 65:9, 65:22); “gnashing of teeth” at ten, one of them in the record (Alma 40:13); “the sun shall be darkened” at five (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:33; 2 Nephi 23:10; Isaiah 13:10; Mark 13:24; Helaman 14:20) and “and the moon shall not” at six (the same five less Helaman 14:20, plus Matthew 24:29 and Ezekiel 32:7). Real-world historicity of the events, and the origin of the KJV correspondence, are out of scope.