The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations

For this post, Dr. Holzapfel assigned us to read The Joseph Smith Papers Revelations and Translations book, specifically, the Revelations on the 27th & 28th of December 1832, and the 3rd of January 1833, pages 293-310. Honestly, I don't know what he expected us to get out of this. It is a copy of the original revelation given to Joseph Smith, and recorded as the 88th section of the Doctrine and Covenants. It is a primary document, which is great and all, but I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of it that isn't already in the D&C. None of the revisions were very interesting, and the only verse that I found was substantially different was where the two revelations in the original were smushed together, but even there, the changes are uninteresting. Maybe I'm just unskilled in this whole textual analysis thing, but without training it seems impossible to see the interesting parts of this. Maybe if he had assigned a revelation we don't already know... Oh well, sorry, that's all the more I can really say...