 He received his M.S.from the Department of Speech at Utah State Agricultural College in 1957 (the year it became Utah State University), followed by his Ph.D. in history from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1965, writing his dissertation on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.Historian Donald Q. Cannon considered Durham's dissertation part of the "major scholarly contribution to the study of Mormon history" that occurred during the 1960s.