027 Did Joseph Smith Plagiarize Part of the JST?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Woodward (00:00):
Hi.
This is Scott from Church History Matters.
Because we're at a point in this serieswhere we're about to move away from the
topic of Joseph's Bible translation,we thought it might be helpful to pause
mid-series and spend our next episodetaking any questions you might have
about Joseph's Bible translation project.
We will be pleased to haveas our special guest Dr.
Kent Jackson to help usrespond to your questions.

(00:21):
He's an author and scholar on allthings related to Joseph's Bible
translation, and Casey and I have drawn.
heavily from Dr.
Jackson's excellent researchthroughout this series so far.
So please submit your thoughtfulquestions anytime before September 6,
2023 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org.
Let us know your name, where you'refrom, and try to keep each question

(00:42):
as concise as possible when youemail them in That helps out a lot.
OK.
Now on to the episode.
In his Bible translation project,did Joseph Smith plagiarize
the work of a prominent Britishscholar named Adam Clark?
Or, if you don't want to call itplagiarism, did Joseph Smith borrow

(01:04):
or appropriate phrases or ideasfrom Adam Clark's Bible commentary
without attribution which arefound in our JST footnotes today?
This is the question at the heart of thebiggest modern controversy surrounding
Joseph Smith's Bible translation.
In today's episode of Church HistoryMatters, we trace the origins of
this controversy back to a seriesof interviews and articles by BYU

(01:27):
professor Thomas Wayment and hisresearch assistant Haley Wilson-Lemmon,
beginning in 2017 and culminatingin a book chapter published in 2020.
And, as we are inclined to do with allthings related to Joseph Smith's Bible
translation, we'll look to expert KentJackson for his take on the claims
of Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon in anarticle he published as a critique

(01:47):
and refutation of their research.
So this should be fun.
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-host isCasey Griffiths, and today we dive into
our third episode in this series dealingwith Joseph Smith's non-Book-of-Mormon
translations and revelations.
Now, let's get into it.

(02:11):
Hello, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths (02:12):
Hello, Scott.
How are you doing?

Doing so good.
How about you?

Very good.
I'm excited to talk about our topic today.
I've done kind of a deep dive intothis over the last couple of days.
I'm loaded for bear, and I'mready to go in there, so.

Yeah.
You know, that's probably good for ourlisteners to hear: that what we do as
we prepare is we, like, load up likecrazy on our topic, and then once we,

like, talk through it—I don't know: If you asked us in two months from now (02:33):
undefined
to talk about these things cold, like,we probably couldn't with the same
amount of—you probably could, Casey,because you've got such a sharp memory.

I don't know.

But yeah, sometimes I'll listen to our old podcast, and I'll think,
like, ”I don't even remember that point.
That was”—

Yeah, me too.
Me too.
Sometimes I listen to it andgo, “Hey, that was pretty good.”

Yeah.

“And I don't remember making those points.”

That's right.
Yes.

But the point is we're learning.

That's right.
Yep.
We're learning, and we'retrying to then pass that on.

Yeah.

So we've been talking about the Joseph Smith Translation, and
last time we talked about the tight,interwoven relationship between the
JST and the Doctrine and Covenants.

Yeah.

And a few key points we pointed out
important thing that we mentioned lasttime is we proposed, and I think we are
both united on this—we feel good aboutthis, that possibly the primary purpose
of the Joseph Smith Translation was toprovide Joseph Smith with a springboard
to receiving additional revelations thatwould spur on the rest of the Restoration.

Yeah.

That is, as Joseph Smith translated the Bible, he was
then led to ask the Lord importantquestions sparked by the text, the
answers to which were then recorded andpublished in the Doctrine and Covenants.
And so the JST acts as a springboard toadditional D&C revelations, and we think
there's really good evidence for this.

Yeah.

For instance, we mentioned that about half of our Doctrine and
Covenants today came during that timeperiod that Joseph was translating the
Bible from June 1830 to July 1833, withmany of those revelations coming directly
from the Joseph Smith Translation.
And what's interesting and kind ofpeculiar about those D&C sections that
are influenced directly by the JosephSmith Translation is that they all seem

(04:18):
to be consistently doctrinally rich, andthey're nearly always dealing with really
important matters of, like, eschatology,meaning like the end of the world and
beyond type of stuff, or matters from likethe ancient past about Adam or Abraham
or the Patriarchs or Israel or whatever.

Yeah.

And we discussed several examples of that.
We mentioned Doctrine and Covenants29, the very first kind of big,
grand revelation about the Millenniumand the redemption of the world and
the sanctification of the earth.
Like, all of that comes because they'rediscussing JST, recent translations.

Mm-hmm.

D&C 37, 38, and 42, 65.
The big kahuna was 76, and 132.
We also mentioned 93.
There's several other examples, butone point we really tried to drive
home was how much church historywas directly influenced by the
Joseph Smith Translation, right?

Yeah.

For instance, the gathering of the New York Saints to
Ohio 1831, and then subsequently manyof the saints going to Missouri in
pursuit of Zion, the new Jerusalem,a major theme of Moses six and seven.

Mm-hmm.

The practice of living the law of consecration
directly comes out of that.
The idea of Adam and Eve asmodels of reinheritance into the
family of God for the rest of us.
This is going to be a familiartheme, which will become ritualized
in Nauvoo into the temple.

Mm.
Mm-hmm.

The concept of the high priesthood, or the Melchizedek
priesthood, and its restoration inKirtland grows right out of Genesis 14.
The understanding of the keys of thepriesthood and their connection to
directing the Kingdom of God on Earthcomes directly from a question Joseph
had about the Lord's Prayer, right?
Matthew 6:10 and D&C 65was given as a result.

Mm-hmm.

You pointed out the practice of baptism at eight years old.
We first learned that in the JST,that that's the age of accountability.
Then later baptism is commanded tohappen at the age of accountability.

Yeah.

The practice of plural marriage.
If that didn't affect our churchhistory, I don't know what did.

Yeah.

D&C 76.
The massively expanded conceptualizationabout God, his merciful plan of salvation
for all mankind, and our understandingthat we can actually become like God.
D&C 93.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of people think that's, like, a Nauvoo idea that Joseph
doesn't begin teaching until Nauvoo, butwe see it right there in D&C 93, that we
can gain the fullness like Christ did.
That's early, right?
And that comes right fromJoseph Smith's work on the JST.

Yeah.

So we're not talking little footnotes
in your scriptures, right?
We're not talking, like, “Oh,that's a neat little insight, right?
That's kind of how itwas for me growing up.
As you look down, the footnotein the Bible, and there'd be this
little “JST,” and it would kindof clarify a word or a phrase.

Mm-hmm.

Might be a little idea.
And there's some of that, but whatwe talked about last time was the
most profound influence of the JosephSmith Translation on the Doctrine and
Covenants, and then subsequent, like,church history that then actually plays
out in time and space and that we'vebeen directly affected by in our history.

Yeah.

Anything you want to add to that review?

Just that it's surprising how important
the Joseph Smith Translation isto our theology and our belief.

Mm.

I mean, I think when Latter-day Saints try to spell
out what makes us different from otherChristians, we go directly to the Book of
Mormon, and that's a good place to start.

Mm-hmm.

But a lot of our fundamental differences
are things that come from the JST,particularly those JST sections that
are in the Pearl of Great Price.
It's just hard to underestimatehow important that is towards our
worldview, our view of humanity, andmost importantly, our view of God
and Jesus Christ, so this is sort ofsomething that even Latter-day Saints

maybe don't fully appreciate (07:42):
that Joseph Smith's work on the Bible was
hugely important in forming what we are

Yeah.

And what we believe today.

Yeah.
It's incredible.
And like we said to beginwith, like, this is insightful.
As we've done a deep dive, for theboth of us, like, I think it's—it's
just been insightful to even just talkabout it out loud with you and realize
I don't know if I fully appreciatedthe impact of the JST on our theology,
on our temple liturgy, on our churchhistory, ultimately how that has impacted

(08:12):
who we are and what we stand for, so.
Very cool.

It's huge, right?

Yeah.

And one of the things that we've continually noted
about the JST is part of what makes itcomplex is it wasn't really finished.
Joseph Smith does complete around of translation by 1833.
He never is able topublish it in his lifetime.
And I guess we would add, too, that thecontroversies surrounding the Joseph

(08:36):
Smith Translation are not finished either.
Today we're going to talk abouta controversy that has sprung
up in the last couple years.

Yes.

You may or may not have heard about this.
Most of my students, I find,have not heard about this.

Yeah.
Let me tee it up, then.

So here's the question (09:03):
What is the biggest controversy surrounding
the Joseph Smith Translation?

So the most recent controversy surrounding the Joseph
Smith Translation is what's called theAdam Clark controversy, and I'll put
this in a nutshell for you really fast.
A couple years ago, two individualsat BYU, Tom Wayment, who's a professor
of classics, and Haley Wilson-Lemmon,who was Dr․ Wayment's research
assistant, published some researchthat noted similarities between the

(09:34):
changes Joseph Smith made to theBible and a commentary published by
a British scholar named Adam Clark.

Mm-hmm.

Now, actually, the first time that this information
appears is in a work called The Pearlof Great Price Reference Companion.
It's an excellent book.
Get a copy—where Kent Jackson,who's one of the eminent scholars
of the Joseph Smith Translation,actually referenced this.
Kent Jackson had apparently talked toTom and Haley and basically heard their
research that Joseph Smith may have beeninfluenced by Adam Clark's translation,

(10:05):
and he makes an offhand reference to it.
Now, at first, this really isn'tsuper earth-shaking at all.
I mean, it might be a little surprising,but most of the Latter-day Saint
scholarly community kind of went, “Oh.
Hey.
That's kind of cool.
It actually fits Joseph Smith'smodus operandi to say that he may
have used a Bible commentary.”

Yeah.

You included this nice quote here, Scott, from the prophet.
He said, “One of the grand fundamentalprinciples of Mormonism is to receive
truth, let it come from whence it may.”

Yeah.
Joseph didn't reallycare about the source.
As long as it was true,he says, “We believe it.”

Yeah.

So he was open to that kind of thing.

Yeah.
And like we said, most ofJoseph Smith's work on the Bible
takes place from 1830 to 1833.
And that's early on inthe prophet's career.

Mm-hmm.

But later on in Joseph Smith's ministry,
he shows a real desire to engagewith scholarship on the Bible.
He hires a Hebrew teacher named JoshuaSeixas, who starts a Hebrew school.
In Kirtland Joseph Smith expressesa desire to read the Bible in the
original languages, Hebrew and Greek.
In the King Follett sermon hereferences reading the Bible in

(11:10):
German and really enjoying it there.

Yeah.

And it seems like he has no issue working with
scholarship when it comes to the Bible,so on the one hand, this is great.

Yeah.
Honestly, when I first heard aboutthis, I thought, “Oh, that's cool.”
And I started actually teaching it tosome of my students when it would come
up, especially in our Foundations ofthe Restoration course as we're talking
about Joseph Smith producing scripture.

Mm-hmm.

And I thought it was a cool illustration of Joseph Smith being
true to that idea of receiving truth fromany source out there—that Joseph Smith
was unafraid of scholarship or insightsin other religious traditions, right?
He would say stuff like, “Dothe Baptists have any truth?
Yeah.
Do the Methodists have any truth?
Yeah.
They all have truth, and we'llreceive truth from anywhere.”

Yeah.

So I thought, “Oh, cool.
This is a cool example ofJoseph Smith doing that.
He's finding truth in Adam Clark'scommentary, and he is incorporating
it as sort of authorized by theSpirit.” I found no problem with that.
My students didn't findany problem with that.
Everything was fine.

Yeah.

Everything was fine.

I mentioned it in my classes, too.
I'd bring it up and say, “Hey, JosephSmith may have even used a commentary
to help with the translation.” Everybodywas like, “Oh, OK.“ Like I said, it fits
his way of doing things, so there reallywasn't much of a controversy to begin with
when this research was first published.

Yeah.
It even made it into the ChurchHistory Topics Gospel Library app.
I had this quote here that Iused in my class from that.
I don't even know if it's still there.
I should double check.
But it says, “As he [Joseph] worked onthese changes in the Bible, he appears,
in many instances, to have consultedrespected commentaries by biblical
scholars, studying them out in his mindas part of the revelatory process.”

(12:52):
That's how it was phrased there.
And this is all based on this work fromTom Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon.

Yeah.

And so, as you said, Kent Jackson, he felt
no problem talking about this.

Yeah.

And he put the very first printed assertion about this in that
commentary for the Pearl of Great Price.
And he said, “I made that statementwithout doing the research myself, but
I trusted the scholarship of ProfessorWayment.” But we were all kind of
on board based on this scholarship.
Tom's a good scholar.
He's got a good reputation.
We had no reason to notbelieve it, correct?

Yeah.
And, I mean, it fits everything we know.
In the revelations Joseph Smith wasgiven, he's told to seek knowledge out
of the best books even by study, alsoby faith, so saying that the JST was a
combination of revelation and scholarshipis something that actually fits.
And in the early 19th century, there'sa lot of commentaries floating around,
commentaries where authors woulddiscuss the text, sometimes even

(13:47):
offer alternate wording, which issomething like Joseph Smith is doing.
Just to list a couple, John Gill,James McKnight, Matthew Henry—I have
Matthew Henry's commentary on my shelfright now—Thomas Koch, and Adam Clark.
Now Clark's is probably the biggest.

Yeah, multi-volumes.

And if you want to read Adam Clark's
commentary, you can find it on Kindle.
I think it's, like, 5,000 pages longin print, and it's contemporary.
Joseph Smith probably wouldn'thave had any trouble finding
this, but he also never reallyclaims to have used it either.

Yeah.
There's no record ofhim ever referencing it.

Yeah.

In any talk or council meeting or anything.

Yeah.

So why is this controversial, Casey?
Why is this controversial?
Where did that come from?

So we've been kind of explaining that the best
way to understand the JST is notto see it as a single thing, but
as at least five different things.
And Kent Jackson, when headdresses this, simplifies the
list down to three things, okay?
Three types of changes thatJoseph Smith is making.

He says, one (14:47):
Blocks of entirely new texts without biblical counterpart.

Best example of that (14:51):
Book of Moses.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Joseph Smith— Matthew. (14:53):
undefined
Just huge additions to thetext that aren't in the Bible.

Yeah.

He says two: revisions of existing texts that
change its function and meaning.
A lot of the JST changes the meaningof the Bible, sometimes fixing
doctrinal problems that exist.

And three (15:09):
revisions that changed the wording of the existing
text, but not the meaning.

Yeah.

And like I said, another thing that made this not
controversial was that most of the changesthat Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon were
tying to Adam Clark were category three.
They were revisions that changedthe wording of the existing
text, but not the meaning.
And so, again, it's no reason toreally kind of worry about it.
So it turns into a controversybecause when Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon

(15:36):
published their final findings, theypublish it in a chapter in a book.
The title of the chapter is “A RecoveredResource: The Use of Adam Clark's
Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith'sBible Translation.” It's in a book
published by the University of Utahcalled Producing Ancient Scripture:
Joseph Smith's Translation Projects.
And after that, thingsget a little intense.
And before we dive into thisdiscussion, I want to preface

(15:57):
that these are all living people.

Yeah.

And we're not trying to smear anybody's reputation.

Sure.

It's a lot easier to talk about dead people than living
people because you're not going torun into them, you know, at lunch.
And so we're not tryingto make anybody look bad.
We're just trying to explain whathappened here, and as we do this,
we're going to try and use wordsthat come directly from the people
so that we don't misrepresent them.

I remember this article being very built up.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, this starts way back in 2017.

Mm-hmm.

And this article's not published until 2020.
And so they had some, like, interimarticles and interviews that they
did where they were kind of sort ofsummarizing some of their findings,
and this was creating a buzz, right?
Kind of interest andnot yet controversial.

Yeah.

So, okay.
So pick it up.
So then it actuallygets published in 2020.

Yeah.

And then what happens?

After that, things started to get intense.
So Hailey Wilson-Lemmon leaves thechurch, and she claims that her work
on the project had a significantnegative impact on her testimony.

Mm.

And she starts to appear on anti-Mormon
podcasts, and in the podcasts theystart to use the word plagiarism—

Mm.

—to describe the Joseph Smith Translation, saying that
Joseph Smith stole from Adam Clark.

Mm.

Now this sort of turns what was kind of an interesting
scholarly development on the JST intoan attack on the integrity of the JST.

Yeah.

Because they're throwing around words like plagiarism—

Yeah.

—and calling into question Joseph Smith's inspiration.

Yeah.

As he works on the Bible translation.

It's almost an attack on his prophetic authority.

Yeah.

As a prophet, right?

Yeah.

And I want to be clear (17:41):
it's Haley Wilson-Lemmon who's making
these assertions, not Tom Wayment.

Yeah.

She kind of breaks with him and starts doing this.

So she cites this as the reason for her
leaving the church, correct?

In some of her sources she says it's a number of reasons.

Okay.

It seems like in the podcasts initially when she
does this, she cites this as the mainreason, and then she kind of broadens
it as she offers other explanations.
The most recent statement I could findfrom her, she says issues over the
Book of Mormon was the primary reason.

Okay.
Okay.

Anyway, this causes Kent Jackson, who, again, is
the preeminent scholar on the JST,to become concerned, and he starts to
do an extensive review of Wayment andWilson-Lemmon's assertions, and then he
publishes an article that appears in theInterpreter, which is a great source.

Yeah.

And I'll just read his words.
Okay, so this is what Kent Jackson says.

We'll link it in the notes.

Casey Paul Griffiths: We'll link it in the notes. (18:37):
undefined
Yeah.
This is an online articleyou can read for free.
Check it out.

Okay.

Said, “Since then,” since the controversy, “I have
studied closely the Wayment article andthe Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon article
and their proposed connections betweenClark's commentary and Joseph Smith.
I've examined in detail every one of theJST passages they set forth as having been
influenced by Clark, and I have examinedwhat Clark wrote about those passages.
I now believe that the conclusionsthey reached regarding those

(19:03):
connections cannot be sustained.
I do not believe that there is anyAdam-Clark-JST connection at all, and
I have seen no evidence that JosephSmith ever used Clark's commentary
in his revision of the Bible.”

Wow.

“None of the passages that Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon
has set forth as examples, in myopinion, can withstand careful scrutiny.”

Shots fired.
Woo.

So he comes out swinging.
And here's the thing is thearticle that he writes is long.

Yeah.

And he goes out of his way to go
through every single example—

Yes.

—that Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon cite in their article as
Adam Clark in the JST, and basicallytakes every single one of them apart.

He handily dismantles them.

Yeah.

Handily dismantles every single one, point by point.
In fact, I remember my experiencereading Jackson's article because,
like I said, I had no problem withthis theory or this latest scholarship
finding that Joseph Smith had consultedAdam Clark and it influenced the JST.
I was like, “That's cool,” andI was teaching it in my classes.
And then I read Kent Jackson's article,and I did an absolute mental 180.

Mm-hmm.

As soon as I read this article, I just sat back in my
chair, and I was like, “Oh my gosh.
That whole theory is baloney,” right?

Yeah.

Let me read Jackson on this
beginning, he says, “The evidencedoes not bear out their claim.
I believe that none of the examplesthey provide can be traced to Clark's
commentary, and almost all of them canbe explained easily by other means.”
He says they misinterpret things.
He says the few overlaps that doexist are vague, superficial, and

(20:38):
coincidental, and then he goes tothe article and just backs that up
point after point after painful point.

Mm-hmm.

And I thought it was interesting, too, that in 2017—so I
have Tom in a short article called, “ARecently Recovered Source: Rethinking
Joseph Smith's Bible Translation.”This was on the 16th of March, 2017.
So three years before thefull article was published.

Mm-hmm.

But he said, “Our research has revealed that the number of direct
parallels between Smith's translationand Adam Clark's Biblical commentary are
simply too numerous and explicit to posithappenstance or coincidental overlap.
The parallels between the two textsnumber into the hundreds,” he says.
But then three years later, whenthe actual article is published,

(21:21):
they only proposed thirty parallels.

Yeah.

So in Jackson's article, he goes through every one of those thirty
proposed parallels and dismantles them.
Should we do a few examples,or is there anything else you
want to say before we do that?

Let's do a few, and we're not going to go
through all 30 because we don't havesix hours to do this, but we went
through, and we picked out a couple.

Yeah.

And I mean, wow.

Yeah.

Hearing you read that makes me go, “Whoo.
They may have jumped thegun a little bit on this.”

Yeah.

Yeah.
So first example, we'll start with themost famous JST footnote of them all.

Dun, dun, dun.

The Songs of Solomon are not inspired scripture.
That's the one that everybody referencesthat all my students are aware of.
When I got to see—and I gotto see the JST manuscripts.
The Community of Christ has them.
I was photographing them for a book I waswriting, and I went straight to that one.
I was like, “Show me the Songs ofSolomon.” Took a picture of that.
That is one of the ones that Wayment andWilson-Lemmon say came from Adam Clark.

(22:18):
Now, what's their reasoning for this?

Yeah.

I'm summarizing what Kent Jackson wrote, but their
reasoning, basically, is that Clark,A, rejects the book as scripture,
just like Joseph Smith does.

Mm.

Casey Paul Griffiths: And this wasn't uncommon. (22:30):
undefined
A lot of people rejected the Song ofSolomon as scripture during this time.
However, their connection to theJST is that in the introduction of
his commentary, Clark refers to theSong of Solomon by a traditional
Latin title, that is Canticles.

Mm-hmm.

Plural.

Canticles.

Canticles, plural.
And in the JST manuscript, JosephSmith's scribe, Frederick G․ Williams,
writes “Songs of Solomon,” plural.

Ooh.
Is that the Englishinterpretation of Canticles?

I guess so.
But that is their connection.
That's why they say thisis linked to Adam Clark.

Oh, man.

Because Adam Clark refers to it as Canticles,
plural, and in the JST, it's not Songof Solomon, it's Songs of Solomon.
That's pretty much it.

Mm.
You know, in Clark's day, as well asin our own, some Christians like to
read the Song of Solomon as, like, aallegory for Christ in the church, right?
The church is Christ's bride, andChrist is, like, writing these
love letters to the church, right?

Mm-hmm.

Clark opposed that.
In fact, let me readsome Jackson right here.
He said—I'm quoting directly from thearticle: “Clark opposed interpreting the
Song of Solomon as an allegory for Christand the church, as some Christians did.
Indeed, he opposed interpreting itas anything other than what the words
in it actually say, and he advisedministers not to preach from it.”

Yeah.

And then here's Jackson: he says, “With no more evidence than
that, Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon cometo the conclusion that Joseph Smith
was influenced by Clark to reject thebook as scripture.” And he talks about
the Canticles and songs thing, butover and over again like this, he'll
just show, like, how thin the reasoningis for their supposed connections.

Yeah.
Let me read a little bit more from him.
“He uses,” referring to Clark, “ [Clark]uses the plural Canticles a total of three
times in his introduction, but elsewherehe refers to the book over 90 times with
singular titles, nouns, and pronouns.
We may never know why Joseph Smith or hisscribe chose “songs,” but nothing suggests
that it was because of Adam Clark.
Many readers, starting centuries ago,have concluded the Song of Solomon

(24:31):
has not inspired writings, so theconclusions of Joseph Smith and
Adam Clark were not unique to them.
But there is something else to consider,not only here, but elsewhere as we look

at the Adam Clark theory (24:39):
By the time the prophet came to this book in his
Bible revision, probably in the springof 1833, he'd already dictated every word
of the Book of Mormon and every word thatwould later be called the Book of Moses.
He'd already received about80 of the revelations now in
the Doctrine and Covenants.
I believe that he was in a uniqueposition to discern the nature of inspired
writings, and I don't believe he neededsuggestions from anybody else to do so.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: So, I mean, that's—whoa. (25:00):
undefined

Yeah.

That's pretty thin evidence that the JST footnote on the
Song of Solomon is linked to Adam Clark.
I mean, real thin.

Yeah.
Here's another really thin one.
Exodus 11:9.
King James version says, “Pharaoh shallnot hearken unto you.” Joseph Smith

Translation (25:34):
“Pharaoh will not hearken unto you.” Changing shall to will.

Yeah.

And for linguistic reasons, Jackson says, “Adam Clark
criticized the King James translators fortheir use of shall here instead of will.
So Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon suggestthat Joseph Smith followed Clark
in making this chain.” And thenJackson says, “But there's no reason
to think that this is the case.
The manuscripts show that theprophet dictated both shall
and will when revising texts.

(26:00):
Prior to arriving at this verse,he had already changed shall to
will in several places, includingGenesis 23, Romans 3, Revelation 19.
In a passage similar to the one here,he had already changed ‘He shall not
let the people go’ to ‘He will notlet the people go’ in Exodus 4:21.
In a passage identical to this one,he had already changed ‘Pharaoh shall

(26:22):
not hearken unto you’ to ‘Pharaoh willnot hearken unto you’ in Exodus 7:4.
Clark suggested none of those changes,and thus, because Joseph Smith made
them prior to arriving at Exodus 11, theconnection that Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon
make with Clark is unfounded.
The prophet made other significantchanges in this verse and in
surrounding verses, but Clark'scommentary cannot explain any of them.

(26:44):
This is something we shallsee repeatedly,” he said.
There's just this really thinevidence, and they're making
these really strong conclusions.

Yeah.

Sometimes they'll say maybe or perhaps, to be fair, but
other times they're really strong.
Like, let me quote another one from Tom.
Back in 2017, he said, “This new evidenceeffectively forces a reconsideration
of Smith's translation projects,particularly his Bible project and
how he used academic sources whilesimultaneously melding his own prophetic

(27:11):
inspiration into the resulting text.”I mean, that sounds pretty grand.
That sounds pretty,like, important, right?
And then when you actuallylook at their examples, it's
things like from shall to will.

Yeah.

Which Joseph had already done and Clark doesn't do
in some places that Joseph does.
And Kent Jackson, preeminent scholaron this, is scratching his head,
saying, “Where is the profundity here?
Why are we needing to forceour reconsideration of Joseph's
translation projects basedon this really thin evidence?

Yeah.

So do you want to do any other examples?
Are we...

Casey Paul Griffiths: Let's do a couple more. (27:39):
undefined
So one that could be consideredimportant: This is Matthew 5:22.

Okay.

The King James text
without a cause,” the JST changes to“whosoever is angry with his brother.“
Deletes the phrase “without a cause.”

Mm-hmm.

“Adam Clark's commentary,” this is Kent Jackson,
“points out that the Greek wordtranslated ‘without a cause’ is not
found in Vaticanus, nor in some othermanuscripts, and it was probably a
marginal gloss originally, which inprocess of time crept into the text.”
So there's a lot of manuscriptsthat don't contain this phrase.
He goes on to write, “This was not arevolutionary discovery because even the

(28:14):
translations of Martin Luther and WilliamTyndale did not include the clause.
Wilson-Lemmon states that the absenceof this clause was the first discovery
she made that linked Joseph Smith'stranslation with the commentary of Adam
Clark.” So Wilson-Lemmon actually saysthis was the first thing that she saw that
caused her to connect it to Adam Clark.

This got her going.

Right.
But Kent Jackson goes on to say,“Clark was not the source for the
prophet’s rendering of this verse.
The Book of Mormon is.”

Ah, shoot.

“The evidence is clear that when he revised
Matthew 5, Joseph Smith edited theKJV text against 3 Nephi in the
1830 Book of Mormon, pages 479–81.
He did not copy the Book of Mormontext exactly, but he inserted into
Matthew 5 about thirty wordingsof it that differ from the KJV.
The Book of Mormon is the sourceof the absence of “without a

(29:02):
cause” in the JST, not Adam Clark.
In addition to those revisions, JosephSmith's translation of Matthew 5 also
contains over ten other changes thatcannot be accounted for with reference to
Adam Clark.” So they're basically pickingone change out of ten in that particular
chapter and using it as evidence thatAdam Clark was the source when all ten

(29:23):
line up with the Book of Mormon andthe version of the Sermon on the Mount
that's found in the Book of Mormon.

Yeah.

So that's a consistent thing is
that they kind of say, “Ooh.
This change lines up with Adam Clark,”and they don't account for the dozens
of other changes in the text around itor try to tie it back to Adam Clark.
And again, Adam Clark isn't the onlyperson that's putting this idea out there.
It's already in the Book of Mormon.
Other biblical translators andscholars had pointed this out, and

(29:50):
to tie it to Adam Clark is a littlebit of a reach, to say the least.

Yeah.
You know, Jackson says in part ofhis conclusion to all of this, I
thought he worded it well here whenhe said, “The Adam-Clark-JST theory
starts with the given that JosephSmith borrowed ideas from Adam Clark,
and then it searches through Clarkfor words that can be invoked as
evidence for it.” Now, that's kind of abackwards way to do scholarship, right?

(30:16):
To start with your conclusion first andthen go to try to find evidence for it.

Mm-hmm.

So this theory, this Adam-Clark-JST theory, did not seem
to grow out of these astonishingconnections into the theory.
It started with a theory that then wentbackwards to look for connections, and
maybe is we'll just take Haley's word forit, that it was that “without a cause”
clause that was the first thing that cuedher into, “Maybe there's something here.”

Mm-hmm.

But I agree that theory that started out so thin
kind of became the lens by whichthey searched Clark, right?
They're looking for anything at all,anything that could be evidence.
Little things, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so, as Jackson says, “Indeed, if Joseph Smith borrowed from
Adam Clark, the evidence would be obvious.
There would be direct recognizableuses of distinctive words of Clark,
and there would be a clear and repeatedpattern of them.” And he says “the real
explanations are almost always mucheasier and much more intuitive than the
explanations that involve Adam Clark.”You just pointed out, like, the Book of

(31:15):
Mormon, way before Joseph gets involvedin the Bible translation project, he
had already translated the Book ofMormon, and it doesn't have that phrase.

Mm-hmm.

And so, yeah, thick conclusions based on thin evidence.

I mean, that's part of the challenge here, right?
If they were just saying, “Hey,there's a possible connection.”

Yeah.

But some of the language that they were using,
started out as “There's a definiteconnection, and we can't deny it.”

Yeah.
And we need to fundamentally reconsiderJoseph's translation projects.

Yeah.
We need to reconsidereverything because of this.
And then that transformslater on into plagiarism.
And you can't make a charge likeplagiarism without serious evidence.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Which they just don't have. (31:51):
undefined
Let me go to the last argumentKent Jackson gives, which is
the mathematical argument, okay?

Okay.

He says, “There is an insurmountable mathematical
problem associated with the idea thatJoseph Smith relied on Adam Clark.”

Mm.

“The prophet made changes in about 3,600
verses of the King James Bible.”

Mm.

“In addition to the thousands of words of new text he added
that have no King James counterpart.”

Wow.

“In some of those verses, he made multiple word changes.
Clark's commentary provides hundredsof thousands of bits of data
that the prophet could have drawnfrom in the JST, had he used it.
The convergences that Wayment andWilson-Lemmon propose are individually
unconvincing, but they're alsotiny and random and statistically
negligible compared with the massiveamount of data available in Clark.”

Hmm.

“On the other side of the equation, Wayment and
Wilson-Lemmon cannot account forthe thousands of changes Joseph
Smith made that do not resemble inany way Adam Clark's commentary.”

Hmm.

“And they do not explain why Joseph would pay
attention to one isolated commentfrom Clark in the midst of scores
of others, nor why he would look toClark to make revisions of little
consequence while Clark was proposingmany re-interpretations of significance.
The numbers don't work at all.
The idea that Joseph Smith eitherread Clark's commentary or has it in
front of him or reads it at night, asWayment maintains, cannot be sustained.”

Whoo.

So what they're suggesting is around thirty changes.
I mean, I guess theysuggested hundreds of changes.

Yeah, back in 2017.
Yeah.
2017 was hundreds.

Yeah.
They only actually cite 30 out of 3,600.

And if those 30 are their very best examples.

Yeah.

This theory is shot.

Yeah.
Using the word “plagiarism” is reallyoff base here and totally unfair.
And for the next part of ourdiscussion, I want to show that
at least Haley Wilson-Lemmon hasbacked off on calling it plagiarism.

Oh, even after stepping away from the church, she's...

Yeah, even after stepping away from the church.
So we wanted to basically allow eachone of these three individuals, Haley
Wilson-Lemmon and Tom Wayment and KentJackson to kind of speak for themselves.

Yeah.

And so in preparing the notes for the show, I
tried to find where they had, you know,offered recent commentary on this.
Haley Wilson-Lemmon wenton to be a grad student.
We noted she left the church.
She hasn't published anything sincethe chapter came out, but she did
do an Ask Me Anything on Reddit.

Okay.

Where people could basically ask any questions.
So this is the way she introducedherself: “Hello, everyone.
I'm Haley Wilson-Lemmon․ Wife․ Exmo․Librarian․ ... and I co-authored a
little paper on the JST' and Adam Clark.
Ask me anything.” Now in the introductionto this, she also notes, “I will not
discuss Tom or his personal beliefsabout the project, the church, or
anything adjacent to those topics.
I appreciate your understanding.”And that's kind of classy.

Yeah.
Let's let Tom speak for himself.

Yeah.
I'm not going to representTom or his beliefs.
I'm representing myself.

Yeah.

When she's asked, “Are you going to continue to
do this?” Someone asks, “What's yournext research project going to be?” She
goes, “I've gotten this question a lot.
I'm going to give a ratherdisappointing answer.
I'm actually done with research for now.”

Mm.

“I've spent most of my life entrenched in Mormonism
and in scholarship, and I'm looking tofind my identity outside of Mormonism.
I'm happy to talk research and help anyonewho wants to try and maybe compare Clark
to the Book of Mormon or something, but Idon't feel like I'm the one to do it right
now.” So she's not doing any research.
Someone else asked about, “Hey, I thinkthis research is important.” Someone

(35:51):
said, “Hey, what do you think aboutthis article that one of the editors of
Producing Ancient Scripture,” the volumethe chapter was published in, “wrote
about it?” That is Mark Ashurst-McGee,who's a member of the Joseph Smith Papers.

Love Mark.

Mark Ashurst-McGee basically comes out and says, “Yeah, I
mean, it's a small number of changes,and it doesn't necessarily conflict
with the idea that Joseph Smith mayhave used outside scholarship, and
it's not fair to call it plagiarism.”

Yeah.

Now, referencing that, Wilson-Lemmon says, speaking
to his idea, referring to MarkAshurst-McGee, “We can't call
what Joseph Smith did plagiarism.”

Mm-hmm.

“Everyone will see it differently, and
that's fine.” So she actually says,“We can't call it plagiarism.”

Mm.

Meaning she's either walking back what she said or she was
misrepresented on some of these podcasts.

Yeah.

You can still go to the webpages of some
of these podcasts, and they justoutright say “It's plagiarism.
This is proof Joseph Smith plagiarizedit.” But then she does make this point.
She says, “The point is that JosephSmith used Clark for his JST, and
regardless of what you want to callit, that fact cannot be denied.”

Mm.

She's still sort of speaking of it as if it's fact.
When you look at the examplesthat they cited, I mean, it's
not settled scholarship at all.

No.
It's debunked, I think,with Jackson's article.
It's debunked scholarship.

Yeah.

I want her to respond to Jackson, not Mark Ashurst-McGee.
I want her to respond—like, has Haley orTom responded to Kent Jackson's article?
Like, I haven't seen anythingthat's a direct response.
Have you?

I couldn't find anything.
And this AMA came outafter Jackson's article.
And she doesn't address him.
I mean, I read through the wholething, and I couldn't find any
place where she addressed it.
But to me the most important statement tosay there was she actively says, “We can't
call what Joseph Smith did plagiarism.”

Wow.

So even she admits it doesn't fit the
definition of plagiarism thatany responsible person would use.

And that was the way that this research was
weaponized originally, right?
Was to say, “Uh-oh.
Look at this scholarship.
Uh-oh.
Joseph Smith was doing someshenanigans with the Bible.
Uh-oh.
This is plagiarism.
This calls into question his prophethoodand his Bible project translation.
We need to radicallyreconsider all of this,” right?

Mm.

That's interesting.
So now she's backing away from that andsaying, “That's not really plagiarism.”

Yeah, basically.

And read that line again.
What did she say?
She said “it's not plagiarism,but I think it's” what?

So speaking to his idea—she's
referring to Mark Ashurst-McGee'sassessment of their scholarship.

Yeah.

“We can't call what Joseph Smith did plagiarism.”

Uh-huh.

“Everybody will see it different, and that's what's fine.
The point is that Joseph used Clark forhis JST, and regardless of what you want
to call it, that fact cannot be denied.”

And then you read Jackson, and it's like, “That
fact can totally be denied.”

Yeah.

That fact can absolutely be denied, that
he used any Clark whatsoever.

Yeah.

Oh, Haley.

Let's move on to Tom Wayment again, because
we're not trying to smear anybody.
We're trying to use their own words here.

Yeah.

Tom Wayment has also pushed back
against the claim of plagiarism.

Okay.

Tom Wayment did a little Q-&-Answer for From the
Desk, which is Kurt Manwaring's blog.
It's excellent.
Everybody should subscribeto From the Desk.
I think it's great.

Mm.

And Tom is kind of maintaining Joseph
Smith did use Adam Clark.
He's still holding out on that, but here'swhat he says: These are Tom's own words.
“The use of sources in completing newscriptural projects is not surprising,
and biblical authors used other textswhen they constructed their own texts
without offering direct attribution.
They quoted and adapted theirsources for their own needs, and
they were deeply influenced by theircultural setting and environment.

(39:28):
Unfortunately, when this discussion ariseswith respect to the text of the Book of
Mormon, the JST, and the Book of Abraham,the conversation partners often draw stark
boundary lines of orthodoxy and heresybetween those who seem to claim that all
of Joseph Smith's scriptural projectswere completed without the influence
of external sources and those who findJoseph's scriptural projects as simply
derivative from his cultural inheritance.

(39:49):
Unfortunately, I think the conversationabout the article and subsequent article
I published on the topic in the Journalof Mormon History was quickly surpassed
by the online conversation of the article.

Hmm.

Words like “plagiarism” have been used to describe
Joseph's use of Adam Clark, and someoutlets were willing to use that term
even before the article appeared in print.

Hmm.

“I think many people eagerly anticipated that the article
would settle the issue of whether Josephplagiarized the work of Adam Clark.
When someone uses a term like plagiarismto describe Joseph's use of Adam
Clark, that person should be carefulto note whether the definition is based
on modern concepts of plagiarism orwhether one is basing that acquisition
on an 1830s definition of the concept.

(40:30):
Joseph Smith consulted a Bible commentaryby a noted Methodist theologian.” Again,
he's talking about this like it's fact.

Hmm.

“I believe there is little doubt of that.
His use of that source shapedthe way he translated verses.
Today a person who consults a Biblecommentary and then, as a result,
alters the translation that a personis working on needs to footnote
the source that was consulted.
I don't wish to obfuscate this reality,but I also want to avoid anachronistic
descriptions of what happened.”

Hmm.

So he's trying to be fair, right?

He's trying to be fair.
So he still believes thatJoseph used Adam Clark.

Yeah.

But he doesn't think he was doing anything sketchy.

Yeah.

Because that was according to the way you did things at the time.
You didn't have to footnote your sources—

Yeah.

—in 1830.

Yeah.
And one of the valuable things hesays here, too, is that these charges
of plagiarism were being made beforehe even published his final article.
And so this was a case where, you know,people that weren't even involved in
the scholarly debate, that weren't evendoing the scholarship, just took this
hint of an idea and all of a suddenstarted using the word “plagiarism”

(41:30):
to describe what Joseph Smith did.
So I think it's fair to say thatTom Wayment isn't saying Joseph
Smith plagiarized Adam Clark.
He still believes Joseph used Adam Clark—

Yeah.

—in his translation, but he's not making any
assertions of plagiarism or anythingthat would really upset the apple
cart about what we believe the JST is.

Tom is a little more fair and circumspect than a lot of
people are with Tom's own scholarship.

Yeah.
And then one more thing that hewrites, “If I am correct and Joseph
used an academic source, even ifit amounted to only a few hundred
changes out of the nearly 1,200”—he'susing weird numbers here, too.

Yeah.

—“we can begin to think of a new paradigm for how prophetic
speech or prophetic translation is done.”So he's saying, “Hey, even if it only
accounts for a few of the changes, itdoesn't discount Joseph Smith's role
as a prophet.” So I think he's been alittle unfairly misrepresented here, too.

So he just said, “We can begin to think of a new
paradigm for how prophetic speechor prophetic translation is done.”

Yeah.

I think, and Tom needs to speak for himself on this, because
he's still alive—it's not like trying toget into the mind of a dead person—but I
sense that's what stake Tom has in this.
He's trying to promotemaybe a new paradigm—

Mm-hmm.

—for prophetic speech or prophetic translation.
He wants us to think more openly aboutscholarship and to be more okay with
using scholarship or to see how prophetshave used scholarship in the past.

Mm-hmm.

That seems to be the angle he's coming at this, right?
Just saying that, “Hey, we don'tneed to be afraid of scholarship.
Joseph Smith used scholarship.
He even used it in his Bibletranslation project.” Although with
Jackson's articles, we don't agree withthat, but I think that's the point.
He's not saying somethingreally damning of Joseph.
He's just, I feel like,trying to shift the paradigm.
Would you say that's—

Yeah.

How you read it?

I think that's where Tom's coming from, and Tom's
trying to basically say, “Hey, if JosephSmith used a commentary, it doesn't
invalidate his role as a prophet.
It doesn't mean thatthe JST isn't inspired.”

Just means we need to rethink our assumptions
about Bible translation.
That's all he's saying.
Right?

Yeah.
So continuing on, Kent Jackson,after his article came out, has
written things about this, too.

Hmm.

Here's what Kent said
to believe that it includes influencesfrom Adam Clark’s commentary, Professor

Wayment was doing what scholars do: establishing a hypothesis, testing (43:49):
undefined
it, and drawing conclusions about it.
It is obviously not uncommon for scholarsto have different opinions as he and I do
about this matter, but his views on thistopic have been overshadowed by the fact
that his co-author, Haley Wilson-Lemmon,has been claiming the research shows
Joseph Smith plagiarized from Clark.
Wayment hasn't made thisclaim: she has.” And we noted

(44:10):
she's backed off on this, too.
Then Kent Jackson goes on to say,“Even if their theory were true, it
wouldn't be plagiarism because theconvergences they propose amount mostly
to isolated words and vague resemblances.
At best they could say Joseph Smith wasoccasionally influenced by the things
Clark wrote, though I don't believe it.”

Mm.

So he basically comes out and says,
“Wayment isn't claiming plagiarism.”

Yeah.

“And even if he is, I don't think that the evidence
is there to prove that there wasany kind of plagiarism that exists.”

And then he said—he goes on in that.
Can I read that next part?

Yeah, please.

He said, “The charge of plagiarism comes from
interviews Wilson-Lemmon has done withaggressive critics of the church.”

Mm-hmm.

“Who have used her and put words into her
mouth for their own purposes.
She has willingly acquiesced.
She famously left the church and hasused the Adam Clark idea as a means
of advertising her disaffection.
This has made her a minor celebrityamong anti-Mormons, and it has brought
the Adam Clark notion into the mixas evidence that Joseph Smith was a

(45:10):
fraud.” And then he says, “I find allof this to be intellectually dishonest,
but this is the kind of thing thatmany critics of the church do.”

Yeah.
This is a great example of that oldsaying that a lie can make it halfway
around the world before the truth has achance to even put its pants on, right?
Where basically everybody, even beforethey had published their article, was
taking the one-sentence descriptionand running off in a totally different
direction with it and claimingthat Joseph Smith plagiarized it.

(45:40):
And, I mean, honestly, I've neverhad a student bring this up in class.
I have a colleague who has had a studentbring it up, but the way the student
phrased it was, “Isn't it true that JosephSmith plagiarized all of his translation?”

Wow.
That's where it's grown to, huh?

Yeah.
That's not what Tom or Kent or even HaleyWilson-Lemmon was claiming to begin with.

Yeah.

But that's the one-sentence distortion of
how this research has turned out.
And this episode, maybe as muchas anything, kind of illustrates,
hey, when a new idea comes along,it's okay to get excited about it,
but don't embrace it until you'vehad a chance to fully explore it.
It takes time for scholarship tobe tested and measured, and before

(46:21):
we radically restructure our viewof something, especially Joseph
Smith's prophetic role, we need totake the time to sort of slow down.

Yeah.

And test the hypothesis and make sure it's even
a valid hypothesis to begin with.

Yeah.
It almost reminds me ofthe Salamander Letter.

Yeah.

Back in the day.

Yeah.

With Mark Hofmann and his forgery.
And some people, that radically,like, shaded the way they viewed
Joseph, even to the point of manyof them thinking he was a fraud.
Some people left the church over that.
And then later it comes outthat that was a forgery.

Yeah.

That Mark Hofmann had made it look like Joseph had said something
like Angel Moroni being, like, a whitesalamander or something like that.
Something kind of odd and ridiculous.

Yeah.

And, you know, that's an interesting case study of “Slow down.
Let's let the scholarship do its work.
Let's let all hypotheses betested,” like you're saying.
Let's put some criticalthinking onto this.

Yeah.

Be careful.
Think slow, not fast about these things.
Be slow to conclude and quick to lookinto what bolsters those assumptions,
what bolsters the assertions.
What's the evidence behind the claim?

Yeah.

If you go about these kind of things slowly,
usually you're not rattled by them.

Yeah.
And it's so typical of what some criticsof the church do, where they make a claim,
they try to get a person caught up inthe emotion of that claim, and they ask
the person to make an immediate action.
“You've got to leave the church.
This isn't right.” That kind of thing.

Yeah.
Alert.
Alert.
Scandal.
Scandal.
Fraud.
Fraud, right?
Kind of just—kind of, yeah.

“This is huge.
Here's the one sentence version of this.”

Yeah.

When you sit down and you start to explore the controversy
and you realize, “Hey, I don't know ifthere's a controversy here to begin with.”

This is a nothing burger.

Yeah.
Last, I want to look at how a scholaroutside the controversy would look at it.
So this is Mark Ashurst-McGee,who both of us know.
Mark's a great guy.

I know of Mark.
I admire Mark.
We—I don't think we've evermet, but I admire his work.
I think he's an incredibleexample of a humble scholar.

Yeah.

Bright and meek.

And I know Mark pretty well.
He's hung out in my office.
We've talked.
I still admire him.

Yeah.

So when this controversy kind of blew up, because
the article was published in Mark'sbook, and then all the podcasts, all
the controversy happened after that.
Mark is asked, “Hey, what doyou think?” In fact, here's the
question that was asked for him.

This is also in From the Desk (48:47):
“Does Joseph Smith's use of Adam Clark
commentary lessen the importanceof the Joseph Smith Translation?”

Okay, hold on a second.
There's an assumption in thatquestion that he did use it, right?

Yeah.

So this must be before Kent Jackson's article.

This is before Kent Jackson's article.

Got it.
Okay.

So here's what Mark says.
Mark says, “No.
It doesn't.
And let me explain why, thoughthis will take a minute.” Again,
you see this characteristic?

Slow down.

Let's slow down.
Let's don't run off before we, you know,know what we're actually talking about.
He said, “Church historians haverecognized for decades that there is a
broad qualitative spectrum of contentin the Joseph Smith Translation.”
That's what we've been arguing inthis series the entire time: that
the JST is way more complex than itusually gets presented as, and it's
better to consider that complexity.

It's not just one thing.

Yeah.
He says, “At one end of thespectrum there are the substantial
expansions regarding Moses and Enoch.
It's quite clear these are meantto be understood as the result of
revelation or revelatory translation.
At the other end of the spectrum, thereare mundane word changes that update the
language of the 17th century King Jamestranslation for a 19th century audience.
Church historians have long been opento the idea that revelation was not

(49:56):
required for these mundane changes.”

Mm-hmm.

“There's a wide range of changes in between these two
extremes, with a large gray area inthe middle where it is unclear whether
changes are meant to be understood asthe result of revelation or reason.”
And again, this all lines up withwhat the Lord tells Joseph Smith.
Use the best books.

Study it out in your—

Casey Paul Griffiths: Study it out in your mind. (50:11):
undefined
By learning and also by faith.
This is all in the Doctrineand Covenants, right?

Mm-hmm.

He said, “It's certainly possible that the entire Joseph
Smith translation is inspired, at leastin the sense that Smith was inspired
to modernize some of the words in theBible for Latter-day Saints of his time.
But even in this scenario, is itthe case that every single word
change is meant to be understoodas a result of pure revelation?”

Mm-hmm.

Then he walks through and points out a couple changes
that Joseph Smith consistently makes.
Like, we mentioned this, buthe changed woteth to knoweth.

Mm-hmm.

Wot to know and wist to knew.

Mm-hmm.

He changed things like afore to before
and aforehand to beforehand.
He revised alway to alwaysand amongst to among.

Mm-hmm.

Mark says, “Must we assume that Smith meant for this
change from amongst to among to beunderstood as the result of revelation?
This is just a small smattering ofexamples of such mundane revisions,
over 1,200 by my count.” And I guessthat's where we harmonize what Tom was
saying versus what Kent was saying.
Kent's saying there's 3,600 changes total.
Tom is saying of the category where thewords were revised, but no significant

(51:09):
doctrinal changes, there's 1,200.

That makes sense.
Fair enough.

Okay, fair enough.

Okay, so Mark goes on to say this: “While it is theoretically possible (51:13):
undefined
that Smith meant for every single oneof these revisions to be received as
revelation, it seems much or more likelyto me that this was not his intent.
And if this is the case, then Smithunderstood the Joseph Smith Translation
to be the result of both revelationand reasoning in his own mind.
Let's think through that further.
Joseph Smith didn't live in anintellectual vacuum, even if Joseph was a

(51:35):
very intelligent and creative person, it'sunreasonable to hold that the reasoning
he employed in updating archaic words wasconfined to the interior of his brain.”

Mm.

“That it was hermetically sealed off from family,
friends, and associates.” I mean, is itthat outlandish that he could have turned
to one of his scribes, say Sidney Rigdonor Oliver Cowdery, and said, “Should we
change this word to this word becauseit's a little bit clearer when we're doing
this?” That seems totally reasonable.

Yeah.

But again, I mean, there's extreme ends on this part of
the argument, but the conclusions thatwe basically come to are it's not a big
deal to begin with, even if it's true.

Right.

And Kent Jackson's work really casts a lot of
doubt on whether or not the Adam Clarktheory is even true to begin with.

Yeah.
I think it thoroughly dismantlesit, but there might be some
that still hold to that.

Yeah.

That's fine.
We could still be friends.

Yeah.
We could still get along andeverything like that, and I still,
you know, respect Tom and think he'sa good person and don't have any—

Yeah.

—personal attacks to make on him or his
faith or anything like that.

I actually like Tom a lot.
I think that he's a good soul.

I do, too, and I feel bad that he's been
misrepresented in this controversy.
I hope that it hasn't injured himor his career or anything like that.

Yeah.

Nevertheless, our highest obligation is to truth, right?

Yeah.

So let me try and put this all together, because
we're near the end of our episode.

Bring it home for us.

1.
Thomas Wayment, the primary scholarinvolved in the Adam Clark controversy.
Never claimed, never claimed, doesnot to this day claim joseph Smith
plagiarizes work from Adam Clark.
He just claimed that Joseph drewfrom Adam Clark as he was making
these grammatical revisions.

Mm-hmm.

Both Wayment and Kent Jackson have stated that
they have no problem if this is true,and we want to be clear with that.
Kent Jackson is saying, “Hey, if it'strue, it's not really a big deal to me.
I'm fine with it.”

Yeah.

Haley Wilson-Lemmon, this is Tom's research assistant, is
more of a question because she appearsto have claimed plagiarism when she
appeared on some of these podcasts.

Yeah.

But in her Reddit AMA, which was the most recent
statement I could find from her,she said that it wasn't plagiarism.
She said we can't call it plagiarism.

Yeah.

But she holds to Joseph Smith used Adam Clark.

Mm-hmm.

Point number 2.
When Kent Jackson reviewed all ofthe examples provided by Wayment and
Wilson-Lemmon of Joseph Smith possiblyusing Adam Clark as a source for the JST,
he didn't find any that could be explainedaway as anything other than coincidence.

Yeah.
Big, fat zero.

Yeah.
And I actually was in a meetingwhere Kent Jackson spoke about this.

Mm-hmm.

We all came in with that theory of, “Hey, we're totally
fine with this if this is the case.”We asked Kent, “How many changes do you
think are linked to Adam Clark?” andKent just basically said, “Zero.” None.

Yeah.

I haven't found any that can be definitively tied
to Adam Clark, and I think if youread his article, he really kind of
brings the receipts to that claim.

Yeah.

It becomes really tough, especially for some
of the ones that are more important—

Yeah.

—to tie them to Adam Clark.

Let me read one more quote from him in his conclusion.
This is from Kent Jackson.
He said, just to put a fine point on this:

Mm-hmm.

“Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon cannot produce convincing corollaries
between Clark's words and the JST, andthat convinces me that there are none.
Instead, the selective choosing ofvague, distant resemblances out of
large blocks of Clark's wordy text,in which nothing else resembles the
JST, coupled with misinterpretationof Clark's words and lack of analysis

(55:07):
of JST revisions in context, produceda theory that does not hold up.”

Yep.
Point number 3.
Whether you agree with Kent Jacksonor whether you agree with Tom Wayment
or whether you agree with HaleyWilson-Lemmon, they all agree that
the changes even cited as beinglinked to Joseph Smith are a very
small number of changes in the JST.

(55:33):
Mark Ashurst-McGee estimated that itwas less than 5 percent of the total
changes, and that's real generous.

Mm-hmm.

None of the academic studies mentioned by us today
really actually threatened the integrityof the Joseph Smith Translation.

Yeah.

So, I mean, in conclusion it's like you said early,
this is kind of a big nothing burger.
I think critics of the church triedto turn it into the controversy of
the week, as they're wont to do.

Yeah.

But like most controversies that they stir up, when
you really sit down and look at it,it's not a controversy to begin with.
They're misrepresenting the people thatthey claim have brought this to light,
and they're really just trying to scorepoints for whoever they serve as a way
of, you know, attacking the integrityof Joseph Smith, the Restoration
and his witness of Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

So that was an hour to basically reach the
conclusion that this is nothing, but...

Yeah.
What we've tried to do today is highlightthe importance of good scholarship.

Right.

I mean, thank God for someone like Kent Jackson who is both
able and willing to slog through theweeds, verse by verse, go to Clark's
commentary, and there's actuallymultiple versions of Clark's commentary
that he cites and he goes through.

Yeah.

So thank you, Kent, for slogging through all of that to be able
to show us what it looks like to challengeassumptions, question conclusions,
and really go to the evidence, go tothe original sources on all of this,
the original manuscripts of the JST,the original Adam Clark stuff, see
everything in context, compare, contrast,and come to more informed conclusions.

(57:05):
I think what he has done isjust a fantastic example of what
faithful scholarship looks like.

Yeah.

It's not starting with the conclusion and then just
finding evidence for that, right?
It's let's look at allthe evidence together.

Yeah.
And I mean, maybe our listenersaren't that enamored with knowing
how the sausage gets made as you andI are, Scott, but this is a classic
case study of how scholarship works.

Yeah.

A scholar makes an assertion, another scholar is
allowed to question that assertion.

Yeah.

They present their evidence back and forth.
So far, Tom Wayment hasn't really givena response to Kent Jackson's assertions
that I can find, but Tom Wayment couldpublish an article tomorrow saying, “No.
You're wrong.
Here's the reasons why.”

Yeah.

And in all cases, scholarship has to be rooted in
responsible academic methodology, orit can lead to wrong conclusions that
could impair or hurt someone's faith.

That's right.
Well summarized.
So thank you all for hangingwith us through all of that.
Hopefully you got some nugget out of that.

Hopefully.
I want to say I had a blastgoing through all this research.
I mean, I just, like, haven't thoughtabout anything else for the last couple of
days, and this was sort of exhilarating.
It was like reading a novel with alot of great twists along the way.

Yeah.
We are such church history nerds.
We are nerds.

Yeah, we're nerds.
But man, we had fun, andmaybe that's the point.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters.
Join us next week as we enjoy ourspecial mid-series Q&R episode with Dr.
Kent Jackson, who has graciously agreedto respond to your questions about
Joseph Smith's Bible translation.
So if you have not yet done so, pleasesubmit any and all of your questions
related to the JST by September 6,2023 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org.

(58:54):
Also, if you're enjoying Church HistoryMatters, we'd appreciate it if you
could take a moment to subscribe, rate,review, and comment on the podcast.
That makes us easier to find.
Today's episode was produced byScott Woodward and edited by Nick
Galieti and Scott Woodward, with shownotes and transcript by Gabe Davis.
Church History Matters is a podcastof Scripture Central, a nonprofit

(59:15):
which exists to help build enduringfaith in Jesus Christ by making
Latter-day Saint scripture and churchhistory accessible, comprehensible,
and defensible to people everywhere.
For more resources to enhance yourgospel study, go to scripturecentral.org,
where everything is availablefor free because of the generous
donations of people like you.
And, as always, while we try very hard tobe historically and doctrinally accurate

(59:38):
in what we say on this podcast, pleaseremember that all views expressed in
this and every episode are our viewsalone and do not necessarily reflect the
views of Scripture Central or The Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Thank you so much for beinga part of this with us.

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