028 Q&R! Tough JST Questions with Kent Jackson

Episode Transcript
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Scott Woodward (00:05):
Did Joseph Smith ever consider his Bible
translation work finished?
Will the JST ever be canonized andreplace the King James Version as
the official Latter-day Saint Bible?
Why haven't any other of ourprophets since Joseph Smith engaged
in similar translation work?
How can we reconcile Joseph Smith'sBible revision work with Deuteronomy
4:2 and Revelation 22:19, which actuallywarn against adding to the Bible?

(00:31):
Is there any evidence whatsoever thatJoseph Smith consulted any outside
sources in his Bible translation work?
Does the fact that Joseph Smith's Bibletranslation started out with massive
amounts of new and significant revealedtext and then tapered off at the end with
only minor revisions support the narrativethat Joseph became a fallen prophet?
If not, how else can wemake sense of this timeline?

(00:54):
In today's episode of ChurchHistory Matters, we dive into all
of these questions and more with Dr.
Kent Jackson, a premier scholar onJoseph Smith's Bible translation.
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-hostis Casey Griffiths, and today we dive
into our fourth episode in this seriesdealing with Joseph Smith's non-Book
of Mormon translations and revelations.

(01:15):
Now, let's get into it.

Casey Paul Griffiths (01:20):
Well, hello, Scott.

Hello, Casey.
How you doing?

I'm doing great.
I'm really excited about our episodetoday and our guest that we have with us.

Yes.
We have been quoting him all series long.

I don't know if quoting or stealing is the best
word, but we've definitely been usinga lot of his work, but we are pretty
excited to have one of the realleading experts on the Joseph Smith
Translation of the Bible with us today.
That's Dr.
Kent P.
Jackson.

Welcome, Kent.

Kent Jackson (01:50):
Thank you.

Welcome, Kent.
Good to have you with us.

Thank you.

Now, we have questions from listeners here, but first
I want to give our listeners a littlebiographical background on you, and
you can offer any corrections as we go.
So Kent P.
Jackson was a professor of ancientscripture at Brigham Young University.
He was born in Salt Lake City, receiveda bachelor's in ancient studies from
BYU, a master's and a PhD in Near EasternStudies from the University of Michigan.

(02:18):
He is a former associate dean ofreligious education and associate
director of the BYU JerusalemCenter for Near Eastern Studies.
He's married and has five children,and I should mention you've written two
books on the Joseph Smith Translation,The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith
Translation Manuscripts, which isexcellent, and Understanding Joseph
Smith's Translation of the Bible, whichwe both drew from pretty heavily in

(02:41):
our podcast where we talked about this.
So Kent, you've had a chance tolisten to a couple of the podcasts.
How'd we do?
Are there any correctionsyou want to offer?

Please.

Which we will humbly accept.
Please, go ahead.

I don't know if I'm here to give corrections, so if you have
things that you feel bad about, Casey,you can bring them up, and I'll respond.

I just want to note that Kent sent some corrections,
which I am going to read off right now,just so you know we're doing the best
we can, but we want to get things right.
So in the podcast, we said thatJoseph Smith bought the Bible.
Kent clarified OliverCowdery bought the Bible.
The Bible was purchased fromthe Grandin Press in Palmyra.
Joseph Smith was living in Harmony.

(03:24):
The inscription in the Biblethat we mentioned is in
Oliver Cowdery's handwriting.
Then Kent offered a couplecorrections about scribes for
the Joseph Smith Translation.
John Whitmer replaced Oliver Cowdery,then Emma acted as scribe, then
Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G.
Williams was scribe for thelast year of translation.

Yes.

And we thank you for that and welcome your corrections.

Yeah.
It's interesting on the scribes thatJoseph Smith had the people work with him
on the JST who were very closest to him.
First it was Oliver Cowdery, who obviouslyhad had great experience as Joseph Smith’s
scribe working on the Book of Mormon,and when he gets sent on a mission to the
West, the prophet uses John Whitmer, andJohn Whitmer then was replaced for a time,

(04:13):
maybe just for one day, with Emma Smith.

Wow.

Maybe Whitmer wasn't available that day, so there are two pages
that are in handwriting of Emma Smith,and then John Whitmer’s the scribe again.
And those Emma Smith pagesweren't discovered until 1995.

Oh, wow.

Her handwriting looks quite a bit like that of
John Whitmer, and nobody had evernoticed the different handwriting.
In 1995 Robert Matthews and ScottFaulring, two BYU colleagues, examined
those pages carefully against someEmma Smith letters in Independence,

(04:52):
Missouri, and voilà, there we had EmmaSmith's handwriting for two pages.

Wow.

And then John Whitmer gets sent on a mission to Kirtland to
oversee the church there, and by thenSidney Rigdon had become a convert, had
moved to Fayette, where the prophet was.
And then he was the primary scribefor a good part of what was left.
He was the primary scribe forsomething like two-thirds of

(05:20):
the total manuscript pages.
And then, in turn, he was, of course,a member of the First Presidency,
and then he was released frombeing a scribe, and Frederick G.
Williams, another member of the FirstPresidency, continued to scribe.
So this is a project, as you twoemphasize, that was very, very
important to the prophet, very closeto his heart, and he took it very

(05:43):
seriously and kept it very close to him.

So let me ask a kind of a preliminary question here, Kent,
and that is, how did you first getinvolved in studying Joseph Smith's
Bible translation so deeply and thenmaking it a major focus of your career?

I was educated in the Old Testament, the Ancient Near East, and
when I came to BYU and joined the facultyin religious education, I just naturally
gravitated to focus on the intersectionof the Bible and the Restoration.
So Restoration/Bible connections weresomething that I always wanted to pursue.

(06:27):
The JST project came to me out of theblue when Scott Faulring, a BYU researcher
in communications with the Community ofChrist, initiated a project of having
BYU and the Community of Christ andthe LDS Church work together to publish
a transcription, and I soon became incharge of that, and so for something like

(06:53):
six years, I worked with the scans andphotographs of the original manuscripts
and with a small army of really highlymotivated and smart students to transcribe
all the original manuscript pages.
And we published that transcriptionin 2004, and since then I've been

(07:14):
entrapped by the intrigue and theexcitement of dealing with this great
revelation that was dictated from thelips of the Prophet Joseph Smith through
inspiration and recorded by his scribes.

So you got in so deep you couldn't get out.

Yes, and that's a good thing.

Absolutely.

Okay.
Well, let me dive inwith a couple questions.
First one might comefrom Scott right here.

Oh, shoot.

We sort of prefaced a lot of our discussion on the JST by
listing off five things that it could be.
One of them was original lost content,and when it comes down to it, Kent,
you've probably studied this morethan any living person right now.
Scott's question was, are you comfortablesaying that it was original lost content?

(08:02):
Or what's the best way to approachthat idea of what exactly the JST is?
How would you define whatJoseph Smith was trying to do?

Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Because now I'm remembering I expressedskepticism that we could know for
sure that it was partially, at least,a restoration of original content,
because wouldn't we have to have someoriginal content to compare it to or
a statement from Joseph claiming thatthat's what he was doing in order
for us to be able to make that claim?

And we have neither of those two things that you said.

Okay.

It's unfortunate that the default assumption of members of the
church, including curriculum writersand others, is that the JST is a
restoration of original Bible content.

Yeah.

Let me say first that Joseph Smith never made that claim.
The JST doesn't make that claim, exceptobliquely with one experience with Moses
in Moses chapter 1, but the prophetnever made that claim, and we should
be very, very cautious about that.
I can't rule things out thatI can't prove negatives for.

Right.
Right.

But I think, despite the fact that it's a default assumption in the
Church, we can't say that it's restorationof original content, because Joseph Smith
never gave us any reason to believe that.
And the reason it's popularly believedthat it's restoration of original Bible
content is because we have scripturesin 1 Nephi, as well as Joseph Smith

(09:34):
himself, talking about plain andprecious things being lost from the
Bible, but when Nephi talks about plainand precious things being lost from
the Bible, he doesn't tell us thatthe Lord was going to fix the Bible.
He says the Lord's going to restorethose things through the Book of Mormon.

Through the Book of Mormon, that's right.

By having those truths be revealed to the Nephite prophets
and come forth in the Book ofMormon and other books, which would
include the Doctrine and Covenants.
But it's not something that can beruled out, because like you said we
have nothing to compare it to to say,uh-huh, this was original content.

(10:13):
I think other suggested waysare much more persuasive.
For example, I give in thebook—Casey, how many were there?
Four or five suggestions?

Yeah, I think we used five suggestions
as our outline in the podcast.

Okay.
One is that the JST restoresthings that were said and
done but were never recorded.
And I'm quite sure thatsomething like that took place.

Okay.

For example, there are all kinds of passages that most Latter-day
Saints aren't even aware of in the NewTestament where the JST provides context
for Jesus's words and lead-ins for hiswords and explanations for Jesus's words.
Those things may never have beenin the Bible, but the prophet is
restoring things that were said orcontext that is necessary to help us

(11:07):
better understand the biblical text.

So we call that more, like, inspired commentary
or restoration of context, or...?

Yeah, restoration of context.
I would never use the wordcommentary because commentary
means an external, modern writergiving his views on the topic.
I don't think that's that.

Okay.

I think that's Joseph Smith providing context, restoring
context, so that the words ofJesus can be understood better.

Okay, that's fair.

And we're clear in saying that Joseph Smith
himself never definitively said whatthe JST was supposed to be, and so
we're working backwards here from themanuscripts, just looking at them.
Is that the best way to approach it, Kent?

Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The best way to approach it is to takewhat we have, like you said, and work
backwards, and say what we can observe.
Not what we can prove, but what wecan observe from the final product.
Now, in an early chapter in mybook, Understanding the Joseph
Smith Translation, I mentionedthat there are two ways to try

(12:15):
to figure out what the JST is.
One is to focus on the intentionand the origin, and the other
is to focus on the outcome.
And when we focus on the outcome andthen look backwards, as you said, Casey,
then we can see what I think are thethree easiest ways to look at the JST.

(12:36):
It contains what I call NewText, capital N, capital T.
I think that's a whole category here.
It contains New Text, and then it containsrevised text, and revised text is of

two sorts (12:50):
revised text that doesn't change the meaning, and then revised
text that does change the meaning.
So that's what we see when welook at the final product and go
backwards and say, what do we have?
And when we do it that way, then we'renot trying to invent interpretations

(13:10):
or motives or anything like that.

And that kind of leads into another question that a
listener named Gabe, Gabe from Rexburg.
Welcome, Gabe.
Gabe said, he said, “In my mind, youhave sufficiently shown in your series
that the Joseph Smith Translation is morethan simply a translation of the Bible,
that it's many different things”—youjust mentioned those three categories
there, I think is what Gabe's referringto, “but we still call it a translation.

(13:46):
That's how the Lord referred toit in Doctrine and Covenants 124.
The scriptures teach that theLord speaks in our language
according to our understanding,but with all that you've shared, is
‘translation’ an insufficient word?
Is there a better word by which we couldrefer to the Joseph Smith Translation?”
What are your thoughts, Kent?

In the Joseph Smith Papers, they have adopted the term for
labeling the manuscripts, “revisions.”And revision is a perfectly good word,
and I use it all the time, but I willdefend the word translation as well.

Mm.
Okay.

We have hang-ups with the word translation because the word
translation has a different meaningtoday than it did in Joseph Smith's day.
For us, what does translation mean?
It means to convey fromone language to another.
In Joseph Smith's day, I thinkin Webster's 1828 Dictionary,
that's the fifth definition given.
The other definitions are “to conveyfrom one place to another place,“ or

(14:46):
“convey from one person to anotherperson,“ or “change.” And so our word
translation today focuses on language.
The word translation in JosephSmith's day, nobody had a problem
with the word translation in his day.
The word meant to move from oneform to another, to change, or to

(15:07):
move from one person to another.

So, like, when Joseph talks about translated beings.

Exactly.

He's talking about a being who is changed
from one state to another state.

Absolutely.
And from one location to another location.

Okay.

And I think all of that's important for the Eighth Article of Faith
as well, “the Bible ... as far as it istranslated correctly.” That's not an issue
of whether the King James translators gotit right or anybody else got it right.
That's an issue of the wholeprocess of transmission from
original writers to the present.
But yeah, revision—what theprophet was doing, he was revising

(15:43):
and he was adding new material,revealing new material to us.

That might be a good lead-in to the next question,
which comes from TJ in Riverton, Utah.
He says, “How do we reconcile thescriptures in Deuteronomy 4:2 and
Revelation 22:19 regarding taking away oradding to the words of this book with the
Joseph Smith Translation?” I think theword revision when it comes to the Bible

(16:09):
might make some people uncomfortable.
How do you reconcile that?

Yeah.
Our evangelical brothers and sisters don'treally like people messing with the Bible.

That's right.
And they have used both those verseson us because of our belief in the
Book of Mormon as well, as you know.

Sure.

I looked at those passages last night, and Moses says, none of you
can add or take away from the Bible.
We get that.
But he wasn't talking to God.
God can inspire prophets to do things.
And same thing with the one in the Book ofRevelation, you and I aren't authorized.
As smart as we think we are, we're notauthorized to mess with the Bible, right?

Right.

But God can, and you can raise up a prophet to do that.

And it seems like there was a whole lot of scripture
that was added to the Bible postDeuteronomy 4:2, wasn't there?

Right.
But I'm sure that Moses wasonly talking about his own book.

Right.
And Revelation 22:19, that seemsto also be a reference only to
John's Book of Revelation, correct?

Sure.

There was no such thing as a Bible proper in terms of
the New Testament when he wrote that.

Correct.

Right.
That happens a few centuries later.

Correct.
Not only that, but John's threeletters were probably all written
after the Book of Revelation.
So he wasn't talking about the Bible.

Right.

There was no Bible.

Yeah.
That's important.
So TJ, I don't know if you're askingfor yourself or if you've got friends,
Bible-believing friends who havepestered you about that, but I think
those are the beginnings of somegood answers in response to that.
I know Elder Holland also gave an entireconference talk about Revelation 22:19.

Right.

I'm trying to remember the name of that talk where he
gives a whole lot of context there.
What's the name of that talk?

I think it's called “His Words Never
Cease,” if I remember correctly.

That's exactly right.
“His Words Never Cease.” That's agreat talk where you can dig into
more detail where Elder Holland willexplain about especially the Book
of Revelation a whole lot deeper.
So great question, TJ.
Thank you.

Casey Paul Griffiths: This comes from Lauren. (18:17):
undefined
She said, “Now that we have the textof the Bible revision made by Joseph
Smith based on the prophet's originalmanuscript, do you think it will
be canonized?” And here's the otherquestion I'm going to combine with it.
Another person asked, “Do you believethe JST will ever be adopted or replace
the King James Version in the Church?”

That's obviously not up to the three of us to determine that, but our
jobs as scholars and teachers, the threeof us and others, is to make the Joseph
Smith Translation available and to talkabout it and inform people about it, and
the Brethren will choose to do what theywill choose to do, but I might say that

(19:00):
the very best stuff of the Joseph SmithTranslation is already in our scriptures.
The Book of Moses is a highlight, orthe highlight, of the whole Joseph Smith
Translation, and Joseph Smith—Matthew,which is Matthew 24 from the JST,
is the gem of the New Testament.
It's the finest thingin the New Testament.

(19:22):
So we already have the best stuff.
And when it comes to the footnotesin our scriptures, the people who
have worked on those footnoteshave done a super good job.
And we have the very, very best stuff.
So all together we have the bulk of thenew text that the prophet revealed, as
far as the Joseph Smith Translation, inthe Pearl of Great Price now and have

(19:46):
since 1851, and then we have the bestof the smaller changes that were made
in the verses in the footnotes and theexcerpts in the back of the LDS Bible.
And all together, we haveabout 800 verses of those 3,600
verses that the prophet changed.

(20:07):
Now, that may not sound like alot, but so many of the changes the
prophet made were specific to theKing James Translation because of the
old language in it that we really dohave the best stuff available to us.

So would you say we have everything of doctrinal
significance already in the scriptures?

I would never say anything that definitive about any topic, but,
no, they have done a wonderful job.
There were two JST changes that weren'tin the 1979 edition of the English
LDS Bible that I really wished werein there, and they were put in in the

(20:49):
2013 edition with a lot of other stuff.
So we're well taken care of.

Okay.

But it is a delight—having said that, it is a
delight to just read the JST text,especially in the Gospels, that has
the whole thing in a continuous mode.
It's a delight to do that because theprophet put in lots of filler words and
transitions that make it read so smoothlyand so nicely when we read it not as

(21:19):
footnotes but as a continuous text.

Thank you.
Now, we know that Joseph Smith wantedto publish the JST in his lifetime, and
the Lord even commands it to happen, andwe know that some money was raised by
the Saints to do so, but then that moneygets sent off in different directions.
I think they bought a hemp farmand other things instead of
publishing this translation.
Do you get the sense that Joseph felt likehe actually was done with the translation?

(21:46):
I hear some people say Joseph neverfinished the translation, and others
say he absolutely finished it.
Some say 1833 was the end of hisfirst round, or his first go at
it, but he intended to continueto translate, but those efforts
to publish in his lifetime seem tosuggest that he felt it was finished.
So what's your take on that, Kent?
Did Joseph actually finish thetranslation, or did he intend to do more?

The answer is clear that he finished it.
He considered it finished.
He considered it done.
There are a number of revelations in theDoctrine and Covenants that talk about
the Joseph Smith Translation where theLord encourages the prophet to get to
work on it or to speed it up, or the Lordtells the Saints to build a house for
the prophet so he can work on it, butonce he declared it finished—so at the

(22:33):
end of the manuscript, they wrote, done.
They wrote, finished, and thenthey wrote to the church and said,
we have finished the translation.
From that moment on, there isnever discussion of translating.
It's, let's get it printed.
And the prophet tried veryhard to get it printed.
He intended to get it printed.

(22:55):
He wanted it to get printed, andthe Lord told him to print it.
I think the last reference chronologicallyin the Doctrine and Covenants to the
Joseph Smith Translation is in section124, where the Lord says, “Let William
Law,” who was a counselor in the FirstPresidency, “publish the new translation
of my holy word unto the inhabitants ofthe earth.” So William Law was assigned

(23:18):
by God to put the process in motionto get the Joseph Smith Translation
published, and he apostatized.

We're going to say he dropped the ball on that assignment.

Right.
Well stated.
We can blame him for the factthat it didn't get published
in the prophet’s life.

Oh, man.

But we can blame other circumstances as well.

Sure.
Okay.
Yeah, that's great.
So it was completed.
And that's July 1833, done.

July 1833, done.

Okay.

Now, another common misconception in the Church is that
the prophet continued to work onit through the rest of his life.
That's been proven to be untrue as well.
It didn't happen.
So really, from 1833 untilthe prophet's death 11 years
later, he considered it done.
He called it done.
The Saints knew it was done and had nointentions of doing anything on that.

Okay.
So that might actually answeranother question from a listener
named Lisa from Minnesota.
She asked, “Why was JosephSmith the only modern prophet to
engage in such translation work?
In other words, did Joseph Smith have asingular role compared to other modern
prophets, or just a different mission?”And it seems like what I'm hearing
you say, Kent, is that, well, by Julyof 1833, that project was done, so no

(24:46):
other prophet needed to work on it.
Is there any other response you wantto say to Lisa's good question there?

I think in many ways, Joseph Smith's mission was unique.
All of our prophets have been prophets,and we're blessed to have 15 prophets,
seers, and revelators in the world today.
Joseph Smith had kind of a unique callingto be the guy to restore and lay the
foundation, and prophets since thenhave been taking the church in great

(25:12):
directions and will continue to do so.

Sure.

There undoubtedly are other changes that could be made in
biblical passages that the prophetdidn't address, but as far as he was
concerned, it was done, and it appearsthat no prophet has had this assignment
to do anything more beyond that.

Yeah.
It seems in D&C 21, where JosephSmith is referred to as prophet, seer,
revelator, and translator, that thatlast designation has never been used
for any other apostles since Joseph.
He almost had that uniquefourth designation.
Would you say that's fair to say that way?

Yeah.
For now, anyway.

For now, yeah.
That's right.

That's open-ended.

Well, thank you.

Well, let me ask another question.
This one's a little complex.
We had a listener write in and say,“How do you reconcile passages in
the JST that appear problematic?
Is it possible Joseph got anything wrong?
For instance, some Latter-daySaint scholars have suggested that
perhaps 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is aneditorial addition to the writings

(26:17):
of Paul by another party, but in theJoseph Smith Translation, it's not
removed, it's edited, which suggeststhat in Joseph's mind it belonged
there, at least in its edited form.
In your model of the Joseph SmithTranslation, what it is, and how
it came to be, could such an errantpassage be justly corrected instead of
removed?” I hope that all makes sense.

Sure.
First of all, we don't knowif that's an errant passage.
I think many of us wishit weren't in the Bible.

Wait.
Should we read it?
What does that say?

It says women shouldn't talk in church.
They should go home andlisten to their husbands.

Oh, oh.

Yep.
Yep.

Okay, I see how that's a little spicy.

We read that in family scripture study the other night,
and my wife and my daughters all hada few choice words to say about Paul.
So it would be nice if we couldsay that that was an errant
passage, but you're saying we don'tknow if it's an errant passage.
And Kent, you and I talked aboutthis before we started recording,
but it doesn't seem like JosephSmith was very into removing Biblical

(27:19):
passages, with one major exception.
Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, yeah.
For the most part—so the prophetdid edit those two verses and change
the word “speak” to “rule.” Saidwomen don't rule in the church.
Now, if he were doing that in 2023, he mayhave been inspired to edit it a little bit
more than that, but I think the principleis, for the most part, the prophet

(27:43):
dealt with the text that was there.
He didn't deal with what wecall text-critical questions, of
whether some editor put that inthere and it didn't really belong
there, except in a very few cases.
The most well-known case, of course, isthe Song of Solomon, which he rejected
altogether as being inspired scripture.

But outside of that, he doesn't seem to be very
interested in removing parts of theBible with the exception of the Song of
Solomon, which most people agree probablydidn't originate with Solomon, correct?

Absolutely not with Solomon.
It's love poetry, and it's, if you likethat kind of stuff, it's nice love poetry.

If you're into that kind of thing.

But it certainly isn't inspired scripture.

And he did omit one phrase in the Sermon on the Mount, right?
The whosoever is angry with hisbrother “without a cause.” He took
out a little bit there, right?
A little bit of excising.

Yeah.

But, yeah, so you're saying that it wasn't his MO to take
text out so much as to comment onthe text that was already there.

Well, to revise the text that was there.

Yeah, sorry.
I used the word comment again.
That's right.
Yeah, it's not a commentary.
It's a revision.
That's right.

Yeah.

So let me restate, then.
It is possible that 1 Corinthians14:34-35 is an editorial
edition that Paul didn't write.
It's also possible that Paul did write it.
We don't know.
Scholarship is stillunsettled on that question.
But either way, it was Joseph Smith'smodus operandi to deal with the text

(29:16):
that was there rather than to decidewhether or not a text should be there.
Is that a fair way of stating it?

Generally speaking, I think that's the right way to say it.

Okay.

Also, I would point out, too, that there are several books in the
Old Testament where the prophet, where hewas going through with his scribes, and
the prophet just said, correct, for wholebooks, in some cases for several chapters.
Now, I don't think that meant therewas nothing in that chapter, in
that book, that could be corrected.
I think that meant we're not going todeal with this, or it's good enough as

(29:51):
it is, and we have better things to do.

It's pretty much the whole minor prophets of the Old Testament.
It seems like Joseph Smith just listscorrect for the majority of them
and then kind of moves on, would bean example of that kind of thing.

Yes.
And it's worth pointing outwhere the prophet's emphasis was:
Genesis and the four Gospels.
Two-thirds of the pages of theJoseph Smith Translation are Genesis
and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Those were the things that areat the heart of our religion,
at the heart of the gospel.

(30:25):
They're way more important toLatter-day Saints than Paul's letters,
for example, and those are the oneswhere the prophet spent the most
time and made the most changes.
And putting Genesis in that categorymakes Genesis a Christian book.
It's one of the most importantcontributions of the Joseph Smith
Translation is helping us to see thatthe earliest history of humankind on

(30:51):
this planet was a Christian history,where the fulness of the gospel
was revealed to our first parents.

Wow.

Very good.
Well, let's move on to another question.
This one comes from Kadisha,and she asked about one of
the more recent controversies.
That's the suggestion that JosephSmith may have used outside sources

(31:22):
as part of the Biblical revisionproject, like Adam Clarke, for instance.
Kent, you've written alittle bit about this.
Is there evidence that Adam Clarke,in his commentary, was a source
for Joseph Smith's translation?

My research tells me no, none whatsoever.
Let's look at the broader question here.
So, as I look at the JosephSmith Translation, I see
different kinds of things.
I see revelation of new texts,word for word, that is, revelation
of words through the Holy Ghost.

(31:55):
The Lord isn't just givinghis prophet ideas, but words.
So much of what we have in the Book ofMoses today was dictated, clear through,
with hardly a hesitation or a stutter,and very, very few later corrections.
And it gives me the impression that Godwas just revealing words to the prophet

(32:19):
all the way through, and his scribeswere just writing as fast as they could.
There are other places where I thinkthat the Lord inspired his prophet
with thoughts, through revelation, realrevelation of thoughts, but the prophet
himself needed to find the words.
So can you see what I'm—thedistinction I'm trying to make there?

Yeah.

So in one case, the Lord reveals words.
In other cases, he reveals ideas andthe prophet needs to find the words.
Now, there's a test case for thatsecond category of revelation.

Okay.

Because the prophet revised Matthew chapter 26 twice
with different scribes months apart.
All the evidence is he simply forgotthat he had done it the time before.

Ah.
Oh, wow.

So as we compare those, what we find is that probably in that
case the Lord was revealing ideas, butnot necessarily the words in every case.

Because why?
Was there a differentwording in each case?

Exactly.
Because they are—they're not identical.
They have differences, but theinteresting thing to me is that the
Lord is revealing the same conceptsto the prophet, but the prophet is
sometimes inserting those new conceptsin different locations in the chapter.
So we get the same material,but not in the exact words.

(33:42):
and not in the exact places.
That, to me, is aremarkable, remarkable thing.

Very interesting.

We also have cases where the prophet went through and edited previous
revisions that he had made, like the HolySpirit was working on him to refine it,
to make it better, make it more helpful.
So the question then comes up, is theprophet using other sources that he had

(34:11):
available to him to do the translation?
And I like to look at theanalogy of the brother of Jared.
The brother of Jared was commandedto build a ship, the Lord gave
him instructions, but there wasa rather significant lack in
the blueprints for the ships.
They didn't have the light, right?
And so the brother of Jared, itwas his job to come up with a

(34:36):
solution in that particular case.
And so my question is did the prophet alsouse his own common sense to make changes?
Did he use what I would callprophetic instincts without details?
And did he use other sources?
And the answer isprobably all those things.

(34:57):
And you two brought up the word—Iguess I didn't know it was Casey's
favorite word, the word Wot, W O T.
The word wot means know, K N O W.
So W O T means K N O W, right?

Okay.
Uh-huh.

So the prophet dictated that to be changed to
his scribes in a couple of places.
Then finally, in Exodus, the prophetdictated a note to a scribe that said,
change wot to know every time we find it.

Mm.
Okay.

And so that got changed.
There are no wots in theJoseph Smith Translation.
Now, the past tense, Casey,I'll give you a quiz here.
What is the past tense of wot?

Oh, shoot.

Oh man.
I'm going to fail this.
I do not know.

You don't wot what it is?

You don't wot what it is.
The past tense of wot is wist.

Wist.

W I S T.

Wist.

The prophet changed some of those, but not all of those.

So we can ask a question (35:57):
how did the Prophet know that wot
means know and wist means knew?
He may have learned that inSunday school class or in some
conversation and then changed it.
So we could considerthat an outside source.

Here's another one (36:15):
the word conversation.
Conversation does not mean conversation.
The King James Translation,conversation means behavior or conduct.

Yeah.

Did God reveal that to Joseph Smith, or did Joseph
Smith learn that in school, orwhat, in order to make that change?
So I have no disagreement withthe prophet learning something
somewhere outside of revelation andincorporating that into the JST.

Yeah.

So the question comes up about my friend Professor Thomas Wayment
and his theory that was published someyears ago about the prophet availing
himself of outside commentaries and books.
I would have no problemhad Joseph Smith done that.

Sure.

Because it makes sense that if the prophet learned something
that he could use in addition torevelation to make the new translation
better, nothing wrong with that.

Yeah.

So Professor Wayment, in his two published articles on this, identified
about 30 passages that he thinks weredependent upon Adam Clarke, who was
a Scottish Bible commentary, wrote a5,000-page commentary on the whole Bible.
I went very carefully throughthose 30-plus examples, and it's

(37:34):
my firm conclusion that not asingle one of those was influenced
in any way by Adam Clarke at all.

Wow.

The passages are typically one- or two-word vague similarities.

Yeah.

They're rarely identical wording, and most of the passages he
identified are very unimportant passages,with unimportant revisions, so I do
not believe at all that there was anyinfluence by Adam Clarke on the JST.

In our last episode, we went through this controversy
for the entirety of the episode.
So if any listeners want to go deeper intothis, we quote Kent's article at length.
We have links to it in the shownotes, so if you want to dig deep
into Kent's remarkable analysis ofall 30 of those proposed Adam Clarke

(38:24):
convergences, you can go check that out.

Yeah.

Now, Kent, I've also heard some people suggest, like, maybe Buck's
Theological Dictionary, kind of a Bibledictionary of Joseph Smith's day, could
have been a source, or other things.
And like you're saying, like, we'reopen to Joseph doing something like
that, that's fine, but have you everseen actual evidence for Joseph quoting
from a commentary or a theologicaldictionary, a Bible dictionary of his day?

(38:51):
Is there any phrases that you think,okay, that's actually Joseph doing that?

None.

None.
Okay.

But there's one interesting case in the Book of
Isaiah where the word unicorn appears.

Oh, yeah.

Now, we know what unicorns are.

Uh-huh.

The King James translators picked a very unhappy
word when they pick unicorns there.

I feel like unicorns are happy, though.
Aren't unicorns generallya happy creature?

They're always happy.
Yes, I stand corrected.

I'm just teasing.

So it's a re'em in Hebrew.

Re'em.

Its identity is not known.
It appears three or fourtimes in the Old Testament.
Its identity is not known.
The translators of the GreekSeptuagint picked the word rhinoceros.
That's where the English word unicorn—it'sa one-corn animal, so the Septuagint
translators thought it was a rhinoceros.

(39:50):
May or may not have been a rhinoceros.
I don't know.
But when the prophet comes to that inone place—not in all the places where
the word appears, but in one placeis—he has the word R E hyphen E M.
So he transliterates the Hebrew wordinstead of fixing the word unicorn.
He left the word unicorn in otherplaces, but he changes it in one place.

(40:14):
I think the Lord has better thingsto do than to reveal something
as nitpicky and inconsequentialto the prophet Joseph Smith.
I may be wrong on that, so I think helearned that somewhere, and maybe he
was in a sermon somewhere where somebodywas preaching and came to that word

(40:34):
and said, it's not a unicorn, it's are-em, and maybe the prophet got it
from that, or maybe he saw it in a book.
But cases like that are exceedingly rare,and so I would say, again, I haven't seen
any evidence that Joseph Smith consultedany book of any kind working on the JST.

Wow.
So here's another question.
You mentioned that the Book of Mosesrepresents the added text, the new text.

(41:15):
There's a lot of new text in the Bookof Moses as we have it today, and then
later on there's a lot of small changesthat Joseph is making that may or may
not change the meaning of the text.

Right.

So there's one listener that's keyed into that, and he has a
question about the timetable of that.
His name is Scott.
I like his name.

Scott asked this (41:31):
He said, “I have heard some critics differentiate the parts of
the JST on a timeline, mainly separatingthe early writings, like Book of Moses
and other doctrinally rich sections,from the more mundane and grammatical
edits that came during the latter half.
They make claim that there were eventsin Joseph's personal life that perhaps

(41:51):
left him less worthy of clear revelation.
Thus he turned to his own abilitiesand perhaps the abilities of others
to clarify the Bible.” So questionnumber one is, “Is there any truth
to this timeline critique?” And thenhe says, “Perhaps these critiques
originate from those who believe thatJoseph's plural marriages were done in
error and he started losing spiritualguidance once he started down that road.

(42:13):
Do the timelines overlap?”

You know, during the prophet's lifetime, the final years
of his life, there were members of thechurch who felt that he was fallen.
It was generally people who were out ofthe loop, didn't have access to temple
blessings, hadn't heard of plural marriageexcept through rumors, who concocted
the notion that the prophet had becomea fallen prophet, and then after the

(42:37):
Saints moved to the West, many of thepeople who became the Reorganized Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsbuilt their idea on the notion that
Joseph Smith had become a fallen prophet.
So I think your listener is referringto that kind of notion there, and,
of course, I reject it entirely.

(42:57):
The prophet Joseph Smithwas never a fallen prophet.
He was the Lord's anointed from the firstmoment of his calling through his death.
But chronologically, it is true tosay that the big explosion of new
stuff came very, very early on.

Yeah.

And one reason for that is what you pointed out in one of your
podcasts, and that is that the Lordwanted to get the Zion story out there
so that he could then reveal the ideaof Zion to the Latter-day Saints, as
you two explained very, very well.
And so we get the visions of Moses,then we get the stories of Adam and Eve.

(43:38):
Then what do we get?
We get Enoch and Zion, and thenthe Lord can start revealing to
the saints, let's build Zion.

Time to gather to Kirtland.
Time to build Zion.
Yeah.

Exactly.
Yeah.
And that's why so much of that kindof really powerful new material
came very early in the Restoration.

Hmm.
That's good.
Yeah, and the timeline doesn't seem tooverlap at all with polygamy, right?
Like 1833 July, he's done.
Joseph doesn't get involved with polygamy.
The Fanny Alger timeline is,what, somewhere between 1834-36?
Somewhere in there.
Probably ’35.
So he wasn't even involved even alittle bit yet with polygamy by the

(44:18):
time the JST was completely done.

Yeah.

So that was a thought I had when I was reading that question,
that the timelines do not overlap interms of polygamy, but interesting.
I've actually never heard that critiquebefore until this listener sent that in.
Anything else either ofyou want to say about that?

I work a lot with Community of Christ, and I—this is
something that would be commonly quotedamong historical scholars from their
camp, that Joseph Smith was a prophet,but that to any extent he was involved in
plural marriage, he was a fallen prophet.
I just think this is a reach,though, to tie that to the JST when

(44:55):
the timeline clearly shows thatthe work was done before any of
that stuff kind of comes up, so.

Good point.

It's a big reach in my mind, but yeah, it's
an interesting thing to bring up.

Very good.

So, Kent, if you could ask Joseph Smith any
clarifying questions about thetranslation project, what would you ask?
So if you were in a room with JosephSmith and you had a chance to pick
his brain a little bit, what's someof the questions you would ask him?

As much as I would love to hang out with the
Prophet Joseph Smith, I've neverthought of that question before.
*inaudible* Okay.
I would ask him if the work thatI've done is acceptable to him.
That's what I want to know.

I love that.

Good question.
This might be our last question.
So you have probably studied thismore thoroughly than any other
person that's still around today,and you're still a believer.
How come?
What makes you a believer in theprophetic mission of Joseph Smith and
the core truth claims of the Restoration?

I'm a believer in the work of the prophet Joseph Smith and the core
truths of the Restoration because ofthe Holy Ghost, but I have to say that
intellectually, I am dazzled when I lookat what the prophet Joseph Smith produced
with his new translation of the Bible.

Just think of it (46:26):
We have scriptural text now that tells us that Adam and
Eve were Christians, had the fullnessof the gospel in their lives, that
they taught it to their children.
We have, through the JST, explanationsof what animal sacrifice is about,
where Satan comes from, what he's about.

(46:46):
We learned that Noah and Enoch sharedin the covenant promises that we have,
and they had the fulness of the gospelof Jesus Christ, and that Moses did.
So all of these things dazzle meby how intricately the Joseph Smith
Translation ties in with the revelationsin the Doctrine and Covenants with

(47:07):
one united effort on the part of theLord to reveal to us in the last days
the fulness of the gospel so that wecan do what the Lord wants us to do.
All of these things just dazzle me asI go through the Gospels and read how
the JST adds to the words of Jesusand clarifies the words of Jesus.

(47:32):
All of this bears testimony to me thatthe Gospel is true, and that Joseph
Smith was precisely who he said he was.

Wow.
Well, Kent Jackson, thank youso much for being with us today.
Thank you so much for your greatscholarship, for your testimony,
for all you've added to ourunderstanding of this important topic.

Yeah.
We can't thank you enough for sharingyour time with us to help clarify
and share your study of the JosephSmith Translation of the Bible.
Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters.
For more of Dr.
Kent Jackson's excellent work on theJoseph Smith Translation, we encourage
you to check out a few of his books,including, first, The Book of Moses
and the Joseph Smith TranslationManuscripts, second, Understanding
Joseph Smith's Translation of theBible, and third, a study volume just
published in 2021 entitled JosephSmith's Translation of the Bible: The

(48:31):
Joseph Smith Translation, and the KingJames Translation in Parallel Columns,
printed by BYU Press and Deseret Book.
In our next episode, we turn to theprocess of and complexities involved
with the canonization of Joseph Smith'srevelations in the Book of Commandments
and the Doctrine and Covenants.
If you're enjoying Church HistoryMatters, we'd appreciate it if you

(48:52):
could take a moment to subscribe, rate,review, and comment on the podcast.
That makes us easier to find.
Today's episode was produced andedited by Scott Woodward, with show
notes and transcript by Gabe Davis.
Church History Matters is a podcastof Scripture Central, a nonprofit
which exists to help build enduringfaith in Jesus Christ by making
Latter-day Saint scripture and churchhistory accessible, comprehensible,

(49:15):
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 while we try very hard to behistorically and doctrinally accurate
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

(49:39):
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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