Donald Patrick Bradley, Ancient Scripture

The Problem

During the first three years of the LDS Church, Joseph Smith spent much of his time revising or retranslating the Bible. He intended to clarify obscure passages, restore lost truths, and weed out errors that had found their way into the sacred text. Although the resulting “Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible” (or JST) is scripture to nine million Latter-day Saints, little is known about how it was produced. Did joseph Smith bring it forth solely by direct revelation? Did he use his own judgment in revising some passages? Were there yet other sources he used besides his own mind and direct revelation?

Hypothesis

I conjectured that Joseph Smith relied on other sources in addition to immediate revelation and that one of these sources was an earlier revelation: the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon contains a significant amount of biblical material, including twenty-one chapters of Isaiah. But Book of Mormon Isaiah differs substantially from the King James Version of Isaiah. Interestingly, the JST of Isaiah often varies from the King James text precisely where the Book of Mormon does. So I hypothesized that joseph Smith inserted portions of Book of Mormon Isaiah into the text of his new translation of the Bible.

Background Information

To understand the process I used to test this hypothesis, the reader must first be acquainted with the relevant documents: the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon (0); the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon (P); and the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, 0 (the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon) was written at Joseph Smith’s dictation as the Book of Mormon text was revealed to him. P (the printer’s manuscript) was copied by hand from 0. The scribe copying it made a number of errors, so P differs at times from 0. The 1830 Book of Mormon is the first printed edition of the book. The entire first half of this edition and part of the second half were typeset from P. Since the first half of this edition traces its textual “genealogy” through P, it inherits the errors of P. But the typesetter was as human as the scribe, so the 1830 edition compounds the errors of P with some of its own, Thus each of the three versions of the Book of Mormon available when Joseph Smith produced the jST is unique, P and the 1830 edition each contain a unique constellation of errors I call a “textual fingerprint.” If Joseph Smith used one of these two documents to help him revise Isaiah, it would have left a clear textual fingerprint on every jST Isaiah passage it touched.

Verifying the Hypothesis

To verify the hypothesis, I analyzed the nineteen Isaiah chapters that appear in 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, and Mosiah. I compared the following versions of these chapters: the King James, 0, P, the 1830 Book of Mormon, and the original manuscript of the jST. My object was to discover discrepancies between the various Book of Mormon Isaiah texts and see which, if any, the JST would agree with, If the jST always followed the text of the King James Version (even when thelatter differed from the Book of Mormon), then I would conclude that my hypothesis was incorrect – joseph Smith did not incorporate Book of Mormon Isaiah material into the JST. If the jST always followed the text of 0, then I would conclude that Joseph produced his translation of Isaiah either by inserting 0 material into the Bible or by receiving an immediate revelation identical to the one he received while translating Book of Mormon Isaiah. And if the JST always followed the text of P or the 1830 edition, then I would conclude that joseph inserted Isaiah material from P or the 1830 edition, respectively. Most of 0 is not extant, so for many passages I could compare only the King James Version, P, the 1830 edition, and the ]ST.

The Results

Upon performing the above-described comparisons, I found that Joseph Smith did indeed insert Book of Mormon Isaiah passages into his new translation of the Bible. Errors made by the scribe who wrote P and the printer who typeset the 1830 Book of Mormon appear in the Joseph Smith Translation of Isaiah. For instance, the P scribe mistakenly wrote 2 Nephi 7:2’s “when I came there was no man” as “when I come there was no man. And the typesetter changed P’s 2 Nephi 27:5, 25 words: “iniquity” to “iniquities,” “heart” to “hearts,” and “precept” to “precepts.” In each of these cases, the JST follows the erroneous text rather than the accurate one. The JST even includes glaring scribal errors, such as the 2 Nephi 7:5 change of O’s reasonable phrase “the Lord hath opened mine ear” to P’s nonsensical “the Lord hath appointed mine ear” I There are twenty such perpetuations of Book of Mormon error in the JST of Isaiah. The only reasonable explanation for Book of Mormon errors of this number and magnitude appearing in the JST of Isaiah is that joseph Smith imported Book of Mormon Isaiah material into the JST.

Which version of the Book of Mormon did joseph Smith use in making his translation of Isaiah? The JST of Isaiah bears the indelible textual fingerprint of the 1830 Book of Mormon. I identified twenty-three places in the Isaiah chapters of First and Second Nephi and Mosiah at which the 1830 Book of Mormon differs substantively from its parent manuscript. In all but three of these cases, the JST follows the 1830 Book of Mormon rather than the earliest and most accurate manuscript (0 where extant, otherwise P). Where the JST does not follow the 1830 Book of Mormon text, it follows no Book of Mormon text at all (once) or it follows P (twice). In both cases where the JST prefers P to the 1830 text, P matches the King James text. So when the JST appears to be based on P, it could just as well be following the King James text. But of the fourteen cases where the JST follows the erroneous 1830 text over P, it differs from the King James text six times. In other words, in every case where P and the 1830 text contradict one another and the King James Version, the JST follows the 1830 Book of Mormon. The only reasonable explanation is that Joseph Smith inserted Isaiah passages from the 1830 Book of Mormon into his new translation of the Bible.

Conclusion

In making his new translation of the Bible -the JST -joseph Smith used his own mind and other sources, in addition to immediate, direct revelation. He believed that the Book of Mormon text of Isaiah was more accurate than the King James text, so he simply inserted Book of Mormon Isaiah passages into his translation of the Bible. Through its contact with the 1830 Book of Mormon, the JST acquired the 1830 edition’s “fingerprint” – a cluster of textual errors. But by using our minds we can identify those errors and eliminate them from the ]ST. Divine revelation and the human intellect don’t have to oppose one another: by faithfully applying our intellects to the JST itself, we can further the very goal of the JST: correcting the mistakes of men that have found their way into scripture.