The Joseph Smith Translation (JST), also called the Inspired Version of the Holy Scriptures (IV), is a revision of the Bible by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, who said that the JST/IV was intended to restore what he described as "many important points touching the salvation of men, [that] had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled".Joseph Smith (Joseph Fielding Smith ed.), Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 16 February 1832, pp. 10–11. See also the LDS Church's "Eighth Article of Faith", which states: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly". Smith was killed before he deemed it complete, though most of his work on it was performed about a decade beforehand. The work is the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) with some significant additions and revisions. It is considered a sacred text and is part of the canon of Community of Christ (CoC), formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and other Latter Day Saint churches. The edition of the Bible published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) includes selections from the JST in its footnotes and appendix. It has officially canonized only certain excerpts that appear in the Pearl of Great Price. These excerpts are the Book of Moses and Smith's revision of part of the Gospel of Matthew.
Translation
The work of revision As with Smith's other translations, he reported that he was forced to "study it out in [his] mind"LDS Doctrine and Covenants 9:8. as part of the revelatory process.Flake, Kathleen. "Translating Time: The Nature and Function of Joseph Smith's Narrative Canon" , Journal of Religion 87, no. 4 (October 2007): 497–527. (accessed February 22, 2009). During the process, Smith occasionally revisited a given passage of scripture at a later time to give it a "plainer translation."LDS Doctrine and Covenants 128:18.
Philip Barlow observes the six basic types of changes:Philip Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Long additions that have little or no biblical parallel, such as the visions of Moses and Enoch, and the passage on Melchizedek "Common-sense" changes (e.g., Genesis 6:6 "And it repented the Lord that he had made man" is revised in Moses 8:25 to read: "And it repented Noah, and his heart was pained that the Lord had made man". God, being perfect, needs no repentance.) "Interpretive additions", often signaled by the phrase "or in other words," appending to a passage to clarify "Harmonization", reconciled passages that seemed to conflict with other passages "Not easily classifiable", frequently the meaning is changed, often idiosyncratically Grammatical improvements, technical clarifications, and modernization of terms (by far the most common within the JST/IV)
The JST/IV was a work in progress throughout Smith's ministry, the bulk between June 1830 and July 1833. Some parts of the revision (Genesis and the four Gospels) were completed from beginning to end, including unchanged verses from the KJV; some parts were revised more than once, and others revised one verse at a time. The manuscripts were written, re-written, and in some cases, additional edits were written in the columns, pinned to the paper or otherwise attached. Smith relied on a version of the Bible that included the Apocrypha, and marked off the Bible as verses were examined (the Apocrypha was not included in the JST).
By 1833, Smith said it was sufficiently complete that preparations for publication could begin, though continual lack of time and means prevented it from appearing in its entirety during his lifetime. He continued to make a few revisions and to prepare the manuscript for printing until he was killed in 1844.Robert J. Matthews, "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible—A History and Commentary. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975, p. 391. Regarding the completeness of the JST/IV as we have it, Robert Matthews has written:
[T]he manuscript shows that Smith went all the way through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. But it also shows that he did not make all the necessary corrections in one effort. This situation makes it impossible to give a statistical answer to questions about how much of the Translation was completed or how much was not completed. What is evident, however, is that any part of the Translation might have been further touched upon and improved by additional revelation and emendation by Smith.Robert J. Matthews, "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible—A History and Commentary. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975, p. 215.
Omission of the Song of Songs
In his work on the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of the Bible, Joseph Smith excluded the Song of Songs, labeling it as "not inspired writings." This annotation appears in the original JST manuscript dated July 1832 and is unique among the biblical books, indicating Smith's view that the Song lacked divine inspiration. Consequently, the Song of Songs is absent from the JST. While it remains in the King James Version used by LDS Church, it is seldom referenced in Latter-day Saint teachings.
Use of other texts
Some scholars infer that Smith had access to Old Testament pseudepigrapha and included insights from these texts in his translation.
In March 2017, Brigham Young University (BYU) professor Thomas A. Wayment and his undergraduate research assistant Haley Wilson-Lemmón published a notice in BYU's Journal of Undergraduate Research suggesting that Smith borrowed heavily from Methodist theologian Adam Clarke's famous Bible commentary. They contend that "direct parallels between Smith's translation and Adam Clarke's biblical commentary are simply too numerous and explicit to posit happenstance or coincidental overlap." They further posit that this evidence is sufficient to "demonstrate Smith's open reliance upon Clarke" before suggesting Sidney Rigdon was likely responsible for urging the use of Clarke's source material. In a May 2018 interview, Wilson-Lemmón indicated that she had provided copies of the research manuscript to the dean of BYU Religious Education. Wayment and Wilson-Lemmón subsequently provided copies to the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church. This prompted a meeting between Wayment and unidentified church authorities, after which they "got the green light" to publish. Wayment and Wilson-Lemmón's findings were then published in full on June 26, 2020 in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity published through University of Utah Press. Wayment then published another article on the topic in the July 2020 issue of the Journal of Mormon History. In October 2020, Latter-day Saint JST scholar and then-former BYU professor Kent P. Jackson published a rebuttal to the findings of Wayment and Wilson-Lemmón in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. Jackson argues that "none of the examples provide can be traced to Clarke's commentary, and almost all of them can be explained easily by other means...The few overlaps that do exist are vague, superficial, and coincidental...I do not believe there is Adam Clarke-JST connection at all[.]"
Doctrinal development Many of Smith's revisions to the Bible led to significant developments in the doctrines of Mormonism. During the process of translation, when he came across troubling biblical issues, Smith often dictated revelations relevant to himself, his associates, or the church. About half of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants are in some way connected to this translation process, including background on the Apocrypha (LDS D&C section 91 CofC D&C 88), the three degrees of glory (LDS section 76 CofC Section 85), the eternal nature of marriage and plural marriage (LDS section 132), teachings on baptism for the dead (LDS section 124 CofC Section 107), and various revelations on priesthood (LDS sections 84, 88, 107 CofC Sections 83, 104).
Overall, 3,410 verses in the printed editions of JST/IV differ in textual construction from the KJV (this uses the verse numbering of the JST/IV as the basis for comparison). Of the total of 1,289 verses changed in the Old Testament, 25 correspond to the additions of Book of Moses chapter 1, and 662 occur in the Book of Genesis.Robert J. Matthews, "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible—A History and Commentary. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975, p. 424. Hence, more than half of the changed verses in the JST/IV Old Testament and 20 percent of those in the entire JST/IV Bible are contained in Moses chapter 1 and Genesis, with the most extensive modifications occurring in Genesis chapters 1–24. As a proportion of page count, changes in Genesis occur four times more frequently than in the New Testament and twenty-one times more frequently than in the rest of the Old Testament. The changes in Genesis are not only more numerous, but also more significant in the degree of doctrinal and historical expansion. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw has suggested that one reason for this emphasis may have been "early tutoring in temple-related doctrines received by Joseph Smith as he revised and expanded Genesis 1–24, in conjunction with his later translation of relevant passages in the New Testament and, for example, the stories of Moses and Elijah."http://www.mormontimes.com/studies_doctrine/doctrine_discussion/?id=3140 Additional evidence suggests that the Book of Moses itself could be seen as a temple text, in the sense discussed by BYU professor John W. Welch.Welch, John W. The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of the Temple. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009.
Publication and use by the Community of Christ
Smith was killed prior to the publication of the JST/IV. At his death, the manuscripts and documents pertaining to the translation were retained by his widow, Emma Smith, who would not give them to the Quorum of the Twelve, although Willard Richards, apparently acting on behalf of Brigham Young, requested the manuscript from her. Consequently, when Young's followers moved to the Salt Lake Valley, they did so without the new translation of the Bible.
Following Smith's death, John Milton Bernhisel asked permission of Emma Smith to use the manuscript to copy notes into his own KJV Bible. Bernhisel spent much of the spring of 1845 working on this project. The LDS Church has Bernhisel's Bible in its archives, but it contains less than half of the corrections and is not suitable for publication. For many years the "Bernhisel Bible" was the only JST/IV source for LDS Church members living in the Salt Lake Valley.
In 1866, Emma Smith gave the manuscript into the custody of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church), of which she was a member, and her son Joseph Smith III, its prophet-president. In 1867, the RLDS Church published the first edition of the IV and obtained a copyright for it. The RLDS Church, now known as Community of Christ, publishes the Inspired Version of the Holy Scriptures through the Herald House, its publishing arm. The copyright has expired on the 1867 editionAll works before 1923 are in the public domain due to copyright expiration. See U.S. Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States located at Cornell Copyright Information Center and a bound photo reproduction of that edition is published by a private concern. In 1944, the RLDS Church issued a "new corrected edition" that eliminated some of the errors made in the original 1867 edition.