Guest blog by Kent P. Jackson, professor of ancient scripture.

This month we celebrate the 179th anniversary of something that most Latter-day Saints take for granted. It was in June 1830, just two months after the Church was organized, that the Prophet Joseph Smith began working on his Bible translation. Today we usually call it the Joseph Smith Translation—JST for short—but the Prophet himself called it the New Translation. The first nineteen pages, revealed between June 1830 and the end of that year, contain his revision of the first few chapters of Genesis. When the Pearl of Great Price was created in 1851, those Genesis chapters were included in it, and they’re still there today. It is the Book of Moses.

Is there anything new in the New Translation? Let’s take a look at just one chapter, the very first chapter of the translation, revealed in June 1830.

What we now call Moses chapter 1 is the text of a vision that Moses experienced before the Lord revealed to him the account of the Creation. It is thus the preface to the book of Genesis. This is one of the most remarkable chapters in scripture, and it is full of doctrines that set Latter-day Saints apart from all other Bible believers. Although Moses’s vision is a biblical event and takes place in a biblical context, there is no record of it in the Old Testament. It has no biblical counterpart at all. But it is one of the great gems of the Restoration—a real pearl of great price.

In this one chapter, we learn a lot.

Moses speaks with God “face to face” in terms that indicate strongly that God indeed has a face. We learn of God’s Only Begotten Son. As the Father speaks with Moses and teaches him of Jesus Christ, we are reminded in clear scriptural terms that the Father and the Son are separate divine beings. We also learn something of ourselves, that we—left to our own resources—are “nothing,” yet we are sons and daughters of God created in the image of his Only Begotten, endowed with enormous potential.

We learn about God’s glory, the celestial power that emanates from him and surrounds him. Humans must be transfigured to abide God’s glory, but Satan can only feign having it and possesses none of it himself. We see God and Satan juxtaposed in striking contrast, and we learn that Satan has a pathological need to be worshipped and seeks only his own interests.

We learn something of God’s power and of the awesomeness of his creations. Moses, enveloped in God’s glory, was able to see every particle of this earth and to discern every soul on it. He was even shown other inhabited worlds—worlds without number. He learned that Christ is the Creator of all those worlds, and he learned that God’s work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of his children who dwell thereon.

Needless to say, none of this was the standard fare of mainstream Christianity in June 1830 when the Lord revealed these things to Joseph Smith.

Indeed, there is much new in the New Translation. But that was only the first chapter.

3 Comments »

1. 

   I cannot quite figure out what point this post is attempting to make. Are we to understand that because Moses 1 is in some sense novel that it is important?

   Truly, Moses 1 does not exist within the traditional canon but so what? Many important religious ideas are not found within any canon – including many LDS ideas.

   Moses 1 does present an anthropomorphic God, it does make reference to Jesus as the unique son of the Father, and it does point out that God’s purpose is the salvation of humans but these ideas in and of themselves are not new.

   Moses 1 may indeed have ideas that are unique to LDS thought but so what? The works of religious leaders writing contemporaneously with JS contain ideas that are likewise unique to their formulation of Christianity.

   Moses 1 may contain doctrines that were not part of mainstream Christian thought in early 19th century America. Again, so what? Aside from the challenge created by trying to define “mainstream,” religious thinkers and visionaries in every age have deviated from conventional formulations.

   There is, indeed, a great deal that is precious about the doctrines of the Restoration but this post does nothing to advance the cause. While I am a firm believer in the mission and message of the Restoration I am something of an agnostic when it comes to the blessings of novelty for novelty’s sake.

   Comment by Sabriel — June 22, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

2. 

   Hi Bro. Jackson,

   Thank you for this wonderful tribute. Do you know if there were other attempts to “translate” the Bible as Joseph Smith did in the 19th century? Or is the translation itself something that sets us apart?

   Comment by Ronggui — June 22, 2009 @ 6:21 pm

3. 

   Indeed. These comments re-emphasize the Prophet’s call as The Prophet of the Last Dispensation, or the culminating dispensation, where the fullness of the gospel or the knowledge of the new and and everlasting covenant was once again restored.

   Comment by vwm — June 28, 2009 @ 12:32 am

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