Perhaps the most profound contribution of Joseph Smith’s revision of Genesis is that it restores the knowledge that Christianity was revealed in the beginning of human history.

After the Fall

In the early Genesis chapters, the New Translation adds significant new material and new interpretations of existing words. For example, the Prophet added over six hundred words of new text between the end of Genesis 3 and the beginning of Genesis 4, words that give Latter-day Saints a unique understanding of the experiences of Adam and Eve following their expulsion from Eden. The first parents were taught by an angel that animal sacrifice was “a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father.” Adam was instructed, “Thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son. And thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.” Adam and Eve knew they were in a fallen state, but they knew that they and all their descendants could be redeemed and that their fallen state was ultimately a blessing. Adam said, “Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression mine eyes are opened. And in this life I shall have joy, and again in my flesh I shall see God.” Eve responded, “Were it not for our transgression we should never have had seed and should never have known good and evil and the joy of our redemption and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.”[1]

In subsequent chapters, the New Translation adds hundreds of words to the accounts of people in the earliest generations after the first parents, accounts that serve as types for human behavior through all of history. Without the Holy Spirit and left to their own resources, people inevitably become “carnal, sensual, and devilish.”[2] The story of Cain and Abel is expanded. Abel is described as one who “hearkened unto the voice of the Lord” and “walked in holiness” before him. Cain, in contrast, “loved Satan more than God” and yielded to his temptations.[3] Some years later, “God revealed himself unto Seth, and he rebelled not.”[4]

The Record of Enoch

The largest addition of new text came at Genesis 5:22, where over the course of several days, on eight densely written manuscript pages, and using the services of three different scribes, Joseph Smith added about forty-five hundred words of new text regarding the ministry and teachings of the biblical patriarch Enoch.

When God called Enoch he told him, “Anoint thine eyes with clay and wash them, and thou shalt see.” When he did so, “he beheld the spirits that God had created, and he beheld also things which were not visible to the natural eye.” Thus it was said, “A seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people.”[5] The text contains an account of Enoch’s calling and ministry, but the main body of it consists of the narrative of a sermon and the narrative of a vision.

Enoch’s sermon on the Fall, the Atonement, and spiritual rebirth is a profound revelation.[6] When people heard him speak, his words were so powerful that they “could not stand in his presence.” He spoke of the Fall of Adam, which brought into the world death, misery, and woe, and he taught that by following the ways of Satan people degenerate and are “shut out from the presence of God.” Much of Enoch’s sermon quotes from revelations to Adam, to whom God gave history’s first known recital of what Latter-day Saints call the first principles and ordinances of the gospel:

If thou wilt turn unto me and hearken unto my voice and [1] believe, and [2] repent of all thy transgressions and [3] be baptized, even in water in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth, who is Jesus Christ—the only name which shall be given under heaven whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men—and [4] ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all things in his name. And whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you.[7]

This is also history’s first recorded reference to the name Jesus Christ, God’s Only Begotten Son, though in the languages of Adam and Enoch the name would have looked much different from how it is in our English text. We learn in Adam’s revelation that Christ atoned for “original guilt” and that although children are born into a world that is characterized by sin, they are born sinless. People allow sin to conceive in their hearts, but they know good from evil and are “agents unto themselves.” Adam was told to teach his children that sin leads to spiritual death, yet there is a remedy in spiritual rebirth: “Ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven of water and of the Spirit and be cleansed by blood—even the blood of mine Only Begotten—that ye may be sanctified from all sin.” Adam himself followed the divine pattern. He was “caught away by the Spirit of the Lord” and was baptized. “The Spirit of God descended upon him, and thus he was born of the Spirit.” God said, “Behold thou art one in me, a son of God, and thus may all become my sons.”[8]

Enoch witnessed a panoramic vision that extended from his day beyond the Second Coming of Jesus.[9] In the short term, the powers of Satan would be over all the world, but Enoch would succeed in building a community of believers who would exemplify godly behavior in their dealings with one another. They would be of one heart and one mind, live righteously, and have no poor among them. So worthy would they be that they would be “taken up into heaven.”

In the vision, Enoch saw a dramatic scene of Satan with a great chain in his hand casting a shadow over all the earth. Satan laughed and his angels rejoiced. Enoch looked at the increasing misery of humankind and wept, and “the heavens wept also and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains.” He then entered into a dialogue with God, asking, “How is it that thou canst weep?” God answered that the people were “without affection and they hate their own blood. . . . Wherefore should not the heavens weep?”[10] God’s efforts to save his children continued, despite the wickedness of the world.

In this JST narrative, the Christian nature of the saving message is evident, with angels descending out of heaven “bearing testimony of the Father and Son.” God promised, “He whom I have chosen has pled before my face. Wherefore he suffereth for their sins inasmuch as they will repent.”[11] Enoch saw the Flood and learned that through Noah a righteous remnant would survive. He also saw, however, that evil would continue to prevail on earth. The earth herself cried out, “Woe, woe is me, the mother of men! . . . When shall I rest?”

Enoch learned that Jesus would come to the earth, but it would be in the “days of wickedness and vengeance,” and Jesus would be crucified. Enoch asked, “When shall the earth rest?”[12] He learned that Christ would come a second time as well, and it would be then that the earth would finally rest. But before then there would be much tribulation in the world. Notwithstanding that, God would send righteousness out of heaven and truth from the earth to bear testimony of his Only Begotten and his resurrection and also of the resurrection of all humankind. He would cause righteousness and truth to “sweep the earth as with the flood,” and he would gather his Saints from around the world to a holy city—a new Zion. Then Enoch and his Zion, a city that had been taken into heaven because of the righteousness of its inhabitants, would come down and meet them there. A poem in the narrative expresses the joy of this gathering of earthly and heavenly Zions:[13]

And we will receive them into our bosom and they shall see us,

And we will fall upon their necks and they shall fall upon our necks,

And we will kiss each other.[14]

Then, finally, the earth will rest.

Noah and the Covenant

Noah in the New Translation was a preacher of Christianity, teaching the same doctrine that God had revealed to Adam in the beginning. Again the first principles and ordinances of the gospel were a foundational message: “[1] Believe and [2] repent of your sins, and [3] be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, even as our fathers did. And [4] ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”[15]

The New Translation inserts a block of new text into Genesis 9:16. It reinterprets the sign of the bow, which in the Bible represents God’s promise that he will never again destroy the world by flood. In Joseph Smith’s account the bow represents God’s promise that Enoch’s city will return again to the earth: “And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant which I made unto thy father Enoch, that when men should keep all my commandments Zion should again come on the earth.” This would be a promise to all of humanity, and it represents the healing of the earth and the coming at last of the rest for which the personified earth was pleading. In that day when Jesus Christ returns, “all the heavens shall shake with gladness and the earth shall tremble with joy.”[16]

Notes

[1] OT2, pages 9–10 (Moses 5:1–11).

[2] OT2, pages 10, 17 (Moses 5:13; 6:49).

[3] OT2, page 11 (Moses 5:17–18).

[4] OT2, page 14 (Moses 6:3).

[5] OT2, page 16 (Moses 6:35–36).

[6] OT2, pages 17–19 (Moses 6:41–7:1).

[7] OT2, page 17 (Moses 6:52).

[8] OT2, pages 18–19 (Moses 6:54–68).

[9] OT2, pages 21–25 (Moses 7:21–67).

[10] OT2, pages 21–22 (Moses 7:18–37).

[11] OT2, pages 21–22 (Moses 7:27–39).

[12] OT2, pages 23–24 (Moses 7:48–58).

[13] OT2, pages 24–25 (Moses 7:60–64).

[14] OT2, page 25 (Moses 7:63). The vision narrative is entirely in the third person. These first-person words are those of people who will be participants in the reunion of the earthly and heavenly Zions.

[15] OT1, page 20; OT2, page 27 (Moses 8:24).

[16] OT2, page 31.