In the examples presented in this and the following chapters, the King James text is again on the left and the New Translation text is on the right. For the sake of comparison, I have highlighted in bold selected words in which the New Translation differs from the King James wording, and I have underlined the corresponding words in the King James translation.

Title page of the Bible used for the preparation of the Joseph Smith Translation, published by H. and E. Phinney, Cooperstown, New York, 1828. While the scribes recorded the Prophet’s words, he read aloud from the Bible, sometimes without change but often dictating different words than those found in the Bible and sometimes adding new text. On the front flyleaf of the Bible, Oliver Cowdery wrote the words “Holiness to the Lord.” Courtesy of Community of Christ Archives.

Suspicion of Italicized Words

Translation from one language to another sometimes requires the inclusion of words in the target language that are not found in the original. An example can be seen in Jeremiah 1:7, where the King James translation has Jeremiah saying, “I am a child.” These four English words come from only two Hebrew words, the word for I and the word for child. Because in English we do not say, “I child,” the translators correctly supplied the two words needed to create a good English sentence. In the sixteenth century, some Bible printers concluded that words supplied in this manner needed to be set apart with different type. The custom to do so was adopted by several printers and became a fashion that caught on and was continued into the King James translation. Since 1612 the King James Bible has used italic type for that purpose, and this is the origin of the vast majority of the italics that are still in it today.[1] Translators and scholars today realize that italicizing the words was never a good translation practice. The italics are both confusing and unnecessary, it was never quite clear what the rules were, and the selection of italicized words was different in every printing.[2]

There is much evidence that Joseph Smith and his associates did not care for the italicized words in the Bible. Editorials in Church periodicals express disdain for them,[3] no words were identified on the New Translation manuscripts to be italicized, and no italicized words were included in early printings. The evidence is also clear that like most Bible readers of their own time and now, they did not fully understand the origin and purpose of the italicized words.

On the New Translation manuscripts, Joseph Smith made a disproportionate number of revisions where italicized words were located. The changes at those locations come in all varieties. Many examples show that he often began a revision by deleting the italicized word and then rearranging those words that remained to reconstruct the text, sometimes with the insertion of other words. Sometimes those changes retained the original meaning for the most part, but sometimes they revised the meaning in significant ways.

In many cases the italicized words were simply deleted, as these examples show:

Psalm 11:6

Psalm 18:41

Mark 3:13

There are many examples where the italicized words were retained in the revised translation but not set apart typographically. Often, however, the Prophet replaced the italicized words with different words or sometimes with a phrase. The revisions reflect the whole range of instincts that are in evidence in the New Translation.

Genesis 21:29

Genesis 22:13

Mark 2:1–2

The Instinct to Remove Ambiguity

There are many revisions in the New Translation in which Joseph Smith replaced pronouns with names and made similar changes to remove ambiguity. The volume of changes of this nature shows that removing ambiguity was a compelling impulse for him in his work with the Bible.[4]

Genesis 18:32

Mark 7:4

Mark 9:20

Luke 2:33

Luke 8:50

Luke 24:1

The Instinct to Provide Plainness and Clarity

The Book of Mormon praises what it calls “plainness,” the quality that makes scriptures or teachings clear and comprehensible.[5] When the King James Bible was translated it was intentionally cast in language that was formal and already somewhat archaic, making it less “plain” than it might otherwise have been, especially for today’s readers. There are many examples in the Joseph Smith Translation of revisions that have the effect of bringing greater clarity to the text. Many revisions, for example, restate the text in language that is more understandable, and often more modern, than in the King James translation. The changes are usually not extensive, but they show evidence that Joseph Smith was guided by an instinct to make the Bible more accessible.

Mark 1:12

The King James wording in Mark 1:12, with the Spirit driving Jesus, is replaced with language that is less awkward to modern eyes. In addition, the revision changes the tense from the present to the past, which makes the phrase seem much more natural in a narrative of events. There are many such examples in which verb tenses are changed from present to past.

Mark 4:38

Changes to more idiomatic word choices are common in the New Translation:

Matthew 3:11

Acts 2:3

In the following example, uncertainty regarding the antecedent of “calling” is made clear through word additions:

Acts 7:59

Small and large word changes clarify meanings and make difficult passages comprehensible:

Romans 5:13

1 Corinthians 15:31

Joseph Smith’s impulse to add plainness and clarity to the text involved the removal of archaic words in many locations. For example, the word passion, as it relates to the Atonement, appears only in this one place in the King James Bible. The Prophet changed it to a more accessible word:

Acts 1:3

Genesis 21:26 was Joseph Smith’s first biblical encounter with the archaic verb wot. He replaced it correctly with “know.” Later, at Exodus 32:1, he dictated to his scribe that know “should be in the place of ‘wot’ in all places,” and thus he edited wot out of the Bible.[6] He similarly replaced wist, the past tense of wot.[7] He removed haply from three passages.[8] He also frequently replaced that and which, when used as relative pronouns referring to people, with the more modern form, who, as in these examples.[9]

Genesis 17:21

Genesis 24:60

Mark 9:17

John 3:31

When revising texts, Joseph Smith used both shall and will. In his day the latter verb was more common and more preferred in normal speech, as it is today. In several places he replaced shall in the text with will.[10]

Exodus 7:4

Revelation 19:15

The revisions in Revelation 19:15 are also excellent examples of Joseph Smith’s instinct to provide interpretation for metaphor, which will be discussed in chapter 14.

The grammar of the King James Bible includes pronouns (thou, thee, thy, thine, and ye) and verbal conjugations (verbs ending in -est and -eth) that we do not use today and that were already obsolete in Joseph Smith’s time. As he revised the Bible, he made some isolated edits to these, yet there was no systematic effort to replace the grammar of the King James Version. But because the archaic grammar was not native to him and was not part of his normal means of expression, when the Prophet dictated text he used the modern forms in many places, sometimes in close proximity to the archaic ones. Thus we have examples like the following in which the forms are not used with consistency.[12]

Matthew 16:3

Most printings of the King James Bible today use an, instead of a, before all words that begin with the letter h, even if the h is pronounced. Joseph Smith dictated most such cases according to the usage of his time and ours:

Genesis 2:20

John 2:16

In contrast to most King James Bibles today, the printing of it that Joseph Smith used while revising the Bible followed the modern practice, with a rather than an before words that begin with a pronounced h. Thus this is the default usage in the Joseph Smith Translation.[13]

A final example of the Prophet’s instinct to provide more plainness and clarity is in the presentation of biblical names. The New Testament, written in Greek, usually renders the names of people known from the Old Testament, written in Hebrew, in ways that differ from how they are rendered in the Old Testament. The King James Version, rather than standardizing the names to the Old Testament forms as most modern translations do, reflects the Greek spelling rather than the Hebrew. In the New Testament we have forms like “Elias” in place of “Elijah,” and “Jeremy” and “Jeremias” in place of “Jeremiah.” When revising the New Testament, Joseph Smith most often dictated the forms of the names as they were written there, but he sometimes dictated the more familiar Old Testament forms. Thus the JST gives us “Jeremiah” for “Jeremy” at Matthew 2:17, “Isaiah” for “Esaias” at Mark 7:6, “Shem” and “Noah” for “Sem” and “Noe” at Luke 3:36, and “Hosea” for “Osee” at Romans 9:25.

The Instinct to Refine the Narrative

In very small and subtle ways, the Joseph Smith Translation often improves the flow of the biblical narrative. There are examples in which the Prophet added or revised small words to aid in the transition between clauses or sentences in ways that help the story flow more naturally. These refinements make the text “plain” in their own way, as the following examples show.

Genesis 18:24–25

Exodus 6:3–4

Matthew 13:10

Mark 9:13

Luke 12:22–23

Sometimes and is changed to for, with the sense of “because.”

Matthew 21:43–44

The words but and and are occasionally changed to therefore, with the sense of “in light of the foregoing.”

Matthew 24:19–20

Luke 12:28–29

And here the word and is changed to that, expressing “in order that”:

Luke 12:35–36

These are not large changes, and they are not frequent, but they emphasize something we have seen in previous chapters: the Joseph Smith Translation was intended to be read.

Notes

[1] The 1611 first edition was published in blackletter type with roman type used where italics are found now.

[2] For more on the italics, see Kent P. Jackson, Frank F. Judd Jr., and David Rolph Seely, “Chapters, Verses, Punctuation, Spelling, and Italics,” in The King James Bible and the Restoration, ed. Kent P. Jackson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 108–12.

[3] See, for example, Evening and Morning Star, January 1833, [58]; July 1833, 106; Times and Seasons, September 1, 1843, 318.

[4] Other examples include Genesis 18:23; Mark 2:13; 6:29, 54; Luke 1:56; 8:36–37; 9:7.

[5] For example, 1 Nephi 13:29; 2 Nephi 25:4, 7; 31:2–3.

[6] OT2, page 69; see Genesis 21:26; 44:15; Exodus 32:1, 23; Numbers 22:6; Joshua 2:5; Acts 3:17; 7:40; Romans 11:2; Philippians 1:22.

[7] See Mark 9:6; 14:40; Luke 2:49; John 5:13; Acts 23:5.

[8] Mark 11:13; Luke 14:29; Acts 5:39. The word haply means “perhaps,” or “by chance.” It appears from the change at Luke 14:29 that Joseph Smith may have understood it to mean “happily.”

[9] Among other examples are Genesis 24:48; Mark 2:25; John 1:9, 12, 15, 29, 30, 33, 40.

[10] Other examples include Genesis 23:9; Exodus 4:21; 11:9; Romans 3:3.

[11] The word should is the subjunctive form of shall.

[12] Other examples include Matthew 6:1, 25; Mark 14:22, 24; John 5:38, 46.

[13] Kent P. Jackson, “The Cooperstown Bible,” New York History 95, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 254–55.