The Instinct to Explain Metaphor

Part of the New Translation’s propensity to add greater plainness and clarity to the text is an impulse to clarify metaphor. Metaphor is typically specific to a given culture and time, making it sometimes difficult to understand when it is removed from its world of origin and also translated into a second language. Thus there are many revisions in the JST in which the Prophet revised metaphor to make it more transparent.

In some cases the text is converted to simple simile, as in these examples:

Joel 1:6

Matthew 6:3

Joseph Smith often reworded the text to make the metaphors’ meaning clear.[1]

Exodus 7:1

Mark 14:24

In many places the New Translation adds clarifying phrases that explain the metaphorical images.[2]

Matthew 5:30

Matthew 16:24

Matthew 3:11

Luke 17:37

Deliberate understatement sometimes has a metaphorical effect. In this example, the JST assures that the statement will be understood:

John 3:34

Irony is often not understood correctly. In the examples from the New Testament that follow, the Joseph Smith Translation adds wording to explain the ironic phrases.

Luke 10:21

Romans 3:7

In the following example from Isaiah, the New Translation replaces the irony with statements of fact.[3]

Isaiah 6:9

The Instinct to Fill in Gaps in the Text

Closely related to the New Translation’s instinct to provide clarity is its impulse to flesh out phrases that appear incomplete or could be enhanced by additional explanation. There are many examples like the following, and the additions range from a few words to whole paragraphs.

Genesis 25:21

Exodus 6:30

The example above from Exodus 6:30 replaces a metaphor with a descriptive word and then augments it with an explanatory clause. In many cases the Prophet added significantly to spoken words in dialogue, as in the following example.

Matthew 23:24

Revisions like these may be examples of the restoration of words once in the biblical text or of words once said but never recorded in the text.

Added words, as in the following examples, also flesh out accounts of events and make narratives more vivid.

Matthew 2:4

Mark 5:14

The Mark 5:14 revision above fleshes out Mark’s succinct account in very sophisticated ways. It replaces the implied direct object represented by the italicized it with an indirect object, “the people.” The JST makes the content of what the people were told explicit with the addition of a clause at the end of the sentence.

In some revisions the Joseph Smith Translation fills in gaps by expanding the text with words recognizable from other scriptural contexts.

Matthew 3:17

The setting in this verse is Jesus’s baptism by John the Baptist. None of the Gospel accounts of this event include the phrase “Hear ye him,” and this is the only one to which Joseph Smith added these words. The phrase is found, however, in all three of the synoptic accounts of the transfiguration,[4] and it was uttered as well by God in Joseph Smith’s First Vision.[5]

A more extensive JST revision that reflects language from other scriptural sources is found in Matthew’s account of the sign Pontius Pilate placed on Jesus’s cross:

Matthew 27:37

The accounts of this event in the synoptic Gospels are all very short.[6] John’s account is longer because it also includes the detail regarding the disappointment of the chief priests at Pilate’s wording of the inscription.[7] Joseph Smith’s revision has features unique to itself, but a good part of it is parallel to words in John and Luke. The text from the beginning through “King of the Jews” is identical to John’s account, and “in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew” is identical to wording in Luke. The resulting text fleshes out Matthew’s narrative with information that Joseph Smith was aware of from previous readings of the other Gospels. The preciseness of some of the wording suggests that when he arrived at Matthew’s terse account and felt that it needed to be expanded, he may have turned to the other Gospels for some of the language. His revision of Mark’s account is similar but less precise, suggesting that the Prophet may have revised it from memory. He did not revise the wording in Luke and John at all.

The Question of Harmonization

It is interesting that even though the Prophet appears to have drawn language from other Gospels in the example of Pilate’s inscription, above, he made no effort to make the four accounts the same. Some scholars have suggested that harmonization was a major focus in the revision of the Bible.[8] There are indeed examples, but most of them are best viewed as efforts to correct errors or to make individual passages more complete, often doing so by adding familiar words. That seems to best explain the revisions to Matthew 3:17 and Matthew 27:37, above. There are other examples:

Mark 8:12

Jesus’s statement in Mark 8:12 is succinct to the point of being inaccurate. It invites the correction the New Translation makes. The insertion matches the content of Matthew 12:39–40, but the wording is sufficiently different to show that the text was not copied.

Mark 8:29

Luke 9:20

For Bible readers familiar with the fuller version of this account in Matthew 16:16, Peter’s response in Mark and Luke seems defective, and thus both passages invited revision. The addition in Mark is identical to the wording in Matthew.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called synoptic Gospels because they share a common perspective.[9] The evidence shows that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke both used Mark in the writing of their Gospels. Because these three Gospels share this history, they tell most of the same stories, and they sometimes do it in words that are identical or very similar. There are places where JST revisions seem to have been made in view of parallel passages. For example, the following revision in Mark 15:23 seems to have been made in light of the earlier JST revision of Matthew 27:34.

When Jesus first encountered Matthew/Levi, the future disciple was “sitting at the receipt of custom.” In all three accounts the Prophet changed the language in similar ways: “the place where they receive[d] tribute,”[10] and “the place where they received custom.”[11] The accounts of the two men crucified with Jesus are very brief in Matthew and Mark.[12] Luke’s account is longer because it includes two elements the others do not have: words by the first thief, “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us,” and then words by the second thief proclaiming Jesus’s innocence and the thieves’ guilt.[13] The JST adds the first of these elements (but not the second) to Mark’s account, and the second element (but not the first) to Matthew’s account.[14] Examples like these show that synoptic wording likely influenced some revisions, but they do not show an effort to make the passages identical.

In chapter 19 we will visit the topic of harmonization again.

The Instinct to Remove Sexually Suggestive Language

In several places, edits the Prophet made in the New Translation remove language that can be regarded as sexually suggestive. Verses with the explicit phrase “go in unto” especially caught his attention and were revised, often with the insertion of euphemisms.

Genesis 29:21

Genesis 29:30

Genesis 30:16

In the following instance, a clause containing the verb know, itself a euphemism for intimate relations, is removed altogether.

Luke 1:34

The Instinct to Preserve (and Sometimes Reassign) Words When Revising Text

It may seem odd to make note of a conservative impulse in a discussion of Joseph Smith making thousands of revisions in the Bible. But there is evidence in many places that when he edited biblical passages he often found ways to preserve the existing words, sometimes going to great lengths to do so by moving them to different locations. This example moves two words from one sentence to another.

Mark 7:9

The relocation of words is seen readily in examples in which the Prophet removed the idea of God repenting or hardening hearts, topics that we will visit in chapter 15. In those cases the New Translation usually reassigns the verb repent from God to other individuals.

2 Samuel 24:16

In the following revisions, we see examples of the JST making changes that reinterpret words and sometimes reorder them extensively, but they retain all of the basic vocabulary. Notice in Psalm 22:1 the removal of the italicized words and the reassignment of the second “my God” to a new sentence.

Psalm 22:1

And in Psalm 119:20 we see the revision of the unidiomatic “my soul breaketh” and the reassignment of “my soul” to a new clause that preserves the rest of the vocabulary of the verse. The resulting words provide a lovely parallel between heart and soul and yield a sentence that communicates far better than in the King James translation.

Psalm 119:20

Revisions like these show considerable sophistication in preserving existing language, even if the words are given entirely new functions or meanings.

Notes

[1] See also Psalm 22:12.

[2] Other examples include Matthew 18:9; Mark 8:35; 9:43–47; Luke 6:29; 14:26, 30; 17:37; 23:31; John 1:27.

[3] Joseph Smith revised this verse to match the corresponding passage in the 1830 Book of Mormon; see chapter 17.

[4] Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35.

[5] Joseph Smith—History 1:17.

[6] Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38.

[7] John 19:19–22.

[8] See, for example, Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion, updated ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2103), 56; Robert J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible—A History and Commentary (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1975), 253; Robert L. Millet, “Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A Historical Overview,” in The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 43. The latter two focus on harmonization in doctrinal matters.

[9] The prefix syn- means “together with,” and synoptic suggests a parallel point of view.

[10] Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:14.

[11] Luke 5:27.

[12] Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32.

[13] Luke 23:39–43.

[14] See Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32; Luke 23:39–43.