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In 2021 the Brigham Young University Press and the Religious Studies Center, in cooperation with Deseret Book Company, published a new edition of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.[1] It includes all the New Translation text that was written on the manuscripts. The Brigham Young University (BYU) edition presents Joseph Smith’s text in parallel columns with the corresponding text from the current King James Version. In addition to all the verses that the Prophet revised, it also includes all the verses that he dictated and his scribes recorded that do not differ from the King James text. Those passages were included because they were written on the manuscripts and thus are part of the documentary record of the New Translation. In addition, they are often part of continuing sentences or quotations with other verses where the Prophet made changes in the wording. In the King James Version column, only verses that were revised in the JST are included. The sign ≈≈ is in the place of KJV verses that the Prophet dictated but in which he made no word changes, thus identifying for readers which verses he revised and which he did not.

The BYU text includes standardized capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. In places where the Prophet dictated only isolated words and the locations for their insertion into existing verses, it reconstructs the complete verses with the words of the King James translation. Footnotes identify Old Testament passages that are quoted or paraphrased by New Testament authors.

The Text

The text in the BYU edition consists of Joseph Smith’s final readings as recorded on OT2 and NT2, the two manuscripts he prepared for publication. The text comes directly from the transcriptions published in unedited format in the 2004 Religious Studies Center volume and later reproduced in the 2011 Brigham Young University Press electronic edition and on the Joseph Smith Papers website.[2] As we saw in chapter 1, Joseph Smith’s dictation of Genesis 1:1–24:41 was first recorded on a manuscript now labeled OT1, which John Whitmer later transcribed onto the manuscript labeled OT2. Similarly, Matthew 1:1–26:71 was first recorded on NT1 and was later transcribed by Whitmer onto NT2. In the process of transcribing, Whitmer sometimes made small editorial refinements to correct spelling, standardize grammar, and modernize isolated words, such as changing till to until. The BYU edition accepts those revisions where it appears they were part of Whitmer’s responsibility to move the text toward publication. Where he made unconscious copying errors, the BYU edition corrects to the OT1 and NT1 readings. For example, at Genesis 17:25 the BYU edition retains “and Ishmael his son was” (OT1), which Whitmer transcribed incorrectly as “and Ishmael was” (OT2), and at Matthew 20:21 it retains “the other on the left” (NT1) rather than the inaccurately copied “the other on thy left” (NT2).

In very few isolated places the BYU edition silently corrects small irregularities that appear to be mistakes made in the dictation or in the scribal recording. These include errors such as writing a word twice, writing only part of a word, and overlooking small words. For example, “all all Judah” is corrected to “and all Judah” at Jeremiah 26:19. In a few instances the transcription restores in brackets words inadvertently left out by scribes, as in “the sons of Raamah: Sheba [and] Dedan” at Genesis 10:7.[3] As we saw in chapter 19, Joseph Smith revised Matthew 26:1–71 and 2 Peter 3:4–6 twice. The BYU edition includes both duplicate revisions.

Chapters and Verses

Today’s biblical chapter divisions date to the thirteenth century, although they are partially based on divisions created much earlier.[4] A French printer invented the verses used in Bibles today for Greek and Latin editions he published in the mid-sixteenth century.[5] He devised the verses to be approximately the length of an average sentence, but they often break up longer sentences between two or more verses. Joseph Smith’s preference for longer verses is evident in all the scriptures he published. As we saw in chapter 2, for his Bible revision he, with Sidney Rigdon and Newel K. Whitney assisting, created paragraph-length verses to replace the verses of the King James Bible. The BYU edition uses Joseph Smith’s verse divisions, and it also notes the traditional biblical verse breaks with small superscripted numbers within the paragraphs, enabling readers to navigate the JST alongside the King James text and other translations.[6] When Joseph Smith revised only individual verses, rather than long texts, he and his associates rarely changed the verse breaks. In the BYU edition those revisions are transcribed as separate revisions, each beginning a new block of text. The exception is if changes in consecutive verses span a sentence or are within the same quotation, in which case they are placed in the same paragraph.

Punctuation, Spelling, and Italics

The abundant punctuation in the King James Bible, first published in 1611, comes from its editors’ desire to maximize its impact on those who heard it read from the pulpit. With that intent in mind, it was given more punctuation than the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts warranted, and by today’s standards its punctuation often seems excessive. Editors revised the punctuation in every printing for the next century and a half, a process that slowed down substantially after a 1769 Oxford edition came to be viewed as the standard King James Bible. Joseph Smith dictated the JST text without punctuation. After it was recorded on the manuscripts, one or more assistants inserted punctuation marks, but the work was done inexpertly and inconsistently. The BYU text contains new modern punctuation and capitalization, and it also includes quotation marks to identify spoken and quoted words.

Spelling in the English language has evolved considerably since 1611. Bible printers after the first King James edition kept the spelling contemporary by modernizing it in every printing. Much of that process ended with the edition of 1769, but modernizations in spelling continued in some later printings, including in the 2013 Latter-day Saint edition. Joseph Smith and his scribes were not consistent in their spelling or usage. The BYU JST presents the words as they wrote them, but with standardized spelling. Joseph Smith’s printed Bible used a rather than an before words that begin with the pronounced letter h, as in “a house” rather than “an house” at Genesis 33:17. That is the default practice in the Joseph Smith Translation and hence in the BYU edition.

As we saw in chapter 13, the New Testament often spells Old Testament names in ways that are unfamiliar to modern readers, with “Esaias” for Isaiah, for example. Joseph Smith was not consistent in how he rendered the names and sometimes used the Old Testament forms. The BYU edition retains the name forms as they appear in the final manuscripts, except in places that appear simply to be misspellings.[7] The King James Bible represents the Hebrew divine name Yahweh (Jehovah) with “the Lord,” with small capital letters setting the divine name apart from the common noun lord. The BYU edition retains that usage in passages that come from the Bible. In passages with no biblical counterpart, such as the Visions of Moses, the transcription follows the form on the manuscript, “the Lord.”

We also saw in chapter 13 that in translating it is often necessary to add words in the target language that are not used explicitly in the original-language text. Those are the words that are typically set in italics in the King James translation. There was no attempt made on the JST manuscripts to preserve italicized words, and thus the BYU edition of the JST does not set apart any words in italics.

Grammar

The English of the King James Bible is characterized by pronouns that are different from those in use today (thou, thee, thy, thine, and ye) as well as by different verbal conjugations (verbs ending in -est and -eth). The earliest King James Bible editions used the archaic pronouns but also used some of those we use today.[8] Editors of later printings revised the modern forms to conform with the older usage, archaizing the grammar at the same time they were modernizing the spelling. Joseph Smith modernized some of those forms but let most of them stand, and when he dictated new text he dictated both the archaic forms and the modern ones. The BYU edition reproduces them as they appear on the manuscripts. Sometimes the Prophet made changes to the wording of a passage without revising the grammar of all the surrounding text. This caused some rare problems with case or with subject-verb agreement, and in a few places it resulted in incomplete sentences. The BYU edition retains incomplete sentences whenever they appear on the manuscripts but corrects issues with subject-verb agreement by using the least intrusive edit that is consistent with the revision. As an example, at 1 Corinthians 1:12 Joseph Smith changed “every one of you” (singular) to “many of you” (plural) without revising the conjugation of the associated verb. Because the Prophet’s revision implies the change in the verb as well, the BYU edition adjusts “saith” (singular) to “say” (plural).

The New Translation in Print

In chapter 20 we were introduced to the Inspired Version, published first in 1867.[9] The BYU edition differs from the Inspired Version in four important ways. First, it includes only the Joseph Smith Translation text and not the verses and chapters that Joseph Smith did not dictate or revise. The Bible contains about 31,000 verses, but Joseph Smith revised only about 3,600 of them, roughly 11.5 percent of the KJV’s verses. Consistent with the content of the original manuscripts, the BYU edition includes only the dictated verses along with the thousands of words of new text that has no biblical counterpart. The parallel columns enable comparison with the King James Version, but the focus of the publication is on the JST text itself. Second, it includes the chapter and verse breaks that the Prophet and his scribes prepared for the New Translation. Joseph Smith’s paragraph-length verse divisions in the BYU edition enable the text to proceed more freely without the interruptions of the frequent traditional verse breaks. Third, punctuation in the Inspired Version reflects that of the King James Bible as filtered through late nineteenth-century standards. The BYU edition uses modern punctuation and includes quotation marks. These features, in conjunction with the longer verses and with Joseph Smith’s modernizing tendency throughout the New Translation, give the text a much more contemporary feel than is found in previous printings. Finally, and most importantly, the text of the BYU edition draws from the most recent scholarship to understand the writing on the manuscripts. This is critically important in the book of Genesis, in which the Joseph Smith Translation differs in many places from the text published in the Inspired Version and in printings based on it.

Many Latter-day Saints are familiar with the New Translation from the footnotes and selections printed with the standard works of the Church. The Brigham Young University edition enables them to come to know it in a different way—as a continuing text rather than as a collection of quotes. In its new form, the thousands of revisions Joseph Smith made to the Bible, inspired by the prophetic instincts that guided him throughout the process of revising the text, allow the New Translation to flow as never before.

Notes

[1] Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: The Joseph Smith Translation and the King James Translation in Parallel Columns (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press and Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021).

[2] Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds., Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible—Original Manuscripts (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 2004); Scott H. Faulring and Kent P. Jackson, eds., Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: Electronic Library (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2011); The Joseph Smith Papers: “Old Testament Revision 2,” “New Testament Revision 2.”

[3] See also Luke 6:32–33, where it appears that there was a haplography of a few lines.

[4] For all these matters, see Kent P. Jackson, Frank F. Judd Jr., and David Rolf Seely, “Chapters, Verses, Punctuation, Spelling, and Italics,” in Kent P. Jackson, ed., The King James Bible and the Restoration (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 95–117.

[5] Robert Estienne, commonly referred to by his Latinized name, Stephanus.

[6] In three places some verses were numbered out of sequence. The BYU edition corrects those silently in the transcription.

[7] As in “Zackarias” in Luke 1.

[8] Notice both ye and you used as the second-person plural subject in the earliest editions at Deuteronomy 5:32–33: “Ye shall observe to doe therefore, as the Lord your God hath commanded you: you shall not turne aside to the right hand, or to the left. You shall walke in all the wayes which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your dayes in the land which ye shall possesse.”

[9] The Holy Scriptures, Translated and Corrected by the Spirit of Revelation. By Joseph Smith, Jr., the Seer (Plano, IL: The [Reorganized] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1867).