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The beginning of the New Translation text about Melchizedek at Genesis 14:24, transcribed by John Whitmer. Notice the insertion of punctuation and verse breaks as the manuscript was prepared for printing. Verse numbers are written at the left margin, and their insertion points are located in the text with a slash. Courtesy of Community of Christ Archives.

Joseph Smith’s translation of Genesis includes the accounts of the patriarchs, and the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph form the framework of the narrative. It is a family history with a focus on promises that God made with his faithful children, promises that continue from earlier in history when God made covenants with Adam, Eve, Enoch, and Noah. The Prophet’s revision of the early chapters of Genesis sets the stage for revisions he made in later chapters. In the stories of the patriarchs, the JST retains most of the Genesis narrative with very little change from the King James Bible. But large additions of new text in several places expand the message in ways that contribute greatly to the Restoration of the gospel.

Melchizedek and His Community

The account in Genesis introduces Melchizedek rather abruptly and without background, but the New Translation tells us much about him. To the story of his meeting with Abram, the JST adds elements that are not found in Genesis.

Genesis 14:18–20

It seems clear that the giving of the bread and wine in the narrative was a sacramental act. Melchizedek broke the bread and then blessed the bread and the wine separately, and the text mentions that he had priesthood authority to do so. The story uses language that invokes other administrations of what we call the sacrament. This is a unique narrative, and it is unclear what it tells us about the sacrament’s occurrence prior to the Last Supper, when it was first instituted in the New Testament. Aside from this narrative, there is no reference to the sacrament in the Old Testament, not even in the explicitly Christian chapters of Genesis that precede it. In addition, the accounts of Jesus giving the sacrament at the Last Supper, especially as revised in the JST, give the impression that he was introducing the ordinance then for the first time,[1] and there is no reference to the sacrament in the Book of Mormon until Jesus’s coming in person to Lehi’s descendants. All these factors combine to suggest that this occasion involving Abram and Melchizedek may have been a singular observance among these two extraordinarily great men and perhaps not the perpetuation of an earlier practice or the introduction of a new one. In any case, the text gives every indication that it was a Christian event that celebrated in advance the atoning body and blood of Jesus Christ.

This passage also gives us history’s first reference to a tithe, and it identifies Abram as the giver, which is ambiguous in the Hebrew text.[2] Melchizedek, the recipient of the tithe, is later called “the keeper of the storehouse of God, him whom God had appointed to receive tithes for the poor.” Abram paid to him “tithes of all that he had of all the riches which he possessed which God had given him more than that which he had need.”[3]

At the end of Genesis 14 the JST adds an insertion of about 470 words that tells Melchizedek’s story. It is a remarkable account. Even as a child Melchizedek showed tremendous spiritual power, and as a leader of a people he created a covenant community after the model of Enoch’s society. His people “wrought righteousness and obtained heaven and sought for the City of Enoch, which God had before taken, separating it from the earth.” This new text thus gives us a record of a second translated community, which together with the people of Enoch will be reserved “unto the latter days or the end of the world,” when heaven and earth will “come together.”[4]

Abraham the Christian

According to the Joseph Smith Translation, Abram was a Christian, but it is perhaps surprising how little the JST reveals of the Christianity not only of Abram but also of his descendants Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. The JST makes few changes to their stories. Speaking many centuries after Abram’s time and in Jerusalem’s temple, Jesus said to a hostile crowd, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.”[5] It is only in the New Translation of Genesis 15 that we have antecedent passages about Abram that connect with these words of Jesus. The New Translation reports that God spoke to him of Jesus’s resurrection and said, “The day cometh that the Son of Man shall live, but how can he live if he be not dead? He must first be quickened.” “Abram looked forth and saw the days of the Son of Man and was glad, and his soul found rest. And he believed in the Lord, and the Lord counted it unto him for righteousness.”[6] Thusk, Abram was among those anciently to whom Joseph Smith referred who were able to “look forward to the time of the coming of the Savior, and to rejoice in his redemption.”[7]

Two interesting gospel references are found in Joseph Smith’s revision of Genesis 17. God tells Abram, “My people have gone astray from my precepts and have not kept mine ordinances which I gave unto their fathers. And they have not observed mine anointing, and the burial or baptism wherewith I commanded them, but have turned from the commandment and taken unto themselves the washing of children and the blood of sprinkling and have said that the blood of righteous Abel was shed for sins and have not known wherein they are accountable before me.”[8] The intriguing thing about this passage is that it does not describe a practice among worshippers of other gods, but it appears to refer to an aberrant practice among those who had been Christians, whom God identifies as “my people.” It provides a context for understanding better the enigmatic content of Hebrews 12:24.

As God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, he establishes circumcision as the sign of a covenant between him and Abraham and his descendants: “I will establish a covenant of circumcision with thee, and it shall be my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, that thou mayest know forever that children are not accountable before me until they are eight years old.”[9] This passage is the earliest reference in modern revelation to an age of accountability.

Abraham’s Christianity is also mentioned in the New Testament of the JST, where we are told that “Christ is the mediator of life, for this is the promise which God made unto Abraham.”[10]

Joseph, Moses, and Joseph Smith

The major contributions that the New Translation makes regarding the lives of Abraham’s immediate descendants come in the form of large insertions of new text near the end of Genesis. Those insertions are about God’s covenant that would be conveyed through them to their children and their children’s children throughout time.

Genesis 48 tells the story of Jacob blessing his young grandsons Manasseh and Ephraim. Jacob told Joseph that he was adopting the two boys as his own children, and thus in the Bible Manasseh and Ephraim are listed among the tribes alongside the names of Jacob’s sons. After Genesis 48:6, the Joseph Smith Translation inserts a new text of about two hundred words in which Jacob reflects on Joseph’s role in rescuing his family from starvation by taking them safely into Egypt. Then he foretells another rescue by Joseph’s descendants that would take place in a latter-day setting: “Thou shalt be a light unto my people to deliver them in the days of their captivity from bondage and to bring salvation unto them when they are altogether bowed down under sin.” It would be from the bondage of sin that Joseph’s posterity would rescue the covenant family in the latter days, as they serve as a light to the descendants of Israel and bring them salvation.[11] The Josephite Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the ministry of ancient Joseph’s latter-day descendants come to mind as fulfillments of this prophecy.

Two chapters later, the New Translation contains another prophecy about the house of Israel, with words that bind its ancient history with its future mission. Joseph Smith added an insertion of almost eight hundred words in the middle of Genesis 50:24. It is a prophecy made by ancient Joseph shortly before his death in which he foretells two great prophets who would be called to lead Israel in later generations. He prophesied that his people would be brought into bondage in Egypt but that God would provide a deliverer for them named Moses. He also foretold that they would be brought into bondage again later on, and then again they would be brought “out of darkness unto light, out of hidden darkness and out of captivity unto freedom.” The latter-day deliverer would be one of Joseph’s descendants and would be named Joseph like his esteemed ancestor. This great latter-day seer, clearly the Prophet Joseph Smith, would bring forth the word of the Lord to Israel, and he would convince them of the scriptures which they would already have. The descendants of Judah and the descendants of Joseph would each have scriptural records, and under the direction of the latter-day Joseph those records would “grow together—unto the confounding of false doctrines, and laying down of contentions, and establishing peace among the fruit of thy loins, and bringing them to the knowledge of their fathers in the latter days and also to the knowledge of my covenants, saith the Lord.” This JST insertion has a parallel in the Book of Mormon, and in chapter 17 we will examine the relationship between the two texts.[12]

Priesthood

Priesthood is an Old Testament concept, but not in the ways that Latter-day Saints typically think of it. The word priest in the Bible usually refers to priests of gods worshipped in other religions or to Aaron’s descendants, who were the hereditary temple functionaries under the law of Moses. The first occurrence of the word, however, is with a different kind of priest and is found in the story of Abram meeting Melchizedek, who is called “the priest of the most high God.”[13] Genesis does not explain what his title means. The first occurrence of the word priesthood is in the story of the anointing of Aaron and his sons.[14]

In the Joseph Smith Translation, however, priesthood is there from the start, mentioned first in the days of Adam, who prophesied that “this same priesthood which was in the beginning shall be in the end of the world also.”[15] God’s priesthood is usually referred to with the word order: God told Adam, “Thou art after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity.”[16] God ordained Noah “after his own order,”[17] and angels, “which were holy men and were sent forth after the order of God,” rescued Lot and members of his family.[18]

Melchizedek was “ordained a high priest after the order of the covenant which God made with Enoch, it being after the order of the Son of God, which order came not by man nor the will of man, neither by father nor mother neither by beginning of days nor end of years, but of God.”[19] This new text in the JST does not sound like the Old Testament at all, but it does sound like an important JST revision in the New Testament: “For this Melchisedec was ordained a priest after the order of the Son of God, which order was without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. And all those who are ordained unto this priesthood are made like unto the Son of God, abiding a priest continually.”[20] That passage does not sound much like the New Testament either, showing that these two JST revisions restore knowledge long lost. In the story of Melchizedek, we learn that “men having this faith, coming up unto this order of God, were translated and taken up into heaven.” Melchizedek himself “was a priest of this order.”[21]

These Old Testament insertions all date to late 1830 or early 1831. The higher priesthood had been restored over a year previously, but early sources show that it took some time for Joseph Smith and other early Latter-day Saints to understand it and to know what to call it. The first use of the title Melchizedek Priesthood in a revelation came in November 1831,[22] and it was months after that when we learn in revelation that those who will be exalted will be “priests of the Most High, after the order of Melchizedek, which was after the order of Enoch, which was after the order of the Only Begotten Son.”[23] Not until late 1832 did revelation clarify that “Abraham received the priesthood from Melchizedek, who received it through the lineage of his fathers, even till Noah; and from Noah till Enoch, through the lineage of their fathers; and from Enoch to Abel, . . . who received the priesthood by the commandments of God, by the hand of his father Adam, who was the first man.”[24] Accounts of all the individuals named in this passage are found in the New Translation of Genesis, and it appears that those accounts had become catalysts for later revelations on the subject of priesthood that are now in the Doctrine and Covenants. Passages like these underscore the importance of Joseph Smith’s Bible revision as part of the Restoration and show how it laid the foundation for further revelations.

It was in April 1835 that Joseph Smith received a revelation that explained the name used for the higher priesthood:

There are, in the church, two priesthoods, namely, the Melchizedek and Aaronic, including the Levitical Priesthood. Why the first is called the Melchizedek Priesthood is because Melchizedek was such a great high priest. Before his day it was called the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God. But out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name, they, the church, in ancient days, called that priesthood after Melchizedek, or the Melchizedek Priesthood.[25]

In 1832 Joseph Smith received a revelation regarding the priesthood that has important parallels in the New Translation. It explains that the greater priesthood administers the gospel and holds the key to the knowledge of God. Without its ordinances and authority, “the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh.” Moses taught this to the Israelites, and he “sought diligently to sanctify his people.”[26] The words that come next in the revelation are parallel to a new text that Joseph Smith added to the book of Exodus, as we see in the following comparison.[27] The highlighted words show common themes and common vocabulary between Doctrine and Covenants 84 and JST Exodus 34.

Rewriting Israel’s History

What we learn from Doctrine and Covenants 84:24–27 and JST Exodus 34:1 is extraordinary. These revelations rewrite the history of ancient Israel by showing that Moses and others in his generation held the Melchizedek Priesthood and that the gospel was known and taught among them. Because of rebellion, however, the higher priesthood was withdrawn from Israel, and it is clear from later in the Old Testament that the knowledge of Jesus Christ and his gospel was generally lost. The “words of the everlasting covenant of the holy priesthood”[28] were withheld from Israel, and Israel’s governing authority thereafter was the Aaronic Priesthood, a hereditary order that officiated in the duties of the law of Moses, which the Book of Mormon calls “a law of performances and of ordinances.” While these revelations provide insights into the background of the priesthood in ancient Israel, it is from the Book of Mormon that we learn that the intent of the law was to keep the Israelites “in remembrance of God and their duty towards him.”[29] A most important point, coming in a JST revision to the words of Paul, is that the law would be Israel’s “schoolmaster until Christ.”[30] It remained the schoolmaster throughout Israel’s history in Canaan, but it was never intended to be the law forever. When God took Lehi and his family away from their ancestral home to establish a new branch of Israel in a new land, he began by revealing to them the gospel of Jesus Christ so they could know “how to come unto him and be saved.”[31] The law stayed in effect until it was fulfilled through Christ’s Atonement.

Notes

[1] NT1, page 61; NT2, folio 2, pages 2, 39–40 (Matthew 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24).

[2] See Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, New American Commentary, vol. 1B (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2005), 151.

[3] OT2, page 40 (Genesis 14:24).

[4] OT2, pages 38–40.

[5] John 8:56.

[6] OT2, page 40 (Genesis 15:5–6).

[7] “Letter to the Church, circa March 1834,” p. 143, The Joseph Smith Papers.

[8] OT2, page 43 (Genesis 17:3).

[9] OT2, page 43 (Genesis 17:7).

[10] NT2, folio 4, page 132 (Galatians 3:20).

[11] OT2, page 63 (Genesis 48:6).

[12] OT2, page 63–65.

[13] Genesis 14:18.

[14] Exodus 40:15.

[15] OT2, page 14 (Moses 6:7).

[16] OT2, page 19 (Moses 6:67).

[17] OT2, page 26 (Moses 8:19).

[18] OT2, page 46 (Genesis 18:22).

[19] OT2, page 39 (Genesis 14:24).

[20] NT2, folio 4, page 139 (Hebrews 7:3).

[21] OT2, page 39 (Genesis 14:24).

[22] Doctrine and Covenants 68:15.

[23] Doctrine and Covenants 76:57.

[24] Doctrine and Covenants 84:14–16.

[25] Doctrine and Covenants 107:1–4.

[26] Doctrine and Covenants 84:19–23.

[27] For the dating of the two revelations, see chapter 18.

[28] OT2, page 72 (Deuteronomy 10:2).

[29] Mosiah 13:30.

[30] NT2, folio 4, page 132 (Galatians 3:24).

[31] 1 Nephi 15:14.