{"id":3729,"date":"2016-04-06T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3729"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:39:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:39:58","slug":"ces-reply-the-joseph-smith-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-the-joseph-smith-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: The Joseph Smith Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is an excerpt from &#8220;A Reply from a Former CES Employee.&#8221; The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CESReply.pdf\" target=\"_self\" class=\"emd_dl_red_darker\" download>Download CES Reply<\/a><\/div>    <style>            \r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker {\r\n        -moz-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        -webkit-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #f24537), color-stop(1, #c62d1f) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #f24537 5%, #c62d1f 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#f24537', endColorstr='#c62d1f');\r\n        background-color:#f24537;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topleft:0px;\r\n        border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topright:0px;\r\n        border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomright:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        text-indent:0;\r\n        border:1px solid #d02718;\r\n        display:inline-block;\r\n        color:#ffffff !important;\r\n        font-family:Georgia;\r\n        font-size:15px;\r\n        font-weight:bold;\r\n        font-style:normal;\r\n        height:41px;\r\n        line-height:41px;\r\n        width:200px;\r\n        text-decoration:none;\r\n        text-align:center;\r\n        text-shadow:1px 1px 0px #810e05;\r\n    }\r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker:hover {\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #c62d1f), color-stop(1, #f24537) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #c62d1f 5%, #f24537 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#c62d1f', endColorstr='#f24537');\r\n        background-color:#c62d1f;\r\n    }.emd_dl_red_darker:active {\r\n        position:relative;\r\n        top:1px;\r\n    }<\/style>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells&#8217; &#8220;Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony.&#8221;\u00a0<span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy&#8217;s words are in green, the color of life,<\/span> while mine are in black, the color of darkness.<\/p>\n<p>_______<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll now let you state your third question in full without interrupting.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">3. The Book of Mormon includes mistranslated biblical passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith\u2019s translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired JST version instead of the incorrect KJV version that Joseph later fixed. A typical example of the differences between the BOM, the KJV, and the JST:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">3 Nephi 13:25-27:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">25: \u00a0&#8230;Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye \u2028shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, \u2028and the body than raiment? \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">26: \u00a0Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; \u2028yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">27: \u00a0Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Matthew 6:25-27 (from the King James Version Bible \u2013 not the JST):<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">25: \u00a0Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye \u2028shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, \u2028and the body than raiment? \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">26: \u00a0Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into \u2028barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">27: \u00a0Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">The above Sermon on the Mount passages are identical, which is understandable as Christ may have said the same thing to both groups of people in the Old world as well as the New world. Let\u2019s look at the JST version of the above identical passages:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Joseph Smith Translation of the same passages in the LDS Bible for Matthew 6:25-27:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">25: \u00a0And, again, I say unto you, Go ye into the world, and care not for the world: for the \u2028world will hate you, and will persecute you, and will turn you out of their synagogues. \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">26: \u00a0Nevertheless, ye shall go forth from house to house, teaching the people; and I will go \u2028before you. \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">27: \u00a0And your heavenly Father will provide for you, whatsoever things ye need for food, \u2028what ye shall eat; and for raiment, what ye shall wear or put on. \u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Christ\u2019s Sermon on the Mount in the Bible and the Book of Mormon are identical. Joseph Smith corrected the Bible. In doing so, he also corrected the same identical Sermon on the Mount passage in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is \u201cthe most correct book\u201d and was translated a mere decade before the JST. The Book of Mormon was not corrupted over time and did not need correcting. How is it that the Book of Mormon has the incorrect Sermon on the Mount passage and does not match the correct JST version in the first place?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>To answer your question, I think we have to define some terms. The first is the idea that the Book of Mormon is \u201cthe most correct book.\u201d The second is the concept of translation as it specifically relates to the JST. We\u2019ll take them both in turn.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of \u201cthe most correct book\u201d comes from Joseph Smith\u2019s famous statement on the subject, which reads as follows:<\/p>\n<p><em>I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Fair enough. But what does that mean, exactly?<\/p>\n<p>Throughout your letter, you return to this phrase repeatedly, as if it\u2019s somehow a claim of Book of Mormon inerrancy, when, in fact, it\u2019s precisely the opposite. If the Book of Mormon is the \u201cmost correct\u201d book, that means that all other books, to one extent or another, are less correct, and therefore contain a degree of error. But it also a clear admission that the Book of Mormon itself also contains error. Joseph Smith does not state that the Book of Mormon is \u201centirely correct,\u201d or \u201calways correct,\u201d or \u201cthe perfectly correct book.\u201d He is offering a comparison rather than issuing an ultimatum. If the Bible and other books were only, say, 2% correct, and the Book of Mormon were 3% correct, it would still be \u201cthe most correct\u201d under those circumstances, even if 97% of it were incorrect. (I personally don\u2019t think the Bible is only 2% correct or that the Book of Mormon is only 3% correct; I\u2019m pushing this to an extreme to illustrate the point.) The comparison highlights the fact that, while no religious texts are perfect, the Book of Mormon is the best of the lot.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also necessary to define what Joseph Smith, and those who quote him, actually mean when they say the Book of Mormon is \u201ccorrect\u201d in any respect &#8211; least, most, or otherwise. How comprehensively should we interpret that adjective? Is it more correct than, say, Stephen Hawking\u2019s \u201cA Brief History of Time\u201d on the subject of black holes? No, the Book of Mormon doesn\u2019t even mention black holes, so Hawking\u2019s book is demonstrably more <em>scientifically<\/em> correct than the Book of Mormon. Okay, then is the Book of Mormon the most <em>grammatically<\/em> correct of any book on earth? It clearly isn\u2019t, although I don\u2019t know what book would be. (\u201cHey, Bob, you really ought to read <em>Hobos in Love<\/em> by Floyd Burgermeister. It\u2019s a terrible story, but it\u2019s the most grammatically correct of any book on earth.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>In the context of the original statement, it\u2019s clear Joseph is talking about the \u201cprecepts\u201d that the Book of Mormon teaches and nothing else. In other words, if you\u2019re looking to learn godly precepts while you\u2019re stranded on a desert island, and you\u2019re only allowed to have one book with you, then you ought to choose the Book of Mormon, as it\u2019s your best bet for drawing closer to God. Science, grammar, spelling, penmanship \u2013 the correctness of any of those elements don\u2019t come into play at all. To insist that they do is to push a tortured legalistic interpretation of Joseph Smith\u2019s simple statement and distort his intent.<\/p>\n<p>Now let\u2019s turn our attention to the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, which is unlike the KJV translation or most other biblical translations in that it was not the transfer of religious text from one language to another. Joseph loosely tossed the word \u201ctranslation\u201d around to describe a number of different processes, some of which were definitionally similar to what the KJV translators did, but many, indeed perhaps most, of which were not.\u00a0 The production of the JST was performed by a \u201ctranslation\u201d method that was, by all accounts, not that kind of translation at all.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201ctranslating\u201d the Bible, Joseph read the English KJV text and then recorded revelations that he received in doing so. Large passages of text from the JST have no extant ancient text from which they were derived, nor did Joseph claim to have those ancient texts in his possession, although he did suggest that many such revelations were representations of ancient texts that had been lost. The most obvious example is the Book of Moses, which was revealed to Joseph during his \u201ctranslation\u201d of Genesis, despite the fact that, as far as we know, he never saw the original text of the Book of Moses. Joseph would refer to this as a translation and insist that what he had written were indeed the words of Moses, but this process did not require him to read ideas in one language and find the proper words for them in English, which is what traditional translators do.<\/p>\n<p>So, equipped with these two freshly-defined premises, let\u2019s return to your question. You seem concerned that the JST is \u201ccorrecting\u201d the KJV and the Book of Mormon, a book Joseph described as \u201cthe most correct.\u201d But there\u2019s absolutely no reason to see the JST language as \u201ccorrecting\u201d anything in the Book of Mormon. The precepts stated in the B of M version of the Sermon on the Mount are still correct precepts. The JST simply offer additional information that supplements rather than corrects the original information, just as the Book of Moses doesn\u2019t replace Genesis but, rather, adds to it.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, you could make a case that the JST is \u201ccorrecting\u201d the KJV, since the KJV version offers a general application for the \u201ctake no thought what ye shall eat\u201d principle, while the JST suggests that this was advice specific to the apostles, not the general church membership. But the irony, here, is that this is identical to the precepts put forward Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n<p>In your question, you use an ellipsis when you quote 3 Nephi 13:25, which would lead a casual reader to assume that 3 Nephi 13:25 is identical to Matthew 6:25. It isn\u2019t. You left out a very important part.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s 3 Nephi 13:25 in full:<\/p>\n<p><em>And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he looked upon the twelve whom he had chosen, and said unto them: Remember the words which I have spoken. For behold, ye are they whom I have chosen to minister unto this people. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So it turns out the Book of Mormon directs this passage to the apostles and not to the church membership at large and therefore departs from the KJV in precisely the same way the JST does, only it does so using different language. Thus the JST isn\u2019t correcting the Book of Mormon at all; they\u2019re both saying the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>And if you\u2019re going to be intellectually consistent, I don\u2019t think you can complain that the same ideas are being expressed in different language, when your initial objection to the Book of Mormon is its inclusion of identical language to translate the same ancient text.<\/p>\n<p><em>Tomorrow: DNA and Book of Mormon anachronisms<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<em>Thisis an excerpt from \"A Reply from a Former CES Employee.\" The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em>&nbsp;This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells' \"Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony.\"\u00a0<span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy's words are in green, the color of life,<\/span> while mine are in black, the color of darkness._______I\u2019ll  ... <a title=\"CES Reply: The Joseph Smith Translation\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-the-joseph-smith-translation\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about CES Reply: The Joseph Smith Translation\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3729"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5142,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions\/5142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}