Joseph Smith as a Creative Interpreter of the Bible Open Access

1. Truman G. Madsen, ed., Reflections on Mormonism: Judeo-Christian Parallels (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center, 1978).

2. Heikki Räisänen, “Joseph Smith und die Bibel: Die Leistung des mormonischen Propheten in neuer Beleuchtung,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 109 (1984): 81-92, and Heikki Räisänen, “A Bible-Believer Improves the Bible: Joseph Smith’s Contribution to Exegesis” in my Marcion, Muhammad and the Mahatma: Exegetical Perspectives on the Encounter of Cultures and Faiths (London: SCM Press, 1997), 153-69.

3. Krister Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Madsen, Reflections on Mormonism, 139-54; rpt. in Krister Stendahl, Meanings: The Bible as Document and as Guide (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 99-113.

4. Biblical passages are quoted from the KJV unless otherwise noted.

5. Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” 152.

6. Ibid., 151.

7. David J. Davies, An Introduction to Mormonism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 47.

8. Petri Luomanen, Entering the Kingdom of Heaven: A Study on the Structure of Matthew’s View of Salvation, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, second series, No. 101 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 285.

9. Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” 145.

10. Dietrich-Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums: Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Paulus, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, 69 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1986), 186-90.

11. Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” 154.

12. Ernest Cadman Colwell, The Study of the Bible, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 55.

13. See Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 56-63.

14. James Barr, Fundamentalism (London: SCM Press, 1977), 191.

15. Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of Latter-day Saints in American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 11-12; see also Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage Books, 2007), 84-108.

16. Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 191: “Apparently Joseph was not speaking entirely tongue in cheek when he wrote, in response to the question ’wherein do you differ from other sects?’, that ’we believe the Bible.’”

17. Barr, Fundamentalism, 279-84.

18. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 54 note 29.

19. The work was so named in 1936 by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who had first published it in 1867. Robert J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: A History and a Commentary, 3rd ed. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), esp. 168-70.

20. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 47.

21. Davies, Introduction to Mormonism, 43.

22. I have not investigated the matter but can imagine that many of them may also have been known to and used by American preachers of the early nineteenth century. Had Joseph heard preachers explain away contradictions between the Gospels as he later did in the JST? Did Sidney Rigdon perhaps call his attention to such problems and their current solutions?

23. See especially Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 233-53.

24. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 57-61, esp. 60f. The reader will have noticed that I deal with the Book of Mormon in similar terms. I thereby side with those “particularly liberal Latter Day Saints” referred to by Davies, An Introduction to Mormonism, 64. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon, 174-84, is critical of such “innovative attempts.” See also Räisänen, Marcion, Muhammad, and the Mahatma, 167-69.

25. Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 285-389. An invaluable tool for purposes of comparison is Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, with Introduction by F. Henry Edwards (Independence, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1970), which offers “a complete parallel column comparison of the Inspired Version of the Holy Scriptures and the King James Authorized Version.”

26. William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel according to Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1982), 949-50; compare Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 304.

27. See also Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 305-6. By contrast, Joseph Smith does not attempt to resolve the problem of the divergent accounts of the various women at the tomb which caused such perplexity to the Church fathers. Helmut Merkel, Die Widersprüche zwischen den Evangelien: Ihre polemische und apologetische Behandlung in der Alten Kirche bis zu Augustin (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 13 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 108, 141.

28. Ibid., 102-3; Origen had already proposed this solution.

29. This oddity is obviously a result of Matthew’s misunderstanding of Zechariah 9:9, which he quotes in 21:5 (21:4, JST). Zechariah states that the king of “daughter Sion” will come “sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.” Undoubtedly the original text of Zechariah has only one animal in view; the mention of the “colt,” in addition to the “ass,” is a typical feature of Hebrew poetry (parallelismus membrorum). Matthew has taken the “doubling” of the ass literally; to make the fulfillment correspond completely to the prediction, he lets Jesus use both animals—however one may visualise this. It seems that Joseph Smith has understood the nature of the poetic parallelism, for he lets the mention of both animals stand in the quotation (Matt 21:4 JST) while removing the ass from the narrative.

30. Merkel, Widersprüche, 107-8.

31. These include patriarchs and the seventy elders of Israel in Moses’s time. For a list, see Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 302.

32. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 52.

33. Joseph Smith is very alert on this issue, for he has made similar corrections to 1 John 4:12 and 1 Timothy 6:15-16 as well. Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 302.

34. Ibid., 309-10.

35. Ibid., 347.

36. E.g., in the Exodus passages just mentioned.

37. E.g., Ex. 7:14, 9:34. The discrepancy is often taken as an indication of the use of different sources by the final composer(s) of the Pentateuch.

38. See Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 51.

39. Victor R. Gold, ed., New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

40. Barclay M. Newman, ed., Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1995).

41. This is, in my view, an unfortunate feature of the original and not due to any incompetence of earlier translators. Incidentally, it is a feature that the JST has not changed. For example, John 5:18 reads: “The Jews sought the more to kill him, because he . . . said …thatGodwashis father.”

42. Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 328. In the Book of Mormon, too, prophets and preachers repeatedly proclaim the future coming of Jesus Christ and describe it in detail. For some passages, see Givens, By the Hand of Mormon, 199.

43. Robert N. Hullinger, Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon (St Louis: Clayton Publishing House, 1980), 122. Ironically, Joseph Smith himself set forth in his later revelations that God actually made progress in his own development. See also ibid., 135 note 4.

44. James H. Charlesworth adduced the passage as a parallel by “Messianism in the Pseudepigrapha and the Book of Mormon,” in Madsen, Reflections on Mormonism, 120-21.

45. According to another reading: “the Messiah.”

46. S. E. Robinson, trans., “Testament of Adam,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, The Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 994.

47. The quotations are my translation into English from a German translation of Anne de Vries, Die Kinderbibel (Constance, Germany: Friedrich Bahn Verlag, 1981), 14, 21.

48. On Christ as the giver of the Old Testament law in patristic writings, see Martin Werner, Die Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas (Bern, Switzerland: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1941), 209-11. For example, the “mediator” of the law in Galatians 3:19 is identified with the preexistent Christ.

49. Similar questions are, of course, to be addressed relative to de Vries’s Children’s Bible.

50. Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 2d ed., Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 29 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 140-50.

51. See Maurice F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 52; Werner, Die Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas, 233. Both are commenting on Origen, who denied that Paul spoke so negatively of the Torah—which would have been to fall into the heresy of Marcion. According to Origen, what he meant was “the law in our members.”

52. Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 149-50.

53. John Chrysostom, paraphrased in Wiles, Divine Apostle, 57.

54. Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 358-59, sharing the view that Paul is speaking of himself, notes that these are strange statements coming from a man like Paul so many years after he had experienced the cleansing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is even contradictory for Paul to say these things about himself when in many other instances he declared that Christ had made him free, and that through the power of Christ he was able to walk no longer after the flesh but after the spirit. “(This is the substance of what he says in Romans 8, of the King James Version . . .).”

55. See, e.g., John Ziesler, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, TPI New Testament Commentaries (London: SCM Press, 1989), 189-95.

56. Matthews, A Plainer Translation, 359-60 offers a clear comparison by printing the two texts in adjacent columns and typographically indicating the differences.

57. Ziesler, Romans, 199.

58. Paul Althaus, Paulus und Luther über den Menschen: Ein Vergleich, 4th ed. (Gütersloh, Germany: Chr. Kaiser, 1963).