How come no one else translated the Bible?


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On 8/17/2016 at 10:14 PM, Zarahemla said:

Joseph Smith was translating the Bible but was killed. There have been 15 prophets since Joseph Smith, why have none been able to or attempted or called to translate the Bible?

No one knows exactly.

It is my opinion that the reason is that the JST has served its primary purpose. (See 5 below.)

Your question is similar to one antis ask frequently: Why don't you (LDSs) use the JST?

There are, to my mind, six reasons for this:

1) We don't own the copyright. That belongs to the CoC. We worked for decades to get permission to use a tiny fraction in foot- and end-notes.

2) We don't need it because it's available with the full text from Herald House (the CoC publisher) and the most important changes in our own edition of the AV as foot- and end-notes.

3) Joseph never finished it (which is your question in a different guise). Some claim he did based on a statement that he had. But this statement is open for interpretation, and, more importantly, refuted by Joseph's own acts. He was still working on it a few weeks before his martyrdom. When the RLDS Publication Committee took the "manuscripts" in hand, they found it "bone tiring work" to prepare an engrossed copy for the printer to work from. The translation process changed about the end of Matthew and Genesis. The first had Joseph read from a large, family-style Bible while his scribe wrote word-for-word the text as Joseph read it from the book itself or from revelation. But that took a long time, and God had him change the process so that Joseph read, but the scribe only wrote the changes, while each made marks on the document before him: Joseph in the Bible, the scribe on the transcript. (These symbols were underlinings, dots in pairs or triples or singles, dashes, and so on and matched.) However, as the Publication Committee discovered, it was not clear what these changes meant. As noted above, the Prophet was still working on it right up until his death. This he did by pinning scraps of paper to the manuscript. Again, the meaning wasn't always clear

4) We don't need it for doctrine. We have the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, as well as the Book of Mormon to reveal doctrine that has been lost in the Bible.

5) The purpose for the JST was to train Joseph in "prophethoodness". With rare exception, prophets of earlier times had grown up in a culture that knew what a prophet did. They may not have accepted them, but they understood the job description. As Joseph went through the Bible, less hurriedly than he'd done in the Book of Mormon, he could reflect on how Ezra or Moses or Isaiah approached his ministry.

6) God hasn't commanded us to use the JST. We are already "weird enough" with the Book of Mormon, etc., that if we also had a different Bible, our work of spreading the Gospel would be even more difficult, and those who might listen now, might not in such a case.

We have a promise that the records of the Jews and of Israel will be available to us at some point. That time is not yet. Patience is a godly virtue.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
a few typos
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Just adding to the awesome reply from @LeSellers, I would also suggest the reading of this article:

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Joseph_Smith_Translation_of_the_Bible_(JST)

In my view, as Joseph opened the seventh and last dispensation of the gospel, he had special gifts and talents unique to his person and role at the time of the restoration. Remember that in the 19th Century there wasn’t so much technology available to help in translation. Nowadays we have a lot of resources that can help us in translation processes. So, the other 13 Church presidents had different roles in their presidency time and certainly translating the Bible was not part of it. We acknowledge these men to be prophets, seers and revelators, meaning that if God so desired, they could have accomplished that task, but somehow they didn’t.

Our living prophet, Thomas S. Monson, has the same prerogatives as his former prophet companions. We don’t know what the Lord has been reveling to him and what sort of revelations they might be. The only thing we can do is speculate.

It’s my personal opinion that there are lots of things that these 15 prophets have been taught by the Lord that hasn’t been allowed to be told to the general membership of the Church. Why? Simply because we still need to use the resouces already available to us and because the Lord has said so.

 

Edited by Edspringer
adding information
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You could ask a larger question - how come the modern scriptures we have are almost all from Joseph Smith, not from later prophets?

As already said here, we don't know the mind of the Lord.

It seems to me that the Lord gave a extraordinary outpouring of revelation to Joseph Smith, the first modern prophet, to re-establish the church after it was lost during the Dark Ages. We got a lot of modern scriptures. Now we need to learn and follow that - and maybe when the Lord see's we're doing that well enough, then he'll give us more scriptures.

Also of course, we have many sermons given by modern prophets, we have  leaders and members getting revelation for their church callings, we have personal revelation from the Holy Spirit, etc. So the Lord hasn't left us alone.

Edited by tesuji
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5 hours ago, Auzy said:

@LeSellers could you explain a little bit more about your first point? I'm unfamiliar with that and would like to learn a little more about this subject. Who is CoC? How did they end up with the copyright? 

I'll let @LeSellers answer the rest, but CoC is the "Community of Christ" formally the RLDS, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

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On 8/18/2016 at 7:57 AM, LeSellers said:

No one knows exactly.

It is my opinion that the reason is that the JST has served its primary purpose. (See 5 below.)

Your question is similar to one antis ask frequently: Why don't you (LDSs) use the JST?

There are, to my mind, six reasons for this:

1) We don't own the copyright. That belongs to the CoC. We worked for decades to get permission to use a tiny fraction in foot- and end-notes.

2) We don't need it because it's available with the full text from Herald House (the CoC publisher) and the most important changes in our own edition of the AV as foot- and end-notes.

3) Joseph never finished it (which is your question in a different guise). Some claim he did based on a statement that he had. But this statement is open for interpretation, and, more importantly, refuted by Joseph's own acts. He was still working on it a few weeks before his martyrdom. When the RLDS Publication Committee took the "manuscripts" in hand, they found it "bone tiring work" to prepare an engrossed copy for the printer to work from. The translation process changed about the end of Matthew and Genesis. The first had Joseph read from a large, family-style Bible while his scribe wrote word-for-word the text as Joseph read it from the book itself or from revelation. But that took a long time, and God had him change the process so that Joseph read, but the scribe only wrote the changes, while each made marks on the document before him: Joseph in the Bible, the scribe on the transcript. (These symbols were underlinings, dots in pairs or triples or singles, dashes, and so on and matched.) However, as the Publication Committee discovered, it was not clear what these changes meant. As noted above, the Prophet was still working on it right up until his death. This he did by pinning scraps of paper to the manuscript. Again, the meaning wasn't always clear

4) We don't need it for doctrine. We have the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, as well as the Book of Mormon to reveal doctrine that has been lost in the Bible.

5) The purpose for the JST was to train Joseph in prophethoodness. With rare exception, prophets of earlier times had grown up in a culture that knew what a prophet did. They may not have accept them, but they understood the job description. As Joseph went through the Bible, less hurriedly than he'd done in the Book of Mormon, he could reflect on how Ezra or Moses or Isaiah approached his ministry.

6) God hasn't commanded us to use the JST. We are already "weird" enough with the Book of Mormon, etc., that if we also had a different Bible, our work of spreading the Gospel would be even more difficult, and those who might listen now, might not in such a case.

We have a promise that the records of the Jews and of Israel will be available to us at some point. That time is not yet. Patience is a godly virtue.

Lehi

That was a great answer Lehi!

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8 hours ago, Auzy said:

@LeSellers could you explain a little bit more about your first point? I'm unfamiliar with that and would like to learn a little more about this subject. Who is CoC? How did they end up with the copyright? 

The Community of Christ (the name was changed in 2001, aIr, by the first non-Smith from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). The claim that Joseph III and his heirs would always run the RLDS/CoC was poo-pooed into oblivion at the time W. Grant McMurray took the office. He resigned under interesting, and unspecified, circumstances.

When the Saints left Nauvoo, one of the important things they did not take with them was the JST manuscript. Emma had it in her possession, and refused to give it to the Church that was leaving her (by her own choice). As its custodian, she eventually gave it to the RLDS Church through her son, JS III.

In the late 1860s the RLDS decided to print the JST (they call it the Inspired Version of the Holy Scriptures), and formed a committee to make that happen. But, when they got the manuscript, they discovered that Joseph didn't have a "manuscript", he had "notes". Putting it together for the printer (a process called "engrossing") took years for the seven-person committee. They made a lot of choices about what to include and what to leave out from among the three versions (called manuscripts 1, 2, & 3), and sometimes made what most might consider mistakes by choosing an earlier version over a more difficult-to-understand later version.

However, one of the RLDSs sent Parley P. Pratt (who was intimately involved in the translation with Joseph) a copy of the first printing. He sat down and read it through, and said that those who had done it had done it well.

Earlier, John Bernheisel (I forget how to spell his name), a doctor, was passing through and visited Emma in Nauvoo. He asked her to see the ms, and she allowed him to look at it and take notes. He produced what we call the "Bernheisal manuscript". It is useful, but he made copyist errors and didn't do a complete transcription, so it isn't as helpful as we might like, but it does (or did) give us a view into the text, and a touchstone to the printed version's accuracy. He included his own interlinear notes, at one point saying "this I not understand."

Feelings between the LDS and RLDS churches were bad to horrid until the mid-70s, aIr. The only way for a Saint to buy a copy of the IV/JST was to get it from Herald House (the RLDS publisher). I got mine from Deseret Book in the mid 70s, but it was more expensive there than I could have bought it directly from the publisher. I think it may have been that HH wouldn't discount the cover price for DB. That's an assumption based on one experience: I haven't even tried to verify it. This animus abated about this time, and it was due to several factor, not least on the efforts of Robert J. Matthews.

The most important LDS scholar to review the mss was Dr. Matthews (A Plainer Translation: Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible--A History and Commentary). The thawing probably came about when he asked for permission from his friend, the RLDS Church historian, to examine the mss. This friendship had been on-going for years, so it was not a surprise that he granted it.

Dr. Matthews examined every page of the extensive mss, and the Bible needed to "decode" the text. He made hand-written copies of the mss and made identical (as far as possible) marks in his own copy of the Bible. See his book for more details.

Following the change, and when the Brethren decided we needed a better edition of the Bible, we got permission to use the IV/JST in foot- and end- notes in the LDS edition of the AV.

I could go on (and on, and on), but I hope this will suffice.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
afew typos
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