Letter 2 — But it IS Translated Correctly!
Letters To A Mormon Elder
by James R. White
Friday, June 21st
Dear Elder Hahn,
Thank you for your letter of May 26th. I appreciate the swift response, as well as the kind attitude with which you wrote.
I realized in writing to you originally and suggesting that we begin with a discussion of the Bible’s teaching about God that we might have to hold off long enough to deal with the subject of the Bible. I have met a few Mormons with whom such a diversion was not necessary, but, that is the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of LDS, in my experience, harbor some doubts concerning the accuracy of the Bible, some going so far as to reject the Bible, for all intents and purposes, as a book that can be trusted. Indeed, Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt once wrote:
“What shall we say then, concerning the Bible’s being a sufficient guide Can we rely upon it in its present known corrupted state, as being a faithful record of God’s word We all know that but a few of the inspired writings have descended to our times, which few quote the names of some twenty other books which are lost,. ..What few have come down to our day, have been mutilated, changed, and corrupted, in such a shameful manner that not two manuscripts agree. Verses and even whole chapters have been added by unknown persons; and even we do not know the authors of some whole books; and we are not certain that all those which we do know, were wrote by inspiration. Add all this imperfection to the uncertainty of the translation, and who, in his right mind, could, for one moment, suppose the Bible in its present form to be a perfect guide Who knows that even one verse of the whole Bible has escaped pollution, so as to convey the same sense now that it did in the original…There can be no certainty as to the contents of the inspired writings until God shall inspire some one to rewrite all those books over again….No reflecting man can deny the necessity of such a new revelation” (Orson Pratt’s Works, “The Bible Alone an Insufficient Guide,” pp. 44-47.
I have met a number of Mormons who were that “radical” in their view. But, I’ve also met others who would disagree with Orson Pratt, such even as Brigham Young, who, in response to comments such as those above by Pratt, said,
Why I make this particular remark is because this congregation heard brother O. Pratt scan the validity of the Bible, and I thought by the time he got through, that you would scarcely think a Bible worth picking up and carrying home, should you find one in the streets…The Bible is good enough as it is, to point out the way we should walk, and to teach us how to come to the Lord of whom we can receive for ourselves (Brigham Young, 10/8/1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:116).
So, as you can see, there are a lot of different attitudes toward the Bible among Latter-day Saints.1Most Mormons assume Scripture is corrupted wherever it contradicts LDS teaching. The Bible, then, always functionally stands under the church’s teaching and the other LDS scriptures. Mormons embrace the Bible as God’s Word only when it can be reinterpreted to support their theological agenda. Your objections to the accuracy of the Bible, Elder Hahn, are “common” in my experience, and I will do my best to answer them.
In my previous letter, I noted a few passages from the Bible, such as Isaiah 40:8 and Proverbs 30:5-6. It seems obvious to me, Elder Hahn, that the Lord Jesus believed that the Scriptures were truly and really “the words of God,” and this is perfectly in line with the views expressed in those Scriptures I just cited. In fact, in disputing with the Jews, Jesus said, “Have you not read what God spoke to you saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”‘ (Matthew 22:31-32). Here the Lord Jesus refers to the written words of Scripture as the very words of God Himself. You will not find the Lord Jesus ever “correcting” the Old Testament Scriptures, but each time He quotes the Old Testament writings, He accepts what they say without question, and expects all others to have the same attitude. A high view of the Bible is surely Jesus’ belief. Do you believe that what you find in the Bible is actually God’s words, Elder Hahn? Or have you been taught that the Bible is not fully trustworthy, not fully accurate?
There are two Scriptures that clearly present my belief in the nature of the Bible as God’s Word. The first is 2 Timothy 3:1-17, and the second is 2 Peter 1:20-21. Let me briefly review these passages with you.
Paul wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof for instruction, for training in righteousness, in order that the man of God might be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” Yes, I know, that is not the King James translation — it is my own translation of the Greek in which Paul wrote to Timothy in the first place. I will discuss the topic of “translation” a little later if I might ask your indulgence till then.
Paul describes the Scriptures as “God-breathed.” The term itself that is commonly translated as “inspired” literally means that the Scriptures find their origin, their source, in God Himself. They are like the breath of God Himself, coming forth from His mouth. Note, too, that the Bible is not here speaking of how the writers were led by God to write what they did, but that what they wrote was “inspired” or “God-breathed.” God used men to write His Word, but He did so in such a way as to ensure that what was written was word-for-word what He had intended from eternity past. The God of the Bible is big enough to use men to write His message, yet at the same time see to it that the resultant revelation is not mixed with error or untruth.2“The Book of Mormon is translated correctly because an unlearned man did it by the gift and power of God. It took him less than sixty translating days. The Bible abounds in errors and mistranslations, in spite of the fact that the most learned scholars and translators of the ages labored years on end over the manuscripts of antiquity to bring it forth.” (Bruce R. McConkie, “The Bible: A Sealed Book,” a BYU speech given to LDS Seminary and Institute teachers, August 1984).
Would it not be considered a little curious that the same “god” who allegedly led Joseph Smith to translate The Book of Mormon “correctly” could have failed to preserve the entirety of His Word in the Bible?
The Apostle Peter did address the manner in which the holy men chosen by God wrote the Scriptures. In 2 Peter 1:21-22 we read, “Knowing this first of all, that no Scriptural prophecy ever came about by the prophet’s own personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever was borne by the will of man, rather, while being carried along by the Holy Spirit, men spoke from God.” Again, this is my own personal translation of the original Greek. Peter is discussing not the interpretation of the text, but the origin and surety of the text. He asserts that the prophecies of Scripture (and he is not speaking simply of prophecies in the sense of predictions of future events, but the whole proclamation of the truth of God) never came about simply by human impulse or through human thinking. God’s revelation has never found its origin in the will of man. Instead, these men spoke from God while being carried along by the Holy Spirit of God. What they said came from God, and as they spoke these things, they were being carried along by the Spirit of God. Obviously, then, the Spirit of God would not have led these men into error in what they said as they spoke from God, would He We see, then, that the Apostles, just as the Lord Jesus, believed in the inerrancy of the Biblical text — that what they wrote contains no errors, no untruths.
We might agree to this point. You might be willing to say “Yes, as the Bible was originally written it was the perfect and complete Word of God.” But, then you’d be quick to add, “Things have changed — the Bible has been changed, things have been lost. We can no longer say that the Bible is fully and completely the Word of God.” That really seems to be your main objection if I am interpreting your last letter correctly. If so, you seem to be in line with a majority of LDS today. However, you might note that one of your own LDS scholars, James Talmage, was not quite as strident in his criticism of the Bible. Rather, he knew enough of the Bible itself to be much more moderate in his words:
The Latter-day Saints believe the original records to be the word of God unto man, and, as far as these records have been translated correctly, the translators are regarded as equally authentic. The English Bible professes to be a translation made through the wisdom of man; In its preparation, the most scholarly men have been enlisted, yet not a version has been published in which errors are not admitted. However, an impartial investigator has cause to wonder more at the paucity of errors than that mistakes are to be found at all (Articles of Faith, by James Talmage, pp. 236-237)
He also noted,
The New Testament must be accepted for what it claims to be; and though, perhaps, many precious parts have been suppressed or lost, while some corruptions of the texts may have crept in, and errors have been inadvertently introduced through the incapacity of translators, the volume as a whole must be admitted as authentic and credible, and as an essential part of the Holy Scriptures (Articles of Faith, p. 248).
It is interesting that Talmage would say “perhaps many precious parts have been…lost” and “some corruptions of the texts may have crept in” in light of the clear teachings of many of the early LDS teachers (such as Orson Pratt) as well as the direct statements of the Book of Mormon about the Bible:
Neither will the Lord God suffer that the Gentiles shall forever remain in that awful state of blindness [the book of Mormon originally read “awful state of woundedness”], which thou beholdest they are in, because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, whose formation thou hast seen (1 Nephi 13:32).
Of course, this passage only says that these “plain and precious truths” are withheld by the “abominable church,” and not that they have been removed from the Bible, but many, many LDS believe this to be the case. 1 Nephi 14:10 says,
And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.
It is clear that the all churches other than the LDS Church must be actively “keeping back” many “plain and precious truths” of the Bible. How this is done is not stated by the Book of Mormon; but, popular belief amongst Latter-day Saints says that the Catholic Church removed whole sections of the Bible during the Middle Ages. You stated in your letter,
But, you must know that the Bible has been translated over and over and over again. We can’t know exactly what the Bible said originally, because it has been translated so often. As the Eighth Article of Faith says, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the book of Mormon to be the word of God.”
You are about the four hundredth Mormon missionary who has said this to me, I can assure you of that! But, your assertion is simply not correct. Let me explain.
TRANSMISSION VERSUS TRANSLATION
We need to define some terms, Elder Hahn, so that we can properly understand how we received the Bible as it is today. You made the statement that the Bible has been “translated over and over and over again.” In one sense, that is true, but I doubt you are thinking of translation in the proper sense. Most Mormons, when they say this, mean that the Bible was translated from one language into another, and then from that language into another, and then into another, and so on. Often the example is used of the child’s game where one person whispers a phrase to one person, and then on to the next, around the circle, and each time the phrase is changed a good bit by the time it gets to the end of the process. But, this is not what happened with the Bible.
When we speak of the history of the Bible, and how it came to us, we are speaking of the transmission of the text over time. For the first fifteen hundred years of the “Christian era,” the text of the Bible was transmitted by hand copying, from one manuscript to another.3Over a thousand-year period, biblical texts were written onto scrolls, copied by scribes, and circulated in various communities who deemed them canonical or not. How Was the Bible Transmitted? We have today over 25,000 hand-written manuscripts of the New Testament alone, and over 5,000 of these are written in the original language of the New Testament, Greek. Most of the time, when Mormons speak of the Bible being “mistranslated” in terms of the 6th Article of Faith, they are not referring to its actual translation, but rather they are alleging that there have been errors made in the transmission of the text. Normally it is believed that passages, and even whole books, have been “lost” in the process of transmission, not in translation.
Translation is the process whereby one renders a passage in one language into the words of another language. For example, above I gave you my own translation of both 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and 2 Peter 1:20-21. That is, I had before me a text of the New Testament written in Greek, and I translated those passages from Greek into English, and put that translation down on paper for your benefit. Each of the various “versions” of the Bible that are available today — the King James Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version — each is simply a different translation of the one Bible, which was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. There is only one Bible, while there are many translations of that Bible into the many languages of mankind, including our own English versions. I enjoy reading the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, as well as in German and French. I am not reading three different Bibles when I read in these different languages — I am reading three different translations of the one Bible, originally written in Greek and Hebrew.
I hope the difference between transmission and translation is now clear to you. When we speak of supposed errors in rendering the original Hebrew or Greek texts, we are speaking of translation. When we speak of the allegation that passages of the Bible, even entire books, have been “removed,” or that the text of the Bible has been corrupted over time, we are speaking of transmission. In light of these definitions, allow me to address your statements.
You said that the Bible had been “translated over and over again.” Yes, that is true in the sense that each time I open my Greek New Testament, I am “translating” it over again. But, I don’t believe you meant it in that way. Rather, you seem to be saying that the Bible has gone through a process where it has been translated from one language into another, sort of like this:
Hebrew to Greek to Latin to French to German to Spanish to English
Obviously, if that is how it happened, you would be right in saying that by the time it got to English, a great deal of what it originally said would have been lost in translation. But, that is not how it happened. Each of the English versions is based directly upon the original languages, and there is but one step between the original Hebrew and Greek texts to the English translation thereof. So, as you can see, we can know what the Bible originally said with reference to its translation from the original languages into English.
So, in a sense, I can say that I agree that the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly, in the sense that a purposeful and malicious attempt to mistranslate the Bible would not produce a result that I would feel obliged to call “the word of God.” For example, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) produce what they call The New World Translation. This, I believe, is not truly “the word of God” for it purposefully mistranslates a number of passages that are relevant to the person of Jesus Christ, in an attempt to “smuggle” the doctrines of Jehovah’s Witnesses into the text of the Bible. I feel no obligation to follow this mistranslation as if it were the Word of God. In the same way, Elder Hahn, I do not follow Joseph Smith’s “translation” of the Bible, for it has no basis in the manuscripts of the Bible that we have, and, in the case of his tremendous addition to the 50th chapter of Genesis, he was obviously attempting to “insert” a prophecy about himself in something that was written a full 3,000 years earlier.4Joseph Smith’s Genesis 50 Additions.
The most remarkable subsection of Joseph Smith’s addition to Genesis is found in his verses numbered 30-33. It is here that we find a “prophesy” regarding the nineteenth-century appearance of the Book of Mormon and the work of Joseph Smith himself.
I have often had LDS people say, when confronted with a passage that contradicted their own beliefs, “Well, that must be mistranslated.” I ask, “Do you know what the correct translation is, then?” “No,” they reply. “Have you examined this passage in the original Hebrew or Greek?” “No, I have not,” they say. “Then how do you know it is mistranslated?” I ask. “Because it contradicts what the LDS Church teaches,” they reply. Only a handful of times have I met anyone who had done even a small amount of study on a passage that they alleged to be “mistranslated.” If you ask me, Elder Hahn, James Talmage knew that the Bible was translated accurately in the English versions, and he also knew that the charges of gross corruption of the Biblical text, made so often by Latter-day Saints, have no basis in fact. That is why he was so reticent in his statements which I cited above.
So the next question, obviously, is this: has the text of the Bible been changed and corrupted, as many allege? Or do we know what the original authors of the Scriptures wrote? We can speak all we wish of being able to translate the texts of the Bible accurately (and we can do so), but if the text has not been transmitted correctly over time, what does it matter?
Recently, I heard a Christian talk host and a Mormon speaking about the Bible on a nationwide talk program. The Mormon said, “Well, the Bible has been translated many times, and we no longer know what it originally said because it has been changed.” Sadly, the talk-show host responded not with accurate information about the Biblical text, but rather said, “Well, the Book of Mormon has been changed, too!” While he is correct that the Book of Mormon has undergone a good deal of specific, purposeful editing (the Doctrine and Covenants even more so!), that is not the point. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The host should have responded by refuting the charge of “corruption” that was lodged against the Bible.
It is impossible, of course, for me to attempt a full discussion of the history of the text of the Bible in a letter. Besides, many fine scholars have put pen to paper in the description of this very thing. Two fine, more basic works come to mind that I would like to recommend to you. F.F. Bruce’s The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and J. Harold Greenlee’s Scribes, Scrolls and Scripture. Both should be readily available to you. But I shall not simply direct you to others without giving you a basic reply to your contentions.
While it may be true that none of the over 5,000 Greek manuscripts5How Many Complete Greek New Testament Manuscripts Do We Have?
It has been well publicized that there are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the NT. The manuscripts we have today were created between AD 125 and AD 1516. Scribes copied by hand the books of the NT. The first copies were made directly from the original manuscripts. Then those copies were copied. (as an example) of the New Testament read exactly like another, this in itself is not a very meaningful fact. That any hand-written document of the length of even one of the Gospels should read exactly like another would be quite remarkable, for the probability of misspelling even one word, or skipping one “and” in a whole book is quite high. But, despite this, it is amazing that at least 75% of the text of the New Testament is without textual variation; that is, 3 out of 4 words in the New Testament are to be found without variation in all the manuscripts we have. 95% of the remaining 25% of the text is easily determined by the process of textual criticism. Textual criticism is the process whereby, of knowing the propensities of scribes in making errors and utilizing the incredibly rich amount of evidence available to us (the New Testament, for example, has far more manuscript evidence available for study than any other document of antiquity), the most likely original reading is determined from the possibilities presented by the manuscripts. That leaves but a little less than 1 1/2 percent of the entire text — less than two out of every one hundred words — where serious doubt as to the exact wording of the original exists. But note this well, Elder one thing that is not in doubt is that we do have the original readings available to us in the possibilities given to us by the manuscript tradition. What I mean is this: every reading that has entered into the manuscripts of the New Testament has remained there. While some might think that this is bad, it is not, for what it also means is that since no readings “drop out” of the text, the original reading is still there as well! Our task is not, then, impossible, for the original readings are still there — we just need to recognize which of two or three possibilities it is.
This “tenacity” of the New Testament text (that is, the fact that readings “stick around” even if they look to be obviously in error) also helps us to see why another favorite LDS accusation against the Scriptures is wrong. Many believe that large sections of the Bible have been “removed” or have been “lost” over time. Seemingly, given what the Book of Mormon says as cited above, this “editing” was done by the Roman Catholic Church, which, it is alleged, removed that which was not in harmony with its own beliefs. Aside from the fact that there remains much in Scripture that is not in harmony with Roman Catholic teaching (which, I guess, would mean they did not do a very good job in their “editing”), what is obvious is the fact that such a task of “editing” would have been simply impossible to do! Why You have thousands of copies of the Scriptures, spread out all across the Roman Empire, from Spain to Egypt. How can any one man, or any one organization, gather up all these copies, including many buried under the sands in Egypt or in a clay pot in Palestine, change all of them, and then replace all of them? Some may wish that God had not allowed for all these copies of the manuscripts to exist with their minor variations, but, in reality, we can see that this was a wonderful way of protecting the text! Any change in one manuscript shows up like a sore thumb when compared with the others! For example, if one person took a manuscript and attempted to “rewrite it” so as to teach a completely new doctrine, this one manuscript would be vastly different than those manuscripts found a thousand miles away. The change would be obvious to all.
So I hope you can see, Elder Hahn, that many of the things you have been taught regarding the Bible are, actually, myths rather than reality. When we read the New Testament, we can know that Paul wrote “For by grace you have been saved through faith…” (Ephesians 2:8); we can know what was originally written and can build our faith upon the sure revelation of God in Scripture.
I have waxed long, but I feel it is important. Please feel free to ask further questions about the Bible, as it will be vitally important to any discussions we might have later on. I hope you are feeling well, and I hope to hear from you again soon.
Sincerely,
James White
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