My wife gathered the family together to go over the 1st lesson of the new Home Study program earlier this week. (Note my previous post expressing mixed feelings about the 2 hours block cutting out half the lessons.) Anyway, for Christmas this year I got a copy of Thomas Wayment’s New Testament Study Bible for Latter-day Saints, and decided to read all the verses and footnotes out of his Bible.
WOW!
Seriously, if you don’t own this, go out and buy it right now!!! It’s amazing. Thomas is a New Testament scholar at BYU, and has translated the entire New Testament into modern English, and added lots of AMAZING footnotes. Seriously, I want this to be the standard for studying the New Testament. We were reading the verse that should be very familiar to you, but Thomas adds an amazing footnote. It comes from Luke 23:34. I’ll quote Thomas’s rendering of the book, which you should clearly recognize, but the footnote is what caught my attention.
[[But Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.]]
You’ve all heard this verse countless times, right? Here’s the footnote!
Quotation comes from Psalm 22:18. The portion of the verse set off in double brackets may not have been original. Some early and good manuscripts omit it, but it has some significant textual support.
Are you freaking kidding me? This verse may not have been in the original manuscripts? How can that be?
Stephen Marsh at Wheat and Tares found another gem about a possible female deacon! I mean this is real biblical scholarship in a highly readable form! What say you? Are you familiar with this study Bible?
Wheat & Tares 
If you like that book I would also suggest the New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: College Edition. It uses the NRSV and has wonderful footnotes and points of study. I’ve used it for many years.
Brown (Death of the Messiah, pp. 971–981) argues that it was original with Luke and omitted by a later copyist. Fitzmyer (Anchor Bible Luke, pp. 1503–1504) agues that it was not originally part of Luke but added later. Metzger (Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, p. 154) believes it is genuine but not original with Luke and later inserted there by a copyist. IOW, scholarly opinion is all over the map on this one. I have to admit, the textual evidence is against it being original to Luke, but I have an easier time seeing why a copyist would leave it out than why they would insert it. Wayment is following the main modern Greek texts by putting it in double brackets, which is probably the best thing to do.
This sort of thing, BTW, is one of the reasons why J. Reuben Clark (or his sources) disliked the Revised Version so. Some of our favorite verses or stories are left out.
This is a fine book, very useful for LDS bible study. First, it is a modern language translation, so LDS readers will actually understand what the Bible is saying (which can be a problem because it doesn’t always say what Mormons have been saying it says, but that’s not the Bible’s fault). Second, it is a study bible, meaning there are helpful explanations in the footnotes (which can be a problem when they point out that some favorite LDS favorite passages are questionable on textual grounds). Third, since it’s intended for LDS readers, there are references to other LDS scriptures, which you don’t get in other study bibles.
Of course, J. Reuben Clark is rolling over in his grave, and many older LDS will roll with him, having internalized the traditional LDS allegiance to the KJV. Suggest they read a modern translation and they’ll think you are inviting them into apostasy. But I think younger LDS will appreciate it more.
Dave B, in my opinion objections to study bibles (I have a Strong’s Concordance for instance) isn’t with these alternatives but with their lack of authority. One man’s opinion about what the Bible says may be a very good opinion, maybe better than mine; but it is still opinion. An ordinary person reading any reasonably accurate translation, powered by the gift of the Holy Ghost, is superior to any scholar. But such authority extends only to that person reading for himself.
What I appreciate is cultural context, some background into the life and times of the Jews in which Jesus taught and lived. That kind of historical context is well within the purview or remit of historians.
NRSV is an awesome translation that I use for personal study.
Wayment’s is better for LDS, not just because of the footnotes but because he tried to retain the verbiage where the BoM quotes the Bible so that you’d be able to recognize that it’s being quoted.
In the past, the ESV did the best job for this since they tried to retain much of the language of the KJV.
I tried buying the new Wayment book, but you cannot find it along the Wasatch front (perhaps a good sign!), so I ordered it online at DB, but have no idea of when I will get it shipped to my home. So I went out bought the Oxford NSRV study bible (paperback at Barnes&Noble), which also has so much great scholarship. I like the notes, essays and footnotes as it is not colored towards LDS beliefs. My very believing wife is having a bit of a struggle with this, as she is very suspicious of anything not done within the confines of the church, but she says she does understand things a little better with a more modern english translation.
On a side note, as one that likes to get more contextual in the scriptures, I decided to start with the book of Mark, as that seems to be the consensus among scholars that it is the first of the Gospels that was written and that Matthew and then Luke used that along with Q to write their versions. To me, it will help me see the variations in a slightly different light as I get to Matthew and Luke. Of course, that put me out of sync with the sunday school manuals, who start with the birth of Jesus.
And sorry to comment on the new SS manual already, but I am not overly excited with the way it is written and the same types of questions that don’t really provoke deeper thought and drive us into story in a more meaningful way. It’s still as if the narrative in Luke and Matthew are literally the way things happened. On the other hand, and a good thing, is that the manual does try to get us to try and learn from the experiences of the people discussed.
I have a copy of Thomas Wayment’s translation and a borrowed (hooray for libraries!) copy of the Oxford Annotated RNSV. Both are helpful.
It’s interesting to read the similarities and the differences in the textnotes and footnotes of both..
Besides the notes and the references to other LDS scripture in Wayment’s version, I also like the fact that the subtitles within a chapter in each of the four Gospels provide correlating references . For example, when I read about the Crucifixion in Luke 23:32-43, the title at the head of those 12 verses includes the references to the chapters and verses where I can find the corresponding accounts of the crucifixion in Matthew, Mark and John. It makes accessing and comparing those corresponding texts much simpler.
What I most appreciate about this publication is that it strikes an excellent balance between competing forces on two different spectra. The first is Latter-day Saint-specific commentary vs. general Christian commentary. Footnotes referring to Book of Mormon verses have provided some particularly fresh insights, but there are also plenty of comments on issues common to the whole of Christianity, noting textual evidence that does not directly support Lattery-day Saint views.
The second balance that I think Wayment has struck particularly well is on the layman vs. scholar spectrum. Textual comparisons, notes on manuscript sourcing, details about alternative translations are complete enough to give the reader a feel for some of the issues that scholars think about, but they are not so detailed that they detract from reading the New Testament for spiritual edification, rather than as an intellectual exercise.
One of the things I like about the new home study is that it feels ok to deviate from the manual a bit. For example, last night for FHE, we did the Sunday School manual. It turned out that the scriptures I read out of Wayment this week weren’t extraordinary (like this post mentions), but on the other hand, there was a question from the Sunday School manual: Who was Matthew? My daughter read the basic description from the manual. So after my daughter read it, I read the introduction that Wayment wrote, I read the exact: Who was Matthew? from Wayment’s book. It provided much better detail, and Wayment said that we don’t really know the identity of Matthew. It seems unlikely that the Gospel of Mathew was written by the apostle of the same name. He also said it seems like it is not Matthew the apostle because the Gospel of Matthew seems to rely not only on the Gospel of Mark, but also a source Q. He also said that they aren’t sure if Levi=Matthew, but there certainly was no person name “Levi Matthew,” because Jews of the day didn’t use 2 first names. My wife was really surprised to learn that the authorship of Matthew wasn’t known.
So, while the manuals are pretty basic, it is nice that we have the flexibility among our families to go a bit deeper on some of these issues if we want, and I think my wife learned something from the lesson that she didn’t know beforehand. (To be honest, I did too with the Levi Matthew thing.) So, the added flexibility of adding the Wayment book to the discussion is a definite plus that I probably wouldn’t bring up in a traditional Sunday School class. That’s nice.
I’ve got a couple of episodes coming out with Wayment this week that are along the same lines as this post. We cover his book, and these issues in pretty good detail. (We will also cover his work on the JST, and he has some AMAZING insights there too.) These are two of my favorite segments! I heartily endorse Wayment’s book. It sold out in December, and sold out again in January. It seems they can’t keep up with demand. I think this really is a must buy if you are a student of the New Testament. I drove clear to Clinton (about an hour away) to get a copy before Christmas. It appears Amazon has a 3 week wait, but I heard Barnes & Noble had it in stock. (I haven’t checked.)
This is definitely on my to-buy list. I am a big fan of study Bibles in general and am a proud owner of a number of them from different Christian theological traditions. I do agree with Michael 2’s sentiment that it’s important to properly contextualize the study notes–they are not themselves scripture, and shouldn’t be treated as such, but they’re like inviting another person into the conversation with knowledge, insights and experience different from yours, and that is almost always extremely valuable. It’s one more way of reading scripture in community, which is really important.
Rick B.: I love that Matthew’s story, in his Gospel text, is told in the context of a *healing*. I blogged about this earlier this year:
https://wheatandtares.org/2018/04/04/the-healing-power-of-jesus-call/
If you like this, you should read Bart Ehrman’s book, “Misquoting Jesus,” which provides an excellent overview of the process by which the Bible was compiled and edited over time. Among other things he makes an extremely compelling case that the verses in Luke about Christ bleeding from every pore in the Garden were not part of the original text but were added by a scribe centuries later.
And if you really want to drill down on the origins and history of the Bible, along with its use in LDS culture, check out Ben Spackman’s suggested reading list: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/benjaminthescribe/2018/12/new-testament-gospel-doctrine-resources-post-2-the-bible-text-and-translation/ I have most of these texts in my library and, with few exceptions, they are all very good.
I have the e version. Is there a way to select a chapter rather than having to scroll through from the begining of say mathew? Otherwise learning a lot.
If it is Kindle version, I doubt it. Kindle isn’t known for chapter and verse navigation because most books aren’t written that way.
Bought it through byu and deseret books.
This book is fantastic and a great “safe” way to intro family members and friends to legit biblical scholarship.
I disagree that it has LDS doctinal commentary. I think it’s all textual. I love that it points out authorship questions in the Gospels, Hebrews, etc.
My Harper Collins NRSV study Bible I feel has much more LDS doctrine e.g. OT and Psalms are packed with references to Divine Feminine, exaltation, and multiple gods, non-creation ex nilio, etc.