Dr Thomas Wayment has a new edition and new publisher of is translation of the New Testament! We’ll discuss the controversy of his recent paper about the Joseph Smith Translation & Adam Clarke. What do people get wrong? We’ll also discuss some New Testament scholarship. Check out our conversation….
GT 03:59 So yeah, that’s exactly where I wanted to go. Because I know, your previous work with Adam Clarke and the Joseph Smith Translation, that was kind of a big deal.
Thomas 04:09 Yeah, well, I appreciate you saying that.
GT 04:11 It was kind of controversial, I guess, too.
Thomas 04:13 Yeah. For some, and it’s unfortunate because the work has been both mischaracterized and it’s been attacked for reasons that I think are completely unfair. And so I it’s hard to say this to a Latter-day Saint audience and help them hear what I feel. So here I am, as a scholar. I have access to the same Greek that everyone else does. We don’t have lost Greek manuscripts, if you will, that somebody, or only a small group knows about. We really all accept the Greek text with a known set of variants. And as a scholar, the JST is not derive-able from that. You can’t look at the Greek and get to the JST in 99.9% of the instances. There’s a few places where the pronouns follow a different manuscript tradition.
Thomas 05:03 And so, as a scholar, you have to ask yourself, “Where does the JST come from? What is this?” And I think for a long time, after Bob Matthew’s work, there’s this idea that maybe some of it is a restoration of original. But even for him, that was maybe not what it was. And then other scholars who’ve worked have said, hey, yeah, there’s maybe some original, but this is other things. People will use words like Midrash, or commentary. And, and the interesting thing is, when I suggested, maybe it’s influenced by 19th century sources, that got a lot of people kind of “Whoa!” Maybe we didn’t mean those sources or something like that.
There are many epistles attributed to the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. Are there mistranslations of these letters? Did Joseph correct or misinterpret Paul? Did Paul start Christianity? We’ll dive deep into these and other questions with Dr. Thomas Wayment. Check out our conversation…
Does JST Follow Greek Manuscripts?
GT 00:29 Since you mentioned, Paul, I wanted to go there anyway for a couple of reasons. Number one, I was listening to your interview with Richie Steadman on the Cultural Hall podcast. And you had mentioned that I think that Joseph Smith Translation had had changed Paul’s words to exactly backwards from what he meant. Do you remember which ones?
Thomas 00:53 It’s in Romans, yeah.
GT 00:55 Tell us about that for those who haven’t listened to Richie.
Thomas 00:58 Yeah, this is really hard to give in a nutshell. But I’ll do my very best. In Romans 7, Paul is grappling with the reality of that he doesn’t enjoy being good in a very ground base level. “He talks about, “I know what’s right. I know what’s good, but the desire to do that, I have not inside me.” It doesn’t exist here. And then he says, the most stunning thing: “I like to do bad.” And Joseph will change that exactly opposite.
Thomas 01:32 And now what we’ve taken away from Paul is this granularity of a true believer. There’s no doubt Paul believed. There is no doubt this man is committed to the Jesus story and telling it. He tells us, “I struggle doing good. I kind of like to do bad.” He doesn’t even say kind of. He says, “Yeah, I enjoy doing bad.” And that’s probably a reflection of these moments when he just lets people have it. He’s probably, “Yeah, that wasn’t my best, but I did it.” And that’s wonderful to me. I don’t want to celebrate his badness. But, I doubt very many people see that in reading the KJV. It’s hard.
GT 02:15 I mean, it reminds me of a situation. Tell me if this is how Paul is, because this is what happened to me. I was standing in line buying groceries. And this guy who was in a wheelchair in front of me, ran his credit card, two or three times. And it was pretty clear to me that he didn’t have enough money or whatever. Anyway, it kept declining his sale. And I was I was irritated. Because I was like, “Would you just get out of my way? I want to buy my stuff.” And so they rang it through again. And I just hurried it, I shoved my credit card in there. And I paid for his groceries. And he didn’t really realize what happened. I mean, the clerk knew. And she was like, “Wow, that was really nice of you.” And in my head I was thinking, “I know it was nice, but I just wanted him to get out of the way.”
Thomas 03:06 See, Paul would have written a letter later to that man and denounced him for having done that.
GT 03:11 Oh, really?
Thomas 03:12 Yeah. Paul loves the letters genre to attack people. I think there’s distance. He’s sailing across the Mediterranean. He writes back to his communities, and he just blasts them.
GT 03:22 Oh, wow.
Thomas 03:23 Yeah.
GT 03:24 See because I struggle with that. Because on the one hand, I know it was a kind thing for me to do. But I did it with such a bad attitude.
Thomas 03:31 You have Paul on your side. He is telling you, “I have a hard time finding the font of doing good in me.” And that’s powerful to me. There’s no one in the New Testament that says that. Everybody else gives us the shined, polished [veneer.] “I always want to do good.” And Paul has the burden of belief on his shoulders. And he’s like, “Yep, sometimes I just don’t want to do this whole thing.”
GT 03:56 Well, because I can totally relate to that. Because to me, it was kind of like that situation. I was just like, would you just get out of my way so that I can buy my cars, because you know, there’s this parable where Jesus is like, well, if you don’t do it for the right reason. It’s not a good thing. On the one hand, I have this sales clerk was just like, “Wow. I can’t believe you did that.” And I’m thinking “I did it for the wrong reason, though.”
Thomas 04:19 Right. So the benefit is lost.
GT 04:21 It didn’t bless me at all.
Thomas 04:23 So are you there like Paul, or the imagined disciple that Jesus has? He’s wonderful that way. And he’s contrite. At times he really backs off and he kind of says, “Well, I was speaking like a man there,” which for Paul is code for “I was being a jerk.” I was. I know it. I’m going to call this back in and here’s where I really stand. I think if we go through and this is hard, I don’t know what to do with this, but we’ll go through the JST and we fix all these. It’s hard to know for a Latter-day Saint well, which is the real Paul? The manuscripts all support the way it is in the New Testament. They don’t support that re-envisioned, Paul.
Have you read Wayment’s New Testament? What do you think of his scholarship? Is the JST problematic?
Wheat & Tares 
When you really think about it, the JST is the ultimate example of the philosophies of man mingled with scripture. Here’s the formula: KJV + Adam Clarke + Joseph Smith = JST.
I am presently reading Wayment’s first translation of the NT, and find it very helpful. This is the one published by Deseret Book.
Finding out that JS used the Adam Clarke commentary was one of the greatest things to help me in my bible study. 1) I stopped excessively looking at footnotes so I could just read the text and 2) it allowed me to go to other newer translations and better understand the text overall.
I love to read Wayment’s footnotes. There are many study Bibles out there, but this is the first one geared to LDS. Both editions are amazing.
Here’s a different take on the influence of Adam Clarke in the JST:
https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/some-notes-on-joseph-smith-and-adam-clarke/
I have a copy of Wayment’s first edition and it is an excellent source for Latter Day Saints and something of a good primer for further Bible study.
I was asked to teach Gospel Doctrine this year. When the bishop approached me I informed him that I had not picked up a KJV bible in 30 years and that if I were to teach the NT and the OT I would use the NET bible as my scriptural source. His response was that my approach to the Bible was the specific reason they were asking me to teach. Now every Sunday I spend the first 10-15 minutes of class with a vignette on textural criticism or history (specifically the history of how the Bible was transmitted). I introduce my class to non-LDS writers such as Metzger, Crossan, Stitt, and Ehrnan while simultaneously weaving in plenty of LDS sources.
My teaching has been quite well-received. A few older couples vocally expressed concern that I would not be using the KJV during my first class but I addressed those sentiments by acknowledging their feelings but reminding them of the 8th Article of Faith and assuring them that the NET was a better translation that the KJV. Three months in and at least one of those couples has been fully “converted” to an updated translation manifest by the fact that they actually bought and bring to class the 15lb $200 print version of the NET Bible available for purchase on Amazon.
Jack, nobody outside of interpreter readers finds that article compelling.
There really isn’t a controversy surrounding the Adam Clarke commentary. It is simply more evidence of where Joseph Smith got his ideas from to construct his many, many writing projects, including his “translation” of the Bible.
Jack, I read the Kent P. Jackson piece. In it he:
1) Acknowledges that there is overlap, but that it is “”vague” and “superficial.” Odd how apologists refuse to label the supposed links between the Old World and the Book of Mormon, such as NHM, as vague and superficial. A bit of a double standard?
2) Shows very clearly what parallels Wayment found and then dismisses it all as “nothing to be found.”
3) At one point in the article he relents by saying, “there is nothing wrong with the idea of Joseph Smith getting some ideas from an external source when revising the Bible,” a sort of subtle acknowledgement that Joseph Smith did indeed copy from Adam Clarke and that Wayment made a contribution to studies of Joseph Smith in his work.
Gotta love the apologists. Too often they write articles in which they claim not to validate “critics'” claims, but subtly and unwittingly validate the criticisms throughout their narratives.