The New Mormon Bible
On page 385 of this book we pointed out that "The Mormon Church is faced with a peculiar dilemma with regard to Joseph Smith's 'inspired revision.' They cannot reject it entirely without admitting that he was a deceiver. On the other hand, if they were to print the revision and fully endorse it, they would be faced with unsurmountable problems. The contents of the 'inspired revision' actually contradict doctrines that are now taught in the Mormon Church. Therefore, the Mormon Church can neither fully accept nor fully reject the Inspired Version of the Bible." Just as this book was going to press, it was rumored that the Church was about to print the Inspired Version. As it turned out, however, the new Bible is only a printing of the King James text with "Excerpts from the Prophet Joseph Smith's translation... Short excerpts are provided in the footnotes; longer excerpts are provided in the Appendix."
Two things should be noted about this Bible: One, the portions taken from Joseph Smith's "translation" have not been canonized. The shorter excerpts are merely footnotes to the King James text and the larger ones are separated from the Bible text by 793 pages of material, i.e., a "Topical Guide" and a "Bible Dictionary." Two, the book only contains "excerpts" from Smith's translation. In other words, the Mormon leaders have included only the portions which they deemed advisable. For instance, Joseph Smith's interpolation that Canaan would be made black ("...a veil of darkness shall cover him, that, he shall be known among all men") is included in a footnote to Genesis 9:26 (page 14), but his revision of Matthew 5:40-41 is neither found in the footnotes nor in the longer excerpts. Joseph Smith had tried to destroy Jesus' teaching about going the extra mile in his Inspired Revision, but in doing this he had contradicted the translation he gave in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 12:40-41) which reads the same as the King James Version.
In any case, the fact that the Mormon leaders would print only "extracts" from Joseph Smith's translation and still use the King James version leads a person to believe they lack confidence in the work.
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