Episode 54: The JST in the D&C with Kenneth Alford (Released September 6, 2017)

LDS Perspectives Podcast Episode 54: The JST in the D&C with Kenneth Alford (Released September 6, 2017) This is not a verbatim transcript. Some grammar and wording has been modified for clarity. Hello, this is Taunalyn Rutherford, and I m here today with Dr. Ken Alford to discuss his work on connections between the Doctrine and Covenants and the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. Welcome, Ken. Great, thank you. I appreciate the invitation. Great to have you. Dr. Ken Alford is a professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He served a mission in Bristol, England. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Brigham Young University and a Master of Arts in international relations from the University of Southern California, a master of computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a PhD in computer science from George Mason University. After serving almost thirty years on active duty in the United States Army, he retired as a colonel in 2008. During his service, his assignments included work in the Pentagon, teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and working as a professor and department chair at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He has published and presented on a wide variety of subjects during his career. His current research focuses on Latter-day Saint military service and the Hyrum Smith Papers project. Ken and his wife, Sherilee, have four children and fourteen grandchildren. Today we ll be focusing on another of your research interests the connections between the Joseph Smith Translation and the Doctrine and Covenants. LDS Perspectives Podcast

Can you tell us this was from a presentation that you gave at ED week a little bit about your interest in these connections and some of the background information about the Joseph Smith Translation? Well, my interest in the Joseph Smith Translation started actually before it was even included in the LDS version of the Bible. Growing up, I kept hearing about the Inspired Version and was always curious about what it was. As a student at Brigham Young University, I took a course from Dr. Robert J. Matthews, and it s to Brother Matthews we, as a church, really owe a lot of our familiarity and relationship with the Joseph Smith Translation today. It was Dr. Matthews who, with his master s and PhD, first really brought the Joseph Smith Translation back to the church. I took his course. It was what was called an R course. It was a repeatable course, and every semester he taught it a little bit differently. One semester it would be the Old Testament, one semester it would be the New Testament, etc. I took it, I think, four times. Wow. It was a one or two credit course. In fact, as I was seriously dating my wife, we ended up taking it together and we went through a copy published by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Herald Publishing, and we marked all of the three thousand and four hundred and something changes in that Bible. That was our Sunday morning activity before church, and we actually marked every one of the changes. It was kind of a fun activity. I ve just really enjoyed learning about the Joseph Smith Translation from especially that time until the present. That s been part of your marriage. It has. Fantastic. Before we look directly at connections between the Doctrine and Covenants and the Joseph Smith Translation, can you explain for our listeners why we call it a translation? http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 2 of 23

It s a King James Version of the Bible and it s English, of course and we end up with an English copy of the Bible. Dr. Matthews gave a statement that I d just like to share. This is in a book he wrote called Joseph Smith s Translation of the Bible, and here s how he explained it. He said, This is apparently the sense in which he, Joseph, understood the work he was doing with the Bible. Since the Bible did not originate in English, his work, to some degree, would amount to an inspired, or revelatory, translation into English of that which the ancient prophets and apostles had written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and/or Greek. Now we should also note that Joseph referred to this effort, himself, as a translation. The Lord also, in revelations that are now canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants, refers to it as a translation. So [it s a translation] in the sense that it takes the English that s there and puts it into the English that gives a better sense of the original intent. I should note at this point though, that Joseph never, at any point, says he is restoring, word for word, the exact and original text as written by those original authors. What Joseph is doing is restoring the sense of the text and restoring the doctrine, and sometimes that involved adding parenthetical phrases that, almost certainly, were not in the original text. Other things happened in the translation; there are major additions, texts that have been lost for example, much of the Book of Moses. There are other little pieces that have been lost. There are many hundreds of changes, little revisions to the text. There are also a couple of deletions. For example, Joseph said the entire book of Song of Solomon, he put a not that says, Not inspired. When you read it, it s basically Hebrew love poetry. There s also several entire books, most of them from the Old Testament, in which no changes were made. For example, Malachi, Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and so on have no changes at all. In the New Testament, there s only two books that don t have changes though, and that s 2 John and 3 John. The New Testament, proportionately, has a much higher percentage of changes that Joseph made. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 3 of 23

Right, okay. Great distinction to make. Thank you. What kind of a Bible did Joseph Smith use to do his translation? Well, here s where I wish we were in audio or visual. Video, right. A video at the time, because I could show that what we ve got on the table here is a copy. This is an 1834 addition of what s called a Cooperstown Bible. It was produced by two brothers whose last name was Finney. Many times in publications it s called a Finney Bible or a Finney Cooperstown Bible. It was published in Cooperstown, New York, prior to the Baseball Hall of Fame going in there. What the Finneys did is they made stereo plate. Stereotype is what it s called. It s a metal plate of the page, so once they had produced an edition, they could rerun it. That s what we have here. I have an 1834 edition, but on October 8th, 1828, there s a note in the original that Joseph and Oliver Cowdery used that says that they purchased it from the Grandin Bookstore. That s the same Grandin that published the Book of Mormon. They went into that bookstore on the 8th of October, 1829, and purchased a copy of this Finney Cooperstown Bible. It s a very large Bible. It s eleven inches tall and nine inches wide. It has a beautiful leather binding. Very beautiful. The pages are huge. It s three inches thick. It s a very, very large Bible, and this is what they began and used throughout the Joseph Smith Translation. Wonderful. I should mention the original is housed today in the archives of the Community of Christ, which was formerly the Reorganized Church. Great, thank you so much for sharing that. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 4 of 23

Could you help us understand a little about the history, the timeline, of the Joseph Smith Translation? For example, who served as scribes as he was receiving this translation? Well, what we have is a series of events that occur. They buy the Bible but apparently don t start on the Joseph Smith Translation right away, or if they do, there s not much recorded. The earliest date that we have recorded for a translation effort is June 1830, and you can actually find that by going to the Pearl of Great Price and looking at Moses 1. Earlier editions of the Doctrine and Covenants dated that differently. Through the research of Dr. Matthews and others, they were able to correctly date it as June of 1830. Just two months after the church is organized, there they are. They have this brand new church, lot of things going on, and Joseph is given this charge. He calls it a branch of his calling, and it s kind of the way that the Lord uses to teach Joseph more of the gospel. They go from June 1830 until March of 1831 in the Old Testament. They start, basically, with Genesis 1:1 in the Old Testament. Joseph receives that vision that Moses had received. Moses 1 is really kind of Genesis 0, if you like. Right, I like what Richard Bushman calls it an expansion. We get expansions. It is absolutely an expansion. Yeah. They work on that for nine months. They don t even finish the book of Genesis, and there s a whole series of scribes. We have people scribing at different times in Genesis. Oliver Cowdery starts because he s the guy that buys the book with Joseph. He does the first five chapters or so of Moses. Then John Whitmer takes over, but not for very long. Emma, interestingly, not only gets to scribe for a short time on the Book of Mormon text early in Mosiah, but she also scribes for Joseph in the book of Moses. She does http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 5 of 23

chapter 6, verses 19 through 52. Then John Whitmer picks up again, and we can see this in the transcriptions because the handwriting changes. After they reach Moses 7, then Sidney Rigdon takes over, and that occurs, in large measure, because of section 35. What we have canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants as section 35. Sidney Rigdon is charged with being Joseph s scribe. The Lord assigns that responsibility to him because at this time Oliver Cowdery is gone. He s on a mission to the Lamanites heading out toward Missouri, and Sidney basically takes over at that point, and while there may be a few verses here and there, Sidney is the primary scribe for the rest of the Joseph Smith Translation. I see, okay. So, what percentage would you say is really Sidney? Well, percentage is a funny thing here because there are about 3400+ changes in the Joseph Smith Translation, but that number includes punctuation. Sometimes it includes verses being switched, like some of the chapters in the book of Revelation. Joseph reorders the list of the verses, so it reads better. In the New Testament, some of them are complete additions, so the text is completely new, and others are simply one word changes. In that way, it s a little bit hard to give you a percentage answer because when Oliver actually starts with what becomes Moses 1:1, they re writing the entire text of the Bible over again. It is very laborious. That s why it takes so long to do. The first twenty-something chapters of Genesis, they are writing out everything, whether it changes or not. You can just imagine how slow that would be. Later they come up with a system. I ve actually had a chance to hold the original Bible that s in Independence. Curators there in the Community of Christ Archives let us go through it, and you can see where it changes. What they came up with was, actually, a little kind of a symbology, I guess, for lack of a better word, where they would put dots in verses or Xs in verses. Then there is a supplemental page that matches that verse where the changes are written out in longhand, but only the changes are written out. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 6 of 23

Then, to further complicate it, they went back to the original manuscript and revised it again, making additional changes to the text. So, it s what s called Old Testament One manuscript, Old Testament Two manuscript. This is really an involved effort that takes multiple years on Joseph s part. Right, and did he ever finish this translation? Well, Joseph writes in a letter. Let s see if I can come up with a copy of that letter here. He writes in 1833 that we have today finished with the translation. Finished, though, is kind of a fungible word. It s that they re finished in the sense that they have gone through the entire biblical text once, but the translation is in no way finished, meaning that Joseph doesn t make any more changes the rest of his life. From 1833, when Joseph writes that they have finished the translation this day until Joseph s death in June of 1844, Joseph continues to make changes to the manuscript. As he receives further light, knowledge, and understanding, and is reading in the scriptures, he identifies things where the sense and the scriptures can be better communicated, and he continues to modify and to wordsmith some of the text. We also have no reason to doubt that if the book had actually come to publication in Joseph s life, that in a final going-through prior to publication even additional changes might not have been made. Brigham Young makes this statement. This has just come out this year because the Joseph Smith Papers project published the Council of Fifty minutes that scholars and historians and members have been waiting for, for well over a century. In there, there s a report of an April 18th, 1844 meeting, and the notes from the Council of Fifty record this statement by Brigham Young. It says, He, Brigham Young, supposed that there had not yet been a perfect revelation given because we cannot understand it. Yet, we receive a little here and a little there. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 7 of 23

And then this important statement that Brigham made and by the way, Joseph Smith is present when this statement is made Okay. This is a Council of Fifty minutes with Joseph there. The minutes say, He, Brigham, should not be stumbled. Kind of a fun 19th century was of saying, I wouldn t be surprised if the prophet should translate the Bible 40,000 times over, and yet it should be different in some places every time. Wow. Because when God speaks, Brigham continued, He always speaks according to the capacity of the people. Joseph is learning a great deal about the gospel. We have wonderful revelations received that are now part of the Doctrine and Covenants that come because of this translation effort. But I love that insight from Brigham; that if Joseph did this every time he looked at it, he would have additional understanding and be able to better convey the original intent of the writers of those biblical texts. That s just a wonderful statement that sheds more light on the Joseph Smith Translation from a publication just this year by the Joseph Smith Papers project. Okay, and it really expands our idea of what translation is and what that branch of his calling was. It really does. And perhaps our own, which we ll talk about later, okay? What is the place of the Joseph Smith Translation in our own LDS Bible today? And perhaps a little background on that history. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 8 of 23

Well, the church was actually commanded to publish what was then called the New Translation. Maybe I should take just a little detour and give some terms first. The translation effort Joseph did was never, ever called the Joseph Smith Translation in his day. Important to know. It s called, in Joseph s day and actually the wording in the Doctrine and Covenants when the Lord refers to it is simply The Translation, or The New Translation. In Joseph s lifetime, it s known as the New Translation. The book is commanded to be published, actually twice, in the Doctrine and Covenants. The first time in section 104:48, where it says, Print my words. The fullness of my scriptures. And then, second, a command is given to William Law, who is second counselor in the First Presidency in section 124, and this happens to be verse 89, in which William Law receives this direct commandment from the Lord: Publish the New Translation of my Holy Word unto the inhabitants of the earth. Couldn t be clearer. The Lord wants this published. Well, for various reason, including the fact that William Law apostatizes and is instrumental in Joseph s martyrdom, the New Translation is never published in Joseph s lifetime. Following the death of the Prophet, Brigham Young then is sustained by the church as president. They seek to obtain the manuscript for the Joseph Smith Translation, or the New Translation, from Emma because it s in her possession. I see. And by the way, we owe Emma a great deal. We owe a great debt to her, because it s Emma that preserves the document, the manuscript of the New Translation, and brings it out of Missouri and into Illinois. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 9 of 23

If it wasn t for Emma Smith, that manuscript could very well have been destroyed or lost, because Joseph was in Carthage. Hyrum was in Carthage and the entire First Presidency, with Sidney there for a time, was in Carthage Jail. As Emma leaves and travels to the Quincy area in Illinois, she takes with her that manuscript. She s also served as one of the scribes, so when emissaries of Brigham come to her and ask for the manuscripts, from her perspective if I understand Emma right she sees this as, Well, you know, the Lord commanded you to publish it. You didn t do it. I m the one that saved it, so no. She does not give up the manuscript. The reason we have portions of the Joseph Smith Translation prior to 1979 in our scriptures is because they were published in the Times and Seasons in Nauvoo. What we call Joseph Smith Matthew and the Book of Moses were published in the Times and Seasons. As far as we have them in the Pearl of Great Price, they were published in the Times and Seasons as well in a serial fashion. I see, okay. It looks like they had intended to publish more. That s why, when you read the Book of Moses, you get along to the very end and it just ends, right in the middle of the story. That s because that s where it ended when it was published in the Times and Seasons. That s really helpful. And so, Franklin D. Richards, fast forwarding into the early 1850s, Franklin D. Richards, a member of the Twelve, is over in England. He has copies of the Times and Seasons. Church members in England don t have all the resources, materials, and access to church leadership, so he puts together a little pamphlet that he calls A Pearl of Great Price. He has republished those portions of the Book of Moses and Joseph Smith Matthew, and then the Pearl of Great Price travels back across the Atlantic in 1878. It s canonized as a standard work. They make some adjustments to the things that are in it, but the portions of the Joseph Smith Translation stay in the Pearl of Great Price. That s all we had as a church until 1979. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 10 of 23

Okay, that narrative, that really adds to the Pearl of Great Price. And so, the Pearl of Great Price, it was wonderful that Franklin D. Richards did that, or the church would have been completely without any Joseph Smith Translation until 1979. Some of the most beautiful language that we have is from Joseph It s really wonderful text. Really, yeah. What happens is then, in the 1970s, there s a scripture committee formed. Brother Matthews, who brings the Joseph Smith Translation forward, works under the direction of Elder McConkie, and I believe Elder Packer, and others on this scripture committee, and they reach the decision that they want to add text from what s then called the Inspired Version. It was published by the Reorganized Church in 1867 as the Inspired Version translation. Let s look at some of these comparisons that you made in your presentation. For instance, Doctrine and Covenants section 29 has a very interesting connection with the Joseph Smith Translation. Can you talk about that? Section 29 is a section that is kind of the Cliff Notes, if you like, to the Plan of Salvation. You can look at section 29 and find things in there; it s verse per verse. It has probably more information about the Plan of Salvation than anywhere else in the scriptures, and it is almost like the Cliff Notes. What you have to recognize is that it s not done chronologically as we would order it. Okay. But you can very quickly rearrange the verses into an order that we would consider, but that s what it is. I see it as the Cliff Notes to the Plan of Salvation. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 11 of 23

The question is, what s the connection to the JST? Well, before we answer that, we have to explain that at the time these revelations were being recorded, John Whitmer was the church historian. That s a whole other fun story. He doesn t want to be historian, and Joseph gets the revelation and he says, I recognize this as from the Lord, and he does it. John Whitmer keeps a book called the Book of Commandments and Revelations. The Joseph Smith Papers project has given that a second designation for clarity. They call it Revelation Book I. Okay. This book has been kept, beginning in 1831, by John Whitmer, and it s, in many cases, the earliest copy we have of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. That book was placed for safekeeping in the First Presidency s safe by a young apostle by the name of Joseph Fielding Smith, who was also church historian, and he placed it in there to keep it safe because it s an irreplaceable book. Well, what happened is that over the years, other things got piled on top of it. President Hinckley once described the First Presidency safe as something akin to a teenager s closet, and they forgot. The church forgot, quite honestly forgot, that that s where the Book of Commandments and Revelations was, as I understand it, and it basically was lost for decades over half a century. That image of a teenager s closet As part of the Joseph Smith Papers project, they asked for permission from then President Hinckley to inventory the contents of the First Presidency safe, looking for items that might be connected to Joseph. President Hinckley, as I understand it, not only gave them his blessing, but said, Feel free to straighten it up while you re in there. And they found, much to their happiness, the original Book of Commandments and Revelations kept by John Whitmer. Now I say all of that because in section 29 there s a paragraph, before section 29 begins, and listeners can actually go to the Joseph Smith Papers http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 12 of 23

website and see what I m about to share with you, because you can see the original pages. That entire book, as well as Revelation Book II (which is known as the Kirtland Revelation Book), the entire books are on the Joseph Smith Papers website. That website is josephsmithpapers.org. And very searchable. And very searchable. There s a paragraph that John Whitmer added to section 29 that does not appear in the Doctrine and Covenants today. It s because it s not part of the revelation. It was just an explanation that John Whitmer added, and here s what it says: A revelation to six elders of the church and three members. Now that s very similar to the way the section heading reads. Here s where it becomes interesting: They understood from holy writ, that the time had come that the people of God should see eye to eye, and they, seeing somewhat different upon the death of Adam, that is, his transgression. Therefore, they made it a subject of prayer and inquired of the Lord, and thus came the word of the Lord through Joseph, the Seer. Okay, so section 29 comes about because early members of the church are having, it doesn t say argument, but friendly discussion, shall we say, regarding Adam and his transgression. If you look at Christendom today, we have not resolved this. Adam is viewed in any number of ways by the Christian world. And so it s only natural that section 29 was received so early in church history. These people are still learning the gospel much of the gospel hasn t even been restored yet. It s not surprising that they disagree about Adam and his transgression. Section 29 is then received. If your listeners will open up a copy of section 29 and look at the footnotes on any page, something that they may not have noticed before will just jump out at you, and that is, that the majority of footnotes, or the most common source in the footnotes I should say, are references to the Book of Moses. Okay. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 13 of 23

Basically, not only is it Cliff Notes to the Plan of Salvation, but section 29 becomes a commentary from the Lord on the Book of Moses. Which had been received. Well, then the question that arises is, why are they talking in the church about Adam at this point in church history? If you look at the Book of Moses, beginning with chapter one, it s received in June of 1830. Section 29 follows not very long after that. This information is starting to be shared with the Church, which is causing them to have discussions, which is causing them to ask the prophet for additional light and knowledge. Section 29 as I read the history and read what John Whitmer gave us comes about, at least partially, because the Saints have had this brought to their attention, because of Joseph s efforts in the Bible. There s some wonderful, wonderful insights into the Plan of Salvation in section 29. It s fun just to go through and look at it again. Oh, thank you. In Doctrine and Covenants section 37, Joseph Smith is commanded to stop the translation. What was going on there? Yeah. What happens is the missionaries to the Lamanites Oliver Cowdery, Ziba Peterson, Parley P. Pratt, and Peter Whitmer Jr. they have traveled through Kirtland, and their main mission is to share the gospel in Kirtland. They think it s to teach to the Native Americans out on the border of the Lamanites, as the Lord calls it in section 28, but it s really Kirtland. And just almost overnight, the center of gravity of the church becomes this little backwater place called Kirtland. The Lord in section 20 commands Joseph and the Church to Go to the Ohio. They all know that means Kirtland. Mm-hmm (affirmative). In there, though, to show how important this is, Joseph is told to stop translating. Now if this is a main branch of his calling and the Lord says, http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 14 of 23

I m suspending the main branch of your calling until you do something, it immediately gets Joseph s and the church members attention. Joseph fulfills the commandment. He travels to Kirtland very quickly. That s a wonderful separate story for another time, but once he arrives in Kirtland, he and Sidney take up again the translation. And then what follows is section 45, which is a real major event in Joseph Smith s translation. Well, let s talk about section 45 for just a minute. Well, section 45 is unique in John Whitmer s Revelation Book One, or the Book of Commandments and Revelations. Other revelations are identified as a commandment, but section 45 is labeled as a prophecy. I believe it s the only revelation in the entire revelation book that is so labeled. Really, prophecy? Okay. The question is, What s going on there? Joseph is promised by the Lord in section 38, primarily in 38, that if they will travel with the Saints to the Ohio, He has great things in store for them. He says he ll endow them with power. He ll teach them additional things. They don t fully understand what all that means, but one of the things that happens is, when the church moves to Kirtland, there is more revelation that has been canonized that was received there in a shorter period than in any other time in church history. The Lord just pours down knowledge on the heads of the Latter-day Saints. Yes. One of the things that happens is section 45 is that Joseph asks questions. Joseph is very curious, apparently, about the Second Coming, as many of us are and, at various times, he asks the Lord for information. There s a fun piece that your listeners can go to in section 130, where the Lord basically says, Joseph, I m not going to tell you when it is, and don t ask anymore. I love you, but just... That s paraphrasing of course. Of course. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 15 of 23

But this is a time when Joseph has asked for information. The Lord gives Joseph kind of a commentary on what s called the Olivet Discourse. It s the last verse or two of Matthew 23 and then Matthew 24 in the King James Bible. And then the Lord goes in and takes that information and applies it to our dispensation. Section 45 is kind of the Olivet Discourse with a how-to guide from the Lord on how to survive and thrive, and prepare for the second coming. I like that. He gives counsel that is not in the Olivet Discourse, because from their perspective, that s thousands of years in the future. For us, it s coming and it s getting closer. And so, in there, the Lord is teaching Joseph and the Saints how to prepare for the Second Coming, but then when you reach verses 60-62, the Lord tells Joseph, basically, stop translating the Old Testament. Switch and start doing the New Testament. Now knowing Joseph Smith, the very next time they sit down to translate, which I believe is almost the next day if it isn t, then it s the next day after that they stop where they re at in the Old Testament and they begin with Matthew 1:1. It s not very long until Joseph reaches the end of Matthew 23 and 24, and then receives the Joseph Smith Translation version of the Olivet Discourse, which we know today in the Pearl of Great Price as Joseph Smith Matthew. It has additional insights. And so whenever you read Joseph Smith Matthew and the Pearl of Great Price, or whenever you read section 45, you should pair it with the other one. Okay. Because they are bookends and they go together. Can you give us some insights into what we ll find, perhaps different, in the Joseph Smith Translation? Can you give us and an idea of how those compare? http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 16 of 23

Well, the emphasis in section 45 is that the Lord gives Joseph a Reader s Digest condensed version, if you like, of the Olivet Discourse. And then he tells him how to prepare, because scattered throughout section 45, is that advice, as I mentioned. For example, He says in verse 3, Listen to me. The best thing you can do to prepare for the Second Coming is to simply listen to me. In verses 9 and 10, He says, Make and keep covenants. In verse 32, He says, As members of the Church, stand in holy places. In Verse 35, He says. Look, things are going to get challenged in the last days, but don t be troubled. He says in verses 37 and 39, I want you to actively look for the signs. I have sprinkled lots of signs in the narrative approaching the Second Coming. I ve told you what they are. When you see these signs, recognize the Second Coming is approaching. He says in verse 44, I want you to watch for me; anxiously watch for me. In verse 57, after in the verses before that, talking about the ten virgins, He very explicitly says, Here s what you do. You receive the truth and then you have to take the Holy Spirit for your guide so that you will not be deceived. When you add them all up together, these are insights that He does not give His apostles, who He gives the Olivet Sermon to, (or His disciples, as He says) but He does give it to us because this is imminent in our dispensation. It s wonderful to read both of them together and see how they fit together. Section 76 is one that we are all very familiar with. That vision of the three degrees of glory. That comes as a direct result of the Joseph Smith Translation. Can you give us the background there; some of the insights there? You bet. Most of the Doctrine and Covenants does not include information about the receipt of the revelation. They re not self-documented. You have to learn the history separately, and that s where the section headings and other things come in handy. Section 76, though, is different. Section 76 is one of the few selfdocumenting sections in the Doctrine and Covenants. We know from http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 17 of 23

those opening verses where they are, what they re doing, when they re doing it, and which specific verse they are at in the Joseph Smith Translation process. As they have the Bible opened up and again, it s kind of fun to go on the Joseph Smith Papers website and read through these early copies of things but what they re doing is translating. They reach John 5:29, and in John 5:29 it talks about a binary situation. There s a resurrection for the damned, and there s a resurrection, basically, for the saved. And Joseph inquires of the Lord and the verse doesn t get changed that much wordwise, but the verse gets changed and it tells us in section 76, And shall come forth; they who have done good, in the resurrection of the just. And just there, it s kind of shorthand for those who are justified ; those who have had their sins cleansed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. They ve been justified through the Atonement of Christ. And they who have done evil, in the resurrection of the unjust. Unjust there is a good kind of shorthand for unjustified ; those who have chosen to not accept the Atonement of Christ fully and have to pay at least in part for their sins. As we apply that into section 76, those who are justified who have had their sins atoned for by Christ are those in the celestial and terrestrial kingdoms. Those who are unjustified are those in the telestial kingdom and what we often call outer darkness or refer to as the Sons of Perdition. We call section 76 The Vision, but Elder Ballard and others have taught and as you read section 76, you can see that it s really the [plural]. It s a series of six separate visions that occur over a period of it looks like about 90 minutes, and Joseph and Sidney see the same thing. We sometimes have a view that they were alone when this was happening, but that s not the case. Philo Dibble and others tell us that we were there watching. We have their accounts, right? What we do have is accounts that they re there, but they do not share information from what is shared in the vision. But apparently Joseph and Sidney are discussing while the vision is going on, communicating with http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 18 of 23

each other and pointing things out. Joseph makes a statement one time that if you could peer into heaven for five minutes, you would know more than has ever been written and these visions go for an hour and a half. Joseph later makes the point, and it notes toward the end of the revelation, that what we re receiving is just the smallest part of what Joseph received. He makes a statement about the hundredth part. If you think that what we have in section 76, as wonderful as it is, is about 1% of what Sidney and Joseph received. But oh, what wonderful, wonderful, revelations, and they re a direct connection to the Joseph Smith Translation. Wonderful. And I should just add the reason this is received at the John Johnson farm. It s in an upstairs room. It s a beautiful coral kind of orange pink color in the trim, and the reason they re at the John Johnson farm is because they just were not able to get as much translation done in Kirtland as they wanted. It s a new church. We just don t have church leadership. Joseph is pretty much everything at this point, but everybody wants a piece of Joseph. John Johnson offers his farm and they go to Hiram, Ohio, so that Joseph can get more translation done. Sidney follows him to Hiram and rents a home across the street from the John Johnson farm so they can work on the translation. That s where the bulk of the Joseph Smith Translation is done: Hiram, Ohio. It s a powerful place to be, that room; it s powerful to sit there today. It really is. So much more to say about section 76, but let s move on in terms of these connections. What about section 91, for instance? There is also a direct relationship there. Joseph and Sidney continue after receiving section 132. They continue through the New Testament. Significant changes are made throughout the http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 19 of 23

Gospels. Oh my goodness; percentage wise, I think it s the highest amount of changes and what it s doing is, it s restoring the divinity of Christ. If you look at what the Joseph Smith Translation does, it does a couple of things. It restores knowledge of the Plan of Salvation. It restores knowledge of the divinity of Christ. It restores knowledge of covenants. It restores knowledge of gospel truths that had just been lost; just taken out of the Bible, as it says in the Book of Mormon. Plain and precious truths have been taken, and Joseph puts many of them back. They work all the way through the ending of the book of Revelation and along the way, we get section 77, which contains questions and answers about their translation work in the book of Revelation, and some other things. Then when they finish the New Testament, they realize, Oh, we left the Old Testament midstream. We just stopped when the Lord said in section 45 move and we moved. So they go back and pick up the Old Testament. The percentage of changes in the Old Testament is much, much, smaller. There are some significant changes, but percentage-wise it s much, much less. And as I said, there are many verses many books actually; I ll do a quick count: two, four, six, twelve books in the Old Testament that don t have any changes. But then they go through and finish the Old Testament. Okay. Before we leave the connections, can we talk about section 132? Are there connections there? There are connections there. Section 132 has a very unique history as well. Portions of it, as the section heading mentions, were probably received as early as 1831, but it s not until Joseph is in Nauvoo that the section is actually committed to paper and shared with some members of the Church at that point. It s not actually added into the Doctrine and Covenants until after the Church is out west. Section 132, as the opening verses tell us, comes about because Joseph has questions about the ancient patriarchs and prophets because he knows they http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 20 of 23

have more than one wife. He asks the Lord, How can this be? How could Abraham, Isaac, Moses, and others be justified in this process? Joseph has translated the Book of Mormon, and in Jacob it tells us that the Lord s program, unless he commands otherwise, is monogamy. Joseph asks the Lord and he receives the answer: When I turn the key, plural marriages can be authorized but only when I turn the key. It comes because the general assumption is that Joseph s questions are raised because he s translating in the Old Testament in 1831, and then moves into the New Testament but it s raising these questions as he sees these men who are clearly approved and favored of God who have more than one wife. And then it causes that great revelation, which for us today is about eternal marriage, and Joseph learns those principles as a result of his work with the Joseph Smith Translation, at least partially. Right, and when we re trying to confront that issue of polygamy, I think it s helpful to see its outgrowth from this Joseph Smith Translation to a degree; the thought that Joseph was questioning at that point. Because it s a legitimate question, and how wonderful that Joseph is able to ask the Lord and receive an answer. Similar, on a smaller scale to what, I guess, we can do. We joked about my research on India, being part of everything; somehow tying that in. Everything Taunalyn does somehow ties back to India. If any of the listeners ever meet her, be prepared to speak about India. Well, there is a parallel. I have found that in interviewing Latter-day Saints in India who participated in the translation process themselves, in translating the scriptures into those native Indian languages, there s this http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 21 of 23

parallel. There s this ongoing restoration that involves translation, and even in our own daily lives, as we each seek to encounter the words of Christ in the scriptures. Can you talk about that parallel, perhaps? Well, each of us, as we approach the scriptures, has to figure out how that scriptural text is meaningful in our life. It s wonderful to understand what s called the exegesis, where the scripture came from. What s the background? What s the context? What s going on in the church? What s going on in the nation or the world at the time the scriptures are given? That s wonderful information. It can really help open up the meaning of the scriptures, but, ultimately, when you read the scriptures, it s the principles and doctrines found there that you incorporate into your life that make a difference. You re not helped that much by understanding the background. Your life is blessed by living those principles and teachings that the Lord has shared through his prophets, which we can have the Holy Ghost confirmed to us. And so, in that sense it s almost a translation, if you like, for us personally as we try to determine what the Lord would have us do with this wonderful information that He s shared with prophets and apostles. Anything else? Well, I guess I would just note that the Doctrine and Covenants, our book of scriptures for our dispensation, is significantly influenced by Joseph s work in the Joseph Smith Translation. We highlighted a couple of those sections today, but depending on how you count it, there are several dozen sections that are influenced in various ways because of what Joseph is doing. How wonderful that Joseph s efforts in learning the gospel and looking at the biblical text has provided all of this additional scripture, insight, principles, and doctrines for us to benefit from. I just think it s important that listeners recognize the Joseph Smith Translation is one of the major influences on that wonderful book we call the Doctrine and Covenants. Thank you, Ken. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 22 of 23

Disclaimer: Thank you. LDS Perspectives Podcast is not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The opinions expressed on this episode represent the views of the guests and the podcaster alone, and LDS Perspectives Podcast and its parent organization may or may not agree with them. While the ideas presented may vary from traditional understandings or teachings, they in no way reflect criticism of LDS Church leaders, policies, or practices. http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/09/20/jst-dc-kenneth-alford/ Page 23 of 23