Sometimes when Latter-day Saints quote scripture, they insert their own names into a verse to make it seem more direct and personal. So, for example, one might hear “O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day. And if ye [Grant] have desires to serve God, ye are called to the work” (D&C 4:2-3). This type of addition is called a “gloss,” and it clarifies or updates some aspect of scripture.
We see slightly more complex examples within the scriptures themselves, as when Mark translates an Aramaic phrase: “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise” (Mark 5:41), or when Mormon makes an immediate correction in the plates: “they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace” (Alma 24:19). Yet what Nephi does when he reads Isaiah is extraordinary by comparison.
One of the key differences between being a Reformation Church and a Restoration Church is our attitude toward scripture. When Martin Luther and John Calvin were seeking to throw off Catholic tradition, they turned to the Bible as the sole source of religious authority, in a doctrine that came to be called sola scriptura. This offered the freedom to return to the early sources of Christianity, yet it was also a position with potential weaknesses.
The process of deciding which books were to be included in the Bible was long and messy, taking several centuries to complete. How can we be sure that the end product contains all of the essential revelations from God? And doesn’t that close off the possibility of further significant revelation? As a library of writings from many times, cultures, and genres, the Bible is sometimes ambiguous and even contradictory. Who can provide authoritative interpretations? Scholars have discovered that most of the books of the Bible have undergone considerable revision, augmentation, and copying over time. Is it reasonable to claim that every editor, scribe, and copyist was divinely inspired? By what logic do Protestants accept the formulations of post-biblical councils, such as the Nicene Creed, while rejecting apocrypha like the 1 Enoch, which was cited as authoritative by the author of Jude? It’s no wonder that claims of extra-biblical revelation elicit such strong negative reactions from many evangelical Christians. For those whose faith is based on the Bible alone, the Book of Mormon challenges them at point of vulnerability.
In addition, some have felt that any admission of an error or human element in scripture would undermine the credibility of the whole. Thus it becomes of great importance whether the six days of creation consisted of 24-hour periods, or whether Goliath was 9 1/2 feet tall (as in the Masoretic Text) or 6 1/2 feet tall (as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint), or whether the word almah in Isaiah 9:6, which means “young woman,” has to be translated as “virgin,” so that it matches the witness of the New Testament (which is unambiguous on the virgin birth).
Similarly, minor details such as whether Paul’s companions heard a voice or not (Acts 9:7 vs. 22:9) or whether Jesus told his disciples to leave their staffs behind or to take them (Matt. 10:9-10 vs. Mark 6:8) threaten the whole notion of scriptural reliability. Because they look only to the Bible for guidance, fundamentalists and many evangelicals have argued that if the Bible is anything less than completely inerrant, their faith has no firm basis.
The doctrines of the Restoration, by contrast, are anchored in not one but three authoritative sources—scripture, continuing revelation, and priesthood authority—which provide a stable foundation, much like a three-legged stool. We pay high respect to scripture, but we are also able to recognize its limitations. For instance, once when I was in a bishopric I asked a young sister to speak in sacrament meeting. She replied that she couldn’t, because 1 Cor. 14:34 clearly states: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak.” I was grateful to be able to point out that, whatever Paul might have been trying to communicate in the context of the first-century Roman Empire, the Church Handbook offered more up-to-date guidance on the matter. One consequence of this triple source of doctrine is that Latter-day Saint approaches to scripture can be somewhat flexible, and there are precedents that go back as far as Nephi.
Nephi famously told his brothers that he would “liken” the scriptures to their family situation, and in particular the words of Isaiah (see 1 Ne. 19:23-24; 2 Ne. 11:2, 8). When he quoted Isaiah, however, there were several significant differences with the King James Bible (which served as the basis for the English translation of the Book of Mormon). For example, Isaiah 29:14 reads “for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish,” but at 2 Nephi 27:26, there is a slight expansion: “for the wisdom of their wise and learned shall perish,” which fits perfectly with the preceding lengthy discussion of a sealed book that would be delivered to a skeptical learned man (itself an explanation of Isa. 29:11-12).
Sometimes we fall back into Protestant modes of reading when we imagine that any changes made by Nephi had to reflect earlier versions of scripture, but here it seems more likely that the additional words are a new gloss, or a clarification, especially since there are no ancient versions of Isaiah that include anything like this (and thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now have Hebrew manuscripts that are a thousand years older than anything available to that King James translators). Nephi may also have modified the verse in Isaiah in order to allude to his brother Jacob’s recent teachings on the wise and the learned at 2 Ne. 9:28 and 42.
Here are more examples of Nephi making significant additions to just one chapter of Isaiah.
Isaiah 48 (KJV) 1 Nephi 20
3 I did them suddenly . . . 3 I did show them suddenly . . .
7 even before the day 7 even before the day
when though heardest them not; when thou heardest them not;
they were declared unto thee,
lest thou shouldest say . . . lest thou shouldst say . . .
14 which among them 14 who among them
hath declared these things? hath declared these things unto them?
The Lord hath loved him: The Lord hath loved him;
yea, and he will fulfill his word which
he hath declared by them;
he will do his pleasure on Babylon he will do his pleasure on Babylon
15 yea, I have called him: 15 yea, I have called him to declare,
I have brought him . . . I have brought him . . .
16 from the time that it was, 16 from the time that it was
there am I; and now the Lord declared have I spoken. And the Lord
God, and his spirit, hath sent me. God, and his Spirit, hath sent me.
17 Thus saith the Lord . . . 17 Thus saith the Lord . . .
I have sent him.
I am the Lord thy God The Lord thy God
which teacheth thee to profit, who teacheth thee to profit,
which leadeth thee by the way who leadeth thee by the way
that thou shoudest go. thou shoudst go,
hath done it.
[These examples, with discussion, can be found in my Understanding the Book of Mormon, p. 73. If you want to try your own hand at this sort of analysis, you can look at the differences between Isaiah 2 and 2 Nephi 12 in verses 5, 10, 12, 13, 14, 19, and 21. Not all of the Book of Mormon variants to Isaiah are as significant as these.]
Because the modifications of Isaiah 48 are thematic changes that are connected to the context of Nephi’s remarks—he has been talking about specific prophecies and the importance of revelation—I suspect that we are dealing with explanatory glosses rather than an earlier version of Isaiah. (Again, there is no support in biblical manuscripts for any of these changes, with the possible exception of “unto them” in v. 14). And keep in mind that Nephi has just told us that he was “likening” scripture to his brothers, which seems to mean not just applying the words but adapting them to the present circumstances. It appears that he is quoting Isaiah somewhat freely, adding in his own clarifications and emphases. How can he do that? Because he is a prophet, and prophets are different from scholars or reformers. When moved upon by the Holy Ghost, they are able to interpret scripture authoritatively for particular audiences.
Joseph Smith did much the same thing in the JST. He accepted the Bible as the word of God, yet he also seems to have been comfortable making revisions to that sacred volume. While some of his additions may represent a restoration of lost texts, many seem to have been to have been clarifications or amplifications that would make sense to modern readers of the King James Version. And sometimes he even modified his modifications.
We see a similar phenomenon in later editions of the Book of Mormon. There are about a dozen instances where Joseph made changes in order to forestall potential misunderstandings, as when he changed 1 Nephi 11:18 in 1837 from “the mother of God” to “the mother of the Son of God.” And in one instance he added a lengthy gloss to a Book of Mormon quotation of Isaiah, a gloss that was not present in either the original or the printer’s manuscript. In 1840, at 1 Nephi 20:1 (Isa. 48:1), after “out of the waters of Judah,” Joseph inserted “(or out of the waters of baptism)”—an interpretation that probably means more to contemporary readers than it would have to Isaiah’s original audience. The 1840 parentheses clearly signaled that this was a secondary explanation, but they were dropped in the 1920 edition.
The point of all this is that because Latter-day Saints can rely upon continuing revelation and priesthood authority as well as scripture, we do not need to adopt Protestant attitudes toward the Bible. It is quite possible that as we search the scriptures and liken them to our own particular circumstances, the Holy Spirit may add clarifications, additions, and glosses that are authoritative for ourselves, our families, and our callings. (Obviously, only prophets can make additions to canon that are binding for the Church as a whole, but we welcome the fact that God “will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.”)
This respectful but flexible approach to the word of God, which allows inspired adaptations for particular audiences and circumstances, is perhaps most clearly seen in D&C 128:17-18, where the Prophet Joseph quoted two verses from Malachi and then stated: “I might have rendered a plainer translation to this, but it is sufficiently plain to suit my purpose as it stands.” It is important to keep in mind that we are committed to the truths behind God’s revelations, as opposed to being bound to any specific written form of that revelation (see D&C 1:24).
Some have questioned why Joseph would have made any changes at all in a revealed text like the Book of Mormon. Couldn’t God have gotten everything right the first time around? But the question exhibits a somewhat fundamentalist attitude toward scripture, a standard by which even the Bible falls short. (Couldn’t God have defined the canon from the beginning of Christianity? Couldn’t he have preserved the original autographs intact?) Realistically, any sort of communication is subject to all kinds of human limitations and historical contingencies. The scriptures are not exempt from these, though with the combination of scripture, continuing revelation, and priesthood, the doctrines and principles of the Restoration rest upon a firm foundation, and can be reliably updated and applied as needed.
Grant Hardy is the editor of The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (University of Illinois Press, 2003) and the author of Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is a professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina—Asheville.