Since its founding, the LDS Church has used the King James Version of the Bible. Is it time to dump KJV? Many people find the old English tough to read & understand. Is it time to upgrade to a more modern version? Will that cause ripple effects with the Book of Mormon? Dr Joseph Spencer weighs in on the issue. We'll also discuss his other books and upcoming projects. Check out our conversation...
https://youtu.be/R15AGtUer90
Don’t miss our other conversations with Joseph: https://gospeltangents.com/people/joseph-spencer/
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Time to Update Bible/Dump KJV?
GT 00:32 Well, I mean, I like this. Because, can I say that I hate reading Isaiah?
Joseph 00:40 A lot of people say it.
GT 00:43 And so, that was one of the good things, I was like, okay. Een though I hate Isaiah, I hear Nephi, we need to study Isaiah. But it doesn't make any sense to me.
Joseph 00:55 Yeah.
GT 00:56 That was one of the things that I really liked about your book was to dive into there. I've talked to Thomas Wayment. He's got his own New Testament, which is fantastic. You really need to get it. But one of the things that Latter-day Saints struggle with, and a lot of other churches have gone to other versions of the Bible. I've heard that Revelation and Isaiah and other books, which are hard to read, aren't so hard when you update the English.
Joseph 01:34 Absolutely.
GT 01:35 Why does our Church stick [with it?] Even the Book of Mormon to a lot of degree is King James English.
Joseph 01:45 Archaic, yeah.
GT 01:47 So first question, would you support if the Church updated and got rid of King James and got something that was easier to read so that we can read Isaiah and understand what he's talking about?
Joseph 02:01 Yeah, I mean, would I support it? Yeah, of course. But I also...
GT 02:06 You're not going to advocate.
Joseph 02:08 Well, advocacy is not how we work in the Church.
GT 02:14 You have to advocate very quietly.
Joseph 02:15 Very quietly, very gently. But no, I mean, I think for one, it's official church policy that people can and should use other translations in their personal study. Right?
GT 02:26 It is?
Joseph 02:27 That's right in the Handbook of Instructions. It's right in the Handbook of Instructions.
GT 02:31 Everybody get's mad when I've [used other editions.] I've taught Gospel Doctrine and I've pulled out other versions and people are like, “That's not King James Bible.”
Joseph 02:39 Yeah. Pull out the handbook. Show them. Yeah, the handbook is very explicit about this. When I make recommendations to my students, or in my writings, and so on, I'll say this. Read Isaiah in the King James. Read it in the Book of Mormon as it stands. But also get out a good translation and read it side by side. The NRSV, I think, is probably the handiest, good one. But also, there are lots, just so many good translations. Just pull those out and read it. And yeah, Isaiah comes down to earth a whole lot. But I think there are other things that are in the way, as well. It's not just a translation issue, though, that is a huge issue. There's plenty of Isaiah that's understandable in the King James Version without a better translation or more modern translation.
Joseph 03:27 The other issue is that we don't know what we're looking for. Latter-ay Saints tend to read scripture looking for two kinds of things. One, just insight into doctrine; tell me what the doctrines are. Or we tend to look for just straight, personal application. Neither of those is what Isaiah is going to give you. So, we're just looking for the wrong thing, if that's what we're looking for in Isaiah. He's not a doctrinal exponent. That's just not what he does. He's not trying to think about everyday application. He's thinking about big picture, historical things. He's living through the disaster of the destruction of the northern kingdom and thinking about what this means for God's promises. But you have to have a lot of history and a lot of big scope stuff to really get your head around that. So yeah, I think the thing that's so hard for us is we're trying to read a verse and get something out of it. But he's telling you a story. We have to read four or five chapters together, and get the basic picture and then we might be able to go, "Ah, yeah, I see how that might apply to my everyday life or something." So, I think that's actually the biggest thing for us. It's not even so much translation. It's that we're looking for the kinds of things Isaiah is not trying to give us.
Joseph 02:41 Which is why he is so hard to understand.
GT 02:41 Okay.
Joseph 03:14 So hard to understand. Yeah, you can read 2nd Nephi 28, and you can, literally, just take a verse and be like, "How does that apply to me? No problem." But you're reading Isaiah 12, you're like, "What does that have to do with me?" I don't know. But yeah, it's because there's a bigger story.
GT 04:57 Okay. Well, are you on the Correlation Committee or anything?
Joseph 05:01 No, not remotely. {both laughing}
GT 05:03 I remember Dan Peterson said that he was making the Sunday School manuals. And I was like, "Can you twist the brethren’s arm to do NRSV or Harper Collins or whatever. But I think a lot of it is because King James is public domain now. So, you can make your own version and do what you want.
Joseph 05:24 Yeah.
GT 05:25 Can't we get an old NRSV or something?
Joseph 05:28 It's definitely not public domain. I mean, I think there are a number of things there. To be clear, all of this is way above my paygrade. I have no institutional authority whatsoever. So, I don't have any orders to offer. But I do think that there are reasons that are motivations that have led decision makers here, whether that's leaders of the Church, or committees, or whatever, who's making these decisions, that led them to be slow to adopt new translations as official. I think part of it is maybe nervousness about who the translators are. I think I can understand how people get there. But more importantly, it's that the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon are in King James English. If we suddenly have a different Bible translation, we would start to miss the elusiveness and the interactions, and so on and so forth. So, I know if I were on a committee, I won't be. But if I were on a committee, and we started talking very seriously, about let's really promote, say, the NRSV to the English-speaking church, I would probably be thinking also about, then how do we create an updated language version of the Doctrine and Covenants, and of the Book of Mormon. We need a set of scholars to go through and find all the allusions and make sure that those are still being kept up. I think that's actually a massive task. It's not an overnight, drop the NRSV on the Church, update the language of the Book of Mormon, and we're good. I think this actually calls for a lot more work.
GT 05:36 Wow. That was my next question. Once we do that Bible, can we do that to the Book of Mormon, too?
Joseph 07:04 Yeah, it’s worth saying people have. There are modern language editions of the Book of Mormon.
GT 07:08 Well, and Grant Hardy just gave an interview. I really should pay attention to which podcast I've listened to. Because if I remember right, it was Cultural Hall podcast. Richie Steadman was like, "Hey, Grant, you've already done two books on the Book of Mormon. Why don't you do it?" And he's like, "Well, that's not really my job. It's the Prophet's job." But I like what you said. Because even if we look at like the Septuagint, I mean, the ancient Jews got 70 scholars together and said, "Hey, let's make a better Bible. a Greek version of the Bible, right?
Joseph 07:47 It's a lot of work.
GT 07:47 We've got $100 billion dollars right? Give a billion to the BYU guys and go do it. Right?
Joseph 07:55 Maybe, I don't know.
GT 07:56 You could take a chunk of that billion, Grant Hardy and some other people.
Joseph 08:01 Yeah, then we've got to get the scholars to agree. That's going to be the tricky thing. Yeah, it's a lot harder than it sounds at first. I will say this. I mean, I've spent a lot of time with the various modern language editions that people have done. People have made easy to read ones and children's Book of Mormons and two-hour Book of Mormon and then he got really kind of wacky ones like Mike Hicks' Street Legal Edition of The Book of Mormon. Have you seen this? It's all slang. There are a lot of these, but what I have found universally in reading modern language editions of The Book of Mormon is I'm like, you lost that part of the text. There's something there that Nephi is doing, and you lost it in your modernization. So, this is the thing. You really have to get to the bottom of the Book of Mormon before you decide how to update the language I think. It's so easy to be like, "Oh, I think this is what it means." And then you've not gotten it, and then we end up in trouble, I think.
GT 08:57 Because it just seems like, let's take Shakespeare. I know, people love Shakespeare and if you love Shakespeare, it's fine. But when I took it in high school, we had in an English class, we had to say, well, this is what it really meant.
Joseph 09:15 Right.
GT 09:15 For those of you who love Shakespeare and love King James Bible, knock yourselves out. For us dumb people, we could use some updated language.
Joseph 09:29 I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. I think getting there is harder than it sounds. Yeah. If you just take a simple--I should just give an example so that this is concrete. But you take something like the phrase, tender mercies. How do you update the language on there?...
