LDS Church’s move toward modern Bible translations likely to spark debate over some Latter-day Saint beliefs

Latter-day Saint Bible scholar Dan McClellan isn’t shy about acknowledging that his church’s move endorsing English Bible translations beyond the King James Version is likely to lead to some uncomfortable conversations about the faith’s other sacred texts and even some beliefs.

That, he argued in a recent episode of The Salt Lake Tribune’s “Mormon Land” podcast, is a good thing.

Below are excerpts, edited for length and clarity, from that conversation with the former scripture translation supervisor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and author of “The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues.”

Many Latter-day Saints are going to look at the list of newly approved Bible translations and just see a bunch of acronyms. Broadly speaking, what sets each one apart?

There are a handful of things that set them apart, ranging from translation philosophy to their ideological orientation.

The NKJV [New King James Version] is one translation that is really a linguistic update to the King James Version. So, that’s taking the King James Version and basically trying to make it easier to read.

The NIV [New International Version] is a more evangelical translation. In the introduction, it quite explicitly asserts that it is assuming the inerrancy, the inspiration, of the text. That influences how it translates certain things. You’re going to see differences between, for instance, the NRSV [New Revised Standard Version] and the NIV because the NIV is trying to gloss over contradictions and inconsistencies.

The NLT [New Living Translation] is a little more what people refer to as a dynamic translation, where instead of trying to get close to representing the form and the words of the text, it’s more about vibes.

The ESV [English Standard Version] is a more recent translation, published not even 25 years ago. That is a translation that was executed to try to push back against what the creators of the translation saw as too much liberalism on the part of the NIV. So, it was mainly made to try to provide a more conservative, less egalitarian translation that leans a little bit more into a complementarian worldview — the idea that women are subservient to men, even if it’s framed in different ways.

Which translation is your favorite?

My preferred translation is the NRSVue [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition], which is the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version that was only released a few years ago. And on the church’s website, it says the NRSV is a good translation for ages 14 and up. And it has a hyperlink. And when you click on it, it takes you to the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version. So I was very happy to see that.

But a member — or anyone — could draw inspiration from any of them, right?

Absolutely, and that’s an important part of what the leadership of the church has been wrestling with.

One of the reasons that there has not been an LDS study Bible is because the leadership knows that once they put an explanatory note in a version of the Bible that they are publishing, it becomes doctrine. That becomes the correct interpretation, and they don’t want to put these hermeneutic bumpers on the text. My understanding is that the leadership of the church would prefer the scriptures function more as a catalyst for revelation and inspiration and guidance than as a strict constitution and rulebook.

There is value to that. I don’t think we should be trying to use it as shackles to facilitate our structuring of power and values and boundaries. It is something that everyone ought to be using to help them find guidance for themselves in their own particular circumstances.

How could the use of these translations help Latter-day Saints as they prepare to study the Hebrew Bible — or, as members of the church call it, the Old Testament?

There’s an opportunity for discussion about what might be going on here, and we should not be shying away from this. I have sat down and been in meetings with people at all different levels of leadership in the church who have lamented the fact that there is fear of questioning what’s going on in these texts and of offering different solutions for it and of interrogating what’s going on in the King James Version or the Joseph Smith Translation. I’m excited to know that there are hopefully more discussions going on about why these translations may differ and what the implications are of that.

What are some doctrinal differences between these translations that would be meaningful for Latter-day Saints?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that the church’s foundational scripture, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants, revelations given to [church founder] Joseph Smith, are couched in King James Version language. If you want to interpret that as evidence that the King James Version is the most inspired and the closest to the real text, the text is not going to stop you. More than likely what it is evidence of is that the revelations of Joseph Smith were couched in the language of the King James Version because that was his source.

But there are a lot of doctrines of the church that build on the foundation of the articulation of these ideas that we find in the King James Version. The idea of, for instance, “line upon line, precept upon precept.” This is from Isaiah 28:10, and most scholars today would say it does not say that. Ideas about dispensations, the dispensation of the fullness of times, all of this. There are countless examples.

And this is one of the reasons that we’ve been so loath to depart from the King James Version. It severs a lot of intertextuality between the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Bible and the Pearl of Great Price. And it raises the question: Where is this doctrine coming from, if not from the King James Version?

So there are a lot of issues that arise from doing away with the King James Version. But it is constructive for us to confront these head-on.

Is there a possible downside if church members are all studying different translations?

When we reduce things to simple binaries and when we draw clear lines around things like this, that facilitates clearer boundaries around identity and membership. When you leave room for pluriformity — for disagreement, for variability like this — what you’re doing is kind of fuzzing up the lines of distinction between in and out.

That’s a good thing. From an institutional point of view, it causes problems. This could and will lead to faith crises because the people who have built their testimonies on this brittle binary foundation of “this is right, everything else is wrong” are now going to have that foundation rocked.

Your advice to those people?

Deconstruct that brittle and fragile foundation.

Deconstruction doesn’t just mean blowing it all up. It means go, interrogate that foundation. Find out what part of that foundation was put in there by well-meaning parents who fed you some kind of Primary answer that was just intended to get you to shut up and that has been there ever since that you never grew out of.

Figure out what is there because of boundary maintenance, because of identity politics, and what is there because it works, because it makes you a better person and brings you closer to God and Jesus, and helps you feel the spirit better. That’s a long hard road. But it’s a more productive road.

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