Review of Thomas A. Wayment, trans., The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints: A Study Bible (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018). $29.99 print. $17.00 digital. 491 pp.

In a sermon delivered in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 27, 1871, Brigham Young issued this charge:

[If] there is a scholar on the earth who professes to be a Christian, and he can translate [the Bible] any better than King James’s translators did it, he is under obligation to do so, or the curse is upon him. If I understood Greek and Hebrew as some may profess to do, and I knew the Bible was not correctly translated, I should feel myself bound by the law of justice to the inhabitants of the earth to translate that which is incorrect and give it just as it was spoken anciently.

Putting a fine point on it, President Young asked rhetorically “Is that proper?” and answer in the affirmative. “Yes, I would be under obligation to do it.”^[1]

English-speaking members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have long cherished the King James Bible, which is both the official English Bible of the Church and has informed Latter-day Saint theological vocabulary since the founding of the Church in 1830. Allusions to and citations of KJV passages and language are woven deeply throughout Latter-day Saint scripture and theological vernacular,^[2] and Joseph Smith famously undertook a “new translation” or revision of the KJV as part of his larger restoration project.^[3] Given that the Latter-day Saint leaders have historically resisted the adoption of modern English translations of the Bible,^[4] it would not be unfounded to assume that the KJV enjoys a supremacy over Bibles among English-speaking Latter-day Saints that will not be contested anytime soon.^[5]

Nevertheless, it simply cannot be denied that after 400 years of intense biblical scholarship since the publication of the KJV in 1611, to say nothing of 400 years of development of the English language, the time is long overdue for English-speaking Latter-day Saints to seriously re-examine their exclusive loyalty to the KJV.^[6] While the KJV unquestionably remains unsurpassed in literary excellence amongst English Bibles–––the veritable crown jewel in the diadem of English prose and poetry–––the plain fact is that sole reliance on the KJV is in many regards a serious impediment to deeper understanding of the biblical text. President Young’s insistence that faithful scholars are obliged “by the law of justice to the inhabitants of the earth to translate that which is incorrect and give it just as it was spoken anciently” must be seriously reckoned with by members of the Church, as there is abundant justification for just such an undertaking.

Thankfully, Latter-day Saints have now been supplied with a landmark publication that meets this demand. Thomas A. Wayment, currently a professor of Classics and previously a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University who has published extensively on New Testament and early Christianity in both popular and academic venues,^[7] has benefited members of the Church with a fresh, precise, engaging, and approachable translation of the New Testament (henceforth the WT for “Wayment Translation”) geared squarely at a mainstream Latter-day Saint audience.

At the outset, Wayment is quick to clarify what his translation is not. “This translation is not an attempt to replace the King James Bible for Latter-day Saint readers, but it is an invitation to engage again the meaning of the text for a new and more diverse English readership” of the New Testament. If Wayment’s translation, then, is not meant to replace the KJV, what precisely does it intend to accomplish? “This translation intentionally engages the possibility that the New Testament can be rendered into modern language in a way that will help a reader more fully understand the teachings of Jesus, his disciples, and his followers” (vii). This is a worthwhile undertaking, since the inspired words of Jesus and his first century apostles are liable to be obscured if modern readers only have access to them through archaic language that is no longer suitable to their modern needs. “When the language of translation becomes too foreign,” Wayment observes, “too distant from the present age, it is time to consider the possibility of another translation” (vii). The fact that a portion of the revisions made by Joseph Smith in his “new translation” of the Bible were updates to the archaic language of the KJV puts Wayment in good company on this point.^[8]

Besides providing a fresh translation, Wayment also endeavors to make his edition “a study tool, an aid to inviting readers into the text so that new meaning can be discovered, and new inspiration can be found” (vii). To that end, the WT overhauls the formatting of the text in some ways that his Latter-day Saint readers are perhaps not too familiar with. This includes the use of “quotation marks to designate what was said and by whom,” a “paragraph structure” as opposed to versification, the minimalization of “the intrusion of verse divisions” by “placing verse designations in a smaller superscript font,” the inclusion of headings to demarcate literary pericopes in narrative and thematic, doctrinal, or structural sections in epistles, and the rendering of intertextual quotations into italics with “notes [to] direct the reader to the source of those quotations” (viii–ix). It is apparent that Wayment and his editor(s) at the Religious Studies Center have put great care into making this an aesthetically pleasing and readable edition.

The study notes in the WT “favor intertextuality, especially with the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.” Wayment informs his readers that he included “those references to help the reader see how the New Testament texts are engaged, developed, and interpreted in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.” References to the JST are also included in the notes, but Wayment is “selective” in how many JST variant readings he includes because “many of the changes that [Joseph Smith] made are inextricably linked to the King James Version.” Important variant readings found in different Greek manuscripts are likewise provided in the notes, as is commentary on disputed passages of “questionable origin” which “offer[s] an opinion regarding the authenticity” of said passages. Latter-day Saints, naturally, should not be scandalized by potential corruptions in the biblical text (see Article of Faith 8), and in any case, it is important to note disputed or variant readings to “show how the text of the New Testament developed over time.” In instances of clearly spurious passages (e.g. 1 John 5:7–8, the interpolation known commonly today as the Johannine Comma), the offending verses have “been removed from the text and placed in the notes” (ix).

Figure 1. A page from Wayment’s study edition of the New Testament

Figure 2. A page from Wayment’s study edition of the New Testament.

In terms of what kind of the translation Wayment has produced, based on his own prefatory explanation and from a sampling of passages, it appears that the WT is more or less a moderate to formal equivalence of the underlying Greek text somewhere between the New Revised Standard Version and the New International Version. That is to say, Wayment has not “attempted to translate Greek words exactly the same way in each instance, nor the same [grammatical] order in which the words appear in their Greek sentences,” as such would come at the cost of readability. He has, essentially, “chosen to err on the side of context in determining” how to render the Greek (viii).

Take, for instance, the question of how to render the word ἀδελφός (adelphos). A straightforward translation of the word would be “brother,” and, as Wayment notes, there are some passages where “the author appears to have intended ‘men’ exclusively” (e.g. Matthew 2:16; 8:28; 14:21). However, there are many other uses of adelphos in the New Testament that do not require a gender-exclusive rendering of the word. “The original context of the word was not intentionally exclusionary but rather an artifact of first-century common usage and parlance,” notes Wayment. Because the New Testament often uses the word “generically to refer to those who believe alike, regardless of gender,” Wayment opts to translate adelphos inclusively as “brother and sister” in many instances (ix). In my judgment, this is a perfectly reasonable, even laudable, way to stay true to the sense of the Greek (based on context) while adapting the English to be meaningful for a broader–––in this case a gender-non-exclusionary–––audience.

Accordingly, Wayment’s approach is welcome because “the New Testament is written in a variety of different Greek styles,” and so imposing a rigid and uniform rendition of English would obscure the range of refined to simple Greek encountered in the various New Testament books. “A translation that can represent the simple power of the language of Jesus and his followers is truly a gift,” Wayment correctly points out, “and as we are further and further removed from the seventeenth century, we have begun to lose sight of the realization that Jesus spoke like everyday people. Jesus did not speak using archaic English terms and phrases. His speech was quite ordinary, his meaning was quite profound, and his intent was often clear. As language evolves, so too translations need to evolve” (vii). So while Wayment’s translation is not likely to be heard being sung by the King’s Singers in Cambridge (or The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square in Salt Lake City) during Christmastime, it nevertheless does effectively render the Greek in a readable yet faithful manner.

It is clear that the WT is aimed at a general, non-academic audience. The question might thus naturally arise as to how Wayment navigates historical or textual issues that become apparent from a critical reading of the New Testament. Issues pertaining to authorship, historicity, and textual corruption in the New Testament are handled judiciously by Wayment. True to its self-styling as a “study Bible for Latter-day Saints,” the WT does not shy away from questions or concerns about the authorship and historicity of the New Testament books, but it also does not lose focus on its devotional and pastoral purposes. Nor does it appear to take any overly radical positions at odds with the restored gospel that are propounded by more “liberal” or secular scholars of the New Testament. On the contrary, I found the WT being, at times, fairly “conservative” in how it approaches a number of issues.^[9] Take these three examples:

• Concerning the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53–8:11), Wayment writes, “The earliest manuscripts of the New Testament omit this verse and John 8:1–11. Some manuscripts place the story of the woman caught in adultery at John 7:36, after John 21:25, or after Luke 21:38. The story appears to have strong external support that it originated with Jesus, but it may not have originally been placed here in the Gospel of John or even to have been written by the author of the Fourth Gospel. It is placed in double brackets [in the WT] to indicate that it has questionable textual support, but it is included in the text because it has a reasonable likelihood of describing a historical event from the life of Jesus” (181).
• Concerning the depiction in Luke 22:43–44 of Jesus experiencing hematohidrosis, Wayment writes, “These two verses are greatly disputed, and a number of important ancient manuscripts omit them. Other early and important manuscripts include these verses. Given the current evidence, it is unlikely that the question of their omission or inclusion can be resolved. However, the evidence is strong enough to suggest that they may be original to Luke’s Gospel but were perhaps omitted over doctrinal concerns. Mosiah 3:7 seems to have these verses in mind (compare Doctrine and Covenants 19:16–19)” (156–157).^[10]
• Concerning the disputed authorship of Hebrews, Wayment writes, “In one of the earliest Greek manuscripts (Chester Beatty papyrus 46), this epistle is included immediately following Romans, indicating that whoever made that copy of the New Testament felt that Paul was the author of the work because the scribe placed the book alongside the other Pauline epistles. . . . However, there are also significant concerns regarding Paul’s authorship of the letter, and the style of Hebrews and the quality of the Greek writing is so markedly different from Paul’s other letters as to suggest that Paul certainly did not write the letter in the same way and under the same circumstances that he wrote his other letters. . . . Tradition suggests that Paul wrote Hebrews, which is a reasonable assumption; the evidence is fairly conclusive that an early Christian author who was connected to Timothy wrote this epistle with the intent of addressing the topic of Christ for a Jewish Christian audience” (401).^[11]

Overall, I found much in Wayment’s new study edition of the New Testament to commend to its intended Latter-day Saint audience. It is precisely the sort of thing that qualified Latter-day Saint biblical scholars can and should be doing for each of the biblical books. The world already benefits from the HarperCollins Study Bible, the Jewish Study Bible, the Catholic Study Bible, and the New Oxford Annotated Bible, to name just a few examples. It’s time for an authoritative Latter-day Saint Study Bible (perhaps a Restoration Study Bible) for both the Old and New Testaments. Wayment has provided a promising glimpse at what a reliable, comprehensive study Bible for Latter-day Saints could look like. If Latter-day Saint scholars collaborated to synthesize the best of biblical scholarship with doctrinal and historical insights from Restoration scripture and the teachings of modern prophets and apostles, I am confident that the publication of just such a study Bible could be accomplished to great benefit for the Saints.

Until that time, every Latter-day Saint wishing to seriously engage the New Testament should pick up a copy of Wayment’s new translation.

Appendix: Parallel Comparison of Select KJV and WT Passages