There’s been lots of talk about the church granting more allowance additional biblical translations beyond the KJV, but I’m arguing in this post that I don’t think that’s what Joseph Smith meant by the eighth article of faith “as far as it is translated correctly.”

JS of course did a revision of the Bible, but it contained very little of the fuller truth he taught in Nauvoo. The Articles of Faith also contained very little of JS’s fuller doctrine: no preexistence, plan of salvation, deification, eternal marriage, etc.

Not only had the great and abominable church removed “plain and precious things” from the Bible, but JS went further in his introduction to DC 76 in his official history:

“From sundry revelations which had been received, it was apparent that many important points, touching the Salvation of man, had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled.” (Joseph Smith, History, A-1, p. 183. See the current heading to DC 76). JS, therefore, claimed that prior to receiving DC 76, he already knew that a whole lot of “important points” were missing from the Bible and then stated that reading John 5:29 prompted the question that led to DC 76.

Yet DC 76 changed the wording of John 5:29. The KJV of that verse says, “And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation,” but DC 76 changes it to “And shall come forth; they who have done good, in the resurrection of the just; and they who have done evil, in the resurrection of the unjust” (76:17).

Using the words “just” and “unjust” instead of “life” and “damnation” is noteworthy because  just and unjust matches the wording in Dacier’s translation of Plato’s Phaedo right before Socrates’s description of the afterlife. There the dead “are all tried and judged, both those that liv’d a holy and just Life, and those who wallow’d in Injustice and Impiety.”[1]

This matching is significant, I argue, because Socrates then goes on to describe four afterlife states for four different kinds of people quite similar to the four afterlife states of DC 76.

Some of the details vary a little, but the overall structures is the closest to DC 76. The lowest, “guilty of Sarcilege and Murder, or such other Crimes, are by a just and fatal Destiny, thrown headlong into Tartarus, where they are kept Prisoners for ever.”[2] The next two who will get out of torment like DC 19 said, then the highest is for “those who distinguish’d themselves by a holy Life … are receiv’d into yet more admirable and delicious Mansions, which I cannot easily describe, neither do the narrow Limits of my Time allow me to launch into the Subject.”[3] (pages 171-72).

Good biblical translations were good, but were not the way to get at the full truth the Bible was missing. As JS said in the King Follett Discourse: “I sup[pose] I am not all[ow]d to go into investing[atio]n but what is cont[aine]d in the Bible & I think is so many wise men who wo[ul]d put me to death for treason.”

The fuller truth was in sources in addition to the Bible. As JS wrote to Isaac Galland in 1839,“The First Fundamental principal of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men.”

The Bible has truth, better translations help, but looking beyond that to sources like Plato get us to the fuller truth that JS felt the Bible was missing.

[1] Dacier, Plato Abrig’d, 2:171.

[2] Dacier, Plato Abrig’d, 2:171.

[3] Dacier, Plato Abrig’d, 2:172.