Appearance
KJV Mistranslations
The claim:
"The Book of Mormon includes mistranslated biblical passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired JST version instead of the incorrect KJV version that Joseph later fixed."[1]
"Christ's Sermon on the Mount in the Bible and the Book of Mormon are identical. But Joseph Smith later corrected the Bible. In doing so, he also contradicted the same identical Sermon on the Mount passage in the Book of Mormon."[2]
The CES Letter provides one example: 3 Nephi 13:25-27 matches the KJV of Matthew 6:25-27, but the Joseph Smith Translation rewrites the passage entirely. If the Book of Mormon is ancient, why does it carry the KJV version instead of the JST's "corrected" one?
The argument depends on a single assumption: that the JST restores the Bible's original wording. Does it?
The JST isn't what the CES Letter needs it to be
The entire claim rests on a premise that the leading JST scholars reject.
Kent P. Jackson — the foremost modern scholar of the JST manuscripts, with 30+ years of research — states the JST is "not intended primarily or solely as a restoration of lost Bible text."[3]
Robert J. Matthews, who pioneered JST manuscript studies, found the work served an educational function for Joseph himself — "he was to come into possession of knowledge he did not previously have."[4]
The Church's own description: the JST involved "smaller changes that improved grammar, clarified meaning, modernized language" alongside "long revealed passages" dictated "much as he did when receiving the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants."[5]
| JST Purpose | Example |
|---|---|
| Restoring lost content | The Book of Moses (JST Genesis) — entire chapters with no biblical counterpart |
| Clarifying meaning | Changing archaic words, harmonizing conflicting passages |
| Theological commentary | Expanding text to address doctrinal questions for modern readers |
| New revelation | D&C 76 (three degrees of glory) came directly from JST work on John 5:29 |
The JST even renders the same passage differently on separate occasions. Joseph translated identical Greek phrases with different English wording at different times.[6] If the JST were a strict restoration of original text, it would be internally consistent. It isn't — because it was never designed to be.
The CES Letter's argument only works if the JST is 100% a restoration of original ancient wording. No serious scholar makes that claim.
The JST rewrites — it doesn't "correct a mistranslation"
Here's the passage the CES Letter presents:
| Version | Text (Matthew 6:25) |
|---|---|
| KJV | "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink..." |
| 3 Nephi 13:25 | "...Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink..." |
| JST Matt. 6:25 | "And, again, I say unto you, Go ye into the world, and care not for the world: for the world will hate you, and will persecute you, and will turn you out of their synagogues." |
The JST doesn't "correct" a translation error. It replaces the passage with an entirely different discourse — new verses about missionary work and persecution, directed at the Twelve. David LeFevre documented that the JST additions to Matthew 6:25-34 address "practical concerns for mobile preachers" — material that has nothing to do with correcting a Greek-to-English translation mistake.[7]
That's prophetic expansion, not error correction. A "mistranslation" is a word-level error. The JST changes here are wholesale rewriting.
The CES Letter says the sermons are "identical." They aren't.
The CES Letter claims the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible and the Book of Mormon are "identical." Sarah Allen's rebuttal identifies a telling problem: the CES Letter "deletes half the verse to hide that it's fundamentally different from the original while claiming they're identical."[8] Roughly three lines of 3 Nephi 13:25 — addressing Jesus's twelve disciples specifically — are omitted from the comparison.
But the real issue runs deeper. The Sermon at the Temple (3 Nephi 12-14) has dozens of deliberate theological differences from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7):
| Change | Matthew (KJV) | 3 Nephi |
|---|---|---|
| "Without a cause" removed | "whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause" (5:22) | "whosoever is angry with his brother" (12:22) |
| Currency adapted | "the uttermost farthing" (5:26) | "the uttermost senine" (12:26) |
| Law fulfilled | "one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (5:18) | "the law in me is fulfilled, for I have come to fulfil the law" (12:18) |
| Perfection expanded | "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father" (5:48) | "Be ye therefore perfect, even as I, or your Father" (12:48) |
| "Thy kingdom come" omitted | Present in Lord's Prayer (6:10) | Absent (13:10) |
| Scribes and Pharisees removed | "except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees" (5:20) | Replaced with "come unto me and be ye saved" (12:20) |
| "Come unto me" added | Never appears | Appears 5 times throughout 3 Nephi's version |
Every one of these changes is theologically consistent with a resurrected Christ speaking to a post-Law-of-Moses audience at a Nephite temple. "Thy kingdom come" is gone because the kingdom has already arrived. "Without a cause" is gone because the standard is higher. "Farthing" becomes "senine" because Nephites didn't use Roman currency.
A person copying from a Bible reproduces what's on the page. These changes reflect a different speaker, audience, and setting.
A Harvard dean recognized what the CES Letter missed
Krister Stendahl — dean of Harvard Divinity School, one of the twentieth century's leading New Testament scholars, and not a Latter-day Saint — examined 3 Nephi's sermon.[9]
He identified 3 Nephi as containing a "Johannine Jesus" — a revealed revealer who points to himself as the message, distinct from Matthew's teacher of moral righteousness. The abundant use of "verily" and "verily, verily" (19 and 25 instances) transforms the sermon "from moral and religious teaching into proclamation and explicit revelation."
Stendahl called the text a targum — an ancient Jewish interpretive expansion that strips geographic and cultural specifics to create a "dehistoricized" revelatory discourse. Scribes and Pharisees disappear. Jerusalem references vanish. What remains is authoritative divine speech suited to a different audience.
A non-LDS Harvard dean recognized that 3 Nephi's sermon wasn't a lazy copy of Matthew. The CES Letter calls them "identical."
58 of 86 verses don't match — and that's the point
If the CES Letter's logic held, the JST and Book of Mormon should at least be consistent with each other. They aren't.
David LeFevre found that "at least 58 of the 86 verses changed by Joseph Smith's translation of Matthew 5-7 differ from the account in 3 Nephi."[7:1] Joseph didn't feel bound by the Book of Mormon text when revising the Bible.
The JST adds three new beatitudes. It adds missionary commission language. It clarifies audience. None of this appears in 3 Nephi.[7:2]
These are different works, produced years apart, for different audiences, serving different purposes. The CES Letter treats them as though they should be carbon copies. They were never intended to be.
The Book of Mormon gets it right where the KJV gets it wrong
The CES Letter frames this as "the Book of Mormon has KJV errors." But in its most prominent divergence from the KJV, the Book of Mormon preserves an older, more accurate reading.
3 Nephi 12:22 omits "without a cause" from Matthew 5:22. The earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts agree:
| Manuscript | Date | "Without a cause"? |
|---|---|---|
| P67 (Barcelona Papyrus) | ~AD 125-150 | Absent |
| Codex Vaticanus | ~AD 325-350 | Absent |
| Codex Sinaiticus | ~AD 350 | Absent |
| Justin Martyr | ~AD 150 | Absent |
| Tertullian | ~AD 200 | Absent |
| Origen | ~AD 250 | Absent |
| Byzantine manuscripts | AD 500+ | Present |
The KJV follows late Byzantine manuscripts. The Book of Mormon matches the earliest evidence.[10]
Jerome himself noted the phrase was absent from the oldest manuscripts known to him. Bruce Metzger, one of the twentieth century's foremost textual critics, concluded it was "much more likely that the word was added by copyists in order to soften the rigor of the precept, than omitted as unnecessary."[11]
The critical analysis identifying this as a late scribal addition wasn't published until 1956 — over 125 years after the Book of Mormon.[12] Modern Bible translations now adopt the Book of Mormon's reading as standard.
Joseph Smith published a textually superior reading in 1830. He didn't know Greek. He didn't have access to the earliest manuscripts. The CES Letter's own chosen passage contains evidence for the Book of Mormon, not against it.
For more on how the Book of Mormon's biblical quotations compare to ancient manuscripts — including Dead Sea Scroll alignments and the broader pattern of KJV divergences — see KJV Errors.
The temple behind the sermon
John W. Welch's landmark study The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount documents approximately 50 temple-related elements in 3 Nephi's version — roughly double those in Matthew's.[13]
The setting matters. Matthew's sermon takes place on a Galilean hillside. 3 Nephi's takes place at the temple in Bountiful. The differences track with that shift:
- Covenant-making language replaces references to scribes and Pharisees
- Baptismal beatitudes (3 Nephi 12:1-2) appear with no parallel in Matthew
- "The law in me is fulfilled" — spoken by someone who has already died and risen
- "Even as I, or your Father" — Christ includes himself because he has been perfected through the atonement
- Written law emphasis — "it is also written before you" (3 Nephi 12:21) added because Nephites relied on written plates, not oral tradition
Welch calls these differences "rational and subtly sensible" — "systematic, consistent, methodical."[13:1]
A plagiarist copying Matthew doesn't produce a text with deeper temple structure. Somebody built that.
"The most correct book" means what it says
The CES Letter quotes Joseph Smith calling the Book of Mormon "the most correct of any book on earth" and treats this as a claim of textual perfection.
The full quote: "the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."[14]
"Correct" modifies "precepts" — the doctrines and principles that bring people nearer to God. Not the spelling of every English word. The Book of Mormon itself has received thousands of textual corrections across editions — grammar, punctuation, spelling — without any doctrinal changes. That pattern is consistent with "correctness" referring to doctrinal reliability, not word-for-word inerrancy.
Revelation came in stages
Over half the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants — 77 sections — arrived during the JST period (1830-1833).[15] The Vision of the Three Degrees of Glory (D&C 76) came directly from JST work on John 5:29.
The JST wasn't a proofreading exercise. It was a revelatory catalyst — a process through which Joseph received new understanding "line upon line, precept upon precept" (D&C 98:12).
Expecting the 1829 Book of Mormon to contain insights from 1832 assumes God delivers everything at once. Nothing in scripture works that way. Nothing in Joseph Smith's experience did, either.
For how the broader pattern of KJV language in the Book of Mormon fits with the translation process — including the italic-word pattern and eyewitness accounts — see KJV Italics.
Bottom line: The JST isn't a word-for-word restoration of original text — leading scholars say it served multiple purposes including commentary, expansion, and new revelation. The Book of Mormon's Sermon at the Temple has dozens of deliberate changes from Matthew, and the one the CES Letter highlights — "without a cause" — actually aligns with the earliest Greek manuscripts against the KJV. One example built on a faulty premise doesn't make a case.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 3, p. 10. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 3, pp. 10-11. ↩︎
Kent P. Jackson, Understanding Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2022). https://rsc.byu.edu/book/understanding-joseph-smiths-translation-bible ↩︎
Robert J. Matthews, as discussed in "Robert J. Matthews and His Work with the Joseph Smith Translation," Religious Educator 5, no. 2 (2004). https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-5-no-2-2004/robert-j-matthews-his-work-joseph-smith-translation ↩︎
"Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/joseph-smith-translation-of-the-bible ↩︎
"The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible: As a Restoration of the Original Bible Text," FAIR. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/The_Bible/Joseph_Smith_Translation/As_a_restoration_of_the_original_Bible_text ↩︎
David A. LeFevre, "The Sermon on the Mount in the Joseph Smith Translation," in The Sermon on the Mount in Latter-day Scripture, ed. Gaye Strathearn et al. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010). https://rsc.byu.edu/sermon-mount-latter-day-scripture ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Sarah Allen, "The CES Letter Rebuttal, Part 2," FAIR Blog (August 26, 2021). https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blog/2021/08/26/the-ces-letter-rebuttal-part-2 ↩︎
Krister Stendahl, "The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi," in Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1978). https://rsc.byu.edu/reflections-mormonism/sermon-mount-third-nephi ↩︎
Daniel K. Judd and Allen W. Stoddard, "Adding and Taking Away 'Without a Cause' in Matthew 5:22," in How the New Testament Came to Be, ed. Kent P. Jackson and Frank F. Judd Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2006). https://rsc.byu.edu/how-new-testament-came-be/adding-taking-away-without-cause-matthew-522. See also John W. Welch, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990). ↩︎
Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 11. ↩︎
Scripture Central, "Without a Cause," Evidence Summary. The critical analysis by P. Wernberg-Moller identifying "without a cause" as a late scribal addition was published in 1956. https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/without-a-cause ↩︎
John W. Welch, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount: A Latter-day Saint Approach (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990). See also Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999). https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-did-jesus-deliver-a-version-of-the-sermon-on-the-mount-at-the-temple-in-bountiful ↩︎ ↩︎
Joseph Smith, History of the Church 4:461. The full quote continues: "and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book." ↩︎
"How Did the Joseph Smith Translation Serve as a Springboard for Many Revelations?" Scripture Central KnoWhy. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/how-did-the-joseph-smith-translation-serve-as-a-springboard-for-many-revelations ↩︎