Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity

by Michael Hubbard MacKay (Editor), Mark Ashurst-McGee (Editor), Brian Hauglid (Editor)

Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the broader Latter-day Saint movement, produced several volumes of scripture between 1829, when he translated the Book of Mormon, and 1844, when he was murdered. The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, is well known. Less read and studied are the subsequent texts that Smith translated after the Book of Mormon, texts that he presented as the writings of ancient Old World and New World prophets. These works were published and received by early Latter-day Saints as prophetic scripture that included important revelations and commandments from God.
 
This collaborative volume is the first to study Joseph Smith’s translation projects in their entirety. In this carefully curated collection, experts contribute cutting-edge research and incisive analysis. The chapters explore Smith’s translation projects in focused detail and in broad contexts, as well as in comparison and conversation with one another. Authors approach Smith’s sacred texts historically, textually, linguistically, and literarily to offer a multidisciplinary view. Scrupulous examination of the production and content of Smith’s translations opens new avenues for understanding the foundations of Mormonism, provides insight on aspects of early American religious culture, and helps conceptualize the production and transmission of sacred texts.
 

Genres: Religion, Mormonism

440 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2020

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not an academic nor a historian, but I can tell that this book is a game changer. It contains literally dozens of new insights on Joseph Smith's various "translation projects," challenging many of the ideas we have come to accept about how JS translated ancient texts, even those ideas that have only come into the popular knowledge of church members in the last several years. The book is a little pricey, but every chapter taught me something I did not know before (many of the chapters had several new insights). Particularly enlightening were the chapters on (1) the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and JS's apparent use of the Clarke Commentary, (2) the role of women in the translation of the Book of Mormon, (3) the timing of JS's creation of the GAEL and the translation of the Book of Abraham, particularly in light of the evidence of his Hebrew studies, and (4) JS's translation of the Kinderhook Plates. Some of the chapters were simply paradigm shifting, like the one comparing the definitions of the word "translated" to help understand what might have been going on in JS's head when he was dictating the Book of Mormon.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a series of essays on the many scriptural translation projects of Joseph Smith. This is a great resource for probing hypotheses and evidences about how Joseph Smith produced scripture, what was going through Joseph's mind, and what he intended by "translation". The book shared some interesting paradigms and recently-uncovered information on methods and meaning. It is a great resource that enlightened my understanding and broadened my horizon. I gave it four stars instead of five because of a tendency of some chapters to state as fact recent arguments that are still debated. The case in point is the statement of fact that Joseph Smith definitely use Adam Clarke's commentary in the New Testament revision, even through there have recently been some good arguments against this (see Kent Jackson's article in The Interpreter, vol 40). This criticism aside, Producing Ancient Scripture, is a wondeful scholarly approach into Joseph Smith's worldview with both breadth and depth.

[Clayton Chase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative exploration of what translation by the gift and power of god may have really been like. Clearly, the informed intellect was and is a productive seed bed for inspiration and comes to both our mind and our heart.

[Steven Garff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of fantastic, cutting-edge, and revolutionary scholarship in Mormon Studies.

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to review a book like this, since it's a collection of papers organized around a vague theme of Joseph Smith's "translation" projects. But I found each of them to be enlightening, and a few of them a little paradigm shifting, and a few of them enraging (at least in the sense that anti-Mormon writers do so very very little research before jumping to their sweeping conclusions based on a single incident or misunderstanding, so I get enraged at them).

Of note were the essays that define "translation" in Joseph Smith's day (not exactly the same as ours), the one about Lucy Harris (not as antagonistic to the nascent church as we've been led to believe), on one section of the D&C as being pseudepigrapha (not sure I buy that), and the kinderhook plates (not as serious an attempt to translate them as people might believe). But your mileage may vary on which one you liked the most.