Question for Jeff Bradshaw on In God’s Image and Likeness (cont.)

[David] In your introduction, you spend some good time addressing the fact that although Joseph spent three years working on his inspired translation of the Bible, a disproportionate amount of time was spent translating the first half of the Book of Genesis, including the chapters we know as the Book of Moses. Why do you feel this was the case? Was there something especially important to be learned from these chapters?

[Dr Jeffrey Bradshaw] While there are a variety of circumstantial factors that had their part to play in the fact that Genesis 1-24 received such a disproportionate amount of Joseph Smith’s time and attention as he translated the Bible, my own study and reflection on the matter led me to consider the content of the chapters themselves. For example, here Joseph would be introduced to the story of Enoch’s Zion, so relevant to the Saints’ upcoming efforts to establish a Zion in Missouri. Perhaps more importantly, however, he would have an opportunity to receive revelation relating to the Creation, the Fall, and the successive unfolding of the doctrines and ordinances of the New and Everlasting Covenant to Adam and Eve. In the first half of Genesis, he would also learn more about Noah, Abraham, and Melchizedek. One day it dawned upon me that, perhaps, the most important result of this translation process at the time was not the scripture itself, but the process of divine tutoring in temple-related themes that Joseph Smith may have received as an immediate follow-up to his translation of the Book of Mormon. Otherwise, assuming one believes that the Prophet was divinely directed in this work, as I do, how can one reconcile the fact that he was so urgently enjoined by the Lord to engage in the Bible translation so early in his ministry with the fact that so very little of the translation was eventually published during his lifetime?

If, indeed, the sequence of the JST translation was largely determined by its tutorial value, one might begin to ask interesting questions about why it was that as soon as the Prophet finished the translation of Genesis 1-24, the Lord asked him to jump to the New Testament—incidentally, a command that he obediently followed the very next day. As an aside, it is both striking and characteristic of the Prophet that he so quickly followed the instructions given in the revelation by abruptly changing his translation priorities. I like the way Bushman characterizes the faith that Joseph Smith had in his own revelations: “Judging by his actions, Joseph believed in the revelations more than anyone. From the beginning, he was his own best follower. Having the word of God at his back gave him enormous confidence” (R. L. Bushman, Rough Stone, p. 173; see also R. L. Bushman, Creation of the Sacred, p. 98).

One of many eye-opening experiences that I had that convinced me that Joseph Smith knew much more about temple covenants in the early 1830s than I had previously imagined was my study of D&C 84, in particular the verses relating to the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood. As I argue in Excursus 3 of the commentary, this revelation, received on 22-23 September 1832, succinctly describes a definite sequence of promised blessings that were not fully bestowed upon the Saints until more than ten years later in Nauvoo.

[David] If most of the translation was finished by 1833, why did it take Joseph until 1843 to have the first chapter of the Book of Moses published?

[Dr Jeffrey Bradshaw] Again, while one could quite appropriately cite all the circumstantial factors that led to delays in the publication of the Joseph Smith Translation, I have also been intrigued by evidence that seems to indicate that the Prophet regarded at least some portions of his work on the Bible to be of such a sacred nature that they were not to be immediately shared. Taking the example you mention of Moses 1, he was specifically commanded not to show it “unto any except them that believe until I command you” (Moses 1:42), and this may have had something to do with the fact that it was not printed until years after other selected excerpts from our book of Moses had appeared in church publications. As another example, in Bachman’s groundbreaking studies on the origins of D&C 132, which has not only to do with celestial marriage but also the whole context of temple work, he convincingly argued that nearly all of that section was revealed to the Prophet as he worked on the JST. This was more than a decade previous to 1843, when the revelation was first recorded (D. W. Bachman, New Light).

Even more striking is the following statement, which seems to indicate that Joseph Smith initially believed that, in sharp contrast to the incredible efforts that had recently been made to promulgate the Book of Mormon, the Lord did not even intend the JST to be published: “I would inform you that [the Bible translation] will not go from under my hand during my natural life for correction, revisal, or printing and the will of the Lord be done” (JS to WW Phelps, July 31, 1832, Jessee, PWJS, 287). Some of what the Prophet learned as he worked on the JST and other translation projects (e.g., the Book of Abraham) may have never been put to writing. Brigham Young is remembered as stating “that the Prophet before his death [spoke] about going through the translation of the scriptures again and perfecting it upon points of doctrine which the Lord had restrained him from giving in plainness and fulness at the time” (Cited in G. Q. Cannon, Life, pp. 147-148). As other examples in which the Prophet only gave very abbreviated summaries of what, from historical and circumstantial evidence, are clearly much more extensive revelations, we have D&C 87 and D&C 110.

[David] Why do you think that the Book of Moses is the only section of the Old Testament that we have from the Inspired Version preserved in our Pearl of Great Price?

[Dr Jeffrey Bradshaw] The Book of Moses is itself a pearl of great price—it is nothing less than a prophetic exposition of the entire plan of salvation from start to finish, all packed into eight chapters. Hugh Nibley says it far more eloquently than I ever could:

“After all these years it comes as a surprise for me to learn that the Book of Moses appeared in the same year as the publication of the Book of Mormon, the first chapter being delivered in the very month of its publication. And it is a totally different kind of book, in another style, from another world. It puts to rest the silly arguments about who really wrote the Book of Mormon, for whoever produced the Book of Moses would have been even a greater genius.…

Was the great last dispensation to be brought on with old shopworn forms and ceremonies? A dispensation is a period of the world’s history during which the church of God with its covenants and ordinances is upon the earth; in the apocalyptic scheme of things it is a comparatively brief period of light following a long period of darkness. What would be an appropriate ensign to announce and inaugurate such a happy time? The single civilization that embraces the world today, whichever way it turns, sees only itself, a great all-confining cliché in which one can think only of what is being thought and do only what is being done. It cannot even imagine a new dispensation, let alone supply one. Like a heavy galleon it labors on into ever deepening gloom, prodded on its way from time to time by promising puffs of a New Order, New Method, New Education, New Deal, New Life, New Cure, New Light, New Way, etc., but ever and again losing momentum as the fleeting winds quickly blow themselves out, leaving the old scow to wallow on as best it may towards the dawn of nothing… From what source can we look for comfort? From none on this distracted globe.

It came from the outside, the Mormons said: The long, long silence was broken by an angel from on high. At once the whole world exploded in one long hoot of derision—adequate witness to the total novelty of the thing; here was something utterly alien and retrograde to everything the world taught and believed… [No one could] be asked to take him seriously were it not that he came before an unbelieving world with boundless riches in his hands.” (H. W. Nibley, To Open, http://mi.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=71).

TO BE CONTINUED…

For the first of this series of posts from my interview with author Jeffrey Bradshaw, see here.