By Carrie Rowe
A BYU study found ancient variants of the New Testament have significant textual agreements with the Joseph Smith Translation.
Thomas Wayment, a BYU professor of ancient scripture, presented the research Thursday, Feb. 12, as part of the House of Learning Lecture Series in the library.
Though the study will not be completed until next year, Wayment said there is strong support for some passages agreeing verbatim with ancient texts. There are roughly 250,000 variants of the New Testament in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syrian, Armenian and Georgian. More are discovered and made available each year. Wayment''s team members are pioneers in this research, which is causing them to rethink how New Testament and Book of Mormon textual criticism is completed.
'It goes to the question of the origins of the New Testament and how authors of the New Testament wrote their books,' Wayment said. 'Did they use sources, and what did they have available to them?'
Variants of the New Testament come in several degrees -- not all of which are doctrinal changes. Scribes often attempted to clarify and clean up the language of the New Testament and to fix errors in locations and spelling.
Because the JST originated in English and is linked so closely with the King James Version, Wayment said the research has presented several challenges. No text critic has ever been trained in using the JST and there is not variant support for all passages. Despite this, there is much agreement.
The King James Version is a combination of several ancient manuscripts, and during compilation, scribes chose between these variants. Wayment said the JST combines variants as well. Many traditional problems in the New Testament were harmonized through changes made by Joseph Smith. These changes do not correlate with any one text, but have different supports in each manuscript.
'The study raises larger questions of Joseph''s feeling about the King James text,' Wayment said.
D.J. Rosevear, a junior from Sandy, majoring in communications, said he found the discussion of the manuscripts and translations interesting.
'We can have a spiritual confirmation that what Joseph Smith did was right and correct, but it''s also kind of neat to see it from a scholarly standpoint as well,' Rosevear said.
Chris Haney, a master''s student in comparative literature, who worked on the project with Wayment, said the newness of the endeavor was a main motivation in entering the field.
'Going into it, we really didn''t have any idea of what we''d find exactly,' Haney said. 'We hope to come up with a reference manual for future investigations into the changes made in the JST and how it influences doctrine.'
As an experienced textual critic, Wayment said the study was definitely legitimate in the world of text scholarship. Mike Tueller, a professor of humanities, classics and comparative literature, said though he found the presentation interesting, he didn''t view the JST through a critical lens.
'I think that if you apply normal text critical techniques, it''s not nearly as crucial as people would like,' he said.