Articles of Faith 8

Sources

• Articles of Faith 1:8, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (opens in a new tab)

Objections & responses

Every Christian accepts the Bible “as far as it is translated correctly”; nobody thinks a mistranslation is the word of God. Isn’t the Article of Faith unremarkable?

On its face, yes. The distinctive content comes from 1 Nephi 13 and from the Joseph Smith Translation, which revised the biblical text on the premise that content had been removed; that is a claim about transmission, not translation. The two sources are paired here for that reason: Article 8 sounds like ordinary caution, and the texts around it show that translated correctly carries a much larger claim about what was lost.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• The claim that “plain and precious things” were removed from the Bible has no manuscript support: the New Testament text is well preserved, and the Joseph Smith Translation’s changes match no known copy.