The Joseph Smith Translation and Adam Clarke's commentary

The JST revised the KJV without any ancient text; its readings rarely match the manuscripts, and a BYU study found dozens of changes tracking Adam Clarke's commentary.

What the Church claims

The JST restores lost or corrupted biblical text by revelation.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. That the JST is not a recovery of ancient text is close to settled: there is no manuscript support for it anywhere, and its changes track Joseph's own theological development. The narrower question of direct dependence on Adam Clarke's commentary is unresolved after Jackson's rebuttal. Weak rather than untenable, because 'by revelation' is not a claim evidence can reach.

The record

  • The Bible revision ran June 1830-July 1833, starting with Genesis (the 'Visions of Moses', June 1830, in Cowdery's hand, became Moses 1), using the KJV and no Hebrew or Greek sources, lexicons or biblical languages; scribes included Cowdery, John Whitmer, Emma Smith, Rigdon and Williams; more than 3,000 verses were revised. The Church History Topics page and JSP say it was 'not a Bible translation in the conventional sense'.
  • The manuscripts stayed with Emma and passed to the RLDS Church, which published the 'Inspired Version' in 1867; the LDS Church printed excerpts as footnotes in 1979; on 2024-03-05 Community of Christ transferred the Bible-translation manuscripts and related artifacts to the LDS Church along with the Kirtland Temple.
  • Kevin Barney (Dialogue 1986) compared JST changes with ancient manuscripts: most JST readings have no ancient support, and those that do usually align with secondary scribal readings; 'unlikely (with very few exceptions)' to be literal restoration.
  • Thomas Wayment (BYU) and Haley Wilson-Lemmon reported in BYU's Journal of Undergraduate Research (2017-03-16) that parallels between the JST and Adam Clarke's commentary were too numerous and explicit to be coincidence; full studies appeared in Producing Ancient Scripture (Univ. of Utah Press, 2020, pp. 262-84) and Wayment's 'Joseph Smith, Adam Clarke, and the Making of a Bible Revision' (Journal of Mormon History 46:3, July 2020).
  • Kent P. Jackson (Interpreter 40, 2020-10-02, pp. 15-60) examined every proposed parallel (30+, across Exodus, Psalms, Matthew, Romans, Revelation, etc.) and argued none requires Clarke: the changes reflect Joseph's habitual removal of italics, Gospel harmonization and common sense; 'The few overlaps that do exist are vague, superficial, and coincidental.'
  • The Church History Topics page on the JST does not mention Clarke or any commentary.

The moving target

  • 1830-1833: Called the work a 'translation' done by revelation; used the KJV as base.
  • 1979: Included JST excerpts as footnotes and an appendix in its KJV edition.
  • n.d. (current): Describes the JST as inspired revision (grammar, clarification, doctrine, restored passages); silent on commentaries.
  • 2024-03-05: Acquired the original JST manuscripts from Community of Christ.

The exchange

Kent P. Jackson (Interpreter 40, 2020)

No JST change can be traced to Clarke; the parallels are statistically negligible against the size of Clarke's commentary, and most are explained by Joseph's known editing habits.

The answer: Jackson's article is a serious, passage-by-passage rebuttal and it weakened the strongest version of the Clarke claim; the question is now genuinely contested, and Wayment's own texts and any published reply to Jackson have not been examined here. But Jackson's argument is defensive: even if Clarke is removed, the JST remains an English-language revision of the KJV whose readings, per Barney, almost never match the ancient manuscripts and sometimes 'correct' the text in directions the manuscripts contradict.

What they get right: Jackson may well be right on several specific parallels; the Clarke thesis should be reported as disputed, not established.

Church History Topics; Barney's own conclusion; JSP

The JST was never meant as textual restoration in every case; it is inspired commentary, harmonization and doctrinal clarification, as the Church's own description says.

The answer: This concedes the critical point: the JST does not recover an original Bible. It also changes what 'translation' meant to Joseph, with the same consequences for the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham that the catalyst theory produces.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

The JST was produced from an English Bible with no ancient text in the room. Barney's comparison shows its readings almost never coincide with the manuscript evidence and, when they do, usually with late scribal variants. That is the profile of a modern revision, not a restoration. The Clarke study adds a plausible channel for specific changes; Jackson's rebuttal shows the case is not closed, but it does not rehabilitate the JST as ancient text. The Church's current description quietly agrees: inspired revision, clarification, modernized language.

The apologetic case

Joseph never claimed philological access to Hebrew or Greek; the JST is inspired revision, and its value is doctrinal. The Clarke thesis rests on a handful of vague overlaps that a careful reading (Jackson) dissolves. Even critics like Barney allow that a few JST readings do have ancient support.

What would change this

Ancient manuscript discoveries matching distinctive JST readings; for the Clarke question, a published reply by Wayment addressing Jackson passage by passage.

Closely related

Sources

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