Monday, April 1, 2019

2 Verses Missing from Genesis Chapter 1

Please ignore the date of this post. This is not a prank.

Joseph Smith restored 2 verses from the beginning of Genesis chapter 1 that you will not find in any other version of the Bible. He called it the "New Translation." The RLDS church (now called "The Community of Christ') calls it the Inspired Version. The LDS church calls it the Joseph Smith Translation. I would call it The Restored Text of the Bible.

Here are the 2 verses that you can label verse -1 and verse 0, or verse 0 and verse 00. They preceded what you will find in all other versions of the Old Testament. Joseph simply labeled them 1 and 2 so that his version of Genesis 1 has 33 verses instead of 31. 

0. And it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Behold, I reveal unto you concerning
this heaven and this earth;
write the words that I speak.

00. I am the Beginning and the End;
the Almighty God.
By mine Only Begotten I created these things.

I love the restoration of the Most High God speaking in the first person. Other bible translations have references to God in the third person, which I believe is less personal, less powerful, and immensely less profound.

I relish the inclusion of a reference to JESUS in the creation because there is more than one God at work. I believe the exclusion of CHRIST was done to create confusion about His divinity. I have no doubt that JESUS is divine. I believe He created this world after the pattern delivered to Him by His Father.

I thank Joseph for giving us the best possible narrative we are going to get, until the Brass Plates come forth. Whether the scriptures taken to the Americas via Lehi and Nephi were brass or bronze is trivial. They exist. Someday people are going to read them and see how flawed our present Hebrew Bibles (Old Testament) actually are.

If I were a Christian of any denomination, and I heard of Joseph's work on the Bible, I would at a minimum want to read it for myself. Most people today do not want to hear anything new, it might disrupt their flawed version of reality. They might have to repent, and if they repented they might find GOD.