The Articles of Faith are 13 articles that briefly sum up the very basic points of Latter-day Saint doctrine. They can be found in the Pearl of Great Price in the LDS canon (an online edition from the Church’s Website can be found here).
The eighth article of faith states the following (emphasis added):
We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
Historically, there have been no consensus among Latter-day Saints what this phrase means—some LDS believe this refers to the translation, from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into another language being correct, while others hold that the term “translated” refers to the redaction of the biblical texts (informed by things such as textual criticism). My own view has been to take this article of faith to be both. However, this post will briefly look at correctly translating the underlying original language texts of the Bible.
I studied Hebrew and Greek at both an undergraduate and postgraduate level in a Catholic theological institution, and continue to have an interest in these languages (especially Greek) since then, and find such things to be “fun” (probably more of an indication of my being a theology nerd than anything else . . .) as well as being of great benefit as one who enjoys scriptural exegesis and LDS apologetics. Often one finds that the English translation one uses sometimes misses some of the nuances of the text, resulting in some of the purported “errors” in the biblical texts one finds in some of the literature (for the record, I reject inerrancy of Scripture [not just the Bible], but find some of the “proofs” of errancy with respect to the purported original texts to be wanting). I found the following note in a book by Robert H. Stein, Jesus, the Temple, and the Coming Son of Man (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2014), p. 51 n. 8 that highlights the importance of reverting back to the Greek of the New Testament:
One of the alleged geographical errors of Mark is found in 7:31. Here Mark refers to Jesus returning from the region of Tyre “by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.” If one looks at a map of these areas it would be like going from Portland to Denver by way of Seattle and the Great Plains . . . However, in describing the journey Mark first lists the place of departure (Tyre), then the goal of the journey which is indicated by “toward” (eis) (the Sea of Galilee) and that this was “by way of” Sidon and the Decapolis. We have the same claim that Mark erred geographically in 10:1 where we read, “He left that place [Capernaum, 9:33] and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” Once again we should note that mark first lists the point of departure (“that place”), then the goal of the journey “to” (eis) (the region of Judea), by way of the eastern side of the Jordan River. (This was a frequent route used by Jews travelling from Galilee to Judea or the reverse in order to avoid going through Samaria.) A final example is found in 11:1 where Jesus and the disciples “were approaching [eis] Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives.” If one again observes that Mark mentions Jerusalem first because it is the ultimate goal of their journey, not because it is the first place they will come to, the alleged error disappears.
I also found the following warning about being careful that one’s attempt at “harmonisation” of Scripture is not just harmonisation for the sake of harmonisation, but to be exegetically sound and consistent (p. 107 n. 12):
The present writer once experienced a young doctoral student seeking to harmonise two apparently contradictory biblical passages and heard the professor dismiss his explanation saying “Das is nur Harmonizerung!” No reasons were presented as to why the explanation was flawed or incorrect. It was enough to say “That is simply a harmonisation” to dismiss the argument. Suggested harmonisation or explanations of biblical passages are neither right nor wrong because they are harmonisations. The rightness or wrongness of such attempts depends on the rightness or wrongness of the reasoning of such explanations.
