The following are excerpts from:
W. W. Phelps, Almanac for the
Year 1861: Being the Thirty Second Year of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints. (From April 6, 1830) (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Office, 1861)
TRANSLATORS’ BLUNDERS
The
Bible contains a great many blunders which causes the unlearned to doubt the
divine authority of revelation. The Book of Mormon, the Saints true
interpreter, says all the most plain and precious parts of Scripture were taken
away”—by the translators. To prove this—we will introduce the last paragraph
and sentence of the 6th chapter of Matthew,--King James’ translation): The
Christian edition: “Sufficient unto the day “is” the evil thereof.”
Who,
on reading the above, can guess at any better meaning than—Sufficient unto God
is the devil. In the Book of Mormon, the same par. Reads:--Sufficient “is” the
day unto the evil thereof; which is the naked truth.
In
Amos, 3d and 6th verse, last clause: “Shall there be evil in a city, and the
Lord hath not done it?
This
comes pretty near putting a translation to a dead language that makes God the
first sinner;--but the simple reading from the old Hebrew text, is, “can there
be evil in a city where the Lord hath not labored?
In
the 4th chapter and 24th verse of St. John’s gospel—The Greek reads: Pneuma o
Theos kai tous proskunountas auton en pneumatic kai aletheia dei proskunein.
Which the translators, by adding “is” and “him:” made God “is” a spirit, and
they that worship him must worship “him” in spirit and truth.
GREEK—Pneumo
o Theois kai tous
The
Spirit God and they
[Greek]
proskunountas auton en pneumatic
That
worships him, in Spirit
[Greek]
kai aletheia, dei proskunein
And
truth must unite to worship.
--All
TRUTH without the quotations.
Jesus
said, “after his resurrection, that he had “flesh and bones,” and a spirit had
not, which makes God a perfected man.—[Luke c. 24, v. 39. (p. 22; notice the Phelps
imputes the blame for the removal of the and precious truths to biblical
translators; for more on John 4:24 and Luke 24:39, see Lynn
Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment)
After providing a translation of Dan
4:21-34, Phelps added this note about the relationship between angels, God, and
time:
N.
B. Joseph Smith, the Prophet, said, that the day of an angel was one year, a
week seven years a mouth thirty years: a time, three hundred and sixty years;
times, seven hundred and twenty years; half a time, one hundred and eighty
years, time, times and a half a time, one thousand two hundred and sixty years;
So “seven times” is two thousand five hundred and twenty years. A day with the
Lord God in Kolob is one thousand years.
Nebuchadnezzar,
which means “the judge puts out to pasture,” was “expelled” about 570 years
before Christ was born, and we will begin “to live the second life” some 40 or
50 years after the Millennium commences. (p. 24)
After providing a translation of
Dan 12, Phelps adds the following note:
MEM.—The
1260 years, after the abomination of desolation spreads, and the church or the
woman flees into the wilderness, added to the 1290 years after the ten tribes
remove themselves, make 2550 years; then take 720 years, the length of time
before the Christian era, when the ten tribes went away, and we have 1830 for
Joseph Smith to bring out the Book of Mormon and organise the church April 6.
Again,
add the 1290 years to 1335 years, and we have 2625 years; these lessened by the
720 again, give 1905 years for Daniel to rise in his glory in the Millennium.
Truly facts are favorable witnesses for revelations. (p. 27; also notice the
allusion to Rev 12 and the equation of the “woman” with the “Church”)
The KJV of Psa 85:11 (a “proof-text”
used sometimes as a prophecy of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon) reads
that "ruth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look
down from heaven" as does the JST. Phelps provides the following
translation of v. 11 which makes the texts relationship to this event a bit
more explicit:
Truth
shall spring up out of the earth, and righteousness come down from
the heavens. (p. 29)