Kent P. Jackson

“English-speaking Latter-day Saints are used to seeing each verse of the scriptures start a new paragraph. But this isn’t how the scriptures were written, and it isn’t how they’ve always been. Books in the Old and New Testaments were written with some internal divisions but not with the chapters as we have them today. The numbered chapters in modern Bibles are, by biblical standards, a rather recent development, having been inserted into the Bible only in the thirteenth century AD.” Kent P. Jackson

Abstract: A recent article alleges that in creating the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith copied Isaiah passages out of the Bible commentary of Scottish theologian Adam Clarke. The author of the article alleges that while doing so, the Prophet edited those passages based on suggestions from Clarke’s cross references and commentary. This explains the differences between Isaiah in the King James translation and the corresponding Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon. A careful analysis of the Isaiah verses in the Book of Mormon and Clarke’s commentary shows that this claim is not true.

Review of Stephen O. Smoot and Brian C. Passantino, eds., Joseph Smith’s Uncanonized Revelations (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2024). 184 pages, $24.99 (hardcover). Abstract: In an important new volume, we now have easy access to revelations received by the Prophet Joseph Smith that were not included in the Doctrine […]

Abstract: What would it have been like to be among the shepherds who heard the angelic announcement of Jesus’s birth? Their story has special meaning for many of us because we feel a kinship with those shepherds through shared anonymity and shared hope and witness. By means of two favorite hymns, “Angels We Have Heard […]

Abstract: This contribution focuses on the earliest and one of the most significant chapters of the Book of Moses: Moses 1, sometimes called the “Visions of Moses.” Kent Jackson summarizes the sources available relating to the production of this chapter, illuminating obscure corners of its often misunderstood background with his extensive knowledge of the history, […]

[Page 15] Abstract: Authors of two recent articles believe they have found evidence that Joseph Smith, in preparing his revision of the Bible, drew ideas from a contemporary Bible commentary by British scholar Adam Clarke. The evidence, however, does not bear out this claim. I believe that none of the examples they provide can be […]

Abstract: Those who follow world events are painfully aware that peace in the Middle East — and particularly in the Holy Land — seems eternally elusive. From a distance we watch events unfold which we are not able to fully comprehend because of that very distance. There are individuals who are burdened with the devastating […]