...as far as it is translated correctly...

The 8th Article of Faith states:

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.

The Articles of Faith were written in 1842, about 166 years ago!

I just received a copy of "Misquoting Jesus", subtitled "The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" by Bart D. Ehrman.

From the introduction:

This brings me back to my interest in the manuscripts of the New Testament and the study of those manuscripts in the field known as textual criticism. It is my conviction that textual criticism is a compelling and intriguing field of study of real importance not just to scholars but to everyone with an interest in the Bible. What is striking, however, is that most readers - even those interested in Christianity, in the Bible, in
biblical studies, both those who believe the Bible is inerrant and those who do not - know almost nothing about textual criticism. And it is not difficult to see why. Despite the fact that this has been a topic of sustained scholarship now for more than three hundred years, there is scarcely a single book written about it for the lay audience - that is, for those who know nothing about it, who don't have the Greek and other languages necessary for the in-depth study of it, who do not realize there is even a "problem" with the text, but who would be intrigued to learn both what the problems are and how scholars have set about dealing with them.

That is the kind of book this is - to my knowledge, the first of its kind. It is written for people who know nothing about textual criticism but who might like to learn something about how scribes were changing scripture and about how we can recognize where they did so. It is written based on my thirty years of thinking about the subject, and from the perspective that I now have, having gone through such radical transformations of my own views of the Bible. It is written for anyone who might be interested in seeing how we got our New Testament, seeing how in some instances we don't even know what the words of the original writers were, seeing in what interesting ways these words occasionally got changed, and seeing how we might, through the application of some rather rigorous methods of analysis, reconstruct what those original words actually were.

If textual criticism of the New Testament has been going on for 300 years, perhaps Joseph Smith had good reason for adding "as far as it is translated correctly" to the 8th Article of Faith. I wonder how prevalent the knowledge of such translation errors in the Bible were in the 1830s and 1840s?

While there are no doubt many traditional Christians that believe the Bible they read is inerrant, others who know better say rather that the original text of the Bible was inspired and perhaps inerrant, but not the Bible we have today.

The great gift of the Book of Mormon, is that it provides a second witness of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Confirming the account, provided by the New Testament, that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and the Savior of all mankind, to a doubting world.