As Latter-day Saints study the Old Testament as part of the 2026 “Come, Follow Me” curriculum, a General Handbook update provides guidance on using different editions and translations of the Holy Bible.
On this Church News podcast, Brigham Young University associate professor of ancient scripture, Josh Sears, joins Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen to discuss the flexibility in using Bible translations in home and Church studies, helping members understand doctrine and seek truth in the sacred works.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Josh Sears: But what I love is that the scriptures, at the end of the day, they’re not the end-all be-all of my discipleship. It’s Jesus Christ. And when I learn to use the scriptures as a tool or a window or some way to connect with the Savior, that’s where they have their greatest power. And I’m excited for the Old Testament year coming up because we believe, as modern prophets have taught, that the Lord in the Old Testament, or Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the premortal Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful opportunity we have to be able to learn about Him, just stories left and right of Jehovah teaching people, correcting people, saving people, giving revelation to people. And as we go out throughout this year, this is just a wonderful opportunity to see Jesus as the God of Israel, making covenants and keeping the covenants that He has made and being faithful to His people.
1:07
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be studying the Old Testament in 2026 as part of their “Come, Follow Me” study. In December of 2025, the Church provided new guidance on the use of different editions and translations of the Holy Bible. This update was published in the Church’s General Handbook and allows greater flexibility in use of the Bible in home and church studies, helping members understand doctrine and seek truth in various sacred works.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, Professor Josh Sears, an associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, shares his insights into the various translations of the Bible and how the Old Testament bears witness of the Savior with teachings applicable today and how it can all be understood through the Spirit of God.
Professor Sears, thanks for joining us today on the Church News podcast.
Josh Sears: Thanks for having me. I’m so excited.
2:11
Jon Ryan Jensen: We’re really excited to talk about this, especially on the heels of an announcement that I think some were perhaps caught off guard by, to have the opportunity to be studying new or different versions to them of the scriptures as we jump into the Old Testament this year.
And as we begin to have that conversation today, can you share a little bit of your background in the scriptures and scripture translation?
2:33
Josh Sears: Yeah, so I’m a biblical scholar, which always sounds pompous when you say it out loud. But I have a bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, and I get to teach in religious education at Brigham Young University. So I teach classes on the Book of Mormon as well as the Old and New Testaments, and it’s just a dream job. I love it. I love getting to study the scriptures every day and to engage with students about it and just spend so much time in the word of God. It’s really a dream come true. So that’s what I get to do, and it’s a lot of fun and a lot of work, and it’s just wonderful.
3:05
Jon Ryan Jensen: Before we talk about the topic for the day, I would love to hear your perspective, though, on how you kind of bridge that gap between academic study of the scriptures and academic teaching of the scriptures versus studying the scriptures for your own personal testimony and gain. Because I think that’s part of what we look at when we go to the Old Testament, is there’re so many details.
But how do you kind of weigh those two out in your life?
3:29
Josh Sears: Yeah, I find that when I go to the scriptures, I’m always asking questions, and my academic training leads me to ask certain kinds of questions, like, “What’s the historical background of this?” or “What’s the cultural metaphor being used here?” And those gears are always turning. And then sometimes I just have to stop and say, “You know what? Right now, I’m going to put that aside, and I’ve got to think about my ministering visit that I have Tuesday night” or “I’ve got a lesson on Sunday” or “I’ve got family scripture study tonight with my kids.” So I have to look at the scriptures asking questions about that: “What do my kids need right now? What do the people I minister to need?” and asking those questions.
These things crisscross back and forth. One type of questions will lead to the other. But I really find that when I take the time to pray and be thinking about the issues that are challenging to me and the people that I’m working with, that the Holy Ghost inhabits that space. So I love to approach the scriptures from those different angles and find that they really mutually reinforce each other.
4:22
Jon Ryan Jensen: I’m glad that you mentioned prayer, because that’s one of the first questions that I want to start with. When you go back to the beginning of how so many members of the Church learn about the Restoration of the gospel, we start with the story of Joseph Smith, and that story frequently goes to verses in the Bible that he read and felt inspired or compelled to then go and pray and have the — he didn’t know at the time, but he would eventually have his First Vision experience.
So, when you think about that, do you know what version of the Bible he was reading, or do you have some context for us on maybe how study of the Bible and scriptures has evolved over time, then or before?
5:03
Josh Sears: Yeah, Joseph was using the King James translation, which was the standard translation that in America at the time most people were using. They were just starting to experiment with more modern English translations. So he’s using the King James Version. And later in his life, he would update the King James Version, and he would work on that. And what Joseph was doing was part of a long history where God has given revelation to His children, and those revelations have had to be written and recorded and preserved and translated in order to communicate what God wanted His children to know.
So, I’ll try to just recap some of this history very briefly, and it goes back further than I think most people think, because even back in the times of the Old Testament, they were having to translate the revelations that came from the Lord. So, for just a little bit of context, most of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. But Hebrew was a language they didn’t develop until about the 12th century B.C. It started as a dialect of a language we call Canaanite and grew into its own distinctive language.
And because Hebrew didn’t originate until that point of time, that means that, for example, Adam and Eve didn’t speak Hebrew, neither did Enoch or Noah or Abraham or even Moses. Moses is on the scene just a little bit before this. So when you have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and all the other books, and they are written in the Hebrew language, the Israelites that are writing down these stories and recording these revelations of their ancestors and these figures that came before, they are already having to describe earlier conversations in translation, and they’re already having to take any records they had from Moses or others and translate them into Hebrew to write it down.
So people today like to refer to the “original Hebrew” when we’re looking at the Old Testament, and they don’t realize there’s layers even before that, because even translation probably had to exist as far back as that to record these things in Hebrew in the Old Testament. And before the Old Testament is even over, already the Jewish people are starting to speak new languages. So some of the Jews were taken to Babylon and learned Aramaic, and then they can’t understand their Hebrew scriptures.
So, there’s an interesting passage, for example, in the book of Nehemiah, chapter 8, verse 8, where some of these people are gathered together, and the priest and scribe Ezra gets up to help explain the scriptures to them. And Nehemiah, chapter 8, verse 8, says, “So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” And there’s different ways to interpret what was going on there. Maybe he was just providing commentary to help them. But one very ancient Jewish tradition says that what was going on is that Ezra was translating from the Hebrew of the scriptures to Aramaic so that these Jews who now spoke a different language could understand it. And this is one of your earliest examples of trying to make the word of God accessible to people in new contexts.
And this just kept going. Eventually, a lot of Jews live in Egypt and Rome and Athens, and they speak Greek, and they can’t understand Hebrew or Aramaic. So a couple hundred years before Jesus, they made a translation of the Old Testament into Greek. We call it the Septuagint. Then early Christians, they are writing the New Testament in Greek, because many of them speak Greek, and they’re using this Greek Septuagint for their Old Testament Bible, not the original Hebrew. And then eventually, Christians start speaking Latin predominantly. So these Latin-speaking Christians can’t understand their scriptures in Greek anymore, Old or New Testaments. So Jerome translates the Bible into the Latin Vulgate. Now yes, they can read the word of God again in a language that’s familiar to them.
And of course, language keeps going. So eventually most Christians aren’t speaking Latin natively anymore. They speak German and English and French and Spanish and all these other languages. So, you have people that start trying to translate the Bible into those languages. So, for example, William Tyndale from England, or Casiodoro de Reina from Spain or Martin Luther from Germany, bringing the Bible and updating it once again so that people can understand in their own tongue. The King James Version is an update of an update of an update of William Tyndale’s translations and was trying to, again, make the Bible accessible to people.
And of course, it didn’t stop there. Language kept going. So, by Joseph Smith’s day — to circle back to where we started — the Prophet Joseph Smith has the King James Version, and the language is several hundred years old by the time he gets to it. So the Prophet Joseph makes his own rendition of the Old and New Testaments that we call the Joseph Smith Translation today.
And one impulse that you see in the Prophet’s work that we tend to not notice, because we focus on the doctrinal corrections and the doctrinal additions that he made, is that Joseph had an impulse to modernize the English of the King James Version. So, for example, there’s places where the King James might say, “Wot,” w-o-t, which is not a word that we use anymore, and they didn’t use it in Joseph’s day. And it means “to know,” k-n-o-w, like to know an idea. So Joseph, as he was going, would change “wot” to “know.” And other places it would have a verbal form like “saith,” and he’d change it to “said,” something that’s more contemporary to his time. And he’s not systematic about this. He’s not trying to find every example of that older language.
Jon Ryan Jensen: But in that moment, he would say, “This is going to be helpful.”
10:20
Josh Sears: Yeah, in that moment, this is clearly a pattern you can see as you go through, that if there’s an older English form or an older English word, he would often make it more contemporary. So he was trying to move it in that direction. And I can’t ask Joseph, but I suspect that’s because he wanted the scriptures to be accessible, to be something people could understand without having to go to a dictionary every verse. So that was clearly an impulse on his part.
And throughout the history of the Church, we have other examples of trying to keep the accessibility. So, in 1979, the Church came out with its own LDS edition of the King James Bible, and they were using an old translation, to be sure, but there was a lot of effort put into those footnotes to have alternate or corrected translations of the Hebrew and the Greek, or those notes that say “or” and “i.e.” that give a different English take or an updated English understanding. So there was an attempt there, very clearly, that while we’re sticking with this traditional translation for a bunch of good reasons, we want it to be as accessible as possible.
11:23
Jon Ryan Jensen: I remember that from my seminary days, when you’re going through seminary, we spent as much time in the footnotes as we did in the verses, just to try to get that additional context. And so that was really helpful. And I’m really interested in that concept that you just talked about of the different epochs, the different dispensations of time, having had perhaps different languages of their own as well. I hadn’t really considered that part, especially because we have — it seems small, but we’re covering so much time in that Old Testament. And so that’s a great insight as we go into 2026.
11:51
Josh Sears: Yeah, the reality is language is always changing. I’ll complain when I can’t understand what my middle school and high school kids are saying, because they’ve got their slang.
Jon Ryan Jensen: I’m in that same boat.
Josh Sears: Yeah, and it makes me realize what I must have sounded like to my own parents when I was their age. But language just keeps evolving. That’s a natural thing, and that’s nothing to be afraid of. That’s just how language works. And we see that throughout history, that as language of the scriptures gets too far removed from what people are speaking, there’s always a need to update and modernize.
We even see this with the Church’s recent translation efforts in non-English languages, just to talk about that briefly, but the Church came out with its own Spanish translation in 2009 and its own Portuguese translation in 2015. And in each case, what the Church did was took an old translation in Spanish and Portuguese, one that was in the public domain that we could use, and it was traditional and respected, but it was also getting antiquated in the language. So in each case, what they did was modernize the language. So, I spent a lot of time in the Spanish — because I speak Spanish from my mission — looking at the original translation, the Reina Valera that the Church started with.
12:55
Jon Ryan Jensen: Which was a 1960 version, if I remember it right.
Josh Sears: It’s even older. It was from 1909.
Jon Ryan Jensen: Oh, wow.
Josh Sears: Yeah, they had to go back to a version that was public domain, that wasn’t copyrighted. So a 1909 version of the Reina Valera, which is an update of one back to the 1500s and 1600s. So, the Church, when it was updating this, I could very clearly see they wanted to make sure this was accessible, because there’s some Spanish verbal forms that people don’t use anymore, so they modernized those. And there’s some words that made sense a hundred years ago in Spanish but people aren’t really using today, and so they would update that word.
And so I thought that what they did was really brilliant. They created a beautiful Spanish translation that’s not informal, and it’s not silly, it’s not overly slangy, it’s still dignified, but it is in Spanish that people can pick up and they can understand. So in those cases, too, I see the Church making this effort to try to make the word of God accessible to people.
So, when the announcement came about the handbook updates, that we’re going to be more flexible and allow for a variety of translations to work alongside the King James, it didn’t really surprise me, because to me, this was in align with this trajectory that we’ve had since the roots of the Restoration to make sure people can understand the scriptures.
14:07
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, with all of these new editions that we are able to study, they’re not all being included on the Church’s website.
So, where would people go to study from those books?
Josh Sears: Yeah, one option is to go to a bookstore or an online retailer, and there’s, of course, print editions of many translations one can get. And they come in a variety of shapes and sizes and pictures and no pictures, and there’s an endless supply, because Bibles are a huge market, especially in America.
But people — I want to stress — don’t have to spend money for any of these resources. Sometimes budgets are tight, and that’s understandable, but there are a variety of free websites and free apps that one can get on a phone or a tablet that will have modern English translations of the Bible. And several will even allow you to pull up side-by-side comparisons, so you could have the King James pulled up on the left and a modern one on the right and even go back and forth there.
So no one needs to spend money on this. Because our Christian brothers and sisters have been so wonderful in trying to spread the word of God as liberally as they can, there are a variety of free resources available.
15:08
Jon Ryan Jensen: And I’ve used a handful of those and really love that. And you’re able to do it with languages as well, on some of them, where you can do the language side-by-side translation as well, if you speak a second or third language.
15:19
Josh Sears: There are even websites and apps that let you pull up Hebrew and Greek if you want to really dive deep in here, and it will let you click on some of the words, and you can look up dictionaries, and you can explore what the Hebrew and Greek mean. So really, there’s so many resources available, and you can dive as deep as you’d like to.
15:37
Jon Ryan Jensen: I remember — so, I served a Spanish-speaking mission and learned a lot from my first study of a Spanish Bible. And I remember feeling a little surprised at how much more I got out of it, because Spanish was a second language. And you have the Old English of the King James Bible, and there’s, like you’re saying, a similar vernacular that’s used in the Spanish. But I was so happy to be learning a different dimension or perspective on these teachings that I’d heard my entire life when I started reading the Spanish Bible.
And I think a lot of returned missionaries have similar experiences, where they gain a new appreciation for the Savior’s life and ministry when they study it in a different language because they serve a mission. But the opportunity now is also to gain perhaps a distinct perspective on the scriptures by studying the unique versions in English as well.
But some seem to be a little maybe afraid to jump in there. And so, while the Church is maintaining King James as the canonical version that we’re going to see on ChurchofJesusChrist.org, what are the benefits, or what suggestions will you give to help people feel a little more comfortable as they look at some of the other versions that the Church suggested using?
16:49
Josh Sears: Yeah, in the Church Handbook updates, it focuses on this, primarily on this issue of accessibility, that, for example, there’s people who are second-language learners for English or people who have reading disabilities or other kind of challenges as they read. And a modern English translation can be particularly beneficial for those groups because of the fact that English is difficult enough already, and reading can be difficult enough already, without throwing in a 500-year-old language.
So, that can be very helpful for people, is the modern English is instantly more accessible. And modern translations offer additional benefits too. Sometimes they’re a little more accurate than what you have in the King James, simply because we have studied Hebrew and Greek for hundreds of years more, and we understand certain aspects of the language better than the King James translators did. So we can look at some of what they did, which was very, very good for the time, and say, “You know what? I think we can render that a little bit more accurately now.”
We’ve also found additional biblical manuscripts that they didn’t have access to 400 years ago, like the Dead Sea Scrolls is the famous one everyone knows about, right? But we found these very ancient versions of some books that have helped us correct certain instances where the manuscripts that the King James translators were using had little problems here and there; nothing major, but things that can affect how you read a verse. So with all this wealth of new textual data now, we’re sometimes able to render things a little more accurately to what we think the original prophets and apostles had written.
And a final thing is that modern translations — and this is kind of an underappreciated benefit of them — use modern formatting. At the time of the King James Bible, the style was that you have the text displayed in double columns and that you have a new paragraph that starts with each and every verse number. And sometimes you have a sentence that crosses two or three verses, but still, we’re going to have a paragraph break right in the middle there. And that format was very compact and useful for reading out loud in church, and there was advantages to that. But for a lot of modern people, that actually creates a little bit of a challenge, because we’re used to books today that have paragraphs, where sentences are grouped around a common subject, and the paragraphing helps you follow the logic of the text.
Jon Ryan Jensen: And with the advent of e-book readers and such, you don’t even have page numbers as much anymore. So you’re just on one continuous scroll. So even harder, in that case.
19:09
Josh Sears: Yeah. And the scriptures, especially the Old Testament, have a lot of poetry in there; like Psalms, almost all poetry. Isaiah is about 80% poetry. And the King James Version formats poetry and prose the exact same way, so you can’t even tell when you have poetry. But every modern translation will format poetry into poetic stanzas. So at a glance, you can tell, “Oh, that is poetry,” and it will put it into little poetic stanzas so you can see how the parallel lines relate, and it makes it a lot easier to read the poetry.
And then a final thing with formatting would be punctuation. A lot of our modern punctuation conventions didn’t exist 400 years ago. An example would be quotation marks. Love quotation marks. They tell you when a speaker starts talking and when they stop talking and the differences between speakers. And they didn’t even exist in 1611, when the King James Version came out. So I don’t fault the translators for not using them. They just didn’t have that ability to include that kind of punctuation. So now, modern translations will include quotation marks and the way we use commas and semicolons in a modern sense and all of those things, and that just makes it easier to read as well, because these are conventions that have developed precisely because they make things easier to read.
20:21
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, we’re talking a lot about the translations themselves, but it’s important to note too that this isn’t just a simple history book that we’re looking back and trying to translate. Scripture has a specific role in our lives as it relates to our testimonies and understanding the plan that our Heavenly Father has for us.
I want to read from the Topics and Questions portion of ChurchofJesusChrist.org, where it says, “The principal purpose of scriptures is to testify of Christ and to guide the children of God so they can come unto Him and receive eternal life.” So there’s a lot at stake in getting these translations correct, as we know.
And then Mormon, when he wrote in the book of Helaman, in Helaman chapter 3, he also talked about what we’re supposed to get out of the scriptures, when he said: “Whosoever will ... lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked — And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out” (verses 29-30).
The stakes of understanding these scriptures are really high. And so, can you talk about not just that, again, academic part of this, but maybe the role of the Holy Ghost in understanding and not just leaning specifically to one version of the scriptures or another?
21:48
Josh Sears: Yeah, I think ultimately, translation is a tool to understand the word of God, but the point isn’t just to understand exactly what someone said anciently. The point is to have the Holy Ghost point us to Jesus Christ and to be able to connect with Heavenly Father like we just read. Sometimes people get frustrated when one translation will say this and another translation will have a slightly different idea. And they think, “Well, which one is right?” And while that’s a valuable question, and I think exploring that is a worthwhile endeavor, I think we can relax because ultimately, the bigger purposes the scriptures are serving might be well served by either rendition and that it’s OK sometimes if there’s these little, minor differences.
Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in his commentary on these changes in the Church News and on the handbook, stressed that if we do have questions about doctrine as we’re comparing translations, the easiest thing to do is compare to the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price and the teachings of modern prophets. They can help make sure that we’re aligned doctrinally.
But these minor discrepancies that you’ll have between translations can be valuable if they help us dig into the text a little bit more. And ultimately, as long as the scriptures are pointing us to Jesus and helping us to come unto Him and be able to take on us His nature, they’re doing what they should do, regardless of which variant reading is the exact right one. There’s a bigger purpose in mind through scripture study.
So I think, yeah, we can relax, have fun with different translations and not think that every minor disagreement is a huge problem. Sometimes it’s a challenge that actually is beneficial, if it helps us get into the word of God and wrestle a little bit. That can be a very productive thing.
23:30
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah, as it tries to help us build and maybe make changes that we need to make in our life. I love how you described that, because what it really comes down to is understanding the word of God. And we live in a time and a period where we have modern prophets and apostles, and we have the opportunity to hear them and hear their words directly from them.
But again, we have 18 million members of the Church, and not all of them speak English, so they’re going through a translation process as well. And so this, like you said, it’s a process that continues to go on today.
When you’re sitting down, then, with members of your family or your ward in those ministering assignments, if they were to say to you, “Josh, what am I supposed to do right now? It’s the Old Testament. The Old Testament is really hard,” what direction would you point them in to perhaps get the most out of their 2026 Old Testament study, given this new guidance?
24:20
Josh Sears: I would say: Keep in mind there’s no one right way to do this. You can figure out what works for you and your family, and that might mean some fun experimentation and seeing what works. But ultimately, scripture study is supposed to be enriching, it’s supposed to be wonderful, and it’s supposed to lift you up. And if there are factors getting in the way of that, it’s good to productively work on those. And if the language of the translation we’re using is getting in the way of those benefits, then work on that.
So, just to give some examples in my family, the last time we read the New Testament, we started by reading the King James Version for the first half of the year, because for me, it’s very important that my kids get familiar with King James language. It’s still the default we’re using most of the time at church, even now. And I want them to know how to use the Church’s footnotes in the LDS edition. And I want them to just learn how that stuff works. So those are important skills. So, for Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, our family read the King James Version. Those are narratives. It’s a story. It’s pretty OK to understand with a little help.
Jon Ryan Jensen: And they refer to each other in many cases.
25:24
Josh Sears: Yeah. Then halfway through the year, we got to Romans. And as much as I love the King James Version for a variety of reasons, Paul’s epistles is not where it shines. It’s very dense, and it’s very difficult to track Paul’s argument when you’re struggling on the sentence level to understand everything he’s saying. So at that point in Romans, we switched to a modern translation, read that for a family for the rest of Paul’s epistles. So, for us, that was a way of adapting so that my kids could get something out of Romans and Corinthians and Ephesians without the language getting in the way so much.
For the Old Testament, the last time we went through this, I remember one thing I did was I assigned my kids to read a more modern translation for their personal scripture study when I wasn’t there to assist, and that helped them get more out of it on their own. Then we’d come together as a family, and we’d read the King James as a family. So they were getting exposed to two translations that week, actually, and there I could help them with the language, because they would struggle with some of the old-time English that you have there.
And then other cases, we’ve had more than one translation at the same time as we’re going around and rotating. And sometimes the differences in translation keep the kids grounded, because they’re looking for those differences, and they’re trying to figure out how what their brother just read in this translation relates to what they have here. And that actually helped them dive deeper into the scriptures.
So we’ve done a variety of different things, and I don’t know what we’re going to do next year. We’re going to play it by ear, and we’re going to figure out what works for us. I’ve got kids ages 6 to 16. There’s five of them. So that’s a pretty big range. My 16-year-old can understand the scriptures differently than my 6-year-old does, so we’re going to have to, I think, adapt even to that, with the age range that we’ve got in our family.
So, I would just say to all other families: Try things out, see what works, whether it’s switching back and forth, like I’ve done in my family; or differences in personal versus family study, as we’ve done; or trying multiple things at the same time. There’s a variety of approaches that you can take here, but the ultimate point is: “Am I enjoying scripture study? Is it helping me? Am I understanding so that I can think about how these beautiful revelations relate to me in my life right now?” That’s the goal. We don’t want to just have it be a slog that we have to get through so we can check a box. So I would just encourage people, whatever you do, make sure it’s working for you.
27:35
Jon Ryan Jensen: That’s great feedback. I’m in a similar boat. I’ve got four between the ages of 13 and 18, and there’s a big range there in ability and understanding of the different scriptural meanings. I’ve got two who have been in seminary and two who are not yet in seminary, and so their experiences are different. It’s really fun to listen to them as they share. I imagine if you’re having them read separately from your family scripture study, they’re each coming with their own perspective as well.
And so, for as a family, where we’re focused so much more now on a family-centered church experience, are you seeing that their excitement to continue to learn the gospel is enhanced because of that kind of experience?
28:18
Josh Sears: Yeah. It’s great having this range of kids, because, yeah, I also have two in seminary right now, and they get to share what they’re learning in seminary, and the younger kids will have just different questions than them. And as a family, it’s been great to discuss. And I’ve actually loved watching the older kids start to be able to answer the younger kids’ questions, so I don’t have to do all the work here. Either from seminary or from things that they’ve read in their own life.
And I think it’s been wonderful to see them reading the scriptures, learning things on their own and being able to internalize that enough so that they can then share it with others. And sharing with their younger siblings has been great preparation for missionary service and everything else they’re going to do in their life. But that’s one thing I’ve loved about family scripture study, is just the time to teach one another.
And I’ll admit: My students in my classes, for all the degrees I have and whatever, they surprise me all the time with these amazing insights, a new way to look at a verse I’ve never considered before, and a new doctrinal insight that comes from a student in class or from my own kids. Sometimes the purity that they come to with the scriptures and the innocence of their questions just makes me stop and be amazed all over again at the brilliance of the scriptures and its ability to challenge us and give us the answers we need.
29:25
Jon Ryan Jensen: That’s such a great insight too because as I look at Sunday School classes around the world, I can just imagine if everyone were completely immersed in that and studying the thing that matters to them that week from the section of study that we’re doing, and then were to bring their own personal insights in, which I think is what Church leaders are hoping that we’ll do with “Come, Follow Me.” But how great is it as a teacher when you don’t have to be the one dishing out information, but you can bring together how each individual’s testimony was built through their study in the scripture that week.
Josh Sears: Definitely.
29:57
Jon Ryan Jensen: I want to talk to you as well: You touched on language. And one of the things that I heard when I came home from my mission was that you’d have individuals who “OK, I served speaking Portuguese,” “I served speaking Spanish, but now I’m home, and I just need to stay back at home in the real scriptures, the English scriptures that I’ve always grown up in.”
Do you have any suggestions for maybe those returned missionaries, or missionaries who are going to be coming home, about what their prolonged study, making use of the language skills they now have, could look like?
30:28
Josh Sears: I have enjoyed over the years continuing to return to my mission scriptures, which for me is Spanish. So the Reina Valera Bible in Spanish and the Spanish translation of the Book of Mormon. I would say that my scripture study has only been enriched by continuing to read in those foreign language translations. It’s the same experience I have when I read in modern English translations — sometimes just a different way of phrasing something helps you see something in a whole new way.
Like in the Spanish Book of Mormon, for example, well, in English, there’s a phrase “in as much as,” which I’ve read a thousand times, and I don’t think much about it. And in Spanish, it says “al grado que,” which literally means “to the degree that.” And I remember one day that just striking me, like, “Oh, that’s what ‘in as much as’ means, that to the degree — even if it’s a small little bit of effort or a lot of effort — but to the degree that I seek the Lord, He’s going to respond in turn. Or to the exact degree that I’m putting a little more effort to being a kinder person, I’m going to see benefits to that.” And it was just a slightly different way of looking at it in a different language that made that idea click for me in a way that English just never had.
There’s a bunch of examples; I’m sure you could share your own. So I would say yeah, read the word of God in a variety of additions and translations. We can mix things up. I’ve even found that listening to the scriptures in an audio format makes me notice things I don’t notice when I’m reading, and vice versa. And I’ve noticed that sometimes I’ll read large swaths of text fast, and I’ll notice things that way that I don’t notice if I’m reading the deep-dive mode where I’m doing one verse at a time. But the deep-dive mode, I notice things I don’t notice when I’m going fast. So there’s a variety of ways to approach this, and I think as we mix things up, it just keeps it fresh. It keeps us excited, because we’re always learning new things, instead of getting stuck in a rut doing it the same old way.
32:17
Jon Ryan Jensen: I do have a couple of my own examples, and as soon as you started sharing yours, it brought to my memory of studying, again, back in the New Testament that you were talking about, my understanding of Paul’s epistles completely changed. And one of the words or phrases that I remember was in English, it says “fellow citizens.” And we frequently in English use the phrase “fellow man.” And so I just kind of saw that as interchangeable — fellow man, fellow citizen. It’s within the margin of error there.
But in Spanish, it’s translated as “conciudadano,” and it literally means that you are a citizen of that place, together with others. And it gave me that whole different perspective of: It’s not just “fellow man” super broadly, but you are together, committed to that thing that you are a citizenry of. And I remember thinking that feels so differently when we talk about being Saints in the Church, being Saints trying to follow Jesus Christ.
Josh Sears: Yeah, these different renditions can just hit you differently.
33:17
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah, yeah. The other thing there that you’re talking about that brought to mind was maybe the importance of helping — we’ve always had the illustrated version of the Book of Mormon, the illustrated scripture studies, and having the Church release a list that says, “Hey, look, here are some that we think might be good for these grade ranges or these age ranges” might be really beneficial too. And as a parent, I thought, “Wow, if I’m going to be suggesting this to my children, then I’m going to need to go in and do my own study of this as well, so that I have some of those places where I don’t want to lose my favorite scripture and I don’t want to lose the meaning of that particular thing.”
And so, do you think that we may be coming up on a time where, generally, the Church’s understanding and Church members’ understanding of the Old Testament and New Testament is going to blossom into something that we haven’t seen before?
34:04
Josh Sears: Yeah, I’m excited for the future. There’s so much to learn and so much growth that we can do, and I think that opening up more room for other translations to be a part of the conversation is just going to help with that.
So, a couple examples of what I’m thinking: You’ll get another translation, and sometimes it’ll have its own footnotes that will have little insights that we’re not used to because they’re not in our scriptures. So now, some of these insights and some of these issues that are being discussed by other Christians and others who are reading the Bible will be brought into our conversation, and we’re going to benefit from some of the things that they have noticed by doing that.
And I noticed in the Church News article that was discussing these announcements that Sister Tamara W. Runia, who’s in the Young Women general presidency, she pointed out that this is a great opportunity for some interfaith dialogue, because we’re going to get to learn from translations produced by other faithful Christians who are doing their best to preserve and render the word of God, and that it’s going to be an exciting opportunity to learn from them as well and have a little bit of a scriptural dialogue here.
35:04
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah, I’ve got one of her quotes here from that article. Sister Runia said, “The beautiful thing is that we can all benefit from translations made by our Christian brothers and sisters to enhance our study and faith as disciples of Jesus Christ.”
35:17
Josh Sears: Yeah, that’s great. When I was in graduate school and we lived in Austin, Texas, for six years — loved that place — and for most of that time, I was the ward mission leader, so I would go out with the missionaries. And this is Bible Belt territory, right? And so we met people of a variety of Christian backgrounds there, and most of them didn’t use the King James translation. They used the New International Version or the New Revised Standard Version or the English Standard Version. There was a bunch of translations.
And sometimes we would invite them to come to church, and they’d be in Sunday School, and they would bring their Bible with them. And I was always a little nervous. I was hoping somebody wouldn’t say something to discourage them: “Oh, no, that’s not a good translation.”
Jon Ryan Jensen: “Not the right one.”
35:53
Josh Sears: “That’s not the right one,” yeah. And I think we have an openness now; people can bring these translations and not feel like they’re different or strange, and the translation that they know and love from their own faith tradition can be part of the conversation now.
And I remember we’d even learn from them, because the missionaries would pull open their King James Version, they’d share something, and the person would be using the New International Version or whatever they had, and they might phrase an idea a little bit differently. And I would notice the missionaries getting these little light-bulb moments where they’re like, “Oh, is that actually what that phrase means?” Because maybe the verse that they were using still makes the point they were trying to make, but there’s a part of the verse that actually was illuminated by the NIV.
Jon Ryan Jensen: It just unlocks that little, additional insight.
36:34
Josh Sears: Yeah, it was just a little moment, a little micromoment of them teaching the investigator but the investigator’s translation also giving a little bit of an insight back to the missionary. So there was an exchange of ideas going on. And that was a beautiful thing that I would see there. And so I think, like Sister Runia says, this is an opportunity for us to learn from each other and open up more doors for conversation.
36:53
Jon Ryan Jensen: And I think that happens maybe more than we recognize as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because even Church leaders today, members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, they — when they stand and share a message with us at general conference — they frequently quote from the scriptures, but sometimes what they’re quoting isn’t always the King James Version.
We’ve seen Elder Uchtdorf, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, use versions that he is more accustomed to. And having come from a German background, he’s looking for something specific in that translation. And so I could really appreciate the work that he or Elder [Dale G.] Renlund or Elder [Neil L.] Andersen go through as they’re looking for: “What is the way to really best describe this in the way that I want to convey it?”
37:35
Josh Sears: Yeah, they’ve been doing this for many years. And I think most people don’t even notice when they quote from other translations, because they’re not taking the time in conference to say, “And now I’m quoting from the New International Version.” But if you go to the footnotes in the printed edition of the talks, that’s where you’ll see the NIV, the NRSV, the ESV, you’ll see what they’re using there.
And it seems that, yeah, often when they quote these other translations, it’s because in this particular verse, the King James has a word or a phrasing that’s not quite clear, whereas another translation can immediately communicate what the ancient prophet was intending. So rather than let the language be a barrier that gets in the way, they have felt free for many years to use another translation in that instance that provides the clarity that they need.
So I think they’ve been a great model for how we can do this. And it’s what the handbook recommends, that in Church we generally use the King James Version so that we’re mostly on the same page, but when necessary and when helpful, we can supplement with these helpful other resources.
38:30
Jon Ryan Jensen: As you say that, I’m thinking about Elder Ronald A. Rasband from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, as he gave a wonderful talk a couple of years ago where he said words matter, and those specific words can have such an influence on us and our understanding and our willingness to do exactly what Heavenly Father wants us to do through His commandments. The better we understand them, the more likely we are to say, “Oh, yes, I get that, and I want to follow Him and continue to honor my covenants.”
38:58
Josh Sears: Exactly. If we’re spending too much time trying to just figure out what the words mean, we’re spending less time thinking about how those words can impact our lives and what changes we can make to come closer to the Savior. And that’s the value of comparing translations, is it helps speed up that first stage of the process, just figuring out what the words mean so we can get on to the real work of figuring out, “OK, now what do I do about this?”
39:19
Jon Ryan Jensen: We didn’t talk about this, so I’m putting you a little bit on the spot, but I imagine that in your work, as you’re studying these ancient texts, that you’re interfacing a lot with individuals who are not members of our Church.
Do you see that other individuals who are engaged in this kind of work are experiencing these same reasonings behind a desire to get to true translation, that they’re all trying to understand the Savior better and Heavenly Father’s plan for us better?
39:47
Josh Sears: For sure. There’s a variety of English translations out there. So, the Church’s new update provides a list of a few examples, but there’s many, many more that we can pick from. And I would say that the vast majority of them are made by people for whom it is a labor of love, who I guarantee you are saying their own prayers to get guidance from the Holy Ghost in their efforts, because their sincere desire is to bring the word of God to people and to bless their lives with it.
And I go to academic Bible conferences where I’ve talked to people who have worked on other translations of the Bible, and I can tell that for them, it’s so important to get it right. It’s so important that whatever they’re doing builds the kingdom of God on earth and that it helps people be able to learn about Jesus Christ. So there’s so much faith and devotion in these other translations, that that is an aspect we don’t need to be fearful of.
And there’s a stereotype I’ve heard from some Church members about people messing up the doctrine and translating according to their own philosophies. And, well, no translation can completely avoid human biases. We all have those. I think we can recognize, as we’ve had Church leaders recently counsel, that we don’t need to be afraid. The motivations are pure. In the vast majority of cases, people are producing translations that are very much — honestly, sincerely — trying to be faithful.
41:05
Jon Ryan Jensen: I’m grateful that you’ve shared that, because that, I think, gives an important part of our understanding and how to build bridges of understanding, like President Russell M. Nelson consistently asked us to before his passing, to build those “bridges of understanding” with each other, because we are, in the end, trying to get to the same place.
Professor Sears, I’ve loved this conversation that we have been able to have today. And I want to ask as we conclude our podcast today about what you have learned, how your testimony has grown through all these experiences you have.
And so, what would you share with us to say that you know now?
41:38
Josh Sears: I would say that for me, the scriptures, I spend a lot of time thinking about scriptures, teaching scriptures, doing scriptures, but what I love is that the scriptures, at the end of the day, they’re not the end-all be-all of my discipleship. It’s Jesus Christ. And when I learn to use the scriptures as a tool or a window or some way to connect with the Savior, that’s where they have their greatest power.
And I’m excited for the Old Testament year coming up because we believe, as modern prophets have taught, that the Lord in the Old Testament, or Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the premortal Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful opportunity we have to be able to learn about Him. The Old Testament is full of prophecies of His coming in the flesh as the promised Messiah. But we also have just stories left and right of Jehovah teaching people, correcting people, saving people, giving revelation to people. And as we go out throughout this year, this is just a wonderful opportunity to see Jesus as the God of Israel, making covenants and keeping the covenants that He has made and being faithful to His people.
In the book of Exodus, chapter 34, verses 6-7 is an important text where Jehovah talks about Himself to Israel. And I’ll just read a little bit of this. OK, Exodus, chapter 34, verse 6: “And the Lord [or Jehovah] passed by before him [meaning Moses], and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”
And that right there, I’ve been taking some time recently just to try to study each of the adjectives and attributes that Jehovah uses to describe Himself there. And it’s just been an amazing window to learn more about the Savior. So, for example, “long-suffering” is a good older English word. Modern translations might say “full of patience.” And I just love to think about how patient He is, because, boy, do I try His patience sometimes, and yet He sticks with me.
Or it says “abundant in goodness.” “Goodness” is a good English translation, but the Hebrew behind that is the word “hesed” that President Russell M. Nelson taught is a description of God’s covenant mercy and covenant loyalty to those to whom He has bound himself. And so saying that He’s abundant in hesed here is a way of reminding us that as we covenant with Him, He delights in being merciful to us, and He delights in being loyal to us and helping us, even when we are sometimes less than faithful to our end of the covenant.
There’s just a lot more here, and it goes on to talk about this. But these scriptures, whether they’re ancient or new, are just all of them designed to testify of Jesus Christ. And I’ve learned to know Him and love Him better through each one of the books of scripture. And I’ve been grateful for additions and versions and translations, whatever it is I can get to get every additional insight about Jesus Christ. And to gather this all together and to compare them and just soak in all the truth that they have has just been a wonderful blessing.
44:48
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
