Taken from The Testimony of John the Beloved: The 27th Annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium (Deseret Book Company, 1998) . . .
Jonn D. Claybaugh writes, “The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has published Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible (Independence, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1970), which is a side-by-side comparison of Joseph Smith’s inspired revision of the Bible (the Joseph Smith Translation, or JST) and the King James Version. It shows that Joseph made changes in every book of the New Testament, except 2 John and 3 John. By simply counting the verses that are changed in the Joseph Smith Translation, I learned the following: of the 879 verses in the Gospel of John, 238 are changed, or 27 percent; of the 105 verses in I John, sixteen are changed, or 15 percent; of the 404 verses in Revelation, 83 are changed, or 21 percent. Overall, of the 1,415 New Testament verses written by John, 337 are changed, or 24 percent” (pp. 34-35, n. 18).
What I would like to do in future months is explore all the JST changes in John’s Gospel and try to understand why. It is crucial that my exegesis every Sunday morning before God’s people be faithful to the text. It is imperative that I study the flow of words in the Greek MSS to see if major changes are authorized by the Holy Spirit to the English text.
Fair enough, friends?
As I mentioned elsewhere, it is important to remember that the JST has not been canonized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It has never even been published (except in footnote form) by the Church. That means that it ranks somewhere in doctrinal status between the TPJS and the Book of Commandments – i.e. clearly venerable, but not necessarily binding doctrine.