3,400 verses corrected, in a Bible never adopted

Their answer, at full strength

FAIR and BYU scholars say the 1833 statement marked the end of a first pass, not a finished book. Joseph kept revising until 1844, and never prepared a manuscript for the press.

The command in D&C 124:89 went unfulfilled amid poverty and persecution, so the church inherited a working draft. They add that the revision was never meant as a uniform restoration of lost text; it blends restoration, prophetic comment, harmonising and modernising.

That explains the differences. And hundreds of its readings went into the footnotes and appendix of the 1979 edition, while the 2024 purchase shows reverence rather than embarrassment.

Arguable, but his own record says he finished it in 1833.

The core facts are undisputed. The revision was commanded. It was pronounced finished in Joseph's own record in 1833. It was commanded to be published in 1841. It was never canonised. And it was published instead by the rival denomination that rejected Brigham Young.

Their reply, that it was actually unfinished and mixed in genre, is a genuine scholarly position. Joseph did keep tinkering. That keeps this contested rather than unrefuted.

But the defence sits awkwardly with the sources. It must read 'we this day finished the translating of the Scriptures' as not meaning finished. And it concedes that the revelation commanding publication was never obeyed.

The category problem stays on any reading. A prophet corrected the Bible by revelation, and the church claiming his mantle still hands members the uncorrected King James.