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RANDY - If the king james bible is incorrect, as the lds church believes, then why do they include it in their 4 standard works? why don't they have the joseph smith so called "inspired version" of the bible as part of their 4 standard works instead?
JOEL - Actually Joseph Smith's translation is part of our LDS cannon of scriptures. As a part of our scriptures we have a section that contains some of the more significant verses that were retranslated by Joseph Smith and we refer to them often. We do regard them as the more correct translation of many Bible verses and many LDS members have a copy of the JST their gospel library, however we do not use it as the official Bible of the church for the following reasons:
1. The Reorganized LDS Church (Community of Christ) holds the publication rights to the Inspired Version of the Bible. It would be illegal for the LDS church to publish and print full copies for its own members.
2. Joseph Smith never had the chance to completely finish it before he died.
3. We don't really need it. The King James version is sufficient for our needs. It gives our members and missionaries something to use that most other Christians can relate to when discussing gospel subjects with them.
4. And as I already said, the more recent LDS publications of the King James version do have some of the more significant verses of the Inspired Version either in the footnotes or at the end for readers to refer to.
We don't believe the King James Bible is completely incorrect; only that certain words or phrases may have been translated incorrectly changing the intended meaning from what the original Hebrew or Greek said. No translation of the Bible can be considered completely perfect since the original writings were translated by imperfect human beings. Many people of different Christian faiths also believe that the Bible is not completely translated correctly. Many times when discussing a passage of scripture, preachers of other faiths will refer to certain words and argue about how some other word or phrase would be a "better" translation from the original Hebrew or Greek word in order to prove a point. The LDS Church is no different, except that it has made an official statement up front explaining our position on this issue(See Article of Faith #8). No true scholar of the Bible, regardless of their religion would disagree with this. Nevertheless we do indeed believe it is the word of God and with the help of our latter day prophets we can know what God intended to say to us and live by its teachings.
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