1. Thomas A. Wayment is the editor of a book entitled, The Complete Joseph Smith Translation of the New Testament: A Side-By-Side Comparison With The King James Version (Deseret Book, 2005). Find John 1:1 and you will read, “In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.”

Now unique to this particular book is that you will find the documentation where Joseph Smith actually crossed out words in the King James Version.

Here is my first question. Are you sure the Holy Spirit wanted Joseph Smith to cross out the third reference to Word (Logos) in John 1:1?

2. John W. Welch and John F. Hall in their book, Charting The New Testament (Provo: FARMS, 2002), declare in chart 18-12, “The Last Words Written in the N.T. – John 21:25.” But this is no longer believed to be the case among the newer profs in BYU academia, right? Like for instance in the latest book, Jesus Christ and The World of the New Testament (Deseret Book, 2006).

3. Let me provide one final quote from a book named, Verse By Verse – The Four Gospels (Deseret Book, 2006) by D. Kelly Ogden and Andrew C. Skinner. On page 30, they write concerning John 1:1-5, “This passage teaches that the Son was in the beginning with the Father (see D&C 93:21); that the gospel has been on earth from the beginning; and that the Father and the Son are two separate Beings. They have been carrying out their divine work together from the beginning.”

Even in Welch and Hall’s forementioned book, their chart 7-2 translates John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was [a] God.”

But now to be a little technical, how can you do that with Greek language? How can people translate, “a god,” as in “one among many”? I do realize that in the last phrase of John 1:1, the predicate nominative, God (theos), does not have a Greek article in front of it. Yet isn’t this almost expected when in the Greek, the predicate nominative comes before the verb and subject? And (kai) God (theos) was (en) the Word (ho logos).

Thinking of heart issues