Chiasmus and the JST in Hebrews
Using the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible is problematic, at least in part, because Joseph Smith never completed the project. Robert Matthews, the late professor of religion at Brigham Young University, made the JST his life's work and concluded "that the work of revision was an on-going process that was never quite completed, and that, had the Prophet lived longer, he might have revised many more passages." What makes the work of interpretation more difficult is the fact that Joseph Smith's revisions frequently overlapped; when he revised the same biblical passage multiple times, early revisions were overwritten with new language. Matthews explains that "where there are multiple manuscripts of the same chapters, the later manuscript is more extensive and contains additional revisions over the earlier." There are places, accordingly, where I struggle to make sense of the Joseph Smith Translation--or where I feel that some truth contained in the lan