Recently, conservative commentator and longtime Mormon Glenn Beck commented on X about William Tyndale’s supposed heroism in translating the Bible into English.
Catholic Answers’ official account responded with the actual story of Tyndale and why Beck’s understanding was, though common, completely wrong.
Mormonism and Tyndale
Beck’s professed Mormonism makes his admiration of Tyndale especially puzzling. Mormonism proposes the Great Apostasy, the idea that true Christianity was corrupted after the death of the last apostle. Tyndale lived roughly 1,400 years after the Apostasy began and nearly 300 years before Joseph Smith’s supposed restoration. What would make him different in kind from a Catholic, or any other apostate Christian? Tyndale was working within an apostate world. His opposition to Catholicism does not, by itself, explain why he should be regarded as a precursor to the eventual restoration.
Beck’s praise of Tyndale is not unique among high-profile Mormons. Multiple Mormon leaders have lauded Tyndale both over the pulpit and in writing. D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke of Tyndale as “not the first, nor the last, of those who in many countries and languages have sacrificed, even to the point of death, to bring the word of God out of obscurity.” Others treat Tyndale as a martyr, his death and work as a providential domino leading to the restoration; without his rebellion against the Catholic Church, Joseph Smith would not have been able to read the pivotal verses of the Bible that led him to restore the church, nor would he have had a Bible to correct to its original text.
Yet history shows that although Tyndale is an important figure in the story of English vernacular translations, he did not “bring [the Bible] out of obscurity.” The controversial Wycliffe Bible existed well before Tyndale, and portions of the Bible had been translated into Old English even earlier. The official Catholic English translation of the New Testament, the Douay-Rheims, was released in 1582, with subsequent sections being released in 1609-1610. The King James Version wasn’t published until 1611. Despite the controversies surrounding each translation, the notion that Joseph Smith would not have had access to an English Bible without Tyndale is, at best, highly doubtful.
The King James Bible
Perhaps the reason Tyndale is lauded by Mormons is because of his connection to the King James Bible, the Bible whose passages inspired Joseph Smith to restore the church, and the translation still used by Mormonism. However, even this praise seems dubious, as Mormonism holds that the Bible itself was tainted by the Great Apostasy: “We also believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly.”
Mormonism believes that many plain and precious truths in the Bible were lost in translation, purposefully removed, or changed maliciously to better align with the apostate Catholic Church’s teachings.
Indeed, even translations of the highest accuracy would still be corrupted. This is why Joseph Smith began correcting errors he found in the Bible—the KJV, to be exact—claiming divine inspiration as he did so. It is called the “Joseph Smith Translation” (JST), and it is found in the footnotes and appendix of LDS-edition King James Bibles.
JST passages often drastically change the meaning of portions of Scripture. This is evidenced particularly well in John 1:1. The original King James wording says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Joseph Smith’s translation says, “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.”
The changes are apparent. Their significance is clearer when paired with Smith’s teachings about the nature of God.
Rather than the traditional Christian interpretation that God is the ultimate explanation of existence, Smith taught—and Mormonism still proposes—that God (Heavenly Father) is an exalted man of flesh and bones who understands the laws of the universe and used his knowledge to form us out of pre-existing, eternal material (Abraham 4).
The JST also aligns with Mormonism’s beliefs in the relationship between the Father and the Son. The KJV’s “the Word was God” disappears. The Son, instead, is described as being “with God” and “of God,” never explicitly called God.
When paired with Joseph Smith’s teachings about Christ, the changes become clearer. Rather than Christ being the Second Person of the Trinity, as he is in traditional Christianity, he is the literally begotten son of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. Christ volunteered to come to earth and sacrifice himself for mankind, and through a process was exalted to godhood—to be not God, but a god (18). The question is: do these changes present the recovery of ancient biblical writing, or do they reflect Smith’s own theology?
Evidence for Joseph Smith’s Claims
Although a Mormon theologian would likely answer that it is both, such a response raises another question: what evidence does Mormonism use to support such extraordinary historical and textual claims?
We have early accounts of what Christians believed. Rather than supporting Smith’s theological claims, pre-Nicene Christian writings contain clear evidence that early Christians believed in the divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Ignatius of Antioch writes,
Study to be established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles, that so all things, whatsoever you do, may prosper both in the flesh and spirit; in faith and love; in the Son, and in the Father, and in the Spirit; in the beginning and in the end (Magnesians 13, early 2nd century A.D.).
Although early Christian writings do not explicitly state the Trinity as it was codified in the First Council of Nicaea (325), they provide ample evidence of its development. (Note that development is not change, but the process to a more sophisticated understanding of what was originally taught by Christ and his apostles).
Additionally, although the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament do contain some textual variants, as one would expect from handwritten manuscripts, they do not show evidence of Joseph Smith’s claimed corrections. John 1, in particular, has extremely early texts supporting current Bible translations (like the late-second, early-third-century P66), not Smith’s corrections. Smith’s claim that he recovered ancient biblical texts is not supported by the surviving historical evidence. Instead, his changes parallel his own theological ideas.
Without substantial historical or textual evidence supporting Joseph Smith’s claims, Mormonism teaches its members to lean on personal revelation. Although a spiritual experience is meaningful evidence for the person who experienced it, it cannot produce verifiable historical records.
Admittedly, historical evidence cannot completely disprove Smith’s claims of personal revelation, as no one knew what Smith felt. However, within Smith’s revelations, he makes a historical claim: that the Bible was corrupted, and he restored the texts to their original form. This we can scrutinize historically. When doing so, the evidence (or lack thereof) shrouds Smith’s claims in reasonable doubt.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has ample historical records dating from the present day back to the earliest sources. It can track its doctrine and its development, as well as its authority to ordain bishops, to the men who knew the apostles (see 1 Clement 42-44).
Being Catholic does not require belief in a Great Apostasy for which there is no extensive historical record. (I go into depth about this here.) Despite Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims, the Catholic Church never lost its authority. Even through myriad evil men, and much scandal within its walls, its purity remains intact. It never needed to be restored.