65 years ago today - Jan 26, 1956

[J. Reuben Clark]

As I left the Expenditure Committee meeting on Tuesday, January 24, 1956, and walked out with President McKay, in the hallway leading to my room, he started to go into the big room and I stopped him and said that I was not sure whether I had cleared with him at the time I cleared the making of the talk on "Our Bible" before Conference, the matter of printing the Notes that I had prepared (they were very voluminous) as a background study for what I said at the Conference.

I made some further comment about the unreliability of the Revised Version, to which he made a response to the effect that he thought we ought to be a little bit careful about criticizing the Revised Version. To this I answered that I was giving it as thorough a going over, destructive-wise, as I could, because I felt that it was an unsound text.

He then stated that he thought there were some places where the Revised Text was better than the Authorized Version, and he stated that he was thinking particularly of words the meaning of which had changed since the Authorized Version was issued, and instanced the word which all of the Revisers name, namely "let" ...

I replied to this that I was aware of that fact, but that I had not heard that anybody was going to try to rewrite Shakespeare to eliminate these anachronisms, to which, of course, he assented. ...

[Regarding the Revised Version's translation of the Bible into colloquial English:] ... I said that I disagreed with this entirely; that there was nothing in the New Testament that could not be reasonably understood, so far as language was concerned, save in express the truths of the New Testament.

There were a few other desultory observations back and forth and then I said, "Now, President McKay, if you have any hesitancy about my going forward with this, just say so and I will put it aside." He said he had no hesitancy, that it was quite all right. ...

I again said, "If you have any hesitancy about the wisdom of printing the Notes, that will end it." He again assured me that he had no hesitancy at all.

After one or two other observations, which I do not distinctly recall, I said, "We cannot give up the Authorized Version." I said that seemed to me to be completely sound, because the

Prophet's so-called translation (I said, the Prophet, of course, did not translate because he had no manuscripts from which to translate, that he really made a recension through inspiration) in all cases that I found, followed the Authorized Version, thus giving his stamp of approval to the Authorized Version.

A little further conversation took place about this and then he began to move away and I called to him after he had gone four or five steps, and said again, "Now, if you have any hesitancy about this at all, I will not go forward." His reply was to the effect that "I have no hesitancy whatever. Go ahead and print your book."

[The Diaries of J. Reuben Clark, 1933-1961, Abridged, Digital Edition, Salt Lake City, Utah 2015]