Endowment Changes + Scripture Study: Matthew 5:22

"Without a cause" and the Joseph Smith Translation

We’ve been working on a sequence of essays about the constructive nature of revelation. All the pieces in that sequence explore the first principle of revelation, and we’ve just recently finished the seventh essay. I’d say we’re about 35% done with the sequence but I usually undershoot, so who knows.

The past three essays have been pretty hefty ones, at least for me; they took longer to write than normal and involved a lot of changes to my views along the way. I have been learning a lot. Because the recent stuff has been heavier, though, I thought it would be good to take a bit of a break instead of steaming ahead with new material. When we get back to the sequence on construction, we’ll do an overview of what we’ve done so far along with a preview of what else is coming.

So today we’re pausing for a scripture study. The focus will be Matthew 5:22, and we’ll discuss both the Greek text and the Joseph Smith Translation in order to see a few challenges for interpretation.

Endowment Changes

First off, I’m told there have been some significant changes to the endowment ceremony. We live pretty far from a temple and have so many young children that doing endowment sessions is difficult, so I haven’t experienced the changes myself yet.