The New Spanish LDS Bible

Some of you may have heard that the LDS Church has undertaken a massive project of providing a Spanish edition of the Bible that is similar in scope to the English LDS Bible, including cross-references to Restoration scriptures, a Bible Dictionary, and explanatory footnotes. They have received copyright permission for one of the influential Spanish translations of the Bible and are using this as the basis for the new edition. I do not have all the details to the endeavor (I would love more information if any of our readers have some), but from one source who is close to the project, the Church has employed Hebrew and Greek scholars to “retranslate” the Spanish edition when relevant to a particularly LDS view, or for the sake of clarity (I do not have any information on the quality of these people’s Greek, Hebrew, or Spanish, let alone their skills with textual criticism, so don’t ask me!). Such changes do not appear in the footnotes from what I understand, but in the text itself. From this source, I was told that such modifications have been made on practically every page!

The fact that there are so many changes to the base text could reflect the poor quality of the base Spanish edition from which they are working. Presumably the copyright was released to the church for a low-cost edition.

However, the LDS edition of the Spanish Bible could prove to be problematic if the changes are too numerous or controversial. Could the Spanish LDS edition of the Bible become tainted as another kind of New World Translation, which is unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses? Will such a unique LDS Bible create barriers and suspicion with other Christian denominations?