--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1842 to 1843. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 4 number: 20 published: 1843-09-01 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“To the Editor of the Times and Seasons,” *Times and Seasons* 4, no. 20 (September 1, 1843): 318." printed_title: To the Editor of the Times and Seasons. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-09-01_4_20 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v4n20.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-09-01_4_20 start_page: 318 end_page: 318 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1843 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-09-01_4_20 publication_year: 1843 --- # To the Editor of the Times and Seasons SIR:-As the Prophet, not long since, told the Unitarian Clergyman, in answer to the question, 'what is truth?' truth is a matter of fact, I have thought that a few such precious morsels, occasionally handed out to this generation, if carefully attended to, might save some. Much has been said about the bad translations of the Bible; the meaning here and there warped to favor religious creeds: for which curious phenomena in the sectarian horizon, very few of the literati, have ever attempted to give an account, or even render a reason.-Every school boy seems to know that when either of the sectarian translators failed in making the two ends of a sentence meet, he filled up the vacuity with italic, by which means God has been greatly helped towards expressing himself so as to be understood by the learned world, and benefit the poor heathen, if they are correct; but if their thoughts should not happen to be God's thoughts, it is a matter of fact that the mother of harlots holds in her hand a golden cup full of the filthiness of her abominations. As your office has not the necessary Hebrew and Greek type to publish the original text of the Bible, I must imitate the sounds with Roman letters; and will begin with an extract from the 33d chapter of Deuteronomy, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th verses; and follow it with the simplest translation, into English, that any known rules of rendition will allow; and then let candid men judge which sounds most like truth: So here it is;