almost as a necessity

It may well be that at some future day documents similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls will be discovered, which, when translated by competent non-LDS scholars, will speak of many of the same doctrines and historical events that are now known only in Joseph Smith’s New Translation. I see this not only as a natural possibility but almost as a necessity. Joseph Smith was the greatest seer and restorer of the things of God that the world has ever known. It might be expected that a work as extensive as his translation of the Bible would probably be attested to by documentary evidence in the due time of the Lord. The Lord always defends and supports his prophets, first by the testimony of the spirit to the hearts of the Saints and eventually by hard facts to the convincing of the world. As one writer a century ago observed, “Surely the facts are stubborn things. It will be as it ever has been, the world will prove Joseph Smith a true prophet by circumstantial evidence.” Although this quotation was written about secular proof for the Book of Mormon, the principle could apply also to the work of the Prophet with the translation of the Bible, since it too was a branch of his divine calling.


"A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible, a History and commentary, by Robert J. Matthews. Brigham Young University Press. 1975. p.265, 266