PROVO — For some it might seem like the worst homework assignment ever. Transcribing someone's 446 pages of notes, written by different scribes more than 170 years ago.

Brigham Young University professor Kent Jackson thought different.

"I'm not going to ever do any better than this," he said of the feat.

That's the reaction one might give after meticulously scouring, for nearly six years, Joseph Smith's translation of the King James Bible.

Jackson, along with Robert J. Matthews, Scott H. Faulring and nearly 15 students, transcribed more than 3,400 verses that make up the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, or the JST. Their final work, "Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts," was published in 2004.

They transcribed the words, the misspellings, the punctuation and the spacing.

"The exciting thing was this got us on the ground level at the mind of Joseph Smith," said Jackson, who spoke Thursday at BYU.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints already have access to portions of the JST in their version of the King James Bible, but Jackson and company wanted to make a definitive and historical record of the entire JST, word for word, letter for letter.

Even though Smith modified more than 3,400 biblical verses, only about 600 appear in the LDS Church's edition of the Bible as footnotes. Jackson's work would make the complete work available for everyone — and under $100.

The original manuscripts remain the property of the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, located in Independence, Mo.

Smith's translation of the Bible set out to help LDS Church members better understand the Bible and answer doctrinal questions, Jackson said. "He considered it a part of his calling," Jackson said.

The project to transcribe the JST began in 1995. Leaders of the LDS Church and academics at BYU contacted the Community of Christ and came to an agreement in which they could scan and photograph the original documents.

However, transcribing was no easy task. Joseph Smith employed several scribes over the course of three years, including other church leaders and his wife. Some were legible. Others not as much.

"He had plenty of bad days on his own handwriting," Jackson said referring to scribe Sidney Rigdon.

The JST was not made in one pass, Jackson said. Often Smith would make corrections after dictating the translation. Others later would make corrections to punctuation and capitalization.

For the first half of translation, scribes wrote every verse that Smith covered even if he didn't alter or amplify any verses.