In The Stick of Joseph in the Hand of Ephraim, at Yeshua’s Drash at Bountiful, we read:

You have heard that it has been said by them of old time, and it is also written before you, that you shall not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment of Elohim. But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council, and whosoever shall say, You fool, shall be in danger of Geyhinnom. (3 Nefi 5:24)

If we compare these words with the King James Version of their parallel passage of the Drash on the Mount (Mattitayhu 5:22) we see that the words “without cause” in the phrase “whoever is angry with his brother without cause” (Mattitayahu 5:22) are lacking from the Stick of Joseph account. This is very significant, because the phrase “without cause” is also lacking in key Hebrew and Jewish witnesses to the text of Matthew 5:22—sources that could not have been known to Yosef Ben Yosef, and which, therefore testify to the authenticity of The Stick of Joseph.

Some thirty-six or more Greek manuscripts of Matthew contain subscriptions preserving readings of a Jewish version of Matthew called the Judaikon which is described as a standard version on Zion, the Holy Mount, in Jerusalem. 

One of these subscriptions is to the words “without cause” in Matthew 5:22 and reads:

Το εικη εν τισιν αντιγραφοις ου κεται ουδε εα τω Ιουδαικω

The words ‘without cause’ are not written in some copies, nor in the Judaikon.

These words are also lacking in many of the oldest Greek Manuscripts, including P64 (about 200 CE); Codex א; and Codex B. Likewise, the words “without cause” are also absent from the DuTillet Hebrew version of Matthew. 

The DuTillet version is a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew that was confiscated from Jews in Rome, in 1553. On August 12th, 1553, at the petition of Pietro, Cardinal Caraffa, (the Inquisitor General) Pope Julius III signed a decree banning the Talmud in Rome. The decree was executed on September 9th (Rosh HaShanna) and anything that looked like the Talmud, that is, anything written in Hebrew characters was confiscated as the Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked. Jean DuTillet, Bishop of Brieu, France was visiting Rome at the time. DuTillet was astounded to take notice of a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew among the other Hebrew manuscripts. DuTillet acquired the manuscript and returned to France, depositing it in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. It remains there to this day as Hebrew Ms. No. 132.

This Hebrew text of Matthew was first published in an English translation by Hugh Schonfield in 1927, who wrote of this version:

….certain linguistic proofs … seem to show that the Hebrew text [DuTillet] underlies the Greek, and that certain renderings in the Greek, may be due to a misread Hebrew original. (An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew’s Gospel; 1927, p. 17)

The words “without cause” are also absent from the Munster Hebrew version of Matthew, which Sebastian Munster published in Hebrew in 1537, having obtained it from “among the Jews”. It has never been translated into English.

Finally, the words “without cause” do not appear in the Shem Tob Hebrew version of Matthew. This Hebrew version of Matthew was transcribed by Shem Tob Ben Yitzach Ben Shaprut, into his apologetic work Even Bohan, sometime around 1380 C.E. It was first published in an English translation by Dr. George Howard in 1987. George Howard writes of Shem Tob’s Hebrew Matthew:

…an old substratum to the Hebrew in Shem Tob is a prior composition, not a translation. The old substratum, however, has been exposed to a series of revisions so that the present text of Shem-Tob represents the original only in an impure form. (The Gospel of Matthew according to a Primitive Hebrew Text; 1987; p. 223)

It may appear from the linguistic and sociological background to early Christianity, and the nature of some theological tendencies in Shem-Tob’s Matthew, that the Hebrew text served as a model for the Greek. The present writer is, in fact, inclined to that position. (ibid p. 225)

Shem-Tob’s Matthew… does not preserve the original in a pure form. It reflects contamination by Jewish scribes, during the Middle Ages. Considerable parts of the original, however, appear to remain…. (Hebrew Gospel of Matthew; 1995; p. 178)

All these sources testify to an original Hebrew Jewish version of Matthew that lacked the phrase “without cause” in Matthew 5:22. Yet none of these sources could have been available to Yosef ben Yosef in 1830. The fact that Yosef Ben Yosef’s translation of The Stick of Joseph also lacks the phrase “without cause” in 3 Nefi 5:24 is a testimony not only to the Jewishness of this record and its Hebrew original, but also to its authenticity.