King James Bible |
It’s obvious even to the casual reader that the Book of Mormon, in its original 1830 translation, is written in the language of the King James Version Bible (hereafter KJV). The critics have been quick to condemn the Book of Mormon because of this fact. “...the miraculous plates,” wrote anti-Mormon “Dr.” Walter Martin, “...somehow or another, under translation, came out in perfect King James English without variation approximately a thousand years before this 1611 [1st edition of the KJV] version was written.” (Martin, 165.) Of course the claim, “without variation,” is stretching the truth since scholars have noted that in some cases where the Book of Mormon departs from the KJV rendering is precisely where other ancient manuscripts depart from the KJV (see Welch, 1990).
Nevertheless, all serious students of the Book of Mormon recognize that there is a definite relationship between the KJV and the original Book of Mormon translation. In my article “Book of Mormon Plagiarism and the Bible,” I note seven possibilities why this may be. The first three possibilities suggest that Joseph plagiarized or borrowed scriptural verses (either directly by copying, or indirectly by memorizing) from the KJV. These three possibilities are dealt with in that article. The remaining four possibilities all accept the belief that the Book of Mormon translation was revealed from God. This article attempts to examine the evidence for each of those four scenarios. Because these articles address LDS criticisms, I will attempt to show that at least one or more of the scenarios are possible, and that God could have revealed the text of the ancient Book of Mormon through a prophet in the language of the KJV.
The four possibilities are:
1) Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from God according to his own understanding of biblical language (KJV), and turned to the Bible as an aid in translating. When the Bible appeared to harmonize with the impressions he understood the Book of Mormon conveyed, he opted for quoting the KJV.
2) Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from God-- word for word-- and the KJV passages in the Book of Mormon reflect Joseph Smith’s revelation in the vernacular and idioms which God elected to reveal to Joseph Smith.
3) When Joseph Smith encountered passages that were similar in idea to those already expressed in the KJV, he included these passages, drawing upon an extraordinary memory.
4) Variation of above. God empowered Joseph Smith with an extraordinary memory of Biblical passages while translating, thereby suggesting that God approved of the included biblical passages as accurately expressing the ideas contained in the Book of Mormon (this does not suggest that these passages need be entirely accurate, but rather that the point of such verses were accurately portrayed).
(The order of the possibilities has been slightly rearranged from the way they are listed in my article on Plagiarism and the Bible.)
The major difference between possibility #1 and the remaining three are that #1 suggests that Joseph had a Bible in his hand while receiving the revelation of the Book of Mormon. Although this is a possibility, and some LDS writers have suggested this (Roberts, 272.), I believe that the evidence (as demonstrated in Plagiarism) makes this possibility tenuous. The remaining three possibilities postulate that God or Joseph or perhaps both (to a greater or lesser degree) are responsible for the KJV language in the Book of Mormon without the assistance of any notes, books, etc. Let’s look at scenarios # 3 & 4 first.
3) When Joseph Smith encountered passages that were similar in idea to those already expressed in the KJV, he included these passages, drawing upon an extraordinary memory.
Personally, I find this possibility flawed. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence to support the belief that Joseph Smith had an uncanny or photographic memory. From a critic’s perspective such a proposition runs counter to other anti-Mormon claims (see Plagiarism), whereas for the believer, such a proposition has little corroboration from historical records dealing with Joseph Smith.
4) Variation of above. God empowered Joseph Smith with an extraordinary memory of Biblical passages while translating, thereby suggesting that God approved of the included biblical passages as accurately expressing the ideas contained in the Book of Mormon (this does not suggest that these passages need be entirely accurate, but rather that the point of such verses were accurately portrayed).
This proposal, I believe, is a distinct possibility. Some studies, however, suggest that Joseph Smith was not intimately acquainted with the Bible. David Whitmer, for instance, testified that “Smith was ignorant of the Bible[;] that when translating he first came to where Jerusalem was spoken of as a ‘Walled City’ he stopped until they got a Bible & showed him where the fact was recorded.” (Cook, 211.) Nevertheless, Joseph may have read enough of the Bible in previous years that by the power of God he could recall pertinent passages when the need arose. And as noted by Welch even those passages wherein the Book of Mormon supposedly copies faulty KJV verses, the Book of Mormon renderings accurately portray the intent of the verse. (See Welch, 1990.) For example, “Dr.” Walter Martin chides the Book of Mormon for following the KJV’s rendering of Isaiah 4:5 which reads: “For upon all the glory shall be a defence.” Martin claims that modern translations of Isaiah correct this reading: “For over all the glory there will be a canopy.“ “The Hebrew word, ‘chuppah,’”notes Martin, “does not mean defence but a protective curtain or canopy, Smith, of course, did not know this nor did the King James translators from whose work he copied.“ (Martin, 166.) Daniel Peterson has answered this objection:
Their reading of chuppah is, it must be admitted, correct. It has the support of the majority of modern translations. But does the Book of Mormon’s “defence“ represent so serious a distortion of Isaiah’s meaning, so serious an error, as to call into question its own antiquity? I think not. The ancient Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate seems to have interpreted Isaiah 4:5 in the same way as did the King James translators, rendering the last phrase of the verse as Super omnem enim gloriam protectio. The ancient Greek Septuagint, on the other hand, has pase te doxe skepasthesetai, in which the final verb is clearly related to the nouns skepas and skepe, both of which mean “covering” or “shelter.” The Jewish Publication Society’s translation, Tanakh, says that the “canopy . . . shall serve as a pavilion for shade from heat by day and as a shelter for protection against drenching rain.” The New Jerusalem Bible says that it will give “refuge and shelter from the storm and the rain,” using much the same language as does the New English Bible. The Evangelical Protestant New International Version says that the “canopy . . . will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.” Is “defence” really so very out of place in such a context? (Peterson, 1993, 50-51.)
It’s possible that God empowered Joseph with a memory of KJV passages when they matched the intent of the text.
2) Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from God-- word for word-- and the KJV passages in the Book of Mormon reflect Joseph Smith’s revelation in the vernacular and idioms which God elected to reveal to Joseph Smith.
The phrase “word for word” does not adequately convey the intent of this position, because there is a range of views as to how “tight” or closely English Book of Mormon phrases approximate the ancient Nephite script. As Dr. Stephen Ricks notes, a “one-for-one equivalency of words in the original language of the Book of Mormon...” is “...problematical from a linguistic point of view.” “This is scarcely likely in two closely related modern languages,” notes Ricks, “much less in an ancient and modern language from two different language families. An examination of any page of an interlinear text (a text with a source language, such as Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, with a translation into a target language such as English below the line) will reveal a multitude of divergences from a word-for-word translation: some words are left untranslated, some are translated with more than one word, and often the order of words in the source language does not parallel (sometimes not even closely) the word order of the target language. A word-for-word rendering... would have resulted in a syntactic and semantic puree.” (Ricks, 1993, 203.) In my opinion, most LDS scholars who opt for a “tight” translation, suggest that there is close relationship between the original ancient script and those in the 1830 translation. The closely related words may have been the ones seen in the “translators” as revealed from God. This possibility has strong support from some studies but is not without it’s problems.
In order to understand if this scenario has any feasibility, it is necessary to understand what little is known about the translation of the Book of Mormon (the details of which will be dealt with in a forthcoming article). Some accounts claim that by way of the “translators” Joseph Smith would see the ancient characters followed by the English equivalent below. These accounts are second or third-hand and several years after the fact and therefore their significance has been dismissed or diminished among some scholars. At least three things are definitely known about the translation: 1) Joseph used some instrument, or “translators” (sometimes the Nephite “Interpreters” or sometimes his “seerstone”) to translate the ancient script; 2) The English translation of the text was revealed by some means via the “translators” ; 3) The translating required Joseph Smith to “study it out in [his] mind” (D&C 9:7-8).
Royal Skousen, who has done some exciting work on what survived of the original Book of Mormon manuscript, supports a “tight” translation (Skousen, 1997; Objections which are raised with such a position will be dealt with in my forthcoming article on the Book of Mormon translation). One reason Skousen gives for his belief that Joseph Smith read English words from the translators is the evidence demonstrating that Joseph spelled out Book of Mormon names after pronouncing them phonetically. (Ibid.) Other evidence would include Hebraisms, Hebrew poetry structure and more. Dr. Welch believes that “Several factors indicate that it [Book of Mormon] was quite a precise translation.... such things as the presence of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, the precise nature of the book’s internal quotations (see, e.g., Alma 36:22 quoting exactly from 1 Nephi 1:8; Helaman 14:12 quoting verbatim from Mosiah 3:8), its consistent use of technical legal terminology, and many other instances of remarkable textual complexity indicate that most of the time the translation was probably not a very loose [translation]....” (Welch, 1990, 140.) Welch observes:
Accordingly, it seems to me that Joseph’s English translation, while being more expressive than a mechanically literal rendition, still... corresponded in some way, point-by-point, with the ancient writing that was being translated. Many of the textual details discussed in this study strongly suggest that the meaning of something on the plates gave rise to each element of meaning in the translation, although one cannot know in all cases how close that relationship or connection was. David Whitmer described how the characters from the plates would appear to Joseph on a parchment with the corresponding English translation below them. Whitmer once explained, “Frequently one character would make two lines of manuscript, while others made but a word or two words.” If this is an accurate statement, it confirms that the translation was rather strict, character for character, although sometimes several English words were required to express the meaning of a single inscription. So, for example, two simple characters might be translated into English as “the interpretation of languages” and two others as “the Book of Mormon,” as Frederick G. Williams once wrote in Kirtland. (Ibid.)
It is necessary then to ask three questions: 1) Why would God render the Book of Mormon translation into KJV English? 2) Is God responsible for grammatical errors in the Book of Mormon? 3) Why would God quote the KJV verbatim even in areas which currently seem to be out of harmony with recent translations based on older biblical texts?
1) Why would God render the Book of Mormon translation into KJV English?
As more than one LDS scholar has pointed out, the KJV English was the accepted scriptural language of Joseph Smith’s day. Dr. Nibley notes: “When Jesus and the Apostles and, for that matter, the angel Gabriel quote the scriptures in the New Testament, do they recite some mysterious Urtext? Do they quote the prophets of old in the ultimate original? Do they give their own inspired translations? No, they do not. They quote the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament prepared in the third century B.C. Why so? Because that happened to be the received standard version of the Bible accepted by the readers of the Greek New Testament. When ‘holy men of God’ quote the scriptures it is always in the received standard version of the people they are addressing...” (Nibley, 1989, 215.) Nibley continues by pointing out that the “‘contemporary language’ of the country-people of New England 130 years ago [1830s] was not so far from King James English. Even the New England writers of later generations, like Webster, Melville, and Emerson, lapse into its stately periods and ‘thees and thous’ in their loftier passages.” (Ibid., 217.) The Book of Mormon is not alone, Nibley observes. “I open at random a contemporary Protestant scholar’s modern translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what do I read? ‘For thine is the battle, and by the strength of thy hand their corpses were scattered without burial. Goliath the Hittite, a mighty man of valor, thou didst deliver into the hand of thy servant David.’” (Ibid.)
2) Is God responsible for grammatical errors in the Book of Mormon?
A closer look at this question will be dealt with in a forthcoming article. Evidence suggests that most if not all supposed grammatical problems in the Book of Mormon actually support the books’ claims of authenticity.
3) Why would God quote the KJV verbatim even in areas which currently seem to be out of harmony with recent translations based on older biblical texts?
As John Welch has demonstrated, while the Book of Mormon may follow the KJV in most instances, sometimes it does not. When the Book of Mormon does depart from the KJV, it is often supported by current translations (see Welch 1990, 144; Michael Ash, “Plagiarism”). In those cases where the Book of Mormon follows an inferior rendering of the KJV, the intent of the passages is not different from newer translations (Ibid.; Ibid.)
If the proposal (#2) is correct that Joseph Smith received revelatory translation of the Book of Mormon in the idiom and sometimes verbatim quotations from the KJV, it would suggest that God approved of the translation as contained in the KJV, and perhaps that a new (Book of Mormon) scripture which followed the accepted Bible version of Joseph’s day would be a more powerful vehicle in testifying to those who read both works (Bible & Book of Mormon) with real intent that they were the words of God (see Moroni 10:4).
Michael R. Ash