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To the Seeker of Truth,
When it comes to discussions of the biblical passages in the Book of Mormon, we almost always encounter inaccurate information, since the vast majority of analysts didn’t carry out the necessary preliminary work of thorough textual comparison and analysis. Indeed, while this aspect of the text has been a subject of study for decades, a complete comparative analysis of the relevant material had never been published before Royal Skousen’s 2019 treatment of the subject, as part of the critical text project (see pages 289–431 of The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon [KJQ]).
We can read in a variety of treatments that Joseph Smith must have used or probably used a King James Bible in order to produce the lengthier biblical passages. In addition, it is commonly asserted that one-third or more of the differences between the passages involve italicized biblical words and that Joseph Smith usually deleted or changed these italicized words. Going beyond assertion and speculation, Skousen has determined that only 22.9 percent of the differences involve italics. And exactly 61.6 percent of the italicized words were left unchanged. (See KJQ 182ff — section 12: “The Italicized Words in the Biblical Text”.) These figures mean that italics is only one part of a much larger story of textual differences, many of which are complex.
When I wrote up some notes a few years ago on CES Letter question 1 — “What are 1769 King James Version edition errors doing in the Book of Mormon? A purported ancient text? Errors which are unique to the 1769 edition that Joseph Smith owned?” — I began by looking at some of these errors. Text-critical writings by biblical experts show that there are many translation errors in the King James Bible. Yet sometimes renderings of difficult passages just boil down to a difference of opinion among experts.
In any event, the conclusion that Runnells came to from the KJV translation errors that are part of the Book of Mormon text was that Joseph Smith must have been responsible for inserting the biblical material, and by extension for authoring all of the Book of Mormon. Yet an examination of all the King James clauses and sentences in the Book of Mormon says otherwise, indicating that he wasn’t responsible for any of the biblical material.
Unlike what question 1 might lead us to believe, virtually all editions of the King James Bible have the same translation errors. They are simply a general problem of the King James text. So the last part of Runnells’ question is confusing.
Moreover, despite the presence of quite a few biblical translation errors in the Book of Mormon, some questionable biblical phrases aren’t necessarily errors. For example, two phrases mentioned in the letter as errors — “pleasant pictures” and “quick understanding” (Isaiah 2:16, Isaiah 11:3; 2 Nephi 12:16, 2 Nephi 21:3) — aren’t clearly errors: they are simply one way to translate meanings that have puzzled translators for a long time. The uncertain source meanings can be worded in multiple ways. (This translation problem isn’t anything that’s surprising, since early manuscripts of the Bible are missing and unrecoverable.) Another item pointed out by Runnells as an error is the Hebrew loanword seraphims, occurring in the King James Bible as a double plural twice, in Isaiah 6. This isn’t a translation error; it’s just an early modern option that the highly literate translators chose to use. (In searching a corpus of almost 1.7 billion early modern words, I found that the double plural occurs in 939 different texts, and the single plural in 588 texts. And dozens of early modern texts have both seraphim and seraphims.)
Yet ultimately, a discussion of King James translation errors cannot answer the question of whether Joseph Smith just inserted these passages in a text he was responsible for. Only an analysis of all the biblical material can do that.
At this point in time, we have enough information to answer some important questions about the Book of Mormon’s biblical material.
First, Joseph Smith dictated these passages without using a Bible, and his scribe, usually Oliver Cowdery, didn’t copy them from a Bible. Although it is frequently thought that Joseph Smith used a Bible to dictate the many biblical passages, we have several clear statements by eyewitnesses of the dictation — among them Emma Smith, David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris — who said that he didn’t use any book to dictate the text, not even a Bible; and the text of the biblical passages strongly supports what they said.
That Joseph Smith dictated the biblical passages is clear from manuscript spelling errors by Oliver Cowdery: he made the same spelling errors as he did elsewhere. And the manuscripts don’t have any biblical punctuation, either.
Skousen notes that “Oliver Cowdery’s misspellings in O [the original manuscript] show that he used the same spellings as he did elsewhere in the text. There is no sign in O that he copied the biblical quotations from an actual King James Bible” (see KJQ 129ff — section 6: “Dictating the Text: Oliver Cowdery’s Spellings”).
Further support is found in the manuscripts, which show that King James chapter divisions were completely ignored. This is quite clear not only in O, the original manuscript, but also in P, the printer’s manuscript. In O, the transition between 1 Nephi 20 and 21 reads plainly, with no hint of a chapter break at the ampersand: “the wicked & a[g]ain hearken”. In P, at the beginning of the long Isaiah block in 2 Nephi, the manuscript reads unbrokenly “unto all men the word that Isaiah”, with no markings to suggest that Isaiah 2 is beginning. Nor is there any indication between Isaiah chapters 2 and 3: the text reads “of for behold”. (Isaiah 2 ends “for wherein is he to be accounted of?”) The biblical chapter division is simply ignored, as is the punctuation, further evidence that a Bible wasn’t copied from.
Another important item of evidence supporting the nonuse of a Bible is the number of textual differences. There are more than 700 of them. If we consider places in the texts that match at the level of the clause and above, which end up being places with at least 16 matching words in a row, then there are 36 distinct biblical sections in the Book of Mormon (of widely varying sizes). Within these 36 text blocks, there are 712 word/constituent differences between the scriptural texts (counting differences based on syntactic analysis – see KJQ 283–88 for how differences were counted). Of these differences, less than one-fourth involve italics, and 31 times an italicized word or phrase is the same when there is a very close non-italics difference. Also, some of the departures from biblical wording in these passages are complex, such as this addition to 2 Nephi 23:22: “for I will destroy her speedily, yea, for I will be merciful unto my people; but the wicked shall perish” (cf. Isaiah 13:22). Yet the quoting in these biblical blocks is rarely loose or paraphrastic.
In view of the large number of differences between biblical readings and Book of Mormon readings, some complex, we are obliged to conclude that Joseph Smith didn’t read from a Bible or even resort to a perfect memory of the Bible.
If a Bible had been used to produce the biblical material, then there would have been fewer than 200 differences, based on the manuscript error rate. And had the Lord revealed the biblical passages to Joseph through ideas, then a paraphrastic rendering would have produced significantly more differences than 712.
Thus we are left to conclude that the Lord transmitted all the altered King James passages to Joseph Smith, including the 712 constituent differences and any KJV translation errors. This is a position supported by the text itself, at 2 Nephi 27:24, which says that Joseph would dictate words that were given to him.
The syntax of biblical passages also supports the position that the Lord revealed the biblical text to Joseph Smith. Syntactically speaking, biblical passages have unlikely relative pronoun changes or insertions referring to persons, going against Joseph’s own personal linguistic preferences, which was to use who or that:
he that → they which [change: cf. 2 Nephi 7:9 and Isaiah 50:9]
man that → man which [change: cf. 2 Nephi 8:12 and Isaiah 51:12]
every one that → every one which [change: cf. 2 Nephi 12:12 and Isaiah 2:12]
ø → they which [insertion: cf. 2 Nephi 26:18 and Isaiah 29:5]
ø → disciples which [insertion: cf. Mormon 26:18 and Mark 16:15]
man ø → man which [insertion [twice]: cf. 2 Nephi 27:3 and Isaiah 29:8]
the poor in spirit ø → ~ which [insertion: cf. 3 Nephi12:3 and Matthew 5:3]
ø → he which [insertion: cf. 3 Nephi 20:19 and Micah 4:3; in a nonbiblical sentence]
These anti-biblical differences clash with his own nonconscious native usage. So odds are that he would have just left all of these unchanged, if he had been responsible for this biblical material.
Overall, the personal relative pronoun patterns of the nonbiblical and biblical sections of the Book of Mormon are distinct, correlating at –0.16 (based on 1,645 nonbiblical instances and 197 biblical instances of personal that, which, and who(m)). The patterns would be roughly similar under revealed ideas, as long as no King James Bible was consulted.
And there was an unlikely future auxiliary switch as well:
will → shall (change: 3 Nephi 20:42, Isaiah 52:12)
By Joseph Smith’s time, will was the dominant future auxiliary, so chances are that he would have just left the biblical reading of will rather than changing to the more archaic shall.
The 712 word/constituent differences in approximately 17,300 biblical words means that there is a difference, on average, every 24 words, though difference rates vary substantially in the quotations. Of note are three sections with precisely matching stretches of more than 200 words and three sections with precisely matching stretches of more than 100 words. Thus it is certainly right to think of these passages as quotations, rather than paraphrases or allusions.
Interestingly, one of the biblical passages has a 1535 Coverdale Bible reading:
“upon all the ships of the sea” (2 Nephi 12:16)
This is additional solid evidence that the Lord transmitted the words of the biblical sections.
As a final note, confusion about King James passages arises in part because even Latter-day Saint scholars have the wrong idea about the Book of Mormon text overall – wrongly thinking that Joseph Smith worded it. In a nutshell, it is quite unlikely that Joseph Smith worded the Book of Mormon overall because significant portions of the syntax, including large-scale patterns, are (1) archaic, (2) different from King James archaism, (3) different from all known pseudo-biblical syntax, and (4) different from Joseph Smith’s own syntactic preferences. And along with the archaic, nonbiblical syntax, the text also has dozens of instances of archaic, nonbiblical vocabulary.
Sincerely, Dr. Stanford Carmack
Biography:
Stanford Carmack has a linguistics and a law degree from Stanford University as well as a doctorate in Hispanic Languages and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in historical syntax and textual analysis. He currently researches Book of Mormon syntax and lexis as they relate to English usage and contributes to aspects of the Book of Mormon critical text project carried out by Royal Skousen.
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