Joseph Copied Parts Of The Book Of Mormon From The Kjv Bible (Church Source)

[omni]

The so-called "JST," which the RLDS have long been publishing as both an "Inspired Version," or an "Inspired Revision," was not published by Joseph, is not canonical, and appears to be a sincere effort by Joseph & Sidney Rigdon to clarify certain selected parts of the Bible (except for some extraordinary revelatory material, such as the Book of Moses). A good many people in that era tried to revise the Bible, including Alexander Campbell and Thomas Jefferson.

So all those scriptures in our scriptures aren't really...scriptures? I'm pretty sure we also refer to the JST as inspired, so doesn't that mean it came from God and should therefore be perfect or at least correct?

[canard78]

So all those scriptures in our scriptures aren't really...scriptures? I'm pretty sure we also refer to the JST as inspired, so doesn't that mean it came from God and should therefore be perfect or at least correct?

I don't have that perspective on revelation which is why the JST issue was mentioned as an afterthought.

Priesthood blessings are a good example. They use a 'prop' to increase faith of both giver and hearer (consecrated oil, similar to stones/U&T). God, I believe, sends impressions but they are expressed, imperfectly, in the words of the priesthood holder. If a different priesthood holder gave the blessing (and was equally 'in tune') the messages would be similar but the words used would not.

You can't pour pure water through an impure filter and still expect to have pure water. Revelation is far more complex than a basic compound of 2H+1O atoms. But the principle still applies. I believe all revelation to be imperfect by varying degrees. I guess that's why personal revelation is so important rather than blind trust of any leader (including the prophet). Having said that, I still appreciate the opportunity to read other people's imperfect expression of their own impressions and revelations to at least have an idea of what I want revelation on.

[mrmendoza]

Bob gives a likely account of how the kJV was likely physically present during the translation. If this wasn't the case, one other option would be that Joseph is choosing to see the text of these KJV passages himself, just as he could choose to see a lost object in a seer stone. If we are to believe that he did see both the original characters and an English text using the hat/stone method, then he likely could see almost any text he wanted to using the stone. If he wasn't holding the stone directly over the plates like he did with the interpreters over copied characters, then he was accessing the characters from the plates remotely just as he saw lost objects remotely. If he could do that, it's not a stretch to assume he could recognize biblical passages and choose to see the KJV version text as well.

That seems reasonable to me. We should remember that the BOM was translated in the language of JSs day. I don't know whether or not he had long passages of the KJV memorized or not but my understanding is that he had been brought up with the KJV being his primary if not only reading material. Remember we are told in D&C 84;85 ..." treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meeted unto every man." So it seems reasonable to me that that which he had "treasured up" throughout his life would be brought to the forefront when the various KJV passages provided the best "translation" to what he was seeing in the plates!

Mike

[canard78]

I favor the accounts that have Joseph seeing some kind of text in the seer stone. One reason is that it still gives him a direct connection to the characters on the plate. When Joseph starts tinkering with the translation he copies characters from the plates and uses the interpreters over these copied characters. He copies other characters for distribution to the learned that his mother implies Joseph is hoping to use as a basis for translating the rest of the plates. There always appears to be a connection to the characters themselves. And the accounts that have Joseph seeing text in the stone also say that he is seeing the characters from the plate, which continues the connection. And this accounts for the culture of the seer stone. According to the few accounts we have, Joseph used it to see lost objects. If so, he would likely feel comfortable "seeing" the characters on the plate through the seer stone.

So if Joseph is actually reading off a stone (and not studying it out/feeling it's right), where do the errors in the original come from? Errors from Joseph in reading the words out or errors from the scribe in hearing and transcribing the words?

I admit both are possible. When I read from a book to my kids I often get words wrong. A listener would probably mishear things or simply get the spelling wrong. English had a fair number of homophones or close homophones.

Out of interest, of all the 1000s of corrections made to the BoM (and I know they are mostly insignificant) how many were made to 'KJV quotes' and how many were made to 'non-KJV quotes'. The base would be different so we'd have to weight it for comparison.

[Calm]

so doesn't that mean it came from God and should therefore be perfect or at least correct?

No.

Please point to anything here on mortal earth that is or was perfect (save for God himself, Christ who possessed the attribute of immortality at the same time as he possessed the attribute of mortality).

[rongo]

Well I guess there's your answer to JS needing a photographic memory or some kind of wireless devise in order to quote the Bible nearly verbatim.

What if his "photographic" memory while translating was part and parcel of the whole "by the gift and power of God" thing? That's where I see the evidence taking me. Too many witnesses emphasize that Joseph had no books or papers with him when he translated, that he picked up right where they left off without reminders, etc. I think that, given what happened to him (real angelic ministrations, etc.), he was motivated to read the Bible (remember ---- he was the least inclined to read at all, per his mother), and the Spirit brought "all thing to his remembrance" when needed (cf. John 14:26). The version of the Bible he read was the KJV, and where it served well in the translation, he had perfect recall of the verbiage through the Spirit. As has been said (and as is noted in a footnote in the BoM), more than half of the Isaiah verses in the BoM have significant differences from their KJV counterparts. We also need to remember that this phenomenon is not just an Isaiah issue: there are multiple other instances where this "total recall" kicks in. For example, the

saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God.

of 1 Nephi 1:8 finds itself verbatim in Alma 26:22

saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and ^bpraising their God

. The witnesses are explicit that there were no papers, books, etc. or any giving of the thread or where they left off. How to explain that, then? I think it's clear that Joseph Smith was able to perform Spirit-influenced magnificent feats of memory, including recalling exact wording for long passages from the KJV Bible, where appropriate (as dictated by the Spirit).

[Robert F. Smith]

So all those scriptures in our scriptures aren't really...scriptures? I'm pretty sure we also refer to the JST as inspired, so doesn't that mean it came from God and should therefore be perfect or at least correct?

I'm not sure that "perfect" is a viable concept for any part of humanity, and all scriptures are not necessarily Holy Scriptures. It is true that we have footnotes to the JST or Inspired Revision, and we have a appendix of the JST, but we also have a Bible Dictionary, a Topical Guide, and maps.. These are helps, and in some cases they may even be inspired, but they are not part of the official Canon of Holy Scripture. That is the distinction I am trying to make.

[why me]

Scholars are free to suppose whatever they wish about how the translation was done, and Richard Anderson's 1977 article did not take into account information which has since become available, and which I discuss in my own "Translation of Languages (hermēniea glōssōn I Cor 12:10),” 28pp. (Independence, MO, June 1980), online 2010 at http://www.scribd.co...on-of-Languages

Well this is a good point. It is only Richard Anderson's account and his own interpretation. I think that we need to understand that people are allowed opinions and understandings and that we should not take what everyone may say as gospel. I find it interesting that many people are trying to figure it all out. My point in bringing out the 1977 article was to show that the members back then were not ignorant but rather pretty well informed about various topics. And survived. But then at that time we did not have the internet with the critics hammering away at people's testimonies. Rather, we discussed issues in priesthodd and in sunday school.

[why me]

So if Joseph is actually reading off a stone (and not studying it out/feeling it's right), where do the errors in the original come from? Errors from Joseph in reading the words out or errors from the scribe in hearing and transcribing the words?

I certainly wish that Joseph would have explained it more than he did. I am sure that he was speaking about it with people. It would be difficult not to. But we have no written record from him about the translation process. What we do know is that something wonderful and spiritual were happening during the translation process. I would assume that during the process it was not exactly easy to be a scribe handling what joseph was reading and saying. It must have been tiring work. And if one writes with a feathered pen, well, not very clear. I am sure that mistakes were made during the process.

[Robert F. Smith]

So if Joseph is actually reading off a stone (and not studying it out/feeling it's right), where do the errors in the original come from? Errors from Joseph in reading the words out or errors from the scribe in hearing and transcribing the words?

We only have about a quarter of the Original Manuscript now, but it is clear that scribal error is a big problem, both ancient and modern scribal error.

I admit both are possible. When I read from a book to my kids I often get words wrong. A listener would probably mishear things or simply get the spelling wrong. English had a fair number of homophones or close homophones.

Yes, of course. For example, Joseph's scribe heard "Son" when Joseph read "Sun," in a biblical allusion to Malachi's Sun of Righteousness, and that mistake continues in all editions through 2013.

Out of interest, of all the 1000s of corrections made to the BoM (and I know they are mostly insignificant) how many were made to 'KJV quotes' and how many were made to 'non-KJV quotes'. The base would be different so we'd have to weight it for comparison.

Without the whole Original MS it is impossible to be exact, but the Printer's MS and the 1830 edition tended to correct toward the KJV. I suspect that Grandin and his men actually referred to a KJV as they set type -- making sure that number and spelling were standardized. This continued in subsequent editions, including matters of style for the whole BofM.

One example which has continued to buck that trend, however, is the quotation of Isaiah 10:29 in which Ramah at II Ne 20:29 is spelled Ramath.. One scholar says that this is a misspelling influenced by the name Aiath in the previous verse, so he follows the KJV (based on a very late Hebrew text). However, the -ath ending is an archaic ending, and we find plenty of examples of it in the Bible, especially in places like Joshua 19. In addition, Ramath is there part of a couplet of place-names ending in -ath,

Ramath is afraid,

[Gibeath] of Saul is fled.

The Book of Mormon would have the Hebrew (or Egyptian) of both place-names end in the same way. Cf. Josh 18:28.

I believe that it is very risky to make a conjectural emendation to the BofM text here. It is good as is.

[Tacenda]

So if Joseph is actually reading off a stone (and not studying it out/feeling it's right), where do the errors in the original come from? Errors from Joseph in reading the words out or errors from the scribe in hearing and transcribing the words?

I admit both are possible. When I read from a book to my kids I often get words wrong. A listener would probably mishear things or simply get the spelling wrong. English had a fair number of homophones or close homophones.

Out of interest, of all the 1000s of corrections made to the BoM (and I know they are mostly insignificant) how many were made to 'KJV quotes' and how many were made to 'non-KJV quotes'. The base would be different so we'd have to weight it for comparison.

I think the Tanner's have each correction listed in a book they produced, or maybe it was UTLM.   If you go to UTLM.org, you might see it and can purchase it.

[williamsmith]

I believe Joseph likely had a Photographic Memory.

When he got to parts that echoed what the Bible said, he simply translated it the same.

Of course, there are also many parts with many or some differences, and even ancient usage that the Bible doesn't have, hence clear evidence of actual revelation on those parts.

I would also like to mention the "lost pages" to the BOM.

Remember the main reason for not re-translating that part?

It's because there would be differences between the already translated part and the re-translating of it.

Meaning, revelation clearly wasn't a perfect word for word process, that the spirit/vision dictated what was written, and only when such was the same as in the same/similar Bible verses only then was it okay to indicate the same information.

But it seems clear that Joseph didn't use "cheat sheets", so he had to have had some sort of photographic memory.

One might ask why didn't he have it with the missing pages? Well, maybe because it came by revelation and wasn't well known to him yet, his mnemonics process didn't work the same. I've seen that before with people with similar abilities. Only in certain conditions does the process work.

[cinepro]

I would also like to mention the "lost pages" to the BOM.

Remember the main reason for not re-translating that part?

It's because there would be differences between the already translated part and the re-translating of it.

Meaning, revelation clearly wasn't a perfect word for word process, that the spirit/vision dictated what was written, and only when such was the same as in the same/similar Bible verses only then was it okay to indicate the same information.

The reason the lost pages would be different than a re-translated version isn't because Joseph was using a loose translation method, but because (according to God) Lucy Harris and her conspirators were going to change the text in their version so it wouldn't match the tightly re-translated new version (which would otherwise be a word-for-word reproduction). (See D&C 10)

In other words, the story of the lost pages confirms the tight translation process, not a loose one.

If Joseph were using a loose translation, then the plan would have been foiled by him simply explaining that that was the case, and so their argument was based on a faulty premise (based on an assumption of a tight translation).

Frankly, the theory set forth in D&C 10 is absurd for many different reasons, and the counter-plan set forth involving the small plates and Words of Mormon is an equally absurd solution, especially if we are to believe this was the chosen plan as designed by an omniscient being.

Edited May 28, 2013 by cinepro

[Calm]

I would also like to mention the "lost pages" to the BOM.

Remember the main reason for not re-translating that part?

It's because there would be differences between the already translated part and the re-translating of it.

But not because of Joseph's ability or lack thereof:

The Lord told Joseph Smith that the people who stole the manuscript planned to change some of the words. If Joseph translated the same plates again, the thieves would show the pages they had altered and say that Joseph wasn’t a prophet because the two translations weren’t identical. The Lord long ago commanded the Book of Mormon prophet Nephi to prepare a second set of plates covering the same things, and He told Joseph to translate this set, instead.

http://www.lds.org/friend/1997/03/the-one-hundred-and-sixteen-lost-pages?lang=eng

add-on: I knew it was in the D&C but I started at 9 and worked back....should have trusted my memory after all.

Edited May 28, 2013 by calmoriah

[Calm]

Frankly, the theory set forth in D&C 10 is absurd for many different reasons

Considering how many insist that since God is involved that must mean the transmission of knowledge or words would be perfect, why do you think it is absurd?

see for example omni's post above:

I understand that Joseph could insist that they compare the handwriting, but as far as I know they didn't have handwriting experts at the time so perhaps they didn't think of forgeries in the same way that we do, that as long as it was more or less similar it would be accepted by most and they would just assume that Joseph or the scribe was lying when they denied it.

Edited May 28, 2013 by calmoriah

[bcuzbcuz]

He had the latest in wireless communications devices. He had an undetectable earpiece and somebody was reading to him and as it was a prototype and nobody else had it their communication was undetected. The reason it hasn't been found is that when he was done he sent it back to the future in his handy little Deloreon time machine. All so simple I'm surprised you missed it.

Thanks. Obviously, nonsense goes ahead of scholarship.

[MormonMason]

Funnily enough, Joseph Smith did not have a Bible at the time he was translating the Book of Mormon. He did not purchase one until October 8, 1829. The Book of Mormon was completed on or before July 1, 1829.

The only other times he could obtain one was when he would send for one from a neighbor down the road to settle a dispute. He also had his head buried in a hat during translation periods and, as mentioned above, all witnesses are unanimous that he had no books, papers or manuscripts with him during translation activities. So, how would he have quoted verbatim from a KJV without anyone noticing?

On top of this, referring to his wording "'in the weakness' of Joseph's own tongue/language (were a marching etc)" is of interest considering that the same kind of wording can be seen in several instances in even the Bible. Here are a few from the Bible, translated by a committee of scholars and classicists:

Luke 8:42 ¶ For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went the people thronged him.

John 21:3 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.

Hebrews 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.

[MormonMason]

I certainly wish that Joseph would have explained it more than he did. I am sure that he was speaking about it with people. It would be difficult not to. But we have no written record from him about the translation process....

We do have something on official record. He was asked to speak something of the details of the translation process. He refused. This information can be found in the Far West Record. Since I do not have my copy of the Far West Record with me, the following will have to suffice:

Brother Hyrum Smith said that he thought best that the information of the coming forth of the book of Mormon be related by Joseph himself to the Elders present that all might know for themselves. Br. Joseph Smith jr. said that it was not intended to tell the world all the particulars of the coming forth of the book of Mormon, & also said that it was not expedient for him to relate these things &c....

http://www.boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1830-33/25Oct31.html

[MormonMason]

The reason the lost pages would be different than a re-translated version isn't because Joseph was using a loose translation method, but because (according to God) Lucy Harris and her conspirators were going to change the text in their version so it wouldn't match the tightly re-translated new version (which would otherwise be a word-for-word reproduction). (See D&C 10)

In other words, the story of the lost pages confirms the tight translation process, not a loose one.

If Joseph were using a loose translation, then the plan would have been foiled by him simply explaining that that was the case, and so their argument was based on a faulty premise (based on an assumption of a tight translation).

Frankly, the theory set forth in D&C 10 is absurd for many different reasons, and the counter-plan set forth involving the small plates and Words of Mormon is an equally absurd solution, especially if we are to believe this was the chosen plan as designed by an omniscient being.

If you have ever seen the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon yourself, and if you had been familiar with the common 19th century view on the verbal inspiration of scripture, it actually makes perfect sense. It would have been easy for someone to make changes to the manuscript because it was already filled with such markings as Joseph would correct something Cowdery miswrote at the time. It was no sweat to add some more and alter it all further. No erasures of manuscript would have been needed but simply crossings out and rewritings in the style of Cowdery.

On a related note, consider the apostasy of Simonds Ryder. His reason for apostasy was that he thought God has misspelled his name in a revelation! His opinion was that God would have known the spelling of his name and the error would not have been there had it really been God behind the revelation. His view of verbal inspiration of scripture would seemed to have had some degree of bearing on his feelings.

Edited May 28, 2013 by MormonMason

[canard78]

Bob gives a likely account of how the kJV was likely physically present during the translation. If this wasn't the case, one other option would be that Joseph is choosing to see the text of these KJV passages himself, just as he could choose to see a lost object in a seer stone. If we are to believe that he did see both the original characters and an English text using the hat/stone method, then he likely could see almost any text he wanted to using the stone. If he wasn't holding the stone directly over the plates like he did with the interpreters over copied characters, then he was accessing the characters from the plates remotely just as he saw lost objects remotely. If he could do that, it's not a stretch to assume he could recognize biblical passages and choose to see the KJV version text as well.

That's all well and good. But why would God/the stone have him quote Mark 16 in Mormon 9 (see OP for link to lots more details on this). Something that's fairly well established to be unoriginal and not something Jesus ever actually said. Why have Mormon/Joseph repeat verbatim something that Christ is supposed to have said that wasn't actually?

I sometimes think it's ironic that we go out of our way to point out the bible's weaknesses or issues to build the need for the BoM and yet a section that most non-LDS Bible scholars (and one or two LDS ones) agree is unoriginal is instead defended by some apologists because if its unoriginal then having Joseph include it puts us on dodgy ground.

For me Mark 16/Mormon 9 remains a smoking gun that I choose to ignore most of the time. I couldn't find anything about it on FAIR.

[canard78]

If you have ever seen the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon yourself, and if you had been familiar with the common 19th century view on the verbal inspiration of scripture, it actually makes perfect sense. It would have been easy for someone to make changes to the manuscript because it was already filled with such markings as Joseph would correct something Cowdery miswrote at the time. It was no sweat to add some more and alter it all further. No erasures of manuscript would have been needed but simply crossings out and rewritings in the style of Cowdery.

On a related note, consider the apostasy of Simonds Ryder. His reason for apostasy was that he thought God has misspelled his name in a revelation! His opinion was that God would have known the spelling of his name and the error would not have been there had it really been God behind the revelation. His view of verbal inspiration of scripture would seemed to have had some degree of bearing on his feelings.

The article in the OP makes a similar point that it's the over-confidence in 'God breathed' style revelation that lead to David Whitmer making the statement about reading words off a stone.

Out of interest if Joseph needed to read words off a stone for BoM, why did he grow out of this need for the BoA?

[canard78]

Funnily enough, Joseph Smith did not have a Bible at the time he was translating the Book of Mormon. He did not purchase one until October 8, 1829. The Book of Mormon was completed on or before July 1, 1829.

The only other times he could obtain one was when he would send for one from a neighbor down the road to settle a dispute. He also had his head buried in a hat during translation periods and, as mentioned above, all witnesses are unanimous that he had no books, papers or manuscripts with him during translation activities. So, how would he have quoted verbatim from a KJV without anyone noticing?

On top of this, referring to his wording "'in the weakness' of Joseph's own tongue/language (were a marching etc)" is of interest considering that the same kind of wording can be seen in several instances in even the Bible. Here are a few from the Bible, translated by a committee of scholars and classicists:

Luke 8:42 ¶ For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went the people thronged him.

John 21:3 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.

Hebrews 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.

So he had a KJV in 1820 (his parents?). Are you saying the whitmers (where he was translating) had no bible either?

[MormonMason]

That's all well and good. But why would God/the stone have him quote Mark 16 in Mormon 9 (see OP for link to lots more details on this). Something that's fairly well established to be unoriginal and not something Jesus ever actually said. Why have Mormon/Joseph repeat verbatim something that Christ is supposed to have said that wasn't actually?

I sometimes think it's ironic that we go out of our way to point out the bible's weaknesses or issues to build the need for the BoM and yet a section that most non-LDS Bible scholars (and one or two LDS ones) agree is unoriginal is instead defended by some apologists because if its unoriginal then having Joseph include it puts us on dodgy ground.

For me Mark 16/Mormon 9 remains a smoking gun that I choose to ignore most of the time. I couldn't find anything about it on FAIR.

We don't know that Jesus never said any of it. All we reasonably can know is that this text is likely not original to the Gospel of Mark, being regarded as quite close in style to Luke. For instance, Westcott and Hort, who rejected this passage from Mark were not willing to jettison it entirely as not even containing the words of Jesus from another, now lost, ancient source. It is entirely possible that the passage contains genuine words of Jesus from a once separate ancient source that later was used to fill in the gaps in Mark's original ending that was perhaps lost very early on. I don't believe that it is original to Mark but I am certain that it does come from another ancient source. The old copy of Mark that Ireneaus quoted c. A.D. 175-185 contained those verses.

[MormonMason]

The article in the OP makes a similar point that it's the over-confidence in 'God breathed' style revelation that lead to David Whitmer making the statement about reading words off a stone.

Out of interest if Joseph needed to read words off a stone for BoM, why did he grow out of this need for the BoA?

I believe that David Whitmer made a wrong-headed assumption based on an event that occurred during the time frame of the translation and applied that occurrence to the entire Book of Mormon translation process. Joseph Smith did not give details of the translation of the Book of Mormon to Whitmer or to Harris, and only Cowdery actually began to translate a portion of the Book of Mormon and failed to go further. We know what process Cowdery was supposed to have used because it is described in the Doctrine and Covenants.

The event in question was Joseph's translating a piece of parchment that would later become Section 7 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Recall Whitmer's description of Joseph seeing "something resembling parchment."

[Glenn101]

Carnard78, I answered your question with a question because there is no one secular naturalistic answer that fills in all of the gaps. The idea that Joseph had a copy of the King James Bible and referred to it when the translation proces came to Isaiah is problematic because (a) Joseph was not well read in the scriptures or (any other literature at the time), (b) he would have had to recognize just what verses were being referred to at the time, © be able to integrate that with Nephi's comments that were interspersed, and (d) know just where to end his quotes from the KJV.

That theory also does not account for the many variants in the Book of Mormon. John A. Tvedtnes has done an analysis of those variants showing that they are most likey intentional and not scribal error for the most part. Which then brings up the question of why some chapters are quoted verbatim and why some have some very significant variations. Having a copy of the KJV and using it does not answer that question.

Your Mark in the New Testament reference is really too uncertain to establish a problem. Know one knows at who's behest Mark wrote his view on the Gospel. It is not known if he was among the early disciples and had first hand knowledge. No one knows his sources of information, but he had to get it somewhere, and probably from diverse sources, which would rather confuse the issue.

None of the naturalistic explanations (including a photographic memory) explain why the Book of Mormon was written in a style of English that had more kinship with the vernacular of the century preceding the production of the KJV than with the vernacular of the KJV text.

Persdonally, I think that God has a sense of humor.

Glenn