Appearance
KJV Italics
The claim:
"When King James translators were translating the KJV Bible between 1604 and 1611, they would occasionally put in their own words into the text to make the English more readable. We know exactly what these words are because they're italicized in the KJV Bible. What are these 17th century italicized words doing in the Book of Mormon? Word for word? What does this say about the Book of Mormon being an ancient record?"[1]
The CES Letter presents two examples — Isaiah 9:1 / 2 Nephi 19:1 and Malachi 3:10 / 3 Nephi 24:10 — and asks why a text supposedly completed by Moroni around 421 AD would contain words invented by English translators twelve centuries later.
What happens when you actually count the italic words?
What KJV italics are
When the KJV translators encountered Hebrew or Greek that needed extra English words to make sense, they supplied those words and printed them in italics. These aren't errors — they're grammatical scaffolding. The Hebrew "Woe me" becomes "Woe is me" because English requires the copula. The italicized is signals: "This word isn't in the Hebrew, but you need it in English."[2]
The CES Letter's argument: if the Book of Mormon reproduces these italicized words, Joseph Smith must have been copying from a KJV Bible.
Simple enough. But it assumes the italicized words are uniformly present in the Book of Mormon. They aren't.
The data tells a different story
Royal Skousen's Critical Text Project produced the definitive count. Of the 516 variants between the Book of Mormon's Isaiah chapters and the KJV, 150 — roughly 29% — involve italicized words.[3] That's striking because only 3.6% of the words in these KJV passages are italicized.[4]
Italicized words account for 3.6% of the text but generate 29% of the changes. They're being singled out — not copied.
Stan Spencer's 2020 analysis in Interpreter sharpened the picture. In 2 Nephi 16–17 (Isaiah 6–7), he counted every word:[5]
| Word type | Total words | Words omitted | Omission rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-italicized | 1,021 | 11 | 1.1% |
| Italicized | 37 | 15 | 40.5% |
Italicized words were omitted at roughly 40 times the rate of non-italicized words.
Across all of the Book of Mormon's Isaiah chapters, 38% of italicized words were omitted or altered.[3:1] A person copying from a Bible copies everything on the page. A person receiving a text with the italic words already removed produces exactly this pattern.
What the broken grammar reveals
When italic words disappear, the English breaks. Spencer catalogued the results:[5:1]
| Passage | KJV (italicized words in bold italic) | Book of Mormon (1830 text) |
|---|---|---|
| Isaiah 6:5 / 2 Nephi 16:5 | "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips" | "Wo me! for I undone; because I a man of unclean lips" |
| Isaiah 6:7 / 2 Nephi 16:7 | "he laid it upon my mouth" | "he laid upon my mouth" |
| Isaiah 6:8 / 2 Nephi 16:8 | "Here am I; send me" | "Here I; send me" |
| Isaiah 7:20 / 2 Nephi 17:20 | "namely, by the king of Assyria" | "by the king of Assyria" |
"Wo me! for I undone." That's not what a plagiarist writes. A plagiarist copies the smooth, readable KJV text — italic words and all. This reads like someone working from a text where the italic words were missing, trying to make sense of what remained.
Key Point
No one reading from a Bible would produce "Wo me! for I undone" when the page in front of them reads "Woe is me! for I am undone." The broken grammar is the strongest evidence against copying.
The Malachi example backfires
The CES Letter's second example — Malachi 3:10 / 3 Nephi 24:10 — presents seven italicized words ("there shall not be room enough to receive it") and asks why they appear identically in the Book of Mormon.
The answer requires looking at the Hebrew.
Malachi 3:10 uses the phrase בְּלִי דַּי (bli day), which means something like "until there is no more sufficiency" — a concept of overflowing superabundance. This phrase cannot be rendered in English with a simple word-for-word substitution. Every competent translator has to add words to convey the meaning.[6]
Here's what modern translations — working independently from the Hebrew — produce:
| Translation | Rendering of בְּלִי דַּי |
|---|---|
| KJV (1611) | "there shall not be room enough to receive it" (italics mark added words) |
| RSV / NRSV | "overflowing blessing" |
| NASB (1995) | "a blessing until it overflows" |
| ESV | "a blessing until there is no more need" |
| NET Bible | "a blessing until there is no room for it all" |
Every translation adds explanatory words. The KJV translators just had the courtesy to italicize theirs.
The italicized words in Malachi 3:10 aren't errors or unjustified additions. They're semantically required by the Hebrew. Any translation of this verse — from any source text, in any era — would contain similar language. The Book of Mormon reproducing this meaning is expected, not suspicious.
The Isaiah 9:1 example is more complicated than it looks
The CES Letter's first example — Isaiah 9:1 / 2 Nephi 19:1 — highlights five italicized words (shall, be, was, by, and Red) and says they appear identically in the Book of Mormon.
But the CES Letter omits a detail from its own example. In KJV Isaiah 9:1, "her" is italicized: "afflict her by the way of the sea." In 2 Nephi 19:1, "her" is dropped — replaced with a different construction: "afflict by the way of the Red Sea."[1:1]
One italicized word removed. Others retained. The mixed pattern — in the CES Letter's own showcase passage — undermines the claim that italics were copied "word for word."
The CES Letter also raises sub-arguments about the word "Red": that Christ quoted Isaiah in Matthew 4:14–15 without mentioning the Red Sea, that "Red" isn't in any source manuscripts, and that the Red Sea is 250 miles from the described location. These are worth addressing, but they concern a textual variant, not a KJV italic issue — the real question is about the broader pattern, and that pattern doesn't support copying.
But what about the italic words that stayed?
A fair objection: if italic words were stripped out, why does the Book of Mormon retain roughly 62% of them?
First, context matters. The Malachi chapters in 3 Nephi are presented as Christ personally quoting the prophet to the Nephites (3 Nephi 24:1: "he said unto them: Write the words which the Father had given unto Malachi"). Unlike the Isaiah passages — where Nephi is working from brass plates and the text passes through a separate translation layer — the Malachi text is delivered directly by the resurrected Lord. A different transmission path can produce a different level of KJV alignment.[5:2]
Second, not every italic word is the same kind of addition. Some italic words are near-mandatory for English comprehension — you can't drop them without the sentence becoming unintelligible. Others are optional glosses. The omission pattern isn't random: the words most likely to be dropped are those that English can survive without, even if awkwardly. The words retained tend to be structurally necessary.[5:3]
The 38% alteration rate is what needs explaining — and "copying" doesn't explain it. No one copies a text and accidentally skips 38% of a specific word category while retaining 99% of everything else.
The inconsistency rules out deliberate revision
Critics Stan Larson and David P. Wright proposed that Joseph Smith knew what italics meant and deliberately targeted them for revision.[4:1] If true, you'd expect consistency. The same grammatical construction should be treated the same way.
It isn't. Isaiah 6:3 (2 Nephi 16:3) retains both italicized verbs unchanged. Isaiah 6:5, two verses later, drops them. The same word — is — kept in one verse, gone in the next.[5:4]
No editorial consistency. This rules out deliberate revision. It looks like passive omission — someone working from a text where those words simply weren't there, sometimes noticing the gaps and sometimes not.
The deliberate-revision hypothesis also has a biographical problem. During the translation, Joseph stopped suddenly and asked Emma, "Did Jerusalem have walls around it?" — he didn't know.[7] Lucy Mack Smith said he "had never read the Bible through in his life."[8] A man who didn't know Jerusalem had walls is unlikely to have understood that KJV italics mark translator-supplied words — a specialized typographic convention that most Bible readers, then and now, couldn't explain.
Joseph Smith's 1837 corrections confirm the pattern
When Joseph edited the Book of Mormon for its 1837 second edition, he restored several of the missing italic words:[5:5]
| Passage | 1830 text | 1837 correction |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Nephi 16:5 | "Wo me!" | "Wo is me!" |
| 2 Nephi 16:5 | "I a man of unclean lips" | "I am a man of unclean lips" |
| 2 Nephi 16:8 | "Here I; send me" | "Here am I; send me" |
| 2 Nephi 17:1 | (missing connector) | Added "that" |
If Joseph had originally removed these words on purpose — to make the text look different from the KJV — why would he add them back seven years later? He'd leave them out to maintain the illusion.
But if the words were absent in the text he received and he didn't catch the problems during rapid dictation, he'd restore them once he sat down to edit. That's exactly what happened.
Two early witnesses saw the pattern
In August 1831 — barely two years after the Book of Mormon was published — The Sun newspaper published an account based on Martin Harris's description of the translation process:[9]
"Jo should omit all the words in the Bible that were printed in Italic."
The account adds that "if Harris attempted to correct Jo, he persisted that the plates were right, and the Bible was wrong."
This is a hostile source — the reporter was mocking the process. But hostile witnesses are often the most useful, because they have no motivation to invent evidence for the other side. This reporter documented precisely the pattern Spencer would analyze statistically 189 years later: italic words omitted during dictation.
The earliest Saints noticed it too
In January 1833, W.W. Phelps wrote in The Evening and the Morning Star that the Book of Mormon "has not been tinctured by the wisdom of man, with here and there an Italic word to supply deficiencies."[10]
Phelps saw the absence of italic words as a feature — evidence the Book of Mormon was purer than the KJV. Whether or not you share his theology, the observation matches the data. The italic words were treated differently from the start, and the earliest Latter-day Saints knew it.
No Bible present during translation
The CES Letter's copying argument requires Joseph to have had a KJV Bible open during dictation. The eyewitness evidence says otherwise.
Emma Smith:
"He had neither manuscript nor book to read from... If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me."[7:1]
David Whitmer described the stone-in-hat method — Joseph's face buried in a hat, reading words that appeared on the seer stone.[11] Consulting a Bible while your face is inside a hat is not physically practical.
Oliver Cowdery purchased a Bible from the Palmyra bookseller E.B. Grandin on October 8, 1829.[12] The Book of Mormon translation was completed by late June 1829. The Bible arrived after the dictation was done.
The text goes beyond the KJV
If the Book of Mormon were simply copied from the KJV, it should be limited to KJV English. It isn't. Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen identified over 90 archaic English words and grammatical structures that predate or are absent from the KJV.[13] A copyist working from the KJV can't produce vocabulary the KJV doesn't contain.
John Tvedtnes analyzed 234 Isaiah variants between the Book of Mormon and the KJV, rating each against ancient manuscript evidence. Of the rated variants, 59 favor the Book of Mormon, 126 are neutral, and 49 favor the KJV.[14] A plagiarist working from a KJV should produce zero readings that align with manuscripts he didn't know existed. The most striking example: 2 Nephi 12:16 combines both the Masoretic "ships of Tarshish" and the Septuagint "ships of the sea" — the first English Septuagint wasn't published until 1808, and the Dead Sea Scrolls wouldn't be discovered until 1947.[15]
For the full analysis of archaic English, Dead Sea Scroll alignments, and non-KJV readings, see KJV Errors.
Why Spencer's hypothesis fits and the others don't
Scholars have proposed three explanations for the italic-word pattern. All three accept the statistical reality. They disagree on why.
| Hypothesis | Proposed by | Explanation | Key weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Variants | B.H. Roberts | The brass plates had different Hebrew, producing different English | Doesn't explain why only italic words are disproportionately affected |
| Intentional Revision | Larson, Wright | Joseph knew what italics meant and targeted them | Requires specialized knowledge Joseph didn't demonstrate; pattern is inconsistent |
| Missing Words | Stan Spencer (2020) | A prior translator stripped italic words; Joseph filled gaps imperfectly | Fits the statistical pattern, broken grammar, 1837 corrections, and eyewitness evidence |
Spencer's Missing Words hypothesis accounts for all the evidence at once: the 40x omission rate, the broken grammar, the inconsistent treatment, the 1837 restorations, the 1831 newspaper account, and the absence of a Bible during translation. Neither of the other two hypotheses does.
Eight facts pointing one direction
| # | Evidence | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italic words omitted at 40x the rate of non-italic words | Something systematically removed them from the source text |
| 2 | Omissions produce broken English ("Wo me! for I undone") | Not a superior ancient reading — just missing words |
| 3 | Joseph restored missing words in 1837 | Consistent with discovering problems, not with intentional removal |
| 4 | The Sun (1831) reported the pattern independently | A hostile contemporary witness described italic omission during dictation |
| 5 | W.W. Phelps (1833) celebrated the absence of italics | The earliest Saints noticed and valued the pattern |
| 6 | No Bible present during translation | Multiple eyewitnesses confirm no books or manuscripts were used |
| 7 | 90+ archaic English forms predate or are absent from the KJV | The text's linguistic fingerprint extends beyond what KJV copying could produce |
| 8 | 59 of 234 Isaiah variants favor the Book of Mormon over the KJV | Ancient manuscript evidence supports readings Joseph couldn't have known |
The CES Letter presents the italic words as proof of plagiarism. The data tells the opposite story: the italic words weren't copied from a Bible — they were absent from the text Joseph received, and he filled the gaps as best he could.
Bottom line: Italicized words are omitted from the Book of Mormon at 40 times the rate of non-italicized words — the opposite of what copying looks like. The CES Letter's Malachi example dissolves when you check the Hebrew — every modern translation adds the same words. The broken grammar, the 1837 corrections, the 1831 eyewitness account, and the pre-KJV English all point the same direction: Joseph Smith wasn't reading from a Bible.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 2, p. 9. ↩︎ ↩︎
The italics convention was first used systematically in the 1560 Geneva Bible and adopted by the King James translators in 1611. See F.H.A. Scrivener, The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (1611): Its Subsequent Reprints and Modern Representatives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884). ↩︎
Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS / BYU Studies, 2019). Skousen identified 516 variants in the Isaiah quotations, of which 150 (29%) involve italicized words. Of the 392 italicized words in the relevant KJV Isaiah passages, 150 (38%) are altered in the Book of Mormon. ↩︎ ↩︎
David P. Wright, "Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Or Joseph Smith in Isaiah," in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, ed. Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 157–234. Wright calculated that 22–38% of Isaiah variants involve italicized words despite italics comprising only 3.6% of the text. Stan Larson, "The Historicity of the Matthean Sermon on the Mount in 3 Nephi," in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon, ed. Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 115–163. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stan Spencer, "Missing Words: King James Bible Italics, the Translation of the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith as an Unlearned Reader," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 38 (2020): 45–106. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/missing-words-king-james-bible-italics-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon-and-joseph-smith-as-an-unlearned-reader/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
See Robert Boylan, "Answering a Criticism of the Use of Malachi 3:10 in 3 Nephi 24:10," Scriptural Mormonism (December 2017). http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2017/12/answering-criticism-of-use-of-malachi.html. The Hebrew בְּלִי דַּי (bli day) denotes superabundance that cannot be rendered by simple word-for-word translation. The Septuagint uses ἕως τοῦ ἱκανωθῆναι ("until satisfied"), also requiring expansion in English. ↩︎
Emma Smith, interview by Joseph Smith III, February 1879. Published in Saints' Herald 26 (October 1, 1879): 289–290. Emma stated: "He had neither manuscript nor book to read from... If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me." She also recalled: "One time while he was translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, 'Emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it?' When I answered 'Yes,' he replied, 'Oh! I was afraid I had been deceived.'" ↩︎ ↩︎
Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool: S.W. Richards, 1853). Lucy wrote that Joseph "had never read the Bible through in his life." See also Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996), 296. ↩︎
"Golden Bible," The Sun (New York), August 18, 1831. The account is based on an interview apparently with Martin Harris. Reprinted and discussed in Spencer, "Missing Words," 68–72. ↩︎
W.W. Phelps, The Evening and the Morning Star 1, no. 8 (January 1833). Phelps wrote that the Book of Mormon "has not been tinctured by the wisdom of man, with here and there an Italic word to supply deficiencies." ↩︎
David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: David Whitmer, 1887), 12. Whitmer described Joseph placing the seer stone in a hat and reading off the translation, with no book or manuscript present. ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery's Bible was purchased from the Palmyra bookseller E.B. Grandin on October 8, 1829. The Book of Mormon translation was completed by late June 1829, its copyright registered June 11, 1829, and typesetting began in late August 1829. See Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 27. ↩︎
Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack identified 90+ lexical items with meanings dating from the 1530s–1730s that do not appear in the KJV. See "Archaic Vocabulary," Evidence Central (Scripture Central). https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/archaic-vocabulary. See also Skousen and Carmack, The Nature of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon, Parts 3–4 of Volume III of the Critical Text Project (Provo, UT: FARMS / BYU Studies, 2018). ↩︎
John A. Tvedtnes, "The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon," FARMS Preliminary Report (1981). Analyzed 234 variants: 59 favor the Book of Mormon, 126 neutral, 49 favor the KJV. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/presentations/report/isaiah-variants-book-mormon. See also Tvedtnes, "Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon," in Monte S. Nyman, ed., Isaiah and the Prophets (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1984), 165–177. ↩︎
Dana M. Pike and David Rolph Seely, "'Upon All the Ships of the Sea, and Upon All the Ships of Tarshish': Revisiting 2 Nephi 12:16 and Isaiah 2:16," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 2 (2005): 12–25. The first English translation of the Septuagint (Charles Thomson, 1808) had a print run of just 1,000 sets. Joseph Smith could not read Greek. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol14/iss2/4/ ↩︎