Appearance
KJV Mistranslations in the Book of Mormon
The claim:
"The Book of Mormon includes mistranslated biblical passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired JST version instead of the incorrect KJV version that Joseph later fixed."[1]
The CES Letter prints three side-by-side passages -- 3 Nephi 13:25-27, KJV Matthew 6:25-27, and JST Matthew 6:25-27 -- and observes that the Book of Mormon matches the KJV verbatim while the JST departs from it dramatically. The implied conclusion: an inspired ancient text should not contain "incorrect" English that Joseph Smith later corrected in 1830-33.[1:1]
This article focuses specifically on the mistranslation and Isaiah variant dimensions of the broader KJV-in-the-Book-of-Mormon question. The companion article on KJV Errors addresses the foundational "1769 edition" claim, the KJV-as-base-text framework, and FAIR's catalog of 91 alleged errors. The companion article on KJV Italics covers Stan Spencer's 40-times statistical analysis of italicized words. The present article concentrates on the texts of the alleged mistranslations themselves: the specific Isaiah variants that Hebrew scholars have rated as KJV errors, the Sermon on the Mount Textus Receptus pattern, the strongest steelman case from David P. Wright, Stan Larson, and Colby Townsend, and the genuinely difficult question of how an ancient text mediated through divine translation should relate to the imperfections of a 17th-century English Bible. Where topics overlap, this article cross-links rather than re-litigates.
Context and Background
"Creative and Cultural Translation"
The most important framework for understanding KJV language in the Book of Mormon comes from Royal Skousen's Critical Text Project -- the most exhaustive scholarly analysis of the Book of Mormon text ever undertaken. After three decades of work with the original and printer's manuscripts, Skousen (with co-author Stanford Carmack) concluded that "the Book of Mormon is a creative and cultural translation of what was on the plates, not a literal one."[2] The phrase has become the defining shorthand for the LDS scholarly position on the Book of Mormon's translation methodology.
The distinction is essential. A literal translation would render each word of the source text independently into English with no reference to existing translation traditions. A creative and cultural translation renders the meaning of the source text into language and idiom familiar to the target audience. Under Skousen's framing, KJV language -- including its imperfections -- represents the translation medium, not evidence that the source text never existed. Skousen identifies KJV translation errors, Textus Receptus influence in the Sermon on the Mount, and Deutero-Isaiah inclusion as three specific challenges arising from biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon, and treats the English-language imperfections in the biblical-quotation passages as artifacts of the translation medium rather than features of the underlying Nephite text.[2:1]
The scholar who has spent more time with the Book of Mormon text than anyone alive thus acknowledges the KJV errors directly and explains them as features of the translation medium. This is not a post-hoc apologetic concession. It is the conclusion of decades of textual analysis at the manuscript level.
The Deutero-Isaiah question is the most significant chronological challenge among the three; it falls outside this article's scope but receives extensive treatment in the KJV Errors article. The present article addresses challenges (1) and (2) directly.
Localization and "Translating Up"
Brant A. Gardner has extended Skousen's framework with the concept of "localization": the adaptation of a translated text to the linguistic and cultural expectations of its receiving audience. Localization is standard practice in translation studies and is documented across centuries of religious-text translation. Gardner argues that "the omnipresence of a King James Version-like style in the translation localized the new book as scripture for the reception audience."[3] For early-19th-century Americans, the KJV was not merely a Bible -- it was the definition of what scripture sounded like. A translation using its cadence and vocabulary signaled to that audience that the text carried scriptural authority.[4]
Gardner cites translation theorist David Bellos for external scholarly support. Bellos, an Oxford-educated translator, observes that "translations toward the more general and more prestigious tongue are characteristically highly adaptive, erasing most of the traces of the text's foreign origin."[5] [3:1] The KJV was the prestige register of American religious discourse in 1830. A translation using its phrasing was not plagiarizing; it was localizing.
Gardner's term for the underlying principle is "translating up" -- rendering ancient concepts into the most prestigious scriptural idiom available to the audience.[3:2] On Gardner's analysis, the resulting text "is sufficient for the religious function of the text" without needing to mirror the source language word-for-word.[3:3]
This principle has a direct scriptural foundation. The Lord declared in D&C 1:24: "Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding." Daniel L. Belnap (2011) has argued that "the use of King James English in the Book of Mormon would itself be part of the Lord's promise that he would reveal his truth to humankind 'after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding' (D&C 1:24)" and that "the presence of King James English and even KJV passages in the Book of Mormon functioned to establish the book's validity to people already familiar with the words of God via King James English."[4:1]
If divine communication accommodates the language of its recipients, the KJV idiom is exactly the language God would use for an 1830s audience steeped in the King James Bible.
Translation Anachronisms vs. Historical Anachronisms
Gardner makes a critical distinction between two types of anachronisms. A historical anachronism is a detail from the wrong time period embedded in a purportedly original composition -- like a reference to the telephone in a medieval chronicle. It is strong evidence of fraud or compositional error. A translation anachronism is a modern word or phrase introduced by a translator to convey an ancient concept -- like the KJV rendering of the Hebrew word for "oil lamp" as "candle," because candles were the common light source in early-17th-century England.[6]
Gardner's verbatim formulation: "It is entirely possible to have an anachronism in a translation that was not present in the original." His specific example: "The KJV frequently mentions candles, even though oil lamps provided light during both the Old and New Testament times. Technically, candles are an anachronism." But "candles were the common means of providing light in early seventeenth century when King James commissioned the English translation."[6:1]
The KJV is full of translation anachronisms. No one regards the KJV as fraudulent because it uses "candle" where the Hebrew says "oil lamp." The KJV translators chose words their audience would understand. If the Book of Mormon translation followed the same principle -- and Skousen's research indicates it did -- then stylistic KJV features in the Book of Mormon (archaic verb forms, thee/thou pronouns, KJV cadence) are translation anachronisms, not historical ones. For a broader treatment of anachronism claims and the Book of Mormon, see the Anachronisms article.
An important caveat: the translation-anachronism framework works cleanly for stylistic features but does not fully cover cases where the KJV conveys a meaning the Hebrew does not support. "Pictures" for the Hebrew sekiyyot ("ships"), for instance, is not a stylistic choice but a factual error transmitting wrong information. The accommodation model's handling of these factual errors is one of the hardest questions in this discussion, addressed at length in the steelman section below.
The Manuscript Evidence for Dictation
Before examining specific mistranslation claims, one foundational fact about the translation process deserves emphasis: Skousen's original-manuscript analysis demonstrates that the biblical passages in the Book of Mormon were dictated, not copied from a printed Bible.[7] [8]
Oliver Cowdery's consistent misspellings in the original manuscript reflect phonetic errors -- mishearings of spoken words -- not misreadings of printed text. The classic example is "Coriantumr," which Cowdery initially wrote as "Coriantummer" -- a phonetic rendering that makes sense for a word heard aloud but not for a word read from a page. Similar phonetic errors appear consistently throughout the original manuscript.[8:1]
Two corroborating documentary facts strengthen the dictation case. First, Oliver Cowdery purchased a Bible from E.B. Grandin in Palmyra on October 8, 1829 -- months after the Book of Mormon translation was completed in late June 1829. The copyright was registered June 11, 1829; typesetting at Grandin's print shop began in late August 1829; Cowdery's Bible purchase came over a month after typesetting started.[9] [8:2] If KJV consultation were essential to the translation process, Joseph and Oliver would presumably have acquired a Bible before beginning. Second, multiple eyewitnesses testified that no Bible or manuscript was visible during the translation. Emma Smith stated under oath: "He had neither manuscript nor book to read from." David Whitmer described the seer-stone-in-hat method, which makes continuous Bible consultation physically difficult since Joseph's face was pressed into the hat to block extraneous light.[10] [11]
This evidence deserves precise characterization. It rules out line-by-line visual copying from a printed Bible. It does not, by itself, rule out the possibility that Joseph Smith had internalized large portions of the KJV from years of Bible reading and produced them from memory during dictation. Someone reciting memorized KJV passages aloud would also produce phonetic misspelling patterns. The dictation evidence is important for what it eliminates (the "open Bible at the table" hypothesis) without being asked to do more work than it can.[8:3]
Know vs. Produce: A Methodological Distinction
The positive case below relies on a specific kind of inference worth flagging at the outset. Several arguments take the form: "the Book of Mormon's reading agrees with manuscript X, which was rediscovered in year Y after the Book of Mormon's publication." That framing is sometimes shortened to "Joseph couldn't have known about manuscript X" -- which is too strong on its own. The actual inference is narrower: for cases like the systematic LXX plurals at Mosiah 14, the Hebrew Qere reading at Isaiah 9:3, the consistent prophetic perfect at Mosiah 14:7, and the first-person verb at Isaiah 48:11, the relevant question is not whether Joseph could have read 1QIsa-a or the Septuagint apparatus (he obviously couldn't) but whether he could have produced the specific pattern of modifications the ancient witnesses were later found to support. For other cases -- the "without a cause" omission and the "ships of the sea" reading at 2 Nephi 12:16 -- the variant was discussed in 19th-century English commentary literature accessible to a determined reader (Adam Clarke flagged the eikēi variant), so the strongest framing is "the Book of Mormon aligned with what later became scholarly consensus, against the KJV," not "no one could have known." The article tries to keep these two categories distinct throughout.
Analysis
The Sermon on the Mount Discrepancy: What the CES Letter Argues
The CES Letter's mistranslation argument rests on a single worked example: the parallel passage at 3 Nephi 13:25-27 / Matthew 6:25-27 / JST Matthew 6:25-27.[1:2] The 3 Nephi passage matches the KJV verbatim ("Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on..."). The JST text, however, departs dramatically from both ("And, again, I say unto you, Go ye into the world, and care not for the world..."). Runnells concludes: "The Book of Mormon is 'the most correct book' and was translated a mere decade before the JST. The Book of Mormon was not corrupted over time and did not need correcting. How is it that the Book of Mormon has the incorrect Sermon on the Mount passage and does not match the correct JST version in the first place?"[1:3]
The argument depends on a syllogism whose load-bearing premises are unstated:
- Premise 1 (implicit): The JST is solely a restoration of the original biblical text -- what the Bible "should" say.
- Premise 2 (implicit): "Most correct book" means "verbatim free of any imperfection."
- Premise 3 (asserted): 3 Nephi 13:25-27 matches the KJV, not the JST.
- Conclusion: The Book of Mormon contains "incorrect" biblical text Joseph Smith later "corrected" in the JST.
Premise 3 is the only premise the CES Letter actually demonstrates with text. The other two premises drive the argument's force but are never argued.
Premise 1 is contested by the leading LDS JST scholars. Robert J. Matthews, who pioneered LDS scholarship on the JST, and Kent P. Jackson, the contemporary editor of the Joseph Smith Translation manuscripts in the Joseph Smith Papers project, both treat the JST as a multi-purpose project that includes prophetic commentary, harmonization across Gospels, theological expansion, and recontextualization -- not merely textual restoration. David A. LeFevre's chapter in the 2010 Sperry Symposium volume documents that "at least 58 of the 86 verses changed by Joseph Smith's translation of Matthew 5-7 differ from the account in 3 Nephi, many in substantial ways."[12] Even Colby Townsend (a critical scholar) acknowledges that the JST involves harmonization and expansion rather than pure textual restoration. If the JST is multi-purpose, there is no internal contradiction in the JST and the Book of Mormon disagreeing on a given passage.
The audience and setting differ. John W. Welch has argued at length that 3 Nephi 12-14 is best understood as the Sermon at the Temple, addressed to a different audience under different theological conditions: Christ's resurrected covenant-making appearance in the New World to a faithful remnant. Galilean Matthew 5-7 is addressed to a mixed crowd at the beginning of Jesus's mortal ministry. 3 Nephi 12:1-2 explicitly frames the Nephite sermon as a covenant-making event, not a parallel teaching event. The two sermons share content because Christ is the same teacher, but they are not required to be identical recordings of a single delivery.[13] [14]
The JST itself contains internal disagreements. Wayment & Yost (2005) have documented that Joseph Smith translated several passages multiple times in different ways during the JST project, with internal inconsistencies between manuscripts.[15] The CES Letter measures the Book of Mormon against the JST as if the JST were a fixed, authoritative comparison standard. It is not.
"Most correct book" means precepts, not verbatim purity. The relevant Joseph Smith quote (HC 4:461, November 1841) reads: "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book." The phrase "most correct" refers to the precepts and the way they bring a person nearer to God, not to a claim that every word is verbatim free of any inherited translation imperfection. The CES Letter trades on a misreading the lay reader is unlikely to have caught.
The cherry-picked example matters too. The CES Letter selects 3 Nephi 13:25-27, where the Book of Mormon follows the KJV. It does not mention 3 Nephi 12:22 -- located in the same Sermon on the Mount block, three chapters earlier -- where the Book of Mormon omits a phrase ("without a cause") that modern textual criticism has confirmed was a later scribal addition. The single example Runnells uses to argue claim 3 sits in the same chapters as the single strongest counterexample to his thesis. The CES Letter's selectivity here is itself diagnostic of its argumentative method.
Isaiah 7:14: The Almah/Virgin Question
Before turning to the specific Isaiah variants the steelman case treats as decisive, one preliminary case illustrates why the "KJV mistranslation" framing is often more contestable than the CES Letter suggests. Isaiah 7:14 -- "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" in the KJV, quoted at 2 Nephi 17:14 -- is sometimes cited as a copied KJV mistranslation, since the underlying Hebrew word almah is more accurately rendered "young woman of marriageable age" than specifically "virgin."
The case is considerably more complex than that framing allows.
The Septuagint's pre-Christian rendering. The Greek Septuagint translators who chose parthenos ("virgin") to render almah in Isaiah 7:14 were Jewish scholars working in the 3rd-2nd century BC, two to three centuries before Christianity existed.[16] They had no Christian theological motive for rendering the word as "virgin." Their translation decision reflects what they considered a contextually defensible reading. While later Jewish translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) used neanis ("young woman"), the original LXX choice of parthenos demonstrates that ancient Jewish translators read "virgin" into the verse on internal grounds. Hallvard Hagelia raises -- without resolving -- whether the Septuagint translators worked from a Hebrew Vorlage (the underlying source text) containing betulah or whether they read almah as implying virginity on social-contextual grounds; he documents the historical context of the LXX choice while himself preferring "young woman" as the more accurate rendering of the Hebrew.[17]
The semantic range of almah. While almah does not technically denote virginity in modern lexicons, it refers to a young, unmarried woman of marriageable age. In ancient Israelite social norms, such a woman would normally be presumed to be a virgin -- the categories overlap substantially.[17:1] Even Jerome, who personally preferred a more literal rendering, acknowledged the legitimacy of the Septuagint's choice in his Commentary on Isaiah.[18] Critics often claim betulah is the "real" Hebrew word for virgin -- but betulah itself has a broader semantic range than that framing admits. Joel 1:8 uses betulah to describe a woman mourning "the husband of her youth," demonstrating that betulah can refer to a young married woman.[19]
Matthew 1:23. The New Testament adopts the LXX parthenos rendering authoritatively, applying it specifically to Mary's conception. The Book of Mormon's use of "virgin" aligns with the oldest continuous translation tradition (the Septuagint), with the New Testament's own quotation of the verse, and with a defensible reading of the Hebrew term's semantic range.
Nephi's prophetic context. Nephi quotes Isaiah 7:14 in 2 Nephi 17:14 in a context where he has already received a vision of the virgin Mary (1 Nephi 11:13-20).[20] His use of the Isaiah 7:14 language is not a naive borrowing of a KJV rendering; it is an informed prophetic application by someone who has been shown the very person Isaiah's prophecy concerns.
This is not to say "virgin" is the best modern translation of almah. Most contemporary Hebrew scholars (including Hagelia) prefer "young woman." But characterizing the rendering as a straightforward "error" misrepresents a genuinely complex textual situation in which reasonable scholars have disagreed for millennia, in which the LXX (centuries before Christ) chose "virgin," and in which the New Testament applied that choice authoritatively.
The Abinadi Narrative: Ancient Manuscript Alignments
The most detailed case study of the Book of Mormon's handling of biblical quotations comes from Shon D. Hopkin's verse-by-verse comparison of the Abinadi narrative (Mosiah 12-16) with the corresponding KJV passages. The Abinadi narrative includes quotations from both Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments, in Mosiah 12-13) and Isaiah 53 (the Suffering Servant, in Mosiah 14). Hopkin identified 20 textual variants between these Book of Mormon quotations and the KJV. His verbatim conclusion:
"In the Abinadi narrative, of the twenty variants that exist, fourteen find support in an ancient manuscript witness -- such as the Septuagint, the Targums, or the Dead Sea Scrolls -- or they are an equally appropriate translation from the Masoretic Text."[21]
A few methodological points deserve attention before assessing this 14-of-20 ratio. Hopkin's 20 variants represent all the substantive textual differences he identified across the Abinadi narrative's biblical quotations (both Exodus and Isaiah), not a curated subset. The ancient witnesses Hopkin compared against include the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Aramaic Targums, the Latin Vulgate, and the Syriac Peshitta -- a large body of comparators across which some degree of coincidental alignment is expected. Hopkin himself frames the result cautiously: "the types of variants in the Dead Sea Scrolls do appear to match the types of variants found in the Book of Mormon fairly closely. This could possibly support the view of the Book of Mormon as a translation of an ancient text," noting that "in all, the picture that emerges from the analysis is varied and complex."[21:1] That cautious framing should be preserved.
The specific Isaiah 53 alignments include the following:
| Mosiah 14 Reading | KJV Isaiah 53 Reading | Ancient Support |
|---|---|---|
| Mosiah 14:6 "iniquities" (plural) | Isaiah 53:6 "iniquity" (singular) | Septuagint hamartiais (plural)[21:2] |
| Mosiah 14:8 "transgressions" (plural) | Isaiah 53:8 "transgression" (singular) | Septuagint anomiōn (plural)[21:3] |
| Mosiah 14:12 "sins" (plural) | Isaiah 53:12 "sin" (singular) | Septuagint hamartias (plural)[21:4] |
| Mosiah 14:7 "opened" (consistent past tense) | Isaiah 53:7 "openeth" (mixed tense) | Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a): perfect tense[7:1] |
| Mosiah 14:9 "evil" | Isaiah 53:9 "violence" (Hebrew ḥāmās) | Targum ḥiṭʾāh ("sin"); LXX anomian ("lawlessness"); cf. 1 Peter 2:22[21:5] |
The systematic plural pattern deserves particular attention. All three singular-to-plural changes -- "iniquity" to "iniquities," "transgression" to "transgressions," "sin" to "sins" -- agree with the Greek Septuagint. A skeptic could plausibly argue that pluralizing English abstract nouns in the context of repentance preaching is a natural stylistic move motivated by theological emphasis on personal sin, and that 3-for-3 in a small sample is exactly what motivated reasoning would produce. The faithful counter is that the direction of the variation (singular → plural) consistently matches the LXX rather than running independently of it, and that Abinadi's commentary at Mosiah 15-16 develops the personal-sin theology in ways that track the LXX's pluralization rather than merely emphasizing a generic theme. Hopkin himself frames the pattern as "harder to attribute to coincidence" rather than as conclusively non-coincidental.[21:6] Neither reading is decisive on the strength of three data points alone.
The "opened/openeth" variant carries weight as well. The KJV inconsistently renders Isaiah 53:7, using past tense in the first clause ("he opened not his mouth") but shifting to present tense in the parallel clause ("so he openeth not his mouth"). Mosiah 14:7 consistently uses past tense throughout, which is a more accurate rendering of the underlying Hebrew prophetic perfect.[7:2] The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a) at Isaiah 53:7 supports the consistent past tense form, as do the Aramaic Targums and the Syriac Peshitta.[22] Skousen has stated that "Abinadi's quotation of Isaiah 53:7 more consistently uses the past tense than does the KJV" and that "the Book of Mormon version renders the underlying Hebrew verbs of Isaiah 53:7 more correctly than does the KJV."[7:3] Abinadi himself demonstrates metalinguistic awareness of the convention at Mosiah 16:6: "And now if Christ had not come into the world, speaking of things to come as though they had already come, there could have been no redemption."[23] This is a precise description of the prophetic perfect tense -- a feature of Hebrew that standard grammars (Gesenius, Joüon-Muraoka) document as a recognized convention. The argument's force here rests not on the bare concept being inaccessible (it appeared in Adam Clarke's commentary on prophetic literature) but on the specificity with which Abinadi applies it to Isaiah 53 with the same verb-tense correction that 1QIsa-a was later found to support.[24]
The "evil/violence" variant at Mosiah 14:9 / Isaiah 53:9 is theologically loaded. The KJV renders the Hebrew ḥāmās as "violence." The Book of Mormon reads "evil." The Targum uses ḥiṭʾāh ("sin"); the Septuagint uses anomian ("lawlessness"); 1 Peter 2:22 -- the New Testament's own quotation of Isaiah 53:9 -- uses hamartian ("sin"). The "evil/sin/lawlessness" interpretive tradition is older and broader than the narrow "violence" rendering. Hopkin's verbatim assessment of theological significance:
"Theologically, the difference between the servant doing no 'violence' and doing no 'evil' is very important for the point that Abinadi is making. The view of the servant as one who does no violence is much less important than the portrayal of the servant as free from evil and thus able to suffer and atone for the sins of the people."[21:7]
The Book of Mormon reading aligns with the interpretive tradition reflected in the Targum, the LXX, and the New Testament's own use of the verse -- and it serves Abinadi's specific theological argument that the Servant's moral purity (not merely nonviolent conduct) is the foundation of his atoning capacity.
The strongest assessment of the 14-of-20 ratio is not as a standalone statistical proof but as a qualitative pattern. Each individual alignment might be attributable to coincidence; the systematic LXX plural agreements, the corrected prophetic perfect, and the theological coherence of "evil" over "violence" cumulatively make the overall pattern difficult to attribute to random stylistic variation. The qualitative cases carry the individual evidentiary weight; the bulk number is context, not argument.
Key Point
Hopkin's specific finding for the Isaiah 53 portion of Mosiah 14 is precise: of the eleven instances of italics (fifteen total italicized words) in Isaiah 53:1-12, none have been changed in Mosiah 14. The italics-correlation evidence does not run through this passage. It runs through other passages: David P. Wright found that approximately 23 percent of the variants in 2 Nephi 23 / Isaiah 13 occur at italicized words, despite italics comprising only 2.4 percent of the text; Stan Spencer's statistical analysis of 2 Nephi 16-17 / Isaiah 6-7 found the Book of Mormon omits italicized KJV words 40 times more often than non-italicized words, an association "not attributable to chance." For the full analysis of KJV italics treatment, see the companion article on KJV Italics.
"Without a Cause": The Book of Mormon Corrects the KJV
The single most striking textual correction in the Book of Mormon involves the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:22, the KJV reads: "whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." In the parallel passage at 3 Nephi 12:22, the Book of Mormon omits "without a cause."[14:1]
Modern textual criticism has vindicated this omission. The phrase "without a cause" (Greek: eikēi) is absent from the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts:
- Papyri P64 and P67 (~AD 200) -- among the earliest extant Matthean manuscripts.
- Codex Sinaiticus (4th century, original hand) -- rediscovered by Constantin von Tischendorf beginning in 1844 (with the major New Testament portions identified on his 1859 visit), well after the Book of Mormon was published.
- Codex Vaticanus (4th century) -- generally inaccessible to scholars until the 1860s.
- The Latin Vulgate -- Jerome mentions that the phrase "was not found in the oldest manuscripts known to him."[14:2]
- Ethiopic manuscripts and the Gospel of the Nazarenes.
- The church fathers Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen.[25]
Read chronologically, the witness pattern is a sandwich — the earliest manuscripts and fathers lacked the phrase, the Book of Mormon omitted it in 1830, and modern critical scholarship has since restored the shorter reading.
| Date | Witness omitting "without a cause" |
|---|---|
| ~AD 150 | Justin Martyr |
| ~AD 200 | Tertullian |
| ~AD 200 | Papyri P64 & P67 |
| ~AD 225 | Origen |
| ~AD 325 | Codex Vaticanus |
| ~AD 350 | Codex Sinaiticus |
| ~AD 400 | Latin Vulgate |
| 1830 | Book of Mormon — 3 Nephi 12:22 |
| 1844 | Codex Sinaiticus rediscovered (Tischendorf) |
| 1860s | Codex Vaticanus accessible to scholars |
| 1865 | Tischendorf's critical apparatus |
| 1881 | Westcott & Hort critical edition |
| 2012 | NA28 / UBS5 modern critical editions |
Bruce M. Metzger's authoritative Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament concurs: the word eikēi was "added by copyists in order to soften the rigor of the precept." Modern critical Greek editions (NA28, UBS5) print the shorter reading without the qualifier.[26] Mainstream modern English translations -- the NIV, ESV, NASB, and NRSV -- all follow the shorter reading, omitting "without a cause" or footnoting it as a textual variant.[26:1] As Scripture Central observes, the omission "is now the predominate reading of Matthew 5:22, as rendered in most modern versions of the Bible."[25:1]
P. Wernberg-Moller (1956) proposed an additional layer to the textual case: the Greek eikēi may itself reflect a translator's misrendering of an Aramaic original. "The Greek translator, then, followed the Aramaic ground text word for word, without being aware, however, that by a slavish rendering of the Aramaic idiom as eikēi, the original categorical saying was turned into a conditional one which made allowance for anger in some circumstances," when the original meaning was absolute.[27] If Wernberg-Moller is correct, the Aramaic original behind Matthew 5:22 contained no qualifier -- exactly as 3 Nephi 12:22 reads.
Daniel K. Judd and Allen W. Stoddard's definitive LDS scholarly treatment (2006) confirms the doctrinal-significance argument: removing "without a cause" creates a categorically stricter ethical standard against anger itself, not merely unjustified anger.[28] John W. Welch put the conclusion directly: "In my estimation, this textual variant in favor of the Sermon at the Temple is very meaningful. ... It is much more severe to say, 'Whoever is angry is in danger of the judgment'" without the qualifier.[14:3] The shorter reading aligns with Christ's other categorical demands in the Sermon (about lust, divorce, and loving enemies); the longer reading softens the ethic.
This is a genuinely significant data point, but it requires careful framing. In 1829, the formal discipline of textual criticism had not yet produced the critical editions that would establish the omission. Westcott and Hort's The New Testament in the Original Greek was published in 1881; Tischendorf's critical apparatus appeared in the 1860s and 1870s.[29] The Book of Mormon anticipated this scholarly consensus by decades.
The honest caveat. The omission was not entirely unknown before the 19th century. Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826), widely available in the American religious print market, discussed the eikēi variant and noted that some manuscripts omitted it.[30] Jerome had mentioned the phrase's absence from old manuscripts. The Latin Vulgate lacked it. The variant was therefore not entirely inaccessible in Joseph Smith's English-language environment, even though modern textual-critical consensus had not yet formed. The strongest framing of the case is "the Book of Mormon aligned with what later became the scholarly consensus, against the KJV" -- not "Joseph could not have known."
That framing is still meaningful. It remains the single sharpest positive data point in the article. Most modern Bible translations -- including the dominant evangelical translations of the 21st century -- now print exactly the reading the Book of Mormon published in 1830.
The Lopsided Textus Receptus Pattern: Larson's Steelman
The "without a cause" omission cannot be evaluated in isolation. Stan Larson (1986; 1993) examined the Sermon on the Mount in 3 Nephi 12-14 against modern textual criticism of Matthew 5-7. He identified eight specific passages where modern critical scholarship (the Nestle-Aland and UBS Greek New Testament editions) agrees that the Textus Receptus -- the late Greek text family the KJV translators used -- has readings absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts.[31] [32]
Larson's identified Sermon-on-the-Mount variants and their treatment in 3 Nephi (the well-attested core):
| # | Matthew | 3 Nephi | TR-only reading | 3 Nephi behavior |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5:22 | 12:22 | "without a cause" (eikēi) | OMITS (aligns with earliest MSS) |
| 2 | 5:27 | 12:27 | "by them of old time" | RETAINS |
| 3 | 6:4 | 13:4 | "himself" / "openly" | RETAINS |
| 4 | 6:6 | 13:6 | "openly" | RETAINS |
| 5 | 6:13 | 13:13 | Lord's Prayer doxology | RETAINS |
| 6 | 6:18 | 13:18 | "openly" | RETAINS |
The result on the well-attested core: 3 Nephi follows the late Textus Receptus in the great majority of identified cases and corrects to the earliest manuscripts in only one (the famous "without a cause" omission).[31:1] Larson's own framing in the 1986 Trinity Journal article identified eight variant passages (with eleven in his initial textual-critical analysis); the precise count of items varies slightly across summaries (the well-attested core comprises six identifiable Matthew/3 Nephi parallels), but the pattern is robust regardless of which count is used: the late Textus Receptus readings pass through to 3 Nephi with one prominent correction.
The Lord's Prayer doxology deserves separate weight. The strongest of the uncorrected late readings is the Lord's Prayer doxology at 3 Nephi 13:13 / Matthew 6:13: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." The doxology is a liturgical formula known from the Didache (1st-2nd century AD) but absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts of Matthew. It is almost certainly a later Christian liturgical addition, not part of Jesus's original Galilean prayer. The KJV preserves it because the Textus Receptus did; 3 Nephi preserves it because the KJV did.[31:2]
The implication is striking: the resurrected Christ is reported, in 3 Nephi 13:13, to have given His New World disciples a prayer ending in 17th-century English liturgical text traceable to second-century Christian worship practice rather than to a divine-original Galilean prayer. Either the doxology was added by Mormon (the editor of 3 Nephi) as a liturgical conclusion familiar to his own faithful audience, or the divine translation rendered Christ's New World prayer using the audience-familiar English form. Both options preserve the framework but require conceding that 3 Nephi 13:13 prioritized audience recognition over textual fidelity to Christ's exact spoken words in Bountiful. This is a real cost.
The KJV-scaffolding model handles this lopsided pattern consistently: where the underlying Nephite text substantially overlapped with the KJV's text of Matthew, the KJV English was used as the rendering, and these late liturgical/scribal additions came along with the scaffolding. The "without a cause" correction was significant enough -- whether textually, theologically, or both -- to be modified. The other readings were not. This is internally coherent. It is also a real concession: the model describes what happened (the KJV's text passed through unmodified) without explaining why the divine translator chose this method on these specific verses when the "without a cause" correction shows the choice to modify was available. That is a residual question.
Additional Ancient Manuscript Alignments
The Abinadi narrative and the "without a cause" omission are not isolated. Across the Book of Mormon's biblical quotations, scholars have identified a consistent pattern: where the Book of Mormon departs from the KJV, it frequently aligns with ancient manuscripts unavailable to Joseph Smith.
2 Nephi 12:16 / Isaiah 2:16 -- "Ships of the sea." The KJV reads "all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures." The Septuagint reads "every ship of the sea, and upon every display of fine ships." 2 Nephi 12:16 uniquely combines both: "upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures" -- a three-element reading that preserves the Septuagint's "ships of the sea" alongside the KJV's "ships of Tarshish."[33] Dana M. Pike and David Rolph Seely's 2005 Journal of Book of Mormon Studies article analyzed the textual situation in detail. The Hebrew word śĕkîyôt -- translated "pictures" by the KJV -- is now widely recognized to relate to Ugaritic and Egyptian words meaning "ship" or "vessel," not "pictures."[33:1] Sidney B. Sperry first observed (1939) that the three-line reading exhibits extended synonymous parallelism, a known Hebrew poetic device, with all three phrases beginning with the same opening words.[34]
Pike and Seely deliberately hedge on the maximalist "the BoM preserves the original" claim. They consider it "much more plausible that [a scribal error] occurred only once, with the Hebrew" rather than independently in both Hebrew and Greek transmission histories.[33:2] Their cautious framing should be preserved here. But whatever the textual history, the Book of Mormon contains a three-line reading combining the KJV's Hebrew tradition and the LXX's Greek tradition at the exact verse the CES Letter cites as a problem. A 19th-century farmer copying from his KJV does not produce this. Joseph Smith could not read Greek; he began studying Greek and Latin only in the 1830s and 1840s, with notebooks postdating the Book of Mormon by years.[35] The first English Septuagint (Charles Thomson, 1808) had a small print run that left it rare in 1829; Lancelot Brenton's widely-distributed English Septuagint was not published until 1844.[36]
This passage requires honest treatment of a mixed signal. The same verse contains both an ancient-attested correct reading ("ships of the sea") and a KJV mistranslation ("pleasant pictures") that Jan Joosten -- as discussed below -- rated 0/4. So 2 Nephi 12:16 simultaneously preserves an ancient Septuagint tradition and perpetuates a KJV factual error. This pattern is more consistent with the scaffolding model (the KJV base text was modified by adding an ancient reading but not by correcting the KJV's separate error in the same verse) than with either pure independent translation or pure copying. It is less consistent with a model where someone with access to the Septuagint simply merged readings, because such a person would presumably have corrected "pictures" to "ships" as well.
1 Nephi 20:11 / Isaiah 48:11 -- First-person verb form. The KJV reads "for how should my name be polluted?" using a third-person construction. 1 Nephi 20:11 reads "for I will not suffer my name to be polluted" -- a first-person form. The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a) -- discovered in 1947, 117 years after the Book of Mormon's publication -- has the verb in the first person, agreeing with the Book of Mormon against the KJV. The Latin Vulgate and the Aramaic Targums also support first-person forms.[37]
2 Nephi 19:3 / Isaiah 9:3 -- Omission of the negative particle. The KJV reads "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy" -- but the verse celebrates increased joy, so the negative contradicts the surrounding tone. The Book of Mormon reads "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and increased the joy," omitting "not." The Hebrew Qere (the scribal correction tradition in the Masoretic Text) instructs readers to substitute lô ("to it/its") for lōʾ ("not"), removing the negation. Tvedtnes documents that "the Qere deletes it, as do twenty Hebrew manuscripts."[37:1] Every major modern translation -- RSV, NIV, ESV, NASB, NRSV -- follows the Qere and translates the verse positively, vindicating the Book of Mormon's reading. Knowledge of the Qere required Hebrew literacy Joseph Smith demonstrably did not have in 1829; he began Hebrew study only in 1835, six years after the Book of Mormon was completed.
2 Nephi 20:29 / Isaiah 10:29 -- "Ramath." The KJV reads "Ramah." The Book of Mormon reads "Ramath" with an archaic Hebrew feminine suffix (-ath) that fell out of standard usage over centuries.[38] A strikingly parallel phenomenon occurs in the Great Isaiah Scroll one verse earlier: at Isaiah 10:28, the scribe originally wrote "Aiah" and then added a superscript letter to restore the older form "Aiath" -- exhibiting awareness that the older feminine ending was the more original form.[37:2] The Book of Mormon preserves the same archaic feminine ending at the next verse the DSS scribe felt compelled to correct. The honest caveat: John Tvedtnes and Robert F. Smith argue the -ath spelling preserves the archaic feminine ending; Royal Skousen has argued it represents a scribal error by Oliver Cowdery for the KJV form.[38:1] Forms ending in -ath appear in the KJV (e.g., Joshua 19:8), so the suffix was available to a KJV reader. The DSS parallel is suggestive, not decisive.
2 Nephi 13:1 / Isaiah 3:1 -- Bread and water parallelism. The KJV preserves a textual situation in Isaiah 3:1 in which the parallelism between "stay of bread" and "stay of water" has been disturbed in transmission. The New English Bible (NEB) and several modern critical editions recognize this and restore the parallel structure. The Book of Mormon also restores the parallelism.[37:3] This is a less decisive case than the others above and should be cited modestly.
The Statistical Picture: Aggregate Numbers Are Context Only
John A. Tvedtnes (1984) conducted the foundational systematic comparison of Book of Mormon Isaiah variants. He classified 234 substantive variants between the Book of Mormon and the KJV, scoring each according to whether it aligned with ancient manuscript witnesses. His verbatim summary:
"Of the 234 variants rated, 59 are +, 126 are =, and 49 are –."[37:4]
Decoded: 59 variants favor the Book of Mormon (align with ancient witnesses against the KJV), 49 favor the KJV (the Book of Mormon reading lacks ancient support), and 126 are neutral (favor neither).
The 59-vs.-49 split should be downgraded to context, not used as evidence. Among the 108 non-neutral variants, 59/108 = 55% favor the Book of Mormon and 49/108 = 45% favor the KJV. Under a null hypothesis of 50/50 random chance, getting 59 favorable in a sample of 108 yields a p-value of approximately 0.18 -- not close to conventional statistical significance. The 126 neutral variants represent the majority (54%) of all variants. Tvedtnes was a faithful Latter-day Saint scholar; his ratings involve interpretive judgment; no neutral textual critic has independently replicated the scoring methodology; and the 19th-century plagiarism hypothesis predicts zero variants favoring the Book of Mormon, so the 59-aligned figure means the bare hypothesis cannot stand but does not by itself establish ancient origin. Stephen Gibson's separate analysis found that 54% of Isaiah verses in the Book of Mormon are modified from the KJV -- not what wholesale copying would predict -- but the same caution applies.[39]
The qualitative cases are where the argument lives. The strongest individual cases anchor on specific identifiable ancient manuscript witnesses: 1QIsa-a's first-person form at Isaiah 48:11; the Hebrew Qere reading at Isaiah 9:3; the systematic LXX plurals at Mosiah 14; the "without a cause" omission at 3 Nephi 12:22; the parthenos alignment at 2 Nephi 17:14; the consistent prophetic perfect at Mosiah 14:7. These cases carry the evidentiary weight, not the aggregate ratio. The aggregate number is consistent with the qualitative pattern; the article does not rest on it. A skeptic who pushes back on each qualitative case individually -- arguing that motivated theological pluralization, basic Hebrew grammatical awareness, and access to commentaries like Adam Clarke or Matthew Henry could plausibly produce a similar pattern -- has a coherent reading. The faithful reader's response is not "the aggregate proves you wrong" (it doesn't) but "the convergence of multiple specialized features in the same direction is harder to attribute to motivated reasoning than any one of them alone."
New Testament Language: Vernacularization, Not Anachronism
The CES Letter treats the presence of New Testament language in the Book of Mormon as self-evidently problematic: how can a text composed centuries before Christ contain phrases from Paul's epistles? The scholarly picture is considerably more nuanced.
Nicholas J. Frederick, the leading LDS scholar on this question, has systematically catalogued approximately 100 identifiable Pauline phrases in the Book of Mormon.[40] His foundational methodological piece (2018) establishes a five-criterion methodology for identifying genuine textual dependencies; his comprehensive treatment of Pauline language (2022) catalogues the specific cases.[41] [40:1] His research yields three explanatory frameworks:
Theological consistency. Some Book of Mormon passages express the same spiritual struggles Paul later articulated, using similar language because the experiences are similar. Nephi's anguished cry "O wretched man that I am!" (2 Nephi 4:17) parallels Paul's "O wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:24). Both are expressing the universal human experience of spiritual inadequacy; the language is parallel because the experience is parallel.[40:2]
Clarification function. In some cases, the Book of Mormon resolves ambiguities in Paul's language. Paul's reference to "a more excellent way" (1 Corinthians 12:31) is famously ambiguous -- is it charity, or the path to salvation? Ether 12:11 disambiguates: it identifies "a more excellent way" specifically as salvation through Christ. If the Book of Mormon were merely copying Paul, it would reproduce the ambiguity. Instead, it resolves it.[40:3]
Vernacularization. Frederick's most important framing is that the Pauline language in the Book of Mormon is best understood as a translation artifact: "Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon rendered the two-millennia-old text into the vernacular of nineteenth-century biblical scripture."[40:4] Gardner frames this as "translating up" -- rendering ancient concepts into the most prestigious scriptural idiom available.[3:4]
A feature of Frederick's analysis is worth noting alongside a necessary caveat. Despite the KJV's prominence as the linguistic substrate, Paul receives surprisingly marginal treatment in the Book of Mormon's theology. Frederick observes: "the Book of Mormon, with all its similarities and adaptations of the Bible, sidelines Paul to a surprising extent."[40:5] More directly: "By placing Paul firmly on the sidelines these same translator(s) likewise provided the Book of Mormon with its own independence from contemporary theological debate."[40:6]
A skeptic has a straightforward counter to the bare observation: the Book of Mormon is set primarily in a pre-Pauline chronological context, so any author -- ancient or modern -- writing a narrative set before Paul's ministry would naturally avoid making Paul central. This is a fair point. The more telling observation is not Paul's marginal narrative presence but the Book of Mormon's independence from 19th-century debates about Paul. The Calvinist-Arminian disputes that dominated American religion in the 1820s-30s were fundamentally debates about Pauline theology. Election, predestination, justification by faith, and the nature of grace were the controversies Pauline epistles framed. A 19th-century plagiarist of the KJV would naturally embed Pauline arguments and Reformed Protestant theological framings throughout. The Book of Mormon does the opposite: it draws on Pauline language (the KJV vocabulary the audience knew) while structurally sidelining Pauline argumentation. As Frederick observes, "Protestants may have needed the letters of Paul to help them find their way through the theological quagmires, but the Book of Mormon emphatically does not."[40:7] The Book of Mormon's theological architecture is built on the gospels and the Old Testament prophets, not Romans and Galatians. The KJV-language similarity is real; the theological debt to Calvinist-Arminian Protestantism is not.
This is exactly what the Ostler/Gardner/Spencer translation framework predicts and exactly what naive plagiarism does not. The shift in scholarly literature is itself telling. Frederick traces the history of this question from Alexander Campbell in the 1830s to the present and identifies a decisive change: the field has moved from arguing "why the Bible is present" (an apologetic-or-critical question) to exploring "how the Bible is present" in the Book of Mormon (a scholarly one).[42] The "how" question yields much more interesting answers than either the CES Letter or early apologists anticipated.
The Septuagint Connection
Several of the ancient manuscript alignments discussed above involve the Septuagint -- the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible produced in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC. The connection deserves separate analysis because it addresses a common objection: that any overlap between the Book of Mormon and the Septuagint proves nothing because the Septuagint was available in Joseph Smith's day.
The claim that Joseph Smith had practical access to the Septuagint requires careful examination. Charles Thomson published the first complete English translation of the Septuagint in 1808 in Philadelphia. Pike and Seely characterize the Thomson edition as "rare for its time," with a small print run that limited its dissemination.[33:3] "Rare" is not "nonexistent" -- Philadelphia is not an obscure foreign city -- so access cannot be ruled out entirely. But the probability is low. Lancelot Brenton's widely-distributed English Septuagint -- the standard English Septuagint reference for the next century -- was not published until 1844, fifteen years after the Book of Mormon.[36:1] Joseph Smith's documented poverty and limited formal education argue against the hypothesis that he consulted obscure biblical scholarship; the eyewitnesses to the translation testify that no Bible or commentary was visible during dictation. Lucy Mack Smith's testimony that Joseph "seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children, but far more given to meditation and deep study"[43] is sometimes cited as evidence of inaccessibility; that overstates what the Lucy quote can support. Lucy was speaking about Joseph's temperament during his teen years -- she was describing him as contemplative rather than bookish. She was not testifying about whether by 1828-29 he had encountered Adam Clarke's commentary, or heard the Septuagint discussed in revival preaching, or had access through community channels. The Lucy citation supports a low base rate for Joseph's likely consultation of obscure scholarship; it does not foreclose the possibility.
Furthermore, the Septuagint agreements in the Book of Mormon are of a type that would require not merely reading an English translation of the Septuagint but performing cross-textual comparison at the level of professional textual criticism -- a discipline that barely existed in 1829. The hypothesis that Joseph Smith accessed Thomson's Septuagint and cross-referenced it against the KJV to produce the specific pattern of agreements and disagreements found in the Book of Mormon is unlikely, though it cannot be conclusively disproved by argument from silence alone.
The pattern of Septuagint alignments is particularly telling. The three systematic singular-to-plural shifts in Mosiah 14 (iniquity/iniquities, transgression/transgressions, sin/sins) all agree with the LXX. The 2 Nephi 12:16 dual-tradition reading combines both the LXX's "ships of the sea" and the KJV's "ships of Tarshish." The Mosiah 14:9 "evil" rendering aligns with the LXX's "lawlessness" and the Targum's "sin" against the KJV's "violence." These are exactly the kinds of patterns we would expect from a text that preserves an older textual tradition than the Masoretic Text used by the KJV translators.[21:8]
Abinadi's Isaiah Exegesis
The Book of Mormon's engagement with Isaiah goes far beyond reproducing KJV text. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Abinadi's use of Isaiah 53 in Mosiah 13-16, which demonstrates several features of sophisticated ancient exegesis.
Section divisions. Abinadi begins his citation at Isaiah 52:13 (Mosiah 14 corresponds to Isaiah 53:1-12, but Abinadi's broader exegesis frames the unit), consistent with how the Suffering Servant passage is treated in pre-modern textual traditions, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, which treat 52:13-53:12 as the Fourth Servant Song unit -- not the KJV chapter division, which begins a new chapter at 53:1.[44]
Pre-Christian messianic interpretation. Abinadi applies the Suffering Servant to a messianic figure -- an interpretation that critical scholars once dismissed as a Christian innovation projected back onto pre-Christian texts. The standard non-LDS scholarly view has shifted decisively. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher's edited volume The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Eerdmans, 2004) is the standard scholarly reference on Isaiah 53 reception history.[45] Martin Hengel and Daniel P. Bailey's chapter in that volume, "The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period," argues that pre-Christian awareness of Isaiah 53 was widespread and that documentary evidence indicates messianic readings in Second Temple Judaism predating Christian use.[46] Margaret Barker, a Methodist (non-LDS) biblical scholar, has independently argued that pre-exilic Israelite religion preserved a temple Christology in which a high God (El Elyon) had a son (Yahweh), and that texts like Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7, and 11:1-9 are pre-exilic temple-Christology fragments -- a reconstruction extensively engaged by LDS scholarship because it converges on positions Latter-day Saints have held since Joseph Smith.[47] [48]
The relevance for the Book of Mormon: the CES Letter implicitly assumes that Abinadi's pre-Christian messianic reading of Isaiah 53 is anachronistic -- that "no Israelite in 150 BC could have read Isaiah 53 as Christological." Recent non-LDS scholarship (Hengel, Janowski, Stuhlmacher, Barker) has dismantled that assumption. The interpretive framework Abinadi uses is consistent with what current critical scholarship believes was actually available in Second Temple Judaism. Scripture Central's KnoWhy #648 summarizes the Barker and Hengel evidence in concise form.[49]
The prophetic perfect. Abinadi describes a Hebrew grammatical convention: speaking of future events in past tense to indicate their certainty. He phrases it explicitly at Mosiah 16:6: "speaking of things to come as though they had already come."[23:1] This is a precise description of the Hebrew prophetic perfect tense, a recognized convention in standard Hebrew grammars.[24:1]
Unique interpretive contributions. Monte S. Nyman argues that Abinadi's commentary "sustains the Christian interpretation with details not found in the writings of other Christians."[50] The mercy-justice integration in Mosiah 15 -- Christ "standing betwixt them and justice" -- is absent from early patristic commentary on Isaiah 53. Abinadi's dual-nature Christology (Mosiah 15:1-4) transcends typical second-century Christian formulations. For more on this unique Christology, see the Godhead Changes article.[50:1]
Frank F. Judd Jr. demonstrates that the conflict between Abinadi and Noah's priests reflects authentic Second Temple Jewish theological disputes about whether salvation comes through Torah alone or requires messianic mediation. The tension about the proper interpretation of Isaiah 52:7-10 -- whether it validates political prosperity or demands messianic suffering -- has parallels in genuine Second Temple exegetical debates.[44:1] Abinadi's Isaiah engagement is active interpretive performance, not passive recitation.
Jacob's Isaiah Commentary: Intertextual Engagement
Jacob's speech in 2 Nephi 6-10 provides another window into the Book of Mormon's engagement with Isaiah. Scripture Central has documented over 60 distinct textual relationships across these chapters -- 12 or more direct quotations, plus dozens of allusions and echoes drawn from at least 8 different Isaiah chapters (11, 28, 29, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55), with possible interactions in 26, 31, 42, 43, 48, 53, 60, and 61. For Isaiah 49 alone, Scripture Central counts "8 quotations, 7 allusions, and 14 proposed echoes" -- about two dozen relationships from a single Isaiah chapter.[51]
Jacob quotes Isaiah 11:11-12 in two separate locations (2 Nephi 6:14 and 10:8), separated by approximately 4,000 words, then weaves the quotation into a larger covenant theology -- an intentional re-engagement, not a passive copy. He inverts Isaiah imagery: where Isaiah urged Zion to "put on thy beautiful garments," Jacob symbolically removes his garments to shake himself free of responsibility for his people's sins. He blends sea-monster imagery from Isaiah 51:9-10 with Nephite concepts of death and hell, demonstrating awareness of ancient Near Eastern primordial combat mythology that 20th-century scholars including Neil Forsyth (The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, 1987) and Nicolas Wyatt (Myths of Power, 1996) have documented in detail.[51:1] [52] Hermann Gunkel's foundational Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (1895) is the originating scholarly work for the modern study of ancient Near Eastern combat-myth traditions.[53]
As Scripture Central observes, Jacob's commentary is "both intertextually complex and thematically sophisticated" and "hardly appears to be the work of a literary amateur." Accomplished scholars "with formal academic training are still trying to fully unpack" its literary architecture.[51:2]
A skeptic will reasonably observe that literary sophistication is not exclusively evidence of ancient authorship. Skilled authors have always creatively reworked source material. Milton's Paradise Lost demonstrates extraordinarily sophisticated engagement with biblical text without requiring ancient origins. The argument's force lies not in the general sophistication but in the specific features that go beyond what creative reworking of the KJV alone could produce: the alignment with Dead Sea Scroll section divisions (in Abinadi's case), the pre-Christian messianic readings, and the ancient Near Eastern mythological awareness. These are knowledge claims, not merely literary-skill claims.
Christ's sermon in 3 Nephi 20:10-23:5 integrates quotations from Isaiah and Micah into a chiastic covenant sermon with original insertions (3 Nephi 21:14, 19-20, 22) adapting the original language to Nephite circumstances. Victor L. Ludlow identified this chiastic structure in his work on 3 Nephi covenant teachings.[54] [55] "Covenant" appears 16 times, "the Father" 39 times, and "the people" 35 times -- intentional repetitive density within a carefully organized literary architecture.[55:1]
Strongest Critical Arguments
Worth Acknowledging
The evidence above is genuinely impressive. But intellectual honesty requires confronting the strongest version of the critical argument -- which is considerably more powerful than the CES Letter's formulation. Critics including David P. Wright, Stan Larson, Colby Townsend, Jan Joosten, and Robert Alter have made specific arguments that the apologetic framework must engage on the merits, not simply dismiss. This section should be read alongside the evidence above, not treated as an afterthought.
The Tight Translation Dilemma
Multiple eyewitness accounts describe a "tight" translation process. David Whitmer described Joseph reading words that appeared on the seer stone in the hat. The Gospel Topics Essay "Book of Mormon Translation" summarizes the testimony: each word appearing on the stone, Joseph reading it aloud, and the stone not advancing until Cowdery had transcribed it correctly.[11:1] Emma Smith testified that Joseph "could not pronounce the word Sariah" before the translation began -- but did pronounce it correctly during dictation.
If God was selecting specific English words one at a time, and the stone wouldn't advance until the right word was given, why would God select 17th-century human translation errors? The tight-translation model implies word-level divine control over the English output. The mistranslations preserved in the Book of Mormon imply the English was not under that level of word-by-word divine control for biblical-quotation passages. This creates a genuine tension, and the most coherent faithful position accepts that the witnesses observed what they observed but did not have access to the bifurcation beneath what they saw -- tight word-by-word selection for original Nephite composition, KJV-scaffolded translation for biblical quotations.[56] The Skousen "creative and cultural translation" framework explicitly addresses this: the framing implies the English process was not uniformly word-by-word for biblical quotations.[2:2] This is a real qualification on a piece of evidence that is sometimes invoked without it, and worth naming directly.
Genuine KJV Errors the Book of Mormon Preserves
Not all KJV translation choices can be defended as "legitimate variants." Hebrew scholars have confirmed that several specific KJV renderings are genuinely wrong, and the Book of Mormon preserves them. A survey compiled by the critical website A Careful Examination solicited assessments from Jan Joosten (then-Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford) and Robert Alter (Professor of Hebrew, UC Berkeley). Joosten and Alter rated specific KJV passages on a 5-point Likert scale where 4 = "Perfectly Accurate" and 0 = "Completely Inaccurate."[57]
The survey's results on six specific passages preserved in the Book of Mormon:
| Passage | KJV / BoM Reading | Hebrew Meaning | Joosten Rating | Joosten Verbatim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isaiah 2:16 / 2 Ne 12:16 | "pleasant pictures" | ships/vessels (Egyptian sekiyyot) | 0/4 | "the word means 'ships' (the word was borrowed from Egyptian, which the KJV translators had no access to)"[57:1] |
| Isaiah 3:2 / 2 Ne 13:2 | "the prudent" | the diviner | 0/4 | (implied: "diviner")[57:2] |
| Isaiah 3:3 / 2 Ne 13:3 | "eloquent orator" | skilled enchanter | 0/4 | "ESV is better"[57:3] |
| Isaiah 9:1 / 2 Ne 19:1 | "grievously afflict" | dealt with seriously | 0/4 | "but I sympathize, the verse is really difficult"[57:4] |
| Isaiah 11:3 / 2 Ne 21:3 | "of quick understanding" | his smelling/discernment | 0/4 | "the text means 'his smelling will be in the fear of the Lord'"[57:5] |
| Isaiah 49:5 / 1 Ne 21:5 | "though Israel be not gathered" | "to him" reading is correct | 0/4 | "the Hebrew here has two alternate reading lo[w] 'to him'/lo['] 'not'; according to the context 'to him' is correct"[57:6] |
Robert Alter on Isaiah 11:3: KJV and ESV "are entirely wrong." Alter on Isaiah 3:2: "The diviner is correct, and the last term should be 'expert in incantations.'"[57:7]
(Note: Isaiah 13:22 / 2 Nephi 23:22 -- "dragons" for tannim -- received Joosten's same 0/4 rating, though Joosten rated the modern alternative "wild beasts" at 2/4 rather than 4/4. The Hebrew word has lexical range covering serpents, sea-monsters, and jackal-like animals; modern translations frequently prefer "jackals," and Alter's annotation also implies "dragons" is incorrect. The kjv-italics article addresses this case in more detail.)
These assessments deserve to be sat with before any apologetic response is offered. Joosten held the Regius Chair of Hebrew at Oxford -- the most prestigious Hebrew professorship in the English-speaking world. Alter is among the most celebrated Hebrew translators of the past century, the author of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Norton, 2018-2019). Their ratings are the most credible expert judgments available against the Book of Mormon's preserved KJV readings, and the rated passages are not difficult or borderline cases on which reasonable scholars might split. Joosten flatly says "pictures" should be "ships." Alter says KJV's "of quick understanding" is "entirely wrong." These are six specific factual errors, each with a defined correct alternative, each preserved verbatim in the Book of Mormon.
If the Book of Mormon were an entirely independent translation from ancient plates containing Hebrew-derived text, we would expect it to get these right. It does not. That is a real datum and the article should not duck it.
The faithful response then has to defend a specific theological position, not merely invoke a framework. The position is this: the divine translator chose to render biblical-quotation passages using the KJV as the English vehicle, including its factual errors, because the audience-reception cost of unfamiliar correct English would have been higher than the lexicographic cost of preserving familiar incorrect English. The Book of Mormon's primary purpose, repeatedly stated in its own text, is testimony of Christ -- not Hebrew lexicography. Honest readers will recognize this is a meaningful concession: the Book of Mormon's biblical quotations are not the place to look for the most accurate Hebrew rendering of those passages. Modern translations like the ESV are. The Book of Mormon's contribution is the doctrinal and narrative content surrounding the quotations, not the lexicographic accuracy of the quotations themselves.
There is scriptural and historical precedent for divine communication channeled through an imperfect prior translation. Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 via the LXX parthenos rather than the more accurate "young woman." Hebrews 10:5 quotes Psalm 40:6 via the LXX "a body you prepared for me" rather than the Hebrew "my ears you have opened." The New Testament authors quoted the Septuagint's imperfect Greek renderings of Hebrew originals throughout, despite presumably having access to underlying Hebrew traditions.[58] The precedent matters but does not fully answer the methodological challenge: NT authors didn't have the option to correct from Hebrew because that wasn't the methodology they used; the question for the BoM is why a methodology was chosen that produces visible factual errors when correction was, in principle, available. The most candid answer is that the Book of Mormon's purpose was scriptural testimony in the audience's language, and the divine choice to use the audience-familiar KJV vehicle (errors included) reflects a prioritization of testimony over technical accuracy in biblical quotations. That is a defense, but it is a defense that explicitly concedes what it concedes.
FAIR's treatment of these errors emphasizes that "in no case, however, is there a translation variant, broadening of meaning, change in meaning, change in intent, etc. that teaches incorrect doctrine or otherwise compels a reader into believing something false."[59] FAIR also notes: "God can achieve all of His divine goals without a perfect translation."[59:1] These observations are true and important: the errors do not lead to false doctrine. But the question Joosten and Alter raise is not whether the errors are doctrinally harmful -- it is whether their preservation is consistent with a translation methodology that has Hebrew access. The doctrinal-harm answer is responsive to a different objection. The methodological objection requires the explicit theological defense above. For a more detailed treatment of the specific errors and their categorization, see the companion article on KJV Errors.
Wright's English Polysemy Argument
David P. Wright (1998 Dialogue; 2002 American Apocrypha) identified a specific class of Book of Mormon variants that exploit the polysemy -- the multiple meanings -- of English words in ways the underlying Hebrew does not permit. These are not merely "stylistic" KJV-influence variants; they are variants where the Book of Mormon's reading only makes sense at the English level. If the Book of Mormon were translated from an ancient text -- by either an ancient Nephite scribe or a divine translator with Hebrew access -- these polysemy variants should not exist. They appear to be the work of an English-speaking mind reinterpreting the KJV's English text. Wright's foundational thesis statement: "If the former were a translation from an ancient text one would expect it to transcend the limitations of the KJV, and even the limitations of modern scholars."[60]
Wright provides multiple specific examples. The 1998 Dialogue article anchors the foundational case (Isaiah 2:10); the 2002 American Apocrypha expansion develops the broader polysemy class.[60:1] All four examples deserve treatment.
Isaiah 2:10 / 2 Nephi 12:10. The KJV reads: "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty." The English "for" here renders Hebrew mippenei ("from before / because of"), a preposition. 2 Nephi 12:10 reads: "for the fear of the Lord and the glory of his majesty shall smite thee." Wright's verbatim analysis:
"The phrase 'for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty' in the KJV Isaiah 2:10 consists of two conjoined phrases introduced with the preposition 'for,' which properly renders the Hebrew mippenei, 'because of.' 2 Nephi 12:10 converts these to a verbal clause: 'for the fear of the Lord and the glory of his majesty shall smite thee.' Here English 'for' changes its function and becomes a conjunction."[60:2]
The Hebrew mippenei cannot serve as a conjunction; the variant only works in English.
Isaiah 50:2 / 2 Nephi 7:2. The KJV asks an interrogative: "Wherefore, when I came, was there no man?" The English "wherefore" here equals "why?" -- translating Hebrew maddûac ("why?"). 2 Nephi 7:2 turns it into a statement: "Wherefore, when I came there was no man." The English "wherefore" here equals "therefore" -- a different word in Hebrew. Wright's verbatim analysis:
"The BM reading depends on the ambiguity or polysemy of the English 'wherefore.' In English this word can be an interrogative ('why?') or a conjunction ('therefore'). It is an interrogative in the KJV verse here, translating the Hebrew word maddûac 'why?' The BM reading uses 'wherefore' as a conjunction, which is not possible for Hebrew maddûac."[60:3]
Two different Hebrew functions have collapsed into a single English word, and the Book of Mormon variant works in English but not in Hebrew.
Isaiah 48:16 / 1 Nephi 20:16. The KJV reads: "from the time that it was, there am I." 1 Nephi 20:16 reads: "from the time that it was declared have I spoken." Wright argues:
"The italicized word 'am' is likely part of the motivation for the change. The stimulus for the idea of 'declaration' comes from earlier in the chapter in vv. 3, 5, 6, 14."[60:4]
The change shows the marks of an English-mediated revision. The italicized "am" is precisely the kind of word that an English reader treating italicization as flagging non-original text might delete; the substitute "declared have I spoken" has no Hebrew warrant in the underlying Masoretic reconstruction; and the source for the substitute vocabulary appears to be earlier verses of the same chapter (vv. 3, 5, 6, 14, all of which use "declared"-language). That is the signature of an editor working through the chapter in English, not of a translator working from a Hebrew source. The hedge: the underlying Hebrew of Isaiah 48:16 is itself textually contested -- Hebrew scholars have long flagged it as one of the more difficult passages in Isaiah, and modern translations differ on what it actually says.[60:5] That hedge does not eliminate Wright's specific point about the direction of the English-level revision; it does narrow what conclusions can be drawn about the underlying Hebrew. The example remains a real instance of the polysemy class, just one where the Hebrew baseline is itself uncertain.
Isaiah 51:17 / 2 Nephi 8:17. The KJV reads: "the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out." 2 Nephi 8:17 inverts "wrung them out" into adjectival "wrung out." Wright's analysis:
"In these cases deletion of italics led to texts that require a word order and grammatical construction notably different from the existing Hebrew text."[60:6]
The KJV's original phrase has "wrung" as a transitive verb taking "them" as its object. The Book of Mormon turns "wrung out" into an adjectival modifier of "dregs." This is a coherent English construction; it is not a coherent Hebrew construction in the underlying text. Like Isaiah 48:16, this variant looks like the KJV italicized words being treated as removable scaffolding by an editor working in English, with the resulting English then being reinterpreted to fit a different grammatical structure than the Hebrew supports.
Wright's general conclusion across the polysemy class: "The BM conserves many of the unacceptable translations of the KJV now clearly recognizable from the stance of modern research." And: "In summary, the three classes of variants discussed in this section show various ways in which the BM Isaiah is not consistent with the Hebrew text, in semantics, syntax, and style."[60:7]
Why this is hard. The "creative and cultural translation" framework (Skousen) and "localization" framework (Gardner) explain why a divine translator might use KJV English as scaffolding. They explain less well why the resulting text would contain modifications that operate at the English level only -- modifications that require an English-speaking mind reinterpreting the KJV rather than rendering an underlying ancient text. The article should not soften this. Under the apologetic framework defended here, the Book of Mormon's biblical quotations are not independent translations from Hebrew. They are derivative works on the KJV. The KJV provided the English vehicle; the modifications were made within that vehicle by an entity working in English (Spencer's "prior translator," Skousen's "translation process"). This is a real concession to the steelman. The Book of Mormon's "ancient source under KJV scaffolding" status, on the polysemy variants specifically, is reduced to "ancient source modulated through an English-mediated translation process that interacts with the KJV's English text on its own terms."
Townsend's Pervasive-Dependence Thesis
Colby Townsend's research (2022 Dialogue; 2025 Journal of the Bible and Its Reception) extends the KJV-dependence argument beyond Isaiah to the full biblical engagement of the Book of Mormon. His findings:
- KJV dependence in BoM Isaiah passages (standard, well-established).
- KJV dependence in BoM Malachi quotations (3 Nephi 24-25 -- Christ's explicit quotation of Malachi to the Nephites).
- KJV dependence in BoM Genesis quotations (Lehi's references to creation, Abraham, etc.).
- KJV dependence in BoM New Testament-style language extending beyond mere phraseology.[61] [62]
The most pointed observation is this: even original Book of Mormon compositions -- passages where Lehi, Jacob, or Nephi are speaking in their own voices, not quoting biblical material -- show KJV-mediated language from post-exilic biblical books that couldn't have been on the brass plates.
Townsend's specific examples:
"Robe of righteousness." 2 Nephi 4:33: "O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness!" (cf. 2 Nephi 9:14, Alma 5:24). The phrase comes from Isaiah 61:10 -- Trito-Isaiah, post-exilic, ~500 BC. If Trito-Isaiah was composed after Lehi left Jerusalem (~600 BC), the phrase "robe of righteousness" should not be in Nephi's vocabulary.
"Mighty to save." 2 Nephi 31:19: "relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save"; cf. Alma 7:14, Alma 34:18. The phrase comes from Isaiah 63:1 -- also Trito-Isaiah. Same problem: post-Lehi origin, but appearing in Nephi's, Alma's, and others' mouths.
The Romans 10:21 / Isaiah 65:2 mediation. Three Book of Mormon verses (2 Nephi 28:32, Jacob 5:47, Jacob 6:4) appear to depend on Isaiah 65:2 (Trito-Isaiah, post-Lehi) -- but Townsend documents that the wording follows Romans 10:21 (Paul's quotation of Isaiah 65:2 with Pauline Greek-to-English filtering through the KJV) more closely than Trito-Isaiah itself.
Townsend's verbatim framing:
"Although slightly varying among themselves in terminology, each of the three verses in The Book of Mormon dependent on Isaiah 65:2 is far closer in its wording to the KJV of Romans 10:21 than Third Isaiah."[61:1]
"The author of The Book of Mormon only knew the book of Isaiah as it is found in the KJV."[61:2]
"These verses also cannot be stripped from Nephi's or Jacob's texts without doing irreparable harm to their message. The author of these chapters knew Third Isaiah and the New Testament."[61:3]
The Romans 10:21 case: the article's hardest single point
The Romans 10:21 mediation is the article's hardest single point: three Book of Mormon verses (2 Nephi 28:32, Jacob 5:47, Jacob 6:4) track the specific English wording of Romans 10:21 more closely than they track Isaiah 65:2 (whether in Hebrew or in modern critical English translation), meaning the divine translator was working through the New Testament's KJV Pauline phrasing in the act of rendering original Nephite compositions in pre-Christian Nephite voices.[63] Faithful scholarship has not produced a clean resolution. The framework absorbs the case by extending its scope from "biblical-quotation passages used the KJV English" to "the broader translation medium used KJV English including Pauline NT English filtration" -- a real extension that widens what the framework concedes about the relationship between the Book of Mormon's English and its underlying Nephite source.
This is a residual cost of the framework, not a contradiction: the framework can be stated in a form that includes the Romans 10:21 case. But the form has to be more expansive than the original "KJV scaffolding for biblical quotations" framing, and the more expansive form makes a sharper concession. At this point, faithful scholarship has not produced a clean answer, and the framework's accommodation of this case is by extension of scope rather than by specific defense of the case on its merits.
Townsend beyond Isaiah: Malachi and Genesis
Townsend's argument is not limited to the Trito-Isaiah cases. His 2022 and 2025 work documents KJV dependence across multiple biblical books in the Book of Mormon. When the resurrected Christ quotes Malachi 3-4 to the Nephites in 3 Nephi 24-25, the wording tracks the KJV's English of Malachi closely. The Malachi case is the cleanest faithful-friendly example of post-Lehi material entering the Book of Mormon: it is attributed. Christ explicitly says he is quoting words the Nephites did not previously have. Divine introduction of post-exilic content with attribution does not raise the same difficulty that unattributed Trito-Isaiah phrases do. But Townsend's specific finding -- that the KJV's English wording (not just the underlying Hebrew sense) tracks through to the Nephite text -- still requires the broader vehicular-KJV-English account rather than independent translation. Townsend also documents that Lehi's references to creation, Abraham, and other Genesis material show KJV-shaped English phrasing. Under the framework, this is another instance of the broader translation medium using KJV English where the underlying Nephite text covered the same conceptual ground -- not a separate problem from the broader vernacularization claim but more data confirming the same phenomenon.
The cumulative force of Townsend's pervasive-dependence thesis is that the KJV-English mediation of the Book of Mormon's text is not confined to obvious biblical-quotation passages. It extends through Malachi, Genesis, and Trito-Isaiah, both attributed and unattributed, and into NT-mediated phrasings. The framework has to be stated with enough scope to cover all of this. It can be so stated -- but the resulting position is more concessive than the simple "KJV-as-base-text-for-Isaiah" framing in the Skousen/Spencer literature.
The Adam Clarke Connection
Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon (2017; 2020) documented that Joseph Smith used Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826, widely available in the 1820s American religious print market) while producing the JST.[64] Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon themselves frame the use as "not plagiarism" but document the textual parallels in detail. The connection to the JST is well-established.
The categorical question that follows: if Joseph used Clarke for the JST in 1830-33, what is the affirmative argument that he did not use Clarke (or similar early-19th-century biblical scholarship) while producing the Book of Mormon in 1828-29? Townsend (2025) extends this argument explicitly: KJV dependence in the Book of Mormon extends across multiple biblical books, and the most parsimonious explanation is that Joseph had access to and consulted contemporary biblical scholarship.[62:1]
Kent P. Jackson's response (2025). Jackson examined Townsend's specific BoM-Clarke claims and concluded "none of his proposed borrowings from Clarke can be sustained."[65] Jackson's specific findings: the variants Townsend identified reflect common Book of Mormon Isaiah patterns rather than Clarke-specific influence; share minimal or no vocabulary with Clarke's text; or rest on misreadings of Clarke's actual argument.
Where this leaves the article. Even if Jackson's specific rebuttal of Townsend's BoM-Clarke claim is correct, the categorical question remains: if Joseph could have used Clarke for the JST, why couldn't he have used Clarke or similar scholarship for the BoM? Jackson's response addresses the specific cases Townsend raised; it does not address the broader categorical question.
The strongest faithful answer to the categorical question is multipart and should be stated explicitly rather than gestured at. First, Joseph's documented poverty and limited library access in the late 1820s reduced -- but did not eliminate -- the base rate of his consulting expensive multi-volume commentaries like Clarke's. Second, the eyewitnesses to the Book of Mormon dictation testified that no Bible or commentary was visible during translation, and the manuscript-physical evidence (phonetic mishearings rather than visual misreadings) supports dictation rather than copying. This eliminates concurrent commentary consultation during dictation, though it does not eliminate the possibility that Joseph had read commentaries beforehand and was working from internalized knowledge. Third, the specific patterns of ancient-manuscript alignment in the BoM (LXX plurals at Mosiah 14, the Hebrew Qere at Isaiah 9:3, the prophetic perfect at Mosiah 14:7, the 1QIsa-a alignments) do not cleanly trace to Clarke or to any other early-19th-century English scholarship. Adam Clarke discussed the "without a cause" textual variant -- so the omission's precedent in Clarke is real, and the article credits this honestly above. But the bulk of the ancient-alignment cases lie outside Clarke's commentary content, which means the categorical "Joseph could have used commentaries" answer does not by itself explain the specific positive cases the article relies on.
The Clarke connection is genuine partial pressure on any "Joseph couldn't have known" framing. It does not transfer cleanly into a Book-of-Mormon-Clarke dependence claim, but it does mean the strongest framing of the positive case is "the Book of Mormon aligned with what later became scholarly consensus, against the KJV, in ways that go beyond what 19th-century commentary access could plausibly produce" -- not "Joseph could not possibly have known anything." The narrower framing is honest and remains evidentially significant; the broader framing is too strong and the article does not rely on it.
The "Red Sea" at 2 Nephi 19:1
At Isaiah 9:1, the KJV reads "the way of the sea" -- referring to the Via Maris, the ancient trade route near the Sea of Galilee. At 2 Nephi 19:1, the Book of Mormon reads "the way of the Red Sea." No Hebrew manuscript, no Septuagint manuscript, no Targum, no Dead Sea Scrolls witness has "Red Sea" at Isaiah 9:1. The Red Sea is approximately 250 miles from Galilee. Geographically the reading makes no sense in the standard interpretation.
This is genuinely difficult. Unlike the cases above involving KJV errors that the Book of Mormon preserves, this is a unique Book of Mormon addition with no manuscript support and no obvious geographic logic. The article should say so directly: this is a category of variant the framework does not handle well. Where the KJV-scaffolding model predicts KJV-English-base plus ancient-attested modifications, the Red Sea variant is neither -- it is neither in the KJV (which has "the way of the sea") nor in any ancient manuscript. It is a third category the model does not predict.
Several explanations have been proposed in faithful scholarship. Listing four mutually-incompatible explanations is itself evidence of difficulty, not strength. If a single coherent explanation existed, the literature would have converged on it.
E. Jan Wilson (2024). Wilson's Interpreter article offers the most developed scholarly treatment to date, proposing that the original Hebrew may have contained sufah (a place name near the Arnon River east of the Dead Sea), which scribes between 600 BC and the Septuagint period misunderstood and replaced with yam ("sea"). On this reading, the Book of Mormon preserves a trace of an older textual tradition.[66] Wilson's own framing is appropriately modest: he acknowledges that "perhaps by changing 'sea' to 'Red Sea,' the translation leaves a hint concerning the original verbiage of that verse and what Isaiah was actually saying."[66:1] Wilson does not claim to have definitively resolved the variant; he proposes a hypothesis that, if true, would explain the unusual reading via a textual-history mechanism.
John Tvedtnes. Tvedtnes proposed scribal error by Oliver Cowdery, influenced by the prominence of "Red Sea" in earlier 1 Nephi chapters describing Lehi's family's exodus through the Arabian peninsula. Wilson notes that the 20-chapter gap between the prominent 1 Nephi "Red Sea" references and 2 Nephi 19:1 may be too large for residual phonetic influence on a careful scribe.[66:2]
Sarah Allen. Allen argues that "The Way of the Red Sea" was an ancient trade route (the King's Highway, distinct from the Via Maris), and that Nephi may have been highlighting this alternate route. "The King's Highway also was part of what was known in ancient times as the Way of the Red Sea, which led out of Egypt." Allen contends "one of the things he mocks about 2 Nephi 19:1 is actually another evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon's authenticity."[67]
Nephi's deliberate modification. Other scholars have proposed that Nephi deliberately modified Isaiah to connect the passage to his family's Red Sea experience.
These four explanations are mutually incompatible. Wilson's sufah-corruption hypothesis says "Red Sea" reflects a real ancient textual tradition. Tvedtnes's Cowdery-error hypothesis says it reflects a 19th-century scribal slip. Allen's King's-Highway hypothesis says it reflects an actual ancient trade route correctly identified. The deliberate-modification hypothesis says it reflects Nephi exercising editorial license. They cannot all be right. The faithful literature offering four mutually-exclusive options is itself a form of evidence: if the variant were straightforwardly explicable under the framework, the literature would not need four different mechanisms, none of which has emerged as consensus. The article's honest position is that this is a genuinely difficult case under the KJV-scaffolding model, and that no faithful explanation has emerged that adjudicates among the available options. Wilson's hypothesis is the most fully developed and is published in a peer-reviewed faithful venue; the article points to it as the best-developed available faithful account, while acknowledging that the variant remains a residual challenge. Royal Skousen's manuscript work, separately, confirms that "Red Sea" was part of the original dictated text and is not a later editorial insertion; whatever the variant's origin, it traces back to the dictation event itself.[68]
The kjv-italics article addresses this verse in greater detail, including the italicized-word omission ("her") that Sarah Allen identifies as an additional evidentiary feature.[67:1] See KJV Italics for that fuller treatment.
A Note on Falsifiability
A fair-minded reader may notice that the creative-and-cultural-translation framework appears to absorb each new datum the steelman raises -- KJV agreement, KJV factual errors, Wright's English-level polysemy, Townsend's NT-mediated phrasings, the Red Sea variant. A framework that absorbs every cost as it arises looks less like a falsifiable hypothesis and more like an interpretive lens that can accommodate any data. The article's honest position is that the framework makes some narrow falsifiable predictions that have been borne out (modifications trending toward ancient witnesses, no post-1611-only KJV errors), but that it has also been adjusted in scope as data has come in -- and so is best characterized as a strong working hypothesis rather than a clean falsifiable claim.[69]
The Book of Mormon's authenticity defense, on this article's framing, does not rest on the KJV-scaffolding framework being a clean falsifiable hypothesis. It rests on the convergence of (a) the framework's narrow predictions being borne out where they are testable, (b) the qualitative ancient-manuscript alignments being more specific than alternative hypotheses can easily explain, and (c) the broader positive case for the Book of Mormon's authenticity (literary sophistication carrying ancient knowledge, dictation evidence, theological independence from 19th-century debates, and the broader textual and historical evidence treated in the KJV Errors and KJV Italics companion articles). The framework's accommodations are real costs; the convergent positive evidence is real benefit; the assessment is the weighing of these, not a pretense that the framework is cost-free.
The Cumulative Context
The CES Letter does not present KJV mistranslations as a standalone argument. It presents them as part of a cumulative case alongside parallel texts (treated in the View of the Hebrews, The Late War, and First Book of Napoleon articles), anachronisms, DNA evidence, and other issues. The most intellectually honest treatment of the KJV-mistranslation question acknowledges that it does not exist in isolation. The KJV-scaffolding framework is one of several specialized explanations required for different features of the Book of Mormon. A skeptic's strongest position is cumulative: each individual argument might have an explanation, but the number of arguments requiring specialized explanation is itself a data point.
The cumulative concern is real but cuts both ways. The positive evidence is also cumulative: the ancient manuscript alignments, the Dead Sea Scroll agreements, the literary sophistication, the pre-Christian messianic readings, the archaic English features that predate the KJV (documented in the KJV Errors and KJV Italics articles), the Septuagint plurals in Mosiah 14, the Hebrew Qere reading at 2 Nephi 19:3 -- these are not isolated coincidences but a convergent pattern. The same reader who asks "why do so many things need explaining?" should also ask "why does the Book of Mormon keep generating textual modifications that align with manuscripts and grammatical conventions Joseph Smith could not have produced?" Both cumulative cases should be weighed against each other. Neither is decisive on its own.
When the local question is genuinely hard -- as Wright's polysemy variants, Townsend's Romans 10:21 mediation, and the Red Sea anomaly all are -- the broader question is what stands firm. The Book of Mormon was dictated in roughly 60 working days, by a young man with limited formal education, with no substantive revisions in Joseph's lifetime, with no whistleblowers among the witnesses, and with no credible naturalistic explanation for its production. The hard local cases are real. They are also embedded in a text whose existence as a whole continues to resist naturalistic explanation. The KJV-scaffolding framework concedes specific costs in specific places without thereby surrendering the ground that matters most.
Evidence Supporting Church Truth Claims
The Weight of Ancient Manuscript Alignments
The positive evidence catalogued throughout this article converges on a single conclusion: the Book of Mormon's departures from the KJV consistently trend in the direction of ancient manuscript readings Joseph Smith could not have produced via 19th-century scholarship alone. This is not a matter of one or two isolated coincidences:
- 14 of 20 variants across the Abinadi narrative's biblical quotations align with the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Targums.[21:9]
- 3 Nephi 12:22 correctly omits "without a cause" per the earliest Greek manuscripts -- a reading later confirmed by Codex Sinaiticus (rediscovered 1844), Codex Vaticanus (accessible 1860s), Papyrus 64/67, and the church fathers Justin, Tertullian, and Origen.[14:4]
- 2 Nephi 12:16 preserves a three-element reading combining the LXX's "ships of the sea" with the KJV's "ships of Tarshish."[33:4]
- 2 Nephi 19:3 follows the Masoretic Qere against the KJV, in agreement with twenty Hebrew manuscripts and every major modern English translation.[37:5]
- 1 Nephi 20:11 agrees with the Great Isaiah Scroll's first-person verb form -- a reading published 117 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.[37:6]
- Mosiah 14:7 correctly renders the prophetic perfect tense per 1QIsa-a, the Aramaic Targums, and the Syriac Peshitta.[7:4]
- Mosiah 14 systematically pluralizes three singular nouns in Isaiah 53, all three matching the Septuagint.[21:10]
- Mosiah 14:9 reads "evil" against the KJV's "violence," aligning with the Targum, the LXX, and 1 Peter 2:22.[21:11]
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 -- 117 years after the Book of Mormon's publication. The Septuagint was not available in widely-distributed English translation during Joseph Smith's lifetime. The Masoretic Qere traditions required specialized Hebrew training to access. The cumulative weight of these alignments is the strongest positive evidence in the entire KJV-in-the-Book-of-Mormon discussion. The aggregate 234-variant analysis is consistent with the qualitative pattern but does not by itself establish ancient origin; the qualitative cases are where the load-bearing argument lives.
Literary Sophistication as Evidence of Ancient Knowledge
The Book of Mormon's engagement with biblical text goes qualitatively beyond what "copying from the KJV" could produce. Specifically, the features that matter most are those that reflect ancient knowledge, not merely general literary skill:
- Abinadi's exegesis of Isaiah 53 demonstrates awareness of pre-modern section divisions (52:13-53:12 as the Fourth Servant Song unit, matching DSS), pre-Christian Jewish messianic interpretation (matching Hengel-Bailey's reconstructed Second Temple readings and Barker's pre-exilic temple Christology), and the prophetic perfect tense (a Hebrew grammatical convention).[44:2] [46:1]
- Jacob weaves 60+ intertextual references from at least 8 Isaiah chapters into a unified covenant sermon with deliberate inversions and ancient Near Eastern mythological allusions documented by 20th-century scholarship (Forsyth, Wyatt) that did not exist in 1829.[51:3] [52:1]
- Christ's 3 Nephi sermon integrates Isaiah and Micah into an original chiastic structure with insertions tailored to Nephite circumstances, with the central point at 3 Nephi 21:4 identifying the sign of the Father's covenant with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon itself.[55:2]
- The Book of Mormon achieves independence from 19th-century theological debates -- particularly Calvinist-Arminian disputes about Pauline theology -- while drawing on Pauline language at the level of vocabulary.[40:8]
A skilled 19th-century author could, in principle, produce literary sophistication. What is harder to account for is the specific ancient knowledge embedded in that literary sophistication -- the pre-modern textual divisions, the pre-Christian messianic readings, the ancient Near Eastern mythological awareness, the Hebrew grammatical conventions. These are knowledge claims, not merely literary-skill claims. They are what distinguishes the Book of Mormon's Isaiah engagement from a talented midrash written by someone with access only to the KJV.
The Dictation Evidence
The manuscript evidence confirms that the Book of Mormon text was dictated, not copied from a printed source. Cowdery's consistent phonetic misspellings, the physical constraints of the seer-stone-in-hat translation method, the purchase of a Bible only after the translation was complete (October 8, 1829), and the unanimous witness testimony all converge on the same conclusion.[8:4] [10:1] [9:1]
As noted above, the dictation evidence rules out line-by-line visual copying but does not rule out production from internalized KJV knowledge. Still, it eliminates the simplest version of the critical hypothesis -- that Joseph had an open Bible and read from it -- and any alternative must account for how a dictating speaker reproduced biblical passages with the specific pattern of modifications documented throughout this article.
Frederick's Independence Finding
Nicholas Frederick's observation that the Book of Mormon "sidelines Paul to a surprising extent" and achieves "its own independence from contemporary theological debate" is one of the freshest pieces of positive evidence in recent scholarship.[40:9] The KJV-language similarity is real -- approximately 100 identifiable Pauline phrases. But the theological architecture is independent of the Calvinist-Arminian disputes that dominated American religion in the 1820s and 1830s. A 19th-century plagiarist drawing on the KJV would naturally embed those disputes; the Book of Mormon does not. The KJV provides the linguistic medium; the theology is genuinely distinct.
This is exactly what the translation framework predicts: the audience's biblical English supplies the vocabulary, but the underlying source content -- whatever its origin -- shapes the substantive theology in directions a 19th-century plagiarist would not have chosen.
Assessment
The CES Letter's argument -- that KJV mistranslations preserved in the Book of Mormon prove 19th-century copying -- is substantially weaker than it appears on first reading. But the strongest version of the critical argument, drawn from Wright, Larson, Joosten, and Townsend, raises genuinely difficult questions that deserve honest treatment, and the framework that absorbs those questions does so by paying real costs that the article should name as concessions rather than complexities.
Where the CES Letter is wrong. The argument is weakest where Runnells is most confident. The single worked example (3 Nephi 13:25-27 / Matthew 6:25-27 / JST) depends on three unstated premises the CES Letter never argues: that the JST is solely a textual restoration (it is not -- Matthews, Jackson, Wayment, and even Townsend treat it as multi-purpose), that "most correct book" means verbatim purity (it does not -- Joseph Smith referred to precepts), and that the JST is a stable comparison standard (it is not -- Wayment & Yost have documented internal JST disagreements). The cherry-picked example sits in the same Sermon on the Mount block as the strongest counterexample to the thesis (3 Nephi 12:22's omission of "without a cause"), which Runnells does not mention. The treatment of Isaiah 7:14 as a straightforward "error" overlooks that the Septuagint chose "virgin" centuries before Christ and that Matthew 1:23 adopted the LXX rendering authoritatively. The argument as Runnells frames it is structurally selective.
Where the strongest critical case has bite. The argument is strongest where the CES Letter does not go. Wright's English-polysemy variants (Isaiah 2:10, 50:2, 48:16, 51:17) point to modifications operating at the English level only, conceding that the Book of Mormon's biblical quotations are not independent translations from Hebrew. The Joosten/Alter scholar survey rates six specific BoM passages "completely inaccurate" by external Hebrew experts -- an accommodation cost that extends to factual errors, not merely stylistic choices. Larson's Sermon-on-the-Mount Textus Receptus pattern in 3 Nephi 12-14 means the celebrated "without a cause" omission sits within a context of multiple uncorrected late readings -- including the Lord's Prayer doxology at 3 Nephi 13:13, which carries specific weight as a liturgical anachronism appearing in Christ's own New World prayer. Townsend's Romans 10:21 mediation is the article's hardest single point: KJV-mediated Pauline phrasing appears in original Nephite voices in a way faithful scholarship has not cleanly resolved, with the framework's accommodation requiring scope-extension rather than specific defense. Townsend's broader pervasive-dependence thesis -- KJV English shaping Malachi quotations, Genesis references, and NT-mediated phrasings -- means the KJV-mediation phenomenon is not confined to obvious biblical-quotation passages. The Red Sea variant at 2 Nephi 19:1 lacks ancient manuscript support and the four mutually-incompatible faithful explanations are themselves evidence of difficulty rather than strength. The Adam Clarke connection to the JST is documented; whether it transfers to the BoM is contested but not foreclosed.
These are concessions, not complexities. The KJV-scaffolding framework concedes that the Book of Mormon's biblical quotations are derivative works on the KJV (Wright), that the framework preserves factual mistranslations rather than correcting them (Joosten/Alter), that the Sermon at the Temple's Lord's Prayer doxology is 17th-century English liturgical text appearing in Christ's New World prayer (Larson), that NT-mediated Pauline phrasing appears in original Nephite voices in ways faithful scholarship has not cleanly resolved (Townsend Romans 10:21), and that the Red Sea variant lacks both ancient-manuscript support and any consensus faithful explanation. The article calls these by the right name: concessions. They are real costs that the framework pays in the act of accommodating each datum.
Where the Book of Mormon stands. The positive evidence is also substantial. The Abinadi narrative aligns with ancient manuscript witnesses 14 times in 20 variants. The "without a cause" omission anticipated modern textual criticism by decades. The Dead Sea Scroll alignments at 2 Nephi 19:3 and 1 Nephi 20:11 published in 1830 a reading that could not be confirmed until 1947. The literary sophistication of Jacob's intertextual engagement, Abinadi's pre-Christian messianic exegesis, and Christ's chiastic Isaiah-Micah integration far exceeds what mechanical copying from the KJV could produce -- and crucially, the sophistication carries specific ancient knowledge embedded within it, not merely general literary skill. The dictation evidence from the original manuscript is inconsistent with the physical act of copying from a printed Bible. Frederick's "independence from contemporary theological debate" finding turns the KJV-language similarity into evidence against 19th-century theological dependence rather than for it.
The most intellectually honest framework. The evidence points in both directions simultaneously. The Book of Mormon contains real KJV translation errors that a fresh rendering from Hebrew would not reproduce. It also contains readings that align with ancient manuscripts unavailable to Joseph Smith. Both facts are true. Skousen's "creative and cultural translation" model, supplemented by Gardner's localization framework and Frederick's vernacularization analysis, accounts for both: the KJV provided the English scaffolding (with its inherited imperfections), and the underlying source text was genuinely ancient (producing modifications that trend toward ancient witnesses in ways a 19th-century fabrication could not). The framework is not a clean falsifiable hypothesis; it is a working framework that has been adjusted in scope as data has come in. The article concedes this directly.
The evidence, taken in full, leaves the Book of Mormon's authenticity defensible on a substantially modified framework rather than on the simple "ancient text rendered into KJV English" account. The KJV-scaffolding model pays real costs that the simple plagiarism hypothesis does not (Wright's polysemy, Joosten/Alter's factual errors, the Sermon at the Temple's late TR readings, Townsend's Romans 10:21, the Red Sea anomaly). The positive evidence (DSS alignments, sophisticated literary engagement carrying specific ancient knowledge, Frederick's independence finding) is also real and substantial. The framework's accommodation of those costs is theologically grounded -- D&C 1:24 and the New Testament's use of the LXX -- rather than ad hoc.
The CES Letter's framing is rhetorically aggressive. The actual evidence is considerably more textured and considerably more honest about its costs. The strongest version of the case -- not Runnells's selective formulation -- yields difficulties the apologetic literature does not always state plainly. It also yields a Book of Mormon whose positive case continues to grow stronger as new manuscript discoveries and scholarly tools come online. The Dead Sea Scrolls vindicated readings the Book of Mormon published in 1830. Modern Greek critical editions vindicated the "without a cause" omission. Hengel-Bailey and Barker have vindicated the pre-Christian messianic Isaiah 53 reading Abinadi uses. Frederick has identified the Pauline marginalization that points away from 19th-century plagiarism. The trajectory of scholarship has been broadly favorable to the Book of Mormon's claims, even as it has also sharpened the critical case in places. Both trajectories belong in any honest assessment -- and at the end of that weighing, what stands firm is the text itself: 270,000 words dictated in roughly 60 working days, witnessed by people who maintained their accounts for the rest of their lives, embedding specialized ancient knowledge no 19th-century farmer could have produced. The KJV question is bounded; the Book of Mormon's existence as a coherent text is not.
Further Reading
- Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch, eds., Isaiah in the Book of Mormon (FARMS, 1998) -- the definitive edited volume with 17 essays on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.
- Donald W. Parry, Harmonizing Isaiah: Combining Ancient Sources (FARMS/Maxwell Institute, 2001) -- parallel readings from the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls, Book of Mormon, and JST.
- Donald W. Parry, "The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a): Catalogue of Textual Variants," Interpreter 41 (2020) -- survey of 2,600+ textual variants in the Dead Sea Scroll Isaiah.
- Royal Skousen, "The Original Language of the Book of Mormon: Upstate New York Dialect, King James English, or Hebrew?" JBMS 3/1 (1994) -- Skousen's earlier treatment of the KJV English question.
- Gaye Strathearn, Thomas A. Wayment, and Daniel L. Belnap, eds., The Sermon on the Mount in Latter-day Scripture (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2010) -- the 39th Annual Sperry Symposium volume directly addressing the BoM-vs-JST Sermon-on-the-Mount question.
- Shon D. Hopkin, ed., Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2018) -- detailed treatment of Abinadi's Isaiah 53 exegesis and its ancient manuscript alignments.
- Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds., The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Eerdmans, 2004) -- standard non-LDS scholarly volume on pre-Christian and Christian readings of Isaiah 53.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 3, pp. 10-11. The CES Letter prints three side-by-side passages: 3 Nephi 13:25-27 (matching the KJV verbatim), KJV Matthew 6:25-27 (explicitly labeled "From the King James Version Bible -- not the JST"), and JST Matthew 6:25-27 (explicitly labeled "Joseph Smith Translation of the same passages in the LDS Bible"). Runnells concludes: "The Book of Mormon is 'the most correct book' and was translated a mere decade before the JST. The Book of Mormon was not corrupted over time and did not need correcting. How is it that the Book of Mormon has the incorrect Sermon on the Mount passage and does not match the correct JST version in the first place?" ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack, The Nature of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon, Parts 3-4 of Volume III, Book of Mormon Critical Text Project (BYU Studies, 2018). Skousen's defining conclusion: "The Book of Mormon is a creative and cultural translation of what was on the plates, not a literal one." Skousen identifies three challenges involving biblical quotations in the BoM: KJV translation errors, Textus Receptus influence in the Sermon on the Mount, and Deutero-Isaiah inclusion. The volume treats KJV mistranslations preserved in the Book of Mormon as artifacts of the translation medium rather than features of the underlying Nephite text. https://criticaltext.byustudies.byu.edu/nature-original-language-book-mormon-parts-3-and-4-volume-iii-book-mormon-critical-text-project ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Brant A. Gardner, "Expanding the Descriptive Vocabulary for the Translation of the Book of Mormon," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 66 (2025): 71-84. Gardner verbatim: "the omnipresence of a King James Version-like style in the translation localized the new book as scripture for the reception audience" (p. 82); "a localized translation is a functional translation, but it adds the specific intent to cross the cultural bridge" (p. 82); "the translation is sufficient for the religious function of the text" (p. 84). https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/expanding-the-descriptive-vocabulary-for-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Daniel L. Belnap, "The King James Bible and the Book of Mormon," in The King James Bible and the Restoration, ed. Kent P. Jackson (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2011), 162-181. Belnap verbatim: "The use of King James English in the Book of Mormon would itself be part of the Lord's promise that he would reveal his truth to humankind 'after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding' (D&C 1:24)." Also: "the presence of King James English and even KJV passages in the Book of Mormon functioned to establish the book's validity to people already familiar with the words of God via King James English while making it easier to recognize the truths found therein because of the text's familiar cadence and sound." Also: "it was certainly through the KJV that many became prepared for the plain and most precious truths revealed through the Book of Mormon." https://rsc.byu.edu/king-james-bible-restoration/king-james-bible-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), as quoted in Gardner, "Expanding the Descriptive Vocabulary," p. 77: "translations toward the more general and more prestigious tongue are characteristically highly adaptive, erasing most of the traces of the text's foreign origin." ↩︎
Brant A. Gardner, "Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon," in A Reason for Faith, ed. Laura Harris Hales (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2016), 33-44. Gardner verbatim: "It is entirely possible to have an anachronism in a translation that was not present in the original." On candles: "The KJV frequently mentions candles, even though oil lamps provided light during both the Old and New Testament times. Technically, candles are an anachronism. Candles were the common means of providing light in early seventeenth century when King James commissioned the English translation." https://rsc.byu.edu/reason-faith/anachronisms-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
Royal Skousen, "Textual Variants in the Isaiah Quotations in the Book of Mormon," in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo: FARMS, 1998), 369-390. Skousen's eight major findings (basis for KnoWhy #39): (1) the KJV is the base text for Isaiah quotations; (2) Isaiah passages were dictated; (3) original BoM chapter divisions don't match the KJV; (4) original BoM is closer to the KJV than later editions; (5) the majority of differences are NOT associated with italicized words; (6) corrections in the original manuscript don't suggest revision-from-KJV; (7) duplicate Isaiah quotations help restore original readings; (8) the JST used the 1830 BoM as a source for some Isaiah revisions. On Mosiah 14:7: "Abinadi's quotation of Isaiah 53:7 more consistently uses the past tense than does the KJV"; "the Book of Mormon version renders the underlying Hebrew verbs of Isaiah 53:7 more correctly than does the KJV." https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book-chapter/textual-variants-isaiah-quotations-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 22-31. Skousen documents that Cowdery's consistent phonetic misspellings ("Coriantummer" for "Coriantumr") show acoustic, not visual, copying. Cowdery purchased a Bible from E.B. Grandin in Palmyra on October 8, 1829; translation was completed in late June 1829. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery purchased a Bible from E.B. Grandin in Palmyra on October 8, 1829 -- months after the Book of Mormon translation was completed in late June 1829. The copyright was registered June 11, 1829; typesetting at Grandin's print shop began in late August 1829; Cowdery's Bible purchase came over a month after typesetting started. See Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," JBMS 7, no. 1 (1998): 22-31; "KJV Italicized Text in the Book of Mormon," FAIR. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/KJV_italicized_text_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
"KJV Translation Errors in the Book of Mormon," FAIR. Lists twelve independent reasons the BoM text was not visually copied from a KJV Bible during dictation, including the physical constraints of the stone-in-hat method, Cowdery's October 8, 1829 Bible purchase after the translation was complete, the unanimous testimony of translation witnesses that no Bible was consulted, and the manuscript's dictation patterns. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/KJV_translation_errors_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
"Book of Mormon Translation," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Discusses the seer-stone-in-hat translation method and Emma Smith's testimony that Joseph had "neither manuscript nor book to read from." https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation ↩︎ ↩︎
David A. LeFevre, "The Sermon on the Mount in the Joseph Smith Translation," in The Sermon on the Mount in Latter-day Scripture, ed. Gaye Strathearn, Thomas A. Wayment, and Daniel L. Belnap (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2010). LeFevre verbatim: "at least 58 of the 86 verses changed by Joseph Smith's translation of Matthew 5-7 differ from the account in 3 Nephi, many in substantial ways." The data shows the JST is not a "stable reference text" against which the BoM can be measured for "correctness." Wayment is one of three editors of the volume but is not the author of this chapter. https://rsc.byu.edu/sermon-mount-latter-day-scripture/sermon-mount-joseph-smith-translation ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Approaching New Approaches," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6, no. 1 (1994): 145-186. Welch's foundational LDS scholarly response to Stan Larson's 1993 New Approaches chapter on the Sermon on the Mount. Welch argues 3 Nephi 12-14 is best understood as a "Sermon at the Temple" addressed to a different audience (post-resurrection Nephites) under different theological conditions (covenant-making temple context), not merely as a parallel to the Galilean Sermon on the Mount. ↩︎
John W. Welch, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount: A Latter-day Saint Approach (Deseret Book / FARMS, 1990); also John W. Welch, Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (FARMS, 1999); and John W. Welch, "The Sermon at the Temple and the Greek New Testament Manuscripts," in Illuminating. Welch identifies the manuscript witnesses for the omission of "without a cause" at Matthew 5:22: P64/67 (~AD 200), Codex Sinaiticus (4th c., original hand), Codex Vaticanus (4th c.), the Latin Vulgate, Ethiopic texts, the Gospel of the Nazarenes, and church fathers Justin, Tertullian, and Origen. Welch verbatim: "In my estimation, this textual variant in favor of the Sermon at the Temple is very meaningful." Also: "It is much more severe to say, 'Whoever is angry is in danger of the judgment'" without the qualifier. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book-chapter/sermon-temple-and-greek-new-testament-manuscripts ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Thomas A. Wayment and Tyson J. Yost (2005). The JST itself contains internal inconsistencies; Joseph Smith translated several passages multiple times in different ways during the JST project. The CES Letter measures the BoM against the JST as if the JST were a fixed comparison standard, but the JST is itself a layered document with internal disagreements. ↩︎
The Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14 uses the Greek parthenos ("virgin"), a choice made by Jewish translators in the 3rd-2nd century BC -- centuries before Christian claims about the virgin birth. See "The Word 'almah in Isaiah 7:14: A New Etymology," Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. https://www.goarch.org/-/the-word-almah-in-isaiah-7-14. ↩︎
Hallvard Hagelia, "'Almah in Isaiah 7:14," Bible Interp. Hagelia documents the historical context of the Septuagint's parthenos rendering and raises but does not definitively resolve two questions: whether the Septuagint translators worked from a Hebrew Vorlage containing betulah, or whether they read almah as implying virginity on social-contextual grounds (since young unmarried women in ancient Israelite social norms would normally be presumed virgins). Hagelia himself prefers "young woman" as the more accurate rendering of the Hebrew, while documenting that the LXX choice was not arbitrary but reflected one defensible reading of the contextual range. He also notes: "A translator should not deviate from his original text in any case, except if words are unknown or enigmatic or for critical textual reasons. In the case of Isa 7:14, there is no lexical or textual problems." https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/hag368019 ↩︎ ↩︎
Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, on Isaiah 7:14, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, Ancient Christian Writers 68 (Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2015). Jerome acknowledged that almah could be rendered as "young woman" but defended the Septuagint's reading based on contextual and theological considerations. ↩︎
Joel 1:8 uses betulah for a woman mourning "the husband of her youth," demonstrating the term's semantic range extends beyond strict biological virginity. Almah itself appears seven times in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Psalm 68:25; Proverbs 30:19; Song of Solomon 1:3, 6:8; Isaiah 7:14) and consistently refers to a young woman of marriageable age. See HALOT (Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament). ↩︎
1 Nephi 11:13-20. Nephi receives a vision of "a virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" who is "the mother of the Son of God." His subsequent use of Isaiah 7:14 language at 2 Nephi 17:14 is informed by this prophetic experience, not dependent on the KJV rendering. ↩︎
Shon D. Hopkin, "Isaiah 52-53 and Mosiah 13-14: A Textual Comparison," in Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, ed. Shon D. Hopkin (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2018), 139-166. Hopkin's verbatim summary: "In the Abinadi narrative, of the twenty variants that exist, fourteen find support in an ancient manuscript witness -- such as the Septuagint, the Targums, or the Dead Sea Scrolls -- or they are an equally appropriate translation from the Masoretic Text." On the types of variants: "the types of variants in the Dead Sea Scrolls do appear to match the types of variants found in the Book of Mormon fairly closely. This could possibly support the view of the Book of Mormon as a translation of an ancient text." On the overall analytic situation: "In all, the picture that emerges from the analysis is varied and complex, with several possible explanations for the differences." On Mosiah 14:9 ("evil" vs. "violence"): "Theologically, the difference between the servant doing no 'violence' and doing no 'evil' is very important for the point that Abinadi is making. The view of the servant as one who does no violence is much less important than the portrayal of the servant as free from evil and thus able to suffer and atone for the sins of the people." Final framing: "The Book of Mormon may not have been a modern creation, but it was certainly a modern translation." https://rsc.byu.edu/abinadi/isaiah-52-53-mosiah-13-14 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Donald W. Parry, Harmonizing Isaiah: Combining Ancient Sources (FARMS / Maxwell Institute, 2001). Parry's parallel-column format presents the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, and Book of Mormon readings side by side, providing direct textual support for many of the variant claims discussed in this article. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/40/ ↩︎
Mosiah 16:6. Abinadi explains: "And now if Christ had not come into the world, speaking of things to come as though they had already come, there could have been no redemption." This is a precise description of the Hebrew prophetic perfect tense, a recognized convention in Hebrew grammar (Gesenius, Joüon-Muraoka). ↩︎ ↩︎
Donald W. Parry, "The Prophetic Perfect Tense," BYU Religious Studies Center. Discusses Mosiah 16:6 and the Hebrew prophetic perfect -- "speaking of things to come as though they had already come." https://rsc.byu.edu/preserved-translation/prophetic-perfect-tense ↩︎ ↩︎
"Without a Cause," Scripture Central Evidence Central. Verbatim: the omission "appears in early Greek papyri (p64, p67), Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, the Latin Vulgate" plus Ethiopic manuscripts and Church Fathers (Justin, Tertullian, Origen); Jerome himself mentioned the phrase "was not found in the oldest manuscripts known to him." On contemporary status: "This is now the predominate reading of Matthew 5:22, as rendered in most modern versions of the Bible." https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/without-a-cause ↩︎ ↩︎
Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994), on Matthew 5:22. Metzger concludes the longer reading was "added by copyists in order to soften the rigor of the precept." The word eikēi is absent from the earliest and best manuscript witnesses. Modern critical Greek editions (NA28, UBS5) print the shorter reading. The NIV, ESV, NASB, and NRSV all follow the shorter reading -- the same reading the Book of Mormon published in 1830. ↩︎ ↩︎
P. Wernberg-Moller, "A Semitic Idiom in Matt. v. 22," New Testament Studies 3, no. 1 (November 1956): 71-73. Wernberg-Moller proposes the Greek eikēi arose from a translator's misrendering of an Aramaic original: "The Greek translator, then, followed the Aramaic ground text word for word, without being aware, however, that by a slavish rendering of the Aramaic idiom as eikēi, the original categorical saying was turned into a conditional one which made allowance for anger in some circumstances," when the original meaning was absolute. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688500017483 ↩︎
Daniel K. Judd and Allen W. Stoddard, "Adding and Taking Away 'Without a Cause' in Matthew 5:22," in How the New Testament Came to Be, ed. Kent P. Jackson and Frank F. Judd Jr. (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2006), 157-174. Definitive LDS scholarly treatment confirming the doctrinal-significance argument: removing "without a cause" creates a stricter ethical standard against anger itself, not merely unjustified anger. https://rsc.byu.edu/how-new-testament-came-be/adding-taking-away-without-cause-matthew-522 ↩︎
B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (Cambridge / London: Macmillan, 1881). Westcott and Hort's critical edition established the scholarly consensus that eikēi in Matthew 5:22 was a later scribal addition. Earlier work by Tischendorf (1860s-70s) had reached similar conclusions. Codex Sinaiticus was rediscovered in 1844; Codex Vaticanus became generally accessible in the 1860s. The Book of Mormon's 1830 publication of the shorter reading thus preceded the modern critical-text consensus by 30-50 years. ↩︎
Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with a Commentary and Critical Notes (London, 1810-1826), commentary on Matthew 5:22. Clarke discussed the eikēi textual variant and noted that some manuscripts omitted it. The variant was therefore not entirely unknown in Joseph Smith's English-language commentary environment, even though modern textual-critical consensus had not yet formed. The strongest framing of the case is "the Book of Mormon aligned with what later became scholarly consensus, against the KJV" -- not "Joseph could not have known." ↩︎
Stan Larson, "The Sermon on the Mount: What Its Textual Transformation Discloses Concerning the Historicity of the Book of Mormon," Trinity Journal 7, no. 1 (1986): 23-45. Larson identifies Sermon-on-the-Mount passages where modern textual criticism agrees the Textus Receptus has readings absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts. 3 Nephi 12-14 retains the late TR reading in the great majority of cases and corrects to the earliest manuscripts in only one (the famous "without a cause" omission at 3 Nephi 12:22). The retained late readings include the Lord's Prayer doxology at 3 Nephi 13:13. The exact item count varies slightly across summaries (the well-attested core comprises six identifiable Matthew/3 Nephi parallels; Larson's framing in the 1986 article and 1993 expansion includes additional cases of varying confidence). The article above cites the well-attested core. https://www.galaxie.com/article/trinj07-1-03 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stan Larson, "The Historicity of the Matthean Sermon on the Mount in 3 Nephi," in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, ed. Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 115-163. Larson's expanded treatment of the 1986 Trinity Journal analysis. The chapter argues 3 Nephi 12-14 reflects English of post-1769 textual editing. ↩︎
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 KJV's "pleasant pictures" renders Hebrew śĕkîyôt, now widely understood to relate to Ugaritic and Egyptian words meaning "ship" or "vessel." The Septuagint reads "every ship of the sea, and upon every display of fine ships." 2 Nephi 12:16 uniquely combines both traditions. Pike and Seely deliberately hedge: "the ancient Hebrew and Greek versions of the Bible as they impact our understanding of [Isaiah 2:16] in 2 Nephi 12:16 are much more complex" than typically assumed; they consider it "much more plausible that [a scribal error] occurred only once, with the Hebrew" -- leaving the textual history unresolved rather than declaring the BoM definitively original. Charles Thomson's 1808 English Septuagint was "rare for its time." Joseph Smith began studying Greek/Latin only in the 1830s-1840s. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol14/iss2/4/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Sidney B. Sperry, The Problems of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1939); reprinted 1995. Sperry first proposed that "the Book of Mormon suggests that the original text of this verse contained three phrases, all of which commence with the same opening words" -- preserved at 2 Nephi 12:16, lost separately in the Hebrew (which kept Tarshish + pictures) and Greek (which kept sea + ships) traditions. ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Joseph Smith's Awareness of Greek and Latin," in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (BYU RSC, 2015). Welch documents that Joseph Smith began studying Greek and Latin only in the 1830s and 1840s, with surviving notebooks postdating the Book of Mormon by years. Joseph could not read Greek in 1829. ↩︎
The first English Septuagint was Charles Thomson's 1808 translation, with a small print run that left it rare in 1829. Lancelot Brenton's widely-distributed English Septuagint (the standard for over a century) was not published until 1844, fifteen years after the Book of Mormon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint ↩︎ ↩︎
John A. Tvedtnes, "Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon," in Isaiah and the Prophets, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (BYU RSC, 1984), 165-178. Tvedtnes verbatim summary: "Of the 234 variants rated, 59 are +, 126 are =, and 49 are –." Among non-neutral variants, 55% favor the BoM, 45% favor the KJV -- meaningful but not statistically overwhelming. The strongest individual cases anchor on identifiable ancient manuscript witnesses (1QIsa-a, LXX, Targums, Vulgate). On the Qere reading at Isaiah 9:3: "the Qere deletes it, as do twenty Hebrew manuscripts." Tvedtnes was a faithful Latter-day Saint scholar; his ratings involve interpretive judgment; no neutral textual critic has independently replicated the scoring methodology. https://rsc.byu.edu/isaiah-prophets/isaiah-variants-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Book of Mormon Onomasticon, "RAMATH" entry. The BoM at 2 Nephi 20:29 reads "Ramath" against the KJV's "Ramah." John Tvedtnes and Robert F. Smith propose the spelling preserves an archaic feminine ending -ath; Royal Skousen has argued it represents a scribal error by Oliver Cowdery for the KJV form. The 1QIsa-a parallel (one verse earlier, where the scribe added a superscript letter to restore the older Aiath form) is suggestive but not decisive. Forms ending in -ath do appear in the KJV (e.g., Joshua 19:8). https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/RAMATH ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen Gibson, One-Minute Answers to Anti-Mormon Questions (Horizon, 2004). Gibson found 46% of Isaiah verses in the BoM identical to the KJV, 54% modified. ↩︎
Nicholas J. Frederick, "The Language of Paul in the Book of Mormon," in They Shall Grow Together: The Bible in the Book of Mormon, ed. Charles Swift and Nicholas J. Frederick (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2022), 205-234. Frederick verbatim: "Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon rendered the two-millennia-old text into the vernacular of nineteenth-century biblical scripture" (p. 205). On Paul's marginal narrative role: "One thing that surprises me as a student of both Paul's epistles and the Book of Mormon is just how minor of a presence Paul's voice has in the Book of Mormon text" (p. 228). Also: "Yet the Book of Mormon, with all its similarities and adaptations of the Bible, sidelines Paul to a surprising extent." On independence from 19th-century debates: "By placing Paul firmly on the sidelines these same translator(s) likewise provided the Book of Mormon with its own independence from contemporary theological debate" (p. 229). Also: "Protestants may have needed the letters of Paul to help them find their way through the theological quagmires, but the Book of Mormon emphatically does not." Frederick notes "roughly one hundred or so identifiable Pauline phrases" with full appendix list (p. 207). https://rsc.byu.edu/they-shall-grow-together/language-paul-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Nicholas J. Frederick, "The Book of Mormon and Its Redaction of the King James New Testament," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 27 (2018): 44-87. Frederick's foundational methodological piece establishing a five-criterion methodology for identifying genuine textual dependencies between the BoM and the KJV NT. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/3616/ ↩︎
Nicholas J. Frederick, "The Bible and the Book of Mormon: A Review of Literature," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28, no. 1 (2019). Traces the field's shift from "why is the Bible present?" to "how is the Bible present?" in the Book of Mormon. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol28/iss1/9/ ↩︎
Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool: S.W. Richards, 1853). Lucy testified that Joseph "seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children, but far more given to meditation and deep study." Lucy's testimony describes Joseph's temperament during his teen years (contemplative rather than bookish); it does not testify directly about whether Joseph had encountered Adam Clarke's commentary, the Septuagint, or other obscure scholarship by 1828-29. The full quote with both halves is the appropriate citation; the second half is sometimes omitted in popular apologetics. See also Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy's Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith's Family Memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001). ↩︎
Frank F. Judd Jr., "Conflicting Interpretations of Isaiah in Abinadi's Trial," in Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, ed. Shon D. Hopkin (BYU RSC / Deseret Book, 2018), 67-90. Documents the conflicting interpretations of Isaiah 52:7-10 between Abinadi and Noah's priests, showing Abinadi engaging in active interpretive debate. Judd's chapter focuses on interpretation of Isaiah 52:7-10, not on chapter-division textual criticism per se; the broader DSS section-division observation is corroborated by general DSS scholarship on the Fourth Servant Song unit. https://rsc.byu.edu/abinadi/conflicting-interpretations-isaiah-abinadis-trial ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds., The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). Standard non-LDS scholarly volume on Isaiah 53 reception history, including Hengel-Bailey's chapter on pre-Christian readings. ↩︎
Martin Hengel with Daniel P. Bailey, "The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period," in Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds., The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). Argues pre-Christian awareness of Isaiah 53 was widespread, with documentary evidence indicating messianic readings in Second Temple Judaism predating Christian use. The messianic reading Abinadi applies was not a Christian innovation. ↩︎ ↩︎
Margaret Barker, The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God (London: SPCK, 2007). Argues that pre-exilic Israelite religion preserved a temple Christology in which a high God (El Elyon) had a son (Yahweh), and that texts like Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7, and 11:1-9 are pre-exilic temple-Christology fragments. Barker is a Methodist (non-LDS) biblical scholar. ↩︎
Margaret Barker, The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1987). Foundational monograph reconstructing pre-exilic Israelite religion. Independent non-LDS scholarly support for the framework Abinadi works within. ↩︎
"Why Did Isaiah Prophesy of a Suffering Messiah?" Scripture Central KnoWhy #648. Summarizes Margaret Barker's pre-exilic temple-Christology research and Martin Hengel's research on pre-Christian messianic interpretation of Isaiah 53. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-did-isaiah-prophesy-of-a-suffering-messiah ↩︎
Monte S. Nyman, "Abinadi's Commentary on Isaiah," in The Book of Mormon: Mosiah, Salvation Only Through Christ, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (BYU Religious Studies Center, 1991), 161-186. Nyman verbatim: "Abinadi's commentary sustains the Christian interpretation with details not found in the writings of other Christians" (p. 163). On Abinadi's pre-Christian messianic reading: "Clearly Abinadi understands this passage not to be a prophecy of suffering Israel, but a prophecy of Jesus Christ, of whom all the prophets have testified." On mercy and justice (Mosiah 15:9): "His compassion to those who repent illustrates his role as the Son as his mercy satisfies the demands of justice" (p. 177). https://rsc.byu.edu/book-mormon-mosiah-salvation-only-through-christ/abinadis-commentary-isaiah ↩︎ ↩︎
"Jacob's Use of Isaiah in 2 Nephi 6-10," Scripture Central Evidence #492. Verbatim: "8 quotations, 7 allusions, and 14 proposed echoes" from Isaiah 49 alone. Overall sophistication assessment: "The commentary is both intertextually complex and thematically sophisticated. How a poorly educated farmer was able to produce a work that accomplished scholars with formal academic training are still trying to fully unpack today is difficult to explain." https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-jacob-s-use-of-isaiah-in-2-nephi-6-10 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Isaiah's Monster in Jacob's Teachings" (2 Nephi 9), Scripture Central Evidence. Documents Jacob's unique blending of primordial sea-monster motifs found in ancient Near Eastern traditions which Isaiah was likely interacting with. Verbatim from the article: "These terms used by Isaiah -- 'Rahab,' 'dragon' (tannin), 'sea' (yam), and 'deep' (tehom) -- were all connected with the mighty waters and express overlapping facets of the same conceptual foe." Cited scholars include Neil Forsyth (The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, 1987), Nicolas Wyatt (Myths of Power, 1996), A.J. Wensinck (The Ocean in the Literature of the Western Semites, 1918), and John Day (Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1992). https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/isaiah-s-monster-in-jacob-s-teachings ↩︎ ↩︎
Hermann Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895). The originating modern scholarly study of ancient Near Eastern combat-myth traditions and their relationship to biblical creation and judgment imagery. Gunkel's monograph established the academic study of Chaoskampf themes that 20th-century scholarship (Forsyth, Wyatt, Day, Wensinck) developed in detail. ↩︎
Victor L. Ludlow, "The Covenant Teachings of Jesus in 3 Nephi," in The Book of Mormon: 3 Nephi 9-30, This Is My Gospel, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1993). Ludlow identifies 3 Nephi 20-23 as a chiasmus organized around six themes, with the central point at 3 Nephi 21:4 -- the sign of the Father's covenant with Israel, identified specifically with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. ↩︎
"Why Did Jesus Mix Together Micah and Isaiah?" Scripture Central KnoWhy #214. Documents Christ's chiastic integration of Isaiah and Micah in 3 Nephi 20:10-23:5. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-did-jesus-mix-together-micah-and-isaiah ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Three options reconcile the eyewitness "tight" testimony with the textual evidence of preserved KJV mistranslations, each carrying a real cost. (1) The witnesses described what they observed accurately, but the underlying methodology bifurcated by text type -- tight word-by-word selection for original Nephite composition, KJV-scaffolded translation for biblical quotations. The witnesses had no way to detect the bifurcation because they only saw Joseph dictating. Cost: the witnesses reported a uniform process, so this requires accepting that they did not have access to the methodology layer beneath what they observed, and that the eyewitness "tight" testimony cannot be applied to biblical-quotation passages in the way some apologetic literature has applied it. (2) The methodology was uniform, but the divine word-level selection in biblical-quotation passages happened to select English wording that corresponded to KJV mistranslations. Cost: requires accepting that God selected factually wrong English ("pictures" for sekiyyot, "violence" for ḥāmās) when correct alternatives were available -- the hardest theological cost. (3) The witnesses were inaccurate or incomplete in their description of uniformity. Cost: impeaches witness reliability for one of the central translation events, with cascading implications. Option 1 is the most coherent faithful position and is what the "creative and cultural translation" framework implies. ↩︎
"Scholar Survey: KJV Translation Errors in Book of Mormon Isaiah," A Careful Examination. Compiles ratings from Jan Joosten (then-Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford), Robert Alter (UC Berkeley), and additional reviewers on a 5-point Likert scale (4 = "Perfectly Accurate"; 0 = "Completely Inaccurate"). Survey covered KJV translations, ESV comparisons, and Strong's Concordance references. Joosten on Isaiah 2:16 "pictures": 0/4 -- "the word means 'ships' (the word was borrowed from Egyptian, which the KJV translators had no access to)." Joosten on Isaiah 3:3 "eloquent orator": 0/4 -- "ESV is better." Joosten on Isaiah 9:1 "grievously afflict": 0/4 -- "but I sympathize, the verse is really difficult." Joosten on Isaiah 11:3 "of quick understanding": 0/4 -- "the text means 'his smelling will be in the fear of the Lord'." Joosten on Isaiah 49:5: "the Hebrew here has two alternate reading lo[w] 'to him'/lo['] 'not'; according to the context 'to him' is correct." Alter on Isaiah 11:3: KJV and ESV "are entirely wrong." Alter on Isaiah 3:2: "The diviner is correct, and the last term should be 'expert in incantations.'" Note: Isaiah 13:22 / 2 Nephi 23:22 ("dragons") received a split rating rather than unanimous 0/4. https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/scholar-survey-kjv-translation-errors-in-bom-isaiah/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
New Testament authors frequently quote the Old Testament using the Septuagint's Greek renderings rather than independently translating the Hebrew, even when the Septuagint differs from the Masoretic Text. See, e.g., Matthew 1:23 (quoting Isaiah 7:14 via the LXX parthenos), Hebrews 10:5 (quoting Psalm 40:6 via the LXX "a body you prepared for me" rather than the Hebrew "my ears you have opened"). The precedent for divine communication channeled through an imperfect prior translation is well-established. ↩︎
"KJV Translation Errors in the Book of Mormon," FAIR. Classifies 91 alleged errors into categories: not errors, translation variants, diachronic shifts, legitimate mistranslations, and modern translator conventions. Verbatim: "In no case, however, is there a translation variant, broadening of meaning, change in meaning, change in intent, etc. that teaches incorrect doctrine or otherwise compels a reader into believing something false." Also: "God can achieve all of His divine goals without a perfect translation." FAIR-acknowledged "genuine mistranslations" preserved in the BoM include Isaiah 3:2 "prudent" → "diviner" (no doctrinal change); Isaiah 3:3 "orator" → "enchanter" (no doctrinal change); Isaiah 2:16 "pictures" → "ships" (rhetorical intent preserved); Isaiah 3:18 "cauls" → "headbands" (same basic meaning). https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/KJV_translation_errors_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
David P. Wright, "Joseph Smith's Interpretation of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 31, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 181-206; expanded as "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. The polysemy argument was foundational in the 1998 Dialogue article (which contains the Isaiah 2:10 / 2 Nephi 12:10 example verbatim, p. 183). The expanded polysemy class with the Isaiah 50:2, 48:16, and 51:17 examples is developed in the 2002 American Apocrypha version (with parallel materials in Wright's earlier online manuscript at user.xmission.com/~research/central/isabm2.html and isabm4.html). Wright verbatim on the foundational thesis: "If the former were a translation from an ancient text one would expect it to transcend the limitations of the KJV, and even the limitations of modern scholars." On Isaiah 2:10: "The phrase 'for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty' in the KJV Isaiah 2:10 consists of two conjoined phrases introduced with the preposition 'for,' which properly renders the Hebrew mippenei, 'because of.' 2 Nephi 12:10 converts these to a verbal clause: 'for the fear of the Lord and the glory of his majesty shall smite thee.' Here English 'for' changes its function and becomes a conjunction." On Isaiah 50:2 / 2 Nephi 7:2: "The BM reading depends on the ambiguity or polysemy of the English 'wherefore.' In English this word can be an interrogative ('why?') or a conjunction ('therefore'). It is an interrogative in the KJV verse here, translating the Hebrew word maddûac 'why?' The BM reading uses 'wherefore' as a conjunction, which is not possible for Hebrew maddûac." On Isaiah 48:16 / 1 Nephi 20:16: "The italicized word 'am' is likely part of the motivation for the change. The stimulus for the idea of 'declaration' comes from earlier in the chapter in vv. 3, 5, 6, 14." On Isaiah 51:17 / 2 Nephi 8:17: "In these cases deletion of italics led to texts that require a word order and grammatical construction notably different from the existing Hebrew text." Conclusion across the polysemy class: "The BM conserves many of the unacceptable translations of the KJV now clearly recognizable from the stance of modern research." And: "In summary, the three classes of variants discussed in this section show various ways in which the BM Isaiah is not consistent with the Hebrew text, in semantics, syntax, and style." https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/joseph-smiths-interpretation-of-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Colby Townsend, "'The Robe of Righteousness': Exilic and Post-Exilic Isaiah in The Book of Mormon," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 55, no. 3 (Fall 2022): 75-106. Townsend verbatim: "As a contribution to the larger project of examining the King James Bible's influence on The Book of Mormon, this essay focuses on several aspects of the problem of Isaiah in The Book of Mormon." On the Romans 10:21 / Isaiah 65:2 mediation: "Although slightly varying among themselves in terminology, each of the three verses in The Book of Mormon dependent on Isaiah 65:2 is far closer in its wording to the KJV of Romans 10:21 than Third Isaiah." Also: "The author of The Book of Mormon only knew the book of Isaiah as it is found in the KJV." And: "These verses also cannot be stripped from Nephi's or Jacob's texts without doing irreparable harm to their message. The author of these chapters knew Third Isaiah and the New Testament." Specific Trito-Isaiah phrases in original BoM compositions include "robe of righteousness" (2 Nephi 4:33; 9:14; cf. Isaiah 61:10) and "mighty to save" (2 Nephi 31:19; Alma 7:14, 34:18; cf. Isaiah 63:1). https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-robe-of-righteousness-exilic-and-post-exilic-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Colby Townsend, "Early Nineteenth-Century Biblical Scholarship and the Production of The Book of Mormon," Journal of the Bible and its Reception 12, no. 1 (March 2025): 57-84. Extends the Adam Clarke / KJV-dependence thesis from the 2022 Dialogue article to a non-LDS academic venue. Townsend argues KJV dependence in the BoM extends beyond Isaiah to Genesis, Malachi, and other biblical books, and that the most parsimonious explanation is contemporary biblical scholarship consultation. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbr-2024-0001 ↩︎ ↩︎
The Romans 10:21 finding is empirical: Townsend documents -- and the article accepts -- that three Book of Mormon verses (2 Nephi 28:32, Jacob 5:47, Jacob 6:4) track the specific English wording of Romans 10:21 more closely than they track Isaiah 65:2 (whether in Hebrew or in modern critical English translation). The phrase shape is Pauline-KJV, not Trito-Isaiah-Hebrew. The KJV-scaffolding model handles biblical-quotation passages cleanly: where the Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah, the KJV provides the English rendering. Trito-Isaiah phrases in original Nephite voices (the "robe of righteousness" and "mighty to save" cases) are already a stretch for the simple model -- they require either (a) the divine translation supplying the post-exilic phrasing because the underlying Nephite concept aligned closely enough that the KJV idiom captured it, or (b) the Nephites somehow having access to post-Lehi prophetic material via revelation. The standard faithful response to "post-Lehi material in BoM" is the Malachi precedent: 3 Nephi 24-25 explicitly attributes Malachi to a post-Nephi-departure timeframe. Divine intervention added attributed post-exilic content. But Townsend's examples are unattributed -- Trito-Isaiah phrases appear in Nephite mouths as their own composition. The Malachi precedent covers attributed delivery; it does not cover unattributed phraseology. The Romans 10:21 case is harder still: the specific phrase shape tracks Paul's KJV English filtration of the Hebrew rather than the Hebrew itself or even an independent translation of the Greek. The divine translator was working through the New Testament's KJV Pauline phrasing in the act of rendering original Nephite compositions. The translation medium was not just KJV-Old-Testament English supplying biblical-quotation language, but KJV-English-as-such (including Pauline NT phrasings) functioning as the broader linguistic substrate. No peer-reviewed faithful-side rebuttal engages Townsend's specific textual findings on this point. Frederick's "vernacularization" framework describes the broader phenomenon at a level that includes the Romans 10:21 case, but it does not specifically defend why this particular type of mediation is theologically appropriate or what exactly the divine selection process was that produced it. ↩︎
Haley Wilson and Thomas Wayment, "A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith's Bible Translation," BYU Journal of Undergraduate Research (March 16, 2017); Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon, "A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith's Bible Translation," in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, ed. Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020), Chapter 11. Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon document Joseph Smith's use of Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826) during the JST project. They themselves frame the use as "not plagiarism" but document the textual parallels in detail. The connection to the JST is well-established; Townsend (2025) extends the argument to claim possible Clarke influence on the Book of Mormon as well. ↩︎
Kent P. Jackson, "Adam Clarke and Isaiah in the Book of Mormon," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 66 (2025): 131-150. Jackson examines Townsend's specific BoM-Clarke claims and concludes "none of his proposed borrowings from Clarke can be sustained" (p. 149). Jackson's specific findings: the variants Townsend identified reflect common BoM Isaiah patterns rather than Clarke-specific influence; share minimal or no vocabulary with Clarke's text; or rest on misreadings of Clarke's actual argument. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/adam-clarke-and-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎
E. Jan Wilson, "Joseph Smith and the 'Red Sea' in 2 Nephi 19:1," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 60 (2024): 183-196. Wilson observes that the Red Sea is "hundreds of miles" from Galilee in the standard interpretation. Wilson proposes the original Hebrew may have contained sufah (a place name near the Arnon River east of the Dead Sea), misunderstood by scribes between 600 BCE and the Septuagint period and replaced with yam. On Tvedtnes's Cowdery-error theory: Wilson finds it plausible but questions whether twenty chapters of separation is sufficient. Wilson verbatim, near the conclusion: "perhaps by changing 'sea' to 'Red Sea,' the translation leaves a hint concerning the original verbiage of that verse and what Isaiah was actually saying." Wilson does not claim to definitively resolve the variant. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/joseph-smith-and-the-red-sea-in-2-nephi-191 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Sarah Allen, "The CES Letter Rebuttal, Part 2," FAIR (August 26, 2021). Allen verbatim: "the King's Highway (which also eventually goes into Jordan) was known as…yep, you guessed it, the Way of the Red Sea." Also: "The King's Highway also was part of what was known in ancient times as the Way of the Red Sea, which led out of Egypt." Also: "one of the things he mocks about 2 Nephi 19:1 is actually another evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon's authenticity." On the italicized "her": "the word 'her' in 'afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea…' is also italicized, and is removed from the Book of Mormon." On the Sermon on the Mount: "The Sermon on the Mount is not identical to the sermon given to the Nephites... It was a different sermon given to a different people." https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blog/2021/08/26/the-ces-letter-rebuttal-part-2 ↩︎ ↩︎
Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6 parts (Provo, UT: FARMS / BYU Studies, 2004-2009). Skousen's manuscript-level analysis of the original and printer's manuscripts confirms that the "Red Sea" reading at 2 Nephi 19:1 was part of the original dictation rather than a later editorial insertion. Whatever the variant's origin, it traces back to the dictation event itself. ↩︎
The framework's narrow falsifiable predictions that have been borne out: if the Book of Mormon never departed from the KJV in the direction of ancient manuscript readings -- if all modifications were random rather than trending toward pre-modern witnesses -- the "ancient source under KJV scaffolding" hypothesis would lose its predictive force. The Dead Sea Scroll alignments at Mosiah 14:7, the Septuagint plurals in Mosiah 14, the Hebrew Qere reading at 2 Nephi 19:3, and the "without a cause" omission at 3 Nephi 12:22 are all consistent with the prediction. Separately, if the Book of Mormon contained KJV errors that post-date the 1611 translation -- errors introduced only in later print runs -- it would indicate dependence on a specific later edition rather than on an ancient base text; the kjv-errors article documents that no such post-1611-only errors have been identified. The framework has been adjusted in scope as data has come in: from "the KJV is the English vehicle for biblical-quotation passages with mostly stylistic accommodation" to "the KJV's English including its factual errors is the vehicle" to "the broader translation medium uses KJV English including NT-mediated Pauline phrasings even in original Nephite voices." Each expansion was a reasonable response to new data, but the cumulative effect is that the framework's scope is broader than its original formulation. The framework also has resilience -- pinching data can be accommodated through one of its components (Ostler's expansion, Gardner's localization, Spencer's missing-words mechanism, Approach 4 divine intervention). That resilience is partly because divine accommodation to human language is a theologically rich principle attested across scripture, and partly because the data really does pattern that way. Resilience is a fair concern; it is not by itself a defeater. The framework is more like a strong working hypothesis than a clean falsifiable claim. It makes some empirical predictions that have been borne out (no post-1611 errors, modifications trending toward ancient witnesses, sophisticated literary engagement with Hebrew material). It also accommodates costs that other models would not pay (English-level polysemy variants, KJV factual errors, NT-mediated phrasings, the Red Sea anomaly). The article does not claim the framework is unconditionally falsifiable, but the framework's accommodations of difficult cases are theologically grounded (D&C 1:24, the NT's use of the LXX) rather than ad hoc. ↩︎