The Book of Mormon is Not The Voice of a 22 Year Old Young Man

I don’t know what it is about the Book of Mormon, but when I open that book…it just feels right. I believe that a spiritual confirmation from the Holy Ghost is telling me that the book is true. I can’t describe that phenomenon in words. But for critics and skeptics…this explanation is pure nonsense. Sometimes, in a somewhat sarcastic tone, people will say that they’ve had their own spiritual confirmation that the book is not true. So where do you go from there?

The only thing I can think to do is analyze the feasibility of Joseph Smith’s ability to write the Book of Mormon.

book of mormon is true

One of the greatest mysteries of all time consists of whether or not Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. No one has been able to prove whether or not it was an authentic record. So…either Joseph Smith was the most brilliant and wicked man of his time and he wrote the book…or he was an uneducated mouthpiece for God that subsequently drank from the firehose of intelligence in these last days. When you open that book, you’re either reading the wisdom and history of ancient prophets or the deranged imaginations of a 22 year old farm hand. You get to read for yourself and decide between those two choices.

I can’t speak for anyone else but every time I open that book…the thought keeps coming back to my mind, “this is not the voice of a 22 year old young man”. The parental wisdom, the complexity, the history, the teachings, the detail! It can’t be the voice of an inexperienced 22 year old!

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Think about it for a second. If Joseph Smith wrote that book, then how would he have kept it secret from his family and so many others in his town? Could he have been writing one of the most influential books in human history in a tiny house under the nose of his older brothers and family members without them knowing? If he was a genius, as many have suggested, would he have been dumb enough to plagiarize from other books that were popular in the nearby schools and community knowing full well that people would be able to see right through his lies and expose him?

Listen to how Emma Smith describes the translation of the Book of Mormon many years after Joseph Smith was dead and she had since been remarried:

In writing for Joseph Smith, I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it and dictating hour after hour, with nothing between us. He had neither mss [manuscript] nor book to read from. If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me. The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen table cloth, which I had given him to fold them in. I felt of the plates, as they lay on the table, tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book. Oliver Cowdrey and JS wrote in the room where I was at work. JS could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon. – Emma Smith Bidamon, Notes of Interview with Joseph Smith III 1879

Lots of people think it was nuts for Joseph Smith to have his face buried in a hat as he translated…but I think it makes the process that much more authentic and miraculous. I mean…if he was making all of this up, then who in the world would think to bury their face in a hat as they “translate” a book anyway? Why not just “act” as if you can read the plates. If it’s all a deception anyway…then why go to the trouble of looking like an idiot and bringing further ridicule upon yourself by burying your face in a hat?

That’s where it gets really crazy. If someone doesn’t believe that Joseph Smith was utilizing a seer stone or the Urim and Thummim in the translation process, then they would have to believe that he had previously concocted, written, and memorized over five hundred and thirty pages of complex teaching and history verbatim before he began dictating it to various scribes. Each of the scribes gave their eyewitness account regarding the miraculousness of the process. No books, no manuscripts, no audio recording earpiece, no punctuation, no chapters or verses.

It gets even more incomprehensible! Emma later added that after a meal or a night’s rest, Joseph would begin, without prompting, where he had previously left off (The Saints’ Herald 26 [Oct. 1, 1879]:290). He didn’t go back, ask for the last sentence, perform edits, or make sure he had his story straight. Can you imagine this? Go to bed, wake up, and know exactly where you left off? I don’t think I could even do this with one page of memorized writings let alone the Allegory of the Olive Tree!  This fact in and of itself is evidence enough of divine intervention. No human is capable of that kind of feat. But even if you were intellectually capable of doing something like that…would you exert so much energy and effort for a fraud?

Those that acted as scribe for Joseph did so with caution, often trying to catch Joseph in some sort of lie or deception. They were as skeptical as you and I might have been the first time we picked up a Book of Mormon. No one wants to waste their time, let alone place their reputation on the line because of a fraud. But over time, those scribes, finding no other way to explain away the marvel of the Book of Mormon, came to the same conclusion I have come to…

“This cannot be the voice of a 22 year old”

Every time I open the Book of Mormon, I feel like Oliver Cowdery when he said “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’—Messenger and Advocate, vol. 1 (October 1834), pp. 14–16.

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There were too many individuals that testified of the miracles that surrounded the coming forth of the Book of Mormon to write it off as a hoax.

You may make fun of me as you read this…but I just can’t believe that a 22 yr old would be capable writing, concocting, memorizing, dictating, and concealing the process from everyone that surrounded him. But for me…it’s more than that.

Personally…I cannot associate the feelings I get and the lessons I learn every time I open that book to any other source than from God. And that is why I keep reading it’s pages and believing it’s teachings.

 

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25 thoughts on “The Book of Mormon is Not The Voice of a 22 Year Old Young Man

  1. RC

    If the head in hat story is so miraculous…why did I never hear about it in 32 years of membership?

    Why are there no illustrations?

    Why is it not depicted in any of the church videos?

    And the thing that really got me is…how did KJV errors end up in the book with the rock in hat method?

  2. RC

    If the head in hat story is so miraculous…why did I never hear about it in 32 years of membership?

    Why are there no illustrations?

    Why is it not depicted in any of the church videos?

    And the thing that really got me is…how did KJV errors end up in the book with the rock in hat method?

  3. jamesallred

    I can appreciate the argument that Joseph Smith could not have written the Book of Mormon, especially as a 22 year old inexperienced and uneducated man.

    It feels good.

    It feels right.

    Because there is no way I could do it at 22 or 52.

    But that argument is only based on feelings. What if we looked at a couple of facts.

    1) Joseph smith’s primary strength in his life was dictating inspired words. The book of mormon, over a hundred revelations in the D&C, translating the bible, translating the Book of Abraham, Translating the parchment of John. Doing this (dictating inspired words) was his strength, which he repeated over and over and over again through out his life. Hmmmmmm.

    2) Just read D&C 76. Here is profound scripture dictated directly from the mouth of Joseph Smith with no other source around him except the inspiration of God. He was only 26. I would argue there is limited difference between 22 and 26. So he clearly had the skills to dictate inspired revelations. It was squarely in his wheel house at a very young age. Hmmmm.

    3) And then look at the content of the book of mormon. Sermons that taught a clear doctrine very similar to many sermons being taught in the 19th century in his neck of the woods. Over 20 percent of the versus exactly copied of deeply plagiarized from the KJV of the bible. Concepts of government that were relevant to a 19th century man and totally foreign to a 600 BC setting. The book of mormon has more in common with a 22 year old frontier american man than it does with a middle aged 6th century BC prophet. Hmmmmmm.

    I know you trust your feelings.

    How do you feel about some facts?

    I wish you only the best. You are a fun read.

    • guest

      “Over 20 percent of the versus exactly copied of deeply plagiarized from the KJV of the bible.” Please point to the over 100 pages in the Book of Mormon that you have stated plagiarize the Bible. This is just silly, and so is the assertion that Joseph Smith wrote this. I suppose it’s easier for you to believe that he was a savant-level genius than it is to believe that he was inspired of God though. I could give you all kinds of links by many people from other religions and in literary fields that testify that the Book of Mormon is incredibly unique, but you could just as easily google these and find them yourself if you were truly interested in facts. You have already noted that Joseph Smith produced many inspired revelations, but it’s unfortunate that you don’t believe that they were truly inspired. What you fail to acknowledge is that very few people that new Joseph Smith ever accused him of having written the Book of Mormon, because his lack of an education was immediately obvious in his early life. If you are interested in some serious analysis of the authorship of the Book of Mormon, I invite you to check out this link that has all kinds of evidence/facts for you to consider (BTW, looks like you’ve plagiarized a picture of Mitt Romney there): http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/21/1/S00003-500d8bb1cd1b63-Stylometric%20Analyses.pdf

      • Broken bose

        Dennis,

        Let me point out just a few of the discrepancies I see in the Book of Mormon, and ask you to address them.

        The first one, and perhaps the most famous, is the problem with Alma 7:10,

        “And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God.”

        Jesus was not born at Jerusalem. He was born in Bethlehem. Jerusalem along with Bethlehem, are cities that reside in the land of Judah. Bethany, another city in the land of Judah, sits two miles due South of Jerusalem and is situated right in between the two cities, being four miles to the north of Bethlehem. There were no such things as suburbs back then, so the idea of calling Bethlehem or Bethany a Jerusalem suburb is not coherent with the geography of ancient Judah.

        When I asked an LDS missionary about the problem of Alma 7:10, his response was to say that Alma might have said Jerusalem instead of Bethlehem because Jerusalem was more familiar, like as if he had said he was from Los Angeles instead of Orange County. But this doesn’t work for several reasons. First, Bethlehem was well known. Everyone was familiar with Bethlehem. Micah prophecied that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. Both kings Saul and David were also born there. And Samuel anointed David as king of Israel in Bethlehem (I Sam. 16:1- 13).

        Second, it’s too far away from Jerusalem (6 miles with no cars) with a wall around the city of Jerusalem itself, with other cities that reside in between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

        And lastly, no Jewish mother who had the possibility of being the mother of the Messiah according to Micah 5 (who’s son was to be born in Bethlehem), would say her first-born son was born in Jerusalem. It is perplexing then to understand how any Jewish mother would get right what Alma as a prophet would so clearly get wrong.

        ______________

        The next problem had to do with an early Church Father named Origen (AD 150-250). Origen noticed that the name of Bethany was used to describe two separate locations in Scripture. One was a city, called Bethany, while the other was an enclave, called Bethany beyond the Jordan. Origen, though a greatly gifted and prolific theologian, thought the similar names were confusing, so he opted to call the place where Jesus was baptized “Bethabara” instead of “Bethany beyond the Jordan”. The King James version reproduces Origen’s preference in John 1:28. However, no other versions of Scripture (not based on the King James version) uses it. They all (even the Douay-Rheims version Catholic Bible published in 1589 in English, 21 years before the King James version) use the actual Scripture reference of “Bethany beyond the Jordan” to describe Jesus’ place of baptism. There is however, one other place the word Bethabara is used to describe the place where Jesus would be baptized.

        In 1 Nephi 10:9, it reads:

        “And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water.”

        How does a theologian’s third century preference make it into the Book of Mormon whose prophecy was supposed to have been written in the sixth century BC? From my outsider’s perspective, the answer seems obvious.

        It came from the King James Bible.

        What would your explanation be?

        ______________

        The last problem I’ll mention for now, has to do with how the early Church Fathers and bishops used their copies of the Gospels to lead the public worship service (called the Divine Liturgy). In some copies of Matthew 6, where the Lord’s Prayer is given, some bishops would mark their copy with what the response of the faithful would be. So after the bishop would recite the Lord’s prayer, the faithful would say “”for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen”. In fact, the Catholic Church reinstated this liturgical response at the second Vatican Council in the 1960s to remember and renew this early Church practice in the council’s update of the Divine Liturgy. Catholics still say it today at Mass on Sunday mornings.

        Yet however appropriate this liturgical response was, it wasn’t considered Scripture in the context of Matthew 6. And no versions mistake the liturgical response written in next to the Lord’s prayer by the ancient bishops for Scripture except the King James version of the Bible (the NASB reproduces the text, but footnotes the correction). There is however, one other place where this Catholic liturgical response is reproduced.

        In 3 Nephi 13:13, it astonishingly reads after the Lord’s Prayer:

        “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen”

        The obvious question is, how does an ancient Catholic liturgical response make it into the Book of Mormon without mistakenly being copied from the King James version of the Bible?

        _____________

        There are many other anachronistic examples in the Book of Mormon like those above but I’ll pause here and wait for your comments. Thanks and God bless.

        • jamesallred

          I would be glad to share a verse by verse comparison of the Book of Mormon with the King James Bible if you are interested in the fact. And just for clarity some of the more than 20% is direct quote for quote and some of it is parapharasing in a consistent and sequential manner to the KJV. But you could have already googled this if you really are sincere.

        • AG

          At means something entirely different than it did in the past. In the past it meant “near”, so therefore 6 miles is very near Jeruselem isn’t it?

          • Broken bose

            Both words were used in Scripture.

            If ‘near’ is more appropriate, then the word ‘at’ is out of place in ancient Scripture. The word ‘at’ is more a function of destination when used, while the word ‘near’ is used more to denote location.

            To be ‘at’ a city in ancient Judah did not mean to be ‘near’ it, but in another city. You would simply name the other city you were in.

            Acts 9:3

            “And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:”

            Paul was still on the road to Damascus here, but not ‘at’ the actual city. So the word ‘at’ is not used. The use of the word ‘near’ is used appropriately to show Paul’s location from the city at the time that the light shone around him.

            Gen 19:20

            “Behold this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.”

            Lot was escaping to the city of Zoar, from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but notice that he wanted to escape to the city that he didn’t yet occupy; he wasn’t yet ‘at’ the city’s destination. He was only ‘near’ it. So the word ‘at’ again isn’t used.

            Matthew 7:13

            “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction.”

            Here, Christ tells us to enter “at” the strait (or narrow) gate, or at the destination of the narrow gate. While today we might say that the gate is physically ‘near’ us in order for us to enter it, Christ’s point is not speaking to the empirical location of the gate to our own person. Christ is telling us what the destination is. He isn’t trying to tell us where the gate is.

            If in Alma 7:10, ‘at’ Jerusalem really meant only ‘near’ it, then Alma 7:10 would still be incorrect, because the way the words were used to describe where Christ was born is wrong.

            Christ wasn’t born ‘at’ Jerusalem. He was born ‘near’ it; in Bethlehem.

        • guest

          Broken Bose, really? All this fuss about Alma referring to the land of Jerusalem in a speech to his people instead of saying Bethlehem? You argue that everyone’s familiar with Bethlehem, but is that the case here? This speech that Alma gives to the people in the land of Gideon was approximately 83 BC, or over 500 years since Lehi had left Jerusalem. And you’re seriously arguing that his phrase “he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers” is too broad for people who are a continent away and have had no contact with Jerusalem in over 500 years? Bethlehem is in the land of Jerusalem, and is only a short distance walk from there of about 6 miles. I hope you realize that this is actually an evidence FOR the Book of Mormon narrative, because had Alma assumed his people would be familiar with Bethlehem, he would’ve been in error and critics could’ve used this as a logical argument against the BoM. So, thanks for pointing this out dude. Feel free to loosen up a bit now, ok?

          • Broken bose

            Thanks for your response and I apologize for not replying sooner.

            Micah was a prophet who wrote in the 8th century BC. Therefore, the prophecy in Micah 5:1 concerning where the Messiah was to be born (in Bethlehem) was well known before Lehi would have left Jerusalem. And if Micah knew it, then why would you assume that Bethlehem was unknown? And again, if this was the place by name mentioned in Micah, then I must assume that those who awaited the promised Messiah would also know where He would be born. Why didn’t Alma?

            Aside from the Book of Mormon, no ancient text from the area or the time refers to Bethlehem as residing in the ‘land of Jerusalem’. It didn’t. It resided in the land of Judah. In fact, there is only one ancient reference to the phrase ‘land of Jerusalem’ at all that I’m aware of, and that is from a work called ‘Pseudo-Jeremiah’. In it, Jeremiah the prophet is held captive in the ‘land of Jerusalem’. But if you cross reference this text with the actual Biblical Jeremiah, in chapter 32 I believe, it says exactly where Jeremiah was held captive–in the King’s court, which was within the city of Jerusalem proper. So even here, the ‘land of Jerusalem’ refers to no more than the land of the city of Jerusalem, which does not include Bethlehem.

            You’re also making a mistake regarding the distance Bethlehem is to Jerusalem. You are correct in that it is six miles away, but not correct that in ancient times, this was nothing more than light walk. Clear boundaries separated the cities from each other. Walls fortified each city. Bethlehem, being six miles away, did not fall within the city walls of Jerusalem. Robbers and thieves frequently took advantage of people who ventured outside the protection of the cities. When one did, they usually traveled in caravans or groups for added protection. The flight of the Holy Family into Egypt then takes on a whole new perspective when one realizes the risks they really undertook to obey to flee.

            That is why Bethlehem residing ‘at Jerusalem’ is incorrect.

            No archeologist with any expertise in the geography of ancient Jerusalem (outside of LDS archeologists) would say that Bethlehem was part of Jerusalem. Again, there were even cities (like Bethany) that resided in between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

            The city of Bethlehem was well known. Micah got right the name of the city of Bethlehem eight centuries before the birth of Christ. So the question is simple–why couldn’t Alma?

            Aside from the Jerusalem question, there were a few others I also asked.

            I look forward to your reply and answers to those as well.

          • Broken bose

            There’s a couple more points about the ‘at Jerusalem’ problem in Alma 7:10 I’d like to make before I well, loosen up.

            If ‘at Jerusalem’ really only meant near it, but in another city, then why not just simply name the other city? Micah did. But by using the name of Jerusalem, and not Bethlehem, and this is significant I think–Alma has not actually identified where Jesus would be born.

            If I were to tell my wife that I would be studying that night ‘at’ my ex-girlfriend’s house when I only meant that I would be ‘near’ it–at Steve’s house, then why wouldn’t I just say I was at Steve’s house to avoid the confusion? If I said that I was ‘at’ my ex-girlfriend’s to study that night but wasn’t, then what information have I really conveyed to my wife?

            If ‘at Jerusalem’ meant only ‘near Jerusalem’, then it is frankly a meaninglessness prophecy.

            The only other avaliable explanation to the discrepancy in Alma 7:10 I believe, is to say that Bethlehem was part of Jerusalem. But again this makes little sense, since both were cities in the land of Judah as I mentioned in my prior post, separated by other cities in between.

            It does indeed seem that the ‘at Jerusalem’ problem in the Book of Mormon, is still a problem that at the moment does not have a clear explanation if we are to assume that Alma 7:10 is true.

            But if we are not obliged to, then indeed, the best explanation becomes obvious.

            It is an error.

          • Broken bose

            Double posted, sorry. I originally sent it as a post to the wrong reply.

            There’s a couple more points about the ‘at Jerusalem’ problem in Alma 7:10 I’d like to make.

            If ‘at Jerusalem’ really only meant near it, but in another city, then why not just simply name the other city? Micah did. But by using the name of Jerusalem, and not Bethlehem, and this is significant I think–Alma has not actually identified where Jesus would be born.

            If I were to tell my wife that I would be studying that night ‘at’ my ex-girlfriend’s house when I only meant that I would be ‘near’ it–at Steve’s house, then why wouldn’t I just say I was at Steve’s house to avoid the confusion? If I said that I was ‘at’ my ex-girlfriend’s to study that night but wasn’t, then what information have I really conveyed to my wife?

            If ‘at Jerusalem’ meant only ‘near Jerusalem’, then it is frankly a meaninglessness prophecy.

            The only other avaliable explanation to the discrepancy in Alma 7:10 I believe, is to say that Bethlehem was part of Jerusalem. But again this makes little sense, since both were cities in the land of Judah as I mentioned in my prior post, separated by other cities in between.

            It does indeed seem that the ‘at Jerusalem’ problem in the Book of Mormon, is still a problem that at the moment does not have a clear explanation if we are to assume that Alma 7:10 is true.

            But if we are not obliged to, then indeed, the best explanation becomes obvious.

            It is an error.

          • Broken bose

            Since I haven’t yet received any responses to my last post, let me expand on what I feel is the underlying issue with regards to Alma 7:10 and the problem of the birth of Christ ‘at Jerusalem’.

            Because the LDS faithful are predisposed to accept the nature of the Book of Mormon as a pristine work, since they believe it to be a revelation directly from God; when a seeming error like Alma 7:10 does come up, it is dismissed by Mormons with the rationale that since the rest of the Book is right, Alma simply can’t be wrong. Instead, it must be right in a way not quite yet understood.

            The question is: Is the Book of Mormon really free from error (and directly from God)? Should the question really even be asked? But that’s the question that needs to be answered first for many non-mormons (including me), before Alma can be given the benefit of the doubt. For those already with a testimony of the Book of Mormon, this seems unnecessary, perhaps even anti-mormon. But if the Book of Mormon is true, then it’s examination should only confirm its truth, and convince and convert those who’s initial faith is based on something less than an LDS testimony.

            I understand that an LDS testimony is not based on any physical evidence necessarily, but is based on higher truth, greater than any evidence could show. Yet for the rest of us searching for truth, the next question is: then how could any testimony itself be evidence of truth, if its truth is not based on any evidence you could show? So we need something else to help us, to show us that evidence of truth first.

            Evidence then, is ultimately necessary for us to see that a testimony is a valid manifestation of truth. Then a subsequent reliance on a testimony after they’ve been proven true, is warranted.

            When I spoke with a good friend, who is a temple-recommend holding member of the LDS Church and a skilled LDS theologian about some of the issues that I encountered while reading the Book of Mormon (at his request), these were his responses:

            I asked him about the problem in 1 Nephi 10:9. In this verse, a prophecy is made about where the Savior would be baptized. In the third century, Origen, a well-meaning and prolific Catholic theologian, noted that there were two places called Bethany. One was the city two miles south of Jerusalem, and the other was an enclave or neighborhood that lay at a distance beyond the Jordan. Origen thought this was confusing and opted to call the enclave ‘Bethabara’ beyond Jordan instead of ‘Bethany’ beyond Jordan to distinguish between the two.

            The King James Version of the Bible adopted Origen’s preference without realizing it was a revision.

            The problem is that 1 Nephi 10:9 reproduces Origen’s preference. This could have only come from one place–the King James Version of the Bible, since no other translations make the same mistake. It also happened to be the version of Scripture that Joseph Smith possessed.

            When I asked my friend about this, his response was that perhaps Heavenly Father left in place a name that most people understood as the place where Jesus would be baptized. But if this were true I thought, then why not do the same with Alma 7:10 and say Bethlehem (since it was believed Jesus was born there) instead of Jerusalem? In any case, it makes little sense since ‘Bethabara’ was not where Jesus was to be baptized–‘Bethany’ beyond the Jordan was.

            Now, there were seemingly two errors that needed explanation in my mind: where Jesus was born, and where He was the be baptized.

            When I reached 3 Nephi chapter 13, alarm bells rang again for me in verse 13. As a devout Catholic who is familiar with some translations of the Bible including the KJV, I’m always a little bemused by the fact that a Catholic liturgical response (a Catholic public prayer response) slipped into a Protestant translation of Scripture: in Matthew 6 of the KJV. In the Lord’s Prayer found there, the ancient Catholic bishops would instruct the faithful to give a response (‘for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen’), after he recited the words of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6. Many times, this liturgical response was written in next to the Lord’s Prayer in the bishop’s copy of the Gospels, so that all would know, including the bishop, when the liturgical response was to be recited. In the KJV translation of Scripture, this response was mistaken for Scripture (since of course, there was no typeset then to distinguish between Scripture verses and other writing) and it was reproduced in its version of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. It is in no other translation of the Bible (the NASB does reproduce the text, but footnotes the correction). This Catholic liturgical response (which Catholics still say today on Sunday mornings), does however exist in one other place–in 3 Nephi 13:13.

            There is only one place I know of that this could have come from–the King James Version of Scripture. When I again asked my friend about this, and since I could find no answers online, he said that since the response isn’t technically an error in truth, it wasn’t ‘truly’ an error technically.

            But this answer really doesn’t work. The reason is because I didn’t ask my friend about an error in truth; I asked him about an error in the text–which ultimately affects truth, because the error reveals that a different source than the gold plates were used to transmit 3 Nephi–namely, the King James version of the Bible. What else could account for verse 13? My friend again dismissed the error as background noise to a Book he considered correct as a devout member of the LDS Church.

            But to me, this was an error that showed that the source of revelation was not what the proprietor of the book said it was.

            There were examples of other problems I brought up, like why did Nephi copy–at great expense, time and effort–the words of Isaiah from the brass plates of Laban onto gold? Why not just reference the brass plates and keep the brass with the gold? I could just imagine Nephi sitting behind a strong, reinforced table; on one side were the brass plates with long passages of Isaiah inscribed on them, and on the other side; blank plates of gold. And then over the course of years or perhaps even decades, to copy what he already had just on the other side of the table. Why? This makes little sense from an internal perspective. But from an external perspective, it begins to makes sense when I realized that the Isaiah chapters occurred in the front of the Book of Mormon, where the first 116 pages were stolen from, by Martin Harris’s wife. Since Joseph Smith may have needed to reproduce a great number of pages quickly to make up for the loss, he might go to the KJV Bible for source material. And once again, those chapters of Isaiah that came from the Book of Nephi, show signs of having come originally from the King James Version of the Bible. This was evident when in the King James version, italicized words were used to better approximate the intended meaning of certain Hebrew words. In Isaiah, some Hebrew words lacked an equivalent definition in English. More words would be used on these occasions to better understand a single Hebrew word, but those extra words used in the King James version were italicized to clearly indicate that they did not appear in the original Hebrew text. These extra words do appear however, in those chapters of Isaiah contained in the Book of Mormon. Again, from a non-Mormon perspective, the real source of Isaiah seems obvious.

            One last issue: when I read in Alma 11:4 this passage:

            ‘for they did not reckon after the manner of the Jews who were at Jerusalem; neither did they measure after the manner of the Jews’

            Something felt wrong here to me. Even though the verse itself seems innocuous, it still felt out of place. Here’s why: If I were to wander into an old construction site and find an old blueprint laying around, I might find measurements for walls or baseboards included in it. Imagine if next to those measurements there was an asterisk, and at the bottom of the blueprint, the asterisk read: these measurements not in units used by Mother Spain. The United States is roughly two hundred and fifty years old. Alma, at the time the book was written, was supposed to have been in the Americas for roughly twice that time. It wouldn’t occur to anyone in the USA today to make a clarification on how things are measured or in what units they’re measured in. Why would such a thing occur to Alma? It feels more to me like someone was trying to anticipate a question that no one really from that time would have thought to answer.

            Are these questions definitive evidence that the Book of Mormon is false? Of course not. But they’re bothersome, and I haven’t yet found anyone that can satisfactorily answer them. If this Book is true, my feeling is that they should be able to.

            If anyone here can I would, in sincerity, be glad to hear your answers.

            Thanks and God bless.

        • Paul Johnson

          2 Kings 14:20
          “And they brought him on horses: and he was buried at Jerusalem with his fathers in the city of David.”

          Used in the Bible.

          • Broken bose

            Paul, it’s not the phrase, ‘at Jerusalem’ itself that’s at issue. The problem is that ‘at Jerusalem’ is not the place where Christ was born. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And the city of Bethlehem does not reside in or ‘at Jerusalem’, another city. Both cities reside in the land of Judah. And no ancient text refers to Bethlehem as an area of Jerusalem.

          • Paul Johnson

            Luke 2:4 “And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem…”

            Luke 2:11 “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

            Now read 2 Kings 14:20 again. “… at Jerusalem … in the city of David …” The Bible does exactly what you say it does not right there all in one verse.

          • Broken bose

            Paul, it actually doesn’t. You’re using twentieth century eisogesis to shoehorn a specific meaning into an ancient verse that really had multiple meanings. Because David was the King of Judah, all the cities in the province or land of Judah were considered the cities of David, even of course, after David passed away. The phrase also referenced to smaller areas, and in one case only David’s palace.

            2 Samuel 5:9

            ‘So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David.’

            Here, the reference in 2 Samuel can’t mean either the entire area of Jerusalem or Bethlehem, or both.

            The city of David also referred to those places significant in some degree to David himself, and in the case in Luke’s Gospel, where both David and Christ were born. In the new testament then, this is a typological reference to the Old Testament to show that Christ was the Son of David, and therefore the new and rightful King.

            But it does not, nor could it mean, citing the prior references in my other posts, that Jerusalem was the same city as Bethlehem. It wasn’t used that way in the Bible.

          • Paul Johnson

            Well the rest of the Christian world pretty much disagrees with you. The City of David is Bethlehem. But clearly you’ve made up your mind. Honestly I already knew how this conversation would go so not fully sure why I even wasted my time. “Anti” Mormon folks see what they want to see, and state that “Pro” Mormon types do the same. Both often true… That said, good luck to you and God bless.

          • Broken bose

            Paul,

            If either of us were concerned about what most Christians think, then you wouldn’t be Mormon, and I wouldn’t be Catholic.

            But this isn’t a question about belief.  That the title of ‘City of David’ was not exclusive to a single location, is simply a point of fact.   Please run a Bible search on the phrase ‘City of David’, and you’ll see that quickly.

            Your other point I don’t quite understand is why, for making that point, I’m labeled anti-mormon.

            If the facts point to Mormonism as true, then I would be compelled to accept it.  I honestly don’t believe I would have any other choice.  I may not like it–but so what?  If it’s true, then it makes it incumbent on me to accept it.

            But here’s what your response sounded like to me:

            You’re wrong.
            You’re anti-mormon.
            See you later.

            If you’re point is to show that Mormonism true, then there has to be a better response than that.

            So show me where I’m wrong.

      • jamesallred

        I would gladly share with you why it looks like more than 20% of the versus in the book of mormon are either copied directly or highly influenced by the KJV of the bible.

        But please let me ask you a question first.

        What percent do you think fit my description (either direct copies from the KJV or highly influenced by)?

        If your answer is zero, then I would suggest you might have a blind spot, which could deserve further reflection.

        If you answer something more than zero, then it feels we could have a productive conversation.

      • jamesallred

        I am not Mitt Romney?

        I was surprised you didn’t consider my other points and only focused on a subset of one.

        I would be interested to hear your thoughts on my other observations about Joseph’s abilities to dictate inspired scriptures over the course of his life.

  4. Broken bose

    Greg,

    How would you expect a twenty-two year old person to write? From our own lives and perspectives, we make the assumption that others had comparative levels of knowledge and skill. And that is not necessarily true.

    If we were William Shakespeare, who wrote his first play in 1590 at the age of twenty-five, then we might indeed believe others were capable of writing what Smith did. Mozart wrote his first Symphony at the age of eight. Christopher Paolini (the fantasy writer) wrote Eragon at the age of 15. We don’t obviously need to be Shakespeare or Mozart in order to imagine that others may be more adept than we are, especially without the distractions of video games and Facebook. Perhaps those are extreme examples, but none the less, because they exist, it makes false the claim that such works can only be miraculous (especially Paolini’s Eragon).

    Perhaps for me to accomplish the above examples it would indeed be miraculous, but for their respective creators–however great, it certainly wasn’t a miracle. Therefore this measure by which the Book of Mormon is said to be miraculous, is really just subjective bias based on our own limited perspective.

    But to ascertain whether or not what Smith wrote was truly miraculous, there’s an easy test. Are the claims historical? Then the historic evidence of those claims should exist. This isn’t anti-mormon bias. It is just a reasonable way to establish that what’s claimed, is really true.

    And therein lies the rub, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet might say. In Mormonism, a testimony replaces the evidence. It short-circuits the process of obtaining truth by replacing it with a feeling.

    And so when we examine the Book of Mormon, the question that’s always asked is, how does it make us feel? And if it makes us feel good, then it must be true.

    God gives us this feeling, it’s believed. But how do we really know that this feeling comes from God? (Because others said so? But aren’t they just ultimately relying on their own feelings too? Because Moroni 10:4 said so? But isn’t that really just a circular argument? [In order to believe in the BOM we already have to accept that what Moroni 10:4 said–which is IN the BOM–is true, without any evidence that it really is]).

    This seems to me to be the catch-22 scenario in Mormonism. If we rely on a testimony, then it’s really because physical evidence is lacking, but if we have physical evidence, then a testimony is unnecessary.

    Reasonable faith seems to be the ultimate casualty.

  5. Virginia

    I love you, Greg. I hope you do not waste time reading (most of) the comments. But if you do, I just want to say that I REALLY appreciate your wonderful blog. I KNOW who you are by the light that shines through you 🙂

  6. Broken bose

    Hey Guest, thanks for the reply.

    Let’s go over your points:

    First, if the Book of Mormon is what you’re trying to prove, then citing it before you’ve proven it is not valid evidence. So saying that it or other LDS Scriptures refer to the ‘land of Jerusalem’ many times doesn’t really prove that Bethlehem was considered part of Jerusalem until you can show us something that corroborates it outside of LDS sources (again, since it’s those sources you’re trying to prove). There is however, no place in Biblical Scripture that refers to Bethlehem as part of Jerusalem, or in the land of Jerusalem. It resided in the land of Judah, and Jerusalem and Bethlehem were separate cities in that land. Biblical archeologists are unanimous on that. The references to 2 Kings 14:20 and the Gospels calling both Jerusalem and Bethlehem the ‘City of David’ do not show that they are the same city. The ancient language and title didn’t work that way. As I mentioned in another post, all the cities of Judah were called cities of David because he was King of Judah, and therefore the King of those cities within Judah. They were David’s cities. The title ‘City of David’ applied to places that were significant to David in some way. Jerusalem was called the ‘city of David’ because that was where the King’s court and the seat of his power resided. Bethlehem was the ‘City of David’ in the Gospels because both Christ and David were born there. And in 2 Samuel 5:9, the fortress or palace that David occupied was also called the ‘City of David’ even though it didn’t refer to either the city of Jerusalem or Bethlehem in the manner you suggested. If you run a Bible search on the phrase, ‘City of David’, you’ll find a host of references (roughly 45 to 50) that show that the title doesn’t refer to one single, unique location. It’s really that simple.

    Now you mentioned the dead sea scrolls as having used the phrase ‘land of Jerusalem’. It’s in a single document in the dead sea scrolls called ‘Pseudo-Jeremiah’. There it says that the prophet Jeremiah was held prisoner in the ‘land of Jerusalem’. But if you cross-reference this with Biblical Jeremiah in chapter 32, you’ll read exactly where Jeremiah was held captive–in the King’s court, which was located within the city limits of Jerusalem, and didn’t include Bethlehem. So the phrase ‘land of Jerusalem’ referred to no more than the land, of the city of Jerusalem.

    There were no ‘suburbs’ in ancient Judah, so calling Bethlehem a kind of suburban outpost of Jerusalem is not accurate. Jerusalem was a walled city, and Bethlehem stood outside those walls, six miles away with other cities resting in between (Bethany was two miles south of Jerusalem and four miles north of Bethlehem, right in-between Jerusalem and Bethlehem).

    Saying that Christ was born in or ‘at Jerusalem’ is a significant mistake, not because you believe I’m an anti-mormon bigot for making the point, but really because it just doesn’t square up with the facts. For one, Micah was a prophet who lived in the eighth century BC, long before Lehi was said to have left Jerusalem. In chapter 5, verse 1 of Micah, it says exactly where Christ was to be born–in Bethlehem. David was born there, and Solomon was also anointed king there. And since Christ was both the new ‘David’, and the new King, he could not have been born in any other place but Bethlehem. The Jews expected the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem, and the congruency and typology with respect to the rest of Scripture regarding this expectation would have been lost if that weren’t fulfilled with the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. This point seems to have been lost on Peterson and FairMormon. In fact in the first chapter of Matthew, Christ’s lineage is given and ends with the number 14–three times, when Matthew divides the number of generations between Christ and Abraham. Matthew’s focus in his Gospel was to show to the Jews that Christ was indeed the Anointed One, the new Son of David, and the new King they all eagerly awaited. The number fourteen is a reference to Christ’s title in Hebrew. Hebrew numbers are expressed with letters just as Roman numerals are. The number fourteen spells out the name of David–and the Jews knew this. Matthew emphatically calls Christ the new David (or the new ‘Messiah’ King, meaning anointed one)–three times. So I cannot stress to you how important it would have been to the ancient Jews that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem as David was–and not Jerusalem. The fact that Alma said Jerusalem and not Bethlehem, is something that just can’t be overlooked as an unimportant curiosity.

    That’s why ‘at Jerusalem’ in Alma 7:10 is still wrong despite all attempts to argue otherwise. And it’s still just a simple mistake. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Jerusalem.

    One last thing if I haven’t exhausted your patience already, and that is the appeal to Joseph Smith’s prophetic status as proof that Alma 7:10 must be accurate. Really, it’s these kinds of arguments that give one pause when considering the truth claims of the LDS Church. When it is said that Jerusalem couldn’t have been a mistake because Joseph Smith was a prophet and must have known that Jesus was born in Bethlehem–that’s like saying that Joseph Smith could not have made the mistake he actually made. It makes no sense. Appealing to his prophetic status as a hedge against mistakes BEFORE he’s proven to be a prophet wouldn’t be an argument that anyone outside of Mormonism would be prepared to accept because once again, it’s still the thing you’re trying to prove, but even more importantly–he’s already made the mistake of saying that Jesus was born at Jerusalem! So why offer this argument, if for all intents and purposes it has already been proven false before it’s even off the ground? It’s really a bizarre bit of reasoning that Mormon apologists use without realizing how incoherent it sounds or desperate it seems. And it unfortunately shows the weakness of the LDS position.

    I mentioned two others problems in earlier posts that have gone unaddressed (regarding verses 1 Nephi 10:9 and 3 Nephi 13:13), so I’m interested if you have answers to those as well.

    Once again, I appreciate your comments and look forward to your next reply.

    God bless.

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