{"id":545,"date":"2014-07-21T01:15:52","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T01:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookofmormontranslation.org\/?page_id=545"},"modified":"2019-05-15T21:30:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T21:30:53","slug":"a-very-strange-text","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/a-very-strange-text\/","title":{"rendered":"A Very Strange Text"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Book of Mormon claims to be an ancient document, yet it contains scores of phrases, and even paragraphs, that appear to have been taken directly from the King James New Testament. It has entire chapters seemingly copied from the King James Old Testament, with frequent modifications around words printed in italics. It has many anachronisms and, in it&#8217;s earliest edition, was riddled with grammatical errors (by modern standards, anyway). At the same time, this enigmatic book contains eloquent examples of classical Hebrew literary structures (such as chiasms), plays on Hebrew words, and other characteristics suggestive of an ancient origin. It is written in the language of the King James Bible but also contains examples of early modern English that are <em>not<\/em> found in the Bible. Wordprint analyses suggest it was written by multiple authors, none of which were the usual 19th Century suspects. Where did such a strange text come from and how was it created?<\/p>\n<p>These strange characteristics of the Book of Mormon can be explained quite well if:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The Book of Mormon was originally composed in an ancient Hebrew-like language.<\/li>\n<li>It was then translated into Early Modern English in a conventional manner, like the Bible, by <a title=\"Who Translated the Book of Mormon?\" href=\"http:\/\/bookofmormontranslation.org\/the-early-translator-model\/\">someone<\/a>\u00a0who knew\u00a0both languages.<\/li>\n<li>The English translation was then transmitted to Joseph Smith in vision, as the principal\u00a0<a title=\"Witness Accounts\" href=\"http:\/\/bookofmormontranslation.org\/witness-accounts-of-translation\/\">witness accounts<\/a>\u00a0suggest, and slightly edited by him as he dictated it to his scribe.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>There is increasing evidence for all three of these steps, as you will see by following the links on this page.<\/p>\n<p>The result of this 3-step process is a book of scripture that, like the Bible, is imperfect, especially\u00a0when judged by modern standards of authorship and composition. At the same time, it is a rich and varied historical, literary, and religious text, and the &#8220;<a title=\"The \u201cMost Correct\u201d Book?\" href=\"http:\/\/bookofmormontranslation.org\/the-most-correct-book\/\">most correct<\/a>&#8221; book of scripture we have.<\/p>\n<p><!-- The strange characteristics of the Book of Mormon can be accounted for as follows: 1. The Book of Mormon\u00a0was originally composed in a dialect\u00a0of Hebrew using\u00a0\"reformed Egyptian\" characters as described in the book itself. This accounts for the Hebraisms, Hebrew plays on words, and poetic structures typical of classical Hebrew texts. 2. This ancient text\u00a0was translated into Early Modern English in a somewhat loose but conventional manner by someone who had learned\u00a0that language as well as the Nephite language. This provides for a naturalistic explanation of several aspects of the book, including the archaic language, the anachronisms, many of the grammatical \"errors,\" the presence of New Testament passages, and the nearly word-perfect copying of several chapters from the Old Testament. The King James Bible phrases and passages in the Book of Mormon are there as cross-references of a sort, to direct the reader to related biblical concepts.\u00a0Whenever possible, old testament prophecies\u00a0in the Nephite record were\u00a0simply replaced with the most familiar version of the prophecy from the King James Bible rather than being retranslated, making the text more familiar to the modern reader. 3. This Early Modern\u00a0English\u00a0text was transmitted to Joseph Smith as a sort of text message (through his seer stone), which he then dictated to his scribe. This agrees with descriptions of the translation process from witnesses. The dictation resulted in errors relating to sounds of words that would not be expected if the text had been copied from a written manuscript or book. For example, the Book of Mormon has Son of Righteousness where it (following the Bible) should have Sun of righteousness. 4. As Joseph Smith dictated the text to his scribe, he put finishing touches on the translation by smoothing the text and perhaps modernizing it somewhat as well. Together with step 2, this\u00a0accounts for the many minor changes in the chapters \u00a0copied from the Bible where the King James Version has words printed in italics. --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Book of Mormon claims to be an ancient document, yet it contains scores of phrases, and even paragraphs, that appear to have been taken directly from the King James New Testament. It has entire chapters seemingly copied from the King James Old Testament, with frequent modifications around words printed in italics. It has many &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/a-very-strange-text\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Very Strange Text<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-545","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2211,"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/545\/revisions\/2211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofmormon.tech\/translation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}