Of all the sources that Joseph Smith used to construct the Book of Mormon, none is more apparent than the King James Bible. Mormons tend to be unaware of just how much the Book of Mormon owes to the Bible.
Smith's use of the Bible occurs in a number of different ways - it shows up in apparently random quotes peppered throughout the Book of Mormon; it also shows up as a narrative source in a number of different passages. In very many cases, Smith quotes the New Testament long before it was written. In a number of cases, Smith quotes a New Testament paraphrase of an Old Testament verse. He recycles quotes over and over again.
He uses archaic King James vocabulary in a manner that shows he was not familiar with the true meaning of the words. He quotes King James translation errors again and again. In short, there can be very little doubt that the King James Version inspired large sections of the Book of Mormon.
Interesting how we ended up with 1611 KJV vernacular in an 1830's BOM.
To the ardent follower of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon is the surest proof of his prophetic office. It is the one undeniable sign of his divinely given gifts of translation.
To the skeptic, the Book of Mormon is an interesting example of early American frontier fiction, both quaint and pretentious, a living monument to human greed and gullibility. An analysis of the Book is useful, not because it tells us anything at all about ancient America, but rather for the insights that it gives us into the human psyche, into the mind of both the con artist and his mark.
It is evident that Joseph Smith used a number of sources in his monumental work. One of these was his own immediate environment, specifically the intense speculation about the origin of the Native Americans that fired the collective imagination of early nineteenth century New England. But, by far the most fruitful source of both ideas and prose in the Book of Mormon is the King James Bible.
It is an undeniable fact that the Book of Mormon quotes the Bible. This fact is acknowledged in the Book itself, in such phrases as '...now I, Nephi, write more of the words of Isaiah, for my soul delighteth in his words.' (II Nephi 11:2). The Book of Mormon contains extensive quotes from Isaiah - some twenty-two chapters of the prophet are found in the Book, in many cases quoted verbatim from the King James Version.
What is less well known is that the Book of Mormon makes a large number of unacknowledged Biblical quotes. These quotes appear as part and parcel of the narrative of the Book, and are quoted by different authors at different times. It is these quotes that are of interest, because they reveal something about the origin of the Book of Mormon.
Of particular interest are quotes that appear long before their sources were written. These include several hundred New Testament quotes and allusions, as well as one Old Testament anachronism. Malachi 4:1-2 is quoted or alluded to several times in First and Second Nephi. (See I Nephi 22:15 and II Nephi 26:4, for example). The problem is that Lehi and his family supposedly left Jerusalem before the Babylonian conquest - Malachi, however, was a post-exilic prophet.
A few examples of anachronistic New Testament quotes would be Matthew 3:10 quoted in Alma 5:52, I Corinthians 15:53 quoted in Mosiah 16:10 and Romans 8:6 in II Nephi 9:39.
Fatigue is a literary phenomenon that sometimes occurs when one author is heavily dependent on another. It produces small errors of continuity and detail, which result from the latter author omitting structural details
while modifying the source.
As an example, consider the story of the healing of the paralytic in Luke 5. The gospel records that there were so many people in the house, that the friends of the patient were forced to let him down through the roof.
Luke 5:19 And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.
The problem is that Luke has failed to mention that Jesus is in a house.
Luke 5:17 And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
What has happened here is that the author of Luke, in using Mark 2 for his source, has forgotten that he did not set the story in a house, creating a minor aberration in the flow of the narrative when he finds that he has need of a housetop.[5]
Can we find similar examples of fatigue in the Book of Mormon? There are at least two candidates.
As noted in the previous section, Alma 18 and 19 contains a story which is very similar to the resurrection of Lazarus as recorded in John 11. The most obvious difference is the fact that whereas Lazarus had died, and had been dead for some time, King Lamoni was in a deep sleep (possibly comatose). Strangely enough, however, after informing his wife that the King is simply asleep, the prophet Ammon goes on to claim that he "...shall rise again" (19:8). This seems a rather curious phrase to use of someone who was merely asleep, especially when we consider that both times the phrase is used elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (Alma 33:22 and Helaman 14:20), it refers to a resurrection from the dead.
Could it be that in copying his source (the gospel of John), Smith used a phrase that made sense in John's narrative ("...Thy brother shall rise again..." in John 11:23), but not in the Book of Mormon story?
A second example concerns the parable of the Vineyard, as recorded in Jacob 5. This is a long parable which casts the nation Israel in the metaphorical role of an Olive tree in a vineyard.
Jacob 5:3 For behold, thus saith the Lord, I will liken thee, O house of Israel, like unto a tame olive-tree, which a man took and nourished in his vineyard; and it grew, and waxed old, and began to decay.
The parable appears to be drawn from two biblical sources - the Song of the Vineyard in Isaiah 5, and Paul's discussion of the relation of the Gentiles to the Jews in Romans 11.[6] The problem for the author of the Book of Mormon is that Isaiah and Paul used slightly different metaphors - Isaiah that of a vineyard, and Paul an Olive tree. It is thus quite significant that halfway through the parable, Zenos appears to forget that he is using an Olive tree as his metaphor, and begins to use the whole vineyard as his focus.
Jacob 5:41 And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard wept, and said unto the servant: What could I have done more for my vineyard?
Significantly, the break appears at the same point that the Book of Mormon quotes a passage from Isaiah:
Isaiah 5:4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?
From this point on, the prophet Zenos refers exclusively to the "fruit of the vineyard", apparently forgetting that vineyards yield grapes, not olives.
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Plagarism, plagarism, plagarism..........and very blatent plagarist.
When a plagarist copies verbatim translation errors that are unique to his source that he's copying...........He's caught "Dead To Rights".........With his hands in the cookie jar.
????????????What does......that.....mean?
Read the links.
