Criticism of Mormonism/Books/An Insider's View of Mormon Origins/Chapter 2

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Response to claims made in "Chapter 2: Authorship of the Book of Mormon"

Claims made in "Chapter 1: Joseph Smith as Translator/Revelator"

A FAIR Analysis of: An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, a work by author: Grant Palmer

Claims made in "Chapter 3: The Bible in the Book of Mormon"

Response to claims made in An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, "Chapter 2: Authorship of the Book of Mormon"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 39 - the church has encouraged a 'thorough and impartial examination' of the Book of Mormon, including questions regarding its authorship
• Response to claim: 40 - B.H. Roberts stated that Joseph Smith was intellectually capable of writing the Book of Mormon himself
• Response to claim: 40 - B.H. Roberts is claimed to have wondered if the Book of Mormon stories were just inspirational tales
• Response to claim: 41-42 - Joseph claimed that a skeleton found was that of a "white Lamanite" named Zelph
• Response to claim: 42 - Joseph reported that the Kinderhook Plates contained a genealogy back to Ham
• Response to claim: 42 - Joseph gave many descriptions of heroes and their treasures hidden in the New York hills
• Response to claim: 42 - B.H. Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith was capable of writing the Book of Mormon
• Response to claim: 48 - The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is the source of Alma 19
• Response to claim: 49 - "The evidence indicates that the Book of Mormon is in fact an amalgamation of ideas that were inspired by Joseph's own environment"
• Response to claim: 55 - The decapitation of Laban parallels the story of Judith in the Apocrypha
• Response to claim: 57 - The author claims that the LDS position is that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the American Indians
• Response to claim: 57, n38 - No Hebrew or Egyptian writing or language has been discovered in the New World
• Response to claim: 58, n40 - B.H. Roberts thought that View of the Hebrews could be a basis for the Book of Mormon
• Response to claim: 60 - Roberts concluded that a copy of View of the Hebrews could have been supplied by Oliver Cowdery
• Response to claim: 60-64 - B.H. Roberts' parallels between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon
• Response to claim: 65-66 - Joseph Smith received a revelation to send people to Canada to sell the Book of Mormon copyright
• Response to claim: 66 - The writing of the 116 pages served as an "apprenticeship" to learning to write the Book of Mormon

Response to claim: 39 - the church has encouraged a 'thorough and impartial examination' of the Book of Mormon, including questions regarding its authorship

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

 Author's quote: "...the church has encouraged a 'thorough and impartial examination' of the Book of Mormon, including questions regarding its authorship."

Author's sources:

• Talmage, The Articles of Faith, 273.
• Widtsoe, In Search of Truth: Comments on the Gospel and Modern Thought, 80.
• Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years, 24.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim is false

This is an absurd claim. The Church does not encourage members to question the authorship of the Book of Mormon.

Response to claim: 40 - B.H. Roberts stated that Joseph Smith was intellectually capable of writing the Book of Mormon himself

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

B.H. Roberts stated that Joseph Smith was intellectually capable of writing the Book of Mormon himself.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 10, 243, 247, 262-263 ( Index of claims )

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts was deliberately stating the position that critics would take - this did not represent his personal belief.

FAIR Answers—back to home page

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1. REDIRECTJoseph Smith's trustworthiness

Response to claim: 40 - B.H. Roberts is claimed to have wondered if the Book of Mormon stories were just inspirational tales

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

B.H. Roberts is claimed to have wondered if the Book of Mormon stories were just inspirational tales, and questioned whether it was history or the product of a "pious but immature" mind.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 272-273 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts was deliberately stating the position that critics would take - this did not represent his personal belief.

Question: Did B.H. Roberts lose his faith in the Church and the Book of Mormon?

An excellent argument against the claim that B.H. Roberts abandoned the Book of Mormon can be found in his last book, which he considered his masterwork

Critics charge that the 'problems' with the Book of Mormon made Brigham H. Roberts (an early LDS apologist and member of the First Quorum of Seventy) lose his faith in the its historicity. The primary source upon which this criticism is based originates with Roberts' manuscripts detailing his critical study of the Book of Mormon, which was published under the title Studies of the Book of Mormon years after his death.

An excellent argument against the claim that B.H. Roberts abandoned the Book of Mormon can be found in his last book, which he considered his masterwork. [B. H. Roberts, The Truth, the Way, the Life: An Elementary Treatise on Theology, edited by John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Studies, 1994).] Given Roberts' clear respect for the Book of Mormon in this volume, there can be little doubt that he continued to believe in and treasure it.

Ironically for the critics, many of the issues which drew Elder Roberts' attention have now been solved as more information about the ancient world has become available. He expressed faith that this would be the case, and has been vindicated:

We who accept [the Book of Mormon] as a revelation from God have every reason to believe that it will endure every test; and the more thoroughly it is investigated, the greater shall be its ultimate triumph.

Roberts was an able scholar, and he was not afraid to play 'devil's advocate' to strengthen the Church's defenses against its enemies

In a presentation on some potential Book of Mormon 'problems' prepared for the General Authorities, Roberts wrote a caution that subsequent critics have seen fit to ignore:

Let me say once and for all, so as to avoid what might otherwise call for repeated explanation, that what is herein set forth does not represent any conclusions of mine. This report [is] ... for the information of those who ought to know everything about it pro and con, as well that which has been produced against it as that which may be produced against it. I am taking the position that our faith is not only unshaken but unshakeable in the Book of Mormon, and therefore we can look without fear upon all that can be said against it.

Roberts felt that faith in the Book of Mormon was a given, and so did not consider any 'negative' points to be of ultimate concern

Roberts felt that faith in the Book of Mormon was a given, and so did not consider any 'negative' points to be of ultimate concern, though he did seek for better answers than he then had. The critics have often published his list of of "parallels" between the Book of Mormon and Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews, without informing modern readers that Roberts did not consider the problems insoluable, or a true threat to faith in the Book of Mormon. They also do not generally cite the numerous other statements in which, to the end of his life, he declared the Book of Mormon to be a divine record.

Roberts' studies also made him willing to modify previous conceptions, such as when he concluded that the Book of Mormon was not a history of the only immigrants to the New World.

In 1930, he enthused about the Book of Mormon a century after the Church's organization:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for God hath spoken. ... The Record of Joseph in the hands of Ephraim, the Book of Mormon, has been revealed and translated by the power of God, and supplies the world with a new witness for the Christ, and the truth and the fulness of the Gospel.

Other witnesses by B.H. Roberts of truth of the Church and the Gospel

The book Discourses of B.H. Roberts of the First Council of the Seventy, compiled by Ben R. Roberts (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company 1948) contains the last seven discourses delivered by Elder Roberts: four in Salt Lake City, one in San Francisco (on the radio), and the last two at the World Fellowship of Faith in Chicago, in August-September 1933. He died three weeks after the last discourse. Roberts had returned from a lengthy illness, which made him realize how precious life is. He determined to leave his testimony, especially for the youth of the church.

From the first of these addresses:

It has always been a matter of pride with me, in my more than fifty years of ministry in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that it was no trivial thing which called this Church of the New Dispensation into existence. It was not founded upon the idea that men differed in relation to how baptism should be administered, whether by sprinkling or pouring, or immersion; or whether it was for the remission of sins, or because sins had been forgiven. I always rejoice that it had a broader foundation than whether the form of church government and administration should be Episcopal or Congregational, or the Presbyterian form of government; or any other minor [23] difference of theologians. It went to the heart of things, and astonished the world, and at the same time, of course, aroused its opposition.

When the Prophet of the New Dispensation asked God for wisdom, and which of the many churches about him he should join, he was told to join none of them, for they were all wrong; their creeds were false; they drew near to the Lord with their lips, but their hearts were far removed from him; they had a form of godliness but denied the power thereof; that the Christian world, especially, had, in fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy, transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, and had broken the everlasting covenant (Isaiah 44), of which the blood of the Christ was the blood of that everlasting covenant. He promised the incoming of a New Dispensation of the Gospel of Christ, which would link together and unite all former dispensations, from Adam down to the present time, the great stream of events speeding on towards an immense ocean of truth in which it would be united with all truth. It was a world movement. To lay the foundations of a greater faith, it brought forth the American volume of scripture, the Book of Mormon. In time the authority of God, the holy priesthood was restored, the minor phase of it, through John the Baptist; and later Peter, James and John, who held the keys of the kingdom of heaven, bestowed upon them by the Christ, appeared to the Prophet Joseph and Oliver Cowdery, and the divine and supreme authority from God was conferred upon them. By this authority and under the power of it they organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, outlined its doctrines, and established it firmly in the earth.

That is how the New Dispensation began—not whether baptism should be by immersion, or for the forgiveness of sins. The rubbish of accumulated ages was swept aside, the rocks made bare, and the foundations relaid” (22-23).

Roberts then refers to a statement in David Whitmer, To All Believers in Christ, about the translation of the Book of Mormon being interrupted due to some problems between Joseph and Emma:

He [Joseph] took up the divine instrument, the Urim and Thummim, tried to translated but utterly failed. Things remained dark to his vision. David Whitmer tells how Joseph left the translating room and [26] went to the woodslot on the Whitmer farm, and there corrected himself, brought himself into a state of humiliation and of exaltation at the same time. He went back to the house, became reconciled to Emma, his wife, came up to the translating room, and again the visions were given and the translation went on. But he could translate only as he was in a state of exaltation of mind and in accord with the Spirit of God, which leads to the source of hidden treasures of knowledge” (25-6).

Roberts then refers to the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, which was revealed shortly after the Church was organized, in June 1830:

It goes further than we have come, this knowledge by faith. After the Prophet had translated the Book of Mormon he began to receive the revelations which today make up the Book of Moses, the translation of [27] which began to be published about six months after the Book of Mormon had been translated” (26-7).

I admire the achievements of the men of science and hold them in honor…. But what am I to think of the Prophet of God, who speaking a hundred years before him, and speaking by the knowledge that comes by faith, revealed the same truth—viz., that as one earth shall pass away, so shall another come, and there is no end to God’s work? This gives to the Church of the New Dispensation the right to voice her protest against a dying universe—its death blows to the immortality of man.

Oh, ye Elders of Israel, this is our mission, to withstand this theory of a dying universe and this destruction of the idea of the immortality and eternal life of man. We have this knowledge revealed of God, and it is for us to maintain the perpetuity of the universe and the immortal life of man. Such was the mission of the Christ, such is ours” (29).

I am one of the special witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, made so by the office I hold, and I want to begin a return to my ministry in this pulpit by exercising my duty as a special witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. Here it is: Jesus Christ is the very Son of God, the incarnation of all that is divine, the revelation of God to man, the Redeemer of the world; for as in Adam all die, so shall they in Christ be brought forth alive. Also Jesus is the Savior of individual man, through him and him alone comes repentance and [30] forgiveness of sins, through which the possibility of unity with God comes. As his witness I stand before you on this occasion to proclaim these truths concerning the Christ, not from scientific knowledge or book learning, but from the knowledge that comes by faith” (29-30)

Roberts' general conference addresses between January 1922 and his death in September 1933 evince no show of doubt in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon

Roberts gave his findings on criticisms of the Book of Mormon to top Church leaders in a series of meetings between January to May 1922. One way to test the possibility of his losing faith in the Book of Mormon is to look at his public discourses and the words he uses to describe the Book of Mormon after he presented these findings. Upon careful examination of the historical record, one finds that Elder Roberts presented no doubts in the authenticity and veracity of the Book of Mormon.

• In the October 1922 conference, Roberts discussed the prophetic promises of the Book of Mormon concerning the land of promise and Zion in the latter-days. “The Lord made certain promises in ancient times concerning the land of Zion—North and South America,” Roberts said in his address. “That is the information we get from our Book of Mormon.”
• In the April 1923 conference, Roberts expounded on the title page of the Book of Mormon. “[N]otwithstanding all these testimonies of the New Testament scriptures,” said Roberts in his sermon, “God brings forth a new volume of scripture, the Book of Mormon, which we are learning to call the American scripture, the word of God to the ancient inhabitants of this land of America.”
• Six months later, in the October 1923 conference, Roberts focused some of his remarks of the Book of Mormon. “The great outstanding thing in the Book of Mormon is the fact of the visit of the Redeemer to the inhabitants of this western world, and the message of life and salvation that he delivered here; the Church which he brought into existence, the divine authority which he established here in the western world.” As Roberts went on to explain, “This is what makes the Book of Mormon of so much importance—it is a new witness for God and Christ and the truth of the gospel. These things being true, makes the advent of the Book of Mormon into the world the greatest literary event of the world since the writing of the Decalogue by the finger of God, and bringing it forth by the great Prophet Moses; or the collection and the publication of the testimony in the New Testament that Jesus is the Christ.”
• In the April 1924 conference, Roberts used the Book of Mormon to combat what he feared were the creeping influences of secular biblical scholarship. Referring to Nephi’s “very great visions concerning the life and the mission of the Christ, before he came in the flesh” (1 Nephi 11–15), Roberts named “the Book of Mormon, the record of the Nephite people, and the revelations of God in this new dispensation, clearly recognized in the Doctrine and Covenants, and also in the Pearl of Great Price” as “records [which] would establish the truth of the record of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb of God” (that is, the New Testament).
• In the October 1925 conference, Roberts delivered an address in which he focused on “three great utterances constitute the message of ‘Mormonism’ to the world” on the nature of God and humankind’s relationship with the divine. “The first comes from a fragment of the teachings of the prophet Moses, found not in musty tomb or ruined temple, but revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith before this Church of ours was six months old [Moses 1]. The second comes from a revelation from God to him, in the year 1833 [D&C 93]. The third contribution comes from our Book of Mormon, and is the contribution of sleeping nations once inhabiting the American continents, a message through their prophet leader to the modern world, and a contribution to the modern world for its enlightenment. How splendid all that is!” (This talk would go on to be republished in January 1926.7)
• In the October 1926 conference, Roberts exulted over the recent purchasing of the David Whitmer farm. “I rejoice that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is gradually gathering into its control the sacred places where great historical events happened,” said Roberts at the time. In his remarks, which were republished later in the Improvement Era (see below), Roberts thrice referred to the Book of Mormon as a “translation” or having otherwise been “translated” by Joseph Smith, spoke at length on the importance of the Book of Mormon witnesses, and told of his experience interviewing David Whitmer in 1884.
• In the April 1927 conference, Roberts reported on his missionary work in the eastern United States. In his report, Roberts spoke of his interactions with a Messianic Jew and stressed the importance of the Book of Mormon (which he called a “translation”) as a witness to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ (see below). He expounded on the doctrinal importance of the book’s title page, which, he reminded his audience, was “not [Joseph Smith’s] composition” but rather was “engraven on the title page of the gold plates.” Regretting that he had “taken more time than [he] should have done” with his lengthy sermon, Roberts nevertheless considered “these matters of sufficient importance to have entered upon the record of this conference. . . . I cannot but regard the opening that has come to us in the Eastern States to furnish material by which we may approach our cousin Judah with the message of the Book of Mormon, as an opening of the way by the inspiration and power of the Spirit of the Lord.
• Later that same year, in the October 1927 conference, Roberts recalled “the pleasure” he took in “standing upon the summit of the Hill Cumorah in company with President [Heber J.] Grant.” He remarked, “Being there upon that height of land, which so splendidly commands a view of the whole surrounding country, I could not refrain from recalling the time when Moroni stood upon the crown of that hill with the evidence of the ruins of the civilization of his people about him.” Roberts continued, “And this warning, written in the Book of Ether, let me say, in closing, comes from the prophet of God who was also the historian of the great Jaredite nation, by abridging and translating their history into the Nephrite language. This warning comes, then, from the historian of one civilization that had perished about the Hill Cumorah; it came also from the same man who was a witness of the destruction of the civilization of his own people at the same place. I hold that he was competent to speak upon this question, and it is most fitting, and is one of the evidences of inspiration, in this Book, that one so competent to speak in warning should be chosen to be God’s mouthpiece in warning this great Gentile nation, holding dominion over the land in our day, to beware of their course lest they, too, forfeit their rights to the pride of place they occupy among the nations of the earth. For great as our nation is, it is not above the powers of destruction if it observes not the conditions upon which it may hold its position upon this land.”
• In a lengthy April 1928 conference address, Roberts spoke on the important teachings preserved in the Book of Mormon; teachings that, according to Roberts, “would have been lost to the world but for the bringing forth of the Nephite scriptures, the American volume of scriptures.” This included, most importantly, “the testimony of the scriptures of the western continents—the Book of Mormon—in relation to the resurrection of Christ. What a wonderful testimony that book contains for the thing that is celebrated this day throughout Christendom, namely, the resurrection from the dead of our Lord the Christ!” In this same sermon Roberts also gave his endorsement Anthony W. Ivins’ comments on the Book of Mormon—calling them “a very important contribution, not only to this conference, but to the literature of the Church”—and recalled his youthful debates with a sectarian critic of the Church in which he, Roberts, defended the book.
• In the October 1928 conference, Roberts expanded on “a number of the early revelations that were given in the Church about the time of its organization and the publication of the Book of Mormon,” including those which had been “given . . . to brethren who had rendered some assistance to the Prophet in bringing forth the Book of Mormon.”
• In an April 1929 conference address (the same address, mind you, that Brigham D. Madsen claims somehow shows signs of Roberts backsliding on his faith in the Book of Mormon), Roberts provided commentary on the ninth Article of Faith, which stresses the importance of ongoing revelation in the Church of Jesus Christ. Within this specific context Roberts began his sermon, “One of the things that has greatly delighted me in this conference has been the prominence given to the Book of Mormon and to the importance of it as a means of acquainting the world with that system of truth for which we stand. But the passage from our articles of faith just repeated reminds me that the Book of Mormon is only one out of very many things that may aid us in this work of making God’s message known to the world.” Roberts then related how as a missionary in the South he worked with a confused investigator who did not know how to make up her mind about the Book of Mormon because she was being fed anti-Mormon literature by her local pastor. (A tale as old as time.) But, Roberts related, once she gained a testimony of the Doctrine and Covenants, she was able to make up her mind about the Book of Mormon being inspired. Roberts concluded his anecdote by affirming, “The Book of Doctrine and Covenants stands unquestioned as to its authorship, and I wish to express a belief that there is evidence of inspiration in it equal to that of the Book of Mormon.” Incidentally, Roberts also took the opportunity in this sermon to affirm the value and inspiration of the Pearl of Great Price. “If the world but had the Pearl of Great Price, and the knowledge it conveys, it would shed a penetrating light upon all the scriptures that our Christian friends acknowledge, and make known the truth of God.” Contrary to Madsen’s bizarre misreading of this sermon, Roberts made it clear that “[t]he Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price are prized by [the Latter-day Saints] above all other books.”
• On the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Church, in the April 1930 conference, Roberts affirmed his testimony of the Restoration, in part, thus: “The Church of Jesus Christ has again, and for the last time, been set up and made the depository of God’s truth and the fulness of it and has been given the mission of proclaiming that truth and the fulness of it to every nation and kindred and tongue and people. . . . The Record of Joseph in the hands of Ephraim, the Book of Mormon, has been revealed and translated by the power of God, and supplies the world with a new witness for the Christ, and the truth and the fulness of the Gospel.”
• In his final address delivered before his death in the April 1933 conference, Roberts referred to the Book of Mormon as “that precious volume of scripture” which spoke of “[the] word of the Lord from the Nephite race” that America was a choice land (quoting Ether 13:2). “This is recorded in the Book of Ether,” Roberts remarked, “which Moroni translated and added to the compilation made by his father.” Besides this, Roberts drew his listeners’ attention to “two great prophecies in the Book of Mormon,” namely: (1) “the witness which the Book of Mormon bears to the divinity of the Christ, affirming that he is the Son of God, . . . affirming that he is the Savior of the world, and . . . bearing witness to the truth of the Gospel”; and (2) “prophecies concerning the great Gentile nation that should rise and which would scatter the children of Israel upon the face of the land, and yet, afterwards, be touched by the spirit of pity and concern which would lead them to seek the preservation of the inhabitants of the land; that the seed of Joseph, so wonderfully gathered here and developed into a multitude of nations, should not be utterly destroyed, but should be preserved, and that, too, by this great nation that should be such an instrument in scattering them in the earth.” These, Roberts affirmed, makes the Book of Mormon a “new American witness for God” and “one of the most valuable books that has ever been preserved, even as holy scripture.”

Keep in mind that these are Roberts’ General Conference addresses and sermons that specifically touched on the Book of Mormon. In other talks that he delivered in the 1920s and early 1930s (such as his October 1929 and April 1932 addresses), Roberts also spoke glowingly of both current Church leadership and Heber J. Grant’s prophetic predecessors.

It is difficult to see these as the words of one who has lost his faith in the Church, the Book of Mormon, or Joseph Smith.

Roberts published other works that take as granted the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon

Roberts published other works between the early 1900s to his death that take the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon, the divine calling of Joseph Smith, and the truthfulness of the Church as a given. These works include:

• New Witnesses for God
• Outlines of Ecclesiastical History
• The Truth, The Way, The Life
• Comprehensive History of the Church
• The "Falling Away"
• Rasha–The Jew

Response to claim: 41-42 - Joseph claimed that a skeleton found was that of a "white Lamanite" named Zelph

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

Joseph claimed that a skeleton found was that of a "white Lamanite" named Zelph

Author's sources:

• History of the Church, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2:79-80.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim is based upon correct information - The author is providing knowledge concerning some particular fact, subject, or event

This is correct.

Question: What is the story of Zelph?

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #336: Who Was Zelph? (Video)

Joseph Smith reportedly found the bones of an individual named "Zelph," during the Zion's camp march

The most common version of this story is found in the History of the Church. It should be noted, however, that the History of the Church version was created by amalgamating the journal entries of several people:

• Wilford Woodruff (WW),
• Heber C. Kimball (HCK),
• George A. Smith (GAS),
• Levi Hancock (LH),
• Moses Martin (MM),
• Reuben McBride (RM).

All of the accounts were published after the death of Joseph Smith

The text has a convoluted history:

In 1842 Willard Richards, then church historian, was assigned the task of compiling a large number of documents and producing a history of the church from them. He worked on this material between 21 December 1842 and 27 March 1843. Richards, who had not joined the church until 1836, relied on the writings or recollections of Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff, and perhaps others for his information regarding the discovery of Zelph. Blending the sources available to him, and perhaps using oral accounts from some of the members of Zion's Camp, but writing as if he were Joseph Smith, historian Richards drafted the story of Zelph as it appears in the "Manuscript History of the Church, Book A-1." With respect to points relative to Book of Mormon geography, Richards wrote that "Zelph was a white Lamanite, a man of God who was a warrior and chieftain under the great prophet Onandagus who was known from the [hill Cumorah is crossed out in the manuscript] eastern Sea, to the Rocky Mountains. He was killed in battle, by the arrow found among his ribs, during a [last crossed out] great struggle with the Lamanites" [and Nephites crossed out].

Following the death of Joseph Smith, the Times and Seasons published serially the "History of Joseph Smith." When the story of finding Zelph appeared in the 1 January 1846 issue, most of the words crossed out in the Richards manuscript were, for some unknown reason, included, along with the point that the prophet's name was Omandagus. The reference to the hill Cumorah from the unemended Wilford Woodruff journal was still included in the narrative, as was the phrase "during the last great struggle of the Lamanites and Nephites."

The 1904 first edition of the seven-volume History of the Church, edited by B. H. Roberts, repeats the manuscript version of Richards's account. However, in 1948, after Joseph Fielding Smith had become church historian, explicit references to the hill Cumorah and the Nephites were reintroduced. That phrasing has continued to the present in all reprintings.

A comparison of the various accounts is instructive:

Aspect	WW	HCK	GAS	LH	MM	RM
Date	May-June 1834	JS on 3 June 1834	Group on 2 June 1834	--	--	JS on 3 June 1834
Place	Illinois River	Illinois River	--	Illinois River	Pike County	--
Description	-300 ft above river -Flung up by ancients	-Several 100 feet above -3 altars on mound	300 ft above river	Big mound	-many mounds -fortifications	--
Artifacts	Body, arrow	Human bones, a skeleton, arrow	Human bones	Human bones, arrow	Human bones, arrow	Skeleton of man, arrow
Person?	Zalph, large thick-set man, warrior, killed in battle	Zalph, warrior, killed in battle	--	Zalph, warrior, white Lamanite	Mighty prophet, killed in battle	Zalph, warrior, white Lamanite, man of God, killed in battle
Nephite/ Lamanite?	Nephite and Lamanite	Lamanite	--	Lamanite	--	Lamanite
JS Vision?	Vision: Onandangus, great prophet Known Atlantic to Rockies	--	--	Onandangus	--	Onandangus, Known Atlantic to Rockies

William Hamblin described some of the difficulties in identifying the roots of this story:

many significant qualifiers were left out of the printed version [of this account]. Thus, whereas Wilford Woodruff's journal account mentions that the ruins and bones were "probably [related to] the Nephites and Lamanites," the printed version left out the "probably," and implied that it was a certainty. [There are] several similar shifts in meaning from the original manuscripts to the printed version. "The mere 'arrow' of the three earliest accounts became an 'Indian Arrow' (as in Kimball), and finally a 'Lamanitish Arrow.' The phrase 'known from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountain,' as in the McBride diary, became 'known from the Hill Cumorah' (stricken out) or 'eastern sea to the Rocky Mountains.' " The point here is that there are many difficulties that make it nearly impossible for us to know exactly what Joseph Smith said in 1834 as he reflected on the ruins his group encountered in Illinois.

Question: How reliable are the accounts of the discovery of Zelph?

LDS scholars have differed about the reliability of the accounts

LDS scholars have differed about the reliability of the accounts, and their relevance for Book of Mormon geography. As Kenneth Godfrey observed:

If the history of the church were to be revised today using modern historical standards, readers would be informed that Joseph Smith wrote nothing about the discovery of Zelph, and that the account of uncovering the skeleton in Pike County is based on the diaries of seven members of Zion's Camp, some of which were written long after the event took place. We would be assured that the members of Zion's Camp dug up a skeleton near the Illinois River in early June 1834. Equally sure is that Joseph Smith made statements about the deceased person and his historical setting. We would learn that it is unclear which statements attributed to him derived from his vision, as opposed to being implied or surmised either by him or by others. Nothing in the diaries suggests that the mound itself was discovered by revelation.

Furthermore, readers would be told that most sources agree that Zelph was a white Lamanite who fought under a leader named Onandagus (variously spelled). Beyond that, what Joseph said to his men is not entirely clear, judging by the variations in the available sources. The date of the man Zelph, too, remains unclear. Expressions such as "great struggles among the Lamanites," if accurately reported, could refer to a period long after the close of the Book of Mormon narrative, as well as to the fourth century AD. None of the sources before the Willard Richards composition, however, actually say that Zelph died in battle with the Nephites, only that he died "in battle" when the otherwise unidentified people of Onandagus were engaged in great wars "among the Lamanites."

Zelph was identified as a "Lamanite," a label agreed on by all the accounts. This term might refer to the ethnic and cultural category spoken of in the Book of Mormon as actors in the destruction of the Nephites, or it might refer more generally to a descendant of the earlier Lamanites and could have been considered in 1834 as the equivalent of "Indian" (see, for example, D&C 3:18, 20; 10:48; 28:8; 32:2). Nothing in the accounts can settle the question of Zelph's specific ethnic identity.

Since the accounts are second hand and differ from one another, it is unclear exactly what Joseph said

Thus, it is unclear exactly what Joseph said. Many of the accounts date from many years after the event, and may have been shaded by later ideas in the writers. Joseph never had a chance to correct that which was published about the event, since he was killed before it was made public. The "Lamanites" may refer to native Amerindians generally, or Book of Mormon peoples specifically. If the latter are referred to, the events may well apply to post-Book of Mormon events, in which case it can tell us little about the geographic scope of the Book of Mormon text. It is at least clear enough that Joseph Smith called the peoples of the area "Nephite" in the statement that he made in the letter to his wife, but those titles of political factions again don't do much for determining ethnicity.

As always, the Book of Mormon text itself must remain our primary guide for what it says. Joseph Smith does not seem to have later regarded his knowledge about Zelph as excluding other peoples or locations as being related to the Book of Mormon, or to have discouraged other Church leaders from similar theories.

Response to claim: 42 - Joseph reported that the Kinderhook Plates contained a genealogy back to Ham

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

Joseph reported that the Kinderhook Plates contained a genealogy back to Ham.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 243-50 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim is based upon correct information - The author is providing knowledge concerning some particular fact, subject, or event

This is correct, although this information did not come by revelation. Joseph deduced this from a single character that has a corresponding explanation in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. Joseph did not realize that the Kinderhook Plates were forged.

FAIR Answers—back to home page

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Articles about Joseph Smith

Life and Character	Status in Latter-day Saint belief Joseph's trustworthiness Money digging Folk magic or the occult The Word of Wisdom Alleged narcissism
Youth	Joseph Smith's family as trustworthy and hard-working Education Use of seer stones as a youth The Hurlbut affidavits Joseph Smith's 1826 trial
Revelations and the Church	Witness of Jesus Christ First Vision Book of Mormon Joseph Smith's inspired revision of the Bible (JST) The restoration of the priesthood Personages who appeared to Joseph Smith Production of the Book of Abraham Kinderhook Plates
Prophetic Statements	The U.S. Civil War Rocky Mountain prophecy The White Horse prophecy Alleged false prophecies of Joseph Smith Joseph Smith and Old Testament practices
Society	Legal issues 1826 trial Creation of the Kirtland Safety Society Failure of the Kirtland Safety Society Campaign for President of the United States
Plural marriage (polygamy)	Plural marriage or polygamy Polygamy navigator Plural wives of Joseph Smith
Death	The Nauvoo Expositor Events surrounding the death of Joseph Smith Firing a gun at Carthage Jail Qualification as a martyr 1844 Succession to Joseph Smith

V

Articles about Latter-day Saint history

Overview	Latter-day Saint history Approaching history Responding to criticisms about Church history Primary source documents of early Church history
Accuracy of Church History	Alleged whitewashing of Church history Alleged whitewashing of polygamy in Church history Alleged hiding of facts in Church history History scholars and Church discipline Accuracy of Church art History of the Church (6-volume history) Lucy Mack Smith's biography of Joseph Smith Histories written by scholars
Forgeries and folklore	Mark Hofmann Kinderhook Plates The Sealed Book of Mormon by Mauricio Berger The Mentinah Papers The Ang Aklatan The Bat Creek Stone The Burrows Cave artifacts Mormon urban legends or folklore

What are the Kinderhook Plates?

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #454: What Do the Kinderhook Plates Reveal About Joseph Smith’s Gift of Translation? (Video)

The Kinderhook Plates are a forged set of metal plates that were given to Joseph Smith to translate

Image of front and back of four of the six Kinderhook plates are shown in these facsimiles (rough copies of even earlier published facsimiles), which appeared in 1909 in History of the Church, 5:374–375. Volume 5 link

A set of small plates, engraved with characters of ancient appearance, were purported to have been unearthed in Kinderhook, Illinois, in April 1843. The so-called "Kinderhook plates" have been something of an enigma within the Mormon community since they first appeared. While there are faithful LDS who take a number of different positions on the topic of these artifacts, most have concluded that they were fakes.

Joseph Smith appears to have had the plates in his possession for about five days.

Joseph Smith's personal secretary, William Clayton said,

President Joseph has translated a portion [of the Kinderhook plates], and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found; and he was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom through the ruler of heaven and earth.

Chemical analysis performed by the Chicago Historical Society on one of the plates in 1981 showed that the plates were fake. Before the release of the CHS' analysis, criticism of the episode from those outside of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was infrequent. After the release, criticism became much more frequent. All critics have believed that this episode brings into question any claim of "inspiration" that Joseph used to translate the Kinderhook Plates and by extension any other revelations he received.

Joseph Smith "translated" a portion of those plates, not by claiming inspiration, but by comparing characters on the plates to those on his "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language" (GAEL)

However, Joseph Smith "translated" a portion of those plates, not by claiming inspiration, but by comparing characters on the plates to those on his "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language" (GAEL). (The GAEL was composed in Kirtland about the time of the translation of the Book of Abraham.) Joseph found one of the most prominent characters on the plates to match a character on the second page of characters in the GAEL. Both were boat shaped. The GAEL interpretation of this boat-shaped character included everything that William Clayton said Joseph said.

Corroborating this is a letter in the New York Herald for May 30th, 1843, from someone who signed pseudonymously as "A Gentile." Research shows "A Gentile" to be a friendly non-Mormon then living in Nauvoo by the name of Sylvester Emmons. He wrote:

The plates are evidently brass, and are covered on both sides with hieroglyphics. They were brought up and shown to Joseph Smith. He compared them, in my presence, with his Egyptian Alphabet…and they are evidently the same characters. He therefore will be able to decipher them.

We know that Joseph was interested in languages. He studied Greek, Hebrew, and German in a secular manner. Therefore, we can easily believe that he attempted to translate the Kinderhook plates without assuming prophetic powers, which powers consequently remain credible.

There are 11 important documents to deal with when dealing with the Kinderhook Plates. This article examines all of them.

There exist several accounts that describe the plates. Not all of the account agree on the details.

William Clayton 1 May 1843

I have seen 6 brass plates which were found in Adams County by some persons who were digging in a mound. They found a skeleton about 6 feet from the surface of the earth which was 9 foot high. [At this point there is a tracing of a plate in the journal.] The plates were on the breast of the skeleton. This diagram shows the size of the plates being drawn on the edge of one of them. They are covered with ancient characters of language containing from 30 to 40 on each side of the plates. Prest J. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharoah king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.

Charlotte Haven 2 May 1843

Charlotte Haven claimed to have heard from a friend that Joseph:

said that the figures or writing on them was similar to that in which the Book of Mormon was written...thought that by the help of revelation he would be able to translate them. So a sequel to that holy book may soon be expected.

Brigham Young 3 May 1843

Brigham Young also drew an outline of one of the Kinderhook plates in a small notebook/diary that he kept. Inside the drawing he wrote:

May 3—1843. I had this at Joseph Smith’s house. Found near Quincy.

The Quincy Whig 3 May 1843

The Quincy Whig (a newspaper from a local town near Kinderhook) published their reaction to the plates. It reads:

Finally, a company of ten or twelve repaired to the mound, and assisted in digging out the shaft commenced by Wiley. After penetrating the mound about 11 feet, they came to a bed of limestone, that had apparently been subjected to the action of fire, they removed the stone, which were small and easy to handle, to the depth of two feet more, when they found SIX BRASS PLATES, secured and fastened together by two iron wires, but which were so decayed, that they readily crumbled to dust upon being handled. The plates were so completely covered with rust as almost to obliterate the characters inscribed upon them; but after undergoing a chemical process, the inscriptions were brought out plain and distinct...

Times and Seasons Editorial 3 or 4 of May 1843

Mr. Smith has had those plates, what his opinion concerning them is, we have not yet ascertained. The gentleman that owns them has taken them away, or we should have given a fac simile of the plates and characters in this number. We are informed however, that he purposes returning with them for translation; if so, we may be able yet to furnish our readers with it.

Joseph Smith Journal 7 May 1843

Joseph Smith's journal entry for 7 May 1843 reads:

May 7[th] Sunday 1843. forenoon visited by several gentlemen concerning the plates which were dug out of a mound near quncy [Quincy] sent by Wm Smith to the office for Hebrew Bible & Lexicon— Mr Vickers the wire dancer called. A.M.— court of 1st Preside[n]cy met & adjond [adjourned] one week, 2 P.P. [p.m.] 399President not well— councellors acted.—

evening preaching by Elder [Orson] Hyde text Luke 21 chapter.

Parley P. Pratt's account 7 May 1843

Parley P. Pratt's account conflicts with Clayton's in some regards:

Six plates having the appearance of Brass have lately been dug out of a mound by a gentleman in Pike Co. Illinois. They are small and filled with engravings in Egyptian language and contain the genealogy of one of the ancient Jaredites back to Ham the son of Noah. His bones were found in the same vase (made of Cement). Part of the bones were 15 ft. underground. ... A large number of Citizens have seen them and compared the characters with those on the Egyptian papyrus which is now in this city.

Comparison of Clayton and Pratt Accounts of Kinderhook Plates

Story Element	Clayton Account	Clayton Correct?	Pratt Account	Pratt Correct?
Skeleton	Yes	Incorrect	Yes	Incorrect
Size skeleton	9 feet	Incorrect	Normal size	Incorrect
Depth buried	6 feet	Incorrect	15 feet	Incorrect
Location plates	On breast of skeleton	Incorrect	No mention	N/A
Dig site	Adams county	Incorrect	Pike county	Correct
Cement vase	No mention	Correct	Mention	Incorrect

John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff broadside 24 June 1843

The contents of the Plates, together with a Fac-simile of the same, will be published in the ‘Times & Seasons,’ as soon as the translation is completed.

Wilbur Fugate 30 June 1879

Wilbur Fugate, one of the perpetrator's of the hoax, wrote a few decades later:

Our plans worked admirably. A certain Sunday was appointed for the digging. The night before, Wiley went to the Mound where he had previously dug to the depth of about eight feet, there being a flat rock that sounded hollow beneath, and put them under it. On the following morning quite a number of citizens were there to assist in the search, there being two Mormon elders present (Marsh and Sharp). The rock was soon removed but some time elapsed before the plates were discovered. I finally picked them up and exclaimed, 'A piece of pot metal!' Fayette Grubb snatched them from me and struck them against the rock and they fell to pieces. Dr. Harris examined them and said they had hieroglyphics on them. He took acid and removed the rust and they were soon out on exhibition. Under this rock (which) was dome-like in appearance (and) about three feet in diameter, there were a few bones in the last stage of decomposition, also a few pieces of pottery and charcoal. There was no skeleton found.

Later he declared in affidavit:

Those plates are a HUMBUG, gotten up by Robert Wiley, Bridge Whitton and myself. … None of the nine persons who signed the certificate knew the secret, except Wiley and I. We read in Pratt’s prophecy that ‘Truth is yet to spring out of the earth.’ [The quote is from Parley P. Pratt’s 1837 missionary tract Voice of Warning.] We concluded to prove the prophecy by way of a joke. We soon made our plans and executed them. Bridge Whitton cut them out of some pieces of copper; Wiley and I made the hieroglyphics by making impressions on beeswax and filling them with acid and putting it on the plates. When they were finished we put them together with rust made of nitric acid, old iron and lead, and bound them with a piece of hoop iron, covering them completely with the rust.

Stanley Kimball Article (Ensign, Aug 1981)

Stanley Kimball published findings demonstrating the plates a hoax:

A recent electronic and chemical analysis of a metal plate (one of six original plates) brought in 1843 to the Prophet Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois, appears to solve a previously unanswered question in Church history, helping to further evidence that the plate is what its producers later said it was—a nineteenth-century attempt to lure Joseph Smith into making a translation of ancient-looking characters that had been etched into the plates.

Why does History of the Church say that Joseph Smith said "I have translated a portion of them..."?

This shows the hostile "Mormoninfographic" that is accurate, but will still probably misread readers because it doesn't explain the whole story.

History of the Church was written by others in the "first person," as if Joseph wrote it himself

The following is from Stanley B. Kimball, "Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax," Ensign, August 1981 off-site

These two oblique references to a “translation” were followed thirteen years later by a more direct published statement that until recently was wrongly thought to have been written by Joseph Smith himself. On September 3 and 10, 1856, the following paragraphs appeared in the Deseret News as part of the serialized “History of Joseph Smith”:

“[May 1, 1843:] I insert fac similes of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook, in Pike county, Illinois, on April 23, by Mr. R. Wiley and others, while excavating a large mound. They found a skeleton about six feet from the surface of the earth, which must have stood nine feet high. The plates were found on the breast of the skeleton, and were covered on both sides with ancient characters.

“I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.” (Then followed a reprint of material from the Times and Seasons article.)

Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. It has been well known that the serialized “History of Joseph Smith” consists largely of items from other persons’ personal journals and other sources, collected during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and continued after the Saints were in Utah, then edited and pieced together to form a history of the Prophet’s life “in his own words.” It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for biographers to put the narrative in the first person when compiling a biographical work, even though the subject of the biography did not actually say or write all the words attributed to him; thus the narrative would represent a faithful report of what others felt would be helpful to print. The Clayton journal excerpt was one item used in this way. For example, the words “I have translated a portion” originally read “President J. has translated a portion. …”

Did Joseph Smith attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates?

This data was introduced by Don Bradley, "'President Joseph Has Translated a Portion': Solving the Mystery of the Kinderhook Plates," Proceedings of the 2011 FAIR Conference (August 2011). link video

Joseph Smith attempted to translate a character on the Kinderhood Plates by matching it to his "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL)"

Don Bradley presented compelling evidence during his 2011 FAIR Conference presentation that Joseph Smith did indeed attempt to translate a character on the Kinderhook Plates. Bradley noted that William Clayton's account is likely representing personal and specific knowledge acquired from Joseph Smith, since evidence indicates that he made his journal entries that day while he was at the Prophet's home. Clayton's account states that

Prest J. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharoah king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.

Bradley noted that one of the most prominent characters on the Kinderhook Plates (a symbol shaped like a boat), when broken down into its individual elements matched a symbol found on page 4 (the second page of characters) of the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL), often referred to as the "Egyptian Alphabet. The GAEL provides meanings for the individual symbols, and the meaning assigned to the particular symbol found on the plates supports the translation reported to have been provided by Joseph.

The conclusion is that Clayton's account appears to be accurate, that Joseph did attempt to translate "a portion" of them by non-revelatory means, and the translation provided matches a corresponding symbol and explanation in the GAEL.

• As William Clayton noted in his journal, Joseph "translated a portion" of the Kinderhook plates. Joseph attempted to translate one of the characters on the plates by matching it to a similar character on the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL), a document that was produced in the same timeframe as the Book of Abraham. It is from the GAEL that he derived the "descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh" meaning.

Did Joseph attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates using the "gift and power of God?"

This shows the hostile "Mormoninfographic" that tells part of the story, but will still probably misread readers.

Joseph apparently did not attempt to translate by the "gift and power of God". Joseph never translated more than the single character

At the time that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, he only claimed the ability to translate by the "gift and power of God." Over time, Joseph studied other languages and wished to learn to translate by other means. His attempt to use the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (a document that he and others had created) to attempt a translation of the Kinderhook Plates fits in with this desire. Since only a single character "matched," Joseph would have been unable to continue to translate the plates in this manner. This may explain why such a translation was never produced: beyond the single character which happened to match, it would not have even been possible to translate the fraudulent plates either manually or by the "gift and power of God." Therefore, no translation was ever produced.

What does Joseph's attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates tell us about his "gift of translation?"

Joseph's attempt to translate manually tells us that he didn't attempt to translate the plates using the "gift and power of God"

A critical graphic from "mormoninfographics" states that "Joseph didn't discern the fraud. The LDS Church now concedes it's a hoax. What does this tell us about Joseph Smith's gift of translation?"

Simply put, Joseph's attempt to translate the plates manually tells us that he didn't attempt to translate the plates using the "gift and power of God."

Why is the statement of William Clayton regarding the Kinderhook Plates in History of the Church written as if Joseph Smith himself said it?

History of the Church was written in the "first person" after Joseph's death

It should be noted that the critical "mormoninfographic" includes a portion of a quote from History of the Church that is written as if it came from Joseph Smith.

The graphic is correct, but it is useful to know the actual source of the quote used by History of the Church.:

I insert fac-similes of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook, in Pike county, Illinois, on April 23, by Mr. Robert Wiley and others, while excavating a large mound. They found a skeleton about six feet from the surface of the earth, which must have stood nine feet high. The plates were found on the breast of the skeleton and were covered on both sides with ancient characters. I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth.

The quote in question was written in William Clayton's journal. It was rewritten in the first person (as if Joseph Smith had said it himself) when it was included in History of the Church. Clayton's journal is the primary source, which was used in History of the Church (a secondary source).

The quote by William Clayton is indeed accurate: Joseph Smith did attempt to translate a portion of the Kinderhook Plates. This is explained in the following section.

The following is from Stanley B. Kimball, "Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax," Ensign, August 1981 off-site

These two oblique references to a “translation” were followed thirteen years later by a more direct published statement that until recently was wrongly thought to have been written by Joseph Smith himself. On September 3 and 10, 1856, the following paragraphs appeared in the Deseret News as part of the serialized “History of Joseph Smith”:

“[May 1, 1843:] I insert fac similes of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook, in Pike county, Illinois, on April 23, by Mr. R. Wiley and others, while excavating a large mound. They found a skeleton about six feet from the surface of the earth, which must have stood nine feet high. The plates were found on the breast of the skeleton, and were covered on both sides with ancient characters.

“I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.” (Then followed a reprint of material from the Times and Seasons article.)

Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. It has been well known that the serialized “History of Joseph Smith” consists largely of items from other persons’ personal journals and other sources, collected during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and continued after the Saints were in Utah, then edited and pieced together to form a history of the Prophet’s life “in his own words.” It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for biographers to put the narrative in the first person when compiling a biographical work, even though the subject of the biography did not actually say or write all the words attributed to him; thus the narrative would represent a faithful report of what others felt would be helpful to print. The Clayton journal excerpt was one item used in this way. For example, the words “I have translated a portion” originally read “President J. has translated a portion. …”

Could the "Egyptian Alphabet" used in an attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates have actually been the Anthon transcript?

Summary: A non-Mormon made the following statement regarding the Kinderhook Plates: ""They were brought up and shown to Joseph Smith. He compared them in my presence with his Egyptian alphabet, which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated..." Why does the non-Mormon eyewitness say that the "Egyptian Alphabet" was "from the plates which the Book of Mormon was translated?"

Don Bradley, "‘President Joseph Has Translated a Portion’: Solving the Mystery of the Kinderhook Plates"

Don Bradley,  Proceedings of the 2011 FAIR Conference, (August 2011)

So, a larger conclusion that we can draw is that we’ve got both the smoking-gun – the GAEL that he uses to translate, and we’ve got an eyewitness. We know exactly how Joseph Smith attempted to translate from the Kinderhook plates and obtain the content that Clayton says he did. A larger conclusion, then, that we can draw is that Joseph Smith translated from the Kinderhook plates not by revelation, but by non-revelatory means.

Click here to view the complete article

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Learn more about the Kinderhook plates

Key sources	Don Bradley, "'President Joseph Has Translated a Portion': Solving the Mystery of the Kinderhook Plates," Proceedings of the 2011 FAIR Conference (August 2011). link video Saints (lds.org 2018) "Kinderhook Plates" Stanley B. Kimball, "Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax," Ensign 11 no. 8 (August 1981), 66–74.off-site
Wiki links	Kinderhook Plates
FAIR links	Ask the Apologist: How do we explain the early comments about the Kinderhook Plates? FAIR link
Online	Wade Englund, "Kinderhook Plates: Putting an End to the Hoax," off-site Brian Hauglid - "Did Joseph Smith Translate the Kinderhook Plates?"
Video	"The Kinderhook plates," BH Roberts Foundation print-link. Video version: "Was Joseph Smith tricked by the Kinderhook Plates?,"  (5 January 2024). video-link. Don Bradley 2011 FairMormon Conference Presentation The Interpreter Foundation Saints Unscripted "Do the Kinderhook Plates Prove Joseph Smith Was a False Prophet?"
Print	Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 5:372. Volume 5 link
Navigators	Table of contents Abuse Bible Book of Abraham Book of Mormon CES Letter Church history Church finances Doctrine and Covenants First Vision Joseph Smith Latter-day Saint temples Mountain Meadows Massacre Plural marriage Prophets and leaders Scripture Brigham Young
Sub categories	forgeries

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Source(s) of the criticism

Critical sources

Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 291. ( Index of claims ) John Dehlin, "Questions and Answers," Mormon Stories Podcast (25 June 2014). MormonThink.com website (as of 5 May 2012). Page: http://mormonthink.com/firstvisionweb.htm Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002) 1, 31, 42. ( Index of claims ) Wilhelm Wyl, Mormon Portraits Volume First: Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing Co., 1886), 205–212.

Notes

Response to claim: 42 - Joseph gave many descriptions of heroes and their treasures hidden in the New York hills

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

Joseph gave many descriptions of heroes and their treasures hidden in the New York hills.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 243-50 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts is talking about the stories Joseph was reported to have told by his mother after his interviews with the angel Moroni. He is presenting the critical perspective that Joseph had sufficient imagination to produce the Book of Mormon. Again, this was not Roberts' own belief, but his description of the arguments that future critics would try to use.

FAIR Answers—back to home page

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1. REDIRECTJoseph Smith's trustworthiness

Response to claim: 42 - B.H. Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith was capable of writing the Book of Mormon

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

B.H. Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith was capable of writing the Book of Mormon.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 243-50 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts concluded that the critics would conclude that Joseph Smith was capable of writing the Book of Mormon. This did not represent Roberts' own belief.

FAIR Answers—back to home page

<onlyinclude>

1. REDIRECTJoseph Smith's trustworthiness

Response to claim: 48 - The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is the source of Alma 19

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is the source of Alma 19.

Author's sources: None cited, however, this section almost precisely matches the analysis shown in Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), 117.( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim contains propaganda - The author, or the author's source, is providing information or ideas in a slanted way in order to instill a particular attitude or response in the reader

Assertion is not an argument. The author needs evidence.

FAIR Answers—back to home page

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Introduction

Does the Book of Mormon plagiarize the King James Bible?

The Book of Mormon emulates the language and style of the King James Bible because that is the scriptural style Joseph Smith, translator of the Book of Mormon, was familiar with

Critics of the Book of Mormon claim that major portions of it are copied, without attribution, from the Bible. They argue that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon by plagiarizing the Authorized ("King James") Version of the Bible.

Hugh Nibley: "As to the 'passages lifted bodily from the King James Version,' we first ask, 'How else does one quote scripture if not bodily?'"

LDS scholar Hugh Nibley wrote the following in response to a letter sent to the editor of the Church News section of the Deseret News. His response was printed in the Church News in 1961:

[One of the] most devastating argument[s] against the Book of Mormon was that it actually quoted the Bible. The early critics were simply staggered by the incredible stupidity of including large sections of the Bible in a book which they insisted was specifically designed to fool the Bible-reading public. They screamed blasphemy and plagiarism at the top of their lungs, but today any biblical scholar knows that it would be extremely suspicious if a book purporting to be the product of a society of pious emigrants from Jerusalem in ancient times did not quote the Bible. No lengthy religious writing of the Hebrews could conceivably be genuine if it was not full of scriptural quotations.

...to quote another writer of Christianity Today [magazine], "passages lifted bodily from the King James Version," and that it quotes, not only from the Old Testament, but also the New Testament as well.

As to the "passages lifted bodily from the King James Version," we first ask, "How else does one quote scripture if not bodily?" And why should anyone quoting the Bible to American readers of 1830 not follow the only version of the Bible known to them?

Actually the Bible passages quoted in the Book of Mormon often differ from the King James Version, but where the latter is correct there is every reason why it should be followed. When Jesus and the Apostles and, for that matter, the Angel Gabriel quote the scriptures in the New Testament, do they recite from some mysterious Urtext? Do they quote the prophets of old in the ultimate original? Do they give their own inspired translations? No, they do not. They quote the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament prepared in the third century B.C. Why so? Because that happened to be the received standard version of the Bible accepted by the readers of the Greek New Testament. When "holy men of God" quote the scriptures it is always in the received standard version of the people they are addressing.

We do not claim the King James Version of the Septuagint to be the original scriptures—in fact, nobody on earth today knows where the original scriptures are or what they say. Inspired men have in every age have been content to accept the received version of the people among whom they labored, with the Spirit giving correction where correction was necessary.

Since the Book of Mormon is a translation, "with all its faults," into English for English-speaking people whose fathers for generations had known no other scriptures but the standard English Bible, it would be both pointless and confusing to present the scriptures to them in any other form, so far as their teachings were correct.

What is thought to be a very serious charge against the Book of Mormon today is that it, a book written down long before New Testament times and on the other side of the world, actually quotes the New Testament! True, it is the same Savior speaking in both, and the same Holy Ghost, and so we can expect the same doctrines in the same language.

But what about the "Faith, Hope and Charity" passage in Moroni 7꞉45? Its resemblance to 1 Corinthians 13:] is undeniable. This particular passage, recently singled out for attack in Christianity Today, is actually one of those things that turn out to be a striking vindication of the Book of Mormon. For the whole passage, which scholars have labeled "the Hymn to Charity," was shown early in this century by a number of first-rate investigators working independently (A. Harnack, J. Weiss, R. Reizenstein) to have originated not with Paul at all, but to go back to some older but unknown source: Paul is merely quoting from the record.

Now it so happens that other Book of Mormon writers were also peculiarly fond of quoting from the record. Captain Moroni, for example, reminds his people of an old tradition about the two garments of Joseph, telling them a detailed story which I have found only in [th' Alabi of Persia,] a thousand-year-old commentary on the Old Testament, a work still untranslated and quite unknown to the world of Joseph Smith. So I find it not a refutation but a confirmation of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon when Paul and Moroni both quote from a once well-known but now lost Hebrew writing.

Now as to [the] question, "Why did Joseph Smith, a nineteenth century American farm boy, translate the Book of Mormon into seventeenth century King James English instead of into contemporary language?"

The first thing to note is that the "contemporary language" of the country-people of New England 130 years ago was not so far from King James English. Even the New England writers of later generations, like Webster, Melville, and Emerson, lapse into its stately periods and "thees and thous" in their loftier passages.

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Furthermore, the Book of Mormon is full of scripture, and for the world of Joseph Smith's day, the King James Version was the Scripture, as we have noted; large sections of the Book of Mormon, therefore, had to be in the language of the King James Version—and what of the rest of it? That is scripture, too.

One can think of lots of arguments for using King James English in the Book of Mormon, but the clearest comes out of very recent experience. In the past decade, as you know, certain ancient nonbiblical texts, discovered near the Dead Sea, have been translated by modern, up-to-date American readers. I open at random a contemporary Protestant scholar's modern translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what do I read? "For thine is the battle, and by the strength of thy hand their corpses were scattered without burial. Goliath the Hittite, a mighty man of valor, thou didst deliver into the hand of thy servant David."

Obviously the man who wrote this knew the Bible, and we must not forget that ancient scribes were consciously archaic in their writing, so that most of the scriptures were probably in old-fashioned language the day they were written down. To efface that solemn antique style by the latest up-to-date usage is to translate falsely.

At any rate, Professor Burrows, in 1955 (not 1835!), falls naturally and without apology into the language of the King James Bible. Or take a modern Jewish scholar who purposely avoids archaisms in his translation of the Scrolls for modern American readers: "All things are inscribed before Thee in a recording script, for every moment of time, for the infinite cycles of years, in their several appointed times. No single thing is hidden, naught missing from Thy presence." Professor Gaster, too, falls under the spell of our religious idiom. [A more recent example of the same phenomenon in the twenty-first century is discussed here.]

By frankly using that idiom, the Book of Mormon avoids the necessity of having to be redone into "modern English" every thirty or forty years. If the plates were being translated for the first time today, it would still be King James English!"

Quotations from the Bible in the Book of Mormon are sometimes uncited quotes from Old Testament prophets on the brass plates, similar to the many unattributed Old Testament quotes in the New Testament; others are simply similar phrasing emulated by Joseph Smith during his translation.

Oddly enough, this actually should not lead one to believe that Joseph Smith simply plagiarized from it. Using the Original and Printer's Manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, Latter-day Saint scholar Royal Skousen has identified that none of the King James language contained in the Book of Mormon could have been copied directly from the Bible. He deduces this from the fact that when quoting, echoing, or alluding to the passages, Oliver (Joseph's amanuensis for the dictation of the Book of Mormon) consistently misspells certain words from the text that he wouldn't have misspelled if he was looking at the then-current edition of the KJV.

Critics also fail to mention that even if all the Biblical passages were removed from the Book of Mormon, there would be a great deal of text remaining. Joseph Smith was able to produce long, intricate religious texts without using the Bible; if he was trying to deceive people, why did he "plagiarize" from the one book—the Bible—which his readership was sure to recognize? The Book of Mormon itself declares that it came forth in part to support the Bible (2 Nephi 29). Perhaps the inclusion of KJV text can allow us to know those places where it is engaging the Bible rather than just cribbing from it. If we didn't get some KJV text, we might think that the Nephites were trying to communicate an entirely different message.

A Proposed Scenario

When considering the the data, Skousen proposes as one scenario that, instead of.Joseph or Oliver looking at a Bible (which is now confirmed by the manuscript evidence and the unequivocal statements of the witnesses to the translation to the Book of Mormon that Joseph employed no notes nor any other reference materials), that God was simply able to provide the page of text from the King James Bible to Joseph's mind and then Joseph was free to alter the text as would be more comprehensible/comfortable to his 19th century, Northeastern, frontier audience. This theology of translation may feel foreign and a bit strange to some Latter-day Saints, but it seems to fit well with the Lord's own words about the nature of revelation to Joseph Smith. Latter-day Saints should take comfort in fact that the Lord accommodates his perfection to our own weakness and uses our imperfect language and nature for the building up of Zion on the earth. It may testify to the fact that God views us not only as creatures but as Gods ourselves—with abilities that can be used effectively to call others to repentance and literally become like Him.

Additional Resources

Learn More About Parts 5 and 6 of Volume 3 of the Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon

Royal Skousen, "The History of the Book of Mormon Text: Parts 5 and 6 of Volume 3 of the Critical Text"

Standford Carmack, "Bad Grammar in the Book of Mormon Found in Early English Bibles" Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 36 (2020).

Stan Spencer, "Missing Words: King James Bible Italics, the Translation of the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith as an Unlearned Reader" Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 38 (2020).

General questions

Chracters

Did Joseph Smith use characters from the Bible as templates for the characters in the Book of Mormon?

Introduction to Question

Critic Fawn Brodie claimed the following in her book No Man Knows My History: the Life of Joseph Smith

Many stories [Joseph Smith] borrowed from the Bible [for the creation of the Book of Mormon]. The daughter of Jared, like Salome, danced before a king and a decapitation followed. Aminadi, like Daniel, deciphered handwriting on a wall, and Alma was converted after the exact fashion of St. Paul. The daughters of the Lamanites were abducted like the dancing daughters of Shiloh; and Ammon, like the American counterpart of David, for want of a Goliath slew six sheep-rustlers with his sling.

So how can we reconcile this? Did Joseph Smith actually use characters from the Bible as templates for Book of Mormon characters?

This article seeks to answer this question.

Response to Question

A Few Similarities Do Not Equate to Causal Influence

One thing that should be pointed out very clearly is that a few similarities do not equate to causal influence. Just because one two characters in two books are both said to have looked at a tree longingly in Central Park in New York City, doesn't mean that the one author read the other and copied the story. The same holds for the Book of Mormon as will be argued in more detail below.

Book of Mormon Central on Type-Scenes

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #414: How Does the Book of Mormon Use an Ancient Storytelling Technique? (Video)

Book of Mormon Central has produced an excellent article that may explain this type of "plagiarism" in the Book of Mormon. That article is reproduced in full (including citations for easy reference) below:

In Genesis 24, Abraham sent his servant to a foreign land to find a wife for Isaac. When he got there, he met a girl named Rebekah at a well, she drew water for him, she ran off to tell her family about it, and later she and Isaac were betrothed. Something similar happened to Jacob. He went to a foreign land to find a wife, he met Rachael by a well, he drew water for her, she ran to tell her family, and Jacob and Rachael were betrothed (see Genesis 29). As with all true stories, the author could have told these stories in many different ways. However, the reason these two stories are so similar is because they are both based on the same pattern, called a type-scene.

A type-scene is an ancient storytelling technique where certain kinds of stories are told in certain ways. The ancient audience expected that when a main character got engaged, for example, he would journey to a foreign land, encounter a woman at a well, and draw water from the well. Then the woman would rush home to tell the family, and the man and the woman would be betrothed. However, each time the storyteller applied this type-scene to a new character, they would change the story slightly. This allowed the type-scene to fit each character’s historical circumstances, but also gave insights into the personalities of each character in the story.

For instance, biblical scholar Robert Alter noted that "it is only in [Isaac's] betrothal scene that the girl, not the stranger, draws water from the well." This fits well with what we see Rebekah doing later, when she took "the initiative at a crucial moment in the story in order to obtain the paternal blessing for her favored son, Jacob." Ultimately, "Rebekah is to become the shrewdest and the most potent of the matriarchs, and so it is entirely appropriate that she should dominate her betrothal scene." The more these stories differ from the basic type-scene, the more one can expect that the characters in the scene will turn out differently than expected.

Alan Goff has pointed out a radically different, but still recognizable, version of this type scene in Alma 17. Just as in the classic type-scene, Ammon went to a foreign land, but in this case, he went to preach the gospel (Alma 17:12). Although Ammon did not meet a woman there, the king offered Ammon his daughter in marriage, but he declined (v. 24). Shortly thereafter, Ammon went to the waters of Sebus, rather than a well, to water the flocks (v. 26). Finally, instead of the woman returning to tell the family about the presence of a potential suitor, the servants returned to the king with the arms of the would-be sheep rustlers (v. 39).

The differences between the basic type-scene and the Ammon story teach us much about Ammon and how we can be like him. Instead of going to a foreign land to find a wife, Ammon went to a foreign land to preach the gospel. When he got there and was offered the hand of the princess, he declined, stating that he wished to work for the king of the Lamanites instead. In addition to simply drawing water for the flocks, he saved them at the peril of his own life. Finally, those present at the watering of the flocks returned to tell the king not about Ammon as a potential suitor, but about the power of God that was with him.

The Ammon story takes the type-scene, in which the hero is simply trying to find a wife, and turns it on its head. Everything Ammon does in the story is done for selfless reasons. The last part of the type-scene, in which the hero becomes betrothed, is conspicuous by its absence. Ammon does not become betrothed at the end of the story because that was not his purpose in traveling to the land of the Lamanites. He went to the Lamanites to preach the gospel and remained focused on that goal the entire time he was in Lamanite lands.

It is easy for us to become so focused on ourselves and our own needs that we rarely think about those around us. Mormon’s masterful reworking of this type-scene reminds us all of the importance of putting others first. If we will all replace selfishness with selflessness, like Ammon did, we can be a true force for good in the lives of those around us and have the power of God with us in our lives, like Ammon did.

Book of Mormon Central has also produced this video on the subject:

So how then does this literary device then work with different characters in the Book of Mormon? Let’s take the claims one by one.

The Daughter of Jared and Salome

BYU Professor Nicholas J. Frederick has authored an insightful paper on this very question in the book Illuminating the Jaredite Records published by the Book of Mormon Academy.

Frederick points out that similarities do exist. Both stories involve:

1. An unnamed daughter
2. A female performing a dance before a powerful male figure
3. Demands for decapitation—one realized, the other foiled
4. Revenge against a perceived injustice
5. Swearing of oaths with unfortunate consequences (the beheading of John the Baptist and the destruction of the Jaredites).

But Frederick also points out important dissimilarities:

1. "[I]n Ether 8 the daughters of Jared is the primary actor; it is she who puts the evil ideas into her father's head and dances before Akish. In Mark's account Salome acts at her mother's behest and presumably does not know that her dance will result in John's death until her mother instructs her after the dance to ask for John's head (see 6:24). She is as much of a pawn in her mother's game as Herod is. Because of this, the daughter of Jared seems to occupy the position or role of both Herodias and Salome , as if both figures were collapsed into one Jaredite female."
2. The audience of the dance: "Salome dances for her father and his friends, while the daughter of Jared dances for a potential husband. The presence of Herod's guests presumably ensures that Salome's request will not be dismissed, an action that would likely have caused Herod to lose face. The daughters of Jared, in the same fashion, has exactly the audience she requires."
3. The nature of the request. "Herod is clearly uncomfortable offering up John's head, but he has little choice—his promise must be kept. Akish appears completely comfortable with the request to carry out the murderous plot, as are, one assumes, both Jared and his daughter."
4. The nature of the dance itself. "The daughter of Jared's dance is prefaced by Moroni's statement that Jared's daughter was "exceedingly fair," suggesting a likely sensual element to her dance, on that is expected to appeal to Akish and that will lead to his matrimonial request. While there is nothing in the text to suggest a salaciousness to the dance itself, it does appear designed to highlight the woman's physical attractiveness. In contrast, Salome is described simply as a 'damsel' (Mark 6:22), and no mention is made of her physical appearance. Nor is there any suggestion that her dance was in any way seductive or erotic, only that it 'pleased Herod' (v. 22). Again, to suggest without textual evidence that Salome's dance contained a lascivious element or that it was, in the words of one scholar, 'hardly more than a striptease' is to surely go beyond the mark."

Frederick proposes a few possible scenarios to answer the question of how we got a story this similar to Salome in the Book of Mormon:

1. Salome is a direct analogue for the daughter of Jared. This idea, as observed by Frederick, simply does not work.
2. See the daughter of Jared as a coupling of both Herodias and Salome, a move that combines these two women into one remarkable figure. Yet even then the daughter of Jared is more Herodias than Salome. The dance itself is the only contribution of Salome to the daughter of Jared's story.
3. See Ether 8 drawing on the Salome story in the nineteenth century with its oversexualized portrayal of Salome. Yet even this does not do the daughter or Jared justice. The daughter of Jared is depicted as calm, shrewd, devoted, knowledgeable, and self-sacrificing. She may be beautiful, but her beauty is one of her features; it does not define her.

Hugh Nibley writes that the account of the daughter of Jared is more similar to ancient accounts that use the same motifs of the dancing princess, old king, and challenger to the throne of the king.

This is indeed a strange and terrible tradition of throne succession, yet there is no better attested tradition in the early world than the ritual of the dancing princess (represented by the salme priestess of the Babylonians, hence the name Salome) who wins the heart of a stranger and induces him to marry her, behead the whole king, and mount the throne. I once collected a huge dossier on this awful woman and even read a paper on her at an annual meeting of the American Historical Association. You find out all about the sordid triangle of the old king, the challenger, and the dancing beauty from Frazer, Jane Harrison, Altheim, B. Chweitzer, Franell, and any number of folklorists. The thing to note especially is that there actually seems to have been a succession rite of great antiquity that followed this pattern. It is the story behind the rites at Olympia and Ara Sacra and the wanton and shocking dances of the ritual hierodules throughout the ancient world. Though it is not without actual historical parallels, as when in A.D. 998 the sister of the khalif obtained as a gift the head of the ruler of Syria, the episode of the a dancing princess is at all times essentially a ritual, and the name of Salome is perhaps no accident, for her story is anything but unique. Certainly the book of Ether is on the soundest possible ground in attributing the behavior of the daughter of Jared to the inspiration of ritual texts – secret directories on the art of deposing an aging king. The Jaredite version, incidentally, is quite different from the Salome story of the Bible, but is identical with many earlier accounts that have come down to us in the oldest records of civilization.

Aminadi and Daniel

The one connection, that both men interpreted the writings of God on a wall, is tenuous. Again, just because stories parallel each other in one respect, doesn't mean that one is dependent on the other for inspiration.

Brant A. Gardner observes:

The story of Aminadi [in Alma 10:2-3] clearly parallels Daniel 5:5-17 with a prophet interpreting Yahweh's writing on a wall, although there is no language dependency. There can be no textual dependency because Daniel describes events during the Babylonian captivity that postdates Lehi's departure from Jerusalem. Just as Alma's conversion experience was similar to, but different from, Paul's (see commentary accompanying Mosiah 27:10-11), it is probable that, if we had a fuller version of Aminadi's story, we would see both similarities and differences.

Alma and Paul

This criticism needs to be looked at in more depth since it has received the largest amount of attention from critics, apologists, and other scholars. We have an entire page at the link below:

The Daughers of the Lamanites and the Dancing Daughters of Shiloh

Latter-day Saint philosopher, historian, and Book of Mormon Scholar Alan Goff wrote a short, insightful book chapter on this parallel back in 1991:

A minor story in the Book of Mormon provides an example of how complex the task of reading the book can be. It also illustrates how much richer our understand­ing can be when we remember that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record with connections to other ancient records, par­ticularly the Old Testament. In the book of Mosiah, a band of wicked priests hid in the wilderness and kidnapped some young women to be their wives (see 20:1-5). This story can be read as an adventure tale. If looked at carefully, however, it shows the kind of connections between the Book of Mormon and the Old Testament that demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is an ancient book.

The story of kidnapping by the wicked priests is a minor part of the record of the people of Zeniff. When King Noah, ruler over the Zeniffites, rejected the prophet Abinadi's message and had him killed, the priest Alma and his followers separated from the rest of the people. Soon thereafter, the Lamanites at­tacked the people of Zeniff. As they fled from the Lamanites, F ng Noah commanded them to abandon their families. Instead, they executed Noah and attempted to kill his priests (see Mosiah 17-19). These priests escaped into the wilderness, led by Amu- lon, one of their number, and later kidnapped some daughtersof the Lamanites to be their wives. Angered by the kidnappingand assuming the Zeniffites were guilty, the Lamanites attacked them. Peace was restored when the Lamanites learned who the real kidnappers were (see Mosiah 20).

A Biblical Parallel

This story of the abduction of young Lamanite women is similar to a story in the Bible in which men from the tribe of Benjamin kidnap daughters of Israel at Shiloh. The end of the book of Judges contains three stories about the tribe of Benjamin. In the first, Benjaminites abused and murdered a Levite con­cubine (see Judges 20). In the second, the other eleven tribes gathered to punish the offenders, and a civil war resulted (see Judges 19). The third story tells of the kidnapping (see Judges 21).

After destroying most of the tribe of Benjamin, the Israelites realized that this tribe was in danger of extinction. To preserve the tribe, the Benjaminites needed wives. But the Israelites had vowed not to allow their daughters to marry the Benjaminites. To get around their vow, they instructed the Benjaminites to kidnap the daughters of the Israelites who lived at Shiloh while the young women danced in the vineyards. As the daughters of Shiloh gathered, the Benjaminites lay hidden. The girls danced, and the Benjaminites stole them to be their wives.

The Stealing of the Daughters of the Lamanites

The similarities between the stories in Mosiah and Judges are complex and carefully stated:

Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Beth­el, on the east side of the high­way that goeth up from Beth­el to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin (Judges 21:19-21).

Now there was a place in Shemlon where the daughters of the Lamanites did gather themselves together to sing, and to dance, and to make themselves merry. And it came to pass that there was one day a small number of them gathered together to sing and to dance (Mosiah 20:1-2).

The Bible clearly mentions the incident as a yearly ritual. The Book of Mormon mentions it as a regular occurrence, not telling us how often ("one day"). In both stories the kidnapped virgins became the wives of the abductors. The record says that the priests of Noah, "being ashamed to return to the city of Nephi, yea, and also fearing that the people would slay them, therefore they durst not return to their wives and their children" (Mosiah 20:3), so they watched the dancers and kidnapped sub­stitute wives. When the narrative returned to the story of Amulon and his fellow priests, the daughters of the Lamanites were then called "their wives" (Mosiah 23:33).

In both stories, the abductors, like peeping toms, waited and watched the spectacle. The Benjaminites lay in wait in the vine­yards watching the dancing. The wicked priests also found the place where the girls danced, then "they laid and watched them" (Mosiah 20:4). We know that the priests hid because in the next verse they "came forth out of their secret places" and abducted twenty-four of the dancing maidens. Not only is the watching stressed in both stories, but also the lying in wait. These were not crimes of passion, but ones of premeditation.

The Meaning of Parallels

Some Book of Mormon critics have seen the parallels between the two stories and concluded that Joseph Smith merely copied the story from Judges, they conclude that any similarities in stories indicate plagiarism. Biblical scholars take a more sophis­ticated approach than do these critics to texts that may appear to borrow from other texts. Scholars often see similarities be­tween stories as evidence of the writer's sophistication and of the richness of the text.

For example, the first of the stories about the Benjaminites, telling of the rape and death of a concubine, is similar to an earlier Bible story of Lot and his two visitors at Sodom. The story in Judges tells of a Levite and his concubine who were returning home from a visit to her father's house in Bethlehem. At a late hour they arrived at Gibeah, a Benjaminite city. Only one old man was willing to take the travelers in. As the host entertained, the men of the city gathered outside and demanded that the host bring the Levite outside so they could rape him. The host protested this violation of the law of hospitality and offered his own virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine as substitutes. The Levite instead pushed his concubine out to the mob, who "abused her all the night until the morning" (Judges 19:25). In the morning she was dead.

This story is obviously similar to the story of Lot's visitors in Genesis 19. In both stories the guests were taken in, the inhabitants of the cities threatened a homosexual rape, and the host offered two women as substitutes to spare the men. Ob­viously readers are meant to see a relationship between the two stories. Biblical scholars see this as an example of conscious borrowing intended both to enhance the meaning of the second story and to emphasize how wicked Gibeah had become. The story in Genesis 19 can easily be read and understood with no awareness of the story in Judges 19, but to understand Judges 19 in any complete way the reader must see the connection to Sodom. The Levite was portrayed unfavorably compared to Lot's divine visitors. The visitors to Sodom effected a divine rescue, while the Levite threw out his own concubine to save himself.

I believe that, in a similar way, the story of the abduction in Mosiah means more when we see it light of the story in Judges. I feel that the author of the story in Mosiah borrowed consciously from the story in Judges, which he knew from the plates of brass, to help make his point.

The story of the abduction of the daughters of Shiloh is the final story in Judges. One of the main purposes of Judges was to justify the establishment of a king. Judges described the evil the Israelites did in the Lord's sight (see Judges 3:7; 4:1), ex­plaining that they did evil because there was no king over the people (see Judges 17:6; 18:1). Judges ends with three stories about the tribe of Benjamin that illustrate this evil. The stories are preceded by a statement about the lack of a king over the land: "And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel. . . " (Judges 19:1). The third story ends with a similar statement: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). The topsy-turvy world described in Judges 17-21 dem­onstrates that doing what is right in one's own eyes is often the same thing as doing what is evil in the Lord's eyes.

By emphasizing parallels to the kidnapping story in Judges, the author of the story in Mosiah seems to me to have strength­ened the moral point. The wicked priests led by Amulon were also evil, doing what was right in their own eyes rather than following the Lord.

Other Parallels

Understandably, the text shows disapproval of all that Amu­lon and his fellow priests did. The parallel case from Judges of doing what is right in man's eyes is only one way the text shows this disapproval. There are other parallels that further discredit Amulon and his companions.

After the Lamanites captured Amulon and his people, the record states that "Amulon did gain favor in the eyes of the king of the Lamanites" (Mosiah 24:1). In gaining the favor of the Lamanites, these priests clearly lost favor with God. There is a note of disapproval in the narrator's words when he says that the people of Amulon not only found favor in the eyes of the Lamanite king, but also that the king appointed these men to be teachers over all his people (see Mosiah 24:1). As teachers, these priests taught the Lamanites the language of the Nephites (see Mosiah 24:4), "nevertheless they knew not God; neither did the brethren of Amulon teach them anything concerning the Lord their God, neither the law of Moses; nor did they teach them the words of Abinadi" (Mosiah 24:5).

On the other hand, Alma taught his people how God de­livered both the followers of Limhi and Alma out of bondage (see Mosiah 25:10, 16). He also taught them "repentance and faith on the Lord" (Mosiah 25:15) as he organized them into congregations. The author emphasizes how different from Alma the priests of Noah were. He says directly that the priests of Noah didn't teach the Lamanites Abinadi's words. He also spe­cifically mentions that Alma "went about privately among the people, and began to teach the words of Abinadi" (Mosiah 18:1). Both Alma and Amulon entered the narrative as priests of Noah. Upon hearing the words of Abinadi, Alma repented, but Amulon refused to repent. Alma taught the prophet's words in secret, while Amulon and his priests utterly refused to teach them to the Lamanites.

The reader is led to see the contrasting lives, not just of Alma and Amulon, but of the people of Limhi and Alma and the people of Amulon. Both Alma and Amulon led colonies into the wil­derness: Alma and his people, when Noah's soldiers discovered their "movement," "took their tents and their families and de­parted into the wilderness" (Mosiah 18:32, 34). Amulon and his followers also fled into the wilderness, but at Noah's command they left their families behind (see Mosiah 19:11-23).

The wicked priests abandoned their wives when King Noah "commanded them that all the men should leave their wives and their children, and flee before the Lamanites" (Mosiah 19:11), then they went about trying to find substitute wives. The other Zeniffites would rather have perished than leave their wives and children behind (see Mosiah 19:12). Thus those who remained behind "caused that their fair daughters should stand forth and plead with the Lamanites that they would not slay them" (Mosiah 19:13). The daughters inspired "compassion" among the Lamanites, for they "were charmed with the beauty of their women" (Mosiah 19:14). Later, Amulon would do the same thing, sending out the Lamanite daughters he and the other priests had kidnapped to plead for mercy (see Mosiah 23:33-34).

The text has set up parallel examples for the reader to com­pare. The Zeniffites sent men out to find those who had fled their children and wives, "all save the king and his priests" (Mosiah 19:18), and had vowed that they would return to their wives and children or die seeking revenge if the Lamanites had killed them (Mosiah 19:19). The parallel stories of sending the two sets of daughters to beg for mercy from the Lamanites teach the reader that what appear to be the same actions actually differ when performed by the good-hearted on the one hand or the evil-hearted on the other.

When we compare the people as the text invites us to do, we contrast the care the men of Limhi showed for their wives and children with the abandonment by the priests of Noah. All of these events define the lack of moral character of the priests. The fact that the Lamanite king was willing to permit the stealing of the Lamanite daughters by welcoming Amulon and the priests into his kingdom speaks badly of this king, just as the Israelites' encouragement of the Benjaminites to kidnap their own daugh­ters speaks badly of all Israel. The people of Limhi, on the other hand, "fought for their lives, and for their wives, and for their children" (Mosiah 20:11). These differences reveal not only the character of the priests of Noah, who abandoned their families rather than fall into Lamanite hands, but also of the Nephites, who decided to face death with their families rather than aban­don them.

The text is clearly unsympathetic to the people of Amulon. The connection between the two stories of abduction is a hint from the author that their actions were reminiscent of a time, reported in Judges, when the Israelites didn't follow God's law but did what was right in their own eyes. The priests are por­trayed as indifferent to God, in spite of their position, which should have made them more anxious to follow God.

The Book of Mormon story of the stealing of the Lamanite daughters cannot be accounted for by the simplistic claim that it was just copied from the Bible. The Book of Mormon makes sophisticated use of the story to make its own point. Critics of the Book of Mormon believe that the author of the text used the earlier story from Judges, and I agree. But unlike them, I believe that the parallel enhances the book and reveals it to be an ancient document rather than a modern imitation.

Ammon and David

The only similarity between these two stories is that both men killed another individual or group with a sling. How many stories can we find authored before the Book of Mormon was translated where a protagonist defeats an antagonist with a sling? Hundreds. The comparison is utterly nonsensical and flimsy.

Conclusion

The presence of similarities does not seem to do anything to belief in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. More research is sure to be forthcoming on the type-scene in the Book of Mormon and readers are encouraged to pay attention for the arrival of that literature.

Did Joseph Smith use Paul as a template for the character Alma in the Book of Mormon?

Introduction to Criticism

The Book of Mormon records the conversion and ministry of a young man named Alma. Alma, along with four companions known as the four sons of Mosiah, are recorded as going about trying to lead people away from God's church. During the apex of their efforts, an angel appears to them, causing them to fall and tremble because of fear. Because of this experience, Alma was converted to the Gospel and labored to spread it throughout his life.

In 2002, critic Grant H. Palmer asserted that this conversion narrative and much of the rest of Alma’s story "seems to draw" on Paul’s story of conversion and ministry in the New Testament as a narrative structure.

In particular, Palmer asserts that the following parallels exist between the stories of Alma and Paul:

1. Both men were wicked before their dramatic conversion (Mosiah 27:8; 1 Tim. 1:12-13).
2. Both traveled about persecuting and seeking to destroy the church of God (Alma 36:6, 14; 1 Cor. 15:9; Acts 22:4)
3. Both were persecuting the church when they saw a heavenly vision (Mosiah 27: 10-11; Acts 26: 11-13).
4. Their companions fell to the earth and were unable to understand the voice that spoke (Mosiah 27:12; Acts 22:9; 26:14).
5. Both were asked in vision why they persecuted the Lord (Mosiah 27:13; Acts 9:4; 22:7).
6. Both were struck dumb/blind, became helpless, and were assisted by their companions. They went without food before converting (Mosiah 27:19, 23-24; Acts 9:8).
7. Both preached the gospel and both performed the same miracle (Mosiah 27:32; Alma 15:11; Acts 9:20; 14:10).
8. While preaching, they supported themselves by their own labors (Alma 30:32; 1 Cor 4:12)
9. They were put in prison. After they prayed, an earthquake resulted in their bands being loosed (Alma 14:22, 26-28; Acts 16:23, 25-26).
10. Both used the same phrases in their preaching.

For point ten, Palmer cites 16 examples in which Alma and Paul used similar phrases in their teaching.

This article will seek to examine this criticism and address it in a way that makes sense given orthodox Latter-day Saint theological commitments.

A Few Preliminary Considerations

We should consider a few things about parallels themselves before getting into the specific parallels that Palmer sees between Alma and Paul.

Parallels are Easy to Create

Parallels are easy to create, and the way they are phrased can make them seem more similar than they are—and obscure important differences. For example, the shaking of the earth in Alma's account of conversion is particularly important to that story, but Palmer leaves it out because it isn't parallel.

A Translator Can See Parallels

Secondly, there are likely to be some parallels because it would have been difficult for Joseph as a translator not to see them, and perhaps translated Alma's account in ways that seem parallel to Paul.

A Few Parallels do Not Establish Literary Dependence of One Story on Another

Third, the question is whether the parallels show dependence. They can show similarity, but don't show that the Book of Mormon account had to be connected literarily to the first. There is not reason to believe that the experiences could not have been similar. God is the same and humans can have similar experiences with him.

Are we really to believe that there can't be two narratives of men persecuting a church organization, being visited by a heavenly messenger exhorting them to repent, having them converted to preaching repentance, supporting themselves by their own labor while they preach, and being freed from bands and prison without one narrative being literately dependent on the other?

Scholars John Welch and John F. Hall created a chart noting similarities and differences between Alma's and Paul's conversion. They explain:

The conversions of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus and of Alma the Younger in the land of Zarahemla are similar in certain fundamental respects, as one would expect since the source of their spiritual reversals was one and the same. Interestingly, in each case we have three accounts of their conversions: Paul’s conversion is reported in Acts 9, 22, and 26. Alma’s conversion is given in Mosiah 27, Alma 36, and 38. No two of these accounts are exactly the same. The columns on the far right and left sides of chart 15–17 show the verses of these six accounts in which each element either appears or is absent. Down the middle are found the elements shared by both Paul and Alma, and off center are words or experiences unique to either Paul or Alma. In sum, the personalized differences significantly offset and highlight the individual experiences in the two conversions.

The chart they created can be seen here.

Reviewing Each Alleged Parallel

With those thoughts in place, we can begin to examine each supposed parallel listed by Palmer and highlight areas where Palmer stretches evidence or misreads it given faulty starting assumptions. The parallels are examined below. Each narrative has important similarities and dissimilarities that need to be considered in isolation in order to understand how combining them too hastily can lead to misunderstandings and faulty premises for criticism.

1. Both men were wicked before their dramatic conversion (Mosiah 27:8; 1 Tim. 1:12-13)

A fairly innocuous parallel when taken by itself and one that we could establish with many other books. This parallel can only be seen as convincing when taken in stride with other parallels. Thus we'll have to examine others to see how strong and unique they actually are. This parallel and the next are probably better suited being combined with parallels three and four as one parallel. Both are so naturally tied into 3/4 that they function better as one parallel. Palmer may be trying to craft more parallels than necessary to make this criticism look more persuasive than it actually is.

2. Both traveled about persecuting and seeking to destroy the church of God (Alma 36:6, 14; 1 Cor. 15:9; Acts 22:4)

1. The account of Alma stresses that they were corrupting people and getting them to not keep the commandments (Mosiah 27:8–10). Paul's emphasizes that he was arresting and persecuting the Saints. Paul imprisoned followers of Christ (Acts 9:1-2) whereas Alma had no such power.
2. In Alma's case, his actions were illegal. In Paul's, they were legal and sanctioned by the church.
3. Paul is a part of the majority religion persecuting the minority religion while Alma is the opposite.

Both Alma and Paul were indeed seeking to destroy the Church.

3. Both were persecuting the church when they saw a heavenly vision (Mosiah 27: 10-11; Acts 26: 11-13); 4. Their companions fell to the earth and were unable to understand the voice that spoke (Mosiah 27:12; Acts 22:9; 26:14)

Paul is on the road to Damascus when he has his vision. The Book of Mormon doesn't give us any details as to the location of Alma and his companions when confronted by the angel. It mentions that an angel came in a cloud and that the earth shook upon which Alma and the four sons of Mosiah stood, but it doesn't give specific details as to where they were. Maybe they were in a tent looking out of it while the angel came down. We don't know for sure.

We know that Alma was with four other people at the time of the heavenly appearance. No info is given for how many companions Saul had with him while on the road to Damascus.

"The next slight difference comes in the angel's appearance to them. To Alma the angel comes in a cloud and to Saul with a bright light from heaven (Acts 9:3)."

"The next difference is the description of the voice. No description accompanies the voice in Paul's account, but in Alma's it is 'a voice of thunder' that shakes the earth. Both Saul and Alma fall to the ground—Saul/Paul because he appears to recognize majesty, and with Alma, as a result of the earth's shaking."

In both accounts, all fall to the ground and all hear the voice of the angel. "The difference is that, in the Book of Mormon account, all fall and all see the messenger (v. 18)…In the Old World example, the companions heard a voice, but the record does not allow us to infer either that they understood it or assumed it to be divine."

In Alma's case, it is an angel that is not God the Father nor Jesus Christ that appears to him and his companions. In Saul's/Paul's case, it is Jesus Christ.

5. Both were asked in vision why they persecuted the Lord (Mosiah 27:13; Acts 9:4; 22:7)

"The similarity to Paul's experience is that 'persecution' is part of the divine message in both cases. In Saul's case, however, it is Christ who is persecuted and in Alma's it is the church. The fact of persecution exists in both cases; but in the New World, Alma's persecution precedes Jesus's coming in the flesh. Thus, in one sense, there was no person with which the church might be directly identified and against whom one might persecute as in the New Testament example. Alma's version of apostasy was almost certainly like that of Noah and his priests in which he accepted much of the competing religion but also held some beliefs of the Mosaic law. In this case, Alma and the sons of Mosiah could not have accepted a declaration like that given to Saul because they would not have believed that they were persecuting Yahweh himself, only those who believed in the future Atoning Messiah. Nevertheless, the messenger declares that the church was equated with Yahweh. Alma and the sons of Mosiah were not persecuting people who believed in a nonexistent being, but they were directly persecuting their own God."

6. Both were struck dumb/blind, became helpless, and were assisted by their companions. They went without food before converting (Mosiah 27:19, 23-24; Acts 9:9)

1. Being made dumb is entirely different from being made blind.
2. Brant Gardner wrote that "Contary to Saul...Alma is completely debilitated. His companions are functional, able to carry him to assistance. Saul was only blind, but Alma was dumb and so weak that he was 'carried helpless.'"
3. Paul was incapacitated for three days and Alma for "two days and two nights"
4. Paul went without food before converting. That is specified clearly in the account of his conversion. In Alma's conversion, it is the priests who fast before Alma receives his strength again. No mention is made of Alma's ability to eat while without strength in his limbs and while mute.

7. Both preached the gospel and both performed the same miracle (Mosiah 27:32; Alma 15:11; Acts 9:20; 14:10)

Both indeed preached the Gospel. Alma ascended to political power after his conversion and then relinquished it before entering ministry whereas Paul had political power, relinquished it, and did not ascend to it again after conversion and before entering ministry.

Paul and Alma did not perform the same miracle. In Alma's passages, he implores the Lord to heal Zeezrom and allow him to walk whereas in Paul's passages, he merely commands the man from Lystra to walk. The nature of the ailment of the person healed is different between the accounts as well. In Alma's account, Zeezrom is in bed and has a fever. In Paul's account, the man is lame and has not been able to walk since he was born.

8. While preaching, they supported themselves by their own labors (Alma 30:32; 1 Cor 4:12)

This is true.

9. They were put in prison. After they prayed, an earthquake resulted in their bands being loosed (Alma 14:22, 26-28; Acts 16:23, 25-26)

Paul and Silas were placed in prison following their being stripped of their clothes and whipped. Alma and Amulek were also confined to prison after being stripped of clothes but suffered being smitten, spit upon, and having people gnash their teeth at them. Paul was imprisoned three times throughout his ministry and Alma once. It was on the first arrest that Paul was taken with Silas and put into prison.

Palmer is entirely wrong that an earthquake resulted in Alma's bands being loosed. Alma's bands are loosed by God and then the prison walls shake and tumble whereas with Paul, it's the foundations of the prison that shake first, doors open, and then the bands are loosed. The walls of the prison in Paul's narrative do not tumble down. We aren't given more specific information in the passages from Acts whether it was God or not that loosed the bands.

10. Same Phrases in Teaching

Palmer next suggests that both authors used the same phrases in teaching. Yet, the Book of Mormon is replete with phrasing from the New Testament. This is not something unique to Alma and his conversion narratives and thus it can't be used as a peculiarity to establish Joseph Smith's dependence on Paul's conversion narratives for Alma. This does, however, provide potential fodder for saying that Joseph Smith lifted New Testament language to create the Book of Mormon. FAIR has collected links to 9 articles from Book of Mormon Central on this page that explain why New Testament language might appear so frequently in the Book of Mormon text. We strongly encourage readers to read those and see what theories make the most sense for them given commitments to belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Conclusion

So there are some parallels between the accounts of Alma and Paul's conversion and ministry. It's important to remember that just because there are a few parallels that this does not equate to causal influence by one story on another. That is, just because there are parallels between the stories of Alma and Paul, doesn't mean that Joseph used Paul as a template for creating Alma. There are many important dissimilarities between the two stories and the similarities are more general instead of the unique type of similarity you might look for to establish the type of relationship Palmer wants you to see in the story.

A much more detailed response to this criticism was given by Latter-day Saint philosopher and historian Alan Goff who, in a long paper written for and published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, argues that "[b]oth the New and Old Testaments appropriate an ancient narrative genre called the prophetic commissioning story. Paul’s and Alma’s commissioning narratives hearken back to this literary genre, and to refer to either as pilfered is to misunderstand not just these individual narratives but the larger approach Hebraic writers used in composing biblical and Book of Mormon narrative." We urge readers to read his paper in full and get familiar with it.

More scholarship on this issue is bound to be forthcoming in the future as scholars continue to wrestle with how the Book of Mormon was translated and how the Book of Mormon's ancient story potentially interacts with the broader ancient Mesopotamian and Mediterranean world.

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Alma’s Prophetic Commissioning Type Scene"

Alan Goff,  Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (April 29, 2022)

The story often referred to as Alma’s conversion narrative is too often interpreted as a simplistic plagiarism of Paul’s conversion-to-Christianity story in the book of Acts. Both the New and Old Testaments appropriate an ancient narrative genre called the prophetic commissioning story. Paul’s and Alma’s commissioning narratives hearken back to this literary genre, and to refer to either as pilfered is to misunderstand not just these individual narratives but the larger approach Hebraic writers used in composing biblical and Book of Mormon narrative. To the modern mind the similarity in stories triggers explanations involving plagiarism and theft from earlier stories and denies the historicity of the narratives; ancient writers — especially of Hebraic narrative — had a quite different view of such concerns. To deny the historical nature of the stories because they appeal to particular narrative conventions is to impose a mistaken modern conceptual framework on the texts involved. A better and more complex grasp of Hebraic narrative is a necessary first step to understanding these two (and many more) Book of Mormon and biblical stories.

Click here to view the complete article

Old Testament

How can 1 Nephi 22:15 in the Book of Mormon quote Malachi 4:1 hundreds of years before Malachi was written?

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #218: Why Did Jesus Give The Nephites Malachi's Prophecies? (Video)

The translation language may resemble Malachi, but the work is not attributed to Malachi

If Joseph was a fraud, why would he plagiarize the one text—the King James Bible—which his readers would be sure to know, and sure to react negatively if they noticed it? The Book of Mormon contains much original material—Joseph didn't "need" to use the KJV; he is obviously capable of producing original material.

The Book of Mormon claims to be a "translation." Therefore, the language used is that of Joseph Smith. Joseph could choose to render similar (or identical) material using King James Bible language if that adequately represented the text's intent.

The translation language may resemble Malachi, but the work is not attributed to Malachi. Only if we presume that the Book of Mormon is a fraud at the outset is this proof of anything. If we assume that it is a translation, then the use of Bible language tells us merely that Joseph used biblical language.

Joseph used entire chapters (e.g., 3 Nephi 12-14 based on biblical texts that he did not claim were quotations from original texts (even Malachi is treated this way by Jesus in 3 Nephi 24-25. If these are not a problem, then a resemblance to biblical language elsewhere is not either, since that is simply how Joseph translated.

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Source(s) of the criticism

Critical sources

Origen Bachelor, Mormonism Exposed Internally and Externally (New York: Privately Published, 1838), 29–30. off-site Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), 115.( Index of claims )

New Testament

Did Joseph Smith riff off of Hebrews 7 to produce the material discussing Melchizedek in Alma 12 and 13?

Introduction to Question

Critic David P. Wright argues that "Alma chapters 12-13, traditionally dated to about 82 B.C.E., depends in part on the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews, dated by critical scholars to the last third of the first century C.E. The dependence of Alma 12-13 on Hebrews thus constitutes an anachronism and indicates that the chapters are a composition of Joseph Smith."

"Wright contends that Alma 13:17-19 is a reworking of Hebrews 7:1-4, noting six elements shared by the two texts and appearing in the same order in both."

This article gives some resources on approaching a response to this criticism.

Resources that Help Respond to this Criticism in Depth

This argument is one that is long, detailed, and hard to summarize easily. The reader will simply have to be directed to resources that will help them in evaluating this criticism as they read from scholars. At another point in the future, perhaps a clearer summary can be presented up front. But, for now, we direct the reader elsewhere.

John A. Tvedtnes’ Review of Wright’s Book Chapter

John Tvedtnes was one of the first to respond to Wright’s contentions in the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon back in 1994. Tvedtnes argues that the parallels do not come from Joseph Smith reading Hebrews 7 but instead that both Hebrews 7 and Alma 13 share in thought from an earlier source discussing Melchizedek. Readers can find a link to his paper at the citation below.

John W. Welch 1990 Book Chapter on the Melchizedek Material in Alma 13

Three years before Wright published on this topic, John W. Welch had written a paper on the Melchizedek material in Alma 12-13. While not giving a direct treatment of Wright’s argument nor having consciousness of it, Welch provides insightful comparisons between Alma 13, Hebrews 7, Genesis 12, and extrabiblical lore about Melchizedek to elucidate how Alma interprets Genesis and frames concepts of priesthood and thus how it differs from Hebrews 7. Readers are strongly encouraged to read Welch’s paper. Link is in the footnotes below.

Book of Mormon Central KnoWhy on Alma and Melchizedek

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #120: Why Did Alma Talk about Melchizedek? (Video)

Book of Mormon Central has written an accessible distillation and analysis of the Melchizedek material in Alma 13 that readers are encouraged to visit.

Brant A. Gardner Commentary in Second Witness

Eminent Book of Mormon scholar Brant A. Gardner has written a commentary on Alma 12 and 13 with Wright’s argument and Tvedtnes' response in consciousness and offers a subtle response to both. In that commentary, "[he takes] the position that the construction of Alma’s text follows a different logic and theme than that of Hebrews. [He develops] this argument in the commentary on the individual verses [of Alma 13]."

Conclusion

When taking in all of the arguments of these scholars, it is the belief of the author that readers will emerge with a nuanced perspective that holds to the conviction that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text and takes into account the theological and linguistic complexities that might emerge from the type of project that Joseph Smith was engaged in: producing a translation of an ancient record for the benefit and understanding of a modern audience.

Does Helaman 12:25-26 quote John 5:29?

We must remember that the speaker in this case is Mormon, who was writing more than three centuries after Jesus Christ, and who had access to a large variety of Nephite records

Some claim that Helaman 12:25-26 quotes John 5:29 :

And I would that all men might be saved. But we read that in the great and last day there are some who shall be cast out, yea, who shall be cast off from the presence of the Lord. [26] Yea, who shall be consigned to a state of endless misery, fulfilling the words which say: They that have done good shall have everlasting life; and they that have done evil shall have everlasting damnation. And thus it is. Amen. (Helaman 12꞉25-26)

It is claimed that the "reading" referred to is from John:

And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.(John 5:29:{{{4}}})

The problem with this is that Helaman 12:26 doesn't quote John, but at best paraphrases. The issue is over the word "read" that is used to force the connection. We must remember that the speaker in this case is Mormon, who was writing more than three centuries after Jesus Christ, and who had access to a large variety of Nephite records.

For example, the following Book of Mormon verses are potential sources for these ideas:

3 Nephi 26꞉5

If they be good, to the resurrection of everlasting life; and if they be evil, to the resurrection of damnation....

Mormon had access to this text, and it approximates that used in Helaman quite closely. (Remember that many who criticize the Book of Mormon on this point claim that Helman is speaking pre-Jesus Christ, rather than the editor Mormon, who is post-Jesus and thus post-3 Nephi.)

Other options include those listed below.

1 Nephi 14꞉7

For the time cometh, saith the Lamb of God, that I will work a great and a marvelous work among the children of men; a work which shall be everlasting, either on the one hand or on the other—either to the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds unto their being brought down into captivity, and also into destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil, of which I have spoken.

2 Nephi 10꞉23

Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.

Alma 22꞉6

"And also, what is this that Ammon said—If ye will repent ye shall be saved, and if ye will not repent, ye shall be cast off at the last day?"

While Mormon in Helaman doesn't use the "resurrection of life" and "resurrection of damnation" that is found in John, it does use the "shall be cast off" and "the last day". Now it isn't exact either, and its quite likely that it isn't a direct quote of this passage.

2 Nephi 2꞉26

Another source of this teaching in the Book of Mormon comes in 2 Nephi 2, in particular in verse 26:

"And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given." (2 Nephi 2꞉26)

Mormon also uses this passage when he writes in Words of Mormon 1꞉11:

"And they were handed down from king Benjamin, from generation to generation until they have fallen into my hands. And I, Mormon, pray to God that they may be preserved from this time henceforth. And I know that they will be preserved; for there are great things written upon them, out of which my people and their brethren shall be judged at the great and last day, according to the word of God which is written."

Other teaching from Christ's era?

Given that Mormon is writing well after Jesus' visit to the Nephites, it is also possible that he is citing another Christian text from that period—it would be logical for Jesus to teach something similar to John 5:29 among the Nephites, though as we have seen there were ample other pre-crucifixion texts available to the Nephites as well.

Summary

Since we have this idea present in Alma 22:6 (the missionary Aaron quoting Alma the Younger), it seems likely that this was an idea that was taught commonly among the Nephites. This is confirmed by the other passages cited. So whether or not we have the source in one of these passages that the Book of Helaman is referring to, we can see how the passage in Helaman reflects a Nephite theology and need not be a New Testament theology introduced anachronistically.

Ultimately, the idea is not a particularly complex one, and could easily have had multiple sources or approximations. Mormon need not be even citing a particular text, but merely indicating that one can "read" this idea in a variety of Nephite texts, as demonstrated above.

Thus, the claim of plagiarism seems forced, since there are Nephite texts which more closely approximate the citation than does the gospel of John, and a precise citation is not present in any case.

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Source(s) of the criticism

Critical sources

A Little Talk, Between John Robinson and his Master about Mormonism, Shewing its Origin, Absurdity, and Impiety (Bedford: W. White, 1840), 1–8. off-site “A Short and Easy Method with the Mormonites,” Anti-Socialist Gazette (Chester) no. 8 (1 May 1842): 142. off-site “The Book of Mormon and the Mormonites,” Athenaeum, Museum of Foreign Literature, Science and Art 42 (July 1841): 370–74. off-site [Letter on Mormonism, 26 July 1841,] Christian Advocate and Journal (New York) 15, no. 52 (11 August 1841). off-site “Mormonism,” New York Weekly Messenger and Young Men’s Advocate (29 April 1835). Reprinted from The Pioneer (Rock Springs, Illinois), March 1835. off-site “Gold Bible, No. 5,” The Reflector (Palmyra, New York) 2, no. 14 (28 February 1831): 109. off-site Richard Abanes, Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism (Harvest House Publishers: 2005). 51, 353-4 n. 2, 3. ( Index of claims ) (Source: Brodie) Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 70, 513n52 (HB) ( Index of claims ) (Sources: Brodie, Tanner) Origen Bachelor, Mormonism Exposed Internally and Externally (New York: Privately Published, 1838), 29–30. off-site Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 62-63. ( Index of claims ) J. Goodson, "Dear Sir," Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate 3 no. 1 (October 1836), 397–99. off-site Hank Hanegraaff, The Mormon Mirage: Seeing Through the Illusion of Mainstream Mormonism (Charlotte, NC: Christian Research Institute, 2008), ?. Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH, 1834), 37. (Affidavits examined) off-site James H. Hunt, Mormonism: Embracing the Origin, Rise and Progress of the Sect (St. Louis: Ustick and Davies, 1844), 20, 25-26, 28-29, 36. off-site Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Revised) (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1997), 204-205. ( Index of claims ) Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002) Chapter 3. ( Index of claims ) George Peck, “Mormonism and the Mormons,” Methodist Quarterly Review (January 1843): 111–27. off-site H. Stevenson, A Lecture on Mormonism (Newcastle: J. Blackwell and Co., 1839), 3-32. off-site Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), 116-122.( Index of claims ) Wesley P. Walters, "Mormonism," Christianity Today 5/6 (19 December 1960): 8–10. S. Williams, Mormonism Exposed (1838), 7–8. off-site

Notes

Response to claim: 49 - "The evidence indicates that the Book of Mormon is in fact an amalgamation of ideas that were inspired by Joseph's own environment"

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

 Author's quote: Joseph said the Book of Mormon was translated "by the gift and power of God," coming "forth out of the treasure of the heart ... thus bringing forth out of the heart, things new and old." The evidence indicates that the Book of Mormon is in fact an amalgamation of ideas that were inspired by Joseph's own environment (new) and themes from the Bible (old).

Author's sources: Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 229.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

The author misrepresents the source that he cites. He neglects to note Joseph's inclusion of covenants and the Bible in his statement in order to strengthen his own conclusion that the Book of Mormon came from Joseph's own heart. It is a stretch to interpret this phrase as some sort of admission by the Prophet that he actually created the Book of Mormon from his own mind and experience.

• From the cited source Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 229:

For the work of this example, see the book of Mormon, coming forth out of the treasure of the heart; also the covenants given to the Latter Day Saints: also the translation of the bible: thus bringing forth out of the heart, things new and old: thus answering to three measures of meal, undergoing the purifying touch by a revelation of Jesus Christ, and the ministering of angels... (emphasis added)

Response to claim: 55 - The decapitation of Laban parallels the story of Judith in the Apocrypha

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

The decapitation of Laban parallels the story of Judith in the Apocrypha.

Author's sources:
No source provided.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim contains propaganda - The author, or the author's source, is providing information or ideas in a slanted way in order to instill a particular attitude or response in the reader

There is no evidence that Joseph utilized the story of Judith as inspiration for the decapitation of Laban.

Question: Did Joseph Smith create the story of Nephi and Laban by plagiarizing concepts and phrases from the story of Judith and Holofernes in the Apocrypha?

Oliver Cowdery purchased a Bible containing the Apocrypha in October 1829, after the Book of Mormon was already at press

In order to support these claims, it would have been necessary for Joseph to have obtained a Bible containing the Apocrypha during the period of translation. It is known that Oliver Cowdery purchased a Bible in October 1829, however, the Book of Mormon was already at press by this time, with the copyright being registered on 11 June 1829. We do know that Joseph had a Bible containing the Apocrypha in 1833 during the time he produced the "Joseph Smith Translation." Doctrine and Covenants Section 91 was given to Joseph specifically in response to his question as to whether or not he ought to revise the Apocrypha.

The story of Judith and Holofernes and the story of Nephi and Laban actually have more dissimilarities than parallels

The two stories actually have more dissimilarities than parallels, with the similarities being very superficial.

The story of Nephi and Laban	The story of Judith and Holofernes
Laban resides in Jerusalem and has possession of the brass plates.	Holofernes is sent by King Nebuchadnezzar to conquer the rebellious Jews. The city of Bethulia is under siege by the Assyrians.
Nephi tells his father that he will return to Jerusalem to obtain the Brass plates of Laban.	Judith, a Jewish resident of the city of Bethulia, tells the people that she will deliver them from their oppressors.
Nephi enters Jerusalem under cover of darkness. He does not intend to kill Laban.	Judith enters the camp of the Assyrians with the intent to kill Holofernes.
Nephi finds Laban drunk and lying in the street. Nephi resists the idea of killing Laban even after he is told to do so.	Judith impresses Holofernes with her charms and gets him drunk. He passes out on his bed.
Nephi holds up Laban’s head by the hair and cuts if off with his own sword.	Judith holds up Holofernes’ head by the hair and cuts it off with his own sword.
Nephi leaves Laban lying in the street, but takes and puts on his armor and sword.	Judith takes Holofernes’ head with her back to the city to prove what she has done.
Nephi obtains the records from Laban’s house and leaves the city.	The Jews, upon learning of the death of Holofernes, leave the city and plunder the Assyrians camp.

The relationship between the story of Laban and the story of Judith is superficial at best. It has even been pointed out by LDS scholars that if one were to look for potential parallels with the story of Nephi and Laban, that the story of David and Goliath would be a much better fit than the story of Judith.

Response to claim: 57 - The author claims that the LDS position is that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the American Indians

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

The author claims that the LDS position is that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.

Author's sources: Book of Mormon, xii, "A Brief Explanation about the Book of Mormon."

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

The introduction to the Book of Mormon, which was not part of the original Book of Mormon text, asserted this. It has since been changed from "are the principal ancestors" to "among the ancestors."

Gospel Topics: "The Book of Mormon...does not claim that the peoples it describes were either the predominant or the exclusive inhabitants of the lands they occupied"

"Book of Mormon and DNA Studies," Gospel Topics on LDS.org:

The Book of Mormon provides little direct information about cultural contact between the peoples it describes and others who may have lived nearby. Consequently, most early Latter-day Saints assumed that Near Easterners or West Asians like Jared, Lehi, Mulek, and their companions were the first or the largest or even the only groups to settle the Americas. Building upon this assumption, critics insist that the Book of Mormon does not allow for the presence of other large populations in the Americas and that, therefore, Near Eastern DNA should be easily identifiable among modern native groups.

The Book of Mormon itself, however, does not claim that the peoples it describes were either the predominant or the exclusive inhabitants of the lands they occupied. In fact, cultural and demographic clues in its text hint at the presence of other groups.6 At the April 1929 general conference, President Anthony W. Ivins of the First Presidency cautioned: “We must be careful in the conclusions that we reach. The Book of Mormon … does not tell us that there was no one here before them [the peoples it describes]. It does not tell us that people did not come after.

Question: Why did the Church modify the introduction to the Book of Mormon from "principal ancestors" to "among the ancestors?"

The Church changed the wording to remove the assumption (inserted into the Book of Mormon in the 1920's) that all of the inhabitants of the Americas were exclusive descendants of Lehi

The Church made the change in wording to the introduction to the Book of Mormon to remove the assumption, which inserted into the Book of Mormon introduction in the 1920's and not part of the original text, that all of the inhabitants of the Americas were exclusive descendants of Lehi. This had been the generally held belief from the time that the Church was restored.

This change makes the Book of Mormon introduction compatible with current DNA evidence and acknowledges the fact that Lehi's group likely intermingled with the native inhabitants of the American continents based upon current knowledge of the DNA composition of the inhabitants of the New World. There is substantial scientific evidence of habitation in the Americas for thousands of years prior to Lehi's arrival.

If Lehi had any descendants among Amerindians, then after 2600 years all Amerindians would share Lehi as an ancestor. Even if (as is probable) the Lehite group was a small drop in a larger population 'ocean' of pre-Columbian inhabitants, Lehi would have been an ancestor of virtually all the modern-day Amerindians if any of his descendants married into the existing New World population.

Response to claim: 57, n38 - No Hebrew or Egyptian writing or language has been discovered in the New World

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

No Hebrew or Egyptian writing or language has been discovered in the New World. The Book of Mormon provides too short a time for the disappearance of the Nephite/Lamanite language.

Author's sources:

• Thomas Stuart Ferguson, "Written Symposium on the Book of Mormon Geography: Response of Thomas S. Ferguson to the Norman and Sorenson Papers," 12 Mar. 1975, printed and updated in Stan Larson, Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for the Book of Mormon, 175-268
• B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 91-94 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim contains propaganda - The author, or the author's source, is providing information or ideas in a slanted way in order to instill a particular attitude or response in the reader

Why would 1000 years be "too short a time" for evidence of Hebrew or Egyptian to disappear?

Question: Is finding links between Hebrew and ancient American languages realistic?

The Lehite’s mother tongue all-but-disappeared shortly after their arrival in the New World

It is important to note that we may never find traces of Hebrew language among American languages for the simple fact that the Lehite’s mother tongue all-but-disappeared shortly after their arrival in the New World. When Moroni writes about reformed Egyptian, he also explains that the “Hebrew hath been altered by us also” (Mormon 9꞉33).

Like other ancient civilizations (such as Egypt) most New World inhabitants would not have been literate. While ancient Americans had a sophisticated writing system, it is likely that knowledge of this system was limited to the civic officials or the priestly class. In the Book of Mormon we infer that training and devotion were necessary to competently master their difficult writing system. King Benjamin, for example, “caused that [his princely sons] should be taught all the languages of his fathers, that thereby they might become men of understanding” (Mosiah 1꞉3). Moroni, who had mastered the art himself, lamented that the Lord had not made the Nephites “mighty in writing” (Ether 12꞉23).

The most likely scenario is that the Lehites—who were a small incursion into a larger existing native populace—embraced the habits, culture, and language of their neighbors within a very short period after their arrival in the New World

The most likely scenario is that the Lehites—who were a small incursion into a larger existing native populace—embraced the habits, culture, and language of their neighbors within a very short period after their arrival in the New World. This is what we generally find when a small group melds with a larger group. The smaller group usually takes on the traits of the larger (or, at least, the more powerful) group—not the other way around. It is not unusual, however, for at least some of the characteristics of the smaller group to show up in the larger group’s culture. Typically, however, the smaller group becomes part of the larger group with which they merge. Thus, the Lehites would have become Mesoamericans. We see, therefore, the necessity to teach the Old World language to a few elite in order to preserve, not only the traditions, but also to maintain a continuation of scribes who could read the writings of past generations.

Even with such instruction, however, the script was most likely an altered form of Egyptian—perhaps adapted to Mesoamerican scripts—and altered according to their language. This suggests that ideas and motifs that originated in the Old World were adapted to a script that could be conveyed with New World motifs, or at least New World glyphs. Under such conditions, would there be any reason to expect that we’d find “Hebrew” among the Native Americans?

Question: Have any relationships been found between New World languages and Hebrew?

Recent scholarly research suggests a possible link between Uto-Aztecan (a family of about 30 Native American languages) and Hebrew

The Book of Mormon text suggests that Lehite language had a relatively minor impact on the speech of the Americas. It may be that Old World languages formed a type of "elite" language, used only by a few for religious purposes.

If, however, one is persuaded that the Book of Mormon text implies that some Hebrew links should still exist, preliminary linguistic data suggest that there are some intriguing links.

For example, Dr. Brian Stubbs argues for numerous parallels between Hebrew and Uto-Aztecan. As a professional linguist, Dr. Stubbs avoids the pitfalls of amateurs who simply point at similar words between two different languages. As he points out,

Any two languages can have a few similar words by pure chance. What is called the comparative method is the linguist's tool for eliminating chance similarities and determining with confidence whether two languages are historically—that is, genetically—related. This method consists of testing for three criteria. First, consistent sound correspondences must be established, for linguists have found that sounds change in consistent patterns in related languages; for example, German tag and English day are cognates (related words), as well as German tür and English door. So one rule about sound change in this case is that German initial t corresponds to English initial d. Some general rules of sound change that occur in family after family help the linguist feel more confident about reconstructing original forms from the descendant words or cognates, although a certain amount of guesswork is always involved.

Second, related languages show parallels in specific structures of grammar and morphology, that is, in rules that govern sentence and word formation.

Third, a sizable lexicon (vocabulary list) should demonstrate these sound correspondences and grammatical parallels.

When consistent parallels of these sorts are extensively demonstrated, we can be confident that there was a sister-sister connection between the two tongues at some earlier time.

A few of Stubbs' many examples are:

Hebrew/Semitic	Uto-Aztecan
kilyah/kolyah 'kidney'	kali 'kidney'
baraq 'lightning'	berok (derived from *pïrok) 'lightning'
sekem/sikm- 'shoulder'	sikum/sïka 'shoulder'
mayim/meem 'water'	meme-t 'ocean'

Rhodes Scholar Dr. Roger Westcott, non-LDS Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics at Drew University, has made positive comments about Dr. Stubbs' research:

Perhaps the most surprising of all Eurasian-American linguistic connections, at least in geographic terms, is that proposed by Brian Stubbs: a strong link between the Uto-Aztecan and Afro-Asiatic (or Hamito-Semitic) languages. The Uto-Aztecan languages are, or have been, spoken in western North America from Idaho to El Salvador. One would expect that, if Semites or their linguistic kinsmen from northern Africa were to reach the New World by water, their route would be trans-Atlantic. Indeed, what graphonomic evidence there is indicates exactly that: Canaanite inscriptions are found in Georgia and Tennessee as well as in Brazil; and Mediterranean coins, some Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic, are found in Kentucky as well as Venezuela [citing Cyrus Gordon].

But we must follow the evidence wherever it leads. And lexically, at least, it points to the Pacific rather than the Atlantic coast. Stubbs finds Semitic and (more rarely) Egyptian vocabulary in about 20 of 25 extant Uto-Aztecan languages. Of the word-bases in these vernaculars, he finds about 40 percent to be derivable from nearly 500 triliteral Semitic stems. Despite this striking proportion, however, he does not regard Uto-Aztecan as a branch of Semitic or Afro-Asiatic. Indeed, he treats Uto-Aztecan Semitisms as borrowings. But, because these borrowings are at once so numerous and so well "nativized," he prefers to regard them as an example of linguistic creolization - that is, of massive lexical adaptation of one language group to another. (By way of analogy, . . . historical linguists regard the heavy importation of French vocabulary into Middle English as a process of creolization.)....

Lest skeptics should attribute these correspondences to coincidence, however, Stubbs takes care to note that there are systematic sound-shifts, analogous to those covered in Indo-European by Grimm's Law, which recur consistently in loans from Afro-Asiatic to Uto-Aztecan. One of these is the unvoicing of voiced stops in the more southerly receiving languages. Another is the velarization of voiced labial stops and glides in the same languages.

While the conclusions remain tentative, some of the details of this on-going research look promising. Certainly, nothing in the linguistic evidence provides plausible arguments against the Book of Mormon narrative.

Question: Have any relationships been found between New World languages and Hebrew?

Recent scholarly research suggests a possible link between Uto-Aztecan (a family of about 30 Native American languages) and Hebrew

The Book of Mormon text suggests that Lehite language had a relatively minor impact on the speech of the Americas. It may be that Old World languages formed a type of "elite" language, used only by a few for religious purposes.

If, however, one is persuaded that the Book of Mormon text implies that some Hebrew links should still exist, preliminary linguistic data suggest that there are some intriguing links.

For example, Dr. Brian Stubbs argues for numerous parallels between Hebrew and Uto-Aztecan. As a professional linguist, Dr. Stubbs avoids the pitfalls of amateurs who simply point at similar words between two different languages. As he points out,

Any two languages can have a few similar words by pure chance. What is called the comparative method is the linguist's tool for eliminating chance similarities and determining with confidence whether two languages are historically—that is, genetically—related. This method consists of testing for three criteria. First, consistent sound correspondences must be established, for linguists have found that sounds change in consistent patterns in related languages; for example, German tag and English day are cognates (related words), as well as German tür and English door. So one rule about sound change in this case is that German initial t corresponds to English initial d. Some general rules of sound change that occur in family after family help the linguist feel more confident about reconstructing original forms from the descendant words or cognates, although a certain amount of guesswork is always involved.

Second, related languages show parallels in specific structures of grammar and morphology, that is, in rules that govern sentence and word formation.

Third, a sizable lexicon (vocabulary list) should demonstrate these sound correspondences and grammatical parallels.

When consistent parallels of these sorts are extensively demonstrated, we can be confident that there was a sister-sister connection between the two tongues at some earlier time.

A few of Stubbs' many examples are:

Hebrew/Semitic	Uto-Aztecan
kilyah/kolyah 'kidney'	kali 'kidney'
baraq 'lightning'	berok (derived from *pïrok) 'lightning'
sekem/sikm- 'shoulder'	sikum/sïka 'shoulder'
mayim/meem 'water'	meme-t 'ocean'

Rhodes Scholar Dr. Roger Westcott, non-LDS Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics at Drew University, has made positive comments about Dr. Stubbs' research:

Perhaps the most surprising of all Eurasian-American linguistic connections, at least in geographic terms, is that proposed by Brian Stubbs: a strong link between the Uto-Aztecan and Afro-Asiatic (or Hamito-Semitic) languages. The Uto-Aztecan languages are, or have been, spoken in western North America from Idaho to El Salvador. One would expect that, if Semites or their linguistic kinsmen from northern Africa were to reach the New World by water, their route would be trans-Atlantic. Indeed, what graphonomic evidence there is indicates exactly that: Canaanite inscriptions are found in Georgia and Tennessee as well as in Brazil; and Mediterranean coins, some Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic, are found in Kentucky as well as Venezuela [citing Cyrus Gordon].

But we must follow the evidence wherever it leads. And lexically, at least, it points to the Pacific rather than the Atlantic coast. Stubbs finds Semitic and (more rarely) Egyptian vocabulary in about 20 of 25 extant Uto-Aztecan languages. Of the word-bases in these vernaculars, he finds about 40 percent to be derivable from nearly 500 triliteral Semitic stems. Despite this striking proportion, however, he does not regard Uto-Aztecan as a branch of Semitic or Afro-Asiatic. Indeed, he treats Uto-Aztecan Semitisms as borrowings. But, because these borrowings are at once so numerous and so well "nativized," he prefers to regard them as an example of linguistic creolization - that is, of massive lexical adaptation of one language group to another. (By way of analogy, . . . historical linguists regard the heavy importation of French vocabulary into Middle English as a process of creolization.)....

Lest skeptics should attribute these correspondences to coincidence, however, Stubbs takes care to note that there are systematic sound-shifts, analogous to those covered in Indo-European by Grimm's Law, which recur consistently in loans from Afro-Asiatic to Uto-Aztecan. One of these is the unvoicing of voiced stops in the more southerly receiving languages. Another is the velarization of voiced labial stops and glides in the same languages.

While the conclusions remain tentative, some of the details of this on-going research look promising. Certainly, nothing in the linguistic evidence provides plausible arguments against the Book of Mormon narrative.

Response to claim: 58, n40 - B.H. Roberts thought that View of the Hebrews could be a basis for the Book of Mormon

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

B.H. Roberts thought that View of the Hebrews could be a basis for the Book of Mormon. Roberts concluded that there was a great probability that the Smith family read View of the Hebrews.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 28-29, 151-54 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts was providing arguments from the perspective of a critic in order to inform Church leaders of possible attacks on the Book of Mormon. Roberts stated that this did not represent his own beliefs.

Question: What did B.H. Roberts say about View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon?

B.H. Roberts was playing "devil's advocate" when he examined View of the Hebrews, and showing what a critic might do

The View of the Hebrews theory was examined in detail by B. H. Roberts in 1921 and 1922. Roberts took the position of examining the Book of Mormon from a critical perspective in order to alert the General Authorities to possible future avenues of attack by critics. The resulting manuscripts were titled Book of Mormon Difficulties and A Parallel. Roberts, who believed in a hemispheric geography for the Book of Mormon, highlighted a number of parallels between View of the Hebrews and The Book of Mormon. Roberts stated,

[C]ould the people of Mulek and of Lehi...part of the time numbering and occupying the land at least from Yucatan to Cumorah...live and move and have their being in the land of America and not come in contact with other races and tribes of men, if such existed in the New World within Book of Mormon times? To make this seem possible the area occupied by the Nephites and Lamanites would have to be extremely limited, much more limited, I fear, than the Book of Mormon would admit our assuming.

Roberts concluded that, if one assumed that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself, that View of the Hebrews could have provided him with a foundation for creating the book. In fact, many of the issues highlighted by Roberts vanish when a limited geography theory is considered. The acceptance of the View of the Hebrews theory is therefore contingent upon the acceptance of a hemispheric geography model for the Book of Mormon. In order to promote View of the Hebrews as a source, critics necessarily reject any limited geography theory proposal for the Book of Mormon.

Roberts rejected the idea that the Book of Mormon was not divine

In 1985, Roberts' manuscripts were published under the title Studies of the Book of Mormon. This book is used by critics to support their claim that B. H. Roberts lost his testimony after performing the study. Roberts, however, clearly continued to publicly support the Book of Mormon until his death, and reaffirmed his testimony both publicly and in print.

Response to claim: 60 - Roberts concluded that a copy of View of the Hebrews could have been supplied by Oliver Cowdery

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

Roberts concluded that a copy of View of the Hebrews could have been supplied by Oliver Cowdery.

Author's sources:

• Studies, 27, 151-61.
• "Poultney Church Records," bk. 3, Poultney Vermont, 1793-1828, Poultney Historical Society.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts was providing arguments from the perspective of a critic in order to inform Church leaders of possible attacks on the Book of Mormon. Roberts stated that this did not represent his own beliefs.

Question: Was the View of the Hebrews theory of Book of Mormon origin advanced during the lifetime of Joseph Smith?

The theory the Joseph Smith plagiarized View of the Hebrews was never advanced during Joseph Smith's lifetime

The theory the Joseph Smith plagiarized View of the Hebrews was never advanced during his lifetime. The prevailing theory of the day was the Spalding Theory, which quickly lost credibility upon the discovery of an actual Spalding manuscript in 1884 which bore no resemblance to the Book of Mormon. There are no records which indicate that Joseph Smith came into contact with the View of the Hebrews during the period of time that he was translating the Book of Mormon. The View of the Hebrews theory was in fact first proposed by I. Woodbridge Riley in 1902, 58 years after the death of the prophet.

Joseph Smith quoted View of the Hebrews as supporting the Book of Mormon

There was, however, a reference to View of the Hebrews within Joseph Smith's lifetime, but it came from the prophet himself. In an article published in the Times and Seasons on June 1, 1842, Joseph quoted View of the Hebrews in support of the Book of Mormon:

If such may have been the fact, that a part of the Ten Tribes came over to America, in the way we have supposed, leaving the cold regions of Assareth behind them in quest of a milder climate, it would be natural to look for tokens of the presence of Jews of some sort, along countries adjacent to the Atlantic. In order to this, we shall here make an extract from an able work: written exclusively on the subject of the Ten Tribes having come from Asia by the way of Bherings Strait, by the Rev. Ethan Smith, Pultney, Vt., who relates as follows: "Joseph Merrick, Esq., a highly respectable character in the church at Pittsfield, gave the following account: That in 1815, he was leveling some ground under and near an old wood shed, standing on a place of his, situated on (Indian Hill)... [Joseph then discusses the supposed phylacteries found among Amerindians, citing View of the Hebrews p. 220, 223.]

It strains credulity to claim that Joseph drew attention to the work from which he derived most of his ideas. Why would he call attention to the source of his forgery?

Response to claim: 60-64 - B.H. Roberts' parallels between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

B.H. Roberts' parallels between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon.

Author's sources: B.H. Roberts, Brigham D. Madsen (ed.), Studies of the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, 1992), 240-242 ( Index of claims ).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

Roberts was providing arguments from the perspective of a critic in order to inform Church leaders of possible attacks on the Book of Mormon. Roberts stated that this did not represent his own beliefs. Roberts' parallels also only had validity if one assumed a hemispheric model for the Book of Mormon.

Question: Could Joseph Smith have used Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews as a guideline for creating the Book of Mormon?

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #502: Is the Book of Mormon Like Any Other Nineteenth Century Book? (Video)

Criticisms related to View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon

• It is claimed that a 19th century work by Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews, provided source material for Joseph Smith's construction of the Book of Mormon.
• Some also postulate a link between Ethan Smith and Oliver Cowdery, since both men lived in Poultney, Vermont while Smith served as the pastor of the church that Oliver Cowdery's family attended at the time that View of the Hebrews was being written.

Many of the criticisms proposed are based upon B. H. Roberts' list of parallels, which only had validity if one applied a hemispheric geography model to the Book of Mormon

The View of the Hebrews theory is yet another attempt to fit a secular origin to the Book of Mormon. Many of the criticisms proposed are based upon B. H. Roberts' list of parallels, which only had validity if one applied a hemispheric geography model to the Book of Mormon. There are a significant number of differences between the two books, which are easily discovered upon reading Ethan Smith's work. Many points that Ethan Smith thought were important are not mentioned at all in the Book of Mormon, and many of the "parallels" are no longer valid based upon current scholarship.

Advocates of the Ethan Smith theory must also explain why Joseph, the ostensible forger, had the chutzpah to point out the source of his forgery. They must also explain why, if Joseph found this evidence so compelling, he did not exploit it for use in the Book of Mormon text itself, since the Book of Mormon contains no reference to the many "unparallels" that Ethan assured his readers virtually guaranteed a Hebrew connection to the Amerindians.

Response to claim: 65-66 - Joseph Smith received a revelation to send people to Canada to sell the Book of Mormon copyright

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

Joseph Smith received a revelation to send people to Canada to sell the Book of Mormon copyright for $8000. After expenses, the money was to go to the Smith family.

Author's sources:

• Hiram Page to William E. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848, in RLDS Library Archives.
• Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, 30-31.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim is based upon correct information - The author is providing knowledge concerning some particular fact, subject, or event

This is correct. The text of the actual revelation has recently been found among the Joseph Smith Papers.

Question: Are there any eyewitness accounts of the events that resulted in the trip to Canada to sell the Book of Mormon copyright?

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #556: Why Did Joseph Smith Attempt to Secure the Book of Mormon Copyright in Canada? (Video)

Joseph Smith decided this could be an opportunity to relieve some of the financial pressure associated with publishing the Book of Mormon

Joseph Smith had been told there were people in Canada willing to buy the copyrights to useful books. Due to the dire financial position of the Church, he decided this could be an opportunity to relieve some of the financial pressure associated with publishing the Book of Mormon. Four men went to Canada.

Joseph Smith received a revelation directing them to go to Kingston, Canada, with some conditions placed upon their success

Before leaving, Joseph Smith received a revelation directing them to go to Kingston, Canada, with some conditions placed upon their success.

...it Pleaseth me that Oliver Cowderey Joseph Knight Hyram Pagee & Josiah Stowel shall do my work in this thing yea even in securing the Copyright & they shall do it with an eye single to my Glory that it may be the means of bringing souls unto me Salvation through mine only Be{t\gotten} Behold I am God I have spoken it & it is expedient in me Wherefor I say unto you that ye shall go to Kingston seeking me continually through mine only Be{t\gotten} & if ye do this ye shall have my spirit to go with you & ye shall have an addition of all things which is expedient in me. amen & I grant unto my servent a privelige that he may sell a copyright through you speaking after the manner of men for the four Provinces if the People harden not their hearts against the enticeings of my spirit & my word for Behold it lieth in themselves to their condemnation &{◊\or} th{er\eir} salvation.

The text of the actual revelation was recently discovered and published in The Joseph Smith Papers

The text of the revelation was published in the The Joseph Smith Papers: The Revelations and Translations Series. According to Marlin K. Jensen, Church Historian and Recorder,

Another interesting development from work on the Revelations and Translations Series has been the identification of a previously unpublished revelation on securing a copyright for the Book of Mormon in Canada. David Whitmer, after he left the Church, recalled that the revelation promised success in selling the copyright, but upon return of the men charged with the duty, Joseph Smith and others were disappointed by what seemed like failure. Historians have relied upon statements of David Whitmer, Hiram Page, and William McLellin for decades but have not had the actual text of the revelation. Revelation Book 1 will provide that.

Although we still do not know the whole story, particularly Joseph Smith’s own view of the situation, we do know that calling the divine communication a “failed revelation” is not warranted. The Lord’s directive clearly conditions the successful sale of the copyright on the worthiness of those seeking to make the sale as well as on the spiritual receptivity of the potential purchasers.

Hiram Page, one of the participants, stated he for the first time understood how some revelations given to people were not necessarily for their direct benefit

Hiram Page, who was one of the individuals sent to Canada, laid out the event in a letter in 1848. Page wrote that the revelation Joseph Smith received conditioned success upon whether those individuals in Canada capable of buying the Book of Mormon copyright would have their hearts softened. When unable to sell the copyright, the four men returned to Palmyra. Hiram Page stated he for the first time understood how some revelations given to people were not necessarily for their direct benefit—in fact, Hiram Page believed that the revelation was actually fulfilled.

Response to claim: 66 - The writing of the 116 pages served as an "apprenticeship" to learning to write the Book of Mormon

The author(s) of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins make(s) the following claim:

The writing of the 116 pages served as an "apprenticeship" to learning to write the Book of Mormon.

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim contains propaganda - The author, or the author's source, is providing information or ideas in a slanted way in order to instill a particular attitude or response in the reader

This is simply the author's opinion, without evidence to support it.

Question: Was Joseph Smith afraid to reproduce the text of the lost 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript because he could not do so?

It is inconsistent for the critics to believe that Joseph was capable of dictating in the manner that he did, and yet could not have easily dictated an alternate text to replace that which was lost

Upon completing the translation of the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, known as the Book of Lehi, Martin Harris, who had acted as scribe during this period of time, asked the Prophet if he could show the manuscript to his wife Lucy. After repeated inquiries of the Lord, Joseph reluctantly agreed to let Martin take the manuscript home. The manuscript disappeared after Martin showed it not only to his wife, but to a number of other people as well. Rather than re-translate the original portion of the record, the Lord instructed Joseph to translate an additional set of plates that had been provided, the record of Nephi, as described in D&C 3 and D&C 10.

Critics have attempted to come up with a secular explanation of why Joseph Smith would create an entirely different text rather than simply reproducing the text of the 116 lost pages. One argument used by critics is that Joseph was afraid to reproduce the text of the 116 pages because he could not do so, and that he therefore chose to avoid the issue by creating an entirely different text.

Given the descriptions of the translation process by various witnesses, it is apparent that the translation proceeded in a very linear fashion. Each day Joseph would pick up the translation where he had left off the day before, without any recital of the previously written text. It is inconsistent for the critics to believe that Joseph was capable of dictating in this manner, and yet could not have easily dictated an alternate text to replace that which was lost. For the believer, it is much easier to accept that the Lord, in His wisdom, knew of the problem that would occur and provided an alternate text.

The loss of the 116 pages did not stop the Book of Mormon from coming forth. If the Book of Lehi (Mormon’s abridgment of what is currently found in the first books in the Book of Mormon today) had been preserved, we would not have had the “more spiritual” first person narrative of Nephi and Jacob. The incident provided a very valuable lesson about the importance of not opposing the Lord’s will. This incident affected the Prophet very deeply, and he was more determined than ever to regain the ability to translate. The lessons taught by this incident are meaningful and are taught even today to members of the Church.

The Lord taught Joseph an important lesson with the loss of the manuscript

The Lord taught Joseph an important lesson with the loss of the manuscript, and He provided an alternate text to compensate. It wasn't necessary to obtain the original pages, therefore there was no reason for Joseph to attempt to locate it using a seer stone. The Lord did not command him to do so. In fact, the Lord commanded Joseph not to retranslate the pages, therefore this is really an issue of whether or not one believes that Joseph was actually a prophet. Had the pages not been lost, we would not have the following:

• D&C 3꞉6-10

And behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men. For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words— Yet you should have been faithful; and he would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and he would have been with you in every time of trouble. Behold, thou art Joseph, and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord, but because of transgression, if thou art not aware thou wilt fall. But remember, God is merciful; therefore, repent of that which thou hast done which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to the work.

A looser translation model might cause other problems

Another possibility is raised by Brant Gardner. Gardner argues that the Book of Mormon translation was not a word-for-word process, and that Joseph had considerable freedom in how he rendered the text. This means that even a divinely-inspired translation would not be the same (and certainly not word-for-word the same) if done twice. Given the expectations in Joseph's environment (which saw scripture as inerrant and divinely inspired word-for-word), this might have caused problems for Joseph's contemporaries. They expected, even demanded that scripture be inerrant and revealed word-for-word. David Whitmer, for example, would later complain that Joseph ought not to edit the revelations he received--David was still stuck with the view of revelation shared by most nineteenth century believers.

Further Evidence Against This

In the 1830 preface to the Book of Mormon, Joseph explains why he didn't try to retranslate the lost portion, identifying the reasons given by the Lord in D&C 10. Given this, if the conspiring men were planning to introduce a modified document, they would now immediately fall under scrutiny, since Joseph preemptively identified the conspiracy. By coming forward, they would actually substantiate Joseph's claim of prophecy! By sharing this revelation with Joseph, the Lord called these men into question before they even had a chance to carry out their plan.

Additionally, the Book of Mormon never mentions the small plates of Nephi after the Words of Mormon. If Joseph translated the Book of Lehi, lost it, and waited several months before beginning in Mosiah again, wouldn't Joseph want to back up his claim for two sets of plates by mentioning it from Mosiah through Moroni? Wouldn't he want to throw in a plug for the"second set of plates" to add plausibility to his claim? But the only time we hear of these plates are 1 Nephi through the Words of Mormon--the only people who actually wrote on the plates. It would make sense that Nephi, Jacob, etc, would mention repeatedly which plates they are writing on. It also makes sense that Mosiah through Moroni are more concerned with the large plates of Nephi, since those are the records that are being updated.

Notes