"Problems with the Book of Mormon" - A Critical Examination of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

A Critical Examination of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. "The Mormons") cont.

D. Problems with the Book of Mormon.

1. Translation:

a. In the Pearl of Great Price, in Joseph Smith's writings (2:62-65) he claimed that a colleague, Martin Harris, took a portion of Smith's translation work to an expert, Professor Charles Anthon, who allegedly confirmed both the legitimacy of the characters and the accuracy of the translation.

b. In a letter to E.D. Howe who was investigating the claims of Smith and Mormonism, Dr. Anthon categorically denied that he had made such statements. He described the characters Harris had brought as a "singular scrawl" and warned him of being deceived by "rogues". (See Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, pp. 180-183 for more detail.)

c. The Smithsonian Institution states that no report of finding any ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, or other Old World writings in pre-Columbian (before 1492) America has ever stood up to close examination. Furthermore, no anthropologist nor any linguist anywhere has ever heard of or found the slightest trace of a "reformed Egyptian" language.

2. Archaeological evidence:

a. The Book of Mormon describes these two ancient American civilizations as being extensive. Such passages as: Mormon 1:7; 6:15a; 2 Nephi 5:15; Ether 9:17-19; 15:2; Helaman 3:8-9, 14 speak of great civilizations covering the land building, trading, manufacturing, farming, fighting wars, etc. There are thirty-eight cities catalogued in the Book of Mormon.

b. The laws of archaeological research demand that if these things are true, there must be some kind of evidence left behind. Here are the facts :

1) None of the cities have been found.

2) No inscriptions or manuscripts with any Book of Mormon names of people, nations, places have been found.

3) No evidence of any Old World domesticated food plants (wheat, barley, oats, rice, etc.) or animals (cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, etc.) in America before 1492, except dogs.

4) No evidence of iron, steel, cement, glass, or silk in the Americas before 1492.

5) No artifact of any kind supporting the Book of Mormon has been found.

** NOTE: The Smithsonian Institute and the National Geographic Society are both on record as denying the claims of the Book of Mormon. Whereas the evidence for Biblical history is so great it convinced skeptics like Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel and the great archaeologist Sir William Ramsey, the case against the Book of Mormon is so devastating that prominent Mormon archaeologist Thomas Stewart Ferguson quit the church. Likewise for Jerald and Sandra Tanner who now publish extensive and detailed information revealing the error of Mormon doctrine (Sandra is a great-great-granddaughter of Brigham Young while Jerald is thought to be descended from John Tanner, a colleague and helper of Joseph Smith in the 1830's).

c. Mormons often point to the works and ruins of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas as evidence for the veracity of the Book of Mormon.

1) If it is true that the American Indians are descendants of Lehi and his people (Jews), it would stand to reason there would be physiological and genetic similarities.

2) To the contrary, anthropologists and geneticists have found that the various physical factors of the races from which the Jewish or Semitic people come bear little or no resemblance to those of the American Indian.

3) According to authorities such as W.C. Boyd and Bentley Glass, a geneticist at John Hopkins, the Semitic races are extracted from the Mediterranean Caucasoid type, while native Americans are Mongoloid, that is, most closely related to peoples of eastern, central and northeastern Asia. This would tie in with the theory that the ancestors of the American Indians crossed a land bridge that once existed in the Bering Strait region. (See Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, pp.184-186.)

4) Also, there is no evidence that any pre-Columbian Indians had any knowledge of Christianity or the Bible.

5) Furthermore, present evidence shows that the first people to reach America from the East (Europe) were Norsemen around A.D. 1000. There is no evidence of them ever being in Mexico, Central or South America prior to 1492.

** NOTE: There is absolutely no reason to believe that the original inhabitants of the Americas had anything whatsoever to do with people of Jewish descent. The artifacts and buildings of the great Central and South American Indian cultures in no way support the claims of the Book of Mormon.

3. Revisions in the text:

a. In the original 1830 edition Mosiah 21:28 reads: "...king Benjamin had a gift from God whereby he could interpret such engravings;..." The only problem is that according to Mosiah 6:5 King Benjamin was already dead. This was corrected and now reads: "...king Mosiah had a gift..."

b. The 1830 version of 1 Nephi 11:18 reads: "...Behold, the virgin which thou seest is the mother of God..." Since Mary could not be the literal mother of their earth deity "Elohim", they had to change it to: "...Behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God..."

c. Similarly, 1 Nephi 11:21 originally read: "...Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the eternal Father!" Now it reads: "...Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!"

FYI: These are three of the more important of 3,913 changes made in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon for one reason or another. Many of the others were grammatical in nature (wrong tense, misspelled words, etc.). However there are several more where the actual information in a verse is changed to make it internally consistent or because the doctrinal implications of a phrase were so unacceptable it had to be edited. In the introduction to their book 3,913 Changes in the Book of Mormon, Jerald and Sandra Tanner provide several quotations from Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders confirming that their position was that the alleged translation of the plates were perfectly correct in their original form because it was translated "by the power of God" (Joseph Smith, History of the Church, Vol. 1 pp. 54-55).

Why then was it changed so many times? Eventually Mormon leaders, embarrassed by the bad grammar and legitimate assertations that God would not provide such faulty English to Smith for any translation of His Word, began to teach that God gave Smith the ideas but Smith expressed them in his own words. It is obvious why they would edit the verses that were clearly wrong and/or contradicted their own doctrine. Still the necessity of the changes raises a huge red flag. Somebody somewhere in this loop is wrong. Today's teaching is that Smith and the early leaders were wrong in their declarations about the book being absolutely correct. If so, that means that Smith either copied errors that were already written on the alleged plates by Mormon or the Book of Mormon was not perfectly translated by the power of God as they so stridently claimed. The other possibility is that today's leaders are wrong to declare Smith's translation to have errors. But the obvious mistakes which have now been corrected/edited make this extremely unlikely. Past and present Mormon positions contradict each other. It is clear the book cannot be trusted for the eternal destiny of one's soul.

4. Plagiarism:

a. The Book of Mormon contains some 27,000 words from the King James Bible. Former Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner (The Case Against Mormonism) list 400 instances where the Book of Mormon quotes the KJV New Testament almost verbatim.

QUESTION: How can a book written supposedly between 600 B.C. and A.D. 421 could possibly contain such extensive quotations from the King James Bible not to be written for another 1200-2000 years? Mormons might answer that since it is the same God speaking it is natural the same words would be used. (Cf. 2 Nephi 29:8). But that answer is insufficient. Why would the translation from different languages (Hebrew and Greek versus "reformed Egyptian") by different men who lived over 200 years apart be word for word in so many places? Even more interesting, why do words with obvious Greek derivations (e.g., Jesus Christ, Timothy, Jonas, Alpha, Omega) appear in a book which is being translated from "reformed Egyptian?"

b. Furthermore, why does the Book of Mormon even contain King James translation errors?

1) In Isaiah 4:5 the correct translation for the Hebrew word "chuppah" is "canopy" or "covering", not "defense". Compare 2 Nephi 14:5.

2) In Isaiah 5:25 the correct translation for "suchah" is "refuse", not "torn". Compare 2 Nephi 15:25.

** These translation errors are there because the King James translators didn't know any better at the time of their translation work and neither did Joseph Smith who simply copied their work.

c. One last question we might ask is why a man translating a work into English in 19th century America would use 17th century English when he wrote it down?

** There are allegations that Smith stole the story line for the Book of Mormon from a novel by Solomon Spaulding, a retired minister who wrote several works of fictional romances with biblical backgrounds before his death in 1816. He sometimes used the King James style of English in his books to make them seem more ancient or authentic. (For more information see Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, pp. 191-193.) Another possible source which might have inspired Smith's imagination for his Book of Mormon script was Rev. Ethan Smith's novel A View of the Hebrews. It is telling that on the title page of the original 1830 edition and in the original Testimony of the Eight Witnesses about the Book of Mormon, Smith is described as the "Author and Proprietor of this work..." Later, of course, those words were changed to "translator."

Next: Contradictions and Errors