Studies

[Record from Babylon, Plates of Brass, Plates of Ether, Plates of Jacob, Plates of Mormon, Plates of Nephi – Large; Plates of Nephi – Small; Plates of Zeniff]

Foreground

1 And now I, Moroni, proceed to give an account of those ancient inhabitants who were destroyed by the hand of the Lord upon the face of this north country.
2 And I take mine account from the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of Ether.
3 And as I suppose that the first part of this record, which speaks concerning the creation of the world, and also of Adam, and an account from that time even to the great tower, and whatsoever things transpired among the children of men until that time, is had among the Jews—
4 Therefore I do not write those things which transpired from the days of Adam until that time; but they are had upon the plates; and whoso findeth them, the same will have power that he may get the full account.
5 But behold, I give not the full account, but a part of the account I give, from the tower down until they were destroyed.
6 And on this wise do I give the account. He that wrote this record was Ether (Ether 1)

Mandate

21 And it came to pass that the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: Behold, thou shalt not suffer these things which ye have seen and heard to go forth unto the world, until the time cometh that I shall glorify my name in the flesh; wherefore, ye shall treasure up the things which ye have seen and heard, and show it to no man.
22 And behold, when ye shall come unto me, ye shall write them and shall seal them up, that no one can interpret them; for ye shall write them in a language that they cannot be read.
23 And behold, these two stones will I give unto thee, and ye shall seal them up also with the things which ye shall write.
24 For behold, the language which ye shall write I have confounded; wherefore I WILL CAUSE IN MY OWN DUE TIME THAT THESE STONES SHALL MAGNIFY TO THE EYES OF MEN THESE THINGS WHICH YE SHALL WRITE.
25 And when the Lord had said these words, he showed unto the brother of Jared all the inhabitants of the earth which had been, and also all that would be; and he withheld them not from his sight, even unto the ends of the earth.
27 And the Lord said unto him: Write these things and seal them up; and I will show them in mine own due time unto the children of men.
28 And it came to pass that the Lord commanded him that he should seal up the two stones which he had received, and show them not, until the Lord should show them unto the children of men. (Ether 3)

Background

9 And for a testimony that the things that they had said are true they have brought twenty-four plates which are filled with engravings, and they are of pure gold.
10 And behold, also, they have brought breastplates, which are large, and they are of brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound.
11 And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; (Mosiah 8)

27 And they brought a record with them, even a record of the people whose bones they had found; and it was engraven on plates of ore. (Mosiah 21)

14 And it came to pass that Mosiah received them with joy; and he also received their records, and also the records which had been found by the people of Limhi. (Mosiah 22)

11 Therefore he took the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, and also the plates of Nephi, and all the things which he had kept and preserved according to the commandments of God, after having translated and caused to be written the records which were on the plates of gold which had been found by the people of Limhi, which were delivered to him by the hand of Limhi;
12 And this he did because of the great anxiety of his people; for they were desirous beyond measure to know concerning those people who had been destroyed.
13 And now he translated them by the means of those two stones which were fastened into the two rims of a bow.
14 Now these things were prepared from the beginning, and were handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages;
15 And they have been kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord, that he should discover to every creature who should possess the land the iniquities and abominations of his people;
16 And whosoever has these things is called SEER, after the manner of old times.
17 Now after Mosiah had finished translating these records, behold, it gave an account of the people who were destroyed, from the time that they were destroyed back to the building of the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people and they were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth, yea, and even from that time back until the creation of Adam. (Mosiah 28)

Afterward

1 And the Lord commanded the brother of Jared to go down out of the mount from the presence of the Lord, and write the things which he had seen; and they were forbidden to come unto the children of men until after that he should be lifted up upon the cross; and for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world until after Christ should show himself unto his people.
2 And after Christ truly had showed himself unto his people he commanded that they should be made manifest.
3 And now, after that, they have all dwindled in unbelief; and there is none save it be the Lamanites, and they have rejected the gospel of Christ; therefore I am commanded that I should hide them up again in the earth.
4 Behold, I have written upon these plates the very things which the brother of Jared saw; and there never were greater things made manifest than those which were made manifest unto the brother of Jared.
5 Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them; and I have written them. And he commanded me that I should seal them up; and he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof; wherefore I have sealed up the interpreters, according to the commandment of the Lord.
6 For the Lord said unto me: They shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord.
7 And in that day that they shall exercise faith in me, saith the Lord, even as the brother of Jared did, that they may become sanctified in me, then will I manifest unto them the things which the brother of Jared saw, even to the unfolding unto them all my revelations, saith Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of the heavens and of the earth, and all things that in them are.
8 And he that will contend against the word of the Lord, let him be accursed; and he that shall deny these things, let him be accursed; for unto them will I show no greater things, saith Jesus Christ; for I am he who speaketh. (Ether 4)

Outcome

33 And the Lord spake unto Ether, and said unto him: Go forth. And he went forth, and beheld that the words of the Lord had all been fulfilled; and he FINISHED HIS RECORD; (and the hundredth part I have not written) and he hid them in a manner that the people of Limhi did find them.
34 Now the last words which are written by Ether are these: Whether the Lord will that I be TRANSLATED, or that I suffer the will of the Lord in the flesh, it mattereth not, if it so be that I am saved in the kingdom of God. Amen. (Ether 15)

“A naming pattern that includes the ancient Egyptian morpheme represented by the pin-tailed duck heiroglyph G39 (with its filial meaning) involves attested linguistic phenomena that could point to the Book of Mormon as an authentic translation from an ancient text with both Egyptian and Hebrew linguistic components.

Since we currently have access only to the English translation of the original text, the few words maintained in the original language are the only direct access we have to the morphology and phonology of the language of the ancient people who wrote the record.

Names in the Book of Mormon were transliterated rather than translated and comprise a large portion of the small corpus of lexical items preserved in the original Book of Mormon language, from which we may derive a deeper understanding of the linguistics and culture of those people.

If accurate, this naming pattern may also provide us with further clues regarding the genealogies of these Book of Mormon individuals.”

(Eve Koller, “An Egyptian Linguistic Component in Book of Mormon Names,” BYU Studies Quarterly, 57:4, p. 139)

Abstract: This paper describes and compares the Book of Mormon’s 12 instances of complex finite cause syntax, the structure exemplified by the language of Ether 9:33: “the Lord did cause the serpents that they should pursue them no more.” This is not King James language or currently known to be pseudo-archaic language (language used by modern authors seeking to imitate biblical or related archaic language), but it does occur in earlier English, almost entirely before the year 1700.

In the Book of Mormon, the syntax is always expressed with the modal auxiliary verbs should and shall. Twenty-five original examples of this specific usage have been identified so far outside of the Book of Mormon (not counting two cases of creative biblical editing — see the appendix).

The text’s larger pattern of clausal verb complementation after the verb cause, 58 percent finite in 236 instances, is utterly different from what we encounter in the King James Bible and pseudo-archaic texts, which are 99 to 100 percent infinitival in their clausal complementation.

The totality of the evidence indicates that Joseph Smith would not have produced this causative syntax of the Book of Mormon in a pseudo-archaic effort. Therefore, this dataset provides additional strong evidence for a revealed-words view of the 1829 dictation.

(Stanford Carmack, “The Book of Mormon’s Complex Finite Cause Syntax,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, Vol. 49 (2021), pp. 113-136)

The Book of Mormon stands out from pseudo-archaic texts in both types and number of instances of subordinate that.

The longer pseudo-archaic texts, which together have more than twice as many words as the Book of Mormon, have fewer types of subordinate that, as well as fewer instances.

Taken together, the 12 longer pseudo-archaic texts have half as many types and about one-fifth the rate of occurrence (1.2 instances per about 10,000 words versus 6.9 per 10,000 words in the Book of Mormon, which has approximately 250,000 words in mostly nonbiblical contexts).

Table 1. Comparison of archaic subordinate that usage with eight subordinators in the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon, and 25 pseudo-archaic texts.

	King James Bible	Book of Mormon	Pseudo-Archaic Texts
after that S	✓	✓	✓
how that S	✓	✓	✓
because that S	✓	✓	✓
for that S	✓	✓	✓
before that S	✓	✓
lest that S	✓	✓
until/till/to that S	✓	✓
Since that S		✓

Note: Five other subordinating conjunctions discussed in Grammatical Variation (see note 6) — “except (that) S”, “insomuch (that) S”, “notwithstanding (that) S”, “save (that) S”, and “than (that) S” — were not included in this study, either because the degree of archaism of the that-construction isn’t clear or the lack of that is often due to other grammatical factors. The correlation of the subordinate that usage of the King James Bible and the Book of Mormon is 0.78.

(Stanford Carmack, “A Comparison of the Book of Mormon’s Subordinate That Usage,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, Vol. 50 (2022), pp. 1-32, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/a-comparison-of-the-book-of-mormons-subordinate-that-usage/)

Lehi, Nephi, Helaman, Shiblon, Moronihah, Amalickiah, Korihor, Pahoran, Lamoni, Zeezrom, Shiz—what strange names! Most are difficult to pronounce, remember, classify, and keep straight. And there are 188 of them. Joseph Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon from ancient records that included authentic names, which he was not at liberty to change. Some critics maintain that the Book of Mormon is fiction and that Joseph invented the names in the same way many authors of fiction do. It would be interesting to study this topic in more depth.

Many successful fiction writers who choose and invent names for their characters claim name selection is an extremely important and difficult process. Literary name specialist Leonard Ashley asserted, “Names require serious and sensitive handling.” If Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon as a work of fiction, did he handle names as seriously and sensitively as authors of fiction claim that they do?

[Sharon Black and Brad Wilcox, “188 Unexplainable Names: Book of Mormon Names No Fiction Writer Would Choose,” Religious Educator, vol.12, no. 2 (2011), pp. 119–133, https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/volume-12-number-2-2011/188-unexplainable-names-book-mormon-names-no-fiction-writer-would]

The expression “narrow path” is unique to The Most Holy & Sacred Book of Mormon and one would have thought that if Joseph Smith had plagiarized the Bible to invent The Most Holy & Sacred Book of Mormon he would have borrowed the King James expression “straight and narrow way” instead.

This is just another of many witnesses to the truthfulness of this sacred record which confirms Jesus is the Christ, born of a virgin, died, rose again, and now sits at the right side of Father God!

20 And I also beheld a strait and narrow path, which came along by the rod of iron, even to the tree by which I stood; and it also led by the head of the fountain, unto a large and spacious field, as if it had been a world. (1 Nephi 8:20)

18 And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life; yea, ye have entered in by the gate; ye have done according to the commandments of the Father and the Son; and ye have received the Holy Ghost, which witnesses of the Father and the Son, unto the fulfilling of the promise which he hath made, that if ye entered in by the way ye should receive.
19 And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save. (2 Nephi 31:18–19)

9 I also have charity for the Gentiles. But behold, for none of these can I hope except they shall be reconciled unto Christ, and enter into the narrow gate, and walk in the strait path which leads to life, and continue in the path until the end of the day of probation. (2 Nephi 33:9)

The phrase “And it came to pass” occurs in The Book of Mormon 677 more times than in the Old Testament (KJV) – a number deemed to be excessive by some.

In truth, the phrase is based on the hebrew WAYEHI, which Bible translators rendered in more ways than one: “it happened,” “it became,” “it was,” etc..

As it turns out, The Book of Mormon translation is more consistent than the Bible, and the use of “And it came to pass” is not excessive.

“Waw” is the Hebrew letter most often used as a co-ordinating conjunction. It is attached to nouns in a list. The following is a good example of its use:

35 And the Lord hath blessed my master greatly; and he is become great: and he hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, and menservants, and maidservants, and camels, and asses. (Genesis 24)

If written in proper English, only one conjunction would have been used, plus a series of commas:

He hath given him flocks, herds, silver, gold, menservants, maidservants, camels, and asses.

The Book of Mormon is full of these Hebrew like conjunctives. Here is just one example:

14 But behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of ships, and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work. (Helaman 3)

If written in proper English it would have looked like this:

Their wars, contentions, dissensions, preaching, prophecies, shipping, and building of ships.

What was once something to scoff at, is now regarded as evidence Joseph did not write The Book of Mormon.

The word “type” does not occur in the KJV Bible yet it is repeatedly used in the Book of Mormon:

Mosiah 3:15 and many signs and wonders and types and shadows shewed he unto them concerning his coming and also Holy Prophets spake unto them concerning his coming and yet they hardened their hearts and understood not that the law of Moses availeth nothing except it were through the atonement of his blood

Mosiah 13:10 but this much I tell you what you do with me after this shall be as a type and a shadow of things which is to come

Mosiah 13:31 but behold I say unto you that all these things were types of things to come

Alma 13:16 now these ordinances were given after this manner that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God it being a type of his order or it being his order and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins that they might enter into the rest of the Lord.

Alma 25:10 for he said unto them What ye shall do unto me shall be a type of things to come

Alma 25:15 yea and they did keep the law of Moses for it was expedient that they should keep the law of Moses as yet for it was not all fulfilled but notwithstanding the law of Moses they did look forward to the coming of Christ considering that the law of Moses was a type of his coming and believing that they must keep those outward performances until the time that he should be revealed unto them

Alma 33:19 behold he was spoken of by Moses yea and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness that whosoever would look upon it might live and many did look and live

Alma 37:45 and now I say Is there not a type in this thing for just as suredly as this director did bring our fathers by following its course to the promised land shall the words of Christ if we follow its course carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise.

Ether 13:6 and that a New Jerusalem should be built up upon this land unto the remnant of the seed of Joseph for the which things there has been a type

Source: Study Light

Which flies in the face of the critic who claims Joseph plagarized the King James Bible.