Note: Much of the content in this podcast can be found in show participant Ross Anderson’s book Understanding the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon claims to be an ancient scripture that tells the story of God’s people in the American continent. It was engraved on gold plates and translated by Joseph Smith through the “gift and power of God.” 

In fact, Smith claimed that “the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book” (History of the Church, 4:461). 

LDS missionaries seek converts by urging them to read BoM and pray about its divine authenticity.

Anachronism 

• Anachronism = events or objects that appear out of the proper time period in which one would expect them
• Synagogues
• Alma 16:13 = Nephite evangelists preached repentance in synagogues, “which were built after the manner of the Jews”
• Nephites were descended from Jews → were Jewish (according to story)
• But synagogues were not developed in Judaism until 400 years after Nephites left Jerusalem
• How could the writer have know HOW the Jews built their synagogues?
• Plants / Animals
• Mosiah 9:9 “And we began to till the ground, yea, even with all manner of seeds: with seeds of corn and of wheat and of barley.”
• Wheat and barley were brought to America by Europeans
• Sheep / goats / cattle / swine → introduced to America by Europeans
• Economy → use of money (coinage) vs. barter

18th Century Ideas

• Since its publication, observers have noted that BoM contains many parallels to 19th c. American life
• Alexander Campbell: JS wrote into the BoM “every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years”
• BoM decides all the great theological / social controversies of the age
• Reflects 19th c. theological & political themes
• Offers guidance on democracy, socialism, capitalism, various Protestant controversies like infant baptism, Calvinism, miracles, the fall of humankind, call to ministry, Unitarianism, etc
• Sermons by Nephite prophets echo closely the form & language of 19th c. evangelists
• Conversion experiences described in BoM are similar to spiritual awakenings commonly reported in American revival movement of early 1800s
• Why are the contents of an ancient work so closely tied to the concerns of one American generation?

Literary Sources

• A View of the Hebrews (1823) by Ethan Smith (Read it here)
• Argued that Native Americans descended from lost 10 tribes of Israel
• This was a pretty common view in early 1800s
• BoM shares several thematic elements
• Extensive quotations from Isaiah
• The New World peopled from the Old World by long sea voyage
• A religious motive for that migration
• Migrants divided into civilized and uncivilized groups with long wars between them
• Eventual destruction of the civilized by the uncivilized
• Assumption that Native Americans are descended from these Israelite people
• Record a change of government from monarchy to republic
• Suggest the gospel was preached in ancient America
• It is unknown whether JS had access to a copy of View of the Hebrews
• But even if BoM was not directly inspired by it, the ideas expressed in it were common and popular in 19th century America; reflected in dozens of books
• History of the American Indians (1775) by James Adair
• Specific words and phrases describing Indian fortifications - same in both
• Many other parallels
• The Wonders of Nature (1825) by Josiah Priest
• Similarity in several passages → a pure coincidence?
• The Golden Pot (1827 eng trans), by ETA Hoffman
• Several alleged similarities in this story compared to the story of how the BoM / gold plates came forth

Bible Anachronisms

• Aspects of how the BoM interacts with the Bible → don’t reflect JS’s times
• KJV language = KJV translated in 1611, 210+ years before BoM
• English had changed quite a bit → compare reading American lit from that time
• Last of the Mohicans / The Scarlet Letter / Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• But BoM is written in full-on KJV style
• KJV the predominant translation → extremely wide circulation
• It was how Scripture sounded
• Why would BoM not reflect the common language of JS’s time?
• If not a conscious attempt to make it sound like Scripture
• BoM contains verbal parallels to the 1611 preface to KJV
• Words / phrases in the preface, but not in the KJV text of Bible
• Which, of course, ancient writers would not have had access to
• BoM has a timeline → approx dates when events took place
• Alma 12-13 (dates) draws heavily on the book of Hebrews
• A variety of BoM’s theological statements draw from / depend on interpretations already present in the NT
• Prophecies from 1-2 Nephi (600-5454 BC) about coming of Jesus Christ use language recorded in NT
• Reads more like a Xian doc vs a Jewish doc
• In a sense, these BoM prophecies know too much detail about Messiah - far more than OT prophets
• Suggests an author familiar with the fulfillment of the prophecies after the fact
• BoM version of Sermon on Mount
• Some changes are made: no ref to Pharisees
• But many issues in BoM version that presuppose 1st-century Jewish cultural / religious context
• Going 2 miles when forced to go 1
• The “jot and tittle” of Scripture
• “Dogs” as a metaphor for Gentiles
• Etc.
• Does the Bible have the same issues?
• The evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls gives strong evidence of the reliability of the Bible

See: “What Are the Dead Seas Scrolls?”