In a work attempting to respond to Latter-day Saint scholarship on LDS theology and the Book of Mormon, one Evangelical Protestant wrote:
Is the Book of Mormon Perfect or Corrupted?
According to Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon is more correct than the Bible (HC, Vol. 4, p. 461). FARMS researcher and scholar John A. Tvedtnes says he was amazed at all the errors in the Book of Mormon, yet in the same scholarly analysis he amazingly states that the Book of Mormon literary form “. . . bears witness that it is valid, valuable, realistic, and authentic” (John A. Tvedtnes, “Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon,” [Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1981], 1). Could a holy book of God be inspired, corrupt, and still be perfect? (Matthew A. Paulson, Breaking the Mormon Code: A Critique of Mormon Scholarship Regarding Classical Christian Theology and the Book of Mormon [Livermore, Calif.: WingSpan Press, 2006, 2009], 213)
There are a number of problems with this rather naïve reading of Joseph Smith’s comments about the Book of Mormon. Here is the statement as it appears in the History of the Church that Paulson references, but does not quote:
Sunday, 28.—I spent the day in the council with the Twelve Apostles at the house of President Young, conversing with them upon a variety of subjects. Brother Joseph Fielding was present, having been absent four years on a mission to England. I told the brethren 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.
The “correctness” of the Book of Mormon relates to its doctrinal content; it is not a statement that the Book of Mormon is “perfect” as Paulson (either through deception and/or ignorance) misreads it. Indeed, note that Joseph Smith made this comment in 1841, one year after the 1840 edition and three years after the 1837 editions of the Book of Mormon which he helped edit and prepare. Contextually, it is clear he is not speaking of the “perfection” of the text, but only the theology, thereof.
As for Tvedtnes' 1981 study on the Isaiah variants, note what Tvedtnes wrote at the beginning of his study and substantiated throughout
As some of the variants was studied, it became clear that, in some instances, the Book of Mormon text could be said to be more "authentic" than that of the standard Massoretic Hebrew text from which the KJV deries. The opposite was true in other cases. And there were many examples wherein the validity of neither the Book of Mormon (Brass Plates original) or the Massoretic text (MT) could be demonstrated.
One should not think that, because some of the evidence does not favour the Book of Mormon, that it is evidence that the book is fraudulent. Indeed, there are many variants in the Isaiah texts as found in different ancient versions used for comparison in this study. One is not justified in deciding which of many variants is "correct" or "original" in many cases . . . The Book of Mormon authors themselves admit that there may be erros [sic] in the text. They had no monopoly on perfection, and indeed, did not believe in perfection on the human level. We cannot know how true to the original text of Isaiah the Brass Plates (BP) which Lehi possessed were. They may have contained errors. Or the Nephite scribes may have copied some of them in error. Thus, errors in the Isaiah passages of the Book of Mormon, though unfavourable to the authenticity of the Isaiah quotes, are not evidence against the book itself. (p. 2)
In other words, while there may be “errors” in the Isaiah variants in the Book of Mormon, such is common in ancient texts of the Bible, so in and of itself, is not evidence for it being a 19th century production but a translation of an ancient text.
We see this even in the Bible. In Jer 31:32 (38:32 in the LXX), we read:
It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. (NRSV)
However, when this text is quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read:
God finds fault with them when he says: "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I had no concern for them, says the Lord. (Heb 8:8-9, NRSV)
In the Hebrew of Jeremiah, Yahweh likens himself to a husband (the underlying Hebrew is בעל which means "to marry" or "to rule over) However, Hebrews, following the LXX, uses the verb αμελεω, meaning "to neglect" or "be unconcerned." The reason is that the first letter of the Hebrew verb, if misread as a gamel instead of a beth (גֹּ֫עַל ) can mean "loathing" or "disdain," thus the variant.
As these are different concepts, there is an error in at least one of these texts. Using Paulson’s “logic,” this is proof that the Bible cannot be ancient and/or the Word of God as it is not “perfect,” showing that anti-Mormon “arguments” levelled against the Book of Mormon usually end up attacking the Bible, too, if our Evangelical opponents were consistent. This was discussed by John Tvedtnes in a very good paper:
Paulson (pp. 213-4) spills a lot of ink about the Mosiah/Benjamin variant in Mosiah 21:28 (it also appears in Ether 4:1, though he appears unaware of that), focusing on a paper by L. Ara Norwood that briefly touched upon this issue, while conveniently ignoring Norwood’s expanded work on this issue. For a discussion, see L. Ara Norwood, King Benjamin or Mosiah: A Look at Mosiah 21:28 (though it is also discussed in the Tvedtnes article linked above, too) as well as Royal Skousen’s 6-volume study of the variants in the Book of Mormon, Analysis of Textual Variations of the Book of Mormon (available for free[!] online here)
For informed articles on the Book of Mormon be sure to check out the great work done by Book of Mormon Central and articles relating to the Book of Mormon published by Interpreter, such as the recent works of Matthew Bowen on the onomasticon of the volume.
