The following are responses to alleged anachronisms in the Book of Mormon by the critic William J. Whalen, The Latter-day Saints in the Modern World (rev ed.; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967). It will be instructive to see how modern scholarship over the past 50 years has blown many of these anachronisms (which, sadly, are still being brought up by grossly misinformed modern critics) out of the water:
Many words appear in the text which were unknown at the dates ascribed to the composition of the Book of Mormon. The Nephites worship in synagogues, a Greek word signifying an institution which developed after the Nephites left Palestine. (p. 45)
It has been a long-standing criticism of the Book of Mormon that its mention of “synagogues” represents an impossibility in the text. But Webster’s 1828 dictionary defined the term in a rather generic manner as a place of assembly for Jews, so its appearance in the Book of Mormon as an English translation is not problematic.
The original scholarly consensus was that synagogues did not exist until after the destruction of the second temple in AD 70, notwithstanding the mention of synagogues in the Gospels. With the discovery of synagogues in Egypt dating to the first and second centuries BC, the date was extended to the postexilic era. And further evidence indicates an even earlier date for the origin of the synagogue. In 621 BC, with the discovery of the Book of the Law (probably Deuteronomy), the Deuteronomic reformation occurred with Josiah at its head (see 2 Kings 22–24). At this time blood sacrifices and temple worship were centralized in Jerusalem, resulting in local congregations of Israelites who met for worship, prayer, and instruction. According to some scholars, such gatherings that took place in the chambers of city gates were the original synagogues. Furthermore, the use of certain terms such as bet haʿam (Jeremiah 39:8), miqdash-me ʿat (Ezekiel 11:16), and moʿade ʾel (Psalm 74:8) have been invoked to substantiate a preexilic date for synagogue origins. (see Lee Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 21–34)
Other words which the Nephites could hardly have known are baptize, church, gospel, barges, etc. (p. 45)
None of these words are anachronistic.
Baptize/baptism
Another Hebrew verb,טבל appears 16 times in the OT, having the meaning of "to dip" or "to immerse," all part-and-parcel of "baptism" (e.g., Gen 37:31; Num 19:18; 2 Kgs 5:14; Job 9:31).
With respect to 2 Kgs 5:14, the LXX translatesטבל using the Greek verb meaning “to baptise” βαπτιζω that appears three other times in the LXX (Isa 21:4 in the proto-canonical texts; Judith 12:7; Sirach 34:35 in the Apocrypha) .
For a book-length treatment, see Jonathan Lawrence, Washing in Water: Trajectories of Ritual Bathing in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Society of Biblical Literature, 2006)
Church
The term “church” denotes any convocation or gathering of individuals, whether secular (as in 1 Nephi 4:26) or religious in nature. In the Hebrew Bible, there are two terms that denote an “assembly” or “congregation,” קהל and עדה; the LXX translates these terms using words such as εκκλησια (the same term used in Matt 16:18); συναγωγη ("assembling"/"bringing together"); and the verb, εξεκκλησιαζω ("to summon to an assembly")
Gospel
Gospel simply means "good news." The LXX of 2 Sam 4:10 uses ευαγγελιον ("gospel" in the Greek NT) to translate the Hebrew word בְּשֹׂרָה which means "good tidings" which itself appears in the Hebrew Bible in many places. HALOT defines the term thusly:
1492 בְּשׂוֹרָה/בְּשֹׂרָה
בְּשֹׂרָה and 2S 1825 בְּשׂוֹרָה: I בשׂר: Ug. bsërt, Akk. bussurtu tidings, MHb., JArm.tg and Meg.Taanit xii בשורתא, CPArm. bswrÀ Arb. busër, bisëaÒrat )< Arm., Fraenkel 115( and Eth. besraÒt good tidings; Sept. εὐαγγέλιον; Bauer Wb. Pal. Arb.; TWNT 2:705ff, 718ff; Bultmann Theol. 86f; Bowman in Mem. Manson 54ff; RGG 2:974f:
—1. tidings 2S 1820, good tidings 1825.27 2K 79;
—2. messenger’s reward 2S 410 1822. †
"Gospel" is not an anachronistic word in the Book of Mormon, especially in light of recent studies on Messianic expectation in Old Testament times which were much more "Christian" in expectation. For more, see, for e.g., Michael Rydelnik, The Messianic Hope: Is the Hebrew Bible Really Messianic? (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2010).
Finally, there is the fact that "good/glad tidings" is a word attested in the Ugaritic language, a member of the Northwest Semitic Language family (the same language family as Hebrew) in texts dating from 1350-1150 BC, significantly pre-dating the time of Lehi et al.
Finally, there is the fact that "good/glad tidings" is a word attested in the Ugaritic language, a member of the Northwest Semitic Language family (the same language family as Hebrew) in texts dating from 1350-1150 BC, significantly pre-dating the time of Lehi et al.
On the Ugaritic cognate to the Hebrew term בְּשֹׂרָה, Cyrus Gordon wrote:
535. bšr II ‘to get tidings (good or evil)’ (76:III:34, 35); D ‘to bring tidings’ (1 Aqht 86); bšrt (76:III:34) ‘tidings’ ; (51:V:88) tbšr bcl (89) bšrtk.yblt ‘be informed, O Bacl, I bring thy tidings’. (Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook [Analecta Orientalia 38; Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1965], 377)
Here are Gordon’s transliteration of the relevant texts:
51:V:88
[88] gh.wtṣḥ.tbšr bcl
[89] bšrtk.yblt.ybn (Ibid., 172)
76:III:34, 35
[34] bšrt.il. bš[r b]cl
[35] w bšr.ḥtk.dgn (Ibid., 183)
1 Aqht 86
[86] abšrkm dn[ ] (Ibid., 245)
This is yet another nail in the coffin of the claim that “gospel” is an anachronistic word in the Book of Mormon.
Barges
Barges do not represent an anachronism in the Book of Mormon. Webster's 1828 Dictionary defintes "barges" thusly:
1. A pleasure boat; a vessel or boat of state, furnished with elegant apartments, canopies and cushions, equipped with a band of rowers, and decorated with flags and streamers; used by officers and magistrates.
2. A flat-bottomed vessel of burthen, for loading and unloading ships.
Such are not anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. Interestingly, the description of the Jaredite voyage, barges included, has many meaningful parallels in antiquity, bolstering, not diminishing, the historicity of the Book of Mormon. For a discussion, see John Tvedtnes, "The Jaredite Ocean Voyage." See also Raphael Patai, The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times (rev ed.; Princeton University Press, 1999). See also Bruce Webster, Pre-Columbian shipping between South America and Mexico?, a summary of Floating a big idea: MIT demos ancient use of rafts to transport goods
"Bible"
The Greek word biblia from which we derive the word bible was first used as a name for the scriptures in the fifth century after Christ. It means “books” or “booklets” and is used to designate a collection of inspired writings bound in codex form. But in 2 Nephi 29:3 we read, “Many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.” (p. 45)
The word “Bible” is the English form of the Greek term meaning “books.” The term was not used until the fifth century C.E. to describe the entire collection of sacred books, so of course the word “Bible” was not used in Nephi’s time. But when Joseph Smith translated the gold plates, he knew that the collection of books or scriptures the Prophet Nephi was talking about in 2 Nephi 29:3-4, 6 was the latter-day Bible, so he used that word so there would be no doubt to the world what the prophecy was about. Using the word “Bible” would be expected since the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient language to a modern-day language. There are other places in the Book of Mormon where apparently anachronistic words are used to convey the meaning of the text, such as the French word “adieu” at the end of the Book of Jacob, because at the time Joseph translated it, that word seemed the most appropriate 19th century word to use to represent Jacob’s feelings as he said good-bye. Bible translators also used French derived words such as “tache” (Exo 26:6) and “bruit” (Jer 10:22) to best convey the meanings of the Hebrew words they are translating.
Interestingly, other translations of ancient texts use "Bible" in the same way the Book of Mormon does. The Letter of Aristeas is a text that is variously dated from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. One can read it on-line, such as Charles’ 1913 English translation here, or the Greek text here. While researching a different topic, I came across the following:
I have also received from Theodectus the tragic poet (the report) that when he was about to include in a play a passage from that is written in the Bible, he was afflicted with cataract of the eyes. He suspected that this was why the affliction had befallen him, so he besought God for many days. (v.316) ( "The Letter of Aristeas" translated by R.J.H. Sutt in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2: Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 7-34, here, pp.33-34; emphasis added. The underlining Greek is ἐπισφα-λέστερον ἐκ τοῦ νόμου προσιστορεῖν (alt: "unreliable translations of the Law" [Charles]). As Shutt notes(p. 34 n. 3), this is a reference to the texts of the Old Testament.)
Additionally, in his translation and commentary of Galatians, Craig Keener offered the following translation of Gal 3:13:
If scholarly translations such as those of R.J.H. Shutt's and Craig Keener's can use "the Bible," so can Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon.
Christ purchased our deliverance from the above-mentioned curse of the law, by becoming a curse on your behalf. This is because the Bible says, “Everyone who was hanged on tree is cursed.” (Craig S. Kenner, Galatians: A Commentary [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2019], 253 [the Greek is ὅτι γέγραπται, "for it is written"])
The Use of the "Prophetic Perfect"
The point of view of the Nephites puzzle the non-Mormon reader since the Messianic hopes of the Nephites are so clearly identified with the person of Jesus Christ, his atonement, baptism, death by crucifixion, and resurrection. Nothing anywhere so specific and prophetic appears in the Old Testament. Verses in 2 Nephi 31:6 and 8, allegedly written between 559 and 545 B.C., refer to Jesus Christ in the past tense: “Now, I would ask of you, my beloved brethren, wherein the Lamb of God did fulfil all righteousness in being baptized in water? . . . Wherefore, after he was baptized with water the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove.” Again in 2 Nephi 33:6 the Nephite prophet exclaims: “I glory in my Jesus for he hath redeemed my soul from hell.” These sentiments would have a more genuine ring if we were told they were expressed by a frontier revivalist than by a Nephite writing six centuries before the birth of Christ. (pp. 45-46)
Such is not anachronistic language. This is a literary form called “prolepsis,” where something then-future is spoken of in the past as it is sure to happen in the eyes of the speaker/author, and permeates both Old and New Testaments. In the latter, two potent examples would be John 17:22 and Jude 1:14-15.
In John 17:22, Jesus, speaking of his followers, states that:
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them . . .
Such glory is said to have been “given” (δεδωκα, the indicative perfect active of διδωμι) to Christ’s followers, notwithstanding it was not given to them at that time, but a then-future promise.
In Jude 1:14-15, speaking of the prophet Enoch, we read:
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied (Προεφήτευσεν) of these, saying, behold the Lord cometh (ἦλθεν) with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgement (ποιῆσαι κρίσιν) upon all, among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
In this pericope, Enoch is quoted, being said to have “prophesied,” and writes of God having “cometh” and having “[executed] judgement.” The Greek underlying this text uses aorist tenses for the verbs “to prophecy” (προφητευω); “to come” (ερχομαι) and “to do” judgement (ποιεω). However, none of these events occurred during Enoch's lifetime, but due to the fidelity of God to his promises, it was so sure in the mind of Enoch, he could confidently speak of them as past actions. Another term that is used for this literary form in Scripture is the “prophetic perfect” (cf. the Fourth Servant Hymn in Isaiah).
"Jehovah"
Such was part of the explicit Messianic expectation of the Book of Mormon peoples. Note the following:
Wherefore, the prophets, and the priests, and the teachers, did labor diligently, exhorting with all long-suffering the people to diligence; teaching the law of Moses, and the intent for which it was given; persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah, and believe in him to come as though he already was. And after this manner did they teach them. (Jarom 1:11, emphasis added)
Biblical scholars would be startled to discover the invented word Jehovah in the Nephite scriptures. In 2 Nephi 22:2 we read:
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation.
With one minor change this is a transcription of Isaiah 12:2 in the 1611 version. The problem for Mormon scholars is that the word Jehovah was made up from the Jewish tetragrammaton—JHVH—long after the plates of the Book of Mormon were buried in A.D. 420. (p. 46)
"Lord Jehovah" translates the Hebrew יָ֣הּ יְהוָ֔ה. It was common for translation literature of the time to translate YHWH as “Jehovah,” and Joseph Smith did the very same. This is not evidence of anachronism in the same way that “in the beginning,” English words, are not anachronistic when found in English translation of Gen 1:1, notwithstanding English not existing at the time Gen 1:1 was originally composed.
The Doxology in the Sermon on the Mount
By examining the extensive selections corresponding to those in the Bible we can also arrive at a judgment as to the date at which the Book of Mormon was actually composed. For example, the ending of the Lord’s Prayer, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever”—which appears in the King James Version as Matthew 6:13 and in the Book of Mormon as 3 Nephi 13:13—is certainly an interpolation. Scripture scholars agree that this liturgical addition was introduced around the fifth century and mistakenly incorporated into some versions of the New Testament. Recent versions eliminate the interpolation. That a Nephite scribe on another continent could come up with the identical interpolation stretches credibility. (pp. 46-47)
There have been many responses to this alleged “error.” In his book, Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount (online here), John W. Welch provides a number of arguments that Jesus did utter a doxology. Consider the following:
First, it would have been highly irregular at the time of Jesus to end a Jewish prayer without some words in praise of God. In Palestinian practice, it was completely unthinkable that a prayer would end with the word “temptation.” In Judaism, prayers are often concluded with a “seal,” a sentence of praise freely formulated by the man who was praying (on this, see Jeremias’ book, The Prayers of Jesus).
Secondly, at a temple setting, that of the Sermon in 3 Nephi 12-14, it is all the more unlikely that a prayer at the temple would end without some form of doxology. This may be a factor in explaining why Luke 11 does not contain a doxology, while the Lord’s Prayer at Bountiful does. In prayers at a temple, the people did not end a prayer with just “Amen.” The benediction at the temple on the Day of Atonement ended with the phrase, “Praised be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and eternally!”
Thirdly, the doxology in the KJV and the Sermon at the Temple seems to have followed a traditional form, reflected in 1 Chronicles 29:10-13, as is widely observed. The Nephites may have known such phraseology from their Israelite traditions, for it appears in an important blessing spoken by King David, and the Nephite record contained certain historical records of the Jews (see 1 Nephi 5:12). According to Chronicles, David’s blessing reads: “Wherefore David blessed the Lord before all the congregation: and David said, Blessed be thou Lord God of Israel out father forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom” (1 Chron 29:10-11, emphasis added).
Fourthly, although a minority, several early texts in Greek, Syriac, and Coptic include doxologies at the end of the Lord ’s Prayer in Matthew 6:13.
What is also interesting is the Didache, an early Christian document that has been variously dated (most scholars argue that it was written about 100 C.E.; one leading Didache scholar, Aaron Milavec, in his The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 C.E. places it before the inscripturation of the Gospel of Matthew) contains the doxology in his rendition of the Lord’s Prayer (Didache 8:2), showing that the doxology in the Sermon at the Mount was known in Christian antiquity; it was not a much later development. Commenting on the Didache, one scholar wrote:
Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7, 385 as cited by Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 438 n. 118.
The three-member doxology, which is usual in our services, is missing in the best manuscripts. But 2 Tim 4:18 and the doxology in Did. 8:2 which, according to the custom of the Didache (10:5) has two members, show that the Lord’s Prayer was prayed in the Greek church from the beginning with a doxology.
Isaiah 5:25 (=2 Nephi 15:25) and "torn"
The King James Version renders Isaiah 5:25 incorrectly as “and their carcasses were torn in the midst of the streets.” The Hebrew word suchah means “refuse” not “torn” and modern Protestant versions correct this error so that it reads “And their corpses were as refuse (offal) in the midst of the streets.” The Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 15:25 perpetuates the King James error. (p. 47)
The Hebrew term in question here is כַּסּוּחָה. Again, this is not a KJV error that made its way into the Book of Mormon--if the Hebrew is read as a verb, as in the KJV, it means "cut off" or "torn off"; only by reading it as a noun prefixed preposition it would mean "as offal." The author clearly did not know Hebrew.
"Steel"
Laban draws a sword and Nephi observes that “the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.” No one believes that steel was available to Laban or anyone else in 592 B.C. (p. 48)
This was ably answered by Matthew P. Roper, Of Cynics and Swords:
Laban’s Sword Nephi records that Laban, a powerful military official in Jerusalem around 600 B.C., possessed a sword with a blade “of the most precious steel” (1 Nephi 4:9).11 White admits that he finds no problem here (p. 34). It is worth noting, however, that many critics of the Book of Mormon have cited this passage as evidence against the Book of Mormon’s historicity. “Steel,” it is argued, “was not known to man in those days.”12 Today, however, it is increasingly apparent that the practice of “steeling” iron through deliberate carburization was well-known to the Near Eastern world from which the Lehi colony emerged. “It seems evident that by the beginning of the tenth century B.C. blacksmiths were intentionally steeling iron.”13 A carburized iron knife dating to the twelfth century B.C. is known from Cyprus.14 In addition to this,
A site on Mt. Adir in northern Israel has yielded an iron pick in association with 12th-century pottery. One would hesitate to remove a sample from the pick for analysis, but it has been possible to test the tip of it for hardness. The readings averaged 38 on the Rockwell “C” scale of hardness. This is a reading characteristic of modern hardened steel.15
Quenching, another method of steeling iron, was also known to Mediterranean blacksmiths during this period. “By the beginning of the seventh century B.C. at the latest the blacksmiths of the eastern Mediterranean had mastered two of the processes that make iron a useful material for tools and weapons: carburizing and quenching.”16 Archaeologists recently discovered a carburized iron sword near Jericho. The sword, which had a bronze haft, was one meter long and dates to the time of King Josiah, who would likely have been a contemporary of Lehi.17 Hershel Shanks recently described the find as “spectacular” since it is the only complete sword of its size and type from this period yet discovered in Israel.18 Such discoveries lend a greater sense of historicity to Nephi’s passing comment in the Book of Mormon.
Notes for the Above:
12 Stuart Martin, The Mystery of Mormonism (London: Odhams, 1920), 44.
13 Robert Maddin, James D. Muhly, and Tamara S. Wheeler, “How the Iron Age Began,” Scientific American 237/4 (October 1977): 127.
14 Ibid. The knife shows evidence of quenching. See Tamara S. Wheeler and Robert Maddin, “Metallurgy and Ancient Man,” in The Coming Age of Iron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 121.
15 Maddin, Muhly, and Wheeler, “How the Iron Age Began,” 127.
16 Ibid., 131.
17 Hershel Shanks, “Antiquities Director Confronts Problems and Controversies,” Biblical Archaeology Review 12/4 (July-August 1986): 33, 35.
18 Ibid., 33.
Horses
In Alma 20:6 the writer mentions horses, which all archaeologists agree were extinct on this contingent by that period and were not introduced until the coming of Spanish settlers. (p. 48)
The “horse” may not be an anachronism in the Book of Mormon anymore. For a full discussion, see Wade E. Miller and Matthew Roper, Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives, BYU Studies 56/4. For a summary, see the article from Book of Mormon Central, New Evidence for Horses in America.
It is refreshing to see that, with the passage of 50+ years, many of these "problems" in the Book of Mormon have been satisfactorily answered by LDS and non-LDS scholarship. Furthermore, the evidences for the authenticity and antiquity of the Book of Mormon continue to grow, something that would not be true if the Book of Mormon was not what it claims to be--a translation of an ancient document. For a good summary, see, for e.g., the various pages at Book of Mormon Central.
