While his essay is perhaps the best work critiquing the historicity of the Book of Mormon, David P. Wright’s study of the Isaiah variants in the Book of Mormon sometimes reveals how he and other critics are unable to give even the slightest amount of credit to Joseph Smith (who they believe to be the author of the volume). Consider the following:
(6) Isaiah 2:20//2 Nephi 12:20: The KJV reads "In that
day a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold which they made
_each _one for himself to worship to the moles...." The BM
reads the relative clause with a singular verb: "which he hath made for
himself to worship." The Codex Alexandrinus of the LXX has a singular
verb, ha epoiesen proskunein "which he made to
worship"; so also the Vulgate: quae fecerat sibi ut
adoraret "which he had made for himself so that he may
worship." Nevertheless, the BM's variant probably
derives from modification of the KJV. The text is numerically
inconsistent: "a man...they..._each _one for
himself." Smith could have simply been smoothing out the English. There
are several other cases where an attempt to establish consistency can be
discerned in the BM Isaiah: "Say ye to the righteous, that _it _shall
_be well _with _him: for they shall eat the fruit of their
doings" > "Say unto the righteous that it is well with
them..." (Isa 3:10//2 N3 13:10); "Woe unto the wicked! _it
_shall _be ill _with _him" > "Wo unto the
wicked for they shall perish" (Isa 3:11//2 Ne 13:11; compare the previous
verse; and cf. also in v. 11 "reward of his hands" > "their
hands"); "...for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come
to pass, _that _he _that _is left in Zion, and _he
_that remaineth in Jerusalem" > "...And it shall come to
pass them (later editions: they) that are left in Zion and remaineth in
Jerusalem" (Isa 4:2-3//2 Ne 14:3); "And in that day they shall
roar...and if _one look unto the land" > "...and
if they look unto the land" (Isa 5:30//2 Ne 15:30); "and _it shall
return" > "and they shall return" (Isa 6:13//2 Ne 16:13; here
the context is the return of the people, conceptually plural). All these cases
of numerical smoothing are associable with KJV italicized words. The variant at
2 Nephi 12:20 is likewise associable with italics. (David P. Wright, "Appendix:
Supposed Evidence from Ancient Manuscripts and Hebrew Language and Style")
Other examples include:
(1) Isaiah 2:5//2
Nephi 12:5: The KJV has "O house of Jacob, come ye, and let
us walk in the light of the Lord." The BM has a plus following this:
"Yea, come, for ye have all gone astray every one to his wicked
ways." Tvedtnes says a two-part textual error led to the loss of the BM's
long plus here: (Tvedtnes, "Isaiah Variants," 169; The Isaiah Variants
22. BMCT (1:172 n. 368) notes that the BM phrase may have been deleted by
haplography.) (1) the omission of b'w (which
he says lies behind "Yea, come") because of its similarity to
the b'wr in v. 4 (a type of haplography) and (2) the
omission of "for ye have all gone astray every one to his wicked
ways" because it would begin with the same conjunction as the beginning of
v. 6 (parablepsis). (Haplography is a scribal mistake where a letter,
sometimes a word, is written once when it is to be written twice. Parablepsis
is where a word or phrase is left out because its beginning is the same as the
text that follows or its end is the same the text that precedes (cf. Emanuel
Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress Press;
Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992], 237-240) An
argument for the antiquity of the BM text based on supposed textual error is
speculative and cannot be calculated as proof, because it essentially invents a
text to provide a parallel for the BM reading. That a plausible development can
be imagined does not prove that the supposed original text ever existed and
that the textual development has in fact taken place. An argument that
textual error has occurred is all the more speculative when it involves
multiple stages of supposed textual error and development, such as this
particular example. In any case, it is unlikely the error noted by Tvedtnes
occurred. The BM's plus "Yea, come..." is resumptive; it
picks up and reiterates the "come ye" earlier in the verse.
Therefore one would expect an underlying Hebrew verb to be the same
as the earlier verb, i.e., lkw, not b'w.
Tvedtnes' further argument that the plus is original because it its language is
similar to Isaiah 53:6 is no proof. Smith could have added this phrase, which
occurs in the most famous chapter of Isaiah for Christian readers. In Part 5,
above, reason is given to suspect this plus as being secondary.
. . .
(g) Isaiah 48:14 // 1
Nephi 20:14: The MT reads yhwh 'hbw ycsh
xp&w "The Lord hath loved him: he will do his pleasure"
(KJV). The BM reads "The Lord hath loved him, yea, and he
will fulfil (sic) his word which he hath declared by them, and he
will do his pleasure." 1QIsaa has a conjunction before
"he will do": yhwh 'whbw wy[c]sh
xp&w "The Lord loves him and he will do his pleasure."(
Cf. also Tvedtnes, The Isaiah Variants, 70; BMCT 1:106 n. 792) The conjunction in the BM is probably due to the long
plus which appears to be secondary, as indicated by its lack in any known
ancient text, the gloss-marking term "yea" . . . and its prosaic rather than poetic style.
