Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Donald Parry on the Relationship between KJV Isaiah and Book of Mormon Isaiah


Question. It seems like Joseph Smith and his scribes simply copied the Isaiah quotations from the KJV of the Bible. Is that correct?

 

Answer. Our knowledge about this matter is incomplete. Perhaps over the coming decades, we will learn more about this subject; for now, however, there exist several fascinating and complex pieces of information indicating that Joseph Smith and his scribes did not simply copy the Isaiah portions of the Book of Mormon from the King James Version. Consider the following complexities:

 

1.     The base text of the Isaiah quotations in the Book of Mormon seems to be the King James Version, but there are also several textual variants in the Isaiah quotations. Where did those come from if Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery simply copied from the King James Version?

In fact, there exist several textual variants in the Isaiah texts in the Book of Mormon. Sperry explains, “The text of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is not word for word the same as that of the King James version. Of 433 verses of Isaiah in the Nephite record, Joseph Smith modified about 233. Some of the changes made were slight, others were radical.” (Sperry, Answers to Book of Mormon Questions, 92) Some of these variants agree with ancient witnesses. Skousen and Carmack write, “Are there any significant differences in the biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon? Yes, and some are not only quite surprising but are also supported by other ancient textual sources.” (Skousen, “Text of the Book of Mormon”) If Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had simply copied the text from the Bible, such textual variants would not exist.

2.     Some writers have claimed, without solid evidence, that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery must have used a copy of the King James Version when they came to the Isaiah sections of the Book of Mormon. Contrary to these writers’ claims, eyewitnesses to the translation of the Book of Mormon have attested that neither Joseph nor his scribes employed any book or manuscript during the translation process, let alone a copy of the Bible. In connection with this, Skousen and Carmack write: “Did Joseph Smith hand over a marked-up Bible to Oliver Cowdery when he came to the biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon? Oliver Cowdery’s misspellings tell us that the answer is no. Joseph Smith dictated the biblical quotations, just like all the rest of [the] Book of Mormon.” (Skousen, “Text of the Book of Mormon.”)

3.     Oliver Cowdery’s spellings in the Isaiah portions (in the original manuscript for the Book of Mormon) were often different from the King James Version. If he simply copied from a Bible, why would there be so many spelling differences?

4.     Similarly, sometimes Oliver Cowdery wrote down the wrong word as Joseph Smith dictated the passages from Isaiah. Again, if Oliver was simply copying from a Bible, such errors would have been less likely to occur.

5.     Some of Oliver Cowdery’s errors are phonological errors (errors of hearing), which indicates that he was listening to Joseph Smith and copying Joseph’s words as he heard them, rather than simply copying from a copy of the Bible.

6.     The original Book of Mormon paragraphing system for the Isaiah quotations is different from the chapter and versification system of Isaiah in the King James Bible. It is unlikely that this system would be different if Oliver Cowdery was copying from the Bible. (Donald W. Parry, Search Diligently The Words of Isaiah [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2023], 208-9)