The following comes from Nicholas Joseph Morganti, Eternal Life for Latter-day Saints: A Comparison of the Bible's Eternal Life & Mormonism's Exaltation (True Grace Books, 2024), 50-52:
Times are Changing and so is Scripture
The reality is that the LDS Church admits the Book of Mormon, at the
time of this appendix, has undergone almost 4,000 changes. The LDS Church has changed
the scriptures thousands of times. So, why would the Church say that nothing has
been changed and nothing is left out as of 2015?
Due to the nature for the story of the gold plates, there are no
manuscripts to test the Book of Mormon we have today These changes are not just
grammatical or publication errors, but severely revisions change the meaning of
the text. Above is a graphic to demonstrate a few of these major changes.
These changes not only show a change in theology, but a correction in
narrative. The Book of Mormon seems to have been changed on the theological
side due to the Latter-day Saint Church’s evolution of the doctrine of the Godhead.
At its inception, the Book of Mormon supported a more modalistic view of God,
claiming that the Lamb (Jesus) is the “Eternal Father”, only to change
it to catch up with the newer view of the Godhead that claims that the three
persons of the Godhead are actually three completely separate beings. As for
the story of the Book of Mormon, the other changes look to fix Smith’s (or God’s?)
errors by revealing things Heavenly Father had not yet, or people presented as
alive who were not supposed to be.
Comments like the above show that Morganti has never studied Latter-day Saint scholarship and apologetics on the Book of Mormon in general, or on the textual changes in the Book of Mormon specifically. Had he done so, and had he even a modicum of intellectual integrity and honesty, he would engage with Latter-day Saints who have discussed these changes.
1 Nephi 11:21; 13:40: Early Mormon Modalism?
Let me note, out of intellectual honesty and integrity
(which Morganti lacks), that there are four offending changes critics bring up,
not just two, in an effort to claim that Joseph Smith’s earliest Christology
was a form of Modalism:
(*) 1 Nephi 11:18: originally read "Mary the mother of
God," in the 1837 ed. "the son of" was added later in the 1837
ed.
(*) 1 Nephi 11:21, 32, and 13:40: "the son of"
was added before "the Eternal Father."
Firstly, I think these readings are sound, and both
readings are acceptable in LDS theology. "Father" and like-terms are
flaccid, not rigid designators; like "God" they can be predicated
upon various individuals. In Isa 9:6 (v. 5 Hebrew), the Messianic figure is
called "everlasting father" (or better, "father of
eternity" [אֲבִיעַד]), but it would be fallacious to read into these
passages Modalism. In the Book of Mormon (e.g., Mosiah 3:8) Jesus is called
"Father" in that he is the creator, not that he is numerically the
same person as the Father. Even in the context of just First Nephi itself,
there is always a numerical distinction of person between Jesus and God the
Father. For e.g., 1 Nephi 10:7; 11:6-7, 24, 27, 31-32 (same chapter 3 of the 4
changes took place in); 12:5-10, 18; 13:40, etc.)
I believe (and I am not alone in thinking this), that the
changes were clarifications for a 19th century audience, esp. Mary being
"Mother of God," which would lead to the charge of
"Romanism," though I think the original readings fit very well with a
pre-exilic origin of the Book of Mormon, esp. in light of the scholarship of
Mark S. Smith et al. On this, see Brant A. Gardner, “Monotheism,
Messiah, and Mormon’s Book” (2003), an revised version appeared as
"Excursus: The Nephite Understanding of God," in Second Witness:
Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. (Salt
Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 1:214-222.
Either way, they do not reflect a change in theology. Even
in the Original Manuscript, Printer’s Manuscript, and 1830 ed. Jesus in these
chapters is distinguished from the person of the Father, being "Son of
God" (1 Nephi 11:7, 18 24) and the "Lamb of God" (1 Nephi 13:40
itself)
I have discussed the myth of early Mormon modalism at some
length, both on a podcast ep and a two-part debate. One can find the playlist,
"The
Myth of Early Mormon Modalism" at where I also discuss issues such as
the Book of Moses, 1832 First Vision Account, the Lectures on Faith, and other Book
of Mormon texts such as Mosiah 15:1-4. As far as I can ascertain, alongside Blake
Ostler, I have done the most work on this particular topic. Early
Latter-day Saint Christology, and even the Christology of the 1830 Book of Mormon,
is not Modalism. Only a naïve reading of the text will produce such a
theology.
Mosiah 21:28: King Benjamin or Mosiah?
Again, Morganti seems not to have studied the topic in detail, instead
just relying upon a quick google search. Had he done so, he would know it is
not just Mosiah 21:18, but Ether 4:1, beginning in the 1849 edition of the Book
of Mormon, that changes “Benjamin” to “Mosiah.”
There are two possibilities: King Benjamin should be retained in both
Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1, or this is a genuine mistake in the Book of Mormon (which
is not an issue, as LDS do not believe in scriptural inerrancy, and the title
page of the Book of Mormon warns against the “mistakes of men”).
On Mosiah 21:28/Ether 4:1 not being an error, consider the following
from John Tvedtnes, “The
Mistakes of Men: Can the Scriptures be Error-Free?” (2002):
King Benjamin’s death
is recorded in Mosiah 6:5, but critics claim that when writing the Book of
Mormon, Joseph Smith forgot that he had made Benjamin die, and wrote of him
living at a later time. (See Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1.) The 1830 edition of
the Book of Mormon shows this error, though subsequent editions, in an attempt
to remove the problem, changed the name to King Mosiah in the later references.
Our normal response
to this is that King Benjamin lived three years after his son Mosiah2 was made
king. It was at the end of these three years that the expedition was sent to
the Land of Nephi, where the plates of Ether were found. After relinquishing his
kingship, Benjamin may have continued to act as a seer for the three-year
interval. The chronology in this part of the Book is not all that clear and we
do not know how long Ammon and his brethren were in the Land of Nephi. It could
have been only a matter of weeks or months. It is not inconceivable then, that
Benjamin passed away shortly after their return, which still would have been
“after three years.” (Mosiah 6:5) It is certainly possible that the keeper of
the record of Zeniff or Mormon and Moroni (Ether 4:1) may have erred in
compiling the records. After all they were mortals, capable of making mistakes.
It is also possible that this was an example of a scribal error, later
corrected by Joseph Smith the translator.
Brant Gardner believes that this reflects a mistake on the plate text and was correctly changed. Commenting on Mosiah 21:28, Gardner wrote:
Variant: The printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon read “that king Benjamin had a gift from God. . . .” “Benjamin” became “Mosiah” beginning in the 1837 edition. Ammon left Zarahemla after the coronation of Mosiah (Mosiah 7:2-3) but perhaps before Benjamin’s death three years after the coronation (Mosiah 6:5). Skousen notes that Benjamin lives three years after Mosiah’s coronation and Ammon’s party departs after three years of peace at the beginning of Mosiah’s reign. The timeline is close enough that “some overlap is possible. Perhaps Ammon and his men left not knowing that Benjamin had died, or perhaps he was still alive when they left.”
Part of the coronation was Benjamin’s transmittal to Mosiah of religious and royal objects: “And moreover, he also gave him charge concerning the records which were engraven on the plates of brass; and also the plates of Nephi; and also, the sword of Laban, and the ball or director, which led our fathers through the wilderness, which was prepared by the hand of the Lord that thereby they might be led, every one according to the heed and diligence which they gave unto him” (Mosiah 1:16). The interpreters do not appear on this list. Perhaps they were not part of the transfer of kingship. Benjamin may have retained the interpreters and his prophetic functions, passing only the governing function to his son. Therefore, the printer’s manuscript’s mention of “Benjamin” would have been correct in identifying the interpreters as being in his possession, not Mosiah’s (at least when Ammon left Zarahemla). All of this is plausible, but perhaps not the best explanation for this particular variant.
Looking past the modern manuscript text and its variants, we must also deal with the sources Mormon used to compile his plate text. In this case, there are two possible records, that of Limhi and that of Ammon. Most of chapter 21 must come from the records of Limhi’s people, even though it is quite probable that Mormon supplemented his sources with some record from Ammon, which is imputed from what must have been available but is never explicitly mentioned. I suggest that the original conversation from Ammon was that “the king” had the “gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engravings” (Mosiah 21:28) and did not mention the name of the king. The people of Limhi would remember only Benjamin, their first leader, Zeniff, having departed during Benjamin’s reign (Omni 1:24-29). The recorders for Limhi’s records entered their own idea of who the unnamed king was and wrote Benjamin into the record. Mormon used that record and therefore that name.
This same issue also occurs in Ether 4:1, where Moroni writes Benjamin and the text has been emended to read Mosiah. Of that textual issue, Skousen notes:
The passage in Ether 4:1 causes more difficulties than this one on Mosiah 21:28. The Ether passage implies that king Benjamin had some control over the Jaredite record, which means, of course, that he must have still been alive when king Limhi handed over these newly found records to king Mosiah (Mosiah 22:13-14). (Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 3:1419)
Rather than a significant textual issue, however, I see Moroni’s reference as a reflection of the presence of Benjamin in Mosiah 21:28. Rather than an independent witness, Moroni is a dependent witness. Moroni simply uses the information as it appeared in his father’s text on the plates that Moroni had with him. (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007], 3:374-76)
Skousen’s final comment is: “The occurrence of Benjamin instead of Mosiah cannot be readily explained as an error in the early transmission of the text; moreover, the text can be interpreted so that Benjamin was still alive when the plates of Ether were delivered by king Limhi to king Mosiah, who then gave the Jaredite record to his father, king Benjamin, for his examination and safekeeping.” Ibid., 3:1420-21. As I noted above, I disagree with this conclusion. (Ibid., 376 n. 4)
Now, if Morganti wants to harp on this being a mistake in the Book of
Mormon that was corrected, he will have to be cautious, as the Bible has a
similar mistake and attempt by later editors to change. As Tvedtnes (ibid.)
noted:
It is interesting that the Bible has a situation similar to that
found in the Book of Mormon. We read in 1 Kings 14:31-15:5 that Abijam (also
called Abijah, as in the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 12:16) became king of
Judah after the death of his father Rehoboam and that, despite his sins, the
Lord preserved his kingship for the sake of his ancestor David. Then, in 1
Kings 15:6-7, we read,
And
there was war between Rehoboam and
Jeroboam all the days of his life. Now the rest of the acts of Abijam, and all
that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of
Judah? And there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam.
The
name Rehoboam is anachronistic, since he was dead and the passage was intended
to describe events in the days of his son Abijam. The error is actually
corrected in a few Hebrew manuscripts and in the Peshitta (Christian Aramaic)
version to read, “And there was war between Abijah
the son of Rehoboam.” The parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 13:2 reads, “And
there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.”
An important book to read is that of Isaac Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005). It shows that there are many instances that would make the "mistake" view of Mosiah 21:28 seem innocent. On pp. 401-2, we read the following:
20.15 According to 1 Kgs 9:26-28,
Solomon built ships at Ezion-geber, near Elath on the shore of the Red Sea, and
Hiram, king of Tyre, sent “his servants, sailors who were familiar with the
sea” to Solomon. Hiram’s servants sailed to Ophir with Solomon’s servants to
import gold.
In 2 Chr 8:17-18 the Chronicler apparently wanted to show
that Solomon initiated this expedition. He wrote that Solomon went “to
Ezion-geber and to Elath on the seacoast” (instead of “Ezion-geber, near Elath”
in Kings!”); and Hiram sent him not only Tyrian sailors but also ships: “Hiram
sent him, with his servants, ships and servants familiar with the sea.
They went to Ophir with Solomon’s servants and imported gold . . . from there.”
This does not seem to be a textual error, as Rudolph claims. He emends the text
to read, “And for the ships he sent his servants who know well the sea.” At any
rate, there is no textual support for either the supposed error or for the
proposed emendation. The Chronicler’s citation is a paraphrase of the earlier
text that ignored the vast geographical and technological problems prohibiting
the dispatch of ships from Tyre on the Phoenician coast to Ezion-geber on the
Red Sea—either by land or by sea. It is unreasonable to assume that Hiram’s
ships sailed from Tyre around the African continent to reach Ezion-geber.
Neither is there any evidence of a canal linking the Nile and the Red Sea
during the Solomonic era. However, these possibilities existed in the
Chronicler’s day, as we read in Herodotus 2.158 and 4.42 and on steles set up
by Darius I (522-486 B.C.E.) along the route of the canal between the Nile and
the Red Sea. On one of the steles, Darius said, “I ordered this canal to be dug
up to link the river flowing throughout Egypt with the sea coming from Persia .
. . and ships sail from Egypt along this canal to Persia.” But the sources
available to us do not indicate that this canal existed during the period of
the United Monarchy.
Elsewhere (ibid., 384-85), commenting on the books of Chronicles and Inconsistency in the Completion of “Elliptical Verses," Kalimi wrote:
Inconsistency in the Completion of “Elliptical Verses”
The Chronicler did not always complete “elliptical phrases” that he found in earlier books. For example, he used the words of 1 Kgs 8:9 in his book (2 Chr 5:10) just as they were : “where the Lord drew up with the Israelites” (meaning “where the Lord drew up a covenant with the Israelites”). The same thing occurs in the Chronicler’s version of 1 Kgs 9:5, “as I spoke of David, your father.” In 2 Chr 7:18 the Chronicler altered the text but did not complete it, stating, “as I drew up with David, your father” instead of “as I drew up a covenant with David, your father.” He may have refrained from completing these phrases because their intent was clear to the average reader. Nevertheless, these examples do show that the Chronicler was not consistent in his reworking of elliptical phrases found in the earlier texts.
Furthermore, the Chronicler himself occasionally wrote elliptically. Thus, for example, in 2 Chr 13:10 (an “addition”) he wrote, “but we are_____ the Lord our God’s, and we have not abandoned him,” instead of “but we are with the Lord our God, and we have not abandoned him.” Several examples of this have to do with the Hebrew idiom “to find strength.” For instance, in 2 Chr 20:37 (an “addition”) he wrote, “they did not find _____ to travel to Tarshish” instead of “they did not find strength to travel to Tarshish [= were not able to travel to Tarshish].” In 2 Chr 14:10[11] ( an “addition”) he wrote, “in your name we have come against this multitude; O Lord, you are our God; let no mortal find _____ against you” instead of “Let no mortal find strength against you [prevail against you],” just as in 2 Chr 13:20 (an “addition”), “Jeroboam did not recover his strength”; and in 2 Chr 22:9 (“an addition”), “the House of Ahaziah did not find strength to reign [had no one able to rule the kingdom].”
2 Chr 1:2-3 (“an addition”) is elliptical: “Then Solomon said to all Israel, to the captains of the thousands . . . to the heads of families _____. Then Solomon, and all the crowd with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon.” In other words, he told them to go with him to the high place at Gibeon, and then they went with him. Similarly, 2 Chr 2:2[3], “Then Solomon sent word to Hiram, king of Tyre, ‘As you did with David my father and sent him cedar to build himself a house to live in _____,’” is apparently an elliptical verse that should be completed with “so do with me.”
In this category also falls the lack of syntactical connection to 1 Chr 29:3 (“an addition”), “in addition to everything I have prepared for the sacred House” instead of “in addition to everything that (אשר) I have prepared for the sacred House”; and in 2 Chr 32:31 (“an addition”), “to test him to know everything in his heart” instead of “to test him to know everything that which was in your heart.”
Perhaps the best way to view the elliptical sentences appearing in the “additions” is that they were a kind of high style that was an attempt to imitate earlier language in order to provide the “addition” (or an emendation by the Chronicler himself) with literary character that would be thought to be "early.”
Morganti has to engage in double standards to critique the Book of Mormon but to ignore the issues with the Bible (of course, this assumes he knows about these issues; I doubt he has studied textual criticism and other areas in any depth beyond Josh McDowell-level apologetics).
2 Nephi 30:6: “White” or “Pure”?
Firstly, it should also be
noted is that, in Hebrew, *LBN לבן can either mean "white" or
"pure," depending on the sense (denotative or connotative), as can be
seen in its use in the Bible. "Pure" fits the context of 2 Nephi 30,
especially in light of the fact that, notwithstanding popular eisegesis by LDS
and non-LDS alike, the context is not about skin color/phenotype, but about the
converted Jews and the Gentiles (v. 3). Consider the following from HALOT:
4530 לבן
I לבן:
to be white; ? denom. from לָבָן; white-coloured >
milk )Bauer-L. Heb. 462r; Gradwohl
4:34ff(; MHeb. pi. to whiten, hif. to become
white; Ph. (Friedrich §196a) and Pehl. (Jean-H. Dictionnaire 134; Junker
Frahang 31 var. a); Arb. laban.
pi: inf. )
לַבֵּן:: hif. < *לְהַלְבֵּן,
Bauer-L. Heb. 228a, 322t(
to whiten, cleanse Da 1135. †
hif: pf. הִלְבִּינוּ;
impf. אַלְבִּין, יַלְבִּינוּ:
to become white )Bauer-L. Heb.
294b( Is 118
Jl 17 Ps 519. †
hitp: impf. יִתְלַבְּנוּ:
to be cleansed )Brockelmann Grundriss
1:535; Bauer-L. Heb. 291j( Da 1210. †
Der. I and II לָבָן, לִבְנֶה, לִבְנָה, I and II לְבָנָה, לְבָנוֹן, לִבְנִי.
Interestingly, this is also a concept found in texts predating the Book
of Mormon.
The following comes from John A. Tvedntes, “The Charge of ‘Racism’
in the Book of Mormon,” FARMS Review 15, no. 2 (2003), 193-96 which
gives a good history of this change in the verse:
“White” versus
“Pure”
According to the 1830
edition of the Book of Mormon, Nephi, speaking of the latter-day restoration,
discussed the future conversion of Lehi’s descendants: “And then shall they
rejoice; for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of
God; and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many
generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a
delightsome people” (2 Nephi 30:6). In 1840 the Book of Mormon was “carefully
revised by the translator,” Joseph Smith,¹⁵ and in that edition the expression
“white and delightsome” was changed to “pure and delightsome.” This change seems
to reflect the Prophet’s concern that modern readers might misinterpret this
passage as a reference to racial changes rather than to changes in
righteousness. Possibly his sojourns in Ohio and Missouri had altered his
perspective of the racial connotations of the term white in the contemporary
United States, particularly among slaves and slaveholders. He may not have
gained much understanding of this matter during his upbringing in New England
and New York State, where slavery was not as common.¹⁶
Unfortunately for
subsequent Latter-day Saint interpreters, following the Prophet’s death the
changes in the 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon were not carried over into
subsequent printings, which were instead based on an edition prepared by the
Twelve Apostles in Great Britain after a copy of an earlier edition. The
apostles, being in England, were not familiar with the 1840 edition.
Consequently, Latter-day Saints did not reap the benefit of the Prophet’s
clarification until it was restored in the 1981 edition of the Book of
Mormon.¹⁷ Some critics have been fond of citing statements of earlier
Latter-day Saint leaders, who once interpreted 2 Nephi 30:6 to mean that
conversion leads to a change of skin color; however, to use such statements
today is anachronistic at best and disingenuous at worst since these statements
were all expressed previous to the 1981 correction and merely echo a misinterpretation
of the Book of Mormon text rather than the authoritative text itself. Moreover,
a change in Lamanite skin color was clearly never intended by the “white/pure
and delightsome” passage that the Prophet Joseph modified because it does not refer
to the Lamanites at all, but to the Nephites and Jews in the latter days who
turn to Christ (see 2 Nephi 30:1–7).
But is the Prophet’s
change from “white” to “pure” justified in the scriptural context? The answer
is yes. The terms white and pure are used synonymously in Daniel 7:9,
Revelation 15:6, and Doctrine and Covenants 110:3. They are also found together
in a number of passages where they clearly refer to those who are purified and
redeemed by Christ (Alma 5:24; 13:12; 32:42; Mormon 9:6; D&C 20:6).
Similarly, Mormon expressed the hope that the Nephites “may once again be a
delightsome people” (Words of Mormon 1:8). It was also of the Nephites that he
wrote:
And also that the
seed of this people may more fully believe his gospel, which shall go forth
unto them from the Gentiles; for this people shall be scattered, and shall
become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that
which ever hath been amongst us, yea, even that which hath been among the
Lamanites, and this because of their unbelief and idolatry. (Mormon 5:15)
T he use of
black-and-white imagery to typify purity and righteousness is exemplified in
the works of Ephraim of Syria, a fourthcentury a.d. Old World Christian writer,
who commented on Philip’s baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26–39) as
follows: “The eunuch of Ethiopia upon his chariot saw Philip: the Lamb of Light
met the dark man from out of the water. While he was reading, the Ethiopian was
baptised and shone with joy, and journeyed on! He made disciples and taught,
and out of black men he made men white. And the dark Ethiopic women became
pearls for the Son.”¹⁸ One of Ephraim’s poems explains that “bodies that were
filled with stains are made white” by means of anointing and baptism.¹⁹ The
Qur’an, a seventh-century Semitic text, also speaks of the day of judgment as
“the day when some faces will be white and some faces will be black” (3:106).
This could be taken as a reference to purity and righteousness on the one hand
and impurity and wickedness on the other, or to salvation and damnation, but
certainly not to race, since Islam has always been reasonably color-blind.²⁰
Modern Arabic still uses the idiom sawwada wajhuhu to describe the act of
discrediting, dishonoring, or disgracing a person, but its literal meaning is
“to blacken the face” of someone.
Notes for the Above:
15. See introduction
to the 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon.
16. Use of the term
white for the concept of purity was well attested at the time Joseph Smith
translated the Book of Mormon, as well as in his cultural context. Out of six
meanings for the term given in Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the
English Language, three concern purity, while only two concern color. The last
concerns venerability.
17. For a more
detailed explanation of the history of this textual variant, see Larry W.
Draper
, “Book of Mormon
Editions,” in Uncovering the Original Text of the Book of Mormon, ed. M. Gerald
Bradford and Alison V. P. Coutts (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), 43.
18. “The Pearl: Seven
Hymns on the Faith” 3:2, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., ed.
Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1890–1900; reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson,
1994), 13:295. My thanks to Mark Ellison for bringing this passage to my attention.
19. This translation
comes from text 16, stanza 7, of a forthcoming edition of selected poems of
Saint Ephraim the Syrian, edited and translated by Sebastian P. Brock and
George A. Kiraz, to be published in a bilingual side-by-side format by Brigham
Young University Press in 2004. See also Sebastian Brock, trans., The Harp of
the Spirit: Eighteen Poems of St. Ephrem, 2nd ed. (London: Fellowship of St.
Alban and St. Sergius, 1983), 49. My thanks go to Daniel C. Peterson for this
reference and the next.
20. Bernard Lewis,
Race and Color in Islam (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
That the Book of Mormon is not a “racist” document (although it, like
the Bible and other ancient literature, ethnocentric), see:
B. H. Roberts Foundation: “Racism in
the Book of Mormon”
David M. Belnap, "The
Inclusive, Anti-Discrimination Message of the Book of Mormon," Interpreter:
A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 42 (2021): 195-370
"Jesus Christ" in 1 Nephi 12:18 in the 1830
Book of Mormon
Christ's Name
Metcalfe claims that
"originally the revelation of 'Christ' to Jacob [in 2 Nephi 10:3] was
redundant, since 'Jesus Christ had already been revealed to Nephi [1 Nephi
12:18]" (p. 430). Yet, contrary to Metcalfe, Jacob never claimed that his
information on Christ's name was unique, merely that an angel had reaffirmed
that this was his name. Nephi, who inserted these teachings into his record on
the small plates, explained that he quoted from his brother Jacob's writings
not because they were unique but because they offered another witness that his
own teachings and revelations were true. Thus Nephi says, "And my brother,
Jacob, also has seen him [Christ]; wherefore I will send their [Jacob and
Isaiah's] words forth unto my children to prove unto them that my words are
true (2 Nephi 11:3). Likewise it would be incorrect to say that King
Benjamin's discourse "was to disclose the Messiah's 'name' for the first
time" (p. 430 n. 44). Benjamin makes no claim that he name
"Christ" is new; he only states that because of the people's
faithfulness and diligence he would confer that name upon them as a
people—which is something quite different. (Matthew P. Roper, "A More
Perfect Priority?," FARMS Review of Books
on the Book of Mormon 6, no. 1 [1994]: 366-67 [in Hebrew,
"name" is the same word as "title" [שֵׁם]; cf. Isa 9:6 [v.
5 in Hebrew]).
For more, see Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants in the Book of Mormon, 258-59
It should be noted that the Bible is open to similar charges of theologically-driven changes (and frankly, a better case can be made). One leading scholar on this is Juha Pakkala. COmpare the following with what Morganti writes on p. 53:
People have
dedicated their lives to disproving the Bible only to find the Bible consistent
through time, accurate in history, and kept miraculously intact.
Commenting on Exodus 24:9-11 in the MT and LXX and Whether God Can Be Seen, he wrote:
An Addition That Created an Omission in Exod 24:9-11
Exodus 24:9-11 provides another illustrative example of how later editors regarded the idea of seeing Yhweh as theologically offensive. Here the correction was made by an addition, which de facto created an omission, although no section of the older text was omitted.
According to the Masoretic version of Exod 24:9-11 (with the exception of some additional names in v. 9, the S[amaritan]P[entateuch] follows the MT closely in these verses), Moses, Aaron and the elders of Israel went up (to the mountain of Sinai), where they saw the God of Israel. Unlike in many other passages, which refer to God’s glory or fire being seen, this text refers to God himself being seen. It also implied that they see his feet under which there was a pavement made of sapphire, pure like heaven. The reference to the feet implies an anthropomorphic form. The LXX translation, however, contains two small additions that in effect omit the idea that God could be seen:
Exod 24:9-11 MT | Exod 24:9-11 LXX |
ויעל משׁה ואהרן נדב ואביהוא9
10 ויראו 11 ואל־אצילי בני ישׂראל | 9 καὶ ἀνέβη Μωυσῆς καὶ Ααρων καὶ Ναδαβ |
9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab, Abihu | 9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab, Abihu |
The Greek version adds a reference to the place where God stood (v. 10) and a place of God (v. 11) immediately after the verb so that the original object was replaced by the addition. As a consequence, the original object, God, now only defines that the place is that is seen ( à place where God stood). Because the plus in the LXX occurs twice in a similar context having a similar effect in the text, the possibility of an accidental omission in the MT/SP can be excluded. The Greek version is a secondary attempt to avoid the idea that God could be seen. However, the Greek text was not systematically edited in this respect because it preserves a reference to the feet of God.
The additions show that the editor (or translator) who made the additions had a high regard for the text and was not unwilling or not allowed to make substantial changes to it. The older test was preserved if the correction in content could be made with an addition, a tendency that we have also seen elsewhere. For the editor it was evidently easier to accept an addition than an omission if the result was similar. The example also shows that the omission of a theologically offensive idea could be achieved by an expansion that effectively avoided the original meaning of the sentence. (Juha Pakkala, God's Word Omitted: Omissions in the Translation of the Hebrew Bible [Forschungen zur Religion und Lieratur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 251; Bristol, Conn.: Vandenhoeck and Reprecht, 2013], 195-96)
2 Sam 5:24 MT | 2 Sam 5:24 LXX* |
יהי כ/בשׁמעך את־קול צעדה בראשׁי הבכאים אז תחרץ כי אז יצא יהוה לפניך להכות במחנה פלשׁתים | καὶ ἔσται ἐν τῷ ἀκοῦσαί σε τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ συγκλεισμοῦ (סעדה) τότε καταβήσει πρὸς αὐτούς/εις τον πολεμον, ὅτι τότε ἐξελεύσεται κύριος ἔμπροσθέν σου κόπτειν ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων |
when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the weeping (trees), then act; for then Yhwh goes before you to smite the camp of the Philistines | When you hear the sound of commotion then go down to them, for then Yhwh goes forth before you to make havoc in the battle against the foreigners. |
Finally, commenting on a small, purposeful and theologically-motivated change to the biblical texts by the Chronicler, Müller, Pakkala, and ter Haar Romeny wrote:
Jehoiada the Priest Teaches Joash