The late
Marian Bodine, in her poorly researched article, “Book of Mormon vs. the Bible
(or common sense)" wrote the following:
II Nephi 4:17, “O wretched man that I am,” exact
quote from Romans 7:24 by the Apostle Paul, 600 years before he was born?
In his
response to Marian Bodine (html version; pdf version), D. Charles Pyle provided
a number of ancient texts where similar locutions to that of Rom 7:24 and 2
Nephi 4:17 appear:
Using the Tufts University Perseus Project website,
we find that Euripides is reported to have written: "O pain, o
pain! Wretched man that I am, how mutilated I am by the unjust
words of an unjust father!" (Euripides, Hippolytus, line
1345). In the same work he writes again: "Oh! Oh! And now the pain, the
pain, comes over me. Let me go, wretched man that I am, and may death come
to me as healer" (Euripides, Hippolytus, line 1370).
Cicero also wrote: "Oh that night
which that day followed! happy was it for this city; but, wretched man
that I am, I fear it may still prove disastrous to me myself" (M.
Tullius Cicero, Orations: Three orations on the Agrarian law, the four
against Catiline, the orations for Rabirius, Murena, Sylla, Archias, Flaccus,
Scaurus, etc., XLI.103). Cicero exclaims again: "For why should I
speak of my consulship? whether as to the manner in which it was obtained, or
in which it was conducted?Wretched man that I am! am I comparing
myself to this disgrace and plague of the republic?" (M. Tullius Cicero,Orations:
for his house, Plancius, Sextius, Coelius, Milo, Ligarius, etc. I.3)
Using another source, we find that earlier still, Homer (c. 800 BCE), writes:
"Yet when he hears of you being still alive, he is glad, and his days are
full of hope that he shall see his dear son come home to him from Troy; but I, wretched
man that I am, had the bravest in all Troy for my sons, and there is not
one of them left" (Iliad XXIV.36, translated by Samuel Butler in Library
of the Future, 4th Edition, [1996, Las Vegas: World Library]).
Looking at the English translations of the texts
just examined, we can conclude that as well might we say that Paul plagiarized
Cicero, Euripides and Homer as to try forcing the issue that Joseph Smith
merely plagiarized Paul for the Book of Mormon by the coincidence of English
textual reading. Besides, we do not deny that Joseph Smith may have made use of
the phraseology with which he should be familiar, namely the Bible, to use in
his translation of an ancient work, just as others both before and after Joseph
Smith have done.
Alongside
the above references, Pyle also references Testament of Solomon 26:7, a
Jewish-Christian pseudepigraphic text. Other pseudepigraphic and apocryphal works
that have similar verbiage include:
O men exceeding wretched base in heart, unstable.
(Sibylline Oracle 1:174)
So that but a third part will remain to wretched men.
(Sibylline Oracle 5:103)
Howling the loathsomeness of wretched men and the
world's woes. (Sibylline Oracle 8:240)
You will to peoples be a wretched slave on account of
the people. (Sibylline Oracle 11:307)
Ah, wretched lofty men of glorious Rome. (Sibylline
Oracle 14:259)
And then men having common boundaries will flee
wretched. (Sibylline Oracle 14:337)
For who among men will ever father such beauty, and
what mother will bear such a light? Wretch that I am and foolish, for I spoke
evil words (of him) to my father. (Joseph and Aseneth 6:7)
He fights against you, the immortal God, and what can
wretched man then do to him? (Apocalypse of Sedrach 5:6)
Wretched man sinned against your will. (Apocalypse of
Sedrach 7:4)
All the
following translations comes from The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, trans. Craig E.
Evans (2008), available on Bibleworks 9.
Bodine’s
errant argument notwithstanding, the phrase in the Book of Mormon is clearly
not a novelty to the apostle Paul nor evidence against the antiquity of the
Book of Mormon.
