Thursday, January 16, 2020

Royal Skousen on the Question of Use of the KJV in the Production of the Book of Mormon and the JST



(4) 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.

(5) When Joseph Smith produced his “New Translation” of the Bible in 1830-33 (now known as the Joseph Smith Translation), did he hand over a copy of the 1830 edition to the scribe to correct the biblical text from?

In this case, we have clear evidence that this is precisely what Joseph Smith was willing to do (unlike what he did when he dictated the Book of Mormon text in 1828-29). There is at least one clear case of this procedure, and perhaps others as well. (Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part 5: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon [Provo, Utah: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and Brigham Young University Press, 2019], 5, emphasis added)