Friday, October 29, 2021

An Example of the "All or Nothing" Approach to the Book of Mormon by Critics

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 verbha epoiesen proskunein "which he made to worship"; so also the Vulgatequae 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.

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(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 themand 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.