Circle Squared
A Textual Analysis of the Book of Mormon
Chapter 20: "Salt of Unusual Size"
Chapter Summary:
The Lord reveals His purposes to Israel--Israel has been chosen in the furnace of affliction and is to go forth from Babylon--Compare Isaiah 48. About 588–570 B.C.
There are many chapters in the Book of Mormon which either borrow from, or copy entirely, various passages from the Old and New Testaments. This chapter is the first in the book to be a nearly verbatim excerpt from the book of Isaiah. I may be alone in thinking it strange that Nephi would cite in the previous chapter three unknown prophets by name (Zenock, Neum, Zenos) and quote another known prophet (Isaiah), all four of which he says have written in the brass plates which are supposed to be an original copy of the Old Testament up to 600 BCE. It is interesting that Nephi would take the time and space, which he claims is very limited, to pull lengthy passages from other scriptures which surely god would have known would be available to future generations.
Perhaps this was done to preserve the plain and precious truths we have heard so much about which were to be taken out and lost by the Catholic Church (aka "the whore of all the earth"). But we have no way to verify this to be the case, and therefore no reason to take seriously Mormon apologists advocating this position.
Furthermore, a side by side comparison will show other interesting issues with Joseph Smith's "translation". As a bilingual person I have at least some experience with translation. The process is subjective. It is unlikely that two translators will translate the same passage exactly the same, especially lengthy passages like those found in the Book of Mormon. If the catholic scribes, who up to this point Nephi has accused of botching many plain and precious truths from the original biblical documents, were so terrible and mistaken in their translations of the bible, why would Joseph's translation of the "original" be a nearly spot-on match with scribes in the 17th century?
Not only this, but the scribes for the King James Version of the bible, the version which matches the book of Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon, inserted various words and phrases to clarify the translation to English. These phrases were not part of the original text, and as such the KJV italicizes these phrases to indicate that they were added by the scribes. An excellent example of this is the last verse in both chapters which contains the well-known phrase: "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." The first two words, "There is", are italicized to indicate they were added by scribes.
The Book of Mormon contains these exact same phrases--verbatim. Why? It certainly looks like Joseph simply copied and pasted the passages from the KJV, rather than translating them from an original biblical source.
By and large the passage is a rather wordy call for Israel to repent and remember the miracles god did for their forefathers, which of course cannot be shown to be anything more than folklore and legends of a nomadic bronze-age tribe of barbarous, war-loving Palestinians. For me to take this seriously, I would need to take it with a grain of salt of unusually large size.
Another problem with Nephi's citation of Isaiah is that the book as we have it in the Old Testament was written in three sections: prior to the Babylonian siege on Jerusalem (which is the reason Lehi and his family left); during the takeover and enslavement; and after Jerusalem was freed from captivity. Scholars attribute these three sections to three different authors due to changes in writing style and events described in passages which are known to take place at specific times during the whole ordeal.
Many of the passages cited and quoted by Nephi and other writers in the Book of Mormon contain entire chapters of Isaiah known to be written after the time Lehi is supposed to have left Jerusalem (scholars say that Isaiah 1-39 were written before the Babylonian takeover; all chapters after 39 were written afterward). This chapter contains a nearly verbatim, verse by verse citation of Isaiah chapter 48, which was written long after Lehi and his band of meandering Jewish Native Americans left the area forever. Why would these passages be in the brass plates or the Book of Mormon if these passages were written after Nephi stole the brass plates from the decapitated Laban and left the city?
Please pass the salt…