Dependence on the New Testament

A second potential anachronism worthy of special note is the Book of Mormon’s use of language reminiscent of the King James New Testament. New Testament language is, in fact, substantially more present in the text than is often recognized. Some suggest that this is a threat to the Book of Mormon’s historicity. How could a book with origins in a 600 BC migration from Jerusalem to the Americas contain passages from the standard nineteenth-century English translation of the New Testament? Phrases from the Old Testament might be expected, since the Nephites possessed some version of writings known in the Old Testament. But the presence of language from, say, the Gospel of John in 1 Nephi 10 is more difficult to understand. Naturally, as with all criticisms of Book of Mormon historicity, there are various ways this issue has been dealt with.

The most traditional approach has been to argue (or at least to assume) that New Testament language appears in the Book of Mormon because that’s what was inscribed on the gold plates by its ancient authors. On this view, there’s no direct dependence of the Book of Mormon on the New Testament. The two have similar language because God reveals the same things from one generation to another. A slight variation on this view might be the idea that the ancient authors of the Book of Mormon were given, through divine experiences, to know the language of the New Testament and to use it in their writings. Nephite prophets occasionally explain that they saw the last days and had a message directly intended for those living in a late Christian context. Yet another slight variation would be the idea that Book of Mormon authors and New Testament authors had access to similarly worded texts that aren’t extant today, older traditions that played a role in their composition. What unites all of these first approaches is that they take the text to be (as much as possible) a word-for-word translation of the gold plates, which already had what we would today recognize as New Testament language in it.

Another set of approaches has gained ascendancy in recent years. Even as these newer approaches insist on the existence of ancient gold plates and some correlation between the plates and the English text of the Book of Mormon, they allow for a looser notion of translation, suggesting that the English text might take certain liberties with the underlying gold-plates text. That is, these approaches take the Book of Mormon’s English text as introducing New Testament language into a text that wasn’t originally worded that way. Again, to translate needn’t be to produce a slavish reproduction of content in one language into another; it can also be to couch the content of the original in language and imagery more familiar to the target audience. As we’ve noted, some understand a looser translation like this to be the product of Joseph Smith’s own involvement, whether larger or smaller, in producing the English text. Others take it to be the work of some divine being—God or an angel—before the English words’ appearance on the seer stone the Prophet read from. Either way, those who embrace this looser notion of translation tend to see a variety of reasons for a less literal translation. New Testament language makes the Book of Mormon more intelligible to a latter-day (and largely Christian) audience. It also lends rhetorical authority to the Book of Mormon, allowing it to speak in the voice of authoritative scripture.

All these theories are interesting, and all seem possible. For our part, the one that makes the most sense is the last one mentioned—that there’s no need for the Book of Mormon to be as literal a translation as possible of the gold plates and that God or an angel provided the text that would speak to the nineteenth century and beyond most forcefully. This makes the best sense of evidence showing that the Prophet read from the seer stone, and it allows ample room for God to ensure that the text of the Book of Mormon would speak directly to its intended latter-day audience. For our part, we find it frankly reassuring to think that the text we have today is what God wanted us to have. Indeed, we take the familiarity and availability of the English text of the Book of Mormon to be a sign of God’s intense love and mercy for us as readers. He could have arranged for a technically accurate translation of a deeply foreign record. Instead, God worked to give us a book that could speak directly to us in the last days. It’s as the translation of the book is adapted to the weakness and the language of its readers that it does its marvelous work.