The second and bigger problem concerns the multiple authors of biblical Isaiah. Scholars generally agree that Isaiah wrote only the first thirty-nine chapters of the book and that chapters 40-66 were written by others. As one scholar summarized this, the “sixty-six chapters of the book of Isaiah cover three time periods.” The first, represented by Isaiah 1-39, was written from 740-700 BCE when Judah was an independent kingdom. In the period 586-539 BCE, the Jewish people were in exile in Babylonia and no longer in their own country, but an enterprising scribe whom scholars call Deutero-Isaiah continued the prophet’s writings pseudonymously, adding chapters 40-55. The third phase, 539-500 BCE, is the “postexilic period” represented by Trito-Isaiah, a Palestinian prophet who wrote Isaiah 56-66 after Babylonia was conquered by the Persians and the Jews were allowed to return to their original land.

If biblical scholars are right, chapters 40-66 could have been included on the brass plates and would not have been available to the Nephites. Nephi would not have been able to read to his brothers “that which was written by the prophet Isaiah” in the mid-sixth century (1 Ne. 19:23), and Jacob could not have read these passages (2 Ne. 6;4), Jesus would not have believed that the first Isaiah was the author of the later chapters (3 Ne. 16:17-20, 22; 23:1). Abinadi could not have quoted from the later Isaiah (Mosiah 14:1-12).

If the later chapters were indeed written after 600 BCE, then their inclusion in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic, and research into this area of study is of critical importance. It would come form the same “higher” form of analysis that gave us the documentary hypothesis. One writer explained that biblical “criticism” is not pejorative but “denote[s] rigorous, balanced scrutiny of sacred texts.” Nor would it be right to think that the documentary “hypothesis” is not accepted as fact. Scholars take the Bible seriously enough to study it thoroughly, not “to ‘tear asunder’ the biblical text, or to impose a particular critical viewpoint on the text. . . . The Bible is frequently in tension with itself, and the critical scholar attempts to determine how this tension arose.” The impact of such research was felt by lay people beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, after Joseph Smith’s death, and may be way most LDS people remain unaware of the contributions of such scholarship. Those of the LDS faith who are educated in the field are often hostile toward it, rather than alter their view of scriptural inerrancy.