Book of Mormon Commentary CofC - Odessa, Missouri Community ...

Book of Mormon Commentary
1 Nephi Chapter 6
twenty-five hundred years. It would be a strange coincidence indeed if the Book of Mormon text
was precisely like the A.D. 1611 version authorized by King James.
Professor J. N. Washburn has done much work on the "Isaiah problem" as it relates to the Book of
Mormon. The following quotation will illustrate his intelligent approach to the problem.
Now, suppose that in these different versions of the Scripture one were to find, not one or two, but
many wordings that agree with the Book of Mormon in those places in which it disagrees with the
King James Bible. Would that not be significant? It would appear, moreover, to be even more
convincing if this support were to come from sources that were not in existence in Joseph Smith's
day, from books that have been published since his death, many years since. In such cases where
could he have got his texts except from some ancient original source, or from his own imagination
? The effectiveness of this argument is conditioned by the number of such instances that can be
found, and the relationship of their sources to each other.
Such items can be found. Here are a few good illustrations:
1. One of the most convincing of them is that of Isaiah 2:16, found in the Book of Mormon as II
Nephi 12:16 [II Nephi 8:32].
The King James wording is as follows:
“And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures”.
The Book of Mormon renders it thus:
"And upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant
pictures."
Clearly the phrase And upon all the ships of the sea is an addition. No one can urge that for
literary value, for aptness, for pertinence of content it does not belong, for it is entirely in harmony
with the context. Where did Joseph Smith get it if not from an ancient manuscript? And if he got it
from such a source, can it be supported from books other than the King James Bible ?
There is not merely one such confirmation, nor two, but three, and perhaps more if one but had the
time to look farther.
The Septuagint or Greek Bible gives this rendering:
"And upon every ship of the sea, and upon every display of fine ships."
It will be seen at once that this disagrees with the King James Bible throughout. However, it
agrees with the Book of Mormon in the only place where the latter differs from the King James
Version.
The Luther German Bible has it thus:
"And upon all the ships in the sea, and upon all delightful work."
The translation is doubtless loose, but there can be no mistaking the similarities.
(One wonders whether anyone will go so far as to suggest that Joseph Smith used the King James
Bible in the main but went to some other occasionally just to raise the very problem under
consideration.)
And lastly, the Moffatt Bible of 1924, eighty years after the death of the prophet, on the titlepage
of which is the statement that it is a “new translation," gives this:
“On all the deep-sea ships, on every gallant craft."
The above is one of twenty-two illustrations given in his book. In dealing with this same problem,
Dr. Sidney B. Sperry makes this observation:
The text of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is not word for word the same as that of the King
James version. There are 433 verses of Isaiah in the Nephite record. Of these 234 verses were
changed or modified by the Prophet Joseph Smith so that they do not conform with the King
James version. Some of the changes made were slight, others were radical. However, 199 verses