Understanding accusations of plagiarism

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Question: How can one address accusations of plagiarism made about the scriptures?

Introduction to Question

One of the primary tactics of critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over the years has been to accuse Joseph Smith of plagiarizing different parts of his translations/revelations that have become part of the scriptural canon of the Church. There are different kinds of influence that critics allege outside sources had on Joseph Smith’s scriptural productions. Some point out mere conceptual resemblance. Others claim direct borrowing (like copy/pasting from other sources). Some believe that certain characters in the Bible provide a narrative structure for those in the Book of Mormon. This article seeks to identify principles and procedures that Latter-day Saint defenders can keep in mind in order to address each of these accusations.

Response to Question

Two Ways We Can Address Accusations Like this

There are two general ways that one can address accusations like this. The first of these is to have a superior option for where something come from and the other is to have an equally plausible option for where something came from. We explain more below.

Have the Superior Option for Where Something Came From

Everyone recognizes that the words and ideas in the scriptures had to come from somewhere. Latter-day Saints believe that they came mostly from ancient prophets. Critics believe it came from the mind of Joseph Smith and/or one or more of his associates. The first way to address accusations from a faithful perspective is to show that the Latter-day Saint perspective is the superior one given the historical data we currently possess. For instance, one can:

1. Check the respective source’s publication date. Latter-day Saint apologist Jeff Lindsay has shown that even if one source and the Book of Mormon have a lot in common, it doesn’t prove that that work had anything to do with the origins of the Book of Mormon. He does this by comparing Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (hereafter “LoG”) to the Book of Mormon (hereafter “BoM”). LoG has seven-word phrase commonalities with the BoM. The BoM, however, was published in 1830 and LoG was published in 1855. Thus, there’s no way it could have influenced the Book of Mormon’s production.
2. Check historical sources and see how close a source was to Joseph Smith. There should be some source that puts Joseph Smith in contact with the alleged source sometime before the production of the book of scripture in question. In the case of the Book of Mormon, the difficulty is that we don’t have a lot of data on Joseph. The earliest document we have of Joseph Smith’s is dated to 1828.

Notes