Book of Mormon in the CES Letter

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Book of Mormon in the CES Letter

The CES Letter lists several concerns about the Book of Mormon. Below are links to various FAIR resources and other resources responding to each concern.

1769 KJV Errors

CES Letter: "What are 1769 King James Version edition errors doing in the Book of Mormon?"

Answer: Translations are often based on common word usage in the target language at the time of translation. Further, the so-called "errors" are not unique to the 1769 version.

For more information:

17th Century Italics

CES Letter: "When King James translators were translating the KJV Bible between 1604 and 1611, they would occasionally put in their own words into the text to make the English more readable. We know exactly what these words are because they're italicized in the KJV Bible. What are these 17th century italicized words doing in the Book of Mormon?"

Answer: They are fulfilling the same function as in the Bible: making the text more clear and readable in English. Phrases that make perfect sense in one language often need additional words when you translate them to another language.

For more information:

Mistranslations

CES Letter: "Christ's Sermon on the Mount in the Bible and the Book of Mormon are identical. But Joseph Smith later corrected the Bible. . . . How is it that the Book of Mormon has the incorrect Sermon on the Mount passage and does not match the correct JST version in the first place?"

Answer: The Sermon on the Mount as given in the Bible is not identical to the one given in the Book of Mormon. Though there are many similarities, there are also many differences. Further, there is an assumption "that all the revisions Joseph Smith made [the Bible] were intended to restore original text. We have no record of him making that claim, and even in places in which the JST would restore original text it would do so not in Hebrew or Greek but in Modern English and in the scriptural idiom of early nineteenth-century America."[1]

For more information:

DNA

CES Letter: "DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but rather from Asia."

Answer: "Nothing is known about the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples, and even if their genetic profile were known, there are sound scientific reasons that it might remain undetected."Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content

For more information:

Anachronisms

Archaeology

Geography

View of the Hebrews

The Late War

The First Book of Napoleon

Early Godhead

  1. ↑ Kent P. Jackson, Understanding Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 2022), 34–35.
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