Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon
A new argument for divine involvement in Joseph Smith’s recovery of the Book of Mormon—an argument unforeseen by the Pratt brothers, B. H. Roberts, Sidney Sperry, or even Hugh Nibley—emerges from the remarkable work of Royal Skousen on the book’s textual history.
Why would anyone "foresee" this argument when it directly contradicts what Joseph and Oliver always said about the translation; i.e., that Joseph translated the engravings on the plates with the Urim and Thummim? What was understandably "unforeseen" was that faithful LDS scholars would reject what Joseph and Oliver taught.
As many readers will already be aware, Skousen and his more recent collaborator and "fellow traveler" Dr. Stanford Carmack have found unmistakable evidence of Early Modern English syntax and vocabulary in the original dictated text.
Early Modern English (EModE) is the form of the language that was being written between roughly 1470—when William Caxton was setting up the first English printing press in Westminster, near London—and 1670. More loosely but perhaps more memorably, we can say that its era extends from 1500 to 1700.
The operative word here is "written" as we'll see below.
So why would EModE appear in the Book of Mormon as it was dictated in 1829? A common and superficially plausible answer to that question would be that, for whatever reason, the Book of Mormon was dictated in the style of the King James Bible (KJV), which appeared very nearly at the middle of the EModE period. The KJV represented the only "scriptural style" known to Joseph Smith and the vast majority of his English-speaking contemporaries.
This is a good example of a logical and factual fallacy. True, Joseph and his contemporaries read the KJV. But newspapers, pamphlets and books were full of Christian writings. When LDS apologists write things such as "The KJV represented the only "scriptural style" known to Joseph Smith and the vast majority of his English-speaking contemporaries," they reveal either an ignorance of the facts or an illogical assumption that these ubiquitous reading materials were somehow not available to Joseph. Or both. Yet Joseph claimed he had an "intimate acquaintance" with those of different denominations.
This is the same logical and factual fallacy that Skousen makes in his work.
But this answer doesn’t actually account for the facts. Many of the EModE features of the vocabulary and syntax of the dictated Book of Mormon don’t actually occur in the KJV and, accordingly, could not have been derived from it.
This is a good point: some of the EModE features do not appear in the KJV. But that's a straw man argument because no one is saying Joseph's translation could have been derived only from the KJV.
Another suggestion has been that the EModE features of the original Book of Mormon manuscript—which include many elements that, by modern and even by nineteenth-century standards, have seemed to be embarrassing errors—can be explained as reflecting Joseph Smith’s own uneducated rural American dialect. But there is, thus far, no evidence at all to support that idea.
Here is another fallacy. The text itself is evidence for how Joseph spoke.
There are no comparable verbatim transcripts of anyone's dictation from Joseph's time and place. Skousen and Carmack are comparing apples (a verbatim transcript of dictation) to oranges (published material). Even the typesetter in Grandin's print shop wanted to correct the grammar before setting the type. Martin Harris told him not to, so he didn't (although he did supply punctuation).
Few if any authors would reject such correction. If even the typesetter felt entitled to correct the grammar, there is no reason to infer that other books and articles were published without editorial correction.
That the text reflects Joseph's ordinary speech patterns is apparent when we see the grammatical changes he made to the text once he learned better grammar. Similar changes were made to the early revelations.
We have no record that Oliver, Martin or other close associates observed that Joseph's dictation of the translation (or early revelations) was markedly different from his ordinary speech.
Joseph's translation was also undoubtedly influenced by the KJV and other Christian writings as we see through the "blending" that Skousen has identified. The text is not uniformly EModE, but often consists of recombining biblical language in new ways, a largely subconscious activity common to everyone who speaks language and exactly what we should expect any translator to do.
So how does the presence of Early Modern English in the dictated Book of Mormon constitute evidence for the Book’s divine origin? Here’s my take:
The EModE nature of the Book of Mormon as it was originally given to Joseph Smith is undoubtedly surprising to believers.
The operative word here is "given." If Joseph actually translated the plates, as he claimed (and as the D&C indicates), then the text was not "given" to him. In fact, Oliver could not translate specifically because he thought the words would be given to him: "Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you." (Doctrine and Covenants 9:7).
Yet now we have LDS scholars claiming, contrary to D&C 9:7, that in fact the text was "given" to Joseph Smith and Oliver was correct all along in his assumption that the text would be given. That makes the error in D&C 9:7 instead of in Oliver's assumption.
(Neither Dr. Skousen nor Dr. Carmack expected to find it, and they certainly didn’t set out looking for it.)
IIRC, Skousen explicitly started looking for it once his students pointed out what they considered irregularities, such as the idea that Oliver made an error by writing "pleasing bar" instead of "pleading bar." I don't have that volume of The History of the Text with me right now, but you can read it part IV.
However, for those who seek to account for the Book of Mormon on purely naturalistic grounds the existence in it of substantial and numerous Early Modern English features is virtually inexplicable.
The EME features are only inexplicable if we reject D&C 9:7 and assume that Joseph, like everyone else, speaks exactly the same way that published language appears. If we assume Joseph actually translated the plates, as he said, "after the manner of [his] language," then we can easily explain EME features.
There was, quite simply, no readily available natural means—apart from the King James Bible (which, as we’ve noted, was inadequate for the task)—by which Joseph Smith could have gained access to EModE.
The assumption that Joseph relied on the KJV is itself a logical and factual fallacy, apart from the direct quotations. The text has many examples of blending of Christian writings other than the KJV.
Why is there a significant Early Modern English aspect to the Book of Mormon? We don’t know. How did it come to be there? We can’t answer that question, except to say that it was given to Joseph Smith in the translation process. But we can surely say that an EModE Book of Mormon represents a major new challenge for reductionist critics of the Restoration.
It's easy to see why an apologist who advocates for SITH (stone-in-the-hat) would find EModE as an attractive argument. But those who still believe what Joseph, Oliver, and the scriptures teach see an easy explanation for EModE features; i.e., they were latent linguistic artifacts that persisted in rural America long after they had become extinct in published materials.
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