CUL:Plagiarisms in the Book of Mormon - from the KJV  by Dr. Walter Martin

   According to a careful survey of the book of Mormon, it contains at
least 25,000 words from the King James Bible. In fact, verbatim
quotations, some of considerable length, have caused the Mormons no end
of embarrassment for many years.

   The comparison of Moroni chapter 10 with 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, 2
Nephi 14 with Isaiah 4, and 2 Nephi 12 with Isaiah 2 reveals that
Joseph Smith made free use of his Bible to suplement the alleged
revelation of the golden plates. The book of Mosiah, chapter 14 in the
book of Mormon, is a reproduction of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah
the prophet; and 3 Nephi 13:1-18 copies Matthew 6:1-23.

   The Mormons naively suggest that when Christ allegedly appeared on
the American continent after his resurrection and preached to the
Nephites he quite natrually used the same language as recorded in the
Bible. They also maintain that when Nephi came to America he brought
copies of the Hebrew scriptures, which account for quotations from the
Old Testament. The only difficulty with these excuses is that the
miraculous plates upon which they were all inscribed, somehow or
another, under translation, came out in King James English without
variation approximately a thousand years before this 1611 version was
written. Such reasoning on the part of the Mormons strains at the
limits of credulity and only they are willing to believe it.

   There are other instances of plagiarisms from the King James Bible
including paraphrases of certain verses. One of these verses (1 John
5:7) is reproduced in 3 Nephi 11:27, 36. The only difficulty with the
paraphrase here is that the text is considered by scholars to be an
interpolation missing from all the major manuscripts of the new
testament but present in the King James Bible from which Smith
paraphrased it not knowing the difference.

   Another example of this type of error is found in 3 Nephi 11:33-34,
and is almost a direct quotation from Mark 16:16, a passage regarded by
many new testament greek scholars as an addition to that gospel by an
overzealous scribe. But Joseph Smith was not aware of this either, so
he even copied in translational errors, another proof that neither he
nor the alleged golden plates were inspired of God.

   Two further instances of plagiarisms from the King James Bible which
have backfired on the Mormons are worth noting.

   In the third chapter of the book of Acts, Peter's classic sermon at
pentecost paraphrases Deuteronomy 18:15-19. While in the process of
writing 3 Nephi, Joseph Smith puts Peter's paraphrase in the mouth of
Christ when the Savior was allegedly preaching to the Nephites. The
prophet overlooked the fact that at the same time Christ was allegedly
preaching his sermon, the sermon itself had not yet been preached by
Peter.

   In addition to this, 3 Nephi makes Christ out to be a liar, when in
verse 23 of chapter 20 Christ attributes Peter's words to Moses as a
direct quotation when, as we have pointed out, Peter paraphrased the
quotation from Moses; and the working is quite different. But Joseph
did not check far enough, hence this glaring error.

   Secondly, the book of Mormon follows the error of the King James
translation which renders Isaiah 4:5: "for upon all the glory shall be
a defense" (see 2 Nephi 14:5). Modern translations of Isaiah point out
that it should read "for over all the glory there will be a canopy,"
not a defense. The Hebrew word, "chuppah," does not mean defense but a
protective curtain or canopy. Smith, of course, did not know this nor
did the King James translators from whose work he copied.

   There are quite a number of other places where such errors appear,
including Smith's insistence in Abraham 1:20 that "pharaoh signifies
king by royal blood," when in reality the dictionary defines the
meaning of the term pharaoh as "a great house or palace." The Revised
Standard Version of the Bible renders Isaiah 5:25: "and their corpses
were as refuse in the midst of the streets," corectly rendering the
Hebrew "suchah" as refuse, not as "torn." The King James Bible renders
the passage: "and their carcases were torn in the midst of the
streets." The book of Mormon (2 nephi 15:25) repeats the King James'
text word for word, including the error of mistranslating "suchah",
removing any claim that the Book of Mormon is to be taken seriously as
reliable material.
