Part 14 - Moroni and Paul

Some of my previous posts have focused on the lack of any corroborating external evidence that supports the Book of Mormon as a genuine ancient historical document.  This post focuses more on the text itself.  Recall from a previous post introducing apologetics that evidence for or against the Book of Mormon can be divided into external and internal with internal further subdivided into textual and ethnographic (cultural).

A curious aspect of the Book of Mormon that has bedeviled apologists is its use of King James English, and its frequent direct and indirect quotations and paraphrases of the King James version of the Bible.  The following two passages illustrate this connection.  The first passage is from Moroni 7:45-47.

 45 And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

 46 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—

 47 But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.

The above passage strongly resembles the following passage from 1 Corinthians 15:4-8.  Some of the phrases are identical, while there are some slight differences.

 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

 8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

So what is the problem with these passages?  The first passage was supposed to have been written by Moroni, the last surviving Nephite prophet.  The Nephites left Jerusalem around 600 BC and had no contact with the old world once they arrived in America.  According to the Book of Mormon, Moroni wrote his version around 420 AD.  According to biblical scholars, Paul wrote First Corinthians about 55 AD.  Moroni could not have had access to the words of Paul.  How did he then quote Paul?

Apologetic responses present two possible explanations for Moroni quoting Paul when he could not have possibly had the words of Paul.  One is that Moroni received the same words as Paul through revelation.  The problem with this explanation is that Paul wrote in Greek and Moroni wrote in reformed Egyptian (whatever that is) and spoke some variant of Hebrew.  How did these ideas originally written in such different languages come to be translated into almost identical King James English?  That leads to the second explanation.  Joseph Smith saw ideas expressed that were similar to Paul's and chose the wording to be like the words of Paul in King James English, with which he was intimately familiar.  These explanations are not mutually exclusive.  Moroni may have received the same ideas as Paul through revelation while Joseph Smith chose the wording to nearly match the King James version of the Bible.

I have issues with both of these apologetic explanations.  First, we have no other examples where two authors separated by time and space with no knowledge of each other independently wrote something so closely related.  If revelation worked this way we should see other examples.  Secondly, the idea that Joseph Smith translated ideas very loosely by choosing wording familiar to him from other sources contradicts other apologetic explanations requiring a tighter, or more word for word translation.  Apologists use these loose vs. tight translation models at their convenience when they should stick with one or the other.  I will explore this idea further in future posts.

There is a far more plausible explanation for why Moroni quotes Paul than anything the apologists have come up with: the Book of Mormon is a 19th-Century creation.  Whether it was written by Joseph Smith, someone else, or multiple authors, the features of the Book of Mormon that match the King James version of the Bible are easily explained by admitting that it is a 19th-Century creation rather than a translation of an ancient record.  If we employ Occam's Razor, this is the explanation we will choose because it is by far the simplest since we do not have to assume unprecedented, almost magical abilities on the part of the ancient authors involved.