Jeremy opened his section with two key quotations:
...the Book of Mormon is the keystone of [our] testimony. Just as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the Church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
...everything in the Church – everything – rises or falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and, by implication, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s account of how it came forth...It sounds like a 'sudden death' proposition to me. Either the Book of Mormon is what the Prophet Joseph said it is or this Church and its founder are false, fraudulent, a deception from the first instance onward.
These quotations remain in effect today.
Jeremy has a list of 11 issues with the Book of Mormon. All of them implicitly reject the explanation of the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery provided; i.e., that Joseph translated the engravings on the ancient metal plates.
In other words, Jeremy's concerns are based on his straw man argument that Joseph did not translate the plates. It's understandable that Jeremy would make this argument because many modern LDS intellectuals are teaching that Joseph did not really translate the plates. Instead, these intellectuals teach that (i) Joseph didn't translate the plates but merely read words that appeared on a stone in the hat (SITH), and (ii) the words were provided supernaturally by an unknown source (which I refer to as the mysterious incognito supernatural translator, or MIST).
This is an example of the problem with modern LDS apologetics. They are creating problems by rejecting what Joseph and Oliver taught.
We discuss the translation process in a separate section, the way Jeremy does, but here we focus on the Book of Mormon itself.
If we proceed with the premise that Joseph and Oliver told the truth--that Joseph actually translated the plates--Jeremy's objections corroborate, instead of repudiate, what Joseph and Oliver said.
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The key point is understanding what a translation is.
Jeremy's CES Letter has been translated into other languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc. In each case, the translator had to draw from his/her mental language bank to render the English of Jeremy's original into the target language of Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc.
There is no such thing as a word-for-word translation because the syntax of languages vary. Often there is no exact corresponding word.
Translating any ancient document presents the additional challenge of cultural differences. A famous example is the presence of "candles" in Matthew 5:15 in the King James Version (KJV). The Greek term is actually "lamp," as it has been translated in other English editions. The KJV translators presumably knew this but used the term because their readers were more familiar with candles in their day.
Even translating the Book of Mormon into other modern languages is a challenge. I've seen the translator's edition of the Book of Mormon. It has a long appendix discussing the connotations of various words and phrases in the text to help translators understand the English meanings. And yet, the translations into other languages vary significantly. Some original foreign translations have been completely re-translated because the errors were so pervasive.
This is not unusual. I've seen multiple English translations of the works of the Russian author Tolstoy, for example. No two translators would come up with an identical translation because of their individual mental language bank, their literary preferences, and their respective worldviews.
That's the inherent problem with translation.
Every one of Jeremy's objections is based on the premise that Joseph did not translate the plates. But the points he raises are actually evidence that Joseph did translate the plates.
Jeremy's original material is in blue below.
1769 KJV Errors.
What are 1769 King James Version edition errors doing in the Book of Mormon? A purported ancient text? Errors which are unique to the 1769 edition that Joseph Smith owned?
No one claims the Book of Mormon is an ancient text. It's a translation of an ancient text. As such, we would expect it to come from Joseph's own lexicon, what I call his mental language bank.
Jeremy's objection is understandable because he shares FairMormon's assumption that Joseph didn't really translate the plates. Here's how FairMormon answered this objection. "...the only conclusion that we can reach to explain the presence of Bible passages which match the King James Version is that the Lord revealed them to Joseph in that manner. We do not know the reason for this."
I agree with Jeremy that FairMormon's response is unsatisfactory, but that's because of their assumption that Joseph didn't really translate as he claimed.
If instead we assume that Joseph meant what he said--that he translated the plates--we have a solid response to both Jeremy's objection and FairMormon's incredible response.
As the translator, Joseph would naturally draw from words and phrases he had previously read. That would include the Bible, but also the works of various Christian authors that were readily available to him. He explained he had an "intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations."
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/2
Jeremy cites passages from Isaiah in 2 Nephi as the basis for his objection. As we'll see in the section on the translation, Joseph likely dictated these passages from memory. Jeremy focused on the "errors" in the KJV that are also present in 2 Nephi, but he forgot to mention the changes from the KJV that look like defects in memorization.
Summary: If Joseph translated the plates, we would expect him to draw from his own mental language bank, including passages from the KJV and the works of Christian authors that he had memorized or was intimately familiar with.
17th Century Italics
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? Word for word? What does this say about the Book of Mormon being an ancient record?... Why does the Book of Mormon, which is supposed to have been completed by Moroni over 1,400 years prior, contain the exact identical seven italicized words of 17th century translators?
This is essentially the same objection as the 1769 KJV Errors objection because Jeremy simply assumes that Joseph did not translate the plates. But if Joseph did translate the plates, we would expect him to incorporate the KJV, including the italicized words, because the KJV was such an important part of Joseph's lexicon.
To repeat: the Book of Mormon is not the writing of Mormon, Moroni, or Nephi. It is Joseph's translation of the ancient record. As such, it is the product of Joseph's mental language bank, including passages he was intimately familiar with and/or memorized, just as the Spanish translation of Jeremy's material is the product of the mental language bank of Jeremy's translator.
Mistranslations
The Book of Mormon includes mistranslated biblical passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired JST version instead of the incorrect KJV version that Joseph later fixed.
This is a compound logical fallacy, based on the straw man assumption that Joseph did not translate the plates. If, as many modern LDS intellectuals claim, the words of the Book of Mormon were given to Joseph (he merely read them off the stone in the hat), then Jeremy's objection is well founded.
If instead we accept what Joseph said, we can see how, as a translator, he could have reasonably used the KJV he was familiar with (and had likely memorized) to render the similar passages he found on the plates.
The second element of the compound logical fallacy is the assertion that a subsequent deliberative translation should match a previous translation that was done rapidly and incorporated as much KJV language as possible.
Years after translating the Book of Mormon, Joseph began revising the New Testament, including passages from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. However, the JST was a work in progress, never finalized for publication. We can't know whether Joseph considered the JST as the final, perfect version of these passages.
As translator, Joseph revised the Book of Mormon twice, both times reflecting his improving understanding of grammar. He could have revised it again to include the JST changes. But the discrepancy between the original translation of the Book of Mormon and the JST is evidence that Joseph was, actually, translating because any translator's mental language bank grows over time. We would expect a later translation to be an improvement over a prior translation.
DNA
DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but rather from Asia. Why did the Church change the following section of the introduction page in the 2006 edition Book of Mormon, shortly after the DNA results were released?
"...the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians"
to
"...the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians"
This point reflects a historical mistake. Many early Latter-day Saints, including Orson Pratt, assumed that all of the indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere descended from Lehi's party of immigrants. They also assumed all the "Jaredites" were killed off. The original note in the introduction Jeremy quoted was based on these assumptions.
Both assumptions were speculative in the first place and not well supported by the text of the Book of Mormon or by what Joseph and Oliver taught.
1. Jaredites. Regarding the Jaredites, Moroni explained that he was writing about only those inhabitants who lived in "this north country." That specifically excluded ancient inhabitants who lived south of that "north country." Moroni also told Joseph that the abridged record was "written and deposited" not far from his home near Palmyra, New York. This statement identifies "this north country" as the area around western New York. In other words, the record of the Jaredites in Ether does not deal with or even mention the inhabitants of most of the Western Hemisphere.
We can see this in the text itself. Ether gives his genealogy, showing he was a direct descendant of Jared. We have no record of the descendants of the brother of Jared and his friends (except for an unnamed king in Ether11:17). Presumably there was intermarriage, but the text implies that the friends had migrated to areas separate from Jared and his brother. Thus, the book of Ether is an account of a specific family line, not of all the inhabitants of the western hemisphere. The destruction of the "Jaredites" in "this north country" had no impact on the descendants of Jared's brother and their friends elsewhere in the hemisphere.
The Jaredites originated in the area of modern Iraq and most likely crossed Asia to the Pacific before crossing to the Western hemisphere. We don't know where their friends originated, but such a long journey through Asia would likely involve some intermarriage and possibly some recruiting. The text therefore accommodates an accumulation of Asian DNA such as that found in the ancient inhabitants of today's Latin America.
2. Lehi's descendants. Most LDS historians overlooked the key point that Joseph Smith expressly rejected Orson Pratt's hemispheric theory. When he wrote the Wentworth letter, Joseph largely followed an 1840 pamphlet written by Orson Pratt. But when he reached the several pages of Orson Pratt's speculation about the "Indians" of Central and South America being Lamanites, Joseph omitted Pratt's speculation and wrote instead that "The remnant (of Lehi) are the Indians that now inhabit this country."
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/church-history-1-march-1842/2
This is consistent with what Moroni told Joseph during his first visit, when he "gave a history of the aborigenes of this country, and said they were literal descendants of Abraham."
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/68
Neither Joseph nor Moroni said or implied that the inhabitants of the entire western hemisphere were Lamanites. Both restricted their scope to "this country." The Lord, in D&C 28, 30, and 32, identified as Lamanites only the Indians then living in New York, Ohio, and Missouri/Kansas (where northeastern tribes had been relocated by the federal government).
Nevertheless, many Latter-day Saints ignored these specific teachings in favor of the theories of Orson and Parley Pratt, Benjamin Winchester, and others. In some sense, we could say that over centuries of migration and intermarriage, ancient people in the western hemisphere merged ancestry. This would make the modern inhabitants of Latin America "Lamanites" in that sense. Of course, the majority of modern Latin Americans have European or African ancestry. But clearly, the predominant indigenous DNA throughout Latin America is Asian. Whether that is Jaredite-related is anyone's guess (the Book of Mormon does not preclude other migrations to America), but the text does support an early immigration by Asiatic people.
Another key point: the indigenous people identified by Moroni, Joseph Smith, and the D&C have DNA that did not originate in Asia and is different from the DNA of indigenous people in Latin America. They have a high incidence of the X2 haplogroup, which is distinct from the rest of Latin America and is connected to the Middle-East. DNA experts claim the American version of X2 broke away 10,000+ years ago, but that's a question of dating that has multiple angles beyond the scope of this discussion.
Had Latter-day Saint scholars adhered to what Joseph, Moroni and the D&C taught, they would never have composed the original introduction to the Book of Mormon that Jeremy objected to. That introduction was the product of a bad assumption, not of false teachings by Joseph Smith.
Anachronisms
Horses, cattle, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheels, chariots, wheat, silk, steel, and iron did not exist in pre-Columbian America during Book of Mormon times. Why are these things mentioned in the Book of Mormon as being made available in the Americas between 2200 BC - 421 AD?
Unofficial apologists claim victories in some of these items but closer inspection reveals significant problems. It has been documented that apologists have manipulated wording so that steel is not steel, sheep become never-domesticated bighorn sheep, horses become tapirs, etc.
Jeremy's framing of the apologetic responses as "manipulated wording" makes sense if we assume Joseph did not translate the plates. But if Joseph did translate, he could draw only on his own mental language bank, which included the terms he used in the translation.
Another assumption Jeremy makes is the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon. Again, Jeremy is justified in making this assumption because most LDS intellectuals have been promoting M2C for decades now. But M2C is based on a mistake in Church history that we'll discuss in the sections on archaeology and geology.
As translator, Joseph said only that the Title Page was a "literal translation." Consequently we infer that the rest of the text was not a literal translation. This point has been exaggerated by M2C proponents beyond reasonable bounds, such as their claim that tapirs are the "horses" in the text, but that type of exaggeration does not justify ignoring the realities of an actual translation process.
It is well known that horses and elephants existed in ancient North America. What is unknown is when (or even if in the case of horses), they went extinct before the Europeans arrived. Silk was well-known in ancient Hopewell civilization, as we see in their burial sites. Cattle, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, chariots, wheat, steel and iron are translated terms. There are Hopewell and Adena equivalents for each of them.
Archaeology
[Note: in this section, I inserted comments in Jeremy's text to point out the assumptions he relied on. They are understandable assumptions, based on the work of LDS intellectuals, but they don't hold up to even cursory scrutiny.]
There is absolutely no archaeological evidence to directly support the Book of Mormon or the Nephites and Lamanites, who were supposed to have numbered in the millions.
[There is nothing in the text that says or implies their population numbered in the millions. The largest enumerated Nephite army was only 42,000 men, accumulated after they "did gather in our people... in one body" in 330 AD. See Mormon 2:5 Depending on assumptions regarding age and gender, this could represent a total population of as few as 100,000 (assuming all males from teenagers up participated in the army). Opposing them was a Lamanite army of 44,000, representing what Mormon called "exceedingly great power."
[For more on Nephite populations, see
http://www.lettervii.com/2021/03/book-of-mormon-populations.html]
This is one of the reasons why unofficial apologists have developed the Limited Geography Model (it happened in Central or South America) and claim that the Hill Cumorah mentioned as the final battle of the Nephites is not in Palmyra, New York but is elsewhere.
[Jeremy is correct here. M2C was borrowed by LDS intellectuals from L.E. Hills, an RLDS scholar who published the first M2C map in 1917. Hills was responding to Cumorah Revisited and other criticisms that claimed there was no archaeological support for the Book of Mormon. Cumorah Revisited claimed the Book of Mormon was false because it described two separate ancient civilizations in North America, but "everyone knew" there was only one. Cumorah Revisited was published before the distinction between Hopewell and Adena was documented by archaeologists.
Like Jeremy and most modern LDS scholars, Hills and the critics agreed that Book of Mormon populations were in the millions, despite the contrary evidence in the text.]
This is in direct contradiction to what Joseph Smith and other prophets have taught.
[Jeremy is exactly right here. By repudiating what Joseph and Oliver taught about the New York Cumorah, modern LDS intellectuals have both (i) undermined the credibility of Joseph and Oliver and (ii) tainted the interpretation of the Book of Mormon so it fits Mesoamerica.]
It also makes little sense in light of the Church’s visitor’s center near the Hill Cumorah in New York and the annual Church-sponsored Hill Cumorah pageants.
[The pageant accommodated M2C by building a bizarre Mayan pyramid on the hillside of the New York Cumorah.]
We read about two major war battles that took place at the Hill Cumorah (Ramah to the Jaredites) with deaths numbering in the tens of thousands – the last battle between Lamanites and Nephites around 400 AD claimed at least 230,000 deaths on the Nephite side alone.
[Because of the work of M2C apologists who set up a false framing of Cumorah, Jeremy understandably makes these assumptions. However, a careful reading of the text shows that only two groups of "ten thousand" were visible from the top of Cumorah. The other groups of "ten thousand" had died previously and elsewhere, possibly as early as the beginning of Mormon's career decades earlier. This fits Oliver's explanation that the deaths from both Lamanites and Nephites numbered only in the tens of thousands, and Mormon's previous enumeration of the armies of 44,000 and 42,000, respectively. Those numbers were assembled years before the final battle at Cumorah.
The term "ten thousand" cannot be an exact number, anyway. It is more likely a term for a military unit of indeterminate size. It's the equivalent of terms such as a battalion, troop, division, etc. Historically, a unit of "ten thousand" has been known to consist of as few as 6,000, and there's no reason why it couldn't have been even smaller after years of retreat and defeat as the Nephites made their way to Cumorah.
For more discussion of this, see http://www.lettervii.com/2021/03/ten-thousand.html]
No bones, hair, chariots, swords, armor, or any other evidence of a battle whatsoever has been found at this site.
This is another unscientific and straw man argument because chariots and armor are not mentioned in connection with this battle. As for the bones and hair, Mormon specifically noted that the bodies went unburied, a point reiterated by Oliver Cowdery.
"their flesh, and bones, and blood lay upon the face of the earth, being left by the hands of those who slew them to molder upon the land, and to crumble and to return to their mother earth." (Mormon 6:15)
If bones and hair survived centuries in nature, the earth would be covered with the remains of millions of dead animals.
The text does mention that the Lamanites "did fall upon my people with the sword, and with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the ax, and with all manner of weapons of war." (Mormon 6:9) It does not mention what weapons the Nephites had. Presumably, after their victory, the Lamanites would not have left behind their weapons. Every victor takes the spoils of war, including useful weapons (especially any "swords" whether made of copper or other metals). Besides, abundant stone weapons (arrowheads, axes, atlatl heads, etc.) have been found around Cumorah and throughout western New York.
Jeremy's objection boils down to a set of false assumptions, based on the work of M2C apologists who reject both what Joseph and Oliver taught and what the text says.
Given the false assumptions of the M2C apologists, Jeremy makes a better case than the apologists. That's why it's important to first assess the assumptions of the M2C apologists.
In other words, the objections based on archaeology are not Jeremy's fault. They're the fault of the M2C apologists.
The rest of Jeremy's objections also rely on the false assumptions invented by M2C apologists. Once we set aside M2C and its assumptions, we see plenty of evidence of Book of Mormon societies.
There is abundant evidence in North America of extensive (but not heavily populated) Hopewell and Adena civilizations, including "banks of earth," houses and cities made "both of wood and of cement," extensive use of rivers, etc. Museums throughout the midwestern U.S. feature the types of weapons and defensive clothing described in the text. Joseph identified known Hopewell sites as Nephite and at least one Adena site as Jaredite. His identifications align with both the text and modern archaeology and anthropology.
What doesn't fit, as Jeremy points out, are the claims of the M2C intellectuals.
In this section, Jeremy points to a map that includes various place names. This objection is problematic for two reasons.
First, the geographic information in the Book of Mormon text is relatively vague and generalized, as is common in most ancient texts. References to specific place names were meaningful to the original authors, but once those place names were lost to history, they are of little help to modern readers, even in translation.
Consequently, the text supports a variety of possible settings in many parts of the world. In fact, the only reason to limit the setting to "the Americas" is because that's what Joseph and Oliver said. But they also both said Cumorah was in New York, which makes the M2C rejection of the New York Cumorah incomprehensible.
Second, analogous place names can be found throughout the world. If Joseph translated the plates, we must infer he used his own mental language bank, including place names that he was familiar with. Some names he presumably translated into the English equivalent of the ancient meaning, such as Bountiful. Others he transliterated, meaning he used an English pronunciation for the ancient name, such as Helam. Such transliteration would naturally require Joseph to draw from names familiar to him, regardless of geography.
As for the specific example of Cumorah, Jeremy points to the highly unlikely possibility that Joseph consulted an obscure map of Africa to pick the capital of the Comoros Islands; i.e. Moroni. A few years ago, I visited the city of Moroni in the Comoros Islands. The origin of the names Moroni and Comoros are obscure, with various theories having been proposed. One possibility is that these names are ancient, handed down through successive generations. If so, and if (as I think) Lehi passed through this area on his way to the New World, he could have picked up the names. Comoros itself is a volcanic island, visible at great distances at sea, which would make it a likely landing spot. This is pure speculation, of course, but so is the idea that Joseph borrowed the names from the obscure map of Africa.
[Note: in the next three sections, Jeremy discusses three books published before the Book of Mormon. I'll address all three together.]
View of the Hebrews
There was a book published in 1823 Vermont entitled View of the Hebrews. Below is a chart comparing the View of the Hebrews to the Book of Mormon:
The Late War
The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain: This book was an 1819 textbook written for New York state school children. The book depicted the events of the War of 1812 and it was specifically written in a Jacobean English style to imitate the King James Bible.
The First Book of Napoleon
Another fascinating book published in 1809, The First Book of Napoleon:
These three books contain many similarities to the Book of Mormon--exactly what we would expect if Joseph translated the plates.
The reason, as we've discussed before, is that Joseph could draw only on his own mental language bank. It is highly likely, for example, that he read The Late War. It involved the War of 1812 during which the British invaded Pultneyville, a town just 20 miles north of Palmyra. Joseph's brother Alvin was buried in a cemetery named for a veteran of that war. Veterans of that war lived in and near Palmyra.
It's less likely he read the other two books, but not unlikely.
The point is, the words and phrases in these books, if Joseph read them, would constitute deposits into his mental language bank. He would then draw on these to translate the ancient plates.
These words and phrases in these books, assuming Joseph read them, corroborate Joseph's claim that he translated the plates.
Early Godhead
The Book of Mormon taught and still teaches a Trinitarian view of the Godhead. Joseph Smith’s early theology also held this view. As part of the over 100,000 changes to the Book of Mormon, there were major changes made to reflect Joseph’s evolved view of the Godhead.
Jeremy's objection here relies on his assumption that Joseph didn't translate the plates. In that scenario, if Joseph merely read words that appeared on a stone in the hat, we would reasonably expect the text to be the exact word of God, word-for-word.
But if Joseph translated the plates, we would expect him to recognize places where his initial translation could be misunderstood. The fact that he made clarifying changes corroborates his claim that he translated the ancient plates.
The specific examples provided by Jeremy show this.
In the original 1830 version, Joseph translated 1 Nephi 11:18 to say the virgin was "the mother of God." He later changed that to "the mother of the Son of God."
I infer that the original text said the equivalent of "mother of God." That is accurate in the sense that Christ is God, but it is misleading to modern readers who understand that Christ is part of the Godhead.
It's also possible that Joseph translated by drawing on his mental language bank of traditional Christian words, phrases, and concepts. Subsequently, he recognized that these passages could be misunderstood and rephrased them--retranslated them--for more precision. That is the prerogative of any translator, of course.
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