filename : MORM5.TXT
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Christian[sic] Information Exchange


From "The Kingdom of the Cults"
by Dr. Walter Martin

Plagiarisms -- The King James Version    

Typed by Mike Tolbert


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.