BOM Alma 45

In the fourth volume of what was then called the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon but which was eventually known as the FARMS Review (and then, very briefly before its murder, as the Mormon Studies Review), John Tvedtnes published a response to a book by the Rev. Wesley P. Walters, a Protestant critic of Mormonism.  In it, he very briefly but intriguingly refers to one of the features of today’s reading, Alma 45.

Walters had claimed “that the story of Alma’s death (Alma 45:18) was borrowed from that of Moses (Deuteronomy 34:5-6). However, the Book of Mormon already drew the parallel in the next verse (Alma 45:19). The account in the Book of Mormon is much closer to that given in Josephus [Antiquities of the Jews IV.8.48] than to the Bible version, in that it refers to the translation of Moses.”

Posted from Park City, Utah