“Members of the Church sometimes approach learning about the temple in a piecemeal fashion. For example, in attempting to grasp the scope and richness of the ordinances, they may focus their initial attention on understanding the meaning of specific symbols used in scripture and temple worship one by one. While there is much that can be learned from this kind of study, most of us not only struggle with the meaning of individual concepts and symbols but also—and more crucially—in understanding how these concepts and symbols fit together as a whole system. The symbols and concepts of the temple are best understood not in isolation but within the full context of the plan of salvation to which they belong.”
King Benjamin addresses his people, in a painting by Minerva Teichert (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
As a small constituent part of a long-term project that I’m working on, I’ll be extracting notes over the next several weeks or (more likely) months from John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book, 1992), and intermittently sharing them here. They represent the state of the questions as of the early 1990s and, in many cases, they will need to be fleshed out with whatever developments may have occurred over the past thirty-three years. (It’s also possible that, in a few cases, subsequent developments will have negated them altogether.) But that is a task for another time (or times). These are notes — sometimes including bibliographical hints for future reading — that I’m compiling for my own use, but I hope that some of you will find them of interest.
John W. Welch, “Textual Consistency” (21-23)
“The general mode of translation used by Joseph Smith in bringing forth the Book of Mormon is well known. He dictated the text to a scribe as he translated the record, going through the text only a single time. People do not often stop to think, however, about the implications and challenges of this unusual and formidable manner of writing.
“For one thing, dictating a nal copy of a letter, let alone a book, the rst time through is extremely difcult. Yet the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon is remarkably clean. There are few strikeovers, and only minor changes were made as the book went to publication. The vast majority of those changes involved spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar.
“Even more remarkable are the extensive, intricate consistencies within the Book of Mormon. Passages tie together precisely and accurately though separated from each other by hundreds of pages of text and dictated weeks apart.” (21)
Professor Welch offers four very specific examples:
Alma 36:22 quotes twenty-one words verbatim from 1 Nephi 1:18.
Helaman 14:12 quotes twenty words verbatim from Mosiah 3:8 — the only difference between them being the insertion of an of in the later passage.
At 1 Nephi 19:11-12, a prophecy given by Zenos foretells a very specific list of catastrophic events, including “thunderings and lightnings, tempests, fire and smoke, a vapor of darkness, the earth opening, mountains being carried up, rocks rending, and the earth groaning.” Hundreds of pages (and hundreds of years) later, 3 Nephi 8:6-23 records the fulfillment of Zenos’s prophecy, describing exactly that list of destructive phenomena.
“Early in Book of Mormon history, King Benjamin set forth a five-part legal series prohibiting (1) murder, (2) plunder, (3) theft, (4) adultery, and (5) any manner of wickedness. This ve-part list, which rst appears in Mosiah 2:13, uniformly reappears seven other times in the Book of Mormon (see Mosiah 29:36; Alma 23:3; 30:10; Helaman 3:14; 6:23; 7:21; and Ether 8:16). Apparently the Nephites viewed Benjamin’s set of laws as setting a formulaic precedent.” (23)
There is no evidence that Joseph Smith ever asked Oliver Cowdery or any of the other scribes to “read back” to him any of the already-translated manuscript. In fact, Emma Smith expressly denies that he ever did so, at least in her experience. With that in mind, I share Jack Welch’s concluding paragraph:
Other cases and kinds of extensive internal textual consistency occur within the Book of Mormon. In these and in many other ways, the Book of Mormon manifests a high degree of precision—both as to its underlying ancient texts and in Joseph Smith’s translation. Given the fact that Joseph dictated as he went, the record’s consistency points to an inspired source for the translation’s accuracy. After all, can you quote the twenty-one words of Lehi or the twenty words of Benjamin without looking? (23)
St.Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)
As several others around the world also did, I watched the announcement of a new pope today. It’s a very dramatic event, and an important piece of history — whether one is or isn’t Catholic.
Leo XIV. Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost, a native of Chicago and a former bishop in Peru. Unexpectedly, the first American pope. We now have a new American world leader of strong spiritual and moral character, well educated and highly intelligent, multilingual, with a global worldview and an evident concern for every nation and people. In this regard, certainly, I like the statement that has been made with his selection very, very much.
The grain silo at Salt Lake City’s Church-owned “Welfare Square” has been around for a long time. But Church humanitarian and philanthropic efforts have increased dramatically in recent decades. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
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