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Scriptural Variations

However, aside from Zenos, the only other prophet whose writings are widely quoted is Isaiah. The Book of Mormon quotes twenty complete chapters (Isaiah 2-14, 48-54). Critics have frequently pointed out that these voluminous quotations from Isaiah follow closely the wording of the King James Version. We certainly would not expect that Joseph's translation of the ancient Nephite records would match so faithfully the English of the King James Bible. However, we should not lose sight of the alterations which were made in the text of Isaiah. According to Sidney Sperry, "The text of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is not word for word the same as that of the King James Version. Of 433 verses of Isaiah in the Nephite record, Joseph Smith modified about 233. Some of the changes made were slight, others were radical. However, 199 verses are word for word the same as the old English version" (Sperry 1968, 507).

It is not possible to review all of the modifications of Isaiah, but we can illustrate some of the types of changes that were made by considering one chapter. Let us place those portions of Isaiah 9 which were altered in the Book of Mormon next to the King James Version.

In addition, Isaiah 9 contains three repetitions of this sentence: "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still" (Isa. 9:12, 17, 21). This sentence also occurs at Isaiah 5:25 and 10:4. In every instance, the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon omitted the word "is" in the last clause of this sentence: "but his hand stretched out still." However, the word was inserted into later editions of the Book of Mormon. The omission of "is" from all five occurrences of this sentence indicates that this was not merely a mistake in copying, but was done deliberately. But, why would someone make this change? In the King James Version, the word "is" in these five instances is italicized, indicating that it is not a part of the Hebrew text, but was added by the translators to make the passages more readable or intelligible. The reviser may therefore have felt that the addition of "is" was an unnecessary interpolation and that these sentences would be closer to the original Hebrew if it were omitted. There does not seem to be any other reason for these changes. But it does not appear likely that it would have occurred to Joseph Smith to make alterations of this sort. And the fact that the Book of Mormon does not agree with the King James Version in such a minor detail suggests that Joseph was not copying directly from the Bible, but from some other manuscript. If he had been using the Bible, all five of these sentences would have included the word "is." Later, when Joseph Smith started his revision of the Bible, he used an 1828 edition of the KJV. Robert Matthews noted that italicized words were crossed out: "Throughout the Bible many italics are crossed out, even when it does violence to the sense. There seems to be little consistency in the cross-outs of italics. Many are not touched; others are crossed out and replaced by words in the manuscripts, and many are not replaced. . . . It is possible that the cross-out of italics was a preliminary step done before the other markings in the Bible, perhaps by a different person, and/or at a different time than the other markings . . ." (Matthews 1975, 59). This might indicate that Joseph Smith understood the significance of italicized words in the Bible while he was working on the Book of Mormon. However, Joseph was joined by Sidney Rigdon in December 1830, and they became collaborators in the revision of the Bible. Therefore, it may have been Sidney who crossed out the italicized words. Another piece of evidence is an account describing Joseph Smith's translation of the Nephite plates, which was printed in the Philadelphia newspaper, The Sun, on 18 August 1831: "So, in order to convince [Martin] Harris that he could read from the plates, Jo deposits them [the stones] in his hat, applies the spectacles, and refers Harris to a chapter in the Bible which he had learned by rote; and which he read from the plates, with surprising accuracy; and what astonished Harris most, was, that Jo should omit all the words in the Bible that were printed in Italic. And, if Harris attempted to correct Jo, he persisted that the plates were right, and the Bible was wrong" (Quinn 1998, 170). Again, this might indicate that Joseph understood the function of italicized words in the Bible, or it could simply mean that whatever text Joseph was using had omitted some of the italicized words, and Joseph merely asserted that his text was right. In any case, the missing words were apparently not due to Martin Harris's knowledge of italics in the Bible. A further statement made by Henry Harris in 1833 suggests that Joseph Smith did not even understand the meaning of the word "italic." In reporting a conversation with Joseph, Harris stated, "I then asked him what letters were engraved on them [the plates], he said italic letters written in an unknown language" (Vogel 1996, 76). Apparently, Joseph thought that "italic" meant something like "hieroglyphic." Dan Vogel dates this conversation between June and September of 1829, when the Book of Mormon was being prepared for printing. If Joseph Smith did not understand what italic letters were in 1829, it isn't likely that he understood the meaning of italics in the Bible when he was working on the Book of Mormon, and it is therefore difficult to believe that he made changes in scripture that were correlated with italicized words. Were such changes in the Book of Mormon made by Sidney Rigdon? This would mean that Rigdon was heavily involved in the production of the Book of Mormon long before his conversion to Mormonism in November 1830. Or, were the changes due to some other source?

It is natural to assume that Joseph Smith inserted the long extracts from Isaiah as a substitute for the 116 pages of manuscript which Martin Harris lost. However, if the chapters from Isaiah were thrown in as an expedient so that Joseph would not have to reproduce what he and Martin had already done, we would expect either that Joseph would not have thought of making any changes, or, in any case, that the alterations would have been rather haphazard. But Isaiah 9:1, which was changed to read "Red Sea," provides us with an example which seems to argue against this. This does not seem to be a casual change; it is doubtful that it would have occurred to anyone to make this modification, unless it was related in some way to the Book of Mormon. This change only begins to become intelligible when it is connected with Lehi's journey northward from Jerusalem and then south along the borders of the "Red Sea." But, I have already argued that Joseph Smith either did not understand the description of Lehi's journey and the reference to the Red Sea, or he deliberately tried to change it contrary to the text. In either case, he could not have been the one who made this modification of Isaiah.

Sidney Sperry has pointed out another important alteration. Isaiah 2:16 reads: "and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures." 2 Nephi 12:16 adds another clause to this verse: "and upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures." This addition is of interest, because it agrees with the Septuagint reading of Isaiah: "and upon every ship of the sea, and upon every display of fine ships." This certainly suggests that the person who made this change in the Book of Mormon was aware of at least some of the variations in the manuscripts of the Bible. It is doubtful that Joseph Smith would have been familiar with the Septuagint reading of Isaiah 2:16. We know, in fact, that he and Oliver Cowdery purchased a copy of the King James Version, which he used in making his revision of the Bible.

It is also important to recognize that other alterations of Isaiah are not capricious, but serve to integrate Isaiah with the text of the Book of Mormon. For example, Isaiah 49 begins: "Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken ye people from far . . . ." The Book of Mormon makes additions to this chapter which stress that Isaiah is addressing people at a distance (emphasis has been added to changes in the text): "Thus saith the Lord: In an acceptable time have I heard thee, O isles of the sea, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee; and I will preserve thee, and give thee my servant for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages . . . . And then, O house of Israel, behold, these shall come from far; and lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim. Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for they shall be smitten no more . . . ." (1 Nephi 21:8, 12-13). Another change of this sort is made in Isaiah 14: "For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the people shall take them and bring them to their place; yea, from far unto the ends of the earth; and they shall return to their lands of promise" (2 Nephi 24:1-2).

Nephi read from Isaiah 49 just after quoting the words of Zenos, which also contain three references to "the isles of the sea." Zenos first describes the cataclysms which will occur at the death of Jesus, "which should be a sign given of his death unto those who should inhabit the isles of the sea, more especially given unto those who are of the house of Israel . . . . And all these things must surely come, saith the prophet Zenos. And the rocks of the earth must rend; and because of the groanings of the earth, many of the kings of the isles of the sea shall be wrought upon by the Spirit of God, to exclaim: The God of nature suffers" (1 Nephi 19:10, 12). Zenos then prophesied the dispersion of the Jews and the future renewal of their covenants with God: "Yea, then will he remember the isles of the sea; yea, and all the people who are of the house of Israel, will I gather in, saith the Lord, according to the words of the prophet Zenos, from the four quarters of the earth" (1 Nephi 19:16). The parable of Zenos concerning the tame and wild olive trees is also a representation of the scattering and gathering in of the Jews, including those who are dispersed to the "nethermost parts."

Thus, the alterations of Isaiah are not haphazard; they go hand in hand with the words of Zenos. They are intended to link Isaiah's prophecies with Lehi's posterity, and they in turn with other groups of dispersed Jews. This point is made clear to us by Jacob, the brother of Nephi: "nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea. But great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren" (2 Nephi 10:20-21).

Clearly, then, the revisions of Isaiah form an integral part of the Book of Mormon; they are meant to emphasize the thesis of the Book of Mormon that groups of Jews were scattered to the far corners of the earth, including the New World. But, if Joseph Smith quoted whole chapters of Isaiah merely to save himself the time and effort required to reproduce the manuscript lost by Martin Harris, we would not expect that he would give much thought to reworking the text of Isaiah to tie it more closely to the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith started a translation of the Bible in 1830, after the Book of Mormon was published. It has been called the Inspired Version or the Joseph Smith Translation (JST). Mormon scholars have determined that the portion of the manuscript containing Joseph's translation of Isaiah was written in the first half of 1833. We would expect that since Joseph had already worked on the plates of Nephi, his translation of the Bible would be exactly the same as those chapters of Isaiah which appear in the Book of Mormon. However, this is not the case. In many instances the JST uses the exact wording of the King James Version, instead of preserving the variant forms found in the Book of Mormon.

Let us again consider the changes in Isaiah 9 which we have already discussed. Here are the three versions of verse 1:

We have noted that in the 1830 edition, the Book of Mormon omitted the word "is" from five different occurrences of the same sentence in Isaiah. These omissions could not have been the result of errors in copying, for in every instance the reading was exactly the same. However, the JST restores the word "is" in all five of these sentences. The purpose of these omissions seems to be to challenge the interpolations of the translators of the Bible. Why then would Joseph change his mind and follow the wording of the KJV? This again suggests that he did not make these changes.

Chapters 48 and 49 of Isaiah were heavily altered in 1 Nephi, but the JST follows the reading of the Bible word for word, with the exception of Isaiah 49:25. Among the changes in Isaiah 49 which the JST eliminates are those which tie the chapter more closely to the Book of Mormon. These include the words "O isles of the sea," "O house of Israel," and the phrase "for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established . . . for they shall be smitten no more." These changes were deliberate, and the fact that they are missing from the JST suggests that Joseph Smith was not the one who altered these chapters.

Only one verse in Isaiah 48 and 49 differs in the JST from the KJV. This verse is 49:25, and it presents an interesting problem. In 1 Nephi 21, verse 25 reads just as it does in the KJV: "But thus saith the Lord, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered; for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children." 2 Nephi 6:16-18 again quotes Isaiah 49:24-26, but this time words are added to verse 25: "But thus saith the Lord: Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered; for the Mighty God shall deliver his covenant people. For thus saith the Lord: I will contend with them that contendeth with thee." The last clause of verse 25 is omitted. This is the reading which Joseph chose to include in the JST, but he also restored the missing clause. Thus Joseph passed over 1 Nephi 21, eliminating all of the changes which had been made in Isaiah 49, but he picked up a variant reading of verse 25 in 2 Nephi 6, where only a portion of Isaiah 49 is quoted.

Mormon scholars claim that Joseph incorporated the wording of the King James Version when he was translating Isaiah from the plates of Nephi. But Joseph's revision of the Bible follows the KJV much more closely than does the Book of Mormon. This fact is explained by saying that Joseph did not finish his translation of the Bible and that he would have made many more changes, if he had had sufficient time. But this explanation simply does not hold with regard to those chapters of Isaiah which are included in the Book of Mormon. Joseph had supposedly already done the task of comparing the plates and the Bible and had made all of the necessary changes. All that remained for him to do was to transfer the text of Isaiah from the Book of Mormon to his revision of the Bible. But there are many verses in the JST which indicate that Joseph compared the Book of Mormon with the King James Version and chose from each of them the wording which he wished to retain. We have already discussed some examples of this, but let us consider a few others.

Here are three versions of Isaiah 5:8:

The three readings of Isaiah 51:12 are as follows:

Another clear example is Isaiah 14:2:

In the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 27 expands a few verses of Isaiah into a prophecy about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. In the opening verses of Isaiah 29, the Lord threatens the destruction of Ariel, the city of David, or Jerusalem. 2 Nephi eliminates these verses from chapter 27 and makes them a part of Nephi's speech in chapter 26. Isaiah 29:3 reads: "And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee." Nephi transforms Isaiah's warning against Jerusalem into a prophecy about his own posterity: "After my seed and the seed of my brethren shall have dwindled in unbelief, and shall have been smitten by the Gentiles; yea, after the Lord God shall have camped against them round about, and shall have laid siege against them with a mount, and raised forts against them . . . ." (2 Nephi 26:15). Isaiah 29:4 continues: "and thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust." Similarly, Nephi says: "For those who shall be destroyed shall speak unto them out of the ground, and their speech shall be low out of the dust, and their voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit; for the Lord God will give unto him power, that he may whisper concerning them, even as it were out of the ground; and their speech shall whisper out of the dust" (2 Nephi 26:16). After all of these strenuous efforts in the Book of Mormon to change Isaiah 29 from a warning against Ariel to a prophecy about the destruction of the Nephites and the discovery of the plates, we find that in the JST Joseph Smith restored the words of Isaiah as they appear in the KJV.

Chapters 12,13, and 14 of 3 Nephi quote Jesus' words as recorded in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. As in the case of Isaiah, the Book of Mormon follows closely the wording of the King James Version, but with variations. Also, in some verses, the wording is changed to accommodate the fact that Jesus was addressing the Nephites. For the most part, the JST version of Matthew includes the changes which were made in the Book of Mormon, but there are some disagreements. For example, here are the three readings of Matthew 5:18:

In examining the manuscripts which contain Joseph's revisions of the Bible, Mormon scholars have made some surprising discoveries. Joseph's alterations of the books of the Bible are very uneven; Genesis and Matthew received the greatest number of changes, while other books have few or no changes. It has also been determined that Joseph did not work straight through the Bible, but jumped around from one section to another. A number of revisions which he made are grouped around a specific theme, such as correcting those verses which imply that the Lord hardened someone's heart or that he repented of some action. More importantly, the manuscripts reveal that passages which were revised by Joseph sometimes received a second and even a third revision, and at times the effect was to reverse the earlier revision, or to change a passage which had been marked as correct.

As we have seen, in creating his "translation" of the Bible, Joseph Smith at times incorporated scriptural variations found in the Book of Mormon, while at other times he completely ignored changes which had important implications for the Book of Mormon. It is therefore difficult to believe that he was responsible for the original versions. In addition, in his revision of Genesis, Joseph added new material which has no parallel in the Old Testament, and seems in fact to be related to the Book of Mormon. This material includes forty-two verses dealing with Moses, 121 verses which recount the visions of Enoch, and other verses which add information about Adam and Cain.

For a more detailed examination of Isaiah, see David Wright's "Isaiah in the Book of Mormon . . . and Joseph Smith in Isaiah"