Royal Skousen was a professor of linguistics and English at Brigham Young University and the longtime editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. He spent decades examining the original manuscript and the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon, working directly from the earliest surviving textual evidence rather than later recollections or theological assumptions.
Based on this manuscript-level analysis, Skousen concluded that the Book of Mormon translation was revealed to Joseph Smith as a pre-existing English text, which Joseph then dictated to scribes. His findings consistently point away from theories that Joseph composed the wording himself or paraphrased revealed ideas into his own language.
The English Text Did Not Originate With Joseph Smith
The original Book of Mormon text consistently uses forms of English common in the 1600s and early 1700s but already obsolete by Joseph Smith’s lifetime. This English is later than King James English yet earlier than Joseph’s own dialect. These grammatical forms do not appear in Joseph Smith’s personal letters, journals, or independently written revelations.
If Joseph were receiving ideas and expressing them in his own words, the grammar would match his natural language. It does not. Instead, the grammar remains stable across the entire text.
Hebrew Grammar Preserved in the English Text
The earliest text of the Book of Mormon repeatedly uses an “if … and” conditional construction. This structure is unacceptable in English but natural in Hebrew. These constructions appear repeatedly and systematically, ruling out scribal accident.
Joseph Smith later edited many of these constructions out in the 1837 edition, suggesting they were part of the revealed text but uncomfortable to him as an English speaker.
“And It Came to Pass” Reflects Hebrew Compression
The frequent use of “and it came to pass” is another evidence of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as it reflects a single Hebrew grammatical marker expanded into English.
The consistent presence of this phrase supports the idea that the text is behaving like translation, not like an improvised narrative built for modern English style.
Large-Scale Chiasmus Appears in Structured, Deliberate Ways
Chiasmus is a writing structure where ideas are presented in a mirrored pattern. The first idea matches the last, the second matches the second-to-last, and so on, with the main point placed in the center. It is a deliberate form of organization, not accidental repetition.
The Book of Mormon contains large-scale chiasmus, not just in short phrases but across long passages. These structures appear at major narrative and theological turning points and are built around clear central ideas. This requires planning and precision.
What matters is how this text was produced. The manuscripts show rapid, linear dictation with no outlines, no rewrites, and no revisions. Writing extended, structured chiasmus under those conditions would be extremely difficult if the text were being made up in the moment. It makes far more sense if Joseph Smith was dictating from an already-existing record rather than inventing the language as he went.
The Translation Required Word-for-Word Precision
Joseph Spelled Unfamiliar Names Letter by Letter
Witnesses described Joseph Smith spelling unfamiliar names out to scribes. Skousen’s manuscript work supports that claim because the original manuscript frequently shows the first occurrence of a name written phonetically and then corrected. The correction often happens immediately on the same line, which matches the idea of Joseph providing the proper spelling when the scribe guessed incorrectly.
This matters because spelling is not normally part of idea-based dictation. If Joseph were simply expressing concepts and inventing names, there would be no reason for consistent pressure toward specific spellings, especially when the spelling is unexpected and using unfamiliar “non-English” words.
Scribal Guessing Was Corrected Immediately
Skousen includes examples where a scribe writes a plausible spelling and then corrects it. One case is Oliver Cowdery writing “Zenock” and then correcting it to “Zenoch.” The immediate nature of these changes suggests the spelling was being controlled rather than invented.
This happens repeatedly, where the scribe first writes a normal English spelling and then corrects it once the proper spelling is given.
Some Spellings Cannot Be Explained Phonetically
Skousen highlights spellings that could not be figured out just by hearing them, such as “Coriantumr,” which ends in a way English words normally do not. His point is not that scribes never made mistakes, but that some spellings show access to specific letters, not just sounds.
Selective Correction After First Occurrence Fits Reading, Not Invention
Skousen shows that once a name is correctly established, later spellings are sometimes allowed to vary, which shows the process was not error-proof. The pattern still fits a revealed text, where the first spelling is checked and later ones are written more casually assuming the scribe remembers the proper spelling.
The Dictation Process Was Beyond Normal Human Composition
Resuming Dictation Mid-Sentence After Long Interruptions
One of the most impressive parts of the Book of Mormon translation is something anyone who has read scriptures as a family can relate to. If you stop one night and try to pick it back up the next day, it is hard to remember exactly where you left off. Skousen points out that Joseph Smith could stop and later resume dictation without the scribe reading back any prior text. He sometimes resumed mid-sentence, yet the text continues cleanly with no duplication, paraphrasing, or false restarts.
This matters because long oral composition normally drifts after breaks. If someone is inventing a narrative, overlap or rewording is expected. The manuscript record does not show that pattern as if Joseph were seeing only a few words or sentences at a time and so knew exactly where he left off.
No Evidence of Planning, Drafting, or Revision
The Book of Mormon spans centuries of narrative time and includes multiple record keepers, sermons, letters, embedded documents, flashbacks, and quoted material. In large-scale authored works that are going to be read by millions of people, you would expect at least some planning, outlines, notes, revisions, reorganized passages, and multiple drafting stages.
Skousen’s manuscript-based account is the opposite. What the manuscripts show is linear dictation, with the kinds of normal human transmission errors that occur when someone speaks and someone else writes.
Joseph Occasionally Acted as Scribe to Avoid Losing Text
Skousen points to a moment in the original manuscript where Joseph Smith himself writes a short segment when Oliver Cowdery stops. Skousen discusses possible explanations, including the practical need to capture what was currently being dictated when the scribe suddenly had to break away.
In one instances, the text started fading out, as if Oliver were falling asleep while scribing.
This behavior suggests that Joseph appears to have been working through an external flow of text that needed to be recorded, rather than a private composition he could pause and reconstruct the thought in a different way at a different time as we would when writing today.
Complexity Remains Stable Across the Dictation
When people make up long stories as they go, the writing usually gets simpler over time. Vocabulary shrinks, ideas repeat, and structure breaks down. That is normal human behavior.
The Book of Mormon does not show that pattern. From beginning to end, the text keeps the same level of complexity and structure, even though it was dictated without outlines or rewrites.
Joseph did not run out of ideas, because they were not his ideas. He was simply dictating the complex work that Mormon and Moroni had put together hundreds of years before.
The Book of Mormon Behaves Like a Pre-Existing Ancient Record
Quoting Text That Had Not Yet Been Dictated
The Book of Mormon contains passages that quote or closely echo other parts of the Book of Mormon. Because the translation sequence was disrupted by the loss of the 116 pages—resulting in the first five books being translated last—and because of later commentary added by Mormon and Moroni, the order of dictation does not always match the chronology of the story. This makes the consistency of the text much more impressive.
In several places, Joseph Smith was effectively quoting material he had not yet dictated. When those sections were later translated, the wording matched closely. That is what you would expect from a pre-existing text, not from a story being made up.
Joseph Did Not Know the Structure of the Text in Advance
Skousen shows that chapter markings and chapter numbers were not part of the revealed text. The word “chapter” is inserted as a marker, and the actual chapter numbering was added later, sometimes in different ink and sometimes with counting mistakes. That indicates the structure was not being planned and implemented by Joseph in real time.
This matters because it suggests Joseph was not deciding where sections began and ended, and he was not organizing the record into a modern framework while dictating. The structure was discovered as the dictation progressed. The chapter breaks were added later.
Human Transmission Errors Are Evidence Against Fabrication
One of Skousen’s most useful clarifications is that the manuscript evidence supports tight control, but not an error-proof process. The original manuscript includes misheard words, misspellings, and inconsistent spellings of names. Some errors were corrected immediately. Some were corrected later. Some remained in the printed version.
This pattern fits real-world dictation: speech passes through a listener and a writer. It does not fit the way deliberate fabrications would. A fabricated text would be over-polished because the inventor has time and motive to smooth rough edges. The earliest Book of Mormon manuscripts show the opposite: a controlled text moving through imperfect human hands.
The Title Page Fits an Ancient Colophon Pattern
Joseph Smith stated that the Book of Mormon title page was translated from the last leaf of the plates. In modern publishing, a title page belongs at the front. In ancient record-keeping, concluding identification statements were common. These colophon-style endings summarized authorship, purpose, and authority after the record was completed.
Joseph moved the title page to the front for publication because that is what modern readers expect. That is the kind of detail that fits ancient scribal practice that Joseph would not have known about.
Conclusion
By learning the actual history of the Book of Mormon translation and examining the evidence Skousen presents, it becomes clear that the text did not come from composition, planning, or conventional translation.
The language patterns, the Hebrew-like structures preserved in English, the letter-level spelling behavior, the ability to resume dictation after long interruptions without review, the absence of outlines and rewrites, the lack of advance structural knowledge, and the way the text holds together as a fixed record all point in the same direction.
Joseph Smith was not producing the Book of Mormon as an author. He was not translating it in the ordinary sense of turning ideas into his own English. He was dictating a controlled English text that was being revealed. That is why the coming forth of the Book of Mormon fits Joseph’s own description: it came by the gift and power of God.
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