One aspect of the Book of Mormon that caused me doubts about its authenticity was how the quoted biblical passages almost exactly matched the King James Version of the Bible. It was never a major issue for me, because I knew the overall power and spirit of the book, but it was slightly unsettling.

I had assumed that somewhere along the translation process, either when Oliver and Joseph were translating, when they copied the original manuscript over to the printer’s copy, or when the printer was reading the text and setting the type, they saw that the text was similar and decided to pull the passages from the Bible and use those words.

But as I’ve studied Church history, the record shows that Joseph Smith didn’t even have a copy of the Bible while he and Emma were living in Harmony, where most of the Book of Mormon translation took place. The printer and Oliver Cowdery also claimed that they never looked at a Bible in the scribing or typesetting process.

So how did the text of the Book of Mormon end up in an earlier English language, using almost the exact phrasing of the KJV Bible?

Royal Skousen, who has done extensive study on the text of the Book of Mormon, including the original manuscripts, believes the translation Joseph Smith received was almost as if someone else had already translated it into English, perhaps Moroni, and that Joseph Smith was being revealed that English translation.

But why so close to the KJV?

For a Wise Purpose

The King James Version of the Bible was THE English Bible for three centuries. It was considered by most protestants to be the infallible word of God, and for many sects and religious groups, it was viewed as perfectly inspired. There were no additional English translations of the Bible until the 1880’s and even then, many Christians believed that any variations from sacred KJV text were adding to or taking away from the Bible.

In rural America, many families had only the King James Version of the Bible in the home. This became the book that many people learned to read from, and it and the language it used was an important part of the culture.

With this context, and with the worldview of many Americans in the early days of the Church, it makes sense that the Book of Mormon, especially the scriptural passages that quote the Bible, needed to sound exactly like the Bible version they knew. Otherwise, many potential investigators may have been immediately skeptical.

Multiple Layers of Ancient Meaning

Ancient languages like Hebrew use all kinds of words with multiple meanings. Sometimes, to really understand the text and its multiple layers of meaning, you also have to understand the Hebrew or Greek puns. The reality is that puns rarely translate well into English.

You have to look at the original language. With Google Translate and artificial intelligence, it is now easier for anyone to study different meanings and puns in the original language.

Since we don’t have the original text or even the original language of the Book of Mormon, it makes sense that the shared biblical passages would be almost exactly the same as the Bible version, where we do have the Hebrew and Greek source texts. We can look back at those texts to get greater meaning.

Shortly after my mission, I had two friends who had recently returned from Spanish-speaking missions.

One told the joke, “What is the laziest animal?”

“The fish, because all it does all day long is nada, nada, nada.”

The other friend, who understood Spanish, thought this was hilarious, but it went right by me. I knew from my three years of junior high Spanish that nada meant “nothing,” but I made no connection between nada and fish, so it just wasn’t funny. But they understhood the pun and knew that nada also means “swims,” which made the joke an actual joke.

The pun only makes sense in the original language. In English, “nothing” and “swim” are not related.

This is the same with much of scripture. To understand the deeper meaning, we need to study the original text and its multiple layers.

KJV “Errors” What the Critics Claims Get Wrong

Critics like the CES Letter claim Joseph Smith simply copied Bible passages from the King James Version into the Book of Mormon, including supposed translation errors. The argument is framed as a gotcha: if Joseph was a prophet, why would the Book of Mormon repeat KJV mistakes?

But that argument depends on one major assumption: that these are actually mistakes.

When you look at the original Hebrew meanings and the way English words were used in the 17th century, the claim falls apart. These supposed “errors” actually are valid translations, older English definitions, or reasonable ways to express the meaning of the Hebrew text.

Jeremy Runnells did not originate this argument. The CES Letter repackages earlier critical work about the Book of Mormon’s use of King James Bible language. Stan Larson was making this kind of argument by the mid-1980s, and David P. Wright later made a more detailed academic argument about Book of Mormon Isaiah.

The problem is that the CES Letter presents these earlier claims in a simplified chart and assumes these Biblical interpretations are the undisputed “correct translations.” They aren’t. In several cases, the supposed corrections are modern translation preferences or narrow readings of Hebrew words that had a wider range of meaning.

The chart looks official, but the argument behind it is pathetically weak.

None of these examples prove Joseph Smith copied false KJV translations into the Book of Mormon. In several cases, the KJV wording is directly supported by the original Hebrew. In other cases, the issue is not mistranslation at all, but older English definitions that modern readers may misunderstand.

The Isaiah 2:16 example is especially interesting. The Book of Mormon includes “ships of the sea” in addition to “ships of Tarshish,” a detail not found in the KJV wording but found in the Septuagint. This provides additional evidence that Joseph Smith did translate the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God as this is a detail Joseph would not have known from the King James Bible alone.

The CES Letter argument does not show what it claims to show. Every supposed KJV “error” it brings up is either a correct translation, a defensible rendering, or a misunderstanding of older English and Hebrew meaning.

CES Letter Supposed KJV Errors: