Archaic Vocabulary
Royal Skousen, Professor of Linguistics at Brigham Young University, has suggested that the Book of Mormon uses an archaic vocabulary that seems to reflect 16th- and 17th-century usage rather than the 19th-century usage one would expect if it had been authored by Joseph Smith. If correct, the implication of this assertion would be that God, in revealing the text of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith, revealed something that roughly approximated the language of the most popular Bible translation of the time, the King James Version. Skousen gives several examples, such as the use of the word require to mean 'to request' in Enos 1:18 (compare to KJV Ezra 8:22) and use of 'to cast arrows' to mean 'to shoot arrows' in Alma 49:4 (compare to KJV Proverbs 26:18).
Skousen's assumption should be critically noted: That one would expect a more modern 19th-century vocabulary if Joseph Smith had authored the book.
The Book of Mormon also appears, according to Skousen, to use archaic phrases that are not found in the King James Bible but were in current usage at or around the time of its first publication in 1611. For example, in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, the original text of what is now Alma 37:37 reads:
ounsel the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good;
using the word 'counsel' to mean 'counsel with.' When read in modern English, the text as originally written makes it sound as if the ‘’Lord’’ was to be the one to be counseled. When the 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon was being prepared, the preposition with was added in this passage “so that readers would not misinterpret the language.” The text of Alma 37:37 now reads:
Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good;
This sense of the word 'counsel' became obsolete about 250 years prior to Joseph Smith's birth. Another example is but if in the original text of Mosiah 3:19: "but if he yieldeth" compared to the current reading; "unless he yieldeth." The use of but if to mean unless ended around the beginning of the 17th century, predating Joseph Smith by 200 years
Read more about this topic: The Book Of Mormon And The King James Bible
Famous quotes containing the words archaic and/or vocabulary:
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