The King James Bible and the Book of Mormon: A Scholarly Response

The presence of King James language in the Book of Mormon is precisely what a genuine ancient record translated for a 19th-century audience would produce. The critics' case rests on assumptions their own cited scholars do not support.

Overview of the Critique

The ldsdiscussions.com article on the King James Bible and the Book of Mormon presents five interlocking arguments: (1) the Book of Mormon incorporates KJV mistranslations it should not contain if translated from gold plates; (2) the pattern of changes to italicized KJV words proves Joseph Smith was revising a KJV text rather than receiving revelation; (3) New Testament language including the long ending of Mark is anachronistic; (4) the Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi is a clumsy derivative of the KJV Sermon on the Mount; and (5) Deutero-Isaiah's presence in the Book of Mormon is chronologically impossible. Each of these claims can withstand rigorous scrutiny.

Before addressing individual arguments, one framing problem must be identified: the critique assumes a single, simple model of the translation process, then measures every piece of evidence against that assumed model. When the evidence does not fit, it attributes the failure to Joseph Smith's fabrication rather than to the model's incompleteness. This logical inversion runs throughout the ldsdiscussions analysis.

I. The Translation Process: What the Evidence Actually Shows

The ldsdiscussions article repeatedly invokes the witness accounts of David Whitmer and Martin Harris to argue that a tight, word-for-word translation process was operating, and then uses those same accounts to demand that no KJV language should appear. This argument contains a crucial equivocation. What the witnesses describe is a controlled revelation process; they do not describe the source of the words being revealed. A divinely controlled process can present text in the received scriptural idiom of the audience without that idiom having originated with the human translator.

Royal Skousen, director of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project at Brigham Young University and the world's foremost textual scholar of the Book of Mormon, has spent over three decades analyzing every manuscript variant. His monumental Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon (six volumes, 2004–2009) and The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (2019) represent the most thorough scholarly examination ever undertaken. Skousen's analysis supports tight control — specific words appeared to Joseph — yet the text exhibits patterns that cannot be explained by Joseph simply copying from a Bible he held in his hands.

Crucially, Skousen's examination of the original manuscript reveals systematic misspellings of proper names in Oliver Cowdery's handwriting that are phonetically consistent with Joseph dictating unfamiliar sounds — not with a scribe copying from a printed page. If Joseph had opened a King James Bible and read from it, Oliver would have seen the text and spelled the names correctly. The manuscript evidence falsifies the open-Bible theory on its own terms.

II. Early Modern English: A Linguistic Fingerprint Joseph Smith Could Not Have Produced

The ldsdiscussions article asserts that the language of the Book of Mormon is "a 19th century frontier language blended with the King James Bible." This claim has been decisively challenged by the linguistic research of Stanford Carmack (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara), published in the peer-reviewed Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.

Carmack compared the grammatical structures of the earliest Book of Mormon manuscript against the King James Bible, Shakespeare, over 200,000 Early Modern English texts, and extensive samples of 19th-century American English including transcripts of sermons by frontier preachers who consciously imitated KJV style. His finding: the Book of Mormon consistently uses grammatical constructions characteristic of 16th- and early 17th-century English — constructions that had become archaic by 1800, that do not appear in the KJV, and that do not appear in any pseudo-archaic texts produced by Joseph Smith's contemporaries.

"The grammar characteristic of early modern English from the 16th and 17th centuries found in the Book of Mormon was not in the KJV, Shakespeare, or other popular 19th-century publications, and these linguistic structures were also not found in any other 19th-century text including transcripts of sermons by preachers using KJV-like language. The indications are that Joseph Smith was neither the author nor the English-language translator."
— Stanford Carmack, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This finding directly contradicts the 19th-century-authorship thesis at the linguistic level. A 19th-century author wishing to write in archaic style would produce pseudo-archaisms that resemble the KJV, because the KJV was the archaic text he knew. What Carmack found instead is a stratum of genuine Early Modern English that predates the KJV and is not replicated in any known 19th-century writing. The ldsdiscussions article does not mention this evidence at all.

III. KJV Italics: The Argument Cuts Both Ways

The ldsdiscussions article argues that Joseph Smith's special attention to italicized KJV words proves he was revising a KJV text. This argument is more complicated than presented, and the key complication undermines the critics' conclusion.

Skousen's own data shows that approximately 29% of all differences between the Book of Mormon's Isaiah text and the KJV involve italicized words. The critics present this as damning. But the same data shows that 71% of differences involve non-italicized words, and 60% of italicized words are retained unchanged. If Joseph were systematically targeting italics for removal, the percentages would be far more lopsided. Skousen's own conclusion, based on comprehensive examination of all variants rather than cherry-picked examples, is that the italics correlation, while real, does not support the inference that Joseph consciously targeted them.

Joseph Spencer's detailed study "Missing Words: King James Bible Italics, the Translation of the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith as an Unlearned Reader," published in the Interpreter Foundation, offers a third hypothesis the ldsdiscussions article does not engage: that a prior translation had already omitted words corresponding to KJV italics, and that Joseph, viewing a text with those words absent, attempted to fill the gaps. On this reading, the variants are evidence of faithful transmission of an already-variant source text, not revision of the KJV.

"Smith's own later corrections (1837 edition) restoring omitted italicized words suggest he had not intended to omit them...but had simply failed to notice their absence when he first dictated these passages."
— Joseph M. Spencer, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Furthermore, Emma Smith reported that Joseph lacked basic biblical knowledge (including ignorance of Jerusalem's city walls), Lucy Mack Smith noted he had never read the Bible through in his life, and no translation witness reported a Bible present during translation. These testimonies create substantial difficulty for the hypothesis that Joseph was deliberately manipulating KJV italics as a sophisticated textual critic.

IV. Mistranslations: Ancient Variants and the Limits of the Argument

The claim that the Book of Mormon contains KJV "mistranslations" assumes that the brass plates could not have contained a variant reading that happens to agree with the KJV. That premise is assumed, not demonstrated.

FAIR LDS's catalogue of the 91 alleged KJV errors in the Book of Mormon identifies multiple categories. Some are not errors at all: modern translational preferences reflect scholarly conventions, not established facts about the original text's meaning. Others involve diachronic shifts in English word meaning where the KJV rendering, in its 17th-century semantic context, was not wrong. In a substantial number of cases, the KJV rendering that modern scholars consider inferior is actually attested in the Greek Septuagint or in other ancient manuscript traditions that Joseph Smith could not have known but the brass plates could plausibly have preserved. FAIR's conclusion: "In no case is there a translation variant, broadening of meaning, change in meaning, change in intent, etc., that teaches incorrect doctrine."

The Isaiah 2:16 example cited by ldsdiscussions ("pleasant pictures" vs. "beautiful craft") is instructive. The critics note that KJV translators lacked access to the Egyptian loanword that modern scholars use to render the verse differently. But the brass plates predated the KJV by more than two thousand years and derived from a textual tradition independent of the manuscripts available to KJV translators. The presence of "pleasant pictures" in both texts is at least as consistent with a shared ancient source variant as with Joseph copying from a 1611 text. The Book of Mormon also alters more than 50% of its Isaiah quotations from the KJV — a fact ldsdiscussions notes but does not explain on the copying hypothesis.

V. Deutero-Isaiah: Scholarly Consensus Is Not Scholarly Certainty

The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), discovered in 1947 and dating to approximately 125 BCE, contains the entire book of Isaiah without any structural break between chapters 39 and 40 — the very point where critics insist authorial hands change. This is the oldest complete manuscript of Isaiah by approximately a thousand years, and it presents the book as a unified composition. Ancient Jewish tradition uniformly attributed the book to Isaiah ben Amoz. The phrase "the Holy One of Israel" — a distinctive Isaianic signature — appears 25 times across both sections of the book, representing stylistic unity that defies clean division.

Even granting the two-author hypothesis: Deutero-Isaiah is dated by most scholars to between 550 and 540 BCE. Lehi left Jerusalem around 600–597 BCE. But the brass plates constituted "the scriptures of the Jews" available in Jerusalem at his departure (1 Nephi 5:11–13). If Deutero-Isaiah was a prophetic tradition circulating before its final compilation — a well-documented phenomenon in ancient Near Eastern textual transmission — earlier portions could have been available. The ldsdiscussions argument assumes a precision in dating and transmission that the text itself does not support.

VI. The Sermon at the Temple: What Derivation Actually Proves

The ldsdiscussions article points to three features of 3 Nephi as evidence of clumsy KJV derivation: the substitution of "senine" for "farthing," the retention of the Roman "mile" reference, and the retention of the Aramaic word "Raca." Each is less damning than presented.

The "farthing/senine" substitution is equally consistent with a translation process that updated currency references while preserving other elements. The "mile" reference communicates a principle of voluntary service beyond legal obligation; the teaching transfers cross-culturally just as modern Christians apply it without living under Roman conscription law. The retention of "Raca" in 3 Nephi 12:22 is presented as inexplicable for a Nephite audience — but by the same logic, Matthew's Greek-speaking audience would have found an Aramaic insult equally foreign. Matthew preserved it precisely because the foreignness amplified its rhetorical force as an expression of contempt. This is literary artistry, not error.

The BYU Religious Studies Center article "The Sermon on the Mount in the JST and the Book of Mormon" documents numerous differences between 3 Nephi and Matthew 5–7 that have no explanation under a simple copying model, including theological expansions, restructured logic, and additional teachings absent from Matthew entirely. A forger does not add difficulty to his text; he simplifies. The Book of Mormon consistently does the opposite.

VII. The Long Ending of Mark: A Genuinely Contested Scholarly Question

The ldsdiscussions article presents the long ending of Mark (Mark 16:9–20) as a clearly inauthentic late addition. This overstates the scholarly consensus and ignores substantial recent scholarship for its authenticity.

The detailed study "The Book of Mormon Versus the Consensus of Scholars: Surprises from the Disputed Longer Ending of Mark," published in the Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, demonstrates: (1) over 95% of extant Greek New Testament manuscripts contain the long ending; (2) the two oldest manuscripts that lack it — Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus — derive from the same Alexandrian text family and do not represent independent testimony; (3) four compositions from the 2nd century CE attest to manuscripts of Mark containing Mark 16:9–20, including works associated with Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus; and (4) scholar Nicholas Lunn identifies Markan linguistic patterns, literary inclusio, and thematic coherence with the rest of Mark consistent with Markan authorship throughout the long ending.

The honest appraisal is that the authenticity of Mark 16:9–20 is a genuinely contested question in New Testament scholarship. The Book of Mormon's parallel language in Mormon 9:22–24 is not the open-and-shut liability the ldsdiscussions article presents.

VIII. Why KJV Language Was the Appropriate Vehicle

Hugh Nibley's foundational argument is that prophets have always quoted scripture in the received standard version of their audience. The New Testament writers, writing in Greek, quote the Old Testament from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Masoretic text — even in passages where the two diverge. This is not plagiarism; it is the natural practice of communicating ancient truth in the scriptural idiom the audience recognizes.

The BYU Religious Studies Center article "The King James Bible and the Book of Mormon" documents that KJV English was the linguistic register of sacred authority in early 19th-century America. A revealed text in any other English idiom would have been dismissed as non-scriptural by its reception audience. The translation's use of KJV idiom is evidence of appropriate contextualization, not dependence.

Richard Lloyd Anderson's 1977 Ensign article concludes that the most natural explanation for KJV language is exactly what the Latter-day Saint position claims: Joseph was given scriptural language in the form his audience would recognize as authoritative. A divine translation process could present ancient content in familiar scriptural language without that language having been composited from the translator's bookshelf.

IX. Occam's Razor Applied Honestly

Occam's Razor instructs us to prefer the hypothesis with fewer unnecessary assumptions — not the hypothesis that simply eliminates the most entities. The 19th-century-authorship hypothesis faces explanatory burdens that Occam's Razor does not dissolve: the Early Modern English stratum identified by Carmack, absent from all known 19th-century texts including conscious KJV imitations; Skousen's manuscript evidence against open-Bible copying; the 50%+ alteration rate in Isaiah quotations; consistent witness testimony that no Bible was present during translation; Emma Smith's testimony of Joseph dictating complex text from memory without notes and resuming mid-sentence after interruptions; and the complex internal consistency of Book of Mormon geography, chronology, and theology across hundreds of pages. The simplest explanation must account for all the evidence, not only the evidence that supports a predetermined conclusion.

Conclusion

The ldsdiscussions article covers genuine scholarly ground, but consistently overstates its case. It presents contested scholarly positions as settled facts, ignores the Early Modern English evidence entirely, cherry-picks Skousen's data while citing him as authoritative, and treats the tight-control translation model as simultaneously proven and beside the point depending on which argument is being made.

The most rigorous textual scholarship on the Book of Mormon — Skousen's critical text project, Carmack's linguistic analysis, Spencer's italics study, and the Interpreter Foundation's work on the long ending of Mark — does not support the confident conclusion that the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century fabrication. It supports the more honest conclusion that the questions are genuinely complex, the evidence cuts in multiple directions, and that the presence of KJV language in the Book of Mormon is precisely what the Latter-day Saint translation model predicts.

As Richard Bushman — whose quote ldsdiscussions uses to close its own case — has also written: "I think the critics have not yet been able to explain the Book of Mormon." The problems the critics raise are real. So is the evidence they have not yet answered.

Sources and Further Reading

Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. (Provo: FARMS/BYU Studies, 2004–2009).

Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Studies, 2019).

Stanford Carmack, "The More Part of the Book of Mormon Is Early Modern English," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 26 (2017): 299–355. interpreterfoundation.org.

Joseph M. Spencer, "Missing Words: King James Bible Italics, the Translation of the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith as an Unlearned Reader," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 38 (2020): 109–194. interpreterfoundation.org.

FAIR Latter-day Saints, "Bible passages in the Book of Mormon." fairlatterdaysaints.org.

FAIR Latter-day Saints, "KJV translation errors in the Book of Mormon." fairlatterdaysaints.org.

Roger Terry, "The King James Bible and the Book of Mormon," in The King James Bible and the Restoration (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2011). rsc.byu.edu.

Richard Lloyd Anderson, "By the Gift and Power of God," Ensign, September 1977.

Taylor Halverson, "Firsthand Witness Accounts of the Translation Process," Religious Studies Center, BYU. rsc.byu.edu.