A serialized response to John Hamer - Part 3

Claim: "The text was/is replete with errors"

Argument 1: "The original text had thousands of grammar errors that were subsequentially corrected"

Since Hamer refers to Royal Skousen’s work during his presentation, this is also a strange argument. One of Skousen’s findings is that grammatically, the Book of Mormon text is an Early Modern English text, ca 17^th century. As such, the original language works well grammatically, perhaps apart from the Hebrew influenced syntax. But because both EModE and Hebrew grammar sounds strange or is plain wrong in 19^th century English, much of that was changed. If Joseph Smith knew he had inserted Hebrew syntax, why change it later instead of leaving it there as evidence? A reasonable answer: He didn’t know because the text was not from him.

So, the “grammar errors” seem to come from 17^th century English and Hebraisms rather than Joseph Smith’s rural dialect. See the following sources for more info:

·         https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/how-joseph-smiths-grammar-differed-from-book-of-mormon-grammar-evidence-from-the-1832-history/

·         https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/is-the-book-of-mormon-a-pseudo-archaic-text/

·         https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Question:_What_do_%22if-and_conditionals%22_tell_us_about_the_Book_of_Mormon_translation%3F

If Hamer’s theory is that the Book of Mormon is an invention by Joseph Smith, this argument is really contradicting his view.

Argument 2: "The original included several substantive errors (e.g. saying Benjamin instead of Mosiah)"

He claims there are several but gives only one example. This is because there is only one example. Some critics would perhaps also argue that a few changes from “God” to “Son of God” in 1st Nephi count as substantive errors. I would argue against that, because the Son of God (Jesus Christ) is in fact a God, which is a title. Even today, we learn that Jesus Christ is the God of the Old Testament. These 1^st Nephi passages, both before and after the change, work and are consistent with the rest of the Book of Mormon text. All throughout the Book of Mormon, there are several examples of Jesus Christ being “the Son of God”, “the Father” and “God”. The Book of Mormon even explains at least three ways in which Christ can be labeled “the Father”.

That leaves us with exactly one substantive error, unless Hamer can provide more examples. Whether the error is by Mormon or Joseph Smith is unknown and is therefore useless as an argument to back up his claims.

Argument 3: "The entirety is anachronistic from animals, crops and metals to 19^th century Christian topics"

This is an old debate and I don’t want to go too much into detail here, because it has been discussed by people much more knowledgeable than me. To be honest, I don’t know what a 19^th century Christian topic is. But if this is used as an example of an anachronism, it’s not enough to find examples from 19^th century literature discussing a certain topic found in the Book of Mormon. One must also demonstrate that this is a new topic in the 19^th century or at least not discussed in Book of Mormon times. How do you do that? There is absolutely no way to demonstrate that a “19^th century Christian topic” is an anachronism or not.

As for animals, crops and metals, it is unreasonable to expect that the names of these things found somewhere on the American continent 2-3 millennia ago, should always have an English 19th century equivalent. It is reasonable to expect that common English words for many of those things didn't even exist. But in order to not have 'cureloms' and 'ziff' all over the book, English words like 'horse' and 'wheat' are used to reflect what those things were with varying degree of accuracy.