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 17th 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 19th 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 17th century English and
Hebraisms rather than Joseph Smith’s rural dialect. See the following sources
for more info:
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 1st
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 19th 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 19th century Christian topic is. But if this is used as
an example of an anachronism, it’s not enough to find examples from 19th
century literature discussing a certain topic found in the Book of Mormon. One
must also demonstrate that this is a new topic in the 19th 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 “19th 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.