Joseph Smith Wrote Better Than He Knew

Joseph Smith Wrote Better Than He Knew

By Elder Cecil E. McGavin

Author of “Cumorah’s Gold Bible” and “Mormonism and Masonry”

THE Prophet Isaiah has said of the book whose words the learned could not read, “And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, I am not learned … Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.”—Isaiah 29:12, 14.

Such a miracle was achieved in the translation of the Book of Mormon!

It is filled with wisdom unknown to the keenest minds in 1830. It is free from the common errors of time and space, those anachronisms that are to be found in the work of the greatest writers of all time. The appearance of one such error in this divine book would arouse our suspicions, yet no such marks of the human hand are to be found in this precious volume.

Without any reflections upon the genius and ability of the beloved Shakespeare, let us call attention to a few striking errors that appeared in his popular plays, emphasizing thereby that the untutored youth in the suburbs of a backwoods town wrote better than he knew when he dictated to his scribe the pages of the Book of Mormon. The skilful Shakespeare often lost himself in his own generation, becoming unmindful of the ancient people whose customs he often modernized. Yet his occasions for such errors were negligible in comparison with those of the young farmer at Palmyra, New York, if we are to assume that Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon.

In “Hamlet” we read of the clock which “struck twelve,” though striking clocks did not appear for three centuries after Hamlet’s time. In the same play, mention is often made of “brazen cannon” and other artillery entirely unknown to the Europeans for nearly five hundred years after the time of Hamlet.

Hamlet speaks of the roses on his shoes, though such ornaments were not fashionable until Shakespeare’s own time. The most flagrant error in this play is the author’s assertion that Hamlet had been educated at Wittenberg; yet the University of Wittenberg did not exist before 1502.

In “Othello,” Cassio is made to pray: “Great Jove, Othello guard,” while all the characters in this play are represented as being Christians. An appeal like this by a disciple of Christ is as absurd as the pagan Hamlet’s pious references to the Bible and Christianity.

In “Macbeth” mention is made of dollars, drums, striking clocks and other modern devices not in existence at the time the story was supposed to have been enacted. Lennon, in speaking of the storm on the night that Duncan was murdered, says: “Our chimneys are blown down,” yet there was not a chimney in Scotland at the time this is supposed to have happened.

SHILLINGS APPEAR

In “Henry The Fifth,” shillings appear as a medium of exchange; however, they were not in circulation until the time of Henry the Seventh. In this play, Henry the Fifth mentions going to Constantinople and taking the Turk by the beard, whereas Constantinople was not in the possession of the Turks until 1453, thirty-one years after Henry the Fifth passed away.

It is in the “Winter’s Tale” that the well known blunder appears—the shipwreck in Bohemia—though that country is landbound on all sides, with no sea within a hundred miles of its boundaries.

Similar anachronisms appeared in almost every play Shakespeare wrote, yet his worldly wisdom was above that of Joseph Smith’s as the heavens are above the earth.

Yet one prejudiced critic has written of this book: “The Book of Mormon should have been a model of perfection. It should have stood out alone, a solitary pinnacle which linguists would have peeped at through a telescope from afar. It should have been a book which educators would have taken into the school room from one end of civilization to the other. Shakespeare has stood out an unapproachable pinnacle in his line for centuries. And while he seems mighty to the scholars of today, he should have been a mere speck when compared with the work of the Almighty. The language of the Book of Mormon should have been absolutely perfect.”—Lamoni Call, “2,000 Changes in the Book of Mormon,” p. 28.

It is unfair to set up a literary standard for the Book of Mormon that is superior to that of the Bible. Should we require more perfection in the Book of Mormon than in the Bible? If we are to regard them both as the word of God, we must judge them both by the same criterion, measure them by the same measuring rod. If the opinion expressed in this quotation were logical, we should expect to find a uniform literary style in the Bible, while, to the contrary, there are as many different literary techniques as there were prophets and writers.

Biblical scholars have recognized this diversity of style and have sought to explain it in a manner that is not incompatible with our views concerning the Book of Mormon. Carlyle B. Haynes has offered this explanation: “When God inspired men to write, the personality of the writer was not effaced, his style was not set aside. The spirit of God infallibly guided in the commission of divine truth from the writer’s own vocabulary and in his own particlar style,”—“The Bible, Is It a True Book?” p. 229.

“It is no honour to the Bible,” asserts J. Patterson Smyth, “to ignore its human side, to insist that the writers were only God’s machines. Rightly understood, the presence of the human element should increase instead of lowering its value: as a book of religion for men … It is as sunlight through a painted window. The light must come to us coloured by the medium. We cannot get it in any other way.”—Smyth, “How to Read the Bible,” p. 23.

Another authority has said that God adopts the language of the person who represents Him, “not the syntax of heaven or the vocabulary of archangels. If God Himself,” he continues, “in order to save the French nation from a frightful explosion, by introducing the Gospel among them, should design to send some prophets among them, by whose mouth He would make Himself heard, they would certainly speak in the French language. But, then, what would be their style and what would you require as characteristic of the style of God? He might choose that one of these prophets should speak like Fenelon and the other like Bonaparte. Then it would be, in a certain sense, the pithy, barking, jerking style of the great general; it would be again in the same sense, the flowing style of the priest of Cambray; but in another sense, more elevated and more true.”—A. E. Gaussen, “Inspiration of the Bible,” p. 62,

If an unschooled youth in a frontier village had written this book of 600 pages in the short time of three months, unaided by the inspiration of the Lord, it would have shown more confusion than there was at Babel’s unfinished tower, at which remote time the story of this book commences. It would have been held up to all the world as the most impious fraud ever foisted upon the public. Its first large edition would never have been sold.

Though its ancient writers often apologize for their frailties and beg its readers to condemn it not because of its imperfections (Mormon 8:12), there is evidence on every page that it is a sacred history recorded, preserved and translated by the inspiration of heaven.

One example will suffice to show how the Book of Mormon, avoids such common mistakes as are made by the best of writers: The first part of the book deals with the Nephites and is replete with Hebrew traits, names, customs, and embraces numerous examples of Hebrew poetry, parallelism and repitition. This is followed by forty pages abridged from the Jaredite literature, the abridgment having been made by Moroni, who was well acquainted with the majesty and beauty of the Hebrew literary style. Yet the Jaredite literature is free from all Hebrew traits, customs, expressions and other features so characteristically Hebraic.

If a single Hebrew trait appeared in the literature of that nation which migrated from Babylonia, it would reveal the hand of man in a book claiming God as its author. Such an example is not to be found in the volume. If the book of Ether contained any of the following terms it would point to the mind of man as its source, whereas, the absence of these words speaks favourably of its divine origin:

Israelites, Law of Moses, Palestine, Abraham or the later patriarchs, or the later Jewish prophets, Aaronic or Melchizedek Priesthood, tabernacle, Levites, Ark of the Covenant, Temple, Egypt, Dead Sea, Jordan, Jerusalem, circumcision and many similar, terms not in existence at the time the Jaredites left the old world. Most of these terms were used in the first five hundred pages of the book, but they cease to appear the moment the writings of the Jaredites are introduced.

The sincere reader of this precious volume of scripture is led to exclaim, as did Willard Richards when he began to read it, “Either God or the devil wrote this book. No man wrote it!”