Remarks on the Book of Mormon

REMARKS ON THE BOOK OF MORMON,

by Elder William Gibson.

(Continued from our last.)

I well remember asking a gentleman in Scotland who was a leader in a religious society and well known for his scientific acquirements, if he thought a boat could not be constructed with a hole in the bottom, and by means of some such simple contrivance as I have stated, the water be prevented from coming in while, at the same time, the aperture so left, be made most useful to those within?

He said he believed the thing could be easily done, but as the Book of Mormon gave no account of any such contrivance, he had therefore to conclude that there was none, and therefore to say that such vessels could float was an absurdity, unless they were to be upheld by a constant miracle.

As he professed to believe the Bible, I begged the privilege of asking him a question or two concerning a boat spoken of in it, namely, the Ark. We are told that Noah was commanded to build an ark 300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad, and 30 cubits high,—that he was to divide it into first, second, and third stories.—that he was to pitch it within and without—that he was to make a window in it of the size of one cubit, and that he was to make a door in the side of the ark; he was furthermore to take the clean animals and fowls by sevens, and the unclean by pairs into the ark, also himself and family, and then both door and window were to be shut upon them asked the gentleman if the inmates of the ark could live without air? he answered, no! I then asked how were they to receive it, when the only door and window in all this vast building was closed upon them, and every' seam and crevice filled with pitch? Oh, he said, there must have been some con­trivance, that is not recorded for this purpose; but I told him, to be consistent, he ought to say, that as the Bible gave no account of any such contrivance, he should therefore conclude that there was none, and to say they could live without air was an absurdity, unless they were upheld by a constant miracle; and if our friends, Messrs. Chambers, the Athenaeum, &c., were to apply the same reasoning to the account of the ark given in the Bible, that they apply to the account of the barges given in the Book of Mormon, if they were consistent men, and rejected one on this account, they would reject them both; for in reading the account of the ark given in the Bible, we must either say that there was some contrivance for giving them air that is not recorded, or have recourse to what the Athenaeum (speaking of the Book of Mormon) calls getting rid of a difficulty, through the easy and arbi­trary medium of a miracle: and if you say that there must have been some plan or contrivance which is not recorded, to prevent them from perishing for want of air in the ark, it is not unreasonable to say that there must have been some plan or contri­vance which is not recorded, to prevent them from perishing by an overflow of water in the barges.

The next objection I will notice is that which is taken from the language of the Book of Mormon.

The Athenaeum and Messrs. Chambers Bay, “through all we find one signal proof, not merely of imposture, but of the ignorance of the impostor, repeated with pertinacity. Every successive prophet predicts to the Nephites the future coming of Christ. The writer has fallen into the vulgar error of mistaking an epithet for a name. The word Christ, as all educated persons know, is not a name, but a Greek title of office, signifying the anointed, being in fact a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. Now the use of a Greek term in an age when the Greek language was unformed, and by a people with whom it was impossible for Greeks to have intercourse, and moreover, whose native language was of such peculiar construction as not to be susceptible of foreign admixture, is a mark of forgery so obvious and decisive, that it ought long since to have exposed the delusion; unhappily, however, we are forced to conclude, from the pamphlet before us, that the American Metho­dists, who first undertook to expose the Mormons, were scarcely less ignorant than themselves.

“A second Nephi takes up the history at a period contemporary with the events recorded in the New Testament, and the words attributed to him bear still more conclusive evidence of the ignorance of the impostors. ‘Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God, I created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are.’ And again, ‘I am the life and the light of the world; I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’ In addition to the former blunder respecting the name ‘Christ,’ we have the name Jesus in its Greek form, and not as the He­brews would have called it, Joshua; we have, furthermore, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, given as a metaphorical description of continued existence to a nation that had never heard of the Greek language. It is quite clear that the writer mistook Alpha and Omega for some sacred and mystic sounds to which pe­culiar sanctity was attached, and wrote them down without perceiving that they were an evidence of forgery so palpable as to be manifest to school-boys.” So then, according to this, the believers in the Book of Mormon are fools, and the American Methodists no better for not having made this discovery before it was made by such a learned and wise man as the editor of the Athenaeum, or such talented and far-famed gentlemen as the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh.

To those who have read Elder P. P. Pratt’s reply to this, in the first number of the second volume of the Millennial Star, I need say nothing; but as this is made much of by our enemies as an argument to prove the Book of Mormon a forgery, and many have not seen Elder Pratt’s reply, a few words on it might do good.

The Athenaeum says that these Greek words, according to the Book of Mormon, were given to a nation that had never heard of the Greek language. Now this is a lie to begin with. There were no such names on the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. What the names were that were applied to the Re­deemer in the language of the ancient American Indians—how they were pro­nounced by them—or how they would appear if an idea of the original was to be conveyed by the English alphabet we know not, for we have only got the trans­lation; but these wise men forget this, and want to make men believe that these Greek names were in the original. The English tongue is a mixture of many lan­guages, Greek amongst the rest; and, therefore, if even Messrs. Chambers, or the learned editor of the Athenaeum was to translate a book from any other language into English, and in that book had to speak of the Redeemer of mankind, how would they name him? Suppose they were translating from the Hebrew, would they call him Joshua? if they did, they would next have to tell the people that Joshua meant Jesus Christ, or some might perhaps imagine they meant Joshua the son of Nun, and yet these wiseacres find fault with the translation of the Book of Mor­mon, because it does not name the Redeemer Joshua—a name by which he is not known in the English language.

Now that the Book of Mormon is about to be translated into other languages, such as French, German, Italian, &c., if the wise men there are like the wise men here, the fault in France will be that French words are put in the mouth of Nephi, and in Germany that Nephi uses the German language; and if such a thing as a Latin term should be in common use among any people into whose language it it translated, then (according to the Athenaeum) if that word be in the translation, it will be an evidence of forgery so palpable as to be manifest to school-boys. Oh, folly! thou art now seen in high places! How truly did Isaiah in his 29th chapter, when speaking of the book's coming forth, declare, that then “the wisdom of the wise should perish, and the understanding of the prudent be hid!”

(To be Continued.)