All the Ships of the Sea

The Book of Mormon contains many quotations from the book of Isaiah. Some passages closely match the text as it appears in the King James Version of the Bible (KJV), while others manifest some variation. Of particular interest is the phrase “And upon all the ships of the sea” found in 2 Nephi 12:16. While this phrase isn’t found in the KJV, very similar wording turns up in the Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint (or LXX).¹

The following chart compares Nephi’s version of this passage with the KJV and the LXX.² Note that in each instance, the key passage (verse 16) has been separated into different components (A, B, and C) to show how each version contains different elements.
 

As can be seen, 2 Nephi 12:16 contains all three elements, whereas the KJV and LXX versions only have two each: the LXX has “every ship of the sea” (element A), the KJV has “all the ships of Tarshish” (element B), while 2 Nephi 12:16 has a version of both elements. According to Pike and Seely, it seems likely that “the Greek Septuagint was translated from a Hebrew text that had the same two poetic lines for verse 16 that the Hebrew Masoretic Text does.”³ The main difference, then, would be in how these two poetic lines came to be understood in different textual traditions.

Tarshish was an ancient city or region that is repeatedly referenced in the Bible. Since the Greek word for “sea” (thalassēs), looks very similar to the word for “Tarshish” (Tharsēs), a number of scholars have assumed that the variation in these passages was simply due to a scribal error at some point.⁴

On the other hand, this could also be a matter of interpretation.⁵ For example, in most manuscript versions of Targum Jonathan (an Aramaic translation/expansion of the Hebrew Bible), the first portion of this verse reads “and against all those who dwell in the islands of the sea.”⁶ One variant, dating to the fifteenth century has “and upon all those who go down in ships of the sea,” which is even closer to the LXX and Book of Mormon.⁷ Scholars have recognized that Targum Jonathan frequently translates “Tarshish” as “sea,” which can be seen in both readings of the text.⁸ The larger point here is simply that the Septuagint isn’t the only ancient text to have this type of variant.⁹

As for element C, the word “pictures” in the KJV is translated from the Hebrew term śĕkîyôt, which is rare in the Hebrew Bible. In the 20th century, scholars realized this term is a likely cognate of Ugaritic (ṯkt) and Egyptian (sktw) words for a type of ship.¹⁰ In other words, “upon all pleasant pictures” in the Hebrew underlying the KJV closely corresponds to “every spectacle of beautiful ships” in the LXX. This understanding is also reflected in more recent English translations of the Bible.¹¹ Although the KJV is somewhat inaccurate in this instance, it was apparently sufficient for the English translation of the Book of Mormon to follow suit.¹²

Is 2 Nephi 12:16 the Original Text?

Some Latter-day Saint scholars have proposed that 2 Nephi 12:16 contains the original text of Isaiah, whereas the extant Hebrew and Greek texts have each lost a portion of the original.¹³ This explanation is also found in a footnote for 2 Nephi 12:16 in the current (2013) edition of the Book of Mormon: “The Greek (Septuagint) has ‘ships of the sea.’ The Hebrew has ‘ships of Tarshish.’ The Book of Mormon has both, showing that the brass plates had lost neither phrase.”¹⁴

Yet, as observed by Dana M. Pike and David Rolph Seely, “the ancient Hebrew and Greek versions of the Bible as they impact our understanding of Isaiah 2:16 in 2 Nephi 12:16 are much more complex” than might be assumed.¹⁵ To be sure, the version of Isaiah 2:16 that we have in the Septuagint is quite ancient. Portions of the Septuagint began being translated as early as the third century BC, with the first extant manuscripts surfacing several centuries later. Yet we also have early Hebrew versions of this Isaiah passage from Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered), and they support the reading found in the Masoretic text from which the KJV was translated.¹⁶

Unfortunately, we don’t have any original Old Testament manuscripts to determine whether 2 Nephi 12:16 really predates these passages.¹⁷ Nor can we be certain about precisely why the different versions ended up as they did. So there simply isn’t sufficient evidence to demonstrate that 2 Nephi 12:16 closely reflects Isaiah’s original wording.

At the same, it would be hasty to conclude that 2 Nephi 12:16 doesn’t, on some level, capture an earlier form or version of this text.¹⁸ It has been argued that the additional phrase in Nephi’s version—resulting in three distinct phrasal elements instead of two—disrupts the originally-intended parallel structure of the text.¹⁹ First of all, we actually don’t know what the full original chapter looked like, with all of the possible variations in each verse. So it is impossible to determine how Nephi’s version would have fit in with the original arrangement. Second, it should be noted that 2 Nephi 12:16 actually complies well with a known form of Hebrew poetic structure—namely, extended synonymous parallelism.²⁰ Thus, any appeal to poetic structure to determine the passage’s “original” form is going to be inconclusive.²¹

Miraculous Explanations for this Variant

If the Book of Mormon is truly the miracle that it claims to be, there are several potential explanations for the presence of this textual variant. One possibility is that there was an original, three-line parallelism in Isaiah 2:16 that was lost before the translation of the Septuagint or the copying of the Isaiah scrolls at Qumran. If this were the case, Pike and Seely “consider it much more plausible that [the scribal error resulting in such a loss] occurred only once, with the Hebrew.”²² Another possibility is that the scribes who copied Isaiah onto the Brass Plates included this additional phrase, either accidentally or as a clarifying expansion.²³

Nephi must also be considered as a potential redactor. Before beginning his long citation of Isaiah, Nephi explained that he would “liken [Isaiah’s] words unto my people,” suggesting that he would be making some adjustments of some kind (2 Nephi 11:1). Elsewhere, he mentioned that it is important to “know concerning the regions round about” Jerusalem in order to fully understand and appreciate some of Isaiah’s prophecies (2 Nephi 25:6). As such, it is possible that Nephi purposefully added this line to clarify that “ships of Tarshish” could also be understood as “ships of the sea,” consistent with other ancient interpretations of this passage.

A final avenue for textual alteration comes through the Book of Mormon’s divine translation into English. Under this scenario, the added line may not have originally been on the Brass Plates or on the plates of the Book of Mormon. Instead, it could be an inspired expansion of the original text revealed to Joseph Smith (perhaps intended to reflect a genuine ancient association between Tarshish and the sea, albeit from a separate textual tradition). This type of change would be in line with the Book of Mormon’s general effort to merge its message with that found in the Bible, while accounting for the fact that there was more than one version of the Bible in ancient times.²⁴

Naturalistic Explanations for this Variant

As just demonstrated, from a faithful perspective there are several options that could reasonably explain the presence of this ancient variant. But what about those who view the Book of Mormon through a lens of strict naturalism? Is there a way to account for this additional phrase that doesn’t require the Nephite record to be truly ancient or for it to have been miraculously translated into English?
One option is that this was simply a lucky guess on Joseph Smith’s part. While strictly possible, this seems exceedingly unlikely. Since the city or region of “Tarshish” is never discernably equated or substituted with the “sea” in this manner in the KJV, and since there is no reason to assume an additional or alternate line of text should be included here, it seems wildly fortuitous for Joseph Smith to include this specific phrase in this location.

The other option, of course, would be to assume that Joseph Smith learned of this variant from his environment and then included it in his fictitious book, presumably to strengthen the case for its authenticity. This explanation is certainly better than an appeal to luck, but it still faces several challenges.

The first English translation of the Septuagint was published in 1808 in Pennsylvania by Charles Thomson, so it is technically possible that Joseph Smith had access to it.²⁵ An early English version of the Bible, known as the Coverdale Bible published in 1535 also includes the phrase “ships of the sea,”²⁶ as does Martin Luther’s Bible published in 1743 (although it was in German).²⁷ There were also several Bible commentaries that mentioned the ancient association of Tarshish with the sea, including at least the following:²⁸

• A Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah (William Lowth, 1727)
• Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (John Wesley, 1765)
• Annotations upon the Holy Bible (Matthew Poole, 1801)
• The Holy Bible (Thomas Scott, 1810–1827)
• Devotional Family Bible (John Fawcett, 1811)

However, there is a big difference between an arcane piece of information floating around in Joseph Smith’s environment and the likelihood of his accessing it through any of these channels. It should be remembered that the Smiths were poor and therefore less likely to possess scholarly publications. As explained by Noel Reynolds,

In trying to understand what Joseph Smith could or could not have known about the events and characteristics found in the Book of Mormon, we have to understand the difference between the body of knowledge that is available to a society as a whole versus what a particular individual knows. … The critics’ method is to find any type of source from which Joseph Smith might conceivably have obtained information … and then to say that because it is in the Book of Mormon, Joseph must have known it. That’s a fairly weak and shabby methodology if you want to try to find out what Joseph Smith actually knew versus what someone else somewhere else knew.²⁹

And, indeed, there is no historical evidence that Joseph Smith had intimate access to any of these sources before 1829, much less a deep familiarity with their minute details. Joseph himself explained that he was “deprived of the benefit of an education suffice it to say I was merely instructed in reading writing and the ground rules of arithmetic which constituted my whole literary acquirements.”³⁰ Many other historical sources corroborate his relative lack of education and literary experience.³¹ For instance, Joseph’s mother remembered that he was “less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children” and said that at “eighteen years of age” he had “never read the Bible through in his life.”³²

Perhaps recognizing that Joseph was unlikely to have derived this obscure piece of information through thick Bible commentaries or from rare or foreign-language translations of the Bible, David Wright suggests that Smith “more likely” discovered this textual variant “through hearing sermons or conversations based on such sources.”³³ To this Jeff Lindsay responds,

It is technically possible that some minister in New England might have been schooled enough to understand the Septuagint and perhaps even to have noticed that Isaiah 2:16 differed from the KJV, or that they paid attention to the minute details of certain commentaries. But would they have found this of such doctrinal importance to discuss it in a sermon to farm folks? … I’ve certainly never heard or read a non-LDS sermon that I can remember that gave any attention to Isaiah 2:16, and I don’t recall LDS sermons digging into that verse, either. Now if modern ministers do not inform their audiences of the divergent texts for Isaiah 2, how can we expect the same of ministers in the 1820s speaking to poorly educated farmers? Why would anybody care?³⁴

It is also notable that Joseph Smith isn’t known to have ever drawn attention to the presence of this textual variant, or any other Isaiah variants that seem to reflect ancient usages.³⁵ The same is true, generally speaking, for the many other ancient features of the Book of Mormon that have come to light long after 1830.³⁶ If the young Joseph indeed added such details to fool people into believing the text was authentically ancient, it is rather curious that he never led anyone to recognize the fruits of his clandestine scholarship.  

Conclusion

Because we lack the original manuscripts of the book of Isaiah, it is impossible to establish what Isaiah 2:16 would have looked like in its original form. Thus, Latter-day Saints should not confidently assert that the version found in 2 Nephi 12:16 is some sort of urtext, preserving the oldest rendition of Isaiah’s words. On the other hand, the fact that this passage contains an authentically ancient textual variant is by no means insignificant.

If the Book of Mormon is what it purports to be, several options exist to explain this additional phrase. In contrast, it seems highly unlikely that Joseph Smith simply guessed this detail. The assumption that he obtained knowledge of this variant from his environment is more sensible, but there are a number of reasons to view the environmental-derivation hypothesis as improbable.

These reasons include at least the following: (1) a lack of any historical evidence directly connecting Joseph Smith to any of the suggested sources before 1829, (2) the Smith family’s poverty, which would limit the number of books they could purchase or access through any library, (3) the seemingly small chance that any preacher or instructor would mention this nuance in Joseph’s presence, and then it being significant enough for him to remember to include it in his translation, (4) Joseph’s overall lack of education and literary knowledge, and (5) that fact that Joseph isn’t known to have ever brought this obscure variant to anyone’s attention.

Thus, at the end of the day, 2 Nephi 12:16 presents a genuine ancient textual variant that, for various reasons, seems unlikely to have been a product of Joseph Smith’s natural intellect. While not definitive proof of anything, this added phrase provides yet another clue pointing towards the Book of Mormon’s ancient origins and miraculous production.

Dana M. Pike and David Rolph Seely, “‘Upon All the Ships of the Sea, and Upon All the Ships of

Tarshish’: Revisiting 2 Nephi 12:16 and Isaiah 2:16,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14 no. 2 (2005), 13–25.

John A. Tvedtnes, “Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon,” in Isaiah and the Prophets: Inspired Voices from the Old Testament, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1984), 165–178.

John A. Tvedtnes, The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1981).

BibleIsaiah 2:16Book of Mormon2 Nephi 12:16

Bible

Isaiah 2:16

Book of Mormon

2 Nephi 12:16