Hello! So if you're multilingual, you're probably aware that different languages
follow different grammatical rules. For example, "David's shoes" in Spanish would
be, "Los zapatos de David" or "the shoes of David." So if you were to hear someone
say, "Hey, look at the shoes of David," you'd understand what they're saying, but you'd
probably also be able to tell that English is not that person's first
language, since that's not how we talk. (what you think it
means) Joseph Smith claimed he translated the
Book of Mormon from a record written by ancient Jews. If that's true, you'd think
we'd be able to see some elements of the ancient Hebrew language in the English
translation of the Book of Mormon. And guess what? We do.
The Book of Mormon exhibits dozens of Hebrew isms throughout its text. We've
talked about some of them before, but this video is going to focus in on just
one category, called "if and the conditionals". In English, we don't have if
and conditionals, we have if-then conditionals.
If I eat 15 Costa Vida raspberry smothered chicken Chipotle burritos, then
I will die. But in Biblical Hebrew it would be, "If I eat 15 Costa Vita
raspberry smothered chicken Chipotle burritos and I will die." They mean the
same thing, but an English speaker would never naturally use and if and
conditional. This is where things get interesting. If you read the current Book
of Mormon, you won't see any if and conditionals. This is because Joseph
Smith and early editors thought these were grammatical errors, which in English
they are, and they edited them out, which is a real bummer because Joseph's
obviously had no idea that these errors were evidence of the authenticity of his
work. Thankfully though we can look at the original manuscript of the Book of
Mormon and the first edition of the Book of Mormon,
where we find our if and conditionals. Right now, Moroni 10:4 says, "If ye shall
ask with a sincere heart with real intent having faith in Christ he will
manifest the truth of it unto you..." In the first edition it said, "If ye shall ask
with a sincere heart with real intent having faith in Christ and he will
manifest the truth of it unto you." The first edition version of Helaman 12
was a gold mine: "and if he saith unto the earth, move and it is moved; yay if he
sayeth unto the earth thou shalt go back that a lengthen is out the day for many
hours and it is done... And behold, also if he saith unto the waters of the great
deep, be thou dried up, and it is done. Behold if he saith unto this mountain, be
thou raised up, and come over and fall upon that city, that it be buried up and
behold it is done. And if the Lord shall say, be thou a curse that no man shall
find thee from this time henceforth and forever, and behold no man getteth it
henceforth and forever. And behold if the Lord shall say unto a man because of
thine iniquities, thou shalt be accursed forever and it shall be done and if the
Lord shall say because of thine iniquities thou shall be cut off from my
presence, and he will cause that it shall be so."
Here's the thing, I'm not gonna tell you what to believe, but these are my
thoughts: Either Joseph Smith was a fraud or a prophet of God. If he's a fraud you
have no choice but to believe that he either put these if and conditionals in
here on purpose to give the book a more authentic look or it was a complete
coincidence. (coincidence I think not) I do not believe he put these in here on
purpose. There are no if and conditionals in the King James Version of the Bible.
Even by Joseph Smith's time they'd been edited into better English like what has
been done with the Book of Mormon. And it's highly unlikely Joseph had access
to any literature that would have taught him about this stuff in the 1820s. Also
if he put them in here on purpose to give the book a more authentic look, why
would he edit them out? It doesn't make any sense. He would have kept them in and
called a bunch of attention to them. "You know what this here is an if and
conditional, look the book is real!" But he doesn't do that. He thinks they're errors
and he fixes them. Could it all just be a big coincidence then? Well believe what
you will, but nobody wrote like this in Joseph's time. Maybe once could just be a
coincidence, but he does it over and over again, back to back, in the Helaman
example. That doesn't look like an accident to me. The other option is that
this is a legitimate translation of an ancient document of Jewish origins. But
wait, there's more! This is just one Hebrewism. We've got plenty more to
cover. As these things continue to compound one on top of the other, the
chances that Joseph just made this stuff up grows inhumanly small. We'll get to
more of those in future episodes. In the meantime, check out the links in the
description for more info on this topic, and have a great day!