The Book of Mormon: "The Most Correct[ed] of Any Book on Earth" by Bob Betts

In the sixth paragraph of the Introduction to the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith said, “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and is the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

Joseph Smith’s “most correct” pronouncement of the Book of Mormon, first published in 1830, has long since been challenged. In reality, there may be no other religious book in history, which has had as many changes made to it as the Book of Mormon. It could be the least correct book ever published. The LDS church has told its members, and the world, that the changes that have been made in the five succeeding editions are minor punctuation corrections. Yet, the almost 4,000 changes that Jerald and Sandra Tanner identified in their book, 3,913 Changes in the Book of Mormon, are words that were added, deleted, misspelling or grammatically incorrect. Even the most recent (1981) edition of the Book of Mormon, edited by a committee headed by members of the Quorum of the Twelve, included about 150 significant word changes.

These changes should not have been necessary in light of Joseph Smith’s own testimony in 1829 that, “...we heard a voice from out of the bright light above us, saying, ‘These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God. The translation of them which you have seen is correct, and I command you to bear record of what you now see and hear’” (History of the Church, by Joseph Smith, Vol. 1, pp. 54-55).

Despite the clearly identifiable changes, one LDS apostle who would later be the tenth LDS prophet, Joseph Fielding Smith, refuted the facts by declaring that, "...enemies of the Church...have made the statement that there have been one or two or more thousand changes in the Book of Mormon since the first edition was published. Well, of course, there is no truth in that statement" (The Improvement Era, December, 1961, p. 924).

SAMPLE CHANGES
The 1830 text of 1 Nephi 12:18 read, "...yea, even the word of the justice of the Eternal God, and Jesus Christ, which is the Lamb of God..." However, the name of Jesus Christ had not been revealed to the Nephites until 2 Nephi 10:3, "Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ--for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name--should come among the Jews..." Therefore, Joseph removed the name of Jesus Christ from 1 Nephi 12:18 and inserted Messiah instead.

The 1830 text of 1 Nephi 20:1 read, "Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel; yet they swear not in truth, nor righteousness." Ten years later, in the 1840 edition, Joseph added the ordinance of water baptism to the text, "Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, or out of the waters of baptism, who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness."

HOW CORRECT IS THE BIBLE?
The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947 in cliff caves 20 miles east of Jerusalem, leave no doubt about the accuracy of the Old Testament. But how correct is the New Testament?

The earliest papyrus and animal skin manuscript copies of the New Testament in the Greek language number at 5, 664. In addition, there are upwards to 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts and about 8,000 in Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian. (The second highest number of ancient manuscript copies known to man is Homer’s Iliad with only 650.) With close to 24,000 manuscripts in existence, comparisons between them have yielded the overwhelming evidence that there are virtually no differences between them. The manuscripts agree with one another.

Bible scholars Norman Geisler and William Nix concluded, “The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book – a form that is 99.5 percent pure” (A General Introduction to the Bible, p. 361). The late Bible scholar F.F. Bruce concluded, “There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament” (The Books and the Parchments, p. 178).

BIBLE DESERVES THE TITLE
Since the Book of Mormon has required almost 4,000 changes throughout its five editions to correct its errors, the Bible is the only scripture deserving the title, The Most Correct of Any Book on Earth.

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