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Mark Twain:
William Sheldon: “Joseph’s imitation of this out-dated phraseology… is a strong proof against its divine origin; for Inspiration would not speak in an obsolete language…”2 Wesley P. Walters:
Josiah Priest: “ (The Book of Mormon) bears the stamp of folly, and is a poor attempt at an imitation of the Old Testament Scriptures, and is without connection, object, or aim; shewing every where language and phrases of too late a construction to accord with the Asiatic manner of composition, which highly characterizes the style of the Bible.”4 Reverend M.T. Lamb: “(There are) sentences by the thousand, and whole chapters, whose very presence in the Book of Mormon, in the form in which they are found, settles the question of the modern origin of the book beyond the possibility of dispute.”5 1 Mark
Twain, Rouging It (Hartford,
CT: American Publishing Co., 1872), 102-103. |
“The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary
history, with the Old Testament for a
model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament.
The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned
sound and structure of our King James' translation of the Scriptures;
and the result is a mongrel-half modern glibness, and half ancient
simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former
natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech
growing too modern-which was about every sentence or two-he ladled
in a few such scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to
pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would
have been only a pamphlet.”1
“In his revelations there also appears this same type of
biblical quotation
along with an
employment of the King James style… therefore, (both works)
must be credited to Joseph Smith… there is a continual use of ‘thee’,
‘thou’ and ‘ye’, as well as the archaic verb endings ‘est’ (second person singular) and ‘eth’ (third person singular).
Since the Elizabethan style was not Joseph’s
natural idiom, he continually slipped out of this King
James pattern and repeatedly confused the forms as well. Thus he lapsed
from ‘ye’ (subject) to ‘you’ (object) as the subject of sentences…jumped
from plural (‘ye’) to singular (‘thou’) in the same sentence (Mosiah 4:22) and moved from verbs without endings to ones
with
endings (e.g. ‘yields…putteth,’ 3:19).”3