HOEKEMA’S ARGUMENT HOW THE ALLEGED BOOK OF MORMON LANGUAGE AND TRANSMISSION GIVES IT AWAY AS A HOAX
In A.A. Hoekema’s book, Mormonism, he argues from the language and transmission
of the Book of Mormon that it is a hoax.
He observes that God is not likely to give us a new Bible in a totally unknown
language, Reformed Egyptian, that has never been proved to exist when he wrote
the Bible in known tongues. Mormons would say it does not matter as long as the
BOM was translated right by the power of God. I say one would expect God to have
told Smith to copy the characters that he translated so that the miracle could
be proved. It would have been impossible for Smith to invent a language and
alphabet like Egyptian.
It is absurd that Nephi wrote in Egyptian on the Plates when he could have used
his native Hebrew. The Jews were not interested in Egyptian. Incredibly the Book
of Mormon even says that the Plates of Laban were written in Egyptian (Mosiah
1:4). Historically, the change from Hebrew to Egyptian makes no sense. And
Egyptian is more primitive and less clear than Hebrew. The Jaredites had a
tongue that was derived from that of Adam and Eve and they were extinct except
for one man, Coriantumr, when the Nephites arrived in America. Yet Moroni was
able to translate their 24 Golden Plates of Ether about 400 AD! And I would ask
why these Plates were not already translated? The Jaredite Coriantumr could have
translated them.
Mormon 9:33 states that Moroni had to write in Reformed Egyptian and not Hebrew
for Hebrew was too large and the Plates were too small. But Egyptian is not an
alphabetical script and Hebrew would take up less space. Why were the plates not
made bigger? Moroni says we meaning that Mormon was as unintelligent as he was.
There is the problem of the grammatical errors in the original handwritten Book
of Mormon which the Church has corrected over the years. One verse has Moroni
saying he wrote on a rent. The Church changed it to say rent part of his garment
(Alma 46:19). The Church might say that these errors were just colloquial forms
of English and it prefers to change them to keep sceptics from scoffing.
Correcting God’s mistakes? The Church would say it is not correcting God for it
does not matter as long as the main words are intact and the meaning can be
worked out. But can you say a book that leaves out words has the meaning intact?
You don’t know if it has.
I would add that the Bible is clear that God
confounded the communication among humans at the time of the Tower
of Babel. The Book of Mormon says the exception was the
Jaredites whose language he did not wreck. The Bible does not
allow for exceptions. Exceptions destroy the point that the
Bible is making - that humankind needs to know it cannot unite to
fulfill itself. It needs God. Without God there is
chaos. So the Book is hardly reliable regarding languages if
the Bible is to be believed.