A new theory suggests that Moroni may have translated the Book of Mormon as a resurrected being. The hypothesis stems from Royal Skousen’s linguistic and textual analysis, which indicates that Joseph Smith didn’t translate the book traditionally but dictated the text—including its anachronisms—verbatim from an external source. In this interview, Roger Terry explores the possibility that a postmortal Moroni was responsible for the translation.
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How do we misunderstand Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon?
Anyone who claims Joseph Smith translated the book uses translate in a very different way than we usually envision translation from one language to another.
For instance, many years ago, I translated Theodor Storm’s novella Immensee from German into English, slaving over words and phrases in an attempt to not just convey the story in English but also preserve the syntax and even the nineteenth-century “feel” of the sentences as much as possible.
This is not what Joseph did. He didn’t understand the characters on the plates the way I understood German. In fact, all second-hand accounts of the Book of Mormon translation indicate that he didn’t even look at the plates while dictating.
Based on his in-depth analysis, Royal Skousen insists—and I agree with him—that Joseph was receiving the English text from some outside source and was merely reading aloud what he saw, generally about twenty words at a time.
This, of course, raises the question of who translated the text and what sort of translation it is.
The clues are numerous and complex, but Royal is an excellent linguist, has spent almost four decades studying the text very carefully, and has arrived at certain conclusions. Since I was his proofreader for nearly all of volume 3 in his Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, I am well aware of his conclusions and agree with him (with a few exceptions).
What was Joseph’s role in the translation process?
Joseph Smith’s role was to bring forth an English text of the Book of Mormon. He apparently did not consider the words he dictated to be straight from the mouth of God. He was aware of errors in the text and phrasing that was difficult to understand, so he edited the 1830 edition in both 1837 and 1840, producing new editions.
Most of his edits didn’t change the meaning of the text in any significant way—they were mostly grammatical or stylistic in nature—but Royal Skousen argues that many of the edits removed evidence of the text’s foundation in Early Modern English.
What is the source of the text?
I have reasoned that there are three possibilities for the sort of translation that the Book of Mormon is: divine, machine, and human.
The inconsistencies and errors in the text preclude a divine translation. For instance, I can’t imagine that God wouldn’t be able to keep singular and plural second-person pronouns straight. The inconsistencies also eliminate machine translation.
So, I assume it is a human translation. But who performed the translation from an unknown ancient language to modern English?
How close is the text to the original?
Royal Skousen addresses this question and concludes that because of textual anachronisms, the translator apparently added a good deal of material that wasn’t on the plates. He calls it a creative and cultural translation. Of course, this all assumes there were actual plates that contained an accurate record of ancient people.
Some researchers have concluded that Joseph Smith received general ideas and then dictated them in his language. I don’t find this theory credible. The text of the Book of Mormon is incredibly complex and equally perplexing.
I don’t believe for an instant that Joseph Smith could have dictated sentences as complex as the ones we find in the Book of Mormon. Royal also insists that the content of the text (as well as the vocabulary and syntax) fits better in the 1500s and 1600s than in the 1800s. His argument is persuasive.
What are the linguistic and historical challenges critics have raised against the Book of Mormon?
I’m going to dodge this question. I am not an apologist. I don’t really like apologetics. So, I haven’t spent a lot of time reading or responding to critics.
Let me just say that the last time I read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, I was looking for unique theological ideas. But I couldn’t help but read as who I am. I have been an editor for 30 years, and I am also an occasional novelist. So, I read the book as both an editor and a novelist, and I marked every word or phrase that jumped out at me for any reason.
The Book of Mormon is like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle.
When I finished, I counted my markings, and they averaged about one per page. So, I have my own questions about what’s in the Book of Mormon, and I have recently begun a series of blog posts dealing with these questions. In other words, I don’t need the critics to point out questions. I have plenty of my own.
The primary question underlying all the others is simply, What is this book? What can we learn from the elements of the text and its history to shed light on this question?
I’ve said before that the Book of Mormon is like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle, and we’ve barely started putting the border together.
How did the King James Bible influence the Book of Mormon?
It’s fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about the English text of the Book of Mormon that it was heavily influenced not by the ancient Bible manuscripts but by the King James Translation. Part 5 of volume 3 in Royal Skousen’s critical text project has 430 pages of examples.
Royal’s analysis of biblical language in the Book of Mormon yields some surprising findings. For instance, nearly every biblical quotation comes from the King James Bible—but not the original 1611 version.
Most likely, the printing quoted in the Book of Mormon was published between 1770 and 1820. However, one particular quotation (“and upon all the ships of Tarshish,” Isa. 2:16, 2 Ne. 12:16) comes from the Masoretic Text, which is both unexpected and puzzling.
What are the implications of those anachronisms?
Royal Skousen discusses three anachronistic problems involving biblical quotations, namely the presence of King James translation errors, the influence of the Textus Receptus, and the inclusion of Second Isaiah:
- KJV Translations Errors: Words appear in the King James quotations that the KJV translators got wrong. There are also cultural translations that are historically inaccurate.
- Textus Receptus Influence: The Book of Mormon includes text from the Textus Receptus (the manuscript the KJV translators relied on) that does not appear in the earliest biblical manuscripts.
- Second Isaiah Anachronism: Text appears that biblical scholars identify as being from “Second Isaiah,” who lived long after Lehi and his family left Jerusalem. Skousen points out that there are ways to deal with this problem, but “it isn’t necessary to do so.” These anachronisms, he explains, are problematic “only if we assume that the Book of Mormon translation literally represents what was on the plates.” As mentioned above, however, careful attention to textual evidence pretty well eliminates this possibility. But it raises a whole host of other questions, including why plates were necessary at all and why, if they contained an accurate history of an ancient civilization, the translator was allowed to take such liberties with the resulting translation.
Do features like s-endings suggest the translator was familiar with Early Modern English?
Royal Skousen and Stan Carmack (Royal’s linguistic sidekick for most of volume 3) have unearthed a boatload of evidence suggesting that the English text Joseph Smith dictated to Oliver Cowdery and the other scribes was heavily influenced by Early Modern English.
S-endings refer to words such as has rather than hath. These s-endings appear randomly in the Book of Mormon. Still, according to Skousen and Carmack, they also appear inconsistently in Early Modern English, so there’s a question of whether their appearance is due to the influence of Early Modern English or the translator’s lack of consistency.
What does that mean for Moroni’s role?
This inconsistency mentioned above is even more prevalent in the Book of Mormon’s usage of second-person pronouns, and I have tied this to a theory about Moroni potentially being the translator of the Book of Mormon.
In 2014, I published two articles in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (47, nos. 2 and 3), titled, respectively:
- “What Shall We Do with Thou? Modern Mormonism’s Unruly Usage of Archaic English Pronouns” (Link)
- “Archaic Pronouns and Verbs in the Book of Mormon: What Inconsistent Usage Tells Us about Translation Theories” (Link)
Moroni May Not Have Been Fluent in English
In the first article, I address the inconsistent usage of thou, thee, ye, and you (and all their cousins) in the Church—in prayer, scripture, and other writings (such as hymns and patriarchal blessings). The Book of Mormon is wildly inconsistent, jumping seemingly at random from the singular form (thou or thee) to the plural (ye or you).
I suspect it may indicate the translator’s imperfect grasp of English.
I explore various possibilities for why this happens. Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack attempt to explain this inconsistent usage away by showing examples of Early Modern authors who were also inconsistent. But the usage in the Book of Mormon is so random that I suspect it may indicate the translator’s imperfect grasp of English, which was also in flux during the 1500s and 1600s.
I have seen speculation that maybe the King James translators (in the spirit world) translated the Book of Mormon. Still, the wildly inconsistent use of pronouns makes me dismiss this theory because these translators were strictly consistent in their usage of second-person pronouns, even though you had largely replaced thou, thee, and ye in common speech by 1611 (see the first of my articles for the juicy details). Also, the King James translators would not have been conversant in reformed Egyptian unless they had learned it in the spirit world (which, of course, is theoretically possible).
Moroni Has Other Relevant Attributes
Toward the end of my second article, however, I propose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that maybe Moroni was the translator. Here’s what I wrote:
Perhaps the book was indeed translated by a postmortal (but not yet divine) being. Do we know of anyone who was proficient in reading and writing the reformed Egyptian characters recorded on the plates, who also spoke English, and who tended to quote passages from the Bible with deviations from the King James text? Yes, we do: Moroni.
Roger Terry, “Archaic Pronouns and Verbs in the Book of Mormon: What Inconsistent Usage Tells Us about Translation Theories” (Dialogue, Volume 47, No. 3)
I point out that even though I arrived at this idea without any outside influence, I was not the first to propose this idea. J. Stanton Curry proposed the same a few years before 2014 in an unpublished paper he later shared with me, titled “A Possible Explanation for King James Bible Passages in the Book of Mormon.”
Brant Gardner mentions another Latter-day Saint writer who proposed Moroni as the translator of the Book of Mormon. Carl T. Cox included this theory in “The Mission of Moroni,” published in three parts on his website, www.oscox.org. When I wrote my articles, I was unaware of either of these men or their writings.
What does Royal Skousen think of the Moroni theory?
Royal Skousen mentions this theory in one of his critical text volumes, but he dismisses it out of hand as idle speculation—which it may well be.
But then again, I think it addresses an important question: If Joseph was not the translator, then who was?
And if Moroni was the translator, this spurs some interesting thoughts:
- How did he learn English, and where?
- Was he like the proverbial three Nephites and allowed to hang around for the express purpose of learning English so that he could translate the record of the Nephites?
- What sources did he have available to him?
Obviously, whoever created the English text of the book had the King James Bible handy. But we also find phrases from Protestant sources (“fountain of all righteousness” comes from John Calvin, “song of redeeming love” appeared in various Early Modern works, and “priestcraft” was a popular concern in the 1500s and 1600s much more so than in Joseph Smith’s day).
We really have no idea where the English text of the book came from, but there are some fascinating clues, and maybe in time, we’ll have a more definitive theory.
Are these linguistic patterns explained by Joseph Smith’s exposure to the Bible?
We don’t really know how well Joseph Smith knew the Bible in 1828. According to a few clues from Emma Smith, the answer is not very well. But he did attend church services and revival meetings. He was definitely fascinated by religion and wanted to find the true version.
However, the linguistic patterns in the Book of Mormon did not come from Joseph Smith. The structure of much of the text is extremely complex, with long, convoluted sentences sometimes employing multiple layers of parenthetical statements and relative clauses.
For instance, notice the complex nature of 3 Nephi 5:14:
And it hath become expedient that I, according to the will of God, that the prayers of those who have gone hence, who were the holy ones, should be fulfilled according to their faith, should make a record of these things which have been done—
3 Nephi 5:14
Joseph likely could not have composed such sentences—and certainly could not have dictated them while looking into a hat. The presence of Early Modern English vocabulary and syntax was also well beyond Joseph’s abilities.
If you compare the Book of Mormon text with Joseph’s revelations or letters, there are superficial similarities, but they are not really similar. So, I have a hard time believing that the Book of Mormon was something Joseph cooked up in his head and dictated without referring to any printed sources.
What do 1600s linguistic and theological patterns suggest?
Whether it was Moroni or someone else, it appears that the Book of Mormon translation was perhaps accomplished in that time period. But Royal Skousen makes two important points about the translation in this context.
First, even though there is a great deal of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon is not an Early Modern text. If you read a book written in Early Modern English, you would find it hard to understand, almost like a foreign language in some ways. But the Book of Mormon is very understandable to readers in the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century.
This leads to the second point, namely that the Book of Mormon text has apparently been managed over time so that it does not contain terms we are unfamiliar with. Sometimes, there are words in the book that, though familiar to us, have an archaic meaning that the modern reader is not accustomed to.
Did the Book of Mormon ever undergo a traditional translation?
I can’t say. It may be that the translator first made as literal a rendition of the ancient record as possible. But it appears that at some point, the translator added material that was not on the plates.
How does Royal Skousen’s Critical Text Project challenge traditional assumptions?
If by “traditional assumptions,” you mean that Joseph Smith was wrestling with the words and sentences on the plates and reproducing the meaning in English, I think Royal’s work completely disabuses us of those assumptions.
There’s no evidence that Joseph could read what was on the plates.
As David Mason put it in his book My Mormonism: A Primer for Non-Mormons and Mormons, Alike (p. 99), “Joseph Smith had a lot of experience translating documents that he couldn’t read.”
I think there is zero evidence that Joseph could read what was on the plates. According to witnesses of the process, he didn’t even look at the plates. Whatever he was doing, it was not a “traditional” translation.
Why did Royal Skousen critique your speculation about a postmortal translator?
Royal does accept the possibility of a postmortal translator. He just doesn’t want to speculate as to who it might be. Of course, it could have been any or all of the Three Nephites.
But I think Moroni makes a lot more sense than them. He was, after all, the final author/editor of the original record.
What does the possibility of a postmortal translator teach us about God and the nature of revelation?
A friend used to say that God doesn’t send us cookies baked in heaven. Very rarely does he do things for us that we can do for ourselves or each other.
So it wouldn’t surprise me if he used a postmortal human to “translate” the record. I believe the evidence in the text is pretty sound that God didn’t translate the book himself. It is far too imperfect.
Does your theory strengthen or weaken the case for the Book of Mormon’s authenticity?
It’s just one possibility to explain the complexity and oddity of the book. As for the book’s authenticity, I’m still working on that million-piece puzzle. My question is, What is this book?
I’m less concerned about whether it is “true.” “True” can mean so many things.
Where do you see this conversation going in the future?
I have no idea where the conversation will go. All I know is where my part of the conversation is heading in the immediate future. I have many unanswered questions, and I am exploring them sporadically and in no preconceived order on my blog, mormonomics.blogspot.com.
Where will I end up? Your guess is probably as good as mine.
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About the Interview Participant
Roger K. Terry is a religious scholar who theorizes that Moroni may have translated the Book of Mormon as a resurrected being. Now retired, he formerly served as the editorial director of BYU Studies and as a senior editor for the Ensign and Liahona. Terry is the author of several articles related to Latter-day Saint history and theology, including “Dealing With Difficult Questions,” “The Love of God,” and “Archaic Pronouns and Verbs in the Book of Mormon: What Inconsistent Usage Tells Us about Translation Theories.” He maintains a personal blog at mormonomics.blogspot.com.
Further Reading
- How Did Joseph Smith Translate the Book of Mormon?
- How Did Joseph Smith Produce Ancient Scripture?
- Is There Hebrew in the Book of Abraham?
- Do Book of Mormon Names Have Ancient Origins?
- Did Moroni Dedicate the Manti Temple Site?
Moroni and the Book of Mormon Translation Resources
- Book of Mormon Questions That My Teacher . . . Never Asked (Mormonomics)
- Archaic Pronouns and Verbs in the Book of Mormon: What Inconsistent Usage Tells Us about Translation Theories (Dialogue)
- Royal Skousen’s Book of Mormon Critical Text Project Lectures (YouTube)
- The Book of Mormon Translation Puzzle (Journal of Book of Mormon Studies)
- On Translation Theories and the Interpretation of the Book of Mormon (Patheos)
4 replies on “Did Moroni Translate the Book of Mormon?”
“The inconsistencies and errors in the text preclude a divine translation.” Not if the divine translation was filtered through the mind of Joseph Smith–which it obviously was.
The front page says it was interpreted by the gift and power of God. (Twice.)
U and Thum or seer stone used by Joseph. Words appeared thereon told to scribe by JS. Scribe reads back and if correct words on seer stone replaced by next phrase. JS had no intellectual input at all. He just read the stone.! This was the “power of g-d” at work not JS. Is it historical? does not matter at all. Even though it says it is. How do we know it is truth = pray and get a subjective feeling that all is well. By any other measure BOM fails.
I have to admit that this article is by far the most radical and odd approach I’ve seen in the past few years to something that is relatively clear and simple. It is not unlike the Jews who despised the words of plainness and sought for things they could not understand, always looking for things beyond the mark (Jacob 4:18). The inconsistencies and errors are man made by either the authors (Nephi, Mormon, or Moroni) or by Joseph himself. Joseph did not receive each word in English that needed to be written down. D&C 9 is clear in how the process worked which involved studying out what he was receiving in his mind, and wording it in a format which we would understand. Anyone translating from any language to their native language (example Spanish to English) would need to reorder words and replacing specific terms. It is never an identical word for word equivalency in a translation.
To suggest that Moroni or one of the three Nephites translated the plates first, goes completely against all of the Lord’s instructions to Nephite prophets including Mormon and Moroni.
This was fascinating. Thank you.