Today we’re looking at an interesting topic in the Book of Mormon that caused Joseph Smith a fair amount of confusion. The topic is on the definition of ‘strait’.
Our text comes from two verses in the Bible that Smith plagiarized and stuck in the Book of Mormon; Matthew 7:14 found in 3 Nephi 14:14 and Isaiah 49:20 found in 1 Nephi 21:20.
When reading Jacobean English in the KJV Bible many English speaking people mistakenly believe the definition of the word ‘strait’ is a variation of the English word ‘straight’. This is obviously the wrong thing to do.
The true definition for strait is strict or difficult. You can see the lack of a prophetic calling in the way Smith used this word in our examples provided.
When he plagiarized the passage in Matthew he changed the word ‘strait’ to ‘straight’ thinking that it had been spelled incorrectly in the KJV. At first glance you might think ‘well, that’s not so bad’, right? Yeah…not so fast!
When he tried to do the same thing in the Isaiah passage it becomes glaringly obvious he was flat out wrong.
Sometime after figuring out he shouldn’t have done that he changed it back to the correct spelling and this is what you see in the Book of Mormon today.
Another passage he did this with is found in 2 Nephi 31:18 where he plagiarized biblical phrases and stuck all of them into one sentence. Once he realized that mistake he changed the spelling from ‘straight’ to ‘strait’ to make it an appropriate use of the word in the phrases he lifted.
Clearly, we can see that Joseph wasn’t called of God and used whatever it was about him (charisma?) to trick people into thinking otherwise.
Besides all that – does it make sense that a supposed Reformed Egyptian speaking Nephite would confuse the word ‘strait’ for ‘straight’ or vice versa? And this didn’t happen just once – oh no my friends. This happened with the Nephi who lived circa 400 AD as well as the Nephi who lived a thousand years earlier circa BC 570.
If this was the most correct book ever written then what’s up with this fiasco?
Oh what a tangled web we weave…
Matthew 7:14; “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
1830 BoM
3 Nephi 14:14; “Because, straight is the gate…”
Modern BoM
3 Nephi 14:14; “Because strait is the gate…”
Isaiah 49:20; “The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell.”
1830 BoM
1 Nephi 21:20; “…The place is too straight for me: give place to me that I may dwell.”
Modern BoM
1 Nephi 21:20; “…The place is too strait for me; give place to me that I may dwell.”
Plagiarized phrases in BoM taken from the Bible
1830 BoM
2 Nephi 31:18; “And then are ye in this straight and narrow path which leads to eternal life…”
Modern BoM
2 Nephi 31:18; “And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life…”
1830 BoM courtesy of Maze Ministry
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