Nephi Plagiarizes John the Baptist

1 Nephi 10:7-9; “And he spake also concerning a prophet who should come before the Messiah, to prepare the way of the Lord – 8 Yea, even he should go forth and cry in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight; for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose. And much spake my father concerning this thing. 9 And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water.”

John 1:26-29; “John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; 27 He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose. 28 These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. 29 ¶ The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

This ‘inspired’ piece of work courtesy of Joe Smith is fraught with anachronisms. spelling and grammatical problems. We’re listing just a small section of the whole passage here, but you can read the rest of it by visiting the LDS website here.

While I obviously didn’t live in the 19^th century, I’ve often wondered why Joe Smith ‘translated’ the BoM in this style. They weren’t using Jacobean English in upstate NY at this time were they? Yeah…I didn’t think so. 

Besides all that, why did God give Lehi this dream and then have John the Baptist say the exact same thing more than 600 years later? Couldn’t God figure out anything else to say by then?