The Early Modern English theory

The newest apologetic argument: the dictated text's grammar dates to the 1500s-1600s, so Joseph cannot have composed it; and why it troubles believers as much as critics.

What the Church claims

The original English text of the Book of Mormon shows Early Modern English syntax and vocabulary that Joseph Smith could not have produced, proving the words were given to Joseph.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Contested. The archaism is real and unexplained in detail by critics, but the theory's inference to a non-human translator is rejected even by many believing scholars, and Davis has supplied a coherent naturalistic account of the main patterns.

The record

  • Royal Skousen (BYU Studies 57:3, 2018), drawing on his Critical Text Project, lists about 80 archaic usages ('extinct' meaning physically dead, 'counsel' meaning consult, 'but if' meaning unless, 'depart' meaning divide, 'require' meaning request) and holds that the syntax best matches the second half of the 1500s.
  • Skousen argues Joseph did not author the English because his 1832 writings lack the text's dominant features (periphrastic past-tense 'did', '-th' plurals, personal 'which'); he declines to say who the translator was, calling speculation about mechanism 'a waste of time'.
  • Stanford Carmack (Interpreter 28, 2018) measured the Book of Mormon against the KJV and four pseudo-biblical books: past-tense 'did' adjacent to the infinitive 24% (16th-century level) against under 1% in the imitations; personal 'which' about 52% against the KJV's 12.5%; about 150 '-th' plurals; finite complementation after 'cause' 57.6% against the KJV's 1.0%.
  • Skousen concedes that the upper date bound is open, that 28% of the Original Manuscript is missing, that some examples may be closer to Joseph's era, and that the text blends KJV phrasing in ways showing 'considerable intervention by the translator(s)'.
  • William L. Davis (Dialogue 58:2, 2025) accepts the empirical observations but not the inference: he attributes the archaism to Joseph's separate 'spiritual register', to KJV templates adapted with errors (his step-by-step account of the 'if ... and' conditionals), and to Early Modern authors rural families read, finding nine of Skousen and Carmack's archaic words in Bunyan's 'The Holy War' alone; he also cites Joseph's 1832 letter using 'cite your minds'.
  • Believing scholars are divided: Brant Gardner defends a loose-control translation in Joseph's own language, and his review of Davis reasons from that model rather than from Skousen's. Skousen's tight-control reading makes the KJV italics variants and 1769 readings part of the given text.

The moving target

  • 2013-12: Describes Joseph reading English words that appeared on the instrument, language compatible with tight control, but takes no position on the Early Modern English claim.

The exchange

Royal Skousen; Stanford Carmack; used by Scripture Central

The syntax is measurably Early Modern, not KJV imitation and not 1820s dialect; Joseph's own prose lacks it; therefore the English was composed by someone else and delivered to Joseph.

The answer: The data are real but the inference has three problems. First, the comparison classes are chosen by the proponents and no independent historical linguist has tested the corpus work; that is a gap on both sides. Second, Davis shows plausible 19th-century routes to the same forms: an elevated devotional register, systematic over-extension of KJV patterns (which produces exactly the ungrammatical 'if ... and' forms Skousen treats as Hebraisms), and Early Modern books still in common use. Third, the conclusion is theologically homeless: neither Joseph, nor Mormon, nor God speaks Elizabethan, so the theory posits an unnamed 16th-century translator, which is why Gardner and others decline it.

What they get right: Specific lexical survivals such as 'extinct' for a dead person are not explained by the KJV, and the sheer density of 'did' periphrasis is unlike anything Joseph is known to have written. Critics who dismiss the data unread are not engaging it.

Royal Skousen; Stanford Carmack

The Early Modern forms are systematic rather than scattered: 'did' periphrasis, personal relative 'which', '-th' plurals and complementizer patterns appear at consistent rates across the whole text and match 16th- and 17th-century English rather than the King James Bible.

The answer: The observation is real; the inference is not. The comparison corpora are drawn mainly from printed literary English, while Joseph's own linguistic environment was spoken, preached and saturated in the King James Bible and the pseudo-biblical style that flourished around it — a register nobody measured until after the claim was made. The argument also proves more than its proponents want. If the wording was given rather than translated, then the grammar corrected in 1837 and 1840 was given, the King James italics were given, and the Adam Clarke parallels were given. No linguist outside the circle has endorsed the conclusion, and an absence of published refutation is not acceptance.

What they get right: Skousen's underlying textual work is first-rate and is the only reason anyone can study the earliest text at all.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

The theory concedes what critics have long said, that the English is not a literal rendering of anything on plates, and then explains the awkward result by an even stranger one: a text composed in 16th-century English by an unknown party and read off a stone. Its evidence base is a set of frequency comparisons compiled by two believing scholars and never adjudicated by outside linguists. Davis's 2025 reply shows that a speaker who had absorbed the KJV and Bunyan, straining for a sacred register, would produce over-corrected archaisms and precisely the kind of broken conditionals the theory calls Hebraisms. Meanwhile the same text carries 1820s theology and KJV italics, which on tight control must also be part of the Early Modern gift.

The apologetic case

Whatever its theology, the linguistic claim is testable and has not been refuted in print by a linguist. The Book of Mormon really does use 'did' periphrasis, personal 'which' and '-th' plurals at rates no 19th-century imitator matched, and Joseph's own writings do not. If the words were his, one must explain why his register shifted so completely and so consistently for sixty days and then never again.

What would change this

An independent corpus-linguistic study confirming that the syntax profile cannot arise from KJV over-imitation would strengthen the apologetic claim; a demonstration that 1820s revival oratory or Joseph's later dictated revelations share the profile would weaken it.

Closely related

Sources

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