Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/764

 pierce] ORIGIN OF THE " BOOK OF MORMON " 693

making eight and one-half pages from the Son of God direct. The other twenty-nine and one-half were taken from the golden plates, engraved thereon by the various writers.

Now, is not this a remarkable contretemps J These plates, brought over from Jerusalem 600 B.C., had the Sermon on the Mount engraved thereon in Adamic characters six centuries be- fore it was delivered on the hills of Galilee. The Book of Mormon presents it in almost the same words in which it appears in King James' version. The Urim and Thummim made here no mistake. The "seer stone" did its infallible work when it translated from the plates whole chapters having their counterparts in King James' version ! The fifth chapter of Isaiah is found on page 90 of the Book of Mormon. In the King James version we find, (verse 10) : " Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah." The Book of Mormon says : " Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of a horner shall yield an ephah."

Lamoni Call, the Mormon teacher at Bountiful, Utah, in his above-cited work, published in August, 1898, says (page 122), of this apparently simple mistake in typography, that it —

tells a big story to a printer. It is the change of " horner " to " homer." If the truth could be learned, I would bet all the old jack knives I had when I was a boy that I can now find, against anything you have a mind to put up, that the Bible foscph had behind the curtain had a nicked " m," so that it looked somewhat like " rn." The word may have looked not very unlike "homer" [horner?].

This, then, is what the Book of Mormon is, when interpreted by the light shed upon it by the Mormons themselves. It will be noted that not a word of accusation has been taken from their enemies. I have brought against it that legitimate criticism only which any book purporting to be of divine origin must be able to successfully confront. The well known rule, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, applies. In this instance, indeed, the rule might well be reversed — falsus in omnibus, falsus in uno.

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