The Week in Mormonism, 11/29/15: 19th Century Phrases in the Book of Mormon; Ken Jennings on the Policy

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Bill Reel published his interview with Mormon historian Richard Bushman, recorded before the policy change. Randall Bowen wrote up a partial transcript. I highly recommend listening to or reading the whole thing.

I want to dig a little deeper on what Bushman said about nineteenth century language in the Book of Mormon (my transcript, starting about 9:30):

I think right now the Book of Mormon is a puzzle for us. Even [for] people who believe it [inaudible] in every detail, it’s a puzzle. To begin with, we’ve got the puzzle of translation. Translating the book without the plates even in sight, wrapped up in a cloth on the table. It’s not something that comes right off the pages, [that is] the characters on the plates. So we don’t know how that works. And then there’s the fact that there’s phrasing everywhere, long phrases that if you Google them, you’ll find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew bible, as an Old Testament: that is, it has Christ in it, the way protestants saw Christ everywhere in the Old Testament.

Bushman made the same assertion about 19th century phrases in the Book of Mormon text at least once before in an interview on Reddit. And yet I wasn’t aware of a good resource to learn more. I emailed Bushman, and he replied that while he was certain he had found several “hits” while checking phrases from Alma, he did not record those results and was unable to reproduce them.

With some more research I’ve found two starting points:

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