During the visit of the resurrected Jesus to the people at Bountiful, he recites part of the Book of Malachi to them, citing it by name:
And it came to pass that he commanded them that they should write the words which the Father had given unto Malachi, which he should tell unto them. And it came to pass that after they were written he expounded them. And these are the words which he did tell unto them, saying: Thus said the Father unto Malachi -- . . . (3 Ne. 24:1).
Jesus then proceeds to quote Chapters 3 and 4 virtually verbatim from the King James Version of Malachi (which together comprise Chapter 3 in the original Hebrew). After the quotation, he explicitly states that this is material which the Nephites had not had before:
And he saith: These scriptures, which ye had not with you, the Father commanded that I should give unto you; for it was wisdom in him that they should be given unto future generations (3 Ne. 26:2).
We should therefore understand that (a) the Nephites only had Malachi 3-4, not the entire book, and (b) they only had it after the visit of Jesus. How well does the actual text of the Book of Mormon fit with those two points? Here, from a paper by Colby Townsend, is an exhaustive list of Malachi material in the Book of Mormon:
- 1 Ne. 2:23 references Mal. 3:9
- 1 Ne. 3:7 references Mal. 3:1
- 1 Ne. 14:17 references Mal. 3:1, 4:1
- 1 Ne. 17:13 references Mal. 3:1
- 1 Ne. 22:15 references Mal. 4:1
- 1 Ne. 22:23-24 references Mal. 4:1-2
- 2 Ne. 25:13 references Mal. 4:2
- 2 Ne. 26:4 references Mal. 4:1
- 2 Ne. 26:6 references Mal. 4:1
- 2 Ne. 26:9 references Mal. 4:2
- Alma 45:13, 14 references Mal. 4:5
- Ether 9:22 references Mal. 4:2-3
Many of these are undeniably quoting Malachi, with highly distinctive phrases reproduced word-for-word in the same order. Others are just occurrences of short phrases such as "he shall prepare ... way" and "curse[d] ... with a ... curse," which aren't exactly smoking guns. Even by Townsend's broad, inclusive standard for what counts as an allusion, though, notice that not a single reference to Malachi 1 or 2 appears on his list; 100% of the Malachi material in the Book of Mormon is from Malachi 3 and 4, the two chapters we know the Nephites had. So that checks out.
The problem, though, is where in the Book of Mormon this Malachi material occurs. The only Malachi quotation that occurs in a reasonable place, in a text written after the visit of Jesus, is the one in Ether, which was written by Moroni centuries after Jesus. (It is problematic in its own way, though, since it refers to "the Son of Righteousness." See my 2013 post on that phrase.) All 11 of the others are, if we take the text as face value, anachronisms.
The supposed Malachi quotation in Alma can be dismissed, I think. It uses the phrase "great and dreadful day," which in the King James Version occurs only in Malachi 4:5. However, the exact same Hebrew phrase is also found in the Book of Joel, where it is translated "great and terrible day" (Joel 2:31). Joel was written in the 9th century BC, long before Lehi left Jerusalem, and would have been available to the Nephites. The use of "dreadful" rather than "terrible" in the translation presumably shows the influence of Malachi, but there is no reason to think the original text was referencing Malachi rather than Joel.
That leaves those 10 quotations -- several of which are undeniably dependent on Malachi -- in the first two Books of Nephi. Since Nephi supposedly wrote this material about a century before Malachi and six centuries before Christ, what are we to make of these quotations?
One option is just to add them to the list of "hard-to-define biblical parallels" which somehow found their way into the English translation even though they couldn't have been present on the Plates. I find this unsatisfactory because it fails to explain (a) why only Chapters 3 and 4 are referenced and (b) why there are lots of Malachi references in 1 and 2 Nephi but none in the pre-Christ portion of the Book of Mormon proper (Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, and the early chapters of 3 Nephi).
Another option, for those who believe Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon, is that Smith got confused about chronology. After losing the 116 pages, Smith first dictated from Mosiah to the end of the book and then went back and dictated the "Small Plates" portion from 1 Nephi to Omni. Thus, although 1 and 2 Nephi are set before the visit of Jesus, Smith dictated them after dictating the visit of Jesus. Perhaps after dictating the Malachi material in 3 Nephi, he started freely including Malachi in the book and carelessly forgot to stop doing so when he went back and dictated the "Small Plates." In my opinion, it is not remotely plausible that Smith could have been so careless. He clearly spelled out in 3 Nephi that the Nephites didn't have Malachi until the coming of Jesus, and then just carelessly included it anyway (but still carefully including only Chapters 3 and 4), not just once but 11 times? This is pushing the Joseph Smith idiot-savant theory to its breaking point. Dictating 3 Nephi would have made Joseph Smith more aware of the need to keep Malachi out of the pre-Christ portion of the book, not less so.
My own tentative conclusion is that the Malachi problem shows the Small Plates are Nephite pseudepigrapha. Although they are written in the voices of Nephi, Jacob, and other early prophets, they were in fact composed sometime after the visit of Jesus Christ. As I mentioned in my last post, the Small Plates were just "found" by Mormon centuries after Christ, and we know nothing of their provenance. There is no obvious reason to assume they were authentically ancient when Mormon "found" them, and several reasons to doubt this (which I may lay out in another post). But the translation of the Small Plates also has rather dodgy history, right? If they weren't actually written by Nephi and company, why assume they were the work of later Nephites rather than of a panciked Joseph Smith trying to undo the damage done by the loss of the 116 pages? Because of Malachi, that's why. Joseph Smith would have had no reason to suddenly start quoting Malachi when he invented the "Small Plates" text, nor to carefully restrict himself to Chapters 3 and 4. The pattern we observe points to post-Christ Nephites, not Joseph Smith.
One tangentially related note before I wrap this up: The account of Jesus dictating Malachi 3-4 to the Nephites suggests a possible explanation for other anachronistic Bible quotations in the Book of Mormon, such as Moroni's extended quotation from 1 Corinthians (Moro. 7, cf. 1 Cor. 13). If Jesus could bring the Nephites scriptures that were written after Lehi left Jerusalem, then other heavenly messengers could have done the same. We know (see 3 Ne. 28) that the Three Disciples traveled among both the Jews and the Gentiles, and that they "ministered unto" Mormon. Mormon lived in the 4th century AD, long after the books of the New Testament had been written, and it seems probable that the Three Disciples would have delivered some of the content of those books to him in the same way that Jesus delivered the words of Malachi at Bountiful.
5 comments:
". . . we know nothing of their provenance"
This isn't true, though. Provenance, stewardship, and record keepers were fairly well documented, including for the small plates.
Ammaron was the one who hid the sacred records among which Mormon 'found' the small plates, so you would need to develop a story for who within the chain of custody from him going back (which weren't many names at all, particularly in the time after Jesus visited Bountiful, which is when you say the pseudepigrapha must have occurred) included the forgery or false authorship, and why they did it, I guess.
A document’s own claims about itself aren’t a provenance.
Joseph said he got the record from a man named Nephi, who was one of the named record keepers in the book (and one of the Disciples). He seemed to vouch for the record in delivering it to Joseph, and we have the names of everyone before and after that man in the book who kept the records, and also the account of how the small plates ended up included in those records.
That is as much provenance as you are going to get in dealing with the angelic transference of golden plates.
I mentioned that there is no story here to suggest how and why such a pseudepigrapha would have come into Mormon's possession. That is what I was asking for - what is the story? How could the Angel Nephi come to give Joseph a record that contained fakes and forgeries? How was Mormon, who appears to have taken his role as historian and record-keeper so seriously, duped into tacking on those writings? Where did the chain of custody break down after Jesus and Nephi?
Could be an interesting story, I just don't see it.
Other possible explanations:
1. Some older document is the source of these distinct phrasings in both cases. I would judge this more probable if it tended to cluster better, about a similar topic.
2. I've always assumed Mormon just physically attached Nephi's plates to his record. What if he 'translated' it instead the way you are thinking Joseph Smith translated the BoM. Why he would do this is unclear, but it would then be 'contaminated' with Mormons subconscious as well as Joseph Smiths.
Homestadter’s first theory is the same one I thought of as I read your post — that Malachi was drawing from something more ancient in his own writings. The second theory doesn’t seem to match up with the story of the small plates in the BoM, however. I would say instead perhaps someone else “translated” the original small plates and Mormon just assumed it was exactly what it claimed to be. So there you have two potential solutions.
It’s a fascinating idea for the small plates to be pseudepigrapha, though. I don’t think I agree w WW that it would make the small plates a forgery. There could have been good reasons for someone rewriting them.
Regardless, I like the first theory the best. Malachi himself may have borrowed from others.
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