On Joseph Smith attempting to establish prophetic authority by means of archaism

Numerous edits undermine such a theory.

Some think Joseph Smith was trying to project prophetic authority through archaism. This theory is disproven by the many unnecessary changes and edits to the text that reduced archaism. If this theory were true, many of the edits Joseph made for the 1837 second edition would not have been made. In addition, many silent changes made by the typesetter in 1830 would not have occurred. Even some edits made by the scribe at the time of dictation (on read-back) might not have occurred. [link]

As an example of this theory, Gregory Bowen’s working assumption for a 2016 thesis was that Joseph Smith was trying to “establish a sense of spiritual authority” and “that biblical imitation was an active choice used to project an identity as a prophet.” note.1 Gregory A. Bowen, Sounding sacred: The adoption of biblical archaisms in the Book of Mormon and other nineteenth century texts (Dissertation, Purdue University, December 2016), xii.

Textually demonstrable facts show that this assumption is wrong. First, Joseph did not make sure that manuscript archaism was maintained in the 1830 first edition. Second, he repeatedly removed biblical archaism in his 1837 edits, and he removed some nonbiblical archaism as well. On both occasions, then, acts of omission and commission served to undermine a presumed goal of establishing spiritual authority.

In one of Bowen’s chapters, he noted how many times archaic past-tense forms — verb forms such as drave and sware — were used in the twelve different texts and corpora that he analyzed. By the time the second and third editions of the Book of Mormon were published, Joseph had a better grasp on what biblical usage was than he had in 1829. If his dictation and subsequent edits were to project an identity as a prophet, then Joseph might have added back in instances of drave and sware where textually supported by the manuscripts.

The verb form drave is found in both manuscripts at aa5007, and in the printer’s manuscript at aa0233 (the original is not extant there). In both cases, the typesetter, John Gilbert, changed drave to drove for the 1830 first edition (see GV 636). That was a change from biblical to modern. Joseph reviewed the printer’s manuscript for the 1837 edition, changing many things. Under Bowen’s theory, we expect that Joseph would have restored drave in both cases, especially because there was manuscript evidence to support a reversing edit. He would have thereby restored a more biblical text, something that Gilbert had diminished.

Also, Smith might have maintained many instances of the personal relative pronoun which, or changed it to personal that, not to who(m). And he probably would not have changed 100+ instances of biblical “after that S” usage to non-archaic “after S.” And so on and so forth. Consequently, the hasty assumption that Joseph Smith employed archaism to establish authority is not supported in many identifiable cases. By and large, analysts do not take the trouble to test such assumptions to see if they fit the textual history.

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