Talk:Matt 6:11-15

I'd like suggestions as to why the JST is only in the Bible & not included in the Book of Mormon. This seems like a great argument against the divinity of the Book of Mormon, that it excludes Joseph Smith's changes in Matthew and adds the questionable last line.--Nanette 01:05, 4 April 2007 (CEST)

Hey Nanette, I remember reading somewhere on this question. There has to be a FARMS article on this question somewhere. I'll try to go looking for it. In the meantime here are some thoughts. First it seems clear that Book of Mormon quotations of the bible are often in the words of the KJV. Maybe the reason for this is so that it is clear that the Bible is being quoted. The translation into English (into the language of the people at the time Joseph translated into English) makes the connection the the Bible by using the same wording as the Bible. If you are Joseph Smith the translator the way you do this is by picking up the KJV and reading it. Of course, this ignores the fact that there are still a lot of differences from the KJV. This is hardly a complete answer, but I hope it is something of a start for thinking about why there would be errors from the KJV reproduced in the Book of Mormon. --Matthew Faulconer 17:07, 4 April 2007 (CEST)

"This seems like a great argument against the divinity of the Book of Mormon." Only if one works on the presupposition that Jesus can't say one thing in the New World and another in the Old World. If apologetics, as Hugh Nibley pointed out again and again, really only amounts to showing that the gospel is not "impossible," then all apologetics can do is to say that it is not impossible that God would be behind these two texts, however they turned out. There is hardly an absolute argument against the divinity of the Book of Mormon here, one that confirms an undeniable impossibility at work. We simply have the task of interpreting. --Joe Spencer 18:09, 4 April 2007 (CEST)

Not surprisingly, I agree with Joe (I need to try to find more to disagree with him over so I'm not just his lackey! And I'm sure Joe would enjoy nothing more, it's just I'm not sure I'm up to the taks since it'll take me a lot of work to think carefully enough about something to truly disagree over!). One thought, which I'm likely stealing from someone else (I think we discussed this a bit on the blog), is that this is a good invitation to think about the different audiences that Jesus was addressing. For example, in the New World, it seems all or at least most of the wicked were destroyed whereas there might've been more unrighteous lurkers which prevented Jesus from teaching the most-celestial version of the sermon.... --RobertC 19:37, 4 April 2007 (CEST)