since 1830 edition of book of Mormon why has it been changed 3913 times?

Question

Alma 41:8 "now the decrees of God are unalterable"., mormon 9:9 " for do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and Forever, and In Him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing. In light of these how could any change be justified?? tranlation was done by the power of God? as described by David Whitmer, Emma Smith and Apostle Talmage. 3,913 + changes?? (I know God is unchanging)

Question is Why all the changes? I'm curious.

God does not make mistakes. BUT MAN sure does. 3,913 and counting...............

Answer 1

because it was written by man and not inspired by God like the Bible is.

Answer 2

Well, I'll get to that. But you might want to ask yourself, why 10's of thousands of changes have been made to the bible.....

by W. John Walsh

Critics of the Church often claim that there have been significant doctrinal changes to the Book of Mormon since the first printing. They make these false claims to discredit our assertion that the Book of Mormon was translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith through the gift and power of God.

First, while we claim that the Book of Mormon is true scripture, we do not claim that the entire process for bringing the translation to the world was free from error. It is important to remember that the Church claims that only Jesus Christ was perfect and did not make mistakes.

Some minor errors, mainly spelling and grammatical, in the text have been perpetuated in past editions of the Book of Mormon. The current edition contains corrections that seem appropriate to bring the material in conformity with pre-production manuscripts and early editions edited by the Prophet Joseph Smith.

At first, the 3,913 changes you cite sound rather significant. But if you recheck your source you will find that even the anti-Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner admit that the 3,913 changes were not really significant at all:

"As we stated earlier, most of the 3,913 changes which we found were related to the correction of grammatical and spelling errors and do not really change the basic meaning of the text." (Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism, Chicago: Moody Pres., 1980, p 131, emphasis added)

When the Prophet Joseph dictated the translation from the plates, a scribe copied down his words. Since only Jesus Christ was perfect, it is not surprising that the scribes made some minor errors. In addition, the non-Mormon typesetter that the Church hired to take the handwritten manuscript to book form was forced to decipher the scribe’s handwriting to set the type. Also, consider that the printing process in 1830 was much more manual and cumbersome than the ones we use today. With all the intervention by fallible mortals required to bring forth the printing of the Book of Mormon, it is surprising that more grammatical and spelling errors were not made. It is important to note that the changes in the Book of Mormon text are actually insignificant to the number of changes that have been made in the Bible throughout the centuries.

Answer 3

I'm impressed that you took the time to read both the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon and the modern version and carefully counted the differences. What, you didn't do that? Well, who are you relying on to tell you that there are differences? The point is, if you had taken the trouble to look for yourself you would have seen why the few changes which have been made were made. But you were willing to rely on someone who wanted to discredit the Mormons. Why would you do that if you wanted an objective and truthful answer?

By the way, Notorious and Brian gave you some wonderful and truthful answers. I hope you take them to heart and learn to not trust those who wish to bring down the Mormon faith.

Answer 4

For the same reason the text of the Bible has been changed so many times: to make it more readable.

Consider reading the Bible in its original English translation. In the Wycliffe Bible of 1380, the very familiar verse John 3:16 read as follows: "for god loued so the world; that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that eche man that bileueth in him perisch not: but haue euerlastynge liif."

Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon as he translated it, and Oliver Cowdery served as a scribe and wrote it down. Several spelling and grammar mistakes were made, and these were later corrected. But the essential meaning of the text has not been changed.

Many critics of the Book of Mormon seem to emphasize issues like this, but there is no substance to their arguments.

Answer 5

I think the book of mormon is a book that was added to the bible
wich it talks about the warnings of in rev. I tryed reading it once and to me it felt like cheating on god I could have been reading his word

Answer 6

You have to keep up with the times.

For the same reason the Roman & English bibles have been changed thousands of times.

Answer 7

first of all Joe was a terrible speller and didn't know punctuation very well, also he was always using double negatives there for they had to change parts. plus an English teacher protested a against his renderings an thought to fix his grammar. after all god told her to.

Answer 8

Whenever you start with a bunch of bullshit, you have to keep filling the loopholes that come up.

Answer 9

Because when you get caught in a lie you have to make up new lies to cover you old lies... Did that make any sense at all?? LoL

Answer 10

because the mormons just can't figure out what they're talking about

Answer 11

cause they gotta figure out what they think they are talking about.