2nd Nephi Chapter 23

 Chapter 23

God will punish the wicked. Some more. Again. Why not. And their families violated and killed. God uh you ok dude?

The chapter ends in desolation in a most peculiar fashion. 

The KJV *ahem* I mean Book of Mormon version says that satyrs and dragons exist and will fill the lands of dead men. 

These bizarre animals come from as per my gf from the Latin Vulgate 

“21 But wild beasts shall rest there, and their houses shall be filled with serpents, and ostriches shall dwell there, and the hairy ones shall dance there:  22 And owls shall answer one another there, in the houses thereof, and sirens in the temples of pleasure.

The translators of the KJV were so incredibly confused that they just added fairy tale monsters instead of the actual animals. 

The same KJV verses say

21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces

Pretty bizarre right? Now let’s compare that to the NRSV, one of the most recent editions of the Bible that draws from the Dead Sea scrolls 

21 

But wild animals will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons will dance. 22  Hyenas will cry in its towers and jackals in the pleasant palaces;

While it’s true that the KJV was the most correct bible at the time, those days are clearly long passed. While the rest of the Christian world tries to find the most correct translation, the Mormon church doesn’t. So weird. 

It’s no wonder that Mormons aren’t considered Christian’s when they don’t believe in the trinity (anymore) and are determined to not engage in the betterment of Christiandom with other sects. 

A couple other notes on the KJV differences. 

In the Hebrew Old Testament YHWH is the name of god since they don’t have traditional vowels like Latin, Arabic or Germanic languages. We pronounce this Yahweh. 

Latin Medieval scholars erroneously translated the 4 letters the “Tetragrammaton” as JHVH. Then added vowels from *a completely different word* Jehovah was created in the 1500’s. 

Yep Jehovah is a completely made up word. That has no bible basis whatsoever. You’d think Joseph Smith with his bible translations would be able to realize this and fix it but apparently not!

For nonmormon adjacent people this is particularly important to understand. Mormons believe that the God of the Old Testament is Jesus and the God of the New Testament in heaven is Heavenly Father. 

Old Testament god is Jehovah and New Testament God is Elohim. Both of these are actually incorrect not just Jehovah. Elohim means Gods, plural, in Hebrew while Joseph Smith says it’s just the name for our current God. 

The KJV also uses thee thine thou when speaking about God but those pronouns actually have no basis in earlier versions. God is referred with everyday pronouns instead. 

Lastly, not content with merely adding Isaiah to the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith adds an extra sentence because he can to this chapter. 

“For I will destroy her speedily; yea, for I will be merciful unto my people, but the wicked shall perish.”

Just in case Isaiah is too hard to understand Joseph summarizes the whole chapter in a sentence. Thanks Joe!

There are likely other changes to the Isaiah chapters but that sounds like a lot of nonsense. Feel free to comment if you find other differences though!