2 Nephi 19:1. Red Sea

2 Nephi 19:1. Red Sea

When Joseph Smith dictated Isaiah passages from the King James Bible, he made a few changes to make it look like the brass plates of Laban supposedly used by the Nephites had a more “correct” version of Isaiah’s writings. But in one case, he changed “sea” (Isaiah 9:1) to “Red Sea” (2 Nephi 19:1). Since the Isaiah passage refers to the Galilee area, Isaiah had reference to the Sea of Galilee, not the Red Sea, which is at some distance from that area.

In studying the Isaiah variants in the Book of Mormon, it becomes clear that there are a few scribal and printer’s errors. I am convinced that the addition of “Red” in 2 Nephi 19:1 was an overcorrection by Oliver Cowdery, who, as scribe to Joseph Smith during the translation of the Book of Mormon, was probably influenced by the fact that he had already written about the Red Sea in a number of earlier passages (1 Nephi 2:5, 8-9; 4:2; 16:14; 17:26-27).

There are at least three more scribal errors of this nature in the Isaiah passages of the Book of Mormon. One is in 2 Nephi 24:19 (= Isaiah 14:19), where Oliver wrote “raiment” when Joseph said the similar-sounding word, “remnant.”

There is, in fact, a good deal of evidence favoring many of the Book of Mormon changes to the biblical Isaiah. See my lengthy treatment of “The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon,” issued as FARMS Study Aid TVE-81, and the article of the same title in Monte S. Nyman (ed.), Isaiah and the Prophets (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, and Bookcraft 1984).