Introduction
The Bible and the book of Mormon are both religious historical writings based on the higher context cultural environment. In such a cultural and environmental context, the target reader is expected to have sound, concrete and broad understanding of the specific cultural context and environment that the writer or author is trying to communicate with.
The book of Mormon and the bible both have totally diverse historical periods in relation to the time in which both were written. The book of Mormon was written based on the ancient American cultural context. On the other hand, the bible was written based on the ancient Hebrew cultural context. the ever changing cultural environments due to the advent of modernity and major information changes from recent revelations from linguistics, anthropology and archeology has necessitated numerous alterations to the original versions of both the bible and the book of Mormon ( Smith, 2010).
Also, the spread of religious beliefs from their conception areas to other global regions calls for numerous translations to meet the religious requirements of the newly intended regions. This combined with many transformations taking place in the today’s world’s major languages contributes to unending contradictions between the ancient languages used in both religious groups and cultural context they are intended to be used. The many concepts used by the original authors of the two religious books were found to be totally unfamiliar and foreign to many of the latter day’s readers. This resulted to mounting pressure from the readers insisting on the use of modern cultural aspects. As a result, this translated to the numerous versions and translations of the two religious books that aim at suiting the particular cultural contexts and environmental setup of different religious groupings.
Religion is not basically a belief but is a narrative which is based on language. Every religion has its own sacred language used in its cultural religious context in speaking and worshiping. Acquiring religion, that is say by use of a Bible translated in a person’s native language, means the learning of various new vocabularies as the bible in any translation clings to its original sacred language. Learning of new wording in daily experience is enhanced by the fact that human language is easily by the less immature minds. This is in support by the fact that children do not learn language easily because they have any innate linguistic ability but it is because they are immature in the mind. Therefore, immature society in religion can have its members change and endorse the Biblical sacred language. This is evident in people use of words like “thee” in speech.
The culture and the general perception of various people are generally impacted by the change of the Bible language. A Bible written in Arabic will spur many issues above all is the purpose and the general information change. Language is language, but however the wording in any language specifically differs from the other. For instance the wording in the ancient Hebrews Bible has kept changing over time. Changes in wording mean a similar change in meaning of the context. Discrepancies in meaning between various Bible Versions have raised alarms of disbelief and scrubbing of faith by believers. The use of various languages to address a common issue about the faith depicted in the Bible has harmonized the general world into a unity in terms of beliefs. This generally results to unity of the world (Smith, 2005).
Mormonism originated with Joseph Smith in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Original text of the book of Mormon contains Hebrew-like instructions that were removed later on due to their non-English context. According to John Gilbert who was one of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon recalled while printing the book on the second day together with Martin Harris and Hyrum Smith noted a grammatical error in the holy Book. He requested his partners whether or not to change the grammar error that had been noted. They agreed not to change the Old Testament and set it as it was.
The book however received numerous complaints forcing Joseph to make the changes by himself in 1837. Since then the book has received numerous changes that has changed the book in many ways. The changes have thus caused a change in the book that we currently in important ways.
It is evident that with language change, numerous grammar changes language, and even the message is certainly going to change. The growth and widening of the English language is a major factor in the numerous changes made to the Book of Mormon. This has however brought negative impact on the religious movement. Some have accused Mormonism as being a cult rather than a religious movement (Rosenberg, 2009).
This is due to the differing in text and meaning of the original book to that of the current one. Language change can have major effects on the meaning of text of a book. Numerous changes including the emitted text by John smith caused a major gap in the book that left quite a number of people confused as to why some major content in the holy book was removed.
Works Cited
Rosenberg, David. A literary Bible. Berkeley: Counterpoint :, 2009. Print.
Smith, Joseph, and Orson Pratt. The Book of Mormon: an account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. Salt Lake City, Utah: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 19861981. Print.
Smith, Joseph. The Book of Mormon. Mt. View, Calif.: Wiretap, 199. Print.
