The Modern Book of Mormon

“We confuse the text with the message. We do not differentiate between man’s language and God’s word. We fail to recognize that God’s word can be expressed even in modern English. The nature of God’s message to people on the earth is such that the essentials of salvation can be learned from any translation that is read prayerfully so that the reader can be influenced by the spirit.” – Marvin Folsom

The Modern Book of Mormon is not a word-for-word translation of the original English text. Instead, it’s the idea of each verse that the Modern Book of Mormon tries to capture. Sometimes this is actually done through something resembling a word-for-word translation, but other times it means rearranging the words and thoughts in a particular verse.

This is not meant to replace the standard English-language Book of Mormon. Instead, it should be used to supplement your reading of the standard Book of Mormon. This translation does not claim to be inspired or anything like that.

This isn’t meant to clarify passages but to clarify the phrasing. For example, I won’t explain to you what all of the Isaiah stuff is talking about or referring to.

Table of Contents

1 Nephi: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

2 Nephi: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Jacob:

Enos :

Jarom :

Omni:

Words of Mormon:

Difficulties in Translation

Translating is hard. It’s hard from one language to another and even between two forms of the same language. That has definitely been the case throughout this project.

Here are some of the things I’ve wrestled with so far.

  • “House of Israel”
  • “wilderness”
  • Poetry vs. archaic language (e.g., “turn their hearts away”)
  • numerous

Whenever I had a question about what something meant in English, I consulted the Russian, Ukrainian, and Spanish versions, which I am familiar enough with to use as comparisons.

There are some things (i.e., Isaiah) that I just didn’t understand in English, and I ended up translating directly from Russian and Ukrainian into English. Also for the Isaiah sections, I used the online parallel bible at http://biblehub.com/isaiah/48-13.htm.modernbookofmormon.com/modern

Proverbs 11:24 in KJV vs. NLT

2 Nephi 2:11