You make a reckless, unsupportable charge--one that has been dear to the hearts of critics for generations. I will deal with it in a separate post.
The public record in the matter indicates otherwise. The charge is neither reckless nor unsupportable. It is a matter of documented fact.
The folly of what you state in the remainder of this post (and in previous ones) is readily exposed and dispatched, as follows:
1. You believe that the terminal sentence in the introduction (original version) refers exclusively to the Book of Ether, which consists of circa 30 pages. By your lights only that book is susceptible to error, and the 487 pages encompassed by the first paragraph are not. That makes no sense, yet it's your position.
That would be a straw man, and that is certainly not my position. The sentence does not refer to the translation at all.
2. You fail to understand that the purpose of an introduction is to introduce readers to the entire contents of a book, or at a minimum to give them an overview of it. But the introduction you endorse--to reiterate-- addresses about 30 pages and ignores 487 pages.
Repeating your bit of fiction does not improve its truth.
3. You do not realize that "fault" in the original introduction functions as a collective noun, thus it is applicable not only to both paragraphs but to the Book of Mormon in its entirety.
Didn't I mention the word was used as a collective noun, equivalent to usage of the word, sin, as in, "And if there be sin..."?
4. You haven't examined the headnotes at the beginning of each chapter in the BoM. Do you see any paragraphing in them? What do you see instead? You see em dashes, even though the subject matter changes (sometimes dramatically).
The em-dashes in question were not in the original. It matters not at all what you've found in later editions.
5. You apparently believe--with a league of critics--that circa 3,000 changes have been made in the BoM text. What you don't seem to understand is that those changes (whatever the number) deal almost exclusively with punctuation, capitalization, and spelling, which fall into the very issue we have been discussing.
You presume too much, and it is an irrelevant distraction to this discussion.
6. Apparently, you do not accept amendments to the U.S. Constitution. If you did, you would understand that while Article 8 makes no reference to errors in the BoM, Joseph Smith admitted that the book was not pristine--on at least two occasions. In other words, he clarified/amended Article 8.
Boy, are you reaching with that one. You bring up amendments to the Constitution of the United States? Seriously? As far as the eighth Article of Faith, you'd think if the good Church leadership were so willing to correct the Book of Mormon, then they'd be just as willing to correct the Articles.
In short, your position isn't credible. The concluding sentence refers to the Book of Mormon in its entirety, and the notion that it refers only to the people of Jared is ludicrous.
So you say. When your argument has substance, please let me know. Meanwhile, the Articles of Faith remain in conflict with your position. Your sole attempt to reconcile the two is to claim Joseph Smith amended the Articles of Faith by not changing them.
arenthetically, I think that Ben Franklin would have found it hilarious to be baptized postumously as a Mormon. John Wesley, on the other hand, would have been pissed.
