Which came first the KJV Bible or the Book of Mormon?

[_scripturesearcher]

Joseph Smith never discussed the details of the translation of the Book of Mormon. Speaking to a group of elders in 1831 he said that "it was not intended to tell the world all the particulars of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, & also said that it was not expedient for him to relate these things." In his 1842 letter to John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat, sketching "the rise, progress, persecution, and faith of the Latter-Day Saints," Joseph stated only that he translated the record "by the gift and power of God." So we're left to guess at what actually took place.

Luckily, we don't have to guess what actually took place, because there were 4 witnesses present during the translation process.
Here are the testimonies of these witnesses:

Emma Hale Smith, Joseph's wife, was the first person to serve as his scribe. Here is her testimony as recounted to her son Joseph Smith III:
"In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us." (source: History of the RLDS Church, 8 vols. (Independence, Missouri: Herald House, 1951), "Last Testimony of Sister Emma," 3:356.)

David Whitmer was one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. The majority of the translation work took place in the Whitmer home.
"I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man." (source: David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Missouri: n.p., 1887, p. 12.)
"I, as well as all of my father's family, Smith's wife, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, were present during the translation. . . . He [Joseph Smith] did not use the plates in translation" (source: Interview given to Kansas City Journal, June 5, 1881, reprinted in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Journal of History, vol. 8, (1910), pp. 299-300.)

Martin Harris, also one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, provided this information to his friend Edward Stevenson, who would later become part of the LDS First Council of Seventy.
"Martin Harris related an incident that occured during the time that he wrote that portion of the translation of the Book of Mormon which he was favored to write direct from the mouth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He said that the Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he then used the seer stone, Martin explained the translation as follows: By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin and when finished he would say "Written," and if correctly written that sentence would disappear and another appear in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used." (source: Edward Stevenson, "One of the Three Witnesses," reprinted from Deseret News, 30 Nov. 1881 in Millennial Star, 44 (6 Feb. 1882): 86-87.)

Oliver Cowdery was Joseph's principal scribe for the Book of Mormon, and another of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.
"These were days never to be forgotten — to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, 'Interpreters,' the history, or record, called 'The Book of Mormon." (spelling and emphasis preserved from original) (source: Oliver Cowdery, Messenger and Advocate, (Kirtland, Ohio, 1834), vol. 1, no. 1, p.14.)
Cowdery's use here of the terms "Urim and Thummim" was a common designation among Mormons after 1833 for Joseph's seer stone.

Notice that none of these witnesses ever mention the King James Version being used or even being present during the translation of the Book of Mormon.

[_Mahonri]

Translation, interpretation and interpolation are different things. Joseph Smith could not have translated the plates without having them in front of him, could he? You don't translate without the object there to read from. Were the plates in the hat? A decent sized hat to fit a big head, swelled with importance, knowledge and bright ideas?(bright enough to be a light to the world?) I be Joseph was so bright that when he was young his parents called him Sun.

[_moksha]

That material from Blake Ostler made a lot of sense.

[_scripturesearcher]

Translation, interpretation and interpolation are different things. Joseph Smith could not have translated the plates without having them in front of him, could he? You don't translate without the object there to read from. Were the plates in the hat? A decent sized hat to fit a big head, swelled with importance, knowledge and bright ideas?(bright enough to be a light to the world?) I be Joseph was so bright that when he was young his parents called him Sun.

I am simply following the evidence where it leads me.
Keep in mind that these witnesses of the translation process are the same witnesses used to gain credibility for the Book of Mormon itself.
If you discredit the witnesses testimonies of the translation process, then you would also have to discredit their testimony of the Book of Mormon.

[_Dakilang Pinoy]

"If God felt the need to add these clarifying words, then why didn't he add them into the original biblical texts of Malachi and Isaiah?
Since the King James Version Bible was published before the Book of Mormon was "translated", doesn't it seem more likely that the italic words from the King James Version Bible are found in the Book of Mormon and are there word for word because Joseph Smith copied them directly from the King James Version Bible?"

I presume it's because these clarifying words weren't necessary in the original languages. I don't know anything about Hebrew, etc, but I do know things about translating.

On my mission I learned the Tagalog language (which is the primary language of the Philippines); there are some things in that language that can't be translated into English.

Here is an example: The sentences "Ano ang sinabi ng kapatid ko? Daraan daw siya rito bukas" would literally be translated as "What was said by/of the sibling of mine? Will pass by he daw here tomorrow" and once cleaned up would read "What did my brother (or sister) say? He will come by tomorrow daw."

The question remains "why didn't you translate daw?" Because there is no translation. "Daw" is a word which basically puts quotation marks on the sentence it is in. In other words, "He will come by tomorrow" is a quote. So how could we help it make sense? We could either take the daw out of the sentence, or we could clarify it by saying,"He said he will come by tomorrow."

This clarification helps us understand something that would seem vague in English, and yet makes perfect sense in Tagalog. There are other, better examples I could use, but this is probably good enough.

I presume the same is the case with the Hebrew. What makes sense to them makes little or no sense to us with a direct translation. The same would apply with the original writing on the Book of Mormon. There was a need to use claryfying words. God directed Joseph Smith to change the clarifying words of the Biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon only if the clarifying words in the KJV were wrong.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

There is no question that the Book of Mormon was written (translated or whatever) long after the King James version.

Of course, in the early 90s, Logos (the software company) released a CD containing an authorized edition of some of the biblical texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls - and you know what? It's translation was also based nearly exclusively on the KJV (where there were differences, they were either caused by unique readings from the DSS or taken from the ASV, but these amounted to about 2% of the text If I recall correctly). When the more recent Dead Sea Scrolls Bible was published (now about a decade ago I think - my copy isn't handy), it had a rather large apparatus built in - since they used their own translation for the default biblical text, without such an apparatus it would have been quite difficult for the lay person to know where the textual variations were due to a different reading of the same text, or a reading of a different text.

That being said, the issue in this thread actually has almost everything to do with various assumptions of what it means to translate by the power of God. And until that notion is explored, most of the rest of the discussion is meaningless. And of course, Joseph is central to that issue no matter where you put him. If he has some control (loose translation) then he is involved in word choice. If he has no control,(tight translation) his language and his understanding is still a significant part of the process (if he had been a Spanish speaker, the text would have been Spanish for example), and in the case of divinely assisted translation, we should also talk about intended audiences and so on, and what that means for the translation of the text.

I think this is why generally all of these discussions usually start from some assumed position about the translation and then go on to show that the text isn't what we would expect given those assumptions.