The Mistakes of Men: Can the Scriptures be Error-Free?
” at FairLDS.org (Dec. 10, 2003). He finds an interesting parallel to the Bible: King Benjamin’s death is recorded in Mosiah 6:5, but critics claim that when writing the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith forgot that he had made Benjamin die, and wrote of him living at a later time. [See Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1.] The 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon shows this error, though subsequent editions, in an attempt to remove the problem, changed the name to King Mosiah in the later references. Our normal response to this is that King Benjamin lived three years after his son Mosiah2 was made king. It was at the end of these three years that the expedition was sent to the Land of Nephi, where the plates of Ether were found. After relinquishing his kingship, Benjamin may have continued to act as a seer for the three-year interval. The chronology in this part of the Book is not all that clear and we do not know how long Ammon and his brethren were in the Land of Nephi. It could have been only a ma
