The Other Isaiah Problem in the Book of Mormon w/ Kolby Reddish - LDS Discussions Pt. 68 | Ep. 2095

The Other Isaiah Problem: Why the Book of Mormon's Isaiah Passages Don't Match the Earliest Known Texts

When scholars discovered the Great Isaiah Scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, they gained an unprecedented window into the oldest known version of the biblical book of Isaiah, dating to approximately 125 BC. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this discovery raised an unexpected question: if the Book of Mormon contains Isaiah passages that were supposedly copied from brass plates in 600 BC Jerusalem, shouldn't those passages align more closely with the oldest available text rather than with translations made over a thousand years later? According to recent analysis presented on the Mormon Stories podcast, the answer appears to be no, and the implications challenge a foundational claim about the Book of Mormon's historical authenticity.

The Other Isaiah Problem, as researcher Kolby Reddish frames it, represents one of the most measurable textual discrepancies in Mormon scripture. Unlike more abstract questions about faith or doctrine, this issue invites direct comparison: ancient manuscripts exist, the Book of Mormon text is fixed, and linguistic analysis can determine which sources it actually reflects.

Understanding the Isaiah Problem: Three Authors, One Text

Biblical scholarship has long established that the book of Isaiah was composed by at least three different authors writing across centuries. The first section (chapters 1–39) comes from the historical Isaiah, who lived during the 8th century BC. Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40–55) was composed during the Babylonian exile roughly two centuries later, and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56–66) emerged even later. This scholarly consensus rests on linguistic analysis, thematic shifts, and historical references embedded in the text itself.

For the Book of Mormon narrative, this timeline creates a specific problem. According to the text, Nephi and his family fled Jerusalem around 600 BC with brass plates containing the writings of Isaiah and other biblical prophets. The Book of Mormon explicitly states these were exact records, preserved carefully and even recopied by subsequent generations who "saw so much value in the words of Isaiah" that they transferred them precisely from one set of plates to another.