Zander Sturgill, who works over at Book of Mormon Central, had an interesting insight when it comes to evidence of The Book of Mormon:
“One of the top five evidences for the Book of Mormon, possible even top three, is something called ‘Intertextuality’. This is when verses or phrases or ideas in the Book of Mormon parallel, reference, match, refer to, etc, something from the Old Testament. And it goes deeper, sometimes into ancient Hebrew practices.
It usually provides deeper insight. For example, if Alma’s words matched the Psalms, wouldn’t it enlighten you to know that those quoted verses in the Psalms were about entering the temple? Then wouldn’t in be interesting that what Alma is teaching are things we learn in the temple? Is Alma teaching a temple ceremony? There’s tons of things like this in the Book of Mormon. TONS!
Sometimes critics think this is evidence against the Book of Mormon, as if Joseph Smith copied the Old Testament. But when looked at seriously, the AMOUNT of correspondences are so numerous, and the correspondences are so DEEP, that Joseph Smith could not have done it himself. Think how the footnotes in the Book of Mormon refer to the Old Testament now and then. Think of the work it took to do that. The internal Intertextuality in the Book of Mormon easily surpasses that. This is all primer to a thought I just had.
One important thing I’m realizing as I’m reading the Book of Mormon is that I’m missing so many intertextualities, simply because I don’t know the Old Testament well.”
