The Book of Mormon infamously draws heavily on the Bible, including the New Testament, which its supposed ancient authors would never have seen. Nowhere is this more evident than in the writings attributed to Moroni toward the end of the Book of Mormon.¹ An interesting case study in point is the occurrence of two clear parallels to 1 John in Moroni 7–8, as shown in the table below.² 

There is much that we can learn from these two parallels between Moroni and 1 John. 

1. The exact parallel using the 18-word sequence that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is can only be plausibly understood as the Book of Mormon drawing on the text of 1 John 3:2 in the KJV.
2. A total of 38 of the 79 words in Moroni 7–8 (48%) are paralleled in 42 of the 86 words of 1 John 3:1-3 (49%).³ This is a very high concentration of verbal parallels for such lengthy passages.
3. The parallels between Moroni 7:48 and 1 John 3:1-3 are not merely verbal parallels, but the parallels also follow the same train of thought: (a) the Father has bestowed love on believers; (b) they are or will be sons of God; (c) when Christ appears we will be like him because we will see him as he is; (d) this hope purifies us to be pure like him.
4. Moroni begins his instruction in verse 48 in the second person (“ye” twice), but then shifts to the first person plural when using the long word sequence in the second half of the verse. This shift from second to third person is clearly the result of the author using the wording of 1 John.
5. Moroni 7:48 shows influence of Johannine language even beyond 1 John 3:1-3. The exact title “his Son Jesus Christ” is used three times in 1 John (1:3; 3:23; 5:20) and nowhere else in the Bible.⁴ There is also some evidence elsewhere in Moroni 7–8 of the influence of language from 1 John, though not quite as clear.⁵ This use of distinctively Johannine language not found in the immediate passage of 1 John 3:1-3 shows that the author of Moroni was steeped in the text of 1 John as a whole.
6. The clear parallel between Moroni 8:16b and 1 John 4:17-18a confirms that the author of the book of Moroni was familiar with 1 John and was influenced by it as he was composing the book.
7. Notice that in both books the passages are about a chapter apart⁶ and in the same order: Moroni 7:48 is followed in the next chapter by Moroni 8:16b, and 1 John 3:1-3 is followed in the next chapter by 1 John 4:17-18a.
8. This is not the only place in the Book of Mormon containing a significant, meaningful parallel to 1 John.⁷ 3 Nephi quotes Jesus as saying, “And thus will the Father bear record of me; and the Holy Ghost will bear record unto him of the Father and me: for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost, are one” (3 Ne. 11:36). This statement clearly parallels 1 John 5:7 in the KJV, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” What makes this particular parallel especially interesting is that the consensus of biblical scholars regards the statement in 1 John 5:7 to have been a later addition to the epistle of 1 John. As New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger explained in a standard reference on the subject, the sentence appears in Greek manuscripts mainly from the sixteenth century, in none of the ancient language versions (Syriac, Coptic, etc.) except a later version of the Latin Vulgate, and was not quoted by any of the early Greek church fathers.⁸
9. It is possible but neither necessary nor likely that the author of Moroni had a Bible in his hands while he was producing his text. Most likely, he was simply very familiar with 1 John and drew on it as he went along.⁹ The major parallel between Moroni 7:48 and 1 John 3:2 is easily explained as the result of the author of Moroni having memorized that particular passage in 1 John.
10. It is obviously implausible to suppose that the figure Moroni, writing in the Americas in the early fifth century, had ever seen the epistle of 1 John. Nor does the Book of Mormon ever suggest that Moroni had knowledge of 1 John or of other books in the New Testament.
11. The similarities cannot be explained as the result of a “lost” book or source that both Moroni and John had in common. For one thing, such an explanation is ad hoc. For another, the explanation would not account in a plausible way for the two parallels about the same distance apart and in the same order.
12. The hypothesis that Moroni said things similar enough to what John said that Joseph Smith could choose, or be inspired, to use John’s wording has the same problem: it cannot account for the two parallels in the same order and about the same distance apart.
13. As we showed in part 1 and part 2 of this series of articles, parallels to other books of the New Testament in Mormon 8–9 and Moroni 7–10 confirm that the author was familiar with the New Testament. Immediately preceding the parallel to 1 John 3:1-3 in Moroni 7:48 is an even lengthier parallel to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 in Moroni 7:45-46. There are simply too many of these parallels from too many parts of the New Testament to explain as merely the result of the translator drawing on the language of the KJV to render what was in the ancient book of Moroni.
14. Therefore, the figure Moroni cannot have been the author of the book of Moroni.
15. The simplest explanation is that the actual author of Moroni 7–8 was someone familiar with 1 John in the KJV, since this view would explain all of the evidence: the similar trains of thought, the two parallels in the same order, the duplication of wording, and the many parallels in the surrounding context to other books of the New Testament. Therefore, we should conclude that the author was an English-speaking person writing after 1611 and of course no later than 1829.

Although alternative theories have been proposed as to the identity of this English-speaking author of the book of Moroni, the most obvious and most likely candidate is Joseph Smith.

NOTES