Delf, it's the Mormons who claim that the Book of Mormon "translation" was done with divine power...and that an angel authenticated it all...
So the angel just flunked a final edit, eh?
Examples:
* Since the phrases "even the Son" and "the Son of God were added to 1 Nephi 11:21,32 since the 1830 version...how could Smith and the angel have got that wrong?
* 1 Nephi 20:1 is copied from Isiah 48...Yet "out of the waters of baptism" was added since the original 1830 edition; it was missing from the 1978 Book of Mormon, but suddenly showed up again in the 1985 Book of Mormon. Why?
* One of the most infamous changes in the Book of Mormon occurs in Mosiah 21:28. In the original 1830 edition, the name "Mosiah" was "Benjamin." yet...a few chapters earlier -- Mosiah 6:5 -- Benjamin had already died! Apparently it took the next edition before somebody noticed that Joseph Smith had errored...and corrected it!!!!
Overall, though, why are even simple grammatical changes of import?
Because...had you, DU, as a missionary given an original 1830 Book of Mormon version to english-reading contacts...guess what they would have seen?
Why, they'd be reading places like...
* 2 Nephi chapter 12 thru chapter 22...which are the books of Isaiah chapters 2 thru 12.
* Or 3 Nephi 13 & 14...which is Matthew chapters 6 & 7.
* or 3 Nephi 15, which borrowed heavily from Isaiah.
* Or 3 Nephi 20, which borrows from 13 verses from Isaiah 52.
* Or Nephi 22, which is Isaiah 54.
* Or 3 Nephi 24 and 25, which is Malachi 3 and 4. etc etc etc...
...and then even beyond all of the above -- instead instead of entire chapters being lifted word for word by a word-thief named Joseph Smith -- we have Kings James English phrases lifted phrase for phrase thruout the Book of Mormon...as if people in 1830 spoke King James English!!!
Now why would the above had been especially of import to English readers...as they might be reading an original 1830 Book of Mormon version?
Because the KJV language in the Bible is so majestic. So appealing from even a pure literary vantage point. So smooth. So flowing. So poetic.
By sharp contrast......for English readers to bump up vs. the backwoods, pre-corrected grammatically corrected Book of Mormon would show how uninspired the original Book of Mormon content part would be.
It would be like two people giving a "presentation" where they only read the writings of others ...
...One presenter-reader would present material that was majestic, poetic, highly literary, flowing, smooth, vital, two-sided sword like...
...the other presenter-reader presents clumsy, awkward, bumpy, illiterate, anachronistic, nonsensical at points, dead wrong at others, unnecessarily repetitious of "It came to pass" phrases and "behold" this and that...which would be especially nonsensical if the writer had to actually engrave "it came to pass" that many times on gold plates!!! (On plates one of the Book of Mormon characters claims he didn't have a lot of space to include much!)
And then at the end of it all, the two presenters ask you to read, pray and believe that ALL of the above content came from the same source.
The hearers in the audience would be shaking their heads in wonderment? What? Same source??? You've got to be kidding!
Believe me, DU...anybody reading the 1830 uncleaned-up version would readily realize that the Book of Mormon original content doesn't belong in the same league as Matthew, Malachi, Isaiah, etc.
So, that's what the Mormon "clean-up Book of Mormon brigade" did...they sought to at least lower the obvious contrast in content between what Smith directly stole phrase by phrase, chapter by chapter from the Bible...vs. the original content he put in there.
More good documentation. Plagiarized and smuggled in to “books” with new names listed by chapter. There really needs to be a good, searchable depository for such items.