"It might be said, also, that in the subsequent conduct of Elijah in restoring this same child to life, we have the original of the New Testament story of Jarius's daughter.[[14]] In this same chapter of Kings we have the following story of Elisha's miraculously feeding a multitude:
And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. So he set before them, and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord.
"Who can doubt," the Biblical sceptic might ask, "but what this story inspired that of the Evangelists concerning the miraculous feeding of five thousand people, in a desert place, from five loaves, and two fishes.[[15]] The excess of people mentioned in the New Testament—five thousand thus miraculously fed as against Elijah's one hundred—"could be pointed to as an effort of the New Testament writer to merely "outdo" in the marvelous the miracles of the Old Testament.
Again, it might be continued that the story of tenth Revelations, where a little book is given to John the apostle to eat, one that should be bitter in his belly, but in his mouth sweet as honey, is but a plagiarism of a very similar story told in Ezekiel where that prophet is commanded to eat the roll of the book, and it was in his mouth "as the honey for sweetness."[[16]]
Thus we might continue in drawing such parallels, but there would be neither profit nor argument in doing so. Such procedure is scarcely worthy the name of criticism. It reminds one of Shakespeare's Rosalind finding the doggerel verses of the love-sick swain, Orlando, hanging upon the trees of the forest of Arden, and of Rosalind reading them—
From the east to the western Ind,
No Jewel is like Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lined,
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no fair be kept in mind,
But the fair of Rosalind.
Which doggerel the more sensible Touchstone, listening to—and impatient at withal—finally breaks in upon the fair reader with:
"I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleepin-hours excepted:—for a taste—
If a hart do lack a hind,
Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Winter garments must be lined,
So must slendor Rosalind.
They that reap must sheef and bind,
Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind.
So with like result one might run on with this kind of argument based upon the Book of Mormon's alleged plagiarisms from the Hebrew scriptures.