David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

[Sledge]

There probably isn't enough agitation for that change yet? Perhaps you need to take up the torch? That thing is a clear embarrassment to your Interpreter friends.

I’m just a random person on the internet. I don’t have “Interpreter friends,” in fact, if you’re referring to the crazies at SeN, they hate me too.

Truth to power, no matter how unpopular, I always say.

[Gadianton]

Some of you might be aware of the response to David Bokovoy’s suggestion that the Book of Mormon could be considered at least in part pseudepigraphical. This isn’t an unreasonable conclusion if we adopt the tool kit of biblical studies as our primary approach, and we conflate the modern text of the Book of Mormon with its ancient sources. In a sense, it is perhaps similar to the conclusions we might see from Biblical Studies if they only used the text of the King James Bible, and had no access to archaeological information or original language sources.

As for the last sentence, if I understood David's blog post correctly, we could still have the documentary hypothesis because it is a literary theory. We can see the separate authors in KJV English. An example of a similar analysis for the Book of Mormon would be the "Mosiah priority" argument.

As for "conflating Book of Mormon text with the ancient sources", what are our options? There are 3 possibilities for anachronisms.

1) 'to be resolved.' Example candidate: The primary Book of Moses text to be discovered that shows a personal devil and a 2nd century BC Christ.
2) textual layer. Example candidate: KJV lifting used as the translation of a portion of the plates similar enough.
3) interpolation. Example candidate: Bokovoy's note that if you accept DH but have an earlier Moses, "the books of Moses" certainly didn't exist until after the exile.

(not listed is denying that the alleged anachronism is an anachronism)

I would like to see a method that can tell us when dealing with a (1) or (2) situation. Example: There could have been two islands in history that had a battle and their records were lost, but I believe The Late War is an ancient document and will one day be unearthed. Example: Christians sometimes complain about Bible studies dating prophetic manuscripts by internal reference to rulers, cities, or events, because it's assumed that there is no such thing as prophecy, and that Daniel or Isiah couldn't have known the future. Under the believer's view, what kind of method can you use to allow prophecy and date manuscripts?

The only apologist method I'm aware of is believe the naïve reading unless contradicted and pick your poison: have faith (1) or (2) hypothesize something to get out of the jam. Example of why there is no method here: suppose there were no horses, but "horse" could have meant another animal. But suppose there were both horses and the other animal -- 'horse' would still mean the other animal, but we would think it meant "horse". there is no reason to believe loanshifting didn't apply equally to both things that existed in Mesoamerica and things that didn't.

[Physics Guy]

there is no reason to believe loanshifting didn't apply equally to both things that existed in Mesoamerica and things that didn't.

Is this really true?

Loanshifting does happen; the example that springs to mind is the robin, which in North America is a bug-and-worm-eating bird that sometimes gathers in flocks, yet got given the name of a smaller and solitary European bird that eats berries, simply because the male North American birds—though not the females—have frontal reddish patches rather like both sexes of European robins. One might suppose that the logic of calling the North American birds "robins" would be the same regardless of whether or not there were also European robins in North America. But in fact it would have been a pain all the time, if there were both kinds of robins in America, to have to keep saying, "No, one of the big robins" or "yes, a red-breasted female, that kind of robin".

It seems to me that it can't be the only condition for loanshifting, that the old term fits the new thing closely enough. I think the old term also has to be free for new use because the old thing is absent.

Conversely it seems to me that another condition is that there is no other old term that would fit the new thing better. I can't see why Nephites would have called deer or goats horses when their Hebrew dialect already had words for goats and deer. Their Old World goats and deer were different from the New World creatures, but they were a lot more similar than horses. And it's also implausible to me that a divine translation would render a Nephite original word for deer or goat into "horse" just because the Nephites somehow used the deer or goats in some horse-like ways. To Smith's audience a horse was a horse, so this would have been quite a bad translation. If the Nephites had really hitched deer to chariots then they would have said so in Hebrew and a divine translation would have rendered it that way in English as well.

So I think we must be stuck with tapirs, which is nice.

[Benjamin McGuire]

As for "conflating Book of Mormon text with the ancient sources", what are our options? There are 3 possibilities for anachronisms.

1) 'to be resolved.' Example candidate: The primary Book of Moses text to be discovered that shows a personal devil and a 2nd century BC Christ.
2) textual layer. Example candidate: KJV lifting used as the translation of a portion of the plates similar enough.
3) interpolation. Example candidate: Bokovoy's note that if you accept DH but have an earlier Moses, "the books of Moses" certainly didn't exist until after the exile.

I am not sure I follow the point you are trying to make. You seem to be discussing how we respond to anachronisms in the text. What I am discussing is how we identify anachronisms and how we attribute or classify them. When we separate the Book of Mormon from its alleged source, we discuss two kinds of anachronisms (chronological issues). Those that can be attributed to the translation of the text and its presentation in English, and those that should be attributed to the original language text (no longer extant). The notion that there could be some future discovery that changes things is a way for people to respond to anachronisms that they can't otherwise address. But it isn't something that I am all that interested in.

There isn't something that we can refer to as a "textual' layer, I don't think. I would attribute the use of the King James language as part of the 'translation' stage of the text (assuming an ancient source). And having done this, it stops being anachronistic, because there is no chronological problem there. The King James text was clearly the most recognized and widely used biblical text at the time of the Book of Mormon's publication.

The Book of Mormon presents a text with a fairly complex internal chronology. We have an approximate start date. We have an approximate end date. We have various translations of texts, we have editing, we have redaction, and so on. And if we want to follow (as you suggest) the idea that we can take the Book of Mormon and create this chronological mapping of its contents, then we can start to assert where there might be potential anachronisms. With parts of the Old Testament, this can be relatively easy. We know, for example, that the Old Testament provides us with two general descriptions (maps) of Israelite territory. One is map where Israel's territory ends at the Jordan, and corresponds to Egyptian maps of Canaan. The other extends Israel's territory to the Euphrates, and corresponds reasonably well with maps (and mapping philosophy) coming during the neo-Babylonian period. The maps are anachronistic only if understood in certain ways (as fitting into a textual chronology in certain ways). They aren't anachronistic in other contexts. These contexts don't simply have to be about the dating of the text, they can involve a literary aspect - the text may be trying to assert something through its use of certain features rather than trying to be historical (this is another challenge we face in ancient literature - the extent to which we read the texts in the way they were intended).

Now, I will agree that this means that you can redirect almost any anachronism to this translation stage, right? That is, if you assume an ancient source, and you find something you think is anachronistic, you can simply claim it must be an artifact of translation. And at least superficially, this might work, but realistically, the literary tools we use to discuss narrative coherence, complexity in the text, rhetorical strategies, and so on - these are all arguments that would work for or against these kinds of superficial readings. We could have reasonable arguments about whether or not to assign any particular feature of the text to that translation stage, or attribute it to the original source (or, from the other perspective, to argue for unity in the text from a single author, modern authorship perspective).

To briefly refer back to your example, it is much easier to take the notion of "five books of Moses" and place that into the context of a translation stage than it would be to explain how a late passage from Deuteronomy used for interpretive commentary got there. The one doesn't significantly alter the value of the text as a communicative act. The other almost certainly does.

You write: "(not listed is denying that the alleged anachronism is an anachronism)" but since anachronisms are things that are chronologically out of place, the requirement to having anachronisms is having chronologies. Mormon interpreters pretty regularly build competing chronologies - with lots of motivations behind them - we only have to look at arguments about the 600 BC date for examples. Much like the DH, part of the role of good scholarship behind the constriction of chronologies for the Book of Mormon history would be working it into frameworks that make sense (and limit the number of anachronisms found in the text).

Example: Christians sometimes complain about Bible studies dating prophetic manuscripts by internal reference to rulers, cities, or events, because it's assumed that there is no such thing as prophecy, and that Daniel or Isiah couldn't have known the future. Under the believer's view, what kind of method can you use to allow prophecy and date manuscripts?

Frankly, I don't think we need to do this. I think that this model of reading texts and understanding prophecy is itself a later development. It comes out of the need for an authoritative and self-explanatory text (which I reject). It is alien to ancient histories (and prophecies). But that's a different debate. If believers want to resolve anachronisms in this way, then by all means, they are welcome to. It just won't be considered reasonable to anyone who doesn't share their assumptions. I have spent some time on this question when I deal with the concept of the audience. With texts though, especially when we are dealing with constructing textual histories, this is also a twisting of positions. A historian doesn't have to deny the existence of a prophecy, they just deny that the prophecy had this specific form until it was reinterpreted into a specific context for a specific reason. We know that religions do this routinely. To use an example that I brought up earlier, the prophecy of the two sticks in Ezekiel is given a completely new interpretive framework in D&C 27.

The only apologist method I'm aware of is believe the naïve reading unless contradicted and pick your poison: have faith (1) or (2) hypothesize something to get out of the jam. Example of why there is no method here: suppose there were no horses, but "horse" could have meant another animal. But suppose there were both horses and the other animal -- 'horse' would still mean the other animal, but we would think it meant "horse". there is no reason to believe loanshifting didn't apply equally to both things that existed in Mesoamerica and things that didn't.

Again, I would preface this by saying that these issues are more challenging when we conflate any potential ancient source with the modern text.

I want to make a correction. I am curious, when you mention loanshifting, exactly what you mean. I don't use the term in this context because it doesn't exactly fit well. Loanshifting refers to a circumstance in which you have two languages. The users of the first language use or translate a term from the second language. But, the second language has other meanings associated with the word, and the users of the first language shift their use to cover the additional meanings from the second language. So, an example. In Hupa (indigenous tribe from northern California), the term k’ide’ means animal horn. By the mid 20th century, it was used to describe a automobile horn. Or from the same group, the phrase lin' mixiy' appears in the 19th century as an insult. It means dog's child. And probably translates "son of a bitch". The modeling of this language on English is what creates the loanshift. As I have discussed elsewhere in great detail (MD&D years ago), if I were looking to explain the use of the word 'horse' in the ancient source text of the Book of Mormon, I would describe it as lexical expansion and not as loanshifting. I'll explain that in my next post in response to Physics Guy. But in any case, when we deal with loanshifting, we should have a sense of the language in use, the language something is being taken from, and we should be able to describe how the language is borrowed and how it changes in the borrowing. And I am not sure that we can do any of this here. More thoughts below.

[Benjamin McGuire]

there is no reason to believe loanshifting didn't apply equally to both things that existed in Mesoamerica and things that didn't.

Is this really true?

Loanshifting does happen; the example that springs to mind is the robin, which in North America is a bug-and-worm-eating bird that sometimes gathers in flocks, yet got given the name of a smaller and solitary European bird that eats berries, simply because the male North American birds—though not the females—have frontal reddish patches rather like both sexes of European robins. One might suppose that the logic of calling the North American birds "robins" would be the same regardless of whether or not there were also European robins in North America. But in fact it would have been a pain all the time, if there were both kinds of robins in America, to have to keep saying, "No, one of the big robins" or "yes, a red-breasted female, that kind of robin".

I don't think this is loanshifting. A basic definition is: (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loanshift)
A change in the meaning of a word under the influence of another language (as when a word meaning "pedal extremity" acquires also the meaning "12-inch unit of length" under the influence of English "foot")

I read what you wrote, and I keep thinking of that oft quoted line: "What do you mean? An African or a European swallow." I generally refer to the tendency that is described here as lexical expansion. My favorite example is what Marco Polo does when he discovers a rhinoceros during his travels. He writes:
https://books.google.com/books?id=VpRlD ... &q&f=false

They have many wild elephants and they also have unicorns enough which are not all by any means less than an elephant in size. And they are made like this, for they have the hair of the buffalo; it has the feet made like the feet of an elephant. It has one horn in the middle of the forehead very thick and large and black ... It has the top of the head made like a wild board and always carries its head bent towards the ground and stays very willingly amongst lakes and forests in the mud and in the mire like swine. It is a very ugly beast to see and unclean. And they are not so as we here say and describe, who say that it lets itself be caught in the lap by a virgin girl; but I tell you that it is quite the contrary of that which we believe that it was.

So we know what he is describing - it is a rhinoceros. And Umberto Eco describes it this way (in Kant and Platypus, p. 58):

Marco Polo seems to have made a decision: rather than resegment the content by adding a new animal to the universe of the living, he has corrected the contemporary description of unicorns, so that, if they existed, they would be as he saw them and not as the legend described them. He has modified the intension and left the extension unchanged. Or at least that is what it seems he wanted to do, or in fact did, without bothering his head overmuch regarding taxonomy.

That is, assuming that that there were no real horses, and that the gold plates are an ancient text. It is a lexical expansion (rather than, as Eco suggests, coming up with something new). The new use of the term doesn't preclude the old use of the word. But this is all occurring as something much more complicated then simply taking an old word to refer to something new.

But you say:

Conversely it seems to me that another condition is that there is no other old term that would fit the new thing better. I can't see why Nephites would have called deer or goats horses when their Hebrew dialect already had words for goats and deer. Their Old World goats and deer were different from the New World creatures, but they were a lot more similar than horses. And it's also implausible to me that a divine translation would render a Nephite original word for deer or goat into "horse" just because the Nephites somehow used the deer or goats in some horse-like ways. To Smith's audience a horse was a horse, so this would have been quite a bad translation. If the Nephites had really hitched deer to chariots then they would have said so in Hebrew and a divine translation would have rendered it that way in English as well.

So how should a divine translator translate the text? Should he substitute the word rhinoceros where we see the word unicorn? That seems problematic because then you would have something like this:

"they also have rhinoceros enough which are not all by any means less than an elephant in size. ... And they are not so as we here say and describe, who say that it lets itself be caught in the lap by a virgin girl; but I tell you that it is quite the contrary of that which we believe that it was."

See, if we don't understand that Marco Polo has gone through this process of lexical expansion, and we replace the word unicorn with the word rhinoceros, then this stops making sense (and it certainly loses a great deal of the intention in the original text).

This also brings up the question of what we mean when we talk about a divine translation, or even when we talk about a good translation. What we mean by translation, what our expectations are, and how that translation is read - these are issues that should be addressed when we are dealing with the Book of Mormon as a modern translation in terms of how we understand its anachronisms. Assuming they exist, if the Nephite writers used the term "horse" for another animal, they certainly were not intending to alter the meaning of the term "horse" in their own scriptural texts (even if in so doing, they eventually have a text that is misunderstood by its readers). Likewise, if the shift occurs within an ancient source, it doesn't make Joseph Smith or any of the other first readers competent enough to understand the distinction. Should the translator be the one who does this? Too often (as is the case here), the idea of a "divine" translation is used to avoid these kinds of questions. Translation is viewed as a black box, with whatever we want coming out.

[Gadianton]

..I think the old term also has to be free for new use because the old thing is absent.

I agree with what you're driving at.

The apologists will point out that deer and tapir are fundamentally similar because the Mayans called Spanish horses either deer or tapir (in Mayan). They say Joseph could have ran up against the same difficulty. I assume the Mayans had some way of saying "deer" or contextualizing, such that the listener could make the distinction. We might assume a cultural negotiation that ensures a distinction. Joseph Smith is doing this in a vacuum. How he picks a term is anybody's guess, and there is no fundamental reason why he couldn't use 'horse' for both horses and deer and tapirs at his leisure. In his mind's eye, when he sees horse#1 he knows what that is, and no confusion when he sees horse#2. People think they are being clear all the time because they have a mental image that others don't. And even if he had his readers in mind, what if he couldn't think of a better term than horse? What if there were horses, but like many other animals and things, they weren't mentioned in the plates for some reason (wild horses or limited use), and he didn't know the term wasn't available?

flexibility cuts both ways. Your example of horse + chariot is even worse, "that they should prepare his horses and chariots" has proposed to mean get the deer from the stable, and also grab the wheeled device or possibly the sled that people pull, and head out. the 'horse' is for a snack along the way. it doesn't say that chariots pull horses. With this much leeway, due to your mentioned lack of clear distinctions, we can't be sure anything in the Book of Mormon is as it seems.

Also to another point you made, the Book of Mormon does do transliteration, "neum and sheum" and then there's some Jaredite mammoth I can't think of that goes by name.

when to do one or the other? what constraints are there to loanshifting? thus far, there is no theoretical framework for any of this that I can see. "loanshifting" isn't even really a theory for apologetics, it's not worked out. the point seems to be that loanshifting is a plausibility that could one day explain the text should it ever be worked out. It's a way to rebuff anachronisms = interpolations as a foregone conclusion.

ETA: I posted this before seeing Ben's response. Honestly, I'm playing loose with the word "loanshifting". I've heard it from apologists and others talking about apologists, but feel free to discard that word. There are places where Joseph Smith is proposed to use a word from his culture to mean something in the culture of the world he's allegedly translation.

[Gadianton]

There isn't something that we can refer to as a "textual' layer, I don't think.

I picked that term up from Brandt; forget about it if it's unclear.

Ben's terminology (correct me):

anachronisms exist in Book of Mormon because:

1. translating to English put them there.
2. they were anachronisms in the original text.
3. anachronisms are relative to the chronology; it might not be an anachronism.

Are blatent interpolations included in 1?

Now, I will agree that this means that you can redirect almost any anachronism to this translation stage, right?

Yes!

To keep things simple for now, let's stop here. You've offered the KJV language as an example of (1). I believe your example of Israelite maps is an example of (3). Conflicting maps aren't anachronisms when understanding the variety of map-making contexts.

What examples do you have for (2) in the Bible and also in the Book of Mormon?

[Symmachus]

I have a tendency to write to much, so I will try and keep this short. [edit: I failed I think]

I'll see your "short" and raise you a Band. One theme I detect in your response is that you are providing answers to a question you are not asking, namely, is the Book of Mormon what its own text claims it to be? This whole discussion, however, began with that as the looming question. You may not want to address that question, which is fine, but there is something slippery about coming in to answer a different question—what are the function of these anachronisms?—and then apply that answer to the other question, dismissing all other answers as "superficial" for not having dealt with the question you are interested in. The anachronisms may be artful or intentional, careless or thoughtless; they may have theological significance or not; they may, in sum, serve all kinds of textual goals. But, if we are asking about historicity in light of the claims made by the text itself, then discovering a literary/theological or whatever function does not diminish their evidence for or against historicity.

The question of Early Modern English, in the context of a 19th century text is an anachronism. As such, the discussion about anachronisms in the 19th century text is already occurring (and I had quite a bit to say about it in the presentation that I linked). Texts can be deliberately anachronistic.

Yes, I agree with that. There can be many reasons for an anachronism, including in the arts of forgery, by the way, usually in their overuse or misuse.

But in general anachronisms speak only to the question of verisimilitude and not to the question of historicity. We routinely (and incorrectly) view one as the other (I have written a lot about this in various places).

No, that's not correct at all. Anachronisms are used all the time in determining historicity and other kinds of historical value. They are not just used to determine termini ante and post quem. Some people might incorrectly view verisimilitude as synonymous with historicity, but it is equally incorrect to disentangle them when we are talking about historicity. Something that has verisimilitude might entail historicity or not, but if something has historicity, it will have verisimilitude, as well. If we are asking about historicity, verisimilitude is a not a separate category from historicity but a sub-species of it; historicity is the superstructure, and verisimilitude is an important component of the structure, though by no means the only one. That is one reason why I framed my view of historicity as scalar, because a text claiming to be set in a historic moment should have a high degree of verisimilitude—seeming to be a from the point in time claimed—with that moment. But it can obviously vary depending on the case, and one needs other blocks to build that superstructure.

The classic example of this in biblical literature is the issue of the Book of Esther. It has a high degree of verisimilitude. In fact, to use Symmachus' words, "To say that something has an origin at some point in the past is to say that the number of historical anachronisms contained in that something is close to 0." The Book of Esther fits that description. It is also a fictional novel.

The claim that it is a fictional novel is an interpretation open to dispute and not something established by evidence external to the text, but let me ask you: what kinds of evidentiary categories do you think have been applied to support that interpretation? Applying those same categories to the Book of Mormon, do you think it would be more likely to come out as a fictional novel or as the translation of an ancient document from Meso-American Hebrews?

As I say, verisimilitude is one block in building the case for historicity. Unlike the Book of Esther, we have no external witness to the Book of Mormon existing before it was produced by Joseph Smith, and we have no material reality to access: we don't have any cities or any people or senines or horses, etc. So, if you accept the interpretation that a text like Esther, which has a high degree of verisimilitude and also is set in a materially located place that can be identified and even a person who can be, is a fiction, should I assume that you also believe the Book of Mormon, a text with a low degree of verisimilitude not set in a world that has been materially located and with no one who can be identified externally, is also a fiction?

On the other hand, it is impossible to use this sort of statement about the Book of Mormon. At its most basic level, the Book of Mormon is written in English. This means that the text itself cannot possibly have an origin any earlier than the introduction of the most recent English language in the text (to keep with the paradigm of Early Modern English). So any statement we make about anachronisms in the Book of Mormon relative to the alleged ancient source (the gold plates) have to be assessed so that we can distinguish between potential anachronisms that can be attributed to the translation of the Book of Mormon and potential anachronisms that cannot be attributed to the translation.

See, that is where I think you are again being quite slippery, in this case with your over-literal distinction between text and translation (just as in the inaccurate opposition you make between verisimilitude and historicity). By definition, a translation is a text that has an origin in another text. A given Text B that is a translation of necessity has an origin in Text A that precedes it in time. Otherwise, we are not talking about a translation at all and have no need of either the category or the word. So, in your view, is the Book of Mormon the text a translation of another text or not?

This means that the text itself cannot possibly have an origin any earlier than the introduction of the most recent English language in the text (to keep with the paradigm of Early Modern English). So any statement we make about anachronisms in the Book of Mormon relative to the alleged ancient source (the gold plates) have to be assessed so that we can distinguish between potential anachronisms that can be attributed to the translation of the Book of Mormon and potential anachronisms that cannot be attributed to the translation.

If you don't have the source text, there is no way to know. The "tight translation theory" as I understand it, is that the translation produced (regardless of the process by which it was produced) reflects a close correspondence between source language and target language. Under that model, having the translation is enough to determine. But that is interpretative choice. That is why I say that you present a version of the loose translation theory, which I take to mean any theory that isn't the tight translation theory. Under that model, your claims about deliberate archaisms seem stronger to me. Unless you think it is God who is deliberate introducing the archaisms, which I would consider a respectable view but not an arguable one.

First, I haven't said anything that would favor either a loose or a tight translation. Those terms don't really work well. Why? Because they are descriptions of what the process looks like and not descriptions of what is going on.

No, but I think it's implied that you endorse at least a looser translation theory, if you believe it is a translation. See my comment above.

That's part of the point of the presentation that I linked. Here are two statements I made near then end:

I want to point out something which I think should be obvious here – this deliberate use of archaic language can be understood in many different ways. It can be understood both in the context of a tight and loose model of dictation. And it can be understood with a wide range of potential translators. What this framework does is help us articulate what role in our communicative act is responsible for the features we see in the text.

Being tight or loose aren't descriptive of what is going on, they are interpretative in nature.

How do you know these archaisms are deliberate? That seems like an assumption. Under the tight translation theory, they are not deliberate.

I think I would recharacterize a little of this now (given time to better articulate my point of view). What I meant here in this is that if we take the Book of Mormon as it is (we don't try to differentiate between the Book of Mormon and an ancient source), then the text clearly has modern elements that need to be attributed to the production of the text around 1830. When we attribute all of the text-as-it-is to some ancient author we make the text pseudepigraphical (as Bokovoy suggested).

One solution would be to free it from the paradigm of translation (which makes it presuppose and dependent upon another text, purportedly ancient), which seems to be what you are saying ("don't differentiate between the Book of Mormon and an ancient source"). Do you think it does not have an ancient origin then, or that it is simply not knowable?

When we approach the text of the Book of Mormon, our studies need to be cognizant of the Book of Mormon as a modern text – and as a text that has been recontextualized for a modern audience – a text whose author was potentially aware of the interpretations that would be given to the text, and the implication of those interpretations on issues contemporary with its first readers. Should we be surprised to sometimes find our own questions reflected back at us from its pages?

Who is the text's author?

I believe this is even truer today that it was at the end of the 19th century. And I believe that a more nuanced understanding of translation as a process can help us understand how to place Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon as a translation of an ancient text.
...
Perhaps a little more bluntly - Mormonism has to drop its notion of a perfect text - which is, inevitably a fictional notion (and not a uniquely LDS one either - it is very much in line with Evangelical views of the Bible). From there, things improve. That there are additional unrelated hurdles to this, I agree (but that is a different discussion).

I'm not sure what you mean by "perfect text," but I think it is unfair to say that traditional believing Mormons necessary lack nuance, which I think you are taking to mean "sophistication." Perhaps they lack that, but that's a recent development in the use of nuance, which traditionally has meant: an approach to the cloudy haze that inhibits clear understanding (contradictions, incoherence, and so on). There is no such haze around the Book of Mormon, or at least it hasn't really been shown yet. On the contrary, in terms of the events and characters it contains, the Book of Mormon is not that incoherent, despite its assumed narrative complexity, and contains very few contradictions. It presents a fairly self-contained world that works on its own terms (its theology is another story). It just turns out that it doesn't fit within what is known (or at least considered known) more generally.

It is as difficult, or rather more difficult than trying to being a monotheist who believes God has a divine son. The Trinity is considered a mystery in Orthodox Christianity for a reason: it is a truth that cannot be known or fully understood except by revelation from God.

[DrStakhanovite]

Hi Benjamin!

Let me just say I’ve thoroughly been enjoying your contributions here.

This also brings up the question of what we mean when we talk about a divine translation, or even when we talk about a good translation. What we mean by translation, what our expectations are, and how that translation is read - these are issues that should be addressed when we are dealing with the Book of Mormon as a modern translation in terms of how we understand its anachronisms. Assuming they exist, if the Nephite writers used the term "horse" for another animal, they certainly were not intending to alter the meaning of the term "horse" in their own scriptural texts (even if in so doing, they eventually have a text that is misunderstood by its readers). Likewise, if the shift occurs within an ancient source, it doesn't make Joseph Smith or any of the other first readers competent enough to understand the distinction. Should the translator be the one who does this? Too often (as is the case here), the idea of a "divine" translation is used to avoid these kinds of questions. Translation is viewed as a black box, with whatever we want coming out.

I think this cuts right to the heart of the matter as to why I think that the topic of the translation and even the composition of the Book of Mormon belongs more to the realm of contemporary philosophy of language than to the canons of lower and higher criticisms. To that end I’m thinking along the lines of Gottleib Frege’s distinction between the sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung) of a word.

When we see a supposed Nephite writer using the term “horse” this always generates a lot of discussion (primarily among different stripes of Mormons) about how the word is being used (the sense/sinn) and if the usage is correct. I find it much more interesting to discuss the ontological commitments the Nephite writer has when employing “horse”, what is the reference? There is an undeniable existential component at play, what is the actual thing the Nephite writer had in mind when “horse” was employed?

Pointing out that Joseph didn’t really even have unmediated access to the Nephite writer makes the issue even worse, can we even legitimately call a process of interpreting signs from God through prophetic instruments an actual translation? Going from a text written in one ancient natural language to a new text that is written in a modern natural language is not a good description of what Joseph Smith did by even the most hagiographic of accounts.

[Benjamin McGuire]

What examples do you have for (2) in the Bible and also in the Book of Mormon?

So I think I need to clarify something. There are different kinds of anachronisms. One of the kinds that w have been loosely discussing is an anachronism of language. We view language as something that can be dated to an extent. So if language appears that is out of a chronological context, it creates an anachronism. Sometimes this is intentional. But if a text contains anachronistic language, that may be a clue to a more complex literary history. Or it may mean that we have dated the text wrong (in which case, a proper dating may make the anachronism go away).

The map descriptions function both in terms of a description and as a rhetorical figure. When we have Israel ruling a territory that was identified and marked by the Egyptians, it may in part play a rhetorical role in suggesting something about the relationship between Egypt and Israel. When the Bible follows patterns used by the neo-Babylonians to discuss boundaries, that too can be a a literary trope of sorts. So we can use these anachronisms to help us date authorship of a text (or its earlier stages or sources) but when it is part of the narrative, the anachronism doesn't simply go away by explanation.

So I think the best place to start answering your question would be a couple of examples using the text-as-it-is. A good biblical example might be the camel. Camels are domesticated around 1000 B.C. They figure prominently in the Old Testament story of Rebecca - which is alleged to have happened centuries earlier. This is an anachronism. We explain the anachronism by recognizing that the text is written significantly after the domestication of the camel. But it remains an anachronism no matter when we date the writing of the text - because it is included in a narrative about the earlier time period (which is independent of when it was really written).

In the Book of Mormon, one of the more interesting anachronisms that functions in a similar way for me is the story in Ether of Riplakish - the quintessential wicked Jaredite king. Here is the relevant verse:

And it came to pass that Riplakish did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, for he did have many wives and concubines, and did lay that upon men’s shoulders which was grievous to be borne; yea, he did tax them with heavy taxes; and with the taxes he did build many spacious buildings.

This relates to the kingship code of Deuteronomy 17:17:

Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

Riplakish is painted as an evil king exactly the way that the other kings of the Book of Mormon are (including David and Solomon) - as having violated the law in Deuteronomy 17. I note in passing Jacob 1:15 -

And now it came to pass that the people of Nephi, under the reign of the second king, began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices, such as like unto David of old desiring many wives and concubines, and also Solomon, his son.

And this is an anachronism. So we can offer explanations for it. But the anachronism persists even if explained. And it does offer interesting suggestions over the textual history if you are a believer.

The Book of Mormon anachronisms that I am more likely to attribute to the alleged ancient source are those that come through the narrative units. Earlier there was a mention of the horse and chariot. This an interesting issue to me personally from the literary standpoint because the first instance in the text (as it is) comes from a citation Isaiah. And this adds some complexity to the question of meaning. And the issue of the horse - while it is likely anachronistic, seems more likely to belong to the original source more than to the translation. Joseph Smith (and all of the other first readers) almost certainly understood it as a horse as we understand the term today. But again, this is why I emphasize so much the fact that we should try to have some common working ground in terms of what we think is meant by translation ....