Zakuska, as ever, is an idiot.
Zakuska wrote:that's the problem we are talking about. If the word Tzimin for example appeared on the plates which can mean either horse or tapir how does that get rendered into what it really means?
1) Joseph Smith didn't know the word
tzimin. He wouldn't have known that
tzimin was the meaning of a given reformed Egyptian symbol until God or his appointed agent told him so.
Do you really think God is going to say "hey, Joseph, this hen-scratch-looking Egyptian symbol right here is pronounced "tzimin" in Nephite, and it means a short little jungle animal you've never seen before, and they got that word from the old Hebrew word for
horse, which they had on the brass plates of Laban. It's your call how you want to translate it, but I'm cool if you just wanna write
horse down on your paper."
2) Are you really suggesting that God, or his appointed divine agent, wouldn't know what Nephi et al meant when they engraved the word
tzimin onto the plates? Really? Zakuska asks "how does that get rendered into what it really means?" Well, for starters, Joseph Smith puts his face down into his hat, at the bottom of which he has placed his magic rock. God then causes the stone to glow and show Joseph Smith words that represent the translation of the characters on the plates. At some point God reaches the character for
tzimin and faces a choice. He makes it.
And you think it's reasonable for that choice that
God makes is to tell Joseph that it means
horse.
Either Joseph or the divine dictator has to make a choice, or look back in time to know what it really meant. There isn't a one to one translation process going on here.
Yes, that's right. The critics are obviously full of it because they propose something utterly preposterous, which is that
God either had to make a choice, or look back in time to figure out, scratching his white beard the whole time no doubt, what the heck Nephi and the other authors of the Book of Mormon were talking about.