Watch the video, Jon, and tell me honestly that it did not demolish the critical argument based on Joseph's translation from the Kinderhook plates: "Only a bogus prophet translates bogus plates."
Well, I'll go ahead and say it. :)
That's exactly the point, Thews--that he wasn't translating this with the help of God. He was comparing similar characters, which is simply a human thing, not a revelatory thing.
Then how do you explain the fact that the two characters, though similar, were not identical, and also, the two translations were similar, but also not identical? You have to account for the difference in "degrees" between the two characters, as you noticed one "boat" was deeper than the other. How would Joseph Smith know how to translate it just a little bit differently, based on the slightest variation in the curvature of the boat? The Hebrew and Greek Lexicons wouldn't tell him that. That is something he would have to produce via revelation, and everyone who knew him knew that is how he translated these things. He offered an off the cuff translation describing the origins of the papyri when they were first presented to him and he did so without benefit of lexicons. So his reason for requesting a lexicon in this instance must have been for a different reason.
Remember, with the KPs he employed a lexicon (EAG) that he himself created by revelation. Is that how conventional translations are done? No. So I don't see it as such a slam dunk that revelation be completely excluded. For one thing if revelation were completely excluded, you'd expect to get some kind of eye-witness confusion as to why that would be so. Why the "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator" would neglect to translate something using the same method he had always used with previous ancient documents.
And are we to believe Joseph Smith called for his EAG because he presupposed every single character found on the KPs would have been accounted for therein? Of course not. And yet the "Gentile" said he would be able to translate all the plates. Perhaps he would have to force other characters to match some variant of EAG character, but either way he would still have to produce a translation using revelation to account for those variations.
The difference is that the new argument you offer above looks at Joseph Smith's Kinderhook plates translation as part of a pattern of fraud, rather than using it as primary evidence of the alleged fraud, which is what the old project does. In other words, if one doesn't already hold with you that Joseph Smith is a fraud, one can't conclude it merely from his application of the GAEL to the Kinderhook plates
Sure we can. If you don't believe me, then go find any number of people who know absolutely nothing about Joseph Smith or the history of the KPs, and then explain it all to them and see what they say. In truth, only a Mormon could allow so much leeway for a self-professing prophet not to know when he is being presented with a hoax. The overriding assumption is that there is really no error for which a true prophet can engage, that would invalidate his claim of being a prophet. Why? Because Mormons have memorized the phrase, "a prophet is only a prophet when acting as such," which was coined by, (surprise!) a man professing to be a prophet. Gee, ya think this might be by design? So no matter what he does wrong, all you have to do is whip out that phrase and all is forgiven. He's still God's chosen prophet.