Ghost Committee Theology

[_moksha]

The idea of a follow-up movie to Witnesses is a good one. Now that Dr. Peterson knows the ropes of being an executive producer, he might as well keep the ball rolling and produce more cinema treats for the LDS community.

Not sure about the title Spirit Translators. Seems like there should be some continuity with the last movie. What about Witnesses From Beyond as a working title?

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

[_Dr Moore]

Reverend,

Thank you for starting this much-needed thread on a high note.

I think we can appreciate why the theory of translation assistance via a ghost committee, or spirit world helpers, is both a tactical and strategic minefield for the church.

Say the notion of a ghost committee were embraced. Implications:
1. The translator was not Joseph, but some other party/parties - his role is diminished
2. God chose not to inform Joseph of the spirit translators - God didn't trust him to know
3. Tight translation by Joseph is implied, indeed required - otherwise, looks like a silly telephone game
4. A significant amount of LDS apologetic gymnastics (a.k.a., scholarship) must be simultaneously rejected
Net/net, we are left with a more complex explanation that answers fewer questions than were addressed previously by translation apologetics. Translation is even less distinguishable from fraud.

Say the notion of a ghost committee were denounced. Implications:
1. Medieval words and phrases demand explanation - new anachronisms
2. The presence of language drawn from multiple centuries weakens the miracle - fan-out problem
3. A significant amount of LDS apologetic gymnastics (a.k.a., scholarship) must be simultaneously rejected
Net/net, we are left with a new dimension on Book of Mormon anachronisms and the clean role of Joseph as a translator looks less distinguishable from fraud.

Skousen has unwittingly opened Pandora's box with this research. His assertion re writing containing in 16/17th century English certainly demands an answer. But does any answer serve the church by showing the Book of Mormon more a miracle and less a fraud?

[_Kishkumen]

Not sure about the title Spirit Translators. Seems like there should be some continuity with the last movie. What about Witnesses From Beyond as a working title?

I concur. The thought had crossed my mind, and I erred too far in the direction of accuracy. You are right to think instead in terms of brand recognition.

[_Fence Sitter]

The notion of a ghost translation committee is absurd, but let's play along for a while. Finn above has pointed out the obvious in that certainly it must include some of the Book of Mormon characters, after all who can read reformed Egyptian outside of the Book of Mormon? No one. But that raises an entire new set of questions.

Why does an omnipotent God need to involve anyone to translate anything? Why can't he just reveal the correct English translation directly to Joseph Smith?

Does this mean there were also ghost translation committees who produced the Books of Abraham, Moses and John? If so shouldn't there be traces of those committees in all of those books?

Moving on from those problems.

Since the claim is that the EMoD in the Book of Mormon shows someone like Tyndale produced the translation from the reformed Egyptian into EMoD laced English, that would show that Tyndale is still speaking and writing in the language of his mortal life, even in the spirit world? Does this mean in the spirit world everyone speaks a different language? How do they communicate? If Mormon is there to help Tyndale translate reformed Egyptian, how are he and Tyndale talking to each other at all? In Hebrew maybe? Why would Tyndale produce a translation based on a version of English no one was speaking in the 19th century? What, God couldn't afford to hire an editor after Tyndale finished? Someone who might of pointed out that "and it came to pass" was being used bit too frequently.

So Tyndale, new to the spirit world, is tasked with producing the translation from a language he does not speak into a version of English that no one will be speaking when his translation is finally used. His work sits for a few hundred years when it is then beamed directly into the stone in Joseph Smith's hat to be read to Oliver Cowdery. What should have been produced then is a translation that looked like a man of Tynedale's writing ability would have produced. What appeared was manuscript that clearly was dictated and written down by someone whose grammar, and punctuation matched the education levels of Joseph and Oliver. What was the point of Tyndale producing a translation if it was going to be butchered like that?

What a mess.

[_Kishkumen]

I think we can appreciate why the theory of translation assistance via a ghost committee, or spirit world helpers, is both a tactical and strategic minefield for the church.

Say the notion of a ghost committee were embraced. Implications:
1. The translator was not Joseph, but some other party/parties - his role is diminished
2. God chose not to inform Joseph of the spirit translators - God didn't trust him to know
3. Tight translation by Joseph is implied, indeed required - otherwise, looks like a silly telephone game
4. A significant amount of LDS apologetic gymnastics (a.k.a., scholarship) must be simultaneously rejected
Net/net, we are left with a more complex explanation that answers fewer questions than were addressed previously by translation apologetics. Translation is even less distinguishable from fraud.

Say the notion of a ghost committee were denounced. Implications:
1. Medieval words and phrases demand explanation - new anachronisms
2. The presence of language drawn from multiple centuries weakens the miracle - fan-out problem
3. A significant amount of LDS apologetic gymnastics (a.k.a., scholarship) must be simultaneously rejected
Net/net, we are left with a new dimension on Book of Mormon anachronisms and the clean role of Joseph as a translator looks less distinguishable from fraud.

Skousen has unwittingly opened Pandora's box with this research. His assertion re writing containing in 16/17th century English certainly demands an answer. But does any answer serve the church by showing the Book of Mormon more a miracle and less a fraud?

Hmmm. I suppose so. However, it is a bold amplification of pre-existing doctrines at the same time. What we are looking at in the Ghost Committee is not really new, in that LDS doctrine already tells us that the spirits of just people will do good works for those in the mortal realm. The question is which good works precisely, or of what kind, more generally, will these spirits do? Professor Skousen has identified reasonable evidence of one specific possibility.

Indeed, the assistance of the Ghost Committee lines up very well with all of the other transactions through the veil. Nephi or Moroni deliver the plates and interpreters (translating keys). Others deliver their priesthood keys to Joseph. The Ghost Committee passes along its translation/composition work.

The Ghost Committee does not really stand out so much against this larger backdrop of work through the veil.

The truth is that there is much that we do not know about the operations occurring in the other world in response to ordinance work in this one. But, evidently, the traffic between the two realms in connection with ordinances is fairly consistent. Why should we imagine that the translation of the Book of Mormon would be any different?

The sad thing is, and I think this thread partially confirms it, that we avoid reasoning with these already established doctrines because we prefer to think of miracles as the operations that occur in an impenetrable cosmic blackbox. We are embarassed by the details, even though Mormonism has long been about providing the extra details in cases such as these.

Skousen, being of a somewhat older generation, and part of the Skousen clan, is probably less inhibited than the young people who either find all miracles stupid or are simply embarassed by the concreteness and detail of Mormon doctrine.

I, on the other hand, rejoice to see people building on the unique aspects of LDS doctrine. Work on the other side of the veil is a drab and lifeless affair without specific/concrete examples. The Ghost Committee is everything one could hope for. If, on the other hand, we are to be inhibited by all the concerns you raise (understandably), then where will this stop? What else will we feel embarassed or inhibited about?

I love my fellow denizens at MDB, but I doubt we are a good measuring stick for what ought to be acceptable in Mormon teachings and doctrine.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think this ghost committee thing will go down along the lines of the tapir thing. The sheer absurdity of it is just...

fun.

I'm hoping it gains traction within exmo circles and we start seeing ghost tie tacks, ghost stickers on cars, and endless ghost committee memes.

THANK YOU, Mopologists for this gift.

- Doc

[_Maksutov]

I think this ghost committee thing will go down along the lines of the tapir thing. The sheer absurdity of it is just...

fun.

I'm hoping it gains traction within exmo circles and we start seeing ghost tie tacks, ghost stickers on cars, and endless ghost committee memes.

THANK YOU, Mopologists for this gift.

- Doc

Love the smell of latter day woo in the morning...

Warren (NAHOM) Aston can bring the flying saucerians. Bigfoot as Cain, Hollow Earth and the tribes of the North, Three Nephites, Dowsing, Scrying, Julie Rowe visions of the Apocalypse, Necromancy...Mormonism was (is?) an early New Age convention with a Masonic Jesus bow on top.

[_Kishkumen]

Finn above has pointed out the obvious in that certainly it must include some of the Book of Mormon characters, after all who can read reformed Egyptian outside of the Book of Mormon? No one. But that raises an entire new set of questions.

I am not so sure. I am with Dean Robbers in supposing that this Ghost Committee development signals the inevitable embrace of a non-non-fictional Book of Mormon. We would expect the members of the Ghost Committee, I would proffer, to identify the language of the "gold plates" in the context of Western esotericism as Reformed Egyptian as being a code for a mystical, esoteric symbolism that conveys more than simple linguistic information.

Why does an omnipotent God need to involve anyone to translate anything? Why can't he just reveal the correct English translation directly to Joseph Smith?

Why do anything involving human beings ever? Why create human beings? If God can do it all, any other being in the universe(s) is just superfluous. Of course, we know that the LDS God is not omnipotent, and we know that the LDS God works through communities of intelligences/spirits/resurrected beings. Thus we should not ask "Why a Ghost Committee?" but "Why did it take so long to get to the Ghost Committee?"

Does this mean there were also ghost translation committees who produced the Books of Abraham, Moses and John? If so shouldn't there be traces of those committees in all of those books?

Indubitably. There were Ghost Committees formed for all of these translations. I would bet that Adam Clarke was caught up into heaven for the Bible Translation Committee, just as Red Jacket was for the Book of Mormon Translation Committee. The traces are definitely there.

Since the claim is that the EMoD in the Book of Mormon shows someone like Tyndale produced the translation from the reformed Egyptian into EMoD laced English, that would show that Tyndale is still speaking and writing in the language of his mortal life, even in the spirit world? Does this mean in the spirit world everyone speaks a different language? How do they communicate? If Mormon is there to help Tyndale translate reformed Egyptian, how are he and Tyndale talking to each other at all? In Hebrew maybe? Why would Tyndale produce a translation based on a version of English no one was speaking in the 19th century? What, God couldn't afford to hire an editor after Tyndale finished? Someone who might of pointed out that "and it came to pass" was being used bit too frequently.

So Tyndale, new to the spirit world, is tasked with producing the translation from a language he does not speak into a version of English that no one will be speaking when his translation is finally used. His work sits for a few hundred years when it is then beamed directly into the stone in Joseph Smith's hat to be read to Oliver Cowdery. What should have been produced then is a translation that looked like a man of Tynedale's writing ability would have produced. What appeared was manuscript that clearly was dictated and written down by someone whose grammar, and punctuation matched the education levels of Joseph and Oliver. What was the point of Tyndale producing a translation if it was going to be butchered like that?

What a mess.

I don't think it is quite the mess you make it out to be, if we understand the Translation Committees as something closer to Composition Committees. These Committees were formed to compose the texts that were revealed to Joseph Smith through the interpreters, etc. We will undoubtedly find the fingerprints of the various members of these Committees in the final texts, but then that is what one would expect from the Committee process.

[_Dr Exiled]

Ye olde ghost committee, as I taketh thee into mine own hands, I wond'r aloud, what myst'ries shall ye furth'r unfold to a hath lost w'rld?