Ever-shifting translation theories from Mopologists

[drumdude]

Do you remember the simpler times, when Joseph Smith was an actual translator? Pepperidge Farm remembers!

Joseph was depicted in LDS artwork as a diligent scholar, translating the reformed Egyptian as any other ancient document would be translated.

Some artists would add in the supernatural elements, the “interpreters.” Some weird breast plate thing, some weird spectacle glasses thing. But he’s still translating.

Well actually guys, apparently he mostly used a rock in a hat. Russell Nelson recently demonstrated it. We are supposed to think of it like an iPhone, without a very strong backlight. The hat was needed to make sure he could see the exact characters on the rock.

Well.. actually… sorry guys we need yet another explanation. Because Isaiah hadn’t written what was on the plates yet. And there are KJV errors in the Book of Mormon. Here’s the newest, and greatest version of the translation process:

When considering the the data, Skousen proposes that, instead of Joseph or Oliver looking at a Bible (the absence of a Bible now near-definitively confirmed by the manuscript evidence and the unequivocal statements of witnesses to the translation to the Book of Mormon), that God was simply able to provide the page of text from the King James Bible to Joseph's mind and then Joseph was free to alter the text as would be more comprehensible/comfortable to his 19th century, Northeastern, frontier audience. This theology of translation may feel foreign and a bit strange to some Latter-day Saints, but it seems to fit well with the Lord's own words about the nature of revelation to Joseph Smith. Latter-day Saints should take comfort in fact that the Lord accommodates his perfection to our own weakness and uses our imperfect language and nature for the building up of Zion on the earth.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/ans ... _of_Mormon


It all makes perfect sense. Laban was murdered so that the records could be carried across the ocean. So that it could not be included in the text that Mormon wrote. That Mormon carried from the Hill Cumorah in Central America to the other Hill Cumorah in upstate New York. So that Joseph could find the plates that he wouldn’t use, because the first draft would go missing, and then because he used a rock in a hat. Which he wouldn’t read the words off, because God was sending the text directly to his brain. So that Joseph could then alter it to say whatever he wanted.

Got it?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

[malkie]

Perhaps if Joseph had had a little more direction, rather than being free to alter the text to make it more comprehensible/comfortable to his 19th century, Northeastern, frontier audience, there would have been no need to make almost 4000 editorial changes in the text.

[Alphus and Omegus]

I thought there were multiple people who claimed he had to read the individual words on the rock and they wouldn't dissappear until written down exactly correctly.

[drumdude]

I thought there were multiple people who claimed he had to read the individual words on the rock and they wouldn't dissappear until written down exactly correctly.

Martin Harris was one of the scribes Joseph Smith used to record the writing on the plates. This enabled him to give a first-hand account of how Smith performed this translation. Harris noted,

“By aid of the Seer Stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by Martin, and when finished he would say ‘written;’ and if correctly written, the sentence would disappear and another appear in its place; but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used” (CHC 1:29).

[Alphus and Omegus]

Yeah that's the one I was remembering. I would wonder what Skousen has to override Harris.

I thought this part from FAIR was hilarious:

Instead of translating Nephi's quotations of Isaiah word-for-word, the Lord gave the passages from Isaiah as contained in the KJV . This may have been done to cater to Joseph's contemporary audience, to save time, and to respect the aesthetic value that the KJV held at that time (and does now to an extent). The chapters of Isaiah that we find in the Book of Mormon were taken largely by Joseph Smith from the KJV Bible, instead of being translated from Nephi's version of that text. In other words, why reinvent the wheel when the work had already been done?

Why reinvent the wheel indeed? The far more simple explanation for why Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah so heavily and incorrectly from KJV is that Smith was just reading it off in a slapdash effort to pad his pages after the 116 pages were stolen.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

From some clay-brained idiot commenting on the foodie’s blog:

The Last Danite

Since the hebraims do exist within the Book of Mormon they demand an explanation from secular critics who all present wildly contradictory theories for the books origin. If one really presses a secular critic patiently and holds their feet to the logical fire they either get extremely defensive or angry. Simply ask them to explain, in detail, how it was accomplished. Demand explanations for the logistics, the conspirators, the motivations, the witnesses lives, how the book itself came to be. The book exists and the burden is upon the critic to explain where it came from with detailed receipts.

-_-

Every accusation is a confession.

- Doc

[Philo Sofee]

Perhaps if Joseph had had a little more direction, rather than being free to alter the text to make it more comprehensible/comfortable to his 19th century, Northeastern, frontier audience, there would have been no need to make almost 4000 editorial changes in the text.

[Philo Sofee]

From some clay-brained idiot commenting on the foodie’s blog:

The Last Danite

Since the hebraims do exist within the Book of Mormon they demand an explanation from secular critics who all present wildly contradictory theories for the books origin. If one really presses a secular critic patiently and holds their feet to the logical fire they either get extremely defensive or angry. Simply ask them to explain, in detail, how it was accomplished. Demand explanations for the logistics, the conspirators, the motivations, the witnesses lives, how the book itself came to be. The book exists and the burden is upon the critic to explain where it came from with detailed receipts.

-_-

Every accusation is a confession.

- Doc

we do that with apologists, hence the myriad contradictory hypotheses, and they keep having to come up with new ones.

[Fence Sitter]

Since the hebraims do exist within the Dr Seuss they demand an explanation from secular critics

Since the hebraims do exist within the The Late War they demand an explanation from secular critics

Since the hebraims do exist within the View of the Hebrews they demand an explanation from secular critics

The explanation is simple. It is how Smith wrote when he mimicked Biblical verse.

Funny how the abundant anachronisms in the Book of Mormon don't require the same explanations from apologists.