Adamic/KEP logical connection

[_dartagnan]

Gosh, Kevin, I know several translators and not one of them relies on a particular gift of the spirit to accomplish their work today. They are fluent in two languages. They can take a work written in one language and "get it into" the second language. "Get it into" is a way to say "translate" without using the word. I don't know what your problem is with that.

Earth to stupid.

How many times do I have to go over this?

You still cannot understand that translate meant the same thing to Smith as it does for modern readers. If you want to say translate really doesn't mean translate, therefore none of his translations really have to be correct according to our understanding of translate, you have a lot of explaining to do. So far you have explained nothing. When you divert onto the he "relies on a particular gift" sidebar, you are focusing on the means, which is irrelevant to the point that he said he was translating from Egyptian into English.

I think Joseph amply demosntrated his ability to "translate."

All verifiable translations have been proven wrong. So on what evidence are you basing this claim? There is no way to verify none of his translations except the Book of Abraham and the facsimiles. Oh, and his professed understanding of Rev 1:6 proved embarrassing in light of modern scholarship, too.

The KEP are not impressive as refutation, in my book. You completely ignore the textual issues involved because you think you have some little criticism in the production.

Oh don't even go there charity. Don't even pretend to have the faintest clue what the KEP are or what the evidence suggests.Your knowledge simply isn't that deep and your attention span not that wide.

Having said that, this is just another diversion since the KEP are not needed to prove Joseph Smith couldn't translate. Again, the Book of Abraham does the job for us. His "translations" of Facsimile 3 are downright absurd. He says point blank that the meanings come from the "characters" written above the figures. So there is no way to get around the fact that we have an indisputable attempt at translation, indisputably attributable to Joseph Smith, which indisputably claim to translate an ancient characters into English.

[_Runtu]

If you would get past your revulsion about angels and plates and supernatural means for producing a book, and look at the textual evidences, you would agree that the Book of Mormon is a pretty amazing work.

Actually, the text is one of the stronger evidences against its being a translation of an ancience text. I don't have a particular "revulsion" to angels and plates (I do still believe in God, last I checked), but to appeal to the "amazing" Book of Mormon as evidence of its antiquity shows a very superficial and uncritical understanding of the text itself.

And since the best, most credible evidence for the source of the Book of Mormon is that Joseph "translated" it by some means not completely understood, that stands as pretty good evidence of his ability to "translate."

Perhaps that's the "most credible evidence" to you, but not to me. Last I checked, real translations don't result in bogus texts.

JST is another one.

Yeah, sure, coming up with a text that makes revisions almost exclusively according to the italics in the KJV and that adds nonsensical and anachronistic emendations--yeah, that's impressive evidence.

And the textual evidence of the validity of the Book of Abraham is pretty substantial, too.

More anachronisms and 19th-century borrowings, with the added bonus of an actual attempt to translate (the facsimiles) that falls flat on its face.

That is how Joseph "amply demonstrated" his ability to "translate."

It seems to me what he "amply demonstrated" was that he was no translator of any kind.

[_Trevor]

There is also a long bit we repeated at the veil that stands in place of an important name, as certainly Nibley argued. Perhaps another instance of expansion?

[_CaliforniaKid]

JST is another one.

Surely you're joking.

[_Sethbag]

JST is another one.

Surely you're joking.

She's not. And stop calling me Shirley!

[_CaliforniaKid]

Actually, the latest rage in apologetics is to call it the JSR, or "Joseph Smith Revision". An admission that it's not even "Inspired"?

[_Paul Osborne]

JST is another one.

Surely you're joking.

She's not. And stop calling me Shirley!

The Church (look at me, Charity, I wrote it with capital C) calls the JST "inspired version". It is not "Joseph Smith's Translation".
They know it is not translation in any sense.

You're just plain wrong. You have your churches confused. The reorganized (Community of Christ) church calls it the "Inspired Version". The LDS Church (Utah) calls it the "Joseph Smith Translation". See the header found in the LDS scriptures.

Paul O