LDS.org posts Book of Mormon translation that opposes Peterson's PBS one

[_ludwigm]

...

The facts are that the witnesses described the translation process that does not include the golden plates.

Which is of precisely no relevance if the text of the plates -- either the original text or the translation text -- appeared in the seerstone or the Urim and Thummim. Which is precisely what Joseph Smith reported.
...

Either the golden plates were used or they were not.

The text of a book can be present in a viewing device while the book is at a distance.
...

The keyword is that legendary device. Which is precisely what Joseph Smith reported.
What was that device? Was it the seer stone or was it the U&T? Or both? Or none?

Or was it the palantír from the Lord of the Rings? While I am reading that book, I believe in every word, because that fiction, that big fairy tale is a good book. After I close the book LOTR, palantír, rings, Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, Aragorn become nonexisting. Disappear. As they are nonexisting, they are fiction. They are object of joy.

What was that device, Mr. Peterson?
Could exist such device in the XIX. century? Could exist such device in 600BC? In 200AC?

Today, in 2008, we can own this type of device.
Version 1. We can have a device programmed to Book of Mormon. It may be a palmtop, in which the Book of Mormon is loaded. From this point on, the original Book of Mormon (written or printed on paper) is unnecessary. The palmtop BECAME the Book of Mormon. Please don't forget, the original Book of Mormon should have been present for loading. In reformed egyptian.
Version 2. We can have a scanner + OCR (process of converting scanned images of machine-printed or handwritten text (numerals, letters, and symbols) into a computer-processable format) + any screen to display the result. In this case, the original printed or handwritten text must be present page by page. In reformed egyptian.

Both version above should use the translation software, from reformed egyptian to jacobean english. It would be difficult even today. Dallin H. Oaks may help in choosing thee, thou or ye.

In the XIX. century there were no such device. Only that what Joseph Smith reported.

What was that device, Mr. Peterson? Please try to think.
Or please tell us another testimony.

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Today, we use different devices. That devices do different things. That devices exist.
If we want to talk about certain devices, we should define them. If we have defined them, the remaining are little handiworks to experts.
The experts did it.
We can use 3D-stereo eye-glasses to see a baseball final, or to see a mass-porn event. Or to see stories about Moroni. (Should he be Nephi instead?)

[_Neo]

You're not Mormon apologetics,

What??? I never said I was.

and Mormon apologetics isn't my career.

I admit that I was mistaken about that.
Good to know. Thanks.

[_Daniel Peterson]

You're not Mormon apologetics,

What??? I never said I was.

Sigh. Sometimes I'm just too subtle.

and Mormon apologetics isn't my career.

I admit that I was mistaken about that.
Good to know. Thanks.

De nada.

[_Scottie]

Okay, coming late here, but I don't see a conflict.

According to LDS belief AND Dr Peterson, Joseph Smith DID translate from the plates. It doesn't say anywhere that the plates were present, however the words were inscribed on the plates.

[_Neo]

Okay, coming late here, but I don't see a conflict.

According to LDS belief AND Dr Peterson, Joseph Smith DID translate from the plates. It doesn't say anywhere that the plates were present, however the words were inscribed on the plates.

How do you translate from something that is not there?

[Guest]

How do you translate from something that is not there?

I shall now demonstrate two different ways of doing this:

(1) I shall translate the first few lines of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that happens to be in my head at the moment.

In German, those first lines read as follows (with some perhaps slight variation in punctuation, but, I think, not in wording):

Herr, es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr gross.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sommeruhren
Und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein.
Gieb ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage.
Dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
Die letzte Süsse in den schweren Wein.

Now, that text exists in my mind. So far as I know, I don't have a copy of it in the room where I now sit. Yet I can translate it (somewhat periphrastically) quite easily without a physical copy nearby:

Lord, it's time. Summer was very great.
Lay thy shadow upon the summer sundials
And let the wind loose upon the corridors.

Command the last fruits to be full.
Give them two more southerly days.
Urge them to completion, and inject
The last sweetness into the heavy wine.

And the fact that the German text is in my mind doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in written form. In fact, I have a copy of the poem in my bedroom, where I read it a couple of nights ago, and there must be hundreds of thousands of physical copies of it around the world.

(2) I do not have a copy of the Arabic Qur’an open upon my desk, nor within easy arm's reach. But I have an image of a handwritten Qur’an manuscript before me on a device that displays such images:



I shall now translate the first three lines displayed in the image above:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Say: He is God, One. God, the Eternal. He does not beget
Nor is He begotten. And none is equal unto Him.

This text, too, exists in physical copies. Millions upon millions of them. If it did not exist physically, I would not have an image of it on my screen. Yet the image on the screen, while dependent upon the existence of a physical text, doesn't require that the physical text be nearby.

[_Ray A]

Dan, what are your thoughts about why Oliver Cowdery was unable to do any translation?

[_Henry Jacobs]

Dan,

If you'd never learned a word of German or Arabic in your life, your demonstration might have made a point.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I don't know why Oliver Cowdery wasn't able to translate.

If you'd never learned a word of German or Arabic in your life, your demonstration might have made a point.

It has a point. The question was whether a text needed to be physically present for translation. I've shown that it didn't.

The question of whether an inspired translation is possible for a text whose language the translator doesn't (humanly) know is an entirely separate one. But, of course, nobody has suggested that Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon was in any way common or conventional.

Personally, once the prior assumption is made of the existence of a God who can (for example) create worlds and raise the dead, the notion seems not such a far stretch that such a God might be able to infuse into the mind of an unlearned man ideas that were not naturally his.

[_Scottie]

How do you translate from something that is not there?

First off, let me state that I don't believe either the Church or DCP are correct. I don't believe the gold plates existed in the first place, so there is no way he could have translated them.

However, that being said, IF the gold plates did exist and Mormonism is true, I would say this...

As loathe as I am to defer to the supernatural, the entire translation process was supernatural, so there is really no way around it. Joseph Smith simply could not read the plates. God had to intervene somehow and show Joseph the words on the plate.

Although I have issues with using the word "translate", as Joseph Smith merely dictated what appeared to him, the words that appeared were done by the power of God. So, why would it matter if Joseph Smith were looking at the plates and God refracted the light in the seer stones to English or if God used his projector to flash words on a rock in Joseph Smith hat? The words still came from what was written on the plates.