If Joseph 'saw the words in English'

[_Dr. Shades]

I agree with Chap 100%.

When translating, if you have absolutely no familiarity with the source language, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to "study it out in your mind" and stumble upon the correct translation.

[_The Dude]

One thing that is very significant, that doesn't get mentioned often enough, is that nobody in known history has ever "translated" after the strange manners that Joseph Smith "translated". Nobody could replicate it, not even his associates. Not even his descendants in the priesthood. Quite a mystery.

[_Daniel Peterson]

One thing that is very significant, that doesn't get mentioned often enough, is that nobody in known history has ever "translated" after the strange manners that Joseph Smith "translated". Nobody could replicate it, not even his associates. Not even his descendants in the priesthood. Quite a mystery.

Dang. The Dude's right.

And that's really bad news for us Morgbots, because we're committed to the idea that it's common

(Actually, I do personally know of a very strongly parallel experience. But I would never, ever, ever toss it out on this message board.).

[_Chap]

But however you take it, I don't see that this alters the point that verses 7 to 9 are not guidance on how to translate.

I'm a bit puzzled. They are guidance on how to translate.

Are not.

Seriously, I am happy for our readers to decide which assertion or counter-assertion they think fits better with an overall view of the content and structure of D&C 9.

I'd like to leave it there, partly because I think we have reached the point where further discussion would just amount to our re-stating our views with variations, perhaps eventually garnished with epithets if we lose our tempers, but mainly because the prospect of talking at length about Smith's free-form revelatory burblings in cod 17th century English repels me more than ... no, I cannot find an adequate similitude. That stuff is in a class by itself.

Aha - I have it: I'd much rather read ten pages of the Book of Mormon than one page of D&C. That says it all.

[_Pokatator]

I've said that I don't know precisely how the translation process worked. Let me translate that: I don't know precisely how the translation process worked. Let me go beyond that: I don't think that anybody who didn't or hasn't experienced it knows precisely how the translation process worked. Let me now draw an implication from that: If nobody who didn't or hasn't experienced it knows precisely how the translation process worked, it might be wise to be somewhat tentative about what is entailed by the nature of the translation process, which isn't precisely known.

Sure, easy for you to say, so just how did the translation process work?

Really?

[_Tom]

Suppose we accept that this second claim is the case (what is the documentary source for this claim, by the way? I am not denying the evidence exists, just asking).

It's in a reminiscence from David Whitmer that I don't have at my fingertips at the moment.

The documentary sources are cited in the following (see text associated with footnotes 23-25):

Editor's Introduction—Not So Easily Dismissed: Some Facts for Which Counterexplanations of the Book of Mormon Will Need to Account

[_harmony]

I've said that I don't know precisely how the translation process worked. Let me translate that: I don't know precisely how the translation process worked. Let me go beyond that: I don't think that anybody who didn't or hasn't experienced it knows precisely how the translation process worked. Let me now draw an implication from that: If nobody who didn't or hasn't experienced it knows precisely how the translation process worked, it might be wise to be somewhat tentative about what is entailed by the nature of the translation process, which isn't precisely known.

This paragraph assumes a few things... 1) that there was a translation process, and 2) that it worked.

Neither has been established as fact. We have a book, yes. But there is no consensus that the book is the result of this process, that it was a translation, or that it was not produced from some other process.

[_Chap]

Tom's posting is very helpful.

For the convenience of board readers:

From Editor's Introduction—Not So Easily Dismissed: Some Facts for Which Counterexplanations of the Book of Mormon Will Need to Account

Further evidence that, whatever else was happening, Joseph Smith was not simply reading from a manuscript, comes from an episode recounted by David Whitmer to William H. Kelley and G. A. Blakeslee in January 1882.

He could not translate unless he was humble and possessed the right feelings towards every one. To illustrate, so you can see. One morning when he was getting ready to continue the translation, something went wrong about the house and he was put out about it. Something that Emma, his wife, had done. Oliver and I went up stairs, and Joseph came up soon after to continue the translation, but he could not do anything. He could not translate a single syllable. He went down stairs, out into the orchard and made supplication to the Lord; was gone about an hour—came back to the house, asked Emma's forgiveness and then came up stairs where we were and the translation went on all right. He could do nothing save he was humble and faithful.23

Whitmer gave the same account to a correspondent for the Omaha Herald during an interview on 10 October 1886. The newspaper relates of the Prophet that

He went into the woods again to pray, and this time was gone fully an hour. His friends became positively concerned, and were about to institute a search, when Joseph entered the room, pale and haggard, having suffered a vigorous chastisement at the hands of the Lord. He went straight in humiliation to his wife, entreated and received her forgiveness, returned to his work, and, much to the joy of himself and his anxious friends surrounding him, the stone again glared forth its letters of fire.24

It would seem from this anecdote that Joseph needed to be in some way spiritually or emotionally ready for the translation process to proceed—something that would have been wholly unnecessary had he simply been reading from a prepared manuscript. As David Whitmer explained, Joseph occasionally "found he was spiritually blind and could not translate. He told us that his mind dwelt too much on earthly things, and various causes would make him incapable of proceeding with the translation."25

At this point, of course, a skeptic might perhaps suggest that emotional distractions interfered with Joseph Smith's ability to remember a text that he had memorized the night before for dictation to his naïve secretaries, or that personal upheavals hindered his improvising of an original text for them to write down as it occurred to him. But such potential counterexplanations run into their own serious difficulties: Whether it is even remotely plausible, for example, to imagine Joseph Smith or anyone else memorizing or composing nearly five thousand words daily, day after day, week after week, in the production of a lengthy and complex book is a question that readers can ponder for themselves.26 I will simply say that, as someone who writes much and rapidly, who, having kept a daily record of how many words I produce each day over the past five years, has never come close to maintaining such a pace (even on a computer), I find the scenario—for anybody, to say nothing of the poorly educated Joseph Smith—extraordinarily implausible.

An anecdote recounted by Martin Harris to Edward Stevenson seems to argue against the translation process being either the simple dictation of a memorized text or the mechanical reading of an ordinary manuscript surreptitiously smuggled into the room. Harris is speaking about the earliest days of the work, before the arrival of Oliver Cowdery, when he was serving as scribe. Harris "said that the Prophet possessed a seer stone, by which he was enabled to translate as well as from the Urim and Thummim, and for convenience he then used the seer stone."27

Now, obviously, the scribes needed light in order to be able to write the text down. By way of contrast (pun intended), Joseph seems to have needed to dim the ambient light so as to make the deliverances from the seer stone easier to see. Accordingly, the stone was placed in a hat into which the Prophet put his face. This situation, coupled with the lack of a dividing curtain, would obviously have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for Joseph to have concealed a manuscript, or books, or even the plates themselves. It would also have made it effectively impossible for him to read from a manuscript placed somehow at the bottom of the darkened hat. Stevenson's account continues:

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, that 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. Martin said, after continued translation they would become weary, and would go down to the river and exercise by throwing stones out on the river, etc. While so doing on one occasion, Martin found a stone very much resembling the one used for translating, and on resuming their labor of translation, Martin put in place the stone that he had found. He said that the Prophet remained silent, unusually and intently gazing in darkness, no traces of the usual sentences appearing. Much surprised, Joseph exclaimed, "Martin! What is the matter? All is as dark as Egypt!" Martin's countenance betrayed him, and the Prophet asked Martin why he had done so. Martin said, to stop the mouths of fools, who had told him that the Prophet had learned those sentences and was merely repeating them.28

The account given here is of a process which:

1. Either worked or did not work depending on Smith's emotional/moral state. The letters appear, or they just don't. As DCP has already confirmed, there is no evidence to support the idea that Smith's emotional/moral state affected the translation process qualitively, so that it got more or less accurate.

2. The stone had an error-checking ability of some kind, so that if the scribes did not correctly transcribe what was shown on the stone as a result of some failure in the process

{Smith reads}->{Smith speaks words aloud}->{Scribe hears Smith's words}->{Scribe writes down words}

then the stone's display did not move on to the next portion of text.

Given that, it is no great wonder that Harris, reported by Stevenson, said:

the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used

If these accounts quoted by DCP are not rejected, there seems to be no evidence in them that would suggest a significant degree of 'Smith mediation' between the seer stone and the transcription. Nor is there any evidence here that when Smith could read the stone, his state affected what appeared on it.

[_Daniel Peterson]

If these accounts quoted by DCP are not rejected, there seems to be no evidence in them that would suggest a significant degree of 'Smith mediation' between the seer stone and the transcription. Nor is there any evidence here that when Smith could read the stone, his state affected what appeared on it.

There is no decisive evidence either way.

Which is what I've been saying.

We don't know, and cannot know, what interaction or relationship, if any, there might be between Joseph's vocabulary, education, etc., and the product of the dictation. But we do know that the translation process did not proceed automatically and mechanically, as my computer's internal processes do, in complete indifference to his mental/emotional/spiritual state.

I've simply said, and I've said it many times, that there is no firm basis on which to postulate precisely what was entailed by the nature of the very incompletely known translation process.

[_Daniel Peterson]

This paragraph assumes a few things... 1) that there was a translation process, and 2) that it worked.

Neither has been established as fact. We have a book, yes. But there is no consensus that the book is the result of this process, that it was a translation, or that it was not produced from some other process.

It also assumes that there is a God, that God is capable of intervening in history, that God is willing to do so, that he in fact did so in this case, and etc., and etc.

I don't feel obliged to argue for each of those propositions in every instance before getting down to the specific issue under discussion.

For the record, in case anybody is unaware of this: I'm a believing Latter-day Saint. This means that I believe in certain things that many here don't. In conversations with me, they should perhaps keep that in mind.