Book of Mormon Borrowings from the New Testament

[_LittleNipper]

God picks the right person to express what God wishes to reveal in the way that person reveals it. The person isn't perfect, but God uses that imperfect talent perfectly. It is like when someone says "Yes," when they wanted to say said "No"; however, YES was the corrected responce...

That's a dodge. If God can compel perfect actions, then there is no need for sin. Again, answer the question and don't just ignore it. Your proposition is God can compel man to convey his words perfectly without error. If that is true, then God can compel man to be perfect in this life and the idea of sin is ludicrous. Is God toying with us in your view?

You mix things up. When God wants something done right, it's done right. Sin is something that men commit when they are not doing God's will and God does allow this in his permissive will. I do believe God allows men to hang themselves ---- remember Judas. So, there is a BIG difference in God's permissive will (what He allows) and what God wills to have happen... God used man as the pen to write His STORY. The Bible is what He wanted and as HE wanted it.

[_Tobin]

That's a dodge. If God can compel perfect actions, then there is no need for sin. Again, answer the question and don't just ignore it. Your proposition is God can compel man to convey his words perfectly without error. If that is true, then God can compel man to be perfect in this life and the idea of sin is ludicrous. Is God toying with us in your view?

You mix things up. When God wants something done right, it's done right. Sin is something that men commit when they are not doing God's will and God does allow this in his permissive will. I do believe God allows men to hang themselves ---- remember Judas. So, there is a BIG difference in God's permissive will (what He allows) and what God wills to have happen... God used man as the pen to write His STORY. The Bible is what He wanted and as HE wanted it.

So God doesn't want things done right all the time?

[_vessr]

That's a dodge. If God can compel perfect actions, then there is no need for sin. Again, answer the question and don't just ignore it. Your proposition is God can compel man to convey his words perfectly without error. If that is true, then God can compel man to be perfect in this life and the idea of sin is ludicrous. Is God toying with us in your view?

You mix things up. When God wants something done right, it's done right. Sin is something that men commit when they are not doing God's will and God does allow this in his permissive will. I do believe God allows men to hang themselves ---- remember Judas. So, there is a BIG difference in God's permissive will (what He allows) and what God wills to have happen... God used man as the pen to write His STORY. The Bible is what He wanted and as HE wanted it.

So God doesn't want things done right all the time?[/quote]

Tobin, read carefully LittleNipper's response above. Your question has already been answered, from LittleNipper's perspective. What don't you understand about the difference between what God wants and what God allows or permits?

[_Themis]

Roger, welcome to ignore.

Welcome to the club Roger. Interesting the only people tobin gives this honor to are the ones that he cannot answer hard questions from. He doesn't seem to mind going after easy targets like nipper or mittens. Congratulations, and well done.

[_Tobin]

Tobin, read carefully LittleNipper's response above. Your question has already been answered, from LittleNipper's perspective. What don't you understand about the difference between what God wants and what God allows or permits?

vessr,

I understand what LittleNipper is saying quite well. In LittleNipper's view, God permits man to sin, though he could prevent it and is in essence toying with us since with little effort on God's part he could make us act like perfect little sock puppets all the time. However, he only makes us sock puppets sometimes while other times he permits us to sin and suffer. I find the concept appalling and was trying to highlight how ludicrous it is. Perhaps you don't find it as silly as I do, but the implications are clearly there.

[_Tobin]

Roger, welcome to ignore.

Welcome to the club Roger. Interesting the only people tobin gives this honor to are the ones that he cannot answer hard questions from. He doesn't seem to mind going after easy targets like nipper or mittens. Congratulations, and well done.

As you typically do, that is a misrepresentation. The reason I don't ignore Mittens and LittleNipper is they don't know any better. You and Roger are intelligent enough in my estimation to know what the facts are and come to reasonable conclusions. The reason you do not is because you choose not to. You instead choose to misrepresent the facts and deceitfully discuss and evaluate topics. I find people like you and Roger intellectually bankrupt and thoroughly uninteresting. So I would rather not discuss anything with you at all.

[_Roger]

Themis:

Welcome to the club Roger. Interesting the only people tobin gives this honor to are the ones that he cannot answer hard questions from. He doesn't seem to mind going after easy targets like nipper or mittens. Congratulations, and well done.

You too, huh? I had a feeling the conversation wasn't going to get very far. No doubt it's partly my fault. The older I get the less patience I have. I also find it immature when people feel the need to announce that they are ignoring you. Announcing that you're going to ignore someone tends to defeat the purpose.

I think the problem for Tobin (and anyone who wants to defend Joseph Smith as a bona-fide translator) is that the only way his defense of the Book of Mormon can work in light of the fact that "cherubims" and "seraphims" are clearly mistakes and, as such, indicate Book of Mormon borrowing from the KJVB, is to suggest, as Tobin does, that what appear to be mistakes are not really mistakes. He attempts to make this case by pointing to other translators who made the same mistake and then suggest that since others made the same mistake, it must not be a mistake. This, of course, is absurd. And it is clearly absurd when one understands how the mistake was made in the first place. When one understands that the "im" suffix (by the way, the auto-correct feature can sometimes be annoying, as in this case where it thinks I meant the contraction for "I am" instead of the actual letter i followed by m with no need for an apostrophe in the middle ) renders the words plural in Hebrew, then one can clearly see that adding the English "s" to an already plural Hebrew creates a redundant plural. One could write "cherubs" and "seraphs" which would be adding the English plural to a Hebrew singular, or one could stick with the Hebrew method of adding the "im" to produce the plural version, but the "ims" rendering is clearly a redundant plural no matter how you slice it.

Certainly it's a mistake that would have been easy to make, particularly when an English translator is copying another. But to argue that because the mistake was repeated it must not be a mistake is just absurd. And it is just such absurdity that must be resorted to when one attempts to defend Joseph Smith as a bona-fide translator. I run into this kind of thing constantly when attempting to discuss the actions of Joseph Smith with TBMs.

And therein lies Tobin's other problem. He is deeply committed to the D & C 9 version of "translation" to the point where he suggests the early Book of Mormon witnesses who were in the same room when it happened don't know what they're talking about and he knows better than they do - but only when it comes to problematic areas of their testimony. Ironically, I agree that they can't be telling the truth, but I also don't believe them when they claim to have seen the plates while Tobin, no doubt, has no problem with that part of their testimony.

[Guest]

Applying foreign language rules to anglicized words is not how English grammar rules work.

For example, wonton in chinese and ninja in japanese do NOT need suffixes to become plural in their respective languages. However, in English these anglicized words are made plural by adding 's'. The same is true of the latin word factum. It's plural form in latin in facta. However, since it is anglicized it is also commonly made plural as factums (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/factum). This is a proper understanding of the English grammar rules here.

Now who should we believe here? Some nobody that has never translated anything in his life and does not have a clue about English grammar or how words have been anglicized and are pluralized. Or a number of DIFFERENT expert scholars in both English and these foreign langues who translated separate versions of the Bible. In fact, the anglicized pluralization of cherubims appears in many works in English and no one has gone back and corrected these either. The proposition that this is mistake is simply manufactured and anyone who really understands English grammar rules and how they pertain to anglicized words would laugh Roger (and anyone else foolish enough to suggest this) out of the building.

http://www.kjvtoday.com/home/cherubims-or-cherubim-in-genesis-324-et-al

[_Roger]

Brad Hudson:

Are you still out there? You seem to be a reasonable skeptic when it comes to parallels. I would like to hear rational (as in non-TBM) reasons why we should be skeptical of parallels.

I see use of KJV language and exact phrases as distinct issues from anachronism and mistranslations. I think anachronisms and incorporation of erroneous translations in the Book of Mormon are strong evidence of a human author. I suppose you could posit a trickster god, who prompted Smith to incorporate errors and anachronisms into the Book of Mormon as some kind of test. Short of that, why would a loving god try to deceive his children? I've heard folks make the case that Yaweh engaged in deception in the Old Testament, but I thought the argument was weak. Jesus seemed to be a straight shooter. So the notion of a deceptive trickster god does't seem consistent to me with existing scripture.

I agree. Moreover, if God is trying to trick humans, I would think God is going to win in that game. So, assuming God is not trying to trick us, it sure looks like anachronisms, grammatical errors and translation errors are difficult to reconcile when it comes to the Book of Mormon precisely because of the specific supernatural claims of its origins by early TBMs. While Paul, for example, describes the Hebrew scriptures as "God-breathed" the claim made by early Mormons is that the English version of the Book of Mormon is God-produced. Folks like Tobin disagree with this, precisely because it is difficult to attribute the mistakes in the 1830 version to God, hence the need to give Joseph more credit. But that is a double-edged sword. How much credit must we give Joseph Smith for the content we see in the 1830 Book of Mormon? Apparently just enough to blame him for the errors, but not enough to obliterate the claim that the work was translated by the gift and power of God. A fine line to be treading indeed!

On the other hand, if you believe the Bible to be the word of God, why would you expect God to sound different in different books of scripture?

Because the works were produced at different times, in different places, speaking different languages in different cultures. If it's the same God we would certainly expect consistency in things like doctrine, but why would we expect God to communicate to us today in the dialect of Abraham Lincoln?

And if you were God, and you wanted to give the world a new book of scripture, what what style of language would you adopt? I think I would put it in the style of the existing book of scripture, which I think at that time was the KJV. There's no deception or trickery required -- simply select the "voice" that followers will recognize as the voice of scripture.

That is certainly reasonable, Brad, but on the other hand, why wouldn't you simply put it in the common language of the culture into which you're going to introduce the book? Isn't that at least equally reasonable?

But if we consider it from a skeptical point of view, consider this... if Joseph Smith was a con-man, do you think his fraudulent Bible would be more effective at pulling in dupes when it completely emulates the language style of Joseph Smith or when it attempts to emulate the KJV Bible? I think the latter.

As to the parallels, given the sheer volume of sentences and phrases in both books, why would it be surprising to find parallel sentences or phrases if the books are the word of the same God? But like I said, I'm generally skeptical of conclusions drawn from parallels.

It wouldn't be surprising to find some phrases matching up here and there. What I think would be surprising (or indicative of borrowing) is when you have multiple sentences lining up and/or a large amount of parallels or, even better, a series of parallels that follow a similar or identical sequence.

I think I am correct to assert that even many TBM apologists accept that certain portions of the Book of Mormon are direct copies of the KJVB. Certainly there are sections that quote the Bible. I believe the (thinking) apologist, when confronted with that, makes the case that Joseph must have realized that Nephi (or whoever) was quoting from the Bible, so, to save time, he just opens the Bible and copies the verse. I don't think this is even denied by many LDS apologists.

So the question I have is, how many parallels does it take before one can safely conclude borrowing took place?

[_Roger]

Tobin:

At the risk of infringing on your self-imposed conversational embargo with me, I offer the following for you to ignore.

Applying foreign language rules to anglicized words is not how English grammar rules work.

For example, wonton in chinese and ninja in japanese do NOT need suffixes to become plural in their respective languages. However, in English these anglicized are made plural by adding 's'. The same is true of the latin word factum. It's plural form in latin in facta. However, since it is anglicized it is also commonly made plural as factums (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/factum). This is a proper understanding of the English grammar rules here.

This might get you some traction except for the fact that you're comparing apples to oranges. Here's why...

You point out that the plural form of the Latin word "factum" is "facta." Sounds reasonable to me. And you also point out that when it is anglicized "it is also commonly made plural as factums" and then, after citing this, you ask

Now who should we believe here? Some nobody that has never translated anything in his life and does not have a clue about English grammar or how words have been anglicized and are pluralized. Or a number of DIFFERENT expert scholars in both English and these foreign langues who translated separate versions of the Bible.

etc. etc.

The problem with all this, Tobin, is that in order to properly compare the example you raise to what has occurred with the KJV, the Book of Mormon, and as you have aptly pointed out, other early English translations, you would need to have constructed the comparison as follows:

factum - singular latin
factums - plural Anglicized
factas - incorrect Anglicized plural rendering of "factum" resulting in a redundant plural

If you notice, you are suggesting that the second rendering is analogous to the situation we find in the Book of Mormon with cherubims and seraphims, when, in fact, it is the third rendering that is analogous, and is, not surprisingly, incorrect in both instances.

All the best.