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Mormon 9:22–24 vs Mark 16: 15-18


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A Facebook friend  of mine has reached out to me seeking answers to a question that he read on a FB post made by Bill Reel. (out of respect I won't cross copy his post) While I have my own ideas on how this might have happened which I'll post below*, Bill does make a compelling argument asking how Mark's words found there way into Morori's mouth and were then written in the Book of Mormon some 400 years after Mark wrote them in his book.  But the plot thickens even more.  Our earliest and most reliable codex's of Mark don't have these verses in them, suggesting that they were late additions added to Mark's Gospel by scribes 2 centuries after the fact and were never even words written by the author of this Gospel we call Mark.

Here are the 2 verses that  (highlighted) are word for word the same and yet Biblical scholars have determined that these words were late additions to the Bible and could not have possibly been written by the author we call Mark.

Quote

Mormon 9:

22 For behold, thus said Jesus Christ, the Son of God, unto his disciples who should tarry, yea, and also to all his disciples, in the hearing of the multitude: Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;

23 And he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned;

24 And these signs shall follow them that believe—in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;

Quote

Mark16:

15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

 

So I'm curious how others see this dilemma or is there some easy explanation that I am not familiar with.  I told my friend I would get back with him with an explanation to satisfactorily resolve his doubts that this post has created.  I should add that this friend has been struggling for several months so this is just another piece of straw upon the back of the camel.

So this is my explanation, but I'm interested in other ideas.  I believe in cutting strait the what I believe is the most logical answer.

*I believe that Joseph copied/quoted this verse directly from his family Bible. During the translation process perhaps in a moment of feeling the spirit he began to evangelize upon the words of Moroni and expand upon what he was translating.  To me this is the most likely answer.  I don't believe that Moroni transported himself across the world to some Catholic monastery where he peeked over the shoulder of some monk/scribe in the act of transcribing the Bible and adding those words as some have suggested.   And I can't see God putting the words of a monk into Moroni's mind to put down on Gold Plates and then have him attribute as the words from Jesus's own mouth.

The other logical answer is that the Biblical scholars are wrong and that Mark did in fact write the longer ending to his Gospel and that it being in Morioni's version supports this conclusion and that some how evil men removed it.  This answer is not at all satisfactory to me it requires too many moving parts and flies in the face of modern Biblical scholarship. It also requires an explanation in how it found its way into Mormon 9:22-24 some 400 years after Mark had written it.  It just requires too much supernatural gymnastics for my tastes.

So what say you?

Edited by Button Gwinnett
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I think Joseph wanted to change the religious times he was faced with. I don't think he believed in what was being taught, he tried and even joined the faith of his mother, but I think he wasn't comfortable there and prayed and felt inspired to create a new one. I believe he took many sources and put them into the BoM. He started a religion just like others surrounding him in the area. They also had visions, and wrote books. It was the time of religious birth in America, since so many were experiencing freedom in believing what they want. That meant you started your own based on those beliefs. His father and grandfather were Universalists and I see some universalism in the church. His family were also Freemasons. And I see that integrated in the church, and even the temple. I see even things from Judaism mixed into ours. And how people will say that once the millenium occurs the Jewish will change over to Mormonism because we're so alike. I see articles that mention that we are a lot like the Muslim religion also. I think Joseph created our relgion from all of these resources and on American ideals. 

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The simplest faithful answer would be that regardless of when they were added to Mark or by whom, if they represent an accurate quotation from Christ then there is no reason Christ could not have repeated himself to Moroni.

The simplest critical answer would be that Joseph copied this from the Bible and it was never spoken to Moroni.

Do we take a faithful or critical approach?

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53 minutes ago, Button Gwinnett said:

A Facebook friend  of mine has reached out to me seeking answers to a question that he read on a FB post made by Bill Reel. (out of respect I won't cross copy his post) While I have my own ideas on how this might have happened which I'll post below*, Bill does make a compelling argument asking how Mark's words found there way into Morori's mouth and were then written in the Book of Mormon some 400 years after Mark wrote them in his book.  But the plot thickens even more.  Our earliest and most reliable codex's of Mark don't have these verses in them, suggesting that they were late additions added to Mark's Gospel by scribes 2 centuries after the fact and were never even words written by the author of this Gospel we call Mark.

Here are the 2 verses that  (highlighted) are word for word the same and yet Biblical scholars have determined that these words were late additions to the Bible and could not have possibly been written by the author we call Mark.

 

So I'm curious how others see this dilemma or is there some easy explanation that I am not familiar with.  I told my friend I would get back with him with an explanation to satisfactorily resolve his doubts that this post has created.  I should add that this friend has been struggling for several months so this is just another piece of straw upon the back of the camel.

So this is my explanation, but I'm interested in other ideas.  I believe in cutting strait the what I believe is the most logical answer.

*I believe that Joseph copied/quoted this verse directly from his family Bible. During the translation process perhaps in a moment of feeling the spirit he began to evangelize upon the words of Moroni and expand upon what he was translating.  To me this is the most likely answer.  I don't believe that Moroni transported himself across the world to some Catholic monastery where he peeked over the shoulder of some monk/scribe in the act of transcribing the Bible and adding those words as some have suggested.   And I can't see God putting the words of a monk into Moroni's mind to put down on Gold Plates and then have him attribute as the words from Jesus's own mouth.

The other logical answer is that the Biblical scholars are wrong and that Mark did in fact write the longer ending to his Gospel and that it being in Morioni's version supports this conclusion and that some how evil men removed it.  This answer is not at all satisfactory to me it requires too many moving parts and flies in the face of modern Biblical scholarship. It also requires an explanation in how it found its way into Mormon 9:22-24 some 400 years after Mark had written it.  It just requires too much supernatural gymnastics for my tastes.

So what say you?

Here are some resources:

Jeff's comments are the most in-depth.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

 

Edited by smac97
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44 minutes ago, Button Gwinnett said:

A Facebook friend  of mine has reached out to me seeking answers to a question that he read on a FB post made by Bill Reel. (out of respect I won't cross copy his post) While I have my own ideas on how this might have happened which I'll post below*, Bill does make a compelling argument asking how Mark's words found there way into Morori's mouth and were then written in the Book of Mormon some 400 years after Mark wrote them in his book.  But the plot thickens even more.  Our earliest and most reliable codex's of Mark don't have these verses in them, suggesting that they were late additions added to Mark's Gospel by scribes 2 centuries after the fact and were never even words written by the author of this Gospel we call Mark.

Here are the 2 verses that  (highlighted) are word for word the same and yet Biblical scholars have determined that these words were late additions to the Bible and could not have possibly been written by the author we call Mark.

 

So I'm curious how others see this dilemma or is there some easy explanation that I am not familiar with.  I told my friend I would get back with him with an explanation to satisfactorily resolve his doubts that this post has created.  I should add that this friend has been struggling for several months so this is just another piece of straw upon the back of the camel.

So this is my explanation, but I'm interested in other ideas.  I believe in cutting strait the what I believe is the most logical answer.

*I believe that Joseph copied/quoted this verse directly from his family Bible. During the translation process perhaps in a moment of feeling the spirit he began to evangelize upon the words of Moroni and expand upon what he was translating.  To me this is the most likely answer.  I don't believe that Moroni transported himself across the world to some Catholic monastery where he peeked over the shoulder of some monk/scribe in the act of transcribing the Bible and adding those words as some have suggested.   And I can't see God putting the words of a monk into Moroni's mind to put down on Gold Plates and then have him attribute as the words from Jesus's own mouth.

The other logical answer is that the Biblical scholars are wrong and that Mark did in fact write the longer ending to his Gospel and that it being in Morioni's version supports this conclusion and that some how evil men removed it.  This answer is not at all satisfactory to me it requires too many moving parts and flies in the face of modern Biblical scholarship. It also requires an explanation in how it found its way into Mormon 9:22-24 some 400 years after Mark had written it.  It just requires too much supernatural gymnastics for my tastes.

So what say you?

I think the current position of the church would insist that God inspired both Moroni and some future author of the gospel of Mark to write the same words.

Or, that particular part of the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction.

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6 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Thanks and I will pass this along.  From a brief review of this link it appear that the author is taking the Biblical Scholars are wrong approach that I mentioned in my OP.  As I stated earlier this is not the most satisfactory answer to dilemma since it puts Mormonism against Biblical scholarship.  

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If I understand right, there is a disagreement about the ending of the Book of Mark, with some scholars believing it ended at 16:8 but other scholars believing that the book continued on (and that the end of Matthew and Luke coming from the lost ending) but the ending was lost and therefore re-written by later scribes.

If the second approach is true (and the end of mark represents fairly accurately what it once said by Mark's own hand), then there really isn't any issue with Mark and Moroni being the same words.  Like JLH said, if the quote from Mark is accurate of the idea Moroni was describing, then there is no problem with JS copying it.

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1 hour ago, Button Gwinnett said:

A Facebook friend  of mine has reached out to me seeking answers to a question that he read on a FB post made by Bill Reel. (out of respect I won't cross copy his post) While I have my own ideas on how this might have happened which I'll post below*, Bill does make a compelling argument asking how Mark's words found there way into Morori's mouth and were then written in the Book of Mormon some 400 years after Mark wrote them in his book.  But the plot thickens even more.  Our earliest and most reliable codex's of Mark don't have these verses in them, suggesting that they were late additions added to Mark's Gospel by scribes 2 centuries after the fact and were never even words written by the author of this Gospel we call Mark.

Here are the 2 verses that  (highlighted) are word for word the same and yet Biblical scholars have determined that these words were late additions to the Bible and could not have possibly been written by the author we call Mark.

 

So I'm curious how others see this dilemma or is there some easy explanation that I am not familiar with.  I told my friend I would get back with him with an explanation to satisfactorily resolve his doubts that this post has created.  I should add that this friend has been struggling for several months so this is just another piece of straw upon the back of the camel.

So this is my explanation, but I'm interested in other ideas.  I believe in cutting strait the what I believe is the most logical answer.

*I believe that Joseph copied/quoted this verse directly from his family Bible. During the translation process perhaps in a moment of feeling the spirit he began to evangelize upon the words of Moroni and expand upon what he was translating.  To me this is the most likely answer.  I don't believe that Moroni transported himself across the world to some Catholic monastery where he peeked over the shoulder of some monk/scribe in the act of transcribing the Bible and adding those words as some have suggested.   And I can't see God putting the words of a monk into Moroni's mind to put down on Gold Plates and then have him attribute as the words from Jesus's own mouth.

The other logical answer is that the Biblical scholars are wrong and that Mark did in fact write the longer ending to his Gospel and that it being in Morioni's version supports this conclusion and that some how evil men removed it.  This answer is not at all satisfactory to me it requires too many moving parts and flies in the face of modern Biblical scholarship. It also requires an explanation in how it found its way into Mormon 9:22-24 some 400 years after Mark had written it.  It just requires too much supernatural gymnastics for my tastes.

So what say you?

I think that demonstrates clear textual dependence on the altered Mark text. Joseph Smith very fluently quoted passages from all over the Bible, even in his letters.

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16 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

From Jeff Lindsay's abstract to his part 2.

From the part 2 essay:

Biblical Scholarship consists of schools and streams and paradigms.  It's neither monolithic, nor demonstrably unchanging and infallible.  It's diverse, complex, and a work in progress.  Just as we all are.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

A review of Lunn's book:

 

http://www.fbs.org.au/reviews/lunn63.html

Excerpt:

Quote

Nicholas P. Lunn is a translation consultant with Wycliffe Bible Translators UK and an associate tutor at Spurgeon’s College, London, and against the weight of critical opinion he contends that the so-called long ending of Mark 16:9–20 ought to be considered an authentic part of the Gospel. Though this issue is no longer disputed among New Testament textual critics, Lunn argues in his preface that this is “a question worthy of reassessment” due to polemical attacks on the internet against the reality of the resurrection (viii). Indeed, Lunn’s introductory chapter sets the stage for his argument by repeatedly emphasising the importance of the resurrection in early Christian kerygma, early Christian creedal formulations, and the resurrection predictions in Mark. In subsequent chapters he considers, often in great detail, the manuscript evidence, patristic citations, linguistic evidence, thematic evidence, and questions of dependence. He finishes with an explanation for the cause of the short ending as a “deliberate suppression of verses which deal with bodily resurrection,” apparently by Gnostics in Alexandria (352).

Despite Lunn’s efforts in making a new, wide-ranging case for the authenticity of the long ending of Mark, it is unlikely to persuade New Testament textual critics. The evidence against his position is stronger than he is willing to recognise, and his arguments often contain factual mistakes and arbitrary judgments. Only a few examples however can be cited in the course of this short review. The fundamental problem is that Lunn does not accept the presence of the resurrection within the body of Mark. In particular, he does not view the proclamation at the empty tomb in Mark 16:6 that Jesus rose (egêrthe) as a textual fulfilment of the resurrection predictions in 8:31, 9:31 and 10:34 because v. 6 did not use the same lexeme anasthênai (‘to rise up’) of the predictions, even though he allowed for two other elements of these predictions to be fulfilled by synonyms (247). Nor does he view “the angelic announcement” as a sufficient narrative fulfilment of a bodily resurrection because such an “extraordinary” claim requires a “mention of a tangible appearance” (246). Lunn cites no primary or secondary source for this requirement and he does not address the fact that the long ending’s appearances lack the tangibility of Luke’s and John’s (neither of which were censored by Alexandrian heretics).

 

Edited by Gray
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1 hour ago, Button Gwinnett said:

*I believe that Joseph copied/quoted this verse directly from his family Bible. During the translation process perhaps in a moment of feeling the spirit he began to evangelize upon the words of Moroni and expand upon what he was translating.  To me this is the most likely answer.  I don't believe that Moroni transported himself across the world to some Catholic monastery where he peeked over the shoulder of some monk/scribe in the act of transcribing the Bible and adding those words as some have suggested.   And I can't see God putting the words of a monk into Moroni's mind to put down on Gold Plates and then have him attribute as the words from Jesus's own mouth.

The other logical answer is that the Biblical scholars are wrong and that Mark did in fact write the longer ending to his Gospel and that it being in Morioni's version supports this conclusion and that some how evil men removed it.  This answer is not at all satisfactory to me it requires too many moving parts and flies in the face of modern Biblical scholarship. It also requires an explanation in how it found its way into Mormon 9:22-24 some 400 years after Mark had written it.  It just requires too much supernatural gymnastics for my tastes.

So what say you?

Its also a copy of the KJV language explicitly, not just a copy of the content.  There are many passages that are dependent on the KJV throughout the BoM, its not just these verses.  You could point your friend to Blake Ostler's BoM expansion essay, that might be satisfactory for him.  Or Brant Gardner the has a series of books on the BoM and is a more updated but similar approach to the BoM.  Assuming your friend doesn't want to go as far as I do on his/her beliefs, I personally believe the BoM has no ancient origins, and was entirely dictated by Joseph Smith and contains 19th century Christian theology.  

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V20N01_68.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Power-Translating-Book-Mormon/dp/1589581318/ref=sr_tc_2_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1507738680&sr=1-2-ent

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18 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Its also a copy of the KJV language explicitly, not just a copy of the content.  There are many passages that are dependent on the KJV throughout the BoM, its not just these verses.  

I think this issue is a non-starter.
The KJV is a translation of the original text.
Joseph in his non-literal translation process of the Book of Mormon was given by revelation the words to write.

There is absolutely zero reason why that revelation could not have come using KJV words instead of a new translation of the original words.

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22 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

From Jeff Lindsay's abstract to his part 2.

From the part 2 essay:

Biblical Scholarship consists of schools and streams and paradigms.  It's neither monolithic, nor demonstrably unchanging and infallible.  It's diverse, complex, and a work in progress.  Just as we all are.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Yes I get this and while I believe that we must let the Book of Mormon speak for itself, I hate that we have to depend on Lund's assertions which run against the prevailing Biblical scholarship.  Again its us against the world or so it seems.  We keep offering these ever shrinking safe harbors for belief to be maintained but its getting harder and harder to maintain belief in when so much of the prevailing scholarship is running against us.  I fear for my friend and fear that he and his family are on the brink of losing all faith and hope in the church and its claims.  I know for a fact, from our past conversation that he is clinging to belief by the thinnest of hope and remains only out of family considerations.  This is a good man and past fellow member of our stakes high council. I have been able to provide satisfactory answers to some of his questions but on others there are answers but none of them seem to be satisfying.   

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2 minutes ago, Button Gwinnett said:

Yes I get this and while I believe that we must let the Book of Mormon speak for itself, I hate that we have to depend on Lund's assertions which run against the prevailing Biblical scholarship.  Again its us against the world or so it seems.  We keep offering these ever shrinking safe harbors for belief to be maintained but its getting harder and harder to maintain belief in when so much of the prevailing scholarship is running against us.  I fear for my friend and fear that he and his family are on the brink of losing all faith and hope in the church and its claims.  I know for a fact, from our past conversation that he is clinging to belief by the thinnest of hope and remains only out of family considerations.  This is a good man and past fellow member of our stakes high council. I have been able to provide satisfactory answers to some of his questions but on others there are answers but none of them seem to be satisfying.   

 

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You might enjoy this:

https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2016/book-mormon-communicative-act

As something of a summary, we run into a problem of definitions. What makes a good translation? No matter how many members would like to see the Book of Mormon as some sort of absolutely accurate rendering of the language from some ancient gold plates into English, this isn't a position that makes much sense. Jesus didn't speak English to the Nephites. He couldn't quote Mark to them (even if he might have been able to paraphrase Mark to them). The identity that is easily seen by us - between the text in the Book of Mormon and the New Testament wouldn't have been visible to anyone who was a contemporary of Mormon, and Mormon himself would not have been able to draw the kinds of connections that we draw. And this means that Mormon couldn't have written what we read, when we read the Book of Mormon. But we aren't reading the words that Mormon wrote - we are reading a translation. And a good translation doesn't create something that exists in a sort of word-for-word correlation with a source. A good translation converts ideas from one language and cultural/social milieu into another. A good translator can replace ideas with something that makes much more sense in the target language and cultural/social milieu. And in this case, part of that means helping us as readers recognize the connections with a Biblical text - because that biblical text had specific meaning within the context the first readers of the Book of Mormon.

This particular case is a really good example - because the passage has become far less significant in Mormonism today than it held in the early LDS Church, with its grounding in restorationist theology. This text was given to the original Relief Society as part of their charge - and it was the justification provided by the Relief Society (and defended by the First Presidency) as the basis for allowing the women in the Church to provide healing blessings through the laying on of hands (a practice that was largely ended in the priesthood reformation under Joseph F. Smith). So there is this idea embedded in the use of these verses in the Book of Mormon that is a larger understanding than the verses themselves. And the readers of the Book of Mormon responded to this passage in a certain way (in a way really, that we wouldn't generally respond to it today). And this sort of thing becomes a part of the translation - becomes a part of the rhetorical strategy. To put it in a different way, the text of the Book of Mormon engages a rhetorical strategy that incorporates elements from the New Testament. It does this because it intends to create a certain sort of response in its readers (in the readers of the modern translation). I don't believe that there needs to be a literal word-for-word sort of correlation between the source and the translation (between the Gold Plates and the Book of Mormon) for the

But you can see how this view is contested by a competing notion that the translation of the Book of Mormon is best understood through the tools provided by Biblical Scholarship. But no biblical scholarship would ever start with a source text of a modern translation. Biblical scholarship doesn't usually start from the text of the King James Version as an example (or the NKJV is you would prefer, or the NIV, or the NLT, or any of the other translations we would choose to pick). Instead, it is a normally an investigation of the original language texts, and their hypothetical sources. If we want to treat the Book of Mormon in the same way that we see biblical scholarship applied, we come to the conclusion that we can only talk about the Gold Plates in terms of this sort of biblical scholarship. The Book of Mormon should be discussed in terms of its role as a translation, and in terms of its intended audience, and its language as understood by the audience envisioned by the translators. This is what I discuss in the presentation that I linked to.

You can see from this why the first question is going to lead to a challenging place - because it assumes that the Book of Mormon has in some way a linguistic equivalence and not a functional equivalence to the gold plates and so the assumption is that we can speak of the gold plates and the Book of Mormon interchangeably - and to extend this, that any similarity between the Book of Mormon and and English translation of the New Testament somehow implies the same similarity between the New Testament and the Gold Plates. I think that this set of assumptions are all wrong and they are certainly hidden (in the sense that we don't start with them up front). What we should be doing instead is to talk about the similarities between the English Book of Mormon and contemporary translations of the New Testament, and how this relationship participates in the rhetorical strategy of the translator of the Book of Mormon. If we want to ask questions of the sort that we see in academic Biblical scholarship, then we have to use this information from that discussion to talk about what might have been on the gold plates, and only then can we have these sorts of discussions in an appropriate way.

Of course, some people will still read all of that, and argue that the Book of Mormon represents some sort of absolutely accurate translation that is both functionally equivalent and linguistically equivalent to the gold plates. But I think this is an indefensible sort of stance.

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25 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Its also a copy of the KJV language explicitly, not just a copy of the content.  There are many passages that are dependent on the KJV throughout the BoM, its not just these verses.  You could point your friend to Blake Ostler's BoM expansion essay, that might be satisfactory for him.  Or Brant Gardner the has a series of books on the BoM and is a more updated but similar approach to the BoM.  Assuming your friend doesn't want to go as far as I do on his/her beliefs, I personally believe the BoM has no ancient origins, and was entirely dictated by Joseph Smith and contains 19th century Christian theology.  

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V20N01_68.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Power-Translating-Book-Mormon/dp/1589581318/ref=sr_tc_2_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1507738680&sr=1-2-ent

While I haven't gone as far as you have to maintain belief, I do feel comfortable with my earlier solution to this problem, that Joseph expanded off of the Bible and evangelized Moroni's and Mormon's sermon by adding these biblical passages.

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48 minutes ago, Gray said:

I think that demonstrates clear textual dependence on the altered Mark text. Joseph Smith very fluently quoted passages from all over the Bible, even in his letters.

I didn't realize that scholars were divided on the Mark text even being altered.

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4 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You might enjoy this:

https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2016/book-mormon-communicative-act

As something of a summary, we run into a problem of definitions. What makes a good translation? No matter how many members would like to see the Book of Mormon as some sort of absolutely accurate rendering of the language from some ancient gold plates into English, this isn't a position that makes much sense. Jesus didn't speak English to the Nephites. He couldn't quote Mark to them (even if he might have been able to paraphrase Mark to them). The identity that is easily seen by us - between the text in the Book of Mormon and the New Testament wouldn't have been visible to anyone who was a contemporary of Mormon, and Mormon himself would not have been able to draw the kinds of connections that we draw. And this means that Mormon couldn't have written what we read, when we read the Book of Mormon. But we aren't reading the words that Mormon wrote - we are reading a translation. And a good translation doesn't create something that exists in a sort of word-for-word correlation with a source. A good translation converts ideas from one language and cultural/social milieu into another. A good translator can replace ideas with something that makes much more sense in the target language and cultural/social milieu. And in this case, part of that means helping us as readers recognize the connections with a Biblical text - because that biblical text had specific meaning within the context the first readers of the Book of Mormon.

This particular case is a really good example - because the passage has become far less significant in Mormonism today than it held in the early LDS Church, with its grounding in restorationist theology. This text was given to the original Relief Society as part of their charge - and it was the justification provided by the Relief Society (and defended by the First Presidency) as the basis for allowing the women in the Church to provide healing blessings through the laying on of hands (a practice that was largely ended in the priesthood reformation under Joseph F. Smith). So there is this idea embedded in the use of these verses in the Book of Mormon that is a larger understanding than the verses themselves. And the readers of the Book of Mormon responded to this passage in a certain way (in a way really, that we wouldn't generally respond to it today). And this sort of thing becomes a part of the translation - becomes a part of the rhetorical strategy. To put it in a different way, the text of the Book of Mormon engages a rhetorical strategy that incorporates elements from the New Testament. It does this because it intends to create a certain sort of response in its readers (in the readers of the modern translation). I don't believe that there needs to be a literal word-for-word sort of correlation between the source and the translation (between the Gold Plates and the Book of Mormon) for the

But you can see how this view is contested by a competing notion that the translation of the Book of Mormon is best understood through the tools provided by Biblical Scholarship. But no biblical scholarship would ever start with a source text of a modern translation. Biblical scholarship doesn't usually start from the text of the King James Version as an example (or the NKJV is you would prefer, or the NIV, or the NLT, or any of the other translations we would choose to pick). Instead, it is a normally an investigation of the original language texts, and their hypothetical sources. If we want to treat the Book of Mormon in the same way that we see biblical scholarship applied, we come to the conclusion that we can only talk about the Gold Plates in terms of this sort of biblical scholarship. The Book of Mormon should be discussed in terms of its role as a translation, and in terms of its intended audience, and its language as understood by the audience envisioned by the translators. This is what I discuss in the presentation that I linked to.

You can see from this why the first question is going to lead to a challenging place - because it assumes that the Book of Mormon has in some way a linguistic equivalence and not a functional equivalence to the gold plates and so the assumption is that we can speak of the gold plates and the Book of Mormon interchangeably - and to extend this, that any similarity between the Book of Mormon and and English translation of the New Testament somehow implies the same similarity between the New Testament and the Gold Plates. I think that this set of assumptions are all wrong and they are certainly hidden (in the sense that we don't start with them up front). What we should be doing instead is to talk about the similarities between the English Book of Mormon and contemporary translations of the New Testament, and how this relationship participates in the rhetorical strategy of the translator of the Book of Mormon. If we want to ask questions of the sort that we see in academic Biblical scholarship, then we have to use this information from that discussion to talk about what might have been on the gold plates, and only then can we have these sorts of discussions in an appropriate way.

Of course, some people will still read all of that, and argue that the Book of Mormon represents some sort of absolutely accurate translation that is both functionally equivalent and linguistically equivalent to the gold plates. But I think this is an indefensible sort of stance.

Each translation theory has its own problems and creates is own set of spin off problems.  if we go with a tight translation as many profess,  or with a loose translation which also has problems and spin off problems. (if I had time I could insert multiple problems for both of these) there are problems unique to that method of translation.  I don't even dare share these with my friend it would be too much. for him to handle. 

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5 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I didn't realize that scholars were divided on the Mark text even being altered.

My understanding is that there is a consensus in the Biblical Scholarship arena.  The Long Mark ending is an addition after the fact and took place in the 2nd century AD.  That it is found in the BoM is what is creating this problem.  How did it make its way into the BoM?

Edited by Button Gwinnett
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11 minutes ago, Button Gwinnett said:

While I haven't gone as far as you have to maintain belief, I do feel comfortable with my earlier solution to this problem, that Joseph expanded off of the Bible and evangelized Moroni's and Mormon's sermon by adding these biblical passages.

Under this view, is Joseph essentially co-authoring the English text with Mormon?

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10 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

I think this issue is a non-starter.
The KJV is a translation of the original text.
Joseph in his non-literal translation process of the Book of Mormon was given by revelation the words to write.

There is absolutely zero reason why that revelation could not have come using KJV words instead of a new translation of the original words.

When you say Joseph was given the words to write it sounds to me like you ascribe to a tight translation model. 

I don't find that model persuasive, Ostler and Gardner and other scholars lean towards a loose translation paradigm and I think that's a better explanation for why KJV is in the text because that allows for Joseph using his own words and/or copying words to tell the BoM narrative.  

An interesting podcast I listened to recently had Thomas Wayment who's been researching Joseph's translation of the bible.  What he found was the Joseph borrowed heavily from a biblical commentary that was widely used at the time written by an Adam Clarke.  I definitely could see the same thing happening during the BoM translation effort.  

Quote

Adam Clarke is a Methodist preacher; he’s kind of a polymath; he’s an expert in languages. He produces a massive 6-volume commentary on the
Old and New Testament. It’s quite good for the time period. He goes through and deals with things like, “This is what the Hebrew word is; this
is what it means.” He’ll even conjecture how the translation should be different. He’s doing this all in the King James Version of the Bible. What
I started to do after seeing these remarkable parallels to statements Clarke had made. I decided, “Well, why don’t we take all of the JST changes and line them up against what Clarke said about those passages.”

What we found, a student assistant (Hailey Wilson Lamone) and I, we discovered that in about 200 to 300 — depending on how much change is
being involved — parallels where Joseph Smith has the exact same change to a verse that Adam Clarke does. They’re verbatim. Some of them are 5 to 6 words; some of them are 2 words; some of them are a single word. But in cases where that single word is fairly unique or different, it seemed pretty obvious that he’s getting this from Adam Clarke. What really changed my world view here is now I’m looking at what appears obvious as a text person, that the prophet has used Adam Clarke. That in the process of doing the translation, he’s either read it, has it in front of him, or he reads it at night.

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/5/b/9/5b9a46be752511d9/LDSP_Joseph_Smiths_Use_of_Adam_Clarkes_Commentary.pdf?c_id=17171867&expiration=1507742934&hwt=4e134921e9b60c2611498e88a72ccfcd

 

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1 minute ago, Button Gwinnett said:

My understanding is that there is a consensus in the Biblical Scholarship arena.  The Long Mark ending is an addition after the fact and took place in the 2nd century AD.  That it is found in the BoM is what is creating this problem.  How did it make its way into the BoM?

Yes, I think the consensus is that stuff was added on after Mark 16:8.  But the disagreement seems to be on where the added stuff came from.  This is what it says on BYU's New Testament Commentary website-

"The idea that Mark 16:8 was the original ending has gained in popularity over the last half-century, yet some scholars still regard it as unlikely. They think the original ending to Mark’s Gospel is now lost, removed either accidentally (because a scroll’s end was damaged or a codex’s final page lost) or deliberately. Evidence that the original ending of Mark was lost includes the following:[13]

1. One of Mark’s themes is the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecies, so to leave the two about a meeting with the disciples (see Mark 14:28 and Mark 16:7) unfulfilled would have been odd.

From the other three Gospels, as well as many epistles, we know that the Resurrection was, obviously, supremely important to early Christians. For Mark not to have included this story (especially when his audience presumably already knew something about it) would have been odd.

2. The first line of the Ggospel tells us that it will be “the good news” (KJV: gospel) of Jesus Christ. 16:8 does not sound like good news!

3. Some scholars maintain that books in Greek would not end with the word “for” (Greek: gar, which is the final word if the text ends at Mark 16:8), but this is sometimes disputed.[14]

4. Obviously, the news about the Resurrection got out, so it isn’t credible to think that the women said nothing to anyone. There must have been more to the story! Note that, on multiple occasions, Jesus tells people not to say anything, but they do anyway (see Mark 1:43-45, 7:36-37, and 10:48). These data points imply that the women did say something, and we expect that Mark would have included that story.

5. The existence of not only one but several variant endings for the Gospel implies that early readers of Mark—including Matthew and Luke—did not consider Mark 16:8 to be a satisfactory ending. It is therefore unlikely that Mark considered 16:8 to be an appropriate ending, either. 

If there was an ending and it was present in Matthew’s and/or Luke’s copies of Mark, then the Resurrection accounts in Matthew and/or Luke may contain material from Mark’s original ending. It has also been suggested that Mark 16:8 was Mark’s original ending not because it served his rhetorical purposes but because something (persecution? death?) interrupted the writing of the Gospel."

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