Possible Litmus Test on BOM Translation Process

[mfbukowski]

Like my cell phone display, I can't read it in the daylight.

Me too!

I was also playing with the "unknown technology" angle of what we call "miracles". An iphone in the 1820's would have definitely been "miraculous".

But I actually had to put my phone into my hat the other day to dial a call!

[cjwright]

Maybe it would make things clearer if I said I don't subscribe to the theories which rely on Joseph Smith hiding some pre-written manuscript in his hat. I contend that the dictation is nothing more miraculous than a first draft of a novel. Why is it any more "miraculous" that Joseph spoke his novel rather than write it out longhand? When you wrote the above post, did you copy it off a manuscript, or did you just make it up "entirely off the top of your head"? All novels have to initially come from the same place--ie, off the top of the author's head. Some authors go back and revise their first pass. Others, not so much. Joseph was obviously the latter (although even Joseph made some later revisions to his first draft.)

Have you ever written a first draft of a novel?

Have you ever written the first draft of a 270,000 word novel?

Have you written the first draft of a 270,000 word novel in about 64 days?

To do what Joseph Smith did, even if he was making it up, would be miraculous in itself. All authors go back and revise their first draft, even if they are doing so during the process of writing it, not just some. Sentences rarely come out perfect first time, especially if they are dictated of the top of your head. All the revisions Joseph made together are nothing compared to the amount of revisions made by almost all authors.

Your entire comment above just goes to show how little you know about the art of writing.

[consiglieri]

Have you written the first draft of a 270,000 word novel in about 64 days?

I think MC might take issue with the 64-day time limit . . .

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[cjwright]

I think MC might take issue with the 64-day time limit . . .

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

Unless he can answer yes to the first two questions the third one is redundant anyway.

Even if we count the length of time Joseph had the plates in his possession as the time period of the translation process, which was a little over two years before publication, the point about the lack of revision to the manuscript still stands. The changes of a word here, or a few words there, in a manuscript of such size is nothing compared to the amount of revision an author has to do on a novel before publication. If Joseph Smith was making it up then there would be vast sentence and paragraph reconstruction in the production of the manuscript, especially if he was dictating it off the top of his head.

I've been writing for over ten years, and I'm making it all up off the top of my head, and I've changed more words in the drafts of my manuscripts than what has actually been published. You can ask any publisher or literary agent, no one ever gets it right first time, every manuscript needs revision and editing in order to get it to a publishable quality.

MC's statement 'Some authors go back and revise their first pass. Others, not so much. Joseph was obviously the latter (although even Joseph made some later revisions to his first draft.' is clearly false. All authors revise their first drafts either after they've completed it or during its creation, and a lot more revision than Joseph made to the Book of Mormon.

[Darth J]

Actually Joseph was a time traveler from the future, and he had an iphone in his hat.

Very simple really. The display was too dim to see in the full sunlight, so he had to put it into the hat to read.

Why can't you people accept the simple explanation that Joseph Smith had a UFO encounter? It has certainly clarified things for me.

A parallel to my theory of ancient buried records concerns the early-day Mormon and American Joseph Smith (1805-1844). As a 14-year-old farm boy living in Palmyra, New York, Joseph said that he had gone out into a wooded glen to pray in the early spring of 1820. Joseph saw in the distance in the clear sky a bright object that grew in magnitude and gradually descended and landed. Two brilliant personages appeared looking exactly alike and standing in the air and one personage pointed to the other and said that they were the Father and His Son. A space messenger named Moroni who came down and went up in a tube of white light appeared to Joseph four times. Joseph had nine visits and was told he was chosen to open up the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times an ancient engraved record of metal plates buried in nearby Hill Cumorah. With his wife Emma, Joseph dug up the buried ancient record on September 21-22, 1827, and translated and published this as

[Darth J]

For example, would you yourself find JS's story more or less compelling if there were no gold plates, no sword of laban, no physical artifacts whatsoever? Would you be more or less inclined to believe JS's story if he just sat down one day and wrote the BoM, claiming the whole thing was the product of divine inspiration?

You mean, like, The Book of Moses in The Pearl of Great Price? Which a great many Mormons, including the one who is typing this current post, are inclined to believe?

[Mighty Curelom]

Unless he can answer yes to the first two questions the third one is redundant anyway.

Even if we count the length of time Joseph had the plates in his possession as the time period of the translation process, which was a little over two years before publication, the point about the lack of revision to the manuscript still stands. The changes of a word here, or a few words there, in a manuscript of such size is nothing compared to the amount of revision an author has to do on a novel before publication. If Joseph Smith was making it up then there would be vast sentence and paragraph reconstruction in the production of the manuscript, especially if he was dictating it off the top of his head.

I've been writing for over ten years, and I'm making it all up off the top of my head, and I've changed more words in the drafts of my manuscripts than what has actually been published. You can ask any publisher or literary agent, no one ever gets it right first time, every manuscript needs revision and editing in order to get it to a publishable quality.

MC's statement 'Some authors go back and revise their first pass. Others, not so much. Joseph was obviously the latter (although even Joseph made some later revisions to his first draft.' is clearly false. All authors revise their first drafts either after they've completed it or during its creation, and a lot more revision than Joseph made to the Book of Mormon.

I take issue with notion that the Book of Mormon is of "publishable quality," especially before the, what is it now, 30,000 corrections?

In any case, I know of at least one author who has probably written more than you, and certainly published more than you. While I don't consider him a particularly good author, Stephen King said some interesting things in his book "On Writing." A few that you might find pertinent:

I believe the first draft of a book

[cjwright]

I take issue with notion that the Book of Mormon is of "publishable quality," especially before the, what is it now, 30,000 corrections?

In any case, I know of at least one author who has probably written more than you, and certainly published more than you. While I don't consider him a particularly good author, Stephen King said some interesting things in his book "On Writing." A few that you might find pertinent:

Elsewhere in the book King remarks that he writes, and has written throughout his entire career, about 8 pages a day. Every day. That's about the pace Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, which is a pace apologists claim is utterly impossible for an author to maintain for a whole 3 months.

Here's one that I find particularly apt:

Did you get that? When King does a second draft, it's mostly (dare I say, entirely?) a process of subtracting material. Not of retooling sentences, not of swapping "that" for "which," or removing the stray dangling participle. Just deleting the boring parts.

In the case of the Book of Mormon, a second draft would be more like "1st draft minus 30%." Heck, 10% is "and it came to pass" and another 5% is "verily," so it shouldn't be too hard to tighten it up to non-chloroform levels of dullness.

Oh, like I've never read On Writing. The fact is I have a copy only inches from me, and can check your facts.

1st, on pg 176, he says he writes 10 pages a day (that would be typed pages on a computer screen, not hand written and dictated) and that makes up 2000 words, or 180,000 word novel in three months (90 days) of solid work - not 270,000+ as with the Book of Mormon, which wasn't written in one constant writing period (every day, eight hours a day like King). Even at that rate you are looking at another 45 days to produce the Book of Mormon in the way described. Almost all writers never produce work that fast, the average time period for a first draft is 9 months.

2nd, What King is talking about is tightening the story, changing huge amounts of text, blocks of text, not just a word here or a word there, or slight changes in punctuation. How much of the Book of Mormon text has been removed, or sentences completely re-written. You can't just 'delete the boring bits' without having to make other changes in order to keep the story consistant. He is also talking about the -10%, so a 180,000 word first draft would end up being 18,000 words shorter as well as the changes. That is also only a guideline theory, it doesn't always, and actual only very rarely, happens in practice.

3rd, in the exerpt of 1408 on pg 336-342 of On Writing, showing the changes he made in text, King made over 390 changes, including deleting whole paragraphs, sentence reconstruction and name changes. These are not found in the Book of Mormon manuscripts.

4th, the first draft on a computer can be edited during its production and still be considered the first draft. Orally dictating a first draft in the 19th Century can't be. You don't know how many changes King make to his novels while constructing the first draft.

5th, a lot of the changes in the Book of Mormon have been made to bring it more in line with the first draft Joseph Smith translated, not to distance the text from it. No author retrogrades his work in further drafts to bring them in line with the first, that