Mormon Times Article on If/And Conditionals

[Daniel Peterson]

I was traveling in rather distant and exotic climes (which I can't mention, because it drives several of my critics absolutely insane with rage when they hear that I've been traveling), and had only poor and rare e-mail access, so I failed to advertise the following prior to now. But some might find it interesting:

http://www.mormontimes.com/article/18047/Daniel-Peterson-Poor-English-but-good-Hebrew-8212-a-divine-hint-of-Book-of-Mormon-truth

[Glenn101]

I was traveling in rather distant and exotic climes (which I can't mention, because it drives several of my critics absolutely insane with rage when they hear that I've been traveling), and had only poor and rare e-mail access, so I failed to advertise the following prior to now. But some might find it interesting:

http://www.mormontimes.com/article/18047/Daniel-Peterson-Poor-English-but-good-Hebrew-8212-a-divine-hint-of-Book-of-Mormon-truth

A nice little article. but I am sure that someone in the S/R camp will be able to show that Solomon Spalding was well versed in the if/and conditional and anyway it doesn't matter because given a thousnad monkeys and a thousand typewriters, they would eventually produce a script with if/and conditionals, or maybe it is just irrelevenat.

Glenn

[Mortal Man]

A nice little article. but I am sure that someone in the S/R camp will be able to show that Solomon Spalding was well versed in the if/and conditional

Spalding's not the culprit.

The if/and conditionals actually appear with slightly greater frequency in the Book of Commandments than in the 1830 BoM.

There is also a significantly higher rate of if/then conditionals in the 1830 BoM than in either the Hebrew Jeremiah or BoC.

A cursory examination of conditional clauses in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, BoC, and book of Jeremiah (included as a contemporary Hebrew control document) reveals that the actual situation is not nearly so clear cut. Table 2 provides a summary of conditional clauses which are unmarked, marked by an "and," anomalously marked, or marked by "then" in these three sources. (For a detailed breakdown of the various clauses, see Appendix B.) [p.362]

Table 2.

Total English Conditional Clauses

Book of Mormon

476

Doctrine and Covenants 1-20

64

Jeremiah

38

Percent Unmarked English Apodoses

Book of Mormon

68%

(324)

Doctrine and Covenants 1-20

73%

(47)

KJV Jeremiah

47%

(18)

Hebrew Jeremiah

29%

(11)

Percent Anomalous English Apodoses

Book of Mormon

19%

(90)

Doctrine and Covenants 1-20

17%

(11)

KJV Jeremiah

3%

(1)

Hebrew Jeremiah

13%

(5)

Percent "Then"-Marked English Apodoses

Book of Mormon

8%

(39)

Doctrine and Covenants 1-20

3%

(2)

KJV Jeremiah

47%

(18)

Hebrew Jeremiah

0%

(0)

Percent "And"-English Apodoses

Book of Mormon

5%

(23)

Doctrine and Covenants 1-20

6%

(4)

KJV Jeremiah

3%

(1)

Hebrew Jeremiah

58%

(22)

According to Skousen's rule, there should be at least a significant percentage of conditional clauses with the apodosis marked by "and" in Smith's first edition of the Book of Mormon

[Fifth Columnist]

That is impressive, Mortal Man. Ed Ashment published that in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. I know FARMS wrote a number of replies to New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. Did any of them attempt to rebut Ashment's argument that you quoted? If not, has anyone developed a theory since then to rebut Ashment's argument?

[LifeOnaPlate]

Brant Gardner, IIRC, takes a different view of the if/and stuff, and perhaps many of the Hebraisms, which he believes can be interpreted as translation fingerprints, rather than a very reliable reflection of a Semitic original. (Correct me if I am wrong, Brant!)

[Kevin Christensen]

That is impressive, Mortal Man. Ed Ashment published that in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. I know FARMS wrote a number of replies to New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. Did any of them attempt to rebut Ashment's argument that you quoted? If not, has anyone developed a theory since then to rebut Ashment's argument?

Skousen, for one, in RBBM 6:1

These examples of non-English Hebraisms provide a real problem for Metcalfe and his colleagues. Their research program requires them to find some nineteenth-century English-language basis for everything in the Book of Mormon. For instance, in order to disprove the Hebraic origin of the if-and construction, Ed Ashment argues (pp. 361-63) that such constructions occur in the early revelations of Joseph Smith. But in actual fact, all except one of Ashment's examples (p. 385) are of the form and-if, which he misleadingly identifies as "If + And (inverted)":

and their testimony shall also go forth unto the condemnation of this generation if they harden their hearts against them (D&C 5:18)

and behold I grant unto you a gift if you desire of me to translate even as my servant Joseph (D&C 6:25)

and misery thou shalt receive if thou wilt slight these counsels (D&C 19:33)

Now all of these examples are perfectly acceptable as English. Nor has there been any tendency to eliminate this and-if construction from the Doctrine and Covenants, unlike the fourteen Book of Mormon occurrences of the if-and construction, all of which had been removed by the time the 1837 edition of the Book of Mormon was published.

Ashment's fourth "counterexample" (p. 385) is supposed to be an actual if-and example:

but if he deny this he will break the covenant which he has before covenanted with me and behold he is condemned (D&C 5:27)

Of course, this is not really an if-and example, for the subordinate clause "if he deny this" modifies the immediately following independent clause "he will break the covenant which he has before covenanted with me" and not the distant resultive clause "and behold he is condemned." This fourth example actually belongs under Ashment's "If + O" class (p. 380). (Here Ashment's capital letter O supposedly stands for the mathematical null symbol). So in actuality Ashment has no examples of the non-English if-and construction from the early revelations of Joseph Smith.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=6&num=1&id=137

Gee also commented in the same volume of the Review.

Ashment confronts a more difficult problem in Royal Skousen's arguments for Hebrew usage (pp. 360-63). Skousen identified examples of conditional clauses in the Book of Mormon where the apodosis is marked by "and" rather than "then."124 For example, "and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, and he will manifest the truth of it unto you" (Moroni 10:4, 1830 edition).125 Here, English would expect the word "then" rather than "and"; while the use of "and" is good Hebrew, it is impossible English. In attempting to refute this argument, Ashment not only follows the same fallacious method of looking for examples in the later Doctrine and Covenants, but he also subtly adopts another false assumption which alters his data as well (pp. 362, 380-85). Ashment assumes that an inverted conditional is the same as a non-inverted one. Take, for example, Book of Commandments 12:3 (= D&C 14:7):

And if you keep my commandments, and endure to the end, you shall have eternal life.

The inverted form of this would be:

And you shall have eternal life, if you keep my commandments, and endure to the end.

This latter form Ashment takes as the equivalent of,

If you keep my commandments, and endure to the end, and you shall have eternal life.

Note that, in the process of inverting, the conjunction "and" (italicized in the examples) has been transferred from its function of coordinating the conditional clauses to the new function of marking the apodosis. Ashment's assumption that an inverted conditional clause is identical to a noninverted conditional clause does not hold. Thus all examples of inverted conditional phrases in Ashment's data can be rejected as specious, reinterpreting the function of the conjunction from connecting the conditional clause to marking the apodosis. This removes all Ashment's examples from the Doctrine and Covenants save one. This example (D&C 5:27) runs as follows:

But if he deny this,

he will break the covenant which he has before covenanted

with me,

and behold he is condemned. (Book of Commandments 4:9 = D&C 5:27.)126

Ashment has clearly misunderstood the compound apodosis. If this were a real example it would read:

But if he deny this,

and he will break the covenant which he has before

covenanted with me,

and behold he is condemned.

Since Ashment has no examples of this sentence construction in the Doctrine and Covenants, his statistic from the Doctrine and Covenants drops from 6% to 0% and the rest of his analysis becomes an exercise in statistical irrelevancy.127

Before leaving Ashment's argument, we should note two other methodological mistakes that Ashment has made. Ashment compares the statistics from the entire Book of Mormon with those of the book of Jeremiah, which he "included as a contemporary Hebrew control document" (p. 361),128 informing us that the percentages should be the same (pp. 361-63). Here Ashment presents us with the fallacy of a sample with built-in bias.129 "The Book of Jeremiah is partly in prose, partly in poetry, these being present in almost equal proportions."130 The Book of Mormon is largely historical prose or exhortatory discourse.131 Since poetry and prose are notorious for having different syntax, a syntactic comparison of this sort is virtually meaningless. Even if Jeremiah were the same genre of text, there is no reason why the percentage usage of any given stylistic variant should be the same between any two individuals. Finally, one suspects that a sample of thirty-eight conditional clauses in Jeremiah (p. 362) is not statistically significant, especially as compared to over ten times as many conditional clauses in the Book of Mormon.132 One also wonders how much methodological sense it makes to count stylistic features in a translation of Jeremiah anyway.

This brings up an important bit of misleading legerdemain shared in both Ashment's and Metcalfe's essays. The appearance given the reader is that all of the statistics and word counts given in the articles derive from careful examination of the 1833 Book of Commandments, the 1830 Book of Mormon, and

[Brant Gardner]

Brant Gardner, IIRC, takes a different view of the if/and stuff, and perhaps many of the Hebraisms, which he believes can be interpreted as translation fingerprints, rather than a very reliable reflection of a Semitic original. (Correct me if I am wrong, Brant!)

No correction required. I looked at this to see if I could support it. I found one such conditional in Joseph's writing outside of the Book of Mormon. Then I looked at the cases in the Book of Mormon text which should have been if/and and were changed to if/then. There were more that didn't need to be changed than those that were the if/and conditionals. So - they are there, but they are not consistent and they represent a lesser percentage of the conditionals. With an example in Joseph's earlier writing, it seems to me to be a remnant of his dialect that was removed after exposure to more people.

Of course, it would be a better argument if I could find representations in his linguistic environment, but I believe it would required examination of manuscript evidence as anything published and edited would have removed them. I confess I haven't attempted that work.

[LifeOnaPlate]

No correction required. I looked at this to see if I could support it. I found one such conditional in Joseph's writing outside of the Book of Mormon. Then I looked at the cases in the Book of Mormon text which should have been if/and and were changed to if/then. There were more that didn't need to be changed than those that were the if/and conditionals. So - they are there, but they are not consistent and they represent a lesser percentage of the conditionals. With an example in Joseph's earlier writing, it seems to me to be a remnant of his dialect that was removed after exposure to more people.

Of course, it would be a better argument if I could find representations in his linguistic environment, but I believe it would required examination of manuscript evidence as anything published and edited would have removed them. I confess I haven't attempted that work.

Cool. So on one side we have the argument that if/and's reflect an ancient original beneath the translation.

On another side we have the argument that they reflect JS's dialect, translator contamination, or call it what you will.

On the another hand we have the studies mentioned above, arguing that the if/and's appear in other JS works aside from the BoM, and the response that said examples do not to represent the data accurately or exhaustively.

[Fifth Columnist]

Cool. So on one side we have the argument that if/and's reflect an ancient original beneath the translation.

On another side we have the argument that they reflect JS's dialect, translator contamination, or call it what you will.

On the another hand we have the studies mentioned above, arguing that the if/and's appear in other JS works aside from the BoM, and the response that said examples do not to represent the data accurately or exhaustively.

Yeah, that sounds about right. One thing that probably should be explored a little bit more is how the "if/and's reflect an ancient original beneath the translation." I think most people agree that the translation of the BOM was revealed to Joseph Smith. In other words, JS didn't actually translate anything himself. Any translating that took place was done by God. Joseph Smith was just the conduit for the translation to paper. If that is the case, then God is the one that mistranslated the if/and conditionals in the text. If I understand Peterson's thesis correctly, God did this because he knew that 150 years later scholars in his Church would recognize the connection and it would provide evidence to support the BOM's claims. Is that correct?

[LifeOnaPlate]

If I understand Peterson's thesis correctly, God did this because he knew that 150 years later scholars in his Church would recognize the connection and it would provide evidence to support the BOM's claims. Is that correct?

I haven't really seen anyone, let alone DCP, make the argument that these things were left in the translation by God's direction specifically to provide evidence. Who made that claim?

[Fifth Columnist]

I haven't really seen anyone, let alone DCP, make the argument that these things were left in the translation by God's direction specifically to provide evidence. Who made that claim?

From DCP's article that he linked to in the OP:

But why would such things appear in "the most correct book?" Perhaps as a subtle divine hint that the original language of the Book of Mormon wasn't English.

Can you think of any other reason God would purposely include these obvious mistranslations in the BOM?

Edited to add, now do you agree that my restatement above is correct? That God included a few mistranslations knowing that his scholars would discover them 150 years after the BOM was first published and recognize the parallels to the underlying Hebrew, thus serving to subtly confirm the truth of the BOM.

[Brant Gardner]

Can you think of any other reason God would purposely include these obvious mistranslations in the BOM?

Some wise person on some blog opined that we shouldn't make comments that deal with the translation of the Book of Mormon unless we can explain our theory of the translation. That would help a lot. For example, the above statement seems to presuppose things that I wouldn't include in my hypothesis about translation. Therefore, I couldn't even begin to answer it as phrased because it is phrased according to assumptions I don't hold.

[Fifth Columnist]

If God included if/and conditional statements in the BOM as a subtle divine hint that the BOM is true, do you think he would also purposely included anachronisms as a way of creating subtle doubts. If we can accept that he would mistranslate something to confirm faith, why can't we accept that he would do the opposite as a way to require us to live by faith. Too much evidence in favor of the BOM would mean that we would no longer have to live by faith.

[Fifth Columnist]

Some wise person on some blog opined that we shouldn't make comments that deal with the translation of the Book of Mormon unless we can explain our theory of the translation. That would help a lot. For example, the above statement seems to presuppose things that I wouldn't include in my hypothesis about translation. Therefore, I couldn't even begin to answer it as phrased because it is phrased according to assumptions I don't hold.

True enough. But you are a special case Brant. You seem to try and be consistent in what evidence you offer up in support of the BOM. Most apologists accept all of the arguments in favor of the BOM even if many of the arguments are contradictory.

[LifeOnaPlate]

From DCP's article that he linked to in the OP:

Can you think of any other reason God would purposely include these obvious mistranslations in the BOM?

Edited to add, now do you agree that my restatement above is correct? That God included a few mistranslations knowing that his scholars would discover them 150 years after the BOM was first published and recognize the parallels to the underlying Hebrew, thus serving to subtly confirm the truth of the BOM.

Ha! That's what I get from relying on memory of past articles. Yes, I see what you mean. On this particular issue I lean towards Gardner's position.

[Uncertain]

Personally I like Ashment's approach using control texts in an attempt to place observations in a correct context. Now don't get me wrong I think Dr. Gee makes a good point perhaps Jeremiah was not an appropriate control. But at least Ashment attempted to do the right thing even if the controls he selected were not completely appropriate. This sort of approach is greatly lacking in both BOM apologetics and critical literature.

Second I also feel the apologetic version of this argument suffers from the same problem inappropriate comparisons. Dr. Peterson argues in his article that if/and conditionals would not have been found in the KJV or any other readily available source hence JS could not have known they were a legitimate Hebrew construct therefore this is good evidence the BOM is authentic. Frankly he is arguing against the weakest critical argument. The fact that the if/and conditionals were later removed is quite strong evidence JS did not intentionally add them because he knew they were authentic Hebrew. The stronger critical argument would be given the large number of grammar mistakes in a book the size of the BOM produced by diction it is not surprising that a small subset of the grammar mistakes would resemble purely by random chance Hebrew constructs. This argument would explain why there are so few if/and conditionals in the BOM. Did the "Hebrew influence" come and go at random? Giving us a if/and conditional here and there surrounded by hundreds of traditional if/then conditionals? Are there any authentic Hebrew documents that have such a small fraction of if/and conditionals? Maybe Jeremiah was not the appropriate control but it did have a far larger fraction of if/and conditionals then the BOM is Jeremiah a complete anomaly/outlier when it comes to authentic Hebrew documents or is it normative? If it is normative this greatly weakens the apologists case since authentic Hebrew documents would contain a far higher fraction of if/and conditionals than the BOM. Which strongly suggests the few scattered BOM if/and conditionals are simply the result of poor grammar or dictation artifacts. This is the kind of question apologists need to address to build a strong case.

The correct controls to address the strongest critical argument is not the KJV of the bible or any other edited text. But other dictated unedited texts by JS or lacking that other unedited texts of comparable length from the same basic time period. It is not at all surprising that if/and conditionals would not be found in edited texts available to JS but who cares? No critic worth his salt is going to argue JS somehow found out if/and conditionals were authentic Hebrew and sneaked in two dozen or so in a text containing hundreds of traditional conditionals. Hence the correct control texts are not edited manuscripts but unedited manuscripts preferably dictated with similar poor grammar to what the original BOM text had.

If I understood correctly Brant has claimed to find at least one example of a if/and conditional in Joseph's earlier writing given these would have been removed as poor English as soon as they were found I am surprised he found any at all in edited material. In any case lacking appropriate comparisons i.e.(controls) to address the strongest critical argument the if/and conditionals are interesting but not particularly strong evidence of antiquity. How many of the grammar mistakes in the BOM would be Chineseisms or Spanishisms or Greekisms? This is the kind of work that needs to be done before a strong case can be made on the basis of grammar mistakes in the BOM occasionally matching Hebrew constructs.

Best,

Uncertain

[Daniel Peterson]

John Gee responded to Ashment's claims clear back in FARMS Review 6/1, in the early 1990s:

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=6&num=1&id=136

As to why God allowed "if/and" conditional sentences to appear in the Original Manuscript and in the first edition of the Book of Mormon, I haven't the foggiest notion. The final sentence of the newspaper column -- it was a newspaper column, after all, limited to ca. 700 words, not an open-ended academic dissertation with unlimited space for qualifications and nuances -- was offered at least partly tongue-in-cheek.

I have no single unitary theory of the translation of the Book of Mormon. I'm not sure that one is possible. I know that, when I translate, I'm more literal at some times and more expansive and paraphrastic at other times. I myself have no single rigid translation methodology for any of the languages in which I typically work, and I see no particular reason to insist on one for anybody else.

[Fifth Columnist]

As to why God allowed "if/and" conditional sentences to appear in the Original Manuscript and in the first edition of the Book of Mormon, I haven't the foggiest notion.

Did God just "allow" them in the BOM or did he affirmatively reveal them to Joseph Smith? If the if/and conditionals were mistakes made by Joseph Smith that God merely tolerated, then this certainly doesn't support the conclusion that the BOM was derived from an ancient Hebrew text (unless Joseph Smith was actively translating from Hebrew to English, but I don't think anyone believes that).

This apologetic argument only makes sense If the person doing the translation from Reformed Egyptian to English - that person being God - affirmatively decided to retain a couple of if/and conditionals in the text (or inadvertently retained them, but I doubt God would do something like that). But then we have the pesky question of why God would do that.

[mfbukowski]

Dr P

This is a slight derail but a plug for you anyway--

Still speaking in La Crescenta on Sunday? I was planning on making the drive if you are.

[CA Steve]

Dr P

This is a slight derail but a plug for you anyway--

Still speaking in La Crescenta on Sunday? I was planning on making the drive if you are.

He is. He confirmed it in another thread yesterday. Toward the bottom

DP In La Crescenta

[Robert F. Smith]

Most apologists accept all of the arguments in favor of the BOM even if many of the arguments are contradictory.

Quite so, but contrariwise as well: Most anti-Mormons accept all of the arguments against the BOM even if many of the arguments are contradictory.

Not a sound basis for a frank and honest discussion.

I'm glad that we at least have the semblance of a reasonable discussion herewith. Why does that seem so rare?

[Robert F. Smith]

Richard Bushman said the following in his JS: Rough Stone Rolling, 174,

"These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding" [D&C 1:24] The revelations were not God's diction, dialect, or native language. They were couched in language suitable to Joseph's time. The idioms, the grammar, even the tone had to be comprehensible to 1830s Americans.

Giorgio Bucellati in Abusch, Huehnergard, and Steinkeller, eds., Lingering Over Words (Scholars Press, 1990), 105, said this:

At best, translation is appropriation (at worst, following the Italian adage, it is betrayal). I take "appropriation" to mean the phenomenon by which the various expresssive means in the source are exploded and recomposed in the target language; through it, we absorb and make our own the expression as originally intended. If the initial expression is captured, absorbed, "appropriated," if it emerges to new life as it becomes "our" expression, then, we may say, a successful translation has taken place.

The "plenary dictation" theory is nonsense. Joseph's unschooled, rural mind and dialect surely refracted whatever inspiration came through him and the seer stone in his darkened hat (Ashment made fun of my notion many years ago that the stone may have been akin to an LED or light emitting diode), and the Original Manuscript is filled with what seem to us odd and archaic, ungrammatical expressions. Joseph did the best he could, and went on to try to improve the 1830 edition language in later editions.

[Glenn101]

If I understood correctly Brant has claimed to find at least one example of a if/and conditional in Joseph's earlier writing given these would have been removed as poor English as soon as they were found I am surprised he found any at all in edited material. In any case lacking appropriate comparisons i.e.(controls) to address the strongest critical argument the if/and conditionals are interesting but not particularly strong evidence of antiquity. How many of the grammar mistakes in the BOM would be Chineseisms or Spanishisms or Greekisms? This is the kind of work that needs to be done before a strong case can be made on the basis of grammar mistakes in the BOM occasionally matching Hebrew constructs.

Best,

Uncertain

The problem with a control text and the Book of Mormon is the difficulty in designing the criteria for a control. In the case of the if/and conditional, how often was it used in the ancient Hebrew? Did it vary by author? In other words, we would seem to need a lot more texts to make any type of valid control.

As you noted, the if/and conditionals are interesting, but in and of themselves are not proof of antiquity. All of the other Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon are not proof either. But the aggregate (among other things) have been submitted as evidence of an ancient Hebraic origin rather than a nineteenth century product.

Glenn

[Fifth Columnist]

The "plenary dictation" theory is nonsense. Joseph's unschooled, rural mind and dialect surely refracted whatever inspiration came through him and the seer stone in his darkened hat (Ashment made fun of my notion many years ago that the stone may have been akin to an LED or light emitting diode), and the Original Manuscript is filled with what seem to us odd and archaic, ungrammatical expressions. Joseph did the best he could, and went on to try to improve the 1830 edition language in later editions.

Were the if/and conditionals revealed to Joseph Smith? If they weren't, how can they be used as evidence that the BOM is a translation of an earlier Hebrew-based text?

[Chris Smith]

Here's my take on the most striking case of "if/and" conditionals in the BoM-- the several that occur in a row in Helaman 12. In my opinion, this is actually one long, run-on sentence that could be described as an "if/therefore" conditional. The awkwardness of the syntax stems from the fact that the text was orally dictated in a stream-of-cnosciousness fashion.