New Testament And Book Of Mormon Parallels (Mark 16:Mormon 9)

[JDave]

My question, and origin this thread is based on the fulcrum of 'it may or may not be historically true.' As I've said before, I know it to be a good influence (Alma 32 style), therefore I believe it to be of God. But that doesn't lead me to the historical conclusion others might make. I do not approach this from the point of proving a conclusion but with the hope of reaching one. And both conclusions remain an option.

I can definitely see how Alma 32 style evidence does not lead to historical conclusions. If you pragmatically determine that the LDS church is the place for you to be, then you should move forward acting as if it is the true kingdom of God. LDS life, including temple attendance and magnifying your priesthood within your stewardship, should provide sufficient proof of the divinity of the work. That's what the Lord promised as well, with John 7:17 being quite analogous to Alma 32. You don't need to completely shelve questions such as this thread explores, but to borrow a phrase from this thread -- don't let the tail wag the dog.

[cdowis]

Very interesting, but what exactly is the point. Skousen sees these as "interesting" with no further explanation or significance,. And Nevo solemnly declares that they are "not interesting", given other possible explanations.

I ask the question, so what, even is Skousen is correct? What does it mean beyond "interesting".

Edited June 16, 2013 by cdowis

[Nevo]

Skousen sees these as "interesting" with no further explanation or significance,. And Nevo solemnly declares that they are "not interesting", given other possible explanations.

You're wrong on both counts. I did not say that Skousen's examples of Early Modern English vocabulary in the Book of Mormon were "not interesting." In fact, I said "Skousen's findings are intriguing." And Skousen doesn't merely offer them as "interesting" anomalies without "further explanation or significance." He says they lead him to the "surprising" "significant" and "remarkable" conclusion that "the original vocabulary of the Book of Mormon appears to derive from the 1500s and 1600s, not from the 1800s"—and that therefore "Joseph Smith was not the author of the English-language translation of the Book of Mormon."

[cdowis]

You're wrong on both counts. I did not say that Skousen's examples of Early Modern English vocabulary in the Book of Mormon were "not interesting." In fact, I said "Skousen's findings are intriguing." And Skousen doesn't merely offer them as "interesting" anomalies without "further explanation or significance."

Normally I don't respond to such posts, but this one seems really silly.

Hmmmm..... well, you spent alot of time in your post discounting it. I'm not a mindreader.

He says they lead him to the "surprising" "significant" and "remarkable" conclusion that "the original vocabulary of the Book of Mormon appears to derive from the 1500s and 1600s, not from the 1800s"—and that therefore "Joseph Smith was not the author of the English-language translation of the Book of Mormon."

OK, so Skousen did not find it "interesting". Rather, he found it "significant". Thanks for the correction, but I was not quoting his article but his statement on the "Papers" TV episode. At that time he drew no conclusions.

You can have the last word.

Edited June 18, 2013 by cdowis

[JeffMorton]

I have been told countless times that the Bible is inspired where it is correctly translated.

I am hoping someone has a list of all the mistranslated passages in the Bible.

I was promised such a list by the son of an LDS bishop, but a month has passed and he has not emailed it to me.

Thanks.

[volgadon]

I have been told countless times that the Bible is inspired where it is correctly translated.

I am hoping someone has a list of all the mistranslated passages in the Bible.

I was promised such a list by the son of an LDS bishop, but a month has passed and he has not emailed it to me.

Thanks.

 

 

He is probably still waiting to access the one in the First Presidency's underground vault.

[Calm]

I have been told countless times that the Bible is inspired where it is correctly translated.

I am hoping someone has a list of all the mistranslated passages in the Bible.

I was promised such a list by the son of an LDS bishop, but a month has passed and he has not emailed it to me.

Thanks.

What is the purpose of getting this list?

[Tacenda]

What is the purpose of getting this list?

I've often wondered why the BoM should be any different than the Bible in this circumstance. Doesn't it seem to make it sound like the BoM is more correct than the bible. And wouldn't this lead to questioning what isn't correct in the bible. Therefore why not a list? ETA: Of course there is the Bible translation by Joseph Smith that the Community of Christ has available in a book, but we don't really study it that I know of. Edited September 3, 2013 by Tacenda

[Calm]

I've often wondered why the BoM should be any different than the Bible in this circumstance. 

Don't think it is.  The BoM itself refers to possible mistakes.

[Erin15]

Are the scholars are wrong?

 

What I don't understand is why anyone would put so much weight on the opinions of scholars.

 

Scholars are mortals.  The gospel is about your personal relationship with God.  It has nothing to do with them.  Instead of listening to scholars, go read, pray, obey, live, endure, believe.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Erin15

[JeffMorton]

What is the purpose of getting this list?

To substantiate the claim.

[Calm]

So how many of the thousands of translations did you want us to deal with and did that request cover misinterpretations as well?

[cdowis]

I have been told countless times that the Bible is inspired where it is correctly translated.

I am hoping someone has a list of all the mistranslated passages in the Bible.

 

In this particular context, "translation" does not mean what you think it does.  Think of it as "transmission".  The BOM tells us that there are many plain and precious things which are missing from the Bible, viz. not "transmitted".  No mention in the BOM about language translation.

 

The Joseph Smith Translation of the bible was clearly not a "translation" from one language to another but a correction and restoration of text.

 

Anyway, your list would be the comparison of the JST and the KJV, which exists already.

Edited September 3, 2013 by cdowis

[volgadon]

 

Anyway, your list would be the comparison of the JST and the KJV, which exists already.

 

It wouldn't be, but that is a different matter.

[cdowis]

One translation "error":  The kingdom of God is within you.

 

Better translation of the Greek is "among you".

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

To substantiate the claim.

Take the KJV of the bible and compare it to the NSRV (As I am told the NSRV is the most accurate we have today). I am sure you will have quite a list of differences at the end of the day. And that would just be a start. imagine if we had originals to translate from. What differences would we have between those originals and the NSRV?

 

Of course I am willing to bet you are trolling more than actually wanting a list of differences.

[JeffMorton]

First, I'm not trolling. I had a great discussion with a bishop and his son a four weeks ago. The son insisted there was a list of such verses and he promised to email me. I have yet to see the verses; I gave him my email address but neglected to get his. So it is a legitimate request.

 

Nevertheless, it is interesting that the LDS tenet of faith is that the Bible has not been maintained reliable by God, due to mistranslations and poor transmissions. I'm not sure this speaks well of God if he is either unwilling or unable to keep his words from harm. If that is indeed the case, why would one expect him to do the same with post-biblical revelations?

 

And as to your suggested methodology, why wouldn't the same method produce doubt about the BoM when compared to earlier versions?

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

First, I'm not trolling. I had a great discussion with a bishop and his son a four weeks ago. The son insisted there was a list of such verses and he promised to email me. I have yet to see the verses; I gave him my email address but neglected to get his. So it is a legitimate request.

 

Nevertheless, it is interesting that the LDS tenet of faith is that the Bible has not been maintained reliable by God, due to mistranslations and poor transmissions. I'm not sure this speaks well of God if he is either unwilling or unable to keep his words from harm. If that is indeed the case, why would one expect him to do the same with post-biblical revelations?

 

And as to your suggested methodology, why wouldn't the same method produce doubt about the BoM when compared to earlier versions?

First off saying that there are errors in translation is a farcry from saying that the bible is not reliable. I am having a hard time thinking that you were not trolling us. I have no doubt that your conversations took place. That is not the issue. The issue is that you really don't care if I could show you1 or 100 mis-translations. You sound like an Evangelical that thinks the bible is inerrant.

 

I guess time will tell?

Edited September 3, 2013 by Mola Ram Suda Ram

[Vance]

"TRANSLATION" had a different major meaning in the early 1800's than it does today.

 

http://1828.mshaffer.com/d/search/word,TRANSLATION

 

It was not just limited to the language to language translation but to the whole transmission and interpretation process.

[cdowis]

Nevertheless, it is interesting that the LDS tenet of faith is that the Bible has not been maintained reliable by God, due to mistranslations and poor transmissions. I'm not sure this speaks well of God if he is either unwilling or unable to keep his words from harm. If that is indeed the case, why would one expect him to do the same with post-biblical revelations?

 

 

That's why He gave us the Book of Mormon, and modern revelation. 

 

That's how He does things -- not by holding the hand of the publishers and copyists and forceably causing them to correct their errors, but through living prophets. 

 

 

 

And as to your suggested methodology, why wouldn't the same method produce doubt about the BoM when compared to earlier versions?

 

 

We do not worship the Book of Mormon or the Bible.  They indeed have human errors.  Again, this is why the Lord gave us living prophets.

Edited September 4, 2013 by cdowis

[Benjamin McGuire]

I have been told countless times that the Bible is inspired where it is correctly translated.

I am hoping someone has a list of all the mistranslated passages in the Bible.

I was promised such a list by the son of an LDS bishop, but a month has passed and he has not emailed it to me.

Thanks.

 

So, Jeff,

 

I am curious (with you being an Evangelical and all), how is the statement in our Article of Faith any different from the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. You must be familiar with it, right? The one that asserts that only the autographs are inerrant, and that everything else - every copy and every translation isn't inerrant. And of course, since we have no autographs, according to the evangelicals who prepared the Chicago statement, we don't have any texts that are actually inerrant, do we. So do you agree with the Chicago Statement? Do you disagree with it? Do you have a translation in mind that you think is absolutely inerrant? Why don't you provide a translation that you believe is inerrant, and then we can talk about where it is potentially mistranslated. Sounds like a plan? Our Article of Faith wasn't written as an assertion that the text is wrong, its an assertion that the King James Version (which was the only mass produced translation at the time that the Articles were written) wasn't potentially translated correctly everywhere. If you want, I suppose we could find a list of translational problems with the KJV (there are certainly plenty of those lists, as any Google search evidences), but that really doesn't seem to be the issue here does it.

 

Article X:

We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

 

Of course we can contrast this to biblical scholars comments right? There is Bart Ehrman. This is from his 2009 book Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) this is from page 185:

There are certain views of the inspiration of Scripture, such as the one I had pounded into me as a late teenager, that do not stand up well to the facts of textual criticism. For most Christians, who don't have a conservative evangelical view like the one I had, these textual facts can be interesting, but there is nothing in them to challenge their faith, which is built on something other than having the very words that God inspired in the Bible. . . . In any event, as I indicated, these theses themselves were almost entirely noncontroversial. Who can deny that we have thousands of manuscripts? Or hundreds of thousands of variants? Or that lots of the variants involve spelling? Or that scholars continue to debate what the original text was in lots of places? All of these statements are factually true.

The one statement that has stirred up controversy is my claim that some of these variations are significant. This view has been objected to by some conservative evangelicals and no one else that I know of. That gives me pause—why is this criticism coming only from people with a particular set of theological views?

Or perhaps we could use a statement from David Clines (president of the SBL in 2009) - this from his article "What Remains of the Hebrew Bible? Its Text and Language in a Postmodern Age" in Studia Theologica 54 (2001) starting on p. 78:

If that seems a large number of variants, consider the significance of the number when set against the number of words in the text. By my count, there are 382 words in 2 Samuel 22 (397 in Psalm 18). If 2 Samuel 22 contains 104 words that are at variance with Psalm 18, then slightly more than one in four words is a variant (one in 3.67, to be exact); since, as I believe can easily be demonstrated, the two texts transmit a single original text, every variant shows one text or the other to be corrupt. If the text of 2 Samuel 22 // Psalm 18 is at all typical of the Hebrew Bible, one word in four in the Hebrew Bible may be textually corrupt. Since we cannot know which word in each set of four words is likely to be the corrupt one, we could find ourselves in a situation of radical doubt about the text of the Hebrew Bible. But things are worse than they appear. ...  I conclude therefore that we know of the existence in pre-Masoretic times of 177 variants within this poem (i.e. the 104 variations between the Masoretic texts of 2 Samuel and Psalm 18 plus the 73 variations between the Masoretic text and the Hebrew of Qumran and the Versions). Considering that the poem contains 382 words (or 397 if we count the words of Psalm 18), if 177 words have attested variants, almost one word in two (2.16, to be exact) is textually open to question. Is there any reason why we should not extrapolate this state of affairs to the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and infer that also for the Hebrew Bible as a whole almost one word in two is textually questionable?

As hard as it may be for you to understand, Mormons in general can hold the text to be both authoritative and deny its inerrancy. And to this end, when we encounter the problems presented by scholarship it doesn't become the either/or challenge that faces someone with an Evangelical mind set. And ultimately this is why your kind of question doesn't mean much to us. It's pretty easy to look at any translation and find places where I disagree with it (if you have studied Biblical languages, you will understand this). Unless you take an extreme fundamentalist position (like a KJV only sort), you probably understand this quite well. The question is, why is it that you think this is a challenge for us, or rather what is it that you hope to gain from this sort of question. Have you also been told countless times that only the autographs of scripture are perfect, which by implication leads us to conclude that we have no perfect scriptures today?

 

Mormonism (in my opinion) generally agrees with Clines, who later remarks:

However, this state of radical textual uncertainty does not mean that we no longer have a Hebrew Bible, that we do not know what the contents and the sequence of materials within the biblical books

generally were. Viewed from a perspective of distance from text-critical enquiries, the text of the Hebrew Bible is reasonably sound; there are no major lacunae, large-scale disarrangements or wildly variant textual

witnesses. For some purposes we can say that what remains of the Old Testament is good enough; but if our purpose is to say what the Old Testament contains,word by word and line by line, what remains of the Old Testament is in a sorry state.

The difference is the expectations. If you demand that the only source of knowledge is this text, and that the text must therefore be perfect (at least in its autographs), and that it must have some sort of determinate meaning, it runs smack into the problem of the uncertainty we have about the text and about the language. But if you don't have these assertions, then the problems with the text do not somehow prevent it from functioning as scripture, and conveying the salvific message.

 

Ben M.

[canard78]

Don't think it is. The BoM itself refers to possible mistakes.

Indeed:

2 Nephi 33:4 "...And the words which I have written in weakness will be made strong unto them; for it persuadeth them to do good."

2 Nephi 3:21 "...and the weakness of their words will I make strong in their faith..."

Book of Mormon Title Page: "And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men..."

[Calm]

To substantiate the claim.

The claim that there is a list of mistranslations somewhere or the claim that the Bible is the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly?

[Calm]

First, I'm not trolling.

swoops in, gives a superficial challenge, ignores answers and swoops out.....yep, a troll.

[Tacenda]

Noticed this thread from over 2 yrs. ago on another board.  (It got slow here and I check other places out, don't hate me).   I notice some old friends that aren't on much anymore on this thread, I hope they're doing well. 

 

Now, has anything been cleared up on this since then?  Any more ideas or answers to Canard's OP?