Translating The Book Of Mormon Into Hebrew, 1835

[jkwilliams]

I ran across a fascinating bit from Brent Metcalfe's "New Approaches to the Book of Mormon." Ed Ashment discusses two December 1835 documents, in the hand of Oliver Cowdery and Frederick G. Williams, which apparently record Joseph Smith's attempt to translate portions of the Book of Mormon into the original Hebrew.

http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=10284

As Ashment explains, the portions so translated are from the Book of Jacob, so two things can be said about the language in which they would have been written:

1. When these portions were written, the Nephites had just recently arrived in the New World, and Jacob would have therefore known the Hebrew of his father's family.

2. These portions are from the small plates, meaning that they would not have been written in the language of Mormon some 1000 years later.

But wait, you say, Nephi says, "Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." True, but Joseph here is supposed to be translating into Hebrew.

As Ashment notes, the transliterated "Hebrew" bears no resemblance to actual Hebrew, but some of the characters show up in Joseph Smith's reconstructions of missing parts of the Egyptian papyri he later purchased.

Here we see also that the translation method follows closely the method used in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, giving us insight into what Joseph Smith thought he was doing with the characters from the papyri.

I read Metcalfe's book years ago as a believer but hadn't remembered this part. Does anyone know if there has been an apologetic response?

Fascinating stuff.

[jkwilliams]

What I find interesting is that he apparently made this "translation" before he knew anything about Hebrew. It's also interesting that the transliterations of "Hebrew" from the Book of Mormon ("i f s E Zamtri," for example) are curiously similar, IMO, to his transliterations of "Egyptian" in the Book of Abraham (such as "Kli-flos-is-es" and "Kae-e-vanrash"). The common denominator is that neither Smith nor his scribes knew the language in question. When he did learn something of Hebrew, it showed up in his translations of Egyptian.
 

[canard78]

I'd never heard of this. Are the original translations/documents on josephsmithpapers.org?
 
This bit is interesting:
 

Although little evidence exists documenting Smith’s modus operandi in such “literal” translations, two virtually identical translation documents have survived in the handwriting of Smith’s scribes, Oliver Cowdery and Frederick G. Williams. Taken together these two documents provide an important glimpse into Smith’s views of language and translation. Because they are not entirely identical, it is unlikely one was copied from the other. But because they are so nearly alike, it is probable they were produced simultaneously, in December 1835.¹²
[p.334] The translation documents consist of two parts: a transliteration of Book of Mormon English phrases into Hebrew (phonetically in English characters) as Smith apparently conceived it and the English equivalent of four Book of Mormon hieroglyphics. Figure 1 presents a composite of the transliteration portions of the two documents,¹³ accompanied by a modern transliteration into Hebrew, in order to give readers an approximate idea of what a Hebrew transliteration should look like.¹⁴

Figure 1.
Transliterations from English into Book of Mormon Hebrew

Questions asked in English & answered in Hebrew

English
For it grieveth me that I should lose this tree & the fruit thereof
Hebrew Ans. ofin Zimim ezmon E, Zu onis i f s veris etzer ensvonis vineris
[Modern transliteration: ki car li ki yo'bad li ha'ec hazzeh upiryo]

English Brethren I bid you adieu
Hebrew Ans. i f s E Zamtri
[Modern transliteration: 'aHay 'omar lakem shalom]
 
The textual selections in the documents are from Jacob 5:13 and 7:27. Fresh out of Palestine, the Hebrew known to Jacob should have been biblical Hebrew. But as Figure 1 illustrates, it bears no resemblance to Hebrew at all.

Edited November 1, 2013 by canard78

[jkwilliams]

I'd never heard of this. Are the original translations/documents on josephsmithpapers.org?

 

This bit is interesting:

 

 

It is interesting to me, but as far as I can see, it's not on the papers website. Ashment mentions that there appears to be further translation on the back of the Williams copy, but the church has not released that to anyone.

[jkwilliams]

So, no interest in this. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that here we have a good example of Joseph Smith showing exactly how characters on the Book of Mormon plates correspond to English and Hebrew. This is a fascinating glimpse of the translation process, albeit in reverse. It also mirrors the structure of the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, which might help us to understand that document as well. I'm just surprised nobody cares but me.

[canard78]

I was also hoping to get some feedback on this. It seems like a very odd process. How did Joseph manage to translate English into a non-existent Hebrew (especially when he didn't even speak it).

Edited November 2, 2013 by canard78

[jkwilliams]

I was also hoping to get some feedback on this. It seems like a very odd process. How did Joseph manage to translate English into a non-existent Hebrew (especially when he didn't even speak it).

 

Seems to be the same thing he did with the Egyptian papyri.

[canard78]

Seems to be the same thing he did with the Egyptian papyri.

Has this been written about elsewhere? It seems pretty significant from both 'sides' of the fence. I'm surprised MormonThink/the tanners haven't delighted in crowing about this. If I've understood the article right it seems a really odd episode.