The Marvels Of The Book Of Mormon

[Avatar4321]

I keep pondering the Book of Mormon and the message. It makes me marvel to think how an uneducated fanboys dictates a book that is internally consistent with itself and the Bible and teaches the redemption and atonement of man so clearly and powerfully unless it is what he claimed it was.

And why would you be willing to go to your death if it wasn't true.

What reasonable explanation is there for this marvelous book? How can it be anything other than what it claims?

[Darren10]

I agree.

[canard78]

"uneducated fanboys"?? Guessing you meant farmboy?

"The editing process uncovered Joseph’s anomalous assumptions about the nature of revealed words. He never considered the wording infallible. God’s language stood in an indefinite relationship to the human language coming through the Prophet. The revealed preface to the Book of Commandments specified that the language of the revelations was Joseph Smith’s: “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.” 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. Recognizing the pliability of the revealed words, Joseph freely edited the revelations “by the holy Spirit,” making emendations with each new edition. He thought of his revelations as imprinted on his mind, not graven in stone. With each edition, he patched pieces together and altered the wording to clarify meaning. The words were both his and God’s."

Rough Stone Rolling, Bushman.

Why is this relevant, you might ask?

Read the early sections of the D&C, many written before or around the time of the Book of Mormon's publication. If they are in his own language and as much his words as God's then the Book of Mormon can be considered in a similar context. The same "uneducated farm boy" dictated those sections as dictated the BoM.

What you're describing is another "God of the gaps" approach that seems all that's left for religion. You're saying "I can't see or imagine how Joseph Smith produced the BoM so therefore the only explanation must be divine intervention."

Must that be the explanation for all prodigies? I can't imagine how some of the composers of the past produced the works they did, often at a very young age but that doesn't mean the only explanation for it is a divine influence.

[canard78]

I'm drawn to the "creative remixing" explanation for the Book of Mormon and allow room for the possibility that some form of (divine?) influence drove that. As a universalist I allow room for the divine in a variety of sources and I don't see why it can't be a part of the origins of the the BoM. I'll put my cards on the table now though and say that I believe the Nephites probably never existed and that the BoM bears no relationship with any historical events of the Americas 2000 years ago. There are other threads to discuss historicity though so I'll focus on the OP.

If I argue in favour of a creative remix I'd be expected to provide sources for this remix. Creative remixing is not necessarily plagiarism and it's not always intentional copying. As we gain access to more big data it's easier to start mapping out the connections in creativity through the ages. Works of literature, music, film etc can be mapped back through time to identify the artist's influences and sources of inspiration. If a divine influence were in some of those parent sources then one could also accept that a type of divine inspiration (the source, not direct divine intervention) was behind the creation of the next work of art.

While exploring the question in the OP of how Joseph could have written the BoM, I'd also be interested in a list of truly original ideas in it. An argument against creative remixing would be to show things that are in the BoM that Joseph could never have drawn (knowingly or not) from his personal experience. There are a few that could be suggested about ancient cultures, geographies or locations - though that could easily be retro fitting. I can't think of anything doctrinal in the BoM that couldn't have been lifted straight out of Joseph's environment. Feel free to give an example if I've missed it.

[Bobbieaware]

I'm wondering how well the "creative remix" theory is going to fly when on the day of judgement God declares in the ears of all people that the Book of Mormon is precisely what it claims to be. It is so obvious to me that young Joseph Smith (and no one else, for that matter) could have produced the Book of Mormon without mighty help from heaven. One day this will be made perfectly clear to everyone, and there will be many in that day who will wonder how they could have been so blind as to be unable to see what is so obviously true. The coming forth of the Nook of Mormon is as great a miracle as the opening of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus from the dead. When it is read and understood by the power of the Spirit, it becomes as undeniable as is the blazing noonday summer sun that it is verily true.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Bobbieaware

[ksfisher]

The coming forth of the Nook of Mormon is as great a miracle as the opening of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

Is Barnes & Noble up to something that I'm not aware of? [insert suitably funny emoticon here, they're not available on my ipad]

[Kevin Christensen]

I've been watching and at times participating in the back and forth regarding various approaches to the Book of Mormon for several decades now. Even the most ambitious and outwardly formidable attempts to explain the thing as Joseph's creativity strike me as failing utterly to come close to defining the problem that the Book of Mormon represents. Does it contain 19th century language? Well, sure, it is 19th century translation. Does it contain some ideas that resemble 19th century discussions? Sure. Would it be more effective if it were incomprehensible and irrelevant? Does it quote the Bible? Well, yes. That is something that Israelite writers did. And the language used makes it obvious and useful in ways that an independent translation would make obscure and confusing.

Does it contain eye-witness details? That question requires taking the Book of Mormon accounts seriously enough to figure out where those eye-witnesses lived and where they stood and what they could have and would have seen. The range of locations and narrators is quite astounding, which means the range of potential tests is equally astounding. I've read a great many studies by a wide range of scholars, who often devoted a lifetime of study in order to prepare their minds to be able to recognize and comment on a relatively thin slice of the Book of Mormon. I've piled up all of those slices into a pile that resembles a Dagwood sandwich. For me it has been a feast, and I have never seen a critic address that problem. They might nibble at a corner or an edge, say, complain about Nahom. But they don't deal with the interconnectedness of Nahom and all of the details of Bountiful, and quasida, and the story of the bow, and First Temple theology, and the Lachish letters, and Hebrew poetry and rhetorical forms, and type scenes, and meaningful content, and the 600 plus interlocking physical details of the New World setting.

Benjamin's Speech has to have a plausible location, and has to include elements of an ancient coronation, plus the Israelite festivals of Tabernacles, Day of Atonement, plus Sabbath and Jubilee, plus demonstrate a range of poetic forms and figures, plus have an overall chiastic structure, that fits the larger chiastic structure of Mosiah, plus fit nicely from a Mesoamerican standpoint in comparison to the San Bartelo murals, with their temple themes and coronation on a tower. Plus, themes and structure that illustrate the Wisdom tradition and Proverbs. And on top of that, it turns out to have something meaningful to say to readers who have no idea that any of this is going on.

And repeat that kind of wide ranging complexity, while using a remarkably simple vocabulary. And spice that simple vocabulary with hundreds of odd and non-Biblical names, whose root meanings in Hebrew turn out to have implications for many of the stories and situations.

The things is, all of the 19th century composition approaches I have seen not only leave all of this kind of thing off the table, unmentioned, and unexplained, but that failure to even consider such information is built into the limits of a 19th century approach.

Even Ostler's attempt to be comprehensive in 1987, with the expansion approach, turns out to have been published in the same year as Margaret Barker's The Older Testament. And since most of Ostler's proposed expansions dealt with the Book of Mormon as being too Christian before Christ, that can be resolved as authentic Temple Theology, rather than modern expansions.

Speaking of retro-fitting easily, Michael Coe for the PBS interview, claimed that Joseph Smith composed the Book of Mormon while imagining a continent spanning setting, and then being flabberghasted upon reading the John Lloyd Stephens Incidents of Travel, and then deciding on a Mesoamerican location. For Coe's reading to make sense, he ought to explain how Joseph Smith was imagining some location in South America for the Sidon, while accurately describing the course of the Grijalva. (See Larry Poulson). But of course, Coe doesn't bother to either read closely or account for what believing scholars have found. A gossip-level definition works well enough.

The settings that the Book of Mormon claims for itself turn out to provide the most rigorous test of its claims. Nibley pointed that out in 1953.

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Edited June 29, 2015 by Kevin Christensen

[tagriffy]

I'm wondering how well the "creative remix" theory is going to fly when on the day of judgement God declares in the ears of all people that the Book of Mormon is precisely what it claims to be. It is so obvious to me that young Joseph Smith (and no one else, for that matter) could have produced the Book of Mormon without mighty help from heaven. One day this will be made perfectly clear to everyone, and there will be many in that day who will wonder how they could have been so blind as to be unable to see what is so obviously true. The coming forth of the Nook of Mormon is as great a miracle as the opening of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus from the dead. When it is read and understood by the power of the Spirit, it becomes as undeniable as is the blazing noonday summer sun that it is verily true.

 

I presume you mean by "precisely what it claims to be" is in reference to historicity. If so, then if God expected us to take it as a historical document, then he should have left a proverbial "Welcome to Zarahemla sign." Meanwhile, we do the best with what we do have. If God doesn't understand that, then he's not someone I want to be associated with anyway.

 

What does the Book of Mormon claim to be? It claims to be something "to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever--And also the the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations" (Title Page). If that is what God means if he declares the Book of Mormon is precisely it claims to be, then it seems to be all the wrangling over historicity will come off as being a bit silly.

[tagriffy]

Benjamin's Speech has to have a plausible location, and has to include elements of an ancient coronation, plus the Israelite festivals of Tabernacles, Day of Atonement, plus Sabbath and Jubilee, plus demonstrate a range of poetic forms and figures, plus have an overall chiastic structure, that fits the larger chiastic structure of Mosiah, plus fit nicely from a Mesoamerican standpoint in comparison to the San Bartelo murals, with their temple themes and coronation on a tower. Plus, themes and structure that illustrate the Wisdom tradition and Proverbs. And on top of that, it turns out to have something meaningful to say to readers who have no idea that any of this is going on.

And repeat that kind of wide ranging complexity, while using a remarkably simple vocabulary. And spice that simple vocabulary with hundreds of odd and non-Biblical names, whose root meanings in Hebrew turn out to have implications for many of the stories and situations.

The things is, all of the 19th century composition approaches I have seen not only leave all of this kind of thing off the table, unmentioned, and unexplained, but that failure to even consider such information is built into the limits of a 19th century approach.

 

Ah, you of all people should know how and why those things get left off the table in taking a 19th century approach--assuming for the moment all those things are in fact going on. You have noted there will always be counterfactuals to any given theory yourself. From a 19th century approach, either those things can be explained just as well or they have no notable impact on the approach. Theory guides the questions, the evidence that is considered admissible, and the interpretation of the evidence. It also guides in assessing the validity of any critiques. If something is irrelevant, there is no reason to address it. Biologists are not obligated to address The Genesis Flood every time they write a textbook on evolution; neither are environmentalists obligated to consider everything a historicist comes up with. To be absolutely clear, this works in reverse as well; historicists are not obligated to answer every environmentalist critique.

[Mormonmaniac]

I've been watching and at times participating in the back and forth regarding various approaches to the Book of Mormon for several decades now. Even the most ambitious and outwardly formidable attempts to explain the thing as Joseph's creativity strike me as failing utterly to come close to defining the problem that the Book of Mormon represents. Does it contain 19th century language? Well, sure, it is 19th century translation. Does it contain some ideas that resemble 19th century discussions? Sure. Would it be more effective if it were incomprehensible and irrelevant? Does it quote the Bible? Well, yes. That is something that Israelite writers did. And the language used makes it obvious and useful in ways that an independent translation would make obscure and confusing.

Does it contain eye-witness details? That question requires taking the Book of Mormon accounts seriously enough to figure out where those eye-witnesses lived and where they stood and what they could have and would have seen. The range of locations and narrators is quite astounding, which means the range of potential tests is equally astounding. I've read a great many studies by a wide range of scholars, who often devoted a lifetime of study in order to prepare their minds to be able to recognize and comment on a relatively thin slice of the Book of Mormon. I've piled up all of those slices into a pile that resembles a Dagwood sandwich. For me it has been a feast, and I have never seen a critic address that problem. They might nibble at a corner or an edge, say, complain about Nahom. But they don't deal with the interconnectedness of Nahom and all of the details Bountiful, and quasida, and the story of the bow, and First Temple theology, and the Lachish letters, and Hebrew poetry and rhetorical forms, and type scenes, and meaningful content, and the 600 plus interlocking physical details of the New World setting.

Benjamin's Speech has to have a plausible location, and has to include elements of an ancient coronation, plus the Israelite festivals of Tabernacles, Day of Atonement, plus Sabbath and Jubilee, plus demonstrate a range of poetic forms and figures, plus have an overall chiastic structure, that fits the larger chiastic structure of Mosiah, plus fit nicely from a Mesoamerican standpoint in comparison to the San Bartelo murals, with their temple themes and coronation on a tower. Plus, themes and structure that illustrate the Wisdom tradition and Proverbs. And on top of that, it turns out to have something meaningful to say to readers who have no idea that any of this is going on.

And repeat that kind of wide ranging complexity, while using a remarkably simple vocabulary. And spice that simple vocabulary with hundreds of odd and non-Biblical names, whose root meanings in Hebrew turn out to have implications for many of the stories and situations.

The things is, all of the 19th century composition approaches I have seen not only leave all of this kind of thing off the table, unmentioned, and unexplained, but that failure to even consider such information is built into the limits of a 19th century approach.

Even Ostler's attempt to be comprehensive in 1987, with the expansion approach, turns out to have been published in the same year as Margaret Barker's The Older Testament. And since most of Ostler's proposed expansions dealt with the Book of Mormon as being too Christian before Christ, that can be resolved as authentic Temple Theology, rather than modern expansions.

Speaking of retro-fitting easily, Michael Coe for the PBS interview, claimed that Joseph Smith composed the Book of Mormon while imagining a continent spanning setting, and then being flabberghasted upon reading the John Lloyd Stephens Incidents of Travel, and then deciding on a Mesoamerican location. For Coe's reading to make sense, he ought to explain how Joseph Smith was imagining some location in South America for the Sidon, while accurately describing the course of the Grijalva. (See Larry Poulson). But of course, Coe doesn't bother to either read closely or account for what believing scholars have found. A gossip-level definition works well enough.

The settings that the Book of Mormon claims for itself turn out to provide the most rigorous test of its claims. Nibley pointed that out in 1953.

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

I personally thin a meso-american setting for the Nephites does a dis-service to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith translated a rcord and never once, while interpreting it, had the geographical locations in mind. The Book stands on its own without shoehorning a pet theory of geography into its covers.

[tagriffy]

I personally thin a meso-american setting for the Nephites does a dis-service to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith translated a rcord and never once, while interpreting it, had the geographical locations in mind. The Book stands on its own without shoehorning a pet theory of geography into its covers.

 

Oh, I think the Prophet had geographical locations in mind somewhere along the way. The text is generally consistent about the basic shape of the land and the layout of the territories therein. I don't see that happening without having at least a rough sketch in one's mind. Whether that sketch fits anywhere in the real world is an entirely different question, of course.

 

I agree with you the Book of Mormon stands on its own, but I have a different reason for not trying to shoehorn it into a pet theory of geography. And that is the simple fact that no Book of Mormon site has been definitively identified. We can certainly work an internal map of Book of Mormon locations, but until we can definitively put at least one of those locations on a real world map, we're not going to be able to truly work out a Book of Mormon geography. However plausible a given model or how well it fits into a given context, it will all be for naught if someone digs up Zarahemla and it turns out to be in an entirely different location.

[Mormonmaniac]

Oh, I think the Prophet had geographical locations in mind somewhere along the way. The text is generally consistent about the basic shape of the land and the layout of the territories therein. I don't see that happening without having at least a rough sketch in one's mind. Whether that sketch fits anywhere in the real world is an entirely different question, of course.

 

I agree with you the Book of Mormon stands on its own, but I have a different reason for not trying to shoehorn it into a pet theory of geography. And that is the simple fact that no Book of Mormon site has been definitively identified. We can certainly work an internal map of Book of Mormon locations, but until we can definitively put at least one of those locations on a real world map, we're not going to be able to truly work out a Book of Mormon geography. However plausible a given model or how well it fits into a given context, it will all be for naught if someone digs up Zarahemla and it turns out to be in an entirely different location.

I agree with you. I have my own ideas on geography but I also reserve the knowledge that it is just a fictional location as of yet. It works best for me to paint my own picture of the BoM with no place of geography in mind. The text comes to life by the people itself and their interactions rather than a belief in one place of geography over another. My interpretations of geography are very loose and open minded with acknowledgement that any of the lands could be anywhere. We fail when we start to place assumptions and guesses and then go on to say "I am right".

[Nevo]

I'm drawn to the "creative remixing" explanation for the Book of Mormon and allow room for the possibility that some form of (divine?) influence drove that.

 

There was a very interesting session on the translation of the Book of Mormon at the most recent MHA conference. Terryl Givens led off with "some notes toward a theoretical framework." Most of it was over my head, but I did learn a couple of new words: bricoleur and bricolage. A bricoleur is basically "a creative remixer"—one who reworks old materials into something new—and Givens suggested that this was what Joseph was doing in his translation of the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, he didn't really elaborate. He just raised the possibility and then moved on to discussions of Schleiermacher and Heschel and hieroglyphics and Diderot and Shelley, nineteenth-century novels using affidavits to bolster "narrative authority," etc.

 

Givens was followed by Jared Hickman, who provocatively argued that a "surface reading" of the Book of Mormon "reframes the historicity question" since the text itself is "consciously, committedly anachronistic," its temporality "extravagantly non-linear." In other words—contrary to popular belief—the Book of Mormon doesn't ask to be read as an ancient text (the spatio-temporal frame of the Book of Mormon really has no parallels in ancient Near Eastern or Mesoamerican texts) but as something else. Hickman calls it a "messianic text"—a "sustained exercise in speaking of things to come as though they had already happened." It wasn't a linguistic translation—Joseph literally turned away from linguistic translation, leaving the plates lying covered on the table—but rather a "metaphysical" translation: a translation of worlds rather than words. Hickman quoted early Mormon patriarchal blessings where people were promised the ability to travel between worlds, to "waft" themselves from place to place. He suggests that Joseph Smith may have thought of himself as doing something similar. Lucy Mack Smith wrote of Joseph describing (circa 1823) "the ancient inhabitants of this continent; their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their <mode of> warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them." Joseph described ancient America as though he had actually been there, and he found prophets there doing the same thing but in reverse, clearly describing nineteenth-century conditions as if they were present.

 

Samuel M. Brown was the final presenter. He too argued that Joseph's mode of translation was "impressionistic/mental" rather than the older "mystical linguist" view where Joseph could actually decipher Reformed Egyptian, or the verbal model where Joseph simply read English words off the seer stone. It was self-consciously an oral performance. The text often uses oral verbs like "I say" to describe a written speech act. He also noted several apparent verbal missteps (at Alma 30:9, Mosiah 7:8, Alma 2:34, 1 Nephi 19:7; and Alma 24:19), where "or rather..." (or some similar phrasing) seems to indicate on-the-fly emendations to the text. Presumably this would not have been necessary had Joseph simply been reading off of a supernatural teleprompter. Brown also pointed out something so obvious I don't know how I missed it before. The Jaredite "plates within plates" are self-consciously a type of the broader Book of Mormon story (e.g., gold plates/gold plates, Ramah/Cumorah, destroyed Jaredites/destroyed Nephites).

 

Anyway, it was a great session. I think you would have enjoyed it. I would love to see these papers eventually appear in written form somewhere, but I doubt they will.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Nevo

[Nevo]

dup

Edited June 29, 2015 by Nevo

[canard78]

There was a very interesting session on the translation of the Book of Mormon at the most recent MHA conference. Terryl Givens led off with "some notes toward a theoretical framework." Most of it was over my head, but I did learn a couple of new words: bricoleur and bricolage. A bricoleur is basically "a creative remixer"—one who reworks old materials into something new—and Givens suggested that this was what Joseph was doing in his translation of the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, he didn't really elaborate. He just raised the possibility and then moved on to discussions of Schleiermacher and Heschel and hieroglyphics and Diderot and Shelley, nineteenth-century novels using affidavits to bolster "narrative authority," etc.

- SNIP -

Anyway, it was a great session. I think you would have enjoyed it. I would love to see these papers eventually appear in written form somewhere, but I doubt they will.

Yes, it certainly sounds intriguing.

I wonder if anyone who is in correspondence with Givens could ask him to elaborate. I know two people who are so I'll drop them a note.

The God Who Weeps has an overtone of that nature. The Givenses illustrate that many/most of the ideas that grew within Mormonism (in the BoM and later in other revelations and sermons) are drawn from existing ideas in Joseph's environment.

It's a restoration. Existing but fragmented ideas were taken and gathered into one place. Restored into a single unit of thought and theology. It's perhaps better described as a distillation of collation.

[Robert F. Smith]

I personally thin a meso-american setting for the Nephites does a dis-service to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith translated a rcord and never once, while interpreting it, had the geographical locations in mind. The Book stands on its own without shoehorning a pet theory of geography into its covers.

Probably most people haven't the time or inclination to consider the geographical theories applied to the BofM, and most converts accept the LDS faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.  I see nothing at all wrong with that.

 

However, are you saying that those who do address such factual questions (pro or con) are showing bad manners, asking unanswerable questions, or are dealing heresy?  What is this "disservice" thing that has you in a spin?

[Robert F. Smith]

I agree with you. I have my own ideas on geography but I also reserve the knowledge that it is just a fictional location as of yet. It works best for me to paint my own picture of the BoM with no place of geography in mind.

Are you therefore disappointed with those who attempt to map Middle Earth or the House at Pooh Corner?  Is this always and everywhere inappropriate?

 

The text comes to life by the people itself and their interactions rather than a belief in one place of geography over another. My interpretations of geography are very loose and open minded with acknowledgement that any of the lands could be anywhere. We fail when we start to place assumptions and guesses and then go on to say "I am right".

So biblical scholars have no more right than Book of Mormon scholars to map anything which has heretofore defied establishing the actual site?  Are those sorts of things all just guesses and baseless assumptions?  All scholars just egomanaical and self-assertive?  No room for forensic evidence and debate?

[tagriffy]

Yes, it certainly sounds intriguing.

I wonder if anyone who is in correspondence with Givens could ask him to elaborate. I know two people who are so I'll drop them a note.

The God Who Weeps has an overtone of that nature. The Givenses illustrate that many/most of the ideas that grew within Mormonism (in the BoM and later in other revelations and sermons) are drawn from existing ideas in Joseph's environment.

It's a restoration. Existing but fragmented ideas were taken and gathered into one place. Restored into a single unit of thought and theology. It's perhaps better described as a distillation of collation.

 

You're going to like David Bokovoy's Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis-Deuteronomy. His chapters on the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham will resonate well with your thoughts.

[Robert F. Smith]

....................................................

Read the early sections of the D&C, many written before or around the time of the Book of Mormon's publication. If they are in his own language and as much his words as God's then the Book of Mormon can be considered in a similar context. The same "uneducated farm boy" dictated those sections as dictated the BoM.

With the proviso that Joe normally had someone else acting as scribe.  His own personal writings were atrocious, but his scribes cleaned it up pretty well.  He vastly improved in his powers of English expression over time.  Bushman has frankly discussed his own experience as a stake patriarch, in which he edited his own patriarchal blessings (while typing them up from his recording, cause he didn't use a secretary).

What you're describing is another "God of the gaps" approach that seems all that's left for religion. You're saying "I can't see or imagine how Joseph Smith produced the BoM so therefore the only explanation must be divine intervention."

Must that be the explanation for all prodigies? I can't imagine how some of the composers of the past produced the works they did, often at a very young age but that doesn't mean the only explanation for it is a divine influence.

The "god of the gaps" explanation is a copout for both believers and unbelievers, very much akin to dropping the ball before actually coming to grips with hard evidence.  We need to address hard evidence and not ignore it with a contemptuous sweep of the hand.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

....................................................................

...............................................The Givenses illustrate that many/most of the ideas that grew within Mormonism (in the BoM and later in other revelations and sermons) are drawn from existing ideas in Joseph's environment.

It's a restoration. Existing but fragmented ideas were taken and gathered into one place. Restored into a single unit of thought and theology. It's perhaps better described as a distillation of collation.

Would Terryl Givens agree with this overall characterization of his work?

 

I have also gone over the available ideas for Joseph's day and have found a great deal of material which matches up very well with him and his approach -- from the Romantic movement and from the American Renaissance, etc., and one can easily portray Joe as a Renaissance magus (I wrote an entire book on the subject) -- but to say that it constitutes "most" of his sources and provides an adequate explanation cannot be sustained by the hard evidence, as I demonstrate in several studies:  See my “The Preposterous Book of Mormon: A Singular Advantage,” lecture, August 8, 2014, at the annual FAIRMORMON Conference, Provo, Utah, online at http://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/PREPOSTEROUS-BOOK-OF-MORMON.pdf .

 

What we do have is the coalescing of manifold historical influences which presage the Restoration, as we should expect in any case.  History does not take place in a vacuum, and explaining Joseph as a prodigy just doesn't go far enough.

[Kevin Christensen]

Ah, you of all people should know how and why those things get left off the table in taking a 19th century approach--assuming for the moment all those things are in fact going on. You have noted there will always be counterfactuals to any given theory yourself. From a 19th century approach, either those things can be explained just as well or they have no notable impact on the approach. Theory guides the questions, the evidence that is considered admissible, and the interpretation of the evidence. It also guides in assessing the validity of any critiques. If something is irrelevant, there is no reason to address it. Biologists are not obligated to address The Genesis Flood every time they write a textbook on evolution; neither are environmentalists obligated to consider everything a historicist comes up with. To be absolutely clear, this works in reverse as well; historicists are not obligated to answer every environmentalist critique.

Yes... all sorts of things get left off the table or put on, depending on one's theoretical approach. But something else happens when it comes time to consider which paradigm is better? That means everything everyone has goes up on a much bigger arena than any single table holds. I could imagine that rather than one restaurant with one chef, one table, and one menu, I get to consider the offerings of a noisy competitive marketplace. That means that theoretical presumptions are admitted to be self-referential, and should not be used to decide which paradigm is better. Orthodoxy or popularity or group or intellectual fashion police approval is not enough. The need to face real competition challenges uncritical presumption.

Which is approach most testable, accurate, comprehensive and coherent? Which is the most fruitful? Which is simplest and most appealing? Which is the promising and worth committing to for future efforts in dealing with open questions? Which is better? Which problems are more signifant to have solved?

I learned long ago that anyone can dismiss another paradigm by simply saying, "So what?" Or by insisting that one's pet issue matters more than any other explanatory success. Or by simply saying, I don't like that chef and I hate the way they set the table.

I'm saying that when I read Brodie, for instance, I find her 19th Century composition by a con man who meant well theory does not explain a great many things that I find impressive. Her paradigm is not "Better" in terms of a specific set of values and a wide range of evidence.

I'm saying that when I read American Apocrypha or New Approaches, or Palmer or Coe, or Dehlin, that I find that their approaches do not address, explain, or account for a great many things that are important to me.

I'm saying that when I consider Religious Studies approaches that, as a matter of social protocol, I should presume that it's rude to actually go around in polite company talking about historicity, when there is so much that could be said that does not offend people who find uncritical presumption of a 19th century origin to be a sufficient explanation of the Book of Mormon. It happens that I find their readings of the Book of Mormon suffer in comparison to those willing to take the text seriously enough to challenge it. Stendahl's reading of 3 Nephi is interesting, but is not better than Welch's and Anderson's and Nibley's and Kowallis's readings.

If I can stand where the authors stood, I can see things that the translator did not imagine. If I chose only to stand where the translator stood, I am then limited to those horizons.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburgh, PA

Edited June 29, 2015 by Kevin Christensen

[Gray]

I'm wondering how well the "creative remix" theory is going to fly when on the day of judgement God declares in the ears of all people that the Book of Mormon is precisely what it claims to be. It is so obvious to me that young Joseph Smith (and no one else, for that matter) could have produced the Book of Mormon without mighty help from heaven. One day this will be made perfectly clear to everyone, and there will be many in that day who will wonder how they could have been so blind as to be unable to see what is so obviously true. The coming forth of the Nook of Mormon is as great a miracle as the opening of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus from the dead. When it is read and understood by the power of the Spirit, it becomes as undeniable as is the blazing noonday summer sun that it is verily true.

 

I can't imagine why God would care whether or not we think a particular book is historical. 

[ERayR]

I can't imagine why God would care whether or not we think a particular book is historical. 

 

Because it affects the way you approach its precepts (as fiction).

[Gray]

Because it affects the way you approach its precepts (as fiction).

 

Either the principles taught in it are good or they are not, whether or not Nephites existed 

[hope_for_things]

There was a very interesting session on the translation of the Book of Mormon at the most recent MHA conference. Terryl Givens led off with "some notes toward a theoretical framework." Most of it was over my head, but I did learn a couple of new words: bricoleur and bricolage. A bricoleur is basically "a creative remixer"—one who reworks old materials into something new—and Givens suggested that this was what Joseph was doing in his translation of the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, he didn't really elaborate. He just raised the possibility and then moved on to discussions of Schleiermacher and Heschel and hieroglyphics and Diderot and Shelley, nineteenth-century novels using affidavits to bolster "narrative authority," etc.

 

Givens was followed by Jared Hickman, who provocatively argued that a "surface reading" of the Book of Mormon "reframes the historicity question" since the text itself is "consciously, committedly anachronistic," its temporality "extravagantly non-linear." In other words—contrary to popular belief—the Book of Mormon doesn't ask to be read as an ancient text (the spatio-temporal frame of the Book of Mormon really has no parallels in ancient Near Eastern or Mesoamerican texts) but as something else. Hickman calls it a "messianic text"—a "sustained exercise in speaking of things to come as though they had already happened." It wasn't a linguistic translation—Joseph literally turned away from linguistic translation, leaving the plates lying covered on the table—but rather a "metaphysical" translation: a translation of worlds rather than words. Hickman quoted early Mormon patriarchal blessings where people were promised the ability to travel between worlds, to "waft" themselves from place to place. He suggests that Joseph Smith may have thought of himself as doing something similar. Lucy Mack Smith wrote of Joseph describing (circa 1823) "the ancient inhabitants of this continent; their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their <mode of> warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them." Joseph described ancient America as though he had actually been there, and he found prophets there doing the same thing but in reverse, clearly describing nineteenth-century conditions as if they were present.

 

Samuel M. Brown was the final presenter. He too argued that Joseph's mode of translation was "impressionistic/mental" rather than the older "mystical linguist" view where Joseph could actually decipher Reformed Egyptian, or the verbal model where Joseph simply read English words off the seer stone. It was self-consciously an oral performance. The text often uses oral verbs like "I say" to describe a written speech act. He also noted several apparent verbal missteps (at Alma 30:9, Mosiah 7:8, Alma 2:34, 1 Nephi 19:7; and Alma 24:19), where "or rather..." (or some similar phrasing) seems to indicate on-the-fly emendations to the text. Presumably this would not have been necessary had Joseph simply been reading off of a supernatural teleprompter. Brown also pointed out something so obvious I don't know how I missed it before. The Jaredite "plates within plates" are self-consciously a type of the broader Book of Mormon story (e.g., gold plates/gold plates, Ramah/Cumorah, destroyed Jaredites/destroyed Nephites).

 

Anyway, it was a great session. I think you would have enjoyed it. I would love to see these papers eventually appear in written form somewhere, but I doubt they will.

Wow, thanks for this summary of MHA and what you learned there.  This is excellent!  I wanted to go, but had a family commitment that weekend.  This is the kind of stuff that keeps me interested in the BoM.  Thanks again!