KJV in the Book of Mormon

[Robert F. Smith]

28 minutes ago, Mormons Talk said:

I don't doubt that going to the Hebrew reveals all sorts of interesting things. If I'm understanding you right, you're saying that you'd look for wordplay in Hebrew that is not translated into the KJV, but which also shows up in the BOM?

Yes.  Matt Bowen has written on the many instances in which Hebraic wordplay is based on the etymology of an associated name.  The same sort of thing occurs frequently in the Bible, and the LDS Bible footnotes call attention to them -- as does any good commentary.

[Ahab]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

It might seem like King James Version English (Elizabethan-Jacobite English used in the 1611 edition) is being used, but the reality is that it is in Early Modern English, which is more archaic and has many structures which now seem ungrammatical.  They even seemed ungrammatical to Joseph, who set about correcting them for the second and third editions of the BofM.

Okay, thank you for the technical correction, I suppose. I refer to that language as KJV English because I think of it as the same language used in what is referred to as the KJV version of the Bible and most people who know that version of the Bible can relate to what I am talking about.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

Okay, thank you for the technical correction, I suppose. I refer to that language as KJV English because I think of it as the same language used in what is referred to as the KJV version of the Bible and most people who know that version of the Bible can relate to what I am talking about.

We were in fact talking of the same English style -- KJV of 1611.  That is the preferred LDS text.  EME is not the same at all, even though our surface impressions have them as the same.  The well-known KJV just doesn't exhibit the seemingly ungrammatical features of EME and the Book of Mormon.

[Mormons Talk]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We were in fact talking of the same English style -- KJV of 1611.  That is the preferred LDS text.  EME is not the same at all, even though our surface impressions have them as the same.  The well-known KJV just doesn't exhibit the seemingly ungrammatical features of EME and the Book of Mormon.

Do you know if other pseudo-biblical texts have been analyzed to see if they contain EME?

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Mormons Talk said:

Do you know if other pseudo-biblical texts have been analyzed to see if they contain EME?

Good question, and I think that Stanford Carmack has actually looked for such occurrences and not found any.  Most of the diagnostic features of EME go extinct long before Joseph Smith's time.  So attempting to use it would be very difficult.

[mfbukowski]

On 3/23/2017 at 5:51 AM, churchistrue said:

That makes sense.  It would be interesting to see at what rate do other books of the time use these KJV n-grams.  But then you get back to the question of whether someone was intentionally trying to sound like the Bible, ie the ancient style, vs writing normally.  And then you get back to the question, well how difficult was it to write in the "ancient style".  hmm.

With all due respect maybe you can help me see why this is important in discovering whether or not the BOM is good theology or helps us live better lives and how this study is relevant to spirituality.

I have never seen it, so maybe you can help.  Maybe that is an unfair question because you see the world differently than I do, I guess.  I suppose I am making you a proxy for all those who see those questions as important, so please ignore this if you find it totally obvious, because that will just show there are different approaches to all this- which is not surprising.

I fully understand it is important to some, just not me, or others who see things as I do.

In my opinion, Joseph used his natural vocabulary to write/translate the BOM.  "Translate" is a rather odd word to use when someone got the text looking at a stone in a hat, so all this historical analysis seems.... not horribly relevant to me, quite honestly

Edited April 25, 2017 by mfbukowski

[6EQUJ5]

35 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

With all due respect maybe you can help me see why this is important in discovering whether or not the BOM is good theology or helps us live better lives and how this study is relevant to spirituality.

I have never seen it, so maybe you can help.  Maybe that is an unfair question because you see the world differently than I do, I guess.  I suppose I am making you a proxy for all those who see those questions as important, so please ignore this if you find it totally obvious, because that will just show there are different approaches to all this- which is not surprising.

I fully understand it is important to some, just not me, or others who see things as I do.

In my opinion, Joseph used his natural vocabulary to write/translate the BOM.  "Translate" is a rather odd word to use when someone got the text looking at a stone in a hat, so all this historical analysis seems.... not horribly relevant to me, quite honestly

I'm with you. I don't know why some find these things interesting.  Incredibly boring if you ask me.

[mfbukowski]

13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I have long said that the only Hebraisms worth considering in the BofM are those which do not appear in the KJV.  One needs to go to the Hebrew itself in the biblical text in order to make valid comparisons.  When that is done, all sorts of wordplay becomes apparent which is invisible in English.  On balance, however, I find far more Egyptianisms in the BofM text than Hebraisms.

You know between all these issues I think you either throw it out or honestly find that it has spiritual origins, with the EME, and the direct quotes from the family bible and Egyptianisms, it is such a mixture that COULD have a spiritual origins, and you have pointed out that the whole notion is preposterous- which is to it's advantage

I am re-reading the BOM now looking for doctrines which illuminate or change Christianity and thinking in terms of the young man who wrote/translated the text- I am primarily looking for philosophical/theological content

These are some doctrinal revolutionary ideas found in Alma 13- some are simple allusions to the doctrine, others are clear statements, but all are new to Christianity

Ordination to the Priesthood after the order of the Son of God

Future Redemption through Christ

Purpose of priesthood authority

Pre-earth life

Intelligences existing from "the foundation of the world"

Foreordination through faithfulness

Foreknowledge of God

Free Agency

Callings provide a preparatory redemption 

We all have an equal opportunity at redemption if we listen to the spirit

Priesthood is to serve mankind

Priesthood is eternal

There might be "multiple eternities"

Being called to the priesthood and ordained is an ordinance

And a covenant

Priesthood status earned through faith and repentance

We are co-eternal with God himself

Garments washed clean through redemption

Many achieve this

Melchizadek was a priest after this order- to whom Abraham paid tithes

Salem had gone astray, but repented

This was a pre-figuring of Christ

Revelation has not stopped, but is on-going

And all these doctrines and allusions of doctrines which revolutionized Christianity were the words of a young man who was uneducated.  These are revolutionary doctrines and clarifications from a young man, spoken about as a coherent paradigm, already fully formulated, but in many cases mentioned in passing as if the audience would already be familiar with these ideas

And all these are presented or alluded to in only 30 verses!!  In ONE chapter of the Book of Mormon.

And some are worried about using King James language??

LOOK AT THE CONTENT!  Who could have done that??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2017 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

38 minutes ago, 6EQUJ5 said:

I'm with you. I don't know why some find these things interesting.  Incredibly boring if you ask me.

It's like the aliens landing and all we care about is the scientific workings of their ship and nothing about their culture or what is important to them.  I get the reference to communication from "aliens"

This obsession we have with alleged "evidence" for spiritual matters has to go. It's on the way out anyway, its inevitable.  For every action there is a reaction. 

[Robert F. Smith]

33 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

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

Ordination to the Priesthood after the order of the Son of God

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

Purpose of priesthood authority

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

Priesthood is to serve mankind

Priesthood is eternal

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

Being called to the priesthood and ordained is an ordinance

And a covenant

Priesthood status earned through faith and repentance

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

Melchizadek was a priest after this order- to whom Abraham paid tithes

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

How odd that a boy influenced mainly by Methodism and Presbyterianism should focus on priesthood authority.  And so many sacraments qua ordinances!!

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

................................................o.

In my opinion, Joseph used his natural vocabulary to write/translate the BOM.  "Translate" is a rather odd word to use when someone got the text looking at a stone in a hat, so all this historical analysis seems.... not horribly relevant to me, quite honestly

Except of course that the word "translate" can mean "transmit" in that period (Webster's 1828 Dictionary).  As Royal Skousen recently said at his speech at BYU, our 8th Article of Faith really says that we believe the Bible only insofar as it is transmitted correctly -- which rightly puts a burden on the scribal transmission.

[champatsch]

16 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Good question, and I think that Stanford Carmack has actually looked for such occurrences and not found any.  Most of the diagnostic features of EME go extinct long before Joseph Smith's time.  So attempting to use it would be very difficult.

Here is some information on that:

     The language of the Book of Mormon is very different in form and structure from pseudo-biblical writings of the late 1700s and early 1800s, in a number of linguistic domains. The influence of pseudo-biblical style on the earliest text of the Book of Mormon is thus contra-indicated. Of course there are some similarities, but there are many fundamental, structural differences in morphology and syntax. These differences rule out classifying the Book of Mormon as a pseudo-biblical effort. That the earliest text also matches a wide variety of Early Modern English usage also means that it is not a pseudo-archaic text either.

Findings

-  Agentive of: The Book of Mormon is broadly archaic in this regard, approaching King James usage levels; pseudo-biblical writings have very little agentive of usage.

-  Relative pronoun usage with personal antecedents: The Book of Mormon’s pattern is archaic but neither biblical, pseudo-biblical, or modern; this solid authorship marker argues strongly against Joseph Smith wording the earliest text.

- Periphrastic did: Joseph Smith was extremely unlikely to have produced the ubiquitous past-tense syntax of the Book of Mormon; its high rate and syntactic distribution are 16th-century in character, not pseudo-biblical, biblical, or modern.

-  Verbal complementation after high-frequency verbs: One cannot generate the Book of Mormon’s heavy finite rates from biblical, pseudo-biblical, or modern syntactic patterns; only thorough knowledge of Early Modern English possibilities generates its archaic auxiliary usage, heavy doses of dual-object syntax, and principled variation.

-  The more part: Book of Mormon usage is similar to what we see in some chronicles from the first half of the Early Modern English era; we don’t find this obsolete phrase in pseudo-biblical writings; scant King James usage left no impression on them in this regard.

-  Had spake: This leveled past-participial form is absent from the King James Bible and pseudo-biblical writings; the Book of Mormon’s use of related “had been spake” and “of which hath been spoken”—both rare and attested in the 17th century—inform us that “had spake” is best classified as an Early Modern English form.

-  The {‑th} plural: The Book of Mormon gives us a nearly complete view of the diverse possibilities of {‑th} inflection in earlier English; neither the King James Bible nor pseudo-biblical writings do.

[champatsch]

On 3/23/2017 at 8:26 AM, Brant Gardner said:

The best work done on this topic is Nicholas J. Frederick, The Bible, Mormon Scripture, and the Rhetoric of Allusivity.  There are certainly cases where the allusions to the Bible appear to have textual meaning. However, there are many, such as many that you are suggesting, that really are the result of general biblical literacy (in the sense of education, not always reading). The KJV language pervaded that time period, aided in part by a relatively recent innovation in publishing which made Bibles cheaper and was combined with the efforts of a group to make it possible for all households to own a Bible. 

Lavina Fielding Anderson presented a paper at the Mormon History Association a few years back entitled "Mother Tongue," which examined the use of KJV language in the general correspondence of the Smith family. It was clearly a part of their common vocabulary. So the ultimate answer to your question about whether Joseph could have known the phrases to use without specific intentionality is that yes, he could--and his family also could, and did in their correspondence.

The problem with assigning interwoven biblical language to Joseph Smith because of biblical saturation is that the sentence structure of the book should be a hybrid of biblical and modern (Joseph Smith's dialect).  But it isn't.  Had Smith produced the text from his own biblically saturated language, the form and structure of the Book of Mormon would be very different from what it actually is. The degree of biblical saturation Joseph might have had in 1829, for purposes of assigning/defending authorship, is irrelevant. The profile of the person needed for crafting the English language of the Book of Mormon was a first-rate philologist—someone extremely knowledgeable in the linguistics and literature of earlier English.

[Thinking]

On 3/23/2017 at 5:54 PM, carbon dioxide said:

It is all pretty interesting stuff.  The whole idea that Joseph just copied stuff out of the KJV is absurd to me.  Given the fact that the scribes said Joseph used not outside materials like a Bible in the translation process and he had his face in a hat, those who oppose the BOM would have me to believe the following.  Joseph Smith read and memorized several thousand words of KJV Isaiah for example.  Then put his face in a hat and repeated the words to a scribe with like 99% accuracy.  Then after this was done he went his way and memorized several thousand more word and the next day did it over again and then did it again and again.  Unless he is one of those freaks who have a photographic memory, I don't see how he could memorize so much KJV so fast and repeat it accurately in the manner he did. 

Some people do have amazing memories. One teacher at our school is well known for memorizing the names of all of his students after the first day of class.

[Ahab]

11 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Except of course that the word "translate" can mean "transmit" in that period (Webster's 1828 Dictionary).  As Royal Skousen recently said at his speech at BYU, our 8th Article of Faith really says that we believe the Bible only insofar as it is transmitted correctly -- which rightly puts a burden on the scribal transmission.

Reminds me of how we say the Bible contains the fulness of the gospel, as does the Book of Mormon. They both do, but the teachings taught by the people who wrote the Bible had become so misrepresented by modern societies by the time of Joseph Smith that we needed a whole new "transmission" to get everything working in order. 

Kinda like when a sports car still has a good engine but the transmission and drive gear is shot but still working enough to get the car moving but not as well as it was designed to go. 

The gospel was still good but the Church needed to be restored.

[cinepro]

15 minutes ago, Thinking said:

Some people do have amazing memories. One teacher at our school is well known for memorizing the names of all of his students after the first day of class.

The absolute worst argument for the Book of Mormon is the appeal to our not being able to understand how Joseph could have done it.  If I had to believe everything I can't explain is the result of a miracle, the world would be chock full of miracles, and the number would diminish every time I learned something new.

[cinepro]

On 3/23/2017 at 4:14 AM, churchistrue said:

 

I find all of this kind of mind boggling.  Is it realistic to think Joseph Smith knew the Bible this well to just throw together phrases together like this without spending time studying and doing it intentionally?

 

 

How are you defining "realistic"?

Also, maybe as a "control" you could run your test on a book like The First Book of Napoleon?  It would be interesting to see what the results look like on a book that was admittedly written without divine dictation.

Edited April 25, 2017 by cinepro

[Ahab]

11 minutes ago, cinepro said:

The absolute worst argument for the Book of Mormon is the appeal to our not being able to understand how Joseph could have done it.  If I had to believe everything I can't explain is the result of a miracle, the world would be chock full of miracles, and the number would diminish every time I learned something new.

About all I know about how Joseph did it is that he did it with the gift and power of God to help him find the plates and some Urim and Thummim which God used to transmit/translate the words/characters on the plates to Joseph's mind through his eyes as he wore the spectacles.  The fact that the words/characters were written on gold may have helped in the process, because of the properties of the gold itself, but I really don't know much about that.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/23/2017 at 6:56 AM, churchistrue said:

Another question for you or anyone else.  If this mixing of random phrases from the KJV all over the place in the BOM is common or normal, why does it seem Skousen and Carmack find it so intriguing?  Or am I misunderstanding them?

The use of stock phrases and style indicates nothing more than familiarity with a dialect.  In this case with KJV dialect.  When such phrases are divorced from a meaningful context, they function only at the surface of our consciousness.  Carmack and Skousen are more concerned with the technical use of grammar and syntax from a particular period -- which has largely gone extinct, so that no command of that dialect would be possible in later times.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/23/2017 at 7:21 AM, stemelbow said:

THis also brings into question the notion that Joseph saw phrases in English as he peered into his hat and then read off the dictation.  It seems likely he had influence on the way things were said when he dictated, else why would a God-written text include KJV language? 

It appears that the impression of KJV language is only a surface impression.  What counts is the underlying grammar and syntax, which even Joseph Smith found odd and immediately set about correcting for the second and  third editions.  Moreover, why would we assume that the text as delivered is "God-written," when it has all the earmarks of a human production in the Early Modern English period?  Did the magus John Dee do the actual translation?

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

It appears that the impression of KJV language is only a surface impression.  What counts is the underlying grammar and syntax, which even Joseph Smith found odd and immediately set about correcting for the second and  third editions.  Moreover, why would we assume that the text as delivered is "God-written," when it has all the earmarks of a human production in the Early Modern English period?  Did the magus John Dee do the actual translation?

Maybe God has a sense of humor???

I actually think that is a possibility. He has Joseph reproduce some verses from Isaiah verbatim, then goes off beat and has Joseph other verses with variants, some of which find support in other texts, such as the Septuagint. All of those anomalies are interesting, and somewhat confusing. We have a text that on the surface exhibits a rather familiar KJV scriptural tone, but when the grammar etc. is delved into, we find that it is a throwback to an earlier era in the English language. This intermingling is not found in any texts (at least so far) that would have been available to Joseph Smith. Added to that is the background of Hebrew, or as you believe, Egyptian constructs in the text that are not attested to in the KJV. There had been no one answer coming forth from believer or critic either that explains those puzzling details. Except......... the one that so many Dale Morgan types are determined not to even acknowledge as a possibility.

[cinepro]

2 hours ago, Ahab said:

About all I know about how Joseph did it is that he did it with the gift and power of God to help him find the plates and some Urim and Thummim which God used to transmit/translate the words/characters on the plates to Joseph's mind through his eyes as he wore the spectacles.  The fact that the words/characters were written on gold may have helped in the process, because of the properties of the gold itself, but I really don't know much about that.

The problem with this, as I think more and more people are starting to realize, is that at some point you just end up describing what every writer does when they write a book.  The words come into their mind, and they put the words on paper, whether through dictation, writing, or typing.

Once you take away the idea of literally translating off the Gold plates, where Joseph is actually performing the task of taking the meaning of words engraved in one language and rendering them in another, you have arrived at the process of what we typically refer to as "writing a book." That triggers the impulse to try and prove that it still must have had a divine origin because "there's no way Joseph could have done it."  But that's an argument based on ignorance (basically, ignorance of what people are capable of doing at the far edges of the curve), and in the end that might sadly be the last argument available to believers (other than "God told me XYZ", of course.)

[JulieM]

3 hours ago, Ahab said:

About all I know about how Joseph did it is that he did it with the gift and power of God to help him find the plates and some Urim and Thummim which God used to transmit/translate the words/characters on the plates to Joseph's mind through his eyes as he wore the spectacles.  The fact that the words/characters were written on gold may have helped in the process, because of the properties of the gold itself, but I really don't know much about that.

How do you reconcile that with what we now know about Joseph using the "head in the hat" method (using his seer stone) and that the plates weren't even present for at least some of the translation?  

[Ahab]

10 minutes ago, JulieM said:

How do you reconcile that with what we now know about Joseph using the "head in the hat" method (using his seer stone) and that the plates weren't even present for at least some of the translation?  

I really don't know much about that. I just know that God directed him to where some gold plates had been left along with some seer stones/crystals set in rims like spectacles (eyeglasses) and that he somehow used the glasses to transmit/translate the language that was written on the gold plates into what I refer to as KJV English. I've read that he sometimes used a seer stone/crystal that wasn't set in the glasses but I don't know much about it.  Maybe he got that stone/crystal by taking one out of the glasses, or maybe it was some other stone/crystal God prepared just like he did the stones/crystals that were set in the rims of the glasses. I don't know if he wore the glasses as he looked into the hat, or if he put one of the plates in the hat while looking at it with a crystal. Maybe the stone/crystal in the hat lit up the inside of the hat so he could read it. Maybe the stone/crystal worked lIke an LCD and putting it into a hat made it easier for him to read. I really don't know much about that. I only know what I know and I don't know much about that.

[Ahab]

45 minutes ago, cinepro said:

The problem with this, as I think more and more people are starting to realize, is that at some point you just end up describing what every writer does when they write a book.  The words come into their mind, and they put the words on paper, whether through dictation, writing, or typing.

Once you take away the idea of literally translating off the Gold plates, where Joseph is actually performing the task of taking the meaning of words engraved in one language and rendering them in another, you have arrived at the process of what we typically refer to as "writing a book." That triggers the impulse to try and prove that it still must have had a divine origin because "there's no way Joseph could have done it."  But that's an argument based on ignorance (basically, ignorance of what people are capable of doing at the far edges of the curve), and in the end that might sadly be the last argument available to believers (other than "God told me XYZ", of course.)

Pffftt. Heh, yeah. Take away the idea of him literally translating/transmitting off of the gold plates, and keeping the idea that he wrote or dictated what later came to be known as the Book of Mormon, and, yeah, it would just be him writing or dictating the Book of Mormon.

But who in their right mind could believe that he could do that???