Where did the Book of Mormon come from?

[JarMan]

2 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Of course. If one does not accept the divinely produced explanation then one must look for something else. Critics have been doing that ever since the Book of Mormon was produced, but none of the proposed explanations cover all or even most of the bases.

It is not just "critics" who are looking for an alternate explanation for how we got the Book of Mormon. There are many faithful Mormons who accept the Book of Mormon as a divine work that simply can't unsee the many problems with the traditional explanation. These members can choose to ignore the problems or "put them on the shelf" for now. That's certainly what I've done for many years. And if people want to do that I'm totally fine with it. But at some point I think the traditional explanation is going to come crashing down. Actually, it is currently in the process of slowing crashing down. My response to this is to try to figure out what really happened. So far I have been able to do that and still maintain my faith in the Book of Mormon as a divine work. I see others on this forum who are at a similar place even though I disagree with most of them about "what really" happened.

[JarMan]

9 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Please explain about the abandonment of the Book of Mormon description of the sfterlife.

 

The Book of Mormon has a very clear Protestant explanation for the afterlife. There's heaven for those who have faith in the atonement and endure to the end. (Actually the idea of enduring to the end is Arminian, not Lutheran or Calvinism.) And there's everlasting fire in hell for everyone else. In February of 1832, less than three years after the Book of Mormon is published we get the revelation now known as D&C 76 which describes the three degrees of glory. These ideas are later expanded upon and expounded upon and we get Sections 88 and 137, for example. So somehow the Nephites were able to maintain this idea of the afterlife for 1,000 years. Where they got it in the first place is another question since it doesn't appear in the OT. But anyway, they keep this idea for a thousand years and within a matter of less than three years the idea starts getting changed dramatically. And I would say that if you look at conference talks about it over the years it is continuing to change to this day.

[cdowis]

8 minutes ago, JarMan said:

The Book of Mormon has a very clear Protestant explanation for the afterlife. There's heaven for those who have faith in the atonement and endure to the end. (Actually the idea of enduring to the end is Arminian, not Lutheran or Calvinism.)

Sigh. 

May I suggest that you read the Bible.
Matt 24 [13] But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

And there's everlasting fire in hell for everyone else.

In February of 1832, less than three years after the Book of Mormon is published we get the revelation now known as D&C 76 which describes the three degrees of glory. These ideas are later expanded upon and expounded upon and we get Sections 88 and 137, for example. So somehow the Nephites were able to maintain this idea of the afterlife for 1,000 years. Where they got it in the first place is another question since it doesn't appear in the OT.

And you are aware that there are missing texts from the OT, as found on the Plates of Brass.  And they also got it from their own prophets.

But anyway, they keep this idea for a thousand years and within a matter of less than three years the idea starts getting changed dramatically. And I would say that if you look at conference talks about it over the years it is continuing to change to this day.

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

 

 

[hope_for_things]

50 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I don't know what "existing evidence" you are referring to that is being turned on its head. The way I understand Skousen (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that he consistently saw on the Original Manuscript breaks in the written text that indicated where a block of text ended and a new one began. The theory, I guess, being that the space a scribe unconsciously leaves between words as he is writing continuous text ends up being ever so slightly different than the space between words when a pause in the writing is made and then continued after some space of time. This lead him to believe that words were being dictated in blocks. And I also understand that there is witness testimony that a block of words were written by the scribe and then repeated back to Joseph. This seems to support what Skousen saw in the manuscripts. Help me understand what evidence we have that suggests the text was transmitted in some other way.

I can understand what he's saying for blocks of text and spaces to indicate where the dictation paused, no problem with that.  I'm not sure how or where he draws the conclusion that this evidence supports a tight control translation.  Joseph needed to pause regardless of whether deity was giving Joseph the words or Joseph was imagining these words himself.  Pauses would be necessary for the scribes to keep pace with the dictation.  

The existing evidence that is being turned on its head that I was referring to is specific to the EmodE theory that claims as I understand it that Joseph couldn't possibly have produced 17th century English grammar, because the other texts that Joseph produced don't contain 17th century grammar and are distinctly different than the BoM text.  Perhaps I misunderstood the summary conclusion, so please correct me if I'm wrong.  

What I'm saying in essence is that because I think Skousen's conclusion about tight control is incorrect, then that gives me greater reason to be skeptical of his conclusions about EmodE in the BoM.  Let me know if that makes sense.  

[hope_for_things]

53 minutes ago, JarMan said:

It is not just "critics" who are looking for an alternate explanation for how we got the Book of Mormon. There are many faithful Mormons who accept the Book of Mormon as a divine work that simply can't unsee the many problems with the traditional explanation. These members can choose to ignore the problems or "put them on the shelf" for now. That's certainly what I've done for many years. And if people want to do that I'm totally fine with it. But at some point I think the traditional explanation is going to come crashing down. Actually, it is currently in the process of slowing crashing down. My response to this is to try to figure out what really happened. So far I have been able to do that and still maintain my faith in the Book of Mormon as a divine work. I see others on this forum who are at a similar place even though I disagree with most of them about "what really" happened.

Do you think Michelangelo's David is a divine work?  What about Beethoven's 9th symphony?  

What I'm trying to get at are these questions.  Would you be willing to reshape what you consider divine with respect to the BoM if you continue to find evidence that Joseph was the author and that it was produced in the 19th century, and that there were no actual Nephites and Lamanites, but that the entire story is an imaginative creation.  Or do you draw the line somewhere with respect to what the evidence shows and your willingness to consider the book divine.  Do you have limits for what you will and won't consider divinely inspired?  

[champatsch]

3 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, so dynamic translation in your description sounds how I understood loose control.  I find that interesting because I thought based on what I've heard Skousen say that he is a proponent of the tight control delivery.  I honestly don't remember the distinction between translation and delivery of text that you mention.  But if Skousen is a tight control proponent, I just assumed based on your close work together that you would align with him on that, rather than allow for dynamic translation.  

The Michael Morse quote is interesting.  Its late and second hand, but many of the other details about the translation that were given about the stone in the hat line up.  I find it interesting that he proposes that Joseph must have been using other materials that he was memorizing.  He seems to acknowledge the Joseph's memory must have been good, but he doesn't agree when they ask him if it was a divinely given ability.    

I'm open to evidence to show that Joseph was using other material, and I'm sure he was using the KJV, but other than that, I don't think we have any strong evidence for other source materials being used.  

No, a dynamic translation varies between a literal translation and a non-literal or freer translation.

I've tried to explain some things to you but you seem to be having trouble grasping some crucial distinctions.

Tight control and dynamic translation are two different things entirely.  Skousen also views the Book of Mormon text as a case of dynamic translation.

For ease of comparison, let's refer to a Skousen 1998 view of the Book of Mormon text and a Gardner 2011 view of the Book of Mormon text.

Skousen 1998
First, the Lord directs / carries out a dynamic translation of the Nephite record into mostly English words.
Second, the Lord transmits / reveals the translated text to Joseph;
     the translated text appears to him as words he can somehow see.
Third, Joseph dictates the Lord's English-language translation to scribes.
Fourth, scribes write down the dictated words.

Gardner 2011
First, the Lord directs / carries out a dynamic translation of the Nephite record into ideas.
Second, the Lord transmits / reveals the translated ideas to Joseph.
Third, Joseph translates the ideas into his own biblically influenced English;
     the translated ideas appear to him as words he can somehow see.
Fourth, Joseph dictates his English-language translation to scribes.
Fifth, scribes write down the dictated words.

Hopefully the above clarifies some of the important differences in Skousen 1998 and Gardner 2011.

(I suspect that Gardner might disagree with my rendition here, in one way or another.  I am assigning a dynamic translation to the Lord, since I think the non-literal aspects of the translation were beyond Joseph's abilities in 1828 and 1829.  This, however, is a secondary consideration.  Even if we alter the initial step, and assign the dynamic part to Joseph, it really doesn't make the view any more likely, based on primary evidence—see below.)

Now, the descriptive linguistic work we've done so far has indicated to us that the Book of Mormon is full of archaic, non(pseudo)biblical syntax and grammar.
This was essentially a foreign language to Joseph Smith.

There are also dozens of potential cases of obsolete, nonbiblical lexis and phraseology in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon.
These support the descriptive work on (morpho)syntax.

These linguistic observations tend to make the Skousen 1998 view extremely likely and the Gardner 2011 view extremely unlikely.

I would ask you to think these perspectives through before posting comments that are inaccurate, and which might mislead others.  (It would be good to gain an understanding of some of the fundamental concepts, so as to increase your chances of reaching an accurate view of things.)

And no, it's not certain that Joseph used the KJV.  The original MS doesn't change character toward the end of 1 Nephi, and even a profound biblical scholar would have had difficulty blending King James phraseology seamlessly as we see quite a few times in the Book of Mormon text.  One very short passage that I know of has phraseology from seven different passages of the King James Bible.

Also, the lengthy King James passages have nearly a thousand modifications—many of them beyond the trivial—hundreds more than we would expect from copying.  And four-fifths of these do not involves italics, rather than the two-thirds previously published.

[champatsch]

25 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

What I'm saying in essence is that because I think Skousen's conclusion about tight control is incorrect, then that gives me greater reason to be skeptical of his conclusions about EmodE in the BoM.

I don't think you have an accurate understanding of what tight control is.  See above.

[champatsch]

7 hours ago, stemelbow said:

What internal evidence identifies God as even existing?  How can there be evidence that God is the source of the English Original Book of Mormon, when it is largely accepted that proving God is impossible to begin with?  It sounds to me he's saying, he assume God' exists and therefore assumes that God must be the source of the original text.  If I'm wrong, let's start with the proof of God.  

If you require that God be eliminated from the discussion, then you will need to direct your efforts toward finding an English philologist that could have fashioned the text, as JarMan attempts to do.

[stemelbow]

6 minutes ago, champatsch said:

If you require that God be eliminated from the discussion, then you will need to direct your efforts toward finding an English philologist that could have fashioned the text, as JarMan attempts to do.

I didn't say eliminate God in this.  I am questioning the claim:

Quote

JBMS 3.1 (1994), 32:
In fact, internal evidence from the original manuscript as well as statements from witnesses of the translation provide strong support that the Lord exercised “tight control” over the translation* process and that he indeed is the source for the original text of the Book of Mormon. From this perspective, Joseph Smith’s editing for the second edition of the Book of Mormon may be viewed as translating the text into standard English rather than cleaning up grammatical errors.

Of course anything is possible.  It's possible there is a God and he wrote the book and dictated it to Joseph through a stone in his hat.  But, what I'm asking here is what evidence is there that God is the source of the original Book fo Mormon text?  That is the claim here--the evidence suggests God is the source.  Alright.  Where's the evidence?  Let's consider.  

I'm curious about the internal evidence.  

I've heard the argument as thus:

1.  Suddenly the English Book of Mormon appeared on the scene, and was claimed to have been translated by the gift and power of God through Joseph Smith

2.  It had to come from somewhere.

3.  Joseph Couldn't have written it.

4.  Therefore it did come from God as he claimed. 

Here's my take on the tight control claim by Skousen:

The evidence of how the scribe wrote it down, is consistent with the idea that he wrote segments, one at a time, 15-20 words each.

There is some testimony to suggest words, particularly names and other difficult ones, were spelled out.  

Tight translation.  

Here is my take on your position of dynamic translation:

Tight translation was used in the dictation, while some of what resulted in the translation is a literal description of what took place or was written originally by the ancient authors, other parts are non literal descriptions of what was originally written by the ancients or what really took place.  

Correct or close to?  

 

 

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Gray said:

 From a historical basis, there's really not much to "explain". The default assumption that it's a 19th century document works very well on historical grounds. On theological grounds, we're only limited by our imaginations. But good theology shouldn't depend on historians backing up every particular aspect of the story in a literal way.

Is the Book of Mormon history or is it scripture? It won't work as both. It works just fine as scripture.

The default assumption that it is a nineteenth century document has been shown to lack explanatory power for a lot of things. The Early Modern English for example.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

No, a dynamic translation varies between a literal translation and a non-literal or freer translation.

I've tried to explain some things to you but you seem to be having trouble grasping some crucial distinctions.

Tight control and dynamic translation are two different things entirely.  Skousen also views the Book of Mormon text as a case of dynamic translation.

For ease of comparison, let's refer to a Skousen 1998 view of the Book of Mormon text and a Gardner 2011 view of the Book of Mormon text.

Skousen 1998
First, the Lord directs / carries out a dynamic translation of the Nephite record into mostly English words.
Second, the Lord transmits / reveals the translated text to Joseph;
     the translated text appears to him as words he can somehow see.
Third, Joseph dictates the Lord's English-language translation to scribes.
Fourth, scribes write down the dictated words.

I know you accused me of inaccurate responses confusing the subject, but I can't read your mind and am unclear about what you're saying, so i'm not sure how I can get an understanding without asking clarifying questions.  I re-read parts of Skousen's 1998 article to brush up on his thesis.  I think I understand his tight control definition fairly well, just to quote from his original paper.  

Quote

The idea of a revealed text raises an important question: To what degree did the Lord control the dictation of the Book of Mormon? There appear to be three possible kinds of control over the dictation of the text:
1. Loose control: Ideas were revealed to Joseph Smith, and he put those ideas into his own language (a theory advocated by many Book of Mormon scholars over the years);
2. Tight control: Joseph saw specific words written out in English and read them off to the scribe-the accuracy of the resulting text depending on the carefulness of Joseph and his scribe;
3. Iron-clad control: Joseph (or the interpreters them - selves) would not allow any scribal error to remain (including the misspelling of common words).

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/7/1/S00005-50be28d378b0e4Skousen.pdf

What I'm confused about is the new definition that you've added to this argument, this dynamic translation which according to you is a mixture of "literal and non-literal" content.  Your distinction between delivery of the text and translation I think I understand, but I admit I've been little confused about the differences.  I couldn't find anything in Skousen's paper that would explain your dynamic translation definition, or even support this idea of a non-literal content being transmitted in the translation process.  Also, Skousen doesn't seem to make any distinction between delivery of the text and translation, he calls the tight control method a translation throughout his paper and I couldn't ever find the term delivery of the text in his essay.  

In your first line description of the 1998 Skousen model you say "the Lord directs / carries out a dynamic translation of the Nephite record into mostly English words."  Can you provide some further clarity about what that means, and perhaps support from Skousen that his tight control model supports this idea?   Also, does this mean that God is the one introducing the 19th century non-literal content into the narrative, and then communicating the exact wording to Joseph of this non-literal content?  So in essence, would God be responsible for every word (tight control), both literal content and non-literal, and none of the content comes from Joseph's mind or his experiences in life? 

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

Gardner 2011
First, the Lord directs / carries out a dynamic translation of the Nephite record into ideas.
Second, the Lord transmits / reveals the translated ideas to Joseph.
Third, Joseph translates the ideas into his own biblically influenced English;
     the translated ideas appear to him as words he can somehow see.
Fourth, Joseph dictates his English-language translation to scribes.
Fifth, scribes write down the dictated words.

Hopefully the above clarifies some of the important differences in Skousen 1998 and Gardner 2011.

(I suspect that Gardner might disagree with my rendition here, in one way or another.  I am assigning a dynamic translation to the Lord, since I think the non-literal aspects of the translation were beyond Joseph's abilities in 1828 and 1829.  This, however, is a secondary consideration.  Even if we alter the initial step, and assign the dynamic part to Joseph, it really doesn't make the view any more likely, based on primary evidence—see below.)

I've read Gardner's book and listened to him talk a few times about this subject.  I feel like I understand his position, but again your first line, this dynamic translation of the Lord as step #1, I don't recall hearing about before so I'm hoping you can clarify what this means and where it comes from.  

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

Now, the descriptive linguistic work we've done so far has indicated to us that the Book of Mormon is full of archaic, non(pseudo)biblical syntax and grammar.
This was essentially a foreign language to Joseph Smith.

Not having read through much of your work, I have a couple questions about this assumption that you're starting from.  Is it possible that the syntax and grammar isn't completely foreign to Joseph, are there other works whether apocryphal works or other literature or even sermons written or spoken within Joseph's environment that could have influenced the syntax and grammar used in the BoM.  Have you essentially eliminated all other possible sources of influence at this point, how exhaustive has your research been with respect to other possible influencing syntax and grammar?  

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

And no, it's not certain that Joseph used the KJV.  The original MS doesn't change character toward the end of 1 Nephi, and even a profound biblical scholar would have had difficulty blending King James phraseology seamlessly as we see quite a few times in the Book of Mormon text.  One very short passage that I know of has phraseology from seven different passages of the King James Bible.

Also, the lengthy King James passages have nearly a thousand modifications—many of them beyond the trivial—hundreds more than we would expect from copying.  And four-fifths of these do not involves italics, rather than the two-thirds previously published.

Have you looked at other content produced by different preachers and writers in the 19th century world that Joseph inhabited to see if any of these works also blended phraseology from different passages in the KJV similarly?  Perhaps writing by Alexander Campbell or Sidney Rigdon or William Miller, or Ellen G. White, or the Shakers, or other groups and preachers coming from this same environment.  Also, are there passages in the D&C or PoGP that also similarly blend multiple KJV phraseology or is this phenomenon unique to the BoM.  

Lastly my apologies in advance if I'm not correctly representing your positions, please correct me where necessary.  I'm a regular guy, not a trained scholar, but I like to participate on the blog and I read a lot as well and try to stay up to speed on Mormon studies.  

[champatsch]

54 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I couldn't find anything in Skousen's paper that would explain your dynamic translation definition, or even support this idea of a non-literal content being transmitted in the translation process.  Also, Skousen doesn't seem to make any distinction between delivery of the text and translation, he calls the tight control method a translation throughout his paper and I couldn't ever find the term delivery of the text in his essay. 

Translation usually can have two broad meanings:  transference (such as motion in physics, or as in conveying from one state to another) and turning from one language into another.  Of course there are other meanings.  So it's the word translation or translate which causes the confusion.  Yes, the issue might not be clear in the paper.  I think for the most part Skousen used the word translation there to mean '(re)transmission or transference'.

If Joseph's the first author of the Book of Mormon, then there's no semantic issue regarding translation to discuss.  That appears to be your perspective.

If we assume, however, that Joseph isn't the first author of the text, then the "translation" process of the Book of Mormon text breaks down into at least two parts:
(1) turning one language into another and (2) either words or ideas being transmitted to him.

Skousen 1998 doesn't discuss (1); the paper is focused on (2), and he concludes from textual and MS evidence that it's words, not ideas, that came to Joseph.  Gardner 2011 thinks that ideas came to Joseph, and that he then did (1).

As I have thought about it recently, the question arose as to what ideas the Lord would have sent Joseph, according to the Gardner 2011 view.  Gardner may believe that the Lord sent Joseph only literally translated ideas, based on the Nephite record.  But I don't think we can rule out the possibility that the Lord could have also revealed ideas of functionalist equivalence (after Gardner 2011), so as to make certain ideas more understandable to Joseph.  If so, then the Lord would have translated (into ideas) some of the record non-literally, and so the Lord's translation (into ideas) would have varied between literal and non-literal (what I have called dynamic, borrowing the term from others).

Edited March 8, 2018 by champatsch

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Tight translation.

It's quite confusing to use the terms "tight translation" or "loose translation".  Better to use "tight/loose control" (over the dictation) and "literal/non-literal translation" (rendering one language into another).

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

Translation usually can have two broad meanings:  transference (such as motion in physics, or as in conveying from one state to another) and turning from one language into another.  Of course there are other meanings.  So it's the word translation or translate which causes the confusion.  Yes, the issue might not be clear in the paper.  I think for the most part Skousen used the word translation there to mean '(re)transmission or transference'.

If we assume, however, that Joseph isn't the first author of the text, then the "translation" process of the Book of Mormon text breaks down into at least two parts:
(1) turning one language into another and (2) either words or ideas being transmitted to him.

This idea might take some time to get used to, but text transmission goes back several centuries in several spiritual traditions. The different terms used in eastern traditions are often a barrier, so I've modified a popular description of this transmission process to remove the jargon.

"When a text is first discovered, it typically appears in symbolic form or a single line of script. This could appear in physical form on a rock or scroll, or alternatively in the mind of the translator. The translator must then decode this symbol form, which acts as a mnemonic device to awaken the memory of a transmission given in the distant past by the person who buried the text. Once decoded, the text is set down as a “root text” and only later expanded into a full textual cycle."

Edited March 8, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[JarMan]

5 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

The existing evidence that is being turned on its head that I was referring to is specific to the EmodE theory that claims as I understand it that Joseph couldn't possibly have produced 17th century English grammar, because the other texts that Joseph produced don't contain 17th century grammar and are distinctly different than the BoM text.  Perhaps I misunderstood the summary conclusion, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

You haven't said what existing evidence you are basing your conclusion on. As far as I can tell you are rejecting an idea because you don't want to believe it, not because any evidence contradicts it.

5 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Do you think Michelangelo's David is a divine work?  What about Beethoven's 9th symphony?  

What I'm trying to get at are these questions.  Would you be willing to reshape what you consider divine with respect to the BoM if you continue to find evidence that Joseph was the author and that it was produced in the 19th century, and that there were no actual Nephites and Lamanites, but that the entire story is an imaginative creation.  Or do you draw the line somewhere with respect to what the evidence shows and your willingness to consider the book divine.  Do you have limits for what you will and won't consider divinely inspired?  

The Book of Mormon is sacred scripture to me regardless of its source.

[JarMan]

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

The Book of Mormon has a very clear Protestant explanation for the afterlife. There's heaven for those who have faith in the atonement and endure to the end. (Actually the idea of enduring to the end is Arminian, not Lutheran or Calvinism.)

Sigh. 

May I suggest that you read the Bible.
Matt 24 [13] But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Lutherans and Calvinists don't understand this verse in the same way that Mormons and Arminians do. They believe that God chooses his elect and the elect are incapable of going astray. This was part of the whole issue behind the Calvinist/Arminian schism.

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

And you are aware that there are missing texts from the OT, as found on the Plates of Brass.  And they also got it from their own prophets.

The point is they got the "wrong" message from the brass plates and their own prophets. The "right" answer is that there is a pre-mortal life, three kingdoms of glory, and outer darkness for sons of perdition. The answer they got is silent about the pre-existence, and heaven is for the faithful with eternal burning in hell for the rest. The Book of Mormon prophets (and presumably the brass plates) teach the Arminian version of the plan of salvation, not the Mormon version.

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

How can we simultaneously believe what was revealed when was is now being revealed contradicts it?

[cdowis]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

Lutherans and Calvinists don't understand this verse in the same way that Mormons and Arminians do. They believe that God chooses his elect and the elect are incapable of going astray. This was part of the whole issue behind the Calvinist/Arminian schism.

The beliefs of the Calvinists/Arminians have absolutely nothing to do with the Book of Mormon.

The point is they got the "wrong" message from the brass plates and their own prophets. The "right" answer is that there is a pre-mortal life, three kingdoms of glory, and outer darkness for sons of perdition. The answer they got is silent about the pre-existence, and heaven is for the faithful with eternal burning in hell for the rest. The Book of Mormon prophets (and presumably the brass plates) teach the Arminian version of the plan of salvation, not the Mormon version.

Sigh.
You have no complete knowledge/ idea what the Nephites knew or did not know.   I have read the Book of Mormon over 50 times and I am not so arrogant to pretend to have that knowledge.

How can we simultaneously believe what was revealed when was is now being revealed contradicts it?

I guess you and I have a  very different understanding.  I see no contradictions but only "line upon line, precept upon precept."  They clearly had a knowledge of the pre-existence, for example (Alma 13).  "Hell fire" is just a metaphor in the BOM, as it is in the NT.

Just a matter of actually reading and studying the book.

 

Edited March 8, 2018 by cdowis

[JarMan]

12 minutes ago, cdowis said:

The beliefs of the Calvinists/Arminians have absolutely nothing to do with the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon plan of salvation is very similar to the Armininan plan of salvation, not the Mormon plan of salvation. If you have some information to refute that claim then by all means let's hear it. Otherwise you are just shouting.

19 minutes ago, cdowis said:

Sigh.
You have no complete knowledge/ idea what the Nephites knew or did not know.   I have read the Book of Mormon over 50 times and I am not so arrogant to pretend to have that knowledge.

You've read the Book of Mormon over 50 times and you don't know what it says about the pre-existence and the afterlife?

21 minutes ago, cdowis said:

I guess you and I have a  very different understanding.  I see no contradictions but only "line upon line, precept upon precept."  They clearly had a knowledge of the pre-existence, for example (Alma 13).  Just a matter of actually reading and studying the book.

Tell me what Alma 13 has to say about the pre-existence.

[JarMan]

7 hours ago, champatsch said:

If you require that God be eliminated from the discussion, then you will need to direct your efforts toward finding an English philologist that could have fashioned the text, as JarMan attempts to do.

I know you weren’t talking to me with this comment but I thought it worthwhile to mention that I don’t require God be eliminated from the discussion. I assume God to be involved in at least an inspirational role. Perhaps he was also involved in getting the text to Joseph. 

[Rajah Manchou]

15 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Ha, sorry to misunderstand what you're saying.  I definitely don't look at religion literally, quite the opposite.  

No worries. After posting I thought it very possible that I misread the tone of your comment. My bad.

Regarding your question: "Can you give an example of a theological concept from these Rechabites that you can find parallel with the BoM?  Are you claiming that these people were isolated, without communication from the rest of the Israelites and that they developed Christian ideas completely independently?"

I'm not up to speed on the subtleties of atonement theology, and will defer to those out there with a better understanding, but there is a discussion about Arminianism having been influenced by Pelagius, a 4th century theologian, with some commonalities with semipelagianism of the 5th century. Pope Zosimus (probably not the Zosimus in the History of the Rechabites, but same century) seemed to permit it then was pressured to censure it. I've found a few articles discussing the similarities between Pelagiansim and Mormonism. Enough to make me wonder if anyone has done a deeper dive into the Book of Mormon to determine whether "Nephite theology" (not meant literally) is closer to Pelagianism, Semipelagianism, Arminianism, Hopkinsianism or something in between. I don't have the background to do it. But from my limited readings on the differences between all those theologies and the Book of Mormon, my guess would be something in between.

Of course the simplest answer is that Joseph wrote it, just as the simplest answer is that Jesus didn't ransom/suffer/die for our sins. But this is religion, so the answers aren't always the easiest ones.

Edited March 8, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Brant Gardner]

15 hours ago, champatsch said:

I suspect that Gardner might disagree with my rendition here, in one way or another. 

For the record, that was a pretty good description. The only thing I would elaborate on is the idea that the Lord translated the record into ideas. I think the understanding/meaning of the text was given to Joseph. Language is an intermediary between understanding. We have some idea and put it into words. From our words, someone else understands meaning. Sometimes the meaning is adequately represented in words, sometimes inadequately. Sometimes in cross-language translation, there are words for meanings that exist only in one language. Then we find English speakers using schadenfreude because we don't have a word for it.

The more competently bilingual one is, the less "translation" happens. If you hear a language and understand it, you can quickly use a second language to replicate the understood meaning without worrying about the correlation between words. The scholarly translation of texts is slightly different in that choices have to be made for how a text is to be translated. We don't really have that in the Book of Mormon. It is fluently dictated. Therefore, either the translation into English comes from understanding or from a pre-existing text. Understanding the evidence for the two options is the reason for the differences of opinion between the Skousen/Gardner ideas.

Thank you, champatsch, for making the distinction between transmission and translation clear. That confusion has clouded discussions of the nature of Book of Mormon translation for a long time. The tight/loose terminology has been applied in ways that were not necessarily intended. 

[Brant Gardner]

12 hours ago, champatsch said:

As I have thought about it recently, the question arose as to what ideas the Lord would have sent Joseph, according to the Gardner 2011 view.  Gardner may believe that the Lord sent Joseph only literally translated ideas, based on the Nephite record.  But I don't think we can rule out the possibility that the Lord could have also revealed ideas of functionalist equivalence (after Gardner 2011), so as to make certain ideas more understandable to Joseph.  If so, then the Lord would have translated (into ideas) some of the record non-literally, and so the Lord's translation (into ideas) would have varied between literal and non-literal (what I have called dynamic, borrowing the term from others).

A little more clarification. If I understand another language well, when I read it I do not translate, any more than I would translate what I read from an English text (my native language). Meaning is transmitted through the words, but the meaning exists independent of the language in which I read it--though there are obviously times when the art or connotations of one language provide a different meaning. Still, Pinker's understanding of the generation of language begins with understanding of meanings that are available without couching words. The words arise in the process of encoding meaning. 

In a bilingual situation, I may be trying to communicate something. Say I am teaching a lesson. I have things I want to say, and the language I choose to use to express them, and some of the idioms I use, depend upon my audience's language. In my case, if I have to teach a class in Spanish to spanish speakers, I do not (when I am at my most fluent, which isn't always the case) translate from English and then speak Spanish. I speak Spanish, and what I intend to say comes out in Spanish without English entering in to the process.

What I am suggesting is that the Lord--shall we say "read" for convenience-- the plate text to Joseph directly to his understanding. Once he understood, he processed meaning into language in the same way that he would have expressed any other understanding he had. When we see the way some of the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants were edited, I see a Joseph looking at what was recorded and saying to himself that what was written didn't quite explain what he meant--so he expanded it. He knew what was intended, even if the language had not precisely captured it. That doesn't suggest that the original was wrong, only that the process of putting meaning into language is always part of a humanly processed sequence.

Of course, reading something that someone else wrote doesn't require any of that. It is a replicative function. So the big difference in what I am suggesting and what Skousen and champatsch are suggesting is the identity of the translator. I am explaining Joseph as translator. Skousen and champatsch have him as a reader only, which moves the necessary process of translation to some entity/entities unknown but pre-Joseph. What I am suggesting might have been the process by which the Skousen/champatsch pre-Joseph translator created the translation that Joseph read. When we are talking about translation itself we really don't have many significant difference. When we speak of the person who dictated the translation to the scribes, there is no difference. So, we might agree on translation. We agree on translation. We just assign different roles to Joseph in the process. I see him as the translator he said he was rather than just a reader.

Note, however, that this doesn't mean that I don't agree that Joseph read the text he dictated. I think there is good evidence that he did, but how that fits into my hypothesis is a different discussion. 

[cdowis]

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

The Book of Mormon plan of salvation is very similar to the Armininan plan of salvation, not the Mormon plan of salvation. If you have some information to refute that claim then by all means let's hear it. Otherwise you are just shouting.

You've read the Book of Mormon over 50 times and you don't know what it says about the pre-existence and the afterlife?

Tell me what Alma 13 has to say about the pre-existence.

I can see our discussion is not  productive. 

 

Edited March 8, 2018 by cdowis

[stemelbow]

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

It's quite confusing to use the terms "tight translation" or "loose translation".  Better to use "tight/loose control" (over the dictation) and "literal/non-literal translation" (rendering one language into another).

I got ya.  Oops on using translation instead of control.  

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, Brant Gardner said:

 

Note, however, that this doesn't mean that I don't agree that Joseph read the text he dictated. I think there is good evidence that he did, but how that fits into my hypothesis is a different discussion. 

If you have a chance...I'm having a tough time understanding how it was that Joseph translated and yet did read a text he dictated.  Did words appear for him to read off as he peered in his hat, as the witnesses of the event claimed?  If so, did those words come to his brain after he did the translating?  Also, how do you explain the element of EModE in the resulting text?  

and

do you think we can safely assume that the resulting English text represents what was on the plates (seeing as we have the issue of Joseph not consulting the plates according to witnesses during the process)?

 

Edited March 8, 2018 by stemelbow