An academic translation of the Book of Mormon

[Rivers]

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

 

[snowflake]

Way to many hypothetical questions here. If we could just find a single shred of textual support for the BOM we would have something to work with, anything pre Joseph.  

[The Nehor]

It would be a treatise on Semitic poetry written entirely in Wingdings.

it will revolutionize the field.

[clarkgoble]

5 hours ago, Rivers said:

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

It'd be loosely the same - although I suspect the symbols on the plates are more a mnemonic shorthand rather than a phonetic system like Egyptian. As such the units would be fairly ambiguous and open to many readings. i.e. there couldn't be a translation but a wide range of translations.

[Gray]

6 hours ago, Rivers said:

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

 

Turns out it's the script to The Road to El Dorado

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Rivers said:

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

Scholars are already capable of rendering the  Book of Mormon into good biblical Hebrew.  The KJV English language readily fits already well-known phrasing in Hebrew.  The late John Tvedtnes offered to do just such a translation for LDS Translation Services, but they refused his offer.  From there we could easily reinterpret the Hebrew into a modern scholarly English rendering.  There are far fewer scholars who could take the biblical Hebrew text and translate it into standard Egyptian, but that could also be done.

Since the Brass Plates and the Book of Mormon plates themselves had to have been engraved in a coherent version of hieratic or early demotic Egyptian (the sort of thing Lehi, Nephi, and their predecessors must have been trained to read and write), one would have to render that Hebrew text into ancient Egyptian.  The language would likely have been classical Middle Egyptian, though that is not certain.

We already have the 1922 Hebrew translation of the Book of Mormon done by a Jewish-Mormon scholar-scribe, but that would have to be improved based on current scholarship.  Matt Bowen has shown how such a Hebrew rendering can throw considerable light on the underlying meaning of many passages.  Moreover, in many other cases, only Egyptian can be used to make sense of the phrasing, suggesting that the Book of Mormon plates were translated into Egyptian for the reasons stated by Moroni in Mormon 9:33,

Quote

And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.

See Matthew Bowen, Name as Key-Word: Collected Essays on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture (Orem: Interpreter Foundation/ SLC: Ehorn Books, 2018) .

[Brant Gardner]

I have been toying with as close to the opening post's scenario as can be done without having the actual plates. My assumptions are based on my ideas about how the translation occurred, so they are idiosyncratic and those with different ideas would come up with different results.

As for what the translation would look like, I think that it would communicate the same information, and it would produce the same structures--though I also believe that Joseph's translation obscured some nice parallelisms because he wasn't attuned to them.

So, I think the basic structures would be the same (meaning the original chapters and the ways they are defined). However, it would clearly be written in a more modern style of English, eschewing attempts to create sacred-sounding language that was expected in Joseph's day. If scholars were to do the translation, it would certainly take much longer, but the run-on or incomplete sentences would be gone.

Just for fun, here is the first part of the title page using more modern language, but attempting to highlight what I take to have been the intended structures:

 

Mormon wrote this account upon plates, and the plates of Nephi were his source. It is a shorter account of plates of Nephi’s record of the people of Nephi, as well as an account of the Lamanites.

It is written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel.

It is also written to the Jew and Gentile.

It is written by commandment; by the spirit of prophesy and revelation.

It is also written by the spirit of Prophesy and of revelation.

It is written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, so that it might not be destroyed.

It is to come forth through translation, accomplished by the gift and power of God.

It is sealed by Moroni’s hand, and it is he who hid it up unto the Lord.

It is to come forth in due time through the Gentiles.

It is to be translated by the gift of God.

[strappinglad]

17 hours ago, Rivers said:

Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni

Not gonna happen because the first thing the ' scholars' would do is pry the sealed portion apart. Someone would then take pics and leak the whole thing to the internet and the amateurs would blow up social media with their educated interpretations. The Vatican would then claim it and bury it in the secret archives. The Illuminati ....well , don't get me started.

[rockpond]

On 11/28/2018 at 4:27 AM, Rivers said:

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

 

Since the Book of Mormon that we have today was not translated from gold plates, but was revealed through a seer stone it seems unlikely that your hypothetical translation would be similar. 

My personal belief is that the plates, as described by witnesses, could not possibly contain all 531 pages that we have in the printed English version (reformed Egyptian would have to be some miraculous shorthand). 

[clarkgoble]

7 hours ago, rockpond said:

My personal belief is that the plates, as described by witnesses, could not possibly contain all 531 pages that we have in the printed English version (reformed Egyptian would have to be some miraculous shorthand). 

Note that with the lost 116 pages the length translated would be around 700-1000 pages depending upon how one views that missing text. You then have the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon which was usually seen as half or more of the plates. That puts it up to around 2000 - 3000 pages total for a translation of all the plates. (Assuming the sealed portion uses the same shorthand as the main Mormon and Nephi plates)

If the reformed Egyptian isn't a variant on hieratic but a shorthand and possibly mnemonic shorthand then that's less of an issue.

It's interesting that looking at the Kirtland Egyptian papers that Joseph clearly assumed that the Egyptian of the papyri and the "Egyptian" of the plates were related. Clearly they weren't for various reasons related to the copies of BoM characters we have. But Joseph thought they word and the effort to work out what the Egyptian was based upon a mnemonic shorthand tied to degrees. That is completely erroneous since the Egyptian on the papyri was standard Egyptian and thus mostly logographic (representing words or morphemes) giving a book of breathings. But why did Joseph think it was this complicated mnemonic system? Possibly based upon the "translations" of Egyptian that Athanasius Kircher had produced two centuries earlier.  But it is also possible he'd heard from Moroni about the plates and there were indications they were mnemonic in a fashion that the Kirtland Egyptian papers reflected.

That is the Book of Mormon characters weren't related to hieratic but were a weird shorthand tied to degrees (multiple changes in meaning tied to a single character) While the shorthands Joseph would have been exposed to weren't ideograms but attempted to be lossless of information and minimize ambiguity they did have single characters representing multiple words.  

Very speculative I know, but also a good explanation of the data. Although I'd also acknowledge there are no known ideogram shorthands of that sort in the ANE that we know of. The closest would be Akkadian ideograms. 

Edited November 29, 2018 by clarkgoble

[MosiahFree]

20 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Scholars are already capable of rendering the  Book of Mormon into good biblical Hebrew.  The KJV English language readily fits already well-known phrasing in Hebrew.  The late John Tvedtnes offered to do just such a translation for LDS Translation Services, but they refused his offer.  From there we could easily reinterpret the Hebrew into a modern scholarly English rendering.  There are far fewer scholars who could take the biblical Hebrew text and translate it into standard Egyptian, but that could also be done.

What possible benefit could be had from translating the Book of Mormon into Biblical Hebrew and then translating that biblical Hebrew Text into 21st American English? What would that new English translation have to tell us? 

[cinepro]

On 11/28/2018 at 3:27 AM, Rivers said:

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

 

Considering how things went when we got the Papyri back from the Metropolitan Museum and found a Regular Egyptian Rosetta Stone, I would predict absolute disaster for the current translation of the Book of Mormon.

[lostindc]

 

15 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

I have been toying with as close to the opening post's scenario as can be done without having the actual plates. My assumptions are based on my ideas about how the translation occurred, so they are idiosyncratic and those with different ideas would come up with different results.

As for what the translation would look like, I think that it would communicate the same information, and it would produce the same structures--though I also believe that Joseph's translation obscured some nice parallelisms because he wasn't attuned to them.

So, I think the basic structures would be the same (meaning the original chapters and the ways they are defined). However, it would clearly be written in a more modern style of English, eschewing attempts to create sacred-sounding language that was expected in Joseph's day. If scholars were to do the translation, it would certainly take much longer, but the run-on or incomplete sentences would be gone.

Just for fun, here is the first part of the title page using more modern language, but attempting to highlight what I take to have been the intended structures:

 

Mormon wrote this account upon plates, and the plates of Nephi were his source. It is a shorter account of plates of Nephi’s record of the people of Nephi, as well as an account of the Lamanites.

It is written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel.

It is also written to the Jew and Gentile.

It is written by commandment; by the spirit of prophesy and revelation.

It is also written by the spirit of Prophesy and of revelation.

It is written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, so that it might not be destroyed.

It is to come forth through translation, accomplished by the gift and power of God.

It is sealed by Moroni’s hand, and it is he who hid it up unto the Lord.

It is to come forth in due time through the Gentiles.

It is to be translated by the gift of God.

Modernized adaptations of 18th century works already exist, as you know, so I am sure there's a method to follow.  I believe Mark Twain's critical analysis of the BOM provides a model for scholars to use to modernize the BOM.  

“The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel — half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast.

Whenever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as ‘exceeding sore,’ ‘and it came to pass,’ etc., and made things satisfactory again. ‘And it came to pass’ was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.”

[Palerider]

15 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

 

 

Mormon wrote this account upon plates, and the plates of Nephi were his source. It is a shorter account of plates of Nephi’s record of the people of Nephi, as well as an account of the Lamanites.

It is written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel.

It is also written to the Jew and Gentile.

It is written by commandment; by the spirit of prophesy and revelation.

It is also written by the spirit of Prophesy and of revelation.

It is written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, so that it might not be destroyed.

It is to come forth through translation, accomplished by the gift and power of God.

It is sealed by Moroni’s hand, and it is he who hid it up unto the Lord.

It is to come forth in due time through the Gentiles.

It is to be translated by the gift of God.

 

So as I understand it, this portion that you have re-written was supposedly translated directly from the plates. Last page, left hand side, according to Joseph if I recall correctly.

It states that it (the record) was written by Mormon and sealed by the hand of Moroni. It also states that it was he, Moroni, who hid (past tense) it up unto the Lord.

It doesn't say "I, Moroni seal this record by mine own hand." or "I, Moroni will hide these plates up unto the Lord."

So if Moroni was supposedly the last writer in the BofM, who is writing this title page??? And how did the writer attach this last plate to the rest if they were already hidden?

This seems very odd to me....🤔🤨....😎

[Ouagadougou]

On 11/28/2018 at 4:27 AM, Rivers said:

Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say we got the Gold Plates back from Moroni.  And then we found a Reformed Egyptian Rosetta Stone.  A dozen or so scholars learned to read and translate Reformed Egyptian.  And then they undertake a completely naturalistic academic translation of the Gold Plates into modern English.  No seer stones involved.  No revelation.  What would that translation look like?  How recognizable would it be to the BOM we currently have?  Would it be a completely different book?  Or would it be pretty much the same thing we already have?

 

Would it still contain a great deal of content (verses) copied directly from the King James Bible, along with King James Bible errors, and numerous anachronisms...oh...and possibly French?

"Brethern, Adieu." 

[Robert F. Smith]

11 hours ago, MosiahFree said:

What possible benefit could be had from translating the Book of Mormon into Biblical Hebrew and then translating that biblical Hebrew Text into 21st American English? What would that new English translation have to tell us? 

A lot of the 1611 KJV phrasing is not an accurate translation of the biblical text (Greek & Hebrew) and the reader can easily be led astray.  So a more accurate English text can have great value just for that reason alone.  The same applies to the Book of Mormon text, which consists largely of EarlyModernEnglish phrasing.  It would help if it were in modern English instead.

For example, we have the confusion in the text between homophones such as "right" and "rite," or "strait" and "straight," or between "Son" and "sun."  We can immediately see the difference based on the Greek & Hebrew text, which can utterly change the meaning.  The Isaiah quotations are particularly vulnerable to misinterpretation.

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

Would it still contain a great deal of content (verses) copied directly from the King James Bible, along with King James Bible errors, and numerous anachronisms...oh...and possibly French?

"Brethern, Adieu." 

Asking how “adieu” can be in the Book of Mormon is like pointing out that the whole translation is flawed because English did not exist back then. It is a lame argument.

[Ouagadougou]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Asking how “adieu” can be in the Book of Mormon is like pointing out that the whole translation is flawed because English did not exist back then. It is a lame argument.

Did the word "adieu" then appear on the seer stone by mistake?  And what about the numerous anachronisms and King James Bible errors (which somehow appear in a translation of an ancient text)? Those are very valid arguments, IMO.  

Edited November 29, 2018 by Ouagadougou

[rockpond]

5 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

Did the word "adieu" then appear on the seer stone by mistake?  And what about the numerous anachronisms and King James Bible errors (which somehow appear in a translation of an ancient text)? Those are very valid arguments, IMO.  

If we are to go by the historical accounts either the word "adieu" and any anachronisms appeared on the seer stone -OR- the scribe misheard and wrote something different than what Joseph spoke.

I'm not sure what other options there could be.

[Ouagadougou]

5 hours ago, rockpond said:

If we are to go by the historical accounts either the word "adieu" and any anachronisms appeared on the seer stone -OR- the scribe misheard and wrote something different than what Joseph spoke.

I'm not sure what other options there could be.

And concerning the King James Bible errors--how would errors from the 1700's King James Bible be in the Book of Mormon--especially considering that it was translated from an ancient text (that would have been written thousands of years prior to that time)? 

 

 

[rockpond]

5 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

And concerning the King James Bible errors--how would errors from the 1700's King James Bible be in the Book of Mormon--especially considering that it was translated from an ancient text (that would have been written thousands of years prior to that time)? 

Again, if we are to go by the Church accepted historical accounts, the errors from the 1700's KJV Bible have to have either appeared that way on the seer stone or the scribe wrote them down wrong.

Aside from that, the only other explanation I can see is that the narrative regarding Book of Mormon "translation" is not correct.

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

Did the word "adieu" then appear on the seer stone by mistake?  And what about the numerous anachronisms and King James Bible errors (which somehow appear in a translation of an ancient text)? Those are very valid arguments, IMO.  

I do not concede the word is a mistake in the first place. Perhaps it was a good translation of what was said.

As to your “valid arguments” I doubt you know enough about them to have an opinion worth caring about.

All your criticisms I have seen read like copy-pastes from standard banal critic sites and you have yet to display an understanding of any of the arguments you are supposedly making and that ignorance is best shown by your marked inability to engage in discussion about the issues you bring in. I have no desire to argue with what amounts to an automated copy-bot.

Maybe someone else will but I doubt it. This thread is hopefully too interesting for anyone to engage in a dull duel with someone as witless as yourself over items that have been rehashed endlessly already.

Edited November 30, 2018 by The Nehor

[rockpond]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I do not concede the word is a mistake in the first place. Perhaps it was a good translation of what was said.

As to your “valid arguments” I doubt you know enough about them to have an opinion worth caring about.

All your criticisms I have seen read like copy-pastes from standard banal critic sites and you have yet to display an understanding of any of the arguments you are supposedly making and that ignorance is best shown by your marked inability to engage in discussion about the issues you bring in. I have no desire to argue with what amounts to an automated copy-bot. Maybe someone else will.

Excellent ad hominem response!

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, rockpond said:

Excellent ad hominem response!

Thank you for the compliment but it was not strictly an ad hominem. An ad hominem is designed to discredit an argument through attacking the character of the one making it. I am asserting that the person in this case did not actually make an argument so discrediting them would not discredit the argument in any case. I am challenging their right to demand a refutation or their status as someone able to engage on the topic. I also threw in a few insults but that was just for fun.

[rockpond]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Thank you for the compliment but it was not strictly an ad hominem. An ad hominem is designed to discredit an argument through attacking the character of the one making it. I am asserting that the person in this case did not actually make an argument so discrediting them would not discredit the argument in any case. I am challenging their right to demand a refutation or their status as someone able to engage on the topic. I also threw in a few insults but that was just for fun.

You'll note that we both responded to the same post from @Ouagadougou.  His/her question seemed simple enough to me, so I gave my answer.

If I had felt that @Ouagadougou didn't have a "right to demand a refutation" or wasn't "someone able to engage on the topic", I would have just ignored the question.