"A Bible! A Bible! We Have Got A Bible" An evening with Dr Wayment.

[clarkgoble]

On 3/13/2019 at 5:16 PM, CA Steve said:

I think I have figured out why Clark's experience with how others react to him and mine seem to be so different. I am, to put it mildly, quite a bit more liberal in how I view the truth claims of the Church. So when I am engaged in real life conversations with people who know my views, or at least think they know them, I think there is some tendency from them to want to protect their own view of the church, a tendency that may manifest itself in accusations of "well you're reading anti-Mormon sources". (An accusation that I heard from my father once, ironically, when I was trying to encourage him to read the Joseph Smith Papers.) Clark on the other hand in perhaps not viewed that way and does not ever see that reaction from other members, I would guess. So I suspect that our experiences are different in this regard simply because we are perceived differently by our real life audience. So maybe it isn't a generational thing after all.

It would seem then that the issue isn't translation or outside resources at all but just how people view more liberal theologically interpretations.

I agree with you btw when you put it like that. I certainly see people reacting to those they perceive as outside the "safe zone" theologically. Those perceptions, whether fair or not, cause very different reactions.

[Calm]

 Just an FYI Brother Wayment created the translation because of the difficulty his students were having with the KJV.  He intended it for personal study and use in Church and school.  He has used it (or parts of it...maybe a draft version?) teaching in Sunday School class as it was apparently intended (this is secondhand through my husband so don't take it as guaranteed accuracy). 

Edited March 17, 2019 by Calm

[caspianrex]

I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I am a collector of Bibles (I have 250+ volumes in my collection). I also have a pretty large library of LDS material.

As an "outsider," I suspect the main reason for the KJV preference in the Church is that the Early Modern English harmonizes better with the Book of Mormon than the modern translations do. I think it would be a bit strange if the missionaries, for example, used a modern Bible translation, and then continued to quote from the more archaic English style of the BofM. I don't imagine that there will ever be a successful updating of the BofM's language, so I would think that the KJV will continue to be the standard among LDS, at least for public use.

I do have the Kindle version of Wayment's NT, and I think it's pretty good. I would imagine that it would be a very handy tool for Mormons in their private devotions and Sunday School classes and such.

[champatsch]

3 hours ago, caspianrex said:

I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I am a collector of Bibles (I have 250+ volumes in my collection). I also have a pretty large library of LDS material.

As an "outsider," I suspect the main reason for the KJV preference in the Church is that the Early Modern English harmonizes better with the Book of Mormon than the modern translations do. I think it would be a bit strange if the missionaries, for example, used a modern Bible translation, and then continued to quote from the more archaic English style of the BofM. I don't imagine that there will ever be a successful updating of the BofM's language, so I would think that the KJV will continue to be the standard among LDS, at least for public use.

I do have the Kindle version of Wayment's NT, and I think it's pretty good. I would imagine that it would be a very handy tool for Mormons in their private devotions and Sunday School classes and such.

Yes, that is correct, but more important are the 36 quotations with biblical n-grams greater than 15, and the copious amounts of King James blending. So if the church adopted the NKJV, for example, the quotations and the blending in the Book of Mormon would need to be carefully edited to match NKJV readings, maintaining however the more than 700 differences in the quotations. Then the Book of Mormon English could be updated, but it would need to be done with an understanding of extrabiblical Early Modern English usage, both syntax and lexis.

Edited June 28, 2019 by champatsch

[champatsch]

I wanted to comment on the following quotation, occurring earlier in this thread, which I checked against a valuable BYU source, and against Uncle Dale's transcription, and at Google Books. I tried to get a more accurate quotation of the original source:

Quote

Cornelius C. Blatchly, “Caution Against the Golden Bible,” New-York Telescope 6.38 (20 February 1830):

I have this month received sixteen pages of this work, from page 353 to 368 inclusive. I cannot perceive any superiority of style in this specimen; nor any evidence that this bible is not a book of Joseph Smith's own manufacture. . . . For in these sixteen pages, I noticed ‘yea’ was repeated 34 times; and even 21 times in two pages. The words, ‘It came to pass,’ is repeated 56 times in 16 pages, and even ten times on one page. ‘Now’ and ‘behold,’ are reiterated near the commencement of sentences, full thirty times apiece, and more, in these sixteen pages. Consequently these four things are repeated 162 times on the ear-drum, . . . .

Thus, in page 359, it is written —“Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni—yea, the devil would never have no power over the hearts of the children of men: . . . .” Whether this style is equal to our scripture style, the reader can judge.

_{* * *}

Again, page 353, is written—“And there was but a few which denied the covenant of freedom.” Was should have been were.—Again: “And there were some who died with fevers, which, at some some seasons of the year, was [were] very frequent.”

Again, in the next page—“And it came to pass that they would not, or the MORE part, would not obey,” &c.

As noted, this is an important quote since it shows an awareness of bad grammar before publication.

First, some housekeeping. The words in bold are Blatchly's errors or the periodical's typesetter's errors. His is should be are. I wouldn't bring this up, but Blatchly decided to criticize the Book of Mormon's grammar, so he needed to be careful to be circumspect about his own. At yea, Blatchly left out an intervening behold-clause. Leaving out the clause makes the Book of Mormon's language sound more repetitive and less felicitous. The indefinite article before few is not in the first edition, nor is it known to have been deleted as an in-press change. The same goes for the repeated some. These are probably either Blatchly's or the periodical's mistakes. Finally, "the more part," reads as "the more part of them" in the 1830, with "of them" and without a comma. This was almost certainly Blatchly's error.

Edited June 28, 2019 by champatsch

[champatsch]

Quote

Cornelius C. Blatchly, “Caution Against the Golden Bible,” New-York Telescope 6.38 (20 February 1830):

I have this month received sixteen pages of this work, from page 353 to 368 inclusive. I cannot perceive any superiority of style in this specimen; nor any evidence that this bible is not a book of Joseph Smith's own manufacture. . . . For in these sixteen pages, I noticed ‘yea’ was repeated 34 times; and even 21 times in two pages. The words, ‘It came to pass,’ is repeated 56 times in 16 pages, and even ten times on one page. ‘Now’ and ‘behold,’ are reiterated near the commencement of sentences, full thirty times apiece, and more, in these sixteen pages. Consequently these four things are repeated 162 times on the ear-drum, . . . .

Thus, in page 359, it is written —“Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni—yea, the devil would never have no power over the hearts of the children of men: . . . .” Whether this style is equal to our scripture style, the reader can judge.

_{* * *}

Again, page 353, is written—“And there was but a few which denied the covenant of freedom.” Was should have been were.—Again: “And there were some who died with fevers, which, at some some seasons of the year, was [were] very frequent.”

Again, in the next page—“And it came to pass that they would not, or the MORE part, would not obey,” &c.

I don't consider the heavy usage of yea, it came to pass, now, and behold of much interest. I will leave it to others to argue for its significance. It's just low-hanging fruit that is of much less import than dozens of other items of English usage in the Book of Mormon.

First, on the more part. I haven't seen the usage in the 18 pseudo-biblical texts that I have checked. It does occur in scholarly and literary writings of the late 1800s. William Morris was the greatest user of it. The Book of Mormon has two rare variants I haven't seen after the 1500s ("a more part") or after the early 1700s ("the more parts"). Beware of false positives in the databases. Had Joseph Smith learned this phraseology from the two rare biblical instances in Acts, he probably would have used the biblical short form at least two times in the nine or ten instances where it could have been used without any loss of information (where "the more part of them" and "the more part of the people" were used). The two adverbial instances, "for the more part" (1n0904), were the most likely for Joseph to have produced in 1829. The other 24 instances were quite unlikely for him.

Second, because there is a lot of 16c extrabiblical syntax in the Book of Mormon, it is reasonable to take bad grammar like "there was but few" to be early modern usage. This particular case was used at a higher rate in the 16c than in the 17c. It continued into the 18c, however, becoming rare by the end of the 1700s. ECCO currently has one American example published in the 1790s (Boston), along with a British example published in New York. There are more than 400 examples to wade through in the 1790s of "there were but few". "Fevers which . . . was" was grammar that was part of Joseph Smith's usage, but it was also fairly frequent early modern usage.

[champatsch]

Quote

Cornelius C. Blatchly, “Caution Against the Golden Bible,” New-York Telescope 6.38 (20 February 1830):

Thus, in page 359, it is written —“Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni—yea, the devil would never have no power over the hearts of the children of men: . . . .” Whether this style is equal to our scripture style, the reader can judge.

Third, the multiple negation of the Book of Mormon was unlikely to have been produced by Joseph Smith. I haven't seen evidence of it in 10 early letters or his 1832 personal history.

It's not too hard to find examples like the above in EEBO:

(Robert Rollock [1555?–1599], 1616, EEBO A11012, pages 178–179)
  "Bee thou a Papiſt, if thou continueſt in that fantaſie, thou ſhalt neuer haue no part, nor portion of His ſuffering."

(Thomas Edwards [1599–1647], 1644, EEBO A38090, page 285)
  "there will never be no perfect nor thorough Reformation,"

Multiple negation occurred at a higher rate during the first part of the early modern period.  Shakespeare, writing at the middle of the period, used "nor no" 40 times (according to the Riverside edition). I have found only one pseudo-biblical author who used "nor no", in a late pseudo-biblical text (1863). The author was a Shakespearean scholar and the editor of the Riverside edition. "Nor no" occurs multiple times in several Bibles that were published before the King James Bible.

"Nor no" usage (6× in the original text) doesn't occur in Joseph's early writings in the one case where it was clearly motivated. "Nor no manner of X" language (4× in the original text) was archaic, non-colloquial usage that was rare by the 1700s.

 

[pogi]

4 hours ago, caspianrex said:

I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Welcome!

Can I just say thank you for respecting our wishes by using the actual name of our church! 

[champatsch]

So, what's the point of all this? Well, my guess is that Nevo quoted Blatchly in order to show that the Book of Mormon originally had a lot of bad grammar with the implication that Joseph Smith was the author. Now, if that wasn't Nevo's purpose, then it would still be the takeaway of many unknowing readers.

It's unlikely that Blatchly was an expert on syntax and grammaticality, and even less likely that he was in relation to Early Modern English usage.  Consequently, his views on Book of Mormon grammaticality are probably unreliable.

What I have found studying the issue over the years, with the advantage of having the original text and large corpora to turn to, is that even the bad grammar of the Book of Mormon points away from Joseph Smith wording the text. Most object they usage, multiple negation, "things which is", shifts in verb complementation, "more part" usage, etc. were probably not part of his everyday language or his biblical imitation language. He almost certainly didn't produce the brilliant combination of questionable grammar we find in the original Book of Mormon text.

[caspianrex]

48 minutes ago, pogi said:

Welcome!

Can I just say thank you for respecting our wishes by using the actual name of our church! 

You're welcome.  I do my best, at least the first time I mention the Church in a post.  Sometimes I mess up and type "Mormon" (force of habit), but I am aware of the recent statements by President Nelson, encouraging people to use the Church's full name.

I understand and respect the decision. Whenever I have interacted with missionaries in the past, they have always treated me with respect, and I want to return the favor!