church history The 1922 B.H. Robert's Meeting With General Authoriteis Re: Book of Mormon Problems and the Secret Meetings That Followed it

[champatsch]

On 8/2/2020 at 9:51 PM, Robert J Anderson said:

Also, the EmodE theory seems to be based on the "how could have Joseph have known" common apologetic.

An important point to bear in mind is that in the case of Early Modern English, the knowledge JS needed was nonconscious, tacit linguistic knowledge of obsolete syntax and vocabulary. A little different from the common apologetic, don't you think?

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, bdouglas said:

The reading out of the hat is not more strange to me than reading out of the Urim and Thummin. As for who was the translator, I have no idea. champatch in other thread says he thinks there were "multiple inputs". It could've been a committee on the other side doing a "creative and cultural translation" circa 1600, the goal of which was to "testify of Christ."

My wife is the smartest person I have ever actually met, and she is about as traditionally LDS as anyone, but she sees my interpretations as acceptable.  She kind of humors me about my unorthodoxy, but sees me as orthodox when I fully explain why I think that way.  She has no knowledge of or interest in apologetics or Book of Mormon scholarship for the same reasons I do, because her entire belief system is based on direct personal revelation through her own spiritual connections.  So do you see why I married her? 

I explained the EmodE - or however it is spelled- theory to her in an extensive "pontificating session" - as she calls them- consisting of about one minute while she politely listened, though clearly bored.  I interrupted her video game for this?? 

She instantly came up with the same answer you did- It could've been a committee on the other side doing a "creative and cultural translation" circa 1600, the goal of which was to "testify of Christ. and resumed her video game.

It could be or could not be, but that is certainly an answer that fulfills all the requirements.

And besides it has my wife's stamp of approval. 

 

 

[InCognitus]

23 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

She instantly came up with the same answer you did- It could've been a committee on the other side doing a "creative and cultural translation" circa 1600, the goal of which was to "testify of Christ. and resumed her video game.

My highly speculative theory is that it was a translation done by the Apostle John and the Three Nephites.   That almost sounds like a rock band name, but maybe they did meet up and do a few gigs together.  I'm not sure that the three Nephites need to be included, but the primary reason I thought of John was because of this podcast on LDS Perspectives, Intertextuality in the Book of Mormon with Nick Frederick.  The New Testament correspondence between the writings of John and the Book of Mormon are remarkable.  Doctrine and Covenants section 7 says of John (in verse 5), "my beloved has desired that he might do more, or a greater work yet among men than what he has before done."  So what has John been doing all this time?  Maybe he learned English and waited for the first English editions of the Bible to become available, and prepared the translation so it would be ready by the time the restoration of the gospel took place.  And the prepared translation was revealed to Joseph Smith by text messages to the iPhone he had in his hat (well, maybe not quite the same technology as that, but you get the picture).  I don't know if this covers the multiple authors issue, but this is what crossed my mind as I was listening to that podcast a couple of years ago.

[OGHoosier]

18 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

My highly speculative theory is that it was a translation done by the Apostle John and the Three Nephites.   That almost sounds like a rock band name, but maybe they did meet up and do a few gigs together.  I'm not sure that the three Nephites need to be included, but the primary reason I thought of John was because of this podcast on LDS Perspectives, Intertextuality in the Book of Mormon with Nick Frederick.  The New Testament correspondence between the writings of John and the Book of Mormon are remarkable.  Doctrine and Covenants section 7 says of John (in verse 5), "my beloved has desired that he might do more, or a greater work yet among men than what he has before done."  So what has John been doing all this time?  Maybe he learned English and waited for the first English editions of the Bible to become available, and prepared the translation so it would be ready by the time the restoration of the gospel took place.  And the prepared translation was revealed to Joseph Smith by text messages to the iPhone he had in his hat (well, maybe not quite the same technology as that, but you get the picture).  I don't know if this covers the multiple authors issue, but this is what crossed my mind as I was listening to that podcast a couple of years ago.

John would likely have an extremely eclectic form of English which could account for multiple authors issue, along the lines of JarMan's comment. 

Then again, I've always thought that a connection between the Nephites and the Petrine church via the Three Nephites was almost guaranteed. My thoughts on Mormon's teachings on faith, hope, and charity was that he was exposed to the teachings of Paul by way of the Three Nephites bringing over a "greatest hits" list. Seems like a little deus ex machina, but we're a religion. Deus ex machina is the point. 

Edit: On the flip side, now I'm imagining John and the Three Nephites all sitting around some room in Britain, and John is tapping out the Book of Mormon on some celestial Samsung while the Three basically reminisce. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by OGHoosier

[mfbukowski]

41 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Seems like a little deus ex machina, but we're a religion. Deus ex machina is the point. 

It is indeed and we should never forget that!  Interesting idea I had never thought about before. 

[Robert J Anderson]

On 8/8/2020 at 11:06 AM, champatsch said:

An important point to bear in mind is that in the case of Early Modern English, the knowledge JS needed was nonconscious, tacit linguistic knowledge of obsolete syntax and vocabulary. A little different from the common apologetic, don't you think?

With all due respect, your work hasn't been checked.  You haven't ruled out that Joseph Smith could have spoken in the poorly gramatical way the printer's manuscript portrays the language.  There is conveniently no way to test this as we don't have any voice recordings on how the people spoke in upstate New York at the time.  We don't have the original manuscript which might have not contained as much EmodE.  We don't know how many rewrites happened between the original dictation and the printing (I believe there was at least 9 months in between, plenty of time to tinker with the book).  Joseph Smith changed the book of mormon and D&C after the fact and so maybe he could have changed the original many times up and through printing.  Also, a glaring hole in the theory is that you find EmodE in the early revelations in the D&C, the Temple Plot, as well as in the book of mormon.  Later, there isn't any.  Seems like Joseph was hamming it up, possibly (taking the side of the critics)?  In any event, he gave us precious little to go on as far as how the translation process occurred.  Maybe it included many rewrites and revisions and changes.  Maybe "translated by the gift and power of God" meant an ongoing project in Joseph Smith's mind, thereby discounting the EmodE theory.

While your theory seems interesting, there are too many holes that cannot be filled.  I think it is best to follow President Nelson and focus on the spirituality of the book and not the sausage making that ultimately will lead too many out.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Robert J Anderson

[champatsch]

The specific, hard linguistic reasons why JS qua author is problematic and doubtful have been mentioned here before several times.

[webbles]

1 hour ago, Robert J Anderson said:

With all due respect, your work hasn't been checked.  You haven't ruled out that Joseph Smith could have spoken in the poorly gramatical way the printer's manuscript portrays the language.  There is conveniently no way to test this as we don't have any voice recordings on how the people spoke in upstate New York at the time.  We don't have the original manuscript which might have not contained as much EmodE.  We don't know how many rewrites happened between the original dictation and the printing (I believe there was at least 9 months in between, plenty of time to tinker with the book).  Joseph Smith changed the book of mormon and D&C after the fact and so maybe he could have changed the original many times up and through printing.  Also, a glaring hole in the theory is that you find EmodE in the early revelations in the D&C, the Temple Plot, as well as in the book of mormon.  Later, there isn't any.  Seems like Joseph was hamming it up, possibly (taking the side of the critics)?  In any event, he gave us precious little to go on as far as how the translation process occurred.  Maybe it included many rewrites and revisions and changes.  Maybe "translated by the gift and power of God" meant an ongoing project in Joseph Smith's mind, thereby discounting the EmodE theory.

While your theory seems interesting, there are too many holes that cannot be filled.  I think it is best to follow President Nelson and focus on the spirituality of the book and not the sausage making that ultimately will lead too many out.

I just want to point out that we have 28% of the original manuscript.  Skousen mentions that at https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2002/changes-in-the-book-of-mormon.  Also, he says that Helaman 13 through the end of Mormon in the first edition was based off of the original manuscript instead of the printers manuscript.  So there is original text to work with.