B.H. Roberts's theory on Book of Mormon translation

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, rongo said:

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

Now as to [the] question, ‘Why did Joseph Smith, a nineteenth century American farm boy, translate the Book of Mormon into seventeenth century King James English instead of into contemporary language?’

The first thing to note is that the ‘contemporary language’ of the country-people of New England 130 years ago was not so far from King James English. Even the New England writers of later generations, like Webster, Melville, and Emerson, lapse into its stately periods and "thees and thous" in their loftier passages..........................

At any rate, Professor Burrows . . . falls naturally and without apology into the language of the King James Bible. Or take a modern Jewish scholar who purposely avoids archaisms in his translation of the Scrolls for modern American readers: ‘All things are inscribed before Thee in a recording script, for every moment of time, for the infinite cycles of years, in their several appointed times. No single thing is hidden, naught missing from Thy presence.’ Professor Gaster, too, falls under the spell of our religious idiom.

By frankly using that idiom, the Book of Mormon avoids the necessity of having to be redone into ‘modern English’ every thirty or forty years. If the plates were being translated for the first time today, it would still be King James English!” (Hugh Nibley, “The Prophetic Book of Mormon,” [Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1990] pp. 214-218).

The BofM language does give that impression, at least on the surface.  The problem, as Stan Carmack has shown, is that the BofM revels in usage of EModE elements which are not used in the KJV.  So it is not merely a seeming transfer of idiom from one context to another, but the systematic use of another idiom -- which greatly muddies the waters, and leaves us unable to puzzle out the "why?"

Hugh Nibley did not live to see this development, and we can only wonder what his reaction would have been.  In one of his letters to me, Hugh complained that one gets too old to wrench one's mind around to some new developments.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 2/2/2021 at 10:10 AM, rongo said:

I also don't find the EmodE theory to be persuasive or compelling (no animosity, just disagreement). I don't think many examples of "exclusively" archaic grammar and usage truly are (I think that examples contemporaneous to Joseph Smith can be found). I also find the theory of a "ghost committee" of reformers several centuries before Joseph Smith who translated the text and transmitted it to Joseph to be weird and unnecessary. I think the manuscripts, textual evidence, and witness accounts all attest to reality more in line with Elder Roberts's thoughts in the early 20th century. 

It is certainly weird.  No question about that.  But nowhere is a "ghost committee" called for by the evidence.  More likely a well-educated single individual did the job, whether as a translation, or as a pseudepigraphon.  Dr John Dee is one potential candidate, but there are others.

EDIT:  This just out by Prof Daniel Peterson:

 

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Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon

A new argument for divine involvement in Joseph Smith’s recovery of the Book of Mormon—an argument unforeseen by the Pratt brothers, B. H. Roberts, Sidney Sperry, or even Hugh Nibley—emerges from the remarkable work of Royal Skousen on the book’s textual history.  As many readers will already be aware, Skousen and his more recent collaborator and "fellow traveler" Dr. Stanford Carmack have found unmistakable evidence of Early Modern English syntax and vocabulary in the original dictated text.

Early Modern English (EModE) is the form of the language that was being written between roughly 1470—when William Caxton was setting up the first English printing press in Westminster, near London—and 1670.  More loosely but perhaps more memorably, we can say that its era extends from 1500 to 1700.

So why would EModE appear in the Book of Mormon as it was dictated in 1829?  A common and superficially plausible answer to that question would be that, for whatever reason, the Book of Mormon was dictated in the style of the King James Bible (KJV), which appeared very nearly at the middle of the EModE period.  The KJV represented the only "scriptural style" known to Joseph Smith and the vast majority of his English-speaking contemporaries.

But this answer doesn’t actually account for the facts. Many of the EModE features of the vocabulary and syntax of the dictated Book of Mormon don’t actually occur in the KJV and, accordingly, could not have been derived from it.

Another suggestion has been that the EModE features of the original Book of Mormon manuscript—which include many elements that, by modern and even by nineteenth-century standards, have seemed to be embarrassing errors—can be explained as reflecting Joseph Smith’s own uneducated rural American dialect.  But there is, thus far, no evidence at all to support that idea.

So how does the presence of Early Modern English in the dictated Book of Mormon constitute evidence for the Book’s divine origin? Here’s my take:

The EModE nature of the Book of Mormon as it was originally given to Joseph Smith is undoubtedly surprising to believers. (Neither Dr. Skousen nor Dr. Carmack expected to find it, and they certainly didn’t set out looking for it.)  However, for those who seek to account for the Book of Mormon on purely naturalistic grounds the existence in it of substantial and numerous Early Modern English features is virtually inexplicable.  There was, quite simply, no readily available natural means—apart from the King James Bible (which, as we’ve noted, was inadequate for the task)—by which Joseph Smith could have gained access to EModE.  

Why is there a significant Early Modern English aspect to the Book of Mormon?  We don’t know.  How did it come to be there?  We can’t answer that question, except to say that it was given to Joseph Smith in the translation process.  But we can surely say that an EModE Book of Mormon represents a major new challenge for reductionist critics of the Restoration.

http://fairmormon.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=93db85ed909c13838ff95ccfa94cebd9.131&s=fcb09e0d03b1fe257d8073adc70928dd

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Robert F. Smith

[Nevo]

On 2/2/2021 at 4:41 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

It is certainly weird.  No question about that.  But nowhere is a "ghost committee" called for by the evidence.  More likely a well-educated single individual did the job, whether as a translation, or as a pseudepigraphon.  Dr John Dee is one potential candidate, but there are others.

This is John Dee, by the way: 

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The Lord Madoc, sonne of Owen Gwyndd prince of North Wales, leaving his brothers in contention, and warre for their inheritance sought, by sea (westerlie from Irland), for some forein, and—Region to plant hymselfe in with soveranity: wth Region when he had found, he returned to Wales againe and hym selfe wth Shipps, vituals, and men and women sufficient for the coloniy, wth spedely he leed into the peninsula; then named Farquara; but of late Florida or into some of the Provinces, and territories neere ther abouts: and in Apalchen, Mocosa, or Norombera: then of these 4 beinge notable portions of the ancient Atlantis, no longer—nowe named America." (Quoted in Jason Colavito, "John Dee, Atlantis, and the Welsh Indians")

 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

This is John Dee, by the way: ...................

Wikipedia says:

Quote

The raw material for the Enochian magical system was "dictated" through a series of Angelic communications which lasted from 1582-1589. Dee and Kelley claimed they received these instructions from angels. While Kelley conducted the psychic operation known as scrying, Dee kept meticulous written records. Kelley looked into a crystal "shewstone" and described aloud what he saw. .... The system claims to relate to secrets contained within the apocryphal Book of Enoch.  ..... Dee and Kelly never referred to their magic as 'Enochian' but rather called it 'Angelic'.  * * *

Temple "furniture" required for the performance of Enochian magick includes: ........  A magician's ring engraved with the god-name Pele. ... The rod "el"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic

Here is an account of a 2016 Dee exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians,

Bear in mind that John Dee is only one of a number of scholars of the period which could be considered.  As Stan Carmack has repeatedly pointed out, the books which are closest in grammar to the Book of Mormon manuscripts are Holinshed's Chronicles (1577) and Caxton's Golden Legend (1483).

Edited February 4, 2021 by Robert F. Smith

[Nevo]

On 2/2/2021 at 10:38 AM, rongo said:

But what about the "Faith, Hope and Charity" passage in Moroni 7:45? Its resemblance to 1 Corinthians 13 is undeniable. This particular passage, recently singled out for attack in Christianity Today, is actually one of those things that turn out to be a striking vindication of the Book of Mormon. For the whole passage, which scholars have labeled ‘the Hymn to Charity,’ was shown early in this century by a number of first-rate investigators working independently (A. Harnack, J. Weiss, R. Reizenstein) to have originated not with Paul at all, but to go back to some older but unknown source: Paul is merely quoting from the record.

Evidently the Church News didn't employ fact-checkers in 1961, otherwise this spurious claim would never have made it into print. Sadly, because Nibley said it, people still trot this out as fact.

None of it is true, apart from the observation that scholars have referred to 1 Corinthians 13 as a hymn. Neither Harnack, Weiss, nor Reitzenstein ever claimed that 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 was composed by someone other than Paul. Harnack, in fact, famously referred to 1 Corinthians 13 as "the greatest, strongest, deepest thing Paul ever wrote" (source). Weiss thought chapter 13 originally belonged after chapter 8 but held that Paul was the author. Reitzenstein thought Paul's "faith, hope, and charity" might have derived from a Gnostic formula, "faith, truth, love, hope," that Paul then Christianized by dropping "truth" and switching "hope" with "love." But even that modest claim has not withstood scrutiny. As another "first-rate investigator" has noted, it suffers from the following difficulties:

Quote

a) The [faith, hope, love] formula is older than the [1 Corinthians] context; it stands already in 1 Thessalonians; it is not polemical, but is propounded as a thesis, and the number three is not secondary.
b) The Gnostic evidence is late and in part clearly secondary.
c) Paul already found in Judaism the beginnings of triadic constructions of this kind.
d) In Paul himself we find loose combinations which can be regarded as preliminary stages, namely, combinations of πίστις / ἐλπίς and πίστις / ἀγάπη, “faith/hope” and “faith/love.”

— Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, trans. James W. Leitch [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975], 229–230.

Far from offering "a striking vindication of the Book of Mormon," critical scholarship is in nearly universal agreement that Paul composed 1 Corinthians 13.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Nevo

[rongo]

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Evidently the Church News didn't employ fact-checkers in 1961, otherwise this spurious claim would never have made it into print. Sadly, because Nibley said it, people still trot this out as fact.

None of it is true, apart from the observation that scholars have referred to 1 Corinthians 13 as a hymn. Neither Harnack, Weiss, nor Reitzenstein ever claimed that 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 was composed by someone other than Paul.. Harnack, in fact, famously referred to 1 Corinthians 13 as "the greatest, strongest, deepest thing Paul ever wrote" (source). Weiss thought chapter 13 originally belonged after chapter 8 but held that Paul was the author. Reitzenstein thought Paul's "faith, hope, and charity" might have derived from a Gnostic formula, "faith, truth, love, hope," that Paul then Christianized by dropping "truth" and switching "hope" with "love." But even that modest claim has not withstood scrutiny. As another "first-rate investigator" has noted, it suffers from the following difficulties:

Far from offering "a striking vindication of the Book of Mormon," critical scholarship is in nearly universal agreement that Paul composed 1 Corinthians 13.

Thanks for the additional updated info (updated to me) !

Given that God inspired Paul with this, it's obviously still not a problem if God inspired Mormon/Moroni with the same thought --- and had Joseph Smith use the KJV version in dictating a translation. My personal view is that God endowed Joseph Smith with superhuman feats of memory (I see no evidence that he used manuscripts, papers, or books in the translation process), hence the prevalence of identical or close KJV language in those sections of the Book of Mormon. Unlike Roberts, I don't think that he simply referred to a copy of the KJV while translating. We would have witness testimony about that. 

I think by far the most insightful part of Nibley's article here is the discussion about KJV/Elizabethan English in general. 

[Nevo]

1 hour ago, rongo said:

My personal view is that God endowed Joseph Smith with superhuman feats of memory (I see no evidence that he used manuscripts, papers, or books in the translation process), hence the prevalence of identical or close KJV language in those sections of the Book of Mormon. Unlike Roberts, I don't think that he simply referred to a copy of the KJV while translating. We would have witness testimony about that.

I tend to agree that Joseph Smith probably didn't have an open KJV Bible in front of him as he translated, not most of the time anyway. The intertextual links to the OT and NT are often quite intricate and sophisticated, not the sort of thing that could be pieced together in a few minutes by flipping through a Bible. I'm thinking here of things like the creative use made of 1 Corinthians 15:53–55, John 1:4–5, and John 5:29 in Mosiah 16:6–11 (see Nicholas Frederick, "'If Christ Had Not Come into the World,'" in Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, ed. Shon D. Hopkin [RSC/Deseret Book, 2018], 117–138).

Edited February 4, 2021 by Nevo

[rongo]

15 minutes ago, Nevo said:

I tend to agree that Joseph Smith probably didn't have an open KJV Bible in front of him as he translated, not most of the time anyway. The intertextual links to the OT and NT are often quite intricate and sophisticated, not the sort of thing that could be pieced together in a few minutes by flipping through a Bible. I'm thinking here of things like the creative use made of 1 Corinthians 15:53–55, John 1:4–5, and John 5:29 in Mosiah 16:6–11 (see Nicholas Frederick, "'If Christ Had Not Come into the World,'" in Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, ed. Shon D. Hopkin [RSC/Deseret Book, 2018], 117–138).

He also flawlessly and effortlessly repurposed passages, like "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners" out of Song of Solomon (used a few times in D&C in a much different way to describe the Church and the latter-day work). He appears to have been "soaked" in Bible language, and he drew upon this for expression. This is all the more interesting to me because his mother said he was the least inclined of her children to read. Again, I think that after he looked up James 5 in response to Reverend Lane's talk on James 1:5 (per his brother William), after what he was told in the First Vision, and after Moroni's visit (where Moroni quoted many passages), I think that after this he read the Bible intently, and God enhanced his memory while producing scripture. 

ETA: Excellent point, by the way, about the complexity of his use of the KJV. It absolutely could not have been done while flipping through a Bible with witnesses present. 

Edited February 4, 2021 by rongo

[Robert F. Smith]

19 hours ago, Nevo said:

Evidently the Church News didn't employ fact-checkers in 1961, otherwise this spurious claim would never have made it into print. Sadly, because Nibley said it, people still trot this out as fact.

None of it is true, apart from the observation that scholars have referred to 1 Corinthians 13 as a hymn. Neither Harnack, Weiss, nor Reitzenstein ever claimed that 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 was composed by someone other than Paul. Harnack, in fact, famously referred to 1 Corinthians 13 as "the greatest, strongest, deepest thing Paul ever wrote" (source). Weiss thought chapter 13 originally belonged after chapter 8 but held that Paul was the author. Reitzenstein thought Paul's "faith, hope, and charity" might have derived from a Gnostic formula, "faith, truth, love, hope," that Paul then Christianized by dropping "truth" and switching "hope" with "love." But even that modest claim has not withstood scrutiny. As another "first-rate investigator" has noted, it suffers from the following difficulties:

Far from offering "a striking vindication of the Book of Mormon," critical scholarship is in nearly universal agreement that Paul composed 1 Corinthians 13.

Whatever that 1961 Church News article said (I haven't seen it), there is a claim that Richard Reitzenstein and Adolf von Harnack had a debate in print over whether this triad appeared prior to Paul.[1]  Johannes Weiss considered the triad as earlier than Paul,[2] while Wolfgang Weiss cited Reitzenstein on Stoic use of a similar formula: AGlaube, Warheit (altheia), Liebe (eros), Hoffnung,@[3] even though Joseph Fitzmyer takes the opposite view from both.[4]  One Bible commentary says of faith, love and hope in First Thessalonians, Athis threefold balance probably arose even before Paul=s doctrinal stance had matured and perhaps came from the teachings of Christ himself.@[5]  Another agrees that the three graces may predate Paul.[6]

  So the notion that it is original with Paul is not nearly as clear as you maintain.  Paul was a trained rabbi, and (as you suggest) he may have employed a typical rabbinic triad (common in Pirqe 'Abot).

IV Macc 17:2,4                        pistis, elpis, hupomone[7]

I Thess 1:3                               pistis, hupomone, elpis

I Cor 13:13                               pistis, elpis, agape

Gal 5:6                                     pistis, agape, ergon

Col 1:4-5                                  pistis, agape, elpis[8]

I Peter 1:21-22                        pistis, elpis, agape[9]

Hebrews 10:22-24                   pistis, elpis, agape

---

[1] R. Schütz, ADer Streit zwischen A. v. Harnack und R. Reitzenstein über die Formel >Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung=, 1. Kor. 13,13,@ ThLZ, 42 (1971):454-457.

[2] J. Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 9^th ed., Meyer Commentary (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910), 320.

[3] W. Weiss, AGlaubeBLiebeBHoffnung: Zu der Trias bei Paulus,@ ZNW, 84/3-4 (1993):196.  Quite aside from the anti-Gnostic position being taken by Paul in that context,

[4] Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, Anchor Bible 32 (Yale, 2008), 490.

[5] F. E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor=s Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 1978), II:242, citing A. M. Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors (London: SCM, 1961), 33-35.

[6] F. F. Bruce, ed., Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, 1982), 45:12, also citing Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors, 33-35.

[7] Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor=s Bible Commentary, 204 (n. 41), 211.

[8] Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor=s Bible Commentary, 214.

[9] Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor=s Bible Commentary, 204 n. 41.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Robert F. Smith

[Nevo]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

  So the notion that it is original with Paul is not nearly as clear as you maintain.  Paul was a trained rabbi, and (as you suggest) he may have employed a typical rabbinic triad (common in Pirqe 'Abot).

To be clear, I'm not saying the "faith, hope, love" triad had no antecedents before Paul. I was responding to Hugh Nibley's claim that a trio of distinguished German scholars (Adolf von Harnack, Johannes Weiss, and Richard Reitzenstein) demonstrated in the early 20th century that 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 did not originate with Paul, but went back to some older source (which was also available to Moroni). He wasn't talking about the triad, he was talking about "the whole passage" he said. Namely:

Quote

Charity suffereth long, and is kind, charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.

My point is that, contra Nibley, Harnack, Weiss, and Reitzenstein all attributed this passage to Paul. And today there is nearly unanimous assent that Paul authored these words.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Nevo

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

To be clear, I'm not saying the "faith, hope, love" triad had no antecedents before Paul. I was responding to Hugh Nibley's claim that a trio of distinguished German scholars (Adolf von Harnack, Johannes Weiss, and Richard Reitzenstein) demonstrated in the early 20th century that 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 did not originate with Paul, but went back to some older, unknown (presumably preexilic) source that was also available to Moroni. He wasn't talking about the triad, he was talking about "the whole passage" he said. Namely:

My point is that, contra Nibley, Harnack, Weiss, and Reitzenstein all attributed this passage to Paul. And today there is nearly unanimous assent that Paul wrote these words.

I listened to a podcast today in which @Brant Gardner was interviewed about translation.  He poured cold water on the notion that translation of the BofM was a literal, one to one style translation.  He didn't discuss the three graces and the way in which Paul develops and weaves a complex discussion of them in koine Greek in the 1 Cor 13 Hymn to Love.  He is saying that we put way too much stock in the identical KJV verbiage in block quotations in the BofM.  The mode of expression is well known and available for direct application.  In other cases the language is freely metaphorical or figurative, a commonly used method or translation.  Brant didn't say it, but specialists call this dynamic metaphrase.  In other words, the text we have in the BofM need not be a direct reflection of the Nephite culture, and may be more a reflection of 19th century culture.  Brant said that we could very well expect an equivalent in our own language.

Others have suggested that Moroni had been provided by the Holy Spirit with that very Hymn to Love (in Nephite), which Joseph later placed in familiar KJV verbiage.  That works fine, unless we allow EModE into the mix.  And even then, it is really a matter of a moving target.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Robert F. Smith

[2BizE]

In what Font type did the words appear on the seer stones?

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, 2BizE said:

In what Font type did the words appear on the seer stones?

There is no way now to determine that, but Joseph Knight Sr did say:

Quote

 Now the way he translated was he put the urim and thummim into his hat and Darkened his Eyes then he would take a sentance and it would apper in Brite Roman Letters.  Then he would tell the writer and he would write it.  Then that would go away the next sentance would Come and so on.  But if it was not Spelt rite it would not go away till it was rite, so we see it was marvelous.  Thus was the hol translated.   BYU Studies, 17:35.