German bible now available online and in the gospel library app

[SeekingUnderstanding]

22 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

With due respect, while you're entitled to your opinion on the matter, and while I understand why people in good conscience and good faith hold that opinion, no one ever claimed that the Book of Mormon is perfect.  Cf. e.g., Mormon 9:31, 33; Joseph Smith, History of the Church, Vol. 4 p. 461.

Dictionary.com, s.v. "Perfect," last accessed July 22, 2021: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/perfect.  Cf. Id., s.v. "Correct," also last accessed July 22, 2021: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/correct

With respect I don’t think you understand my opinion (and likely that’s my fault for poorly explaining it). It’s not about the book being perfect. I can totally understand the imperfections of humans argument as well a loose translation heavily influenced by the environment of the translator (the in this instance KJV). 
 

What I can’t understand is a God that messes with us. An analogy to another field would be saying the earth is actually 6000 years old but God made it look like it aged and developed over 4.5 billion years. That’s not something a loving father does. Likewise, I can’t see God using Nephi (who is not directly quoting Isaiah here) talking in a totally different context to confirm that the KJV translators somehow correctly restored the original Isaiah manuscript. 
 

 

[InCognitus]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I’m afraid I don’t follow this at all. Differences are expected. It would take a miracle to translate from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek and have things come out word for word. Especially since it’s possible that much of it came from oral traditions where taking a bit of leeway with the words is not a big deal.  What it’s odd here is that Nephi is word for word copying the words of English translators making stuff up in the 1500’s. So either there is a loose translation going on where Joseph (or your 16th century translator) used the familiar words of the mistranslated Bible to loosely convey Nephi’s meaning, or … I’m drawing a blank on other faithful options here. 

What I'm saying is that if an angel of God can quote a potentially incorrect translation of Hebrew scripture to the apostle John in the book of Revelation, simply because the Septuagint was the familiar and accepted translation in John's day, then the same could be true of God (or servants of God), providing a translation of the Nephite text to Joseph Smith using a translation that was familiar in his day.  And in this example it simply wasn't important enough to change it.

Above you say that Nephi was copying English words, but Nephi isn't the one who supplied the English translation.  I think you may have meant something else, so I won't dwell on that part.

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I’d actually say that I can’t understand a God that would throw up stumbling blocks. If he wanted it in the manuscript, then tell Isaiah to put it there. Don’t raise doubt in the most perfect book on earth and slide it in backwards. 

Is it God throwing up stumbling blocks? I don't think so. 

How do you know that Isaiah didn't write what God told him to write, and then the copyist whose copy made it into the canon made a change to suit himself?

The Book of Mormon does not speak totally well of the text of the Bible, you know. Plain and precious things being removed/corrupted. You are aware of that, right? 

[The Nehor]

3 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Is it God throwing up stumbling blocks? I don't think so. 

Why not? God does all kinds of things.

[Stargazer]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

No, I served in England. I just had about 4 German elders serve in my various districts. The mission was about 50% US and Canadian, 48% European, and 2% rest of the world. I served with English, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Jamaican, and Czech elders and I am probably forgetting one or two.

Wow, you were kinda privileged.  I wish I had had a German companion -- would have learned much better German. But in my time there were very few native German FTMs. I think we had exactly one during my time. And he was from Switzerland or Austria, not Germany.

As to international flavors, in my current ward in England in 2019 we had two missionary elders from Papua New Guinea, of all places! We live in the London England mission, probably not where you served.

[Stargazer]

3 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Why not? God does all kinds of things.

I suppose if God wants to throw up stumbling blocks, He's allowed to. I mean, who am I to object?

But I suspect that He doesn't throw up stumbling blocks so much as we stumble over things we shouldn't be stumbling over. In our pride.

[Stargazer]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

My POV might eventually become (still exploring the circumstances) God used the opportunity to add a truth to scriptures.  If prophets can be inspired in what they originally say and scribes inspired in what they choose to include in their original writings, why not translators in their struggles to give more better access to these sayings and writings.

But then I probably have a more relaxed view of the purpose of scripture than most (meant to get us thinking about, seeking out and then asking God more than providing answers).

I share your relaxed view, btw.

[Stargazer]

16 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

What I can’t understand is a God that messes with us. An analogy to another field would be saying the earth is actually 6000 years old but God made it look like it aged and developed over 4.5 billion years. That’s not something a loving father does. Likewise, I can’t see God using Nephi (who is not directly quoting Isaiah here) talking in a totally different context to confirm that the KJV translators somehow correctly restored the original Isaiah manuscript. 

God isn't messing with us.

What difference would it make if God created the earth 6000 years ago and made it look 4.5 billion years ago? Presumably He'd be competent at it, and nobody would ever discover the truth, until He revealed it. What if the universe doesn't actually exist, except in our minds, and God has us all enveloped in a perfect illusion that appears to be a physical universe? If we all believed we were in a universe with physical laws and we behaved accordingly, what difference would it make in the end if we weren't actually ever in such a universe? I assert it wouldn't make the slightest difference. I'm a software developer by profession, and that's exactly how we test our systems to find out if they work properly. We feed our systems with data that appears real, and if the system works as expected, then we know we can put actual real data into the system and get meaningful results.

[No, it doesn't always work that way, because sometimes it's difficult to come up with test data that mimics real data closely enough. Which is why there have to be multiple attempts to test the systems.]

What does a loving father do? You, as a loving father, raise your children by hand, keep them from harm while young, and even sometimes when they are older, teach them as much about the world as you can so that they can eventually learn to get along without you, and then, in the end, you see how well your work ended up. Did they become successful? Did they bring you grandchildren? Can you be content at the results at the end of your life, or do you have regrets that you could have done better? The results are variable, and in the end may depend more upon factors out of your control than ones in your control. You die, and they go on (or not). End of story.

God doesn't do these things. He's not visibly present during the lifetime of virtually any of his children, though if they seek Him out, He may manifest Himself to them in some way. Some of them who have had Him manifest Himself to them may teach others about God, while yet others to whom God never manifested Himself, may, for various reasons both good and bad, pretend they know who He is, and teach others fictions about Him and what He supposedly desires of them. Occasionally, God will seek out certain of His children and actually reveal Himself in certain ways, and these children, prophets, will teach the children they live among. But most others never hear anything about these prophets, or if they did, have no reason to credit them as genuine representatives of God. And they go whatever way they go, ignorantly.

God leaves the vast majority of His children in abject ignorance of His will, or even His existence, during the period of His children's existence on this planet. He leaves the raising of those children to the mortal parents of those children. Towards the end of the test period, God will have made His will known (if disputed) to many more people than He ever did in the past (we're living in that period now), but still, there are a very large number who don't know much if anything about Him.  But in the end, He will manifest Himself more fully to His children, and for a period His will will be known to nearly all who live on earth (the Millennium).

God's method's are clearly different from yours, as a loving mortal parent, and His purposes and goals are different as well. You raise your children in order to promote their mortal existence, so they live as long as they can. God is testing us, to determine our suitability for future employment.

As far as I can determine, God is trying to determine which among all His children will, without sure knowledge of Him, choose to do as righteously as they can. Because He is trying to find out which ones among all His children, are suitable for advancement to do His work, to be raised by Him to become like Him, and then go on to do His work as well. The scriptures make this sufficiently clear, and this is what I have concluded from them.

ETA: All that sounds very mechanistic, I suppose, so I must add that God loves us unreservedly, and those of us who nevertheless fail to be suitable for future employment as gods, will nevertheless be rewarded immeasurably and be given meaningful work that will make us happy for eternity. And after eternity ends, might there be more for us? Who knows, but I have confidence that God's love will make all this we have to go through be worthwhile.

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Stargazer

[Dan McClellan]

On 7/22/2021 at 9:11 PM, Calm said:

You are supposed to have all the answers, Dan, already. So disappointed.   
 

I am actually quite looking forward to a less set in stone reading of scripture. Happy to be patient for its coming. 

I'm looking forward to the same. Things are changing. It's a slow process, and people are fighting against it, but we'll get there.

[champatsch]

On 7/23/2021 at 12:51 AM, InCognitus said:

What I'm saying is that if an angel of God can quote a potentially incorrect translation of Hebrew scripture to the apostle John in the book of Revelation, simply because the Septuagint was the familiar and accepted translation in John's day, then the same could be true of God (or servants of God), providing a translation of the Nephite text to Joseph Smith using a translation that was familiar in his day.  And in this example it simply wasn't important enough to change it.

Above you say that Nephi was copying English words, but Nephi isn't the one who supplied the English translation.  I think you may have meant something else, so I won't dwell on that part.

There is plenty of inaccurate information in the literature about biblical quoting in the Book of Mormon.

In general, researchers in this domain have been willing to cherry-pick and speculate without doing the necessary preliminary work of thorough textual comparison and analysis.

The wording of the biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon is neither paraphrastic nor a close copy of the King James passages. This rules out revealed ideas or the use of a Bible or even what I regard as a fanciful crutch, eidetic imagery. Bible use isn't supported by any known witness. Chapter divisions were ignored and cannot be discerned in the manuscripts.

There are 36 identifiable sections of the Book of Mormon that quote substantial portions of the King James Bible (with matching n-grams of n ≥ 16, requiring at a minimum clause-level matching). These sections do so in a way that strongly favors the view that the quotations were the result of revealed words. In other words, a pre-edited, mostly King James text was transmitted to Joseph Smith, with many KJV infelicities intact.