"Joseph Smith was the TRANSLATOR of the Book of Mormon"

[SirThomasMore]

<<<<<< Is this the true spirit of catholicism now…seeing people mock another religion and having a good time doing it?

comparing two works of fiction is not mocking. It is comparing two works of fiction.

 

[SirThomasMore]

I have never thought the use of the word “adieu” meant the book was not ancient. I always beleived that it meant it was not divinely inspired.

The apologetics have always been that the word was in dictionaries at the time. Fine. That means nothing. The question is did Joseph use it? I have read a lot from Joe and have never seen him use the word, apart from the Book of Mormon.

One might presume, then, that it was not a word that Joe would have quickly come up when translating. It MIGHT be a word, hoever, that a learned man like Cowdrey or Rigdon would have used when writing a book.

 

[soren1]

I have never thought the use of the word “adieu” meant the book was not ancient. I always beleived that it meant it was not divinely inspired.

The apologetics have always been that the word was in dictionaries at the time. Fine. That means nothing. The question is did Joseph use it? I have read a lot from Joe and have never seen him use the word, apart from the Book of Mormon.

One might presume, then, that it was not a word that Joe would have quickly come up when translating. It MIGHT be a word, hoever, that a learned man like Cowdrey or Rigdon would have used when writing a book.

Shakespeare was very widely read in early America. On that basis alone, there is nothing obscure about “adieu.”

 

[SirThomasMore]

Shakespeare was very widely read in early America. On that basis alone, there is nothing obscure about “adieu.”

So? The issue is not how widespread it was…the issue is if JOE was around it.

I grew up in the country. When I would go into town, people used words and phrases I had never heard. Everyone in town seemed to know them, but I had never heard them. Does the mere fact that everyone in town knowing those words and phrases automatically mean that I had heard them? Nope.

My question has always been what HE knew and heard. Having read many things by Joe, and not ever seeing the word in any other writings, is food for thought.

 

[why_me]

comparing two works of fiction is not mocking. It is comparing two works of fiction.

Yes, but then we expand the works of fiction to include the bible and the koran. We then can see just what unites all of these books: the existence of god which could also be a work of fiction. Then, we can begin to include other works of fiction from eastern religions and see just where these books draw similiarities with western religious fiction. And on and on and on it goes.

And when we discuss the comparisons of these works of fiction, we can call their religious leaders by their first very familiar name such as joe, johnny calvin, johnny knox, Johnny wesley, mohammy, and so. Something that you do for the mormon leader Joseph Smith.

And then we these religious adherents complain, we can say that we are not mocking their leaders at all. And that it is not a reflection of catholicism at all because Pope Benedict (notice how I wrote that and not pope benny) would like a ecumenical partnership with most of such faiths.

 

[why_me]

The apologetics have always been that the word was in dictionaries at the time. Fine. That means nothing. The question is did Joseph use it? I have read a lot from Joe and have never seen him use the word, apart from the Book of Mormon.

One might presume, then, that it was not a word that Joe would have quickly come up when translating. It MIGHT be a word, hoever, that a learned man like Cowdrey or Rigdon would have used when writing a book.

Religion is full of presumption and assumptions. It is unfortunate but that is the way it is. It is much more difficult to unite all these people under one roof before the publication of the book of mormon. Then, the problems begin. But on this section of the forum, we can all make presumptions and assumptions that prove everyone else wrong excepts ourselves.

 

[autdrew]

I understand why you are frustrated, and I will vouch that I am not unaware of the existence of LDS responses to criticisms. I read far more of LDS apologetics than I do of anti-Mormon literature, which I find quite boring. I think you have made some good points in your defense, so I will try to give you different argument.

Sometimes very good evidence in a debate is misused because its significance is misunderstood by the person who argues from it. Take, for instance, the example of adieu that you responded to earlier on this thread. There is actually a very good argument to be made from adieu, but not the argument I think you are used to hearing. People always overstate the case and say that adieu shows that the BOM is not ancient. This claim is silly for precisely the reasons you pointed out, but that does not mean that adieu is unimportant: it only means its importance lies elsewhere.

The thesis that people who quote adieu ought to argue is that the English idiosyncracies of the BOM undermine any attempt to objectively define its linguistic connection to its supposed Semitic source text. The undermines LDS attempts to provide evidence for the BOM, except for those based on actual Hebrew words and names. Adieu is one small example of why. There is no Hebrew salutation that corresponds in meaning with “adieu.” The idiosyncracy of the English text makes it impossible to make any non-speculative claims about the Hebraic original. There are yet better examples. Take for instance the question of swords and horses. LDS scholars would have us dismiss these objections on the grounds that “sword” could mean a wooden club with obsidian pressed into it, or that horses are tapirs (adding that the Aztecs gave to Spanish horses a name that was related to their word for tapir), or any number of similar speculations. Like the rebuttal to the adieu argument, all of these replies assume a loose, non-literal translation theory for the BOM. “We cannot,” the Mormon apologist must assert here, “assume a word-for-word correspondence between the BOM and its Hebraic source text, for that would entail a naïvely literalistic philosophy of translation.” Warming to this theme, he might say further, “God speaks to people according to their capacity, and so he inspired Joseph to translate the BOM in a way that would be most understandable to him and to his nineteenth century readers; this involved using term and idioms that might not have been in the original text, but would have conveyed the thoughts of the BOM authors more clearly to the understanding of modern people.”

In and of itself, I think this is a reasonable response; but I lose my respect for this argument when I find that the same LDS scholars who reason this way will then turn around and look for grammatical parallels between the English BOM and any ancient Semitic document and declare, whenever they find a parallel, that it is “evidence” for the BOM, not noticing that this line of argument assumes the same literalistic translation theory that underlies the adieu fallacy. This holds even for some of the impressive evidences like chiasms. English and Hebrew do not have the same syntactical structure, and words rarely fall in the same order in a Hebrew sentence and its English translation. That is why many chiasms in the Hebrew Bible are invisible in English translations. Why assume that a chiasm in the English text corresponds to a chiasm in the original? We should actually expect the opposite. The overuse of “and it came to pass” in the BOM is another example. In Hebrew, a word that is sometime translated “and it came to pass” is a tense marker used to indicate that the following verb will be in the past tense, just as the verb “will” marks the future tense in English. The frequency of “and it came to pass” is taken by LDS apologists as a Hebraism in the BOM, but only a literal translation philosophy would justify translating it at all, like translating “will” directly into a foreign language that has no such tense marker.

The consequence of all this is that pro-BOM apologetics is lost in a double-standard. Every evidence against the antiquity of the book is dismissed by assuming a loose translation philosophy, but whenever a literal translation philosophy can help the case for Joseph Smith, it is embraced at once and the results then presented as “evidence.” If you have to use one standard to deal with evidence against your position and then use a wholly different standard to judge arguments in your favor, you have not made a case at all. Inconsistency in standards is the mark of a failed argument.

Brilliant! :clapping:

 

[SirThomasMore]

Religion is full of presumption and assumptions.

Yes…like the one that Joseph commonly used the word “adieu”

It is unfortunate but that is the way it is. It is much more difficult to unite all these people under one roof before the publication of the book of mormon.

Not really. We know that Joe had several years to write it. We know he was with Oliver. We know he knew Rigdon. Easy.

Then, the problems begin.

Yes, for Momons.

But on this section of the forum, we can all make presumptions and assumptions that prove everyone else wrong excepts ourselves.

It’s ok. You being wrong is nothing for you to be ashamed of. You are fooled by the false prophets as I once was

 

[SirThomasMore]

Yes, but then we expand the works of fiction to include the bible

Yes, you can choose to ignore the True God. You are LDS. Still, I never thought you would classify the Bible as fiction. How very sad.

and the koran. We then can see just what unites all of these books: the existence of god which could also be a work of fiction. Then, we can begin to include other works of fiction from eastern religions and see just where these books draw similiarities with western religious fiction. And on and on and on it goes.

For one such as you, yes, I suppose it can. But then, you are obviously confused. You follow a false prophet. That opens up too many dangerous doors. So, you follow fiction…you can call the Bible fiction. But, “for me and my house, we will follow the Lord.”

And when we discuss the comparisons of these works of fiction, we can call their religious leaders by their first very familiar name such as joe, johnny calvin, johnny knox, Johnny wesley, mohammy, and so. Something that you do for the mormon leader Joseph Smith.

Joe was no different than Jim Jones. His name was Joseph, but the acceptable and common shoertening of that name is Joe. You call me Tom. That is an acceptable shortening of Thomas. Should I be offended? I am sorry if that offends you, but it is true. Now, I am surprised at your dishonesty in saying that Mohammed’s real first common name was mohammy, but I have often seen that you have the need to discuss that way. I am sorry that telling you the truth affects you so. I am sorry that us telling you the truth makes you react like this. Rest assured, we mean no ill will, we are just concerned for your soul

And then we these religious adherents complain, we can say that we are not mocking their leaders at all.

I am not mocking Joe. I am telling the truth about him. He does not deserve my respect. For what? Leading millions of people away from the true God? For his criminal activity? For his need to have a lot of women? For his treasure seeking? For his dishonesty? No. I hope and pray that he now knows the truth and God will be merciful on his soul.

And that it is not a reflection of catholicism at all because Pope Benedict (notice how I wrote that and not pope benny)

So? His name was never Benny. Benedict is not his given name. B enedict was the name he took. Another red herring.

 

[dianaiad]

adieu

fallacy. This holds even for some of the impressive evidences like chiasms. English and Hebrew do not have the same syntactical structure, and words rarely fall in the same order in a Hebrew sentence and its English translation. That is why many chiasms in the Hebrew Bible are invisible in English translations. Why assume that a chiasm in the English text corresponds to a chiasm in the original? We should actually expect the opposite. The overuse of “and it came to pass” in the BOM is another example. In Hebrew, a word that is sometime translated “and it came to pass” is a tense marker used to indicate that the following verb will be in the past tense, just as the verb “will” marks the future tense in English. The frequency of “and it came to pass” is taken by LDS apologists as a Hebraism in the BOM, but only a literal translation philosophy would justify translating it at all, like translating “will” directly into a foreign language that has no such tense marker.

The consequence of all this is that pro-BOM apologetics is lost in a double-standard. Every evidence against the antiquity of the book is dismissed by assuming a loose translation philosophy, but whenever a literal translation philosophy can help the case for Joseph Smith, it is embraced at once and the results then presented as “evidence.” If you have to use one standard to deal with evidence against your position and then use a wholly different standard to judge arguments in your favor, you have not made a case at all. Inconsistency in standards is the mark of a failed argument.

First, you are assuming that Joseph Smith would hold to any one specific view of translation. Assume, just for the sake of argument, that his story is true; that he did indeed translate the BoM from the plates.

His very inexperience with the modes of translation would explain things. For instance, a strict word for word translation might explain the ‘It came to pass’ stuff–but if Joseph didn’t quite know the rules for this marker of past tense, it would be reasonable to figure that he simply plugged ‘it came to pass’ whenever he came to it. As for chiasms…given that the entire idea of chiasmus wasn’t recognized outside of some very rarified scholastic circles at the time JS did this, the fact that there are any chiasms at all is pretty suggestive, never mind the very strong and consistent usage of them. Let’s face it: chiasms are a very eastern sort of literary device, not often found, if at all, in western literature.

In fact, while it is possible to lose chiasms in translation, it doesn’t often happen that chiasms are found where there were none in the first place. Chiasms, as well, are not affected much by the ‘idea for idea’ rather than ‘word for word’ translation style, because chaisms are all about ideas, not words.

Your point about chiasms might be valid, in other words…if the chiasms in the BoM were not so obvious, well designed and complex…extremely deliberate, in other words. It is, in fact, a great deal less likely that JS would understand and deliberately use such an intricate literary device than that he would use 'adieu."

 

[why_me]

Yes, you can choose to ignore the True God. You are LDS. Still, I never thought you would classify the Bible as fiction. How very sad.

What is the true God and how did your true God, allow for priests to molest many and many innocent children?

For one such as you, yes, I suppose it can. But then, you are obviously confused. You follow a false prophet. That opens up too many dangerous doors. So, you follow fiction…you can call the Bible fiction. But, “for me and my house, we will follow the Lord.”

**To an atheist we also follow a false Pope that opens up many dangerous doors. And we all follow fiction and if you follow the lord, begin to show humility and humbleness for the conversion of souls. **

I am sorry that us telling you the truth makes you react like this. Rest assured, we mean no ill will, we are just concerned for your soul

If you were concerned for my soul, you would begin to show charity in your posts instead of hostility.

I am not mocking Joe. I am telling the truth about him. He does not deserve my respect. For what? Leading millions of people away from the true God? For his criminal activity? For his need to have a lot of women? For his treasure seeking? For his dishonesty? No. I hope and pray that he now knows the truth and God will be merciful on his soul.

Oh yes, you are mocking him and you know it. Everyone deserves respect because they are human beings. Let god be the judge of who is righteous and who is not.

So? His name was never Benny. Benedict is not his given name. B enedict was the name he took. Another red herring.

**
It doesn’t matter he is benedict now and would you report someone for using the more familiar pope benny over and over again and would you consider it disrespectful?**

 

[why_me]

It’s ok. You being wrong is nothing for you to be ashamed of. You are fooled by the false prophets as I once was

Perhaps and yet, these false prophets have helped lead a wonderful church that does good in the world and allows people to live the word of god through love of neighbor and through the love of one’s enemy. Something that we all can learn from.

 

[PaulDupre]

Take for instance the question of swords and horses. LDS scholars would have us dismiss these objections on the grounds that “sword” could mean a wooden club with obsidian pressed into it, or that horses are tapirs (adding that the Aztecs gave to Spanish horses a name that was related to their word for tapir), or any number of similar speculations.

Here is a tapir:



Does that look more like a horse or a pig? I would pay good money to see General Moroni riding a chariot pulled by this fellow.

 

[soren1]

First, you are assuming that Joseph Smith would hold to any one specific view of translation. Assume, just for the sake of argument, that his story is true; that he did indeed translate the BoM from the plates.

I am quite willing to assume that for the sake of argument. My entire preceding post assumed it – and depends on it - because it was necessary to make that assumption in order to talk about translational theories in the first place. But I am not assuming that there was a consistent method of translation. What I am pointing out is that there is no way to define Joseph’s method of translating so as to make an actual evidential case. There is nothing logically inconsistent about supposing that different ways of translating were employed at different times, but there is also no way to verify it. In LDS scholarship the only means used to determine the standard of translation is the outcome: whenever a passage threatens to undermine the antiquity of the BOM, LDS apologists will decry the literalism of those who point it out, using the ambiguities involved in translation to push the BOM text into a hermeneutical fog so that the problematic passages cannot be interpreted from the English. Yet whenever a text seems to hold some promise for tying the BOM to an ancient source, then the all such hermeneutical difficulties are forgotten, and the LDS apologists quickly rubber-stamp the passage as “evidence.” You see, I am not making any definitive claim about how it could have been translated; what I am saying is that the positive case for the BOM has no evidential value, because the standard for appraising evidence are determined by the outcome: lose translational theory to answer objection; rigorous translational theory to support evidences.

His very inexperience with the modes of translation would explain things. For instance, a strict word for word translation might explain the ‘It came to pass’ stuff–but if Joseph didn’t quite know the rules for this marker of past tense, it would be reasonable to figure that he simply plugged ‘it came to pass’ whenever he came to it.

This is an example of the point I am making above. Here you are supposing a literalistic view of how Joseph translated, in a close, word-for-word way. However, Smith does not actually use “it can to pass” often enough to make this a very good argument. If he were following the Hebrew literally, he would have used it at the start of virtually every sentence in any narrative sequence.It would actually occur about four times more often in the BOM than it does. It is more likely that Joseph was imitating the KJV which also used “and it came to pass” a lot, but doesn’t do it universally, since the text was translated by multiple authors, some of whom preferred to leave “and it came to pass” untranslated.

As for chiasms…given that the entire idea of chiasmus wasn’t recognized outside of some very rarified scholastic circles at the time JS did this, the fact that there are any chiasms at all is pretty suggestive, never mind the very strong and consistent usage of them. Let’s face it: chiasms are a very eastern sort of literary device, not often found, if at all, in western literature.

A - Hickory, dickory dock
B - The mouse ran up
C - the clock.
C - the clock struck one;
B - The mouse ran down.
A - Hickory, dickory, dock.

I admit I chose this example for humor, but it illlustrates a principle: chiasmus is a very Western writing device - in fact chiasma is an ancient Greek term to describe that device. It means “x-shaped.” The most widely known form of chiasm in Western literature is the five-act structure developed by the Greek tragedians which was later brought to perfection in Elizabethan drama. The first act sets up a problem, the second develops it, the third provides a turning point, the fourth move towards a conclusion, and the fifth concludes the story providing a moral that answers the original problem from act one. Other famous examples are the chiastic quatrains in Petrarchan sonnets and the extensive use of chiasmus in the weaving of motifs in Shakespeare and Spenser. And these are just examples from the English Renaissance. You can find the same in a lot of later literature.

 

[soren1]

In fact, while it is possible to lose chiasms in translation, it doesn’t often happen that chiasms are found where there were none in the first place.

Oh yes it does. Most frequently it happens in cases when the original language uses a parallel structure, and the syntax of the translating requires terms to be reversed from their original order. Here is an example of a famous English chiasmus:

Do not ask what you country can do for you:
Ask what you can do to your country.

Here is my translation of the same sentence into Latin:

Non roga quid facere potest tibi patria tua
Roga quid facere potes te pro patria tua

By switching it from one language with a particular syntactical to another language with different syntax, what is chiastic in one language becomes parallelistic in the other. The same thing can occur in reverse and is quite normal.

Chiasms, as well, are not affected much by the ‘idea for idea’ rather than ‘word for word’ translation style, because chaisms are all about ideas, not words.

Your point about chiasms might be valid, in other words…if the chiasms in the BoM were not so obvious, well designed and complex…extremely deliberate, in other words. It is, in fact, a great deal less likely that JS would understand and deliberately use such an intricate literary device than that he would use 'adieu."

I am not saying that the chiasms are not deliberate. I am saying that they do not demonstrate antiquity, because they do not show that there were chasims in the orginal. For example, there are many chiasms in D&C equal in complexity to those in the BOM, whic hyou can find documented here. Do you think this is evidence that D&C is also an ancient text?

Moreover, one aspect of Joseph’s translation method that never gets much press in LDS publications are the many botched chiasms that result from his emendations of the Bible. For instance, the word order of the John 1:1 in Greek createda chaism that look like this:

A - In the beginning
B - was
C - the word
D - and the word
E - was
F - with God
F - and God
E - was
D - the word.
C - The same
B - was
A - in the beginning with God.

But what happens when you add Smith’s changes?

*In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God. The same was in the beginning with God. *

Try building a similar chiasm out of this, and you will find it quite difficult. I have tried and failed. The same can be said of almost every instance in the JST where Smith’s alterations occur within a chaistic passage.

 

[soren1]

Here is a tapir:

Does that look more like a horse or a pig? I would pay good money to see General Moroni riding a chariot pulled by this fellow.

I have always held out hope that the horses in the Book of Mormon are the extinct South American ground sloths. What a noble beast!

But seriously, I favor cutting the Mormons slack on points like this, not because I think their explanations are convincing, but because I don’t like to play the skeptic, arguing for disbelief. I prefer to make the theological case primarily, and argue not against the BOM so much as against the claim the there is evidence for it. For instance, my argument about translational ambiguities is not an argument against the possibility that Smith translated the BOM in multiple manners, but against the possibility of being able to discern the translation philosophy in a properly systematic way so as to make an evidential argument from it. What they call “evidence” is in fact only conjecture.

 

[SirThomasMore]

Yes, you can choose to ignore the True God. You are LDS. Still, I never thought you would classify the Bible as fiction. How very sad.

What is the true God and how did your true God, allow for priests to molest many and many innocent children?

Silly question. Why does God allow death? Why does God allow cancer? Why does God allow hgurricanes? Silly questions. Priests do not claim to be prophets who talk one on one with God. I do not blame the Mormon Bishops who have broken the law any more than I blame the Priests for Breaking the law. So your quesiton is silly.

For one such as you, yes, I suppose it can. But then, you are obviously confused. You follow a false prophet. That opens up too many dangerous doors. So, you follow fiction…you can call the Bible fiction. But, “for me and my house, we will follow the Lord.”

To an atheist we also follow a false Pope that opens up many dangerous doors. And we all follow fiction and if you follow the lord, begin to show humility and humbleness for the conversion of souls.

There is no “we”. You are Mormon. I am Catholic. I am plenty humble. The fact that I do not stand idly by while people follow a false prophet does not mean I am not humble. It means I am doing as Christ commanded.

I am sorry that us telling you the truth makes you react like this. Rest assured, we mean no ill will, we are just concerned for your soul

If you were concerned for my soul, you would begin to show charity in your posts instead of hostility.

Again, you missue the word charity. Do I really need to keep correcting you on this? Just because your arguments are exposed as false doctrine does not mean I lack charity. Reads the Church Fathers…they agree

I am not mocking Joe. I am telling the truth about him. He does not deserve my respect. For what? Leading millions of people away from the true God? For his criminal activity? For his need to have a lot of women? For his treasure seeking? For his dishonesty? No. I hope and pray that he now knows the truth and God will be merciful on his soul.

Oh yes, you are mocking him and you know it. Everyone deserves respect because they are human beings. Let god be the judge of who is righteous and who is not.

No, calling a man by his accepted shortened name is disrespectful. If it is, then you have disrespected me calling me Tom. His name is Joe. People use Bill for William, Tom for Thomas, Joe for Joseph, Steven for Steven, Liz for Elizabeth. It is very common. Get over it.

So? His name was never Benny. Benedict is not his given name. B enedict was the name he took. Another red herring.

It doesn’t matter he is benedict now and would you report someone for using the more familiar pope benny over and over again and would you consider it disrespectful?

Do what you feel you need to do. If you think the name taken should actually be Benny, knock yourself out. I will not report you.

 

[SirThomasMore]

Perhaps and yet, these false prophets have helped lead a wonderful church that does good in the world and allows people to live the word of god through love of neighbor and through the love of one’s enemy. Something that we all can learn from.

Yes…I have read the quotes from your prophets. Not impressed. But so what? JW are good people…most muslims are good people, Scientologists are good people…Bahia are really good people…does that mean thier prophets are true prophets from God? I submit it doesn;t. They are, like Joe, wolves in sheep’s clothing.

 

[LongJourney]

Paul, I just couldn’t resist it.

Here is a tapir:
Does that look more like a horse or a pig? I would pay good money to see General Moroni riding a chariot pulled by this fellow.

If there was any interpretation going on, it could have said “camel”, and then there would have been a parallel animal:

Animals

Step into the world of animals, from wildlife to beloved pets. Learn about some of nature’s most incredible species through recent discoveries and groundbreaking studies on animal habitats, behaviors, and unique adaptations.

www.nationalgeographic.com

But the level of inspiration was abysmal.

 

[MelanieAnne]

I can offer the name of a free image-resizing program for anyone who might be interested.