Tight vs Loose Translation of the Book of Mormon | Ep. 1599 | LDS Discussions Ep. 06
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
- John, LDS Discussions and @NEMOTHEMORMON go over the tight and lose translations of the Book of Mormon.
LDS Disc Full Playlist: • LDS Discussions - An E...
Show Notes:
LDS Discussions website: www.ldsdiscussions.com/
LDS Discussions essay on Tight vs. Loose: www.ldsdiscussions.com/tight-...
Earlier MS episode on BOM Translation with LDS Discussions: • Book of Mormon Transla...
John Larsen’s Tight vs Loose Translation video: johnlarsen.org/podcast/Archive...
CES Letter: cesletter.org/
Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis/How to talk to believing family and friends: www.mormonfaithcrisis.com/com...
Sandra Tanner polygamy episode on MS. D&C 132: mormonstories.org/podcast/the...
LDS Discussions episode on 116 Pages: www.ldsdiscussions.com/116pages
Michael Coe episodes: mormonstories.org/podcast/mic...
FairMormon essay on Translation: www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/a...
Nemo the Mormon Podcast: / @nemothemormon
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Timecodes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:03 Talking with believing family and friends
00:07:58 Defining a Tight or Loose Translation of the Book of Mormon
00:13:11 How we’re defining a tight translation
00:24:05 What did Emma Smith witness?
00:25:09 What did David Whitmer witness?
00:28:50 The witnesses all describe a tight translation
00:33:08 Why the translation method matters
00:33:45 The King James Bible insertions need a loose translation
00:39:53 An example of translation issues between the KJV/BOM?JST
00:45:34 Anachronisms require a loose translation
00:49:42 Literal Biblical stories in the Book of Mormon require loose
00:53:51 Changes to the BoM require a loose translation
01:01:04 Surrounding influences require a loose translation
01:06:08 Hebraisms require a tight translation
01:08:07 Names of plants, animals and money require tight translations
01:10:35 An example of needing it both ways
01:15:57 Some apologetic answers to the tight vs loose question
01:32:22 Conclusion on the tight vs loose debate
#LDS #Mormon #PostMormon #ExMormon #MormonStories #Religion #Education
These are my favorite discussions John, they make so much sense. Mike is great and Nemo's analysis adds so much to the conversation.
👏👏👏 The BofM was the last thing that held me to the church's truth claims: How could "unlearned" JS have written this "perfect" book? Mike lays out perfectly just how imperfect the BofM is, which I couldn't see while still in the lds bubble. Bravo on all of these excellent episodes!
I don’t know if this is mentioned in this video, but we get a glimpse of whether Joseph believed he was doing a tight or loose translation with the lost 116 pages. If it was a loose translation, he could’ve explained that he was not doing a word for word translation, and “retranslated” it with the same basic story but different wording. Instead, he said conspiring people would change words and, if he were to translate it over again, the words they changed would be different from the retranslation. Sounds like a tight translation to me.
These episodes are fascinating. I grew up, went through the temple, and served my mission just before the rise of the Internet and the Mormon church's beginning to cave in to reality while refusing to admit it. Changes to the Book of Mormon (the most perfect book on Earth!), changes to the temple endowment (the ever-changing eternally unchanging ritual), and so on. When I went on my mission, Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine was widely considered to be doctrinal (as the title more than implies). When I came home from my mission, everyone had a computer, the Internet was just becoming a thing, and the Mormon church was just starting to busily change its tune and sweep things under the rug and reinterpret things that were plain, simple, and commonly taught before. And it's ongoing still! It's just so interesting to watch these things happen in real time.
I love these types of podcasts, Dr.Dehlin. These are the podcast I'd share with others.
Mike, you are brilliant! You leave me hungry for more. I can't wait until your next episode.
I really love having Nemo on, he adds so much to the discussion.
Thank the gods for, Brooklyn, who time stamped this entire episode and added all the links in the show notes and made a playlist for this series. WOW! This is so needed!!!
I know I’ve said this before, but I really love this series. Love having Mike and Nemo as cohosts. This factual information, so clearly explained, is so important to my deconstruction. Thank you for doing this.
My favorite 3 cohosts! Thank you for all your hard work
These are my favorite episodes. Mike is very good at explaining things.
My ex husband's cousin is Ron Esplin (JS Papers). I asked him in November why he still believes in JS and BoM, he couldn't answer me. Large monies from the books is a real motivator to remain in the church.
If you spend decades of you life in the church it is harder to get out. I have known people who leave and their spouse files for divorce. In some cases people have lost all ties to family. There is also the psychological shock of leaving after losing testimony. I also feel for those who have decided the whole thing is not true and are employed by the church. They have people to support and a pension and retirement benefits at stake.
@@scottbrandon6244 it happened to me. Lost my entire step family including grandkids. Lost my home and all my savings. Integrity and morals are tough sometimes. I pity them all.
@@susangroom960 your not alone. It's really sad.
What Mike said about the CES letter putting things on your shelf and apologetics actually breaking it was 100% my experience. The lack of any substantive or satisfying answers was what really woke me up.
This was my experience as well. Being presented with these issues and trying to find "faith-promoting" answers by listening to Mormon apologists brought the final realization of the misrepresentations and outright lies that the Mormon church is founded and maintained on. Looking back now from being out for a number of years, it amazes me that I could have been so blind. it's so obvious now that Joseph Smith was just making it up as he went along. But the real disappointment is that the current church leaders are just as deceitful.
I really love when Nemo is on. He just cuts right to the meat of each problem.
Must say again how much I love this series and the thoughtful, new insights Mike brings. Regarding the CES letter, I always felt it a little light on answers but great at listing the questions. I’m so glad Mike has consolidated the info into this fascinating Mormon history class we all wish we’d had growing up in the church.
Brilliant. I love these discussions. They are thought provoking. Thank you.!!!
This series is the best! Mike has so clearly organized and presented the evidence that it is simply undeniable. I can’t wait until you guys get to polygamy. These videos will help many people recognize what is real and not when it comes to Mormon truth claims.
It's hilarious when John makes funny rhetorical comments and Mike doesn't understand that it's a joke and awkwardly takes it seriously and addresses it. Then John has to explain that he's kidding.
Great work guys - loving these episodes... so informative
Yay. I love this series. It’s my favourite on the channel so far (I’m new here).
Flex that knowledge Nemo! Flex it! 😆
The series really is great. Thanks gents! I love Nemo’s input and perspective!!
From what I understand of the original transcript, that seer stone would never have won a spelling bee.
Amazing series! Please keep them coming
At 13:12. There was an article entitled "A Treasured Testament" in the July 1993 issue of Ensign by Elder Russell Nelson that discussed the translation process. He cites David Whitmer as claiming JS used a top hat and seer stone. The story about Emma being asked by JS about the walls of Jerusalem was in the article.
We subscribed to the Ensign and had that issue in our library. It was so understated that no importance was given to it in any church classes. The big emphasis was on the "gold plates' and all the church artwork depicted Joseph Smith sitting at a table with the gold plates in front of him, running his finger over the plates as he dictated to his scribe. If we had been told that Smith got the Book of Mormon by putting a rock in his hat and supposedly seeing words on that rock, I certainly would never have joined.
This is amazing! I am very new to your channel but man this stuff just speaks volumes
Good point that once he moved away from NY that JS became quite tight lipped about the translating process.
Sure, it was portrayed by the principal actors involved as a "tight translation". But was it "tight like unto a dish"? I think that is an important distinction that may have been missed in this otherwise excellent episode. ;o)
I think I wanna change a saying, "What in the sam hill" to "why in the king James english!?".., HAHA..!
I absolutely love these discussions! I am learning so much from them!
A loose translation also would explain why several witnesses (Emma, Oliver, Martin, David) saw the plates either not in the room or in a burlap sack on the table. Due to absence of the gold plates in full view, a hybrid model may another option. This would have the Urim and Thummim and breastplate at the start of translation (part of the 116 pages). At some point Harris testified JS used a seer stone and top hat, as did Emma, more than one Whitmer, and Cowdery. Most of the evidence swings toward a tight translation. Testimony from eyewitnesses to the Abraham and Moses lean towards a loose translation method. Same with the JST. I think the church leans toward a loose translation in the gospel topic essay on the Book of Abraham. They use the term translation loosely and refer to revelation as the key method. The church even states that the "value of the book of Abraham cannot be settled by scholarly debate concerning the book's translation and historicity. It also seems there is little mention of any "interpreter" tools once the BM is published. The JST is more of inspiration like the Book of Moses. The one thing missing in either a tight or loose model is why were there plates to begin with if they were never (or rarely) used in translation? I thought ancient records were recorded so we would remember the past and have doctrine to guide us in present day.
The simplest explanation is that Joseph Smith was just making it up. The 'translation' of the Egyptian papyri was simply his own imagination, culled from several sources and his contemporary social and religious ideas
Has anyone made a digital copy of the BOM, then run it through a plagiarism program? That would make an interesting episode.
This is a big topic. In this digital world where Mormon scripture can be analyzed far more effectively, by far the most common escape route for apologists are loose translation excuses. But does JS make room for it?
Any idea how can I track down the quote from Dallin H Oaks (to church educators) reference by Nemo in this episode? I was looking for it a few months ago and failed.
Can you number these episodes so they are easier to watch in order?
nice seeing Nemo here
The FAIR response you guys read at the beginning is like all of them: just attempting to explain away evidence and make more and more unknowable. These things aren’t unknowable unless you’re willing to close your eyes.
Since you mentioned the “we see through a glass darkly” scripture-I can’t help but observe that FAIR seems to desire making the glass as dark as possible to maintain faith.
Yes, as pointed out by Mike and others, one of the striking features of most of the apologetic responses is that they are so ad hoc. It's just a band-aid mentality. They don't even seem to care whether the explanation of the day that they give for one problem creates havoc in other areas of the belief system (if applied logically and consistently). I guess that's because their intention is that their ad hoc explanations should only be viewed in connection with whatever they're trying to fix at the moment and should not be considered anywhere else.
The apologists are in the business of giving pacifiers to members who are troubled by cognitive dissonance. When the intellect of a questioning member starts crying for relief, the apologist comes along with a fruit-flavored pacifier. "Here, suck on this and be quiet!" Oddly enough, it often works.
So true. The default mode of faithful members to explain anything away always ends up at the “gods ways aren’t our ways” train station. It’s the last stop. Just saying we can’t really know anything so faith. Discard facts, logic, history, and trust your feelings. It’s ridiculous and a horrible way to live and to me the most insidious way that the church indoctrinates members, to get them to trust their feelings at the expense of actual tangible evidence that negates the feelings they have.
@@johnhorner1969 yes. A lot of them don’t seem to realize it also ends in a place with a deity who deliberately tries to mislead us. I’ve had family members tell me that-maybe it all looks so fishy so we’d need faith.
I understand the need for faith, but to me-faith is to be used as a gap-filler not the destroyer of rational thought and evidence. After my faith crisis, I still have faith there’s a purpose to our existence here, even if I don’t know fully what it is-but that’s a far cry different deciding that faith trumps all evidence, facts, and rationality.
God himself believed in a tight translation. In D&C 10 he commands Joseph not to retranslate the 116 pages “because they have altered the words, they read contrary from that which you translated and caused to be written.” God appears to place priority on the exact words and the way they read here. It wasn’t just Joseph that described a tight translation. God did.
Also it’s so tiring to hear apologists explain over and over how they know better than Joseph. For apologists Joseph was the most inspired foul-up: “Amazing! Can you believe how right he was even when he was so wrong??”
Great format
I found a copy of the only art depiction by the church of Joseph Smith with the Urim and Thummim fashioned as a pair of glasses. It also has JS using a breastplate and seated in front of the gold plates.
Really informative! Thanks guys for all your work on these issues
I don’t care if it’s a tight or loose translation, I don’t care if he used magic dice or brass book ends, someone pick a narrative and then stick with it! If the history of the translation of the most correct book on earth is in question how can anyone believe any of it!
Thank you for mentioning Brother Jake! I had to look him up as a result and his videos are great, very funny.
the Rosetta stone was found in 1799. although it wasn't well known in the USA yet even in the 1830's.
It takes a Nimrod to believe this. Thanks for breaking it down.
it's true: it's a weird psychological phenomenon that if someone asks for a reason, ANY reason will do. For example, if you want to cut in line and you say, "excuse me can i cut in line?" the person will say "no." but if you say "excuse me can i cut in line because i'm in a hurry" which is a non-reason, they are very likely to actually let you do it, just because you gave any reason at all. It's human psychology, crazy as it sounds.
The comments that Joseph would come up with revelations as he needed to address the shortcomings or holes in his narrative or for his convenience is exactly the same thing that happened with Muhammad and the Quran. If his established revelation required him to sleep with a different concubine every night and that he could not favor one over the other with his “attentions”, changed all the sudden when he married his son’s hot new wife. He all the sudden wanted to spend much more time with her. Solution? God gives him a new revelation that says he can favor his concubines as he sees fit. These revelations of convenience are all to common with supposed prophets who claim they can talk to God.
I love Nemo's voice!!
#1 MS1575: Treasure Digging
#2 MS1583: Golden Plates and the B of M
#3 MS1585: Book of Mormon Translation
#4 MS1590: Lost 116 pages
#5 MS1594: DNA & the B of M
#6 MS1599: Tight vs Loose Translation
I would love an episode of John Larson doing a hilarious take on all the family drama in Ether 7-11. “Corihor takes captive his dad, Kib. Shule battles his brother, Corihor. Noah rebels against his Uncle Shule and takes him captive. Noah’s cousins kill him. Cohor battles his great-uncle, Shule, and Shule kills him. Jared takes captive his dad, Omer. Jared’s brothers, Esrom and Coriantumr, battle him to give the Kingdom back to their dad, Omer. Omer’s son and granddaughter plot with Omer’s friend, Akish, to get the head of Omer. Omer is warned and escapes. Akish marries Jared’s daughter and kills his new father-in-law. Akish is jealous of his son and throws him in jail until he dies. Heth kills his dad, Com, and takes the throne. Shez’s son rebels against him. Kim’s brother takes him into captivity. Levi battles his uncle and gains the kingdom. Shiblom’s brother battles against him. The end
Would be hilarious to see this played out as a modern Telemundo soap opera.
I always am fascinated by the "dancing for a decapitation" scenario. (Daughter of Herod please say hello to Daughter of Jared.) I mean the dancing must have been ridiculously exquisite to the point of including moves and techniques that have been lost to the world. There are dancers and dance performances I really like in modern times. But I don't think any of them would be enough to earn a decapitation. Too bad there is no film record of either of those amazing "Dancing for a Decapitation" performances. It would be so interesting to watch and I'm sure it would be more impressive than anything on "Dancing with the Stars."
All translation is interpretation! It always bothered me as a never Mormon to hear my MIL call him this awesome translator but it is word for word and perfect. Even in middle school when I started foreign languages I knew that was bunk. Word for word always ends up poorly eventually. (Think Me llamo es … for my name is but is actually I am called, or мне нравится being translated as I like but it is really closer to “it is pleasing to me.” And these are simple sentences! Not complex theological and philosophical thoughts. To argue a tight versus loose translation is ridiculous to start and it shows how much the church isn’t open and truthful.
Not sure if it was this episode where you said it, but can you tell me where is says that the witnesses of the golden plates never actually saw them, but saw them with their spiritual eyes? In the testimony of the 8 witnesses ( who didn’t see an Angel) They say they see the plates the engravings and got to handle the plates with their hands. They say “we have seen and hefted” the plates.
Quick merch idea: stuffie Kureloms and Kummoms!
It would be interesting to see a response to the apologetic about how the BoM was impossible for Joseph to write because of length, time translating, content complexity, etc.
We covered a bit of that in the translation episode, but will get to it in more detail in the Authorship episode which I think is in 3-4 weeks.
I often go back to the Article of Faith that states". We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." Doesn't seem to given much flexibility to a loose translation. It seems the BoM should be a tight translation."
I need a shirt that says “and that’s just it”
17:19. The 'time machine test' of going back in time to ask previous religious figures what they think about the current beliefs of their future followers seems like it could cause quite a stir
When they get to the slide about words like “deseret”, with no etymological background, they ask the question where did Joseph get these words? From a tight or loose translation? My first thought was “He pulled them from his backside”… lol…
Just curious at 1:00:02 where in the book of mormon do we find treasure digging references?
It really seems like Emma is on it.
Well, Joe's "prophet, seer, revelator and translator" shtick was the family business. In terms of motivation, Emma had to know that if Joe was successful in getting followers, selling the Book of Mormon, organizing his own church and so on, that meant prosperity for her as well.
If Joe failed, the failure would result in hard times for her as well.
Any statements made publicly by Emma about the founding of the church/religion and translation of the BoM, etc., really have to be viewed with an understanding that she was talking about her family's main business and source of income.
I wouldn't be surprised if she was sort of a believer during the first year or so of marriage. But I have a hard time swallowing the notion that she did not really know from fairly early on that Joe was a scammer and the golden plates thing was a total fraud.
Importantly, the Book of Mormon church business remained her family's business long after Joe died, with her son becoming the President and Prophet of the largest faction that did not follow Brigham Young.
I don't want to defend apologists, but as someone who has published translations and who knows many other professional translators, these conversations sort of bug me a bit because "tight translations" aren't real. They don't exist. Every translation in history has included the translator as a co-author, and translators who claim otherwise are simply not understanding their own process. There were no gold plates and reformed egyptian isn't a real language, but if there were, then anyone--scholar or prophet--who ever translated them would necessarily be coauthoring the English text.
Look at any piece of literature, like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Illiad or whatever you like, and there are hundreds of translations out there, and most of them are perfectly valid. There's no "one true tight translation" of the plays of Aeschelus. Even when it comes to scripture, you've got many different extremely rigorous, prestigious translations of the Bible by whole teams of scholars, like the NIV and the NRSV, and the wording varies between them because tight translations aren't real.
I like this point. I wish the video had leaned more into the idea that Joseph presenting the translation as perfectly word-for-word calls into question his claim to be a translator at all. Making the question about "tight" vs "loose" translation is a red herring. It always turns into a discussion about translation choices as if those would have to be consistent throughout the whole text or wouldn't have existed at all.
I think the question is Joseph as translator vs revelator vs original author.
If he was the translator, he had to make the choices for how to translate things, Pretty much anything can be defended as translation choices (maybe not good choices, but potentially plausible for a person to make). But if he was making choices like that, why did he present such a word-for-word translation?
If he was the revelator, he was given the text in English word-for-word but he didn't actually translate anything. Then if the BoM is really a translation of ancient records, there must have been some other intermediary translator who made the translation choices and the text of that translation was what what Joseph saw in the hat. But in that case, who translated it? God? An angel? Some other person we've never heard of?
And if he was the original author (or any other variation on it being a 19th c creation originally written in English), then he made it all up anyway (and might not have known enough about how translation works to realize a perfect word-for-word translation doesn't make sense). This obviously is the most likely answer.
To be fair, I think the responses to the apologists on this aren't great because the apologists don't present good explanations in the first place.
Hi there! Is this 5:00 pm mountain time?
3pm mountain.
Neither theory. The BOM contains a lot of condensed Protestant teachings which are wonderful, however the book is purely fiction. As is the Book of Abraham. These’s no literal or historical truth to the BOM.
When you take out the passages copied wholesale from the Bible, take out the passages that basically echo popular sermons of Joseph Smith's day, take out the reworked stories from the Bible, take out the reworked version of the dream of Joseph Smith, Sr. and take out the Masonic/Anti-Masonic themes (secret combinations, corrupt judges, etc.), the BoM is essentially a poorly written 19th century version of a comic book for adolescents.
Lots of slicing and dicing. (One guy even literally disarms 100 bandits or something like that...I mean literally cuts off their arms.)
People literally losing their heads. Slippery treasure. Magic glowing stones in submarine-like barges. A place called "Land of Moron" and a ruler named Moron (King Moron). (IIRC, the Land of Moron was across a huge river from the Land of Im-be-cile, which was ruled over by King Im-buh-cyle, or something like that.)
Then there was a band of heroic young warriors called the "stripping warriors"...or "stripling warriors"...something like that, basically a group of Nephite Chippendale dancers who did their thing and came through unscathed.
Anyway, you just can't make this stuff up.... Well, I guess you could if you wanted to. Most people wouldn't want to. But Joseph Smith did want to, so here we are.
I am currently watching Under the Banner of Heaven...a series on Hulu based on true events..about Mormonism and Fundamentalists. It's very eye opening and shoes how the Mormon church supersedes the law. I am not sure if you have done a segment on it or not. I'd love to see an analyst on this series done by mormon stories.
Loose Translation at 14:06. Either John or RFM interviewed a guy last year with a book on Joseph Smith. He claimed the BM was more of an inspiration than a translation. It got him ex'd.
See Taylor Drake, Joseph in the Gap (2021).
As a non - Mormon who watches this series because I have an interest in historical sociology (how sects form and why sects form) I find the discussions fascinating. Having said that I would caution against the use of 'slippery terms' like myth and history. if we describe myth as stories about origins that come from the past ( although I think they are rather more than that) then the Old Testament is replete with such myths. I would include as myth the stories of the patriarchs ( stories about ancestors and clan origins) and the exodus and covenant stories ( stories about national origins). Distinguishing myth and history is not as easy as it first appears. Did the OT prophets regard the exodus and covenant traditions, which their forth telling presuppose, as myths or as actual past occurrences? Was prophetic preaching based on fictions uncritically received as fact? What conclusions can we draw about their truthfulness if their message is based on a mythopoeic fantasy?
100,000 changes to the original BOM? That would be 191 changes per page. The Tanners have said that there have been something like 3931 changes. Sounds more like it.
One additional observation. In her "biographical sketches of the prophet Joseph Smith", his mother Lucy Mack indicates that the lost 116 pages episode implies a tight translation. Quote: "The manuscript has never been found ; and there is no doubt but Mrs. Harris took it from the drawer, with the view of retaining it, until another translation should be given, then, to alter the original translation, for the purpose of showing a discrepancy between them, and thus make the whole appear to be a deception." Only in a tight translation would a discrepancy be problematic. In a loose translation, at least sentencewise discrepancies could be due to translation variances.
So God “chose to respect Joseph’s agency” in relation to translation but sent and angel with a flaming sword in the name of polygamy?🤔
Love it, making my way through the series. Unfortunately most of my family would like to keep their blinders on and think I’m being deceived by Satan. It’s quite disappointing. Keep up your good work, if it helps just one person, it’s worth it
I have a very important request for Mike. I keep hearing "the ovary project" over and over in this series. Let me first say that I really respect it when a man is comfortable enough to repeatedly name the female anatomy. I'm just guessing that you mean to say "the overview project" so can we maybe work on that pronunciation a little bit? I mean, ovaries and overviews, it becomes a little bit hilarious when you keep hearing one instead of the other... 😂
The King James Version, whatever the LDS church might claim, is not considered an especially accurate translation. It was composed in an era when many people could not read and would need to have it read to them. Therefore, it was written to sound beautiful. Where the demands of accuracy and poeticism clashed, the priority was on the poeticism.
It would be an interesting exercise for somebody with more time and enthusiasm than I have to compare the Book of Mormon KJV quotes to a biblical translation that is considered more accurate
Part of the reason that Jewish commentaries on the Torah are so extensive is that the Torah - the first five books of the Old Testament - is hugely symbolic. Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet represents not just a sound but also conveys a numerical and spiritual symbolism, so even a very simple word can be interpreted in a huge number of ways.
Obviously, this wealth of symbolism is lost in English, whose letters only represent sounds. You might have thought that God, who felt it necessary to provide such symbolism to the Israelites, might have taken advantage of the translation of the BoM to reveal it to Joseph Smith, or at least to explain what the hell Isaiah was going on about. But apparently not.
When I was growing up, NO ONE argued about whether or not The Book of Mormon had been translated "tightly" or "loosely." What a joke Mormonism has become.
The fact that JS used a kjv Bible translation into the BoM is so strange to me. Because this is something he *knew* was obvious. he knew the KJV translation was written at a specific date and what that date was.... so it makes no sense to me that he would have completely overlooked that, when he seems to have thought of everything else based on the information he had at the time. Like he didn't know DNA evidence would be a thing to disprove his theory of the ancestry of the native americans... but he did know when the KJV Bible was written, right? I can't imagine how he didn't think of that.
Why would apologists propose that Joseph Smith's lions are really jaguars and not mountain lions? For that matter, why tapirs and not moose? Or llamas, if we're sticking with a South American setting?
It should be noted that calling mary the 'mother of God' *does not* imply a modalist trinitarian theology
Keep up the great work. Book of Abraham and BoM are clear works of fiction. Well in my humble opinion anyways.
This is another example where the more the church argues, the worse it looks.
Thanks for covering this topic. I'm still not sure I always understand the issues that come up with tight/loose translation arguments, but I think a lot of my confusion comes from how murky the facts of the translation process are. With the facts that we do have - plates weren't used, face in a hat, dictation style, etc etc - I don't see why the church doesn't simply say "this is the way god wanted the BoM written" and call it good. Mix of tight and loose translations. God's goal was to get a "perfect" end product and maybe the only way to get there was to use a nonspecific translation style. But instead these apologist arguments make claims that have absolutely no basis in either reality or its own narrative about the gold plates because we simply do not have gold plates to reference or any samples of reformed egyptian.
As a believing member, I wouldn't have had any problems at all with BoM anachronisms, made-up animal names, chiasmus, or any number of oddities about the BoM or its style - IF the explanation was simply, consistently, "The translation style or vehicle didn't really matter, so it follows that many translation styles and vehicles were used. What mattered was the end goal and the end BoM messages that god wanted to communicate" with the existence of physical plates and the Urim and Thummim as evidence of believers who lived a long time ago. As a lover of stories and books I can even appreciate god making his believers fight and struggle to get the job done because on the philosophical side of things, I think there's inherent individual-level benefit to that. It really just needs to be as simple as that, but the church reaching for practical explanations for everything makes it shoot itself in the foot constantly, to paraphrase Nemo a bit.
The physical locations and evidence are of course themselves huge problems, but that's another topic.
About the whole "test of faith" gap filler. It seems to me (to paraphrase a common expression) that an appeal to "faith" is the last refuge of a scoundrel. When the evidence is missing and there is no logic, convince the dupes that "faith is a virtue". This is essential for organizations that require unquestioning obedience. The whole problem with appeals to faith in Mormonism, however, is that when you persist in asking them why faith, in and of itself, is a good thing, there really is no good answer. Isn't it obvious that certainty and knowledge is always better than having to rely on faith? Why would an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent god need or require tests of faith?
This of course relates directly to the "need" for "special men" who are exclusively authorized to "speak for god" and be "god's mouthpiece" and so on. For some reason, the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent god cannot speak clearly, plainly and unmistakably to 99.9999999% of humanity. Nope. We always have to trust some guy who says that god told him to tell us that god wants us to give money to that guy who will receive it and manage it on behalf of god. Sometimes, it's not just money. Sometimes it's wives and daughters. Sometimes that "special" guy will tell us that god told him to tell us that god wants us to build a house for that guy...you know...so that the special guy can continue to speak for god without undue hardships.
But if you ask that special guy why it is that we should believe that he REALLY speaks for the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god, doesn't the response ultimately come down to some notion that it's a "test of faith", implying that we need to prove to god that we are gullible...er...I mean we need to prove to god that we are willing to believe in things that defy logic and observable reality. Hmmm... Isn't it odd that acceptance of the whole "test of faith" concept would work very well for a scammer and con-artist who is only pretending to speak for god?
So brilliant. I want to have lunch with you. - John
@@mormonstories Thank you so much! I'm always up for lunch. If I find myself traveling to Utah anytime in the near future, I would love to have such a lunch.
I’m convinced Emma was in on the con
choose a lane... you can't choose both. And neither lane makes sense.
If LDS doctrine is untrue, your Mormon ancestors are up there in a version of the afterlife that they weren’t prepared for. I’m sure they would be hoping that their descendants might learn that truth sooner than they did, to live out the rest of their lives without an oppressive religion commanding them.
1:16:36 Yeah. That's what I call miscontextualizing.
Week after week Mike and John show beyond doubt what absurdly farcical lies Mormon truth claims are. They must be beyond embarrassed that they ever believed this fraudulent nonsense. Or did they? It would be really interesting for them to be transparent about what they believed and why, what they just pretended to believe and what they never believed. Those would be great episodes.
Shouldn’t apologists be more accurately referred to as excuse-ologists ?
People can find the truth by looking for themselves with pray and faith in God with a soften and humble heart. The truth from God can’t be understood by looking for mistakes, by waiting for the moment we can stop believing. Faith will bring us to understand mysteries. God things are not always reasonable , same as miracles can’t be explained with science. God own the law of everything. Don’t trust the reasonable that comes from hate and making fun of others believe behavior.
D&C Section 10, Nukes a loose translation theory, in the words of "God" himself!
Just one example in the section;
D&C: 10 vs 40-42
40 And now, because the account which is engraven upon the plates of Nephi is more particular concerning the things which, in my wisdom, I awould bring to the knowledge of the people in this account-
41 Therefore, you shall translate the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi, down even till you come to the reign of king Benjamin, or until you come to that which you have translated, which you have retained;
42 And behold, you shall publish it as the record of Nephi; and thus I will aconfound those who have altered my words.
The whole lost 116 pages incident makes the loose translation folly, (as Nemo points out)
But since you have shown the original run on sentence non - punctuated document that has 100,000 A
admitted changes, obviously God and his angels can't spell or use grammer.
All religions have this problem bc as we understand science more and more. So in the beginning of especially old religions they had about 90% religion to explain what was happening in the world and 10 percent attributed to science. As we are now in 2023 we are practically at 90% science and 10% to God or religion. Back with the Roman and ie Greek gods they had a god for almost everything bc they didn’t understand weather patterns, hurricanes, floods, famine, earthquakes plagues, etc…these issues once attributed to God’s wrath are easily explained by scientific and medical discoveries. They have nothing to do with religion. So as our understanding of science grows all religions become more problematic. The Bible saying the earth is only 6 to 7 thousand years old is a huge problem. So today if u are using this logic there is almost nothing left to attribute to God. We are so far along in science especially with DNA….archaeological digs finding humans frozen from 14,000 years ago not to mention dinosaurs.
The idea that Noah went around the entire world and put all the species of animals on a boat to preserve them from the flood…I think there are something like 300 species of beetles. And in the Amazon alone there are so many species of animals reptiles bugs etc. The whole idea of Noah and the flood is just ridiculous and impossible. He had to go get penguins and polar bears with alligators and boa constrictors… please stop all religious people THINK!!!!
Yeah... no jaguars, anaconda, armadillos, or monkeys in the Book of Mormon...they ought to be in it.
Try to find any actual translator outside the LDS who takes this text seriously as a translation. The very text itself suggests it is no translation, let alone one that ought to be expected to be error free. I mean, why translate into an outmoded language and pattern of speech? Why should the Holy Spirit inspire the prophet to write the text in an antiquated & unused language pattern/grammatical matrix? A: This mimicking of the KJ English gives the text a credibility to people who understand the KJ as theological verbiage. Of course, it was not this when it was first translated in 1611!
📚📖📚🧐modern biblical criticism and manuscript evidence aside...actually for its time- The King James Bible is extremely accurate and its poetic quality unrivaled by any modern version...the BoM problem is huge- but the problem is solely anachronism- with verbatim quotes-appearing in a purported ancient American document from long centuries earlier..and not "errors" in the King James version...
That guy needs to slow his roll jeez 🤣
Since John Dehlin accused JS of plagiarizing Matt 7:6 from Adam Clarke. John, why don't you post what Adam Clarke actually said about Matt 7:6. Maybe JS borrowed from Adam Clarke, but he definitely didn't borrow from him for JS-Matthew or the Book of Moses. Adam Clarke doesn't even come close to those scripts. He doesn't come close on Matthew 7:6. John will have to find another source. Also 3 Nephi is taught by Christ. He taught the sermon on the mount to the Nephites.
Lazy Jesus, didn't even bother to change the content to match his audience. I just imagine a bunch of Nephites standing around asking wtf a sheep is. The inclusion of metaphor including Roman laws probably didn't mean much to them either...