When a sacred text is translated into another language or rewritten into more familiar language, there are substantial risks that this process may introduce doctrinal errors or obscure evidence of its ancient origin.These are good and valid reasons. It's certainly possible that one day the church will think these risks worth it, but not today. One interesting thing to consider-- there have been changes to the Book of Mormon already. I first learned it before or during my mission, and have recently been learning more about that process. Joseph Smith made many edits to the Book of Mormon when it came time for later printings. That's fine since he was authorized, but what if these changes obscured evidence of its ancient origin? And what about copying mistakes?
Starting in 1988, Royal Skousen started a project to recover this earliest text. This was a long and exhaustive effort analyzing all the manuscripts and printed editions of the Book of Mormon, and finally in 2009 he printed The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text.
His analysis is ongoing and he is still printing findings. So what sort of evidence has he discovered? In this blog post, I would like to summarize what he and others have found that sheds light on how the Book of Mormon was translated, and some surprising findings.
Joseph Smith married Emma in January 1827, and received the plates on September 22nd that same year. After Emma and Joseph moved into their home, Emma acted as Joseph's scribe. In an interview with her son, Joseph Smith III, published in 1879, she related some of her experience:
Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon. ... when acting as his scribe, your father would dictate to me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after interruptions, he would at once begin where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript or having any portion of it read to him. This was a usual thing for him to do. It would have been improbable that a learned man could do this; and, for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impossible.Joseph's ignorance was well-known, and is why most early critics of the Book of Mormon proposed theories as to who actually wrote it. Of course, Latter-day Saints believe that it was by the gift and power of God. No matter what you believe, there's some interesting evidence that the original manuscripts reveal.
About 28% of the original manuscript still exists. Evidence confirms that it was dictated. Mistakes made in the original manuscript are the type of errors one would expect from mishearing a word instead of misreading it. Like "away" instead of "a way" or "&" instead of "an" for example. Since there are mistakes, this shows the revelation did not prevent misspellings.
After the loss of the 116 pages, evidence shows that they continued where they left off with Mosiah. They completed the Book of Mormon, and then after moving up to Fayette to the Whitmer farm in July, Joseph translated what was on the small plates. One of the biggest clues is that in the printer's manuscript, Mosiah begins with chapter 3.
The chapter breaks were also part of the translation. In some manner or another, Joseph saw a break in the chapters, so when he was at the end, he would say so, and Oliver would write "Chapter" and then the numbers were added in later. The word "chapter" itself likely wasn't part of the plates, since these were always at the end of chapters, but that's how it was interpreted.
When Orson Pratt added verse numbers to the Book of Mormon in 1879, he also broke up these long chapters, so what we have today isn't the same chapter divisions that Joseph Smith received. Looking at the original, you can see how things were divided into large logical chunks.
To prevent another lost-pages scenario, In August, Oliver copied the original manuscript to another manuscript that they took to the printer. This printer's manuscript is extant except for three lines. The mistakes on the printer's manuscript are the type one would expect from misreading a word while copying, rather than mishearing a word.
None of the original manuscript had paragraphs or punctuation. Hyrum would bring it and then John Gilbert, the typesetter for the Book of Mormon would set the print. As he did so, he added punctuation, and Hyrum would take it back home. After a while, Joseph permitted John to take the manuscript home so that he could add punctuation. Indeed, pencil marks start showing up at 2 Nephi 17:4.
There are many ways to view the Book of Mormon translation. One view some Latter-day Saints have is that the Book of Mormon was an "iron-clad" translation-- that no mistakes were permitted, and Joseph couldn't move forward until every word was spelled right. On the opposite side of the spectrum, some believe that ideas were revealed to Joseph, which he them put into his own words.
The spelling mistakes in the manuscripts rules out the iron-clad view, but there is a reason people believe that. Evidence in the original manuscript shows that the first time Joseph came to a new name, he would spell it out-- the name would be crossed out and then the correct spelling would be inserted. But later times, it was possible the name would be misspelled.
There is also evidence against the loose-control theory. This theory was largely proposed to explain the non-standard English in the Book of Mormon. However, this would require Joseph to memorize non-biblical passages that are widely separated in the text. The internal consistency of quotes and references is far greater than one would expect if Joseph were just putting ideas into his own words.
Joseph Smith edited out much of the non-standard English grammar in the 1837 and 1840 editions of the Book of Mormon, marking changes on the printer's manuscript. Looking at the original, it appears that the non-standard English grammar isn't Joseph's language.
One example is that instead of if-then statements, the Book of Mormon frequently used if-and which doesn't make sense in any English, let alone Joseph's. For example, Moroni's promise was originally written, "and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart with real intent having faith in Christ and he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost."
Although bad English, if-and is how such a statement would be given in Hebrew.
Besides Hebraisms like these, most of the syntax of the Book of Mormon actually follows examples of Early Modern English from the late 1500s. For example, the Book of Mormon often adds "-eth" endings to plural 3rd person verbs when "correct" grammar says it should only be for singular. However, this occasionally shows up in Early Modern English, the highest rate in the late 1500s. Another example is how it uses "did" alongside verbs-- "I did say" "I did go" etc. was more common in Early Modern English. Stanford Carmack proposes that every example of non-standard English from the Book of Mormon actually comes from Early Modern English.
Some may argue that Joseph got this Early Modern English from the Bible, however many of the Early Modern English examples in the Book of Mormon do not have any examples in the Bible. The King James Bible was originally published in 1611, but after English developed a standard in the 1700s, the King James Bible was largely standardized. This standardized version was published in 1769 and is largely what has been used since.
One interesting thing is that every word in the Book of Mormon was at least 100 years old (older than 1730) with three exceptions. Heft, hinderment, and -ites don't show up until later. Heft is from the witness statement, and Latter-day Saints do not claim it was part of the translation. The other two can be made from other words, so Royal Skousen doesn't think they really count either.
However, it is also a filtered vocabulary. There are no truely archaic words-- that is, those of Joseph's day would recognize all the words as current, except some in Bible quotations. However, some of the words or phrases make more sense with archaic meanings. Like "but" and "but if" meaning "unless", "counsel" meaning "consult", and "departed" meaning "divided" instead of their current meanings.
That is really surprising for me, because it's not like "The Book of Mormon is largely in Early Modern English" is a truth-claim that the Church makes. Nor is it one we would expect it to make. But that's where the evidence leads.
They do caution that it isn't entirely in Early Modern English. I already mentioned that there are Hebraisms, and the language is filtered. Some syntax matches better with late 1700s instead of 1500s. Taking phrases as a group, some phrases don't show up later. Interestingly "retain" in the Book of Mormon has a unique meaning, "to take back," that English never used as a meaning.
Speaking of biblical quotes, these also show something about the translation. Although the King James Bible does not seem to be the source for the syntax of the rest of the Book of Mormon (as described above) it does seem to be the base for the Bible quotes in the Book of Mormon. 97% of the words in the Isaiah chapters that are quoted in the Book of Mormon are unchanged from the King James text.
It is a mistake however to say the Bible was just copied. Just counting the fully quoted Isaiah chapters, half the verses have some change to them. 3% of the words were deleted or changed, and the Book of Mormon adds 4% more words.
One criticism I have seen is that the Book of Mormon contains the italicized words from the King James Bible. The King James translators italicized some words to indicate that they were not in the original Hebrew and Greek text. They were added because English often requires more words to make a sentence make sense, which were not necessary in the original languages. So of course these words still need to be there. However, it isn't even true that all the italisized words were copied. Many were changed or removed, and only 65% of these words remain, which is very disproportionate to the other words, 97%. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) retains 43% of the King James italics, and the New American Standard Bible (NASB) retains about 50%, despite these versions not even being based on the King James Bible.
I've also heard the opposite argument, that Joseph knew what the italics were, and therefore felt safest making changes in those areas. However, although a lot of the italics were changed, most of the changes in the Biblical chapter quotes were not made to the italics. Royal Skousen calculates only 29% of the changes were associated with italicized words.
Some of those changes make the Book of Mormon text align better with other ancient Bible sources, such as the Septuigint and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
As far as the translation methodology goes for the Book of Mormon, Royal Skousen believes that the evidence shows that it probably isn't a literal translation, but a creative and cultural translation. It's as if the one providing the translation was keenly aware of social issues during the 1500s and 1600s and had an in-depth knowledge of the King James Bible, and was capable of interweaving different parts together, blending in new ways such that you don't see the seams.
Take a look at Mosiah 18:21
And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and love one towards another."One faith and one baptism" comes from Ephesians 4:5. "Their hearts knit together" is from Colossians 2:2, "together in unity" is from Psalm 133:1, and "in love one towards another" is from 1 Thessalonians 3:12.
Social issues that come up in the Book of Mormon include people being burned at the stake for their beliefs, secret combinations, independence of church and state, and an awareness of debates about congregation vs church, elder vs. priest, love vs. charity, repent vs. do penance. These issues were bigger in the 1500s and 1600s, not in Joseph Smith's time.
We can speculate forever as to why the Lord did the translation the way He did. I don't know why. But from what we see in the Book of Mormon-- it is not Joseph's language. Nor that of anyone living during his time. We also see that although it isn't free from mistakes, it is very deliberate. It might not be literal, but it is a "tight" translation, meaning even if the translation was creative and cultural, each word is intentional, not haphazard.
The Book of Mormon was published nearly 200 years ago, and we are only recently finding out about these things, a lot of this within the last five years. I think this is super interesting, and makes me excited for what they are going to find next!
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