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| Assessing the Evidence for the Translation Method |
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The eye witness evidence and the manuscript evidence
Joseph Knight (autograph [between 1833 and 1847]): Emma Smith (Edmund C. Briggs interview, 1856): Martin Harris (Edward Stevenson's 1881 account): David Whitmer (Eri B. Mullin interview, 1874): David Whitmer (James H. Hart interview, 1884): The first remarkable observation on these accounts is that they have reasonable consistency, both in the general information, and over time. With this eye witness background we must approach the text, and Skousen uses these statements as a springboard for his discussion of the qualities of the original manuscript. The importance of the statements for the translation method, however, is one of the nature of the translation, with each appearing to support what Skousen has termed "iron-clad control: Joseph Smith (or the interpreters themselves) would not allow any error made by the scribe to remain (including the spelling of common words). (Skousen, Translating the Book of Mormon, p. 65.) Skousen sets up his discussion of the evidence with a final example: Every word was distinctly visible even down to every letter; That the second is definitely false is inescapable from the evidence he examines. For instance: "Errors in the original manuscript (O) are based on the scribe mishearing what Joseph Smith dictated rather than visually misreading while copying from another manuscript. Consider, for instance, the difficulty the scribe had in hearing the difference between and and an. In 1 Nephi 13:29 of O the scribe (designated as scribe 2) wrote down the following: & because of these things which are taken away out of the gosple of the Lamb & exceeding great many do stumble Obviously, scribe 2 misheard "an exceeding great many" as "and exceeding great many." The use of the ampersand (&) shows that the error was not based on visual similarity. Hearing an, the scribe interpreted it as the casual speech an' for and. (Skousen, Translating the Book of Mormon, p. 67.) This is certainly a correct reading of the evidence. What does it mean for the eye witness accounts? First that their observation that the text was dictated is certainly correct. Second, their expectation of iron-clad control is not correct. With an error of this kind, we have an understandable process, but not one nearly so miraculous as the witness accounts seem to say. We have not a spelling error being corrected, but an incorrect word that is allowed to stand. Skousen gives other examples of mishearing, with some that appear to have been corrected immediately, while others were not. Thus the idea (as Skousen had noted) that the words would remain on the interpreters until the written text was absolutely correct cannot be an accurate description of the translation process. Nevertheless, Skousen does find evidence that the accounts of correcting the spelling of names did occur: "Frequently the first occurrence of a Book of Mormon name is first spelled phonetically, then that spelling is corrected; in some instances, the incorrect spelling is crossed out and followed on the same line by the correct spelling, thus indicating that the correction is an immediate one." (Skousen, Translating the Book of Mormon, p. 75.) While such information underscores the correctness of the statement that names were spelled, the subsequent allegation that long words were also spelled correctly has no such corroboration: "There appears to be no firm evidence in what remains of the original manuscript to support this claim of Emma Smith and David Whitmer. Long English words found in what remains of the original manuscript are frequently misspelled." (Skousen, Translating the Book of Mormon, p. 77.) The next general category of the accounts of the translation method deal with the process whereby the scribe would read back the text to Joseph. In Whitmer's account, this becomes: "He did not use the plates in the translation, but would hold the interpreters to his eyes and cover his
face with a hat, excluding all light, and before his eyes would appear what seemed to be parchment, on which would
appear the characters of the plates in a line at the top, and immediately below would appear the translation in
English, which Smith would read to his scribe, who wrote it down exactly as it fell from his lips. The scribe would
then read the sentence written, and if any mistake had been made, the characters would remain visible to Smith
until corrected, when they faded from sight, to be replaced by another line. (Whitmer in an 1881 interview published
in the Kansas City Journal. Skousen, Translating the Book of Mormon, p,. 83). The evidence thus far leaves us with a conclusion and a question. The conclusion is inescapable; the assertions of the eye witnesses that the Book of Mormon is the result of iron-clad control are incorrect, and the translation method cannot be described in such terms. The question is perhaps more interesting, and that concerns the statements of the witnesses themselves. Why do they uniformly assert iron-clad control, and features of the translation that are not accurate? Does this impugn them as witnesses? The answer is no, and all this does is suggest that we must do our homework, and forgive them for their humanity. The most telling of the statements is actually that of Joseph Knight: "but if it was not Spelt rite it would not go away till it was rite, so we see it was marvelous." (cited in Skousen, p. 65.) His statement on the accuracy of the spelling may be demonstrably wrong, but it is his conclusion that is important. Knight's interest is not precisely in the accuracy of spelling, but rather in the "so we see it was marvelous." I suggest that the imperative to see the Book of Mormon as "marvelous" underlay the specific types of factual errors in the eye witness accounts. All of the accounts follow the actual events by a number of years. All of the accounts are by people who were part of the "marvelous work and a wonder" and the desire to further sacralize the Book of Mormon took the form of adding the miraculous to process of translation. This is a very human process of transformation, where that which is sacred takes on even more sacred connotations or attributes. For instance, baptism was the seminal and transformational rite of the early church. The particularly sacred nature of that rite naturally attracted even more sacred trappings in some writers. In the apocryphal "Barlaam and Ioaseph" we find: "And they that were baptized not only received health in their souls, but indeed as many as were afflicted with bodily ailments and imperfections cast off all their trouble, and came up from the holy font pure in soul, and sound in body, reaping an harvest of health for soul and body alike." Similarly, we have the text called "The Avenging of the Savior " "Then said the Emperor Tiberius to Velosianus: Velosianus, hast thou seen any of those men who saw Christ? Velosianus answered: I have. He said: Didst thou ask how they baptize those who believed in Christ? Velosianus said: Here, my Lord, we have one of the disciples of Christ himself. Then he ordered Nathan to be summoned to come to him. Nathan therefore came and baptized him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Immediately the Emperor Tiberius, made whole from all his diseases, ascended upon his throne…" The ties between the waters of baptism and the waters of healing are understandable (Christ was a healer, and the story of Elisha and Naaman reinforce the immersion/cleansing miracle - 2 Kings 5:8-14) but this is an addition to the rite not part of the testamental doctrine. It is certainly an addition of sacrality, just as the absolute control over the Book of Mormon text was an addition of sacrality to an already sacred subject. The internal manuscript evidenceSkousen presents three ideas that might support what he terms "tight control: Joseph Smith saw specific words written out in English and read them off to the scribe - the accuracy of the resulting text depending on the carefulness of Joseph Smith and his scribe." (Skousen, Translating the Book of Mormon, p. 65.) His first point; is brief, as it was covered in an earlier section. Skousen suggests "Of course, the spelling out of name definitely suggests that a theory of loose control must be revised in some way; Joseph Smith had some view of the specific spelling for names, in particular, names with impossible spellings for English literates." (Skousen, p. 87.) There is definite evidence for corrected spelling of names, but how well does that translate into a tight control over the text on the plates? The most interesting example for a name in the Book of Mormon may be Nephi, first because it is not an expected Hebrew name, where the rest of Lehi's sons clearly have names acceptable to Hebrew tradition, and secondly, the name appears to have roots in Egyptian. After a lengthy analysis of attested variations, John Gee notes: "The name element NPY seems to be the Semitic (i.e., Aramaic, Phoenician) transcription of the Egyptian nfr, a common element of Egyptian personal names. The medial p in the Semitic form would have been taken as a /f/, so the vocalization of NPY as Nephi poses no problem." (Gee, John. "A Note on the Name Nephi." In" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1/1 (Fall 1992) FARMS: p.189.) This example is carefully chosen, first because it provides evidence that there is a connection between the ancient plates and the modern translation. The second reason is that it tells us something about the nature of the that translation, and particularly the point Skousen is making about the "tight control" between ancient and modern text. The problem of the name Nephi is in English rendition of the medial /ph/. This is a grapheme with a phonetic value of /f/. That is, it is written with "ph" but pronounced as "f." Now we have to examine the translation process that might create the form /Nephi/ rather than the form /Nefi/ (as indeed it must be rendered into other languages that do not use the /ph/ grapheme, such as Spanish). To follow Skousen's theory of tight control, there must be some correlation between the /ph/ structure and something from the plates. However, the Egyptian form would have had a character better represented by /f/ according to Gee's research.
We might have some correspondence between the Semitic grapheme that would be rendered /p/ and pronounced /f/ as
Gee notes, but this would require that the text be written in a Semitic character set, rather than an Egyptian
character set. Nothing in the Book of Mormon suggests that the Semitic character set was used, and if there is
any hint as to script, it leans more to the Egyptian. Therefore, the script of the plates, under a "tight
control" should have produced /f/ rather than /ph/. What might we conclude by looking at Nephi as opposed to Skousen's example of Coriantummer->Coriantumr? (Skousen, p. 76.) We can conclude that Joseph was able to see or visualize a spelling and transmit the spelling to the scribe. We cannot conclude, however, that this ability to visualize and transmit the spelling was directly dependent upon the script of the plates. This first argument for "tight control" is not convincing. The second evidence for "tight control" is the identical production of two passages in different parts of the Book of Mormon (Skousen, p. 88, referencing work by John W. Welch and Tim Rathbone): 1 Ne. 1:8 Alma 36:22 This is certainly better evidence, though not necessarily conclusive because the identical passage is too short to be clearly beyond the ability of a person to recreate. The "numberless concourses" phrase is not absolutely unique to these two verses, as it is found also in 1 Nephi 8:21 in a different context. While the phrase of "attitude of singing and praising their God" is unique to these two passages, the conceptual rendition of singing and praising is not an unusual representation of an idea. Thus once again, the evidence best suggests a relationship between the plates and the modern text, but not necessarily a tight control over the English words used to create the modern text. However the text was rendered, it is also abundantly clear that the conceptual relationship of the words to the text of the plates was one that was not constrained by a tight relationship, as the editorial process of the English text indicates. Were there a tight control between plates and modern text, one might assume that such a control would be required and sacralized to the point of not allowing changes. This is clearly not the case, and the editor(s) felt quite free to make reasonable changes for the clarity of reading, as even Skousen notes (Skousen p. 84.) Skousen's third argument for tight control rests on the alteration of a non-standard "if>and" into a standard "if>then" construction: "One of the interesting complexities of the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon is that it contains expressions that appear to be uncharacteristic of English in all of its dialects and historical stages. These structures also support the notion that Joseph Smith'' translation is a literal one and not simply a reflection of either his own dialect or the style of early modern English found in the King James Version of the Bible. For instance, in the original text of the Book of Mormon we find a number of occurrences of a Hebrew-like conditional clause. In English, we have conditional clauses like "if you come, then I will come." With then being optional. In Hebrew this same clause is expressed as "if you come and I will come." In the original text of the Book of Mormon, there were at least fourteen occurrences of this non-English expression." (Skousen, p. 88.) For this evidence to hold for a close translation, it would certainly mean a direct connection to the text of the plates, as it hinges upon the word "and." Not only is this an awkward construction in English, but the focus of the conditional clause on a rather simple conjunction would mean that the translator was closely working with an underlying script that produced grammatical structures in variance with their usual translation. The biggest problem for Skousen's analysis is that while the if>and construction might be non-standard, and is certainly rare, it is not unattested in the writings of Joseph Smith (though it does appear only in the earlier writings, and disappears later.) <1833> Dec.18 "… behold he is blessed of the Lord for his constancy [p. 32] and steadfastness in the work of the Lord wherefore he shall be blessed in his generation and they shall never be cut off and he shall be helped out of many troubles and if he keep the command=ments and harken unto the <council of the> Lord his and [and] his rest shall be glorious." (The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 23 - 25) The phrasing here is somewhat awkward, but the final phrase is clearly a conditional, and in the location of the expected then we have "and." Certainly this is a rare occurrence in the extant writings, but the simple attestation indicates that it was not unknown, and secondly, that it might perhaps have been an older construction that Joseph learned to correct later. The internal evidence from the manuscript shows that there is a probable connection between the plates and the English text where the same citation shows in two different places. This supports a connection to the plate text, but not necessarily a tight control over the English words used to reflect that plate text. Even more interesting from a methodological standpoint is the contrast between the foundational argument for tight control based on the spelling of names and Skousen's argument for an archaic grammatical structure. As noted above, the control over the spelling of names appears to be correct, but cannot be demonstrably related to a tight control over the text from the plates (the counter example being the spelling of Nephi, as noted). The argument for an archaic grammatical structure, however, depends upon a tight connection between the plate text and the English text. Thus Skousen's arguments themselves propose two different types of "control" ranging from a control from the plate text to a control over the English representation of the text. Both of these types of control find counter examples when the Isaiah texts in the Book of Mormon are examined. The evidence of the Isaiah variantsThe location where we have the best textual control over the translation method is in the variations found in the Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon. In these texts we have not only an English potential source in the KJV, but we also have a section where the ultimate original is known to have been Hebrew (though the script of the brass plates required a knowledge of the language of the Egyptians to read - Mosiah 1:4). Additionally, there is a documentary trail of textual variants against which we might make comparisons. The Isaiah variants therefore present an excellent opportunity to examine the nature of the translation method. The important beginning point is: "the base text for the Isaiah quotations in the Book of Mormon is indeed the King James Version of the Bible." (Skousen, Royal. "Textual Variants in the Isaiah Quotations." In: Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. FARMS, 1998, p. 373.) Basing some of his conclusions on the work of his student, Andrew Stewart, Skousen notes: "he then compared those readings with the Book of Mormon text. Not surprisingly, in every case except one Stewart found that the Book of Mormon agreed with the unique readings in the King James Version."(Skousen, 1998, p. 376.) Above and beyond this noted correspondence, he also finds that "the original Book of Mormon text is closer to the King James Version." (Skousen, 1998, p. 378.) To what extent was the King James Version (KJV) the basis for the changes rather than an artifact of convenience in translating? The answer to this question comes on several different grounds. The first evidence for the source of the Book of Mormon text is subtle, because it deals not in the variants in the KJV, but rather in those places were there is no variation but perhaps should be. The KJV provides not only an archaic form of English, but at times a less than accurate representation of the intent of the manuscripts: "Another manifestation of the BM Isaiah's roots in the KJV is its preservation of numerous errors and defects of that translation. The following is a list of readings, found in the BM, where the KJV is clearly or very likely wrong…The description of the following cases is abbreviated, with just enough information to point out the difficulties in the KJV. Readers may refer to the modern versions, commentaries, and dictionaries for sample translations, discussion, and documentation. Isaiah 2:6//2 Nephi 12:6: "And they please themselves in the children of strangers." Modern renditions: "they strike hands with foreigners," "make bargain/covenant with foreigners," or "are crowded with foreigners." Isaiah 2:16//2 Nephi 12:16: "Upon all pleasant pictures." Modern renditions: "upon all grand boats/precious things." Isaiah 3:2//2 Nephi 13:2: "Prudent." Modern renditions: "diviner." Isaiah 3:3//2 Nephi 13:3: "Eloquent orator." Modern renditions: "expert enchanter." Isaiah 3:8//2 Nephi 13:8: "To provoke the eyes of his glory." Modern renditions: "rebel against/defy/insult his glorious presence/glance/gaze." Isaiah 3:18-23//2 Nephi 13:18-22: The meaning of several of the terms in this passage is unclear and the KJV cannot be considered accurate. Compare the NJPS: "(18) In that day, my Lord will strip off the finery of the anklets, the fillets, and the crescents; (19) of the eardrops, the bracelets, and the veils; (20) the turbans, the armlets, and the sashes; of the talismans and the amulets; (21) the signet rings and the nose rings; (22) of the festive robes, the mantles, and the shawls; the purses, (23) the lace gowns, and the linen vests; and the kerchiefs and the capes." Isaiah 5:2//2 Nephi 15:2: "He fenced it." Modern renditions: "he dug it," "made a trench," "broke the ground." Isaiah 5:17//2 Nephi 15:17: "Then shall the lambs feed after their manner." Modern renditions: "then lambs shall feed as at their pasture/meadow" or "in their old pastures." Isaiah 5:25//2 Nephi 15:25: "Their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets." Modern renditions: "their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets." Isaiah 5:30//2 Nephi 15:30: "And the light is darkened in the heavens thereof." Modern renditions: "the light is darkened by/in its clouds." Isaiah 6:2//2 Nephi 16:2: "Above it." Most likely to be rendered "above him." Isaiah 6:13//2 Nephi 16:13: "Whose substance is in them, when they cast _their _leaves, _so the holy seed _shall _be the substance thereof." Modern renditions: "whose stock/stump remains when they are felled (or: their leaves fall): its stock/stump is the holy seed." Isaiah 7:15//2 Nephi 17:15: "Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good." The logical relation of the second clause to the first is not clear. It is as if eating butter and honey leads to moral knowledge. Clarification is needed. Compare the NJB: "On curds and honey will he feed until he knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good." Isaiah 8:1//2 Nephi 18:1: "A man's pen." Modern renditions: "common/ ordinary letters" or "common/ordinary stylus." Isaiah 8:6//2 Nephi 18:6: "The waters of Shiloah that go softly and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son." The KJV translation of meçôç (root çwç) which KJV translates "rejoice" may be wrong since it does not fit the context. Several read the term as a biform of the root mss and translate "but melt (with fear) before Rezin and Remaliah's son." (Wright, David P. "Isaiah in the Book of Mormon ...and Joseph Smith in Isaiah." completed January 1996; initially published August 1998 on the web, part 3 [note that the examples continue in the original.) In each of these cases, there is a weakness in the KJV translation that was not altered in the Book of Mormon. Had the Isaiah text been taken from the plates directly and simply placed into KJV language, one would expect some of these errors to have been corrected. The replication of the KJV language suggests that it was the KJV text in English that formed the basis for the Book of Mormon text, just as Skousen concluded. A second evidence that the variations that are produced are based on the English KJV rather than the plates comes from some of the particular changes that were made. The most obvious is the clear misunderstanding of the archaic meaning of "wherefore" in the KJV. By Joseph's time, the interrogative meaning (perhaps best translated as "why?" or "how come?") and been mostly lost, and the other alternative meaning as a conjunction was retained. Note that in the following two examples, the use of "wherefore" to introduce a question has been transformed into a declarative sentence in the Book of Mormon: Isa. 5:4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? 2 Ne. 15:4 What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes it brought forth wild grapes. Isa. 50:2 Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst. 2 Ne. 7:2 Wherefore, when I came, there was no man; when I called, yea, there was none to answer. O house of Israel, is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem, or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make their rivers a wilderness and their fish to stink because the waters are dried up, and they die because of thirst. Each of these cases takes a question and turns it into a declarative, and the resulting shift from question to declaration requires an alteration of the word order to complete the removal of the question. This surface text must be related to the English ability of "wherefore" to mark both declaration and question, and specifically the preference for the declarative in Joseph Smith's work. With these alterations in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon text is consistent in using only "wherefore" as a conjunction. Because this change is dependent upon a vagary of English vocabulary, not represented by an underlying Hebrew, the change could only have occurred by altering the English text, not an original language. Because the same change occurs twice, the possible argument that this is an inconclusive error is also diminished. One of the known locations of change in the Book of Mormon revolves around the italicized words in the KJV. Of this phenomenon, Skousen notes: "The majority of differences between the Book of Mormon text and the Isaiah text are not associated with italicized words in the King James Version." (Skousen, 1998, p. 381). Skousen notes that the statistical representation was 29% (Skousen, 1998, p. 382 - errata. The printed version is 2%, an error.) Certainly this supports the statement that a "majority of differences" are not associated with italicized words. Compare Skousen's conclusion to that of David Wright: "The figures show that from 22% to 38% of all differences between the BM and KJV Isaiah text are associable with words italicized in the KJV. This suggests forcibly by itself that the BM text is responding to italics. A count from another, and more objective, perspective substantiates this impression. The second register in the table (headed by "Total italicized words in KJV") shows that 40% percent of the words italicized in the KJV are altogether lacking in the BM Isaiah. The significance of the concentration of variants at italicized words becomes visible when it is realized that only 3.6% of the words in the KJV are italicized (see the bottom register of the table). Approximately one-fourth to one-third of the variants are associated with words that constitute only about one-twenty-fifth of the text." Note that both statistical counts come close to the same numbers, yet the conclusions drawn are dramatically different. Skousen uses the statistics as an indication that more changes are made elsewhere, and Wright uses the same number to stress the italicized words as a focal point for change. What information should be extracted from these positions? Even at 29%, there are a significant number of changes that focus on the italicized words, using Skousen's numbers.
While saying that they do not constitute a majority is a correct statement, it avoids dealing with the fact that
nearly a third of the changes do occur in relation to the italicized words. Isa. 54:9 For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. 3 Ne. 22:9 For this, the waters of Noah unto me, for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee. In this case, the italicized words in the first phrase are replaced with a single comma in the Book of Mormon
version of the text. The Book of Mormon reading is awkward, and clearly misses the smoother reading of the KJV.
While it is true that the italicized words represent an addition to the text, it is an addition of meaning allowed
by grammatical structures, and is a reasonable translation, better than the comma of the Book of Mormon. Isa. 6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. 2 Ne. 16:5 Then said I: Wo me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. (reading according to original manuscript, see Book of Mormon Critical Text, FARMS 1987, p. 217.) The original manuscript follows a fairly regular practice of elimination of the italicized word, and in this case does such violence to the English text that modern editions have added "is unto" in between "Wo" and "me." Nevertheless, such was not in the original. One might consider this to be a scribal error where it was simply dropped, but this is certainly one that would have been caught in the re-read of the dictated sentence. This is best seen as an example of the elimination of the italicized words. All of this indicates that Joseph based his analysis of Isaiah on the KJV Isaiah text rather than exclusively on the plates text. The nature of the changes clearly points to the use of the KJV as the basis, a point that Skousen accedes, at least in part. Implications of the evidence for the translation methodThe evidence available for the process of translations suggests that Joseph Smith was an active participant in the process, and that the English language text of the Book of Mormon may owe as much to Joseph Smith's understanding as it does to the plates. The evidence of the Isaiah variants indicates that alterations were made through Joseph's active interaction with the English text, not an original language (whatever that might have been.) None of this suggests that there was no translation, however. Even the very Isaiah sections that show such a reliance on the text of the KJV indicate a very unusual divergence from that text. If Joseph were copying Isaiah directly, one would expect that he would copy not only the words, but the structure. The versification would be clearly lost as it would not fit with the way the rest of the text was written, but one would expect that a copyist would retain the chapter divisions, as there are chapter divisions in the Book of Mormon manuscript, and there are chapter divisions in the Isaiah material. They are not, however, the same as the chapter divisions of the KJV. In Skousen's findings: "Although the base text for the Isaiah quotations in the Book of Mormon is the King James Version, the original Book of Mormon chapter divisions ignore the chapter system found in the King James Bible. The division into the 66 relatively short chapters in Isaiah dates from late medieval times. The original Book of Mormon chapters are based on narrative unity and group the King James chapters into more coherent units. And in one case, the grouping does not overlap with the beginning and ending of the King James chapters." (Skousen, 1998, p. 379). Structural and narrative unity do appear to have relationship to the material on the plates, and provide a better source for the indication of the nature of the original than the particulars of the surface language. What this indicates for the analysis of the Book of Mormon is that the reliance and argument over particular words relies on a sandy foundation. The grosser structural patterns and narrative segments are a better location for the examination of the nature of the ancient text than is the specific language in which we have received the text. Examining the types of evidence that should still provide a strong reference for the Book of Mormon we would still have the chiastic structures and the narrative structures related to ceremonial speeches, such as that evidenced by 2 Nephi 6-10 (Thompson, John S. "Isaiah 50-51, the Israelite Autumn Festivals, and the Covenant Speech of Jacob in 2 Nephi 6-10." In: Isaiah in the Book of Mormon FARMS 1998). What we do not have, however, are the specific grammatical and linguistic arguments. Arguments based on Hebrew sentence structure would require a tighter connection between the plate text and the English text than is in evidence. Linguistic arguments that the appearance of the term "horse" in the Book of Mormon is an artifact of a Nephite cross-naming phenomenon (such as proposed by John Sorenson) would also require a greater connection to the original text than the evidence suggests. Nevertheless, there are some arguments about language in particular that do make sense in this scenario. For instance, the appearance of the word chariot might be ascribed to Joseph's lexical choice of a term to describe something for which there is no precise equivalent. Thus the word "chariot" could be an anachronism of the translator, and still reflect a meaning that existed on the plates. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
The current work being
on the manuscript versions of the Book of Mormon are yielding interesting insights into the construction of that
sacred text. Royal Skousen is in charge of the critical text project that has been examining these manuscripts.
As part of that process, Skousen has suggested that the manuscripts can provide particular insight into the translation
methodology. In an article describing those insights, Skousen notes the general correspondence between various
eye witness descriptions of the translation method. They are worth repeating here for clarity:
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