“Joseph Smith’s editing for the second and third editions (1837 and 1840) represents human editing, not a revealed revision of the text.”

If the original manuscript represents a word-for-word transmission to Joseph Smith (a la the Qu’ran to Muhammad) with some dictation errors then why did Joseph and others he authorized ever revise it at all?

Philip Barlow among others have argued that we LDS often take the scriptures a bit too literally as the precise words of God to humanity (i.e. that we ignore the potentially fallible human role in producing scripture). His primary evidence for this argument was Joseph Smith’s repeated revisions of his own revelations in the D&C and his revisions of the Book of Mormon.

If Joseph Smith’s revisions to the BOM were “human editing” rather than revelation why did he do it or allow others to do so?

it’s just you.

(or not)

;-)

Anyway –

We know that Oliver Cowdery averaged about three textual changes per manuscript page as he copied from the original manuscript into the printer’s manuscript.

I wonder if we could conjecture that, therefore, it is likely Oliver and the other scribes made an average of three changes per manuscript page from whatever Joseph was reading/receiving.

Oral transmission would be different than the visual method of transmission from the Original Manuscript to the Printers, but since we can’t truly know exactly what JS saw, we can only conjecture what changes Martin Harris/Oliver Cowdery/other scribes introduced into the original manuscript.

Now my brain aches.

Is anyone else skeptical, or is it just me?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it the case that the consensus of the various accounts we have of Smith’s translation of the BoM is that the plates were not, in fact, needed, or even present most of the time? Joseph stared into the Urim and Thummin, or into his seer stone, or into his hat (or all three), and recited to his scribes, while the plates themselves were elsewhere–in the room, downstairs, hidden in a barrell of beans, etc., correct? I’m uncomfortable with the the idea of the book’s revelation being a process of strictly controlled, word-for-word transmission, but to the extent that the evidence points that way, it supports the conclusion which follows from this fact: namely, that the plates were primarily a catalyst (kind of like how the Egyptian Book of the Dead scrolls were a catalyst for the revelation of the Book of Abraham), and that no actual, literal translation of Reformed Egyptian marks hammed into metal plates took place at all.

(1) Wish I could take credit for inventing the usage myself, but I simply picked it up from Dr. Skousen’s piece, when he wrote, “Joseph Smith is not the author of the Book of Mormon, nor is he actually the translator. Instead, he was the revelator – through him the Lord revealed the English-language text (and by means of the interpreters and the seer stone). Such a view is consistent, I believe, with Joseph’s use elsewhere of the verb translate to mean ‘transmit’ and the noun translation to mean ‘transmission’ (as in the eighth Article of Faith).”

(2) I’m no expert in translation practices, but I have tried to imagine how Joseph could have produced his translation/transmission of the plates. I accept the book’s fundamental historicity, but there have been (and still are) moments when a particular word or passage seems out of place in the text; right now, for example, I’m troubled by the word “monarchy” in Alma 43:45, which seems culturally and linguistically misplaced. As I see it, there are a few methodological possibilities (and these are certainly not especially original): first, God revealed each word directly and unequivocally to Joseph’s mind or eye, presumably in a syntax that closely matched the original text but in a vocabulary that preserved Joseph’s sense of the sacred (ie KJV-Biblical). Dr. Skousen’s work argues for this kind of initial controlled transmission, which would warrant very close, word-by-word exegesis of the text, but (frustratingly) makes it clear that the original product of that method is permanently lost (barring further revelation), and so we cannot read the majority of the text in that way. The presence of early modern linguistic forms, under this possibility, would originate with God, and thus I would have to re-evaluate God’s rhetorical objectives (not an easy feat). Second, I’ve thought that perhaps only inchoate concepts and information came to Joseph, which he then formulated into language by means of his own rational faculties. If there are truly archaic early modern forms in the BoM that are not extant in the KJV, this theory would be nonsense, since Joseph would have no mental access to those forms (I have previously rejected this theory for other reasons). Finally, I’ve postulated a sort of middle ground, where words and phrases are transmitted to Joseph ready-made, but where God provides close (but not exact) linguistic matches to words or idioms that have no equivalent in 19th-C English; this would allow for both semitic and 19th-C elements to appear in the text. But if Dr. Skousen is right about archaic forms being present in the text, that would suggest that God did in fact transmit words and idioms that were unfamiliar to Joseph, at least in certain cases, rather than transmitting a close but familiar equivalent.

Of course, we haven’t seen any of the evidence for early modern archaisms yet, and though I trust Dr. SKousen’s initial judgement, it’s possible that the conjecture will not pan out.

I agree that this was the most interesting part of Professor Skousen’s study. Two questions:

(1) Why do you prefer “transmission”? (I like the term, too, but I wonder if we share the same reason.)

(2) Why would the existence of archaisms force you to reconsider Joseph’s method? Stated another way, what theories have you entertained?

Alma 42:25 – “do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice?” = “rob justice”, a collocation difficult to render in another language

1 Ne 13:33-34 – “visit in judgment” – visit is a neutral term in translation, but should it not have a meaning of “punish”?

Alma 7:25 – And may the Lord bless you, and keep your garments spotless. = “and [may the Lord] keep your garments spotless” OR “and [you should] keep your garments spotless”? In translation the verb “keep” will have a different form according to the choice you make. We mag have a tendency to read it according to the first possibility. But some will interpret that it is not the responsibility of the Lord to keep your garments spotless, but your own, in which case the second possibility is preferred.

And an interesting problem has been the added words “the BoM – Another Testament of Christ”. The word “another” has two meanings, “one more Testament” or “a different Testament”. The first is meant of course. But in other languages the translation can rather convey “different”. Plus “of Christ” is meant as “in favor of Christ”, but in other languages “of” can mean “from, given by”. You see the ambiguity in certain translations that can be understood as “a different Testament given by Christ”.

http://www.metacannon.net/bomsyntax/