Comments on: How studying the humanities helps me avoid faith crises: notes on deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

By: BlueRidgeMormon

BlueRidgeMormon — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 18:29:48 +0000

Jonathan:

First, EXCELLENT post. For me your thoughts hit the nail on the head, but when I try to convey them, they come across as sounding like I’m saying I just don’t care about the details. Wish I was as articulate as you. Well done, and thank you.

Second, “dial that goes up to eleven” FTW! Well played, my friend.

By: SDS

SDS — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 22:52:29 +0000

Thanks, Clark and Jonathan; those clarifications are helpful.

By: Kevin Christensen

Kevin Christensen — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 17:38:50 +0000

Regarding this comment, “First is what we might call cultural historical context; specifically, in the eighth century, Jerusalem was the inviolable Zion, while deutero-Isaiah reflects a conquered Jerusalem, therefore (the argument goes) those passages must have been composed later. It’s a very reasonable way to interpret the evidence.”

This is of course a generalization about deutero-Isaiah, and I agree with it being “a very reasonable way to interpret the evidence,” but what gets overlooked is the issue of what gets imagined, noticed and valued as evidence given the assumptions, methods, and problem field of particular approach. I sometimes run across an approach to chapters within those labeled deutero-Isaiah that brings out things that the “conquered Jerusalem” contextual filter and lens simply does not see, and therefore, does not bother to interpret or weigh in the balance. This one, in particular, deserves serious consideration with respect to the Fourth Servant song (Isaiah 53 and Abinadi) with implications for generalizations about deutero-Isaiah. I hadn’t read it when I wrote my chapter on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon in Paradigms Regained in 2001. I should have done. It makes a difference in what should count as evidence, though, not if we don’t read it.

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/FourthServantSong.pdf

And discussions of the KJV influence on the translation are interesting and important, but Thomas Wayment noticed a passage in Alma 7:11 where Alma quotes Isaiah 53:4, but apparently Joseph Smith did not recognize it as a quote he had already translated KJV style in Mosiah. Alma 7:11 provides a more literal and more accurate translation of the Hebrew.

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1399&index=10

By: Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:20:33 +0000

SDS, there are several possibilities. Maybe in some cases, a passage from deutero-Isaiah is older than it looked (and so doesn’t cause a problem for the traditional dating of the Book of Mormon). Or maybe the Brass Plates left Jerusalem later than the traditional dating has it (there are gaps in the Book of Mormon’s chronicle of history, and the internal story suggests at least a couple places where record keeping wasn’t very good, and who knows how well the editors were able to reconcile the records at their disposal). And that’s all before the problem of the KJV in the translation process that Clark describes. Maybe Joseph Smith’s revelatory process always rendered one word of Nephite writing into a word of English, although I suspect that it was rather a process that might find the best possible translation of a word or phrase with a much larger (or smaller) linguistic unit drawn from the KJV, maybe reflecting a Nephite citation of a verse from Isaiah with a verse from the KJV, or maybe reflecting that verse with a chapter. So when an issue like deutero-Isaiah comes along, we can look at it from a lot of different angles and possibly learn something interesting.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:59:32 +0000

SDS, I can't speak for Jonathan on those topics, but I think once you accept a loose translation rather than a tight translation that those issues resolve themselves. You then have the U&T in some fashion taking phrases that convey a similar idea out of Joseph's memory. Those most often are KJV phrases but also come from common theological or rhetorical phrases that he likely heard in his environment. The bigger issue aren't these loose phrases with a "close enough" relation to the underlying text but extended quotations that almost certainly reflect quotations in the underlying text. If you're interested a good discussion of the arguments for a loose translation along with explaining what that entails, I'd check out Brant Gardner's excellent The Gift and the Power. Even if you ultimately may not agree with him I think it's a must read for oriented the nature of the debate.

By: SDS

SDS — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:42:53 +0000

This is an interesting, informative, insightful post. But I wonder if you could spell out, for slower readers (or at least for me), what it adds up to with respect to possible crises of faith. From what you say, it’s clear that we can’t expect to have certainty regarding the exact authorial process for a text like Isaiah, or the Book of Mormon. And overly simple descriptions (e.g., Mormon inscribed the word on a metal plate; Joseph read the inscription on the plate and gave the exact English translation) are likely misleading. I get that. But what sort of scenario(s) do you have in mind that might account for the inclusion in the Book of Mormon of language from texts written a continent away, to which the book’s authors would not have had (natural) access? What are the faith-friendly ways in which that language might have gotten from the deutero-author into the 19th-century English translation? I apologize for the question: probably you’ve answered it in the original post, but I wasn’t able to make out exactly what you were suggesting.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:23:10 +0000

Good post. And as you note appeal to the best explanation doesn’t entail truth especially when the evidence is circumstantial and weak.