Who Translated the Book of Mormon?

Chad Nielsen

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What if the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient language into modern English, but it wasn’t God or Joseph Smith who did the translation? If so, did Moroni translate the Book of Mormon? That’s the very theory that Roger Terry has suggested, based on Royal Skousen’s research into the Book of Mormon. He recently was part of an interview over at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, in which he discussed the theory. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview.

Did Moroni Translate the Book of Mormon?

What is it in Royal Skousen’s research that led Terry to suggest this idea?

Based on his in-depth analysis, Royal Skousen insists—and I agree with him—that Joseph was receiving the English text from some outside source and was merely reading aloud what he saw, generally about twenty words at a time.

This, of course, raises the question of who translated the text and what sort of translation it is.

The clues are numerous and complex, but Royal is an excellent linguist, has spent almost four decades studying the text very carefully, and has arrived at certain conclusions. …

I don’t believe for an instant that Joseph Smith could have dictated sentences as complex as the ones we find in the Book of Mormon. Royal also insists that the content of the text (as well as the vocabulary and syntax) fits better in the 1500s and 1600s than in the 1800s. His argument is persuasive.

Skousen has indicated that it seems most likely that Joseph Smith was reading text on the seer stones and dictating what he saw to a scribe.

Now, the theory provides a couple answers to some concerns historians have about the Book of Mormon. For example, when it comes to anachronisms,

Royal Skousen addresses this question and concludes that because of textual anachronisms, the translator apparently added a good deal of material that wasn’t on the plates. He calls it a creative and cultural translation. Of course, this all assumes there were actual plates that contained an accurate record of ancient people. …

Royal Skousen discusses three anachronistic problems involving biblical quotations, namely the presence of King James translation errors, the influence of the Textus Receptus, and the inclusion of Second Isaiah:

  1. KJV Translations Errors: Words appear in the King James quotations that the KJV translators got wrong. There are also cultural translations that are historically inaccurate.
  2. Textus Receptus Influence: The Book of Mormon includes text from the Textus Receptus (the manuscript the KJV translators relied on) that does not appear in the earliest biblical manuscripts.
  3. Second Isaiah Anachronism: Text appears that biblical scholars identify as being from “Second Isaiah,” who lived long after Lehi and his family left Jerusalem. Skousen points out that there are ways to deal with this problem, but “it isn’t necessary to do so.” These anachronisms, he explains, are problematic “only if we assume that the Book of Mormon translation literally represents what was on the plates.” As mentioned above, however, careful attention to textual evidence pretty well eliminates this possibility. But it raises a whole host of other questions, including why plates were necessary at all and why, if they contained an accurate history of an ancient civilization, the translator was allowed to take such liberties with the resulting translation.

Terry added that “Obviously, whoever created the English text of the book had the King James Bible handy. But we also find phrases from Protestant sources (“fountain of all righteousness” comes from John Calvin, “song of redeeming love” appeared in various Early Modern works, and “priestcraft” was a popular concern in the 1500s and 1600s much more so than in Joseph Smith’s day).” He further observed that inconsistencies and grammatical errors may be an indication of “the translator’s imperfect grasp of English, which was also in flux during the 1500s and 1600s.” It is these types of clues that led Roger Terry to suggest that the text was translated by someone during the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries and this translation was the text that was given to Joseph Smith.

It’s an interesting theory. Terry suggests that it could very well have been Moroni himself who studied English and did the translation, but that is a more speculative part of the theory. Overall, the theory helps to make sense of the anachronisms and imperfections of the text as well as the need for the physical records to be created in the first place. I’m not sold on it yet, but it is interesting to consider.

For more on the translation of the Book of Mormon into English (and the question, did Moroni translate the Book of Mormon?), head on over to the Latter-day Saint blog From the Desk to read the full interview with Roger Terry. (Also, let it be known that five years later, I’ve finally brought up Skousen’s translation theories, as requested by a commentor named Wally.)

Comments

7 responses to “Who Translated the Book of Mormon?”

  1. Dave K

    I’ve held to this view for years. Only difference is I think the translation was by a committee rather than one person. Quite possibly it included the translators who created the KJV.
    Joseph obviously didn’t translate in the traditional sense. He dictated.
    God doesn’t step in to do a work if men and women can do it.

  2. ReTx

    I don’t get it. Why would an angel (Moroni) use the KJV at all? Are there any other examples of dead people writing scriptures for the use of living people?

  3. Samuel Bradshaw

    I like to think that he had an early beta version of the Gospel Library app installed on the seer stone, and was reading a verse at a time from there, then scrolling to the next verse, etc. :)

  4. Jonathan Green

    With apologies to all involved, I don’t think this will be a productive approach to Book of Mormon translation.

    Twice in the interview, Roger Terry says that all second-hand accounts agree that Joseph Smith didn’t look at the plates while translating. But this isn’t true – the evidence is highly contradictory on this point, as I’ve noted.

    Positing a semi-angelic being active around 1600 with imperfect command of English as the translator seems like a needless complication when there are simpler ways to explain the archaic syntactic features. Joseph Smith’s own imperfect acquisition of archaic English features in his personal scriptural language seems like a much simpler explanation.

    I don’t think calling the Book of Mormon a human rather than a divine translation by process of elimination (a divine or machine translation would have had fewer errors, according to the argument) is going to be workable just on theological terms. Joseph Smith seemed to think of the process as both translation and divine in any case.

    One of the problems in this discussion is the idea that translation only means a linguistic rendition of text from one language into its equivalent in another language on a fairly low level (word level, sentence level). That’s how academics in the humanities are trained to look at translation as a research tool – it’s what I did, it’s what I told students to do – but real-world translation and the discipline of translation studies accommodate (and sometimes require) a much broader view.

  5. Loyd

    JG: “Positing a semi-angelic being active around 1600 with imperfect command of English as the translator seems like a needless complication when there are simpler ways to explain the archaic syntactic features. Joseph Smith’s own imperfect acquisition of archaic English features in his personal scriptural language seems like a much simpler explanation.”

    This is precisely right and where Occam’s razor should be applied. Not only can the supposed EME in the BofM be best explained by local dialects in spoken New England English (the BofM, was dictated, afterall), but a 19th century composition of the English text (whether as translation or original work) is the only thing that explains the many phrases and ideas from early 19th century sermons finding their way into the text.

  6. LHL

    Hmmmmm…..how about we simply apply Occam’s Razor…..and declare that there was never any translation; just creative writing, plagiarism and some dictation. While sometimes inspiring….there really is nothing “magical” about the book.

  7. Jack

    I think Stanford Carmack would say that there’s way too much EME in the text for it to be nothing more than a reflection of Joseph’s dialect. I’m open to the idea that EME was used because it was a dialect that best resonated with the early saints as an authentic voice for a sacred ancient American text. Plus, it could be that EME was the best target language (in English) for the language on the plates.

    Re: KJV: again, I’m of the opinion that we have to think about what was best for the early saints. They were a Bible reading people–and I think the Lord wanted quotes from the Bible to be unmistakable and plain to them. By so doing it would help them to receive the Book of Mormon as a companion to the Bible rather than as a challenge to it.

    I remember Don Perry talking about the translation process that his team used for the Great Isaiah Scroll. They decided to utilize the KJV as the target text for everything that was pretty-much the same as what is found in the other Isaiah Sources. But anything that was decidedly different they translated into a modern dialect so that it could be clearly identified as something unique to the Great Scroll.

    I think it’s quite possible that the same sort of thing may be happening in the BoM vis-a-vis the KJV.

    At any rate, for me the key to understanding (at least some of) the conundrums regarding the translation process is to keep in mind the mind the needs of the first generation of saints–that is, with regard to what would best help them to receive the book as authentic scripture.

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