Here is the second of four categorical reasons why translations may differ. 2) How does the translator parse the mechanics (syntax, etc.) and disambiguate the text on the sentence and paragraph level? (NB: This is a very simplified presentation of complex subjects.) Biblical Hebrew is very different from English. Like many other ancient languages, it has no formal punctuation, no capitals, and word order can vary. Consequently, it’s not always easy to figure out if this word belongs to end of this phrase or the beginning of that one. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where one sentence ends and another begins particularly since the word “and” functions in multiple ways and is used more frequently then English. Translators have to decide where the breaks are in the text, and then how to represent that in English. (As a side note, several FARMS papers have discussed this in terms of the Book of Mormon’s awkward English syntax, with its endless run-on sentences and sometime unclear subjects. See here, here, and here.) Another way Hebrew differs from English that may affect the translation is that it has only two verb “conjugations.” Whereas English makes liberal use of words to indicate tense and mood, Hebrew does not grammatically indicate tenses such as future, past, present, let alone those nightmare tenses like future perfect. This is not to say Israelites didn’t think about time or any such nonsense; what we indicate grammatically, they indicate…
Category: Cornucopia
Reading the Bibles: Why Translations Differ (Part 2)
Before looking at the two sample passages in detail, I want to familiarize you with some basic information about the Old Testament text and translation issues. And in the last part, I’ll make some suggestions about how to approach the text like this when you haven’t studied Greek or Hebrew. I’ve divided these into four semi-artificial headings, too long to all go in one post. 1) What are they translating from, and (1a) how much is the translation influenced by the versions? Translators must choose a base text from which to translate. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), the best manuscripts of the Old Testament were medieval, i.e. very late and far removed. This traditional Hebrew text is called the Massoretic text, or MT. Scribes copied biblical texts by hand for generations and as with all human endeavors, errors crept in by nature as well as by intention. That is, on occasion scribes would “correct” a text as they thought it should read (e.g. if you’re reading a story about a dog chasing a man, the dog catches him, and the man bites the dog, and then the man goes to the hospital, you would reasonably assume that it was the dog that bit the man, not the other way around, and “correct” the text.) Scribes also sometimes made changes in pronunciation (to make sure Yahweh was pronounced as Adonai) or bowdlerized the text a little, or…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Darwin
We’ve come to the last chapter of Blake Ostler’s first volume of Exploring Mormon Thought. After five months of reading and writing about this first book, I’m even more convinced than when we began that Blake’s work is and will continue to be the indisputable starting point for our generation’s work in Mormon philosophical theology.
Reading the Bibles: The Problem (Part 1)
I received the following from an educated friend, and got permission to respond via blogposts. Slightly edited, he asks- >>As someone without training in the original languages, how can I evaluate alternate translations of scripture? Here’s what motivates this question: I’ve been reading Grant Hardy’s Reader’s Edition of the Book of Mormon, which I love. I’ve been working through Nephi’s Isaiah chapters, and, as I started working through 2 Nephi 19/Isaiah 9, I decided it was time to check alternate translations. I have several: a 4-in-1 that includes KJV, New Life Translation (NLT), New International Version (NIV), and New American Standard Version (NASB), a copy of the English Standard Version (ESV), and, via the web, the NetBible (NET), plus, of course, Nephi’s versions of Isaiah (BOM). There are four issues that one can observe by working through 2 Ne 19/Isaiah 9: • Similar translations, but with variations in clarity. • Most translations reading the same, but with one that disagrees sharply. • All translations vary • Most translations reading with clarity, but with one that is absolutely opaque. 2 Ne 19:1 illustrates 1-3. Note how these different translations say more or less the same thing [point 1], up until all of them but KJV say something about how Galilee will be honored or made glorious, while KJV explicitly says the opposite [point 2]. Galilee is defined differently, alongside the bit about Jordan and the “way of…
BMGD #19: Mosiah 18-24
CHAPTER 18 1 And now, it came to pass that Alma, who had fled from the servants of king Noah, repented of his sins and iniquities, and went about privately among the people, and began to teach the words of Abinadi— Are “sins” and “iniquities” two different things or two different ways of saying the same thing? Why “privately”? (See v3 for more on this.) I love the idea that he is a fugitive. From the FEAST wiki: “Why is it that Alma has success in preaching where Abinadi didn’t?” Do you interpret all of Abinadi’s teaching differently if you think of their purpose as the raw material for Alma’s teachings instead of for a show-down between Abinadi and Noah’s priests? Why don’t we get any meat here for Alma’s conversion story? 2 Yea, concerning that which was to come, and also concerning the resurrection of the dead, and the redemption of the people, which was to be brought to pass through the power, and sufferings, and death of Christ, and his resurrection and ascension into heaven. I’m curious about the tripartite division of Christ’s work into “power, suffering, and death”? Why this formulation? (Or, you could call it a five-partite division if you wanted to add in resurrection and ascension.) Why “that which was to come” as opposed to being more specific about what Alma taught? 3 And as many as would hear his word he did teach. And…
Misattributed Quotes of Note: Henry Eyring (Sr.) on Babies, Bathwater, and Authority
This wisdom is often attributed online to Elder Henry B. Eyring, but none provides a source. It was Henry Eyring Sr., non-Apostle and brilliant prolific scientist who gave this nugget of wisdom. However, Henry Eyring Jr. apparently took the lesson to heart, as he has said similar things. And perhaps he quotes his father somewhere. “There are few ways in which good people do more harm to those who take them seriously than to defend the gospel with arguments that won’t hold water. Many of the difficulties encountered by young people going to college would be avoided if parents and teachers were more careful to distinguish between what they know to be true and what they think may be true. Impetuous youth, upon finding the authority it trusts crumbling, even on unimportant details, is apt to lump everything together and throw the baby out with the bath.” Henry Eyring Sr., “What Are the Things That Really Matter?” as quoted in Mormon Scientist: the Life and Faith of Henry Eyring (no page numbers in this volume on GospeLink.com, Deseret Book’s online library, which is where I found it.) This could be more liberally applied, methinks, for the sake of activity and intellectual development. It also opens a bit of Pandora’s box with issues of competing authority and epistemology, but these are healthy issues to wrestle with.
The Same 10 Families
With the exception of student wards, every ward or branch I’ve attended seems to rely on a few families to fill all of the major callings. We’ll call them “the same ten families.” In our Long Island branch, there were about six families that carried the load. The branch president was married to the young women’s president. The young men’s president was married to the Relief Society president. The Elder’s quorum president was married to the primary president. We weren’t president level material there: my husband was a counselor in the young men’s presidency and the gospel doctrine teacher while I was a Relief Society counselor. Even so, we were exhausted by church and looked forward to moving away just to get a break on Sundays. (It was hard to leave, and we still miss the people of our branch.) So we moved to Provo. We thought that here, in the middle of happy valley, we would be extraneous and possibly ignored. We looked forward to settling down into an anonymous calling like nursery leader. But it turns out that by purchasing a home in an area that is mostly occupied by students and renters, we got fast tracked into the same ten family status in our new ward. As soon as our records arrived, I got called to be the primary president. A year later, my husband was called to be a counselor to our new bishop. He’s over…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Christ
I haven’t any real idea who or what or how—or even when!—Jesus Christ was. And is. And will be. As odd as I’m sure it sounds, I’m not terribly interested in changing that situation. I suspect that, in large part, my ignorance and feeling of content concerning that ignorance are more a side effect than anything else, a side effect of the Pauline commitments that were created, nurtured, and cemented in me through my obsessive work on the Book of Mormon. The Christ to whom I have declared undying fidelity, of whom I consistently testify, concerning whom I couldn’t feel love more deeply—that Christ—is the one who died and rose again, who worked out a concrete, material immanent critique of death he then committed in theological form to Saint Paul, who came to Lehi’s children with pierced hands he used almost exclusively to turn the pages of Isaiah, Micah, Malachi, and who knows what other Hebrew texts. The Gospels? They’re interesting, as all scripture is. But do they teach me about Christ? To be a bit frank—a bit too frank: not really. I find in the Gospels somewhere between four and a dozen different views of who Jesus was, about the implications of his having walked among us, and I find all those views compelling. I let—I try to let—them shape the way I think and act. But I don’t know that they shape me much more than any other…
Sacrifice and retention: An unsolvable dilemma?
In Lectures on Faith, Joseph Smith taught that “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation” (Lecture 6, verse 7). The Church’s dramatic history demonstrates that this call to sacrifice was not mere rhetoric. Extolling the endurance of the pioneers is part of Mormon tradition. In talks and lessons members are repeatedly reminded of commandments and duties.
BMGD #18: Mosiah 12-17
Reading Tom Wright’s New Testament Commentary for Everyone
Writings on the scriptures often comes from one of two perspectives. 1) Devotional-but-clueless, i.e. the author is able to read/write devotionally on a passage because they don’t know any other way to read it. They don’t address context or difficulties or objections or avoid pitfalls, because they’re completely unaware of them. It’s often trite and shallow (and I don’t think you necessarily need length to have depth, lead to reflection, or inspire.) Lest I be misunderstood, it is entirely possible to be devotional and clueless, but still meaningful, I just think it’s rare and find little value in spending my time to read it. And let us not even speak of the abomination of trying to pass off rhyming poems as “spiritual thoughts.” 2) Knowledge-but-without-faith-implications, i.e. the author doesn’t care about affecting behavior, spiritual experiences, or the implications of the content for faith and doctrine, but is intent on talking about Roman culture, or Hebrew grammar, or Ugaritic history. This also is rare in a Church setting, but is completely valid and normal in other contexts. Some of my favorite authors are such because they neither hide from the difficult questions nor avoid wrestling with their implications for believers. I do not like my devotional material to be empty spiritual calories, nor do I like my knowledge divorced from all application, meaning, and implication for someone of faith. Small indeed is the number of authors who can successfully give spiritual…
Dear SLCHQ,
Hiya, It has recently come to my attention that my ward and stake are in a gross state of apostasy. I was completely unaware of this until I saw this infographic on the LDS Newsroom site, but now that I know about it, I really think you need to send us some GAs to reorganize everything, because we’re doing it all wrong here in the suburbs of Austin (and every other place I’ve ever lived, come to think of it).
BMGD #17: Mosiah 7-11
A Nation of Heretics?
Ross Douthat posted a column adapted from his new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012). Mormons are used to denigrating references — recall Mitt Romney’s response to the Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, “I’ve heard worse” — but it still has some shock value for most American Christians, who generally think they deserve a pat on the back instead of a kick in the … shin. Welcome to the club, fellow heretics.
BMGD #16: Mosiah 4-6
Exploring Mormon Thought: God As Limit?
It seems hard to deny that some kind of structure, however fragile or unstable, organizes human experience. And it seems hard to deny that a major aspect—if not the determining characteristic—of the structure of experience is time. Let’s grant all that for the purposes of this week’s discussion. If we take as paradigmatic the structure of a formal system, it turns out that there are two possibilities when it comes to a structure, as the early twentieth century’s greatest mathematical minds taught us: if a structure is consistent, it is incomplete; if a structure is complete, it is inconsistent. More strictly, every structure robust enough to be worthy of the name as it were produces an undecidable element—an element that cannot determinately be said either to belong or not to belong to the structure in question; if it is decided, in the name of achieving systemic completeness, that this element belongs to the structure, inconsistency results; but if it is decided, in the name of maintaining systemic consistency, that this element doesn’t belong to the structure, incompleteness results. Thus, completeness and consistency are mutually exclusive when it comes to structures. (Note that this result is easiest to demonstrate when it comes to formal systems, but it equally holds for non-formal systems, as so much work in the so-called soft sciences has shown in the past century.) Coming up against an undecidable, we have a decision to make. (Note that, paradoxical…
Wheat for Man
It’s pretty obvious that wheat is spiritually required. Let’s list some reasons why: 1. The Doctrine and Covenants says directly, “wheat for man.” 2. Jesus ate wheat, and specifically gave wheat to his followers and commanded them to eat it. Multiple times. 3. Jesus specifically said that wheat is righteousness. 4. There are about a zillion other scriptural references to wheat. 5. Modern prophets have said a whole bunch of things about the awesomeness of wheat. 6. It is objective fact that wheat is yummy. Now I realize, there are some people who may struggle with living this principle. Celiac folk, gluten-allergy people, or others who may be tempted by non-wheat attraction. But it’s pretty clear that most people do just fine eating wheat. I personally eat wheat all the time. So do several of my friends! And I knew someone who used to not like wheat, but then he repented and now he loves wheat. Finally, we should remember that God doesn’t change eternal principles just because some people are too weak or misguided to live them. So, pull up that bowl of cracked-wheat cereal, and brew yourself a mug of Postum. And the next time that some unrighteous soul tells you they aren’t eating wheat (whether ostensibly for health reasons or out of mere preference) please tell them as gently as possible that they’re going to hell.
BMGD #15 Mosiah 1-3
Seeing the Future of Mormonism
If you want to know where Mormonism going, look at Mormon missionary work. Mormonism is nothing if not a missionary church. Indeed, the evangelical imperative of the religion has consistently defined its teachings, theology, and culture. For example, if one is looking to read Mormon theology in the nineteenth century, you would find little in the way of theological treatises. Rather, you would find missionary tracts like Pratt’s Key to the Science of Theology, or you could read sermons, sermons whose doctrinal content is almost always embedded in an explicit or implicit theological polemic against American Protestantism. This is because in large part Mormon missionary work proceeded by polemic. As a missionary, I envied the bygone days when missionary work consisted of public theological brawling with an apostate and hireling clergy, but that is clearly the missionary experience that produced much of early Mormon thought. Likewise, the massive emphasis on families, especially the sanctified nuclear family, that one sees in post-WWII Mormonism in large part comes from the way in which the church placed an appeal to family at the heart of its incredibly successful proselytizing work in the twentieth century. To be sure, the theological material was ready at hand to create a cosmic narrative about eternal families, but the theology of the family implicit in the Home Front ads was not the same thing as the theology of the family implicit in the sealing practices of Joseph Smith…
Teleos
The door is the first thing I notice: an automatic sliding door with three wide panels of glass. When I step on the sensor mat, the third panel slides back behind the second and the second slides back behind the first, leaving a doorway at least ten feet across. It takes me a minute to remember where else I’ve seen a door like this: the children’s hospital. The ER, to be exact. Not the main entrance, but the one in the ambulance zone, where EMTs rolled gurneys bearing little bodies into the fluorescent light of the trauma center. But this building isn’t a hospital. It’s a school.
Easter Morn
The hot cross buns in the kitchen are on their final rise; meanwhile, the kitchen smells of cinnamon and allspice and lemon and orange zest.
King Benjamin and the Moral Irrelevance of Panhandlers
For many people, being confronted by a panhandler presents a moment of profound moral choice. I think that these people are confused. As I understand it, the panhandler presents a moment of profound moral choice because he forces us to confront the reality of poverty and our willingness to do something about it. To give money to the panhandler is to act as Christ’s disciple, ministering to the poor. To walk by the panhandler is to ignore the poor and the downtrodden. The text I have most often seen in church for framing this crisis comes from King Benjamin’s address: And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just — But I say unto you, O man, whosever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent. (Mos. 4:16-18) I don’t buy it. First, to be clear, I believe that poverty is a great moral evil. I believe that God has commanded us that we are to…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Immediacy
The trouble is time. When the Buddha first turned the wheel of the dharma with his inaugural discourse at Varanasi, he articulated the first pressing reality (i.e., the first “noble truth”) of life as the truth that “Life is suffering.” He could just have easily said, “Life is time.” Gotama claimed this “stainless insight” into the order of experience on the basis of an intensive, first-person phenomenological investigation of life as it is lived. 20th century phenomenology is in fundamental agreement: the transcendental horizon of experience is time. Time is troubling. This being troubled is the stuff of life and the condition of possibility for experience. This trouble marks the impossibility of any pure presence or direct immediacy. The ceaseless rush of time constitutes the present moment as real but always passing. As pass-ing, the present is given as suspended between the past and the future and constituted by their mediation. The “immediacy” of the present moment depends on the troubling loss of what has passed and on the troublingly open character of what is not yet given. Experientially, the focal character of the present as focal depends on a network of only tangentially given background objects, feelings, memories, expectations, and signs. This withdrawn background is what structures the present as coherent even as it bars the present from being definitive. The present, in order to be present, can never be self-sufficient or definitive because, as present, it is always passing. Chapter…
Lent
We are now in Holy Week, and Lent is ending. I’ve been fasting. It’s nothing onerous; just giving up sweets and meats. I’m not a huge fan of penance and self-flagellation, but to be honest, I probably eat too much of both categories for both my conscience and my health. But even if a little guilt is in order, I don’t see any profit in wallowing or groveling. Lent is the perfect time to reset my habits. It is a well-defined period of fasting that, if not observed, is at least recognized throughout Christendom. And it is that very definition, the fact that it is so widely recognized, makes the fast easier and more bearable. I know Mormons don’t generally observe Lent; I was raised Mormon. But I am surprised by how many derisive reactions I receive from my fellow Mormons during my fast. I’ve already mentioned the practical reasons for fasting through Lent. But the primary reason to fast is spiritual. This extended fast, this period of prolonged mild self-denial builds anticipation for Easter. In my 40 days, I remember the other 40s of the Bible: Moses fasting on Sinai, Elijah walking to Horeb, the great deluge, the 40 years of exile in the wilderness. I remember Christ fasting in the wilderness for 40 days at the beginning of his ministry, and how hungered and weak, he overcame temptation. I look to the wilderness surrounding me, my mountains and…
Randy Bott and the Need For Peer Review
The embarrassing appearance of BYU Professor Randy Bott’s unsavory speculations about race in a Washington Post article a few weeks ago will undoubtedly have led some BYU administrators and perhaps even some members of the Board of Trustees to spend a few moments thinking carefully about the way BYU teaches church doctrine. It is disturbing to find that one of the most popular teachers at BYU has been continuing to teach ugly ideas that were denounced from the highest levels of the church decades ago. Thousands of students have listened to his lectures. This is an institutional failure, not merely a failure in one man’s judgment. There must be some way to keep this sort of thing from happening. BYU functions effectively as an arm of the LDS church. What BYU professors teach in their classrooms is seen, reasonably enough, as carrying a degree of church authority, both within the university and beyond it. It is vital that this authority be used in ways that lead students (and other church members) to truth rather than error. It seems to me the Bott case is strong evidence that BYU’s approach to religious education needs revamping. Obviously Bott is just one professor out of over 70 full-time Religious Education faculty. However, his case is so far out of line, and evidently has been so far out of line for so many years, that it raises serious questions about the quality control mechanisms…
City Creek and the Choices of Thrift
Jana Riess, a person for whose intelligence and good will I have a great deal of respect, has an article up criticizing the new City Creek mall that that Church has financed in Salt Lake City. You ought to go read Jana’s article. To massively over simplify her point, the mall represents a basic moral failure because the church invested $1.5 billion in the project. This money could have been spent on the poor and rather than a glitzy palace to consumerism. There is a simple and powerful logic to Jana’s claim, but I think that by failing to work through the actual economic trade offs involved in the project, her argument misses the points of moral and practical judgment, thereby obscuring the nature of the choice that Church leaders made with this project. The most fundamental question is whether the Church should save a portion of its revenue. Despite the price tag, from the Church’s point of view the Mall is less a piece of flashing spending, than consequence of the choices that the Church’s commitment to institutional thrift impose upon it. The Church does not spend the totality of its revenues each year. Rather, it always takes a portion of revenues and sets them aside. My understanding is that this policy was put in place in the 1970s by President N. Eldon Tanner, who was tasked with solving the financial mess that was created by the rapid expansion…
BMGD #14: Enos, Jarom, Omni, Words of Mormon
No Women Allowed: Why Exclusion Makes the Priesthood Awesome
In the name of full disclosure and in order to clarify my agenda, if any, note I tend to agree with Ralph Hancock a great deal of the time and to disagree with Joanna Brooks about as often. In addition, even before I began blogging in 2003, I wrote for Meridian Magazine. (I was one of the original three in the “Circle of Sisters.”) In his recent, two-part review of Joanna Brooks’ The Book of Mormon Girl, Ralph Hancock responds to Brooks’ negative response toward gender differentiation in the church. While I believe it minimizes this differentiation—with women being excluded from holding the much-touted, much-taught “eternal power and authority of God”—by calling it merely “role differentiation,” Hancock made a particular statement that has continued to run through my mind. Those who are not simply content with accepting the Church’s authority on such matters might thus consider the possibility that Priesthood responsibilities and rites of passage serve purposes particularly appropriate to the making of boys into men and to the effective and wholesome definition of manhood…It may be, that is, that, on the whole, women are more immediately or naturally in touch with the meaning of their womanhood than men are with their manhood, and thus that boys need certain social structures and incentives that differentiate them from girls and women. Assuming that his claim that there actually is an authoritative reason for this “other priesthood ban” than tradition, the argument…
Exploring Mormon Thought: Divine Belief
We remain, in chapter 9 of The Attributes of God, within Ostler’s larger assessment of the (in)compatibility between exhaustive divine foreknowledge and human free will. I want to do two things in this post. First, I want to focus briefly on Ostler’s claim, on page 280, that the point on which “the debate ultimately turns” is “whether God’s having a belief is relevantly similar to humans having beliefs.” Second, I want to move from an investigation into what Ostler is doing with that gesture to yet another reframing of the question concerning knowledge—a reframing akin in spirit to what I did a couple weeks ago with chapter 7 and what Adam did last week with chapter 8. Divine Unicity I: What Says Joseph? Ostler claims that the pivotal point for the philosophical analysis of divine foreknowledge is the question of whether God is “utterly unique” or “a member of a kind” (p. 280). With this gesture, Ostler comes back to a distinction or at least point of clarification he drew in his very first chapter, between (1) “God” as the rigid designator of a concrete particular absolved in some sense from every class and (2) “God” as shorthand for a function that selects out of discreet beings a determinate set that contains more than one element. I’ve asked myself at least a dozen times in the last two hundred and fifty pages why Ostler hasn’t been drawing on that distinction…
Conference Plug: Mormons and the Internet
Want to be discussed, dear reader? Engage in naval gazing? Hear voices and see faces of names you’ve only read and intellectually crushed on? A reminder of the conference to be held at UVU on Thursday and Friday and appropriately live-streamed over the internet, featuring various luminaries from all corners as John Dehlin (of Mormon Stories), Joanna Brooks (various), Ardis Parshall (Keepapitchinin and others), Scott Gordon (of FAIR), David Charles (of Patheos), James Faulconer, Patrick Mason, Jana Reiss, and others. Joanna Brooks and Jana Reiss will be doing readings on Wednesday, and it’s not clear if those will be broadcast. See here for complete info.