ePub feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

ePub feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship
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ePub feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Interpreter Foundation is a nonprofit educational organization focused on the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the Bible, and the Doctrine and Covenants), early LDS history, and related subjects. All publications in its journal, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, are peer-reviewed and made available as free internet downloads or through at-cost print-on-demand services. Other posts on the website are not necessarily peer-reviewed, but are approved by Interpreter’s Executive Board. Our goal is to increase understanding of scripture through careful scholarly investigation and analysis of the insights provided by a wide range of ancillary disciplines, including language, history, archaeology, literature, culture, ethnohistory, art, geography, law, politics, philosophy, statistics, etc. Interpreter will also publish articles advocating the authenticity and historicity of LDS scripture and the Restoration, along with scholarly responses to critics of the LDS faith. We hope to illuminate, by study and faith, the eternal spiritual message of the scriptures—that Jesus is the Christ. Although the Board fully supports the goals and teachings of the Church, The Interpreter Foundation is an independent entity and is not owned, controlled by, or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with Brigham Young University. All research and opinions provided on this site are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board nor as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief, or practice.

  1. 2024/11/22

    Through a Glass Darkly: Restoring Translation to the Restoration?

    Review of James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2023). 288 pages. $19.95. Abstract: In By Means of the Urim & Thummim, James Lucas and Jonathan Neville valiantly seek to defend Joseph Smith’s role as the divinely inspired translator, a role that they argue is incompatible with using any tool other than the Nephite “intepreters,” later called the Urim and Thummim. They offer a unique theory to account for the statements of witnesses about Joseph using a seer stone in a hat, arguing that it was a fake demonstration using memorized passages to satisfy onlooker curiosity about the translation process. They propose a translation model in which Joseph did more than just get impressions, but saw an incomplete or literal translation in the Urim and Thummim that left plenty of room for heavy mental effort to turn what he saw into acceptable English. While the authors seek to defend Joseph from what they view as the questionable theories of modern Church scholars, their misunderstanding and misinterpretation of both the historical record and scripture result in some errant assumptions and logical gaps that undermine their well-intentioned work. I appreciate what James Lucas and Jonathan Neville seek to do with their book,1 which is to defend the character of Joseph Smith and [Page 170]the divinity of the Book of Mormon. Through their lengthy efforts to refute what they feel are new apostate theories on the translation of the Book of Mormon, they offer a deeply apologetic book that strives to be scholarly with extensive documentation and analysis. At the same time, the authors somewhat ironically malign the work of Latter-day Saint “apologists” and scholars who disagree with them on the issues they tackle. They are unwilling to let the work of such “academic scribblers” (p. 19n48) subvert what they see as core Latter-day Saint doctrines on the details of the translation of the Book of Mormon. The book, in spite of lofty intentions, often collides with reality. The opening pages will resonate with readers who were taken aback when the Church publicly recognized that two kinds of tools were used in the translation of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith’s history makes it clear that he received an ancient tool with the gold plates known as the “interpreters,” two transparent stones set in a frame somewhat like spectacles that were had among the ancient Nephites, likely related to the two stones received by the brother of Jared (Ether 3:22–28). The interpreters would eventually be called the Urim and Thummim by Latter-day Saints, and that term was then often used to describe how the Book of Mormon was translated. But the historical record adds a complex wrinkle that some Latter-day Saints did not know about. After the loss of the 116 manuscript pages,2 the plates and presumably the Urim and Thummim were taken away from Joseph. After the items were returned to Joseph, multiple witness accounts indicated that he translated with the aid of a different revelatory tool, a seer stone he had previously found.

  2. 2024/11/22

    Trust Us, We’re Lawyers: Lucas and Neville on the Translation of the Book of Mormon

    Review of James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2023). 288 pages. $19.95. Abstract: In their book, James Lucas and Jonathan Neville present two major theses relative to translation of the Book of Mormon. The first is that the translation was always done by means of the interpreters that were delivered with the plates. The second is that Joseph Smith was an active participant in the translation process. A theory is laid out for how that might happen. Although this reviewer can agree that Joseph was an active participant in the translation, neither the first thesis nor their explanation of the second thesis can be accepted by those familiar with the historical record. This review requires a disclosure, right up front. James Lucas and Jonathan Neville wrote a book that introduces a theory on how the Book of Mormon was translated.1 I also wrote a book on that topic.2 [Page 136]They include my book in their book’s bibliography and in a couple of footnotes. They didn’t like my book. I return the favor: I don’t like theirs. Nevertheless, I hope to provide an analysis that can transcend my obvious personal involvement in the issues. Well, mostly avoid personal involvement. Lucas and Neville didn’t really say “trust us, we’re lawyers.” I confess that is my translation3 of what they said: “The authors are both attorneys, and the law has long and well-tested criteria for evaluating secondhand or hearsay testimony, which we apply to sources about the origins of the Book of Mormon” (p. 27). This statement is part of the introduction to the first part of the book which takes on historical testimonies to argue that Joseph Smith never used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon. The assertion is important because they are also asking us to prefer their interpretation to that of trained Latter-day Saint historians. Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat represent the opposition: “Recently, historians of the Joseph Smith Papers Project carefully analyzed all of the known accounts about the translation to document the use of the seer stone.”4 Lucas and Neville are asking us to favor their reading of their selected set of sources over the interpretations of the trained historians who have “analyzed all of the known accounts about the translation to document the use of the seer stone.” Did those trained historians really miss what the lawyers found? That would be astonishing. Perhaps it could be true, but “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” in Carl Sagan’s aphorism.a id="footnote5anc" href="#footnote5sym" title="5. Carl Sagan,

  3. 2024/11/15

    A Closer Look at Transliterations in Divine Translations

    Abstract: The Book of Mormon contains many words left untranslated by Joseph Smith, such as cureloms, cumoms, senine, and ziff. While some might wonder why these words are left untranslated, a closer examination of the kinds of words that are simply transliterated as well as the frequency at which these phenomena occur provide evidence that Joseph Smith actually had an ancient record that he was translating into English. In this paper, I examine why some words have been transliterated in historical translations of the Bible or other ancient texts and compare these explanations to the Book of Mormon. In the end, I show that the Book of Mormon consistently transliterates the same types of words typically left untranslated in other works in ways that would have been unknown to Joseph Smith. In the Book of Mormon, it is reported that the Jaredites had tamed multiple animals. These are mentioned in a brief list: “And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms” (Ether 9:19). It is generally accepted by Latter-day Saint scholars that the words cureloms and cumoms are transliterations of words on the Book of Mormon plates. They may have been provided by Moroni2, Mosiah2, or by Joseph Smith, none of whom had any functionally equivalent words in their languages to designate these animals.1 Furthermore, while perhaps [Page 122]some of the most enigmatic examples, these are far from the only transliterations in the Book of Mormon. Multiple words are left untranslated in the text with no explanation ever given for this process by the Prophet Joseph Smith. The presence of transliterations may be surprising to readers who assume that the Book of Mormon, translated by the gift and power of God, should, by nature, provide clear English terms throughout the text. However, this assumption is reading something into the text that is not there, and a close look at the transliterated words of the Book of Mormon will show that their presence is fitting for a translation of an ancient text where certain words do not have clear meaning to the translator. Translators can face various challenges when determining whether or not to translate some words. These challenges are, * the low frequency at which the words appear in the text, * the general fact that not all words, especially technical terms, have a one-to-one correlation with words used in different cultures, and * the fact that rare animal or plant names can be a particular source of confusion when translating ancient texts. Frequency of Untranslated Words Untranslated words may generally reflect rare or unusual words in the source text. One example of these rare words would be hapax legomena, or “words (other than proper names) which occur only once” in the text.2 This is especially true of the Book of Mormon, in which various hapax legomena are present, such as the words sheum and neas (Mosiah 9:9). Other untranslated words in the Book of Mormon, including ziff (Mosiah 11:3, 8), cureloms, and cumoms, could technically be categorized as dis legomena, that is,

  4. 2024/11/15

    A Plain Exposition of Book of Mormon English by Means of Short Questions and Informed Answers

    Abstract: Because many questions have arisen regarding the discovery of real early modern influence in the dictated language of the Book of Mormon, some of these are considered and answered in this essay. The answers reflect insights from an exploration of the data that drove the conclusions published in previous papers. Numerous considerations independently indicate that the Book of Mormon was dictated in language that cannot be explained as a mere imitation of King James linguistic style, nor as Joseph Smith’s Yankee dialect. While the reasons for this and the processes that may have led to such results are open for debate, the implications of the data themselves cannot be lightly brushed aside. An examination of the language of the original Book of Mormon text by Royal Skousen (since 1988), and also by the writer of this essay (since 2014), has generated a large amount of unexpected linguistic data that undermine common assumptions about Book of Mormon English and translation, including the assumption that Joseph must have used his own archaic and uneducated grammar in constructing its language. The discovery of a strong current of nonbiblical earlier English in the Book of Mormon was driven by the data, since the initial hypothesis for both Skousen and this author was that its English usage might approximate that of the King James Bible, and that it might be similar to what is found in roughly contemporaneous pseudo-archaic texts. But the data showed otherwise. [Page 108]While discoveries in this area have made some uncomfortable, the data deserve to be considered (text-critical volumes contain analyses of a large amount of relevant data, and later papers may present additional unpublished treatments of the English-language data). Various questions and some objections have been raised in response, some of which seem to ignore much of the data. While we can’t establish exactly why so much nonbiblical Early Modern English is in the text that Joseph Smith dictated, we can answer a number of questions with clarity. Questions and Answers The answers presented here to a number of questions on Book of Mormon English (and translation) are based on extensive research and comparative study.1 Unfortunately, that has not been true of most comments made about Book of Mormon English through time. Thus, there has been an accumulation of layers of underinformed opinions. Some of these are incorporated in the questions found in this essay. In the balance of this essay, I present each question as a heading for ease of reference and follow all the questions with a short summary. Did Joseph Smith speak an ultra-archaic dialect in 1829, at the time he dictated the Book of Mormon? No, his early writings (mainly as personal letters: 1829–1833)2 indicate that he di...

  5. 2024/11/08

    A Deep Dive on War

    Review of Morgan Deane, To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon (Middletown, DE: Morgan Deane, 2024). 138 pages. $14.99 (paperback). Abstract: Morgan Deane’s To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon defines and discusses the concepts of war in the Book of Mormon and places “just war” within a larger context. The various aspects of just war and its impact are compared to the teachings and writings of scholars and philosophers from the early Church Fathers to Chinese military strategists. This interesting and informative book helps Latter-day Saints understand when war is necessary and justified. William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union army general in the Civil War, is credited with saying, “War is hell.”1 War is hell, but according to Morgan Deane in To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon, there are times it is necessary. Indeed, war at times is not only needed, but it can and should be just. The purpose of To Stop a Slaughter is to discuss a “powerful, animating, Christlike love that motivates the use of force” (p. 5) at times when it is truly needed. With that said, I’m going to do what I haven’t done in any previous book review—I’m going to start with the negatives of the book. Deane’s book, which is self-published, needed an extra set of editing [Page 104]eyes, or perhaps two. There were noticeable grammar and punctuation errors that could have been avoided with some professional editing. And, incomprehensibly, there was no printed pagination. I went through and manually wrote page numbers for the purpose of this review. Page numbers could have and should have been added to the text, and an index would have been helpful. These few negatives are literally my only complaints, and these quibbles should not dissuade any potential reader. The book, which isn’t long, was an enjoyable and interesting read as the author discusses the concept of “just war,” defined as “love compelling the reluctant use of arms to stop a slaughter” (p. 6). Morgan Deane, a military historian and former U.S. Marine, demonstrates an excellent knowledge of the literature pertaining to war, the philosophical and theological reasons for war, and the conduct of war. This is not surprising, given that some of his earlier publications include Offensive Warfare in The Book of Mormon and a Defense of the Bush Doctrine (2011) and Bleached Bones and Wicked Serpents: Ancient Warfare in the Book of Mormon (2014). In To Stop a Slaughter, he equally quotes and analyzes the writings of early Church Fathers and Chinese and other philosophers as he interweaves the writings of Book of Mormon prophets and warriors like Captain Moroni. Among the chapters in the book are some provocative topics that encourage fascinating and meaningful discussion. These chapters include “Loving Your Neighbors by Standing Up to Their Slaughter,” “More than Angry: The Debates in Moroni’s Letter,” “Waiting for Revolution: Gideon’s Lessons,” “Kishkummen’s Dagger, Helaman’s Servant, and First Strike,” and “Renounce Peace and Proclaim War, Mormon 4 and Doctrine and Covenants 98.” Near the beginning of the book, Deane succinctly sets the parameters of the discussion: Just war flows from two central impulses that people recognize to varying degrees but rarely articulate. Most people understand on a fundamental level that some situations justly demand the use of force. At the same time, most [people] instinctively realize that war is an evil that should be avoided [altogether].

  6. 2024/11/08

    Verbal Punctuation in the Book of Mormon III—Behold

    Abstract: As an ancient book, the Book of Mormon employed verbal punctuation rather than typographical punctuation. An example of this verbal punctuation is the word behold, which is used in the Book of Mormon to point things out, to highlight unexpected effects of situations, and to modify a previously expressed proposition. This corresponds to ancient Hebrew usage. Joseph Smith’s usage from the time the Book of Mormon was produced, however, differs in both its frequency and how it was used, even when Joseph Smith was consciously trying to imitate the Book of Mormon. All the modern punctuation in the published versions of the Book of Mormon has been added by later editors and was not in the original manuscript or on the plates. Its original punctuation was verbal punctuation. As an ancient book, the Book of Mormon uses words rather than marks as punctuation to structure the narrative. Though the modern punctuation is helpful to the modern reader, it can, at times, distract us from the ancient text. In the Book of Mormon manuscripts and in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, the verbal punctuation that most regularly signals a chapter break is “(and) now,” which accounts for more than two-thirds (68%) of the chapter breaks in the 1830 Book of Mormon.1 The second [Page 84]most common beginning for a new chapter, occurring 10% of the time, is behold. Methodology The methodology used in this analysis has been outlined before2 and here will only be summarized: * Book of Mormon usage is paramount and is therefore considered first. Normally, with hundreds of citations, only one citation is given for any book. In this case, however, more than one indicative citation is given to illustrate the usage. * After the Book of Mormon usage is given, ancient equivalents are considered, with special emphasis on Hebrew and Egyptian. * We then consider Joseph Smith’s early usage as defined by a standard set of early documents. * Because of both theoretical and practical problems with the Doctrine and Covenants, it is not considered among the early documentation of Joseph Smith’s usage. Those interested in fuller details of the methodology are encouraged to consult the earlier discussion. Book of Mormon Usage In an examination of the strings of verbal punctuation in the Book of Mormon, “behold” usually comes after “and now” and before “it came to pass.”3 The original text of the Book of Mormon has 1,640 instances of the word behold, 14 of beholdest, 5 of beholding, and 129 of beheld.4 The present and the past tense are sometimes mixed up in the manuscripts.5 The verbal form of behold that means “to look at, or see” [Page 85]is distinct from the verbal punctuation, and only the latter is our concern here. There are 1,213 instances of the use of behold as verbal punctuation. Though there has been some good work on the use of behold in th...

  7. 2024/11/01

    “Behold, I Went to Hunt Beasts in the Forest”: An Addendum on Enos, Esau, and the Symbolic Geography of Seir

    Abstract: Enos’s use of the onomastic wordplay in the Jacob and Esau cycle enables him to meaningfully allude to the symbolic geography of those stories and incorporate it into his New World setting (e.g., allusions to the river Jabbok and Peniel/Penuel, the site of Jacob’s “wrestle” with the divine “man”). A third instance of this type of allusion occurs with Enos’s recollection that he “went to hunt beasts in the forest[s]” (Enos 1:3), which appears to subtly allude to Mount Seir, the forested hill country in the land of Edom inhabited by Esau and his descendants. Three earlier studies, one by John Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper and two of my own, have attempted to detail the subtle and intricate ways in which Enos “likened” the Jacob-Esau cycle to himself in writing his autobiography.1 Tvedtnes and Roper demonstrated clear [Page 76]intertextual links between the Jacob-Esau cycle and Enos’s writings. My studies focused more specifically on Enos’s autobiographical adaptations of Hebrew names and words. For example, I examined “wrestle” (wayyēʾābēq, Genesis 32:24) as wordplay on the name Jacob (yaʿăqōb), the name of the patriarch and Enos’s own father, and the river Jabbok (yabbōq), near the site of Jacob’s “wrestle.” Also, I examined Enos’s use of his own name ʾĕnôš (“man”) as a poetic2 synonym of, and allusion to, the divine “man” (ʾîš) who “wrestled” with Jacob. I further suggested Enos, as “man,” echoes the God and “men” (ʾănāšîm) with whom Jacob “struggled” or “had power” (Genesis 32:28). Notably, ʾănāšîm is the common plural of both ʾîš and ʾĕnôš. Moreover, I noted that Enos as “man,” identifies him with both Jacob and Esau who are both characterized as an ʾîš of starkly contrasting kinds (see also further below). What follows here will be a short addendum to that previous work. Enos, the son of Jacob, likens his autobiography to the story of his patriarchal ancestor Jacob and Jacob’s brother Esau in telling how he received the power of the atonement of Jesus Christ into his life (Enos 1:1–8). He then adds how he later procured covenant blessings and promises for his kindred (the Nephites, Enos 1:9–10) and ultimately for his estranged “brethren,” the Lamanites, who had become his enemies (Enos 1:11–18). Just as he “wrestled” and prayed for his own soul, he “struggled” for his kindred and his estranged brothers (Enos 1:10–11, 14). Again, Enos, as a poetic Hebrew name, transparently denotes “man.” Enos introduces himself in his autobiography with the statement that his father was a “just man,” imitating the style of Nephi’s autobiographical self-introduction.3 He then recalls having a “wrestle . . . before God” (Enos 1:2), which recalls the mysterious “man” from Genesis 32 who “wrestled” Jacob. In likening his ancestor Jacob’s “wrestle” at Peniel to himself, Enos (“man”) indicates that the “man”a id="footnote4anc" href="#footnote4sym" title="4.

  8. 2024/11/01

    Die Prophezeiung Henochs: Some Observations on Section 36 in the German Edition of the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants

    Abstract: Multiple translations of the Doctrine and Covenants into German have been produced over the past century and a half. This essay looks at a more recent example of these translations as found in the Buch der Lehre und Bündnisse published electronically by the Community of Christ. Focusing on Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants 36, the revelation of Zion to Enoch, the essay compares and contrasts the German text with its Vorlage. It also notes the ways in which the German translation attempts to “de-problematize” its source material, particularly in regard to its references to blackness and the racial implications of such references. The author argues that this effort resolves some issues while creating others. There exists an extensive history of translating the Doctrine and Covenants into various languages, particularly into German. The first German translation was completed by Heinrich Carlos Ferdinand Eyring in 1876 for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.1 Several later German editions of the scripture were published by the [Page 70]Utah-based Church in the twentieth century including a very limited printing from the 1920s and a later printing in the 1960s that included a German translation of the Pearl of Great Price. The German versions of the standard works published in 1981 through 2013 saw extensive revisions to the grammar and syntax contained in previous editions to better conform with modern developments in the language over its immediate pre-World War II predecessor.2 The most recent example of a German Doctrine and Covenants comes, however, not from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but from the Community of Christ. An exclusively digital edition sold through Amazon, Buch der Lehre und Bündnisse (literally, the Book of Teaching and Covenants), is one of several electronic editions of the scriptures published by the Community of Christ in the past decade.3 Released in 2019, Buch der Lehre und Bündnisse contains German translations of all of the revelations found in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants as well as those unique to the Community of Christ as given by its various presidents. This includes the most recent revelation, CC D&C 165,4 given by the current President of the Community of Christ, Stephen Veazey, in 2016.

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The Interpreter Foundation is a nonprofit educational organization focused on the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the Bible, and the Doctrine and Covenants), early LDS history, and related subjects. All publications in its journal, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, are peer-reviewed and made available as free internet downloads or through at-cost print-on-demand services. Other posts on the website are not necessarily peer-reviewed, but are approved by Interpreter’s Executive Board. Our goal is to increase understanding of scripture through careful scholarly investigation and analysis of the insights provided by a wide range of ancillary disciplines, including language, history, archaeology, literature, culture, ethnohistory, art, geography, law, politics, philosophy, statistics, etc. Interpreter will also publish articles advocating the authenticity and historicity of LDS scripture and the Restoration, along with scholarly responses to critics of the LDS faith. We hope to illuminate, by study and faith, the eternal spiritual message of the scriptures—that Jesus is the Christ. Although the Board fully supports the goals and teachings of the Church, The Interpreter Foundation is an independent entity and is not owned, controlled by, or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with Brigham Young University. All research and opinions provided on this site are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board nor as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief, or practice.

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