This is a blog version of some material I've been working on lately. This pertains to the Early Modern English (EME) theory of Book of Mormon translation.
EME is a narrow topic that most Church members don't know or care about, but it has implications for our understanding of the translation of the Book of Mormon (and the revelations in the D&C).
Scholars have debated these issues for decades, but in recent years the discussion has become more detailed and sophisticated because of advances in linguistic analysis and available databases.
The question of translation has been framed as "loose" control vs. "strict" or "tight" control; i.e., did Joseph Smith translate the Nephite text on the plates in his own words, or did he read the English words that appeared on a seer stone?
I summarize the question this way: Did Joseph translate or transmit the Book of Mormon?
If you think this doesn't matter, that's fine with me. You don't need to read the rest of this post.
_____
Most people probably accept or reject the Book of Mormon on its face, based on their spiritual responses and the biases they want to confirm, pro or con. They don't make a decision based on how it was translated. But for some people, issues related to the text are an impediment to accepting, or even reading, the Book of Mormon.
I think it's important to understand and reconcile aspects of the Restoration that otherwise are confusing or contradictory.
For example, many otherwise inconsistent or inexplicable accounts in early Church history are easily explained when we understand that Joseph actually translated two separate sets of plates.
The plates Joseph originally got from Moroni, which I call the Harmony plates, were accompanied by the Urim and Thummim. (Joseph's father said there was a compartment inside the plates for the Urim and Thummim, which makes sense to me.) Joseph translated all of these plates (except the sealed portion) when he was in Harmony, including the Title Page that he said was on the last leaf of the plates.
Before he left Harmony, Joseph returned those original plates, along with the Urim and Thummim, to the divine messenger who took them back to the Nephite repository in the Hill Cumorah. There, the messenger picked up the plates of Nephi which the Lord had told Joseph he would have to translate when he finished with the Harmony plates (D&C 10).
The messenger took the plates of Nephi to Fayette, where he gave them to Joseph for translation (1 Nephi through Words of Mormon 1:10). Because he no longer had the Urim and Thummim, Joseph translated the plates of Nephi with the seer stone. That's why all the accounts of the translation from Fayette involve the seer stone. BTW, Martin Harris and Emma were among those present in Fayette, so their accounts could have come from that period as well.
Regarding the translation vs transmission question, consider this: If the Book of Mormon was revealed word-for-word (tightly controlled), why did Joseph later make changes to the text? If the text was revealed word-for-word, why does it contain terms, phrases, and concepts that are not found in the Bible but are found in sources contemporary with, and proximate to, Joseph Smith?
For me, the answers are exciting and faith affirming, and I look forward to sharing them as soon as I can. I've been learning a lot about the context of the Book of Mormon and I think you'll appreciate the new insights this context gives us. I know I have.
_____
The latest trend among scholars is the claim that Joseph transmitted the text; i.e., he merely read the words that appeared on the seer stone in the hat. This is what the Church History Department instructs missionaries to tell visitors. It is also the conclusion of Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack, in their recently published volumes on the Nature of the Original Language. I have the greatest respect for these two scholars, and their work is detailed and thorough. I rely on it all the time and I encourage everyone to read it. They have demonstrated, I think even to the disappointment of critics, that Joseph Smith did not merely copy the Bible, or even the language of the King James Version, when he dictated the text of the Book of Mormon.
I accept all their findings of fact, but I disagree with some of their inferences, assumptions and conclusions. Essentially, I don't think the text was tightly controlled, and I think Joseph translated the text in his own words, as guided by the Spirit.
_____
If you watched the face-to-face on the Saints book (I don't know if there's a transcript), you heard the historians suggest that Joseph started the translation with a scholarly approach, studying the plates and the characters, copying the characters and sending them to scholars, etc. Joseph decided the scholarly approach wasn't working so he turned to a revelatory approach. The word "translation" is still relevant, but it was a spiritual process, not an intellectual one. The Urim and Thummim was buried with the plates, but the seer stone was not; Joseph had found it separately, years earlier. It seems like he used the seer stone a little more often. By the time he translated the Bible, he didn't need physical objects to translate. (Of course, by then he wasn't translating a physical text.)
There's nothing wrong with that explanation and I'm not criticizing it. But as I suggested above, the scenario of two sets of plates reconciles the various accounts more completely. I think new evidence explains the translation more completely as well.
_____
In this post, I'm going to share a brief example.
BYU Studies recently published an article by Brother Skousen titled "The Language of the Original Text of the Book of Mormon."
In the article, Brother Skousen explains
I sat on this hypothesis—that the Book of Mormon lexicon was archaic (especially the conjectured word sermon for ceremony)—until September 2003 when Christian Gellinek proposed to me that the two instances in the text of pleasing bar are errors for pleading bar. Within the next few weeks, I was able to find a variety of examples of pleading bar on the internet, all dating back to the 1600s or referring to courtrooms in the 1600s and describing the defendant in court cases as standing before the pleading bar when pleading his case (that is, when making his plea or pleading). Even after the 1600s, when the dock replaced the pleading bar, evidence for the term pleading bar continued in the language, although only minimally. There is, for instance, a citation from an 1887 religious book by Julia Wood: “its ventilation . . . was apparently easily operated by an occasional pull of a cord hanging against the wall, adjacent to the pleading bar”. And there were museum descriptions in Fordwich, England, dating from the late 1990s and the early 2000s. On the other hand, I have found no evidence for “the pleasing bar of God” or any “pleasing bar of justice”, except for references to the standard text of the Book of Mormon.
While it's true that the full term "the pleading bar" was used in the early published books that show up in the databases, most references refer simply to "the bar." In a legal context, it's understood to what bar one is referring.
The political cartoon at the left depicts children pleading their case at the bar. It "is a satirical comment on the criminal prosecution of young children. In the 19th century there was no distinction between the prosecution of children and adults; even petty crimes – such as stealing a loaf of bread or, as in this illustration, a black pudding – was punishable by imprisonment.
Drawn by George Cruikshank in 1828, the illustration argues that children do not have the same mental capacity as adults – parrot-like, they simply repeat every word the jailor standing next to them says – and, therefore, it is absurd to try them in an adult criminal court."
While it is possible that Joseph misread the seer stone, or that Oliver misunderstood what Joseph dictated and wrote pleasing bar instead of pleading bar, there is no need to hearken back to Early Modern English for the term. Assuming that no early 1800s examples of the specific term pleading bar can yet be found in existing databases, that absence does not prove the term was obsolete in Joseph's day. This 1828 political cartoon titled "Pleading at the Bar" was presumably easy for Joseph's contemporaries to understand (at least those living in London). But in the 1820s, the local paper in Palmyra also referred to the bar in this same legal sense several times.
[Below I'll discuss why pleasing bar makes more sense anyway.]
Brother Skousen cites lots of examples of Early Modern English (EME) language in the Book of Mormon that can be found in print from the mid-1500s to the mid-1700s (and do not appear in the King James Bible), but cannot be found in print closer to the time they appear in the Book of Mormon.
This raises an inference that certain examples of EME in the Book of Mormon had become obsolete by 1829, so Joseph could not have known the terms, their obsolete definitions, or the archaic usage (verb forms and grammar). This in turn leads to the EME theory that the text had to be specifically revealed to Joseph Smith, word-for-word (strict control), which in turn means he had to read English words off the stone and did not translate the text himself.
[The question about who actually did the translation from Nephite to English has led to all sorts of speculation that I won't discuss here.]
Proponents cite 2 Nephi 27 for the proposition that Joseph read the words off the stone. E.g., verse 20: "wherefore thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee." Of course, these verses work equally well if Joseph read English words on the stone, or read and translated Nephite words on the plates. In either case, the words were given to Joseph.
The evidentiary challenge for EME to overcome seems obvious. The basic premise of EME is that absence of evidence is evidence of absence; i.e., absence of evidence of published EME contemporary to Joseph's translation is evidence of absence of dialectical EME contemporary to Joseph's translation.
However, the databases include only digitized published material. This omits substantial published material, such as many local newspapers, but also handwritten material (letters and journals) and illustrations. There is very little (if any) verbatim recording of spoken dialect.
As good as the databases are, the indexes include only material that works with OCR. In my research, I've searched the same texts in Google books and archive.org. and obtained different results (usually Google misses more words than archive.org). Often end-of-line hyphenated words don't show up. Alternative spellings are problematic.
More importantly, though, people don't speak the same way they write. Published material typically goes through an editing process, further removing it from ordinary speech. The Book of Mormon text was dictated, not written. (Presumably Oliver recorded it verbatim, without editing or discussion along the way.)
Furthermore, there are few if any examples of verbatim recordings of spoken dialect from either Vermont or western New York in the early 1800s--except for the the text of the Book of Mormon.
It turns out that so far, the only evidence we have of Joseph's spoken dialect from this period of his life is the text of the Book of Mormon itself, along with the early revelations in the D&C.
In this sense, EME turns logic on its head because it claims that the only evidence of Joseph's 1829 spoken dialect--the text of the Book of Mormon and the early revelations--is actually evidence that he didn't speak that way!
[Some argue that Joseph's 1832 written history is evidence of his 1829 spoken dialect, but apart from the problem of that manuscript being written and edited (and not dictated), by 1832 Joseph was already changing his spoken grammar (changing the personal which to that and who in the dictated revelations, for example).
_____
I'm currently living in a country where the common language isn't even written. Most people learn French and English in school, but at home they speak a form of Creole that is unique to this island. Those who don't finish school speak Creole exclusively, except for English or French they pick up on the street, through the media, etc. A future academic studying this country would have no database from which to understand how people actually spoke, unless he had a verbatim transcript of someone speaking Creole.
Another consideration is that all language is inherited. We speak what our parents and peers speak. All of our language has its roots in previous generations. The Creole here is mostly French, with some input from English and other languages brought by early inhabitants from India and Africa. Some of it is archaic French, actually, dating to the original French colonization.
If an uneducated person living here today dictated a book in Creole, a future linguist would examine the text and, not having any published Creole reference for comparison, would find elements of archaic French, combined with the other residual languages. The academic would conclude from this that the text had to be dictated by God because no one, especially an uneducated person, could possibly assemble such a complex melange of multiple languages, including archaic French!
_____
Colonial lag meant American English retained older forms than the language that progressed in England (especially the major cities), but most of the published EME material in the databases comes from England. Daniel Webster observed that Americans easily understood Shakespeare even after Shakespeare became difficult for people in England to understand because the American English had not progressed the way the English English did.
Another feature of American English is the inventiveness of American speakers, such as creating verbs from nouns.
Rather than being surprising that Joseph spoke with elements of Early Modern English, what would be astonishing is if the text of the Book of Mormon had no roots in Early Modern English.
This is just a summary of the analysis. I have a lot more detail for another time.
_____
If you're still with me, now comes the fun stuff.
The Skousen material led me to a slightly different but related inquiry:
How do we account for language in the Book of Mormon that is not found in the Bible, especially doctrinal language?
Brother Skousen also observes that the Book of Mormon weaves or blends together different passages from the Bible in unique ways. He gives an example from Mosiah 18:21:
having one faith and one baptism
having their hearts knit together in unity
and in love one towards another
Sources:
Ephesians 4:5 one faith, one baptism
Colossians 2:21 their hearts being knit together
Psalm 133:1 together in unity
1 Thess. 3:12 in love one toward another
I'm finding a similar blending from non-Biblical sources that are contemporary with and proximate to Joseph Smith. This is consistent with the language concept of chunking, which explains how people learn language in chunks and then reformulate the chunks to express their own unique thoughts.
_____
As I considered the issue of pleasing bar vs pleading bar, I did a search for the term bar in the scriptures. I was surprised to see that the concepts of a judgment bar and bar of God are unique to the Book of Mormon.
Joseph could not have copied these concepts or the terminology from the Bible because they are nowhere in the Bible. Does that mean the text was dictated by God (strict control) the way some scholars claim?
I don't think so.
First we'll look at the scriptural use of these terms and concepts, then we'll look at how they appear in non-scriptural sources available to Joseph Smith before he dictated the Book of Mormon.
Here are the results from lds.org.
Tribunal in the scriptures
Recall that the original issue I was investigating was the source for pleasing bar vs pleading bar. Here's a source that uses another adjective for bar, from a June 27, 1829, magazine:
[We find lots of references to terms such as Adam's race, comparable to Mormon 3:20 every soul who belongs to the whole human family of Adam.]
While awful bar is an antonym to pleasing bar, recall that Jacob contrasted the pleasing bar with awful. Recall also the passage above that used the term dread tribunal.
Jacob 6:13 Finally, I bid you farewell, until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God, which bar striketh the wicked with awful dread and fear.
As I mentioned, these are only a few of the sources I've accumulated, but they give you a sense of the environment in which Joseph Smith grew up. Certainly there are differences between these sources and the text of the Book of Mormon--which is evidence Joseph did not merely copy or plagiarize others--but these are similarities we would expect if Joseph actually translated the Nephite plates, using his own language.
Or, as the Lord put it, "these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding." D&C 1:24
_____
Now, let's consider the term pleasing bar of God.
None of the examples above use the term pleasing to modify or describe the bar of God. Does that mean the term doesn't belong in the Book of Mormon? Or that it's a mistake? That it should read pleading bar?
Let's consider the adjective pleading. It adds nothing to the phrase the bar of God. Everyone in Joseph Smith's day who read the term knew the bar referred to the judicial pleading bar, as the political cartoon above illustrated. It's a generic term that adds no qualitative meaning.
When we look at how pleasing is used in the text, especially by Jacob, it adds a specific and important qualitative meaning. When viewed this way, it seems more likely that pleading would be a mistake.
Notice also that the only author who uses pleasing as an adjacent adjective is Jacob. (I assume Moroni quoted Jacob; even though Joseph translated Moroni first, I also assume Jacob's teachings were included in the original Book of Lehi.)
Jacob's phrase the pleasing bar of God aligns with his repeated phrase the pleasing word of God. Notice also how he contrasts the pleasing bar with the way the wicked approach the bar:
On the other hand, for Jacob, who has rid himself of the sins of his people (Jacob 2:2), and the rest of the righteous, the bar is pleasing.
The contrast between the righteous and the wicked is a major theme of Jacob's teachings. He made this same contrast in verse 3 of the same chapter:
3 And how blessed are they who have labored diligently in his vineyard; and how cursed are they who shall be cast out into their own place!
Focusing on the bar of God is a powerful way to emphasize the outcome of our lives. By using the simple term pleasing, Jacob contrasts a righteous life with the life of those who will stand before the bar of God with dread, fear, guilt and shame.
For all these reasons, I think the text is correct as it stands and should not be emended to replace pleasing with pleading.
_____
If you're following closely, you'll note that I suggested the Nephites had no bar, pleasing or otherwise, in their society. Yet the text has several authors referring to the bar of God, with Moroni and Jacob both describing the bar as pleasing.
How can this be?
I took a look at the 1828 Webster's dictionary to get a sense for the way the term was used during Joseph's day. Here's the definition:
5. Figuratively, any tribunal; as the bar of public opinion. Thus the final trial of men is called the bar of God.
This is a fascinating definition because it equates the bar with any tribunal, just the way the Book of Mormon text uses it in Alma 5:18. IOW, the bar of God doesn't necessarily (or even likely) refer to a pleading bar after all. The term simply refers to a tribunal--the final judgment.
When viewed this way, Jacob and Moroni are not referring to a specific British system, but instead to a forum of final judgment, which will be a pleasing event for those who follow Christ.
_____
When I read these passages in the context of sources contemporary with Joseph Smith, I gain a deeper appreciation for their meaning and the way the Book of Mormon clarifies doctrine. I look forward to sharing all of this in the near future.
EME is a narrow topic that most Church members don't know or care about, but it has implications for our understanding of the translation of the Book of Mormon (and the revelations in the D&C).
Scholars have debated these issues for decades, but in recent years the discussion has become more detailed and sophisticated because of advances in linguistic analysis and available databases.
 |
| Joseph used the Urim and Thummim to translate, according to Joseph, Oliver, and Lucy Mack Smith |
 |
| Joseph used a stone in a hat, according to everyone else |
I summarize the question this way: Did Joseph translate or transmit the Book of Mormon?
If you think this doesn't matter, that's fine with me. You don't need to read the rest of this post.
_____
Most people probably accept or reject the Book of Mormon on its face, based on their spiritual responses and the biases they want to confirm, pro or con. They don't make a decision based on how it was translated. But for some people, issues related to the text are an impediment to accepting, or even reading, the Book of Mormon.
I think it's important to understand and reconcile aspects of the Restoration that otherwise are confusing or contradictory.
For example, many otherwise inconsistent or inexplicable accounts in early Church history are easily explained when we understand that Joseph actually translated two separate sets of plates.
The plates Joseph originally got from Moroni, which I call the Harmony plates, were accompanied by the Urim and Thummim. (Joseph's father said there was a compartment inside the plates for the Urim and Thummim, which makes sense to me.) Joseph translated all of these plates (except the sealed portion) when he was in Harmony, including the Title Page that he said was on the last leaf of the plates.
Before he left Harmony, Joseph returned those original plates, along with the Urim and Thummim, to the divine messenger who took them back to the Nephite repository in the Hill Cumorah. There, the messenger picked up the plates of Nephi which the Lord had told Joseph he would have to translate when he finished with the Harmony plates (D&C 10).
The messenger took the plates of Nephi to Fayette, where he gave them to Joseph for translation (1 Nephi through Words of Mormon 1:10). Because he no longer had the Urim and Thummim, Joseph translated the plates of Nephi with the seer stone. That's why all the accounts of the translation from Fayette involve the seer stone. BTW, Martin Harris and Emma were among those present in Fayette, so their accounts could have come from that period as well.
Regarding the translation vs transmission question, consider this: If the Book of Mormon was revealed word-for-word (tightly controlled), why did Joseph later make changes to the text? If the text was revealed word-for-word, why does it contain terms, phrases, and concepts that are not found in the Bible but are found in sources contemporary with, and proximate to, Joseph Smith?
For me, the answers are exciting and faith affirming, and I look forward to sharing them as soon as I can. I've been learning a lot about the context of the Book of Mormon and I think you'll appreciate the new insights this context gives us. I know I have.
_____
The latest trend among scholars is the claim that Joseph transmitted the text; i.e., he merely read the words that appeared on the seer stone in the hat. This is what the Church History Department instructs missionaries to tell visitors. It is also the conclusion of Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack, in their recently published volumes on the Nature of the Original Language. I have the greatest respect for these two scholars, and their work is detailed and thorough. I rely on it all the time and I encourage everyone to read it. They have demonstrated, I think even to the disappointment of critics, that Joseph Smith did not merely copy the Bible, or even the language of the King James Version, when he dictated the text of the Book of Mormon.
I accept all their findings of fact, but I disagree with some of their inferences, assumptions and conclusions. Essentially, I don't think the text was tightly controlled, and I think Joseph translated the text in his own words, as guided by the Spirit.
_____
If you watched the face-to-face on the Saints book (I don't know if there's a transcript), you heard the historians suggest that Joseph started the translation with a scholarly approach, studying the plates and the characters, copying the characters and sending them to scholars, etc. Joseph decided the scholarly approach wasn't working so he turned to a revelatory approach. The word "translation" is still relevant, but it was a spiritual process, not an intellectual one. The Urim and Thummim was buried with the plates, but the seer stone was not; Joseph had found it separately, years earlier. It seems like he used the seer stone a little more often. By the time he translated the Bible, he didn't need physical objects to translate. (Of course, by then he wasn't translating a physical text.)
There's nothing wrong with that explanation and I'm not criticizing it. But as I suggested above, the scenario of two sets of plates reconciles the various accounts more completely. I think new evidence explains the translation more completely as well.
_____
In this post, I'm going to share a brief example.
BYU Studies recently published an article by Brother Skousen titled "The Language of the Original Text of the Book of Mormon."
In the article, Brother Skousen explains
I sat on this hypothesis—that the Book of Mormon lexicon was archaic (especially the conjectured word sermon for ceremony)—until September 2003 when Christian Gellinek proposed to me that the two instances in the text of pleasing bar are errors for pleading bar. Within the next few weeks, I was able to find a variety of examples of pleading bar on the internet, all dating back to the 1600s or referring to courtrooms in the 1600s and describing the defendant in court cases as standing before the pleading bar when pleading his case (that is, when making his plea or pleading). Even after the 1600s, when the dock replaced the pleading bar, evidence for the term pleading bar continued in the language, although only minimally. There is, for instance, a citation from an 1887 religious book by Julia Wood: “its ventilation . . . was apparently easily operated by an occasional pull of a cord hanging against the wall, adjacent to the pleading bar”. And there were museum descriptions in Fordwich, England, dating from the late 1990s and the early 2000s. On the other hand, I have found no evidence for “the pleasing bar of God” or any “pleasing bar of justice”, except for references to the standard text of the Book of Mormon.
While it's true that the full term "the pleading bar" was used in the early published books that show up in the databases, most references refer simply to "the bar." In a legal context, it's understood to what bar one is referring.
 |
| 1828 political cartoon titled "Pleading at the Bar" |
Drawn by George Cruikshank in 1828, the illustration argues that children do not have the same mental capacity as adults – parrot-like, they simply repeat every word the jailor standing next to them says – and, therefore, it is absurd to try them in an adult criminal court."
While it is possible that Joseph misread the seer stone, or that Oliver misunderstood what Joseph dictated and wrote pleasing bar instead of pleading bar, there is no need to hearken back to Early Modern English for the term. Assuming that no early 1800s examples of the specific term pleading bar can yet be found in existing databases, that absence does not prove the term was obsolete in Joseph's day. This 1828 political cartoon titled "Pleading at the Bar" was presumably easy for Joseph's contemporaries to understand (at least those living in London). But in the 1820s, the local paper in Palmyra also referred to the bar in this same legal sense several times.
[Below I'll discuss why pleasing bar makes more sense anyway.]
Brother Skousen cites lots of examples of Early Modern English (EME) language in the Book of Mormon that can be found in print from the mid-1500s to the mid-1700s (and do not appear in the King James Bible), but cannot be found in print closer to the time they appear in the Book of Mormon.
This raises an inference that certain examples of EME in the Book of Mormon had become obsolete by 1829, so Joseph could not have known the terms, their obsolete definitions, or the archaic usage (verb forms and grammar). This in turn leads to the EME theory that the text had to be specifically revealed to Joseph Smith, word-for-word (strict control), which in turn means he had to read English words off the stone and did not translate the text himself.
[The question about who actually did the translation from Nephite to English has led to all sorts of speculation that I won't discuss here.]
Proponents cite 2 Nephi 27 for the proposition that Joseph read the words off the stone. E.g., verse 20: "wherefore thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee." Of course, these verses work equally well if Joseph read English words on the stone, or read and translated Nephite words on the plates. In either case, the words were given to Joseph.
The evidentiary challenge for EME to overcome seems obvious. The basic premise of EME is that absence of evidence is evidence of absence; i.e., absence of evidence of published EME contemporary to Joseph's translation is evidence of absence of dialectical EME contemporary to Joseph's translation.
However, the databases include only digitized published material. This omits substantial published material, such as many local newspapers, but also handwritten material (letters and journals) and illustrations. There is very little (if any) verbatim recording of spoken dialect.
As good as the databases are, the indexes include only material that works with OCR. In my research, I've searched the same texts in Google books and archive.org. and obtained different results (usually Google misses more words than archive.org). Often end-of-line hyphenated words don't show up. Alternative spellings are problematic.
More importantly, though, people don't speak the same way they write. Published material typically goes through an editing process, further removing it from ordinary speech. The Book of Mormon text was dictated, not written. (Presumably Oliver recorded it verbatim, without editing or discussion along the way.)
Furthermore, there are few if any examples of verbatim recordings of spoken dialect from either Vermont or western New York in the early 1800s--except for the the text of the Book of Mormon.
It turns out that so far, the only evidence we have of Joseph's spoken dialect from this period of his life is the text of the Book of Mormon itself, along with the early revelations in the D&C.
In this sense, EME turns logic on its head because it claims that the only evidence of Joseph's 1829 spoken dialect--the text of the Book of Mormon and the early revelations--is actually evidence that he didn't speak that way!
[Some argue that Joseph's 1832 written history is evidence of his 1829 spoken dialect, but apart from the problem of that manuscript being written and edited (and not dictated), by 1832 Joseph was already changing his spoken grammar (changing the personal which to that and who in the dictated revelations, for example).
_____
I'm currently living in a country where the common language isn't even written. Most people learn French and English in school, but at home they speak a form of Creole that is unique to this island. Those who don't finish school speak Creole exclusively, except for English or French they pick up on the street, through the media, etc. A future academic studying this country would have no database from which to understand how people actually spoke, unless he had a verbatim transcript of someone speaking Creole.
Another consideration is that all language is inherited. We speak what our parents and peers speak. All of our language has its roots in previous generations. The Creole here is mostly French, with some input from English and other languages brought by early inhabitants from India and Africa. Some of it is archaic French, actually, dating to the original French colonization.
If an uneducated person living here today dictated a book in Creole, a future linguist would examine the text and, not having any published Creole reference for comparison, would find elements of archaic French, combined with the other residual languages. The academic would conclude from this that the text had to be dictated by God because no one, especially an uneducated person, could possibly assemble such a complex melange of multiple languages, including archaic French!
_____
Colonial lag meant American English retained older forms than the language that progressed in England (especially the major cities), but most of the published EME material in the databases comes from England. Daniel Webster observed that Americans easily understood Shakespeare even after Shakespeare became difficult for people in England to understand because the American English had not progressed the way the English English did.
Another feature of American English is the inventiveness of American speakers, such as creating verbs from nouns.
Rather than being surprising that Joseph spoke with elements of Early Modern English, what would be astonishing is if the text of the Book of Mormon had no roots in Early Modern English.
This is just a summary of the analysis. I have a lot more detail for another time.
_____
If you're still with me, now comes the fun stuff.
The Skousen material led me to a slightly different but related inquiry:
How do we account for language in the Book of Mormon that is not found in the Bible, especially doctrinal language?
Brother Skousen also observes that the Book of Mormon weaves or blends together different passages from the Bible in unique ways. He gives an example from Mosiah 18:21:
having one faith and one baptism
having their hearts knit together in unity
and in love one towards another
Sources:
Ephesians 4:5 one faith, one baptism
Colossians 2:21 their hearts being knit together
Psalm 133:1 together in unity
1 Thess. 3:12 in love one toward another
I'm finding a similar blending from non-Biblical sources that are contemporary with and proximate to Joseph Smith. This is consistent with the language concept of chunking, which explains how people learn language in chunks and then reformulate the chunks to express their own unique thoughts.
_____
As I considered the issue of pleasing bar vs pleading bar, I did a search for the term bar in the scriptures. I was surprised to see that the concepts of a judgment bar and bar of God are unique to the Book of Mormon.
Joseph could not have copied these concepts or the terminology from the Bible because they are nowhere in the Bible. Does that mean the text was dictated by God (strict control) the way some scholars claim?
I don't think so.
First we'll look at the scriptural use of these terms and concepts, then we'll look at how they appear in non-scriptural sources available to Joseph Smith before he dictated the Book of Mormon.
Here are the results from lds.org.
Bar in the scriptures
Old Testament (41) (0 for judgment bar or bar of God)
New Testament (2) (0 for judgment bar or bar of God)
Book of Mormon (11) (all
Doctrine and Covenants (1) (0 for bar of God)
Pearl of Great Price (0)
Now, look at how the Book of Mormon implements this concept:
before his bar
at the judgment bar
before the bar of God
before the pleasing bar of God
before the bar of God
before the bar of God
before the bar of Christ the Son, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, which is one Eternal God
before the bar of God
before his bar
at the bar of God
meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge
and a separate, related passage:
before the tribunal of God
Here are the passages in context:
Now, look at how the Book of Mormon implements this concept:
before his bar
at the judgment bar
before the bar of God
before the pleasing bar of God
before the bar of God
before the bar of God
before the bar of Christ the Son, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, which is one Eternal God
before the bar of God
before his bar
at the bar of God
meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge
and a separate, related passage:
before the tribunal of God
Here are the passages in context:
2 Nephi 33:11 And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar; and ye shall know that I have been commanded of him to write these things, notwithstanding my weakness.
15 For what I seal on earth, shall be brought against you at the judgment bar; for thus hath the Lord commanded me, and I must obey. Amen.
Jacob 6:9 Know ye not that if ye will do these things, that the power of the redemption and the resurrection, which is in Christ, will bring you to stand with shame and awful guilt before the bar of God?
13 Finally, I bid you farewell, until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God, which bar striketh the wicked with awful dread and fear. Amen.
Mosiah 16:10 Even this mortal shall put on immortality, and this corruption shall put on incorruption, and shall be brought to stand before the bar of God, to be judged of him according to their works whether they be good or whether they be evil—
Alma 5:22 And now I ask of you, my brethren, how will any of you feel, if ye shall stand before the bar of God, having your garments stained with blood and all manner of filthiness? Behold, what will these things testify against you?
Alma 11:44 Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but every thing shall be restored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body, and shall be brought and be arraigned before the bar of Christ the Son, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, which is one Eternal God, to be judged according to their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil.
Alma 12:12 And Amulek hath spoken plainly concerning death, and being raised from this mortality to a state of immortality, and being brought before the bar of God, to be judged according to our works.
Mormon 9:13 And because of the redemption of man, which came by Jesus Christ, they are brought back into the presence of the Lord; yea, this is wherein all men are redeemed, because the death of Christ bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a redemption from an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall be awakened by the power of God when the trump shall sound; and they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand before his bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band of death, which death is a temporal death.
Moroni 10:27 And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?
34 And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.
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Furthermore, there is only one instance of tribunal in the scriptures.
Tribunal in the scriptures
Old Testament (0)
New Testament (0)
Book of Mormon (1)
Doctrine and Covenants (0)
Pearl of Great Price (0)
Alma 5:18 Or otherwise, can ye imagine yourselves brought before the tribunal of God with your souls filled with guilt and remorse, having a remembrance of all your guilt, yea, a perfect remembrance of all your wickedness, yea, a remembrance that ye have set at defiance the commandments of God?
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Recall, these terms and concepts are not found in the Bible.
Does this mean that Joseph could have dictated them only by pure revelation?
Could he have dictated these passages solely by reading the words off the seer stone?
I think the answer to both questions is definitely no. All these phrases and concepts were well established in published material contemporary with and proximate to Joseph Smith. They were part of his mental language bank.
For this post, I won't give all the examples I've gathered, but here are some from The Adviser, Vermont Evangelical Magazine, published in 1810, 1811, and 1813. I chose this source as an example because Joseph was born in Vermont and lived there until moving to Palmyra around 1814. I'm not aware of any evidence that Joseph specifically read this magazine or listened to the preachers associated with it, but the magazine reflects the type of language in Vermont that his family should have been familiar with, given their discussions about religion.
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Does this mean that Joseph could have dictated them only by pure revelation?
Could he have dictated these passages solely by reading the words off the seer stone?
I think the answer to both questions is definitely no. All these phrases and concepts were well established in published material contemporary with and proximate to Joseph Smith. They were part of his mental language bank.
For this post, I won't give all the examples I've gathered, but here are some from The Adviser, Vermont Evangelical Magazine, published in 1810, 1811, and 1813. I chose this source as an example because Joseph was born in Vermont and lived there until moving to Palmyra around 1814. I'm not aware of any evidence that Joseph specifically read this magazine or listened to the preachers associated with it, but the magazine reflects the type of language in Vermont that his family should have been familiar with, given their discussions about religion.
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Well, then, at a review of the past, may the sinner tremble. He has the misimprovement of the various means, which he has enjoyed, of being made a subject of the grace of God and an heir of salvation, the abuse of the divine mercy and the squandering of his day of trial to render his account a fearful one at the bar of judgment. He has also for the neglect, or perversion of his means of doing good, to answer at the divine tribunal.
Thousands daily and hourly shall quit the land of hope and a state of trial, to stand at the bar of judgment and to enter on the recompence of reward.
Often reflect on the day, when you must meet your children at the solemn tribunal of Jehovah… Can you go in peace to the bar of God, with so much guilt as you are daily contracting, by neglecting their immortal souls? …
you must meet them at the bar of omniscient Jehovah, to give an account of your trust,
Mr. Cotton, in all his conduct and demeanor, manifested a solemn sense of the steady presence of God, of his own un-worthiness in his sight, and of that account which he expected to render at his bar.
On this occasion his mind was expressively solemn ; and he seemed to spend every hour, as if he expected, at the next, to stand at the bar of God.
A key point to observe is how verbose the other sources are compared with the text of the Book of Mormon. In my view, by the gift and power of God Joseph translated the Nephite plates into authoritative statements of clear doctrine, drawing upon his own mental language bank.
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In the next example, the author combines the bar of God with the judgment seat of Christ. The judgment seat of Christ appears twice in the New Testament and eight times in the Book of Mormon (counting the Title Page and the Testimony of the Three Witnesses).
I find it fascinating that this author combined a term used in the Bible (judgment seat of Christ) with a term not found in the Bible (bar of God). The Book of Mormon contains both phrases, although not adjacent as in this example.
It is significant that the Book of Mormon uses the bar of God terminology. The term is not in the Bible because the concept of a bar for lawyers and pleading clients was first developed in England, say around the 1500s. While the King James translators used anachronistic terms and concepts (such as candles, which the ancient Jews did not use), for whatever reason they didn't think of using the concept of a judgment bar in connection with the final judgment.
But preachers and theologians did think of it, and they used it in sermons.
The judgment seat, by contrast, was an ancient formal setting. The Greek word, according to Strong's Concordance, is defined this way:
968. bḗma (from bainō, "to step, ascend") – properly, a platform to which someone walked up to receive judgment; (figuratively) the administration of justice – literally, given from "a tribunal-chair" (throne) where rewards and punishments are meted out.
The Book of Mormon refers to the judgment seat throughout the text. There were contentions about who should fill the judgment seat, for example (Helaman 2). That means a judgment seat was an appropriate concept for an ancient culture (setting aside the question whether this was an attribute of 600 B.C. culture in the Middle-East that the Nephites would have known about).
We might think that the use of the bar of God terminology in the text means the ancient Nephites developed some sort of legal bar comparable to the British system. Should we conclude the Nephites had both a judgment seat and engaged in pleading at a bar?
I don't think so.
In the case of the judgment seat, the text refers to both practical, real-world applications and to theological applications. But in the case of the bar of God, there are no practical, real-world applications; the term has purely theological meaning.
How do we explain the presence of bar of God terminology in the text? If the Nephites had no experience with pleading at the bar of the law, why would they use this metaphor for the final judgment?
When we recall that Joseph said that the Title Page was a literal translation, we can infer he meant that the rest of the text is not a literal translation. This makes sense for lots of reasons, and as you'll see below, the Title Page (literal) refers to the Judgment seat of Christ, but not to the bar of God. The bar of God language appears only in the presumably non-literal translation.
I think the use of the bar of God is an example of Joseph drawing from his own mental language bank to translate the text after the manner of his language, making the concepts understandable and relevant to his contemporary readers. I don't think it means the Nephites were familiar with pleading at a bar of justice. I have plenty more examples of this that I'll be discussing soon.
Here is the passage from the pre-1829 source:
It is significant that the Book of Mormon uses the bar of God terminology. The term is not in the Bible because the concept of a bar for lawyers and pleading clients was first developed in England, say around the 1500s. While the King James translators used anachronistic terms and concepts (such as candles, which the ancient Jews did not use), for whatever reason they didn't think of using the concept of a judgment bar in connection with the final judgment.
But preachers and theologians did think of it, and they used it in sermons.
The judgment seat, by contrast, was an ancient formal setting. The Greek word, according to Strong's Concordance, is defined this way:
968. bḗma (from bainō, "to step, ascend") – properly, a platform to which someone walked up to receive judgment; (figuratively) the administration of justice – literally, given from "a tribunal-chair" (throne) where rewards and punishments are meted out.
The Book of Mormon refers to the judgment seat throughout the text. There were contentions about who should fill the judgment seat, for example (Helaman 2). That means a judgment seat was an appropriate concept for an ancient culture (setting aside the question whether this was an attribute of 600 B.C. culture in the Middle-East that the Nephites would have known about).
We might think that the use of the bar of God terminology in the text means the ancient Nephites developed some sort of legal bar comparable to the British system. Should we conclude the Nephites had both a judgment seat and engaged in pleading at a bar?
I don't think so.
In the case of the judgment seat, the text refers to both practical, real-world applications and to theological applications. But in the case of the bar of God, there are no practical, real-world applications; the term has purely theological meaning.
How do we explain the presence of bar of God terminology in the text? If the Nephites had no experience with pleading at the bar of the law, why would they use this metaphor for the final judgment?
When we recall that Joseph said that the Title Page was a literal translation, we can infer he meant that the rest of the text is not a literal translation. This makes sense for lots of reasons, and as you'll see below, the Title Page (literal) refers to the Judgment seat of Christ, but not to the bar of God. The bar of God language appears only in the presumably non-literal translation.
I think the use of the bar of God is an example of Joseph drawing from his own mental language bank to translate the text after the manner of his language, making the concepts understandable and relevant to his contemporary readers. I don't think it means the Nephites were familiar with pleading at a bar of justice. I have plenty more examples of this that I'll be discussing soon.
Here is the passage from the pre-1829 source:
I am hastening to the judgment seat of Christ, to the bar of a righteous and holy God, to render a strict and impartial account of the deeds done in the body. And how dreadful beyond description will be my doom, should I appear before that dread tribunal without an interest in the blessed Redeemer—to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power! How alarming is my condition!—Awake then, O my soul, from thy lethargy. Continue no longer at ease in sin.
[Note: "Doom" does not appear in the Bible, but it appears in the Book of Mormon, D&C, and PofGP. I consider that a "Joseph Smith term." The passage about "everlasting destruction" is a quotation from 2 Thess. 1:9, but that is the only time the term is used in the Bible. The same term is used 9 times in the Book of Mormon, repackaged (blended) in different ways. It's also interesting to compare the last two lines to 2 Nephi 4:28 - Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.]
In my view, the quoted passage contains evidence that these terms and phrases became part of Joseph mental language bank. We see the language and concepts from these sources recombined--blended--to produce the text of the Book of Mormon.
It's interesting to compare these uses of judgment seat of Christ in the Bible and the Book of Mormon:
2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Romans 14:10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
Mormon 3:20 And these things doth the Spirit manifest unto me; therefore I write unto you all. And for this cause I write unto you, that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, yea, every soul who belongs to the whole human family of Adam; and ye must stand to be judged of your works, whether they be good or evil;
22 And I would that I could persuade all ye ends of the earth to repent and prepare to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.
3 Nephi 28:31 Therefore, great and marvelous works shall be wrought by them, before the great and coming day when all people must surely stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;
Mormon 6:21 And the day soon cometh that your mortal must put on immortality, and these bodies which are now moldering in corruption must soon become incorruptible bodies; and then ye must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, to be judged according to your works; and if it so be that ye are righteous, then are ye blessed with your fathers who have gone before you.
Ether 12:38 And now I, Moroni, bid farewell unto the Gentiles, yea, and also unto my brethren whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ, where all men shall know that my garments are not spotted with your blood.
Moroni 8:21 Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ.
Title Page: And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.
The similarities between the Bible and the Book of Mormon are obvious, but the Book of Mormon blends the Biblical concepts (especially Romans) with other terms, phrases and concepts. For example, spotless (Title Page) does not appear in the Bible, but it appears several times in the Book of Mormon. It also appears in some of my other sources, contemporary with Joseph Smith.
Spotted appears once in the New Testament (Jude 1:23), once in the D&C (copying Jude with changes), and once in the Book of Mormon (Ether 12:38, blending Jude with other passages).
I realize this looks complex, but it's fascinating to see how it works and I think you'll agree once I lay it all out.
The similarities between the Bible and the Book of Mormon are obvious, but the Book of Mormon blends the Biblical concepts (especially Romans) with other terms, phrases and concepts. For example, spotless (Title Page) does not appear in the Bible, but it appears several times in the Book of Mormon. It also appears in some of my other sources, contemporary with Joseph Smith.
Spotted appears once in the New Testament (Jude 1:23), once in the D&C (copying Jude with changes), and once in the Book of Mormon (Ether 12:38, blending Jude with other passages).
I realize this looks complex, but it's fascinating to see how it works and I think you'll agree once I lay it all out.
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Recall that the original issue I was investigating was the source for pleasing bar vs pleading bar. Here's a source that uses another adjective for bar, from a June 27, 1829, magazine:
[We find lots of references to terms such as Adam's race, comparable to Mormon 3:20 every soul who belongs to the whole human family of Adam.]
While awful bar is an antonym to pleasing bar, recall that Jacob contrasted the pleasing bar with awful. Recall also the passage above that used the term dread tribunal.
Jacob 6:13 Finally, I bid you farewell, until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God, which bar striketh the wicked with awful dread and fear.
As I mentioned, these are only a few of the sources I've accumulated, but they give you a sense of the environment in which Joseph Smith grew up. Certainly there are differences between these sources and the text of the Book of Mormon--which is evidence Joseph did not merely copy or plagiarize others--but these are similarities we would expect if Joseph actually translated the Nephite plates, using his own language.
Or, as the Lord put it, "these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding." D&C 1:24
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Now, let's consider the term pleasing bar of God.
None of the examples above use the term pleasing to modify or describe the bar of God. Does that mean the term doesn't belong in the Book of Mormon? Or that it's a mistake? That it should read pleading bar?
Let's consider the adjective pleading. It adds nothing to the phrase the bar of God. Everyone in Joseph Smith's day who read the term knew the bar referred to the judicial pleading bar, as the political cartoon above illustrated. It's a generic term that adds no qualitative meaning.
When we look at how pleasing is used in the text, especially by Jacob, it adds a specific and important qualitative meaning. When viewed this way, it seems more likely that pleading would be a mistake.
Notice also that the only author who uses pleasing as an adjacent adjective is Jacob. (I assume Moroni quoted Jacob; even though Joseph translated Moroni first, I also assume Jacob's teachings were included in the original Book of Lehi.)
1 Nephi 6:5 Wherefore, the things which are pleasing unto the world I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and unto those who are not of the world.
2 Nephi 5:32 And I engraved that which is pleasing unto God. And if my people are pleased with the things of God they will be pleased with mine engravings which are upon these plates.
Jacob 2:7 And also it grieveth me that I must use so much boldness of speech concerning you, before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God;
8 And it supposeth me that they have come up hither to hear the pleasing word of God, yea, the word which healeth the wounded soul.
9 Wherefore, it burdeneth my soul that I should be constrained, because of the strict commandment which I have received from God, to admonish you according to your crimes, to enlarge the wounds of those who are already wounded, instead of consoling and healing their wounds; and those who have not been wounded, instead of feasting upon the pleasing word of God have daggers placed to pierce their souls and wound their delicate minds.
Jacob 3:2 O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever.
Jacob 6:13 Finally, I bid you farewell, until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God, which bar striketh the wicked with awful dread and fear. Amen.
Jacob 7:22 Now, this thing was pleasing unto me, Jacob, for I had requested it of my Father who was in heaven; for he had heard my cry and answered my prayer.
Words of Mormon 1:4 And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of the prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have been fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely come to pass—
Alma 30:53 But behold, the devil hath deceived me; for he appeared unto me in the form of an angel, and said unto me: Go and reclaim this people, for they have all gone astray after an unknown God. And he said unto me: There is no God; yea, and he taught me that which I should say. And I have taught his words; and I taught them because they were pleasing unto the carnal mind; and I taught them, even until I had much success, insomuch that I verily believed that they were true; and for this cause I withstood the truth, even until I have brought this great curse upon me.
Moroni 10:34 And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.
Jacob's phrase the pleasing bar of God aligns with his repeated phrase the pleasing word of God. Notice also how he contrasts the pleasing bar with the way the wicked approach the bar:
Jacob 6:9 Know ye not that if ye will do these things, that the power of the redemption and the resurrection, which is in Christ, will bring you to stand with shame and awful guilt before the bar of God?
13 Finally, I bid you farewell, until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God, which bar striketh the wicked with awful dread and fear. Amen.
On one hand, the bar of God strikes the wicked with awful dread and fear, with shame and awful guilt.On the other hand, for Jacob, who has rid himself of the sins of his people (Jacob 2:2), and the rest of the righteous, the bar is pleasing.
The contrast between the righteous and the wicked is a major theme of Jacob's teachings. He made this same contrast in verse 3 of the same chapter:
3 And how blessed are they who have labored diligently in his vineyard; and how cursed are they who shall be cast out into their own place!
Focusing on the bar of God is a powerful way to emphasize the outcome of our lives. By using the simple term pleasing, Jacob contrasts a righteous life with the life of those who will stand before the bar of God with dread, fear, guilt and shame.
For all these reasons, I think the text is correct as it stands and should not be emended to replace pleasing with pleading.
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If you're following closely, you'll note that I suggested the Nephites had no bar, pleasing or otherwise, in their society. Yet the text has several authors referring to the bar of God, with Moroni and Jacob both describing the bar as pleasing.
How can this be?
I took a look at the 1828 Webster's dictionary to get a sense for the way the term was used during Joseph's day. Here's the definition:
5. Figuratively, any tribunal; as the bar of public opinion. Thus the final trial of men is called the bar of God.
This is a fascinating definition because it equates the bar with any tribunal, just the way the Book of Mormon text uses it in Alma 5:18. IOW, the bar of God doesn't necessarily (or even likely) refer to a pleading bar after all. The term simply refers to a tribunal--the final judgment.
When viewed this way, Jacob and Moroni are not referring to a specific British system, but instead to a forum of final judgment, which will be a pleasing event for those who follow Christ.
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When I read these passages in the context of sources contemporary with Joseph Smith, I gain a deeper appreciation for their meaning and the way the Book of Mormon clarifies doctrine. I look forward to sharing all of this in the near future.
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