ThePhy said:
This is pretty close to the answer I had asked for. My original point in responding in this thread was to establish that the coming forth of the BoM was not by the normal error-prone methods of traditional translation. Staring into the darkness of a thick felt hat as a means of translation sounds like either a highly divine event, or some sort of hucksterism that uneducated country folk might fall for. I’m sure you opt for the former interpretation of the events. So, the BoM was (at least in LDS history) brought from whatever language it first existed in into English by very direct divine involvement. Which brings us full circle, why call sleds or drag poles “chariots” when the word “chariot” is typically thought of as a wheeled vehicle?
I'm still not seeing how you think the whole of the process was utterly void of error simply because God's power was involved in the transmission, it's an assumption that God was both correcting the original text being translated and that he was forcibly insuring the use of the most accurate possible words, it also fails to take into account the fact that God has OFTEN used his dirrect intervention WITHOUT making
every action of those employing such to be correct, or right, or in perfect accordance with his will. There's an implicit difficulty or effort in the concept of 'keep trying' processes. Like teaching a child to read correctly. There may come points when words are mispronounced, misread, or read out of place, but generally we only make the child repeat such untill they reach a level of satisfactory accuracy RATHER than waiting untill their proficiency arrives at that of a tenured college English professor. So being unable to know whether God's aid was compensating for all errors commited on the original writters end or if he was waiting untill the rendition arrived at a God written equivilancy level and considering that there was copying from the original manuscript to the printers manuscript for a good portion of it, a process void of evidence of God openly stoping errors by witholding advancement untill a level of sufficient accuracy has been reached, it's by no means a surefire assumption that the seerstone felt hat methood insured that the text was the same as if the relation had simply been written by God in modern day English and dropped on the table one morning in Joseph's cabin in a format readable by any literate Englishman.
I don’t want this to devolve into another “Mormonism” thread, but hey, Jason and Jo opened this bag of worms on Bob’s show. My question, now that you directly admit to the felt hat trick, is what did Joseph even need the golden plates for (assuming they did exist)?
In terms of raw translation need I wouldn't know the difinative answer to that. It seems the plates were needed for the witnesses to see, the eight and the three and the one (twelve official witnesses)
I haven’t seen any independent contemporary account (like exists for the hat) that he studied them as part of the translation process.
Well seeing the script as it appears on the plates and then in english sounds very similar to the format of language study I've employed in all four of the languages I've ventured into. Generally it seems the best way to learn a language. If simply the translated English text was all that was needed why would God give the script in Reformed Egyptian THEN give the English if the the English was the only thing he really wanted out of it?
Hey, I hope science advances, but I am not claiming that there are specific itemized surprises lurking in the parts of science that are already well investigated (like the artifacts spoken of in the BoM that are absent in American archaeology). Do you have faith the supporting archaeological evidences will be found, or are you hoping against hope just to avoid facing the uncomfortable alternative - that they don't exist?
I'm sure alot of them have moved on to a state unrecognizable to current investigative means. I wouldn't be supprized to see some revealed in the future. I don't think any such revelation of evidence to the whole world would occur previous to the second coming of Christ. So I don't personally see the evidence as being used to show to the unbelieving to change their ways. Certainly God could do it, but God, being omniscient, has stated to prophets that even if the people saw all the Joseph Smith received they wouldn't believe his words. Why would an omniscient God spitefully condemn people with all that added evidence if he knew before hand that it never had a chance of changing their mind?
