I keep returning to this point, because unless I’m missing something somewhere, it is a fatal flaw to current Book of Mormon apologia.
Here’s the “normal” translation process that can feasibly result in errors. Sue’s native language is English, but she is fluent in French. Sue reads a French text, and processes its meaning in her mind, and then does her best to capture that same meaning in English. Errors can occur in this process in several ways. Perhaps Sue didn’t understand a specific French term, although she though she did. Or perhaps she inadvertently inserted an anachronism to capture the meaning of a phrase, which could not be translated word-for-word because it is culture-based. So the end result may be a translated text with some errors. Now when someone reads that translated result – without benefit of either having access to the French original, or not be able to read French – all the reader has to work with to create his/her own understanding is the flawed English translation. Without access to additional information, the reader is captured in the flawed translation, so to speak. That, as far as the reader is concerned, IS the text.
Now it may be possible for Sue to not understand the text differently than someone reading her translation in certain manners, but these would be tend to be differences in interpreting larger or hidden meaning in the text. Did the author intend to make a social statement of some sort? - those sort of literary issues.
Now, of course, if Sue were simply a “reader” of English words that appeared on a stone, then she could feasibly not understand the resultant text at all.
Joseph Smith, in some unexplained way, figured out what the text was saying without seeing words appear on a rock (according to the loose, “slutty”, translation theory – copyright EA ;) So how did he figure it out? There’s only so many ways it could happen – maybe a movie was shown in his mind. Or maybe he just suddenly “knew” the story and told it. (kind of like, say, writing a story without divine intervention sometimes works) But whether it was visual images, or some mental “knowing” of the story – what we have as the Book of Mormon is the direct result of what he understood those images or story to be.
Maybe it will be clearer if I use one specific example – the infamous “others” passage.
2 Nephi 5:6
Wherefore, it came to pass that I, Nephi, did take my family, and also Zoram and his family, and Sam, mine elder brother and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all who would go with me. And all those who would go with me were those who believed in the warnings and the revelations of God; wherefore, they did hearken unto my words.
LGT apologists insist that “all those who would go with me” really means all those indigenous Mesoamericans that Joseph Smith never knew existed. (my own interpretation is “all those who would go with me” refers to family members not named by name, perhaps certain offspring of the rebellious members who decided to follow Nephi instead of their wicked parents)
As I understand the possible loose translation process, it is just not possible that these specific worlds - “and all those who would go with me” – really refer to the indigenous others, because those words were the end result of Joseph Smith’ understanding of what happened, and Joseph Smith did not understand there to be indigenous others. The only way an apologist can logically insist that “and all those who would go with me” really means something Joseph Smith never imagined or understood – indigenous others – would be under the tight translation theory.
So did Joseph Smith see some movie in his mind, and that is what created the words in the Book of Mormon? If so, then he did not see indigenous others, whom Nephi met and converted, in this movie –
because he didn’t believe they existed. If he had seen them in his little movie, he would KNOW they existed. If, instead, the idea of the story came to him (more likely given how he described revelation in other instances), then the idea didn’t contain indigenous others, because Joseph Smith didn’t believe they existed.
Am I off the track, or is this really a fatal flaw in current apologia? (for those who adhere to the loose translation theory, of course, which is a necessity for anyone who knows anything about Mesoamerica)
Addictio and Brent, I’d love to get your feedback on this (and anyone else, of course, just naming those two because they are so “learned in the ways of man”. ;)