Don Bradley's Kinderhook Bomb

[_Dad of a Mormon]

Don,

Would you agree that if Joseph Smith really did use the GAEL in the way that you are proposing, that he was at the very least incompetent and lacked discernment regarding the nature of the KP?

I have to admit that it seems pretty unlikely that a single character in the GAEL would account for his translation. Did Joseph Smith really think that there was a single character that would translate to convey that the plates "contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth"? I think you would agree that on the surface, it does seem extraordinarily unlikely. Which is why that regardless of whether it helps or hurts Mormon apologetics, if you did make your case, it would unquestionably be an interesting find.

[_Buffalo]

Either way, it discredits his ability as a "translator" of ancient documents (real or forged).

It makes me smile, Buffalo, to realize that I am having an exchange with someone who can't see any distinction between translating something by God giving you its meaning and translating by comparing two similar characters.

You have a nice day.

Don

I know you're living on a planet haunted by gods and demons, but here in the real world, translations have to be accurate to be meaningful, and a translator whose translations don't hold up under scrutiny (KP, Book of Abraham) isn't really a translator at all. It doesn't matter how well meaning he was. Just sayin.

[_Equality]

It makes me smile, Buffalo, to realize that I am having an exchange with someone who can't see any distinction between translating something by God giving you its meaning and translating by comparing two similar characters.

From whence did he derive the meaning of the two similar characters? Could a third party who was not a Prophet duplicate the result? Verify the correctness of the translation? If I translate the characters "agricola" from Latin to English as "farmer," I use secular means to do so (God didn't give me the answer). Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Latin can verify my translation. If, on the other hand, I translate the characters %$#&@( as "there once was a man named Zelph, who was in very poor health. Wherever he went, arrows flew, and one of them struck him in the mouth," I could claim that I translated it by comparing it to the characters %$#&@ from another document. But if no one else in the world sees the characters %$#&@ and recognizes them as being about a man named Zelph, have I really engaged in a secular translation? In claiming to have translated those characters that way, have I not committed an act of fraud and deception? How is this any different than what is being proposed for Joseph Smith and the Kinderhook Plates?

[_harmony]

I guess my problem is I don't see how it's possible to translate a fake, period.

[_stemelbow]

I have two (main) questions (with related ones too), if Don would be so kind to answer:

If it is true that Joseph Smith spotted a like-character on the KP as from the GAEL, how long, if this can be ascertained, did he spend working on a translation?

Did it go something like this: Joseph Smith got the KP looked them over cursorily and found them to contain curious markings. He took them, then and searched them over, trying to match them up with any various translations he'd been involved with previously. When he found the match between the KP character and the GAEL character, at this time, he set them aside hoping to get back to them but never did?

Is there any indication that Joseph Smith considered the KP a fraud after it was sumarized by Phelps that he translated a portion of them?

[_Aristotle Smith]

I think this is a major problem too. The apologists are wanting to have it both ways on this.

Pot, meet kettle.

Aristotle, your comments have been a perfect illustration of wanting to have it both ways. You want to enlist the new Kinderhook plates finding in support of your position on the Book of Abraham without even acknowledging their real implications for understanding the Kinderhook plates issue itself.

Don, the only way I am trying to have it both ways here is in trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Since I am now accused of trying to have it both ways, I'll stop doing that.

So, let's leave aside the the GAEL and look at what you have shown. You have shown that Joseph Smith tried to translate the KP. You agree that the plates were fraudulent. You agree the tranlation is nonsense. You have done brilliant history in showing that the KP gives zero evidence that Joseph Smith could translate anything. In short you have done good history, and I congratulate you for that. You have also done zero apologetics, because this in no way helps the case for showing that Joseph Smith was not a fraud.

If you want to continue on with the academic vs. revelatory word games, have at it. Just let me remind you that on a strictly historical basis, your pronouncements to have definitively shown that Joseph Smith did not invoke revelatory means are complete nonsense, as purely historical research can show no such thing. You may be right and I may be wrong, but your historical evidence cannot adjudicate the matter.

As for the arguments that you were making over at MDD, I have read them all and I find them unpersuasive.

by the way, as for me being "one of the apologists," you should know that while I had been working toward these interpretations years ago as a believer, I did not finalize them, nor find the eyewitness account, until I was an atheist outside the church. They are scholarly interpretations which, unlike your use of the data, are not shaped for polemical ends.

Like I said, I will stop referring to your presentation as apologetic, since it wasn't. You are, I am sure, a great historian. Please, continue with the historical research, I only wish we could clone about 20 of you to do research in Mormonism.

[_cinepro]

Did it go something like this: Joseph Smith got the KP looked them over cursorily and found them to contain curious markings. He took them, then and searched them over, trying to match them up with any various translations he'd been involved with previously. When he found the match between the KP character and the GAEL character, at this time, he set them aside hoping to get back to them but never did?

This is related to my primary question:

How did a character from the GAEL end up on the Kinderhook Plates?

Did the forgers of the plates just chicken-scratch a bunch of random characters? If so, Joseph could be the first apologist to fall victim to parallelomania.

It also raises the interesting idea of what might have happened had there been some random characters on the KP that looked like Book of Mormon characters (or "caractors").

[_onandagus]

I guess my problem is I don't see how it's possible to translate a fake, period.

It's possible to think you're translating one if you find matching characters.

Don

[_Fence Sitter]

Did the forgers of the plates just chicken-scratch a bunch of random characters? If so, Joseph could be the first apologist to fall victim to parallelomania.

This made me LOL

[_cinepro]

Like I said, I will stop referring to your presentation as apologetic, since it wasn't. You are, I am sure, a great historian. Please, continue with the historical research, I only wish we could clone about 20 of you to do research in Mormonism.

Sometimes I think apologists take their eyes off the ball.

If an apologist is arguing against someone, and that person doesn't believe Joseph Smith had any supernatural gifts, then it seems odd for a "defender of the faith" to try and win the argument by arguing that Joseph Smith didn't have supernatural gifts. They confuse "agreement" with "winning the argument".

In cases like the Kinderhook Plates where it is supremely evident that Joseph Smith had no supernatural help in analyzing the situation, there really isn't any sort of apologetic argument to be made. The only way this becomes an apologetic issue is if a Prophet would be expected to be able to identify fraudulent artifacts when presented to him.

Apologists can argue that Prophets shouldn't be expected recognize fakes, but since non-Prophets also aren't expected to identify fraudulent artifacts, they are simply clarifying a way in which "Prophets" are no different than everyone else. And since non-believers believe all the Prophets are just like everyone else when it comes to supernatural powers, apologists are just incrementally moving towards the non-believing position.

If apologists don't make corresponding gains in moving non-believers towards their position, they will ultimately succeed in proving that the Prophets are just like everyone else with no special supernatural abilities, and the Church is just like every other religious organization.