jfro18 wrote:I get why people are doing all of these language studies to try and prove the Book of Mormon, but at the end of the day does it really matter?
The tight and loose translation problems exist no matter which side you're on - you need both a tight and loose translation for the Book of Mormon to work, but we know you can't have both.
If Joseph could only receive words on the stone in a hat, then there should be no word-for-word copying from the King James Bible, no deutero-Isaiah verses, and no contradictions from his 'inspired' JST Bible.
If you believe Joseph was simply inspired through revelation and not translation, then him using language before his time doens't make sense because he wouldn't know it to use it.
No matter how they go here, they're just avoiding one roadblock only to hit another one moments later.
And that's why apologists will never take both tight and loose translation issues on together - it's always divide and conquer because they know that they have to alternate between translation methods and if they look at things in a "big picture" mode it will never add up.
Excellent points.
I have never been able to envision how a loose translation would work for a person who doesn’t know the source language at all. If it were a vision that he saw and had to describe in his own words, what about all the dialogue and preaching in the book?
"The DNA of fictional populations appears to be the most susceptible to extinction." - Simon Southerton
jfro18 wrote:I get why people are doing all of these language studies to try and prove the Book of Mormon, but at the end of the day does it really matter?
The tight and loose translation problems exist no matter which side you're on - you need both a tight and loose translation for the Book of Mormon to work, but we know you can't have both.
If Joseph could only receive words on the stone in a hat, then there should be no word-for-word copying from the King James Bible, no deutero-Isaiah verses, and no contradictions from his 'inspired' JST Bible.
If you believe Joseph was simply inspired through revelation and not translation, then him using language before his time doens't make sense because he wouldn't know it to use it.
No matter how they go here, they're just avoiding one roadblock only to hit another one moments later.
And that's why apologists will never take both tight and loose translation issues on together - it's always divide and conquer because they know that they have to alternate between translation methods and if they look at things in a "big picture" mode it will never add up.
Excellent points.
I have never been able to envision how a loose translation would work for a person who doesn’t know the source language at all. If it were a vision that he saw and had to describe in his own words, what about all the dialogue and preaching in the book?
I agree, good points. The Book of Mormon credibility to be what it claims to be falls apart under scrutiny from either a tight or a loose translation perspective. The Church has recently nailed itself to the tight translation through its publication of Saints. And the other issue with 'tight' is explaining away all the post publication corrections the Church has made, above and beyond the few simple print mistakes.
The fact that apologists are searching around for some people in the 16th Century on whom to pin the translation should tell all but the intellectually dishonest, that the ship is sunk. It's over. The only thing lifeboat left carries the name "Inspired Fiction", but to board that vessel is to admit there was no ship in the first place.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')