Book of Mormon translation and historicity with scholar Brant Gardner
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video I interview scholar Brant Gardner, scholar and Mesoamerican expert and apologist. In this interview we discuss Brant Gardner's thoughts on the Book of Mormon composition, translation, historicity and providing evidence and responding to the critics!
Check out Brant's books here such as 'the book of Mormon as history'
www.amazon.co.uk/Traditions-F...
Here are presentations he has done on fair
• History and Historicit...
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Timecodes
00:00 Opening remarks
05:00 BH Roberts quote on examining the Book of Mormon
08:05 The Book of Mormon as historical
09:55 The translation & coming forth of the book of Mormon
12:40 Tight vs Loose translation
14:50 Horses in the book of Mormon
18:50 Understanding translation
19:20 Witnesses of the translation supporting a tight translation
24:00 Brant's view on the translation process
30:50 Evidence from the text supporting historicity
37:20 Nahom & Bountiful - Old World Geography
41:05 Historical Evidence in the new world
43:07 Other civilisations present in the Americas
48:20 Internal consistent geography- John Sorenson
53:50 Nephites and Lamanites inhabiting the entire continent
1:00:50 Phrases- Literal or Metaphor
1:04:06 Shorter years in the Book of Mormon
1:06:10 Final battle in the Book of Mormon according with history
1:10:30 No Archaeological evidence in the book of Mormon?
1:25:45 Anachronisms in the text
1:27:55 If Loose translation- Why curelums or cumoms
1:30:20 King James Bible passages in the Book of Mormon
1:33:32 Did Joseph consult a Bible during the translation?
1:36:10 The Book of Mormon quoting the new testament
1:41:50 Alexander Campbell- BOM addressing 19th century controversies
1:44:50 Book of Mormon containing the fulness of the gospel
1:50:00 Protestant Christianity & phraseology in the book of Mormon
1:53:00 Joseph Smith's Fathers dream vs Lehi's dream
1:56:50 Prophecies in the Book of Mormon- Nephi, Moroni or Joseph?
2:02:40 Why Deutero Isaiah in the book of Mormon?
2:08:12 The tower of Babel & the Jaredites
2:11:40 Racism in the Book of Mormon & lamanites cursed with dark skin
2:21:20 DNA and the Native Americans
2:27:50 Does the BOM say no other nations before the BOM people?
2:34:30 Thoughts on the naturalistic explanations of the BOM
2:38:30 Final thoughts on the Book of Mormon
Congratulations on 1000 subscribers Murph! Really enjoy your channel!
Thank you 😊 I really appreciate the support!
Thank you for including time codes in your description.
No problem!
Awesome video! Thanks for sharing
Thanks for watching!
I have always found the idea of defending the BOM as an ancient record harder to defend than to refute, but at the same time my testimony does not hinge on it.
I don’t understand your comment, darn it. But it is probably due to my own deficiency!
@@Glen.Danielsen I don’t blame you. I think my testimony is weird. That being said my weirdo wife shares the same testimony with me. For us we feel the church is true regardless of whether or not the BOM is an ancient record and we live as committed members of the LDS Church.
@@cinnamondan4984 Thanks for your honesty, Dan. We are both travelers on same road! 💛😊
@@Glen.Danielsen 🥰 Great to hear it
A minor point: The unicorn mentioned in the KJV is a one horned rhinoceros, not a mythical creature. The two horned rhinoceros used to be called a binocorn.
Except the Hebrew word being translated is not rhinoceros, which exists.
Gardner makes so many assumptions, reads between so many lines, twists so many facts, and undermines so many source quotes to make his beliefs fit that I was actuality somewhat impressed.
Some of the doctrines such as temple doctrines are hinted at in the book of mormon in several places but are less specific. The brother of Jarid had a communication with the lord through the veil. King Benjamin gives his people a new name. A temple is built at the city of bountiful, Zarahemla, the land of nephi and of course there is the temple at Jerusalem. Lehi made sacrifices, and many of the prophets had powerful revelatory expiriances which have some temple like relations. Lehi's dream and nephi's vision is a good example. Nephi also goes to mountians when they are at bountiful because mountians acted as temples. A cool resource is reconstructing the lost 116 pages by don Bradleyand the connections that may have been in the lost 116 pages text which contained temple related. elements
Gardner has made an excellent case for reading the text in a critical, scholarly, and faithful manner.
He has
His speculation is not scholarship. He is doing the same thing that Kerry Muhlestein does, starts with a conclusion and finding evidence to support it.
Here, finally, for what you've put forward as one of your favorite interviews. Let's see what Brant has got.
So, first note, as I've commented on some of your other videos, any statements made that compare the Book of Mormon we have to the source text is purely speculative. These claims are without evidentiary support unless and until a source text can be produced.
I do agree with Brant that despite what the witnesses say, the truth is more complicated. It is important to take eyewitness testimony with an appropriate grain of salt.
Agreeing again with Brant that the words come from Joseph's "mental vision". I just find his "cultural translation" explanation to be indistinguishable from fraud or fiction.
So, the Jaredite descent story is quite interesting. However, there are enough slight differences in the details that suggest Joseph may have relied on notes or mnemonics or a contrivance to his scribe (all speculative, I'll agree). The errors, slight as they are, do not appear consistent with Moroni or Ether authorship theories. But they would be consistent with the options listed above. The only thing standing in the way of my speculative points is Emma's otherwise problematic testimony. Willing to put the Jaredite descent in the camp of "I don't know how he did it", but I don't think it overcomes the epistemic burden imposed by the nature of the claim and other challenges to lead to accepting a "miraculous" origin to the text.
The story of Jerusalem in and around 597 BCE is recorded in the Bible. The story of fleeing prophets is in the Bible. The story of prophets executed for their teachings is in the Bible. And the L shaped route is in the map and a basic understanding that being closer to shorelines tends to be more favorable to flora and fauna growth.
Jerusalem is slightly more humid than the coastal areas near the Red Sea. But the difference is very slight, and the rate of travel is not all that rapid between the changing climes.
Claims made about the location of Nahom and Bountiful are speculative and without much textual evidence. We are given directions, but nothing close to a rate of travel. There are also no known, fixed reference points other than Jerusalem and the very long Red Sea coast. NHM is a potential site for Nahom, sure, but the text does not compel that site. The other challenges with the site for being the Nahom site, as well as the other anachronistic material in the Book of Nephi lower probability that Nahom is NHM given available extant data. Notably, the naming of the site does not follow the wider Book of Mormon convention of linking place names with a certain meaning.
Is it metaphorical when the Book of Mormon author claims that they covered the "whole face of the land" or "from the north to the south"? How does Brant know that this is just an idiom? What knowledge does he have about reformed Egyptian or Nephite culture/writings that would indicate that this is just idiomatic, non-literal language? Or is this just assertion so that his model of geography doesn't fall apart?
As for the shorter years claim, in Joseph's time, Zedekiah's reign was believed to have started in 600 BCE. This makes the Book of Mormon's timeline consistent with Joseph's (erroneous) understanding of the timeline. The shorter years apologetic is necessary to justify the disparity that just shouldn't be there. The funny thing is that I don't find the criticism against the Book of Mormon based on timeline particularly compelling because there is enough opportunity to say that there is error in our understanding of when Jesus would have been born and there are some gaps in the recording of specific years in the small plates that we really just need to go from the first year of Zedekiah to about 121 years before Jesus was born, good enough, onto the large plates.
What the shorter years apologetic does is cause me to think that maybe there actually is a "there" there with the timeline disparity. Just seems an unforced error that, lacking a known second century BCE Nephite calendar, for example, just isn't necessary. But I'm also not latched onto the Teotihuacan narrative.
If we have no way of determining what a Nephite artifact would look like, that moves the claims about Nephites into claim that are asserted without evidence. Hitchens' Razor would seem to apply here.
No Hebrew or reformed Egyptian to allow us to identify Nephite sites or artifacts.
Things really aren't getting better for the Book of Mormon's historical case. That some purported anachronisms were just bad claims is not equal to making the case for the Book of Mormon better. Brant leaps back to translation speculation (again, impossible to verify without the source text, but God could clear it up pretty quickly by making the source text available to us).
Nobody says the KJV wasn't there. The polemics on Joseph not having a manuscript are against the claims to the Spaulding theory, not a reference to a religious exercise having scripture in the room.
Wow, fallacious much on that dodge to the question about the theological answers in the Book of Mormon being those relevant to Joseph's day? The issue isn't that there is an anachronism, per se, the issue is that the theological questions answered don't extend beyond those relevant to the the 1830 context of the Book of Mormon's production. Where is the discourse on feminism? On LGBTQ issues? On racial segregation in church administration? On divine hiddenness? That I can find clear discussions on theodicy, infant baptism, origins of the indigenous Americans, and Masonry, but nothing on those topics topics which have come up since... Sure, maybe we can defend the Book of Mormon and say that some of those topics would not have reached the awareness of Nephite writers. But I can all but guarantee that 4th century indigenous Americans knew about women and knew about same-sex sexuality. And they sure seemed to have an understanding of prejudice based on outward appearance, a progenitor to racism.
I don't disagree with Brant about how we should evaluate Lucy's recollection of Joseph Sr's vision of the tree of life. I would, in fact, encourage the same sort or evaluation on claims that are more favorable to the faithful narrative, such as Joseph's purported disposition toward reading or his familiarity with the Bible.
"If you already know what the prophecy is telling you, then you rewrite the prophecy to fit what you know." I've... I've got nothing... That reasoning should not be acceptable to any rationally minded person. As for the Isaiah 7 stuff, boy howdy does Brant gloss over some REALLY important details. Those details are not friendly to the faithful position. I recommend Bart Ehrman's scholarship on the subject. Dan McClellan also has some great breakdowns on the subject.
Deutero-Isaiah is a double problem for the Book of Mormon. If a tight translation, insert all the anachronism issues. If a loose translation, then God has the ability to reveal scripture without the source text being necessary for the work, meaning Nephi murdered Laban with unjustifiable divine justification. Take your pick on whose responsibility that murder is. The scholarship that opposes the Deutero-Isaiah theory is fringe scholarship at best. Finding solace in the controversy is ill-advised.
The Tower of Babel story, as Brant describes it, is also anachronistic. It likely would not have appeared on a pre-Exilic codex of the Tanakh. The confusion of the languages is a critical feature of both the Jaredite account and the Tower of Babel account. The two accounts are obviously linked and the lack of historicity of Babel is a problem for the historicity claim of Ether.
Racism of early LDS folks toward the indigenous Americans is endemic from the start. The Book of Mormon is both an extenstion and a theological justification for that racism. I'll grant that the racism does take different forms over time, but the revelation to minister among the Lamanites is rife with racist ideas, and that's among the more compassionate forms of early LDS racism. The apologetics that Brant employs are consistent with the racist justifications for "white man's burden" and other forms of "compassionate" racism common to 19th century New England. We aren't reading back that context onto the text if Joseph Smith was the author, by the by. That's just the context of the text in that scenario, and that model has a great deal of explanatory power and a high prior probability.
Brant is correct that DNA evidence of people migrations is different than individual identification. Within that paradigm, none of the DNA evidence supports either of the Book of Mormon migrations.
I agree with Brant's implied point that reading the 1830 or RLDS (COC) versions of the Book of Mormon is better.
My comment was too long for TH-cam and had to be split😂
(Continued)
Unfortunately, the more I've learned about the Book of Mormon, the less compelling I've found the evidence for it. While Brant suggests that the more we learn, the better the evidence gets, what I see from him is a shrinking text that is continuously corralled in by overwhelming data that suggest it is historical and, at best, to be understood as purely a 19th century construction from the mind of pious man seeking to answer the great theological questions of his day and place.
But I'm willing to move the needle on my position if evidence appears that is contrary to it. Examples would be if the purported source text was made available, if the writings of Zenos or Zenock were discovered and matched Book of Mormon descriptions, or if 6th century BCE to fifth century CE New World Hebrew or reformed Egyptian writings were discovered that corroborated Book of Mormon claims (such as kings, judgeships, coinage, religious practices, or others). Until then, what we have is speculation that, to use a paraphrase of Brant's own words, if you already know what the evidence is telling you, you rewrite the evidence to fit what you already know.
I know this comment is long. Just notes along the way through the entire interview. I think this was a good interview overall. Brant does seem very sharp and well-studied on most of the relevant material, and I appreciate his honesty in pointing out places where he is less informed. His approach to the Book of Mormon's historicity is quite conservative, which gives it a fair amount of resilience to criticism, but I think it lacks the "offensive" strength that Dan Peterson lauded as being necessary to Book of Mormon apologetics in his interview. You might be able to use Brant's information to defend Ammonihah or Noah, but it won't allow you to take Manti, metaphorically speaking.
Principal ancestors is in the Introduction to BOM, not title page. Title page was actually translated from the plates.
Great discussion and great guest.
Thank you, yes you are right
Not enough people look up what "skin of blackness/darkness" would have meant in Joseph Smith's day. Black meaning "Negro" is the 6th definition in the Webster's 1828. "Blackness" as an adjective only has two, the color and wickedness.
What is your point?
@@jamescrane6583 I was agreeing with the point made in the video that often people read modern idiomatic racist language into the text, instead of what the text meant to the translator (early 19th frontier English) or the writer (6th century Hebrew).
Prior to the Civil War, at least according to the OED, "black" and "blackness", when used as labels, were ten times more often used to mean a dirty, disreputable, or wicked Caucasian than an African-American, and were not used to mean Native American.
While there is clear evidence that later LDS assigned racist understandings to these passages, there is no evidence that Joseph Smith did. The evidence, so far as it exists, supports the idea that Joseph believed the only difference between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans was that of opportunity, not inherent nature.
We assume that Joseph shared in the modern racial context of that language, with little actual support for that supposition.
@@brettmajeske3525 if this wasn't a secular translation what does it matter how words were used?
The racism of the book of Mormon is more than just the usage of the word dark.
Where would I find a large professional group of outside non-mormon Scholars and scientists who agree about the historicity of the Book of Mormon? 35:58
Great point he makes about Joseph being a product of horse culture, yet horses not being more prominent in the Book of Mormon if he fabricated it! I find that similar to the idea that the magic worldview Joseph is accused of plays virtually no role in the very Christian oriented Book of Mormon text.
There's a couple of verses in Helamam people point to talking about slippery treasures and curse upon the land, seeming like this resembles 19th century folklore and treasure digging. But you're right, it's not a big part of it.
I've looked at those, and Book of Mormon Central has a good analysis of those verses. Rather than being tied to treasure digging, they seem to be more consistent with ancient ideas that the land could be blessed or cursed based on righteousness, not just metaphorically but the earth literally swallowing the wicked and their goods, as found in such places as Numbers 16, the Quran, and the ancient Egyptian "Instructions of Amenemope."
What I meant though is BoM themes are driven completely by Christian ideas rather than the magical or occultic.
Mosiah uses seer stones. Nephi has a special compass that has writing on it some times.
Regarding horses, you think it is more likely that the nephites didn't take full advantage of horses rather than assuming that Joseph Smith just told stories poorly?
Is there a place where I can find evidence of King Benjamins existence and location anywhere outside of Mormonism?
The same problem exists for Christians, there's no evidence of Abraham or Moses. That doesn't mean they didn't exist, just means no archaeological or linguistic evidence outside the text supports. If we did find something that said Benjamin though how could we confirm it's the right Benjamin. The name Ishmael has been found at Nahom the burial site. Ishmael according to bom was buried there, but how do we determine if its the correct Ishmael?
@@mormonismwiththemurph NHM is easily the weakest apologetics ever. I honestly feel bad for any Mormon apologist who is trying to pound the square peg into a round hole. The evidence simply is not on your side.
Guitars can split that are solid wood in different climates. Interesting…
It is about as complex as saying yay and verily it came to pass over a thousand times
Funny I don't remember seeing a single "yay" or "verily it came to pass".
I tend to think the whole loose vs tight gets conflated with literal vs conceptual vs functional. Even if Joseph was just reading words with no conscious input, that does not mean it was transliteral. There was some intelligence involved, and how one would be able to tell the difference between Joseph and some angel limiting the translation to the knowledge and vocabulary of Joseph's time, I do not know.
No ancient text is ever purely a transliteral translation, none of the popular versions of the Bible, not Plato, not Homer.
That's a good point, it's important to know translation is never word for word and is a combination of tight vs loose, functional, literal and conceptual
Joseph Smith didn't know how to translate other languages in 1829.
@@jamescrane6583 No one has ever claimed that he could. The LDS Church has never claimed Joseph performed any secular translations. All were accomplished by "the Gift and Power of God".
Indeed, it is clear that Joseph used the word "translation" differently than is common today. He lived in a culture that had a deeper religious connotation than today. To him, and many early Church members, it meant the transmit ion of scripture, not only from one language to another, but also from place to place and time to time and even from Heaven to Earth. All were aspects of "translation". As a historically note, the original usage of "translation" in English was about the transference of Holy Relics from one church to another, and then was extended to the travel of a Bishop, and finally interpreting the sermons of a Bishop from Latin into the vernacular. It was from the last notation that the more linguistic definition was derived.
Joseph Smith used the word "interpretation" for the strictly linguistic usages more common today.
@@brettmajeske3525 the gift and power of God got the book of Abraham wrong. Why should I assume it got the book of Mormon any better?
And the church has claimed that Joseph Smith translated the the book of Mormon. There are many church approved images of Joseph Smith studying the plates. Why would they take characters to Charles Anton if it wasn't a secular translation?
@@jamescrane6583 There is no evidence that Joseph got the Book of Abraham wrong. There are no attempted interpretations on any of the hieroglyphics found on any of the fragments. Since there was no attempt to translate the fragments, they are not evidence of anything. The characters were taken to Anton before any translation was attempted. The Church has always claimed the Book of Mormon was translated by the Gift and Power of God, and that is the only standard to which it need defend.
I hope he talks about how it was "translated" through a magic rock in a hat and how the historicity is non-existent.
We talk of the translation and he shares his evidence for the historicity and responds to issues calling its historicity into question.
Why do the words, "Grasping at straws," keep popping up in my mind?
The "Grasping at straws" pertains to the mind of the anti-Mormon cult.
Fair and Objective? Would you be open to having a scholar share objective information that presents a view that differs from yours? Do you really want to find truth?
Had me on board, until you said Guatemala. #heartlandforthewin.
That's fighting talk
@mormonismwiththemurph You know what's fascinating, with the Meso and Heartland theories, there are many reasons to lean both ways. It'll be interesting when we can be taught the histories of it all.
You wish! 😄
No, it has never been proven historically, or by an archeologist. Not one artifact has been found!!
We get into that and he shares his perspectives and evidence!
Go watch Wayne May, Rod Meldrom, Michael P. and others here on youtube if want evidence. They don't just say they found it they show you what they found.
Nhm
Lehi’s trail Lynn Hilton
@@mormonismwiththemurph the book of Mormon is not a translation. It is not an ancient record. There is no reason to look for archeological evidence for it. Anything found has nothing to do with the stories Joseph Smith invented
@@icecreamladydriver1606 The Book of Mormon has been thoroughly examined, read by the Smithsonian Institute and many other historians or archeologists, and they cannot find any validity of historical value. It has not been validated by very credible scholars of history.
What a joke. The writing is the BOM. If it’s not the BOM, it’s not anything.