My focus this winter has been on the #2 ranked Springville basketball team and will be through February. Go Red Devils! My posting frequency has gone down, but I continue to be excited about sharing the churchistrue LDS paradigm and will try to keep my blog posts going and stay up on the current issues that relate. Terryl Givens latest book and some of the content available related to that has been on my mind lately. This post will contain some analysis and quotes from Terryl’s presentation at Benchmark books–you can watch/listen here.
D&C 29 and Book of Moses Chapters 3-6
Brother Givens did some analysis, lining up time period of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible project with D&C revelations. D&C 29 was revealed about the same time Joseph produced Moses Chapters 3-6. Then looking at the text, you see correlations.
“If you want to go take a look at the section 29, you will see it as, it is an unwieldy revelation… It’s a bizarre revelation because it just jumps from subject to subject to subject with no reference to a common theme or chronology. And we get phrases like this in Section 29:
- The Lord created all things, both spiritual and temporal, first spiritual, secondly, temporal.
- He rebelled against me saying, give me thine honor.
- They should not die until I should send forth angels to declare unto Adam and Eve repentance and redemption.
- Children are redeemed from the foundation of the world.
- The devil should tempt the children of men or they cannot be agents unto themselves.
Well, guess what happens over the weeks immediately succeeding that revelation? Joseph produces Moses chapters three through six. Every one of those phrases appears in the Moses narrative, but now those phrases appear in the context of this chronologically coherent, smooth narrative. It’s beautiful, it’s amazing. And so what that looks like to me…Joseph is in some kind of a regulatory trance or mode. He’s just getting these images that he dictates as they appear without any context or linking. And then they kind of percolate in his mind over succeeding weeks. And then we get this whole seamless, beautiful narrative theology that we call the Book of Moses in chapters three to six. And the phrasing, as I said, is identical. It’s identical phrasing. So that’s one of those few moments when I think we really can say something substantive about how his prophetic mode of revealing doctrines operated.”
This is a great description of Joseph’s translation process. I think this is applicable to all his scripture translations and revelations, including the Book of Mormon. When we see those phrases in the Book of Moses, we don’t need to believe that those phrases originated with Moses in an ancient text that Joseph translated. It seems more accurate to view Joseph as connecting with the divine in a way that images and phrases and doctrines are rushing into his mind in ways he almost doesn’t understand, and then he works those into the translated text output as he imagines the original text in an ancient setting.
On the Book of Abraham controversy
Givens quote on Book of Abraham translation:
What excites me is the ambition of Joseph Smith’s project as a translator. Do we have the source from which he actually produced the Book of Abraham? That’s probably the hottest, most controversial topic at the center of book of Abraham studies and controversies. …(explaining that the text of the Book of Abraham refers to the facsimile which we have, which is next to text on the papyrii that we have which we know is not the Book of Abraham). It’s my impression from my review of the literature and what’s been published on the subject that most scholars who are seriously inquiring into the subject think that we do. …Those who think we do not have the original, that would be people like John Gee and Hugh Nibley, they would argue that, well he could’ve just been experimenting by juxtaposing the narrative with those symbols to see if there is a match, to see if we can make those somehow correlate. John Gee is convinced that we don’t have the original manuscript because so many contemporaries apparently referred to a long scroll from which Joseph worked and we don’t have the long scroll, but those are generally much later recollections and subject to all kinds of problems…My personal sense is that yeah, we probably do have the source document.
Terryl goes on to explain that he thinks this controversy was resolved over 100 years ago. In 1912, the Church submitted the facsimiles to Egyptology scholars and were told that Joseph’s explanations were not accurate. How did the Church respond? By publishing the results of twelve Latter-day Saint and non-LDS scholars.
Now they all say the same thing. Guess what they all say…they all say, “Yep, guess he failed. Guess he doesn’t know how to translate Egyptian after all. Total failure.” But at least this shows we’re not afraid to learn from what the scholars can tell us because we want to know. And now we know: Joseph didn’t know how to translate Egyptian, but what he received was revelation.
Interesting that Terryl is coming down very strongly in the “catalyst” camp on this.
Collapsing Sacred Distance
Terryl Givens quote:
There is a danger that Latter-day Saint theology poses to a kind of glib familiarity with sacred thing. I myself may be part of the problem because for so long I have said that the essence of the Mormon problem in the American mind, was the collapse of sacred distance. It wasn’t what Mormons believed. It was how specifically they believed the things they believed. Brigham Young said Joseph’s greatness was that he took the things of heaven and brought them down to earth and he took things of earth and he brought it up to heaven. So we celebrate a lot of this, but if it gets to the point where we’re talking about about the most magnificent being in the history of the universe, the Creator of all things, the Redeemer and Savior of the world is my big brother, somewhere we’ve taken a wrong turn.
That’s a power packed paragraph right there. I think it capsulizes one of the great conundrums of Mormonism. Greg Prince said in a nutshell, Joseph’s brilliance could be described as: “he saw the face of God and created a set of symbols that enabled his followers to do the same.” Joseph disliked creeds because they put a limit to how close man could come to God. Joseph said:
I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations, because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to, though all of them have some truth. I want to come up into the presence of God, and learn all things; but the creeds set up stakes [limits], and say, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further’ [Job 38:11]; which I cannot subscribe to.
I love this aspect of Mormonism. I love the idea that we can know God, he/she can be with us, and we can have a personal relationship. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are tangible, material being that can be a positive force in our lives. The specificity and the certainty with which we view doctrine about God, salvation, the hereafter, etc, is necessary to some degree in order to have that spiritual connection in some ways. This is how humans work. A movie with poor character development–we’re not going to connect with the hero emotionally. Show the hero’s backstory in great detail, and we’re better able to connect. But in other ways, this specificity and certainty causes sub-optimal outcomes. Peter Enns calls this the sin of certainty. Certainty can stop us from necessary positive change and evolution. Certainty can stop us from a deep seeking for God. Richard Rohr talks about the “mystery” in a way that it’s necessary for spiritual depth.
Sorry for the crudeness in this example, but sex always seems to come up here. It’s a great LDS doctrine that God was once like humans and humans can become like God. That’s comforting and interesting and inspiring, but only if we don’t try to put too much infrastructure to that belief. When we do, we create problems. We say if God is like humans, God must use sexual relations to create life. Then we get weird, creepy doctrine like Heavenly Father had sexual relations with Mary the mother of Jesus. Or even more weird and creepy, that God the Father has many polygamous eternal wives and Mary is one of them. Offensive and sexist but unfortunately a certain percentage of active LDS believe this.
The more we set up this certain and specific infrastructure around the nature of God, the more likely we are to hurt others with our own wrong beliefs. This happened when we took speculative statements about race too seriously. I believe it’s happening now with hurting our LGBTQ brothers and sisters by taking non-canonical beliefs about sexuality in the eternities too literally and seriously. I hear straight LDS telling gay LDS they will be straight in heaven and gay LDS arguing back, no they will be gay in heaven. Can we just say we don’t know with certainty?? Can we say everything we understand about eternity is “translated” (Joseph’s word) from a God to a human in ways that probably don’t define it perfectly and absolutely?
Let’s think about how we gain the benefits of Joseph’s style of removing ambiguity about God in order to remove the barriers of connecting and having a relationship with God. But also avoid the negatives that come with that and also gain some of the benefits of a Richard Rohr style religion embracing mystery and mysticism.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m right. Maybe neither are right. Maybe we’re both right in a way that we can’t understand as humans. We probably don’t know yet. Let’s love each other and not use doctrine to hurt each other.
Wheat & Tares 
Givens says. “So we celebrate a lot of this, but if it gets to the point where we’re talking about about the most magnificent being in the history of the universe, the Creator of all things, the Redeemer and Savior of the world is my big brother, somewhere we’ve taken a wrong turn.”
I’m confused by this. Is he saying that Joseph collapsed the “sacred distance”, but we may have taken it to far? That it is inappropriate to refer to Jesus as our big brother?
Hmmmmm….I kinda/sort really like the way you narrated this subject. While it’s the “Mormon Infrastructure” which many times drives me to distraction…..the theology (the ideas) as expressed in some of Joseph’s writings really are beautiful and remarkable. While it’s now easy for me to dismiss the “infrastructure”….I’m not quite willing to abandon all of the theology and thinking. My compliments.
It’s interesting to watch us as we deal with issues with Joseph’s writings and compare that to what I’m seeing at http://www.thetorah.com where archaeological and linguistic evidence has really thrown a wrench in the traditional narrative of Moses writing the first five books.
The base of the arguments are the same as ours where the traditional narrative doesn’t stack up with modern findings, what do we do, what do we believe, and what do we tell the kids?
It’s interesting to read their professors essentially saying, this is our culture and our tradition. We should take the good from it, acknowledge the bad, and teach the materials where we touch on problems. You don’t have to delve into them but know that there’s issues.
I feel like this is a healthy approach since so much of our Mormon sub-culture is integrated with our religion. Do we walk away from it all or focus on the good (our devotion to God, service, family, community) and move away from the bad (I’ll let you make your own list).
https://www.thetorah.com/article/teaching-biblical-scholarship-in-a-modern-orthodox-high-school
Andy, yes I’ve said for a long time we can learn from Progressive Jews, Christians, and Catholics (even the CoC) who have been addressing these issues longer than we have. We can learn a lot from other religions how to evolve in these ways.
I have a recommendation: what if Church leaders only speak publicly on what has been specifically revealed? What if they cease talking about topics that could easily be construed as the philosophies of men mingled with scripture? That would have kept us out of trouble on race and LGBQ.
One of the most honest statements President Oaks has ever made was when he said that we don’t know why some souls have LGBQ tendencies. My reply: If we don’t know, let’s not give talks about it.
Love your comments, Josh. My compliments.
I really like the post and the things Givens said. I’m not entirely sure I buy into the idea that thinking of Jesus as “big brother” is necessarily a “wrong turn”. It’s true that we do ourselves a disservice if we think that way and it reduces God, but I don’t think that’s true if we think that way and it elevates our perspectives of ourselves. I don’t think Joseph Smith brought heaven down to earth so much as he lifted our view to heaven. One of the reasons I find the gospel so hopeful is its promise of unlimited glory and joy that is actually obtainable. By thinking of Jesus as my brother, it doesn’t need diminish or limit Him in my mind, but rather expand my expectations of and for myself.
I don’t have the tendency to get hung up on GA statements or conference talks that invoke the cynicism I read at W&T, partially because I approach their doctrine in the same way. For example, when Pres. Nelson talks about conditional love, I feel I get what he’s saying. Others reject it outright because to them, God’s love is and must be unconditional. I agree with both points of view, depending on what is meant by “love”. Depending on how you define it, either statement can lift us toward God, similar to the way one’s thinking when using the word “brother” to describe Jesus can be helpful or hurtful. Oversimplification is as easy for the cynics and critics as it is for the believers.
Thanks for this post. Most interesting and helpful. It prompts me to purchase Givens’ book.
“Terryl goes on to explain that he thinks this controversy was resolved over 100 years ago. In 1912, the Church submitted the facsimiles to Egyptology scholars and were told that Joseph’s explanations were not accurate. How did the Church respond? By publishing the results of twelve Latter-day Saint and non-LDS scholars.”
This is not quite the story told in Wikipedia (for whatever that’s worth). Instead, it was “in 1912, [that the] Episcopal Bishop Franklin S. Spalding sent copies of the three facsimiles to eight Egyptologists and semitists…” And the church followed with vigorous defenses of the Book of Abraham as a translation. If that account is correct, it does not “show we’re not afraid to learn from what the scholars can tell us because we want to know.” What does it show instead?
Wondering. I did a summary of Givens’ portion of that presentation which was already a summary from what he wrote in his book, I presume. I would not be surprised at all, if something was lost in those summaries. If you want to see what he said, it’s about at the 25:00 mark of that linked youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9w2rrT_CB8
Thanks. I listened. According to Givens, it was not the Church that submitted the facsimiles to scholars. Instead, it was a number of non-members and one member. He does say the the ca. dozen member scholars responding agreed that JS was a “total failure” at interpreting the facsimiles. I have not looked at any of those early responses. But if, indeed, that was the import of a Church publication of the criticisms and responses, the Church certainly (as measured by what it was teaching about the facsimiles in the mid-20th century and thereafter, learned exactly nothing from the experience.
“When we see those phrases in the Book of Moses, we don’t need to believe that those phrases originated with Moses in an ancient text that Joseph translated. It seems more accurate to view Joseph as connecting with the divine in a way that images and phrases and doctrines are rushing into his mind in ways he almost doesn’t understand, and then he works those into the translated text output as he imagines the original text in an ancient setting.”
OK I have a question: Why would the God of the Universe choose to communicate His most important message in such an oblique, convoluted manner – a “translation” of an ancient text that is in no sense a translation, by a treasure hunter from the sticks? Does this make sense? – or does its utter ridiculousness actually enhance its rustic appeal independent of any consideration of verisimilitude?
P. Great question. This reasoning is essentially what moved me from believer to disbeliever in the “dominant narrative” and forced me to rethink my paradigm. The apologetic answers are adequate in the sense that they can explain every difficult issue somewhat logically. But then you’re left with a bigger question “why would God do it this way??” So the way I make sense of that is that God is not necessarily driving this. Humans are driving it, tapping into divinity and God’s power some how in different ways at different times.
“ God is not necessarily driving this”
I’ve come to think along those same lines.
It makes more sense to me that God is more “hands-off” here on earth, letting us stumble, err, learn from mistakes, while making our way through life. It’s hard to reconcile the tremendous suffering we see around the world (especially children) with a “hands on God” that is “fixing” things for us when we ask—- or a God that plans and executes challenges for us so that we might “grow.”
On the one hand, we should give Joseph and his associates some credit: These were actual ancient scrolls; there were authentic Egyptian characters on these scrolls; and the KEP shows that Joseph and his associates made actual efforts to connect characters with a translation.
On the other hand, the fact that the English text is not in any sense a translation of the authentic Egyptian characters on the scrolls is just one of those ugly truths that slays a beautiful religious theory. Lay members blissfully ignore that ugly truth; scholars issue convoluted apologetic explanations to try and get around it; and leadership mixes the two (ignore the issue when you can, repeat apologetic arguments when you can’t). I can’t imagine anyone stating this ugly truth in say a Gospel Doctrine class, as teacher or adult student, and not getting a lot of pushback from members and local leaders — despite the fact that the Church now acknowledges the English text is not a translation of the Egyptian characters! Fantasy seems to trump reality on this issue.
Dave B. My wife taught catalyst theory in Gospel Doctrine class from the church’s essay. Went over just fine. It may not be received well in every ward and you have to do it a little delicately, but I think most people could pull it off.
churchistrue, do apologetic answers explain issues somewhat logically? I mean, absent some enduring belief in the church and the prophetic power of Joseph Smith, does church doctrine make any sense? Consider that there was an accepted and faith-affirming explanation for the processes that produced the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Pearl of Great Price, the Joseph Smith bible translation, etc. A closer look at historical data supports almost none of those explanations. Professional explainers like Teryl Givens come up with alternative explanations, but they are still dramatic departures from what were previously the dominant narratives. The common thread in explaining Mormon history and doctrine is a belief that it is divinely inspired, even without a consistent historical explanation for how it came about. How is that logical?
One of the insights from reading Rough Stone Rolling was Bushman’s divisions of Joseph’s writings into Translations and Revelations. Joseph certainly made a distinction between them. The D&C is full of mostly revelations. The BoM and the Book of Abraham are (purported) translations. The method and procedure Joseph followed differed for receiving or producing the two types of texts.
The problem with catalyst theory is that by cutting the link between a source and its translation, it erases Bushman’s (and Joseph’s) distinction and makes everything just revelation. With catalyst theory, really any catalyst will do — one could read a good novel, mull over a deep poem, or just have a vivid dream … and boom, out pops a revelatory text. Catalyst theory works only for those who already believe the text and can’t let go. A translation, if it authentic and accurate, works for everyone. So a translation claim is inherently more credible, if only because it is at least falsifiable.
Dave. Theologically, is it that different? With translation, you’re just pushing the revelation back to a previous source. Anyway, regardless of how important the distinction is or how Joseph defined that distinction or how Bushman reported it previously (he seems to be backing off that distinction in recent interviews), it seems the data is forcing us to accept nearly everything Joseph did as revelation not translation.
Not sure unreality is sustainable anymore. Bro Givens should know that replacing one unreality w/ another does not constitute progress. Does he? Sometimes unreality is also incredibly toxic as Catholics are still discovering way too late. What % of LDS must be literal believers for the church to survive? What is the ethical duty of LDS leadership to disabuse members of patently false but widely believed history? Does leadership understand that there is a window of opportunity to correct the record, after which the narrative moves entirely out of their hands?
Catalyst theory is absolutely a possibility because that’s how we have our JST and Book of Moses. Joseph is sitting with Sidney and his Bible and sometimes stuff’s coming to him , other times he’s just making changes to clarify, and other times he’s using Adam Clark’s bible.
Revelation vs translation is a problem of honesty. If Joseph Smith said he could translate ancient Egyptian text and other ancient texts, and we have proof that he couldn’t, then that means he lied. Or he was misled by God, delusional? I don’t know. We know he already lied about things like not practicing polygamy.
If he would have said, here’s an ancient text I prayed over and God inspired me with visions of his conversations with past patriarchs that I wrote down, that would be something else. But Joseph seemed to want to say he translated the record to increase credibility and tie his revelations to a tangible ancient source.
If we do believe that God is all powerful and communicates with His prophets, then why couldn’t Joseph have provided a correct translation if he is a prophet? Even if the text doesn’t contain any doctrine, just alone being able to translate it accurately would have been miraculous for him.
I’m not trying to claim Joseph wasn’t necessarily a prophet, but these things all add up and damage the church’s credibility and relationship with its members. It’s hard to come to terms with some of these things and parse out the truth.
churchistrue, I think there are four alternatives. (1) Normal translation, by one who knows both the source and the target language. (2) Translation by seer stone or U&T, where the resulting text does, in fact, translate the source text even know the practitioner doesn’t know the source language. (3) Translation by seer stone or U&T where the resulting text turns out NOT to in fact match up with the source text, although it was originally held out as doing so. And (4) the Catalyst Theory, where not only does the resulting text not match up with the source text, the defenders of the theory don’t even claim it was ever supposed to do so. So it’s not a translation at all.
The Church originally claimed (2) and largely still does, only hinting at (4) around the edges. Now it seems that, objectively, at least for the BoA, we are objectively at (3). The Catalyst Theory tries to argue (4), except that does not accord with what Joseph thought he was doing and it does not accord with the continued insistence by the Church in official statements that what Joseph was doing was translation. I understand the appeal of the Catalyst Theory (it walks back any need to defend Joseph’s work as actual translation). I just don’t find it terribly persuasive as an explanation for what was actually going on.
Joseph wouldn’t be the first person to not understand what he was doing!
How about a 5th alternative — catalyst producing by revelation a real translation of an original text not present , never found, and not the same source text the receiver of the catalytic revelation thinks he’s translating? I wonder how many more steps we can hypothesize that are all beyond any examination. 🙂
FWIW I reject out-of-hand every last bit of (the forgoing) hocus-pocus nonsense, yet still consider the Church a marvelous work & a wonder, whatever its origin (likely a young early 19th Century genius named Jos Smith, Jr.). I am a better human being for having gotten mixed up w/ this crazy bunch and don’t regret a second. I hope, if not pray, that the Brethren will make the 21st Century adjustments necessary for institutional survival – just for MoTab and the genealogy program!
hey, p, I understand the organization formerly known as MoTab is now the TabCats. But we haven’t yet had a general conference talk on the importance of that name. (I understand it was invented by members of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, and doesn’t appear in the D&C so I guess failure to use it is probably not a victory for Satan.) 🙂
But “TabCats” IS a victory for Satan
Just don’t understand getting bent out of shape about the “translation” of the Book of Abraham, but not about a Joseph Smith “translation” of the Book of Moses.
Seems to me his Joseph Smith Translation had as much to do with the King James English in Genesis as the papyrus did with the BoA.