A lot of people think Joseph used King James English in the Book of Mormon. However, David Hall, Chairman of Hall Labs says that Joseph used William Tyndale’s 1530 English. He tells us why we need to look at Tyndale’s definitions in order to better understand Joseph’s revelations.
GT: We talked about you know, Joseph Smith used King James English.
David: No. He used Tyndale English.
GT: Yeah. So why? Because King James [Bible was written in 1611.] Yeah. So why 1530 English is William Tyndale?
David: Tyndale did the English Bible that went to the world, right? And the Lord wants them to be companions. Right? So you’ve got the English Bible by Tyndale and the English Book of Mormon done in the same language that together, go to the world.
GT: Okay, so that’s why Joseph was using 1530 English for the Book of Mormon?
David: Yeah, he didn’t know it.
GT: Yeah.
David: The Lord, we’ve learned, gave it to him, right? It wasn’t a translation. Come on, that word should have never been used. That really screws us up when we think he’s translating.
GT: So, you’re saying that we should not consider the Book of Mormon a translation. It should be a revelation?
David: Yes.
GT: Okay.
David: That’s what it’s described as, right? I mean, everybody who saw it firsthand said, “It’s done by the gift and power of God,: number one. It was given to him. He saw it. He wasn’t going to the plates and trying to translate. The plates were off, and that’s true. I mean, he tried and tried and tried with the papyri for the Book of Abraham and stuff like that. If you go into his minutes, and everything, he was trying. He was going and trying to learn. He failed miserably. Finally, when he gave up on all that and just received it as a revelation, that’s why we have the books. We are nuts to try and put it to those documents. That’s silly. You just going to leave the Church, if you go that way. Because it doesn’t fall together. Joseph Smith was not a translator. He was a seer, and that’s it.
GT: I know a lot of critics are going to say, then what was the point of having the plates there in the first place, if it was just revelation?
David: Joseph Smith never was able to do anything without a prop. I think that’s true for most seers. You need something. Come on. He’s a mystic, right? He and his associates were using divining rods and seer stones, and he needed that to get up to faith.
GT: So, he needed the papyrus for the Book of Abraham in order to receive revelation. Why didn’t he do that with Genesis and the Joseph Smith Translation [of the Bible]?
David: Well, if you look at his process of going through that, he really studied that out, but he’s still messed up a lot. He used some of the Bible scholar things from at the time for a lot of what…
GT: Adam Clarke.
David: Yes, and stuff like that. So, he was just trying to figure it out, because he was commanded to. But we’d better be really careful about saying it was all revelation. I mean, because that’ll get you in trouble.
GT: Are you going to be in trouble?
David: Oh, I’m always in trouble.
Why do you think Tyndale English was used? David makes the case that the original plans were in English units of rods, perches, and the English mile (6336 ft vs 5280 ft), and that Joseph didn’t understand the units or have an engineering background to build it properly.
Joseph’s visionary city of Independence was well ahead of its time. In fact, it is probably ahead of our time. David Hall, Chairman of Hall Labs, says it will take 100 years to build Joseph’s visionary city, and he’s trying to do it!
David: Well, you’ve got to think of, the plat gives you the challenge. It has to be for all men. Now, this is in the future, right? So, if you take the world projections on population, most statisticians estimate that we’ll end up at about 15 billion people and taper off. That’s double where we’re at now. So, if you have to provide an excellent economy and a Zion-like society, to 15 billion people, you cannot have single family homes. It doesn’t scale. There’s no way to do it. There are not enough raw materials. There’s not enough cars and not enough roads. There’s not enough area. You know, we’ll totally wreck the world for sure, if we all stick to our existing single family home concept. It doesn’t scale. Sorry, it doesn’t do it.
David: So, what’s interesting is the 1833 plat is green, totally green, because it says it has to supply itself, and it has to be for all men. You can’t just have your green 40,000 square foot house with solar on it and claim you’re green. No, you have to have developed something that all men can have. So, that’s the challenge. If you take the economies of the world, add up all the GDP for the whole thing, divided by the 7 billion people, that gives you a certain amount that you have, that you’ve got to do everything with. That’s what we do. So, you won’t see us do anything that is supporting single family homes or the big cars or anything like that. You won’t see us working on those things, because everything we try and do, we want to be able to scale to everybody. And 150 square feet is what we’ve figured out. People like to have more space than that, really, so, you’ve got to figure out how to make it adapt to eight rooms. As you’re just moving around, you don’t even have to move, right? To be a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, a dining room, a study, an exercise room, all those things in one.
GT: Yeah, how can you get all that in 150 square feet?
David: There’s a big hint in the plat, and, actually, in the building plan. There’s 14 feet between floors, and that’s a lot taller. You have to start. We started way back. We split it into two floors, and then you had to kind of [duck.] People needed to go back to being five foot tall. So that didn’t work, that fell apart. So, now what we’ve figured out is you have a good “basement” underneath you, so that there can be lots of appliances and things that come up from the floor in the sub[-floor]. Then you have a big area above you, four feet or more, where you can store the beds, the tables, the bicycles, the exercise equipment, your shower, things like that, so that things can transform. That’s why we spun off this company for Smarter Homes that does all these things.
GT: This is like The Jetsons.
David: Yeah, it’s the future.
What do you think of these plans?
Wheat & Tares 
Oof, that 150 sq feet is pretty tight for a family, but I still think doable. I spent a year living in an 8.5’x24′ tiny house with my wife and 3 kids… It was my wife’s idea, and I thought I was going to hate it, but I actually loved it! We all did, and look back on it as one of our best years. Of course, we were in the middle of 1,500 acres of Alaskan forest, and when I wasn’t at work we spent all day adventuring in the outdoors. With a tiny space inside, having a big fun outside space is really important.
If I just had 150 feet, and families living on both sides of me, above me, and below me… I think I’d opt out of zion and go build my own tiny house in the Alaskan wilderness again.
Why do you think Tyndale English was used [instead of KJV English]?
It may be a distinction without a difference. My understanding is that the KJV very much drew on earlier English Bibles (mainly the Geneva Bible) as source texts and the language was already old and out of date when it was first published. The Geneva Bible likewise drew much from Tyndale.
From Wikipedia on the KJV:
It shouldn’t be a total surprise that JS used KJV English as there were movements that used the Bible to teach English. Let’s see if this link works, in which Dan McClellan discusses influence of KJV on the English language. Warning to JCS and his ilk, this is a link to TikTok, and therefore morally suspect.
https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdhvTrBT/
I have yet to watch the YouTube videos to see if and how this relates to city planning.
Ok I see now that Hall is not just talking about the wording that copies it mimics the KJV, but that God have new revelations to Joseph Smith in Tyndale English, such that if one wants to understand a distance or weight measure in the revelations they need to look up the definition from the time of Tyndale. I’m not sure if Hall applies this to all the revelations, or just certain aspects.
How confusing. Now when one looks up a definition to understand a revelation, one must decide whether to use a 16th, 17th, 19th, or 21rst century definition.
I think the most sensible definition to use is the one which Joseph Smith would have understood the best.
David plans that 2.5 people would live in each unit, so a family of 6 might spread out across 4 units (600 sq ft). Since walls can be removed, a family would have more space than a single person/married couple.
I also find it strange that JS revelations would be given in Tyndale English. Why would God give a revelation bound to be misunderstood? David made the case that the Book of Mormon was a companion to the Tyndale Bible, but what’s so special about Tyndale Bible, besides that it was the first English Bible? Why not speak in modern 19th-century English?
You know what I really wonder? I wonder if the Church would be better off now (in the Internet age) had JS been more honest about his props. Pretend for a minute that he did not claim a First Vision, a visit by Moroni, Gold Plates, papayra, or a visit by Peter, James and John.
In the short to medium run, he would not have been able to generate the fantastic narrative and subsequent interest that he developed with all of those props and stories. His appeal to authority and his demo of special gifts would have made him much more ordinary.
However, in the long run (1995 Internet age) maybe the Church would be better off. Many of us (former TBMs) spend so much time focused on how we were misled, we might fail to see the goodness of the product.
Pretend that all along we were told that JS received the BOM via revelation, not translation. Pretend that there was no fantastic stories about Moroni and Elijah and Peter, James, and John (oh and John the Baptist). Let’s just imagine JS making the case that he’s inspired and he’s looking to reveal to us what’s been revealed to him. In that case, we wouldn’t have to care about Adam Clarke or the KJV. We could simply acknowledge that he used whatever sources he could find to stimulate (catalyst anyone?) his revelation.
And the greedy approach continues to this day. We have RMN (and Ms. Wendy) claiming that every time a decision is made for the Church is based on some kind of special revelatory process instead of just admitting to basic inspiration. And of course it strains credibility to overturn a major Church policy in 41 months.
We could get away with the fantastic pre-Internet (shout out to Fawn Brody for at least trying). But now, the kids are walking away because their tik tok is more honest than Mormon.org