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ScriptureHistory.com The Global Genesis Flood Atlantis in History, Tradition, and Scripture Astrophysics' Black Box: The New Shamanism: Reconsidering Book of Mormon Geography Problems with Radiometric and Genetic Dating Chronology of the World The Myth of Scientific Objectivity The Religion of Science Lost in Translation |
Lost in Translation Contemporary LDS Scholarship’s Encounter with Scriptural
Linguistics David Stewart, Jr.
(c) 2007 Introduction We have been pleased with the reception of the 72languages.com site by individuals
and linguists from many cultures who note the correct use of their languages
in material on this site and desire to know more. We have also noted a
phenomenon where some individuals who know little or nothing about
linguistics have turned to LDS academicians for validation of various points
made here, which (as we expect) has been disclaimed. While specific criticisms of these works
are easily answered as seen in the weekly installment series, this paper will
address this second trend of individuals who rely upon the “experts” to tell
them what to think and for permission of what they are or are not allowed to
believe. It is natural that any claim of expertise in a field ought
to be subject to a verifiable real-world reality check. In my article “The
Myth of Scientific Objectivity,” I addressed the questionable standards
of scientific rigor in the philosophical sciences, the political factors
which dictate which conclusions are or are not acceptable, the lack of
genuine intellectual independence, and the pressures brought to bear upon
academicians to support consensus orthodoxy, which have often lead
practitioners in these fields to accept popular but tenuous viewpoints while
ignoring contradictory evidence. We
expect no fairness from academicians where the data leads to conclusions that
they deem unacceptable a priori
before even engaging the evidence. Individuals with competency in the languages referenced
here, however, can verify for themselves the material cited. We have received many positive messages
from speakers of Hindi, Arabic, Slavic languages, and others, who have been
able to validate for themselves the accuracy of material found here. Translation without the
Original? In published LDS scholarly works, contemporary
academicians typically cite scholars’ transliterations
of hieroglyphs, hieratic, cuneiform, and other ancient languages, without
ever providing the actual characters under discussion. Such an approach has several
consequences. It relies upon the
transliteration being absolutely correct, and thus is predicated upon the
precise accuracy of accepted interpretive methods. There is no room, for instance, for
considering evidence from Champollion or other sources that a given
hieroglyph may have had a different sound in early Most significantly, the accepted standard in scholarly
publications of omitting the original ancient language characters and
representing them only by their supposed transliterations, makes scholars’
conclusions unverifiable to the
layman while confounding the peer review process even within the field. You cannot question whether the
transliteration fits the evidence of how a character was used or reference
that character for yourself when the character is not even provided, and
numerous different characters are given the same transliteration by
Egyptologists! I found it rather funny
when one academician criticized my father’s table of the transliteration of
different hieroglyphic characters by different scholars as generically
“wrong” because my father had provided a phonetic translation rather than
using the modified Latin characters academicians used to represent certain
sounds – while this academician himself has published numerous books and
articles without including the original hieroglyphic characters at all. Thoughtful people might wonder why the original
hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters are omitted in most published
works. Is it too difficult for scholars
to include the original characters in their articles and essays? Nineteenth-century pioneers including E.A.
Wallis Budge, Adolf Erman, and others, were able to reproduce the original
characters in their published work, and so claims that original characters
are omitted because of difficulty with fonts or technology are not
credible. Is it really too much work,
before scholars provide a lengthy analysis, to provide the actual characters
that they purport to translate? Are
the characters omitted because of a condescending belief that readers would
not be able to grasp them anyway? Or
are the characters mere irrelevancies, relics of defunct civilizations, which
have been wholly superseded by modern transliteration paradigms for which a
variety of models exist? The recognition that the same sound is attributed to
widely different hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters, that variant
spellings can result in the same transliteration, and that a single character
was often used differently in different periods, makes the reproduction of
the original characters imperative when analyzing ancient documents. In contrast with contemporary
published academic works on these topics which generally cite scholars’
interpretations of hieroglyphic, hieratic, or cuneiform characters
without including the actual texts for the readers’ review, we have taken
efforts to reproduce original characters in a vast range of fonts in order to
allow individuals to investigate conclusions for themselves. Peer Review? I have read a number of withering reviews of other authors
in LDS scholarly publications. Such
publications, it is claimed, are solid academic sources because they are peer
reviewed. What they contain represents
the best contemporary LDS scholarship and can be trusted to be accurate and
reliable. The problem with this is that when you have one geologist,
one archaeologist, one Egyptologist, and other specialists who are the sole
or even predominant representatives of their field of study, none of them has
a genuine peer on the review board.
Without peers, it goes without saying that there is no true peer
review. The alleged “peer review” in
such cases typically consists more of editorial
review than critical peer review. Grammar, phrasing, tone, and direction may
be addressed, but the “review” never penetrates the central issues of the
quality of scholarship. Reviewers tend
to be deferential to “experts” out of their own field. One reviewer noted of a Mesoamerican scholar,
“we should learn from what he has to tell us.” This is an attitude more consistent with
grade school pupils than critical reviewers.
It is difficult to claim that the authority bestowed by such
“[non]peer review” carries greater force of reason or proof than if an expert
were merely to claim the validity of their arguments “because I said so.” Truth is not established in a popularity contest between
conflicting unproven theories, nor by the consensus of academicians. A reality test is needed to assess
competency. LDS Scholarship’s Reality
Check Fortunately, we have a reality test to evaluate the
competency of linguists in translating words of scripture. We have known manuscripts and scriptural
translations (i.e. the Joseph Smith Papyri and the Book of Abraham). We have additional ancient documents with a
description of what they contain (the Kinderhook Plates). For those who are not able to make sense
out of those documents (or who question their legitimacy rather than
acknowledging their own ignorance of the language), we have many words in
scripture for which both the word and the translation are given. Then we have the Anthon Transcript which include
characters from the Book of Mormon, but for which the translation is not
given. If scholars cannot translate
this, then at least they can offer a general analysis of the language and its
characters, comment on its origin, and go on record as to whether the
characters represent a valid language or not.
And if so, the implications that this has for our understanding of
ancient writing systems in the Should we not first demand that scholars demonstrate a
rigorous ability to explain known findings before we take their word on the
unknown? Linguistic Content of
Scripture Several passages in LDS scripture provide both an ancient
word and its correct translation. For
instance: Gnolaum: eternal (Abraham 3:8) Irreantum:
many waters (1 Nephi 17:5) Rabbanah:
powerful or great king ( Raukeeyang:
expanse or the firmament of the heavens (Facsimile 4; its equivalence to an
Egyptian hieroglyph is noted) Rameumptom:
the holy stand ( Ripliancum:
large, or to exceed all (Ether 15:8) To date, LDS scholars have not been able to successfully
derive any of these terms from ancient words with these transliterations. If
they cannot produce answers consistent with what we can verify from
scripture, and cannot arrive at the correct solution even when provided with
these substantial clues, how can they be trusted to arrive at the correct
meanings of the many ancient words like Liahona and Nephi that are not
translated in scripture? If they
cannot match these words with meanings in languages known to them, what basis
can there be for mapping other words of unknown meaning onto languages that
have already proven inadequate? If we
cannot validate the accuracy of scholars on points where we have texts and
translations in hand, is there any ground for accepting their expertise on
matters for which no such verification is available? The prevailing theories have come to reflect who is the
most credentialed, or who is the most persuasive, or who can reach the
largest audience, but without first passing the internal validity checks that
scriptures themselves provide, none of these theories can be considered to
offer anything more than speculation. Some linguists have claimed that there is no possibility
that the transliterations in the Book of Mormon and other scripture are
accurate transliterations the original ancient words. Such claims are only an admission of the
scholars’ own inability to determine the ancient origins of scriptural words. To the contrary, the historical record and
internal linguistic consistency, both in the consistent spelling of names and
in the consistency with which sounds are represented across many different
words, both document meticulous care and precision in the English
transliterations provided. Book of Abraham The Book of Abraham papyri have been translated by
Egyptologists as representing a common funerary text with little or nothing
to do with the content of the Book of Abraham. Critics reason that this disproves that
Joseph Smith translated anything, while apologists counter that the
“translation” was really a revelation with nothing to do with the text at
hand. The consensus view that the documents were not really
“translated” but were revelations unrelated to the text at hand, demands
convoluted mental gymnastics. First,
we must throw out the repeated statements of Joseph Smith himself and other
eye-witnesses that the documents were translated. Second, willful ignorance and selective
scholarship must be invoked to overlook the fact that we do have documents
such as the facsimiles which do give translations. The belief that the Joseph
Smith papyri were not the manuscripts that were translated is similarly
problematic and ignores the fact that the documents that we do have
demonstrate clearly that Joseph Smith translated ancient Egyptian very
differently from modern Egyptologists.
Just what do proponents suggest that the “real” Book of Abraham test should have looked like in Egyptian,
anyway? In Facsimile 1, Joseph Smith
identifies figures 5-8 as the idolatrous gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah,
and Korash. Egyptologists call these
figures Qebehsenuf, Duamutef, Hapi, and Imset. David Stewart, Sr. has identified here how Joseph
Smith’s transliterations are correct and those of Egyptologist are faulty. Joseph Smith identifies Figure
12 as the Egyptian word Shaumau, meaning high, or the heavens. In Facsimile
2, Figure 6 (the four sons of Horus) Joseph Smith identified as
signifying the four corners of the earth, which Egyptologists can verify, and
Joseph Smith could not possibly have known independently in the late 1830s before the decipherment
of Egyptian was publicly available.
Joseph Smith identifies Figure 1 as the governing planet Kolob, Figure
2 as Oliblish, Figure 4 as the number 1,000; and figure 7 as a governing
planet said by the Egyptians to represent the Sun. Egyptologists’ translations differ on every
point. Translating only figures 1-7,
Joseph Smith notes that “the above translation is given as far as we have any
right to give at the present time.” He states that figure 8 “contains
writings that cannot be revealed unto the world; but is to be had in the Holy
Temple of God.” Figure 9 and 10 “Ought
not to be revealed at the present time.”
Figure 11 represent numbers: “Also. If the world can find out these
numbers, so let it be. Amen.” Figure
12-21 “will be given in the own due time of the Lord.” For those who have not yet
picked up on the abundant prior clues, it would seem that Joseph Smith could
hardly have been more explicit: Egyptologists do not translate these
characters correctly! He has thrown
down the gauntlet: “if the world can find out these numbers [and other
writings], so be it.” Yet he is
confident that the correct translation will emerge only “in the own due time
of the Lord,” who is able to do His own work, independent of the decrees of
committees and scholarly bodies.
Joseph Smith has told us with authoritative clarity that modern
scholars simply cannot read early Egyptian!
In so doing, he has preemptively dismantled the silly theories about
“revelation without translation” or the absence of the original documents
that have gained wide credence in the contemporary LDS scholarly community. In Facsimile 3, the name of
the character if figure 5 is said to be “Shulem, one of the king’s principal
waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand.” Figure 6 is “Olimlah, a slave belonging to
the prince.” Again, Egyptologists’
translations are completely different. It has been abundantly
demonstrated by a variety of authors that Joseph Smith’s writings convey
considerable knowledge of Egyptian anachronistic for his time that he could
not possibly have had independent of divine revelation. Beyond these
convergences, it is also apparent that Joseph Smith translated Egyptian very
differently from modern scholars. Who
is right? If the scholars are correct
and Joseph Smith is wrong, how did Joseph get so many things right, and where
does this put the argument that the translations were unrelated to the texts
at hand? And if Joseph Smith is right,
is it unreasonable to consider that perhaps we might learn valid and meaningful
principles of the early Egyptian language by studying his work rather than
pronouncing him to be an ignoramus while we uncritically follow the cowpath
of consensus scholarship? When All You
Have is a Hammer... Many of the attempts by LDS
scholars to decipher scriptural linguistics reflect the erroneous
extrapolation of a language that the author has some familiarity with to
languages that the author has little or no familiarity with. This is most widely seen with writings on
Egyptian language. Some articles, for
instance, attempt to interpret Egyptian scenes or concepts from the Book of
Abraham with Semitic linguistics. I
asked one widely published author why he did not investigate Egyptian
language explanations for an Egyptian text, and he replied to the effect that
he was not familiar with Egyptian.
This lack of familiarity, however, did not prevent him from composing
his own speculative conclusions based on Semitic. The litany of scholarly
references could not conceal the problem that Egyptian sources were not
consulted in attempting to interpret an Egyptian document, yet the fact that
there could be an Egyptian solution was not allowed. The old adage comes to mind: if all you
have is a hammer, everything is a nail! As obvious as the problem should be
of inadequate knowledge base when broader competency is needed, most authors
fail to adequately allow for possibilities beyond the narrow range that they
introduce. The False
Dichotomy The false dichotomy promulgated
by LDS scholars and critics alike is that, since Joseph Smith’s translations
differ from those of secular scholars, either (1) the “translations” were
given by revelation and had little or nothing to do with the text at hand, or
(2) that Joseph Smith was a fraud and no translation occurred at all. Both accept the ability of establishment
scholars to provide correct and comprehensive translations of ancient
documents. There is a third possibility
which both groups fail to consider: that that documents were literally
translated, and that Joseph Smith’s translation is correct, while the
translations of early Egyptian and other documents by modern scholars
erroneously extrapolate the Ptolemaic Egyptian of the Rosetta Stone to an era
nearly two millennia previous when the Egyptian language was very
different. It is this third
possibility, ignored by modern scholars, which David Stewart, Sr., is
demonstrating to be correct. Egyptologists
have avoided a reality check for their own nonsensical translations by
classifying a large proportion of Egyptian documents as religious texts and
noting that “in religion, anything goes.”
With a rationale to back them up which throws sense and meaning out
the window, no translation can be senseless, inane, or absurd enough to offer
them the insight that perhaps they have missed the meaning of the document
altogether. Hugh Nibley[1]
has documented that some of the meanings Joseph Smith attributed to Hebrew
words were unknown in his time, but have since been corroborated by modern
discoveries that have expanded contemporary understanding of ancient
languages. If Joseph Smith has been
shown to have been correct about many linguistic matters that he could not
possibly have known except by revelation, is it too much to consider the
possibility that he could be correct on other matters not yet understood by modern
linguists? The Golden Plates LDS scholar Brant Gardner criticizes author Ainsworth for
his arguments about plates of disputed authenticity. He cites Ainsworth’s statement: “Another objection the
authors of the report expressed about the Padilla plates was their
rectangular shape and square corners. They felt that this feature of the
plates constituted evidence of modern origin and could be a powerful argument
against the plates’ authenticity. On the other hand, we know that the gold
plates of the Book of Mormon were rectangular with square corners.” One of the “problems” of the
While I see no evidence for the authenticity of either the
Padilla or We cannot allow one standard to be used for the Golden
Plates because of their spiritual provenance and another to be used for finds
of unknown provenance: the standard must be consistent. If the Padilla Plates or the Michigan
Tablets are not allowed to be made of rolled, flat metal or to have square
corners as Mr. Gardner and other experts claim, then the Gold Plates of the
Book of Mormon are not allowed to, either. In 1842, Joseph Smith described the plates as “not quite so thick as
common tin.” This is quite
thin. Yet Mr. Gardner used the fact
that the Padilla Plates are “quite flat” to support his firm conclusion that
“they were produced with modern machinery, not
ancient manual techniques.” In 1888,
Witness David Whitmer stated that the leaves "were so securely
bound that it was impossible to separate them.” Can metal
plates in a book be thin and inseparable when sealed without being flat and
regular? Joseph Smith described
the Golden Plates in
rectangular dimensions, and there is no mention of irregularity or
imperfection from any of the numerous witnesses who provided physical descriptions of the plates. This does not prove that they were
perfectly rectangular, but neither is there any evidence from the
historical descriptions of the plates to support assumptions of mandatory
irregularity. The argument that we can draw no conclusions about the
Gold Plates because we do not have them in hand for scrutiny misses the
point. Authoritative attempts to define allowable answers to the question of
whether the metal of the Golden Plates was rolled or hammered, or whether it
was smelted or crude, are premature when any
gold plates with writing in the Americas – and more so, with “reformed
Egyptian” writing – are deemed to lie entirely outside the provenance of what
the consensus community of archaeologists believes to be possible. The
“experts” have decreed that there were no golden plates in the If other scripts and artifacts from the The Anthon Transcript The Anthon transcript contains characters reportedly
transcribed by Joseph Smith from the Golden Plates and exhibited to Professor
Charles Anthon. Either the original or
a copy came into the possession of Peter Whitmer. Critics cite the words of Michael Coe, one of the
decipherers of the Mayan script: "Of
all the peoples of the pre-Columbian Some LDS Mesoamerican scholars have similarly declared
scripts of disputed provenance in the Americas to be fraudulent on the basis
that they are isolates for which no comparable writing in the Americas has
been accepted by the “experts,” that they are not understood nor deciphered
but merely incomprehensible jumbles of unknown letters, and that those
letters that appear to have some similarity to Old World writing systems
differ in some ways from their presumed Old World equivalents. [4] We wonder again of these scholars: Where does this put the
Anthon Transcript and the Golden Plates? They may protest, like Professor
Anthon himself, that we cannot be absolutely sure that the transcript
contains accurate representations of the characters on the plates. Yet once again, such criticisms miss the
point: the “experts” have declared that there were no complete writing
systems besides the Mayan script in the ancient Some LDS skeptics have gone so far as to claim that the
Golden Plates or the Anthon Transcript are valid because they were associated
with the prophet Joseph Smith. Thus
they rationalize one standard for that which they believe to be valid because
they have been told that it is valid, while applying a different standard
entirely for similarly unknown scripts of disputed provenance. This is an argument from ignorance, as
linguistic merit must be assessed in an independent and consistent
manner. The double standard which they
invoke by mentioning the word “revelation” is an admission that their own
paradigms fail to account for or even allow known finds in church history and
scripture on a rational or even-handed scholarly basis. When they cannot account for or explain the
known, is there any rational basis to trust their pronouncements about the
unknown? In view of the dismal record of the LDS scholarly
community in failing to account for or explain even what we do know about the
Golden Plates, the Anthon Transcript, the Book of Abraham, the Kinderhook
Plates, and any of the translations given in modern scripture, thoughtful
individuals can appreciate the divine wisdom of providence in removing the
golden plates from our midst. Does a review of the record allow any rational person to
believe that, were the golden plates among us today, any of the so-called
experts would be able to validate either the metallurgy or the linguistics of
the plates? It is certain that they
would engender a whole new set of bizarre theories and faulty
rationalizations from LDS scholars, while serving as a lightning rod for
claims of “proven” forgery from critics. The Double Standard It is this striking disconnect of contemporary LDS
scholarship which merits our attention: the axiomatic acceptance of evidence
from church history which is compartmentalized to an intellectual hyperspace, while failing to allow the
possible implications of such data to even be considered in the real
world. This double standard has been exhibited even by respected
scholars like James Talmage. The Book of Mormon gives
accounts of expert Jaredite metallurgy and glassmaking skills that
included smelting
rocks into glass (Ether 3:1,3), smelting
steel swords from ore deposits in a hill (Ether
7:9), and sophisticated mining operations that “did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get
ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper” leading to the
production of “all manner of fine work” (Ether 10:23). Consensus archaeologists declare that there
was no glass in the In view of the failure of LDS scholarship to provide
plausible, textually consistent, real-world explanations for known linguistic
and metallurgical finds described in church history and scripture, can these
same scholars be relied upon to provide correct analysis and interpretation
of the unknown? |
