LDS Why is the word "Bible" in the BoM?

dzheremi

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Egyptian had developed into Demotic by around 600 BC (darn typos...), yet we know from documents produced by Joseph Smith and/or his circle that this is not what they were dealing with in the supposed "Reformed Egyptian" documents he claimed to possess (see, e.g., the infamous "Caractors" document/Anthon transcript, below).

DemoticScriptsRosettaStoneReplica.jpg

Demotic Egyptian from a replica of the Rosetta Stone, 196 BC

vs.

Caractors_large.jpg

Anthon Transcript ("Caractors" document), produced by Joseph Smith, 1828
 
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withwonderingawe

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From 2 Nephi 29:

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

4 But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

Isn't the fact that the word Bible appears in the Book of Mormon kind of disconcerting? The Bible itself doesn't even contain the word.

Ummmm could it be that it was translated from one langue to another and the words which were chosen were done so that the people reading it would comprehend it.

And another point is that this is a prophecy about something that would come to pass, in the future. After the Nephites were long gone and the Gentiles took possession of the land, they brought with them a book they called a Bible.
 
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withwonderingawe

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Egyptian had developed into Demotic by around 600 AD, yet we know from documents produced by Joseph Smith and/or his circle that this is not what they were dealing with in the supposed "Reformed Egyptian" documents he claimed to possess (see, e.g., the infamous "Caractors" document/Anthon transcript, below).

DemoticScriptsRosettaStoneReplica.jpg

Demotic Egyptian from a replica of the Rosetta Stone, 196 BC

vs.

Caractors_large.jpg

Anthon Transcript ("Caractors" document), produced by Joseph Smith, 1828

Actually they've figured out that this document is not the Anthon Transcript, he described vertical symbols.
 
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DamianWarS

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From 2 Nephi 29:

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

4 But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

Isn't the fact that the word Bible appears in the Book of Mormon kind of disconcerting? The Bible itself doesn't even contain the word.

Bible is Greek for book (biblos), it even has a strongs number (G976) and appears in the very first verse of the NT. So we are calling it literally a book or a holy book. this works also with different languages like Arabic "alkitab" or "the book" which is what the bible is called.

I certainly don't defend the Book of Mormon or LDS doctrine but I guess it could be argued the source of this word is from Greek and it was chosen to be translated as "bible" rather than "book". If this is the argument then Joseph Smith may be accused of over interpreting which then presents a problem of what else did he over interpret. This is of course contingent on there was even a source document he translated from. So either it questions the authenticity of the revelation or exposes a bais in translating.
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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Obviously this proves the prophetic character of the BOM which predicted the future idea of a canonized bible to which people would look to for proof of their theological ideas. Shoes on the other foot for us Christians. Certainty couldn't be an anachronistic reference to an idea that probably shouldn't have been known or understood at the time the BOM was supposedly written.
 
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dzheremi

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Obviously this proves the prophetic character of the BOM which predicted the future idea of a canonized bible to which people would look to for proof of their theological ideas. Shoes on the other foot for us Christians. Certainty couldn't be an anachronistic reference to an idea that probably shouldn't have been known or understood at the time the BOM was supposedly written.

How could I have been so blind! That's obviously the case! :bow:
 
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PaulCyp1

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Obviously the word "Bible" doesn't appear in the Bible, since the bishops of the Catholic Church didn't compile the Bible until three centuries after the texts were written. And it was they, at that time, who first called the book "Biblios", which means "the Book", and which is the origin of the English word "Bible". As for the BoM, who cares what it has to say about anything. Seriously! The incoherent ramblings of a violent, misguided heretic.
 
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Thomas Schular

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This line of questioning isn't very useful. You got two possibilities:

- The Book of Mormon is not what it says it is so the question is kind of... like asking is something disconcerting in work of fiction. It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

- Or the Book of Mormon is what it says it is (a translation of an ancient record) and there's no problem having a word translated thus.

Either way it's quite of a short discussion.

X, which claims to be true, doesn't make sense.

- Either X is wrong, so it is fiction, so why bother discussing it.

- Or X is true and there's no problem with it not making sense.

Bad logic. If a book claims to be written before certain things or concepts existed, and if people believe that book to be true, then it is worth helping others realize it is false.

This is especially the case when it comes to cults and religions with cult characteristics. Joseph Smith had a history of lying. He claimed to have devices which aided him in translating something, all of which, he made excuses for not showing. When, as a pathological liar, he foolishly put himself in a position to be shown as a fraud, he weaseled his way out by saying God will punish them for questioning him by not re-translating.

So a guys says God tells him to dig up ancient plates. He says God gives him magical devices to translate such plates. But these can't be shown publicly. And God apparently could not just tell him what to write. And he said God got upset that when people questioned said guy's ancient plates and magical devices he won't show publicly, and that's why he can't re-translate the ancient plates with the magical devices. When it is obviously, he's a pathological liar.
 
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DamianWarS

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and when you think about it, when BOM was 'translated from' the alleged sacred plates -- why wasn't it translated into 1830 American English -- rather than King James English?

this is the same problem essentially for the word "bible". Bible is from the greek word for "book" (biblos - Strong G976) otherwise it's an abstract english word. so the source tablet in it's original language should have been "book" and base on context JS translated it as "bible" just like he translated everything into elizabethan English. This shows us either it is a false revelation that is using language and words to help validate it or that JS had a bais when translating which points to a corrupted English text.
 
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Ken Rank

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From 2 Nephi 29:

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

4 But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

Isn't the fact that the word Bible appears in the Book of Mormon kind of disconcerting? The Bible itself doesn't even contain the word.
It just means, "the book."
 
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Ironhold

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As I've kept explaining time and time again, translation isn't an exact science, especially when you're trying to translate things into and out of English.

It's actually the mark of an incompetent translator to try and do things as literally as possible. Ever had a set of assembly or repair instructions that sounded like someone pulled words from a bowl of alphabet soup? Someone translated too literally.

Better translators will understand that individual words and concepts may not translate cleanly, at which point they'll have to decide whether or not to use the "next best" word or even leave it untranslated.

Secular examples?

For the former? One infamous bit from the Japanese sci-fi series "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" had a villain respond to a question about how many people he's killed with a phrase that, when translated literally into English, comes out as "How many breads have you eaten in your life?". Translators have either rendered it as "How much bread have you eaten?" or "How many sandwiches have you eaten?".

For the latter? Japanese has various honorifics establishing the status of the person being referred to or spoken to in regards to the speaker. Most of these honorifics don't translate to English at all, and early efforts to translate them often resorted to slang. It's now common practice to leave them alone.
 
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dzheremi

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As someone who has worked as a translator both unofficially from a very young age and later professionally in my 20s, I can say that what Ironhold writes about the difficulties of translation are true regarding translating too literally. I'm not really seeing how that exonerates or even directly relates to Joseph Smith in this case, however. He may or may have translated some other construction as "the Bible" or "a Bible" (following the earlier evidence of how that is rendered in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, etc.), but the issue is much more basic regarding the supposed timeline of the actual writings themselves -- both their form, and (of lesser importance, in my view) their content. This is why I made sure to try to highlight how things are phrased in Coptic, since it is the last (sort of) surviving relative of Egyptian, and of course the Mormon claim is that all of this was written in "Reformed Egyptian".

Of course, since they have no period-appropriate evidence for such a writing system and/or language (?) having ever existed, I have found from multiple discussions on the matter that Mormons aren't too sure what they're actually arguing for when they make this claim regarding the provenance of their writings in the supposed original. So, like any good Coptologically-focused linguist would do, I await actual evidence of whatever "Reformed Egyptian" is, and until then (and not a minute sooner) maintain the professional and personal opinion that the existence of Reformed Egyptian, like the plates themselves and the supposed histories they were said to contain, are a part of the religious narrative of Mormonism, and hence do not necessarily have any real world existence.

Anyone who would like to prove me wrong is welcome to do so. As I've written before in other threads, who wouldn't want more Egyptian? The attested dialects of Coptic alone have been expanded over the years as more and more evidence is found in papyri and various inscriptions here and there (I believe there are now six major recognized dialects), so there's no reason why this couldn't happen with regard to "Reformed Egyptian", if it actually exists. (And if it isn't a form of Egyptian to begin with -- as again, Mormons themselves don't seem very clear about this, and will sometimes argue that it was instead just a writing system used to write some other language like Aramaic or Hebrew -- then okay; the same rules still apply.)
 
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withwonderingawe

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I appreciate that.

LDS don't believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible at all. Rather, they are both viewed as scripture and stand together, not one above the other.

Eze 37
16 Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:
17 And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
 
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twin.spin

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According to Mormonism claims, the BoM is:
"I told the brethren that The Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth . . . and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."
(Joseph Smith, Introduction to the Book of Mormon)

However as far as the Bible is concerned according to Mormonism:
"We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly;" (Eighth Article of Faith).

1 Nephi 13:28
Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God..​


seems pretty obvious what Joseph Smith \ Mormonism believes as is to what holds the edge over the Bible.
 
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Anto9us

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This is just LOONEY-TUNES...
at one point it is said that it is not even correct to call it "translation" -- whatever the process was that JS allegedly used as he looked at plates inscribed with 'Reformed Egyptian' -- and came away with King James English...

Then the discussion goes to "translation as a science"

dad-gummit, which is it?

What do Mormons allege happened here?

1. Did JS' "special Urim and Thummim glasses" enable him to look at the reformed egyptian and IN HIS MIND he knew the reformed Egyptian words and wrote down the English equivalent? Not in 1830 American English, mind you, but in KJV English, which had been obsolete for a couple hundred years?

2. Or did he look through his Urim and Thummim super-spy-glasses and SEE AS A FINAL PRODUCT -- in his VISION -- the formed words of King James English?

#1 is TRANSLATION, albeit through supernatural knowledge somehow enabled by the special glasses -- #2 is something out of this world, more akin to AUTOMATIC WRITING than to "translation" as it exists in every other instance in this world

God/Holy Spirit had produced a Bible with manuscripts existing by the thousands in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Then it is claimed that God produced another book somehow from metal plates that VANISHED - wherein it was apparently a big deal to get names and signatures of witnesses who even SAW the plates - and there ARE NO SOURCE DOCUMENTS available whatsoever, from a specific language that THERE IS NO HISTORY OF!

Mormons - explain the PROCESS - and explain why the final product was in a form of English ALREADY OBSOLETE, please.
 
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