Understanding Book of Mormon Word Choices

This video discusses theories on word choices used in the Book of Mormon translation, and then answers criticisms used against the Book of Mormon related to the words in the text.

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Okay, so in this video, I’m going to discuss the translation of The Book of Mormon, a little bit more specifically the words that are used in the text and some of the criticisms that are leveled against that. First of all, I want to share this quote from some minutes from a church conference in 1831. Joseph always said he translated by the gift and power of God. This is an interesting account, though, where it says here in this conference, “Brother Hyrum said that he thought best that the information of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon be related by Joseph himself to the elders present, that all might know for themselves. Brother Joseph Smith, Jr. said that it was not intended to tell the world all the particulars of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and also said that it was not expedient for him to relate these things.”

So Brother Ricks, Stephen Ricks, a BYU professor, said this: “Joseph’s reticence was probably well justified and may have been due to the inordinate interest some of the early saints had shown in the seer stone or to the negative, sometimes bitter reactions he encountered when he reported sacred experiences to others.”

Brant Gardner, in fact, this is a book I’m going to recommend is phenomenal, Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon. I’m going to share a number of quotes from Brant Gardner here, but he’s done a phenomenal work with this. But he talked about how Joseph may have not really understood how it happened himself and was kind of blown away in a sense and and not able to maybe even articulate what he had experienced himself. My favorite quote of all is Elder Maxwell. He said, “Why do we not have more disclosure concerning the process of translation of the Book of Mormon? Perhaps the full process was not disclosed because we would not be ready to understand it even if given. Perhaps, too, the Lord wanted to leave the Book of Mormon in the realm of faith, though it is drenched with intrinsic evidence. After all, Christ instructed Mormon, who was reviewing the Savior’s own teachings among the Nephites, not to record all of them on the plates because, ‘I will try the faith of my people.'”

“Perhaps the details of translation are withheld also because we are intended to immerse ourselves in the substance of the book rather than becoming unduly concerned with the process by which we received it.” Okay, so let’s talk about what “translation” meant, or “translate”, in 1828. So here’s the dictionary, 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. There are seven listed here: to bear, carry, or remove from one place to another; to remove or convey to heaven as a human being without death; to transfer, to convey from one to another; to cause to remove from one part of the body to another as to translate a disease. Look at number five, to change.

Number six, to interpret, to render into another language. Seven, to explain. So, then Brant Gardner goes on to say, “Only one of these seven definitions corresponds to the way the word [translate] is most often understood in modern English, and that definition is deep in the list. Any questions about the reason for the different perception of the Bible and the Book of Mormon may be resolved by appealing to the difference between the way modern readers and Joseph understood the word ‘translate.’ To be ‘translated correctly’ did not have a linguistic definition but a spiritual one.” So it focuses on spiritual meaning, and in fact think about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and inspired revisions he made there. We call it the translation because that’s what they called it, the JST, right? But look at these two paragraphs. Here are quotes. This top one is actually on the Church website in the history topics about the JST.

“Joseph Smith also made many smaller changes that improved grammar, modernize language, corrected points of doctrine, or alleviated consistencies. As he worked on these changes, he appears in many instances to have consulted respected commentaries by biblical scholars studying them out in his mind as a part of the regulatory process.” And I love this from David Seely in the August 1997 Ensign. He said, “The prophet did not translate the Bible in the traditional sense of the word, that is go back to the earliest Hebrew and Greek manuscripts to make a new rendering into English. Rather, he went through the biblical text of the King James version and made inspired corrections, revisions, and additions to the biblical texts.” I’m going to talk more about the JST in a minute and some criticisms and things on how we address those. But first let’s talk about Doctrine and Covenants, section 1 verse 24, and this is how God works with with His people.

He says, “Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.” And look what Brigham Young said, “Should the Lord Almighty send an angel to re-write the Bible, it would in many places be very different from what what it now is. And I will even venture to say that if the Book of Mormon were now to be re-written, in many instances it would materially differ from the present translation.” Now here’s Elder Widtsoe. He said about the Book of Mormon translation, “It was not a word-for-word translation. As nearly as can be understood, the ideas set forth by the characters were revealed to the Prophet. He then expressed the ideas in English as best he could; that is, the language of the English Book of Mormon is to a large degree the language of the Prophet as he used in his everyday conversation on religious subjects, but brightened, illuminated and dignified by the inspiration under which he worked.”

“It must be said, however, that the vocabulary of the Book of Mormon appears to be far beyond that of an unlettered youth.” Now one last one here from Dallin D. Oaks, he said “The language of the Book of Mormon translation was likely influenced by Joseph’s own language. This would seem to be the case whether the Lord revealed the translation word-for-word to Joseph after the manner of Joseph’s own language, or whether he revealed it to Joseph through ideas Joseph expressed in his own words.”

So Joseph made all of the grammar changes, mostly in 1837, from the original text that was published in 1830, and if you go and read back the 1830, even though there’s still challenging grammar in 1837, 1830 it’s extremely challenging in the grammar from today’s view on there. But it wouldn’t be a surprise from Joseph and also Doctrine Covenants 1:24 in his language.

But there is some interesting theories that have been talked about recently and it really is fascinating. Let me share this quote and then I’ll give you some thoughts on this. So B.H. Roberts, he said about the poor grammar in the original text, he said “There can be no reasonable ground for objection to the correction of mere verbal errors and grammatical construction. There can be no reasonable doubt that had Joseph Smith been a finished English scholar and the facts and ideas represented by the Nephite characters upon the plates had been given him by the inspiration of God through the Urim and Thummim, those ideas would have been expressed in correct English, but as he was not a finished English scholar, he had to give expression to those facts and ideas in such language as he could command, and that was faulty English, which the Prophet himself and those who have succeeded him as custodians of the word of God have had and now have a perfect right to correct.”

And I will tell you this very fascinating, fairly recent theory that has come about from Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack and in fact I’ll link to the video. You can watch, they published a lot on this. I’ll put those in there too, but BYU Maxwell Institute, they spoke recently. It’s about an hour, 45 minutes or so on this. And this interesting aspect they found is that a lot of this archaic English actually that’s very poor grammar in a sense fits very well back in early modern English in a sense and many of these phrases too and things and it’s quite interesting. So they have this theory possibly of ministering angels helping do kind of an interim translation possibly earlier using early modern English and it’s another way of saying there’s no way Joseph could have done this with his understanding of vernacular on there and who knows if this is … There is a lot of pushback on this from different scholars, but it is something to keep our eyes on. It’s fascinating.

This early modern English was late 15th century to mid 17th century there, but it definitely gives a different bite on this poor grammar in a sense. Now actually there’s one interesting tidbit. Like I said, there’s some push back on some of these things and I’ll link to some of the pushbacks, so you can see the different arguments and things people make about some of these different approaches. But this, Dallin D. Oaks, BYU professor, specializing in English linguistics said this, and he wasn’t specifically addressing Skousen and Carmack, but he says “It is common for rural communities to be conservative in preserving some older forms of speech. Furthermore, some religious groups often deliberately preserve older language forms. By these measures, Palmyra and its surrounding area thus represented a prime region for the presence of many older linguistic forms because it was not only decidedly rural, but contained a substantial number of members of the Society of Friends … “, Quakers, as we know them, ” … whose speech even in normal everyday settings was highly influenced by older forms of English.”

So that could have been also some of that archaic coming through potentially. So, but like I said, usually there’s a lot of discussion about the process of the translation and they’ll use some different terms. So “loose control” or “tight control.” So what Skousen will be pointing to here is “tight control.” Joseph was really dictating this text that had been given to him through this interim ministering angel process in a sense there. “Loose control” would be Joseph using his agency essentially to create the words much more there, still through divine intervention, but in a different way. This is talking more about the dictation. If you actually look at how does it relate to what was on the actual plates, the plate text.

And I love what Brant Gardner did. He talked about these three different ways to think about it as this literal word for word there. And then a functional where Joseph basically converted what was there for us into understanding that we would appreciate and grasp with our language, and it had to do with what he had the ability to do. And then there’s this conceptual, which is really fascinating. It’s a kind of an expansive view. In fact, Blake Ostler wrote of this in 1987 I’ll link to it, but this expansionary theory of the Book of Mormon. And it’s got some solid foundation from one aspect. If you look at what Joseph did in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, when he looked at Moses and Enoch, we got these huge long chapters from a small little tiny part in Genesis that then became expansive.

And so it’s based on the original plate text essentially, but the Lord gave Joseph the authority to expand for the current modern day audience and teach through that. So very fascinating. So now Brant Gardner, he goes through here … oh, I do want to say say what Brant Gardner’s thought is. So he thinks that it’s a functional translation for the most part, but there are maybe some very literal aspects. The names for example, we get very good details that names are spelled out there. They’re ancient in character. I’m going to do a separate video on that at some point. There’s also these Hebraisms. Now there could be some influence of that from King James language of the Bible, but it’s not normal for Joseph to say “rod of iron.” He would say “iron rod.” So those kinds of things. But chiasmus specifically, he thinks those structures were on the plates and they were able to come through even with Joseph’s language. And then functional and then even some conceptual he gives some examples of how that could have also come about.

So I think it’s really fascinating and personally I’m fascinated by this idea of this archaic language that even if it wasn’t some earlier ministering angel, could Joseph himself have been inspired through some way? John 14:26 says that it’ll come back to our minds. The spirit can bring things to our remembrance, whatsoever the Lord has said to us. So could the Lord have given him this information? Maybe even in the preexistence. I want to just throw that out. I haven’t heard anyone talk about that. But for me, I’m wondering, could this be another sign? The Lord has given us all of these divine fingerprints or signatures as we have the book, the magic is the idea, just the production of it itself is the grand witness. But as you see all these things too it stacks up in a very interesting way.

Okay. So Brant Gardner does share this in his book. He says, “I hypothesize that mentalese … “, now he goes through some great detail in the book about what mentalese is and how this works and how it worked in the brain possibly, ” … or the pre-language of the brain, holds the answer to how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. According to this hypothesis, divine intervention implanted the plate text in Joseph’s brain in the brain’s native language.” Now here’s a footnote he put it in the book and this is why I wanted to put this on there. I thought it was interesting. He says “It is at this point, that Royal Skousen and I come closest in our descriptions of the translation process. He posits a divine translator giving the specific English to Joseph. I posit a divine translator giving Joseph an understanding of the plate texts.”

“We differ in that I see Joseph generating the English rather than the divine translator.” So kind of fascinating. Then it goes on to say about this, native pre-language. He says, “This process is actually quite similar to the way B. H. Roberts described the translation process: ‘The translation thought out in the seer’s mind may also have been reflected in the interpreters and held there until recorded, all of which would be incalculably helpful. But since the translation is thought out in the mind of this seer, it must be thought out in such thought-signs as are at his command, expressed in such speech forms as he is the master of.'” And this may be also why we get some of this 19th century revivalist language that comes about. And let me share a quote on that.

Okay, so here’s what Brant Gardner had to say about this. “The same process that primes Joseph to include new Testament language …”, I’ll talk about that in a minute, ” … for plate-text meaning explain the presence of phrases from contemporary religious revivals. As the generation of language moved from Joseph’s subconscious to his conscious awareness, it accessed Joseph’s available vocabulary and grammar. He knew the language common in contemporary revivals. The phrases were memorable and some of them have become nearly as memorable for modern readers of the Book of Mormon. Most speakers of a language find that they can reproduce very familiar phrases faster and with less effort than unfamiliar ones. Certain culturally common and oft-repeated phrases become stored in the memory as phrases; and when triggered by the need to express that meaning, the speaker almost automatically utters the entire phrase. This is the reason that cliches appear so readily.” Okay.

Now there’s been a lot of focus, like I said on translation. Lately, there was a conference that was held, and I will link to this, but through the Faith Matters Foundation, they held it up at Utah State, and they had all these scholars there. It was really interesting. Richard Bushman was there, Terryl Givens, just a bunch of different scholars talking about translation for a whole day. So I’m glad they recorded this and it was called New Perspectives on Joseph Smith and Translation and it was held in 2017 and I do love … I actually just recorded it, something that Terryl Givens said and talking about the kind of this dichotomy between loose control and tight control, about word-for-word versus Joseph trying to come up with the language.

And he says this, he says “In many ways we have created a false dichotomy that doesn’t serve us well.” Now he’s talking about a scholar here, he says, “Shleyemacher is correct, that translation is always constrained by the conceptual vocabulary of the interlocutor … “, which is the person translating, ” … then God could have been, or the Spirit could have been dictating to Joseph Smith, but would have been strictly limited by his own conceptual imagination.” So both ways, Joseph involved but also word-for-word from God or the Spirit. “And it seems to me that that kind of a conflation (merging of two ideas) is the only way you could explain Hebraisms on the one hand and what seemed to be 19th century colloquialisms (ordinary/familiar words or phrases) and motifs (themes or ideas) on the other.” Okay, so now I want to share some interesting couple of two slides here to really helpful signals of the fact that Joseph did seem to be involved here in coming up with this.

We can see it very clearly in the text. And these are two great examples. So if you look in 1 Nephi, so if you think about it, Nephi would be looking forward okay to Christ coming in 500 or 600 years out on there. But look at how, so if you look at 1 Nephi 15 verse 13 look at this. The current edition says, “the Messiah shall be manifested in body unto the children of man.” So that’s how Nephi would say it right, “he shall be manifested.” But look at what the original manuscript said in 1830 “the Messiah hath manifested himself in the body unto the children of men.” That would be Joseph. For him this is 1828, 29. He’s experienced … Christ has already come. So that would be something seeing Joseph’s maybe coming out, just this, the tense that he’s using and we see it again four chapters later, look at this.

The current edition says, “because they crucify the God of Israel.” Joseph’s original word said “because they crucified.” It had happened already, whereas Nephi is looking forward, right? That’s the tense change that happened. So really interesting. And then we see this in Gardner’s book. He brings this up. Alma 14:29 “A metaphorical phrase that depends on Joseph Smith’s culture: ‘ …fled from the presence of Alma and Amulek even as a goat fleeth with her young from two lions and thus they did flee from the presence of Alma and Amulek.’ The metaphor immediately communicates both the dangerous presence of predators and the response of the weaker animals. However, neither lions nor goats were native to ancient Mesoamerica. Therefore, this relationship between them would have been unavailable to generate the metaphor. The reference to other sheep relies on the New Testament context (John 10:16) , and a cultural familiarity with herding sheep.”

“Jesus is the good shepherd and brings His flock together. Because there were no sheep in the New World, Jesus must have communicated this information using culturally familiar imagery for his Nephite audience. Joseph’s translation, however, reserves the language more familiar to a New Testament audience.” These are called anachronisms. I did a whole video on the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon and I think it’s a great one to watch in addition to this. But I love the example from the Bible. The King James translators used candles and candlesticks for oil and lamps because they felt like there were no candles and candlesticks back in Jesus’ day, but there were in 1611 and this was an easier way for people to understand that concept. So it’s an anachronism in the Bible as an example, but it’s the same concept.

Okay, let’s talk about some critics say there were errors in the Bible of Joseph’s time, which is a 1769 version of the King James translation. So first of all, let’s talk about Doctrine and Covenants section 128:17. So it’s a verbatim quote of Malachi 4:5-6 and then Joseph says in verse 18, “I might have rendered a plainer translation to this, but it is sufficiently plain to suit my purpose as it stands.” So the words weren’t as critical as the meaning for Joseph. Brant Garner, said “Quotations of the KJV in the Book of Mormon is no guarantee that such KJV text is without error or is a precise match to what was on the plates, only that is sufficiently plain to communicate the message to be conveyed.”

Michael Ash said, “Latter-day Saints don’t believe in inerrant scripture. We don’t believe in the need for perfectly translated or dictated scripture to accept the text as the word of God (and from a scholarly perspective, we don’t believe that there is such a thing as a perfectly translated or dictated text). Any errors copied from the KJV into the same passages of the Book of Mormon have no bearing on the spiritual importance of the passages.” And to say they are errors, by the way, is a false premise. It’s based on a subjective assumptions essentially, in the first place. Also, other critics will point to changes that were made in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible that then were not changed back in the Book of Mormon and saying, “well this doesn’t, that doesn’t make sense. That means it was wrong in the Book of Mormon.” Well, Joseph’s learning line upon line and you remember the process he went through of the focus inspired revision of the Bible and he learned and grew from that and we do too. And he could have, he had the power to change.

He knew that the changes were there. He didn’t even go back and change them. He didn’t see the need to and he just figured you guys do the work. Just look, read it yourself and understand the change that happened there, but it doesn’t make anything incorrect or faulty, in that sense, it’s just the assumptions and understanding how to view this. Okay. Let’s talk about the New Testament phrases that appear in the Book of Mormon in the Old Testament period. This is a big challenge for a lot of critics of the Book of Mormon, particularly Evangelical Christians and such. They view this as one of their biggest reasons why they reject the Book of Mormon in a sense. Here’s Brant Gardner. He said, “I see the process of translating these passages as consisting of two parts.”

“The first is that there was a meaning on the plates that could be appropriately rendered in English. Then, Joseph’s familiarity with the New Testament passages primed his memory with the familiar phrases. Those familiar phrases were available and appropriate to the meaning Joseph understood and therefore became the way the plate text meaning was expressed in the English translation. Rusko Bourtchouladze explains how the brain can be primed for certain responses: ‘We retain knowledge that we have acquired on a particular occasion long after we have forgotten the episode itself. We experience priming in everyday life. A good idea pops up in our mind, unattached to any context or experience; we do not remember reading about it anywhere or discussing it with a colleague or a friend; and we assume that we have come up with it just now only later to realize that it was derived from specific experience. The unintentional plagiarism in music, art and literature, not to say science, may also result from priming.'”

“It’s important to understand that such priming occurs subconsciously. We simply have an idea or a phrase come to mind. The same circumstances that assured that we would have KJV language in the Book of Mormon dictated that similar concepts would be translated in phrases familiar from the KJV, even when the familiar phrases post-dated the plate text.” Okay. Now, Book of Mormon Central did a phenomenal job on this topic: Why Do New Testament Phrases Show Up in the Book of Mormon? And I want to show you there they had five or six different categories and then I’ll show you the sub categories. You can pause the screen to read on those.

But before I do that, I really love this to point out something about Joseph’s use of the Bible and I did a video also, one is on changes in the Book of Mormon text and then the other is on what is the Bible doing in the Book of Mormon? So again, some other ones to look at in relation to this video. But look at this screen here. “The idea that Joseph Smith opened a Bible, located and read from the Bible as he went along seems completely unlikely ,for several reasons.” Okay. The first is, “There is no evidence that he had his own Bible before the end of 1829.” Now, I would push back slightly on that just in the sense that he could have used one in the Hale home from, I’m sure Isaac Hale had one and also Peter Whitmer when he was in the Whitmer home. I’m sure he could’ve used those, but as far as Joseph, maybe not himself owning one. But these other ones are … “Eye witnesses such as Emma said that he used notebooks, notes or Bible, in dictating the English words of the Book of Mormon.”

“No witness or close associate involved in any way in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon ever claimed that Joseph had or used a Bible. No hostile observers ever report or suggest that Joseph had a Bible while translating. If using King James Bible, Joseph would have to have done extensive study and alterations of the text before dictating, due to the complex composite quotations, blending of texts, and sometimes extensive, but precise modifications made to the quote of biblical texts.” Some amazing things here. Joseph … there’s italics in the King James Bible where they put in English words to help with it, but they weren’t in the original text. But to help with the flow of the language. So in other words, on those italics, he was interacting with them and saying he viewed them as not as important because he knew that maybe they weren’t part of the original text from the Greek or the Hebrew, whatever, but that had been used by the King James translators to help with the flow.

And so it’s just interesting. Joseph statistically changed a lot of those, showing that whatever he saw, however he saw this process, he could see where maybe those italicized words were, which is just stunning to the mind. But it’s quite interesting. The other thing about this intertextuality and some of the complexity … Royal Skousen actually in his … I think it was him that did the presentation on this, he showed one verse in the Book of Mormon specifically, it was in Mosiah, and he showed this one verse that was saturated with biblical language, had four different phrases from four different places in the Bible, one in the Old Testament. It was just, it was, it boggles the mind. He said “you would have had to been, if you even had the Bible, this would have been crazy to go through.” So now, here is the part that Book of Mormon Central did on these New Testament phrases and it’s really fascinating.

So a lot of good … now it’s a great summary on different possibilities in addition to Joseph’s vernacular being the reason I think that’s probably one of the best cases as you can tell from the video here. And they talk about that too as the last thing, but I’m just going to show the main topics and then you can read the sub ones if you pause the screen. So, “the resurrected Jesus as the source of some of these similarities.” That’s the first one there. Okay. The second one, “similarities due to a common ancient source.” Okay. And just pause the screen if you want to read the subs on these. “Revelations to Nephite prophets as the source of the similarity.” Interesting. Now I love this one. In fact, I’m going to read the subs on this “Mormon and Moroni as the source of the similarity.”

“As Mormon in the fourth century A.D. abridged the historical Nephite records, he could have inserted words or phrases that Jesus introduced into Nephite usage.” Number two, “Hypothetically …”, I’ve never thought of this before. He says ” … it is possible that Mormon did not simply append the small plates of Nephi to the end of his plates, but instead copied the words of Nephi, Jacob, and others from the small plates onto new plates that he created. We do not know if this was the case, but if it was, Mormon could have used later New Testament type phrases from his day to make the early Nephite teachings more understandable for a future audience that he knew would have the Bible.” And remember he saw us, Mormon said … if you go and look, that aspect is there. “Some sections in the book of Ether were written by Moroni in the late fourth century A.D. as his own editorial insertions, so it should not be unexpected to find Christian language in these sections. It is also possible that Moroni inserted Christian language into other portions of Jaredite history as he summarized, contextualized, and interpreted its narratives.”

And the last is Joseph Smith. So this is “the translation process is the source of the similarity.” So this was the video we just did. Basically “Joseph Smith’s ordinary language, likely included some biblical expressions that were common in the early 1800s. Joseph Smith may have memorized or learned by heart some common New Testament passages, which the Spirit then called up from his mind as they were then woven into the translation, because they made good translational sense appropriate in that context.” Three, “the idea that Joseph Smith opened a Bible, located and read from the Bible as he went along, seems completely unlikely for several reasons”, and I’ve already shown you that detail.

And then four, “various lines of scriptural, linguistic and historical evidence suggest that Joseph Smith was not responsible for the English language of the translation, that it was instead revealed to him word for word.” That’s the Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack stuff that we were talking about earlier. Okay, so now one last quote from Brant Gardner in dealing with Jesus Christ Himself, the name Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon and in Old Testament times. So he says, “Perhaps the most obvious case of a functional equivalent comes in the use of ‘Jesus Christ’ in the Book of Mormon. The phrase is anachronistic in two ways. One, it is used in a given name plus a surname (like Joseph Smith), rather than as a name (Jesus), plus a title (the anointed one., Even without access to the original language, Jesus Christ as a name plus surname is incorrect. In antiquity, people had given names, but no surnames. When individuals needed to be differentiated, the biblical formula was the son or daughter of father’s name.”

Number two, “Christ is anachronistic for the time period and cultural background of the Book of Mormon. Christ is the anglicized version of the Greek word meaning anointed (christos). The Hebrew word for anointed is mashiah, anglicized as Messiah. Based on the connection to Hebrew religion and the time period of the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ is a functional equivalent for what should have been translated as Messiah or perhaps Jesus the Messiah. Nevertheless, while not as accurate as literal translation, it is still connected to the intent of the underlying text.” I thought that was a brilliant way to explain seeing the name Jesus Christ, which, like I said, a lot of Christians have a huge problem with this from the Old Testament period that we see that in the Book of Mormon.

Okay. I want to conclude with this. One of my favorite quotes on the Book of Mormon, President Benson. Well, this is Elder Benson right before he became the prophet. April 1984 conference. He says, “We do not have to prove the Book of Mormon is true. The book is its own proof. All we need to do is read it and declare it. The Book of Mormon is not on trial. The people of the world, including the members of the Church, are on trial as to what they will do with this second witness for Christ.” I just love that. Hope you enjoyed the video. Subscribe for more.

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Resources:

Books:

The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon by Brant Gardner

Videos: Fairmormon 2011 Conference, Brant Gardner – The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvVm9…

BYU Studies & Interpreter Foundation @ BYU Hinckley Center: Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack present “The Nature of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KfoS…

Faith Matters Foundation – New Perspectives on Joseph Smith and Translation (day long conference at Utah State University in 2017) – see link here to the playlist of all the sessions: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf_P…

Articles:

Seerhood, Pure Language and Sacred Translation – Fairmormon Transcript from Samuel Brown: https://www.fairmormon.org/conference…

The Book of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source, Blake Ostler in Dialogue: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-co…

Blake Ostler commenting on Expansion Theory (and updating thoughts in 2005) on timesandseason.org: https://www.timesandseasons.org/harch…

The Book of Mormon as a Communicative Act – Fairmormon 2016 Conference Transcript – Ben McGuire: https://www.fairmormon.org/conference…

Church Website – Gospel Topics Essay – Book of Mormon Translation: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/m…

Fairmormon Website – Main page for Book of Mormon Translation https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Bo…

Book of Mormon Central – Why Do New Testament Words and Phrases Show Up in the Book of Mormon: https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.or…

Answer to some KJV ‘errors’ in Book of Mormon at conflictofjustice.com: http://www.conflictofjustice.com/kjv-…

August 1997 Ensign article from David Seely – Joseph Smith Translation: Plain and Precious Things Restored https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s…

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.