Wednesday, January 02, 2019

TV Tropes in the Book of Mormon



One of the more interesting and unexpected by-products of the tech boom is how much more technically aware people have become in their media consumption. Take special effects for example. Green screen effects that would’ve wowed audiences in past generations are today easily spotted and considered cheap and clumsy.

The same can be said for story-telling techniques. With the proliferation of media channels, ham-fisted clichés in scripts (such as all bombs being defused with one second left on the timer) are quickly noticed. In fact, many comedy films will spoof these tropes as a way of showing just how phony such situations are.

These tropes can even be found in written material. Imagine a story where the document is supposed to sound archaic. Many times, writes will lapse into what TVTropes.org called “Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.” Here’s their explanation:
Be the tale set in glorious 1300s Scotland or vexing 1840s Cardiff, appropriately "old-fashioned" English shalt if based on the archaic King James Bible. Thine formula is simple: addeth thou "-eth" and "-est" to random verbs, scattereth thou silent Es like the leaves of autumne, bandyeth about the words "thee", "thou", "thine", "doth", "hast", and "forsooth", reverseth 'pon every other occasion thine noun-verb order, and strewth, thou doth be the next Billy Shakespeare!1
I bring all this up because it became relevant after an ongoing conversation I had with a couple of Mormon missionaries. The young men had asked me to read 3 Nephi 11, as they found that chapter particularly moving. I went ahead and read the entire book of 3 Nephi to make certain I had the full context of the book. But in so doing, a glaring pattern emerged: over and over again, I kept reading the phrase “it came to pass.” The phrase appears fifteen times in chapter one alone! Moreover, the phrase wasn’t being used correctly. In the King James Bible, “it came to pass” was used as bridge to connect the prior narrative to the next section after some portion of time had elapsed, such as in 1 Kings 18:1 where it says “And it came to pass after many days…” In 3 Nephi, the phrase is being used sometimes for the immediate reaction of Nephi to an event that is now happening. The phrase just sticks out like a sore thumb.

This made me a bit more curious, though. If you go the online version of the Book of Mormon at LDS.org, you can search for the phrase “came to pass” (in quotes) and it will show the phrase is used 1824 times in the Book of Mormon. Compare that to the King James Bible, where the phrase is used 456 times in a work that is three times as long! That’s about a 1200% increase in frequency—which makes it kind of a tell that the phrase falls more into the trope category than it does appropriate translation.

The Mormon Response

BYU Studies, however,  thinks this proves Joseph Smith was a better translator than the King James translators. At this page, they created a chart mapping the frequency of the phrase “it came to pass” from each book in the BOM. They then write:
Some readers wonder why these words occur so often in the Book of Mormon compared with the Bible. Actually, the Hebrew word wayehi is translated in the King James Version of the Bible as "it came to pass," but it is also translated as "it happened, came, had come, became, arose, was, now," and so forth. Therefore, what was an extremely common phrase in the Bible appears to be less so because it was translated into various phrases instead of a single one. Apparently, Joseph Smith was quite consistent in translating it with the phrase "it came to pass" every time.2
Here's the problem, though. The Hebrew וַיֶּ֑ה (wayehi ) would never have occurred in the original texts of the Book of Mormon at all. The book itself claims to have been written in reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics that were altered according to the language of the Nephites at that time. (Mormon 9:32). Mormon goes on to write that “none other people knoweth our language; and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof” (Mormon 9:34). So the standard grammar of the Hebrew wayehi doesn’t apply. It’s the translation where we are to judge.

The word wayehi literally translates to “and it was.” If that was the phrase that appeared over and over in the BOM, then perhaps the above defense would have some validity. But translators are intentionally choosing to use the phrase “it came to pass” to denote a passage of time. In other words, if the translators were to translate wayehi only and exclusively into “it came to pass,” it would be bad translating. But since it was God who supposedly interpreted the reformed Egyptian language to Joseph Smith, revealing the meaning of each word to him, it would mean that God was guilty of  bad translation.

The missionaries I spoke with didn’t seem that bothered with the problem of the “Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe” trope appearing in the Book of Mormon. Of course, that isn’t the only historically problematic thing about the work. To me, it’s pretty clear that BYU Studies is trying to impose damage control. We can apply Ockahm’s Razor to this instance. The best explanation for the overuse of “it came to pass” is Joseph Smith wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand how that language is properly used. He relied on the “Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe” trope to try and make his audience believe what he had written should be accepted as archaic.

References

1. “Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.” TV Tropes, TV Tropes, http://www.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe. Accessed 2019-01-02
2. "134 - ‘It Came to Pass’ Occurrences in the Book of Mormon.” BYU Studies, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 10 Nov. 2017, http://www.byustudies.byu.edu/charts/134-it-came-pass-occurrences-book-mormon. Accessed 2019-01-02.

Tuesday, January 01, 2019

Uncovering the Hidden Riches of Christian History



People take pride in their heritage. It’s part of who they are and how they understand themselves. Our family traditions, the foods we eat, our shared celebrations and habits become valuable to us and help define us. The English hold parades on St. George’s Day and Americans will come together to celebrate the Fourth of July.

In school we are taught about our heritage. Americans learned about people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln--and significant events like the Continental Congress and the Civil War. Any Greek can tell you about Socrates or Alexander the Great. The French learn the exploits of Charlemagne and the theories of Rosseau.

But what about our Christian heritage?

Shouldn’t we as Christians pass to our children our spiritual heritage with the same importance and fervor as we give our cultural heritage? Any American who doesn’t know the Fourth of July is America’s birthday is considered uninformed. But how much do you know about the events that helped believers better understand and grow closer to God? What are their stories? How did they survive and even thrive in the face of brutal persecutions? Just what was the Council of Nicaea or the Great Schism? What made Luther nail his complaints to that Wittenberg church and how did our church fathers answer the deadly heresies that threatened the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints?

These are important stories to tell. That’s why the Come Reason Podcast has launched a series taking you on a journey of exploration--uncovering remarkable stories and discovering incredible insights into some of the most significant people and events that helped shaped our Christian faith into the world-transforming force it became.

Did you know the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ theology was examined and defeated by the early church councils? Or that most of the objections raised by today’s new atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris were answered by a man who lived 1600 years ago?

There is so much of our past that we’ve neglected, and so much we can learn from those who went before us.  Join me at the beginning of this new year as we go on a treasure hunt to discover the Hidden Riches of Christian History. Here’s the first installment.

Series #1: Eleven Breaking into the Upside-Down


The first Christians were part of a world that was so different from our own that we would hardly recognize it. Not only did they battle persecution and discrimination, but the very values we now take for granted — like individuals being equal — were considered strange and dangerous. Rome saw the teachings of Christianity as a threat to their culture and they were right. The eleven apostles took the Gospel of Jesus and broke through the upside-down culture of ancient Rome to establish a new way of thinking, paying for it with their blood.