project mayhem

just finished reading the new mormon challenge. here are some thoughts about the last two remaining chapters...

finley's critique of lds scholars seeking out hebraisms in the book of mormon had some good points and some huge stretches. i especially found his biblical source for nahom to be quite a stretch. i am not too sure about hebraisms in the book of mormon myself. i fidn them interesting, but some of them (especially sentance structure) don't fit my view of the book's translation. i see the book of mormon more as an ancient text put into joseph smith's words. while this view doesn't necessarily fit the descriptions of the process specualted by some of the witnesses, it does fit the 'official' description of the translation process found in d&c 9:8,9.

i found shepherd's article about translation and pseudotranslation (a fraudulant translation) a very interesting read. it was odd though that he never referred to blake ostler's the book of mormon as a modern expansion of an ancient source which nicely welds the two idea of translation and pseudotranslation together. if i can find an online version of this article i'll be sure to post it. it's one of the best articles i've read about the origin of the book of mormon. while shepherd concluded (though stressing it was not definitie) that the book of mormon was a pseudotranslation, i loved this quote of his at the end. "...the book of mormon is the most complex, ambitious, and influential pseudotranslation that the world has ever seen or is, indeed, ever likely to see." and he finishes the article with "...joseph smith was not content to lightly rework and paraphrase existing scripture. instead, armed with the courage of his considerable convictions, joseph smith set out ot fashion his own scripture, creating for himself in the book of mormon a monument to his work as paraphraser and prophet."

i want to jump on to another book...either farm's the temple in time and eternity or another book which i have not yet decided. first i gotta finish the book of mormon. i'm in the end of 3rd nephi and wanted to finish the book by new years so that i can start afresh with the new year to follow the gospel doctrine class's lessons.