1069: Dan Vogel - The Book of Mormon as “Revelation” Instead of “Translation” Pt. 2
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2019
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Continuing our discussion with preeminent Joseph Smith historian Dan Vogel, we dive deep into explaining the authorship of the Book of Mormon including these topics:
- Nephi/Moroni confusion
- Book of Mormon Geography and the Hill Cumorah
- Limited Geography Theory
- The Nahom apologetic defense of The Book of Mormon
- Instances of Chiasmus
- Blake Ostler’s “Loose Translation” or Expansion Theory
- The Movement of the modern Mormon church in 2019 to refer to The Book of Mormon as a “revelation” instead of a “translation”
- Joseph’s motivations and pious fraud theory
- Dan's theory on Joseph Smith’s polygamy
Transcript
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| 0:35.1 | So the church in fact is moving towards this interpretation of the Book of Mormon being a |
| 0:55.8 | revelation, not a translation. I have a recording of Spencer Flumman from the Maxwell Institute |
| 1:04.1 | trying to give his best apologetic response to some doubters and in that he calls the Book of Mormon |
| 1:09.7 | Joseph Smith's grandest revelation again which is code word for it not being an actual translation. |
| 1:16.8 | And you know we have other people reporting that the church intentionally is going to be moving |
| 1:21.2 | towards this this type of language going forward. This and you mentioned Blake Osler and his |
| 1:30.1 | what they call it the loose translation theory that Joseph Smith basically is just doing his best. |
| 1:37.9 | He's not literally translating word for word but instead he's got you know he's seeing things in |
| 1:45.1 | the stone and he's being told these stories but he's got his own language and his own culture |
| 1:51.1 | and somehow the Book of Mormon isn't really a translation. It's Joseph channeling maybe not even |
| 1:58.7 | using the plates but just channeling his best attempt to write down what he's seeing in his mind |
| 2:05.2 | that God's giving to him as revelation. What do you think about that theory? You said that's the way |
| 2:12.2 | the church should go. That's the way you would go. If somebody's trying to make sense of whether this |
| 2:18.5 | is actually authentic, whether this is is really based on actual historical figures this Book of Mormon, |
| 2:26.7 | how reasonable is that of a theory given that you already admit to have a secular |
| 2:34.0 | scientific worldview? What would you counsel somebody who just wants to know what really happened? |
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