Hello everyone, Marie Kent here. Yes, we're going to get to part two of the second lecture on faith because we all know that we have questions that need to be answered, and Joseph Smith is the guy to answer them.

But yeah, about that, many thanks to the comment section at my book of Mormon podcast.com, I had a vague idea.

There were theories swirling around about the possibility that these

lectures were primarily written by the one and only, Sidney Rigdon, Joseph's super best friend

during the Kirtland years. Now, I know there are thoughts and opinions, and now there are

points of contention. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'll address that on the show.

But today, though, I want to talk about language.

Every once in a while, Bryce and I get so swept up in the absolute joy that it is to read all

these amazing texts that we forget how different a time it was back then. Things that make

complete sense in 1834 are lost in the sands of time, and today those same words sound downright

silly. Friend of the show, Jason, dropped me an email, gently calling us out. I could summarize,

but he explains it best. Here's what he said. A small historical point. I'm going to sort of

defend a Mormon writing. You guys mocked Smith for invoking science to describe theology, and I grant you freely, had someone tried to make that claim today, they would certainly deserve some pushback. The tricky thing here is that this was written in the 1830s. As Bryce himself recently observed on naked Mormonism, word meanings sometimes change over time, and

the word science is a great example of that. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the English

word science was used quite loosely, more like the German word Wiesenshaft, literally

wisdom craft or art. So this sometimes creates issues for translators of German texts

from that era. Science is often how Wiesenschaft is translated in text today, like say from Friedrich Nietzsche.

He has a book and a concept called Frolic Wiesenschaft, which most translators render as the gay science.

But of course, it has nothing to do with our 21st century notion of

gay, and he doesn't mean science in the sense of scientists in white lab coats and beakers.

That's why some translators opt for joyful wisdom, but there are textual reasons I won't get into

here why other translators stick with the gay science, even though joyful wisdom

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