Evidence Sixty-Four:
“Complexity and Accuracy in the Book of Mormon, Despite the Amazing Speed of Translation”©
Today I want to acquaint you with a wonderful article that was published about a year ago regarding the time it took to translate the Book of Mormon and some of the interesting insights that knowledge brings to us. It was written by John (Jack) W. Welch. He is the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU. He was editor of BYU Studies Quarterly for thirty years, discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, and has been a major influence in the Church to promote ongoing Book of Mormon research and writing. His article is: John W. Welch, “Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon: ‘Days [and Hours] Never to be Forgotten,’” BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018):11-50.
Professor Welch has long been interested in the length of time it took Joseph and his scribes to translate the Book of Mormon. This study brings the major findings of that ongoing work together for the Church. He of course also utilizes the research and writing of a number of others in the field, particularly the three-decade-long work of Royal Skousen, who has been working on what is known as “The Critical Text Project,”–Skousen’s effort to produce an accurate and critical (meaning annotated) text of the Book of Mormon.
Professor Welch is only one of many over the years who has tried to pin down how long it took Joseph Smith to translate the book, and he briefly reviews that information at the beginning of his article. So the reader will understand, although Joseph Smith received the plates from Moroni in September 1827, the bulk of translation took place much later. That is because he originally translated 116 pages, but that manuscript was apparently stolen. So the work resumed in earnest in the months of April, May, and June of 1829. Joseph and Emma were living in Harmony, Pennsylvania at the time. Emma’s parents lived in Harmony and the couple lived with them for a time before purchasing a small home. Emma helped translate just a very few pages. But Oliver Cowdery arrived on 5 April 1829, offering to help. He and Joseph began translating on 7 April 1829, and the project was finished at the end of June that same year.This is well known information, so most researchers have begun with this base of approximately 85 days or nearly three months as the period when the book was translated. Although others have whittled the time down some, Welch has studied the period extensively. He knows the days Joseph was traveling, engaged in other business, and otherwise preoccupied. Consequently he subtracts eleven days from the total, leaving seventy-four for actual translation. However, he adds “there must have been many days during that time period that were only partially available for translation work.”(1) So, it may have been significantly shorter than seventy-four days.
The next important fact and question is, how long was the book and could Joseph have accomplished this task in that short time? The original 1830 Book of Mormon was 269,510 words long, on an estimated 608 pages of manuscript. [“Estimated,” because only 28% of the original manuscript is still in existence, the remainder was destroyed by water damage, or is unknown.] To translate those 269,510 words, averages out to about 3,743.2 words a day for 74 days. It turns out that many words occupies about eight pages of the printed book, so Joseph would have to produce eight to nine pages of manuscript each day.(2) Welch asks, is this possible?
Here is how the process worked: Joseph would read about 20 words at a time to Oliver Cowdery, who then wrote the dictated portion. When he was finished, he read it back to Joseph. In the process corrections were made–and there were many–mostly errors related to hearing the text articulated, such as the difference between chaste and chased, or leaving off an s in a word that was supposed to be plural.(3) Grant Hardy observes:
It appears that Cowdery was listening intently to Smith’s dictation and corrections, while Smith was equally attentive to Cowdery’s reading the words back to him, enough so that both men were catching differences in plurals and verb endings. Evidence from O [original manuscript] suggests that they were expending considerable effort to get the words exactly right.(4)
With the corrections made, the process continued.
The intricacy with which Welch works out the various possibilities of translating 10, 15, or 20 words a minute, over 3 to 8 hours per day, shows the general feasibility of the task within the time period. However, when experiments were tried with adult classes, they quickly discovered the mental difficulty of close attention to listening, writing, reviewing, and correcting over long periods and came away with a greater appreciation for the diligence and stamina of the brethren even if they translated as little as three or four hours a day at a slow pace.
We are also fairly certain of the order in which the Book of Mormon was translated. The lost 116 pages were taken from Nephi’s abridgment of Lehi’s story, which was apparently part of the Large Plates of Mormon, which also included the books of Mosiah through part of Mormon. So, when Joseph and Oliver resumed translating in April 1829, they almost certainly began with Mosiah and translated the goodies on the Small Plates of Nephi during the end of the translation. Knowing the order of translation, the approximate number of days to translate, and having some idea that it required about eight pages a day, Welch can provide an educated guesstimate of what materials were translated when and provides a helpful day-by-day chart in the article. Interestingly, the content of the material being translated matches up well with several known dates where something in the Book of Mormon influenced external events such as the baptism of Joseph and Oliver, and their reception of the Priesthood. The content also matches up reasonably well with some of the phraseology and thought content of the thirteen revelations which were given to Joseph Smith during the period of the translation. That is, some things in the Book of Mormon are reflected in those revelations.(5)
Given this background I want to share, just one more of the many significant insights growing out of this important study. “Knowing how quickly it was dictated,” Welch writes, “amplifies the significance of many kinds of details, helping astute readers notice and value literary features that would otherwise go unappreciated.”(6) Here is his example:
...in Alma 36:22, Alma quotes exactly twenty-two words from Lehi as found in 1 Nephi 1:8. Knowing that the passage in Alma was translated in Harmony [Pennsylvania] in April, perhaps about April 24, while the Lehi text was not supplied until June, perhaps about June 5 in Fayette [New York], might be relevant to how those passages and many other instances of complex intertextuality are read.(7)
I think Welch understates his case. My goodness, talk about complexity and accuracy despite the amazing speed of translation! In late April 1829, the story of Alma quoting exactly twenty-two words from Lehi is placed in the book more than a month earlier than the translated account of Nephi actually giving those words. Yet, to the reader of the Book of Mormon the 1 Nephi material appears before Alma and the sequence is chronological and feels natural. However, the translation of these two texts was exactly the reverse! Dan Peterson’s recent reaction was, “Not bad for a 'writer' who is said never to have consulted the material already produced before he commenced a new day of dictation.”(8)
But the evidence grows, because you have nearly the exact case with material in 3 Nephi 8. Here the story describes the destruction which occurred at the time of the Savior’s crucifixion. And according to the account it fulfills some prophecies of Nephi found in 1 Nephi 19. The Nephi material was recorded a month later that the 3 Nephi 8 text!
So, either we are making a case for the phenomenal memory of Joseph Smith with two very similar examples, or we are seeing a translation in the manner in which Joseph Smith described it –“by the gift and power of God.”(9)
Here is a gem from Jack Welch summarizing the perspective this kind of information gives to the student of the Book of Mormon:
At the same time, the feat of bringing forth the Book of Mormon within its tight time frame increases appreciation for the achievement of the Prophet Joseph Smith, which can, in turn, increase awe and reverence for God and the word of God. As Elder Maxwell once observed, “One marvel is the very rapidity with which Joseph was translating.” I would add that we should note the marvel of perceiving and vocalizing the text, line after line, with no time for research, for collocating scattered scriptural phrases, for keeping track of numerous threads, for developing an array of characters and their stylistic voices, or for composing coherent accounts.”(10)
I say, Amen, and thank God for Joseph Smith.
Let’s think together again, soon.
Notes:
1. John W. Welch, “Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon: ‘Days [and Hours] Never to be Forgotten,’” BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018):32. Regarding possible translation between the loss of the 116 pages and April of 1829, Welch writes, "There is no indication from Joseph Smith that he translated anything besides the lost manuscript pages before April 7." [Welch, 13, n. 5.]
2. Welch, “Timing the Translation,” 22, 31, n. 51. Dan Peterson going with a 60 day translation period, writes: “Using the figure of sixty dictation days, my calculation: 269,510 words / 60 days = approximately 4,492 words dictated per day. Nearly nine pages in the current standard English edition of the Book of Mormon daily — 8.85, to be precise.
3. Grant Hardy, “Textual Criticism and the Book of Mormon,” in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources, edited by Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft, 45-6, 52, 57, n. 39. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
4. Hardy, “Textual Criticism,” 57. Hardy points to another “interesting evidence for oral dictation” of the manuscript and brings two important things to light. He gives one instance found in a quotation from the Biblical book of Isaiah. It occurs in P [printer’s manuscript] at 2 Nephi 23:14. “Cowdery apparently copied P directly from O (which is no longer extant for this passage) where he had transcribed a phrase from Isaiah 13:14 as “it shall be as the chaste row.” At some later point Cowdery realized his error and after crossing out chaste, inserted chased above the line.” What is striking to me is that here in an Isaiah quotation, which anti-Mormons claim is evidence of plagiarism on the part of Joseph Smith, we find evidence the manuscript was dictated rather than copied from the Bible. See Hardy, 57, n. 39.
5. Welch, “Timing the Translation,” 33-37. I shared this data with an 82-year-old friend of mine who is a pretty sharp cookie. He almost cut me off to ask, “How important is all this information relative to the life changing message and doctrine in the book?” I think he was a bit surprised to hear me say, “In that light it isn’t important." "However," I went on, "I believe knowing these kinds of things may help us appreciate and value the book and its message even more." He understood my point and my interest.
6. Ibid, 41.
7. Ibid.
8. Dan Peterson, “Notes from 'Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon' (1)" 4 January 2020, on Peterson’s website, Sic Et Non, at: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/
9. Welch, “Timing the Translation,” 42.
10. Ibid., 44.
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