Joseph Smith's Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism

321 Pages·2020·22.41 MB·English

by  Samuel Brown

Joseph Smith’s Translation

Joseph Smith’s
Translation
The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism
SAMUEL MORRIS BROWN
1
3
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ISBN 978– 0– 19– 005423– 6
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
I dedicate this book to my wife, Kate Holbrook, who makes my efforts at
translation worthwhile.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Chronology xi
Key Abbreviations Used in Footnotes xiii
Introduction: Language, Time, and the Human Cosmos 1
Nineteenth- Century Contexts 4
Smith’s Goals and Aspirations 7
Implications 11
SECTION 1 CONTEXTS
1. The Quest for Pure Language 19
Language and Its Origins 21
The Sacred Pictogram 29
Joseph Smith on Language 31
Conclusion 48
2. The Nature of Time 51
Time in History 54
Flattening Time 57
The Primordium and Historylessness 59
The Saints and the Collapse of Time 61
Life in Yon Time 69
The First and Eternal Theology 74
Time and Space 76
Conclusion 78
3. Human and Divine Selves 81
Nineteenth- Century Selves 83
Smith’s Modernist Sensibilities 89
The Modern Prison of Individualism 96
Escape Routes from Individual Isolation 97
Conclusion 120
SECTION 2 TEXTS
4. The Task of the Book of Mormon: To Save the Bible, First You Must
Kill It 127
The Bible in Crisis 130
viii Contents
The Gold Bible 132
The Problems of Language 135
Transmitting the Bible 137
Canon and Completeness 141
The Acts of Translation 144
Self- Interpreting Scripture 146
Saving Evidential Christianity 150
Evidence in a Modern Age: The Problem of Miracles 155
Getting from Bible to Church 158
Conclusion 160
5. Rereading the Bible: Joseph Smith’s New Translation 163
Taxonomy of Smith’s Bible Translations 164
Smith’s Bible Timeline, 1829–1 833 166
Context and Competition 170
Expanding Smith’s Bible Translation 173
Interpretation 183
Marvelous Literalism and the Metaphysics of Reading 185
Conclusion 190
6. The Egyptian Bible and the Cosmic Order 193
Egypt in America 195
Immediate Contexts and Continuities 197
Overview of the Texts 199
Themes of the Egyptian Bible 211
Secularity and the Egyptian Bible 229
Conclusion 231
7. The Transcendent Immanent Temple 233
A Brief History of Temples 235
The Harmony of the Cosmos 246
Divine Anthropology in the Temple Endowment 248
The Right Name of Things 252
That Which Must Not Be Spoken 256
Living the Temple 260
The Immanent- Transcendent God 263
A God Split in Two (or More) 265
Conclusion 269
Epilogue 271
Bibliography 275
Index 295
Acknowledgments
Undergraduate theoretical syntax courses from Samuel Epstein and Noam
Chomsky taught me to wonder systematically about the structures of language.
While I did not pursue linguistics formally after college, I have ever been grateful
for their influence on the care and rigor of my thinking. Those two scholars are
among the most consummately intellectual people I have ever met.
This book grew out of conversations with colleagues and friends, most prom-
inently Jared Hickman. During the writing of In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph
Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death and its kindred projects, I was
impressed by the extension of the principle of metaphysical correspondence in
early Latter-d ay Saint thought and the sense in which translation as a source of
scriptural texts mirrored translation as a process by which humans became as-
similable to the divine presence. This juxtaposition called out for an explana-
tion that could deal with the deep connections of these two modes of translation.
Jared and I discussed these questions at length from our respective intellectual
traditions and even for a time contemplated a coauthored book on the topic.
While Jared and I interpret many of these questions differently, he has taught me
much over the many years of our close and stimulating friendship.
I am also grateful to the many friends and colleagues who have improved this
work, often through careful and wise reading of drafts. I specifically and alpha-
betically thank Michael Austin, Jacob Baker, Phil Barlow, Diann Brown, Spencer
Brown, Richard Bushman, Zachary Gubler, Grant Hardy, Michael Haycock, Kate
Holbrook, Robin Jensen, Jason Kerr, and John Durham Peters. Jana Riess, John
Turner, and James Egan led the pack in their thorough comments on the entire
manuscript. I also thank the able young scholars who have helped me as research
assistants, including Nicholas Shrum, Brady Winslow, and Brett Dowdle. I thank
The Faith Matters Foundation for funding much of the work of my research
assistants. I thank Cynthia Read and her expert staff at Oxford University Press
for their consistent support and excellent insights.
I thank the editors of Church History for allowing me to incorporate revised
material originally published in their journal. Chapter 6 uses and revises my
“Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden,”
Church History 78:1 (March 2009): 26– 65, which I explored in a different key in
chapter 5 of my In Heaven as It Is on Earth. Some portions of chapter 1 update
and expand material from aspects of those same works.