Roberts and Bushman on Book of Mormon English
Speculative comments with respect to the English usage.
Latter-day Saint apologists have been going back toward familiarization rather than foreignization as a translation philosophy. Rather than denying nineteenth-century parallels, Latter-day Saint scholarship is returning to the observation made by B. H. Roberts at the beginning of the twentieth century. After commenting on the technology of translation, Roberts suggested that “there can be no doubt, either, that the interpretation thus obtained was expressed in such language as the Prophet could command, in such phraseology as he was master of and common to the time and locality where he lived.” Smith read the words in the stones, but the language necessarily came from his own provincial culture to enable his nineteenth-century readers to understand it. [
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Neither B. H. Roberts nor Richard Bushman studied Book of Mormon English usage very much. Roberts did not thoroughly categorize and analyze the syntax, grammar, and vocabulary of the text; neither did Bushman. They were unsure of their conclusions on translation and the English usage of the text. Roberts did not express any uncertainty, however, since he wrote “there can be no doubt.” Because he had not studied the matter in-depth, the conclusion he reached was speculative, and it turned out to be wrong.
Indeed, there are many textual examples that disprove linguistic derivation from nineteenth-century provincial culture. For instance, “but if” meaning ‘unless’ (mh0319) did not come from Joseph Smith’s own provincial culture, nor did the impersonal, simple dative expression “it supposeth me” (wm0102, jb0208, aa5411; me is an indirect object in these expressions, not a direct object). The former was obsolete by 1600 and the latter is language from Late Middle English.
I have posted a brief study of grammar that B. H. Roberts objected to. [
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