The snail on the roof, the Lincoln Memorial, and the translation of the Book of Mormon

LDS Discussions, which is maintained by the pseudonymous "Mike" and is one of the more even-handed anti-Mormon sites out there, has a whole essay on the question of "Tight vs Loose Translation" of the Book of Mormon, defining the terms thus:

Tight translation: As outlined above by FAIR's use of Emma Smith’s quote above, a tight translation is where Joseph Smith is directly translating the Book of Mormon via the seer/peep stone in the hat word for word. The translation of the plates would appear on Joseph Smith’s seer/peep stone in the hat, and Joseph Smith would dictate them to his scribe. This method of translation is a literal one and does not afford Joseph Smith the ability to change or alter the words as the tight translation must be direct for the stone to reveal further words as we will see from the accounts of the translation.

​Loose translation: This method of translation would give Joseph Smith "inspiration" through revelation, which allowed Joseph Smith the freedom to dictate the text of the Book of Mormon through his own milieu, putting the text of the Book of Mormon in his own words. Effectively Joseph Smith would be given the general lessons and concepts through revelations, but it was then left to Joseph Smith to weave those into a story that could be understood in his time. Some have argued that this would be a revelation of “pure intelligence” where Joseph Smith was flooded with the story itself, some say Joseph Smith could see the actual Book of Mormon events in visions, and some say he got literal translations but was then free to make changes as he saw fit.

Mike's argument is that all eyewitness accounts of the translation support the "tight translation" theory: Joseph Smith saw a bit of text, read it out, made sure his scribe had copied it down correctly (including spelling), then saw the next bit of text, and so on. This implies that every word of the text was revealed, and that Smith played no more active or creative a role in the production of the text than did his scribes. A few aspects of the text -- for example, the use of unfamiliar words like cureloms and ziff, which were not understood by Smith but were faithfully copied down as received -- support this theory.

Overall, though, the English text of the Book of Mormon strongly implies a loose translation. It is full of anachronisms, historically problematic uses of the King James Bible, and 19th-century Protestant theology. The original text was also full of misspellings and grammatical errors, most of which have since been corrected. Smith himself also apparently felt at liberty to alter the revealed text in more substantial ways -- for example by inserting "the son of" in places where the first edition had portrayed Jesus as being God himself. All these issues constitute overwhelming evidence that, if the text of the Book of Mormon was indeed revealed, the revelation was filtered through the limited understanding of Joseph Smith, introducing countless errors and changes that were not in the original source text on the golden plates.

Mike argues that defenders of the Book of Mormon can't have it both ways: They can't say that the text was revealed word for word, as all eyewitnesses attest, and then turn around and say that problematic aspects of the text reflect Joseph Smith's own language and limited understanding.

I believe we can have it both ways. My own theory is that Joseph Smith experienced every word of the text as "given" or revealed -- that he was reading off what he saw, not consciously interpreting it or putting it in his own words -- but that what he saw was nevertheless substantially influenced and corrupted by his own understanding.

I briefly introduced this theory in my inaugural post here, "Lehi, Nephi, and the pillar of fire that "dwelt upon a rock": A case study of hard-to-define biblical parallels" (September 2023). I gave an example from my own experience as a dabbler in the art of remote viewing, in which one is given a string of numbers which have been assigned to a "target" about which one knows nothing and then attempts to perceive that target by psychic means. Later, the identity of the target is revealed, and the accuracy of the viewing can be assessed.

In the example I discussed there, I received and sketched an image of a sloping roof with dark shingles, with a very large snail shell on it. After the viewing, I checked the target image and found that it was indeed a photograph of a snail shell on a dark surface sloping in the direction indicated in my sketch -- but that the surface was rock, not a shingled roof. This was undeniably a "hit," an example of successful extrasensory perception -- the odds of my having seen a snail shell on a dark sloping surface by chance are effectively zero --  but the "shingled roof" aspect was an error. Did I see a dark sloping surface and then reason that it was most likely a shingled roof? No. I saw the roof -- including the opposite slope, with no snail on it -- just as clearly as I saw everything else. The whole thing was experienced as "given," with absolutely no sense that I was interpreting or expanding on what I saw. And yet, apparently, I was. The roof came not from the target image but from my own experience and expectations about the likely identity of dark sloping surfaces.

I recently read an even clearer example of this sort of thing from a much more professional remote viewer: Courtney Brown of the Farsight Institute, in his magnum opus, Remote Viewing: The Science and Theory of Nonphysical Perception. Brown is describing two different remote-viewing sessions in which, unbeknownst to him going in, the target was the same: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The first of the two sessions is very accurate with regard to location and environment. Descriptions of Washington, D.C. are very clear. Descriptions and sketches of various landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial) in Washington, D.C. are also clear. Descriptions and sketches of what appears to be the Ford Theater are quite good . . . . The session is also very accurate with regard to perceptions of the nature of the primary subject (a U.S. president). In this session I do not perceive the actual attack on President Lincoln, although I do report a mental despondency on the part of the President at the time of the assassination event.

The second of my two sessions for this target is also very accurate with regard to location and environment. Descriptions of Washington, D.C. are very clear. Descriptions of various landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial) in Washington, D.C. are also clear, and some of the sketches with identifying deductions are quite remarkable. (See figures 6.1, 6.2a, and 6.2b.) Descriptions and sketches of what appear to be the Ford Theater (or components of the Ford Theater) are quite good. However, I do not perceive the actual attack on President Lincoln.

This gibes with my own experience -- that the relative "importance" or salience of different aspects of the target seems to have no effect on remote viewing, and that often peripheral elements are perceived at the expense of the main target. Still, getting clear images of Washington, D.C., both times is impressive, given that this was part of an experiment with dozens of sessions, with targets ranging from an 18th-century naval battle to the largest crater on the Moon. Brown's perceptions of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial were so clear that they were chosen as cover illustrations for the paperback edition of the book. But one major problem, which Brown fails to mention, is that there was obviously no Lincoln Memorial at the time of Lincoln's assassination. This element of his viewing is a glaring anachronism.

Nevertheless, Brown perceived the Lincoln Memorial in direct low-level terms. It's not as if he got a general impression of Washington and then filled in the details based on his own knowledge -- not consciously, at any rate. Here are the figures mentioned in the text I have quoted above:

In Brown's notes, D means "deduction" -- in both senses of that word. Viewers are supposed to focus on low-level sensory-type information and avoid making logical inferences, but when inferences present themselves, they're supposed to jot them down as a way of getting them out of their system ("deducting" them) to minimize their contaminating effect. So for the Lincoln Memorial, what Brown perceived was the shape in the sketch, plus the ideas of "smooth surface, heavy, stone, short, angular." From these direct perceptions came the deductions "Lincoln Memorial, tomb, monument." Likewise, "Washington Monument" is a deduction from the perceptions "stone, heavy, thick, flat sides."

If Brown's sketch of the Washington Monument looks a bit short, and if "thick" seems an odd way of characterizing the structure, that's actually a point in his favor. Though Brown doesn't mention it, at the time of Lincoln's assassination, the Washington Monument was still under construction and looked like this:

So in these sessions we have a combination of impressive "revealed" content -- the Washington Monument not in its familiar form but as it appeared in 1865 -- combined with the obvious error of a Lincoln Memorial already existing before Lincoln had even died. The Lincoln Memorial might have crept into Brown's vision because it is a standard D.C. landmark, or because it is conceptually related to the idea of Lincoln's assassination, but in any case it was clearly inserted into the picture by Brown's mind with its 20th-century perspective, not by the target itself.

Nevertheless, the two perceptions -- the historically correct Washington Monument (analogous to Joseph Smith's nailing some little-known Hebraism) and the howler of an 1865 Lincoln Memorial (analogous to quoting Deutero-Isaiah or whatever) -- were received by Brown in the same way, with no way of distinguishing the true vision from the corrupted one. It was me both times, baba, me first and second also me.

While Joseph Smith's seership was obviously not the same thing as modern military-style remote viewing, my working hypothesis is that they had a lot in common, and that even if the entire text of the Book of Mormon was directly perceived by Joseph Smith, as if written by the finger of God, it was nevertheless filtered through his mind and compromised by his own understanding and mental associations -- most notably by the fact that his was a mind positively saturated with the King James Version of the Bible.

The question, then, is why. I have been using words like corrupted and compromised, but this was the way the Lord chose to have the text revealed. He could presumably have given the plates to a scholar, provided a Rosetta stone, and had the book translated in a more straightforward way, but he chose to do it through seership instead, ensuring the production of a hybrid work with massive 19th-century influences. This must have been optimal for his purposes. There is great value in having an accurate record of ancient religious thoughts and practices, but, to coin a phrase, "a Bible, a Bible, we have got a Bible." The Book of Mormon is something different. As Ezra Taft Benson said, "The Nephites never had the book; neither did the Lamanites of ancient times. It was meant for us."