Mormon Book Reviews released a new podcast yesterday titled "New Approaches to Joseph Smith." You should definitely watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u9-6k0k0Y4
In my view, it makes a big difference to see how God prepared Joseph Smith from his youth for his future role as translator and prophet, instead of the narrative that Joseph was an ignorant farm boy who said a prayer out loud.
As we've discussed before, Joseph himself said the Restoration started when he was a young boy. His brush with death through his leg surgery and recovery made him a religious seeker, as he explained in his 1832 history.
For additional material, see
https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2024/09/joseph-smith-early-years.html
and
https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2024/09/the-embarrassed-narrative-and-sith.html
From Joseph's experience, we each learn that our own spiritual development and relationship with God is directly linked to our desires and the effort we employ to seek God. Which is what the scriptures have said all along.
This is also important for understanding Joseph as a translator, as he and Oliver said. IOW, he didn't merely read words that appeared on the stone-in-the-hat (SITH), but he actually translated the engravings on the plates, as the Lord instructed him, using the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates (D&C 10:41).
_____
Related to this, I uploaded another annotation of a chapter in the Book of Mormon, in this case Alma 12.
https://www.mobom.org/bm-kjv-and-je-alma-12
and here:
https://dailyjonathanedwards.blogspot.com/2025/01/alma-12-annotated.html
If you'd like the Word version, which is easier to follow because the footnotes are at the end of each page, just email me at lostzarahemla@gmail.com and I'll email it to you.
You can see all the annotated chapters here:
https://www.mobom.org/jonathan-edwards
It's cool to see how Joseph employed his own vocabulary and knowledge to translate the plates "after the manner of his language."
Plus, seeing the connections with Jonathan Edwards expands the text considerably, just like seeing the connections with the Bible does.
No comments:
Post a Comment