Comments on: Gilgamesh and the JST (etc.)

By: Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:51:00 +0000

Ronan,

Thanks for the shout out.

By: john f.

john f. — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:49:07 +0000

(But I realize the BoM is only tangential to your focus here, which is the JST. As SMB put it, JS was up to more than just filling in gaps in his work with the JST; he was joining the seers as a peer to restore what had been lost. Since this is what JS apparently really believed he was doing, even a non-believer should be able to acknowledge the fundamental difference between his efforts and Mitchell’s.)

By: john f.

john f. — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:39:57 +0000

In other words, we can already conclude — as you love to do! — that there was a lot of embellishment that occured in the text as we now have it by virtue of this process even assuming that Joseph Smith translated ancient characters word-for-word in a literal translation. We have to look no further than Mormon and Moroni, who fit nicely into your process as either the Redactors (which we know they were, because they were merely summarizing large passages from other records, e.g. most of the material in Alma); or they might have even played the role of creating a single combined text from material already redacted by others.

By: john f.

john f. — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:35:17 +0000

Ronan, I think the value of this study is more in the parallel up to but not including Mitchell and Smith. That is, people should know about the evolution of the Bible, as you have described it, with the steps you laid out, i.e. from history to mythology to written versions (JEDP) to edited version (Redactor) to earliest texts to translations. It does not seem necessary to conclude from this process, however, that Joseph Smith was doing what Mitchell was doing when he translated the BoM; that is, we do not have to conclude that JS was filling in gaps with fiction of his own creation that seemed to fit into the whole.

By: Costanza

Costanza — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:43:30 +0000

I think that Blake’s comment in #19 is correct–especially when one considers how very early in Joseph Smith’s career the Moses material was produced. I doubt that he could have come up with it on his own if he had lived to be 500, but the fact that he produced it in 1830(ish) makes it that much more impressive, IMHO.

By: Kevin Barney

Kevin Barney — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:22:34 +0000

Ronan, ask and ye shall receive: 1. "A More Responsible Critique," FARMS Review 15/1, here. Scroll a little more than halfway down to the caption "Shepherd on Pseudotranslation," and read from their to the end. 2. "The Joseph Smith Translation and Ancient Texts of the Bible," Dialogue 19/3 (Fall 1986), here. Anyone interested in this topic should also read Blake's enormously influential "The Book of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source," Dialogue 20/1 (Spring 1987), here.

By: Blake

Blake — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:45:08 +0000

Ronan: I doubt that a verse in Genesis on Enoch is sufficient to constitute a scholarly text of the Book of Enoch and certainly not enough to suggest Moses 6-7. That is what I meant. You are undoubtedly correct that the KJV is the scholarly text for the JST outside of what I have called textual revelations. Do you have some explanation for these textual revelations outside of sheer audacity and perhaps revelation? It seems to me that there was not enough in Joseph’s environment to suggest either the Book of Moses or the Book of Abraham notwithstanding their remarkable similarities to the Enochic material and the pseudepigraphic Abrahamic material (the Apocalypse and Testament of Abraham respectively).

By: anon

anon — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:41:34 +0000

ack. Cicero and Virgil’s Aenid

By: smb

smb — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:38:18 +0000

14/R: I agree: the differences are instructive, and I agree that this analogy does illuminate Smith as exegete (apropos Kevin’s post, there’s a fascinating essay on Smith as pseudepigraphist within the last five years or so in Dialogue).

By: larryco_

larryco_ — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:37:06 +0000

Although I haven’t read Mitchell’s version of Gilgamesh, I have read others, and his expanding of the text – being true to the spirit of it – brings to mind the pseudoepigrapha works of 1 Enoch (Ethiopian), 2 Enoch (Slavonic), and 3 Enoch. In each, the writer has obviously drawn from written and oral traditions to produce an expanded work. In particular, 2 Enoch has the hero sitting among the council of God and touring through the 10 heavens. Fascinating stuff.