Getting the name of God and Christ wrong

[ulmite]

For you, you probably shouldn't care. I posted the post becomes it matter to me.

For me it is not a matter of the natives using their own term for Christ, which I'm fine with. It is a matter of the church claiming Christ himself (not the natives) is speaking in the FIRST PERSON in the D&C revelations to an internal audience and getting his own name wrong.

And I like your proof the Joseph didn't really speak to Christ or he would have corrected his prophet on his name in his own language.

For the record, I'm not a literal believer in any of this.
But I do have to tear down the argument~: I moved to a foreign country some time back, and people couldn't pronounce my name correctly. I kept trying for a year or so but then I gave up, picked a nice transliteration, and have been going with that ever since. The vowels are all completely different, (different phonetic symbols!) and one consonant is a little different. I do not have a difficult to pronounce name, it just sounded weird, forced, and people had a hard time with it. This is a 2-year complete shift, and keeping with the age-old tradition of projecting yourself onto Jesus, why would He not do it too?

Of course, the adamic is just made-up.

[el-asherah]

For you, you probably shouldn't care. I posted the post becomes it matter to me.

For me it is not a matter of the natives using their own term for Christ, which I'm fine with. It is a matter of the church claiming Christ himself (not the natives) is speaking in the FIRST PERSON in the D&C revelations to an internal audience and getting his own name wrong.

And I like your proof the Joseph didn't really speak to Christ or he would have corrected his prophet on his name in his own language.

For the record, I'm not a literal believer in any of this.
But I do have to tear down the argument~: I moved to a foreign country some time back, and people couldn't pronounce my name correctly. I kept trying for a year or so but then I gave up, picked a nice transliteration, and have been going with that ever since. The vowels are all completely different, (different phonetic symbols!) and one consonant is a little different. I do not have a difficult to pronounce name, it just sounded weird, forced, and people had a hard time with it. This is a 2-year complete shift, and keeping with the age-old tradition of projecting yourself onto Jesus, why would He not do it too?

Of course, the adamic is just made-up.

I understand your argument, I speak Japanese and my own name transliterated into Japanese sounds terrible since the construction of vowels is so different.

For me the heavy item on my shelf was NOT that if Christ was speaking in the FIRST PERSON that the Aramaic words Yehoshua or Yeshua should be there in the D&C revelations. Which I agree that JS probably could not pronounce.

But rather the best transliteration from the Aramaic name Yeshua to an English name should be there, which is JOSHUA.

There is no way anyone can get Jesus by directly transliterating Yeshua from Aramaic into English. The only way to get Jesus from Yeshua is to follow the 1800 years of transliteration history from Aramaic into Greek and then Latin then German and then English.

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but in my neck of the woods I have never meet a native English speaking person that can not pronounce the English word JOSHUA, especially if they are versed in the Bible or go to church.

[el-asherah]

I should probably add, now days I don't think any GA or apologist would take the position, that in the D&C revelations, Christ himself was physically in the room talking directly to Joseph, and Joseph was acting as a scribe and writing down exactly every word with exact precision.

Nevertheless, this is what I was taught growing up and most of my adult life by the church, and this is what is implied since the revelations are written in the first person. Now days, GAs and apologists would say something like JS received inspiration from the Holy Spirit the thoughts of Christ which was interpreted and filtered through his cultural len.

Years ago during my studies the Jesus Joshua (Yeshua) discovery was a big item on my shelf, that made me realize that everything was being filtered through a cultural lens and these words were not actually directly said by Christ, but came through the mind of Joseph Smith, and if that is the case ... down the rabbit hole we go ....

However, since the Christ D&C revelations are still written in the first person that is fraudulent misrepresentation, since it implies they were not filtered through the mind of Joseph Smith when they actually are, and every apologist would probably admit to that.

[Mormorrisey]

A fascinating thread, and well worth the read. My two cents though...

When JS had a hard time distinguishing between Elias, which was the Greek translation of Elijah, and Elijah himself, and then makes up a very convoluted doctrine of who and what an "Elias" was, which is still rather confusing as Mormon scholars try to navigate it even today, I'm not at all confident in his abilities to figure out the name of God, in any language. I'll always remember reading the old Institute D&C manual and how they tried to explain what and who an "Elias" was, and that was my first experience with Mormon apologetics that went awry. I just thought to myself, uh, Elias was how the Greeks said Elijah, pretty sure that's just it. One of the early shelf items I just ignored. Now it's an easy explanation.

[Give It Time]

Three thoughts.

1) Gosh, I would love to be a fly on the wall in any Sunday School if you started talking about this stuff.

2) This thread is probably the best Sunday School discussion I've ever experienced.

3) Welcome to NOM!

[el-asherah]

A fascinating thread, and well worth the read. My two cents though...

When JS had a hard time distinguishing between Elias, which was the Greek translation of Elijah, and Elijah himself, and then makes up a very convoluted doctrine of who and what an "Elias" was, which is still rather confusing as Mormon scholars try to navigate it even today, I'm not at all confident in his abilities to figure out the name of God, in any language. I'll always remember reading the old Institute D&C manual and how they tried to explain what and who an "Elias" was, and that was my first experience with Mormon apologetics that went awry. I just thought to myself, uh, Elias was how the Greeks said Elijah, pretty sure that's just it. One of the early shelf items I just ignored. Now it's an easy explanation.

Thanks for that additional insight, the transliteration into Greek in the New Testament mangled several Hebrew names. Which as you pointed out seemed to cause mass confusion in Joseph Smith's head, with Elias and Elijah being one of key misunderstandings.

I'm trying to remember all the Greek transliteration cases that Joseph Smith misunderstood, here is what I can remember, maybe other people can add to the list

Joshua (Jesus)
Elijah (Elias)
Isaiah (Esaias)

The Elijah/Elias confusion shows up in D&C 110

Where Elias appears in the Kirtland temple and then leaves, and then Elijah appears, as if they are different prophets

The Isaiah/Esaias confusion shows up in D&C 76, again confusion about two names referring to the same prophet

100 These are they who say they are some of one and some of another—some of Christ and some of John, and some of Moses, and some of Elias, and some of Esaias, and some of Isaiah, and some of Enoch;

The usual apologetic response is to claim Esaias and Elias are different unknown prophets who lived at the time of Abraham. How two people living at the time of Abraham could have Greek names (or Greek name transliterations) is beyond me, because Greek as a language did not exist until several hundred years after Abraham.

I should point out that the names Joshua, Elijah, and Isaiah are also transliterated in their evolutionary path into the English language (they are not quite right either), but they are not as nearly mangled as the same names that were transliterated by the Greeks (Jesus, Elias, Esaias)

For example, Jesus when vocalized does not sound even close to Yeshua, whereas Joshua when vocalized sounds pretty darn close to Yeshua, but it is not perfect. I suppose the best possible transliteration of Yeshua (Aramaic) into English would be .... wait ... for .... it .... Yeshua.