Joseph Smith's Translation

Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have translated ancient scriptures. He dictated an American Bible from metal plates reportedly buried by ancient Jews in a nearby hill, and produced an Egyptian "Book of Abraham" derived from funerary papyri he extracted from a collection of mummies he bought from a traveling showman. In addition, he rewrote sections of the King James Version as a "New Translation" of the Bible. Smith and his followers used the termtranslation to describe the genesis of these English scriptures, which remain canonical for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether one believes him or not, the discussion has focused onwhether Smith's English texts represent literal translations of extant source documents. On closer inspection, though, Smith's translations are far more metaphysical than linguistic. In Joseph Smith's Translation, Samuel Morris Brown argues that these translations express the mystical power of language and scripture to interconnect people across barriers of space and time, especially in the developing Mormon temple liturgy. He shows that Smith was devoted to an ancientmetaphysics--especially the principle of correspondence, the concept of "as above, so below"--that provided an infrastructure for bridging the human and the divine as well as for his textual interpretive projects.Joseph Smith's projects of metaphysical translation place Mormonism at the productive edge of the transitions associated with shifts toward "secular modernity." This transition into modern worldviews intensified, complexly, in nineteenth-century America. The evolving legacies of Reformation and Enlightenment were the sea in which early Mormons swam, says Brown. Smith's translations and the theology that supported them illuminate the power and vulnerability of the Mormon critique of Americanculture in transition. This complex critique continues to resonate and illuminate to the present day.

“"...its approach is thought-provoking and creative, and parts of it can break new ground in understanding the work of Joseph Smith." -- Kent P. Jackson, Birmingham Young University, BYU Studies Quarterly "I found Joseph Smith's Translation stimulating. Brown weaves his way through the wide variety of the texts Smith produced to identify common threads of metaphysical transformation and communal ascent. For those with an esoteric bent, he provides satisfying ways of understanding Joseph Smith's scriptural contributions. Samuel Morris Brown has "translated" Joseph Smith for the reader in a way we have not seen before." -- Cheryl Bruno, Association for Mormon Letters”

"I found Joseph Smith's Translation stimulating. Brown weaves his way through the wide variety of the texts Smith produced to identify common threads of metaphysical transformation and communal ascent. For those with an esoteric bent, he provides satisfying ways of understanding Joseph Smith's scriptural contributions. Samuel Morris Brown has "translated" Joseph Smith for the reader in a way we have not seen before." -- Cheryl Bruno, Associationfor Mormon Letters

Samuel Morris Brown - intensive care unit physician, medical researcher, and cultural historian-is Associate Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Medical Ethics and Humanities at University of Utah/Intermountain Medical Center and director of the Center for Humanizing Critical Care at Intermountain. The author of In Heaven as It Is on Earth and Through the Valley of Shadows, Dr. Brown researches and writes at theinterfaces among medicine, religion, culture, and history.

Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have translated ancient scriptures. He dictated an American Bible from metal plates reportedly buried by ancient Jews in a nearby hill, and produced an Egyptian "Book of Abraham" derived from funerary papyri he extracted from a collection of mummies he bought from a traveling showman. In addition, he rewrote sections of the King James Version as a "New Translation" of the Bible. Smith and his followers used the termtranslation to describe the genesis of these English scriptures, which remain canonical for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether one believes him or not, the discussion has focused onwhether Smith's English texts represent literal translations of extant source documents. On closer inspection, though, Smith's translations are far more metaphysical than linguistic. In Joseph Smith's Translation, Samuel Morris Brown argues that these translations express the mystical power of language and scripture to interconnect people across barriers of space and time, especially in the developing Mormon temple liturgy. He shows that Smith was devoted to an ancientmetaphysics--especially the principle of correspondence, the concept of "as above, so below"--that provided an infrastructure for bridging the human and the divine as well as for his textual interpretive projects.Joseph Smith's projects of metaphysical translation place Mormonism at the productive edge of the transitions associated with shifts toward "secular modernity." This transition into modern worldviews intensified, complexly, in nineteenth-century America. The evolving legacies of Reformation and Enlightenment were the sea in which early Mormons swam, says Brown. Smith's translations and the theology that supported them illuminate the power and vulnerability of the Mormon critique of Americanculture in transition. This complex critique continues to resonate and illuminate to the present day.

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