JOEL - When you have a mortal man trying to translate scripture using immortal means, there are bound to be discrepancies and occaisional errors. On various occasions Joseph Smith said he saw and heard things he could not communicate in the language he had:
“Great and marvelous are the works of the Lord, and the mysteries of his kingdom which he showed unto us, which surpass all understanding in glory, and in might, and in dominion;
“Which he commanded us we should not write while we were yet in the Spirit, and are not lawful for man to utter;
“Neither is man capable to make them known, for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him.” (D&C 76:114-16.)
According to these scriptures, it is near impossible to put into words or be able to adequately communicate the things that are revealed to the spirit of man under these conditions. This may have been the source of some error during translation of the Book of Mormon.
Also, Joseph was not a perfect man. There may have been occasions when he was not perfectly in tune with the Spirit during every second of the translation process. And when you consider how quickly he was able to finish the work, there is no doubt that he spent long nights, working under sleep-deprived conditions, which could also have resulted in some errors. And there are, of course, the transcription, spelling, and printing errors that have been corrected over time.
It has been suggested that, during the translation process, when something appeared similar to what was already written in the Bible (eg. Isaiah), Joseph may have simply used the words already written in the King James Version, which may have been the case with the Lord's prayer. Later, while retranslating the Bible, Joseph may have realized that there could be a more descriptive translation of that verse, that would make the meaning clearer. Speaking of the translation process, David Whitmer is quoted as saying that "frequently one character would make two lines of manuscript while others made but a word or two words". Two lines of manuscript are a lot of words to get out of one character. One might not necessarily get the exact same wording out of that character on one particuler occasion as he would years later with the same character.
Most of these explanations are of course the opinions of myself and others. However, even though some discrepancies and errors do exist, God was careful to be sure that they were not serious enough to result in the missunderstanding of esential gospel concepts and doctrine. It is still the "most correct" book in terms of explaining the gospel and doctrine of Jesus Christ, compared to any other book or cannon of scripture.
You say, "It has been getting harder and harder to just accept these things...". But any discrepancies that exist concerning Joseph Smith's translation of any scripture, whether it be the Book of Mormon, D&C, or JST of the Bible, have existed for about 170 years now. None of this is new. Some have been explained, some have not. More than likely what has changed over time is the strength of your testimony and/or your ability to be patient and have the faith that all questions will eventually be answered. With all the studying I have done, I have assembled a good list of questions that I am waiting to get answers for. However, my testimony has not weakened one bit because of these minor things. On the contrary, it has become stronger because of the truths I have learned. And when I finally do confront God (or whoever it is that handles those unanswered questions), I plan to be quite embarrased at how trivial and unimportant those questions really were.
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