Sunday, February 13, 2011

Mormonisms Beginnings: Part 3 The Translating of the Book of Mormon.

Last time I bloggity blogged, the young virile Joseph was promised that he would find some goddamn gold plates.  Joseph was still around 14 years old and god and Moroni figured that Joseph wasn't ready to get the plates yet because if he did, he'd probably just sell them on eBay.

So the next couple of years Moroni instructed Joseph like you would train a dog.  Joseph was brought up to the hill Cumorah where the plates were hidden but he couldn't find, them.  He was then given a biscuit.  After a few more years, he was able to look at the plates but not touch them (once Joseph was naughty and touched them anyway.  God gave him a shock because there wasn't a rolled up paper close at hand.)

Once Joseph was trusted to be good with the plates and stop pissing all over the fucking carpet, he was given not only gold plates, but also the "sword of Laban" and something called the Urine and Thumbelina (which I will just refer to as UaT from now on).  Joseph was told that the gold plates contained a record of the Native Americans and also the story of Jesus visiting these people as part of a study abroad program.  Jesus was finished with most of his credits to graduate, but he hadn't quite landed that perfect job and didn't want to start paying off his student loans so quickly.  So he came to Ancient America to teach low level courses.  The UaT was going to help Joseph translate the plates because the ancient Native Americans were inconsiderate and didn't learn English and wrote on the gold plates in "reformed Egyptian."  I guess Egyptian was a shitty language to engrave on gold plates, so it needed to be reformed.  And I'll probably only mention the sword of Laban one more time because Joseph didn't do anything with it, and I think he only mentioned obtaining it to convince the Dungeons and Dragons crowd to join the Mormon Church.

"What you guys don't care that Jesus came to America? Well, what if I told you that I found a sword in a treasure chest after getting directions from an Angel?....The sword has +2 defense against the dark arts."

Holy shit! Let's all get baptized, and then hunt some ORC!

Anyway Joseph got started translating the plates.  And according to my Sunday School classes, he banged that shit out like you would a term paper for a class you stopped giving a shit about 5 weeks ago.

During the middle of the "come get the plates, Joseph. OH, PSYCHE! You can't have them for another four years you dumb mother fucker. Hahaha! You should have seen the look on your face! Now go home and repent and try to farm some more dirt and rocks!" Episodes with Moroni, Joseph met his wife Emma Smith and also some dude named Martin Harris.  Emma is as revered as Mary (Jesus's MILF) for Mormons.  Funny enough she also has just as small a part in Mormon history as Mary does in the bible.  You hear about her like twice in church, but she's just super duper cool--just trust them.

Martin Harris was another cool dude that happened to come along with a lot of money.  As most comedians have noted, god isn't very good with money, so he always needs rich people to step up to the plate.  This was Harris's job.  He had money, Joseph was going to be a prophet, and well, shit ain't free around here, so Harris ended up footing the bill for stuff while Joseph translated.

And translating was hard work.  Again, according to Sunday School, Joseph took the gold plates and set them on the table, he then took the UaT and while reading the plates the UaT was like a Rosetta Stone and found the words that were right and then read them off.  Martin Harris was in the other part of the room (which had been partitioned off with a sheet.  No one was allowed to see the gold plates.  I guess they were too shiny or something).  Martin would then write the shit down.  Occasionally, Martin's wrist would cramp from jerking off too much, and Emma would come in and scribe while Joseph dictated.  This process went on for just a few weeks and then the book was ready to print.

Joseph took the manuscript to a printer that apparently was crazier than a shit-house rat.  Over 3000 "printing errors" have been corrected by the various editions of the Book of Mormon.  And all of these errors have been categorized by "printing press" errors.  Maybe the only competent printers in the New York area were all possessed by Satan (probably still true today), and they would have killed Joseph and "frustrated" god's work.  And no one wants a "frustrated" god.  I don't know if you've notice, but that guy's a total fucking psycho.  He will ruin your family, your health, and your wealth over a bet with Satan.  He's been known to destroy entire flocks of birds just because gays serve openly in the military, and he'll plunge an entire nation into chaos and revolution just so a couple of 19 year old boys can go door to door giving out free books.  So don't mess with that guy.  Seriously, he'll fuck your shit up.

Next time: the Book of Mormon without having to use Wikipedia.

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