Alrighty, I’ve finished the brand new Kindle versions and updated EPUB versions of the Doctrine & Covenants reader’s edition, Pearl of Great Price reader’s edition, and Words of the Prophets (a compilation of twenty-two sermons from the Book of Mormon). Enjoy.
Because I’m a language nerd who loves the Book of Mormon, I’ve put together a few charts showing the top 400 words by frequency in the Book of Mormon in Spanish, French, German, and Italian.
(There are two pages, which is why you only see 150 words here.)
For each language I downloaded the text from scriptures.lds.org and removed the HTML tags, then ran a modified version of my friend Chad’s text cleaner script to get a sorted list of the words by frequency (lowercased so I wouldn’t get duplicate words). I then recapitalized the words (proper names for all four languages, and with German I also capitalized the nouns as they’re used in the text) and put it all into InDesign.
My rule of thumb was that I want this to show the words as they appear in the text, so I haven’t consolidated variant forms, and in French I’ve kept the elided articles separate. Basically, if you want to read the Book of Mormon in any of these languages, these lists will show you what words appear and the forms they appear in.
I’m passingly familiar with these languages but I’m nowhere near fluent, so if any of you happen to spot errors, let me know.
I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner, but I’ve released the Kindle version of my Book of Mormon reader’s edition. I’ve also updated the formatting on the EPUB version so it’s nicer (indented paragraphs and all that). Kindle versions and updated EPUBs of the D&C and Pearl of Great Price will come in the near future.
Update: I’ve finished and released this. Sorry it took so long.
This isn’t done yet, but it’s coming along nicely:
It’s a study edition of the Book of Mormon, with extra large outside margins and more line spacing so there’s plenty of room for taking notes. I’ve also moved the verse numbers out of the way so the text stands on its own.
When I finish it, I’ll release a free PDF on here as usual and make a paperback perfect bound hard copy available on Lulu at cost. (It’ll probably be around $20 plus shipping. I asked my local copy shop how much it’d cost to print and bind this — around 580 pages — and they said $60 for the printing costs alone, so it looks like Lulu is going to be much, much cheaper.)
I take a lot of things for granted. Take the sun, for instance. It’s 93 million miles away. Ninety-three million miles. Let’s say you hop in a car and start driving towards the sun at 60 mph (okay, we’ll make it a spacecar) — it’d take you 177 years to get there. And that’s if there aren’t any red lights along the way. So the sun is far, but the thing that blows my mind is this: it’s so bright to us here on earth that if we look straight at it, it temporarily blinds us. And it’s hot. You can burn ants with it (and a magnifying glass). That’s crazy. I mean, I understand the physics of it (the basics, anyway), but isn’t it bonkers that the whole thing actually works? Not to mention its huge role in life on earth and all of that.
Speaking of distance, instant messaging is another thing that’s crazy if you stop to think about it. I can type “lol” on my laptop and have it show up pretty much instantly for someone on the other side of the globe. Which is almost 13,000 miles away. Not as far away as the sun, but still pretty dang far. It’s like magic, except better because, like, it actually works.
There’s more. The stuff we build amazes me. Like cities. And buildings — cathedrals, skyscrapers, football stadiums, airports. Even just ordinary houses are incredible (meaning, hard to believe). The fact that we can stick pieces of wood together into something that (a) stands upright and (b) doesn’t blow down with the wind just blows my mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I love animals (or at least I don’t hate them), but you don’t see anything like this in the animal kingdom. Sure, lots of species do some crazy intricate things, but nothing even comes close to what we humans build. Our cities are far more complex than any anthill.
And there’s things like plastics. We can mold plastic into almost any shape we want, which is why my shampoo bottle looks the way it does. And shampoo is amazing, too. To think that we somehow came up with the right types of things to mix together to make our hair (a) clean and (b) smell good (plus the other stuff shampoo does, most of which is beyond me) is a miracle.
And we have zippers and post-it notes and medicines that work (usually) and violins and pianos that actually sound beautiful and microwaves and street lights and the whole earth is chock-full of little miracles.
Street lights remind me of something else that blows my mind: freeways. Streets in general, but freeways in particular. First, you have this crazy massive network of I don’t know how many millions of tons of asphalt laid all over the country (and world, but we’ll stick with the States for this paragraph), flattened out and relatively smooth. They’ve put roads through mountains and (with the help of bridges, which are also incredible) over bays and rivers and lakes. Second, and this is the bigger miracle for me, we have millions of imperfect humans driving at fairly high speeds in all sizes of vehicles on these freeways…and yet accidents are relatively rare. Consider all it takes for an accident to happen: someone’s attention leaves the road for four or five seconds. Or someone accidentally turns their steering wheel a few millimeters too far. It’s an insane miracle that there aren’t a lot more accidents on every road we’ve got. Which is why I believe in traffic angels.
And, actually, all of these miracles are a testimony to me that God loves us, because even as awesome as we are (being the children of God with all sorts of latent superpowers) (no, really), there’s no way we could have gotten as far as we have without his help. Without God inspiring all of these makers and builders and inventors, we’d still be living in caves. (Well, maybe not caves, but you get the point.) At least we’d still have that bright, hot, oh-so-far-away sun.
I’ve been reading Arthur Henry King’s book The Abundance of the Heart, and something C. Terry Warner wrote in the introduction (pages 3–4) has stuck with me:
We can reflect again on our contemporary conception of the truth as mere information. This conception is not only false; it is dangerous. It leads us to suppose that we can pass bits of the truth conveniently to one another, as if they were coins. We are encouraged to regard the mind as a kind of purse in which we can collect and even hoard these coins. We believe we can buy, sell, and barter for them; we treat them as if they have exchange value. As far as we are concerned, evil people can get hold of them, as well as good people. Sinister men can control the world by acquiring these truths and withholding them from others. All of this is false. The idea that truth is information is, ultimately, a menacing economic metaphor.
Just how menacing this idea is can be seen in our approach to education. Because we have taken the economic metaphor seriously, we have come to think that learning is completely independent of morality. We have made it competitive rather than cooperative. We have turned our universities into vocational schools. Certain kinds of training have become not just occupationally but socially advantageous. We have made the most successful information-mongers among us into snobs. Learning, so called, has become a divisive social instrument that reinforces class distinctions. It is not possible to calculate the devastating effects of these disasters.
Teaching is not a form of commerce. It is more like the radiance or influence of a resonant soul as it is felt by other souls. The teacher of the truth does not convey to the student valuable bits of anything, but by his presence and commitment he points away from himself to something higher than himself, to which the student can have independent access. “And also trust no one to be your teacher…, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments” (Mosiah 23:14).
A couple weeks ago I came across a By Common Consent post that quoted this gem by Lorenzo Snow, taken from George Q. Cannon’s diary (via Leonard Arrington’s book Adventures of a Church Historian):
I saw Joseph Smith the Prophet do things which I did not approve of; and yet…I thanked God that He would put upon a man who had these imperfections the power and authority which He placed upon him…for I knew I myself had weakness and I thought there was a chance for me. These same weaknesses…I knew were in Heber C. Kimball, but my knowing this did not impair them in my estimation. I thanked God I saw these imperfections.
Knowing that our prophets are human and imperfect is really comforting to me. The Lord knows us better than we know ourselves and is very aware of our flaws, and yet miraculously, mercifully, he still sees our potential and gives us responsibilities and assignments that help us grow.
As for what our attitude towards these human prophets ought to be, Arrington’s book goes on to quote Brigham Young in the next paragraph:
Even Brigham Young, who loved Joseph Smith with a constancy that bordered on idolatry, admitted in a discourse on loving-kindness in the Salt Lake Bowery that he sometimes thought that the prophet was not always right in his management of affairs. “It gave me sorrow of heart [to see this],” he said, but “I clearly saw and understood, by the spirit of revelation manifested in me, that if I was to harbor a thought in my heart that Joseph could be wrong in anything, I would begin to lose confidence in him, and that feeling would grow…until at last I would have the same lack of confidence in his being the mouthpiece for the Almighty.” So Young decided to let the Lord deal with Joseph’s failings. “Though I admitted in my feelings and knew all the time that Joseph was a human being and subject to err, still it was none of my business to look after his faults…. He was called of God; God dictated [to] him, and if He had a mind to leave him to himself and let him commit an error, that was no business of mine…. Though he had his weaknesses,” Young continued, “he was all that any people could require a true prophet to be.”
Our Church leaders aren’t going to be perfect. They just aren’t. And that’s okay. Their imperfections don’t void the fact that it was God who called them and that they have real power and authority from the Almighty. God can use imperfect people to do his work. (And thank heavens for that.)
This is a new color version of First Vision Triptych, which I painted back in October.
I’ve often wondered why we had a lot of “thus saith the Lord” revelations back in Joseph Smith’s day (just look at the Doctrine & Covenants) and don’t get many at all nowadays (“The Proclamation to the World on the Family” and “The Living Christ” are the only ones I can think of, and even then they’re not directly in the Lord’s voice).
Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that the Church nowadays is led by God just as much as it was in 1830, and I likewise fully believe that our modern prophets receive revelation. I was just curious as to why the format seems to have changed over the years.
On Sunday I found my answer.
I was reading Melvin J. Petersen’s February 1985 Ensign article “Preparing Early Revelations for Publication” and came across this passage from John A. Widtsoe:
There is, in view of what has been said, need of continuous revelation. However, we must understand that there are two classes of revelation given by God to man. The first deals with the structure and content of the plan of salvation. Once given it does not need to be given again. Adam received it…. Christ gave the same revelation to man in His dispensation. So did Joseph Smith in his dispensation. The foundation, or platform, once given does not need to be given again unless men forget the truth.
Then there are revelations that fit the changes in our lives, meet our new needs, help us overcome unforeseen conditions—revelations for our daily guidance.
This great country, the United States of America, has found itself in a great depression. We have the Gospel. What did the Lord do? He spoke to his Prophet, and we have what is known as the Welfare Program. It is the application of the eternal principles of the Gospel to present day needs. It is as revelation. We have that type of revelation continuously.
So, when people say: ‘We ought to have revelation now as we did in the day of Joseph,’ we must answer, ‘Open your eyes; we do have revelation every day; such as we need from day to day.’
Revelations have been given to Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith and President Heber J. Grant. Every one of them has had revelation whereby the Church has been guided.” (John A. Widtsoe, “Modern Revelation and Modern Questions,” The Deseret News, Church Section, 28 January 1939, p. 6.)
And there you have it.
Introducing some simple LDS scripture reading charts, starting with the Book of Mormon. They’re available in PDF in nine different languages for now (Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai), with more to come.
