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Benjamin McGuire

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  1. You can suggest this, but, I think you will find that it doesn't help your argument in the slightest bit. According to the text, the writings of Lehi and Nephi (where you are finding your strongest similarities) were not redacted, abridged, or translated within the gold plates. When we start dealing with the nitpicking sorts of details, this is a problem. But this isn't meaningful. It's why I keep pointing to the problem of an absence of any sort of formal critieria or method in your efforts. To put is simply, you have intuited a connection between texts (well not just you of course). Then you (specifically you) are looking for ways to make that intuited connection work in terms of the necessary external problems - chronologies, history, and all that. But, without that intuited connection, there isn't any need to go this route. You need to start by actually creating a real justification for the comparison that isn't built purely on textual similarities. When you build from the similarities, you inevitably end up with parallelomania. You don't have evidence - because you do nothing to explain why these things that are similar couldn't come from some other place and time. You work within assumptions of the text - your intuited connection drives your assumptions about the text, its authorship, the way that we should understand it - but without that intuited presumptive position, we don't actually have any real reason to see any of this. The Book of Mormon text remains much closer to the biblical text on all of these issues that you raise. And since the Book of Mormon text claims to be using the Old Testament texts as sources - and the fact that we can see the Book of Mormon text quoting the Old Testament extensively (just look at the chapter after chapter of Isaiah), we should prefer that text as a source over any alleged parallel to Palladius pr Pseudo-Callisthenes. To use a source like one of those, you would first have to show fairly conclusively that the Book of Mormon texts that you point to for the similarities cannot be understood as taking material from sources that we know are being used. This is a much harder task than you seem to think it is. No, it isn't. I think that maybe you really don't understand what verisimilitude is ... No it isn't. And you haven't given me any reason to accept this point of view. There are a number of reasons for this - but finding similar words (which seems to be a part of your parallelomania) is the weakest sort of argument that you can front here. There is a sort of strange transfer that you are making - from literary connections to history. You are redefining the text - re-reading it in this context that you have imagined - and because you have reinterpreted the text in that way, you believe that it conforms to a history (but let's not forget that this is a history that isn't contemporary in its own right - that has to be interpreted). I'll try to illustrate what I mean here in just a minute. I don't doubt you in this at all. But this illustrates my point - you have already decided what you think happened - and all you are doing is looking for the "evidence" that you are right. It doesn't really seem to matter how much effort you have to engage in to make your parallels work - and you certainly don't seem to be looking for anything that would contradict your theory. This is why I continue to label what you do as parallelomania. Unless I accept your intuited position, it doesn't actually seem that reasonable or logical at all. In fact it does matter. Why? Because all of these things are very different traditions. But when you (as I noted in that list of vices) reduce each of these traditions to a few points that enhance their similarity, you make everything the same and make difference impossible to identify. And yet it is the differences that matter far more than the similarities. You have already reduced the entire Book of Mormon narrative to a few points that you believe are the most important (this is the "blessed people from the Mediterranean region"). But to reduce the Book of Mormon to this is to alter its meaning to the point of unrecognizability. The Book of Mormon doesn't understand itself in these terms. The Book of Mormon understands itself in the context of the Israelite exodus from Egypt. It does so quite clearly - repeatedly. It compares its prophets to Moses. It deals with the wilderness in a way that matches the Old Testament. It is only by ignoring this that you get to this point where you can find these similarities. Again - this is parallelomania. The Book of Mormon really doesn't have a "land in the farthest east inhabited by a blessed people from the Mediterranean region". There is nothing "interesting" about this. This is absolutely the weakest sort of parallel in terms of evidence. These things are meaningless on their own - because we can find similarities between words (and names) in all sorts of contexts in which we don't believe there is any real connection. I do think that the issue of the KJV is telling though. The first question it raises for me is this - why would it be important to see something like this in the KJV? What possible value would that have for any sort of evidence? You want to make this evidence so narrow - and yet Abinadab is in the KJV. But really, why does this matter? The King James translation is relative modern, right? According to the Book of Mormon, their version of the Old Testament (a translation in Egyptian and not a Hebrew text) was dated to around 600 BC. The Aminadab of the Book of Mormon shows up some six centuries later. We don't actually have a Nephite etymology for names (especially since the Book of Mormon isn't an original language text but represents an ostensibly anglicized transliteration). So given all of this, how is any of this supposed to remotely be evidence of anything? It only means something when you place it into that framework that you have intuited. It is these kinds of challenges that good methodology and good working criteria would help deal with - but I believe that you would never engage those kinds of things because they would decimate your argument. But the Alexander Romance is irrelevant. There is no evidence that the Alexander Romance has anything to do with the Book of Mormon. There is no reason to connect a protagonist named Marong/Maroni to the Moroni of the Book of Mormon. It is a far better argument to suggest that you are stringing together coincidences. The argument that a string of coincidences becomes significant by sheer number isn't a real argument and it doesn't actually work. And all of this is completely meaningless. Really. I mean this with complete conviction. There is nothing in the Book of Mormon (not a single hint) that would connect the name Moroni to the idea of a dragon or a serpent. So let me sort of list the thinking that you make here - 1: Humboldt published a drawing of the Aztec Calendar stone in 1814. 2: Anthon was familiar with this image, and thought it was similar to a circular device on the manuscript that Harris showed Anthon. 3: Humboldt believed that the Aztec zodiac had similarities to East Asian zodiacs, and for this (and other reasons) believed that Mexico had been colonized by east Asians. Now, we are going to get back to the thing I was going to discuss. Here is a question I would like you to answer. Do you believe that there was a group of people called the Rechabites, who traveled to the edge of the world, where they were taken up into a city in the sky protected from the rest of world by an impenetrable barrier? Do you believe that there was an individual named Zosimus who was taken to see the descendants of these people in a vision? The problem that we run into here is the sort of strange transference you are doing between literature and history. So I return to the Book of Esther, which is a fictional tale. Why is it fictional? Because the events it describes could not have happened. We have historical records that show enough differences between what really happened and what the book describes as happening, that we know that it is fictional. It is similar to the idea that we can create contemporary fiction today that describe real places, may even involve real people, but which clearly didn't happen. An example I found that I could use (after a 30 second search) is in movie White House Down. The basic plot of the film involves a threat towards the President of the United States James Sawyer. And of course, such a person never existed - but the story fits a certain time and place. The fact that it fits that time and place (as does the Book of Esther) creates a sense of verisimilitude. That is, something that could happen (a film of this sort or a story like the Book of Esther both become something different if they don't have some sense of believability created by this verisimilitude). But, they are still fictional. So we get back to your statements. Whatever Humboldt believed about the Aztecs, he was wrong. Mexico was not colonized by a Buddhist monks from eastern Asia. And in fact, the Aztec Zodiac has nothing to do with eastern Asian zodiacs. There are some profound differences. The east Asian Zodiacs, for example, present a sequence of years - each zodiac sign was for an entire year. The Aztec zodiac was one of a month-like period - 13 months of 20 years, so that a cycle is completed every 260 days. There is some advantage to having a competent understanding of the language. We can understand the Aztec calendar stone today in ways that Humboldt could not. So this leaves us with an interesting question - what value is Humboldt's incorrect speculations? This is that funny crossover between literature and history. Humboldt's version of history is clearly fictional. It didn't happen. It's relevance to the Book of Mormon is only possible if we assume that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. If we saw much later history of the Jewish people that incorporated the fictional characters from the Book of Esther as if they were real people, then that much later history would be fictional (at least in those places). This brings up the issue - while the Book of Esther (as realistic fiction) has verisimilitude (it appears to come from the right place and time - but as fiction instead of some sort of historical record). If we deal with a later record that treats Esther as historically accurate, instead of fictional, we know that those records represent a fiction as well. And this brings us to a problem. Being verisimilar means only that we put something into an appropriate place or time - it doesn't mean that something has historicity. And when we say something is verisimilar, it means that we are connecting it to a particular context. The Book of Esther is verisimilar to a particular context. The narrative of Zosimus is a fictional account. It is verisimilar to a context of the 5th century CE in a particular place. It isn't verisimilar to a 600 BCE Palestinian context. This is part of the reason why the text is dated to that 5th century CE context, and why it isn't dated to earlier or later contexts. Because it is fictional, the narrative has no historicity. So when we get to Humboldt's theory (which we know is fictional, even if Humboldt didn't know this), we end up with a realization that his views do not represent historicity in any sense. Any account which relies on Humboldt's ideas is likewise ahistorical - they cannot have historicity (because they rely on a fiction). So when we have any theory that relates the Book of Mormon to Humboldt's fictional theories, we are building a case for the verisimilitude of the Book of Mormon that builds around the time and place of Humboldt's theory - or, in other words, we are building a case for a fictional Book of Mormon written in the early 19th century. Generally, arguments for verisimilitude for an authentic Book of Mormon are used because they are engaging two ideas simultaneously. The first is that the Book of Mormon can be shown to have verisimilitude to an ancient context (in particular, the earliest chronological parts can be connected to a 5th century BCE context in the ancient near east). The second is the assumption that there is no way to explain the verisimilitude of the Book of Mormon as a translation of an authentic ancient text without the acceptance of the divine elements in the narrative Joseph Smith provided for the Book of Mormon's production. Put together, the argument is that evidence that the Book of Mormon is verisimilar in that early ANE context is evidence that the Book of Mormon also has historicity. There is space for a different conclusion - that is, that the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation of an ancient work of fiction (like the Book of Esther) but that particular conclusion is generally of interest to no one at all. So there is one thing left to address. And that is the question of whether or not you think that Humboldt was right. If you think that Humboldt's theories are fictional but reflect a historical reality, and that with this understanding, you can provide an alternate ancient context in which the Book of Mormon becomes verisimilar - then, at this point, we can simply end the discussion. I don't know of a single modern authority in any field who would accept Humboldt's theories. And, since I have no reason to accept them, I will simply throw your approach out as being impossible to justify. If you agree that Humboldt was wrong, then the clear implication is that you believe that the Book of Mormon is entirely a modern production, and that Joseph Smith was writing a fiction based on this idea of Humboldt. And if this is the case, then we can start to really have a discussion about whether or not the Book of Mormon builds on that theory. There isn't really a third option here I don't think. And so when we get to your last paragraph, and you write this - It doesn't matter what people think - what people think doesn't have much to do with historicity (except perhaps the history of what people think). Author's don't establish verisimilitude as any sort of deliberate act. Verisimilitude simply exists because authors write in specific times and in specific places - and so their works identify in those times and places. Elaborate hoaxes inevitably contain problematic elements that can help identify the correct time and place in which the forgery was produced. The myth of the blessed isles may go way back (and it does) - but only in particular contexts and with particular understandings. But what we can say with some certainty is that the blessed isles weren't ever a real place. They didn't actually exist. And when you speak of "tracing the path" of the blessed isles, all you are doing is creating a history of the idea - that can be used to date accounts that include that fictional element of the blessed isles. According to wikipedia (because it is an easy place to link for you): Hesiod is a useful point of context because he wrote in the period between 750 and 650 BCE (not that long before Lehi). This means that for us to understand Lehi's journey in the Book of Mormon as a journey to the blessed isles we would also have to see it as a trip to the underworld. If you could make this case (and I don't believe you can), then this would give the Book of Mormon potential verisimilitude in that historical context - but it would also mean that the Book of Mormon is as much fiction as those same kinds of elements are in Hesiod - a literary fiction. No one actually journeys to the fictional mythical location of the blessed isles - and we know this because we have a much greater understanding of geography and the nature of planet earth than people did who lived thousands of years ago. Samuel Mitchell may have placed the Garden of Eden in the New World, and he may have even believed that the Garden of Eden was a real place there at some point in history. And while this is interesting, in 600 BCE, everyone was firmly convinced that the Garden of Eden was in Mesopotamia. So a Book of Mormon that believed that the Garden of Eden was in the Americas would have no verisimilitude with an ancient historical context. It would only have verisimilitude in a modern context - and as a fictional work with no historicity. This is the problem that your arguments bring forward. And it is the problem that is always present when we try to argue that verisimilitude and historicity are interchangable (even when we get the concepts right).
  2. Your argument there isn't with me - I am just going with current scholarship on the issue. But if the dating of the text is central to your argument, and the dates you use are at best strongly contested (and at worst, completely wrong), then it is really problematic for you to use this in your main argument. Generalities aren't going to help you here. The Narrative of Zosimus is entirely dependent on the LXX for its scriptural references. Even if there are Jewish elements, they aren't early enough to matter in the question of the verisimilitude of the Book of Mormon narrative. Further, your use of the narrative isn't centered on what might be originally Jewish (that is, your argument doesn't attempt to distinguish what is much later from what is earlier). Your primary argument is based on later interpretations that you believe coincides with other (non-ancient) texts like the Kedah Annals. I use wikipedia as an easy thing to look at, I wouldn't call it my source. And, if you look up the reference used by the wikipedia article, it says something quite different from the wikipedia article. The reference is to Knights, Chris (2014). "The Rechabites Revisited: The History of the Rechabites Twenty-Five Years On". Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. 23 (4): 307–320, specifically to pages 308-309. Here is what Chris Knights writes on page 309: To put it simply, the author of this article has abandoned this earlier view and believes that it is not of Jewish origins at all but is entirely a Christian text of relatively late origins. And this is the position of current scholarship on the age and origins of the text. That you use this tells me that you don't understand the argument. The reference in the quote you provided mentions C.H. Knights. This is the author that I quote above, whose position is that the story is entirely Christian in origin. So when you write this: You are still stuck with the problem that even if it is the oldest part of the narrative, it is still Christian in origin. It does not have roots that go back to around 600 BCE. It is this core that is dated to around the 4th century. And of course, the manuscript evidence doesn't help you either. As the review article that you quote from shows, the oldest manuscripts are all from the 12th century CE. And the problem that you have is that this still puts it a thousand years after Lehi allegedly leaves Jerusalem. Finally, I want to clue you in to something from the quote that you pull from that review essay - here is the statement again: "... appeared in the first half of the 4th century at the latest, having by then integrated the classical myth about the Isle of the Blessed ..." You will notice the capital letters for the Isle of the Blessed. This is not accidental. The classical myth of the Isle of the Blessed isn't Jewish in origin. It is Greek. And what this review author is saying is that the Christian author's of the Narrative of Zosimus "integrated the classical myth about the Isle of the Blessed with the aim to popularize it in the broader context of the triumph of Christianity." In other words, they were trying to make the story more appealing to the Greek and Roman audience that made up most of contemporary Christianity. So when you go on to say: I am going to respond by saying that this is just wrong.
  3. No - and I would tend to believe that it wasn't something he would be inclined to worry about. That's the whole point of likening scripture unto himself - he no longer has to be all that concerned with the idea of translation as a means of trying to get to original meaning. It is the original meaning that he suggests isn't all that important. When we try to argue about the urtext (the language of the gold plates, the language of the brass plates, and so on) - that's when these differences become important. If all we did was liken the text unto ourselves, we wouldn't be concerned over these kinds of distinction either - and in fact the sorts of questions that trigger these discussions wouldn't be of interest to us. But since we are dealing with these questions, we do have to deal with this problem of the translation of the Book of Mormon (assuming it is an authentic translation) being influenced by the King James version of the Bible. No. And, I think, this is part of the intention of the text (and its discussion). Because, when Nephi has the same vision, and it is curated by an angel, he becomes very aware that the elements in the vision are figurative and not literal. So we can know with certainty that by the end of the discussion Nephi has with Laman and Lemuel that Nephi's understanding of the river leading to the tree of life is not a literal understanding - he tells us this. So, for example, in 1 Nephi 11:25 we read: Do you see what I mean here? The rod of iron was something else - it was the "word of God." The tree of life is a representation "of the love of God." This is not a literal understanding, but a figurative one. When we talk about the river in particular though, there is something else that is really fascinating in the discussion - because the river features in the discussion with the brothers. Here is 1 Nephi 15:26-28 There are a couple of important points we can take from this discussion. First, Nephi has already helped his brothers understand that the elements in the vision are figurative. So at this point, they are asking about what the meanings of the elements in the vision are. That is, they accept the idea that this isn't literal and they want to understand how the elements work together to create a non-literal meaning. Second, they don't understand the reference to the river. This is important in the context of your claims of parallels - because they don't seem to recognize any parallel to it. They aren't placing it in their own context as they are the earlier discussions about the olive tree. So there is a recognition from both Nephi and Laman and Lemuel that the river should be understood figuratively - and a recognition that there was something missing from what their father told them to help them really understand what it means. Nephi is able to supply that information because his experience of the vision was different from his father's experience (I spend a bit of time in my published material discussing the significance of this). Yes, there is a real reason why he wouldn't interpet it as a directive to physically go towards the garden. Nephi portrays two opposing bodies of water. The river, as we see in the verses quoted above, is filthiness, while the other water - 'the fountain of living waters' are a representation of "the love of God," - those two are not at all similar - you cannot substitute one for the other. On a separate note, my Father moved to Missouri for a couple of years after he joined the Church - in part to participate in the gathering of Zion, which, of course, didn't happen. So he left. We have this mythology in the Church of Adam Ondi Ahman - but I think that you are misrepresenting it here. Why would I suggest that? D&C 107:53 reads: Adam-ondi-Ahman isn't the Garden of Eden. It isn't where the trees were planted by God. It is a place that Adam finds himself after his expulsion from the garden. Section 116 reads: This is a future event - a repeat in some ways perhaps of the event described in D&C 107. But again, this doesn't make it the site of the trees. And then we have the issue of the trees. Adam was booted from the Garden. Then what happens to the garden? Does it become just an ordinary part of the world? Does the who thing about the fiery sword from Genesis 3 simply disappear? We can all see that there is a lot of room for speculation and interpretation here. But, what we don't see in the Book of Mormon or in any Old World context is the idea that in the middle of Missouri is the place where the Garden of Eden was. If you look at contemporary literature (i.e. ancient sources), we have the Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia - somewhere in modern day Iraq or Iran. The rivers would be the Tigris or the Euphrates. And we can turn to a text more contemporary with when Lehi was supposed to live in Ezekiel 28 where we get a description (vss 11-16): Eden is in the mountains there perhaps in Lebanon. But in any case, you don't find a tradition contemporary with Lehi's departure that is anything like Joseph Smith's claims. Your argument that people can believe in a literal interpretation or a literal place that can be traveled to is fine. I tend to think that whatever the historical reality was (assuming that there was one), it has all become mythical now, with those historical details simply lost. But none of this gets to the point that Nephi doesn't undestand his vision literally. There is no need to see him understanding his journey as a path to Eden. It isn't Eden when he gets there. And there are lots of reasons to understand that he instead saw his journey as following a more Moses-like journey through the wilderness to his land of inheritance - a new Israel so to speak. And here we have the same problem again. The story of the Rechabites in Jeremiah 35 is very short and to the point. There is no river, no ocean, no traveling to a promised land. All of those things that you want to point to parallels here come from a romantic fable written a thousand years after Jeremiah. And this part that you want to highlight here? "But in the end thy seed shall be blessed" - that is the common theme to the Old Testament. Just look at Genesis 22. Given that Lehi associates his family with the tribes of Israel (the children of Jacob), why do we need to look to Jeremiah to find this connection when we can look to the other Old Testament texts that would be far more relevant. And here you again are applying that interpretive overlay to the text. We go right back to the narrative of Zosimus which is a thousand years too late to be relevant. It isn't a snapshot of Rechabite history. We know this at least in part because of the mythological nature of the text. We also know this because it isn't a Palestinian text - it is a Greek text written by Christians in late antiquity. It isn't a translation of some older text. It's content doesn't match up to a context a millennia earlier. It isn't useful to compare these texts given what we know today. Yet you keep returning to this because it is the source of your intuited connection. It's a distinction with no meaning in the ancient world - which saw heaven as a physical place in the heavens above the earth, and hell as a physical place within the earth. All of which we understand to be incorrect today. Enoch, at least according to early LDS tradition, is still out there someplace, and those people will rejoin the rest of humanity at some point. Zosimus doesn't actually travel to the Rechabites in any traditional sense of traveling. He doesn't get on a boat like Nephi does. His journey is entirely spiritual, much like the earlier and later stories of ascents and descents to heaven and hell. Enoch is the main example - Gen. 5:24. There is also Elijah, but we don't have an age for him in the texts that we have. Those are the two Old Testament figures who never die. We use the word 'translation' in Mormonism, but this comes out of interpretive traditions of these Old Testament narratives - it isn't original to LDS, it comes from Jewish commentaries about Elijah and Enoch. If there is a difference (as you suggest) between the Rechabites in the narrative of Zosimus and Enoch/Elijah traditions, the Book of Mormon tends to follow the Enoch/Elijah narratives and not the other. I am not quite sure what you are referring to. I looked and nothing jumped out at me. I know I have made a bunch of scattered comments on the topic - but usually it is embedded in another discussion. My issues with verisimilitude involve only a handful of principles, and if you want, I am happy to engage that on a different thread. If you want to look over the list of potential matches, this search might be helpful to you.
  4. Details matter. And your context isn't a literary context here but a textual context (the two are very different things). As far as the "awful gulf" goes - the thing that Nephi sees in his vision, he actually provides for us a very specific understanding - it is a figurative gulf and not a literal ocean of some sort. This is what we get in 1 Nephi 15:27-28 - And we see from the context here that this is the same river that Lehi describes in 1 Ne. 8:13-14 (and the following verses): The imagery here is much closer to the imagery that we would expect if a comparison was being made to Eden, the garden with the original tree of life. So we read in Genesis 2:10 - Do you see how the river-Ocean from your parallels has no head? And the rivers in the Genesis account do? And we should see here at this point that the argument to make the river in Nephi's vision the same as the river-Ocean is really unlikely. To this end, I didn't say Nephi didn't use the term "river," I said he didn't use the term "the River." The definiteness of the language that you used was aimed at guiding us away from what the text says and towards your suggested parallels. Nephi shows no familiarity with the idea of a river-Ocean surrounding the land masses of the known world on a flat earth. And this is important because this is the parallel that you are pointing to. When you use a term like "the River" and you put it in quotation marks when there is no quote like that from the Book of Mormon. And when we do get Nephi speaking of a river, it seems to come from a very different context. And this leaves me believing that you are heavily engaging in those vices of parallelomania. Then you need to actually make this case before you start looking for parallels - because, frankly, I don't see the case being successfully made for your argument here. I could start with the basic reasons that Lehi brings unrighteousness with him across the ocean, the Nephites find unrighteousness when they get there, and lets not forget the outcome. The whole Rechabite narrative hinges on the idea that we have this community that because it has been taken out of the world (much like the City of Enoch to use a more familiar narrative for our LDS friends here) remains righteous. The righteous Nephites don't persist in their isolated community - they are wiped out because they become wicked. This is not an advance towards the Tree of Life. Nephi has made it clear that the journey to the Tree of Life isn't a physical journal but a figurative one. The entire book of Jacob is a lament that deals with both the figurative and real journey to a promised land - not in the context of this journey across a barrier but in terms of the wilderness that stood between Israel and Egypt. At the end of his book, Jacob, who expected the Nephites to overcome their sinful natures enough to enter the promised land as Israel did, tells us (Jacob 7:26): This is not at all what we would expect if what you are arguing for is at all accurate. Actually, I think this is quite accurate. But here is the problem you face. Reading the text as incorporating material from Genesis - and idea that we expect from the text itself, since it claims to use the Old Testament text as a source, is anticipated by the text. The parallels from the Old Testament should take precedence for us over parallels to other contexts. If we want to argue for an external parallel to a bit of text that also parallels the Old Testament, then the argument has to show how such a reading should be preferred over seeing the Old Testament parallels - and not just in language but also in the way that the text uses those parallels rhetorically. We know with absolute certainty that the Book of Mormon quotes the Old Testament. What the Book of Mormon doesn't do is quote some source that references this river-Ocean that you find in texts from late antiquity. I wouldn't, by the way, call that article a close reading. A close reading isn't generally all that interested in constructing a potential urtext. The whole discussion over the meaning of the word "straight" in the text highlights the sort of argument that is being made here. You might produce a close reading as a follow up of this article - that is, how the text as a whole could be interpreted once we understand the relationship between the Book of Mormon text and the Old Testament text. You can see how my article on Nephi writing is far more interested in the implications of the narrative in terms of interpreting meaning than your source here is. There is a secondary problem here - one that shouldn't be underestimated, and one that I have discussed from time to time over the past several decades. The article you link uses language as a primary point of connection between the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon - but it isn't the Old Testament more broadly, it is the language of the King James text. And this means that if we accept the textual basis for the relationship between the two textual traditions, the influence is at least doubled. What do I mean by that? We have the idea that the Book of Mormon's source (the Gold Plates) borrow from the Brass Plates (a copy of the Hebrew scriptures translated into Egyptian - Mos. 1:4). But the language itself of the Book of Mormon as a translation is influenced by the King James text of the Old Testament. Because of this, we have this problem - how do we differentiate between the two influences? In some places, where the ideas are there but the language is not, it is easy enough (I'll provide an example in a moment). But in other cases, the language by itself cannot be the sole justification - there has to be a larger discussion about context and content (meaning) to show that the borrowing functions at a deeper level than just language. So here are a couple of examples - from the Book of Jacob in the Book of Mormon. The first example concerns Psalm 95 - here is the last half of the Psalm (95:7b-11): There are several places in Jacob where this text is used (this is itself an important recognition). The first is Jacob 1:7 Now, I have bolded the phrases that are duplicated closely. It's been reordered a bit, and the tenses changed. The individuals/groups have been re-identified - because the original Psalm was meant to be sung to the Israelites, while the derived text is an interpretation. And we can see here that there is an interpretive overlay. The duplication of language, the explicit reference to an event, and so on, make this a relatively certain relationship. The next use comes in Jacob's interpretation of the explicitly quoted material from the Brass Plates (Zenos) in Jacob 6:6: These eleven words add some continuity to the entire sermon that Jacob is giving. And this leads us to Jacob 7:26, which doesn't quote anything from Psalm 95 - but which offers a context identical to Israel's situation described in Psalm 95: There is a lot of interesting ways to understand this in a text which uses Psalm 95 to frame the entire Book of Jacob. I hinted at this earlier, but I should probably add a couple of comments here. Much like Israel who get a glimpse of their promised land and then spend 40 years wandering in the wilderness, when the Nephites arrive at their promised land, they are almost immediately forced out of it (the family split) and they move into the wilderness. It is this wilderness that Jacob is describing here. It takes a long time for this view to disappear (consider, for example, Omni verse 27). Jacob's text focuses then on the spiritual issues that he believes are the barriers to the Nephites obtaining the land of their inheritance - which is why the issues he raises: polygamy, pride, the apostasy caused by Sherem, and so on, are the concerns of his text. These are the things that Jacob understands as the problems that are keeping them in the wilderness (and I note in passing that by the time we get to Omni 27, the place where the Nephites live is no longer the wilderness - the wilderness has shrunk to that space between the Nephite lands and the land of Nephi). So there is one set in Jacob. While we could argue that the language is clearly influenced by the King James text, the text of the Book of Mormon uses the language in a way (as revealed by a close reading - my short discussion here doesn't do it a lot of justice) that requires the reliance to be more than simply cosmetic - it isn't just the words that are engaged in a superficial construct but the original text is engaged, reinterpreted (remember Nephi's likening) and used to try and understand the condition of the Nephites and their failure to obtain the land of their inheritance. This deeper argument also points to all sorts of things about the limited scope of the Promised land of the Nephites, the potential for outsiders (in Sherem), and so on. And what it doesn't do is point to an idea of a Rechabite sort of paradise, or even an Edenic paradise as being an island in the middle of an ocean .... The second set of parallels that is interesting to discuss here in close proximity to that first one comes in the context of polygamy - a set of parallels I have discussed here in this forum several times. The primary source is called the kingship code in Deuteronomy 17. Here are verses 14, 16-17, and 20: We can see the appeal of this text right from the start. "When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee ..." seems tailor made for use by the Nephites. Jacob 1:15-16 offers us a premonition of the use of these passages: This passage is really interesting because here the language is updated. Consider the relevant material from the NIV translation of Deuteronomy 17:17, 20: The language of the King James - of "multiply wives to himself" has lost a bit of its meaning in modern English, so the language gets an overhaul. I include that NIV translation of Deut. 17:20 because of what we read in Jacob 2:12-13 - Some of the main concepts from the Kingship code are here. And here again we see this sort of updated language in Jacob. It isn't that their 'hearts are lifted up above their brethren' but that they "suppose that ye are better than they". But where things really come together is in the discussion of the many wives in Jacob 2:24 This is a violation of that kingship code - but again, it is the updated language - closer to what we find in the NIV. Now for the priestly code, our first encounter is with the idea of the abomination - eight times, Jacob describes the actions of the Nephites as abominations (Jacob 2:5, 2:10, 2:16, 2:21, 2:24, 2:28, and 2:31). And then Jacob uses more language from Deut. 18 in Jacob 2:26 and 2:32: Deuteronomy 18 (which has a similar code for priests) is one of the most frequently referenced Old Testament texts in the Book of Mormon (esp. v 15, but Jacob alludes to it a dozen times or more). What we see here is that these sorts of discussions go way beyond language. Language itself is the weakest sort of indicator of parallels. And this is why I see a reference to "the River" and don't get much out of it. The language in the Book of Mormon is definitely influenced. I can find those sources of influence confirmed in the text itself - the alleged Brass Plates along with its Old Testament contents. But this is an entirely different animal than the narrative of Zosimus, the Greek Christian text from late antiquity. There isn't this sort of close relationship there. And the only way that we start to get to that relationship is by speaking of one text in terms used by the other. And this is parallelomania. It was easy to see the apologetic interest in the piece back when people still thought it was an intertestamental work. Its place as Greek Christian text nearly a thousand years later makes it far less interesting (apologetically). The similarities we find can be attributed to other explanations very easily. It stops having any sort of explanatory power. Actually, let's be really clear on this point. The Book of Mormon NEVER uses the word "ocean". Not once. So when you say that "its frequently referred to as an ocean", I don't have a point of reference - any reference to ocean comes from commentary. As I noted before, details matter.
  5. When I read this, what I see is that you are picking the things that you see parallels for and are trying to make this the quintessential substance of the text. But this part really stands out: Nephi never uses the term "the River" in his text. This means that it isn't a quote (it shouldn't have quotation marks). These are your words - interpreting Nephi's text in a way that you believe highlights the parallels you are presenting. This is the substance of what we call parallelomania. From my review essay on the idea, I'll quote a list of the vices of parallels (not mine - Alexander Lindey's - the source is referenced in the link): I would argue that Nephi doesn't in fact seem to be aware that he has crossed "the River" or is in the middle of it - because conceptually, "the River" (whatever you mean by this term) isn't how he understands what he is doing - or better, it isn't how the author of the Book of Mormon text seems to express what is going on. There is nothing in the text that suggests a belief that by sailing east they would be getting close to the sun. There is no belief in the text that the Garden of Eden has some identifiable location that they could travel to. All of this comes from you, and not from the text. So, why should we agree with you on any of these points that you raise that aren't substantiated in the text?
  6. What do you mean by "intended setting" - and more to the point, what do you mean by "intended"? This is a really problematic claim - because the moment that we start talking about intentions - especially the intentions of an author - we have trouble. The only way to begin to deal with the problems this raises is to recognize that you cannot reference anything that is external to the text. To do so means to engage the intentional fallacy. I have argued in several of my published efforts that we can in fact discuss the intentionality of a text - but only through the text itself - using the rhetorical devices in the text that provide clues to the intentions of the author. But, to try and locate the author in a setting external to the text is to fabricate meaning. I note in passing that the Book of Mormon itself discourages this sort of reading when it tells us to liken scripture unto ourselves - as opposed to asking us to look at the intentions of the author. I discuss this in some detail in my essay here. And one thing that is of interest, when we talk about First and Second Nephi in particular is that the intentions of the author are discussed within the text itself. So the question is, how do you identify the intended setting of the book without starting with an interpretation already that is based on something external to the text? The Book of Mormon is a text written in the early 19th century. It claims to be a translation of an older text. If I start from that position, do we really have any anachronisms that require trying to place it into a specific context? This is one of the problems with the Book of Mormon and all of these theories that tend to try and locate them temporally and spatially - they all involve already an interpretation of the text that creates the sorts of anachronisms that you want to answer (like, for example, elephants). But those interpretations are based on certain assumptions about the text - about what it means to be a translation, and how it should be read. I don't see these kinds of things as anachronistic when I read the text. My discussion here was about how our sense of translation changes the way that we read the text. My discussion in the earlier link is about how our intuited understanding of the author of the text alters the way that we read the text. These things have already occurred before we start to look at parallels the way that you do - and they alter how we understand those parallels. This leads me to assert that these discussions have to occur prior to our looking for parallels. Which of the anachronistic ideas should we make artifacts of translation instead of artifacts connecting to a specific model of place and time for authorship of the urtext that we are hypothesizing about? That's fine - it still doesn't provide us with enough certainty to take it anywhere ... And strangely enough, this reading with no real-world setting in mind is exactly how Nephi tells us to read. Rather than copying and pasting it all here, the section heading Nephi Reading in my essay that I linked earlier describes this process. This is the main idea: If you want to suggest that we have to have this special knowledge to understand the text, that's fine - but you won't get that special knowledge because you are looking in all the wrong ways at the text. Throwing pasta at the wall isn't somehow going to create that special knowledge - especially when you start by making assumptions about the text - about what should be understood as anachronistic and what should be understood as the essential parts of the narrative. It does represent your methodology. I know this because if your methodology were something that was recognized as useful in tackling literary questions of this sort, you would be making entirely different arguments. I believe you completely when you say this. However, I will point to the fact that you have no access to the author's intention. And you don't seem to be doing anything to build an argument for that intention from the text itself. The text becomes a series of anachronistic puzzles that need to be solved in a way that supports what you have intuited (and not demonstrated). One of the earliest and most interesting topographical references in the Book of Mormon is the three day journey into the wilderness. Why? Because it is put in there in imitation of the three day journey made by Israel under the direction of Moses - when they left Egypt. And this tells us something about the text and it's narrative. It tells us that the intentions aren't really about creating a useful map, but about providing us with a specific sort of narrative that involves all sorts of other things. The problem with the sorts of reconstructions that you offer, that are offered by Clark and Sorenson is that they are pulled together from the text in ways that tell us that the author wasn't at all worried about providing us with some sort of temporal-spatial context for the narrative. The sorts of things you are pulling out aren't really a part of the authors intentions at all. And, of course, this is what we would expect for an author that has no sense of their audience or their specialized knowledge (or lack thereof). What I find humorous is what this tells us about you and your reading of your sources. The author of your source is the one that discusses Homer's Odyssey. And of course the geography doesn't fit because it doesn't recognize the world that we know that we live in today. It was written without that specialized knowledge that we have. And yet, the geography from the Apocalypse of Paul or the Book of the Watchers don't have real world settings either. That's the entire point of the text you were quoting. Here is a bit from page 100: The idea is that the river-Ocean is the demarcation for the edge of the inhabited world - beyond which there is something entirely different. It's like the edge of the world (for those who believed the earth was flat). And beyond that edge is something else - how else do you keep something that is a place that is between heaven and earth? But none of these reflect real world geographies. And the idea of this river-ocean is relatively foreign to the narrative content of the Book of Mormon - and we might expect that it would be foreign either because it was authored in a modern context or because it is in fact a translation of an ancient text, which has little in connection with late antiquity's depiction of the world. As a side note, I point here to the fact that if we take the text at face value (as you suggest), then this sort of thing adds to the anachronisms we find in the text - it doesn't reduce them. And this is in part because you seem to be flattening literary history. And here we go down the rabbit hole. I am perfectly happy contesting the similarities that you bring up - and pointing out how they invoke parallelomania. Waving Jack Welch and Blake Ostler in front of me doesn't do anything for me at all. Google is not your friend. Do you read what you write? I didn't say I could come up with something convincing. I said I could come up with parallels similar to yours (which aren't convincing). This is the problem. And it is worsened by the fact that because the Book of Mormon isn't intended as a geographical text, there isn't really any consensus about how the internal geography of the Book of Mormon should be understood ... Finally - We need to stop right here - because the Narrative of Zosimus isn't a Jewish work. It wasn't written in the intertestamental period. You could look here for example: But should we decide that Wikipedia isn't authoritative, let's see what Kirsti Copeland’s essay had to say about it: Late antique Christiantiy (Byzantine Christianity) is not Jewish, it is not intertestamental. And when you draw these comparisons, you aren't really creating an ancient context for the Book of Mormon. You are putting the Book of Mormon into a later antique Christian context. Ostler is demonstrably wrong on this point.
  7. If you aren't arguing for historical events, then why even have this discussion? You suggest then that you aren't interested in historical events (historicity) and are only focused on versimilitude. The Book of Mormon then becomes a work of fiction. And somehow Joseph Smith is allowed to translate this work of fiction into modern scripture. I am not sure where you go after that. And this means what? It is a serious question - because you are trying to establish relationships - and yet you aren't letting the relationships speak for themselves - you are finding everything that could possible support your claim. It is (to use a tired simile) like throwing the plate of spaghetti at the wall to see how many noodles stick. There are lots of rivers, and there are lots of oceans - and they have, since earliest times - been connected to voyages to other places. Sometimes, we even connect them to non-existent places. This same sort of story can be seen in Peter Pan, where Wendy and the boys fly out to an island in the middle of a vast ocean (Neverland). And yet, I don't think you will even understand the problem with your justification. and No. I'm not doing what I am accusing you of doing. I am not creating this complicated argument and using parallels as evidence. I am pointing out the problems with your methodology. As your source points out this theme of the river ocean that surrounds all of the known world, and is inhabited by all sorts of imaginary and mystical beings is a nearly universal theme in ancient literature. So why don't you use the Apocalypse of Paul? Or Homer's Odyssey? Or even The Book of the Watchers? Your source uses all of these. The challenge is that you aren't doing what your source is doing. Of course, we also have more closely related stories in the Old Testament. One of the most important of these is Joshua 3-5, where we get a repeat of the Moses parting of the red sea so that the people can enter their promised land. The methodology problem - the thing that makes this the wrong way to do it - is that you are using what you see as the similarities as the core elements that drive the comparison. You use google to come up with things that help you (I don't really believe, for example, that you actually read Bremmer's book). I can come up with equally strong parallels by looking for similarities like this to other traditions - they just wouldn't necessarily be the same parallels that you are using. It's not as hard to do as you might think it is. The challenge that I face is that your parallels are all contrived. You want to make the specific points of comparison seem so important. And yet, you cannot get past the problem of coincidence. Why can these similarities not be complete coincidence?
  8. Or this, right (which is not mine and does not reflect my views)? The challenge will always be how you can make a connection that rises above the level of coincidence ...
  9. You just don't seem to be getting the problems here. So I'll try again. 1: This is speculation. Barker seems pretty clear about that. Speculation isn't evidence. Part of the problem is what Barker describes in the story as "fantasy and folk tale." Part of the problem is the fact that the story was composed at least 700 years after after the Josian reform. So I might reasonably ask (since you want to use this in some way as evidence) what the likelihood is that this reflects some actual historical event - and how you come to that assessment beyond simply your intuition. 2: There is a problem with the translation that Barker uses. I have provided sources that explain that the Rechabites didn't cross a great sea. The text doesn't actually say this. 3: Much of what you want to use as parallels to the Book of Mormon (or other things) are part of what we can clearly see is the fantasy and folk tale. This is a problem when you are trying to relate it to some real history in a real place and time. You aren't addressing anything that I am saying here - you keep returning to your bad claims of evidence. You keep returning to the parallelomania. What you are providing isn't meaningful at all. And while I tend to think that a number of LDS writers are going to far, if you were only going as far as they do, it wouldn't be that bad - but you leapfrog over them into an entirely different level of parallelomania here.
  10. Except, of course, it doesn't provide supporting evidence for an ancient setting for the Book of Mormon. It doesn't provide evidence at all. At the very best, it provides some sense of plausibility - which is very different from evidence. I will continue to stand by this assessment. You provided a lot of links - but not a single one of those links goes to an academic source. The closest we get is the Jack Welch article. Mormon Studies has come a long way since Jack last wrote about the Rechabites - it is starting to move away from the parallel hunting that was so pervasive decades ago. Except that this isn't really happening, is it. Can you show me something published in an academic venue that draws any of these kinds of conclusions published in the past 15 years? What is going to remain popular is the appeal for apologists, who like the idea of a text with parallels that was unavailable to Joseph Smith. That is the one detail that makes this whole thing popular. Should we find a translation of this text published in English in 1825 and available in Joseph Smith's neighborhood, we would suddenly be having an entirely different discussion about it. Nothing that you write here challenges my points. Zosimus is a late text (relative to the gold plates). Zosimus fits into a popular theme at the time. While it is loosely inspired by Jeremiah, it isn't some sort of real history of the group that Jeremiah discusses. The similarities to the Book of Mormon narrative are not particularly interesting. So, do we really call this evidence of anything at all? Ummmm ok .... Well actually, let's break this down a bit. The Jews who were pushed out of Jerusalem after the Jewish revolt (66-70 CE) all left after Josiah's reforms too, didn't they (just several hundred years afterwards). Did Jeremiah flee Jerusalem with a bunch of Jews because of Josiah's reforms? No. They fled because of the impending invasion by the Babylonians. And come to think of it, this was the reason why Lehi left - because he was told that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed (and of course a pretty big deal is made in the text about how that prophecy was known to have been fulfilled when the Nephites meet the Mulekites). There is nothing in either text about Josiah's reform. And there isn't really any reason to read it there as part of the intent of the narrative. So you are really going out into left field here. Who cares? None of these things are real history. Somewhere along the line you may have forgotten what it means to be labeled as pseudepigrapha (as the article that you link describes the text). Of course, the author of that article you link also notes that the narrative makes extensive use of the Septuagint (and not the Hebrew) text of the Old Testament. That the known copies we have have been redacted by Christians, and that the date of authorship (for the History of the Rechabites itself) is difficult to pin down, occurring most likely after 70 AD and before 700 AD. He asserts that it is an original work in Greek and was not based on some earlier Hebrew text. And while the author of that article does provide a reference to the Sons of Moses (the sons of Levi). This is what he writes: What is facinating about this (at least as far as it is relevant to this discussion) is that we have the cloud and the pillar of fire. Lehi, of course, also sees his pillar of fire (1 Ne. 1:6) - but it ought to be clear that the pillar of fire here comes from the narrative of the mother of all wilderness journey narratives in Israelite literature - the Exodus from Egypt. So there are similarities. The strongest similarities in the Book of Mormon narrative are to the Exodus journey of ancient Israel and not to these much later fictional accounts. This is a real problem for trying to connect the Zosimus narratives to the Book of Mormon from an apologetics perspective. It doesn't do much good to argue a close connection between the Book of Mormon and a fictional (but historical) work. Although in this case, that issue is somewhat blurred because of the apologetic argument. If the text is genuinely historical, then because we cannot produce an actual history of the text, we ought to assume that the narrative of its production is plausible. In any case, Jerusalem is a real-world historical place. The Book of Esther was couched in a real-world location. Just because fiction is put into real-world locations, doesn't somehow mean that it isn't fiction. It just means that people are familiar with those places (or at least the names of those places). Yes, I understand that you don't have a clued - and that you wouldn't recognize a legitimate methodology if it bit you on the backside. All of this is nonsense. You aren't helping yourself by continuing to try and build up this mountain of parallels. I have done a lot of work with literary parallels over the decades - I understand how easy it is to produce all of this - and have it be completely meaningless.
  11. Why? And I mean this question seriously. Here are the issues: 1: Similarities exist between traditions that are purely coincidental. We can find these kinds of coincidences elsewhere. 2: In light of point 1, there has to be some way of connecting the two traditions. This cannot be based on the similarities themselves. This is an important issue in these sorts of questions because, if we base the alleged connection on the parallels themselves, then point 1 is negated - and we should assume that all similarities should be recognized as being non-coincidental and significant. So in light of these two ideas, we get Jack's article that you link to - and here he offers two possibilities (which are more than a little problematic in my opinion). Here is the first one: Unpacking this argument, this is the position that the similarity is coincidental - only linked by an underlying truth claim that is actually true. In other words, any group that receives the same revelation or religious experience would express this in ways that are similar. In science, for example, we could draw an analogy by saying that two scientists can come to the exact same conclusion through observation of the same natural principles. An understanding of gravity by two different cultures in two isolated parts of the world wouldn't surprise us - because the similarity in conclusions are drawn from natural laws that we view as generally being universal. We expect to see these kinds of similarities, and we wouldn't conclude that their existence implies any sort of close connection. The problem is, of course, that to suggest that the two (the story of Zosimus and the Book of Mormon) are referencing the same event - one known from history and one from some sort of revelation - isn't really a defensible position. The broad range of variations on this theme don't seem to be all that interesting either. The second one is this: We can see how this reflects your perspective - and we can see how it has a problem. Nowhere does Jack actually challenge the idea that they might be purely coincidental without the idea of revelation. Jack formulates his argument like this: This is great and all that, but it is already introducing problems associated with what I label parallelomania. One of the biggest problems is the "they were led by God to an ideal land across the ocean". Except, they weren't. This is the last part of Chapter 10 of the apocryphon: Now there is some recognition of this in Jack's essay. He does note that: "After extended prayer, he [Zosimus] is caught away to a place beside a river or great ocean, which turns out to be a cloudy and watery barrier between this world and paradise, or the land of blessedness." But, you can see how this fits the later narrative we get of the Rechabites and how their paradise was constructed. The Rechabites (the one who actually traveled to their paradise - Zosimus just visits them - didn't cross an ocean to get there. They go to a spot and an ocean (although it isn't really an ocean - it is a barrier created from the waters of the abyss) is created around them. By the way, I love the reference to scattering here - there's lots of ways we could understand that - but, certainly the Nephites understood themselves as having been scattered. Anyways, this brings us to a really important point for both Jack's work and your use of Jack's work. While the narrative of Zosimus uses Jeremiah as its starting point, it isn't contemporary with Jeremiah. But, the problem that gets faced is that the story of the Rechabites isn't particularly interesting (from that point of view). Why? Well let's get to something a little more recent in terms of academic studies than what Jack engages - here is some material from Ronit Nikolsky's 2002 article "The History of the Rechabites and the Jeremiah Literature", from the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 13.2. This is from page 196 and is in reference to that passage I quoted earlier from the text: What is fascinating here is that the story itself isn't particularly unique or special. But Jack isn't focusing on the issues that we would see as definitive of the work (and which allow us to place it into the family of similar works with which it is normally associated). Jack wants to emphasize just the features of the text that bring it closer to the Lehi story. This is what we generally refer to when we talk about parallelomania. Yes, Lehi's story fits into a particular context. But this context (the idea's that Nikolsky provides above) are a sort of natural progression from the original narrative used by these groups - the miraculous saving of a people by moving them from a bad place to a good one that we find in the Old Testament Exodus, with Moses. And I have argued (along with others) that there is a deliberate attempt in the Lehi narrative to fashion that narrative around this Old Testament source. What makes the story of Zosimus appealing for parallels isn't really the similarities between the texts. It is the apologetic gain that comes from trying to claim that the Lehi narrative is similar to a story that wasn't translated from it's ancient sources until the later part of the 19th century. You can see that interest in Jack's comment here: This is what makes it of interest to Jack and others. But, this means that the search for similarities is in part driven by the desire to use the parallels in another argument - and not for the parallels themselves. This is an apologetic argument from beginning to end. I have a lot of respect for Jack. But, I think that he represents the beginning and not the end of the discussion of any relationship between the two narratives. At any rate, this is just the tip of what we could discuss - but I am not so interested at this point in the details - because a mountain of details won't save a thesis if the methods are bad and the conclusions so tenuous. My earliest published piece laid out a great deal of my interest in method and an appropriate way to look at parallels. And you will see that I am more interested in the literary aspects - parallels between literature and history are much more problematic - unless they are explicitly referenced in the literature. If we want to find references between history and literature, it's not hard to do. Modern Latter-day Saints saw themselves as actively reliving an Exodus type event when they left Nauvoo and traveled west to Utah. A wonderful example of this would be Arrington's biography: Brigham Young: American Moses. Asked in a 1995 interview about the title, Arrington said (as quoted here😞 You can see how this takes a historical narrative in the vein of what I have been discussing here, and then applies it to a real historical event. The comparison is itself a part of the message. My arguments are generally specific. And they rely on the notion that there is some intention conveyed through texts. Although, I will also admit that even my nuanced efforts to deal with intention are themselves sometimes subject to criticism (see for example, Frederick Kleiner's Dissertation: Experiment Upon the Word). Hopefully this helps you understand a little more my skepticism. I am a fairly equal opportunity skeptic, I think.
  12. Of course it's been canonized. Just only by Mormons. If Mormons didn't believe it was scripture we wouldn't be having this conversation either. Right, but it's still a work of fiction. This is the problem that we run into when we deal with something like the Kedah Annals that you are so fond of. The Kedah Annals are dated to the late 18th or early 19th century. It claims to be a history of a much earlier period - but - much of what it describes isn't historical at all. Just as an example - the appearance of the Garuda as a major plot element is problematic (wouldn't you agree). I point this out because if we use the standards of Esther in terms of claiming that it establishes an authentic setting (this is perhaps the beginning of a discussion on methods), then we can believe that the Kedah Annals do not provide an authentic setting. By the same token, it is likely that the Book of Mormon doesn't provide us with an authentic setting either. The part of the text that would be the closest to history (assuming that the narrative is at least somewhat authentic) would be the contents of the small plates of Nephi - which allegedly were written by eye-witnesses to the events, and which were then translated only once some 2500 years later. The Jaredite record is provided (according to the text) only in a late translation of a highly editorialized early translation. It likely counts as mythical in the same way that the Kedah Annals contain mythical information. The Book of Mormon has a very clearly established setting. It was produced between 1827 and 1829 in the United States. Your concerns have a fairly high degree of irrelevancy until you come up with some sort of plan to distinguish between the translation and the urtext. What we really want is the source text - and without that source text, everything becomes speculative. There are lots of reasons for this - which I have discussed in various venues. The issue of the "elephant" is one of these issues. You keep bringing it up, but it is mentioned once in the text - and in a fairly contextless fashion - Ether 9:19 This is supposed to come from the Jaredite record. We don't really have a Jaredite record of course - because the Book of Ether isn't a translation, even in a very loose sense, of the Jaredite record. After all, in Ether 6:1 we read: "And now I, Moroni, proceed to give the record of Jared and his brother." Six chapters in, and only now are we getting the record? It is highly editorialized. And we have to wonder, is the elephant in Ether 9 significantly different from the Garudah in the Kedah Annals (and for those who are just following the discussion, you can read about the Garuda here). So we have a translation of a text that allegedly occurs a little over 2,000 years ago (the actual events, being contemporaneous with the mythical confounding of the languages concurrent with the tower of Babel, which is dated to more than 4,000 years ago), and this is at best paraphrased in the Nephite record in the Book of Ether, which is included with the gold plates that are then translated in 1828 into English. So we end up with a text that is less than helpful, two translations which may or may not be all that accurate, and so on. And yet, you want to argue that this is somehow significant for us in trying to put a historical context on the text of the Book of Mormon. You have to understand why this would raise a high level of skepticism right from the beginning.
  13. I don't really agree with this. Of course, I am a text guy, not a historian or a geographer. But, as Adele Berlin noted about the Book of Esther: Esther is still a fictional account. And the existence of the characters in the text contradict historical data. The problem that we face is that the Book of Mormon is a text - a work of literature, and the Nephites we see in the text are literary constructs. You want to create a close connection between the literary creation and history - but - you don't want to first deal with the literary problems. To me, that only suggests that you are privileging an interpretation - one that is already competing with other interpretations. Looking for evidence to support your interpretation (especially when it ignores evidence that contradicts your interpretation) tends to make for circular arguments. It makes it difficult for you to distinguish between your evidences and pure speculation. In a nod to @mfbukowski it's worth pointing out that our need to prove that the Nephites existed isn't particularly important to our reading of the text. It especially isn't important if we are going to read as Nephi suggests, by likening the text to ourselves. And of course, to deal with this, we have theories (which I don't particularly subscribe to either) that Lehi and company sailed south and west around Africa and crossed the Atlantic. The text is problematic because (like all texts) it represents a communicative act - and only when we understand that communicative act can we start to understand the reasons for the details that are included in the text. And I can see this problem here in the idea you have of the Lehite expedition sailing east instead of south when the direction they sailed simply isn't a part of the narrative. And as a note, I really don't have a point B. I have never (in the decades I have been posting here) ever suggested that I favored one geographic model. My concern isn't deciphering the geography of the text - after all, in discussing the text as a communicative act, I note with some certainly that it isn't within the scope of its intent to make it easy to produce a map of the various journeys and locations mentioned.
  14. I don't have a point B. That is, I am not arguing for any particular location where the Book of Mormon took place. However, I think that your question does provide a space for some relevant discussions - 1: The Book of Mormon alleges to be a translation. We need to be very clear that the Book of Mormon is produced in a specific time and place. Any attempt to deal with the historicity of the narratives in the text (to the extent that there may be a historicity to them) has to differentiate between features of the text that are attributable to the translation as opposed to the source text (the gold plates). 2: Being able to identify with certainty a location where the alleged events of the Book of Mormon took place helps us understand the text (and this is especially helpful for understanding the source for the translation). However, incorrectly identifying the location where the alleged events took place is harmful in understanding the text - and, I would argue, that this misidentification is more harmful than reading the text (in translation of course) without attempting to identify a specific location where the alleged events took place. In other words, reading the text with the wrong location in mind provides a reading that is worse than reading the text with no location in mind. Because of this, I find no value in the various models attempting to identify a location. Until one comes out that works with enough certainty that I would be confident using it, I prefer not to read it in a specific historical context. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that while Nephi understands the historical context of the Brass Plates, he deliberately withholds that information from his people. Instead, he adopts a paradigm of likening the text to their experience. This sort of reading doesn't require us to have a historical context - it always recontextualizes the text in the present. I bring this up only to point out that while there is a literary reason to avoid trying to contextualize the text into a specific historical place and time, there is also a reading paradigm in the text itself which suggests that the translation of the text provides us with everything we need to read it in the here and now. Finally, as my own writing indicates, I have no problems with using historical contexts when the narrative provides it - which it does in its origin stories with Jerusalem.
  15. But this doesn't really seem to be what you are doing here, frankly. It seems to me that you are trying to find avenues for arguments to support an idea that you have intuited. Without actually taking the time to engage real methodology, this will never get you anywhere. But this points right back to the problem. It isn't a Book of Mormon mystery at all. There is no reason or need to draw this connection here. There is no connection between A and B which would suggest that this is at all relevant to the Book of Mormon. And there is no mystery because we aren't looking at some unexplained puzzle. See this? This isn't a description of what's going on in the Book of Mormon. Moroni doesn't appear in the Book of Mormon as a military title. It does appear as a name. But we can find lots of homonyms to that name in lots of places and times. No. This is all complete nonsense. And I mean complete nonsense. The narrative itself doesn't support this. So you have to reject the narrative for a personal theory that you intuited (on the basis of reasons other than a close reading of the text). At any rate, I think I am done here. It seems to me that you already know what is 'true' - you just are hoping that you can find a way to prove it. Let me just suggest that you start instead by finding a good methodology - and that you then follow that methodology - and accept the outcome if it shows that your theory isn't workable ...
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