Deutero-Isaiah question?

[JarMan]

59 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

There's no texts from that era. However the types are all there. Indeed I think all writers on the apocalyptic genre note how the Hellenistic genre repurposes these earlier elements. That's not cherry picking. Now it's not in the exact form you're right. But again, we have no pre-Hellenistic texts. So by your criteria it's impossible to say anything one way or the other.

It's still cherry picking. But on imaginary trees.

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem with the 16th century context using your type of criticism is precisely 1 Nephi 13:30-38. You could argue (as Don Bradley did in his thesis) that this reflects the New York attempted gathering of Israel. However it definitely presupposes a relative end to genocide of native Americans that wasn't going on in the 17th century. Even if this reflects the aims of some 16th century author, there's many things in that section that simply didn't happen until the 18th and 19th centuries.

These verses fit very well in a 17th Century context. Protestants of the early modern period were very critical of the Spanish for their treatment of the natives. But in their minds they were treating the Natives differently when they went to colonize America.

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

The other problem with the chapter you quote, 22, is that the "might nation...upon the face of this land" that scatters the seed of Lehi doesn't fit England, Portugal or Spain. Rather it fits the United States and the scattering (not genocide or enslavement) of the American Indians. It seems such a clear reference to 19th cenutry Indian policy (against the policy of Great Britain) that its very hard to see that as occuring before the mid-18th century and arguably not until after the break from Britain.

I think you are misunderstanding the word scatter. You have to read it in terms of the scattering of the Jews both in OT times and after the second temple was destroyed. This is the context Nephi is using when he uses the word scatter. The Jews were certainly killed and enslaved, too, as they were being scattered. So this description for the Europeans acting against the natives works perfectly. And, of course when Nephi says this land he is referring to the Americas. Why would he be referring to Europe?

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

There's also the prophecies in 3 Nephi about the seed rising up. Again, difficult to date before the rise of say Tecumseh. 

So by your own methodology you undermine your 16th century dating.

Can you give me chapter and verse about the seed rising up?

I don't have a 16th Century dating. I think I was pretty clear that I dated it to 1635-1648.

[clarkgoble]

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

Can you give me chapter and verse about the seed rising up?

I don't have a 16th Century dating. I think I was pretty clear that I dated it to 1635-1648.

3 Nephi 21 - particularly verse 12. 

Sorry - I wrote 16th century but was thinking 1600's. My bad. I get confused sometimes since the EModE is 1500's. 

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

These verses fit very well in a 17th Century context. Protestants of the early modern period were very critical of the Spanish for their treatment of the natives. But in their minds they were treating the Natives differently when they went to colonize America.

Not following you here. Particularly 1 Ne 13:19-20. If you think the first half of the 1600's is the date, then I just don't see how those verses work. If you see the battle as over the Spanish attempts to overthrow Elizabeth that might work a bit. However it doesn't explain the "out of captivity" passages. That seems more more explainable in a 19th cenutry context as people fleeing Europe. In which case 13:17 is talking about war between nations in the Americas. That would have to be either the French/English wars, the American Revolution (most likely) or something similar. My big problem is that if the "good gentiles" are opposing the Spanish, that pretty well points to the English, but the English don't really have success in the Americas until the second half of the 1600's and arguably not really successful until the 1700's. If we're not talking about the Enlgish but hte Dutch or other Protestant groups, then I think the problems are even more pronounced.

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think you are misunderstanding the word scatter. You have to read it in terms of the scattering of the Jews both in OT times and after the second temple was destroyed. This is the context Nephi is using when he uses the word scatter. The Jews were certainly killed and enslaved, too, as they were being scattered. So this description for the Europeans acting against the natives works perfectly. And, of course when Nephi says this land he is referring to the Americas. Why would he be referring to Europe?

Not following you at all here. I thought that was how I was using scatter. You seem to want to use it as say enslavement in Brazil where the slaves worked in Brazil but that seems pretty forced compared to indigenous peoples pushed out of their homelands. But maybe if you're more explicit.

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

3 Nephi 21 - particularly verse 12. 

This is just Micah 5:8 (which most scholars think is post-exilic).

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Sorry - I wrote 16th century but was thinking 1600's. My bad. I get confused sometimes since the EModE is 1500's. 

The first half of the 1600's is still the early modern period.

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Not following you here. Particularly 1 Ne 13:19-20. If you think the first half of the 1600's is the date, then I just don't see how those verses work. If you see the battle as over the Spanish attempts to overthrow Elizabeth that might work a bit. However it doesn't explain the "out of captivity" passages. That seems more more explainable in a 19th cenutry context as people fleeing Europe. In which case 13:17 is talking about war between nations in the Americas. That would have to be either the French/English wars, the American Revolution (most likely) or something similar. My big problem is that if the "good gentiles" are opposing the Spanish, that pretty well points to the English, but the English don't really have success in the Americas until the second half of the 1600's and arguably not really successful until the 1700's. If we're not talking about the Enlgish but hte Dutch or other Protestant groups, then I think the problems are even more pronounced.

1 Nephi 13:17-20 is all referring to the defeat of the Spanish Armada which occurred in 1588.

The "out of captivity" phrase refers to the Dutch and English primarily, but could also mean other Protestant nations. The Dutch rebelled from their Spanish overlords in 1568. The war lasted 80 years. So they were certainly coming "out of captivity." The English rebelled against Spain after Bloody Mary's death by going back to Protestantism. Mary was married to King Phillip II of Spain and was Queen Consort of Spain as well as Queen of England. It was Phillip II who sent the Spanish Armada against Mary's successor, Elizabeth.

The Dutch and the British were getting quite established in the Americas by 1650. Here's a map of New Netherland in 1650. By that time they also had colonies in several Caribbean islands and had captured a large part of Brazil from the Portuguese and controlled Dutch Guaina. Meanwhile, the British had colonies in the Caribbean and many in New England and Nova Scotia (New Scotland). You're right, of course, that England got stronger in America with time, but certainly by 1650 the combined presence of the Dutch, English, and Scottish was enough to make this time period fit Nephi's descriptions.

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Not following you at all here. I thought that was how I was using scatter. You seem to want to use it as say enslavement in Brazil where the slaves worked in Brazil but that seems pretty forced compared to indigenous peoples pushed out of their homelands. But maybe if you're more explicit.

I guess I'm not following you. The natives of America were treated very badly by the Spanish from the very beginning. The conquistadors killed and enslaved them indiscriminately. Slaves were brought back to Europe or to Caribbean plantations or to silver mines or the pearl fisheries. This was very much a "scattering" but on a larger scale. The whole point of using the "scattering" imagery was to introduce another commonality between the Old World Israelites and the New World Israelites.

Edited July 10, 2019 by JarMan

[clarkgoble]

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

This is just Micah 5:8 (which most scholars think is post-exilic).

Now you're applying a double standard. Elsewhere when a text is quoted or paraphrased it counts towards history depending upon its textual context. Here you're breaking that and dismissing the textually context. (And the post-exilic issue is irrelevant here both for the reasons I outlined of loose translation but more particularly because this is a summary of events around 30 AD with Christ speaking written around 400 AD and then put through a KJV paraphrase likely in the 19th century) The use in 3 Nephi 21 is radically different from Micah as indicated by the opening verses where it's applying to the remnant of the Lamanites/Nephites. It's a perfect example of where the underlying paraphrased KJV text doesn't tell us about its use.

Put an other way, for you to apply this standard here is exactly what I am doing by pointing out Revelation is quoting/paraphrasing earlier pre-exilic symbols and narratives.

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

The first half of the 1600's is still the early modern period.

Good point.

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

1 Nephi 13:17-20 is all referring to the defeat of the Spanish Armada which occurred in 1588.

The "out of captivity" phrase refers to the Dutch and English primarily, but could also mean other Protestant nations. The Dutch rebelled from their Spanish overlords in 1568. The war lasted 80 years. So they were certainly coming "out of captivity." The English rebelled against Spain after Bloody Mary's death by going back to Protestantism. Mary was married to King Phillip II of Spain and was Queen Consort of Spain as well as Queen of England. It was Phillip II who sent the Spanish Armada against Mary's successor, Elizabeth.

The British never were in captivity though. That's a real stretch. The problem with it being the dutch 

The problem with it being the war with the Spanish Armada is that the text doesn't emphasize the many waters as how they battle captivity. Rather it is indicating a fleeing captivity by going across the many waters. More to the point the land in verse 17 appears to be the land of America not the land in Europe. The emphasis in "land" is the land of the Americas so I don't think the Spanish Armanda reading works if you're going for this historical criticism approach. You're trying to say it's Spain/England in Europe when the text keeps emphasizing the land of promise.

The French/English wars would work, but then that wouldn't give you your desired dating. But the more obvious reading is the traditional one of the American Revolution and thus a 19th century context. Verse 19 in particular.

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

The Dutch and the British were getting quite established in the Americas by 1650.

Yes, but that's insufficient for the passage. Particularly 17-20.

Even if I conceded the Spanish Armada for 13 it just ignores emphasis that is gentiles in the land of promise and the battle taking place there. 

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

I guess I'm not following you.

I'm saying enslavement and mistreatment is insufficient for the word scattered. While I'm hardly an expert on this era of history my understanding is that few slaves were brought back to Europe. Most of the slaves were used on the plantations - typically working them to death which was why Africans were brought in initially along with the later (mid 16th century) banning of native slavery. I certainly will concede that the Spanish did move slaves around their colonies depending upon where work was needed. However I was under the assumption that slaves typically were used close to where they were captured with some exceptions with Portugeuse slavers. The big problem though was the short survival rate of slaves contrasted with large population shifts in say the British/American colonization of the US. Although I'm sure you could point out the issue is less what happened than how Europeans in the early 1600's understood what was happening. And there I'm nearly completely ignorant.

[RevTestament]

On 7/8/2019 at 10:10 PM, JarMan said:

But we can narrow it down even further with some clues from Chapter 22. In this chapter Nephi is explaining to his family the meaning of Isaiah 48 and 49 (20 and 21 of 1 Nephi). There is a hint in 14:16 that is made clearer in 22:13. 14:16 tells us there is war “among all the nations which belonged to the mother of abominations”. This is important since France, a Catholic nation, didn’t enter the war until 1635. Worried about Spain’s power, France entered the war on the side of the Protestants. 1 Nephi 22:13 then tells us: “And the blood of that great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall turn upon their own heads; for they shall war among themselves, and the sword of their own hands shall fall upon their own heads, and they shall be drunken with their own blood.” This is France’s entry into the war in 1635, primarily against Spain.

I have to disagree with your interpretation. It is not historical. The prior verses show that it has not yet come to pass:

11 Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to make bare his arm in the eyes of all the ^anations, in bringing about his covenants and his gospel unto those who are of the house of Israel.

12 Wherefore, he will ^abring them again out of ^bcaptivity, and they shall be ^cgathered together to the lands of their ^dinheritance; and they shall be ^ebrought out of obscurity and out of ^fdarkness; and they shall know that the ^gLord is their ^hSavior and their Redeemer, the ⁱMighty One of Israel.

The Lord has not yet bared His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and has not yet brought all of Israel out of their captivity in Islam and gathered them to the land of their inheritance. So, your assuming that verse 13 has supposed to already have happened is not accurate.... just sayin. 

Quote

For further evidence the writer did not know the outcome of this war, the very next verse (22:14) tells us the great and abominable church “shall tumble to the dust and great shall be the fall of it.” Nephi is extrapolating this from Isaiah 49 which says:

25 But thus saith the Lord, even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered; for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.

26 And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; they shall be drunken with their own blood as with sweet wine; and all flesh shall know that I, the Lord, am thy Savior and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

But the Catholic nations did not lose the war. The Catholic Church did not tumble to the dust as a result of these wars as Nephi prophesied. If anything, they got stronger over the next century. So at the point that Nephi's prophecy fails is the point where we know the writer of 1 Nephi is predicting the future. This confirms he is writing during the time of these apocalyptic wars, but now we can narrow it down to 1635-1648 since we can clearly see that France has joined the fight.

I can cite a dozen other clues that give us this basic time frame for the Book of Mormon's production.

They are basically irrelevant when you are misinterpreting the scriptures like this. The great and abominable Church is the same as the great whore of Revelation. She does not fall until the seventh seal of Revelation. D&C makes it clear that Joseph Smith lived in the 6th seal. So you are again just plainly wrong in your interpretations, so you can't use them to date the time of the writing of the BoM...

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Now you're applying a double standard. Elsewhere when a text is quoted or paraphrased it counts towards history depending upon its textual context. Here you're breaking that and dismissing the textually context. (And the post-exilic issue is irrelevant here both for the reasons I outlined of loose translation but more particularly because this is a summary of events around 30 AD with Christ speaking written around 400 AD and then put through a KJV paraphrase likely in the 19th century) The use in 3 Nephi 21 is radically different from Micah as indicated by the opening verses where it's applying to the remnant of the Lamanites/Nephites. It's a perfect example of where the underlying paraphrased KJV text doesn't tell us about its use.

Put an other way, for you to apply this standard here is exactly what I am doing by pointing out Revelation is quoting/paraphrasing earlier pre-exilic symbols and narratives.

I think you are misunderstanding my intent so let me explain my thinking a little better. The author seems willing to "prophesy" up to his own experience but no further because he knows he can't see the future. That's why he doesn't give any information beyond the French joining the war. For future "prophesy" he relies on biblical texts. That's why he points us to Revelation to get the rest of the story of his vision. I pointed out already that he did the same thing in 1 Nephi 22:14 by using Isaiah 49 to "prophesy." In 3 Nephi 21:12 he is doing the exact same thing. He's not prophesying per se. He's using existing prophesy from the bible that he believes will come to pass.

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The British never were in captivity though. That's a real stretch. 

Remember that being in captivity can also mean paying tribute as it does in Mosiah 27:16. The English were paying tribute to the church in Rome (though the church didn't call it that) at the time of Henry VIII. Henry VIII ended that practice. I assume it was brought back under Mary and then ended again under Elizabeth. So I think this is consistent with what the Book of Mormon calls "captivity."

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem with it being the war with the Spanish Armada is that the text doesn't emphasize the many waters as how they battle captivity. Rather it is indicating a fleeing captivity by going across the many waters. More to the point the land in verse 17 appears to be the land of America not the land in Europe. The emphasis in "land" is the land of the Americas so I don't think the Spanish Armanda reading works if you're going for this historical criticism approach. You're trying to say it's Spain/England in Europe when the text keeps emphasizing the land of promise.

The French/English wars would work, but then that wouldn't give you your desired dating. But the more obvious reading is the traditional one of the American Revolution and thus a 19th century context. Verse 19 in particular.

Yes, but that's insufficient for the passage. Particularly 17-20.

Even if I conceded the Spanish Armada for 13 it just ignores emphasis that is gentiles in the land of promise and the battle taking place there.

Verse 13 doesn't refer to the armada battle. It refers to the exploration of the "many waters" -- the oceans (perhaps including the Indian and Pacific as well as the Atlantic since the East Indies were also being explored). The Dutch and English were both battling Spain at this time on the oceans using privateers because the Spanish were trying to enforce a trade monopoly in the East and West Indies. This is another way to understand them as going forth out of captivity. (I should point out here that Grotius defended this privateering because he believed free trade was a fundamental right and that if someone was preventing it, ie the Spanish, it was cause to wage just war.)

Only verses 17-19 refer to the armada. Notice here that it is just the "waters" -- not the "many waters" of verse 13. It was a local conflict.

Verse 19 does not specify which land. But since it doesn't say "land of promise" I think the more straightforward reading is that it is Europe. The primacy of water over land in verse 17 as well as the other things I mentioned suggests that the Spanish Armada is a better match than the Revolutionary War.

 

Edited July 11, 2019 by JarMan

[JarMan]

3 hours ago, RevTestament said:

I have to disagree with your interpretation. It is not historical. The prior verses show that it has not yet come to pass:

11 Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to make bare his arm in the eyes of all the ^anations, in bringing about his covenants and his gospel unto those who are of the house of Israel.

12 Wherefore, he will ^abring them again out of ^bcaptivity, and they shall be ^cgathered together to the lands of their ^dinheritance; and they shall be ^ebrought out of obscurity and out of ^fdarkness; and they shall know that the ^gLord is their ^hSavior and their Redeemer, the ⁱMighty One of Israel.

The Lord has not yet bared His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and has not yet brought all of Israel out of their captivity in Islam and gathered them to the land of their inheritance. So, your assuming that verse 13 has supposed to already have happened is not accurate.... just sayin. 

They are basically irrelevant when you are misinterpreting the scriptures like this. The great and abominable Church is the same as the great whore of Revelation. She does not fall until the seventh seal of Revelation. D&C makes it clear that Joseph Smith lived in the 6th seal. So you are again just plainly wrong in your interpretations, so you can't use them to date the time of the writing of the BoM...

What I'm doing is using historical-critical methods to determine when the Book of Mormon was written, given that it appears to be an early modern document. This is the same thing biblical scholars do, for example, to show that the Book of Daniel was likely written between 167 BC and 164 BC instead of in the sixth century. This is necessarily a secular study so modern revelation is irrelevant to the process. I agree that the great and abominable church is the whore of Revelation, but in early modern Protestant Europe this was the Catholic Church (and sometimes Islam, as well).

[champatsch]

JarMan, some questions:

(I don't see evidence of Grotius being extremely well-trained in English. I see Latin and Dutch, of course.)

Where and when did Grotius obtain his philological training in English?

Did he have special training in Greek and Hebrew?

How did Grotius produce the text's late Middle English and very early modern English forms, structures, and lexis?

How about the Scotticisms in the text, textually found after his death, like "save it were" (1646, 1684).

When did Grotius work for years on the very complex text of almost 270,000 words?

As one very important example, when did Grotius work for years on the complex King James blending and quoting which are clearly part of P?

How did the Book of Mormon get its late modern system of auxiliary selection with unaccusative past participles?

Where is the evidence for Joseph Smith manipulating an earlier manuscript, before and while he dictated O?

What evidence do you have to contradict six dictation witnesses, one quite independent (Michael Morse), who said that Joseph Smith didn't dictate from books or MSS?

Edited July 11, 2019 by champatsch

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm saying enslavement and mistreatment is insufficient for the word scattered. While I'm hardly an expert on this era of history my understanding is that few slaves were brought back to Europe. Most of the slaves were used on the plantations - typically working them to death which was why Africans were brought in initially along with the later (mid 16th century) banning of native slavery. I certainly will concede that the Spanish did move slaves around their colonies depending upon where work was needed. However I was under the assumption that slaves typically were used close to where they were captured with some exceptions with Portugeuse slavers. The big problem though was the short survival rate of slaves contrasted with large population shifts in say the British/American colonization of the US. Although I'm sure you could point out the issue is less what happened than how Europeans in the early 1600's understood what was happening. And there I'm nearly completely ignorant.

I have to assume the wars of the Conquistadors created many refugees, as all great wars do. I think that, in itself, is enough to satisfy the concept of "scattering." I do not know the total nature and extent of slavery during this time but I believe it was sufficient, combined with the refugees, to constitute a scattering. I will do some additional research on this, both on the conditions among the natives and the interpretation of it by Protestant Europeans.

[JarMan]

14 minutes ago, champatsch said:

JarMan, some questions:

(I don't see evidence of Grotius being extremely well-trained in English. I see Latin and Dutch, of course.)

Where and when did Grotius obtain his philological training in English?

Did he have special training in Greek and Hebrew?

How did Grotius produce the text's late Middle English and very early modern English forms, structures, and lexis?

How about the Scotticisms in the text, textually found after his death, like "save it were" (1646, 1684).

When did Grotius work for years on the very complex text of almost 270,000 words?

As one very important example, when did Grotius work for years on the complex King James blending and quoting which are clearly part of P?

How did the Book of Mormon get its late modern system of auxiliary selection with unaccusative past participles?

Where is the evidence for Joseph Smith manipulating an earlier manuscript, before and while he dictated O?

What evidence do you have to contradict six dictation witnesses, one quite independent (Michael Morse), who said that Joseph Smith didn't dictate from books or MSS?

Grotius was fluent in Dutch, Latin, French, Greek, and Hebrew and apparently was pretty familiar with Syriac. I propose he wrote the Book of Mormon in Latin, as most of his works were, and that a native English speaker (possibly Scottish) translated it into English. The English translator would have been a scholar so familiar with both the KJB and Latin Vulgate he was able to recognize Grotius' blending of the Latin Vulgate and create a corresponding blending of the KJB.

Grotius was a prodigious writer who produced a vast amount of scholarly work on the bible, law, warfare, history, historiography, astronomy, classical antiquity, poetic works and plays (including plays on Adam's expulsion from the garden, Joseph in Egypt, and Christ's passion), government, the ancient populating of the Americas, and many other topics. I propose he worked on the Book of Mormon beginning in the 1630's possibly up to his death in 1645. At that time he was mostly living in France working as Queen Christina of Sweden's ambassador to France.

I've written elsewhere about my theories on how Joseph was able to read a transcript without violating the dictation witness statements. I am not familiar with Michael Morse's statement, though (it's not listed on the Fair Mormon website which is the source I've been using to evaluate them), so I would appreciate if you could provide a link.

[champatsch]

48 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I am not familiar with Michael Morse's statement, though (it's not listed on the Fair Mormon website which is the source I've been using to evaluate them), so I would appreciate if you could provide a link.

Saints’ Herald, 15 June 1879, 190, 191.

Morse didn't say that Joseph Smith didn't use a MS, but others said it, and Morse said Joseph must have memorized, which implies no use of MS.

Edited July 11, 2019 by champatsch

[champatsch]

50 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Grotius was fluent in Dutch, Latin, French, Greek, and Hebrew and apparently was pretty familiar with Syriac. I propose he wrote the Book of Mormon in Latin, as most of his works were, and that a native English speaker (possibly Scottish) translated it into English. The English translator would have been a scholar so familiar with both the KJB and Latin Vulgate he was able to recognize Grotius' blending of the Latin Vulgate and create a corresponding blending of the KJB.

Grotius was a prodigious writer who produced a vast amount of scholarly work on the bible, law, warfare, history, historiography, astronomy, classical antiquity, poetic works and plays (including plays on Adam's expulsion from the garden, Joseph in Egypt, and Christ's passion), government, the ancient populating of the Americas, and many other topics. I propose he worked on the Book of Mormon beginning in the 1630's possibly up to his death in 1645. At that time he was mostly living in France working as Queen Christina of Sweden's ambassador to France.

I've written elsewhere about my theories on how Joseph was able to read a transcript without violating the dictation witness statements. I am not familiar with Michael Morse's statement, though (it's not listed on the Fair Mormon website which is the source I've been using to evaluate them), so I would appreciate if you could provide a link.

So here's what you have, at a minimum:

Grotius writing for five to 10 years a complex document in Latin, drawing on expertise in biblical languages.

Then a Scottish English philologist translating Grotius.

Then an English philologist around the year 1800 reworking the translation, selectively updating it.

Then Joseph Smith acquiring this presumably unpublished MS.

Then Joseph Smith carrying out his elaborate hoax.

Finally, Joseph Smith dictating from the MS to create O.

Thus, all the witnesses who saw him place a seer stone in the crown of a hat, put his face into the hat, and dictate, were uniformly mistaken.

[JarMan]

7 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Saints’ Herald, 15 June 1879, 190, 191.

Morse didn't say that Joseph Smith didn't use a MS, but others said it, and Morse said Joseph must have memorized, which implies no use of MS.

This is a secondhand account so that may be why it is not listed on FairMormon. (But it is nonetheless consistent with most of the other accounts.) Essentially my theory is that Joseph had a manuscript concealed behind the table. By pretending to look at a stone in a hat it's quite easy to leave a gap and see into your lap. None of the eyewitness accounts I have seen mention going behind the table or seeing into the hat. So my theory is that both the table and hat were items used for concealment.

The only possible exception to this among the witness statements is Emma's problematic statement from 1879. It's problematic both because it's 50 years after the fact and because she gives a lot of demonstrably false information in the rest of the interview, particularly relating to polygamy.

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

How did the Book of Mormon get its late modern system of auxiliary selection with unaccusative past participles?

I'm not familiar with this argument. Is it discussed in one of your Interpreter papers? If not, could you give me some details about the argument?

[JarMan]

12 minutes ago, champatsch said:

So here's what you have, at a minimum:

Grotius writing for five to 10 years a complex document in Latin, drawing on expertise in biblical languages.

Then a Scottish English philologist translating Grotius.

Then an English philologist around the year 1800 reworking the translation, selectively updating it.

Then Joseph Smith acquiring this presumably unpublished MS.

Then Joseph Smith carrying out his elaborate hoax.

Up to here I think you've got it. Though I would say something along the lines of  "transmission of inspired writing" rather than "elaborate hoax."

14 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Finally, Joseph Smith dictating from the MS to create O.

Thus, all the witnesses who saw him place a seer stone in the crown of a hat, put his face into the hat, and dictate, were uniformly mistaken.

Many people, including close family members, believed he could see things on the seer stone in his hat. So, here's a question for you. Before the gold plates came along, do you think Joseph was able to see hidden treasure and other things when he put the stone in his hat?

[champatsch]

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

Up to here I think you've got it. Though I would say something along the lines of  "transmission of inspired writing" rather than "elaborate hoax."

Many people, including close family members, believed he could see things on the seer stone in his hat. So, here's a question for you. Before the gold plates came along, do you think Joseph was able to see hidden treasure and other things when he put the stone in his hat?

Well, by hoax I was thinking of the plates, etc. There's a lot of complex activity that occurred because of the plates. As to the seer stone and hidden treasure, I don't know. I don't concern myself with that. I realize that the textual evidence is ultimately dispositive — it's the strongest evidence.

 

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm not familiar with this argument. Is it discussed in one of your Interpreter papers? If not, could you give me some details about the argument?

I mentioned auxiliary selection with unaccusative past participles in my first paper (unaccusatives are verbs of motion and change of state). Skousen mentioned it in a recent BYU Studies paper (57.3.106(c)). Basically, all the relevant forms that occur in the text were available by the late 1600s, but the syntactic pattern of auxiliary selection fits the late 1700s / early 1800s. The vast majority of the syntactic patterns in the Book of Mormon fit the early modern period well, but this is an exception. So if we posit that the text was first put together in the mid to late 1600s, then a later reworking is required to account for this late modern syntactic pattern and for a few items of late vocabulary. And someone must have inserted the anomalous, nearly consistent use of the extra conjunctive and after a complex subordinate clause and before its following main clause.

 

[Kevin Christensen]

Jar man said of the prophecies around 1 Nephi 13:

Quote

The author seems willing to "prophesy" up to his own experience but no further because he knows he can't see the future. That's why he doesn't give any information beyond the French joining the war. For future "prophesy" he relies on biblical texts.

It seems to me that the prophesies concerning the loss of plain and precious things, including many covenants, and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and then other books from the Gentiles is further:

Quote

39 And after it had come forth unto them I beheld ^aother ^bbooks, which came forth by the power of the Lamb, from the Gentiles unto them, unto the ^cconvincing of the Gentiles and the remnant of the seed of my brethren, and also the Jews who were scattered upon all the face of the earth, that the records of the prophets and of the twelve apostles of the Lamb are ^dtrue.

40 And the angel spake unto me, saying: These ^alast records, which thou hast seen among the Gentiles, shall ^bestablish the truth of the ^cfirst, which are of the ^dtwelve apostles of the Lamb, and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them; and shall make known to all kindreds, tongues, and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the ^eSavior of the world; and that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved.

41 And they must come according to the words which shall be established by the mouth of the Lamb; and the words of the Lamb shall be made known in the records of thy seed, as well as in the ^arecords of the twelve apostles of the Lamb; wherefore they both shall be established in ^bone; for there is ^cone God and one ^dShepherd over all the earth.

When I compare the story of what happens to the book that came out of the mouth of the Jew with this essay on what happened to the scriptures, I am seeing the same story, and that much of the information that permits the telling of the story comes from books discovered after the publication of the Book of Mormon.

Quote

Marcel Simon, writing in 1948 about the material which only appears in Christian texts concluded: ‘We are entitled to reckon such passages not as ones that the Jews suppressed but as Christian interpolations’ on the grounds that they could not be found in the original Hebrew19. Thirty years later, after impact of the Qumran discoveries, Robert Kraft wrote in M.Simon’s Festschrift: ‘Our suppositions about what is or is not possible or probable in pre-Christian and non-Christian Jewish circles need to be carefully re-evaluated and reformulated... For the topic in hand, overtly Christian influences on the transmission of Jewish Scriptures, most of the older claims can be dismissed because the assumptions on which they were based are no longer convincing...’20

An unacknowledged problem at the heart of Western Christian biblical study is that the Church, and especially the Western Church, has as its Scriptures the Jewish canon and text of the Old Testament, when the evidence shows clearly that the earliest Church used very different Scriptures. Let us examine that evidence. This is a complex field and what follows can be no more than a sketch of what is there. There are many unexamined assumptions, and many facts which must be set alongside each other.

After the destruction of the Temple, certain of the Hebrew books came to be accepted as Scripture and others rejected. R. Akiba, a third generation rabbi teaching some fifty years after the destruction of the temple, said that anyone who read a book excluded from the Scriptures (‘the outside books’) would have no part in the world to come (m.Sanhedrin 10.1). There must have been a Hebrew canon in his time and it must have been very important if such a penalty attached to reading the other books. The decisions about the Hebrew canon are often associated with the scholars who established a new centre of Jewish life and learning at Jamnia, and whilst there is no actual evidence for this, the scholarly expertise required to collect and establish the Hebrew texts is as likely to have been there as anywhere. A thinly veiled account of the process appears in 2 Esdras (4 Ezra), which describes how ‘Ezra’ was inspired to dictate and define the Scriptures. Although set in the aftermath of the first destruction of Jerusalem in 586BCE, the text of 2 Esdras is usually dated after the destructionin 70CE. ‘In the thirtieth year after the destruction of our city’ (2 Esd.3.1) indicates 100CE. 2 Esdras (originally the Apocalypse of Salathiel 2 Esdr.3-13) was expanded, and then preserved by the Christians. It was probably written by Hebrew Christians reflecting on the outcome of the first revolt against Rome, in which they had been heavily involved, and thus gives the Christian perspective on the formation of the Hebrew canon21. The prophet Ezra, whose genealogy presents him as descended from Aaron (2 Esd.1.1), heard the Most High speaking to him from a bush. This Ezra was a new Moses, but he was not named Moses. He was told to take five scribes and many writing tablets and then to write what was revealed to him. In forty days he dictated 9422 books, and was told by the Most High that only the first 24 were to be made public. The other 70 books were to be given ‘to the wise among your people. For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom and the river of knowledge’ (2 Esd.14.47). The 24 books are assumed to have been the Hebrew canon as it is today,23 but the books are not named. The seventy other books were recognised as more important than the Hebrew canon because they were the source of understanding, wisdom and knowledge. What were these seventy books? Presumably they were the ‘outside books’ which were forbidden to anyone who identified as a Jew. If, as seems likely, they were the pre-Christian texts which were only preserved by the Christians e.g. the earlier strata of the Ascension of Isaiah, the texts known as 1 (& 2) Enoch, - the texts now classified as the Pseudepigrapha - there must have been something of great importance in these texts. It is entirely possible that Justin had first hand knowledge of these events. He was born around the end of the first century CE in Flavia Neapolis (near ancient Shechem) which is about forty miles from Jamnia. The Christians in Palestine must have known what was being done to the Scriptures, – hence the ‘Ezra’ story – and Justin was the first to raise this issue of altering texts. The Christian telling of this story showed that they did not accept the Ezra canon as exclusive.

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/TextAndContext.pdf

Things get even more interesting in light of not only the particular sources Barker employs to tell the story, but the particular arguments she makes, compared to 1 Nephi 13.  In Light and Perspective I had this:

Quote

The Book of Mormon itself in 1 Nephi 13:23‒41 offers its own view of what happened to Bible texts in transmission but also on the significance of other texts that have emerged since the publication of the Book of Mormon. It happens that Barker’s essay “Text and Context” on the transmission of Biblical texts and 1 Nephi 13:23‒42 tell the same story, including not only the importance of nonbiblical texts emerging after the publication of the Book of Mormon, but also the convergence in Nephi’s declaration that the other texts would restore plain and precious truths, including the specific claim that “the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father,” which happens to be the overall argument of Barker’s The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God, and The Revelation of Jesus Christ, that Yahweh was seen as not only the Son of El Elyon but also the servant and lamb. I’ve made a case that Barker’s work fulfills prophesy in 1 Nephi 13 on the restoration of plain and precious things relevant to Lehi’s preaching what he “saw and heard” concerning “a messiah and the redemption of the world” (1 Nephi 1:19).⁴⁴ In contrast to what Lehi “saw and heard,” and expressed plainly, I take Jacob 4:14 on “blindness” and “looking beyond the mark” in Jerusalem as a direct comment on the reform, and I read the encounter with Sherem as an important echo of the main issues.

A part of Barker's case since The Older Testament is that the apocalyptic genre goes back to the First Temple.  I've previously cited her Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalyspses.

  http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/BeyondtheVeil.pdf

In essays that are no longer easy to link to (due to the problem at Maxwell Institute), I could show discussion that shows elaborate ties between Ezekiel and Revelation, and her comment that such things were there, not because the author of Revelation deliberately imitated Ezekiel, but because they both drew on the same High Priestly tradition.  It was easy for me to add references to all the same imagery in 1 Nephi.

It happens that "all data is theory laden", which means we do not objectively assess information, but we contextualize it in ways that affects interpretation.  As I've said before,  Othello is not just objectively following the facts to their conclusion, but buying into a narrative that provides the interpretive context for that information.  Another narrative can easily account for the same information.  And contextualizing the Great and Abominable in 1 Nephi 13 against anti-Catholic rhetoric may seem telling and convenient, but it happens (as has been pointed out by Clark and others) the imagery was both scriptural and ancient, going back to Nephi's time and background.  Margaret Barker's commentary on Revelation notes that the fate of the Great Whore in Revelation is to be burned, which happens to be the punishment proscribed in the OT for an adulterous spouse of the High Priest, not just for anyone.  And that points to the corrupted Temple.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Kevin Christensen
missing word

[clarkgoble]

21 hours ago, JarMan said:

What I'm doing is using historical-critical methods to determine when the Book of Mormon was written, given that it appears to be an early modern document. This is the same thing biblical scholars do, for example, to show that the Book of Daniel was likely written between 167 BC and 164 BC instead of in the sixth century. This is necessarily a secular study so modern revelation is irrelevant to the process. I agree that the great and abominable church is the whore of Revelation, but in early modern Protestant Europe this was the Catholic Church (and sometimes Islam, as well).

Just to be clear again, I don't think anyone disputes it was translated in the 19th cenutry and has some strong elements of the 19th century. As part of that translation process I think we'd expect more detail for past events the translator saw as fulfilled given that it's a loose interpretive translation.  The real debate here is whether it's purely the mid 1600's or not. There I think you have your work cut out for you to say the least since you have to account for the later linguistic elements as Stanford points out. But it's at least fun debating these elements of Nephi's prophecy.

22 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think you are misunderstanding my intent so let me explain my thinking a little better. The author seems willing to "prophesy" up to his own experience but no further because he knows he can't see the future. That's why he doesn't give any information beyond the French joining the war. For future "prophesy" he relies on biblical texts. That's why he points us to Revelation to get the rest of the story of his vision. I pointed out already that he did the same thing in 1 Nephi 22:14 by using Isaiah 49 to "prophesy." In 3 Nephi 21:12 he is doing the exact same thing. He's not prophesying per se. He's using existing prophesy from the bible that he believes will come to pass.

That's fair for your perspective. I'd still dispute the other elements which I think better describe French/English wars and the American Revolution. Which we'd expect if the interpretvie translation was the early 1800's rather than mid 1600's.

22 hours ago, JarMan said:

Remember that being in captivity can also mean paying tribute as it does in Mosiah 27:16. The English were paying tribute to the church in Rome (though the church didn't call it that) at the time of Henry VIII. Henry VIII ended that practice. I assume it was brought back under Mary and then ended again under Elizabeth. So I think this is consistent with what the Book of Mormon calls "captivity."

OK. That makes more sense. I think the "tribute" of the English Catholics to Rome is a pretty ill fit for that though. Maybe if you could find some 16th or 17th century texts describing it as such you'd have more strenght. To me this is at least as much of a stretch as any of the weakest of the pre-exilic parallels I put forth.

More to the point it assumes that "out of captivity" is just the ending of that tribute which seems dubious again.

22 hours ago, JarMan said:

Verse 13 doesn't refer to the armada battle. It refers to the exploration of the "many waters" -- the oceans (perhaps including the Indian and Pacific as well as the Atlantic since the East Indies were also being explored). The Dutch and English were both battling Spain at this time on the oceans using privateers because the Spanish were trying to enforce a trade monopoly in the East and West Indies. This is another way to understand them as going forth out of captivity. (I should point out here that Grotius defended this privateering because he believed free trade was a fundamental right and that if someone was preventing it, ie the Spanish, it was cause to wage just war.)

Only verses 17-19 refer to the armada. Notice here that it is just the "waters" -- not the "many waters" of verse 13. It was a local conflict.

Verse 19 does not specify which land. But since it doesn't say "land of promise" I think the more straightforward reading is that it is Europe. The primacy of water over land in verse 17 as well as the other things I mentioned suggests that the Spanish Armada is a better match than the Revolutionary War.

Again this seems a stretch demanding that land and water mean something different if they don't have the adjective modifier in every case.

The main argument against your interpretation of land as say the Spanish Netherlands is verse 15 where the land seems tied to the "seed of my brethren." There's also the emphasis on common "land of inheretance" with the idea of the gentiles having the inheretance now. To me it's just pretty hard to read those verses as referring to land as Europe rather than America.

Realize that here we're judging competing interpretations - primarily two. (1) A 17th century source where the narrative is about land/sea battles in the Spanish/English war at the end of the 16th century. (2) A 19th century source where the narrative is about land/sea battles that might include Spanish/English but is primarily about freeing European especially English colonists to America from Europe. Then arguably a third in which we have a prophetic pre-exilic experience translated/expanded by a 19th century interpretive translation. The question then becomes which has better explanatory power. For your use it's not enough to simply argue for a plausible mid 17th century interpretation you have to simultaneosly argue a 19th century authorship model can't work.

Even if we concede yours is a possible reading, that tends to also come with the caveat that the text is ambiguous in this regard. So at best it's a compatibility rather than evidence for your position. i.e. what you're calling historical-critical is ambiguous.

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

Essentially my theory is that Joseph had a manuscript concealed behind the table.

The biggest problem in your theory is the line of transmission. We require a detailed complex manuscript written by Grotius that no one else knows about, a separate translator of the text that Grotius shared the text with an no one else that we know of, this translated text somehow getting to Joseph Smith without anyone else knowing about its existence. That alone is a pretty good reason why even a naturalist skeptic of the Book of Mormon would find your position pretty difficult to accept. Particularly when the elements you are pointing to are abiguous between 17th and 19th century contexts and the problem that any 19th century author could also know 16th and 17th century events.

Compounding the difficulties you face is that your transmission theory seems to open up the possibility of Joseph modifying the manuscript in the 19th century. This makes the "historical critcal method" you raise difficult at best.

Edited July 12, 2019 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

4 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

A part of Barker's case since The Older Testament is that the apocalyptic genre goes back to the First Temple.  I've previously cited her Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalyspses.

To be fair I don't think Barker's thesis has found much acceptance in that particularity that I can see. We like her thesis because it supports the Book of Mormon of course, but that's motivated reasoning on our part for the most part.

Now I think the idea that these elements that are commonly found in apocalypses are pre-exilic is much, much more widely accepted. The problem then becomes defining apocalypse. There I think there's a surprising lack of agreement and most books of apocalypse note this even while arguing for their own definition. The main distinction between proto-apocalypse and apocalypse tends to oriented purely around the books they are found in. Books dated to the Hellenistic era are called apocalypses and books dated to the prophetic era (either pre-exilic or post-exilic) are called proto-apocalypse.

The main problem is that both are eschatological in nature and utilize symbolism, particularly Exodus inspired symbolism or YHWH vs. pagans symbolism.

Other differences almost always are tied to the thematic investigation that a particular author is using to analyze the apocalypse. That is the distinction between proto-apocalypse and apocalypse is primarily not one of content but one of date. Most scholars since Paul Hanson (back in the 70's) have simply tended to see the genres as a continuum. To therefore use it as an argument for date seems circular IMO. The bigger issue is the surrounding text - whether prophetic or not. 

The text to see the status of apocalyptic research seems Collins' "Apocalypse Now" -- although it's now a few years old.

It seems to me with respect to Book of Mormon apocalypse is the issue of whether in terms of imagery it refers to things unique in post-exilic apocalypse. I don't think it does. Certainly elements of the translation emphasize Revelation but only elements in Revelation that are themselves pre-exilic in nature. We don't see for instance strong elements of Daniel. Even the parallels to 1 Enoch are only the elements in 1 Enoch that are themselves pre-exilic themes or images. (Such as the mesopotamium notion of mountains as place where the gods live or ties to the waters)

Edited July 12, 2019 by clarkgoble

[USU78]

7 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The biggest problem in your theory is the line of transmission. We require a detailed complex manuscript written by Grotius that no one else knows about, a separate translator of the text that Grotius shared the text with an no one else that we know of, this translated text somehow getting to Joseph Smith without anyone else knowing about its existence. That alone is a pretty good reason why even a naturalist skeptic of the Book of Mormon would find your position pretty difficult to accept.

Absolutely this ^.

If the theory more easily explains the data, then it's a good theory.  If all it does is provide as plausible an explanation as JSJr's own explanation of the data, then it's a "meh" theory.  If it is less likely to explain the data, then it's a bad theory.  I vote for "meh."

[Steve J]

"A part of Barker's case since The Older Testament is that the apocalyptic genre goes back to the First Temple.  I've previously cited her Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalyspses."

Hopefully, the old Maxwell articles will be easier to link to and find in the future, what work of hers discusses the above hypothesis. I am currently reading the preview sections of "King of the Jews" on ibooks. (The book is kind of expensive)

 

Thanks

[Kevin Christensen]

For Steve, there is a line near the end of The Older Testament that Noel Reynolds wanted me to make sure I quoted in my essay in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem, about the apocalyptic elements in the OT as "not being insertions, but fossils." 

You can find several of her essays here:

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/default.htm

And this one in particular. "Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origins of the Apocalypses."

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/BeyondtheVeil.pdf

King of the Jews (her commentary on John)  is very much worth reading.  I've read all of her books (got them all as hard copies) and consider the time and effort as incredibly well spent. And considering that there are a few books I would love that cost around $100 a copy, I think her books are quite reasonable.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[Steve J]

Just now, Kevin Christensen said:

For Steve, there is a line near the end of The Older Testament that Noel Reynolds wanted me to make sure I quoted in my essay in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem, about the apocalyptic elements in the OT as "not being insertions, but fossils." 

You can find several of her essays here:

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/default.htm

And this one in particular. "Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origins of the Apocalypses."

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/BeyondtheVeil.pdf

King of the Jews (her commentary on John)  is very much worth reading.  I've read all of her books (got them all as hard copies) and consider the time and effort as incredibly well spent. And considering that there are a few books I would love that cost around $100 a copy, I think her books are quite reasonable.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Thanks. It's not actually that expensive 40.... I just have a hard time spending that amount on a book after all the money I spent on them in school...(Not to mention what my wife  would think :/

[JarMan]

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

Well, by hoax I was thinking of the plates, etc. There's a lot of complex activity that occurred because of the plates. As to the seer stone and hidden treasure, I don't know. I don't concern myself with that. I realize that the textual evidence is ultimately dispositive — it's the strongest evidence.

The issue of the seer stone and treasure seeking is a tough one. It seems like people are willing to accept the seer stone when it comes to the Book of Mormon but aren't so sure when it comes to other things. Maybe there's some nuanced explanation for all of this, but in my mind you either have to accept it all or reject it all (the use of the seer stone, that is). If Joseph has the ability to deceive witnesses when using the seer stone to look for treasure, doesn't that indicate he might have the ability to deceive them in dictating the Book of Mormon?

[JarMan]

12 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Jar man said of the prophecies around 1 Nephi 13:

It seems to me that the prophesies concerning the loss of plain and precious things, including many covenants, and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and then other books from the Gentiles is further:

This is actually an early modern idea. The best writing we have on it is from Samuel Fisher, a baptist minister turned Quaker. In 1660 he published a lengthy book on this issue. He argues that there are many books missing from the jewish and christian canons. This was based on the recent discovery of some new manuscripts and the various mentions of other books in the bible. He mentions many of them such as several of Paul's epistles, the prophecies of Enoch, Christ's Letter to Agbarus King of Edessa, and several others. He claimed that the early church removed them from the canon because they didn't like the teachings in them.

There are antecedents to this idea, but it is proving hard to research since Samuel Fisher's book seems to be the first discussion written in English. However, from second-hand sources I've found that there were Catholic apologists pointing to missing books in the early 1600's. Their reason for bringing it up was to counter the Protestant idea of sola scriptura. If you don't have all the scriptures then you need the church to tell you the things that are missing. Or so the argument goes.

In the 1630's there was something of an Enoch craze among European scholars. Some fragments of Enoch had been discovered and it was rumored that the entire work existed in Ethiopia. Grotius is one of the scholars who was apparently highly interested in it and had apparently seen the original fragments.

[JarMan]

8 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Just to be clear again, I don't think anyone disputes it was translated in the 19th cenutry and has some strong elements of the 19th century.

I dispute this. With the exception of a single sentence which I propose was added by Joseph or Oliver, I think it can all be dated to the mid 1600's or earlier. I've offered the challenge on here on multiple occasions for somebody to point out something in the Book of Mormon that can only be dated to after that time. So far nobody's won the prize. So I'll put the offer out there again. I'd like somebody to find content in the Book of Mormon that necessarily post-dates the mid-17th Century.

8 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Again this seems a stretch demanding that land and water mean something different if they don't have the adjective modifier in every case.

The main argument against your interpretation of land as say the Spanish Netherlands is verse 15 where the land seems tied to the "seed of my brethren." There's also the emphasis on common "land of inheretance" with the idea of the gentiles having the inheretance now. To me it's just pretty hard to read those verses as referring to land as Europe rather than America.

It's important to be mindful of the "And it came to pass" time jumps. We get one of these in 13:16 indicating that we are now hearing something that takes place later than what we just heard in 14 and 15. So we can't assume the land mentioned in 17 is the same land in 15. Also notice that "land" is modified in verses 12, 14, and 15 so that we know for sure it's America. In verses 17 and 20 there are no modifiers, and then in verse 30 and 14:2 we again see that the land is specifically mentioned to be the promised land. I think it's quite reasonable to see verses 17 and 20 to mean Europe.

8 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Realize that here we're judging competing interpretations - primarily two. (1) A 17th century source where the narrative is about land/sea battles in the Spanish/English war at the end of the 16th century. (2) A 19th century source where the narrative is about land/sea battles that might include Spanish/English but is primarily about freeing European especially English colonists to America from Europe. Then arguably a third in which we have a prophetic pre-exilic experience translated/expanded by a 19th century interpretive translation. The question then becomes which has better explanatory power. For your use it's not enough to simply argue for a plausible mid 17th century interpretation you have to simultaneosly argue a 19th century authorship model can't work.

Even if we concede yours is a possible reading, that tends to also come with the caveat that the text is ambiguous in this regard. So at best it's a compatibility rather than evidence for your position. i.e. what you're calling historical-critical is ambiguous.

Here are some challenges for the traditional interpretation, then. Who, exactly, is coming out of captivity? What is the nature of that captivity? Who are the "mother Gentiles" and why is a religious term being used here rather than a secular one, such as "mother nation?" Why is primacy given to the sea over land when describing the battle? Why does the text say only that they were gathered to battle without giving details of the wars? Why does it say they were delivered out of the hands of "all other nations?" These are all questions that are better answered with an early modern model.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The biggest problem in your theory is the line of transmission. We require a detailed complex manuscript written by Grotius that no one else knows about, a separate translator of the text that Grotius shared the text with an no one else that we know of, this translated text somehow getting to Joseph Smith without anyone else knowing about its existence.

And the traditional explanation requires that Joseph could read a record written in a different language by peering at a stone in his hat.