Benjamin McGuire

And? How do you define something based on a mortal condition that exists in a pre-mortal condition? I suspect you could make the claim that the mortal condition always reflects a pre-mortal condition - but it seems clear that for at least a small group, this simply isn't the case. And if the empirical evidence suggests that this cannot be the case in some instances, then it becomes suspect as a generalization. Again, you are engaging in this swap. The idea of a legal sex is purely a construct. The idea of a biological sex seems to be (at least in your argument) something that is empirically accessible. So it seems clear that the Church's statement on gender and sex is not using the notion of legal sex. So to The idea of gender seems to be something that is not empirically based. Gender isn't really equatable with sex because unlike sex (legal or biological) it doesn't seem to be binary at all. Not at all. I think sometimes you get special treatment because your views come across as being so odious. I am old enough now that I don't always feel the need to be particularly diplomatic. The Church isn't in a position to define language that everyone uses. What the Church did was to clarify what the language meant in the document that they produced - so that it wouldn't be confusing in a context in which it could be read differently. The two terms are not synonymous - and nothing that the Church can do will change that. Absolutely. Clarity is always a good thing. It is good for the Church as well. I think that they are working to try and present a consistent approach. Yes. And this was expected because the source of the proclamation's language used the word sex. Had Talmage used the word gender, I doubt that they would have made this statement. That's right, he wasn't. I don't think that I said he was. However, the clarification that was published is something that came about during his Presidency. It's a lot like the shift from the LDS 'I'm a Mormon campaign' to President Nelson's "To remove the Lord’s name from the Lord’s Church is a major victory for Satan." A shift in policy. But it's hard to argue that President Monson was carrying out a campaign for Satan. And this suggests, among other things, that there is a certain level of fluidity in these kinds of policies. This has always been the problem of trying to push doctrine through policy. It is easy to change policies - they require no action or sustaining vote from the body of the Church. This creates an interesting problem - because once it's canonized, it becomes doctrine, right? But, they can't canonize the interpretation of the scriptures. And we end up in the same place we were when the priesthood ban was lifted, when Elder McConkie pointed out "Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world." Interpretation doesn't mean a whole lot in the larger scheme of things when it comes as part of incomplete knowledge. And we know, in this particular situation, that we have incomplete knowledge.

Put simply, Zechariah 14 (along with Zechariah 12) is a prophetic statement of the Day of the Lord - when God comes to rule in person on the earth. Zechariah 14 is quoted in John 7. I think that we are nowhere near the moment of the second coming. As far as the text goes, probably the most interesting commentary comes from Konrad Schaefer's 1995 article, "Zechariah 14: A Study in Allusion". I used it in my 2009 article "Nephi and Goliath". Zechariah 14 is built around a series of earlier texts: Isaiah 2-4, Isaiah 13, Isaiah 30, Ezekiel 38-39 and 47, and Zephaniah 1. Much of the author of Zechariah's concern is about the earlier prophecies which simply failed to be fulfilled in the return from the Babylonian diaspora. They are rewritten to produce a future event. New Testament authors (especially John and the Johannine epistles) invoke Zechariah 14 - and there is an expectation that this will be fulfilled in the conflict which resulted in the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem in 70 AD. Since that point in time, it is often brought up any time that there is believed to be something that points to the end of the world. I think that the last few verses are interesting. The text in Zechariah 14 seems to side with Joel against Isaiah. Joel and Zechariah have a Jerusalem that is free from strangers and Canaanites - they are all excluded. Isaiah has all the peoples of the world coming to Jerusalem to worship - it's vision of Israel is inclusive. Personally, I think that while it is perfectly fine to reinterpret texts (and prophesies) in our own contexts, problems occur when we assume that our readings are in some way the meaning of the text intended by its authors. While the current events are consuming our attention, and it is certain that there are plenty of people reading into these events a fulfillment of prophecy, it seems to me that this is simply wishful thinking for some. For LDS in particular, we have this problem - many decades ago, when I was young, I was part of a group of children who were being told that we were a part of the chosen generation - set to see the last days. Last Sunday was our young men's and young women's sacrament meeting - and I heard the same thing from the youth of today. These events seem like a lot - but realistically, the wars and the threats of war that we see today are relatively tame compared with the events of my parents youth and their parents youth. This is merely a sideshow ...

The problem is that it is self-contradictory. You can't have gender be both "biological sex at birth" and "an essential characteristic of individual premortal ... identity and purpose." This incongruity is reflected in LDS Church policy in two ways. The first is that restrictions that follow gender assignment surgery are only restrictions for those who voluntarily undergo such a procedure. Infants who are assigned (or re-assigned) a biological sex as infants are not considered to have had a gender reassignment for this purpose. Then there is section 38.7.7: There is, of course, a distinct deceptiveness in smac97's use of the NHS statement with regard to the Proclamation on the Family. Why do I say this? Because NHS has clearly differentiated gender from biological sex. According to the NHS, they are not the same thing. The LDS proclamation on the family draws its language from a James Talmage article in 1922 (this was how it made it through correlation). The original source for this statement in the proclamation didn't use the word gender, it used the word sex: If I had to guess, the language was changed from sex to gender because, at the time, there was a desire to avoid implicating the idea of sex as an ongoing issue in post-mortality. Whatever the cause of the shift, it is clear that the original source of this statement wasn't as nuanced as the current interpretation is today - Talmage was not writing to explain our current contexts - and that the current interpretation involves a progressive shift that is as much a matter of semantics as anything else. Given the easiness with which past policies have been erased and replaced - there was a big swing when President Nelson became the prophet - I suspect that there will likely be another shift within the Church when leaders with a different set of opinions take the reins. This is merely policy as doctrine.

I conceded that there are a number of publications that mention Kircher. More than once. Then lets do so.

Let's suppose for a moment that you are right here. Do you even understand how problematic this is? You have been arguing for days now that Buchanan uses Kircher. Now you are arguing that Buchanan is really using Barrow. If Buchanan is using Barrow, it makes it less likely that he had actually read Kircher and was only familiar with it from other sources. But, you aren't right. Barrow doesn't reference Kircher at all. The link is to an easily searchable copy of the referenced work, which includes both quotations from Barrow - which I am providing here: The heading that this is under (in Buchanan) is: Chinese Version of the Scriptures; and Chinese Literature. The discussion isn't about the spread of language, but about the possibility of providing a copy of the Bible in Chinese for use by the Chinese people (and their neighbors). But let's not stop here - since negative evidence isn't really evidence. Luckily for us, Barrow provides an entire chapter of his book on the Chinese language. Let me quote some of it for you (emphasis added): This goes on for pages. And then we get a bit of a summary (again emphasis added): In particular, Barrow is critical of the work of Joseph Hager (who he mentions directly). Hager's An Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese; with an Analysis of their Ancient Symbols and Hieroglyphics was published in 1801, and Hager's text does reference Kircher and his theories. But Barrow views these ideas with complete disdain. So let's get back to what I originally asked: You responded by arguing that Buchanan was quoting Barrow who was discussing Kircher. In Chapter 4 of Barrow's work (where the quotes are taken from), there is no discussion of Kircher at all. In Chapter 6 of Barrow's work, there is an indirect discussion of Kircher. I say indirect, because it is actually a discussion of Hager's modifications to Kircher's theory. So I note several things - First, the sections of Barrow quoted by Buchanan have absolutely nothing to do with Kircher's theory of languages. Not only don't they have anything to do with it, we generally wouldn't expect them to have anything to do with Kircher given Barrow's complete rejection of Hager's view of Kircher's theory (Barrow's rejecting of Hager includes a rejection of Kircher). Second, the fact that Barrow is quoting Hager reminds us that by the beginning of the 19th century, this discussion has expanded well beyond Kircher. That means that in this area, you aren't likely to find something that is "uniquely shared between Buchanan and Kircher". Already in this little discussion we have extended the necessary chain - Kircher -> Hager -> Barrow -> Buchanan. Buchanan doesn't even have to be aware of Kircher's theories to have included the comments he made in his work - because Buchanan doesn't discuss Kircher, and Barrow only discusses Kircher indirectly (through Hager). Third, you want to mention this idea of ideas existing in the environment, but, as I keep providing citations, what we see is that Kircher's views on language and migration - as plausible as they seemed in the 17th century, were generally being rejected in the 19th century. That is, public opinion of Kircher's theories isn't very good at all. That we can see this when we read these texts that mention Kircher again points to the problems of using digital search engines without spending the time with the context. And this creates a problem for the idea that it is this sort of theory that should direct our interpretation of the Book of Mormon (I think it's worth pointing out that when we get to the first readers of the Book of Mormon, they also don't read it in a way that follows Kircher either - something we might have expected had it been an idea so prevalent in the environment). This was the point of my request. It illustrates all of the problems that I tend to see in these sorts of comparisons. The genetic connection between Kircher and Buchanan seems unlikely - and if that connection is unlikely, it is even more unlikely that Kircher creates any sort of influence on the general populace in the U.S. in the early 19th century. And this brings us to the last bit I want to say. John Barrow wasn't quoting Kircher. I think that it's more likely than not that he was aware of Kircher's writings. But, Barrow does quote sources in his text - and this is not indicated as a quote. Further, you run into the problem that John Barrow was part of the first British Embassy in China. He lived there, and learned to speak and read Chinese. This makes his account more first-hand experience. Why does he need to quote Kircher (who had no first hand experience in China) when he could rely on his own observations of the value of learning Chinese (as he had learned) and its use in dealing with all of the different East Asian nations? Finally, all of this speculation on the relationship between Egyptian and Chinese ends in 1822. This is when Jean-François Champollion translates Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time. What allows the sort of speculation that Kircher (and Hager) engage in is first and foremost the fact that Egyptian glyphs were a lost language. Chinese was not. And so you could, if you believed Kircher's theory, attempt to work backwards and decipher Egyptian on the basis of the Chinese language (attempts were made at this). In 1822, that ends - because in coming to understand ancient Egyptian, we could see that the relationship between Chinese and Egyptian doesn't exist. In 1823, five Egyptian manuscript translations were published using Champollion's system. They were published in dozens of books over the next couple of years. This is really important for the larger discussion, because if you want to discuss Mitchill or Anthon, do you think that they were unaware of the translation of Egyptian and its lack of a relationship to Chinese? Do you think that they still believed in the idea that all languages shared some sort of Adamic language? That we can put Kircher into the environment is not itself terribly meaningful. It creates plausibility (as I have noted before) but it doesn't create a believable narrative. At any rate, there's my two cents (and then some).

Yeah, I'm sure. Irving's history mentions Kirchner: "I more than barely mention that father Kircher ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians, Budbeck to the Scandanavians, Charron to the Gauls, Juffredus Petri to a skaiting party from Friesland, Milius to the Celtae, Marinocus the Scicilian to the Tomans, Le Compte to the Phoenicians, Postel to the Moors, Martin D'Angleria to the Abyssinians; together with the sage surmise of De Laet, that England, Ireland, and the Orcades, may contend for that honour. In the same section, Irving also mentions in the same chapter the theories of Lopez de Gomara, Juan de Leri, Grotius, Marco Polo, Plato, Paracelsus, Dr. Romayne, Buffon, Helvetius, and Darwin. It is the only mention of Kircher, and Irving is telling his readers that Kircher is nonsense - not as nonsensical as an argument that America is Marco Polo's Zipangri, or Plato's Atlantis. That there are some people who know about Kircher isn't in question. The problem is that this isn't common knowledge or understanding. And we can see in this example that Kircher is being dismissed. So which of these is the most influential? I should note that the Darwin that Irving mentions is not the one that we all know, but his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and that while Irving spends 16 words dismissing Kircher, he spends most of a page on Darwin. The problem that you still aren't recognizing is that just because there are these mentions doesn't elevate these writers and thinkers into common awareness. No one is going to read Irving and suddenly develop an interest in reading Kircher (even if Kircher was available). It just isn't happening. On the other side of the coin, Erasmus Darwin's grandson, Charles Darwin, becomes a household name (and continues to be one). Hardly anyone has heard of Kircher or Erasmus Darwin. Everyone has heard of Charles Darwin. Washington Irving was incredibly influential - but his influence doesn't promote Kircher - any more than it promotes any of these other figures who you probably have never looked into. This is the reason why electronic searches aren't helpful. They don't provide perspective on their results. You are, as I continue to note, providing mentions of Kircher. You aren't providing any discussions of his theories. No one is trying to advance Kircher's views. No one is defending his propositions. He is a figure of the past that isn't relevant to the present. I wouldn't disagree with this. I would simply say that it is an irrelevancy. It is a meaningless conjecture. If we all agree that Kirchner has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon, then lets drop the discussion of Kircher. It gets old arguing about something that everyone agrees is irrelevant. No one can read Irving and learn of Kircher's theories beyond the single statement that we find there. Anyone who adopts their ideas about the settlement of the Americas from Irving is not going to use Kircher as a source. Again, this doesn't actually tell us anything does it. Someone can be aware of Kircher, have read some Kircher, and reference it. The challenge is that Mitchill being aware of Kircher's Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiosae luis, qui pestis dicatur, doesn't tell us anything about Mitchill knowing much of Kircher's theories of language and world population following a universal flood. The title of Kircher's work, when translated into English is: Physico-Medical Examination of the Contagious Pestilence Called the Plague. This book was the results of Kircher's efforts to use a microscope to look at the blood of persons with the plague. So you can say that Mitchill is familiar with Kircher and his work - but since that work was very broad, it is impossible to tell from this quotation much beyond what we actually learn here. The Star of the East says nothing about Kircher, other than he wrote an illustrated guide to China (China Illustrata). This is why these references aren't particularly useful information. They don't really tell us very much. Everything else is your conjecture. Your set of assumptions. And as I noted, we can just let it drop if it doesn't mean anything to you.

Let's get the context of the statement Anthon made: It seems to me that the similarity between Humboldt and the manuscript Harris had was that there was a circle divided into sections with strange characters in them. That is the limit of the similarity. And then we have the greek and roman letters, etc. Yeah, not getting the same confidence that you have here. Yeah, quite sure. You keep making statements like this without ever backing it up with information that would be specific to the two sources. Buchanan's works (the volume you show in your list) was published in 1812. Anyone can find it here. The only mention of Kircher in his complete works is the same mention we have already been discussing - the footnote in the appendix. The idea of the relationship between languages was a common notion in the time period between Kircher publishing his China Illustrata (1667) and Buchanan publishing The Star of the East (1809). Is there anything that Buchanan says that has to be linked to Kircher instead of any of the subsequent authors in between? It doesn't seem to me to be that way. And yet, this is commentary - there is nothing in the text about this, is there. The problem here is this is more than a little deceptive on your part. What did Kircher think the original language was? What did Buchanan think it was? If it is coincidence, then it is an irrelevancy to this discussion. And yet you keep bringing it up as if it means something. This was the thing that Kircher wrote in his letters to delay publication (indefinitely as the case was). This isn't Colavito's theory. He is just quoting Kircher. And generally, the standard understanding (of the few scholars who have engaged this topic) goes in a different direction - that is, Kircher's source was a collection of these other authors, and not a singular author's text. And yet, you are the one who keeps repeating the claims. If we search this forum, we keep finding Kircher coming up in these discussions that don't involved Lars Nielson. So why do you keep bringing this up if Kircher has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon? I can tell you a little of what I see. You want to connect all of these different ideas - but you can't do it immediately in Joseph's environment, so you find the ideas that you want to use and then try to find a way to create a possible (even if highly unlikely) path to Joseph Smith so that you can claim that the argument is plausible. You have no idea, of course, on how to make the connections likely ...

Let's be clear that this is an argument for plausibility (possibility) not an argument that can claim anything resembling likelihood. These are not likely chains of events - and there is no evidence to suggest that any of these connections have relevance to the things being discussed. This is a core problem - it means that all of these arguments are based purely on speculation. The conclusions drive the speculations, and not the other way around. Because we are looking only for plausibility (instead of fact or truth), the arguments aim to become unfalsifiable.

Except that Buchanan doesn't talk about Kircher at all. Kircher is mentioned in a footnote in the appendix, without mentioning any actual content that Kircher had. Buchanan only has to be aware that Kircher exists (and that he wrote his book China Illustrata - which has a title that is reflective of its content). Buchanan doesn't have to be aware of what Kircher really wrote - and Buchanan doesn't seem to quote Kircher or refer to him elsewhere. So I think that you are way off in left field in your assertions here. By the time that Buchanan comes along, Kircher has been dead for a long time. Buchanan doesn't have to resort to Kircher to get anything that you think that he may have gotten from Kircher. So what is the real basis for us trying to connect Buchanan to Kircher? Perhaps you can show us something that is unique to the two - uniquely shared between Buchanan and Kircher? And let's look at the sources themselves.

Then there's vegetable oil, palm oil, peanut oil, coconut oil ... and baby oil ... Vegetarians eat vegetables. Pescatarians eat fish. Do we really want to hang around with humanitarians?

No. You seem to be ignoring the fact that you wrote that Humboldt "was one of the first to discuss the 'hieroglyphs' of South America." This really isn't true. If you say that Humboldt uses Kircher, this is a claim that defeats your earlier statement. Why? Kircher died a century before Humboldt was born. When I say this is all a red herring - it is because it is clear that that Humboldt's material isn't an influence on the contents of the Book of Mormon. That figure that you provide from Kircher doesn't actually have anything to do with the Book of Mormon. It doesn't seem that Kircher has any influence on the Book of Mormon. There really isn't anything in the Book of Mormon that points us back to Humboldt or to Kircher. This is the problem. When you break Kircher or Humboldt into broad generalizations, they are no longer unique. We can find those same generalized ideas in lots of places. So why the need to look at Kircher or Humboldt? Because you are trying to fabricate a connection between specific ideas and Joseph Smith. I agreed with you. I moved the goalpost. It became clear that by reference, you meant the inclusion of the last name Kircher, in a footnote, in an appendix in a published text. I will absolutely agree that it is there. It's inclusion in The Star of the East is useless to anyone who isn't already knowledgeable about Kircher. The text doesn't quote him, doesn't discuss his ideas, it doesn't list any publications by Kircher. But yes, it's mentioned. And if you want to get picky at this level, then by all means, I can argue that Humboldt was nowhere near one of the first to discuss the hieroglyphs of South America. The problem I have is that you aren't really addressing the problem of the mention of Kircher and its lack of context. It doesn't matter how many early Americans would have read The Star of the East, not a single one of them would have any idea about his theories, or the contents of his books. This is you being deceptive. Buchanan mentions Kircher. It is only a mention. There is no discussion of Kircher. There is nothing there. I provided the entire reference. See this is the same sort of bait and switch. Earlier in this thread, you made this claim: Your link takes us to the three references to Kircher in that voume. Let's look at them. Here is the first one, from page 242 (I included part of page 241 for context, Emphasis added): So, here we are - information about ancient astronomy - all the possible sources that Humboldt was aware of. Kircher is the last entry. I suppose we should believe that everyone who went to Dartmouth was aware of all of these authors and their texts based on the inclusion here in Humboldt, right? What exactly did Kircher have to say about ancient astronomy? I am curious to know what Humboldt really has to say about it. But alas, I am forced into disappointment. Here is the second entry, from page 255, emphasis added, and a clarification put into brackets: This is a discussion about Gatterer's interpretation of counting systems. Humboldt believes Gatterer is wrong, and cites Kircher's explanation as part of his reason for rejecting Gatterer. He doesn't actually quote Gatterer. The final entry is in the list of authors, on page 264 (emphasis added): So, I am now really, really curious. What does someone learn from all of this about Kircher? You didn't respond to it. Responding to it means quoting Kircher and showing where he discusses the confusion of languages at Babel. And yet the Jaredites don't write or speak in Hebrew (or in Egyptian for that matter). Kircher does eventually deal with the Tower of Babel for the first time in the last book he writes (as you note) - and by then, his views presented in China Illustrata have evolved. But that text has never been translated into English (as far as I know). That text (Turris Babel) is never quoted by Humboldt. It provides for a break in languages by family (there are only four major language groups). And all of this is so different from the Book of Mormon's approach where the Brother of Jared prays so that the families of Jared and his brother will still be able to understand each other. I picked them up for this discussion. Why do you think that this issues are separated? A setting for a narrative is very much a question of historicity, isn't it? Perhaps - but you are still illustrating the problem. There is no "nephi" in Kircher's published works, there is only Abenephius the Arab. And, as Roberto Buinanno suggests: As with everything else, it really doesn't matter, I suppose, what the truth is, what matters is the perception provided by Kircher for your argument. But in Kircher's published works - those read by Humboldt and others, there is no Israelite Nephi, there is only the Arab Abenephius. And here, the reason why there might be some similarities is quite clear. Of course, Ibn Wahshiyya dies in 930 CE, more than 1500 years after Nephi is supposed to have left Jerusalem (and this, of course, is why reality isn't really a part of this discussion). A narrative of a Nephi based on this figure could only be a fictional account. Actually I don't hate it. I just think it is completely ignorant. None of this really matters. Let's go back to Daniel Stolzenberg: Do you see why I might look at your statement with more than a little skepticism? Ibn Wahshiyya wasn't equated with Barrachius Nephi by Kircher. And in Kircher's published works, he is identified only as Abenephius the Arab. But Kircher does note the similarities between Kircher's works and Maimonides. And, I assume you read this comment from Stolzenberg: Kircher knew who Ibn Wahshiyya was. He had a copy of some of his works - again from Stolzenberg: But again, all of this really doesn't matter - because none of this information that you are trying to put together is really important - what is important is the perception of all this material. And your suggestion that any linguist at Dartmouth would have had access to all of this other stuff is ludicrous on its face. What was actually available at Dartmouth? There is a copy of Kircher there. You have to be able to read it (and I doubt they loaned it out). But all of this other stuff that you discuss here - Nephi the Rabbi, "the 'strange alphabets' that Peiresc described (but which Kircher never published)" mentioned by Stolzenberg - all of this other material isn't there. It isn't a part of Kircher's book. Kircher's book in an of itself doesn't provide a fraction of the support that you think it does for your theory. And if that supposed oriental linguist at Dartmouth is aware of Ibn Wahshiyya or Maimonides, then he knows that these are all relatively late figures, living more than 1,500 years after Nephi allegedly leaves Jerusalem. They certainly aren't going to consider this as a context for the Book of Mormon narrative. All of this is the sort of thing that shows that there is no real coherent narrative that puts all of this together. And we are still arguing about details - irrelevancies. And then of course, if Joseph Smith knows all of this, then why is he so accepting of an American context so many years before any of this makes sense? So maybe we should discuss two important issues - First, based on your assessment of all of this, do you conclude that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction? Second, how are we to understand the Book of Mormon's philosophical discussions. For example, where does its notion of reading texts by likening them unto the reader come from (it's not just a discussion of how it should be done, the text provides examples of doing this)?

This is at odds with the title of the thread. I don't think that anyone disagrees with the idea that expanding mandatory reporting to those without training creates better outcomes for children. There is a lot of evidence that Mandatory reporting of child abuse is associated with better outcomes for children. That is, if we eliminate mandatory reporting altogether, we are very likely to make outcomes worse for children. Also, being reported doesn't generally result in an investigation. At least in my area (and I work with the local MDHHS board - Michigan Department of Health and Human Services) the percentage of cases that are actually investigated is quite small. The information I was given at the board meeting I attended yesterday was that state-wide, there is a higher chance of an actual investigation for minority groups - without a corresponding increase in findings of abuse. There was some discussion about the future roll-out of changes in how investigations are triggered after reports are made that will try to take steps to avoid bias in those decisions. This statement in the article is certainly flawed: This harm is certainly there. What is wrong is the statement about mandatory reporting keeping children safe. It is clear that when we have substantiated cases that stem from mandatory reporting that the mandatory reporting laws are doing something. The Colorado task force report (linked in this comment) doesn't recommend the elimination of mandatory reporting. The recommendation is: The article correctly points out that while reporting requirements have grown over the years (which is the reason for the increased reporting), the resources to deal with these reports have not grown. Studies have shown that the reports that come from professional reporters are generally the most accurate - suggesting that when training is put in place, mandatory reporting becomes more effective. The solution is never going to be to eliminate mandatory reporting. The number of substantiated cases hasn't changed much in the last decade (as the article reports), but this means that in Colorado, more than 10,000 child abuse and neglect cases have been substantiated every year for the last decade. What are we going to replace this system of uncovering abuse with? Are we going to rely on law enforcement (that is going to go over really well). Are we willing to write off all those children? The article does quote one advocate of dismantling the reporting system - and this is what they propose: I'm all for this. I think that we cannot fully address abuse without also working to address those factors that have high correlations with abuse - poverty and its related concerns of affordable housing and affordable child care. Making sure that every Colorado family had adequate housing and child care would, I think, reduce the number of substantiated cases there. But, there seems to be little public will to increase safety nets to the level that would be required for this to be effective. This article doesn't offer us anything new since the last time that Danzo and I sparred over this topic.

Again, this is all meaningless trivia. It's entire purpose is to cloud the issue - that you cannot demonstrate any connections - so you try and make a circumstantial argument that over-emphasizes the things that are important to your theory. Let's face it, 10 editions is nothing in early America (where editions were usually quite small - with the state of printing presses, printing was much closer to our print on demand industry now). We can find lots of texts that by these conditions should have been well known to practically everyone in America. This doesn't mean a whole lot for the arguments that you raise. It is all a red herring. The question you ask about Diego de Landa is revealing. He wasn't available in English in 1830. And what Landa tells us is that we have discussions about American hieroglyphs hundreds of years before Humboldt is even born. You have this very narrow focus on a specific context because that is all that is of interest to you and to your theory. This is a symptom of parallelomania. It encourages you to avoid dealing with alternative explanations or contextualizing what it is you find. And the problem is that while Buchanan may be familiar with China Illustrata, he doesn't actually share any of its details. This idea of ancient cryptic texts isn't unique to Kircher. There is a very broad history of this idea - going back into the Old Testament itself (consider the Book of the Law discovered by Hilkiah when they were renovating the temple in Jerusalem in 622 BCE - the discovery that kicked off the Josian reform). The book on Orientalism is interesting. The problem is in assuming that Orientalism is the only context in which we find ideas about ancient cryptic texts. These other contexts are just as useful in explaining the Book of Mormon (if that was our desire). Orientalism isn't any better with its explanation than these other contexts. No. Material at Dartmouth explains the availability. It does not provide any evidence that "these narratives were in circulation around the Smiths." These are very different issues - they shouldn't ever be conflated. This is completely compatible with Kircher's view of a post-flood immigration to China from Egypt (in fact, of a post flood immigration to everywhere from Egypt). It still puts all of these migrations thousands of years prior to Lehi. Interestingly enough (in this context), the Book of Mormon doesn't distinguish these three social classes, does it. But, of course, none of this has anything to do with a migration to America. It certainly isn't this group that crosses the Bering Strait and colonizes the Americas. It's like we are reading two different texts almost ... That's not a quote from Buchanan - its from a modern translation of China Illustrata. How does Buchanan reference this? But this isn't a unique storyline to Kircher. And there is this curious element of parallelomania that we see in your comments. Kircher doesn't mention the Tower of Babel, or the subsequent confusion of languages. So to bring it up here in this way is to try and inappropriately enhance the similarities that you think are there. Then there are the other differences right? The Jaredites in the Book of Mormon aren't simply remnants of a civilization - they are contemporary with the Nephites (contemporary enough that at least one Jaredite gives his story to the Nephites in person). The Jaredite narrative swirls around a text. And so on. These are not the same things at all. It is only by using such broad generalizations of the narrative that you can even start to claim the parallel. Some years ago, I published a piece with a set of rules that apply to parallelomania. Here are several of them (these are not mine - I source them in the essay): The idea of the confusion of languages is a central issue - because Kircher's whole argument is based on the premise that the languages of Egypt and China were effectively the same thing. This is why he ignores the whole Babel story - it doesn't relate to his theory. For you to bring it up here in this way is to engage in the 'rhetorical hocus-pocus'. The Nephites didn't consider themselves exiles - at least not until after they had to leave their promised land (the land of their first inheritance, which was in the New World, and not the Old World). There certainly isn't a renewal of the Jaredite civilization (at least not in the way that Kircher describes it). What you are providing here is parallelomania. It is not a legitimate comparison. The conclusions you come to are not supported by the evidence - but this isn't really a surprise - because you start with the conclusion and then hunt for the evidence. One of the rules I left out from that list: "Parallel-hunters do not, as a rule, set out to be truthful and impartial. They are hell-bent on proving a point." But you are interested in the historicity question. You can't simply deny that you are interested it in, and then engage the question directly. There are several problems here - 1: in the bible, the phrase "isle of the sea" isn't understood as literally as you understand it. One of the most popular interpretations of the phrase "isles of the sea" in use in the early 19th century comes from Isaac Newton: I think that there is a disconnect with this sort of technical definition that you want to use here. It seems quite likely (especially given this sort of 19th century understanding - but it isn't an understanding that is terribly out of place in the original contexts) that the Nephites could understand the Americas as being on the Isles of the Sea, or France, or really any location that wasn't a part of Asia and Africa. You are making assumptions about the text. And this is before we start to have the discussion about "correct translations." If all we have is a translation, then the idea of "correct translation" has to precede all of this - because all of this is dependent on an interpretation of the translation. Your idea isn't really that simple because it seems to entail a whole host of assumptions (many of which, I think, I disagree with). No. This is an impossibility. Why? Because the idea of an Egyptian Jew named Nephi is present only in unpublished manuscripts by Kircher. In his published material, there is no Egyptian Jew named Nephi. There is only Abenephius the Arab. To quote Daniel Stolzenberg: These letters between Peiresc and Kircher are the only references we have to Rabbit Barachias Nephi. In Kircher's published material, the figure is know as Abenephius the Arab - again from Stolzenberg: Those letters were not available to any of your list of people in that chain between Kircher and Joseph Smith. There is no parallel here. I have a copy of Stolzenberg. I have acquired three other books that discuss Kircher (the first two have discussions about the correspondence with Peiresc): The Stars of Galileo Galilei and the Universal Knowledge of Athanasius Kircher. This one is interesting because it has the longest discussion of the letters. It includes the letters explaining why Kircher cannot publish his translation of the text. A Study of the Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher, 'German Incredibilis' Ideography and Chinese Language Theory: A History This one only has a single chapter on Kircher, but it is a fascinating chapter. In the long run, we get back to the problem of historicity which you suggest is not your concern. But when you try to make it seem important that there could have been this Nephi, who really was a compiler of Hebrew, Coptic and Egyptian texts - that is an argument that only matters when we are trying to establish something akin to historicity. Without that impulse, it has no value for this discussion.

All of this is a sort of irrelevant trivia. The idea that he was one of the first to explore the Americas isn't really accurate. He doesn't arrive (for the first time) in New Spain (Mexico) until 1803. The idea that he was one of the first to discuss the 'hieroglyphs' of South America is laughable. The first systematic approach to South American hieroglyphs was the work of Diego de Landa, who produced his work in the mid-1500s. Of course, the reason why this doesn't come up in your search for evidence for your theory is that his work and the work of later Spanish students (like Francisco Ximénez and his work with the Popol Vuh) was largely unavailable to Europeans. I agree with you. So I have to change the goalpost. Kircher wasn't widely discussed in American publications before 1850. The reference to Kircher, in a footnote in an appendix is not going to create broad knowledge. As part of the appendix, it means it's likely that Buchanan didn't use Kircher in his sermon(s). The footnote also suggests that Buchanan was referring specifically to Kircher's work China Illustrata. So let's continue this moving of the goal posts. I think that it's quite possible that John Smith would have heard the name Kircher. What does this mean? The reason why John Smith is of interest is because of the Spaulding theory, right? Both Spaulding and Ethan Smith both went to Dartmouth while John Smith was teaching there, and could have been taught by him (that is, whatever relevant information we might get from Kircher would have been passed to Spaulding or Ethan Smith, who then used it when possibly writing the Book of Mormon). But the idea that John Smith knew of Kircher is a far cry from whether or not John Smith taught anything that Kircher wrote (or had even read anything by Kircher). We get this string of suppositions with absolutely no evidence. Neither Spaulding or Ethan Smith ever mention Kircher in any surviving texts. So we come back to a couple of key points. No matter what else we might think of Kircher and his work or Humboldt and his work, Egyptian was not the source of Chinese Hieroglyphs. This can be easily established. We know of Chinese writing much, much older than the time-frame that Kircher proposes. Kircher's assumptions about language traveling from Egypt to China is framed by his understanding of the world wide flood and Noah. I'll use his China Illustrata because it's description is pretty straight forward (This is from the beginning of Part VI, Chapter I): This quote comes from this text here - Chapter 8 is about Kircher. Kircher's theory isn't about a 6th century group of Egyptian exiles that colonize what is now China. His theory spelled out in several places is that this occurs within a few hundred years of the flood, and that the colonization was begun by Ham, the son of Noah. There is no 6th century group that is exiled in Kircher's writings. Now, not only does this not compare with the Book of Mormon, but, the Book of Mormon, as part of the Jaredite narrative, completely contradicts the core of Kircher's beliefs about the colonization of the world following the flood and the relationship of languages between these groups. The Jaredites maintain their original language (that original language that Kircher likes) because they escaped the confusion of languages at Babel. The more I read, the more problematic the arguments you raise become - because of the issues that I point out - you create the similarities as much through interpretation as anything else. Then there is the meta-discussion. Kircher's theories were wrong. The reason why he is a completely obscure figure today is that despite his being the first person to create a grammar for Egyptian hieroglyphics, it didn't work. Kircher's ideas about language, population immigration, and all of this are a fiction he developed. Let's assume for a moment that you are right - that Kircher, and later Humboldt and Rafinesque were all influences on the text of the Book of Mormon. Then we come to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is a fiction. And if the Book of Mormon is a fiction, then it cannot be a real history of some group in eastern Asia. It leaves me questioning what it is that you are really arguing about ... As I said, this is all in your head. You don't have any idea what was actually discussed in these 'discussions' because we have so little information about them. So naturally, you interpret them in an expansive way that supports your long sequence of necessary events. One of the fascinating things about all of this is that we have James Gordon Bennett's journal entries for August 7 and 8 of 1831. If we go to Richard Bennett's source (here) we get an interesting read. So what does James Gordon Bennett write? The previous entry is also interesting. I won't duplicate it here - you can look it up, but in it we read that Sidney Rigdon was the author of the Gold Plates, that they dug a hole 30 feet deep and 6 feet in diameter into the hill to get the plates, the chest they were in "fled his approach," and even (referring to the lost manuscript I think) that "Smiths wife looked into a hole and the chest fled into a trunk and he lost several of them." While I believe that these are the things that James Bennett was told, they aren't necessarily accurate remembrances. It seems strange to me that Butler (assuming that Butler is the source) knows that Mitchell identifies the script with specific extinct race - and yet no one knows which race that was. Richard Bennett's conclusions aren't nearly what you make them out to be: In other words, Mitchell's response to Harris was self-serving. It's clear that Mitchell had a population from Malaysia (or Australia) that came first, and was later destroyed by Mongols coming across the Bering Strait. And we can see how this would have seemed convincing to Martin Harris. But it also seems unlikely that this theory changed the trajectory of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon seems pretty set on the Nephites and Lamanites being Israelites - which wasn't an idea that Mitchell accepted. It also points to a different issue. There were (as I noted a while back) a lot of different theories behind the native populations in the Americas. Many of these theories insist that the reason why the question needed to be answered was because there was a terminal point for the earliest possible habitation of the Americas - Noah's flood. The question comes out - why, if you want to base the Book of Mormon on some fictitious history, do we need to go to this one, which seems much more problematic than some of the other theories? I would say that it has little to do with which source is better, and a lot to do with the question of availability of sources. Here you engage these discussions about Mithill but they are easy to find because of the interest in verifying Martin Harris's claims. The Spaulding theory provides all sorts of information about Dartmouth - but the Spaulding theory originally comes out of untenable claims of authorship of the Book of Mormon. It is easy to find because of the digital footprint. But without these earlier suspect claims, these sources wouldn't be being discussed at all.

But Humboldt isn't an American. And Buchanan isn't an American. And while his Star in the East is published in America (in many editions), the mention of Kircher is in an appendix (which wasn't published in some of the earlier editions) in a footnote, which reads: This sort of thing doesn't instill confidence in your claims that Kircher was something of a household name in the United States in the early 19th century. I'll grant you that this is a mention. But it tells us nothing of Kircher or his theories ... What am I doing? No, I don't relate the Book of Mormon to some real historical context - other than the part that indicates for itself that it relates to a specific place and time (Jerusalem, some time before its destruction around 587 BCE). For us to understand the text of the Book of Mormon, I don't think that we need to place it into a historical context. If we believe that it can only be understood properly when placed in the correct historical context (the correct time and place) then it seems clear that no one can actually understand it properly ... I don't take this position (either the first part of it or the conclusion drawn from it). I don't think that the narrative in the Book of Mormon suggests this necessity either - and this for two reasons. First because it tells us that original context can be irrelevant (see what Nephi does with Isaiah) and second because it really makes little conscious effort to try and place itself in a context that we can understand. I don't think that there is much similarity between the Book of Mormon and Esther because with the Book of Esther we have an ancient fiction while the Book of Mormon is clearly a modern text (either as a translation or as an original work). With the Book of Esther, we know it is fiction because we know that the historical context in which it is written is inconsistent with the narrative provided by the text. This is related to another fundamental problem of what you do (that we have discussed elsewhere). If we assume that the Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient text, to try and use the Book of Mormon as a source for that ancient context we first have to distinguish between material that is attributable to the modern translation, and what might be assigned to the unknown urtext. To make this like the Book of Esther, we would then need to be able to assess the historical context in which the text was written, and show that while the Book of Mormon fits that context well in terms of language and content, that the narrative itself is fictional because the people involved couldn't possible have existed (even though the story could otherwise be quite plausible). Esther is useful for illustrating the difference between versimilitude and historicity. With the Book of Mormon we cannot assess either verisimilitude or historicity (outside of the first parts of the text where we can place the narrative with some certainty into a context). This is a pretty big difference. There is a fascinating subtext, which of course LDS members have engaged for years. The idea that if they can argue for verisimilitude then they can argue for historicity through that verisimilitude - because for them, they see an inconsistency with the idea of a revealed text from God being itself nothing more than a work of historical fiction (like Esther). This is at least in part the reason for the drive to try and connect the text to various historical contexts. I am personally completely indifferent to this effort. I don't think that it provides us with anything terribly useful - and the risk of reading the text through such a context is that in mistaking the context, we provide for poor readings. But we don't have any evidence that these "discussions" conveyed anything meaningful, or that they were more than superficial discussions. The timing is also problematic. The 1828 trip occurs after the Book of Mormon translation work has begun. In any case, you provide nothing but speculation - and this speculation doesn't provide us with any sort of reason to start looking for parallels in any of the places you are looking. It just isn't there until you start producing imaginary content for those discussions. Why? It's a serious question. It wouldn't seem to have any relevance to any of these issues. As I pointed out, it is a fallback for a theory that has consistently proven wrong - and when it is proven wrong, the fallback isn't to something that seems likely but to something that has a small chance of being possible (there's that argument for plausibility being used by those trying to continue a failed argument). It's been a long time since Dale and I had our arguments - but things haven't changed much since then. Ok. But The Star of the East doesn't engage Kircher. So I have to ask why it is relevant here ... There's no data to support this. And in fact The Star of the East provides virtually no foundation for the narrative of The Book of Mormon. As I have noted, one of the characteristics of parallelomania is to take two texts and to reduce them to over-generalizations and then to pretend that those generalizations are the core material of the texts. Once you have that core, you then claim that the core of the two texts are the same. In fact, The Book of Mormon and The Star of the East share very little. It does not provide a foundation. And it's all in your head.