Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

Benjamin McGuire

Contributor
  • Posts

    1,946
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Benjamin McGuire

  1. D&C 132:15-17 doesn't say any of this: These verses don't mention the "Celestial Kingdom," the don't mention any "divisions". It doesn't say anything about "eternal increase." Your comments are entirely an interpretive overlay. In particular, the part that reads (verse 17) "For these angels did not abide my law" refers us back to the ideas in Section 88 - here is 88:22 - "For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory." There is no reference here to subdivisions in the Celestial Kingdom. No, and I am not following your argument here. I don't know what you are reading, but it isn't the text ... Joseph Smith taught that eternal marriage was necessary for entrance into the Celestial Kingdom - not for entrance into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom. Joseph nowhere taught a subdivided Celestial Kingdom. As I said, we have contemporary descriptions of the way that Joseph Smith and his contemporaries envisioned the Celestial Kingdom - and it is not what you are describing. Here is Orson Hyde's version (published in 1844). And you have no idea what you are talking about.
  2. Naturally, the Church would rather have avoided a trial, but I think that the odds of them winning when it does go to trial are pretty good.
  3. Then you aren't reading what I wrote. I said nothing about "the norm". What I said is that policy makes exceptions. This explains why your analogies don't work. I can thumb through the Church Handbook and find example after example of statements that say - Do this, or, if this comes up, contact Salt Lake City. That is an exception. The section I quoted earlier (38.7.7) contains an example - "Questions about membership records, priesthood ordination, and temple ordinances for youth or adults who were born with sexual ambiguity should be directed to the Office of the First Presidency." 38.2.4 (ordinances for individuals with disabilities): "Questions about membership records, priesthood ordination, and temple ordinances for youth or adults who were born with sexual ambiguity should be directed to the Office of the First Presidency." 38.2.5 (ordinances performed by those with disabilities): "If leaders have questions they cannot resolve, the stake president contacts the Office of the First Presidency." 38.3: "The bishop consults with his stake president if he has questions about civil marriage that are not answered in this section. The stake president may direct questions to the Office of the First Presidency." 38.4: "Members should counsel with their bishop if they have questions about sealing policies that are not answered in this section. The bishop contacts the stake president if he has questions. Stake presidents may contact the temple presidency in their temple district, the Area Presidency, or the Office of the First Presidency if they have questions." 38.4.2.7: "If a child was born to a surrogate mother, the stake president refers the matter to the Office of the First Presidency (see 38.6.22)." And so on. Practically, we need exceptions to policies - because situations are often unique. I am not saying that exceptions are bad - the opposite is true. We need to have exceptions so that we can deal with the unpredictable, or we can manage ambiguity. This is a very different thing from questions about schools and allergies, or important vaccinations (see, even here you are loading the language politically). Theology on the other hand needs to avoid exceptions. Either a theological principle is valid or it isn't. This is the reason why past racism leaves such a bad taste in our mouths - it was a theology with an exception. Two people living their lives under identical circumstances (with one exception) get two different outcomes - because one of them had a single drop of African blood. This is what I am talking about. The Church distinguishes between those who get gender reassignment surgery on the basis of a single issue - whether or not the surgery was voluntary on the part of the individual. If they chose it, it is bad. If others chose it for them, it is okay. This was the point I was making - it is a policy based principle and not a theologically based principle.
  4. There are two things I would like to say about this. The first is something from the current Church Handbook on the subject of children born into a biologically ambiguous sexual state (38.7.7): So my related question is this - shouldn't we also (on the basis of your argument) disallow parents from making decisions in areas like this - where the decision that is made can clearly have a detrimental impact on the children that will last a lifetime? My second point is this - hormone blocking is reversible (which is not the same thing as hormone replacement). These blockers aren't just used for transgender youth, they are also used for youth with precocious puberty (when puberty starts much earlier than it should). The reason why parents use hormone blockers is to delay certain developments in young people until they can become better advocates for themselves. Your argument in this case is actually the opposite. By preventing developmental delay, you put transgender young people in a position where later interventions may be much more invasive. Whether intended or not, the claim that hormone blockers is a terrible thing is simply an attempt to affirm that transgender care as a whole is a terrible thing.
  5. While I can provide a good explanation for why this is important to me, I suspect that the number of people who can articulate why this might be important is not very large at all. What is fascinating for me, in regard to the comments by @caspianrex , is the sort of problematic view that the comparison with the biblical text makes. After all, I would love to have a copy of the biblical text with an accurate apparatus indicating the chronological aspects of its composition. But this is a controversial topic. What parts of Jeremiah are the earliest parts? What in Deuteronomy should we take as a proto-Deuteronomic text? How do these kinds of questions even relate to the Book of Mormon? Skousen's work is valuable, and it is helpful, but the presentation of the full text like this is about as meaningful in some ways as a recreation of the original text of the King James translation of the Bible ...
  6. It is certainly possible. This has been a subject of speculation for a long time. Some of this speculation is based on Section 76:44-48 - Other parts of the speculation are based on the idea that Joseph presented on everything that has a beginning also having and end - if perdition has a beginning, then in theory it may have an end. The speculation begins with Brigham Young - who said among other things: A lot of these speculations run counter to much more widely accepted doctrinal explanations though. Personally, I don't really have much a vested interest in worrying about it.
  7. Yes and no. When I say no, it is because the idea of three degrees in the Celestial Kingdom was a late development. It is usually defended by referring to D&C Section 131, verses 1-4. The text contains an ambiguity in this regard. It reads: The ambiguity exists because the phrase "celestial glory" isn't necessarily the same as "Celestial Kingdom." In the first full length commentary on Section 131, which was published in 1919, no mention is made of a subdivided Celestial Kingdom. The first time the idea of a subdivided Celestial Kingdom is mentioned in the historical record is in 1922 (46 years after the Section is added to the canon). We know that it was not a teaching at the time of Joseph Smith because we have diagrams of the Celestial Kingdom, and it was not three tiered - it was a series of nested kingdoms. So, the idea of a subdivided kingdom is a development that comes outside of the period of canonization in scripture - and this means that there isn't a scriptural reference that really addresses the question of a subdivided Celestial Kingdom. When I say yes, it is because until 1876, there weren't even any scriptural references that could be interpreted as allowing for subdivisions - and so most of the scriptural context doesn't provide exceptions to the idea of eternal increase. For example, this reference in Section 76 seems to suggest that everyone who enters the Celestial Kingdom are gods with eternal increase - 76:92-96: The way that this was harmonized with the idea of a sub-divided Celestial Kingdom was through the idea of eternal increase. Even the most conservative interpretations of progression in a post-mortal state allow for progression within the Celestial Kingdom. So whether or not one starts in the lowest of the three subdivisions of the Celestial Kingdom, the historical view of the Church has been that those individuals can progress within the Celestial Kingdom until they are in the highest of the subdivisions.
  8. The best current source would probably be The Mormon Church and the Blacks (which I have). If I remember correctly, there is also a bit about it in Prince's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. There are also mentions in a number of journal articles - that go back quite a bit further in terms of time. I probably first came across it in Quinn (in his 1994 Extensions), or maybe in an article in Dialogue. It has been a long time now, though, and my memory can be fuzzy with inconsequential details of that sort. I think that this is an interesting example for a number of reasons. Among them is the fact that Jewish tradition doesn't uniformly come down on the side of Abraham here. Many Jews (present and past) saw the binding of Isaac as a failure on Abraham's part - where Abraham chose blind obedience instead of making the right decision, and so failed this test of Abraham's faith. More to the point, the problem (from this perspective) presented is that, with all of the wonderful examples of obedience we have to choose from, this one should not be our go to case. We shouldn't be teaching the idea of an Abrahamic test that creates such an ethical and moral dilemma.
  9. It seems to me that you are making my point for me. Which simply tells me that you don't understand the original proposition ...
  10. We don't make rules based on exceptions. We don't make policy based on exceptions. When you put an exception as the poster child, it creates bad arguments. It doesn't matter if you can put a name and a face to your argument in these circumstances.
  11. "gender is something that is completely independent of biological sex." Let's start with the lowest hanging fruit. All spirits in the pre-existence had a gender (so says the proclamation on the family). This includes Lucifer and all of the spirit children of God who followed Lucifer. All of these spirits have a gender (according to the Proclamation). None of them will ever have a biological sex (according to LDS theology). Thus, gender is completely independent of biological sex. The reverse may not be true.
  12. No, it really has to do with right and left handed people ... if 90 percent of the population were left handed instead of right handed, it would probably have been reversed. You might enjoy this volume. Or you might hate it (it certainly costs too much ...).
  13. I think that everyone who seriously confronts this question comes to their own resolution (even if, for some, that resolution is a loss of faith). My personal opinion is this - I think that we don't always get the message - especially when there are other strong interests going on. The question of the lifting of the priesthood ban didn't happen in a vacuum. And no matter what our personal views are on the issue, it is clear from events over the past few years that race relations are still an issue (at least here in the United States), almost a half century after the ban was lifted. The first serious effort to lift the ban occurred in 1969. President Hugh B. Brown asked the Quorum of the Twelve to vote on lifting the priesthood ban. While a majority of the apostles voted to lift the ban, it was not a unanimous vote. And this kept the ban from being lifted then. Between 1969 and 1978, seven ordained apostles died, including all of those who opposed lifting the ban in 1969. This is probably a coincidence of sorts, right? Sometimes change occurs in the Church simply because of the ever changing leadership created by the normal cycle of our lives. I think that if we believe the idea that God wouldn't allow the leaders of the Church to lead the Church astray, we could take that in two different ways here. On the one hand, we could argue that things happened when God wanted them to happen. I think this is a really problematic argument to make. It is especially problematic for those who hold to a sort of utilitarian belief about the priesthood ban - that is, that the ban was cultural baggage that was necessary for the Church to prosper, and that lifting it sooner would have caused more harm than good. I think this is a terrible argument. There is a sense in these arguments that everything is set by divine purpose, and we shouldn't push for change. I think this is also wrong. Having said that, if I were to subscribe to some form of this idea, I would suggest that God gives us as much rope to hang ourselves as we can get. If he steps in to redirect the Church it is only because we have moved so far from where we need to be that we cannot make it back on our own. In this way, I tend to agree with at least the principle of that argument. In terms of the issue of agency, I am less inclined to accept this entirely. I am not a fan of the idea that we have some sort of absolute agency here in mortality. I think that our agency is limited in many different ways. For us to say that God always favors agency over the possibility of evil is problematic. I think an interesting example in the Book of Mormon comes in Mosiah 27:11-13 - I think this is a useful bit of text in this case. If it was truly agency over evil, then why the intervention? And there is the emphasis that the transgression of the Church is the one thing that is capable of destroying the Church. It is the willingness of the Church as a whole to support racist policies that creates the risk to the Church - and if the members of the Church unite behind what is right, then I think that God can intervene. I think it helps to understand that even prophets have shortcomings. Our role as members is to help move the Church forward. And the first step in this process is to work to overcome any of our own racist tendencies (assuming that we may have some) - and perhaps even more importantly, to work to prevent our children from developing them. My father, who grew up in a terribly racist home, made a very conscientious effort to not raise his kids to think that way. And I think he was at least somewhat successful (for which I am quite grateful). I think that the more that we defend the racist views of the past, and try to explain how this was good for the Church (the white Church of course), the more that we keep a hold on the problems of the past and keep the Church from moving on. This is not so much about a necessary relationship between agency and evil. The dichotomy is between good and evil, and as Lehi notes, we have to be enticed one way or the other in order to really have agency.
  14. I think that you have issues. It is clear to me that you are spitting out a lot of propaganda about things that you seem to know absolutely nothing about. A better question is this - if we are concerned about children making decisions about these kinds of issues, then why is it that we deem it acceptable to have thousands of newborns each year experiencing medically invasive surgical procedures to define their biological identity? Do they have a choice? Is there any harm in waiting, when those decisions could be made later in life? There is no question in my mind that there is an inconsistency on the part of the current conservative perspective in our country over the idea of parental rights. The inconsistency is that it is okay for parents to decide what is best for their children only when it meets that conservative ideological position, and it is a horrible thing when it doesn't. The level of hypocrisy in this is amazing. Let's also not forget that the Proclamation on the Family tells us that Gender is an eternal characteristic - that we had a gender in the pre-existence. If this is a true principle, then it means that gender is something that is completely independent of biological sex. The LDS Church is struggling to come to terms with this idea theologically. Why? Because the Church is so vested in the idea of an immutable gender identified entirely by biological sex. If we can accept even for a moment that sometimes (either because of genetics or because of a mistake made by some doctor who assigned the wrong biological sex to a new-born infant) we have people who experience a mismatch between their biological sex and their eternal gender, then we have to accept the reality that the Church isn't defining its members by their eternal gender but only by their biological sex. (I also want to point out that I think there is an almost certainty to the premise that the Church has ordained biological males who are eternally gendered females to the priesthood, or has sealed same-eternal-gendered couples together). I have several family members who are (or who have) transitioned in various ways. One reason that is obvious to anyone who has dealt with this issue over the past several decades (and I mean dealt with it either by experiencing gender dysphoria themselves or who has a close friend or relative who has) is the simple fact that thirty years ago, the stigma against it was much, much higher than it is today. This is one of the reasons why young people transition more frequently than older people - it is an expected outcome, not some statistic to wonder about. I don't disagree with the idea that some diagnostic rigor is important - especially for surgical interventions. But it isn't clear that this isn't happening already for the most part. I am not interested in the bet - that is just posturing - whether or not you are willing to put up is irrelevant. $10 won't even buy me a decent breakfast ... The fascinating thing to me is that social change is happening in ways that we did not predict. Back in the early 90s, when I got married and started my own family, I told my wife that I didn't expect to see same-sex marriage in my lifetime. Here we are. We can ask for better descriptions and better diagnostic tools without trying to make the claim (as you are doing here - at least implicitly) that there is no reason for individuals to transition at all. Back then, the Church refused to recognize that same-sex attraction was a natural thing for many. A decade later, they formally acknowledged this was the case. So in a few more years, once we understand all of this a bit better, I suspect that even the Church will be moving to come to terms with the idea.
  15. I have never bothered to deal with the entire sermon - just sections of it. In the section where he relies on Seixas, he also seems to be relying to some extent on the Gibbs. There is something of an assumption here in that what he seems to be doing follows naturally from the way the entries are provided in the Gibbs student edition - and not so much of he was using the more complete earlier text. At the same time, any Lexicon could have provided that information - it wasn't unique to the Gibbs (I linked to a short discussion of this issue earlier). Elsewhere in the KFD, he discusses a German translation of parts of the New Testament. Circumstantially, at least, it would appear that he was using a 1602 Hutter polyglot - his Novum Testamentum harmonicum. While this is of mild interest (it is a fairly rare volume, which does make us wonder a bit about whether this conclusion is warranted), what is probably more important is that Joseph was favoring a German New Testament by Luther (which can be found in lots of places). It is also reasonable to believe that some of Joseph's comments on languages came from Phelps. To understand that connection, you have to start with Sam Brown's work. If you aren't already familiar with it, go here: https://samuelbrown.net/history/ There is probably a lot of other stuff to be found in the sermon. But, outside of my specific interests in the past, I haven't done a whole lot. My original interest in the KFD was really limited to his discussion of the Hebrew. This was a fairly long time ago, when I was dealing with it - and my work on defining textual reliance developed quite a bit since that point in time. Later, I became interested in the way that the text described Joseph's attitudes towards the Bible and its various translations and the comparison between those views and the views of other Church members 60 years later.
  16. Surgery as transgender care for minors, is relatively rare, and of those, the huge majority are mastectomies. The statistics that I have access to show less than 20 genital surgeries per year for minors in the U.S. Most transgender care for minors is not medically invasive. This figure is dwarfed by the number of medical interventions performed each year on new born infants.
  17. The title page - according to Joseph Smith (and I assume that Skousen accepts this), the title page was the last page of Moroni's text. As far as the Words of Mormon go, its complicated. Skousen puts the Words of Mormon as the last part of the text translated - but, I don't think that he has taken a firm position on the status of verses 12-18 as either a part of Words of Mormon or as a part of Mosiah 2 (chapters as originally numbered). I don't think that he believes that they are part of a summary written by Joseph Smith. Those are the three main views of the origins of those seven verses. I know that Skousen points out that not having the original manuscript for that section makes it harder to make any sort of certain determination. If it was a summary by Joseph Smith, then it was probably written during the process of preparing the text for printing. If it was part of Mosiah 2, then it represents the oldest part of the text. If it is part of Words of Mosiah, then those last few verses were the last things translated. Perhaps publishing it in the order in which it appears in the published Book of Mormon was an easy way to avoid having to weigh in on this problem.
  18. No - Before I get into my view here, I want to point out that Section 19 is very early. It is received in the summer of 1829 - and the revelation of the three levels of heaven in the resurrection doesn't come until 1832. So what we are seeing in Section 19 is something of a preliminary notion that is developed later - and it is an expression of the idea that the punishments of God do not last forever in a temporal sense - there is a limit to them. So, the eventual doctrine is that for some, this punishment does last forever - those are the sons of perdition. Perdition is considered the opposite of Eternal life (everlasting salvation). For everyone else, there is some form of inheritance in a kingdom (see Section 76). For those who immediately inherit the Celestial Kingdom, there is no punishment to be experienced (their punishment is prevented by the atonement). Everyone else must face some sort of judgment and punishment before moving on to their kingdom. And this is what Section 19 is about - that state of punishment only lasts for a little while. Which brings me to an earlier comment - Mormonism generally doesn't differentiate between the three degrees in the Celestial Kingdom in terms of the question of exaltation. The separation of the Celestial Kingdom into three levels doesn't show up until the last part of the 19th century. Mormonisms views of the three degrees and their purpose has shifted more than once since that time. A fluidity in understanding and a lack of scriptural definition also led to a related issue - one of the debated ideas in the Church is the question of upward mobility in the resurrection. In its most restrictive form, the consensus is that upward mobility is limited to mobility within the three kingdoms. In this case, anyone can move from the lowest degree of the Celestial Kingdom to the highest. In the most expansive form of the idea of progression in the resurrection, as long as you inherit a kingdom you can progress towards the highest degree in the Celestial Kingdom - it just takes time (a resource that all resurrected persons have in abundance). But in any case, I think that Mormonism as a whole would view all of those in the three degrees of the Celestial Kingdom as having exaltation. At any rate, there is further development of this idea in the notion that LDS have of having ones calling an election made sure, where we have the idea taught that this process It is also worth mentioning that the idea of God's left and right hand is a figurative statement. It is a metaphor.
  19. I am not much of a fan of the term "catalyst theory" - I don't think that it reflects the full scope of what is happening - or what the evidence tells us. The Book of Abraham is at least in part a continuation of an idea that starts at least as early as 1832, and precedes the exposure to and acquisition of the Egyptian material. Using the term seems to create real limitations on the project of the Book of Abraham in terms of context. To speculate, I believe that some of the material that we find in the Book of Abraham would have appeared without the Egyptian materials.
  20. I don't know of him. I also don't have any of his books (not that this means anything). I skipped through the presentation somewhat (in and around my other chores this morning). I think that it is easy to make broad sweeping statements, and use these to try to make a point. I think that the general idea is reasonable - that there is a historical pattern to the development of complex literature. Here are four thoughts - 1: We have a problem both within and outside the LDS Church in that we tend to conflate the Book of Mormon with the Gold Plates. We need to consistently refer to the Book of Mormon as a modern text with potential ancient sources. The Book of Mormon is not an ancient text. The extent to which is faithfully conveys its sources is speculative at best. As I have noted in the past, the Book of Mormon, assuming that it is a translation, is not a very good one by today's standards. If we conflate the Book of Mormon with its alleged ancient sources, then it is clearly a text that is terribly out of place. But this is true of many modern translations of an ancient texts. If we only had the Living Bible without any ancient sources, biblical studies would be a very problematic field. 2: It is clear that the Book of Mormon itself is a very complex text. I started one of my essays in this way: "Nephi, of course, could not have been a postmodernist. No matter what conclusions we may draw from the text, even from the perspective of a book published in 1830, his work simply stands outside the postmodern time period." Much of the Book of Mormon is exactly the sort of thing that Lundwall tells us we should expect. Wars, chronologies, and so on. But there is some of it that isn't it - that defies our expectations. I have a deep respect for the complexity of the text, and have spent many years encouraging people to engage the text in ways that reveal this complexity. Of course, I could just be imagining it ... after all, complexity is in the mind of the reader ... 3: While the presentation spends an awful lot of time dealing with the theory, it spends little time with the nature of the gold plates - the Book of Mormon text that claims that the gold plates were mostly a redaction written only 1600 years ago, making the gold plates contemporary to St. Augustine's Confessions. Finding a complex text in 400 AD isn't all that special in the context of this argument. While I think that it isn't unreasonable to be highly skeptical of the claims about the text, if you are going to use a broad brush to dismiss it, you should at least recognize what those claims really are. This doesn't mean that the argument raised wouldn't work against the Book of Mormon - just that it needs to be further developed in specific contexts than what I found in that discussion. An argument that discusses the Gold Plates as a 2600 year old text is very different from discussing them as a 1600 year old text. I recognize that this does leave the 'small plates' hanging out there. They become more problematic than the rest of the Book of Mormon in that context. 4: There is something that nearly every student who takes classes in ethics and philosophy learn early in their coursework: you have to come to terms with the complexity in the writings of Plato. A thousand years before the invention of the printing press (something mentioned as significant in the video clip) we have the writings of someone who has become one of the founding fathers of western philosophy. His writing is frequently complex. He uses a wide range of rhetorical devices and strategies (allegory, allusion, and so on). You would think, from watching the presentation, that Plato might be anachronistic for his writing. True, Plato postdates Nephi, but only by a couple of hundred years. Finally, and its worth noting in passing, that Lundwall's arguments also push for the latest range of dates for the biblical text. That is, Judaism as a religion, he argues here, is largely a post-Babylonian captivity religion. The Bible is a text that ought to be dated quite late. I think that this is where his position is weakest - and it is subject to criticism. This is especially true given the claims about the relationship between writing and monotheism. The Greeks - some of the best writers of the ancient world - did not become monotheists because they developed writing and advanced the teaching and study of rhetoric, nor did the Asians. The shifts towards monotheism were often as much political as religious. And we tend to see (as this discussion shows) a sort of polarizing view of monotheism versus polytheism instead of a broad spectrum. This is not a simple topic, and deserves more time - but, I think that this is the problem with polemical podcasts - they have a priority, and they get to it within the limited time frame that they have. The same issues that Lundwall raises against the Book of Mormon almost certainly argue that the Old Testament couldn't come into existence until after the return from Babylon under Cyrus. I am putting this here because while his ideas here are problematic for traditional Mormon views, they are also problematic for traditional Christianity more broadly. I am not much of a traditionalist, so it tends to not be an issue for me, but that could be an important part of the discussion for believers. So, that's my two cents on this.
  21. Maybe, but not there. I have no desire to interact with Paul Osborne (Shulem) at all (and if you read through his comments, can you blame me?). When I deal with my stuff here, this isn't an attempt to create an apologetic argument (in fact, I suspect that you would find a lot of disagreement with some of my beliefs among other Mormons who look at these issues). As I noted, I am simply describing relationships between the Book of Abraham and other contemporary texts. I am not trying to draw conclusions about it. At the moment, I am going to just make one point. Kerry gets in to the idea of repurposing biblical texts. This happens a lot. The New Testament appropriates (repurposes) a lot of Old Testament stuff. Mormons do it routinely (we only have to look at the discussion on this forum about Psalm 82). The Book of Mormon contains both a description of how it works, but provides examples of it. There is a certain amount of irony here. Kerry and Paul both believe exactly this - they believe that Joseph Smith simply made it all up. They believe that Joseph Smith repurposed the Egyptian documents. Where I get called to task on this is not that I am describing something that they believe is inaccurate in terms of what we have, but that I am contradicting traditional views held by others. I am certainly okay with that. There is, I think, too much trying to force these texts into expectations rather than trying to understand them in their context. I might suggest, for example, that the Book of Abraham text is pseudepigraphical. The only thing that keeps Genesis in the Old Testament from being called pseudepigrapha by the academic world is the fact that it doesn't directly make the claim of authorship by Moses. Most of our religious literature is problematic in different ways - but my crime is to have an At this point in my life, it is hard for me to feel particularly anxious or engaged by arguments like the ones raised by Kerry or over at discussmormonism (or to feel obligated in any way to really respond). What matters to me is my own personal search for understanding. I don't mind dialogue - but I have no interest in trying to address what they believe are inconsistencies between traditional Mormonism and my perspective.
  22. This is a deep rabbit hole. I have not spent a lot of time working on these issues since around 2016 (and I was much more heavily engaged in this research between 2008 and 2012). So mostly I go back to my old notes, which are somewhat scattered. In terms of the language stuff that we have been discussing, Joseph Smith had a J.W. Gibbs Lexicon. I don't know which edition. I suspect it was the 1832 student edition (which is smaller than the full lexicon he published). I have found places in the EA documents (especially in EA-OC) suggestions that this text was being employed in efforts that went back over some of the earlier work on the EAG (much of which was completed in July-September 1835). This would have necessarily occurred after November of 1835 (when the book arrived in Nauvoo) and likely before or contemporary with J. Seixas teaching Hebrew in Kirtland (which runs from January to February 1836). Joseph Smith acquires at the same time a 5th edition of Moses Stuart's Hebrew Grammar - the RLDS Church owns this specific book. Seixas brought with him some material to instruct the members of the Church in Kirtland in 1836 - and they actually printed a small booklet for use in the class. Joseph Smith's use of the Seixas material seem to mostly come from the 1834 edition of the Seixas Grammar. There was also an 1833 edition. While these are all available in digital format now, prior to my work, there were very few copies of the 1834 edition available (at one of the early FAIR conferences, I distributed high resolution images of both on CD). The edition matters here - most of the earlier research on the Seixas grammar and its relationship to Joseph Smith's work was done using a replica edition published in 1981 by Zucker. His work used the 1833 edition. These texts and the dates involved with them are important - not just because of their contents and the relationship between these texts and material produced by Joseph Smith and his associates - but also because of distinct difference between the Seixas material and everything else. Gibbs and Stuart base their work on the earlier work of Gesenius (I am reasonably confident that Joseph didn't own a copy of Gesenius himself). His work was in German (and so to the extent that most of the Hebrew grammars and lexicons in the 19th century use him - they are translations from the German). Gesenius used a style of Hebrew transliteration and pronunciation which is generally called Ashkenazic. This was a Hebrew dialect that developed in the diaspora in northern Europe. The other general system is called Sephardic - and it comes out of sourthern Europe. Most of the early immigrating Jews who came to the United States were Sephardic Jews. Seixas's grammar and teaching was done using the Sephardic style. There are some major differences between the two that are really important for students of early Mormonism. For example, the Hebrew word for God is written as El in Ashkenazic style and as Ale in Sephardic. Kokaubeam and Gnolaum - from Abraham 3, are Sephardic spellings. Gnolaum corresponds to H5769 in a Strong's concordance, which spells it as 'owlam. Kokaubeam is a plural form of the Hebrew H3556, which Strong's transliterates as kowkab (or in the plural, kowkabim). One of the distinct differences between the 1833 and 1834 editions of the Seixas grammar is that the 1834 edition contains an extended translation and discussion of excerpts from the first chapter of Genesis. The terms occur there. But this isn't the extent of the connection between Abraham and Seixas's translation of Genesis. For example, while the KJV has in verse 2: "the earth was without form, and void," Seixas renders this "the earth was empty and desolate," and in the Book of Abraham we get "And the earth, after it was formed, was empty and desolate." There is a lot of connections there - this is just the tip of the iceberg. But, after 1836, Joseph does a lot with both Sephardic spellings, and with the process by which Seixas taught how to use the lexical tools to interpret biblical Hebrew. Another example that reflects the depth of the influence comes much later in the King Follett discourse - and rather than putting it here - you can dig way back on this site to comments I posted in 2013. My thoughts on that haven't changed at all. So it isn't just about words, it's ideas about language more generally and translation that deeply impact Joseph's thoughts. On top of these texts, there is also an important connection to Zephaniah 3:9: In early 1835 - before the papyri show up, we start to see a dialogue about the nature of the "pure language" - an idea that was believed by those in the restorationist movement to be a prophetic requirement with a fulfillment necessary before the second coming could occur. Early on, within Mormonism, the person who was most interested in this was Phelps. He publishes a couple of articles on this topic in the Evening and Morning Star. This publication was Phelp's - and he started it in Independence in 1832, and brought it to Kirtland in 1834. The idea of the pure language had several different components within early LDS belief. Among other things, Brigham Young popularized the speaking of tongues in early Mormonism (there was quite a bit of this going on in Kirtland - you can read about a lot of it in connection with the temple dedication there). There was a view in the late 1830s that when members of the Church spoke in tongues, they were speaking the Adamic language - or the pure language. There was an attempt to construct a pure language. This was not something that was isolated to Mormonism. There were a lot of different attempts (of varying scope) to do this. Mormonism's interest in the idea eventually dies out - but not before we get the Deseret script. To really jump further down the rabbit hole, we have to mention Michael Hull Barton, who in 1833 published this book. Barton was one of the more ambitious Americans in the early 19th century attempting to create a universal language (a "pure language.") This might have been just a footnote except for the fact that in 1831, Barton joined the Mormon church. He leaves the church within a few years - although he continues to interact with it until 1844 (when the Church makes the trip west). Barton almost certainly had an influence on some of the ideas circulating within Mormonism on language. At any rate, the first attempts to create or formulate this pure language within Mormonism start in 1832. This is in a question and answer format (one of the ways in which Joseph Smith received revelation). in May of 1835, before the papyri show up, we have a letter from William Phelps, which has within it a grid showing a series of characters and across from them, transliterations of those characters, along with 'translations' or interpretations of them. This is related to the 1832 revelation. These characters, along with the transliterations and interpretations are all included in the EA documents of the KEP. So however we want to understand the KEP, we have to consider that they (along with potentially the Book of Abraham) are a part of this project to unfold the pure language (the universal language of Adam). The goal wasn't necessarily to restore this pure language so much as to create it (with the help of revelation). We can see how this material becomes a part of the Book of Abraham - an internal reliance so to speak, between projects. Abraham 3:13 not only uses Sephardic Hebrew, it also includes the word Olea, which is taken from these earlier, purely LDS, discussions about the pure language. So I realize that this is a lot of material, and its mostly surface stuff (as I said, my notes can be a bit scattered). Engaging in this kind of research takes a lot of time and effort. It is becoming easier than it was when I spent a lot of time on it - mostly because there are more digital sources. I really don't have the energy that I had in the past to track down the physical copies of rare stuff for review (and to take pictures). And it is hard to say how valuable the search is - most of what I would term the low hanging fruit has already been explored - at least a bit. So to get back to the questions - 1: In their original context, I don't think that there was anything to do with Abraham on the papyri. I think that we could speculate endlessly about why Joseph Smith connected the papyri to Abraham - but, once he did so, he repurposed the material and images to create something new. 2: As far as assumptions go, I think it matters if you think that Joseph Smith was reading the text in front of him verbatim in a word-for-word translation. Someone with that assumption will find what I am talking about very difficult to accept. It also matters how you view Joseph Smith's claims to be a prophet. I could probably list more - but I think that there is such a broad range of views about Joseph Smith and about the Book of Abraham that impact how we understand all of this material. When I put that in there, it was more of an umbrella statement to suggest that perhaps the best way to deal with this is to try and separate facts from interpretation in the discussion. As you can see, at least at the surface level, I prefer to connect the details we know rather than flesh out narrative. It leaves it more open to my audience to come to terms with it. I just wanted to follow up on one comment you made in the thread you linked: I just wanted to add that we really have to be aware of avoiding circular arguments in these discussions. Arguments about plausibility are generally worth less than nothing in these kinds of discussions. The process of identifying potential sources needs to be carefully articulated, and the allowance for coincidence has to be made.
  23. It is possible that the issue is the part that you quoted here - (my emphasis added): I alluded to this principle in my example from my brother's experience. If I had to guess, this issue may be involved. The Church seems to be claiming that the insurance company refused to defend the Church in this case (which sought damages for bodily injury). And in doing so, they accepted the obligation to pay. I would guess that the insurance company has taken a different view of this issue.
  24. I believe he was. However ... we don't really have any clear or concise description of what was going on when he translated the Book of Mormon. So was he simply reading? Was he getting some sort of mental image? We don't know. With that caveat in mind, I would suggest that his attempts at translation in the traditional sense were generally clumsy, amateur, and in a sense aimed at trying to make texts correspond to his beliefs. One you have a relatively good idea of his sources, his explanations are quite understandable (even if we might disagree with his conclusions). We see a lot of this sort of thing in the King Follett Discourse, for example, where we can take his language and actually pinpoint which of the texts he derived his explanations from. But this idea also causes us some problems with the Book of Abraham. We see influences from these sources on the text. And so without being able to know what the process was, it makes it difficult for us. The text of the Book of Abraham appears redacted at least once. There are chronological challenges with trying to date it (it doesn't seem to be written all at once - which adds to the confusion). The absence of good descriptions of what was going on doesn't help - and this means that there are lots of different ideas about it. So ... in this sense, we have a spectrum. The Book of Mormon has almost nothing in it that we might attribute to a growing understanding of texts and translation. The JST project has a little bit of this understanding in it. The Book of Abraham has a lot - and a large part of how we understand that is really determined by the assumptions people bring to the text. And to add one more wrinkle to all of this, we have the idea of a perfect language (and the corresponding notion of an Adamic language). Joseph starts discussing ideas about an Adamic language in 1832 (between the JST and the BoA). But this isn't so much a restoration of an Adamic language, but attempts to create one - and within Mormonism, the end result of this sort of speculation is the language of Deseret. My take away is that Joseph Smith never really develops a notion of translation in the sense that a linguist might want to discuss it today.
  25. Insurance companies work with a set of complicated relationships. Most insurance companies work with another layer of insurance that is usually referred to as reinsurance. Reinsurance can be used by insurance companies (who are then able to limit their losses in certain circumstances) or they can be used by companies directly who self-insure. Reinsurance companies use something that works like your normal insurance deductible - except that the numbers can be quite large. I have a brother who is an attorney who spent part of his career representing reinsurance companies in the health care industry. So, he would get involved in cases only when the costs to a hospital (or their insurance company - if he was representing the insurance company) reached the level where his company would start to assume liability. Suppose that the deductible for the reinsurance was 5 million dollars. Suppose someone has an issue with the hospital, and wants to sue. The hospital makes them a settlement offer for 5 million. My brother's job might be to encourage that person to accept the settlement - because if they decide to go for more than that 5 million dollars, the reinsurer could fight that claim in court - sometimes leaving the claimant with nothing (even though the hospital themselves were willing to settle). An umbrella policy of the sort referred to here, covers damages (losses) in excess of amounts covered by both underlying regular insurance policies and/or an amount set out for self-insurance (the 'retained limit'). So the umbrella policy might have a stipulation that says that they will pay amounts only after other insurance policies have paid, or in the case of something not covered by other insurance policies, only after an amount of XXX dollars has been paid by the insured entity. Most of the time, these other first shot insurance policies have limits on the amount that they will pay out, and this umbrella policy is acquired to cover damages in excess of those payouts. The argument here is simply that the insurance companies are claiming that the Church did not meet the contractual requirements necessary before the reinsurance kicks in. Additionally, the insurance company is claiming that the voluntary settlement in this specific cause didn't meet the bar to qualify as damages or losses for the purposes of meeting the retained limit. The Church is claiming that it has met those contractual requirements and is expecting these insurance companies to meet their obligations. This sort of case is actually pretty routine.
×
×
  • Create New...