the narrator

That makes sense. Thanks.

Yo, chill out. I was merely pointing out that I did not know when and precisely why Mormons began using "sacrament" exclusively for communion.

Let me just add that so much of Mormonism is built on misreadings of scripture due to not understand the historical and linguistic context they were first given in--which I assume is the reason for the question posed in the OP.

If that works for you, then cool. One of my greatest nightmares is dying and discovering that the universe is controlled by a deity who demands that a ritual be performed using exact English phrases in order to not suffer eternally.

You completely missed the point. "Sacrament" is essentially synonymous with "ordinance" or "ritual." Baptism is a sacrament. Confirmation is a sacrament. Communion is a sacrament. The endowment is a sacrament. Sealings are sacrament. Etc. In the rest of Christianity (and in early Mormonism, I believe), the term is used to describe all of the key ordinances and rituals of Christianity. Early Mormons also used "Lord's supper" and "communion," but somewhere along the way they began using "the sacrament" exclusively for communion. I suspect it comes from a misunderstanding of D&C 20, which uses "the sacrament" as a simple reference to communion but then later began to be misread as the actual name of the ritual.

If precise ritual acts and precise ritual language are required to sway God's will or the cosmos, that makes it an incantation. Argue with English, not with me.

My point is that, in Mormonism, baptism and other sacramental rites have shifted away from their basic utility (covenant initiation into a community) and into magical rites by ignoring the basic utility and instead focusing on precise ritual acts and incantations--such that many Mormons believe that God (or some weird cosmic reality) will not accept a baptism if a toe, some clothes, or hair floated to the top of the water or the priest skipped or misspoke part of the incantation.

Exactly. I think that baptism, communion, endowment, sealings, etc should be understood as initiation rites into a community. In the Book of Mormon, particularly at the waters of Mormon, baptism is quite clearly portrayed as such, communion literally means "participation in something; that which is common to all; union in religious worship, doctrine, or discipline" (I have no idea how it came to be called "the sacrament" in Mormonism), and the temple endowment was literally modeled after initiation rites for the preeminent social club of the early 19th century. Somewhere along the way, though, these sacraments lost their role as communal initiation and became magical means to secure a spot in heaven.

I wasn't taught that all covenants were being renewed, but I was definitely taught that baptism covenants were--to the point that I thought if I died sometime between sinning & repenting and being able to take the sacrament again that I might be screwed.

Job is based on an older Sumerian legend which provides the main framing beginning with chapters 1 and 2, and concluding with 42:7-17. This is the standard story and part that people generally only read. The rest is an Israelite poem calling into question the very premise of the story, rejecting it, and even has Job announce that someone would avenge him by punishing God for such an injustice.

Unfortunately many high-profile apologists (and leaders) loudly claim the opposite and reinforce the belief that the BofM must be an accurate historical representation if it is to have religious value. For example, Stephen Smoot writes, "To abandon faith in the historicity of the Book of Mormon is to effectively abandon — whether intentionally or not — faith in Joseph Smith’s sanity, honesty, and divine ordination."--a claim I entirely reject. As I have long argued, religious apologetics that attempt to tie religious truth claims to secular epistemology not only completely misunderstand what it means for something to be a religious truth but do more in the long term to harm faith--especiallly as the gap (aka "How could have Joseph known?!?!") apologetics increasingly fall by the wayside as more secular knowledge emerges. (We can see a very similar thing happening as the arguments utilized by Christian creation apologetics have been almost entirely and conclusively eliminated in the past few decades.)

No they don't.

Seems post-Mormon is used more frequently now.

No they don't.

It was first coined in the late 90s. I first encountered it a few years ago, and had not seen anybody yet discuss it in the context of Joseph Smith and the BofM.

He was wrong.

I guess you should add it to the long list of wrong things Church leaders have said.

This question has been posed repeatedly for years without an answer, and there will never be one. That's because Carmack isn't doing linguistics. If he was, he'd be trying to understand why and how the text is the way it is. But, he isn't, and any attempt to conjure up a supernatural systematic explanation of the supposed EModE will be ridiculous enough to end it all.

Or Romney was wrong.

Lolz.

In this case, the three people Davis thanked were for checking grammar, a helpful conversation 2 decades ago, and another who read an early draft but had no substantive suggestions. None of these come close to what Carmack was claiming or implying. Davis was simply being nice and thanking people. (I've done much less for people who helped more with some of my publications.) As I noted before, the reason why Carmack seems to make his claim is tied to his constant need to emphasize his supposed skills and training over others to cover up the fact that he isn't engaging in linguistics but is just acting as a glorified grammar nerd attempting to identify and force EModE syntax and language in the Book of Mormon. If he were actually doing linguistics he would be trying to understand and explain why the supposed EModE appears in the text intermingled with 19th century language, phrases, and ideas. But he can't do that. And so, instead, he throws out ad hominins and dupe people like Ryan by his appeals to his own authority.

Why you gotta be so calm about things...?

Well, it's best I leave this thread. As I noted, my autistic brain gets triggered by fallacious reasoning, and the utterly absurd EModE thesis (and even moreso attempts to defend it) are about as fallacious as things could get. So consider this my last contribution (if they could be called that) to this. Looking forward to an actual substantial reply to Davis from Carmack in which he actually responds to what Davis actually argued instead of his usual strawman adventures.

Nobody assisted Davis with the creation of his article, and no scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be "involved in the creation of an article." Perhaps I would give Stan the benefit of the doubt of not understanding scholarship, however his claim of "various people" and then later claim of assistance of "his colleagues" beyond the blind reviewers and editor make it clear that Stan was lying (or carelessly repeating a lie). We could spend plenty of time wondering why Stan wrote out his lies, but it would probably be better if he just explained himself. Davis does thanka few people for helpful suggestions, but that is hardly a claim of various people being in the creation of his article. It's obvious why Stan portrayed the article as being multi-person creation. It's part of his schtick of feigning skills of a linguist that any critic of his couldn't possibly match--despite him not actually doing linguistics in his grammar labeling.

1. How is that disrespectful? 2. Is it more disrespectful than Stan lying about Davis's article being created by multiple persons?