the narrator

Here is the passage in Alma 55:19: "for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice" Here it is in other religious speaking by Joseph Smith: "for this cause that men might be made partakers of the glories" (D&C 133:57) "for this cause that thy Days may be prolounged" (D&C 5:33) However, while Carmack only counts "seven instances" in the Book of Mormon, there are several more he missed because of a clause (or whatever the phrases are called, italicized here) breaking up the "for this cause . . . that": "for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works. (3 Ne. 27:15) "for this cause have I suffered that ye should be preserved" (Mosiah 7:11) "for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph" (2 Ne. 25:21) "for this cause that the Gentiles, if they will not harden their hearts, that they may repent and come unto me and be baptized in my name and know of the true points of my doctrine, that they may be numbered among my people" (3 Ne. 21:6; not sure if this is counted among Carmack's seven) "for this cause I write unto you, that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Morm. 3:20) "for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter." (2 Ne. 31:17) "for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world" and taking these into account, we find even more examples in Joseph's revelations and other contemporary LDS texts: "for this cause I have sent you that you might be obedient" (D&C 58:6) "for this cause I gave unto you a commandment that you should call your solemn assemblies assembly" (D&C 95:7) "for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5) "for this cause I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise, that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was." (D&C 124:38) "for this cause they are not worthy to receive them yet god has suffered it not for your sins but that he might preprare you for a grateer [greater] work that you might be prepared for the endowment from on high" (letter to church leaders) "For this cause, the inteligent saint earnestly desires the gathering of the elect; to be completed; that the scene of wretchedness may ce[a]se in the world" (letter to Don Carlos Smith from Sidney Rigdon) "for this cause I gave unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio" (Letter from Phelps, likely paraphrasing D&C 38:32) "for this cause have I spoken these things & again I say unto you that my servant Isaac may not be tempted above that which he is able to bear" (D&C 64:19-20) "for this cause thou shalt take thy Journey with my servents Joseph & Sidney [Rigdon] that thou mayest be planted in the land of thine inheritance" (D&C 55:5) "for this cause these commandments were given; they were commanded to be kept from the world in the day that they were given, but now are to go forth unto all flesh—And this according to the mind and will of the Lord, who ruleth over all flesh. And unto him that repenteth and sanctifieth himself before the Lord shall be given eternal life. And upon them that hearken not to the voice of the Lord shall be fulfilled that which was written by the prophet Moses, that they should be cut off from among the people. (D&C 133:63-64; this long clause is clearer in revelations when it isn't split between verses) "for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned" (letter to editor in Times and Seasons) However, it should be noted that pretty much all of the "For this cause" lines in the Book of Mormon and Joseph writings and others' writings from the time use "cause" in the sense of "purpose." The difference between using "that" and not including the term depends on if the passage is referring to a desired future outcome "that they might" instead of a present, past, or necessary condition or state. So, yeah, "for this cause . . . that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>" is pretty common in Joseph's religious writings, as we would expect if he was also using it in the Book of Mormon.

Well, I'm no linguist, but I would just say that you and Davis are simply both reading Jacob 7:19 wrong. It's not being used as "unless, except." It's being used a conjunction where his final confession stands against the list of things he had been doing. And then he dies. Contrary to your supposed "more reasonable interpretation," this seems the clear interpretation based on the description of his speech that precedes it: Your reading has Sherem implicitly dying without such a confession: "I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful unless I confess unto God." However, the text is not only clear that he had confessed, but that his fear is that he committed the unpardonable sin, and so he is scared that he will still nevertheless suffer despite his confession: "I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God. . . . And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful." So, here is just an example of where you are just wrong with what you think you are identifying. For this reason I prefer Brant Gardner's rendering, which I think better captures what is being related (though I would put "and they truly testify of him" in parentheses): Bwahahahahahaha. These kinds of lines from you are hilarious. Who are these "his colleagues"? What role did they play in his paper? How do you know of them?

I understand things quite well. The problem is that Carmack (and you) want to point to things that look like EModE and then declare "God!" without asking (1) what else might result in these phrases, and (2) why would God do that? This is the same problem that BofM apologetics, Christian apologetics, creationist apologetics, etc routinely fall into. You point to something you think can't be explained and then declare it as something that can only be explained by the divine. Then, when an explanation is offered you either plug your ears or shift the goal posts and repeat. All Carmack has done is identified phrases that appear archaic and share archaic structures. That's it. Responsible scholarship should ask if there are good explanations for why they might be there. Davis has done that. You and Carmack have not. Seriously, read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments.

My background and training is in philosophy. A "control text" is not a basic principle of logic. Linguistics is not a hard science. Here, you are already off. You seem to imply that Joseph (or anybody) has a single way of speaking. This is not at all the case. When I am praying, speaking in a sacrament meeting talk, school presentation, to my parents, with my kids, and with my friends, I will be speaking very differently--especially if I am trying to reach a particular audience. As you put it earlier, the English translator/speaker of the Book of Mormon likely utilized "a blend of select archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative." Far from wanting a "control text" as you call it, a thesis that recognized the mix of supposed EModE-looking phrases and 19th century language and ideas (and quotes from sermons from that period) might propose that if Joseph was the speaker of the Book of Mormon we would expect to find some similar constructions and mixes of supposed EModE-looking phrases and 19th century language and ideas in other religious texts he spoke to also "make [them] sound older and more authoritative." Now, as I said before, if those revelations completely lacked similar phrases, then that would add weight to the claim that the Book of Mormon and Joseph's revelations were not created by the same person. However, if similarities exist, then it adds weigh to the claim that the Book of Mormon and Joseph's revelations shared a creator (whether that be Joseph or God or some angel). From there, competing theses of why such a mix of supposed EModE and later language should both exist in these texts need to be proposed and compared to determine which makes more sense. Davis does precisely that with the Book of Mormon texts, and JSPP editors like Grant Underwood has done the same for Joseph's revelations. I have yet to see any sort of methodological reasoning for why God would have done the same outside of simple aphorisms and slogans. Again, you are now tossing out the very places where we would expect to find them. No. I am pointing to them as religious texts wherein Joseph was more likely to utilize the same spiritual linguistic registers and where we are most likely to see similar phrasing as a result of trying to "make [them] sound older and more authoritative." Another strawman. I am seeing them in the same way that Grant Underwood has argued: "A richer, more nuanced view, one that see Joseph as more than a mere human fax machine through whom God communicated finished revelation texts composed in heaven. Joseph had a role to play in the revelatory process. His associate Oliver Cowdery, after all, had earlier been chided for assuming the process required no effort, for supposing that God would simply "give" him the words without any thought on his part (D&C 9:7–8)." For Underwood, the words weren't given to Joseph; instead, Joseph put the inspiration that he received into his own words. It's not a black-and-white, all-or-nothing process, and I'm sure it's the same thing you do when performing a blessing. Nope. See above. I don't know how many times I could explain this to you before you stop with the strawmen. Nope. Again, you really need to read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments. Nobody is claiming that it was widely present and regularly in use by others. The argument is that the particulars of the Book of Mormon are somewhat unique to Joseph's idiolect and spiritual registers when constructing religious texts to "make [them] sound older and more authoritative." Again, you are continuing to complete misunderstand things. The language of the Book of Mormon is specific to a religious text delivered by speaking not writing. Those two aspects are central, and we shouldn't expect to see the same language in secular written texts. Think really hard for a moment: compare the language you use when praying and the language you use when writing a letter to the editor to complain about the city not fixing potholes. Would you really expect the language in both to be the same? No, you would not. You should read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments. So try really hard to think. How might you expect the language of a secular novel written by Joseph's own hand to different from an ancient authoritative religious history that is orally presented? Would they differ? How so? Might the latter include archaic-sounding language to "make it sound older and more authoritative" while the former did not because it was a secular novel? Again, this is a strawman. Further, calling them "archaic features" is making an assumption. As far as the text is concerned, they are "archaic-seeming feature." Again, strawman. strawman. Nobody i s claiming they were all in his environment. Some were, some weren't. Or, you could do option 4, which is what Davis has done. You can show how these archaic-seeming forms can arise from a combination of copying/mimicking/paraphrasing the KJV, poor grammar, mixing scriptural passages, local dialect, extemporaneous speaking, etc. Seriously, read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments.

Pointless quibbling. My point is that while the creation of paracosms is a very common adolescent experience. Continuing those paracosms past adolescence is quite rare. Books are not paracosms. A paracosm is the world in which stories are told, and they exist in the mind of their creator outside of any book and regardless if any fiction is created within them. Just because a book takes place in an fictional world or time, it does not mean the author had a paracosm in which it takes place. Again, the Book of Mormon is not a paracosm, nor was it an adolescent creation. Joseph was 22 when he began. The paracosm of the Book of Mormon was the world itself: "their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their <mode of> warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them." How the Book of Mormon was presented and received is irrelevant to whether or not it came out of a paracosm. Bob is a friend of mine, and I strongly disagree with him. He's completely wrong comparing the Book of Mormon to other written fictions. The oral storytelling of the Book of Mormon is a completely different form of creative storytelling than writing a book. I'm not going to bother responding to dump of apologetic talking points, as they are irrelevant to whether or not the Nephite world and history underlying the Book of Mormon constitutes a paracosm. I also suggest you learning more about paracosms before dismissing my claim. I hardly think the Book of Mormon is simple.

Edit: Ryan dropped the snark, so dropping my snarky reply.

What is even a "control text"? I'm happy to admit that I'm not trained in linguistics like you, so can you please tell me what a "control text" is in linguistics? Please point me to how this term is appropriately used in lingustics so that I can best understand how you are using it. I was simply countering the argument that the claim that these phrases were absent from Joseph's environment and pointing to just how much a part of it they are. Because, as I explained above, if the supposed EModE was a part of Joseph idiolect (and religious register, as Davis argues), then we would expect to find some of them in Joseph's other religious writings, which they do. If they were absent from them, then the question of why they only appear in the BofM would be more important. But since they do appear elsewhere, the question should then be asked why they appear in both. You just throwing out a bunch of random hollow questions without doing the work to explain why the answer to any of those makes sense and is sufficient and makes more sense than it just being Joseph is not explaining anything. Please let me know when you have finally read Davis's article so that you aren't overtly displaying your ignorance while fighting strawmen.

They aren't a "control group". They are other dictations of religious texts spoken by Joseph. Again, and you seem to keep on missing the point, if these phrases that look like EModE are the consequence of Joseph's idiolect for religious-sounding texts, then we might expect them to appear in other religious texts by Joseph--and we do! If you were to propose some sort of testable thesis for why Joseph's revelations combine similar EModE-looking phrases with 19th century language and ideas that do not involve Joseph himself, then maybe you would have a reason to exclude them, but you don't. Strawman. Nobody is claiming that. Perhaps rather than fighting windmills, you should read Davis's article and actually deal with the arguments he is making. But if you prefer fighting windmills, as it seems you do, then I'm wasting my time. It doesn't have "so much" relative the the text. And Davis IMO more than adequately shows how these can appear in the Book of Mormon. Read Davis's article. Actually read it. Don't just skim it. Read it. Again, strawman. You sure like to argue against against them. But we can point out the silliness of God mashing together supposed native EModE with 19th century language and ideas, and I have yet to see a proposal for why God would do this--and probably because any sort of explanation for this would sound ridiculous and better explained by the supposed EModE being a combination of things but primarily Joseph idiolect. That isn't at all analogous because in our case we are dealing with both the BofM and D&C being religious texts dictated by the same person. There was never an analogous placebo. Now, if none of Joseph's other religious writings had similar phrasing, then that would bolster your argument. But that isn't the case. And if you want to say that the D&C revelations and other religious texts that share similar language do so for the same supernatural reasons that the Book of Mormon text does, then you need to explain what those supernatural reasons are. You need to provide a thesis for why God would be doing such and why that makes more sense then them being present for other reasons, such as those argued by Davis. It is absurd though. So basically God was doing what others are saying Joseph was doing, but to you it makes more sense for God to use bad grammar than it does for Joseph to. Gotcha. Also, yeah, that's absurd. I hope you realize that you are making an argument for a single voice with a particular idiolect. It's not unique though, as they appear in other religious writings, which you want to dismiss in order to maintain this silly argument. Did God use his Kolob translate app? Were multiple angels from different time periods taking turns between sentences as they translated the same revelations from Adamic into their native English? blah blah blah blah blah? Rather than just throwing out abstract questions, why don't you make an actual proposal outlining some sort of divine methodology that makes more sense than Joseph already having a religious dialect he was familiar with and dictating a blend of archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative. If something is silly or absurd, then it's a good reason to assume that it wasn't something happening on the other side of the veil--unless you think that God is involved in absurdity and confusion. Seriously, read Davis's article. I linked it again to make it easy for you.

This is a lie. You shouldn't lie, Stan.

Thanks for pointing out that Joseph did use them outside of the Book of Mormon. I'm really hoping you actually respond to Davis's article rather than continue your game of whack-a-mole. I have no doubt whatsoever of your knowledge of EModE and your ability to recognize syntax resembling or identical to EModE. I just seriously doubt your critical thinking and ability to process what this means about the production of the Book of Mormon text. Like so much of BofM apologetics, you point to this supposed EModE and declare "How could Joseph have known?!?" and then do everything you can to further build a case of "How could Joseph have known?!?" and when replies are made, again, like most BofM apologetics, you shift the argument (now to the point where you have to make a silly statistical claim about it somehow being meaningful that it appears more in the BofM. (I should not that this is not just the case for BofM apologetics, so much of religious apologetics also plays the silly game of immediately claiming that the supernatural is the only answer to some supposed evidentiary gap, and then shifting the goalposts when that gap has been explained.) Serious and responsible scholarship would look at these supposed EModE and ask how they might be explained--especially in light of the majority of the text not being EModE and the clear presence of 19th century language, phrases, idea, and content in the translation. Bill Davis is doing precisely that. You are not.

Two is enough, and the others show that the speech pattern was used enough by Joseph to show how slight alterations while speaking can mimic the EModE. As I have noted repeatedly, and as Bill Davis makes very explicit and central to his recent Dialogue article, the Book of Mormon isn't supposed to be ordinary language. It's a specific idiolect that is present when Joseph is intended to evoke religious language. It thus shouldn't be expected to appear near as much in writing and speech outside of Joseph's religious idiolect. If you exclude Joseph's revelations you are excluding the primary place where we might expect to see similar language to that of the Book of Mormon. Furthermore, the idea that the language of Joseph's revelations are not his own but of some native EModE speaker is just as silly as the absurd notion that the language of the Book of Mormon has language from both an EModE speaker and a 19th century New Englander. You really ought to read Davis's article, because it seems like you haven't.

Yeah, they would still require staffing, but when I heard these plans Nelson's building plans made a lot more sense to me.

Fair enough.

I cannot; or, rather, will not. Sorry. Don't want to cause any trouble for anyone.

Assuming that this isn't another Fiend of Dreams, where buildings were built with faith that they would be filled, there is another reason for the increased temple building that won't necessarily mean expected growth. Part of Nelson's larger temple-focused project was to have rooms in temples with a large TV screen and tablets for group studies of the endowment. The idea is that a elders quorum, ward relief society, or family group could reserve a room and then be able to watch, rewind, pause, skip, etc the endowment video, as well as the tablets having accompanying notes with scriptures, GA quotes, and explanations for each line of the endowment. Essentially, in these rooms people would be able to study the endowment as a group just as they would the scriptures. This is one of the main reasons why the Salt Lake Temple was gutted rather than just the seismic and electrical updates they initially announced, as it is supposed to now have multiple rooms for this purpose. I suspect this is the same reason that Nelson was announcing so many temples: it wasn't necessarily to meet new expected demands but rather to make it easier for members to more regularly study the endowment. I'm assuming this will still happen, but I know that other updates he wanted to the endowment were squashed.

This is precisely what a paracosm is. It's the world created in which the stories take place, and the very sort of thing that my daughter was actively engaged in until she wasn't (as I discussed above). That Joseph didn't produce more from his paracosm simply means he moved on (as happens with most paracosms). Paracosms primarily develop in adolescence and rarely continue beyond them. Tolkein's, Lewis's, and others are unique in that they continued far into adulthood, and that is partly due to them having a motivation and interest in continuing it, and it seems the case that once someone has moved past theirs they typically don't recover it. (Cameron's Pandora paracosm may be an exception where he returned to his childhood paracosm, though he seems to have also kept it in play behind the scenes.) I would argue that one reason that Joseph moved past his Nephites paracosm is that his interests had moved from the origins of the Native Americans and into a border global history of human existence and religion (as we see in his translation of the Old Testament in the Book of Moses) and then into a cosmic history of not just humana but of the cosmos and the gods that inhabit it.

Simply comparing it to other writings is missing the point. The Book of Mormon was intentionally presented as a religious text, and so it would need to be compared with other religious writings, texts, and letters by Joseph--and that is precisely where they can be found.

There is no reason to assume it "should have." However, those things should be more likely to show up in other religious writings and dictations by Joseph, which they frequently do.

But for some reason, the examples the Carmack offers seem to show up in other writings and transcriptions of Joseph and his colleagues, and for some reason they show up even more in revelations, sermons, and epistles that use KJV-inspired religious language.

I agree with this statement. However, Carmack needs to explain what he means by "it reads like a written text in various ways." Without making clear what he means by that, it just becomes a useless claim. When editing Brant Gardner's recent study edition it really struck me how much the dictation did present itself as not just a written text--but a printed page of the Bible, complete with book title, book summaries, and sometimes even chapter summaries. For me, this confirmed my long suspicion that Joseph had strong hyperphantasia, as this is similar to experiences others have with hyperphantasia. (It's really impressive how much some of these seems identical to how it was described Joseph reading a text.) I have only scanned Carmack's recent essay, but it, again, has the same issues his papers always have. Take this for example: If only Carmack had looked to see how much Joseph Smith himself used the noun cause to conveys a archaic meaning of purpose in his letters and revelations. They don't "uniformly escape the textual record." 3. Your whole claim here implies some uniformity of usage in the Book of Mormon , which is simply not the case. They do show up. However, we should expect bad grammar to show up less than the Book of Mormon that other published writings because the BofM was intentionally published as the unedited spoken text whereas most other published text would be edited to a degree. I have yet to find an example that isn't present in late 18th or early 19th century texts They don't need to have complete explanatory power. There merely shows that such usage can readily occur in the Book of Mormon without requiring this EModE thesis. But one can very easily point out that they don't have the significance that Carmack wants to claim they have. "If they are correct"-- Again, the issue isn't whether EModE (or language that seem like EModE) appears in the Book of Mormon. I agree with them that both are true. It's their next step in claiming or implying that these could not appear without some supernatural means that does not hold up. "and it is highly implausible that Smith dictated the Book of Mormon using his own natural ability" -- what do you mean by "and"? Are you simply throwing in a premise here? Is it bad grammar? Or are you channeling archaic usage through supernatural means? "then that obviously strengthens the claim that he produced the text via supernatural means." -- no it doesn't. No. When the whole point of Carmack's thesis is to argue that the Book of Mormon was brought about by supernatural means, the question isn't second order but central to it. This is where Ockham's Razor comes in, because the supernatural explanation complicates things further whereas the natural explanation does not add any such complications. Over the years, I've noticed a lot of "its a great argument" claims, when it comes to the research of Skousen/Carmack. But I find it quite telling that their apologists rarely deal with the actual data and arguments themselves. Edit: Skimming through Carmack's response to Davis something has become clear that is typical of BofM apologetics. As critics of Carmack's thesis have shown examples of other EModE in 19th century writings, he has shifted to goal posts from the supposed EModE no beign in contemporary wriitngs to it's more statistically prevalent in the BofM than contemporary writings. That is quite the shift, and his statistical claims do not have the weight he thinks they do. Edit 2: I just read Davis's Dialogue article that Carmack responds to, as well as Carmack's response. You should really read Davis's if you haven't, as he more than adequately explains things (while Carmack does the typical apologetic move of pointing to more and saying "well what about this," which would just turn into same cycle of every "How could Joseph have...?" type of apologetics. And the two articles perfectly display the vast quality and responsibility differences between David and Carmack. While Davis looks at the supposed EModE and attempts to explain how they could appear alongaide obvious 19th century aspects with Joseph as a translator, Carmack (in typical apologetic fashion) throws his hands in the air and declares the supernatural and makes no attempt to explain the mix of supposed EModE and 19th century content. If you haven't read Davis's article, you really should.

It can quite easily be refuted by the fact that 1. the English BofM was spoken and not written, 2. that local regional dialects often retain archaic syntax, 3. that many of the supposed examples of EModE can simply be poorly spoken English (for example, just listen to my wife's extended family in Louisiana speak--and I assure you they aren't from the 17th century, despite what it might seem), 4. that ALL of the examples offered can be found in 19th century books, letters, etc.--including some in writings by Joseph and his colleagues. But more importantly, its a stupid argument because it simply unnecessarily complicates things when the above is the simplest explanation. If the BofM was entirely in EModE, then it would have more traction. But it is a very simple fact that the language of the Book of Mormon is predominantly English contemporary to Joseph with KJV-language mimicry that was common in religious writing and speaking at the time, and the supposed examples of EModE are the outliers. Here is where Okkham's Razor would be valuable. What makes more sense--the English BofM having dual 17th and 19th authorship? Or the English BofM translation having a 19th century translator who spoke a rural New England English and mimick KJV English to provide it with a more religious feel?

Nobody should talk about that because it's stupid--easily one of the worst apologetic arguments made.

Yeah, it seems lifting from each other was a common aspect of sermon culture.

Nice find

Also, I'm not 100% certain, but I believe that Jonathon Edwards coined the phrase "plan of salvation" or at least popularized it