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Here's a follow-up to what I wrote yesterday about "did have" in the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith dictated sixteen instances of non-emphatic, nonbiblical “did have,” an uncommon early modern periphrasis.[1] Roger O’Connor, a pseudo-archaic author who wrote with high levels of “did <infinitive>” (more than 1,100 instances), did not employ “did have” even once, although he had many opportunities to do so.[2] Joseph Smith also dictated archaic, non-emphatic “do have” and “doth have” once each, which rarely occurred earlier.[3] Texts | Corpora did have do have doth have 1611 King James Bible 0 0 0 Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts) 0 0 0 Bunyan corpus (39 texts) 0 0 0 1829 Book of Mormon 16 1 1 Early English Books Online 12 3 0 He also dictated early modern variational usage of “thou didst” alternating immediately with “and did” (Alma 39:3) and “did thou” varying almost immediately with “thou didst” (Ether 12:31). This is attested early modern variation which resulted from differential syntactic influences. Periphrastic “«do» have” and didst ~ did variation fit with the Book of Mormon’s frequent usage of various types of little-known Early Modern English. [1] The approximately 60,000 texts of the freely available portion of the EEBO corpus have between four and twelve instances of “did have” (1496–1691), depending on strictness of interpretation. There are four simple, early examples: 1496, https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A06811, [91]; 1534, A00387, 75; 1534, A68860, [27]; 1576, A09316, 96. These are the most representative examples of the Book of Mormon’s “did have” usage. The latest one in EEBO is probably an emphatic instance, because of the accompanying use of indeed: “as indeed they did have it” (1691, A45242, 309). Another later example occurs in a legal context (1659, A52921, 24); such usage, often with adverbs, was persistent. One is a conjoined case, “did have and hold” (1651, A28585, 279), which can be distinguished as involving a verb compound. Five are poetic instances, influenced by meter and rhyme. [2] Roger O’Connor’s curious history of Ireland titled Chronicles of Eri was written around 1800 and published in 1822; as indexed in WordCruncher, it has approximately 131,000 words. There are seven instances of “did eat” in his book and none of ate. The Book of Mormon has one of “did eat” and two of ate, weakening claims of biblical “did eat” influence. [3] I have not found an example of periphrastic, non-emphatic “doth have” (Alma 32:23), but “do have” (Alma 9:23) occurs at least three times in the EEBO corpus: 1565, https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A00179, [37]; 1648, A27810, [273]; 1665, A44793, 8.

Here is another way that the Book of Mormon is different from pseudo-archaic writings and Bunyan's usage. Texts | Corpora the more part the more part of X a more part the more parts 1611 King James Bible 2 0 0 0 Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts) 0 0 0 0 Bunyan corpus (39 texts) 0 0 0 0 1829 Book of Mormon 0 21 1 2 The reason Bunyan didn't use "more part" phraseology is because it was mainly usage of the 16c and earlier. Also, Joseph Smith could have imitated the Bible's short form, with no post-modifying phrase, 13 times, without any loss of information. But he did not. The Book of Mormon appears to be independently archaic because of the two rare early modern variants. The plural variant occurs from Late Middle English to Early Modern English. It can be seen in early statutes. The indefinite variant was the rarest. One plural variant is in the first edition of Holinshed's Chronicles (1577, HC), but it was changed in the second edition (1587) to the singular. Statutory compilations of earlier English law have many examples of "more part" phraseology. Besides those, the Book of Mormon has the most occurring in a text since the early 1600s. HC might have the most. It has about 50 that are adverbial, which read "for the more part." The adverbial use occurs twice in the Book of Mormon, in 1 Nephi 9. And HC has about 110 examples of non-adverbial "the more part." Most of these, at least 90, have a post-modifying phrase, as in the Book of Mormon. There was rare, sporadic usage of "the more part" in the 1800s, and such examples are used to explain this stand-out Book of Mormon usage naturalistically. The text's rare variants are conveniently ignored, since hardly anyone knows about them, and many other archaic outliers are ignored. Obviously, if Joseph Smith worded the "more part" phraseology of the Book of Mormon, then he did it consciously, and he happened to hit on two rare variants. Also, he consciously dictated dozens of different types of archaic outliers, involving thousands of instances. Just the "did <infinitive>" outlier alone constitutes 1,600 instances, including 16 of the rare early modern variant "did have." He had to consciously dictate non-emphatic, non-contrastive periphrastic did more than 1,500 times, over many weeks, including the rare variant "did have," which is not in the above comparison texts, but does occur in earlier English, primarily in the 1500s. Of course, modern "did have" usage, which everyone was exposed to, was emphatic or poetic or a legal use. This is different from what Joseph Smith dictated. Even Bunyan was exposed to some of this emerging, later usage, and it did not lead to him using "did have" in the rare 16c way.

One has to be quite credulous to think that Joseph Smith composed the conjunction save usage of the Book of Mormon, as well as many other things, some of which I've recently mentioned. "Save it were" does not occur in a vacuum of no other conjunction save usage. It is discussed as if it occurred in a vacuum, however, in order to make it seem more plausible that Joseph Smith automatically used it more than 70 times. We are apparently expected to believe that dozens of pro-form instances of "save it were" were worded by Joseph Smith, even though it isn't found elsewhere before the Book of Mormon more than once, and in few texts, of British origin. The three earliest sources are Scottish English: 1646, 1684, 1749 (Scottish folk song, reprinted). There are also three examples of pro-form "save it was" in the Book of Mormon. This usage was rarer historically than "save it were." The reason it was rarer is because the subordinate clause was normally overtly marked as subjunctive by the use of singular were. Pro-form "except it <be>," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is where the phrase was used instead of repeating the principal verb, similar to how a pronoun is used instead of repeating a preceding noun. As I see it, the "it <be>" was used (after the subordinating conjunctions except or save) instead of repeating a preceding subject and verb. "Except it be|were" primarily occurred in the early modern period, when "except it be|were" occurred at its highest rate and most frequently in texts, in absolute terms. Before the Book of Mormon, pro-form "save it was" occurs in 1684: "I carefully declin’d the looking but never so overly into any Book of this nature; save it was that sacred one, wherein our Religion is most divinely established" (EEBO B18463, [14]). The way I read it, what James Canaries meant in context by "save it was that sacred one" was something like "except that I did carefully examine that sacred book." Other examples of "save it was" that I have seen are not pro-form, even the other one in Canaries' book, which is followed by a that-clause. Tyndale has one where save is a coordinating conjunction, "save it was flat." These can be discerned because the it is literal, not an expletive. In other cases, "save it was" is part of an impersonal expression, which although the it is an expletive, the phrase is not a pro-form use. (So, to avoid running into interpretive errors, some syntactic awareness is needed.) Pro-form "save it was," then, is one reason why I view the conjunction save usage of the Book of Mormon as early modern. Another reason is the text's brilliant "save <subject> shall <infinitive>" usage, where shall is a subjunctive marker. For those who might not know, subjunctive, modal shall is used in many contexts in the Book of Mormon where it is not even used in the King James Bible. For instance, in subordinate clauses headed by archaic "inasmuch as." This early modern usage is not in pseudo-archaic texts or John Bunyan's writings, either. Also, subjunctive, modal shall occurred at its highest rate in the 16c. After the 1500s, it declined in use over the centuries. It is also characteristic of a formal, written style. The heavy subjunctive, modal shall use is another reason, along with its heavy finite verbal complementation, that the Book of Mormon reads like a written text, despite being dictated. So, because the Book of Mormon has "save <subject> shall <infinitive>" usage far beyond any known text, and it is quintessential early modern usage, and because pro-form "save it was" was rare early modern usage, it is quite reasonable to view the conjunction save usage of the Book of Mormon as early modern, which of course Joseph Smith did not author.

Here is some Late Middle English in the Book of Mormon. There is no textual support for Joseph Smith formulating this syntax. As noted below, this is impersonal, simple dative syntax; me is not accusative. There is no evidence of later analogical formation in English. It is not a mistake of the dictation: dictated on three different days, in two different locations, weeks apart, makes sense contextually. And so on. Naturalistic explanations are stipulative. Alma 54:11 But behold, it supposeth me that I talk to you concerning these things in vain, or it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell. Jacob 2:8 And it supposeth me that they have come up hither to hear the pleasing word of God, The Words of Mormon 1:2 And it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. suppose, verb, definition I.i.4: “† intransitive. impersonal with complement and indirect object. him supposeth: it seems to him. Obsolete. rare.” a1393. www.oed.com/dictionary/suppose_v?tab=meaning_and_use#19727882.

Here is a distributional difference between “sore afraid” and “exceeding fraid,” both archaic phrases. The latter has so far been verified in three seventeenth-century writings, dated 1642, 1648, 1676.[1] The word morphology is archaic: no {-ly} on the adverb and an aphetic participial form, originally derived from the verb affray, used since the 1300s. Two of these were authored by women, shown below. The original Book of Mormon text is independently archaic in this regard, but we have been told repeatedly that Joseph Smith was just imitating the Bible or John Bunyan or any number of authors who commentators can present as plausible sources. Texts | Corpora “sore afraid” “exceeding fraid” 1611 King James Bible 23 0 Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts) 5 0 Bunyan corpus (39 texts) 2 0 1829 Book of Mormon 0 4 [1] Brilliana Harlay, 1642, https://books.google.com/books?id=w8c_AAAAcAAJ (1854); Anne Yemans, 1648, https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A67808; Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), 1676, https://books.google.com/books?id=3RxkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA204.

It has recently been proposed that Joseph Smith was influenced by some of John Bunyan's writings (1628–1688) in formulating Book of Mormon English. In his Dialogue article, Davis also suggests these authors as possible influences: William Shakespeare (1564–1616), John Milton (1608–1674), Richard Baxter (1615–1691), John Flavel (ca. 1627–1691), Isaac Watts (1674–1748), Philip Doddridge (1702–1751), John Wesley (1703–1791), Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), and James Hervey (1714–1758), since their works were in accessible libraries. In short, we now have it proposed that Joseph Smith was a highly literate author of some sort. We are led to ask: Was he highly literate or not? Was he a pseudo-archaic author, or just dictating his own unique form of sacred | spiritual language that is not pseudo-archaic, even though he was not fluent in Early Modern English? These things might strike some as possibly incoherent. Davis considered very little counterevidence to his theory of Bunyanesque influence on Book of Mormon English. Today I will show you some counterevidence related to rhetorical if. Oxford English Dictionary, “'if so be' in if (conj. & n.), sense P.2,” December 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7755464232. In the days to come, I might be able to mention other things. (For the next 10 days I only have limited time to write anything here, since my partner, who usually takes care of dozens of animals, large and small, is away. But I might be able to offer one substantive item a day.) We are supposed to believe that Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon based on his great familiarity with the King James Bible and his familiarity with writings such as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and Holy War (1682). As mentioned, I put together a corpus of 25 pseudo-archaic writings with help from E. Shalev and D. Johnson. I also put together a corpus of 39 writings by Bunyan, including the above two, mainly from EEBO texts. This is what we see in terms of rhetorical if in the comparison texts: Texts | Corpora if so be if it so be 1611 King James Bible 13 0 Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts, 1740–1888) 5 0 John Bunyan corpus (39 texts, 1656–1688) 9 0 1829 Book of Mormon 0 42 John Lydgate’s Troy Book (1412–1420) 13 21 The last entry shows us that both rhetorical if variants were Late Middle English phrases. Though not in Lydgate's Troy Book, "if it so be" was the minority form. Both show limited persistence into Late Modern English. Lydgate's 21 instances of "if it so be" is the most I've counted in a text besides the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith dictated 39 of these from 3 Nephi 16 on; before that only three. Four of Bunyan’s nine examples are quotes or paraphrases of biblical language. The King James Bible also has five in the Apocrypha. Matthew 18:13 has a well-known example: “if so be that he find it.” Four pseudo-archaic authors in the corpus produced the five examples of "if so be". The Book of Mormon’s “if it so be” usage is arguably archaic in nature because of six instances of subjunctive, modal shall governed by the phrase (e.g. “if it so be that these last grafts shall grow” Jacob 5:64) [plus 1 Nephi 17:13, 1 Nephi 19:19, 2 Nephi 1:7, 2 Nephi 1:9, 2 Nephi 3:2, 2 Nephi 6:12]. We are supposed to believe that the above was rather automatic for Joseph Smith — something he could have readily done. Just another aspect of his sacred | spiritual language. The Google Books database has over 20 billion words in it between 1801 and 1829, because of ever increasing publishing rates. I don't think it's too much to ask for someone to find six examples of "if it so be that . . shall <infinitive>" published in that time span. After all, Joseph Smith produced six in just 252,350 nonbiblical words in 1829 (0.0013% of the words).

What languages fall in this category? As mentioned, cause causatives began in the 1300s as heavily infinitival, increasing over the centuries toward 100%. Because of publishing rates and the above, the early modern period has the largest number of finite causatives. So far I have found fewer than 10 early modern texts with more than 10 finite causatives (and fewer than 20), and they were translations from Latin or French. Of course, those are the primary languages, along with other Romance languages, that early modern texts were translated from. Perhaps someone who knows biblical Hebrew can let us know what its tendencies are. About a year ago, I asked a linguist, who is a language typologist, what languages around the world prefer generally. I think the terms he used for finite and infinitive verbal complementation were balanced and deranked. He said deranked (infinitival) was the majority construction.

Analytics position on Book of Mormon English boils down to calling all of it Joseph Smith's sacred language (even though he does not actually believe it is sacred since he thinks Joseph Smith made it up). For him, it seems to be a rare sister of pseudo-archaic English, which was automatic for Joseph Smith and no one else, and which he can safely mock, in an academic sense, without knowing that much about it, since almost no one does. As mentioned, the position he has adopted is repeatedly stipulative and ad hoc. Somehow he is an expert who has figured it out without comparatively studying a large amount of data. He also ventures into expatiating on how academics regard the study of the Book of Mormon as pseudo-science. Since he brought it up, we might as well consider how Wright's work on biblical passages might be an example of pseudo-science. Wright did not analyze all of the biblical passages. There are fewer than 17,500 biblical words in the Book of Mormon, and he did not study them all. In academic work, he would have been expected to analyze all of them, at least generally, since the number of words is not very large. Since it is a niche field, and since he reached an academically acceptable conclusion, he could get away with this neglect, and receive praise for his deficient work. He did not compare the passages against what Joseph Smith dictated in 1829, he did not collate them against the 11 King James books they correspond to, he did not arrive at reliable, comprehensive numbers of non-matching readings, he did not mention the advance preparation it would have required, he did not determine that most italicized words remain intact in Book of Mormon readings (focusing on a possibly non-representative subset that gave him a desired conclusion), etc. In view of the above, this strikes me as a prime example of pseudo-scientific inquiry. And consider Analytics' approach to Book of Mormon English, as well as that of many others. Also pseudo-science: a lack of expertise while drawing conclusions feigning expertise. Where is the academic honesty in that? Well, academic research in many fields, especially in fields amenable to distortion, is not ultimately about truth-seeking. Priorities lie elsewhere. Truth-seeking began to go by the wayside many decades ago. In the case of the Book of Mormon, especially its English usage, rarely was there truth-seeking. Sometimes the neglect was the result of malice, sometimes it was the result of ignorance, etc.

Much earlier I mentioned causative constructions in the Book of Mormon, mostly with cause (235) but also with make (10). Here I will just focus on the former, since there are more than 200 and so we see a statistically clear pattern. A causative has a dependent verb that the verb cause governs. A simple example is "they caused that he should be bound" (Alma 30:29). This is an example of a finite causative. An infinitive causative would be "they caused him to be bound." Here are a few things we know. The Book of Mormon is almost 60% finite, even though English causatives were historically among the least finite of verbs of influence. In general, finite complementation was characteristic of formal, written registers. Thus the Book of Mormon's high levels of finite complementation, in many contexts, but especially after verbs of influence, marks this aspect of the text as written, despite Joseph Smith dictating it. This is one more reason of many that calls into question his wording the Book of Mormon. In the 1820s, English speakers spoke with infinitive causatives because these began in the 1300s as more than 90% infinitival (Cuyckens, Lowrey, in Explorations in English Historical Syntax, 2018) and the infinitive use generally increased over time, approaching 100%. Therefore it is inaccurate/wrong to say that this reflects an archaic dialect that Joseph Smith spoke; this has been one incorrect fallback position to explain Book of Mormon English. The Book of Mormon's frequent use of finite causatives (136) is not a pseudo-archaic artifact of Joseph Smith's dictation because pseudo-archaic authors used infinitive causatives: in 25 pseudo-archaic texts (1740–1888), a corpus of almost 600,000 words that I put together after consulting Eran Shalev and Duane Johnson, there are more than 100 causatives and no finite causatives. My reasonable conclusion is that finite causatives were revealed to Joseph Smith word for word. When I mentioned to McGuire that I could not find a text with 36 finite causatives, let alone 136, he pointed me to a 2017 translation of a 17c Yiddish text by Faierstein that had 66 finite causatives. McGuire did not give me additional details about this translation's causatives. Though irrelevant to Book of Mormon authorship, Faierstein's written translation turns out to be quite different from Joseph Smith's oral "translation" of causatives (in quotes because it is not the default meaning). First, the 2017 translation is only about 24% finite, even though Faierstein knew multiple languages (which Joseph Smith did not in 1829), probably four or more, but at least three. The Book of Mormon is about 58% finite. Second, the translation is close to twice as long as the Book of Mormon, and more than twice as long if we exclude biblical quotations. The 66 finite causatives normalize to 31, relative to the Book of Mormon's 136. Third, the embedded modal use is odd in its frequent use of will and non-use of shall, while the Book of Mormon's modal use is not odd, historically speaking. It is what we expect that early modern translators might have used. Faierstein's modal usage is what we might expect of a pseudo-archaic, literal translator. Fourth, the 2017 translation does not have any ditransitive causatives and the Book of Mormon has 12 (ditransitive causatives were obsolete by about 1725 – Lowrey 2018 views them as obsolete by about 1700). The Book of Mormon's 12 ditransitive causatives are well above any other text and are characterized by frequent "did cause" usage, which peaked in English around 1590. The Book of Mormon has a large amount of syntax that fits usage of the second half of the 1500s. Translated early modern texts that have between 10 and 20 finite causatives suggest that the Book of Mormon's 136 finite causatives could have been the result of the Lord having the Book of Mormon translated (before delivery to Joseph Smith) from a language or languages that employed many finite causatives. This is speculation, of course, which I am just mentioning here as one of many possibilities.

No, that is not correct. It was unlikely for him to use "save it were" more than 70 times (as a pro-form expression) since it does not occur more than two or three times in other texts, and it rarely occurs before the Book of Mormon and not in American English sources, and it is not an isolated archaism of the language he dictated. There is both specific and general internal textual support for viewing it as an archaism. Indeed, the heavy use of this rare syntax is one of many archaic syntactic outliers in the text. Of course it is possible that there is an American English example somewhere before the Book of Mormon. They do begin after the Book of Mormon, in an 1837 poem and Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter (1850). But that is not explanatory. In general, Book of Mormon English is more British than American in style. A large amount of the syntactic matching of the text is found much more often in British sources than American sources. "Save it <be>" syntax is one of these that is much more British in style rather than American. It is also rather poetic and literary in style. "Save it were" is not an isolated archaism of the Book of Mormon. There is even support for it being an archaism from other subordinating conjunction save usage. The save syntax where the subordinate clause is marked as subjunctive by the modal auxiliary shall is archaic usage (18×), and the Book of Mormon has much more of it than any text. This particular shall usage marks it as formal, written language in style. It is not pseudo-archaic usage or biblical usage or modern usage. Here are 7 of the 18, the ones with third person pronouns. This usage is currently not in the largest databases before 1830. Moroni 7:38 save they shall have faith in his name Moroni 7:43 save he shall be meek and lowly of heart 1 Nephi 3:7 save he shall prepare a way for them 2 Nephi 5:22 save they shall repent of their iniquities 2 Nephi 9:42 save they shall cast these things away 2 Nephi 30:6 save they shall be a white and a delightsome people 2 Nephi 33:5 save he shall be of the spirit of the devil If this subjunctive “save he | they shall” syntax had been commonly used before 1830, there would be examples in Google Books, which currently has more than 25 billion words published before 1830, or ECCO (about 9 billion words), or EEBO (about 1.5 billion words). The dataset consists of two potentially frequent three-word phrases. Yes, there are examples with except, but there is no textual evidence of analogizing from except. This illustrates the general point that analogical extension in language is not automatic or predictable. English, historically speaking, compartmentalized some of its except | save usage. The conjunction save usage of the Book of Mormon, which is unique in an overall sense, is a strong point in favor it being viewed as a text not authored by Joseph Smith. Here are the Book of Mormon's 16 examples of "they which" occurring in object position, immediately following the object trigger. There is no text that has anything like this set, and only one verified example so far, dated 1659. Object they usage was almost always "they that" or "they who". "They which" would have been Joseph Smith's 9th choice of 9 options in this context. Like those around him, he preferred "those who" in this context. aa3136 he clapped his hands upon all they which were with him hn1312 it is because of they which are righteous that it is saved hn1618 unto they which shall be at Jerusalem 3n1805 unto all they which shall believe 3n1923 I pray . . for all they which shall believe on their words mi0810 unto they which are accountable and capable of committing sin 1n1913 as for they which are at Jerusalem, . . they shall be scourged 1n1920 I have workings in the spirit . . for they which are at Jerusalem 1n2204 from the knowledge of they which are at Jerusalem 1n2205 concerning all they which shall hereafter be scattered 1n2211 unto they which are of the house of Israel 2n1003 among they which are the more wicked part of the world 2n1021 unto they which are upon the isles of the sea verb 2n1022 the Lord remembereth all they which have been broken off 2n2709 the words of they which have slumbered in the dust verb 2n2907 I remember they which are upon the isles of the sea This is also evidence that Joseph Smith did not author the bad grammar of the Book of Mormon. Book of Mormon English is quite amazing, in many respects. Attempts to explain it naturalistically are highly stipulative.

Various aspects of non-verbal save point away from 19c authorship by Joseph Smith. American English speakers in the early 1800s preferred except over save; the Book of Mormon is the opposite. We can see the except preference in Lucy Mack Smith's dictated book and to a limited degree in Joseph Smith's early letters (few examples – all except). American English speakers used except and save as prepositions most of the time (with phrases); the Book of Mormon uses them as conjunctions (with clauses) the vast majority of the time. Lucy and Joseph used them as prepositions almost all the time. Lucy's book is a better resource for this, since it is longer and there are many more examples to consider. Two broad categories of conjunctions are coordinating and subordinating. Coordinating conjunctions head predicative clauses, often referred to as main clauses. Subordinating conjunctions head subordinate clauses, often in the subjunctive mood. Save, in the past, when functioning as a conjunction, was mainly used as a CC. It was used as a CS to a more limited degree than except, from what I have been able to determine thus far. In the Book of Mormon, save functions as a CS most of the time. The Book of Mormon probably has well beyond ten times the amount of save functioning as a CS than any other text. As the main subtype, the text has 130 instances of "save it <be>," the vast majority where save is a CS. So far the most I have verified in another text is five. In the case of "save it was," save is a CS in the text 3 times, which was rare past usage. In most textual examples of "save it was", save is a CC. So far I have seen "save_CS it was" in the writing of a Scottish minister, James Canaries, dated 1684. Similarly, "save_CS he|they shall" occurs in the Book of Mormon 7 times. In this case, I have not found an example before the Book of Mormon yet. For some reason, there was hardly any analogizing from except historically. The subjunctive, modal shall marking is archaic, of course. So far I have seen approximately 10 examples of "save_CS what shall . . ." in the 17c. Quoting, in part, Skousen, The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (2019), 225: "The Anchor Bible Dictionary has First Isaiah (Isaiah 1–39), Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55), and Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56–66), as well as separating out an additional post-exilic “Little Apocalypse” from Isaiah 24–27, assigned to yet another author." Deutero-Isaiah, in part, follows from references to Cyrus in Isaiah 44, 45. Of course academic treatments reject prophecy, so where the Isaiah text has a predicted item, then it must have been authored later. One bit of hard evidence for unity is the following. "In Isaiah 49:25 the earlier, pre-exilic Qal Passive for the verb לקח ‘to take’ occurs in the Masoretic text (that is, as יקח ) instead of the later, post-exilic Niphal (that is, as ילקח ), which occurs in the Qumran scroll for this passage. Hendel notes that “in late Biblical Hebrew the Qal Passive is extremely rare”, so the Qal Passive verb form in Isaiah 49:25 provides additional evidence that Isaiah II reflects earlier usage. Hendel’s discussion of early versus late Biblical Hebrew is found in the appendix, “Linguistic Notes on the Age of Biblical Literature” (see pages 115–116 and its accompanying notes on pages 158–164), to his book Remembering Abraham (Oxford University Press, 2005)."

Meaning? As an example, whoso(ever). The first whoso occurs at Helaman 13:18. I did not check to see which original chapter break yields the greatest rate difference, but it could be 3 Nephi 7 | 8. In any event, the shift is clear at that point, and it was the one I generally used because it was a good fit with various usage shifts. whoso whosoever % whoso Mosiah 1 to 3 Nephi 7 1 66 1.5 3 Nephi 8 to Words of Mormon 40 6 87.0

Every shift could be individually optimized to yield a highest Yates chi-square value. For my study, I have constrained shift points to coincide with books or original chapter breaks. I have calculated most shifts at 3 Nephi 7|8 (III | IV). The shift to conjunction save optimizes toward the end of Helaman or at the end of Helaman. The most well-known shift is therefore to wherefore, which optimizes to Ether 4 | 5 (4.4% wherefore » 90.3% wherefore). It does not matter in terms of statistical significance, but I have counted one dozen or so "and (now) therefore" as wherefore since that is one definition of the word and there are no "and|now wherefore" strings in the Book of Mormon. The transition from there to where occurs between er0210 and er0907 (n=43). The Ngram Viewer in Joseph Smith's time shows wherefore at less than 3% vs. therefore. That is also seen in his early letters and in his mother's book. The wherefore usage shift in the Book of Mormon reflects English usage of the second half of the 16c (1550–1600). The shift is in both directions, but the vast majority of the time to greater archaism. I mentioned two to less archaism, and another one is wroth|angry. Surprisingly, there is more wroth in the first part of the dictation. It is a statistically significant shift using 3 Nephi 5|6 as a shift point, not 3 Nephi 7|8. That is because angry predominates in both sections, going from two-thirds in the first part, to more than 90% in the second part of the dictation. So it is a minor shift to less archaism.

No, that is not right. That is one problem with the terms tight and loose. The original terms are tight control and loose control, and then they are misused or misconstrued to mean tight translation and loose translation, which is what you apparently did at some point, so it created a straw man in your mind. We ought to clarify for everyone that Wright only did a partial analysis of the biblical material in the Book of Mormon, and he probably did not use a comparison text that was very close to what Joseph Smith dictated. He needs to redo his analysis for the sake of rigor and veracity. It might be helpful to specify a few things about what the open-Bible theory actually believes. First, at Mosiah 12:21, Joseph Smith opened a King James Bible to Isaiah 52:7 and began to read that off to Oliver Cowdery. He read four verses word for word. Then 10 verses later, he went to Exodus 20 and began to read from verse 2. He inexplicably did not change italicized "any thing" in v.4 (the theory has Joseph Smith being heavily influenced by italicized words – here he ignored the first two he came across [there's one in v.2, am ]). But he unnecessarily changed "that is in heaven" to "in the heaven", and he changed "or that is" to "or things which is", not changing the italicized "is" and unnecessarily changing "that" to "things which". And so forth. In fact, there are many changes that were unnecessary and that went against Joseph Smith's personal preferences and that have to be stipulated. For instance, in one place the King James text reads "will", which Joseph Smith preferred over "shall", like others of his time, yet he unnecessarily changed the biblical "will" to "shall". There are other times the King James text reads "that", which Joseph Smith preferred over "which" to refer to persons, like others of his time, yet he unnecessarily changed the biblical "that" to "which". There are also quite a few complex changes that would have taken advance preparation. And many know about the the Coverdale|Septuagint reading at 2n1216 that has to be stipulated.

All of the biblical material needs to be analyzed, which one can find in a 2019 critical text book. It has a collation of all 36 biblical quotations sections, with more than 700 differences marked. Eleven biblical books are quoted in the Book of Mormon, and with so many differences, many/most of the changes would have had to be marked up in a King James Bible. The preparation would have taken a considerable amount of time. There is no eyewitness of the dictation who said he used a Bible, not even Michael Morse. Plus, there isn't clear evidence in the MSS of where biblical quotations begin and end. Anyone can check transitions and see some that are unmarked, unpunctuated, just like everything else.

Joseph Smith was the only one who dictated the text. If he worded the text, then he had to shift the English usage in about 30 ways. After dictating Mosiah, Alma, and Helaman, he had dictated 54% of the nonbiblical words (about 136,700), establishing various discernible usage patterns with large numbers of examples. One such pattern consists of the subordinating conjunctions after, before, because, for, and since. For more than half the nonbiblical part of the dictation, Joseph Smith dictated archaic subordinate that at only a 2% rate, and then for the remaining portion of the dictation he dictated archaic subordinate that at a 54% rate. That means that while he was in Pennsylvania, he consciously decided to dictate more archaically, in at least 25 ways, although there are a few exceptions where he dictated less archaically and where he dictated rare archaism. Two of the less archaic exceptions are that he dictated half the previous per-word rate of yea after 3 Nephi 7, and one-fifth the rate of present-tense periphrastic do (e.g. "do stumble"), going from 10% periphrastic do to only 2%, approximately. One change to rare archaism was in the mixture of usage of the conjunctions except and save. It is just under two-thirds except before 3 Nephi, and it shifts to about five-sixths save. In the large subset of "except|save it be|were" usage (n=149), the shift was from 62% save to 100% save. (In Early Modern English, "except it be|were" was used at its highest rate, and at 1,000 times the rate of "save it be|were"; the low rate of "save it be|were" (nine or ten instances) is why I call the latter rare archaism.) Up to Helaman 10, which is about half the dictation (nonbiblical), the usage split was 5/8 "save it be|were" and 3/8 "except it be|were" (n=63). After that, it was 100% "save it be|were". This also suggests conscious control. So, Joseph Smith must have consciously decided to begin to use "after that S", starting at 3 Nephi 12 (only one of 25 pseudo-archaic authors checked used any "after that S" at all — one item of evidence, supported by others, that not all obvious biblical archaisms were automatically imitated by pseudo-archaic authors). He consciously decided to use whoso almost all the time instead of whosoever almost all the time, starting in 3 Nephi 9; to use wherefore instead of therefore the vast majority of the time, starting in Ether; to use "before that S" some of the time, starting at 3 Nephi 28; to use mine and thine at a higher rate before words beginning in vowels; to use much more "they|them which" instead of "those which" in referring to persons; and so forth. It seems reasonable to me to reject that he was able to control 30+ linguistic features in this way. So it seems reasonable to me that they were part of an English-language translation that was delivered to him (2n2724).

Here's something I (S Carmack) wrote up a few months ago about another interesting aspect of Book of Mormon English usage (bear in mind that Joseph Smith's 1829 dictation of the Book of Mormon went from Mosiah to Moroni and then 1 Nephi to Words of Mormon): In addition to many other linguistic elements, the conjunction save usage of the Book of Mormon points away from 19c authorship. The text shifts after the book of Helaman to mostly conjunction save usage relative to synonymous except usage (shifting from 35% save [conj.] to 83%; n=300). (To verify this, exclude verbal save, prepositional uses, and biblical quotations.) This is not a shift to more archaic usage, as most of the shifts are. Furthermore, archaic "except it be|were" usage ends at Helaman 8:21 (24× to that point; "except it were" 15×, a few 17c texts noted with 13 or 14) and from then on it is "save it be|were" 86 times in a row. No text has more than five of "save it <be>"; the Book of Mormon has 130. I currently see 30+ different shifts in English usage, some subtle. One of the most interesting shifts, besides the ones Metcalfe pointed out and the shift from zero "after that S" (in 60% of the text) to 115 (in 40% of the text), is from 25% “they | them which” (vs. less archaic “those which”) to 92%, using 3 Nephi 7|8 as a boundary [orig. ch. 3 Nephi III | IV; n=235, Yates χ²≐103.82, p<.0001]. In general, the text shifts to somewhat more archaic usage (which is why there's a shift to wherefore and whoso), with a few exceptions. Frequent readers of the text have probably sensed the greater English archaism of the small plates and 3 Nephi to Moroni, especially if the first edition or critical text is read. [1] Brent Lee Metcalfe, “The Priority of Mosiah: A Prelude to Book of Mormon Exegesis,” in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, ed. Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 409–15. https://archive.org/details/NewApproachesToTheBookOfMormon. [2] Arthur Glen Foster, Jr., “The Plates of Jacob: An Analysis of the Replacement to the Lost Manuscript of the Book of Mormon” (1983). See Metcalfe, “The Priority of Mosiah,” 408–09. [3] 3 Nephi 9:14 (whosoever) → 3 Nephi 9:20 (whoso). [4] Royal Skousen, Grammatical Variation (Provo, UT: FARMS and BYU Studies, 2016), 1019–21.