Zosimus

True. Bryant was wrong about Chatterton's education. By 15 Chatterton had read several books at the charity school and his early poems show his literary influences. His charity school education was far more substantial than Bryant claimed. Yes, Chatterton was mixing his invented pseudo-archaism with his modern usage, whereas Champatsch argues the BoM exhibits something almost inverse. If Carmack is right, that's super significant. The old parchment collection at the church does explain pseudo-archaic Rowleyese in a way that the archaisms in the BoM can't be explained. However, I do think it's worth looking at 16th-17th century reference works and older Bibles that were circulating in lending libraries and were on shelves at, for example, the charity school Hiram attended. But these are all fair points you make, so let me reframe what I think the Chatterton example demonstrates. That is, restored texts (whether the Rowley Poems or the Book of Mormon) are so powerful and timely that many will embrace them as true without much concern for evidence or provenance. Having committed, they are then motivated to defend the text to preserve authenticity. That's the overlap with Chatterton I find interesting. For example, Bryant defended the ancient Rowley texts by arguing Chatterton was too ignorant and poor to have produced such sophisticated works. When skeptics established that Chatterton was actually well-read and his charity school education was decent, the defense shifted to something else, the language, the historical and geographical references, the parchment witnesses. But alongside the evidence-based arguments, a second line of defense ran in parallel. William Blake bypassed the debates entirely and simply declared: "I believe both Macpherson and Chatterton that what they say is ancient, is so." For Blake, the poems were too mighty and too ancient-feeling to have been a con job orchestrated by a 15 year old boy. He could feel that burning in the bosom, despite the critics. What's interesting is that both lines of defense are recognizable in this thread. Smac, Champatsch and Ryan Dahle are doing sophisticated evidence work, the same work Bryant did for Chatterton. But this is hard because critics will challenge the evidence requiring another kick to the can down the road. At that point yesterday's Nibley apologetics and Sorenson's Mormon's Codex are no longer enough. We are then introduced to more sophisticated word-play analysis, pseudo-archaic language, and the impossible-to-argue-against witnesses to the tangible plates. Alongside all these arguments Smac also does the Blake move, describing Moroni's Promise as "the catalyst" from which everything else is derivative of and is "downstream from". The evidence doesn't establish the foundation, only personal revelation can do that, and the evidence reinforces it. Like Blake, Teddyaware skips the evidence entirely, "once authentic faith is exercised, the doors of spiritual perception are unlocked and it becomes so perfectly obvious that the Book of Mormon is a mighty miracle." This IMO is what App means by #3 transmission lineages. The defense of the restored text becomes the transmission. The restored tradition thrives not despite its critics but because of them. The irony is the critics are likely so active because they sense that same mightiness and power in the restoration. This is likely why Strang's movement failed, his restored texts weren't as powerful as the Book of Mormon, and they weren't as timely (published after the Book of Mormon), so after he was killed he lost his defenders and the critics along with them.

I do much prefer all these options, as fraud is such a loaded term. I'm following Urs App's idea of a long-running tradition of "original truth" restorers across a wide range of traditions. What stands out is how consistently the same elements appear across different cultures and contexts, without any obvious imitation. Drawing on App's case studies, the pattern involves: An original pure teaching or proto-revelation. A Golden Age → Age of Degeneration → Age of Restoration arc. A transmission lineage connecting the original teaching to the present. Pivotal figures who serve as links in the chain. A protagonist as the restorer, the one who recovers the primordial doctrine. Ancient texts and material objects serving as proof. He even references Smith while defining #6 in the pattern: "divine revelations stored on golden tablets in heaven or in some American prophet's backyard." App's point (that I'm grappling with) is that this isn't a playbook for fraudsters and con artists. It's the pattern of restorationism, and seekers like Joseph Smith unwittingly fall into the pattern because the template already existed and the hunger for original truth is genuinely human. Devotional mythmaking does capture the idea. So does Jan Shipps' mythmaking. But making myths kinda sounds like lying, so it still feels inadequate to me. The word I keep returning to is restorationist, as it describes the pattern of restoring something that was lost, rather than inventing or imagining something new. It describes a pattern of recovering truth without passing moral judgements

I think the misunderstanding has been around this point: And also this: You are not wrong, but I can't help but to want a 4th option, whether its epistemologically sound or not. I've tried to explain through examples of other sincere people believing that they were playing a role in a restoration of a lost truth, including ancient texts. I don't see them as liars or frauds. Swedenborg is another example. He wrote thousands of pages describing his visits with angels in spiritual worlds and the teachings and texts that the angels revealed to him. I don't think Swedenborg was lying, or delusional, but he also wasn't telling the truth as I would understand it. I don't believe Swedenborg actually spoke with angels. But I believe he was sincere in believing that he did, and that he wasn't running some con job or fraud. I don't know what truly happened to Swedenborg, so I don't want to be forced into calling Swedenborg a deceiver, a dupe, or someone who was simply insane. I feel the same about Joseph Smith and the witnesses. I just find myself unable to collapse it into three options, so I suppose I am trying to resolve for myself what a 4th option might look like and what the implications would be. So I think we can close this out with our agreement that "by the time the witnesses experience the plates, they knew enough about the importance and significance of Smith's translation project to endorse it and support it and to commit to their testimonies all their lives." Thanks for the discussion

I tend to agree, but even then I do find a lot of people still insisting that one be completely familiar and versed with massive books like Mormon's Codex, with all the same methodological problems, blatant errors of fact and notable omissions. Responding to Sorenson's work is grueling and tedious, but its a prerequisite to the discussion. The more significant data will be parsed in time Yes

I brought Chatterton into the discussion not just as another example of a talented and "imaginative historian" who wrote pseudo-archaic works that still impress literary critics today. I mostly introduced him here as an example of how scholars like Jacob Bryant explained away Chatterton's natural talents to prove that Chatterton's works were authentically ancient. Similar explanations are often used to explain away Joseph's natural talents to prove that the Book of Mormon is authentically ancient: The "Ignorant Transcriber" argument. After interviewing Chatterton's mother, sister and friends, Bryant claimed that Chatterton was described as a dull boy incapable of instruction. He was fatherless and poor so his mother could only teach him to read from a music book and a Bible. Bryant's argument was that Chatterton was too ignorant and under-educated to have fabricated such sophisticated and apparently ancient material. Lack of Historical and Geographical Knowledge The Rowley poems contained obscure historical references that Bryant believed a poorly educated charity-school boy could never have known. When writing in his own hand, Chatterton exhibited no familiarity with geography, believing for example that the Tiber River was in Arabia. Unknowable dialects thought to be bad grammar. Rowley's poems were written in an older dialect that Chatterton couldn't have known. When critics complained about “bad grammar” Bryant pointed out that Chatterton had tried to fix up awkward 15th century language using his own 18th century language. Bryant also provided examples of grammar and syntax inaccessible to an under-educated teenager. Chatterton was too poor and busy. "If a young lad of little or no principle should find a treasure of old poetry, and put it off for his own; I should not much wonder. But that such a person should compose to this amount, and then give the credit of it to another, is past my comprehension." The argument was that Chatterton was too busy trying to escape poverty that he wouldn't have time to do all of the above. Witnesses to the process. Bryant interviewd neighbors who knew Chatterton intimately testified that they had seen him copying from ancient parchments and that he never hinted at being the author. Too long and sophisticated to produce in so short a timeframe. 3,700 verses on various subjects and in very difficult language (see below) within the time frame of about eighteen months. His verses were admired by Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth etc. Not a single copy/paste job from the KJV and no "it came to pass" filler

The point of this portion of the discussion was whether or not Joseph Smith "hardly knew" the Whitmers, after living in their home for 3-4 weeks while translating the gold plates. My opinion is by the time they witness the plates, they knew enough about the importance and significance of Smith's translation project to endorse it and support it and to commit to their testimonies all their lives. I responded to Smac's line of questioning already. From my view, he is also misrepresenting the parallels, inflating some and ignoring others. So its a draw of sorts I suppose. What's getting strange is your constant fixation on my unwillingness to discuss the moral character of Joseph Smith, James Strang and their witnesses. Discussing the moral character of Smith, Strang and the witnesses would be a waste of time. I don't mind discussing motives, so long as we "don't go down the path of depending on all the statements of all the angry villagers 40 years after the fact." See above. I don't frame Joseph as a con artist or a fraud. I did once use the term pious fraud, but qualified that I think fraud isn't the right term. My words were: ""I view the projects of both Smith and Strang as pious frauds, but even then I don't like the word fraud because I don't think Smith was necessarily a fraud. I believe he was sincere." I also said I don't think con job is a fair label for the translation project, and I provided examples of other "imaginative historians" that did indeed fabricate histories for reasons that explain why I do not consider them to be con artists involved in fraud.

I mentioned the scorecard I've been working on in the other thread, in case its helpful here: Category A. Flora (Items 1-8) Scorecard Category B. Fauna (Items 9-18) Scorecard Category C. Metallurgy and Materials (Items 19-27)Scoredcard Category D. Writing Systems and Record-Keeping (Items 28-33) Scorecard Category E. Weapons and Military (Items 34-42) Scorecard Category F. Economy, Trade, and Monetary System (Items 43-48) Scorecard Category G. Government and Law (Items 49-53) Scorecard Category H. Religion and Temples (Items 54-58) Scorecard Category I. Vehicles, Transport, and Maritime (Items 59-62) Scorecard Category J. Demographics and Settlement (Items 63-67) Scorecard Category K. Chronology and Civilization Trajectory (Items 68-70) Scorecard Category L. Physical Geography (Items 71-82) Scorecard Global Scorecard & Conclusion: Which Geography Most Resembles the Book of Mormon? Master Comparison Matrix: Categories A-L (Items 1-82)

There are too many examples throughout history of witnesses corroborating suspicious artifacts. Sometimes they go along with it even if they know the artifact is dubious. There are a number of reasons why, but usually it boils down to the witnesses have something to gain or something to lose, or some combination of both. I gave the example earlier of police investigators and a wide range of church and state officials going along with the Etruscan texts (scariths) that Curzio buried throughout his hometown. Even if state officials knew the artifacts were fabricated, they vouched for their authenticity, because they all had enough to gain from it. There are dozens of similar examples over the past 400 years. Its not that difficult to explain. I believe the witnesses to the gold plates and the witnesses to Strang's plates were motivated to vouch for the authenticity of the plates, because they had something to gain from it. They were similarly motivated to never recant, because they all had more to gain by not reversing their previous witness of the plates. I know there's the argument out there that the Cowdery, Harris and the Whitmers faced tremendous hardship because of their testimonies, but IMO this is why they were quick to fall out with Smith and then Brigham Young. They perceived they would benefit by falling out and starting their own movements. But as the plates were central to the movements that they were starting themselves, they needed to maintain their testimonies of the authenticity of the plates and their angelic witness. They benefited by falling out with Smith, while at the same time they also benefitted by maintaining their testimony of the plates.

Meyerstein’s 1930 biography treated the Rowley poems as serious art, identifying a consistent meter resembling Edmund Spenser (16th c) and spotting numerous echoes of Shakespeare and Dryden Taylor’s 1971 Complete Works set the Rowley canon and traced sources for “Rowleyese”. Taylor is the one that compiled a glossary of all Chatterton's invented archaisms, and recast Chatterton as an “imaginative historian” rather than a con artist. Cottle complained that critics obsessed over the suicide and the forgeries instead of reading the Rowley poems as real literature. Farrer wrote about how the Rowley poems still impress even when read today. Hall and Forman argued the musical and natural qualities of Chatterton's can only be sensed when read in the original fake-archaic diction. Groom used the fake Rowley documents, ink, and parchment to question how history and texts get their authority in the first place. Studies of Keats show how deeply Chatterton’s style and medievalism seeped into Romantic poetry. Overall, modern scholarship places Chatterton within a wider revival of medieval things and praise him as a wildly inventive "poet historian" who invented his own language in an age obsessed with reason. FWIW, my sense is Joseph Smith's approach to inventing a language and history for America was not much different.

Chatterton was using dictionaries from his local library. He scanned the dictionary for any term labeled “Obsolete” and then worked that into his manuscripts. Consistently enough to convince experts like Jacob Bryant. AFAIK there’s no one arguing that the language of the Book of Mormon is correct for 400 AD. Champatsch would know better than me, but seems the argument is that the language of the Book of Mormon is more aligned with 17th century. Idk, were the dictionaries and glossaries that Chatterton used to isolate archaisms also circulating in the Americas? The KJV certainly was. For me, Chatterton demonstrates that a 15-17 year old from an impoverished background with minimal education was capable of producing a set of pseudo-archaic documents that impressed the likes of Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Bryant and Blake. He wrote them himself. In 1768, he invented his own 15th century “provincial dialect” using nothing but dictionaries and glossaries from his local library. He did all this without his family and friends suspecting any fraud

In 1768, an impoverished and under-educated 15 year old boy in Bristol named Thomas Chatterton claimed to have discovered a chest full of 15th century manuscripts written by a monk named Rowley. He produced transcripts in his own handwriting of the 15th century documents along with a few of the originals written in a pseudo-medieval script. The language of the transcripts was so unique and seemingly authentic that many well-known scholars believed Chatterton. It was only after Chatterton committed suicide at the age of 17 that the debate about their authenticity exploded in print literature. Jacob Bryant, one of the most respected antiquarians at that time, wrote a full volume on the controversy, arguing that the Chatterton documents were authentic 15th century manuscripts. His arguments can be summarized as: The "Ignorant Transcriber" argument. After interviewing Chatterton's mother, sister and friends, Bryant claimed that Chatterton was described as a dull boy incapable of instruction. He was fatherless and poor so his mother could only teach him to read from a music book and a Bible. Bryant's argument was that Chatterton was too ignorant and under-educated to have fabricated such sophisticated and apparently ancient material. Lack of Historical and Geographical Knowledge The Rowley poems contained obscure historical references that Bryant believed a poorly educated charity-school boy could never have known. When writing in his own hand, Chatterton exhibited no familiarity with geography, believing for example that the Tiber River was in Arabia. Unknowable dialects thought to be bad grammar. Rowley's poems were written in an older dialect that Chatterton couldn't have known. When critics complained about “bad grammar” Bryant pointed out that Chatterton had tried to fix up awkward 15th century language using his own 18th century language. Bryant also provided examples of grammar and syntax inaccessible to an under-educated teenager. Chatterton was too poor and busy. "If a young lad of little or no principle should find a treasure of old poetry, and put it off for his own; I should not much wonder. But that such a person should compose to this amount, and then give the credit of it to another, is past my comprehension." The argument was that Chatterton was too busy trying to escape poverty that he wouldn't have time to do all of the above. Witnesses to the process. Bryant interviewd neighbors who knew Chatterton intimately testified that they had seen him copying from ancient parchments and that he never hinted at being the author. Too long and sophisticated to produce in so short a timeframe. 3,700 verses on various subjects and in very difficult language (see below) within the time frame of about eighteen months. His verses were admired by Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth etc. Not a single copy/paste job from the KJV and no "it came to pass" filler Example. This poem Keats called the "purest" English: O! synge untoe mie roundelaie, O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee, Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie, Lycke a reynynge ryver bee; Mie love ys dedde, Gon to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe tree. Blacke hys cryne as the wyntere nyghte, Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe, Rodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte, Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe; Mie love ys dedde, Gon to hys deathe-bedde, Al under the wyllowe tree. Bryant was completely convinced, and other writers like William Blake would claim Chatterton to be a kind of visionary figure beyond explanation. But it is much more plausible (and is the scholarly consensus) that the boy was a precocious prodigy, and that he had mined old dictionaries and glossaries from his local lending libraries to stitch together a syntax and narrative with archaic vocabulary and pseudo‑medieval spellings to give his poems a fifteenth century feeling. He used candles and yellow ochre to artificially darken and age the manuscripts. Over time, scholars identified anachronisms such as the knitting of stockings before anyone knew how to knit stockings and Bristol being identified as a city before it was one. Analysts figured out that beneath the archaisms and props, the dialect (consisting of over 1,800 unique words now known as Rowleyese) was entirely invented by a 15 year old boy trying to make a name and a career for himself

3-4 weeks living in someone's home is more than enough time to invite them to be witnesses to whatever was in the trunk, with an appearance of gold. See all my responses to this same question in out previous conversations What makes you say the 19 year old who found the Etruscan texts was tricking people? Read the whole story, its more complicated than that. Curzio Inghirami was, in part, providing a way for people to discuss topics that would normally get them burned at the stake. There are a couple other reasons why I consider the scarith controversy to be far more than a con job and Curzio and his family and witnesses more sincere than con artists Same goes for Joseph Smith and his family and witnesses No, it doesn't. See above

I am interested in discussing Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon a I am interested in discussing James Strang and the Record of Rajah Manchou and the four witnesses and the Brass Plates of Laban and the seven witnesses I am interested in discussing the three witnesses: Martin Harris, David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery and their written witness testimony I am interested in discussing the eight witnesses to the gold plates: the five Whitmers and the three Smiths I am interested in discussing how Smith's gold plates differ from Strang's brass plates I am interested in discussing how Smith's witnesses differ from Strang's witnesses However, I am not interested in a back and forth about the moral character of Joseph Smith, James Strang or any of the witnesses. I am not interested in what Joseph Smith would later say about the moral character of the witnesses, and the reasons why they were excommunicated I am not interested in what the witnesses would later say about Joseph Smith's moral character I am not interested in what some would later say about James Strang's moral character and the reasons why he was excommunicated I am not interested in what neighbors or villages who knew Joseph Smith and his witnesses or James Strang and his witnesses said about their moral character I was just listening to a podcast about the Scarith of Scornello. A 19-year old boy staged an elaborate set of forged Etruscan texts (scarith) and buried them all over the city as evidence of their antiquity. State officials came to investigate, and ended up also convinced that the texts were authentically ancient, and they issued witness statements confirming. "For the next two weeks, the two officials alternated days in the field with days spent examining witnesses, and there is no doubt which days they enjoyed more. Proud of their own Etruscan heritage, they found the dig at Scornello an intoxicating immersion in their ancient past. Thirteen new scarith emerged from the chalky soil during their seven days of on-site investigation, two of the capsules wrested from a gnarled tangle of oak tree roots by none other than Ottavio Capponi himself. Their direct experience of amateur archaeology had a forceful effect on the granducal agents: after a trip to view the oldest documents in Volterra's civic archive, they officially declared that the scarith of Scornello had been genuinely buried and were very, very old." The forger then used all the witness testimonies to convince others, all the way to the Vatican. He said: "It is evident that when [the scarith] first began to be found, the Criminal Court intervened from the very beginning, and then the whole City of Volterra; many people have intervened from almost every place in Tuscany, and all the principal Cities, and places of Italy, and in effect all those who have fancied clar- ifying their ideas about the truth have been present at the finding of these memorials, and this has not happened on one single occasion, but in a lapse of time, bit by bit, so that from 25 November 1634 up until now these have always been found, and are still continually being found. In addition to this, they are reinforced by the authentic testimony of a public trial, held with the greatest diligence by Signor Tommaso Medici and Signor Ottaviano Capponi, delegated to this task by the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the presence of a nearly infinite number of eyewitnesses, and ratified thereafter by the order of His Highness, who sent the Signori Mario Guiducci and Niccolò Arrighetti, Gentlemen of Florence, to examine the place and watch the excavations, and this document is preserved in the Archive of the City of Volterra." So my view is more nuanced than calling something like this a "con job". I think it just sort of starts small as a curiosity, and then spirals out of control due to more intense curiosity combined with social, familial and economic pressures, religious motives, and an "intoxicating immersion in the ancient past" and once it reaches a certain point, its easier to go along with the string of events that has everyone so excited.

You mean Christian, Jacob, Peter, and John Whitmer and Hiram Page, the husband of Catherine Whitmer? Joseph Smith was invited by the Whitmers to live in their home. Joseph, Emma and Oliver lived with the Whitmers for 3-4 weeks while translating the gold plates in their home. Two of those Whitmers (Christian and John) acted as scribes. They were actively contributing to the translation project for weeks, and certainly were not strangers. Would a defense attorney be able to convince a jury that Joseph Smith "hardly knew" 5 people from a family he had been living with for 3-4 weeks? If two of those five had helped him translate the plates, can we say Joseph hardly knew them? Also, you fail to mention that the other 3 witnesses were Joseph Smith's own family, his two brothers and his father.

This is not in the linked article. If you are discussing all this with AI, you might be getting hallucinations. I’ve seen this quite a lot with ChatGPT. It will make up an authoritative quote and even cite a journal and a paper, but the paper might be completely hallucinated, and the quote is loosely based on words it finds in similar papers in the cited journal. Can you find the actual quote in that journal? Or ask your AI to verify the quote, pointing out that it might be hallucinating. It will usually fess up if it has and you catch it.

Is it certain that the “modern” human‑adapted strains didn’t also have seals as an earlier vector? Can we conclude for certain that IS6110 spread through human‑to‑human contact only, rather than also moving through earlier animal and hosts we haven’t sampled yet? I don't find any mention of L. serricone in the linked text. All it says is: "Three utilized samples of rope recovered from around the ankles and wrists of skeletons or isolated limbs; the fourth was done from a sample of fly and beetle remains collected from within the skull of H33. Because of the small size of the samples, all were analyzed by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS)." How to determine these beetle remains were L. serricone? The real question is how those traces ended up in those vials in the first place. Samorini is basically saying these results are so wild, and the reporting is so thin, that we shouldn’t rewrite global history yet. In other words, we shouldn't limit ourselves to results of 1990s positives from Balabanova and Parsche & Nerlich, versus other teams on other mummy sets that don’t see cocaine at all. Better to be cautious given the high likelihood of contamination. This is why nobody has given much weight to these results.

The conservative answer is the correct one. TB was carried by seals to the Americas, and humans then consumed seals. Pre-Columbian mycobacterial genomes reveal seals as a source of New World human tuberculosis "We compared the genome - the entire genetic information - of these ancient strains with the modern bacterium that forms today's Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and what we found was the ancient Peruvian strains were not typical European, Asian or African strains that we find in humans today," (source I can't find anything online about L. serricorne within the wrappings and crainums of Peruvian mummies. Could you link to where you found this info? Mummies and ‘impossible’ drugs: A new look to the Svetlana Balabanova’s ethnobotanical revisionism "Balabanova was not a credible scholar, which she demonstrated in many ways. She never referenced serious studies, not even one, on any subject, for example on the history of tobacco (such as Laufer 1924 and Goodspeed 1954), she was never interested in them when, from the perspective of a correct methodology, she should have started from a careful study of these texts to make credible counterproposals. Just as in the case of the tobacco beetles, for which this forensic chemist would have been better off if she had consulted professional entomologists, in dealing with ethnobotany it would have been better if she had consulted professional ethnobotanists. But that did not interest her, since her aim simply was to ‘alter our cultural history’ (Balabanova et al. 1993: 93), at any cost."

I think we keep asking the wrong questions. We keep asking "does X fit setting Y?" but the better question is "where does the text have the highest verisimilitude?" Alma 11 is a good test. Its a very specific economic system. So instead of asking "does this economic system fit Mesoamerica in 82BC?, the verisimilitude question would be "where in the ancient world did systems like this actually exist, with these metals, at this level of detail?" I haven't looked too closely at it, but my guess is Mesoamerica would score poorly, cocoa beans, jade, and textiles as medium of exchange, sure, but there's not much that looks like senums, amnors, ezroms, and ontis in Mexico. We could loan-shift our way there, but every loan-shift lowers verisimilitude. A setting where "gold" means gold scores higher than one where "gold" means "cocoa beans, maybe?" But Mesoamerica scoring poorly doesn't say anything about the verisimilitude of the Book of Mormon, it only says that yje Mesoamerica model has some weak points otoh If you consider the verisimilitude question in other limited geographies, the results are better. - Copper plates with lengthy inscriptions, Yes, but not Mesoamerica - Israelite diaspora communities dating to the first temple with copper plates, Yes, but not Mesoamerica - Monetary systems resembling Nephite monetary systems, Yes, but not Mesoamerica We could go down the list of steel, elephants, horses, chariots, silk. All these things really do fit into limited geographies that date to the Book of Mormon timeframe. Meaning the Book of Mormon has extremely high verisimilitude, if we take our thumb off the scales. Of course, verisimilitude doesn't prove anything about whether or not the Book of Mormon is history, but it does tell us where the Book of Mormon most closely resembles a real civilization, which is the prior question. I've been working out a comparative framework that checks for verisimilitude across all the major geography models, not just economics but the full range of material culture: fauna, flora, metallurgy, writing, weapons, government, the lot. I ran Alma 11 through the framework, and got these results. And since we were discussin writing on metal plates as historical evidence for the Book of Mormon, I also ran that test. Results are here.

This is pretty common across Asian economies. In Burma/Myanmar Chat and Thailand Baht are currencies named after the ancient Tical weights and measurements which was used alongside the Teal anciently and is still used in the markets today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tical_(unit) If you follow the link in the sources of that wikipedia article) there's an article called The Origin of the Tical that discusses the main theories for origins of the Tikal Near Eastern "shekel” Babylonian/Persian to India to Siam/China Arabic thaqal (“to weigh”) Proposed by le May, Dodd, some dictionaries. Chinese/Malay (tael, etc.) Recognizes tael → Khmer/Thai tamleng → baht (weight structure). Indian tanka via Mon/Burmese (Campos’ conclusion) Indian silver weight/coin tanka → Mon t’ke / tacka → Burmese tical (standard silver weight, 1/100 of a viss).

Yes, but we do know something about what Ether had compiled on the 24 plates from earlier Jaredite records that account all the way back to antediluvian times. And its very dark. Satan as the origin of the works of darkness Secret combinations have a Cainite origin in the antediluvian Old World, pre-dating the Jaredites Helaman 6:28 informs that the same being who inspired the Tower also led the Jaredites to the Americas and spread the works of darkness "Dark Plates" brought across the waters The Jaredites carried a record from the Tower (maybe earlier) containing the secret combinations of their fathers These "Dark Plates" were the vector transmitting the dark arts from Old World to the New World The daughter of Jared knows to reference them, so it's a living document within Jaredite culture Ether's Compilation Ether had access to the full Jaredite record tradition including the Dark Record His 24 plates therefore contained: The antediluvian/Mosaic material (creation → tower) which Moroni skips because the Jews already had it The secret combinations material likely drawn from the Dark Plates brought across the waters The Jaredite history from tower → destruction in New World which Moroni includes in his abridgment Moroni explicitly warns not to translate the dark stuff Sealed portion Vision or entire world history written down by the Brother of Jared in Old World (Moriancumer) and carried across the waters to the New World Am I missing something? Am I reading anything wrong?

I'm the same, so its set up in chronological order with numbering. Start with the intro, and then work your way through the numbered profiles, each bridging into the next: 00. The Long Search for a Single Ancient Wisdom 01. Annius of Viterbo 02. Guilluame Postel 03. Isaac Casaubon 04. Athansius Kircher There will be more profiles (presently 84 in the queue) added over time, all the way through Joseph Smith. Oh, get some sleep!

Jews in 600 BC wouldn't. A local (or global) flood was only a problem for Christians, who had a very different view of Adam, the flood and the role of Noah and his sons. Speculation about anyone surviving the global flood was highly dangerous because these things were fundamental: Adam sinned (the Fall) All humans descend from Adam (monogenism) Therefore all humans inherit original sin Therefore all humans need redemption through Christ and the Church Then the highly advanced civilizations of millions of people in the Americas were discovered. Some like La Peyrere speculated that these Americans were pre-Adamites, a line that did not descend from Adam and were unaffected by the flood. This enraged orthodox Christians, because it implied indigenous Americans didn't inherit original sin and had no need for Christ (and the Church) to save them from original sin. For this blasphemy, La Peyrere's books were burned. He was arrested and forced to recant, which he did. So if you're saying that Moroni didn't need to worry about getting the dungeon for believing there were Adamites that survived the flood in America, I'd agree. My point is Moroni had more ancient and accurate primary Jaredite and Nephite sources, therefore Moroni had better theology than what European Christians pieced together from the confusing Mosaic record that they misinterpreted to require that only 8 humans survived the flood, and we all descend from those 8 and all inherited their sin. My larger point is that Joseph restored exactly those two things (the extra-Mosaic Book of Ether + rejection of original sin), making it possible for us Mormons to speculate that there might have been people in the Americas before the Jaredites. Other Christians still struggle with this

Only you'd have been thrown in a dungeon for believing that at any point before the 19th century. This interpretation of Genesis is a 21st century adjustment that works well for us Mormons who don't subscribe to solo scriptura. Volumes and volumes had been written between the 15th and 19th centuries trying to work this problem out. But much of it was done anonymously or pseudo-anonymously out of fear. Often people just waited to die to publish, then their sacrilegious ideas wouldn't get them killed. Joseph Smith did work it out, but he couldn't do it with the Mosaic record alone. He had to restore other equally ancient texts and truths as more reliable witnesses. And even in 1845 American frontier, it got him killed

Yes, if Moroni was following something other than the Mosaic record (eg. a Jaredite account) then he didn't need to conform to the Biblical account, and we don't either But it gets more complicated, because this was the foundation of a longstanding war between Biblical apologists vs Deists and Biblical history skeptics. So for me it begins to feel that the Book of Ether is a response to that modern debate I haven't landed on a final conclusion yet, but if your interested in the search, its documented here. But one thing I'm sure of is the Book of Mormon is a consequential addition to the search for the pure original truth

I'm a big believer in everyone using AI as much as possible, it is a total unlock in our inputs and outputs. I could read AI output all day long because I've configured my agents to automatically reject what I think and tell me why I'm wrong and give me a I don't trust AI that hasn't been finely-tuned to reduce sycophancy, so I don't bother reading copy/pastes of AI prompts that are meant to be some sort of neutral arbitrator of forum discussions, that are also AI-generated. I don't mind AI output in a forum post if it is general reference, and not posted as a final conclusion or a zinger.