Where did the Book of Mormon Take Place?

[theplains]

On 4/24/2026 at 7:06 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

Regarding the quotes Plains offers, Bob Crockett used to line these and others like them up against the notion that the New York Hill must be the Book of Mormon hill.  One thing that all these statements, and others like them, such as the Joseph Fielding Smith quote from the 1930s, reprinted in the 1950s, and the authorities who present them have in common is that none of deal directly with the Book of Mormon statements regarding the location of the Hill.  All presume that the tradition, as tradition, must be correct.  No further inquiry is necessary or desirable.

 

I'm not sure where @InCognitus stands, but it seems you believe all those quotes from LDS leaders
about the two hills being in the same location are false and misleading.

[Calm]

30 minutes ago, theplains said:

 

I'm not sure where @InCognitus stands, but it seems you believe all those quotes from LDS leaders
about the two hills being in the same location are false and misleading.

By misleading do you mean to suggest it was intentional?

[the narrator]

57 minutes ago, webbles said:

I don't know what to make of it, but it can't be easily refuted.

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?

[Kevin Christensen]

56 minutes ago, theplains said:

 

I'm not sure where @InCognitus stands, but it seems you believe all those quotes from LDS leaders
about the two hills being in the same location are false and misleading.

I think they are human and misinformed.  For example, Bob Crocket several times here used a Joseph Fielding Smith quote from 1937, and which was reprinted in the Church News in the 1950s.  That quote emphasized that some traditional Saints were disturbed in their faith by suggestions by people like the Washburns that were suggesting that a close look at Book of Mormon texts, purporting to be written by actual eye-witnesses, such as Mormon himself, on the topic of the Hill seemed not to describe the New York Hill, but rather, a location in Mesoamerica.  The ones who raised the question were those who paid close attention to what the eye witnesses, Mormon and Moroni, had to say.  Sidney Sperry, for instance, published an essay called "Where there two Cumorahs?" that looked at the implications of Book of Mormon passages and stories that put the Cumorah and Shim in a geographic context with specific relationships.  But I find it telling that those who like to pile up a string of authorities who assert the sure knowledge of the identity of the New York drumlin and the Book of Mormon hill, never address the issues of when and by whom the tradition started, and especially that such authorities never actually address the relevant Book of Mormon passages, the eye-witnesses, whose authority on that topic, deserves some attention and respect.  And I notice that the Joseph Fielding Smith quote, while showing concern that some were disturbed in their faith by the then new suggestions, he showed no concern whatsoever for people who might find the new suggestions faith promoting.   Joseph Smith himself noted this tendency among the Latter-day Saints.

Quote

But there has been a great difficulty in getting anything into the heads of this generation. It has been like splitting hemlock knots with a corn-dodger for a wedge, and a pumpkin for a beetle. Even the Saints are slow to understand.

I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God; but we frequently see some of them, after suffering all they have for the work of God, will fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to their traditions: they cannot stand the fire at all.

Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 33

Joseph Smith also noted that the problem with "creeds" was that "Creeds say 'Hitherto thou shalt come, and no further."   The cost of further light and knowledge is old preconceptions.  If you refuse to pay that price, you cannot progress.  And D&C 1 spells out "mine authority and the authority of my servants" by saying "inasmuch as they erred, it shall be made manifest, Inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed."  Our faith is not presently constrained by a Big Book of What to Think. Rather, we believe in ongoing revelation.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

[Ryan Dahle]

3 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

Except, it hasn't been "easily refuted" by these points. 

1. The fact that the Book of Mormon was "spoken and not written" does not on its own make it plausible that Smith could implement the specific suite of archaic lexis, grammar, and syntax that is increasingly being uncovered in the Book of Mormon. It is true that spoken language can differ from written language, but that doesn't, on its own, favor specific types of archaism. You would need to demonstrate why the specific types of features in the text were more likely to be spoken than written, since many of the features could actually swing in the other direction (in that they may have been historically more likely to be written than spoken). In a recent article, for example, Carmack opens up his study by stating, "It is appropriate to compare the Book of Mormon text to written texts, since it reads like a written text in various ways." So two can play at that game, and I trust his assessment of spoken-vs.-written language over yours (as he actually has a degree in this area and is highly qualified to make such assessments). The other issue is that not everyone is equally able or motivated to maintain strict boundaries in their written and spoken communications. The problem gets even more complicated when a dialect isn't just a preference for a singular pronoun or verbal pattern, but involves a whole host of nuanced syntax and grammatical forms. It is one thing, for instance, for an individual to be able to frequently use "ain't" in spoken speech but "isn't" in written speech. It is another for a whole community to use a diverse set of archaic forms of grammar and syntax in spoken language but then for all of them to consistently NOT use those same forms in written language. When you actually look at the diversity and complexity of the archaic forms in the Book of Mormon, and consider them in their entirety, your point holds little explanatory power. 

2. It is true that regional dialects can sometimes retain archaic syntax. But there is a problem with applying this type of generalization to explain the dictation of the Book of Mormon. When certain dialectal features (such as retained archaisms) are prominent and consistent enough in a given region to be retained as part of the active vocabularies of its inhabitants, such residents will naturally tend to manifest those features in their communication. This, of course, would also largely include written communications, since most people are not fully aware or their own dialectal proclivities or able to consciously filter them on multiple levels simultaneously, even in contexts where written speech affords more time to be selective and deliberate in one's expressions. One might consider, for example, the archaic forms that were intentionally perpetuated by the Quakers. Yes, certain types of archaism were preserved and adapted. But it is also well-known and well-documented. In other words, if the large suite of archaic features (including extrabiblical features) in the Book of Mormon were indeed present in Smith's spoken environment, then we should also expect to find many examples of such features in the written record. It is true that features of spoken dialects can sometimes escape the textual record, but that seems to be a much more feasible outcome in instances of relatively small-scale usage in primarily non-literate communities. In Joseph Smith's environment, where we have letters, journals, court documents, newspapers, and many other forms and genres of communication, it is hard to imagine how prevalent archaic forms would uniformly escape the textual record. One also has to consider the fact that literate societies tend to have more stable dialects. The Smith's, for example, would have been influenced by normative patterns of language that they read, as well as what they heard daily. This means that language becomes more standardized over wider regions in literate societies. Thus, the default and normative assumption, based on known linguistic principles and patterns of language use and assimilation among communities, is that the archaism of the Book of Mormon very likely wasn't derived from Smith's linguistic environment. In order to push back against this normative assumption, you would really need to provide evidence for your alternative theory using truly comparable examples (where a diverse set of archaic features were heavily used enough in a largely literate community to be assimilated into the spoken language patterns of its citizens but then almost completely escaped the textual record of that same region).  

3. Skousen and Carmack have already addressed the issue of the "bad grammar" hypothesis. The problem is that the Book of Mormon's instances of supposed "bad grammar" have a very fascinating tendency to align with EModE forms. The range of features and their frequency disparities in the textual databases is rather remarkable. Thus, you would have to explain why it is that, in instance after instance, the Book of Mormon's bad grammar aligns with earlier forms of speech that were used in disproportionately high rates in earlier periods of English. If you could demonstrate that the dialect of your wife's family has similarly consistent and wide-ranging affinities with EModE usage (not just a few traces of archaism), and that it often manifests a host of sophisticated variants of that usage, it would provide a much better case for your position. Yet even if you could demonstrate systematic archaism that is TRULY analogous to the Book of Mormon (which I find to be highly doubtful), you would likely still have trouble with points 1 and 2 that I raised above. We would expect that such archaism would show up in the writings of the literate contemporaries in Smith's region. 

4. I don't think your claim (that ALL of the archaic BofM features identified by Skousen and Carmack have turned up in 19th century texts) is true. You should ask Carmack about that, as he keeps up better than anyone on that issue, since he is constantly checking his own claims (sometimes modifying them) and looking for later attestations. But it ultimately doesn't matter because there are so many cases in which the attestations and frequencies of 19th-century examples are so miniscule that it doesn't appreciably raise the chances that the feature was used with any degree of frequency in Smith's local environment. This is especially true in instances where the archaism is used by well-educated authors who were known to spend a lot of time in EModE texts. We might expect, for example, a different degree of archaism from a Shakespearean scholar like Richard Grant White (whom Carmack mentions in his recent Interpreter article) in comparison to Joseph Smith. So you can't just uncritically look at extraordinary outliers of 19th century usage and act like they have significant explanatory power. They don't. 

3 hours ago, the narrator said:

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?

Nothing about your theory is simple. It requires numerous stacked assumptions that are non-normative, non-intuitive, and that are not yet supported by sufficient examples of actual language patterns to demonstrate their plausibility. Carmack has done more than anyone to compare the Book of Mormon language with contemporary pseudo-biblical texts. One can't just ignore the systematic differences he has uncovered on that front. 

As for Occam's razor, one actually has to deal with the linguistic data and arguments proposed by Skousen/Carmack. If they are in fact correct, and it is highly implausible that Smith dictated the Book of Mormon using his own natural ability, then that obviously strengthens the claim that he produced the text via supernatural means. Speculating about why/how God would produce the specific mixture of EModE and 19th century language seems like a second-order question. More objective assessments of Smith's capacity, based on known principles of natural language patterns and usage, would seem to be the privileged and much more testable data set in this context. 

Over the years, I've noticed a lot of "its a stupid argument" claims, when it comes to the research of Skousen/Carmack. But I find it quite telling that their critics rarely deal with the actual data and arguments themselves. It is almost always superficial arm-chair critiques and alterative theories that are not, themselves, supported by comparably relevant and robust sets of data. The more I hear "its a stupid argument" without serious engagement, the more confident I become that the critics simply don't understand the hard linguistic data nor the underlying linguistic principles and axioms that are guiding the interpretation of that data. 

Edited April 30 by Ryan Dahle

[webbles]

6 hours ago, the narrator said:

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?

I started from the assumption that EModE was a red herring.  I thought it was easily refuted.  But it isn't.

I first asked claude what it's opinion of Carmack and it agreed with you.  I then gave it Carmack's documents as well as documents from those that have refuted him.  I then provided claude the eebo, ecco, evans, pseudo-archaic 19c literature, etc.  And let it go through the documents, run analysis and look at what Carmack wrote and the refutation.  Claude came back and basically said that the best explanation is an EModE original text with a thin layer of 19c on top.  It said the vast majority was EModE and correctly written.  I didn't believe it and pushed back on it.  But it pointed to all of its data.

So I started another instance of claude so it wasn't blinded by the first one.  This time, I had it look for EModE in the Book of Mormon without giving it anything from Carmack (as I saw from the previous attempt, it is biased against Carmack).  It found a bunch of potential EModE things.  These were based on its own understanding of EModE as well as ngram analysis of the Book of Mormon.  I then gave it all the files from before and asked it to verify that what it found was really EModE and what was the most likely path that Joseph learned these EModE.  Everything it found could be shown to be EModE and several of them have extremely few 19c and 18c rates in the files.  Many aren't in the KJV or the pseudo-archaic attempts.  They aren't in Joseph's later writings, D&C, etc.  And again, they were correctly written as if the person knew EModE intimately.

I'm now trying a third attempt.  I don't know what to make of it but it is not easily refuted.  The Book of Mormon is full of EModE that can't be explained by a "local regional dialect" because it isn't anywhere except in the Book of Mormon.  No one else around him spoke or wrote like that.

At this point, the Occam's razor points to an EModE book that Joseph found and then modified it slightly or not at all.  That's why I asked about direct quotations since that would refute it.  I'm going to be using that in the third attempt to see what it would do, but I suspect it will give an answer similar to the first attempt as I tried bringing up how the Book of Mormon talks a lot about 19c religious issues.

But one thing I have learned from this is that the Book of Mormon doesn't mimic the KJV.  It exceeds it in pretty much every category.  And it does it correctly.  It isn't random attempts to inject archaic phrases.  It is done correctly in ways that aren't obvious (like using "hath" for most situations but "has" for informal or emotionally charged areas)

Edited May 1 by webbles

[webbles]

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

2. It is true that regional dialects can sometimes retain archaic syntax. But there is a problem with applying this type of generalization to explain the dictation of the Book of Mormon. When certain dialectal features (such as retained archaisms) are prominent and consistent enough in a given region to be retained as part of the active vocabularies of its inhabitants, such residents will naturally tend to manifest those features in their communication. This, of course, would also largely include written communications, since most people are not fully aware or their own dialectal proclivities or able to consciously filter them on multiple levels simultaneously, even in contexts where written speech affords more time to be selective and deliberate in one's expressions. One might consider, for example, the archaic forms that were intentionally perpetuated by the Quakers. Yes, certain types of archaism were preserved and adapted. But it is also well-known and well-documented. In other words, if the large suite of archaic features (including extrabiblical features) in the Book of Mormon were indeed present in Smith's spoken environment, then we should also expect to find many examples of such features in the written record. It is true that features of spoken dialects can sometimes escape the textual record, but that seems to be a much more feasible outcome in instances of relatively small-scale usage in primarily non-literate communities. In Joseph Smith's environment, where we have letters, journals, court documents, newspapers, and many other forms and genres of communication, it is hard to imagine how prevalent archaic forms would uniformly escape the textual record. One also has to consider the fact that literate societies tend to have more stable dialects. The Smith's, for example, would have been influenced by normative patterns of language that they read, as well as what they heard daily. This means that language becomes more standardized over wider regions in literate societies. Thus, the default and normative assumption, based on known linguistic principles and patterns of language use and assimilation among communities, is that the archaism of the Book of Mormon very likely wasn't derived from Smith's linguistic environment. In order to push back against this normative assumption, you would really need to provide evidence for your alternative theory using truly comparable examples (where a diverse set of archaic features were heavily used enough in a largely literate community to be assimilated into the spoken language patterns of its citizens but then almost completely escaped the textual record of that same region).  

One thing that came out in one of my attempts with claude is that the "Book of Pukei" should have been a perfect example for Joseph's dialect to show up.  This is written by people who personally know him or his family, they live in the same environment, they read at least parts of the Book of Mormon, and were mocking Joseph.  It has some archaic phrasing (like "it came to pass") but it uses modern phrases in places that the Book of Mormon would have used archaic.  If Joseph really did use archaic language or those in his environment used archaic language, it should have shown up in the "Book of Pukei" as they had every reason to make Joseph look like a yokel.

[champatsch]

A recent Dialogue article – Davis: Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language – is riddled with errors of linguistic analysis. Various people were involved in the creation of the article. They were apparently unable to clean up the many errors they ought to have recognized. The paper is a fine example of naive or deliberate one-sided argumentation. Many cases of counterevidence were not dealt with. I have mentioned some here recently.

Similarly, the vague claim that Joseph Smith spoke very archaically (never substantiated) and that accounts for the English usage is clearly wrong, as shown by the verbal complementation and many other things, including a vast array of other usage in the text as well as his early letters and his mother's biography. The two clearest textual examples are the verbal complementation after the verbs suffer and cause. They exhibit an archaic, written, translation pattern, which no one ever spoke with, from the 1300s forward. Because the pattern is not an archaic spoken pattern, they show that the archaic maintenance argument is wrong and non-explanatory.

For example, the Book of Mormon has over 100 more finite causatives than any other text before it, at around 60% finite. No one ever spoke that way in English. The only way that robust pattern appears in the dictation language is if Joseph Smith repeatedly reminded himself to employ finite causatives from the very start of his 1829 dictation in Mosiah. Even his thinking about such a thing is a highly unlikely scenario, since there was no general pseudo-archaic impulse to do so and he was not linguistically astute in 1829. And to be able to implement the syntax 136 times is another highly unlikely scenario. Likewise with the verb suffer. Likewise with the verb command.

Furthermore, the Book of Mormon has 12 ditransitive causatives, syntax that was obsolete during most of the 18c and into the 19c. Not even lengthy early modern texts have more than four of these. This exposes a recent assertion here as an incorrect speculation – that everything was being used in the early 19c – which I have disproven before with other syntax like "save he shall prepare" or "it supposeth me that S." No one ever formulated the impersonal, simple dative syntax with the verb suppose – save it were Joseph Smith – since a poet did it once in the late 1300s.

The attempt to make Joseph Smith the author of the English of the Book of Mormon takes cover from academic priorities, which can only ever accept such a position. It is up to the interested to discern whether the academic arguments are sound and explanatory. As an informed analyst, who goes beyond mere speculation, I can tell you that the Book of Mormon has dozens of archaic outliers that resist naturalistic explanations, as well as the complex English usage shift that occurs toward the end or after the book of Helaman, of which hath been spoken.

Edited May 1 by champatsch

[the narrator]

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

1.

In a recent article, for example, Carmack opens up his study by stating, "It is appropriate to compare the Book of Mormon text to written texts, since it reads like a written text in various ways."

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:

Quote

One example that has received little or no attention is this phraseology: “for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice” (Alma 55:19; general case: “for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>.”) The noun cause conveys an archaic meaning of purpose in these. The Book of Mormon has seven instances, which is a high level of usage and a historical outlier. Only two texts have been found to have more, both published in the 1580s and both translations of Calvin. Among early modern texts with at least two instances of this syntax, the Book of Mormon ranks seventh in per-word usage, right between these two Calvin translations. In intensity, these texts rank higher.

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.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

2.

In Joseph Smith's environment, where we have letters, journals, court documents, newspapers, and many other forms and genres of communication, it is hard to imagine how prevalent archaic forms would uniformly escape the textual record.

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.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

3. We would expect that such archaism would show up in the writings of the literate contemporaries in Smith's region.

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.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

4. I don't think your claim (that ALL of the archaic BofM features identified by Skousen and Carmack have turned up in 19th century texts) is true.

I have yet to find an example that isn't present in late 18th or early 19th century texts

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So you can't just uncritically look at extraordinary outliers of 19th century usage and act like they have significant explanatory power. They don't. 

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.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Carmack has done more than anyone to compare the Book of Mormon language with contemporary pseudo-biblical texts. One can't just ignore the systematic differences he has uncovered on that front. 

But one can very easily point out that they don't have the significance that Carmack wants to claim they have.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

If they are in fact correct, and it is highly implausible that Smith dictated the Book of Mormon using his own natural ability, then that obviously strengthens the claim that he produced the text via supernatural means.

"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.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Speculating about why/how God would produce the specific mixture of EModE and 19th century language seems like a second-order question.

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.

 

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Over the years, I've noticed a lot of "its a stupid argument" claims, when it comes to the research of Skousen/Carmack. But I find it quite telling that their critics rarely deal with the actual data and arguments themselves.

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.

Edited May 1 by the narrator

[the narrator]

13 hours ago, webbles said:

I'm now trying a third attempt.  I don't know what to make of it but it is not easily refuted.  The Book of Mormon is full of EModE that can't be explained by a "local regional dialect" because it isn't anywhere except in the Book of Mormon.  No one else around him spoke or wrote like that.

 

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.

[the narrator]

13 hours ago, webbles said:

If Joseph really did use archaic language or those in his environment used archaic language, it should have shown up in the "Book of Pukei" as they had every reason to make Joseph look like a yokel.

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.

[the narrator]

3 hours ago, champatsch said:

Similarly, the vague claim that Joseph Smith spoke very archaically (never substantiated) and that accounts for the English usage is clearly wrong, as shown by the verbal complementation and many other things, including a vast array of other usage in the text as well as his early letters and his mother's biography.

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.

[Kevin Christensen]

On the business of looking to Joseph's cultural environment to explain the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, would like to call back to Ben McGuire's response to Rick Grunder's extensive work on such parallels>

Quote

Underneath the umbrella of intertextuality we find several kinds of connections between texts. Some of them do stem from what might be termed influence (and this influence can [Page 42]range from very specific, where an author borrows, or quotes from a source, to very general, as when an author is influenced by an entire body of literature without seeming to use a specific source or text). Other connections can be explained as the result of shared milieus, shared subject matter, or even shared languages of origin. Some connections may be only understood when the texts are read by certain audiences, connections that did not exist for the original author of a text. Whatever the source(s) of these connections, they exist for all texts. Grunder seems to have this in mind (although he uses different terms) when he wrote:

We are scarcely dealing here with issues of pointed study or conscious borrowing. No single one of these writings was essential to the work of Joseph Smith, and this Bibliographic Source hangs upon no individual concept—upon no particular text. It is, rather, the very existence of the Mormon parallels which these sources display—in such great number, distribution, and uncanny resemblance to the literary, doctrinal and social structures which Joseph formed—which may command our attention. (2008, pp. 37–38).

In contrast to this point we have Ferguson’s remarks that I presented earlier: “That Christians observed the same customs and used words in the same way as their contemporaries is hardly noteworthy in itself.”54 In other words, every religious movement that arises in a particular historic era, which has a real history with real individuals and real texts, will produce parallels “in such great number, distribution, and uncanny resemblance to the literary, doctrinal and social structures” with its environment. If we were to find a movement that had none of these features, which did not have such great numbers of [Page 43]seeming “parallels,” we would have to start from the position that it wasn’t a real religion but was fictional, and that it must have come from some other time and place. Without these points of contact, such a religion would be completely inaccessible to its potential adherents. What is for Grunder “uncanny” is merely expected and commonplace for Ferguson.

Somer concludes: “Hence links among many texts may be noticed, whether the authors of the texts knew each other or not.” Grunder suggests, “It really does not matter whether Joseph Smith actually read any specific manuscript or book, because an entire culture is on display” (2008, p. 37). And yet, this isn’t a novel or noteworthy insight. We already recognize that the roots of Mormonism occur in a cultural setting—more than this, Mormonism isn’t a result of a cultural environment, it is a part of it, and its existence helps to shape and reshape that cultural setting. In this way, we must also ask (where Grunder does not) how many of his parallels are due purely to these cultural settings, as well as the more complicated question of how many of these parallels exist only because we (the present day readers) note these connections. (McGuire, Page 43).

See McGuire, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/finding-parallels-some-cautions-and-criticisms-part-one 

https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/finding-parallels-some-cautions-and-criticisms-part-two

Also, on the notion of Joseph Smith as responding to Thomas Paine, I have to consider some of Nibley's essays in The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled, (a title that refers both to history and the present continuity of the ancient ideas).   

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/80/

Look closely at "Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic" and "Paths that Stray: Some Notes on Sophic and Mantic" and consider just how far back we find thinkers like Thomas Paine, and consider that being educated in Paine's day was education in the Greek and Latin classics.  I find myself continually delighted by Alexander Campbell's complaint that "the Book of Mormon resolves all the great controversies" as though relevance to current controversies is the last thing one would want or expect in a divine book.   Would you be impressed that a book was both "irrelevant and incomprehensible and therefore, must be inspired?"

And I see a great difference between Joseph Smith being able to discourse on everyday life among the Nephites as though Joseph had lived among them, and Joseph preaching in response to contemporary controversies.  Details of every day life, clothing, animals, modes of travel, warfare and manner of worship require immersion in a different culture, not present culture, for which immersion is consequence of being alive, not of research into or careful creation of something different.  My issue with the Lucy Mack Smith quote on that topic is that none of those who take the quote as a key to explaining the Book of Mormon address the problem with that late edited passage (not a contemporary diary entry), is that the passage mentions things that that Book of Mormon does not describe, and that if Joseph could amuse his family that way on those topics, why did he never do it again?  And for that matter, why did they not appear in the Book of Mormon?  J. K. Rowling and J. R. R Tolkien produced all sorts of details about the characters and their histories outside of the novels.  Joseph Smith as imaginative author could certainly have done the same on many occasions.  But he never did, unless you count the Zelph campfire gossip, recorded differently by several participants as such, which I don't.  I also notice that Joseph's 1982 history, for the awkwardness of expression, does indeed carefully include many apt scriptural references (as the late Matthew Brown demonstrated at FAIR in detail), but that  history came after Joseph and Sidney Rigdon has been intensely focused on the Bible for the previous year.   It is not evidence of Joseph's abilities three or four years previously.

 

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Details of every day life, clothing, animals, modes of travel, warfare and manner of worship require immersion in a different culture, not present culture, for which immersion is consequence of being alive, not of research into or careful creation of something different.  My issue with the Lucy Mack Smith quote on that topic is that none of those who take the quote as a key to explaining the Book of Mormon address the problem with that late edited passage (not a contemporary diary entry), is that the passage mentions things that that Book of Mormon does not describe, and that if Joseph could amuse his family that way on those topics, why did he never do it again?  And for that matter, why did they not appear in the Book of Mormon?  J. K. Rowling and J. R. R Tolkien produced all sorts of details about the characters and their histories outside of the novels.  Joseph Smith as imaginative author could certainly have done the same on many occasions.  But he never did, unless you count the Zelph campfire gossip, recorded differently by several participants as such, which I don't.

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.

Edited May 1 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

7 hours ago, the narrator said:

Quote

One example that has received little or no attention is this phraseology: “for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice” (Alma 55:19; general case: “for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>.”) The noun cause conveys an archaic meaning of purpose in these. The Book of Mormon has seven instances, which is a high level of usage and a historical outlier. Only two texts have been found to have more, both published in the 1580s and both translations of Calvin. Among early modern texts with at least two instances of this syntax, the Book of Mormon ranks seventh in per-word usage, right between these two Calvin translations. In intensity, these texts rank higher.

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.

I think this is the perfect example of how Carmack's claims are often misunderstood and then prematurely dismissed. I looked through every instance in that search query (you linked to), and I only found two examples that seem to actually represent the specific type of construction (for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>") which Carmack found significant. As far as I could tell, his claim was not simply about "for this cause" when "cause" has an archaic meaning.

As for the two examples, they come not from Smith's personal writings but from the D&C revelations. And that is a problem because it hasn't yet been demonstrated that the wording of the D&C is uniformly from Joseph Smith's native speech patterns. Since these are revealed texts, they cannot logically be used as a control group for Smith's personal dialect. Carmack has done some preliminary evaluation of some D&C revelations, which should lead to caution about who produced the words. I would be far more impressed if you found significant 19th-century concentrations of this usage outside of Smith's own revelations. Can you find such an example? 

Maybe @champatsch can provide further clarification, if he is so inclined. 

Edited May 1 by Ryan Dahle

[webbles]

9 hours ago, the narrator said:

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'm still trying out claude with the data but the D&C doesn't match the Book of Mormon.  Sure, there are EModE things in the D&C but the usage differences between the Book of Mormon and D&C are apparently enough to make claude not think that they are enough evidence to say that Joseph was the EModE author of the Book of Mormon.  Still trying it out.

10 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

Sure, they might not have noticed that Joseph used archaic language, but it is really odd.  That's what claude is really focusing on, the fact that there are multiple ways that the Book of Mormon doesn't match Joseph's other writings, the writings in his time period, and pseudo-archaic writings.  It isn't just 1 or 2 things.  It is a lot.  That's what seems to be why claude finds it difficult to accept Joseph being the source of the EModE.  It can't rule him out, but it considers him to be extremely unlikely.

[champatsch]

Unfortunately, I am not that interested in repeatedly responding to devil's advocate positions that make atomistic points and ignore the improbability of large numbers of occurrences of different types of syntactic usage appearing in the Book of Mormon naturalistically. Also ignored are the large numbers of archaic outliers in the Book of Mormon, some of which have hundreds or dozens of occurrences, some of which have fewer than a dozen occurrences. Finite causatives are one type with more than 100 occurrences. Finite permissives are another type with more than 50 occurrences. Personal "they which" is another type with more than 100 occurrences. And so on and so forth.

I have already responded to many spurious claims before. What happens is that sufficient time elapses, people forget, dispositive evidence is ignored, and old, weak claims re-emerge. It is rather stupid, and we all encounter it in various venues.

There are so many types of archaic outliers in the Book of Mormon that are not in pseudo-archaic texts, or barely in these texts, that coincidence with past usage is not a valid explanation, since the number of correspondences with various types of archaic English usage goes well beyond coincidence. That is, in view of dozens of types of archaic outliers that are not in pseudo-archaic texts, the varied correspondences with historical usage are not properly classified as coincidental.

Those who read this post ought to realize that some commentators think their readers are unable to think things through very well, since these commentators tell them that some Book of Mormon usage is explained as part of Joseph Smith's dialect just because it appears in a few Doctrine and Covenants revelations, even though no one was using the expressions anymore, and had not been using them for many decades before Joseph Smith was born. Commentators expect their readers to believe that various kinds of lexical and syntactic usage somehow skipped many or several generations of English speakers and just landed in his idiolect.

As one example, take the "of which hath been spoken" type, meaning 'previously mentioned' (no overt grammatical subject). There are 10 in the Book of Mormon (4 varieties), two in the witness statements, and three more in other revelatory output of Joseph Smith's (1830 preface and Doctrine and Covenants revelations). This type of language was very rarely used after the 1680s. Known examples are British. In well over 30 billion words, between 1690 and 1830, I currently do not find any original examples (limited to "of which|whom hath|has been spoken"; allowing intervening adverbs like already, but excluding cases with intervening pronominals like it or enough). (One 1735 example in ECCO ["of which already hath been spoken"] dates originally to 1684, to a work by Anthony Sparrow.) Before 1690, there are a few dozen examples of this syntactic type without an overt grammatical subject (mostly with which, secondarily with whom), and hardly any texts with more than one example. (The usage first appears around 1550; I have so far noted only two texts with more than one example: two examples each; cf. the Book of Mormon's 10.)

According to those who profess to have great linguistic insight into Book of Mormon English while studying it to a limited degree, we are supposed to accept that this peculiar archaic syntax (missing an expletive it ), was part of Joseph Smith's dialect, despite the absence of external textual support.

Edited May 3 by champatsch

[the narrator]

On 5/1/2026 at 4:33 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

I looked through every instance in that search query (you linked to), and I only found two examples that seem to actually represent the specific type of construction

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.

On 5/1/2026 at 4:33 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

As for the two examples, they come not from Smith's personal writings but from the D&C revelations. And that is a problem because it hasn't yet been demonstrated that the wording of the D&C is uniformly from Joseph Smith's native speech patterns. Since these are revealed texts, they cannot logically be used as a control group for Smith's personal dialect. Carmack has done some preliminary evaluation of some D&C revelations, which should lead to caution about who produced the words. I would be far more impressed if you found significant 19th-century concentrations of this usage outside of Smith's own revelations. Can you find such an example? 

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.

[the narrator]

On 5/3/2026 at 5:28 AM, champatsch said:

As one example, take the "of which hath been spoken" type, meaning 'previously mentioned' (no overt grammatical subject). There are 10 in the Book of Mormon (4 varieties), two in the witness statements, and three more in other revelatory output of Joseph Smith's (1830 preface and Doctrine and Covenants revelations).

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.

[the narrator]

On 5/1/2026 at 5:50 AM, champatsch said:

A recent Dialogue article – Davis: Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language – is riddled with errors of linguistic analysis. Various people were involved in the creation of the article. They were apparently unable to clean up the many errors they ought to have recognized. The paper is a fine example of naive or deliberate one-sided argumentation. Many cases of counterevidence were not dealt with. I have mentioned some here recently.

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

Edited May 4 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

On 5/1/2026 at 4:33 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

I looked through every instance in that search query (you linked to), and I only found two examples that seem to actually represent the specific type of construction

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.

Whether "two is enough" is debatable, since (as I pointed out) they come from texts that can't logically function as a reliable control group. I seem them as essentially non-evidence. So, from my perspective, you really you have 0 examples from valid control texts. And if your argument is that those "slight" alterations were likely to be made by Joseph Smith, it would help if you could find similar alterations being made by other 19th-century authors, especially in similar frequencies. Statistically speaking, it doesn't seem like a "slight" alteration to me. You labeling it that way doesn't make it so. 

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

That might be a nice explanation if Smith's language was strictly idiolectic in nature (in the sense that it was truly unique to his own speech patterns). But that isn't what we find. Instead, we see a lot of lexis, grammar, and syntax that significantly overlaps with EModE language patterns (to a degree that would be extraordinarily unlikely if Smith was simply creating random new speech patterns). And these patterns are, of course, "outside of Joseph Smith's religious idiolect." So you would still have to explain why his supposed "idiolect" has so much nuanced overlap with archaic forms and why there are very few truly novel features in the text. The problem doesn't go away simply by assuming he was intentionally trying to produce a unique scriptural language. You actually have to explain the data. 

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

I think you are misunderstanding the nature of the debate on this point. You initially brought up Smith's usage of this particular feature  (for this cause that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase>") as pushback against its uniqueness. I think you thought everyone would just go along with your smuggled-in assumption that the D&C and Smith's other revelatory or ecclesiastical documents must uniformly reflect his own wording. No one contests that D&C texts are viewed by Latter-day Saints as either revealed or divinely inspired documents. Yet the precise nature and mechanisms of those revelations has never been fully established with actual evidence, whether on linguistic or historical grounds. So, if one accepts the premise that God may have had a significant role in the production of these texts, it should be obvious why we can't just assume (without any verifying evidence) that God was never to any appreciable degree influencing the text at the level of specific language patterns. It is still very much an open question. What we really need are sufficient samples of Smith's writings or dictations that all parties would agree are strictly non-revelatory in nature (and therefore safely reflect his own strictly natural human language patterns).

Using a somewhat analogous scientific example, what you are proposing would be like trying to give one group of humans a certain medication and another group a placebo pill but then realizing after the fact that there was an administration error and that you can't actually verify if the placebo pill was really a placebo pill or if some or all of the presumed placebo pills were actually the medication that you are testing for. If you can't sufficiently determine that your supposed control group actually is a valid control group, then it is essentially worthless as evidence. It maybe frustrating that we don't have many control texts from Smith's writings that might help verify your own theory (since most everything Smith produced was in some way ecclesiastical or revelatory in nature) but we have to deal with the nature of the evidence as it is, not as we wish it would be. 

3 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

I think you are really stretching to make this theory sound "silly" and "absurd." It isn't absurd that God might use EModE as part of the Book of Mormon language, since the Bible was itself filled with archaic forms. In other words, to some degree it was already part of the religious dialect familiar to Smith and his contemporaries. On the other hand, Skousen and Carmack have pointed out that the archaic features of the Book of Mormon seem to have been "filtered" for modern audiences. It doesn't have lexical items or grammatical forms that are incomprehensible. They are just archaic. And that makes perfect sense, that the text may be a blend of select archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative, while also being tailored in many ways for a contemporary 19th-century audience. That seems to be a common theme of God's communication style, merging the old with the new in his Restoration efforts. So nothing is really very absurd about this at a broad rhetorical level.

The main oddity is just the choice to use a significant number of extrabiblical archaisms, or to sometimes take rare biblical archaisms and use them at much higher rates. In other words, why does the divine translation have this specific suite of archaic forms tailored for a modern audience? Was the choice for apologetic value, to help demonstrate the text is unique from Smith's own language patterns? Does it symbolically demonstrate that the text, although related to the Bible, isn't simply a regurgitation of biblical language? Does it have to do with the divine entity (or entities) in charge of translating the text? Does it have to do with English versions of the Book of Mormon that may already have been in use on the other side of the veil? Is it something else? 

You see, there are just too many potential explanations and unknown variables to test this question in any meaningful way, which I think is why Skousen eventually chose to ignore it. At the same time, however, this same limitation makes it difficult to develop a compelling case for why the text should not be this way. It is not very logical to label something like this as "silly" or "absurd" when you have no idea what is actually happening on the other side of the veil and how the text might have been prepared by God or divine beings. Your condescending characterization of this theory presupposes that, if the text were indeed produced by a divine process, you have some privileged notion of what it should be like. But that isn't an argument. It isn't based on data or evidence. It is just your own raw intuitions about currently unknown divine processes. 

[the narrator]

3 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Whether "two is enough" is debatable, since (as I pointed out) they come from texts that can't logically function as a reliable control group.

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.

9 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

That might be a nice explanation if Smith's language was strictly idiolectic in nature

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.

11 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So you would still have to explain why his supposed "idiolect" has so much nuanced overlap with archaic forms

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.

12 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The problem doesn't go away simply by assuming he was intentionally trying to produce a unique scriptural language. You actually have to explain the data. 

Read Davis's article. Actually read it. Don't just skim it. Read it.

13 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think you thought everyone would just go along with your smuggled-in assumption that the D&C and Smith's other revelatory or ecclesiastical documents must uniformly reflect his own wording

Again, strawman. You sure like to argue against against them.

14 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

if one accepts the premise that God may have had a significant role in the production of these texts, it should be obvious why we can't just assume (without any verifying evidence) that God was never to any appreciable degree influencing the text at the level of specific language patterns.

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.

 

18 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Using a somewhat analogous scientific example, what you are proposing would be like trying to give one group of humans a certain medication and another group a placebo pill but then realizing after the fact that there was an administration error and that you can't actually verify if the placebo pill was really a placebo pill or if some or all of the presumed placebo pills were actually the medication that you are testing for.

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.

31 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It isn't absurd that God might use EModE as part of the Book of Mormon language

It is absurd though.

 

31 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In other words, to some degree it was already part of the religious dialect familiar to Smith and his contemporaries. On the other hand, Skousen and Carmack have pointed out that the archaic features of the Book of Mormon seem to have been "filtered" for modern audiences. It doesn't have lexical items or grammatical forms that are incomprehensible. They are just archaic. And that makes perfect sense, that the text may be a blend of select archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative, while also being tailored in many ways for a contemporary 19th-century audience. That seems to be a common theme of God's communication style, merging the old with the new in his Restoration efforts. So nothing is really very absurd about this at a broad rhetorical level.

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.

 

40 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The main oddity is just the choice to use a significant number of extrabiblical archaisms, or to sometimes take rare biblical archaisms and use them at much higher rates. In other words, why does the divine translation have this specific suite of archaic forms tailored for a modern audience?

I hope you realize that you are making an argument for a single voice with a particular idiolect.

42 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Was the choice for apologetic value, to help demonstrate the text is unique from Smith's own language patterns?

It's not unique though, as they appear in other religious writings, which you want to dismiss in order to maintain this silly argument.

 

43 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Does it symbolically demonstrate that the text, although related to the Bible, isn't simply a regurgitation of biblical language? Was the choice for apologetic value, to help demonstrate the text is unique from Smith's own language patterns? Does it symbolically demonstrate that the text, although related to the Bible, isn't simply a regurgitation of biblical language? Does it have to do with the divine entity (or entities) in charge of translating the text? Does it have to do with English versions of the Book of Mormon that may already have been in use on the other side of the veil? Is it something else? 

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.

58 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It is not very logical to label something like this as "silly" or "absurd" when you have no idea what is actually happening on the other side of the veil

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.

[Ryan Dahle]

39 minutes ago, the narrator said:

They aren't a "control group". They are other dictations of religious texts spoken by Joseph.

You definitely were attempting to use them as control texts, in the context of trying to push back against the uniqueness of the feature that Carmack had identified. In other words, you were saying that this feature in the Book of Mormon (for this cause that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase>") isn't very significant since we can find two examples of its usage in Smith's other revelations (specifically in the D&C). But that type of argument only works if you confidently assume, at the outset, that Smith's D&C revelations were produced using his own language patterns. In contrast, if the language of the D&C revelations were influenced by the same or a similar divine process that produced the language of the Book of Mormon, then your argument makes no sense.

If you didn't view these D&C revelations as reliable control texts when attempting to push back against Carmack's claim, then why bring them up? What could they possibly prove or demonstrate? How does bringing them up help your case in any way? 

Edited May 4 by Ryan Dahle

[the narrator]

39 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You definitely were attempting to use them as control texts

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.

Quote

If you didn't view these D&C revelations as reliable control texts when attempting to push back against Carmack's claim, then why bring them up? What could they possibly prove or demonstrate? How does bringing them up help your case in any way? 

 

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.

Edited May 4 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

Too snarky on my part. I deleted this one, for which we will probably all be grateful. 

 

Edited May 4 by Ryan Dahle