Where did the Book of Mormon Take Place?

[the narrator]

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

Edited May 4 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

13 minutes ago, the narrator said:

28 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.

Let me try to unpack this a bit further. The idea of a "control text" isn't a sophisticated linguistic term (and I'm not a trained linguist). It is a more basic principle of logic that applies to many different domains. When testing certain hypotheses in science, we often need to establish controls or control groups (I'm guessing you are familiar with this basic concept, so I won't try to explain it further).

At least when it comes to the competing theories/explanations in our discussion, the debate is about whether or not the language of the Book of Mormon was revealed to Joseph Smith or whether it reflects his own native linguistic habits (which would be expected to largely reflect the language patterns of his 19th-century environment, which would include religious language and pseudo-biblical texts and so forth from that period). In such a debate, it would obviously be very helpful to identify any texts that Smith produced which certainly reflect his own native linguistic patterns and habits. Such texts would reasonably function as a "control" group of documents, which could then be compared to the Book of Mormon and other texts which are purported by Latter-day Saints to have been produced or strongly influenced by Smith's revelatory gifts.

If such control texts could be confidently identified, and if they were to contain archaic features that Skousen/Carmack believe are significant due to their absence or rarity in Smith's 19th-century environment, then they would help push back against the theory of a divinely-worded text. In other words, if Carmack were to propose that a specific textual feature in the Book of Mormon was likely produced by God (since it is absent in Smith's environment and not likely to be produced naturally by him), but then you can show the same feature was indeed produced by Smith in a secular context that has nothing to do with Smith's revelatory gift or calling, then that would obviously push back against Carmack's claim (at least when it comes to that particular textual feature).

It seems, based on the context of the debate, that this is precisely the type of argument you were trying to make. You appealed to examples of a certain archaic feature in Smith's D&C revelations as evidence of what Smith could naturally produce himself:

On 5/1/2026 at 9:24 AM, the narrator said:

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.

In other words, you were treating the D&C revelations as established control texts that certainly reflect Smith's native linguistic habits, rather than as revelatory documents that might reasonably reflect Smith's revelatory gifts. In the context of the debate, that is a logically invalid move. It would be like taking an example of that archaic feature from the Book of Mormon itself, then arbitrarily assuming Smith is the one who produced it rather than a divine entity, and then using that example to argue that the rest of the instances of this textual feature in the Book of Mormon were also plausibly produced by Smith. That type of debate tactic doesn't working because it is simply assuming the conclusion you want to reach, rather than supporting it with valid evidence. 

You basically have two primary options to rebut Carmack's claims with actual evidence:

(1) One option would be to find a sufficient number of examples from other 19th-century authors to argue that this specific feature actually was being used regularly by other writers of the day (and therefore to argue that Smith's usage isn't statistically unique or impressive).

(2) The other option would be to find examples of archaic usage in Smith's writings that are indisputably secular and non-revelatory in nature. For instance, let's imagine that scholars were to discover a lengthy work of fiction written by Smith's own hand in 1828. And let's say that he included a preface to the work that explains it has nothing to do with his revelations and that he is simply trying his hand as a novelist. Imagine, however, if this fictional novel were full of the very same types of archaisms that Skousen/Carmack believe are so special as seen in the Book of Mormon and some D&C revelations. That novel would function as a remarkable control text, demonstrating what type of archaic language patterns Smith was naturally capable of. Once it is proven that he could naturally produce those features, then there would be no need for Skousen/Carmack to appeal to a supernatural revelation. 

You could also make other non-evidence based arguments, such as simply assuming all of the archaic features of the Book of Mormon were in Smith's environment but reflected a spoken rather than written dialect. Or you could assume that Smith simply got lucky and that he produced an idiolectic form of speech that just so happened to match up with all of these archaic forms by accident. Or you could assume that all of these forms of speech were in Smith's environment but just never made it into the textual record. Or you could assume some combination of these theories. But then, of course, you would need to support these assumption-based theories with a robust set of underlying data in contexts comparable to the Book of Mormon. 

[Kevin Christensen]

On 5/1/2026 at 1:01 PM, the narrator said:

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.

Notice the problem with the phrase "Tolkien's, Lewis's and others [paracosms] are unique..."   Unusual, maybe.   Published fantasy authors may be relatively unusual in the general population, but given large populations, we have lots of them.  Scott Card imagined the original "Ender's Game" novelette while daydreaming on a grass lawn at BYU.  He's still putting out lengthy novels.  

I also see a problem with treating the Book of Mormon as an adolescent creation, let alone something that can be characterized and explained as something typical, ordinary, no big deal.  There is a difference between imagining an appealing fantasy world and gaining a large fan following.  The "lig" root in religion" shares meaning with ligaments, which bind us together.  The Book of Mormon is just a bit of fun, but something adherents accept as binding and as describing reality. 

I consider Robert Rees's essays on Joseph Smith compared to other notable writers of the American Renaissance.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V35N03_91.pd

A follow up sequel.

https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/joseph-smith-the-book-of-mormon-and-the-american-renaissance-an-update

He concludes this essay with this:

Quote

Each of the writers of each of the masterpieces under consideration here, with the exception of Joseph Smith, had a long gestation period during which he “tried out” his ideas, metaphors, allusions, coloring (tone), points of view, personae, and rhetorical styles before tackling a larger, more complex, and more sophisticated form, whether as a collection of poems and essays (Emerson), an extended personal narrative (Thoreau), a novel (Hawthorne and Melville) or a major poem (Whitman). There are no parallel try works for Joseph Smith, nor any evidence of his apprenticeship as a writer. In fact, all evidence points in the opposite direction. Unless and until some hitherto undiscovered record demonstrating that Joseph Smith did in fact leave evidence of the reading, thinking, writing, and imaginative expression — the try works — required to write a book like the Book of Mormon, we are left with the choice of accepting his explanation of the book’s origin or making the case for some alternative explanation, which to my mind no one has done satisfactorily. Such a case would seem to require consideration of the main argument of this paper, i.e., examining the biographical and authorial history of any proposed author or authors in relation to what we understand of the compositional process required to produce a book like the Book of Mormon.

Then we have the kind of narrative techniques used in the Book of Mormon, the use of type scenes and allusions, whose importance and significance were first pointed out for modern readers by Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative in 1981.   Alan Goff has written many important essays showing the sophistication demonstrated in the Book of Mormon, drawing on Alter.  And he also reviewed Mark Thomas's Digging in Cumorah, which approached the Book as a 19th Century fiction, while at the same time drawing on Alter's work, published 151 years late to be of use to Joseph Smith.  And more recently, Matthew Bowen has been exploring "onomastic" word play in the Book of Mormon, which complicates things further for an adolescent author.  And this on top of the kinds of Hebrew techniques Welch and Parry and others have done, while underneath all of that managing to give different authors different word prints, and drawing on the Early Modern English patterns that champsatch and Ryan have been observing.

Other conspicuous problems emerge in things like "Survivor Witness and the Book of Mormon" by Thomasson and Hawkins:

https://scripturecentral.org/archive/presentations/report/i-only-am-escaped-alone-tell-thee-survivor-witnesses-book-mormon

Where did Joseph Smith learn the survivor witness pattern?  And learn hypnosis, metal work, engraving, and while also chopping down 5000 trees, split rails for fences, uproot stumps, plant and harvest crops, making maple syrup, , etc.dig wells, working with family and neighbors to pay the bills necessary to keep their property?  Leisure for either elaborate daydreaming and time and money for delving into esoteric books

And where did he learn the theories of warfare that Nibley has compared to his personal experience in WWII, the theories of Clauswitz, and that Daniel Peterson compared to modern theorists like Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung, and others.

And how about NDE experience patterns, as well as how experience changes the survivors over time?  I wrote about that decades ago.

And if Joseph Smith is drawing on the Mound Builder mythos, and books like View of the Hebrews, why contradict its basic premises far more often than it parallels them?  (See Welch's 1984 essay on that.) And why do subsequent editions of MIchael Coes' "The Maya" have more and more in common with the Book of Mormon, rather than less and less.  Why did not the LiDAR surveys undercut the Book of Mormon picture? 

There are some readers to dismiss the Book of Mormon as simple, but that is because they do not engage the more sophisticated readers of the text.  Ann Taves, for instance, mentions only bulk and chiasmus as potential, but not serious obstacles.   It is the magicians trick of misdirection.  Over many years of engaging with the critics, I find that the Book of Mormon gets far more difficult to explain than any of them come close to acknowledging.  One of the few who bothered to read the defenders work (John Charles Duffy) admits that he dismisses it all a priori, and explains it all away via a pair of metaphors, rather than detailed engagement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

 

[Ryan Dahle]

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

Actually, that isn't really necessary, as long as the EModE data is strong enough to render Smith's production of the text as implausible. The same is true in many legal contexts. If you have lots of hard data pointing toward a specific individual committing a crime, proving motivation often becomes a secondary matter. The problem is exacerbated, though, in this religious context where you are essentially attempting to mind-read God and then conclude that there is no plausible reason for him to translate a text in a certain way, as if you are in a good position to establish what is or isn't plausible about his motivations and designs in that type of unprecedented context. I'm much more confident in the hard linguistic data ruling out Smith's likely authorship than I am in the ability of humans to rule out God's involvement, based on untestable intuitions about his divine motivations and purposes. 

[Ryan Dahle]

3 hours ago, the narrator said:

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.

Well, for one thing, I already think it is exceedingly unlikely that Smith produced the text. You see, that is a huge part of the problem. I don't think you take the data seriously. And our little discussion earlier made that pretty clear to me. You seemed to misunderstand the specific nature of what Carmack was claiming and then pointed to invalid texts (D&C revelations) to argue for what Smith could naturally produce. I'm guessing that is pretty much par for the course in how you are dealing with Carmack's data.

You seem to think everything was either in Smith's environment, or that he was finding it in old texts, or that he was just making up his own dialect and got lucky a lot or whatever. I find those types of suppositions extraordinarily implausible, whether in isolation or in conjunction with one another. If you can disabuse me of that conclusion, using actual linguistic evidence rather than mere conjecture, and showing me that you understand and are responsibly engaging with Carmack's research, I would probably be more inclined to change or modify my view. 

Edited May 4 by Ryan Dahle

[the narrator]

13 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Notice the problem with the phrase "Tolkien's, Lewis's and others [paracosms] are unique..."   Unusual, maybe. 

Pointless quibbling. My point is that while the creation of paracosms is a very common adolescent experience. Continuing those paracosms past adolescence is quite rare.

 

15 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Published fantasy authors may be relatively unusual in the general population, but given large populations, we have lots of them.  Scott Card imagined the original "Ender's Game" novelette while daydreaming on a grass lawn at BYU.  He's still putting out lengthy novels.

Books are not paracosms. A paracosm is the world in which stories are told, and they exist in the mind of their creator outside of any book and regardless if any fiction is created within them. Just because a book takes place in an fictional world or time, it does not mean the author had a paracosm in which it takes place.

22 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I also see a problem with treating the Book of Mormon as an adolescent creation, let alone something that can be characterized and explained as something typical, ordinary, no big deal.  There is a difference between imagining an appealing fantasy world and gaining a large fan following.  The "lig" root in religion" shares meaning with ligaments, which bind us together.  The Book of Mormon is just a bit of fun, but something adherents accept as binding and as describing reality. 

Again, the Book of Mormon is not a paracosm, nor was it an adolescent creation. Joseph was 22 when he began. The paracosm of the Book of Mormon was the world itself: "their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their <mode of> warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them."

How the Book of Mormon was presented and received is irrelevant to whether or not it came out of a paracosm.

28 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I consider Robert Rees's essays on Joseph Smith compared to other notable writers of the American Renaissance.

Bob is a friend of mine, and I strongly disagree with him. He's completely wrong comparing the Book of Mormon to other written fictions. The oral storytelling of the Book of Mormon is a completely different form of creative storytelling than writing a book.

I'm not going to bother responding to dump of apologetic talking points, as they are irrelevant to whether or not the Nephite world and history underlying the Book of Mormon constitutes a paracosm. I also suggest you learning more about paracosms before dismissing my claim.

32 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

There are some readers to dismiss the Book of Mormon as simple, but that is because they do not engage the more sophisticated readers of the text.

I hardly think the Book of Mormon is simple. 

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The idea of a "control text" isn't a sophisticated linguistic term (and I'm not a trained linguist). It is a more basic principle of logic that applies to many different domains.

My background and training is in philosophy. A "control text" is not a basic principle of logic.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

When testing certain hypotheses in science, we often need to establish controls or control groups

Linguistics is not a hard science.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

it would obviously be very helpful to identify any texts that Smith produced which certainly reflect his own native linguistic patterns and habits.

Here, you are already off. You seem to imply that Joseph (or anybody) has a single way of speaking. This is not at all the case. When I am praying, speaking in a sacrament meeting talk, school presentation, to my parents, with my kids, and with my friends, I will be speaking very differently--especially if I am trying to reach a particular audience. As you put it earlier, the English translator/speaker of the Book of Mormon likely utilized "a blend of select archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative." Far from wanting a "control text" as you call it, a thesis that recognized the mix of supposed EModE-looking phrases and 19th century language and ideas (and quotes from sermons from that period) might propose that if Joseph was the speaker of the Book of Mormon we would expect to find some similar constructions and mixes of supposed EModE-looking phrases and 19th century language and ideas in other religious texts he spoke to also "make [them] sound older and more authoritative."

Now, as I said before, if those revelations completely lacked similar phrases, then that would add weight to the claim that the Book of Mormon and Joseph's revelations were not created by the same person.

However, if similarities exist, then it adds weigh to the claim that the Book of Mormon and Joseph's revelations shared a creator (whether that be Joseph or God or some angel). From there, competing theses of why such a mix of supposed EModE and later language should both exist in these texts need to be proposed and compared to determine which makes more sense. Davis does precisely that with the Book of Mormon texts, and JSPP editors like Grant Underwood has done the same for Joseph's revelations. I have yet to see any sort of methodological reasoning for why God would have done the same outside of simple aphorisms and slogans.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

but then you can show the same feature was indeed produced by Smith in a secular context that has nothing to do with Smith's revelatory gift or calling

Again, you are now tossing out the very places where we would expect to find them.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In other words, you were treating the D&C revelations as established control texts that certainly reflect Smith's native linguistic habits

No. I am pointing to them as religious texts wherein Joseph was more likely to utilize the same spiritual linguistic registers and where we are most likely to see similar phrasing as a result of trying to "make [them] sound older and more authoritative."

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

rather than as revelatory documents that might reasonably reflect Smith's revelatory gifts

Another strawman. I am seeing them in the same way that Grant Underwood has argued: "A richer, more nuanced view, one that see Joseph as more than a mere human fax machine through whom God communicated finished revelation texts composed in heaven. Joseph had a role to play in the revelatory process. His associate Oliver Cowdery, after all, had earlier been chided for assuming the process required no effort, for supposing that God would simply "give" him the words without any thought on his part (D&C 9:7–8)." For Underwood, the words weren't given to Joseph; instead, Joseph put the inspiration that he received into his own words. It's not a black-and-white, all-or-nothing process, and I'm sure it's the same thing you do when performing a blessing.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

. In the context of the debate, that is a logically invalid move. It would be like taking an example of that archaic feature from the Book of Mormon itself, then arbitrarily assuming Smith is the one who produced it rather than a divine entity, and then using that example to argue that the rest of the instances of this textual feature in the Book of Mormon were also plausibly produced by Smith.

Nope. See above. I don't know how many times I could explain this to you before you stop with the strawmen.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You basically have two primary options to rebut Carmack's claims with actual evidence:

(1) One option would be to find a sufficient number of examples from other 19th-century authors to argue that this specific feature actually was being used regularly by other writers of the day (and therefore to argue that Smith's usage isn't statistically unique or impressive).

Nope. Again, you really need to read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments. Nobody is claiming that it was widely present and regularly in use by others. The argument is that the particulars of the Book of Mormon are somewhat unique to Joseph's idiolect and spiritual registers when constructing religious texts to "make [them] sound older and more authoritative."

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

2) The other option would be to find examples of archaic usage in Smith's writings that are indisputably secular and non-revelatory in nature. For instance, let's imagine that scholars were to discover a lengthy work of fiction written by Smith's own hand in 1828. And let's say that he included a preface to the work that explains it has nothing to do with his revelations and that he is simply trying his hand as a novelist. Imagine, however, if this fictional novel were full of the very same types of archaisms that Skousen/Carmack believe are so special as seen in the Book of Mormon and some D&C revelations. That novel would function as a remarkable control text, demonstrating what type of archaic language patterns Smith was naturally capable of. Once it is proven that he could naturally produce those features, then there would be no need for Skousen/Carmack to appeal to a supernatural revelation. 

Again, you are continuing to complete misunderstand things. The language of the Book of Mormon is specific to a religious text delivered by speaking not writing. Those two aspects are central, and we shouldn't expect to see the same language in secular written texts. Think really hard for a moment: compare the language you use when praying and the language you use when writing a letter to the editor to complain about the city not fixing potholes. Would you really expect the language in both to be the same? No, you would not.

You should read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

For instance, let's imagine that scholars were to discover a lengthy work of fiction written by Smith's own hand in 1828. And let's say that he included a preface to the work that explains it has nothing to do with his revelations and that he is simply trying his hand as a novelist. Imagine, however, if this fictional novel were full of the very same types of archaisms that Skousen/Carmack believe are so special as seen in the Book of Mormon and some D&C revelations.

So try really hard to think. How might you expect the language of a secular novel written by Joseph's own hand to different from an ancient authoritative religious history that is orally presented? Would they differ? How so? Might the latter include archaic-sounding language to "make it sound older and more authoritative" while the former did not because it was a secular novel?

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

such as simply assuming all of the archaic features of the Book of Mormon were in Smith's environment but reflected a spoken rather than written dialect.

Again, this is a strawman. Further, calling them "archaic features" is making an assumption. As far as the text is concerned, they are "archaic-seeming feature."

 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Or you could assume that Smith simply got lucky and that he produced an idiolectic form of speech that just so happened to match up with all of these archaic forms by accident.

Again, strawman.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Or you could assume that all of these forms of speech were in Smith's environment but just never made it into the textual record.

strawman. Nobody i s claiming they were all in his environment. Some were, some weren't.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Or you could assume some combination of these theories. But then, of course, you would need to support these assumption-based theories with a robust set of underlying data in contexts comparable to the Book of Mormon. 

Or, you could do option 4, which is what Davis has done. You can show how these archaic-seeming forms can arise from a combination of copying/mimicking/paraphrasing the KJV, poor grammar, mixing scriptural passages, local dialect, extemporaneous speaking, etc.

Seriously, read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments.

Edited May 5 by the narrator

[the narrator]

59 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Well, for one thing, I already think it is exceedingly unlikely that Smith produced the text. You see, that is a huge part of the problem. I don't think you take the data seriously. And our little discussion earlier made that pretty clear to me. You seemed to misunderstand the specific nature of what Carmack was claiming and then pointed to invalid texts (D&C revelations) to argue for what Smith could naturally produce. I'm guessing that is pretty much par for the course in how you are dealing with Carmack's data.

I understand things quite well. The problem is that Carmack (and you) want to point to things that look like EModE and then declare "God!" without asking (1) what else might result in these phrases, and (2) why would God do that? This is the same problem that BofM apologetics, Christian apologetics, creationist apologetics, etc routinely fall into. You point to something you think can't be explained and then declare it as something that can only be explained by the divine. Then, when an explanation is offered you either plug your ears or shift the goal posts and repeat.

All Carmack has done is identified phrases that appear archaic and share archaic structures. That's it. Responsible scholarship should ask if there are good explanations for why they might be there. Davis has done that. You and Carmack have not.

Seriously, read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments.

[Ryan Dahle]

On 5/1/2026 at 9:24 AM, 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.

So, after all you have said, maybe you can just clearly re-explain how the statement you made above clearly rebuts or counteracts Carmack's claim. I don't see how it affects or undermines his claim at all, based on your endless redirects towards the thesis propounded by Davis. 

(P.S., your persistent insistence that I read Davis isn't making me any more or less inclined to do so. And I haven't said one way or another, whether I would or wouldn't. But I just want you to know that I saw your comment. You don't have to keep repeating it ad nauseum. Seriously, you should stop pestering me about it. Seriously. No, really, seriously. ... And one more time, just for effect, seriously). 

Edited May 5 by Ryan Dahle

[champatsch]

In Davis's recent Dialogue article, in which he argues that Joseph Smith was influenced by John Bunyan's English usage, Davis provides two examples from Bunyan's Holy War (1682) for but meaning 'unless, except' in Jacob 7:19:

“the walls . . . could never be opened nor forced but by the will and leave of those within” (9);
“nor can they by any means be won but by their own consent” (12).

A third example from Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666) is provided in a footnote:

“the tempter came in with this delusion, That there was no way for me to know I had faith, but by trying to work some miracle.”

Jacob 7:19: "And because that I have thus lied unto God, I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful but I confess unto God."

In the Bunyan examples, but precedes a prepositional phrase (OED def. I.1.b). In jb0719, but precedes a clause, and it might precede a subordinate clause that introduces a condition (OED def. II.8.a). This important syntactic and semantic difference does not appear to have been understood by Davis, his colleagues, his reviewers, or his editors. In a later revision of Skousen's write-up (which Davis read), Skousen noted that but followed by a PP was not the Book of Mormon usage.

In looking at the current OED definition structure, we can see that the OED differentiates between the conjunction but being used in (i) a simple sentence, (ii) a complex sentence, or (iii) a compound sentence. The OED considers the above Bunyan examples to have but occurring in simple sentences. The but of jb0719 might be a subordinating conjunction introducing a condition in a complex sentence. We are most familiar with but functioning as a coordinating adversative conjunction in compound sentences. In many part of speech tagging systems, the latter is marked as CCB, for conjunction coordinating but, while an archaic subordinating use could be marked as CS, for conjunction subordinating. According to the OED, this use of but died out in the 1500s (latest example 1556).

Monte Shelley proposed that but in jb0719 might be a nonbiblical archaism 11 years ago (June 2015). The typical interpretation of jb0719 has been but as part of a compound sentence structure. Skousen does not rule that out entirely, but considers the atypical interpretation to be favored contextually. Skousen wrote up the subordinate, conditional reading for the text-critical publication NOL (2016), on pages 228–29. This is how the relevant part of the NOL entry begins (the entry discusses both but if in mh0319 and but in jb0719):

Quote

There is also the possibility that the Book of Mormon text has an instance of the single conjunctive but that takes the meaning ‘unless’. In this case, there is no if. In the current text, this but has always been interpreted as an instance of the normal conjunctive but, and the punctuation in the printed editions has guaranteed this interpretation:

This is just one example of the important errors in Davis's paper, which can confound almost anyone without a background in linguistic analysis.

Soon I might write up a brief description of the error of analysis Davis made in relation to about 40 complex sentences in the Book of Mormon that have the syntactic structure "if|when|because|after|as S and S." His mis-analysis also probably confuses nearly everyone who reads his paper, since almost no one is consciously aware of syntactic structure.

Edited May 5 by champatsch

[the narrator]

6 hours ago, champatsch said:

In Davis's recent Dialogue article, in which he argues that Joseph Smith was influenced by John Bunyan's English usage, Davis provides two examples from Bunyan's Holy War (1682) for but meaning 'unless, except' in Jacob 7:19:

“the walls . . . could never be opened nor forced but by the will and leave of those within” (9);
“nor can they by any means be won but by their own consent” (12).

A third example from Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666) is provided in a footnote:

“the tempter came in with this delusion, That there was no way for me to know I had faith, but by trying to work some miracle.”

Jacob 7:19: "And because that I have thus lied unto God, I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful but I confess unto God."

Well, I'm no linguist, but I would just say that you and Davis are simply both reading Jacob 7:19 wrong. It's not being used as "unless, except." It's being used a conjunction where his final confession stands against the list of things he had been doing.

Quote

19. And he said: I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God; for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him. And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful; but I confess unto God.

And then he dies.

Contrary to your supposed "more reasonable interpretation," this seems the clear interpretation based on the description of his speech that precedes it:

Quote

17. And it came to pass that on the morrow the multitude were gathered together; and he spake plainly unto them and denied the things which he had taught them, and confessed the Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministering of angels.

Your reading has Sherem implicitly dying without such a confession: "I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful unless I confess unto God." However, the text is not only clear that he had confessed, but that his fear is that he committed the unpardonable sin, and so he is scared that he will still nevertheless suffer despite his confession: "I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God. . . .  And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful."

So, here is just an example of where you are just wrong with what you think you are identifying.

For this reason I prefer Brant Gardner's rendering, which I think better captures what is being related (though I would put "and they truly testify of him" in parentheses):

Quote

And he saith: "I fear lest I have committed the unpardonable sin. For I have lied unto God. For I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures. And they truly testify of him. And because I have thus lied unto God, I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful. But I confess unto God."

 

6 hours ago, champatsch said:

This important syntactic and semantic difference does not appear to have been understood by Davis, his colleagues, his reviewers, or his editors.

Bwahahahahahaha. These kinds of lines from you are hilarious. Who are these "his colleagues"? What role did they play in his paper? How do you know of them?

Edited May 5 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

15 hours ago, the narrator said:

Seriously, read Davis's article so that you can better understand just how much you are misunderstanding the arguments.

So, I finally just finished reading Davis's article, and it was remarkably unimpressive. Based on your almost obsessive insistence that I read it, I assumed it was going to provide a substantial and compelling counter-explanation, a comprehensive rebuttal to the EModE data and the underlying linguistic principles that point towards a divinely-revealed-words hypothesis. Let's just say that I was thoroughly underwhelmed by his analysis and claims. Almost every point he made was erroneous, irrelevant, or implausible. It failed to account for the vast majority of the EModE data. It made errors in understanding and articulating the EModE data. And it provided convoluted explanations when attempting to account for the EModE data that it did address. And so forth. 

The fact that you found this to be such a big deal is rather fascinating. This was all hype and no substance. When I read these types of attempts to engage with the EModE research carried out by Skousen/Carmack, it actually just strengthen my confidence that their theory is the more compelling one. It isn't being responsibly engaged, and that is telling to me.

At the very least, you can stop hounding me about this matter. But it also makes me wonder, conversely, how well YOU have actually read the research by Skousen/Carmack? I think I have read every single one of Stan's papers and I have read volumes 3-4 (among others) of their History of the Text of the Book of Mormon (as well as reading lots of Skousen's work and watching their presentations and so forth). Can you honestly say you have paid close attention to their collective research on this topic? Or are you just engaging it through intermediaries like Davis? My experience over the years is that those who try to take down their research are almost never qualified to do so and invariably misunderstand the arguments and data that they are attempting to rebut. Davis's attempt is just par for the course. 

Edited May 5 by Ryan Dahle

[the narrator]

13 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So, after all you have said, maybe you can just clearly re-explain how the statement you made above clearly rebuts or counteracts Carmack's claim. I don't see how it affects or undermines his claim at all, based on your endless redirects towards the thesis propounded by Davis. 

Here is the passage in Alma 55:19:

"for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice"

Here it is in other religious speaking by Joseph Smith:

"for this cause that men might be made partakers of the glories" (D&C 133:57)

"for this cause that thy Days may be prolounged" (D&C 5:33)

 

However, while Carmack only counts "seven instances" in the Book of Mormon, there are several more he missed because of a clause (or whatever the phrases are called, italicized here) breaking up the "for this cause . . . that":

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works. (3 Ne. 27:15)

"for this cause have I suffered that ye should be preserved" (Mosiah 7:11)

"for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph" (2 Ne. 25:21)

"for this cause that the Gentiles, if they will not harden their hearts, that they may repent and come unto me and be baptized in my name and know of the true points of my doctrine, that they may be numbered among my people" (3 Ne. 21:6; not sure if this is counted among Carmack's seven)

"for this cause I write unto you, that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Morm. 3:20)

"for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter." (2 Ne. 31:17)

"for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world"

 

and taking these into account, we find even more examples in Joseph's revelations and other contemporary LDS texts:

"for this cause I have sent you that you might be obedient" (D&C 58:6)

"for this cause I gave unto you a commandment that you should call your solemn assemblies assembly" (D&C 95:7)

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

"for this cause I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise, that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was." (D&C 124:38)

"for this cause they are not worthy to receive them yet god has suffered it not for your sins but that he might preprare you for a grateer [greater] work that you might be prepared for the endowment from on high" (letter to church leaders)

"For this cause, the inteligent saint earnestly desires the gathering of the elect; to be completed; that the scene of wretchedness may ce[a]se in the world" (letter to Don Carlos Smith from Sidney Rigdon)

"for this cause I gave unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio" (Letter from Phelps, likely paraphrasing D&C 38:32)

"for this cause have I spoken these things & again I say unto you that my servant Isaac may not be tempted above that which he is able to bear" (D&C 64:19-20)

"for this cause thou shalt take thy Journey with my servents Joseph & Sidney [Rigdon] that thou mayest be planted in the land of thine inheritance" (D&C 55:5)

"for this cause these commandments were given; they were commanded to be kept from the world in the day that they were given, but now are to go forth unto all flesh—And this according to the mind and will of the Lord, who ruleth over all flesh. And unto him that repenteth and sanctifieth himself before the Lord shall be given eternal life. And upon them that hearken not to the voice of the Lord shall be fulfilled that which was written by the prophet Moses, that they should be cut off from among the people. (D&C 133:63-64; this long clause is clearer in revelations when it isn't split between verses)

"for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned" (letter to editor in Times and Seasons)

 

However, it should be noted that pretty much all of the "For this cause" lines in the Book of Mormon and Joseph writings and others' writings from the time  use "cause" in the sense of "purpose." The difference between using "that" and not including the term depends on if the passage is referring to a desired future outcome "that they might" instead of a present, past, or necessary condition or state.

So, yeah, "for this cause  . . . that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>" is pretty common in Joseph's religious writings, as we would expect if he was also using it in the Book of Mormon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Almost every point he made was erroneous, irrelevant, or implausible.

Please provide examples and explanations.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Can you honestly say you have paid close attention to their collective research on this topic?

I have read much, have seen them present, etc., but I have not kept up entirely with their ever-shifting goalposts. However, that is largely because each iteration of their work just seems to be either another iterations of the same problems or the said-shifting of goalposts--such as Carmack's now turn to cheap statistics that have no real relevance.

[Ryan Dahle]

54 minutes ago, the narrator said:

However, while Carmack only counts "seven instances" in the Book of Mormon, there are several more he missed because of a clause (or whatever the phrases are called, italicized here) breaking up the "for this cause . . . that": 

...

and taking these into account, we find even more examples in Joseph's revelations and other contemporary LDS texts:

I'm sorry, but this seems to be a large part of the problem. You don't seem to understand the significance of the grammatical distinction that Carmack is making. The additional examples that you are saying are relevant (both in the Book of Mormon and in Smith's other writings) are not what Carmack is talking about. This is the main problem, over and over and over. Those without linguistic competence find non-analogous counter examples and simply assume the differences don't matter that much. But they do. You can't point to examples with intervening phrases and clauses and then argue that subsequent clauses beginning with "that" are functioning in the same manner. 

The simple phrase "for this cause" with "cause" holding the archaic meaning of "purpose" is not in itself that significant. Yes, it is archaic, but it is also fairly frequent in the Bible, especially the New Testament, and was fairly widely used in 19th-century texts. So there is nothing particularly remarkable about Smith using this phrase on its own. It is the full phrase that Carmack identified that is significant. For a refresher, here is the relevant paragraph from his article: 

Quote

English from the end of the sixteenth century ought to be of interest [Page 235]to readers of the Book of Mormon since the text has a substantial amount of syntactic usage that was most prevalent in the history of the language around this time. 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,³⁶ 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.³⁷ 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.

I think what happened is that you latched onto the underlined phrase in the paragraph ("The noun cause conveys and archaic meaning of purpose in these") and assumed that this was the most significant aspect of the claim. Instead, I think Carmack was simply clarifying the archaic nature of the verb, as used in the complete phrase. But, to be clear, it is the complete phrase that was significant, and not simply the archaic form of the verb. So if you want to push back against his claim, you have to find truly analogous instances to this peculiar usage. I don't actually know if or to what frequency it shows up in later periods. But the implication from Carmack's paragraph is that it is either rare or absent from later periods, but that it shows up in similar concentrations in Early Modern texts. Maybe @champatsch can clarify that point. 

In any case, can you find truly analogous examples of 19th-century usage of this phrasal structure outside of Smith's own revelations? 
 

Edited May 5 by Ryan Dahle

[webbles]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

Here is the passage in Alma 55:19:

"for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice"

Here it is in other religious speaking by Joseph Smith:

"for this cause that men might be made partakers of the glories" (D&C 133:57)

"for this cause that thy Days may be prolounged" (D&C 5:33)

 

However, while Carmack only counts "seven instances" in the Book of Mormon, there are several more he missed because of a clause (or whatever the phrases are called, italicized here) breaking up the "for this cause . . . that":

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works. (3 Ne. 27:15)

"for this cause have I suffered that ye should be preserved" (Mosiah 7:11)

"for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph" (2 Ne. 25:21)

"for this cause that the Gentiles, if they will not harden their hearts, that they may repent and come unto me and be baptized in my name and know of the true points of my doctrine, that they may be numbered among my people" (3 Ne. 21:6; not sure if this is counted among Carmack's seven)

"for this cause I write unto you, that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Morm. 3:20)

"for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter." (2 Ne. 31:17)

"for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world"

 

and taking these into account, we find even more examples in Joseph's revelations and other contemporary LDS texts:

"for this cause I have sent you that you might be obedient" (D&C 58:6)

"for this cause I gave unto you a commandment that you should call your solemn assemblies assembly" (D&C 95:7)

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

"for this cause I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise, that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was." (D&C 124:38)

"for this cause they are not worthy to receive them yet god has suffered it not for your sins but that he might preprare you for a grateer [greater] work that you might be prepared for the endowment from on high" (letter to church leaders)

"For this cause, the inteligent saint earnestly desires the gathering of the elect; to be completed; that the scene of wretchedness may ce[a]se in the world" (letter to Don Carlos Smith from Sidney Rigdon)

"for this cause I gave unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio" (Letter from Phelps, likely paraphrasing D&C 38:32)

"for this cause have I spoken these things & again I say unto you that my servant Isaac may not be tempted above that which he is able to bear" (D&C 64:19-20)

"for this cause thou shalt take thy Journey with my servents Joseph & Sidney [Rigdon] that thou mayest be planted in the land of thine inheritance" (D&C 55:5)

"for this cause these commandments were given; they were commanded to be kept from the world in the day that they were given, but now are to go forth unto all flesh—And this according to the mind and will of the Lord, who ruleth over all flesh. And unto him that repenteth and sanctifieth himself before the Lord shall be given eternal life. And upon them that hearken not to the voice of the Lord shall be fulfilled that which was written by the prophet Moses, that they should be cut off from among the people. (D&C 133:63-64; this long clause is clearer in revelations when it isn't split between verses)

"for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned" (letter to editor in Times and Seasons)

 

However, it should be noted that pretty much all of the "For this cause" lines in the Book of Mormon and Joseph writings and others' writings from the time  use "cause" in the sense of "purpose." The difference between using "that" and not including the term depends on if the passage is referring to a desired future outcome "that they might" instead of a present, past, or necessary condition or state.

So, yeah, "for this cause  . . . that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>" is pretty common in Joseph's religious writings, as we would expect if he was also using it in the Book of Mormon.

I think the addition of the clause in between "for this cause" and "that" is a completely different linguistic structure.  The usage of just "for this cause that X may/might" is the archaic phrase.  Adding a clause in between the two is not archaic.  So, I guess you could argue that Joseph, in 7 instances, just dropped the inner clause to make it sound more archaic.  Or that it is evidence that it was archaic from the start.

[the narrator]

8 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm sorry, but this seems to be a large part of the problem. You don't seem to understand the significance of the grammatical distinction that Carmack is making.

No, you don't seem to understand that Carmack is simply pointing out syntax that resembles EModE. The problem is that you don't understand that the other extended examples I shared have the same syntactical structure.

11 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The additional examples that you are saying are relevant (both in the Book of Mormon and in Smith's other writings) are not what Carmack is talking about.

They are precisely what Carmack is talking about.

12 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Those without linguistic competence find non-analogous counter examples and simply assume the differences don't matter that much.

Ryan, by your own admission you are without linguistic competence.

13 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The simple phrase "for this cause" with "cause" holding the archaic meaning of "purpose" is not in itself that significant.

Which is why I didn't point to any phrases that just had those three words. Did you even look at the examples? For heaven's sake, I even bolded the relevant words to make it easy to see.

14 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think what happened is that you latched onto the underlined phrase in the paragraph ("The noun cause conveys and archaic meaning of purpose in these") and assumed that this was the most significant aspect of the claim.

Nope, I did not. While "cause" as "purpose" might be the most relevant aspect, I specifically made sure that every single example I offered followed the structure Carmack provides

16 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But, to be clear, it is the complete phrase that was significant, and not simply the archaic form of the verb.

Which is precisely why I included the complete phrase for each.

16 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So if you want to push back against his claim, you have to find truly analogous instances to this peculiar usage.

And that is what I did. Allow me to make it as simple as possible for you. I'll color code everything to make it even easier:

Here is the the structure that Carmack provides:

for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>

Here it is in Alma 55:19

"for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice" 

Here it is in D&C 133:57:

"for this cause that men might be made partakers of the glories"

Here it is in D&C 5:33:

"for this cause that thy Days may be prolounged"

However, as I note, Carmack misses several passages that contain the same structure because of a clause that regularly gets inserted between for this cause and that that elaborates on the thing being done to achieve the purpose. As Brant Gardner has shown, these sorts of clauses occur all throughout the Book of Mormon and are very common in oral speaking as the speaker provides more information, sometimes interrupting a thought and returning to.

Thus the extended structure featuring the clause looks like:

for this cause [clause explaining thing that was done] that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase> 

Here are the relevant passages from the Book of Mormon, color coded just for you:

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works. (3 Ne. 27:15)

"for this cause have I suffered that ye should be preserved" (Mosiah 7:11)

"for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that  these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph" (2 Ne. 25:21)

"for this cause that the Gentiles, if they will not harden their hearts, that they may repent and come unto me and be baptized in my name and know of the true points of my doctrine, that they may be numbered among my people" (3 Ne. 21:6; note here that Joseph begins "for the cause that the Gentiles... but then interrupts his speaking to add the condition, and then picks back up by repeating "that they")

"for this cause I write unto you, that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Morm. 3:20; here, everything after the initial "ye may" could be read as an extended infinite phrase)

"for this cause have they been shown unto me, that  ye might know the gate by which ye should enter." (2 Ne. 31:17)

"for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world"

And here are the relevant passages from Joseph's writing and other contemporaneous Mormon writings, color coded just for you:

"for this cause I have sent you that you might be obedient" (D&C 58:6)

"for this cause I gave unto you a commandment that you should call your solemn assemblies assembly" (D&C 95:7)

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

"for this cause I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise, that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was." (D&C 124:38)

"for this cause they are not worthy to receive them yet god has suffered it not for your sins but that he might preprare you for a grateer [greater] work that  you might be prepared for the endowment from on high" (letter to church leaders)

"for this cause, the inteligent saint earnestly desires the gathering of the elect; to be completed; that the scene of wretchedness may ce[a]se in the world" (letter to Don Carlos Smith from Sidney Rigdon)

"for this cause I gave unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio" (Letter from Phelps, likely paraphrasing D&C 38:32)

"for this cause have I spoken these things & again I say unto you that my servant Isaac may not be tempted above that which he is able to bear" (D&C 64:19-20)

"for this cause thou shalt take thy Journey with my servents Joseph & Sidney [Rigdon] that thou mayest be planted in the land of thine inheritance" (D&C 55:5)

"for this cause these commandments were given; they were commanded to be kept from the world in the day that they were given, but now are to go forth unto all flesh—And this according to the mind and will of the Lord, who ruleth over all flesh. And unto him that repenteth and sanctifieth himself before the Lord shall be given eternal life. And upon them that hearken not to the voice of the Lord shall be fulfilled that which was written by the prophet Moses, that they should be cut off from among the people. (D&C 133:63-64; this long clause is clearer in revelations when it isn't split between verses)

"for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that  they may believe a lie and be damned" (letter to editor in Times and Seasons)

 

Ryan, every single one of these contains every part of the " for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase> " structure.

[the narrator]

2 hours ago, webbles said:

I think the addition of the clause in between "for this cause" and "that" is a completely different linguistic structure.

You think wrong. The extended passages simply include more information to explain the thing done. The Book of Mormon is filled with mid-passage explanations. It's very common in oral speaking.

2 hours ago, webbles said:

The usage of just "for this cause that X may/might" is the archaic phrase.

The really only archaic usage is the use of "cause" instead of other words like "reason" or "purpose." This is why "for this cause" is rare in modern publications and usually only appears in religious texts when they do (since the phrase is associated with biblical passages). On the other hand, "for this reason" and "for this purpose" are quite common today. As I note above the "might/may (not) X <infinitive.phrase>" phrase is only used when speaking of a desired but not necessary outcome.

To see what I mean, just look at a Google Book search between 1480 and 1665 for "for this cause" so you can see how those three words are the primary archaic feature. Carmack's demand that it be the larger structure is part of his every-shifting goalposts, giving the impression to people who don't know better that only that larger structure archaic. 

2 hours ago, webbles said:

Adding a clause in between the two is not archaic. 

It's still "archaic" (but not really archaic since it's 19th century) either way. It's simply adding an explanatory cause, as the speaker of the Book of Mormon is constantly doing. It's how oral speakers update or correct a text without a word processor.

And if you look at the entries of the Google Books search above for books written in EModE, you will find numerous examples that have additional explanatory information between the "cause" and "that", for example:

"For this cause he puts them in good hope and confirmes them in this confidence to wit That they should obteine remiffion of their finnes and so be delivered out of captiuitie notwithstanding their vn worthines" (here)

and

"for this cause that he rather chose to work with his own hands for his Livelihood than to be maintained by them as he might justly have demanded that he might make himself an Example of Diligence for them to follow" (here) 

and

"For this cause was I sent , that I should suffer this fire for Christs Sake" (here)

and

"for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering" (here)

I could go on and on and on and on and on, but I think this is sufficient to show that Joseph was using the same supposedly archaic-only syntax structure in his revelations that EModE writers were using.

2 hours ago, webbles said:

So, I guess you could argue that Joseph, in 7 instances, just dropped the inner clause to make it sound more archaic.  Or that it is evidence that it was archaic from the start.

Nope, it's just that in many cases in the Book of Mormon and  D&C, Joseph added clarifying language when speaking.

Even if the explanatory clauses make it no longer an archaic structure, it doesn't matter. What the passages do show is that this syntax was repeated in the BofM and the D&C revelations.

Edited May 5 by the narrator

[the narrator]

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In any case, can you find truly analogous examples of 19th-century usage of this phrasal structure outside of Smith's own revelations? 

Beside innumerable examples that were republished during this time, here are some new passages contemporary to the time:

Sure:

"For this cause, that ye, who must lament The death of those that made this world so fair, Cannot recall them now" (from the 1818 poem, The Revolt of Islam, by Percy Bysshe Shelley).

"for this cause That He whose sov reign will none dares contest Forbids that I rebellious as I was to His city any soul should lead" (poem by JFW Herschell (1792-1871)

"for this cause , that would not have been the case" (Report from the Select Committee on the Employment of the Poor in Ireland Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 16 July, 1823)

Those I found from a quick search while making sure they weren't from one of the many dozens of books reprinted at this time from earlier periods.

Of special note, I found this in John Craig's 1861 The Universal English Dictionary:

 

Edited May 5 by the narrator

[webbles]

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

You think wrong. The extended passages simply include more information to explain the thing done. The Book of Mormon is filled with mid-passage explanations. It's very common in oral speaking.

The really only archaic usage is the use of "cause" instead of other words like "reason" or "purpose." This is why "for this cause" is rare in modern publications and usually only appears in religious texts when they do (since the phrase is associated with biblical passages). On the other hand, "for this reason" and "for this purpose" are quite common today. As I note above the "might/may (not) X <infinitive.phrase>" phrase is only used when speaking of a desired but not necessary outcome.

It's still "archaic" (but not really archaic since it's 19th century) either way. It's simply adding an explanatory cause, as the speaker of the Book of Mormon is constantly doing. It's how oral speakers update or correct a text without a word processor.

Nope, it's just that in many cases in the Book of Mormon and  D&C, Joseph added clarifying language when speaking.

Even if the explanatory clauses make it no longer an archaic structure, it doesn't matter. What the passages do show is that this syntax was repeated in the BofM and the D&C revelations.

The version with the extended passages is very common.  Totally agree.  But Carmack isn't talking about that syntax.  He is talking about a specific linguistic structure that doesn't have the extended passages.  I had to go to an AI to help me understand I basically asked it to compare your examples to what Carmack's structure and it said they are different.  The ones Carmack is looking at doesn't have the extended passages and is archaic.  It shortcuts the text in a way that modern English doesn't do.  So comparing the two types is a completely different argument than what Carmack is saying.

The "cause" by itself isn't what makes it archaic.  From the AI:  It is the syntactic pattern where a “cause/end” phrase directly governs a purpose “that”-clause without a verb in between

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

Beside innumerable examples that were republished during this time, here are some new passages contemporary to the time:

Sure:

"For this cause, that ye, who must lament The death of those that made this world so fair, Cannot recall them now" (from the 1818 poem, The Revolt of Islam, by Percy Bysshe Shelley).

"for this cause That He whose sov reign will none dares contest Forbids that I rebellious as I was to His city any soul should lead" (poem by JFW Herschell (1792-1871)

"for this cause , that would not have been the case" (Report from the Select Committee on the Employment of the Poor in Ireland Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 16 July, 1823)

Those I found from a quick search while making sure they weren't from one of the many dozens of books reprinted at this time from earlier periods.

Of special note, I found this in John Craig's 1861 The Universal English Dictionary:

 

I also asked the AI about these 3 examples.  Apparently only the Shelley one is equivalent.  The other two, even though they have the same words, their clause types are different.  For the Hershell one, the "that" class is an explanation clause which is different somehow.  For the House of Commons one, the it doesn't have a modal (may/might) or an infinitive sense.  (I'm paraphrasing what the AI said).

I'm not a linguist and had to pester the AI multiple times to try and understand it.  I gave it every instance you had and only gave it the 7 that Carmack listed.  Your examples are not the same as what Carmack is focusing on.

[champatsch]

4 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think what happened is that you latched onto the underlined phrase in the paragraph ("The noun cause conveys and archaic meaning of purpose in these") and assumed that this was the most significant aspect of the claim. Instead, I think Carmack was simply clarifying the archaic nature of the verb, as used in the complete phrase. But, to be clear, it is the complete phrase that was significant, and not simply the archaic form of the verb. So if you want to push back against his claim, you have to find truly analogous instances to this peculiar usage. I don't actually know if or to what frequency it shows up in later periods. But the implication from Carmack's paragraph is that it is either rare or absent from later periods, but that it shows up in similar concentrations in Early Modern texts. Maybe @champatsch can clarify that point.

Yes, the main thing is the phrase type "for this cause that X may|might <infin.>" as well as the number of instances. It's an interesting additional example of syntactic archaism. I was just clarifying the meaning of cause in the phraseology.

I think it qualifies as archaic syntax, even though it was still being used marginally after 1700, since the usage rate in texts was much higher before 1700 than after. The Book of Mormon's seven examples appear to make it an anachronistic outlier in this respect. The two texts found to have more were published in the 1580s. If there is a text with more than seven after the 1580s, then the Book of Mormon will be less of an outlier in this regard, but still interesting and still unlikely to have been formulated by Joseph Smith.

Edited May 5 by champatsch

[champatsch]

I already mentioned a number of items of countevidence to Bunyanesque influence on Joseph Smith in another thread. Perhaps I will summarize some of them here.

One general point is that a theory of Bunyanesque influence applies to other pseudo-archaic authors. So their texts are a test group. Another point is that it goes hand in hand with knowledge of King James English.

For now, recall that rhetorical if in the King James Bible, Bunyan's writings, and pseudo-archaic texts is "if so be." In the Book of Mormon, it is consistently "if it so be." Both variants were used in Middle English, sometimes in apparent free variation. For instance, Lydgate's Troy Book (1420) has 13 of the former and 21 of the latter. Lydgate's poem has the most examples of "if it so be" outside of the Book of Mormon, which has 42. Also, only three examples were dictated by Joseph Smith up to 3 Nephi 16, then he dictated 39 of them. So the evidence supports Joseph Smith not wording rhetorical if, and it puts a dent in a claim of Bunyanesque influence.

Edited May 5 by champatsch

[the narrator]

18 minutes ago, champatsch said:

The Book of Mormon's seven examples appear to make it an anachronistic outlier in this respect. The two texts found to have more were published in the 1580s. If there is a text with more than seven after the 1580s, then the Book of Mormon will be less of an outlier in this regard

The only relevance that the number of times it appears in the Book of Mormon has is that it heavily implies that its appearance is not a grammatical accident. However, you are wrong (or intentionally misleading) if you to continue to lead your readers to believe that "for this cause that X may|might <infin.>" is the only form that this syntax takes in EModE (as Ryan and Webbles have seemingly come to believe).

All that the seven instances (plus the 7 or so other instance with the main clauses) simply show is that the speaker of the Book of Mormon text was prone to use it, and if Joseph Smith was that speaker we should expect it to appear in his other spoken religious text--and we precisely find that very thing.

[Ryan Dahle]

4 hours ago, the narrator said:

No, you don't seem to understand that Carmack is simply pointing out syntax that resembles EModE. The problem is that you don't understand that the other extended examples I shared have the same syntactical structure.

They obviously don't have the "same syntactical structure." Rather the various structures provide the same grammatical function (and some of your examples--such as 3 Nephi 27:15 and D&C 74:5--appear to not be valid, even on that front). By way of analogy, when Yoda says "powerful you have become," that sentence has the same semantic meaning as "you have become powerful." It is the same set of words and they share the same grammatical relationships. However, each sentence has a different syntactic order or structure.

And that simple reordering of words sometimes makes a big difference. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of instances of phrases with the form "you have become X" in the databases of the English language. There will be far fewer examples of "X you have become" in those same databases. One syntactic structure is normative English and the other isn't. This means that, in practical terms, most English speakers (at least up until Star Wars came out and popularized this particular phrase) were probably not ever going to use the phrase "X you have become" even though it has the same semantic meaning as "you have become X." Sometimes alternative syntactic arrangements (which hold the same grammatical relationships and the same semantic meaning) are used with similar or relatively similar frequencies. For instance, in English one could say "he came to the store yesterday" or, alternatively, "yesterday, he came to the store." In these examples, both types of syntax are common. So it just depends on what the structures are, but there is no question that some types of arrangements are exceedingly rare during certain periods of the English language. Which means the specific ordering of words definitely can and often does matter. 

In this case, placing the subordinate adverbial clause identified by Carmack ("that X may/might (not)<infinitive phrase>") immediately after the prepositional phrase "for this cause" seems to have fallen out of favor in later periods of the English language. Perhaps this was because stacking that type of subordinate clause right after a prepositional phrase felt clunky. Or maybe there were other reasons. Whatever the case may be, it seems like English speakers in Smith's day were not nearly as inclined to use this particular syntactic arrangement. 

I looked through each of the additional examples you provided: 

• "For this cause, that ye, who must lament The death of those that made this world so fair, Cannot recall them now" (from the 1818 poem, The Revolt of Islam, by Percy Bysshe Shelley).

• "for this cause That He whose sov reign will none dares contest Forbids that I rebellious as I was to His city any soul should lead" (poem by JFW Herschell (1792-1871)

• "for this cause , that would not have been the case" (Report from the Select Committee on the Employment of the Poor in Ireland Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 16 July, 1823)

I don't have time to closely analyze these in their fuller contexts at the moment, but it s seems that each of these are not grammatically analogous to the syntax Carmack identified (meaning that the subordinate clause is functioning differently on a grammatical level). This is in contrast to most of the Book of Mormon examples you provided, where the grammatical form was the same and it was only the syntactic arrangement that was different. In other words, as far as I can tell, these do have "for this cause that" but they are not analogous to the specific feature Carmack was describing. Perhaps I'm wrong. I could be. I will have to look at the full context to tell. I have to be done now, but I will try to explain this in greater detail when I have time later. 

Edited May 5 by Ryan Dahle

[webbles]

15 minutes ago, the narrator said:

The only relevance that the number of times it appears in the Book of Mormon has is that it heavily implies that its appearance is not a grammatical accident. However, you are wrong (or intentionally misleading) if you to continue to lead your readers to believe that "for this cause that X may|might <infin.>" is the only form that this syntax takes in EModE (as Ryan and Webbles have seemingly come to believe).

That's not what I seemingly believe.  The "for this cause ... that X may|might <infin>" is also another form.  But it is different from the "for this cause that X may|might".  Both are in EModE.  The former still shows up in modern English.  The later is pretty much gone.