Where did the Book of Mormon Take Place?

[Ryan Dahle]

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

Nobody assisted Davis with the creation of his article, and no scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be "involved in the creation of an article." Perhaps I would give Stan the benefit of the doubt of not understanding scholarship, however his claim of "various people" and then later claim of assistance of "his colleagues" beyond the blind reviewers and editor make it clear that Stan was lying (or carelessly repeating a lie).

So, I asked Chat-GPT about this, and anyone can see that I wasn't biasing the prompt in my favor. In fact, I intentionally biased it in the other direction (so that it would agree with the narrator). Yet look what we find: 

Quote

PROMPT:

I saw someone I admire make this claim in a debate on the internet, and it seems pretty valid to me. What do you think? Here is the claim: "Nobody assisted [redacted name] with the creation of his article, and no scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be 'involved in the creation of an article.'"

ANSWER:

I’d be cautious about accepting that claim as stated. It sounds rhetorically strong, but it bundles together two different ideas:

1. Authorship / substantive assistance
2. Editorial or peer-review involvement

A peer reviewer or journal editor usually would not be considered a co-author or “assistant” in the strong sense of helping write, research, or construct the article. So if the debate is about whether someone else secretly wrote or substantially developed the article, then peer review and editorial review would not normally count as that kind of assistance.

But the absolute claim is too broad:

“No scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be ‘involved in the creation of an article.’”

That is overstated. Scholars routinely understand publication as a process that can include authors, reviewers, editors, copyeditors, typesetters, and publishers. Peer reviewers and editors can sometimes influence the final article in significant ways: requesting revisions, challenging arguments, requiring additional citations, pushing for clarification, or even recommending structural changes. In that weaker sense, they are definitely “involved” in the article’s development or publication.

The better distinction would be:

Peer reviewers and journal editors are generally involved in the review, revision, and publication process, but they are not normally considered authors or substantive creators of the article unless their contribution crosses into major intellectual or drafting assistance.

So I would say your admired person has a valid point only if “creation” means authorship or substantive composition. But if “involved in the creation” means “played any role in shaping the final published article,” then the claim is too categorical and probably misleading.

Since Carmack's comments about the role of those who helped Davis with his article was contextualized primarily by error detection and not by authoring substantial amounts of text, the context of his claim sufficiently signals what he meant by others being "involved in the creation of the article." He clearly meant it in the narrow sense of the term, just as the AI response concluded was a valid possible meaning. 

Edited May 7 by Ryan Dahle

[Calm]

My husband’s POV…obviously just personal experience as a prof, not as an authority; he says he is thinking of it in the APA context (Psychology, not Press):

Authorship means doing part of the actual research and/or actual writing of the paper.

Suggestions means ideas contributed that may or may not be used by the author(s) in their writing or analysis (if they are seen as helpful, I am assuming they are used, but he insists that I include “may or may not”).

My husband is remembering a suggestion from one professor that dramatically changed his paper, but would never be seen as authorship (the prof told him he had to defend a claim made about a scale my husband created for his dissertation, he hated the suggestion as so much more work, but it did strengthen his dissertation significantly).

He is okay with using the phrase “involved in the creation” for someone providing helpful suggestions, says that is accurate, which surprises me as that doesn’t feel that precise to me.  I wouldn’t use it as it feels more than suggestions even if not necessarily authorship (it does feel close, so I get why narrator went there).  “Involved in creation” feels like it should imply they are “creators” which means much more to me helpful suggestions.

If an editor or peer reviewer offered a suggestion (such as the prof for my husband), they could be said be involved in the creation, but he wouldn’t normally describe them as such. 

He really got into clarifying it, lol.

Edited May 8 by Calm

[Ryan Dahle]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

He is okay with using the phrase “involved in the creation” for someone providing helpful suggestions, says that is accurate, which surprises me as that doesn’t feel that precise to me.  I wouldn’t use it as it feels more than suggestions even if not necessarily authorship.  “Involved in creation” feels like it should imply they are “creators” which means much more to me helpful suggestions.

I actually suspect that Carmack used "involved in the creation" specifically to avoid using something like "helped author the text." To me, the creative process involves many different aspects of the production of the text (initial drafting, reviewing, editing, organizing, etc.). So, anyone involved in any way at one of those levels would be involved in the creative process. I can see how some people would associate "creation" strictly with "authorship" or origination of the main content. But that narrow interpretation doesn't seem technically necessary. I am personally involved in all or most of these processes on a daily basis, and I feel others regularly contribute to the creation of the articles that I write (without me viewing them as having secondary authorship status). For instance, if a peer reviewer suggests I rearrange content, and I follow that suggestion, then it seems like they helped in the creative production of the text. If someone suggests I take out content, include content, or revise content, then I would feel like they played an important role in the creative production of the text. And so forth. 

Edited May 8 by Ryan Dahle

[Zosimus]

On 5/2/2026 at 1:33 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

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).   

I've got a lot of thoughts wrt Nibley's Ancient State. In summary, Smith thought himself as a restorer, in a long line of restorers, of an "old forgotten doctrine of the divine plan" or "primordial revelation", as Nibley calls it in "Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic"

Nibley himself sums up well in Eloquent Witness:

"The idea of an “archaic wisdom,” prisca arcane, or “primeval revelation,” a knowledge of the ancients far in advance of later times, has always intrigued philosophers and theologians. But today it is the scientists who are taking it seriously. Joseph Smith was well acquainted with the idea..."

On 5/2/2026 at 1:33 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

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.  

According to that essay, Nibely was a Patternist. This loops him in closely with the likes of Bryant and Faber who laid the foundations of Patternism. 

Nibley makes the case himself, he just fails to acknowledge that the material was available in 1820s America. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ethan Smith straight up copies Faber. Bryant and Faber influenced a number of Americans writing in the 1820s.

On 5/2/2026 at 1:33 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

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.  

For sure, Paine wasn't the first, he was the most widely distributed. Afaict Paine picked up his claim that Hilkiah forged the Book of the Law to justify Josiah's reforms from Voltaire. It was in the little pocket version of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary which was widely circulating in America. Voltaire seemingly gets it from earlier sources like Spinoza. This conflict between the skeptics and the Biblical apologists goes back a long way, at least as far back as Scaliger, who was a major influence on Nibley. He heaps praise on Scaliger in a separate essay in Ancient State.

On 5/2/2026 at 1:33 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

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?"

Like Campbell, I am impressed how well the Book of Mormon resolves all the great controversies of the period roughly between Scaliger forward to Joseph Smith.

[the narrator]

On 5/7/2026 at 5:42 PM, Calm said:

Suggestions means ideas contributed that may or may not be used by the author(s) in their writing or analysis (if they are seen as helpful, I am assuming they are used, but he insists that I include “may or may not”).

 

In this case, the three people Davis thanked were for checking grammar, a helpful conversation 2 decades ago, and another who read an early draft but had no substantive suggestions. None of these come close to what Carmack was claiming or implying. Davis was simply being nice and thanking people. (I've done much less for people who helped more with some of my publications.)

As I noted before, the reason why Carmack seems to make his claim is tied to his constant need to emphasize his supposed skills and training over others to cover up the fact that he isn't engaging in linguistics but is just acting as a glorified grammar nerd attempting to identify and force EModE syntax and language in the Book of Mormon. If he were actually doing linguistics he would be trying to understand and explain why the supposed EModE appears in the text intermingled with 19th century language, phrases, and ideas. But he can't do that. And so, instead, he throws out ad hominins and dupe people like Ryan by his appeals to his own authority.

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

In this case, the three people Davis thanked were for checking grammar, a helpful conversation 2 decades ago, and another who read an early draft but had no substantive suggestions. None of these come close to what Carmack was claiming or implying. Davis was simply being nice and thanking people. (I've done much less for people who helped more with some of my publications.)

Well, considering that you jumped straight to the accusation that Carmack was categorically lying when making his statements, one may question your own ability to accurately characterize what he was indeed claiming or implying. Technically speaking, his claims appear to be accurate. By Davis's own admission, multiple people were involved in helping review or contribute to his article (as would be expected of an article submitted to an academic journal). Davis named three people, as well as other "anonymous readers" (note the plural), for their contributions. The natural conclusion would be that multiple people helped review the article and gave suggestions that in some substantial way contributed to the article's creation/production. And since Carmack's comments were each contextualized by a lack of error correction, it seems pretty clear what he intended by his statements. Carmack's point was simply that none of those involved appeared to catch the errors that Carmack himself noticed. 

Now you want to fault Carmack for not having some type of privileged information about precisely how the named and unnamed contributors influenced the article. Somehow, he was supposed to know that Davis was "simply being nice" and that the suggestions and help that others offered really didn't in any way substantively contribute to the creation of the article. I think that, for whatever reason, you may just have an irrational hostility towards Stan, and that it is clouding your judgment. As you repeatedly noted, this conversation is triggering you. That seems quite apparent. 

 

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Well, considering that you jumped straight to the accusation that Carmack was categorically lying when making his statements, one may question your own ability to accurately characterize what he was indeed claiming or implying. Technically speaking, his claims appear to be accurate. By Davis's own admission, multiple people were involved in helping review or contribute to his article (as would be expected of an article submitted to an academic journal). Davis named three people, as well as other "anonymous readers" (note the plural), for their contributions. The natural conclusion would be that multiple people helped review the article and gave suggestions that in some substantial way contributed to the article's creation/production. And since Carmack's comments were each contextualized by a lack of error correction, it seems pretty clear what he intended by his statements. Carmack's point was simply that none of those involved appeared to catch the errors that Carmack himself noticed. 

Now you want to fault Carmack for not having some type of privileged information about precisely how the named and unnamed contributors influenced the article. Somehow, he was supposed to know that Davis was "simply being nice" and that the suggestions and help that others offered really didn't in any way substantively contribute to the creation of the article. I think that, for whatever reason, you may just have an irrational hostility towards Stan, and that it is clouding your judgment. As you repeatedly noted, this conversation is triggering you. That seems quite apparent. 

Lolz.

Edited May 11 by the narrator

[theplains]

On 4/30/2026 at 3:21 PM, Calm said:

By misleading do you mean to suggest it was intentional?

No. I highly doubt leaders intentionally teach something that is false. But they teach things that 
they believe are the truth, speaking them at General Conference, even putting them in books referred 
to as gospel doctrine, truth, or principles.

When it is determined that it was really false, that's where the concept of leading people astray 
comes in.

President Marion G. Romney, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, bore testimony of the events 
of the Book of Mormon in relation to the hill Cumorah in General Conference, October 4, 1975.

"In the western part of the state of New York near Palmyra is a prominent hill known as the “hill 
Cumorah.” (Morm. 6:6.) On July twenty-fifth of this year, as I stood on the crest of that hill 
admiring with awe the breathtaking panorama which stretched out before me on every hand, my mind 
reverted to the events which occurred in that vicinity some twenty-five centuries ago—events which 
brought to an end the great Jaredite nation.

This second civilization to which I refer, the Nephites, flourished in America between 600 b.c. and 
a.d. 400. Their civilization came to an end for the same reason, at the same place, and in the same 
manner as did the Jaredites’.

And when they had gone through and hewn down all my people save it were twenty and four of us, 
(among whom was my son Moroni) and we having survived the dead of our people, did behold on the 
morrow … from the top of the hill Cumorah, [230,000] of my people who were hewn down, …

Now my beloved brethren and sisters everywhere, both members of the Church and nonmembers, I bear 
you my personal witness that I know that the things I have presented to you today are true—both 
those pertaining to past events and those pertaining to events yet to come".

More teachings from LDS leaders teaching the two hills are the same and in the same place is found
here.

Obviously the current church leadership does not accept these teachings as the truth. Or maybe they 
really do in their hearts.

[theplains]

On 4/30/2026 at 4:07 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

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

President Marion G. Romney, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, bore testimony of the events 
of the Book of Mormon in relation to the hill Cumorah in General Conference, October 4, 1975.

The hills are the same and in the same place.

[Calm]

53 minutes ago, theplains said:

When it is determined that it was really false, that's where the concept of leading people astray 
comes in.

 

How do you define “leading astray”?

Do you believe it must mean teaching anything false or does it have a more restricted definition such as persistently teaching something false?  Or even leading into sin or apostasy as in ‘leading off the path of salvation or righteousness’?

What do you think LDS leaders meant and mean by “leading astray”?

Edited May 12 by Calm

[the narrator]

3 hours ago, theplains said:

President Marion G. Romney, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, bore testimony of the events 
of the Book of Mormon in relation to the hill Cumorah in General Conference, October 4, 1975.

The hills are the same and in the same place.

Or Romney was wrong.

[the narrator]

On 5/7/2026 at 1:55 PM, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I'm really trying to understand the theory here. What level of influence did Joseph's brain influence the text? It sounds like your position is none at all? Who translated the text then? You speak of changes in 3 Nephi. Are you posing two separate translators? More? Why isn't the text entirely EModE? Why the mishmash? I'd really like to understand what your hypothesis is for how the text was put together, and why God chose to do it that way.

This question has been posed repeatedly for years without an answer, and there will never be one. That's because Carmack isn't doing linguistics. If he was, he'd be trying to understand why and how the text is the way it is. But, he isn't, and any attempt to conjure up a supernatural systematic explanation of the supposed EModE will be ridiculous enough to end it all.

[theplains]

On 5/12/2026 at 2:27 PM, the narrator said:

Or Romney was wrong.

Right. And if wrong, he led the hearers astray.

[theplains]

On 5/12/2026 at 12:13 PM, Calm said:

 

How do you define “leading astray”?

Do you believe it must mean teaching anything false or does it have a more restricted definition such as persistently teaching something false?  Or even leading into sin or apostasy as in ‘leading off the path of salvation or righteousness’?

What do you think LDS leaders meant and mean by “leading astray”?

False teaching leads people astray, away from the truth. It can also lead people into sin, 
worshipping a false God for example.

I think LDS leaders mean the same thing.

[the narrator]

47 minutes ago, theplains said:

Right. And if wrong, he led the hearers astray.

I guess you should add it to the long list of wrong things Church leaders have said.

[Amulek]

3 hours ago, theplains said:

False teaching leads people astray, away from the truth. It can also lead people into sin, 
worshipping a false God for example.

I think LDS leaders mean the same thing.

I think there’s an important distinction between being mistaken about some things and intentionally leading people away from God. Humans, including prophets and apostles, are not omniscient.

For example, if Paul held ancient assumptions about cosmology that later turned out to be incorrect, would that make him a false apostle? Most Christians would say no, because his mission was to testify of Christ, not to deliver perfect scientific knowledge.

So the existence of a mistaken belief by itself does not prove someone is a false teacher or that they are leading people into sin. The bigger question is whether they are drawing people toward faith in Christ, repentance, love of God and neighbor, etc., or away from those things.

Otherwise, every biblical figure would fail some modern test of “perfect doctrine” or knowledge.

Edited May 14 by Amulek

[Kevin Christensen]

On 5/12/2026 at 9:26 AM, theplains said:

President Marion G. Romney, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, bore testimony of the events 
of the Book of Mormon in relation to the hill Cumorah in General Conference, October 4, 1975.

The hills are the same and in the same place.

Mormon and Moroni, both of whom, recorded relevant eye-witness descriptions of the hill and its environs, were also prophets who reported personal encounters with the Risen Lord.  If President Romney was doing something other than affirming received tradition, then it should be easy to reconcile the eye witness descriptions with the New York Hill.  That, as Sperry and others point out, leads to problems.  On the other hand, if we can take seriously the Lord's formal statement of "mine authority, and the authority of my servants" in D&C 1, that "inasmuch as they erred, it might be made known," and "inasmuch as they sought wisdom, they might be instructed," then comparison of the New York Hill's physical description with the Book of Mormon eye witness description might actually tell us something.   The story in 3 Nephi where the Risen Jesus explains that his Old World disciples "supposed they understood" who and where the "other sheep" were and because they did not ask, were not informed.   The reason I cited Sperry's essay is that he actually considers the implications of the eye witness accounts compared to the "supposed" identity of the New York Hill.  Supposing that Elder Romney "must have known" does not conform to the D&C 1 formal statement, nor does just name dropping a conclusion deal with the issues raised by the eye witness accounts provided by Mormon and Moroni.   Beyond the problems that Sperry acknowledged and addressed, more research has been done, and many more geographical passages (well over 500 hundred passages) and relationships have been studied since, and as Sorenson aptly points out, they all need to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.  I see no reason to suppose that those who ignore that puzzle, based on their uncritical statements of earlier Latter-day Saints who also demonstrably ignored the puzzle, are doing anything other than supposing they understood, and did not ask.  So where, exactly, is their basis of secure authority?

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

 

Edited May 15 by Kevin Christensen

[SeekingUnderstanding]

On 5/13/2026 at 10:11 AM, the narrator said:

This question has been posed repeatedly for years without an answer, and there will never be one. That's because Carmack isn't doing linguistics. If he was, he'd be trying to understand why and how the text is the way it is. But, he isn't, and any attempt to conjure up a supernatural systematic explanation of the supposed EModE will be ridiculous enough to end it all.

Well I haven't been following that long, but the lack of any sort of coherent model here seems problematic. Why the Book of Mormon (purportedly written for our day, by a God that "speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.") would be a mishmash of EModE that changes half way through 3 Nephi and is also  interspersed with modern english is a mystery to me. That degree of tight control over the language seems to present challenges for other areas where apologists want to claim looser control to allow for mistakes and revisions. 

Edited May 15 by SeekingUnderstanding

[Zosimus]

On 5/12/2026 at 10:26 PM, theplains said:

The hills are the same and in the same place.

How do Heartlanders reconcile Cowdery and other early leaders, closer to the original source, making statements that the Lehites landed in Chile or somewhere on the coast of South America? 

The articles below report on the Lamanite Mission missionaries (Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, Peter Whitmer Jr.) preaching in Kirtland en route to Missouri, and the first article explicitly names Cowdery as the source.

This is the earliest known mention of Chile as the landing, just months after the Book of Mormon was published, and before the Williams document everyone usually cites.

Observer and Telegraph (Hudson, Ohio), 18 November 1830

"According to the narrative given by one of these disciples — Oliver Cowdery — at their late exhibition in Kirtland… This new Revelation, they say is especially designed for the benefit, or rather for the christianizing of the Aborigines of America; who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of Manasseh, and whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chili 600 years before the coming of Christ, and from them descended all the Indians of America."

Another report on early LDS missionaries teaching a South America landing:

Fredonia Censor (New York), 7 March 1832

"The Revelation commenced about 600 years before Christ, with a prophet of the name of Lehi, of the tribe of Joseph… He with another family who accompanied him, built themselves a ship and landed on the coast of South America, where they increased very fast…"

Do you accept a landing in Chile? Is your narrow neck then Panama or somewhere in North America?

[webbles]

3 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Well I haven't been following that long, but the lack of any sort of coherent model here seems problematic. Why the Book of Mormon (purportedly written for our day, by a God that "speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.") would be a mishmash of EModE that changes half way through 3 Nephi and is also  interspersed with modern english is a mystery to me. That degree of tight control over the language seems to present challenges for other areas where apologists want to claim looser control to allow for mistakes and revisions. 

My understanding is that Carmack (and I think Skousen as well) speculates that everything can be attributed to EModE.  The only modern English is spelling (through the scribes).

But I am really curious on what are all the changes that occur in 3 Nephi and what that is supposed to mean.

[Calm]

On 5/12/2026 at 9:26 AM, theplains said:

he hills are the same and in the same place.

Except you aren’t a believer in the Book of Mormon iirc and therefore there was never a hill Cumorah in the past that was the same in your own belief surely.  Does make it easier to dismiss the text as fabrication if one insists they have to be considered the same by Saints.  

[SeekingUnderstanding]

10 hours ago, webbles said:

My understanding is that Carmack (and I think Skousen as well) speculates that everything can be attributed to EModE.  The only modern English is spelling (through the scribes).

But I am really curious on what are all the changes that occur in 3 Nephi and what that is supposed to mean.

Do they? It’s so hard for me to follow. I seem to recall that they say some is much more archaic than the King James Bible. Which would point to authorship or translation earlier than a book that is extensively quoted throughout? Like what’s going on. And why? 

[webbles]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Do they? It’s so hard for me to follow. I seem to recall that they say some is much more archaic than the King James Bible. Which would point to authorship or translation earlier than a book that is extensively quoted throughout? Like what’s going on. And why? 

KJV is EModE.  It was originally written in 1611.  https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/skousen/2023-09-28/byus_59.1_royal_skousen_the_history_of_the_bom_text_2020_87-128.pdf talks about part 5 of volume 3 which is about KJV quotations and it says:

Quote

This part analyzes the numerous biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon, of which all but one come from the archaic 1611 King James translation of the Bible.

It also says a little farther down:

Quote

Which edition of the King James Bible do these quotations depend upon? Is it the original 1611 first printing, or is it a printing close to 1828, when the Book of Mormon began to be translated, or is it some printing in between? It is easy to establish that the copytext was definitely not the first printing or the second, both in 1611, nor in fact any edition prior to 1660.

And then a little farther down it says:

Quote

These three examples, taken together, imply that the copytext for the Book of Mormon biblical quotations dates from after the 1760s. But we must remember that this is the only example involving italics that provides any support for dating the copytext, especially a later dating. The 16 examples involving word differences imply that the copytext could date up to a century earlier.

So, simple reading, the KJV that was used is after the 1760s (probably the 1769 version).  But only one data point (which is about a difference in an italic word) gives that date and the rest push it earlier to about 1660s (which is at the end of the EModE era).

I agree that it is not easy to follow, especially when date ranges are used that don't even overlap.  Some of the EModE that Carmack has mentioned were heavily used in the 1500s and some were heavily used in the 1600s.  It is possible for 1 person to use both but it is odd.

The EModE is really curious to me.  I'm getting to the point that I can't see how Joseph could have done it but I don't know what that means.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

Quote

These three examples, taken together, imply that the copytext for the Book of Mormon biblical quotations dates from after the 1760s. But we must remember that this is the only example involving italics that provides any support for dating the copytext, especially a later dating. The 16 examples involving word differences imply that the copytext could date up to a century earlier.

So, simple reading, the KJV that was used is after the 1760s (probably the 1769 version).  But only one data point (which is about a difference in an italic word) gives that date and the rest push it earlier to about 1660s (which is at the end of the EModE era).

I agree that it is not easy to follow, especially when date ranges are used that don't even overlap.  Some of the EModE that Carmack has mentioned were heavily used in the 1500s and some were heavily used in the 1600s.  It is possible for 1 person to use both but it is odd.

The EModE is really curious to me.  I'm getting to the point that I can't see how Joseph could have done it but I don't know what that means.

Exactly. So why is an author that is writing/translating in the 1500s quoting a bible that doesn't exist?

[Ryan Dahle]

3 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

14 hours ago, webbles said:

My understanding is that Carmack (and I think Skousen as well) speculates that everything can be attributed to EModE.  The only modern English is spelling (through the scribes).

But I am really curious on what are all the changes that occur in 3 Nephi and what that is supposed to mean.

Do they? It’s so hard for me to follow.

Actually, that isn't quite correct. You have to actually go read their research to sift through the nuances. Many summaries online are likely going to misrepresent their claims in some way.