Metal Records--Was the Notion Preposterous in Joseph Smith's Day?

[WalkerW]

I'm looking forward to the paper.

[Calm]

Maybe anther footnote woud help you make up your mind, Cal.

Won't be making up my mind about anything tonight...not on what I'm taking, lol.

I wrote, "Contrary to what Hamblin may want his readers to believe, the ancient practice was mentioned in countless sources including newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, dictionaries, religious periodicals, biblical commentaries, elementary textbooks, etc." Below is what is found in my footnote for "encyclopedia":

I think you've made a good case for the widespread publication of sources...not sure countless, that would depend on total number of examples you use, but even more so on any context that might be able to be found on publishing and distribution habits of the time. I am only extrapolating back my experience with the publishing of journals and textbooks in the academic field on the assumption they are much the same now as they were then...if that assumption is wrong...well, I probably won't have much else to say of important.

If your claim was really about "countless sources" and not just a nice turn of phrase than that is problematic as it's easy to actually count them and so far you have given us a dozen or so (the "or so" is a result of blurred and unfocused eyes so my count could be way off). Obviously those aren't countless even if you were to provide 10 more or such groupings. The use of the term "countless" seems to be more a commentary on the context of the sources, that among what is out there these are in such numbers in comparison to those that don't have such references as to overwhelm. If that is the type of analysis being done here and not just assumed, then I think it essential to establish the over all publication context in order to demonstrate a couple of things...first is this a case of the available dozen books in the relevant topic all discussing this bit of information, or is it a dozen books out of a hundred published at that time in the field or even out of a thousand or ten thousand.

Second, going back to the idea of what happens post publication, it is my experience that one can have a massive bibliography and yet be considered source poor based on the quality of those cites, 3 cites from an A list journal or book and a couple of presentations at some headlining university known for its dominance in the field will mean much, much more than 300 cites from self-published vanity presses or cites in dissertations produced in diploma mills, etc. I think it would be helpful to not only list your examples, but to also establish the context around them...who produced them, respected publishers would tend to lead to a wider audience; the number of reprints and editions would speak to the number of sold, plus the harder evidence to demonstrate that the 'common' man was quoting material from these books showing that someone was actually reading them and not just 'coffee table books' one looks at for the pictures or because the set looks good on the walls. I doubt you could really establish the last very well for someone that is not a common topic that people were constantly writing about. You should be able to have better luck in looking into the quality of the source materials and if you are really lucky be able to find publishing lists of how many books published when and sold to what distributors where.

[Calm]

I then support this argument further by giving the following info in a footnote:

First time through I had missed the "3rd Edition" on a couple of the books, no guarantee of what type of audience, but does make the likelihood of the audience much larger.

[Calm]

I had a long chat with some folks who ignore the whole thing now because of how silly it has gotten.

The biggest gripe are all these "papers" being written. From Chris Smith and his Pal's silly mathematics venture (to which more papers are supposedly coming out to dispute his understanding of the thickness), to others like this Mike Reed and his paper on if Joseph Smith knew people wrote on metal plates?

Yes, heaven forbid that we have some intelligently written papers to examine, even to challenge us and our perceptions of the world. What a waste of time, we should be playing WoW instead.

[Calm]

That's a possibility, of course. The criticism persists, however. I know I encountered it during my mission (though I'm not sharing which decade that occurred in), and, thus, a published answer came in awfully handy when I encountered that German Mennonite Evangelical preacher who spoke in Steyr, Austria against cults [Sekten].

Yes, it is confusing to me that if something like this was so well known beyond the academic perspective that Dr. Hamblin claims, that it would be lost and later replaced with a less educated position. I am quite curious as to the possible explanations of how this shift in criticism style changed and why.

[jskains]

Whatdoya mean, Mortal Man? You weren't impressed by jstain's scarequotes of "papers"? How can you rebut that?

So Mike. Because I find the idea you are devoting so much energy to a very overall silly paper, you think that justifies namecalling?

Wow.. Maturity... A seemingly rare commodity among critics.

JMS

[jskains]

Yes, heaven forbid that we have some intelligently written papers to examine, even to challenge us and our perceptions of the world. What a waste of time, we should be playing WoW instead.

So we go from criticism on some of the subject choices to playing Warcraft? You have a rather narrow range of possible things to do with your life.

JMS

[CA Steve]

So Mike. Because I find the idea you are devoting so much energy to a very overall silly paper, you think that justifies namecalling?

Wow.. Maturity... A seemingly rare commodity among critics.

JMS

Priceless.

[BookofMormonLuvr]

Mike-

In the quote you have given several times thus far to support your claims, I see know mention of precious metals. Joseph's account is of plates "with the appearance of gold". Is there anything in your sources from the time period mentioning the ancients writing on precious metals or something like unto them?

Thanks in Advance.

[jskains]

But, CA Steve, not as cool or witty as a single word reply using an overused term.

Your awesomeness is beyond reproach.

JMS

[semlogo]

Why should I not bear testimony? This board is about "Mormonism" is it not?

False assertions are things that go against evidence.

Explanations are things that account for evidence, "supernatural" or not.

If you have been following the KEP threads, you would see what my position is on the Book of Abraham issues, and you would see how apologetics that go against evidence bothers me just as much.

Ed Goble

Topics We Don

[Bill Hamblin]

Let's take a vote.

Was Bill Hamblin wrong for insisting that the knowledge of ancient Metal records was limited to "highly educated specialists"?

Yes or No.

Mormon apologists, I am especially interested in seeing how you vote.

Bill Hamblin, you can vote too.

Thanks.

Mike Reed's "vote" is a farce, because I never made the claim Mike claims I made. This type of nonsense is why I have placed Mike on my ignore list. But I'll waste my time just this once. Mike claims I insist "that the knowledge of ancient Metal records was limited to "highly educated specialists." I never made that claim. Here is what I actually said.

Metcalfe seems to realize that the fact that some highly educated scholars in the early nineteenth century were aware of

ancient writing on metal plates is not evidence that it would have been common knowledge among semiliterate frontier farm-boys. (468)

Note the REAL argument is that Metcalfe has not proven that uneducated farm-boys knew of metal plates by showing that educated people knew of metal plates. I am critiquing Metcalfe's methods, logic, and use of sources. I am not saying that knowledge of writing on metal plates was unknown. I am saying that Metcalfe has not demonstrated his case by the evidence he provided. It is a critique of Metcalfe's argument, not the broader issue. I am not making a universal argument. I am critiquing Metcalfe's article. Reed misrepresents my position by claiming that I am trying to make a universal critique.

Do I have anything to say about the broader issue? Of course.

In "Sacred Writing on Metal Plates in the Ancient Mediterranean" (Farms Review 19/1 (2007): 37-38, n. 3, I observe:

Metcalfe [and Mike Reed as far as I can tell] ignores the most obvious nineteenth century source for the idea of writing on golden plates, the KJV translation of Exodus 28:36 (discussed below), which states that

[semlogo]

I don't necessarily want to resist his findings, only account for them, that is, if there are no fundamental flaws in his research. But I have to wonder what his agenda is, and I bet it is the same as Vogel's.

I have yet to have it demonstrated to me that he is just a scholar that merely wants to get to the facts.

Facts are facts. They remain facts regardless of agenda. The OP doesn't do harm to the Book of Mormon, only to one line of apologetic reasoning. Apologetics aren't the gospel.

[Jeff K.]

Facts are facts, but people slant them to make them something else.

A fact might be that Moses killed a man ("facts are facts") but was he protecting someone else, did he seek revenge, did he merely wish to hold that man off and accidently killed him. Facts are facts, but you can argue what the facts mean.

[LeSellers]

What dates would be ideal for you?

They'd have to allow some wide dissemination between their publication and Joseph's telling his family about the plates in 1824.

That was a tyo [sic, ]. The year was 1804.

This one has some chance of being "ideal for [me]", although its relatively early appearance does not of necessity mean that Joseph and his peers had heard of metallic histories.

Lehi

[semlogo]

Facts are facts, but people slant them to make them something else.

A fact might be that Moses killed a man ("facts are facts") but was he protecting someone else, did he seek revenge, did he merely wish to hold that man off and accidently killed him. Facts are facts, but you can argue what the facts mean.

Sure. But these particular facts seem to render a fairly weak argument moot. That is all.

[Jeff K.]

I haven't really seen it do that, but then again, it is about the slant and I haven't seen an argument that rendered anything moot given the rather strong rebuttal.

[semlogo]

I haven't really seen it do that, but then again, it is about the slant and I haven't seen an argument that rendered anything moot given the rather strong rebuttal.

If the argument is: "no one in Joseph's day knew about writing on metal plates," then that argument is indeed moot in the light of this evidence. If the argument is "The Book of Mormon is authentic," then that argument is completely unaffected by this evidence.

Let's not mistake apologetic lines of reasoning for doctrine. They're just arguments.

[Jeff K.]

There are more than those two positions involved. For instance another position would be that Joseph did not access the information. I do not believe as a young man he had leisure time to spend in libraries, which was an upper class occupation.

[Calm]

Myself above:

Oh....and speaking of tastes and conclusions....I try to compare apples to apples and not apples to apple pies....I don't think it's appropriate to compare what you have said with what you have given as Dr. Hamblin's position as the second is a very superficial treatment, way too open imo to draw any conclusions from on what he actually means without having to use so many assumptions that it most likely would be unrecognizable to Bill by the end of it. I would prefer to wait until his level of exploration matches yours thus allowing me to measure the best against the best so to speak.

Note the REAL argument is that Metcalfe has not proven that uneducated farm-boys knew of metal plates by showing that educated people knew of metal plates. I am critiquing Metcalfe's methods, logic, and use of sources. I am not saying that knowledge of writing on metal plates was unknown. I am saying that Metcalfe has not demonstrated his case by the evidence he provided. It is a critique of Metcalfe's argument, not the broader issue. I am not making a universal argument. I am critiquing Metcalfe's article. Reed misrepresents my position by claiming that I am trying to make a universal critique.

Now that Dr. Hamblin has chimed in and phrased his argument for himself it would appear to me we are much closer to an apple pie to apple pie situation....actually though now it seems like it's more of a peach pie to an apple pie in that the argument Mike constructed to argue against wasn't the actual argument of Dr. Hamblin's.

I think Mike's work appears to have gone further than B. Metcalfe's claim, I use appear because I have not looked close at his claim and seen how he has supported it, I am assuming that Mike's work---which is presented as something new---has built upon Metcalfe's material. I cannot make any specific conclusions about Metcalfe's work until I read that, but if I assume that Mike's is an expansion upon it than I would say that it still lacks definitive evidence...at least as presented in this thread, his paper may have it.

OTOH, I think Dr. Hamblin pointing out the use of metal plates in the Bible to go the furthest of all in demonstrating what Metcalfe was claiming, so honestly I don't really see why this has been made into an issue. It is, after all, possible to agree about conclusions without agreeing about how one gets there.

----

This appears to be Part Two of the issue of Dr. Hamblin's argument and as far as this thread has gone, it has not be addressed by Mike from what I can see. Since I have yet to read Dr. Hamblin's work, I cannot comment on whether I am satisfied with it or not. I am hoping it addresses why there were so few, if any criticisms early on based writing on metal plates, IOW, I am hoping to see an examination of how the criticism developed over time.

As to the issue of whether writing on gold plates was criticized by anti-Mormons, see 465 n 59.

If the argument is as simple as this, then one or two examples of such criticisms would suffice to meet any challenge. If the argument is more elaborate...well, I'll have to read it before I can talk about it.

Theses sources demonstrate that this type of criticism was made, and thus shows that the knowledge of ancient writing on metal plates was not universal. Was it known? Yes. Did everyone know it? No. Could Joseph have known? Yes. Did Joseph know? There's no way to tell.

I am curious. Is there anyone here who disagrees with Dr. Hamblin's appraisal in this line above? It seems logical that if there were any criticism of writing on plates, such writing was not universally known about even if it could be proved it was commonly known which means one can't identify who knew and who didn't unless there is specific information connecting that person with the info (such as reported conversation of Joseph with a townsman discussing treasure that included 'metal books' or something like that).

PS: I would personally never use the metal books thing as a 'hit' for Joseph Smith, I see the only value in this type of discussion is demonstrate whether or not that type of record is consistent with the era it is claimed to have come from.

[semlogo]

There are more than those two positions involved. For instance another position would be that Joseph did not access the information. I do not believe as a young man he had leisure time to spend in libraries, which was an upper class occupation.

Yes, but that possibility is irrelevant to this topic - the claim was that the notion of writing on plates was preposterous in the early 19th century. Again, these facts only address that apologetic argument, not every possible argument or idea.

[Anijen]

Yes, but that possibility is irrelevant to this topic - the claim was that the notion of writing on plates was preposterous in the early 19th century. Again, these facts only address that apologetic argument, not every possible argument or idea.

If the argument is: "no one in Joseph's day knew about writing on metal plates,"

It might have slipped to that but I believe that was not the original argument IIRC it was, was it widely known?

In the end they are arguments that can not be proven either way.

[Mike Reed]

Mike Reed's "vote" is a farce, because I never made the claim Mike claims I made. This type of nonsense is why I have placed Mike on my ignore list. But I'll waste my time just this once. Mike claims I insist "that the knowledge of ancient Metal records was limited to "highly educated specialists." I never made that claim. Here is what I actually said. y

Quote

Metcalfe seems to realize that the fact that some highly educated scholars in the early nineteenth century were aware of

ancient writing on metal plates is not evidence that it would have been common knowledge among semiliterate frontier farm-boys. (468)

Actually

[Mike Reed]

you think that justifies namecalling?

No. I don't. Offensive typo corrected.

[jskains]

No. I don't. Offensive typo corrected.

Interesting "typo" considering it was commonly used at the other board (and not as a typo).

Well I look forward to your next paper on if Joseph Smith could have known there might have been people on the U.S. Continent during his day.

JMS