No piece for the wicked

[Magyar]

A day or two ago, I enjoyed a piece of pizza for lunch. Unfortunately, I had to visit my dentist to repair my damaged teeth after the meal. You see, according to at least one critic of the Church, "piece" was commonly understood in the days of Joseph Smith to refer to a metal coin. So, even though Joseph Smith never used the word coinage in the Book of Mormon, we must realize that "piece" can refer to nothing else but a coin -- not wampum, not a weight, but a standard, highly anachronistic disk of stamped and engraved metal. And of course, because lots of intelligent Mormons over the last century or so also believed that the "pieces" referred to in the Book of Mormon were coins, we are required to agree with them that they were.

Which of course proves the Book of Mormon was false.

Now I am in greater pain, not just from my damaged dentition but from the mental contortions into which I have had to twist myself to understand this tortured logic.

[Sevenbak]

A day or two ago, I enjoyed a piece of pizza for lunch. Unfortunately, I had to visit my dentist to repair my damaged teeth after the meal. You see, according to at least one critic of the Church, "piece" was commonly understood in the days of Joseph Smith to refer to a metal coin. So, even though Joseph Smith never used the word coinage in the Book of Mormon, we must realize that "piece" can refer to nothing else but a coin -- not wampum, not a weight, but a standard, highly anachronistic disk of stamped and engraved metal. And of course, because lots of intelligent Mormons over the last century or so also believed that the "pieces" referred to in the Book of Mormon were coins, we are required to agree with them that they were.

Which of course proves the Book of Mormon was false.

Now I am in greater pain, not just from my damaged dentition but from the mental contortions into which I have had to twist myself to understand this tortured logic.

Where Can I Turn for Piece?

[cdowis]

Did you look it up in the dictionary?

1. a separate or limited portion or quantity of something: a piece of land; a piece of chocolate.

2. a quantity of some substance or material forming a single mass or body: a nice piece of lumber.

3. a more or less definite portion or quantity of a whole: to cut a blueberry pie into six pieces.

I think number 3 is appropriate here. You have a sack of gold, for example, and divide it up in a predetermined (fixed by law) "groupings" or pieces of gold dust. This was a crude beginning to coins, where the "grouping" was then smelted and stamped. The name "piece" is appropriate both to the coin or to the predefined gold weight.

Next time, look it up in the dictionary first.

[Questing Beast]

Yea verily yea, the Miriam Webster Dictionary (unexpurgated) is the fifth book in the Standard Works of the LDS Church....

[Magyar]

Did you look it up in the dictionary?

1. a separate or limited portion or quantity of something: a piece of land; a piece of chocolate.

2. a quantity of some substance or material forming a single mass or body: a nice piece of lumber.

3. a more or less definite portion or quantity of a whole: to cut a blueberry pie into six pieces.

I think number 3 is appropriate here. You have a sack of gold, for example, and divide it up in a predetermined (fixed by law) "groupings" or pieces of gold dust. This was a crude beginning to coins, where the "grouping" was then smelted and stamped. The name "piece" is appropriate both to the coin or to the predefined gold weight.

Next time, look it up in the dictionary first.

With or without a dictionary, I am actually fully aware that a piece or pieces can refer to any number of things, not just coins. Apparently, some critics of the Church, sadly in need of dictionaries in their local libraries, are not.

[LeSellers]

according to at least one critic of the Church, "piece" was commonly understood in the days of Joseph Smith to refer to a metal coin. So, even though Joseph Smith never used the word coinage in the Book of Mormon, we must realize that "piece" can refer to nothing else but a coin -- not wampum, not a weight, but a standard, highly anachronistic disk of stamped and engraved metal.

Others have cited "the dictionary", but a XXI dictionary, to identify what the word "piece". But this does not address what Joseph would have thought about it. So, to rectify this situation, I offer this.

PIECE, n. [Heb. to cut off or clip.]

1. A fragment or part of any thing separated from the whole, in any manner, by cutting, splitting, breaking or tearing.

2. A part of any thing, though not separated, or separated only in idea; not the whole; a portion.

3. A distinct part or quantity; a part considered by itself, or separated from the rest only by a boundary or divisional line.

4. A separate part; a thing or portion distinct from others of a like kind.

5. A composition, essay or writing of no great length; as a piece of poetry or prose; a piece of music.

6. A separate performance; a distinct portion of labor.

7. A picture or painting.

8. A coin.

9. A gun or single part of ordnance. We apply the word to a cannon, a mortar, or a musket. Large guns are called battering pieces; smaller guns are called field pieces.

10. In heraldry, an ordinary or charge. The fess, the bend, the pale, the bar, the cross, the saltier, the chevron are called honorable pieces.

11. In ridicule or contempt.

12. A castle; a building. [Not in use.]

Seven different meanings appear prior to "a coin". Your critic is simply in error: Joseph would have had several other meanings to choose from.

Besides, even if he did mean "coinage", thinking that "their gold and ... their silver" must have meant "specie coins", it still boils down to the fact that a translator, especially an amateur translator, would render the source text into English that represents his idea of what the meaning actually is. Thus, under this hypothesis, Joseph would be reading into the text but still giving us the important information we'd need understand the level of the bribe Zeezrom was offering Amulek.

Further, whatever understanding one takes with regard to "pieces", the full explanation of the monetary system is where the text is less ambiguous: "neither did they measure after the manner of the Jews; but they altered their reckoning and their measure, according to the minds and the circumstances of the people". Their money system was a system of measurement, not of coinage. It was different from that of the Jews at Jerusalem, and they altered it from generation to generation, as well.

Further, the system itself is much less reasonable if it is about coinage than if about weights or measures of precious metals. No country I know of has a binary coinage system. In USmerica (and now in Europe), it's all decimal. In England, at the time Joseph translated the Book of Mormon, it was pence, shillings and pounds. Here's an Irish example:

Farthing (Feoirling) ¼d £¹/₉₆₀

Halfpenny (Leath Phingin) ½d £¹/₄₈₀

Penny (Pingin) 1d £¹/₂₄₀

Three-Pence (Leath Reul) 3d £¹/_/80

Sixpence (Reul) 6d £¹/_/40

Shilling (Scilling) 1s £¹/₂₀

Florin (Flóirín) 2s £¹/₁₀

Half-Crown (Leath Choróin) 2s6d £¹/₈

Ten Shilling (Deich Scilling) 10s £¹/₂

We see scores (20s), and threes, sixes, eighths, and so on at least as much (and more) as doubles and halves. This was the system Joseph would have been familiar with (USmerica used the British Pound in parallel with the dollar for decades after the Revolution) along side the decimal system of the dollar. Something so incredibly simple as the Nephite system of measures would have been extremely alien to any XIX writer.

Further, the money system is not a part of any of the rest of the Book of Mormon with one exception: Jesus notes that, when a man is in prison, he cannot repay even one senine.

I have read and re-read Alma 11 and 3 Nephi 12, and it is still something of a mystery to me (I haven't even tried to understand it—it's wholly tangential to me). It seems rather unlikely that Joseph could have kept this bit of trivia in mind and then play the card perfectly for hundreds of pages later.

Lehi