Pahoran

[Rob Bowman]

Nelson,

You wrote:

I think we've already established that there would be some Egyptian in the spoken language, as I've mentioned Cyrus Gordon. And it would be inevitable if you use a foreign script for your language. For example, after Chinese script was imported to write Japanese (a completely different language), some Chinese pronunciations were absorbed into the language.

I'm sorry, but what you say here has absolutely no bearing on the point I made. Of course, Hebrew itself has some Egyptian loan words and other signs of influence from Egyptian, so if the BOM was written in Hebrew with or without Egyptian script we would expect there to be some Egyptian influence. But that is different from claiming to have demonstrated as fact that the BOM engages in a specific bit of wordplay dependent on a specific Egyptian word in a text that makes no claim to be engaging in wordplay or any other kind of verbal association. Demonstrating a possibility is not the same thing as demonstrating a reality.

You wrote:

Did you miss my examples?

No. Are you acknowledging that your old examples don't work and claiming that your new examples are better? 1 Nephi 17:5 is the only example you have given so far in which a BOM text actually claims to be giving the derivation or verbal association that is the basis for a particular name (Irreantum). (There are others, as I recall, but this is the only one you have mentioned so far.) At least with this text we know it claims to be presenting some kind of etymology, derivation, or wordplay. This is what is lacking in Bowen's examples (Nephi, Alma, and Enos). Do you want to drop those examples, and what exactly are you claiming about 1 Nephi 17:5?

[Uncertain]

The work with chiasmus applied the test to other random texts. I think for the wordplay, we can use other texts as a baseline.

This would require a program that holds lexicons of Hebrew and Egyptian that would scan all the text surrounding proper names, translate words into Hebrew and Egyptian, and find matches. Apply the test to a series of random works, and see if the BOM turns up significantly more matches.

I am familiar with the chiasmus paper. I agree control texts are the way to go with word play. You could also use the BOM itself as a control by comparing it to Semetic languages which are not good candidates to have been spoken by purported ancient BOM authors. Given the relativly small number of word play examples I am not convinced the frequency of occurence is statistically signficant but I am agnostic to the question until additional analysis is performed. Another interesting comparision would be comparing the frequency of word play in a positive control like the Bible with purported word play in the BOM. If the frequency in an authentic ancient text like the Bible is much greater than the BOM this would cast doubt on the BOM word play.

The issue is trying to argue the examples of word play in the BOM are good evidence without such additional analysis is suspect. In other words I think Rob Bowmen made a very good point. Observation should be paired with comparision (i.e. controls) in order to be helpful. BOM apologetics has lots of observation very little comparison. This leaves the interpretation of observation to be susceptible to confirmation bias. Believers will be firmly convinced the only plausible explanation of ANE connections is ancient authorship while critics will be just as convinced of the opposite conclusion. The same data opposite conclusions because controls are rarely if every used to place observations into the correct context. The almost complete absence of appropriate controls in BOM apologetics is a major flaw.

Best,

Uncertain