David Bokovoy's explanation of OT

[Robert F. Smith]

14 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Actually the New Jerusalem is taken from the Bible  (Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 11:10; 12:22–24; and 13:14), but it is most fully described in Revelation 21.  We are still looking for the claimed Lamanites to be found so that their destiny can flower and I'm sorry but I'm not familiar with the servant reference... But Smith specifically referrers to himself, references Columbus, without specifically naming him, refers to the founding of the Unites States and then the BoM becomes silent.  Using broad generalities are fine and used throughout the BoM...but the specifics stop once the author finished his book. While it claims to be written for our day...in actuality it was written for 1829 and then stops. Had it been authored by a real man named Mormon who had a fore knowledge of our time, surely he would have warned of the coming of the internet and the challenges that would have on the church, on the disparity of wealth distribution, over population, global warming, Hitler...maybe even warned the US to be on guard on December 7th and September 11th...but those things were unknown to Smith so why would we expect to find them in the BoM...we wouldn't 

You put a lot of stock in matters of very little importance to God, such as global warming, Dec 7, 1941, or the like, and short-shrift to matters of greater significance, such as the Gathering of the Jews -- upon which Joseph focused, and which has come to pass.

You also assume that the BofM is supposed to be in competition with the one thousand quatrains of magus Nostradamus' Les Propheties, when the BofM is actually very much a narrative account of various civilizations which rise and fall in the New World.  Only collaterally does it engage in some prophecies, which you then attack for not having gone far enough.  That was not the point of the book anyhow.

[Johnnie Cake]

25 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You put a lot of stock in matters of very little importance to God, such as global warming, Dec 7, 1941, or the like, and short-shrift to matters of greater significance, such as the Gathering of the Jews -- upon which Joseph focused, and which has come to pass.

You also assume that the BofM is supposed to be in competition with the one thousand quatrains of magus Nostradamus' Les Propheties, when the BofM is actually very much a narrative account of various civilizations which rise and fall in the New World.  Only collaterally does it engage in some prophecies, which you then attack for not having gone far enough.  That was not the point of the book anyhow.

The so called gathering of the Jews was actually taking place before Hyde's 1841 blessing.  According to British Historian Tudor Parfitt Jews were the majority population in the late 1850's and even in the 1830's constituted the largest single community.  Jews were flocking to Jerusalem at the very time Joseph was predicting it.

Quote

British historian Tudor Parfitt reports a Jewish majority in Jerusalem by the late 1850s.

". . . by the 1850s the Jews were the majority in the city. . . "

 

"But in the course of the nineteenth century a remarkable change took place. Between 1800 and 1882 when the first Zionist settlers arrived in Jaffa -- the Jewish community in Jerusalem grew from 2,000 to about 18,000 (out of a total population of 35,000). From the 1830s the Jews constituted the largest single community and from the late 1850s the Jews constituted an overall majority in the city. This, it must be stressed, was before the immigration inspired by modern political Zionism. Moreover, these figures do not really give a full idea of the scope of the immigration because the mortality was so high at any given point that very considerable immigration was needed just for the size of the community to stand still. "

Added to this is the fact that the "Return of the Jews" is actually a theme taken directly from the Bible...so for the Book of Mormon to also "predict" this is just consistent with its authors pattern of taking prominent themes from the bible and incorporating them in to his Book of Mormon

 

see:

Hosea 3:4-5 - "For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days."

Hosea 6:1 - "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds."

Edited May 26, 2016 by Johnnie Cake

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Gray said:

This rigidity explains why so many people who lose their testimony become antagonistic to Mormonism. I guess it's kind of built into our faith tradition. 

If thinking that that reasoning is absurd makes me rigid then I am happy being rigid.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Sure.  I think he totally missed one other option for LDS folks--just bury head in sand and pretend there are no problems at all.  I think it's been effective enough so he might as well have mentioned it. 

I do not trust the scholars. I think their premises are bad and I believe Isaiah was written before the exile. If that makes me an ostrich that sticks his head in the sand then so be it. Maybe I will find candy while I am down there.

[stemelbow]

So in connection with the Skousen/Carmack theory I'm curious.  Would the implications of this theory be that God does not deal with translations?  That others do the translating and He just asks them to do it?  And their translation is manual?  Might it suggest that God wouldn't be able to just translate automatically by knowing all languages?  or that translating in the heavenly sense is about like us translating.  They use tools similar to what we have?  This is kind of what this theory suggests to me. 

[stemelbow]

13 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I do not trust the scholars. I think their premises are bad and I believe Isaiah was written before the exile. If that makes me an ostrich that sticks his head in the sand then so be it. Maybe I will find candy while I am down there.

It only shows you haven't examined the reasons why it is accepted that much of Isaiah was written after the exile.  In that sense it's a sign of ignoring the facts in favor of the Church's assumed story. 

Edited May 26, 2016 by stemelbow

[Buckeye]

24 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

So in connection with the Skousen/Carmack theory I'm curious.  Would the implications of this theory be that God does not deal with translations?  That others do the translating and He just asks them to do it?  And their translation is manual?  Might it suggest that God wouldn't be able to just translate automatically by knowing all languages?  or that translating in the heavenly sense is about like us translating.  They use tools similar to what we have?  This is kind of what this theory suggests to me. 

I don't have much time to comment but will give my quick 2-cents. I arrived at this hypothesis on my own some 5-6 years ago (though not in nearly the degree of detail as Skousen). What led me to the hypothesis (and what I think is driving Skousen) is the inherent conundrum found when one studies the evidence of Joseph's translation process coupled with the actual text of the book. The evidence appears to support both a "tight" translation at times (aka "dictation") and a loose translation at others. Most LDS scholars approach this problem by suggesting a hybrid process where Joseph was tight sometimes and loose at others. But a simpler explanation could be that there were two "translation" events - an initial loose on that we would recognized as being a translation exercise (dictionaries, revisions, etc.) and a later dictation of that translation by Joseph (which he inaccurately, but innocently labeled as his "translation").

Here's a prime example that still strikes me as powerful. Dan Peterson as written about the "if and" clause that appears at places in the original manuscript (such as Moroni 10:3-5), but which the printer edited out because its not proper grammer. In English, we say "if X, then Y.' But Dan points out that in Hebrew its common to say "if X, and Y"  Dan cares about this because he sees it as evidence of an ancient and divine origin for the BOM because Joseph didn't know Hebrew and would never have used an "if and" clause. I saw it as evidence that Joseph was not actually translating the BOM, but dictating it, because a native English speaker would never use "if and"; he would automatically correct to the proper English. 

Consider a modern example of a translation from a spanish text to english. The spanish text reads: "Adan tiene diecisiete anos." The english translation should read: "Adam is 17 years old." But suppose the english translation read: "Adam has ten and seven years." That translation would lead me to believe that the translator was not a native english speaker. In like manner, the fact that the original BOM manuscript includes hebraisms, such as the "if and" clause, leads to me to conclude that it was not made by a native english speaker - either Joseph, Oliver, Solomon Spaulding, or any other modern possibility. 

The best explanation I can find for why the original manuscript contains hebraism is that the actual translator was not a native english speaker. Or, at least, that someone who did a portion of the translation was not a native speaker. Beyond that, granted, there is lots of speculation as to who that person could be.

FWIW, I actually am agnostic as to whether the BOM is historical. There's evidence I've seen suggesting it could not be written by Joseph or other 19th century english speakers (ex: hebraisms). And there's evidence that it is a modern construct (ex: deutro-isaiah). For now, rather than continue down the rabbit hole of an incomplete historical record, I find more mileage out of learning the gospel that the book teaches, carefully dropping the bad parts (ex: racism), and leaving the historicity for another day. I hope Nephi and Alma are real. But if not, it doesn't change the gospel I follow. Unfortunately, not only is my view a small minority one in the church today, but in light of Elder Holland's conference address in which he said he could not fathom someone believing the BOM is not historical, my view is also not very welcome in church discourse.

 

PS - To answer your question, yes, I think the upshot is that God was not directly involved in the actual translation. Just like he allows fallible men to do current translations of the book from english to swahili, he allowed fallible men at someplace and sometime to do a fallible translation from the nephite record to english.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Buckeye

[stemelbow]

5 minutes ago, Buckeye said:

I don't have much time to comment but will give my quick 2-cents. I arrived at this hypothesis on my own some 5-6 years ago (though not in nearly the degree of detail as Skousen). What led me to the hypothesis (and what I think is driving Skousen) is the inherent conundrum found when one studies the evidence of Joseph's translation process coupled with the actual text of the book. The evidence appears to support both a "tight" translation at times (aka "dictation") and a loose translation at others. Most LDS scholars approach this problem by suggesting a hybrid process where Joseph was tight sometimes and loose at others. But a simpler explanation could be that there were two "translation" events - an initial loose on that we would recognized as being a translation exercise (dictionaries, revisions, etc.) and a later dictation of that translation by Joseph (which he inaccurately, but innocently labeled as his "translation").

Here's a prime example that still strikes me as powerful. Dan Peterson as written about the "if and" clause that appears at places in the original manuscript (such as Moroni 10:3-5), but which the printer edited out because its not proper grammer. In English, we say "if X, then Y.' But Dan points out that in Hebrew its common to say "if X, and Y"  Dan cares about this because he sees it as evidence of an ancient and divine origin for the BOM because Joseph didn't know Hebrew and would never have used an "if and" clause. I saw it as evidence that Joseph was not actually translating the BOM, but dictating it, because a native English speaker would never use "if and"; he would automatically correct to the proper English. 

Consider a modern example of a translation from a spanish text to english. The spanish text reads: "Adan tiene diecisiete anos." The english translation should read: "Adam is 17 years old." But suppose the english translation read: "Adam has 10 and seven years." That translation would lead me to believe that the translator was not a native english speaker. In like manner, the fact that the original BOM manuscript includes hebraisms, such as the "if and" clause, leads to me to conclude that it was not made by a native english speaker - either Joseph, Oliver, Solomon Spaulding, or any other modern possibilities. 

The best I explanation I can find for why the original manuscript contains hebraism is that the actual translator was not a native english speaker. Or, at least, that someone who did a portion of the translation was not a native speaker. Beyond that, granted, there is lots of speculation as to who that person could be.

FWIW, I actually am agnostic as to whether the BOM is historical. There's evidence I've seen suggesting it could not be written by Joseph or other 19th century english speakers (ex: hebraisms). And there's evidence that it is a modern construct (ex: deutro-isaiah). For now, rather than continue down the rabbit hole of an incomplete historical record, I find more mileage out of learning the gospel that the book teaches, carefully dropping the bad parts (ex: racism), and leaving the historicity for another day. I hope Nephi and Alma are real. But if not, it doesn't change the gospel I follow. Unfortunately, not only is my view a small minority one in the church today, but in light of Elder Holland's conference address in which he said he could not fathom someone believing the BOM is not historical, my view is also not very welcome in church discourse.

 

PS - To answer your question, yes, I think the upshot is that God was not directly involved in the actual translation. Just like he allows fallible men to do current translations of the book from english to swahili, he allowed fallible men at someplace and sometime to do a fallible translation from the nephite record to english.

hmm...so do you think it possible something similar happened with the book of Abraham?  I've gotten the impression that the translation or dictation of whatever you want to call them of both were similar. 

I get the confusion of it seeming like a tight and loose dictation in different parts though.  I've wanted it badly to be that Joseph was taken away in a sense, shown parts and had explanation of parts and he had to figure out how to explain it.  He did so by trying ti incorporate biblical language.  And it seemed likely with the parts from the Bible he just plain read out of the BIble. 

Whatever the case in order for it to be any sort of scripture one has to get pretty creative in trying to figure out how we got it.  In that sense, the whole theory under discussion make sense. 

[champatsch]

Stanford Carmack here. I heard about this discussion and wanted to give an additional side of things, so readers can have a bigger picture and more information from which to draw (minor) conclusions. John Williams and I have emailed from time to time. I read his book Heaven Up Here, which I liked (we went to the same mission, but didn't overlap, my time preceding his), and then I believe I commented on his blog and emailed him.

Late August of last year we corresponded by email on substantive matters related to Book of Mormon language. It lasted about a week or so, and then he disengaged from the discussion. I brought up some word usage with him. I made some mistakes in the course of the discussion (related to tremendious [a Google search slip-up] and plural mights [mischaracterizing the data]), but the list he presented here was never intended to be an obsolete word list, against what he has very recently stated. (And I just checked our email exchange, and I clarified that explicitly in an email, so he has misled readers here in that regard.) Rather, it was a list of presumed American dialectal items that I had also found in Early Modern English texts.

In my plural was paper, which Robert F. Smith has helpfully provided a link to (as well as my other Interpreter articles; thank you), I mention and provide earlier examples of several of these dialect forms, with reference to Hardy's introduction to Skousen's The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale, 2009). RFS has linked to Joseph Smith Read the Words, which has a longer list of possibly obsolete/archaic vocabulary items. Skousen is currently working on part 3 of volume 3 of the critical text project, which includes a discussion of archaic vocabulary. I can assure you that it is a longer list than the one I placed in the article. Skousen has accumulated material on vocabulary for nearly 20 years. (I have only worked on Book of Mormon language for 2½ years.) I have seen his filing cabinet containing this material. I am assisting him in this endeavor. I have sent him my findings from time to time. So if John has dismissed the lexical evidence for non-King James Bible lexical obsolescence as minor and inconsequential, that is an inaccurate assessment. Please disregard what he may have suggested about archaic/obsolete Book of Mormon lexis. We discussed some archaic/obsolete vocabulary items in our email exchange of nine months ago, but probably fewer than 10, and maybe fewer than five (and I’m not talking about tremendious, etc.).

I was about to discuss "the more part" with him when he disengaged. I valued his insights and asked him to look at a working paper. I don't know if he did but I believe I made it available to him. As stated in that paper, we can find novel uses of "the more part" after the Book of Mormon. I've seen it in Freeman, Morris, and Stevenson in the latter half of the 19th cent. There are probably others. Their usage has little bearing on Book of Mormon usage.  And it cannot be reasonably said that the usage in the Book of Mormon is biblical, in the sense of the King James Bible. That Bible has "the more part" twice, in Acts, and never "the more part of X". Rather, Book of Mormon "more part" usage is like Coverdale's "the more part of them". And even if we want to say that it comes from the King James Bible, there is "a more part of it" (once), and the "the more parts of X" (twice), which have currently been found only in the Early Modern era, and not yet in the 18th cent. and beyond. So it appears that if they do eventually show up as novel usage of the 18th cent., it will be rare novel usage. Also, novel instances of "the more part" in the 18th cent. are rare in the textual record. The bulk of it is reprinted legal language. The usage is actually rare/uncommon in the 17th cent. The only book I've seen with something like Book of Mormon usage is Holinshed's Chronicles (1577). "The more part" was never the most-common option in EMnE. So once again we have a solid 16th cent. match for Book of Mormon usage (26 times), as we do with did usage. The reason I mention "the more part" is as a lead-in to plural mights, which is similar in certain ways to "the more part".

Plural mights, which is mentioned in what John quoted, and not quite accurately characterized by me in our exchange, is similar in that the only time there is appreciable usage in the textual record is from the first half of the Early Modern period. Also, the 18th cent. shows a lack of usage, as with "the more part". It was apparently rare, or even perhaps very rare in that century. As of this time, I haven't encountered a novel example. There are probably cases, but I haven't been able to search for it in certain databases yet. John found an example in a dictionary of Johnson's, but it was a quote of early 17th cent. usage as found in the writings of the famous Ben Jonson. In EEBO, there are several books with quite heavy usage of mights, on a par with the Book of Mormon, which has 12 instances of plural mights, but I have found that they are all late Middle English texts printed in the 16th cent., and in these the meaning and usage is often somewhat different. Now, the closest text to Book of Mormon usage in this regard is Malory's Morte d'Arthur, which can be thought of as a late late ME book, or an early EMnE book. The Book of Mormon is similar to Malory but also independent in its usage. First, both Malory's and the Book of Mormon's primary use is instrumental, with one exception. Malory has 9 "with all their mights", the BoM never has all, but 11 times it has "with our/your/their mights". Once it has "in their mights", which is like Spenser, who has "in their immeasur'd mights". (Chaucer has "in my mights", with a somewhat different sense.) John provided a solid New-England example from 1814 which has Malory's "with all their mights". The usage is clearly contextual, since "with all their hearts" immediately precedes it. BoM usage, in contrast, is only contextual once, and noncontextual and even countertextual the rest of the time. Again, never with all. Because usage was apparently rare in writings leading up to 1829, and never as heavily used as it is in the BoM since Malory, I think the proper characterization of BoM usage is that it is similar to and different from Malory, and it is highly unlikely that Joseph Smith would have employed the relatively frequent noncontextual mights usage and "in their mights" as he did in the dictation. If it had been likely, we would encounter other books with comparable usage rates, but we don't. Again, as in the the case of "the more part" and Holinshed's Chronicles, we have to go back in time quite a ways till we hit Malory and similar plural mights.

In the domain of syntax, the same is true many times over in the Book of Mormon. For this to be mischaracterized, through ignorance of the matter, is misleading to the readers here, and I have felt the need to address it and cut off such an uninformed line of reasoning that may lead to faulty conclusions.

[The Nehor]

37 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

It only shows you haven't examined the reasons why it is accepted that much of Isaiah was written after the exile.  In that sense it's a sign of ignoring the facts in favor of the Church's assumed story. 

Actually I have. I just disagree with some of the reasoning and the conclusion.

[jkwilliams]

19 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Stanford Carmack here. I heard about this discussion and wanted to give an additional side of things, so readers can have a bigger picture and more information from which to draw (minor) conclusions. John Williams and I have emailed from time to time. I read his book Heaven Up Here, which I liked (we went to the same mission, but didn't overlap, my time preceding his), and then I believe I commented on his blog and emailed him.

Late August of last year we corresponded by email on substantive matters related to Book of Mormon language. It lasted about a week or so, and then he disengaged from the discussion. I brought up some word usage with him. I made some mistakes in the course of the discussion (related to tremendious [a Google search slip-up] and plural mights [mischaracterizing the data]), but the list he presented here was never intended to be an obsolete word list, against what he has very recently stated. (And I just checked our email exchange, and I clarified that explicitly in an email, so he has misled readers here in that regard.) Rather, it was a list of presumed American dialectal items that I had also found in Early Modern English texts.

Stan,

Let me publicly apologize for bringing up you and our discussion on this board. That was absolutely wrong of me, and I am truly sorry. I have not intentionally misrepresented you or our discussion, but if you feel I got it wrong, again, I apologize. According to my email our conversation went from August until late October of last year, for what it's worth. But I did not intend to mislead anyone, and I certainly did not mean to hurt you.

John

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

The so called gathering of the Jews was actually taking place before Hyde's 1841 blessing.  According to British Historian Tudor Parfitt Jews were the majority population in the late 1850's and even in the 1830's constituted the largest single community.  Jews were flocking to Jerusalem at the very time Joseph was predicting it.

Added to this is the fact that the "Return of the Jews" is actually a theme taken directly from the Bible...so for the Book of Mormon to also "predict" this is just consistent with its authors pattern of taking prominent themes from the bible and incorporating them in to his Book of Mormon

..........................................................................

You're right.  The Gathering of the Jews had been in the Bible for thousands of years.  How odd that it had no meaning in reality in all that time.  No substantial return was in fact taking place at the time the Book of Mormon was printed.  The Jewish Galut continued as it always had.  The Return in earnest had yet to begin.

And, yes, the Book of Mormon has the same Gathering predictions that the Bible has -- with this one important difference, which you overlook:  The BofM is an immediate sign of the Restoration of all things, including that Gathering, which has now taken place in unmistakable ways.  No, the Jews have yet to build their temple in Jerusalem (which was part of Orson Hyde's dedicatory prayer), if you are young enough you will doubtless see it in your lifetime.  In that day, you will simply say that it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy, and has no other significance.  Will you be saying the same thing when the apocalyptic end comes?

[T-Shirt]

59 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

It only shows you haven't examined the reasons why it is accepted that much of Isaiah was written after the exile.  In that sense it's a sign of ignoring the facts in favor of the Church's assumed story. 

What a smug, condescending thing to say.  Do you really think anyone who disagrees with your view of the evidence is an ignoramus with his head in the sand?

[Buckeye]

31 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

hmm...so do you think it possible something similar happened with the book of Abraham?  I've gotten the impression that the translation or dictation of whatever you want to call them of both were similar. 

I get the confusion of it seeming like a tight and loose dictation in different parts though.  I've wanted it badly to be that Joseph was taken away in a sense, shown parts and had explanation of parts and he had to figure out how to explain it.  He did so by trying ti incorporate biblical language.  And it seemed likely with the parts from the Bible he just plain read out of the BIble. 

Whatever the case in order for it to be any sort of scripture one has to get pretty creative in trying to figure out how we got it.  In that sense, the whole theory under discussion make sense. 

For me, scripture is whatever the spirit dictates. It is constantly changing with the maturity of the person being taught.

As for the BOA, that's another good example of something that caused me to question what "being true" means. In a nutshell, I now equate "true" with "good" rather than "historically accurate." The result is that I don't worry about whether Joseph got the BOA translation wrong (he clearly thought he was translating the papyrus); rather, I look for what is good in the text. I take the same approach with the Bible, D/C, Koran, Apocrypha, and other scriptural texts. It also means I have less confidence in Joseph (and others') claims to historical visitations and the like. For me, the first vision was always meant to be a personal thing for Joseph and that's how its best left. The visitations from messengers in Kirtland giving him keys could be real or just imagined (again, I'm agnostic). So I no longer are 100% sure that the church as any authority or directive greater than other churches. But am I sure that the temple ordinances, sacrament, and other works we do tend to lead to good fruit and so are "true" in the sense that matters to me. I'll never be GA material (thank goodness), but I have found a place in the church body so long as I don't speak out too much.

[mfbukowski]

And now the heart-felt apology, which is part of the pattern.  There are reasons John and I do not get along.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And now the heart-felt apology, which is part of the pattern.  There are reasons John and I do not get along.

Would you prefer that I not apologize? I shouldn't have posted that stuff from Stan, and I've said so publicly. When I do wrong, I acknowledge it and apologize. 

[champatsch]

Thank you for the apology, John. And if I could edit my reply, I would edit "and it is highly unlikely that Joseph Smith" to "and it is highly unlikely that Joseph Smith, out of his own language (or from his knowledge of the Bible)", etc.

You are always welcome, John, to work with me in this rich field of inquiry, rather than against me. Best wishes.

[jkwilliams]

13 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Thank you for the apology, John. And if I could edit my reply, I would edit "and it is highly unlikely that Joseph Smith" to "and it is highly unlikely that Joseph Smith, out of his own language (or from his knowledge of the Bible)", etc.

You are always welcome, John, to work with me in this rich field of inquiry, rather than against me. Best wishes.

You're a good man, Stan, and I don't have any desire to work against you. Check your email.

Edited May 26, 2016 by jkwilliams

[ttribe]

18 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And now the heart-felt apology, which is part of the pattern.  There are reasons John and I do not get along.

FYI - You're being a jerk, again.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, ttribe said:

FYI - You're being a jerk, again.

Mark has a long history with me, and I understand why he feels the way he does. I wish I could change that, but I can't. In short, I have been a jerk to Mark many times in the past.

[ttribe]

1 minute ago, jkwilliams said:

Mark has a long history with me, and I understand why he feels the way he does. I wish I could change that, but I can't. In short, I have been a jerk to Mark many times in the past.

I'm aware of that.  Still doesn't excuse his pettiness.

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, ttribe said:

I'm aware of that.  Still doesn't excuse his pettiness.

I think he's entitled to a little pettiness where I'm concerned. 

[mfbukowski]

12 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Would you prefer that I not apologize? I shouldn't have posted that stuff from Stan, and I've said so publicly. When I do wrong, I acknowledge it and apologize. 

Of course you should apologize, but speak carefully in the first place and be careful in characterizing the opinions of others and then you will not have to apologize.

[mfbukowski]

Fine then, let's just start over

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Of course you should apologize, but speak carefully in the first place and be careful in characterizing the opinions of others and then you will not have to apologize.

As I said, I don't believe I mischaracterized his opinions, at least not intentionally, but bringing things up here was wrong of me and required an apology, whether or not you think it was sincere.