19th century Protestant language in Book of Mormon

[churchistrue]

I'd like some discussion here on a couple issues on this.

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-book-of-mormon/

 

I assert that there answers to explain the presence of this language that support any faithful view of the BOM.  But even though I say that, I think the logic is kind of weak for #1 below.  What are the strongest arguments for the presence of these phrases, given a very traditional view of BOM translation?

1. traditional view, ancient record translated with no substantial expansion by Joseph
2. the Expansion Theory: it’s an ancient record with significant expansion by Joseph, and
3. not historical at all, and purely came through revelation to Joseph Smith, similar to other revelations like the Doctrine and Covenants.

 

Also, since Stanford Carmack posts here occasionally and many here are familiar with his work and theories, I'd like to have some discussion on this:

 

Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack are doing great research into the Book of Mormon and how it was translated/dictated, and providing some really good insight into the Early Modern English (EModE) in the Book of Mormon.  One theory coming from their research, is that the Book of Mormon contains so much EModE grammar and vocabulary, that it’s translation or creation date is more likely to be in the 1600’s than the 1800’s.  Joseph simply could not or would not have used so much EModE.  I’m obviously a hack, amateur research hobbyist compared to them, but this is what I see.  When I copy/paste these 19th century phrases (from the list below) into this historical trender, over and over it produces results like the above.  I understand there are a handful of phrases and grammar clauses that are real head scratchers, in terms of being popular in EModE and dead in Joseph’s day (especially “save it be” and “save it were”–very puzzling!).  But on the flip side, you have to account for literally hundreds of phrases in the Book of Mormon that were popular in the early 1800’s that don’t seem to be used in the EModE period.

 

[clarkgoble]

 

1. traditional view, ancient record translated with no substantial expansion by Joseph
2. the Expansion Theory: it’s an ancient record with significant expansion by Joseph, and
3. not historical at all, and purely came through revelation to Joseph Smith, similar to other revelations like the Doctrine and Covenants.

I don't think that gets at the variances. First we have to distinguish between method and content. Skousen argues for tight translation control but doesn't really address the other content issues much beyond the claim about 17th or even 16th century English. My guess is that this would prove to be regional dialects in the New England area of Joseph Smith but I'm not sure there's a way of testing that.

Anyway to content neither (1) nor (2) really deal with how tight or loose the translation was in terms of content. I think the evidence is pretty weighty that if either of those broad models are true that the text is loosely translated making liberal use of KJV phrases or even full verses to translate related thematic content. The evidence is also pretty strong that the KJV isn't normally followed exactly suggesting even looser connection. I suspect that if we already have that loose of a translation that (2) is entailed logically.

However when dealing with (2) one has to distinguish between expansion by the translator, expansion due to Joseph and other types of expansion. If the translation is more conceptual rather than tight in terms of narrow semantic tokens (words, word clumps) then the question is what source of 'texts' is being matched. I suspect it's matching based upon phrases already in Joseph's mind. (Which is not to say he's conscious of this although I wouldn't be shocked to find out there is some conscious influence due to the "study it out in your mind" command in D&C 9) 

How I take Blake's expansion theory is not expansion at this conceptual level but more midrashic commentary either of ideas, events, or the like like. That is significant expansion. So a common speculation of expansion is the beginning of Alma 11 where the aside on weights and measures might be expansion. But the difficulty is of course you can't really tell if it's expansion. For all we know Mormon put that in.

[churchistrue]

32 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

 

1. traditional view, ancient record translated with no substantial expansion by Joseph
2. the Expansion Theory: it’s an ancient record with significant expansion by Joseph, and
3. not historical at all, and purely came through revelation to Joseph Smith, similar to other revelations like the Doctrine and Covenants.

I don't think that gets at the variances. First we have to distinguish between method and content. Skousen argues for tight translation control but doesn't really address the other content issues much beyond the claim about 17th or even 16th century English. My guess is that this would prove to be regional dialects in the New England area of Joseph Smith but I'm not sure there's a way of testing that.

Anyway to content neither (1) nor (2) really deal with how tight or loose the translation was in terms of content. I think the evidence is pretty weighty that if either of those broad models are true that the text is loosely translated making liberal use of KJV phrases or even full verses to translate related thematic content. The evidence is also pretty strong that the KJV isn't normally followed exactly suggesting even looser connection. I suspect that if we already have that loose of a translation that (2) is entailed logically.

However when dealing with (2) one has to distinguish between expansion by the translator, expansion due to Joseph and other types of expansion. If the translation is more conceptual rather than tight in terms of narrow semantic tokens (words, word clumps) then the question is what source of 'texts' is being matched. I suspect it's matching based upon phrases already in Joseph's mind. (Which is not to say he's conscious of this although I wouldn't be shocked to find out there is some conscious influence due to the "study it out in your mind" command in D&C 9) 

How I take Blake's expansion theory is not expansion at this conceptual level but more midrashic commentary either of ideas, events, or the like like. That is significant expansion. So a common speculation of expansion is the beginning of Alma 11 where the aside on weights and measures might be expansion. But the difficulty is of course you can't really tell if it's expansion. For all we know Mormon put that in.

Thanks, so I guess you're saying, whether or not there's significant expansion, we should expect to find significant phraseology and vocabulary specific to Joseph.  I guess there would be a 1a traditional, tight view and a 1b traditional, loose view.  Where 1a might have trouble with the 19th century language but 1b wouldn't.  

[Tacenda]

Not to change the subject in any way, bear with me hopefully here. Has anyone done studies on how the BoM manuscript can fit on the gold plates? 

[Benjamin McGuire]

First,

Have you read my discussion about the Book of Mormon translation?

http://www.fairmormon.org/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/book-mormon-communicative-act

Second, we run into this problem - which is that the King James is a relatively dated source. This idea only works if we assume that the Book of Mormon is an EME work. But this clearly isn't the case, since it includes language which comes too late for the EME period. If we look at this list, and compare them to other Biblical translations, we find something very different. So, for the NIV:

Spotless? Check. Restoration? Check. Happiness? Check. Plan? Check. Forever? Check. Consigned? Check. And so on.

I think that there is a real problem with Skousen and Carmack's work (which I discuss in that link above).

Ben McGuire

 

[JLHPROF]

2 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Not to change the subject in any way, bear with me hopefully here. Has anyone done studies on how the BoM manuscript can fit on the gold plates?

Without knowing the language it was written in I don't see how that would be possible.

[Tacenda]

1 minute ago, JLHPROF said:

Without knowing the language it was written in I don't see how that would be possible.

Oh my goodness, I had forgotten that it was written in another language where one letter could possibly represent a full word, dummy me.

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, churchistrue said:

I'd like some discussion here on a couple issues on this.

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-book-of-mormon/

 

I assert that there answers to explain the presence of this language that support any faithful view of the BOM. 

I see no issue with that.
Idiomatic translation (as opposed to literal) would be much more beneficial to the reader.
Why wouldn't an expression used on the plates receive an inspired idiomatic translation from God in order to make it more understandable by the 19th century readers?
Haven't Bible scholars gone back to original Biblical texts and retranslated them into modern English to make the Bible more readable than the KJV?

[thesometimesaint]

Any translation is dependent on the meaning of a word in another language.

[clarkgoble]

15 minutes ago, churchistrue said:

Thanks, so I guess you're saying, whether or not there's significant expansion, we should expect to find significant phraseology and vocabulary specific to Joseph.  I guess there would be a 1a traditional, tight view and a 1b traditional, loose view.  Where 1a might have trouble with the 19th century language but 1b wouldn't.  

Yup. And since we find so much KJV variants and 19th century language/imagery in my opinion (1a) has been falsified. Which is why you don't really find defenders or commentators who try and deal with all the evidence using (1a). I should add that the best book I've found on this is Brant Gardner's The Gift and the Power: Translating the Book of Mormon. While I disagree with him in a few places I think he does a great job explaining the issues. 

Usually what happens I think is people conflate tight control in terms of translating method (i.e. how the seer stone or Urim & Thummim were used) with tight control in terms of content. This then leads them astray. But they're really separate mostly orthogonal issues.

Edited March 8, 2017 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

1 minute ago, thesometimesaint said:

Any translation is dependent on the meaning of a word in another language.

I don't think it's quite that simple. (Depending upon what you mean by that) While certain types of translations tend to privilege words as the unit of translation there's really no reason why you shouldn't see the unit as the sentence or even paragraph. (Recognizing paragraphs and even sometimes sentences aren't present in all texts) There's also the problem of idioms which usually function at the phrase level and are very difficult to translate. In modern translations the usual approach to these things is either to find a similar idiom that might be unrelated to the word or else to do a more literal word translation with commentary in footnotes. But we should note that our contemporary norms of separating out commentary into either separate texts or footnotes is relatively modern.

To see the problem consider an idiom like "shake hands." This first off isn't done the same way in other language. (Distantly remembering my Russian from college I think it's shake arms there) But most importantly the connotation of shaking hands has a whole slew of cultural significance that translating the words would miss. Other good examples are "you have tomatoes in your eyes" in German but which means seeing real objects but not seeing what everyone else sees about them. In Swedish you have "there's no cow on ice" which seems nonsensical when translated literally but which means "there's nor reason to worry." An other Russian one I remember is "take yourself in your hands" which means "pull yourself together" which even as an English idiom is hard to translate.

Needless to say some languages have more poetic idioms than others. Semitic languages tend to be a bit more hyperbolic than the European languages we're familiar with. So they make use of these idioms far more. The KJV is a fairly literalistic mostly word for word translation. Which is why so much of it doesn't make sense in the Old Testament without a commentary. 

Throw in the issue that you might have semiotic drift which means phrases come to change meaning. You see this in say early (pre-20th century) Protestantism which is making extensive use of KJV English (or other translations for languages like German) but that those are unrelated to the original Semitic or Greek senses that the text is translating. This makes translation pretty difficult at the best of times especially when you are trying to communicate not just what the sentence means but also its connection to other sentences it might be quoting, paraphrasing or at least referencing. Again we handle this today with commentaries or footnotes. But again that's a relatively recent innovation largely developed by the needs of academic scholarly writing. In ancient times that just wasn't even done. (Heck typically punctuation hadn't even been invented yet)

So if one asks how one might translate a passage that's come through multiple languages and editors while indicating reference to other texts including texts not existing when originally written (say to connect an OT passage to a NT passage) how do you do it? We're biased by how we do it today. But honestly expansion combined with translating similar ideas by familiar existing texts isn't a wrong answer even if it probably obscures the word by word literalism we tend to emphasize in our own scholarly translation. (Largely due again to the innovations in terms of layout of footnotes, endnotes and commentary blocks)

[Meadowchik]

24 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Oh my goodness, I had forgotten that it was written in another language where one letter could possibly represent a full word, dummy me.

I don't know if it matters...unless Joseph was committing the plate inscriptions to memory, he did not directly translate from them. Witnesses described Joseph using the seerstone in the hat with the plates covered while he dictated the words given him by the stone to his scribe.

[thesometimesaint]

It really is one of necessity. I can't read Russian; its Cyrillic alphabet is largely unknown to me. But I do understand the American English equivalent of it.

[clarkgoble]

12 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

It really is one of necessity. I can't read Russian; its Cyrillic alphabet is largely unknown to me. But I do understand the American English equivalent of it.

I wish English were as simple as Russian (and arguably most European language). Most language spell phonetically. Unfortunately English tended to appropriate words from other language and keep their original spelling rather than adopt them into a phoenetic spelling. Worse yet spelling started standardizing just before a huge shift in how English words were pronounced. Which is why we need dictionaries in English and why there's the very idea of a spelling bee which is nonsensical in most languages. And kids get confused with words like 'knight' where the k is silent or 'cook' where we have two different letters with the same sound.

On the other hand English is ridiculously expressive with often dozens of different words with the same literal meaning but subtly different connotations and places where they're appropriate. It's really a pretty complex language since often the issue isn't meaning but appropriateness. (You do have this in other languages though like modern Japanese) 

Getting back to translation it's pretty easy to think of sentences where the particular word choice has great significance beyond it's meaning in terms of semantics. Translating that is pretty hard. 

Edited March 8, 2017 by clarkgoble

[churchistrue]

43 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

First,

Have you read my discussion about the Book of Mormon translation?

http://www.fairmormon.org/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/book-mormon-communicative-act

Second, we run into this problem - which is that the King James is a relatively dated source. This idea only works if we assume that the Book of Mormon is an EME work. But this clearly isn't the case, since it includes language which comes too late for the EME period. If we look at this list, and compare them to other Biblical translations, we find something very different. So, for the NIV:

Spotless? Check. Restoration? Check. Happiness? Check. Plan? Check. Forever? Check. Consigned? Check. And so on.

I think that there is a real problem with Skousen and Carmack's work (which I discuss in that link above).

Ben McGuire

 

Hi Ben, I've read a lot of your work.  I missed attending the conference last year, but I streamed it and watched your presentation.  

I'm not getting your point with the NIV, though.  Joseph wouldn't have access to the NIV.  

[thesometimesaint]

57 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I wish English were as simple as Russian (and arguably most European language). Most language spell phonetically. Unfortunately English tended to appropriate words from other language and keep their original spelling rather than adopt them into a phoenetic spelling. Worse yet spelling started standardizing just before a huge shift in how English words were pronounced. Which is why we need dictionaries in English and why there's the very idea of a spelling bee which is nonsensical in most languages. And kids get confused with words like 'knight' where the k is silent or 'cook' where we have two different letters with the same sound.

On the other hand English is ridiculously expressive with often dozens of different words with the same literal meaning but subtly different connotations and places where they're appropriate. It's really a pretty complex language since often the issue isn't meaning but appropriateness. (You do have this in other languages though like modern Japanese) 

Getting back to translation it's pretty easy to think of sentences where the particular word choice has great significance beyond it's meaning in terms of semantics. Translating that is pretty hard. 

If American English weren't my native tongue, I doubt I would have any desire to learn it. I just don't have the gift of tongues.

I agree translating is hard work.

SEE https://www.biblebelievers.com/jmelton/italics.html

[Danzo]

3 hours ago, churchistrue said:

I'd like some discussion here on a couple issues on this.

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-book-of-mormon/

 

I assert that there answers to explain the presence of this language that support any faithful view of the BOM.  But even though I say that, I think the logic is kind of weak for #1 below.  What are the strongest arguments for the presence of these phrases, given a very traditional view of BOM translation?

1. traditional view, ancient record translated with no substantial expansion by Joseph
2. the Expansion Theory: it’s an ancient record with significant expansion by Joseph, and
3. not historical at all, and purely came through revelation to Joseph Smith, similar to other revelations like the Doctrine and Covenants.

 

Also, since Stanford Carmack posts here occasionally and many here are familiar with his work and theories, I'd like to have some discussion on this:

 

Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack are doing great research into the Book of Mormon and how it was translated/dictated, and providing some really good insight into the Early Modern English (EModE) in the Book of Mormon.  One theory coming from their research, is that the Book of Mormon contains so much EModE grammar and vocabulary, that it’s translation or creation date is more likely to be in the 1600’s than the 1800’s.  Joseph simply could not or would not have used so much EModE.  I’m obviously a hack, amateur research hobbyist compared to them, but this is what I see.  When I copy/paste these 19th century phrases (from the list below) into this historical trender, over and over it produces results like the above.  I understand there are a handful of phrases and grammar clauses that are real head scratchers, in terms of being popular in EModE and dead in Joseph’s day (especially “save it be” and “save it were”–very puzzling!).  But on the flip side, you have to account for literally hundreds of phrases in the Book of Mormon that were popular in the early 1800’s that don’t seem to be used in the EModE period.

 

 

Are you saying there is 19th century language in a document from the 19th Century?

I'm Shocked!, Shocked!

Why didn't any tell us about this earlier? All those years of my life . . .

 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

Not to change the subject in any way, bear with me hopefully here. Has anyone done studies on how the BoM manuscript can fit on the gold plates? 

See my "The ‘Golden’ Plates,” FARMS Update, October 1984, reprinted in John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon: The F.A.R.M.S. Updates (Provo: FARMS/ SLC: Deseret Book, 1992), 275-278.  Online at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=71&chapid=847 ,

There are plenty of plates available for engraving the Egyptian text.  Also, in the April 1923 issue of the Improvement Era, Janne Sjodahl showed how the plates could have been engraved in Hebrew.  http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1269&context=jbms .

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

First,

Have you read my discussion about the Book of Mormon translation?

http://www.fairmormon.org/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/book-mormon-communicative-act

Second, we run into this problem - which is that the King James is a relatively dated source. This idea only works if we assume that the Book of Mormon is an EME work. But this clearly isn't the case, since it includes language which comes too late for the EME period. If we look at this list, and compare them to other Biblical translations, we find something very different. So, for the NIV:

Spotless? Check. Restoration? Check. Happiness? Check. Plan? Check. Forever? Check. Consigned? Check. And so on.

I think that there is a real problem with Skousen and Carmack's work (which I discuss in that link above).

Ben McGuire

In light of your comments in last year's FairMormon Conference, Ben, I think it interesting that some of the Brethren use translations other than the KJV in their General Conference talks.

[hope_for_things]

3 hours ago, churchistrue said:

I'd like some discussion here on a couple issues on this.

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-book-of-mormon/

 

I assert that there answers to explain the presence of this language that support any faithful view of the BOM.  But even though I say that, I think the logic is kind of weak for #1 below.  What are the strongest arguments for the presence of these phrases, given a very traditional view of BOM translation?

1. traditional view, ancient record translated with no substantial expansion by Joseph
2. the Expansion Theory: it’s an ancient record with significant expansion by Joseph, and
3. not historical at all, and purely came through revelation to Joseph Smith, similar to other revelations like the Doctrine and Covenants.

 

Also, since Stanford Carmack posts here occasionally and many here are familiar with his work and theories, I'd like to have some discussion on this:

 

Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack are doing great research into the Book of Mormon and how it was translated/dictated, and providing some really good insight into the Early Modern English (EModE) in the Book of Mormon.  One theory coming from their research, is that the Book of Mormon contains so much EModE grammar and vocabulary, that it’s translation or creation date is more likely to be in the 1600’s than the 1800’s.  Joseph simply could not or would not have used so much EModE.  I’m obviously a hack, amateur research hobbyist compared to them, but this is what I see.  When I copy/paste these 19th century phrases (from the list below) into this historical trender, over and over it produces results like the above.  I understand there are a handful of phrases and grammar clauses that are real head scratchers, in terms of being popular in EModE and dead in Joseph’s day (especially “save it be” and “save it were”–very puzzling!).  But on the flip side, you have to account for literally hundreds of phrases in the Book of Mormon that were popular in the early 1800’s that don’t seem to be used in the EModE period.

 

Thanks for your post, this is great stuff and very interesting.  I love the list of phrases that we can play around with, really nice work there.  

Question about your comments on Skousen and Carmack's work.  I haven't read really any of their work on this EModE hypothesis, so I can't comment to much on it.  Are you saying that your results Google searches show that many of the phrases that Skousen and team are callings EModE, are actually quite common in the 18th & 19th century?  I just want to make sure I understand your point.  

Also, can you comment a little more about the Skousen and Carmack work in general.  I have to say I haven't paid much attention to it, because I disagree with Skousen's tight translation model that he asserts and I just assume that if he's that ignorant of all the evidence that rules out the possibility of tight translation, that his ability to produce objective critical scholarship is lacking and that undermines his credibility in my book.  That said, I try to remain open to ideas, so if you think their work on EModE is more legitimate, I might be persuaded to look into it further.  

[hope_for_things]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

First,

Have you read my discussion about the Book of Mormon translation?

http://www.fairmormon.org/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/book-mormon-communicative-act

Second, we run into this problem - which is that the King James is a relatively dated source. This idea only works if we assume that the Book of Mormon is an EME work. But this clearly isn't the case, since it includes language which comes too late for the EME period. If we look at this list, and compare them to other Biblical translations, we find something very different. So, for the NIV:

Spotless? Check. Restoration? Check. Happiness? Check. Plan? Check. Forever? Check. Consigned? Check. And so on.

I think that there is a real problem with Skousen and Carmack's work (which I discuss in that link above).

Ben McGuire

 

Thanks Ben for sharing this.  I haven't read a FAIR article that I liked this much in a very long time.  I just might have to start reading them more often if they continue to produce works like this.  Really appreciate it.  

[clarkgoble]

Ben I hadn't read that presentation of yours before. I rather like it. I especially like this line:

Quote

In other words, had Joseph Smith been the translator, and had he prepared a completely fluent translation, it would have seemed far more likely to his intended audience that it was an original work, and not ancient scripture. 

The quotations and paraphrases of the KJV were significant both to indicate reference but also because his primary audience was unsophisticated and needed that sort of language and familiarity. That said I think a criticism of your position (even if I agree with you) is that one can conduct an archaic style while maintain more textual fidelity to the underlying text. Most translations of pseudepigrapha from the early 19th century or earlier did this for instance.

However the pseudopigraphal texts highlight a problem. They typically didn't go quite as far as Joseph did in aping KJV language. Consider for instance the Lawrence translation of 1 Enoch from 1821. (That says 1883, but I think that's just the date of that publication while the translation is originally from 1821) Lawrence leaves off 'thees' and 'thous' and other Elizabethan language but maintains some archaic elements such as 'ye.' This suggests that even if some degree of KJV style is necessary this model of expectations doesn't explain the degree of archaic language used nor the loose text style indicated by KJV quotes and paraphrases for texts not in the Bible. While undoubtedly people criticize elements of Lawrence I think it highlights that one could in theory have a tighter connection to the underlying text of the Book of Mormon.

My guess is that a loose translation (in terms of content) was necessary both because of the method of translation ('study it out in your mind' in some degree) but also perhaps because the underlying tokens and syntax on the plates itself demanded a loose translation. i.e. it was highly compressed in some form - already indicated by Nephi. Exactly what that means whether a cipher tied with mnemonic techniques or a kind of shorthand that encompassed broad semantic tokens isn't clear. I'm skeptical, for instance, that the brass plates and gold plates were written in the same script. That's especially true if Nephi's egyptian style wasn't egyptian scripts but an egyptian style of mnemonic writing. This  idea being that a person already familiar with the text reads the text to you and then that enables you to read the shorthand written down due to familiarity -- this was a style popularized in the art of memory during the Renaissance which reached it's peak with masonic ciphers of their rituals and then quickly disappeared. So you see it in the Renaissance with Fludd or Bruno but the general techniques themselves go back at least to 400 BC. (I should add as an aside that some have postulated this as an explanation for the Book of Abraham and the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar has some ties to it as well) While too late for Nephi there are fairly early Greek texts discussing the broad method.

Edited March 8, 2017 by clarkgoble

[churchistrue]

32 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Thanks for your post, this is great stuff and very interesting.  I love the list of phrases that we can play around with, really nice work there.  

Question about your comments on Skousen and Carmack's work.  I haven't read really any of their work on this EModE hypothesis, so I can't comment to much on it.  Are you saying that your results Google searches show that many of the phrases that Skousen and team are callings EModE, are actually quite common in the 18th & 19th century?  I just want to make sure I understand your point.  

Also, can you comment a little more about the Skousen and Carmack work in general.  I have to say I haven't paid much attention to it, because I disagree with Skousen's tight translation model that he asserts and I just assume that if he's that ignorant of all the evidence that rules out the possibility of tight translation, that his ability to produce objective critical scholarship is lacking and that undermines his credibility in my book.  That said, I try to remain open to ideas, so if you think their work on EModE is more legitimate, I might be persuaded to look into it further.  

Here's what I'm saying.  And I'm saying it in a hack/hobbyist way with no bold assertions that I'm trying to undo their work or theory.  It's more that I'm wondering out loud here.  Their work has identified a lot of EModE unique kind of vocabulary and grammar.  Some in KJV that could be copied.  Some well known that could be mimicked.  Some not so well known at all, and essentially dead in Joseph's day, and very unlikely to be copied or mimicked.  Further, the way that the EModE presents itself is done in a way that is above someone like Joseph trying to mimic it.  That's what they are claiming.  At least that is my understanding of it.  My kickback here is the following: 1) i'm saying nothing concerning the EModE  2) i'm saying outside and addition to the EModE, there is a lot of 19th century type phrases and vocabulary, that appear to be hitting its most popular peak time in Joseph's day and many times appear to come to popularity AFTER the EModE period (but I'll back down on that in a hurry if I'm challenged because I know Google Advanced Books is not the right method to search EModE texts).  phrases like the ones I list there at the bottom of the article.    

ie: EModE = he did go, save it were, the more part, etc.  I'm not challenging any of this.  outside the EModE: "song of redeeming love", "plan of redemption", "demands of justice", etc.  lot of them in there.

As for commenting on their work in general, a lot of people here are more qualified than I am to do so.  I'm very interested in their work, and it appears solid, academically.  But you have to separate their actual academic work with some of the theories that have spun off from it.  

[Jane_Doe]

(Hippo)

So the Book of Mormon was translated into the religious language that was used in that day.... so?

[hope_for_things]

29 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Ben I hadn't read that presentation of yours before. I rather like it. I especially like this line:

The quotations and paraphrases of the KJV were significant both to indicate reference but also because his primary audience was unsophisticated and needed that sort of language and familiarity. That said I think a criticism of your position (even if I agree with you) is that one can conduct an archaic style while maintain more textual fidelity to the underlying text. Most translations of pseudepigrapha from the early 19th century or earlier did this for instance.

However the pseudopigraphal texts highlight a problem. They typically didn't go quite as far as Joseph did in aping KJV language. Consider for instance the Lawrence translation of 1 Enoch from 1821. (That says 1883, but I think that's just the date of that publication while the translation is originally from 1821) Lawrence leaves off 'thees' and 'thous' and other Elizabethan language but maintains some archaic elements such as 'ye.' This suggests that even if some degree of KJV style is necessary this model of expectations doesn't explain the degree of archaic language used nor the loose text style indicated by KJV quotes and paraphrases for texts not in the Bible.

Any reason why we shouldn't expect that Joseph at times had the KJV open in front of him while dictating, and other times he may have been paraphrasing from memory.  Some evidence from this kind of a process in past studies seems relevant.  The use of wherefore and therefore as outlined by Metcalfe way back in the 90s.  

http://signaturebookslibrary.org/new-approaches-to-the-book-of-mormon-10/