Could the Book of Mormon be a 17th Century pious fraud?

[cdowis]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

The only other execution by fire I am aware of in the Book of Mormon is King Noah who is burned to death by his own people. This doesn't appear to have been because of heresy, but for what might simplistically be called a failure of leadership. However, it's worth noting that King Noah's execution was done by the same culture that performed two of the other three burning-execution episodes.

The burning of heretics seems to have been related to beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church in medieval times. (A recent parallel would be execution by firing squad as a form of execution in Utah based on religious beliefs.) At any rate, this form of punishment (burning) for this particular crime (heresy) seems to be unique in the history of the world to medieval Europe (particularly on a large scale). If you can point me to any other people at any other time in history that performed mass executions of heretics I would be very interested. It seems quite extraordinary to find this exact practice in the Book of Mormon. . . and on multiple occasions.

I see your point.  It is called parallelism, an argument against the authenticity of the BOM.  But. my friend, you have reached the wrong conclusion.  Parallelism proves that this is a 20th century production.  We have a band of robbers which has a standing army, and they hide in caves in the mountains.  This is OBVIOUSLY a reference to the Taliban.

We have blood oaths, straight out of the mobsters of the casa nostra, among other things bribing judges for a favorable judgement == sounds like the corruption found in Chicago or New York.

Burning heretics comes from  the play and TV production of "Joan of Arc"

We can detect the popularity of TV preachers, references to Darwinism == survival of the fittest.

The continual tension and hostility between the Lamanites and Nephites, the two great powers == certainly a reference to the Cold War.

The refusal of the kingmen to participate in defending and fighting the bad guys == the Quakers and other conscience objectors during WW2.

Where else will you find such a confluence of such events?  Parallelism tells us that the Book of Mormon was a pious fraud written in the 20th century.  
How can you deny the obvious ==>> It all fits!!

Edited October 12, 2017 by cdowis

[JarMan]

2 minutes ago, cdowis said:

I see your point.  It is called parallelism, an argument against the authenticity of the BOM.  But. my friend, you have reached the wrong conclusion.  Parallelism proves that this is a 20th century production.  We have a band of robbers which has a standing army, and they hide in caves in the mountains.  This is OBVIOUSLY a reference to the Taliban.

We have blood oaths, straight out of the mobsters of the casa nostra, among other things bribing judges for a favorable judgement == sounds like the city of Chicago or New York.

The continual tension and hostility between the Lamanites and Nephites, the two great powers == Obviously taken from the Cold War.

Parallelism tells us that the Book of Mormon was a pious fraud written in the 20th century.

Believe it or not, you've hit on part of my motivation for this thread. To at least show that parallels in the Book of Mormon are not unique to Joseph Smith's time. 

[Benjamin Seeker]

41 minutes ago, JarMan said:

The language issues I'm afraid are even more difficult than just the ones you've mentioned. For instance, why aren't there any 16th Century words in the Book of Mormon that were completely extinct by 1829? And what about the words in the Book of Mormon that didn't exist in the 16th Century? Perhaps the text was "managed" over time. As in first written down, say in the late 1500's, then later revised once or many times over the next hundred years or so. And since we're talking wild theories now, what if a late 16th Century writer used the Tyndale Bible, and also had an early English translation of Isaiah? Maybe one that was later used (like the Tyndale Bible was) in the King James translation effort. Couldn't that help explain the differences in the italicized words if the King James Committee decided to change the "original" ones? Wild theory, I know.  But there really isn't a model I'm aware of that makes sense of all the linguistic mysteries without wild theories. 

I've suggested that JS was exposed to Early Modern English through grimoires, American psalmnody and hymnody, prayer language, and perhaps Freemasonry. Carmack doesn't think those are sufficient sources for the amount and fluency of Early Modern English found in the BOM, but at the very least, I believe those are four traditions in which Early Modern English had been preserved into the 19th century.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[Glenn101]

51 minutes ago, JarMan said:

If you can point me to any other people at any other time in history that performed mass executions of heretics I would be very interested. It seems quite extraordinary to find this exact practice in the Book of Mormon. . . and on multiple occasions.

This may not be exactly analagous but in ancient Egypt people were burned alive for vandalizing tombs. In the Old Testament there were several sins where the punishment was burning. Therefore it would not be surprising that in Abinadi's case among a people that professed to live the Mosaic law but were evil themselves would choose that punishment. And you will note that such was not the prevailing punishment among the Nephites themselves. You are taking an anomalous practice and comparing it to a normal practice. That is a bit of a stretch.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

12 minutes ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I've suggested that JS was exposed to Early Modern English through grimoires, American psalmnody and hymnody, prayer language, and perhaps Freemasonry. Carmack doesn't think those are sufficient sources for the amount and fluency of Early Modern English found in the BOM, but at the very least, I believe those are four traditions in which Early Modern English had been preserved into the 19th century.

Why not do more than suggest. Follow up on that. However just being exposed to something does not put it into ones speech patterns. Carmack has already done some work in that area and Early Modern English does not show up in Joseph's 1832 history which he penned himself.

Glenn

[JarMan]

17 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

This may not be exactly analagous but in ancient Egypt people were burned alive for vandalizing tombs. In the Old Testament there were several sins where the punishment was burning. Therefore it would not be surprising that in Abinadi's case among a people that professed to live the Mosaic law but were evil themselves would choose that punishment. And you will note that such was not the prevailing punishment among the Nephites themselves. You are taking an anomalous practice and comparing it to a normal practice. That is a bit of a stretch.

Glenn

It was a normal practice among the people of King Noah and their descendants. I think the fact that it was not normal among the main body of Nephites is precisely the point being made. It was an evil practice that eventually was only ended by killing off the culture that practiced it. Many 16th Century reformers (though not all) would have also seen it as an evil practice. In the end the message seems clear: if you practice this you will be driven forth, hunted down and killed (Alma 25:12).

[Benjamin Seeker]

1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

Why not do more than suggest. Follow up on that. However just being exposed to something does not put it into ones speech patterns. Carmack has already done some work in that area and Early Modern English does not show up in Joseph's 1832 history which he penned himself.

Glenn

Frankly, It's not my area of expertise. However, it doesn't take an expert to see that if there were four individual traditions that preserved Early Modern English into the 19th century and each of those traditions contacted JS, then there is an easy argument for the language of the BOM to be a product of the 19th century, which was one of the obvious anwers to begin with considering the BOM contains both Early Modern English as well as 19th century English unknown to earlier time periods, so if you have to choose one time period over the other you go with the later time period since the early one has at least already occurred, even if it is temporally distant from the latter. 

As far as the 1832 history not having the more archaic grammar, if this grammar was not JS's normal speech but his archaic-sounding scriptural voice, you could easily see how that could shift over time as JS's perception of the archaic may have changed according to the sources of English he was frequently exposed to. For example, I believe he distanced himself from folk magic and treasure hunting (I.e. Grimoires) during the time he was translating the BOM. Given a couple years of distance, this could have impacted his perception of ancient and his ability to draw on archaic forms that he had been exposed to in grimoires. This is similar to the shift in someone's ability to speak a foreign language after decreased exposure to it.

Its too early to know but from what little Carmack has revealed on this board, it appears that archaic forms are more prevalent in JS' earlier revelations than in his later ones. If this is true, than it would support my idea that JS' exposure to Early Modern English may have shifted over time affecting his ancient-sounding scriptural voice.

 

Edited October 12, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[churchistrue]

6 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Why not do more than suggest. Follow up on that. However just being exposed to something does not put it into ones speech patterns. Carmack has already done some work in that area and Early Modern English does not show up in Joseph's 1832 history which he penned himself.

Glenn

If you wanted to write a piece in hick southern talk, or mimic a bad native Asian attempt at English, or ebonics, or snooty British speak, or channel an obnoxious televangelist, you probably could. That doesn't mean you would use it in your journal or every other writing you did. 

[Rajah Manchou]

20 hours ago, Nevo said:

The references to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in 2 Nephi 3, the numerous passages referring to the loss of the 116 pages, anti-universalism, republican ideology, anti-Masonry...

So besides dictating a 300+ page manuscript by memory to a number of scribes in plain view, Joseph managed to write himself into the book as well as the 116 page plot twist, anti universalism, republican ideology and anti-masonry themes.

At some point the "Joseph as sole author of a pious fraud" begins to fall apart.

[cdowis]

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

Believe it or not, you've hit on part of my motivation for this thread. To at least show that parallels in the Book of Mormon are not unique to Joseph Smith's time. 

To put it bluntly, using parallelism as an argument is pure rubbish.

[Benjamin McGuire]

11 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Its not impossible that 300+ pages of a 16th/17th century religious text written in a strange script could end up in the hands of someone close to Joseph Smith.

In fact, it did happen.

http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/2000s/2001RBSt.htm

Samuel Mitchill compared the shorthand in the Detroit Manuscript to the shorthand found in the margin notes of a Bible dating back to the 1630s. Where did this 300+ page manuscript, used by Jesuit missionaries to proselytize Native Americans, go? 

Richard Stout and I used to argue about issues all the time (decades ago - not much recently). My notes tell me that on the old AOL forums (and I don't think there is more than a couple of persons here who were participants there back then - maybe Juliann is the only other one), he went under the usernames of IOUDA3 and Jude3. At any rate I have several pages of notes that I put together a few years ago about Richard Stout's proposal. Here are some of the highlights.

__________

1: At the core of this argument is the issue that there is a potential similarity between the scripts in the sample that we have of the characters on the Gold Plates, and the script used in the so called Detroit manuscript.

2: This similarity is part of the origins theory that Stout puts forward. That is, as he puts it: "Perhaps most startling of all, paleographic research indicates that Joseph may have copied many of the characters he had Martin Harris take to Dr. Mitchell directly from the Detroit Manuscript."

3: The text of the Detroit Manuscript (along with the narrative of its discovery) are connected to Joseph in this way - we have Abraham Edwards (who lives in Detroit, Michigan) who occasionally works with Stephen Mack (Joseph's uncle who also lives in Detroit), who has to deliver a copy of the manuscript to Joseph Smith and explain to him the story about its discovery including the trip to see Mitchell.

Now, when we start to try and match this up with the other side, we start having some problems. Especially when we fill in the chronology. According to the documents that Stout provides, the book was found at the very end of February or the beginning of March of 1823. By April 10th (at the latest), the text had been translated, and the characters were no longer unknown.

4: Stout makes a big deal about Mitchell being involved. Perhaps the idea behind this is that if Mitchell couldn't interpret the text the first time, he won't be able to interpret it again when Joseph sends the characters off with Martin Harris. But here we run into a bit of a chronology problem. Mitchell responds to Edwards that his look at the language is inconclusive (he suggests it might be Latin of some sort), but he responds to him on April 16, 1823. By the time he gets this, Edwards already knows (from the letter dated April 10th) what the text is, and that it has been identified and translated (along with a selection from the text).

Do you see the chronological complexity here? For Stephan Mack to pass this on to his nephew Joseph - and include the detail that Dr. Mitchell cannot read it, he also already has to know the details about the fact that it has been translated and read, and that it isn't in an unknown script. Stout is trying to manipulate this chronology (particularly in the way that he presents it). There is no real window where the requirements are met (where the manuscript script is both unknown by "the learned" and remains undecipherable). By the time we have the assessment from Mitchell that it is potentially an unknown script, there already exists an explanation for the script along with a brief translation of part of it.

Later in his essay Stout suggests this:

"I believe it fair to conclude -- given the connections already enumerated in this paper between the "curious" manuscript's owner Abraham Edwards, Stephan Mack, Joseph Smith, and Samuel L. Mitchill -- that the "Anthon transcript" is, very likely, primarily a random collection of early modern shorthand characters transcribed from the Detroit Manuscript."

This is where we begin to run into the problem of the mythical manuscript. Here is another problem. It's true that in reviewing the vast collection of characters in this group of scripts, in the shorthand that was used, and in marginalia of these old texts that Stout could find characters that matched characters on the piece of paper we call the Anthon transcript. But how many pages of the Detroit Mansucript would be necessary to get all of them? Of the hundreds of pages, how many were needed? Did Stephan Mack copy the entire manuscript? And if all of them came from a single page, wouldn't it be likely that the Anthon mansucript might be somewhat readable? But this isn't what we find at all. And in the various exhibits that Stout provides, we don't see a cluster of similar characters - we see a single similar one surrounded by many, many unfamiliar (non-similar ones).

This means that the similarities represent a small (and dispersed) selection from the characters in the manuscript, meaning that it is awfully hard to make the case that this isn't simply coincidence.
__________

At any rate, Richard Stout's piece doesn't have any significant value as far as I can tell. It never reaches the point where we might consider it to be predictive, and it doesn't really (in my opinion) ever even reach the point where it is explanatory. I think that the chronology argument really shoots it in the foot (long before we get to any sort of actual data driven analysis). But, even so, we get to Rajah's suggestion -

Quote

Samuel Mitchill compared the shorthand in the Detroit Manuscript to the shorthand found in the margin notes of a Bible dating back to the 1630s. Where did this 300+ page manuscript, used by Jesuit missionaries to proselytize Native Americans, go? 

Mitchell cannot be an authoritative source. He gets it wrong. And by the time his response comes back to Edwards (and potentially Mack), they already have a partial translation of the text as well as an understanding of the script and its language. It clearly is a Catholic text. But, what makes him think that it must be a Jesuit missionary text? It seems unlikely on the surface that a French Jesuit would be carrying around an Irish Catholic theology book for conversion purposes.

Of course, for those of us with close ties to the city of Detroit, it's easier to connect some of the dots. In 1805, the City of Detroit burned to the ground (completely). The only surviving building was a stone fort. The city rebuilt. But, it seems likely (given the dates) that the buried manuscript survived the fire, and was abandoned in the ruins. When the city rebuilt, it was rebuilt using a different city planning schema. And because of this, this is why Edwards could discover the manuscript while digging a basement. But it seems much more likely that it came with an Irish immigrant who came to Detroit near the end of the 18th century, instead of with a French missionary a few decades earlier. And it wasn't that strange of a manuscript, nor could it have been presented to Joseph Smith in that context (the chronology just doesn't allow for it).

 

Edited October 12, 2017 by Benjamin McGuire

[clarkgoble]

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think you are confusing two different episodes. In Alma 35 the Zoramites evicted the new converts from their land and then went to the war with Ammon's people after they gave the evicted Zoramites a land to live in. I'm referring to an episode in Alma 25 where the descendants of Amulon (former priest of Noah) "caused that many of the Lamanites should perish by fire because of their belief" (verse 5). The message that they were killed because of their belief is reinforced in verses 8 and 11. And once we realize the context of the mass burnings it becomes clear that it was heresy. The context, of course, is that these were the same people (culturally) who put Abinadi to death for what can only be described as heresy. As Abinadi burned he prophesied that he was a type of things to come and that their seed would put others to death in the same way "because they believe in the salvation of the Lord their God." (Mosiah 17:15). 

The only other execution by fire I am aware of in the Book of Mormon is King Noah who is burned to death by his own people. This doesn't appear to have been because of heresy, but for what might simplistically be called a failure of leadership. However, it's worth noting that King Noah's execution was done by the same culture that performed two of the other three burning-execution episodes.

The burning of heretics seems to have been related to beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church in medieval times. (A recent parallel would be execution by firing squad as a form of execution in Utah based on religious beliefs.) At any rate, this form of punishment (burning) for this particular crime (heresy) seems to be unique in the history of the world to medieval Europe (particularly on a large scale). If you can point me to any other people at any other time in history that performed mass executions of heretics I would be very interested. It seems quite extraordinary to find this exact practice in the Book of Mormon. . . and on multiple occasions.

Sorry - I didn't know that had actually posted. (Honestly not trying to make an excuse for a crappy post -- I still have it up on my screen writing it) I'd typed Zoramite originally but meant Ammoniah. Just ignore that whole post. I was writing it quickly at the end of day but it had a ton of errors in. I didn't realize I'd clicked "submit" somehow. But now you get to see my writing method. LOL. (I write most things during print jobs I'm waiting for)

Edited October 12, 2017 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

15 hours ago, Nevo said:

As far as I know, there was no Universalist movement gaining momentum ca. 1620 and the patristic debates were long over by then. So, yes, I am arguing that it is anachronistic in the 16th and 17th centuries. Western New York in the 1820s offers a much more plausible Sitz im Leben for the Nephite debate than early modern England.  

Oh, I agree with that. I thought you meant to the Book of Mormon in general.

 

[Glenn101]

2 hours ago, churchistrue said:

If you wanted to write a piece in hick southern talk, or mimic a bad native Asian attempt at English, or ebonics, or snooty British speak, or channel an obnoxious televangelist, you probably could. That doesn't mean you would use it in your journal or every other writing you did. 

But if you wanted to mimic Early Modern English you couldn't. It would have to be a part of your every day speech patterns or you would have to study it. That is the point. Critics have opined that it must have been part of Joseph's environment, fossilized speech patterns. Stanford's analysis of Joseph's 1832 history just did not find the evidence of Early Modern English that appeared in the Book of Mormon. Thus JarMan's 16th century pious fraud theory arises as an attempt to proffer one explanation as to how it came about.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, cdowis said:

To put it bluntly, using parallelism as an argument is pure rubbish.

I thought it was a mania....

[Physics Guy]

9 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

But if you wanted to mimic Early Modern English you couldn't.

 

Why not?

I mean, it might be hard to mimic it on purpose. You couldn't sit down and say, "I'm going to nail the dialect of south London's middle class merchants in 1620!" and pull it off well without study. But why can't you just aim for old-fashioned English like the KJV, overdo it a bit, and wind up sounding kind of 1620? What's the obstacle?

[champatsch]

21 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Oh certainly. There is more than a little vocabulary that is out of place in 1620.

northernmost, collected, cleared, mysterious, concerned, overpowering, overpowereth, checked (as in stopped - the other meaning of checkered is old enough), overbearance ...

Do I need to do more?

Well, every word has its own history, and even the OED isn't up to date in many instances.  Take the first one of this list, northernmost. OED2 has a 1719 Defoe example as the earliest. OED3 (online) has a 1661 example.  In EEBO Phase 1 texts 1577 is the earliest example.

So is northernmost out of place in 1620?  No.  Neither is the verb collect.  But the general point is that there are some words, like derangement, which are not found in 1620.  That word doesn't enter the textual record of English till 1737.  Before that it's in dictionaries as a French word.  So there is 18c vocabulary.  But there is 15c vocab, 16c vocab, 17c vocab too.

In any event, a definitive study will be published early next year.  About 1,400 pages.  Skousen has written up about 500 vocabulary items and phrases.  There are about 50 that should be classified as archaic or obsolete (pre-1701).  He's categorizing them all, and the typesetter is working on it.  I've been helping.

[champatsch]

11 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

Why not?

I mean, it might be hard to mimic it on purpose. You couldn't sit down and say, "I'm going to nail the dialect of south London's middle class merchants in 1620!" and pull it off well without study. But why can't you just aim for old-fashioned English like the KJV, overdo it a bit, and wind up sounding kind of 1620? What's the obstacle?

Well, the obstacle is that you need to know a ton of archaic vocabulary and syntax and incorporate it with the content.  Syntax like the following that isn't in the KJB or pseudo-biblicals:

There are dozens of this sort of thing in the Book of Mormon that aren't what the mimics did -- they aren't (pseudo)biblical.  The archaic/obsolete lexical usage and morphosyntax are mutually supportive.

[Benjamin McGuire]

I did of course, just do a quick search on terms meeting a specific set of requirements, using my OED4. And I want to point out that there is this issue. Even if a word shows up for the first time in 1620, we wouldn't expect for it to be used by a translator in translating a text for some time after it first shows up. Translators generally work to make their texts accessible to a contemporary (and not a future) audience.

Of course, the problem Carmack, is that this works in both directions.

When Royal produces his list of "50 that should be classified as archaic or obsolete (pre-1701)," how many do you think I will be able to find easily in a later context (after 1701)? I have very high expectations. And doesn't this mitigate his claim of being obsolete or archaic in the same way?

Language isn't made of these discrete slices. You don't really have an 18c vocabulary, or a 15c vocabulary, or a 16c vocabulary, or a 17c vocabulary. Why? There are a lot of reasons. But one of them is simply the fact that we don't have people that fall into these discrete slices - and language exists at least in part in the collective understanding of the people who use it. Many people may live their entire life inside of one of these time period. But many don't. And while we can discuss when a term enters the language, this isn't such an indicator for how long it lasts or when it becomes obsolete. It becomes obsolete not so much in terms of its inclusion in new texts, but in its becoming less understood in the existing texts as they are read. So we run into the problem that it is far easier to attempt to determine the earliest use of a term rather than the point at which it stops being understood properly (and only at this point does it really become obsolete). And of course we have a unique sort of phenomenon that occurs in this research in the availability of texts. Availability (and search-ability) decreases as we go back in time. The likelihood of our finding examples of obsolete words, phrases, and grammar in more recent texts goes up simply because we have a progressively larger representation of the completely literary production. This is also a bit of a coin with two sides, because we can still talk about the relevance of language that is rare (and particularly in the context of translation as I point out).

But I assume that you know this.

Ultimately though, there is this real hurdle with the notion of a translation in connection with Skousen's work. A translation aims to be read by audiences (and read in a certain way) by the author of the translation. In particular, the notion of translating a text into archaic language can serve any number of rhetorical purposes on the part of the translator. Part of this discussion has to be the why, and not just the what. And it is over this question that I find Skousen to have absolutely no clear answers. So how do you propose to answer the question? What date do you give the translation? What sort of profile do you personally assign to the translator? What is the purpose of the archaic and obsolete language that you see in the text? And finally (and perhaps most importantly), how does recognizing the archaic and obsolete language in the text, as you read it, change the meaning you derive from it?

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Sorry - I didn't know that had actually posted. (Honestly not trying to make an excuse for a crappy post -- I still have it up on my screen writing it) I'd typed Zoramite originally but meant Ammoniah. Just ignore that whole post. I was writing it quickly at the end of day but it had a ton of errors in. I didn't realize I'd clicked "submit" somehow. But now you get to see my writing method. LOL. (I write most things during print jobs I'm waiting for)

Oh, now you have done it Clark Kent - now we know your innermost secrets! Now we've got you on the run! Now you are on your heals. Now you have no excuses. Now I'll be watching your every move with my super x-ray vision dude. Yeah, you are definitely in for it now... Say no more, I got you pegged. Just head for the ropes...

P.S. note my EME word "innermost" - yeah, I could write the BoM too with one pinky tied behind my back, and no I won't even do it during a print job - that's just disgusting  

[Nevo]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

So besides dictating a 300+ page manuscript by memory to a number of scribes in plain view, Joseph managed to write himself into the book as well as the 116 page plot twist, anti universalism, republican ideology and anti-masonry themes.

At some point the "Joseph as sole author of a pious fraud" begins to fall apart.

Last night I happened to be browsing aimlessly on YouTube and came across a video of two acclaimed British stage actors, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, discussing their skepticism that "the man from Stratford" wrote Shakespeare's plays. They were promoting a document called "The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about the Identity of William Shakespeare," which makes arguments like the following:

Quote

. . . one finds no contemporaneous evidence that Mr. Shakspere was even a professional writer, much less that he was the poet-playwright William Shakespeare. Further, much contemporaneous evidence that has come to light seems at odds with his having been Shakespeare. Of a few great writers, like Homer, we know nothing at all; but there is only one great writer about whom the more we learn, the less he appears to have been a writer. How can this be for England's Shakespeare? . . .

Mr. Shakspere grew up in an illiterate household in the remote agricultural town of Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no record that he traveled at all during his formative years, or that he ever left England. Both of his parents witnessed documents with a mark; but most surprisingly, neither of his daughters could write. One poorly-executed signature exists for his daughter, Susanna, but it only suggests a functional illiterate. His younger daughter, Judith, twice signed with a mark when witnessing a deed for a Stratford neighbor. Mr. Shakspere may have attended the Stratford grammar school, but records to confirm this do not exist. Records do survive for England's two universities at the time, but no record places him at either of them. Most orthodox scholars make no claim that he ever attended any university, inside or outside of England.

Some say that the Stratford grammar school would have provided all the formal education Mr. Shakspere would have needed to launch him on a trajectory consistent with the author's literary output. We disagree. The works show extensive knowledge of law, philosophy, classical literature, ancient and modern history, mathematics, astronomy, art, music, medicine, horticulture, heraldry, military and naval terminology and tactics; etiquette and manners of the nobility; English, French and Italian court life; Italy; and aristocratic pastimes such as falconry, equestrian sports and royal tennis. Nothing that we know about Mr. Shakspere accounts for this. Much of the knowledge displayed in the works was the exclusive province of the upper classes, yet no record places Mr. Shakspere among them for any length of time. The works are based on myriad ancient and modern sources, including works in French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and Greek not yet translated into English. How Mr. Shakspere could have acquired knowledge of these sources is a mystery.

Sound familiar? Their argument is essentially, "How could Shakspere have known?" In the video, Jacobi at one point theorizes that the plays had multiple authors, since it seemed impossible for any single person to know so much.

I don't know how we got the Book of Mormon. It's a mystery to me. But I don't find it harder to believe that "Joseph managed to write himself into the book as well as the 116 page plot twist," than the alternative explanation that a legendary figure from the 2nd millennium BCE foresaw Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and that God knew in the 6th-century BCE that Lucy Harris would interfere with the 116 manuscript pages in 1828 and therefore directed Nephi to keep two parallel sets of plates.

[Benjamin McGuire]

To what extent though is the language that you offer - "caused them that they should" significantly different from the KJB: "commanded them that they should" or "charged them that they should"?

[clarkgoble]

57 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

When Royal produces his list of "50 that should be classified as archaic or obsolete (pre-1701)," how many do you think I will be able to find easily in a later context (after 1701)? I have very high expectations. And doesn't this mitigate his claim of being obsolete or archaic in the same way?

I was a pretty big skeptic of Carmack. But it's worth taking his examples and trying to find later contexts. For most of them I couldn't. He's linked to the corpus he used in a post here from a month or two ago. So you can run the tests yourself. It convinced me although I'll fully confess I didn't test everything. I just tested enough against his corpus and corpuses I had to be convinced. For an easy test just put up complex queries against 19th century writings in the Google Books corpus.

[clarkgoble]

11 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I've suggested that JS was exposed to Early Modern English through grimoires, American psalmnody and hymnody, prayer language, and perhaps Freemasonry. Carmack doesn't think those are sufficient sources for the amount and fluency of Early Modern English found in the BOM, but at the very least, I believe those are four traditions in which Early Modern English had been preserved into the 19th century.

Just to note many of those are in his corpus. I thought the same thing, but the pre-1830 masonic texts, hymns and other similar sources I checked didn't have the forms that I checked for. Again I didn't check all of Carmack's examples. But I went from skeptic to convinced. I'm open to someone finding some obscure source Joseph had, but I'm now pretty skeptical they will. Again look at Google Books for a reasonable collection of books prior to the 1830's.

[cdowis]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Richard Stout and I used to argue about issues all the time (decades ago - not much recently). My notes tell me that on the old AOL forums (and I don't think there is more than a couple of persons here who were participants there back then - maybe Juliann is the only other one),

I was on  compuserve forum back in the day.  Also participated in the newsgroup  alt.religion.mormon

Tough place to be, but I finely honed my skills at destroying the antis.  I would not be the person I am today.

Edited October 12, 2017 by cdowis