19th century phrases in the BOM -- especially for the EModE'ers

[churchistrue]

4 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

What do you think his theory is? From what I can tell he's arguing for a composite text not a purely 15th century one. It seems unambigous that there are post-15th century phrases.

I think Royal threw out a theory once that it's a 16c translation that was "massaged" or updated for a 19c audience or something like that. But I think he's backed off that a little maybe. I guess my understanding of their theory would be that the example I suggested would be damning to the theory or force a different view. ie maybe a few instances of vocabulary or phrasing could change but not that widespread. But I don't know exactly. That's why I ask.

 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I try not to use apologist as a pejorative term, I think its respectable to be an apologist, in some topics I consider myself an apologist too. 

Working for the church alone classifies you as an apologist in some sense, and I've heard enough from Skousen to believe that he's a very conservative apologist, but I haven't heard or read as much directly from Carmack.  

As for EModE, I'll be honest, I don't respect it, and I think the burden of earning respect is on the shoulders of those promoting any new theory.  So, I'm having a little fun about how absurd the whole thing seems to me, that is in jest, not paranoid ranting.  I'm not a scholar and never have claimed to be, I'm just a hack message board participant.  

The thing about Carmack and Skousen is that they make methodical secular presentations of fact without ever speculating on the religious value of their work on Early Modern English.  Indeed, it appears to me that any non-Mormon linguistics scholar would approach the questions they deal with in pretty much the same way.  That is how academics do their work.  If they have overlooked something, or gotten something wrong in that secular endeavor, then by all means say so, and understand that they will appreciate the correction.  That is how scholars work.  You seem very uncomfortable with that.

[Robert F. Smith]

14 minutes ago, churchistrue said:

I think Royal threw out a theory once that it's a 16c translation that was "massaged" or updated for a 19c audience or something like that. But I think he's backed off that a little maybe. I guess my understanding of their theory would be that the example I suggested would be damning to the theory or force a different view. ie maybe a few instances of vocabulary or phrasing could change but not that widespread. But I don't know exactly. That's why I ask.

You are certainly asking a lot of good questions, and it is true that Carmack and Skousen are not quite sure what to make of all this.

[champatsch]

Quote

My question is would it change your theory or would that be expected with your current theory?

No, it doesn't change the theory.  Any explanatory theory must allow that a (final) translation was late, but it's hard to pinpoint late.  Suppose you base it on attestations, then we have ites first attested in the 1850s, and unwearyingness first attested in the 1860s (independent of the Book of Mormon).  Of course we know the Book of Mormon was set down in writing in 1829 and published in 1830.  So basing the date of the (final) translation on attestations like that doesn't actually work. Therefore, even though we have things like "plan of mercy" first attested currently in 1746, we could still say that the (final) translation could have been earlier than 1746, since there is creativity apparent in the translation, as shown by things like ites and unwearyingness.  But words that came from French, like derangement, do put a lower bound on the (final) translation date, since it wouldn't have been much before the 1737 first attestation of derangement  that it had begun to be used commonly in English.  You could also try to pinpoint the (final) translation with grammar, such as the systematically modern auxiliary selection with unaccusative verbs. That seems to place the (final) translation toward the end of the 18c.  And "had not ought to", as in "this thing had not ought to be" (Moroni 8:24), should be considered.  So far we have a late date for the first attestation of the negative, although the positive is found in the 1530s.  What is the earliest someone can find "had not ought to" with a following verb?

Edited November 9, 2017 by champatsch

[churchistrue]

13 minutes ago, champatsch said:

No, it doesn't change the theory.  Any explanatory theory must allow that a (final) translation was late, but it's hard to pinpoint late.  Suppose you base it on attestations, then we have ites first attested in the 1850s, and unwearyingness first attested in the 1860s (independent of the Book of Mormon).  Of course we know the Book of Mormon was set down in writing in 1829 and published in 1830.  So basing the date of the (final) translation on attestations like that doesn't actually work. Therefore, even though we have things like "plan of mercy" first attested currently in 1746, we could still say that the (final) translation could have been earlier than 1746, since there is creativity apparent in the translation, as shown by things like ites and unwearyingness.  But words that came from French, like derangement, do put a lower bound on the (final) translation date, since it wouldn't have been much before the 1737 first attestation of derangement  that it had begun to be used commonly in English.  You could also try to pinpoint the (final) translation with grammar, such as the systematically modern auxiliary selection with unaccusative verbs. That seems to place the (final) translation toward the end of the 18c.  And "had not ought to", as in "this thing had not ought to be" (Moroni 8:24), should be considered.  So far we have a late date for the first attestation of the negative, although the positive is found in the 1530s.  What is the earliest someone can find "had not ought to" with a following verb?

Thanks. I don't buy all this. But everything you and Royal say, I find thoroughly fascinating. Thanks for answering.

[champatsch]

I should add here that in the first quarter of next year parts 3 and 4 of volume 3 of the Book of Mormon critical text project will be published.  These parts include 1,300 pages analyzing hundreds of items of vocabulary, phrases, expressions, and syntax of the Book of Mormon, relating them to the textual record of English, both early and late.  This study shows that many phrases that have been assumed to be strong markers of the 19c have their origin in the Early Modern English period.

Here's an interesting phrase to consider: "fountain of all righteousness".  It is rare in the 19c, before the Book of Mormon.  It was more common in the 16c than in the 17c.  It comes from Calvin originally.  So some phrases in the Book of Mormon are best classified as 16c, and they are enveloped, for the most part, in extra-biblical 16c and 17c syntax.

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, churchistrue said:

.................................... I want to say there's one other usage in Scarlet Letter, but I might be confusing it with another rare BOM phrase.

Maybe Joseph got it from Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of the 1850 Scarlet Letter) since both were living in Salem as boys of nearly the same age back in 1813.

[churchistrue]

I hope I don't suddenly have several posts. I'm struggling with the editor.

Quick question. "State" or "state of". Have you guys done a deep dive on that?

When I did my computer study, I divided what I call S Voice and N Voice. Assume just the first half of large plates Mosiah through Helaman for now, which is where this distinction is trongest. S Voice = first person sermons of King Benjamin, Alma, Abinadi. N Voice = third person narrative, mostly Mormon.

There were a lot of differences between the two but "state of" was one of the most remarkable. Very high frequency in S Voice and low or nonexistent in N Voice.

"State of" appears to be another one of those phrases that is very heavily late 18c/early 19c.

"State of" seems to be deeply integrated into the meaning and purpose of the text and wouldn't be something that could be a later add-on. 

Thoughts?

[Robert F. Smith]

39 minutes ago, champatsch said:

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

Here's an interesting phrase to consider: "fountain of all righteousness".  It is rare in the 19c, before the Book of Mormon.  It was more common in the 16c than in the 17c.  It comes from Calvin originally.  So some phrases in the Book of Mormon are best classified as 16c, and they are enveloped, for the most part, in extra-biblical 16c and 17c syntax.

“fountain of righteousness” I Enoch 48:1 (both Richard Laurence 1821 and R. H. Charles 1917 phrase it the same), “fountain of all righteousness” I Ne 2:9.

 

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

So what percentage of the Book of Mormon contains EmodE versus 19th century language anything else that might be found? 

If it is so pervasive and diverse that could possible speak to Joseph using many sources to come up with the Book of Mormon, extending to different eras, or that whoever was on the other end putting words before his face was using many sources transcending eras.  How does this type of thinking work regarding the Book of Abraham? 

Well I don't know about overall percentages. That is probably not answerable yet, but Carmack might have a good estimate based on his analysis.

As far as Joseph obtaining EModE features from different sources, I think you don't understand how unlikely that would be. Using grammar and syntax is an intuitive process. And the EModE features in the text seem specifically chosen because they would be understandable to 19th century audiences. Joseph likely didn't have access to very many of the sources that contained the EModE features in the BofM. Even if he did, he would have needed the ability to select a variety of archaic features (understandable to modern audiences) from different sources and then use them systematically in a fast-paced orally-dictated translation. The access, the careful selection, and the systematic implementation of such features are all unlikely on their own and virtually impossible together. 

Because divine beings (God, Holy Ghost, Angels) have linguistic capacities beyond mortals, it is simply not clear what role specific sources played in the translation if any (assuming a divine translation took place and that a divine being or beings translated the text). 

It is difficult to determine at this point how similar Joseph Smith's other revelations and translation projects were to his translation of the Book of Mormon. Thus these findings may or may not be relevant to the translation of the Book of Abraham.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

..........................................., or that whoever was on the other end putting words before his face was using many sources transcending eras.  How does this type of thinking work regarding the Book of Abraham? 

Interesting quandary, and the guy or gal who comes up with a reasonable explanation should probably win a Nobel Prize.

The Book of Abraham is a very different matter, but I don't see any archaic English expression there.  Do you?  We do know the source of the Hebrew used (in Sephardic style transliteration), and there is certainly some Egyptian used as well.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The thing about Carmack and Skousen is that they make methodical secular presentations of fact without ever speculating on the religious value of their work on Early Modern English.  Indeed, it appears to me that any non-Mormon linguistics scholar would approach the questions they deal with in pretty much the same way.  That is how academics do their work.  If they have overlooked something, or gotten something wrong in that secular endeavor, then by all means say so, and understand that they will appreciate the correction.  That is how scholars work.  You seem very uncomfortable with that.

Makes sense, and I'm not uncomfortable at all with it.  I would love to see them publish in a secular peer reviewed journal on their findings.  

[stemelbow]

17 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Well I don't know about overall percentages. That is probably not answerable yet, but Carmack might have a good estimate based on his analysis.

He's been at it for years, so I'd hope he had something.  An accurate appraisal in terms of percentages seems reasonable at this point. 

17 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

As far as Joseph obtaining EModE features from different sources, I think you don't understand how unlikely that would be.

I think I do.  That's why I think the idea silly on the face of it.  But it is, I suppose a conclusion to draw from all of this.  Joseph must have culled from many sources that spanned hundreds of years, if'n it wasn't given to him as he peered into his hat. 

17 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Using grammar and syntax is an intuitive process. And the EModE features in the text seem specifically chosen because they would be understandable to 19th century audiences. Joseph likely didn't have access to very many of the sources that contained the EModE features in the BofM. Even if he did, he would have needed the ability to select a variety of archaic features (understandable to modern audiences) from different sources and then use them systematically in a fast-paced orally-dictated translation. The access, the careful selection, and the systematic implementation of such features are all unlikely on their own and virtually impossible together. 

I guess so.  I wonder how many phrases we start using after we read them without realizing we're doing it.  I probably do it plenty. 

17 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Because divine beings (God, Holy Ghost, Angels) have linguistic capacities beyond mortals, it is simply not clear what role specific sources played in the translation if any (assuming a divine translation took place and that a divine being or beings translated the text). 

It is difficult to determine at this point how similar Joseph Smith's other revelations and translation projects were to his translation of the Book of Mormon. Thus these findings may or may not be relevant to the translation of the Book of Abraham.

Some time ago I just told myself that Joseph's work on the BoA translation was probably like his efforts with the BoM.  He didn't use the plates to translate the BoM, and the papyrus doesn't contain anything near the BoA.  So, if inspired on both counts, they likely weren't translations at all.  I doubt some intermediator translated the plates for Joseph and dictated them to him.  If dictation it was probably someone else out there writing down the stories to fit the notion of scripture like the Bible.  The Bible, as it is, is hardly good history after all.  I wonder if Jesus just assigned the task to some character who grew up in 15th century English speakers, but had also been listening and interacting with English speakers who were arriving to the heavenly realms as he was taking a couple hundred years to get a story that one day he'll make appear, line by line, in a stone that he had to figure out how to get into some 19th century american's hands. 

This character:  "Sir, I don't know why these folks went through the trouble of keep a record and hiding it, if it wasn't going to be translated"

Man upstairs:  "don't worry about it.  My gosh, if I was worried about getting accurate history, a word for word accounting, I would have done the whole bible different.  There's nothing foolproof here.  You are all mistake prone.  So get at it.  You'll make plenty of mistakes as everyone before.  It doesn't matter because it's a story, ideas put out there.  Let them figure it out.  they'll fail and fall all over themselves.  Just do it.  You know enough true stuff.  Just tell them the mistakes the mistakes of men."

Character:  "can I hire a few to help?"

"sure.  Take whoever you want.  They ain't busy or nothing trying to convert the dead." 

[Robert F. Smith]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Makes sense, and I'm not uncomfortable at all with it.  I would love to see them publish in a secular peer reviewed journal on their findings.  

Actually, all of this and more will be published next year in two huge volumes for scholars to examine in detail.  Meantime, Carmack has been publishing peer-reviewed articles on this matter for several years (all online and free).  Scholars are free to respond at any time.  I have provided a full bibliography on this board several times, and Carmack has been very accessible on this board -- dealing forthrightly with all questions.  What's not to like?

[Robert F. Smith]

6 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

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

Some time ago I just told myself that Joseph's work on the BoA translation was probably like his efforts with the BoM.  He didn't use the plates to translate the BoM, and the papyrus doesn't contain anything near the BoA.  So, if inspired on both counts, they likely weren't translations at all.  ...........................................

Naturally, if you make the false assumption that the Snsn Papyrus has to be the BofA papyrus, then of course it cannot be the source of the text of the BofA.  May make perfect sense to those who don't know anything about ancient Egypt or the Bible.  I took a systematic look at the issue, and came up with a very different conclusion in my “A Brief Assessment of the LDS Book of Abraham,” version 8 online August 18, 2014, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/118810727/A-Brief-Assessment-of-the-LDS-Book-of-Abraham .

6 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

This character:  "Sir, I don't know why these folks went through the trouble of keep a record and hiding it, if it wasn't going to be translated"

Man upstairs:  "don't worry about it.  My gosh, if I was worried about getting accurate history, a word for word accounting, I would have done the whole bible different.  There's nothing foolproof here.  You are all mistake prone.  So get at it.  You'll make plenty of mistakes as everyone before.  It doesn't matter because it's a story, ideas put out there.  Let them figure it out.  they'll fail and fall all over themselves.  Just do it.  You know enough true stuff.  Just tell them the mistakes the mistakes of men."

Character:  "can I hire a few to help?"

"sure.  Take whoever you want.  They ain't busy or nothing trying to convert the dead." 

This is somewhat over the top, stemelbow.

[stemelbow]

52 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Interesting quandary, and the guy or gal who comes up with a reasonable explanation should probably win a Nobel Prize.

The Book of Abraham is a very different matter, but I don't see any archaic English expression there.  Do you?  We do know the source of the Hebrew used (in Sephardic style transliteration), and there is certainly some Egyptian used as well.

I think the problem is that we are unable to come up with a reasonable explanation.  The whole idea that someone from the 15th century translated the plates then it was dictated to Joseph through a rock doesn't feel reasonable and so it was abandoned, it seems, as soon as it was proposed. 

[stemelbow]

24 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Naturally, if you make the false assumption that the Snsn Papyrus has to be the BofA papyrus, then of course it cannot be the source of the text of the BofA.  May make perfect sense to those who don't know anything about ancient Egypt or the Bible.  I took a systematic look at the issue, and came up with a very different conclusion in my “A Brief Assessment of the LDS Book of Abraham,” version 8 online August 18, 2014, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/118810727/A-Brief-Assessment-of-the-LDS-Book-of-Abraham .

Thanks.  I have a feeling I've read it before, but obviously I need a refresher.

24 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This is somewhat over the top, stemelbow.

you got me.  But I don't know how else to frame this stuff. 

[Robert F. Smith]

46 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I think the problem is that we are unable to come up with a reasonable explanation.  The whole idea that someone from the 15th century translated the plates then it was dictated to Joseph through a rock doesn't feel reasonable and so it was abandoned, it seems, as soon as it was proposed. 

The idea that the plates were available to and translated by someone like Dr. John Dee (1527-1608; astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I) does seem odd, but he did have an Aztec seerstone (which is now in the British Museum). There is even a book of Enoch attributed to him (also in the British Museum Library).  We sometimes think that everything began with Joseph Smith.  It didn't.

As for rocks being seerstones (as for John Dee), we could have laughed at that back in the day, but we now use fancy looking rocks (solid state) as electronic communication devices which could perform exactly the function described for Joseph's seerstone.  A sense of perspective might help here.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The idea that the plates were available to and translated by someone like Dr. John Dee (1527-1608; astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I) does seem odd, but he did have an Aztec seerstone (which is now in the British Museum). There is even a book of Enoch attributed to him (also in the British Museum Library).  We sometimes think that everything began with Joseph Smith.  It didn't.

As for rocks being seerstones (as for John Dee), we could have laughed at that back in the day, but we now use fancy looking rocks (solid state) as electronic communication devices which could perform exactly the function described for Joseph's seerstone.  A sense of perspective might help here.

Well maybe the "someone like" since I think it safe to say it wasn't Dee. I always found Dee's mesoAmerican seer stone fascinating. Steve over at JI did an interesting post on them a while back.

It's worth noting that his "stone" was nothing like Joseph's. It's a black disk with an odd lump at the top. (See photo below) Dee as I recall called it a mirror quite frequently. More interesting is his "crystal ball" although that's also an artifact whose connection to Dee is perhaps weaker than the rest. It's also worth noting that neither Dee nor his assistant Kelley ever called their alphabet Enochian. They preferred Angelical. It was latter commentators who labeled it that on the basis of Dee's heavily annotated copy of Giovanni Pantheus' Voarchadumia.That was a work on alchemy from 1530. There were various "angelic" languages prior to Dee and presumably after. I believe Agrippa first popularized the idea of these secret scripts - usually based upon Hebrew restylized somewhat. (Agrippa's Transitus Fluvii is one example) 

I vaguely remember someone comparing all these alchemical and "cabalistic" scriptures to the Anthon Transcript. I can't seem to find any notes on it though. As I recall there weren't a terrible lot of parallels beyond what one might expect from the limited number of glyphs one can write with.

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by clarkgoble

[champatsch]

5 hours ago, churchistrue said:

Quick question. "State" or "state of". Have you guys done a deep dive on that?

What do you think this might show, since state and state of have been ubiquitous in English, from Middle English on, borrowed from Old French?

Other more complex syntax and morphosyntax are much more important, but for what?  Not for pinpointing a date for the text, since the Book of Mormon is not a monolithic text of a specific date.  To show it wasn't Joseph Smith's text.

Consider the ites passage, with "nor no manner of ites".  That's more interesting, because of the multiple negation (fused with non-colloquial "no manner of"). This of course is a syntactic phenomenon that has persisted, though generally marginalized, but which used to be unremarkable in the 16c.  (Consider discussions of multiple negation in Shakespeare.)  Non-biblical "nor no manner of" is a phrase that occurs throughout the Early Modern English period, but at a diminishing rate.  It is moribund in the 18c (in original production).  On ECCO I currently get seven distinct quotes of earlier language, from the 14c, 16c, and 17c.  EEBO has 26 total (1484 to 1695), some duplicates.  What do others get in Google Books or elsewhere?  Any original production of "nor no manner of" in the 18c or early 19c?

Edited November 10, 2017 by champatsch

[JarMan]

8 hours ago, champatsch said:

No, it doesn't change the theory.  Any explanatory theory must allow that a (final) translation was late, but it's hard to pinpoint late.  Suppose you base it on attestations, then we have ites first attested in the 1850s, and unwearyingness first attested in the 1860s (independent of the Book of Mormon).  Of course we know the Book of Mormon was set down in writing in 1829 and published in 1830.  So basing the date of the (final) translation on attestations like that doesn't actually work. Therefore, even though we have things like "plan of mercy" first attested currently in 1746, we could still say that the (final) translation could have been earlier than 1746, since there is creativity apparent in the translation, as shown by things like ites and unwearyingness.  But words that came from French, like derangement, do put a lower bound on the (final) translation date, since it wouldn't have been much before the 1737 first attestation of derangement  that it had begun to be used commonly in English.  You could also try to pinpoint the (final) translation with grammar, such as the systematically modern auxiliary selection with unaccusative verbs. That seems to place the (final) translation toward the end of the 18c.  And "had not ought to", as in "this thing had not ought to be" (Moroni 8:24), should be considered.  So far we have a late date for the first attestation of the negative, although the positive is found in the 1530s.  What is the earliest someone can find "had not ought to" with a following verb?

The phrase “plan of mercy” is used in the 16th Century…in Latin as “consilium misericordiae.” Isn’t it possible that someone in the 16th Century used the phrase “plan of mercy” based on an English translation of the Latin (or some other language, for that matter) but that it just never became common in English until much later? Tyndale introduced new phrases into the English language with his Bible translation.  It’s just that those phrases have survived because of the popularity of the Bible.

Disclaimer: I don’t know Latin, but I can use google translate. The point, though, is that it may be useful to look at the religious lingua franca of the 16th and 17th Centuries to see if certain equivalent Latin phrases were in use that could have been translated into the English phrases we find in the Book of Mormon that seem to post-date the rest of the text. 

[phaedrus ut]

If the translation was using Joseph's language why did the rock need to be in a hat "so as to exclude the light"? 

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

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

Because divine beings (God, Holy Ghost, Angels) have linguistic capacities beyond mortals, it is simply not clear what role specific sources played in the translation if any (assuming a divine translation took place and that a divine being or beings translated the text). .....................................

Divine beings may indeed have extraordinary linguistic abilities, but they make a point of speaking to humans according to human capacities and understanding, rather than in divine modes.  Book of Mormon Central, “Why Does the Lord Speak to Men ‘According to Their Language’? (2 Nephi 31:3),” KnoWhy # 258, Jan 6, 2017, online at https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/why-does-the-lord-speak-to-men-“according-to-their-language” .  Cf. D&C 1:24, "these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding."  II Ne 31:3, "for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding."

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Well maybe the "someone like" since I think it safe to say it wasn't Dee. I always found Dee's mesoAmerican seer stone fascinating. Steve over at JI did an interesting post on them a while back.

It's worth noting that his "stone" was nothing like Joseph's. It's a black disk with an odd lump at the top. (See photo below) Dee as I recall called it a mirror quite frequently. More interesting is his "crystal ball" although that's also an artifact whose connection to Dee is perhaps weaker than the rest.

Dee's seerstone was made from obsidian by the Aztecs, which is why it could be used as a mirror (it was called "The Devil's Looking Glass: The Magical Speculum of Dr. John Dee"), and Mesoamerican priests and shamans regularly used such stones, right up to the present day, to predict the future and to heal.  They are called zaztun in Maya language -- see the photo and description in National Geographic, 148/6 (Dec 1975), 746-747.

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

It's also worth noting that neither Dee nor his assistant Kelley ever called their alphabet Enochian. They preferred Angelical. It was latter commentators who labeled it that on the basis of Dee's heavily annotated copy of Giovanni Pantheus' Voarchadumia.That was a work on alchemy from 1530. There were various "angelic" languages prior to Dee and presumably after. I believe Agrippa first popularized the idea of these secret scripts - usually based upon Hebrew restylized somewhat. (Agrippa's Transitus Fluvii is one example) 

I vaguely remember someone comparing all these alchemical and "cabalistic" scriptures to the Anthon Transcript. I can't seem to find any notes on it though. As I recall there weren't a terrible lot of parallels beyond what one might expect from the limited number of glyphs one can write with................................................

The glyphs lead nowhere and are not similar to the so-called "Anthon Transcript."

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, phaedrus ut said:

If the translation was using Joseph's language why did the rock need to be in a hat "so as to exclude the light"? 

Because he was reading an LED screen, and one cannot see that in lighted areas.