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

[Robert F. Smith]

On 11/8/2017 at 5:29 PM, churchistrue said:

This post which I wrote previously was cross posted at Wheat and Tares.  https://wheatandtares.org/2017/11/08/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-the-book-of-mormon/

I'm very curious what the EModE'ers think about this portion:

Exercise 2: Google N-Gram Historical Trend Viewer

Put in your n-gram here.  I put in “demands of justice”. 

It’s interesting to see that this was a phrase that maxed out in terms of popularity in Joseph’s day. ....................................

I just saw Royal Skousen responding to this claim elsewhere, and i excerpt it here:

Quote

I did his first three on Early English Books Online, covering from the late 1400s up to 1700, Early Modern English (the fountain of Protestantism, by the way):

“demands of justice”: 50 times, first one dating from 1647, Samuel Rutherford, who uses it four times

“infinite atonement”: 1 time, rare, but it occurs: Antony Burgess, 1654; I discuss this one in the Nature of the Original Language (to appear, parts 3 and 4 of volume 3 of the critical text

“state of the souls”: 45 times, first one dating from 1581: Thomas Rogers’ translation of Niels Hemmingsen’s The Faith of the Church Militant.

 

Edited November 11, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[champatsch]

Here is an interesting 4-gram to consider, consisting of four very high frequency words:

Alma 1:16

for there was many which loved the vain things of the world.

Even though these four words in bold are ubiquitous in the textual record, this string is quite rare.  Here are four instances, from three books, that I have found thus far:

1548 [ PAGE lij ] EEBO A16036 Nicholas Udall, tr. [1505–1556] | Desiderius Erasmus [1466–1536] The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus vpon the Newe Testamente

Howbeit there was many whiche had a good opinion of hym:

1550? EEBO A03896 Randall Hurlestone Newes from Rome concerning the blasphemous sacrifice of the papisticall Masse

howebeit there was many which for asmoche as they knewe the lyghte, in no maner wolde retayne them.

1653 [ PAGES 258 and 286 ] EEBO A70988 F.G., tr. | Madeleine de Scudéry [1607–1701] Artamenes

but shortly after Oltanus seeing such a great concourse of visitants, and observing there was many which addressed themselves unto him much more complacentially then usuall;

yet there was many which did solicit against him,

This 1653 text of 1.75 million words also has one example each of “there were many which”, “there were many who”, and “there was many who”.

If you find other examples of this string, by all means let us know.

Joseph Smith's 1832 History has one instance of "there were many", despite using plural was elsewhere.  It is also clear from the history that he favored the personal relative pronoun who, followed by that, with no examples of archaic which.  In Alma 1:16 we have bad grammar that could have been Joseph's bad grammar, although he may have favored "there were many" and used it most (or all) of the time, if the instance in his history is an indicator.  His likely production of phrase equivalents may be given in the following descending order of probability:

there were many who  |  there were many that  |  there was many who  |  there was many that  |  there were many which  |  there was many which

There are many such interesting ngrams to consider in the Book of Mormon (but one must use the earliest text), such as "nor no manner of", of which hath been spoken.  Currently I have read about 30 distinct instances of these, all of late Middle English and Early Modern English vintage.  The Book of Mormon has four of them.  Besides statutes, no other writing that I've seen has as many.  Last original attestation so far is 1695.  First one whose date I have pinpointed is 1363, in statutory language during the time of Edward III.

[churchistrue]

On 11/11/2017 at 3:04 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

I just saw Royal Skousen responding to this claim elsewhere, and i excerpt it here:

 

Thanks. Where did he respond? I didn't see that.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, churchistrue said:

Thanks. Where did he respond? I didn't see that.

He sent an email concerning that Wheat and Tares blog, which I have not seen.