Where did the Book of Mormon come from?

[Calm]

Quote

Thus they cannot be used as evidence of the archaisms Joseph was capable of producing from his own biblically influenced language.

Champatsch, I think I am reading this differently than you are.

If the archaisms are in both BoM revealed text and nonBoM revealed text of the same time period, then it seems likely the source of the archaisms is not the BoM text, correct?  If so, what do you see the source as?

Edited March 12, 2018 by Calm

[Brant Gardner]

4 hours ago, champatsch said:

The early revelations Gardner refers to in this comment were received by Joseph Smith before and during the dictation of the 1829 Book of Mormon text.  He received them in the same way as the Book of Mormon text.  Thus they cannot be used as evidence of the archaisms Joseph was capable of producing from his own biblically influenced language. 

If you begin with the firm conclusion that everything was given to Joseph, then of course you conclude that the early revelations were given in exactly the same way. However, if you begin without that assumption, the similarities in language suggest--similarities in language. Remember, you are not arguing that the Book of Mormon--or the revelations--were created at an earlier time. You have stated that there are modern elements, therefore, there are parts that must be modern. In the case of the revelations, there is a modern question being answered, and no reason to assume any kind of time depth. So, we have an editor of translation and revelation that has an idiosyncratic version of English that encompasses a number of forms that had been discarded from the past, and in the time of the translation or dictation were considered ungrammatical. 

When combined with non-linguistic evidence, I still see Joseph as an active part of the translation process. For a good review of evidence for Joseph's participation in the revelations, see Grant Underwood, ""Relishing the Revisions: Joseph Smith and the Revelatory Process." There are more data to examine than only the linguistics of the revelations, or the translation.

As for the biblically influenced language, you have stressed the inability of someone accurately recreating any of the earlier forms of English in their appropriate time depth. Imitating biblical language does not suggest that he got it right--in fact, it would be shocking were he to do so. Nevertheless, he wasn't the only one, and other writers also intentionally imitated (and incorrectly reproduced) biblical language. So yes, I can still see him attempting to imitate the KJV, and not being any better at it that his contemporaries. Past the grammar, the intertextuality with the New Testament requires that there be a conscious reference to the New Testament, at times with just enough slight difference to indicate a change from memory and not copying.

[Brant Gardner]

4 hours ago, champatsch said:

Yet he knows very well that we don't think that Book of Mormon archaism is contingent on translation; by extension, Plot of Zion archaism isn't contingent on translation either.

It has finally occurred to me that I really am missing something important in what you are saying about the English we have in the Book of Mormon and Joseph's revelations. You clarify that you do not believe that it is contingent upon translation. By that, I assume that you mean that the original language did not necessitate any particular syntactic form, and that might extend to a relationship with vocabulary. Thus both vocabulary and syntax are elective by the X providing the text to Joseph--where X might be God, or some other divine intermediary.

Are you then suggesting that X had an idiolect that covers the wide time depth of grammar that you have found? By what means might X have learned this Frankenstein's monster of a language that you indicate "can involve modern English vocabulary and syntax as well as Early Modern English (1500-1700), and even some late Middle English." I am at a loss to understand a reason for this in the translation from the plate text to English, but perhaps it happened earlier. However, the revelations don't have that excuse, so X had to have a current fluency in English that was, in the time period into which the revelations were given, ungrammatical--even if some of it had previously been acceptable a hundred years earlier.

How would we describe X's idiolect, and to what period might it be compared? Did this idiolect ever exist on earth?

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

You'll get no argument from me on that front. Many biblical stories are literary creations as well. Robert Alter, for example, sees most of the OT narratives as "historicized fiction." Elaborating further, he writes:

We need more readers who understand Alter and Frye on biblical storytelling (not so different from Ephraim Speiser).  Hardy is the best we have, but I consider Brant Gardner right on target with his observation that Nephi composes his small plates with considerable self-justification in mind.  He exaggerates his own piety and obedience, along with the emphatic evil of Laman & Lemuel.  Neither the BofM writers or the biblical writers are true historians, even if here and there we can correlate what they do and say with actual historical events.  See my “Book of Mormon Event Structure: Ancient Near East,” FARMS Preliminary Report/Study Aid, SMI-84 (Provo: FARMS, 1985/1986), published in JBMS, 5/2 (1996):98-147, online at http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol5/iss2/5/ .

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

I would suggest that many Book of Mormon narratives also exhibit a "schematic neatness" that would tend to place them closer to the "design" end of things.

Grant Hardy sees a few places where Mormon seems to struggle with "the recalcitrant facts of known history," writing: "Mormon is also enough of a historian that he occasionally includes details that allow us to critically evaluate the points he is making, as when he works hard to convince his readers that the martyrdom of more than a thousand believers was actually a good thing (Alma 24:20–27), or that Captain Moroni, an impetuous and sometimes brutal military commander, was in reality a paragon of Christian virtue (Alma 48:11–18)" (Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, 112). But Hardy's reading here is clearly informed by his own cultural sensibilities. Rather than a narrator grappling with historical facts that don't easily fit the story he is trying to tell, I think we may just be dealing with a story-world where the martyrdom of believers is a good thing and where being an angry, "brutal" (by the standards of a gentle 21st-century academic) military commander is not thought to be incompatible with being a good Christian.

Neatness and design might also help account for the presence of carefully structured chiasms, part of an elite scribal tradition -- which also includes the use of a vast array of literary tropes taken from ancient Near Eastern literature generally.

[Kevin Christensen]

Another essay worth considering on the relationship between mythic and literary patterns and history would be Clifton Jolley, "The Martyrdom of Joseph Smith: An Archetypal Study" Utah Historical Quarterly 44, Fall 1976, 329-350.  However well documented in history it happens to be, there are the matter of notable mythic patterns comparable to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, as well as a distinct pattern involving "The Myth of the Death of the Hero."   Eliade observes that when historical events fall into such patterns, they tend to be noticed as more real for doing do, rather than less.  We don't argue that Joseph Smith's death was a fictional event just because it falls into patterns.  But reading the essay does give some insight into why we talk about Joseph's death in Carthage and pay little attention to Parley P. Pratt's murder in Arkansas.

You can download the volume in a pdf from the upper right hand link here:

http://utahhistory.sdlhost.com/#/item/000000031000579/view/27

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

[Gray]

22 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

It does not appear that you have followed Stanford Carmack's work on this very closely.

I haven't, for the reasons I outlined earlier. I'm certainly open to it. It's a curiosity.

 

22 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

It does not take a linguist to determine if Early Modern English is in the Book of Mormon. The words ans phrases identified can be verified by anyone willing to take the time to do so. 

Well, Early modern English still pops up today, right?

 

22 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

That phenomena was discovered by Royal Skousen while working on the critical text project. It was unexpected... not something that he was looking for. This information has been out there for some time now. Why do you think that no one has come forth to refute the information that Skousen and Carmack have produced?

How about because none of his peers (inside or outside of Mormon studies) has been interested enough in the idea yet? I'd be very interest in seeing some sort of either rebuttal or confirmation from other linguists - even better if from someone outside of the small circle of Mormon scholarship. Preferably from multiple independent scholars. Of course a more interesting question might be, how did it get there? There are many potential paths, but I think it would be very hard to establish one with any degree of certainty.

When some new theory pops up in any field, it's appropriate and responsible to withhold final judgement until it has been properly scrutinized.

 

22 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Oh it is historical that there were witnesses that claimed to have witnessed physical objects and the appearance of angels. Should have put a smiley on that one.

Yes, in that sense it's historical

[hope_for_things]

I just started reading a new book titled Foundational Texts of Mormonism, it’s published by Oxford University Press and many important Mormon scholars have contributed to this and I’ve been looking forward to this book since I heard about it last year.   The first essay is written by Richard Bushman, and I’d like to share a select portion as I think his writing is relevant to this thread. 

http://juvenileinstructor.org/guest-post-introducing-foundational-texts-of-mormonism-oup-2018/

The editors of this volume are coming to Benchmark Books on 3/21 if you’re in the SLC area, I’m hoping to be able to attend. 

https://www.benchmarkbooks.com/evening-with-the-editors-foundational-texts-of-mormonism-wed-mar-21/

Richard Bushman:

“JOSEPH SMITH SAID that the Book of Mormon was the ‘keystone of our religion,’ an assertion his followers accepted at the same time and have never given up since.  From the beginning it was the premier foundational text of Mormonism.  The first and the largest of Smith’s publications and the message that missionaries took with them when they first went into the field, the Book of Mormon set Mormonism apart from the scores of other religions springing to life in the nineteenth century and gave the church the nickname it has been unable to shake ever since.  Moreover, the book’s importance has not faded over time.  If anything, the Book of Mormon has grown more influential through the church’s history.  The criticism of skeptics has not diminished its centrality for Latter-day Saints, and the erosion of faith in the Bible has not spilled over to the Book of Mormon.  Mormons are more devoted to the Book of Mormon today than when it was first published in 1830. 

Behind the Book of Mormon, and even more captivating than the book itself, stood its purported source: the gold plates recovered from the Hill Cumorah with the help of an angel.  For Smith’s followers, the plates were the ur-text, the mysterious original of the English translation, and so for them the true foundational text, allegedly written in a derivative of Egyptian and never read by moderns save for Joseph Smith himself.  So compelling was the image, the gold plates threatened to swamp the Book of Mormon as a text.  Even for believers, the backstory of the text’s production defined the book more than its actual contents.  The plates were a gift from heaven, brought by an angel, making the very existence of the Book of Mormon a marvel.  At the same times, the plates came out of the earth.  They were an artifact recovered from a stone box on a hillside near the Smith farm, where according to Smith’s story, they had lain for fourteen centuries.  Like a pot dug up by an archeologist, they put the nineteenth century in touch with biblical Jerusalem and ancient America.  All this was in the plates’ story before the pages of the book were even opened. 

For outside observers the plates were, of course, wholly imaginary and likely a hoax, yet they defined the Book of Mormon for them as well.  The first known newspaper notice regarding Joseph Smith was an article in the Wayne Sentinel in June 1829 reporting the imminent appearance of the ‘gold bible.’  The text itself—the lengthy, detailed history of an ancient civilization—was less newsworthy than the plates on which it was purportedly inscribed.  It excited reporters to think that the Book of Mormon was supposedly written on a six-inch stack of thin metal plates inscribed with ancient hieroglyphs and presumably of immense value.  The reporters were aware of the writing on the plates: The Wayne Sentinel spoke of a supposed ‘ancient record, of a religious and divine nature and origin, written in ancient characters.’  But the image of a gold bible stood out, the greed of the gold joining with the holiness of the bible to create an irresistible image. 

The story of the plates has made interpretation of the Book of Mormon so contentious that the readers coming from differing perspectives can scarcely agree on anything about Mormonism’s foundational text.  The plates cast doubt on everything.  They move the Book of Mormon into the realm of the fantastic.  Without the plates story, the Book of Mormon would have seemed like a simple literary fiction dreamed up by a talented folk writer.  The book would have been classed with Solomon Spaulding’s Manuscript Found, a novel of Roman voyagers who visited pre-Columbian America, with its own fictional backstory of translation from a manuscript found in an Ohio cave in 1812.  The Book of Mormon would have been amusing but not dangerous.  Add the angel and the gold plates, and the Book of Mormon becomes an insidious fraud.  The Wayne Sentinel reporter called the whole matter ‘a gross imposition, and a grosser superstition.’  By sticking to the story of an exotic artifact delivered by an angel and withheld from public view, Joseph Smith took a great risk.  He rested his own veracity, the historicity of the Book of Mormon, the reality of his prophetic mission, and the legitimacy of his church on the existence of the plates. 

The plates perplex even believers.  Latter-day Saints themselves cannot agree on how the writings engraved on the gold surfaces relate to Joseph Smith’s oral dictation to his secretaries.  Assuming their existence, as Latter-day Saints do, how exactly did the translator use the plates?  Artists’ depictions of the translation process sometimes show him looking at the plates with a finger on the character he was translating, as if puzzling out the meaning of each mark.  Presumably then, the Book of Mormon text would be an exact translation of the words on the leaves.  That may have been Smith’s method in the early phases of the translation—when he was looking at the plates through the lenses of the ‘spectacles’ he found with them—but later descriptions have him looking at one of his seer stones in a hat with the plates wrapped in a cloth on a table.  The plates themselves were not even visible to him.  During part of the translation, the plates were not even present—Smith claimed they were hidden away to keep them safe.  Was the dictation, then really coming from the plates like a computer sending information to a wireless printer or like a cell phone using Google Translate?  Or was the seer stone delivering something else?  What was it Smith saw, or believed he saw, or at least told others that he saw?  Accounts of believing Latter-day Saints do not agree. 

The entire process of translation has been the subject of debate among Mormon scholars.  Even those who believe the text came by the inspiration of God, as Joseph Smith said, differ on the relationship between inscribed plates and translated text.  Was it word-for-word, an exact conveyance of meaning from “reformed Egyptian” to English; or did Smith get impressions of meaning that he couched in his own language?  Some have suggested that he injected commentary of his own to expand the translation thus introducing a nineteenth-century content.  Other Mormon scholars offer evidence from the translation manuscripts that the translation was tightly controlled, implying that the resulting English text closely conformed to the words Smith saw in the seer stone.  The space between the wrapped plates sitting on the table and Joseph nearby looking into a stone in a hat symbolizes the interpretive gap where various explanations of translation have been inserted even by those who accept the premise of the plates’ existence. 

What then can be said about the relationship of the current edition of the Book of Mormon to its original text on the gold plates?  The subject is so fraught there is no agreement at any level.  Can the subject be addressed with any hope of common understanding?  One resort is to the text itself.  The prevailing ambiguity about the Book of Mormon’s foundational text dissipates inside the book.  In contrast to the uncertainties about the very existence of the plates and the nature of translation, the Book of Mormon is surprisingly exact about the production of the text inscribed on the plates.  Once a reader moves inside the text and suspends judgment about the background story, the text generously explains itself.  Few books are more self-conscious about their own making.  Even when regarded as historical fiction, the book illuminates itself.”

[champatsch]

17 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

It has finally occurred to me that I really am missing something important in what you are saying about the English we have in the Book of Mormon and Joseph's revelations. You clarify that you do not believe that it is contingent upon translation. By that, I assume that you mean that the original language did not necessitate any particular syntactic form, and that might extend to a relationship with vocabulary. Thus both vocabulary and syntax are elective by the X providing the text to Joseph--where X might be God, or some other divine intermediary.

Are you then suggesting that X had an idiolect that covers the wide time depth of grammar that you have found? By what means might X have learned this Frankenstein's monster of a language that you indicate "can involve modern English vocabulary and syntax as well as Early Modern English (1500-1700), and even some late Middle English." I am at a loss to understand a reason for this in the translation from the plate text to English, but perhaps it happened earlier. However, the revelations don't have that excuse, so X had to have a current fluency in English that was, in the time period into which the revelations were given, ungrammatical--even if some of it had previously been acceptable a hundred years earlier.

How would we describe X's idiolect, and to what period might it be compared? Did this idiolect ever exist on earth?

First, another bit from your earlier comment that surprised me was your observation that our position invoked God, with the implication that yours didn't.  Of course you write that the Lord implanted thoughts into Joseph's subconscious.  Your position invokes the Lord in part; our position does as well.

About this latest comment, the context of my paper that you quote from is that the earliest text is mostly Early Modern English.  You keep failing to bring that out.  I wrote what you quote to indicate an awareness of a range of usage.

Can a reader tell that unwearyingness was first attested in 1869, can a reader tell that derangement entered later than other -ment nouns, can a reader tell that whereby meaning 'why' as used by the daughter of Jared may be late Middle English usage from Malory, who wrote around 1469?  No, most readers don't find the range of usage of the text out of place.  Now, readers might think that "had ought to" is dialectal, but it arose in the early 1500s, at least, and is found a number of times in EEBO.

Your characterizing the language as a Frankenstein's monster demonstrates a lack of understanding about language variation, Early Modern English variation, and that you have trouble with linguistic diversity in the Book of Mormon text.  I gained an adequate understanding of the first two through many years of intensive study.  Now, I know that you work hard, but perhaps you are not in a position to gain an understanding of these linguistic matters which are crucial to understanding the text.  I can understand that.  I'm not in a position where I can spend years learning anthropology and archaeology so that I can write about the Book of Mormon in relation to these disciplines.  I don't have a foundation in these fields, and I'm not in a position to gain one and survive, and I probably never will be, and it becomes more unlikely as the years roll on.

Let's suppose you object to immediate -s and -th variation in the Book of Mormon text, that you think it's a problem and part of the monstrosity.  I don't because of Ether 12:26, which I think applies also to the English-language text.  I also don't because I know that this immediate variation was ubiquitous in English in the late 1500s and 1600s.  It was even in the 1611 King James Bible, in the Apocrypha.  And it's in Shakespeare.  Also, as a linguist I have learned that there were various factors driving the variation, and that the spelling variation didn't actually reflect pronunciation in many cases.  (Factors that affected this inflectional variation included register, dialect, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, etc.)

Let's say you object to shall ~ should modal auxiliary variation which we can find in Jacob 5 and in Alma 44 and 61.  That's Early Modern English variation.

Let's say you object to shall ~ ø modal auxiliary variation, which is in 1 Nephi 15:13 and elsewhere.  That's Early Modern English variation.

Let's say you object to the pronominal variation of the Book of Mormon.  That's biblical variation (examine the end of the Pentateuch and Isaiah) and Early Modern English variation.

Let's say that you object to angry ~ wroth variation.  The King James Bible has it.  Let's say you object to that ~ which variation.  The King James Bible has it, it's part of natural language variation.  Let's say that you object to "they was" used at all.  It was used in the 1500s and 1600s.  The 16c translator of Froissart's Chronicles used it; John Bunyan, the author of the Pilgrim's Progress employed close "they was" ~ "they were" variation, as we see in Alma 9.  George Fox the Quaker employed "they was".  Etc.

Let's say you object to anger being used intransitively three times in the text.  That's an archaic, poetic usage, perhaps Scottish.  Let's say you object to fain being used non-biblically and redundantly.  So far we find it in late 1500s poetry.

Yes, there is diverse usage in the Book of Mormon text, but some of it is poetic, some of it is literary, some of it is archaic and sophisticated.

Edited March 13, 2018 by champatsch

[champatsch]

16 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

Thus both vocabulary and syntax are elective by the X providing the text to Joseph--where X might be God, or some other divine intermediary.  [Etc.]

In this speculation, first you assume that the Book of Mormon translation was achieved through a process we are familiar with, which is an uncertain assumption.  But we proceed on that uncertain basis.

Then, from our limited perspective, perhaps more likely than a single X, we assume a process somewhat akin to the King James Bible: translators A through Z being involved in an English-language translation of the Nephite record under the direction of the Lord.  This is a further uncertain assumption, based on an uncertain assumption.

To put dates on something highly speculative but to our minds seemingly possible, suppose the Lord directed a translation according to our year 1590, then had portions of it updated in 1690, then had portions of it updated in 1790.

Or perhaps the Lord directed a single translation according to our year 1825.

Etc.

[champatsch]

17 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

As for the biblically influenced language, you have stressed the inability of someone accurately recreating any of the earlier forms of English in their appropriate time depth. Imitating biblical language does not suggest that he got it right--in fact, it would be shocking were he to do so. Nevertheless, he wasn't the only one, and other writers also intentionally imitated (and incorrectly reproduced) biblical language.

This is of course why a comparison of the Book of Mormon text with pseudo-biblical texts is an interesting area of study, and which I have done.  Portions of my comparative work will appear in Interpreter at the end of the week, and portions in Skousen's The Nature of the Original Language very soon.  Book of Mormon archaism far surpasses pseudo-biblical archaism.  I have referred to some of this in an earlier posting.

[champatsch]

17 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

There are more data to examine than only the linguistics of the revelations, or the translation.

Of course, but what is the dispositive data?  It is the less contextual, the mostly subconsciously produced data—such data is more difficult to manipulate.  Data that is massively represented, that resists subjective interpretation, that is concrete and more easily quantifiable.  This is the syntax and grammar.  It overwhelms data that includes biblical phraseology and allusion—in strength and numbers and reliability.  It is the primary data.  The other data is non-primary and is interesting and fruitful to study, but it cannot decide the issue of whether Joseph worded the text.

[champatsch]

We describe linguistically many aspects of the syntax and grammar of the earliest text of the Book of Mormon, of the King James Bible, of pseudo-biblical texts, of Joseph's early writings, quantifying things that may lend themselves to statistically valid comparisons.

We find overlap but a large amount of non-overlap, and most of the non-overlap found in the Book of Mormon, of both a systematic and non-systematic nature (where there isn't much data), is also found in the early modern era, and much of it is characteristic of that time.

We note more than three dozen possible instances of obsolete meaning in the earliest text, but with words that have persisted with modern meanings.  We also note archaic phrases.

We find the extra-biblical, archaic syntax and grammar and the potential cases of genuinely archaic lexis and phraseology to be mutually supportive.

Edited March 13, 2018 by champatsch

[hope_for_things]

22 hours ago, champatsch said:

On 3/10/2018 at 11:21 AM, Brant Gardner said:

So now we return to your question of who the translator was. It was the same person who generated at least the early revelations, and the same who dictated the plot of Zion.

There are quite a few things in this post that deserve a sharp response.  Here are two things that strike me as manipulative.

The early revelations Gardner refers to in this comment were received by Joseph Smith before and during the dictation of the 1829 Book of Mormon text.  He received them in the same way as the Book of Mormon text.  Thus they cannot be used as evidence of the archaisms Joseph was capable of producing from his own biblically influenced language.  This is like using a selection from the Book of Mormon in order to show what Joseph's archaizing language was.  (That one is presumably a translation and the other not is irrelevant to either of our positions about Joseph wording the text or not.)  Of course Gardner knows this, so we must be on our guard that he might be intentionally treating the evidence unfairly.  He has certainly done so in this case. 

The underlined portion above is another problem.  (To be clear, "old forms" should be understood as also encompassing syntactic structures and systematic usage.)  Here Gardner leads us into thinking that ALL the archaic forms, structures, and systematic usage of the Book of Mormon persisted, while writing it carefully for plausible deniability.  I haven't seen him research linguistic persistence and demonstrate it by examples and analysis.  He apparently pays little attention to the research and findings of hundreds of independent linguists over many years, who have described a multitude of diachronic shifts and obsolescence in the English language, some of which are directly relevant to the Book of Mormon text.  Immediately after this, Gardner mentions that the 1833 Plot of Zion, though not a translation, has archaisms. His purpose may be to support Joseph wording the Book of Mormon, by implying that Joseph worded the possible archaisms of the Plot of Zion precisely because it wasn't a translation.  Yet he knows very well that we don't think that Book of Mormon archaism is contingent on translation; by extension, Plot of Zion archaism isn't contingent on translation either. This part is obscure and misleadingly selective.

 

19 hours ago, Calm said:

Champatsch, I think I am reading this differently than you are.

If the archaisms are in both BoM revealed text and nonBoM revealed text of the same time period, then it seems likely the source of the archaisms is not the BoM text, correct?  If so, what do you see the source as?

champatsch,

I'm hoping you can add some additional clarity about your response here because this point seems like an important one to myself and Calm asked a follow up question about it as well, and I want to make sure I understand your position.  Let me restate the point Brant made in my very non scholarly way. 

• The BoM contains these archaisms (old syntax and grammar) and similar archaisms are also found in the text of early revelations (D&C as we have it today.)  This seems to be evidence that Joseph is the author of both the BoM content as well as the non-BoM early revelation content because when he was dictating in revelatory voice the same syntax and grammar components are present in both productions.  

Can you explain why this isn't strong evidence of Joseph being the author of both texts?  If these artifacts of grammar and syntax represent unconscious tendencies by an author, then Joseph couldn't have intentionally created these similarities?  

I don't understand the sentence in bold from your quote or your example about why the similar grammar/syntax in the D&C revelations texts is irrelevant to whether Joseph was the source of this wording.  Any additional clarity would be appreciated.

[Brant Gardner]

6 minutes ago, champatsch said:

First, another bit from your earlier comment that surprised me was your observation that our position invoked God, with the implication that yours didn't.  Of course you write that the Lord implanted thoughts into Joseph's subconscious.  Your position invokes the Lord in part; our position does as well.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I don't think God was involved. As you note, that is imperative. It is the one sure thing that Joseph attested to.

Quote

About this latest comment, the context of my paper that you quote from is that the earliest text is mostly Early Modern English.  You keep failing to bring that out.  I wrote what you quote to indicate an awareness of a range of usage.

I don't need to repeat your basic argument. I am looking at the range because it is the range of usage that tells us whether or not the text is Early Modern English, or contains Early Modern English--even if it is heavily Early Modern English. Why the distinction? For the same reason that stratigraphy is important in archaeology and geology. If the text is wholly Early Modern English, then the more modern intermediary is less likely to have anything to do with it. However, if the range includes the contemporary, then the presence of Early Modern English doesn't tell us about an earlier time, but rather than the Early Modern English appeared in an idiolect at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon and the early revelations. Those instances therefore retain an earlier usage, and the fact that they are obsolescent in more educated circles differentiates between what was considered grammatical by the educated community, and the language that was ungrammatical in contemporary usage. 

If we are attempting to use an idiolect to describe the person/persons/divinity producing the English seen in the Book of Mormon or the early revelations, then  narrowing the timeframe is essential. Of course, you imply that in the efforts made to show that certain forms or words became obsolete. We both appear to be attempting to find a timeframe. You are suggesting that the evidence requires not-Joseph, and I am suggesting that the range of the time frame at the least allows for Joseph.

Quote

Your characterizing the language as a Frankenstein's monster demonstrates a lack of understanding about language variation, Early Modern English variation.

I was afraid that someone might fix on the word monster and not the concept of the collection of parts that created Frankenstein's monster. Forget the monstrous. You have suggested that the translator and revelator had an idiolect that combined multiple time periods. Because there are elements that postdate Early Modern English, there are elements of Early Modern English that were retained in the idiolect while disappearing in other language communities. That is what I have been saying, and your evidence agrees. You cannot suggest (and I believe that you have clarified that you do not suggest) an particular timeframe for the language. As you indicate, a lot of it preserves Early Modern English--but the point is the preservation of older forms while some newer forms are present. Any attempt to find a date has to include the modern times--or find a way to otherwise explain them.

Surely I am not the expert you are, but that doesn't mean that I haven't studied linguistics and historical linguistics, as well as the persistence through time and space of other culturally transmitted knowledge. As with things like the persistence of Old English tunes in the Appalachian Mountains, there are times that more isolated  communities can preserve elements that have become obsolete in other communities. The presence of older forms that are obsolescent in other areas does not preclude preservation in more isolated regions. Western New York was rapidly shedding its isolation with the Erie Canal, but those who learned their language prior to that time had not been exposed the the wider range of acceptable grammar.

Finding those forms in the early revelations can have two meanings. One is that we have an example of a non-translation event and therefore one that corroborates Joseph's language when he was intentionally imitating (incorrectly) what was considered sacred, or important language. Or, we could posit the the same non-Joseph with the unique idiolect was the translator/dictator-of-revelations (for a time period). Both interpretations can be posited, and neither has absolute proof behind it.

Gregory Bowen's dissertation (which you have referenced and therefore at least read through) shows specific types of usages across a number of different imitators of King James language. The comparisons show a greater affinity among the imitators than any of them with the original--and often the similarity is in an overcorrection, a higher frequency of forms that were considered imitative. Interestingly, when educated translators produced an English version in that style, they were much more accurate. So we have the case where there is a body of evidence indicating similarities between the English of writers who didn't handle the forms, but attempted to use them. 

The question is whether Joseph's idiolect, when intentionally imitating KJV style, might have preserved currently ungrammatical forms that were once grammatical. That is a question of availability. I see the early revelations, and the Plot of Zion, as confirming that Joseph had access to that language. You see it as confirming the non-Joseph purvey or English language. Same evidence, different conclusions. 

Not being able to use language alone to make the determination, I turn to other aspects of the translation and revelation-recording experience. Seeing Joseph as the active participant that he appears to have believed he was makes more sense of the 1837 changes he made to the text of the Book of Mormon, and the historical record of how the revelations moved from original dictation to final form.

 

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Gray said:

On 3/12/2018 at 12:32 PM, Glenn101 said:

It does not appear that you have followed Stanford Carmack's work on this very closely.

I haven't, for the reasons I outlined earlier. I'm certainly open to it. It's a curiosity.

Sounds sort of like some early critics of the Book of Mormon who did not feel they had to read it in order to criticize it. 

1 hour ago, Gray said:

Quote

It does not take a linguist to determine if Early Modern English is in the Book of Mormon. The words ans phrases identified can be verified by anyone willing to take the time to do so. 

Well, Early modern English still pops up today, right?

Probably. But you need to actually tune into what Stanford has been saying. It would help to at least know what his arguments are.

 

1 hour ago, Gray said:

Quote

That phenomena was discovered by Royal Skousen while working on the critical text project. It was unexpected... not something that he was looking for. This information has been out there for some time now. Why do you think that no one has come forth to refute the information that Skousen and Carmack have produced?

How about because none of his peers (inside or outside of Mormon studies) has been interested enough in the idea yet? I'd be very interest in seeing some sort of either rebuttal or confirmation from other linguists - even better if from someone outside of the small circle of Mormon scholarship. Preferably from multiple independent scholars. Of course a more interesting question might be, how did it get there? There are many potential paths, but I think it would be very hard to establish one with any degree of certainty.

When some new theory pops up in any field, it's appropriate and responsible to withhold final judgement until it has been properly scrutinized.

Yes, that would help. Stanford says that he has actually tried to get someone to (another linguist, non-LDS I presume) to review his findings, but the person declined. It has been noted some time ago by a couple of evangelicals that the LDS are far ahead of the critics in scholarship in areas related to the Book of Mormon.

 

Glenn 

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

I don't need to repeat your basic argument. I am looking at the range because it is the range of usage that tells us whether or not the text is Early Modern English, or contains Early Modern English

No, you don't, but then you don't need to write the following statement right after it, which misleads those who don't know the context, which is virtually everyone:

Quote

In this description, using the range of options available to us, we would have to say that the Lord translated, or had it done, in a way that incorporated archaisms into a modern vocabulary.

Here you give the distinct impression that the Book of Mormon mostly has a modern vocabulary, and that some archaisms are incorporated.

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

Gregory Bowen's dissertation (which you have referenced and therefore at least read through) shows specific types of usages across a number of different imitators of King James language. The comparisons show a greater affinity among the imitators than any of them with the original--and often the similarity is in an overcorrection, a higher frequency of forms that were considered imitative. Interestingly, when educated translators produced an English version in that style, they were much more accurate. So we have the case where there is a body of evidence indicating similarities between the English of writers who didn't handle the forms, but attempted to use them. 

You don't know this material as well as I do.  Bowen's studies are preliminary and superficial.  Pseudo-biblical authors fall far short of generating the archaisms of the Book of Mormon text.

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

You have suggested that the translator and revelator had an idiolect that combined multiple time periods.

You are permitting one potential translator with one idiolect.  We don't know that at all.  That is your position—Joseph Smith.  OK, I understand that.

[champatsch]

38 minutes ago, champatsch said:

You don't know this material as well as I do.  Bowen's studies are preliminary and superficial.  Pseudo-biblical authors fall far short of generating the archaisms of the Book of Mormon text.

For instance, Bowen looks at affirmative did and gives us a frequency in words per million.  He declares a biblical hypercorrection.  He doesn't provide a much fuller description of the usage in the King James Bible or in the Book of Mormon.  He doesn't look at syntactic distribution or individual verb tendencies.  He doesn't give us adjusted figures for two exceptional usages of the King James Bible: affirmative didst and "did eat".  Preliminary and superficial.  Whenever he mentions something interesting, he doesn't explore further: e.g. the usage of the conjunction save, and save it were or save it be, both poetic, literary forms.

Edited March 13, 2018 by champatsch

[champatsch]

3 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

there are times that more isolated  communities can preserve elements that have become obsolete in other communities. The presence of older forms that are obsolescent in other areas does not preclude preservation in more isolated regions. Western New York was rapidly shedding its isolation with the Erie Canal, but those who learned their language prior to that time had not been exposed the the wider range of acceptable grammar.

This is where you need to study.  You need to find heavy non-emphatic affirmative did, complex finite complementation, heavy personal which, etc.

Of course you know that there were books published in the early 1800s, written by less educated people.  There are other sources, too, that I'm sure you're aware of.

For instance, I found a lot of "had ought to" and "had not ought to" in an early 1800s Buffalo, New York book.  If I could determine that the Book of Mormon was heavily dialectal in many other ways, then I would say that Joseph worded the book.  But a lot of the bad grammar isn't his bad grammar, and some of the possibly dialectal material could also be early modern usage.

If I could find a lot of other possibly archaic Book of Mormon usage in the modern period, then I would say, yes, Joseph Smith could have worded this book.

But when there are many things in the text—systematic and non-systematic—that I can't find in the modern textual record, then I must say, no, it's extremely unlikely that Joseph worded this book.

Again, the pseudo-biblical authors provide a control, and help us make a firmer determination, one way or the other.

If I saw roughly similar levels of archaism in the earliest text, then I would say that the Book of Mormon is like a pseudo-biblical text in its form and structure.  But when I don't, I conclude that it is not a pseudo-archaic text.

Edited March 13, 2018 by champatsch

[Brant Gardner]

30 minutes ago, champatsch said:

But when I don't, I conclude that it is not a pseudo-archaic text.

But when you find forms that are not archaic, then perforce the text isn't archaic. Give it a different designation, but the presence of the newer forms means that it is not archaic. It contains archaic forms, perhaps even more of them than pseudo-archaic texts--but it cannot be archaic.

[champatsch]

3 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I'm hoping you can add some additional clarity about your response here because this point seems like an important one to myself and Calm asked a follow up question about it as well, and I want to make sure I understand your position.  Let me restate the point Brant made in my very non scholarly way. 

• The BoM contains these archaisms (old syntax and grammar) and similar archaisms are also found in the text of early revelations (D&C as we have it today.)  This seems to be evidence that Joseph is the author of both the BoM content as well as the non-BoM early revelation content because when he was dictating in revelatory voice the same syntax and grammar components are present in both productions.

Can you explain why this isn't strong evidence of Joseph being the author of both texts?  If these artifacts of grammar and syntax represent [sub]conscious tendencies by an author, then Joseph couldn't have intentionally created these similarities?  

I don't understand the sentence in bold from your quote or your example about why the similar grammar/syntax in the D&C revelations texts is irrelevant to whether Joseph was the source of this wording.  Any additional clarity would be appreciated.

The question is whether Joseph worded the Book of Mormon text.  If we say that Joseph, by the same means, worded early Doctrine and Covenants revelations, and we see a subset of the Book of Mormon's archaic language such as the -th plural or "save it was" or modal auxiliary shall usage or singular ye, then we might be able to get the result that Joseph worded the Book of Mormon text.  (Unfortunately, we have fewer words and we are missing the earliest copies for some of these.  We have 28% of the original MS of the Book of Mormon (75,000 words) and we have two firsthand copies of about one-sixth of it.)

But Joseph dictated at least the early revelations, and probably quite a few later revelations as well, by the same means as the Book of Mormon text. So Joseph's dictation of the early revelations looked the same to the outside observer as the dictation of the Book of Mormon, and we have decided the wording-source question for the Book of Mormon from something that was dictated in the same way.

[champatsch]

11 minutes ago, Brant Gardner said:

But when you find forms that are not archaic, then perforce the text isn't archaic. Give it a different designation, but the presence of the newer forms means that it is not archaic. It contains archaic forms, perhaps even more of them than pseudo-archaic texts--but it cannot be archaic.

Let's not be dogmatic.  I have listed on earlier pages of this thread some of the astounding levels of archaism found in the earliest text.

[champatsch]

25 minutes ago, Brant Gardner said:

But when you find forms that are not archaic, then perforce the text isn't archaic. Give it a different designation, but the presence of the newer forms means that it is not archaic. It contains archaic forms, perhaps even more of them than pseudo-archaic texts--but it cannot be archaic.

Take have / be auxiliary selection with unaccusative past participles—come, become, gone, etc.  The systematic usage of the Book of Mormon in this particular case is modern if we base our determination on rates of have and be usage with these past participles, which is the way to determine systematic usage.  This is one of only a few things that are syntactically modern in the text.  There are dozens and dozens of archaic syntactic systems and elements in the text, most of them unlikely or highly unlikely for Joseph to have produced.

You wish to call this a modern text because of a few modern features.  Very well.

Edited March 13, 2018 by champatsch

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

The question is whether Joseph worded the Book of Mormon text.  If we say that Joseph, by the same means, worded early Doctrine and Covenants revelations, and we see a subset of the Book of Mormon's archaic language such as the -th plural or "save it was" or modal auxiliary shall usage or singular ye, then we might be able to get the result that Joseph worded the Book of Mormon text.  (Unfortunately, we have fewer words and we are missing the earliest copies for some of these.  We have 28% of the original MS of the Book of Mormon (75,000 words) and we have two firsthand copies of about one-sixth of it.)

But Joseph dictated at least the early revelations, and probably quite a few later revelations as well, by the same means as the Book of Mormon text. So Joseph's dictation of the early revelations looked the same to the outside observer as the dictation of the Book of Mormon, and we have decided the wording-source question for the Book of Mormon from something that was dictated in the same way.

I'm still not clear if you agree that this evidence within the early D&C revelation text, supports the idea of Joseph being the author of those texts based on the similar syntax & grammar.   I know there are less extant texts available compared to the BoM original manuscript, and I know many of the revelations texts aren't the original version, but from what we do have, do the similarities support Joseph being the author?  

If so, why isn't this clear evidence that Joseph is the source for all of the EmodE and archaic language, if he successfully produced this language when dictating the BoM and did the same in other texts when he was using a revelatory voice, then isn't this clear evidence that Joseph was the source of the archaic language himself, rather than some unknown author that lived in an earlier time period.