Where did the Book of Mormon come from?

[clarkgoble]

43 minutes ago, Calm said:

"I'm heading into surgery in a few days"

Major?  Will be thinking of you even if minor.

Yeah I thought I had a flu that lasted too long thinking maybe I had a minor secondary lung infection. Turned out it was an infection on my heart valve. So I go in for open heart surgery on Monday and have been here in the hospital all week. Although honestly after six hours of antibiotics I felt fine. But there's a big growth on my heart valve now and the valve is damaged. So life comes at you fast.

Edited March 16, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Yeah I thought I had a flu that lasted too long thinking maybe I had a minor secondary lung infection. Turned out it was an infection on my heart valve. So I go in for open heart surgery on Monday and have been here in the hospital all week. Although honestly after six hours of antibiotics I felt fine. But there's a big growth on my heart valve now and the valve is damaged. So life comes at you fast.

Oh boy does it.  

Pleae get well quickly.

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

Maybe we're all missing the obvious explanation. Maybe there were a series of translations that built on each other as with the KJB. There was Wycliffe and Tyndale and Coverdale and others and then the final KJB some 200 years after Wycliffe. Should we expect the KJB, then, to have a dialect that represents an actual dialect at some moment in history? Or is it more likely that we would see signs of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries in the text variously weighted according to the respective influences of the translators? 

Certainly a reasonable idea, and such things have taken place -- with constant updating, even in the KJV.  The problem is that there are definite parts of the language stream which get left behind, and those items become extinct.  As artifacts they help date any given composition.  Yes, we are still using turns of phrase used by Tyndale, Wycliffe, and Shakespeare,, but there are a great many other phrases and grammatical constructions which we do not use -- and those are the ones which can be used to date a style (such as EModE).  The other phrases and constructions are useless as stratigraphic and diagnostic elements.

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Exiled said:

EmodE books like the 1611 KJV were still in circulation back then, right?  Joseph Smith's immediate family and uncles and cousins were interested in religion and probably had access to the 1611 edition.  Also, maybe Joseph had access to old Shakespeare manuscripts from the local library or other books (perhaps from Luman Walters as alluded to in the Book of Pukei)? 

Carmack has shown that many examples of EModE  appearing in the BofM do not appear in the KJV, and even when they do, they do not show up at the same high rates in the KJV.  So, where could one learn the extinct EModE?  There was no way to train oneself.  Only by looking at those early books today, can linguistics experts reconstruct that language now.  People living in Joseph's day were unaware that EModE had even existed.  Put all that together with the presence of modern English grammar and phrasing, and we have a double whammy.  Everyone including Joseph considered it ungrammatical and in dire need of revision.  They were wrong, of course, but how could they know that?

Quote

Certainly it is a possibility that Joseph Smith, wanting to have his book accepted as any pseudopigraphist would, would use archaic, biblical sounding language?

But the KJV-style was normal, not special, and everyone used it -- not just pretenders to authenticity.  Use of that lingo doesn't distinguish it from anything else.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Robert F. Smith

[Exiled]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Carmack has shown that many examples of EModE  appearing in the BofM do not appear in the KJV, and even when they do, they do not show up at the same high rates in the KJV.  So, where could one learn the extinct EModE?  There was no way to train oneself.  Only by looking at those early books today, can linguistics experts reconstruct that language now.  People living in Joseph's day were unaware that EModE had even existed.  Put all that together with the presence of modern English grammar and phrasing, and we have a double whammy.  Everyone including Joseph considered it ungrammatical and in dire need of revision.  They were wrong, of course, but how could they know that?

But the KJV-style was normal, not special, and everyone used it -- not just pretenders to authenticity.  Use of that lingo doesn't distinguish it from anything else.

Shouldn't the entire thing be in EmodE for the theory to work? How did the EmodE translator(s) know the more modern english constructions that are in the book of mormon? It seems that the presence of the modern constructions kills the EmodE theory, assuming a tight translation.

[Robert F. Smith]

25 minutes ago, Exiled said:

Shouldn't the entire thing be in EmodE for the theory to work? How did the EmodE translator(s) know the more modern english constructions that are in the book of mormon? It seems that the presence of the modern constructions kills the EmodE theory, assuming a tight translation.

We can't assume a tight or loose translation theory (whatever that means), and the EModE translator(s) circa 1540 couldn't know what the future English would look like.  So we have an enigma wrapped in a riddle, or vice-versa.  Either we have the wrong theory to account for it, or we have the wrong data set. Either way, the BofM is preposterous.

I can show with relative certainty that the BofM plates were in ancient Egyptian and not Hebrew.  Grant Hardy can successfully analyze the internal structure of the book.  But we don't know how it was translated into English.  We can understand the meaning of the English text, of course, and that despite some archaic vocabulary and expressions.  The consternation we feel at trying unsuccessfully to account for the mixture of modern and EModE grammar is inexplicable.  Maybe it's God's idea of a joke.  Wouldn't put it past Him.  

[Exiled]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We can't assume a tight or loose translation theory (whatever that means), and the EModE translator(s) circa 1540 couldn't know what the future English would look like.  So we have an enigma wrapped in a riddle, or vice-versa.  Either we have the wrong theory to account for it, or we have the wrong data set. Either way, the BofM is preposterous.

I can show with relative certainty that the BofM plates were in ancient Egyptian and not Hebrew.  Grant Hardy can successfully analyze the internal structure of the book.  But we don't know how it was translated into English.  We can understand the meaning of the English text, of course, and that despite some archaic vocabulary and expressions.  The consternation we feel at trying unsuccessfully to account for the mixture of modern and EModE grammar is inexplicable.  Maybe it's God's idea of a joke.  Wouldn't put it past Him.  

I thought Mr. Carmack's theory assumed a tight translation as in the exact words appeared on the seer stone as David Whitmer claimed?

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/17/2018 at 10:20 AM, Exiled said:

I thought Mr. Carmack's theory assumed a tight translation as in the exact words appeared on the seer stone as David Whitmer claimed?

Yes, he and Skousen take that view, but not everyone agrees as to what "tight" means.  Do the words appearing on the stone represent the exact work of the ca 1540 translator?  No, because we have modern English mixed in.  Are the words appearing on the stone the very words of God?  Only indirectly, if at all, because God always speaks to men according to their limited understand and language.  Of course, Holy Writ is inspired by God (meaning that there is an intermediary, the Holy Spirit).  Another theory entails Joseph (or the ca 1540 pre-translator, or both) streaming the ideas of the text through Joseph's brain before they appear on the seerstone in a kind of feedback loop.  Loose or tight?  You tell me.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Robert F. Smith

[Exiled]

14 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, he and Skousen take that view, but not everyone agrees as to what "tight" means.  Do the words appearing on the stone represent the exact work of of the ca 1540 translator?  No, because we have modern English mixed in.  Are the words appearing on the stone the very words of God?  Only indirectly, if at all, because God always speaks to men according their limited understand and language.  Of course, Holy Writ is inspired by God (meaning that there is an intermediary, the Holy Spirit).  Another theory entails Joseph (or the ca 1540 pre-translator, or both) streaming the ideas of the text through Joseph's brain before they appear on the seerstone in a kind of feedback loop.  Loose or tight?  You tell me.

Well, the answer to the riddle is that it has to be inspired fiction from the mind of Joseph Smith and maybe with the help of others, if one still believes.  He wanted to build faith and perhaps start a religious movement when he commenced his activities.  He also wanted to repair his damaged reputation from his treasure seeking days.  So, he used the mound-builder myth, personal experience, his father's dreams, and KJV as vehicles to do his midrash, just as he used Clarke's commentaries to make his new bible version.  I think this makes more sense, given the state of the evidence.   It also makes more logical sense to me that God would speak or inspire the writer directly, instead of inspiring past writers and then transmitting past inspiration to the present.  I think the believer should ask: why not remove the middleman and just inspire directly as in the Book of Moses and the D&C?

[Jeanne]

17 minutes ago, Exiled said:

Well, the answer to the riddle is that it has to be inspired fiction from the mind of Joseph Smith and maybe with the help of others, if one still believes.  He wanted to build faith and perhaps start a religious movement when he commenced his activities.  He also wanted to repair his damaged reputation from his treasure seeking days.  So, he used the mound-builder myth, personal experience, his father's dreams, and KJV as vehicles to do his midrash, just as he used Clarke's commentaries to make his new bible version.  I think this makes more sense, given the state of the evidence.   It also makes more logical sense to me that God would speak or inspire the writer directly, instead of inspiring past writers and then transmitting past inspiration to the present.  I think the believer should ask: why not remove the middleman and just inspire directly as in the Book of Moses and the D&C?

This kind of speaks to me..mainly because of D&C...so many changes or things that were happening affected the words of the Lord in the D&C.  IMO  In any case, this makes more sense to me than anything divine..but I do believe that Joseph..believed in himself. 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Exiled said:

Well, the answer to the riddle is that it has to be inspired fiction from the mind of Joseph Smith and maybe with the help of others, if one still believes.

That has been a fairly common view for all the years since 1829, but fails on the rocks & shoals of EModE nowadays.  Since Joseph could not possibly have known that language, it had to have come to him already translated (pre-translated), thus allowing in some way for a bit of modern parlance to be inserted as well.  That latter would have to be an innocent affect, since one could not have consciously edited it in that way.

2 hours ago, Exiled said:

  He wanted to build faith

Lutheran pastor Robert N. Hullinger even wrote a book arguing that Joseph was defending God and the Bible: Joseph Smith's Response to Skepticism (Signature, 1992). However, all the motivation in the world is not going to create an 1830 book with EModE as an integral part.

2 hours ago, Exiled said:

and perhaps start a religious movement when he commenced his activities.  He also wanted to repair his damaged reputation from his treasure seeking days.  So, he used the mound-builder myth, personal experience, his father's dreams, and KJV as vehicles to do his midrash, just as he used Clarke's commentaries to make his new bible version.  I think this makes more sense, given the state of the evidence.

One can use additive logic with such a recipe, but it never gets us to the actual facts:  The BofM portrays a literate high civilization, with immense population, etc., none of which is evident in that recipe.  Indeed, most of the information in Clarke is wrong in cases where the BofM gets it right based on modern archeology and linguistics.  And that is before we consider the intractable problem of EModE.

2 hours ago, Exiled said:

   It also makes more logical sense to me that God would speak or inspire the writer directly, instead of inspiring past writers and then transmitting past inspiration to the present.  I think the believer should ask: why not remove the middleman and just inspire directly as in the Book of Moses and the D&C?

The answer is that God never does it that way.  He always follows weak human ways (according to their language and understanding, 2 Ne 31:3, D&C 1:24).  Humans are pretty stupid, and cannot be expected to understand the mind of God (Isa 55:8-9).  Moreover, why would God not want it this way?  He wants to leave us dependent on our own free agency so that we can learn essential lessons.  This life is not intended to be a "rose garden."  Direct, unmediated revelation does not exist.

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, Exiled said:

I thought Mr. Carmack's theory assumed a tight translation as in the exact words appeared on the seer stone as David Whitmer claimed?

For clarity we should distinguish between a tight and loose translation in terms of the text and tight or loose control in terms of the method. I think most, on the basis of how early descriptions say the U&T worked, assume tight control. i.e. that Joseph didn't have much conscious control of the process but read off words from the crystal. However tight or loose in terms of the relationship of produced text to the gold plates is a completely different topic. Many assume loose translation due to the anachronistic quotations of texts to translate things suggesting a loose ideological translation rather than a word for word translation. That's not to deny elements of tightness such as in transliteration schemes but that by and large the translation proceeded in terms of broad units of translation and picking the nearest idea/phrase.

[cdowis]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

And that is before we consider the intractable problem of EModE

May I point out that archaic words and phrases continue to be found in dialects despite disappearing from general use, e.g. "over yonder" as used in the Southern states.

Edited March 17, 2018 by cdowis

[Brant Gardner]

4 hours ago, Exiled said:

I thought Mr. Carmack's theory assumed a tight translation as in the exact words appeared on the seer stone as David Whitmer claimed?

Not quite. It certainly has gained that meaning, but that is the result of a lack of clarity in definitions. If we lay out the steps, then it is easier to understand.

Step 1: plates are written in some Nephite language (there are conjectures about what it might have been, but that is a different question than the one we are looking at here).

Step 2: The Nephite text is translated into English. In this step, we might have either a literal translation or a functional translation. On this step, Carmack has indicated that it is possible that it was functional. I don't know if he is interested in taking a specific position.

Step 3: The English text shows up visually through means of the Interpreters or the seer stone. Joseph reads what he saw on the stone(s). This is where we have tight control in that Joseph faithfully reads and does not alter the English he reads.

All of the discussion centers on whether whether Joseph participated in Step 2 or if it was someone else (or multiple others). The linguistic evidence is offered to show that it could not have been Joseph because there is a larger amount of Early Modern English that Carmack suggests was obsolete and therefore unavailable to Joseph.

In any case, clarity would encourage us to only use tight control for Step 3, because Skousen's definition of the term only applied to Step 3 (and he coined the idea, so he gets to define it). the problem in lack of clarity has been that since Step 3 is part of the process involved in the translation of the Book of Mormon, the word translation has been used with Step 3.

 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, cdowis said:

May I point out that archaic words and phrases continue to be found in dialects despite disappearing from general use, e.g. "over yonder" as used in the Southern states.

Absolutely, and many of those dialects have been closely studied.  Sometimes they represent a much earlier standard mode of speech, and can be found only in isolated locations (as in Appalachia or the Ozarks, for example).  Even old musical styles can be found in isolated places.

What a linguistics scholar must do is to differentiate the hold-overs from items which died out entirely in the course of time.

[Glenn101]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Absolutely, and many of those dialects have been closely studied.  Sometimes they represent a much earlier standard mode of speech, and can be found only in isolated locations (as in Appalachia or the Ozarks, for example).  Even old musical styles can be found in isolated places.

What a linguistics scholar must do is to differentiate the hold-overs from items which died out entirely in the course of time.

I think that Stanford Carmack has covered those bases pretty well in checking out Joseph's speech patterns and researching the written documents of the era. Joseph did not live nor was raised in an isolated pocket of peoples. Stanford has asserted that to be able to reproduce the EmodE as extensively as it appears in the Book of Mormon, a person would have immersed in that language to the point that it would have come naturally, if I understand his reasoning correctly. It does sound logical. I have never bought the idea that a person that did not naturally speak any dialect could somehow imitate it unconsciously. 

Glenn

[Exiled]

18 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

Not quite. It certainly has gained that meaning, but that is the result of a lack of clarity in definitions. If we lay out the steps, then it is easier to understand.

Step 1: plates are written in some Nephite language (there are conjectures about what it might have been, but that is a different question than the one we are looking at here).

Step 2: The Nephite text is translated into English. In this step, we might have either a literal translation or a functional translation. On this step, Carmack has indicated that it is possible that it was functional. I don't know if he is interested in taking a specific position.

Step 3: The English text shows up visually through means of the Interpreters or the seer stone. Joseph reads what he saw on the stone(s). This is where we have tight control in that Joseph faithfully reads and does not alter the English he reads.

All of the discussion centers on whether whether Joseph participated in Step 2 or if it was someone else (or multiple others). The linguistic evidence is offered to show that it could not have been Joseph because there is a larger amount of Early Modern English that Carmack suggests was obsolete and therefore unavailable to Joseph.

In any case, clarity would encourage us to only use tight control for Step 3, because Skousen's definition of the term only applied to Step 3 (and he coined the idea, so he gets to define it). the problem in lack of clarity has been that since Step 3 is part of the process involved in the translation of the Book of Mormon, the word translation has been used with Step 3.

 

 

Thanks for this. This hypothesis still doesn't discount the possibility that the text could have been prepared, prior, by JS and perhaps some confederates, including seemingly old world like language to sound authoritative, in preparation for the seer stone step. Do we know what was actually written down during the seer stone sessions? We know what was claimed but only Oliver and JS were witnesses to what actually transpired, right?

[Glenn101]

48 minutes ago, Exiled said:

Thanks for this. This hypothesis still doesn't discount the possibility that the text could have been prepared, prior, by JS and perhaps some confederates, including seemingly old world like language to sound authoritative, in preparation for the seer stone step.

The EmodE in the Book of Mormon pretty much discounts such a possibility.

Glenn

[Gray]

On 3/16/2018 at 6:18 PM, clarkgoble said:

Yeah I thought I had a flu that lasted too long thinking maybe I had a minor secondary lung infection. Turned out it was an infection on my heart valve. So I go in for open heart surgery on Monday and have been here in the hospital all week. Although honestly after six hours of antibiotics I felt fine. But there's a big growth on my heart valve now and the valve is damaged. So life comes at you fast.

My best wishes to you for a speedy recovery!

[Jeanne]

2 hours ago, Gray said:

My best wishes to you for a speedy recovery!

Yo...best wishes from me too..you take care of yourself and keep us up to date...prayers.

[Brant Gardner]

8 hours ago, Exiled said:

Thanks for this. This hypothesis still doesn't discount the possibility that the text could have been prepared, prior, by JS and perhaps some confederates, including seemingly old world like language to sound authoritative, in preparation for the seer stone step. Do we know what was actually written down during the seer stone sessions? We know what was claimed but only Oliver and JS were witnesses to what actually transpired, right?

The only person who knows what Joseph saw and read was Joseph. However, there is enough information that can be discerned from the original manuscript (what remains of it) that we can state that Joseph appears to have faithfully dictated the text.

You are correct that there is some place for something to have happened prior to the time of the dictation. The things that would have had to have been in that pre-dictation manuscript are getting very specific. If you accept the Skousen/Carmack hypothesis, the language itself would have been impossible. If you discount that, you still have some complex structural arrangements of the text that follow some consistent practices that were not expected in contemporary literature. If you discount that, you still have the says in which the story of the Book of Mormon fits with a known place and time and the major events known from archaeology--almost none of which were known prior to the dictation of the Book of Mormon.

There are certainly many who want to see some purely human creation of the Book of Mormon, and there are those who find some parallel or another with different books or ideas. Unfortunately, all of those that I have seen never place controls on their use of parallels, so they fall prey to what has been called parallelomania--which is drawing parallels that only have the appearance of usefulness, but which fail under examination.

I really haven't seen any argument that Joseph could have created the text that can account for the text. I haven't seen any argument that a committee could have done it either.

[Bernard Gui]

On 3/8/2018 at 10:06 AM, CV75 said:

I would suspect it had something to do with the Europeans coming. On one hand they destroyed some 90% of the native population, which according to the Book of Mormon would have apostatized a millennium earlier, and on the other hand, they introduced Christianity which was often co-opted into native religions either by conversion, symbiosis, or to camouflage traditional beliefs and practices. It would be hard to trace an authentic Book of Mormon religion through all that. At least in the Old World, the conquerors adopted Christianity, enabling their success in preserving relics from the past.

Below is an image of the Mayan symbol "Pop". It means "Council of Elders." Those born under its sign are leaders. It is the first month of the sacred, 260-day Tzolkin calendar. Note the interlocking square, the "Seal (or Square) of Melchizedek" in the center. Note the Mayan cross toward the right, which was a symbol of the "World Tree," the Milky Way, and a medicine wheel, each of which in their own way connect the underworld, the earth, and heaven. But of course we only see what we're looking for, right?

Or the obvious compass and square.

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

There are certainly many who want to see some purely human creation of the Book of Mormon, and there are those who find some parallel or another with different books or ideas. Unfortunately, all of those that I have seen never place controls on their use of parallels, so they fall prey to what has been called parallelomania--which is drawing parallels that only have the appearance of usefulness, but which fail under examination.

I really haven't seen any argument that Joseph could have created the text that can account for the text. I haven't seen any argument that a committee could have done it either.

There are 17th Century men who could have produced the Book of Mormon and I think the 17th Century parallels overwhelm the traditional models. A brief list of things a 17th Century model explains: Nephite religion including soteriology, atonement theory, infant baptism, heaven and hell, Garden of Eden, Satan’s role, faith vs works; Nephite government under kings and judges, including the relationship between church and state and the existence of a republican form of government; Nephite cultural practices such as the prohibition of slavery, exiling non-believers, and the burning of heretics; Nephite warfare ethics and practices including wars against foreign nations, wars against robbers, civil wars, and civil strife between king men and republicans; the existence and specific tactics and practices of robbers; total warfare; pacifism; Galilean scientific thought in the Book of Mormon; the great and abominable church and anti-Christ; loss of plain and precious parts of the Bible; KJB—both the extended passages and the ubiquitous KJB words and phrases; literary forms like chiasmus, father-to-son letters, and Joseph of Egypt’s vaticinium ex eventu in 2 Nephi 3; trans-Pacific colonization of the New World; Nephite geography. Based on published writing there is a small circle of men within a narrow temporal-spatial window in 17th Century Europe that could have provided all of the listed aspects of the Book of Mormon. I don’t think a 19th Century model or an ancient American model can even come close to this.

[Rajah Manchou]

43 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I don’t think a 19th Century model or an ancient American model can even come close to this.

Somehow this gets in there:

"And thus prophesied Joseph, saying: Behold, that seer will the Lord bless; and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded; for this promise, which I have obtained of the Lord, of the fruit of my loins, shall be fulfilled. Behold, I am sure of the fulfilling of this promise. And his name shall be called after me; and it shall be after the name of his father. And he shall be like unto me; for the thing, which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand, by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation." - 2 Nephi 3:14-15

There aren't many ways to explain those two verses without appealing to either revelation or a 19th century addition made by someone familiar with Joseph Smith. How would a 17th century model explain this? Is this the vaticinium ex eventu you are referring to? How does that work?
 

Edited March 19, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Brant Gardner]

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

There are 17th Century men who could have produced the Book of Mormon and I think the 17th Century parallels overwhelm the traditional models. A brief list of things a 17th Century model explains: Nephite religion including soteriology, atonement theory, infant baptism, heaven and hell, Garden of Eden, Satan’s role, faith vs works; Nephite government under kings and judges, including the relationship between church and state and the existence of a republican form of government; Nephite cultural practices such as the prohibition of slavery, exiling non-believers, and the burning of heretics; Nephite warfare ethics and practices including wars against foreign nations, wars against robbers, civil wars, and civil strife between king men and republicans; the existence and specific tactics and practices of robbers; total warfare; pacifism; Galilean scientific thought in the Book of Mormon; the great and abominable church and anti-Christ; loss of plain and precious parts of the Bible; KJB—both the extended passages and the ubiquitous KJB words and phrases; literary forms like chiasmus, father-to-son letters, and Joseph of Egypt’s vaticinium ex eventu in 2 Nephi 3; trans-Pacific colonization of the New World; Nephite geography. Based on published writing there is a small circle of men within a narrow temporal-spatial window in 17th Century Europe that could have provided all of the listed aspects of the Book of Mormon. I don’t think a 19th Century model or an ancient American model can even come close to this.

As I mentioned, parallelism is a flawed methodology. Depending upon how you couch the parallel, things may be made to appear parallel that wouldn't otherwise. I appreciate you belief that no other model comes close to this collection, but the collection itself depends upon the interpretive spin and not on stronger connections. 

For example, you have "wars against robbers." Stated that simply, it would seem that it could be a parallel. However, the literary use of the Gadianton Robbers in the text works very differently from anything that would be described as simply as that. "Burning of heretics" places a particular interpretation on the events--but one that is not exclusive to your timeframe. It could have been much, much earlier.

What would have been impossible for your small circle of men is the very close connections between specific time periods, specific locations, and known events that we know from archaeology and are described in the Book of Mormon (and not just one, and the timing stays accurate through cultural/historical changes). None of that would be available. As a quicker example, within the last 20 years archaeologists have found that there were Mesoamerican societies that were not based on kingship, but on a more collective concept where the people had a voice (the Book of Mormon is not Republican, something Richard Bushman discovered when trying to write about its Republicanism for the US bicentennial).