Evidence Case Study

[clarkgoble]

3 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I don't think it changes things either way. The argument rests on the idea that Joseph would not have been familiar with these EModE constructions, and that's a really difficult thing to prove, IMO. For example, the "of which hath been spoken" usage shows up in Joseph's writing outside the text of the Book of Mormon. If that is really an EModE usage, then it seems he was familiar enough with it to use it in his own writing, which suggests that he could easily have written the occurrences of that phrase in the Book of Mormon. Where did he learn that phrase? Now, that could be interesting, but it's not probative either way.

I do think that we need as a null hypothesis looking at early Mormon documents to see if these phrases appear. Although that's not perfect since they may arise because of the Book of Mormon. However you're completely correct that they'd undermine the significance of that particular grammatical or phrase structure. I haven't remotely gone through all of Carmack's examples but back when I was investigating I went through quite a few and only found one or two that were in Joseph's phrasing. (Fortunately this is relatively easy to do thanks to the search function at The Joseph Smith Papers -- I also used The Parallel Joseph) 

You probably missed it but there was a discussion here several months ago about later 19th century documents that were aping 16th century style and whether they appeared in those. I honestly don't recall the details though as I think I was rather busy at the time.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I do think that we need as a null hypothesis looking at early Mormon documents to see if these phrases appear. Although that's not perfect since they may arise because of the Book of Mormon. However you're completely correct that they'd undermine the significance of that particular grammatical or phrase structure. I haven't remotely gone through all of Carmack's examples but back when I was investigating I went through quite a few and only found one or two that were in Joseph's phrasing. (Fortunately this is relatively easy to do thanks to the search function at The Joseph Smith Papers -- I also used The Parallel Joseph) 

You probably missed it but there was a discussion here several months ago about later 19th century documents that were aping 16th century style and whether they appeared in those. I honestly don't recall the details though as I think I was rather busy at the time.

I probably wasn't around then. It all boils down to my seeing what I see in this argument and being told I just don't get it or I'm deliberately misleading people. If anything, it's the former, but I could be way out in left field. Again, even if there's no evidence that Joseph could have been familiar with these kinds of usage, to me it's just an oddity of the text with little explanatory power. 

[mfbukowski]

52 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

It undermines the Joseph as author - that's all. Although that's significant. As I said I think it completely undermines the Taves model for instance.

I wouldn't say that.

A naturalistic explanation could be that "Moroni" was a living person, an "embodied angel" who somehow found plates or a manuscript or was the author which then, using the Taves hypothesis, sacralized it.  As you know I am not a history guy because I find it irrelevant to the value of the book as a spiritual document.

In the back of my mind, there was a strange person who was some kind of spiritualist who told Joseph he was "destined" to find the "treasure" in the hill- ?  Too lazy to look it up

Suppose he was the "angel"?

Suppose he also did ordinations etc?

Now THAT would fit the Taves hypothesis VERY well.

Edit:  I looked it up : Josiah Stowell.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1657&context=msr

 

Edited July 6, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

But when you assert that it is in meroitic I've been assuming you mean the script, not the language. Is that not the case?

Meroitic is named for Meroe, the Nubian capital at that time.  They used Egyptian cursive to write their language, a language now lost.  Why would a Nubian language be of interest to BofM scholars?  The only point being made by those who compare it is that it is Egyptian script being used to write that lost language, not that BofM language or script is Meroitic.  Your obsession with Merotic makes no sense.

Quote

Yes, but I'm trying to write to be clear to other readers here. For those interested most of the original documents can be found here. I'm not sure I trust Anthon's description too much. He seems intentionally trying to portray it as an obvious fraud.

"This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calender given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived."

The more compelling argument is the Wilhelm Poulson account. We also know there are other documents such as Martin Harris' document he was showing that was copied by Flanders Dyke. There's then two other documents by Oliver Cowdery and Fredrick Williams - the translation of Mormon being the one discussed in that Ensign I linked to.

But whether or not this is the Anthon Transcript it's been called it enough that everyone understands what one means. "Caracters" is a bit of a mystery to the average reader.

The spelling is "Caractors."  The scholarly community no longer makes the unjustified assumption that it is the AT, but you are certainly free to call it whatever you want.

Quote

Of course it's for us to say. We can ask why they thought that. If we don't know and no one else replicates the argument, then their opinion is irrelevant. Appeal to authority is simply a terribly weak argument particularly in cases like this where, by your own account, these are things that many should be able to know. It matters when there are huge incentives for people to verify this and no one does.

We're not talking about some events someone saw and no one else did (or could). We're talking about something that in theory should be easy to replicate and that people can give arguments for. If the only argument is an appeal to the authority of a dead man then that's simply bad argument. It'd be akin to saying dark matter is axions because a dead but smart physicist was convinced they were.The only thing that matters in cases like this are the arguments produced. 

Parker and Hayes were very  much alive when they made their statements.  Anti-Mormons and ignorant Mormons frequently claim that no such claim has ever been made by a professional non-Mormon Egyptologist.  They believe that scholarly authority is important, even if it isn't.  Those sorts of lies and misinformation are all too common, and need to be refuted.

Edited July 6, 2018 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

26 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I wouldn't say that.

A naturalistic explanation could be that "Moroni" was a living person, an "embodied angel" who somehow found plates or a manuscript or was the author which then, using the Taves hypothesis, sacralized it.  As you know I am not a history guy because I find it irrelevant to the value of the book as a spiritual document.

In the back of my mind, there was a strange person who was some kind of spiritualist who told Joseph he was "destined" to find the "treasure" in the hill- ?  Too lazy to look it up

Suppose he was the "angel"?

Suppose he also did ordinations etc?

Now THAT would fit the Taves hypothesis VERY well.

Edit:  I looked it up : Josiah Stowell.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1657&context=msr

 

THIS kind of thing is precisely why I am a fideist.

History is irrelevant to the spiritual content of the BOM.  Makes no difference to my testimony whatsoever. 

For me there is no such thing as "anti-Mormon literature".

If you are into historical evidence, here it is.  .  Taves works fine for me.

 

[clarkgoble]

54 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

A naturalistic explanation could be that "Moroni" was a living person, an "embodied angel" who somehow found plates or a manuscript or was the author which then, using the Taves hypothesis, sacralized it.  As you know I am not a history guy because I find it irrelevant to the value of the book as a spiritual document.

Right, but that's different from Joseph sacralizing it and still undermines the Joseph as author thesis. (Taves theory was that there were no plates but Joseph saw it in a kind of platonic fashion and then made the plates to actualize this platonic vision. He then wrote it is a pseudo-prophetic way in which he wasn't consciously fraudulent but was "spirit writing" out of his subconscious.

22 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

History is irrelevant to the spiritual content of the BOM.  Makes no difference to my testimony whatsoever. 

Makes considerable effect on how one reads the text.

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

I probably wasn't around then. It all boils down to my seeing what I see in this argument and being told I just don't get it or I'm deliberately misleading people. If anything, it's the former, but I could be way out in left field. Again, even if there's no evidence that Joseph could have been familiar with these kinds of usage, to me it's just an oddity of the text with little explanatory power. 

I'm not quite sure how you come to that. To put the implication thesis is a starker image, consider that Joseph wrote it all in coptic. Now it's conceivable he might have learned coptic somewhere, but it's pretty unlikely. So it's prima facie reason to think Joseph wasn't the author.

 

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not quite sure how you come to that. To put the implication thesis is a starker image, consider that Joseph wrote it all in coptic. Now it's conceivable he might have learned coptic somewhere, but it's pretty unlikely. So it's prima facie reason to think Joseph wasn't the author.

The difference is that the likelihood that Joseph was exposed to Coptic is quite small, close to nil. Exposure to EModE literature isn't nearly as remote a possibility.

[clarkgoble]

58 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Meroitic is named for Meroe, the Nubian capital at that time.  They used Egyptian cursive to write their language, a language now lost.  Why would a Nubian language be of interest to BofM scholars?  The only point being made by those who compare it is that it is Egyptian script being used to write that lost language, not that BofM language or script is Meroitic.  Your obsession with Merotic makes no sense.

Again, I'm not an Egyptologist and was going by what you were claiming pages back. If you think it irrelevant now that's fine. I'll drop it. All my comments were just questioning the meroitic connection.

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The spelling is "Caractors."  The scholarly community no longer makes the unjustified assumption that it is the AT, but you are certainly free to call it whatever you want.

I write these fast when I'm at work between items on my todo list. Typos pop in - particularly when I'm typing with my phone.

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Parker and Hayes were very  much alive when they made their statements.  Anti-Mormons and ignorant Mormons frequently claim that no such claim has ever been made by a professional non-Mormon Egyptologist.  They believe that scholarly authority is important, even if it isn't.  Those sorts of lies and misinformation are all too common, and need to be refuted.

Again the issue is the argument for the claim, not who makes the claim. If ones just replying to an anti-Mormon saying non-Mormons haven't seen connection that's one thing. If it's raised as support for the claim then more is needed. It's the latter I was addressing.

[jkwilliams]

21 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Again, I'm not an Egyptologist and was going by what you were claiming pages back. If you think it irrelevant now that's fine. I'll drop it. All my comments were just questioning the meroitic connection.

I write these fast when I'm at work between items on my todo list. Typos pop in - particularly when I'm typing with my phone.

Again the issue is the argument for the claim, not who makes the claim. If ones just replying to an anti-Mormon saying non-Mormons haven't seen connection that's one thing. If it's raised as support for the claim then more is needed. It's the latter I was addressing.

I'm not sure what one can make of a couple of apparently off-hand statements from 60 years ago. I'm not saying they are wrong, just that the lack of specifics makes it awfully hard to evaluate these statements.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

The difference is that the likelihood that Joseph was exposed to Coptic is quite small, close to nil. Exposure to EModE literature isn't nearly as remote a possibility.

Yup. I was just trying to illustrate the issue. However whether sufficient exposure to EModE to the point that he speaks using such forms exists seems unlikely. It's not out of the question of course. But I think it's at the point where some text in Joseph's proximity is necessary to believe it was an influence on him.

Usually people making textual claims appeal to the Manchester Library. There were 421 books there but the vast majority date to within 1800-1830 with a few from the late 18th century. Obviously none are so-called occult books. Now it's possible that as you said some esoteric magical writing was being passed down. Often John Dee's writings are appealed to but those are easily available to search. (I've not I'll confess) Although I also have a hard time seeing Joseph having a copy of Dee's Five Books of Mystery laying around. Steve Fleming has done some work on this. It seems like the magic parchments the Smiths did own were possibly derived from Scot's Discoverie and Sibly's New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences. Some (including Quinn) suggested they had access to grimoires but those are extremely rare and it's probably on par with knowing Coptic. So I think it's fair to ask Carmack to compare his findings against a null hypothesis of Sibly, Scot and perhaps Barrett's The Magus and Dee's Five Books of Mystery. If most of Carmack's structures aren't in those then I think that pretty well establishes things.

If I have some time I might try a few of the structures. In theory Google Book's search should do many of them. I don't have time to do them all though.

11 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I'm not sure what one can make of a couple of apparently off-hand statements from 60 years ago. I'm not saying they are wrong, just that the lack of specifics makes it awfully hard to evaluate these statements.

Exactly. If the concern is whether non-Mormon Egyptologists at some time were positive towards claims that's one thing. (Although I'm not sure why even that matters too much) If the issue is the positive claim itself then all that matters is the argument itself.

Edited July 6, 2018 by clarkgoble

[strappinglad]

Every plan should have a built in redundancy . Suppose JS was plan B or C for that matter. The small plates of Nephi were made as a backup to the large plates info. Did God try to restore the gospel at another time? Was the BoM translated into the English at that time? In God's economy that previous translation might have been " close enough " to be used in 1820.

If only Martin's wife had been less of a ... , we would know so much more about the Nephites .

If only I didn't like unfounded speculation so much...

Edited July 6, 2018 by strappinglad

[cinepro]

16 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

If only Martin's wife had been less of a ... , we would know so much more about the Nephites .

 

From what I can tell, Lucy Harris was acting entirely rationally.  Any smart woman married to a man doing what Martin Harris was doing would do the same thing.

Edited July 6, 2018 by cinepro

[Ahab]

5 minutes ago, cinepro said:

It might not be a popular opinion, but from what I can tell Lucy Harris was acting entirely rationally.  Any smart woman married to a man doing what Martin Harris was doing would do the same thing.

There was no good reason for her to destroy those pages, or to leave them unlocked in her bureau so that others could easily take them if that is what happened.  I'm sure Martin told her how important those pages were to him and even if she chose to disregard them for what her husband believed them to be there was no good reason for her to be careless with them.  Those pages were not her property, or the property of her husband, and I'm sure she knew her husband had only  borrowed them and was expected to return them.

[cinepro]

9 minutes ago, Ahab said:

There was no good reason for her to destroy those pages, or to leave them unlocked in her bureau so that others could easily take them if that is what happened.  I'm sure Martin told her how important those pages were to him and even if she chose to disregard them for what her husband believed them to be there was no good reason for her to be careless with them.  Those pages were not her property, or the property of her husband, and I'm sure she knew her husband had only  borrowed them and was expected to return them.

For a woman worried about her husband literally betting the farm on a fruitless endeavor and threatening her livelihood in a day when she didn't have many other options, ending the project as soon as possible would be the most rational course of action.  And destroying the pages would be the best way to try and do it.

Obviously, she wanted to read the work in progress to see what they Martin was investing in.  If it had potential to be a literary success, then she probably would have supported (or at least tolerated) Martin's participation.  While we don't know much about what, exactly, was on the 116 pages, we can surmise that whatever it was didn't impress Lucy so she went with plan B. 

Edited July 6, 2018 by cinepro

[Ahab]

3 minutes ago, cinepro said:

For a woman worried about her husband literally betting the farm on a fruitless endeavor and threatening her livelihood in a day when she didn't have many other options, ending the project as soon as possible would be the most rational course of action.  And destroying the pages would be the best way to try and do it.

Obviously, she wanted to read the work in progress to see what they Martin was investing in.  If it had potential to be a literary success, then she probably would have supported (or at least tolerated) Martin's participation.  While we don't know much about what, exactly, was on the 116 pages, we can surmise that whatever it was didn't impress Lucy so she went with plan B. 

Well, still, I have reservations on calling a woman smart when she couldn't spot a best seller when she saw one.  Our missionaries may now give them away for free but somebody somewhere is paying for them after they're printed, and always have been since they've been printed.

[cinepro]

13 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Well, still, I have reservations on calling a woman smart when she couldn't spot a best seller when she saw one.  Our missionaries may now give them away for free but somebody somewhere is paying for them after they're printed, and always have been since they've been printed.

That makes no sense.  Harris did mortgage his farm and lost it.  It's not like the project was never finished and we'll never know if she was right or not.

[jkwilliams]

40 minutes ago, Ahab said:

There was no good reason for her to destroy those pages, or to leave them unlocked in her bureau so that others could easily take them if that is what happened.  I'm sure Martin told her how important those pages were to him and even if she chose to disregard them for what her husband believed them to be there was no good reason for her to be careless with them.  Those pages were not her property, or the property of her husband, and I'm sure she knew her husband had only  borrowed them and was expected to return them.

There was if she thought he was being swindled out of a large amount of money. 

[Glenn101]

4 hours ago, cinepro said:

That makes no sense.  Harris did mortgage his farm and lost it.  It's not like the project was never finished and we'll never know if she was right or not.

According to the LDS history site and Encyclopedia of Mormonism Harris did not lose his farm. He initially mortgaged his farm to Grandin to get the Book of Mormon published and later sold off 151 acres, a bit less than half, of the farm to pay the debt in full. 

And, according to Lucy Mack Smith, Lucy Harris at one time actually donated $28.00 of her own money  to aid in the translation process. There may be more to the Lucy Harris story than we currently know.

Glenn

[cinepro]

6 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

According to the LDS history site and Encyclopedia of Mormonism Harris did not lose his farm. He initially mortgaged his farm to Grandin to get the Book of Mormon published and later sold off 151 acres, a bit less than half, of the farm to pay the debt in full. 

And, according to Lucy Mack Smith, Lucy Harris at one time actually donated $28.00 of her own money  to aid in the translation process. There may be more to the Lucy Harris story than we currently know.

Glenn

By all accounts,  even the ones you provided, Martin sold that part of the farm to pay the $3,000 for the Book of Mormon printing.  He never got it back (the money or the 151 acres), so to the degree that that's what Lucy was fearing would happen, it happened.  

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, cinepro said:

By all accounts,  even the ones you provided, Martin sold that part of the farm to pay the $3,000 for the Book of Mormon printing.  He never got it back (the money or the 151 acres), so to the degree that that's what Lucy was fearing would happen, it happened.  

But he did not "lose the farm," as your link stated. Just trying to be a bit more accurate.

Glenn

Edited July 7, 2018 by Glenn101
clarification

[Robert F. Smith]

12 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

..................................Again the issue is the argument for the claim, not who makes the claim. If ones just replying to an anti-Mormon saying non-Mormons haven't seen connection that's one thing. If it's raised as support for the claim then more is needed. It's the latter I was addressing.

Comments by non-Mormon scholars are usually very relevant precisely because the claim is so frequently made that no such non-Mormon scholarship has been forthcoming.  It always astonishes me that such uninformed claims are made at all.  For example, it is noteworthy that the late William F. Albright stated in writing twice that the BofM names Paanchi and Pahoran were authentic Egyptian names -- both times at the  invitation of anti-Mormon questioners, who thereafter went out of their way to ignore Albright's words.  Such blatant dishonesty needs to be addressed.

[cinepro]

14 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

But he did not "lose the farm," as your link stated. Just trying to be a bit more accurate.

Glenn

This review of seems to indicate that he may have lost the whole farm after all. 

Quote

The line “thou shalt not covet thine own property” I find really striking. We’re talking about Martin’s entire net worth–his farm–which he in fact was unable to redeem and lost. Apparently the original plan was for all proceeds of sale of the first print run of the Book of Mormon to go towards building up the Church, with no provision for Martin to recover his “gift.” That was later changed, by giving Martin an equal right to sell copies of the BoM until his investment was recouped, but at first at least the books wouldn’t sell, for nobody wanted them. It’s unclear to me whether Martin eventually recouped some of his investment from BoM sales, but even if so it would have been a small fraction of what he had lost.

This kind of puts the actions of Martin’s wife, Lucy Harris, into a certain perspective. She made Martin deed to her her dower interest in the farm (80 acres) to make sure he couldn’t alienate it to finance the BoM. Although we don’t know for sure, the best guess is that it was Lucy who destroyed the 116 manuscript pages in an effort to prevent her husband from doing what he in fact ended up doing.

 

https://bycommonconsent.com/2015/12/31/financing-the-book-of-mormon/

 

[Glenn101]

2 hours ago, cinepro said:

This review of seems to indicate that he may have lost the whole farm after all. 

 

I do not have a copy of the book under review but I do have access to this publication which says that one John Graves purchased a one hundred-fifty and one quarter acre tract of land for $3300 dollars from Thomas Lakey who was the second assignee of the mortgage originally with Grandin. I have not been able to obtain any copy of the original mortgage, but every source I have read states in essence that Harris signed a mortgage document in August of 1829 which would be due in eighteen months authorizing Grandin to sell Harris' lands if the $3000 was not repaid by that time. Grandin sold the note to a Thomas Rogers II for $2000 dollars. Lakey evidently negotiated with Rogers to buy the note for the full $3000 dollars and negotiated with Harris for the 150 1/4 acres but sold the land to Graves when he was unable to make the payments in time to keep up an accelerated payment schedule. The article is a bit fuzzy on the details but I am thinking that Lakey did not actually pay Rogers in cash but agreed to make payments for the $3000. The article references a couple of transactions recorded in the Wayne County New York Deeds 7 April 1831 and 28 January 1832. This is why I believe that the 150 plus acre portion of the farm and not the whole farm is correct. I have not been able to fins any type of copy of those deeds as of yet. On a side note, the article says that Lakey paid Harris the $3000 and Harris then paid Grandin but that does not make sense as Grandin has sold the note to Rogers and Rogers was the one that certified that the note had been satisfied.

Glenn