The State of Mormon Apologetics

[Nevo]

10 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Take the Egyptian names that William F. Albright found surprising to be in the Book of Mormon (Paanchi and Paharoan). Why was he surprised and it makes no impression on you?  Albright was surprised because the study of Egyptian hierglyphics was in its infancy when the Book of Mormon was produced. 

Albright's discovery evidently didn't make much of an impression on Albright either. At the end of the letter, he wrote: "I do not for a moment believe that Joseph Smith was trying to mislead anyone; I accept the point of view of a Jewish friend of mine at the University of Utah, that he was a religious genius and that he was quite honest in believing that he really could decipher these ancient texts. But to insist that he did is really doing a disservice to the cause of a great church and its gifted founder."
 

Quote

Also, the presence of extensive Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. Stanford Carmack noted that a person may include occasional Early Modern English phrases in written texts. There is some in the Bible itself. But a person would have to speak/write Early Modern English as second nature for it to show up in a text to the extent that it does in the Book of Mormon. Stanford has analysed pesudo-Biblical texts of the era and they do not have such usage levels. Not even close. He also has analysed Joseph's own personal writings and has not found it to contain significant amounts of Early Modern English. Do you have an evidence based explanation for this that would make this Early Modern English usage fit comfortably in a nineteenth century text?

Carmack has analyzed some pseudo-biblical texts but certainly not all of them. A poster on another board recently uncovered a satirical newspaper article from 1888 that uses the auxiliary "did" in past-tense contexts in ways similar to the Book of Mormon:

"I followed Carmack's strictures for the most part, omitting past tense of 'to be' and passive forms, neither of which can take a 'did' form. In Ye Ancient Chronicles of Gotham, there are roughly 67 past-tense narrative verbs along these lines, and of those I have detected 33 examples of affirmative past-tense syntax with 'did.' That is an astonishing 49%!" (http://mormon*****.***/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=896985#p896985)

Yet Carmack claims that this usage died out in the 1700s and therefore "Book of Mormon past-tense syntax could have been achieved only by following the use of largely inaccessible 16th-century writings" (emphasis mine). Well, that claim appears to be incorrect. Also, for what it's worth, my late Dutch stepfather used auxiliary "did" past-tense syntax all the time ("I did go to the store..."), influenced I am sure by the Book of Mormon (which he read every day).

Edited August 11, 2018 by Nevo

[USU78]

50 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Gross exaggeration on Emma’s part.  The evidence doesn’t support it.  

Are you talking about JSJr 1827 or JSJr 1837?

[Hamba Tuhan]

11 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

If I has such a realistic dream that I felt compelled to check to see if it was real.

No dream or vision will 'compel' you to act.

Quote

In my current skeptical mindset I would wonder if I hadn't already visited that hillside before, and just forgot, and I would question the reality of what was happening to try and find an explanation that works for my world view.

Thanks for that honest answer. I think it has certain implications.

[why me]

4 hours ago, ttribe said:

You completely dodged the substance of my question - Do you really believe that the majority of the Church's membership would no longer be surprised the issues frequently raised by critics?

Not if they could find the issue on a church website. No surprise there. I don't expect the entire church membership to be experts on church issues or church history. But if the member can find the information on a church website why would they be influenced by a critic when the information is there? Remember the good ol' church hides its history claim?

[hope_for_things]

5 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Are you talking about JSJr 1827 or JSJr 1837?

You’d expect some improvement from age 21 to 31.  

[hope_for_things]

4 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

No dream or vision will 'compel' you to act.

Thanks for that honest answer. I think it has certain implications.

Honesty has implications?  

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 minute ago, hope_for_things said:

Honesty has implications?  

Certainly! But that's not exactly what I intended. I more meant the content of your response.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[USU78]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

You’d expect some improvement from age 21 to 31.  

Indeed. Quite my point. Emma could easily be referring to the 1827 Joseph, while your unelaborated evidence could be referring to 1837 Joseph. No need to trash Emma's credibility, which is unnecessary and, frankly, offensive.

Edited August 11, 2018 by USU78

[hope_for_things]

32 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Indeed. Quite my point. Emma could easily be referring to the 1827 Joseph, while your unelaborated evidence could be referring to 1837 Joseph. No need to trash Emma's credibility, which is unnecessary and, frankly, offensive.

I appreciate Emma a lot and typically am a defender, saying it was a gross exaggeration isn’t impugning her character.  And saying Joseph got smarter from 21 to 31 doesn’t make him illiterate at 21.  

[jkwilliams]

5 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I appreciate Emma a lot and typically am a defender, saying it was a gross exaggeration isn’t impugning her character.  And saying Joseph got smarter from 21 to 31 doesn’t make him illiterate at 21.  

Is it impugning her character to question her denial that Joseph practiced polygamy?

[clarkgoble]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Look for the Brant Gardiner posts.  Long thread.  

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/70279-where-did-the-book-of-mormon-come-from/?tab=comments#comment-1209799365

I also think other early writing and dictation should be examined, letters, revelations, JST, 1832 history.  Even work by Cowdery and other scribes.  It’s possible they also had some of these linguistic tendencies.  

That was the thread I was thinking of.

I believe Carmack did examine the writing properly in Joseph's hand. He mentioned that in a few of those threads. I found Brant's belief that the D&C was similar. He was skeptical (as I was for a long time) of Carmack's thesis. Carmack did say, "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." Also note Carmack doesn't say it's purely 16th and 17th century language - he also sees parts contemporary with Joseph.

But beyond that, I didn't see any hard evidence in the thread from either Brant or Carmack for the D&C. (I did search through the whole thing)

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

"I followed Carmack's strictures for the most part, omitting past tense of 'to be' and passive forms, neither of which can take a 'did' form. In Ye Ancient Chronicles of Gotham, there are roughly 67 past-tense narrative verbs along these lines, and of those I have detected 33 examples of affirmative past-tense syntax with 'did.' That is an astonishing 49%!" (http://mormon*****.***/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=896985#p896985)

Yet Carmack claims that this usage died out in the 1700s and therefore "Book of Mormon past-tense syntax could have been achieved only by following the use of largely inaccessible 16th-century writings" (emphasis mine). Well, that claim appears to be incorrect. Also, for what it's worth, my late Dutch stepfather used auxiliary "did" past-tense syntax all the time ("I did go to the store..."), influenced I am sure by the Book of Mormon (which he read every day).

If it was only a few I'd agree. However I checked a large number (although hardly exhaustive) and was quite shocked how few showed up. Some I did find. Replication is of course the essence of science. So hopefully others will test. He's listed the databases he accessed so there nothing keeping others from searching through his examples. Even if one or two prove to not ultimately work well, it's the number in toto that start to become convincing. At least to me - and as I said I went from skeptic to reasonably convinced. The place I'm not 100% convinced is whether small pockets persisted in rural New York. Some of the examples after all date to within 50 years which is pretty close to Joseph's time.

But as I said earlier I definitely think replication is in order to both check for mistakes as well as methodology.

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Albright's discovery evidently didn't make much of an impression on Albright either. At the end of the letter, he wrote: "I do not for a moment believe that Joseph Smith was trying to mislead anyone; I accept the point of view of a Jewish friend of mine at the University of Utah, that he was a religious genius and that he was quite honest in believing that he really could decipher these ancient texts. But to insist that he did is really doing a disservice to the cause of a great church and its gifted founder."

It needn't be convincing to be present. That "burden of proof" element I mentioned earlier still applies. Just like believers can't really explain the metal references yet that's not enough to overcome their burden of proof, so too skeptics are not apt to be convinced by these elements. The issue isn't whether it's convincing relative to the nature of the text but whether they are actually there. Likewise there's a fair collection of Hebrew names not in the Bible that are in the Book of Mormon. Are these enough to convince skeptics? No. Are they significant? Of course. And one can do a google search on them (admittedly far from a perfect corpus) to see if they pop up around Joseph's time. (Most don't)

Edited August 11, 2018 by clarkgoble

[ttribe]

1 hour ago, why me said:

Not if they could find the issue on a church website. No surprise there. I don't expect the entire church membership to be experts on church issues or church history. But if the member can find the information on a church website why would they be influenced by a critic when the information is there? Remember the good ol' church hides its history claim?

Again, the fact that some critics will no longer be able to say the history was "hidden" is beside the point.  Trying again - Do you really believe that much of what gets raised by critics as problematic in church history wouldn't still be a surprise TODAY to most church members? It's a simple yes-or-no question.

[clarkgoble]

9 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Again, the fact that some critics will no longer be able to say the history was "hidden" is beside the point.  Trying again - Do you really believe that much of what gets raised by critics as problematic in church history wouldn't still be a surprise TODAY to most church members? It's a simple yes-or-no question.

At this stage, yes. Although the hope of inoculation is that over time that "surprise" event will be avoided. In other words it's kind of like people freaking out over Joseph claiming to be a prophet but not batting an eye at Moses. It's what one is used to and thereby the expectations. The theory is that by making people's expectations more reasonable you avoid the shocks that lead people astray. Whether in the short run it also does that to people ignorant of all this or increases the shocks remains to be seen.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

Is it impugning her character to question her denial that Joseph practiced polygamy?

Definitely not, Emma sure was put through a lot of crud.  Brigham seemed to enjoy impugning Emma’s character though.  

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Albright's discovery evidently didn't make much of an impression on Albright either. At the end of the letter, he wrote: "I do not for a moment believe that Joseph Smith was trying to mislead anyone; I accept the point of view of a Jewish friend of mine at the University of Utah, that he was a religious genius and that he was quite honest in believing that he really could decipher these ancient texts. But to insist that he did is really doing a disservice to the cause of a great church and its gifted founder."

Whether Albright was impressed or no is not the issue being debated at all. JKWilliams does not seem to be even admitting that those are Egyptian names. My point is that those Egyptian names do not belong in a nineteenth century document, and should be some evidence the Book of Mormon being a product of the nineteenth century.

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Carmack has analyzed some pseudo-biblical texts but certainly not all of them. A poster on another board recently uncovered a satirical newspaper article from 1888 that uses the auxiliary "did" in past-tense contexts in ways similar to the Book of Mormon:

"I followed Carmack's strictures for the most part, omitting past tense of 'to be' and passive forms, neither of which can take a 'did' form. In Ye Ancient Chronicles of Gotham, there are roughly 67 past-tense narrative verbs along these lines, and of those I have detected 33 examples of affirmative past-tense syntax with 'did.' That is an astonishing 49%!" (http://mormon*****.***/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=896985#p896985)

Yet Carmack claims that this usage died out in the 1700s and therefore "Book of Mormon past-tense syntax could have been achieved only by following the use of largely inaccessible 16th-century writings" (emphasis mine). Well, that claim appears to be incorrect. Also, for what it's worth, my late Dutch stepfather used auxiliary "did" past-tense syntax all the time ("I did go to the store..."), influenced I am sure by the Book of Mormon (which he read every day).

Nevo, you are about the first one I have seen try to do anything substantive to rebut some of Stanford's points. Stanford has been researching texts of the era during which and just before the Book of Mormon was produced. Of course your reference text was from 1888. It would be helpful to make your point with a text from those era's. And it was a parody, but of what? It was imitating something, but what? In your post on the site that must not be named, you made a pre-emptive strike concluding that it could not have been the Book of Mormon because of how unpopular the Mormon religion was at that time. After reading the pages that you cited, I can understand why you decided on that tactic. However, I think that maybe you set a back fire there, because things that are unpopular are also often the favorite targets of ridicule and parody. It began even before the Book of Mormon was ever put into print. Maybe you should check this out.

I would also like to see how Stanford replies to this.

Glenn

[ttribe]

56 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

At this stage, yes. Although the hope of inoculation is that over time that "surprise" event will be avoided. In other words it's kind of like people freaking out over Joseph claiming to be a prophet but not batting an eye at Moses. It's what one is used to and thereby the expectations. The theory is that by making people's expectations more reasonable you avoid the shocks that lead people astray. Whether in the short run it also does that to people ignorant of all this or increases the shocks remains to be seen.

I'm aware of the long-term goal of inoculation. It was the apparent immediate claim of effectiveness that I objected to.

[Nevo]

1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

Whether Albright was impressed or no is not the issue being debated at all. JKWilliams does not seem to be even admitting that those are Egyptian names. My point is that those Egyptian names do not belong in a nineteenth century document, and should be some evidence the Book of Mormon being a product of the nineteenth century.

I think it would be more correct to say that Paanchi and Pahoran resemble Egyptian names (if you squint a bit, as John says). The Book of Mormon doesn't, after all, say p3-ʿnh and p3-ḥr-3n. Even the Book of Mormon Onomasticon isn't completely sure that these are Egyptian names. Also, earlier MSS of the Book of Mormon have "Parhoran/Parhoron" and "Pahoron" instead of "Pahoran," so we can't even be certain of the transliterated English spelling. The suffix "horon" is found in the Bible so it's not impossible that a 19th-century person could have made up the name "Pahoron." That it bears a passing resemblance to a variety of Egyptian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic names may well just be coincidence.

Quote

Nevo, you are about the first one I have seen try to do anything substantive to rebut some of Stanford's points.

The credit belongs to Symmachus on the other board, not me (we are not the same person, I'm sorry to report). The newspaper article he cites mimics KJV style in an exaggerated, over-the-top fashion (the title gives it away: "Ye Ancient Chronicles of Gotham"). This was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the Hitler parody video, although the genre was well past its prime by 1888. According to the Israeli historian, Eran Shalev, pseudo-biblical writing peaked in popularity between 1770 and 1830. While many offered comic treatments of contemporary events, others were serious in tone (like Gilbert Hunt's The Late War). Most pseudo-biblical writing appeared in local newspapers (like Obadiah Dogberry's [Abner Cole's] "Book of Pukei"), so they aren't easily discovered in Google Books and other databases of 19th century writings. I know Carmack has looked at a few examples of pseudo-biblical writings (by Hunt and Snowden) but I don't think he has made anything like a systematic study. There are dozens if not hundreds of examples of pseudo-biblical writing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Thanks for the link, by the way. Looks interesting.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Nevo

[Glenn101]

5 hours ago, Nevo said:

I think it would be more correct to say that Paanchi and Pahoran resemble Egyptian names (if you squint a bit, as John says). The Book of Mormon doesn't, after all, say p3-ʿnh and p3-ḥr-3n. Even the Book of Mormon Onomasticon isn't completely sure that these are Egyptian names. Also, earlier MSS of the Book of Mormon have "Parhoran/Parhoron" and "Pahoron" instead of "Pahoran," so we can't even be certain of the transliterated English spelling. The suffix "horon" is found in the Bible so it's not impossible that a 19th-century person could have made up the name "Pahoron." That it bears a passing resemblance to a variety of Egyptian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic names may well just be coincidence.

The reason I selected those names was because a non-LDS Scholar had recognized them as Egyptian in their transliterations. (All of the variants have the same root.) Albright did not bend over backwards to find a reason not to identify them as Egyptian nor did he have to "squint a bit" in his identification. His reaction was one of surprise. Actually "Horon" in the Bible is a proper name. It is used as part of Beth-Horon meaning "House of Caves" and probably a tribe as one Sanballat is noted as a Horonite. It really gets tricky when one starts to rationalize how Joseph might have combined this suffix with that prefix to come up with a name as such an one is faced with the array of non-Biblical names found in the Book of Mormon. I have seen several attempts by people with computers (something I don't think Joseph had) to explain how Joseph did it using names from the Bible. Without a computer, I can just see Joseph laboriously poring over the Bible, getting a prefix from here and a suffix from there to put together his mismash of names, until he came to the less than laconic Lachoneus. ☺️

I really wonder what how non-LDS scholars would approach the Book of Mormon text if they did not know its origins. That is the conundrum that we are faced with, i.e. how much our biases play in the way we approach this subject. It seems to me that former LDS are more adamant, more rigid in their oppositioon to anything that would shed a favorable light on the Book of Mormon than are some LDS scholars. I remember a conversation I had with one former apologist who had a conversion experience via Richard Dawkins. He had built a complex apologetic website and loved to quote non-LDS scholars to make his points. Now he was throwing those scholars under the bus, or maybe just his interpretations of what they were saying. So, I asked him why anyone should trust his newfound skeptical reasoning, since it flew in the face of his former apologetic reasoning. His answer was that before he was starting at the present and working back to arrive at his former (now erroneous) conclusions. I pointed out to him that this was still what he was doing, and that is what Richard Dawkins and everyone else is doing because that is what we have to do. We are "here" and the past is "back there." But he was now adamant that none of his former arguments held water. Just one of many.

6 hours ago, Nevo said:

The credit belongs to Symmachus on the other board, not me (we are not the same person, I'm sorry to report).

And, if you will note, he uses a liberal does of sarcasm and ridicule to embelleish his points. He certainly found an appreciative audience. Sarcasm and ridicule are effective because they provide no point of entry for a rebuttal. It will find a receptive audience with those of a like mind. Replying in kind just leads to an escalation and usually devolves into persoanlities. I try to avoid it.

Glenn

[Nevo]

21 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

The reason I selected those names was because a non-LDS Scholar had recognized them as Egyptian in their transliterations. (All of the variants have the same root.) Albright did not bend over backwards to find a reason not to identify them as Egyptian nor did he have to "squint a bit" in his identification. His reaction was one of surprise.

 

I don't think I'm bending over backwards to avoid identifying the names as Egyptian. That identification may be correct. But there are good reasons to be cautious.

Let's consider another name from the Book of Mormon: Moroni.

D. Michael Quinn notes that "Moroni" is a fairly common Italian surname, "but few Italians lived in the United States during the early years of the nineteenth century." He also notes that Joseph Smith's 1832 history spelled the name "Maroni." "Maron," Quinn points out, was the name of a servant of the Egyptian god Osiris according to an 18th-century book on mythology and was also "one of the holy names for conjuration according to the 'Key of Solomon'."

He continues: "A book in Smith's hometown library listed 'Maronaea' as an ancient city of Thrace. In addition, an encyclopedia on sale near Smith's home also identified 'Maroni' as a river in Guinea." Further, "Oliver Goldsmith's 1774 History of the Earth explained that Moron was the name of a venomous salamander. . . . Alexander von Humboldt's study of the New World stated that some North American Indians used a similar name, 'Imoron,' to designate a being that poisons. . . . In 1828 a Boston publisher printed an English-Spanish dictionary which defined 'Moron' as 'sm. Hill, hillock,' a fair description of the hill where Joseph Smith unearthed the gold plates. By the 1820s there were also New Yorkers with the surname Moron, which derived from Arabic for 'to hide, bury.'"

Now for the punchline: "The discussion here demonstrates that exact or close parallels exist for Book of Mormon names in everything from contemporary American surnames, to reference books available in the Palmyra area during the 1820s, to previously published occult works, to ancient Near Eastern texts. Singling out one type of parallel as more important is interpretation, not proof. (Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, rev. and enl. ed. [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998], 155-156).

The Book of Mormon Onomasticon notes that Pahoran may be an Egyptian name, but it also lists possible derivations from Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. If we put Mike Quinn on the case, I expect he'd uncover numerous 19th-century variants of the name too.

(Years ago, I owned a copy of John Marco Allegro's treatise, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. If you ever want to see a clinical case of parallelomania, check out that book. Allegro was a professor of Comparative Semitic Philology and the book reads like a parody of the field. But he was apparently quite serious.)

[jkwilliams]

Nevo is right: caution is warranted, but that is not the same as bending over backwards in denial.

[Glenn101]

45 minutes ago, Nevo said:

I don't think I'm bending over backwards to avoid identifying the names as Egyptian. That identification may be correct. But there are good reasons to be cautious.

Let's consider another name from the Book of Mormon: Moroni.

D. Michael Quinn notes that "Moroni" is a fairly common Italian surname, "but few Italians lived in the United States during the early years of the nineteenth century." He also notes that Joseph Smith's 1832 history spelled the name "Maroni." "Maron," Quinn points out, was the name of a servant of the Egyptian god Osiris according to an 18th-century book on mythology and was also "one of the holy names for conjuration according to the 'Key of Solomon'."

He continues: "A book in Smith's hometown library listed 'Maronaea' as an ancient city of Thrace. In addition, an encyclopedia on sale near Smith's home also identified 'Maroni' as a river in Guinea." Further, "Oliver Goldsmith's 1774 History of the Earth explained that Moron was the name of a venomous salamander. . . . Alexander von Humboldt's study of the New World stated that some North American Indians used a similar name, 'Imoron,' to designate a being that poisons. . . . In 1828 a Boston publisher printed an English-Spanish dictionary which defined 'Moron' as 'sm. Hill, hillock,' a fair description of the hill where Joseph Smith unearthed the gold plates. By the 1820s there were also New Yorkers with the surname Moron, which derived from Arabic for 'to hide, bury.'"

Now for the punchline: "The discussion here demonstrates that exact or close parallels exist for Book of Mormon names in everything from contemporary American surnames, to reference books available in the Palmyra area during the 1820s, to previously published occult works, to ancient Near Eastern texts. Singling out one type of parallel as more important is interpretation, not proof. (Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, rev. and enl. ed. [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998], 155-156).

The Book of Mormon Onomasticon notes that Pahoran may be an Egyptian name, but it also lists possible derivations from Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. If we put Mike Quinn on the case, I expect he'd uncover numerous 19th-century variants of the name too.

(Years ago, I owned a copy of John Marco Allegro's treatise, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. If you ever want to see a clinical case of parallelomania, check out that book. Allegro was a professor of Comparative Semitic Philology and the book reads like a parody of the field. But he was apparently quite serious.)

I understand that line of reasoning. The part that you bolded implies that close parallels can be found for all of the Book of Mormon "names in everything from contemporary American surnames, to reference books available in the Palmyra area during the 1820s, to previously published occult works, to ancient Near Eastern texts."  Is this actually the case? Have the names Pacumeni, Paanchi, etc. been found in such texts? Are these names one would expect to find in nineteenth century documents between 1800 and 1830?

To test as best i could the premise that you bolded, I ran some Google nGrams on some of the book of Mormon names. Here are the results:

Teancum    - 1700 - 1860 is zero percent
Pacumeni   - 1700 - 1860 is zero percent
Pachus     - 1775 - 1782 is maximum 0.00000350%
Pachus     - 1808 - 1821 is maximum 0.0000006347%
Paanchi    - 1700 - 1860 is zero percent
Pathros    - 1700 - 1860 maximum is .0000156276%
Abinadi    - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Amlici     - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Antionum   - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Cezoram    - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Coriantum  - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Coriantumr - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Curelom    - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Cumom      - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Irreantum  - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Korihor    - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Lachoneus  - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Liahona    - 1700 - 1830 no valid ngrams
Rameumptom - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Riplah     - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Ripliancum - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Sherrizah  - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Teomner    - 1700 - 1830 no valid ngrams
Tubaloth   -  1700 - 1830 is zero percent
Zeezrom    - 1700 - 1830 is zero percent
 

I removed several from the list that would have been easy to make up such a Zenock (from Enoch), etc.

Now, if you will recall, my main point is that the names are something that one would not expect to find in a nineteenth century document. The etymologies are intriguing, but not necessary for this purpose. Now, if you wish to rebut this, maybe you can go back and make some changes to the names to find close enough ngram matches. However the process of perusing multiple books, extracting and modifying names would have required a lot of time and effort. It would have been a really convoluted and tortuous process, especially for a person with a prett limited vocabulary. Then he would have had to keep all of those names in his head, unless all of the witnesses were lying. Did Joseph continually mess up with his characters and names? That is one thing that the critics have not accused him of. Or was he consistent with his names and kept track of them as they appeared and reappeared?

Glenn

 

[champatsch]

16 hours ago, Nevo said:

Carmack has analyzed some pseudo-biblical texts but certainly not all of them. A poster on another board recently uncovered a satirical newspaper article from 1888 that uses the auxiliary "did" in past-tense contexts in ways similar to the Book of Mormon:

"I followed Carmack's strictures for the most part, omitting past tense of 'to be' and passive forms, neither of which can take a 'did' form. In Ye Ancient Chronicles of Gotham, there are roughly 67 past-tense narrative verbs along these lines, and of those I have detected 33 examples of affirmative past-tense syntax with 'did.' That is an astonishing 49%!" (http://mormon*****.***/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=896985#p896985)

Yet Carmack claims that this usage died out in the 1700s and therefore "Book of Mormon past-tense syntax could have been achieved only by following the use of largely inaccessible 16th-century writings" (emphasis mine). Well, that claim appears to be incorrect. Also, for what it's worth, my late Dutch stepfather used auxiliary "did" past-tense syntax all the time ("I did go to the store..."), influenced I am sure by the Book of Mormon (which he read every day).

Actually not really my claim, but the claim of several independent linguists many years ago.  The evidence I've looked at generally confirms the conclusions of preceding linguists, that there wasn't persistence of non-emphatic "did <infinitive>" adjacency in the language. More persistence in poetic texts driven by meter. The Book of Mormon is 24% "did <infinitive>" adjacency, not counting the lexical phrase ICTP.  And of course there are a host of other nonbiblical, archaic features in the text, many that are associated with the did syntax.

An 1888 pseudo-biblical text, 60 years after the Book of Mormon, isn't as relevant as those that precede the Book of Mormon in time; one cannot rule out Book of Mormon influence in later texts.  Also, this is quite a short piece.

B of M syntactic distribution and individual verb tendencies correlate fairly well with early modern tendencies — for example, low rates of “did die” and high rates of “did minister”.

The B of M also has the following periphrastic did (and do) features:

• rare “thou didst . . . and did” variation (Alma 39:3; 1581, A05738; 1622, A11627; 1655, A90622)
• rare early modern negation: “did cease not” (Alma 49:10); “did care not” (Ether 13:22) ⇋ Foxe’s Book of Martyrs “did eate not” (1583, A67922); and probably “did hear not” (1655, A35992 [about 1639]).
• rare non-emphatic “did have” (e.g. Mosiah 19:29 ⇋ 1534, A00387; 1576, A09316; 1609 OED) (also “do have” Alma 9:23 ⇋ 1565, A00179; 1648, A27810; 1665, A44793)
• uncommon non-emphatic “did do” (e.g. Mosiah 11:13 ⇋ quite a few EEBO examples); also “do do” (Helaman 13:24) ⇋ 1631, A04633; 1655, A60921)
• did with four infinitives: “did trample . . .” (Helaman 6:39) ⇋ “dydst boldly neglecte . . .” (1557, A00616); “doth exercise . . .” (1611, A20802)

Isaac Barrow’s A Treatise of the Pope’s Supremacy (A31089), which was probably completed in 1677, near the time of his death, may be the last text before the B of M with more than 20 percent did–infinitive adjacency — a 152-year time gap.

So if anyone finds a prose text with 20+% "did <infinitive>" adjacency, between 1677 and 1829, that would be important to note.  I've recently found two late 1790s prose texts with about 5% "did <infinitive>" adjacency.  But the 12 pre–Book of Mormon pseudo-biblical texts I've looked at don't have anything close to those levels.  The texts I've looked at are all less than 0.5% "did <infinitive>" adjacency, and they have a modern syntactic distribution of did and the infinitive.

Edited August 11, 2018 by champatsch

[Exiled]

21 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Actually not really my claim, but the claim of several independent linguists many years ago.  The evidence I've looked at generally confirms the conclusions of preceding linguists, that there wasn't persistence of non-emphatic "did <infinitive>" adjacency in the language. More persistence in poetic texts driven by meter. The Book of Mormon is 24% "did <infinitive>" adjacency, not counting the lexical phrase ICTP.  And of course there are a host of other nonbiblical, archaic features in the text, many that are associated with the did syntax.

An 1888 pseudo-biblical text, 60 years after the Book of Mormon, isn't as relevant as those that precede the Book of Mormon in time; one cannot rule out Book of Mormon influence in later texts.  Also, this is quite a short piece.

B of M syntactic distribution and individual verb tendencies correlate fairly well with early modern tendencies — for example, low rates of “did die” and high rates of “did minister”.

The B of M also has the following periphrastic did (and do) features:

• rare “thou didst . . . and did” variation (Alma 39:3; 1581, A05738; 1622, A11627; 1655, A90622)
• rare early modern negation: “did cease not” (Alma 49:10); “did care not” (Ether 13:22) ⇋ Foxe’s Book of Martyrs “did eate not” (1583, A67922); and probably “did hear not” (1655, A35992 [about 1639]).
• rare non-emphatic “did have” (e.g. Mosiah 19:29 ⇋ 1534, A00387; 1576, A09316; 1609 OED) (also “do have” Alma 9:23 ⇋ 1565, A00179; 1648, A27810; 1665, A44793)
• uncommon non-emphatic “did do” (e.g. Mosiah 11:13 ⇋ quite a few EEBO examples); also “do do” (Helaman 13:24) ⇋ 1631, A04633; 1655, A60921)
• did with four infinitives: “did trample . . .” (Helaman 6:39) ⇋ “dydst boldly neglecte . . .” (1557, A00616); “doth exercise . . .” (1611, A20802)

Isaac Barrow’s A Treatise of the Pope’s Supremacy (A31089), which was probably completed in 1677, near the time of his death, may be the last text before the B of M with more than 20 percent did–infinitive adjacency — a 152-year time gap.

So if anyone finds a prose text with 20+% "did <infinitive>" adjacency, between 1677 and 1829, that would be important to note.  I've recently found two late 1790s prose texts with about 5% "did <infinitive>" adjacency.  But the 12 pre–Book of Mormon pseudo-biblical texts I've looked at don't have anything close to those levels.  The texts I've looked at are all less than 0.5% "did <infinitive>" adjacency, and they have a modern syntactic distribution of did and the infinitive.

Given your finding EmodE in the book of mormon text, it is your theory that what Joseph Smith received was already a finished product? Or was it something like what Shakespeare wrote and then he simply changed it to his appalachian form of english? Or is it something else?

[mfbukowski]

On 8/9/2018 at 2:09 PM, JulieM said:

Or dreamed it and believed it was real (which means he told the truth when he talked about it.) 

I think that’s why people can believe both (Joseph was truthful but the BofM is fictional) along with believing that Joseph just got a few things wrong (but was still being truthful).

What’s weird is that I just had this conversation with my Dad last Sunday when he came over for dinner.  I had no idea he no longer believed the BofM was actual true history!  He’s a past Bishop and a High Counselman now.  But we started talking about a story about Nephi and it led to him sharing what he believes.

He still believes Joseph was a Prophet and restored the true gospel.  Just that he got some things wrong, was human and made mistakes like all Prophets have done.  I know my Dad definitely does not believe Joseph was a fraud.

What?  You are my daughter?

Dang I don't remember THAT conversation at all.

I must be losing my marbles!  But why did you choose the name "Julie"?  Did you know I like that name?  It was my great grandmother's!

 

 

Yes- I am trying to be funny 

I agree with your dad! 

 

[champatsch]

I have read here and there in this thread that the archaic linguistic issues of the Book of Mormon are sufficiently known and understood.  I doubt that's the case for almost everyone. I find myself forgetting things I've studied carefully, since it's a vast field of inquiry.  This is what I think is required to sufficiently understand the issues: 

Careful study of the following:

• the 2009 Yale edition of the Book of Mormon — the language of the 1829 dictation
• the 1611 King James Bible and earlier 16th-century Bibles
• the 16th- and 17th-century textual record using the EEBO database
• the 18th-century textual record using the ECCO and Evans databases
• one dozen pseudo-biblical texts
• the Google Books database and the Ngram Viewer (with awareness of limitations)
• Joseph Smith’s 1832 personal history and personal letters
• linguistic analyses of relevant (morpho)syntax

Edited August 11, 2018 by champatsch