The State of Mormon Apologetics

[jkwilliams]

Just now, JarMan said:

I understand that. That's the partial match to masonry I was talking about. My theory about secret combinations is that the 17th Century writer combined ideas from Rosicrucianism and historic events, some from Roman history involving conspiracies to overthrow the government, to develop the idea of secret combinations we see in the Book of Mormon. Additionally, the link to Gadianton Robbers, which I also think has a direct link to ancient Roman sources shows that a 17th Century model (using ancient sources) is a far better match for the secret combinations in the Book of Mormon than masonry in the 1820's.

The whole point of the anti-Freemason scare was the same impetus behind the fear of "globalists" and "the deep state" today: the notion that there's some nefarious group conspiring behind the scenes to take over the world. It's always mixed religion and politics. My point was simply that you can't divorce secret combinations in the Book of Mormon from the Satanic oaths they use, handed down from the beginning. Whether it's the Freemasons or Rosicrucians, the idea seems to have become widely believed sometime around the Reformation.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

With regards to tight control, of course that just talks about Joseph's role and note where the particular phraseology and presuppositions originated. If this was something more akin to the Koran purportedly dictated by God I think you'd have a point. But the text is primarily narrative with sections of Biblically inspired sermons and self-identified as written by very flawed people. Even a very accurate translation in the modern sense we are used to would transmit those aspects of the underlying text.

If under tight control there's expansions or explanations by way of 19th century social or theological notions, I'm not sure that's attributable to God. Except in the sense he'd always have some sort of veto power rarely exercised. So I'm not sure I can agree with Stanford there.

So if racism shows up it seems we have two possibilities in this model as I'm understanding it from what champatsch is saying.  

1. It was part of the ancient narrative and inscribed on the plates, OR

2. God inserted it and transmitted the specific wording to Joseph.  

What this model rules out, is the possibility that Joseph was the source of the racist content.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.  

[Kenngo1969]

This whole thread simply goes to prove my theory: The only thing more preposterous than the actual story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is ... all of the other proffered explanations for its existence!   

 

[JarMan]

19 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

The whole point of the anti-Freemason scare was the same impetus behind the fear of "globalists" and "the deep state" today: the notion that there's some nefarious group conspiring behind the scenes to take over the world. It's always mixed religion and politics. My point was simply that you can't divorce secret combinations in the Book of Mormon from the Satanic oaths they use, handed down from the beginning. Whether it's the Freemasons or Rosicrucians, the idea seems to have become widely believed sometime around the Reformation.

Agreed.

Secret combinations in the Book of Mormon are also sometimes nation-states that operate militarily against other nation-states. This is consistent with the 17th Century usage of the term.

[jkwilliams]

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My translation theory assumes that the translation utilized words and phrases that were popular in both the EModE period and the 19th century to convey the ancient content of the Book of Mormon.

That was Mark Twain's theory, as well. 

[Glenn101]

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Champatsch was distinguishing between content (Ideas and concepts) and language & grammar (EmodE).  I'm talking about content, and with respect to content, we have a lot of ideas that last for many generations, especially in religion.  We frequently talk about 19th century ideas in the 21st century in Mormonism.  Its to be expected that 16th and 17th century theology would still exist in the 19th century.  The opposite is not true, we would not expect to see uniquely 19th century theology to be found in a 16th century book.  That's the question I'm asking is how do people explain that, using their dynamic translation model.

Firstly, I do not think that there is a consensus that the Book of Mormon is a 16th century text. The LDS position is that it is an ancient Hebrew text written in some form of Egyptian. There no one secular explanation that accounts for all of the different types of things that appear in the Book of Mormon. A totally nineteenth century viewpoint does not account for the Early Modern English, many of the Book of Mormon names, some of the theology, etc.

Glenn

[hope_for_things]

6 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Firstly, I do not think that there is a consensus that the Book of Mormon is a 16th century text. The LDS position is that it is an ancient Hebrew text written in some form of Egyptian. There no one secular explanation that accounts for all of the different types of things that appear in the Book of Mormon. A totally nineteenth century viewpoint does not account for the Early Modern English, many of the Book of Mormon names, some of the theology, etc.

Glenn

I'm aware of other Mormon apologists and scholars who don't subscribe to the whole EmodE theory.  There are those who don't believe in historicity, and others who subscribe to various different degrees of expansion type models.  Lots of different ideas out there.  

From my perspective the 19th century viewpoint is the best explanation, and the evidence marshaled to the contrary hasn't been very convincing.  

Edited August 14, 2018 by hope_for_things

[Ryan Dahle]

8 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

4 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My translation theory assumes that the translation utilized words and phrases that were popular in both the EModE period and the 19th century to convey the ancient content of the Book of Mormon.

That was Mark Twain's theory, as well. 

The devil's in the details. 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I'm aware of other Mormon apologists and scholars who don't subscribe to the whole EmodE theory.  There are those who don't believe in historicity, and others who subscribe to various different degrees of expansion type models.  Lots of different ideas out there.  

From my perspective the 19th century viewpoint is the best explanation, and the evidence marshaled to the contrary hasn't been very convincing.  

Agreed. I go back to my analogy of the dots. Imagine someone comes to you with a 3-panel strip of Bloom County. 

"It's a newly discovered Gauguin," they say. 

"Looks like a Bloom County to me," you reply.

Then they get out a magnifying glass and say, "Look at the patterns of dots!"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"There are hundreds of dot patterns in this piece of art that match up exactly with dot patterns in Gauguin's "Arearea."

"That may be, but it still is obviously a Bloom County."

"Then how do you account for the dots? Unless you come up with a specific theory of how and why those dots match, you have to admit it's a Gauguin."

"Well, no, I don't."

[jkwilliams]

5 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The devil's in the details. 

Not really. Your theory is just a convenient way to account for linguistic and conceptual anachronisms. Twain's was just an observation by someone who knew how to write.

[Ryan Dahle]

49 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

55 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The devil's in the details. 

Not really. Your theory is just a convenient way to account for linguistic and conceptual anachronisms. Twain's was just an observation by someone who knew how to write.

Ironically, Twain's literary critique of the Book of Mormon actually provides good evidence that it was out of place as a 19th century production. The dull redundancies that were so boring and anachronistic in 19th century prose and which were repugnant to Twain's American literary tastes are perfectly at home if the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be--an ancient text written by prophets who sought to preserve the religious/literary traditions of their Hebrew ancestors.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/bookchapters/Poetic_Parallelisms_in_the_Book_of_Mormon_The_Complete_Text_/Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon.pdf

 

 

Edited August 14, 2018 by Ryan Dahle

[jkwilliams]

22 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Ironically, Twain's literary critique of the Book of Mormon actually provides good evidence that it was out of place as a 19th century production. The dull redundancies that were so boring and anachronistic in 19th century prose and which were repugnant to Twain's American literary tastes are perfectly at home if the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be--an ancient text written by prophets who sought to preserve the religious/literary traditions of their Hebrew ancestors.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/bookchapters/Poetic_Parallelisms_in_the_Book_of_Mormon_The_Complete_Text_/Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon.pdf

I guess I never thought it was anachronistic to be dull and repetitive. My whole career is an anachronism!

Edited August 14, 2018 by jkwilliams

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

"And, behold, I will put cords upon you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to another, till you have ended the days of your siege"

That's Ezekiel 4, not 3.

And the issue is "cords" PLUS "secret combinations"

The goal was finding quotes that could be a masonic not quotes that could not be Masonic.

The latter includes practically every passage.

The goal was finding a passage that could NOT be from before 1650, or in other words that had to be AFTER 1650.

 

[Ryan Dahle]

3 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I guess I never thought it was anachronistic to be dull and repetitive. 

Well, it is when those seemingly dull repetitions happen to consistently take the form of various Hebrew parallelisms, some of them quite sophisticated. Unless, of course, you can demonstrate that other texts (other than the Bible or translations of ancient texts) produced in the 19th century had anything close to the quantity, diversity, and sophistication of the Book of Mormon's Hebraisms. In this regard, the BofM is WAY out of place as a 19th century production.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Ryan Dahle said:

Well, it is when those seemingly dull repetitions happen to consistently take the form of various Hebrew parallelisms, some of them quite sophisticated. Unless, of course, you can demonstrate that other texts (other than the Bible or translations of ancient texts) produced in the 19th century had anything close to the quantity, diversity, and sophistication of the Book of Mormon's Hebraisms. In this regard, the BofM is WAY out of place as a 19th century production.

The issue for me is whether someone consciously imitating word usage and patterns from the Bible might just use such "parallelisms" and other structures. In short, what you call "Hebraisms" may simply reflect patterns borrowed from the KJV (and indeed, Parry's book depends on the KJV to show where these patterns occur). 

I've come to believe that the Book of Mormon is not as simplistic as, say Twain or Campbell believed, but it's also not as "sophisticated" as a lot of apologists seem to believe. 

[Ryan Dahle]

Just now, jkwilliams said:

The issue for me is whether someone consciously imitating word usage and patterns from the Bible might just use such "parallelisms" and other structures. In short, what you call "Hebraisms" may simply reflect patterns borrowed from the KJV (and indeed, Parry's book depends on the KJV to show where these patterns occur). 

If this type of conscious imitation was achieved by someone fairly unlearned like Joseph Smith, who according to witnesses orally dictated the text at a rapid pace without reference materials or revisions, then surely you should be able to find something comparable in other 19th century works. What 19th century text, or set of texts with a similar word count, do you think compares to the BofM in quantity, diversity, and sophistication of Hebraisms?

[hope_for_things]

15 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Well, it is when those seemingly dull repetitions happen to consistently take the form of various Hebrew parallelisms, some of them quite sophisticated. Unless, of course, you can demonstrate that other texts (other than the Bible or translations of ancient texts) produced in the 19th century had anything close to the quantity, diversity, and sophistication of the Book of Mormon's Hebraisms. In this regard, the BofM is WAY out of place as a 19th century production.

Jkwilliams, apparently you have something in common with the Hebrews (boring writing style).  Is your patriarchal lineage through the tribe of Judah by chance?   

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Ryan Dahle said:

If this type of conscious imitation was achieved by someone fairly unlearned like Joseph Smith, who according to witnesses orally dictated the text at a rapid pace without reference materials or revisions, then surely you should be able to find something comparable in other 19th century works. What 19th century text, or set of texts with a similar word count, do you think compares to the BofM in quantity, diversity, and sophistication of Hebraisms?

There are a lot of assumptions packed into that first sentence, each of which is fairly problematic, IMO. Your question depends on my accepting each of your assumptions, which I do not.

[jkwilliams]

6 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Jkwilliams, apparently you have something in common with the Hebrews (boring writing style).  Is your patriarchal lineage through the tribe of Judah by chance?   

I'm all Ephraim, all the way. Still boring, alas.

Edited August 14, 2018 by jkwilliams

[champatsch]

30 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I've come to believe that the Book of Mormon is not as simplistic as, say Twain or Campbell believed, but it's also not as "sophisticated" as a lot of apologists seem to believe.

Twain's 145-year-old witticisms are not reliable vis-a-vis the question of linguistic sophistication, so it's good to ignore what he has to say, except to use him as a foil.

If your view is a studied one — based on serious study of the earliest text, ATV, GV, the KJB, pseudo-biblical texts, the textual record — then it would be worth reading your research on the issue of linguistic sophistication.

I've encountered a lot of high level language in the text.  I see it in top writers of the past.  I see a lot of learned legal language of the past.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Twain's 145-year-old witticisms are not reliable vis-a-vis the question of linguistic sophistication, so it's good to ignore what he has to say, except to use him as a foil.

If your view is a studied one — based on serious study of the earliest text, ATV, GV, the KJB, pseudo-biblical texts, the textual record — then it would be worth reading your research on the issue of linguistic sophistication.

I've encountered a lot of high level language in the text.  I see it in top writers of the past.  I see a lot of learned legal language of the past.

And that is a rather subjective view, isn't it? I'm quite happy to admit my view is also subjective, based on 30-something years of reading and study. 

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

I'm aware of other Mormon apologists and scholars who don't subscribe to the whole EmodE theory.  There are those who don't believe in historicity, and others who subscribe to various different degrees of expansion type models.  Lots of different ideas out there.  

From my perspective the 19th century viewpoint is the best explanation, and the evidence marshaled to the contrary hasn't been very convincing.  

The EmodE is not a theory.

Glenn

[Ryan Dahle]

27 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

There are a lot of assumptions packed into that first sentence, each of which is fairly problematic, IMO. Your question depends on my accepting each of your assumptions, which I do not.

Ok, well lets just stick to the text itself then. What 19th century text (or group of texts of similar length to the BofM) do you think is comparable to the Book of Mormon when it comes to Hebraic content?

 

 

[hope_for_things]

6 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

The EmodE is not a theory.

Glenn

What is it then?  

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Ok, well lets just stick to the text itself then. What 19th century text (or group of texts of similar length to the BofM) do you think is comparable to the Book of Mormon when it comes to Hebraic content?

Depends on what you mean by "Hebraic content." How do you determine what is legitimately "Hebraic" and what is possible imitation of Biblical patterns?