The State of Mormon Apologetics

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

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

Sorry - misunderstood. I'd not been on for a while. My bad. Should have spent the time reading all the comments prior to having last read before posting.

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

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.

Also in 19th century works.

3 hours 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.

Also The Protocols of Zion. And more relevant, anti-papist conspiracies which also often involved oaths and accusations of satanic stuff. And one could easily read the "Church of the Devil" bit in Nephi's vision as anti-papistry. What's funny is finding Masonic magazines warning of papist conspiracies and plots. 

Edited August 14, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Ryan Dahle]

13 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

17 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. 

Well, his linguistic training obviously gives his linguistic opinion substance. Your 30-something years of reading and study probably don't really matter much when it comes to technical linguistic analysis. Telling an expert linguist "that's just your subjective opinion" when it relates to a matter that the linguist specializes in seems like a rather convenient way to brush aside data that doesn't fit your theory. 

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Well, his linguistic training obviously gives his linguistic opinion substance. Your 30-something years of reading and study probably don't really matter much when it comes to technical linguistic analysis. Telling an expert linguist "that's just your subjective opinion" when it relates to a matter that the linguist specializes in seems like a rather convenient way to brush aside data that doesn't fit your theory. 

Obviously I'm no expert in linguistics. I've said my piece about why I find his approach problematic, and I don't think I need to be an expert to see the problems. If that's arrogant or convenient, I can live with that.

[Ryan Dahle]

16 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

19 minutes 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?

Let's just concentrate on the actual content first and bracket the question of intentionality. A chiasm is still a chiasm even if you can't prove one way or another if it was intentional or accidental. The great number of good proposals of a type of Hebraism you find concentrated in a single text, the more likely it is that they are mostly intentional. Same thing with Hebrew wordplays or any other Hebrew feature. 

How about you just name a 19th century text that you think has as many good and diverse proposals for Hebrew content as the Book of Mormon. 

Edited August 14, 2018 by Ryan Dahle

[Glenn101]

19 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

What is it then?  

Stanford Carmack has evidentially (not evidently) established it as a fact.

[Stargazer]

On 8/9/2018 at 5:41 PM, stemelbow said:

Quote

If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

– Brigham Young, Salt Lake City, March 8, 1863.

I'd heard this before.

I'd like to know where Br. Brigham found this law -- it doesn't seem to be in the scriptures.  I suspect that either he didn't know who the seed of Cain is, or misidentified them.  Brigham has been problematic many times; he won't have been the first prophet to get some things bass ackward.  

Doesn't make him less of a prophet, IMHO.

[jkwilliams]

15 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's just concentrate on the actual content first and bracket the question of intentionality. A chiasm is still a chiasm even if you can't prove one way or another if it was intentional or accidental. The great number of good proposals of a Hebraism you find concentrated in a single text, the more likely it is that they are mostly intentional. Same thing with Hebrew wordplays or any other Hebrew feature. 

How about you just name a 19th century text that you think has as many good diverse proposals for Hebrew content as the Book of Mormon. 

I didn't say anything about intentionality. Just saying. 

Let's leave aside the wordplay stuff, which we've already talked about, and focus on chiasmus. 

Is chiasmus a Hebraism, or does it appear elsewhere in other contexts? How exactly does one identify a uniquely Hebraic chiasm? 

ETA: it would be interesting to see if any 19th-century text has any "proposals for Hebrew content." I very much doubt that because there is no reason anyone would propose such Hebraisms in a 19th-century document, unless that document claimed to be translated from something approximating ancient Hebrew. I can't think of any such text off the top of my head. Can you?

Edited August 14, 2018 by jkwilliams

[jkwilliams]

5 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Stanford Carmack has evidentially (not evidently) established it as a fact.

What exactly is the fact that's been established? 

[champatsch]

53 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

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. 

Twain's being a literary genius did not make him a philologist.  And his naive criticisms revealed that he wasn't. No one knows what was acceptable in earlier English without special study. Present-day judgments are off the mark. Study of the King James Bible is insufficient, and study of Shakespeare is also insufficient. Wide study of many texts and the research of experts is necessary.  Even that, however, misses a lot.  Modern-day corpora are a recent invention and are crucial to understanding the patterns of earlier English.

[champatsch]

I think it should be clear to all the different approaches that are taken with respect to the Book of Mormon and its English language.  One is that no systematic, careful study is required.  Hard linguistic evidence isn't that important. In fact, it's worthy of casual dismissal unless it feeds a favored ideology.  The other is that systematic, careful study is worthwhile and has a lot to tell us about authorship.  This is uncontroversial descriptive linguistic work, after all.  When one notes that the Book of Mormon has 8 of an archaism, and the King James Bible has 5, and that pseudo-biblical texts have none, then it is a mere description of an identifiable linguistic reality.

[MosiahFree]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

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.

Who are some of those writers of the past?

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

What is it then?  

Stanford Carmack has evidentially (not evidently) established it as a fact.

 

 

3 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Firstly, I do not think that there is a consensus that the Book of Mormon is a 16th century text.

I have to admit, I'm a little confused by your comments, first its not a consensus, and now its a fact?  I agree with your first comment, its definitely not a consensus.  

 

[Guest]

On August 8, 2018 at 4:28 PM, lostindc said:

Years ago, when I joined this site, the field of Mormon apologetics was active.  I remember active engagement from Mormon academics from various backgrounds, consistent publications, debate, amongst other activities.  Nowadays, Mormon apologetics seems close to non-existent relative to ten years ago.  What changed?  Where are the apologists?  

 

P.S. It's been years since I've posted here, I hope everyone is doing well.

No, not closed to academics,  some still around, and many very capable contributors. Just stick around, things are just fine, I hope you will find it so.  

[JarMan]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

What does this have to do with flaxen cords?

There have been secret societies throughout history.

One could simply hold that that verse was a 19th century intrusion into a 16th century text, but you were dogmatic that there were NO such intrusions. Clearly there are.

So as not to link to anti Mormon or Masonic sites:

https://www.amazon.com/Koch-5560415-48-Feet-Braided-Mason/dp/B004Y75N7K

But this IS an exception I think to your point quoted here, flaxen cords in masonry can't be dated prior to 1650.

"Actually I don't know of anything in the Book of Mormon that can't be dated to before about 1650 (with the exception of the first sentence of 2 Nephi 3:15 which I theorize was added by Joseph or Oliver). I've issued this challenge and I will again here: I'd like someone to find me something in the Book of Mormon that can't be dated prior to about 1650."

 

I'm not familiar with the flaxen cord issue that you are talking about? Could you provide a brief summary or point me to some sources?

[Ryan Dahle]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I didn't say anything about intentionality. Just saying. 

Let's leave aside the wordplay stuff, which we've already talked about, and focus on chiasmus. 

Is chiasmus a Hebraism, or does it appear elsewhere in other contexts? How exactly does one identify a uniquely Hebraic chiasm? 

ETA: it would be interesting to see if any 19th-century text has any "proposals for Hebrew content." I very much doubt that because there is no reason anyone would propose such Hebraisms in a 19th-century document, unless that document claimed to be translated from something approximating ancient Hebrew. I can't think of any such text off the top of my head. Can you?

Our discussion of wordplay ended with you saying that the narrative connection between Jershon and a land of inheritance wasn't unique, and me demonstrating that it was. So, the issue was hardly resolved. You didn't comment much on any of the other proposals or give any arguments as to how they were inferior to commonly accepted proposals for biblical wordplays. 

As for chiasmus, it is only one example of an array of poetic parallels proposed in the text. Many of them clearly match up nicely with well established parallelisms used in the Bible and in other ANE writings. Yet I have never seen any 19th century texts that have had the same diversity and quantity of these types of features. I assume if they were common in 19th century literature that students would probably learn about these things in high school English classes, along with sonnets, blank verse, limericks, etc. I have never found the definitions or descriptions for most of the types of Hebrew parallelisms found in the Book of Mormon in English literature glossaries. Chiasmus is usually the only one that shows up. Yet these diverse poetic forms have been identified and described in scholarship discussing biblical and ANE literature.

In other words, there is already a scholarly literature discussing all of the BofM parallelisms for one milieu and hardly any of them are discussed in the other. That gives us a pretty good starting point as to what context they mostly likely fit better in as a collective data set. 

 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Ryan Dahle

[mfbukowski]

19 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I'm not familiar with the flaxen cord issue that you are talking about? Could you provide a brief summary or point me to some sources?

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1312&context=jbms

[JarMan]

3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1312&context=jbms

This article answers the issue quite nicely. The flaxen cord seems to be an allusion to the story of Sampson. Biblical references are certainly not out of place pre-1650.

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

 

 

I have to admit, I'm a little confused by your comments, first its not a consensus, and now its a fact?  I agree with your first comment, its definitely not a consensus.  

 

If you will read my comments again you will note that I am talking about two different things. (1) Stanford Carmack (and Rotal Shousen) have established that there is extensive Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. (2) Although the presence of Early Modern English has been established there is not a consensus that the Book of Mormon is a 16th century text. There are all kinds of theories being floated around as to how it got there, such as an earlier translation by someone in the 16th century. Jarman thinks that Hugo Grotius authored the Book of Mormon as inspired fiction with an English translator. (Maybe you could engage him in a dialog as to the unique nineteenth century elements you find in the Book of Mormon. That would be interesting.) You may not be impressed with that Early Modern English, but I believe that you would not find many linguists that would affirm to you that a text having the level of Early Modern English that has been found in the Book of Mormon would be found in a nineteenth century text.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

3 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

What exactly is the fact that's been established? 

That there is extensive Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon.  Is that something that you disagree with?

Glenn

[hope_for_things]

 

7 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

If you will read my comments again you will note that I am talking about two different things. (1) Stanford Carmack (and Rotal Shousen) have established that there is extensive Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. (2) Although the presence of Early Modern English has been established there is not a consensus that the Book of Mormon is a 16th century text. There are all kinds of theories being floated around as to how it got there, such as an earlier translation by someone in the 16th century. Jarman thinks that Hugo Grotius authored the Book of Mormon as inspired fiction with an English translator. (Maybe you could engage him in a dialog as to the unique nineteenth century elements you find in the Book of Mormon. That would be interesting.) You may not be impressed with that Early Modern English, but I believe that you would not find many linguists that would affirm to you that a text having the level of Early Modern English that has been found in the Book of Mormon would be found in a nineteenth century text.

Glenn

Or the simplest explanation for me is that Joseph was the source through either attemping to speak in a way that sounded similar to KJV language or because of the dialects found in his area or a combination of the two.  

Edited August 15, 2018 by hope_for_things

[Glenn101]

39 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

 

Or the simplest explanation for me is that Joseph was the source through either attemping to speak in a way that sounded similar to KJV language or because of the dialects found in his area or a combination of the two.  

So you do not believe Stanford Carmack when he says that a person would have to be facile in Early Modern English, to speak it as a second nature, for such level of Early Modern English to show up his spoken or written vocabulary? You really think that is is probable that a person could try to imitate Biblical sounding language and wind up producing not just occasional, but extensive Early Modern English? If you do, please provide us some references where it has been done before. If Joseph had been exposed to Early Modern English so that it was ingrained in him to the point that it showed up so prominently in the Book of Mormon, it would aslo show up in his personal writings and dictations. Is there evidence of this? Or do you believe that he was such an accomplished writer and orator that he could turn it on and off at will? If so, is ther any evidence of this?

Glenn

[hope_for_things]

5 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

So you do not believe Stanford Carmack when he says that a person would have to be facile in Early Modern English, to speak it as a second nature, for such level of Early Modern English to show up his spoken or written vocabulary? You really think that is is probable that a person could try to imitate Biblical sounding language and wind up producing not just occasional, but extensive Early Modern English? If you do, please provide us some references where it has been done before. If Joseph had been exposed to Early Modern English so that it was ingrained in him to the point that it showed up so prominently in the Book of Mormon, it would aslo show up in his personal writings and dictations. Is there evidence of this? Or do you believe that he was such an accomplished writer and orator that he could turn it on and off at will? If so, is ther any evidence of this?

Glenn

Well, ignoring the strawman exaggerations a couple thoughts.  There are some other early works of Joseph’s that contain some EModE, this was brought up in the other thread I linked to earlier, early revelations and the Plat of Zion were mentioned.  

I don’t think all the works of Joseph have been thoroughly researched to look for EModE, I have no idea how many have been scrutinized so I can’t comment further on other possible sources.  

As to whether Joseph could have produced these elements either intentionally or unintentionally, the fact remains that he did produce the material, he dictated the BoM, and the words came from his mouth.  As far as I’m concerned the extremely large burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of anyone claiming a supernatural explanation for something very natural, dictating text.  

[jkwilliams]

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Our discussion of wordplay ended with you saying that the narrative connection between Jershon and a land of inheritance wasn't unique, and me demonstrating that it was. So, the issue was hardly resolved. You didn't comment much on any of the other proposals or give any arguments as to how they were inferior to commonly accepted proposals for biblical wordplays. 

As for chiasmus, it is only one example of an array of poetic parallels proposed in the text. Many of them clearly match up nicely with well established parallelisms used in the Bible and in other ANE writings. Yet I have never seen any 19th century texts that have had the same diversity and quantity of these types of features. I assume if they were common in 19th century literature that students would probably learn about these things in high school English classes, along with sonnets, blank verse, limericks, etc. I have never found the definitions or descriptions for most of the types of Hebrew parallelisms found in the Book of Mormon in English literature glossaries. Chiasmus is usually the only one that shows up. Yet these diverse poetic forms have been identified and described in scholarship discussing biblical and ANE literature.

In other words, there is already a scholarly literature discussing all of the BofM parallelisms for one milieu and hardly any of them are discussed in the other. That gives us a pretty good starting point as to what context they mostly likely fit better in as a collective data set. 

 

Hmmm. I did not say Jershon was not unique. I simply noted the speculative nature of using English words and possible transliterations to make these wordplays work. Jershon is by far the strongest possible example, but it rests on some speculative methodology, IMO. 

As for Hebraisms, I can’t think of any text that has been scoured for Hebraisms like the Book of Mormon. Do you have something in mind? As Clark noted, there are lots of possible pseudo-biblical texts, and as far as I know, no one has looked for Hebraisms. I’ve asked you to explain how to distinguish a genuine Hebraism from a rhetorical device that is common to other language contexts. That would be a great starting point. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

This article answers the issue quite nicely. The flaxen cord seems to be an allusion to the story of Sampson. Biblical references are certainly not out of place pre-1650.

Oh gosh. Ok.

See it as you want to. That's what we all do anyway.

I suggest you study further. I have no dog in the fight whether it's 19th century or 16th century, Masonic, anti-Masonic, if Joseph stared into a flame or onto a stone or translated the wallpaper.

What I can do is look at the evidence and see it for what it is instead of worrying about whether or not it is God breathed.

Strongly suggest you read about Masonic rituals how Joseph was attempting to restore true masonry in the temple ordinances after they had apostasized. Look up Master Mahan as Master Mason.

Look up the similarities between the temple ordinances on Masonry. Figure out why it is that some argue that Mason's killed Joseph.

I really don't care. To me scripture comes from God as he inspires human beings with all their prejudices and feelings intact.

The purpose of scriptures that teaches about God not about history.

I have absolutely no problem with that but obviously many here do.

You have and these verses a major reference to Masonic ritual mixed with the words "secret combinations" in one verse at the time and place of a huge anti-masonic furor.  

Uh, I see it differently.

[USU78]

5 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I'd heard this before.

I'd like to know where Br. Brigham found this law -- it doesn't seem to be in the scriptures.  I suspect that either he didn't know who the seed of Cain is, or misidentified them.  Brigham has been problematic many times; he won't have been the first prophet to get some things bass ackward.  

Doesn't make him less of a prophet, IMHO.

You don't appear to be very conversant with the Old Testament. Or did you know what he was paraphrasing and for what rhetorical purpose?