The State of Mormon Apologetics

[jkwilliams]

Just now, USU78 said:

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?

Do tell. 

[USU78]

8 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Do tell. 

Numbers 25:6-15.

BY stated in that particular address that it is the law that there be capital punishment for mixed marriages with those outside the covenant.

But then he turns it all on its head by saying the Church should do no such thing as execute white male church members who sleep with black women.

Stem left that out, didn't he? Disingenuously.

Then there's this that he left out, disingenuously: in that day, we know what white men were sleeping with black women. Slave owners. If anybody was mixing seed it was those guys.

But of course stem didn't mention it, did he? To his shame.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Numbers 25:6-15.

BY stated in that particular address that it is the law that there be capital punishment for mixed marriages with those outside the covenant.

But then he turns it all on its head by saying the Church should do no such thing as execute white male church members who sleep with black women.

Stem left that out, didn't he? Disingenuously.

Then there's this that he left out, disingenuously: in that day, we know what white men were sleeping with black women. Slave owners. If anybody was mixing seed it was those guys.

But of course stem didn't mention it, did he? To his shame.

Do you have the full quote?

[USU78]

2 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Do you have the full quote?

Too lazy to run down stem's partial out of context quote. My recollection is that FAIR has it.  Maybe we can ask disingenuous stem to provide entire quote. Whaddya think?

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, USU78 said:

Too lazy to run down stem's partial out of context quote. My recollection is that FAIR has it.  Maybe we can ask disingenuous stem to provide entire quote. Whaddya think?

It’s possible he isn’t being disingenuous but simply isn’t aware of the full quote. I certainly have never read that BY made such a rhetorical u-turn. Hence my asking for the full quote. 

[USU78]

Just now, jkwilliams said:

It’s possible he isn’t being disingenuous but simply isn’t aware of the full quote. I certainly have never read that BY made such a rhetorical u-turn. Hence my asking for the full quote. 

JD 10:110

[Gray]

10 minutes ago, USU78 said:

JD 10:110 

http://jod.mrm.org/10/104

I don't see where Brigham Young makes the about turn as you claim. Is it possible you're engaging in a rather brazenly eisegetical reading in an attempt to force the text to be less offensive to modern sensibilities?

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Gray said:

http://jod.mrm.org/10/104

I don't see where Brigham Young makes the about turn as you claim. Is it possible you're engaging in a rather brazenly eisegetical reading in an attempt to force the text to be less offensive to modern sensibilities?

I’m not seeing it either. 

[Stargazer]

6 hours ago, USU78 said:

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?

Yeah, I'll admit that.  I'm sure I'm less conversant than I should be.  Never read it as assiduously as I read the other standard works.  Sounds like I'm about to learn something I hadn't known before.

[stemelbow]

9 hours ago, USU78 said:

Numbers 25:6-15.

BY stated in that particular address that it is the law that there be capital punishment for mixed marriages with those outside the covenant.

But then he turns it all on its head by saying the Church should do no such thing as execute white male church members who sleep with black women.

Where does he say that?  

9 hours ago, USU78 said:

Stem left that out, didn't he? Disingenuously.

Then there's this that he left out, disingenuously: in that day, we know what white men were sleeping with black women. Slave owners. If anybody was mixing seed it was those guys.

But of course stem didn't mention it, did he? To his shame.

My shame?  I asked a question that went unanswered.  But ok.  Fine.  Here's the rest of his quote.  Tell me where it says what you claim:

Quote

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? 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. The nations of the earth have transgressed every law that God has given, they have changed the ordinances and broken every covenant made with the fathers, and they are like a hungry man that dreameth that he eateth, and he awaketh and behold he is empty.

The following saying of the prophet is fulfilled: “Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion. But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they his counsel: for he shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor. Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion, &c.” God rules in the armies of Heaven and does his pleasure upon the earth, and no man can help it. Who can stay the hand of Jehovah, or turn aside the providences of the Almighty? I say to all men and all women, submit to God, to his ordinances and to His rule; serve Him, and cease your quarrelling, and stay the shedding of each other's blood.

If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.

I am neither an abolitionist nor a pro-slavery man. If I could have been influenced by private injury to choose one side in preference to the other, I should certainly be against the pro-slavery side of the question, for it was pro-slavery men that pointed the bayonet at me and my brethren in Missouri, and said, “Damn you we will kill you.” I have not much love for them, only in the Gospel. I would cause them to repent, if I could, and make them good men and a good community. I have no fellowship for their avarice, blindness, and ungodly actions. To be great, is to be good before the Heavens and before all good men. I will not fellowship the wicked in their sins, so help me God.

Joseph Smith, in forty-seven prosecutions was never proven guilty of one violation of the laws of his country. They accused him of treason, because he would not fellowship their wickedness. Suppose the land should be cleansed from its filthiness and the law of God should predominate, if a man or woman should be found who had corrupted themselves and thereby become diseased, that man or woman would be placed by themselves, as the lepers were anciently, never more to commune with the human family. Purify your flesh and blood, your spirits, your habitations, and your country, and then you will be pure before God. This change has got to be before this earth will be taken back into a celestial atmosphere.

Find fault with me because I have wives! They would corrupt every wife I have, if they had the power; and then they cry to the government, “You had better do something with the Mormons; they are deceitful and disloyal!!” I am disloyal to their sins and filthiness. Cleanse your hearts and the whole person, and make yourselves as pure as the angels, and then I will fellowship you.

I say to every man and woman in this community, suffer not your affections to wander after that which is unholy; do not lust after gold, nor the things of this world. Sanctify yourselves before your God and before one another, until you are pure outside and in and all around you, and see that you faithfully perform every duty.

Now, as we are accused of secession, my counsel to this congregation is to secede, what from? From the Constitution of the United States? No. From the institutions of our country? No. Well then, what from? From sin and the practice thereof. That is my counsel to this congregation and to the whole world.

May God bless everybody that wishes well to his kingdom on the earth. Amen.

 

[Glenn101]

11 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

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.  

Please explain strawman exaggeration. There are a couple of things that we can agree on. Well at least one. Stanford has looked at the 1832 First Vision account and did not find anything. Hopefully he will be able to do a comprehensive survey. While reading letters he personally wrote, none of the Early Modern English phrases used in the Book of Mormon are evident. The biggest problem is discerning what are the actual words of Joseph rather than words attributed to Joseph. It is interesting to note that so far the only known instances of Early Modern English produced by Joseph was when he claimed to be receiving revelation.

Glenn

[jkwilliams]

8 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Please explain strawman exaggeration. There are a couple of things that we can agree on. Well at least one. Stanford has looked at the 1832 First Vision account and did not find anything. Hopefully he will be able to do a comprehensive survey. While reading letters he personally wrote, none of the Early Modern English phrases used in the Book of Mormon are evident. The biggest problem is discerning what are the actual words of Joseph rather than words attributed to Joseph. It is interesting to note that so far the only known instances of Early Modern English produced by Joseph was when he claimed to be receiving revelation.

Glenn

As someone pointed out elsewhere, the problem is that, if you actually read something written in EModE it doesn't read like the Book of Mormon at all. Stan has shown that certain possible usage variants from EModE show up in the Book of Mormon, but does that add up to an author writing in EModE? I don't know. As I've said several times, I'm not dismissing or disputing Stan's findings at all, mostly just asking questions. There are matches between examples of variant usage in the Book of Mormon and the same variant showing up in EModE texts. My question from the beginning is what the significance is. If we have a variant that shows up in fewer than 10 EModE documents and a similarly small number in the Book of Mormon, is that statistically significant enough to make any conclusions? I don't know. And I am still unsure what I'm meant to conclude from all of this, anyway. 

[CA Steve]

14 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I) 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

Well wouldn't such a affirmation have been evident through peer review? What feedback did they get from the review?

[RevTestament]

12 hours ago, USU78 said:

Numbers 25:6-15.

BY stated in that particular address that it is the law that there be capital punishment for mixed marriages with those outside the covenant.

But then he turns it all on its head by saying the Church should do no such thing as execute white male church members who sleep with black women.

Stem left that out, didn't he? Disingenuously.

Then there's this that he left out, disingenuously: in that day, we know what white men were sleeping with black women. Slave owners. If anybody was mixing seed it was those guys.

But of course stem didn't mention it, did he? To his shame.

I don't think that Numbers 25 supports death for those who marry outside the covenant. I think what was happening there  is that some Midianites were worshiping Baal-peor  with the Moabites.  Midianites were not black either. They were descended from Midian, the son Abraham and Keturah. Moses' father-in-law Jethro was apparently a Midianite, and Moses married his daughter. The Israelites were experiencing a plague because some were turning to Baal-peor. The plague on Israel did not have to do with Zimri being with the Midianite woman, Cozbi. 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

I don't think that Numbers 25 supports death for those who marry outside the covenant. I think what was happening there  is that some Midianites were worshiping Baal-peor  with the Moabites.  Midianites were not black either. They were descended from Midian, the son Abraham and Keturah. Moses' father-in-law Jethro was apparently a Midianite, and Moses married his daughter. The Israelites were experiencing a plague because some were turning to Baal-peor. The plague on Israel did not have to do with Zimri being with the Midianite woman, Cozbi. 

That's how I read it, as well. Even if USU78 is right about it being a rhetorical device, I'm having a hard time seeing either that BY didn't mean what he said or that he made some kind of rhetorical u-turn. Perhaps USU78 can clarify what he means, as I'm not seeing it.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

As someone pointed out elsewhere, the problem is that, if you actually read something written in EModE it doesn't read like the Book of Mormon at all. Stan has shown that certain possible usage variants from EModE show up in the Book of Mormon, but does that add up to an author writing in EModE? I don't know. As I've said several times, I'm not dismissing or disputing Stan's findings at all, mostly just asking questions. There are matches between examples of variant usage in the Book of Mormon and the same variant showing up in EModE texts. My question from the beginning is what the significance is. If we have a variant that shows up in fewer than 10 EModE documents and a similarly small number in the Book of Mormon, is that statistically significant enough to make any conclusions? I don't know. And I am still unsure what I'm meant to conclude from all of this, anyway. 

The implications of the argument don’t necessarily point to a clearly positive apologetic.  It could mean that Joseph plagiarized a 16c work to produce the BoM.  I don’t think the supporters of this research want that to be conclusion.

For whatever reason I think apologists like the EmodE research because it deflects the argument that Joseph created the BoM text.  It’s a difficult position to defend so anything to help support the position is welcomed.  

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

As someone pointed out elsewhere, the problem is that, if you actually read something written in EModE it doesn't read like the Book of Mormon at all. Stan has shown that certain possible usage variants from EModE show up in the Book of Mormon, but does that add up to an author writing in EModE? I don't know. As I've said several times, I'm not dismissing or disputing Stan's findings at all, mostly just asking questions. There are matches between examples of variant usage in the Book of Mormon and the same variant showing up in EModE texts. My question from the beginning is what the significance is. If we have a variant that shows up in fewer than 10 EModE documents and a similarly small number in the Book of Mormon, is that statistically significant enough to make any conclusions? I don't know. And I am still unsure what I'm meant to conclude from all of this, anyway. 

As I recall I asked Stanford how much, as in what percentage, of the BoM was written in EmodE since it was said to be found so extensively in it.  I think he basically said he couldn't be sure, it was too hard to really figure that out.  I suppose that means it's not so definitive to read something and say "well that's EmodE" and read another something and say "well that's not EmodE", particularly since if EmodE it is spliced in randomly with 1-4 word phrases or something.  What would it mean if the majority of the Book was written in non EmodE and yet only some minor sounding phrases or words happen to fit well with EmodE?   Maybe nothing.  I don't know.  When I see the examples of EmodE I feel less impressed that it means anything.   

[RevTestament]

8 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

That's how I read it, as well. Even if USU78 is right about it being a rhetorical device, I'm having a hard time seeing either that BY didn't mean what he said or that he made some kind of rhetorical u-turn. Perhaps USU78 can clarify what he means, as I'm not seeing it.

I read BY with caution. To me he seems to misinterpret scripture on more than one occasion. Another example is his statement about Yeshua not being born of the Holy Ghost to the virgin Mary. He dismisses Luke's account, but seems to ignore the Book of Mormon as well which also says Yeshua was born of the virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost.

[clarkgoble]

19 hours ago, Stargazer said:

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.  

He appears to have in the 1840's read some southern racist apologetics for slavery based upon the Bible. This was popular in the 1830's through the civil war to try and stop the rising tide of abolitionists. It's all nonsense stuff but if you're ignorant of the context for the Bible - especially it's history - and just have the texts and are used to proof texting as theology then it can seem persuasive. That appears to be much of the basis for Brigham Young's change of views and adoption of racist theology. 

In this case the racist apologetic is using the Old Testament rule against marrying outside the covenant (Jewish one) against interracial marriage. Which is nonsense on the face of it, but probably what Brigham was referring to in JD 10:110. Brigham had picked up the southern slavers use of Canaan to purportedly refer to Africans rather than just an other Semitic group genetically pretty much identical with the Jews. A lot of this is creative reading of Genesis 9. Around the time of the Reformation a popular view was that Ham was cursed due to a sexual sin. (Some writers thought it incestual rape) There's no textual basis for this of course, but it was widely believed. Then in the southern United States the idea gets shifted into Ham mocking Noah. This interpretation does appear in Josephus giving it some justification in proponents' eyes - although in practice it's wrapped up with the honor culture in the south. So part of the justification is tied to honor and order. (You see some aspects of that in Brigham's thought) 

While most of his writings come up after Brigham has picked up the racist exegesis of Genesis 9, Benjamin Morgan Palmer is profoundly influential pushing these ideas in the 1850's and 1860's. You also have writings by Thorton Stringfellow, James Thornwell, and Augustus Longstreet all of whom wrote in this genre and were hugely influential in the pre-civil war era. It seems pretty likely that Brigham's ideas largely arise out of that genre combined with his tendency to still trust and privilege the Bible in determining theology except where Joseph had taught on things.  My guess is that Brigham, since he gave authority to the Bible, saw these apologetic arguments and assumed they must be true. He wasn't really educated and lacked the sophistication to make the obvious questions about presuppositions. (Like the identity of Canaan)

 

Edited August 15, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Ryan Dahle]

10 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

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. 

You had cast doubt on the uniqueness of the wordplay because the phrase "land of inheritance" is used many times in the text, thus supposedly rendering Jershon's relationship to this phrase less significant. I countered by noting that there are only three specific toponyms that are described as being a "land of inheritance" (including Jershon) and that Jershon's narrative details in this regard are certainly unique enough for a valid wordplay proposal. I wouldn't say it is "by far the strongest." There are other wordplays of comparable strength, and quite a few that are not far behind.

I don't see the methodology as being all that speculative. There are only a handful of words in any given language that a transliteration could plausibly represent. A good plausible wordplay only occurs when one of the best acceptable ancient words happens to have unique narrative significance surrounding the transliteration. It is the type of thing that could certainly happen by chance, but it is not the type of thing that would likely happen over and over again in a single text by chance. The Book of Mormon has a large enough amount of these proposals that a good argument can be made that they aren't collectively a coincidence. In order to make a fair judgment about the evidence, one would have to assess the data set as a whole. You sampled Jershon, and I think in every way it counts as a plausible wordplay, on par with many of the best biblical wordplays proposed by non-LDS scholars. 

11 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

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 have looked for Hebraisms in pseudo-biblical texts, but not systematically. Careful research definitely needs to be done. So far, I haven't found anything even close. I will try to prepare some samples for comparison.

Chris and Duane Johnson tried to claim that the Late war contained comparable Hebraisms to the Book of Mormon, but in some cases they misidentified them in the text  (for instance, 2 of the 4 examples they found of cognate accusative aren't valid). In most cases (negative questions, construct state, compound prepositions, and adverbials), they chose features that definitely show up in English as well as Hebrew, and the argument for the feature being genuine Hebraisms, in the first place, really has to do with usage rates rather than exclusive usage. These are the types of features that I expect a fairly competent pseudo-biblicist would be able to mimic to some extent anyways, so they aren't very conclusive. I will try to find some time to do some preliminary analysis on pseudo-biblical texts and share my results. 

11 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

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. 

There is some categorical ambiguity in this question. As I see it, a Hebraism is simply a feature that is typical of (and usually somewhat unique to) the Hebrew language or culture. A British-English speaker could use an Americanism just like an American-English speaker could use a Hebraism. Moreover, something can simultaneously be a Hebraism and an Egyptianism because these ancient languages/cultures shared many features that are rather foreign to modern English speakers. So in this case, a more clear question is how do we decide whether the proposed Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon are the product of ancient writers trained in the Hebrew literary tradition (as the text claims) or the product of a 19th author or group of authors who merely imitated ancient Hebrew forms.

The authorship/milieu of most texts isn't usually disputed, so this is a rather unusual situation. The Book of Mormon claims that it was written by prophets who used an ancient version of the Hebrew Bible (up to Jeremiah). So comparing the text's Hebraisms to biblical Hebraisms is a good starting point. We can look at the literary forms and grammatical tendencies identified and discussed in biblical scholarship, and see how well the Book of Mormon matches up. Obviously, the work of John Welch, Donald Parry, John Tvedtnes, Matthew Bowen, and many others has shown that it has done quite well. I don't think that is really very disputable. 

The next step is harder. We need to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon's good match with biblical forms is fairly unique or unusual for a 19th century text. As you have noted, this hasn't been sufficiently researched. Pseudo-biblical texts and religious texts seem to be the best place to look. These are the types of texts that most consciously tried to imitate the literature found in the Bible. 

Even if a feature, like chiasmus, was used in other literary contexts, its presence in the Bible was only beginning to be discovered. So far, it seems that the only discussion on biblical chiasms avaialble in American before 1830 was contained on about 4 pages from a massive critical study of the Bible, published in 1825. So nobody knew how pervasive this feature was in the Bible. Even if Joseph Smith had read Shakespeare or some other work of English literature containing chiasmus, the likelihood that he would have identified it is fairly low. Moreover, even if he found chiasmus in another English text, there would have been no logical reason he would have had to implement it in his dictation of the Book of Mormon, especially in such great frequency. We don't find sonnets or many other well-known features of English literature in the Book of Mormon. How would Joseph have known which literary forms were biblical and which weren't? 

One can always assume that Joseph discovered chiasmus on his own through analysis of the Bible itself, which honestly is a much better argument, but the problem with this line of reasoning is that most people just don't recognize the feature on their own. It took over 130 years for anyone to draw attention to its presence in the Book of Mormon. Neither Joseph Smith nor anyone around him mentioned anything about the text's parallelisms in general or chiasmus in particular. So, while possible, I think one has to admit that this is a very unlikely hypothesis.

So the starting assumption that the Book of Mormon is unique in its diversity and quantity of Hebraic content seems to be on solid ground. On the other hand, the assumption that other texts likely have the same degree of biblical Hebraisms isn't at all on solid ground. I suppose time and further study will tell which assumption is most likely correct. If the Book of Mormon performs way better in comparison to works of pseudob-biblical and religious literature, then the text's unique quantity and diversity of Hebraic content would significantly support its claim of having been written by ancient Hebrew-trained authors. 

On another front, I have found some evidence suggesting that one chiasm, in particular, was very likely produced by someone familiar with Hebrew. I plan to publish this research in the near future with another author, so I can't get into specifics. Suffice it to say that I discovered a previously unrecognized series of linked chiasms which relies on a transliterated toponym to finish out the chiastic structure. This term works as a bilingual wordplay, and perfectly supplies the missing link in the macro chiastic structure. Moreover, the elements of the third embedded chiasm significantly mirrors a chiastic structure found in the Psalms. The catch is that the English translation in the KJV completely masks the chiastic structure in the Psalms. The other notable feature is that the key terms, in the center of the chiasm, are very rare in the Hebrew bible. So its unlikely that the close relationship between these chiasms is pure chance, and yet virtually impossible to derive the relationship from an English version of the Bible. I'm not expecting you to take my word for it. The research should be published fairly soon for scrutiny. But these are the types of things that increase my confidence in the assumption that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be and that Joseph Smith wasn't responsible for it. 

 

 

 

[jkwilliams]

4 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

I read BY with caution. To me he seems to misinterpret scripture on more than one occasion. Another example is his statement about Yeshua not being born of the Holy Ghost to the virgin Mary. He dismisses Luke's account, but seems to ignore the Book of Mormon as well which also says Yeshua was born of the virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost.

I thinking reading him with caution is the right approach. I'm just trying to figure out where USU78 is coming from, as I'm not seeing BY's statement as a rhetorical paraphrasing of Numbers 25, and I don't see anywhere in the sermon where BY pivots away from that statement. But, I'll let USU78 explain what he means.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Ryan Dahle said:

You had cast doubt on the uniqueness of the wordplay because the phrase "land of inheritance" is used many times in the text, thus supposedly rendering Jershon's relationship to this phrase less significant. I countered by noting that there are only three specific toponyms that are described as being a "land of inheritance" (including Jershon) and that Jershon's narrative details in this regard are certainly unique enough for a valid wordplay proposal. I wouldn't say it is "by far the strongest." There are other wordplays of comparable strength, and quite a few that are not far behind.

I don't see the methodology as being all that speculative. There are only a handful of words in any given language that a transliteration could plausibly represent. A good plausible wordplay only occurs when one of the best acceptable ancient words happens to have unique narrative significance surrounding the transliteration. It is the type of thing that could certainly happen by chance, but it is not the type of thing that would likely happen over and over again in a single text by chance. The Book of Mormon has a large enough amount of these proposals that a good argument can be made that they aren't collectively a coincidence. In order to make a fair judgment about the evidence, one would have to assess the data set as a whole. You sampled Jershon, and I think in every way it counts as a plausible wordplay, on par with many of the best biblical wordplays proposed by non-LDS scholars. 

I have looked for Hebraisms in pseudo-biblical texts, but not systematically. Careful research definitely needs to be done. So far, I haven't found anything even close. I will try to prepare some samples for comparison.

Chris and Duane Johnson tried to claim that the Late war contained comparable Hebraisms to the Book of Mormon, but in some cases they misidentified them in the text  (for instance, 2 of the 4 examples they found of cognate accusative aren't valid). In most cases (negative questions, construct state, compound prepositions, and adverbials), they chose features that definitely show up in English as well as Hebrew, and the argument for the feature being genuine Hebraisms, in the first place, really has to do with usage rates rather than exclusive usage. These are the types of features that I expect a fairly competent pseudo-biblicist would be able to mimic to some extent anyways, so they aren't very conclusive. I will try to find some time to do some preliminary analysis on pseudo-biblical texts and share my results. 

There is some categorical ambiguity in this question. As I see it, a Hebraism is simply a feature that is typical of (and usually somewhat unique to) the Hebrew language or culture. A British-English speaker could use an Americanism just like an American-English speaker could use a Hebraism. Moreover, something can simultaneously be a Hebraism and an Egyptianism because these ancient languages/cultures shared many features that are rather foreign to modern English speakers. So in this case, a more clear question is how do we decide whether the proposed Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon are the product of ancient writers trained in the Hebrew literary tradition (as the text claims) or the product of a 19th author or group of authors who merely imitated ancient Hebrew forms.

The authorship/milieu of most texts isn't usually disputed, so this is a rather unusual situation. The Book of Mormon claims that it was written by prophets who used an ancient version of the Hebrew Bible (up to Jeremiah). So comparing the text's Hebraisms to biblical Hebraisms is a good starting point. We can look at the literary forms and grammatical tendencies identified and discussed in biblical scholarship, and see how well the Book of Mormon matches up. Obviously, the work of John Welch, Donald Parry, John Tvedtnes, Matthew Bowen, and many others has shown that it has done quite well. I don't think that is really very disputable. 

The next step is harder. We need to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon's good match with biblical forms is fairly unique or unusual for a 19th century text. As you have noted, this hasn't been sufficiently researched. Pseudo-biblical texts and religious texts seem to be the best place to look. These are the types of texts that most consciously tried to imitate the literature found in the Bible. 

Just out of curiosity, what is your background? 

For me, a lot of the problem is that we're working with an English text, not a Hebrew or Egyptian text, so, as Clark Goble mentioned, any Hebrew words are merely words that "sound like" possible Hebrew words. Even if we assume that Jershon is Hebrew, we then are left to wonder why people who apparently assimilated with Mesoamericans are, after 500 years, still doing wordplays in a language that likely only the priests and scribes would have known. And even then, we're told in the BofM that Nephi wrote in Reformed Egyptian but spoke Hebrew, so assimilation likely means Hebrew didn't survive as a spoken language or a written language, as it had been superseded by Reformed Egyptian.

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Even if a feature, like chiasmus, was used in other literary contexts, its presence in the Bible was only beginning to be discovered. So far, it seems that the only discussion on biblical chiasms avaialble in American before 1830 was contained on about 4 pages from a massive critical study of the Bible, published in 1825. So nobody knew how pervasive this feature was in the Bible. Even if Joseph Smith had read Shakespeare or some other work of English literature containing chiasmus, the likelihood that he would have identified it is fairly low. Moreover, even if he found chiasmus in another English text, there would have been no logical reason he would have had to implement it in his dictation of the Book of Mormon, especially in such great frequency. We don't find sonnets or many other well-known features of English literature in the Book of Mormon. How would Joseph have known which literary forms were biblical and which weren't? 

One can always assume that Joseph discovered chiasmus on his own through analysis of the Bible itself, which honestly is a much better argument, but the problem with this line of reasoning is that most people just don't recognize the feature on their own. It took over 130 years for anyone to draw attention to its presence in the Book of Mormon. Neither Joseph Smith nor anyone around him mentioned anything about the text's parallelisms in general or chiasmus in particular. So, while possible, I think one has to admit that this is a very unlikely hypothesis.

So the starting assumption that the Book of Mormon is unique in its diversity and quantity of Hebraic content seems to be on solid ground. On the other hand, the assumption that other texts likely have the same degree of biblical Hebraisms isn't at all on solid ground. I suppose time and further study will tell which assumption is most likely correct. If the Book of Mormon performs way better in comparison to works of pseudob-biblical and religious literature, then the text's unique quantity and diversity of Hebraic content would significantly support its claim of having been written by ancient Hebrew-trained authors. 

On another front, I have found some evidence suggesting that one chiasm, in particular, was very likely produced by someone familiar with Hebrew. I plan to publish this research in the near future with another author, so I can't get into specifics. Suffice it to say that I discovered a previously unrecognized series of linked chiasms which relies on a transliterated toponym to finish out the chiastic structure. This term works as a bilingual wordplay, and perfectly supplies the missing link in the macro chiastic structure. Moreover, the elements of the third embedded chiasm significantly mirrors a chiastic structure found in the Psalms. The catch is that the English translation in the KJV completely masks the chiastic structure in the Psalms. The other notable feature is that the key terms, in the center of the chiasm, are very rare in the Hebrew bible. So its unlikely that the close relationship between these chiasms is pure chance, and yet virtually impossible to derive the relationship from an English version of the Bible. I'm not expecting you to take my word for it. The research should be published fairly soon for scrutiny. But these are the types of things that increase my confidence in the assumption that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be and that Joseph Smith wasn't responsible for it. 

I'm interested in reading your stuff when you publish. I'm not surprised that Joseph didn't include English literary forms in the Book of Mormon. Why would he? It's pretty clear he was quite familiar with the King James Bible, down to knowing where the italicized word (insertions by the translators) were. I guess you're assuming that Joseph was too ignorant to have produced a pseudo-Biblical text that, consciously or not, uses some literary structures found in the Bible. I don't see him that way, but obviously that's a general assumption among apologists. I disagree that the "starting assumption" is on solid ground, as no one has done a systematic study of similar texts. The Book of Mormon may be unique in its diversity and quantity of Hebraic content, but I don't think we can say that today.

[champatsch]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

if you actually read something written in EModE it doesn't read like the Book of Mormon at all

If we were to spell the earliest text like a 1500s text and punctuate it like a 16c text, and have it printed in a book that looked hundreds of years old, with ragged type, then it would strike us a lot more like an early modern text.  Taking out most of the biblical narrative words and short phrases would help too.

One difference, however, is that the vocabulary is filtered, except in the biblical passages.  So known words are used with obsolete meanings a few dozen times, but they are lexemes that were still current in the early 19c, not verbs like ween or trow or perforce, not nouns like fewter or resanation.  So in that way we could say that it doesn't sound like an Early Modern English text.

Of course one has to examine the 2009 Yale edition, which has only 354 conjectural emendations versus the 654 less reliable guesses of the 1981 text.  Is the Yale text what interlocutors here are conversant with?  Probably not.  One could also examine the 1830 first edition. I have put a high-quality electronic version of this in the WordCruncher library, which is precisely searchable, and is meant for serious students of the text.

There are thousands of things in the earliest text that are like what is found in Early Modern English: individual usages and systematic patterns that are not (pseudo)biblical or modern.  I suppose the level of Early Modern English could be quantified, but it would take years of work.  I don't know of anyone that is going to do it.

Most critics of Book of Mormon English here and elsewhere aren't conversant with

1. the earliest text, so they underestimate the number of early modern features in the text;
2. late 15c and 16c chronicles, so they don't know what that language was like;
3. many other early modern texts;
4. Skousen's ATV and GV, so they aren't aware of the issues.

Is it too much to ask of Book of Mormon antagonists to put in some serious work before throwing out for public consumption a bunch of unlikely speculations?

I have only given John a small amount of data to look at.  As mentioned previously, this is a vast field of inquiry, and there are thousands upon thousands of details to consider.  The first study I undertook (and I didn't do a very good job of it, since I was just starting out) was on verb complementation after the verb command.  An article could also be done on complementation following the verb cause or suffer or make or desire or grant.  I have a working paper on cause that I did a few years ago, but I don't know that it will ever be published.  There are dozens of other topics to consider.  A lot of the raw data is catalogued in GV.

John has speculated here that the Book of Mormon just has sporadic archaic usage that corresponds with rare early modern usage.  There are a few such things, but that is only a small part of the syntactic story.  Its "more part" usage is not that.  Its "if it so be" usage is not that.  Its complex finite complementation after the verb cause is not that.  Etc.

 

In fine, I would advise the serious-minded to dismiss the unserious, unstudied remarks of various Book of Mormon antagonists.  My various studies have led me to the conclusion that Joseph Smith did not have the implicit knowledge to word the earliest text.  This conclusion is based on a huge amount of comparative textual analysis and the application of axiomatic linguistic principles.

[jkwilliams]

5 minutes ago, champatsch said:

In fine, I would advise the serious-minded to dismiss the unserious, unstudied remarks of various Book of Mormon antagonists.  My various studies have led me to the conclusion that Joseph Smith did not have the implicit knowledge to word the earliest text.  This conclusion is based on a huge amount of comparative textual analysis and the application of axiomatic linguistic principles.

Oh, by all means. A message board is not the place to dig into serious study. 

[Ryan Dahle]

8 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I guess you're assuming that Joseph was too ignorant to have produced a pseudo-Biblical text that, consciously or not, uses some literary structures found in the Bible.

I think that the vast majority of Americans in Joseph's day were too ignorant of Hebrew literary forms to produce a text like the Book of Mormon. I don't think any of them could have produced it under the circumstances described by the witnesses and to some degree confirmed by the manuscript evidence. And I think Joseph, in particular, was especially unlikely to be able to produce such a text under any circumstances, let alone the circumstances described by the witnesses. Time will tell, though, I suppose.