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Nature of the Original Language of the Bk of Mormon


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On 9/25/2018 at 10:30 AM, RevTestament said:

I certainly can see a conclusion that the BoM reacts to TULIP principles. I've never even really noticed that. Perhaps the Lord simply doesn't like those ideas, and knew they would rise up among the Gentiles. It seems almost that the BoM couldn't be more deadset against the five principles of Calvinism. However, I have noticed that throughout the history of religion, it seems the devil has been expert at countering the main points of YHWH's religion or teachings. This is not some new phenomenon restricted to the BoM. I could point to many other "Christian" teachings which are in direct opposition to what I consider to be the most reasonable biblical interpretation. It seems opposition arises on every Biblical point. The main difference is that it is easier to claim that the BoM is a "reaction" to some of these things because it was published afterwards rather than before some of these teaching arose. Nevertheless, many atheists charge that all of Christianity is merely a reaction to earlier Savior figures in pagan religions - Krishna in Hinduism, Horus in Egyptian mythology, Mithras, etc. I do commend you for your connection of the BoM to anti-TULIP ideas. Over my 20 years on the internet, it also seems to me that Calvinists are among the most hostile towards LDS Christianity. I can now perhaps appreciate why Calvinists and Reformed Church members have a stronger reaction to LDS Christianity - reading the BoM would seem a direct affront to their life-long central teachings and indoctrination into their privileged elected status.

This very debate played out quite dramatically in the Dutch Republic in the early 1600’s. In the end the traditional Calvinists won and their opponents, the Arminians, were executed, imprisoned, or exiled. Maurice of Nassau exploited the conflict by taking sides with the stronger faction and with the help of his army was able to make himself ruler over the previously independent but confederated Dutch states. (Sounds like a Book of Mormon story, right?) He was the one who ultimately meted out punishment to the losing side. 

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16 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

So to come back to the Book of Mormon, the point that has to be made is not that the Book of Mormon language would have been easy for an EModE speaker, but that it would be really hard for Joseph Smith. No amount of evidence that it was EModE can say anything about that. The only reason it even seems to say anything about it is that you pull the fast one of labelling Carmack and Skousen's results as "facilely writing Early Modern English" and then go on as if writing the Book of Mormon amounted to proving perfect fluency in an archaic dialect.

Carmack said that for a person to blend that amount of EmodE into a text, it would have to be second nature. That was in one of the earlier threads on the subject.

16 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

If all you want to say is that Carmack has claimed some stuff, fine. Scientific authority does not exist by default, however. No-one is presumed correct until proven wrong. It's the other way around: truth is really, really hard to establish, and so everything is presumed to be wrong until it has at least been checked out by a few unbiased experts. Is that "peremptory dismissal"? Maybe it is. It's how science works, though—and given how many crackpots with claims there are in the world, even crackpots with fine credentials and claims that would take a lay person a lot of work to disprove, it's the only sensible approach. 

When a person in physics comes up with a new discovery while running experiments, he or she will publish the methodology for fellow scientists to try to duplicate. If other scientists can duplicate the results, it becomes pretty much accepted. There still may be differences of opinions about the conclusions drawn from any such experiment. The case of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is a bit different. That it is present in the Book of Mormon is pretty easily demonstrated. Stanford has a whole list in some of his articles. I know I was going to follow up on that several months ago but the Oxford English Dictionary is not free. One can get a monthly individual subscription. I was going to sign up for a month, but I think dementia is settling in because I cannot remember if I actually verified anything. I know that I did not record it if I did.

But Stanford has produced his data. I do not think any linguist conversant in Early Modern English would dispute his contentions that such and such a phrase is Early Modern English. Another linguist might dispute his contention that a person would have to write Early Modern English as second nature in order to produce a text with Early Modern English to the extent that appears in the Book of Mormon. (I hope I am understanding Stanford's position correctly.) I have been hoping that another linguist would show up here to add to the information we have, but that has not happened as of yet.

Stanford has searched a large corpus of books for the phrases found in the Book of Mormon, looking for Early Modern English texts that Joseph might have had access to that could have influenced him. In addition he has searched Joseph's own writings for evidences of Early Modern English, and has found none. He analysed other pseudo Biblical texts such as "The Late War' and found nothing to compare to the Book of Mormon.

It is the conclusions that Stanford has arrived at that may be disputed. He concludes that the Book of Mormon text is just something that Joseph could not have produced on his own. Of course his conclusion is that it came via Divine revelation, which I suspect that you reject. I noted that in another post you were asking what is the significance for LDS apologetics, that if Joseph was not the author he must have gotten the text from an already extant manuscript. In my opinion that is a correct assessment of the situation.

Glenn 

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30 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

If these instances were coins in a jar, what dating would you give to the jar?

If the Book of Mormon writer had stuck faithfully to the text of the bible you'd have to give a date of 1769. The problem with the coin analogy here, though, is that the Book of Mormon writer was quite free in making changes to the bible. He was apparently familiar with the Latin Vulgate, the Masoretic text, the Greek text, and several English versions because you can see the influences of all of them. There are also changes that aren't reflected in any known version which indicates he was making his own conjectures. By making conjectures it's possible to make a change that will be made in a future version. This is particularly true if the writer is expert in the underlying Greek/Hebrew texts. If the writer had produced the text soon after the 1611 KJB, then he would have made 8 out of the 11 future changes correctly. This is possible but seems unlikely. If, however, the writer was relying on the 1638 version, it would have only required one conjecture since the other changes occurred before 1638. This seems more likely and I think is the reason Carmack and Skousen have both said the original KJB was likely not used, but have instead pointed to the late 1630's.

Based purely on the KJB in the Book of Mormon it's still possible the Book of Mormon could have been produced in the 1800's. But it would have required the author be familiar with multiple English bible versions as well as the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts.

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22 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

When a person in physics comes up with a new discovery while running experiments, he or she will publish the methodology for fellow scientists to try to duplicate. If other scientists can duplicate the results, it becomes pretty much accepted. There still may be differences of opinions about the conclusions drawn from any such experiment. The case of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is a bit different. That it is present in the Book of Mormon is pretty easily demonstrated. Stanford has a whole list in some of his articles.

I think "Physics Guy"'s point is that if it's really significant it could withstand peer review and end up in a journal. Pretty well nothing in physics is accepted without that kind of peer review - particularly new controversial claims that go against status quo view. I suggested politics due to the nature of the BoM would undermine this but I don't know for sure. As I said I'd love to hear from Carmack and Skousen on this. It might also be that no journal particularly cares if there's early modern grammar in the Book of Mormon. Most journals are probably focused on more abstract questions about linguistics.

I'm convinced by Carmack that the grammatical structures are in old English but not 19th century simply by looking at the corpuses he's pointed out along with 1st order testing with Google. What I think is more questionable is the significance of that. I mentioned earlier the problem of there not being ethnographic studies of local dialects. Those wouldn't be in most 19th century corpuses and thus (to my mind) make the biggest possible way the claims could be undermined. But again I'd love to hear from a non-Mormon linguistic with background knowledge in these dialects.

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43 minutes ago, JarMan said:

If the Book of Mormon writer had stuck faithfully to the text of the bible you'd have to give a date of 1769. The problem with the coin analogy here, though, is that the Book of Mormon writer was quite free in making changes to the bible. He was apparently familiar with the Latin Vulgate, the Masoretic text, the Greek text, and several English versions because you can see the influences of all of them. There are also changes that aren't reflected in any known version which indicates he was making his own conjectures. By making conjectures it's possible to make a change that will be made in a future version. This is particularly true if the writer is expert in the underlying Greek/Hebrew texts. If the writer had produced the text soon after the 1611 KJB, then he would have made 8 out of the 11 future changes correctly. This is possible but seems unlikely. If, however, the writer was relying on the 1638 version, it would have only required one conjecture since the other changes occurred before 1638. This seems more likely and I think is the reason Carmack and Skousen have both said the original KJB was likely not used, but have instead pointed to the late 1630's.

Based purely on the KJB in the Book of Mormon it's still possible the Book of Mormon could have been produced in the 1800's. But it would have required the author be familiar with multiple English bible versions as well as the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts.

It looks to me like we have an Arminian pastor from the mid to late 1700s who had access to multiple English bible versions as well as the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts. He would have been familiar with historical and ecclesiastical texts, with access to a large library. Someone who wrote lectures combining Newtonian astronomy, natural science and Arminian theology in a way that anticipates Mormon doctrine. He likely spoke Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Chaldaic, Arabic or other oriental languages. Extra points if he was related to of both Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack living within 15 miles of the Smith family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(lexicographer)

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31 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

It looks to me like we have an Arminian pastor from the mid to late 1700s who had access to multiple English bible versions as well as the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts. He would have been familiar with historical and ecclesiastical texts, with access to a large library. Someone who wrote lectures combining Newtonian astronomy, natural science and Arminian theology in a way that anticipates Mormon doctrine. He likely spoke Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Chaldaic, Arabic or other oriental languages. Extra points if he was related to of both Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack living within 15 miles of the Smith family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(lexicographer)

LOL. I voted you up for that. However can you really see him working on the Book of Mormon and no one knowing?

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46 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

It looks to me like we have an Arminian pastor from the mid to late 1700s who had access to multiple English bible versions as well as the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts. He would have been familiar with historical and ecclesiastical texts, with access to a large library. Someone who wrote lectures combining Newtonian astronomy, natural science and Arminian theology in a way that anticipates Mormon doctrine. He likely spoke Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Chaldaic, Arabic or other oriental languages. Extra points if he was related to of both Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack living within 15 miles of the Smith family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(lexicographer)

He could be an important link. But he’s too late for EModE. 

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2 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Carmack said that for a person to blend that amount of EmodE into a text, it would have to be second nature.  ... Another linguist might dispute his contention that a person would have to write Early Modern English as second nature in order to produce a text with Early Modern English to the extent that appears in the Book of Mormon.

This is the important part of Carmack's thesis, because without it, Early Modern elements in Book of Mormon grammar would just be consistent with an amateur attempt at KJV English, such as skeptics have always suspected, that overdid the archaism and came out sounding closer to pre-KJV. This "overdone archaism" theory is only challenged if the EModE usage in the Book of Mormon is somehow amazingly fluent.

But it's that judgement of fluency in "blending", and of what it would take for an author to write that much fluent blending, that strikes me as most debatable in what Skousen and Carmack are saying. Counting usage instances in corpuses is a straightforward and well established methodology, but inferring fluency is surely not so clear cut. And there can't have been many studies done, if any, on just what kinds of language tend to show up when uneducated people try to imitate the King James Bible in dictation. Carmack's effort to survey 19th century American pseudo-Biblical texts is worth doing because at least it's something one can check, but it involves a mere handful of texts, and it's not at all clear that they're really fair comparisons to the Book of Mormon, because their authors were likely more educated and more careful than Smith was.

So I don't see how the case for "it would have to be second nature" can be very solid here. It looks like the weak link in the chain, and if it is, then neither Skousen's and Carmack's credentials nor the rigor of their corpus studies can do much to strengthen it. 

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5 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

This is the important part of Carmack's thesis, because without it, Early Modern elements in Book of Mormon grammar would just be consistent with an amateur attempt at KJV English, such as skeptics have always suspected, that overdid the archaism and came out sounding closer to pre-KJV. This "overdone archaism" theory is only challenged if the EModE usage in the Book of Mormon is somehow amazingly fluent.

But it's that judgement of fluency in "blending", and of what it would take for an author to write that much fluent blending, that strikes me as most debatable in what Skousen and Carmack are saying. Counting usage instances in corpuses is a straightforward and well established methodology, but inferring fluency is surely not so clear cut. And there can't have been many studies done, if any, on just what kinds of language tend to show up when uneducated people try to imitate the King James Bible in dictation. Carmack's effort to survey 19th century American pseudo-Biblical texts is worth doing because at least it's something one can check, but it involves a mere handful of texts, and it's not at all clear that they're really fair comparisons to the Book of Mormon, because their authors were likely more educated and more careful than Smith was.

So I don't see how the case for "it would have to be second nature" can be very solid here. It looks like the weak link in the chain, and if it is, then neither Skousen's and Carmack's credentials nor the rigor of their corpus studies can do much to strengthen it. 

Again, I believe that we need to have another competent, linguist that does not have a bias weigh in on the situation. At the moment we do not have that. Finding someone without a bias when it comes to the Book of Mormon also may be difficult.

Glenn

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That's why this needs to be submitted to a mainstream linguistics journal.

There shouldn't be a huge problem with bias, because not even the most bigoted anti-Mormon really cares whether Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself or copied it from an old manuscript. It would still probably be harder to publish a paper casting doubt on Smith's authorship of the Book of Mormon than it is to publish a more typical linguistics article, but I don't think this would be because even a solid paper on this topic would get rejected by reviewers. I think it's more that shakier papers can fairly often get nodded through if they don't make waves, and this article would not have that benefit. It shouldn't need that benefit, though, if it's really solid enough for lay people to take it seriously.

It not uncommonly can take more than a year for a paper to get through peer review in linguistics, and it wouldn't necessarily be a damning judgement if this paper were rejected once or twice by a couple of journals before eventually getting accepted somewhere else—that can happen even to an excellent paper. Peer review is not infallible or even efficient; it's simply the best system we've figured out so far. So it could legitimately take up to a few years for this work by Carmack and Skousen to appear in a mainstream journal.

Much past that point, though, the failure of this work to appear in a linguistics journal will become tantamount to getting a judgement from competent experts—and the judgement being negative.

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13 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

But it's that judgement of fluency in "blending", and of what it would take for an author to write that much fluent blending, that strikes me as most debatable in what Skousen and Carmack are saying.

I think this is correct. Although that seems a separate issue from the grammatical uses that aren't in the KJV. I'd really like to see quantified the nature of this "blending" as I'm not sure what's meant. When I get some time tonight I'll go through Carmack's papers again to see how he discusses it. I suspect I'd just skimmed over it before since my primary interest was in testing his grammatical claims.

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