The Book of Mormon is a conundrum.

[champatsch]

There's the obsolete syntactic usage: patterns and individual instances.

Edited March 27, 2019 by champatsch

[champatsch]

There's 2n2724: : “the Lord shall say unto him that shall read the words that shall be delivered him”.

[champatsch]

13 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I think this misses the distinction between conscious or unconscious actions. That's rather important for many forms of loose translation. What I think you're getting at is that if Joseph were given vague ideas and had to find the words for it that he'd make a certain class of mistakes. That might well be true but really depends upon conscious deliberation. If the deliberation isn't conscious then that type of error simply wouldn't appear.

So, are you saying here that Joseph was unaware that he was wording the text?

[Exiled]

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Objective? 

Famous N. R. Hanson quote:

Jenkins got all of his mileage from insisting that Hamlin use his (Jenkin's) theories, assumptions, judges, problem field, and standards of solution. And never even acknowledged or comprehended that that is just what makes all the difference in whether evidence shows up. 

Hamblin wrote a very good essay on that exact topic in JBMS.  Still relevant though much has been learned since then.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1382&index=11

Whereas Exiled can say, "nothing exists" and insist on some proof that will coerce his unwilling submission, paradigm change doesn't work that way.

A good example of this was Brant Gardner (to cite one example):

His six volume Second Witness commentaries gather his evidence, which is not nothing.  Of course anyone can say "So what?" to that something. but that doesn't make it nothing.  Just something that they ignore, and therefore, do not explain to my satisfaction.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

It seems one has to have a desire to believe first in order to believe whatever "evidence" is provided. Secular scientists aren't on board with Nephites existing in the Americas, like they are with the Romans existing or the Etruscans. DNA shows the native peoples here came from Russia through the Bering Straights prior to the time of supposed Adam. Perhaps the DNA disappeared like the plates, but the fact remains that the evidence is poor and probabilities are on the side of a fictional book of mormon. It still has spiritual value for those of the Community of Christ and members of the church. It's just not historical.

[clarkgoble]

40 minutes ago, champatsch said:

So, are you saying here that Joseph was unaware that he was wording the text?

I'm saying that is a possibility. Also I'm saying that this influence by Joseph may not even be an action (whether conscious or unconscious) by Joseph.

I should note that technologically we're already getting to that stage of mind reading if you're in an MRI. We can tell what someone is dreaming about. We can "read" the part of the brain where visual images appear and get a crude representation of what they're seeing (either internal images such as dreams or external images)

How memories are encoded is still a mystery although it's starting to appear to be more complicated than people originally thought, partially encoded within the cell rather than just being in terms of neurons. There are some hypothesis that DNA/RNA function is actually involved in memories. So all this is rather complicated, but if we already can do elements of this via computer and sensors, I don't think we should dismiss it as a potential process by God.

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

There's 2n2724: : “the Lord shall say unto him that shall read the words that shall be delivered him”.

Good point.  I don't think there's a way for Clark's theory to work considering this.  

[Kevin Christensen]

14 minutes ago, Exiled said:

It seems one has to have a desire to believe first in order to believe whatever "evidence" is provided. Secular scientists aren't on board with Nephites existing in the Americas, like they are with the Romans existing or the Etruscans. DNA shows the native peoples here came from Russia through the Bering Straights prior to the time of supposed Adam. Perhaps the DNA disappeared like the plates, but the fact remains that the evidence is poor and probabilities are on the side of a fictional book of mormon. It still has spiritual value for those of the Community of Christ and members of the church. It's just not historical.

Not just to see, but to take the time to figure out both where to look and what to expect.  If you are looking in the wrong place for the wrong things, you are not likely to discover evidence or "evidence" if you prefer.  To cite an important example, I recall Michael Coe and John Dehlin  in the Mormon Stories talking about how there is no evidence of brass helmets and iron arrowheads in the New World.  I'd find their "evidence" more intimidating if the Book of Mormon mentioned either thing.  But it doesn't.  They were not just wrong, but terribly misleading and under informed.  And Coe had actually read the Book of Mormon several decades ago and has Mesomerican credentials, and Dehlin claims he just want to put all of the evidence on the table.  But alas, I cannot take Coe's impressive credentials and Dehlin's professed ideals for granted.  The evidence does not support their judgement.  They were looking for the wrong things the wrong place, so their evidence is dubious.

On DNA as the pin that pops the fragile bubble of possibilities for the Book of Mormon:

Quote

Another way to state this question is “could a group of people vanish without a genetic trace as measured by Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA testing and yet be the ancestors of someone living today?” It is important to realize that examination of Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA genetic markers permits only a small fraction of an individual’s ancestry to be tracked.

Most genetic analysis studies of human history involve comparing a group of samples of living individuals to another group of living individuals without any detailed knowledge of the genealogy of the individuals in the groups being tested. These types of DNA studies make assumptions about the average time for each generation in the past along with a fixed mutation rate whereby genetic variation may occur over time. Similarities in the modern populations examined are then used to claim a shared origin between the two populations with an estimated time for divergence between the populations.

An interesting study reported in the June 2003 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics leads me to believe that it is possible for Book of Mormon peoples to be ancestors of modern Native Americans and yet not be easily detected using traditional Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests. This study, conducted by a group of scientists from a company called deCODE Genetics, used the extensive genealogies of people from Iceland combined with probably the most massive population study ever performed. They traced the matrilineal and patrilineal ancestry of all 131,060 Icelanders born after 1972 back to two cohorts of ancestors, one born between 1848 and 1892 and the other between 1742 and 1798.⁶

Examining the same Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers used in other genetic studies, these 131,060 Icelanders “revealed highly positively skewed distributions of descendants to ancestors, with the vast majority of potential ancestors contributing one or no descendants and a minority of ancestors contributing large numbers of descendants.”⁷ In other words, the majority of people living today in Iceland had ancestors living only 150 years ago that could not be detected based on the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests being performed and yet the genealogical records exist showing that these people lived and were real ancestors. To the point at hand, if many documented ancestors of 150 years ago cannot be linked to their descendants through Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests from modern Iceland, then it certainly seems possible that the people who are reported in the Book of Mormon to have migrated to the Americas over 2,600 years ago might not have left genetic signatures that are detectable today.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1446&index=6

This essay is by John Butler.  His credentials at the time:

Quote

John M. Butler holds a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia and is the author of eighty research articles and book chapters on human DNA, including essays on Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA as applied to human-identity testing. He has received a number of awards in the field of forensic genetics and is the author of the award-winning textbook Forensic DNA Typing, now in its second edition. In July 2002, Butler received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony for his work in pioneering modern forensic DNA testing. He is currently employed as a research chemist in the Biochemical Science Division at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he directs a project team developing new DNA technologies for forensic and human-identity applications.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

There's 2n2724: : “the Lord shall say unto him that shall read the words that shall be delivered him”.

3 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

Good point.  I don't think there's a way for Clark's theory to work considering this.  

Sure it does. The hypothetical sci-fi example I gave handles that completely. As I mentioned we're already technologically getting into the realm of mind reading. We know parts of the brain dealing with nouns, with verbs, thanks to cases with stroke victims. We can "see" what someone is seeing visually technologically. It's primitive but is there. We can tell what people are dreaming to a certain extent. Now we really don't know how memories are encoded so that we can't do, but if we can do all of this I wouldn't put it past God. Assuming such a process was in play generating the text it'd be partially determined by Joseph's brain but may only appear visually to him with perhaps some effort on his part for the projection into the visual neurons to work.

Again to be clear I'm not saying that's how it happened. I've no idea how it functioned. I'm just saying if this seems plausible - a version of Google translate that takes as its source corpus ones memories - then I don't think we can dismiss it.

The assumption that Joseph's brain isn't involved just seems deeply problematic from my perspective. I'd also add that it seems deeply problematic that the process is completely passive as well given D&C 9.

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

There's the obsolete syntactic usage: patterns and individual instances.

I don't see how that or the other examples is problematic to my view. Again a hypothetical sci-fi example to just illustrate possibilities we need consider, you have some 16th century figure (or at least a person with instinctual language use that includes old English), a Google translate program, and Joseph mind. The program based upon memory and the structure of the linguistic part of the brain encoding use generates the source text from the 16th century into Joseph's and displays it on his visual neurons.

Again not saying that happened. Just presenting it to show the class of considerations one has to include in ones analysis.

As soon as you start talking about "power and gift of God" and start having an imperfect text with all those KJV quotations rather than underlying text (say quoting Pauline passages for pre-Christian texts) then you pretty well have to consider how that happens. 

[champatsch]

44 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm saying that is a possibility. Also I'm saying that this influence by Joseph may not even be an action (whether conscious or unconscious) by Joseph.

If it's not an action by Joseph, then how is it in effect not a revelation of words to Joseph?

[clarkgoble]

37 minutes ago, champatsch said:

If it's not an action by Joseph, then how is it in effect not a revelation of words to Joseph?

When you remember something is it a revelation to you?  It'd still be revelation in a loose sense I guess. The point I'm getting at is the involvement of Joseph's mind and environment. You're more or less arguing about whether Joseph is dictating it or is taking loose impressions and in part consciously creating. That may happen of course and I just don't know enough there to know whether you've falsified that theory. However it's not the only involvement.

Again to be clear, I'm talking loose content vs. tight content not loose control vs. tight control. I'm fairly agnostic on that latter question although I'm completely open to arguments that errors suggest no loose control. 

Edited March 27, 2019 by clarkgoble

[Exiled]

3 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Not just to see, but to take the time to figure out both where to look and what to expect.  If you are looking in the wrong place for the wrong things, you are not likely to discover evidence or "evidence" if you prefer.  To cite an important example, I recall Michael Coe and John Dehlin  in the Mormon Stories talking about how there is no evidence of brass helmets and iron arrowheads in the New World.  I'd find their "evidence" more intimidating if the Book of Mormon mentioned either thing.  But it doesn't.  They were not just wrong, but terribly misleading and under informed.  And Coe had actually read the Book of Mormon several decades ago and has Mesomerican credentials, and Dehlin claims he just want to put all of the evidence on the table.  But alas, I cannot take Coe's impressive credentials and Dehlin's professed ideals for granted.  The evidence does not support their judgement.  They were looking for the wrong things the wrong place, so their evidence is dubious.

On DNA as the pin that pops the fragile bubble of possibilities for the Book of Mormon:

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1446&index=6

This essay is by John Butler.  His credentials at the time:

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

There is always a chance, however slight.  Perhaps the future will be glorious for book of mormon historicity?

Edited March 27, 2019 by Exiled

[Glenn101]

33 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

When you remember something is it a revelation to you?  It'd still be revelation in a loose sense I guess. The point I'm getting at is the involvement of Joseph's mind and environment. You're more or less arguing about whether Joseph is dictating it or is taking loose impressions and in part consciously creating. That may happen of course and I just don't know enough there to know whether you've falsified that theory. However it's not the only involvement.

Again to be clear, I'm talking loose content vs. tight content not loose control vs. tight control. I'm fairly agnostic on that latter question although I'm completely open to arguments that errors suggest no loose control.  

I have always had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that the Book of Mormon was revealed to Joseph in ideograms or concepts which he converted into his own words. But I have come to believe that Joseph did not actually see words appear in the stone itself, but rather that he saw them in his mind's eye, which seems to be pretty much what you are saying, i. e. that the text was displayed on Joseph's visual neurons. Joseph reportedly used the stone to describe some of the building on Josiah Stowell's farm which convinced Josiah to hire Joseph for the aborted treasure digging effort. If the report is accurate, Joseph could hardly have seen the details in that small of a frame. If Royal Skousen's assessment of the translation process is correct, Joseph was working with about twenty words or so at a time.  According to the descriptions of the stone in possession of the church, it is oval measuring about two inches in length (5.5 mm) or" about the size of an egg but more flat", according to one contemporary observer. Displaying twenty words or more in the space of two inches would necessitate a really small font type because twenty words averaging just four characters per word would  be eight characters, plus spaces. It just seems that some type of projection on Joseph's visual nerves would have been required.

Of course the translation had to be in a functional equivalence for the concepts that were expressed, but I believe that those equivalences were expressed in words which Joseph dictated and not ideas which Joseph expressed in his own language. That "tight control" if one wishes to call it that would seem to me to fit the evidence that Skousen has amassed and the witness testimonies.

 

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The assumption that Joseph's brain isn't involved just seems deeply problematic from my perspective. I'd also add that it seems deeply problematic that the process is completely passive as well given D&C 9.

I am not sure how D&C section nine actually works into this narrative. How does one go about working out in one's own mind whether something is "right" or not when trying to translate on the fly as it were. It does seem that Oliver was able to perform some translation, but as Jehovah said to him "you did not continue as you commenced." According to Joseph Fielding Smith "Oliver’s failure came because he did not continue as he commenced, and the task being a difficult one, his faith deserted him” (Church History and Modern Revelation [1953], 1:51)."

Glenn

[champatsch]

14 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

17 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The assumption that Joseph's brain isn't involved just seems deeply problematic from my perspective. I'd also add that it seems deeply problematic that the process is completely passive as well given D&C 9.

I am not sure how D&C section nine actually works into this narrative. How does one go about working out in one's own mind whether something is "right" or not when trying to translate on the fly as it were. It does seem that Oliver was able to perform some translation, but as Jehovah said to him "you did not continue as you commenced." According to Joseph Fielding Smith "Oliver’s failure came because he did not continue as he commenced, and the task being a difficult one, his faith deserted him” (Church History and Modern Revelation [1953], 1:51)."

Clark, of course translating in the sense of retransmitting revealed words does involve the brain. And Doctrine and Covenants 9:7–9 cannot be used to definitively argue for your preferred position. It probably refers to the divine authority to act as a seer, not to verifying word choices. Glenn is right, the spiritual verification of proposed word choices is problematic for the pace of the dictation. In any event, D&C 9 cannot be used as evidence, since we cannot be sure of the interpretation. Anyway, it is soft evidence compared with hard linguistic evidence, especially syntax.

This April 1829 revelation was received at the same time as the Book of Mormon and probably in like manner. The substitutional "save it was" language used in the revelation (meaning 'except that you did take thought'; see OED except, C2c) is very rare in the textual record and was unlikely to have been chosen by Joseph Smith. I invite you to find a chain of use of this 3-gram constituent during the 1700s and early 1800s. I haven't found one. I've only found one example of it so far, in 1684. (There are a handful of others to be found between 1530 and 1686, but they are not substitutional.)

[Kevin Christensen]

18 hours ago, Exiled said:

There is always a chance, however slight.  Perhaps the future will be glorious for book of mormon historicity?

Personally, I think the present is remarkable, much much more impressive than when I was young.  Very little of the best work has been thought of, let alone done.  And what there was, I hadn't known about.  The first time I read anything that impressed me, (other than Welch's Chiasmus essay in The New Era around 1971 or so), was when I was 21, in England, on a P-day reading of in 1975, of  Nibley's An Approach to the Book of Mormon.  Before that, all I had run across was Jack West's Cartoon Trial of the Book of Mormon and the old Christ in America Videos.  Tracking down all things Nibley led to the early days of FARMS around 1981, and that led to much more, including Sorenson's Ancient American Setting in 1985, and subsequently Gardner, Poulson, Wirth, Clark, Wright, Mormon's Codex, and much much more. including the recent LiDar surveys.   I've occasionally made contributions myself, at Maxwell Institute, Sunstone, Interpreter, and elsewhere.  And I see the future as very promising from a wide variety of approaches, New World, and Old World.   For instance, I wrote this 11 years ago.

https://ldsmag.com/article-1-1644/

Not stuff I've seen accounted for by any of the skeptics.  And I've learned quite a lot since then.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited March 28, 2019 by Kevin Christensen
title fix

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, champatsch said:

Clark, of course translating in the sense of retransmitting revealed words does involve the brain. And Doctrine and Covenants 9:7–9 cannot be used to definitively argue for your preferred position.

Just to be clear again what I outlined isn't my preferred position. Rather I think our arguments have to acknowledge the open possibilities the data can entail. I outlined a speculative possibility, one I rather doubt was the case, only to illustrate the elements that I think get neglected in discussions. By calling it a sci-fi interpretation I meant to indicate I didn't take it too seriously but that I think it points to considerations that get neglected.

To D&C 9, I think the main thing we should take away from it is the indication that effort is in play. After all it may well be that how Joseph translated and how Oliver attempted aren't necessarily the same. As you know some have speculated that the background to D&C 9 is the use of a divining rod rather than the spectacles. So I fully agree there is a lot of uncertainty to D&C 9 and we should use it with caution. However I think the principle "you took no thought save it was to ask me" that we have to take seriously. It may well indicate that the process is not passive, even in terms of consciousness.

The position you and Skousen appear to take is that the translation is a passive endeavor consisting only of reading text much like I read text off my iPhone. I'm just deeply skeptical that is the case, although it certainly is one possibility. So I don't want to neglect that possibility.

Two issues are really at play. First to what degree Joseph's mind, beliefs and memories are involved in the text of the Book of Mormon. (Ignoring here his later minor revisions) The second is what conscious effort was involved.

For the latter you are suggesting that the type of errors suggests that Joseph isn't consciously making choices. I'd like to see that more explicitly and rigorously argued for. I should note I don't have the critical text - only Robert's early version from before Skousen took over. Any publicly accessible articles addressing that I'll definitely check out.

In any case I am convinced by the structures you find. I just don't think they necessarily address the issue I raise above since in any composite work I'd still expect to find such structures if one of the authors uses such structures.

[Ryan Dahle]

34 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I should note I don't have the critical text - only Robert's early version from before Skousen took over. Any publicly accessible articles addressing that I'll definitely check out.

You may be interested in this, if you didn't know about it:

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/content/book-mormon-earliest-text 

[champatsch]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The position you and Skousen appear to take is that the translation is a passive endeavor consisting only of reading text much like I read text off my iPhone.

Not so. We don't know that it was like reading text off an electronic device. Reading revealed words could have been exhausting and mentally taxing, for all we know. There's no way to know since we didn't experience it.

[clarkgoble]

9 hours ago, champatsch said:

Not so. We don't know that it was like reading text off an electronic device. Reading revealed words could have been exhausting and mentally taxing, for all we know. There's no way to know since we didn't experience it.

Fair up to a certain point. That is one could imagine it takes mental effort to keep the words illuminated "on" the stone without there being mental effort to generate the words. As I said though I'm not sure we can simply discount D&C 9 the way you suggest. Although clearly that won't convince everyone. 

BTW - I put up a post over at T&S on EmoE in the BoM. It really doesn't do much other than summarize things as best I'm able. I'm am curious as to the response it gets.

Edited March 29, 2019 by clarkgoble

[Glenn101]

12 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Two issues are really at play. First to what degree Joseph's mind, beliefs and memories are involved in the text of the Book of Mormon. (Ignoring here his later minor revisions) The second is what conscious effort was involved.

For the latter you are suggesting that the type of errors suggests that Joseph isn't consciously making choices. I'd like to see that more explicitly and rigorously argued for. I should note I don't have the critical text - only Robert's early version from before Skousen took over. Any publicly accessible articles addressing that I'll definitely check out.

In any case I am convinced by the structures you find. I just don't think they necessarily address the issue I raise above since in any composite work I'd still expect to find such structures if one of the authors uses such structures.

How would we go about determining just what and how Joseph's beliefs and memories would be involved in the text of the Book of Mormon? Don't you think that maybe God would want to provide a transmission mechanism that would bypass Joseph's currently held beliefs and memories? In my opinion, Joseph was started down the prophet path early, before he had become set in his ways and opinions, especially religious opinions, but he still had been exposed to quite a lot of religious doctrinal debate and was rather leaning toward the Methodists, if I remember my reading correctly. Human beings are awfully stubborn types once they actually form an opinion and it is difficult to change another persons mind. Rendering the translation to Joseph in words that he could read would pretty much eliminate subjective interpretations but obviously not human error.

The EmodE in the Book of Mormon almost certainly would not be there if Joseph had chosen his own words and phrases. As it is, it is not rational to assert that the language of the Book of Mormon is just a knock off of the language of the King James Version of the Bible. Then there is the places where Bible verses are quoted verbatim as they appear in the King James Version, then there is that series of verses that are not quoted verbatim, causing problems for a theory that Joseph had memorized those verses or somehow read them from a concealed Bible or text.

As for the conscious part, it seems obvious that there had to be a lot of mental and spiritual preparation, including faith, in order for it to work. I wonder if Oliver could have continued his own translation if his efforts had began after May 15 of 1829?

I am not sure what you mean by your last sentence. What authors are you talking about that may have used EmodE structures?

Glenn

 

[why me]

On 3/15/2019 at 3:15 PM, snowflake said:

If you want a much more impressive book...... historically accurate, lacking anachronisms, mountains of hard archaeological proof, thousands of pieces  of textual support in many differing languages....billions of believers.......you should stick with the far superior... Bible. 

However, the new testament gospels were written long after the event. Can we be sure of their accuracy? How can the writers recall exactly what Christ said? Or recall the miracles? Did they mis-remember some of them? It is probably true that the writers were natives to that land and so, geographically correct. Unfortunately, the bible takes faith since we have no record of Christ as doing such wonders outside the bible. And such wonders were rather common in that time frame. Others did some also.

Also, it was Paul who saved the church since he brought the gospel to the pagans. The church in the area that Christ preached with James, his brother, did not do so well. Why?

[champatsch]

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Fair up to a certain point. That is one could imagine it takes mental effort to keep the words illuminated "on" the stone without there being mental effort to generate the words. As I said though I'm not sure we can simply discount D&C 9 the way you suggest. Although clearly that won't convince everyone.

BTW - I put up a post over at T&S on EmoE in the BoM. It really doesn't do much other than summarize things as best I'm able. I'm am curious as to the response it gets.

On Doctrine and Covenants 9, you'll want to look at this.

I didn't check your T&S post thoroughly for minor errors, but you'll want to change the 15th and 16th centuries to the 16th and 17th (1500s and 1600s), and when you mention seeketh near the beginning it contrasts with seeks (not seek), the historically northern form that took over. Each verb seems to have a unique trajectory in the textual record. There's a lot of biblical contamination that's difficult to account for properly globally. Here's high frequency take in EEBO1, based on more than 100,000 instances:

[clarkgoble]

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

How would we go about determining just what and how Joseph's beliefs and memories would be involved in the text of the Book of Mormon? 

I think you miss the line of reasoning I'm following. I don't think we can know how or if it accessed Joseph's memories. Yet the answers to those questions have big implications for the answers for other things we argue about. So my argument is that we have to look at the range of possibilities given what we don't know and account for that. My worry is that in a lot of discussions on translation and the nature of the text we just don't do that enough.

So all the examples I give aren't examples I necessarily see as highly probable. They are just there to point out a kind of possibility that is getting neglected.

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Don't you think that maybe God would want to provide a transmission mechanism that would bypass Joseph's currently held beliefs and memories?

The problem with this line of reasoning, as critics are fond of pointing out, is that the translation just doesn't line up with what we might expect God to do for a translation. I don't think many people expect an extremely loose translation that makes extensive use of NT quotations or paraphrases to translate texts unrelated to it. Yet that's what happened. So what we have to do is not presuppose what God did do but look at the range of possibilities of what did happen and see what lines up with the data.

My guess, as I outlined, is that God is doing the translation primarily indirectly since most of what he does is indirect. He gives power to flawed ignorant people and lets them do his will. That leads to all sorts of problems such as having Martin Harris lose somewhere between ¼ and ½ of the translated text. 

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I am not sure what you mean by your last sentence. What authors are you talking about that may have used EmodE structures?

The idea is that Joseph had access to a text in some way but modified it. That leads to multiple authors. The analogy might be to the redactors and editors of our Old Testament. They, in the Ptolemaic era took lots of texts and oral traditions, combined them, removed bits, and massaged them somewhat to make a more coherent text. That's what Mormon did as well, offering expansions where he deemed it necessary. The argument is that in the translation process it's possible that Joseph did as well. The debate would be over whether that was an unconscious process or not. We know he did consciously do this for the second edition.

Edited March 29, 2019 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, champatsch said:

On Doctrine and Covenants 9, you'll want to look at this.

I didn't check your T&S post thoroughly for minor errors, but you'll want to change the 15th and 16th centuries to the 16th and 17th (1500s and 1600s), and when you mention seeketh near the beginning it contrasts with seeks (not seek), the historically northern form that took over. Each verb seems to have a unique trajectory in the textual record. T

Thanks. Fixed that. 

[Glenn101]

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think you miss the line of reasoning I'm following. I don't think we can know how or if it accessed Joseph's memories. Yet the answers to those questions have big implications for the answers for other things we argue about. So my argument is that we have to look at the range of possibilities given what we don't know and account for that. My worry is that in a lot of discussions on translation and the nature of the text we just don't do that enough.

So all the examples I give aren't examples I necessarily see as highly probable. They are just there to point out a kind of possibility that is getting neglected. 

I don't think we have to try to account for all of the various possibilities that may come to mind, especially when we have no way of verifying or falsifying them. We can only deal with the evidence that we have with the text itself and the observations of the various witnesses to try to understand as best we can how the process worked. The real problem with all this is that the Book of Mormon is pretty unique in the way it came to us and we are left with Joseph's succinct "by the gift and power of God" explanation, the witnesses, and the text itself.

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem with this line of reasoning, as critics are fond of pointing out, is that the translation just doesn't line up with what we might expect God to do for a translation. I don't think many people expect an extremely loose translation that makes extensive use of NT quotations or paraphrases to translate texts unrelated to it. Yet that's what happened. So what we have to do is not presuppose what God did do but look at the range of possibilities of what did happen and see what lines up with the data.

My guess, as I outlined, is that God is doing the translation primarily indirectly since most of what he does is indirect. He gives power to flawed ignorant people and lets them do his will. That leads to all sorts of problems such as having Martin Harris lose somewhere between ¼ and ½ of the translated text. 

Actually it does not line up with what critics thought it should be based upon their ideas that the Book of Mormon is a product of Joseph Smith's or an associate's imagination. The critics are hardly looking at what they think God would have done as they are pretty united in their belief that God had nothing to do with the production of the Book of Mormon. The extensive EmodE in the Book of Mormon makes the critic's assertion that the language of the Book of Mormon is just a knockoff of the King James Version of the Bible or that is is a nineteenth century text. The direct quotes from the King James bible raised objections or accusations that Joseph was using a secreted bible when dictating those verses, but then there are the verses which do not follow the King James bible which are problematic for that theory. And, if Stanford and Royal are correct, it pretty much precludes Joseph Smith as the author of the text. As far as the loose NT quotations, many of them are also found in the Old Testament. Now we do not know if the New Testament authors are quoting or paraphrasing Old testament authors or maybe getting inspiration from the same source. That is the point here. If Joseph is not the author of the Book of Mormon, what is the source?

God may do things indirectly, at times and directly at times. The translation of the Book of Mormon is unique our experience, but remember, King Mosiah was called upon to translate the Jaredite plates using the Nephite interpreters with no evidence of an intermediary. There is no reason to suppose God would have needed or used an intermediary author/translator in the process. It really does not line up with what little we do know.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

 

 

10 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

 

Clark and Stanford, quoted both of you without quoting anything because I wanted to ask both of you a question. The subject has been brought up concerning oral versus written speech, i.e. that they differ considerably. The idea being that Joseph's oral speech may have contained a lot of EmodE. If it did, it would pretty much mean that Joseph was the author or that the spiritual part of the translation process had very little to do with his speech patterns.

The question I wish to ask though is just what kind of differences would one expect to see between written speech and oral speech? When the subject first came up some time ago I did a little internet research, which of course instantly makes me an expert. 😎 But, since my memory has such gaping holes and my retention is pretty much like a sieve, I have to rather ask people that maybe have a little more expertise in the area than I.

 I was wondering if the Book of Mormon could be analyzed on that basis, to see if the text shows evidence of coming as an oral presentation pretty much extemporaneously or dictated from an already written text? Is there a way of doing that?

Thanks,

Glenn