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The Book of Mormon is a conundrum.


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1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I don't think there's consensus on that point, but again even if Joseph is reading that merely pushes the question back a step to when that text was written.

The one place I think Taves is on strong ground with evidence is the argument that writing in this heightened way leads to a different style of linguistical output. That's obvious in some cases like glossalia in say Pentacostal performances. However it also ends up being in "prophetic" writings. That is the style of writing is quite different from a person's normal writing. I don't think Mormon apologists have engaged with this issue that well.

While I personally don't buy Taves' thesis it's more because of the lack of evidence she presents for Joseph attempting to actualize a "spiritual" or "mind's eye" type of text including the manufacture of the gold plates. I think the evidence is considerable against that view which tends to push things towards the faithful or fraudulent models. It's hard to buy Taves' middle ground as working. It's the issue of the plates that undermines her arguments IMO. However I simultaneously think that in terms of the cognitive science of such "spiritual" productions she's on strong ground.

True there is hardly a consensus as to whether Joseph was reading the text or just orally dictating it. Royal Skousen seems to have put in the most work in ferreting out just how the text was dictated and is a proponent of the theory that Joseph was dictating from an already prepared text. He proposes that Joseph could actually see about twenty words at a time. Do you know of anyone that has presented any type of evidence for an extemporaneously dictated text?

I do believe that if Joseph were reading from a prepared text, that would also make Taves' idea even more problematic because her proposition would almost have to involve some type of 'stream of consciousness" type of dictation. That would hardly involve spelling out words that Joseph could not pronounce and very long words.

Glenn

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39 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You see to be avoiding my main point--which is that there is a significant disparity in the data sets and that you seem to be favoring conclusions based on a weak absence of evidence argument and essentially ignoring conclusions based on a much stronger absence of evidence argument. 

I don't agree that EmodE is a strong absence of evidence argument firstly.  But secondly, I'm not sure why you're characterizing anachronism arguments as an absence of evidence arguments.   Can you clarify how evidence that certain statements that are clearly depended on the events and ideas in the 19th century, is an absence of evidence argument and why you think this is "weak" evidence? 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The actual nature of the translation has never been a part of any prominent Mormon origin story. It has always been mostly in the domain of speculation. The scholarly community has inherited certain assumptions about the translation over time, but there is a long history in the Church of scholarly speculations being overturned by new data. Most members have no idea these shifts are even taking place.

I agree that there hasn't been a whole lot of detail given to the translation process in the traditional Mormon origin story.  This new theory would add a significant layer of complexity that I just don't see as a benefit for the church.  

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31 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Well, the argument that God can do anything essentially is an faith position that has nothing to do with any evidence.  No need to even evaluate evidence if this is the fall back position. 

Oh, that is not a fall back position at all. It is the goto position. That was Joseph's position. It is the critics who have to deal with the evidence that has been produced whichs n=makes it almost impossible that Joseph could have produced the text of the Book of Mormon himself.

Glenn

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1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Apocalyptic writings can have both contemporary as well as future meanings, and such multiple meanings can be operative not so much as a matter of faith, but as a matter of scholarship.  The scholar need not believe in the meanings and interpretations applied to a given book or text, but only to accurately apply the beliefs of contemporaries.  What, for example, did the Essenes think of Daniel?  What did the Essenes think of the Suffering Servant portions of Isaiah?  That tells us how the Jews themselves viewed such texts long before there were any Christians.  It may be eisegetic, but that is not the fault of the scholar.

Well, it's true that sacred texts mean different things to different people. What I was talking about was what Daniel meant to its author(s) and their audience. There is of course ample evidence in the scriptures for the common practice of eisegesis. Matthew is full of it. Reading new meanings into an existing text isn't theologically "wrong" per se.

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31 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Do you know of anyone that has presented any type of evidence for an extemporaneously dictated text?

I do believe that if Joseph were reading from a prepared text, that would also make Taves' idea even more problematic because her proposition would almost have to involve some type of 'stream of consciousness" type of dictation. That would hardly involve spelling out words that Joseph could not pronounce and very long words.

Yes. While a lot of people say they like Taves' theory in practice it leads to lots of problems. I think it often is a theory people like because they want a middle ground between faith or fraud. I also think that these issues haven't been engaged in well by critics - perhaps because most see the burden of proof on believers whom they feel haven't met it. That is the default position is that Joseph composed it and getting into these nuances doesn't matter. Especially since from their perspective the text itself is deeply problematic.

However there really is a lot of interesting stuff here. I also think the 116 Pages complicates the idea of Joseph having a prepared text. After all if he did, why not just "retranslate" the text exactly the same as proof of his prophethood.

I suspect the more interesting work will be between believers skeptical of Joseph just reading a text such as Brant Gardner and those who think he did such as Skousen. If nothing else it'll force the arguments to be honed. Personally I'm quite convinced for a loose translation making heavy use of the KJV. I think Brant's model works best there. However I'm also convinced by Carmack that the language of the Book of Mormon isn't just KJV text in a fashion unlikely to be produced by unconscious aping of the KJV.

What I think those pushing a loose translation have to do is explain how ideograms (which is the best explanation for the need for a loose translation) could semi-accurately be translated by paraphrases or quotations of KJV text. This is particularly the case for passages dependent upon Pauline writings.

Edited by clarkgoble
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41 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Among critics and historians it wasn't at all uncommon to postulate Joseph plagiarized the text. So I don't think you can dismiss a non-Joseph authorship so readily. That Joseph wrote it is, for non-believers, the most common interpretation. But there certainly are various problems with that view. It's just that barring clear unambiguous reference to his copying or modifying it, Joseph's authorship is the simplest naturalistic explanation. I'm not sure that entails "all our historical evidence shows that Joseph created [the Book of Mormon]." So far as I know, outside of his dictation there's not really any evidence of authorship. Even circumstantial arguments such as Vogel's claims that it uses mound builder legends and myths merely is an argument for how it was written not that Joseph wrote it.

While it's not as popular anymore, I think the non-Joseph authorship fraud model still is a live option. Particularly if Carmack's language claims work out.

Its a good point that there have been a lot of theories over time about Joseph not being able to produce the text.  My personal opinion is that none of those theories have compelling evidence.  I believe Vogel also argues that Joseph produced the text.  

43 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm very skeptical of this since "inspired pseudepigrapha" is basically a move towards a liberal protestantism. At which point why not just become a protestant? When you combine this with the changes in religious views among the Millennials and Gen-Z it's hard to see that working. 

But that's neither here nor there. Certainly there's no Apostle that thinks what you suggest, and that will be what drives the Church's positions. 

Your point is more about what direction you think will allow the church to thrive the best in the future, and my point was more about the direction I see the church going, whether it thrives in that direction or not I don't know.  

Can you comment more about the religious views of Millennials and Gen-Z, and how a more "liberal" view of scripture wouldn't work well for them?  I'm currently reading "The Next Mormons" by Jana Reiss, and I'm not sure if it addresses any questions about scripture yet or not, but I would be interested in knowing what the younger generations think about scripture.  

46 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Midrash has a fairly specific sense and is quite separate from pseudepigrapha. Midrash can have fictional elements but need not. Even pseudopigrapha can be complex since usually scholars assume the traditions aren't made up wholesale but borrow from earlier texts. The problem of using pseudopigrapha with regards to Joseph's productions is that Joseph argues against such a reading. In any case, if Daniel is ahistorical (as elements clearly are) then they're fictional. If we're talking in terms of what really happened and whether a text is reasonably accurate, surely the issue is truth vs. fiction not the question of pseudopigrapha.

I'm not as concerned with are subtle differences with the use of these terms.  I don't like using the truth vs. false terms when it comes to scripture as I think its not only disrespectful, but its also gets into category errors when people are often talking about truth in terms of how they subjectively feel about their religious experience, and not truth in terms of historical accuracy.  

Scriptures aren't documents that conform to modern historical standards, so they overwhelmingly fail to meet that standard, and in some ways its very presentist of us to judge them according to that standard.  

52 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The problem with this take is that when we look at other books attempting to do just that they don't have these elements of 16th century English. So I think Carmack makes a rather compelling argument here. 

Other texts that Joseph produced, or other texts produced by different authors?  

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22 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Oh, that is not a fall back position at all. It is the goto position. That was Joseph's position. It is the critics who have to deal with the evidence that has been produced whichs n=makes it almost impossible that Joseph could have produced the text of the Book of Mormon himself.

Glenn

This position really has no place in scholarly evidence based discussions. 

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1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It looks like the "more part" usage is actually being quoted or paraphrased from a deed that dates to the 1600s. So that hardly counts as an example of modern usage.

Carmack already knows that documents existed in 1829 that preserved the earlier usage. The issue is the likelihood of accessibility and then reproducibility in a fast-paced translation setting. The fact that we can pretty much only find such usage in earlier documents, like the legal deed reported in the book you cited, helps demonstrate that the "more part" was used with some frequency in an earlier era of English and had become obsolete by 1829.

So to make an argument for accessibility, one has to assume Joseph was rummaging through a wide variety of old books to pick up on and then use the variety of non-biblical archaism we find in the Book of Mormon, or else that ALL of these archaic features were preserved in his environment and that ALL of them escaped the textual record except for the Book of Mormon, where they occur at rates and in varieties that are unprecedented for his time. Or perhaps some combination of the two. But the fact that both of them are highly unlikely on their own doesn't make combining them any more persuasive. 

You may be right there, now that I look more closely. They seem to be summarizing records from the 17th and 18th centuries.  Still, perhaps indicative of how much easier it would be for persons in the early 19th century to encounter such material with its outdated grammar, than it would be for someone in the 21st century to encounter it.

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2 hours ago, RevTestament said:

No, they don't have to assume prophesy is real, but when they assume that it is not as a main reason for drawing their conclusions, I see a bit of a problem with it. Using that reasoning they will never accept an earlier composition date than until after the prophecy occurs. That is a problematic bias to me.

I've never seen a historical argument that was entirely based on that, but it's still a reasonable argument to make, from the perspective of professional history.

Quote

I've already shown one weakness to their conclusions - Daniel 9 concludes after your scholarship says Daniel was written. Using your scholarship, one should conclude that Daniel was written after the city was destroyed again. Oops. No one believes Daniel was written AD. 

The thing about their interpretation of Daniel 10 & 11 is that again, they assume that it all applies to the period before Christ. However, the prophecy itself does not end with Antiiochus Epiphanes, but moves onto a new king who is not from the north or south kingdoms. The new king is Rome. So, actually the vast majority of that prophecy is pertaining to this new Roman king, which is why the time has not yet come when more trouble occurs than has ever occurred from the foundation of the world. Scholars missed that because they were stuck on Antiochus Epiphanes. When they use their misinterpretation as a primary dating method for the book, they run afoul of grave error. They have foregone any real forensic or scientific dating methods. So no, I don't believe them. I know them to be wrong. The prophecy was sealed until the time of the end, and their powers of unsealing failed.... oh well.

Again, this is your theologically driven eisegesis, not a historical analysis.

Edited by Gray
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4 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Other texts that Joseph produced, or other texts produced by different authors?  

Texts produced by other authors. While not representing Joseph's linguistic tradition they represent the broader culture when an attempt at pseudo-KJV language is produced. As I've noted Carmack needs to engage with oral use but in terms of written works he's been pretty exhaustive.

6 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I'm not as concerned with are subtle differences with the use of these terms.  I don't like using the truth vs. false terms when it comes to scripture as I think its not only disrespectful, but its also gets into category errors when people are often talking about truth in terms of how they subjectively feel about their religious experience, and not truth in terms of historical accuracy.  

Well subjective judgments can make claims about historic events. Indeed we do that every day. So I'm not sure it's a category error at all. It may be they're wrong of course. 

I also don't think it's disrespectful for a skeptical Biblical scholar to say that the Exodus is fiction. You see scholars using that terminology rather regularly. More to the point though, I think it matters for many people in deciding whether to adhere to religious claims. Give me Ehrman being forthright on these issues any day - even if I disagree with him ultimately. Put an other way, if I tell a story about something that happened to me and it never happened, you'd justifiably call it fiction.

 

 

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10 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I don't agree that EmodE is a strong absence of evidence argument firstly.

I noticed.

12 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

But secondly, I'm not sure why you're characterizing anachronism arguments as an absence of evidence arguments.

An anachronism is when something doesn't fit a specific time or place. In other words, there is a perceived absence of evidence for that item in its purported context. 

30 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I agree that there hasn't been a whole lot of detail given to the translation process in the traditional Mormon origin story.  This new theory would add a significant layer of complexity that I just don't see as a benefit for the church

Not complex at all. Joseph said he read the English text of the Book of Mormon via his translation instruments and it turns out that the language of the text indicates he didn't formulate it himself. Go figure. The EModE data actually simplifies and makes better sense of the standard historical and scriptural evidence. 

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8 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Texts produced by other authors. While not representing Joseph's linguistic tradition they represent the broader culture when an attempt at pseudo-KJV language is produced. As I've noted Carmack needs to engage with oral use but in terms of written works he's been pretty exhaustive.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.  I agree that oral use needs to be better engaged with, but I don't know how possible it is to realistically evaluate other psuedo-biblical oral productions for comparison.  

10 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Well subjective judgments can make claims about historic events. Indeed we do that every day. So I'm not sure it's a category error at all. It may be they're wrong of course. 

I also don't think it's disrespectful for a skeptical Biblical scholar to say that the Exodus is fiction. You see scholars using that terminology rather regularly. More to the point though, I think it matters for many people in deciding whether to adhere to religious claims. Give me Ehrman being forthright on these issues any day - even if I disagree with him ultimately. Put an other way, if I tell a story about something that happened to me and it never happened, you'd justifiably call it fiction.

Subjective judgments about historical events aren't verifiable or accurate, but I do agree that people make them.  The category error is with respect to how people believe their religious experiences tell them something that is of the same evidentiary substance as scientific evidence.  

I also appreciate forthright language and I'm not trying to be at all unclear about what I think.  However, I can't recall running across biblical scholars using the term "fiction" much if at all.  I wonder if I've just had blinders on because I've read a few of Ehrman's books and I still don't recall him using that word frequently.  Now that you're saying this, I'm going to try and keep my eyes open for it going forward.  

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30 minutes ago, Gray said:

Still, perhaps indicative of how much easier it would be for persons in the early 19th century to encounter such material with its outdated grammar, than it would be for someone in the 21st century to encounter it.

Except that 19th century republications of the "more part" is rare and usually not the type of thing a frontier farmer like Joseph Smith would be perusing through. The fact that the phrase shows up in legal minutia across the ocean doesn't significantly add to the plausibility of Joseph stumbling upon it and noticing it, much less the entire suite of EModE features in the text.    

Edited by Ryan Dahle
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7 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

An anachronism is when something doesn't fit a specific time or place. In other words, there is a perceived absence of evidence for that item in its purported context. 

Ok, yes, that is one kind of anachronism.  Another example would be something that we know exists in the 19th century, such as Christian theological ideas that we can trace the development of these ideas over time and their dependence on certain periods in time.   So are you saying that some of the kinds of anachronisms, i.e. horses, steel, are weaker than the linguistic work around EmodE which you believe shows stronger evidence?  

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2 hours ago, Gray said:

I've never seen a historical argument that was entirely based on that, but it's still a reasonable argument to make, from the perspective of professional history.

Again, this is your theologically driven eisegesis, not a historical analysis.

Does being an historical analysis somehow automatically make them right? And I beg to differ. Like their's, mine is an interpretation, but I posit that it is true to the text of Daniel, while their's is not. I also posit that mine is an historical analysis.  Which verse would you like me to clarify from the standpoint of an historical analysis? (I will posit for this purpose that chapter 12 is not historical, but still virtually all to come, so I am speaking of 10 & 11)

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15 hours ago, champatsch said:

I hope you're taking seriously the need to study the linguistic data systematically and holistically. If not, you may be under the wrong impression that quite a few linguistic features of the text are late modern that actually are not late modern.

I don't have the expertise to study the linguistic data in the same way you have. I do believe that we have to study the translation holistically, and concentrating on linguistic data doesn't provide a holistic analysis. The most important element of the translation that doesn't respond to linguistic analysis is the types of variations that exist in the texts which clearly follow (but do not exactly reproduce) KJV texts. There are patterns in the logic behind the changes, and the statistical concentration of changes at italicized words--often leading to difficult readings in an attempt to make sense after removing the italicized word. These features are the same as we see in Joseph's translation of the Bible. The work on that text indicates that there are certainly times of great inspiration, but that many of the cases appear to be Joseph working against the English KJV text and making changes. Given that what we see there is virtually the same as we see in the Book of Mormon, it is difficult to suggest that the two were the result of very different translation processes. That kind of holistic study strongly suggests Joseph's active participation in the translation process.

Why then might we not think Joseph was involved. The presence of Early Modern English, by itself, is insufficient. it is possible that it was simply retained in less polished English. So the question is whether that was the case. The problem there, as you have pointed out, is that we have little evidence to go on. There are three problems. 1) the lack of comparative vernacular from the right time and place, 2) the problem arising from the fact that it is unique to pseudo-biblical language, and therefore might exist only in that context and not in quotidian speech, and 3) Joseph left so little in his own handwriting. That complicates things.

The fallback methodology has been to use dating of the latest discovered occurrence. That is where the problem arises. While many of the forms appear to die out earlier, not all of the forms in the text do. That should signal that the methodology of dating is problematic, and that declarations depending upon it cannot be confirmed. Since there is ambiguous dating of some elements, and the dating is based upon an absence of information, then the conclusions are built on the thinnest of logical evidence.

There is no problem with the descriptions. The declaration that the descriptions tell us that Joseph couldn't have done it are based on an absence of data that may be nothing more than the absence of discovered data. It does not preclude retention, but simply says that the evidence is not found. That is very different from saying that the data cannot exist.

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2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, thanks for clarifying.  I agree that oral use needs to be better engaged with, but I don't know how possible it is to realistically evaluate other psuedo-biblical oral productions for comparison.  

The issue isn't pseudo-biblical oral productions because I think the BoM is different from someone just spouting quasi-KJV text at a revival. Plus a lot of revival meetings had transcripts and are in the main corpuses. (They should be in the Google Books corpus for instance) The issue is whether the odd grammar appeared in spoken English. After all a lot of the formulations Carmack found aren't in the KJV.

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Subjective judgments about historical events aren't verifiable or accurate, but I do agree that people make them.  The category error is with respect to how people believe their religious experiences tell them something that is of the same evidentiary substance as scientific evidence.

I had the subjective judgment that I brushed my teeth this morning, put a cap on my toothbrush and put it in the drawer. That's completely verifiable. So I think you're just wrong that subjective judgments aren't verifiable. The majority of them are trivially verifiable. There may be some that aren't, but if I claim a revelation that someone's lost watch is in a certain location one can simply look. That's why I disagree with the idea this is a category error. No one is claiming it is science, but to have an evidentiary substrate doesn't entail it is science or academic history. 

31 minutes ago, Brant Gardner said:

I don't have the expertise to study the linguistic data in the same way you have. I do believe that we have to study the translation holistically, and concentrating on linguistic data doesn't provide a holistic analysis.

You don't have to be a linguist to study the data. You can actually do most of the queries just against Google Books by setting the date to books before 1/1/1830. It won't be as good as the corpuses that Carmack uses but gives you an idea if it's on the level. I went from a fairly big skeptic to being mostly convinced, although as I said I think the oral transcripts need be engaged with.

What the implications are I'm not sure about. The data seems to be orthogonal to most of the debates although it does give a compelling reason to think Joseph not the author. I'm not sure it does much beyond that though.

I do agree that with the rest the more holistic issues are important. More to the point I think we need to understand the patterns of KJV usage, which haven't been analyzed as well as they could. Right now most of the attention was by critics attempting to show the book as plagiarized or anachronistic. I think apologists or faithful scholars should be looking trying to discern what the strategy of KJV quotations is. Likewise, assuming the underlying text is ideographs rather than something like Hebrew written in hieratic, whether the underlying text entails a kind of loose translation. My guess is that the KJV quotations were designed to indicate reference but some things, like anachronistic Pauline quotations are very intriguing. Not a lot of work has been done on this and I think it important.

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, yes, that is one kind of anachronism.  Another example would be something that we know exists in the 19th century, such as Christian theological ideas that we can trace the development of these ideas over time and their dependence on certain periods in time.   So are you saying that some of the kinds of anachronisms, i.e. horses, steel, are weaker than the linguistic work around EmodE which you believe shows stronger evidence?  

I think steel, gold, silver and other metals are the biggest thing to explain in the Book of Mormon. There's really no apologetic answer for them that's satisfactory. Most of the rest - horses, bows, swords and the like - can be explained by linguistic drift where a symbol comes to have a new referent. So far as I'm aware there's nothing in the text that demands horses be used like old world horses. Deer that are traded and are harvested works quite well. Ditto flocks of turkeys for where people assume the flocks are sheep. There might be one or two places that remain problems, but I think it's metal that's the primary issue as an anachronism at this stage.

But of course for the skeptic of historicity the linguistic issues Carmack raises aren't troubling for nearly the same sorts of reasons that metal isn't troubling to the believer. The perception is that the weight of the rest of the evidence overwhelms what can't yet be explained making it less problematic.

 

 

Edited by clarkgoble
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17 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

These are very common surface explanations for all things Mormon.  In each case, however, they don't hold up well on the rocks and shoals of reality.

I tend to agree with you. There comes a point where you have to seriously consider that things were simply made up or copied. There are A LOT of “coincidences” in church history. 

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4 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

However there really is a lot of interesting stuff here. I also think the 116 Pages complicates the idea of Joseph having a prepared text. After all if he did, why not just "retranslate" the text exactly the same as proof of his prophethood.

I was not really pushing the idea that Joseph had a prepared text. I only threw that in because it is one of the theories proposed by some critics, i.e. that Joseph had a prepared text that he somehow was able to conceal from onlookers. The retranslation problem is addressed in Doctrine and Covenants section 10.

Glenn

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8 hours ago, Gray said:

As soon as you bring God into the picture we're no longer talking about data.

That's a distraction, since the same thing can be stated otherwise, for those that have other priorities. For example, it can be said, quite accurately, that the data fully support the notion that Joseph Smith was not the author or the English-language translator of the text.

Those with other priorities might actually agree with this if they study the linguistic data carefully, and then merely assume that there were other human authors, something that has actually been put forward before.

I imagine you know this, but are just trying to be difficult.

Edited by champatsch
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8 hours ago, Gray said:

The phrase "the more part" occurs five times in The Report of the Commissioners Concerning Charities, from 1826, England. I'm not suggesting Joseph Smith got the phrase from this book. but here it is still in use in rural England.

https://books.google.com/books?id=GvQGAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA112&lpg=RA1-PA112&dq="the+more+part+of"&source=bl&ots=OBy47oWXy8&sig=ACfU3U1UChIB0sc1T1FzzNVL_oC_sdD-Iw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihusP1poTgAhWKj4MKHf5vCZMQ6AEwCnoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q="the more part of"&f=false

That's lazy work. What's the true date of this language?

Anyway, that kind of evidence is almost entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. There are several important aspects of the Book of Mormon's more part usage, which I've laid out twice before in two different papers.

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1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

The issue isn't pseudo-biblical oral productions because I think the BoM is different from someone just spouting quasi-KJV text at a revival. Plus a lot of revival meetings had transcripts and are in the main corpuses. (They should be in the Google Books corpus for instance) The issue is whether the odd grammar appeared in spoken English. After all a lot of the formulations Carmack found aren't in the KJV.

I wouldn’t necessarily think people at a revival were even attempting to speak in the same type of pseudo biblical language that Joseph was when dictating the BoM.  While the spoken English of the region would certainly help for this analysis, it seems a little different to have someone intentionally trying to mimic archaic sounding English biblical language and I would expect that to differ from regular speech. 

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I had the subjective judgment that I brushed my teeth this morning, put a cap on my toothbrush and put it in the drawer. That's completely verifiable. So I think you're just wrong that subjective judgments aren't verifiable. The majority of them are trivially verifiable. There may be some that aren't, but if I claim a revelation that someone's lost watch is in a certain location one can simply look. That's why I disagree with the idea this is a category error. No one is claiming it is science, but to have an evidentiary substrate doesn't entail it is science or academic history. 

Your personal experiences don't become scientifically verifiable until they passes the muster of testing, verification, peer review, etc.  Your description of person experience could be accurate, but it also could be flawed.  

And lots of religious people and other groups lift these types of experiences up to the status that competes against science, that’s the problem.  When the personal and subjective are just as influential or more so than science, we get movements like the anti vaccination crowd.  And these ideas have a negative impact on society and individuals.  In Mormonism many people I’ve interacted with in this board think that their personal testimony of the BoM is evidence for its historicity.  That is a category error, and answers to prayer are not scientific and don’t meet that standard for evidence.  

Interesting talk on the scientific method I just happen to listen to today.  Coincidence or inspiration?  You decide.  😆

https://www.ted.com/talks/phil_plait_the_secret_to_scientific_discoveries_making_mistakes/up-next

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think steel, gold, silver and other metals are the biggest thing to explain in the Book of Mormon. There's really no apologetic answer for them that's satisfactory. Most of the rest - horses, bows, swords and the like - can be explained by linguistic drift where a symbol comes to have a new referent. So far as I'm aware there's nothing in the text that demands horses be used like old world horses. Deer that are traded and are harvested works quite well. Ditto flocks of turkeys for where people assume the flocks are sheep. There might be one or two places that remain problems, but I think it's metal that's the primary issue as an anachronism at this stage.

But of course for the skeptic of historicity the linguistic issues Carmack raises aren't troubling for nearly the same sorts of reasons that metal isn't troubling to the believer. The perception is that the weight of the rest of the evidence overwhelms what can't yet be explained making it less problematic.

I think the Christian theology is a bigger problem than the metals.  At least for me personally, that was the evidence that pushed me away from historicity in a definitive way.  The fact that these theological concepts about Jesus have a clear evolution and genesis means that they couldn’t have existed ever at any point in the ancient Americas.  And for someone who was trying to hold onto a very loose translation paradigm with a hope that at least some of the inspired parts had an ancient root to them, to find out that all of the Christian ideas couldn’t have existed in an ancient American continent, pretty much sealed the fait of any hopes I had for a partially historical text.  

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7 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Why are you assuming its a foreign language that Joseph didn't know?  The EmodE you're finding is in the BoM and other early documents that Joseph dictated.  You have a very hard task of trying to prove something that all our historical evidence shows that Joseph created.  I can't even imagine a more difficult task.  

I'm not assuming, you are assuming. I have spent a lot of time studying this very issue.

You don't know much about this, I gather. If you haven't studied any of this material somewhat carefully, then you can't know that what you just wrote here is accurate. It isn't accurate, and you don't know the subject matter, but that hasn't dissuaded you from asserting things. I guess it doesn't matter to you that you may be recklessly throwing out a lot of misinformation.

On a general note, the Book of Mormon has many patterns and individual instances that are archaic but different from biblical patterns and individual instances. MANY. Over and over. They are not in pseudo-biblical texts. They had entered obsolescence by Joseph's time, or were truly obsolete. This applies to the vocabulary and the grammar, including syntax.

Edited by champatsch
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