Robert F. Smith Posted July 20, 2019 Posted July 20, 2019 17 hours ago, churchistrue said: I don't think that's fair. Someone could say the same thing about your work. The paper should be judged on its own merits. Good point, and we should appreciate the hard labor which went into assembling that huge, separate Appendix. Everybody was making plates. Lots of them. However, as you can see from my own above responses, Ryan Thomas kind of missed the point, allowing ideology to carry him where the evidence did not.
Robert F. Smith Posted July 20, 2019 Posted July 20, 2019 On 7/19/2019 at 9:03 AM, PacMan said: As far as the size of the golden plates, by any witness account, there was more than sufficient space to produce the text of the BoM. For example, the Petelia Gold Tablet is a totenpass less than 1.5 inches long. It is really, really small. Yet it produces 12 lines of text of about 10 words each. This is smaller in size but larger in content than a verse in the standard printing of the BoM. If Mormon wanted to make it all fit, he very well could have done so--that's before taking into account that the individual sheets of the tablet were bigger (6x8) than a standard BoM print (double page print is about 5x8), that many languages use much more abbreviated writing styles than English (the whole point of the reformed Egyptian was that it took up less space than Hebrew, which is pretty close to the size of the Greek on the Petelia Gold Tablet), that the chapters did not come with chapter headings, that the footnotes post-dated Mormon by a few years, and that the difference in total thickness of the compilation is 6 inches (golden) to 3/8 (paper). Of course, you could double, triple, octuple, or sixteen-tuple (I don't know the real word) the thickness of our paper and still have sufficient material left over for both the text and the sealed portion (about half of the whole record)--ignoring the fact that the thickness of each golden sheet (according to witness testimony) was only necessarily as thick as parchment. What makes this all the more feasible, is that the translation of the 24 Jaredite plates (from the golden plates) equates to about 15 of the smaller-sized two-page printings of English text. This gives plenty of room for the abridged material, less Moroni's added commentary. Egyptian and Hebrew do not use vowels in their Classical form of spelling, while Egyptian has the added advantage of using only one logogram for a triliteral (three consonant) word. Champollion called it "short-hand" (tachygraphie).
Robert F. Smith Posted July 20, 2019 Posted July 20, 2019 On 7/19/2019 at 11:22 AM, mapman said: ............................................... Before knowledge of the translation of the Rosetta Stone became widespread, it was commonly believed (especially among those of an esoteric or mystical bent) to regard hieroglyphics as emblems that contained ancient wisdom hidden within them. Their meanings were discerned through revelation, intuition, or mystical methods, and then formulated into common language. Thus one symbol was taken to represent a whole set of ideas. For example, Athanasius Kircher translated the symbols that modern Egyptologists read as dd Wsr, "Osiris says," as "The treachery of Typhon ends at the throne of Isis, the moisture of nature is guarded by the vigilance of Anubis." This understanding of hieroglyphics is demonstrated in the Kirtland Egyptian papers, where individual symbols are sometimes interpreted as whole paragraphs of text. The symbols are interpreted in different ways in different "degrees", and not in the way that Egyptologists have discovered they mean, suggesting that these interpretations were received by inspiration and are not literal translations. ............................. Jeff Lindsay deals with this question at length in his latest review, “A Precious Resource with Some Gaps,” Interpreter, 33 (2019):13-104, online at https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-precious-resource-with-some-gaps/ . KEP isn't necessarily what it appears to be on the surface, and they are far from inspired. 2
PacMan Posted July 20, 2019 Posted July 20, 2019 5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Egyptian and Hebrew do not use vowels in their Classical form of spelling, while Egyptian has the added advantage of using only one logogram for a triliteral (three consonant) word. Champollion called it "short-hand" (tachygraphie). Precisely. I don't know much about Egyptian writing. But I knows some Chinese. And if the two are alike, you can cram a whole lot of information in just a couple spaces. The "size" of the plates is a nonstarter. 1
cinepro Posted July 21, 2019 Posted July 21, 2019 On 7/19/2019 at 8:03 AM, PacMan said: As far as the size of the golden plates, by any witness account, there was more than sufficient space to produce the text of the BoM. How much space would have been needed on the plates if they weren't being referred to during the translation process? 1
PacMan Posted July 21, 2019 Posted July 21, 2019 1 hour ago, cinepro said: How much space would have been needed on the plates if they weren't being referred to during the translation process? Same answer. However the content of the BoM was received (seer stones, revelation, etc.), it was not a "translation" as we use the term today. Joseph couldn't read the actual text of the plates anyway. The point is that the plates (could have) physically housed the content contained in the BoM. 3
Rajah Manchou Posted July 21, 2019 Posted July 21, 2019 (edited) On 7/19/2019 at 11:23 PM, Ryan Dahle said: Moreover, there are ancient metal documents that are more comparable in length to the Book of Mormon. They just don't happen to fit the right time, place, and genre simultaneously. They fit in the right time and genre just fine. The tradition of inscribing lengthy religious texts on metal plates to preserve the teachings from corruption dates to the Book of Mormon time period. An Indian text translated in the 4th century AD tells of the "School of Copper-plates", the dominant religious group on the island known as Taprobane, or Copper Island: “A hundred years after the Buddha’s demise, King Asoka was destroying Buddhism. His brother was a monk and obtained Arahatship. When [the King] was persecuting Buddhism he was a great elder. Worrying that Buddhism might be replaced by [other religions] and disappear, he had the Tripitaka engraved on copper plates and had them sent to the Lion county. Later on, King Asoka had faith in some monks and took back the Tipitaka on copper plates to circulate. This is why [it] is called the [school of copper plates]; it is the School of Elders.” In other words, the traditions of South and Southeast Asia is that the entire Buddhist canon was preserved on metal plates, as early as the 3rd century BC. This act of preserving the entire canon on metal plates was repeated during the time of King Kanishka in 2C AD. The tradition of preserving religious texts on gold plates was carried to East Asia where there are countless example of religious texts inscribed on gold plates and buried for preservation. [1] ---------[1] Buddhist Texts on Gold and Other Metals in East Asia: Preliminary Observations Peter Kornicki with T.H. Barrett Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University Volume 2, Spring 2017 Edited July 21, 2019 by Rajah Manchou 3
clarkgoble Posted July 22, 2019 Posted July 22, 2019 On 7/19/2019 at 9:43 PM, Burnside said: Moroni had a sled and what, dragged the plates from Central America/ Southern Mexico? I can only imagine he had to repeatedly bury them when he got hungry and had to go a-hunting and run down his prey, during his travels to upstate New York. ha ha! If that model is correct then yes, he'd almost certainly have to hide the plates while hunting. I'm not quite sure why you find that so unlikely since that would have been true of most traders if they didn't have horses - yet we know there were extensive trade routes from Mexico reaching throughout the US is pre-columbian times. On 7/19/2019 at 9:43 PM, Burnside said: Since you believe in the Two-Cumorah geography theory which originated with the RLDS Church: Page 150 of this 1924 book, published in Independence, MO: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89058377359;view=2up;seq=154;skin=mobile Again, the origin of an idea is separate from the support for an idea. That you consistently are unable to see that presumably says a lot about how you evaluate ideas. I'll leave it at that. On 7/20/2019 at 5:37 AM, Kevin Christensen said: Clark is probably referring to the two pre-exilic silver scrolls from near Jerusalem, rather than Qumran, which provided a copper scroll. Jeff Lindsay quotes Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay in "The Riches of Ketef Hinnom," Biblical Archaeology Review, 35:4 (July/August September/October 2009): Whoops. Yes. I should have been more clear there. On 7/20/2019 at 6:42 AM, churchistrue said: OK. I thought that might might have been what he was referring to. That feels a little bit of an overreach to claim they "contain the scriptures". As I mentioned, they may have functioned more as quasi-magical amulets. We know that was a Jewish tradition among some groups in the Roman era and persists among some groups to the present. The issue isn't whether they represent the tradition of maintaining full texts on metal, but rather that by establishing at the time of Nephi the tradition of writing on metal scripture it makes plausible the idea of longer writing.
churchistrue Posted July 22, 2019 Posted July 22, 2019 2 hours ago, clarkgoble said: As I mentioned, they may have functioned more as quasi-magical amulets. We know that was a Jewish tradition among some groups in the Roman era and persists among some groups to the present. The issue isn't whether they represent the tradition of maintaining full texts on metal, but rather that by establishing at the time of Nephi the tradition of writing on metal scripture it makes plausible the idea of longer writing. Yeah for me, it doesn't. One phrase from scripture isn't even close to the same thing as a precedent for the entire Hebrew Bible copied on metal plates. But I guess that's getting into a subjective view.
clarkgoble Posted July 22, 2019 Posted July 22, 2019 21 minutes ago, churchistrue said: Yeah for me, it doesn't. One phrase from scripture isn't even close to the same thing as a precedent for the entire Hebrew Bible copied on metal plates. But I guess that's getting into a subjective view. Once you know you can do it for short sections doesn't that imply the technology for longer sections? I guess I'm not following you. It doesn't mean it happened but it surely seems a plausible process. Now if one takes the kind of minimalism that I think Biblical scholars tend to embrace one should only believe what is required by evidence. Absence of direct evidence is evidence of total absence. I think that problematic given the paucity of data from pre-Hellenistic times.
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