Michael D. Coe, Mesoamericanist and Book of Mormon skeptic, recently died

[SeekingUnderstanding]

On 10/12/2019 at 10:37 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

There is zero evidence of EModE being available to anybody in the 19th century, Steve, except in old books from the 16th century, and no scholar could have duplicated that 16th century mode of speech, even if he realized how it could be done.  Using the KJV wouldn't duplicate it.  The language was fully extinct.  No one else in the 19th century used that style of writing.  The conclusion is direct:  The English BofM had to have been rendered by someone in the 16th century.  That still accommodates it being a pseudepigraphon, and those who think it a piece of fiction merely have to place it in the 16th century.  Then you could theorize that Luman Walters the Magician was the one who conveyed it to Joseph, having obtained it on a trip to London where he obtained the manuscript from the remnants of the estate of Dr John Dee the Magus (I'm just throwing names around here, you understand).

Dr Stanford Carmack has spent years making his case through systematic evidence.  It was as much a surprise to him as to everyone else.  It is not a ploy, but merely an example of what happens when real research is allowed to lead the scholar wherever it takes him.  Carmack even summarized some of the high points on this board for us:

Stanford Carmack, “ The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter, 14 (2015):119-186, pdf online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/carmack-v14-2015-pp119-186-PDF.pdf , but abstract online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-implications-of-past-tense-syntax-in-the-book-of-mormon/ . 

Skousen, Royal J., and Stanford Carmack, “Editing Out the ‘Bad Grammar’ in the Book of Mormon,” BYU lecture, April 6, 2016, formal transcript published by Interpreter, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/grammatical- variation.pdf .

Carmack, Stanford, “Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?” Interpreter, 28 (2018):177-232, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/is-the-book-of-mormon-a-pseudo-archaic-text/#more-12401 .

Skousen, Royal J., and Stanford Carmack, “The Nature of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon,” lecture at BYU Alumni Center, Sept 25, 2018, online at https://interpreterfoundation.org/presentation-on-the-nature-of-the-original-language-of-the-book-of-mormon/ .

This is merely a sampling of the detailed bibliography which is available.

 

My understanding is that per Carmack the BoM is an interesting mix of EModE and more modern English. Is this not the case? What I have never seen (and don’t know that it exists) is a comparison of Joseph’s rural spoken dialect with what we see in the Book of Mormon. The comparison with other pseudo biblical sources is interesting, but since the BoM is dictated, I’m not sure the comparison is completely relevant. 

[JarMan]

24 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The problem with that theory (BofM qua Bible) is that the BofM got to us by a series of astonishingly preposterous events, the EModE mode being almost the last straw.  Even the Bible, flawed as it is with thousands of anachronisms, as least got to us by easily understood secular historical means (scribal copying and redaction).  The evangelical belief that it is free from error, and that God has kept it pure all these years, is just childish twaddle.

Yet it got to us anyhow. Just like the bible. Before modern scholarship the bible's purported origins seems preposterous. Fittingly, it was the Erasmus' textual criticism of the bible that seems to have set in motion what we consider to be modern scholarship. Now we have a workable hypothesis for how it came to be. I see the textual critical work on the Book of Mormon to be a similar watershed event.

38 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Moreover, why would secular scholars be at all interested in a 16th century BofM, except as a curiosity?  Even Dan Vogel would only need to shift his claims to the 16th century (after reading your forthcoming book).  

Scholars are very interested in early modern thinking because it was transitional in developing our modern views. Some are very interested in the religious aspects but others in the more secular. One under-appreciated aspect of the Book of Mormon that I think needs more study is the ethical system of warfare it sets forth. The personal ethics are essentially biblical, but the national/international ethic on warfare is clearly not. I don't know of any other scripture from any religious tradition (disclaimer: I'm not very familiar with Eastern religions) that sets out such clear guidelines on things like: What types of international wars are justifiable? When is civil war justifiable? How should conquered peoples be treated? How should POW's be treated? What do we do about conscientious objectors in our own ranks? What about outright dissenters? How do we deal with non-conventional combatants? Are targeted assassinations of military leaders justified? Is deception in warfare morally acceptable? And many more. Most of these items are still debated today and I happen to think that the Book of Mormon does an extraordinary job of  addressing these issues. Scholars of warfare, and particularly ethics in warfare, should take note. Particularly since most of these ideas would have been pretty revolutionary in the early modern context.

[JarMan]

22 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

My understanding is that per Carmack the BoM is an interesting mix of EModE and more modern English. Is this not the case? What I have never seen (and don’t know that it exists) is a comparison of Joseph’s rural spoken dialect with what we see in the Book of Mormon. The comparison with other pseudo biblical sources is interesting, but since the BoM is dictated, I’m not sure the comparison is completely relevant. 

Carmack does not reject the possibility that the original Book of Mormon language could be early modern with the language being reworked at some point closer to Joseph's time. (At least he does not reject this possibility on linguistic grounds.)

We have many other examples of Joseph's dictated texts. They do not show the same level of early modern English as the Book of Mormon.

Edited October 14, 2019 by JarMan

[SeekingUnderstanding]

12 minutes ago, JarMan said:

 

We have many other examples of Joseph's dictated texts. They do not show the same level of early modern English as the Book of Mormon.

So there is a difference in degree not kind? Just trying to understand. 

[JarMan]

8 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So there is a difference in degree not kind? Just trying to understand. 

There is evidence of Joseph using extra-biblical early modern English in texts he dictated after the Book of Mormon. But we can't say that it was part of his normal vernacular since he likely just picked it up from the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is systematically early modern. His later dictations have bits and pieces that are early modern. Many of the early modernisms in the Book of Mormon don't appear at all in his later dictations. So there's a difference in both degree and kind.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

46 minutes ago, JarMan said:

There is evidence of Joseph using extra-biblical early modern English in texts he dictated after the Book of Mormon. But we can't say that it was part of his normal vernacular since he likely just picked it up from the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is systematically early modern. His later dictations have bits and pieces that are early modern. Many of the early modernisms in the Book of Mormon don't appear at all in his later dictations. So there's a difference in both degree and kind.

Or that Joseph's language and grammar changed over time as he spent more time with those in the church that he founded. 

I must say, I'm not sure what the data of a book of Mormon that is full of a consistent mix of EModE and Modern English does. If it was entirely EModE, that would be evidence of an EModE author. But a mix of the two? Seems most likely that Joseph's local dialect had large traces of EModE in it. Even granting the idea of an earlier author that was later edited (creating the interesting mix that we see in the book of Mormon), I'm not sure how that supports the idea of divine origins for the book.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

My understanding is that per Carmack the BoM is an interesting mix of EModE and more modern English. Is this not the case? What I have never seen (and don’t know that it exists) is a comparison of Joseph’s rural spoken dialect with what we see in the Book of Mormon. The comparison with other pseudo biblical sources is interesting, but since the BoM is dictated, I’m not sure the comparison is completely relevant. 

 

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

Carmack does not reject the possibility that the original Book of Mormon language could be early modern with the language being reworked at some point closer to Joseph's time. (At least he does not reject this possibility on linguistic grounds.)

We have many other examples of Joseph's dictated texts. They do not show the same level of early modern English as the Book of Mormon.

Carmack says specifically

Quote

syntactic patterns and usage definitively rule out Joseph Smith or anyone else commonly associated with the composition of the Book of Mormon as potential authors of the text.    http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/72003-deutro-isaiah-question/page/2/  

Quote

The linguistic fingerprint of the Book of Mormon, in hundreds of different ways, is Early Modern English. Smith himself — out of a presumed idiosyncratic, quasi-biblical style — would not have translated and could not have translated the text into the form of the earliest text. Had his own language often found its way into the wording of the earliest text, its form would be very different from what we encounter.  https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/joseph-smith-read-the-words/ .

We are stuck with the 16th century.

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Or that Joseph's language and grammar changed over time as he spent more time with those in the church that he founded. 

I must say, I'm not sure what the data of a book of Mormon that is full of a consistent mix of EModE and Modern English does. If it was entirely EModE, that would be evidence of an EModE author. But a mix of the two? Seems most likely that Joseph's local dialect had large traces of EModE in it. Even granting the idea of an earlier author that was later edited (creating the interesting mix that we see in the book of Mormon), I'm not sure how that supports the idea of divine origins for the book.

There is precious little that is linguistically modern in the Book of Mormon. Skousen identified only six phrases that only occur in later English. After some searching I was able to eliminate two from that list. A third ("an eye singled to") is almost certainly a scribal mistake. That leaves only three phrases in the entire Book of Mormon that seem to be modern. I imagine these three will eventually be discovered in early modern texts.

 Skousen also mention that the perfective auxiliary have is considerably more frequent than the archaic perfective auxiliary be for verbs of motion or change (as in "he is risen"). This is an issue of degree and it could be that the early modern author's usage was non-typical in a way that fits better with modern usage.

Also, there are no words that were obsolete by Joseph's time. This is most easily explained by a modern re-working of the text.

Carmack mentioned something else several months ago but I can't remember what it is right now. To me the most plausible explanation is that an early modern writer with some personal or regional idiosyncrasies in  writing style wrote it and a modern person made some minor revisions to remove obsolete words. 

It seems like both sides have tried to explain the linguistic findings in a way that supports the view already held rather than honestly looking at what the data tell us. This should be a scientific endeavor where the data shape our conclusions rather than an apologetic or critical endeavor in which we attempt to interpret the data to conform with what we already believe.

[JarMan]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We are stuck with the 16th century.

I think we're stuck with the 17th Century. At the very least I don't know how we get past the fact that we have the KJB in the Book of Mormon instead of one of the 16th Century versions.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 

Carmack says specifically

We are stuck with the 16th century.

And as evidence Carmack says: “Gardner has chosen to believe that every instance of apparently obsolete lexis found in the earliest text was current in Smith’s dialect.7 It is important to note that there are more than 30 instances of apparently obsolete, nonbiblical vocabulary found in the earliest text, so it is highly likely, in the absence of comprehensive, specific evidence to the contrary, that at least one of them was not part of his dialect.”

This hardly seems like solid evidence. What does “highly likely” mean. What did Joseph’s spoken dialect look like? How much modern English grammar that is unattested in the 16th century do we see? Crunch the numbers. 

This whole way of looking at it seems backwards. There are dialects of English that to this day preserve the thee and thou as well as other forms long extinct in modern English. (See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_dialect. Count the forms from earlier English. What does that tell us exactly?) To say it’s incumbent on me or any other person to prove these 30 forms exist in Joseph’s language is ridiculous. If you ask me to, I’d put forward the Book of Mormon as exhibit a in how Joseph Smith spoke since he dictated it. How many EModE forms exist in total? What percentage of all EModE forms are found in the BoM. How many modern forms exist in the BoM? If the text doesn’t look entirely EModE, it seems much more likely that the language is representative of Joseph’s spoken dialect. All around the world people speak with one grammar at home and another when they interact with the world formally. Speak to someone in rural Munich then compare that to the high German that they would use when writing etc. The linked article is hardly convincing. 

[Robert F. Smith]

27 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

And as evidence Carmack says: “Gardner has chosen to believe that every instance of apparently obsolete lexis found in the earliest text was current in Smith’s dialect.7 It is important to note that there are more than 30 instances of apparently obsolete, nonbiblical vocabulary found in the earliest text, so it is highly likely, in the absence of comprehensive, specific evidence to the contrary, that at least one of them was not part of his dialect.”

This hardly seems like solid evidence. What does “highly likely” mean. What did Joseph’s spoken dialect look like? How much modern English grammar that is unattested in the 16th century do we see? Crunch the numbers. 

This whole way of looking at it seems backwards. There are dialects of English that to this day preserve the thee and thou as well as other forms long extinct in modern English. (See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_dialect. Count the forms from earlier English. What does that tell us exactly?) To say it’s incumbent on me or any other person to prove these 30 forms exist in Joseph’s language is ridiculous. If you ask me to, I’d put forward the Book of Mormon as exhibit a in how Joseph Smith spoke since he dictated it. How many EModE forms exist in total? What percentage of all EModE forms are found in the BoM. How many modern forms exist in the BoM? If the text doesn’t look entirely EModE, it seems much more likely that the language is representative of Joseph’s spoken dialect. All around the world people speak with one grammar at home and another when they interact with the world formally. Speak to someone in rural Munich then compare that to the high German that they would use when writing etc. The linked article is hardly convincing. 

As I have repeatedly stated, if such a dialect existed, why is it that Joseph's own writing never evinces it, and that no one else in the 19th century has ever been found to have used it?  Carmack has looked.  Language experts are well aware of the dialects you speak of, and many more besides.  However, there is at least evidence for them.

You make it sound as though Carmack took a cusory look for a few minutes and reached his conclusions, or that he played hopscotch with the whole question.  Not so.  Carmack has spent years looking carefully at an entire range of grammatical features.  The bibliography is long, and you have clearly not bothered to read it.  It shows a systematic EModE foreign to Joseph Smith, who immediately began editing out the bad grammar for the second edition (1837).  Even Joseph, ignorant as he was, could easily see that it sorely needed editing.  You really need to read Carmack's detailed articles.  If you don't have the bibliography, I can list it for you.

[Robert F. Smith]

45 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I think we're stuck with the 17th Century. At the very least I don't know how we get past the fact that we have the KJB in the Book of Mormon instead of one of the 16th Century versions.

The problem with that argument is that we have a lot of LDS scholars who insist that Joseph and Oliver pulled out a KJ Bible when they came to block quotations.  And Emma's claim will not get us past that.

[JarMan]

29 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The problem with that argument is that we have a lot of LDS scholars who insist that Joseph and Oliver pulled out a KJ Bible when they came to block quotations.  And Emma's claim will not get us past that.

I've never heard anyone claim that they pulled out a bible during translation of the Book of Mormon. I've always heard the opposite. And we don't have any witnesses claiming they used a bible, do we? 

[CA Steve]

24 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I've never heard anyone claim that they pulled out a bible during translation of the Book of Mormon. I've always heard the opposite. And we don't have any witnesses claiming they used a bible, do we? 

We don't have any witnesses who claim to have seen Joseph using Clarke's Commentary when working on the JST, but we know he did.

[JarMan]

15 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

We don't have any witnesses who claim to have seen Joseph using Clarke's Commentary when working on the JST, but we know he did.

I'm with you in regard to the idea that witness statements don't tell us everything that happened. For all we know when witnesses were present Joseph and Oliver did one thing, and when they weren't they did something completely different. Even so, we have to acknowledge a lack of evidence for a bible being used. But I'm not one of those who will claim that a bible couldn't possibly have been used based purely on a lack of evidence.

An interesting argument against a bible being used, though, comes from the 800 or so differences between the KJB and the Book of Mormon. Copying the bible directly would have produced much fewer errors. However, if Joseph was somehow going by memory, we would expect many more than 800 errors. So it seems that Joseph was working from an existing text in which the author had incorporated the KJB but consciously made a variety of changes.

[Robert F. Smith]

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

I've never heard anyone claim that they pulled out a bible during translation of the Book of Mormon. I've always heard the opposite. And we don't have any witnesses claiming they used a bible, do we? 

A careful look at the block quotations can even tell us which edition of the 1611 KJV was used (the text itself is its own best witness).  Those scholars openly stating that a KJV was used include B. H. Roberts, Sidney B. Sperry, H. Grant Vest, Daniel H. Ludlow, Stanley R. Larson, me, and others.

[CA Steve]

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

A careful look at the block quotations can even tell us which edition of the 1611 KJV was used (the text itself is its own best witness).  Those scholars openly stating that a KJV was used include B. H. Roberts, Sidney B. Sperry, H. Grant Vest, Daniel H. Ludlow, Stanley R. Larson, me, and others.

Robert,

Has anyone proposed a year, publisher, and or edition for the KJV used for the Book of Mormon?

Edited October 15, 2019 by CA Steve

[champatsch]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

13 hours ago, JarMan said:

I've never heard anyone claim that they pulled out a bible during translation of the Book of Mormon. I've always heard the opposite. And we don't have any witnesses claiming they used a bible, do we? 

A careful look at the block quotations can even tell us which edition of the 1611 KJV was used (the text itself is its own best witness).  Those scholars openly stating that a KJV was used include B. H. Roberts, Sidney B. Sperry, H. Grant Vest, Daniel H. Ludlow, Stanley R. Larson, me, and others.

No dictation witnesses said a King James Bible was used.

Latter-day Saint scholars have said a King James Bible was used.

What is clear, is that Oliver Cowdery did not copy from a King James Bible, because the same spelling errors occur in the manuscripts.

So, did Joseph Smith dictate to Oliver from a King James Bible?  If he did, it would have had to be a heavily edited, carefully prepared Bible, because of how many uncalled-for changes to King James readings there are, and how many unexpected interpolations there are.  So, probably not.

The latest critical text volume, the King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon, has finally been printed and is now being bound. It will be available for purchase, for the few who are truly interested, in November 2019.  Skousen will make a presentation about the findings, including what KJB might have been used for the quotations, in early 2020, at BYU, under the auspices of BYU Studies and the Interpreter Foundation.

[CA Steve]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

What is clear, is that Oliver Cowdery did not copy from a King James Bible, because the same spelling errors occur in the manuscripts.

Spelling errors don't occur when manually copying text?

 

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

So, did Joseph Smith dictate to Oliver from a King James Bible?  If he did, it would have had to be a heavily edited, carefully prepared Bible, because of how many uncalled-for changes to King James readings there are, and how many unexpected interpolations there are.  So, probably not.

What Bible commentaries were available at that time and have they been checked to see if the edits could have been made from them?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

15 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

As I have repeatedly stated, if such a dialect existed, why is it that Joseph's own writing never evinces it

Writing is typically done formally and is much different than the spoken word. As an alternative hypothesis, I merely offer that Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon in his native dialect mimicing the biblical style. As he grew and matured and eventually wrote, he wrote in a more standard dialect. Most dialects until recently were never written or recorded. The truth is, we don't know a great deal of how most people spoke their native tongue.  

15 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

, and that no one else in the 19th century has ever been found to have used it?  Carmack has looked.  Language experts are well aware of the dialects you speak of, and many more besides.  However, there is at least evidence for them.

And where do we find evidence of the JS dialect that he spoke growing up? Can you point me to a database somewhere?

15 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You make it sound as though Carmack took a cusory look for a few minutes and reached his conclusions, or that he played hopscotch with the whole question.  Not so.  Carmack has spent years looking carefully at an entire range of grammatical features.  The bibliography is long, and you have clearly not bothered to read it.  It shows a systematic EModE foreign to Joseph Smith, who immediately began editing out the bad grammar for the second edition (1837).  Even Joseph, ignorant as he was, could easily see that it sorely needed editing.  You really need to read Carmack's detailed articles.  If you don't have the bibliography, I can list it for you.

It's possible I'm way off base here, its true. Perhaps a different tact. If we took a chapter from the book of Helaman in its original form, removed obvious identifying information and gave it to a group of linguists who specialized in the English language, how would they date it? Would they all date it to the 16th century? Has this been done?

[Robert F. Smith]

18 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Writing is typically done formally and is much different than the spoken word. As an alternative hypothesis, I merely offer that Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon in his native dialect mimicing the biblical style.

Once again, the KJV Bible does not have the specific patterns characteristic of the BofM.  Carmack proved that, and I cited an example of the stats for you.  Moreover, Joseph's early personal writings are as informal and ignorant as it is possible to get.  If he had a dialect of some sort that you imagine, it would be present in those poor quality writings by Joseph.  And yet that 16th century EModE is wholly absent from his simplistic mode of expression.

18 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

As he grew and matured and eventually wrote, he wrote in a more standard dialect. Most dialects until recently were never written or recorded. The truth is, we don't know a great deal of how most people spoke their native tongue.  

And where do we find evidence of the JS dialect that he spoke growing up? Can you point me to a database somewhere?

All the known dialects at least have some evidence to establish their existence.  Scholars have worked hard to build up a reliable database of such dialects.  Now you are inventing one out of whole cloth just because it seems to you that such a thing actually existed.  Yet there is not a shred of evidence for it.  No one ever used such a dialect in the 19th century.  Pure supposition is not enough to make a case.  Apologists are frequently pilloried for using just that sort of illogic.

18 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It's possible I'm way off base here, its true. Perhaps a different tact. If we took a chapter from the book of Helaman in its original form, removed obvious identifying information and gave it to a group of linguists who specialized in the English language, how would they date it? Would they all date it to the 16th century? Has this been done?

The comparisons have already been done systematically for the entire BofM, covering an entire range of linguistic phenomena.  The dating and conclusions are clear.  Anyone else can do the same analysis using the thousands of digitized books from these periods.  You are speaking as though you think that someone spent one Sunday afternoon glancing over a single source.  Where do you get these ridiculous notions?  Years of hard work were spent on this, and you show no interest in reviewing it.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

No dictation witnesses said a King James Bible was used.

Latter-day Saint scholars have said a King James Bible was used.

What is clear, is that Oliver Cowdery did not copy from a King James Bible, because the same spelling errors occur in the manuscripts.

So, did Joseph Smith dictate to Oliver from a King James Bible?  If he did, it would have had to be a heavily edited, carefully prepared Bible, because of how many uncalled-for changes to King James readings there are, and how many unexpected interpolations there are.  So, probably not.

The latest critical text volume, the King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon, has finally been printed and is now being bound. It will be available for purchase, for the few who are truly interested, in November 2019.  Skousen will make a presentation about the findings, including what KJB might have been used for the quotations, in early 2020, at BYU, under the auspices of BYU Studies and the Interpreter Foundation.

I look forward to going over that volume.  May help us all understand what was actually taking place during dictation of the block quotations.

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, CA Steve said:

Robert,

Has anyone proposed a year, publisher, and or edition for the KJV used for the Book of Mormon?

Some have proposed the 1828 Phinney Bible (a KJV Bible on sale at Grandin's Bookstore in Palmyra), while others have said generally that it was the 1769 Oxford edition of the 1611 KJV.  According to champatsch in this thread, a volume on this question will be available in Nov -- by Royal Skousen -- and that should settle the matter for all of us.

[CA Steve]

51 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Some have proposed the 1828 Phinney Bible (a KJV Bible on sale at Grandin's Bookstore in Palmyra), while others have said generally that it was the 1769 Oxford edition of the 1611 KJV.  According to champatsch in this thread, a volume on this question will be available in Nov -- by Royal Skousen -- and that should settle the matter for all of us.

Oliver didn't purchase the Bible from Grandin's bookstore until Oct 8, 1829, well after they were finished with translation. I realize that would not eliminate them using another copy of it from someone else, but we know at least it wasn't the copy they purchased.

[Robert F. Smith]

25 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

Oliver didn't purchase the Bible from Grandin's bookstore until Oct 8, 1829, well after they were finished with translation. I realize that would not eliminate them using another copy of it from someone else, but we know at least it wasn't the copy they purchased.

Of course not, but I was speaking to ready availability.  I used an actual 1828 Phinney Bible every day as I edited the FARMS Book of Mormon Critical Text from 1984-1987.  I consulted it for every biblical reading, and compared it with the first edition of the 1611 KJV, as well as with the 1979 LDS KJV.  In each case, I checked every detail, including the italics.