Emode as Proof Js Did Not Write Bom

[bdouglas]

Two months ago someone from my extended family, Richard (not his real name), left the church.

“I believe Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon,” he said.

I spent an hour or so pushing back on this point. I brought up the complex geography of the BOM (“Fiction writers very rarely invent geography, and when they do it’s a very simple geography”); the language (“Who invents something like Reformed Egyptian? If you’re inventing a story about Jews from 600 BC you have them speaking Hebrew”); the various plates (“Someone could write a whole book on the various plates in the BOM alone, the abridgments, the abridgments of abridgments, the large plates, the small plates, what happened to these plates over the course of a thousand years”); the messiness yet internal consistency of the narrative (“Fiction is not messy, it is tidy, organized. But the BOM is untidy, messy, and there are loose ends everywhere. Why? Because it is not fiction"); etc., etc.

But it was all to no effect. Richard has never been a reader, and most of what I said––well, it just didn’t register with him.

But what I said next, did.

“The Book of Mormon was originally rendered in a language Joseph Smith didn’t know.”

“What?”

“The Book of Mormon, the original text that Joseph Smith dictated, was not written in the English of that day. It was not the King James English of the Bible, nor was it the English of Joseph’s day. It was written in Early Modern English, a language which had been out of use for 200 years by 1827. This was a language Joseph Smith did not know and could not have known.”

Long pause. I’d finally hit on something that Richard could grasp.

"The presence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is proof that Joseph Smith did not produce the book himself," I said.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it is a different kind of proof, one that is easily grasped by someone like Richard, who is not going to respond to other proofs.

Not that Richard is suddenly going to return to the church. I doubt that he will.

But the presence of EModE in the BOM, when taken with all of the other proofs, makes it extremely unlikely, really impossible, that JS wrote the BOM.

P.S. - Tried to edit headline but can't.

Edited August 2, 2020 by bdouglas
Clarity

[bdouglas]

The last part of my conversation with Richard went like this:

“Okay, so Joseph  Smith didn’t write the Book of Mormon. All that means is someone else did."

“Someone else? Who?”

“I dunno. Someone.”

“So someone from 200 years ago, in the English speaking world, wrote the BOM, and somehow this manuscript landed in the hands of Joseph Smith, who then connected it to a made up tale about an angel, gold plates, etc."

“I dunno. Maybe."

“The funny thing, Richard, is that you can entertain notions like that——extremely implausible, even fantastic notions——but you can’t accept the simple explanation that Joseph Smith gave about the origins of the book. You say you still believe in God, in miracles? Then why is it so hard to accept the explanation Joseph Smith gave, especially when the Book of Mormon, the product of the explanation he gave, is right in front of your eyes?"

“I dunno. This is something I will need to think about.”

Edited August 2, 2020 by bdouglas
Clarity

[JAHS]

55 minutes ago, bdouglas said:

But the BOM is untidy, messy, and there are loose ends everywhere. Why? Because it is not fiction"

Also proof that it was an abridgement that was taken from many other records. If we had all the records it might not seem so messy with loose ends.

[JarMan]

1 hour ago, bdouglas said:

“So someone from 200 years ago, in the English speaking world, wrote the BOM, and somehow this manuscript landed in the hands of Joseph Smith, who then connected it to a made up tale about an angel, gold plates, etc."

Sounds about right to me.

[Stargazer]

52 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Sounds about right to me.

It would!

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, bdouglas said:

“Fiction is not messy, it is tidy, organized. But the BOM is untidy, messy, and there are loose ends everywhere. Why? Because it is not fiction

In an effort to see how best to organize a novel I will probably never finish, I've been studying several published works in my chosen genre, and the idea of "no loose ends" has really come to the fore. Then again, there's the final season of Game of Thrones... which appears to have written by chemistry majors.

[cinepro]

2 hours ago, bdouglas said:

The last part of my conversation with Richard went like this:

“Okay, so Joseph  Smith didn’t write the Book of Mormon. All that means is someone else did."

“Someone else? Who?”

“I dunno. Someone.”

“So someone from 200 years ago, in the English speaking world, wrote the BOM, and somehow this manuscript landed in the hands of Joseph Smith, who then connected it to a made up tale about an angel, gold plates, etc."

 

It's not Richard's job to explain who wrote the Book of Mormon. Even if we don't know who did it, that doesn't mean that "God did it" is the logically compelling argument. It simply means that we don't know who did it, or how Joseph did it. It is enough for Richard to simply say that the evidence doesn't support your theory about the origin of the book.

Sure, his "Joseph did it" theory may not satisfactorily explain what you present as evidence that there is "Early Modern English" in the book, but I'm pretty sure your "God did it" theory also doesn't satisfactorily explain it either.

I can't explain the phenomenon that people describe as "UFOs", but that doesn't mean I'm logically compelled to believe they exist, or accept someone else's theory about what they are and where they came from. Unless they can provide evidence that supports their specific theory, of course.

Edited August 2, 2020 by cinepro

[bdouglas]

2 hours ago, cinepro said:

I can't explain the phenomenon that people describe as "UFOs", but that doesn't mean I'm logically compelled to believe they exist, or accept someone else's theory about what they are and where they came from. Unless they can provide evidence that supports their specific theory, of course.

The BOM will never be "logically" proven and no one will ever be "compelled" to believe it——not in this life, at least. God gives us enough to support belief, but not more. "My grace is sufficient for the meek," the scripture says.

Richard's blithe assertion that "Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon" is insupportable——this is what I was trying to show him.

That and the fact that there are no naturalistic BOM origin theories that make any sense. They require huge leaps of faith to accept——greater leaps of faith, in fact, than is required to believe the simple explanation JS gave.

It is more honest for one to say "I don't know where the BOM came from" than it is to say "Joseph Smith wrote it."

The point of my opening post is that the "Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon" theory is dead. If it wasn't dead before, it is dead now with EModE findings.

Edited August 3, 2020 by bdouglas

[cinepro]

11 minutes ago, bdouglas said:

It is more honest for one to say "I don't know where the BOM came from" than it is to say "Joseph Smith wrote it."

The point of my opening post is that the "Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon" theory is dead. If it wasn't dead before, it is dead now with EModE findings.

Uh, that's what I said. It is most honest to say that we don't know where the BoM came from. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the believers' case.

I would also be wary of being overconfident in the "EModE findings" and what they mean. I don't know how long you've been in the apologetics game, but things like that have a way of circling back and biting you in the behind.

[Tacenda]

3 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Uh, that's what I said. It is most honest to say that we don't know where the BoM came from. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the believers' case.

I would also be wary of being overconfident in the "EModE findings" and what they mean. I don't know how long you've been in the apologetics game, but things like that have a way of circling back and biting you in the behind.

What does EModE stand for?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

49 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

What does EModE stand for?

Early Modern English. Shakespeare for example wrote in EModE. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

3 hours ago, cinepro said:

I can't explain the phenomenon that people describe as "UFOs", but that doesn't mean I'm logically compelled to believe they exist, or accept someone else's theory about what they are and where they came from.

I went to a David Copperfield show that ended with a UFO being transported into the theater. I have no idea how he did that or any number of other things. I’ve searched online for explanations, and no one can provide the exact method of how he did the things he did. None the less I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the straight forward “true” answer that it was magic. 

[Tacenda]

55 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Early Modern English. Shakespeare for example wrote in EModE. 

Thanks for the help!

[Robert F. Smith]

33 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I went to a David Copperfield show that ended with a UFO being transported into the theater. I have no idea how he did that or any number of other things. I’ve searched online for explanations, and no one can provide the exact method of how he did the things he did. None the less I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the straight forward “true” answer that it was magic. 

Copperfield spends a lot of money on stage magic equipment, and the business of sleight of hand and the like is a very old and honored profession.  The audiences all know that it is fake, but they love it anyhow.

Was that what Jesus and his companions did?  Was it just old fashioned legerdemain?  Or was it real  magic?

When Moses and Aaron threw down their staffs and they turned into snakes which swallowed the snakes of Pharaoh's magicians, was that just a fairy tale, or did it really happen?  When Moses raised up a bronze snake to heal the Israelites, was that true healing, or is that just another nonsense story?

Can we trust the performance of mentalists like Dan White, Darren Brown, David Blaine, Lior Suchard, and Oz Pearlman?

Daniel Engber, “Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real,” Slate, June 7, 2017, online at  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/daryl-bem-proved-esp-is-real?utm_source=pocket-newtab , yet the conclusion of that article is that one cannot be sure at all. 

[Tacenda]

There are hundreds of instances where Joseph Smith plagiarized portions of the Joseph Smith “Translation” of the Bible directly from Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary.

Couldn't he have done the same for the Book of Mormon by borrowing from a Bible: Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English

Edited August 3, 2020 by Tacenda

[longview]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Early Modern English. Shakespeare for example wrote in EModE. 

Is it our understanding that Shakespeare was on the committee that put together the KJV Bible?  This language was the high quality King's English that was not normally spoken by the public at large.  The publication of the KJV raised the level of everyday dialogue and caused greater unity in the English nation.

[OGHoosier]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

There are hundreds of instances where Joseph Smith plagiarized portions of the Joseph Smith “Translation” of the Bible directly from Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary.

Couldn't he have done the same for the Book of Mormon by borrowing from a Bible: Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English

The occurrence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is not constrained to KJV-adjacent passages but undergirds the whole text. Joseph could have specifically analyzed the KJV and any other Early Modern texts which he could have been exposed to in order to alter his word choice, but I'll be honest, I think that's stretching it. These changes we're talking about are for the most part minutiae. The thesis that Joseph cribbed Early Modern English on purpose is also weakened by the fact that it was a dictation, which necessitates word choice on the fly. Even theories of dictation like Davis's, if I recall correctly, require Joseph to do extemporaneous dictation  on bullet points, since Joseph did not have eidetic memory. The case for specific premeditated EModE word choice is thus weakened. 

Furthermore, several prominent systemic features of EModE in the Book of Mormon belong to a class of linguistic tendencies which are subconscious - the writer typically does not choose them. Intentional EModE borrowing has a mighty hard time accounting for that. 

Also, FWIW, plagiarized is an inaccurate term since the JST was never finished and thus never published with the explanatory preface that accompanied every other one of Joseph Smith's scriptural productions. To say he plagiarized Clarke would be like taking uncredited prewriting notes for a master's thesis and calling them examples of plagiarism. 

Edit: Perhaps @champatsch could come lay down some law on this topic. 

Edited August 3, 2020 by OGHoosier
Added tag

[Kenngo1969]

The Book of Mormon, both in the text itself and in the manner of its coming forth, violates the KISS Principle repeatedly (including the pervasive presence of Early Modern English ... you're welcome, Tacenda! ... therein).  While that fact, standing alone, proves nothing, certainly, it is curious.

[Robert F. Smith]

8 hours ago, Tacenda said:

There are hundreds of instances where Joseph Smith plagiarized portions of the Joseph Smith “Translation” of the Bible directly from Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary.

Joseph and Sidney Rigdon were trying to make the KJV easier to understand, same as Alexander Campbell, Thomas Jefferson and others were doing in revising the KJV.  Using Adam Clarke was a very sensible thing to do, and I constantly use such learned volumes myself in helping clarify Scriptural texts.

Quote

Couldn't he have done the same for the Book of Mormon by borrowing from a Bible: Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English

No.  As it turns out the BofM uses types of EModE syntax which are not used in the KJV.  And even when it does use KJV syntax, it uses it at a very different rate than the KJV.  Carmack has published a long list of articles detailing how that works.  There are books from around 1540 which are closest to the BofM in style and syntax, but not Bibles.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[champatsch]

The Book of Mormon isn't a delimited early modern text from a few identifiable authors or from one particular dialect. It's a filtered, mostly and selectively early modern text, leaving pseudobiblical writings far behind in matching early modern archaism.

Four important pervasive syntactic features are the personal relative pronoun pattern (mostly late 16c / very early 17c in character), heavy finite clausal complementation with early modern modal usage (most like 16c and earlier usage), non(pseudo)biblical subjunctive shall usage (syntactic subjunctive, not morphological) (most similar to 16c usage), and the early modern periphrastic past (mostly 16c in character, when the usage peaked). The latter, however, needs internal syntactic support (of which there is plenty), since Chronicles of Eri (1822) has similar usage, though its periphrastic past lags the Book of Mormon's in quality.

[stemelbow]

17 hours ago, bdouglas said:

“So someone from 200 years ago, in the English speaking world, wrote the BOM, and somehow this manuscript landed in the hands of Joseph Smith, who then connected it to a made up tale about an angel, gold plates, etc."

 

That would be for you to explain not him.  Or are you saying God speaks in EModE?  DId God translate, Joseph translate, or some other random person do the actual translation?  The problem you are pushing Richard on is your problem.  If JOseph didn't do the translation as he claimed, then who did?  If God why would he use archaic language?  If you don't have an answer, then why do you think Richard should?  

[Tacenda]

9 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

The occurrence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is not constrained to KJV-adjacent passages but undergirds the whole text. Joseph could have specifically analyzed the KJV and any other Early Modern texts which he could have been exposed to in order to alter his word choice, but I'll be honest, I think that's stretching it. These changes we're talking about are for the most part minutiae. The thesis that Joseph cribbed Early Modern English on purpose is also weakened by the fact that it was a dictation, which necessitates word choice on the fly. Even theories of dictation like Davis's, if I recall correctly, require Joseph to do extemporaneous dictation  on bullet points, since Joseph did not have eidetic memory. The case for specific premeditated EModE word choice is thus weakened. 

Furthermore, several prominent systemic features of EModE in the Book of Mormon belong to a class of linguistic tendencies which are subconscious - the writer typically does not choose them. Intentional EModE borrowing has a mighty hard time accounting for that. 

Also, FWIW, plagiarized is an inaccurate term since the JST was never finished and thus never published with the explanatory preface that accompanied every other one of Joseph Smith's scriptural productions. To say he plagiarized Clarke would be like taking uncredited prewriting notes for a master's thesis and calling them examples of plagiarism. 

Edit: Perhaps @champatsch could come lay down some law on this topic. 

Perhaps you're right, I "plagiarized" by c/p'd partially from an intro to a podcast about JS doing this. I don't have a decent ability for the written word some days. 

But why didn't JS admit to using Clarke's work, and making it look like it was his doing? No one knew, until it was discovered right? It would have been nice if JS admitted using the help.

[The Nehor]

When did the EModE thing go from a fringe theory to accepted truth? Did I sleep through the revolution?

[Honorentheos]

There are two major theories regarding the BoM's authorship. Either it came about through the gift and power of God, or it is a fictional story created in the 19th century. One of those is a singular event while the other is extremely commonplace.

Under these two main theories are countless subtheories intended to explain the details of the parent main theory. To my mind none of them on either side is so compelling it demands to be accepted as fact. I personally favor Smith and Cowdery having worked openly on it together with full knowledge of the Whitmers it was a project. The production work was mundane. Peep stones and top hats were props brought out when entertaining guests to sell the show. The theory has the advantage of explaining why the production rate of the BoM we have far exceeded the rate required to produce the 116 pages prior to Cowdery, and the dynamic between Joseph, David, John, and Oliver that we can see evolve through the expansion and divisions within the church up to the end of the Missouri period. Given the evidence from The Late War, it's not a major event to find people in 1829 attempting to mimic the KJV. Did their attempt end up being archaic? Seems much more probable to me than a ghost committee. But do I assume that is absolutely what happened? No. The evidence is too weak around any of these subtheories to feel that degree of probability is justified.

 

Now, as to the BoM being fiction written in the 19th century? That's vastly more likely than it being a miraculously obtained and recorded history of a lost people that happens to align with theological debate and thought about the Native Americans from the period it was published.

 

Richard doesn't need to be a "reader" to recognize when the direction of disinterested sciences and other fields are no where near supporting the BoM and moving further away all the time. 

[Nevo]

19 hours ago, bdouglas said:

But it was all to no effect. Richard has never been a reader, and most of what I said––well, it just didn’t register with him.

19 hours ago, bdouglas said:

Long pause. I’d finally hit on something that Richard could grasp.

This whole dialogue with "Richard" is so contrived, I assume it's fiction. Or at least fictionalized. But the condescension part rings true.