Emode as Proof Js Did Not Write Bom

[Honorentheos]

8 minutes ago, JarMan said:

It’s really only significant if it occurs before 1828, though. 

I thought the point was that Smith couldn't pretend to use EmodE otherwise he could be accused of attempting to mimic the language of the KJV. It had to be given to him. Or is that post shifting?

Edited August 4, 2020 by Honorentheos

[JarMan]

13 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

I thought the point was that Smith couldn't pretend to use EmodE otherwise he could be accused of attempting to mimic the language of the KJV. It had to be given to him. Or is that post shifting?

He could mimic EModE from the Bible. Or from the Book of Mormon. But he couldn’t come up with extra biblical EModE. But that’s what we find throughout the Book of Mormon. 

[Bob Crockett]

Just now, JarMan said:

He could mimic EModE from the Bible. Or from the Book of Mormon. But he couldn’t come up with extra biblical EModE. But that’s what we find throughout the Book of Mormon. 

I don't believe it. Give me two good examples. 

[Honorentheos]

7 minutes ago, JarMan said:

He could mimic EModE from the Bible. Or from the Book of Mormon. But he couldn’t come up with extra biblical EModE. But that’s what we find throughout the Book of Mormon. 

So far following Carmack and searching the Joseph Smith Papers has been 2 for 2. But its worse than this. The phrases show up in the writings of Cowdery when he is waxing biblical, too. It seems this theory should have looked at the potential 19th c. authors and their other similar writings rather than at other pseudo biblical texts for comparisons.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Honorentheos

[Bob Crockett]

So what does it mean when these phrases are common in 1830 literature?

[Honorentheos]

7 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

So what does it mean when these phrases are common in 1830 literature?

Inspired fiction was the "in" franchise among dead 16th c. writers looking for a venue to get their work published from beyond the grave?

Edited August 4, 2020 by Honorentheos

[Honorentheos]

18 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

So far following Carmack and searching the Joseph Smith Papers has been 2 for 2. But its worse than this. The phrases show up in the writings of Cowdery when he is waxing biblical, too. It seems this theory should have looked at the potential 19th c. authors and their other similar writings rather than at other pseudo biblical texts for comparisons.

Next up: lest-shall.

 

Directly from Joseph Smith's journal:

"the Bread & wine was then brought in, and I observed that we had fasted all the day; and lest we faint; as the Saviour did so shall we do on this occasion, we shall bless the bread and give it to the 12 and they to the multitude, after which we shall bless the wine and do likewise"

[JarMan]

16 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

So far following Carmack and searching the Joseph Smith Papers has been 2 for 2. But its worse than this. The phrases show up in the writings of Cowdery when he is waxing biblical, too. It seems this theory should have looked at the potential 19th c. authors and their other similar writings rather than at other pseudo biblical texts for comparisons.

I'm not sure you're understanding the point. After the Book of Mormon was produced, then of course we find Joseph and Oliver using some EmodE phrases from the Book of Mormon. But these are limited. There are only very limited writing samples for Joseph before 1828 so it's tough to make a systematic analysis. Carmack does, however, look at his 1832 history in How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History. 

Quote

Abstract: Some of the grammar of Joseph Smith’s 1832 History is examined. Three archaic, extra-biblical features that occur quite frequently in the Book of Mormon are not present in the history, even though there was ample opportunity for use. Relevant usage in the 1832 History is typical of modern English, in line with independent linguistic studies. This leads to the conclusion that Joseph’s grammar was not archaizing in these three types of morphosyntax which are prominent in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon. This corroborating evidence also indicates that English words were transmitted to Joseph throughout the dictation of the Book of Mormon.

 

33 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

I don't believe it. Give me two good examples. 

I didn't have to dig deep. I went to the very first paper Carmack published on this subject on Interpreter: A Look at Some “Nonstandard” Book of Mormon Grammar

Quote

Next we consider I had smote. To many of us, smote seems to be a past-tense verb form defectively used in a pluperfect construction. The KJV doesn’t use smote in this way. From the perspective of that important biblical text, past-participial smote is a grammatical error; it seems like smitten should have been used in 1 Nephi 4:19 (and in Alma 17:39; 20:30; 26:29; 51:20; Ether 15:31). Indeed, in the latest LDS edition there is only standardized smitten in these contexts, a clear reflection of that view. But smote is specifically noted in the OED as functioning as a past participle for centuries in English, beginning in the 16th century.

Quote

Worth mentioning here are the three places in the BofM where instead of there was + plural noun we surprisingly find the reverse situation — that is, there were + singular noun. These are all of the form there were no followed by a singular noun:

… and they were in one body. Therefore there were no chance for the robbers to plunder and to obtain food save it were to come up in open battle against the Nephites.

3 Nephi 4:4

Nevertheless … it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there were no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake

3 Nephi 11:3

peace did remain for the space of about four years, that there were no bloodshed

Mormon 1:12

Is this bad BofM grammar? The KJV doesn’t have any cases of this curious syntax, and these readings have all been changed subsequently to there was no.

There are many more examples all throughout his various papers.

[Honorentheos]

10 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I'm not sure you're understanding the point. After the Book of Mormon was produced, then of course we find Joseph and Oliver using some EmodE phrases from the Book of Mormon. But these are limited. There are only very limited writing samples for Joseph before 1828 so it's tough to make a systematic analysis. Carmack does, however, look at his 1832 history in How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History. 

I don't know. It seems the point is either the language found in the BoM could have been created by someone in the 19th c. attempting to sound biblical or the presence of these archaic phrases can only be explained by supernatural means.

I don't think arguing Smith couldn't do this having the Bible as inspiration but then could later on having the BoM as inspiration is well thought out as arguments go. Seems like that's missing...well, something.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Honorentheos

[Honorentheos]

Smith used "have smote" in a record while serving as Mayor in Nauvoo:

"We have done good for evil long enough, in all conscience, we think that we have fulfilled the scriptures every whit. They have smitten us on the one cheek, and we have turned the other, and they have smote that also."

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Nevo said:

As I've mentioned before, my Dutch immigrant stepfather overused periphrastic did at least as much as the Book of Mormon does, and he wasn't a time traveler from 1550; he learned English in the 1970s. I realize this is only anecdotal evidence, but it makes me wary of concluding that idiosyncratic usage must necessarily derive from a particular century.

You may have noticed that JarMan (on this board) has suggested Dutchman Hugo Grotius as a potential author/translator of the BofM.  Though not his only suggestion, Grotius is his prime candidate. Perhaps there is something about Dutch grammar that would favor using periphrastic "did," and other characteristics.  But then we are looking for an entire range of features, not simply that one characteristic.

Quote

I've also mentioned before Dallin D. Oaks's article in Book of Mormon Reference Companion on the language of the Book of Mormon, where he notes that "documents from the general time and area of Joseph Smith's boyhood attest to the presence in the local dialect(s) of some linguistic forms that would seem archaic to people today and that are similar to the language of the King James Bible." Oaks goes on to say: "It is common for rural communities to be conservative in preserving some older forms of speech. Furthermore, some religious groups often deliberately preserve older language forms. By these measures, Palmyra and its surrounding area thus represented a prime region for the presence of many older linguistic forms, because it was not only decidedly rural but contained a substantial number of members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) whose speech, even in normal everyday settings, was highly influenced by older forms of English" (119).

Also important is his observation that "Joseph's ability to use [archaic] forms would not have to have been exclusively determined by any direct contact with the Bible. . . . His speech, like that of everyone else, would have had multiple registers that probably varied, depending on whether he was addressing a church congregation, relating a story to small children, or telling a joke to a group of friends. But it seems that he likely had a religious register containing features associated with the language of the King James Bible." Oaks concludes: "The language of the Book of Mormon translation was likely influenced by Joseph's own language" (119). This, of course, has been the predominant view of Latter-day Saint scholars for many years.

There is nothing wrong with such offhand notions.  I myself used to take that view.  However, it is absurd to ask Oaks to write such an article, when actual experts are available.  Grant Hardy, who does not agree with Carmack & Skousen on this, would have been a far better choice.

Quote

You remember the Holmes stylometric study that looked at vocabulary richness? Matthew Roper and statisticians Paul Fields and Bruce Schaalje thought that Holmes overreached in his conclusions but allowed that his basic finding was correct: "The Holmes study shows only that the Book of Mormon texts, although consistently distinct in terms of noncontextual word usage and word-pattern ratios, display similar vocabulary richness. This might reflect simply that the Book of Mormon texts are the work of a single translator, as Joseph Smith claimed, and thus were limited by his vocabulary" ("Stylometric Analyses of the Book of Mormon: A Short History," JBMORS 21/1 [2012]: 36).

There are several ways to approach this stylometric authorship question.  I once did a very detailed statistical analysis of the usage of "it came to pass" in the Book of Mormon and the KJV Bible.  I did not know what to expect, as this was basic research.  Two conclusions stood out:  (1) narrative use in the BofM was the same as narrative use in the Bible, and (2) the one place where a BofM author was exactly the same in that phrase usage in two separate books was Mormon in the book of Mormon and Words of Mormon.  That seemed hardly likely by chance, since the two books were separated by such distance in the BofM.  Similarly, all of the basic research of Skousen & Carmack took place in complete innocence of possible conclusions.  Both were quite surprised by the results, as am I.

You may also recall the late John Tvedtnes' "Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon" (BYU Studies, 11/1 [Aut 1970]:50-60), showing how certain types of phrasing or construction could easily have been derived or influenced by biblical Hebrew.  My immediate reaction was that the BofM claims to have been written in Egyptian, and it seemed to me that all those Hebraisms posited by Tvedtnes were even better as Egyptianisms.  Indeed, there are many Egyptianisms in the BofM text which cannot be Hebraisms.  That include citations to the written claims by the late William F. Albright (non-LDS) that names such as Pahoron and Paanchi are excellent Egyptian names.  I have a huge paper with full documentation making my case, which will be forthcoming in a volume on the Book of Mormon.

There is more than one way to approach this issue.

Quote

Carmack believes that the author of the English text of the Book of Mormon "was a first-rate, independent philologist — someone extremely knowledgeable in the linguistics and literature of earlier English" ("Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?" Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 28 [2018]: 231). Someone a lot like himself, in other words. But the limited vocabulary richness would seem to argue against this view of the author/translator as littérateur. Weren't many of the earliest readers of the Book of Mormon, after all, struck by its "plainness"?

I view Carmack's analyses as interesting preliminary explorations, but I hesitate to join you and others in declaring the Book of Mormon an authentic Early Modern English text. Carmack's work has yet to be scrutinized by other specialists and, as far as I can tell, he has paid relatively little attention to nineteenth-century sources (although spoken dialects are probably going to be underrepresented in those sources anyway).   

Actually, Carmack has spent a lot of time examining 19th century sources, and that only reinforces his data on EModE.  I too looked around for local dialects, long before the EModE connection was advanced.  I had the same off the wall notions as Oaks.  Was simple common sense.  Unfortunately, there is nothing to back it up.  Certainly nothing in Joseph's personal writings, and nothing in local publications in which people are quoted in their own dialect.  We have gone over this several times on this board.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert J Anderson]

9 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You may have noticed that JarMan (on this board) has suggested Dutchman Hugo Grotius as a potential author/translator of the BofM.  Though not his only suggestion, Grotius is his prime candidate. Perhaps there is something about Dutch grammar that would favor using periphrastic "did," and other characteristics.  But then we are looking for an entire range of features, not simply that one characteristic.

There is nothing wrong with such offhand notions.  I myself used to take that view.  However, it is absurd to ask Oaks to write such an article, when actual experts are available.  Grant Hardy, who does not agree with Carmack & Skousen on this, would have been a far better choice.

There are several ways to approach this stylometric authorship question.  I once did a very detailed statistical analysis of the usage of "it came to pass" in the Book of Mormon and the KJV Bible.  I did not know what to expect, as this was basic research.  Two conclusions stood out:  (1) narrative use in the BofM was the same as narrative use in the Bible, and (2) the one place where a BofM author was exactly the same in that phrase usage in two separate books was Mormon in the book of Mormon and Words of Mormon.  That seemed hardly likely by chance, since the two books were separated by such distance in the BofM.  Similarly, all of the basic research of Skousen & Carmack took place in complete innocence of possible conclusions.  Both were quite surprised by the results, as am I.

You may also recall the late John Tvedtnes' "Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon" (BYU Studies, 11/1 [Aut 1970]:50-60), showing how certain types of phrasing or construction could easily have been derived or influenced by biblical Hebrew.  My immediate reaction was that the BofM claims to have been written in Egyptian, and it seemed to me that all those Hebraisms posited by Tvedtnes were even better as Egyptianisms.  Indeed, there are many Egyptianisms in the BofM text which cannot be Hebraisms.  That include citations to the written claims by the late William F. Albright (non-LDS) that names such as Pahoron and Paanchi are excellent Egyptian names.  I have a huge paper with full documentation making my case, which will be forthcoming in a volume on the Book of Mormon.

There is more than one way to approach this issue.

Actually, Carmack has spent a lot of time examining 19th century sources, and that only reinforces his data on EModE.  I too looked around for local dialects, long before the EModE connection was advanced.  I had the same off the wall notions as Oaks.  Was simple common sense.  Unfortunately, there is nothing to back it up.  Certainly nothing in Joseph's personal writings, and nothing in local publications in which people are quoted in their own dialect.  We have gone over this several times on this board.

Robert:

What do you make of Dr. Carmack's article on the Plot of Zion: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/on-doctrine-and-covenants-language-and-the-1833-plot-of-zion/

It seems that finding EmodE in the D&C and Temple Plot of Zion revelation points to how Joseph wanted to portray revelation, as ancient and biblical, unless one believes God/Jesus spoke EmodE for a while to Joseph.

[JarMan]

29 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

I don't know. It seems the point is either the language found in the BoM could have been created by someone in the 19th c. attempting to sound biblical or the presence of these archaic phrases can only be explained by supernatural means.

I don't think arguing Smith couldn't do this having the Bible as inspiration but then could later on having the BoM as inspiration is well thought out as arguments go. Seems like that's missing...well, something.

What you're missing is that there are many EmodE elements in the Book of Mormon that are extra biblical. Since they are extra biblical and pretty much extinct in modern English Joseph couldn't have known them when he produced the Book of Mormon. But once the Book of Mormon was produced, then he was familiar with them and could start imitating them.

21 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

Smith used "have smote" in a record while serving as Mayor in Nauvoo:

"We have done good for evil long enough, in all conscience, we think that we have fulfilled the scriptures every whit. They have smitten us on the one cheek, and we have turned the other, and they have smote that also."

Well, "have smote" is not "had smote." But it doesn't matter anyway because this is after the Book of Mormon.

[Robert J Anderson]

32 minutes ago, JarMan said:

What you're missing is that there are many EmodE elements in the Book of Mormon that are extra biblical. Since they are extra biblical and pretty much extinct in modern English Joseph couldn't have known them when he produced the Book of Mormon. But once the Book of Mormon was produced, then he was familiar with them and could start imitating them.

Well, "have smote" is not "had smote." But it doesn't matter anyway because this is after the Book of Mormon.

So, do you think the EmodE in the D&C is Joseph imitating archaic forms found in the bofm?  Wouldn't God have corrected him as HIS word was so important to transmit to the people that HE would want to control the language?  Inserting EmodE into the revelations means more of a chance at misinterpretation as it is a language from the past and not used.  I imagine God would want to be careful so there wasn't any confusion in HIS word.  Or do you think God is a lousy communicator?

[JarMan]

37 minutes ago, Robert J Anderson said:

So, do you think the EmodE in the D&C is Joseph imitating archaic forms found in the bofm?  Wouldn't God have corrected him as HIS word was so important to transmit to the people that HE would want to control the language?  Inserting EmodE into the revelations means more of a chance at misinterpretation as it is a language from the past and not used.  I imagine God would want to be careful so there wasn't any confusion in HIS word.  Or do you think God is a lousy communicator?

I think God is a super lousy communicator. 

[Bob Crockett]

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm not sure you're understanding the point. After the Book of Mormon was produced, then of course we find Joseph and Oliver using some EmodE phrases from the Book of Mormon. But these are limited. There are only very limited writing samples for Joseph before 1828 so it's tough to make a systematic analysis. Carmack does, however, look at his 1832 history in How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History. 

 

I didn't have to dig deep. I went to the very first paper Carmack published on this subject on Interpreter: A Look at Some “Nonstandard” Book of Mormon Grammar

There are many more examples all throughout his various papers.

"I had smote" was used in the poetry of Edward Lytton Bulwar in 1836, in Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes before 1823, again by Edward Lytton Bulwar.  The theme made it into a Wagnerian opera.

I can demonstrate many more examples; particular those after the Book of Mormon was published, in poetry.  "I had smote" was archaic but in use.

This is laughable.  These conclusions need to rule out the common use of the phrases in English at the time of the Book of Mormon.

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Bob Crockett

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Robert J Anderson said:

Robert:

What do you make of Dr. Carmack's article on the Plot of Zion: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/on-doctrine-and-covenants-language-and-the-1833-plot-of-zion/

It seems that finding EmodE in the D&C and Temple Plot of Zion revelation points to how Joseph wanted to portray revelation, as ancient and biblical, unless one believes God/Jesus spoke EmodE for a while to Joseph.

Carmack does theorize that instances of archaic usage are evidence of revelatory archaisms which Joseph did not use personally.  He doesn't say that Joseph came up with those archaisms on his own.

If, as JarMan suggests, "God is a super lousy communicator.," I would respond that could only be because he has flawed humans to communicate with (D&C 1:24, II Ne 31:3).  what else is going on there is opaque.

[Robert F. Smith]

20 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

"I had smote" was used in the poetry of Edward Lytton Bulwar in 1836, in Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes before 1823, again by Edward Lytton Bulwar.  The theme made it into a Wagnerian opera.

I can demonstrate many more examples; particular those after the Book of Mormon was published, in poetry.  "I had smote" was archaic but in use.

This is laughable.  These conclusions need to rule out the common use of the phrases in English at the time of the Book of Mormon.

Carmack points out the reuse of some such phrases later than their EModE origins, but his main point is the statistical usage.  Some balloon in popularity, some disappear completely.  Some appear later, but are quite rare -- as you might expect in poetry especially.  If you can't graph the rate of occurrence, you aren't telling us anything.

[Bob Crockett]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Carmack points out the reuse of some such phrases later than their EModE origins, but his main point is the statistical usage.  Some balloon in popularity, some disappear completely.  Some appear later, but are quite rare -- as you might expect in poetry especially.  If you can't graph the rate of occurrence, you aren't telling us anything.

Really?  This analysis is ludicrous. 

The phrase was in use in poetry before the Book of Mormon, and in use thereafter, and I am told that the burden is with me because I must statistically rule it out?

I'd like to see peer review discussion of Dr. Carmack's work.  From linguists. 

I just addressed the tip of the iceberg with I had smote.   And this is the be best example?

We don't need fraudulent science to shore this up.  First Sorenson and now Ye Olde English. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Bob Crockett

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

Really?  This analysis is ludicrous. 

The phrase was in use in poetry before the Book of Mormon, and in use thereafter, and I am told that the burden is with me because I must statistically rule it out?.......................................

I just addressed the tip of the iceberg with I had smote.   And this is the be best example?

We don't need fraudulent science to shore this up.  .......................................

It is not "ludicrous" or "fraudulent science" to use statistics to detect the frequency of use of some feature.  In fact it is ludicrous to do otherwise, Bob.

And since when is "had smote" the supposed "best example"?  Carmack discusses the perfect tense in the BofM, as with "had been spake" at Alma 6:8 (cf. "hath/had/have (not) been spake").  He cites William Tyndale's use of "had smote," so that your use of it in Joseph Smith's day is just another red herring (and you do love red herring).  I have noted repeatedly that some aspects of language continue into the future, some do not.  If you want to focus on "had smote," but refuse to provide the statistical rate of usage of it through time, that is a perfect example of "fraudulent science."  If "had smote" continues in use through time at the same rate from Tyndale to today that does not in any way disprove the presence of EModE in the BofM, but only tells us that the phrase is not diagnostic of anything.  We need instead to look at other examples of the perfect tense (as Carmack does).  Otherwise we are merely baying at the moon.

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

I thought the point was that Smith couldn't pretend to use EmodE otherwise he could be accused of attempting to mimic the language of the KJV. It had to be given to him. Or is that post shifting?

I thought the point was that Joseph need  not be consciously using any types of phrases he had learnt through dictating and reading the BofM.  If familiarity with some phrase here or there led to its reuse by Joseph, why would that tell us anything about intentionality?  Particularly if it was hit and miss and not systematic.

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

I don't believe it. Give me two good examples. 

I gave two examples already in this thread:

Quote

Carmack calls attention to the Affirmative Past-Tense Syntax (1829 Book of Mormon contains nearly 2,000 instances of this particular syntax, using it 27% of the time in past-tense contexts. The 1611 King James Bible —which borrowed heavily from Tyndale’s biblical translations of the 1520s and ’30s — employs this syntax less than 2% of the time)[1]  Overall, both BofM positive and periphrastic "did" usage is much more common than the low rates in the KJV or pseudo-biblical texts.  The same is true for the perfect tense.

---

[1] S. Carmack, “ The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter, 14 (2015):119-186, http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-implications-of-past-tense-syntax-in-the-book-of-mormon/  .

Carmack claims for periphrastic "did" (Past Tense) that Joseph Smith was extremely unlikely to have produced the ubiquitous past-tense syntax of the Book of Mormon (didst go, did go, didst eat, did eat, did arrive), because its high rate and syntactic distribution are 16th-century in character, not pseudo-biblical, biblical, or modern.  30% positive did used with infinitives (excluding lengthy biblical passages), 90% adjacency "did <verb>", some archaic simple past-tense.  Best fit is mid- to late-1500s, but "did do" and "do do" is mainly found in 1600s, and markedly different from the relatively low rate of affirmative did found in the KJV.

Same for Perfect Tense (hath/had/have (not) been spake/spoken). 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[champatsch]

Interesting to see the back and forth here. The Book of Mormon has a constellation of non(pseudo)biblical archaic features — sometimes patterns, sometimes not at the level of patterns but multiple instances, sometimes individual instances. There's of course the lexical material as well, which isn't as cut-and-dried as the syntax, but each potential instance is significant in its own way, to different degrees (semantics being quite complex and often hard to pin down).

That earlier pseudobiblical paper is preliminary. I now have a corpus of 25 pseudobiblical writings which I'll work on improving and expanding over time. They have very little of the agentive of of the Book of Mormon, which approaches 50%. Agentive of is partially influenced by the kind of agent. If deity is the agent, there tends to be a greater usage of agentive of. That lessens its significance in the Book of Mormon, but the high level of agentive of is nevertheless part of the mosaic.

I saw lest - shall  mentioned and misanalyzed.  The shall is a subjunctive marker and needs to be in a governed clause, in the lest clause. Outside of the lest clause, the shall is irrelevant, since it isn't a subjunctive marker except in the rare case when it's a subjunctive marker triggered by an element in the following, separate clause.  In the Bible, the only instances after lest occur right after when ("lest when . . shall"), so they're probably triggered by the when. We can find lest - shall usage into the 1800s, of course, but there's very little of it and not at the level of the Book of Mormon and it's not in the 25 pseudobiblical texts. I've looked for "lest . . shall" to the degree it occurs in the Book of Mormon, and the one that came the closest was a very long late-16c thesaurus.

The bigger picture, however, is that the Book of Mormon is full of nonbiblical subjunctive shall usage, especially interesting in inasmuch clauses and in lest clauses and after verbs of influence (suasive verbs), or wherever it occurs nonbiblically. So nonbiblical suasive shall is prevalent in the Book of Mormon (more than 40 of them), but I only found suasive shall in one of the 25 pseudobiblical texts — the best one (linguistically speaking), written by a Shakespearean scholar in the 1860s on the Civil War. He used it after two verbs three times. The Book of Mormon has it after about 10 verbs more than 40 times. Another part of the mosaic.

I saw more part phraseology mentioned. As JarMan indicated, LDS writings / revelatory language don't tell us much about its prevalence because of the high likelihood of Book of Mormon influence / contamination. I'm an expert on this usage by now, and know about late 19c usage by writers such as Morris and Stevenson and Freeman. They didn't use the two rare variants present in the Book of Mormon: "a more part" and "the more parts". The Book of Mormon appears to have the most instances since Holinshed's Chronicles (1577, 1587). Book of Mormon more part usage is distinct from the two rare biblical instances. Blatchly, an early critic of Book of Mormon grammar, a Quaker, thought it was bad grammar, though he was presumably familiar with biblical expression.

Take the nonbiblical referential phraseology "of which/whom [ø] hath/has been spoken", without an it where the null sign is. The Book of Mormon has more of this than any book, and the latest I've been able to find it outside of LDS revelatory language is in the late 17c. (There are a few instances of the type "of which enough hath/has been spoken" in the 1700s, but in these single words like enough might be pronominal.) "Of which/whom [ø] is spoken" lasted longer, with the current latest in the 1780s, in a German grammar by a German speaker. I'm always interested in cataloguing latest examples, so if anyone can find late examples of this kind of language, please let me know. The rare late modern instances I've found have it's in them: "of which/whom it has been spoken".

Hope this clarifies some things (though there's always room for more clarification and further details) — that in the Book of Mormon we encounter an array of nonpseudobiblical archaic features that we don't find in the King James Bible, or that are rare there and/or formed differently, like the more part usage, where the Bible employs the short form twice, and the Book of Mormon never does 24 times.

Edited August 4, 2020 by champatsch

[champatsch]

44 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I gave two examples already in this thread:

Carmack claims for periphrastic "did" (Past Tense) that Joseph Smith was extremely unlikely to have produced the ubiquitous past-tense syntax of the Book of Mormon (didst go, did go, didst eat, did eat, did arrive), because its high rate and syntactic distribution are 16th-century in character, not pseudo-biblical, biblical, or modern.  30% positive did used with infinitives (excluding lengthy biblical passages), 90% adjacency "did <verb>", some archaic simple past-tense.  Best fit is mid- to late-1500s, but "did do" and "do do" is mainly found in 1600s, and markedly different from the relatively low rate of affirmative did found in the KJV.

Same for Perfect Tense (hath/had/have (not) been spake/spoken). 

I would modify this now, as I mentioned in a post a few days ago, since Chronicles of Eri (1822) has similar usage. Does anyone want to catalog its entire usage to get all the particulars? Probably not. For the moment I can say that the Book of Mormon's early modern–like periphrastic did is more complete and less indiscriminate than in O'Connor's text.

So, it's another part of the early modern mosaic.

On the basis of the supporting syntax, we can still say reasonably it wasn't JS producing it. Even in view of the 1822 text, it was unlikely that JS would've produced it, since the other longer pseudobiblical texts don't have the feature in the way it is in the Book of Mormon. Only Eri approaches it, and I'm trying to find out what might have prompted it in his book, which he wrote in fits and starts, over more than a decade. I know from a 19c article that he was a man of wide reading and literary attainments and a member of the Irish Bar. Spenser's Faerie Queene is a possible source. Also, since this is a book on the Irish people (widely panned), I looked at the Irish language, and noticed that /d/ and /do/ are used in the past tenses as a prefix on verb stems, closely mirroring the did / do of English. I don't know that this Irish phonological feature was a trigger, but it doesn't seem impossible.

Edited August 4, 2020 by champatsch

[champatsch]

In case some are wondering . . .

Does Chronicles of Eri have high levels of subjunctive shall? No.

Does it have early modern personal relative pronoun patterns? No.

Does it have heavy finite clausal complementation? No.

Does it have various other nonbiblical early modern features found in the Book of Mormon?
Not that I've seen. Further investigation required.