The Gold Plates

[Calm]

55 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Check it out, 3 pager

https://www.academia.edu/35043132/Review_of_Ann_Taves_Revelatory_Events?email_work_card=thumbnail

What does that have to do with my comment?

Does it support that most people don’t understand religion as belonging in the context of the divine or spiritual realm?

[mfbukowski]

58 minutes ago, Teancum said:

That is ok. Your posts make my head hurt.  😏😇

Me too, but don't tell anyone.

 

[mfbukowski]

22 minutes ago, Calm said:

What does that have to do with my comment?

Does it support that most people don’t understand religion as belonging in the context of the divine or spiritual realm?

I seldom care about what "most people" think.  What would be the purpose of studying that?

[Calm]

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I seldom care about what "most people" think.  What would be the purpose of studying that?

It is not about studying. It is about communicating. If someone you are talking to limits religion to the supernatural, you insisting there is secular religion is nonsense to them and they will dismiss your argument. If you instead talk about having faith in a secular position, even blind faith at times, they may actually agree with you. 
 

If your intent is to teach, it seems to me to be wise to use words in the way those you are attempting to communicate with use them and to avoid the more ambiguous ones. At least then you have a chance of both being in the same ballpark of discussion, rather than both essentially being on an otherwise empty field arguing with the air.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Calm

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

And painted gold. It’s probable that a bunch of farmers would detect a block of wood with some metal plates even if it were covered in beeswax. 

The witnesses were all believers in Josephs' divine mandate and call, and as Nevo points out, were primed to believe. It's not like Joseph took 11 disinterested local farmers. I wonder why not.

[mfbukowski]

26 minutes ago, Calm said:

It is not about studying. It is about communicating. If someone you are talking to limits religion to the supernatural, you insisting there is secular religion is nonsense and they will dismiss your argument. If you instead talk about having faith in a secular position, even blind faith at times, they may actually agree with you. 
 

If your intent is to teach, it seems to me to be wise to use words in the way those you are attempting to communicate with use them and to avoid the more ambiguous ones. At least then you have a chance of both being in the same ballpark of discussion, rather than both essentially being on an otherwise empty field arguing with the air.

I am such an idiot at communicating.

Thanks very much.

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I am such an idiot at communicating.

Thanks very much.

I would love you to persuade others that blind faith is as frequent a visitor in secular matters as religious.  And that religious faith can be grounded on quite solid experience, even if personal. 

[mfbukowski]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

I would love you to persuade others that blind faith is as frequent a visitor in secular matters as religious.  And that religious faith can be grounded on quite solid experience, even if personal. 

Agree, I have been trying for years, at least in that second area

[Stormin' Mormon]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

 It's not like Joseph took 11 disinterested local farmers. I wonder why not.

Why would 11 disinterested farmers agree to put their reputations on the line for the local charlatan? 

Conversely, why would Joseph trust 11 disinterested farmers to stand firm in their defense of a man they barely knew?   

If I was trusting my reputation, future livelihood, and even my very life to 11 other people, I'm not sure I would have picked 11 randos over 11 close and trusted friends.  There may have been greater evidentiary value to using the disinterested farmers, but it's not like that choice wouldn't have been laden with its share of risks as well.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Stormin' Mormon

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

Why would 11 disinterested farmers agree to put their reputations on the line for the local charlatan? 

Conversely, why would Joseph trust 11 disinterested farmers to stand firm in their defense of a man they barely knew?   

If I was trusting my reputation, future livelihood, and even my very life to 11 other people, I'm not sure I would have picked 11 randos over 11 close and trusted friends.  There may have been greater evidentiary value to using the disinterested farmers, but it's not like that choice wouldn't have been laden with its share of risks as well.

In addition, several of those who witnessed the plates played important roles in the fledgling Church. So it would make sense for Joseph or the Lord (assuming he authorized the selection of both the Three and the Eight) to have chosen from among those few who already believed and could help the Church grow and stabilize.

Those inclined to be suspicious of the selection process of the witnesses certainly can make that choice, but the the available evidence doesn't by any means necessitate such suspicion. From my view, it seems more in keeping with the gospel itself for the witnesses to be chosen among believers, rather than from random (supposedly objective) outsiders. An argument could even be made that such an effort (choosing random local citizens) might make it look more like a con job, with Joseph duping individuals who wouldn't really be able to test his character and trustworthiness on other grounds. 

[Vanguard]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I am such an idiot at communicating.

Thanks very much.

I don't think you're any more an idiot than the rest of us. ; ) Personally, I have believed firmly for some time that you are on to something powerful though frequently (almost always?) I become lost in your wording. Now that may be due to my poor comprehension though it may also be due to you finding a better way of communicating to the masses. ; ) I listened to a bit to Rorty off YouTube and within about a minute I began to wander...

[JustAnAustralian]

11 random farmers would probably tell him that unless he was going to help them pick the crops to shut up and get off their land.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Vanguard said:

I don't think you're any more an idiot than the rest of us. ; ) Personally, I have believed firmly for some time that you are on to something powerful though frequently (almost always?) I become lost in your wording. Now that may be due to my poor comprehension though it may also be due to you finding a better way of communicating to the masses. ; ) I listened to a bit to Rorty off YouTube and within about a minute I began to wander...

Well thanks!!  Great compliment!

Please ask me to go back over something- ANYTIME, I take it as a strong responsibility to reply to every comment the best I can!

I suppose not commenting while listening to the news or watching judge Judy or football would help.

Henceforth I will go into my office, not use my phone to type and actually think about what I am saying!   

And no sarcasm!   😇

Edited September 21, 2022 by mfbukowski

[Teancum]

21 hours ago, smac97 said:

I think academics are, generally speaking, not inclined to pay much attention to the truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Very little upside, all sorts of downsides.

I am not sure I agree.  Experts engage in all sorts of things they may not believe in.  Bart Ehrman is a NT expert but is now an atheist. There are many documents and texts out there that I am sure when they have reasonable merits and scholar is interested in pursuing. THey don't have to believe the text is divine, or from God, or the  narrative from Joseph Smith about how he got it to see if it really meets the ancient texts attributes that LDS apologists and scholars argue for.  Also are any of the arguments and books or paper making the arguments peer reviewed outside the LDS scholar circles?  Likely not.  I think this is highly problematic.  It seems if these arguments in favor or as strong as you seem to believe they are non LDS scholars ought to take notice.

[Ryan Dahle]

On 9/19/2022 at 8:16 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. I haven't done a lot with 19th century texts. Now, for 18th century texts, sure. I can do this. Generally, the people I see who make claims of this sort have never spent any time actually reading the literature or the source texts. Ring forms are particularly interesting to me (and were a bit of a hobby a while back) because not only do we find them as these large macro chiasms, we also find them as much shorter chaisms of the sort you highlight in the Book of Mormon. More to the point, we know in several instances that these were deliberate rhetorical structures based on comments by the authors. It was a favorite, for example, of Giambattista Vico. There are lots of examples in his Liber Metaphysicus. This issue has always been one of the real weaknesses of Book of Mormon apologetics - it has tended to approach the Book of Mormon strictly through the lens of Biblical Studies - it wants to treat the Book of Mormon as an ancient text rather than what it really is - a modern text claiming to be a translation of an ancient text. As I pointed out in my 2016 presentation:

Thanks for the reference. Do you have the particular structures identified? I really would be interested to see them. 

Also, can you point to the comments made by the author that you had mentioned?

Edited September 21, 2022 by Ryan Dahle

[smac97]

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

Quote

I think academics are, generally speaking, not inclined to pay much attention to the truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Very little upside, all sorts of downsides.

I am not sure I agree. 

Well, let's look at that.  By way of example, Book of Mormon Central published this article in 2018: Five Compelling Archeological Evidences For the Book of Mormon

The five evidences are:

• Metal Plates
• The Nahom Altar
• Cement in Mesoamerica
• The Seal of Mulek
• Barley in the Americas

Consider Nahom.  Dan Vogel addressed it 2004, but otherwise look at the "references" in the Wikipedia entry:

Quote

• Aston, Warren P.; Aston, Michaela Knoth (1994), In the Footsteps of Lehi: New Evidence for Lehi's Journey across Arabia to Bountiful, Deseret Book Company, ISBN 0-87579-847-0.
• Aston, Warren P (2001), "Newly Found Altars from Nahom", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Maxwell Institute, 10 (2), archived from the original on 2009-04-22, retrieved 2006-12-19.
• Barney, Kevin L (2003), "A More Responsible Critique", FARMS Review, Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 15 (1): 97–146, archived from the original on 2008-03-06, retrieved 2007-02-06.
• Brown, S.Kent (February 23, 2001), On Nahom/NHM, retrieved 2006-12-21.
• Brown, S. Kent (1999), "New Light: "The Place That Was Called Nahom": New Light from Ancient Yemen", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Maxwell Institute, 8 (1), archived from the original on 2006-12-10, retrieved 2006-12-19.
• Christensen, Ross T (August 1978), "The Place Called Nahom", Comment, Ensign, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, retrieved 2011-10-23.
• Damrosch, David (1987), The Narrative Covenant: Transformations of Genre in the Growth of Biblical Literature, San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, ISBN 0-8014-9934-8.
• Givens, Terryl L (2002), By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 120–21, ISBN 0-19-513818-X.
• Goff, Alan. "Mourning, Consolation, and Repentance at Nahom". In Sorenson & Thorne (1991)..
• Hilton, Lynn M; Hilton, Hope A (October 1976), "In Search of Lehi's Trail—Part 2: The Journey", Ensign, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 34–35, retrieved 2007-01-11.
• Hilton, Lynn M; Hilton, Hope A (1996), Discovering Lehi: New Evidence of Lehi and Nephi in Arabia, Springville, Utah: Cedar Fort, Inc., ISBN 1-55517-257-1.
• Peterson, Daniel C, Evidences of the Book of Mormon, Maxwell Institute, archived from the original on 2006-12-11, retrieved 2007-01-08.
• Potter, George; Wellington, Richard (2004), Lehi in the Wilderness: 81 New Documented Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is a True History, Springville, Utah: Cedar Fort, Inc., ISBN 1-55517-641-0.
• Reynolds, Noel B, ed. (1997), "Lehi's Arabian Journey Updated", Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, pp. 379–389, ISBN 0-934893-25-X, archived from the original on 2007-11-12.
• Robin, Christian; et al. (1997), Yemen au Pays de la reine de Saba, Paris: Flammarion.
• Roper, Matthew (1997), "Unanswered Mormon Scholars", FARMS Review of Books, Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 9 (1).
• Sorenson, John; Thorne, Melvin J., eds. (1991), Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, ISBN 0-87579-387-8.
• Tanner, Jerald; Tanner, Sandra (1996), Answering Mormon Scholars: A Response to Criticism Raised by Mormon Defenders, Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry.
• Vogel, Dan (2004), Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, Signature Books, ISBN 1-56085-179-1.

David Damrosch is cited, but only pertaining to the etymology of NHM (nothing about Nahom in the Book of Mormon). 

French researcher Christian Robin is also cited, but only pertaining to the dating of the altars (nothing about Nahom). 

That leaves the Tanners and Dan Vogel.  Neither have any particular or relevant training or expertise in the relevant fields.  And they are not "academics."

Phillip Jenkins has addressed Nahom, and he is an academic.  But he's writing mostly from an counter-apologetic/polemical perspective, rather than a an academic one.  And he is a historian with seemingly no particular training or expertise in fields relevant to assessing NHM.

So am I missing something?  Wikipedia is certainly not definitive, but on controversial topics it can function as, at a minimum, a starting point to look for references.  Both Latter-day Saints and critics are interested in Nahom, as evidenced by the ample presence of Latter-day Saint sources (Aston, Brown, etc.) and critical sources (Vogel, Tanners).  If you are aware of substantive academic treatments of Nahom, I would appreciate you pointing them out to me.

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

Experts engage in all sorts of things they may not believe in.  Bart Ehrman is a NT expert but is now an atheist. There are many documents and texts out there that I am sure when they have reasonable merits and scholar is interested in pursuing. THey don't have to believe the text is divine, or from God, or the  narrative from Joseph Smith about how he got it to see if it really meets the ancient texts attributes that LDS apologists and scholars argue for. 

Broadly speaking, I agree (with "experts engage in all sorts of things they may not believe in").  I think the calculus changes a bit for the Book of Mormon, though.  There is nothing overtly "miraculous" in the transmission of the biblical text.  Academics can therefore evaluate the Bible in the same way it examines other ancient documents.  A scholar discussing ancient Greece need not believe in Zeus.  A scholar can examine Schliemann's work on Hisarlik without believing that Eris's golden apple was real, or that Diomedes wounded Aphrodite and Ares during the Trojan War.

But there is a huge gap in the transmission of the text of the Book of Mormon.  1,400 years or so.  And its transmission to us purportedly came through miraculous means (Joseph finding the Plates and translating them "by the gift and power of God").  My sense is that most academics simply prefer to not address it at all.  As I summed up my assessment of Hamblin's position relative to Phil Jenkins: "He {Hamblin} is saying that secular scholars don't take the Book of Mormon seriously in an a priori kind of way, not in a we've-given-it-a-lot-of-scrutiny-and-found-it-lacking kind of way."

If this assessment is incorrect, I would like to be corrected.

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

Also are any of the arguments and books or paper making the arguments peer reviewed outside the LDS scholar circles?  Likely not.  I think this is highly problematic.  It seems if these arguments in favor or as strong as you seem to believe they are non LDS scholars ought to take notice.

Conversely, if these arguments are specious, non-LDS scholars would also be likely "to take notice."  Robert Rittner and Michael Coe are both examples of academics who have weighed in.  I think the former was considerably more invested than the latter, to a problematic degree even.  Coe, meanwhile, apparently has little to know familiarity with the BOM text (as evidenced by John Sorenson's open letter to him).

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited September 21, 2022 by smac97

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

I am not sure I agree.  Experts engage in all sorts of things they may not believe in.  Bart Ehrman is a NT expert but is now an atheist. There are many documents and texts out there that I am sure when they have reasonable merits and scholar is interested in pursuing. THey don't have to believe the text is divine, or from God, or the  narrative from Joseph Smith about how he got it to see if it really meets the ancient texts attributes that LDS apologists and scholars argue for.  Also are any of the arguments and books or paper making the arguments peer reviewed outside the LDS scholar circles?  Likely not.  I think this is highly problematic.  It seems if these arguments in favor or as strong as you seem to believe they are non LDS scholars ought to take notice.

The only problem with this is that modern academia is a social-reputational system more than a validity-seeking system. Lee Jussim breaks it down though he more specifically focuses on social psychology. I highlight the following: 

Quote

Success is determined by others’ evaluations of you, not by whether you are right and they are wrong (the approximate scientific parallel to winning and losing). Publish or perish, right? How do you publish? You write a piece of scholarship, and submit it to a journal. The reviewers and editor either like it or they don’t. Others’ evaluations. How do you get a job? In large part, by having great letters of recommendation by famous people willing to say great things about you. Others’ evaluations. How do you get tenure? The same subjective evaluation system plus, at research-oriented universities, grants. How do you get grants? Grant committees say your work sounds great. Others’ evaluations.

You have to look at the practical incentives for academics with limited time and resources. It simply does not pay to engage such a niche market as Latter-day Saint apologetics. Findings in favor of our arguments won't advance any academic field since generally apologetic arguments are about showing how our beliefs work with academic findings, not expanding the knowledge base of the field. Why would a journal care about an article saying "actually the Mormons agree with us"? What incentive does a professor have to publish that outside of personal interest - which according to you is "problematic." Academics aren't journalists, with their noses to the ground looking for a good scoop. They research in specific - and increasingly narrow - directions and must make their case to increasingly narrow audiences on whose opinions their careers rely. Getting involved in LDS polemics is a bad investment for outsiders.

[why me]

On 9/19/2022 at 4:47 AM, JarMan said:

I don’t think Joseph produced the manuscript. I don’t believe he had the ability. I think he used an existing manuscript written by somebody else. 

I guess we will never know. The ability to discover the truth would have happened during Joseph's time. I am sure that investigations were done at that time. But nothing was found. Sidney Rigdon denied writing it on his deathbed. And Oliver denied it was a fraud on his deathbed. And the people jotting down the manuscript were fooled. Hard to believe.

[Bernard Gui]

On 9/20/2022 at 4:02 PM, SeekingUnderstanding said:

The witnesses were all believers in Josephs' divine mandate and call, and as Nevo points out, were primed to believe. It's not like Joseph took 11 disinterested local farmers. I wonder why not.

For one thing, lots of folks including neighbors were trying to steal them. Who could he trust not to hit him up the side of the head and run off with them? It’s also very possible he was given their names through revelation. 

Edited September 21, 2022 by Bernard Gui

[Stargazer]

On 9/19/2022 at 3:16 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

The text doesn't claim to have multiple authors. The text claims to be a translation of a text that had multiple authors - and these are two very different things - especially from the perspective of stylometric analysis.

A very interesting point! Although one feels that Mormon may have included verbatim text from the various multiple authors, good luck determining where that might have occurred.

[Stargazer]

On 9/19/2022 at 9:13 PM, smac97 said:

If you believe we have information sufficient to identify, say, a "Nephite" pottery shard, please share it.  If not, the "leaving no trace of their existence" assertion does not work.

This made me chuckle, because despite being a believer, his belief does not include a belief in the historicity of the BoM, so why would he feel it necessary to offer identification markings that he doesn't believe exist?

[JustAnAustralian]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

A very interesting point! Although one feels that Mormon may have included verbatim text from the various multiple authors, good luck determining where that might have occurred.

I think what Benjamin means here is that the Book of Mormon as we have it, is a translation by a single individual JSjr.

Translations have many forms. Word for word, meaning for meaning, etc.

If I was translating the phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" I probably wouldn't do a word for word translation, unless I literally meant that cats and dogs were falling from the sky. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raining_cats_and_dogs

So Nephi (small plates), Mormon (abridgement of large plates), Ether, etc, may well have all used different phrases that JSjr translated as the same English phrase.

You might need to look at topic usage, or argument order usage, rather than specific word usage.

[Benjamin McGuire]

17 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Also, can you point to the comments made by the author that you had mentioned?

This is a bit more complicated, since he only ever discusses the rhetorical forms in terms of how he read and not what he wrote. Vico studied in Naples and received his Doctor in both canon and civil law in 1694. He then taught rhetoric at the university there beginning in 1699 and remained there for his professional career. He died in 1744. For much of that time, he taught rhetoric through the classics (Homer, . He first details chiasmus directly in his writings in 1711 in his Institutiones Oratoriae - although he refers to it by the Greek term epanados, and provides examples from Cicero and Vergil. I note that there was no standard terminology used to describe this rhetorical form and there wouldn't be for some time - even with Robert Lowth's 1753 volume Praelectiones Academicae de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum on Hebrew parallelisms did not produce a standard identity. The closest we see in the early 18th century are the Latin terms commutatio and figurae. In any case, he also discusses his reading strategies in his autobiography. I can probably dig up some exact quotes, but, it would take me a little time. I only have translations of his Metaphysics and not his other works, and I would need to find copies.

In terms of examples, rather than trying to type them in here, I will refer you to this article: Horst Steinke, “Vico’s “Liber metaphysicus”: An Inquiry into its Literary Structure” in Laboratorio dell’ISPF, Vol. XI (2014). You should be able to get it here. It has an appendix with the title: "Notes on Vico’s Inaugural Orations, their proposed chiastic composition, and some hermeneutical implications." The inaugrual orations were a series of lectures delivered by Vico from 1699 to 1707 presented to the students and faculty at the university in Naples. Steinke describes them in terms of their chiastic structure along with notes.

[Saint Bonaventure]

From my perspective, the gold plates thing seems like one large MacGuffin.

 

[Stargazer]

12 hours ago, JustAnAustralian said:

I think what Benjamin means here is that the Book of Mormon as we have it, is a translation by a single individual JSjr.

I think he meant both. We have Mormon taking source documents from disparate authors, condensing their words into his own words -- and Mormon lived up to a 1,000 years after some of the original writers, so meanings of words may have drifted over time, with Mormon substituting some words with others. And then Joseph comes along. But you must realize that Joseph did not translate the Book of Mormon. He transmitted a translation that he received from a divine source. So, ultimately, it is God's words that you have to evaluate as to evidence multiple authors. Problematic!

Did you ever see the John Denver film "Oh God!" In order to prove that he really hasn't been visited by God (played by George Burns), Jerry, the Denver character is sequestered by himself in a hotel room with a set of questions (to ask God to answer). The trick is, the questions are all in Aramaic, which everyone knows Jerry doesn't know. God shows up and gives him the answers to the questions in English, which Jerry writes down as he hears them. The answer to the final question, which is a bit more complicated, God decides to write himself. He takes the pen, writes it and hands it back to Jerry. Jerry looks at the answer God has just written, and notices that it's in his own handwriting! 

This is effectively what happened with Joseph Smith and the "translation" of the Book of Mormon. It was not translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.

Do we know if God's translation was rendered "word for word"? Nope. For all we know, God's translation is an expansion on what Mormon wrote. 

ETA: Having mentioned a scene from "Oh God!" I just have to put it in:

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Stargazer