The Gold Plates

[Kenngo1969]

You know, for such an obvious fraud, the Book of Mormon seems entirely too obsessed with its own alleged source material.  To perpetrate a fraud, why are any plates necessary at all?  The Book of Mormon, via the notion of plates, violates the KISS Principle.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

18 minutes ago, smac97 said:

coherent counter-explanation

There’s that word again. It’s doing a lot of work for you. As I mentioned before It seems to function exactly like “true” in, well “no true Scotsman …”

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

There’s that word again. It’s doing a lot of work for you. As I mentioned before It seems to function exactly like “true” in, well “no true Scotsman …”

It's like insisting that, unless we explain in detail exactly how it was done, we must accept that Gob Bluth really did make that yacht disappear. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by jkwilliams

[jkwilliams]

32 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

You know, for such an obvious fraud, the Book of Mormon seems entirely too obsessed with its own alleged source material.  To perpetrate a fraud, why are any plates necessary at all?  The Book of Mormon, via the notion of plates, violates the KISS Principle.

That is, of course, assuming that there actually were plates. This is not a given, as this thread shows rather well. 

[Ryan Dahle]

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I think so, sure.

This is such an odd sort of request. Why? At its core, it seems to be making some sort of assertion about the Book of Mormon, that it is, in some way, a unique text, with special sorts of textual indicators. This reminds me of something written by Ralf Norrman, way back in 1986, when he published one of the earliest treatments of chiasm in non-biblical texts (it was important, and it was a highly referenced work): Samuel Butler and the Meaning of Chiasmus. Norrman writes (page 4):

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This study hasn't gotten a lot of attention in LDS writings (although there are several that reference it) because Samuel Butler is a little late for the apologetic purposes that you are using it for. He was born in 1835. But this is quite the argument. When you make the claim that the Book of Mormon's chiasmus has a unique diversity and concentration, what exactly do you mean? How do you measure that diversity and concentration in empirical terms for the purpose of comparison? Or is this really simply hyperbole expressing your perception that the Book of Mormon has unique characteristics that set it apart from other literature in terms of chiasmus?

If you go back through the thread, you will realize that my original talking points were about various parallel structures, not just chiasmus. So, once again, do you know of a text from the late 18th to mid 19th century that approximates the Book of Mormon's diversity and and concentration of parallel structures, including but not limited to chiasmus?

I doubt we are going to agree about the meaning and value of such a text, based on our prior discussions. But if you know of one, I would genuinely be interested in looking at it closely to see if I agree with your assessment. I'm open to such a text existing somewhere, so this isn't just me trying to prove a point. I'm guessing you will understand, though, why I would rather not debate its meaning with you. 

[Snodgrassian]

55 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

You know, for such an obvious fraud, the Book of Mormon seems entirely too obsessed with its own alleged source material.  To perpetrate a fraud, why are any plates necessary at all?  The Book of Mormon, via the notion of plates, violates the KISS Principle.

do you believe people who claim that spiritual histories of ancient civilizations are just revealed to them via inspiration and then are turned into books? 

The only ones I can think of are fiction... and there can be life changing spiritualism obtained via fiction, i am not trying to belittle it. 

[Snodgrassian]

7 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

diversity and and concentration of parallel structures

Where is a good breakdown of this? Can you point me to a source, it sounds interesting.

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I don't think there is anything close to "overwhelming empirical data of the exact antithesis" of the claimed origins of the Book of Mormon. 

Agreed. And this is why it is folly to situate the positive evidences in favor of the Book of Mormon as merely demonstrating that its divine origin story isn't strictly "impossible." Such an approach gives undue privilege to hyper-skeptical assumptions that aren't warranted by the available evidence. 

[Ryan Dahle]

1 minute ago, Snodgrassian said:

Where is a good breakdown of this? Can you point me to a source, it sounds interesting.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/61/

And here are specific summaries of Parry's work from Evidence Central:

https://evidencecentral.org/evidence-type-2/literary-features/parallelisms

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Agreed. And this is why it is folly to situate the positive evidences in favor of the Book of Mormon as merely demonstrating that its divine origin story isn't strictly "impossible." Such an approach gives undue privilege to hyper-skeptical assumptions that aren't warranted by the available evidence. 

Who says you need to be "hyper-skeptical" to find the origin story implausible? The available evidence certainly points to that conclusion, but I'll never say "impossible." 

[Snodgrassian]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

The same could be said about the knives used to assassinate Julius Caesar.  Because they are not available, do you deny that the assassination took place?

This reasoning isn't is landing with me. I believe there is an unbroken historical record that A. Julius Caesar existed and B. that he died a tragic death (presumably assassinated). Could parts of his death be untrue, sure. But the story of his death has been recorded since it occurred (as far as I know). This just is not the case for the Nephites. There is no record of them ever existing prior to the Book of Mormon. The Gold plates are that historic record, but only 12 people have witnessed the plates. 

[Snodgrassian]

14 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/61/

And here are specific summaries of Parry's work from Evidence Central:

https://evidencecentral.org/evidence-type-2/literary-features/parallelisms

Thanks for sharing, took a quick look and the first one i clicked on was "Antithetical parallelism". Im confused, based on the conclusion below, how does this make the BoM special/unique, if it contains similar structures that are found in the Bible? Does the Bible share the same "diversity and and concentration of parallel structures" as the Book of Mormon?

This question may get answered when i dive deeper into the things that you shared. 

Conclusion

Antithetical parallelism happens to be “one of the most prominent types of parallelisms in the Bible.”² That being the case, it should come as no surprise that it is also found in the Book of Mormon (see Appendix). It’s presence in the Nephite record provides evidence of its Hebrew literary origins, while also manifesting one aspect of the book’s textual complexity.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Snodgrassian said:

Thanks for sharing, took a quick look and the first one i clicked on was "Antithetical parallelism". Im confused, based on the conclusion below, how does this make the BoM special/unique, if it contains similar structures that are found in the Bible? Does the Bible share the same "diversity and and concentration of parallel structures" as the Book of Mormon?

This question may get answered when i dive deeper into the things that you shared. 

Conclusion

Antithetical parallelism happens to be “one of the most prominent types of parallelisms in the Bible.”² That being the case, it should come as no surprise that it is also found in the Book of Mormon (see Appendix). It’s presence in the Nephite record provides evidence of its Hebrew literary origins, while also manifesting one aspect of the book’s textual complexity.

How does one distinguish between Hebrew literary forms and KJV manifestations of those forms? Asking for a friend.

[Ryan Dahle]

44 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Who says you need to be "hyper-skeptical" to find the origin story implausible? The available evidence certainly points to that conclusion, but I'll never say "impossible." 

You misunderstood me. I think it is understandable to find the origin story implausible. Heck, Joseph Smith himself conceded that much.

You are actually proving my original point. Benjamins McGuire has been claiming that the appropriate starting assumption when approaching the Book of Mormon is that its divine origin story should be viewed as impossible and therefore that the worth of any evidence in the text's favor should be evaluated in relation to that extreme assumption. My position throughout the debate was that no responsible observers on either side of the issue should really be starting with the assumption that it is impossible for the text's origin story to be or not be true. The evidence isn't anywhere close to that strong, for either side of the debate (note that all reasonable assumptions are themselves based on some type of evidence). At best, both sides start off with some undefinable assessment of the text's plausibility, and there are a lot of assumptions in between (i.e. between highly plausible and highly implausible). Naturally, the diversity of starting assumptions leads to different evaluations of the meaning and value of the available evidence. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

6 minutes ago, Snodgrassian said:

Thanks for sharing, took a quick look and the first one i clicked on was "Antithetical parallelism". Im confused, based on the conclusion below, how does this make the BoM special/unique, if it contains similar structures that are found in the Bible? Does the Bible share the same "diversity and and concentration of parallel structures" as the Book of Mormon?

The parallelisms are there in the Bible (albeit often obscured in translation), but that doesn't mean that most readers consciously recognize them. The vast majority of biblical readers don't. And their presence in the Book of Mormon was only discovered after biblical scholars started to write about and demonstrate their existence in the Bible. In other words, if you go back to the first 100 or so years of commentary on the Book of Mormon, you wont find any discussions of its parallel structures, at least not that I know of. And yet how many people during those years read the text regularly. So one is faced with the question of whether Joseph Smith was likely to have (1) known of such structures in 1829 and (2) been able to implement them in the creation of the text (under the assumption that he fabricated it).

I find both possibilities rather improbable, and therefore I see this as evidence that strengthens the text's claims of divine/ancient origins. The Book of Mormon's internally claimed authors seem like much better candidates to have created such structures, at least to me. Here is the overview of chiasmus which sort of presents an argument that works similar for the parallelisms collectively:

https://evidencecentral.org/evidence/chiasmus-overview

[Ryan Dahle]

3 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

How does one distinguish between Hebrew literary forms and KJV manifestations of those forms? Asking for a friend.

Sometimes the KJV masks, obscures, or alters the original form. So it is possible to get false positives (something that seems like a specific parallelism in the KJV may end up being different in the original Hebrew). It is possible that this type of thing happens in the Book of Mormon as well. This is especially likely to happen with limited elements. Something that looks like ABBA in the KJV might actually be ABAB in the original Hebrew. I found some of these while going through Psalms and Proverbs in the OT this year. So that is a valid concern. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Ryan Dahle

[Snodgrassian]

10 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The parallelisms are there in the Bible (albeit often obscured in translation), but that doesn't mean that most readers consciously recognize them. The vast majority of biblical readers don't. And their presence in the Book of Mormon was only discovered after biblical scholars started to write about and demonstrate their existence in the Bible. In other words, if you go back to the first 100 or so years of commentary on the Book of Mormon, you wont find any discussions of its parallel structures, at least not that I know of. And yet how many people during those years read the text regularly. So one is faced with the question of whether Joseph Smith was likely to have (1) known of such structures in 1829 and (2) been able to implement them in the creation of the text (under the assumption that he fabricated it).

I find both possibilities rather improbable, and therefore I see this as evidence that strengthens the text's claims of divine/ancient origins. The Book of Mormon's internally claimed authors seem like much better candidates to have created such structures, at least to me. Here is the overview of chiasmus which sort of presents an argument that works similar for the parallelisms collectively:

https://evidencecentral.org/evidence/chiasmus-overview

Great summary, much appreciated. Where these structures "Discovered" or "named" ? Did people even know what to look for? Or was there some research that was done that then enabled people to "discover" it in other works? I mean, I had no clue what most of these structures are called until you shared the link, but I immediately recognized them and, if asked, would have probably produced similar sounding phrases if asked to re-write something in "Bible speak". I actually do this often, when I "Yodafy" something. It is always great learning about all of this from people who care, so thank you once again. 

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

 

EDIT:

I posted the deleted post without reading the context in which the word was used, a silly mistake on my part.

Edited October 12, 2022 by mfbukowski

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Snodgrassian said:

Great summary, much appreciated. Where these structures "Discovered" or "named" ? Did people even know what to look for? Or was there some research that was done that then enabled people to "discover" it in other works? I mean, I had no clue what most of these structures are called until you shared the link, but I immediately recognized them and, if asked, would have probably produced similar sounding phrases if asked to re-write something in "Bible speak". I actually do this often, when I "Yodafy" something. It is always great learning about all of this from people who care, so thank you once again. 

Categorization and nomenclature have varied somewhat for different structures. They weren't regularly taught in normative educational experiences, especially on the American frontier. Scholars were still just beginning to identify and label them in the early 19th century.

I think the shorter structures are fairly discernable for most people. Phrases like "all for one and one for all" are clearly symmetrical and most readers notice that symmetry. This is also somewhat true for ABAB structures of various types in the Bible. It is the longer, mid-sized complex structures that I think would be especially likely to go unnoticed and therefore not mimicked. They aren't like Yoda's simple syntactic rearrangements that are obvious and easily reproducible for most English speakers. At least, my opinion that is. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So, once again, do you know of a text from the late 18th to mid 19th century that approximates the Book of Mormon's diversity and and concentration of parallel structures, including but not limited to chiasmus?

Of course. Most late 18th to mid 19th century works of poetry are almost entirely concentrations of parallel structures. They can be quite diverse. And they often include chiasmus. In fact, they present such in much greater density than does the the Book of Mormon. I didn't think this was an issue. This isn't really what you are arguing for. The general apologetic argument about the Book of Mormon is that the Book of Mormon engages ancient poetic forms, and in particular Hebrew forms - and most importantly, chiasmus, since chiasmus wasn't a part of the general knowledge at the time that the Book of Mormon was produced. So, in 1972, Jack Welch published in the New Era an article about Chiasmus in The New Era. In it he makes these comments (my emphasis):

Quote

Chiasmus was first noticed by a few nineteenth century pioneer theologians in Germany and England, but the idea had to wait until the 1930s before it found an ardent exponent, Nils Lund, who was able to lay the principle before the eyes of the world in a convincing way. But even at that, it was not until the decade of the 1960s, after much more had been learned about the philology of early Semitic languages, that chiasmus was properly understood and unequivocally acknowledged. Today, articles on the subject are quite common.: II. Are the Extraordinary Claims Supported by Extraordinary Evidence? ... Let us turn now to the Book of Mormon. What we would like to know is what the discovery of chiasmus should mean for us and our understanding of the Book of Mormon. Surely it would be spectacular if this long-forgotten aspect of Hebrew literature were also to appear in the Book of Mormon.

My point all along has been that these poetic forms are simply not unique to the biblical text. They were widely used prior to 1830, and used regularly through the 19th century. It just wasn't called "chiasmus". And modern chiasmus isn't at all interesting to biblical scholars - which helps explain some of Welch's comments. As I noted (I'll link it again) several years ago:

Quote

Another example of how we conflate translation with proof comes in the assumptions surrounding chiasmus. Earlier, I noted that we have a tendency to use the tools of biblical criticism to investigate the text of the Book of Mormon. When we apply these tools to the Book of Mormon, and get results that are similar to the results produced in Biblical Studies, we use these results to suggest proof of authenticity. I see this regularly in essays (both published and unpublished) exploring aspects of chiasmus. ... And within a canonical ring form, the center isn’t necessarily the main point – it simply serves as the middle of the structure. My point here isn’t to contest the idea of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. There seem to be some remarkable structures in the text. What I am suggesting is that the appearance of modern chiasmus – and in particular of these macro-chiastic structures, along with a body of literature describing them and their use, point to an unrecognized problem – biblical studies has no interest in modern literature, and so has never engaged the question of chiasmus as an established structure and form apart from its narrow interest in the ancient near east. And because this literature exists outside of the world of Biblical Studies, most Mormons engaged in these studies are simply oblivious to its existence. Chiasmus as a literary structure wasn’t as unknown in Joseph’s day as we sometimes like to believe. It just wasn’t always called chiasmus.

So I am not sure at all what you mean when you ask for "diversity and concentration of parallel structures". In the context of traditional defenses of the Book of Mormon, this has a very specific meaning and context. But now you seem to be denying that traditional context - and I am left somewhat at a loss as to what you are actually trying to say here.

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You are actually proving my original point. Benjamins McGuire has been claiming that the appropriate starting assumption when approaching the Book of Mormon is that its divine origin story should be viewed as impossible and therefore that the worth of any evidence in the text's favor should be evaluated in relation to that extreme assumption. My position throughout the debate was that no responsible observers on either side of the issue should really be starting with the assumption that it is impossible for the text's origin story to be or not be true. The evidence isn't anywhere close to that strong, for either side of the debate (note that all reasonable assumptions are themselves based on some type of evidence). At best, both sides start off with some undefinable assessment of the text's plausibility, and there are a lot of assumptions in between (i.e. between highly plausible and highly implausible). Naturally, the diversity of starting assumptions leads to different evaluations of the meaning and value of the available evidence. 

This isn't what I am arguing at all. What I am saying is that there is a pattern in literature attacking and defending the authenticity of the Book of Mormon (meaning that it is what was claimed about it by Joseph Smith) by using comparisons with the impossible. In this case, as I noted just a moment ago, the earliest arguments about chiasmus in the Book of Mormon were that it was impossible for Joseph Smith to have known about chiastic forms - and thus their inclusion can and should be recognized as evidence for authenticity. More recently than Welch's original articles is some research that I happen to like: Edwards and Edwards article “Does Chiasmus Appear in the Book of Mormon by Chance?” in BYU Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2004), pp. 103-130. In that article, they make the following statement (p. 126):

Quote

Using chiasmus to strengthen the claim of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient historical record is based on the assumption that Joseph Smith was unaware of chiasmus.

There it is in all of its glory. When we assume that Joseph Smith could not have understood chiasmus, it means that the occurrence in the Book of Mormon should be understood as evidence for authenticity. The only problem is that chiasmus (although not identified by that name) as a literary structure is relatively common in Joseph's environment (and not just from the King James bible). So what does this mean for this argument? That is what my point is all about here. I am simply point out that when Ryan makes his list of 'evidences' they are all connected to this implicit idea of impossibility - and this is no different from an argument against authenticity that also uses this idea of impossibility to make an unlikely argument seem "plausible". As an apologetic, this kind of argument is particularly problematic because it lays a methodological groundwork that can encourage people to reject the authenticity of the text for the same reasons that they may have once embraced that authenticity.

Ryan's comments here are quite telling for me in this discussion: the idea that "the evidence isn't anywhere close to that strong, for either side of the debate" by definition means that the evidence is incapable (on either side) of creating a plausible explanation. And as a side note, "the text's plausibility" is a grammatical mess. The text is an artifact. It isn't plausible. It isn't implausible. It is simply there. What can be considered plausible or not are propositions about the text. In this case, the most appropriate proposition would be something along the lines of "The Book of Mormon is an authentic translation of an ancient text". And while we can have different starting points in terms of our view of the accuracy of such a proposition, evidence is based in facts. And those facts aren't dependent on the starting view of the proposition. The Book of Mormon contains chiasms. This is a fact. This is attached in the above citation to the fact that "Joseph Smith was unaware of chiasmus". This is also stated as a fact. And in my earlier post I noted that Jack Welch claimed as a fact that chiasmus wasn't understood until a century after the Book of Mormon was published. These are all facts - but it is clear to me that these facts are not all accurate. And I don't have to take a side about the proposition (the proposition that the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation of an ancient text) to challenge these facts. Nor does the starting point for a belief change the way that these arguments are constructed with a contrast to the impossible as a way of creating likelihood. This engagement with impossibility is simply a bad argument on either side of the proposition.

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The parallelisms are there in the Bible (albeit often obscured in translation), but that doesn't mean that most readers consciously recognize them. The vast majority of biblical readers don't. And their presence in the Book of Mormon was only discovered after biblical scholars started to write about and demonstrate their existence in the Bible. In other words, if you go back to the first 100 or so years of commentary on the Book of Mormon, you wont find any discussions of its parallel structures, at least not that I know of. And yet how many people during those years read the text regularly. So one is faced with the question of whether Joseph Smith was likely to have (1) known of such structures in 1829 and (2) been able to implement them in the creation of the text (under the assumption that he fabricated it).

I am not sure why this means anything. Form criticism of the bible doesn't really begin until the end of the 19th century. And this sort of analysis of the Book of Mormon wouldn't follow for nearly another century. The fact that I can speak about what I believe were important contributions that I have made to the study of the Book of Mormon and its rhetorical structure (which have nothing to do with chiasmus) suggests that we have only relatively recently started looking at the Book of Mormon text in this way. So the fact that there is nothing of this sort of analysis in the first hundred years of commentary on the Book of Mormon isn't a meaningful observation.

In terms of this last statement, lets ask the same thing of Samuel Butler. How did he include so much chiasmus in his writing if he was (1) unlikely to have known of such structures in the mid-19th century and (2) how did he implement in the creation of his text (under the assumption that he actually wrote them).

You see, this argument doesn't make any sense unless we accept all sorts of faulty assumptions about the nature of language, rhetoric, and authorship.

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

How does one distinguish between Hebrew literary forms and KJV manifestations of those forms? Asking for a friend.

I don't think that the relationship is combative in this way. In general, when we find these forms in the KJV, there isn't really any reason to suspect that they don't represent reasonably reliably the same form in the Hebrew text. The problems that we have are that there are Hebrew literary forms that can't really be seen in the KJV - where they are lost due to translation choices. In the most extreme cases, this is completely unavoidable. For example, one type of parallelism is called the Janus parallel (two-faced). This is a pun type construction in which a Hebrew word with multiple meanings (an ambiguity resolved by context) is used where it means one thing when used with the text preceding the word and it means something else when used with the text that follows it. Unless the target language of the translation has a word with an identical set of meanings and an identical ambiguity, it simply cannot be accurately translated - and so most translations pick one meaning and just use it. Without the original text for comparison, it is difficult to identify this sort of form. The KJV also, from time to time, changes the form. Instead of an ABBA it might give you an ABAB. This isn't usually all that consequential for reading.

[rodheadlee]

12 hours ago, Teancum said:

I am sure there is a term for the logical fallacies in your remarks. I assume that you say the same for Islam and the Quran? After all there is a book and there is the religion and there is the over 1 billion adherents.  By your standard it must be true and divine.

You asked for evidence that the gold plates were authentic. Not a discussion of other religions. I believe the Quran is true and divine for whom it was intended.

Edited October 13, 2022 by rodheadlee

[Ryan Dahle]

6 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Ryan's comments here are quite telling for me in this discussion: the idea that "the evidence isn't anywhere close to that strong, for either side of the debate" by definition means that the evidence is incapable (on either side) of creating a plausible explanation.

It seems you misread me. Again. 

So let me try again.

You keep saying that many people on both sides of the debate start off with very strong assumptions about the truthfulness or falsity of the Book of Mormon's divine origins. You further seem to be arguing that those strong assumptions render any type of evidence on the other side of the debate as being basically meaningless, since it is assumed at the outset that the opposing view of the Book of Mormon is essentially impossible. Thus, the most an opposing evidence can do (unless it is exceedingly strong, like the Mesoamerican example that I proposed and that you finally admitted as being valid evidence) is shift one's view of the opposing claims from being impossible to possible. (As a side note, I think that is ultimately an unhelpful description of the evidence, since something that is "possible" can be either highly likely or highly unlikely or anywhere in between, but whatever.)

What I was saying is that the assumptions themselves that lead to these extreme biases don't seem to be valid, especially by your strict standards of probability. In other words, the evidence supporting those assumptions isn't strong enough to render the opposing viewpoint as being impossible to begin with. And it sort of destroys your whole definitional framework when that is admitted. 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Ryan Dahle