Utah Lighthouse Ministry shutting down

[Eschaton]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Sure. Although, the term "artifacts" is problematic in this context as well - as if we can excavate a piece of language from a text and identify it as such. We take something out of the whole and claim that it is independent enough to be meaningful on its own, when really, the text is written for a specific audience, in a specific context, with an intended meaning.

In general usage (which isn't much), the phrase "artifact of translation" refers to the problems in language created by a literal (or dictionary) sort of translation as opposed to a more natural kind of translation. Or, in other words, something completely the opposite of the way you are trying to use it here .... it shows up in bad translations, not good ones (where the translation process is generally hidden from the reader, and the reading is natural).

If these major themes of the book are artifacts of translation or creations by Joseph Smith, what is the underlying historical core of the book's contents, and how do you reconstruct it? 

[Eschaton]

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

The Book of Daniel and Enoch contain apocalyptic writing, the Fourth Suffering Servant Song in Isaiah is a suffering and atoning Messiah as revealed in the Dead Sea Scroll's Isaiah Scroll and was deleted from Bible translations by post-Christian Jews, the theme of miraculous conception to "virgins" is an ancient theme, Sarah had a Virgin birth, so says scholar Philo of Alexandria, Isaiah's Virgin prophasy also referred to his own son, and the translation disputes over what a "virgin" is began by post-Christian Jews. Sheol (Spirit World) containing Abraham's Bossom (Paradise) and Gehenna (Prison) was an established Jewish idea, in Philo and the 500 BC Book of Enoch, a pre-Christian text the Jews burned all Hebrew copies of because it proved Christianity was no innovation but a throwback to an ancient time of Elyon's Son, divine Davidic kings and Melchizedek Priests, etc.

The Book of Daniel (168 BCE) and Enoch (2nd century BCE) date to the apocalyptic period, which is centuries after Lehi and family left for the new world. Isaiah doesn't have a virgin birth prophesy and the suffering servant is Israel, not a future messiah. Spirit prisons and paradises date to probably the apocalyptic period (second or third century BCE) but don't really enter the Canonical Bible until the end of the first century CE. Neither the Matthew nor the Luke nativity stories have a historical core - scholars would say that Jesus was born in Nazareth to Mary and Joseph, and all the other details in the two stories are legendary inventions intended to a) punctuate the importance Jesus held for them and b) say something about the nature of what they thought Jesus to be (in Matthew's case, royalty given kingly gifts by foreign magi, or in Luke's case, a very unexpected son of God born into humble yet miraculous circumstances). 

Now of course you can make appeals to fringe scholars and arguments about these things, which is fine, but that would really be off topic - the topic was mainstream Academic Biblical scholarship, as opposed to fringy stuff. 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Eschaton

[Hamba Tuhan]

10 hours ago, Eschaton said:

Scholarship and doctrine are two different worlds.

Not when scholars and/or their disciples start dictating to us that our doctrines need to match/include their latest scholarly conclusions -- something you have done in nearly every post on the last two pages of this thread.

[OGHoosier]

23 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Not when scholars and/or their disciples start dictating to us that our doctrines need to match/include their latest scholarly conclusions -- something you have done in nearly every post on the last two pages of this thread.

Not gonna lie, every time I see the word "mainstream" I just have a little alarm in my head that starts blaring "GATEKEEPING HEURISTIC DETECTED."

Especially true in textual criticism, where the underlying logic is relatively accessible, fluid, and intrinsically speculative.

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 hours ago, Eschaton said:

If these major themes of the book are artifacts of translation or creations by Joseph Smith, what is the underlying historical core of the book's contents, and how do you reconstruct it? 

I doubt that you could reconstruct it in such a way. From a religious perspective, I don't think its even necessary to do so. If all we had was the King James translation of the Bible, would we assume that the Book of Esther had an underlying historical core? Or would we follow the current understanding of the text and recognize it as a fictional novella? I recognize a number of related challenges -

1: Locating the Book of Mormon narrative in a temporal-geographical space (a lot of effort has gone into this without any conclusive results). If we could correlate the narrative to specific historical content we could draw conclusions (as they do with Old Testament literature) about the nature of the texts.

2: Attempting to identify the primary audience of the translation (consider the difficulties created for this task in Skousen's EModE theory).

3: Determining which parts of the narrative are likely to have been adjusted (creating anachronisms when read in that historical context) for the modern audience.

The problem is that to get to number three, we have to know something about one and two - we have to know things that are external to the text - and there isn't really anything I would label as a consensus view about either of those two topics. So there really isn't a way to get to number three. Every suggestion we make about a potential underlying urtext, every discussion of parallels or rhetorical strategies in the text by an ancient author - all of these come with a set of assumptions that may or may not be articulated.

2 hours ago, Eschaton said:

The Book of Daniel (168 BCE) and Enoch (2nd century BCE) date to the apocalyptic period, which is centuries after Lehi and family left for the new world. Isaiah doesn't have a virgin birth prophesy and the suffering servant is Israel, not a future messiah. Spirit prisons and paradises date to probably the apocalyptic period (second or third century BCE) but don't really enter the Canonical Bible until the end of the first century CE.

One of the fascinating things about the Book of Mormon is that in First and Second Nephi we are told that reinterpreting scripture and re-contextualizing it into a local context for new audiences is not only desirable but at times necessary (likening the scriptures unto ourselves). It wouldn't be out of place with this framework in mind to have the Book of Mormon be a complete re-contextualizing of the Gold Plates into a new context and a new interpretive framework. In fact, we might argue, this is completely necessary. Nephi describes this practice as necessary because he people were not taught to read the Hebrew scriptures the way that were intended to be read. And the first readers of the Book of Mormon would face an even greater barrier in approaching the Nephite scripture. So if Nephi can re-contextualize the Old Testament, then why not the Book of Mormon re-contextualizing the Gold Plates?

[dougtheavenger]

On 11/25/2022 at 6:43 PM, Kenngo1969 said:

"We need more anti-Mormon books [sic].  They keep us on our toes."

     —Hugh W. Nibley

 

I have a book for you. I wrote it "An Illustrated History of Anti-Mormonism"

https://payhip.com/b/4Oje

Edited December 6, 2022 by dougtheavenger

[dougtheavenger]

In the 19th and early 20th century Mormons were portrayed alternately as enslavers of women and wimps dominated by women. If you doubt this, read my book

https://payhip.com/b/4Oje

 

[Nevo]

8 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I retain a great fondness of most of the essays in Old Testament and Related Studies, especially "Before Adam" and "Patriarchy and Matriarchy", and I remain tremendously impressed by Nibley's work and achievements, though having no illusions about him being perfect.

Old Testament and Related Studies was actually the first thing I ever read by Nibley. I found a copy in the pensión where I was staying in Santiago, Chile, while serving as a missionary in the early 1990s. We had been kicked out of our former living quarters and had to find a new place on short notice.

Some members took us in, and we ended up sleeping in a windowless, subterranean room under their kitchen. Next door was a bar that played cumbia music all night. I don't recall getting much missionary work done during those weeks, but I made it through the book (as well as Joseph Fielding Smith's Essentials in Church History). I loved it. It was my first exposure to "serious" scholarship, and I was enthralled. I couldn't follow a lot of it ("Patriarchy and Matriarchy" was particularly opaque), but it left me hungry for more. Nibley's constant name-dropping appealed to my pretentious side (I hoped to be able to do the same someday) and the Desert Fathers, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic writings, and the Kabbalah were exotic new worlds to be explored. When I got home from my mission, I read Prophetic Book of Mormon, Approaching Zion, and Temple and Cosmos, and loved all of them. 

But eventually "shades of the prison-house began to close upon the growing boy" and I lost my former enthusiasm. My mind became colonized by "mainstream" scholarship and Nibley's work (much of it written for Church publications in the 50s and 60s) started to look deeply flawed in comparison. Not just outmoded, but fundamentally unsound (for the reasons that Jackson and others have noted).

However, you are probably correct that I have underestimated and undervalued Nibley's contributions — perhaps guilty of what E.P. Thompson called "the enormous condescension of posterity" or maybe just stuck in a lower level of the Perry scheme of cognitive growth.

I certainly share your affection for Nibley the man (not least for this story, which has always endeared him to me).    

   

8 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

The most notable feature of the current Church backed Histories, 33 years after Novick's talk, is the Joseph Smith Papers Project, which is making the originals of everything available to everyone.  The most dominant feature of the project is to deal with the criticism that the church has to suppress the "historical facts" to survive.   The Joseph Smith Papers, as well as the Mountain Meadows project demonstrate the same charter, the same determination to put everything available out there for anyone who truly wants to understand, something that takes more effort and patience than "seeking to make a man an offender for a word." 

Yes, this is a welcome change from the situation in 1989. While not everything is available to everyone (and some things probably never will be), there has been a massive effort to be more transparent. For which I am grateful.

(I'll really start celebrating when the William Clayton journals are published, as well as the official list of Joseph Smith's (probable) plural wives. In 2015, the introduction to the third volume of Joseph Smith's journals stated that "An Annotated List of Joseph Smith's Plural Wives" "will be published on the Joseph Smith Papers website" [p. xix]. In 2017, I asked the Church History Department when that might happen. I was told that "there is no scheduled release date at this time for the annotated list." Five years later, we are still waiting, which makes me wonder if there is a holdout in the Q15. Time will tell, I guess.)

 

[Eschaton]

15 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Not when scholars and/or their disciples start dictating to us that our doctrines need to match/include their latest scholarly conclusions -- something you have done in nearly every post on the last two pages of this thread.

This is beyond silly. Scholars don't have disciples, and I've not dictated what anyone's doctrines should be, nor do academic Biblical scholars dictate what any church's doctrine should be.

[Eschaton]

14 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

One of the fascinating things about the Book of Mormon is that in First and Second Nephi we are told that reinterpreting scripture and re-contextualizing it into a local context for new audiences is not only desirable but at times necessary (likening the scriptures unto ourselves). It wouldn't be out of place with this framework in mind to have the Book of Mormon be a complete re-contextualizing of the Gold Plates into a new context and a new interpretive framework. In fact, we might argue, this is completely necessary. Nephi describes this practice as necessary because he people were not taught to read the Hebrew scriptures the way that were intended to be read. And the first readers of the Book of Mormon would face an even greater barrier in approaching the Nephite scripture. So if Nephi can re-contextualize the Old Testament, then why not the Book of Mormon re-contextualizing the Gold Plates?

It's definitely a time honored tradition - and an ancient tradition. First century Christians reinterpreted the Hebrew Bible quite freely.

I've tried to make myself okay with it, but to me it just seems like a distortion and eisegesis based on the faulty premise that ancient writings have "authority." Okay, since we can't get around their authority, let's pretend the author meant something different that aligns with our current goals. 

I would rather say, "this is what this ancient writer believed. It's not very similar to what we believe today, but he made a good faith effort based on the information he had at the time. Here's what we believe..." 

 

[Analytics]

19 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Do you see a problem in anthropomorphizing evidence to the point where you can follow it where it leads, as though the evidence itself knows where it is going, and why you should follow it, and that evidence has the capacity to speak for itself to the extent that no scholarly input or effort is required?  That sort of thing is why I keep quoting N. H. Hanson, to the effect that "All data are theory laden" and Kuhn that "Anomally emerges only from a background of expectation."

Kuhn's ideas are intended to be used as a way to understand paradigms and choose the best one. They aren't intended as a way to rationalize clinging to the paradigm you happen to like the best.

19 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

As to what I should expect from Joseph Smith's account of making an inspired translation of an ancient document, should I base my expectations on what happens with an academic translation, or from other accounts provide a range of actual evidence of inspired translations of say, a half dozen other books like the Book of Mormon?

Let's review what the Church actually teaches on this:

“We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.”

The Bible has the words of prophets who testified of Jesus Christ. When people translated it, they changed or left out some important parts. That’s why we believe the Bible is the word of God except for any errors or missing parts.

The Book of Mormon also contains teachings of prophets. Joseph Smith translated it with Heavenly Father’s help, so nothing was changed or left out.

Article of Faith 8 (churchofjesuschrist.org)

19 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

 In his essay, Wright specifically suggests that Joseph Smith's translation should be completely independent from the King James version...

Wright extensively shows that the changes in Isaiah are based on somebody reading the KJV and trying to clarify or fix how they interpreted the KJV, which generally made the  actual translation from Hebrew worse and not better. And the nature of the changes show that the writer was grappling with KJV and not with the underlying Hebrew or with another language.

I haven't heard Wright say that "Joseph Smith's translation should be completely independent from the King James version." That comes across as a terrible straw man. Could you provide a reference? CFR.

Wright's actual point is that when people translated the Bible, it was in fact changed and important parts were in fact left out. Joseph Smith was right about that. However, the problem is that he didn't fix the problems. He made it worse and was guilty of exactly what he accused prior generations of scribes and translators of doing. In Wright's own words:

"The foregoing list makes clear that the KJV has grave deficiencies. Biblical scholarship has grown and advanced greatly since the early seventeenth century through the benefit of new archaeological, textual, and linguistic evidence and through improved methods of study and analysis. The developments are in their own way as revolutionary as those in the sciences (astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, etc.) since that time. The KJV, while having elegant language and conveying the meaning of the original texts adequately in many places, has been superseded like many of the scientific theories of its age. The BM conserves many of the unacceptable translations of the KJV now clearly recognizable from the stance of modern research. If the former were a translation from an ancient text one would expect it to transcend the limitations of the KJV, and even the limitations of modern scholars who still find a number of the passages noted insoluble."

MORMON CENTRAL - JOSEPH SMITH - LDS TEMPLES - BOOK OF MORMON - MORMONISM (xmission.com)

Wright goes on to say:

"There are several cases where the same English word appears in both the KJV and BM, but in the BM has a meaning different from the word in the KJV and the underlying Hebrew. In these cases the surface similarity to the English reading but dissimilarity to the Hebrew reveals that the variant comes from revision of the English text." We can't blame this on Nephi, Mormon, or Moroni--they may have had variant ideas about Isaiah, but their ideas weren't based on the KJV.

Other changes that Joseph Smith made interrupt the elegant Hebrew poetry style, and thus are examples of screwing up the text, not fixing it.

The Book of Mormon fails to do what the 8th Article of Faith promises.

19 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

If, as Wright claims, Joseph Smith just gives us something that bears no evidence of being an actual translation.  How are we to judge?  What should we notice, and what should we value?

Please read Wright's paper for an answer to these questions. Wright's approach here is a valid approach and is basically what Tvedtnes tried to do. Quoting Wright:

"A few researchers have sought to verify the antiquity of the BM Isaiah by showing that some variants correlate with ancient versions and manuscripts and that others reflect features of Hebrew language and style.⁹¹ The most extensive recent work of this sort has been done by John Tvedtnes in a FARMS Preliminary Report.^92"

MORMON CENTRAL - JOSEPH SMITH - LDS TEMPLES - BOOK OF MORMON - MORMONISM (xmission.com)

As Dr. Wright demonstrates, the hoped-for evidences in favor of authenticity ultimately all fail. Textual criticism conclusively proves that the changes from KJV in the Book of Mormon were made based on what is in the KJV and make the translation worse, not better. It breaks what was translated fine, and doesn't fix the real problems that we now know were there. And these changes were done in a way that is clearly relying on the Bible.

The bottom line is his methodology is sound. The reason you reject the paradigm laid out in the 8th Article of Faith is because you don't like what the evidence implies in that paradigm.

19 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I've also notice that if I base my expectations on the purely local and human 19th century event that Wright sees in the Book of Mormon, there is "far more in heaven and earth than is dreampt of in [his] philosophy."   I cannot get from his picture of Alma 13, for example, to those offered by John Tvedtnes, John W. Welch, and Margaret Barker.   Wright's picture of Joseph Smith as not a real translator does not explain anything whatsoever in Matthew Bowen's recent Name as Key-Word, for instance.  And Welch's work on The Sermon on the Mount as a Temple text, which argues that it was a composition by Jesus, fits perfectly in 3 Nephi and such.   And there are things like Gardner's Second Witness, Larry Poulson's work, the details of Lehi's Journey through Arabia, and such, as well as the unexpected and elaborate convergence of Barker's work with the Book of Mormon, including her case that Isaiah 53 was based on Hezekiah's bout with the plague and was therefore, pre-exilic and available to Abinadi, the dazzling convergence of the revolutionary LiDAR picture and the Book of Mormon and much much more by hundreds of notable scholars that Wright does not address, nor follow, nor explain, but simply ignores as irrelevant to his current conclusions.

The questions are rather, "Which paradigm is better?" and inescapably "How do we measure "better?"

Simplicity is only part of the test Kuhn describes for good paradigm decisions.  (Nowadays I always think of the Monty Python sketch in which competitors have less than a minute to explain their Kennedy Assassination theories.  The winner in the competition says, "A tiger got him."  Compared to the offerings of the other contestant depicted, that is unquestionably simpler.  But better? 

That absurdity highlights the problem that you neglect here and that Kuhn addresses in calling for criteria of Puzzle definition and testability, Accuracy of Key predictions, Comprehensiveness and Coherence, Fruitfulness (which involves what a person sees when trying on the new paradigm for size and nurturing the seed within that view, and seeing what grows that they would otherwise not even imagine), simplicity and aesthetics and future promise.  Wright's view, I notice, considerably lacks future promise.

I couldn't disagree more. The various apologetics for the Book of Mormon are all over the place and tend to contradict each other. Whatever nuggets that are found are the results of looking everywhere for everything. The result is that apologists claim it is both a loose translation and tight translation, and is also a "creative and cultural translation" written by a ghost committee from the 1500's for an 1800's audience that uses a blend of EModE and modern English to make its points, and is both glossalalia and xenoglossia. We are left needing to believe that the sentence "the Book of Mormon is translated correctly" is true, but we don't know what the definition of is is.

In contrast, when you accept a naturalistic explanation, all of the pieces fit into place. Quoting Wright:

Quote

The simplest and most logical explanation is that the BM Isaiah derives directly from the KJV text with some secondary modifications and does not derive from an ancient text through translation.

The larger net of evidence supports this conclusion. Other studies have demonstrated the use of the KJV in the composition of the BM. Stan Larson has shown that the "Sermon on the Mount" materials in 3 Nephi 12:1-14:27 are a revision of the KJV Matthew 5:3-7:27.¹¹² One can add to his insights the observation that several of the variants there are connected with words italicized in the KJV.¹¹³ In another study I have shown that Smith used the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews in composing Alma 12-13.¹¹⁴ This is an anachronism in the BM text, and the language of the parallels reflects the KJV formulation.

Smith's revision of the Bible also lends credence to the conclusion here. This work was not a "translation," even though so termed by Smith, but a reworking of the KJV. Though in places it has more substantial plusses than the BM Isaiah (chapter-length sometimes), its basic character is the same as the BM Isaiah. Many variants are associated with italics, develop from English polysemy, contradict Hebrew and Greek language and style, smooth out contextual and theological difficulties, and explain unclear words and ideas. The JSR, too, has more plusses than minuses. It is also noteworthy that work on the JSR began almost immediately after work on the BM. When the BM Isaiah is seen to be a revision of the KJV, the chronological proximity of the two works makes perfect sense. One can even conclude that work on the BM Isaiah was the training ground for work on the JSR.

More broadly, the conclusion of this paper is supported by--and in turn supports--arguments that show that the whole of the BM is not an ancient work but a composition by Smith himself.¹¹⁵ The book displays many cultural, ideational, and textual anachronisms. New and Old World archaeological finds have not been satisfactorily or successfully correlated with it.

That is what Kuhn meant by a paradigm being "fruitful." It is broad consistency with all of the evidence, and allows you to fruitfully predict and understand things that you didn't understand before.

I like the way Richard Packham said it. In the 1950's, he was a young man with a super-strong testimony. Years before the Tanners published Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?, He was studying his own faith, trying to reconcile all of the problems he kept finding. In his own words:

"It was at a single moment one day in the university library when I was pondering this problem. I was suddenly struck with the thought, All of these problems disappear as soon as you realize that the Mormon church is just another man-made institution. Everything then is easily explained.' It was like a revelation. The weight suddenly lifted from me and I was filled with a feeling of joy and exhilaration. Of course! Why hadn't I seen it before?"

Accuracy of Key predictions. Comprehensiveness. Coherence. Fruitfulness. Simplicity. Aesthetics. Future promise. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

Edited December 6, 2022 by Analytics

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

Kuhn's ideas are intended to be used as a way to understand paradigms and choose the best one. They aren't intended as a way to rationalize clinging to the paradigm you happen to like the best.

Oh yeah.

Oops, there goes gravity.

But I still BELIEVE!

Edited December 6, 2022 by mfbukowski

[Hamba Tuhan]

9 hours ago, Eschaton said:

This is beyond silly. Scholars don't have disciples ...

I'm guessing you even managed to write this with a straight face! 

[Tacenda]

21 hours ago, Nevo said:

Old Testament and Related Studies was actually the first thing I ever read by Nibley. I found a copy in the pensión where I was staying in Santiago, Chile, while serving as a missionary in the early 1990s. We had been kicked out of our former living quarters and had to find a new place on short notice.

Some members took us in, and we ended up sleeping in a windowless, subterranean room under their kitchen. Next door was a bar that played cumbia music all night. I don't recall getting much missionary work done during those weeks, but I made it through the book (as well as Joseph Fielding Smith's Essentials in Church History). I loved it. It was my first exposure to "serious" scholarship, and I was enthralled. I couldn't follow a lot of it ("Patriarchy and Matriarchy" was particularly opaque), but it left me hungry for more. Nibley's constant name-dropping appealed to my pretentious side (I hoped to be able to do the same someday) and the Desert Fathers, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic writings, and the Kabbalah were exotic new worlds to be explored. When I got home from my mission, I read Prophetic Book of Mormon, Approaching Zion, and Temple and Cosmos, and loved all of them. 

But eventually "shades of the prison-house began to close upon the growing boy" and I lost my former enthusiasm. My mind became colonized by "mainstream" scholarship and Nibley's work (much of it written for Church publications in the 50s and 60s) started to look deeply flawed in comparison. Not just outmoded, but fundamentally unsound (for the reasons that Jackson and others have noted).

However, you are probably correct that I have underestimated and undervalued Nibley's contributions — perhaps guilty of what E.P. Thompson called "the enormous condescension of posterity" or maybe just stuck in a lower level of the Perry scheme of cognitive growth.

I certainly share your affection for Nibley the man (not least for this story, which has always endeared him to me).    

   

Yes, this is a welcome change from the situation in 1989. While not everything is available to everyone (and some things probably never will be), there has been a massive effort to be more transparent. For which I am grateful.

(I'll really start celebrating when the William Clayton journals are published, as well as the official list of Joseph Smith's (probable) plural wives. In 2015, the introduction to the third volume of Joseph Smith's journals stated that "An Annotated List of Joseph Smith's Plural Wives" "will be published on the Joseph Smith Papers website" [p. xix]. In 2017, I asked the Church History Department when that might happen. I was told that "there is no scheduled release date at this time for the annotated list." Five years later, we are still waiting, which makes me wonder if there is a holdout in the Q15. Time will tell, I guess.)

 

Per the bold: Pretty sad, like they didn't exist, what a shame. Like the missionary photo!

Edited December 7, 2022 by Tacenda

[JustAnAustralian]

23 hours ago, Nevo said:

In 2015, the introduction to the third volume of Joseph Smith's journals stated that "An Annotated List of Joseph Smith's Plural Wives" "will be published on the Joseph Smith Papers website" [p. xix]. In 2017, I asked the Church History Department when that might happen. I was told that "there is no scheduled release date at this time for the annotated list." Five years later, we are still waiting, which makes me wonder if there is a holdout in the Q15. Time will tell, I guess.)

The list isn't there in one spot, but searching for "plural wife of JS" on the JSPP site, gives you a list of 30+ people pages highlighting that they were a plural wife of JS. 

Edited December 7, 2022 by JustAnAustralian

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I'm guessing you even managed to write this with a straight face! 

“How Stephen Hawking’s Chinese disciple is smashing universal barriers in his spirit”

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/2137423/how-stephen-hawkings-chinese-disciple-smashing-universal-barriers-his

”Mr. Lanier may well be a visionary and quite possibly have been a young disciple of Richard Feynman.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/05/15/jaron-laniers-who-owns-the-future-what-on-earth-is-this-guy-talking-about/

“graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1921, Sandoval Vallarta later became a disciple of Albert Einstein and other scientists of that ...”

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sandoval-vallarta-manuel-1899-1977

“The Disciples of Carl Sagan”

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/the-disciples-of-carl-sagan/

 

Edited December 7, 2022 by Calm

[Eschaton]

15 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I'm guessing you even managed to write this with a straight face! 

I'm always slightly amused by conservative religious people using religious terms to cast aspersions on secular fields of study. The use of "disciples" as a kind of conspiratorial insult coming from a religious person seems rather self-defeating. 

Edited December 7, 2022 by Eschaton

[Kevin Christensen]

Wright's essay in American Apocrypha was not the last and final word on the topic of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.  John Tvedtnes published an important response back in 2004 in the FARMS Review 16/2.  Some important observations from Tvedtnes include:

Quote

The publication of Royal Skousen’s research on the textual history of the Book of Mormon not long before Wright’s article appeared in print makes available for the first time typescripts of the extant original and complete printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, including emendations made in the manuscripts themselves.³ Skousen’s work is invaluable as a means of correcting both my earlier study of the Isaiah variants and Wright’s assumptions about those variants.

 https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1633&context=msr

He makes an overall comment in his footnote 2.

Quote

While I do not reject all of Wright’s arguments, I find some of them insignificant. For example, he protests too much when he minimizes version support for the addition
of the conjunction and in some Isaiah passages quoted in the Book of Mormon and then places emphasis on other matters that are truly minimal.

Tvedtnes looks at the variants overall and makes this observation and conclusion:

Quote

Of the 388 verses contained in the lengthy Isaiah passages quoted in the Nephite record, 199 vary from those of the KJV Bible, while 189 verses correspond word for word with it. The fact that more than half the verses include variants challenges Wright’s contention that “except for a few variants, the BoM text follows the KJV word for word” (p. 158, emphasis added). Some 193 of those KJV verses include italicized words. The Book of Mormon modified 137 (71 percent) of these but also modified 62 (32 percent) of the 195 KJV verses that include no italicized words.¹¹
This analysis suggests that while italicized words could have influenced Joseph Smith in modifying KJV Isaiah passages, they cannot have been the sole factor. An examination of the relevant passages in the original and printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon suggests that a more detailed study should include those earliest readings. 

Several separate but crucially important issues emerge in considering the Original and Printer's Manuscripts.

Quote

Some variants are readily explained as scribal errors (e.g., the addition of the word not in 2 Nephi 13:6, the change from an healer to a ruler in 2 Nephi 13:7, and the addition of Red before sea in 2 Nephi 19:1). Some of them seem to be aural errors, where the scribe misheard the word (e.g., the change from found to founded in 2 Nephi 20:10,¹² the change from found to proud in 2 Nephi 23:14, and the change from raiment to remnant in 2 Nephi 14:19). 

And this:

Quote

Other variants have a more complex history when one examines the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon, from which most of the Book of Mormon was typeset. For example, the printer’s manuscript of some Book of Mormon Isaiah passages lacks a word found in the KJV, which was later restored. These were apparently inadvertent omissions during Joseph Smith’s dictation or during the copying of the original manuscript to produce the printer’s manuscript. Thus, their in Isaiah 3:18 and am in Isaiah 6:8 KJV were omitted in the manuscript but later restored in 2 Nephi 13:18 and 2 Nephi 16:8. For the printer’s manuscript of 2 Nephi 16:2, 6, the word seraphims appears precisely as in Isaiah 6:2, 6 KJV but omits the s in the published version. The word bare in Isaiah 53:12 KJV was misspelled bear in the printer’s manuscript, leading to an overcorrection to bore in the printed version of Mosiah 14:12; the word is not italicized in the KJV, and the change is clearly unrelated to the KJV use of italics. Such facts call for a more thorough examination of the variants than anyone has yet undertaken.¹⁴

And even more notably, this kind of thing:

Quote

Some of Wright’s arguments fail when one looks at the meaning of the KJV words as used in Joseph Smith’s day. In this example, Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines provoke as “challenge,” which is clearly in agreement with the “modern renditions” that Wright cites. Similarly, where 2 Nephi 15:2 follows KJV “he fenced it” (Isaiah 5:2), the modern renditions read “ ‘he dug it,’ ‘made a trench,’ ‘broke the ground’” Some of Wright’s arguments fail when one looks at the meaning of the KJV words as used in Joseph Smith’s day. In this example, Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines provoke as “challenge,” which is clearly in agreement with the “modern renditions” that Wright cites. Similarly, where 2 Nephi 15:2 follows KJV “he fenced it” (Isaiah 5:2), the modern renditions read “ ‘he dug it,’ ‘made a trench,’ ‘broke the ground’ ” (p. 170). A simple check of the 1828 Webster notes that the word fence means “a wall, hedge, ditch,” the third example fitting well with the modern renderings. From examples such as this, it is clear that a thorough study of the Isaiah passages of the Book of Mormon should determine what the words meant in Joseph Smith’s day. Wright is not the first critic to point out presumed errors in the KJV’s translation of Hebrew words that were perpetuated in the Book of Mormon. What is surprising is that some of these “errors” are an illusion because some of the KJV words had a different meaning in nineteenth-century American English than they do today. For example, the word curious, which is used to describe various artifacts ten times in the KJV (Exodus 28:8, 27–28; 29:5; 35:32; 39:5, 20–21; Leviticus 8:7; Acts 19:19) and six times in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 16:10; 18:1; Alma 37:39; 63:5; Helaman 6:11; Ether 10:27) should not be understood as “strange” or “inquisitive.” In all of those passages, it means “skilled” and alludes to the craftsmanship that produced the artifact. That the word continued to have this meaning in nineteenthcentury American English is affirmed by Webster’s 1828 dictionary and its use in describing Mormon’s plates in the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, published near the beginning of the Book of Mormon.(p. 170). A simple check of the 1828 Webster notes that the word fence means “a wall, hedge, ditch,” the third example fitting well with the modern renderings. From examples such as this, it is clear that a thorough study of the Isaiah passages of the Book of Mormon should determine what the words meant in Joseph Smith’s day.

Wright is not the first critic to point out presumed errors in the KJV’s translation of Hebrew words that were perpetuated in the Book of Mormon. What is surprising is that some of these “errors” are an
illusion because some of the KJV words had a different meaning in nineteenth-century American English than they do today. For example, the word curious, which is used to describe various artifacts ten times in the KJV (Exodus 28:8, 27–28; 29:5; 35:32; 39:5, 20–21; Leviticus 8:7; Acts 19:19) and six times in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 16:10; 18:1; Alma 37:39; 63:5; Helaman 6:11; Ether 10:27) should not be understood as “strange” or “inquisitive.” In all of those passages, it means “skilled” and alludes to the craftsmanship that produced the artifact. That the word continued to have this meaning in nineteenth century American English is affirmed by Webster’s 1828 dictionary and its use in describing Mormon’s plates in the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, published near the beginning of the Book of Mormon.

Tvedtnes also questions the weight Wright gives to passages deemed "obscure" or "unintelligible" the Hebrew.   He also questions Wright's citation of an 1831 Philadephia newspaper article that "is clearly heresay, and, as far as I can determine, unattested by statments made by Joseph Smith and Martin Harris, about whom the article speaks."

These kinds of things call into question the overall soundness of Wright's approach.  I cannot help but notice that you did not mention them, but only mentioned that Wright criticized a much earlier effort by Tvedtnes.

But expections are important, and it is one thing to base one's expectations on an abstract ideal, "Surely God would ensure that no human imperfections would appear in anything he assigns a prophet to do, rending them into his sock puppets without any discernable humanity (for evidence supporting this unquestionable assumption see nothing whatsoever) and that when they do, we can be sure that Wright, being a noted Brandeis scholar, can be assumed to have transcended his own humanity.  

Analytics wrote:

Quote

The various apologetics for the Book of Mormon are all over the place and tend to contradict each other. Whatever nuggets that are found are the results of looking everywhere for everything. The result is that apologists claim it is both a loose translation and tight translation, and is also a "creative and cultural translation" written by a ghost committee from the 1500's for an 1800's audience that uses a blend of EModE and modern English to make its points, and is both glossalalia and xenoglossia. We are left needing to believe that the sentence "the Book of Mormon is translated correctly" is true, but we don't know what the definition of is is.

The first sentence is way too abstract to be useful.  Specificity is important for what Kuhn calls the criteria of "puzzle definition and testability."  I notice that the statement that "Whatever nuggets that are found are the results of looking everywhere for everything" is also notably abstract and also directly comparable with Helaman 16:16 that " Some things they may have guessed right, among so many; but behold, we know that all these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass, of which has been spoken."

Regarding the translation, I like Kevin Barney's term, "complex translation", rather than "loose" or "tight control" simply because in general, the realities of cross cultural and cross temporal translation where different human beings are involved cannot, and should not, be oversimplified.  Some concepts and ideas may translate (and think of the range of definitions in the 1828 Websters) easily, some, quite simply, will not.  And in even some of the most important and effective translations introduce anachronism, such as the "candle" and the "bushel" as in "Do men light a candle and hide it under a bushel?"

 I do not think you really grasp Kuhn's description of most important values involved in paradigm choice.  For instance, "the proponents of different paradigms will often disagree aabout the list of problems that any candidate for paradigm must resolve.  Their standards and definitions of science are not the same."  (Kuhn 148).

Many of the things that I find most persuasive simply do not appear on your list, nor in anything I have read from Wright, or the many other critics I have explored. And as to "fruitfulness", Kuhn writes that "particularly persuasive arguments can be developed if the new paradigm permits the prediction of phenomena that had been entirely unsuspected while the old one prevailed."  (Kuhn, 154).   Wright, I noticed, in his notably learned and careful study of Alma 13 completely overlooked a great many things I see significant in Alma 13.  And beyond that, I notice that nothing that he or you has written had acknowledged, let alone explained in any meaningful way, for instance, "Survor Witness in the Book of Mormon" (Hawkins and Thomasson's amazing paper),

https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/i-only-am-escaped-alone-tell-thee-survivor-witnesses-book-mormon

let alone Larry Poulson's geographic corrolations, or Lehi's Journey, or the kinds of things that LiDAR recently showed, nor literally hundreds of studies I have read by people with expertise I do not have who offer unexpected insights that I could not have imagined.  Nor the personal spiritual confirmations I have had. They are not on you list.  Fine.

But another things Kuhn points out is that:

Quote

the issue is which paradigm in the future should in the future guide research on problems which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances, that decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise.... He must that is, have faith that the new paradgm will succeed with the many problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith.  (Kuhn 157-158.

In comparing my own experience in reading the Tanner's work with Richard Packham's that you offer as an alternate paradigm, I can only reflect on just how much I have seen and learned and experienced in the past 35 years or so that I would not only have never imagined, but also that I would not even know what I had missed.   So, with a subtantial sense of awe and gratitude, I thank God for faith.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited December 7, 2022 by Kevin Christensen
typos

[mfbukowski]

I still don't get it.

Either God tells you the principles are true or not.  Those are the "instructions on the package"

Do not take while under the influence of sophistry.

Accept philosophy for what it is.

Poof.

Millions of pages disappear, thousands of people return to church.

Even history science and scholarship take faith to believe and incorporate into your life, what's the difference?

Instrumentalism is the final answer. Either the paradigm does what you need it for, or it doesn't, until another one appears which must be tested on faith.

Hope for things unseen, until they are seen.

Edited December 7, 2022 by mfbukowski

[Eschaton]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I still don't get it.

Either God tells you the principles are true or not.  Those are the "instructions on the package"

Do not take while under the influence of sophistry.

Accept philosophy for what it is.

Poof.

Millions of pages disappear, thousands of people return to church.

Even history science and scholarship take faith to believe and incorporate into your life, what's the difference?

Instrumentalism is the final answer. Either the paradigm does what you need it for, or it doesn't, until another one appears which must be tested on faith.

Hope for things unseen, until they are seen.

When one understands that "faith" really just means "trust," then it becomes clear that our entire lives run on faith. 

[Eschaton]

6 minutes ago, Ambrosia said:

Trust what?  When do you decide when you should have faith in something? Or trust, if you think faith is the same thing as trust?  When?  How?  Who?  When who says what when?

I don't think faith is the same thing as trust, and even if it were, how would you go from one step to another while being sure you are making the right steps?

If we hope for things unseen until they are seen while we hope we will see them, what is it that is causing us to hope we will someday see those things? 

I think we hope while we also have some sense of certainty that what we hope for is true.  Is that sense of certainty what you say is trust?

We wouldn't hope for something if we did not feel some sense of certainty that what we hope for is true or will come to pass.  That sense of certainty is what we call faith, and we need faith while we have hope that what we don't see is true.

But where would you say that faith comes from, or should come from?  What causes us to think we have faith when we have it?  How do you think we know when we have faith?

I've seen a New Testament translation where they translated πίστις  as "trust" in each instance. "Faith" over the centuries has built up all kinds of connotations, and I think the word "trust" kind of gets rid of the baggage and gets to the heart of what is meant. 

But in what should we trust you ask? That's the question. Everyone must answer that for themselves. 

[The Nehor]

28 minutes ago, Ambrosia said:

Well, if we're supposed to trust God, first and foremost, then we should have some way to know WHEN God is telling us something AND WHAT he is telling us when he communicates with us. 

Wouldn't you say those are our minimum requirements IF we want to trust God? 

God doesn’t seem to agree with your minimum requirements.

I am not happy about it either.

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, Ambrosia said:

True, the way God communicates with us doesn't seem be a way for us to "know" when God is telling us something AND WHAT he is telling us when he communicates with us, at least not to some people, but it is the way and it does work as it should.

I'll be much happier when I get a much better crystal display screen with a much better buzzer to notify me when I get a text message from him.

Same.

At least I haven’t heard the metaphor about the old timey radio sets having to be tuned in correctly that much lately. Even then I wondered how humanity had surpassed God in communication technology.

[Arthur Vandelay]

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

At least I haven’t heard the metaphor about the old timey radio sets having to be tuned in correctly that much lately. Even then I wondered how humanity had surpassed God in communication technology.

In HPG a few weeks ago, a teacher made a very plausible case -- using the Book of Daniel -- that God will only reveal himself when non-Huawei 5G infrastructure is reliably deployed and adopted.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Arthur Vandelay said:

In HPG a few weeks ago, a teacher made a very plausible case -- using the Book of Daniel -- that God will only reveal himself when non-Huawei 5G infrastructure is reliably deployed and adopted.

High Priest Group? A few weeks ago? Really?