Book of Mormon Criticism of Calvin

[JarMan]

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You remember the bit about what's missing? Most of what Grotius's use of the biblical text is the New Testament (by frequency). When we get to his discussions on the trinity, it is mostly from the New Testament. Yes, he can quote the Old Testament. I am not arguing that. The Book of Mormon presents a very different use of the Biblical text than Grotius does. So Grotius may comment on every passage in the Old Testament that the Book of Mormon uses. This isn't a surprise if, as you note, Grotius comments on nearly every biblical passage (it would even be expected). What isn't expected is the way that the Book of Mormon uses the biblical text if Grotius is its author. Perhaps a good way of looking at this would be  for me to take a passage of the Old Testament, provide Grotius's varied comments on that passage, and then compare them to the Book of Mormon usage. If they aren't similar, that should be evidence against Grotius as author, right?

My experience in reading Grotius is that he is very focused on the OT.  Let's stay with Abinadi and his use of the OT since that's the starting point of this thread. We have some very good material from Grotius on this that is super relatable: his Truth of the Christian Religion. Book 5 is addressed to the Jews and set out where the Jews have gone wrong and Christianity has gone right. Sections 6-12 discuss the same general things Abinadi says to Noah and the priests regarding the Law of Moses in Mosiah 12 and 13. Sections 13-23 discuss the same themes we see in Mosiah 13 and 14 regarding OT prophecies of Christ. They both even quote Isaiah 53 in its entirety. This is a good place to start to see how Grotius reads the OT.

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Alma 60 -

We know from verse 2 that this letter is about the war and the war strategy - "I direct mine epistle to Pahoran ... and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war."

While Moroni lays out the primary issues (lack of men, supplies, and so on), he really is arguing about the secondary causes for this problem. This is laid out starting in verse 11 -

"Behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain."

This is a reference to the strategies that had worked in previous conflicts - with Alma and the people of Limhi. This is directly pointed to in Alma 60:20. In those circumstances, the people were completely passive, and were eventually saved - something they attributed to righteousness. The losses experienced by Moroni in this engagement are presented in this context in Alma 60:12 - "Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness?" This doesn't come out of nowhere - it has a context. Moroni is arguing for a more aggressive proactive approach to the war - that rather than wait passively and rely on their righteousness and the providence of God, that they should take the battle to their enemies and become an aggressive participant in the war. The idea that perhaps this aggressive approach might be seen itself as sinful can be seen earlier in the text - in Alma 43:30 where there is an editorial comment: "And he [Moroni] also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem ..."

Moroni is making the argument that those who are doing their duty (being righteous) can still lose, and that their losses are not because they are acting in an unrighteous manner in pursuing their enemies. And in this context, Moroni then calls out the lack of support for the military efforts as itself a sin. And he suggests that the Nephites cannot win the war while the leaders of the people are sinning in not actively defending the people. And his threat of violent insurrection is presented as a potential test if they cannot be convinced. If the Nephite leadership is so set in their belief that they are righteous and their righteousness will save them, and that it is Moroni and his men that are acting questionably (as evidenced by their losses), then they should have nothing to fear if Moroni should bring his armies after the Nephite leadership.

The rhetoric is more complex than I am presenting it here - there is a series of references to earlier material in Mosiah and Alma, but this is the gist of it.

Ok, thanks for playing along. There is enough here, I think, to now look at a letter from Pompey to the Roman Senate as written by the Roman historian, Sallust. Sallust was a senator and former general. His work became very popular in the 16th and 17 centuries. It's interesting that a lot of the ancient histories were written by generals--Julius Caesar and Thucydides--to name a few. The BoM imitates that convention to some degree. Another thing it imitates (whole-heartedly) from the ancient historians is its use of embedded speeches and letters. Here is Pompey's letter to the Senate.

Quote

IF I had been warring against you, against my country, and against my fathers’ gods, when I endured such hardship and dangers as those amid which from my early youth the armies under my command have routed the most criminal of your enemies and insured your safety; even then, Fathers of the Senate, you could have done no more against me in my absence than you are now doing. For after having exposed me, in spite of my youth, to a most cruel war, you have, so far as in you lay, destroyed me and a faithful army by starvation, the most wretched of all deaths. Was it with such expectations that the Roman people sent its sons to war? Are these the rewards for wounds and for so often shedding our blood for our country? Wearied with writing letters and sending envoys, I have exhausted my personal resources and even my expectations, and in the meantime for three years you have barely given me the means of meeting a year’s expenses. By the immortal gods! do you think that I can play the part of a treasury or maintain an army without food or pay?

I admit that I entered upon this war with more zeal than discretion; for within forty days of the time when I received from you the empty title of commander I had raised and equipped an army and driven the enemy, who were already at the throat of Italy, from the Alps into Spain; and over those mountains I had opened for you another and more convenient route than Hannibal had taken. I recovered Gaul, the Pyrenees, Lacetania, and the Indigetes; with raw soldiers and far inferior numbers I withstood the first onslaught of triumphant Sertorius; and I spent the winter in camp amid the most savage of foes, not in the towns or in adding to my own popularity.

Why need I enumerate our battles or our winter campaigns, the towns which we destroyed or captured? Actions speak louder than words. The taking of the enemy’s camp at Sucro, the battle at the river Turia, and the destruction of Gaius Herennius, leader of the enemy, together with his army and the city of Valentia, are well enough known to you. In return for these, grateful fathers, you give me want and hunger. Thus the condition of my army and of that of the enemy is the same; for neither is paid and either can march Victorious into Italy. Of this situation I warn you and I beg you to give it your attention; do not force me to provide for my necessities on my own responsibility. Hither Spain, so far as it is not in the possession of the enemy, either we or Sertorius have devastated to the point of ruin, except for the coast towns, so that it is actually an expense and a burden to us. Gaul last year supplied the army of Metellus with pay and provisions and can now scarcely keep alive itself because of a failure of the crops; I myself have exhausted not only my means, but even my credit. You are our only resource; unless you come to our rescue, against my will, but not without warning from me, our army will pass over into Italy, bringing with it all the war in Spain.

Some have claimed this letter alludes to Nicia's letter to the Athenian Assembly as recounted by Thucydides (beginning at par. 11) as it shares several qualities, but also some notable differences. Here is one such paper by Elizabeth Meyer from the University of Virginia that will be helpful for this discussion. The reason it should be helpful is because it shows how someone else has approached this kind of comparison. I can't be accused of parallel hunting if I look at the very same criteria she brought up. I will also expand on the things she looked at because I am bringing in a third text for comparison.

I know I have given you a bunch of homework so I'm going to hold off for now on discussing the linguistic aspects. In the mean time I will be doing some homework on that.

[JarMan]

9 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Why don't you find it then, and see what they are really claiming. My experience is entirely different. Usually when language is brought back, it isn't brought back as archaism (which never really leaves), it is brought back as meaning something entirely different. Like, for example, the word plastic. When Arkenside writes "the plastic arm of the creator," he wasn't referring to God having a polymer arm.

Ok, I think I found the reference I was referring to. So let me correct my claim based on what it says.

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The point here is that this one instance is an outlier: it is unsupported by any other usage in this time period. We need other examples, especially by normal speakers that could not have known the archaic usage. It seems reasonable to assume that the judgment of the OED editors is undoubtedly right: this usage was obsolete in the late 1800s (and very likely from the 1600s on). For another example, one of an archaic phrase still known to a few speakers, see pleading bar, which was undoubtedly obsolete in the 1800s and 1900s, despite the fact that it was still known and used by a few specialists.

Skousen is essentially saying that some archaic phrases might persist among specialists. I said they were brought back by specialists, which is different than having them persist. However, I do still think that specialists bring back obsolete language, as I pointed out with Tolkien and two other authors. (I know I said I wasn't going to talk about language, but I didn't want to leave a CFR partially answered.)

[JarMan]

9 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So it's a work of fiction, and only the one passage is allegorical, and we don't really have to worry about the rest of the text? This is one of those vices - decontrextualize the part you want to compare, and ignore everything else. If the text is primarily fiction, you need a lot more justification than you have provided that we should even read this one passage as allegorical.

I think you are trying to caricature my views rather than trying to understand them. I see the BoM as an epic founding myth like the Aeneid, or the story of the exodus, or Tolkien's stories. As with other founding myths, it instructs and informs the reader about big-picture ideas: proper moral and civic behavior, understanding the bible, the role of governments and the church, human suffering, justice and injustice. Embedded within are apocalyptic wars and apocalyptic prophecies with prescriptive antidotes for people and nations to survive and thrive. Along the way it takes shots at the contemporary and the historical world. It draws on ancient and contemporary events--some explicitly, and others more hidden--to help move the narrative along. It's style attempts to imitate both the bible and ancient western historians. In my opinion it's a literary marvel because it's managed to do all of that while building and maintaining a massive loyal following of true believers for almost 200 years.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Your link didn't work for me, so I just did my own search for it on Google (to come up with something comparable to what you are looking at). I also own this book which discusses this work specifically.

I am looking at Book 5, Section 6, and I am wondering where you get the similarities. Section 6 doesn't seem to have anything to do with Mosiah 12 and 13. I'll list a few major differences between Grotius here and the Book of Mormon.

1: Grotius defines a prophet as someone who performs miracles. The Book of Mormon defines a prophet as someone who receives the word of God (through visions and dreams) and then delivers it to the people. The standard text used by the Book of Mormon (which isn't referenced here at all by Grotius) is Numbers 12:6 - "And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream." This is the justification that the Book of Mormon uses for Lehi's being called a prophet in 1 Nephi. So here is 1 Nephi 1:8, 16; 2:1:

Quote

And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, ... And now I, Nephi, do not make a full account of the things which my father hath written, for he hath written many things which he saw in visions and in dreams; and he also hath written many things which he prophesied and spake unto his children, of which I shall not make a full account. ... For behold, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto my father, yea, even in a dream, and said unto him:

Grotius writes (5.6): "For the Hebrew doctors themselves lay down this rule for the extent of a prophet's power, that is, of one that works miracles: that he may securely violate any sort of precept, except that of the worship of one God, and, indeed; the power of making laws, which is in God, did not cease upon his giving precepts by Moses; nor is any one, who has any authority to give laws, thereby hindered from giving others contrary to them." I note in passing that this idea in action could account for the discussion on polygamy in Jacob relative to Lehi's commandments to the people. But this isn't happening here. The way that Grotius defines a prophet is central to his argument. He is arguing that Jesus performed miracles, and so should have been recognized by the Jews as having the authority to change the law. This is from Grotius 5.2:

Quote

But we bring twelve witnesses, whose lives were unblameable, of Christ's ascending into heaven; and many more, of Christ's being seen upon the earth after his death; which, if they be true, the Christian doctrine must of necessity be true also; and it is plain that the Jews can say nothing for themselves, but what will hold as strong or stronger for us. But, to pass by testimonies, the writers of the Talmud, and the Jews themselves, own the miraculous things done by Christ, which out to satisfy them: For God cannot more effectually recommend the authority of any doctrine delivered by man, than by working miracles.

This idea is to some extent foreign to the Book of Mormon. But it is noticeably absent here in Mosiah 12-15. Do the texts share a theme of prophets? I won't argue against that. However, their view of prophets is quite different. And this matters. When you make the parallel a broad theme, it becomes problematic in this kinds of arguments. After all, the number of texts written between 1500 and 1800 that have a theme of prophets and prophecy is a really big number. When the Book of Mormon does deal with the issue of miracles as signs of authority (which it does in a couple of places), it is completely different from the value that Grotius places on it here.

Lest you think that my summary is misplaced, I will quote from the commentary that I linked to, from Heering, p. 59, which summarizes the beginning of Book 5 of Grotius's work:

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Grotius opens with a friendly address to the Jews, in which he declares that the Jewish faith contains a part of the truth that has been fully brought to light in Christianity. The Jews ought to recognise the historicity of the miracles performed by Jesus, for they prove the miracles in which they themselves believe in the very same way that the Christians prove theirs, namely by appealing to reliable testimonies. Some Jews wrongly assert that the miracles of Jesus were brought about by demons, and that Jesus learned demonic arts in Egypt. One could say the same of Moses, who spent much longer in Egypt. It is an argument for Jesus’ innocence that he was not accused of such arts either by the Roman or the Jewish authorities. The assumption that his miracles could have been performed by verbal magic is a Jewish fiction. Jesus’ miracles found their justification in the law of Moses, which states that after Moses there would be other prophets whom the people would have to obey. Prophets are known in the first place by the miracles that they perform. The Jews are obliged to believe every prophet who performs miracles, provided that they are not led astray from the worship of the true God. They therefore have no reason whatever not to believe in Jesus, who performed only miracles that served the one true God.

At this point though, I want to mention something really important. Grotius, in his 5th book, spends a lot of time pointing out how the Law of Moses could be superseded by Jesus without violating any of the biblical principles of revealed religion. This is a specific claim that the Law of Moses wasn't perfect, that it could be replaced by an authoritative prophet, and that Jesus was an authoritative prophet with authority to change the Law. Mosiah on the other hand doesn't address any of these issues. When Abinadi confronts Noah and his priests it is about their wickedness in not living the law. Abinadi doesn't replace the law, doesn't offer a higher law. Instead, what Abinadi does is to recite for them the law that they are not living, beginning with the ten commandments. The very basic purpose of these texts is at odds. One is trying to explain why, even in a Jewish context, Christianity is valid. It responds directly to Jewish criticisms of Christianity. The other occurs exclusively within a Jewish context.

Now, I want to discuss just briefly the issue that  you raise of Isaiah 53. One of the things that happens in this particular work of Grotius, is that he constantly plagiarizes. In Section 19, for example, all of his footnotes to the text of Isaiah 53 are lifted from a Latin text (I don't think it has ever been translated into English) by Constantijn L'Empereur: Comment. in Esaiae prophetiam, cum additamento eorum quae R. Simeon e veterum dictis collegit. It isn't just this source - most of the footnotes in the entire volume are copied from contemporary sources - and we can determine which sources that Grotius is using based on differences in the footnotes. For example, Heering notes this (189):

Quote

For example, he refers in one place to Rashi as ‘Solomon Jarchi’ and elsewhere as ‘Rabbi Salomo’. The identification of Rashi with Solomon Jarchi is due to a Christian misunderstanding, a mistake made by Raymundus Martini and later copied by such  Hebraists as Münster, Buxtorf junior and L’Empereur. The explanation of Grotius’ ambiguity is that he must have taken the references to ‘Solomon Jarchi’ from L’Empereur,168 and those to ‘Rabbi Salomo’ from the converted Jew Gerson. It is not clear if Grotius knew to whom he was referring.

Or, from pages 189-90:

Quote

His references to the Spanish rabbi Moses ben Nachman Geroni offer another example of lack of clarity. In the main text he calls him ‘Moses Nehemanni filius’, and in the note ‘Moses Gerundensis’. Did he realise that he was referring to one and the same person? For Grotius the mere naming of names is often sufficient indication of his testimonies.

And there are mistakes. This is why, in Section 19 - the Section which quotes Isaiah 53, Grotius provides in footnote 17 a reference to the Babylonian Talmud. We know (from the original text where Grotius took this reference) that it is a  reference to tractate Sota in the Babyonian Talmud. But in Grotius there is a typo in the Hebrew text, resulting in a tractate that doesn't actually exist. Grotius apparently (and this is the conclusion of Heering) couldn't actually read the source materials that he routinely references in this work.

This is important for a couple of reasons. Among other things, it points out that when Grotius engages Isaiah 53 in this way, he is far from unique. Isaiah 53 is used frequently in discussions about the Messiah. Grotius uses it in a way that is consistent with historical patterns. But, so does the Book of Mormon. And because these instances both fit into a much larger pattern of writing, it becomes very difficult to use this as evidence of a connection between the two texts.

[Benjamin McGuire]

19 hours ago, JarMan said:

Skousen is essentially saying that some archaic phrases might persist among specialists. I said they were brought back by specialists, which is different than having them persist. However, I do still think that specialists bring back obsolete language, as I pointed out with Tolkien and two other authors. (I know I said I wasn't going to talk about language, but I didn't want to leave a CFR partially answered.)

But I am not presenting usages by specialists, and the usage isn't technical in that way. Skousen on this phrase is simply wrong. So, let me ask a simple question. How many 'normal' usages would I need to find between, say, 1800 and 1828 for you to admit that the phrase "the more part of" wasn't obsolete - just merely a widely recognized archaism?

[Benjamin McGuire]

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think you are trying to caricature my views rather than trying to understand them.

Perhaps I am. On the other hand, I would suggest that you are describing your argument in ways that imply a lot of things you don't mean to imply. In any case, you still have the problem that the Book of Mormon doesn't read like anything that Grotius wrote.

[Benjamin McGuire]

21 hours ago, JarMan said:

Some have claimed this letter alludes to Nicia's letter to the Athenian Assembly as recounted by Thucydides (beginning at par. 11) as it shares several qualities, but also some notable differences. Here is one such paper by Elizabeth Meyer from the University of Virginia that will be helpful for this discussion. The reason it should be helpful is because it shows how someone else has approached this kind of comparison. I can't be accused of parallel hunting if I look at the very same criteria she brought up. I will also expand on the things she looked at because I am bringing in a third text for comparison.

Let me point out the glaring difference. In the paper by Elizabeth Meyer, the effort is to show that there is an allusion from one text to another. I am somewhat familiar with this idea, having published some of my own efforts on this issue. But, part of the issue here is that the comparison is being made between two texts with known authors and known historical contexts. Among other things, you cannot (as this paper does) compare the language of the two source texts. Why? Because you don't have them both. In fact, you are claiming that the text you have is a later redaction of a translation of the original.

I don't find your efforts to be anything like this.

[Benjamin McGuire]

A final note -

We have lots of accounts about armies starving. About how difficult it was to supply them, and how often these military groups suffered extreme deprivation. We can look at accounts from the American revolutionary war and find them. This is a common theme of warfare. You put back to me something that is a relatively common theme - and you say that this is what Alma 60 is all about - after I provided you with a complex reading that discusses how this letter reflects not only the deprivations of war, but a disagreement over how military force should be used within the Nephite community. My analysis is nowhere near as superficial as yours is. But this process - of going after the most common denominators is a symptom of parallel hunting.

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Your link didn't work for me, so I just did my own search for it on Google (to come up with something comparable to what you are looking at). I also own this book which discusses this work specifically.

I am looking at Book 5, Section 6, and I am wondering where you get the similarities. Section 6 doesn't seem to have anything to do with Mosiah 12 and 13. I'll list a few major differences between Grotius here and the Book of Mormon.

1: Grotius defines a prophet as someone who performs miracles. The Book of Mormon defines a prophet as someone who receives the word of God (through visions and dreams) and then delivers it to the people. The standard text used by the Book of Mormon (which isn't referenced here at all by Grotius) is Numbers 12:6 - "And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream." This is the justification that the Book of Mormon uses for Lehi's being called a prophet in 1 Nephi. So here is 1 Nephi 1:8, 16; 2:1:

Grotius writes (5.6): "For the Hebrew doctors themselves lay down this rule for the extent of a prophet's power, that is, of one that works miracles: that he may securely violate any sort of precept, except that of the worship of one God, and, indeed; the power of making laws, which is in God, did not cease upon his giving precepts by Moses; nor is any one, who has any authority to give laws, thereby hindered from giving others contrary to them." I note in passing that this idea in action could account for the discussion on polygamy in Jacob relative to Lehi's commandments to the people. But this isn't happening here. The way that Grotius defines a prophet is central to his argument. He is arguing that Jesus performed miracles, and so should have been recognized by the Jews as having the authority to change the law. This is from Grotius 5.2:

This idea is to some extent foreign to the Book of Mormon. But it is noticeably absent here in Mosiah 12-15. Do the texts share a theme of prophets? I won't argue against that. However, their view of prophets is quite different. And this matters. When you make the parallel a broad theme, it becomes problematic in this kinds of arguments. After all, the number of texts written between 1500 and 1800 that have a theme of prophets and prophecy is a really big number. When the Book of Mormon does deal with the issue of miracles as signs of authority (which it does in a couple of places), it is completely different from the value that Grotius places on it here.

Lest you think that my summary is misplaced, I will quote from the commentary that I linked to, from Heering, p. 59, which summarizes the beginning of Book 5 of Grotius's work:

At this point though, I want to mention something really important. Grotius, in his 5th book, spends a lot of time pointing out how the Law of Moses could be superseded by Jesus without violating any of the biblical principles of revealed religion. This is a specific claim that the Law of Moses wasn't perfect, that it could be replaced by an authoritative prophet, and that Jesus was an authoritative prophet with authority to change the Law. Mosiah on the other hand doesn't address any of these issues. When Abinadi confronts Noah and his priests it is about their wickedness in not living the law. Abinadi doesn't replace the law, doesn't offer a higher law. Instead, what Abinadi does is to recite for them the law that they are not living, beginning with the ten commandments. The very basic purpose of these texts is at odds. One is trying to explain why, even in a Jewish context, Christianity is valid. It responds directly to Jewish criticisms of Christianity. The other occurs exclusively within a Jewish context.

Now, I want to discuss just briefly the issue that  you raise of Isaiah 53. One of the things that happens in this particular work of Grotius, is that he constantly plagiarizes. In Section 19, for example, all of his footnotes to the text of Isaiah 53 are lifted from a Latin text (I don't think it has ever been translated into English) by Constantijn L'Empereur: Comment. in Esaiae prophetiam, cum additamento eorum quae R. Simeon e veterum dictis collegit. It isn't just this source - most of the footnotes in the entire volume are copied from contemporary sources - and we can determine which sources that Grotius is using based on differences in the footnotes. For example, Heering notes this (189):

Or, from pages 189-90:

And there are mistakes. This is why, in Section 19 - the Section which quotes Isaiah 53, Grotius provides in footnote 17 a reference to the Babylonian Talmud. We know (from the original text where Grotius took this reference) that it is a  reference to tractate Sota in the Babyonian Talmud. But in Grotius there is a typo in the Hebrew text, resulting in a tractate that doesn't actually exist. Grotius apparently (and this is the conclusion of Heering) couldn't actually read the source materials that he routinely references in this work.

This is important for a couple of reasons. Among other things, it points out that when Grotius engages Isaiah 53 in this way, he is far from unique. Isaiah 53 is used frequently in discussions about the Messiah. Grotius uses it in a way that is consistent with historical patterns. But, so does the Book of Mormon. And because these instances both fit into a much larger pattern of writing, it becomes very difficult to use this as evidence of a connection between the two texts.

You are losing sight of what is at issue here. You want to claim the BoM is contradictory to Grotius. Differences, though, are not necessarily contradictions. There are many, many internal differences within the BoM itself as well as within Grotius. There are some contradictions, as well, as long complex texts usually do have internal contradictions. You need to identify contradictions. All you are offering is obfuscation. Abinadi says Moses and all the prophets testified of the coming of Christ. He tells the priests the performances and ordinances of the law were given to keep them in remembrance of God, that they are a type of things to come, but don't have any saving power on their own. Keeping the law isn't limited to performing the rites, it also includes keeping the commandments. And it requires Christ's atonement. In a nutshell, this is what Abinadi teaches in Mosiah 12 and 13. Grotius addresses all these issues in the sections of his book I referred to. And he is in agreement with Abinadi on all of those points. He even uses the same rhetorical device, here, of quoting Isaiah 53 in its entirety as part of this discussion.

6 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

But I am not presenting usages by specialists, and the usage isn't technical in that way. Skousen on this phrase is simply wrong. So, let me ask a simple question. How many 'normal' usages would I need to find between, say, 1800 and 1828 for you to admit that the phrase "the more part of" wasn't obsolete - just merely a widely recognized archaism?

Two of your late sources were specialists as I have pointed out already. Your secondary grammar source can be explained as recognizing the use among just that type of specialist. All you have are two outliers here--the contemporary Sampson speech and the 1875 geology text. But, even so, I acknowledge it's possible JS or someone else could have been aware of this particular phrase, I just think there's a low probability. You have the additional problem that the phrase has to be known to be archaic. How would someone know if a phrase is archaic? I submit they have to be aware of its use in archaic texts, otherwise it will seem either like normal or provincial use. This is the biggest challenge of your position because it requires the author to be familiar with many, many archaic works like, in this case, Holinshed. This is where the baseline pseudo-archaic texts are so important because they show contemporary authors being unable to produce an equivalent amount of archaism.

6 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Let me point out the glaring difference. In the paper by Elizabeth Meyer, the effort is to show that there is an allusion from one text to another. I am somewhat familiar with this idea, having published some of my own efforts on this issue. But, part of the issue here is that the comparison is being made between two texts with known authors and known historical contexts. Among other things, you cannot (as this paper does) compare the language of the two source texts. Why? Because you don't have them both. In fact, you are claiming that the text you have is a later redaction of a translation of the original.

I don't find your efforts to be anything like this.

The level of redaction I am claiming is the substitution of archaic words with modern words, which wouldn't change the meaning of the text. But let's just assume for this discussion, that the BoM is a modern work produced by someone in JS's environment. Now we're comparing apples with apples.

6 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

A final note -

We have lots of accounts about armies starving. About how difficult it was to supply them, and how often these military groups suffered extreme deprivation. We can look at accounts from the American revolutionary war and find them. This is a common theme of warfare. You put back to me something that is a relatively common theme - and you say that this is what Alma 60 is all about - after I provided you with a complex reading that discusses how this letter reflects not only the deprivations of war, but a disagreement over how military force should be used within the Nephite community. My analysis is nowhere near as superficial as yours is. But this process - of going after the most common denominators is a symptom of parallel hunting.

As superficial as mine? I haven't made an analysis yet. I'm only setting the table to do one based on parameters we can agree on. At every turn you are signaling that you're not interested in a good faith effort to look at this, but are instead poised to reject what I present no matter what.

I think there are some issues we can look at that anyone should be able to see are not superficial. Here are some general contextual questions we should consider:

1) What do we know about Moroni as a general? 

2) What do we know about the Nephites and their government?

3) What is the domestic political situation?

4) What do we know about the rival commanders?

5) What do we know about the Lamanite people and their government?

6) What is the political situation for the Lamanites?

7) What is this war about? What are its immediate and long-term causes?

8 ) How does the Nephite government react to the letter?

Then we can look at the general contents of the letter itself.

1) Who has written it?

2) Who is the letter written to?

3) What is the purpose of the letter?

4) What is the tone of the letter?

And we can look at the specific contents of the letter. For that I will first refer to Meyers' paper. She identifies several things in the letter she thought were significant enough to look at. And she provides several citations for others who have done similar analyses. We can look at the issues they thought were important. And we can identify additional issues that Moroni's letter brings to the table.

We can also look at the historiographic approach in the BoM, which is the one thing I have provided some brief comments on.

Have I identified anything here that is superficial? Have I missed something that should be considered?

Edited February 13, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

13 hours ago, JarMan said:

You are losing sight of what is at issue here. You want to claim the BoM is contradictory to Grotius. Differences, though, are not necessarily contradictions.

I am generally trying to stay within the contexts that you are asking me to stay within. If I can open up the entire Book of Mormon and the entire corpus we have from Grotius, we can discuss the contradictions in their own right. I am not overly worried about it right now. For the moment, I am simply concerned with the fact that you think that trying to show how one text alludes (or refers) to another is somehow analogous with trying to show that a text comes from a specific historical context, or more narrowly, how a text is authored by a specific individual.

13 hours ago, JarMan said:

There are some contradictions, as well, as long complex texts usually do have internal contradictions. You need to identify contradictions. All you are offering is obfuscation.

I'm not the one obfuscating here. You keep trying to move the goal posts. You say that there is no contemporary use of a certain phrase. I find one. You start suggesting that a few examples aren't enough to make the case. You say that you have all of these specific examples but then only offer generalities (as I will point out again in a minute). You need to provide detailed examples. And then you need to account for these differences. Something that I didn't mention last night, but is quite useful from the paper that you linked (as an example of methodology) - p. 98:

Quote

But to what end? In order, first, to sharpen the contrast that emerges from the comparison: these similarities help to highlight which differences in the characters of the two letter-writers as well as which differences in their respective audiences will be most important.

Even you example of method recognizes what I have been arguing this entire time. The differences are the more important part of the discussion. Not contrariness. Contrariness simply shoots the theory down (it is part of the falsifiability issue). If I can find parts of the Book of Mormon that directly contradict Grotius's thought, that should be sufficient evidence to argue that Grotius should not be considered the author of the text. Especially given the view you have of the text and its purpose.

13 hours ago, JarMan said:

Abinadi says Moses and all the prophets testified of the coming of Christ. He tells the priests the performances and ordinances of the law were given to keep them in remembrance of God, that they are a type of things to come, but don't have any saving power on their own. Keeping the law isn't limited to performing the rites, it also includes keeping the commandments. And it requires Christ's atonement. In a nutshell, this is what Abinadi teaches in Mosiah 12 and 13. Grotius addresses all these issues in the sections of his book I referred to. And he is in agreement with Abinadi on all of those points. He even uses the same rhetorical device, here, of quoting Isaiah 53 in its entirety as part of this discussion.

No, Grotius doesn't do this. Show me where he does. Put it out here in detail. Grotius is doing something very different from what the Book of Mormon is doing here. And it doesn't matter how many time you keep repeating this, like a mantra, it doesn't change the fact that only by reducing the text to its lowest common denominator can you make it seem to be the same thing. You want to reduce it to a 'nutshell' and ignore the actual details.

Everyone uses Isaiah 53. It is one of the most frequently used prooftexts in Christianity about the Messiah. It has been used this way for 2,000 years. It means nothing for your argument. Nothing at all. We can find dozens of examples of texts discussing these same issues in wide circulation in the early 19th century. There is nothing here in your generalities that would lead me to believe that I should place the Book of Mormon in the period you are arguing for, or that I should place Grotius as its author.

14 hours ago, JarMan said:

Two of your late sources were specialists as I have pointed out already. Your secondary grammar source can be explained as recognizing the use among just that type of specialist. All you have are two outliers here--the contemporary Sampson speech and the 1875 geology text. But, even so, I acknowledge it's possible JS or someone else could have been aware of this particular phrase, I just think there's a low probability. You have the additional problem that the phrase has to be known to be archaic. How would someone know if a phrase is archaic? I submit they have to be aware of its use in archaic texts, otherwise it will seem either like normal or provincial use. This is the biggest challenge of your position because it requires the author to be familiar with many, many archaic works like, in this case, Holinshed. This is where the baseline pseudo-archaic texts are so important because they show contemporary authors being unable to produce an equivalent amount of archaism.

A poet, a geologist and a minister are specialists? It sounds a bit like the beginning of a bad joke. There is no doubt that there is a use of this phrase that I would call specialist. I can find hundreds (perhaps thousands) of usages of this language in legal literature. I just haven't provided them. But formal language isn't (at least not in this sense) a specialist language. And I am arguing that the use of these archaisms is in that direction. You keep wanting to refer to my sources as 'late,' but what does that mean? They are all within the lifespan of, say, Brigham Young. This is a highly artificial distinction you seem to be making. So, let's get down to the nuts and bolts of it. Your claim is getting old - you are just repeating yourself without adding anything. Why should I consider Holinshed to be a baseline text? Is it typical of literature produced in that time-frame?

I am going to categorically deny your suggestion that the only way someone would use an archaic phrase is if they were familiar with a piece of literature that also used that language. This is not how language works. Apart from which, the use of archaisms in the Book of Mormon is not actually very large (in terms of frequency). The vast majority of the text is not made of archaisms. And the vast majority of archaisms in the text can also be found in the King James Bible. This is partly where your reliance on Skousen and Carmack has tainted your understanding of language. They are interested in archaisms that they believe could not have been produced by Joseph Smith. This is a tiny fraction of the text. I suspect that you have never really read Holinshed. At the beginning of his work there is a short dedication. Here is the first half of it. I may have made a typo or two - spell check isn't helpful here:

Quote

Considering with my selfe, right Honorable and my singular good Lord, how redie (no doubt) manie will be to accuse me of vaine presumption, for enterprising to deale in this so weightie a worke, and so far aboue my reach to accomplish: I haue thought good to aduertise your Honour, by what occasion I was first induced to vndertake the same, although the cause that moued me thereto hath (in part) yer this beene signified vnto your good Lordship.

Whereas therefore, that worthie Citizen Reginald Wolfe late Printer to the Queenes Maiestie, a man well knowne and beholden to your Honour, meant in his life time to publish an vniuersall Cosmographie of the whole world, and therewith also certaine particular histories of every knowne nation, amongst other whome he purposed to vse for performance of his intent in that behalfe, and hauing proceeded so far in the same, as little wanted to the accomplishment of that long promised worke, it please God to call him to his mercie, after fiue and twentie years trauell spent therein; so that by his vntimelie ceccase, no hope remained to see that performed, which we had so long trauelled about. Neuerthelesse those whom he put in trust to dispose his things after his departure hence, wishing to the benefit of others, that some fruit might follow of that whereabouts he had imployed so long time, willed me to continue mine endeuour for their furterance in the same. Which although I was redie to doo, so far as mine abilitie would reach, and the rather to answere that trust which the deceassed reposed in me, to see it brought to some perfection: yet when the volume grew so great as they that were to defraie the chrages for the impression, were not willing to go through the whole, they resolue first to publish the histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with their descriptions; which descriptions, bicause they were not in such readinesse, as those of forren countries, they were inforced to vse the helpe of other better able to doo it than my selfe.

Moreouer, the Charts, wherein Maister Wolfe spent a great part of his time, were not found so complet as we wished: and againe, vnderstanding of the great charges and notable enterprise of that worthie Gentleman maister Thomas Sackford, in procuring the Charts of the seuerall prouinces of this realme to be set foorth, we are in hope that in time he will delineate this whole land so perfectlie, as shall be comparable or beyond anie delineation heretofore made of anie other region; and therefore leaue that to his well deserued praise. If any well willler will imitate him in so praiseworthie a worke for the two other regions, we will be glad to further his endeuour with all the helpes we may.

The density of what we might consider archaisms is much, much higher than what we see anywhere in the Book of Mormon. This is why the statistics you present are misleading - and why Carmack and Skousen are helpful for you. They track down specific archaisms - their goal is to find language that was obsolete at the time of Joseph Smith to show that Joseph Smith couldn't have been the author. Even within Hollinshed's work there is a regular inconsistency of forms - because the language yet did not have a well defined structure - that would only come after we had accumulated more time with the printing press. Skousen and Carmack take the position that someone who was familiar with EModE would have translated the Book of Mormon - but not in the EModE period. The text isn't EMoDE enough to make such a claim. You want to suggest that the Book of Mormon's use of certain phrases is similar to that of Holinshed. I don't disagree with this point. My counterpoint up until now has simply been that Holinshed isn't particularly typical for some of these phrases used in the Book of Mormon - and that the frequency of the Book of Mormon's use of these phrases isn't meaningful in this context the way that you think it is. But you persist. So, I will simply move on to the next point -

The Book of Mormon is not an EModE text with some sporadic Late Modern English in it, it is a Late Modern English text with some sporadic EModE in it - archaisms, not obsolete usages. An EModE Book of Mormon full of obsolete language would read much more like Holinshed than it does.

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

The level of redaction I am claiming is the substitution of archaic words with modern words, which wouldn't change the meaning of the text. But let's just assume for this discussion, that the BoM is a modern work produced by someone in JS's environment. Now we're comparing apples with apples.

I think that you underestimate what is involved in this process - to change an EModE text into the Book of Mormon. And more to the point, if the phrase "the more part of" was obsolete, then why wasn't it changed with the rest? Why not modernize the text completely? And, why pull the italics out of the King James text? And why include some biblical references in the King James language and update others? I think its an interesting theory - but it has a lot of consistency issues with the text - and those consistency problems are also problems for the evidence you are using.

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think there are some issues we can look at that anyone should be able to see are not superficial. Here are some general contextual questions we should consider:

We need to back up just a moment - because there is an issue we need to make clear before we start to answer these questions. Are we considering the Book of Mormon to be a work of fiction in this context?

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

Have I identified anything here that is superficial? Have I missed something that should be considered?

Absolutely.

The Meyer's paper is dealing with the question of literary allusion specifically and the intertextual relationship between two texts more generally - and those two texts are texts with a known authorship that were produced in a known context.

How does this remotely begin to compare with what you are trying to do here? Which text is the source text for your proposed allusion? Which text is the text making the allusion?

From my perspective, you are not doing the same thing at all. And the methods that she employs, while they might be helpful to you in some ways, aren't designed to be used in the way that you are suggesting that they should. (Although I dispute your assumption that you are using the same methods - perhaps you could make a formal declaration of your methods in a way similar to what I have done in past publications).

I can answer all of your questions, but the answers, of necessity (and assuming that the Book of Mormon should be read as a work of fiction in your model) should all be internal to the text of the Book of Mormon. Which means that they aren't useful at all in doing what you are trying to do with it.

15 hours ago, JarMan said:

We can also look at the historiographic approach in the BoM, which is the one thing I have provided some brief comments on.

But, according to you, the Book of Mormon isn't history at all, it is a work of fiction. And you apply principles of historiogrpahy very differently to fiction than you do to historical documents like the letters that Meyer is working with.

I feel the need to try to explain more, but it is difficult without your having any of the necessary groundwork in this sort of comparison. Assuming that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction, then any set of comparisons of the sort you want to raise will make just as an effective argument for placing the text within a specific context. And you already run into problems with competing theories. Why is your theory any better than the Spaulding theory (to use one of the earliest authorship attributions in the historical record)? How do you even begin to compare the two theories in a meaningful way to determine which is better?

[JarMan]

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am generally trying to stay within the contexts that you are asking me to stay within. If I can open up the entire Book of Mormon and the entire corpus we have from Grotius, we can discuss the contradictions in their own right. I am not overly worried about it right now. For the moment, I am simply concerned with the fact that you think that trying to show how one text alludes (or refers) to another is somehow analogous with trying to show that a text comes from a specific historical context, or more narrowly, how a text is authored by a specific individual.

There are several things going on in this discussion, and you are conflating some of them. Let me try to untangle this a little bit. You asked for some examples of how Grotius used some specific scriptures so you could compare it to the Book of Mormon. I pointed to Book 5 of his Truth of the Christian Religion and suggested you read Abinadi's speech in light of what he said there. You're free to look elsewhere in the BoM, as well. But then you make it sound as if I am claiming the texts are directly related, as if one text is supposed to be based on the other. I'm still waiting for you to compare Abinadi's speech or any other part of the Book of Mormon to the Grotius material I pointed you to. You indicated that's what you were doing, but now say you're not overly worried about it. That's fine if you want to put that off, but just understand that that is the context in which I was discussing the two different texts.

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I'm not the one obfuscating here. You keep trying to move the goal posts. You say that there is no contemporary use of a certain phrase. I find one. You start suggesting that a few examples aren't enough to make the case. You say that you have all of these specific examples but then only offer generalities (as I will point out again in a minute). You need to provide detailed examples. And then you need to account for these differences. Something that I didn't mention last night, but is quite useful from the paper that you linked (as an example of methodology) - p. 98:

Look, I probably fell in to the trap of defending Skousen and Carmack's claim that there was no contemporary use rather than concentrating on what is important for my view of things. So let me explain again. For a phrase to be archaic does not require it to be obsolete. The phrase in question was archaic in JS's time, but not obsolete. My view is that to know if something is archaic, you need to know the archaic sources. Let's pretend JS hears "the more part of" in a sermon from Sampson. How does JS know this is an archaic phrase? You haven't explained how somebody could know all of these archaic constructs and also know that they are archaic. That's the main challenge to your argument.

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Even you example of method recognizes what I have been arguing this entire time. The differences are the more important part of the discussion. Not contrariness. Contrariness simply shoots the theory down (it is part of the falsifiability issue). If I can find parts of the Book of Mormon that directly contradict Grotius's thought, that should be sufficient evidence to argue that Grotius should not be considered the author of the text. Especially given the view you have of the text and its purpose.

No, Grotius doesn't do this. Show me where he does. Put it out here in detail. Grotius is doing something very different from what the Book of Mormon is doing here. And it doesn't matter how many time you keep repeating this, like a mantra, it doesn't change the fact that only by reducing the text to its lowest common denominator can you make it seem to be the same thing. You want to reduce it to a 'nutshell' and ignore the actual details.

Everyone uses Isaiah 53. It is one of the most frequently used prooftexts in Christianity about the Messiah. It has been used this way for 2,000 years. It means nothing for your argument. Nothing at all. We can find dozens of examples of texts discussing these same issues in wide circulation in the early 19th century. There is nothing here in your generalities that would lead me to believe that I should place the Book of Mormon in the period you are arguing for, or that I should place Grotius as its author.

Again, you are taking what I've said out of context. I am not saying Grotius is doing the same thing as Abinadi. I'm not saying there aren't differences. I'm giving you some source material, which you requested, to compare to the BoM. Instead of make the comparison you said you were going to make, you start ranting about things irrelevant to the conversation. I did point out that both texts quote Isaiah 53, not because I'm claiming the two text are directly related. I'm simply pointing out a stylistic similarity between the two authors. It's not that they both rely on Isaiah 53, as many authors do--it's that they both quote it in its entirety in similar contexts. This is a conscious, stylistic choice.

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

A poet, a geologist and a minister are specialists? It sounds a bit like the beginning of a bad joke. There is no doubt that there is a use of this phrase that I would call specialist. I can find hundreds (perhaps thousands) of usages of this language in legal literature. I just haven't provided them. But formal language isn't (at least not in this sense) a specialist language. And I am arguing that the use of these archaisms is in that direction. You keep wanting to refer to my sources as 'late,' but what does that mean? They are all within the lifespan of, say, Brigham Young. This is a highly artificial distinction you seem to be making. So, let's get down to the nuts and bolts of it. Your claim is getting old - you are just repeating yourself without adding anything. Why should I consider Holinshed to be a baseline text? Is it typical of literature produced in that time-frame?

Edward Freeman was an Oxford-educated English historian. Thus he would have certainly been aware of Holinshed and other similar works. This makes him a specialist. William Morris was also educated at Oxford where he studied the classics. This makes him a specialist. This leaves you with Sampson and a late geology text, which span a significant period of time, which demonstrates the phrase was not in common use.

There are two main reasons Holinshed is important to the BoM in this discussion. First, they both use "the more part of" very densely. We don't see anything similar in the 1700s or 1800s where the phrase was very rarely used or used in a specific legal context. The second reason is that both texts use the phrase in many similar ways. I'm cataloging the various uses and will put together a summary when I have some more time.

In addition, the BoM seems to imitate several actual historical sources. Some of these sources are from the classical world and some from the early modern world. This helps it to actually sound like a historical work. If this phrase was historically used in a context unrelated to the BoM, it would be less significant than it is.

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am going to categorically deny your suggestion that the only way someone would use an archaic phrase is if they were familiar with a piece of literature that also used that language. This is not how language works. Apart from which, the use of archaisms in the Book of Mormon is not actually very large (in terms of frequency). The vast majority of the text is not made of archaisms. And the vast majority of archaisms in the text can also be found in the King James Bible. This is partly where your reliance on Skousen and Carmack has tainted your understanding of language. They are interested in archaisms that they believe could not have been produced by Joseph Smith. This is a tiny fraction of the text.

First of all, you've misstated what I've said. I gave four reasons why somebody might use an archaic phrase. And from among them, you solidly endorsed #4. Under that paradigm the person is using an archaic phrase knowing that it is archaic. So I ask again, how does the person know the phrase is archaic?

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I suspect that you have never really read Holinshed. At the beginning of his work there is a short dedication. Here is the first half of it. I may have made a typo or two - spell check isn't helpful here:

The density of what we might consider archaisms is much, much higher than what we see anywhere in the Book of Mormon. This is why the statistics you present are misleading - and why Carmack and Skousen are helpful for you. They track down specific archaisms - their goal is to find language that was obsolete at the time of Joseph Smith to show that Joseph Smith couldn't have been the author. Even within Hollinshed's work there is a regular inconsistency of forms - because the language yet did not have a well defined structure - that would only come after we had accumulated more time with the printing press. Skousen and Carmack take the position that someone who was familiar with EModE would have translated the Book of Mormon - but not in the EModE period. The text isn't EMoDE enough to make such a claim. You want to suggest that the Book of Mormon's use of certain phrases is similar to that of Holinshed. I don't disagree with this point. My counterpoint up until now has simply been that Holinshed isn't particularly typical for some of these phrases used in the Book of Mormon - and that the frequency of the Book of Mormon's use of these phrases isn't meaningful in this context the way that you think it is. But you persist. So, I will simply move on to the next point -

The Book of Mormon is not an EModE text with some sporadic Late Modern English in it, it is a Late Modern English text with some sporadic EModE in it - archaisms, not obsolete usages. An EModE Book of Mormon full of obsolete language would read much more like Holinshed than it does.

I think that you underestimate what is involved in this process - to change an EModE text into the Book of Mormon. And more to the point, if the phrase "the more part of" was obsolete, then why wasn't it changed with the rest? Why not modernize the text completely? And, why pull the italics out of the King James text? And why include some biblical references in the King James language and update others? I think its an interesting theory - but it has a lot of consistency issues with the text - and those consistency problems are also problems for the evidence you are using.

I'm not claiming the BoM was written in the 1500s, so I wouldn't expect it to sound like Holinshed. I think the original text was likely written around 1640, but I don't know when it was translated to English. I don't know what level of redaction occurred. I'm happy to let the linguistic evidence inform me on both of these issues. Any modern language in the text can be explained under this paradigm.

The problem for your paradigm is that it can't explain the archaic language. It might be able to explain a few instances, but it simply cannot tell us how all of it got in there. This is particularly true since so much of it is syntax, which is not consciously generated. There's a reason we didn't know all of these structures were archaic until modern computer-searchable corpora became available.

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

We need to back up just a moment - because there is an issue we need to make clear before we start to answer these questions. Are we considering the Book of Mormon to be a work of fiction in this context?

Absolutely.

The Meyer's paper is dealing with the question of literary allusion specifically and the intertextual relationship between two texts more generally - and those two texts are texts with a known authorship that were produced in a known context.

How does this remotely begin to compare with what you are trying to do here? Which text is the source text for your proposed allusion? Which text is the text making the allusion?

From my perspective, you are not doing the same thing at all. And the methods that she employs, while they might be helpful to you in some ways, aren't designed to be used in the way that you are suggesting that they should. (Although I dispute your assumption that you are using the same methods - perhaps you could make a formal declaration of your methods in a way similar to what I have done in past publications).

Meyer is making the case that Sallust was consciously using Thucydides. I am making the case that the BoM author was consciously using Sallust. She identifies several similarities and differences between the two letters. Ultimately she offers explanations for the similarities and for the differences. This is what I propose to do. I also propose expanding the comparison by looking at additional context immediately preceding and following the letter. For this exercise the BoM author can be anybody who could have had access to Sallust and other historical Roman sources. My aim is to explain the similarities and differences in the texts and offer some reasons for both. I see this as being exactly what Meyer has done.

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I can answer all of your questions, but the answers, of necessity (and assuming that the Book of Mormon should be read as a work of fiction in your model) should all be internal to the text of the Book of Mormon. Which means that they aren't useful at all in doing what you are trying to do with it.

But, according to you, the Book of Mormon isn't history at all, it is a work of fiction. And you apply principles of historiogrpahy very differently to fiction than you do to historical documents like the letters that Meyer is working with.

I can use principals of historiography here because my proposal is that the author is consciously imitating ancient historiography. Thus we have generals as historians, embedded letters and speeches, annalistic retelling of events, analepsis, etc. But of course you will just claim that this is shallow and pretend you have some sort of monopoly on how to do any sort of literary or historical comparison.

14 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I feel the need to try to explain more, but it is difficult without your having any of the necessary groundwork in this sort of comparison. Assuming that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction, then any set of comparisons of the sort you want to raise will make just as an effective argument for placing the text within a specific context. And you already run into problems with competing theories. Why is your theory any better than the Spaulding theory (to use one of the earliest authorship attributions in the historical record)? How do you even begin to compare the two theories in a meaningful way to determine which is better?

Oh, stop with the You couldn't possibly understand bit.

The Spaulding theory is garbage and you know it.

[Benjamin McGuire]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

There are several things going on in this discussion, and you are conflating some of them. Let me try to untangle this a little bit. You asked for some examples of how Grotius used some specific scriptures so you could compare it to the Book of Mormon. I pointed to Book 5 of his Truth of the Christian Religion and suggested you read Abinadi's speech in light of what he said there. You're free to look elsewhere in the BoM, as well. But then you make it sound as if I am claiming the texts are directly related, as if one text is supposed to be based on the other. I'm still waiting for you to compare Abinadi's speech or any other part of the Book of Mormon to the Grotius material I pointed you to. You indicated that's what you were doing, but now say you're not overly worried about it. That's fine if you want to put that off, but just understand that that is the context in which I was discussing the two different texts.

I'm not conflating them. I have spent decades working with this sort of material.

I read Chapter 5. It is nothing at all like how Abinadi uses scripture. I pointed out that in the quoting of Isaiah 53, Grotius doesn't even know what he is referring to - he is citing sources he has never read. We know this because he wholesale plagiarized his references in that section from another known work. What I want from you is a detailed example of the comparison you are trying to make - because it isn't evident to me at all what the actual comparison is beyond vague generalities that don't have any real relevance to the question. You keep avoiding doing this.

There is a fundamental difference between the two texts - in what the two texts are trying to do. Grotius is trying to show that Christianity is a logical progression from Judaism. Abinadi is not trying to address the question of Christianity. Grotius is suggesting that prophets follow a certain model. Abinadi does not follow that model (and in fact, the Book of Mormon rejects this model as a way of identifying prophets). Grotius is critical of the Jews - because they didn't accept Jesus as a prophet. Abinadi is critical of Noah and his priests because they were not keeping the Law of Moses. Abinadi relies on the Old Testament. Grotius cites the New Testament hundreds of times. These are all significant differences. You seem to want to ignore them and focus on similarities in small pieces or created by using such broad generalizations that they become irrelevant to your argument.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Look, I probably fell in to the trap of defending Skousen and Carmack's claim that there was no contemporary use rather than concentrating on what is important for my view of things. So let me explain again. For a phrase to be archaic does not require it to be obsolete. The phrase in question was archaic in JS's time, but not obsolete. My view is that to know if something is archaic, you need to know the archaic sources. Let's pretend JS hears "the more part of" in a sermon from Sampson. How does JS know this is an archaic phrase? You haven't explained how somebody could know all of these archaic constructs and also know that they are archaic. That's the main challenge to your argument.

This is a definitional distinction:

Quote

A distinction between archaic and obsolete words and word senses is widely used by dictionaries. An archaic word or sense is one that still has some current use but whose use has dwindled to a few specialized contexts, outside which it connotes old-fashioned language. In contrast, an obsolete word or sense is one that is no longer used at all. A reader encounters them when reading texts that are centuries old. For example, the works of Shakespeare are old enough that some obsolete words or senses are encountered therein, for which glosses (annotations) are often provided in the margins.

This is part of what I mean when I suggest that you are using terms in ways that you seem to think mean one thing but mean something else. Archaisms are known and recognized language. Obsolete language isn't recognized. You don't need to know archaic sources to understand archaic language. This isn't my definition. It is a standard point of view within these discussions on language. When something is obsolete - that is when you need to understand it from sources because it isn't in use in any way (and hasn't been for a while). The fact that a phrase is archaic in Joseph's environment means precisely that most people understand it.

There is something else that is really bizarre in your assertion. Some phrases and syntax are much harder to understand than others. "The more part of" isn't hard to understand. I doubt that anyone in 1828 wouldn't understand the meaning of this phrase. Just as we don't have a hard time understanding the intent of it today (even though it is more archaic today). This is easier to understand than many of the phrases in the short section that I quoted from Holinshed. Skousen and Carmack simply argue that Joseph would never have used such a phrase. I am pointing out that it was still in use in the 19th century as an archaism (and even into the 20th century). This means that it could easily be used without some source to draw it from. You seem to be really resistant to this idea - because your use of Skousen and Carmack (as you interpret them) is essential to your basic premise - that the language of the Book of Mormon could not have been written in the early 19th century. But you don't have a real way to defend this - and that is obvious in your arguments - over and over again. You have relied entirely on Skousen and Carmack for this position - and in my discussions with them, it has been clear to me that they would never support your  theory on this point.

You ask - "How does Joseph Smith know this is an archaic phrase?" This is a strange question. Why? Because I have never (in this thread) asserted that Joseph Smith is the author of the Book of Mormon. That question that you ask me here is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the Book of Mormon is an EModE text written originally by Grotius. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't have to be written by Joseph Smith to be an early 19th century work. But the kicker is this - if Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Mormon, that doesn't make it any more likely that Grotius did write it. If in fact Joseph Smith didn't know that "the more part of" was an archaic phrase it still doesn't help your argument. And this is why your reliance on Skousen and Carmack isn't helpful to you. Their position does not lead to the necessity that that the text was written in EModE. Their position only leads to the conclusions that someone other than Joseph Smith produced the text in the early 19th century.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Again, you are taking what I've said out of context. I am not saying Grotius is doing the same thing as Abinadi. I'm not saying there aren't differences. I'm giving you some source material, which you requested, to compare to the BoM. Instead of make the comparison you said you were going to make, you start ranting about things irrelevant to the conversation. I did point out that both texts quote Isaiah 53, not because I'm claiming the two text are directly related. I'm simply pointing out a stylistic similarity between the two authors. It's not that they both rely on Isaiah 53, as many authors do--it's that they both quote it in its entirety in similar contexts. This is a conscious, stylistic choice.

What stylistic similarity? It's not there. I just read both texts. I didn't see any stylistic similarity. Do I need to reproduce both sets of texts here to make my point.

Grotius quotes Isaiah 53 in the way that he does - not because he is using a specific style, but because he is plagiarizing a contemporary author. The use of Isaiah 53 here in this way is not unique to Grotius. It is not his style. There is more to it than that. Quoting Isaiah 53 in the context of defending Christianity still occurs in writers today. It occurred in writers 2,000 years ago. And has been occurring pretty much consistently the entire time in between. It is a favorite text. So to find it in two places does nothing to establish any sort of connection between the two texts. You cannot establish an intertextual relationship on this basis. At the same time, I can establish an intertextual relationship between Grotius and his source because the footnotes are unique to just the two texts. That is a meaningful comparison.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Edward Freeman was an Oxford-educated English historian. Thus he would have certainly been aware of Holinshed and other similar works. This makes him a specialist. William Morris was also educated at Oxford where he studied the classics. This makes him a specialist. This leaves you with Sampson and a late geology text, which span a significant period of time, which demonstrates the phrase was not in common use.

You are, perhaps deliberately, misunderstanding what this means. It isn't about whether the writer is a specialist. It's about the nature of the language. Used in some contexts, some language takes on a specific formal meaning. The language being used in this case is not specialized. This is not a legal discussion over inheritance. Why would that be specialized? Because the phrase is used in older written British law. When those laws are later referred to, that language gets used because it is required. The Book of Mormon had a copyright statement in its beginning. That copyright statement is taken, verbatim, from a state law on copyright. This is a specialized used. The use in the texts that I provided (and in many other texts) isn't specialized in this way. It doesn't have a specific meaning granted by context. So the question of whether the writers were specialists is irrelevant - because this phrase isn't connected in any formal way to their work. This is why your argument is flawed.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

There are two main reasons Holinshed is important to the BoM in this discussion. First, they both use "the more part of" very densely. We don't see anything similar in the 1700s or 1800s where the phrase was very rarely used or used in a specific legal context. The second reason is that both texts use the phrase in many similar ways. I'm cataloging the various uses and will put together a summary when I have some more time.

No matter how many times you say this, it doesn't matter. It might matter if you were arguing that the Book of Mormon plagiarizes Holinshed. But, this has never been your argument (and it wouldn't make sense even if it was). I don't need your list of comparisons. Why? Because they don't make a valid argument. You somehow think that the frequencies of this phrase means something - it doesn't. There is much more literature on this aspect of language similarities (and authorship attribution) in the last 30 years when statistical models have become the standard which we use.

Further, and this is really important - Grotius would not have used the phrase "the more part of" because he did not write in English. So what is your argument here? If Grotius wrote a text and it was translated by someone in the EModE period, they wouldn't have needed Holinshed, because it would have been natural language for them. If a later author used Holinshed as a model (which clearly is not the case - more on that in a moment), then how does this have anything to do with the argument of authorship by Grotius. When I say that Holinshed was not the model used, you are picking up on a single similarity. How many archaisms can I find in Holinshed that are not in the Book of Mormon at all? How many of the archaisms in the Book of Mormon are not found in Holinshed? The differences matter. If you are taking the best statistical comparison you can find between the two, how do you differentiate between this and simple coincidence? Your arguments here don't make any sense at all.

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm not claiming the BoM was written in the 1500s, so I wouldn't expect it to sound like Holinshed. I think the original text was likely written around 1640, but I don't know when it was translated to English. I don't know what level of redaction occurred. I'm happy to let the linguistic evidence inform me on both of these issues. Any modern language in the text can be explained under this paradigm.

The problem for your paradigm is that it can't explain the archaic language. It might be able to explain a few instances, but it simply cannot tell us how all of it got in there. This is particularly true since so much of it is syntax, which is not consciously generated. There's a reason we didn't know all of these structures were archaic until modern computer-searchable corpora became available.

This is just pure speculation with no facts to back it up.

I am not sure what you think you mean when you say "your paradigm", but in fact, an early 19th century text does explain the archaisms in the Book of Mormon quite well. There are several issues that make my point. The first is this - we don't care about a single archaism. You want to argue that the specific example that you are parading is the most important. The Book of Mormon contains archaisms. Most of the archaisms it contains come from the King James text of the Bible. Once we eliminate those, we are left with a bunch of them - but a bunch of language that is Late Modern English as well. If we take the frequency of all of those archaisms combined, and we can find other texts in the early 19th century with similar overall frequencies of non-King James archaisms, then such a 'paradigm' does explain the Book of Mormon. The second is this - the Book of Mormon contains a lot of Late Modern English in it. Yes, there is an overlap between EModE and Late Modern English (and this is a good thing). Can you find anything written in 1640 that has the same frequency of Late Modern English in the text as the Book of Mormon (I assume that you can, but I also assume that you haven't actually tried to do so - because you have been relying on Skousen and Carmack and not on any original research). Third, language doesn't change as quickly as you suggest it does. Our distinction between EModE and Late Modern English isn't built around syntax so much as it is around the spoken language. Once we had texts, language changes even slower. People don't stop reading just because a text is a hundred years old. I didn't provide any examples from older literature - but the phrase "the more part of" is used by Chaucer - who remained one of the most widely read and published English poets well into the 20th century. Dozens of editions of his work were published in the United States before the mid-19th century. This language lingers. And this doesn't mean that you have to read Chaucer to be aware of the phrase. Especially when it gets used as part of a formal language.

Finally, a brief comment on your last sentence there - "There's a reason we didn't know all of these structures were archaic until modern computer-searchable corpora became available." Actually a few comments. The first is this, prior to the use of computers, these sorts of comparisons were being performed - they just took a lot more time. I doubt you have read any of the literature though. Second, the improvement of computer databases for these kinds of searches has helped - but not in the way that you suggest. This is what Harold Love (p. 91) has to say about this idea:

Quote

Here LION, Gutenberg and similar electronic archives come into their own, since as well as providing illusory parallels they also assist mightily in shooting down those which arise from the common parlance of the time. Once we have encountered an unusual expression in the writings of three or four different authors it ceases to have any value for attribution.

The databases are far more helpful in shooting down authorship attributions than in helping us find them. My third comment is this - our databases are imperfect. You (along with Skousen and Carmack) note that we get regular misidentifications on searches of text with columns. Many of the databases we have were produced in past decades, while our technology has improved dramatically (I know - I work with digitizing images frequently in my job right now). AI innovations are some of the most recent and allow text processors to correct for columnar errors and to try and correct other issues with the text. The texts we look at now have false positives, but they also have false negatives. There are more examples out there than we have identified. My fourth comment is this - there is a certain problem that occurs with over-specificity. The dictionary entry that I provided a while back didn't identify the archaic phrase "the more part of" but it identified the phrase "the more part". The examples came as "the more part of ...". If the EModE phrase is really "the more part" and adding 'of' just provides us with one type of usage of that phrase, we get explosively greater numbers. Finally, you identify a point that I have been trying to make for some time now. There wasn't a lot of consistency in EModE syntax. Search engines allow us to find all sorts of things in the past - but, do we follow Skousen and keep bad English in the text because he can find another example of this bad English in the EModE corpus? Or do we chalk some of it up to errors in the scribal and printing process?

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

Meyer is making the case that Sallust was consciously using Thucydides. I am making the case that the BoM author was consciously using Sallust. She identifies several similarities and differences between the two letters. Ultimately she offers explanations for the similarities and for the differences. This is what I propose to do. I also propose expanding the comparison by looking at additional context immediately preceding and following the letter. For this exercise the BoM author can be anybody who could have had access to Sallust and other historical Roman sources. My aim is to explain the similarities and differences in the texts and offer some reasons for both. I see this as being exactly what Meyer has done.

If you do it appropriately, then more power to you. Provide me with some of the specific arguments and I will evaluate them (I have done a fair amount of this, and have published much of my formal methodology for this sort of comparison).

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

The Spaulding theory is garbage and you know it.

And so is your theory. But you are merely avoiding the question by making this statement. At least the Spaulding theory has a history of attribution claims. The first layer of external evidence for textual attribution is, according to Howard Love (p. 51):

Quote

Contemporary attributions contained in incipits, explicits, titles, and from documents purporting to impart information about the circumstances of composition – especially diaries, correspondence, publishers’ records, and records of legal proceedings;

The third layer is similar (ibid):

Quote

The history of earlier attributions of the work and the circumstances under which they were made.

The Spaulding affidavits have real problems with this third layer ('the circumstances under which they were made') since I can argue conclusively that they were all written by the same person. But for your theory, all of the evidence that can be raised for either of these two points is against you. You have nothing that supports this strange idea of yours - which is built entirely out of the material produced by Skousen and Carmack.

As far as this goes:

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

Oh, stop with the You couldn't possibly understand bit.

Provide me with some test for falsifiability that you won't simply walk back once the test fails ...

[JarMan]

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I'm not conflating them. I have spent decades working with this sort of material.

I read Chapter 5. It is nothing at all like how Abinadi uses scripture. I pointed out that in the quoting of Isaiah 53, Grotius doesn't even know what he is referring to - he is citing sources he has never read. We know this because he wholesale plagiarized his references in that section from another known work. What I want from you is a detailed example of the comparison you are trying to make - because it isn't evident to me at all what the actual comparison is beyond vague generalities that don't have any real relevance to the question. You keep avoiding doing this.

There is a fundamental difference between the two texts - in what the two texts are trying to do. Grotius is trying to show that Christianity is a logical progression from Judaism. Abinadi is not trying to address the question of Christianity. Grotius is suggesting that prophets follow a certain model. Abinadi does not follow that model (and in fact, the Book of Mormon rejects this model as a way of identifying prophets). Grotius is critical of the Jews - because they didn't accept Jesus as a prophet. Abinadi is critical of Noah and his priests because they were not keeping the Law of Moses. Abinadi relies on the Old Testament. Grotius cites the New Testament hundreds of times. These are all significant differences. You seem to want to ignore them and focus on similarities in small pieces or created by using such broad generalizations that they become irrelevant to your argument.

What stylistic similarity? It's not there. I just read both texts. I didn't see any stylistic similarity. Do I need to reproduce both sets of texts here to make my point.

Grotius quotes Isaiah 53 in the way that he does - not because he is using a specific style, but because he is plagiarizing a contemporary author. The use of Isaiah 53 here in this way is not unique to Grotius. It is not his style. There is more to it than that. Quoting Isaiah 53 in the context of defending Christianity still occurs in writers today. It occurred in writers 2,000 years ago. And has been occurring pretty much consistently the entire time in between. It is a favorite text. So to find it in two places does nothing to establish any sort of connection between the two texts. You cannot establish an intertextual relationship on this basis. At the same time, I can establish an intertextual relationship between Grotius and his source because the footnotes are unique to just the two texts. That is a meaningful comparison.

I don't know how much clearer I have to be. I am not suggesting these two texts are trying to say or do the same thing. That is your strawman version of my argument, which conveniently allows you to tear it down. You asked me for some examples on how Grotius uses scripture so that you could compare to the BoM. I provided that for you. The only issue you've brought up is how Grotius defined a prophet versus how prophets are defined in the Book of Mormon. But there's not a contradiction here as you seem to think. In order to show that Grotius couldn't possibly have written the BoM you need to show significant contradictions. This shouldn't be hard to do. That's how you falsify my theory.

Furthermore, when I point out a stylistic similarity, I am presenting a single data point. Every time I bring up a single data point you react the same way by scolding me for thinking this one thing proves anything. This is another way you make my hypothesis into a strawman--you reduce it all to a single argument as if that is the entirety of it. And I'll repeat this data point again, because you haven't acknowledged it. Both authors make a conscious decision to insert the entire Isaiah 53 into a larger discussion. This is the stylistic choice they both make. This is different than simply citing it or using portions of it which, of course, many authors do. And your red herring about Grotius plagiarizing a contemporary author is unrelated to the point I am making here.

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is a definitional distinction:

This is part of what I mean when I suggest that you are using terms in ways that you seem to think mean one thing but mean something else. Archaisms are known and recognized language. Obsolete language isn't recognized. You don't need to know archaic sources to understand archaic language. This isn't my definition. It is a standard point of view within these discussions on language. When something is obsolete - that is when you need to understand it from sources because it isn't in use in any way (and hasn't been for a while). The fact that a phrase is archaic in Joseph's environment means precisely that most people understand it.

There is something else that is really bizarre in your assertion. Some phrases and syntax are much harder to understand than others. "The more part of" isn't hard to understand. I doubt that anyone in 1828 wouldn't understand the meaning of this phrase. Just as we don't have a hard time understanding the intent of it today (even though it is more archaic today). This is easier to understand than many of the phrases in the short section that I quoted from Holinshed. Skousen and Carmack simply argue that Joseph would never have used such a phrase. I am pointing out that it was still in use in the 19th century as an archaism (and even into the 20th century). This means that it could easily be used without some source to draw it from. You seem to be really resistant to this idea - because your use of Skousen and Carmack (as you interpret them) is essential to your basic premise - that the language of the Book of Mormon could not have been written in the early 19th century. But you don't have a real way to defend this - and that is obvious in your arguments - over and over again. You have relied entirely on Skousen and Carmack for this position - and in my discussions with them, it has been clear to me that they would never support your  theory on this point.

You ask - "How does Joseph Smith know this is an archaic phrase?" This is a strange question. Why? Because I have never (in this thread) asserted that Joseph Smith is the author of the Book of Mormon. That question that you ask me here is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the Book of Mormon is an EModE text written originally by Grotius. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't have to be written by Joseph Smith to be an early 19th century work. But the kicker is this - if Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Mormon, that doesn't make it any more likely that Grotius did write it. If in fact Joseph Smith didn't know that "the more part of" was an archaic phrase it still doesn't help your argument. And this is why your reliance on Skousen and Carmack isn't helpful to you. Their position does not lead to the necessity that that the text was written in EModE. Their position only leads to the conclusions that someone other than Joseph Smith produced the text in the early 19th century.

Here again you try to reduce my entire hypothesis to just a portion of it. Of course showing JS didn't produce the BoM doesn't prove Grotius wrote it. And by the way, I haven't claimed you think JS wrote it. I used JS merely as an example of someone from his time.

But I don't think you understand the problem you have. You think that if you can show each of these archaisms to be present somewhere in the written or verbal language corpus of JS' day, that that makes it possible for a person to have used all of them. But these archaisms are, by definition, rare. We can't equate words or phrases that are theoretically accessible to a person, with words or phrases that a person could actually produce.

For instance, here's a short list of archaic words still currently used: ambage, chantment, fingersmith, gwine, peascod. What do you think the chances are that a single person today would know all of these? I'm not asking if someone would understand these words, because that's a different matter altogether. What are the chances somebody could "produce" these words in a written text without using modern technology for research? The chances are low and the more archaic words I add to this list, the less likely it is for a single person to know them. This is one of the big ideas you are missing.

Add to that the difficulty in knowing when a rare word is not archaic. Here are some current examples: broigus, hench, pronoid, quisling, truthiness. You have to be pretty sharp to know that all these words are modern.

The same principals are also true for syntax. Here are some examples of non-standard syntax:

I was in a bad accident, so I was.

We had this blind woman came to stay with us.

I will put the things that is precious to me in a safe place.

I ate rotting food and was strucken with vomiting that night.

They were dressed after the manner of their countries.

You've gone and took one of my books.

We can easily recognize these as non-standard syntax, but how do we know which examples are regional and which are archaic? If I want to produce a pseudo-archaic text, which non-standard syntactical forms do I use? I can only know this by knowing which forms actually occur in archaic books. This is a big challenge for you because it requires a person to  know both what non-standard syntax in his environment to exclude as regional, and what non-standard syntax to include as archaic.

In addition, the person needs to know something about the usage rate of the archaic syntax in order to properly imitate it. But we've seen from the pseudo-archaic texts that authors are not able to do this very well and certainly are not able to do it for a large number of archaic constructions.

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Provide me with some test for falsifiability that you won't simply walk back once the test fails ...

I've explained this several times already. If you want to show that the text is not early modern in origin, you need to show where the text can't be early modern. It would be fairly simple to show that the text is not medieval, for example.

Edited February 15, 2023 by JarMan

[Navidad]

You two are amazing! I give you full kudos for sticking with this for so long. I have tried to follow the conversation because I am interested in BOM origins since I live and study here in Mexico. I admire both of you for your respective perseverance. Maybe an Anabaptist from the Muenster, Germany period/debacle was the author! After all that was indeed one of the early attempts to gather Zion, there was a militia, and the Anabaptists were after all, one of the early restorationist groups!

[Benjamin McGuire]

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't know how much clearer I have to be. I am not suggesting these two texts are trying to say or do the same thing. That is your strawman version of my argument, which conveniently allows you to tear it down. You asked me for some examples on how Grotius uses scripture so that you could compare to the BoM. I provided that for you.

Right, and having compared them, it is clear that they are entirely different. If you disagree, then show me. You fixate on the fact that they both quote Isaiah 53. But this fact has nothing to do with how scripture is used. The Book of Mormon's use of scripture is far different from Grotius. Especially, for example, the use of Isaiah 29 in 2 Nephi 26. The thing about Isaiah in the Book of Mormon that is fascinating is the statement made in 1 Nephi 19:23 -

Quote

But that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning.

Nephi's use of Isaiah is wrapped around this idea of reinterpreting it within a completely new context - something that Nephi does explicitly in 2 Nephi 26 (perhaps even as an example of this process) when he interprets the earlier passage in 1 Nephi 13 using the Isaiah text.

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

In order to show that Grotius couldn't possibly have written the BoM you need to show significant contradictions. This shouldn't be hard to do. That's how you falsify my theory.

One of the more interesting conflicts in the Book of Mormon with Grotius is the idea of the natural man. The Book of Mormon claims that the Natural Man is an enemy to God (Mos. 3:19). Grotius, on the other hand, argues that man's nature isn't evil, and that God Himself is responsible for creating man with his nature. Grotius makes the argument that man's nature was created by God, and as such, man's nature is neither good nor bad but rather the foundation on which to justify ethical laws (his natural law theory).

See? It's not hard to do. Just as interestingly, I am curious to see what you think Grotius's view of the trinity is? Does Grotius believe that Jesus was God before he was born?

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

Furthermore, when I point out a stylistic similarity, I am presenting a single data point. Every time I bring up a single data point you react the same way by scolding me for thinking this one thing proves anything. This is another way you make my hypothesis into a strawman--you reduce it all to a single argument as if that is the entirety of it. And I'll repeat this data point again, because you haven't acknowledged it. Both authors make a conscious decision to insert the entire Isaiah 53 into a larger discussion. This is the stylistic choice they both make. This is different than simply citing it or using portions of it which, of course, many authors do. And your red herring about Grotius plagiarizing a contemporary author is unrelated to the point I am making here.

The problem that you have is that Grotius is plagiarizing it. It isn't unrelated. Grotius doesn't use it because he wants to put it in that way - he puts it in that way specifically because of the source he is using. Nowhere else in his 6 volume collection that you reference does Grotius quote an entire chapter of Isaiah (unlike, of course, the Book of Mormon). So, I think that your point isn't substantiated. At the same time, you are underrepresenting the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon does quote Isaiah 54 in its entirety. It also quotes Chapters 2-14 and 48-54. And when we get to the Isaiah 53 citation, it is part of a dialogue right? Mosiah 12:20-24 is a question asked by the wicked priests:

Quote

And it came to pass that one of them said unto him: What meaneth the words which are written, and which have been taught by our fathers, saying: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth; Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion; Break forth into joy; sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem; The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God?

You can see where this is going, right? This is nothing more than a quote from Isaiah 52:7-10

Quote

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Looks pretty identical to me. There is this dialogue going on the Book of Mormon - and it is quite different from Grotius. So both authors had reasons to include the text. We can call this a stylistic decision if you want - but it doesn't somehow give these two texts a similar use of scripture. And then there is the other side of the coin. In Grotius, there are far more quotes from non-scriptural sources than there are for scripture across the six volume work. And from the scriptures, we have more references to the New Testament than to the Old Testament. Where is all of this in the Book of Mormon? Even if we determine (as you suggest) that the Book of Mormon is intended as a foundational myth, we are left with the feeling that this is something very different from anything that Grotius wrote.

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

But I don't think you understand the problem you have. You think that if you can show each of these archaisms to be present somewhere in the written or verbal language corpus of JS' day, that that makes it possible for a person to have used all of them. But these archaisms are, by definition, rare. We can't equate words or phrases that are theoretically accessible to a person, with words or phrases that a person could actually produce.

They certainly aren't so rare that people wouldn't understand them, or have problems using them. You seem to be underestimating normal human vocabulary. Studies show that the vocabulary that we know is much larger than the vocabulary that we use (there are exceptions, I suppose - James Joyce uses more words in his Ulysses than Shakespeare did in his complete works - the Book of Mormon, especially for a work its size, has a tiny vocabulary). The Book of Mormon doesn't have as many archaisms as you are implying - especially once we cut out the archaisms found in the King James Bible. So I counter by suggesting that there aren't that many, and they aren't that rare. And more importantly, they aren't that rare in the environment. This last point is significant. You want to exclude all sorts of uses from the searches - especially quotes of older material. Which is important from a certain point of view. But you can't simply take this out of the environment. How many editions of Chaucer were published in the United States prior to 1830? How many histories contained these archaisms at least in part because they quote older histories? These have to be included in the discussion of rarity in terms of the language people were familiar with. And as I said, it wasn't that rare. Texts accumulate.

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

For instance, here's a short list of archaic words still currently used: ambage, chantment, fingersmith, gwine, peascod. What do you think the chances are that a single person today would know all of these? I'm not asking if someone would understand these words, because that's a different matter altogether. What are the chances somebody could "produce" these words in a written text without using modern technology for research? The chances are low and the more archaic words I add to this list, the less likely it is for a single person to know them. This is one of the big ideas you are missing.

None of these are in the Book of Mormon either. This is nothing more than a distraction. It is significant that we can find all of the vocabulary in the Book of Mormon in use in 1830.

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

We can easily recognize these as non-standard syntax, but how do we know which examples are regional and which are archaic?

I don't think it's relevant. But, I'll bite - why don't you tell me how to distinguish between the two? I do enjoy the fact that your phrases seem to be entirely made up. Did you find any of them in published texts? The list does offer a challenge that I have tried to address. Skousen and Carmack seem to have a tendency of accepting a non-standard syntax when it can be found in EModE sources, and rejecting it when it can't. Should we wonder if "We had this blind woman came to stay with us" really just reflects an orthographic error and should be read as "we had this blind woman come to stay with us"?

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

I've explained this several times already. If you want to show that the text is not early modern in origin, you need to show where the text can't be early modern. It would be fairly simple to show that the text is not medieval, for example.

Yes, you have explained this several times. And your defense whenever an example is provided is to claim that the text that we have is a late redaction of your early text. So, we need to get past this bad argument on your part. What sort of evidence can I provide that you won't simply claim is attributable to a late redaction or later translation, or whatever it is.

This is the frustration ...

Clearly parts of the text are not Early Modern. In fact, most of the text isn't Early Modern. And all we have to do to illustrate this is exactly what I did - actually put up a sample of Early Modern Text. Those texts read nothing like the Book of Mormon.

[JarMan]

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Right, and having compared them, it is clear that they are entirely different. If you disagree, then show me.

I don't disagree. That's what I've been trying to say. I did not present those two sources as somehow being related.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

You fixate on the fact that they both quote Isaiah 53. But this fact has nothing to do with how scripture is used.

Quoting the same entire chapter in the midst of a larger work is an important data point. And both sources do use it similarly--as a prooftext to a Jewish audience that the OT prophesies of Christ.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

The Book of Mormon's use of scripture is far different from Grotius. Especially, for example, the use of Isaiah 29 in 2 Nephi 26. The thing about Isaiah in the Book of Mormon that is fascinating is the statement made in 1 Nephi 19:23 -

Nephi's use of Isaiah is wrapped around this idea of reinterpreting it within a completely new context - something that Nephi does explicitly in 2 Nephi 26 (perhaps even as an example of this process) when he interprets the earlier passage in 1 Nephi 13 using the Isaiah text.

First of all, the "use of scripture" is not something that should necessarily be consistent. After all, people use scripture differently depending on the context. But even so, you haven't shown how Grotius used the scriptures in question.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

One of the more interesting conflicts in the Book of Mormon with Grotius is the idea of the natural man. The Book of Mormon claims that the Natural Man is an enemy to God (Mos. 3:19). Grotius, on the other hand, argues that man's nature isn't evil, and that God Himself is responsible for creating man with his nature. Grotius makes the argument that man's nature was created by God, and as such, man's nature is neither good nor bad but rather the foundation on which to justify ethical laws (his natural law theory).

Mosiah 3:19 is setting forth BoM soteriology.

Quote

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

The 5 articles of remonstrance address the issue Benjamin is talking about. From Articles 3 and 4:

Quote

That man has not saving grace himself, nor of the energy of his free will, inasmuch as he, in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself, neither thing, will, nor do any thing that is truly good (such as saving Faith eminently is); but that it is needful that he be born again of God in Christ through his Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding, inclination, or will, and all his powers, in order that he may rightly understand, think, will, and effect what is truly good, according to the Word of Christ, John 15:5: “Without me ye can do nothing.”

That this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to this extent, that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awaking, following and co-operative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements, that can be conceived, must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ.

The Arminian view of the "natural man" is that he can do no good and resist no temptation without the holy spirit and, ultimately, Christ's atonement. This is consistent with what Benjamin is saying.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am curious to see what you think Grotius's view of the trinity is? Does Grotius believe that Jesus was God before he was born?

Grotius' view on the trinity is something that scholars are still debating. It appears that in most of his public works he tried to be very careful about how he talked about the trinity. After all, people were still being burned for anti-trinitarian heresies. So it's hard to pin down exactly what his view was. Some of his contemporaries accused him of Socinianism, which among other things, was known to be anti-trinitarian. Many scholars believe he privately did not hold orthodox views on the trinity, but they differ in what they think he really did believe. I think it's pretty clear he personally held a heterodox view of the trinity, but I haven't really been able to reconstruct just what his view was.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

They certainly aren't so rare that people wouldn't understand them, or have problems using them.

To use them you have to know them. It's not enough to understand it when someone else says it. You have to already know it in order to use it. All the archaism in the BoM needed to have been known to the author. Because of the sheer number of them and their scarceness or obsolescence, this is very unlikely.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

You seem to be underestimating normal human vocabulary. Studies show that the vocabulary that we know is much larger than the vocabulary that we use (there are exceptions, I suppose - James Joyce uses more words in his Ulysses than Shakespeare did in his complete works - the Book of Mormon, especially for a work its size, has a tiny vocabulary). The Book of Mormon doesn't have as many archaisms as you are implying - especially once we cut out the archaisms found in the King James Bible. So I counter by suggesting that there aren't that many, and they aren't that rare. And more importantly, they aren't that rare in the environment. This last point is significant. You want to exclude all sorts of uses from the searches - especially quotes of older material. Which is important from a certain point of view. But you can't simply take this out of the environment. How many editions of Chaucer were published in the United States prior to 1830? How many histories contained these archaisms at least in part because they quote older histories? These have to be included in the discussion of rarity in terms of the language people were familiar with. And as I said, it wasn't that rare. Texts accumulate.

You are finally coming around to what I've been saying. Archaism can really only be known to be archaic if you know the archaic texts. That's why the author almost certainly had to know Holinshed or another work from that era, among many others.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

None of these are in the Book of Mormon either. This is nothing more than a distraction. It is significant that we can find all of the vocabulary in the Book of Mormon in use in 1830.

This is a demonstration that just because many archaic terms exist in a given environment, that we cannot conclude a single person should know them all. This shows why your theory doesn't work. And that's why you want to dismiss it as a distraction. You can't ignore what's going on here.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yes, you have explained this several times. And your defense whenever an example is provided is to claim that the text that we have is a late redaction of your early text. So, we need to get past this bad argument on your part. What sort of evidence can I provide that you won't simply claim is attributable to a late redaction or later translation, or whatever it is.

Again, you are not keeping two separate issues separate. Modern language can accounted for with a redactor. You need to show content that is modern, or at least not early modern. I have not tried a single time to account for any alleged non-early modern content you have brought up by relying on redaction.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is the frustration ...

Clearly parts of the text are not Early Modern. In fact, most of the text isn't Early Modern. And all we have to do to illustrate this is exactly what I did - actually put up a sample of Early Modern Text. Those texts read nothing like the Book of Mormon.

You're talking about language here. But even so, you are most likely reading from the modern edition of the BoM, which we know has been redacted. When you read Skousen's text you get a different feel. At any rate, the text reads like an early modern text with modern redaction. It doesn't read as a modern pseudo-archaic text.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

The problem that you have is that Grotius is plagiarizing it. It isn't unrelated. Grotius doesn't use it because he wants to put it in that way - he puts it in that way specifically because of the source he is using. Nowhere else in his 6 volume collection that you reference does Grotius quote an entire chapter of Isaiah (unlike, of course, the Book of Mormon). So, I think that your point isn't substantiated. At the same time, you are underrepresenting the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon does quote Isaiah 54 in its entirety. It also quotes Chapters 2-14 and 48-54. And when we get to the Isaiah 53 citation, it is part of a dialogue right? Mosiah 12:20-24 is a question asked by the wicked priests:

So the source he is using somehow forces him into quoting Isaiah 53 in its entirety? This makes no sense.

We get further discussion of Isaiah 53 from Grotius here. Grotius uses this chapter to develop his governmental theory of atonement, which essentially is that justice requires a punishment for sin, but Christ bore that punishment for us. From Grotius:

Quote

God was moved by his own goodness to bestow distinguished blessings upon us. But since our sins, which deserved punishment, were an obstacle to this, he determined that Christ, being willing of his own love toward men, should, by bearing the most severe tortures, and a bloody and ignominious death, pay the penalty for our sins, in order that without prejudice to the exhibition of the divine justice, we might be liberated, upon the intervention of a true faith, from the punishment of eternal death.

yet in this Passage of Isaiah, and that of Peter also, the joint mention of the sufferings of Christ and of our liberation, would make the interpretation certain. For to bear sins by suffering, and in such a way as to liberate others thereby, can only mean to receive another's punishment. In the Same Passage we have: "God cast upon him, or smote him with, the punishment of us all. It is exacted, and he is himself afflicted."

Note also the following passage from Isaiah: " By his stripes we are healed," that is, through his punishment is our exemption from punishment.

Abinadi interprets Isaiah 53 in a similar way in Mosiah 15:7-9:

Quote

Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father.

And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men.

Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Looks pretty identical to me. There is this dialogue going on the Book of Mormon - and it is quite different from Grotius. So both authors had reasons to include the text. We can call this a stylistic decision if you want - but it doesn't somehow give these two texts a similar use of scripture. And then there is the other side of the coin. In Grotius, there are far more quotes from non-scriptural sources than there are for scripture across the six volume work. And from the scriptures, we have more references to the New Testament than to the Old Testament. Where is all of this in the Book of Mormon? Even if we determine (as you suggest) that the Book of Mormon is intended as a foundational myth, we are left with the feeling that this is something very different from anything that Grotius wrote.

You need to read more Grotius. Here are two of his fictional works on OT themes: Sophompaneas and Adamus Exul. And here is one on NT themes, though still a theme represented in the BoM: Christus Patiens. There is a ton of information in these works to compare to the BoM. Let me be clear that I am not saying that any of these plays resemble the BoM. The plays are a completely different genre, after all. However, it does show that Grotius didn't just write tomes on history or war or politics. He also wrote historical fiction, if you want to call it that, centered on biblical characters and themes. It's the themes in these plays that we can compare to the themes in the BoM.

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

I don't think it's relevant. But, I'll bite - why don't you tell me how to distinguish between the two? I do enjoy the fact that your phrases seem to be entirely made up. Did you find any of them in published texts? The list does offer a challenge that I have tried to address. Skousen and Carmack seem to have a tendency of accepting a non-standard syntax when it can be found in EModE sources, and rejecting it when it can't. Should we wonder if "We had this blind woman came to stay with us" really just reflects an orthographic error and should be read as "we had this blind woman come to stay with us"?

Three examples are from early modern sources and three are from modern regional dialects. The only reason I know which are modern and which are early modern is because I found all of them. This speaks to my point about a modern author for the BoM. If he encountered any non-standard syntax in verbal communication, how would he know if it was regional or archaic? He would probably assume it was regional. He would need to encounter the syntax in an archaic work to know it was archaic. 

Edited February 17, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

Quoting the same entire chapter in the midst of a larger work is an important data point.

It's not. Perhaps you could explain why it is - apart from your intuition. This is one of those things where your intuition (as opposed to an understanding of statistics) is not your friend. Lots of texts and writers quote entire chapters in the middle of larger works. And some chapters in a variety of works have special value within a specific context. So they get quoted more often. Your argument would make more sense if no one else, anywhere else, were to have quoted the entirety of Isaiah 53 in the middle of a larger work. But we know that this isn't the case. In fact, we know that one of these two sources that you are point to, does this, in the way that he does it (Grotius) because someone else did it before him, and he is copying their work. And this tells me that this isn't an important data point at all.

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

And both sources do use it similarly--as a prooftext to a Jewish audience that the OT prophesies of Christ.

It isn't all that similar. But I give you credit for continuing to try to use the broadest possible terms to create your similarities. The Book of Mormon asks a specific question. And then it uses Isaiah 53 and an interpretation of Isaiah 53 to answer that question. It is not the same as the question that Grotius asks. Grotius isn't writing to a Jewish audience. The following is from the translator's preface to the edition that I provided earlier (since I prefer to allow others to make these kinds of statements):

Quote

This is the author's design, to prove the truth of the Christian religion in general, against Atheists, Deists, Jews, or Mahometans; and he does not enter into any of the disputes which Christians have among themselves, but confines himself wholly to the other.

This is not an attempt to convert the Jews. It is an apologetics work more generally. What is a prooftext? It is a term used to describe the use of a passage of scripture to defend a particular doctrine or theological principle. Prooftexts have been used for thousands of years. Both Christians and Jews have used Isaiah 53 as a prooftext. So this isn't (by itself) an important data point - especially when using a macro lens to look at it. Is Grotius a Christian? Is his attempt to identify the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 with Jesus? Yes. Is Abinadi a Christian? Is his purpose to identify the suffering servant with Jesus? No to both counts. Is the debate between Abinadi and the priests of Noah an external apologetic or an internal discussion? It seems internal to me.

So yes, both are using Isaiah 53 as a prooftext. And there isn't anything special about this. On the other hand, they are using the prooftext for very different purposes in very different contexts to answer very different questions. And again, this means that your reducing these discussions to this simple similarity is a way of concealing these differences. Your argument is simply a bad argument based on an inappropriate use of parallels without considering the differences.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

First of all, the "use of scripture" is not something that should necessarily be consistent. After all, people use scripture differently depending on the context. But even so, you haven't shown how Grotius used the scriptures in question.

You haven't shown how they are alike. You have merely claimed that they are. Most of Grotius's use of scripture is simply borrowed from earlier authors. The sources can often be identified explicitly. Here is a brief excerpt from J. P. Heering's Hugo Grotius as Apologist for the Christian Religion: A Study of his Work De Veritate Relionis Christianae (1640) (Brill, 2004) - emphasis added:

Quote

In this section [Chapter 5, Section 8], following a regular practice of Christian apologetes, Grotius confronts the Jews with a series of citations from the Psalms and prophets of the Old Testament

He also relates the dietary rules of the Mosaic law to the idolatry into which the Jewish people had fallen during their captivity in Egypt (§9). Once again this explanation appears to be borrowed from Justin Martyr. To bring out the temporary nature of this law he follows Justin Martyr in referring to several pre-Mosaic Old Testament figures, who were free to eat all living creatures. Finally he mentions a pronouncement of Jewish ‘teachers’ that God would abolish the prohibition on certain foods and the distinction between clean and unclean animals at the coming of the Messiah. He must have owed this information to Mornay, who named a ‘rabbi Hadarsan’ in this context.

Rabbi Hadarsan refers to the 11th century AD Moshe ha-Darshan. In this particular work, there is some original material from Grotius, but there is very little. And unlike the Book of Mormon, Grotius makes regular references to his sources. The Book of Mormon refers us to nothing but the scriptural text.

As a side note, here is another contradiction between Grotius and the Book of Mormon. Grotius was a firm believer that the biblical text was complete and without error. Heering (p. 70) explains to us that:

Quote

In the epilogue to his [Grotius] apologetic work he asserts that the Scriptures contain everything that it is necessary to know for salvation:

Quote

The writers of this word were all too faithful, and moreover guided by God’s spirit, to have forgotten the slightest point of that which is necessary for you to know for your salvation.

This is very different from the Book of Mormon's assertion that many plain and precious things were removed.

In any case, back to you -

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

The 5 articles of remonstrance address the issue Benjamin is talking about. From Articles 3 and 4:

Quote

That man has not saving grace himself, nor of the energy of his free will, inasmuch as he, in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself, neither thing, will, nor do any thing that is truly good (such as saving Faith eminently is); but that it is needful that he be born again of God in Christ through his Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding, inclination, or will, and all his powers, in order that he may rightly understand, think, will, and effect what is truly good, according to the Word of Christ, John 15:5: “Without me ye can do nothing.”

That this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to this extent, that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awaking, following and co-operative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements, that can be conceived, must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ.

Yet, this isn't what the Book of Mormon teaches. In fact the Book of Mormon goes a very different direction - and it comes in at least two specific ways. The first is that the Book of Mormon argues that mankind does not have absolute agency - and that when man acts in ways that are contrary to the will of God because he does not have agency, that it is not counted as sinful. The Book of Mormon takes this even further (away from Arminianism) by asserting that man can in fact have little enough agency that they cannot choose to have faith. The second is that man can do good without it being caused by the grace of God (just that this good isn't enough to be salvific). In other words, the Book of Mormon denies the idea that 'this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good. Alma reiterates this point a bit later.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

The Arminian view of the "natural man" is that he can do no good and resist no temptation without the holy spirit and, ultimately, Christ's atonement. This is consistent with what Benjamin is saying.

You are simply wrong. The Arminian view (much like Calvanism) asserts total depravity to man. From birth. Benjamin does not. He says this three times in this sermon in verses 18 and 19: -

"the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but men drink damnation to their own souls except they ... become as little children, ... the natural man is an enemy to God, ... unless he ... becometh as a child."

This is not Arminianism. More to the point though, Grotius discusses the natural man very differently than you are. So perhaps you can find in Grotius some different reference to this idea that you claim he should have. I haven't yet been able to. Grotius did not have the same views on several of these topics as did, for example, Servetus (where we first started this discussion).

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

You are finally coming around to what I've been saying. Archaism can really only be known to be archaic if you know the archaic texts. That's why the author almost certainly had to know Holinshed or another work from that era, among many others.

No. No. No. Archaisms exist within the public awareness of language. You don't have to be familiar with a phrase in a book to understand that phrase as an archaism. The books merely represent the persistence of the language in popular awareness. Texts represent the only way that we can measure that awareness - but as I have pointed out, there are solid reasons to believe that these kinds of archaisms persist in spoken language as well as written language - and in that context, they come in to play as representations of formal language - of the sort we might hear during a religious sermon. As long as that language persists in the environment, there is no reason to assert that the author had to know Holinshed or any other work. Language doesn't work the way that you keep asserting that it does.

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

This is a demonstration that just because many archaic terms exist in a given environment, that we cannot conclude a single person should know them all. This shows why your theory doesn't work. And that's why you want to dismiss it as a distraction. You can't ignore what's going on here.

I haven't ever said that a single person should know them all. The Book of Mormon contains only a tiny portion of the archaisms that exist - a tiny portion. For someone to be familiar with those forms is not as unexpected as you seem to think it is. I am not ignoring what's going on here. I am telling you that you have such absolutlely wrong assumptions about the persistance and use of language. Language simply doesn't change as quickly or as absolutely as you seem to suggest that it does. And you are hyperfocusing on a single small set of these archaisms that exist in the Book of Mormon. There is this strangeness in your argument in part because you haven't done any of the original research - so you don't really understand the arguments you are employing. Most of what we would term archaisms in the Book of Mormon are found in the King James Bible. But we both know that this is generally taken out of the discussion because we all know that archaic or not, that language was prevalent in the 19th century and would continue to be prevalent through the middle of the twentieth century when we finally start seeing alternate English Bible translations. The number of archaisms in the Book of Mormon is actually a tiny percentage of the text. This suits Skousen's and Carmack's arguments fairly well. It doesn't help yours.

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

Again, you are not keeping two separate issues separate. Modern language can accounted for with a redactor. You need to show content that is modern, or at least not early modern. I have not tried a single time to account for any alleged non-early modern content you have brought up by relying on redaction.

But most of the text is Modern language. This isn't a redaction. There isn't mostly archaic language with small pockets of redacted modern language put in by a redactor. We have a Modern language text with small bits of EModE in it. And the content is modern. You haven't brought up any content that cannot be found in texts in the 19th century. Can you find material in the Book of Mormon that reflects content that could only come from the 17th century? I really don't think so.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

You're talking about language here. But even so, you are most likely reading from the modern edition of the BoM, which we know has been redacted. When you read Skousen's text you get a different feel. At any rate, the text reads like an early modern text with modern redaction. It doesn't read as a modern pseudo-archaic text.

No, actually, you don't get a different feel when reading Skousen's text. Again, you seem to be suggesting that there is this huge quantity of archaisms in the text. There aren't. I have never labeled the text as a pseduo-archaic text. I have suggested that Book of Mormon incorporates archaisms as a way of helping direct the reading of the text in a certain way (not an uncommon tactic). This is very different from the pseudo-scriptural efforts that you (and Skousen and Carmack) refer to. The text doesn't read like an EModE text with modern redactions. If you think that this is the best description for it, then provide me with a known example of an EModE text that has undergone the same level of redaction that you are arguing for in the Book of Mormon and lets compare them. It should be easy enough, right?

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

So the source he is using somehow forces him into quoting Isaiah 53 in its entirety? This makes no sense.

No. Generally, when we talk about textual reliance, we discuss it in terms of the fact that it appears the way it does in one text because of the way that it appears someplace else. Part of what Grotius's interest is, in these six volumes, is to carry a certain presentation of the material through his use of footnotes. Many of the footnotes that he uses are taken from identifiable sources. The is clear because these different sources have both different styles of footnotes and competing sets of identifiers (that is, they identify the same person or material in different ways). Grotius's footnotes are inconsistent in terms of style and they use competing identifiers. The general view is that Grotius is often unaware that two footnotes refer to the same person or the same text because his sources refer to them in different ways. Heering, p. 189, notes this with regard to Grotius's footnotes:

Quote

And even these summary references to names are not free from inconsistencies, which can be explained on the assumption that he was dependent on secondary literature. All the signs suggest that he merely transcribed the references he found without further modification, so that he copied the different styles of reference from the different secondary works.

The majority of references in these notes are to medieval Jewish Bible commentaries. This is not surprising, since it was these works above all that had been translated and provided with commentaries by Menasseh, L’Empereur, Gerson and other contemporaries of Grotius. The most important exegetes and commentators whom he names are Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, David Kimchi, Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, Moses Alshech, Joseph ibn Yahya, and Levi ben Gerson. Most of these references can be traced back to L’Empereur (especially those to Abrabanel, Alshech and ibn Yahya), and to Gerson (especially those to Rashi, Kimchi, Saadia, Levi ben Gerson and Bechai). We find several inconsistencies in these references, which point to a defective knowledge of the sources.

Heering notes that this is part of the deliberate strategy by Grotius who believed that having more notes indicated a greater certainty of the argument (p. 164):

Quote

Grotius’ notes are intended to maximise the evidential force of his testimonies in two ways. In the first place he stresses the multiplicity of testimonies as often as he can. One of the assumptions of dialecticalrhetorical argument was: the more testimonies the better the proof. Grotius was convinced that if reports from various testimonies agreed with one another they indicated a universal consensus, which is a sign of universal truth. In the foreword to De iure belli he states that he has incorporated the widest possible range of authorities, because a universal consensus must be underlain by a universal cause.

You suggest that it makes no sense that the source require him to use Isaiah 53 in its entirety. What I am suggesting is that Grotius's desire to use the entire set of footnotes from his source effectively required him to use the entire chapter of Isaiah 53 in his text. Is my position unreasonable? I don't think so.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Grotius uses this chapter to develop his governmental theory of atonement, ... Abinadi interprets Isaiah 53 in a similar way in Mosiah 15:7-9:

Except that Abinadi doesn't present us with a governmental theory of atonement. This is a theological discussion, with a very different purpose than Grotius's attempt to ground the nature of human rights. From Abinadi:

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men.

This builds on 2 Nephi 2. Here are verses 8-10:

Quote

... there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, asave it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise. Wherefore, he is the firstfruits unto God, inasmuch as he shall make intercession for all the children of men; and they that believe in him shall be saved. And because of the intercession for all, all men come unto God; wherefore, they stand in the presence of him, to be judged of him according to the truth and holiness which is in him. Wherefore, the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the eatonement.

This presents two stages. The first stage is an atonement from the fall - and the resurrection of Jesus "breaketh the bands of death" for all mankind. After which, all mankind is brought into the presence of God at which point the Son has the power to intercede on behalf of the righteous. This is not a governmental theory of atonement. It is closest to a penal substitutionary theory of atonement. A little later in verse 26 we get this:

Quote

And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.

So, here, we are told that because the Messiah redeems humanity from the fall of Adam, they gain the capacity of agency. Abinadi continues this line of thinking:

Quote

Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father. And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men — Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

To repeat myself, this is not a governmental theory of atonement. From your link on this theory:

Quote

Governmental theory holds that Christ's suffering was a real and meaningful substitute for the punishment humans deserve, but it did not consist of Christ's receiving the exact punishment due to sinful people. Instead, God publicly demonstrated his displeasure with sin through the suffering of his own sinless and obedient Son as a propitiation. Christ's suffering and death served as a substitute for the punishment humans might have received. On this basis, God is able to extend forgiveness while maintaining divine order, having demonstrated the seriousness of sin and thus allowing his wrath to "pass over."

Penal substitutionary theory suggests:

Quote

The penal substitution theory teaches that Jesus suffered the penalty due according to God the Father's wrath for humanity's sins. Penal substitution derives from the idea that divine forgiveness must satisfy divine justice, that is, that God is not willing or able to simply forgive sin without first requiring a satisfaction for it. It states that God gave himself in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for our sin.

The Messiah, according to Abinadi, stands between humanity and justice having taken upon himself the iniquity of mankind. There is very different from Grotius.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

You need to read more Grotius. Here are two of his fictional works on OT themes: Sophompaneas and Adamus Exul.

I have read them. I don't find them to be nearly so similar to the Book of Mormon as you do. Perhaps its an interpretation thing. Your track record doesn't give me a lot of faith that your interests are in anything but trying to find similarities.

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

He also wrote historical fiction, if you want to call it that, centered on biblical characters and themes.

I wouldn't call this historical fiction. Are you suggesting that Grotius believed the narrative of Adam and Eve was fiction?

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

Three examples are from early modern sources and three are from modern regional dialects. The only reason I know which are modern and which are early modern is because I found all of them. This speaks to my point about a modern author for the BoM. If he encountered any non-standard syntax in verbal communication, how would he know if it was regional or archaic? He would probably assume it was regional. He would need to encounter the syntax in an archaic work to know it was archaic. 

But, as I pointed out, your examples are not typical, are they. You are stretching a great deal here to create a problem that doesn't need to be addressed - except perhaps by Carmack and Skousen.

[Ryan Dahle]

58 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

But most of the text is Modern language. This isn't a redaction.

For clarification, most of the Book of Mormon contains Early Modern language that persisted into the early 19th century. It contains only a very small amount of what may be termed as exclusively modern language. On the other hand, there are some patterns of usage in the Book of Mormon that are more reflective of modern English than Early Modern English (when looking at rates of usage).

So any alleged redactor would presumably:

• be responsible for the very small amount of exclusively modern language (although there is always a possibility that what is believed to be an exclusively modern term or phrase could have existed in the EModE period but we just haven't found it yet; just like there is always a possibility of what seems like an exclusively EModE word or phrase being discovered in modern English)
• be responsible for usage rates that are better reflective of modern language

Of course, I don't subscribe to JarMan's theory, but it seems like there was a misunderstanding on this point. 

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

42 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

For clarification, most of the Book of Mormon contains Early Modern language that persisted into the early 19th century.

This isn't an accurate statement at all.

Most of the Book of Mormon contains language that occurs in Early Modern English and became a part of Late Modern English. It didn't simply persist into the early 19th century, and it remains a part of the English that we use today.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[Ryan Dahle]

On 2/15/2023 at 1:11 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

On 2/15/2023 at 12:30 AM, JarMan said:

But I don't think you understand the problem you have. You think that if you can show each of these archaisms to be present somewhere in the written or verbal language corpus of JS' day, that that makes it possible for a person to have used all of them. But these archaisms are, by definition, rare. We can't equate words or phrases that are theoretically accessible to a person, with words or phrases that a person could actually produce.

They certainly aren't so rare that people wouldn't understand them, or have problems using them. You seem to be underestimating normal human vocabulary. Studies show that the vocabulary that we know is much larger than the vocabulary that we use (there are exceptions, I suppose - James Joyce uses more words in his Ulysses than Shakespeare did in his complete works - the Book of Mormon, especially for a work its size, has a tiny vocabulary). The Book of Mormon doesn't have as many archaisms as you are implying - especially once we cut out the archaisms found in the King James Bible. So I counter by suggesting that there aren't that many, and they aren't that rare. And more importantly, they aren't that rare in the environment. This last point is significant. You want to exclude all sorts of uses from the searches - especially quotes of older material. Which is important from a certain point of view. But you can't simply take this out of the environment. How many editions of Chaucer were published in the United States prior to 1830? How many histories contained these archaisms at least in part because they quote older histories? These have to be included in the discussion of rarity in terms of the language people were familiar with. And as I said, it wasn't that rare. Texts accumulate.

I think JarMan's point still stands here. To me, it isn't about merely understanding the words. It is about passive vs. active vocabulary. I think we can look at modern day Latter-day Saints as a pretty good example. Many Latter-day Saints are exposed to a frequent diet of archaic language in the Bible and in our Restoration scripture. Yet virtually none of us are regularly using these archaic words and phrases in our everyday speech and conversations. Which means that even if we can understand an archaic word of phrase when we read it, most examples of such language haven't become part of our active vocabularies.

At least, I know that is the case for me. When I look at the range of archaic words and phrases in the Book of Mormon and Bible, I get the sense that--if I were placed into Joseph Smith's shoes--I would never personally have been able to reproduce a comparable degree of biblical and extrabiblical archaic features. It isn't that I don't understand the meaning of the words, and it isn't that I have never encountered those words before (I've actually encountered most of them dozens of times). It is the fact that I have never regularly used any of those words in my everyday speech or writing patterns. 

For instance, I highly doubt I would ever, on my own, think to use the phrase "the more part" if this peculiar phrase hadn't been pointed out to me by Skousen and Carmack. I don't think I ever consciously noticed it before that and had probably never used it in my life in my personal discourse (despite the fact that I encountered it dozens of times in the Book of Mormon). In fact, I doubt I would even use a phrase like "the greater part." I would almost certainly opt for "most" most of the time because that is the word that is most thoroughly entrenched in my active vocabulary. At this point in my life, I'm probably far more well versed with the Book of Mormon than Joseph Smith was with the Bible in 1829. And yet, even today, even after having looked very carefully at the research of Carmack and Skousen, and even after having spent years reading and researching the Book of Mormon on a regular basis, I don't think I could reproduce a comparable range of archaisms (assuming something like Gardner's translation theory, where I would have raw scriptural ideas flowing into my mind which I would then have to articulate using my own linguistic knowledge and patterns). 

That is why it doesn't really matter to me if some of the allegedly obsolete words and phrases in the Book of Mormon turn out to only be rare--rather than completely absent--in the corpus of 18th-19th century literature. The debate is really about what type of archaic diversity (both biblical and extrabiblical, and in the realms of lexis, grammar, and syntax) we should expect to find in Joseph Smith's active vocabulary in 1829. He wasn't a preacher. He wasn't a Bible scholar. He almost certainly wasn't consuming a steady diet of arcane texts. And the constraining circumstances of the translation ensured that he didn't have time to use reference materials to help compensate for any limitations in his active vocabulary (unlike most pseudo-biblical writers). 

Edited February 17, 2023 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

For clarification, most of the Book of Mormon contains Early Modern language that persisted into the early 19th century.

This isn't an accurate statement at all.

Most of the Book of Mormon contains language that occurs in Early Modern English and became a part of Late Modern English. It didn't simply persist into the early 19th century, and it remains a part of the English that we use today.

That is what I meant by "persisted." Sheesh.

It persisted (in the sense that it was being actively used and therefore perpetuated) in Late Modern and Modern English and, of course, is still used today. Thus most of the language can neither be characterized as exclusively Early Modern or exclusively Modern, as it plentifully shows up in both periods. Hence there is only a small subset of the language that would need to be ascribed to a hypothetical redactor, under JarMan's theory.

A much larger subset of the language is predominantly Early Modern in character. But even that is comparatively small, when contrasted with the language that fits fairly comfortably into both periods. 

Edited February 17, 2023 by Ryan Dahle

[Benjamin McGuire]

Perhaps a better way of explaining it is this - Modern English is the English that we use today. It evolved from Middle English. At the beginning of the period in which we put the evolution of Modern English, there weren't a lot of standards in terms of the syntax and forms of Modern English. We identify this period as Early Modern English. Over time, Modern English standardized into what we refer to as Late Modern English. We have a wealth of information about this process - especially in the historical grammars of English from that Early Modern time period. One of the texts in my collection discusses the progressive nature of these grammars: Descriptive Adequacy of Early Modern English Grammars. Because this is a progressive process of standardization, most of the syntax and the forms that we use today come out of Early Modern English - they are the winners, so to speak, and these observations are only expected. We don't have forms or syntax that persist from Early Modern English into Late Modern English (the statement doesn't really make sense). We could discuss whether or not we have Middle English forms and syntax that persist into Modern English - but we are discussing a different sort of transition there.

The Book of Mormon was produced in 1829, well outside the period of Early Modern English. So we shouldn't discuss it in terms of being an Early Modern English text that contains Later Modern English forms, syntax and vocabulary. It is a Late Modern English text that occasionally uses Early Modern English forms and syntax. Some of this usage is specific to the text's use of the King James Bible. Some of it isn't. But for Skousen and Carmack to make their case, they looked for language that was exclusive to the Early Modern English period. Their purpose was apologetic. They wanted evidence of a translation process on the part of Joseph Smith which would support their view that the translation was 'tight' and that Joseph Smith was merely a reader of the text and not in any way a contributor to that final product. I find this proposal problematic from several different directions.

Discussing frequency is an entirely different animal. It may be possible to discuss the value of frequency as a metric only if we determine that there isn't some sort of choice at work on the part of an author. We know this isn't true. And one thing we have learned over the last twenty years is the ways in which word choice is predictive with regards to authors - but not to other categories (of the sort being suggested in this thread).

To dig in to the one example that was pushed here, the phrase "the more part of" isn't a particularly common phrase - even in the EModE period. The database that JarMan used for his search showed that it occurred in only a half a percent of texts in the 16th and 17th century in the database - and even then, only in a few instances per text. Frequencies are a problematic issue because they require some sort of baseline, and these baselines generally need to be more broadly applicable than single examples. The actual usage of the phrase "the more part of" in terms of instances per 1,000 words is incredibly small. We know this because, at least in the database that JarMan references, 99.5 percent of the volumes (just under 60,000 volumes) had zero instances. Only 313 had one or more instances - most of these had only one instance, and only a handful had more than 5. If we only look at this piece of data, the Book of Mormon is an outlier to the point that the frequency becomes a meaningless statistic. The frequency in the Book of Mormon is significantly greater than 99.9 percent of all of the volumes in that EModE era collection (I could, of course, speculate over what this means).

But the nature of the phrase is also part of the problem. Early Modern English grammars don't identify this as a distinct phrase because it combines two separate linguistic structures. The "of" at the end of the phrase is a marker for a new preposition. So we have "the more part" + preposition. This complicates the arguments that are being made about this phrase. At least in terms of syntax, there isn't a significant difference between "the more part of ..." and "the more part in ...", while there is a fairly significant difference between "the more part of ..." and "for the more part".

Frequency simply isn't helpful in these discussions.

Now, if we could have some sort of objective definition of archaisms to look for we could use that to create a baseline for texts more broadly using a baseline database of texts. We could then take volumes not in the database but with known publication dates to test that baseline, and then (and only then) could we apply that baseline to the Book of Mormon to see what it tells us. But, given the nature of the shift from EModE to Late Modern English, I suspect we would never get past the process of testing our baseline to see if it provides a useful point for comparison.

[Benjamin McGuire]

18 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think JarMan's point still stands here. To me, it isn't about merely understanding the words. It is about passive vs. active vocabulary. I think we can look at modern day Latter-day Saints as a pretty good example. Many Latter-day Saints are exposed to a frequent diet of archaic language in the Bible and in our Restoration scripture. Yet virtually none of us are regularly using these archaic words and phrases in our everyday speech and conversations. Which means that even if we can understand an archaic word of phrase when we read it, most examples of such language haven't become part of our active vocabularies.

I don't disagree with any of this. It is clear that we (speaking of all of us collectively) have a much broader knowledge and acquisition of the English language than is illustrated in our active vocabularies. At the same time, the Book of Mormon isn't everyday speech and conversation - and it wasn't when it was produced. We often use different language in different contexts. In Church, for example, we adopt at times a special kind of formality. This is even more noticeable for language associated with a special purpose - prayers, blessings, even testimonies and talks. It isn't even just the language itself - the way of speaking is often context driven (just look at General Conference).

In an even different direction, the Book of Mormon claims to be a translated text. And part of that argument (that it is a translated text) comes in the formal language style of the text. This could be true whether it is a real translation or an original work claiming to be a translation (in fact, as I have argued in the past, the poor nature of the translation functions rhetorically along side its message). This sort of purposeful use of archaic language can account for the presence of these archaisms far more easily than a theory of EModE authorship (which has to then include one or more redaction layers to explain the more recent language and syntax that occur in the text).

27 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

At least, I know that is the case for me. When I look at the range of archaic words and phrases in the Book of Mormon and Bible, I get the sense that--if I were placed into Joseph Smith's shoes--I would never personally have been able to reproduce a comparable degree of biblical and extrabiblical archaic features, especially when I was 23 years old. It isn't that I don't understand the meaning of the words, and it isn't that I have never encountered those words before (I've actually encountered most of them dozens of times). It is the fact that I have never regularly used any of those words in my everyday speech or writing patterns. 

Who cares? Seriously. This is not a binary argument. It isn't one or the other here. The idea that the Book of Mormon was written by a 17th century author has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Joseph Smith could have written it at the age of 23 in 1829. I am not discussing whether or not Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon in my discussion with JarMan in this thread. I am only discussing the likelihood that Hugo Grotius wrote the Book of Mormon in the early part of the 17th century.

[Ryan Dahle]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

At least, I know that is the case for me. When I look at the range of archaic words and phrases in the Book of Mormon and Bible, I get the sense that--if I were placed into Joseph Smith's shoes--I would never personally have been able to reproduce a comparable degree of biblical and extrabiblical archaic features, especially when I was 23 years old. It isn't that I don't understand the meaning of the words, and it isn't that I have never encountered those words before (I've actually encountered most of them dozens of times). It is the fact that I have never regularly used any of those words in my everyday speech or writing patterns. 

Who cares? Seriously. This is not a binary argument. It isn't one or the other here. The idea that the Book of Mormon was written by a 17th century author has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Joseph Smith could have written it at the age of 23 in 1829. I am not discussing whether or not Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon in my discussion with JarMan in this thread. I am only discussing the likelihood that Hugo Grotius wrote the Book of Mormon in the early part of the 17th century.

Well, I care. But I see now that this isn't directly relevant to your discussion. Sorry for the interruption.