Book of Mormon Criticism of Calvin

[Benjamin McGuire]

There is a lot here, so I am probably going to do this in pieces. I want to start with this:

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

think I understand your criticism, but I disagree with it completely. You asked me to find how other people have approached this exercise, so I've been looking. I've found that the people involved in historical criticism and the authorship question roundly reject what you are describing, as well. Here's a paper that directly addresses the issues. This is written by a fellow who has been involved in authorship studies of Shakespeare's plays. So he's even looking at the same period I am. For those who may not want to read the entire thing, which is actually quite good, I'll provide some relevant quotations.

Google is not your friend if you don't really know what you are looking at. You can publish practically anything today. But it doesn't mean that it has any value.

Quote

Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims.[3]

fn 3:

Kathman 2003, p. 621: "...antiStratfordism has remained a fringe belief system"; Schoenbaum 1991, p. 450; Paster 1999, p. 38: "To ask me about the authorship question ... is like asking a palaeontologist to debate a creationist's account of the fossil record."; Nelson 2004, pp. 149–51: "I do not know of a single professor of the 1,300-member Shakespeare Association of America who questions the identity of Shakespeare ... antagonism to the authorship debate from within the profession is so great that it would be as difficult for a professed Oxfordian to be hired in the first place, much less gain tenure..."; Carroll 2004, pp. 278–9: "I have never met anyone in an academic position like mine, in the Establishment, who entertained the slightest doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship of the general body of plays attributed to him."; Pendleton 1994, p. 21: "Shakespeareans sometimes take the position that to even engage the Oxfordian hypothesis is to give it a countenance it does not warrant."; Sutherland & Watts 2000, p. 7: "There is, it should be noted, no academic Shakespearian of any standing who goes along with the Oxfordian theory."; Gibson 2005, p. 30: "...most of the great Shakespearean scholars are to be found in the Stratfordian camp..."

I use this reference because it collects a broad number of statements that reflects the disregard that academia has for the ideas in this paper and those that espouse them. Further, it is helpful for us to see this to understand the first sentence of the paper:

Quote

Much can be learned about why literary scholars have not accepted Edward de Vere’s authorship of the works of William Shakespeare by examining changes in the methodology of literary criticism over the course of the twentieth century.

The author is blaming the lack of support for this fringe theory on the development of literary criticism in the 20th century. To further the analogy of one of the comments in the footnote I just quoted, this paper is a lot like taking your theory about the young age of the earth and backing it up by using Rod Meldrum's website:

Quote

The new geology shows why the Earth has no magma at its center and explains the true origin and source of lava and its heat. The UM debunks long-held, false notions about rock and mineral formation, and describes the origin of minerals such as salt and sand.

So you have a problem here. You bring out an article with a methodology that rejects what is nearly universally accepted in terms of literary theory in favor of a fringe idea (pseudo-academia is one term that frequently gets applied to this group - another term is the 'oxfraud'). And when you use this to support your own arguments, you end up aligning with the fringe against widely accepted mainstream scholarship. Is this really where you want to be?

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

I think we have different views on what is important in the type of analysis I'm doing. As far as I can tell, though, other people are using methods similar to mine.

I am just going to reiterate that last point. Yes, others are using the kind of analysis that you are using. And they are considered incredibly fringe. So if you are okay with this, then by all means, keep at it. Realize that it isn't worth the effort in a discussion like this to try and refute these kinds of beliefs deny most of what is broadly accepted and understood in current literary theory. And if this is the route you want to take, I will simply say, go for it - just don't expect the theory to get any sort of traction.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

In order to understand your position better, tell me how would you approach the authorship question. What methods are appropriate?

Currently, the best methods are all statistical analysis of texts. The earliest statistical model (that I know of) was published by Thomas C. Mendenhall in 1887. It's probably not coincidental (given the discussion now) that he used it to examine Shakespearean authorship. His methods haven't been in use for a century, but recent statistical models are quite good. You claim that a known author is responsible for the Book of Mormon. You also claim that Joseph Smith made minimal adjustments to the text. You have a relatively narrow window for writing. I am sure that we could come up with a suitable statistical model, a suitable text for Grotius to use in comparison, and a suitable handful of texts of known authorship to use as control documents. This would be an appropriate approach - and it is where I would start - if I was overly concerned with the question.

Are there alternatives? Yes. I think that parallels can be useful. In particular, authors (including myself) tend to be somewhat self-referential in their texts. In a volume containing, among other things, philosophical discourse and theology, it could be possible to find a confluence of ideas. However, there are problems with this approach. The model needs to be made predictive (and not just reactive). The references need to add meaning (and not replace meaning) in the text (that is, they need to serve a rhetorical function). In some of my work, I have explored various ways in which authors make texts interactive for the reader. I have looked at the ways in which a text reveals a range of voices on the part of the author, and so on. All of these features can help us understand a text - and the extent that they can reveal things about an author, we can use them to help determine who that author might be. But it doesn't work in reverse. We should never intuit an author and then use that intuition to reinterpret the text in light of what we believe that author might have written about.

In another dig at the article you linked, I want to point out that after more than a century of statistical analysis, that article makes no mention of authorship attribution using statistical models. Perhaps part of the reason for this is that every stylometric comparison made between de Vere and Shakespeare conclusively demonstrated that de Vere could not have authored any of Shakespeare's works. The only way for them to salvage the theory of authorship is to reject the statistical modeling and embrace (and promote) the fictional historical narrative that they have created to defend their position.

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

Perhaps you could point me to some analysis so I could become familiar with the argument. My initial response, though, is that assuming what you're desciribing is legit, it would require my author to have been able to know this information. You may know that Grotius wrote extensively on the bible and related religious subjects, so it wouldn't be surprising if he was familiar with what you are talking about.

It's not whether he was familiar or not with it that is the issue. Texts have purposes (meanings) - and not just the lexical-semantic structures that they are made of. They make arguments. You started this thread by claiming that the Book of Mormon is making a specific argument about Calvin and Servetus. You claim that this argument is found in the narrative of Abinadi and Noah. In making this claim, you are radically reinterpreting the text. The challenge that I am trying to forward in this case is that this section of the Book of Mormon already seems to have a rather complex rhetoric. It makes some very specific arguments. It interacts with other texts that we know (in the Old Testament) as part of its rhetorical strategy. The meaning that you are superimposing on the text makes these other rhetorical readings of the text meaningless - they don't fit within the argument that you are raising. So there wouldn't be a point for Grotius making the kinds of arguments that I believe exist in the text. This is what I mean when I suggest that the claims are largely exclusive.

For me it doesn't stop there. The theology of Mosiah 15 shows up again in Alma 42 - where it is blended with the separate theology of 2 Nephi 2. This suggests to me that there is a developing argument in the text. The theology of Mosiah 15 is far more significant to the overall argument of the Book of Mormon than the relationship between Abinadi and Noah. And later, when the Abinadi's death is brought up, it isn't in connection with Noah, but rather with the prophecy that Abinadi makes. At any rate, it's late and I need to get to sleep. I'll try and review this tomorrow and add another comment or two.

[JarMan]

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

It's not whether he was familiar or not with it that is the issue. Texts have purposes (meanings) - and not just the lexical-semantic structures that they are made of. They make arguments. You started this thread by claiming that the Book of Mormon is making a specific argument about Calvin and Servetus. You claim that this argument is found in the narrative of Abinadi and Noah. In making this claim, you are radically reinterpreting the text. The challenge that I am trying to forward in this case is that this section of the Book of Mormon already seems to have a rather complex rhetoric. It makes some very specific arguments. It interacts with other texts that we know (in the Old Testament) as part of its rhetorical strategy. The meaning that you are superimposing on the text makes these other rhetorical readings of the text meaningless - they don't fit within the argument that you are raising. So there wouldn't be a point for Grotius making the kinds of arguments that I believe exist in the text. This is what I mean when I suggest that the claims are largely exclusive.

To say I am radically reinterpreting the text assumes there is some definitive interpretation. But there are many, so what you are really saying is that I am disagreeing with your interpretation. This is just an appeal to (your) authority. And I don't understand your aversion to the idea of layered thematic elements.

I am not taking the Abinadi story as a starting point for anti-Calvin attitudes in the BOM, by the way. I initially identified that element in analysis of BOM soteriology. Others have pointed out the BOM is consistent with Arminianism, so this is a fairly standard idea. But I need to explain why I am saying Arminianism = anti-Calvinism. Today, Arminianism is just another branch of Christian thought, but its development has a specific context. Arminianism per se starts to develop in the late 1500's in the Calvinist Netherlands as a reaction to the perceived problems with Calvin's religious system. There was also a political subtext to these reforms that was reacting to autocratic forms of government. The Servetus affair was a convenient story, particularly for proto-Arminians, that helped fuel the overall movement and shape its narrative. From the perspective of post-Synod of Dort (1619) Netherlands, Arminianism was equivalent to anti-Calvinism. So if we are to read the Book of Mormon as literature developed in that time period, which is of course what I am doing, then the BOM's Arminian soteriology is also anti-Calvinism. Later I discovered the Servetus story and made the connection to the larger context. So this is not an interpretation being made in a vacuum.

I suppose you would say that I can't interpret the text as anti-Calvinism because that would violate the intentional fallacy. Would you consider classification of art by genre as violating the intentional fallacy? Doesn't the very idea of assigning genre to a piece of art suggest that the artist was influenced by other similar art and, say, social or other issues common to the genre? If I hear grunge music and I want to determine its creator(s), can I start by assuming it was created by men in their 20s and 30s from the pacific northwest in the late 80's and early 90's? It could be copy-cat grunge, as well, but then I'm assuming something else--the creator(s) came later and were influenced by earlier grunge music. If I can't say anything about an artist's environment, then it seems like that is the fallacy.

[Benjamin McGuire]

10 minutes ago, JarMan said:

To say I am radically reinterpreting the text assumes there is some definitive interpretation. But there are many, so what you are really saying is that I am disagreeing with your interpretation. This is just an appeal to (your) authority. And I don't understand your aversion to the idea of layered thematic elements.

No. When I say you are radically reinterpreting the text, what I mean is that you are reinterpreting a text in a way that requires the assumptions that you bring. Without those assumptions, we would never interpret the text in that way. We have no reason to believe that Abinadi is Servetus without the set of claims that you make. We can argue that this is a radical reinterpretation because, as you note, in the nearly two centuries that the text has been being read, you are the first to read it in this way.

I am not sure what you mean when you say "the idea of layered thematic elements". I am not concerned with elements in the text but in the rhetoric of the text.

14 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I am not taking the Abinadi story as a starting point for anti-Calvin attitudes in the BOM, by the way. I initially identified that element in analysis of BOM soteriology. Others have pointed out the BOM is consistent with Arminianism, so this is a fairly standard idea. But I need to explain why I am saying Arminianism = anti-Calvinism. Today, Arminianism is just another branch of Christian thought, but its development has a specific context. Arminianism per se starts to develop in the late 1500's in the Calvinist Netherlands as a reaction to the perceived problems with Calvin's religious system.

The thing about finding certain arguments in the text is that, as a general rule, they don't create any sort of argument for a narrow date range for the text (there are probably some exceptions). They simply create a date for the earliest possible date of authorship. So the Book of Mormon can discuss Arminian soteriology as a text written in 1830. This isn't terribly helpful for your cause.

20 minutes ago, JarMan said:

So if we are to read the Book of Mormon as literature developed in that time period, which is of course what I am doing, then the BOM's Arminian soteriology is also anti-Calvinism.

But there isn't any real reason to read it as being written in that time period - and defintely some reasons not to (including the language of the text which is later than this time frame). There seems to be a certain amount of circular reasoning here ....

22 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Later I discovered the Servetus story and made the connection to the larger context. So this is not an interpretation being made in a vacuum.

I disagree. If you take a text and read it in a certain context, and then find support for that context when the text is read that way, and then try to use the support that you found as evidence that the text comes from that context, it's a circular argument. We can do exactly the same process for other contexts and come up with the same kinds of results (as others have done). So, what makes your theory any better than any of the other competing theories? It doesn't seem to me to have stronger evidence.

24 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I suppose you would say that I can't interpret the text as anti-Calvinism because that would violate the intentional fallacy.

No. The intentional fallacy only deals with bringing details about the author into the interpretive model and effectively discussing the author's motivations and thoughts as part of the interpretive process. Those things are not only not available to us, they are undiscoverable. This is the intentional fallacy. Reading the text as anti-Calvanism is simply an interpretive model. We all interpret texts (as you note). Most of us recognize that texts can be interpreted in different ways. For those of us who have given the idea some thought, we also recognize that we place these different interpretations in a hierarchy of values. We might decide that the best interpretation is the interpretation that the author intended. We might decide (as happens occasionally in forums like this one) that the best reading is the one that suits are argument best (independent of what an author might have intended). We might decide that the best interpretation is where we liken the text unto ourselves (this one the Book of Mormon discusses in some detail). Having an intepretive model isn't bad. But there can be problems. One such abuse is to take an interpretation (like your anti-Calvanism framework) and to pretend that this particular interpretive framework is exactly what the author intended.

31 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Would you consider classification of art by genre as violating the intentional fallacy?

Why would I? Despite your having read Wimsatt and Beardsley, I begin to wonder if you understand what the intentional fallacy is. What does genre have to do with intention? We can define genre through objective elements in the art.

33 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Doesn't the very idea of assigning genre to a piece of art suggest that the artist was influenced by other similar art and, say, social or other issues common to the genre?

Sure. In fact, art genres are generally defined by specific elements in terms of style, production and materials. It is the objective nature of these definitions that allow us to have these universally defined genres. And, we can see how one movement or genre builds on its predecessors. This is entirely different from interpreting an individual piece of art - not in terms of its genre but in terms of discussing what the painting means and what message its creator is trying to convey.

34 minutes ago, JarMan said:

If I hear grunge music and I want to determine its creator(s), can I start by assuming it was created by men in their 20s and 30s from the pacific northwest in the late 80's and early 90's?

No. Have you ever watched the show, The Voice? Isn't part of the show a refutation of this idea?

39 minutes ago, JarMan said:

If I can't say anything about an artist's environment, then it seems like that is the fallacy.

You can say all you want. What you can't discuss is how the creator or author's environment explains to us what the text or painting means. You don't get to talk about what the artist was thinking when he painted, or what the author was thinking when they wrote.

[JarMan]

28 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. When I say you are radically reinterpreting the text, what I mean is that you are reinterpreting a text in a way that requires the assumptions that you bring. Without those assumptions, we would never interpret the text in that way. We have no reason to believe that Abinadi is Servetus without the set of claims that you make. We can argue that this is a radical reinterpretation because, as you note, in the nearly two centuries that the text has been being read, you are the first to read it in this way.

I see the linguistic evidence as requiring a very significant early modern production layer. I am not arbitrarily bringing that assumption to the text. I am approaching it as I believe that evidence requires us to approach it. If I then find things that confirm early modern themes, that's not circular reasoning. That's following the evidence. You disagree with me about the value of the linguistic evidence, I get that, but that doesn't mean you can put my starting place as being based on my own assumptions. And I wouldn't say I am the first to read it this way. Skousen, himself, listed I believe ten elements in the Book of Mormon he believed were early modern, including the Abinadi story. Before Skousen's and Carmack's work, there was no reason to approach the text this way so it's not surprising that people haven't been doing that for the last 200 years.

42 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am not sure what you mean when you say "the idea of layered thematic elements". I am not concerned with elements in the text but in the rhetoric of the text.

You indicate that the biblical rhetoric somehow precludes my interpretation. But you haven't explained why these things are mutually exclusive. I don't think they are.

51 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The thing about finding certain arguments in the text is that, as a general rule, they don't create any sort of argument for a narrow date range for the text (there are probably some exceptions). They simply create a date for the earliest possible date of authorship. So the Book of Mormon can discuss Arminian soteriology as a text written in 1830. This isn't terribly helpful for your cause.

This is a straw man again. I haven't claimed that the things I've brought up in this thread on their own create the narrow date range I am claiming. These are just a few examples of many that have helped me narrow the possibilities.

54 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

But there isn't any real reason to read it as being written in that time period - and defintely some reasons not to (including the language of the text which is later than this time frame). There seems to be a certain amount of circular reasoning here ....

I disagree. If you take a text and read it in a certain context, and then find support for that context when the text is read that way, and then try to use the support that you found as evidence that the text comes from that context, it's a circular argument. We can do exactly the same process for other contexts and come up with the same kinds of results (as others have done). So, what makes your theory any better than any of the other competing theories? It doesn't seem to me to have stronger evidence.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe the linguistic evidence requires us to approach the text from an early modern perspective.

55 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. The intentional fallacy only deals with bringing details about the author into the interpretive model and effectively discussing the author's motivations and thoughts as part of the interpretive process. Those things are not only not available to us, they are undiscoverable. This is the intentional fallacy. Reading the text as anti-Calvanism is simply an interpretive model. We all interpret texts (as you note). Most of us recognize that texts can be interpreted in different ways. For those of us who have given the idea some thought, we also recognize that we place these different interpretations in a hierarchy of values. We might decide that the best interpretation is the interpretation that the author intended. We might decide (as happens occasionally in forums like this one) that the best reading is the one that suits are argument best (independent of what an author might have intended). We might decide that the best interpretation is where we liken the text unto ourselves (this one the Book of Mormon discusses in some detail). Having an intepretive model isn't bad. But there can be problems. One such abuse is to take an interpretation (like your anti-Calvanism framework) and to pretend that this particular interpretive framework is exactly what the author intended.

Why would I? Despite your having read Wimsatt and Beardsley, I begin to wonder if you understand what the intentional fallacy is. What does genre have to do with intention? We can define genre through objective elements in the art.

Sure. In fact, art genres are generally defined by specific elements in terms of style, production and materials. It is the objective nature of these definitions that allow us to have these universally defined genres. And, we can see how one movement or genre builds on its predecessors. This is entirely different from interpreting an individual piece of art - not in terms of its genre but in terms of discussing what the painting means and what message its creator is trying to convey.

I think I do understand the intentional fallacy, but it sounds to me like you've essentially swept up my entire thesis and thrown it into the intentional fallacy bin. If you want to say the intentional fallacy applies specifically to certain claims I've made during this conversation, then your are probably justified. But I can retract those things and it won't change the overall approach I've taken. I think my approach is essentially the same as taken by Vogel, but we're looking at different milieus. Do you believe Vogel's approach is valid?

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Why would I? Despite your having read Wimsatt and Beardsley, I begin to wonder if you understand what the intentional fallacy is. What does genre have to do with intention? We can define genre through objective elements in the art.

Sure. In fact, art genres are generally defined by specific elements in terms of style, production and materials. It is the objective nature of these definitions that allow us to have these universally defined genres. And, we can see how one movement or genre builds on its predecessors. This is entirely different from interpreting an individual piece of art - not in terms of its genre but in terms of discussing what the painting means and what message its creator is trying to convey.

No. Have you ever watched the show, The Voice? Isn't part of the show a refutation of this idea?

You can say all you want. What you can't discuss is how the creator or author's environment explains to us what the text or painting means. You don't get to talk about what the artist was thinking when he painted, or what the author was thinking when they wrote.

I'm making the case that art is inherently linked to the milieu in which it was created. If I examine the physical features of art, I can intuit things about its milieu, which of course, include the artist. The concept of genre is one application of this principle. At times you have sounded like you are saying that we can't know anything about the artist from the art. Your latest comments clarify you are only saying that we can't know anything about the author's intention or the art's meaning. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I can try to speak in those terms. This doesn't change the key results of my work, though.

[Benjamin McGuire]

16 hours ago, JarMan said:

I see the linguistic evidence as requiring a very significant early modern production layer. I am not arbitrarily bringing that assumption to the text. I am approaching it as I believe that evidence requires us to approach it. If I then find things that confirm early modern themes, that's not circular reasoning. That's following the evidence. You disagree with me about the value of the linguistic evidence, I get that, but that doesn't mean you can put my starting place as being based on my own assumptions. And I wouldn't say I am the first to read it this way. Skousen, himself, listed I believe ten elements in the Book of Mormon he believed were early modern, including the Abinadi story. Before Skousen's and Carmack's work, there was no reason to approach the text this way so it's not surprising that people haven't been doing that for the last 200 years.

That linguistic evidence doesn't exist. I have enough background to be comfortable debating that point with you. A text isn't dated by the earliest linguistic content in it but by the latest linguistic content. And I don't believe that you are a linguist, but, go ahead and surprise me.

The circularity of the argument in this case is in part caused by your refusal to address negative evidence.

I don't doubt that there are parts of the text that can be framed as Early Modern English. The problem, as I keep repeating, is that language isn't sliced up like this. Language is a continuum. Stuff comes in, and stuff leaves - but it comes in suddenly, and leaves very, very gradually. In a text written in 1600, I would expect to see bits and pieces of even earlier language (like Middle English). When I read the earliest English translations of Grotius, I find this sort of language. But, I don't find it in the Book of Mormon. Instead, we have a lot of Modern English that is more or less identical to Early Modern English (Modern English isn't a wholesale replacement of EModE, just as EModE wasn't a wholesale replacement of Middle English). And for more archaic forms that went out of style in Modern English, most (if not all) of them that can be found in the Book of Mormon were still in use in 1830 (even if not very commonly in use). Skousen and Carmack's arguments were often flawed because they relied on the OED for terminus dating, instead of simply doing a search through available digital archives of published works.

There still is no reason to approach the text this way. And Skousen and Carmack themselves have (at least to an extent) recognized that there isn't any reason to approach the text this way. So, as I said, you have drawn unwarranted conclusions - and I think at least in part it is because you don't really have an understanding of what the linguistic evidence is pointing to. Further, it is clear that the use of this archaic language was not (at least in the early 19th century) a significant barrier to reading the text. In my own research, I have tried to point to reasons why an early 19th century text would incorporate such archaic language.

16 hours ago, JarMan said:

You indicate that the biblical rhetoric somehow precludes my interpretation. But you haven't explained why these things are mutually exclusive. I don't think they are.

I'll explain the theory. I am not all that interested in going through specific examples - since you are just dancing around at the moment. The idea of using a text that discusses one thing to refer to something else involves rhetorical devices in the text used by an author to help an audience recognize the shift. These rhetorical devices involve using markers in the text that we can identify. References and allusions are made using parallels, shared language, and so on. Part of the importance of a shift of this sort is in recognizing how the understanding of the text changes. In the case of Abinadi and Noah, the sorts of markers you claim should point us to Servetus and Calvin instead point us to the Old Testament and reinforce the internal debate over the role of prophets and kings in the text in an Old Testament (and specifically a Law of Moses) context. In general, we don't see these kinds of markers serving dual purposes - it makes it much more difficult for readers to get anything from the text at this rhetorical level that the author may have intended (and by this, I mean, that such an author would have done a terrible job at conveying meaning because they are too tied up in their own cleverness).

You are welcome to provide relevant counter examples.

16 hours ago, JarMan said:

This is a straw man again. I haven't claimed that the things I've brought up in this thread on their own create the narrow date range I am claiming. These are just a few examples of many that have helped me narrow the possibilities.

It's not a straw man, and I am sorry that you see it this way. Again, I don't really care how many examples you have. It is a long-recognized principle of literary criticism that simply providing more examples does not help forward an article. To use your description of your process - somewhere way back in the process, you put a circle into your map in entirely the wrong place - and all subsequent overlaps were meaningless.

16 hours ago, JarMan said:

As I mentioned earlier, I believe the linguistic evidence requires us to approach the text from an early modern perspective.

No, it doesn't. And while this is what kicks all of this off for you, this premise is completely wrong. This is the circle that you drew that makes all of the rest of your research pointless. And if you want, we can start a thread devoted specifically to this question - because it is so foundational to your claims.

16 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think I do understand the intentional fallacy, but it sounds to me like you've essentially swept up my entire thesis and thrown it into the intentional fallacy bin. If you want to say the intentional fallacy applies specifically to certain claims I've made during this conversation, then your are probably justified. But I can retract those things and it won't change the overall approach I've taken. I think my approach is essentially the same as taken by Vogel, but we're looking at different milieus. Do you believe Vogel's approach is valid?

No. I think that there are ways for you to try and support your thesis that don't involve the intentional fallacy.

Vogel also engages highly problematic arguments. (And for the record, I routinely run into issues with LDS writers as well). Historians - especially amateur historians - have a tendency to make these kinds of errors. They are trying to create narratives. Anytime someone writes that they know what someone was thinking we have a problem. We generally can't know what people today are thinking, let alone someone who has been dead for more than a century.

16 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm making the case that art is inherently linked to the milieu in which it was created. If I examine the physical features of art, I can intuit things about its milieu, which of course, include the artist. The concept of genre is one application of this principle. At times you have sounded like you are saying that we can't know anything about the artist from the art. Your latest comments clarify you are only saying that we can't know anything about the author's intention or the art's meaning. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I can try to speak in those terms. This doesn't change the key results of my work, though.

I don't disagree with any of this. What the art cannot tell you is why the artist included this element as opposed to that one, or what he was thinking when he picked his subject matter. Sometimes we can tell what an artist was trying to convey to his audience based on stylistics and conventions (part of the objective elements that we based belonging to a particular genre or milieu on). When we have objective criteria to use, then it stops being a speculative discussion about what the artist was thinking (the intentional fallacy). You don't use conventions, or stylistics or anything else that has a objective (to any extent) set of criteria for evaluation. This is why I suggested that your argument should come in two parts - the first to discuss your method (to set out those objective criteria) and the second to apply that method to your data. Then we can have the two separate discussions that are necessary - the first over whether the method can produce the results you want, and the second to see if you applied it appropriately with your data. The first discussion is the most important - because it is the easiest to falsify. If we take your method and apply it in a controlled setting where we already know things about texts and authors, we can see if it not only yields the sort of results you like, but we can also discuss whether or not it provides false conclusions. This creates the layer of falsification we need to test your theory. It is also why it can be helpful to use the methods that others have produced - because it means that much (if not all) of this process has already occurred. Then we can deal with how you apply it.

In the discussion here, the lack of an objective (to the extent that you can have one for questions like this) means that the discussion is all over the place - dealing with the theory in some places and in the data in other places. The need for a negative check, for example, is a part of the method discussion. The application of the negative check (the discussion of differences) occurs when reviewing your application of the method.

And as a final note, I want to point out that if we beginning with the earliest levels of your theory, we start with the question of EModE. How do we know if a text had to be written earlier than, say, 1650, or how can we tell if a text had to be written later than 1800? These are questions that I don't think you can currently answer. And part of this is because you have adopted a personal (and incorrect) view of Skousen's and Carmack's research.

Edit: One other thought before I let this go for the day. In order for the EModE in the text to matter in the way that you want it to, the translation into English had to occur in the EModE period. We have translations of this sort of Grotius. A comparison of the Book of Mormon with Grotius in terms of language usage is fascinating.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[JarMan]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The circularity of the argument in this case is in part caused by your refusal to address negative evidence.

What negative evidence have I refused to address?

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

That linguistic evidence doesn't exist. I have enough background to be comfortable debating that point with you. A text isn't dated by the earliest linguistic content in it but by the latest linguistic content. And I don't believe that you are a linguist, but, go ahead and surprise me.

I don't doubt that there are parts of the text that can be framed as Early Modern English. The problem, as I keep repeating, is that language isn't sliced up like this. Language is a continuum. Stuff comes in, and stuff leaves - but it comes in suddenly, and leaves very, very gradually. In a text written in 1600, I would expect to see bits and pieces of even earlier language (like Middle English). When I read the earliest English translations of Grotius, I find this sort of language. But, I don't find it in the Book of Mormon. Instead, we have a lot of Modern English that is more or less identical to Early Modern English (Modern English isn't a wholesale replacement of EModE, just as EModE wasn't a wholesale replacement of Middle English). And for more archaic forms that went out of style in Modern English, most (if not all) of them that can be found in the Book of Mormon were still in use in 1830 (even if not very commonly in use). Skousen and Carmack's arguments were often flawed because they relied on the OED for terminus dating, instead of simply doing a search through available digital archives of published works.

There still is no reason to approach the text this way. And Skousen and Carmack themselves have (at least to an extent) recognized that there isn't any reason to approach the text this way. So, as I said, you have drawn unwarranted conclusions - and I think at least in part it is because you don't really have an understanding of what the linguistic evidence is pointing to. Further, it is clear that the use of this archaic language was not (at least in the early 19th century) a significant barrier to reading the text. In my own research, I have tried to point to reasons why an early 19th century text would incorporate such archaic language.

You are assuming a small window of production for the text. What evidence do you base that assumption on? I believe the evidence suggests a primary early modern production period with some subsequent reworking of the text. Carmack has acknowledged that is consistent with the linguistic evidence, although I don't think he believes that is what actually happened.

A narrow window of production in, say, 1829 can't account for the early modern features. Carmack's papers are pretty definitive on that. Your point about relying on the OED for terminus dating makes me wonder how closely you have read Carmack because the vast majority of his analysis focused on syntax, not vocabulary. He analyzed a bunch of modern texts, particularly pseudo-biblical texts, and couldn't find any that contained anything close to the number of early modern syntactical constructions.

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I'll explain the theory. I am not all that interested in going through specific examples - since you are just dancing around at the moment. The idea of using a text that discusses one thing to refer to something else involves rhetorical devices in the text used by an author to help an audience recognize the shift. These rhetorical devices involve using markers in the text that we can identify. References and allusions are made using parallels, shared language, and so on. Part of the importance of a shift of this sort is in recognizing how the understanding of the text changes. In the case of Abinadi and Noah, the sorts of markers you claim should point us to Servetus and Calvin instead point us to the Old Testament and reinforce the internal debate over the role of prophets and kings in the text in an Old Testament (and specifically a Law of Moses) context. In general, we don't see these kinds of markers serving dual purposes - it makes it much more difficult for readers to get anything from the text at this rhetorical level that the author may have intended (and by this, I mean, that such an author would have done a terrible job at conveying meaning because they are too tied up in their own cleverness).

You are welcome to provide relevant counter examples.

I might be able to provide a counter-example if you had provided an example, in the first place. What rhetorical devices or markers are you talking about? Without an example, I'm not sure I even know precisely what you mean by rhetorical device or marker. So I'm going to have to read your mind to explain how the "markers" I see in the text point Abinadi and Noah to Calvin and Servetus. The most obvious feature of this story pointing us to medieval or early modern Europe is that it is about a "heretic" being burned at the stake. This is completely anachronistic to the OT. You've insisted that is not what's happening, but haven't provided any evidence to the contrary. So let's use that as a starting place. How is this story anything other than what I claim it is.

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

It's not a straw man, and I am sorry that you see it this way. Again, I don't really care how many examples you have. It is a long-recognized principle of literary criticism that simply providing more examples does not help forward an article.

When I accuse you of using a straw man, I mean that you are not addressing my arguments per se. Instead, you build a straw man that looks something like my arguments, and then knock down that straw man. Specifically, you take some of the arguments I've used for placing the text without recognizing that I've repeatedly said I have a lot more information, and then say that this evidence is not enough to establish my point. But then you also say that adding more evidence only weakens my case. So you've set up a scenario where the evidence I present is either not enough to support my theory or else is too much to support my theory. For you, I suspect the porridge will always be too hot or too cold, because you simply don't like porridge.

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. I think that there are ways for you to try and support your thesis that don't involve the intentional fallacy.

Vogel also engages highly problematic arguments. (And for the record, I routinely run into issues with LDS writers as well). Historians - especially amateur historians - have a tendency to make these kinds of errors. They are trying to create narratives. Anytime someone writes that they know what someone was thinking we have a problem. We generally can't know what people today are thinking, let alone someone who has been dead for more than a century.

I don't disagree with any of this. What the art cannot tell you is why the artist included this element as opposed to that one, or what he was thinking when he picked his subject matter. Sometimes we can tell what an artist was trying to convey to his audience based on stylistics and conventions (part of the objective elements that we based belonging to a particular genre or milieu on). When we have objective criteria to use, then it stops being a speculative discussion about what the artist was thinking (the intentional fallacy). You don't use conventions, or stylistics or anything else that has a objective (to any extent) set of criteria for evaluation. This is why I suggested that your argument should come in two parts - the first to discuss your method (to set out those objective criteria) and the second to apply that method to your data. Then we can have the two separate discussions that are necessary - the first over whether the method can produce the results you want, and the second to see if you applied it appropriately with your data. The first discussion is the most important - because it is the easiest to falsify. If we take your method and apply it in a controlled setting where we already know things about texts and authors, we can see if it not only yields the sort of results you like, but we can also discuss whether or not it provides false conclusions. This creates the layer of falsification we need to test your theory. It is also why it can be helpful to use the methods that others have produced - because it means that much (if not all) of this process has already occurred. Then we can deal with how you apply it.

In the discussion here, the lack of an objective (to the extent that you can have one for questions like this) means that the discussion is all over the place - dealing with the theory in some places and in the data in other places. The need for a negative check, for example, is a part of the method discussion. The application of the negative check (the discussion of differences) occurs when reviewing your application of the method.

I've outlined my method and a way to test it, but you act like I haven't. So I'll go over it again. My initial hypothesis was that the Book of Mormon was primarily produced in the early modern world. To do this, I take something from the text that I think narrows down its production milieu. For this discrete block there are basically two things to evaluate. The first is whether I've appropriately read the text, and the second is whether I've appropriately defined the corresponding set. I'm also recognizing that sets may not have bright lines defining them. We may end up with sets that look like a heat map.

Another part of this exercise involves creating a hypothetical set and reading the text to see what parts of the set can be excluded. If my hypothetical set is early modern Europe, I have enough textual evidence to exclude a devoutly Catholic or strictly Calvinist production. The way to criticize this is essentially the same as above. Either I've misinterpreted the Book of Mormon or I've misunderstood the excluded milieu. The main limitation to this process should be obvious, which is that it doesn't say anything about the things outside the hypothetical set, for instance JS's world. But it is still helpful because it allows me to exclude big chunks from a more general set.

If we applied only the second part of this method to Noah/Abinadi, we may conclude that the story can be read consistent with a certain set within the early modern world. But that doesn't prove it has an early modern origin because our hypothetical set was limited to the early modern world in the first place. I think you are recognizing this is part of my process, and that is what you are claiming is circular. If that was the entirety of my process, the only thing I'd ever be able to show is what, within an early modern context, is consistent with the BOM. On its own that is useful and interesting, but of course not definitive. So my hypothesis needs part 1 in order to exclude things outside my hypothetical set. It also relies on the Skousen/Carmack work to do some heavy lifting.

I think I've explained my process, some of its limitations, and how to falsify it. What's missing? I suspect you might say objective criteria, and we can address that. What else? Is there a fatal flaw? What are some other limitations of the method?

[Benjamin McGuire]

28 minutes ago, JarMan said:

What negative evidence have I refused to address?

All of it. For you, apparently, anything that doesn't help the situation gets relegated to the late redactions of the text. That isn't addressing the evidence.

28 minutes ago, JarMan said:

You are assuming a small window of production for the text. What evidence do you base that assumption on? I believe the evidence suggests a primary early modern production period with some subsequent reworking of the text. Carmack has acknowledged that is consistent with the linguistic evidence, although I don't think he believes that is what actually happened.

And I have repeatedly said that Carmack is wrong. What is hard to understand about that.

You on the other hand propose an early text, a second early text (translation) and then one or more subsequent redactions of the text. All with no actual evidence. The EModE, as I keep pointing out, is not evidence since it works just as well in a later text that is using archaic language deliberately.

30 minutes ago, JarMan said:

A narrow window of production in, say, 1829 can't account for the early modern features. Carmack's papers are pretty definitive on that. Your point about relying on the OED for terminus dating makes me wonder how closely you have read Carmack because the vast majority of his analysis focused on syntax, not vocabulary. He analyzed a bunch of modern texts, particularly pseudo-biblical texts, and couldn't find any that contained anything close to the number of early modern syntactical constructions.

Yes, an 1829 context can in fact account for the early modern features. I have argued this point for years. I have read Carmack, and I can find examples of his EModE in use in published English long after the Book of Mormon's publication. It isn't hard to find them. This isn't vocabulary, but syntax. This argument doesn't work. And what it doesn't address (which is problematic for your theory) is that in the early 17th century, we still routinely find instances of Middle English in texts - including translations of Grotius in the first couple of decades of the 17th century. But, we don't find any of this in the Book of Mormon - something we should expect but isn't there. As a side note, the fact that we have texts using pseudo-biblical language suggests that the idea of using archaic language in (then) modern texts as a rhetorical strategy was not that uncommon.

34 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I might be able to provide a counter-example if you had provided an example, in the first place. What rhetorical devices or markers are you talking about? Without an example, I'm not sure I even know precisely what you mean by rhetorical device or marker. So I'm going to have to read your mind to explain how the "markers" I see in the text point Abinadi and Noah to Calvin and Servetus. The most obvious feature of this story pointing us to medieval or early modern Europe is that it is about a "heretic" being burned at the stake. This is completely anachronistic to the OT. You've insisted that is not what's happening, but haven't provided any evidence to the contrary. So let's use that as a starting place. How is this story anything other than what I claim it is.

The Book of Mormon doesn't have anyone being burned at the stake. I'll come back to that in a moment.

In the Old Testament, burning to death was one of the proscribed punishments for certain sins. Leviticus 21:9 - "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." Leviticus 20:14 - "And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you." Or Gen. 38:24; Josh 7:15, 25. What of the two sons of Aaron: Nadab and Abihu? And if we aren't too concerned over the fire aspect of it, lots of people are killed for heresy in the Old Testament. And in particular, Jeremiah fits a lot of the story line of Abinadi, doesn't he. Thrown in prison. There is certainly enough there to make for a reasonable argument.

Now, the other thing. Scourging isn't burning at the stake. Even scorching isn't. Yes, there were people who were described as scorched who had been burned at the stake. But, people were scorched in lots of other contexts. What you are arguing is that the Book of Mormon has an error. The text should be emended to read "scorched". (Yes, I recognize that this isn't your argument). And then, we should interpret being "scorched with fagots" as being burned at the stake. Perhaps you can point to any 18th century or earlier text which refers to burning at the stake as being "scorched with fagots". I looked. I didn't find any. So this creates problems - because it is clear that you could be 'scorched with fagots' without being burned at the stake. And of course, as Abinadi claims as he is dying - "and then ye shall suffer, as I suffer, the pains of death by fire." What does this mean? Does it mean that they would all be burned at the stake? We might think so, given your interpretation, but, that isn't what the Book of Mormon tells us. There is a long discussion of what this means in Alma 25: "And now Abinadi was the first that suffered death by fire because of his belief in God; now this is what he meant, that many should suffer death by fire, according as he had suffered." And this isn't at all what we would have expected if Abinadi's death had been meant to be understood in terms of Servetus. This is part of what I mean about rhetoric. When you claim that an author intends us to understand a story of one thing as a reference to something else, then the things in the text that point to the connection need to be clearly used for that connection and not for something else. When different reading strategies take the same textual elements and use them as markers for completely different rhetorical figures, it makes it highly unlikely that both interpretations could have been intended by an author.

In the end, I stand by my claim that "scorched with fagots" is not meant to be a connection to a burning at the stake. If this was the intention, there were a lot of better ways to do so - including simply coming out and saying in the text that Abinadi was burned at the stake. This is not positive evidence for you claim due to a) its own uncertainty, and b) because of the interpretation needed prior to its becoming a marker.

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

When I accuse you of using a straw man, I mean that you are not addressing my arguments per se. Instead, you build a straw man that looks something like my arguments, and then knock down that straw man. Specifically, you take some of the arguments I've used for placing the text without recognizing that I've repeatedly said I have a lot more information, and then say that this evidence is not enough to establish my point. But then you also say that adding more evidence only weakens my case. So you've set up a scenario where the evidence I present is either not enough to support my theory or else is too much to support my theory. For you, I suspect the porridge will always be too hot or too cold, because you simply don't like porridge.

I will toss this back at you. I think that there is a real gap in the way that you have intuited a process that you think produces evidence. And I have noted consistently that an intuitive process rarely yields useful results. I have claimed that in order for your parallels to be meaningful, you also have to account for the differences. My views have been published - they are available for anyone to read. I don't feel the need to repeat them ad nauseum. But your response has been repeatedly to say that you don't need to do any of this. But you haven't provided a formal method that you use. You haven't pointed to someone else's formal method that you will use (your one attempt in this direction was a bit of a failure ...). I am reminded of something written back in 1932 by Muriel St. Clare Byrne, who tells us that there are some golden rules for parallel hunters (this was largely in the context of shakespeare theories and similar sorts of things - but your efforts fall into this as well).

Quote

 

Parallels may be susceptible to at least three explanations: (a) unsuspected identity of authorship (b) plagiarism, either deliberate or unconscious (c) coincidence;

Quality is all-important, and parallels demand very careful grading—e.g., mere verbal parallelism is of almost no value in comparison with parallelism of thought coupled with some verbal parallelism;

Mere accumulation of ungraded parallels does not prove anything;

In accumulating parallels for the sake of cumulative effect we may logically proceed from the known to the collaborate, or from the known to the anonymous play, but not from the collaborate to the anonymous;

In order to express ourselves as certain of attributions we must prove exhaustively that we cannot parallel words, images, and phrases as a body from other acknowledged plays of the period; in other words, the negative check must always be applied.

 

You have all these parallels you say. Well provide us with your three best parallels. Provide all the detail that you have. Provide your source information (so I can access them). Explain the points of contact, and why the parallel is significant. Describe how the parallel is intended to change the way we read the text once we recognize it. This is the normal process we go through when we are using parallels. Note that this isn't about trying to make a text parallel some historical narrative. It needs to parallel a source. If you want to have the Book of Mormon written by Grotius then show us how the Book of Mormon parallels the known texts of Grotius. It is his writing that we are concerned about - and not some carefully crafted interpretive narrative. I don't think that I have seen anything from you that actually separates these out - so this may be a novel experience for you.

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

I've outlined my method and a way to test it, but you act like I haven't. So I'll go over it again. My initial hypothesis was that the Book of Mormon was primarily produced in the early modern world. To do this, I take something from the text that I think narrows down its production milieu. For this discrete block there are basically two things to evaluate. The first is whether I've appropriately read the text, and the second is whether I've appropriately defined the corresponding set. I'm also recognizing that sets may not have bright lines defining them. We may end up with sets that look like a heat map.

Ok.

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

Another part of this exercise involves creating a hypothetical set and reading the text to see what parts of the set can be excluded. If my hypothetical set is early modern Europe, I have enough textual evidence to exclude a devoutly Catholic or strictly Calvinist production. The way to criticize this is essentially the same as above. Either I've misinterpreted the Book of Mormon or I've misunderstood the excluded milieu. The main limitation to this process should be obvious, which is that it doesn't say anything about the things outside the hypothetical set, for instance JS's world. But it is still helpful because it allows me to exclude big chunks from a more general set.

I think this is useless. But okay.

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

If we applied only the second part of this method to Noah/Abinadi, we may conclude that the story can be read consistent with a certain set within the early modern world. But that doesn't prove it has an early modern origin because our hypothetical set was limited to the early modern world in the first place. I think you are recognizing this is part of my process, and that is what you are claiming is circular. If that was the entirety of my process, the only thing I'd ever be able to show is what, within an early modern context, is consistent with the BOM. On its own that is useful and interesting, but of course not definitive. So my hypothesis needs part 1 in order to exclude things outside my hypothetical set. It also relies on the Skousen/Carmack work to do some heavy lifting.

The problem is that the Skousen/Carmack work doesn't do the heavy lifting. The Noah/Abinadi narrative can be read as being written in 1829 without any problems. There is no need to formulate a hypothetical complex textual history for this text. This is a simple fact. And if you want to debate this with me, then lets focus on this narrow issue.

If I start with this basic assumption, that English in 1829 is perfectly capable of explaining the text of the Book of Mormon, I can then come up with any number of potential theories for authorship. And, they would be just as convincing as yours - except - I don't have to have the hypothetical complex textual history.

Your theory doesn't present a falsification process because a) you work with only a small set of potential options (this is one of the flaws I see in your method) and b) because anything that disagrees with the EModE claim you simply assign as part of the hypothetical complex textual history.

It doesn't work. And Skousen's and Carmack's research doesn't actually help you. In a way, I get the appeal. Their effort is an apologetic argument aimed at the premise that Joseph Smith couldn't have written the text. And your position is that Joseph not being able to write it must be evidence for your theory. It just isn't a logical argument.

So let me propose a question. Suppose I take samples of Grotius and samples from the Book of Mormon and run them through a stylometric analysis and the two are no where near each other. Would this lead to the reasonable conclusion that Grotius could not be the author of the text of the Book of Mormon?

[JarMan]

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

All of it. For you, apparently, anything that doesn't help the situation gets relegated to the late redactions of the text. That isn't addressing the evidence.

The only "negative evidence" we've really discussed is something I brought up myself. I provided an explanation for it and supported its plausibility by showing a similarity in the historical record. You make a disingenuous leap by claiming I would address any apparent negative evidence with a redaction layer. This is mind reading that conveniently allows you to excuse yourself from offering negative evidence for me to respond to.

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And I have repeatedly said that Carmack is wrong. What is hard to understand about that.

I know you think Carmack is wrong, but you haven't supported your position with anything that shows you even understand his work.

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You on the other hand propose an early text, a second early text (translation) and then one or more subsequent redactions of the text. All with no actual evidence. The EModE, as I keep pointing out, is not evidence since it works just as well in a later text that is using archaic language deliberately.

Yes, an 1829 context can in fact account for the early modern features. I have argued this point for years. I have read Carmack, and I can find examples of his EModE in use in published English long after the Book of Mormon's publication. It isn't hard to find them. This isn't vocabulary, but syntax. This argument doesn't work. And what it doesn't address (which is problematic for your theory) is that in the early 17th century, we still routinely find instances of Middle English in texts - including translations of Grotius in the first couple of decades of the 17th century. But, we don't find any of this in the Book of Mormon - something we should expect but isn't there. As a side note, the fact that we have texts using pseudo-biblical language suggests that the idea of using archaic language in (then) modern texts as a rhetorical strategy was not that uncommon.

I don't have evidence of an original non-English text. I concede that. But the textual evidence supports a primary early modern production with modern redaction. Carmack tested the idea that the early modern features are a result of someone deliberately archaizing the text by comparing other texts that we know do that. His results clearly show the other texts did not even come close to replicating the amount of early modern constructions in the Book of Mormon. You can't replicate what you don't know exists. You can attempt it by trying to generate biblical-sounding language, but Carmack's work shows a large amount of archaic features in the BOM that are not found in the bible. How do you propose a modern writer could replicate so many early modern, non-biblical features?

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

In the Old Testament, burning to death was one of the proscribed punishments for certain sins. Leviticus 21:9 - "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." Leviticus 20:14 - "And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you." Or Gen. 38:24; Josh 7:15, 25. What of the two sons of Aaron: Nadab and Abihu? And if we aren't too concerned over the fire aspect of it, lots of people are killed for heresy in the Old Testament. And in particular, Jeremiah fits a lot of the story line of Abinadi, doesn't he. Thrown in prison. There is certainly enough there to make for a reasonable argument.

Repeating something I have already acknowledged doesn't move the ball. The challenge is that the OT doesn't show burning at the stake for heresy. This has solely been a Christian practice as far as I can ascertain.

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Now, the other thing. Scourging isn't burning at the stake. Even scorching isn't. Yes, there were people who were described as scorched who had been burned at the stake. But, people were scorched in lots of other contexts. What you are arguing is that the Book of Mormon has an error. The text should be emended to read "scorched". (Yes, I recognize that this isn't your argument). And then, we should interpret being "scorched with fagots" as being burned at the stake. Perhaps you can point to any 18th century or earlier text which refers to burning at the stake as being "scorched with fagots". I looked. I didn't find any. So this creates problems - because it is clear that you could be 'scorched with fagots' without being burned at the stake. And of course, as Abinadi claims as he is dying - "and then ye shall suffer, as I suffer, the pains of death by fire." What does this mean? Does it mean that they would all be burned at the stake? We might think so, given your interpretation, but, that isn't what the Book of Mormon tells us. There is a long discussion of what this means in Alma 25: "And now Abinadi was the first that suffered death by fire because of his belief in God; now this is what he meant, that many should suffer death by fire, according as he had suffered." And this isn't at all what we would have expected if Abinadi's death had been meant to be understood in terms of Servetus. This is part of what I mean about rhetoric. When you claim that an author intends us to understand a story of one thing as a reference to something else, then the things in the text that point to the connection need to be clearly used for that connection and not for something else. When different reading strategies take the same textual elements and use them as markers for completely different rhetorical figures, it makes it highly unlikely that both interpretations could have been intended by an author.

In the end, I stand by my claim that "scorched with fagots" is not meant to be a connection to a burning at the stake. If this was the intention, there were a lot of better ways to do so - including simply coming out and saying in the text that Abinadi was burned at the stake. This is not positive evidence for you claim due to a) its own uncertainty, and b) because of the interpretation needed prior to its becoming a marker.

There's Thomas Heywood's 1641 The Life of Merlin. . . which says the following, "Soon after followed the deaths of Doctour Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, (acquit of * Treason, and condemed of Heresie) Nicholas Ridley late Bishop of London, and Hugh Lati∣mer: with infinite others, insomuch that scarce any City or Market Towne thorow the whole Kingdome in which some pious professor or other, had not felt the scorching of the fire and faggot. . ."

And we have Raphael Holinshed's 1587 The First and Second Volume of Chronicles. . . which describes burning a bull at the stake: "For they were not onelie contented to burne and spoile all the villa∣ges thereto adioining; but also they would range twentie or thirtie miles into the maine land: and hauing taken a bull, they vsed to tie him to a stake, and scorching him with faggots, they would force him to rore, so as all the cattell in the countrie would make towards the bull, all which they would lightlie lead awaie, and furnish the campe with store of béefe."

You demand the word "stake" be there. But in early modern texts "faggot" was the main marker word that signaled what was happening. This execution method was commonly referred to as "fire and faggot" not necessarily "burning at the stake" like it is now. A proximity search on eebo returns 863 results for burn* and stake* but 1845 matches for fire* and fag*. You can't demand the text conform to your expectations. It says what it says. Besides, the overall context tells us this is what is happening. Readers have overwhelmingly recognized this despite the archaic language and possible scribal error, which may not be an error anyway because "scorch" was sometimes spelled "scorge" as in the Merry Wives of Windsor, "scorged me up like a burning glasse."

There's no reason "death by fire" should be understood as only meaning burnt at the stake because it doesn't include the marker, "faggot." This is a general phrase that includes burning at the stake. So whether others were burnt at the stake or thrown in a pit of burning debris or some other method of burning doesn't matter.

You haven't explained what you think is happening to Abinadi. If he's not being burnt at the stake, then what is happening and how do you know?

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I will toss this back at you. I think that there is a real gap in the way that you have intuited a process that you think produces evidence. And I have noted consistently that an intuitive process rarely yields useful results. I have claimed that in order for your parallels to be meaningful, you also have to account for the differences. My views have been published - they are available for anyone to read. I don't feel the need to repeat them ad nauseum. But your response has been repeatedly to say that you don't need to do any of this. But you haven't provided a formal method that you use. You haven't pointed to someone else's formal method that you will use (your one attempt in this direction was a bit of a failure ...). I am reminded of something written back in 1932 by Muriel St. Clare Byrne, who tells us that there are some golden rules for parallel hunters (this was largely in the context of shakespeare theories and similar sorts of things - but your efforts fall into this as well).

You have all these parallels you say. Well provide us with your three best parallels. Provide all the detail that you have. Provide your source information (so I can access them). Explain the points of contact, and why the parallel is significant. Describe how the parallel is intended to change the way we read the text once we recognize it. This is the normal process we go through when we are using parallels. Note that this isn't about trying to make a text parallel some historical narrative. It needs to parallel a source. If you want to have the Book of Mormon written by Grotius then show us how the Book of Mormon parallels the known texts of Grotius. It is his writing that we are concerned about - and not some carefully crafted interpretive narrative. I don't think that I have seen anything from you that actually separates these out - so this may be a novel experience for you.

Let's start with the analysis I offered in my presentation. Let's strip away all the baggage that comes along with Grotius (which I purposefully excluded) because that will inevitably lead us down more rabbit holes than we have time to discuss.

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So let me propose a question. Suppose I take samples of Grotius and samples from the Book of Mormon and run them through a stylometric analysis and the two are no where near each other. Would this lead to the reasonable conclusion that Grotius could not be the author of the text of the Book of Mormon?

I doubt there is an appropriate baseline for this stylometric analysis. We would need to have known texts that were translated from Latin to English in the mid 1600s and then reworked to some degree around the early 1800s. This presents several problems, including that we don't know to what extent the BOM may have been reworked. Showing the content of the text to be early modern is not dependent on Grotian authorship anyway. I think we can be more productive if we focus more broadly on the general milieu rather than a specific author at this point, anyway.

Edited January 30, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

All right, I'll give you an example -

King Noah’s sins are described in Mosiah Chapter 11.

Verse 2 is important:

Quote

For behold, he did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart. And he had many wives and concubines. And he did cause his people to commit sin, and do that which was abominable in the sight of the Lord. Yea, and they did commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness.

Here, we have several indicators of where this is going. This refers us back to a section of Deuteronomy 17 called the Kingship Code (17:14-20).

Here are verses 14-17:

Quote

When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the Lord hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. So, Noah multiplied wives to himself, he followed the desires of his heart. But, the Book of Mormon doesn’t stop there. Noah also taxed the people (greatly multiplied to himself silver and gold), and so on.

Noah isn’t the first king in the Book of Mormon to have some of these charges laid against him. In Mosiah 11:2, we are told that “He had many wives and concubines.” The same thing is said of David and Solomon in Jacob Chapter 2:24 which reads:

Quote

Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.

This isn’t the only point of comparison. In Jacob 2:23 we are told that the people “seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.” This theme is repeated in Mosiah 11 with respect to Noah – “and he [Noah] did cause his people to commit sin, and do that which was abominable in the sight of the Lord. Yea, and they did commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness.” So we have the same situation (at least in the way that it is described).

The criticism of the king in both texts (Mosiah and Jacob) is based on the kingship code of Deuteronomy. This isn’t a unique idea to the Book of Mormon. There is a lot of discussion in Jewish literature about how David and Solomon should be understood with respect to Deuteronomy 17. Modern scholarship simply suggests that the text was written as a response to these kings rather than something that occurs before. In any case, the most fascinating treatment of this issue (at least to me) comes out of the Cairo Damascus document (found in the Cairo Genizah and also among the Dead Sea Scrolls):

Quote

 

They are Belial's three nets about which Levi, son of Jacob spoke, in which he catches Israel and makes them appear before them like three types of justice. The first is fornication; the second, wealth; the third, defilement of the temple. He who eludes one is caught in another and he who is freed from that, is caught in another.

The builders of the wall who go after Zaw-Zaw is a preacher as it is said Assuredly he will preach - are caught twice in fornication: by taking two wives in their lives, even though the principle of creation is male and female he created them.

And the one who went into the ark went in two by two into the ark. And about the prince it is written: He should not multiply wives to himself. However, David had not read the sealed book of the law which was in the ark, for it had not been opened in Israel since the day of the death of Eleazar and of Jehoshua, and Joshua and the elders who worshiped Ashraroth had hidden the public (copy) until Zadok's entry into office. And David's deeds were praised, except for Uriah's blood, and God allowed them to him.

 

This text excuses the behavior of David (and Solomon) because it claims that the Book of Deuteronomy had been lost during the time of David, and wouldn’t be known until it was rediscovered (2 Kings 22:8-11). For our context though, this particular idea is even more interesting. Here is a bit of discussion about the three nets of Belial (from Florentino García Martínez, Qumranica Minora II, Brill, 2007. p. 62):

Quote

In order to understand the following discussion, both the immediate and the more general context of the passage of the Damascus Document need to be recalled, albeit summarily. Our passage is part of the so-called midrash on the three nets of Belial, with which the quotation of Isa 24:17 “Panic, pit and net against you, earth dweller” is explained. As our text says: “They [the three expressions used by Isaiah] are Belial’s three nets, about which Levi, son of Jacob spoke, by which he [Belial] catches Israel and makes them appear before them like three types of justice. The first is fornication; the second, wealth; the third, defilement of the temple. He who eludes one is caught in another, and he who is freed from that, is caught in another.

These are also the sins of King Noah (and his priests). The Book of Mormon seems to be taking them from Deuteronomy 17, but, there is a clear interpretive tradition about these issues within Judaism. For this discussion, though, it is important to recognize that the Book of Mormon likes to repeat its themes. And here is a repeating theme. We start off in Jacob 2, and then we get this text here. And there are further repetitions later (in particular the description of the wicked Jaredite king).

There are a couple of challenges with this text when we get to your theory of Noah as Calvin. First, the Book of Mormon associates Noah with David and Solomon (really as a type of the wicked king figure). The Book of Mormon text emphasizes that an essential aspect of Noah and his shortcomings is his role as a king. Being a king came with specific additional requirements under Mosaic law - that Noah was not keeping. I will just mention this in passing, but its worth more discussion - Deuteronomy 17 explains that the king should be reading the law every day of his life. When Abinadi is brought before the king, what does he do? He quotes to him the law from the Old Testament. These issues do not point toward an identification of Calvin as Noah. The extended references help make this clear. Noah is like Solomon and David (and while I am not going to discuss this here either, Abindai is associated with Moses, the giver of the Law). The earlier passages (and the later passages) do not share the same parallels that you use to try to connect Noah to Calvin. And this means that to make this work, you have to remove the Book of Mormon narrative from its rhetorical context. This doesn’t help your argument (unless you want to move to a point where, instead of a majority of the material being early, it is only a small part that comes from the early source and the later redactions are far more than small additions and changes to the text).

This passage isn’t anti-Calvin, it is anti-king. And it’s making a very specific argument about what makes kings bad.

There is a bit more to this. One of the interesting things about the encounter between Abinadi and Noah is that it gets rehashed a bit in Alma 25 (9-11).

Quote

And behold they are hunted at this day by the Lamanites. Thus the words of Abinadi were brought to pass, which he said concerning the seed of the priests who caused that he should suffer death by fire. For he said unto them: What ye shall ado unto me shall be a type of things to come. And now Abinadi was the first that suffered death by fire because of his belief in God; now this is what he meant, that many should suffer death by fire, according as he had suffered.

Again, we see this being used for a different discussion – there is no hint here that we are dealing with Servetus/Calvin. Just as interesting (because of your discussion in the video) is the comment that Abinadi was the first to be put to death by fire for his beliefs. This refers us back to Mosiah 17:15 –

Quote

Behold, even as ye have done unto me, so shall it come to pass that thy seed shall cause that many shall suffer the pains that I do suffer, even the pains of death by fire; and this because they believe in the salvation of the Lord their God.

This particular prophecy is completed in Alma 14 – and its completion is important – because, of course, it is suggested that those who are going to be burned will be burned as Abinadi was. It happens in 14:8 -

Quote

And they brought their wives and children together, and whosoever believed or had been taught to believe in the word of God they caused that they should be cast into the fire; and they also brought forth their records which contained the holy scriptures, and cast them into the fire also, that they might be burned and destroyed by fire.

And if this isn’t descriptive enough of a non-burning at the stake death by fire, we get a comparison about these deaths in verse 14:

Quote

Now it came to pass that when the bodies of those who had been cast into the fire were consumed, and also the records which were cast in with them, the chief judge of the land came and stood before Alma and Amulek, as they were bound; and he smote them with his hand upon their cheeks, and said unto them: After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?

These are not people being burned at the stake. And if our concern was to encourage people to see this parallel that you put forward, this is what we would expect. It just isn't there.

This is at least part of what I mean when I mention negative evidence. The differences between narratives matter at least as much (if not more) as the similarities. When you only focus on the similarities, it is easy to misread a text. When I see material being pulled out of its rhetorical context to become evidence for something else, it always raises red flags. My view of the text is driven from the text and its relationship with itself and other texts. I don't have to invoke an author. I don't have to involve an author's intention. The text does this for me. And, I can start from the perspective that the text is a coherent whole.

Unfortunately the search engine here isn't helping me find any of my discussions with Carmack on this forum. I still have this problem. What sort of linguistic evidence would you consider to falsify your theory? If you can describe it, I will try to provide it (I may fail). It would need to be something that wouldn't be attributable to a later redaction. Perhaps an easier question to discuss would be this one - how would you differentiate between material that comes from the earliest translation of the text and material added in by a later redactor? Maybe that is a better starting point for this discussion about falsification.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[JarMan]

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

All right, I'll give you an example -

King Noah’s sins are described in Mosiah Chapter 11.

Verse 2 is important:

Here, we have several indicators of where this is going. This refers us back to a section of Deuteronomy 17 called the Kingship Code (17:14-20).

Here are verses 14-17:

Noah isn’t the first king in the Book of Mormon to have some of these charges laid against him. In Mosiah 11:2, we are told that “He had many wives and concubines.” The same thing is said of David and Solomon in Jacob Chapter 2:24 which reads:

This isn’t the only point of comparison. In Jacob 2:23 we are told that the people “seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.” This theme is repeated in Mosiah 11 with respect to Noah – “and he [Noah] did cause his people to commit sin, and do that which was abominable in the sight of the Lord. Yea, and they did commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness.” So we have the same situation (at least in the way that it is described).

The criticism of the king in both texts (Mosiah and Jacob) is based on the kingship code of Deuteronomy. This isn’t a unique idea to the Book of Mormon. There is a lot of discussion in Jewish literature about how David and Solomon should be understood with respect to Deuteronomy 17. Modern scholarship simply suggests that the text was written as a response to these kings rather than something that occurs before. In any case, the most fascinating treatment of this issue (at least to me) comes out of the Cairo Damascus document (found in the Cairo Genizah and also among the Dead Sea Scrolls):

This text excuses the behavior of David (and Solomon) because it claims that the Book of Deuteronomy had been lost during the time of David, and wouldn’t be known until it was rediscovered (2 Kings 22:8-11). For our context though, this particular idea is even more interesting. Here is a bit of discussion about the three nets of Belial (from Florentino García Martínez, Qumranica Minora II, Brill, 2007. p. 62):

These are also the sins of King Noah (and his priests). The Book of Mormon seems to be taking them from Deuteronomy 17, but, there is a clear interpretive tradition about these issues within Judaism. For this discussion, though, it is important to recognize that the Book of Mormon likes to repeat its themes. And here is a repeating theme. We start off in Jacob 2, and then we get this text here. And there are further repetitions later (in particular the description of the wicked Jaredite king).

There are a couple of challenges with this text when we get to your theory of Noah as Calvin. First, the Book of Mormon associates Noah with David and Solomon (really as a type of the wicked king figure). The Book of Mormon text emphasizes that an essential aspect of Noah and his shortcomings is his role as a king. Being a king came with specific additional requirements under Mosaic law - that Noah was not keeping. I will just mention this in passing, but its worth more discussion - Deuteronomy 17 explains that the king should be reading the law every day of his life. When Abinadi is brought before the king, what does he do? He quotes to him the law from the Old Testament. These issues do not point toward an identification of Calvin as Noah. The extended references help make this clear. Noah is like Solomon and David (and while I am not going to discuss this here either, Abindai is associated with Moses, the giver of the Law). The earlier passages (and the later passages) do not share the same parallels that you use to try to connect Noah to Calvin. And this means that to make this work, you have to remove the Book of Mormon narrative from its rhetorical context. This doesn’t help your argument (unless you want to move to a point where, instead of a majority of the material being early, it is only a small part that comes from the early source and the later redactions are far more than small additions and changes to the text).

This passage isn’t anti-Calvin, it is anti-king. And it’s making a very specific argument about what makes kings bad.

I don't know if you saw my earlier discussion about kingship in the Book of Mormon, but I touched on the same idea you are addressing. I made the point that Noah was the prototypical bad king as seen by early modern writers. The early modern world has several examples of the Mirrors for Princes genre that discusses kingship. Obviously, kingship was a very important issue and most writers drew on biblical sources. Here's a very relevant snippet from Tyndale:

Quote

He warns (Deut 17.15-20) that their kings not have too many wives, lest their hearts turn away; and that they always read in the law of God, to learn to fear him, lest their hearts be lifted above their brothers. These two points – women and pride, and despising their subjects who are indeed their own brothers – are the common pestilence of all princes. Read the stories, and see.

So your take on this is pretty much exactly what I've been saying. Here's another example from the same Tyndale work that describes the positive attributes of a king.

Quote

Therefore no man ought to seek himself, or his own profit, but Christ and his will. In Christ no man rules as a king to his subjects, or as a master to his servants; but he serves as one hand serves another, and as the hands serve the feet, and the feet serve the hands, as you see 1Corinthians 12. We also serve, not as servants to masters, but as those who are bought with Christ’s blood serve Christ himself. Here we are all servants to Christ. For whatever we do one to another in Christ’s name, we do as to Christ, and we shall receive the reward of that from Christ. The king considers his commoners as Christ himself; and therefore he serves them willingly, seeking no more from them than is sufficient to maintain peace and unity, and to defend the realm. And they obey in return willingly and lovingly, as unto Christ.

If Noah is the prototypical bad king, then Benjamin is the prototypical good king. Here is part of his speech in Mosiah 2:

Quote

16 Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God.

17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

18 Behold, ye have called me your king; and if I, whom ye call your king, do labor to serve you, then ought not ye to labor to serve one another?

19 And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!

Tyndale and the BOM both draw on Matthew 25:40 to describe attributes of a good king. And they both use Deuteronomy 17 to describe attributes of a bad king. Recognizing that Noah represents "bad" kingship, once we realize that he also allegorically represents Calvin, we can now read the story as saying that Calvin was a "bad king." This is essentially what his early modern critics said about him, as well.

Here's one more snippet from an early modern author, Erasmus, that fairly accurately describes Noah versus Benjamin.

Quote

Contempt is incurred most speedily by devotion to sensual pleasures, lust, wine-bibbing, glutton, gaming, by the encouragement of fools and clowns; in a word, by folly and indolence generally. Authority, on the other hand, is attained by the contrary qualities--wisdom, integrity, temperance, seriousness, and industry. These, therefore, are the attributes by which the Prince who desires to wield real authority among his people commends himself. Some there are who foolishly imagine that they must inevitably win esteem by making a din and a great show of splendour and luxury. Who can credit the Prince with greatness simply because he decorates himself with gold and precious stones, when everyone knows that he has as many of these as he wants? Meanwhile, what else does he display but the misfortune of his subjects, who must provide the means for his extravagance?

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There is a bit more to this. One of the interesting things about the encounter between Abinadi and Noah is that it gets rehashed a bit in Alma 25 (9-11).

Again, we see this being used for a different discussion – there is no hint here that we are dealing with Servetus/Calvin. Just as interesting (because of your discussion in the video) is the comment that Abinadi was the first to be put to death by fire for his beliefs. This refers us back to Mosiah 17:15 –

This particular prophecy is completed in Alma 14 – and its completion is important – because, of course, it is suggested that those who are going to be burned will be burned as Abinadi was. It happens in 14:8 -

And if this isn’t descriptive enough of a non-burning at the stake death by fire, we get a comparison about these deaths in verse 14:

These are not people being burned at the stake. And if our concern was to encourage people to see this parallel that you put forward, this is what we would expect. It just isn't there.

I am not arguing we should read the story strictly as Noah = Calvin or strictly as Abinadi = Servetus. They don't need to be identical in every way for us to recognize the obvious allegory. The story is weaved into a much larger narrative and, therefore, conveys multiple layers of meaning.

Obviously Alma 14 is not describing people burned at the stake. But there is no reason we should expect them to be. We only need expect they suffer "death by fire" in a "like matter" as Alma. You have to change the meaning of "like" (which essentially means "similar") to "exact" or "precise" for this to be an issue. If we are going to focus on the text we can't change the meaning of words just to suit our purpose. You think you are presenting negative evidence, but your negative evidence is dependent on how you think the narrative should be written and on making changes to the meaning of words. There is no reason we should expect the text to be written as you demand it be written.

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is at least part of what I mean when I mention negative evidence. The differences between narratives matter at least as much (if not more) as the similarities. When you only focus on the similarities, it is easy to misread a text. When I see material being pulled out of its rhetorical context to become evidence for something else, it always raises red flags. My view of the text is driven from the text and its relationship with itself and other texts. I don't have to invoke an author. I don't have to involve an author's intention. The text does this for me. And, I can start from the perspective that the text is a coherent whole.

Your view of the text depends on changing the meaning of words ("like") and ignoring important textual markers ("faggots"). And there is no reason there should be a single context to understand Noah and Abinadi. This is a multi-layered text that addresses several different issues by constantly referring back to and reinterpreting itself. You can't demand literature to be written as you would expect it to be written while claiming I've missed something because I haven't addressed a problem with how you think it should have been written. And I don't have to invoke an author or author's intention, either.

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Unfortunately the search engine here isn't helping me find any of my discussions with Carmack on this forum. I still have this problem. What sort of linguistic evidence would you consider to falsify your theory? If you can describe it, I will try to provide it (I may fail). It would need to be something that wouldn't be attributable to a later redaction. Perhaps an easier question to discuss would be this one - how would you differentiate between material that comes from the earliest translation of the text and material added in by a later redactor? Maybe that is a better starting point for this discussion about falsification.

In order to begin to falsify Carmack's linguistic evidence, you would need to show a nearly contemporary text that resembles the Book of Mormon in its use of early modern syntax. Carmack has looked at several potential works and hasn't found anything close.

Edited January 31, 2023 by JarMan

[JarMan]

To follow up on this discussion, here are some definitions of the word "faggot" from the OED.

Quote

a. A faggot (sense A. 1a), used in the burning alive of people regarded as heretics; (hence by metonymy, in singular with the) this method of execution. Also, esp. in to carry (also bear) a faggot and variants: a punishment in which a person regarded as a heretic, or a person who has recanted heresy, must publicly carry a faggot for a certain time as a mark of shame. Cf.

Quote

b. An embroidered or painted figure of a faggot, which people regarded as heretics, or those who had recanted heresy, were obliged to wear on their sleeve. Chiefly historical. Now rare.

Quote

P1. fire and faggot (also faggots) and variants: the punishment of being burnt alive for heresy; cf. sense A. 2a   and fire n. 11. Now historical.

These definitions support the idea that "faggot" is a clear marker in the text indicating the story is about a heretic being burnt at the stake.

There are other indicators in the text, as well, if you compare the many accounts in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Most were given a last chance to save themselves by recanting, as was offered to Abinadi. Foxe commonly has the martyr delivering a final speech as the flames burn them. This is not unique to the time, of course, as we also see NT martyrs deliver their final words just before expiring. But the slow death at the stake allows for a more extended speech than say, Stephen's, as he was stoned to death. Abinadi's final words were more of the extended type as seen in Foxe.

Abinadi's speech is atypical, though, compared to Foxe's accounts which generally have the martyr's praising God in their final moments, rather than prophesying suffering and death on their accusers as Abinadi did. But there are exceptions to this, such as George Wishart's final words:

Quote

The governor of the castle, who stood so near that he was singed with the flame, exhorted our martyr, in a few words, to be of good cheer, and to ask the pardon of God for his offences. To which he replied, "This flame occasions trouble to my body, indeed, but it hath in nowise broken my spirit. But he who now so proudly looks down upon me from yonder lofty place (pointing to the cardinal) shall, ere long, be as ignominiously thrown down, as now he proudly lolls at his ease." Which prediction was soon after fulfilled.

Abinadi's execution fits into an early modern context in essentially every detail. 

[Calm]

14 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Unfortunately the search engine here isn't helping me find any of my discussions with Carmack on this forum.

If you have a phrase/term you occasionally used, I can try using google to track the down.  Also a time period would be helpful.

[Benjamin McGuire]

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't know if you saw my earlier discussion about kingship in the Book of Mormon, but I touched on the same idea you are addressing. I made the point that Noah was the prototypical bad king as seen by early modern writers. The early modern world has several examples of the Mirrors for Princes genre that discusses kingship. Obviously, kingship was a very important issue and most writers drew on biblical sources. Here's a very relevant snippet from Tyndale:

The challenge is that this isn't unique to the EModE period. So it isn't evidence that connects the text to the EModE period.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

If Noah is the prototypical bad king, then Benjamin is the prototypical good king. Here is part of his speech in Mosiah 2:

Perhaps - but it's largely an irrelevancy. Overall, the Book of Mormon doesn't promote kingship. Who are the other good kings? Zeniff, Noah's father maybe? He isn't even identified as a king in the text. We only assume this because at the end of his life it says that he confers the kingdom on his son Noah.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Tyndale and the BOM both draw on Matthew 25:40 to describe attributes of a good king.

This isn't accurate. The Book of Mormon part in any case. And Matthew 25:40 has to be made relevant through the idea that kings are given their position by God - and so a good king's relationship with his people is a reflection of God's relationship with His people. That isn't what happens in the Book of Mormon. One of the close themes that the Book of Mormon uses of all kings also comes from Deuteronomy 17. That bit: "When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me ..." When does Zeniff become a king? After he returns to the Land of their first inheritance (which isn't really the land of their first inheritance - its the second area that the Nephites settle into). When does Nephi become a king? After they have left their first inheritance (where they landed), and go into the wilderness to avoid conflict with the other half of the original group (2 Nephi 5:7-8, 18):

Quote

And we did take our tents and whatsoever things were possible for us, and did journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. And after we had journeyed for the space of many days we did pitch our tents. And my people would that we should call the name of the place Nephi; wherefore, we did call it Nephi. And it came to pass that they would that I should be their king. But I, Nephi, was desirous that they should have no king; nevertheless, I did for them according to that which was in my power.

And here (the foundational Nephite King) is described in the following terms - he teaches (and keeps) the Law of Moses, he defends his people militarily, he teaches them to build buildings and to harvest the natural resources that exist there, he builds a temple - and he doesn't require them to do all of this for him (the opposite of King Noah). There is nothing here that resembles Matthew 25. But there is something else that is also important - from Deuteronomy 17:20 - "That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren." We have some sense of the importance of this in the context of the Book of Mormon - as a democratizing idea. It isn't applied just to the king, but to everyone else. Jacob 2 (to go back to a section that was heavily influenced by Deuteronomy 17) suggests that:

Quote

And the hand of providence hath smiled upon you most pleasingly, that you have obtained many riches; and because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel, and persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they.

And we return to this in Mosiah 11:5 in the new priests that Noah chooses. He "consecrated new ones in their stead, such as were lifted up in the pride of their hearts." It is in contrast to this that we get King Benjamin. But, so that you understand that I have something apart from my own opinion -

Quote

As we have seen in our examination of the Kingship Law, this association of king and individual member of the covenant community is important to a proper understanding of the monarchic office in Israel. Whilst the practice of kingship in Judah and Israel was often far too similar to the exploitative patterns of ANE monarchy, the Dtr ideal presents a very different picture; a picture of the king as one of the community and not exalted over his “subjects.” Deut 17:15 states that the king must be one of the Hebrew brothers ( מקרב אחיך תשׂים עליך מלך ), and, whilst clearly designed to prohibit the kingship of a foreigner (one not under the covenant), this verse also indicates that, “the essential criteria for Israel’s appointment are that the king should be the one chosen by Yahweh, and that he should be a ‘brother’-Israelite.” This democratising criterion finds fuller expression in Deut 17:20, where the king is told not to “exalt himself over his brothers”. לבלתי רום־לבבו מאחיו This emphasis on equality as part of the whole community under covenant allegiance, makes it clear that the king is not greater than the people, but is essentially part of the body corporate. The emphasis of his role is not as administrator, judge or general, but rather as torahkeeper. The king is to excel in keeping covenant with Yahweh and as such acts as an example for all of the Hebrew community. (Jamie Grant, The King as Examplar, SBL: Atlanta, 2004, 286-7).

A bit later in the same volume:

Quote

So, finally, it appears that the torah-kingship psalms not only share the Dtr views on torah and kingship, but that their process of democratisation also reflects the theology of Deuteronomy and, in particular, of the Kingship Law. Deuteronomy’s Law of the King sets the lifestyle which the king should follow as an example of proper conduct for the people. The torah-kingship psalms fulfill the same function. Not only are these psalms to be read as influencing the picture of the eschatological king, but they should also be read as commending a particular lifestyle to the reader of the Psalter—a lifestyle of complete trust in Yahweh and immersion in his word. (288-89).

This is a pretty widely accepted idea - I just provided one of several sources I have that discuss this idea. Tyndale wasn't teaching something new. I am only dealing with earlier material, by the way, not because later material doesn't exist, but because the important thing is to show that your sources are participating in a pre-existing tradition. We can find lots of examples after the fact as well. Tyndale merely quotes the Old Testament in the bit you provide. There isn't anything surprising about this. And we can see that the interpretation hasn't changed much (if at all) from earlier interpretations. And this means that there isn't any reason to accept that this is a source. It doesn't help you make the case for authorship in a specific time period. And it certainly doesn't help in trying to assign a specific author. This is true - even for the other reference you provide from Tyndale. But, what is really important (at least from my perspective) is that the Book of Mormon is consistent in its approach. Benjamin may be the quintessential good king, but he isn't the only good king. And the kings in the Book of Mormon (like Nephi) reflect this language of Deuteronomy also. It is consistent.

Now one brief comment about this remark:

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

we can now read the story as saying that Calvin was a "bad king." This is essentially what his early modern critics said about him, as well.

What? Calvin as a 'king'? And modern critics call him a 'bad king'? I don't know what you are reading, but Calvin was never a king. And we won't ever get the idea that Calvin was a "bad king" from the Book of Mormon. He doesn't fit the way that kings are spoken of in the Book of Mormon (good or bad) - even if certain criticism of bad kings can also be applied to Calvin. This is a huge leap.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I am not arguing we should read the story strictly as Noah = Calvin or strictly as Abinadi = Servetus. They don't need to be identical in every way for us to recognize the obvious allegory. The story is weaved into a much larger narrative and, therefore, conveys multiple layers of meaning.

You are losing me here. It's obvious that allegories (or parables, or any of a number of other rhetorical devices) don't have to match exactly. That's not how rhetorical devices work. The problem that you have is that you are arguing for a layer of meaning that doesn't fit the rhetorical structure of the underlying text - that contradicts it. If we read the text rhetorically, we wouldn't ever come to the conclusion that you start from - that Calvin and Servetus are represented in the text. When you start from that conclusion - driven by your desire to find an author for the text in a specific window of time (an unwarranted decision in my view) it becomes possible - but only because you aren't reading the text in a way that looks at the texts rhetorical structure. You have ripped your parallels out of context, placed them in a list, and decided that you have discovered the meaning of the text through your parallels. But the rhetorical structure I am introducing conflicts with the meaning you are trying to pull from the text. If you accept my interpretation of the text, it largely precludes your interpretation - because the things that you want to interpret a specific way (to match you parallels) cannot be interpreted that way. This is the problem. You can't simply dismiss this sort of thing by saying - well, there are multiple layers of meaning intended by the author. What we have aren't compatible in that way - we just have different layers of meaning in terms of the way we read the text. And (as I think I noted earlier), when you start by intuituing a meaning and then interpreting the text to fit that meaning, you no longer care much about what the author may have actually intended that can be illustrated through the rhetoric of the text.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Obviously Alma 14 is not describing people burned at the stake. But there is no reason we should expect them to be. We only need expect they suffer "death by fire" in a "like matter" as Alma. You have to change the meaning of "like" (which essentially means "similar") to "exact" or "precise" for this to be an issue. If we are going to focus on the text we can't change the meaning of words just to suit our purpose. You think you are presenting negative evidence, but your negative evidence is dependent on how you think the narrative should be written and on making changes to the meaning of words. There is no reason we should expect the text to be written as you demand it be written.

Oh, the irony.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Your view of the text depends on changing the meaning of words ("like") and ignoring important textual markers ("faggots"). And there is no reason there should be a single context to understand Noah and Abinadi. This is a multi-layered text that addresses several different issues by constantly referring back to and reinterpreting itself. You can't demand literature to be written as you would expect it to be written while claiming I've missed something because I haven't addressed a problem with how you think it should have been written. And I don't have to invoke an author or author's intention, either.

You do have to address it. But understand how I see what you are doing. You claim on the one hand that your theory is in someway falsifiable. And yet at every turn you have a way of deflecting what might falsify the argument. It is a different layer of meaning. That part is from a later redactor. And so on. The Book of Mormon is a text, just like any other text. The rules of literature and literary theory apply to it just as much as to any other text. What I am saying should be obvious. The Book of Mormon narrative that you are dissecting here only works for your purposes when you remove it from its context. It's context discusses what the narrative means in places. Your interpretation is at odds with what the text tells us that the narrative means. This is why I make the claim that if your interpretation is right, we would have expected the text to be different elsewhere. We wouldn't expect the text itself to offer competing meanings for the bit that you are arguing about. That is what I am saying.

I think that you do have to invoke the author - and I think you have done it here in this comment I am responding to: "once we realize that he also allegorically represents Calvin." Where does this come from? This entire argument on your part stems from some very significant assumptions about the text. If I disagree with those assumptions, this never even comes to the surface. My dealing with Deuteronomy in the text does not have that same liability.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Your view of the text depends on changing the meaning of words ("like") and ignoring important textual markers ("faggots"). And there is no reason there should be a single context to understand Noah and Abinadi. This is a multi-layered text that addresses several different issues by constantly referring back to and reinterpreting itself. You can't demand literature to be written as you would expect it to be written while claiming I've missed something because I haven't addressed a problem with how you think it should have been written. And I don't have to invoke an author or author's intention, either.

There isn't any reason to back and reinterpret though. And the text doesn't offer any reason for us to assume that it is allegorical in the way that you propose. There are no markers that would distinguish it as allegorical (and let's not forget that allegory in the early 17th century isn't that complicated - look at Everyman, or The Pilgrim's Progress). There is this huge disconnect between your interpretation of the text and what the text is actually doing. You bring the meaning, the text doesn't reveal it. And it does matter (in the context of being burned at the stake) that Abinadi is described as the first of many who are burned to death, and the others who are burned to death. The text isn't trying to tell us something important about any specific mode of death. It isn't the point. But in order for your theory to work, you need to emphasize it in a way that the text doesn't. It isn't that the later part reinterprets the original for its own meaning. If there was an allegory there, we would like to see what Alma has to say about the situation, since the argument that Alma deals with is why God allows for martyrdom at all. Why doesn't God protect the righteous? Why did God allow Jeremiah to die (in the Old Testament)?

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

In order to begin to falsify Carmack's linguistic evidence, you would need to show a nearly contemporary text that resembles the Book of Mormon in its use of early modern syntax. Carmack has looked at several potential works and hasn't found anything close.

Perhaps you could explain why this would falsify Carmack's evidence.

But in the meanwhile, I'll bite. Let's decide on the parameters. What percentage of the Book of Mormon uses early modern syntax? That is, how are we going to measure the criteria that you raise, so that I know when I have met my objective? The reason why this is important is because a huge chunk of what was in use in EModE is still in use today - that is to say, for the most part, we have no problems reading the Book of Mormon - it isn't like a foreign language. Carmack is only looking at a a fairly small subset of the language in the Book of Mormon as EModE, and for this to be a true test, I need to know what that percentage is. I would also be interested in knowing what Carmack believes is the percentage of the text which is language that cannot be dated as early as EModE ... but that may be a different issue ....

Edited January 31, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[JarMan]

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The challenge is that this isn't unique to the EModE period. So it isn't evidence that connects the text to the EModE period.

I'm not saying it necessarily connects to the early modern period. I'm saying it is consistent with it. This is important because you want the story to be either about kingship from an OT perspective or about Calvin/Servetus, but not both. I've been saying for a long time now that it is about both. It's also about kingship from a NT perspective.

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Perhaps - but it's largely an irrelevancy. Overall, the Book of Mormon doesn't promote kingship. Who are the other good kings? Zeniff, Noah's father maybe? He isn't even identified as a king in the text. We only assume this because at the end of his life it says that he confers the kingdom on his son Noah.

This isn't accurate. The Book of Mormon part in any case. And Matthew 25:40 has to be made relevant through the idea that kings are given their position by God - and so a good king's relationship with his people is a reflection of God's relationship with His people. That isn't what happens in the Book of Mormon. One of the close themes that the Book of Mormon uses of all kings also comes from Deuteronomy 17. That bit: "When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me ..." When does Zeniff become a king? After he returns to the Land of their first inheritance (which isn't really the land of their first inheritance - its the second area that the Nephites settle into). When does Nephi become a king? After they have left their first inheritance (where they landed), and go into the wilderness to avoid conflict with the other half of the original group (2 Nephi 5:7-8, 18):

Are you seriously claiming that Matthew 25:40 is not reflected in Benjamin's speech? I really don't know what to do with that except scratch my head.

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And we return to this in Mosiah 11:5 in the new priests that Noah chooses. He "consecrated new ones in their stead, such as were lifted up in the pride of their hearts." It is in contrast to this that we get King Benjamin. But, so that you understand that I have something apart from my own opinion -

A bit later in the same volume:

This is a pretty widely accepted idea - I just provided one of several sources I have that discuss this idea. Tyndale wasn't teaching something new. I am only dealing with earlier material, by the way, not because later material doesn't exist, but because the important thing is to show that your sources are participating in a pre-existing tradition. We can find lots of examples after the fact as well. Tyndale merely quotes the Old Testament in the bit you provide. There isn't anything surprising about this. And we can see that the interpretation hasn't changed much (if at all) from earlier interpretations. And this means that there isn't any reason to accept that this is a source. It doesn't help you make the case for authorship in a specific time period. And it certainly doesn't help in trying to assign a specific author. This is true - even for the other reference you provide from Tyndale. But, what is really important (at least from my perspective) is that the Book of Mormon is consistent in its approach. Benjamin may be the quintessential good king, but he isn't the only good king. And the kings in the Book of Mormon (like Nephi) reflect this language of Deuteronomy also. It is consistent.

Now one brief comment about this remark:

I'm not disagreeing with you at all about the Book of Mormon incorporating ideas of kingship from the OT. In fact I've been saying that from the beginning.

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

What? Calvin as a 'king'? And modern critics call him a 'bad king'? I don't know what you are reading, but Calvin was never a king. And we won't ever get the idea that Calvin was a "bad king" from the Book of Mormon. He doesn't fit the way that kings are spoken of in the Book of Mormon (good or bad) - even if certain criticism of bad kings can also be applied to Calvin. This is a huge leap.

I'm saying Calvin's contemporaries considered him to be a "bad king." The word I use in my presentation is autocrat. I think I provided sources for this to someone else earlier in the thread.

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You are losing me here. It's obvious that allegories (or parables, or any of a number of other rhetorical devices) don't have to match exactly. That's not how rhetorical devices work. The problem that you have is that you are arguing for a layer of meaning that doesn't fit the rhetorical structure of the underlying text - that contradicts it. If we read the text rhetorically, we wouldn't ever come to the conclusion that you start from - that Calvin and Servetus are represented in the text. When you start from that conclusion - driven by your desire to find an author for the text in a specific window of time (an unwarranted decision in my view) it becomes possible - but only because you aren't reading the text in a way that looks at the texts rhetorical structure. You have ripped your parallels out of context, placed them in a list, and decided that you have discovered the meaning of the text through your parallels. But the rhetorical structure I am introducing conflicts with the meaning you are trying to pull from the text. If you accept my interpretation of the text, it largely precludes your interpretation - because the things that you want to interpret a specific way (to match you parallels) cannot be interpreted that way. This is the problem. You can't simply dismiss this sort of thing by saying - well, there are multiple layers of meaning intended by the author. What we have aren't compatible in that way - we just have different layers of meaning in terms of the way we read the text. And (as I think I noted earlier), when you start by intuituing a meaning and then interpreting the text to fit that meaning, you no longer care much about what the author may have actually intended that can be illustrated through the rhetoric of the text.

You keep making unwarranted assumptions about how and why I've approached this and my approaches are not what you portray. So I'll tell you what my approach has been. First and foremost, I read this story as being about a heretic burned at the stake. The textual clues are overwhelmingly in favor of that interpretation. Second, I see Noah as the prototypical bad king in juxtaposition to Benjamin, the prototypical good king. I don't have to choose one interpretation here; I overlay them. Another important item here is the nature of Abinadi's heresy. In short, it has to do with a modalistic view of god. This is not a unique interpretation of Abinadi. None of what I've said so far is unique. But now I have enough information to start constructing some sets. The OT ideas of kingship do extend to ancient times, of course, but they've also been noticed by many other commentators throughout time as you rightly pointed out. When we overlay the set related to burning heretics at the stake, though, it excludes all the non-Christian ancients. The third set relating to modalism as a heresy doesn't help us narrow the set that much, since this essentially was also an ancient heresy. But it does help us to draw a heat map. The outer boundaries of our set now basically encompass the entirety of Christian history from, let's say the second or third century, to 1829. Let's look at burning heretics at the stake now and color our set with hot colors where that was a huge issue and cold colors when it wasn't, with warm or cool shades in between. We've got some really hot areas in late medieval to early modern times. We have some warm or hot areas in the first several centuries and some cool or cold areas for the rest of the set. We do the same thing with modalism and we get some hot or warm blobs throughout the set, with most areas pretty cool or cold.

Because of the linguistic evidence, my research has been focused on early modern Europe. But somebody could look into early Christian history focusing on the hotspots there. I don't think there are any hotspots in JS's environment, but it's still part of the set so it's not excluded. This analysis doesn't happen in a vaccuum, though. I have sets related to infant baptism and soteriology, among others, so now I overlay them onto my heat map. Anti-infant baptism creates another series of heat blobs throughout Christian history. As for the soteriology, it does have warm spots in early Christianity. But it also has a heat blob that starts to form in the late 1500's in Europe, particularly the Netherlands. This blob grows throughout Europe, crosses the seas and by Joseph's time, was certainly in his vicinity.

Anyway, I started reading accounts of heretics being burned at the stake to see how they related to Abinadi. There are lots of similarities to accounts in Foxe and other sources. Finally I came across Servetus' story, which is well attested in the historical record. We have English translations of his two earliest books and several biographies over the centuries from a variety of points of view. We have records of his trial and letters he wrote, or which were written about him. I'd looked at other famous martyr stories with lots of available information like Tyndale's and Thomas More's, but they didn't relate that well. Servetus' story, on the other hand, really did stand out. The most important detail was the specific heresy he was convicted of. On closer examination there turned out to be a lot of similarities. I didn't undertake my study of early modern martyrs expecting to find the Abinadi story. I was trying to find an Abinadi story (or stories) that supported the hypothesis that the BOM was consistent with the early modern world. But I got more than I bargained for.

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Oh, the irony.

You do have to address it. But understand how I see what you are doing. You claim on the one hand that your theory is in someway falsifiable. And yet at every turn you have a way of deflecting what might falsify the argument. It is a different layer of meaning. That part is from a later redactor. And so on. The Book of Mormon is a text, just like any other text. The rules of literature and literary theory apply to it just as much as to any other text. What I am saying should be obvious. The Book of Mormon narrative that you are dissecting here only works for your purposes when you remove it from its context. It's context discusses what the narrative means in places. Your interpretation is at odds with what the text tells us that the narrative means. This is why I make the claim that if your interpretation is right, we would have expected the text to be different elsewhere. We wouldn't expect the text itself to offer competing meanings for the bit that you are arguing about. That is what I am saying.

You say I am removing the BOM from its context, well, what is its context? Is it a historical account of ancient people? A nineteenth century production? Or, is it an early modern production? My hypothesis is that it's an early modern production, so that's the context I read it in. And in an early modern context, a story featuring a heretic being burned at the stake by a prototypical bad king makes a ton of sense.

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I think that you do have to invoke the author - and I think you have done it here in this comment I am responding to: "once we realize that he also allegorically represents Calvin." Where does this come from? This entire argument on your part stems from some very significant assumptions about the text. If I disagree with those assumptions, this never even comes to the surface. My dealing with Deuteronomy in the text does not have that same liability.

I don't need to have a theory about a specifc author to recognize Calvin had lots of early modern critics. An early modern work critical of Calvin makes perfect sense. 

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There isn't any reason to back and reinterpret though. And the text doesn't offer any reason for us to assume that it is allegorical in the way that you propose. There are no markers that would distinguish it as allegorical (and let's not forget that allegory in the early 17th century isn't that complicated - look at Everyman, or The Pilgrim's Progress). There is this huge disconnect between your interpretation of the text and what the text is actually doing. You bring the meaning, the text doesn't reveal it. And it does matter (in the context of being burned at the stake) that Abinadi is described as the first of many who are burned to death, and the others who are burned to death. The text isn't trying to tell us something important about any specific mode of death. It isn't the point. But in order for your theory to work, you need to emphasize it in a way that the text doesn't. It isn't that the later part reinterprets the original for its own meaning. If there was an allegory there, we would like to see what Alma has to say about the situation, since the argument that Alma deals with is why God allows for martyrdom at all. Why doesn't God protect the righteous? Why did God allow Jeremiah to die (in the Old Testament)?

I'm not arguing that the BOM is an allegory per se. But like the bible, it incorporates allegory as one of several literary devices. I agree that the text isn't trying to tell us anything important about a specific mode of execution. You're right, it's not the point. What's important and relevant to me is how an early modern person would have read the story. What would he think was important? He would automatically know this was a story about a heretic being unjustly burned at the stake by an evil ruler. And, as such, it would have directly related to the world he lived in. It would have clearly looked like commentary on his world. And from this perspective, this story could be read as a condemnation of Calvin and a vindication of Servetus. 

[JarMan]

15 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Perhaps you could explain why this would falsify Carmack's evidence.

But in the meanwhile, I'll bite. Let's decide on the parameters. What percentage of the Book of Mormon uses early modern syntax? That is, how are we going to measure the criteria that you raise, so that I know when I have met my objective? The reason why this is important is because a huge chunk of what was in use in EModE is still in use today - that is to say, for the most part, we have no problems reading the Book of Mormon - it isn't like a foreign language. Carmack is only looking at a a fairly small subset of the language in the Book of Mormon as EModE, and for this to be a true test, I need to know what that percentage is. I would also be interested in knowing what Carmack believes is the percentage of the text which is language that cannot be dated as early as EModE ... but that may be a different issue ....

It's possible to determine the percentage of words or phrases in the BOM that existed in EModE. For individual words I believe it's 100%. For individual phrases it's virtually 100% with a small handful of phrases--less than ten, I think--that haven't yet been identified in early modern sources. This makes it unlikely to have been produced in the 1800s. How do you write some 270,000 words without accidentally including a word with a modern origin? But even more compelling is the syntactical evidence.

When it comes to syntax, there's really no way to assign a percentage of early modern usage. If we look at Carmack's latest article on subordinate that usage, it is clear why this is the case. Subordinate that was used regularly in early modern writing, but it was also regularly omitted. So if a text uses it or omits it, both are examples of early modern usage. This isn't very helpful if we're looking to assign a percentage. Instead, we need to know how the usage rate has changed over time and what the BOM's usage rate is in comparison. We can also look at roughly contemporary pseudo-archaic texts to see the rates produced by those authors.

A similar analysis can be done with any number of syntactical structures that have changed frequency of use over time. The most revealing to me are the ones that aren't found in the bible and whose usage rate around 1800 was very low or zero. When these appear in the Book of Mormon at a rate similar to early modern texts, how do we explain how they got there? Particularly when we look at pseudo-biblical texts as a control and don't find them there.

The abundance of antiquated syntactical forms in the BOM appearing at rates that correspond with early modern usage, combined with the lack of similar constructions or construction rates in texts we would most expect to find them strongly indicates the BOM has a significant layer of early modern construction. The early modern origin of essentially all of the vocabulary and phraseology supports that. To falsify this indication of early modern construction, someone would need to show that these things were indeed possible in the 1800s by showing a contemporary text that does essentially all of the same things.

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm not saying it necessarily connects to the early modern period. I'm saying it is consistent with it. This is important because you want the story to be either about kingship from an OT perspective or about Calvin/Servetus, but not both. I've been saying for a long time now that it is about both. It's also about kingship from a NT perspective.

And I am saying that it's not about both. I am saying that it cannot be about both. This isn't because as you claim, the story about Calvin/Servetus is allegorical. ANd for us to recognize the allegory, we have to lose the other story. When we deal with rhetorical figures in a text, they can be exclusive when they use the same markers. Finally, it isn't about kingship from a NT perspective at all.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Are you seriously claiming that Matthew 25:40 is not reflected in Benjamin's speech? I really don't know what to do with that except scratch my head.

Yes, that is what I am saying.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm saying Calvin's contemporaries considered him to be a "bad king." The word I use in my presentation is autocrat. I think I provided sources for this to someone else earlier in the thread.

I am challenging you on this. Autocrat does not equal king. This is one of those 'vices' of parallelomania, where you interpret and shift meaning to make your case. On the one hand, we have a very clear case where the Book of Mormon invokes the Old Testament discussions of kingship in what might be considered a fairly traditional fashion. On the other hand, you are arguing that some people might have considered Calvin a king, and so a discussion about a king could be read as suggesting Calvin. This is much more of a stretch than you seem to be willing to admit. We don't care so much about contemporaries who may have considered Calvin to be autocratic. Did Grotius ever label Calvin as a king? And it is a problem within the Book of Mormon which generally differentiates between religious and political leaders. Calvin was a religious leader. Yes, he had a lot of power. But he wasn't a king. And Calvin's job wasn't hereditary. Now, if the bad guy in the Book of Mormon was the high priest, you would have more of a case. It just isn't there. I went back and looked through the thread briefly - I saw no sources mentioned for this.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

First and foremost, I read this story as being about a heretic burned at the stake.

Right. Because this is necessary for your theory. But this isn't the case - and it isn't even what I would describe as an accurate summary. This is the story of a martyr being burned to death. There is no stake. Not only is it a story of martyrdom, but, there is an entire discussion about why it is that God allows for there to be martyrs - what role martyrs have in God's plan. And the text points out that Abinadi was the first of these martyrs. There is a lot here in the text that simply doesn't fit well into your narrative of a heretic burned at the stake.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

The textual clues are overwhelmingly in favor of that interpretation.

They don't at all. Not even a little bit. The only way this works (and even then, not so well), is for you to bring all of these assumptions to the text - assumptions about when it was written, who it was written by, and why they might have written it - all of these things contribute to the intentional fallacy that comes up over and over again.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Another important item here is the nature of Abinadi's heresy. In short, it has to do with a modalistic view of god.

Abinadi's view of God is not modalistic at all. It is, in fact, quite similar to the Statement of Faith produced at Chalcedon. I will try and make this brief. The Statement of Faith from Chalcedon reads in part:

Quote

So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us.

So, let's substitute the language from this statement into the Book of Mormon in Mosiah 15. Instead of 'Fathe', I will substitute 'truly God' or 'true God'. Instead of Son, I will substitute 'truly man' or 'true man'. When I do this, Abinadi's sermon becomes this (verses 1-8 bolding where I made the changes:

Quote

1 AND now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people.
2 And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the eternal God, being truly God and truly man
3 Truly God, because he was conceived by the power of God; and truly man, because of the flesh; thus becoming true God and true man
4 And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.

5 And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the true man to the true God, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people.
6 And after all this, after working many mighty miracles among the children of men, he shall be led, yea, even as Isaiah said, as a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
7 Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the true man being swallowed up in the will of the true God.
8 And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the true man power to make intercession for the children of men

One thing should be clear - whether I make the substitution or not - this was never Modalism. But, in re-framing this passage in this way, it becomes clear that Abinadi is explaining the two natures of Jesus Christ - the divine and the human nature - and pointing out (an important idea in the theology of the Book of Mormon that comes up again in Alma) that it is the human nature that allows Jesus Christ to act as an intercessor for humanity and not the divine nature. And this doctrine by Abinadi isn't modalistic. Although I am willing to have you convince me by explaining what you mean ...

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

When we overlay the set related to burning heretics at the stake

Right - an idea that doesn't exist on its own in the Book of Mormon ...

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

We do the same thing with modalism and we get some hot or warm blobs throughout the set, with most areas pretty cool or cold.

But Modalism isn't really there ... and now we end up with your overlapping hot spots being something completely unreliable.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

Anyway, I started reading accounts of heretics being burned at the stake to see how they related to Abinadi. There are lots of similarities to accounts in Foxe and other sources. Finally I came across Servetus' story, which is well attested in the historical record. We have English translations of his two earliest books and several biographies over the centuries from a variety of points of view. We have records of his trial and letters he wrote, or which were written about him. I'd looked at other famous martyr stories with lots of available information like Tyndale's and Thomas More's, but they didn't relate that well. Servetus' story, on the other hand, really did stand out. The most important detail was the specific heresy he was convicted of. On closer examination there turned out to be a lot of similarities. I didn't undertake my study of early modern martyrs expecting to find the Abinadi story. I was trying to find an Abinadi story (or stories) that supported the hypothesis that the BOM was consistent with the early modern world. But I got more than I bargained for.

And I think that most of the similarities exist because you commit the various problems associated with parallelomania. You use the parallels to try and frame what is important. You over-simplify complicated issues so that they sound more alike, and so on. I have read Servetus. Take a look at section 13 of his De trinitatis erroribus (where he discusses how Jesus can be called the Father and the Son) and tell me how this relates at all to Abinadi other than on a purely superficial level (my description here). Explain to me how Servetus's notion of intercession matches up with Abinadi's (this is important because this is one of the charges made against Abinadi - that God will come but won't save everyone). I think that you found things that matched your intuition - and without any valid way of assessing them, you simply fell into problems that have plagued this sort of search for hundreds of years.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

You say I am removing the BOM from its context, well, what is its context? Is it a historical account of ancient people? A nineteenth century production? Or, is it an early modern production? My hypothesis is that it's an early modern production, so that's the context I read it in. And in an early modern context, a story featuring a heretic being burned at the stake by a prototypical bad king makes a ton of sense.

No - I am saying that the text is a whole. It is connected internally. You are pulling material out of that whole to make use of it in context. The Book of Mormon's theology isn't limited to little pieces here and there. But in taking out a piece here, and a piece there - by removing that larger context - you are able to interpret the text as saying things that are contradicted elsewhere. The Book of Mormon's theology is really quite alien to Servetus. It's discussions on war are alien to Grotius. It's discussions on readers and the role they play in interpreting texts is alien to the 17th century. But you only need to look at the parallels for your (flawed) method to give you a result. It just isn't a meaningful result.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't need to have a theory about a specifc author to recognize Calvin had lots of early modern critics. An early modern work critical of Calvin makes perfect sense. 

Only if we start with assumptions about the author - which is what you are doing. This is the intentional fallacy again. Without this assumption (that the author was critical of Calvin), we wouldn't read Calvin into the text at all.

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I'm not arguing that the BOM is an allegory per se. But like the bible, it incorporates allegory as one of several literary devices. I agree that the text isn't trying to tell us anything important about a specific mode of execution. You're right, it's not the point. What's important and relevant to me is how an early modern person would have read the story. What would he think was important? He would automatically know this was a story about a heretic being unjustly burned at the stake by an evil ruler. And, as such, it would have directly related to the world he lived in. It would have clearly looked like commentary on his world. And from this perspective, this story could be read as a condemnation of Calvin and a vindication of Servetus. 

I completely disagree with you that an early modern reader would have made these assumptions. There is an evil ruler. There is a martyr dying for the faith. But a heretical one? I am not so sure. The Book of Mormon deals with a whole range of theological issues. These are inconsistent with your premise. How would Servetus have felt about the Book of Mormon's discussion of pre-destination? Or agency? How would he have responded to the reading strategy which ignores the author's intention in favor of a recasting based on personal experience? I don't think the story works as a condemnation of Calvin or a vindication of Servetus. I think in the larger context of the overall narrative flow of the Book of Mormon, the narrative of Abinadi and Noah doesn't play this kind of role. Perhaps its just me. I think in the long run, your theory won't find broad acceptance simply because it doesn't fit well and because it is more than a little esoteric.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

It's possible to determine the percentage of words or phrases in the BOM that existed in EModE. For individual words I believe it's 100%. For individual phrases it's virtually 100% with a small handful of phrases--less than ten, I think--that haven't yet been identified in early modern sources. This makes it unlikely to have been produced in the 1800s. How do you write some 270,000 words without accidentally including a word with a modern origin? But even more compelling is the syntactical evidence.

Ok.

So, to falsify the theory, I only need to find a word in the Book of Mormon that doesn't exist in EModE, is that right?

On the other side of the coin, if I find other books written around the time of the Book of Mormon where I can find every word and every phrase in them in EModE period books, that would also falsify the theory, right?

Just to be clear here, how long should the phrase be? Would 3 word n-gram be sufficient?

The first issue is pretty easy. I have a list someplace, I just need to find it and review it. The second part is a little more difficult (proving a negative is always more of a challenge, right?). But, all I need to do to meet your terms is find another text published around 1830 in which I can find virtually 100% of the phrases in the text in early modern sources. That is also manageable if a bit time consuming. I will have to dig out my analysis tools, but they are reasonably well suited to the task.

Does this sound right?

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

When it comes to syntax, there's really no way to assign a percentage of early modern usage. If we look at Carmack's latest article on subordinate that usage, it is clear why this is the case. Subordinate that was used regularly in early modern writing, but it was also regularly omitted. So if a text uses it or omits it, both are examples of early modern usage. This isn't very helpful if we're looking to assign a percentage. Instead, we need to know how the usage rate has changed over time and what the BOM's usage rate is in comparison. We can also look at roughly contemporary pseudo-archaic texts to see the rates produced by those authors.

So provide with me some metrics I can use in my search.

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

A similar analysis can be done with any number of syntactical structures that have changed frequency of use over time. The most revealing to me are the ones that aren't found in the bible and whose usage rate around 1800 was very low or zero. When these appear in the Book of Mormon at a rate similar to early modern texts, how do we explain how they got there? Particularly when we look at pseudo-biblical texts as a control and don't find them there.

Do you have examples? My experience with Carmack on this particular point is that his searches aren't very good. I have little problem finding late examples. But, give me some specific examples to work with.

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

The abundance of antiquated syntactical forms in the BOM appearing at rates that correspond with early modern usage, combined with the lack of similar constructions or construction rates in texts we would most expect to find them strongly indicates the BOM has a significant layer of early modern construction. The early modern origin of essentially all of the vocabulary and phraseology supports that. To falsify this indication of early modern construction, someone would need to show that these things were indeed possible in the 1800s by showing a contemporary text that does essentially all of the same things.

I am going to disagree with you (and Carmack) that texts written 'biblically' are those which should have the highest overlap. I don't find any reason to accept this particular assumption. My experience has been different. Actual translations of older texts tend to have much higher levels of archaic forms. There is a rhetorical value to this (even if it results in bad translations). The Book of Mormon claims to be a translation and not a history written in 'biblical language'.

At any rate, your last set of comments about syntax are all rather vague. If I am to falsify your argument, I will need some metrics, or I will need some specific examples with which to work.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[Benjamin McGuire]

I wanted to make a final comment for JarMan this morning -

I would like your take on this issue. Carmack and Skousen have an apologetic agenda. They believe that the text of the Book of Mormon was delivered through divine means to Joseph Smith, and they also believe in what has been labeled as a tight model of transmission of the text (I assume that you know what I am referring to). These beliefs are reflected in some of their approaches to the text of the Book of Mormon and their EModE theory. A good example is the use of the phrase "them days". They argue that this occurs in the original manuscript. It was used in EModE. And so it is likely that this was not an error (it was later edited in the Book of Mormon to "those days".). There are a couple of other options here -

It took me only 5 minutes to identify more than 100 English texts from the 19th and 20th centuries that use this phrase. Most of them appear to use it in dialogue (no, I didn't look at more than they first handful). This may well have been an error created by the reading and writing process the Book of Mormon is alleged to have gone through. Many of Skousen's suggested emendations are based on this principle - do you think that this is an appropriate way to build evidence for the EModE situation? Should we prefer original text readings that could simply be errors stemming from the dictation process?

[Navidad]

On 1/24/2023 at 1:52 AM, mfbukowski said:

No one, I hope in God's name,  has EVER implied that ANY Catholic from ANY time period could NOT be  "Saint" as defined by the Church of Jesus Christ. God judges individual lives and intentions and desires, not what one was taught as a baby, to judge who is and who is not a "member" of His church, in judging his children 

Sometimes you really confuse me! 🙃

[Navidad]

If the Book of Mormon criticizes Calvin, I am all for it. He was in one way or the other responsible for the death of perhaps thousands of Anabaptists. Luther as well. Stephen Jay Gould muses that Luther may have been responsible for the deaths of 100,000. While I think that number is way too high; these two were in some ways harder on their peasant class restorers than of middle and upper class reformers or Catholics. 

On the other hand I am always cautious about comparisons of other ancient cultures with Mesoamerican cultures. I have seen it done with the Hittites, Phoenicians, and others. All too often we find that for which we are looking.

[Navidad]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

If I am to falsify your argument

I find this confusing. Is it your intent from the "git-go" to falsify or to interact with his argument? Do you identify as an apologist?

[Benjamin McGuire]

47 minutes ago, Navidad said:

I find this confusing. Is it your intent from the "git-go" to falsify or to interact with his argument? Do you identify as an apologist?

In this case, identifying as an apologist is irrelevant.

JarMan is proposing that the Book of Mormon was written by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). I don't believe that to be the case. We are discussing ways that the argument could be falsified so that the theory becomes testable in some way.

I am not sure that the proposals he is making (the ways to falsify his argument) are useful tools to do this. He is arguing that the Book of Mormon is unique in the context of an 1830 publication time frame in that it's vocabulary drawn entirely from EModE, that its component short phrases can all be found in EModE literature, and that its syntax can all be found in the EModE period. That second point has issues, but I am taking it largely for what it is meant to say (that is - any time we engage in proper names/nouns it can create unique readings if those names are unique - and some of the ones in the Book of Mormon are relatively unique).

The way I see it, there are two ways to falsify these arguments. One is to show that there is vocabulary that is post-EModE (from 1650-1830). Another is to show that the Book of Mormon isn't particularly unique in this regard (that there are other volumes with similar vocabularies). To try and work through any of this will take a fair amount of time though ... so it may be a while before I have something to spit out. I have some homegrown lexical tools which I use for text processing, but finding texts, putting them into an appropriate form, evaluating the vocabulary lists, and then determining placement in EModE (which isn't always easy since the same word can have an EModE usage and a post-EModE usage) can take a lot of effort.

So, while it's about the argument, the discussion is really about how you can test the argument.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Navidad said:

Sometimes you really confuse me! 🙃

And will continue to do so without telling me how.