Book of Mormon Criticism of Calvin

[Navidad]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yes, if you cannot falsify a theory, you can certainly keep advocating for it. The challenge is that these kinds of theories are usually given a back seat. There isn't a way to promote one such theory over another (even if individuals are convinced that they are right). In the realm of hard sciences, often theories are limited - because the tests that we envision that can prove or disprove a theory can't be performed. A good example of this is the Higgs Bosun - a sub atomic particle theorized in The Standard Model. It was described along with its function several decades before the technology existed that could perform the tests necessary to prove its existence. Those tests were successfully completed only in 2013. The predictive nature of the theory (and the subsequent tests) adds credibility to the model and the hypothesis.

You are right, that the vast majority of religious questions cannot be falsified - but these issues are rarely raised in this sort of fashion (other than, perhaps, questions like the existence of God, which individuals have tried to prove or disprove for a very long time). That being said, these kinds of tools are scientific tools - and they don't work well to evaluate religious or philosophical truths. They can work well at evaluating beliefs. For example, the beliefs about vaccination (and there is a huge range of those beliefs right now) could be tested by using the scientific method - forming a hypothesis, developing a test, and then seeing if the test results confirm or deny the hypothesis.

Rarely do tests confirm or deny complex theories entirely. Instead they evaluate one approach at a time. And depending on the outcome of the test, the hypothesis can be altered to match the new information (or tossed, or accepted, or whatever the results warrant).

It would seem that the claim that Grotius is the primary author of the Book of Mormon is a claim that can be tested. The idea of the parallels and the comparison of material that JarMan raises are all part of the inductive argument. They help him get to the hypothesis. But, in order to determine the validity of the evidence, we have to perform some sort of test. Further, since we are dealing with literature, the kinds of principles that are brought forward to test the claims here should be usable to test similar claims in other contexts. That is, if we create a set of criteria using syntax in the text as a way of determining EModE authorship, then that test should be applicable to most (if not all) texts written in this period. In other words, we should be able to use the same set of criteria to evaluate known texts in the same way. This creates that falisfiability that we are looking for - and it comes as we expand from the specific to the more general principle. If it doesn't work in the larger context, it doesn't deny the original hypothesis - it simply points out that what we thought was evidence may not really be evidence. If we can use the same principles of parallels to argue that a book with a known author was actually written by another known author, then we know that the process of using parallels in this way is flawed and not usable as evidence.

In agreement with your other remarks, I think that we should be very skeptical of attempts to conflate these kinds of investigations with the confirmation of the Spirit or, as you note, even with philosophical or religious truths.

Thanks so much for the time you took to answer my questions. I appreciate it very much. Wasn't it Collins who generated, or made popular the idea of the God gene or something in our genetic makeup that promotes belief and faith? I think it was the idea that humans have a gene of some tangible code that engages things like belief, faith, hope, and the like? I would think that view, which I have stated very crudely might be falsifiable?

[Benjamin McGuire]

39 minutes ago, Navidad said:

Thanks so much for the time you took to answer my questions. I appreciate it very much. Wasn't it Collins who generated, or made popular the idea of the God gene or something in our genetic makeup that promotes belief and faith? I think it was the idea that humans have a gene of some tangible code that engages things like belief, faith, hope, and the like? I would think that view, which I have stated very crudely might be falsifiable?

It was Dean Hamer. I think that this does raise interesting questions - the idea that there is a genetic component to faith is something that could be tested. However, the results of the study that Hamer uses in his book were never replicated by other researchers. The view that there is a genetic component to faith could be falsifiable - we can come up with ways to test this. We haven't been able to test this specific idea - not because we don't know how to do it, but because there seems to have been enough issues with the way the study was conducted so as to make the original study itself impossible to verify - and this leaves us without a basis to test the idea.

[Navidad]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

It was Dean Hamer. I think that this does raise interesting questions - the idea that there is a genetic component to faith is something that could be tested. However, the results of the study that Hamer uses in his book were never replicated by other researchers. The view that there is a genetic component to faith could be falsifiable - we can come up with ways to test this. We haven't been able to test this specific idea - not because we don't know how to do it, but because there seems to have been enough issues with the way the study was conducted so as to make the original study itself impossible to verify - and this leaves us without a basis to test the idea.

Thanks. All I know is that we Mennonites seem to have a genetic code that makes us crave snickerdoodles. I have eaten about five today! I bet (well Mennonites don't bet) that propensity could be tested!

[JarMan]

@Benjamin McGuire I think there are three issues we need to keep distinct for this discussion.

1) Linguistics. I am interested in pursuing some linguistic testing that we can both agree on. More on that later.

2) The hypothesis that the BOM was primarily produced in the early modern world.

3) The Grotius authorship theory.

I think the early modern hypothesis can be tested. The BOM was published in 1830, but that's irrelevant when it comes to testing the hypothesis. In fact, any assumption you or anybody else has about the BOM is irrelevant when testing the hypothesis. Any argument that rests on an assumption of what the text "actually" is assumes the conclusion. This is what "begging the question" actually means. It's a circular argument. What you can provide are things in the text that you don't believe support an early modern production. I think we can engage fruitfully if approached that way and this hypothesis is something I am intersted in defending.

As for the authorship theory, I should perhaps be a little more clear where I am on that. For my early modern hypothesis, I feel confidence at let's say 95%. For Grotius and Grotius alone as author, my confidence is probably more like 40%. However, if I expand the potential candidates to close friends and family (including shared authorship ideas), my confidence is much higher. Let's say 75%. I'm not that interested in per se defending something I am only 40% confident in. And we don't have a huge amount of writing from the others in his close circle, so I don't see any way to test the larger group except by using Grotius more or less as a proxy. With that being said, I think we can have meaningful discussions about how Grotius' writing relates to the BOM.

[JarMan]

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And I am sure that I can show a large clustering of persistent archaic syntax in a such a text. All I need from you is an actual metric I can use by which to gauge my success. That is, provide me with an actual target number, and I will do what I can to demonstrate it. We can do this in number of instances per 1,000 words (since that is a metric you used earlier).

This can't ever really be conclusive because there isn't a baseline. I have mentioned this in other ways before. EModE has a lot of syntax that survives in late Modern English (the language that becomes the predominant form of English after 1650). And we realize that this is true because while we may occasionally find difficult passages in EModE texts, they aren't, broadly speaking, so far removed from our language that we cannot read them with a high level of understanding. According to Carmack, the Book of Mormon has a higher than expected incidence of certain kinds of syntax than does the typical EModE text. So the Book of Mormon shouldn't be used as the benchmark when discussing whether or not this sort of syntax is a useful marker for indicating EModE authorship. If the Book of Mormon really does have a larger amount of exclusively EModE syntax than typical EModE texts, then using the standard of the Book of Mormon we could only conclude that these other EModE texts were not written in the EModE period. This would falsify your premise that this is a viable indicator, right? This is why I suggest that the Book of Mormon has a higher usage of some of this syntax because it is deliberately using archaic language, rather than naturally using naturally using language that is later viewed as archaic.

But, I am certainly willing to go your route. Would you concede that the EModE theory is flawed if I can find a text that fits your description? This is a lot of work. I am not going to go through the process without some sort of commitment.

I agree with your assessment that we would need a baseline from known early modern authors in order to even know what the results from a 19th century author might mean. If I had the right software, I could probably do that analysis. I think if we agreed to some linguistic features to look at ahead of time and then both did the same analysis we could produce results that could then be compared. Are you interested in something like that?

[JarMan]

On 2/1/2023 at 4:48 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

So let's start with the word 'alarming'. Used in Alma 2:3 -

"Now this was alarming to the people of the church, and also to all those who had not been drawn away after the persuasions of Amlici;"

The OED puts this in the English language in 1680 (which matches up reasonably well with my searching).

Skousen lists 6 phrases he could not identify in early modern English. It appears that he used 1700 as a cut-off date.

Quote

A descendant of (with a plural subject) “they are a descendant of the Jews” (2 Nephi 30:4)

An eye singled to (singled rather than the expected single) “for God will that it shall be done with an eye singled to his glory” (Mormon 8:15)

Morrow month “on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you” (3 Nephi 3:8)

Murmur with (non-participatory with) “the people began to murmur with the king because of their afflictions” (Mosiah 21:6)

Visit your destruction “and those of the fourth generation shall visit your destruction” (Helaman 13:10)

Wax strong in years “they had many children which did grow up and began to wax strong in years” (3 Nephi 1:29)

I've found two of these: "morrow month" and "murmur with" leaving 4 phrases that haven't been found before 1700. I should also note that "single to" and "singled to" sound almost identical, if not identical, so the scribe could have easily mis-heard it. He also identifies 5 expression that weren't found either in EModE or ModE:

Quote

Cite your minds forward to ‘to urge you to consider’ “I would cite your minds forward to the time which the Lord gave these commandments” (Alma 13:1)

Pollutions ‘people who are polluted or who pollute’ “O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites . . . why have ye polluted the holy church?” (Mormon 8:38)

Retain ‘to take back’ “even until they had retained the one half of their property” (Helaman 4:16)

Subsequent to man ‘consequent to man’ “to remove the cause of diseases which was subsequent to man” (Alma 46:40)

Wax ‘to cause to become’ (causative usage, in the passive) “and they having been waxed strong in battle” (Alma 9:22)

This means only 3 - 9 phrases out of the entire text may not be early modern. But like the two that I found, it's still possible the others will also be found.

Somehow I missed your comment about "alarming" earlier. At any rate, here's the OED definition that I think applies to Alma 2:3:

Quote

4. a. transitive. To make (a person) feel suddenly frightened or in danger; to strike or fill with fear. Later commonly in somewhat weakened use: to fill with anxiety or unease; to cause concern to, worry. Also intransitive.

Then it provides this example:

Quote

1646   Perfect Diurnall No. 136. 1093   They are so Alarmed by our parties, that they are forced to keep in bodies, and can hardly go to Quarter.

I'm not sure where you're coming up with 1680.

Edited February 4, 2023 by JarMan

[Bernard Gui]

On 1/17/2023 at 9:49 PM, Kenngo1969 said:

I must admit, compared to Yours Truly, Scott (the protagonist in the short film linked above) is a Smooth, Suave, Debonair, Bassoon-Rockin' Lady Killer!   
 

 

Awesome. Another names for the bassoon is “fagotte.”

A little homage to Mason Williams…

Them Bassoooners by Bernard Gui

How about them bassoooners, ain’t they locos?

Ahuffin’ and apuffin’ on they bocals.

Puffin’ them Buffets, huffin’ them Heckels,

Honkin’ on they contras, bein’ Hydes and Jeckells.

Look at them bassoooners, ain’t they cartooonish?

Honkin’ on they reed, blowing’ noise buffooonish.

Them loooney toooney bassoooners, ain’t they the packet?

Fittzzin’ with them canes all day, makin’ such a rackett.

How to be a bassoooner? Don’t have to take no guff.

Jest strap on a buncha sticks, slap on a reed and puff.

 

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think if we agreed to some linguistic features to look at ahead of time and then both did the same analysis we could produce results that could then be compared. Are you interested in something like that?

This seems reasonable.

Without contesting the conclusions that may be being drawn here, I want to point out something - the Book of Mormon's original manuscript contains a number of issues we might term as textual errors - that is, orthographic errors, mis-spellings, that sort of thing. When we deal with single examples, there is (or should be) a possibility to view those instances that are found as errors and not as textual witnesses to a later development in the language.

A second thing to consider is this - Shakespeare appears to have brought roughly 1,700 words into the English language. Assuming that this is accurate for even a bare majority of these words, the first usage doesn't mean that there is an instantaneous adoption of the term. If a word is first used in the English language in 1680, the idea that it was widespread enough to be useful for dating an unknown text twenty years later is problematic - especially if that first source was not something that was as widespread or as popular as Shakespeare was.

Using a 1700 date is useful to Carmack and Skousen because it serves their purpose of claiming that language and forms that would not have been recognized as such by Joseph Smith. I think that you need to do a much better job of explaining your view of the history of the text of the Book of Mormon. Grotius would not have written in English. But for the EModE to be the basis of the text, it would have had to have been translated into English at some point. What is the point in time that you believe the Book of Mormon text was first translated into English (when it took on its EModE characteristics)?

Finally, the EModE period is characterized by a lack of formal syntax rules. While it is possible to find Book of Mormon syntax in EModE, often with any particular expression, there might have been several (if not many) different EModE syntactical expressions that could achieve the same meaning. How do we deal with the problem of cherry picking EModE syntax? To better express this perhaps - you mentioned a number of specific features of the Book of Mormon syntax - do you actually think that we can find an EModE text that contains anything like the exact set of syntax choices made in the Book of Mormon text? Carmack and Skousen seemed to find examples scattered across a very large corpus rather than centered in a handful of individual texts.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Somehow I missed your comment about "alarming" earlier. At any rate, here's the OED definition that I think applies to Alma 2:3:

The challenge here is that the definition you offer is of a transitive adjective.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

4. a. transitive. To make (a person) feel suddenly frightened or in danger; to strike or fill with fear. Later commonly in somewhat weakened use: to fill with anxiety or unease; to cause concern to, worry. Also intransitive.

It doesn't apply at all. Why? Because in the sentence in Alma 2:3, the word "alarming" is not a transitive adjective (it certainly isn't transitive). It comes from a verb, adding the -ing when it is used as a past participle. My entry in the OED that is relevant is this one:

Quote

alarming, ppl. a.
 (əˈlɑːmɪɳ)[f. alarm v. + -ing 2.]
alarming, ppl. a.
 Disturbing or exciting with the apprehension of danger.
1680: Burnet Rochester (1692) 86 “With such allarming Evidences.”
1769: Junius Lett. ii. 14 “The last charge..is of a most serious and alarming nature.”
1855: Macaulay Hist. Eng. IV. 278 “But one alarming report followed another fast.”

This is where I get the 1680 date. This also isn't quite accurate, because the use as an past participle verb form likely post-dates the use as an adjective. In fact, a quick look at Google doesn't give me any examples prior to the late 1700s.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[JarMan]

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The challenge here is that the definition you offer is of a transitive adjective.

It doesn't apply at all. Why? Because in the sentence in Alma 2:3, the word "alarming" is not a transitive adjective (it certainly isn't transitive). It comes from a verb, adding the -ing when it is used as a past participle. My entry in the OED that is relevant is this one:

This is where I get the 1680 date. This also isn't quite accurate, because the use as an past participle verb form likely post-dates the use as an adjective. In fact, a quick look at Google doesn't give me any examples prior to the late 1700s.

The definition I cited was for a transitive and intransitive verb. The example I provided was an intransitive verb. The BOM uses it as an intransitive verb.

They are so Alarmed by our parties. . .

Now this was alarming to the people. . .

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This seems reasonable.

Without contesting the conclusions that may be being drawn here, I want to point out something - the Book of Mormon's original manuscript contains a number of issues we might term as textual errors - that is, orthographic errors, mis-spellings, that sort of thing. When we deal with single examples, there is (or should be) a possibility to view those instances that are found as errors and not as textual witnesses to a later development in the language.

I've mentioned two potential errors already. The manuscript says "An eye singled to" instead of "single to" and we have "scourged" vs "scorched."

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

A second thing to consider is this - Shakespeare appears to have brought roughly 1,700 words into the English language. Assuming that this is accurate for even a bare majority of these words, the first usage doesn't mean that there is an instantaneous adoption of the term. If a word is first used in the English language in 1680, the idea that it was widespread enough to be useful for dating an unknown text twenty years later is problematic - especially if that first source was not something that was as widespread or as popular as Shakespeare was.

I agree with you on first known use and should point out that last known use offers a similar challenge. If we use either of them dogmatically it can lead to false conclusions. A good example from archaeology is the Clovis first hypothesis. Later discoveries clearly show earlier people. First known use is just that. We don't know what we don't know. One example of last known use that comes to mind, again from archaeology, is the last mammoths in the western hemisphere. That date keeps getting pushed later and later as new discoveries are made.

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Using a 1700 date is useful to Carmack and Skousen because it serves their purpose of claiming that language and forms that would not have been recognized as such by Joseph Smith. I think that you need to do a much better job of explaining your view of the history of the text of the Book of Mormon. Grotius would not have written in English. But for the EModE to be the basis of the text, it would have had to have been translated into English at some point. What is the point in time that you believe the Book of Mormon text was first translated into English (when it took on its EModE characteristics)?

I will let the linguistic evidence primarily inform my view of the history of the text. Based on the evidence so far, it appears we have a significant early modern production with somewhat minor modern redactions. I think textual clues give an earliest production date of about 1635. This could perhaps be pushed earlier, but certainly no earlier than 1611. As for a latest date or a more precise earliest date, that's where I want the linguistic evidence to inform me. If Grotius was the author, he wrote primarily in Latin, French, and Dutch so there would need to be an English translation at some point. But the author could be someone else that wrote in English or in any other language.

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Finally, the EModE period is characterized by a lack of formal syntax rules. While it is possible to find Book of Mormon syntax in EModE, often with any particular expression, there might have been several (if not many) different EModE syntactical expressions that could achieve the same meaning. How do we deal with the problem of cherry picking EModE syntax? To better express this perhaps - you mentioned a number of specific features of the Book of Mormon syntax - do you actually think that we can find an EModE text that contains anything like the exact set of syntax choices made in the Book of Mormon text? Carmack and Skousen seemed to find examples scattered across a very large corpus rather than centered in a handful of individual texts.

If a modern author could intentionally try to sound archaic, then so could an early modern author. But an early modern author, particularly an older one with some philological training, would have had more access to archaic syntax than a modern author, particularly a younger one with no training in philology, and therefore would have a better chance of reproducing multiple archaic forms. You're right, though, that the early modern texts might have some of the same problems as the modern texts in that we may not find the levels of concentrations we see in the Book of Mormon. But that's the whole reason we need some early modern control texts.

[Benjamin McGuire]

First, I apologize for the delay. I spent most of the last four days at my parents house, helping them take care of my sister who is recovering from a broken back.

On 2/4/2023 at 2:23 PM, JarMan said:

The definition I cited was for a transitive and intransitive verb. The example I provided was an intransitive verb. The BOM uses it as an intransitive verb.

No. Yes, you are right - after I reread it, it applies as both a transitive and an intransitive. But, it is not a verb. It was not a verb in the example I provided either. The abbreviation a. stands for adjective in the OED. The challenge you have is that alarmed and alarming are different words. And the occurrence of one does not imply the occurrence of the other. But, you are welcome to try and find an EModE example of "was alarming". I would be interested in seeing it.

On 2/4/2023 at 1:17 AM, JarMan said:

4. a. transitive. To make (a person) feel suddenly frightened or in danger; to strike or fill with fear. Later commonly in somewhat weakened use: to fill with anxiety or unease; to cause concern to, worry. Also intransitive.

At any rate,

On 2/4/2023 at 2:23 PM, JarMan said:

I've mentioned two potential errors already. The manuscript says "An eye singled to" instead of "single to" and we have "scourged" vs "scorched."

This isn't what I was discussing. Generally speaking, when we look at texts, we can almost always find errors. Some of these errors are simple spelling errors. Some of them are orthographic. Skousen and Carmack look at errors as having different kinds of causes. Some of them they attribute to a vocal transmission of the text (that they believe occurred as Joseph Smith read the text from his seer stone out loud to his scribe). This is what you are referring to here. I don't want to get into the problem right now that this creates for your use of these errors because I don't believe that you believe that Joseph Smith read the text from a seer stone. But, having said that, there are places where Carmack and Skousen determine that what appears to be an error should be kept because they can find examples of similar syntax in the EModE corpus. That is, they prefer to avoid emending a difficult text when they can find parallel syntax in the EModE corpus and prefer to emend the text when they can't. This is a methodological decision that rests on an unproven assumption.

There is a similar thing that goes on in Biblical literature that is described by David Clines in his essay What Remains of the Hebrew Bible:

Quote

One thinks of the inordinate expense of effort commentators across the globe are laying out to explain texts that are in all probability corrupt. No doubt we should do all within our power to explain the texts we have (in practice most commentators restrict themselves to explaining the Masoretic text, privileging it over all the other textual witnesses, as usual), but it is a moot point to what lengths we should go when an alternative text is available by way of emendation.

There is a combination of relevant issues here. There is a desire to privilege the original text (this is combined with Skousen's and Carmack's view of a tightly controlled translation). And the use of EModE is in part a way to increase the privilege of that original text. When, in many places, it seems quite reasonable (without their assumptions) to suggest that perhaps the text should be emended instead. It is ideas like this that call into question the bias that Skousen and Carmack have with regards to the text and the problem this bias creates for your use of their work in your theory. It isn't that they don't put in emendations occasionally, it's that they prefer not to - especially when they can attribute the poor grammar or syntax to their EModE theory. I hope this was better explained this time.

Now, I am going to make a suggestion for something you should read:

Harold Love's Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. I have my own copy. The first half is largely devoted to older strategies on attributing authorship - those developed before we started really working with statistical models. The second half gets into the statistical models (written in 2002, the second half is significantly out of date at this point, but the first half is not). He discusses, in quite a bit of detail, how external and internal data should be used, and what sorts of information qualifies for this kind of use. Perhaps it would serve as a good springboard to discussing your theory.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

helping them take care of my sister who is recovering from a broken back.

How is she doing?   (If you don’t mind sharing just a bit, ignore the question if you prefer)

Edited February 8, 2023 by Calm

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

How is she doing?   (If you don’t mind sharing just a bit, ignore the question if you prefer)

There is a lot of pain and pills. She is recovering well (if a little slowly - she is 60). She works from home and the initial suggestion was that she should be able to start working again about a week after she was released from the hospital. I think this is a little optimistic, but she is making noticeable improvements every day. While it will be another 10 days before the staples come out, and she will likely wear a neck brace for significantly longer than that, I think that she should be able to start work again a week from now. She was released last Saturday. She had a vertebrae in her upper back fracture badly - and when they went in, they discovered that the interior of the bone had severely degenerated (the term that was used was 'mush'), so the bone was rebuilt with a couple of metal plates. It will be another day or two before the biopsies come back on the bone. The condition of the bone means that there was an as yet unknown underlying cause. There was no immediate cause for the fracture (no falls or anything like that) - they believe it happened because of the existing damage. The big concerns are that the bone damage was caused by either advanced osteoporosis (which seems unlikely given other factors) or cancer (a tumor growing in the bone). If it isn't either of these, then it will be hard to determine a cause. It could have been caused by something like an old infection some time in the past - it would be hard to determine when and why. While that isn't great either, it would mean that there is limited ongoing risk of further damage in other bones. Obviously, if either of these other issues show up, it will not be good.

My wife and I had been planning the visit for some time. A year ago, I signed my father up for a service called Storyworth. They sent him a question a week for a year (I generally picked the questions out). At the end of the year, the put the answers together into a book (on demand vanity press sort of thing - they send him a copy as part of the service and the rest of us can buy one). It has been a fascinating process - and we ended up with a memoir filled with information that would otherwise never have come out - about his relationship with his family members, his grandparents, that sort of thing. Part of what I enjoyed was that the quality of his memory and his answers improved dramatically over the year. We may find some other way to keep this sort of thing going for him. I was going to visit to help my dad edit the answers and organize it prior to finishing it up. We got enough done that we can do the rest over the phone over the next few weeks. At any rate, this other event happened unexpectedly - and since my wife and I work in healthcare, it was serendipitous that we arrived just before she came from the hospital and we were able to help considerably with the first few days of recovery. That and all of the other normal stuff (I guess) that we do for our parents in their 80s.

[Calm]

Storyworth is a great idea.  And for those really interested in having parents’ life stories but are putting it off for whatever reason, be aware you may lose your chance if you don’t start early.  My husband’s parents were in a car accident and his mom suffered severe brain damage, so her childhood and young adulthood in Australia before she met her husband became unavailable as well as her own perspectives of their family life; my dad died of food poisoning or some bug quite unexpectedly a month after they moved close by.  He was quite sharp and likely to live many more years.  I was excited that it would be a chance for him to stick around long enough to share stories with my kids and grandkids.  And it turned out Mom’s dementia was much more advanced than anyone had thought…I hadn’t even thought of it as dementia at that point, Dad had not be sharing any of his difficulties with her with anyone else and she masked it well.  When I sat down not long afterwards to go over photos of her extended family and childhood and marriage, she not only couldn’t recall, but wasn’t interested.  And then she started coming up with stories no one had heard before so very hard to know if they had happened.  
 

Life rarely goes like one plans in my experience.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Calm

[JarMan]

9 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

First, I apologize for the delay. I spent most of the last four days at my parents house, helping them take care of my sister who is recovering from a broken back.

No. Yes, you are right - after I reread it, it applies as both a transitive and an intransitive. But, it is not a verb. It was not a verb in the example I provided either. The abbreviation a. stands for adjective in the OED. The challenge you have is that alarmed and alarming are different words. And the occurrence of one does not imply the occurrence of the other. But, you are welcome to try and find an EModE example of "was alarming". I would be interested in seeing it.

I was using the verb definition for alarm rather than the adjective definition for alarming. But this definition shows usage from 1658. S. Hammond Quakers House Built upon Sand 1   I am the rather drawn out at such alaruming times, for securing soules. 

9 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This isn't what I was discussing. Generally speaking, when we look at texts, we can almost always find errors. Some of these errors are simple spelling errors. Some of them are orthographic. Skousen and Carmack look at errors as having different kinds of causes. Some of them they attribute to a vocal transmission of the text (that they believe occurred as Joseph Smith read the text from his seer stone out loud to his scribe). This is what you are referring to here. I don't want to get into the problem right now that this creates for your use of these errors because I don't believe that you believe that Joseph Smith read the text from a seer stone. But, having said that, there are places where Carmack and Skousen determine that what appears to be an error should be kept because they can find examples of similar syntax in the EModE corpus. That is, they prefer to avoid emending a difficult text when they can find parallel syntax in the EModE corpus and prefer to emend the text when they can't. This is a methodological decision that rests on an unproven assumption.

There is a similar thing that goes on in Biblical literature that is described by David Clines in his essay What Remains of the Hebrew Bible:

There is a combination of relevant issues here. There is a desire to privilege the original text (this is combined with Skousen's and Carmack's view of a tightly controlled translation). And the use of EModE is in part a way to increase the privilege of that original text. When, in many places, it seems quite reasonable (without their assumptions) to suggest that perhaps the text should be emended instead. It is ideas like this that call into question the bias that Skousen and Carmack have with regards to the text and the problem this bias creates for your use of their work in your theory. It isn't that they don't put in emendations occasionally, it's that they prefer not to - especially when they can attribute the poor grammar or syntax to their EModE theory. I hope this was better explained this time.

Let's look at an example from Skousen--the more part of. The BOM uses this phrase (or a close variation) 26 times. Skousen claims this phrase was obsolete by the 1800s. I searched ECCO and couldn't find any examples from the 1700s, although the OED gives a 1768 example. EEBO has many examples from the 1500s and 1600s. I did a simple query and sorted the results by frequency. Here I list the number of occurrences in a single work with the year it was published for the top 25 results.

57	1577
52	1587
26	1683
20	1587
20	1676
20	1613
19	1630
19	1587
19	1636
17	1666
15	1600
15	1644
15	1569
11	1682
10	1655
8	1660
8	1625
7	1578
7	1655
7	1585
7	1685
6	1600
6	1659
5	1533
5	1583

I will do some more analysis to determine usage rate and context. In the meantime, how do you explain use of the more part of in the BOM?

9 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Now, I am going to make a suggestion for something you should read:

Harold Love's Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. I have my own copy. The first half is largely devoted to older strategies on attributing authorship - those developed before we started really working with statistical models. The second half gets into the statistical models (written in 2002, the second half is significantly out of date at this point, but the first half is not). He discusses, in quite a bit of detail, how external and internal data should be used, and what sorts of information qualifies for this kind of use. Perhaps it would serve as a good springboard to discussing your theory.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm also looking for sources that speak to the more general approach I'm taking to identify time/location, as opposed to author. I know this has commonly been done with the bible, but I wonder if there are other examples that try to determine more recent time periods.

Edited February 8, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Let's look at an example from Skousen--the more part of. The BOM uses this phrase (or a close variation) 26 times. Skousen claims this phrase was obsolete by the 1800s. I searched ECCO and couldn't find any examples from the 1700s, although the OED gives a 1768 example. EEBO has many examples from the 1500s and 1600s. I did a simple query and sorted the results by frequency. Here I list the number of occurrences in a single work with the year it was published for the top 25 results.

Edward A. Freeman (1823-1892) uses the phrase "the more part of" 7 times in his Outlines of History published in 1872. Another 3 times in his General Sketch of History published in 1876.

William Morris (1834-1896) used it in his The Life and Death of Jason published in 1867. And again in The Earthly Paradise published in either 1870 or 1871.

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848) uses it in his Curiosities of Literature (1808).

The 1875 Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina uses it twice.

And there are dozens more works in the mid to late 19th century that use the phrase. How do I explain it? It is clearly an attempt to use archaic language. I found dozens of volumes using the phrase with a quick search in an archive of American texts from the 18th and 19th centuries. I vetted a bunch of them to make sure that I wasn't dealing with column issues in the OCR. Part of the issue is that the use of the specific databases that Skousen and Carmack use (and now you are using) creates flawed data.

Even a quick search on Google Books for the exact phrase "the more part of" yields hundreds of results. Even more fascinating for the purpose of this discussion is Hendrik Poutsma's 1914 A Grammar of Late Modern English: The Composite Sentence. It has an entry for the phrase "the more part" which mentions: "The more part is still in use as an archaism," (all of his examples actually exist in the phrase "the more part of"). This isn't a particularly difficult issue to deal with, especially in a text that is deliberately trying to use archaisms as a rhetorical device.

There is another problem that you are going to face here. You provide the top 25 texts in terms of frequency. ECCO contains 180,000 works. The Book of Mormon as a text from within that time period would be number 4 on that list (in the top 0.003%). That would make it a very clear outlier - not at all typical of a text from that period. This doesn't help your case, it makes it worse. It means that the Book of Mormon is anything but a typical EModE text in this regard. It is just as easy to see this overabundance of archaic language as a deliberate inclusion of archaic language rather than a natural expression of current language. Skousen and Carmack just want to argue that Joseph couldn't have understood the syntax. While I dispute that, their goal is different from yours and their data doesn't translate well to your questions.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

I know this has commonly been done with the bible, but I wonder if there are other examples that try to determine more recent time periods.

Love discusses this in that volume. The problem that occurs, as he points out, is that even a small gap in time can create very different outcomes - not just in the assessment, but in the way that we read the text (it creates something of a circular problem). He notes this on page 75:

Quote

The point of the dating exercise is that adopting an early or a late date gives a totally different context not only to the author but to the writing. If certain events described took place in the 1840s rather than the 1830s a responsive reader will recreate them in different ways, will visualise clothing, and interpret manners and social assumptions differently, and in the end will construct a different Walter: a true dissident Victorian rather than a hangover from Regency libertinism.

10 years is not much of a difference, but in the context of the text he was using to illustrate his points, it is big deal. Generally though, Love is trying to connect actual events in the text to a historical period. One of my favorites of this sort (which is not cited by Love) comes from The Phantom of the Opera. In the prologue to the novel, Leroux wrote this:

Quote

Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. All that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persian's documents precisely; and a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion. It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at once able to prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost. I made the acting-manager put this proof to the test with his own hand; and it is now a matter of supreme indifference to me if the papers pretend that the body was that of a victim of the Commune.

Not much was made of this statement in the novel until 1987 (77 years after the novel's publication), when a room with a time capsule containing 24 gramaphone recordings placed there in 1907 was rediscovered. This sort of thing creates a solid connection to a specific place and time. The Book of Mormon doesn't have this sort of thing (other than perhaps the one sentence that you keep pointing out that is an apparent reference to Joseph Smith).

In the case of the Book of Mormon, you are claiming a two hundred year difference between when the Book was published, and when you argue it was written. Discussing another example, he concludes (p. 77):

Quote

 In a case such as this, where internal evidence has taken on an external function, contextual reasoning becomes so heavily speculative as to be of little value. The most we can hope to do is to invent increasingly complex scenarios and see which of them survive, whether by Popper’s criterion of falsifiability or because they turn out to reveal unpredicted links and analogies.

I think that with the Book of Mormon, there are particular difficulties to establishing this sort of internal-external linkage. This is why you need to describe the meaning as allegorical (because there isn't anything that closely connects the text to a historical period). Even the names largely do not follow any particular pattern. So, it becomes 'heavily speculative'.

[JarMan]

14 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Edward A. Freeman (1823-1892) uses the phrase "the more part of" 7 times in his Outlines of History published in 1872. Another 3 times in his General Sketch of History published in 1876.

William Morris (1834-1896) used it in his The Life and Death of Jason published in 1867. And again in The Earthly Paradise published in either 1870 or 1871.

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848) uses it in his Curiosities of Literature (1808).

The 1875 Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina uses it twice.

And there are dozens more works in the mid to late 19th century that use the phrase. How do I explain it? It is clearly an attempt to use archaic language. I found dozens of volumes using the phrase with a quick search in an archive of American texts from the 18th and 19th centuries. I vetted a bunch of them to make sure that I wasn't dealing with column issues in the OCR. Part of the issue is that the use of the specific databases that Skousen and Carmack use (and now you are using) creates flawed data.

Even a quick search on Google Books for the exact phrase "the more part of" yields hundreds of results. Even more fascinating for the purpose of this discussion is Hendrik Poutsma's 1914 A Grammar of Late Modern English: The Composite Sentence. It has an entry for the phrase "the more part" which mentions: "The more part is still in use as an archaism," (all of his examples actually exist in the phrase "the more part of"). This isn't a particularly difficult issue to deal with, especially in a text that is deliberately trying to use archaisms as a rhetorical device.

The problem here is that most of what you are identifying is what Skousen called "false positives." The google hits are overwhelmingly reprints of early modern texts or British texts that use "boilerplate" legal language. The D'Israeli source quotes an early modern text. Freeman and Morris are late hits by Oxford educated scholars familiar with early modern texts. The Geological source is from 1875.

In short, there are no American sources before or near 1830. The British sources are reprints of early modern texts or texts that use archaic legal language. This is important because the Book of Mormon doesn't use "the more part of" in the sense of the British legal meaning. The BoM use is consistent with a meaning whose last known use is in the 1600s.

The theory that a 19th Century American person was trying to sound archaic is not the best explanation based on the available evidence. Known pseudo-archaic texts from this milieu don't reproduce this syntax, for one. And the actual sources that used this syntax along with the meaning used in the BoM are separated by centuries and an ocean. The best explanation for this single construct is that it was produced in Europe in the mid-to-late 1500s. The next best explanation is that it was produced by a later writer familiar with the Holinshed Chronicles. A European Anglo from the mid-1600s is a much better candidate than a North American from the early 1800s.

[JarMan]

15 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There is another problem that you are going to face here. You provide the top 25 texts in terms of frequency. ECCO contains 180,000 works. The Book of Mormon as a text from within that time period would be number 4 on that list (in the top 0.003%). That would make it a very clear outlier - not at all typical of a text from that period. This doesn't help your case, it makes it worse. It means that the Book of Mormon is anything but a typical EModE text in this regard. It is just as easy to see this overabundance of archaic language as a deliberate inclusion of archaic language rather than a natural expression of current language. Skousen and Carmack just want to argue that Joseph couldn't have understood the syntax. While I dispute that, their goal is different from yours and their data doesn't translate well to your questions.

The BoM usage rate is reasonably close to Holinshed's Chronicles. Skousen lists 86 instances of "the more part of" with 17 additional instances of "the more part" in about 2 million words. This is a usage rate of 4 or 5 per 100,000 words. The BoM uses 26 instances in about 270,000 words (250,000 if you exclude the large biblical portions) or about 10 per 100,000 words. Obviously the 86 instances in Holinshed are not evenly distributed throughout, so with a random sample of blocks of 250,000 consecutive words, we would expect some would have a higher usage rate than the BoM. This doesn't make the BoM a clear outlier. Instead, it suggests late 1500s authorship. Or it could be a 1600s writer expressing natural language at an exaggerated rate. It definitely does not suggest an 1800s author. 

15 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Love discusses this in that volume. The problem that occurs, as he points out, is that even a small gap in time can create very different outcomes - not just in the assessment, but in the way that we read the text (it creates something of a circular problem). He notes this on page 75:

10 years is not much of a difference, but in the context of the text he was using to illustrate his points, it is big deal. Generally though, Love is trying to connect actual events in the text to a historical period. One of my favorites of this sort (which is not cited by Love) comes from The Phantom of the Opera. In the prologue to the novel, Leroux wrote this:

Not much was made of this statement in the novel until 1987 (77 years after the novel's publication), when a room with a time capsule containing 24 gramaphone recordings placed there in 1907 was rediscovered. This sort of thing creates a solid connection to a specific place and time. The Book of Mormon doesn't have this sort of thing (other than perhaps the one sentence that you keep pointing out that is an apparent reference to Joseph Smith).

In the case of the Book of Mormon, you are claiming a two hundred year difference between when the Book was published, and when you argue it was written. Discussing another example, he concludes (p. 77):

I think that with the Book of Mormon, there are particular difficulties to establishing this sort of internal-external linkage. This is why you need to describe the meaning as allegorical (because there isn't anything that closely connects the text to a historical period). Even the names largely do not follow any particular pattern. So, it becomes 'heavily speculative'.

For me, the exercise of trying to connect the text to a specific milieu is largely about excluding what doesn't fit. People who believe that it doesn't fit an ancient Judaic milieu normally assume 1800s authorship. Then they find examples that confirm this view. Others see the BoM as an ancient work that is partially a product of JS's world (my former view). Then they find examples that confirm this view. And there is a lot that fits. The problem here is what you have been saying all along, which is that people don't consider the negative evidence. There's a lot that doesn't fit. Two quick examples, here, both of which are Enlightenment ideas. First, with all of the themes regarding government, we don't ever see separation of government power from an Enlightenment pov. Second, we don't ever see secular governments from an enlightenment pov. The importance of these two ideas in shaping a radically different modern world can hardly be overstated. Somehow the BoM, a work that otherwise gushes with anachronisms, is completely oblivious to these foundational western ideas.

[Benjamin McGuire]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

The problem here is that most of what you are identifying is what Skousen called "false positives."

No. This is simply not true. These are not reprints. They are original texts. This is part of the reason why I included the 1875 Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina in the list. Not only is it typical in terms of date, the content of the entire text contains no significant references to earlier literature. So here are the two examples from pages 34-35 and 136:

Quote

It is noticeable that both these rivers receive the more part of their waters and all their larger tributaries from the north; those of the Catawba, North Fork, Linville, Upper Creek, John's River, Lower Creek and the three "Little Rivers": those of the Yadkin, Lewis's Fork ...

There remains one other Huronian tract, whose formations compose the most westernly rocky zone of the State, including the mass of the Smoky Mountains and its eastern escarpment for the more part of its course, from the head waters of Laurel River in Madison county, near the Big Bald, to Cherokee; widening southward until it includes almost the whole length of the latter county, in the transverse section of its strata.

It is clearly an American source.  Now, you are trying to narrow the window down by arguing  that it must be an American source near or before 1830. So I can provide that. Let's try this one. This was published in 1824 in New York City by Mahlon Day (an American publisher). It is a tract published by the Society of Friends (the Quakers). It records a sermon delivered by the Reverend Ezra Sampson (an American clergyman). The context reads:

Quote

If we take a careful survey of American Society, I believe we shall find that the more part of the families who have experienced a distressing reverse in their circumstances, owe it to one or other of the three following causes - the inheritance of wealth - the greediness of wealth - and the affectation of wealth.

A text delivered by an American, about American society and published in America by an American publisher in the 1820s.

I am not going to take the time to review all of the instances. There are certainly plenty of examples that fit the issues that you raise. The problem is that neither yourself, nor Skousen or Carmack have actually reviewed all of the literature that is available to be able to make this statement: "In short, there are no American sources before or near 1830." It is not only falisifiable, it was really easy for me to do so.

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

This is important because the Book of Mormon doesn't use "the more part of" in the sense of the British legal meaning. The BoM use is consistent with a meaning whose last known use is in the 1600s.

And see, this simply isn't true. And my sources (that you didn't bother to look up) illustrate readings that are not a British legal meaning. I suppose that this is, in your opinion, one of the better documented claims that Carmack has made. The uses that I find illustrate my point. The language, as a bit archaic, is used because in in the 19th century (and even in the 20th century and beyond), archaic language became associated with formal language. Just look at Mormonism and its 'language of prayer' which uses 17th century forms as a way of creating formal speech. Sometimes it is used to create a sense of another place (especially in fiction). But the use of archaism as a rhetorical strategy is both widely known and widely used.

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

The BoM usage rate is reasonably close to Holinshed's Chronicles. Skousen lists 86 instances of "the more part of" with 17 additional instances of "the more part" in about 2 million words. This is a usage rate of 4 or 5 per 100,000 words. The BoM uses 26 instances in about 270,000 words (250,000 if you exclude the large biblical portions) or about 10 per 100,000 words. Obviously the 86 instances in Holinshed are not evenly distributed throughout, so with a random sample of blocks of 250,000 consecutive words, we would expect some would have a higher usage rate than the BoM. This doesn't make the BoM a clear outlier. Instead, it suggests late 1500s authorship. Or it could be a 1600s writer expressing natural language at an exaggerated rate. It definitely does not suggest an 1800s author. 

It doesn't suggest authorship in the late 1500s or early 1600s. You are handpicking examples instead of trying to produce a baseline. In any case, what you haven't done is made a coherent argument against the point that the language, while considered archaic in the early 19th century, wasn't still in current use - in New York - in the United States - and in original literature. The fact that this phrase is used in a dictionary in the first part of the 20th century which explains that the phrase is still in use (even if archaic) should really be a strong clue that your position is not on solid ground. But, you are welcome to take my examples and demonstrate how I have misused them ... my argument is also falsifiable.

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

For me, the exercise of trying to connect the text to a specific milieu is largely about excluding what doesn't fit. People who believe that it doesn't fit an ancient Judaic milieu normally assume 1800s authorship. Then they find examples that confirm this view. Others see the BoM as an ancient work that is partially a product of JS's world (my former view). Then they find examples that confirm this view. And there is a lot that fits. The problem here is what you have been saying all along, which is that people don't consider the negative evidence. There's a lot that doesn't fit. Two quick examples, here, both of which are Enlightenment ideas. First, with all of the themes regarding government, we don't ever see separation of government power from an Enlightenment pov. Second, we don't ever see secular governments from an enlightenment pov. The importance of these two ideas in shaping a radically different modern world can hardly be overstated. Somehow the BoM, a work that otherwise gushes with anachronisms, is completely oblivious to these foundational western ideas.

My response here will be necessarily brief because of the absence of details in your arguments. First, if there is a lot that fits in an early 19th century context, then there is going to be a lot that doesn't fit in a 16th-17th century context. You have to deal with these negatives in a way that doesn't simply refer to a redaction of the text. Second, the Book of Mormon has a great deal of discussion of the separation of government. What do you think happens in Alma 4? Or in the conflict between the freemen and the kingmen? What is a government from an enlightenment point of view (I am not asking for my own edification - I want to know what it is you are looking for). And what is different in 1828 than exists in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. I wouldn't mind having this discussion. Grotius isn't known nearly as well for this theology as he is for his political theory. And we could discuss all sorts of interesting things in the context of Grotius in the Book of Mormon. Why is it, for example, that the only time the Book of Mormon discusses taxes, it is from the perspective of wicked kings? There is a lot of room here to compare the Book of Mormon's perspective with Grotius. Perhaps we should get into the nuts and bolts of it.

Finally, what do we do with Nephi's declaration of "liken[ing] all scriptures unto us". Where would you place this in terms of an author's milieu? This represents a fairly large chunk of the Book of Mormon including examples (from Nephi) illustrating how he understands this idea works. What is the closest thing you can find to this idea in the late 16th and early 17th century?

There are going to be problems with this approach, which doesn't mean that it is a bad approach. I just think that you should have a look at some of the recognized and published discussions on the pitfalls to avoid as you do this.

[JarMan]

17 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. This is simply not true. These are not reprints. They are original texts. This is part of the reason why I included the 1875 Report of the Geological Survey of North Carolina in the list. Not only is it typical in terms of date, the content of the entire text contains no significant references to earlier literature. So here are the two examples from pages 34-35 and 136:

It is clearly an American source.  Now, you are trying to narrow the window down by arguing  that it must be an American source near or before 1830. So I can provide that. Let's try this one. This was published in 1824 in New York City by Mahlon Day (an American publisher). It is a tract published by the Society of Friends (the Quakers). It records a sermon delivered by the Reverend Ezra Sampson (an American clergyman). The context reads:

A text delivered by an American, about American society and published in America by an American publisher in the 1820s.

I am not going to take the time to review all of the instances. There are certainly plenty of examples that fit the issues that you raise. The problem is that neither yourself, nor Skousen or Carmack have actually reviewed all of the literature that is available to be able to make this statement: "In short, there are no American sources before or near 1830." It is not only falisifiable, it was really easy for me to do so.

And see, this simply isn't true. And my sources (that you didn't bother to look up) illustrate readings that are not a British legal meaning. I suppose that this is, in your opinion, one of the better documented claims that Carmack has made. The uses that I find illustrate my point. The language, as a bit archaic, is used because in in the 19th century (and even in the 20th century and beyond), archaic language became associated with formal language. Just look at Mormonism and its 'language of prayer' which uses 17th century forms as a way of creating formal speech. Sometimes it is used to create a sense of another place (especially in fiction). But the use of archaism as a rhetorical strategy is both widely known and widely used.

I did look up all your sources and commented on every one of them. They don't help your case. Do I really need to explain why a source 45 years after the fact is not a hit? I reviewed about the first 50 hits on google books. They all fit the profile I described. Carmack claims to have done an exhaustive search on google books. That was in 2015, so it's possible some were added since then. You didn't provide the source for the Sampson sermon. But if that one checks out, you've only identified one hit, not "plenty."

But obsolescence or not obsolescence is not really the issue here. The point of showing little or no use is that it narrows down the options so that your theory is the only possible explanation. But in order for someone to purposefully make a text sound archaic, they have to know what archaic actually sounds like. And the best way (probably the only way) to do that is to be familiar with archaic sources. The most likely source for a modern author would have to be Holinshed's Chronicles. It likely would have been the most available and its use appears to be closest to the BoM. I'll provide some analysis to support that later.

17 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

It doesn't suggest authorship in the late 1500s or early 1600s. You are handpicking examples instead of trying to produce a baseline. In any case, what you haven't done is made a coherent argument against the point that the language, while considered archaic in the early 19th century, wasn't still in current use - in New York - in the United States - and in original literature. The fact that this phrase is used in a dictionary in the first part of the 20th century which explains that the phrase is still in use (even if archaic) should really be a strong clue that your position is not on solid ground. But, you are welcome to take my examples and demonstrate how I have misused them ... my argument is also falsifiable.

The language wasn't in use to any appreciable extent in JS's time. That's clear. You are overstating the strength of your case by relying on late examples. Archaic uses can come back into limited or specialized usage when archaic texts become more readily available. The fact that we are talking about this particular archaism demonstrates my point. But, as I said earlier, it doesn't matter. I'm not trying to demonstrate the same thing as Skousen and Carmack as you have mentioned yourself. At this point, I'm trying to show why early modern authorship is a much more likely explanation than modern authorship. So let's start with what I think is reasonably clear--Hollinshed, or perhaps other works near that time, had to have been the model for this particular BoM phrase if the text is pseudo-archaic. Nothing else can explain the frequency and particular variety in the BoM (analysis forthcoming). This doesn't exclude a modern author, of course. But it's clear that the likelihood of an early modern author having access to Hollinshed is much higher than a modern American. In addition, an early modern author likely would have been exposed to this phrase in his own environment, while a modern American very likely would not have been.

[JarMan]

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

My response here will be necessarily brief because of the absence of details in your arguments. First, if there is a lot that fits in an early 19th century context, then there is going to be a lot that doesn't fit in a 16th-17th century context. You have to deal with these negatives in a way that doesn't simply refer to a redaction of the text. Second, the Book of Mormon has a great deal of discussion of the separation of government. What do you think happens in Alma 4? Or in the conflict between the freemen and the kingmen? What is a government from an enlightenment point of view (I am not asking for my own edification - I want to know what it is you are looking for). And what is different in 1828 than exists in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. I wouldn't mind having this discussion. Grotius isn't known nearly as well for this theology as he is for his political theory. And we could discuss all sorts of interesting things in the context of Grotius in the Book of Mormon. Why is it, for example, that the only time the Book of Mormon discusses taxes, it is from the perspective of wicked kings? There is a lot of room here to compare the Book of Mormon's perspective with Grotius. Perhaps we should get into the nuts and bolts of it.

I haven't tried to deal with any negatives, beside the one I brought up, by appealing to a redactor. The only reason I think there even was a redactor is because of something Skousen brought up, which is that there are no clearly obsolete words in the BoM. A modern scribe copying an archaic manuscript could have replaced obsolete words with modern ones fairly easily. I'm not arguing for a re-working of any content.

What I mean by separation of powers is what we all learned in high school civics. There are three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial that must act independently to assure the freedom of the people. This is clearly an enlightenment idea that started to be developed around the time of the English Civil War in the mid 1600s. Locke wrote about it late in the 1600s and Montesquieu is best known for enumerating it in the mid 1700s. Before that, there were many systems that had separation of powers to some extent, but none that I know of that look like the western system that began to be developed during the Enlightenment.

As far as discussion on Grotius and the BoM, I'm happy to dig around and discuss any topic that interests you.

Edited February 10, 2023 by JarMan

[JarMan]

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Finally, what do we do with Nephi's declaration of "liken[ing] all scriptures unto us". Where would you place this in terms of an author's milieu? This represents a fairly large chunk of the Book of Mormon including examples (from Nephi) illustrating how he understands this idea works. What is the closest thing you can find to this idea in the late 16th and early 17th century?

I appreciate this challenge. I don't have an answer for you right now, but I will look into this.

Edited February 10, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

Do I really need to explain why a source 45 years after the fact is not a hit?

Yes, you do. Part of the reason why you need to do this is the fact that we aren't talking about little slices of time, we are talking about lifespans for human beings. There is a limit to the time frames in which we can discuss the disappearance of language and its use and effectiveness precisely because people live a relatively long time. The clergyman that I quoted lived from 1749 to 1828. We have only a tiny, tiny fraction of his legacy of sermons. The fact remains that the usage can be extrapolated on a much larger period by these occasional hits - because this is how language works. Language doesn't simply stop being used for 30 years and then come back into usage. It remains the entire time - especially something like this, which doesn't have technical meanings or shifting definitions.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

You didn't provide the source for the Sampson sermon. But if that one checks out, you've only identified one hit, not "plenty."

You are right, I didn't provide the source, I apologize. At the same time, the Google search wasn't my primary source - I was using other databases which more narrowly focus on the 18th and 19th centuries. But one hit is all it takes to falsify a statement with absolutes like the one that you provided:

On 2/8/2023 at 11:54 PM, JarMan said:

In short, there are no American sources before or near 1830.

In short, there are American sources before or near 1830. And I have no doubts that I can locate more. I didn't devote a lot of time to this - and I don't really feel that obligated to do so because you clearly haven't devoted a lot of time to it either.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

But obsolescence or not obsolescence is not really the issue here. The point of showing little or no use is that it narrows down the options so that your theory is the only possible explanation. But in order for someone to purposefully make a text sound archaic, they have to know what archaic actually sounds like. And the best way (probably the only way) to do that is to be familiar with archaic sources. The most likely source for a modern author would have to be Holinshed's Chronicles. It likely would have been the most available and its use appears to be closest to the BoM. I'll provide some analysis to support that later.

You can try, but you aren't going to succeed. Why? Because the kinds of comparisons that you continue to assert are meaningful simply aren't as meaningful as you think - especially in a question like this.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

Archaic uses can come back into limited or specialized usage when archaic texts become more readily available.

CFR.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

But, as I said earlier, it doesn't matter.

Yes, I know it doesn't matter - because there is simply no argument that can be made that can apparently falsify your theory. It actually does matter.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

So let's start with what I think is reasonably clear--Hollinshed, or perhaps other works near that time, had to have been the model for this particular BoM phrase if the text is pseudo-archaic.

This isn't an assumption I would agree with. In particular because we are talking about an archaism that continued to be in use in 1912. It was never out of use. And this means that the Book of Mormon isn't required to pull it from any particular source text. It is difficult to assert a genetic claim (of the sort you are now making). I am not sure, yet, that you even understand the implications of the claims that you are making.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

In addition, an early modern author likely would have been exposed to this phrase in his own environment, while a modern American very likely would not have been.

I don't agree with this either. I don't think you can demonstrate this. And, I don't think that a phrase being used uncommonly means a whole lot - especially if it is a part of the oral language more than it is the written language (which I have mentioned previously).

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

I haven't tried to deal with any negatives, beside the one I brought up, by appealing to a redactor. The only reason I think there even was a redactor is because of something Skousen brought up, which is that there are no clearly obsolete words in the BoM. A modern scribe copying an archaic manuscript could have replaced obsolete words with modern ones fairly easily. I'm not arguing for a re-working of any content.

There are certainly places where the King James language is updated. I think that you are using this notion of a redactor rather loosely. It serves a lot of purposes but it isn't defined. Perhaps you could point to the textual evidence that suggests a redaction has occurred. We certainly have a lot of discussions on this question when we deal with other historical manuscripts, so it isn't a complete shot in the dark to try to address this.

5 hours ago, JarMan said:

What I mean by separation of powers is what we all learned in high school civics.

So, as I asked, what do you make of Alma 4 in that context?

Backing up just briefly -

On 2/9/2023 at 12:50 AM, JarMan said:

The BoM usage rate is reasonably close to Holinshed's Chronicles. Skousen lists 86 instances of "the more part of" with 17 additional instances of "the more part" in about 2 million words. This is a usage rate of 4 or 5 per 100,000 words. The BoM uses 26 instances in about 270,000 words (250,000 if you exclude the large biblical portions) or about 10 per 100,000 words. Obviously the 86 instances in Holinshed are not evenly distributed throughout, so with a random sample of blocks of 250,000 consecutive words, we would expect some would have a higher usage rate than the BoM. This doesn't make the BoM a clear outlier. Instead, it suggests late 1500s authorship. Or it could be a 1600s writer expressing natural language at an exaggerated rate. It definitely does not suggest an 1800s author. 

You are missing the point. Holinshed's Chronicles is itself an outlier in it's usage. You provided data that illustrated this yourself when you provided a list of the frequency count from the 25 texts. I duplicated your search - the basic search engages just over 60,000 texts. Of those 60,000 texts, the phrase was only found in 313 of the texts. The total number of uses of the phrase across that 60,000 text corpus was 843. The Book of Mormon's usage (by frequency in a single volume - not by frequency per 100,000 words - which I don't have the means to check at this point) puts it in third place. But this doesn't represent the baseline. In terms of frequency per volume, it doesn't occur on average once per text. It doesn't occur even once per 10 texts. The average frequency by text in this collection is 0.014 occurrences per text. That is, if we average the the number of occurrences by all the texts in the collection, it occurs once in every 72 texts. The Book of Mormon usage is roughly equivalent to roughly 1,800 texts randomly chosen from that collection. This is why it is an outlier. Holinshed's Chronicles would be just as much an outlier. And it doesn't - as you argue - suggest a late 1500s authorship or even a 1600s authorship. It is a fact that doesn't provide us any real conclusions at all.

I am going to end this morning's comments with two things from the Harold Love book - because it is helpful to recognize that these are not merely my ideas but recognized principles. The first is from p. 86:

Quote

While the evidence of ideas, if applied with the cautions just suggested, can certainly be used for positive identification, its real value lies in excluding candidates for authorship.Unless it is some kind of spoof or a piece of paid journalism, a work espousing predestination could not have been the work of an Arminian; one maintaining a uniformitarian view of the development of the natural world could not have been the work of a catastrophist; contagionist views on the spread of disease could not have been advocated by a miasmatist; a work sympathetic to the use of protective tariffs to encourage the growth of national industries could not be the work of an economic rationalist; a work espousing the sanctity of the patriarchal family is not the work of a radical feminist. Often it takes only a phrase or two to derail an attribution; on other occasions it might well be done by the absence of the expected.

One of the recognized issues (not my criteria) over this idea of using ideas as a means of drawing connections between a text and an author is that counter examples are generally worth much more than any number of positive examples.

The second deals with an issue that we haven't really discussed yet. This is from pp. 54-55:

Quote

The most common reason for believing that a particular author wrote a particular work is that someone presumed to have first-hand knowledge tells us so. This telling usually takes the form of an ascription on a title-page or in an incipit, explicit or colophon, or in the item, title or contents-list of an anthologised piece. It may be supported by legal and book-trade records. There may be direct corroborating evidence in correspondence and personal recollections of the period of composition, such as Coleridge’s famous story of the composition of ‘Kubla Khan’ being interrupted by a person from Porlock (the point is not whether the incident ever happened but that it constitutes a claim by Coleridge to the authorship of the poem). If we can confirm a title-page ascription from other evidence, we have satisfied the first requirement of attribution studies; ...

One of the reasons why I brought up the history of your claim of Grotius being the author is that we simply have nothing that claims that Grotius wrote it. We don't even have any claims that Grotius wrote anything like this. On the other hand, we have lots of claims that Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon, not the least of which is a published letter from Oliver Cowdery in which he defended Joseph Smith's being called the author of the Book of Mormon in it's copyright statement. He wrote (11/9/1829):

Quote

Your first inquiry was, whether it was proper to say, that Joseph Smith Jr., was the author? If I rightly understand the meaning of the word author, it is, the first beginner, or mover of any thing, or a writer. Now Joseph Smith Jr., certainly was the writer of the work, called the book of Mormon, which was written in ancient Egyptian characters, - which was a dead record to us until translated. And he, by a gift from God, has translated it into our language. Certainly he was the writer of it, and could be no less than the author.

Whether or not the text of the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient source, accounts contemporary with its publication make a range of claims of authorship. These claims are "the first requirement of attribution studies". Skousen's and Carmack's work doesn't provide enough justification in my opinion (which may not be worth all that much) for us to determine that no claim of 19th century production could be accurate. And this is partly why your appeal to them is a problem. They do not make the claim that the Book of Mormon was written in the 16th or 17th centuries. They also claim that it was first written in the 19th century - just by someone who had much more personal experience with the earlier language than Joseph Smith (or any of the other proposed authors of the text). And without this argument, is there really any reason to assert an author like Grotius? It creates a very high bar - one that you haven't met.

At the same time, Carmack's and Skousen's research is to a large extent, apologetic. Many attempts to establish the authorship of the Book of Mormon have the same sort of issues but from a different perspective. I think I noted it earlier, but the most astonishing claim made by the Johsons in their argument that the Book of Mormon was heavily influenced by (plagiarized even?) The Late War, was that Jane Austen was heavily influenced by the novel The Officer's Daughter. This would be a complete surprise to Austen scholars (particularly given the documentary history surrounding Austen and the things she read and wrote). There are a number of academics who specialize in the works of Grotius - more his political theory than his theology. How receptive do you think they would be to the claim that the Book of Mormon is really an allegorical text by Grotius? It is a serious question that, perhaps, cannot be answered right now. But my guess is that no matter how strong you believe your evidence to be, this claim would be mostly ignored as a fantasy. The Book of Mormon reads like nothing that Grotius wrote. It includes none of the sources that Grotius used (except for a few biblical passages). These kinds of issues would generally disqualify Grotius. And this disqualification can occur long before we have to deal with the lists of parallels (which wouldn't be unique to Grotius in any sense).

[JarMan]

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yes, you do. Part of the reason why you need to do this is the fact that we aren't talking about little slices of time, we are talking about lifespans for human beings. There is a limit to the time frames in which we can discuss the disappearance of language and its use and effectiveness precisely because people live a relatively long time. The clergyman that I quoted lived from 1749 to 1828. We have only a tiny, tiny fraction of his legacy of sermons. The fact remains that the usage can be extrapolated on a much larger period by these occasional hits - because this is how language works. Language doesn't simply stop being used for 30 years and then come back into usage. It remains the entire time - especially something like this, which doesn't have technical meanings or shifting definitions.

You are right, I didn't provide the source, I apologize. At the same time, the Google search wasn't my primary source - I was using other databases which more narrowly focus on the 18th and 19th centuries. But one hit is all it takes to falsify a statement with absolutes like the one that you provided:

In short, there are American sources before or near 1830. And I have no doubts that I can locate more. I didn't devote a lot of time to this - and I don't really feel that obligated to do so because you clearly haven't devoted a lot of time to it either.

There are a few possibilities with Sampson: 1) He independently came up with the phrase. 2) He knew the phrase was archaic from reading archaic texts and adopted it. This is what 2 of your late authors apparently did. 3) It was normal use in his environment. 4) He learned it from his environment but it wasn't normal use; instead, it was known to be archaic (like, when people use thee and thy in modern church prayers). You are supporting #3. I think any of the 4 explanations are possible, but #2 seems the most likely to me. Well, the BoM has to fit into one or more of these categories, as well, if it's from the 1800s.

Number 1 is possible in a few cases, but certainly can't explain the entire BoM. Number 2 is a possible explanation. Number 3 is not possible for the entire BoM. It could explain a few archaic structures, but not all. Number 4 is also possible on a limited basis. An 1800s BoM has to be primarily #2. The author had to have been very familiar with early modern texts.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You can try, but you aren't going to succeed. Why? Because the kinds of comparisons that you continue to assert are meaningful simply aren't as meaningful as you think - especially in a question like this.

I haven't tried to make any linguistic comparison yet. But thanks for revealing that you've made up your mind before hearing the evidence.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

CFR.

This was something Skousen or Carmack mentioned in one of their papers. I can go back and find it. But it should be obvious that archaic language can be brought back by people who know it's archaic but deliberately use it. Like with Tolkien. Or Edward Freeman or William Morris.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yes, I know it doesn't matter - because there is simply no argument that can be made that can apparently falsify your theory. It actually does matter.

This isn't an assumption I would agree with. In particular because we are talking about an archaism that continued to be in use in 1912. It was never out of use. And this means that the Book of Mormon isn't required to pull it from any particular source text. It is difficult to assert a genetic claim (of the sort you are now making). I am not sure, yet, that you even understand the implications of the claims that you are making.

I don't agree with this either. I don't think you can demonstrate this. And, I don't think that a phrase being used uncommonly means a whole lot - especially if it is a part of the oral language more than it is the written language (which I have mentioned previously).

It's convenient to claim something was in the oral language when there's no way to actually disprove that claim. So I'll just turn that on its head and say that without evidence that it was in the oral language there's no reason to take the idea seriously.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There are certainly places where the King James language is updated. I think that you are using this notion of a redactor rather loosely. It serves a lot of purposes but it isn't defined. Perhaps you could point to the textual evidence that suggests a redaction has occurred. We certainly have a lot of discussions on this question when we deal with other historical manuscripts, so it isn't a complete shot in the dark to try to address this.

I've mentioned this a few times already. The lack of truly obsolete vocabulary is what I see as evidence of a redactor. But that's your word. I am envisioning a modern scribe who copied the manuscript but consciously changed the oldest words to more modern ones.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So, as I asked, what do you make of Alma 4 in that context?

This certainly isn't talking about separation of powers. Nephihah has legislative and executive, if not also judicial, powers. It's not talking about a secular government, either, since Nephihah was purposefully chosen from among the elders of the church.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am going to end this morning's comments with two things from the Harold Love book - because it is helpful to recognize that these are not merely my ideas but recognized principles. The first is from p. 86:

One of the recognized issues (not my criteria) over this idea of using ideas as a means of drawing connections between a text and an author is that counter examples are generally worth much more than any number of positive examples.

The second deals with an issue that we haven't really discussed yet. This is from pp. 54-55:

One of the reasons why I brought up the history of your claim of Grotius being the author is that we simply have nothing that claims that Grotius wrote it. We don't even have any claims that Grotius wrote anything like this. On the other hand, we have lots of claims that Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon, not the least of which is a published letter from Oliver Cowdery in which he defended Joseph Smith's being called the author of the Book of Mormon in it's copyright statement. He wrote (11/9/1829):

Whether or not the text of the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient source, accounts contemporary with its publication make a range of claims of authorship. These claims are "the first requirement of attribution studies". Skousen's and Carmack's work doesn't provide enough justification in my opinion (which may not be worth all that much) for us to determine that no claim of 19th century production could be accurate. And this is partly why your appeal to them is a problem. They do not make the claim that the Book of Mormon was written in the 16th or 17th centuries. They also claim that it was first written in the 19th century - just by someone who had much more personal experience with the earlier language than Joseph Smith (or any of the other proposed authors of the text). And without this argument, is there really any reason to assert an author like Grotius? It creates a very high bar - one that you haven't met.

At the same time, Carmack's and Skousen's research is to a large extent, apologetic. Many attempts to establish the authorship of the Book of Mormon have the same sort of issues but from a different perspective. I think I noted it earlier, but the most astonishing claim made by the Johsons in their argument that the Book of Mormon was heavily influenced by (plagiarized even?) The Late War, was that Jane Austen was heavily influenced by the novel The Officer's Daughter. This would be a complete surprise to Austen scholars (particularly given the documentary history surrounding Austen and the things she read and wrote). There are a number of academics who specialize in the works of Grotius - more his political theory than his theology. How receptive do you think they would be to the claim that the Book of Mormon is really an allegorical text by Grotius? It is a serious question that, perhaps, cannot be answered right now. But my guess is that no matter how strong you believe your evidence to be, this claim would be mostly ignored as a fantasy. The Book of Mormon reads like nothing that Grotius wrote. It includes none of the sources that Grotius used (except for a few biblical passages). These kinds of issues would generally disqualify Grotius. And this disqualification can occur long before we have to deal with the lists of parallels (which wouldn't be unique to Grotius in any sense).

You keep mentioning that Skousen and Carmack are engaged in apologetics? So, what? You've been engaged in apologetics, as well. Does that make everything you say suspect?

I haven't said the BoM is an allegorical text. It's a text that contains, as far as I can tell, one allegorical story amid a much larger context. I don't think you appreciate how involved Grotius was in biblical studies. He considered his magnum opus to be his commentaries on the OT and NT. To say that "a few biblical passages" are the only things in common is really an understatement. I would not at all be surprised if Grotius has commentated on every biblical passage in the BoM. He also wrote three religious plays, all of which are related to things in the BoM. One is about Adam and Eve in the garden. This was adopted and adapted by Milton, who was an admirer of Grotius. Another play was about Joseph in Egypt and the third was about Christ's sacrifice. I think Grotius scholars would be fascinated to look at warfare, government, religion and other things in the BoM from his perspective. The problem is that secular scholars generally don't take the BoM seriously, as you well know.

There are several other sources I think were used in the creation of the BoM that I haven't really mentioned yet. One of them relates to Alma 60, which has always been one of my favorites. I don't want to be accused of twisting the narrative in order to show parallels, though, so I'm hoping you can play along with me. If you're willing to, I'd like to have you provide a brief synopsis of this chapter.  What's the context of the letter? What is the letter saying? What happens in the aftermath? What are the major themes of the story? Then I can use your words, not mine, as a baseline to compare against a historical source. Are you willing to play along?

Edited February 11, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

There are a few possibilities with Sampson: 1) He independently came up with the phrase. 2) He knew the phrase was archaic from reading archaic texts and adopted it. This is what 2 of your late authors apparently did. 3) It was normal use in his environment. 4) He learned it from his environment but it wasn't normal use; instead, it was known to be archaic (like, when people use thee and thy in modern church prayers). You are supporting #3. I think any of the 4 explanations are possible, but #2 seems the most likely to me. Well, the BoM has to fit into one or more of these categories, as well, if it's from the 1800s.

One of the sources that I provided was Hendrik Poutsma's A Grammar of Late Modern English published in 1912. That grammar suggests that the phrase is still in use as an archaism. This means that Sampson doesn't have to learn it from a book - it could be a part of the language (archaic doesn't mean obsolete), and it gets used because of the practice of deliberately using archaic language as an expression of formalism. My argument is that the Book of Mormon does the same thing. This puts me solidly in favor of #4. One of the key factors is that it is understandable to readers - including us today. We don't have any difficulty understanding what the phrase means or what the text says (unlike with many obsolete phrases).

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

An 1800s BoM has to be primarily #2. The author had to have been very familiar with early modern texts.

I think, in reality, that it is hard to view your #2 and your #4 as distinct or separate options. Why? Because every single example (and I am using the absolute sense here purposefully) that has been raised of EModE language can be found in current use in the 19th century. Rare? Sometimes. Not so rare? Often. But all of them are there. And they appear to get used more frequently in certain contexts (like speech or when used as formal language). On top of that, you seem to have some real misconceptions behind your statement. The early 19th century is full of EModE period texts. The King James Bible is unquestionably the most prolific text from that period, but we have Chaucer and a large number of histories and the like. This is evident in the statements that you, yourself have provided - that many of the 19th century texts you looked at were quoting earlier EModE texts. This means that the language of that period is still quite prevalent in the 19th century - both in older texts and in current texts. So it can be learned from texts - but those texts don't have to be EModE texts. Even EModE texts (like the King James Bible) aren't somehow excluded from the environment in the early 19th century. This is why I continue to argue (against what seems to be your perception) that the EModE language doesn't fit well within particular demarcations - within specific dates - because people and texts survive far beyond those limits in the real world. The widespread use of the printing press changes the way that language survives. So a phrase can be considered archaic, can be learned from texts, can be used because it represents (as an archaism) a more formal language, and at the same time, is also something understood and considered as a part of the language environment.

It is clear (to me at least) that the Book of Mormon uses archaic language for a variety of reasons. It uses the King James language because it wants the readers to be clear that it is quoting from the Bible. It modernizes the language from time to time when it paraphrases the language of the Bible. But, it also seems true that it uses archaic language to support its claims of being scripture and a translation (both of these identifications are helped by the use of this archaic language). This is what I have been arguing for many years now.

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

I haven't tried to make any linguistic comparison yet. But thanks for revealing that you've made up your mind before hearing the evidence.

You may not have, but I have started to do so. It is on my own experience, not yours, that I am making up my mind.

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

This was something Skousen or Carmack mentioned in one of their papers. I can go back and find it. But it should be obvious that archaic language can be brought back by people who know it's archaic but deliberately use it. Like with Tolkien. Or Edward Freeman or William Morris.

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

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

It's convenient to claim something was in the oral language when there's no way to actually disprove that claim. So I'll just turn that on its head and say that without evidence that it was in the oral language there's no reason to take the idea seriously.

When it shows up primarily in recorded sermons (very, very few of which were recorded), that becomes evidence of a continuance of language that is more common in oral use than in written use.

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

You keep mentioning that Skousen and Carmack are engaged in apologetics? So, what? You've been engaged in apologetics, as well. Does that make everything you say suspect?

No, I haven't. Perhaps you could point to anything in this thread that suggests that I am engaging in apologetics? Have I argued in this thread that the text must be translated using divine power? No. I have deliberately left any question of belief out of this discussion because it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Grotius wrote the text. That is the issue I am focusing on.

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

I haven't said the BoM is an allegorical text. It's a text that contains, as far as I can tell, one allegorical story amid a much larger context.

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

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't think you appreciate how involved Grotius was in biblical studies. He considered his magnum opus to be his commentaries on the OT and NT. To say that "a few biblical passages" are the only things in common is really an understatement. I would not at all be surprised if Grotius has commentated on every biblical passage in the BoM.

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

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

There are several other sources I think were used in the creation of the BoM that I haven't really mentioned yet.

Your theory here is just a mess - again, there is no way to falsify it. At what point were thses other sources used? By Grotius (in his non-existent manuscript)? By the early translator who thought they would add to Grotius's text? By a later redactor? You are developing an unprovable complex history for a text without ever really asserting how you would assign material to each layer other than as a way of making it convenient for your theory.

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't want to be accused of twisting the narrative in order to show parallels, though, so I'm hoping you can play along with me. If you're willing to, I'd like to have you provide a brief synopsis of this chapter.  What's the context of the letter? What is the letter saying? What happens in the aftermath? What are the major themes of the story? Then I can use your words, not mine, as a baseline to compare against a historical source. Are you willing to play along?

Sure. I have to run out with the wife to an estate sale or two and get breakfast. I'll put something up in a couple of hours.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Alma 60 -

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

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

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

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

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

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