Book of Mormon "Horses"

[Guest Daddy of DanseM]

Daddy of DanseM, your nonsense filled posts have been deleted. You are one post away from the queue.

[Brant Gardner]

Mighty Curelom:

The only people who hold this position are members of the LDS church and its offshoots.

Not 100% percent correct, but close enough. Of course there is a reason for this. Once someone discovers/decides/has revealed that it is an historical text it rather follows that they join the church. As I said, not 100% true, but close enough. That certainly isn't an argument against historicity. It is tantamount to saying that the only people who believe it are the ones who believe it. Not very useful analysis.

More and more members are taking the position shared by Van Hale and Grant Palmer--that the BoM is not an ancient record of actual events.

And more and more and coming to a more sophisticated understanding of history that far exceeds Palmer's comprehension of the text. Again - there are those who believe and those who don't. That such a division exists has long been known. That does not constitute any sort of analysis of the text. There are many who don't believe it to be historical who have never read it. There are many who suggest "historical" reasons for their disbelief that have little understanding of history. All of that tells us about the believer or non-believer - but nothing about the text itself.

Contrast this with the Bible. Even militant atheists acknowledge the ancient nature of the Bible.

They acknowledge that much of it was written anciently because there are records attesting to it. That doesn't constitute a belief in the text and is hardly a comparison with the Book of Mormon which by original definition does not have an extant text nor a textual tradition traced to antiquity. That tells us that your comparison is misleading at best. It attempts to suggest that the only way a text can be ancient is to have a surviving tradition of antiquity. In that you are quite mistaken. I have noted the Histoire du Mechique several times before on this board and ZLMB. That is a text known only in a modern French translation that purports to be a translation of a much older Spanish text. It is considered authentic despite the lack of authenticated provenance. Your conclusion does not fit with the way historians work with texts.

As Dan Vogel has said, this is latter-day apologetics.

Then Dan is mistaken. This is modern-day history where historians must examine the nature of the evidence before them.

Zeitgeist contributed a lengthy post including many contemporary descriptions of the method of translation.

Yes, he did. Please show me the one where any of those witness performed the translation so that they had first-hand knowledge of the process. Since some of the witness statements are not corroborated by the original manuscript, some of their descriptions of the process are known to be incorrect. Please tell, based on your understanding of how historical communities pass on such information, which items are authentically due to Joseph Smith's recitation to them and which they invented. You may certainly separate those things that may be observed from those that may not. When you do this, you are doing what historians must do to their sources. While I disagree with Dan Vogel on many things, I doubt that we disagree on the basic principle of cautiously reading witness testimonies.

It is only since critics have pointed out the many anachronisms and translation oddities pervading the text that apologists have turned to the translation process to excuse these problems.

This basic idea seems to crop up frequently - the idea that discussions of any aspect of the Book of Mormon (translation, geography, etc.) are only a response to critics. That is a wonderful conceit that is hardly supported by an objective history of the development of those ideas. They can all be traced quite early and can be seen in contexts that have nothing to do with critics. If you remember, you cited the Bible. The Bible has also undergone extensive scholarly analysis with some scholars more or less favorable to the religious message. Nevertheless, the critical analysis has occurred because of the desire to understand the text, not because critics have required it. Indeed, many of the scholars have become more critical of the Bible that the non-believing critics. The Book of Mormon has similarly had its believing scholars who are interested in deepeing the understanding of the text. That has happened for a long time and much of it is only peripherally and tangentially related to outside criticism.

This then becomes a cure-all for any textual inconsistencies and anachronisms that turn up in the BoM.

I assume from this comment that you are not really familiar with LDS scholarship on the text. It is quite incorrect.

I assume that you've decided that the BoM is an authentic ancient text based on a revelatory experience, since that is the only method of authentication the Church endorses.

Wrong - and right. I confess to the revelatory experience, but only after a long study of the text and of Mesoamerican history. I find that there are compelling arguments that are follow the rules of textual analysis found in the discipline of Mesoamerican ethnohistory.

How would you convince others who have not received dvine confirmaton that the BoM is an ancient text that it is such? Do you believe the evidence proving historicity is strong enough that a revelatory experience is unnecessary to convincingly demonstrate the BoM as ancient? If so, why hasn't the academic community embraced it?

You assume that no academic has embraced it. In that you are again incorrect. However, see the first point above. The problem is that if they embrace it and believe, then their belief seems to discount their academics. It is a wonderful ploy, but eventually unsound. There are trained archaeologists and anthropologists and ethnohistorians of Mesoamerica who have embraced the text as authentic and concordant with their field of study. Is there a reason you doubt them?

How would I prove the text to anyone? I doubt that it is possible to prove it. I don't think I could prove much of anything in the social sciences. Could I create a case for historicity based on the text and the correspondencies to the time and culture of the proposed location for the text? Absolutely.

[Brant Gardner]

Jaybear:

Brant makes this comment: "I suggested that it is premature to discuss a method of translation before establishing that it was a translation. "

This is where he loses me. The BoM purports to be a translation of an ancient record engraved on gold plates. Brant seems to be taking the positon that one cannot argue that the BoM is NOT a translation, but a work of fiction, unless and until one first establishes that it was a translations. Huh?

I'll try to clarify. It is premature to discuss how it was translated until one establishes that it was a translation. Using presumed "issues" of translation to prove that it wasn't a translation puts the cart before the horse. If one can establish that it wasn't a translation, then there is no need to deal with "translation" problems because that would be moot. If it is established as a translation, then the question becomes one of analyzing the data to determine the way it was done.

When a skeptic argues that the BoM is not a translation of an ancient text, due to the presense of horses in the text, he is not making an assumption but is stating a conclusion based on (1) the refence to the horse in the BoM, and (2) the current state of evidence regarding horses in the Americas. The only assumption to the argument is that the state of knowlege re horses is correct.

Not quite. The skeptic is deciding that there is a problem of an anachronism, not a problem of translation. This argument says that since horses were not in the Americas until later this anachronism disqualifies the text. That is an issue of text, not translation.

The issue of translation comes when one suggests that the text is historical. In that case, there is still an issue of the anachronistic horses. One suggestion is that the anachronism is related to translation rather than original authorship. An example is candles in the KJV New Testament. That is an anachronism--they used oil lamps and not candles. However, that anachronism is part of the translation rather than the original and therefore is not a condemnation of the text. Similarly, known cross-cultural translation issues in naming animals suggests that unusual names that are not "correct" may still accurately represent a historical text. This is true of the horse/deer issue known from early native texts.

None of that, by the way, discusses the finding of horse bones in precolumbian strata. They have been found and are being tested. I haven't seen publication of the results but the rumor mill suggests that the C-14 date to precolumbian times. My personal opinion holds with translation issues, but I confess that I must wait for the hard evidence that appears to exist.

This is where the faithful come in. The can challenge this conclusion, by either (1) refusing to accept the state of the evidece re horses,

I hope you will not do the same when the data mentioned above are published. I assume, however, that you will not become an immediate convert <grin>.

or (2) postit that the refence to horses was the result of a translation error. It is the latter response that leads to the various assumptions (or theories) of the translation methodology. In order to explain how the error came about, the faithful need to posit a theory of tranlsation method consistent with both the descriptions by witnesses, and with the text.

Correct. If one holds that the mention of horses is due to the translation of the text one is required to understand the nature of that translation. It also requires understanding both translations and the witness descriptions, as well as analyzing the nature of those witness descriptions. That is where I suggested that the analysis must be the result of analyzing data. I don't see very many people taking the time to evaluate all of the available evidence. Most people stop short when they find something that they believe fits the conclusion they have already drawn (pro or con).

Thus, it seems to me that these dangerous assumptions that Brant warns us about, are not the "foundation" of the skeptic's argument, but more accurately serve as the "foundation" for the faithful attempt to explain errors or anachronisms in the text, in order to support thier other foundational premise that the BoM is a transtion of an ancient record.

No. You have misunderstood the problem. One cannot claim to disbelieve that the text is a translation because of what one believes a translation should be. If it is a translation, then the method needs to be determined - but assuming that it cannot be a translation because it isn't the kind of translation one assumes it ought to be is a faulty methodological premise.

Bear in mind, it was SMAC, who opened the discussion with a question (explain horses) with the PREMISE that the BoM was a translation. Personally, I thought SMAC's question, assumption in hand, created a good exercise to allow the faithful an opportunty to better understand how the translation process.

Yes, it was a good invitation. It is simply a terrible place to attempt it. It requires much more evidence and a much longer argument that is possible on a board. I saw the invitation and declined, and continue to decline, to take up the offer in this venue.

The question I would pose to Brant, is just how do you propose that one who is skeptical about the reliablity of spiritual confimation goabout deciding the threshold quesiton you raise. Is it a translation, or is a work of fiction?

I suggest that one apply the same kinds of criteria that scholars do to other texts of unknown provenance that claim to be translation of ancient documents. The one option available to us is to compare it to a known time and place to see if it fits. Critics attempt that for the 19th century context and some of the text clearly fits that time and place. The vocabulary is quite clearly reminiscent of that time and the particular place where the book was published. However, that doesn't tell us anything conclusive. The more difficult test is historical. I suggest comparing the text to Mesoamerica during the times indicated for the Book of Mormon. I have done that I find non-arbitrary reflections of that time and place in the text. Cultural data and the particular developmental trends and pressures are parallel in ways that are too close for chance. This is, of course, another issue which requires data and argumentation much longer is possible on a message board.

What is wrong with simply comparing the culture, geography, language, customs, etc. described in the text, with what we now know about the Americas during the relevant time frame. You seem to suggest its impossible to reach a reasoned conclusion about the merits of JS's claim of having translated an ancient record.

As you will note, that is exactly what one should do. I have. Have you?

Brant, setting aside spiritual evidence, hasn't our understaning of ancient America advanced to the point that the overwhelming weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that the BoM is a work of 19th century fiction?

Quite to the contrary. I think that the weight of evidence is steadily shifting towards the text.

Are there any nonLDS mesoamerican scholars that even consider this question an open issue worthy of academic discussion?

Does that matter? Are LDS Mesoamericanists inherently less able to understand their field? What of someone who was non-LDS, but then converted? Do they suddenly lose their ability to be scholars of Mesoamerica? Dr. Peterson has noted two Mesoamericanists who have joined the church after becoming recognized in their field. Do they count or not?

[jerm]

Here is a Tapir.

I could see it being used as a beast of burden but not as a means of transportation. Maybe sheep refered to llamas? Oh yeah, how can those pictures leeuniverse posted on the first page be explained? Are any of them not pre-columbian?

[Zeitgeist]

For an archeological outsider's opinion see:

Coe, Michael. "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View." Dialogue 8 (Summer 1973): 40-48. You can read it here: http://content.lib.utah.edu/cgi-bin/docvie...ue&CISOPTR=6247

While the article is outdated, you can get a general idea of some problems. It is a good start, I would also suggest contacting a number of people who specialize in Mesoamerican studies for their opinions. Many are more than happy to give you their take on the ideas of Mormons and Mesoamerica. Though few have kept up with the latest FARMS arguments. You may need to educate them a little. I suggest sending Brant Gardner['s recent FAIr article to a few and asking their opinion. I did.

Zeitgeist

[Zeitgeist]

Brant,

It seems pretty clear from the soureces I provided the method of translation. What are your opinions regarding the statements?

Zeitgeist

[Firm JS Doubter]

<<You assume that no academic has embraced it. In that you are again incorrect. However, see the first point above. The problem is that if they embrace it and believe, then their belief seems to discount their academics. It is a wonderful ploy, but eventually unsound. There are trained archaeologists and anthropologists and ethnohistorians of Mesoamerica who have embraced the text as authentic and concordant with their field of study. Is there a reason you doubt them?>>

Yes, there are some huge reasons to doubt these people.

Science can, and has been, worked well. The biggest opposition to science, however, is human bias. As Newton says, there's no place [for a] hypothesis, we must begin from observation, then experiment, repeat. If you're deducing from the standpoint of a fictitious book, you're looking too deeply, and you'll often find your senses lying to you, showing you the outcome you wished it to be.

Haven't you seen the movie Pi? Once you get that thing, that number in your mind, you'll see it everywhere.

Well, these so-called scientists of the Churches are of the Church, thus biased to any findings other than those which they want to see.

human subjectivity. it's a bi-ach.

[Brant Gardner]

Zeitgeist:

It seems pretty clear from the soureces I provided the method of translation. What are your opinions regarding the statements?

Clear? Really? I couldnt reconstruct a translation method from those statements that would account for all of the data. I would be happy to know what you come up with. There are some aspects of the accounts that depend upon their personal observation. I think those tell us something - but since they are inherently outside the process we have only Joseph Smith's statement that he translated through the power of God. That tells me that he believed God was involved, but it does not tell me how God was involved. It does not tell me how the current text was formulated. Not a single one of those statements can tell me that.

The closest they come is the idea that writing appeared. Attached to some of those statements is the idea that nothing incorrect could be written - which doesn't match with the evidence of the manuscripts. That tells me that in addition to personal observation there are the forces of community lore at play in those statements.

I happen to believe that a reasonable explanation of the methodology of translation can be given, but it is inherently a long argument as it has to deal with a lot of diverse data. I have no desire to attempt it here.

[Dan Vogel]

Enu,

I

[Dan Vogel]

Ben,

I understand this theory of yours, but how does it square with Moroni translating

[Brant Gardner]

Firm JS Doubter:

Yes, there are some huge reasons to doubt these people. . . If you're deducing from the standpoint of a fictitious book. . .

Let's see. These professionals must be deluded because they decided to believe in spite of their mastery of their subject matter. You, on the other hand, are objective because you don't have expertise in the area, but still recognize the book as fictitious. Since you are right they must be wrong.

Interesting logic. I'll stick with the scientists. Tell me, in what other arena would you suggest that I should prefer the opinion of someone who hasn't studied a subject over one who is a professional in the field?

[Dan Vogel]

Ben,

JS claimed the translation was by the power of God. He simply read the translation from the miraculous stones. Of course, the translation was given by God in English. The notion that JS was somehow involved is latter-day apologetics.

So, on some level, you are agreeing that Joseph Smith exerted influence over the translation without having to be directly involved in the translation of the text himself. And, furthermore, if Joseph was the intended audience of the translation, it stands to reason that his ability to read and understand the text would have exerted even more influence over the text than merely determining the language of the text, right?

The translation may have been in JS

[enummaelish]

Dan,

If the BofM is a revelation rather than a translation, then D&C 1 is relevant. If, for example, one believe the BofM is inspired fiction, then comparing it with the JS

[Dan Vogel]

Brant,

I suggested that it is premature to discuss a method of translation before establishing that it was a translation. There is a big difference. If you begin with the assumption that the text was not a translation, then you are free to bring up all kinds of issues and posit them as reasons that it wasn't a translation. The problem with that type of analysis is that it depends upon the original assumption that it wasn't a translation, and upon subsequent assumptions of what a translation should have been. Both of those are flimsy foundations for reasoned argument.

If, however, you begin properly by establishing the fact of translation first you may then discover the method. Since Joseph was the only one who actually translated and he did not say how it was done, we have the text as the only data on which to extract the translation methodology. Notice, however, that one must proceed from data to analysis. This is very different from proceeding from assumption to analysis, as in "this is how I think a translation should have worked." The only thing that reasoning tells us is what the analyzer thinks. That may make an interesting sociological commentary on those who so opine, but it doesn't, and cannot, tell us anything serious about the text.

This seems a little convoluted to me. How does one determine the method of translation without an original?

As I said above, the uniform descriptions of the translation method point to a common source. They couldn

[Brant Gardner]

Dan Vogel:

This seems a little convoluted to me. How does one determine the method of translation without an original?

I take it you haven't had to work with documents where there was a translation but no original. It certainly isn't as easy as when there is one, but with a text as long as the Book of Mormon there is sufficient information.

As I said above, the uniform descriptions of the translation method point to a common source. They couldn

[Brant Gardner]

Dan Vogel:

The translation may have been in JS

[Dan Vogel]

Enu,

In my mind the Book of Mormon is both a revelation and a translation. It is not either or, therefore the analogy works perfectly.

If that

[enummaelish]

Dan,

Not if he was making it up as he was going. And not if the translation was conceptual whereby he expressed the language in the best English he could command. He could never remember the words he had chosen. Could you translate 116-pages of text loosely, and then repeat it exactly more than a year later?

I do see your point. But I

[Firm JS Doubter]

Rules of thumb for trusting science:

Partisan Science has no place in the minds of the masses.

This means religious groups working to find answers (Mormons, Monks) and political campaigns working to make their point (Bush - Healthy Forests Act [will argue this one to the grave]) will always be bias and therefore, unworthy of airtime. No human is without bias, but at least most scientists dont have these goals out in front of them to be reached. Francis Bacon would have a field day with those weak-minded 'scientists' who experiment based on what they WANT to find.

Bias, Bias, Bias. There will always be Bias. Let's not condone it! If anyone has any respect for science, they will deeply doubt the one-sided works of partisan science. Skepticism is key for any Science, any where.

[Dan Vogel]

Brant,

The translation may have been in JS

[Brant Gardner]

Dan Vogel:

Clearly, the exaggerated accounts of those in the latter 19th century would fall under folklore, but the accounts of eyewitness like Emma, Harris, Joseph Knight, and the Whitmers are not to be dismissed as folklore. Besides, it is wrong to assume that folklore is automatically wrong, that is a common misconception.

So the answer is no, you don't know much about lore communities. It is equally incorrect to assume that folklore is correct as it is to assume it is wrong - both are actually the wrong questions. The lore is the important thing. One of the issues is how it develops. If you look at the dating of some of your statements and the nature of the similarities, where those similarities are known to contradict dictation fact - you have the signs of a lore community developing around a central charismatic figure. Reading such statements as though they were the equivalent of an eyewitness misreads the statements completely. They are great evidence for the development of the lore community, but not particularly helpful in discerning the translation method. As you will remember, but for some reason did not address, none of those people actually translated - ergo they cannot have first-hand experience that tells us how it occurred.

Your point about spectacles and the word seer indicating that Joseph implied that he saw something is a better use of the data - but that still doesn't tell us what he saw or where it came from. The descriptions of a head in a hat to shut out light should tell us that the idea of "seeing" must be something different from what we expect optically, since that function requires light.

Your sources put you back at square one. They don't tell you anything about how the translation was done. They tell you how they told the story of how it was done - but that is a very different question.

[Dan Vogel]

Brant,

So the answer is no, you don't know much about lore communities. It is equally incorrect to assume that folklore is correct as it is to assume it is wrong - both are actually the wrong questions. The lore is the important thing. One of the issues is how it develops. If you look at the dating of some of your statements and the nature of the similarities, where those similarities are known to contradict dictation fact - you have the signs of a lore community developing around a central charismatic figure. Reading such statements as though they were the equivalent of an eyewitness misreads the statements completely. They are great evidence for the development of the lore community, but not particularly helpful in discerning the translation method. As you will remember, but for some reason did not address, none of those people actually translated - ergo they cannot have first-hand experience that tells us how it occurred.

I

[Brant Gardner]

Dan Vogel:

I

[Benjamin McGuire]

Zeitgeist writes:

I thought I would share some things regarding the translation.

The only issue I have with this, Zeitgeist, is that this isn't about a "translation" process as we think of translation. Joseph wasn't actually participating in the process of the translation (for the most part) - at least not in these descriptions. Statements like this:

By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet ....

Make Joseph a reader of the text, not a "translator". Yes, a translation is believed to have occured. Joseph was the person who was enabled to provide the translation. But, you are discussing the mechanics of the process by which Joseph provided the translation and not about the process of the translation itself (which, using the term as we normally use it today, Joseph simply did not do). So we are still left asking you the same questions. What was the process that God used to translate the plates? Since you are so certain as to what the translation could not have looked like, what do you think it should have looked like?

Later Zeigeist wrote:

It seems pretty clear from the soureces I provided the method of translation. What are your opinions regarding the statements?

No. You provided a description of how the translation was recorded. But there is nothing in those quotes which talks about the actual translation (i.e. was it word-for-word, was it idea-for-idea, etc.)

Ben

[Benjamin McGuire]

MC writes:

More and more members are taking the position shared by Van Hale and Grant Palmer--that the BoM is not an ancient record of actual events.

First, I think you are misrepresenting Van Hale a bit, whose position is quite different from Grant Palmer's. Van Hale is largely indifferent to the question of historicity. And while he doesn't think it is a historical work, he certainly would not be unhappy to find out that it was. Grant Palmer, as I have demonstrated in points here in the past, bases his claim of non-historicity on bad information. His understanding, particularly of the Book of Mormon text, is problematic - despite the years he taught about it. And Grant Palmer is not so indifferent to the question of historicity or not. Grant Palmer does not (perhaps did not) believe the Book of Mormon to be real revelation, I think. While Van Hale does.

Ben