Book of Mormon Historicity: A Reply

[Benjamin McGuire]

Zosimus asked for a critique of this essay in another thread. As part of that request he made this statement:

On 3/26/2024 at 9:52 PM, Zosimus said:

In a way, I'm approaching the question of historicity in the same way Willams does, and I assume its close to how @mfbukowski approaches historicity:

"In this sense, I suggest that a description of Book of Mormon historicity that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences of such a concept will be more productive than one that remains caught up in simply "proving" the relative "truth" of the book. Inasmuch as the question of evidence in Book of Mormon historicity is a philosophical or literary question rather than scientific one, I agree with Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism: "A fully humanist culture, of the sort I envisage, will emerge only when we discard the question 'Do I know the real object, or only one of its appearances?' and replace it with the question 'Am I using the best possible description of the situation in which I find myself, or can I cobble together a better one?'

My response is going to be at a pretty high level. I could get deeper into it, but I think that before I try that, I want to address the context - the intersection that shows up in the comments I quoted above.

First, I have come across very few students of comparative literature who had a firm sense of the term "historicity". So perhaps a bit of background on my views is in order. There are certainly a lot of good texts out there that discuss the issue - although most of them are not the sort of thing you are going to encounter without a research library handy. But here is one from my personal library -

In History, Historicity and Science David Carr writes ("the Reality of History," Chapter 5):

Quote

History as a branch of knowledge begins with a distinct handicap. While there may be serious disputes about whether theology, for example, has any object, everyone agrees that the object of history does not exist at all. In view of this fact, it is perhaps no wonder that skepticism about history's claims to knowledge has always been widespread.

Reasons for this skepticism are not hard to come by. The events of the past cannot be seen, heard or felt, and any assertions we make about them must be grounded by the most indirect means. Testimony to their existence is often such that we cannot be sure even of its meaning, much less its truth. What is worse, historians may be even less trustworthy than the evidence they examine. The personal, political, religious or other prejudices of the investigator seem more likely to affect the study of past human events than they affect the study of animals, plants or inanimate nature.

There is something almost (but perhaps not quite) misleading about Williams's comment cited by Zosimus. Historicity is not really a scientific endeavor. What Zosimus quotes here is a footnote to the Williams text, and the text reads this way:

Quote

In Vogel's words, "Scientific method was invented to override emotional biases and help us overcome our tendency to make subjective judgments." Thus, Vogel's rather anti-postmodern faith in scientific objectivity leads him to what he believes is the "truth" about the Book of Mormon, while Stephen's apologetic hermeneutic tendencies allow him to maintain what he believes is the "truth" about the Book of Mormon. But there is one point on which both Stephens and Vogel remain virtually silent: the social and cultural consequences of their various "truths."

To allow my parallel between Columbus and Joseph Smith to articulate these potential consequences, let's abandon that particular question of scientific "truth" for a moment and turn to the more cultural and social aspects of the debate on historicity.

So let's summarize this in a way that is a bit more readable. Vogel takes a scientific approach to the text so that he can avoid subjective judgments. This leads Vogel to a "truth" about the Book of Mormon (a truth which he claims is objective). Stephen starts with "truth" and then interprets the Book of Mormon as a literary text to preserve that truth - an understanding of the history that can only be considered subjective. Both of these truths are exclusive to each other. Ignoring for a moment the real direction of Williams's argument (which deals with the consequences of different 'truths'), we just need to point out one thing. Vogel's words run counter to what is widely accepted. History does not provide "truth." And, in line with my own writings, Carr continues his discussion with the problem created by narrative:

Quote

One form of skepticism about history has arisen from reflections on the narrative form in which historical knowledge is often presented. If historians are essentially telling stories about the past, their activity seems more literary than scientific. The standards of story-telling are different from those of truth-telling: the point is to produce a coherent tale with beginning, middle and end, and perhaps with a moral lesson to convey. The proper place for narrative is fiction, which is by definition unconcerned with the reality of the events it portrays. Story-telling about real events thus runs the risk of being inadvertently fictional, more concerned with aesthetic than with scientific criteria. On this view, history seems condemned by the very form in which it is written to distort or misrepresent the events about which it claims to know.

Now why this discussion? Because Zosimus misses the point here. His footnote 17 starts with "In this sense, I suggest that a description of Book of Mormon historicity that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences of such a concept will be more productive than one that remains caught up in simply 'proving' the relative 'truth' of the book." Historicity is indifferent to truth. If someone is claiming to be looking for the truth and at the same time discussing historicity, they are insisting that historicity and truth are one and the same thing - and that by proving one, they are consequently proving the other. In this sense, both Vogel and Stephen are on the same page - agreeing to the same principle. Vogel attempts to situate the text historically, thereby situating the truth of the text. Stephen attempts to situate the truth of the text, and so to situate the text's historicity. It doesn't work for either of them (and this is, in a nutshell, what @mfbukowski said in the other thread).

What is historicity? To have historicity is to have factual historical reality. But because we cannot experience the past, historicity comes in two parts. First it consists of claims about the past that can be asserted to be accurate and second, it is a description of how we come to that understanding. To the extent that events of the past have historicity, we have to be able to provide both. In general, we work with a lot of different assumptions. Texts (literature) create problems for us for a number of reasons. one of the great examples of the problems (it isn't as useful to me as the Book of Esther, but it is useful in other ways) is the object known as the Merneptah Stele. It is a helpful object because it can be narrowly dated (sometime near the end of the reign of Pharoah Merneptah, which was from 1213 to 1203 BCE). This by itself wouldn't make it so noteworthy. It is a victory stele - it documents military conquests. But near the bottom occurs the earliest known textual evidence for the name 'Israel'.

Now why is this so fascinating? You would think that this could be a wonderful tool to help with the historicity of the biblical account. The problem is the text itself. The standard translation is: "Israel is laid waste - its seed is no more". It is a victory stele that attests to the absolute annihilation of ancient Israel. It is useful for establishing Israel in the ancient record. But it does nothing to confirm the biblical account. This becomes really illustrative of the problem of historicity. And should help to point to the reasons why it isn't just the claims but the process of how the evidence produces those claims.

Mormonism isn't really all that different from other groups that attempt to draw these (often inappropriate) equivalencies. If Joseph Smith is a true prophet - if the Book of Mormon is a true translation - then it must have historicity. If someone can show that there are things in the Book of Mormon that cannot be historically accurate (to have historicity) then the expectation is that the Book of Mormon cannot be a true translation or Joseph Smith cannot be a true prophet. This is a shared assumption between Mormon believers and its critics that colors an awful lot of this discussion. And there also needs to be an additional note stated - that is that being verisimilar is not the same as having historicity. Even within the believer's view - the claim that there is no way for the text to be verisimilar without it having historicity is a flawed argument that creates its own set of problems.

My position starts by attempting to disentangle these claims. First, we separate verisimilitude from historicity. Second we make only verifiable claims. For example, the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text - it is a wholly modern text. There are claims that it is a translation of an ancient text - but translation creates an overlay that exists within the context of the translation. Any discussion of historicity has to find ways to produce reliable fact - and texts can only do this in a very limited fashion. Finally, we have to remove any claims of a relationship between historicity (or even verisimilitude) and truth. They are not equivalencies and shouldn't be taken as equivalencies.

Given these points - which are broadly accepted in terms of the pursuit of history - the essay engages some of these bad assumptions. Now, in allowing something a defense, these sorts of assumptions are broadly accepted by those without a specialized understanding - or who have highly nuanced views (like I have). Mormonism's populist view of a correlation between history and truth isn't unique to Mormonism. It comes out of the same perspective from the larger Christian context which dominates popular literature. Most of the sorts of discussions that we see here can easily be found in the context of broader Christian literature. One of the things that came out of higher criticism of the Biblical text was the big push to find the historical Jesus (of which there are many) and the claims of how we can hold to the historicity of the biblical text - and in more conservative circles, how the necessary historicity of the biblical text (necessary because of the perception that historicity is equivalent to truth) overrides other forms of possible evidence against historicity.

It is in this context that this essay's thesis should be understood. It is not about real historicity but about perceived historicity. Only if we assume that there is a connection between historicity and truth does this statement (again from that footnote) mean something:

Quote

In this sense, I suggest that a description of Book of Mormon historicity that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences of such a concept will be more productive than one that remains caught up in simply "proving" the relative "truth" of the book. Inasmuch as the question of evidence in Book of Mormon historicity is a philosophical or literary question rather than scientific one ...

So two points with my discussion in mind -

1: Social and cultural consequences relate to the reception of the text and its truth claims in the religious context. It's about how modern readers understand and read the text - it has nothing to do with historicity.

2: "evidence in Book of Mormon historicity is a philosophical or literary question rather than scientific one" - this is an oxymoron. Historicity is not a philosophical or literary question. If the only evidence you have is philosophical or literary, you cannot address the question of historicity. We can discuss truth in the context of philosophy and literature. So this means that this is a discussion of truth masquerading as a discussion of historicity.

So, let's skip to the conclusion:

Quote

What we are left with, then, is a complex set of social, political, and cultural issues that may all be affected by calls for Book of Mormon decolonialization. The term "Galileo Event," while provocative and interesting, reduces these complex issues to the simple and "classic" conflict of religion versus science—an epistemological or cosmological issue. However, by characterizing the current debate as a moment of decolonialization (forecasting, of course, a future era of Book of Mormon postcolonialism), we are forced to acknowledge the complex linguistic, cultural, and political matrix that surrounds such an event. If we are going to focus on one figure in this debate, let it not be Galileo, but Columbus, and the fraught and tortuous legacy he left behind.

Ultimately, what this article is discussing is the impact of institutionalizing models of interpretation of the Book of Mormon as having historicity. That is, identifying particular groups as Lamanites. This understanding has historically recast native populations in Book of Mormon terms. The problem in terms of the discussion here is that the impact of reading the text in a certain way on a range of views that exist within the Mormon community is not based on any real evidence of historicity but on presumed hsitoricities created by theorists who develop models of interpretation. Historicity comes in really only because critics have used the paradigm to try and defend their approach. But their approach is just as limited to philosophical and literary evidence as the current author is.

I would argue that Zosimus is doing exactly what the article is explicitly critical of. By intuiting a historical context which they believe can be associated (as historicity - as they define the term) there is the perpetuation of a new set of ideas masquerading as truth. But because the evidence remains only philosophical and literary, interpretation, there will never be a solid connection between the text and historicity. But if we only substitute one demographic group for another nothing really changes. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't use this argument as a way of criticizing Zosimus's theory. I think that while there is something to be said about the concerns that are raised, it's an argument in a completely different space than I usually engage.

As I noted earlier, my own thoughts are that if we (collectively) abandon the bad assumptions that bring us to this point, we would be better off.

Edited March 28, 2024 by Benjamin McGuire

[Ryan Dahle]

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

First, we separate verisimilitude from historicity. Second we make only verifiable claims. For example, the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text - it is a wholly modern text. There are claims that it is a translation of an ancient text - but translation creates an overlay that exists within the context of the translation.

We can reasonably verify that the Book of Mormon was dictated in modern times. But how do you "verify" that it "is not an ancient text" and furthermore that it is a "wholly modern text"? 

Seems like right out of the gate you are starting off with unverifiable claims. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

We can reasonably verify that the Book of Mormon was dictated in modern times. But how do you "verify" that it "is not an ancient text" and furthermore that it is a "wholly modern text"? 

Seems like right out of the gate you are starting off with unverifiable claims. 

So there are several issues here. First, you want to claim that the Book of Mormon is simply dictated (as opposed to being authored or written). Embedded in this is the idea that somehow the Book of Mormon is equivalent to it putative source. It isn't. Translations aren't equivalents to the original texts they are based on. Whether or not Joseph simply dictated it, if there is a translation, that translation is still a new communicative act. You can find my description of the basis for this claim here. The Book of Mormon is written in language that has an earliest possible point of occurrence (based on the language itself). This is perhaps the easiest to understand way in which we can claim that the Book of Mormon is a "wholly modern text".

This is not unverifiable. And this is in line with claims of authorship made about the text, the text's copyright, and so on. For claims about the authorship, I could point to a letter written by Oliver Cowdery, dated November 9th,  1829, addressing a question about the copyright statement published with the Book of Mormon in its first edition (although the Book of Mormon hadn't been published yet, the copyright was filed on June 11, 1829 - which was not terribly unusual). The letter contains this statement:

Quote

You wrote to Mr. Harris, some time since, respecting the book of Mormon of which he was concerned in the publication.

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.

Regardless of how we understand any of the translation process (what it entailed, what sort of translation it was, who actually did the translating), the text was produced at a specific point in time - and the text reflects a lot of things (as all texts do) that are contemporary with its production. The time period in which the Book of Mormon was written is not generally contested. Only when we try to conflate the Book of Mormon with its alleged sources do we run into problems with this distinction - and you illustrate how this happens. It is a good thing that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" since if it was, no one would be able to read it with any degree of competency. As a side note, Cowdery's comments above paraphrase the Daniel Webster's 1828 dictionary entry for the word author.

I realize that this response is a bit over the top - but I am really trying to emphasize this issue - and why the conflation that occurs between the Book of Mormon and its potential ancient sources is such a problem. By conflating the two we end up not recognizing the need to understand how the translation can reflect both the earlier sources and issues contemporary with the translation process at the same time. If we want to speak of the sources that were translated (of the gold plates), we first have to isolate content in the modern text that reflects modern influences. This is why, for example, the Book of Mormon's use of the King James Version of the Bible shouldn't be understood as some sort of validation of the authorized translation as accurate. It simply reflects common usage at the time that the translation occurs. It makes the use of scripture more recognizable in the text.

Does this help?

I stand by my argument that the Book of Mormon is a modern text and that this is a completely verifiable fact.

[OGHoosier]

The English Book of Mormon is a modern text because it was verifiably translated in modern times. This does not militate against the thesis that it is a translation of an ancient text. It does, however, require us to consider that a 1-to-1 translation is not even conceptually possible and the Book of Mormon English translation was necessarily modified to fit the times in which it came.

Do I have it right?

Edited March 29, 2024 by OGHoosier

[Benjamin McGuire]

Just now, OGHoosier said:

The English Book of Mormon is a modern text because it was verifiably translated in modern times. This does not militate against the thesis that it is a translation of an ancient text. It does, however, require us to consider that a 1-to-1 translation is not even conceptually possible and the Book of Mormon translation was necessarily modified to fit the times in which it came.

Do I have it right?

Yes - I would say that this is where our starting point should be.

[Ryan Dahle]

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So there are several issues here. First, you want to claim that the Book of Mormon is simply dictated (as opposed to being authored or written). Embedded in this is the idea that somehow the Book of Mormon is equivalent to it putative source. It isn't. Translations aren't equivalents to the original texts they are based on. Whether or not Joseph simply dictated it, if there is a translation, that translation is still a new communicative act.

You seem to be making some unwarranted logical leaps here about my language and motives. I used the word "dictate" not because I was trying assert that the modern form of the Book of Mormon "is equivalent to its putative source" but because the word "dictate" avoids the connotation of authorship altogether. In other words, it allowed me to make a claim about the text's verifiable modern production history without committing myself to any position of authorship. Of course, I have a position on its authorship, but I wanted to avoid making unverifiable assertions. 

I agree that "translations aren't equivalents to the original texts." I wasn't stating or assuming otherwise. 

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Regardless of how we understand any of the translation process (what it entailed, what sort of translation it was, who actually did the translating), the text was produced at a specific point in time - and the text reflects a lot of things (as all texts do) that are contemporary with its production. The time period in which the Book of Mormon was written is not generally contested. Only when we try to conflate the Book of Mormon with its alleged sources do we run into problems with this distinction - and you illustrate how this happens. It is a good thing that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" since if it was, no one would be able to read it with any degree of competency. As a side note, Cowdery's comments above paraphrase the Daniel Webster's 1828 dictionary entry for the word author.

I have "illustrated" no such thing. I never made any conflation of the modern text with its alleged sources. You are apparently just assuming that I am conflating these concepts in my mind. 

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

By conflating the two we end up not recognizing the need to understand how the translation can reflect both the earlier sources and issues contemporary with the translation process at the same time. If we want to speak of the sources that were translated (of the gold plates), we first have to isolate content in the modern text that reflects modern influences. This is why, for example, the Book of Mormon's use of the King James Version of the Bible shouldn't be understood as some sort of validation of the authorized translation as accurate. It simply reflects common usage at the time that the translation occurs. It makes the use of scripture more recognizable in the text.

I'm not sure that isolating modern content is necessarily the "first" thing that one would "have" to do. One could just as easily start by attempting to identify or isolate seemingly ancient content. I think both pursuits are part of any attempt to "date" a text (especially if a text's alleged antiquity is in dispute).

I agree that the use of the KJV in the Book of Mormon isn't a "validation" of the KJV's translation accuracy or even of its historical claims. I think the quotations of the KJV provide a different rhetorical function, but that is a matter of speculation. 

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Does this help?

I stand by my argument that the Book of Mormon is a modern text and that this is a completely verifiable fact.

I think you were missing my original point. Let me restate my original comment (which quotes from your original statements, which I have bolded) and then I will explain further what I mean. Here is what I said: 

Quote

We can reasonably verify that the Book of Mormon was dictated in modern times. But how do you "verify" that it "is not an ancient text" and furthermore that it is a "wholly modern text"? 

Seems like right out of the gate you are starting off with unverifiable claims. 

Notice that I personally am not making any specific claims here about the text's translation or its putative ancient source. I am neither claiming it is modern or ancient, nor am I delineating my best understanding or opinions of its production, transmission, translation, etc. My point is just that your specific assertions about the text's non-ancient status and its "wholly modern" nature (note that you used the word "wholly" in your original articulation) seem to be overstatements and technically inaccurate. I think this may be because you are using the concept of "text" in a somewhat idiosyncratic way. 

In most academic discussions, when one engages in an assessment of the dating of a "text," the idea of the text is generally not confined merely to its certainly verifiable linguistic forms, nor even to its certainly known production history. The word "text" also involves any potential unknown or unverifiable aspects of a document's true origin, production, transmission, redaction, and translation over time (which features of the text may have varying degrees of evidentiary support). For instance, although the Apocalypse of Abraham is only preserved in late medieval Slavonic manuscripts, scholars certainly wouldn't claim that it is "not ancient" or that it is a "wholly" late medieval text. In other words, the concept of "text" typically transcends the most recent or certainly known form that a text may take (i.e., a text is more than just its packaging). Based off of various inferences concerning the form and contents of the Apocalypse of Abraham, scholars believe that it was most likely an ancient document originally written in a Semitic language (probably Hebrew). That, of course, can't be proven, but it is widely assumed based on the available textual evidence. 

Thus, stated simply, your claim that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and that it is a "wholly modern text" is technically not verifiable (under most academic understandings of the concept of "text"). All one can responsibly claim--if one wants to adopt your rule that we should "only make verifiable claims"--is that the currently known form of the text is not ancient (meaning the earliest manuscripts and various editions published in English since 1830). Whether or not the English version of the text is a translation of a genuinely ancient document--and, if so, what type of translation it might be--is a matter of ongoing debate.

Edited March 29, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

[ZealouslyStriving]

Jerry Grover's recent translation of the "Charactors Document" shows the difficulty of translation and I believe demonstrates how Joseph's translation had to be adapted to English to be readable and of a reasonable length:

 

Edited March 30, 2024 by ZealouslyStriving

[smac97]

On 3/28/2024 at 9:10 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Mormonism isn't really all that different from other groups that attempt to draw these (often inappropriate) equivalencies. If Joseph Smith is a true prophet - if the Book of Mormon is a true translation - then it must have historicity. If someone can show that there are things in the Book of Mormon that cannot be historically accurate (to have historicity) then the expectation is that the Book of Mormon cannot be a true translation or Joseph Smith cannot be a true prophet. This is a shared assumption between Mormon believers and its critics that colors an awful lot of this discussion. And there also needs to be an additional note stated - that is that being verisimilar is not the same as having historicity. Even within the believer's view - the claim that there is no way for the text to be verisimilar without it having historicity is a flawed argument that creates its own set of problems.

My position starts by attempting to disentangle these claims. First, we separate verisimilitude from historicity.

Could you elaborate on the bolded parts above?  

On 3/28/2024 at 9:10 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Second we make only verifiable claims. For example, the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text - it is a wholly modern text. There are claims that it is a translation of an ancient text - but translation creates an overlay that exists within the context of the translation. Any discussion of historicity has to find ways to produce reliable fact - and texts can only do this in a very limited fashion.

Who is this "we"?  The Latter-day Saints?

What do you mean by "wholly modern text"?

What do you mean by "we make only verifiable claims"?   What constitutes "verification" of a claim?  Who is doing/attemping the verifying, and in what context/paradigm, and for what purpose?  What types of evidence and reasoning are acceptable in this exercise?  What quantum of evidence is sufficient to "verify" a claim?  Who determined the parameters of evidence and reasoning and evidentiary quantum?  Who is the arbiter of whether a claim has been verified or not?

On 3/28/2024 at 9:10 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Finally, we have to remove any claims of a relationship between historicity (or even verisimilitude) and truth. They are not equivalencies and shouldn't be taken as equivalencies.

Could you elaborate?  Is "a relationship" between two things coextensive with an "equivalence" between them?  It seems not.

On 3/28/2024 at 9:10 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Given these points - which are broadly accepted in terms of the pursuit of history - the essay engages some of these bad assumptions.

What are your thoughts about the essays in Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures?  I have read these essays several times over the years, and feel like I have a pretty good grasp of both their conclusions and assessments and the reasoning utilized to reach those conclusions/assessments.  Here, your essay is more conclusory than explanatory.  I want to understand both what you are concluding and how you got there.

On 3/28/2024 at 9:10 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Now, in allowing something a defense, these sorts of assumptions are broadly accepted by those without a specialized understanding - or who have highly nuanced views (like I have). Mormonism's populist view of a correlation between history and truth isn't unique to Mormonism. It comes out of the same perspective from the larger Christian context which dominates popular literature. Most of the sorts of discussions that we see here can easily be found in the context of broader Christian literature. One of the things that came out of higher criticism of the Biblical text was the big push to find the historical Jesus (of which there are many) and the claims of how we can hold to the historicity of the biblical text - and in more conservative circles, how the necessary historicity of the biblical text (necessary because of the perception that historicity is equivalent to truth) overrides other forms of possible evidence against historicity.

It is in this context that this essay's thesis should be understood. It is not about real historicity but about perceived historicity. Only if we assume that there is a connection between historicity and truth does this statement (again from that footnote) mean something:

Quote

In this sense, I suggest that a description of Book of Mormon historicity that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences of such a concept will be more productive than one that remains caught up in simply "proving" the relative "truth" of the book. Inasmuch as the question of evidence in Book of Mormon historicity is a philosophical or literary question rather than scientific one ...

So two points with my discussion in mind -

1: Social and cultural consequences relate to the reception of the text and its truth claims in the religious context. It's about how modern readers understand and read the text - it has nothing to do with historicity.

"It" is referencing what?

Thanks,

-Smac

[Benjamin McGuire]

11 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In most academic discussions, when one engages in an assessment of the dating of a "text," the idea of the text is generally not confined merely to its certainly verifiable linguistic forms, nor even to its certainly known production history. The word "text" also involves any potential unknown or unverifiable aspects of a document's true origin, production, transmission, and translation over time (which features of the text may have varying degrees of evidentiary support). For instance, although the Apocalypse of Abraham is only preserved in late medieval Slavonic manuscripts, scholars certainly wouldn't claim that it is "not ancient" or that it is a "wholly" late medieval production. In other words, the concept of "text" typically transcends the most recent or certainly known form that a text may take (i.e., a text is more than just its packaging). Based off of various inferences concerning the form and contents of the Apocalypse of Abraham, scholars believe that it was most likely an ancient document originally written in a Semitic language (probably Hebrew). That, of course, can't be proven, but it is widely assumed based on the available textual evidence. 

This is completely nonsensical.

It is something that I address in the link I provided. Here is part of the relevant material:

Quote

Historically, part of our struggle with the question of translation comes from the comparisons we make between the text of the Bible and the text of the Book of Mormon. ... Most of the time, this comparison works well and helps those we introduce to the Book of Mormon understand how we use and understand the Book of Mormon within our faith. But, when we take this comparison, and extend it into studies of the text, it can create some very real problems. Our tendency to try and understand the Book of Mormon and its translation primarily through the lens of biblical studies and the tools employed within traditional biblical studies is part of this inadequate framework.

First, the situation you raise about academics dating a text isn't at all analogous to what we get here. We might be able to have a corollary if we were to try and discuss the dating of the Biblical text when our only text was the King James version, and we not only had no copy of any earlier text, but we also had no working knowledge of the Hebrew language. On top of this, it would also be necessary to place most of the text into an archaeological vacuum.

But this isn't the sort of analogy you provide with the Apocalypse of Abraham. I'll supply some commentary from this academic discussion: Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (SBL, 2004). I am not going to get into the details about the various manuscripts we have. We have several different manuscripts which are all independently dated and which represent different levels of completeness. But, in discussing the nature of the text as a translation, the author of this volume offers this discussion (beginning on page 38):

Quote

Like nearly all early Slavonic literary texts, ApAb was translated from the Greek. Apart from the general historical considerations this conclusion may be confirmed by the long lists of Hellenisms. ... In this work we are concerned with the retroversion of those Greek counterparts which are not obvious or common, and/or the reconstruction of examples for each type of the translation phenomena which make the retroversion possible, namely: (1) graphic misinterpretations, (2) morphological calques, (3) semantic calques, (4) syntactic Hellenisms, and (5) phraseological Hellenisms.

The first category occurs when the translator misreads a text. So the author discusses several examples of this including an instance at 1:9. There we have a problematic reading, and the problematic reading in the Slavonic is well explained if we assume that the translator misread πελεκάω in their source text instead of πελεκίζω. Types 2 and 3 deal with calques - a calque is translation using a loan-word. In these texts this is often partly indicated by the fact that the word used in translation is unique (occurs nowhere else). These words generally have a similarity to the theoretical original root. So, for example, the Japanese タイプライター (transliterated as Taipuraitā) comes from the english word Typewriter. Morphological calques are loan words that maintain inflection points. The idea is fairly well understood. So we can see these unique words in the translation that correspond morphologically to Greek words. Semantic loans, on the other hand, use a term that already exists, but is expanded to cover ideas from the source language. This is particularly easy to see when we have the translation quoting something that we recognize. You get the idea. The problem that we run into with the Book of Mormon is that we can't do any of this with the Book of Mormon. Unlike with the Apocalypse of Abraham, we don't have a much larger body of translated texts in which we can both situate the Book of Mormon (as a part of that group) or to use to show how translations of known originals treated the text to create this library of examples. While we can identify instances of hapex legomena in the Book of Mormon, we don't have examples of a source language to compare them to.

So the Slavonic text is translated from a Greek text. Was there a Hebrew or Aramaic original? It seems likely. And as the author of that same text points out (p. 64): "we construct first the Greek Vorlage and then, when possible, its Semitic original."

Here we run into a problem that comes with the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon claims to be a translation of the gold plates (whatever that language was like). But most of the citations we have in the text of the Old Testament (and the New Testament) come in the language of the King James version. Even if we wanted to use the textual citations as a way to reconstruct that original text, we cannot. Our only option is to leapfrog back to the sources of the sources of the sources - assuming that we accept the narrative claims to textual history. That is, we have the gold plates, which are rendering the brass plates, which are rendering a Hebrew original. This doesn't help us at all to understand the text as a translation. And since the text uses a standard translation (at least for 1830) of biblical text in these passages, we have no loan words at all to look at here.

So let's summarize - the Book of Mormon doesn't provide us with anything that we can use that is similar to what is used to try and identify the Slavonic text of the Apocalypse of Abraham as a translation based on an earlier Greek tradition based on an earlier Semitic tradition. None of the evidence used to make these arguments exists for the Book of Mormon. Which brings us back to my comments -

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Thus, stated simply, your claim that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and that it is a "wholly modern text" is technically not verifiable (under most academic understandings of the concept of "text"). All one can responsibly claim--if one wants to adopt your rule that we should "only make verifiable claims"--is that the currently known form of the text is not ancient (meaning the earliest manuscripts and various editions published in English since 1830). Whether or not the English version of the text is a translation of a genuinely ancient document--and, if so, what type of translation it might be--is a matter of ongoing debate.

The Book of Mormon that we have is an entirely modern text. I will keep repeating this. You can discuss the "form of the text," and I don't mind using that term, but we run into the problem of what that actually means. We don't have any other form. And we don't really have significant clues as to what that form would look like. You mention this:

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm not sure that isolating modern content is necessarily the "first" thing that one would "have" to do. One could just as easily start by attempting to identify or isolate seemingly ancient content. I think both pursuits are part of any attempt to "date" a text (especially if a text's alleged antiquity is in dispute).

So getting back to this, this isn't how it plays out in the ApAb discussion that I provide. The morphological and sematic loans, the graphic misinterpretations - these are all the modern elements of the text. Identifying those modern elements is what allows us to identify the text as a translation. When the discussion mentions syntactic Hellenisms and phaseological Hellenisms, there is a look backwards - but we run into this problem with the Book of Mormon - these would be phraseological re-formed Egyptianisms or syntactic re-formed Egyptianisms (or whatever language the gold plates is written in). And we don't have any understanding of what this would look like. And the Book of Mormon does us no favors in this regard with its use of the King James text - we can't use that to identify features of the language from which the Book of Mormon was translated. At best, we could argue that there is a relationship between the text on the Gold Plates and a Hebrew original of the Old Testament - but that doesn't help us with the issue of translation. The use of the King James can only be understood in the context of a choice made by the modern translator. For us to look for clues to the translation in the text we have to exclude all of this language.

I don't think that there is a lot of distinction in separating the new from the old by pulling out the new or by pulling out the old - but focusing on the new is easier because we don't have any sort of history of the old. We eliminate what we can from consideration.

And to get back to my perspective, you haven't made a convincing case that you aren't confusing the Book of Mormon with its sources here. By drawing the comparison that you do with the ApAb, you seem to be asserting that the Book of Mormon is in some way like biblical texts (and pseudepigraphical texts). This is a conflation that hides the problem. If we wanted a real comparison to biblical studies, I suggest, that using the Book of Mormon in this way is akin to arguing about the textual history of the bible - using only the King James translation and ignoring everything else we know of the history of the text, of biblical Hebrew and Greek, and so on.

And as a final thought -

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Whether or not the English version of the text is a translation of a genuinely ancient document--and, if so, what type of translation it might be--is a matter of ongoing debate.

This is a real problem. There is no real doubt that the ApAb is a translation. And because we can make significant and detailed arguments about the actual language our manuscripts were translated from, we don't really have this matter of ongoing debate. The problem that I see is that when people speak of the Book of Mormon and the text and narratives in it, they want to refer to both the Book of Mormon text that we have and to the gold plates as an ancient record. They equate the two. If you are not equating them, then perhaps you could explain to us how you separate out the ancient material in the text and how you define it as ancient as opposed to the modern interpolations and the modern content of the text published in 1830.

[mfbukowski]

11 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is completely nonsensical.

👍

[Benjamin McGuire]

39 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Could you elaborate on the bolded parts above?  

Sure. The argument that Joseph Smith "could not have known" X, where X is a point of verisimilitude, is not a replacement argument for whether the text has historicity or whether the text is in some way "true". Similarly the critical view that the Book of Mormon contains X, where X is a point of contact with a modern context contemporary with Joseph Smith is not a replacement argument for whether the text lacks historicity or that the text is in some way "false".

A good example of this that I have engaged at some length is the appearance of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Here is a lengthy quote from my FAIR presentation on translation (I'll summarize the main point after so you don't have to read the whole thing if you don't want to):

Quote

 

Another example of how we conflate translation with proof comes in the assumptions surrounding chiasmus. Earlier, I noted that we have a tendency to use the tools of biblical criticism to investigate the text of the Book of Mormon. When we apply these tools to the Book of Mormon, and get results that are similar to the results produced in Biblical Studies, we use these results to suggest proof of authenticity. I see this regularly in essays (both published and unpublished) exploring aspects of chiasmus. A recent favorite for chiamsus enthusiasts was the 2010 essay by Edwards and Edwards titled “Does Chiasmus Appear in the Book of Mormon by Chance?”[14] This study is fascinating. It provides what could turn out to be a very valuable negative check to use against proposed examples of chiasmus in a text. But, it also has some issues related to its purpose (as an article). In the conclusions, they note this:

Using chiasmus to strengthen the claim of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient historical record is based on the assumption that Joseph Smith was unaware of chiasmus.[15]

And this seems to be par for the course when we engage this topic. Biblical studies is, by definition, quite narrow. They have very little interest in (or need for interest in) chiasmus outside of their field of study. And so Edwards and Edwards wrote in their introduction that:

The historical record has yielded no direct evidence that Joseph Smith actually knew about chiasmus when he translated the Book of Mormon in 1829, although some other people at that time did.[16]

The study uses a footnote to point to a series of articles by Jack Welch, Don Parry, and Dan Peterson. And those articles are certainly worth reading. And of course, if we look for references to chiasmus, we are going to come up with a very short list (which these authors all do). In fact, the term chiasmus is really rather quite late. And in terms of Biblical studies this isn’t much of an issue. But, in modern literary studies we find the same concept under the label of ‘ring forms’ and ‘ring structures’. And we can find entire books written with a chiastic structure that are roughly contemporary with the publication of the Book of Mormon. The one that caught my attention first, and introduced me to this concept (as seen outside of the world of Biblical studies) was published by Giambattista Vico in 1710, titled Liber metaphysicus, (the first of three volumes in his De antiquissima Italorum sapientia).[17] Just as significant was the influence that Vico had on Wagner – his ring forms becoming the structure of Vagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, his epic four part music drama composition. And Wagner’s work went on to inspire James Joyce – most notably in his novel Ulysses.

 

The main point of this for the present conversation is this quote from the Edwards and Edwards 2010 study: "Using chiasmus to strengthen the claim of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient historical record is based on the assumption that Joseph Smith was unaware of chiasmus." The problem is that I can find huge numbers of examples of chiasmus in literature contemporary to Joseph Smith including descriptions of the use of chiasmus as a rhetorical structure. It just isn't called chiasmus.

Chiasmus may be found in the text of the Book of Mormon as deliberate structures with roots in ancient semitic texts. Reading the text with these structures in mind may help us understand the text. Finding these structures is not evidence of either historicity or truth.

48 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Who is this "we"?  The Latter-day Saints?

I sometimes use the royal "we". I don't think, in reading my comments, that I meant to make this refer to Latter-day Saints as a whole.

49 minutes ago, smac97 said:

What do you mean by "wholly modern text"?

That it was a text published in 1830. That it was produced in the period of time before it was published. I also mean that the Book of Mormon is distinct from the gold plates. We can talk about the reliance of the Book of Mormon on the gold plates, but we shouldn't equate the two and make the Book of Mormon an ancient text - we need to clarify the relationship between the Book of Mormon and the gold plates in our discussions so that we don't confuse the two. Put more graphically, the gold plates cannot quote the King James bible. This is not an attempt to argue that the Book of Mormon is not a translation.

51 minutes ago, smac97 said:

What do you mean by "we make only verifiable claims"?   What constitutes "verification" of a claim?  Who is doing/attemping the verifying, and in what context/paradigm, and for what purpose?  What types of evidence and reasoning are acceptable in this exercise?  What quantum of evidence is sufficient to "verify" a claim?  Who determined the parameters of evidence and reasoning and evidentiary quantum?  Who is the arbiter of whether a claim has been verified or not?

I'll tell you what - if you answer three questions for me first, I'll answer these questions for you. 1: When was the language of the published Book of Mormon (1830) generated? 2: When was the copyright statement prepared for the published Book of Mormon (1830)? 3: Would you consider these first two questions to be verifiable, and if so, who could verify them?

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

What are your thoughts about the essays in Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures?  I have read these essays several times over the years, and feel like I have a pretty good grasp of both their conclusions and assessments and the reasoning utilized to reach those conclusions/assessments.  Here, your essay is more conclusory than explanatory.  I want to understand both what you are concluding and how you got there.

I wouldn't call this an essay. And I am not interested - I just don't have the time to review this book. Perhaps you could be more specific about what you would like a response to.

57 minutes ago, smac97 said:

"It" is referencing what?

The Williams essay that Zosimus linked to contained this comment:

Quote

To allow my parallel between Columbus and Joseph Smith to articulate these potential consequences, let's abandon that particular question of scientific "truth" for a moment and turn to the more cultural and social aspects of the debate on historicity.

It is a few pages later that he goes through this process (this is from page 49):

Quote

Here, then, it may be useful to label the appearance of the Book of Mormon in the Americas a "Colonializing Event," both because Columbus's name in the original Spanish is Colon and because I think the geopolitical implications are interesting. I define such an event as occurring when a series of speech acts are employed in the characterization or taking possession of an entire people—a process that relies for its legitimacy on systems of cultural power. Naturally, the drawing of parallels is never without a degree of tension. One must recognize, of course, that there was an important difference between the militarized greed and racist ambitions of Columbus, and the Utopian anti-capitalist, relatively anti-racist visions of Joseph Smith.

I am not terribly interested in really gunning for Williams. This isn't a recent publication and perhaps he has different views now. What I am really responding to is the claim in the other thread that this is the approach to the historicity of the Book of Mormon that Zosimus follows - this is what he wrote in that other thread: "In a way, I'm approaching the question of historicity in the same way Willams does." I am simply arguing that Williams doesn't approach historicity at all. There is no route to historicity in his discussion. This is the "It" - there is no historicity when we talk about the way that modern readers respond to the text.

[smac97]

21 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Sure. The argument that Joseph Smith "could not have known" X, where X is a point of verisimilitude, is not a replacement argument for whether the text has historicity or whether the text is in some way "true".

Could you explain what you mean by "replacement argument?"  Replacement for what?  I see this as an argument, one of many pertaining to historicity.

21 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Quote

What do you mean by "we make only verifiable claims"?   What constitutes "verification" of a claim?  Who is doing/attemping the verifying, and in what context/paradigm, and for what purpose?  What types of evidence and reasoning are acceptable in this exercise?  What quantum of evidence is sufficient to "verify" a claim?  Who determined the parameters of evidence and reasoning and evidentiary quantum?  Who is the arbiter of whether a claim has been verified or not?

I'll tell you what - if you answer three questions for me first, I'll answer these questions for you.

1: When was the language of the published Book of Mormon (1830) generated?

The English text was purportedly "generated" in 1829.

21 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

2: When was the copyright statement prepared for the published Book of Mormon (1830)?

Some time in fairly close proximity to June 11, 1829.

21 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

3: Would you consider these first two questions to be verifiable, and if so, who could verify them?

As a Latter-day Saint, yes, I think the first two questions are "verifiable." 

As to the first question, some dispute that Joseph Smith authored the text, and so may not agree with the 1829 date.

As to the second question, I don't think there is any reasonable dispute about the June 11, 1829 date.  From the above link:

Quote

On June 11, 1829, Joseph deposited, with the clerk of the Northern District Court of New York, a single printed page that resembled what would become the title page of the 1830 Book of Mormon, in order to secure a copyright in the work.³ The court clerk, Richard Ray Lansing, generated the official executed copyright form, which he retained; Lansing’s record book was eventually deposited in the Library of Congress. In December 2004, this official form and the accompanying title page were photographed by the Library of Congress⁴ (see pages 97–99 in this issue), prompting a reevaluation of the law and the events surrounding the original copyright of the Book of Mormon.
...

3. Copyright Records, June 11, 1829, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York 1826–1831, volume 116, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. Although the law required only that a printed title of the book be deposited with the court, Joseph Smith included the entirety of what would be the title page of the Book of Mormon.

4. In the past, the printer’s proof sheet of the title page was catalogued separately and encased in a protective covering. James Hutson located the official copyright application on a request initiated by Kristi Bell of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. Photos of the copyright application and title page proof sheet, first published in “The Worlds of Joseph Smith Gallery Display,” in The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress, ed. John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: BYU Press, 2006), 136–37, appear here for the first time in color.

I have not personally "verified" the foregoing statements, but I am content to deem them "verified" and beyond reasonable dispute.  I say this in large part because there are all sorts of people who, if there were grounds for dispute, would invoke them.  This has not happened.

21 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I wouldn't call this an essay. And I am not interested - I just don't have the time to review this book. Perhaps you could be more specific about what you would like a response to.

The book is a series of essays:

Quote

Table of Contents

• The Latter-day Saint Concept of Canon - Alexander B. Morrison
• Scripture as Incarnation - James E. Faulconer
• Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study - John Gee and Stephen D. Ricks
• The Need for Historicity: Why Banishing God from History Removes Historical Obligation - Paul Y. Hoskisson
• Joseph Smith and the Historicity of the Book of Mormon - Kent P. Jackson
• Joseph Smith and the Historicity of the Book of Mormon - Robert J. Matthews
• No Middle Ground: The Debate over the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon - Louis Midgley
• The Historical Jesus: A Latter-day Saint Perspective - Robert L. Millet
• Notes on Historicity and Inerrancy - Daniel C. Peterson
• The World and the Word: History, Literature, and Scripture - John S. Tanner
• The Historicity of the Book of Mormon - Dallin H. Oaks

I drew my characterization of these as "essays" from BYU's description of the book:

Quote

Abstract

In defense of the historicity—the historical actuality—of scriptures embraced by Latter-day Saints, several BYU and Institute scholars have contributed to a collection of essays published recently by BYU’s Religious Studies Center. Edited by Paul Y. Hoskisson, Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures contains 11 essays that explore this topic.

Also, they walk and talk like essays.

21 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am not terribly interested in really gunning for Williams. This isn't a recent publication and perhaps he has different views now. What I am really responding to is the claim in the other thread that this is the approach to the historicity of the Book of Mormon that Zosimus follows - this is what he wrote in that other thread: "In a way, I'm approaching the question of historicity in the same way Willams does." I am simply arguing that Williams doesn't approach historicity at all. There is no route to historicity in his discussion. This is the "It" - there is no historicity when we talk about the way that modern readers respond to the text.

Okay.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 29, 2024 by smac97

[Benjamin McGuire]

18 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Could you explain what you mean by "replacement argument?"  Replacement for what?  I see this as an argument, one of many pertaining to historicity.

Where is the historicity argument? Perhaps you could explain it to me.

20 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I have not personally "verified" the foregoing statements, but I am content to deem them "verified" and beyond reasonable dispute.  I say this in large part because there are all sorts of people who, if there were grounds for dispute, would invoke them.  This has not happened.

And all of this is what I meant. We have what most of us would consider to be a relatively easy to verify understanding of when the Book of Mormon came into existence. That it did so occurs independently of whether or not the Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient text. So when you asked earlier:

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

What do you mean by "we make only verifiable claims"?   What constitutes "verification" of a claim?  Who is doing/attemping the verifying, and in what context/paradigm, and for what purpose?  What types of evidence and reasoning are acceptable in this exercise?  What quantum of evidence is sufficient to "verify" a claim?  Who determined the parameters of evidence and reasoning and evidentiary quantum?  Who is the arbiter of whether a claim has been verified or not?

This is what I am referring to. I don't think that we really need to dig into this because none of it is contested. I don't even think we need to be this specific for the purposes of my comments in terms of date. It really doesn't matter - the Book of Mormon (which includes the title page, its copyright statement, and so on) is a modern production. It is not an ancient text.

25 minutes ago, smac97 said:

  37 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I wouldn't call this an essay. And I am not interested - I just don't have the time to review this book. Perhaps you could be more specific about what you would like a response to.

When I wrote this, I was responding to the later part of your comment -

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Here, your essay is more conclusory than explanatory.

This isn't an essay here. I whipped it out in 30 minutes. Your comment is spot on. It becomes a new thread because I didn't want to include this whole discussion in the other discussion I am having with Zosimus.

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So let's summarize - the Book of Mormon doesn't provide us with anything that we can use that is similar to what is used to try and identify the Slavonic text of the Apocalypse of Abraham as a translation based on an earlier Greek tradition based on an earlier Semitic tradition. None of the evidence used to make these arguments exists for the Book of Mormon.

None of the analysis (which you summarized in the quote above) really matters to my point, which is true for most of your other tangential commentary as well. Whether or not we have the tools to confidently trace the specific origins, transmissions, redactions, and translations of a text isn't the issue. A text could have a genuine ancient provenance, whether or not we have the ability to prove that fact or even responsibly assume it. So whether or not the Book of Mormon has sufficient textual evidence to confidently establish its antiquity (compared to the evidence supporting the ApAb or any other purportedly ancient text) is really beside the point. 

My point is simply that you can't verify that the English text of the Book of Mormon was not in some manner translated from an ancient document. You appear to be trying to prove a negative in a context where a negative just can't be proven. It is an unverifiable claim, which is somewhat ironic in that it is set forward as an example of a methodical principle in which only verifiable claims are to be invoked.  

Edited March 29, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 minute ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My point is simply that you can't verify that the English text of the Book of Mormon has no relationship to an ancient document from which it was purportedly "translated." You appear to be trying to prove a negative in a context where a negative just can't be proven. It is an unverifiable claim, which is somewhat ironic in that it is set forward as an example of a methodical principle in which only verifiable claims are to be invoked.  

I haven't argued otherwise.

What I said is that the Book of Mormon is a modern production. This can be said of any translation of an ancient text. It can be said of any translation of a modern text. The problem is the tendency to use the term Book of Mormon to refer to both an ancient text and a modern text - to equate the two. The Book of Mormon is not an ancient text even if it uses an ancient text as a source.

You continue to do this when you write:

4 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So whether or not the Book of Mormon has sufficient textual evidence to confidently establish its antiquity

The Book of Mormon doesn't exist before 1830. How can we even begin to argue that we can establish its antiquity? We want to argue about the antiquity of the gold plates, not the Book of Mormon.

[Ryan Dahle]

3 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

What I said is that the Book of Mormon is a modern production. This can be said of any translation of an ancient text. It can be said of any translation of a modern text. The problem is the tendency to use the term Book of Mormon to refer to both an ancient text and a modern text - to equate the two. The Book of Mormon is not an ancient text even if it uses an ancient text as a source.

Would you also say that the ApAb is not an ancient text and that it is wholly a product of the late medieval period, since the only extant versions of the document come from that time period? 

[ZealouslyStriving]

This stood out to me as I just read the Title Page:

"Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile—The interpretation thereof by the gift of God"

"noun: interpretation

the action of explaining the meaning of something.

"the interpretation of data"

Perhaps, the translation proceed was a combo of strict translate mixed with interpretation for the more difficult parts, thus why some parts appear to be more of a modern construct. I believe this corresponds well with the video interview with Don Bradley I posted earlier.

[Zosimus]

9 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Don Bradley's recent translation of the "Charactors Document" 

Hah I can't think up a more tempting clickbait link for Mormon history junkies 

BTW that's not Don Bradley

[ZealouslyStriving]

5 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

Hah I can't think up a more tempting clickbait link for Mormon history junkies 

BTW that's not Don Bradley

You are correct sir 🥴

Edit coming soon.

[Calm]

18 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

Hah I can't think up a more tempting clickbait link for Mormon history junkies 

BTW that's not Don Bradley

That makes way more sense.

[Zosimus]

Thanks for breaking out this thread, its a better starting point. I don't want to flood the replies here but wanted to clarify a few things I feel have been lost in the crossover from the other thread  

On 3/28/2024 at 10:10 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Now why this discussion? Because Zosimus misses the point here. His footnote 17 starts with "In this sense, I suggest that a description of Book of Mormon historicity that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences of such a concept will be more productive than one that remains caught up in simply 'proving' the relative 'truth' of the book." Historicity is indifferent to truth. If someone is claiming to be looking for the truth and at the same time discussing historicity, they are insisting that historicity and truth are one and the same thing - and that by proving one, they are consequently proving the other. In this sense, both Vogel and Stephen are on the same page - agreeing to the same principle. Vogel attempts to situate the text historically, thereby situating the truth of the text. Stephen attempts to situate the truth of the text, and so to situate the text's historicity. It doesn't work for either of them

I have said repeatedly that I am not attempting to prove the Book of Mormon is historical, I am attempting to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is believable. I might add that I agree with Williams, a discussion of Book of Mormon historicity that considers 'human' outcomes/consequences will be more productive than digging for historical evidence.

Another thing that Williams doesn't state clearly. We can't fault the Book of Mormon for identifying Polynesians with the Nephites and the Lamanites with indigenous Americans. That's all damage done by our reading of the text with our unsupportable assumptions about the setting.

As a quick example: It is widely accepted that the Lemba believe that they migrated from Jerusalem to a distant land from the 6th century BC. This claim can be supported with cultural, linguistic and genetic data. There is not enough evidence to establish that the Lemba accounts are historically true, but we can establish that their claims are believable. Their claims don't go against the data. A reading of the Book of Mormon that situates the Lehites within the same cultural milieu and demographic context as the Lemba would be more productive than a reading that situates them in Mesoamerica.

On 3/28/2024 at 10:10 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

I would argue that Zosimus is doing exactly what the article is explicitly critical of. By intuiting a historical context which they believe can be associated (as historicity - as they define the term) there is the perpetuation of a new set of ideas masquerading as truth. But because the evidence remains only philosophical and literary, interpretation, there will never be a solid connection between the text and historicity. 

Once again, any "evidence" I might propose is not intended to be evidence for historicity, but rather evidence for believability. I might use 3rd century Greek/Roman accounts of the Camarini, or 4th century fictional accounts of the Rechabites, to establish that the account of 200 years of peace in 4 Nephi is believable. Not historical, but believable. I note your doubts about what you perceive as a flattening of history, will respond in the relevant thread.

Notice I'm no longer using the word verisimilitude because we'd first need to have a discussion about what that term means.

On 3/28/2024 at 10:10 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

But if we only substitute one demographic group for another nothing really changes. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't use this argument as a way of criticizing Zosimus's theory. I think that while there is something to be said about the concerns that are raised, it's an argument in a completely different space than I usually engage.

Absolutely, this would be a problem. But when you look closely enough at the model I propose, I'm not substituting one demographic for another. I'm instead proposing to situate LDS Lamanites (indigenous Americans) and LDS Nephites (Polynesians) in a position that doesn't go against the data, or believability. My approach to the discussion of historicity is somewhere between Williams and Razib Khan:

As Khan says in his article The Native Americans Before the Native Americans:

"The religion founded by Joseph Smith, Mormonism, was bathed with cutting-edge scientific and historical theories from the 1820s, like that Native Americans descended from ancient Hebrew tribes."

I see the production of the Book of Mormon in a similar way. I assume that Joseph Smith (as translator) didn't know the setting of the text, because he couldn't have known this from the text. So Joseph Smith was intuiting/following the most believable "cutting-edge" theories available to him about the peopling of the Americas. I'll be making my case in the another thread that he sourced these ideas from the writings of perceived authorities like Humboldt, and even sourced directly from Samuel Mitchell. We don't know much about Joseph's personal beliefs wrt the setting of the narrative. Even if we did, we could be sure his understanding did not come from the Book of Mormon. The only thing we can establish from the Book of Mormon is that the setting was upon Jacob's "isle in the sea", which later takes the form of an isthmus or peninsula surrounded by water with a narrow neck separating the Land Northward from the Land Southward. We might have another clue, but for it to work we'd need to assume that Columbus was the man among gentiles in Nephi's vision:

"And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land."—1 Nephi 13:12

We could speculate that because the Spirit of God led Columbus to the Americas, that the setting of the Book of Mormon is also the Americas. After all Columbus believed his act of discovery was the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecies about the isles of the sea.

"I pointed out that for the execution of the journey to the Indies I was not aided by intelligence, by mathematics or by maps. It was simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied." — Christopher Columbus

But there's a problem, as Williams points out. Columbus was wrong about the location and he misidentified the people. This is where Williams intentionally engages the vice of parallelomania, to compare Columbus' misstatements about the identity of Native Americans with Joseph's misstatements about the identity of Native Americans. What I'll be doing in the geography thread is really unpacking this, because right or wrong, both Joseph and Columbus seem to agree, they were participating in the same prophetic event, and the text of the Book of Mormon seems to confirm this.

But I'm curious. How would you, using strict text-only methods, understand 1 Nephi 13:12? Can we establish that the text has anticipated the identity of a historical figure or is this just more parallelomania?

Edited March 30, 2024 by Zosimus

[Benjamin McGuire]

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Would you also say that the ApAb is not an ancient text and that it is wholly a product of the late medieval period, since the only extant versions of the document come from that time period? 

No. I think that you are continuing to confuse the issue. Let's go back to that text I referenced in my earlier comments to you - Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha. I am going to quote for you the first two paragraphs of the introduction (since I had to type this in, I didn't bother with all the italics):

Quote

 

Most early Slavonic documents are translated texts. Unlike Greek, Latin, and some other medieval sacral languages with developed pre-Christian literary traditions, Slavonic was initially created as a lingua translations from Greek, and mainly from the "Semitized" Greek of the Bible and early Christian literature. Many of the Slavonic writings could hardly be properly interpreted without referring to their Vorlage. This problem is especially striking when we deal with those texts for which there are no surviving prototypes or versions in other languages.

The significance of some such texts goes far beyond their value for Slavic research, when their lost originals belong to ancient traditions that form the foundation of our culture. One of the most significant ancient documents to have been preserved solely in translation into Slavonic is the pseudepigraphon Apocalypse of Abraham (= ApAb). Its lost Hebrew (or, less probably, Palestinian Aramaic) original may be defined as the earliest mystical writing of Judeo-Christian civilization and as representative of a missing link between early apocalyptic and medieval Hekhalot tradition. ApAb is of great interest for the study of the roots of both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. At the same time, the Slavonic prototext of ApAb is no less important for the investigation of Slavonic literary activity at the very beginning of its development.

 

The Apocalypse of Abraham that is described here (the ApAb) is a narrative. It isn't something that is real - it is a theoretical construct that is connected to both real and hypothetical texts over a long period of time. If we wanted to speak of the Book of Mormon as a narrative, (in the same way that we can speak of the ApAb as a narrative), then we should likewise speak of it as a narrative for which we have no original, and whose only translation (existing in a  family of manuscripts as Skousen points out) is very useful in exploring the religious context of the time of its translation and publication.

From the perspective of a believer, I am not suggesting at all (just as this author points out) that we cannot properly interpret the text without reference to its Vorlage (the Gold Plates). The problem is that, much as with the ApAb manuscripts, there are going to be differences between that vorlage (earlier source) and the text that we have, and much of what is different will reflect the purpose and use of the translation in its modern context.

Likewise, when we look at the ApAb manuscripts, we recognize that they are not themselves as old as the narrative is, and that they have great value in looking at the time period in which they were created (that late medieval period that you reference). And this means that there is a recognized difference between the manuscripts themselves, the narrative, and the narrative as is changes over that history (reflecting issues contemporary to those changes as they occur).

Does this help at all?

As a follow up comment, when trying to hypothetically reconstruct an ancient vorlage of the Book of Mormon we have to (as this author does) work to separate out the aspects of the medieval manuscripts that reflect issues contemporary with the production of those manuscripts from what might reflect the older material connected to the textual history of the literary tradition. And to do this, we have to distinguish between the Book of Mormon and its ancient vorlage. This is far more difficult with the Book of Mormon than it is with the ApAb - because while both narrative traditions do not have extent originals, the ApAb exists within a specific community of similar texts and is translated into a language that in its own way a specialized form used to translate earlier texts and documents - allowing us (as modern investigators) to recognize the likelihood of specific Greek originals underlying specific Slavonic phrases. None of this sort of thing exists for the Book of Mormon. And our wanting to confuse the two issues plays out problematically in lots of different ways in our literature and in our popular belief.

[Benjamin McGuire]

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

I have said repeatedly that I am not attempting to prove the Book of Mormon is historical, I am attempting to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is believable. I might add that I agree with Williams, a discussion of Book of Mormon historicity that considers 'human' outcomes/consequences will be more productive than digging for historical evidence.

What is it that you think makes the text unbelievable without the additional context that you are providing? This is, I think, a serious question, because if you think that this discussion is necessary, then you must find something about the text itself to be unbelievable unless it is interpreted properly.

Don't get me wrong - this idea is as old as scriptural commentary. There is a moment in Augustine's Confession when he tells us how he learned to resolve difficult passages in scripture:

Quote

For, as to those passages in the Scripture which had heretofore appeared incongruous and offensive to me, now that I had heard several of them expounded reasonably, I could see that they were to be resolved by the mysteries of spiritual interpretation.

It's all about the interpretation. But to use Augustine's language, what part of the Book of Mormon is incongruous so that it needs a special interpretation to make it believable?

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Another thing that Williams doesn't state clearly. We can't fault the Book of Mormon for identifying Polynesians with the Nephites and the Lamanites with indigenous Americans. That's all damage done by our reading of the text with our unsupportable assumptions about the setting.

It isn't that he doesn't state it clearly, it's that he tells us that he isn't going to engage this issue of historicity. This is the problem of claims about historicity - the claim that we can situate the text in a specific place and time in history. His argument points to the fact that there are lots of different readings trying to situate the text historically (to give it historicity) and that there isn't just this sort of thing - this is exactly what Vogel and Metcalfe also do. It is what you are trying to do. And Williams tells us that he is uninterested in getting into that issue - because it isn't the historicity question that is of interest to him but the way that the interpretation of the text works when viewed through the lens of colonization and decolonization studies. These terms, by the way, have a very specific meaning in the context of literature studies (where Williams gets them).

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

As a quick example: It is widely accepted that the Lemba believe that they migrated from Jerusalem to a distant land from the 6th century BC. This claim can be supported with cultural, linguistic and genetic data. There is not enough evidence to establish that the Lemba accounts are historically true, but we can establish that their claims are believable. Their claims don't go against the data. A reading of the Book of Mormon that situates the Lehites within the same cultural milieu and demographic context as the Lemba would be more productive than a reading that situates them in Mesoamerica.

No, it wouldn't be more productive. You keep saying this, but where is the evidence for this sort of claim? And in the context of the Williams essay, why would colonizing a different set of people using the text create any less difficulty than the first set?

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Once again, any "evidence" I might propose is not intended to be evidence for historicity, but rather evidence for believability. I might use 3rd century Greek/Roman accounts of the Camarini, or 4th century fictional accounts of the Rechabites, to establish that the account of 200 years of peace in 4 Nephi is believable. Not historical, but believable. I note your doubts about what you perceive as a flattening of history, will respond in the relevant thread.

Notice I'm no longer using the word verisimilitude because we'd first need to have a discussion about what that term means.

I think that you need to define believability. Why? To go back to an example I offered quite some time ago, the Book of Esther is an ancient text, it has verisimilitude, but it is a work of fiction. It is not believable. What evidence do you have that people found the narrative of Zosimus believable? Or the Kedah Annals? One of the challenges I find here is that this idea of believability in the way that you are using it seems very much to be a relatively modern construct. We have a lot of mythology in ancient histories - just look at Herodotus. But it seems equally clear that those writers were very highly suspicious of the mythical elements that they included in their narratives. At the same time, it is important to ask why you think that Greek/Roman accounts of the Camarini or a 4th century fictional account of the Rechabites has any relevance to the Book of Mormon, or to making it "believable".

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

My approach to the discussion of historicity is somewhere between Williams and Razib Khan:

And my challenge is that Williams doesn't engage in historicity. At all. So your comment doesn't narrow this down, or explain how I should understand what you mean by historicity - or why historicity even matters for this issue.

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

I see the production of the Book of Mormon in a similar way. I assume that Joseph Smith (as translator) didn't know the setting of the text, because he couldn't have known this from the text. So Joseph Smith was intuiting/following the most believable "cutting-edge" theories available to him about the peopling of the Americas. I'll be making my case in the another thread that he sourced these ideas from the writings of perceived authorities like Humboldt, and even sourced directly from Samuel Mitchell. We don't know much about Joseph's personal beliefs wrt the setting of the narrative. Even if we did, we could be sure his understanding did not come from the Book of Mormon. The only thing we can establish from the Book of Mormon is that the setting was upon Jacob's "isle in the sea", which later takes the form of an isthmus or peninsula surrounded by water with a narrow neck separating the Land Northward from the Land Southward.

And this seems really incoherent to me. Perhaps you could spell this out - by separating out your different points and explaining what you mean here. If Joseph is just a translator of the text, then what relevance is there at all in what Mitchell believed or in what Humboldt believed?

And what should I do about the literary interpretation that has to occur to connect Jacob's "isle in the sea" with the much later land northward and the land southward (which has nothing to do with isles more generally)?

5 hours ago, Zosimus said:

But I'm curious. How would you, using strict text-only methods, understand 1 Nephi 13:12? Can we establish that the text has anticipated the identity of a historical figure or is this just more parallelomania?

1 Nephi 13 is part of a revelatory vision. That vision is filled with symbolism. When Nephi interprets his own vision, he does so using the text of Isaiah. For an initial look at my approach, see this publication here, starting with the header "Nephi Reading". At the same time, the text is a translation. So out better question is, how does the translator understand the text so that it comes to us in this way ... what I get from you though is a reading predetermined by your intuited view of historicity.

[Ryan Dahle]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. I think that you are continuing to confuse the issue.

I don't think you understand my intent nor my line of questioning nor my knowledge base.

I have read ApAb all the way through and studied its contents on several occasions for different purposes. I have read multiple academic articles discussing its contents. I have read a number of other pseudepigraphic texts and the secondary literature surrounding them as well. I appreciate your efforts to get me up to speed on these issues, and I agree with a lot of what you are saying about them. But you are missing my point. So I will try state my purpose very clearly so that you don't feel inclined to give me unneeded elaborate discussions that don't meaningfully add to my understanding of these issues, and which largely avoid my specific concerns. Here is my position: 

1. I believe the way you talk about the dating of "texts" is academically unorthodox and therefore can be easily misunderstood.
2. I find the justifications for your usage in this regard (which you have provided to this point in the discussion ) to be inconsistent and unwarranted.  
3. I find this situation problematic because you are apparently attempting to establish a mode of discourse about this topic that helps people avoid confusion about these somewhat complex matters. 

So let me just ask for confirmation of your view, so that I'm not misunderstanding you. It seems like you are saying the following

1. The Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and is a "wholly modern text."  
2. In contrast, the ApAb is an ancient text, even though its earliest extant manuscripts aren't ancient.

And you can forebear with another elaborate explanation. I just want to make sure I get these two claims right. Then I will get into the concerns I see with your stated rationale up to this point. 

Late Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not even considering historicity at the moment. That is a downstream discussion.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I have read ApAb all the way through and studied its contents on several occasions for different purposes.

You haven't. Or, if you think you have, what you have read is an entirely modern creation - one that cannot be found in any manuscript that exists. There is no manuscript that would contain the ApAb in the sense that we can talk about a narrative that is the ApAb. We construct what we believe is that narrative by using the range of manuscripts that we have, correcting them where we think they need to be corrected, and so on. We may even choose one manuscript that we think is the best, and build the narrative around that one, but supplementing the missing parts from other texts, correcting orthographic errors, and all of the rest of the stuff that comes with it. And of course, it is translated into English (I assume you don't read that form of Slavonic, but I could be wrong). Inevitably though, we do not have an original manuscript text that matches what gets read in that composite text built from all the others. And the ApAb is a good sampling of what this is and how it works. To go back to my text - this is from page 3:

Quote

A relatively full text of ApAb is found in six manuscripts from the 14th to the 17th centuries, four of which are integreated into the Palaea Interpretata (mss ABCK; for abbreviations see the list of manuscripts). Other copies are obviously secondary and contain almost no independent evidence (cf. Lunt 1985:56 and n. 3; RL:686-687). Codex Sylvester (ms S) is the oldest and the only independent manuscript containing the full text of ApAb. Although it is also the most obscure and is considered "extremely faulty" (RL:686), abundant "in errors major and minor," it preserves valuable evidence of the Slavonic prototext and its sources.

So when you read ApAb, which manuscript are you actually reading? Which version of the text do you follow? This is exactly what I am referring to as the problem of a text like the ApAb - we use the term to refer to a narrative, but the individual manuscripts that we have are all derivative of that narrative - none of them represent in totality what we generally consider to be the ApAb.

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

1: I believe the way you talk about the dating of "texts" is academically unorthodox and therefore can be easily misunderstood.

You need to be more specific here about this ... what is the way that am I talking about the dating of "texts" that is both unorthodox and easily misunderstood?

We can just start here I think. The problem ultimately (to use the sort of terminology that you are getting to here) is that I am considering the Book of Mormon to be a manuscript, not a text - at least not a text in the sense that we speak of the ApAb. As a manuscript, we can date the manuscript that is the Book of Mormon. Much like the various manuscripts of the ApAb, the manuscript of the Book of Mormon (the 1830 edition or any of the subsequent editions) is not synonymous with the narrative of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon (1830 edition) is no more an ancient text than are the ApAb manuscripts listed above labeled A, B, C, and K. I use those in particular because they exist with large amounts of added material, not present in the hypothetical original version of the ApAb. So let's get back to your question

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

• The Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and is a "wholly modern text."  
• In contrast, the ApAb is an ancient text, even though its earliest extant manuscripts aren't ancient.

If we want to consider the Book of Mormon and the ApAb to both be ancient texts in the same way, then we have two narrative traditions - neither of which are extant in any original form, and both of which can only be found in relatively late translations. The Book of Mormon that we read is a late manuscript translation of the original Book of Mormon narrative (no longer extant). We know that it was produced in the late 1820s. We know that its translators (assuming that it is a translation) incorporated, among other things, large sections of the King James translation of the Bible (it is not an original translation in places of a source text).

I don't have any problems discussing the Book of Mormon on these terms. The problem is when people make the argument that the 19th century manuscript Book of Mormon that we have is equivalent to the original Book of Mormon text.

So to summarize - the printed Book of Mormon that we read is not analogous to the ApAb as a narrative tradition. It is analogous to one of the various manuscripts that we have (which can be reasonably accurately dated) of the Slavonic translation of ApAb. These manuscripts are not themselves ancient.

The problem that we have (within Mormonism) is the desire to conflate the two - to make the Book of Mormon manuscript (and remember now, we have this push for the original Book of Mormon text to push this back to its absolutely earliest form) the same as narrative tradition - to make the original dictated text identical in some way to that ancient source. There are a lot of reasons why there would be this urge to conflate the two - but those reasons don't make it appropriate to do so. And the real challenge that we have is that this conflation allows us to ignore what should be important to those who want to investigate the potential vorlage of the Book of Mormon - the need to extract from the text those things that are attributable to the modern translation process as additions or interpretations to the text - those elements that move the manuscript that we have away from the original narrative.