Book of Mormon Historicity: A Reply

Benjamin McGuire · March 30, 2024

9 hours ago, Zosimus said:

I am attempting to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is believable.

I was in a bit of a hurry this morning, and I wanted to add something -

The question of believability is a challenge because of the way that it get substituted for historicity. Adele Berlin (who I quote from time to time) said this on the question of the historicity of Esther (JBL 120/1, "The Book of Esther and Ancient Storytelling"), emphasis added:

Quote

On what grounds is a story to be judged fictional? Because it is easier to accept a patently unrealistic story, fictionality was sometimes determined by whether or not the events of the story could have happened or by whether the story seemed realistic. But to judge a story’s historicity by its degree of realism is to mistake verisimilitude for historicity. Verisimilitude is the literary term for the illusion of reality. Just because a story sounds real does not mean that it is. Realistic fiction is just as fictional as nonrealistic fiction. Among the leading arguments for Esther’s historicity are that its setting is authentic and that its knowledge of Persian custom is detailed and accurate. But this realistic background proves nothing about the historicity of the story, as our aforementioned commentators were well aware.

When I see the notion of believability being introduced to the discussion, this is where it takes me. But, as I noted earlier, the idea that being believable (being verisimilar) isn't really all that useful for establishing truth or establishing historicity. And the reason why this is important is that you also said this:

9 hours ago, Zosimus said:

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

Just because you aren't using the word doesn't mean that you have stopped using the concept.

Ryan Dahle · March 30, 2024

20 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

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.

So, to be clear, do you hold to these following conclusions simultaneously:

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.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

Benjamin McGuire · March 30, 2024

6 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So, to be clear, do you hold to these following conclusions simultaneously:

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.

No.

If as you say in point 2, "the ApAb is an ancient text, even though its earliest extant manuscripts aren't ancient", then you are making a distinction between a "text" and a "manuscript".

The Book of Mormon is a "manuscript" and not a "text" in this context.

Because of this distinction, the Book of Mormon is clearly "not an ancient text" in the same way that the ApAb "is an ancient text."

To clarify point number one, if we want to use terminology in a technical fashion like this, I would not say that the Book of Mormon is a "wholly modern text" either. I would say that it is a "wholly modern manuscript".

So, I would say something like this:

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

Ryan Dahle · March 30, 2024

28 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

To clarify point number one, if we want to use terminology in a technical fashion like this, I would not say that the Book of Mormon is a "wholly modern text" either. I would say that it is a "wholly modern manuscript".

Now we are honing in on the issue that I am getting at. But we aren't quite there yet.

28 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So, I would say something like this:

The Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" because it is a "wholly modern manuscript."

In contrast, the ApAb is an ancient text, even though its earliest extant manuscripts aren't ancient.

I think this has some flawed hidden reasoning in it, which I will try to elaborate on further. But first, what do you think of these revised set of statements (which I am crafting based on the logic you are using above):

The Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" because it is a "wholly modern manuscript."
The ApAb is also not an ancient text, because it is only found in a set of late medieval manuscripts.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

Benjamin McGuire · March 30, 2024

7 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think this has some flawed hidden reasoning in it, which will try to elaborate on further. But first, what do you think of these revised set of statements (which I am crafting based on the logic you are using above):

The Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" because it is a "wholly modern manuscript."

The ApAb is also not an ancient text, because it is only found in a set of late medieval manuscripts.

Ok so we have gotten past problem one - on to problem two.

Text as technically used here (in your statements) doesn't refer to what we read (the artifact) but to the narrative that comes when we read the artifact. The ApAb isn't a text (an artifact) but a narrative (a construct). So, number 2 is problematic - because that narrative isn't actually found on the set of late medieval manuscripts (and to the extent that modern experts may be guessing correctly, modern translations and manuscripts may or may not accurately reflect that narrative). You can't provide me with the ApAb and then tell me on which of the late medieval manuscripts that this text is found - because all of the manuscripts are different (in a variety of ways and for a variety of different reasons). So we can speak of the text of the ApAb, and we can show how each of these late medieval manuscripts reflects that text (modified in various ways). Each of these manuscripts was, at some point, a 'modern' manuscript.

Because of this, the ApAb is an ancient text - regardless of whether it is found on a set of late medieval manuscripts.

The Book of Mormon is a manuscript. We could speak of a Book of Mormon text - but only if we adopt the position that there is a Book of Mormon narrative that is only partially reflected in the Book of Mormon manuscripts, having been changed in a variety of ways for various reasons.

Ryan Dahle · March 30, 2024

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Text as technically used here (in your statements) doesn't refer to what we read (the artifact) but to the narrative that comes when we read the artifact. The ApAb isn't a text (an artifact) but a narrative (a construct). So, number 2 is problematic - because that narrative isn't actually found on the set of late medieval manuscripts (and to the extent that modern experts may be guessing correctly, modern translations and manuscripts may or may not accurately reflect that narrative). You can't provide me with the ApAb and then tell me on which of the late medieval manuscripts that this text is found - because all of the manuscripts are different (in a variety of ways and for a variety of different reasons). So we can speak of the text of the ApAb, and we can show how each of these late medieval manuscripts reflects that text (modified in various ways). Each of these manuscripts was, at some point, a 'modern' manuscript.

Because of this, the ApAb is an ancient text - regardless of whether it is found on a set of late medieval manuscripts.

This is what I am getting at.

When scholars speak of a "text" that has a specific name or title, such as the ApAb, they typically aren't referencing any specific manuscript or translation or edition or version of the text (unless specified). The ApAb, as a text, is a transcendent concept. It involves all known versions of the text, as well as any that might not be known. It seems likely that there were other versions of the ApAb that have been lost to history. If so, and if ever discovered, they would also be appropriately labeled as the ApAb. Of course, it is possible that a version of a text may be so divergent from any related manuscripts that scholars might elect to exclude it from the label or title altogether. So there are limits. But typically the concept of a "text," when it is given a title such as ApAb, can accommodate a significant degree of variation (in production history, redaction, translation, expansion, etc.).

The same rationale would apply to the Book of Mormon. It is a transcendent idea. The Original and Printer's manuscripts, the 1830 edition, and all other editions, as well as any presumed ancient documents from which the English versions are believed to have been translated, all belong to the same "text." In as much as they exist, they are all more or less the Book of Mormon. So when you make unqualified statements--such as "the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text" or it is "wholly a modern text"--it opens the door wide open for misunderstanding. Most people don't think of the Book of Mormon--the text--in that way, as simply a set of modern manuscripts.

If you want to emphasize that we only have the Book of Mormon in English, then fine. If you want to counsel people to avoid conflating its modern manuscripts with any possible or presumed ancient versions of the text, then fine. Good for you, and agree with that emphasis. But when you say that the Book of Mormon isn't ancient and that it is wholly modern, you are almost bound to be misunderstood. People will likely conclude that you are categorically stating that there is no ancient version of the text, rather than commenting on its modern manuscripts or linguistic form.

Part of the reason readers would misunderstand your meaning is that when scholars speak of the dating of a text, like the ApAb, they typically will refer to its original production. Often, this is just a best guess (when dealing with ancient documents). In some cases we can make stronger inferences than in others, about when a text was most likely first produced. In other words, if you asked an expert in the pseudepigrapha about the dating of the ApAb, they would most likely tell you that it dates to the first or second centuries CE. Scholars are usually careful, when talking about the dating of later manuscripts, to clarify that distinction. Notably, I have never heard of a text like the ApAb described categorically as "not being ancient" or as being "wholly late-medieval" simply because the only extant versions of the text are contained on manuscripts which are presumed to post-date the original production.

Even if you were to claim that there is comparatively better evidence for the antiquity of the ApAb than there is for the Book of Mormon (which isn't a debate I'm interested in at the moment), it wouldn't matter (and really isn't a relevant point). This is because we aren't talking here about some sort of evidentiary threshold needed before we can appropriately describe a text as categorically ancient. Rather, if evidence is an issue, then we are talking here about the evidentiary threshold needed to assert that a text is not ancient and that it is wholly modern (per your claims)! As I quoted earlier, you stated: "the ApAb is an ancient text -regardless of whether it is found on a set of late medieval manuscripts." I would just reply with the following: The Book of Mormon could be an ancient text, regardless of whether it is found on modern manuscripts. In other words, if this is about evidence for antiquity (rather than just a shift in definitions that conflates texts with manuscripts), then you don't have enough of it to conclusively state that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text. That isn't a verifiable claim.

Here is the ultimate point: The only sense in which the Book of Mormon can be conclusively labeled as "not an ancient text" and as a "wholly modern text" is if one is strictly speaking of the text's modern production history and manuscripts (as if the text is these things, and only these things, whether or not an ancient version of it exists). In other words, you have to divest the Book of Mormon of the transcendent notion of "text" in order for your statements to be true. But in doing so, you are engaging in a mode of discourse that is demonstrably unorthodox and atypical of scholarly discussions about texts. You seem to recognize this, since you aren't willing to describe the ApAb as non-ancient or as a wholly late-medieval text (i.e., you aren't willing to say that the ApAb is, and is only, what is contained on a set of late-medieval manuscripts). And rightly so, since scholars, to my knowledge, don't typically conflate manuscripts with texts in this manner. I have never seen it done. Thus, your mode of discourse will likely lead to confusion rather than clarity.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

Benjamin McGuire · March 31, 2024

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So when you make unqualified statements--such as "the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text" or it is "wholly a modern text"--it opens the door wide open for misunderstanding. Most people don't think of the Book of Mormon--the text--in that way, as simply a set of modern manuscripts.

And yet we get someone like yourself, who then argues that the text is ancient, without distinguishing the fact that you don't mean the English manuscript published in 1830 (or even better yet the original manuscript) - rather you mean the gold plates from which the English text of the Book of Mormon was translated. As I have stated here and elsewhere, anytime we then attempt to use tools (of the sort that biblical studies brings to bear on the biblical text) on the English Book of Mormon, it is no different from a biblical scholar working exclusively from the King James translation of the text.

This is a real problem. And to be frank, I don't seem to have this issue when I talk about this quite broadly. All I have to do, when I talk about the published Book of Mormon as a modern text is to explain that by this, I mean the English text and not the contents of the Gold Plates. It is your attempt to blur the line between these two that (and others who do so) that continues to give strength to the popular views that I am trying to correct.

That last sentence of yours is fascinating to me - because you are criticizing me here for using terminology and language that the typical LDS member would find confusing - and yet you just earlier today criticized me for not reflecting appropriate academic explanations. So which should it be? Should I present a populist message, or should I try to be accurate? I think that my message is quite appropriate and apparently quite necessary.

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But when you say that the Book of Mormon isn't ancient and that it is wholly modern, you are almost bound to be misunderstood. People will likely conclude that you are categorically stating that there is no ancient version of the text, rather than commenting on its modern manuscripts or linguistic form.

And when you call the Book of Mormon an ancient text, while referring to the published English edition you are also creating a situation that is at least as harmful (if not more so). What you say might be true, if in fact my history of publications tells a very different story.

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Part of the reason readers would misunderstand your meaning is that when scholars speak of the dating of a text, like the ApAb, they typically will refer to its original production.

This isn't true. Most academic publications may talk about the original text - but they are also careful to date the manuscript evidence accurately. They don't refer to the Slavic manuscripts of the ApAb as that ancient text.

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Notably, I have never heard of a text like the ApAb described categorically as "not being ancient" or as being "wholly late-medieval" simply because the only extant versions of the text are contained on manuscripts which are presumed to post-date the original production.

Of course not, but in the academic material I did quote, we saw very clearly a distinction made about the manuscripts and what the manuscript families could tell us about the time frame in which they were produced. You see, for us, as LDS, it would be very helpful for us to understand that the translation of the Book of Mormon in 1830 provides a great deal of information about the audience for which it was intended. Yet this idea is often viewed as anathema within Mormon thought.

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I would just reply with the following: The Book of Mormon could be an ancient text, regardless of whether it is found on modern manuscripts. In other words, if this is about evidence for antiquity (rather than just a shift in definitions that conflates texts with manuscripts), then you don't have enough of it to conclusively state that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text. That isn't a verifiable claim.

And the problem is that you will continue to label the modern English Book of Mormon text as the Book of Mormon rather than as a modern manuscript of the Book of Mormon. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Nor can you say with any certainty what parts of the English translation of the Book of Mormon are necessarily ancient in origin (although we can point with some certainty to parts that are modern in origin). This is the heart of the problem - and why your position isn't particularly tenable.

3 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Here is the ultimate point: The only sense in which the Book of Mormon can be conclusively labeled as "not an ancient text" and as a "wholly modern text" is if one is strictly speaking of the text's modern production history and manuscripts (as if the text is these things, and only these things, whether or not an ancient version of it exists). In other words, you have to divest the Book of Mormon of the transcendent notion of "text" in order for your statements to be true. But in doing so, you are engaging in a mode of discourse that is demonstrably unorthodox and atypical of scholarly discussions about texts. You seem to recognize this, since you aren't willing to describe the ApAb as non-ancient or as a wholly late-medieval text (i.e., you aren't willing to say that the ApAb is, and is only, what is contained on a set of late-medieval manuscripts). And rightly so, since scholars, to my knowledge, don't typically conflate manuscripts with texts in this manner. I have never seen it done. Thus, your mode of discourse will likely lead to confusion rather than clarity.

As a simple response to your 'ultimate point' I would say this. The only text that we have is the English translation. And we can know with some certainty that parts of that text are modern in nature.

Yes, this is unorthodox. Yes, it is a point of view that is atypical of LDS scholars. It is not a point that is atypical of biblical scholarship today. We have clear problems with the conflation that occurs - and I have discussed this quite publicly for years. But there is a distinct set of problems with asserting that the text that we have is identical to the transcendent text of the Book of Mormon as you define it here.

Benjamin McGuire · March 31, 2024

By the way, I wanted to add one comment for @Ryan Dahle -

When we quote from the Book of Mormon (regardless of what our purpose is for that quote), we aren't quoting from the transcendent text - we are quoting from the modern manuscript. Every time.

This is part of why the distinction matters. No one ever quotes from the transcendent text of the Book of Mormon because none of us has any real idea of what it looks like. And certainly, if suddenly we come across other manuscripts (original or translations) we could then start having a more solid discussion of what that transcendent text might be like. But without it, we can merely assert that on the assumption that the Book of Mormon is in fact a translation, then that transcendent text must exist. We could even work to identify what in the modern manuscript should be attributed to that transcendent text and what should be attributed to the modern translation. But without drawing that distinction, such efforts are impossible.

Ryan Dahle · March 31, 2024

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

That last sentence of yours is fascinating to me - because you are criticizing me here for using terminology and language that the typical LDS member would find confusing - and yet you just earlier today criticized me for not reflecting appropriate academic explanations. So which should it be? Should I present a populist message, or should I try to be accurate? I think that my message is quite appropriate and apparently quite necessary.

In some instances, the academic and popular understanding of an idea converge or overlap for whatever reasons or set of reasons, which appears to be the case here. Your comments would easily be confused either way. Pretty much anyone--scholar or layman--would assume that your language would exclude the possibility of any ancient version of the text. It is no secret among average Latter-day Saints or those who disagree with them, that there is an ongoing debate about the antiquity of the Book of Mormon. Countless commentators who disagree with the Church's tenets have claimed that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text (in the sense that it is impossible or highly implausible that it was inded translated from an ancient document). So, of course, when you state that the text "is not ancient" and is "wholly modern" this is what people will likely assume is being claimed.

Yet a similar understanding would result if your statements were interpreted through a scholarly lens. If a scholar were to state, without qualification, that the ApAb "is not an ancient text" and is a "wholly modern text" the conclusion would be that there is no ancient version of the text. This is why scholars are generally careful when talking about the dating of later manuscripts to specify that it is only the manuscripts themselves that they are referencing, and not the text itself as a transcendent concept.

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And when you call the Book of Mormon an ancient text, while referring to the published English edition you are also creating a situation that is at least as harmful (if not more so). What you say might be true, if in fact my history of publications tells a very different story.

First of all, I didn't say the Book of Mormon is an ancient text. I don't think that is a "verifiable" claim, at least not in the sense of it being a factual claim that virtually all parties would agree with. I certainly believe it is ancient, but I didn't claim that in this discussion. I agree that people get confused by this issue, but the idiosyncratic discourse you are offering as a solution doesn't seem to help.

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

20 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Part of the reason readers would misunderstand your meaning is that when scholars speak of the dating of a text, like the ApAb, they typically will refer to its original production.

This isn't true. Most academic publications may talk about the original text - but they are also careful to date the manuscript evidence accurately. They don't refer to the Slavic manuscripts of the ApAb as that ancient text.

My claim is that when scholars talk about the dating of the text (such as the ApAb) and don't make any qualifications (such as specifying that they are referencing later manuscript versions of the text), the default assumption is that they will be discussing the timing of the text's original production. In other words, it would be perfectly normal for a scholar to state, without qualification, that the ApAb most likely dates to the first or second century AD. Most everyone would agree with that, and understand what is meant.

In contrast, it would be atypical for a scholar to claim, without qualification, that the ApAb dates to the late-medieval period. That would raise eyebrows and is the type of statement that would be expected to get caught and corrected in review. It would be especially unorthodox to claim that the ApAb "is not ancient" and is a "wholly modern text."

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You see, for us, as LDS, it would be very helpful for us to understand that the translation of the Book of Mormon in 1830 provides a great deal of information about the audience for which it was intended. Yet this idea is often viewed as anathema within Mormon thought.

Perhaps it would be helpful. I think it is somewhat complicated to intuit every intended audience and precisely what the text is trying to convey to them (or us). But I probably share similar views to you about some of the rhetorical purposes of the text. I was there at Fair in 2016 when you gave your presentation. I agree with a lot (but not all) of the points that you made there. And I agree with the need to help give more nuance in Mormon thought about the difference between texts and manuscripts, and to avoid making bad assumptions about the form of the ancient text and so forth. I remember commenting on it to my colleagues, about how good and helpful your presentation was. I'm not against the gist of a lot of your ideas.

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And the problem is that you will continue to label the modern English Book of Mormon text as the Book of Mormon rather than as a modern manuscript of the Book of Mormon. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Nor can you say with any certainty what parts of the English translation of the Book of Mormon are necessarily ancient in origin (although we can point with some certainty to parts that are modern in origin). This is the heart of the problem - and why your position isn't particularly tenable.

Of course I will continue to label it as the Book of Mormon. That is literally what the English version of the text is called, just like I will continue use the title Apocalypse of Abraham for the English version of that text that I am familiar with (even though I am fully aware it is a translation of certain Slavonic manuscripts that were likely translated from ancient Greek manuscripts which likely were translated from Hebrew manuscripts and which ultimately likely dates to the first or second centuries CE). What else should I call the English versions of these texts?

But I do think is wise to emphasize, at least from time to time, that the only version of the text that we is in a modern language and that this modern form of the text may (to some unknown extent) have substantial difference from any ancient document from which it is believed to have been translated.

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

As a simple response to your 'ultimate point' I would say this. The only text that we have is the English translation. And we can know with some certainty that parts of that text are modern in nature.

Yes, this is unorthodox. Yes, it is a point of view that is atypical of LDS scholars. It is not a point that is atypical of biblical scholarship today. We have clear problems with the conflation that occurs - and I have discussed this quite publicly for years. But there is a distinct set of problems with asserting that the text that we have is identical to the transcendent text of the Book of Mormon as you define it here.

Again, I agree that the conflation that you are trying to ameliorate needs more attention. We need to find ways to communicate about the text that leave as little room as possible for misunderstanding. Obviously, no one is going to make such qualification every time they mention the words "Book of Mormon," but we can do a better job at articulating these nuances when the .

16 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

When we quote from the Book of Mormon (regardless of what our purpose is for that quote), we aren't quoting from the transcendent text - we are quoting from the modern manuscript. Every time.

This is part of why the distinction matters. No one ever quotes from the transcendent text of the Book of Mormon because none of us has any real idea of what it looks like. And certainly, if suddenly we come across other manuscripts (original or translations) we could then start having a more solid discussion of what that transcendent text might be like. But without it, we can merely assert that on the assumption that the Book of Mormon is in fact a translation, then that transcendent text must exist. We could even work to identify what in the modern manuscript should be attributed to that transcendent text and what should be attributed to the modern translation. But without drawing that distinction, such efforts are impossible.

I think you are missing some nuance here. The transcendent idea of the Book of Mormon includes the modern English version of the text, just as it does all versions of the text. It is an inclusive concept. If I quote the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, I'm still quoting from the Book of Mormon. If I quote a Spanish version of the Book of Mormon, I'm still quoting from the Book of Mormon. Likewise, I can quote from the English version of the ApAb that I have access to, even though what I am quoting is undoubtedly not going to be precisely equivalent to the original ancient version of the text. Obviously, in some instances, modern versions of an ancient text (especially if equivalency-style translations, redactions, or expansions are involved) could potentially vary greatly from an original ancient version of the text. But even if the differences are fairly substantial, one could still claim they are quoting from the text.

In some cases, it is important to specify which version of a text one is quoting, but in other cases it is obvious or irrelevant and therefore needs no qualification. It is self-evident that no one today has the ability to quote from the ancient version of the text, if it exists. Even lay readers get this. The real problem is in popular LDS assumptions about the nature of the English translation, and its potential correspondence to the ancient text. And this doesn't get solve simply by saying the text is entirely modern.

Perhaps you would like to get rid of the transcendent notion of a "text" altogether (due to the ambiguity and potential for misunderstanding), but it probably offers too many communicative benefits to dispense with. And the notion is already fairly well entrenched, both within academia and among general audiences. People get that Harry Potter is still Harry Potter, even if it is translated into French or German or some other language. People just don't understand translation.

I think the better option, once again, is to just to make important distinctions as clear as possible if needed. That is what scholars tend to do, when the distinctions matter. Redefining a text to only mean a modern version of a text is just not going to work well, especially when there is enormous debate over whether an ancient version of the text exists. That will just make things worse.

Edited March 31, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

Benjamin McGuire · March 31, 2024

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Pretty much anyone--scholar or layman--would assume that your language would exclude the possibility of any ancient version of the text.

I don't think so - especially within the context. I actually think that you approach this deliberately - in a way to read the worst into it - just for the sake of argument. Others here don't seem to have the same difficulty.

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My claim is that when scholars talk about the dating of the text (such as the ApAb) and don't make any qualifications (such as specifying that they are referencing later manuscript versions of the text), the default assumption is that they will be discussing the timing of the text's original production.

This just isn't true. Would you like me to provide examples? This happens regularly when we are discussing texts with complex hypothetical and real histories. In that text that I keep referencing we routinely see discussions about the dating of various manuscripts. This is important because of the fact that the research places these manuscripts into a history of translation - a history in which translational preferences shift over time. Knowing when a manuscript was translated or produced can help provide significant information about the vorlage for those manuscripts. What is especially interesting about the ApAb is that the Slavic manuscripts are translations from Greek. But, when they begin to produce that hypothetical Greek vorlage (using all the tools that I listed earlier), we get a Greek text that shows similar signs of having been translated from something else - an even earlier semitic text. And to discuss this history, not only do we have to apply those same rules we used on the Slavic manuscripts to uncover the Greek, we also have to have a fairly confident dating for the hypothetical Greek mansucripts so that we can in the same fashion discuss the earlier semitic texts. This is not a discussion in which we can flatten everything and only speak of the original production of the text.

Regardless, this misses the point of all of this. When scholars discuss the dating of a text (using your notion of a transcendental text) they are very much concerned with the dates of the various manuscripts. In the discussion of the text of the ApAb that I continue to reference, each known manuscript is discussed both in terms of its content and in terms of its date of production. Part of what you seem to not be recognizing here is the fact that the 'transcendent text' isn't a real thing - it is a hypothetical construct. Whenever we actually quote material, it has to come from the manuscripts - whether those are historically oriented manuscripts or constructed manuscripts that we build in modern times based on our hypothetical reconstructions of the vorlage of the manuscripts that we have.

I'll provide you with an example of what I mean with all of this. Here is an excerpt from Grigg's chapter "The Book of Mormon as an Ancient Book" in the volume Book of Mormon Authorship:

Quote

The major weakness of works such as those mentioned above is their one-dimensional approach to the problems which the Book of Mormon presents to its critics. The assumption that any parallels from the world of Joseph Smith, real or imagined, are sufficient to discredit the authenticity of the work is naïve. The challenge of the Book of Mormon lies elsewhere. It claims to be an ancient book, and it must be examined and criticized in terms of its claim. Before he can disprove the antiquity of the book, the critic must analyze the historical, cultural, and social elements which are found throughout the narrative of the Book of Mormon and must show that they cannot represent the ancient world origin claimed for them. Since nobody could feasibly invent a work the length of the Book of Mormon which represented ancient Near Eastern society accurately (even a transplanted segment of that society would retain many characteristics which could be checked for accuracy), subjecting the book to the test of historical integrity would be a rather easy task for any specialist to undertake.

I don't disagree with Griggs here in the sort of framework argument he wants to make, but because he is confusing the transcendent text with the published book (the manuscript), he ends up largely in agreement with his critics. His argument is that if the Book of Mormon (the manuscript mind you) has elements that are ancient, then we should consider the narrative of the Book of Mormon's (the manuscript that is) production to be authentic. The real issue is that the manuscript is a modern text and if it is a translation, we should find parallels to the world of Joseph Smith (both real and imagined). But to understand the text, we don't work only with the ancient parallels - we have to work with the modern parallels as well. This is the only way for us to work towards constructing the vorlage - your transcendent text.

If we were to take Griggs offered test here as a general rule of investigation, we can see how his argument is one-sided:

"Before he can disprove the modern authorship of the Book of Mormon, the [believer] must analyze the historical, cultural, and social elements which are found throughout the narrative of the Book of Mormon and must show that they cannot represent [the modern world origin] claimed for them."

We can see here that Griggs is making the same argument as his critics - just from the opposite side of the coin. Griggs claims that this is acceptable because of the special nature of the claims about the production of the text - a case of special pleading that he believes is justified. Whether or not that special pleading is in fact justified is irrelevant to the problem that this creates for properly understanding the text. This is similar to the problems pointed out by Larry Hurtado in his Lord Jesus Christ where he confronts a similarly shared set of bad assumptions about early Christianity:

Quote

This is the notion that the validity of a religious belief or practice is called into question if it can be shown to be a truly historical phenomenon, and the product of historical factors and forces that we can attempt to identify and analyze…. Wishing to preserve the religious and theological validity of traditional christological claims, the anticritical view attempted to deny or minimize as far as possible the historically conditioned nature of early Christ-devotion. [Page 21]On the other hand, the history-of-religion scholars were convinced that their demonstration of the historically conditioned nature of early Christ-devotion proved that it was no longer to be treated as theologically valid or binding for modern Christians. In both views the assumption is the same: if something can be shown to have arisen through a historical process, then it cannot be divine “revelation” or have continuing theological validity.

We can discuss the nature of these assumptions shared within Mormonism, but Hurtado's later observation is this:

Quote

The misguided assumption I am criticizing here has obviously worked mischief in scholarship. . . . It has led a good deal of historical-critical scholarship to opt for some simplistic historical analyses in the interest of opposing traditional Christian beliefs.”

This sort of statement could easily be made applicable to an LDS context with minor changes. It is the assumptions that I am criticizing - but that criticism needs to be described in terms of how we correct the problem.

15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think you are missing some nuance here. The transcendent idea of the Book of Mormon includes the modern English version of the text, just as it does all versions of the text.

Not really. This is, I think, part of the core problem I have with the way that you describe things. Suppose you are right - that the transcendent idea of the Hebrew Old Testament includes the entire range of manuscripts and translations (past, present, and future). We run immediately into a problem described by David Clines:

Quote

In the end, the argument of this lecture does not turn on the resultant figure; for it is much the same situation whether it is one word in two or one word in four that we can reasonably estimate is a variant in our Hebrew texts. For the overriding consideration is that (except for the cases where variants are still extant) we do not know which word it is that is the variant. For most practical purposes, it is as if every single word in the Hebrew Bible was a known variant, and as if we possessed an entirely uncertain text.

So, every manuscript with every variant, every mis-translation, every paraphrase and interpretation - they are all apart of this transcendent idea of a text? And you suggest that I am going to confuse people? I don't think that this works at all. I think it is easy to make this sort of idea work with the Book of Mormon with the absolutely limited set of manuscripts that we have - but I don't think that the implications this has for everything else actually works.

On a bright note (and said with some sarcasm) I suppose that this is good in that it really does separate the transcendent text from any sense of authorship or original meaning.

15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Likewise, I can quote from the English version of the ApAb that I have access to, even though what I am quoting is undoubtedly not going to be precisely equivalent to the original ancient version of the text.

This gets a laugh. It isn't even close to the original ancient version of the text - let alone being imprecisely equivalent. We could start with the most basic feature of language.

And just to be clear, I do want to recognize that what I am discussing is not the text as we use it for religious belief so to speak. We can use the text as a tool to build faith or to increase spirituality without the need to dig into the texts sources.

In the context of the original discussion which led to this posting, the discussion is about how the text can be used to argue about historicity (that is about placing the text into a specific historical place and time - giving it absolute context). This is more than Griggs was arguing about above (he was arguing for verisimilitude and arguing that versimilitude could be then made equal to historicity or truth).

15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But even if the differences are fairly substantial, one could still claim they are quoting from the text.

Sure, you can claim whatever you want. But you wouldn't actually be quoting from the text. Most of the time, academically, we get around this problem by creating tools to help with this. We build up an apparatus to help us understand the composite natures of the texts that we have. My BHS starts from a single manuscript and then has a significant set of indicators to point to the other manuscripts used to create this text. The fact that you generally read an English translation of these reconstructed texts tends to conceal what is there as well as the range of variants and so on. But when we get back to the academics who construct these texts - they don't see them, I think, as you do. They are not readers in the sense that you are.

15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Perhaps you would like to get rid of the transcendent notion of a "text" altogether (due to the ambiguity and potential for misunderstanding), but it probably offers too many communicative benefits to dispense with. I think the better option, once again, is to just to make distinctions as clear as possible if needed. Redefining a text to only mean a modern version of a text is just not going to work well, especially when there is enormous debate over whether an ancient version of the text exists. That will just make things worse.

My goal is not to define a text as modern only (text as you are using the term) but to define the manuscript as modern only. That is, to make a clear statement that the published Book of Mormon is entirely a modern text. Any attempt to discuss the ancient Book of Mormon (your transcendent text) needs to demarcate what in that modern manuscript of the Book of Mormon leads us to that vorlage of the text that could be considered ancient - and at the same time, it needs to point to what is modern (even if that only comes in the absence of what is ancient). And by this last part I mean to say that it isn't enough to argue that we can separate the text into two parts - the part that we can show is ancient and the part that we can't show is ancient yet.

Ryan Dahle · March 31, 2024

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

On 3/30/2024 at 8:07 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

My claim is that when scholars talk about the dating of the text (such as the ApAb) and don't make any qualifications (such as specifying that they are referencing later manuscript versions of the text), the default assumption is that they will be discussing the timing of the text's original production.

This just isn't true. Would you like me to provide examples?

Sure. I would be interested if you could find an instance in which a scholar, without making any sort of qualification about specific manuscripts, definitively dates a named text to a time period that comes well after its presumed original production. For instance, if you could find a scholar who declares something like "the ApAb dates to the late-middle ages" without qualification, I would be very surprised. I'm guessing any such examples would have some sort of obvious qualification.

Yet this isn't even the threshold that would need to be met for a statement to be truly analogous to your comments on the Book of Mormon. You would have to find a scholar who states something like "the ApAb is not an ancient text" and that it is a "wholly late medieval text." No scholars speak like this about these types of texts. But if you have some examples that demonstrate otherwise, I would be interested to see them.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

So, every manuscript with every variant, every mis-translation, every paraphrase and interpretation - they are all apart of this transcendent idea of a text? And you suggest that I am going to confuse people? I don't think that this works at all. I think it is easy to make this sort of idea work with the Book of Mormon with the absolutely limited set of manuscripts that we have - but I don't think that the implications this has for everything else actually works.

I'm not just making the idea of a transcendent text up. I'm describing the idea of a "text" that I see in scholarly literature and which is widely understood in our broader culture. It is a very useful idea in many ways. And people intuitively grasp it. When someone talks about a later "edition" of a text, they understand generally what that means. It is likely going to be very similar to the old text, but with edits and possibly some expansions, etc. Likewise, if someone talks about the Spanish version of Harry Potter, they understand that the concept of Harry Potter, as a text, transcends language. The Spanish version holds the same basic ideas of the Harry Potter that they know in English, but it is just expressed in a different linguistic form. This isn't rocket science. Everyone gets the basics.

People just need more education about how and why separate versions of text might have significant differences, especially if these versions are separated significantly in time, language, and culture and if they have undergone any extensive redactions or expansions. By all means, let's help people understand these factors. But saying that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and is a "wholly modern text" is going to be confusing, for what should be obvious reasons.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

On 3/30/2024 at 8:07 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

But even if the differences are fairly substantial, one could still claim they are quoting from the text.

Sure, you can claim whatever you want. But you wouldn't actually be quoting from the text. Most of the time, academically, we get around this problem by creating tools to help with this. We build up an apparatus to help us understand the composite natures of the texts that we have. My BHS starts from a single manuscript to and then has a significant set of indicators to point to the other manuscripts used to create this text. The fact that you generally read an English translation of these reconstructed texts tends to conceal what is there as well as the range of variants and so on. But when we get back to the academics who construct these texts - they don't see them, I think, as you do. They are not readers in the sense that you are.

Scholars do this all the time. And so do everyday people.

Let's say, for instance, that a scholar is presenting in an academic conference, and the scholar quotes from the 10th edition of The Maya, written by Michael Coe and Stephen Houston. However, let's say that in the lecture, the scholar doesn't specify which version of the text he is quoting from. He just has a generic attribution on his Power Point to the title of the work. Yet after the presentation, during the Q&A session, a commentator calls out the presenter, claiming that the presenter didn't actually quote from The Maya. When the confused presenter asks for further explanation, the heckler claims that since the quotation that was used in the presentation is different from (or in some cases not even present in) earlier versions of the text, then the presenter was not actually quoting from The Maya. Of course, at this point, everyone is going to be scratching their heads, wondering what in the heck this person's problem is. Just because the presenter didn't specify which version of The Maya he was quoting from, it doesn't mean he wasn't quoting from The Maya. He obviously was, even if the portion that he quoted isn't present in every version of the text.

Also, you might notice in many academic works that scholars often point to instances of apparent intertextuality among pre-modern texts. When significant differences in early manuscripts are known, sometimes they may be specified (if the author is even aware of such differences), but often the citations are given without qualification. For instance, in the edition of ApAb that I have, it is noted that some manuscript versions of the ApAb 32:5 "quote Gen 12:13." Notice, however, that the author doesn't make a big deal about which version of Genesis is being quoted. In this instance, the author is invoking the transcendent concept of the book of Genesis. It is well known that there is considerable variation in extant biblical manuscripts and that there are undoubtedly numerous other versions of these texts that we don't possess, many of which are certainly much older than what we posses. Nevertheless, the author is claiming that one text is quoting another, without qualification. In other words, the transcendent notion of "text" is being used here. This happens all the time in scholarly literature.

19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

My goal is not to define a text as modern only (text as you are using the term) but to define the manuscript as modern only.

Yeah. I got that. And my point is that unless you specify that you are talking about the manuscripts themselves (rather than the transcendent notion of the text that most people hold) you are likely just going to confuse people.

I think we are probably winding up here. There isn't much left to discuss. If you want to continue asserting that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and that it is a "wholly modern text" then fine. I think most people will misunderstand your intent, and it is easy to just rephrase such statements to avoid any confusion. Obviously, I think your mode of discourse will likely confuse rather than clarify (for all the reasons I laid out), but you seem unconvinced. So we should probably just agree to disagree at this point.

Edited April 1, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

mfbukowski · March 31, 2024

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I don't think so - especially within the context. I actually think that you approach this deliberately - in a way to read the worst into it - just for the sake of argument. Others here don't seem to have the same difficulty.

I have had some private communications with him a few years ago and came to the same conclusion.

Benjamin McGuire · April 1, 2024

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Sure. I would be interested if you could find an instance in which a scholar, without making any sort of qualification about specific manuscripts, definitively dates a named text to a time period that comes well after its presumed original production.

And now you have moved the goal posts. *shrug*

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm not just making the idea of a transcendent text up.

I agree that you are not making it up. But, I also am absolutely certain that you don't really understand the idea of the transcendent text. If you did, you would never use the term.

Quote

Transtextuality is defined as the "textual transcendence of the text". According to Gérard Genette transtextuality is "all that sets the text in relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts" and it "covers all aspects of a particular text". Genette described transtextuality as a "more inclusive term" than intertextuality.

Intertextualty is a concept I have a little bit of passing familiarity with. The same site lists the following components of the textual transcendence of the text:

Quote
- Intertextuality could be in the form of quotation, plagiarism, or allusion.
- Paratextuality is the relation between one text and its paratext that surrounds the main body of the text. Examples are titles, headings, and prefaces.
- Architextuality is the designation of a text as a part of a genre or genres
- Metatextuality is the explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text
- Hypotextuality or hypertextuality is the relation between a text and a preceding 'hypotext' – a text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends. Examples are parody, spoof, sequel, and translation. In information technology, hypertextuality is a text that takes the reader directly to other texts.

What I suggested before is something of a minimalist approach to this idea - but in fact, all of these other things are a part of the transcendent text. But let's move on:

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It is likely going to be very similar to the old text, but with edits and possibly some expansions, etc. Likewise, if someone talks about the Spanish version of Harry Potter, they understand that the concept of Harry Potter, as a text, transcends language. The Spanish version holds the same basic ideas of the Harry Potter that they know in English, but it is just expressed in a different linguistic form. This isn't rocket science. Everyone gets the basics.

And see, we get more nonsense from you. There is this strange attempt to merge academic views with popular views in your comments. I think that this is in part because you don't really have the experience (despite your degree) with understanding the relationship between literary studies and the biblical studies that you read. When you say:

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm describing the idea of a "text" that I see in scholarly literature and which is widely understood in our broader culture.

and then you write:

14 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

And people intuitively grasp it.

You are suddenly engaging two very different things. But the problems don't stop there. It's much easier to try and equate a Spanish translation of Harry Potter with its English original. We can all pick up copies of both of them. Your "transcendent text" though isn't a translation. It's not something people can pick up and read. It is a hypothetical construct. And, people generally have a belief that translations are somehow real equivalents to each other. Which is the normal view that is held by almost everyone - except of course the academics who deal with translation theory, where translation isn't merely the expression of a text "in a different linguistic form." That isn't how we view translation. The idea that there is a text that merely takes on different linguistic forms isn't any sort of academic perspective that I am aware of. What it is, though, is a remnant of theologically oriented thought on language coming out of the need to protect the Biblical text. God becomes the author of the text (using text in the sense that you propose for a transcendent text) and then each version of it that we have is merely a linguistic form of that text - so that the meaning (whatever God intended) remains consistent and the Bible is thus self-revealing. But this notion has been gone for a considerable amount of time. Each translation isn't just a linguistic form, it is a contextually moderated interpretation of the original - a new communicative act based on an interpretation of the old (interpreted twice - once in the reading of the source text and again when that interpretation is put into a new context). Early Mormonism seemed to understand this much better than mormonism a century later - especially after the arguments raised with the introduction of major new English translations of the Bible. The LDS community moves from Joseph Smith's claims that the King James wasn't a particularly good translation to a King James onlyism that is startling in the context of our understanding today. We go from Brigham Young who argues that the translation of the Book of Mormon is entirely dependent on it audience - and that it would be substantially different if translated again even a few decades after Joseph Smith produces it to the modern question for the original (English) text.

15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's say, for instance, that a scholar is presenting in an academic conference, and the scholar quotes from the 10th edition of The Maya, written by Michael Coe and Stephen Houston. However, let's say that in the lecture, the scholar doesn't specify which version of the text he is quoting from. He just has a generic attribution on his Power Point to the title of the work. Yet after the presentation, during the Q&A session, a commentator calls out the presenter, claiming that the presenter didn't actually quote from The Maya. When the confused presenter asks for further explanation, the heckler claims that since the quotation that was used in the presentation is different from (or in some cases not even present in) earlier versions of the text, then the presenter was not actually quoting from The Maya. Of course, at this point, everyone is going to be scratching their heads, wondering what in the heck this person's problem is. Just because the presenter didn't specify which version of The Maya he was quoting from, it doesn't mean he wasn't quoting from The Maya. He obviously was, even if the portion that he quoted isn't present in every version of the text.

It's an irrelevant comparison here.

15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think we are probably winding up here. There isn't much left to discuss. If you want to continue asserting that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" and that it is a "wholly modern text" then fine. I think most people will misunderstand your intent, and it is easy to just rephrase such statements to avoid any confusion. Obviously, I think your mode of discourse will likely confuse rather than clarify (for all the reasons I laid out), but you seem unconvinced. So we should probably just agree to disagree at this point.

I want to end by pointing out something. Skousen, in his 2001 The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, does a fairly good job of showing this distinction. After all, his title is about the Manuscript. And in his introduction, he mentions that his first goal "is to determine, to the extent possible, the original English-language text of the book" (p. 4). And what we see here is the clear indication that he is talking about an entirely modern text. He isn't discussing your transcendent text. Likewise Carmack in his 2018 Interpreter piece "Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?" is clear that what he means by the text of the Book of Mormon is the manuscript: "In a nutshell, the Book of Mormon text exhibits high levels of archaic (morpho)syntax; the pseudo-biblical texts exhibit much lower levels of archaic (morpho)syntax." Such statements make no sense in the context of your transcendent text - they only make sense if (as I do) you assert that the Book of Mormon text is a modern production. When there is a need (based on the discussion) to have the context clearly displayed, it usually happens. But, more often than not, and especially in more popular types of material, this distinction is lost.

Whatever it is that you think that you are accomplishing in this dialogue here seems completely lost. The real context is about how we look for historicity in the text. And this is where this distinction is most important. It is easy to see the distinction when we are talking about the language (and really it's an argument about the language as a thing) of the text. Because it is the English language itself that makes the text entirely modern. When we equate the manuscript to your transcendent text, then there is an effort to read the text as having complete historicity. There is an impact in that readers tend to deny that there is any sort of modern intrusion into the text. We find ways to explain the King James language in the text that are not at all connected to the need to modernize the content (and not just the language) in translation. But you seem to be solidly rooted in your perspective (as wrong as it is). So perhaps we can drop the discussion and head back to the purpose of this thread and my discussion with Zosimus about the problems of reading the modern language Book of Mormon and expecting it to uncritically provide us with historicity (or even believabilty).

ZealouslyStriving · April 1, 2024

Sooooo.... the Book of Mormon isn't transtextual?

*I couldn't resist😜

Edited April 1, 2024 by ZealouslyStriving

Ryan Dahle · April 1, 2024

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Sure. I would be interested if you could find an instance in which a scholar, without making any sort of qualification about specific manuscripts, definitively dates a named text to a time period that comes well after its presumed original production.

And now you have moved the goal posts. *shrug*

I think the goal posts are right where they have been all along. This has been my consistent position. Here are previous articulations of this idea that I made in various posts that preceded the exchange quoted above:

"If a scholar were to state, without qualification, that the ApAb "is not an ancient text" and is a "wholly modern text" the conclusion would be that there is no ancient version of the text. This is why scholars are generally careful when talking about the dating of later manuscripts to specify that it is only the manuscripts themselves that they are referencing"
"My claim is that when scholars talk about the dating of the text (such as the ApAb) and don't make any qualifications (such as specifying that they are referencing later manuscript versions of the text), the default assumption is that they will be discussing the timing of the text's original production.
In contrast, it would be atypical for a scholar to claim, without qualification, that the ApAb dates to the late-medieval period.

Perhaps you just aren't carefully reading my posts, and therefore your responses are off point. I'm guessing you can't actually point to any examples that counter this consistent claim, and especially not any that are truly analogous to your comments on the Book of Mormon (which involve the proving of a negative). *shrug*

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's say, for instance, that a scholar is presenting in an academic conference, and the scholar quotes from the 10th edition of The Maya, written by Michael Coe and Stephen Houston. ...

It's an irrelevant comparison here.

Actually it is quite apt. Your whole point rests on the fact that the modern English version of the Book of Mormon is likely substantially different from its original text (assuming it exists). And in this hypothetical analogy, the specific passage from The Maya that the scholar quoted from wasn't even in some of the earlier versions of the text (which clearly gets at the core of your point, since some portions of the modern, English version of the Book of Mormon may be expansions that can't be found in any form in the original text, not to mention all the other types of variation). Just claiming it is an "irrelevant comparison" doesn't make it so. It is obviously relevant.

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I want to end by pointing out something. Skousen, in his 2001 The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, does a fairly good job of showing this distinction. After all, his title is about the Manuscript. And in his introduction, he mentions that his first goal "is to determine, to the extent possible, the original English-language text of the book" (p. 4).

Which only reinforces my earlier point. If you had, in your original statements which I took issue with, stated that "the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon isn't ancient" and that it is "wholly modern" then I would have never batted an eye. In this case, Skousen is responsibly qualifying his statement, so that people don't misunderstand his meaning.

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Whatever it is that you think that you are accomplishing in this dialogue here seems completely lost. The real context is about how we look for historicity in the text.

As part of your commentary on historicity, you outlined a set of principles to help avoid confusion about certain matters, but I found your articulation of those ideas to invite further confusion. I clearly haven't been engaging with your larger thesis, and I openly and directly stated that this wasn't my intent. If you didn't want to talk about my specific concerns, you could have elected not to. I'm not very interested in your larger thesis at the moment (even though I think it is very important, generally speaking). We all pick and choose what were are interested in engaging with and when we want to stop conversing about certain matters.

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And see, we get more nonsense from you. There is this strange attempt to merge academic views with popular views in your comments.

I'm not trying to "merge" these views. I just see that they naturally overlap for whatever reason or set of reasons. I think it was clear why I took issue with your statements on academic grounds (as per our discussion with ApAb). You apparently can't find any counterexamples to prove otherwise (and no, I wasn't shifting the goal post).

As for the "popular" understanding of these ideas, here are some statements to consider from various sources on the internet that I found without much effort:

FAIR

"The argument is that Joseph Smith ignorantly included a late addition to the Bible into the Book of Mormon, thus proving the Book of Mormon to be a creation of Joseph Smith and not an ancient text.

Mormonr

"This has led some to argue the Book of Mormon is therefore not an ancient text, and so the Church's truth claims are false.

LDS Discussions

"Again, even with a loose translation, this is an absolutely critical issue with the Book of Mormon, and it is an area where we can show that Joseph Smith’s inability to know that there were multiple writers of Isaiah allows us today to see that it is not an ancient text."

WasMormon

"There is easily verifiable evidence that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text"

Insights

"When confronted by textual evidence for the Nephite observance of the Israelite feast of tabernacles, for example, they typically don't discuss the facts, but dismiss the whole idea as preposterous because they've already decided the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text."

I could go on and on and on with such examples. In popular usage, often driven by anti-Mormon talking points, the notion that the Book of Mormon "is not an ancient text" (when stated without qualification) is overwhelmingly understood to mean that no version of the text exists in the ancient world. The same would be true if a scholar were to state, without qualification, that the Apocalypse of Abraham "is not an ancient text" and is "wholly a modern text." Scholars would take such statements, articulated in this manner, to mean that there is no version of the ApAb in the ancient world. So, of course, they don't make unqualified statements like this. If you disagree, then please provide examples where scholars speak in these terms.

On both scholarly and popular grounds, your mode of discourse on this particular matter seems likely to cause more, and not less, confusion. I will stand by that conclusion and you can have the last word.

Edited April 1, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

Benjamin McGuire · April 1, 2024

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Sooooo.... the Book of Mormon isn't transtextual?

*I couldn't resist😜

It brought a smile.

All texts are transtextual. Those that seem non-transtextual are texts we cannot read. One of the most famous of these is the Voynich manuscript. If you engage with any of the literature about it though, you will see that the attempts to decipher the text (and its script) have all been precisely about finding its transtexuality - this is likely our only avenue to understanding - although with this one, no one has successfully encountered the text.

If we go back to my list, we can see that the Book of Mormon is a highly transtextual book.

Intertextuality could be in the form of quotation, plagiarism, or allusion: The text quotes Isaiah extensively. It quotes other known texts, and it claims to quote several unknown texts. It internal descriptions of much of the work as an abridgement of various other historical records puts it way, way up there in terms of its unknown intertext. One of the most fascinating (to me) aspects of the intertextual Book of Mormon is is self-referential material.

Paratextuality is the relation between one text and its paratext that surrounds the main body of the text. Examples are titles, headings, and preface: This is an interesting feature of the Book of Mormon. It comes with both a paratext related to the original English text (the translation Joseph Smith provides) which includes book summaries. The various published editions come with a variety of paratextual elements including chapter headings. The system of footnotes that grows over time is a paratextual element, as is an index, a pronunciation guide, a topical guide, and so on.

Architextuality is the designation of a text as a part of a genre or genres: This is a much more complicated issue. Is the published Book of Mormon interested in presenting itself as scripture? This is an important question in my opinion. Certainly, as we add paratextual material, we (speaking of the various groups that adopt the Book of Mormon as scripture) have built up the text to conform to our notion of scripture. But with such a long work, we have a series of arguments about narrative units in the text. To what extent do we have a Psalm in the text? My arguments about the several distinct narrative beginnings in 1 and 2 Nephi touch on this question - where the Book of Mormon seems to question its own sense of genre. When we get to the last parts of the Book of Mormon, do we see the text as having strong historical genres?

Metatextuality is the explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text: There are some specific elements of this in the Book of Mormon - and in the early parts there is a great deal of discussion about Isaiah, which I believe probably falls into this category.

Hypotextuality or hypertextuality is the relation between a text and a preceding 'hypotext' – a text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends. Examples are parody, spoof, sequel, and translation. In information technology, hypertextuality is a text that takes the reader directly to other texts: This is being explored with the Book of Mormon, but is, I think the area with a lot of room for exploration. A great way to look at the LDS views here would be the article of faith that contrasts the Book of Mormon with the Bible - we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. To the extent that we develop a meaning for this (appropriate or not) that makes the Book of Mormon both an extension of that scriptural genre, but then claims that it has moved beyond that genre we start to discuss the hypertextuality of the Book of Mormon. This is a category that is far easier to discuss in terms of modern contexts than ancient contexts because of the limitations created by an absence of an original language text and difficulty in contextualizing what we have in the absence of that original language text and the context for its original authorship. We can discuss a bit of this (as I do in 1 and 2 Nephi) but it is such a limited sort of discussion. We are much more comfortable trying to contextualize what we have in the text with hypothetical similarities (to try and place the text into an appropriate context/genre) than we are in trying to show how the text transforms that genre/context.

In a sense, the transtextual content is both the text and the instructions on how to understand that text (I am borrowing a term from semiotics here in this concept of instruction - although those instructions come from the perspective of the author and may provide only very limited mileage to the real readers who may not resemble the readers that an author was writing to). This is a particularly important concept when we get back to the questions of translation, since any sort of translation which only engages the language of the text will not necessarily reflect the instructions on how to understand the text. If, for example, the original author uses a literary allusion to extend meaning, and that allusion isn't as accessible (it's a source only found in the original language), or perhaps isn't accessible at all to the new audience in translation, then the instructions may not come across in translation and meaning is lost.

Benjamin McGuire · April 1, 2024

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Perhaps you just aren't carefully reading my posts, and therefore your responses are off point. I'm guessing you can't actually point to any examples that counter this consistent claim, and especially not any that are truly analogous to your comments on the Book of Mormon (which involve the proving of a negative). *shrug*

No - its really the fact that will accusing me of being out in left field, you are providing language and discussions that don't resemble anything else that's out there. So I have to interpret everything. And when I finally get to where I think I understand what you want, it isn't

34 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Actually it is quite apt. Your whole point rests on the fact that the modern English version of the Book of Mormon is likely substantially different from its original text (assuming it exists). And in this hypothetical analogy, the specific passage from The Maya that the scholar quoted from wasn't even in some of the earlier versions of the text (which clearly gets at the core of your point, since some portions of the modern, English version of the Book of Mormon may be expansions that can't be found in any form in the original text, not to mention all the other types of variation). Just claiming it is an "irrelevant comparison" doesn't make it so. It is obviously relevant.

I'll tell you what, I'll go ahead and engage.

18 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's say, for instance, that a scholar is presenting in an academic conference, and the scholar quotes from the 10th edition of The Maya, written by Michael Coe and Stephen Houston. However, let's say that in the lecture, the scholar doesn't specify which version of the text he is quoting from. He just has a generic attribution on his Power Point to the title of the work. Yet after the presentation, during the Q&A session, a commentator calls out the presenter, claiming that the presenter didn't actually quote from The Maya. When the confused presenter asks for further explanation, the heckler claims that since the quotation that was used in the presentation is different from (or in some cases not even present in) earlier versions of the text, then the presenter was not actually quoting from The Maya. Of course, at this point, everyone is going to be scratching their heads, wondering what in the heck this person's problem is. Just because the presenter didn't specify which version of The Maya he was quoting from, it doesn't mean he wasn't quoting from The Maya. He obviously was, even if the portion that he quoted isn't present in every version of the text.

You cannot quote a construct that doesn't exist. It isn't real. People can confuse manuscripts. We can talk about the difference between the 1830 and the 1840 edition. And people can complain about the differences. I am not going to contest that. The problem is that when you 'quote' something, you actually have to have something to quote. You don't quote the ApAb as a transcendent text (using your definition) because it isn't actually a text that can be quoted. There is no manuscript which identifies it. This is a really deceptive sort of sleight of hand that you are engaging in here. In your example, he wasn't quoting from The Maya, as a transcendent text (your definition) he was quoting from a specific manuscript of the The Maya. To bring this back to the academic study of ancient texts, academics don't just quote manuscripts, they reconstruct potential original texts. Now, you have already told me that these potential original texts are not themselves the transcendent text (your definition), but are simply a part of that transcendent text. And they quote these reconstructions all the time (often without specifying what they are doing). But those citations are usually translations and not original language sources. Critical text editions do in fact tend to actually identify where everything comes from by manuscript. Instead of your hypothetical, let's talk about something where we don't even have to worry about translation. Here is a discussion of Shakespeare. It is not academic, and so should be reasonably easy for everyone here to understand. This is a bit of an excerpt:

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Most people are surprised to learn that there are not even standard line numbers in Shakespeare editions. Because of the alternation between prose and verse in most of Shakespeare’s plays, even the line numbers vary from edition to edition (though usually not by much)—no agreement has ever been reached to standardize the line numbers. That means that interpreters of Shakespeare’s plays must be careful not to attribute certain aspects of the texts to authorial intention, when in fact they are the work of modern editors. For example, any attempt to find meaning in the number of lines in a particular passage would be dubious. And before making an interpretation hinge on a single word in the text, one should check to see if that word is the invention of a modern editor (this can be done by consulting the textual apparatus in any good Shakespeare edition or by comparing different editions).

In short, without becoming a full-fledged textual scholar, anyone studying Shakespeare seriously is obliged to become aware of the textual problems with his plays.

This is pretty straight forward. And you can see how we have reference to a who variety of texts that are part of this family of texts - including later derivative works that contain editorial insertions or changes, original texts, and critical texts that use an apparatus to define what comes from where. It's worth pointing out that all of this occurs in a text family that isn't ancient, and for which there is a lot of data. The text critical apparatus for the Book of Mormon can deal only with texts that are derivatives of that original manuscript prepared by Joseph Smith and his scribes. The current editions contain these same kinds of issues with regard to those modern texts (any glance through the critical edition will point out all of these different features and detail the manuscript history of those issues).

In contrast to your analogy (and the reason why it doesn't work and is irrelevant to this discussion) is that people don't quote from the Book of Mormon and claim to be quoting from the gold plates. We have another thread here in which this scenario plays out - more or less as you describe it. Someone provides a claim of a quote from the Book of Mormon. There is a response about the difference of that text in the various editions of the English Book of Mormon. There isn't any sense in any of that of the invocation of some sort of transcendent text of the Book of Mormon. And this is why it doesn't work.

59 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Which only reinforces my earlier point. If you had, in your original statements which I took issue with, stated that "the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon isn't ancient" and that it is "wholly modern" then I would have never batted an eye. In this case, Skousen is responsibly qualifying his statement, so that people don't misunderstand his meaning.

Not really. It's more about your deciding to take exception to the way that I expressed the view. That's on you, not on me. Skousen is not responsible for correcting all of the different ways that people can misread or misrepresent his text. He can only write to the audience he is writing to, he isn't required somehow to envision all of the possible audiences and to write in a way that none of them can get it wrong (if that's even possible - which I don't believe it is). You are way off in left field here.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm not trying to "merge" these views. I just see that they naturally overlap for whatever reason or set of reasons. I think it was clear why I took issue with your statements on academic grounds (as per our discussion with ApAb). You apparently can't find any counterexamples to prove otherwise (and no, I wasn't shifting the goal post).

You did shift the goal posts. I have no reason to try and find an example of what you spelled out in a detailed fashion only afterwards - because what you are asking for isn't relevant to the discussion. I'll show you what I mean.

Original statement:

22 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

My claim is that when scholars talk about the dating of the text (such as the ApAb) and don't make any qualifications (such as specifying that they are referencing later manuscript versions of the text), the default assumption is that they will be discussing the timing of the text's original production.

Secondary statement:

19 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I would be interested if you could find an instance in which a scholar, without making any sort of qualification about specific manuscripts, definitively dates a named text to a time period that comes well after its presumed original production. For instance, if you could find a scholar who declares something like "the ApAb dates to the late-middle ages" without qualification, I would be very surprised. I'm guessing any such examples would have some sort of obvious qualification.

These are two very different discussions. Part of the reason why this irrelevant to the issue of the Book of Mormon is that we have a fairly tightly connected set of manuscripts (all spelled out by Skousen). But no one comes up with a transcendent Book of Mormon and then tries to quote from it. Skousen doesn't have to specify that he isn't dealing with your transcendent text because he isn't interested in anything that comes before that original manuscript. When he deals with dating something in the Book of Mormon manuscript history, it is not an attempt to date the gold plates.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

On both scholarly and popular grounds, your mode of discourse on this particular matter seems likely to cause more, and not less, confusion. I will stand by that conclusion and you can have the last word.

I'll take that opportunity. I think that the real underlying problem is that there are a lot of people who prefer a pre-modernist approach to literary criticism. Included in this are the ideas that texts have determinate meanings, that the author of a text is the sole arbiter of its meaning, and related ideas allows them to take an approach to scripture which protects certain close standing views about meaning and interpretation. For them, my views are going to cause confusion. But those are views that are rejected by academics, scholars, and philosophers. They are views that are most closely held instead by theologians. The problem is that we don't build arguments about historicity from the beliefs of theologians. When we discuss the historicity of the Book of Mormon narratives, that discussion is inseparable from the discussions we have to have about the modern English text and the way that this modern English text is conditioned by it's modern production. This is where this discussion goes. Any time that we see discussions where the text of the English Book of Mormon is equated with the contents of the gold plates, we create confusion - and this is, I think, a far more problematic confusion for faith than any concerns people may have about the distinctions I am making.

mfbukowski · April 2, 2024

On 3/28/2024 at 8:10 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

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

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):

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

Really good stuff, thanks.

I am short of time to respond for a few days, but will be back.

Just a mention about Vogel - as a Positivist -for those unfamiliar with these ideas:

The idea that a proposition must be scientifically objective to be "true" is called Logical Positivism. That is Vogel's position.

There is a problem with that, because the statement that a "proposition must be scientifically objective to be "true" is itself NOT SCIENTIFICALLY OBJECTIVE.

There is no empirical evidence to prove that one must HAVE empirical evidence for a statement to be true!

And so if you search "the death of positivism" you will find an avalanche of information on how and why virtually no contemporary philosopher of note is a positivist, yet the notion lingers in those who are not professional philosophers.

That's why Rorty quit philosophy for comparative literature, but that is another story!

Zosimus · April 4, 2024

Been slower to respond, didn't want to interrupt the interesting discussion about texts

On 3/30/2024 at 8:48 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

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.

I think we agree that the record on the gold plates is unknowable and we can't assess its believability. We can only assume it contained a history of the Lehites. According to Joseph Smith, the final author of the gold plates told him, "there was a book deposited written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang"

I've read this a hundred times before, but noticed something new in light of our discussion. Moroni describes the account written upon gold plates as a book. Presumably, this book written on gold plates provides an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and their origins. I can now appreciate what I always considered awkward phrasing, "a book deposited written on gold plates," because it helps me to conceptualize two distinct books:

A book deposited before 1823, written on gold plates, provides an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang.
The Book of Mormon was published in 1830.

If I understand you correctly, you also acknowledge that the record on the gold plates and the text of the 1830 Book of Mormon are not the same text. Keeping the distinction in mind, I would respond to your question by saying that because the book written on gold plates is inaccessible to me, I can't determine whether it is believable or unbelievable. The best I can do is comment on the 1830 Book of Mormon, a 19th-century interpretation of the book written on gold plates. The discussion about the 1830 Book of Mormon has largely become a battle between parallelomaniacs. But as Williams puts it: "The conflict comes from the interpretation of texts and data rather than from the texts and data themselves." For me, the conflict between the 1830 book and believability stems from Joseph's interpretation of Moroni's description of the book written on gold plates, which he also applied to his translation of the Book of Mormon.

Let me emphasize, the book deposited before 1823, written on gold plates, is not the source of conflict. The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, is also not the source. The conflict has roots not in the books, but in Joseph Smith's interpretation of Moroni’s description of the books. Moroni had stated that the book deposited on gold plates was an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang. Joseph interpreted this description to mean that the Lehites had sailed from the Arabian Peninsula to America, and by extension, the narrative from 1 Nephi 18 unfolds in the New World. If our concern is verisimilitude, then this interpretation is incorrect. We can know this because the reading that follows from this interpretation results in conflicts between the text and the data.

From the epigraph to Williams' paper:

"In the discussion period following a January 2003 presentation at BYU, a young Peruvian student named Jose summed up the dilemma. He told the audience and panelists how he grew up believing he was a Lamanite and now felt "overwhelmed with the surprise coming from science. . . . We don't know where the Book of Mormon took place. We don't know where the Lamanites are. If we don't know who the Lamanites are, how can the Book of Mormon promise to bring them back? It's an identity crisis for many of us that [must] be understood"

I'll have more to say about Jose later.

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what part of the Book of Mormon is incongruous so that it needs a special interpretation to make it believable?

For starters, the trans-oceanic voyage in the 6th century BC is incongruous with the data and not believable. You might respond by pointing out that the Book of Mormon never claims an American setting and that the assumed voyage across the ocean is an external interpretation of the text. Rght, and that’s my point. The assumed American setting doesn’t come from the Book of Mormon. Yet, this interpretation is at the root of Jose's identity crisis. Despite the damage done by this reading, I can't recall a single instance of anyone critically approaching the question about the assumed American setting of the narrative. The question isn't asked. Even Vogel assumes that the setting is America, although he also can't make the hemispheric model fit the geographical descriptions from the text. Vogel’s solution is arguably more unbelievable than Sorenson’s.

Another example. The Book of Mormon tells us that Nephi "did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords". We know from 1 Nephi 4:9 that the sword of Laban was made of steel. Iron smelting is something that is pretty easy to spot within the archaeological record. There is no evidence of iron or steel smelting in the Americas before Columbus.

In my opinion, the only special interpretation needed to make the Lehite account believable is that the events described within the gold plates took place within a setting that would have been known to the authors. If we situate the gold plates account within the context of the Old Testament, as you recommend doing for everything else in the Book of Mormon, then it is believable. The account in the book written on gold plates is not believable within Joseph's New World setting.

Look at it this way. On his 4th trip, Columbus stood upon the Isthmus of Darien (Panama), but he didn’t have enough information to calculate his position in the Americas. Instead, he estimated he was in Champa (Vietnam/Cambodia), about 10 days away from the Sinus Magnus (Gulf of Thailand) and the Phison River flowing out of Eden (Ganges). Columbus wrote his Book of Prophesies without understanding that the Isthmus of Darien or the Pacific Ocean existed. He had no concept of continents, let alone an American continent. He was still within a Biblical context and believed he had found passage to the Aurea Chersonesus (as described by Ptolemy) near the Biblical port of Ophir (as described by Josepus) and the Biblical Sinim (associated in Columbus' times with Ptolemy's Sinae).

Likewise, Jacob, while standing upon the promised land, might have imagined he was upon one of the isles of the sea mentioned in Isaiah. Jacob was also writing from within a Biblical setting, later interpreted by Joseph Smith in terms of the KJV. The description of the Book of Mormon being a "record of this continent" was Joseph's interpretation of what Moroni had told him. This interpretation could not have come from the gold plates. The authors of the gold plates would have known nothing about continents beyond Sinae. As far as I can tell, the description of the "book written on gold plates being an account of the former inhabitants of the American continent" wasn’t written down until James Mulholland included it in JS, History (1838). This would be 15 years after Moroni's visit to Joseph Smith. To further complicate our interpretation of Moroni's description, it seems to be influenced by a dream/vision that Benjamin Benson had reported to Joseph Smith in 1837, also recorded by James Mulholland. I could be missing something with this timeline here. I appreciate comments from anyone that might have more information.

In any case, we'll never know what Moroni said and we'll never know if Joseph interpreted what Moroni said correctly. In the same way, we can’t know what Columbus understood when he claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah regarding the lost sheep in the isles of the sea. Did he mean the lost sheep on the Isthmus of Darien or did he mean the lost sheep on the Golden Peninsula? Its an important question and the answer matters. Just ask Jose. If we could ask Columbus in 1505 to identify the ethnicity of the lost sheep of another fold, he would give us a list of ethnonyms that could be found in Ptolemy, Polo, and Mandeville etc. If we asked him in 1505 to draw a map locating the lost sheep, it would have looked something like:

This map from the mind of the man among the gentiles described in 1 Nephi 13 is the closest thing we've gor to an internal geography of the book written on gold plates.

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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?

I was parroting Williams. I would also argue that a geography model that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences will be more productive than a geography model that remains caught up in simply proving the relative truth of the book. This brings me back to Jose.

Jose is from Peru. He had believed that the Book of Mormon was a history of his ancestors, the Lamanites. Along with that understanding, Jose believed that the authors of that book had made promises to a specific group of historical people, known today as Native Americans, including Peruvians. This is the colonization of Jose. In time, Jose came to the realization that the data doesn't support the claims that form a significant part of his identity. Jose experiences an identity crisis. This is the decolonization of Jose. To answer your question, we've seen the damage done through colonization, why would I propose yet another colonizing event in yet another location? Oh, I'm not. I'm just following the data. It won't be possible to lay all of this out here, but this is the gist of it:

"There was a book deposited written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang."

That's it. I put emphasis on a single word in Moroni's description of the ancient record and then I make the distinction between the book deposited before 1823, written upon gold plates, and the book published in 1830. This allows the reader to position the account within a believable setting within the Biblical worldview of the authors. If we separate the account on the plates from the narrative in the book then we can support the claim that the events described on the gold plates take place on Jacob's Isle of the Sea, among other isles of the sea known to Jacob. These isles of the sea were interpreted by the man Nephi saw among the gentiles (Columbus) as Mondo Novo, a New World setting that we'll never be able to experience. In contrast, the narrative in the Book of Mormon seemingly takes place upon Joseph Smith's American continent, a place that the authors of the Book of Mormon could never experience.

Of course, this reading of the text doesn't necessarily resolve Jose's identity crisis, but as Razib Khan points out, there's a lot of new information out there and it's best we remain agnostic about the peopling of the Americas. Notably, last year, it was discovered that some modern Peruvians are genetically related to a historical group that most closely resembles the sea nomads of the Andaman Islands and the indigenous peoples of Malaysia and Thailand.

Deep genetic affinity between coastal Pacific and Amazonian natives evidenced by Australasian ancestry

Additionally, these Peruvians have DNA that is a closer match to the first inhabitants of Kedah (based on samples taken in neighboring Kelantan) than they are to any other ancient samples (source)

With this understanding, Jose might interpret the Book of Mormon as an account of the former inhabitants of America and the isles of the sea from whence they sprang. The book written on the gold plates could now be interpreted as a pre-colonial record of Jose's ancestors and the source from whence they sprang.

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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".

I'll explain in the geography thread how the Camarini are the same people Columbus imagined to be the lost sheep of another fold described in John 10:16. I have a lot of work ahead to reference all this, but Columbus had learned about the Indies from a number of sources, some of which we've been discussing in the other thread. The lost sheep in Columbus' Mondo Novo were the Kumr of Komoriyya in Arabic geographies. They were the inhabitants of the Island of Brahmans described in Mandeville's Travels. The Camarini were the Makarioi (Blessed) in the Alexander Romance that were mistakenly identified as the Rechabites in the History of Zosimus. They were the Indians. Joseph Smith also interpreted them as Indians.

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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?

The ideas of Mitchell, Humboldt, Bradish, Anthon, Rafinesque, and others in 1829 aren't relevant to the account in the book written on gold plates. However, we have a clear instance of their ideas being relevant to the discussion about the authenticity of that account, which hadn't been translated yet. Anthon tells us that the transcript ended with something that resembled Humboldt's Mexican zodiac. We don't know what Anthon saw, but he certainly interpreted it in terms of Humboldt's books. I imagine that Harris got caught up in numerous attempts at interpretation on his trip east. Mitchell supposedly compared the transcript against other hieroglyphics and identified them as being authentic to a people or nation in the east, which he named. We discussed Bennett briefly in the other thread. He has said that it is likely that Mitchell also saw in the characters evidence to support his theory that Australasians or Malays were among the first to populate the State of New York. Bennett argues Harris was persuaded by these interpretations. I expect he also communicated much of it to Joseph. I can only assume these interpretations influenced Joseph's interpretations of the 1830 Book of Mormon. In a way, Harris's trip to New York in 1828 was the opening round of bad history and parallelomania between the book written on gold plates and the Book of Mormon.

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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)?

Nephi and Jacob don't provide us with sufficient geographical information to situate the text. However, I still disagree that Jacob only meant 'isle in the sea' in a general sense, in the Isaiah context. I interpret Jacob's 'isle in the sea' to also refer to a physical island or peninsula. Hardy appears to support this dual meaning in the Annotated Book of Mormon. Nearly 800 years after Jacob situates the Lehites on an 'isle in the sea', Mormon intentionally adds a very specific geographic context. He provides enough information for us to discern the shape of the island, which turns out to be a peninsula. The geographic descriptions are internally consistent. It's unclear what we should do with this information.

Benjamin McGuire · April 4, 2024

34 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

For me, the conflict between the 1830 book and believability stems from Joseph's interpretation of Moroni's description of the book written on gold plates, which he also applied to his translation of the Book of Mormon.

I think this is progress.

35 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

For starters, the trans-oceanic voyage in the 6th century BC is incongruous with the data and not believable. You might respond by pointing out that the Book of Mormon never claims an American setting and that the assumed voyage across the ocean is an external interpretation of the text. Rght, and that’s my point. The assumed American setting doesn’t come from the Book of Mormon. Yet, this interpretation is at the root of Jose's identity crisis. Despite the damage done by this reading, I can't recall a single instance of anyone critically approaching the question about the assumed American setting of the narrative. The question isn't asked. Even Vogel assumes that the setting is America, although he also can't make the hemispheric model fit the geographical descriptions from the text. Vogel’s solution is arguably more unbelievable than Sorenson’s.

We can both agree, I think, that these kinds of problems are conditioned on an interpretation of the text of the 1830 Book of Mormon, right? I am not passing judgment on your point of disbelief, just making this observation.

37 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

Another example. The Book of Mormon tells us that Nephi "did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords". We know from 1 Nephi 4:9 that the sword of Laban was made of steel. Iron smelting is something that is pretty easy to spot within the archaeological record. There is no evidence of iron or steel smelting in the Americas before Columbus.

Steel presents a different sort of problem than the transoceanic travel. The idea of transoceanic travel is built into the narrative. It is difficult to simply explain away a significant boat journey through interpretation or language choice. However, there isn't much to get from "after the manner of it" - there isn't anything in that language that requires us to look for iron or steel smelting. Even the choice of word "steel" is probably problematic, since the King James text uses it regularly when we would not make such a translational choice today. So we can point to this, but it isn't a particularly meaningful example because of the lack of textual context.

51 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

I would also argue that a geography model that takes into account the various social and cultural consequences will be more productive than a geography model that remains caught up in simply proving the relative truth of the book.

And I would simply disagree with you here on this point. Social and cultural consequences of an interpretation are irrelevant to the question of whether an interpretation of the Book of Mormon accurately reflects the contents of the gold plates. I am not sure what you mean by "more productive" in this sentence either. Being "more productive" implies some sort of deliverables that can be measured in an empirical fashion. What are the deliverables that you are looking for, and how would you know that it was "more productive" or "less productive" (that is, how would you measure it). And finally, I generally take exception to the notion of "the relative truth of the book". Books are not true (except perhaps in the sense that you can have a real, genuine book). Propositions are true. And so there must be something that you mean when you speak of the "relative truth of the book" in terms of propositions that you hold to be true (or that you want to demonstrate to be true). Perhaps as part of talking about what it means to be more productive you could enumerate one or two of the propositions that you are trying to prove.

58 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

Jose is from Peru. He had believed that the Book of Mormon was a history of his ancestors, the Lamanites. Along with that understanding, Jose believed that the authors of that book had made promises to a specific group of historical people, known today as Native Americans, including Peruvians. This is the colonization of Jose. In time, Jose came to the realization that the data doesn't support the claims that form a significant part of his identity. Jose experiences an identity crisis. This is the decolonization of Jose. To answer your question, we've seen the damage done through colonization, why would I propose yet another colonizing event in yet another location? Oh, I'm not. I'm just following the data. It won't be possible to lay all of this out here, but this is the gist of it:

But I don't think that this works. The colonization isn't simply an interpretation of the text, it is tied to the conversion practices of the LDS Church and its more or less official interpretation of the text of the Book of Mormon. But Jose's beliefs come from specific interpretations of the text of the Book of Mormon, and have no real connection to what may or may not be on the gold plates. To suggest that you are just following that data is a suggestion that you believe that there is no interpretation at all the process that leads you to your conclusions - but this cannot be the case in my opinion. You aren't simply following the data - because the data doesn't go anywhere on its own.

1 hour ago, Zosimus said:

With this understanding, Jose might interpret the Book of Mormon as an account of the former inhabitants of America and the isles of the sea from whence they sprang. The book written on the gold plates could now be interpreted as a pre-colonial record of Jose's ancestors and the source from whence they sprang.

And this wouldn't be helpful in any sense - because the only thing that changes is interpretation. We interpret away the textual difficulties. The story doesn't become more believable here - the interpretation of the story may be more believable in a specific context. I want you to understand that what I read here is that you are simply picking an interpretation (from all of the possible interpretations we might get from the text of the Book of Mormon) and saying this is the one we should follow because it's the one that makes Jose reconcile his interpretation with his own sense of self. This is nothing more than Nephi's likening the text unto ourselves - but it doesn't actually help us situate the gold plates in a historical context.

1 hour ago, Zosimus said:

Nephi and Jacob don't provide us with sufficient geographical information to situate the text. However, I still disagree that Jacob only meant 'isle in the sea' in a general sense, in the Isaiah context. I interpret Jacob's 'isle in the sea' to also refer to a physical island or peninsula.

And you can interpret the text however you want - but what you can't do with any legitimacy is to argue that your interpretation is what the gold plates actually said or that its author actually meant. And I want to point to the problem inherent in your comment here. Who is is that chose the words "isles of the sea"? It couldn't have been the historical Jacob. Jacob didn't speak in English. He didn't write in English. The literary interpretation is critical to understanding the text. This distinction isn't as important when we are dealing with theology (Sunday School lessons) - but when you are trying to locate the narrative as historicity, it matters a great deal. None of the words in the English text of the Book of Mormon were chosen by Jacob.

mfbukowski · April 4, 2024

On 3/31/2024 at 4:38 PM, mfbukowski said:

I have had some private communications with him a few years ago and came to the same conclusion.

Quoting my own post here to make a correction- those "private communications" I discussed, were about historicity in general, and in going back over them, it is clear to me that when I made that remark, my memory of what Ryan was talking about was not related to the nuances of the discussion here. So going back over it, I goofed!

Actually also in going back over the private discussions, I remember now that our opinions are not that much apart when it comes to historicity in general.

Zosimus · April 12, 2024

On 4/5/2024 at 12:38 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

We can both agree, I think, that these kinds of problems are conditioned on an interpretation of the text of the 1830 Book of Mormon, right? I am not passing judgment on your point of disbelief, just making this observation.

I had recently seen this response Joseph Smith gave to a similar question about belief in the text of the Bible (source):

Q: Do you believe the bible?
JS: If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does. For there are none of the religious sects of the day that do.

Q: Wherein do you differ from other sects?
JS: Because we believe the bible, and all other sects profess to believe their interpretations of the bible, and their creeds.

Likewise, I believe the book written on gold plates. I don’t find any of the current interpretations of the 1830 Book of Mormon to be believable.

On 4/5/2024 at 12:38 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Steel presents a different sort of problem than the transoceanic travel. The idea of transoceanic travel is built into the narrative. It is difficult to simply explain away a significant boat journey through interpretation or language choice. However, there isn't much to get from "after the manner of it" - there isn't anything in that language that requires us to look for iron or steel smelting. Even the choice of word "steel" is probably problematic, since the King James text uses it regularly when we would not make such a translational choice today. So we can point to this, but it isn't a particularly meaningful example because of the lack of textual context.

Steel isn’t a problem for the book written on gold plates, its a problem for our varied interpretations of the Book of Mormon. wrt iron, the Lehites knew what iron was. Nephi tells us he made swords after the manner of the Sword of Laban and then in the next verse he says: “And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance.” We know how the KJV interprets iron so we can interpret that the rod of iron that Nephi saw in vision was made of the same material that David prepared to make nails for the doors of the gates of the temple.

This poses a problem for interpretations that place Nephi's landing in the Americas. There is no evidence for a transoceanic crossing in the 6th century BC. There is no evidence for iron, or iron smelting, in the Americas before Columbus. Neither iron furnaces, not iron blooms, not iron slag have been found in the archaeological record in the Americas. The apologetic response has been that even though iron ore was common in the Americas, the knowledge of refining was lost. This is not believable. King Noah was not only decorating spacious buildings with iron in the 2nd century BC, but he was also taxing it. Jesus mentions iron in 3rd Nephi, presumably because the Lehites understood iron in the same way that Jesus, from Jerusalem, understood it. It's not believable that the Lehites would use the term iron, in the KJV sense, and at the same time lose the ability to produce it. There's only one way that I can see this interpretation being believable within an American context. The Lehites knew how to work with iron but, like the Rechabites, chose not to. The Rechabites had the technology, but they didn't refine iron, for religious reasons. Its an interesting question, but perhaps too far off-topic.

In any case, the interpretation that Nephi worked iron while on the America continent in the 6th century BC is problematic. Alternatively, the interpretation that Nephi worked iron while upon an isle in the sea in the 6th century BC is not problematic. There’s evidence to support the later (source):

“Archaeological research conducted at [Sungai Batu] proved the existence of the ancient Kedah Kingdom to be recorded much earlier, which was in the 6th century BC at the iron-smelting site (Mokhtar, 2019). The dating was obtained using charcoal samples through the radiocarbon dating method (Mokhtar, 2019). The river jetties structure in this complex was also dated using the OSL method by using in-situ brick samples, which showed that the structure was built around the 6th century BC (Halim, 2019) and the administrative site around the 5th century BC (Ahmad, 2016), which proved the continuity of the ancient Kedah Kingdom since the times before the Common Era.”

There is evidence of a boat jetty and iron smelting dated to within 10 years of the Lehite voyage, in the land that the man among the gentiles understood to be the the isles of the sea. The boat jetty is the oldest known structure on the peninsula. The evidence for iron production includes iron furnaces, iron blooms, iron ingots, iron slag and furnace blowpipes, or tuyeres. This port became the ancient worlds largest iron production site, the iron produced here being used to make iron swords including a sword with a gold hilt that was used by the Banu Qaynuqa, a Jewish tribe in Saudi Arabia (source). So when Nephi says soon after his arrival in the promised land he made swords "in the manner of" the sword of Laban, we can see that this account is quite believable, as there is historical evidence to support a location in the isles of the sea that produced iron swords in the manner of the sword of Laban.

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I am not sure what you mean by "more productive" in this sentence either. Being "more productive" implies some sort of deliverables that can be measured in an empirical fashion. What are the deliverables that you are looking for, and how would you know that it was "more productive" or "less productive" (that is, how would you measure it). And finally, I generally take exception to the notion of "the relative truth of the book". Books are not true (except perhaps in the sense that you can have a real, genuine book). Propositions are true. And so there must be something that you mean when you speak of the "relative truth of the book" in terms of propositions that you hold to be true (or that you want to demonstrate to be true). Perhaps as part of talking about what it means to be more productive you could enumerate one or two of the propositions that you are trying to prove.

It’s from Williams: “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.”

Another way to say it would be, we'll accomplish little trying to find evidence that the account in the Book of Mormon is "true". It would be more productive if we instead discussed the social and cultural consequences of our interpretations of the book. IMO to be more productive, our interpretations must remain within the bounds of what we presently understand to be true about the historical record and the people we interpret as being the descendants of Nephites and Lamanites. This is not a discussion about Book of Mormon historicity, it is a discussion about our interpretations of the Book of Mormon.

Proposition One: Our interpretation of Moroni’s description of the book written on gold plates is incorrect. The data is clear, the former inhabitants of the American continents sprang from Asia, not Jerusalem. A more accurate interpretation of Moroni's description is that the book written on gold plates is a record of the former inhabitants of the American continent and the isles of the sea from whence they sprang.

Proposition Two: I propose a more productive (and accurate) interpretation of Nephi’s vision is that the man among the gentiles was Christopher Columbus and the promised land is the Biblical land that Columbus identified as the new heaven and new earth, which he believed he had found. In other words, the gold plates are set in the pre-Columbian Biblical worldview of the authors and not in the 19th-century worldview of Joseph Smith, the translator of the Book of Mormon.

Here's a thought experiment. Orson Hyde once said in General Conference that Moroni was physically present alongside Columbus on the 1st voyage:

"[The Angel Moroni] was with Columbus, and gave him deep impressions, by dreams and by visions, respecting this New World. Trammeled by poverty and by an unpopular cause, yet his persevering and unyielding heart would not allow an obstacle in his way too great for him to overcome; and the angel of God helped him——was with him on the stormy deep, calmed and troubled elements, and guided his frail vessel to the desired haven." (source)

Let's imagine that Moroni had the gold plates with him and he gave Columbus personal readings. How would Columbus interpret the account on the gold plates? Where would he place Jacob's isle of the sea? Where would he situate the narrow neck of land? When Moroni reads the passages in 1 Nephi about the man among the gentiles who crosses the many waters to the promised land of the Lehites, what continent would Columbus understand that to be? What land would Columbus understand to be the new heaven and new earth Moroni describes in Ether 13:9? Columbus himself gave us his answer: "God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John after having spoken of it through the mouth of Isaiah; and he showed me the spot where to find it."

OK, to be clear, I don't believe that Moroni was a crew-member on the Santa Maria, this is far from anything we could find in the Book of Mormon. But through this thought experiment, we can understand that the gold plates account was set in the pre-Columbian Biblical worldview of Columbus. At this point, the description of the gold plates Moroni might have given to Columbus would be something like "an account of lost sheep upon the isles of the sea". After Magellan sailed into the Pacific Ocean for the first time in recorded history, Moroni's description would need to be updated to include the lost sheep of the American continent and the Pacific. Moroni told Joseph that the gold plates were an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang, which I interpret to be the isles of the sea, or more specifically an isle upon the sea. An interpretation that comes from the text is expansive enough to include the lost sheep upon all the isles of the sea, not just the American continent.

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The colonization isn't simply an interpretation of the text, it is tied to the conversion practices of the LDS Church and its more or less official interpretation of the text of the Book of Mormon. But Jose's beliefs come from specific interpretations of the text of the Book of Mormon, and have no real connection to what may or may not be on the gold plates.

Jose’s beliefs do not come from the gold plates. Our beliefs do not come from the gold plates. They come from our interpretations of the 1830 Book of Mormon. There’s nothing in the book written on gold plates or the Book of Mormon that identifies Peruvians, or American Indians, or Polynesians as Nephites or Lamanites. These beliefs come from Joseph Smith’s interpretation of Moroni’s description of the book written on gold plates.

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And this wouldn't be helpful in any sense - because the only thing that changes is interpretation. We interpret away the textual difficulties. The story doesn't become more believable here - the interpretation of the story may be more believable in a specific context. I want you to understand that what I read here is that you are simply picking an interpretation (from all of the possible interpretations we might get from the text of the Book of Mormon) and saying this is the one we should follow because it's the one that makes Jose reconcile his interpretation with his own sense of self. This is nothing more than Nephi's likening the text unto ourselves - but it doesn't actually help us situate the gold plates in a historical context.

The text says that they were upon an isle of the sea. The man among the gentiles described in 1 Nephi wrote quite a lot about where he believed the land across the many waters to be. I situate the gold plates account in the same place the man among the gentiles situated the 'new heaven and new earth' spoken of in Isaiah, and described by Moroni in Ether 13:9.

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And you can interpret the text however you want - but what you can't do with any legitimacy is to argue that your interpretation is what the gold plates actually said or that its author actually meant. And I want to point to the problem inherent in your comment here. Who is is that chose the words "isles of the sea"? It couldn't have been the historical Jacob. Jacob didn't speak in English. He didn't write in English. The literary interpretation is critical to understanding the text. This distinction isn't as important when we are dealing with theology (Sunday School lessons) - but when you are trying to locate the narrative as historicity, it matters a great deal. None of the words in the English text of the Book of Mormon were chosen by Jacob.

I don’t claim to know what is on the gold plates and I don't know what the authors actually meant. At the same time I believe what is on the gold plates. I don't believe any of the interpretations of the Book of Mormon.

Edited April 12, 2024 by Zosimus

webbles · April 12, 2024

On 4/4/2024 at 10:22 AM, Zosimus said:

Likewise, Jacob, while standing upon the promised land, might have imagined he was upon one of the isles of the sea mentioned in Isaiah. Jacob was also writing from within a Biblical setting, later interpreted by Joseph Smith in terms of the KJV. The description of the Book of Mormon being a "record of this continent" was Joseph's interpretation of what Moroni had told him. This interpretation could not have come from the gold plates. The authors of the gold plates would have known nothing about continents beyond Sinae. As far as I can tell, the description of the "book written on gold plates being an account of the former inhabitants of the American continent" wasn’t written down until James Mulholland included it in JS, History (1838). This would be 15 years after Moroni's visit to Joseph Smith. To further complicate our interpretation of Moroni's description, it seems to be influenced by a dream/vision that Benjamin Benson had reported to Joseph Smith in 1837, also recorded by James Mulholland. I could be missing something with this timeline here. I appreciate comments from anyone that might have more information.

Are you asking what's the earliest known document that says the Book of Mormon was about the inhabitants of the American continent? Oliver Cowdery wrote in letter IV in 1835:

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He then proceeded and gave a general account of the promises made to the fathers, and also gave a history of the aborigenes of this country, and said they were literal descendants of Abraham. He represented them as once being an enlightned and intelligent people, possessing a correct knowledge of the gospel, and the plan of restoration and redemption. He said this history was written and deposited not far from that place, and that it was our brother’s privilege, if obedient to the commandments of the Lord, to obtain and translate the same by the means of the Urim and Thummim, which were deposited for that purpose with the record.

That sounds like the idea that the golden plates were the history of the American continent was known by at least 1835.

Kevin Christensen · April 12, 2024

I've read the Dialogue essay on Historicity issues linked to the start of this discussion a few times now. I think this comment in the essay is key:

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The book could not have included all of these hemispheric mythologies, along with the hemispheric language of the "land northward," the "land southward," and the "narrow neck of land," without intending the kind of reading that current DNA evidence would contradict. Indeed, for these critics, the book demands to be read this way.

That reminds me of this comment about Bacon by Karl Popper:

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Bacon, the philosopher of science, was, quite consistently, an enemy of the Copernican hypothesis. Don’t theorize, he said, but open your eyes and observe without prejudice, and you cannot doubt that the Sun moves and that the earth is at rest.

The point is that in just the way that Bacon argues for an unquestionable Ptolemaic view, with the Sun at the center of things, on grounds of overwhelming obviousness, so it seems to him, but without addressing the problematic issue of planetary motions, the troublesome epicycles that troubled Copernicus and Kepler, and Galileo enough to rethink theory and observations, so the supposedly obvious and unquestionable "hemispheric language" ignores all of the telling textual details in the Book of Mormon that when considered, preclude such a reading. If the Land of Nephi in the South is about 21 days on foot to Zarahemla also in the South, for a mixed group of families and flocks, and Limhi's explorers must have known that when they went from their location in the Land of Nephi, looking for Zarahemla, and passed through the narrow neck into a Jaredite location and could mistake it for Zarahemla, that precludes a hemispheric geography. None those who offered a hemispheric interpretation have ever mentioned this. That is like Bacon, addressing the obvious, without accounting for the telling details of planetary motion.

And If the early Saints obviously thought of the indigenous peoples of the New World as Lamanites, it does not show that they paid close attention to the fact that Jacob, a first generation writer in the Book of Mormon, in his first public discourse, for the newly relocated portion the community that followed Nephi from the Land of the First Inheritance, is on the theme of how "how “Gentiles shall be blessed and numbered among the house of Israel” (2 Nephi 10:18), and in his own book makes the point that he and the book will use "Lamanite" as a blanket term for political unfriendlies, not as a designation of lineage, nor of righteousness.

It makes a great deal of sense, Kuhn says, to ask "Which paradigm is better?" where the question of "better" should be asked in terms that are not completely paradigm dependent. And because deciding which paradigm is better always involves deciding, "Which problems are more significant to have solved?" that means conclusions will differ. We are not forced to conclusions by facts, but persuaded to them in terms of what we choose to notice and to most value, based on different paradigmatic frameworks.

That is exactly why Jesus says criticism should start with self-criticism, checking on the beams in one's own eye first. The beams, I think, being our preconceived ways of thinking. We cannot argue that Bacon, the father of the scientific method, was not being scientific or rational or logical, but we can clearly see that he was not self-critical of his own assumptions. The beam in his own eye obscured his vision and as a consequence, he did not see clearly.

But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. (Luke 5:38–39)

Williams rather neatly illustrates the point that "all data are theory laden" by offering an abstract description of of a text meant to suggest the Book of Mormon when he subsequently reveals that it is a notably dubious "The Travels of Marco Polo."

In this, we should notice that paradigms are by definition, established by standard examples of scientific work. We learn to see one situation as like another. The likening both establishes the paradigm that defines a way of seeing.

Williams then says this:

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Time spent on picking apart the various geographical and textual inadequacies in the Book of Mormon may actually obscure the more important question of what social consequences we can expect to see as a result of this particular battle between parallels. What are the consequences of reinterpreting (or otherwise abandoning) Book of Mormon historicity?

Which problems are more significant to have solved? That question defines the change from the Old Maxwell Institute to the new on in 2016. Should we speak to the scholars (meaning, the dominant consensus at the Universities, or the Saints? They deliberately chose the universities and formalized that with the massive website overhaul in 2016.

Williams moves to say this:

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Now, then, let us summarize and begin to draw some parallels: (1) Based on a rather vague and ambiguous geography, a man, who some consider to be "inspired," gave a name with real social effects to an entire group of people; (2) The agent responsible for this act knew that it would seem illegitimate and so he installed a "discourse of wonder" to "fill up" the vacancy of that act; (3) Certain systems of cultural power were added to that discourse of wonder to validate the original speech act. What I hope this parallel points to is that, whether we accept Book of Mormon historicity or not, the linguistic act by which an entire people are appropriated by a given discourse is not simply a matter of "science," "truth," or "facts." It is a question of power, of culture, and of language. In fact, the possession of a people's identity is rarely a question of truth.

Joseph Campbell explains in various places (such as The Power of Myth) that one of the functions of a mythology is to "sustain a particular social order."

Various stories and labels applied to allow a high level dismissal of both the Book of Mormon and the best scholar's who defend it operate for exactly this purpose. A story is told about "parallelomania" or "defense attorneys who start with conclusions" rather than "investigators objectively following the facts where ever they lead." We then are to take those stories as paradigmatic, as providing a way to pre-assess and value whole bodies of work by hundreds of scholars using a range of professional specialties without need to bother with the details.

Williams discusses the issue of colonialism, how the concept of Lamanite affects the self-identity of various LDS members to whom the label was been applied, and also the attitudes of various groups of LDS in their attitudes towards them. But I cannot help but notice that in all that blunt and serious consideration of various conflicted interests and attitudes, there is no discussion of the implications of Jacob's political definition as "those who seek to destroy the people of Nephi" (Jacob 1:14), his discussion of how the Gentiles "Shall bring thy sons in their arms, and they daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders" (2 Nephi 6:6) and on how “Gentiles shall be blessed and numbered among the house of Israel” (2 Nephi 10:18).

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Wherefore, I will consecrate this land unto thy seed, and them who shall be numbered among thy seed, forever, for the land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all men that dwell thereon that they shall worship me, saith God. (2 Nephi 10:19)

So we are mixed together, and all the children of God, and are all to treat one another as such, regardless of lineage and what matters most is how we behave.

And overall, I think of this:

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One of the ruling illusions of Western metaphysics is that reason can somehow grasp the world without close attention to language and arrive at a pure, self-authenticating truth or method. Derrida’s work draws attention to the ways in which language deflects the philosopher’s project. He does this by focusing on metaphors and other figurative devices in the texts of philosophy…

His method consists of showing how the privileged term is held in place by the force of the dominant metaphor, and not, as it might seem, by any conclusive logic.3

So I always find it illuminating to consider the stories and notions a person puts forward as dominant metaphors, to which we are to liken everything, and through which, various people suggest we view at least a portion of the world, for various reasons, and with different degrees of self-reflection, offer as keys to understanding. We can't escape such things. But we ought to be self-aware, as a first step. Of the beams in our eyes. "Then shall ye see clearly."

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited April 15, 2024 by Kevin Christensen
missing words

Benjamin McGuire · April 12, 2024

2 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Steel isn’t a problem for the book written on gold plates, its a problem for our varied interpretations of the Book of Mormon. wrt iron, the Lehites knew what iron was. Nephi tells us he made swords after the manner of the Sword of Laban and then in the next verse he says: “And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance.” We know how the KJV interprets iron so we can interpret that the rod of iron that Nephi saw in vision was made of the same material that David prepared to make nails for the doors of the gates of the temple.

This poses a problem for interpretations that place Nephi's landing in the Americas. There is no evidence for a transoceanic crossing in the 6th century BC. There is no evidence for iron, or iron smelting, in the Americas before Columbus. Neither iron furnaces, not iron blooms, not iron slag have been found in the archaeological record in the Americas. The apologetic response has been that even though iron ore was common in the Americas, the knowledge of refining was lost. This is not believable. King Noah was not only decorating spacious buildings with iron in the 2nd century BC, but he was also taxing it. Jesus mentions iron in 3rd Nephi, presumably because the Lehites understood iron in the same way that Jesus, from Jerusalem, understood it. It's not believable that the Lehites would use the term iron, in the KJV sense, and at the same time lose the ability to produce it. There's only one way that I can see this interpretation being believable within an American context. The Lehites knew how to work with iron but, like the Rechabites, chose not to. The Rechabites had the technology, but they didn't refine iron, for religious reasons. Its an interesting question, but perhaps too far off-topic.

I want to point to an obvious sort of issue here (emphasis added) - "We know how the KJV interprets iron so we can interpret the rod of iron that Nephi saw in a vision was made of the same material that David prepared to make nails for the doors of the gates of the temple." The point I want to emphasize is that something you see in a dream is by definition immaterial. It cannot possibly be "made of the same material" as something that is allegedly material and experienced in a material way.

Steel isn't a problem for the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon isn't an ancient text (like the gold plates). When we assert that there is an anachronism in references to iron and steel, we are asserting that the anachronism occurs because the use of steel and iron in the Book of Mormon are accurate reflections (and not interpretations) of the contents of the gold plates. So this is a two stage argument (as I have been trying to point out). I am not sure that you understand this - especially if your best point of contact is a description of a vision that Nephi has. One of the problems with lists is much clearer if I use a different list - this is from 1 Nephi 18:25 -

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And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the *** and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold, and of silver, and of copper.

The distinction between a goat and a wild goat is of interest because it cannot (by context) refer to a distinction between domestic and non-domestic goats. The distinction between goat and wild goat, however, occurs several times in the KJV Old Testament, in lists cataloging animals. So we have Deuteronomy 14:4-5:

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These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat, The hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois.

And you can see that there is a contextual overlap here. Deuteronomy tells us that these are the animals to eat. The Book of Mormon identifies these animals that "were for the use of men." In a culture which, allegedly, was deeply concerned with clean and unclean animals, there is an immediate need in a new place to catalogue those animals that could be used (and to differentiate them from those that could not be used). The fact that the 1830 translation falls back on the language of the King James translation could be understood in a lot of different ways - but, it seems unlikely, that these lists are in fact specific terms relating to modern understanding of specific species. And given the context, this creates the problem for making the assumption that the metal list that is used early in the Book of Mormon is also meant to be understood in such a way. In other words, we have several interpretative decisions to make. Is the range of metals listed a reference to a range of specific metals being worked? Is it borrowing language from the Brass Plates (whatever that might have looked like) to reference their own use of metals. Does the Book of Mormon take some liberties with the language? The problem that we have with this, as I noted, is that the Book of Mormon provides very general language here that is meant to be descriptive in and of itself. We don't know how the brass was used, or for what. We don't have this information for the copper, or the iron, or the steel, or the gold or the silver or the other precious ores (whatever they were). And this means that we can accept the idea that this is a literary interpretation of sorts without doing any real damage to the narrative (either of the Book of Mormon or of any sense of the contents of the Gold Plates). In the same way, there isn't any way to identify the goat or the wild goat with a specific species of animal - and the text doesn't ask us to, because no-one engages the question of what a wild goat is in the text or how it is different from a goat.

For you to get to where you want to get, you have to 1: Make the assertion that iron or steel in the Book of Mormon is a reflection of the language and intent of the gold plates, and 2: That this use reflects a technical enough use to help us establish points of contact with a potential historical context/environment in which we should understand these events to have taken place.

There are problems at both levels of this. As I pointed out, the ocean crossing narrative is much more difficult to place entirely on the modern translator of the Book of Mormon than is the use of the words steel or iron in any particular context - especially since there is so little context from which to pull meaning on the use of these terms in the Book of Mormon. So the question of why we should understood iron or steel as reflecting the meaning of the gold plates (and to understand them as technical terms), is something that needs to be argued and not assumed. Because of the use of this language in the King James text and the rather vague or ambiguous use of the language, I am of the view that the language as an interpretive part of the translation should be the default position - that is that this tells us more about the translation (the Book of Mormon) than the source (the Gold Plates).

But, even supposing that we can assert with some confidence that the language comes from the Gold Plates, we then have to come to some interpretation of the Gold Plates record that allows for a technical understanding that can be used to historically situate the narrative someplace. This is different argument - that is, we have to be able to show how the hypothetical language that we point to in the Gold Plates text relates to a historical reality as opposed to a literary reality. In other words, if the Gold Plates are discussing something but are engaging that something through language that comes from someplace else (Isaiah for example), then it creates a more complicated situation when trying to develop your hypothetical historical environment. So we come back to your statements -

4 hours ago, Zosimus said:

In any case, the interpretation that Nephi worked iron while on the America continent in the 6th century BC is problematic. Alternatively, the interpretation that Nephi worked iron while upon an isle in the sea in the 6th century BC is not problematic. There’s evidence to support the later (source😞

“Archaeological research conducted at [Sungai Batu] proved the existence of the ancient Kedah Kingdom to be recorded much earlier, which was in the 6th century BC at the iron-smelting site (Mokhtar, 2019). The dating was obtained using charcoal samples through the radiocarbon dating method (Mokhtar, 2019). The river jetties structure in this complex was also dated using the OSL method by using in-situ brick samples, which showed that the structure was built around the 6th century BC (Halim, 2019) and the administrative site around the 5th century BC (Ahmad, 2016), which proved the continuity of the ancient Kedah Kingdom since the times before the Common Era.”

There is evidence of a boat jetty and iron smelting dated to within 10 years of the Lehite voyage, in the land that the man among the gentiles understood to be the the isles of the sea. The boat jetty is the oldest known structure on the peninsula. The evidence for iron production includes iron furnaces, iron blooms, iron ingots, iron slag and furnace blowpipes, or tuyeres. This port became the ancient worlds largest iron production site, the iron produced here being used to make iron swords including a sword with a gold hilt that was used by the Banu Qaynuqa, a Jewish tribe in Saudi Arabia (source). So when Nephi says soon after his arrival in the promised land he made swords "in the manner of" the sword of Laban, we can see that this account is quite believable, as there is historical evidence to support a location in the isles of the sea that produced iron swords in the manner of the sword of Laban.

So let us review what you are doing here. "The interpretation that Nephi worked iron while on the American continent" is an interpretation that (1) the references to working iron in the Book of Mormon are reflective of the intent of the Gold Plates, and (2) the Gold Plates should be understood within a particular historical context. In other words, you are arguing that it is problematic when you argue that the text of the Book of Mormon should be read as being equivalent to the Gold Plates, and that the text of the Book of Mormon should be read in a particular historical context (as having historicity). And, as you know, I am suggesting that both (1) and (2) are bad assumptions. But this is where you are wrong. The interpretation that Nephi worked iron some place else in the 6th century BC is just as problematic. Long before we ever get to the historical context, you haven't made an argument for the way that you interpret the text about the issue of working iron. You are reading the text and interpreting the text to conform to your intuited historical placement - but you haven't actually justified those readings. You have to go through the steps that I outline above - and this has to be done before you start claiming that you have found historical contexts in which to place the Gold Plates.

Your argument doesn't get you any further (it has no more validity than) the argument that Nephi worked iron on the American continent.

7 hours ago, Zosimus said:

It’s from Williams: “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.”

Another way to say it would be, we'll accomplish little trying to find evidence that the account in the Book of Mormon is "true". It would be more productive if we instead discussed the social and cultural consequences of our interpretations of the book. IMO to be more productive, our interpretations must remain within the bounds of what we presently understand to be true about the historical record and the people we interpret as being the descendants of Nephites and Lamanites. This is not a discussion about Book of Mormon historicity, it is a discussion about our interpretations of the Book of Mormon.

The Williams essay doesn't help you here.

For a specific book to be 'true' would be to mean that the specific books has enough of the characteristics of a book for the specific example to be an actual book. We don't usually speak of objects as true - because in general, it isn't objects that are true, but propositions. And since we aren't really talking about the book, but about the narrative, we run into the interpretation problem. What is the 'true' meaning of a book? And this is awfully fuzzy, because interpretation really isn't fixed or determinate like this. Williams doesn't want to talk about it in absolute terms, so he discusses the "relative 'truth' of the book" - and relative truth is something that changes over time. So the Williams statement is just a mess. He has zero interest in the question of what historicity really is (unlike you). And you have misunderstood his statement. In the concluding paragraph, Williams writes this:

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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.

Williams doesn't in this essay suggest that we should replace the traditional claims of historicity of the Book of Mormon with a new set of claims of historicity that will take into consideration the social and cultural impact of such claims. He argues that there shouldn't be an argument made for historicity at all - that we should decolonize the text - to the extent that we can start to talk about a post-colonial understanding of the Book of Mormon (which by definition would be a Book of Mormon without any understanding of historicity). He wants a discussion of the Book of Mormon that is absent any claims of associating the Book of Mormon peoples with specific historical contexts.

7 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Jose’s beliefs do not come from the gold plates. Our beliefs do not come from the gold plates. They come from our interpretations of the 1830 Book of Mormon. There’s nothing in the book written on gold plates or the Book of Mormon that identifies Peruvians, or American Indians, or Polynesians as Nephites or Lamanites. These beliefs come from Joseph Smith’s interpretation of Moroni’s description of the book written on gold plates.

Ok. But there is also nothing on the gold plates or in the Book of Mormon that provides your interpretation either.

7 hours ago, Zosimus said:

The text says that they were upon an isle of the sea. The man among the gentiles described in 1 Nephi wrote quite a lot about where he believed the land across the many waters to be. I situate the gold plates account in the same place the man among the gentiles situated the 'new heaven and new earth' spoken of in Isaiah, and described by Moroni in Ether 13:9.

And here you are again conflating the Book of Mormon with the gold plates. The language of the Book of Mormon is dependent on textual sources that we can point to (like the King James text of the Bible). But then we get this sort of strange interpretation of Ether 13:9 and the underlying text of Isaiah 65:17 - "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." The Book of Mormon text reads: (and I include verse 8 because it's relevant):

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Wherefore, the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land; and it shall be a land of their inheritance; and they shall build up a holy city unto the Lord, like unto the Jerusalem of old; and they shall no more be confounded, until the end come when the earth shall pass away. And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new.

The new heaven and the new earth are a post-apocalyptic creation - coming after the destruction of the old earth and the old heaven. This is the same idea that we see in Revelation 21, or 2 Peter Chapter 3. This verse doesn't place these events anywhere.

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