Book of Mormon Historicity: A Reply

[smac97]

On 4/1/2024 at 9:37 AM, Ryan Dahle said:

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. 

My two bits: I have also found Ben's commentary as to the foregoing issue to be more confusing than clarifying.

I have also considered Ryan's efforts to request clarification to be reasonable.

Thanks,

-Smac

[mfbukowski]

On 4/12/2024 at 9:52 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

And overall, I think of this:

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

Exactly!  As usual!

Philosophers look at the PARADIGM presented and not the story or myth that generated the original paradigm.

"Facts" tend to be completely generated on the favorite cultural belief of the time.  Science is social constructivism at its best. It looks at the experiments and what has been published by other scientist in the same field to check the up-to the- minute scientific doctrine, 

Philosophers look at paradigms, many finding it irrelevant as to how the paradigm was generated. "The proof is in the pudding"- does the PARADIGM itself work to bring about a useful belief?

A quick off the cuff analogy might begin with finding an ancient text presenting the key to magic waters made of herb x mixed with herbs y and z, in the proper proportions, and boiled in the waters of a certain magic spring which cures all ailments.   But there are questions about the historicity of the document, and who would take such a formula seriously anyway?

Instead of brushing it aside, a contemporary scientist involved in cancer research, decides to actually run some experiments and examines the data carefully.  The magic waters are supposedly located in the Amazon rain forest, next to the location where the allegedly ancient text was found.

The scientist decides to ignore the issue of the "historicity" of the document and actually takes on the challenge of trying it out.   His peers think he is nuts!

Yet he persists, and actually goes to the location where the text was allegedly found.   

He follows the formula, using the herbs found in the area.  Yet there is also a translation problem with which herb is actually "herb x" since there are different varieties of the herb in question.  The scientists decides to use an herb similar to what is mentioned in the text, but is prevalent in the area.  After some preliminary trials, he also decides to use the actual water from the stream next to where to inscription was allegedly found.

Here the story breaks down because of all the practical problems with medical testing which would have to follow, but let's wave the magic wand and pretend that the formulation the scientist took from the ancient and suspicious text, ACTUALLY WORKS in preliminary testing.   Further testing shows that it is the specific varieties of herbs found in the area, "translated correctly" mixed with the water from the nearby stream, which happens to have unusual minerals, ACTUALLY SHOWS improvements in real patients! 

I hope with this silly story to illustrate my views about the "Moroni Promise" found in Moroni 10, and the paradigm for "truth" found in Alma 32.

TEST the paradigm, not the historicity.   Historicity is IRRelevant to the RELevance of the paradigm!

If YOU feel peace with a religious paradigm- LDS or not- I believe you are on YOUR own path to where God wants you to be.

Even atheism, according to recent definitions of  "Secular Religions', ARE, according to my beliefs, felt because you are being directed by whatever force you want to call it, toward what the "Universe" or its Creator- "insofar as these words are translated correctly", aka as "The Light of Christ",wants for you!

Words and titles may get in the way,  but the major issue imo, is finding that peace with your direction of travel.   Trust it!   It is all a progression toward a better life.

I firmly believe in the Holy Spirit, and/or The Light of Christ- and I think understanding religion itself and its function is a step we need to make to understand that LDS beliefs ultimately lead us to the 'best paradigm' for mankind.

We must "test opposites" to find the truth- and historicity is entirely irrelevant as to where these ideas originate.   They are PARADIGMS and not "historical facts", though some may need the history to believe the paradigm.   So be it then.   Some of us do not need historicity for our selected paradigm at all.

All religions are true in the extent that they bring one closer to an "ideal paradigm" about an "ideal force".   And yes, may that force be with you! 

If God is an exalted Human, then Humanism becomes a religion.

Yes, wikipedia has its purpose, and this is one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_religion#:~:text=Among systems that have been,Cult of the Supreme Being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion

https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/#:~:text=Humanism is an approach to,human nature and experience alone.&text=Humanism is%3A A joyous alternative,and life in a hereafter.

I believe that an understanding of these paradigms can lead to the understanding that the Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ will be seen as the "Ideal Paradigm" for all mankind.

 

Edited April 13, 2024 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

More about Humanism as a religion- from Humanist sources!

Quote

Humanism is a philosophy, world view, or lifestance based on naturalism-the conviction that the universe or nature is all that exists or is real. Humanism serves, for many humanists, some of the psychological and social functions of a religion, but without belief in deities, transcendental entities, miracles, life after death, and the supernatural. Humanists seek to understand the universe by using science and its methods of critical inquiry-logical reasoning, empirical evidence, and skeptical evaluation of conjectures and conclusions-to obtain reliable knowledge. Humanists affirm that humans have the freedom to give meaning, value, and purpose to their lives by their own independent thought, free inquiry, and responsible, creative activity. Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge-an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth.
– Steven Schafersman

We LDS believe in naturalism- God used available materials, not the supernatural, to create the earth.

All that exists is known only within a Human mind. If you are reading thls, it is coming to you via a human mind and experience.   Yes we disagree on theism.  BUT I think we are even more Humanist than the Humanists are, because I believe that God himself is an exalted Human.

Yes, we affirm that humans have the freedom to find meaning value and purpose by their own independent means, ie: the Holy Spirit/ Light of Christ.

We also are materialists- we learn in D&C that even "spirit" is "matter"- as proven, incidentally, with "E=MC2", the paradigm that energy and matter are one.

We stand for the establishment of Zion, or, a "more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge-an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth."

https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/#:~:text=Humanism is an approach to,human nature and experience alone.&text=Humanism is%3A A joyous alternative,and life in a hereafter.

 

Edited April 13, 2024 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

On 4/12/2024 at 12:20 PM, smac97 said:

My two bits: I have also found Ben's commentary as to the foregoing issue to be more confusing than clarifying.

And I would disagree with your opinion on this one.

[mfbukowski]

How can one disagree that the Church of Jesus Christ is NOT "humanist" knowing that Our Father Eloheim has a human body of flesh and bones, and his Son had a human body as all humans do, and suffered and died in order to let us firmly know that he has gone through every possible human pain and misfortune that ANY human could possibly experience, so that that knowledge could give us solace in our times of deep pain and life AS a human?

He has taken that on that we might know that HE knows fully- what it is like to BE Human in every possible circumstance, in order to take our pains from us, when we need that?

It just is impossible for me to even understand how anyone could see the Gospel of Jesus Christ as NOT "Humanist" in every possible way.

Again, if God is Human, then Humanism becomes theology.  Materialism is theology, and naturalism becomes theology. What some call "miracles" are simply technologies that remain yet discovered, or at least that is my opinion.  We do not need any paradigm for what "SUPER-natural" means, because our paradigms justify all those beliefs as they are.

I started here with these kinds of beliefs, and I think it is time to reiterate them more strongly.   There is no logical need for historicity to define "truth" for truth we can know without it, through forces of nature  (Light of Christ- Holy Spirit) our Human God has already given us.

Again, these concepts are all related to the"Radical Empiricism" of William James.   And THAT version of empiricism eliminates discussion of anything BEYOND what is experienced by humans.   Religious experience, by definition is INCLUDED in what humans experience, and therefore becomes empirical.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/radical-empiricism

 

 

[mfbukowski]

On 3/30/2024 at 11:46 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

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.

This is also consistent with the philosophical notion of "quale", I believe.

"Quale" is the property of the experience of redness, which results from a construction by a human body, whereas "red" is the reflection of light of a certain frequency of light entering the human eye.  The quale is human generated 

In a sense, the quale becomes a human- compiled/generated "narrative" while the "raw feel" is a phenomenological event CAUSING the "narrative" = a "manuscript"

Right?

[mfbukowski]

Since I have had such a great response here, let me give y'all one more reference.   I know you all have waited for this. 

https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-of-mind/chapter/qualia-and-raw-feels/

 

[MiserereNobis]

11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Since I have had such a great response here, let me give y'all one more reference.   I know you all have waited for this. 

https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-of-mind/chapter/qualia-and-raw-feels/

 

The Rorty video! We need the Rorty video!!!

[the narrator]

On 4/1/2024 at 7:14 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

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.

Not entirely sure that the last line is true in Skousen's brain. Several years ago at a conference at UVU I asked Skousen why his Yale edition began with First Nephi rather than Mosiah if it was supposed to represent the dictation text for scholarly study. He answered, "Because I believe that is the order God intended the Book of Mormon to be in."

[the narrator]

On 4/2/2024 at 11:11 AM, mfbukowski said:

Just a mention about Vogel - as a Positivist

I would argue Vogel's attempts at psychobiography are quite the opposite of positivism.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, MiserereNobis said:

The Rorty video! We need the Rorty video!!!

Dang!  Somebody bought the rights to it or sompti'in lak dat   and now it gets complicated to pull up.

But this goes beyond the Rorty stuff.  But notice that Wittgenstein's rabbit/duck (as opposed to rabid duck) is included for your viewing pleasure.

I don't know why it is so hard to understand that everything we know is due to perceptions of our minds.   NO! They say!  We see reality!

Yeah you see what you THINK is "reality", and yes, thinking that is definitely a useful way to see the world especially while driving in LA traffic bumper to bumper at 75 MPH, but what you see is still what your brain tells you is out there.

That means there is a subjective element to everything we know, and that leaves it open to the possibility that God can talk to YOU subjectively in that little voice.

Many atheists have great morals, and know there is "something out there", and talk about "the universe" speaking to them, acknowledging there is something "Greater" than themselves out there, but of course we cannot call it "God" because that is......  for simple people, and of course  OUR team is only for intellectuals and smart and famous folks.  UGH.

No, it is all semantics.

That "Something Greater" can just as easily called "God" as "something greater".   And so we call that source of comfort "OUR FATHER" because the "voice" seems friendly and loving.

But of course we cannot call it "God" because that is only for SIMPLE PEOPLE, not US! 

But it is the IDEA that we believe- historical or not. It is the PARADIGM that we are accepting,  Atheists tend to find their own gods in ecology, peace in the world, politics, "being a good person" etc, but we believers in God call it God.

And that becomes true for every religious point of view.   All seek "salvation" from something for something better for humanity.

Meditation brings you closer to "the voice".  So does helping others, being a philanthropist, curing cancer, and providing carrots to the world.  Every worthwhile activity is called "worthwhile" because it is "WORTHwhile".  It helps society in one way or another.

But at the center is always a person or two getting together and finding the best way, subjectively, for them to do something of worth, and find a purpose for their lives.

THAT is religion, secular or not.

It is about having a paradigm to believe and upon which to act.

Right now on TV they are speaking about a Fire Department new recruit who stopped on the freeway on the way to work to help someone who had a car problems, and was killed by another driver while helping.   He is correctly being honored as a "Hero", and will rightly be given a hero's funeral.

His paradigm was to help others at all costs.  That was also the paradigm of Jesus Christ.

What is important here is the story- the paradigm- that we should be of worth to others.  When or where it happened or did not becomes irrelevant.   I have no idea if the fire department recruit was religious or had a religion.   It doesn't matter.   He followed that paradigm.

And what if I just made up that story and it is NOT "historic"

What difference does it make?

Now back to Rorty:

Quote

 

To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states.  To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences, there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2024 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

36 minutes ago, the narrator said:

I would argue Vogel's attempts at psychobiography are quite the opposite of positivism.

I would like to see evidence for that view.  I am certainly not an expert on Vogel, that is merely my impression.  

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

I would like to see evidence for that view.  I am certainly not an expert on Vogel, that is merely my impression.  

Which view? That Vogel is doing psychobiography (at least in Making of a Prophet) or that psychobiography is not positivist?

[mfbukowski]

24 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Which view? That Vogel is doing psychobiography (at least in Making of a Prophet) or that psychobiography is not positivist?

You made the claim that he is not a positivist.

Positivism:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/logical-positivism

Quote

 

Logical positivism, a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless. A brief treatment of logical positivism follows. For full treatment, see positivism: Logical positivism and logical empiricism.

Logical positivism differs from earlier forms of empiricism and positivism (e.g., that of David Hume and Ernst Mach) in holding that the ultimate basis of knowledge rests upon public experimental verification or confirmation rather than upon personal experience. It differs from the philosophies of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill in holding that metaphysical doctrines are not false but meaningless—that the “great unanswerable questions” about substance, causality, freedom, and God are unanswerable just because they are not genuine questions at all. This last is a thesis about language, not about nature, and is based upon a general account of meaning and of meaninglessness. All genuine philosophy (according to the group that came to be called the Vienna Circle) is a critique of language, and (according to some of its leading members) its result is to show the unity of science—that all genuine knowledge about nature can be expressed in a single language common to all the sciences.

 

The question as I see it boils down to whether or not PERSONAL TESTIMONY- ie: subjective accounts of human experience- are justifiable as being "True" based on Pragmatism and Phenomenology and related philosophical schools which take the position that subjective experience can also be justifiable and considered True.

I believe Vogel's central paradigm is definable as positivist, as differentiated from Neopragmatism and Phenomenology. 

I prefer the latter approaches which justify personal testimony.

Edited April 15, 2024 by mfbukowski

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 hours ago, the narrator said:

Not entirely sure that the last line is true in Skousen's brain. Several years ago at a conference at UVU I asked Skousen why his Yale edition began with First Nephi rather than Mosiah if it was supposed to represent the dictation text for scholarly study. He answered, "Because I believe that is the order God intended the Book of Mormon to be in."

And, as I noted the last time you brought this up -

On 8/7/2023 at 11:25 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Skousen's work is valuable, and it is helpful, but the presentation of the full text like this is about as meaningful in some ways as a recreation of the original text of the King James translation of the Bible ...

I think that there is a complicated problem here for Skousen. You might be right - that for Skousen, the English Book of Mormon (manuscript) is closer to Ryan's 'transcendent text' than the Gold Plates are. I think that if I considered God to be the author of the Book of Mormon manuscript (in some way), then I might get to that conclusion - especially in light of a text like 1 Nephi 9:5 - "Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not" (1 Nephi 9:5). But this would seem to disconnect the transcendent text from any particular historical context or human author.

[Zosimus]

15 hours ago, webbles said:

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:

This is 5 years after the publication of the Book of Mormon. I'm looking for what was said about the gold plates before the publication of the Book of Mormon. The only real discussion on the setting of the narrative of the gold plates is Richard Bennet's research detailing the encounter of Samuel Mitchell with the transcript of the gold plates. You can read about it on churchofjesuschrist.org and here. Harris shows Mitchill the transcript of the characters taken from the large plates. Mitchill compares the characters to hieroglyphs (we aren't sure which) and informs Harris that they are from a nation now extinct, which he named. 

In summary, in 1828, after studying the characters from the gold plates, America's leading naturalist identified the nation that produced them. important IMO

 

[the narrator]

17 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I believe Vogel's central paradigm is definable as positivist, as differentiated from Neopragmatism and Phenomenology. 

 

That may be true and descriptive of much of his work, and Making would have probably been considered positivist a century ago, but they key psychobiography arguments in that book are most definitely not positivist.

Don't want to derail this thread on this any further though.

[Zosimus]

Quote

What was actually available at Dartmouth? There is a copy of Kircher there. You have to be able to read it (and I doubt they loaned it out). But all of this other stuff that you discuss here - Nephi the Rabbi, "the 'strange alphabets' that Peiresc described (but which Kircher never published)" mentioned by Stolzenberg - all of this other material isn't there. It isn't a part of Kircher's book. Kircher's book in an of itself doesn't provide a fraction of the support that you think it does for your theory. And if that supposed oriental linguist at Dartmouth is aware of Ibn Wahshiyya or Maimonides, then he knows that these are all relatively late figures, living more than 1,500 years after Nephi allegedly leaves Jerusalem. They certainly aren't going to consider this as a context for the Book of Mormon narrative.

Moving over here to keep the discussion we had going separate from the Lars Nielson thread.

Kircher as a direct source for the narrative isn't convincing. Its the various interpretations of Kircher's ideas in the 1810s and 1820s that were relevant. A good summary of all that is found in The Birth of Orientalism which I believe you have access to, so I won't go into details here. The interpreted narrative IMO comes from the works of Claudius Buchanan, not Kircher

I also don't have a supposed Dartmouth linguist. The linguists that contributed most to the interpretation of the gold plates were Charles Anthon and Samuel Mitchill at Columbia College.

[Benjamin McGuire]

8 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Kircher as a direct source for the narrative isn't convincing. Its the various interpretations of Kircher's ideas in the 1810s and 1820s that were relevant. A good summary of all that is found in The Birth of Orientalism which I believe you have access to, so I won't go into details here. The interpreted narrative IMO comes from the works of Claudius Buchanan, not Kircher

Except that Buchanan doesn't talk about Kircher at all. Kircher is mentioned in a footnote in the appendix, without mentioning any actual content that Kircher had. Buchanan only has to be aware that Kircher exists (and that he wrote his book China Illustrata - which has a title that is reflective of its content). Buchanan doesn't have to be aware of what Kircher really wrote - and Buchanan doesn't seem to quote Kircher or refer to him elsewhere. So I think that you are way off in left field in your assertions here.

By the time that Buchanan comes along, Kircher has been dead for a long time. Buchanan doesn't have to resort to Kircher to get anything that you think that he may have gotten from Kircher. So what is the real basis for us trying to connect Buchanan to Kircher? Perhaps you can show us something that is unique to the two - uniquely shared between Buchanan and Kircher? And let's look at the sources themselves.

[Zosimus]

Quote

Perhaps you can show us something that is unique to the two - uniquely shared between Buchanan and Kircher? And let's look at the sources themselves.

Buchanan is quoting Barrow who is discussing Kircher. This is from the China Illustrata I provided earlier:

"All the Chinese and their neighbors who use Chinese characters for writing-follow one of these. This is true of the peoples of Japan, Korea, Tonchin, and the Cochin China, of whom we shall talk later. These three sects correspond in nearly all respects to the three social classes who composed the ancient Egyptian kingdom, that is, the priests, those who knew the hieroglyphic writing, and the common people."

This is from The Star in the East, just 5 lines above the reference to Kircher that you say isn't a discussion of Kircher's ideas:

"They know that the Chinese character is understood from the gulf of Siam to the Tartarian Sea, and over a very considerable part of the great Eastern Archipelago; and that the Cochin Chinese, with whom they have already firmly rooted themselves; use no other writing than the pure Chinese character, which is also the case with the Japanese."

Buchanan get's this from Kircher's China Illustrata, via Barrow, and he pretty much tells us that in the footnote when he says that the Barrow quote above come from Kircher downwards.

I suppose you could say Buchanan didn't know that the quote came to him from Kircher, but then that's somewhat acknowledging that Kircher's ideas were so embedded in the public consciousness that people didn't even know the theories came from Kircher. Either way, it shows that Kircher's ideas are still relevant and are still in discussion in 1809

[Benjamin McGuire]

37 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

Buchanan is quoting Barrow who is discussing Kircher. This is from the China Illustrata I provided earlier:

"All the Chinese and their neighbors who use Chinese characters for writing-follow one of these. This is true of the peoples of Japan, Korea, Tonchin, and the Cochin China, of whom we shall talk later. These three sects correspond in nearly all respects to the three social classes who composed the ancient Egyptian kingdom, that is, the priests, those who knew the hieroglyphic writing, and the common people."

This is from The Star in the East, just 5 lines above the reference to Kircher that you say isn't a discussion of Kircher's ideas:

"They know that the Chinese character is understood from the gulf of Siam to the Tartarian Sea, and over a very considerable part of the great Eastern Archipelago; and that the Cochin Chinese, with whom they have already firmly rooted themselves; use no other writing than the pure Chinese character, which is also the case with the Japanese."

Buchanan get's this from Kircher's China Illustrata, via Barrow, and he pretty much tells us that in the footnote when he says that the Barrow quote above come from Kircher downwards.

Let's suppose for a moment that you are right here. Do you even understand how problematic this is?

You have been arguing for days now that Buchanan uses Kircher. Now you are arguing that Buchanan is really using Barrow. If Buchanan is using Barrow, it makes it less likely that he had actually read Kircher and was only familiar with it from other sources.

But, you aren't right. Barrow doesn't reference Kircher at all. The link is to an easily searchable copy of the referenced work, which includes both quotations from Barrow - which I am providing here:

Quote

The press in China," says Mr. Barrow, "is as free as in England, and the profession of printing open to every one. It was the press in Europe that opened a free access to the doctrines of that religion, which of all others, is best calculated for the promotion of individual happiness and public virtue.

...

The French, aware of the solid advantages that result from the knowledge of languages, are at this time hoilding out every encouragement to the study of Chinese literature; obviously not without design. They know that the Chinese character is understood from the gulf of Siam to the Tartarian Sea, and over a very considerable part of the great Eastern Archipelago; and that the Cochin Chinese, with whom they have already firmly rooted themselves, use no other writing than the pure Chinese character, which is also the case with the Japanese. It is to be hoped therefore that the British nation will not neglect the means of being able to meet the French, if necessary, even on this ground.

The heading that this is under (in Buchanan) is: Chinese Version of the Scriptures; and Chinese Literature. The discussion isn't about the spread of language, but about the possibility of providing a copy of the Bible in Chinese for use by the Chinese people (and their neighbors). But let's not stop here - since negative evidence isn't really evidence. Luckily for us, Barrow provides an entire chapter of his book on the Chinese language. Let me quote some of it for you (emphasis added):

Quote

If no traces remained, nor any authorities could be produced, of the antiquity of the Chinese nation, except the written character of their language, this alone would be sufficient to decide that point in its favour. There is so much originality in this language, and such a great and essential difference between it and that of any other nation not immediately derived from the Chinese, that not the most distant degree of affinity can be discovered, either with regard to the form of the character, the system on which it is constructed, or the idiom, with any other known language upon the face of the globe. Authors, however, and some of high reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding to one part, and curtailing another, changing a straight line into a curved one, or a square into a circle, something might be made out that approached to the picture, or the object of the idea conveyed by the character as, for example, the character 田, representing a cultivated piece of ground, they supposed to be the picture of an inclosure, turned up in ridges; yet it so happens that, in this country, there are no inclosures;...

This goes on for pages. And then we get a bit of a summary (again emphasis added):

Quote

Whatever degree of affinity may be discovered between the sounds of the Chinese language and those of other nations, their written character has no analogy whatsoever, but is entirely peculiar to itself. Neither the Egyptian inscriptions, nor the nail-headed characters, or monograms, found on the Babylonian bricks, have any nearer resemblance to the Chinese than the Hebrew letters have to the Sanscrit; the only analogy that can be said to exist between them is, that of their being composed of points and lines. Nor are any marks or traces of alphabetic writing discoverable in the composition of the Chinese character; and, if at any time, hieroglyphics have been employed to convey ideas, they have long given way to a collection of arbitrary signs settled by convention, and constructed on a system, as regular and constant as the formation of sounds in any of the European languages arises out of the alphabets of those languages.

In particular, Barrow is critical of the work of Joseph Hager (who he mentions directly). Hager's An Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese; with an Analysis of their Ancient Symbols and Hieroglyphics was published in 1801, and Hager's text does reference Kircher and his theories. But Barrow views these ideas with complete disdain. So let's get back to what I originally asked:

On 4/28/2024 at 12:30 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Perhaps you can show us something that is unique to the two - uniquely shared between Buchanan and Kircher? And let's look at the sources themselves.

You responded by arguing that Buchanan was quoting Barrow who was discussing Kircher. In Chapter 4 of Barrow's work (where the quotes are taken from), there is no discussion of Kircher at all. In Chapter 6 of Barrow's work, there is an indirect discussion of Kircher. I say indirect, because it is actually a discussion of Hager's modifications to Kircher's theory. So I note several things -

First, the sections of Barrow quoted by Buchanan have absolutely nothing to do with Kircher's theory of languages. Not only don't they have anything to do with it, we generally wouldn't expect them to have anything to do with Kircher given Barrow's complete rejection of Hager's view of Kircher's theory (Barrow's rejecting of Hager includes a rejection of Kircher).

Second, the fact that Barrow is quoting Hager reminds us that by the beginning of the 19th century, this discussion has expanded well beyond Kircher. That means that in this area, you aren't likely to find something that is "uniquely shared between Buchanan and Kircher". Already in this little discussion we have extended the necessary chain - Kircher -> Hager -> Barrow -> Buchanan. Buchanan doesn't even have to be aware of Kircher's theories to have included the comments he made in his work - because Buchanan doesn't discuss Kircher, and Barrow only discusses Kircher indirectly (through Hager).

Third, you want to mention this idea of ideas existing in the environment, but, as I keep providing citations, what we see is that Kircher's views on language and migration - as plausible as they seemed in the 17th century, were generally being rejected in the 19th century. That is, public opinion of Kircher's theories isn't very good at all. That we can see this when we read these texts that mention Kircher again points to the problems of using digital search engines without spending the time with the context. And this creates a problem for the idea that it is this sort of theory that should direct our interpretation of the Book of Mormon (I think it's worth pointing out that when we get to the first readers of the Book of Mormon, they also don't read it in a way that follows Kircher either - something we might have expected had it been an idea so prevalent in the environment).

This was the point of my request. It illustrates all of the problems that I tend to see in these sorts of comparisons. The genetic connection between Kircher and Buchanan seems unlikely - and if that connection is unlikely, it is even more unlikely that Kircher creates any sort of influence on the general populace in the U.S. in the early 19th century.

1 hour ago, Zosimus said:

I suppose you could say Buchanan didn't know that the quote came to him from Kircher, but then that's somewhat acknowledging that Kircher's ideas were so embedded in the public consciousness that people didn't even know the theories came from Kircher. Either way, it shows that Kircher's ideas are still relevant and are still in discussion in 1809

And this brings us to the last bit I want to say.

John Barrow wasn't quoting Kircher. I think that it's more likely than not that he was aware of Kircher's writings. But, Barrow does quote sources in his text - and this is not indicated as a quote. Further, you run into the problem that John Barrow was part of the first British Embassy in China. He lived there, and learned to speak and read Chinese. This makes his account more first-hand experience. Why does he need to quote Kircher (who had no first hand experience in China) when he could rely on his own observations of the value of learning Chinese (as he had learned) and its use in dealing with all of the different East Asian nations?

Finally, all of this speculation on the relationship between Egyptian and Chinese ends in 1822. This is when Jean-François Champollion translates Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time. What allows the sort of speculation that Kircher (and Hager) engage in is first and foremost the fact that Egyptian glyphs were a lost language. Chinese was not. And so you could, if you believed Kircher's theory, attempt to work backwards and decipher Egyptian on the basis of the Chinese language (attempts were made at this). In 1822, that ends - because in coming to understand ancient Egyptian, we could see that the relationship between Chinese and Egyptian doesn't exist. In 1823, five Egyptian manuscript translations were published using Champollion's system. They were published in dozens of books over the next couple of years. This is really important for the larger discussion, because if you want to discuss Mitchill or Anthon, do you think that they were unaware of the translation of Egyptian and its lack of a relationship to Chinese? Do you think that they still believed in the idea that all languages shared some sort of Adamic language? That we can put Kircher into the environment is not itself terribly meaningful. It creates plausibility (as I have noted before) but it doesn't create a believable narrative.

At any rate, there's my two cents (and then some).

[Zosimus]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You have been arguing for days now that Buchanan uses Kircher.

Is that really how you see this discussion? 

This discussion started out as a CFR to support your claim that Kircher wasn't mentioned in American publications before 1850. He was, in quite a few of them, from Washington Irving to Samuel Mitchill. Drop the Buchanan one if its not strong enough. Drop them all if you want, it doesn't change the fact that Americans have known about Kircher and his ideas for as long as Kircher had been publishing his books. For example:

"Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora was one of the first great intellectuals born in the New World. Sigüenza's ideas about the ancient Mexicans were informed by the hugely valuable manuscripts from Alva Ixtlilxochitl, but he also developed ideas of his own about the origin of the Mexicans. He was one of the first persons, during Spanish rule, to dig around the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan...Sigüenza's ideas about the origins of the ancient Mexicans were influenced by German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who saw ancient Egypt as the source of all natural wisdom. Sigüenza embraced Kircher's ideas and in the publication accompanying his triumphal arch for the arrival of the new viceroy, Theater of Political Virtues That Constitute a Ruler, "he boldly pronounced that the Mexican Indians were the descendants of the Naphtuhim, the son of Misraim, founder and ruler of Egypt," (source)

You may be right that Kircher wasn't widely discussed or respected for his ideas, and maybe Washington Irving did find his ideas about Egyptians colonies in America funny. But in any case, Kircher was known to Americans long before 1830. Was Kircher known to Joseph Smith? I doubt it. We can close this one up now

[Benjamin McGuire]

47 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

This discussion started out as a CFR to support your claim that Kircher wasn't mentioned in American publications before 1850. He was, in quite a few of them, from Washington Irving to Samuel Mitchill.

I conceded that there are a number of publications that mention Kircher. More than once.

49 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

You may be right that Kircher wasn't widely discussed or respected for his ideas, and maybe Washington Irving did find his ideas about Egyptians colonies in America funny. But in any case, Kircher was known to Americans long before 1830. Was Kircher known to Joseph Smith? I doubt it. We can close this one up now

Then lets do so.