An unusual way to say something

[Bernard Gui]

Who writes this way?

A curious observation….Joseph used a lot of words in a parallelism to describe the location of Nephi’s garden tower. I’m not aware of Joseph talking or writing like this outside of the translation of the BoM.  This is not the language of an illiterate 19th-century American farm boy. 

Quote

Helaman 7:10

And behold, now it came to pass that

• A. it was upon a tower,
•   B.  which was in the garden of Nephi,
•     C.  which was by the highway
•       D.  which led to the chief market,
•          E.  which was in the city of Zarahemla;
•       therefore, Nephi had bowed himself
• A.  upon the tower
•    B.  which was in his garden,
• A.  which tower 
•    B.  was also near unto the garden gate
•     C.  by which led the highway.

Or in other words,

Quote

Then Nephi bowed himself upon his garden tower next to the highway that ran to the main market in Zarahemla. 

Thoughts?

Edited September 5 by Bernard Gui

[CV75]

46 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

A curious observation….Joseph used a lot of words in a curious parallelism to describe the location of Nephi’s garden tower. I’m not aware of Joseph talking or writing like tgis outside of the translation of the BoM.  This is not the language of an illiterate 19th-century American farm boy. 

Or in other words,

Thoughts?

For one thing, I do not write that way; it is way in which I do not write, for one thing.

[LoudmouthMormon]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

1. Middle and high schoolers trying to turn 3 paragraphs into a 5 page essay.

2. Translators dealing with a language with sentence structures and syntax that differs widely from the target language.

3. Grandpa Simpson

4. I dunno, people who spoke whatever Nephi spoke, and trying to convert that into something you could scratch into a plate in reformed Egyptian?  And then it gets run through the 2nd step?

 

Edited September 3 by LoudmouthMormon

[manol]

2 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

A curious observation….Joseph used a lot of words in a curious parallelism to describe the location of Nephi’s garden tower. I’m not aware of Joseph talking or writing like tgis outside of the translation of the BoM.  This is not the language of an illiterate 19th-century American farm boy. 

Or in other words,

Thoughts?

They didn't have erasers back then?

(Actually, they probably did. They could probably pound the indentations out of the metal, and probably more easily and more often with a highly malleable metal like... um... come on, help me out here...)

I always though it was kind of funny how Jacob whines about how hard it is to write because their hands are so big (like in Arnold Friedman's paintings), and THEN he gets tasked with writing the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees.

Seriously, good point. 

Edited September 3 by manol

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

1. Middle and high schoolers trying to turn 3 paragraphs into a 5 page essay.

2. Translators dealing with a language with sentence structures and syntax that differs widely from the target language.

3. Grandpa Simpson

4. I dunno, people who spoke whatever Nephi spoke, and trying to convert that into something you could scratch into a plate in reformed Egyptian?  And then it gets run through the 2nd step?

 

1. Right.

2. There is only one translator in this case. Do you think this is the way he would write if he were simply making up the story as he went along?

3. Nope.

4. See #2.

[Bernard Gui]

2 hours ago, CV75 said:

For one thing, I do not write that way; it is way in which I do not write, for one thing.

And........

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, manol said:

They didn't have erasers back then?

(Actually, they probably did. They could probably pound the indentations out of the metal, and probably more easily and more often with a highly malleable metal like... um... come on, help me out here...)

I always though it was kind of funny how Jacob whines about how hard it is to write because their hands are so big (like in Arnold Friedman's paintings), and THEN he gets tasked with writing the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees.

Seriously, good point. 

Pounding out the indentations would deform and thin the metal plate. Probably not a good solution. 

Arnold is known to have taken a few artistic leaps of fantasy. 

Do you have any thoughts about the point?

[Stargazer]

7 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

A curious observation….Joseph used a lot of words in a parallelism to describe the location of Nephi’s garden tower. I’m not aware of Joseph talking or writing like tgis outside of the translation of the BoM.  This is not the language of an illiterate 19th-century American farm boy. 

Or in other words,

Thoughts?

Some people will believe anything if it is ludicrous enough, as long as it confirms their bias.

There was someone on this very board who once claimed that the most complex example of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon (in Alma 36) was a perfectly explainable mode of writing, and that anyone could come up with it. So it served as evidence of the book being a revealed text not at all. The writer also claimed that he wrote letters using chiasmus just as complex all the time.

This is why the Lord chose a relatively uneducated farm boy to give the translation to. Because nobody could possibly claim that the book was the result of a university education. 

Edited September 3 by Stargazer

[Analytics]

On 9/3/2024 at 9:32 AM, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

A curious observation….Joseph used a lot of words in a parallelism to describe the location of Nephi’s garden tower. I’m not aware of Joseph talking or writing like tgis outside of the translation of the BoM.  This is not the language of an illiterate 19th-century American farm boy. 

Or in other words,

Thoughts?

Why did Mormon use 63 words to describe something that could be said in 20 words?

Good question; that doesn’t sound like something someone would do if they were engraving the words on metal plates.

Edited September 4 by Analytics

[the narrator]

On 9/3/2024 at 8:32 AM, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

 

Scribes recording an oral storyteller word-for-word. This kind of repetition is common in oral storytelling as both a function of memory and way in which the storyteller delays while thinking out (or "studying it out in their mind" [D&C 9:8]) what to say next.

[LoudmouthMormon]

9 hours ago, Analytics said:

Why did Mormon use 63 words to describe something that could be said in 20 words?

Good question; that doesn’t sound like something someone would do if they were engraving the words on metal plates.

Right?  And what the crap was Isaiah thinking?  Didn't he realize that scribing is work?   It was all by hand back then, ya know.

Isaiah only needed to say this:

Judah and Jerusalem, you're being disobedient.  Knock it off or bad things will happen and you'll regret it.

 

What Isaiah ended up saying:

A Because the daughters of Zion are 
 B  - haughty, 
 B  - and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, 
 B  - walking and mincing as they go, 
 B  - and making a tinkling with their feet: 
A Therefore the Lord will 
 B - smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, 
 B - and the Lord will discover their secret parts. 

A In that day the Lord will 
 B- take away the bravery of their 
  C  - tinkling ornaments about their feet, 
  C  - and their cauls, 
  C  - and their round tires like the moon,
  C  - The chains, 
  C  - and the bracelets,   
  C  - and the mufflers,
  C  - The bonnets, 
  C  - and the ornaments of the legs, 
  C  - and the headbands, 
  C  - and the tablets, 
  C  - and the earrings,
  C  - The rings, 
  C  - and nose jewels,
  C  - The changeable suits of apparel, 
  C  - and the mantles, 
  C  - and the wimples, 
  C  - and the crisping pins,
  C  - The glasses, 
  C  - and the fine linen, 
  C  - and the hoods, 
  C  - and the veils.

A- And it shall come to pass, 
 B  - that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; 
 B  - and instead of a girdle a rent; 
 B  - and instead of well set hair baldness; 
 B  - and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; 
 B  - and burning instead of beauty.

A- Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
 B- And her gates shall lament and mourn;
 B- and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

 

Isaiah shouldn't get a pass just because it was all parchment back then.  I'm thinking the Old Testament was made up by a guy with a typewriter.  

 

[Bernard Gui]

On 9/4/2024 at 12:09 PM, Analytics said:

Why did Mormon use 63 words to describe something that could be said in 20 words?

Good question; that doesn’t sound like something someone would do if they were engraving the words on metal plates.

Perhaps, but we have no idea what or how many characters Mormon engraved to describe this location. Perhaps he had developed some kind of “reformed Egyptian short-hand” to save time and space. Come to think of it, though, that’s an interesting idea.   

Whatever the conclusion, it is an excellent example of parallelism, and is not something one would expect from a chap like Joseph.

Edited September 7 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

On 9/4/2024 at 12:25 PM, the narrator said:

Scribes recording an oral storyteller word-for-word. This kind of repetition is common in oral storytelling as both a function of memory and way in which the storyteller delays while thinking out (or "studying it out in their mind" [D&C 9:8]) what to say next.

Would you please provide some examples of this practice?

[Bernard Gui]

20 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Right?  And what the crap was Isaiah thinking?  Didn't he realize that scribing is work?   It was all by hand back then, ya know.

Isaiah only needed to say this:

Judah and Jerusalem, you're being disobedient.  Knock it off or bad things will happen and you'll regret it.

What Isaiah ended up saying:

A Because the daughters of Zion are 
 B  - haughty, 
 B  - and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, 
 B  - walking and mincing as they go, 
 B  - and making a tinkling with their feet: 
A Therefore the Lord will 
 B - smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, 
 B - and the Lord will discover their secret parts. 

A In that day the Lord will 
 B- take away the bravery of their 
  C  - tinkling ornaments about their feet, 
  C  - and their cauls, 
  C  - and their round tires like the moon,
  C  - The chains, 
  C  - and the bracelets,   
  C  - and the mufflers,
  C  - The bonnets, 
  C  - and the ornaments of the legs, 
  C  - and the headbands, 
  C  - and the tablets, 
  C  - and the earrings,
  C  - The rings, 
  C  - and nose jewels,
  C  - The changeable suits of apparel, 
  C  - and the mantles, 
  C  - and the wimples, 
  C  - and the crisping pins,
  C  - The glasses, 
  C  - and the fine linen, 
  C  - and the hoods, 
  C  - and the veils.

A- And it shall come to pass, 
 B  - that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; 
 B  - and instead of a girdle a rent; 
 B  - and instead of well set hair baldness; 
 B  - and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; 
 B  - and burning instead of beauty.

A- Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
 B- And her gates shall lament and mourn;
 B- and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

Isaiah shouldn't get a pass just because it was all parchment back then.  I'm thinking the Old Testament was made up by a guy with a typewriter.  

Interesting point. According to Donald Parry, “many ands” is a form of Hebraic parallelism. It is used throughout the BoM. I looked up Helaman 7:10 in his Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon. Here’s how he saw it:

Behold, now it came to pass that it was upon a tower,

   which was in the garden of Nephi,

   which was by the highway,

   which led to the chief market,

   which was in the city of Zarahemla; (Like sentence beginnings)

therefore, Nephi had bowed himself upon the tower which was in his garden, which tower was also near the garden gate by which led the highway. 

“Like sentence beginnings” parallelisms also appear throughout the BoM, but I think this verse is much more than that as I showed in the OP. 

Do you have Parry’s book? I heartily recommend it. 

[webbles]

On 9/3/2024 at 8:32 AM, Bernard Gui said:

Who writes this way?

A curious observation….Joseph used a lot of words in a parallelism to describe the location of Nephi’s garden tower. I’m not aware of Joseph talking or writing like this outside of the translation of the BoM.  This is not the language of an illiterate 19th-century American farm boy. 

Or in other words,

Thoughts?

I was curious if the original manuscript had this and if so, did it show breaks in the oration.  Unfortunately, this part doesn't exist.  Do you have a list of other verses like this?

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

I was curious if the original manuscript had this and if so, did it show breaks in the oration.  Unfortunately, this part doesn't exist.  Do you have a list of other verses like this?

I’m not sure what you are asking for. 

[webbles]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

I’m not sure what you are asking for. 

the narrator had said it was evidence of oral story telling so I'm curious if there are other examples of this that could be found in the original manuscript and if we can find evidence of a break in the oration.  If Joseph Smith had taken a break in the middle of the verse, then it would make it harder to believe that it is evidence of oral story telling.  So curious if you know of other verses that are verbose like this one.

[the narrator]

17 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Would you please provide some examples of this practice?

Walter Ong discusses it here in, particularly pages 39 and 40:

Quote

The public speaker’s need to keep going while he is running through his mind what to say next also encourages redundancy. In oral delivery, though a pause may be effective, hesitation is always disabling. Hence it is better to repeat something, artfully if possible, rather than simply to stop speaking while fishing for the next idea. Oral cultures encourage fluency, fulsomeness, volubility. Rhetoricians were to call this copia. They continued to encourage it, by a kind of oversight, when they had modulated rhetoric from an art of public speaking to an art of writing. Early written texts, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are often bloated with ‘amplification’, annoyingly redundant by modern standards.

This essay here discusses the role that memory plays in repeated text in oral communication.

A whole lot of essays on parallelisms in oral culture, including one by Kerry Hull, can be found here.

Brant Gardner discusses these and other aspects of orality in the BofM text in his Engraven Upon Plates, Printed Upon Paper.

[Doctor Steuss]

17 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Would you please provide some examples of this practice?

Hi Bernard,

Regarding chiastic structures playing a role in memory for oral storytelling in ancient cultures, I thought this blog entry by Brad Vaughn was pretty interesting.  Especially regarding the non-linear method (when the overall story/narrative is linear), and looking at the chiastic structure not as just a memory device, but as a plot structure (with the climactic theme centered in the chiasm).

I've never read anything else by him, and his educational background appears to be in theology rather than something more along the lines of Hebrew or textual criticism, but nothing seemed particularly "off" in the entry.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jacksonwu/2017/07/26/chiasm-oral-peoples-grand-biblical-story/

 

[Bernard Gui]

19 hours ago, webbles said:

the narrator had said it was evidence of oral story telling so I'm curious if there are other examples of this that could be found in the original manuscript and if we can find evidence of a break in the oration.  If Joseph Smith had taken a break in the middle of the verse, then it would make it harder to believe that it is evidence of oral story telling.  So curious if you know of other verses that are verbose like this one.

Well, this immediately came to mind. Poetic, descriptive, parallelistic. Is this what you had in mind?

My rendering:

Quote

Mosiah 18:30 And now it came to pass that all this was done

A. in Mormon,

   B. by the waters of Mormon,

     C. in the forest that was

   B. near the waters of Mormon;

A. the place of Mormon,

   B. the waters of Mormon,

      C. the forest of Mormon,

how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer;

       yea, and how blessed are they, for they shall sing to his praise forever.

Parry parses it like this and labels it "like sentence endings":

Quote

 

And now it came to pass that all this was done in Mormon,

by the waters of Mormon,

in the forest that was near the waters of Mormon;

the place of Mormon,

the waters of Mormon,

the forest of Mormon,

how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer;  yea, and how blessed are they, for they shall sing to his praise forever.

 

So, it could be condensed thusly:  "This was done in the waters and forest in the place called Mormon." But the Nephites didn't write like we do.

Edited September 6 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

On 9/6/2024 at 12:08 PM, Doctor Steuss said:

Hi Bernard,

Regarding chiastic structures playing a role in memory for oral storytelling in ancient cultures, I thought this blog entry by Brad Vaughn was pretty interesting.  Especially regarding the non-linear method (when the overall story/narrative is linear), and looking at the chiastic structure not as just a memory device, but as a plot structure (with the climactic theme centered in the chiasm).

I've never read anything else by him, and his educational background appears to be in theology rather than something more along the lines of Hebrew or textual criticism, but nothing seemed particularly "off" in the entry.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jacksonwu/2017/07/26/chiasm-oral-peoples-grand-biblical-story/

Yes, very interesting, thank you. 

His rotating the Chiasm to form a vertical literary "plot structure" (ABA) reminds me of the sonata-allegro form in music and the triangle used in many classical art works. Sonata-allegro is an ABA structure that is used in nearly all first movements of symphonies, sonatas, quartets, etc., since the times of Haydn and Mozart. A=exposition of the two themes. B=development of the themes, and A=recapitulation of the themes. In classical art the triangle is used as an organizational device to direct the eyes upward to the subject, for example, the Pieta, Mona Lisa, and the popular Jesus Visits the Nephites by Arnold Frieberg.  

The ABA structure seems to be a very useful device in organizing thoughts. While most parallelisms in the Book of Mormon and Bible are not chiastic, some people do think the whole BoM is a grand Chiasm (the scattering of the Lehites, the coming of Christ, the gathering of the Lehites), much like he describes the New Testament.

Quote

Whether consciously or otherwise, the writers present biblical history in a chiastic fashion. How easy it would be for them and us to recall this Story.

I'm not sure how this applies to Helaman 7:10 and the many chasms in the Book of Mormon because Joseph translated Mormon's written histories, not oral traditions. Moreover, like the Bible, the vast majority of parallelisms are not chiasms.

Your thoughts?

Edited September 7 by Bernard Gui

[Doctor Steuss]

2 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

I'm not sure how this applies to Helaman 7:10 and the many chasms in the Book of Mormon because Joseph translated Mormon's written histories, not oral traditions. Moreover, like the Bible, the vast majority of parallelisms are not chiasms.

Your thoughts?

As a dirty-dirty-heathen, I think it was more-so either a function of Joseph's oral storytelling, or it was basically an unavoidable subconscious mimicry of biblical language.

If I were to put my believer hat on, it would have been something that the Book of Mormon authors likely carried from their pre-exile familiarity with scripture.  Remember, they had to fetch the brass plates, which indicates they had no physical scripture record of their own (yet seemed to have at least some level of familiarity with Hebrew scripture), and likely relied on oral retellings within their family prior to obtaining the plates from Laban.  The reliance on oral transmission of scripture would have been ingrained in them on a cultural/language level.  This would have inevitably influenced their own way of crafting and recording holy writ to have those repetitive structures and poetic themes. 

From another potential perspective, the utilization of these types of structures would have assisted in dissemination of the new holy writ amongst the Nephites (and other "ites").  The writings/prophecies/history of the Nephite prophets would need to be disseminated to the general public, which would have likely been predominantly accomplished through oral transmission, making the carry-over and retention of those ancient Hebrew structures invaluable.

[Bernard Gui]

16 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

As a dirty-dirty-heathen, I think it was more-so either a function of Joseph's oral storytelling, or it was basically an unavoidable subconscious mimicry of biblical language.

If I were to put my believer hat on, it would have been something that the Book of Mormon authors likely carried from their pre-exile familiarity with scripture.  Remember, they had to fetch the brass plates, which indicates they had no physical scripture record of their own (yet seemed to have at least some level of familiarity with Hebrew scripture), and likely relied on oral retellings within their family prior to obtaining the plates from Laban.  The reliance on oral transmission of scripture would have been ingrained in them on a cultural/language level.  This would have inevitably influenced their own way of crafting and recording holy writ to have those repetitive structures and poetic themes. 

From another potential perspective, the utilization of these types of structures would have assisted in dissemination of the new holy writ amongst the Nephites (and other "ites").  The writings/prophecies/history of the Nephite prophets would need to be disseminated to the general public, which would have likely been predominantly accomplished through oral transmission, making the carry-over and retention of those ancient Hebrew structures invaluable.

If I understand you correctly, Mormon’s unusual description of Nephi’s garden tower is (1) the way Joseph told his stories, (2) a cultural manifestation of oral story telling practices handed down over centuries from Lehi’s experience prior to getting the Brass Plates in Jerusalem, (3) the way the Nephite writers taught in sermons and other public settings. 

Edited September 7 by Bernard Gui

[Pyreaux]

I think the use of repetition, patterns, and sentence structure helped it to naturally stand out by nature of its sound pattern and symmetry which made it easier to memorize and recite. 

[Bernard Gui]

On 9/7/2024 at 6:10 PM, Pyreaux said:

I think the use of repetition, patterns, and sentence structure helped it to naturally stand out by nature of its sound pattern and symmetry which made it easier to memorize and recite. 

Yes. I think they also make it much easier to learn, understand, and remember, which are the purposes of discourse. And....poetic parallelism is much more creative and interesting than straight prose.

Edited September 9 by Bernard Gui