Hugo Grotius's On the Law of War and Peace in comparison with the Book of Mormon

[JarMan]

55 minutes ago, webbles said:

Yes, it is clear that Nephi wouldn't have killed Laban, but the phrase that I quoted shows Nephi's morals.  Nephi says "Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.".  That is his own morals.  The first and third don't appear to be from Grotius' morality.  Neither of those are reasons for killing a person, per Grotius.  Yet Nephi thinks of those when he is trying to convince himself that he can kill Laban.  There were other things said by the Spirit that finally convinced Nephi, but when Nephi came up with some reasons, he didn't follow Grotius.

Nephi ruminated about the wrongs Laban had committed against him, but doesn't use them as a justification for killing Laban. His justification was obedience to God, nothing else. This is consistent with other commentators' take on the story such as Charles Swift, BYU professor of ancient scripture (https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1636&context=jbms). As I've pointed out (and so does Dr Swift in the paper I linked), if Nephi felt he was justified in killing Laban, he didn't need the Spirit to tell him three times to do it.

[webbles]

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

Nephi ruminated about the wrongs Laban had committed against him, but doesn't use them as a justification for killing Laban. His justification was obedience to God, nothing else. This is consistent with other commentators' take on the story such as Charles Swift, BYU professor of ancient scripture (https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1636&context=jbms). As I've pointed out (and so does Dr Swift in the paper I linked), if Nephi felt he was justified in killing Laban, he didn't need the Spirit to tell him three times to do it.

But you said that Nephi had Grotius morality.  That's what I'm commenting on.  Why did Nephi reference two items that are contra Grotius when he is trying to rationalize himself?  I agree those two weren't enough to get him to kill Laban and he needed the third.  But when he says "Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.", he isn't saying that he shouldn't kill Laban because of those things.  For me, if Nephi had Grotius morality, then he would have said something like "Yeah, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life but he is currently drunk and passed out which is not enough reason to kill him".

[champatsch]

On 2/11/2025 at 7:00 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

1: There difference between loose and tight translation models is actually very large - but not in a way that helps with the understanding of the text. I don't actually have a significant preference one way or the other here - I think (and this was part of the main focus of this presentation) that to describe the text in terms of tight and loose translation is something of a limiter in terms of understanding the text. The dichotomy isn't particularly helpful because it forces us to view the question in terms of two very different paradigms instead of trying to find a place in between that might be more accurate. Most of the features in the text can, I believe, be described equally well in either paradigm, which means that the paradigms themselves are not terribly useful in understanding the text. Because of this, arguments tend to rely on various testimony describing the translation - and this isn't helpful for textual interpretation. We have to move beyond this dichotomy to discuss the Book of Mormon as a communication rather than as mere translation (whatever we mean by that) - and in that way engage the text on its own terms instead of through these external lenses.

2: By connecting the archaic language as Skousen-Carmack do, to a specific model of translation, it also provides limits on how that archaic language can function in the text. I believe that the archaic language in the text can be understood in a loose translation model if we recognize that the archaic language itself may be a rhetorical strategy in the text. If the archaic text is a rhetorical device - even if it is merely an aesthetic of the text - then it is no longer terribly helpful to see in the text some earlier language model like EME (it levels the playing field so to speak for these features in the text).

3: Another part of the Skousen-Carmack approach is also driven by the assumption of the Book of Mormon as a tight translation. When the text-as-it-is is a revealed text, in theory it replaces the source as the most important text (or at least is equal to the original text). We no longer really need to concern ourselves with the urtext of the gold plates or the language that might have been on it. When this occurs, there is a shift in the significance of using text critical tools applied to the Book of Mormon - that is, the most important text becomes the original text that was transcribed by the scribes, and understanding the English of that original manuscript becomes far more important than trying to argue (as I did with Nephi and Goliath) about whether Nephi uses the Hebrew innah from Exodus instead of the more common cagar. Every text after that original manuscript is secondary - and so we use text critical tools to produce a manuscript history - much like a New Testament scholar would attempt to produce that original New Testament manuscript by working backwards through all of the extant manuscripts - evaluating and grading all known differences in the manuscript. This is precisely what we have seen Skousen do in his critical edition. Don't get me wrong, I am deeply grateful for that work - I wouldn't want to do it - and I use it regularly. But it tends to be based on the idea that the Book of Mormon isn't so much a translation (no matter how we want to define it) as it is a revelation. Efforts to harmonize the text with the parallel passages of the Old and New Testament are of interest only when they can be reasonably accomplished without altering significantly the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon.

 

My thoughts have moved beyond this, but not in anything I have published. One additional reflection is the fact that within Biblical Studies, when the focus was entirely on the original text, David Clines noted that there was and is a consistent and sustained push to support attested readings above conjectural emendations. This is strongly reflected in both the critical text work and the EME work of Skousen-Carmack who, when confronted with difficult orthographic readings prefer to look for viable examples of the text-as-it-is in other contexts rather than trying to construct reasonable emendations of the text. These are philosophical decisions that are made - and are problematic for those of us who find the philosophical basis problematic. While Skousen-Carmack can find examples of difficult readings in EME, there isn't a pattern to this, and the discovery does not create something that is particularly predictive, which mimics some of the problems explained by Clines with reading the biblical texts.

Unfortunately, I find some of your writing to be opaque. You're going to have to explain some things differently, if I am to understand what you're getting at. Indeed, I'm not always sure what you mean by various terms, such as tight translation and loose translation. Such terms are often difficult to precisely interpret. In a 1998 JBMS paper, Skousen used the terms iron-clad control, tight control, loose control, not tight and loose translation. These are not the same things.

And to be clear, Skousen determined all the transcriptions and almost all the critical text readings, well before I came on the scene in 2014. I have primarily worked in the domain of syntax, with a secondary interest in lexis.

While we agree on most things, we don't always agree on minor things. But we do agree that the Book of Mormon is a revealed text which Joseph Smith didn't word. The lexis and the syntax both make that clear.

[Benjamin McGuire]

19 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't think you're considering the subtext. It's clear Nephi wouldn't have killed Laban without being prompted (3 times) by the Spirit. I don't think it was inexperience that held him back. I think it was his innate sense of morality. "Never at any time have I shed the blood of man" to me means something along the lines of: I'm not a killer, I'm a man of God. Finally he concludes that because he is a man of God he must kill him, both to obey God and to help fulfill his divine purposes.

I remain convinced that you are trying to force an interpretation onto the Book of Mormon text. The Book of Mormon provides all sorts of justifications for the killing of Laban. There are lots of reasons given. The problem is that Grotius would agree with none of them. You are putting all of this emphasis on the idea that God commanded it, and so it must be done - but this misses something that is really important. Grotius would never believe that God would issue such a commandment. This is where that issue of natural law is important. And it is also the reason why it is important for us to recognize that the things that Nephi seem to be - at least in the terms that Grotius provides - immoral and unjustified. Sure, we accept that Grotius would allow God to punish without concern that there is a good outcome. Grotius himself points to examples of this - like, for example, the destruction of the wicked at the day of judgment. But, as Grotius outlines when violence is or isn't acceptable, Nephi's circumstances consistently fall on the side of the violence not being acceptable. If Grotius is inventing a text to help explain his point of view, then why does it contest that point of view with such deliberateness? This is why I am having a hard time understanding why Grotius could have written this. Remeber that while Grotius isn't going to put limitations on God (other than the limitations that he suggests that God puts on God in the issue of natural law), Grotius is writing a text that is intended as a legal argument here. This is about the nuts and bolts of the situation. He isn't all that interested in discussing why or why not God would do something because, ultimately, it's irrelevant in the question of how humanity is supposed to act in the state of war.

Finally, thank you for the kind words about that essay. My discussion there points to a separation between what the text says and what the text does. If the author of First Nephi is engaging the 2 Samuel text, it would be interesting (and I haven't done this yet) to compare that engagement with any discussion of 2 Samuel that Grotius wrote. While it doesn't negate the discussion we have been having, that usage creates an entirely different purpose in Laban's death in the narrative - and it challenges perhaps our conventional readings.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

While we agree on most things, we don't always agree on minor things. But we do agree that the Book of Mormon is a revealed text which Joseph Smith didn't word. The lexis and the syntax both make that clear.

You and I certainly don't agree on this. I think that the lexis and syntax do not make this clear. I am open to it either way - but I am convinced that this conclusion is driven by a set of assumptions that come before the discussion about lexis and syntax. And while I agree with some of the ideas that are raised about the language, there are other ideas that I simply don't agree with. We can simply leave it there.

I am confident though that you would agree with me that the idea that the Book of Mormon was written by Hugo Grotius int he early 18th century, was translated in EME, and then redacted and updated by an unknown contemporary of Joseph Smith (perhaps even Joseph Smith himself) as put forward by Jarman is unsupportable.

[champatsch]

I guess it's the early 17c, not 18c, for Grotius. I don't know about Grotius, but the text could have been elaborated in the early modern period and then updated later. Perhaps it was first elaborated around the time of Malory and Caxton, in the late 1400s.

And if you could clarify your translation terms.

 

Edited February 17, 2025 by champatsch

[Benjamin McGuire]

22 minutes ago, champatsch said:

And if you could clarify your translation terms.

Which terms? If you mean the notion of tight or loose (or iron clad), those represent assumption that are brought to the text and not conclusions that can be drawn from the text. I think that they are all generally problematic for the question of what the Book of Mormon is in terms of a translation. The dating of the text (in terms of translation or authorship) should be based on the most recent language and not on the earliest language. This is a pretty standard approach. The challenge with using either a tight or an iron-clad approach to the text is that 1) it produces a poor translation by any standard, and 2) it favors trying to justify extant language over suggesting emendations. This is a common problem in biblical studies when the text is considered to be inerrant. It privileges specific approaches to the text - for which there isn't really any justification.

[JarMan]

On 2/16/2025 at 11:00 AM, webbles said:

But you said that Nephi had Grotius morality.  That's what I'm commenting on.  Why did Nephi reference two items that are contra Grotius when he is trying to rationalize himself?  I agree those two weren't enough to get him to kill Laban and he needed the third.  But when he says "Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.", he isn't saying that he shouldn't kill Laban because of those things.  For me, if Nephi had Grotius morality, then he would have said something like "Yeah, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life but he is currently drunk and passed out which is not enough reason to kill him".

This is a fair question. The way I see it is that the author of the text was putting these thought in Nephi's head, not to justify Nephi's actions, but to justify God's. I think the subtext indicates Nephi actually is saying what you are indicating he should have said.

[JarMan]

On 2/16/2025 at 4:09 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

I remain convinced that you are trying to force an interpretation onto the Book of Mormon text. The Book of Mormon provides all sorts of justifications for the killing of Laban. There are lots of reasons given.

I think my interpretation is pretty standard, which is why I referenced the Charles Swift essay on this. I do think, though, that you have more of a tendency for nonstandard interpretations than I do--not that there is anything wrong with that in some contexts--but from your perspective this might make "standard" interpretations appear contrived. Either of us could come up with an ad hoc interpretation to try to make things fit, which is why at the outset I stressed relying on what others have said as a sanity check. I think I'm well in the mainstream here.

On 2/16/2025 at 4:09 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

The problem is that Grotius would agree with none of them. You are putting all of this emphasis on the idea that God commanded it, and so it must be done - but this misses something that is really important. Grotius would never believe that God would issue such a commandment. This is where that issue of natural law is important. And it is also the reason why it is important for us to recognize that the things that Nephi seem to be - at least in the terms that Grotius provides - immoral and unjustified. Sure, we accept that Grotius would allow God to punish without concern that there is a good outcome. Grotius himself points to examples of this - like, for example, the destruction of the wicked at the day of judgment. But, as Grotius outlines when violence is or isn't acceptable, Nephi's circumstances consistently fall on the side of the violence not being acceptable. If Grotius is inventing a text to help explain his point of view, then why does it contest that point of view with such deliberateness? This is why I am having a hard time understanding why Grotius could have written this. Remeber that while Grotius isn't going to put limitations on God (other than the limitations that he suggests that God puts on God in the issue of natural law), Grotius is writing a text that is intended as a legal argument here.  This is about the nuts and bolts of the situation. He isn't all that interested in discussing why or why not God would do something because, ultimately, it's irrelevant in the question of how humanity is supposed to act in the state of war.

I am not sure which text (BofM or DJB) you are referring to here. I certainly don't think the BofM is trying to make a legal argument regarding Laban's homicide. On the contrary, I see it as specifically telling us something about the nature of God's justice, as opposed to man's. DJB, on the other hand, does make legal arguments. That is really it's whole purpose. And in this we see a misalignment in purposes between the Laban story and most of the content of DJB. I think what you are really identifying is this incongruity in purpose. But I think you are incorrectly using that incongruity to try to make the case that therefore Grotius would have disagreed with Nephi. I see this as being a non sequitur.

On 2/16/2025 at 4:09 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Finally, thank you for the kind words about that essay. My discussion there points to a separation between what the text says and what the text does. If the author of First Nephi is engaging the 2 Samuel text, it would be interesting (and I haven't done this yet) to compare that engagement with any discussion of 2 Samuel that Grotius wrote. While it doesn't negate the discussion we have been having, that usage creates an entirely different purpose in Laban's death in the narrative - and it challenges perhaps our conventional readings.

Your paper really got me thinking about the Aeneid and whether the similarities with the BofM were echoes, coincidences, actual allusions, or something else. We have the obvious similarities, which is that Aeneas escapes a legendary destroyed city with his family, wanders and adventures for several years, and founds a new chosen nation across the sea. But as I reviewed the story again, I noticed several similarities to the Laban story that I hadn't really considered before. When Aeneas and his friends wake to find their beloved Troy being burned by the Greeks, they kill a bunch of the invaders and put on their armor and take up their weapons to disguise themselves as they campaign deeper into the city. This later results in a case of mistaken identification by Aeneas' allies who don't recognize the Trojans in Greek armor. Aeneas is protected and led by Venus (his mother) as he gathers up his family and household gods. The household gods, like the Brass Plates, are important to Aeneas as we see them established once again in his new land. But whereas Nephi had to sneak into Jerusalem, it was the "bad guys" who snuck into Troy. Anyways, at the risk of taking this discussion off topic, I bring this up, not only because it relates to the story under discussion, but also because it provides another possible BofM connection to the ancient classical world that Grotius was very familiar with.

Edited February 22, 2025 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think my interpretation is pretty standard, which is why I referenced the Charles Swift essay on this. I do think, though, that you have more of a tendency for nonstandard interpretations than I do--not that there is anything wrong with that in some contexts--but from your perspective this might make "standard" interpretations appear contrived. Either of us could come up with an ad hoc interpretation to try to make things fit, which is why at the outset I stressed relying on what others have said as a sanity check. I think I'm well in the mainstream here.

If you read my essay, you will see that it undermines some of the arguments that Jack made.

The other thing is that Swift misunderstands my position - Swift writes this:

Quote

Just as the idea that God had delivered Goliath into the hands of David was a sign that God had chosen him to be king, McGuire understands the language of delivery by God into Nephi's hands to indicate that Nephi will be king.33 While McGuire writes of a number of parallels between Nephi and David, I cannot help but be bothered by one of the glaring differences: David triumphed in battle with an armed man-a "giant;' even-while Nephi killed a drunken man passed out in the street. It is difficult to accept Nephi's action as a divine sign of ascendency to the throne in the same light as David's defeat of Goliath.

This misses most of the point of the essay, which is not to create some sort of history, but to show how we can discuss the intentions of the author through the narrative. I also wrote this (which Swift does not reference):

Quote

I believe that this is the wrong question. Whether or not we believe the law in Exodus applied to Nephi is to some extent irrelevant to what Nephi believed. The fact that he includes several distinct references to the passage would suggest that he did, in fact, think it was applicable. So, we should be asking in what way Nephi thought it applied to his situation, not whether in fact it applied at all. In asking whether or not the law applies in this specific case, we are not developing a textual interpretation but rather providing an apologetic for a modern and probably incorrect understanding of the text. We want to justify Laban’s death. The better approach (although from an apologetic perspective perhaps less satisfying, since we still are faced with the issue of whether or not Nephi was justified in killing Laban) is to ask how Nephi felt that the law applied to him—that is to say, how does he justify the killing of Laban within the context of the Mosaic law. Dealing with intent in the technical fashion that Welch does is problematic, since the text itself states that this narrative is written long after the events occurred, and the text twice gives a foreshadowing of Laban’s demise (first from the angel and then later from Nephi himself). If we accept the chronology provided in the text literally, then there is a real issue of whether or not Nephi entered the city fully expecting to kill Laban.

And so on. This problem crops up again here in Swift's comments:

Quote

Nephi's account of his coming upon Laban in the street provides an excellent example of scripture as literature. It is experiential in that it both depicts the experience for us as readers and it provides an experience for us. We experience the thrill Nephi feels as he comes upon the sword for the first time, the terror and confusion he senses when he is commanded to take another man's life, the rationalization he works through as he tries to come to terms with what he has been told to do, the logic he remembers as he collects his thoughts, and the resolution he arrives at as he commits to obey the voice of the Spirit.

These really are not compatible views. I dive much more deeply into the writing of the text and its approach in my later essay, but, we run into this problem with the assertion that this is all about our reading of the text instead of what the author is trying to convey. There is a relationship going on - and what we get from this is that Swift is doing little more than trying to find an apologetic reading of the text. He gets to experience it somehow, through the lens of his own experience (his own imagination really, since none of this, we assume, actually reflects anything like his own experience). And in the end, his only fall back is that God commanded it - meaning that it must be justified. And while that on its own is a really problematic view to take, it doesn't actually mitigate the problem that all of us who commented on the narrative have seen (myself, Jack Welch, Val Larsen, etc.), find in that the text contains lots of statements of personal justification for the action. Swift doesn't explain them away, he just dismisses them - as if everything must take a back seat to the commandment of God. Grotius though argues something very different. He argues that there exists this natural law - which would exist whether or not even God existed. And because of this belief, Grotius makes this statement (that I referenced earlier) - 1.1.10:

Quote

The law of nature, again, is unchangeable – even in the sense that it cannot be changed by God. Measureless as is the power of God, nevertheless, it can be said that there are certain things over which that power does not extend; for things of which this is said are spoken only, having no sense corresponding with reality and being mutually contradictory. Just as even God, then, cannot cause that two times two should not make four, so He cannot cause that that which is intrinsically evil be not evil.

When Grotius tells us that it is against the law of nature for a person to do certain things - what that means is that it is evil to do those things - and God cannot make it not evil simply by God's commanding it to be so. This only applies for Grotius in these issues of natural rights - but it is in these issues of natural rights that we see Grotius declaring over and over again that what Nephi does is in violation of these natural rights. Grotius would never argue that Nephi's actions are supported by Nephi's natural rights. This includes the ideas that Grotius specifically lists - that it is not right to kill someone over property, that it is not right to kill someone for some future (and not immediate) good, that it is not right to kill a person who is not an immediate threat, and so on. And according to Grotius, even God cannot make these violations good simply by commanding it. But this is the very point that Swift makes - that the only way we should understand Nephi is to understand that by commanding Laban's death, God makes it justified:

Quote

Similarly, for the story of Nephi slaying Laban to remain in harmony to its fundamental truth, perhaps it, too, must be limited to its essential story of the young man being willing to sacrifice what he initially thinks he is supposed to do-keep the commandment to not kill-in order to obey the will of God.

Nothing could be further from Grotius's truth than this.

We still have the problem that Swift is never going to engage - specifically because he believes that once God commands something, it must be justified or righteous - and so beyond questioning. Grotius makes the specific claim that God is not beyond natural law - and that God cannot change what is good or evil - especially that which is good or evil that is found in natural law. And in the end, Swift isn't helpful at all for the argument you are trying to make - and I think that here it is wrong on both sides. We have the problem that Grotius is not going to allow Nephi to justly break natural law just at God's command, because God wouldn't command the breaking of natural law. And we have the problem that the Book of Mormon isn't best understood as teaching that the only justification is God's command. You may disagree with me on the value of Swift's argument, but regardless of how you try to defend Swift, the heart of the issue is really with Grotius.

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

I am not sure which text (BofM or DJB) you are referring to here. I certainly don't think the BofM is trying to make a legal argument regarding Laban's homicide. On the contrary, I see it as specifically telling us something about the nature of God's justice, as opposed to man's. DJB, on the other hand, does make legal arguments. That is really it's whole purpose. And in this we see a misalignment in purposes between the Laban story and most of the content of DJB. I think what you are really identifying is this incongruity in purpose. But I think you are incorrectly using that incongruity to try to make the case that therefore Grotius would have disagreed with Nephi. I see this as being a non sequitur.

I am going to assume for the moment that I have answered this in the above comments.

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

Your paper really got me thinking about the Aeneid and whether the similarities with the BofM were echoes, coincidences, actual allusions, or something else. We have the obvious similarities, which is that Aeneas escapes a legendary destroyed city with his family, wanders and adventures for several years, and founds a new chosen nation across the sea. But as I reviewed the story again, I noticed several similarities to the Laban story that I hadn't really considered before. When Aeneas and his friends wake to find their beloved Troy being burned by the Greeks, they kill a bunch of the invaders and put on their armor and take up their weapons to disguise themselves as they campaign deeper into the city. This later results in a case of mistaken identification by Aeneas' allies who don't recognize the Trojans in Greek armor. Aeneas is protected and led by Venus (his mother) as he gathers up his family and household gods. The household gods, like the Brass Plates, are important to Aeneas as we see them established once again in his new land. But whereas Nephi had to sneak into Jerusalem, it was the "bad guys" who snuck into Troy. Anyways, at the risk of taking this discussion off topic, I bring this up, not only because it relates to the story under discussion, but also because it provides another possible BofM connection to the ancient classical world that Grotius was very familiar with.

I have given a lot of thought to this issue over the years. There are some really strong arguments that much of the David and Goliath narrative as we have it today was re-written as a response to the epic Greek narratives - making David an anti-hero so to speak for the Jewish people. The closest in ancient texts that I have found for the theory of reading that Nephi offers comes in Plato's Cratylus. Plato of course was not a contemporary of Nephi. But the comparisons are interesting (and it is hard to say if the comparison is relevant).

I think though that we have to be very careful about spreading a broad net - because we run into the problem that eventually, all stories become the same. In Genesis 31, for example, we have Jacob. And Jacob gathers up his family and his possessions and leaves the home of his father-in-law (Laban), and takes with him Laban's household gods. And we can point to the similarities here and those you mention. These kinds of connections are interesting, but they aren't often very helpful when we are discussing our theories. And the more generally we describe texts, the more likely it is that we will see superficial connections rather than meaningful comparisons. This over generalization is a long-recognized problem - and as I noted once in the words of Alexander Lindey:

Quote

Parallel-hunting is predicated on the use of lowest common denominators. Virtually all literature, even the most original, can be reduced to such terms, and thereby shown to be unoriginal. So viewed, Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper plagiarizes ****ens’ David Copperfield. Both deal with England, both describe the slums of London, both see their hero exalted beyond his original station. To regard any two books in this light, however, is to ignore every factor that differentiates one man’s thoughts, reactions and literary expression from another’s.

One way to deal with this is not to try and connect the Book of Mormon back to the "ancient classical world that Grotius was very familiar with" - because this connection creates only the notion of plausibility and not probability (and it would apply to anyone who was familiar with the ancient classical world - or even the ancient world more broadly). You can never move beyond possible into probable with an argument like this. The argument is moved forward with the things that are unique to Grotius. This is why the discussion about his views on Natural Law and the justification for violence is useful - because Grotius's views are in places quite controversial. And it is on those points arguments are more likely to succeed.

[champatsch]

On 2/17/2025 at 11:00 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Which terms? If you mean the notion of tight or loose (or iron clad), those represent assumption that are brought to the text and not conclusions that can be drawn from the text. I think that they are all generally problematic for the question of what the Book of Mormon is in terms of a translation. The dating of the text (in terms of translation or authorship) should be based on the most recent language and not on the earliest language. This is a pretty standard approach. The challenge with using either a tight or an iron-clad approach to the text is that 1) it produces a poor translation by any standard, and 2) it favors trying to justify extant language over suggesting emendations. This is a common problem in biblical studies when the text is considered to be inerrant. It privileges specific approaches to the text - for which there isn't really any justification.

I note that unwearyingness first occurs elsewhere in 1869. Is that the date of the text?

How about we are a descendant of X, which might occur first after 1830 (found at least by 1897).

If we rigidly follow standard dating protocols, then the result is absurd. And that's why it's absurd to follow such a procedure. Dating simply turns into an ideological exercise.

Who is / who are responsible for the illocutionary strategies of the text, and what are the strategies?

Edited February 25, 2025 by champatsch

[Benjamin McGuire]

16 hours ago, champatsch said:

Who is / who are responsible for the illocutionary strategies of the text, and what are the strategies?

I'll tell you what - I'll answer your questions if you answer a few first.

1: The Book of Mormon - when was it translated into English?

2: Why does the Book of Mormon quote the King James text?

3: What are the major characteristics of the intended audience of the Book of Mormon that we could use to define the competence of a potential reader?

[Benjamin McGuire]

17 hours ago, champatsch said:

I note that unwearyingness first occurs elsewhere in 1869. Is that the date of the text?

By the way, this is an absurdity. We have a publication date for the Book of Mormon - so we aren't arguing about the date of publication. The first datable occurrence that you know of isn't 1869, but 1830. So does it originate with the Book of Mormon?

By the way, a quick search did find an instance in 1862. I suspect if I look, I might find a couple of earlier examples in the 1850s, but I don't have the time right now.

[champatsch]

On 2/17/2025 at 11:00 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

Which terms? If you mean the notion of tight or loose (or iron clad), those represent assumption that are brought to the text and not conclusions that can be drawn from the text. I think that they are all generally problematic for the question of what the Book of Mormon is in terms of a translation. The dating of the text (in terms of translation or authorship) should be based on the most recent language and not on the earliest language. This is a pretty standard approach. The challenge with using either a tight or an iron-clad approach to the text is that 1) it produces a poor translation by any standard, and 2) it favors trying to justify extant language over suggesting emendations. This is a common problem in biblical studies when the text is considered to be inerrant. It privileges specific approaches to the text - for which there isn't really any justification.

Let's go back to this nonsense you wrote. First, you didn't clarify your translation terms. So I still don't know if you're talking about a loose translation or loose control, etc. Then, if you included a notion of tight control in your unclear terminology, you wrongly wrote that tight control couldn't be determined by the text, when in fact it is determined by the text. Then you wrote about dating the text to the most recent language, which is a complex issue in the case of the Book of Mormon, which I pointed out with an absurdity. And I'm not going to go further, since I don't know whether you were writing about translation or control.

[champatsch]

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

By the way, this is an absurdity. We have a publication date for the Book of Mormon - so we aren't arguing about the date of publication. The first datable occurrence that you know of isn't 1869, but 1830. So does it originate with the Book of Mormon?

By the way, a quick search did find an instance in 1862. I suspect if I look, I might find a couple of earlier examples in the 1850s, but I don't have the time right now.

See just above this post re absurdity.

Well, Google Books now has two independent instances of unwearyingness dated 1862, when in 2017 it didn't have at least one of these, and possibly neither of these; but it had one dated 1869, which I noted back in 2017, and which was published in NOL (2018).

[Benjamin McGuire]

Just now, champatsch said:

Let's go back to this nonsense you wrote. First, you didn't clarify your translation terms. So I still don't know if you're talking about a loose translation or loose control, etc. Then, if you included a notion of tight control in your unclear terminology, you wrongly wrote that tight control couldn't be determined by the text, when in fact it is determined by the text. Then you wrote about dating the text to the most recent language, which is a complex issue in the case of the Book of Mormon, which I pointed out with an absurdity. And I'm not going to go further, since I don't know whether you were writing about translation or control.

No. I think that I am getting a little tired of not having any answers from you. After dozens and dozens of e-mails, we haven't really gotten anywhere. The control is completely irrelevant. It makes no difference. It is all speculative and based on assumptions that are external to the text. It is not determined by the text. It cannot be determined by the text. You haven't made a single argument that could begin to explain how the text determines this. The statistical analysis that you provide only tells us about the language that is in the text - it tells us nothing about the author (the person who decided what words to use). Was this God? Was this someone else? Was it Joseph Smith? We don't know from the text. And, from the discussions we have had, I don't think that you can say much about the author(s) of the text from your analysis - only that you are fairly certain that it wasn't Joseph Smith who is responsible for that language.

The point about the language is a funny issue. In one of our more recent e-mails, you wrote this about the language of the Book of Mormon: "That doesn't work, 'cause it's not all archaic." So can I say with some certainty that it is not an Early Modern English text but a Modern English text with some archaic language in it? And if we agree with that, then everything that you write about the archaic parts of the text is really simply an argument about who potentially should not be considered the author - and not really an argument about who should be that author ... and this creates a problem here. Why does the control matter unless your only concern is to try and claim that Joseph Smith didn't write the text? But, we have this problem that lingers. In the tight (or iron-clad) control, we have divine intervention going on. And once we have divine intervention, what are the limits on that divine intervention? Does the divine intervention only work when Joseph Smith does nothing more than read the text? Does divine intervention allow Joseph Smith to come up with the text as he receives inspiration that requires him to help choose the language that he gives to the scribes? How would you be able to claim that it is just one of these and not the other? Is the divine intervention limited?

So, the way that I see it, the whole argument about control is really an argument about how we are supposed to understand the divine intervention. It does absolutely nothing to help us actually understand the text. The questions that we really should be asking are about the author, the intended audience, and the rhetoric of the text that helps us understand the intended meaning of the text. Questions of control serve virtually no purpose at all. There is nothing that tight control (or iron-clad control) explains about the text that cannot be explained under the assumption of a loose control.

That is why my questions are relevant and important, and why I have absolutely zero interest in adopting or defending any particular form of control. When you say that control is determined by the text, I will continue to respond that this is complete nonsense. You haven't demonstrated this, and you cannot demonstrate this.

[champatsch]

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

On 2/25/2025 at 4:22 PM, champatsch said:

Who is / who are responsible for the illocutionary strategies of the text, and what are the strategies?

I'll tell you what - I'll answer your questions if you answer a few first.

1: The Book of Mormon - when was it translated into English?

2: Why does the Book of Mormon quote the King James text?

3: What are the major characteristics of the intended audience of the Book of Mormon that we could use to define the competence of a potential reader?

1. 1829.  Analysts think that interpreting Book of Mormon English according to Webster's flawed, misleading 1828 ADEL adequately covers textual meaning and usage. It doesn't.  See Reed's 1962 article in American Speech.

2. This why question sounds like it is made to intentionally tease out speculative answers. After all, my illocutionary purpose in asking the above questions of you is to note speculative aspects of potential answers. And the desired perlocutionary effect is doubtful.

(Note: The Book of Mormon quotes a substantially faithful (non-paraphrastic), but also frequently altered, King James text, with more than 700 constituent differences, from 11 books. Most people don't know the textual details, including most scholars, who nevertheless have the text all figured out.)

First, who was ultimately responsible for the King James quoting in the Book of Mormon? Not Joseph Smith. He wasn't ultimately responsible for the biblical quoting, or the text he dictated, which is deducible from MS evidence (including the biblical sections of the MSS) and hard linguistic evidence. If Joseph Smith had come up with biblical sections himself, they would not read like they do, in many different ways. So a supernatural agency was responsible for the quotations.

If we say it was a single divine agent, then it is Christ. Going with a single divine agent, the above question becomes, Why did Christ quote the King James text (in the altered way it is)?  Also, the Book of Mormon has a lot of expert King James phrase blending outside of the quotations. So the why question actually covers both important aspects of the text.

The only answer that isn't ultimately speculative for us is that it was wisdom in the Lord; it was expedient (using favored Book of Mormon phraseology). Christ deemed the King James language to be suitable and proper to the circumstances of the case. At that point we might speculate that it was because the language resonated with the vast majority of the first readers of the text, since the King James Bible was the dominant English-language Bible in 1820s America and Great Britain. That might be part of the reason, or not. And I don't necessarily favor that speculation.

3. This question is clearly your province. Just plug your question into some AI-generators, like DeepSeek. I just did that, and it broke down an elaborate answer into 8 parts and 14 subparts and a conclusion.

Edited February 27, 2025 by champatsch

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The control is completely irrelevant. It makes no difference. It is all speculative and based on assumptions that are external to the text. It is not determined by the text. It cannot be determined by the text. You haven't made a single argument that could begin to explain how the text determines this. The statistical analysis that you provide only tells us about the language that is in the text - it tells us nothing about the author (the person who decided what words to use).

Here you go from text to language that is in the text to author. So it sounds like you're differentiating between text and language in the text and then relating author to text, but not to language in the text. This is quite confusing.

[champatsch]

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The point about the language is a funny issue. In one of our more recent e-mails, you wrote this about the language of the Book of Mormon: "That doesn't work, 'cause it's not all archaic." So can I say with some certainty that it is not an Early Modern English text but a Modern English text with some archaic language in it? And if we agree with that, then everything that you write about the archaic parts of the text is really simply an argument about who potentially should not be considered the author - and not really an argument about who should be that author ... and this creates a problem here. Why does the control matter unless your only concern is to try and claim that Joseph Smith didn't write the text? But, we have this problem that lingers. In the tight (or iron-clad) control, we have divine intervention going on. And once we have divine intervention, what are the limits on that divine intervention? Does the divine intervention only work when Joseph Smith does nothing more than read the text? Does divine intervention allow Joseph Smith to come up with the text as he receives inspiration that requires him to help choose the language that he gives to the scribes? How would you be able to claim that it is just one of these and not the other? Is the divine intervention limited?

This is a clearer paragraph. I wrote "it's not all archaic" and you interpret that it's mostly late modern? That's a misinterpretation of "not all" that you favor, but you aren't sure of it in the least. It's mostly early modern, which the verb phrase shows. Well, yes, control isn't my only concern, but I'm interested in control in relation to authorship. You've known that for a long time, but here you write like you don't know that. (Iron-clad control has been known to be impossible for decades, from the orig. MS. A 1998 JBMS article begins to discuss and give evidence for tight control.)

Book of Mormon English-language authorship is either (1) Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith or (2) Jesus Christ.

Edited February 27, 2025 by champatsch

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

Here you go from text to language that is in the text to author. So it sounds like you're differentiating between text and language in the text and then relating author to text, but not to language in the text. This is quite confusing.

It shouldn't be confusing at all.

Let's look at a couple of corollaries.

1: The Book of Abraham claims to be a translation. Based on your expertise, and using only the text, what type of control can we determine existed in the translation process of The Book of Abraham, Chapter 1?

2: In 1579, John Frampton published The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo. He claimed it was a translation. What sort of control was used in that translation?

When I speak about authors, I am using the term author in the sense that it is used by Grice and Searle and others. That is, an author is the person who chooses the words on the page. Your analysis tells us about the language - it provides a sort of dictionary level discussion. In a translation, the language is provided by the translator of the text (who becomes the author of the translation). An analysis of this language may be able to tell us things about the translator. At the most basic level, a translator is going to be someone who can read the source language, interpret it, and duplicate it in some way into a new language (in a double act of communication). He is a reader of the text in the first act, and an author of a text in the second act. But the way that the translator converts things is far more revealing. How does he take idioms that would be meaningless if translated in a dictionary fashion and move them into the new language in a way that is not only understandable, but conveys the meaning that the original author intended to convey?

When you make the translator a divine entity, as you do when you suggest it could be Jesus Christ, you are effectively creating an impenetrable veil over the process of translation. There is no difference, for example, from the perspective of the text, if Jesus Christ makes the translation and then provides that text in a tight (or iron-clad) control than if Joseph Smith is inspired to use that same exact language as he is studying the text using the seer stones. There is nothing in the text that we can point to and say "see, here is where it must have come word for word from Jesus Christ Himself" as opposed to "see, here is where Joseph Smith was inspired to use this exact wording," and "see here, Joseph Smith used language that he was familiar with to describe this narrative here." Once we include the supernatural elements, there isn't anything that we can relate this to. And for us to say, well, this translation is different from Frampton's translation (or really any other translation for that matter) is to engage in special pleading. It simply doesn't get us logically to any sort of reasonable conclusion (that we don't start with for other reasons). This is why I am suggesting that the arguments about control aren't particularly interesting or valuable - they serve a primarily apologetic function.

On the other hand, the fascinating thing about texts and their meaning is that even if God is providing the text, that text still has to be read by someone. And that someone that is reading the text doesn't know the mind of God - and so the text that God provides to, say, Joseph Smith, is still required to have an intended audience. So when we get to the question of the King James text, we could say a lot of things - but the first thing we would note with absolute certainty is that the King James text in the Book of Mormon cannot represent any sort of literal translation of the source material. The various differences (all 700 constituent differences) aren't half as interesting as the fact that the use of the King James text because of its familiarity to its intended audience. Otherwise, we might expect the sort of updates to the language that we find in places like Jacob 2:13 and 2:24 where the rephrasing of Deut. 17:20 and 17:17 is much closer to the language of the NIV than it is to the KJV. In any case, the King James is used because it creates that intertext that can be used by the readers to easily draw the connections between texts - and to understand various rhetorical features of the text that this creates. Some are clearly more easily connected than others. The long Isaiah passages are easy to recognize (although what is going on in 2 Nephi 26 is fascinating as the Nephi text interweaves the text of Isaiah 29 with his own text from 1 Nephi 13). Also easy to recognize are the longer quotes like the citation of Psalm 95 in Jacob 1. But that long citation in Jacob 1 and its recognition also allows us to recognize the frequent allusions back to the Psalm text, like the reference we see in Jacob 6:6 - "Yea, today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." In any case, we identify features of the intended audience through this usage. Clearly, a familiarity with the King James text is a part of what makes a competent reader of the Book of Mormon. So when you come back to this and ask: "who was ultimately responsible for the King James quoting in the Book of Mormon?" we run into a problem. You first claim is that it couldn't be Joseph Smith. And this tells me all sorts of things about what your objectives are. There really isn't any reason to exclude Joseph Smith from being the source. And no matter what you claim the "hard evidence" is that Joseph Smith couldn't be the source of that language - you don't actually have any hard evidence. Of course, you say this to me but you aren't really adressing this to me. Your argument is purely an apologetic one - and what your argument is really about is a dichotomy between "If Joseph Smith had come up with biblical sections himself" and "If we say it was a single divine agent, then it is Christ." I am not arguing anywhere the Joseph Smith came up with it himself. In fact, the loose control model doesn't ever suggest that Joseph Smith came up with it himself. So this is an argument aimed only at the critics - and it really doesn't work outside of that context.

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

If we say it was a single divine agent, then it is Christ. Going with a single divine agent, the above question becomes, Why did Christ quote the King James text (in the altered way it is)?  Also, the Book of Mormon has a lot of expert King James phrase blending outside of the quotations. So the why question actually covers both important aspects of the text.

While this is an interesting question, it is largely an irrelevancy to the way that people read the text. The blending part is clear - the Book of Mormon doesn't simply quote the King James text, it uses it - it engages it - it is in dialogue with it. But the King James part - for all intents and purposes - is a representative text. So in 2 Nephi 26:15 we get this:

Quote

After my seed and the seed of my brethren shall have dwindled in unbelief, and shall have been smitten by the Gentiles; yea, after the Lord God shall have camped against them round about, and shall have laid siege against them with a mount, and raised forts against them; and after they shall have been brought down low in the dust, even that they are not, yet the words of the righteous shall be written, and the prayers of the faithful shall be heard, and all those who have dwindled in unbelief shall not be forgotten.

And we have a paraphrase of Isaiah 29:3-4 being used as an interpretive commentary of 1 Nephi 13:34-35. The Isaiah passage:

Quote

And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee. And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust.

And the 1 Nephi passage:

Quote

And it came to pass that the angel of the Lord spake unto me, saying: Behold, saith the Lamb of God, after I have visited the remnant of the house of Israel—and this remnant of whom I speak is the seed of thy father—wherefore, after I have visited them in judgment, and smitten them by the hand of the Gentiles, and after the Gentiles do stumble exceedingly, because of the most plain and precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, which is the mother of harlots, saith the Lamb—I will be merciful unto the Gentiles in that day, insomuch that I will bring forth unto them, in mine own power, much of my gospel, which shall be plain and precious, saith the Lamb. For, behold, saith the Lamb: I will manifest myself unto thy seed, that they shall write many things which I shall minister unto them, which shall be plain and precious; and after thy seed shall be destroyed, and dwindle in unbelief, and also the seed of thy brethren, behold, these things shall be hid up, to come forth unto the Gentiles, by the gift and power of the Lamb.

And it is easy to see the back and forth that goes on (there's more in the text). The interesting thing though is that this is Nephi giving us an example of how to recontextualize scripture: "I did liken all scriptures unto us." So when you mention the phrase blending, a lot of it occurs deliberately as an intertext - and recognizing the biblical language gives us rhetorical cues to understand what the text is trying to convey. Of course, this was all much easier in some ways for its first readers. Mormonism didn't become infatuated with the King James text of the Bible until after the Revised version was published ... as far as suitability, I agree with you - but it was only because there was one broadly read translation of the Bible available to its first readers. If the Book of Mormon were to have been translated today, I doubt that the King James would have been its preferred translation.

What should be obvious though is that that the use of the King James language tells us more about the intended audience than it does about the author/translator or the 'control' that was used in providing the text to Joseph Smith. And this, of course, brings us to question 3. And your non-answer of the question.

Finally,

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

What keeps you from accurately simplifying Book of Mormon English-language authorship to either (1) Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith or (2) Jesus Christ?

I am perfectly fine with either of those. Neither one is an issue for me. The thing is, though, is that we can accept either of these without regard for "control." And we still have to go through the process of reading the text to understand it - and that includes recognizing the variety and range of rhetorical styles that show up in the text. One of those rhetorical strategies is the use of archaic language - which seems aimed at helping convince people that the text is a translation, that it is scripture, and that we should read it in certain ways.

So if you were to look at D&C 27, how would you determine which language came from Joseph Smith, and what came through inspiration from God? I am really curious about this - perhaps you would humor me (and yes, of course I have ulterior motives in asking about this particular section).

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Mormonism didn't become infatuated with the King James text of the Bible until after the Revised version was published

Could you clarify what you mean here?  I can think of a couple of ways to understand this.

Edited February 27, 2025 by Calm

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

Could you clarify what you mean here?  I can think of a couple of ways to understand this.

Sure. Joseph Smith did not hold the King James in particularly high regard. Especially near the end of his life, he was quite critical of the translation. He mentions, for example, in 1844 that:

Quote

I have an old edition of the New Testament in the Latin, Hebrew, German and Greek languages. I have been reading the German, and find it to be the most correct translation, and to correspond nearest to the revelations which God has given to me for the last fourteen years.

Earlier he had made this statement, which I think is a bit more familiar for most LDS:

Quote

I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors.

The speculation has been (for some time now) that the Bible that Joseph refers to in 1844 was a 1602 Hutter polyglot New Testament, and the German translation was probably Martin Luther's. In any case, we have a number of efforts - including the formal lessons in Hebrew by Joshua Seixas that push Joseph Smith towards this view that the KJV wasn't a particularly good translation. All of this changes within the LDS community with the publication of the Revised version in 1885. With its tens of thousands of changes from the KJV, it caused a lot of concern for many readers of the Bible. In particular, resistance focused on the changes to Isaiah 7:14. But for Mormonism, there were some additional challenges. The JST was not held in very high regard until much later (manuscript issues) and the Revised version conflicted with some proof texts used within Mormonism. You can find a reasonable overview here. Note that this article points out that George Albert Smith explicitly stated that the translators of the KJV were not inspired. Mormonism's shift to the KJV position that it has today wasn't complete until the 1950s and the efforts of J. Reuben Clark (the controversies were renewed with the 1952 publication of the RSV). There are echoes of these shifts still at work in the present discussions about the language of the Book of Mormon.

Getting back to the OP, it is noteworthy that if the Book of Mormon was written by Grotius, and translated into English not long afterwards, we would want to know why the KJV was used instead of the Geneva Bible (it took the KJV quite some time to become popular - even among protestants).

It is also important to point out that there is this huge gap between myself and Stan over the way that we approach the text. The use of the KJV language isn't merely about familiarity for me - it is what that familiarity does for the reader who engages the text. The competent reader has to be aware of the KJ text - and not merely the "700 constituent differences" - the dropped italics and the other minor changes aren't terribly important as we read the text. But we can see, from the get go, how this approach that Stan offers creates an entirely different way to view the text. If Jesus Christ is really the author of the text of the Book of Mormon, then the Book of Mormon becomes in a very literal sense, the Word of God. And the Gold Plates become irrelevant. They are no longer important - because they don't reflect (even if we had them) the Word of God in the same way that the Book of Mormon would. The search for the original text of the Book of Mormon (the words dictated by Joseph Smith) is about uncovering that original text delivered by God. And, much like certain fundamentalist views of the Biblical text (and in particular the divinely inspired branch of King James Only-ism). Early Mormonism had a view of the Book of Mormon that was much closer their contemporary views of scripture. As Brigham Young noted in 1862:

Quote

When God speaks to the people, he does it in a manner to suit their circumstances and capacities. … Should the Lord Almighty send an angel to rewrite the Bible, it would in many places be very different from what it now is. And I will even venture to say that if the Book of Mormon were now to be rewritten, in many instances it would materially differ from the present translation.

When we get to the discussion of control, this is what is really at stake - this is the heart of the argument. How should we understand the English text of the Book of Mormon. It is this complex background that drives the various answers to questions about the use of the King James text in the Book of Mormon - and I see these arguments playing out in the discussion. By taking a direct turn away from this, and instead approaching the text from the perspective of the reader, I find that there isn't much need to bother with these questions - the translation, after all, is a black box. To the extent that people want to discuss control it is all about what assumptions we should bring to the text and what this says about the text as artifact. For me, the real issues are about how we read the text. To what extent does the text expect us to liken it unto ourselves. To what extent do we need to make the effort to become competent readers by understanding the intertextual connections that allow us to read and re-read the text as its author (whoever that author was) intended. And to quote Stan on this question, he wrote this back in 2016:

Quote

A large amount of textual evidence — and the foregoing discussion contains only a sliver of it — tells us that Joseph Smith did receive and read a revealed Early Modern English text. Understandably, he may not have been fully aware of it.

You can maybe get a sense from the above and this statement that our differences are not merely about the language in the text - but about a much more fundamental philosophical understanding of the text, the role of the author, and what makes a competent reader. Here, the argument Stan fronts is that the translation was a great translation (even a perfect translation) into Early Modern English, and Joseph Smith, like all of the other first readers, was simply too incompetent of a reader to get it. I see the use of the archaic language in much the same way that I see the language of the KJV - it isn't the only way to have expressed the text but it serves a rhetorical purpose in encouraging a certain view of the text as a translation of an ancient work in its earliest readers. That we have moved away from this is in part because we have become less competent readers over time. Restoring an image of the text as an Early Modern English text will not make us more competent readers - it will, in fact, tend to make us less competent because it comes with all of the other baggage that I discuss above.

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Quote

A large amount of textual evidence — and the foregoing discussion contains only a sliver of it — tells us that Joseph Smith did receive and read a revealed Early Modern English text. Understandably, he may not have been fully aware of it.

You can maybe get a sense from the above and this statement that our differences are not merely about the language in the text - but about a much more fundamental philosophical understanding of the text, the role of the author, and what makes a competent reader. Here, the argument Stan fronts is that the translation was a great translation (even a perfect translation) into Early Modern English, and Joseph Smith, like all of the other first readers, was simply too incompetent of a reader to get it. I see the use of the archaic language in much the same way that I see the language of the KJV - it isn't the only way to have expressed the text but it serves a rhetorical purpose in encouraging a certain view of the text as a translation of an ancient work in its earliest readers. That we have moved away from this is in part because we have become less competent readers over time. Restoring an image of the text as an Early Modern English text will not make us more competent readers - it will, in fact, tend to make us less competent because it comes with all of the other baggage that I discuss above.

For the above quote, I would now make sure to insert a mostly. Yet it actually serves a purpose that I over-emphasized Early Modern English there, since almost every researcher wrongly de-emphasizes that aspect of the text, on the basis of limited linguistic knowledge. Here's a detail I mentioned in my first paper in 2014.

Quote

the BofM is the complete opposite in usage (91 of 95 have+come / came = 96% have). It functions like an early 19th-c. text in this regard. This is one of the areas where the BofM is a ModE text.

I take patterns seriously, and heavy usage of the have auxiliary with unaccusative past participles in the Book of Mormon is a late modern pattern. The vast majority of verbal patterns in the text, however, are early modern or more like early modern than late modern. The unaccusative auxiliary pattern is a small subset. The various tenses of the text, including modal usage, are early modern in character, not late modern. Past, present, future, perfect. [One example: Had spake occurs 12 times, the most textually since 1646; John Donne employed the usage in the early 1600s.] Verb complementation is much more like early modern than late modern. The relative pronoun usage is early modern. Subjunctive marking is early modern. Subordinate that is early modern.

So you took my Joseph Smith might not have been fully aware that he was dictating an Early Modern English text (full of many types of earlier usage, some obscure), and characterized it as he was simply too incompetent of a reader to get it. That's a big, inaccurate step. Indeed, you and most others aren't familiar with many details of early modern usage, so you're not fully aware of what might be the text's early modern elements.

I don't think I've said it was a perfect translation, or even a great translation. That's your characterization. It has some very surprising language in it (almost always in a good way), but it has flaws. One obvious type of flaw is incomplete sentences.  I don't know why they're there. Yet it has sophisticated syntactic use, and it reads as a much more literate, archaic, and formal text than one would expect of Joseph Smith. That's because there was a very high degree of external word control. It's visible all over the place, at the start of the 1829 dictation in Mosiah 1, in that 1 Nephi 13:34 excerpt, at the start of 1 Nephi 1.

[champatsch]

Quote

(1 Nephi 13:34)
Behold, saith the Lamb of God, after that I have visited the remnant of the house of Israel
—and this remnant of which I speak is the seed of thy father—
wherefore after that I have visited them in judgment and smitten them by the hand of the Gentiles,
and after that the Gentiles do stumble exceedingly because of the most plain and precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb
which hath been kept back by that abominable church, which is the mother of harlots, saith the Lamb,
wherefore I will be merciful unto the Gentiles in that day, saith the Lamb,
insomuch that I will bring forth unto them in mine own power much of my gospel, which shall be plain and precious, saith the Lamb.

For behold, saith the Lamb, I will manifest myself unto thy seed that they shall write many things which I shall minister unto them, which shall be plain and precious.

Here's how I view this language, almost 130 words in the first, complex sentence, suggesting written more than oral.
I was surprised to find that "saith the Lamb" wasn't in the King James Bible. But "mother of harlots" is in Revelation, next to "abominations of the earth."
External word control:
"after that S" (3×), 16c, declined sharply after 1600; the sharply shifting textual distribution decisively indicates external control.
wherefore (2×), 16c, declined sharply after 1570. Shift from there- to wherefore in Ether isn't gradual; textual distribution indicates external control, like "after (that) S."
non-emphatic "do stumble," peaked in English between 1580 and 1600.
"parts which hath," such -th plural usage was most typically 16c; this didn't need to be edited by JS in 1837, has edit sub-optimal.
will/shall variation, early modern / biblical in character, will used heavily with I, shall used heavily generally
non-personal relative pronoun usage: which consistently used here, and dominates textually, even as restrictive relative; modern Amer. English mixed that and which.
personal "of which"
"saith the Lamb"

Early modern biblical:
(for) behold, visit (for punishment), remnant, by the hand of, insomuch, unto, etc.

Miscellaneous notes:
This subordinate clause is strongly 1590s in style:  after that the Gentiles do stumble exceedingly
"Wherefore after that S" (3× total in text) doesn't occur in the King James Bible. It was most common in English in the 1540s.
The second sentence has "that they shall write" expressing the purposed result of the Lamb manifesting himself. Late modern usage prefers no auxiliary or should, rather than shall. Cf. Luke 18:41 (shall), Matt. 10:32 (shall), Mark 10:51 (should), 1881 (Revised) (should, 3×).

Edited February 27, 2025 by champatsch

[JarMan]

On 2/22/2025 at 6:47 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

These really are not compatible views. I dive much more deeply into the writing of the text and its approach in my later essay, but, we run into this problem with the assertion that this is all about our reading of the text instead of what the author is trying to convey. There is a relationship going on - and what we get from this is that Swift is doing little more than trying to find an apologetic reading of the text. He gets to experience it somehow, through the lens of his own experience (his own imagination really, since none of this, we assume, actually reflects anything like his own experience). And in the end, his only fall back is that God commanded it - meaning that it must be justified. And while that on its own is a really problematic view to take, it doesn't actually mitigate the problem that all of us who commented on the narrative have seen (myself, Jack Welch, Val Larsen, etc.), find in that the text contains lots of statements of personal justification for the action. Swift doesn't explain them away, he just dismisses them - as if everything must take a back seat to the commandment of God. Grotius though argues something very different. He argues that there exists this natural law - which would exist whether or not even God existed. And because of this belief, Grotius makes this statement (that I referenced earlier) - 1.1.10:

The idea that Nephi was justified based solely on God's command is consistent with the interpretation of many church members in my experience. I think it's people like Welch who are on the fringe, here.

On 2/22/2025 at 6:47 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

When Grotius tells us that it is against the law of nature for a person to do certain things - what that means is that it is evil to do those things - and God cannot make it not evil simply by God's commanding it to be so. This only applies for Grotius in these issues of natural rights - but it is in these issues of natural rights that we see Grotius declaring over and over again that what Nephi does is in violation of these natural rights. Grotius would never argue that Nephi's actions are supported by Nephi's natural rights. This includes the ideas that Grotius specifically lists - that it is not right to kill someone over property, that it is not right to kill someone for some future (and not immediate) good, that it is not right to kill a person who is not an immediate threat, and so on. And according to Grotius, even God cannot make these violations good simply by commanding it. But this is the very point that Swift makes - that the only way we should understand Nephi is to understand that by commanding Laban's death, God makes it justified:

Nothing could be further from Grotius's truth than this.

I've acknowledged already that Nephi's actions aren't justified under Grotius' natural law. But that is beside the point. You're still refusing to address what Grotius says about God's sovereignty to punish his own creation. He explicitly does not limit God to the natural law. He's very clear about this. But you keep trying to impute a logical argument onto him that he expressly rejects.

On 2/22/2025 at 6:47 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

We still have the problem that Swift is never going to engage - specifically because he believes that once God commands something, it must be justified or righteous - and so beyond questioning. Grotius makes the specific claim that God is not beyond natural law - and that God cannot change what is good or evil - especially that which is good or evil that is found in natural law. And in the end, Swift isn't helpful at all for the argument you are trying to make - and I think that here it is wrong on both sides. We have the problem that Grotius is not going to allow Nephi to justly break natural law just at God's command, because God wouldn't command the breaking of natural law. And we have the problem that the Book of Mormon isn't best understood as teaching that the only justification is God's command. You may disagree with me on the value of Swift's argument, but regardless of how you try to defend Swift, the heart of the issue is really with Grotius.

God punishes the wicked, including with death. Grotius is perfectly comfortable with this. God also does not permit the murder of helpless people, which Grotius also agrees with. But this is what causes the moral tension for Nephi and makes it so heart-wrenching for him. If Nephi was justified under the natural law, there would be no tension here and no reason for God to even be involved. It is precisely because Nephi is not otherwise justified in killing Laban that we must read this as a story of obedience, from Nephi's perspective. From God's perspective it's a story about punishing the wicked and bringing about a greater good. As I mentioned in another post, I think Nephi's ruminations about Laban's actions are intended to be God's justifications. God says he kills the wicked for his purposes (verse 13); but just before that (verse 11), Nephi's mental recap reminds us just what wickedness Laban was guilty of.

On 2/22/2025 at 6:47 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

I think though that we have to be very careful about spreading a broad net - because we run into the problem that eventually, all stories become the same. In Genesis 31, for example, we have Jacob. And Jacob gathers up his family and his possessions and leaves the home of his father-in-law (Laban), and takes with him Laban's household gods. And we can point to the similarities here and those you mention. These kinds of connections are interesting, but they aren't often very helpful when we are discussing our theories. And the more generally we describe texts, the more likely it is that we will see superficial connections rather than meaningful comparisons. This over generalization is a long-recognized problem - and as I noted once in the words of Alexander Lindey:

One way to deal with this is not to try and connect the Book of Mormon back to the "ancient classical world that Grotius was very familiar with" - because this connection creates only the notion of plausibility and not probability (and it would apply to anyone who was familiar with the ancient classical world - or even the ancient world more broadly). You can never move beyond possible into probable with an argument like this. The argument is moved forward with the things that are unique to Grotius. This is why the discussion about his views on Natural Law and the justification for violence is useful - because Grotius's views are in places quite controversial. And it is on those points arguments are more likely to succeed.

It's true that many people are familiar with the Aeneid. We know for certain Grotius was. But we can only speculate whether Joseph or others in his environment were. So if we are keeping a tally with Joseph in one column and Grotius in the other, Grotius gets the check mark while Joseph gets a question mark.

I do agree with your assertion about plausibility versus probability here vis a vis Grotius in particular. What I find interesting, though, is a general lack of willingness to apply this logic to apologetic argument. I think apologists exist exclusively in the realm of plausibility (at best), yet they speak with the confidence of someone talking about probability. (Someone recently sent me a Tad Callister talk that illustrates this to a T and I was reminded just how annoying it can be.)