tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post2054402217056482400..comments2023-11-02T07:25:45.884-05:00Comments on Mormanity - a blog for those interested in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: The Sizzle of ShazerJeff Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-13665344078748508942017-11-19T16:23:55.578-06:002017-11-19T16:23:55.578-06:00People are being pretty strict with the theories a...People are being pretty strict with the theories and suggestions Jeff is mentioning, and criticizing them for arbitrary assumptions. That is understandable and fair, but to me their counter-examples and assumptions are just as arbitrary and speculative, and in some ways more so. Which is fine, this is just speculative entertainment. Let's be honest, though. Even professional historians and researchers are for the most part professional speculators. To debunk Joseph's life work, you can't skip his childhood experiences and shared experiences. You have to start at the beginning with a reasonable theory, none of which make more sense than the OP's.Cameronnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-12069051187115510532015-11-17T06:14:32.782-06:002015-11-17T06:14:32.782-06:00About "fountain" = "source":
...About "fountain" = "source":<br /><br />Yeah, we got that. I mentioned it a few posts up. <br /><br />It's still a bit hard to figure out what kind of watery object has a river emptying into it, yet itself counts as a source for the Red Sea, which is open to the ocean. Jeff pegs it as the Gulf of Aqaba, but to be honest the only thing the Gulf of Aqaba has going for it, to qualify for the role of 'fountain' of the Red Sea, is that it is bigger than a river but smaller than the Red Sea. The sense in which it is a source still eludes me; the Red Sea certainly does not come from the Gulf of Aqaba.<br /><br />The term 'fountain' was never an issue. Now I'm trying to get my head around how the Nephite itinerary, which so neatly goes through NHM and Bountiful and the River Laman and mentions lots of little corroborating details along the way, seems to end in the ancient metropolis of Ezion-Geber without even mentioning <i>a major city</i>. Did I misunderstand something here? Because if not, and that really is the scenario, then I'm afraid it's an absurd scenario, and all this nice evidence of NHM just goes Poof, as far as I'm concerned.James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-68082644290328505752015-11-17T04:53:38.560-06:002015-11-17T04:53:38.560-06:00Regarding "fountain": Nephi mentions tha...Regarding "fountain": Nephi mentions that "the waters of the river [Laman] emptied into the fountain of the Red Sea" (1 Nephi 2:9). As for the word "fountain," I think it is more meaningful than you assert. In the Book of Mormon, it is not used as a synonym for a body of water, but for an origin or spring (see <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mormon/mormon-idx?type=simple&format=Long&q1=fountain&restrict=All&size=First+100" rel="nofollow">search results</a>). Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-47016011380457435062015-11-16T12:55:21.043-06:002015-11-16T12:55:21.043-06:00Quite so, James -- especially an account that we a...Quite so, James -- <i>especially</i> an account that we are told is "detailed" and "specific" and the like.<br /><br />I'd say that an account that <i>does</i> leave out such major elements is not an account that can be very useful in constructing a travel itinerary. Its not an account that is <i>meant</i> to be useful for that purpose.<br /><br />It's as if I was to say, "I left Atlanta and traveled in a generally northern direction by way of the cities and farms near the Atlantic Ocean. Then, after making a couple trips back to Atlanta to take of of some business, I traveled for three days by way of the cities and farms nearer the Atlantic Ocean, and I did park my car in a valley by a high mountain."<br /><br />So where am I? Where is this valley? We can narrow our choices down a bit, since the high mountains of the East Coast are about as rare as streams on the Arabian coast, but still -- where am I? In the Blue Ridge? In New Hampshire? Near Mt. Katahdin in Maine?<br /><br />If in fact my first leg of travel had taken me to New York City (today's equivalent of Ezion-geber), and I had stayed there for several weeks (the time it would have taken Nephi to make two 500-mile round trips from Ezion-geber to Jerusalem on camelback), would it not make sense for me to mention that?<br /><br />Finally, which seems more likely:<br /><br />(1) That the BoM is trying to give the sort of account that could be used to anchor the Lehite journey in a real geography?<br /><br />or<br /><br />(2) That the book presents a mythic account whose purposes are not geographical at all, but spiritual and symbolic?<br /><br />It seems far more likely to me that the details of the Lehite "exodus" from Jerusalem serve a purpose that is similarly symbolic/spiritual, rather than geographic. The purposes are to liken the Lehite story to, and lend it the gravitas of, the Israelite Exodus, to deepen the spiritual conflict between Nephi and and his jealous brothers, etc. Jeff and the rest of the literal-minded apologist crowd are simply reading it wrong. They're reading the Book of Mormon as one reads a travelogue, not as one reads the kind of genuinely ancient scripture the book claims itself to be.<br /><br />In doing so they are in a way profoundly disrespecting that text, in the same way fundamentalists do when they read the Revelation of John as if it were some kind of apocalyptic weather forecast. Just another example of the disservice being done to the faith by its apologists.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-17831421446062220102015-11-16T09:23:23.805-06:002015-11-16T09:23:23.805-06:00Whoa, yeah.
There's one case at least in whic...Whoa, yeah.<br /><br />There's one case at least in which absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That's when you get something like a diary entry which says only, "Today I met the vice-president." The diary entry doesn't say anything about whether or not the writer met the president on that day; but you can conclude that in fact the writer did <i>not</i> the president that day, because if they did, they surely wouldn't only have mentioned the VP.<br /><br />Same here. If the account of the trip mentions things like hunting expeditions and how fertile the land is, then wouldn't it drop a couple of words about a whole major city?<br /><br />This sounds like a huge point.James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-11853548260174498732015-11-15T19:58:09.767-06:002015-11-15T19:58:09.767-06:00A quick questions, Jeff.
If Lehi traveled through...A quick questions, Jeff.<br /><br />If Lehi traveled through Edom to Ezion-geber, wouldn't a "detailed" account say something like <i>he traveled through Edom to Ezion-geber</i> instead of <i>he came down by the borders near the shore of the Red Sea</i>?<br /><br />This question is not about whether Aqaba was the jumping-off point for the Valley of Lemuel. This is only about my objection to your use of words like "detailed" in reference to what still strikes me as a very sketchy description. It strikes me as even more so if the jumping-off point was some kind of bustling port metropolis. It seems odd that Nephi would not give so much as a hint that they were anyplace special.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-14976662334557407302015-11-15T18:17:06.145-06:002015-11-15T18:17:06.145-06:00Orbiting, I recognize your concern that our placin...Orbiting, I recognize your concern that our placing of the Valley of Lemuel as being near Aqaba, and requiring Nephi's initial approach to the Red Sea to have been at Aqaba, may be driven by hindsight now that a plausible candidate for the Valley of Lemuel and River Laman has been found in a location corresponding well with a three days journey south of Aqaba at the northern end of the short Gulf of Aqaba. But before that candidate was found, long before the work of Potter and Wellington, the Hiltons in their search for Lehi's trail had already pointed out that Nephi's initial approach to the Red Sea at Aqaba was mandated by the ancient trails leading south from Jerusalem. In fact, they had already proposed that the Valley of Lemuel was likely 3 days south of Aqaba, and then Shazer another four days south of that, putting Shazer near the southern beginning of Aqaba and the Valley of Lemuel about midway along the Gulf. See the details about the ancient trails and their reasoning in a 1976 article in the Ensign: "<a href="https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/09/in-search-of-lehis-trail-part-1-the-preparation?lang=eng" rel="nofollow">In Search of Lehi’s Trail—Part 1: The Preparation</a>."<br /><i><br />But no matter which route Lehi used to leave Jerusalem, all three routes converge south of the Dead Sea in the Wadi al ‘Araba, which leads to Aqaba at the head of the Red Sea on the Gulf of Aqaba. To be in Aqaba must have been great education for young Nephi, because it was a metal smelting center and a shipbuilding center, both of which industries later became very useful to Nephi.<br /><br />Aqaba, formerly called Ezion-geber, was the chief city of the ancient desert kingdom of Edom. Over three hundred years before Lehi’s family had left Jerusalem, King David had captured Edom. (2 Sam. 8:14.) Israel had begun smelting copper and iron ores there, and King Solomon greatly added to his wealth and power by exploiting this natural resource. He stationed his navy in Aqaba (1 Kgs. 9:26), and later Jehoshaphat of Judah built another fleet there (1 Kgs. 22:48). Aqaba is situated on the only way between Jerusalem and the ancient Red Sea coast road, the intersection of civilization and the wilderness in that ancient world.<br /><br />Readers will recall that Nephi mentions reaching the “borders near the shore of the Red Sea” (1 Ne. 2:5) and then traveling “three days in the wilderness” (1 Ne. 2:6) before pitching his tent in the valley Lemuel. Thus it is possible that Lehi’s camp in that valley was but three days’ journey from this main Red Sea port and industrial city in former Israelite, now Edomite, territory; on his several trips through Aqaba to Jerusalem, Nephi may have taken opportunity to study its technology. In fact, the Book of Mormon reports four more such trips through this area, the goings and comings to obtain the Brass Plates and to bring Ishmael.<br /><br />But where would Lehi have gone from Aqaba? The entire Arabian peninsula lay before them, of course, but it is the well-traveled frankincense trail that runs south-southeasterly along the entire Arabian Red Sea coastline, with 118 known water wells spread along its trail. At this point in our study, an item from Church history became very illuminating: the Prophet Joseph Smith said that “Lehi went down by the Red Sea to the great Southern Ocean, and crossed over to this land,” meaning America. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 267.)<br /><br />Since the Red Sea does not run directly north and south, Lehi’s party would have been coming “nearly … south-southeast” (1 Ne. 16:13) as they roughly paralleled its coast. Then, after Ishmael’s death at Nahom, they turned “nearly eastward” (1 Ne. 17:1) until they came to the many waters.<br /><br />{Probable Outline of the Lehi Trail<br />Illustration 6 Probable Outline of the Lehi Trail}<br /><br />Nephi’s care in specifying nearly south-southeast and then nearly east allows us to make a very likely speculation about the location of their destination, the land Bountiful....</i>Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-7886978476239469992015-11-15T16:35:11.073-06:002015-11-15T16:35:11.073-06:00James, it's just like fighting the zombies of ...James, it's just like fighting the zombies of "creation science." Doesn't matter how many times these arguments get shot down, they just keep lurching back.<br /><br />Anon, rather than rebut your rebuttal of my rebuttal of ...., let me just say that I'm prepared for your argument and mine to be submitted to the reasonable people of the world. I have full confidence in their judgment.<br /><br />But let me just ask you one more thing -- a question that would likely also interest the reasonable people of the world. Do you have any theory explaining why the Book of Mormon would contain so much pre-KJV EModE? Assuming you're right that this EModE is in fact there, <i>why</i> is it there?<br /><br />Any thoughts on this?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-7010927515942678962015-11-15T14:55:00.699-06:002015-11-15T14:55:00.699-06:00Again there's the argument from complexity of ...Again there's the argument from complexity of chiasmus, which again I just don't get. I mean, we all agree that some human being managed to contrive those complex passages. Either it was Joseph Smith, or it was (for example) Alma. <br /><br />If Alma could do it, why couldn't Smith? Is it because only Alma was all learned in the lore of Hebrew rhetoric? But Joseph Smith had surely been exposed to far more Hebrew rhetoric than Alma could ever have seen. Smith had the whole Bible. Most of the Bible was written after Nephi left Jerusalem. James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-75332633251356458932015-11-15T14:41:29.398-06:002015-11-15T14:41:29.398-06:00Wunderli mentions this analysis by the two physics...Wunderli mentions this analysis by the two physics guys, at least for Alma 36. He points out that their theory involves a sort of textual gerrymandering. They pick and choose where to draw boundaries between sections. This has a huge effect on their results, supposedly, but is not taken into account in their analysis. I'd have to look at it more carefully to be sure, but the suggestion is definitely worrisome. This kind of error can easily turn an impressive 98% chance of intentionality into no evidence at all. Really — that high chance comes from compounding over many data points, and so if all the individual chances have to be revised, the total effect can be huge. James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-57606988098713334192015-11-15T14:29:21.167-06:002015-11-15T14:29:21.167-06:00On Orbiting Kolob's misrepresentation of "...On Orbiting Kolob's misrepresentation of "did" syntax in the Book of Mormon and in the King James Bible. The KJB itself, because the usage was so low in the 1611 text, sped the demise of 16c non-emphatic past-tense did syntax in English. Ellegard in 1953 estimated the usage in the KJB to be 1.3%. The usage in nonbiblical parts of the BofM is about 30%. Thousands of cases. A massively significant difference. Interestingly, some books of the period have 50% usage so the BofM rate cannot be viewed as extreme or impossible. That is hardly all. Ellegard also noted the syntactic breakdown of the use and charted it in his ground-breaking thesis/book. Rates and breakdown are simple to calculate, if tedious. The BofM matches 16c averages in this regard exclusively, and is markedly different from the KJB. Moreover, individual verb rates correlate well with the period. A three-level match, at a minimum -- there are other features that line up. This points to authorship that involved implicit knowledge, whose fine points even a philologist might not have known.<br /><br />OK references a sharpshooter fallacy. It is a weak point because there are hundreds of items found in the BofM, in diverse domains, that match the earlier period well, and do not match the modern period well. Statistically speaking, the hundreds of matches create a vanishingly low p-value that can easily overcome any reasonable number one wants to claim as an offsetting factor for the fallacy. Orbitational, just as many others before him, deems himself to be qualified, without special study, to make definitive pronouncements on matters he knows very little about. All the points he makes immediately above must be rejected by the reasonable.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-87437437508692917102015-11-15T13:46:43.178-06:002015-11-15T13:46:43.178-06:00On a brief perusal of a map. OK knows the differen...On a brief perusal of a map. OK knows the difference between recognition and recall. He ascribes recall powers and even more to Smith when all we have to do today is recognize correspondence, with the world at our fingertips. Smith would have had to do recall matching of geographical fine points presumably gleaned from a map in order to make the interlocking details of 1 Nephi work as they do. Plus, the map does not have many of the details that were needed to make the narrative match the Arabian peninsula to the level that it does -- the map was not the territory, and could not have been the territory. Hence, a brief perusal of a map would not have been sufficient. Naturalistically speaking, study of a map would have been needed, and more information beyond a map would have been needed as well. All of that was inaccessible to Smith and his scribes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-7455747276252011272015-11-15T13:36:07.036-06:002015-11-15T13:36:07.036-06:00On chiasmus. Jeff has a lot of older entries in th...On chiasmus. Jeff has a lot of older entries in this blog that deal with this topic. There are many publications that address this. Here is what Jeff knows, and what Orbiting Kolob may know or should know, and what Anglin can easily know (in fact, there is an important paper by two brothers who are physicists on chiasmus in the BofM that Jeff has referenced, probably more than once).<br /><br />1. There are at least four compact chiastic passages in the BofM that are not simple (with more than three levels, and some with added complexity/intricacy).<br />2. There is a multi-level blasphemer chiasm in Leviticus.<br />3. There were a couple of scholarly English books (one multi-volume) in the 1820s that had some poor to good examples of short biblical chiasmus buried in their pages (Jebb and Boys).<br />4. It was unlikely that Smith was consciously aware of complex chiasmus from reading the KJV, just as the typical reader is unaware of it today.<br />5. It was highly unlikely that Smith read about chiasmus in Jebb and Boys.<br />6. It is highly likely that 4 or more chiastic passages in the BofM were intentionally, consciously produced (see physicists' paper).<br />7. Hence it is highly unlikely to extremely unlikely that Smith was capable of producing, out of his own mind (as author), the four or more complex chiastic passages in the BofM in a steady dictation.<br /><br />Therefore, what OK wrote immediately above about chiasmus is misleading.<br /><br />Number one in the above list disregards Alma 36. The other passages are such that it is disingenuous to off-handedly ascribe them to the authorship of Joseph Smith. They then support the view that Alma 36 may indeed be a legitimate, if sometimes diffuse, chiastic passage.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-12597074432123096112015-11-15T09:59:21.211-06:002015-11-15T09:59:21.211-06:00Hey, just in googling to remind myself which chapt...Hey, just in googling to remind myself which chapter of Alma had the big chiasm, I found an article from the recently mentioned Dialog journal, by a guy named Earl Wunderli. He argues that the great chiasm isn't really so great. His main point is that the words and phrases which define the chiastically corresponding elements are selected out of quite large blocks of text. In some cases the same words are repeated elsewhere in the text, in places that don't fit the chiastic pattern, and to see the chiasmus, you have to just ignore those other repetitions, and pick on the ones that fit the structure. He argues that when you take a long and highly repetitive text, and give yourself the freedom to choose which words to highlight (and when to highlight them), your chances of being able to extract a chiasmus are good.<br /><br />That seems to me like a pretty significant point. I had been kind of under the impression that the great Alma 36 chiasmus was a pretty tight verse-by-verse structure, like a psalm. Apparently instead it's more a pattern of section headings, that you can arrange if you choose the right section headings. Maybe there's still something to it, but I have to say that it sounds a lot less impressive to me now that it did before.<br /><br />Having said that, I also have to say that I'm not sure why it's so important. I was willing to buy that Joseph Smith could have sat down and made up a tightly chiastic psalm. If Alma could do it, why not Smith? It's not as though chiasmus is so inherently tricky to execute that you can only pull it off if you come from a long line of chiasmists. So I never did really get the argument from chiasmus, anyway. Now I'm maybe more interested in whether the chiasmus is really there, or not, than I ever was in what it might imply about the Book of Mormon if it was there.James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-48981841716097550632015-11-15T08:38:30.463-06:002015-11-15T08:38:30.463-06:00I for one would be much more impressed with argume...I for one would be much more impressed with arguments about the complexity and erudition of the Book of Mormon if they were more specific. Exactly what is it that would be hard for Joseph Smith to have faked? Why would it have been hard to fake it?<br /><br />Jeff's stuff in this and recent posts, for example, is specific enough for me. He lays out his case concretely, explains how he reads the Book of Mormon, and how he thinks it lines up with actual Arabian geography better than could be expected from the best map that Joseph Smith might plausibly have seen. I'm not actually convinced by the argument — I think the interpretation of Nephi is arguable and other sources are plausible — but I acknowledge that it is an actual argument, not just bluster.<br /><br />Every time I see a vague, blanket appeal to complexity, however, it makes me think of the trial lawyer's aphorism: "If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-39345630526044335602015-11-14T18:39:05.886-06:002015-11-14T18:39:05.886-06:00Um, what "prerequisite knowledge that just wa...Um, <i>what</i> "prerequisite knowledge that just wasn't possibly there in Smith's case"?<br /><br />Chiasmus was there for Smith. "Did" syntax was there for Smith. (Both of these are in the KJV.) Nehem/Nahom and the general direction of Lehite travel is there on old maps of Arabia. None of these are impossible for Joseph to have known. And he wouldn't need a vast frontier library, either -- just a KJV, a brief perusal of a map (or even a conversation with someone else who'd perused a map), an immersion in the theological and anthropological controversies raging in his day, an ordinary human facility with language, and a good imagination.<br /><br />(EModE might or might not have been there for Smith -- hard to say -- but it's not really in the Book of Mormon at all; it's an artifact of Carmack's lousy "Texas Sharpshooter" methodology.)<br /><br />The things people keep finding in the BoM that make it look to them like an ancient text are analogous to the things Stanley Fish's students found in his list that made it look to them like a complex religious poem.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-82219057841045194012015-11-14T16:24:16.288-06:002015-11-14T16:24:16.288-06:00It ain't just complexity. That's only one ...It ain't just complexity. That's only one ingredient. Immense knowledge was required, and Nibley probably was thinking of both when he wrote of complexity. Genius cannot produce thousands of bits that require prerequisite knowledge that just wasn't possibly there in Smith's case.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-13084089300389647832015-11-14T16:17:07.667-06:002015-11-14T16:17:07.667-06:00James is right about the whole "complexity&qu...James is right about the whole "complexity" argument. Complexity can be found in just about any text. In fact, it's very easy for the readers to create complexity in the very act of interpretation. Sort of -- bear with me.<br /><br />The famous literary critic Stanley Fish, who first made a name for himself with a brilliant interpretation of the great Protestant epic (John Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i>), has a wonderful essay (<a href="http://engl611-mueller.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Fish+How+to+Recognize+a+Poem.pdf" rel="nofollow">"How to Recognize a Poem When You See One"</a>) about the time he was teaching a linguistics class at 9:30 followed by a poetry class in the same room at 11:00.<br /><br />In the course of teaching the first class, he listed some names of linguists on the board: Jacobs, Rosenbaum, Levin, Thorne, etc. At the end of the class he walked out for a break, without erasing the list. When the poetry students arrived they assumed the list to be some kind of modern poem, and by the time Fish returned to the room the students were already hard at work trying to interpret this "poem."<br /><br />Sly devil that he is, Fish let his students proceed without telling them of their mistaken assumption. Pretty soon a consensus developed among the students that they were discussing a religious poem, since it was packed with biblical allusions. <i>Jacobs</i> of course alluded to the Jews, the House of Jacob; <i>Rosenbaum</i> is German for "rose wood," no doubt alluding to the Rose of Sharon (Jesus) crucified on a wooden cross; <i>Levin</i> not only recalls the Tribe of Levi, whose priestly functions were superseded by the sacrifice of Jesus, it also sounds exactly like "leaven" and thus recalls Jesus's warning in Matthew to "beware the leaven of the Pharisees," not to mention the Jew's preparation of unleavened bread for the Exodus. <i>Thorne</i>, of course, refers to the Crowne of Thorns.<br /><br />Pretty soon Fish's students had worked out an impressive interpretation that was so plausible he hated to inform them that the semantically rich and thematically complex "poem" was in fact just a list of names he'd left on the board.<br /><br />Or was it both a list and a poem?<br /><br />Building on this anecdote, Fish argues for the crucial importance of the assumptions we bring to bear on our interpretations, starting with our very basic assumptions about what kind of thing we're reading in the first place. If you assume from the get-go that you're reading a poem, and you know that poems do things like use richly allusive language to convey complex meanings, then you'll start looking for allusive language and complex meanings -- and most likely you'll find them!<br /><br />Things get a little weird when you start thinking about whether the complexities and meanings are actually <i>in the text</i> or simply readerly constructs somehow snuck <i>into the text</i> by the reader. Fish notes that everything his students claimed in their interpretation was quite plausible and grounded in the actual words in the text; so how was the interpretation <i>not</i> in the text? Were the meanings in the assumptions? Not exactly, since the assumption that the list was a poem depended a lot on the names and the way they were arranged -- that is, the assumptions were not wholly brought to the text but were partly in the text. It gets complicated. Language itself is incredibly complicated.<br /><br />My point, of course, is that something very similar presumably happens in LDS apologetics. The assumption that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text enables the discovery of the evidence that "demonstrates" it to be an ancient text.<br /><br />In any event, feel free to read <a href="http://engl611-mueller.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Fish+How+to+Recognize+a+Poem.pdf" rel="nofollow">Fish's essay</a> and see what you think.<br /><br />P.S. My apologies to the Anons for my "hardly laudable prolixity." I can't seem to help myself.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-41981838750979586082015-11-14T16:16:56.445-06:002015-11-14T16:16:56.445-06:00Let me chime in here on this tangent. It reminds m...Let me chime in here on this tangent. It reminds me of some bad scholarship I read once in Dialogue:<br /><br />Christopher C. Smith, “Joseph Smith in Hermeneutical Crisis”, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 43.2 (Summer 2010): 106n60.<br /><br />"Joseph’s imitation of King James idiom is imperfect; he occasionally<br />misuses personal pronouns and sometimes even lapses back into<br />regular nineteenth-century speech patterns. Wesley P. Walters, “The Use<br />of the Old Testament in the Book of Mormon” (M.A. thesis, Covenant<br />Theological Seminary, 1981), 163; Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 27. He<br />also tends to exaggerate the use of certain forms—for example, the emphatic<br />construction “I did go up unto,” as opposed to “I went up unto.”<br />My own computer study reveals that most biblical books use the word<br />“did” very infrequently—only Habakkuk uses it more than three times<br />per thousand words. The Book of Mormon, by contrast, exhibits extraordinarily<br />high rates of occurrence per thousand words in four books:<br />4 Nephi (23.64), Ether (12.26), Mormon (11.87), and Helaman (11.86).<br />Only 2 Nephi (1.29), Jacob (2.08), and Moroni (2.61) use “did” fewer<br />than five times per thousand words."<br /><br />The author, C. Smith, agrees that the BofM misuses personal pronouns without thoroughly studying King James English and the writings of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and other figures of the past. The scholars cited were equally sloppy. C. Smith is no linguist yet he holds himself out as sufficiently knowledgeable to reiterate inaccurate work. GIGO. Once again it's okay to have an adverse opinion of the book without knowing much about what you're talking about. He also naively states that "did" usage in the BofM is an emphatic construction when there are at least half a dozen reasons why it isn't. A pretty lame effort that is completely misleading. Here he holds himself out as a linguistic expert. Heaven help us. And notice how stupid those rates of occurrence figures are. Meaningless as stated. It's the rate per past tense that might be important, and 2 Nephi is heavily biblical anyway, which has low rates. Heaven save us from a constant barrage of misleading and inconsequential information. And that is what we get all too often from some of our interlocutors here.<br /><br />Dialogue is apparently happy to accept and publish shoddy scholarship (which in the case cited is objectively so, since it has to do with a non-fuzzy topic) that points to the BofM being a 19c product.Dogberrynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-41201439131318392992015-11-14T16:01:06.773-06:002015-11-14T16:01:06.773-06:00Anglin: "And he didn't really have a vast...Anglin: "And he didn't really have a vast frontier library," Well, I would say those, like you, who want to say hediddit, would have to admit that he did have such a library in order to be reasonable. If you're ok with being unreasonable then you can say that he had a storehouse of knowledge that no one else demonstrated at that time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-47076925751538129942015-11-14T15:17:34.395-06:002015-11-14T15:17:34.395-06:00Gee, thanks, Anons. But really, there's nothin...Gee, thanks, Anons. But really, there's nothing very remarkable about my work. It has very little to offer the world. I'm saying that Joseph Smith was just another of the many church-founders of his era, which is already the scholarly consensus. It's nothing new.<br /><br />Hugh Nibley, on the other hand, and his successor apologists, are quite a different story. What <i>they</i> have to offer the world is nothing less than an intellectual revolution! If they're right, it would radically reshape the fields of ancient middle eastern history and archaeology, Biblical studies, American ethnohistory, Native American studies -- not to mention astronomy and cosmology.<br /><br />It's stunning to think of the academic implications of the authenticity of the LDS scriptures. If only non-Mormon academics could be persuaded.... If a scholar using accepted methodology could convincingly demonstrate the historicity of, say, the Jaredite migration and their uncorrupted language and their massive wars, think of the fame that would come his way! He would be a regular Champollion.<br /><br />The incentive is there.<br /><br />Yet oddly enough, after all these generations, non-Mormon academia still finds itself unable to digest this big burrito of knowledge. Which of these seems the more likely reason? Is it that non-LDS scholars -- every single one of them! -- are:<br /><br />(1) filled with anti-Mormon prejudice;<br /><br />(2) too incompetent to understand the brilliant arguments of Nibley, Peterson, etc.;<br /><br />(3) too pig-headed to acknowledge the evidence;<br /><br />(4) blinded by Satan to the truth.<br /><br />Or is it possible that the evidence just ain't there?<br /><br />Is it possible that the evidence we <i>do</i> have points overwhelmingy to 19th-century composition?<br /><br />Why is it that the only people impressed by these putatively objective apologetic arguments happen to be people who <i>already have</i> a highly subjective, purely <i>emotional</i> "testimony" to the texts' authenticity?<br /><br />Why is it that, while every <i>other</i> academic question must be settled on the basis of evidence and rational argument <i>alone</i>, the Book of Mormon is an exception?<br /><br />I'm sure there are a fair number of Mormon Shakespeare scholars out there. If they make claims about the origins of the First Folio, they have to demonstrate the truth of those claims using evidence and logic alone.<br /><br />They wouldn't even think of saying, "Well, okay, yeah, in order to be persuaded by my argument, you need to supplement the evidence with a <i>testimony</i>. You need to get down on your knees and pray sincerely about the origins of the First Folio, and if you do that sincerely and with an open heart, you will see that I am right. And if you pray about it and <i>don't</i> come to see that I am right, you must not have prayed about it sincerely."<br /><br />Do you have any idea how ludicrous this sort of thing seems to the rest of the world?<br /><br />The Mormon Shakespeare scholar would never even think of saying, "Well, I realize there are still some big holes in my argument, but you have to understand that God doesn't <i>want</i> us to understand the First Folio by way of evidence and logic alone. What God wants is for us to make the final leap to understanding it <i>on the basis of faith</i>."<br /><br />No Mormon scholar would say these kinds of things about any other academic question. In every other arena, every Mormon scholar applies purely secular standards of evidence and argumentation. Secular scholars like me simply apply those same standards to the Mormon scriptures as well.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-79288155574132833202015-11-14T15:10:05.078-06:002015-11-14T15:10:05.078-06:00Complexity isn't hard to achieve, though. That...Complexity isn't hard to achieve, though. That's one thing I've learned from trying to write a novel. The hard trick is to be simple but interesting. Letting the complexity sprawl is only too easy. And it would appear that Orbiting Kolob teaches literature. I doubt he's completely naive about complexity in art.<br /><br />Frankly, I think Hugh Nibley was kicking a ridiculous straw man. The skeptical theory usually denies that Smith was a genius, but there's a long gap between genius and stupidity, and the skeptic puts Smith in the upper part of that range. He was smart, and like a lot of smart people he may have been lazy when he could get away with it, but no doubt he could work extremely hard when his heart was in it. And he didn't really have a vast frontier library, but skeptics do tend to assume that he had a lot more knowledge than he let on.<br /><br />Many skeptics are pretty down on Smith for his morals. I have to admit, for my part, that there's probably no conceivable revelation about Nephi that can make up, in my book, for the revelation about the fiery sword. I'm afraid that with me he's just never going to live that one down.<br /><br />But no concern about Smith's morals implies any doubt about his ability to compose a complex book.James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-48701960901563532662015-11-14T12:20:42.210-06:002015-11-14T12:20:42.210-06:00Yes, Anon 1134, OK should gather and package his b...Yes, Anon 1134, OK should gather and package his body of work and submit to Dialogue. They'd probably be interested in his work.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-3523620089032721952015-11-14T11:34:28.766-06:002015-11-14T11:34:28.766-06:00As re-issued today elsewhere:
"I think this ...As re-issued today elsewhere:<br /><br />"I think this constantly reiterated unfailing charge that Joseph Smith was a raggle-taggle, down-at-the-heels, sloppy, lazy, good-for-nothing supplies the best possible test for the honesty and reliability of his critics. Some of them reach almost awesome heights of mendacity and effrontery when, like Mrs. Brodie, they solemnly inform us that Joseph Smith, the laziest man on earth, produced in a short time, by his own efforts, the colossally complex and difficult Book of Mormon."<br /> “The Myth Makers,” Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, 11:144-45.<br /><br />In the case of OK, he doesn't focus on or even advocate laziness, but instead disregards or dismisses immense textual complexity. His musings are thus also off-track and misleading. He conveniently ignores complexity when confronted with it, and with hardly laudable prolixity attempts to unravel the Book of Mormon as possible for Smith, when the reasonable must reject that view in the face of all the evidence (including the heavily witnessed short production period).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-37321962769498227182015-11-14T10:25:14.959-06:002015-11-14T10:25:14.959-06:00Jerome, James, and everyone: Yes, look at 2 Nephi ...Jerome, James, and everyone: Yes, look at 2 Nephi 3:15, and then ponder these definitions:<br /><br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction" rel="nofollow">Fan fiction</a> is "fiction about characters or settings from an original work of fiction, created by fans of that work."<br /><br />The type of fan fiction called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue" rel="nofollow">Mary Sue</a>, "or, in case of a male character, Gary Stu or Marty Stu, is an idealized character, a young or low-rank person who saves the day through extraordinary abilities. Often but not necessarily this character is recognized as an author insert and/or wish-fulfillment."<br /><br />The Book of Mormon is Bible fan fiction, more specifically, a Gary Sue, with Nephi as the author insert -- the "young or low-rank person" who repeatedly "saves the day through extraordinary abilities" -- created by Joseph Smith.<br /><br />In a broader sense, I think that the United States is also a kind of "insert": a young and low-ranked nation (in the 1820s, of course) that "saves the day" by enabling the restoration of a gospel that had been perverted and co-opted by the evil Church of the Devil. It's pretty ingenious, actually, and extremely well-calculated to appeal to a patriotic and intensely Protestant-revivalist American audience. There's no question about Smith's peculiar genius.<br /><br />This is where the non-LDS scholarship relentlessly points. When Book of Mormon studies eventually develops into a legitimate academic field, this will be the consensus, though the scholars will presumably use stuffier terminology.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04668073406352787818noreply@blogger.com