Boylan’s latest podcast calculates gold plates were too heavy

[Rivendale]

One of the luminaries commenting on Dorknpork’s blog suggested Joseph Smith could do this because he was a farmer, and because farmers have a strong grip it means they have ultra-strength or something.

To dumb whit:

I have shaken hands with enough people who had to milk cows regularly to know that those with an agrarian background have a degree of strength that is both impressive and long lasting, e.g., one of the brethren whose hand I shook was well into his eighties and still had an impressive shake. I have no problem believing that Joseph could have run with the plates. The idea that he couldn't have or that this is a smoking gun is simply not a serious argument. It is more of a touchstone revealing the attitude of the person sharing it.

-_-

That agrarian knowledge base was supplemented by bishop chastity interviews.

[Gadianton]

What kills me is the resistance apologists and possibly even regular TBMs have to just saying the Lord endowed Joseph Smith with strength and it's another miracle. With all the other miracles, why not just say the Lord stepped in here also?

It might actually make an interesting research project - - the history of Joseph's run through the woods story.

I recall as a kid hearing this story and how it showed exactly what Doc Cam's quote says -- Joseph, the rock-solid farmer who lived clean, rejecting alcohol as a youth and faced severe pain, handled his sinner Gentile assailants.

It's a good question as to when Joseph's weakness proves the miracle and when the miracle isn't allowed and Joseph Smith has to be strong enough.

On the one hand, TBMs want Joseph Smith dumb as a stump so that he couldn't possibly have composed the Book of Mormon, but no chance was he not strong enough to carry the plates and fight off the bad guys with his own power.

A guess is, as I recall hearing the story as a kid, somewhere along the line the tale got locked into showing Joseph Smith's personal superiority over the bad guys. Initially, the plates were as heavy as possible but Joseph Smith having been such a hard working boy, he could do what few others could.

[Philo Sofee]

If the Carmack-Skousen Early Modern English thing was even a possibly tenable hypothesis, they would have published it in some kind of mainstream linguistics journal by now. Their thesis is by no means unacceptable because of any religious implications. It's simply a linguistic statement about the language of the Book Mormon, and accepting it wouldn't imply the slightest acceptance of any Mormon religious claims. People who thought that the Book of Mormon was a sheer hoax would be perfectly able to maintain that belief and just revise their guess about when the hoax was perpetrated. The suggestion that Smith might have found an older fake scripture would make for a provocative literary and historical mystery: who really wrote it, and how did a copy find its way to Joseph Smith? Even if peer reviewers found the Early Modern English hypothesis unlikely on balance, I bet that some journal or other would agree to publish the paper just to stimulate research on an intriguing long-shot question—as long as the case wasn't outright ridiculous.

It would take work for Carmack and Skousen to get a paper published that way, all right. It ought to be worth it to them, though. Confirming that it was at least possible that the Book of Mormon was something more interesting than just badly faked King James English would be a respectable rebuttal to one of the most grating critical sneers against the Book of Mormon. Anyone who wanted to uphold the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as Scripture ought to be willing to work very hard indeed for a prize like that.

The only reason why this Early Modern English Book of Mormon theory hasn't been published in any real journal is that it actually is outright ridiculous. If Carmack and Skousen haven't even tried to get it published outside Interpreter, that just means that it's outright ridiculous and, deep down, they know it, so they're settling for doing apologetics theatre, playing for applause from the choir.

Wouldn't you think this might weight heavily on scholars who spent their lives studying real academic work? They are intelligent enough to know what they're doing.

Skousen has made hundreds of thousands of dollars on this however, least of all from the Interpreter alone. What care for truth when one can get lucratively blessed for strengthening testimonies?

[Moksha]

[Everybody Wang Chung]

[Physics Guy]

Wouldn't you think this might weight heavily on scholars who spent their lives studying real academic work? They are intelligent enough to know what they're doing.

Yeah, it's a bit weird.

I've read some of Carmack's Interpreter articles and argued with him a bit on the MDDB board. And I have a fair amount of exposure to mainstream academic linguistics because my wife is a linguistics professor. She did a long post-doc at the same Max Planck Institute where Skousen once spent a sabbatical. They didn't overlap there, but it means that I've chatted over a lot of dinners with people who aren't too far from Skousen's orbit. At one point I also found and read a couple of Skousen's linguistics papers that weren't related to the Book of Mormon.

So I have at least a bit of a sense of who these guys are and what they do. Their work still isn't remotely my own field, but for what it's worth, they give me a fringe vibe.

[Marcus]

...No one, in their right mind, would agree with the idea that reading the text of the Book of Mormon - reading words that Joseph Smith claimed to see through the seer stone/Nephite interpreters - actually amounts to translating something. We can say that he provided a translation. But we cannot say that he is the one who is translating the text. When Joseph Smith adopts the phrase "by the gift and power of God," he does so by taking it from Omni 1:20. This is the phrase he used consistently to publicly describe the process of producing the Book of Mormon. Joseph's purpose in using this verse (perhaps) was to suggest that he was doing exactly what the Nephite prophets had done. I am not sure we can call what they did "translating" either. You can find my critique of Skousen's ideas about translation in my presentation here.

This isn't to say that there aren't a whole lot of members of the Church (leaders among them) who believe that Joseph Smith was actively engaged in translation of some sort. We have all of this artwork with Joseph carefully studying the text. But, at this point, there isn't any real idea that Joseph Smith was playing an active role as a translator
https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/75 ... 1210155769

Bolding by me to emphasize my W. T. H. moment. This is NOT what the lds church taught when i was in it.

From the current lds.org

Quotes
Joseph Smith Quotes

“I translated the Book of Mormon from hieroglyphics, the knowledge of which was lost to the world..."
https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org ... s?lang=eng

Wow. The pretzel logic of Mopologetics is further beyond any shred of credibility than i even thought possible. Just admit it is fiction from the mind of Smith and be done with it. This mangling of all logic and common sense is just an embarrassment.

[I Have Questions]

Mopologetics is ApostasyLite

[Moksha]

Mopologetics is ApostasyLite

It's like Trump: You tell lies as a matter of compulsion. You accuse Dr. Scratch of changing the meaning of words just to defend his weird cult of anti-Mormons when we know that apologists make the best phone calls -- perfect phone calls.

[Tapir Rodeo]

I'll issue a formal challenge to them.

We can find a high school track (each lap is usually a quarter mile) and a 60 pound kettle bell. The Mopologists can find someone who approximates Jospeh Smith's size, athletic ability, and leg injury. The rules will be as follows.

The "Jospeh Smith" stand in must:
1) complete 12 laps (3 miles) carrying the weight under his arm wrapped in a jacket.
2) walk the first mile, at the completion of this mile he will climb over a log, be struck in the head with a blunt object, and then fight off an attacker.
3) He must run the next two miles. At two random points in the next two miles he will be attacked by groups of men trying to steal the weight.

Failure will occur if the "Jospeh Smith" stand in:
1) stops to rest.
2) can't retain control of the plates.
3) is incapacitated and can't continue.

That seems fair to me. Maybe DCP will give it a shot lol.

They will just inject god magic. Something similar happens when dowsers are tested. They create all kinds of excuses for their failures. Equally strange is how god magic vanishes when it is most needed. The attack on Carthage jail is a prime example. God is just like the Mormon church today. Using up members then tossing them into the garbage can so the caravan can move on.

The thing is, I've yet to see a mopologist appeal to divine intervention. They seem to have trapped themselves in corner where they must defend Smith doing it all on his own.