DiscussMormonism.com

Gidday all, I am new to this board, generally I lurk around RfM. I am a kiwi exmo (22 years now), but my mother has been valiant in her efforts to ‘reactivate’ me. She has recently discovered FAIR and FARMS.02 and is convinced that this fantastic treasure trove will contain just the information to convince me. In return for Mum reading ‘Insider’s View’ and ‘Mormon Enigma’ I am reading the Book of Mormon again, and apologetic material she forwards.

We have had some small issues are discussing at the moment, I would appreciate comments, if anyone has them. Much of this has been posted on RfM previously.

Loanshifting

While digging around in mopology I have learned the new buzzword: 'loanshift'. Which describes using a familiar word to describe some new animal or object or concept in a different laguage. This explains how horses are really deer or tapir. "Horse" is a 'loanshift' for "tapir". "Steel" is a 'loanshift' for "obsidian" etc.
I guess we would now loanshift whatever the Jaredites called their water-craft, into ‘submarine’.

So, the correct answer to "what about XXXX in the Book of Mormon?" is "That's a loanshift, you ignoramus!"

Brother Ash believes that Tapir are the most likely candidates for the loanshifted Nephite horse:
http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/AshHorse/

I could not leave this one alone, Google has turned up the problem of tapirs being nocturnal and suffering serious eye damage in sunlight, as well as other skin lesions including carcinoma.
e.g.: Click here

In addition, tapirs have delicate little feet that are prone to ulcers of the foot pad on hard surfaces. Even over-activity associated with re-housing them can result in serious ulceration of the foot pads.
e.g.: http://www.tapirback.com/reprints/aazv1.htm (tapirback.com is a huge resource for Tapir information)

Can't you just see the tapir tottering delicately along dragging king Lamoni's chariots (now loanshifted into travois) while blindly crashing into the odd, badly positioned, rameumpton (no loanshifting required, apparently).

As a side issue, Tapirs have four splayed hooves (separate horned toes surrounding the foot pad) in front, and three hooves in back. They would be considered ‘cud chewers, though. So they do not neatly conform to either ‘clean’ or ‘unclean’. Given the importance of defining clean and unclean animals in Leviticus, and the importance of this issue throughout history (for example Daniel in Babylon in roughly the same time frame, the revelation to Peter etc, and the WoW today), the total absence of clarifying revelation, on tapir and other new animals, for the benefit of the people is remarkable!

There are major problems with considering deer (Br Ash’s second option) as a candidate for ‘horse’ as well. Using the generic 'deer' is allowing the issue to get pretty cloudy, since only reindeer and the very very occasional moose have been domesticated (both are too far north). All other deer domestication attempts have failed. (NZ farming excluded of course, but we use really high electric fences and only farm them for food, and they are horrible stroppy buggers).

Of course, the Book of Mormon mentions Horses and Asses (and goats and elephants) in the same sentence, so BOTH deer and tapir at least must have been used as beasts of burden, or maybe the tapir were the elephants, or whatever.

The point is, there are no serious candidates for loanshifting into horse in the first place. If these are the best options, the concept is on pretty shaky ground in this case.

The problem is that the "animal X" must fit the context of the horse used in the Book of Mormon. The tapir fails miserably. I spent some time on the tapir on my essay here:

The tapir section is the bottom half.

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com/horses.htm


Oh, and the problem with deer is that the Lehites would already know what a deer is, from the Old World. They knew what a horse was, they knew what a deer was. Loanshifting in that situation is ridiculous.

by the way, you should enjoy this citation in particular:

When highly excited, tapirs will spray their urine about diffusely. For example, in the Frankfurt Zoo a male tapir was forced out of his warm stable into the cold winter air. At first he resisted all attempts to make him leave his quarters. Eventually, he stood on the threshold and smelled the cold air, and then suddenly he sprayed backward. The keeper, who was gently trying to push him outside, was sprayed full force with urine.

(cited in my article I already linked)

You've put together a pretty good website Beastie. It would be nice if someone with good knowledge of web design put some polish on it for you.

That is classic, you have sprayed tapir pee on the horse loanshift.

I have bookmarked your site for more indepth reading later - it is fantastic.

I can't believe that after all the correspondence, apologists are still using the same old disposed-of arguments! Your metallurgy page clearly discusses the problems of pretending that stones or ores are metal, yet I recently found a pamphlet on Book of Mormon anachronisms by Brother Ash, that states clearly that Ann Cyphers found several tons of iron in Olmec site. It took me five minuites to discover the iron was really mostly ilmenite beads.

This is outright deception. And only convincing to those who want to be decieved.

There is another anachronism problem we have been discussing, in the Isaiah chunks of the Book of Mormon. I think it is interesting because there is no way to loanshift out of it.

Nephi claimed to copy Isaiah from the plates of Laban. When Joseph Smith did his translation, the Book of Mormon Isaiah contained many many word changes from the KJV which Joseph Smith claimed reflected the correct original version of Isaiah. Anachronisms of course, must be loanshifts.


OK so far. The problem is that one of the KJV errors was the use of the word Cockatrice. This is more than just another anachronism. The cockatrice was a mythical creature unique to Britain. The word derives from a 12th century French re-translation of Pliny (originally describing the little birds which clean crocodile's teeth) which was anglicised to Cockatrice. Not knowing what creature was referred to, Brits took the word and imagined their own monster for it, a rooster with a serpent's tail, which had poisonous breath (Pliny's natural history got somewhat scrambled). There was subsequently a rash of Cockatrice sightings across Britain, and the Cockatrice became a heraldic creature, later on linked to the Basilisk (which was originally all serpent, but gained its rooster's head at about the same time the cockatrice appeared).

The Cocktrice was popular during the Elizabethan period in dramas and beastiaries up till after the KJV was translated, and that is possibly why it is found in several places in the KJV, as a mistranslation of hebrew word(s) for "serpent" of some natural kind. In the 17th century the Cockatrice was excluded from natural histories and basically dropped out of fashion. The word essentially disappeared from the language, EXCEPT for the KJV (and eventually re-emerging in 'Dungeons and Dragons' where I became fascinated with it).

So why would Joseph Smith use the word Cockatrice in the Book of Mormon? Isaiah meant "hissing serpent". There would be no problems for Nephi translating it into reformed Egyptian, or Mormon abridging it - snakes are snakes in Egypt and in America - even with the supposed limited reformed Egyptian vocabulary (where 'horse' includes any animal with 4 legs, big enough to sit on). The very concept postdates both Isaiah and the Nephites. There would be no problems for Joseph Smith translating "hissing serpent" into 19th century vernacular either. Cockatrice was geographically limited and archaic, and only locally mentioned in the KJV.

There are claims that Joseph Smith may have used the KJV to speed up translation or something like that - but he went to so many pains correcting 'incorrect' words like 'that' and 'so', that a whopper like ‘Cockatrice’ should have been picked up and corrected in the most correct book.

Plausibility analysis allows one to (very barely) excuse the Book of Mormon appearances of the KJV words Satyr (for "shaggy goat"), and Dragon (for jackal or hyena). There are tiny and credibility stretchingly remote possibilities that these concepts could have been known to Nephi, Mormon, or Joseph Smith and considered more apt for a broader metaphysical interpretation of Isaiah's actual description of physical abandonment of a city. Or whatever.

But I see no grounds whatsoever for finding Cockatrices in the Book of Mormon. OK. Maybe the reformed Egyptian word for 'Snake' means "tastes like chicken", hence the confusion.


Ref:
The Career of the Cockatrice,
Laurence A. Breiner
Isis, Vol. 70, No. 1. (Mar., 1979), pp. 30-47.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-1 ... 0.CO%3B2-W

So, the Book of Mormon words "Curelom" and "Cumom" are loanshifted for. . . what, exactly?

Dr. Shades wrote:So, the Book of Mormon words "Curelom" and "Cumom" are loanshifted for. . . what, exactly?

The striped anteater and purple dragons respectively.

You've put together a pretty good website Beastie. It would be nice if someone with good knowledge of web design put some polish on it for you.

Thanks. There are folks here who would probably give me advice, as they have in the past, but I really hate fooling with the web design stuff. I also have to update it because since ZLMB’s host switched to some new format, those links appear not to work anymore. It will take me ages to figure out the new links, and I just have not had the desire to do that yet. I put so much work into it last summer that it burned me out, I think.

I can't believe that after all the correspondence, apologists are still using the same old disposed-of arguments! Your metallurgy page clearly discusses the problems of pretending that stones or ores are metal, yet I recently found a pamphlet on Book of Mormon anachronisms by Brother Ash, that states clearly that Ann Cyphers found several tons of iron in Olmec site. It took me five minuites to discover the iron was really mostly ilmenite beads.

This is outright deception. And only convincing to those who want to be decieved.

Some apologetics can be excused/understood on the basis of simple confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, neither of which require conscious deception. Yet there are instances when the issue is so egregious that it does seem reasonable to conclude some level of conscious decision to deceive. Of course they’re not going to use the word “deceive” – but, in the end, it’s pretty clear that’s what they’ve done. I’ve confronted a couple with these examples, and their reaction was less than admirable. Very dismissive. It’s a slight of hand – the sources talk about simple metal working from meteoric remnants or outcrops. Anyone who has studied ancient Mesoamerica in an even minimal amount is aware that they worked with metal in this fashion. But then the apologists use it to support the Book of Mormon, when the whole problem in the Book of Mormon is the use of metallurgy itself, not simple metal working. They do the same thing with “linguistic” evidence – they use it to support the Book of Mormon, when the linguistic evidence is the same as the artifact evidence – it’s simple metal working and outcrop metals. D’uh. Yeah, we know that kind of metal existed. The apologists who use these references know enough about the subject to know that the artifacts/linguistic evidence are referring to simple metal working with meteoric/outcrop material, but they don’t explicitly say that, and they use it to support the Book of Mormon, so of course their readers interpret this as evidence for metallurgy. It’s not. The apologists know it. I confronted Brant Gardner once on ZLMB for using this “linguistic evidence” nonsense on a thread at FAIR/MAD, and challenged him to be forthright enough to clarify that this “linguistic evidence” was referring to simple metal working, and NOT metallurgy. He wouldn’t. When I emailed Sorenson about his outright false claims that certain sources provided support for metallurgy when they clearly did NOT, he dismissed it as a “tempest in the teapot” and claimed that there is PLENTY of other evidence, even if those particular sources were incorrectly used. The reactions of Brant and Sorenson convinced me that there IS some level of knowing deception going on, otherwise I think they would rush to correct the misperception they’d created by their “oops”. It’s not an “oops”, it was a deliberate choice to mislead.

The cockatrice issue they’d likely dismiss by saying that once Joseph Smith recognized the verses as Isaiah, he’d save time by simply using the KJV.


Shades:

So, the Book of Mormon words "Curelom" and "Cumom" are loanshifted for. . . what, exactly?

This one is fun. Long ago I predicted that eventually apologists would merge the tight “Smith as reader” and the loose “Smith as active translator” theories into one messy mutation. They did. They had to do this because either theory left them screwed, basically. Apologists who are interested in the Hebraisms would opt for the “Smith as reader” theory, which is the one with the contemporary evidence to support it. (see my website page with tons of references to Smith’s contemporaries who said he simply read the words off the rock) Apologists who are interested in New World evidence ran from the “tight” theory because it left them high and dry with ridiculous anachronisms. But if they insisted on the loose theory, the Hebraists lost most of their arguments (many of which depend on the structure of the text). It was fun to watch, and I knew that eventually they’d resolve it by claiming that the translation was sometimes loose, sometimes tight. It really is funny, because it’s a living demonstration of how apologia transforms and adapts to the one goal – justifying the Book of Mormon. Everything else, including intellectual integrity and coherence of theory – can be thrown under the bus.

beastie wrote:This one is fun. Long ago I predicted that eventually apologists would merge the tight “Smith as reader” and the loose “Smith as active translator” theories into one messy mutation. They did. They had to do this because either theory left them screwed, basically. Apologists who are interested in the Hebraisms would opt for the “Smith as reader” theory, which is the one with the contemporary evidence to support it. (see my website page with tons of references to Smith’s contemporaries who said he simply read the words off the rock) Apologists who are interested in New World evidence ran from the “tight” theory because it left them high and dry with ridiculous anachronisms. But if they insisted on the loose theory, the Hebraists lost most of their arguments (many of which depend on the structure of the text). It was fun to watch, and I knew that eventually they’d resolve it by claiming that the translation was sometimes loose, sometimes tight. It really is funny, because it’s a living demonstration of how apologia transforms and adapts to the one goal – justifying the Book of Mormon. Everything else, including intellectual integrity and coherence of theory – can be thrown under the bus.

In this regard, Mopologetics does me a very useful service. I spend time encountering Mopologetics because it holds up a mirror to my own faith convictions, and compels me to examine my own personal Christian apologetic with rigor. If I catch myself doing a Mopologetic, I know I'm going wrong.

Other than that, there's not much in it for me.