Brant Gardner wrote:I deny that it is a unique methodological issue. Faced with any text of uncertain provenance, the proper way to examine it is--to examine it, and do so in the context in which it claims creation. Nibley was quoting Blass on that over 50 years ago. The principle has not changed.
The Secret Gospel of Mark, a likely forgery, is a text of highly uncertain provenance, and yet it strikes one as much more believable than the circumstances surrounding the discovery and translation of the Book of Mormon. To reiterate: no one with any expertise in American antiquities ever examined the plates. All we have of the Book of Mormon are a few stray "characters" supposedly copied from those plates, and the purported translation. There is no way to check the correctness of the translation against the plates. These are not just methodological challenges; they are wide chasms standing between the evidence and the ability to establish the authenticity of the text with any reasonable degree of reliability.
Furthermore, if one is to examine it in the context in which it claims creation, one has first to locate that context, which, oddly enough, the text does not in fact disclose to the reader. Book of Mormon geography is highly problematic, to put it mildly. One is left to argue a geography from the uncertain clues of the text, and then use that conclusion to provide the very context that you use. Again, this is a huge methodological problem.
That is an interesting statement. It is entirely dependent upon a presumption of what should be found that would therefore suggest the Book of Mormon. Having examined all of those presumptions I can think of, I don't find any that stand up to historical populations. It becomes of case of determining what what believes should be found, and when it isn't, declaring that there is no hope. It is a doomed methodology.
It is a reasonable statement, not merely an interesting one. One will judge the Phaistos disc against other remains of Minoan writing and culture in order to argue its authenticity or that it is a fake. Fortunately, one has access to such materials. There is a place to begin. When someone says, "I had an ancient document that does not really match any other known text from the claimed context, which I translated into English, but I do not possess the original, nevertheless you should use my translation to figure out whether I did in fact possess an ancient document," then I would say we have a huge problem. Morton Smith has a problem, and yet we still possess enough evidence in similar texts from the same context to begin to ask whether the claim is even within the range of the probable.
I agree that I have to begin with the possibility of the antiquity of the text, else there is no reason to continue. Along with the possibility of antiquity, there come some other requirements. For example, if it is ancient, then it must behave as an ancient text would. If the text shows signs of creation that don't have precedence in antiquity, then there is a problem.
It does have signs of creation that don't have precedence in antiquity. It is a frankly Judeo-Christian text that you place in ancient Mesoamerica, even though it was supposedly found in western New York. I would say that this is a real problem (the latter part of which requires the addition of a second Cumorah). The only way that I can see you getting around such a problem is to repair to such devices as "loose translation" or "esoteric royal tradition."
Because I borrow it directly from the disciplines of ethnohistory and archaeology, there are quite a few secular scholars who would agree with the methodology. Surely you don't believe that the method they are using is faulty?
If they were using that method to study the elven culture based on the writings of Tolkien, I might. Instead, they are using it to study a people whose time and place is pretty well established by the ground archaeology. While they make mistakes based on the limitations of the evidence and their methodology, I have no question that in the broad strokes they are studying things that connect somehow with historical realia.
I will be happy to oblige. First, however, would you please explain to me how that information will be manifest in material remains? All Old World Christian symbols are suspect, because they were borrowed from Greek iconography and would not have been available or understandable to anyone in the New World. Jewish iconography is heavily aniconic, and when we do find iconography, it too is often borrowed from surrounding cultures. Given that the entire history of the creation of material remains that might be associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with examples of borrowing, do you believe that the process would be different in the New World? Why?
So, tell me. If what you say is true, why does the Book of Mormon have so much of the appearance of an Old World document produced in a pseudo-KJV dialect? If I can't find steel, horses, Hebrew characters, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Greek names in Mesoamerica, why on earth should I find a Book of Mormon there, especially when the purported modern discovery location was not even in Mesoamerica?
For loose translation, I deny that I use it to manipulate the text to a desired end.
And yet those things one does not find in ancient America are dismissed as loose translation, while those things that one does find become a literal translation. That does not strike you as incredibly convenient? Why gold and not steel? Runtu makes an excellent point there. And, if you don't have the original text, how can you really test the reliability of your method for dealing with issues of translation? Do you have another Nephite document that Joseph Smith translated at hand that exhibits similar characteristics?
What I continue to promote is that vocabulary can be a deceptive level when dealing with translations and that one must look to descriptions in the text to see of the vocabulary is required by the textual description. In some cases, I rely on precedents where translators borrow familiar phrases rather than retranslating from the original. All of that is controlled by known practices and precedences. I don't advocate any argument that cannot be bolstered by both evidence and comparative data to other human populations. That helps control against special pleading.
What it lacks is the crucial existence of the ancient text or close congeners that could provide some kind of control for your process. If you lack the crucial evidence, you are essentially operating in the dark. It is like you are saying, "given this huge mountain of assumptions, I will proceed on the very same methodological lines as those who do not lack the necessary evidence (like some established context), and since what I am doing looks methodologically the same, you can overlook the fact that I lack the crucial evidence to make the argument in fact.
It is also, by the way, the way one must approach Spanish texts describing Mesoamerican native religion and practices. The Spanish regularly couch their descriptions in terms of Christianity and their own vocabulary, and the ethnohistorian has to peer through that to the native practices that might be generating those descriptions.
Of course they do, and yet we are fairly confident that they did not make up the peoples they encountered in the New World. We also have access to enough of the evidence to corroborate the fact that they weren't making it up.
I'm glad you mentioned that this was your opinion. It certainly doesn't describe anything that I have done, or believe. I am quite likely to discard typical apologetic "proofs" because they cannot be supported by the evidence. I am still convinced by such comments that you haven't paid any serious attention to either my methods or arguments.
I know you believe that, and yet you have no basis outside of the text for even believing that the Book of Mormon civilizations ever existed. Nothing. I am happy that you are more sophisticated than others of your colleagues, and I admire your ability, but I part ways with you in accepting the numerous assumptions you adopt in order to begin your argument. I suppose, if I accept everything you assume to be true, that I would find your work more persuasive, but you have set the bar way too low for my standards, and I am not willing to go there with you.
Yours, please.
Although it has already been done for me, I would have said that the simple demands I make to establish history are those I would hope any rational person not relying on religious faith would make. I have no problem with people applying assumptions from their faith to their intellectual work, as long as they are explicit about doing so and do not deride those who do not agree as bigoted or backwards for it.
There are a lot of assumptions in this sentence. I don't think any of them fully describes the known historical events. It is much more complicated and interesting that this summation. The first third of my book on the translation of the Book of Mormon covers these topics and the data require more room that we can allow in a discussion board.
OK, but it is basically true, no matter how much more complicated you choose to make it. Joseph Smith was a treasure seer who used a seer stone to find treasure, some of which was supposedly buried by Native Americans. He also lived in an environment filled with speculation about the origins of these native peoples. Other treasure seers had told stories about the lost civilizations associated with Native American peoples. I am not making this up, and it is all information that is readily available, as you undoubtedly know.
I think it is altogether fair to say that these facts are more easily established by evidence external to the Book of Mormon, and even some within it, than the evidence for a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon. I am also completely confident that evidence and arguments will come forth that will continue the process of solidly establishing the 19th-century North American context of the Book of Mormon, something that will take few people by surprise outside of the LDS Church.
I am actually quite well aware of where it comes from. I was inside that community in my graduate work, and maintain acquaintances with some who are still in that community. I read the rare cases when the discuss the Book of Mormon, and I know precisely where they are coming from--and based on the evidence they are looking at, I often agree with them.
You make it sound like the Book of Mormon is particularly picked on, when one could point to many other historical forgeries, from antiquity to the present, that have also been rejected on the basis of fewer problems and objections. And when I say forgery, I do not do so to deride the Book of Mormon as a sacred text. There is plenty of pseudepigrapha in holy scripture, leading me to the conclusion that pseudepigrapha is a legitimate method for producing sacred text.