Right on Target!

[_EAllusion]

Well, that's convincing. Thanks Symmachus.

[_Alf O'Mega]

Sorry. This is not on point, Alf O'Mega. I humbly call on Symmachus to enlighten Alf, if so inclined.

So pointing out another even later example of a construction that was allegedly extinct by Joseph Smith's time is not on point? Even if it is from the region of the country he was from? Even if it is being used by the author as a clarification, as if it were more comprehensible than the language of the King James Version?

I'll accept "on fleek" if "on point" is too great a concession.

[_scorndog]

Gaddianton, Bertrand would have been dismayed by your vacuous treatment of the issue.

Kishcumen, your praise of empty argumentation is what the apologist is often criticized for.

Shostakovich, there are obsolete readings in the text with several, even many instances, and with just one or two examples. Rigor requires acceptance of the reading in this case without aposiopesis because a straight reading is possible and even indicated. There are certainly instances of aposiopesis in the text, but not in this isolated case. Also, as you know, lengthy texts typically express the same/similar meaning with different words/phrases. So you are merely speculating in that regard, and you must reject that line of reasoning as not dispositive of the issue.

Alf, the 1877 quote actually strengthens the OED's position (and therefore Skousen's position) because the KJB could have used "but if" in several cases but it didn't. And why didn't the translators opt for "but if" = 'unless' at least once? Apparently the usage was deemed to be archaic, perhaps even nearing obsolescence, by the translation committees prior to 1611. Also, it is usually difficult to prove wrong the OED's pronouncements. Lexicographical research is required. One must be a harmless drudge. Yes, it can be done in certain instances, but it is almost always not a simple matter.

Back to Symmachus: I have appreciated reading your informed views on the matter. You will understand, since you were inclined to be dismissive a time or two throughout this discussion, but I'm afraid I cannot invest much time, or perhaps any more time on this discussion. I thank you, however, for your insightful comments.

[_Symmachus]

Back to Symmachus: I have appreciated reading your informed views on the matter. You will understand, since you were inclined to be dismissive a time or two throughout this discussion, but I'm afraid I cannot invest much time, or perhaps any more time on this discussion. I thank you, however, for your insightful comments.

You're the only one being dismissive—perhaps that's what I should expect from someone named "Scorndog"—since I have offered you two or three possible ways of reading these without appeal to the supernatural, and I have taken time to lay them out rather thoroughly, so I don't think I have been dismissive at all. Your basic reply each time is just, "I am not convinced," but you haven't really given a good reason for why these don't work. You just keep repeating the same idea: these are not plausible to you. I'd welcome hearing from you then what you think is the more plausible explanation, and why.

[_Chap]

Gaddianton, Bertrand would have been dismayed by your vacuous treatment of the issue.

Kishcumen, your praise of empty argumentation is what the apologist is often criticized for.

Shostakovich, there are obsolete readings in the text with several, even many instances, and with just one or two examples. Rigor requires acceptance of the reading in this case without aposiopesis because a straight reading is possible and even indicated. There are certainly instances of aposiopesis in the text, but not in this isolated case. Also, as you know, lengthy texts typically express the same/similar meaning with different words/phrases. So you are merely speculating in that regard, and you must reject that line of reasoning as not dispositive of the issue.

Alf, the 1877 quote actually strengthens the OED's position (and therefore Skousen's position) because the KJB could have used "but if" in several cases but it didn't. And why didn't the translators opt for "but if" = 'unless' at least once? Apparently the usage was deemed to be archaic, perhaps even nearing obsolescence, by the translation committees prior to 1611. Also, it is usually difficult to prove wrong the OED's pronouncements. Lexicographical research is required. One must be a harmless drudge. Yes, it can be done in certain instances, but it is almost always not a simple matter.

Back to Symmachus: I have appreciated reading your informed views on the matter. You will understand, since you were inclined to be dismissive a time or two throughout this discussion, but I'm afraid I cannot invest much time, or perhaps any more time on this discussion. I thank you, however, for your insightful comments.

So - are we not to be told what implication Scorndog draws from what he believes to be pre-KJV English forms in the Book of Mormon? Let's assume that, contrary to what has been suggested as a possibility above, no English speaker in the world used 'but if' at any time around the early 19th century, and that this form did not appear in any book available to Joseph Smith.

Even with those exclusions, does the presence of 'but if' do anything to advance the case that the Book of Mormon translation was 'by the gift and power of God"? It doesn't look like it to me. It just seems to demand more weirdness in the process, such as a translation of the Book of Mormon by a committee of the spirits of Bible translators who date from before the KJV. That makes it less plausible, not more.

[_Symmachus]

there are obsolete readings in the text with several, even many instances, and with just one or two examples.

Rigor requires that you show why one or two examples are meaningful. A basic rule of historical linguistic analysis: systematicity calls for explanation; isolated instances do not.

Rigor requires acceptance of the reading in this case without aposiopesis because a straight reading is possible and even indicated.

How is it indicated? The punctuation is Skousen's, not original to the text here, so how do you know that? It's just speculation on your part.

There are certainly instances of aposiopesis in the text, but not in this isolated case.

Again, you know this how?

So you are merely speculating in that regard, and you must reject that line of reasoning as not dispositive of the issue.

You use the rhetoric of someone who is being rigorous, but it's just a screen for your subjective assumptions and refusal/inability to deal with the evidence within established parameters of linguistic analysis. Since we are not dealing with systematicity, anything about isolated instances in a text whose original speaker is inaccessible is speculative, but my point is that it's up to YOU to show why these are so meaningful. I am showing you that there are different ways to read these isolated instances that are well within established linguistic norms and don't necessarily involve positing Elizabethan influence or appeal to the supernatural—both of which are 100 % speculative on your/Skousen's part until you/Skousen establish systematic difference that can only be explained by one of those two hypotheses or both.

[_Flaming Meaux]

Back to Symmachus: I have appreciated reading your informed views on the matter. You will understand, since you were inclined to be dismissive a time or two throughout this discussion, but I'm afraid I cannot invest much time, or perhaps any more time on this discussion. I thank you, however, for your insightful comments.

You're the only one being dismissive—perhaps that's what I should expect from someone named "Scorndog"—since I have offered you two or three possible ways of reading these without appeal to the supernatural, and I have taken time to lay them out rather thoroughly, so I don't think I have been dismissive at all. Your basic reply each time is just, "I am not convinced," but you haven't really given a good reason for why these don't work. You just keep repeating the same idea: these are not plausible to you. I'd welcome hearing from you then what you think is the more plausible explanation, and why.

This is a pretty common approach for individuals more interested in apologetics (i.e., "In what way can I read the available evidence such that it supports my predetermined conclusion?") than scholarship (i.e., "What is the most reasonable explanation that accounts for all of the available evidence in the most simple manner with the fewest exceptions?").

Rather than engage with the substantial body of evidence and scholarship that supports your position, Symmachus, they'd rather just have you boil it all down into a two or three paragraph explanation so that they are more comfortable rejecting it. Because reasons.

And when pressed to engage the actual evidence, perhaps not unsurprisingly, the response is, "I just can't invest the time to do that."

[_EAllusion]

Rigor requires acceptance of the reading in this case without aposiopesis because a straight reading is possible and even indicated.

Scorndog is unpersuaded by aposiopesis as a plausible explanation for the features of the text. I thought it was convincing, but I am a mere layman uneducated in this area. So we can accept scorndog has higher evidential standards than what Symmachus can offer. So is it that this feature of the text remains a mystery to scorndog in want of explanation? That does not appear to be the case.

He appears to believe that it demonstrates supernatural influence. More specifically, faithful LDS who point to the purported Elizabeathean language in the Book of Mormon in my experience to a person argue that dead people from that era translated the Book of Mormon first, followed by that translation passing along to Joseph Smith. Since Scorndog refuses to state what he thinks, even though context strongly suggests that this is what it is, observers are left to throw their hands in the air. It would be damning to his credibility if on the one hand he is asserting that aposiopesis is too implausible for people of scholarly rigor to entertain while on the other he believes the evidence compels the explanation that ghosts from the middle ages telepathically transmitted the text. And perhaps that is why he refrains from articulating it. Rigor indeed.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Lol. I love it when an apologist throws a dart at the wall, draws a circle around it, and then claims, "Bull's eye!".

- Doc

[Guest]

Even with those exclusions, does the presence of 'but if' do anything to advance the case that the Book of Mormon translation was 'by the gift and power of God"? It doesn't look like it to me. It just seems to demand more weirdness in the process, such as a translation of the Book of Mormon by a committee of the spirits of Bible translators who date from before the KJV. That makes it less plausible, not more.

Yeah, I really would like to know how this is supposed to help the apologetic case. I just don't get it: is it that, as long as they can show it has some non-19th century features, the Book of Mormon must be more than what critics of a literalist reading claim? Although it's unlikely to turn me into a believer, I don't see why those who like these supposedly Elizabethan features need to keep their relevance a secret from the rest of us.

I know Brant Gardner references Skousen as way to push back against the Hebraist approach to the English language of the Book of Mormon. For Gardner, establishing that the "Hebraisms" are actually particular features of English is one support for his "tight" translation theory, which I know Skousen also holds. From my view, looking at the English is really the only thing you can do, because it is the only evidence that is susceptible to systematic analysis rather than random observations that are at base impressionistic, no matter how technical the language used to express those impressions might be.

Focusing on the English at least respects the fact that the only thing we have is the English text, and that would be a great methodological improvement to the whole enterprise.

But then I see the same tactics being applied: come up with a theory that involves the supernatural, and make everything fit that theory, even if there are simpler explanations that don't involve the supernatural. And of course just make it all about isolated linguistic scraps; don't show how your theory is systematic. The problem is, then you're not really dealing with theory at all but just with subjective impressions dressed in the objective-seeming technical jargon. So, we're back to the same apologetic tack, and any explanatory advantage over the Hebraist school of apologetics vanishes into thin, airy rhetoric. That's on a methodological level, but you're right, Chap, about the conceptual level too: an Elizabethan linguistic context makes even less sense than accepting the Hebraic linguistic context that the Book of Mormon claims for itself.

Rather than engage with the substantial body of evidence and scholarship that supports your position, Symmachus, they'd rather just have you boil it all down into a two or three paragraph explanation so that they are more comfortable rejecting it.

I don't even have a position on this. I'm just showing that there are other ways to read the isolated bits of evidence that have been adduced on this thread, without positing the supernatural. It'd be nice if Scorndog could actually lay out what his position is and how the evidence supports that position.