jfro18 wrote:The point is that none of these situations allow for Joseph to then bring other sources into the Book of Mormon and yet he did.
Would you point out any first person witness statement that would verify this?
jfro18 wrote:That verify that he used other sources in the Book of Mormon?
Yes, otherwise we have to at least allow for the KJV language and content to have come through the translation/transliteration process as I've described.
jfro18 wrote: We have no first person sources that I am aware of that allow for Joseph to simultaneously use a tight and loose translation -- even if you think he used the gold plates (which apologists are quickly going away from), that would *still* be a tight translation although it would not be quite as open and shut as the rock in a hat would be.
We have no first person source that would NOT allow for the translation process to occur in a way similar to what I've described in this thread.
Granted, it is speculation...but to me it makes more sense than what I've been hearing from the critics over the years. And I don't think there is anywhere I'm stepping over the line in going beyond what we actually have from first person accounts from those that were actually there.
Joseph read off the words which he saw to the scribe. Yep.
jfro18 wrote:...even if you think he used the gold plates (which apologists are quickly going away from), that would *still* be a tight translation although it would not be quite as open and shut as the rock in a hat would be.
What the EmoE thesis would at best do is invalidate the idea that Joseph composed the Book of Mormon as he dictated it. Unfortunately that does not entail that the text is what we believers think it to be. https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.p ... of-mormon/
Yep.
And that's OK. Line upon line, precept upon precept.
jfro18 wrote:We have no first person source that would NOT allow for the translation process to occur in a way similar to what I've described in this thread.
Granted, it is speculation...but to me it makes more sense than what I've been hearing from the critics over the years. And I don't think there is anywhere I'm stepping over the line in going beyond what we actually have from first person accounts from those that were actually there.
Joseph read off the words which he saw to the scribe. Yep.
Your first line gives away the entire game.
By dancing around what we *do* have, you can make up any theory you want about what we don't have.
That's just not how honest history works. It's not even how honest faith works.
Faith is believing in what we can't see or what we can't know. It's not about believing in spite of what we know and in spite of what we can see.
It's a dishonest approach and I don't think you're doing it with bad intentions or even if you know that you're doing it, but you can't just piece together a theory by carefully dancing around the landmines that were put in place by the very people who were a part of the process itself.
jfro18 wrote:...even if you think he used the gold plates (which apologists are quickly going away from), that would *still* be a tight translation although it would not be quite as open and shut as the rock in a hat would be.
What the EmoE thesis would at best do is invalidate the idea that Joseph composed the Book of Mormon as he dictated it. Unfortunately that does not entail that the text is what we believers think it to be. https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.p ... of-mormon/
Yep.
And that's OK. Line upon line, precept upon precept.
Regards, MG
That is a mis-use of Clark Goble's comment in T& S that takes his words out of context, which the post from which you took this quote makes absolutely clear.
Clark Goble wrote:I personally don’t really think EmoE in the Book of Mormon has the apologetic use some believe. From early on in the history of attacks on the Book of Mormon critics saw Joseph Smith plagiarizing the text.
Clark feels that Carmack's work supports a plagiarism conclusion, not the one you are implying above.
jfro18 wrote:Faith is believing in what we can't see or what we can't know. It's not about believing in spite of what we know and in spite of what we can see.
Not quite.
Alma 32: 21 And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
What we can't see or can't know, but most importantly have "hope" in is not worth the time or effort. But a perfect knowledge is not required. Hope can act as a buffer against what is not completely 'seen' or 'known'.
jfro18 wrote:It's a dishonest approach...
Only if you're looking through the eyes of pure/strict rationality without the eyes of faith.
jfro18 wrote:...you can't just piece together a theory by carefully dancing around the landmines that were put in place by the very people who were a part of the process itself.
Lemmie wrote:That is a mis-use of Clark Goble's comment in T& S that takes his words out of context, which the post from which you took this quote makes absolutely clear.
Nonetheless, the point I'm making stands. And the quote does support it.
I will, however, acknowledge that the quote may have had another intended meaning in full context. I had pulled the quote off of another thread as it stood in isolation. In fact, I think it was placed there by you.
The tangled spaghetti of sophistry required to prop up the Book of Mormon is pretty amazing. I find the psychology of belief to be fascinating. What would ever motivate someone to construct this Rube Goldberg machine of faith?
I simply can't fathom it. I'm just not made that way.
Lemmie wrote:That is a mis-use of Clark Goble's comment in T& S that takes his words out of context, which the post from which you took this quote makes absolutely clear.
Nonetheless, the point I'm making stands. And the quote does support it.
I will, however, acknowledge that the quote may have had another intended meaning in full context. I had pulled the quote off of another thread as it stood in isolation. In fact, I think it was placed there by you.
Incorrect, on both counts. The person who made the comment did not intend it to support your meaning, and it did not "stand in isolation" in another thread, the context was made clear. The use by me of the post, in conjunction with fence sitter's points, is relevant to the ongoing discussion, so I'm happy to post it here:
Lemmie wrote:
fence sitter wrote:Regarding the use of the KJV in writing the Book of Mormon. It is a frequent apologetic defense to state there is no record of Joseph Smith using the KJV when he created the Book of Mormon so therefore he must not have had one present.
Given that we now know he plagiarized from Clark's Bible Commentary to make some of the JST revisions, in spite of the lack of a record of him using it, it is then reasonable to conclude he had access to or directly used a KJV of the Bible when he wrote the Book of Mormon. BYU classics professor Tom Wayment has stated that the Book of Mormon quotes directly from the KJV of the New Testament over 80 times and that he has found 400 Book of Mormon verses with a direct textural influence from the KJV. But it gets worse, when Wayment ran a word comparison program which compared the text of the Book of Mormon to the text of the KJV, a program that was designed to find instances where 3 or more words in a row from one text matched the other, there were over 6000 hits.
Smith and Cowdery were absolutely using the KJV when they made up the Book of Mormon.
grindael wrote:I'm just completely blown away by these numbers. We just have no idea what Smith & Cowdery were doing in 1829. But as you say, we know he used Clarke's Commentary, and no one ever mentioned seeing Smith or Rigdon with it. So Jo could be sly about using source material to make things up. It is my belief that the "hat trick" was only used when people were around, it was a gimmick that Smith & Cowdery didn't use when they were alone. They were "bosom friends" and Cowdery is the most silent of the three witnesses, and the best way to keep a secret, is to never talk about something. Both Smith & Cowdery were the same in that.
This just adds further to the implausible position of Carmack, in trying to find Early Modern English, as transmitted to Joseph Smith via the stone. Clark Goble commented on this, in a blog entry on T & S:
goble wrote:What the EmoE thesis would at best do is invalidate the idea that Joseph composed the Book of Mormon as he dictated it.[6] Unfortunately that does not entail that the text is what we believers think it to be.