Rasmussen on Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon

[Physics Guy]

How many hypothetically possible books are there which would have about the amount and style of chiasmus that the Book of Mormon has?

It seems to me that this must be a very large number. The chiasms can be in any places in the text, and on any subjects, with any sets of elements A,B,C, ... as long as they appear before ...,C,B,A.

Furthermore the ways you have to interpret the text in order to see the chiasmus in each case can be any. Like, maybe there's a word "son" in the text, and if you count "son" as a kind of "youth" than it's a nice middle item "C" in a long chiasmus, but if you count it as "male" or "family" then it doesn't fit and the chiasmus is missing its "C". In a different chiasm, interpreting "son" as "male" might be what you need to fit the chiasmic structure, and "youth" wouldn't work. This interpretive freedom multiplies the number of possible chiasms, especially longer ones.

This all makes a very large number of possible books with about the amount and style of chiasmus that the Book of Mormon has. Whatever this large number is, let's call it N.

Does this large number N appear anywhere in Rasmussen's analysis?

[bill4long]

I don't know if this has been covered in the thread but D. Michael Quinn had something interesting to say about chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.

https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_ ... -chiasmus/

It seems more than plausible to me that Joe or one of his inner circle had come across Horne's Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, first published in 1818 and republished in 1825 (and many times thereafter), which discusses chiasmus. It enjoyed widespread circulation in the USA and was advertised in Palmyra in 1825.

“E. Littell… has in press, AN INTRODUCTION To the Critical Study and Knowledge of THE HOLY SCRIPTURES By Thomas Hartwell Horne, M .A…. the Poetry of the Hebrews…” Wayne Sentinel (Palmyra, NY), 6 Apr. 1825

[Philo Sofee]

I don't know if this has been covered in the thread but D. Michael Quinn had something interesting to say about chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.

https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_ ... -chiasmus/

It seems more than plausible to me that Joe or one of his inner circle had come across Horne's Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, first published in 1818 and republished in 1825 (and many times thereafter), which discusses chiasmus. It enjoyed widespread circulation in the USA and was advertised in Palmyra in 1825.

“E. Littell… has in press, AN INTRODUCTION To the Critical Study and Knowledge of THE HOLY SCRIPTURES By Thomas Hartwell Horne, M .A…. the Poetry of the Hebrews…” Wayne Sentinel (Palmyra, NY), 6 Apr. 1825

Don't tell any of the Mopologists about this. We all know, that along with Alma and Nahom the Mopes wish to maintain the vacuum in what Joseph Smith could not have known, so lets keep er down to a dull roar that Smith, yet again, as with every evidence elicited for testimony sake, had access to knowledge in order to bring forth the Book of Mormon. It's just not good for the business of building testimony into the youth, you know?

[Physics Guy]

Apologists argue that just because all these books were published in Smith's time, and were in principle accessible not too far away from him, doesn't mean that he had actually read them. Apologists like to make fun of the "vast frontier library" that skeptics blithely assume the rural bumpkin enjoyed.

Unfortunately for the apologists, though, the question isn't whether Smith had any book on his shelf, but whether he could have encountered the ideas in the book at any time over the years before the Book of Mormon appeared. All it takes is for him to overhear a conversation in a pub, or hear an aside in a sermon, and he can store the idea away for future use. It would be hard to find hard evidence that he definitely did read or hear about a particular idea at any particular time and place, but here's the nasty problem for apologists: it's enormously harder to rule out the chance that he did.

If a book was in print in Smith's time, and accessible anywhere within a few hundred miles of him, then the chance that Smith somehow encountered some of the book's content is enormously higher than the likelihood that he was a true prophet who got golden plates from an angel.

[Doctor Steuss]

Which is more likely?

1) Word repetition correlates to oral dictation of stories and sermons by someone with a limited, Biblically inspired vocabulary.

2) Word repetition correlates to ancientness, due to a high density of Hebraic chiasmus.

I'm pretty late to this conversation, and really don't have much to contribute, but I just wanted to note that many parts of the Torah were likely transmitted (for a time) predominately orally. The chiasmus in the Torah could potentially be somewhat influenced by the same thing that influenced their (inadvertent?) inclusion within the Book of Mormon. Oral creation/transmission.

To me, their presence within the Book of Mormon is as much an indicator of oral creation as it is of ancientness (if not more-so). It's just one more of those things that can just as easily be explained within the realm of frontier Protestantism (with the bonus that you don't have to invoke nocturnal seraphs in your theory).

[Moksha]

Apologists argue that just because all these books were published in Smith's time, and were in principle accessible not too far away from him, doesn't mean that he had actually read them. Apologists like to make fun of the "vast frontier library" that skeptics blithely assume the rural bumpkin enjoyed.

Apologists make a good argument that a boy who sat on his front porch playing the banjo and was barely cognizant of the outside world is unlikely to have picked up a book. Even if he could duel with a guitar, it does not prove anything and you can't trust the word of city slickers.

[toon]

Apologists argue that just because all these books were published in Smith's time, and were in principle accessible not too far away from him, doesn't mean that he had actually read them. Apologists like to make fun of the "vast frontier library" that skeptics blithely assume the rural bumpkin enjoyed.

Apologists make a good argument that a boy who sat on his front porch playing the banjo and was barely cognizant of the outside world is unlikely to have picked up a book. Even if he could duel with a guitar, it does not prove anything and you can't trust the word of city slickers.

I got the reference. And if the movie is any indication, this is going to go downhill fast.

[Dr Moore]

Which is more likely?

1) Word repetition correlates to oral dictation of stories and sermons by someone with a limited, Biblically inspired vocabulary.

2) Word repetition correlates to ancientness, due to a high density of Hebraic chiasmus.

I'm pretty late to this conversation, and really don't have much to contribute, but I just wanted to note that many parts of the Torah were likely transmitted (for a time) predominately orally. The chiasmus in the Torah could potentially be somewhat influenced by the same thing that influenced their (inadvertent?) inclusion within the Book of Mormon. Oral creation/transmission.

To me, their presence within the Book of Mormon is as much an indicator of oral creation as it is of ancientness (if not more-so). It's just one more of those things that can just as easily be explained within the realm of frontier Protestantism (with the bonus that you don't have to invoke nocturnal seraphs in your theory).

This is how I see it too. Joseph may not have read all of the source material, but if he heard the stories or the main ideas, what’s the difference?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm pretty late to this conversation, and really don't have much to contribute, but I just wanted to note that many parts of the Torah were likely transmitted (for a time) predominately orally. The chiasmus in the Torah could potentially be somewhat influenced by the same thing that influenced their (inadvertent?) inclusion within the Book of Mormon. Oral creation/transmission.

To me, their presence within the Book of Mormon is as much an indicator of oral creation as it is of ancientness (if not more-so). It's just one more of those things that can just as easily be explained within the realm of frontier Protestantism (with the bonus that you don't have to invoke nocturnal seraphs in your theory).

This is how I see it too. Joseph may not have read all of the source material, but if he heard the stories or the main ideas, what’s the difference?

Why couldn’t OC have read the material?

- Doc

[bill4long]

Apologists argue that just because all these books were published in Smith's time, and were in principle accessible not too far away from him, doesn't mean that he had actually read them. Apologists like to make fun of the "vast frontier library" that skeptics blithely assume the rural bumpkin enjoyed.

Unfortunately for the apologists, though, the question isn't whether Smith had any book on his shelf, but whether he could have encountered the ideas in the book at any time over the years before the Book of Mormon appeared. All it takes is for him to overhear a conversation in a pub, or hear an aside in a sermon, and he can store the idea away for future use. It would be hard to find hard evidence that he definitely did read or hear about a particular idea at any particular time and place, but here's the nasty problem for apologists: it's enormously harder to rule out the chance that he did.

If a book was in print in Smith's time, and accessible anywhere within a few hundred miles of him, then the chance that Smith somehow encountered some of the book's content is enormously higher than the likelihood that he was a true prophet who got golden plates from an angel.

Right. What it means, simply, is that chiasmus is not evidence of ancient historicity of the Book of Mormon.