"The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

[Bought Yahoo]

I've already spent a lot of time with Carmack on the other board explaining to him the statistical problems with his analysis. I may not be an expert in statistics but I hire statisticians and have seen statisticians go down in flames in court, with their reports excluded.

The Ye Olde English theory of the Book of Mormon, simply, doesn't pass muster with standard statistical methods which would require:

1. An examination of texts for the claimed Ye Olde English theory. Thousands need to be examined. A trained linguist in Ye Old English needs to pick out various texts and phrases to run against the Book of Mormon.

2. An examine of texts for the Book of Mormon period. There are in existence thousands of these books and newspapers. Run the "various texts and phrases" found from No. 1's tests to determine if they continued to be statistically significant in the Book of Mormon period.

3. Run the "various texts and phrases" against the Book of Mormon and ask if the occurrences therein are statistically significant in comparison to a run against contemporary books and newspapers.

4. Then run the "various texts and phrases" against the various Bibles in use at the time of the Book of Mormon to rule out the possibility that the Bible language influenced the Book of Mormon.

Very little of this statistical stuff was done by Carmack.

It is the same with John Sorensen. There are statistical packages (that's overstating; just methodologies) to link, say, a site for the historical Troy against the historic texts to see if there is statistical signficiance. Sorensen, a trained anthropologist, did not even mention these packages in his books

[Marcus]

I've already spent a lot of time with Carmack on the other board explaining to him the statistical problems with his analysis. I may not be an expert in statistics but I hire statisticians and have seen statisticians go down in flames in court, with their reports excluded.

The Ye Olde English theory of the Book of Mormon, simply, doesn't pass muster with standard statistical methods which would require:

1. An examination of texts for the claimed Ye Olde English theory. Thousands need to be examined. A trained linguist in Ye Old English needs to pick out various texts and phrases to run against the Book of Mormon.

2. An examine of texts for the Book of Mormon period. There are in existence thousands of these books and newspapers. Run the "various texts and phrases" found from No. 1's tests to determine if they continued to be statistically significant in the Book of Mormon period.

3. Run the "various texts and phrases" against the Book of Mormon and ask if the occurrences therein are statistically significant in comparison to a run against contemporary books and newspapers.

4. Then run the "various texts and phrases" against the various Bibles in use at the time of the Book of Mormon to rule out the possibility that the Bible language influenced the Book of Mormon.

Very little of this statistical stuff was done by Carmack.

It is the same with John Sorensen. There are statistical packages (that's overstating; just methodologies) to link, say, a site for the historical Troy against the historic texts to see if there is statistical signficiance. Sorensen, a trained anthropologist, did not even mention these packages in his books

I'm pretty sure the standard answer would be "but we're not saying it's in 'olde English,' we are saying it's in 'early modern English', as a way to put off your comment. It's obvious what you mean, but some mopologists can be irrelevantly and irritatingly accurate if it's in their favor.

[Symmachus]

How indicative of the state of Book of Mormon ancient-ology that the most innovative idea they have hinges on the English words "that," "did," and "and."

This is all so utterly pointless. A higher percentage of a feature, deemed meaningfully archaic by the researcher vs. a lower percentage compared to a selected text corpus means nothing. Just what percentage of a given feature determines Early Modern Englishness? How many subordinating "that's" per sentence are required to indicate Early Modern Englishness? I strongly suggest that anyone interested in this theory first read some Early Modern English prose, just so you get a sense of how un-Early Modern English the Book of Mormon is. Royal / Carmack should spend more time with texts and less time with corpora.

Anyway this article doesn't help the case. Assuming that he has demonstrated an archaic use of "that" here is more thickly woven into the language of the Book of Mormon than in other archaizing texts of the 19th century, he has shown it to be excessively archaic. So? That suggests the sort of artificiality born of overcompensation, not a genuinely archaic linguistic specimen. He has just shown that the Book of Mormon's language in this minor respect is more Early Modern English than the King James Bible: it's more Biblical than the Bible. Mmm, it tastes so authentic!



In any case, if one is going to make an empirical case for the Book of Mormon (i.e. not a spiral of reader-response theoretical speculations or take it on faith, which is perfectly legitimate in my mind), it really doesn't matter how much ancient or pre-nineteenth century stuff you think you've found. The logic of the "how could Joseph have known" clearly points the way for us: if there is just one thing in the Book of Mormon that is foreign to antiquity but native to Joseph Smith's culture, then it is not ancient.

Good thing there is absolutely nothing like that in the Book of Mormon!

[Bought Yahoo]

I don't think Carmack is qualified to understand Ye Olde English.

[malkie]

I don't think Carmack is qualified to understand Ye Olde English.

Are you planning to be the þorn in Carmac's side?

[Moksha]

I'm pretty sure the standard answer would be "but we're not saying it's in 'olde English,' we are saying it's in 'early modern English', as a way to put off your comment.

Good point. The group of bards, on the Ghost Translation Committee, are much more Canterbury Tales than Beowulf.

[Alphus and Omegus]

I don't think Carmack is qualified to understand Ye Olde English.

Are you planning to be the þorn in Carmac's side?

𝖂𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 þ𝖊 𝕶𝖎𝖓𝖌'𝖘 𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊?

[huckelberry]

I'm pretty sure the standard answer would be "but we're not saying it's in 'olde English,' we are saying it's in 'early modern English', as a way to put off your comment.

Good point. The group of bards, on the Ghost Translation Committee, are much more Canterbury Tales than Beowulf.

Book of Mormon is pretty modern compared to Canterbury Tales or especially Beowulf. Well quite modern with some old fashioned affectations.(just to state the obvious)

[drumdude]

Good point. The group of bards, on the Ghost Translation Committee, are much more Canterbury Tales than Beowulf.

Book of Mormon is pretty modern compared to Canterbury Tales or especially Beowulf. Well quite modern with some old fashioned affectations.(just to state the obvious)

Can you imagine if it was true? The amount of valuable anthropological information contained within it would be like nothing we've ever seen. A melding of ancient Hebrew culture (which we know quite a bit about) and ancient American culture (which we know much less about). It would be the definitive text on the ancient Americas.

Instead, it is a book of a million errors and fantasies, and instead of being looked to as an authoritative ancient American source, it has a couple dozen BYU professors spending their careers making excuses for it.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

- Doc