David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Symmachus »

Benjamin McGuire wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:52 pm
Symmachus wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:06 pm
Well, it depends on how closely you believe the English translation reflects its putative source text. Alma could not have quoted or alluded to an as yet unwritten text. Or else, under the theory of a rather literal translation, Alma is post Pauline.
The book of Alma is not post-Pauline though, is it. See, you keep conflating the text of the Book of Mormon with its putative source. If you want to contextualize it by saying, "assuming that the English translation is a word-for-word translation of its putative source ....". But then, I certainly don't believe this to be the case (as should be evidenced from my presentation on translation). As long as you make your assumptions clear, there isn't a problem
Note “it depends “... as well, I have used this very clarifier in one form or another a dozen times in our conversation. I’m not conflating anything but have been throughout showing a flaw in that very position if applied consistently. It seems obvious that the Book of Mormon is from 1830, but the Thompson article to which I initially responded says otherwise and provides a critical reading that assumes that sort of word-for-word literalness. You swooped in to plant the flag of allusion and declare the problem solved. All I’ve been saying is that it doesn’t solve it for that position. I’ve been consistent in separating the two. Maybe you didn’t see my initial comment in that context, but I’m not sure how much clearer I can make it by this point. You don’t agree with that position either. I’m sorry I’ve only been able to respond to your long posts here and not to all of your writings on the topic, but a little reading comprehension, please.
Sometimes anachronisms are secondary to that chronology in the sense that they are not part of the evidence used to establish the chronology and don't affect it one way or the other. Thus you are right that the quotation of Paul by Alma, which is strictly an anachronism in its narrative context set as the 2nd century BC, is not an anachronism from the perspective of the Book of Mormon's English, since the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, long after St. Paul. But sometimes they are primary evidence in establishing chronology, which is a problem for people who take assume a literal translation of the Book of Mormon.
Right. And this creates the need to distinguish between the two, right? Those that can be limited to the translation, and those that can't.
Yes, I look forward to reading some of your published work to see how that is done without the source text or some independent form of it as a control.
So, if we accept that the Book of Mormon is a fairly literal translation in the traditional sense taken by the Thompson article, then it is an anachronism that would cause us to revise our understanding of the text's chronology—hence my original comment that you object to.
Just remember, I am highly critical of the position taken by the Thompson article. I don't accept that the Book of Mormon is a fairly literal translation. Literal translations are, as I point out in great detail in that presentation, generally poor translations. And this is an important observation because you are making an argument against a very specific set of assumptions.
Again, “it depends...” here with its textual variant “if we accept”.
No. An intertextual relationship is not a chronological relationship
Texts don’t exist outside of time. “Marty! You’re not thinking 4th dimensionally!”
except when we are speaking of the specific sort of intertext we call dependence - where we can establish a genealogical relationship. It is not always possible to determine direction and path that borrowing takes. Sometimes it is fairly easy. I have some longer discussions about this (with some examples) in the review essay that I published about Rick Grunder's book.
Very easy in the Book of Mormon’s case. As you keep reminding us, it’s a text from 1830.
You want to talk about Paul, and a Pauline corpus,
No, I wanted only to show what happens to the literalist position if applied consistently. I’m genuinely not sure what your issue is, unless you are actually a literalist for whom intertextuality is a tactic to avoid inconvenient absurdities as part of an overall strategy to buttress Book of Mormon historicity from whatever angle helps.

Your point about these, um, pre-Pauline similarities to Pauline language as intertexts are well taken, but they are irrelevant to the original critique which is against a position you claim not to hold. I can only speculate why you want to beat a horse that has been shot, stabbed, hung, electrocuted, dismembered, and turned into glue.
but, Alma in the Book of Mormon doesn't quote Paul. Alma quotes the King James Bible's translation of Paul. This relationship is almost certainly genealogical (even if we cannot determine the exact path of the borrowing). The Book of Mormon also quotes Isaiah, but it is quoting the KJV. I can say with absolute certainty that the language in the Book of Mormon in places occurs in the way it occurs precisely because the KJV language occurs the way it does. This is an intertextual relationship but it is also dependence.
Well put. I agree there is dependence.
Can we even say that there is an intertextual relationship between the Book of Mormon and Paul?
Your sentence before this already answered the question.
And if so, what do you mean by Paul?
Not sure it matters, as long as we agree that it’s before the 1820s.
As I noted, we will just have to agree to disagree.
On what? That pre-existing assumptions don’t condition what interpretations are possible for a given reader before an interpretive act even occurs? See your comments re: assumptions and conflation of text and translation.
There isn't, as far as I can tell, any difference here between your position and the position of a critic of the Documentary Hypothesis who argues that E doesn't exist because there is no text that represents E.
You and I agree that we only have the English text of the Book of Mormon. The Documentary Hypothesis is a system of deductive inferences not from translation but from strands of Hebrew text discernible in the first instance by mostly Hebrew-specific features to greater and lesser degrees (diction, occasional verb forms and even anachronisms). The “focus” and “emphasis” or “ideology” or whatever specific claims of a given strand are derived secondarily from linguistic data, and there is widest disagreement precisely because there is so little linguistic data to support these interpretations, not because a manuscript or an independent fragment of these sources are yet to be found.

Show me the consensus on what “E” is and we’ll talk about whether this an apt analogy.
Well, what can I say. You can take it up with the literature. My point is a generally held consensus - but it does take one clarification. There is no question that Esther is historical. It is an ancient text. It just doesn't have historicity. This is the distinction between having historicity and being verisimilar. The document clearly has a lot of details that are correct. It's the people that didn't exist.
Yes, as I mentioned, it’s misleading distinction, like saying Socrates isn’t a man just because all men aren’t Socrates. My claim was that something with historicity will by definition contain close to 0 anachronisms. I didn’t claim that lack of anachronisms proves historicity, but that’s the absurd straw angel you chose to wrestle in citing Esther. All I’m pointing out is only that it doesn’t appear to be a great example in a discussion around the Book of Mormon.

There is no evidence against the historicity of Esther that I can find other than argumenta ex silentio with a very small set of contemporary sources, inconsistencies in the text, and improbabilities. It has no anachronisms that need explaining (i.e. chunks of text that appear to post-date its putative historical setting).
I have already written a great deal about this. What more do you want? What were the mechanics of how the Book was produced?
You’ve written the Book of Mormon as a dictated but orally composed text with formulaic diction derived from the King James Bible and with techniques common to oral composition (mnemonic techniques like chiasmus, for example? I was just asking if you’d thought about it.
Perhaps you could enlighten me.
I’m certain I could not.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Kishkumen »

To flog a thrice-dead Hermes, without access to the source text of the Book of Mormon or any related ancient text that attests to its existence or renders it scrutable in some way, there is just no fruitful argument to be made about a Book of Mormon text written in antiquity. So interesting that as many times as it can be said, there will be someone who returns to make some variation of an argument in favor of a non-starter.

At some point, one must acknowledge that certain problems are insurmountable. The complete absence of evidence, one should think, would be on that list.

It is interesting to see our friend Benjamin McGuire qualify things from the position of a believer, which I suppose is a way of holding forth while that glaring lack of evidence is standing there like a massive curelom and cumom in the room. I don't have a problem with people who believe, but I do have a problem with arguments that substitute belief for evidence, when the arguments are historical ones.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Lem »

Benjamin McGuire wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:17 pm
Lem wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 8:20 pm
Based on the concepts you have established in the last several pages, the part I bolded seems a perfectly valid assumption for PG to make in this discussion of the text. Please correct me if I am misinterpreting your position, PG, but it seems to me that PG’s consideration “that it is a work of fiction” should carry at least the same weight as the opposite, so why would consideration of one option go nowhere at the expense of the other? It seems both should be considered.
I haven't said otherwise. I have tried to be consistent in explicitly stating that all of this is relevant only if we assume that there is an ancient source and that the Book of Mormon is a translation. As a work of fiction, questions of anachronisms are largely meaningless.

I suppose it all depends on what the purpose of the dialogue is. If you want to convince a believer that the anachronisms in the text challenge belief, then you have to argue from that perspective. Simply labeling the text fiction isn't going to generate meaningful dialogue. If on the other hand, you are able to make a coherent argument adopting the same assumptions, it can lead to meaningful dialogue. The reason why the suggestion that PG makes doesn't work in that context is because the outcomes he sees conflict with the outcomes that a believer would look for. A believer is not going to effectively attribute everything in the text to Joseph Smith (in a final redaction layer) because this is generally inconsistent with the assumptions that they make about the nature of the text, its purpose and its contents.
This is an interesting point. Maybe I missed it earlier in the thread where the purpose of the dialogue was described, but I certainly don't see the need to convince a believer of anything in this discussion. I see this as a discussion about the text, and discussing it as fictional vs. nonfictional has already generated a great deal of meaningful dialogue here.

Not discussing a concept such as PG's because it is in "conflict with outcomes that a believer would look for," or that it is "inconsistent with the assumptions" a believer would make is not a legitimate, academic reason. It may be valid in an apologetic sense, but again, that takes it out of the realm of academic analysis. That may certainly be an option, and if this thread is about that, then I can see the argument for a purely apologetic approach.

Earlier I believe you spoke about assumptions by readers not being a valid approach to understanding a text, I would argue that catering to assumptions by believers would fall under the same category. Outside of a purely apologetic approach, your logic, if I am understanding it correctly, would mean that assumptions of believers should have no more of a place in an academic discussion of a text than assumptions by non-believers.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Gadianton »

Gadianton wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:15 am
Ben,

Since you're getting more popular by the day, I'm going to keep it short.

when you say:
Ben wrote:We explain the Rebecca-camel issue by saying that the stories were (re)written after camels were domesticated
I feel like you are affirming what I said, the bold is added wording in case it wasn't clear:
We don't leave the option open that the scribes put the story into the scriptures for the very first time. The scribes during the time of the Rebecca didn't put 'camel', because they didn't have camels, but our rule says that later scribes either inherited the word camel from the prior text, which in this case is impossible, or it is a translation artifact, the extant story is re-written with the new-fangled word camel, which means the story is guaranteed to be authentic by the assumptions we've made about artifacts. Any artifact, after all layers are examined, are artifacts of translation.
Maybe I overlooked this as Ben responded to Lem:
I haven't said otherwise. I have tried to be consistent in explicitly stating that all of this is relevant only if we assume that there is an ancient source and that the Book of Mormon is a translation.
Okay, so maybe I got my wires crossed, and Ben's quote "we explain..." is meant to say that we explain that the stories were re-written not because we're assuming they were re-written, but because evidence supports that they were rewritten. the camel example might be an example of a rewritten story, but not of assuming the story was re-written whereas with the Book of Mormon we're assuming that the anachronism was already in the text.

For instance, the kingship code isn't a good example of a translation anachronism for Smith (per Ben), we prohibit the explanation that Smith just inserted it whole stock, and we know it can't come from Ether's time, and so we put the burden on Moroni. Moroni put in the kingship code.

But from there, it's a problem. Where did Moroni get it? Two possibilities:

a) we prohibit the explanation that Moroni just inserted it whole stock, and we know it can't come from Ether's time. But these are metal plates FROM Ether's time, we don't have the luxury of manuscripts being passed down age to age, where little embellishments can add up. It's all or nothing. This means that it is a translation anachronism for Moroni. But that seems hard to swallow, because all of the reasons that prohibit it from being a translation anachronism for Joseph Smith would surely prevent it from being a translation anachronism for Moroni.

b) we allow Moroni to just insert it whole stock. For believers in general and some apologists, this could work because even if the plates of Ether were ultimately a forgery by Moroni, if Moroni was real, then the Book of Mormon is ancient. But I don't see how it could be satisfying for a Mormon scholar. How could you say in one era, God wholesale blocks interpolations but in another era, he generously allows them? I'm pretty sure the people in Moroni's time would be pissed if they found out Moroni had taken severe liberties with translating -- liberties that would be offensive if it were Joseph Smith, for instance.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Symmachus »

Kishkumen wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:38 pm
At some point, one must acknowledge that certain problems are insurmountable. The complete absence of evidence, one should think, would be on that list.

It is interesting to see our friend Benjamin McGuire qualify things from the position of a believer, which I suppose is a way of holding forth while that glaring lack of evidence is standing there like a massive curelom and cumom in the room. I don't have a problem with people who believe, but I do have a problem with arguments that substitute belief for evidence, when the arguments are historical ones.
I wish I could have said so much in so few words, dear Reverend. I greatly admire Benjamin's efforts here, and I appreciate that it is not a small thing to tangle with three or four posters minutely responding to different lines of argument. I intend to study his presentation on Thursday; it certainly deserves a close look. He seems sincerely to want to find a common methodology—and if there can be one, surely it will take someone like him with a much broader mind that some of our other friends at the Interpreter—but of course, as you summarize it so perfectly here, anything that is going to lead back to a historical Book of Mormon can't be it.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Benjamin McGuire »

Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:46 pm
We don't have the hypothetical E from the Pentateuch or the hypothetical Q from the synoptic Gospels, but we have a limited range of plausible hypotheses from which to choose in accounting for these texts, given our knowledge, limited though it also is, of when they were written and how. If one ancient text refers to a somewhat more ancient text, the use that the first text makes of its predecessor cannot depend on the thousand years of history that followed after them both.
*shrug*

It seems to me that you are engaging in special pleading here.
If instead the entirety of our access to the whole culture of the ancient texts is a miraculous revelation in 19th century English, which in many ways seems aware of the expectations of its 19th century audience, then we have no way of knowing what artefacts may have been introduced in the revelation itself. I mean, the Book of Mormon has a number of direct quotations from the Old and New Testaments in the King James Version, which I'm pretty sure have to be interpreted as final translation artefacts. If important chunks of text can be pasted in because of how they would read to a 19th century audience, rather than because ancient Nephites really wrote them that way, then it's hard to see what kind of textual evidence in the Book of Mormon could be safely identified as not being an artefact of the final translation.
If I haven't managed to convey this by now in a convincing fashion, its probably not worth my time to continue to try, is it. Repeating myself gets old after a time, and I have better things to do with my time.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Benjamin McGuire »

Symmachus wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:17 pm
It seems obvious that the Book of Mormon is from 1830, but the Thompson article to which I initially responded says otherwise and provides a critical reading that assumes that sort of word-for-word literalness. You swooped in to plant the flag of allusion and declare the problem solved. All I’ve been saying is that it doesn’t solve it for that position. I’ve been consistent in separating the two. Maybe you didn’t see my initial comment in that context, but I’m not sure how much clearer I can make it by this point. You don’t agree with that position either. I’m sorry I’ve only been able to respond to your long posts here and not to all of your writings on the topic, but a little reading comprehension, please.
I don't believe that anyone can possibly make the argument that the Book of Mormon is a word-for-word literal translation. I don't believe that a literal word-for-word translation is in fact a good translation. And while you claim to be consistent in separating the two, your language has been imprecise. You haven't, as far as I can tell, shown any consistency in doing this at all.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Benjamin McGuire »

Lem wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 7:05 pm
Not discussing a concept such as PG's because it is in "conflict with outcomes that a believer would look for," or that it is "inconsistent with the assumptions" a believer would make is not a legitimate, academic reason. It may be valid in an apologetic sense, but again, that takes it out of the realm of academic analysis. That may certainly be an option, and if this thread is about that, then I can see the argument for a purely apologetic approach.
But PG isn't making an academic argument.
Earlier I believe you spoke about assumptions by readers not being a valid approach to understanding a text, I would argue that catering to assumptions by believers would fall under the same category. Outside of a purely apologetic approach, your logic, if I am understanding it correctly, would mean that assumptions of believers should have no more of a place in an academic discussion of a text than assumptions by non-believers.
No, I don't think this is what I said.

I think that you cannot read the text without bringing assumptions. Fictional texts, just like non-fictional texts, are read and interpreted through assumptions. The Book of Mormon is not read in the same way by two individuals, one of whom believes it is an ancient record translated into English and the other of whom believes it is a modern fiction. But in any case, I haven't seen much here that would rise to the level of academic analysis. I'll try to make some comments on that in a moment in a separate post before I bow out of the discussion.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Physics Guy »

Benjamin McGuire wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:25 am
It seems to me that you are engaging in special pleading here.
To point out that every other text is different from the Book of Mormon in a crucially relevant way is not special pleading. You acknowledge that the Book of Mormon is unique in that its final redactive layer was much later than the others and miraculous, but you don't seem to appreciate how important this issue is for your project. You seem to just shrug it off and go on as if the Book of Mormon was just like other ancient texts.

This seems to be just ignoring the curelom in the room. Or can you give one example of a text feature which might indicate ancient redaction in the Book of Mormon, and which you can be sure is not an artifact of the final translation step through Joseph Smith? Even one clear example would likely be enough to make me shut up and admit that you've got a point after all.

I can see how it must be tempting to dismiss this quibble of mine as a non-academic argument. Perhaps it somehow is. I'd be at least a bit worried, though, if I were you. I can try to build a radar dish out of bamboo, and I may be all eager to optimize the shape of my dish. Optimal antenna geometry is a complicated and technical subject, all right. If somebody warns me that bamboo doesn't conduct electricity, though, I shouldn't just dismiss their concern because they obviously know nothing about optimal antenna geometry.
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Re: David Bokovoy Issues a Devastating Critique of the Mopologists' "Scholarship"

Post by Symmachus »

Benjamin McGuire wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:33 am
Symmachus wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:17 pm
It seems obvious that the Book of Mormon is from 1830, but the Thompson article to which I initially responded says otherwise and provides a critical reading that assumes that sort of word-for-word literalness. You swooped in to plant the flag of allusion and declare the problem solved. All I’ve been saying is that it doesn’t solve it for that position. I’ve been consistent in separating the two. Maybe you didn’t see my initial comment in that context, but I’m not sure how much clearer I can make it by this point. You don’t agree with that position either. I’m sorry I’ve only been able to respond to your long posts here and not to all of your writings on the topic, but a little reading comprehension, please.
I don't believe that anyone can possibly make the argument that the Book of Mormon is a word-for-word literal translation. I don't believe that a literal word-for-word translation is in fact a good translation. And while you claim to be consistent in separating the two, your language has been imprecise. You haven't, as far as I can tell, shown any consistency in doing this at all.
Benjamin, I have been consistent from the very first about where my comments apply. I have used the terminology you employed as the discussion has progressed, so if it as not as precise as you like, it's because I've been trying to let you set the terms. You didn't like "loose translation" and "tight translation," so I moved to "literal" and the like and terminology that leans on that end of the scale. It is not as if we are talking about air-tight categories anyway.

It doesn't matter whether "anyone can possibly make the argument that the Book of Mormon is a word-for-word literal translation"—I agree with that—but that is exactly what is implied by Thompson's article, whether he argues so explicitly or not. You simply can't derive information about the putative strands of the Documentary Hypothesis by using a translation unless that translation is something close to the consistency that you get from a word-for-word translation. That is exactly the point of my initial comment you came into critique, and I have said it several times now: if you are assuming that kind of translation, then you will run into some problematic anachronisms. You don't see those anachronisms as problematic or even as anachronisms, but that's because you approach the 1830 text from a completely different understanding of its relationship to the source text.

I have no problem with that, but your approach doesn't solve Thompson's problem unless there is some special pleading going on, where sometimes the text is very literal, and other times it is extremely free. Fine. But without a source text, that is not a position you can defend from evidence, only an assertion you can buttress with motivated inference. If that's not your position, I'm not sure why you think we are on opposite sides of the issue.

By the way, I think more of the writers at the Interpreter should pay much closer attention to your warning about their translation assumptions, because Thompson is not the only one whose published work at the Interpreter assumes that kind of consistency. Matthew Bowen's numerous studies on wordplay assume this level of correspondence, as well, to the point that he can apparently discern patterns of language-specific resonances in the Hebrew or Egyptian or Egypto-Hebrew source text through the dark glass of the 1830 language, heavily dependent on the KJB. Something like wordplay is practically impossible to capture in translation; without looking at the source text, you would only discerns its presence in a source text by very strict patterns in the translation, which is what he does, but you only get patterns like that when the translator has taken a mechanical one-to-one approach or something approaching that.
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