Schryver Responds

[_Brent Metcalfe]

Hi Will,

I responded to your ill-advised criticism over on MAD (see here).

Cheers,

</brent>

[_dartagnan]

Dear God, NO! What can we do to keep Coggy in the LDS Church? Someone think of something quick! We critics get far too much mileage off his lowbrow shenanigans to let him come to his senses!

Last I heard, a good swig of Noni juice will do the job. One of its latest miracle wonders is its ability to kill a failing testimony (along with the anti-Mormon culprit) on sight. I think Will Schryver has some on sale for $40 a bottle. It arrives with Tahitian model, complete with coconut hairdo.

[_harmony]

Hi Will,

I responded to your ill-advised criticism over on MAD. [snip link]
Cheers,

</brent>

Why couldn't you have written that paragraph here?

[_Brent Metcalfe]

Hi harmony,

Here you go...

Hi Will,

Your criticism is ill-advised.

Yes, there are elements in my transcription that someone unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of Frederick G. Williams' handwriting could perceive as transcription errors. For instance, Williams' trademark minimalist "s" in "flocks" is conjoined to the "k," effectively serving as its leg yet curving in the opposite direction of the legs on Williams' typical terminal k's. I discuss such elements in the text-critical annotations for my transcriptions.

On the other hand, your transcription of Abraham 1:12 from BoAbr ms. 1a (fldr. 2) exhibits an error that manifests a pronounced unfamiliarity with the rudiments of Williams' handwriting (if memory serves, Brian Hauglid made the same error in his FAIR 2006 presentation).

My best,

</brent>


http://mormonscripturestudies.com
(© 2008 Brent Lee Metcalfe. All rights reserved.)
——————————
The thesis of inspiration may not be invoked to guarantee historicity, for a divinely inspired story is not necessarily history.
—Raymond E. Brown

Cheers,

</brent>

[_harmony]

Thanks :-)

*awaiting Will's reply*

[_CaliforniaKid]

Will has posted a lengthy response in the Pundits thread at MADB, which I will not attempt to reproduce here since it includes substantial quoting and formatting, and plenty of images. It's clear he spent quites some time putting it together. Will identifies what he thinks are four errors in Brent's transcription. My general impressions are that in the first case he appears to be right, but in the other three it's less clear.

[_dartagnan]

Here is Will's massive blow to Brent (kidding of course):

In the very first sentence of verse 3, the word “country” appears (“… get thee out of thy country …”). Mr. Metcalfe transcribes the word as: count[ ]y. The brackets indicating that the “r” was omitted. However, having previously examined this particular portion of the document with much care, it was evident to me that, in fact, what we are seeing here is a “ligature,” which in text-critical parlance indicates an example where two or more letter-forms (in this case, the "ry" pair) are joined as a single glyph.

Will is such an idiot, and he doesn't have the testicles to come here and deal with the four clear indisputable points where I showed he flat out lies in his apologetics. Instead, he wants to make mountains over lint about whether an irrelevant word like this was meant to read "county" or "country"! Yeah, that proves Brent is totally discredited! How does any of the above support his copyist theory?

This is the kind of irrelevant crap they spend all their time on.

Will just can't get it through his head that he has become "irrelevant" to the debate. He hasn't an ounce of credibility left, no matter how many "ligatures" he scrubs out of his "inferior photos." What is teh apologetic value in Will's post? Why has he spent the last week working on this, but refuses to address the four points where he flat out lied? The apologetic value is found in his underlying attempt to suggest Brent's credibility has somehow been diminished.

Brent is probably waiting to see if Brian is going to make an argument any time soon. Will is simply not worth responding to. And it drives him nuts, which is why he is always using the pundits arena as a pulpit. As if anyone even pays attention to him.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Instead, he wants to make mountains over lint about whether an irrelevant word like this was meant to read "county" or "country"!

In fairness to William, Brent started it. Brent's position seems to be that no aspect of the transcription is irrelevant and that producing a maximally accurate transcription is a necessary first step in understanding the documents.

[_dartagnan]

In fairness to William, Brent started it.

No, I started it. I threw Will's credibility on the table for examination and Will has done nothing to prove me wrong. He started a silly thread "Schryer Responds" but then he really responded to nothing.

Yes, Brent made a remark earlier that Will's transcription had an error of some sort, but then he just dropped the subject, which was suggestive to me that he never really thought Will was worth the time to correct. Nobody else seemed to care about the alleged error except Will.

So I can accuse him of flat out lying and provide pages of documented evidence, and Will ignores it all. Yet, Brent makes an off the cuff comment that Will made a minor error in copying something from what Brian called Will's "inferior photos," and Will goes all ape-shit and spends a week trying to get him back with a tit for tat.

This is school yard apologetics.

PS: And it seems Will is addressing the word document Brent provided, right? Hasn't Brent already indicated that it isn't perfect, and that he has already made one revision? We're talking pre-publication tinkering here. Will deserves to be corrected because of his continuous "bombastic certitude." I don't want to hear about how Brent overlooked dot here or there. I want to see how any of this means anything to his analysis. Will invented an entire transcription from thin air - how does this even begin to compare to Brent missing a dot here or there?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Yes, Brent made a remark earlier that Will's transcription had an error of some sort, but then he just dropped the subject,...Brent makes an off the cuff comment that Will made a minor error in copying something from what Brian called Will's "inferior photos," and Will goes all ape-s*** and spends a week trying to get him back with a tit for tat.

Brent's comments weren't off-the-cuff, and he didn't drop the subject. Much as I respect Brent and his work, he evidently is not immune to the human penchant for baiting one's opponent. In my opinion that's what he was doing in this case. Will's response was bombastic and irrelevant in the scope of the larger debate, but in that respect I think he's just playing the cards Brent has dealt him.