Hasa Diga Eebowai wrote:There are numerous references to destroying robbers in the Book of Mormon and none in the Bible. While there are no doubt other potential sources (and I wouldn't make the claim that the robbers in the Book of Mormon are solely based on this one passage) it is interesting that both the Late War and the Book of Mormon speak of going against the band of robbers and destroying them.
You're on a roll, there, Hasa!
Keep up the good work. Before you know it, you'll be winning grants to travel to Mesoamerica to find the ancient homeland of the real authors of Hunt's history of the War of 1812.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Kishkumen wrote:In my view this is one of the most valuable insights on this thread. Language long touted by academically trained LDS apologists as Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon unsurprisingly turns out to be something a nineteenth-century New Yorker who was aping the Bible (and yet was not Joseph Smith) could have written.
And yet, Rick Grunder called it on every Hebraism type discussed in this thread, and the implications for apologetics, some 5 years ago.
I suppose the "silver bullet" status here is how obvious the matter is to such a wide range of people.
I'm pretty sure it's obvious to the apologists as well, which is why we haven't heard from them yet.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
I thought I would share this post from a Facebook discussion. I am not attributing the post, but I wanted to show you the reaction of a person who strikes me as level-headed and seems to have read my post about curious workmanship:
It would be all too easy to point to individual motifs and language to show how problematic it would be to assume some special connection with the Book of Mormon. But its the clustering of examples in one text in a particular time and place that makes the argument for some kind of close relation suggestive. You're right xxxxx, that "curious workmanship" was a common term used in the early 19th century and it is thus quite difficult to point to literary dependence in a situation like this. However, it may nevertheless be worth noting that contrary to the prevalent usage you refer to, the Late War and the Book of Mormon use "curious workmanship" to refer to all the same kinds of things: weapons, boats, and ball-like entities. Which is really striking, in my opinion, since the closest biblical usage deals with the "curious work" of the tabernacle (Ex 35) and an architectural usage was common in the 19th century. I don't know, I'll have to look into it more.
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I agree, it is sad that the issue has to be so divisive and emotional to distract us from giving it the careful attention it deserves. One the one hand, it is sad that people are gleefully accepting news of a book disconfirming the authenticity of the Book of Mormon (since this raises questions about ideological conditioning and confirmation bias and suggests as well that leaving Mormonism has been a traumatic experience at some level), and on the other hand it is sad that others all too readily dismiss the argument of literary influence on the Book of Mormon because of the uncomfortable implications it carries.
At any rate, the book probably is at one level or another an argument against historical authenticity, since it pushes toward understanding the Book of Mormon text in terms of the literary and stylistic conventions of the early 19th century rather than as an ancient text. Pseudo-biblical writing provides a context for the Book of Mormon that has not been fully explored before and needs to be seen as an authorial device as well and not merely understood for how it shaped the way the Book of Mormon was read by its first readers. If the style was authorial in nature, it points to a much larger and indeed CREATIVE hand of Joseph Smith in the final product of the Book of Mormon than most traditionalists have hitherto been willing to give him credit.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Gadianton wrote:And yet, Rick Grunder called it on every Hebraism type discussed in this thread, and the implications for apologetics, some 5 years ago.
I guess I didn't get the memo!
Where did the apologists rebut Grunder's work?
I would like to read what they said.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
1. A select band of warriors ala the stripping warriors. 2. A cataclysmic earthquake with the darkness. 3. Bands of robbers. 4. Devices of curious workmanship.
How many common themes before one can call 'plagiarism'?
--ETA-- 5. Kings-men 6. Standard of liberty 7. Prospering by obeying the laws of the land.
Do we qualify for plagiarism yet?
Last edited by Guest on Tue Oct 22, 2013 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.
Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality. ~Bill Hamblin
Jeffrey Holland wrote:If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit.
Ooooohh I would so love to see what Jeffrey says now.
Was he aware of Grunder's work on Hebraic parallels? That it was distributed in a limited edition and to a select few is a pity. but with the brute strength of the Johnson textual similarity analysis highlighting this work, it is now a double whammy.
Gadianton wrote:And yet, Rick Grunder called it on every Hebraism type discussed in this thread, and the implications for apologetics, some 5 years ago.
I guess I didn't get the memo!
Where did the apologists rebut Grunder's work?
I would like to read what they said.
No, what I'm saying is the Rick basically anticipated everything we're saying on this thread 5 years ago. Reading that .pdf is like reading this thread.
(well not everything, but all the forms of Hebraism that "Late War" debunks he talks about)
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
This is interesting. Apparently, this text was examined in one of the Bushman seminars a little while ago. Someone brought this up in the discussion I am observing to point out that the question had already been dealt with.
Another person responded:
Yeah, I saw the note of someone in the seminar who had looked at Hunt, and from what I could tell, it was woefully inadequate.
So it seems like no one aside from Grunder and Johnson has closely examined these works to compare them.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Gadianton wrote:No, what I'm saying is the Rick basically anticipated everything we're saying on this thread 5 years ago. Reading that .pdf is like reading this thread.
(well not everything, but all the forms of Hebraism that "Late War" debunks he talks about)
Ah, Dean, it was faculty lounge humor that missed its mark.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Jeffrey Holland wrote:If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit.
Ooooohh I would so love to see what Jeffrey says now.
Was he aware of Grunder's work on Hebraic parallels? That it was distributed in a limited edition and to a select few is a pity. but with the brute strength of the Johnson textual similarity analysis highlighting this work, it is now a double whammy.
Maybe he shouldn't have challenged us to account for the origin of those pages. It seems that accounting is not working out well for him.