Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_DrW]

Hey Ceeboo,

Come on now, would I mess with you?

I don't think so.

LDSFF is the LDS Freedom Forum board. Sound Right? Well it is.

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopi%20...%2014&t=30777

It is on the first page of comments.

Read the other comments, look at the pictures and avatars, and then see if you think this is serious or not.

Huh!

It looks to be as serious as serious gets.

You have to realize, my Christian Friend, that the Mormonisciousness of most folks you encounter on this board is nothing compared to that of the hard core of this religion.

Perhaps?

Thanks for the link/reply my atheist friend!

by the way, how many boards/forums do you Mormons and ex-Mormons have?

Peace,
Ceeboo

Clearly not as many as we need.

[_Ceeboo]

by the way, how many boards/forums do you Mormons and ex-Mormons have?

Peace,
Ceeboo

Clearly not as many as we need.

(Exactly what I was thinking!)

Peace,
Ceeboo

[_Kishkumen]

By arguing that the language used in the Book of Mormon is not special you may succeed in delinking the Great War and the Book of Mormon, but you simultaneously destroy the supposed langauge evidences. All of the alleged hebrewims and other language evidences are now dead in the water. The metholodgy is now shown to incredibly flawed and prone to false positives. Where once the arguments were made for their rarity and uniqueness of the langauge of the Book of Mormon they must now be made to show how common it was as you have done above.
You might suceed in separating the Book of Mormon from the late war, but by doing so you will demonstrate the Book of Mormon is simply a product of its time.
So good luck!

Well, and a simple Google search, as I believe I suggested some time ago on this very thread, is not going to suffice to show that the way these phrases are deployed is or is not similar in the two books. One has to look at the usage of the phrases. If they are used in closely similar ways, whereas other texts do not deploy them in the same ways, then that suggests a relationship that should prompt further examination.

I like our friend the narrator, and I am not trying to identify him as an apologist when I say this, but I have seen this silly trick with Google several times now and it simply does not cut it. Literary analysis is not a Google search. Establishing or arguing against intertextuality requires a closer examination of the texts with special attention to the contexts in which these phrases are used.

I was trained by some of the finest scholars doing intertextual analysis, and I am fairly confident that I know how to do this. One may start with a Google search of 19th century English books, but that would only be a very first step.

[_Kishkumen]

Brant Gardner comments as follows, regarding Mosiah 20:10: "What we probably have in this case is Joseph substituting a known animal (out of place) for an animal which was also a big cat. In other words, the underlying text would have been 'jaguar' but the translation would be 'lion.'"

And without the original text, we have no way of knowing whether he is correct or not. One just chooses tight or loose translation on an ad hoc basis without the control having the source document.

[_Kishkumen]

And where have I said that supposed Hebraisms were evidence of ancient origins?

To the contrary, I would say that these stretched parallelisms between the Book of Mormon and LW are just as problematic as attempted parallelisms between the Book of Mormon and other ancient texts.

We'll see. I would say it is too early to tell, but I don't believe intertexts of a certain degree of complexity are likely to be the result of mere chance.

[_robuchan]

Brant Gardner comments as follows, regarding Mosiah 20:10: "What we probably have in this case is Joseph substituting a known animal (out of place) for an animal which was also a big cat. In other words, the underlying text would have been 'jaguar' but the translation would be 'lion.'"

And without the original text, we have no way of knowing whether he is correct or not. One just chooses tight or loose translation on an ad hoc basis without the control having the source document.

So Joseph comes to the word and he's impressed that it's a big cat but no further specificity? God can't do any better than that? Is this God worthy of worship? If he can't even get his prophet to translate correctly I'm not too worried he's going to punish me for my sins. I see him pulling out a whiffle bat to paddle my butt while I stifle laughter like my mom when i was a kid.

[_Kishkumen]

Hey Kish,

I believe that Joseph sent him to Mitchill. I believe that Bradish was an afterthought by Harris. This book connection is fascinating, and helps to confirm a lot of things about why Jo sent Harris to Mitchill. (There is also the connection between Mitchill and the Detroit Manuscript). The first mention of Harris' visit to New York doesn't even mention Anthon, it features Mitchill, and this from the Palmyra Freeman from 1829:

So blindly enthusiastic was Harris, that he took some of the characters interpreted by Smith, and went in search of some one, besides the interpreter, who was learned enough to English them; but all to whom he applied (among the number was Professor Mitchell, of New York,) happened not to be possessed of sufficient knowledge to give satisfaction! Harris returned, and set Smith to work at interpreting the Bible.

Anthon wrote in 1841:

Many years ago, the precise date I do not now recollect, a plain looking countryman called upon me with a letter from Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, requesting me to examine, and give my opinion upon, a certain paper, marked with various characters which the Doctor confessed he could not decypher, and which the bearer of the note was very anxious to have explained. A very brief examination of the paper convinced me that it was a mere hoax, and a very clumsy one too.

Harris, two years later, told Charles Butler (a lawyer he tried to borrow money from to finance the Book of Mormon) he visited Anthon, then Mitchill then Anthon again after Mitchill. I think that the purpose of Harris' trip was to visit Mitchill. He then was recommended to Bradish (who was on the way) and he recommended him to Anthon. Harris simply saw Anthon first. He then went to Mitchill, who was enthusiastic about what Harris showed him, and then Haris took that to Anthon who he visited a second time. (Who then possibly, tore up Mitchill's paper) and wrote his own that Harris did not keep, because it was critical of the whole story. I have this documented here. http://mormonitemusings.com/2013/09/22/ ... -new-york/

That could be right. I don't know the history of the scenario well enough to say. I would like to see more definitive evidence that Smith referred Harris to Mitchill. I seem to recall that some questions have been raised regarding the accuracy of Anthon's accounts. If I recall correctly, there are more than one and they contradict each other at points, not necessarily about this, but regarding other important details.

[_Kishkumen]

So Joseph comes to the word and he's impressed that it's a big cat but no further specificity? God can't do any better than that? Is this God worthy of worship? If he can't even get his prophet to translate correctly I'm not too worried he's going to punish me for my sins. I see him pulling out a whiffle bat to paddle my butt while I stifle laughter like my mom when i was a kid.

Theological questions are beyond my ken.

[_Kishkumen]

I've been watching these threads, biding my time. It has come, now that Wade has served up perhaps the most ridiculous turd of all:

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/620 ... 1209311392

That man makes no sense.

[_Kishkumen]

What I think this book can show us is the KJV-influenced vernacular that had currency during Smith's day. A lot of the terminology shared by both books can be found in other publications from the same time period, although this book appears to have the highest concentration of non-KJV linguistic overlap. The Late War very well may have been read by Smith and/or Cowdery growing up (it became marketed as a textbook for children), or even around the time of the rendering of the Book of Mormon. They may have even made a conscious decision to pattern the flavor of the Book of Mormon language after this book. At this point, however, I don't see the relationship being much deeper than that.

What are the implications of this conclusion? It means, in my opinion, that the theory that the Book of Mormon was revealed letter-by-letter to Joseph Smith is significantly undermined, unless, of course, one wants to assert a very, very tight brand of accommodationism (God so adapted the language of his revelation to Smith's own culture, worldview, and personal lenses that he exactly mimicked the very kinds of phraseology he would have come up with). That begs the question in my opinion.

I am impressed by mak's estimation of the situation. Well done, mak!