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.Benjamin McGuire wrote: ↑Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:52 pmThe 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
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.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.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.
Again, “it depends...” here with its textual variant “if we accept”.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.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.
Texts don’t exist outside of time. “Marty! You’re not thinking 4th dimensionally!”No. An intertextual relationship is not a chronological relationship
Very easy in the Book of Mormon’s case. As you keep reminding us, it’s a text from 1830.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.
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.You want to talk about Paul, and a Pauline corpus,
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.
Well put. I agree there is dependence.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.
Your sentence before this already answered the question.Can we even say that there is an intertextual relationship between the Book of Mormon and Paul?
Not sure it matters, as long as we agree that it’s before the 1820s.And if so, what do you mean by Paul?
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.As I noted, we will just have to agree to disagree.
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.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.
Show me the consensus on what “E” is and we’ll talk about whether this an apt analogy.
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.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.
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).
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.I have already written a great deal about this. What more do you want? What were the mechanics of how the Book was produced?
I’m certain I could not.Perhaps you could enlighten me.