Interpreter apologists wrestle with Nephi’s transoceanic vessel

[Kishkumen]

In sum, please continue your discussion. I wish you the best, and I hope there are no hard feelings. I just disagree with you, and I note that no one cares to or can address the points I have made. They may not be important to you, but I think they are important. They come from my experience analyzing literature within an academic framework. It is funny to have Shulem lecture me about how I am not being academic and scholarly. I will cherish these memories.



Er, I mean laughs.

[drumdude]

I’ve lost track of what we’re even arguing about

[Shulem]

I’ve lost track of what we’re even arguing about

DEAR READERS (including Kyler Rasmussen),

Can anybody cite a single word, phrase, or verse in Nephi's account that would lead Joseph Smith the translator to suspect or assume that Nephi received outside assistance in constructing a ship?

[Chap]

... this includes condemning Joseph Smith for translation choices that do not match the English of the King James translation closely. This reminds me of Vergil's "mistake" of constructing a simile around the image of a Roman magistrate calming a crowd in an epic poem that was set in the Late Bronze Age.

Does it really? You don't think it was likely that Smith was really trying to write 'Bible English' in order to persuade his readers to accept what he wrote as 'more scripture, just like the Bible', but sometimes didn't do the job as perfectly as he might have wished? OK.

Are you talking about Aeneid 1.148-153, where Neptune calms the winds?

And as, when ofttimes in a great nation tumult has risen, the base rabble rage angrily, and now brands and stones fly, madness lending arms; then, if perchance they set eyes on a man honored for noble character and service, they are silent and stand by with attentive ears; with speech he sways their passion and soothes their breasts.

Has anyone ever called that passage a 'mistake'? I can't see why they would. And how does it resemble Smith's failure to make an accurate imitation of the writing of King James' Men? But maybe I am looking at the wrong bit of text?

If Vergil had tried to represent the diction of some writer of archaic Latin but messed it up, that might have been a better analogy, surely? But I am no classicist.

[Shulem]

In sum, please continue your discussion. I wish you the best, and I hope there are no hard feelings. I just disagree with you, and I note that no one cares to or can address the points I have made. They may not be important to you, but I think they are important. They come from my experience analyzing literature within an academic framework. It is funny to have Shulem lecture me about how I am not being academic and scholarly. I will cherish these memories.



Er, I mean laughs.

Believe it or not, your contribution, Kish-baby, does have some value to the thread. You have demonstrated techniques used by LDS apologists on how to deflect and take their opponents eye off the ball and derail what's really important by introducing fantasy. You bring material (Roman garbage) to the board that serves no purpose other than to detract.

Well done. You get a ribbon. You make a great apologist!

Yeah, baby!

[drumdude]

DEAR READERS (including Kyler Rasmussen)

Kyler actually disagrees with the author of the article that Nephi had help.

[Shulem]

DEAR READERS (including Kyler Rasmussen)

Kyler actually disagrees with the author of the article that Nephi had help.

That's well and good to know. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Kishkumen]

Does it really? You don't think it was likely that Smith was really trying to write 'Bible English' in order to persuade his readers to accept what he wrote as 'more scripture, just like the Bible', but sometimes didn't do the job as perfectly as he might have wished? OK.

I think he was writing in what he took to be the Biblical genre, yes, but I don't think he was trying to mimic it down to every detail, and in that regard I do think the Book of Mormonism very much like Vergil's Aeneid, which is written according to many of the conventions of Homeric epic, but is obviously not Homer.

Are you talking about Aeneid 1.148-153, where Neptune calms the winds?

And as, when ofttimes in a great nation tumult has risen, the base rabble rage angrily, and now brands and stones fly, madness lending arms; then, if perchance they set eyes on a man honored for noble character and service, they are silent and stand by with attentive ears; with speech he sways their passion and soothes their breasts.

Has anyone ever called that passage a 'mistake'? I can't see why they would. And how does it resemble Smith's failure to make an accurate imitation of the writing of King James' Men? But maybe I am looking at the wrong bit of text?

If Vergil had tried to represent the diction of some writer of archaic Latin but messed it up, that might have been a better analogy, surely? But I am no classicist.

Very good, Chap!

The point is that anyone who is familiar with Homeric epic similes knows that "Homer" has no epic similes of that kind. Furthermore, the poem is set in the Late Bronze Age, but the epic simile really only makes sense within a much later Roman context.

But of course it is not regarded as a "mistake" of Vergil, and that is exactly my point.

[Kishkumen]

Believe it or not, your contribution, Kish-baby, does have some value to the thread. You have demonstrated techniques used by LDS apologists on how to deflect and take their opponents eye off the ball and derail what's really important by introducing fantasy. You bring material (Roman garbage) to the board that serves no purpose other than to detract.

Well done. You get a ribbon. You make a great apologist!

Yeah, baby!

Hooray! I would make a good apologist! So says a polemicist!

Whew, we are back in comfortable territory. Rest easy. The status quo is maintained.

Apologist, meet polemicist. Polemicist, meet apologist.

Now both of you do your thing, and don't you dare break character. We have a devoted audience with certain expectations!

[drumdude]

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.