Carmack's current position on Book of Mormon authorship

[Gadianton]

[in my opinion, the previous statements constitute circular reasoning on Carmack's part.]

Right, it is he, not Analytics. The Ghost Committee translated the plates, the D&C is Jesus speaking directly to Joseph. Using the D&C for a control text makes perfect sense, since Joseph Smith is the medium for two different spirit entities. That the Ghost Committee intervenes when Jesus, who speaks English -- and we know that because of the sacred grove -- speaks to Joseph makes no sense.

dividing the text into a section going from Mosiah 1 to 3 Nephi 7, and from 3 Nephi 8 to Words of Mormon. The first section is approximately 57.5 percent of the dictation (counting nonbiblical words). The forty-two instances of “if it so be” in these two sections of the dictation exhibit a 3|39 split

I don't have a great way to find these at the moment, but 3d Nephi is largely Jesus speaking (beginning in ch. 4). One of those three is in 3 Nephi 7, and then many more in 3 Nephi 8.

I think you're in real trouble when downplaying "only 3" instances when it's supposed to be such a rare, meaningful form.

But none of this I find convincing for multiple authors, whether it's the ghost committee or other conspirators.

My suspicion, and granted this is sheer speculation, but something like "if it so be" raises an eyebrow due to its presence in older Bibles, once that's found, that area of text is scrutinized far more carefully for other possible anachronisms and soon there's 29 more oddities.

[Gabriel]

[in my opinion, the previous statements constitute circular reasoning on Carmack's part.]

Right, it is he, not Analytics. The Ghost Committee translated the plates, the D&C is Jesus speaking directly to Joseph. Using the D&C for a control text makes perfect sense, since Joseph Smith is the medium for two different spirit entities. That the Ghost Committee intervenes when Jesus, who speaks English -- and we know that because of the sacred grove -- speaks to Joseph makes no sense.

dividing the text into a section going from Mosiah 1 to 3 Nephi 7, and from 3 Nephi 8 to Words of Mormon. The first section is approximately 57.5 percent of the dictation (counting nonbiblical words). The forty-two instances of “if it so be” in these two sections of the dictation exhibit a 3|39 split

I don't have a great way to find these at the moment, but 3d Nephi is largely Jesus speaking (beginning in ch. 4). One of those three is in 3 Nephi 7, and then many more in 3 Nephi 8.

I think you're in real trouble when downplaying "only 3" instances when it's supposed to be such a rare, meaningful form.

But none of this I find convincing for multiple authors, whether it's the ghost committee or other conspirators.

My suspicion, and granted this is sheer speculation, but something like "if it so be" raises an eyebrow due to its presence in older Bibles, once that's found, that area of text is scrutinized far more carefully for other possible anachronisms and soon there's 29 more oddities.

I believe that Carmack is trying to have his cake and eat it too with this. If he is tacitly acknowledging Mosiah Priority, then he should be counting all the instances of “if it so be” from Mosiah all the way to the Book of Moroni; and then count all the instances of “if it so be” from the First Book of Nephi to the Words of Mormon. Why? Because that is the order in which they were dictated after the loss of the 116 pages. Story-wise, there is a significant point of demarcation between Moroni and First Nephi

First:

[Mosiah] (Book of Mosiah)
[Alma] (Book of Alma, the Son of Alma)
[Helaman] (Book of Helaman)
[3 Nephi] (Third Nephi)
[4 Nephi] (Fourth Nephi)
[Mormon] (Book of Mormon)
[Ether] (Book of Ether)
[Moroni] (Book of Moroni)

And then:

[1 Nephi] (First Book of Nephi)
[2 Nephi] (Second Book of Nephi)
[Jacob] (Book of Jacob, the Brother of Nephi)
[Enos] (Book of Enos)
[Jarom] (Book of Jarom)
[Omni] (Book of Omni)
[Words of Mormon]

Carmack’s cutoff point between 3 Nephi 7 and 8 seems completely arbitrary to me. What am I missing here?

Nevertheless, if he's playing games, then here’s mine:

In dividing Wallace Shawn’s corpus of work from My Dinner with Andre to The Princess Bride, the first movie script contains 75% of the total dialogue (counting nonbiblical words). The six instances of “inconceivable” in these two scripts exhibit a 1/5 split.

By the way, I won't use AI. Nevertheless, a simple Google search shows that Sir Walter Scott was no stranger to the use of the phrase "if it so be."

[huckelberry]

Overall, those who entertain secular notions with regard to the Book of Mormon are quite credulous, in a number of ways. They are protected in their credulity by academic priorities.

Here is just one of many ways they are credulous with regard to Book of Mormon English usage.

American English speakers and writers preferred except to save; the Book of Mormon has mostly save, which is a rare thing among texts with large numbers of except.

AmE native speakers employed these two words as prepositions almost all the time; the Book of Mormon as conjunctions almost all the time.

Historically speaking, the conjunction save was used as a coordinator most of the time; in the Book of Mormon, as a subordinator almost all the time.

Conjunctive use was almost always "save that S"; in the Book of Mormon, almost always "save S."

Overall, the Book of Mormon's save usage is unique textually. It is archaic in formation, and very frequently marked for the subjunctive mood, both synthetically and analytically.

For the credulous, Joseph Smith generated the above as a matter of routine pseudo-archaism, even though there is no support for the above Book of Mormon usage among any pseudo-archaic text. (The above is also very different from biblical usage.)

Edited Thursday at 09:46 AM by champatsch

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/11 ... 1210269158

In other words, Carmack assumes that the only alternative explanation is that Smith wrote like a typical pseudo-biblical author of his time, even though he has stated that such authors were typically more educated and more literate than Smith.

Then, he states that if Smith did NOT write like pseudo-archaic authors who were more literate and educated than he was, the only other conclusion is that more than one persons, from several previous centuries, translated the Book of Mormon first, and then dictated it to Smith. This does nothing more than push the problem of supernatural explanations further into the past, in an extremely complicated way.

Additionally, there is the problem that he had to retract somewhere around 60 to 80% of his previous findings of archaism. His research record is not strong, so simply taking his conclusions as legitimate evidence is out of the question.

Marcus, Carmack seems to me to work hard to see only limited possibilities for word choices. His effort pushes me to consider simple alternatives. I picture Joseph adopting a bit of play acting himself as part of inhabiting his story. Phrases sounding either older or poetically elevated may have been useful to adopt as they caught his fancy. Use like this would be a bit idiosyncratic and would likely change over time.

Carmack is pointing out that the Book of Mormon is not simply following King James style. One might conclude Joseph was in flexible adjusting his verbal costume.

[Gadianton]

Carmack’s cutoff point between 3 Nephi 7 and 8 seems completely arbitrary to me. What am I missing here?

This threw me for a loop yesterday also and I ended up spending a bit of time on it, my excuse is allergy season destroyed my plans for productivity this weekend, so might as well attack the church. I'll summarize this in my own words the best I can without references and Carmack can register and defend himself if he ain't happy with it.

After Moroni buried the plates, presumably he snuck them back to heaven because we can't have a poor farm boy translating them by the gift and power of God or anything like that. In heaven, a resurrected committee (they can't be ghosts, or how would they interact with the plates?) of 16th century reformers, temple worked completed, were chosen to translate the plates. For some reason Moroni, who was familiar with all the requisite languages wasn't available, so these reformers had to learn the Nephite language and get to work. The project was split between two reformers. The Gold plates contain in order: the 116, the rest of the large plates, the small plates, and Moroni's snippet. The committee said, "Myles Coverdale, you get the first half and John Rogers, you get the second half."

Well, that works out to be 45% for Coverdale and 55% for Rogers if you put the line right at 3 Nephi 7. If one handwritten page is 1.8 printed pages worth instead of 1.2, then it would be 50-50 (I think - Malkie can verify). These are the two separate 16th century voices. The split is ostensibly marked by the distinct voice transition Carmack found right at that spot. I'm trying to help with more intuition to draw the line there, like an equal share of translation load. Carmack says that Joseph Smith was on a "hot streak" dictating when the 3 Nephi 7/8 line is crossed, and the style abruptly changes. Because the style abruptly changes, the alt hypothesis that Joseph's style drifted during translation is falsified.

Rogers wrote "if it so be" in the New Mathew Bible. Carmack says the B translator (my Rogers) is guilty of all the archaisms and style, which was coming into vogue in that time in academic writing. The A translator is more vanilla. But Tyndale (another A suspect) wrote things like, "It is a marvel if" -- so I'd be slightly more impressed if the A author had more of a distinctive voice of their own rather than just less of the same distinctive voice. I should point out that "It is a marvel if" is doing a different kind of linguistic job than "It it so be" -- the point is there could have been something more distinctively A.

Returning to "If it so be". The fact that it's in the D&C is a huge problem. The fact that A also uses it even those three times is a huge problem. But the worst part of it is it doesn't sound "archaic" to me. Looking into this matter, it appears in modern English we use "dummy subjects" when a sentence doesn't have a true subject, and all sentences must have a subject. The "it" provides. There was a Bible created in 1998 called the Third Millennium Bible, here's what wiki says:

also known as the New Authorized Version, is a 1998 minor update of the King James Version of the Bible.[1] Unlike the New King James Version, it does not alter the language significantly from the 1611 version, retaining Jacobean grammar (including "thees" and "thous"), but it does attempt to replace some of the vocabulary which no longer would make sense to a modern reader

Well, guess what language it retains that apparently makes sense to a modern reader? "if it so be". That a modern writer seeking to sound biblical would use it isn't surprising.

[Philo Sofee]

Remember that the Book of Mormon is more British than American in its expression, on balance. - Carmac

Where does it ever say those who are cast out go to bloody hell then?

[Limnor]

After Moroni buried the plates, presumably he snuck them back to heaven because we can't have a poor farm boy translating them by the gift and power of God or anything like that. In heaven, a resurrected committee (they can't be ghosts, or how would they interact with the plates?) of 16th century reformers, temple worked completed, were chosen to translate the plates. For some reason Moroni, who was familiar with all the requisite languages wasn't available, so these reformers had to learn the Nephite language and get to work. The project was split between two reformers. The Gold plates contain in order: the 116, the rest of the large plates, the small plates, and Moroni's snippet. The committee said, "Myles Coverdale, you get the first half and John Rogers, you get the second half."

This is as adequate an explanation as anything given the context. I mean, woof. Although having plates present in the first place didn’t seem to matter.

[I Have Questions]

In other words, Carmack assumes that the only alternative explanation is that Smith wrote like a typical pseudo-biblical author of his time, even though he has stated that such authors were typically more educated and more literate than Smith.

Then, he states that if Smith did NOT write like pseudo-archaic authors who were more literate and educated than he was, the only other conclusion is that more than one persons, from several previous centuries, translated the Book of Mormon first, and then dictated it to Smith. This does nothing more than push the problem of supernatural explanations further into the past, in an extremely complicated way.

Additionally, there is the problem that he had to retract somewhere around 60 to 80% of his previous findings of archaism. His research record is not strong, so simply taking his conclusions as legitimate evidence is out of the question.

Marcus, Carmack seems to me to work hard to see only limited possibilities for word choices. His effort pushes me to consider simple alternatives. I picture Joseph adopting a bit of play acting himself as part of inhabiting his story. Phrases sounding either older or poetically elevated may have been useful to adopt as they caught his fancy. Use like this would be a bit idiosyncratic and would likely change over time.

Carmack is pointing out that the Book of Mormon is not simply following King James style. One might conclude Joseph was in flexible adjusting his verbal costume.

One might also conclude that Joseph was flexible in what he copied from.

[PseudoPaul]

The Book of Mormon being "more British than American" was new to me, so I am posting Carmack's full statement, including his argument that Analytics is using circular reasoning, with which I strongly disagree:

On 3/21/2026 at 1:32 PM, Analytics said:
"I'd also note that at least one of the constructions you identified as genuinely archaic in this thread appear in the Doctrine and Covenants: specifically D&C 18:15 (“if it so be") and D&C 27:2 ("if it so be"). The D&C isn't a translation of an ancient record; it's Joseph Smith's own directly dictated revelations. If these features appear there too, it seems to suggest these words were in fact available to Joseph Smith to use in a pseudo-archaic way."

I don't think Joseph Smith was wording the revelations in the D & C, anymore than he was wording the text of the Book of Mormon. Witnesses all said that he "dictated" the revelations.

Yes, this is circular reasoning by Analytics. Joseph Smith's revelatory language, even derivative revelatory language, cannot be used as evidence for or against Joseph Smith's ability to produce a specific item of revelatory language in the Book of Mormon. Once again, Analytics shows a lack of insight and makes missteps.

D&C 67 suggests that Joseph Smith did not word Doctrine and Covenants revelations, otherwise others who were more literate would have been able to equal or surpass the expressive brilliance of the revelations, which are full of formal, literate, and archaic language.

[in my opinion, the previous statements constitute circular reasoning on Carmack's part.]

Remember that the Book of Mormon is more British than American in its expression, on balance.

It is also more written than oral in its style in various ways, of which hath been spoken.

"If it so be" was still used, rarely, in the 19th century. It was used at a much, much higher rate earlier than later. The argument relative to "if it so be" is exactly how I presented it earlier in this thread. It is not what Analytics implies in what he just wrote, quoted above.

In a corpus of 25 pseudo-archaic authors, assembled without bias (with the help of two people who think Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon), four of the pseudo-archaic authors only used the biblical form, "if so be." Bunyan only used the biblical form. The Book of Mormon only used the nonbiblical form of rhetorical if, 42 times, six times with subjunctive, modal shall, marking the usage as archaic. The usage rate shifts at 3 Nephi 16 dramatically. Joseph Smith supposedly dictated the Book of Mormon based on familiarity with King James English. This is evidence against that. The position that Joseph Smith worded these is incoherent and weak. It is quite annoying having to spell this out time and time again to supposedly bright, analytical minds.

Edited March 22 by champatsch

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/11 ... 1210268284

So weird that he can't get his kooky theory filled with circular reasoning, special pleading and obvious theologically motivated decisions published in a real academic journal.

[Equality]

Carmack’s cutoff point between 3 Nephi 7 and 8 seems completely arbitrary to me. What am I missing here?

This threw me for a loop yesterday also and I ended up spending a bit of time on it, my excuse is allergy season destroyed my plans for productivity this weekend, so might as well attack the church. I'll summarize this in my own words the best I can without references and Carmack can register and defend himself if he ain't happy with it.

After Moroni buried the plates, presumably he snuck them back to heaven because we can't have a poor farm boy translating them by the gift and power of God or anything like that. In heaven, a resurrected committee (they can't be ghosts, or how would they interact with the plates?) of 16th century reformers, temple worked completed, were chosen to translate the plates. For some reason Moroni, who was familiar with all the requisite languages wasn't available, so these reformers had to learn the Nephite language and get to work. The project was split between two reformers. The Gold plates contain in order: the 116, the rest of the large plates, the small plates, and Moroni's snippet. The committee said, "Myles Coverdale, you get the first half and John Rogers, you get the second half."

Well, that works out to be 45% for Coverdale and 55% for Rogers if you put the line right at 3 Nephi 7. If one handwritten page is 1.8 printed pages worth instead of 1.2, then it would be 50-50 (I think - Malkie can verify). These are the two separate 16th century voices. The split is ostensibly marked by the distinct voice transition Carmack found right at that spot. I'm trying to help with more intuition to draw the line there, like an equal share of translation load. Carmack says that Joseph Smith was on a "hot streak" dictating when the 3 Nephi 7/8 line is crossed, and the style abruptly changes. Because the style abruptly changes, the alt hypothesis that Joseph's style drifted during translation is falsified.

Rogers wrote "if it so be" in the New Mathew Bible. Carmack says the B translator (my Rogers) is guilty of all the archaisms and style, which was coming into vogue in that time in academic writing. The A translator is more vanilla. But Tyndale (another A suspect) wrote things like, "It is a marvel if" -- so I'd be slightly more impressed if the A author had more of a distinctive voice of their own rather than just less of the same distinctive voice. I should point out that "It is a marvel if" is doing a different kind of linguistic job than "It it so be" -- the point is there could have been something more distinctively A.

Returning to "If it so be". The fact that it's in the D&C is a huge problem. The fact that A also uses it even those three times is a huge problem. But the worst part of it is it doesn't sound "archaic" to me. Looking into this matter, it appears in modern English we use "dummy subjects" when a sentence doesn't have a true subject, and all sentences must have a subject. The "it" provides. There was a Bible created in 1998 called the Third Millennium Bible, here's what wiki says:

also known as the New Authorized Version, is a 1998 minor update of the King James Version of the Bible.[1] Unlike the New King James Version, it does not alter the language significantly from the 1611 version, retaining Jacobean grammar (including "thees" and "thous"), but it does attempt to replace some of the vocabulary which no longer would make sense to a modern reader

Well, guess what language it retains that apparently makes sense to a modern reader? "if it so be". That a modern writer seeking to sound biblical would use it isn't surprising.

Is Carmack arguing that "if it so be" is archaic but "if it be so" is not?

[Marcus]

Carmack’s cutoff point between 3 Nephi 7 and 8 seems completely arbitrary to me. What am I missing here?

This threw me for a loop yesterday also and I ended up spending a bit of time on it, my excuse is allergy season destroyed my plans for productivity this weekend, so might as well attack the church. I'll summarize this in my own words the best I can without references and Carmack can register and defend himself if he ain't happy with it.

After Moroni buried the plates, presumably he snuck them back to heaven because we can't have a poor farm boy translating them by the gift and power of God or anything like that. In heaven, a resurrected committee (they can't be ghosts, or how would they interact with the plates?) of 16th century reformers, temple worked completed, were chosen to translate the plates. For some reason Moroni, who was familiar with all the requisite languages wasn't available, so these reformers had to learn the Nephite language and get to work. The project was split between two reformers. The Gold plates contain in order: the 116, the rest of the large plates, the small plates, and Moroni's snippet. The committee said, "Myles Coverdale, you get the first half and John Rogers, you get the second half."

Well, that works out to be 45% for Coverdale and 55% for Rogers if you put the line right at 3 Nephi 7. If one handwritten page is 1.8 printed pages worth instead of 1.2, then it would be 50-50 (I think - Malkie can verify). These are the two separate 16th century voices. The split is ostensibly marked by the distinct voice transition Carmack found right at that spot. I'm trying to help with more intuition to draw the line there, like an equal share of translation load. Carmack says that Joseph Smith was on a "hot streak" dictating when the 3 Nephi 7/8 line is crossed, and the style abruptly changes. Because the style abruptly changes, the alt hypothesis that Joseph's style drifted during translation is falsified.

Rogers wrote "if it so be" in the New Mathew Bible. Carmack says the B translator (my Rogers) is guilty of all the archaisms and style, which was coming into vogue in that time in academic writing. The A translator is more vanilla. But Tyndale (another A suspect) wrote things like, "It is a marvel if" -- so I'd be slightly more impressed if the A author had more of a distinctive voice of their own rather than just less of the same distinctive voice. I should point out that "It is a marvel if" is doing a different kind of linguistic job than "It it so be" -- the point is there could have been something more distinctively A...

I'm afraid it gets much worse, Gad. It seems Carmack wasn't satisfied with leaving it as Translator A and Translator B. For some of his Early Modern English examples, A was more archaic than B, for others B was more archaic than A:

"The text shifts after the book of Helaman to mostly conjunction save usage relative to synonymous except usage (shifting from 35% save [conj.] to 83%; n=300). (To verify this, exclude verbal save, prepositional uses, and biblical quotations.) This is not a shift to more archaic usage, as most of the shifts are...In general, the text shifts to somewhat more archaic usage (which is why there's a shift to wherefore and whoso), with a few exceptions."

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/11 ... 1210267677

He argues that 25 of 30 shifts are to more archaic language, the other 5 to less archaic.

Additionally, not all the 'shifting' to a different voice occurred at the same place:

"The text shifts after the book of Helaman to mostly conjunction save usage relative to synonymous except usage..."

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/11 ... 1210267677

and

"So, Joseph Smith must have consciously decided to begin to use "after that S", starting at 3 Nephi 12... He consciously decided to use whoso almost all the time instead of whosoever almost all the time, starting in 3 Nephi 9; to use wherefore instead of therefore the vast majority of the time, starting in Ether; to use "before that S" some of the time, starting at 3 Nephi 28..."

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/11 ... om/page/6/

This really complicates the number of 'voices' involved in the shifting. It gives new meaning to the idea that it's difficult to get a committee to do anything that is coherent and cohesive.