Loan shifting the anachronisms away

[Tapir Rodeo]

Horses
(Confirmed to be contemporary with man in pre-Columbian times and as part of Indigenous traditions; Partially Confirmed in Book of Mormon times). Some early critics claimed that horses could not be found in the Americas at any point prior to Columbus, but the fossil record is placing evidence of horses increasingly closer to Book of Mormon timeframes.

I am unaware of any legitimate evidence that confirms the existence of horses in America during Book of Mormon times.

[Marcus]

Horses
(Confirmed to be contemporary with man in pre-Columbian times and as part of Indigenous traditions; Partially Confirmed in Book of Mormon times). Some early critics claimed that horses could not be found in the Americas at any point prior to Columbus, but the fossil record is placing evidence of horses increasingly closer to Book of Mormon timeframes.

I am unaware of any legitimate evidence that confirms the existence of horses in America during Book of Mormon times.

The key word is legitimate. Unfortunately, DCP and the Interpreter don't consider that word to be a necessary descriptor of things they believe.

[Benjamin McGuire]

The real problem for me is the very nature of the idea of loan-shifting. Loan shifting is a type of lexical extension. It occurs when one group borrows a foreign word to use in describing local content.

What this means is that the Nephites (let's stay within the paradigm) begin using a foreign word to describe something that they experience. And this is a problem with any real literary analysis of the text. This is from the wikipedia article on Semantic Loans:

A typical example is the French word souris, which means "mouse" (the animal). After the English word mouse acquired the additional sense of "computer mouse", when French speakers began speaking of computer mice, they did so by extending the meaning of their own word souris by analogy with how English speakers had extended the meaning of mouse. (Had French speakers started using the word mouse, that would have been a borrowing; had they created a new lexeme out of multiple French morphemes, as with disque dur for "hard disk", that would have been a calque.)

Another example, in this case propelled by speakers of the source language, is the English word already. The Yiddish word for the literal senses of "already" is שוין shoyn, which is also used as a tag to express impatience. Yiddish speakers who also spoke English began using the English word already to express this additional sense in English, and this usage came to be adopted in the larger English-speaking community (as in Enough already or Would you hurry up already?) This sense of already is therefore a semantic borrowing of that sense of shoyn.

For us to discuss the idea of a loan shift in the Book of Mormon (from the perspective of a believer), we have to discuss how the Book of Mormon borrows a foreign language concept - and brings it into contemporary language. And this is where this idea in connection with the Book of Mormon is really problematic. The Book of Mormon is an alleged English translation of an ancient text. In that ancient context, for loan shifting to occur, there would need to be some process by which the Nephite language changes because of interactions between the Nephites and some other foreign population, from whose language a borrowing occurs. That is, the Nephites interact with Population X, there is a word in the Nephite Language that corresponds to some thing or concept in that foreign language. And so in the interactions between the two language an equivalence is developed. However, that word or phrase in that foreign language also means something else. And so the Nephite population starts to use their own word to refer to that something else as well. This is the meaning of the lexical extension referred to by the term loan shift. In order for it to actually exist, we have to have Nephite interactions with some contemporary foreign language in which extra meaning is given to the Nephite language because of that interaction and because those extra meanings exist within that foreign language.

There are other types of lexical expansion. If the Book of Mormon is an authentic text, a good parallel might be with what happens in Marco Polo's Travels (an example I have used from time to time). Marco Polo encounters a rhinoceros. He identifies it's species by the horn on it's forehead, and writes that he has discovered the unicorn. He writes this:

There are wild elephants in the country, and numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big. They have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do no mischief, however, with the horn, but with the tongue alone; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles [and when savage with any one they crush him under their knees and then rasp him with their tongue]. The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. 'Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin; in fact, 'tis altogether different from what we fancied.

Now, Marco Polo consistently uses the word unicorn (and to be clear, it wasn't written by Polo but by Rustichello da Pisa, and it was written in Franko-Venetian - but the language is consistent). For Marco Polo (assuming that this is his language), the lexical extension occurs because he has identified another version of the unicorn. It would not have been nearly as linguistically dramatic for him as it is for us because his language didn't already have something for rhinoceros (at least that he was aware of). He doesn't borrow this lexical shift from a foreign language - it is entirely internal. And so there is no loan shift. And this sort of lexical expansion creates a bit of a headache for translation. We cannot translate it into the word Rhinoceros in English because doing so would damage the meaning of the text far more than any benefit would be gained by increasing understanding for an English audience.

The Book of Mormon uses a lot of language that comes from the Old Testament. One of the important examples to this discussion is the Book of Mormon's use of the phrase "wild goat" - a phrase which is used a couple of times, and only in close connection with "goat". It is almost certainly connected with the Old Testament - probably Deuteronomy 14:4-5. And (from a believer's perspective) this would indicate a taxonomy used by the Nephites in the New World that was closely connected to Mosaic restrictions on the use of animals based on certain characteristics (much of Deuteronomy 14 is a description of these features). If the Nephites were to use these features to identify animals and give them the label (or bring them under the umbrella of) used in their texts, we would have a lexical expansion - but we would not have loan shifting.

Further, it creates problems for lists like the one that Roper offers - because there is no consistency. Should we consider the term horse to be a reference to actual horses, or should we consider it to be a lexical expansion. The horse is particularly important because of the way that the Book of Mormon uses the Deuteronomy 17:14-20 - and when it does, and where we would expect to see references to horses in the Book of Mormon context, we get nothing. Other elements are referenced quite explicitly. We have the many wives, we have the debate over kingship, we have the gold and silver, we have the heart being lifted up - one of the two things that is missing each time the Deuteronomy Kingship code is raised as criticism of kings is the return to Egypt (which makes no sense in the context of the narrative - the Book of Mormon identifies the Egypt of the Exodus with the Jerusalem that Lehi leaves) and the other is horses - which is something we would expect to be there if there really were horses being collected by the political class. It's just not there. And so, at least from a literary perspective, the horse references seem to be similar to the wild goat. A potential lexical expansion. But not likely to be a real historical corollary.

Roper's discussion of "Cow" is also interesting in this context:

(Confirmed as a loan shift). Early critics claimed that cows were not present before Columbus, let alone in Book of Mormon times, but early European settlers sometimes referred to the bison as “cow”, and it remains the proper term for female bison, suggesting that the term may have been applied as a loan shift to the bison present in various areas of North America (despite questions about the extent of their range).

If I accept this argument on its face, it has this problem. First, if there is a loan shift that occurs here, because of the nature of the term loan-shift, it would go in the other direction. In other words, we have to identify the foreign and the local language and then we can observe where the shift occurs. The problem is with the idea of the bison here. American bison are first identified as bison (first connected to their European counterparts and the word itself comes from the French) in the 1690s. Prior to this, and beginning in 1625, the American bison was called the buffalo - after its connection to the Asian animal. And, historically, in English, female buffaloes are identified as cows. Lexical extension (even less remarkable than the unicorn-rhinoceros example) - but not a loan shift.

What would a loan shift look like? Suppose that there were bison and cows in North America in the 1600s. The Native Americans have separate words for each. They learn the English/French representation of the bison as buffaloes. They also learn that female buffaloes are called cows, just as domesticated cattle are also called cows. The Native Americans start to use their own word for "cow" to refer to female bison. A shift in language borrowed from the foreign language.

But then we come to the problem that should be obvious to everyone. If we are talking about how a loan-shift might deal with something potentially anachronistic in the text of the Book of Mormon, we have to separate out what occurs through translation as opposed to what is in the original text. If it is a translational thing, then it would reflect a loan-shift in English that has nothing to do with the underlying ancient text of the gold plates. That is, the words buffalo, bison, and cow (in English) have no meaning relative to the gold plates. Since (beyond Joseph Smith) there is no potential interaction with the original language of the gold plates, there can be no creation of loan-shifts in the Book of Mormon (the translation) itself. And for us to speak of a loan-shift from the gold plates, we would first have to understand how the language of the gold plates interacts with some foreign language to make this happen. The application of this discussion to an ancient text can be only described as imaginary. So is Roper really only referring to the Book of Mormon as a translation becoming the vehicle of the loan-shift? (And for a dig - what happens here if we really do have an EME translator as per Skousen and Carmack? - How does any of this make any sense?)

The thing about lexical loan shifts and extensions/expansion is that they have to be explained as shifts or as expansions. In a dramatic linguistic change (as a journey to the New World would be), we might even start discussing lexical substitution (fixed language, completely new context). But when the discussion is caught up in the apologetic attempt to cure anachronisms, the objective of that apologetic process overshadows any appropriate discussion of the text as a translation of an ancient source. The better way for believers would be to stop the process of trying to linguistically equate the Book of Mormon with the Gold Plates and then identifying by context which examples are more significant than others. The goat and wild goat are relatively insignificant given that we have almost no contextual information about them (a Deuteronomy connection makes sense no matter what your views on authorship are - and so it stops being helpful in the critic/apologist discussion). I think, though, that the preference for a historical solution that we see here is mired in the LDS view of the Book of Mormon as some sort of perfect translation made by God (whatever that is supposed to mean), and the desire to protect the notion of a perfect translation (which is also misunderstood by many in the LDS apologetics community). This badly done notion of loan-shifting is much more palatable in such a view than some of the alternatives I discuss here.

At any rate, I tend to think that believers would have a much better argument if they were to really focus on translation choices instead of trying to explain things through the completely unapproachable and non-extant original text. I think that you could make a serious argument about lexical expansion - and while it would have its issues in places, it would certainly force the discussion back to what I might consider the significant or important potential anachronisms. However, using this inaccurate notion of loan-shifting in this way is really only building a sort of fall-back position which should be invoked when historical evidence isn't helpful. And it is creating a lot of LDS internet readers with a very poor understanding of the linguistic issues that can be raised in support of and against the Book of Mormon. And I think it is detrimental to trying to read the text as it was intended to be read (no matter where you fall on the spectrum of belief about the authorial intention).

[drumdude]

Excellent post! Puts into words eloquently what I am unable to express.

[I Have Questions]

https://interpreterfoundation.org/inter ... s-animals/

The Summary

In a set of two initial articles, Matthew Roper introduces the fruits of his now several-decade-long study of claimed Book of Mormon anachronisms, and then analyzes claims regarding the book’s descriptions of animals. After discussing what he means by an “anachronism” (i.e., as items in the text that have, at one point or another, been claimed to be “odds with known facts or widely held assumptions about the ancient world”), he notes the potential significance of these anachronisms, as framed by Hugh Nibley:

“It is the ‘howlers’ with which the Book of Mormon abounds that furnish the best index of its authenticity. They show, first of all, that the book was definitely not a typical product of its time, and secondly, when they are examined more closely in the light of present-day evidence, they appear very different indeed than they did a hundred years ago.”

Roper’s purpose is not to address every piece of evidence which might be brought forward in relation to the Book of Mormon and its ancient claims, nor is it to end all discussion of claims that he feels the evidence now supports or to express favor for specific geographical models. It is instead simply to see “how well alleged anachronisms themselves have held up over time”. His method for doing so involved a review of over 1,000 critical sources printed since 1830, with the anachronisms they cite organized into eight categories, including animals, ancient warfare, metals and metallurgy, ancient culture, proper names, wilderness journeys; records, writing and language; and natural phenomena. The chapter for each category includes details of the allegation, a categorization of its status (with the Book of Mormon’s textual features “confirmed”, “partially confirmed” or “unconfirmed” by the available evidence), and a set of charts summarizing the anachronisms in that category and their status over time.
Roper goes on to analyze claims regarding the following Book of Mormon animals:

Horses
(Confirmed to be contemporary with man in pre-Columbian times and as part of Indigenous traditions; Partially Confirmed in Book of Mormon times). Some early critics claimed that horses could not be found in the Americas at any point prior to Columbus, but the fossil record is placing evidence of horses increasingly closer to Book of Mormon timeframes.

Asses
(Unconfirmed in Indigenous traditions, but Partially Confirmed in Book of Mormon times). As with horses, critics once claimed that the ass could not be found in the Americas prior to Columns, but smaller species of horse, which might have been considered an ass by Book of Mormon peoples, have been found with material dated as late as 1300-1240 BC in Mexico.

Cows
(Confirmed as a loan shift). Early critics claimed that cows were not present before Columbus, let alone in Book of Mormon times, but early European settlers sometimes referred to the bison as “cow”, and it remains the proper term for female bison, suggesting that the term may have been applied as a loan shift to the bison present in various areas of North America (despite questions about the extent of their range).

Oxen
(Confirmed as a loan shift). In keeping with the broad assumptions of early critics, it was believed that there were no oxen prior to Columbus. As “oxen” can refer to both domesticated bovines or a variety of wild animals, including 18th century references to bison, the same bison-related loan shift could have been applied.

Cattle
(Confirmed). As with the above equines and bovines, critics have claimed that there were no pre-Columbian cattle. However, “Hebrew words rendered as cattle by translators can refer to any large or small quadrupeds”, and thus may have been applied any number of four-legged animals raised and used for food (e.g., deer, peccary).
Goats & Wild Goats (Confirmed as a loan shift). Though species of goats in the Americas appear to have gone extinct prior to Book of Mormon times, Early Spanish observers characterized certain species of Mesoamerican deer as “goats” and “wild goats”.

Sheep
(Confirmed). Critics have claimed a lack of pre-Columbian sheep, but mountain sheep ranged extensively across North America in pre-Columbian times, and are recorded as having been used as ritual food in central Mexico as late as 900AD.
Flocks and Herds (Confirmed). In connection with claims regarding sheep, critics have suggested that the terms “flocks” and “herds” were anachronistic. In addition to evidence of mountain sheep, there are a number of other animals in pre-Columbian America that could have formed domesticated flocks and herds, whether that be the quadrupeds noted above (as suggested by the potential underlying Hebrew) or flocks of birds and fowl.

Elephants
(Confirmed to be contemporary with man in pre-Columbian times; Partially Confirmed in Book of Mormon times). Critics have similarly claimed that there were no elephants at any point in the Americas before Columbus, but fossil evidence continues to extend the pre-Columbian timeframe for mammoths of various kinds, with the most recent finds currently dating to 3985BC.

Swine
(Confirmed as a loan shift). The Book of Mormon use of the term “sow” has been interpreted by critics as a reference to swine, of which there is no evidence in pre-Columbian America. But New World peccaries closely resemble pigs, were often named as such by the Spanish, and were an important meat source in ancient Mesoamerica, suggesting a plausible loan shift.

Honeybees
(Confirmed). Some have claimed that there were no pre-Columbian honeybees, but stingless honeybees were well known in early Mesoamerica.

Lions
(Confirmed as a loan shift). Early critics claimed that lions have never been in the Americas, and these were apparently unfamiliar with the far-ranging cougar] (Rise and Shout!), which, given the common appellation of “mountain lion”, could have clearly served as a loan shift.

(It continues ad nauseum in this fashion.)

I suppose it’s a very fitting article for the journal run by Dan the Tapir Man himself.

All told, as of 2024, a sizable majority of the Book of Mormon’s animal-related claims (82%) have been confirmed. Only a few seemingly anachronistic animals remain (horses, asses, and elephants), and those claims are trending toward confirmation as well.

When the above things are stated as "Confirmed", how have they been confirmed, and by whom? Let's take a look at Ropers actual article...

1. Pre-Columbian Horses

Status: Confirmed (1845–1966)
Critics’ Claim: Horses are repeatedly mentioned in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 18:25; 2 Nephi 12:7; Enos 1:21; Alma 18:9–12; 3 Nephi 3:22, 4:4, 6:1, 21:14; Ether 9:19). Some early critics, however, claimed that there were never horses at any point in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans, and if they had ever existed before that time, they would not have become extinct.4
Response: Charles Darwin was among the first to discover fossils of extinct pre-Columbian horses (see figure 1). While in Argentina in 1833, he recovered molars from a Pleistocene species of horse. This species is known as Equus (Amerhippus) neogeus meaning “American horse of the New World.”5 Many other prehistoric horse specimens have subsequently been recovered and identified throughout North, Central, and South America.

So Fossils from prehistoric eras equates to confirmation that horses being present in South America during Book of Mormon times does it? On that exact same basis T-Rex has been confirmed as roaming around Montana during Book of Mormon times.

[Gadianton]

What would a loan shift look like? Suppose that there were bison and cows in North America in the 1600s. The Native Americans have separate words for each. They learn the English/French representation of the bison as buffaloes. They also learn that female buffaloes are called cows, just as domesticated cattle are also called cows. The Native Americans start to use their own word for "cow" to refer to female bison. A shift in language borrowed from the foreign language.

Thanks for the explanation there, I'm not sure I ever really understood what their argument was supposed to be for these cases.

What do you imagine as an expansion that may work better? If I recall, Blake is big on expansion but maybe that isn't the same thing.

[sock puppet]

https://interpreterfoundation.org/inter ... s-animals/

Asses
(Unconfirmed in Indigenous traditions, but Partially Confirmed in Book of Mormon times). As with horses, critics once claimed that the ass could not be found in the Americas prior to Columns, but smaller species of horse, which might have been considered an ass by Book of Mormon peoples, have been found with material dated as late as 1300-1240 BC in Mexico.

"Might have been considered"? Oh, c'mon. The most perfect book on earth? God giving Joseph Smith the wording, independent of the plates and the scratchings on them, found it more appropriate to use "might have been considered" by "Book of Mormon peoples" more communicative than what people reading it after 1830 would understand "ass" to mean?

Well, how do we know the Book of Mormon peoples didn't consider an ice cream social to be a whoredom and sitting by and talking to a girl at the ice cream social to be fornication?

These lame, slippery slope apologetics are asinine.

[huckelberry]

Ben's post has good clarification and an amusing example of unicorn. Ben shows that loan shift ls a misnomer, perhaps to sound more thoughtful. What I see described is the idea that Hebrew speakers in a new world encounter a puma and view it as enough like a lion that they use the name "lion." Same idea for sheep and bison; call them "cows."

I find that idea plausible. Horses and elephants need hope of new discoveries to reverse current conclusions based upon evidence.

I could add that I do not see these devices working for swords. Cubs fit with flint or obsidian cutting edges would not be called steel swords. Hebrew words would be available for club and flint.

[Marcus]

Excellent post! Puts into words eloquently what I am unable to express.

I agree. Sadly, DCP responded to people's comments with this:

noticed one strand of critical response almost immediately, however, that didn’t altogether surprise me but did nonetheless manage to disappoint.

Let me first point out that deciding whether or not an answer is a good one depends upon properly identifying the question that it purports to answer. For example, “four” is a very good answer to the question “What is the sum of two plus two?” But it’s a poor answer to the question “What is the value of pi?” Likewise, “Paris” is an excellent answer to the question “What is the capital of France?” but it’s not so good if it’s taken to answer the question “What is the capital of Japan?”

This should, of course, be painfully obvious. It’s utterly elementary.

Unfortunately, some of the initial critical responses to the first installment of Matt Roper’s work presume that he’s attempting to answer the question “What is the best evidence for the Book of Mormon?” But, clearly, he’s not. Rather, he’s offering an answer to the question “What is the current state of evidence regarding alleged anachronisms in the book?”

It often seems to me that some people try very, very hard not to understand what they’re reading. This, I’m afraid, is one of those cases.

I suppose DCP could argue he's reading elsewhere, but given how frequently he responds immediately and specifically to things posted here, I have a hard time believing he hadn't read this thread, including McGuire's excellent post about that article, before posting the above. He obfuscated just enough that I am sure he will bluster he wasn't referring to this thread, but wow. He really is a dishonest person in his online writings.

[drumdude]

It’s a really dumb game he plays. He wants to respond but he doesn’t want a discussion. The perfect Mopologist safe space.