Wayment on "borrowing" in the JST

[_Dr Moore]

Hauglid, in his RFM interview, mentions almost in passing that Matthew Grey’s paper in Producing Ancient Scripture “smacks up against the whole missing papyrus theory”, a.k.a. the long scroll theory.

I believe he has a very good point here. Boy, Gee must be fuming mad at this point.

What I’m wondering is whether this new scholarship means the church will redact the missing scroll theory from the Book of Abraham essay? I mean here we have new scholarship from a current BYU scholar, that really blows the old speculative theory apart, and Gee has offered no response to it. Does Gee concede the point and have the long scroll and pre 1836 Book of Abraham completion theories both died officially? A death certificate would be nice, after all the misdirection efforts by Gee and pals holding out hope.

[_Dr Exiled]

https://www.amazon.com/Producing-Ancien ... 1607817381

This link says it will ship to your door by July 16, 2020. Personally, I like Kindle and hopefully it will be in that format soon.

[_Dr Exiled]

Hauglid, in his RFM interview, mentions almost in passing that Matthew Grey’s paper in Producing Ancient Scripture “smacks up against the whole missing papyrus theory”, a.k.a. the long scroll theory.

I believe he has a very good point here. Boy, Gee must be fuming mad at this point.

What I’m wondering is whether this new scholarship means the church will redact the missing scroll theory from the Book of Abraham essay? I mean here we have new scholarship from a current BYU scholar, that really blows the old speculative theory apart, and Gee has offered no response to it. Does Gee concede the point and have the long scroll and pre 1836 Book of Abraham completion theories both died officially? A death certificate would be nice, after all the misdirection efforts by Gee and pals holding out hope.

I keep going back to what my former Stake President brother says about all the issues. He simply disregards them and concentrates on the here and now. For him, the fact of a likely fraud or invention with good intentions doesn't bother him. He is good. His flock is good. The church is doing good in his mind and so there it ends. Perhaps the Brethren are pushing this kind of closed off mind? And in that case, what does it matter if the missing scroll theory is jettisoned? It never held much water anyway and tithing receipts don't depend on it, so who cares?

[_Gadianton]

Aren't all of these theories also against the grain of the Ghost Committee theory?

"This new evidence effectively forces a reconsideration of Smith's translation projects, particularly his Bible revision, and how he used a scholarly source while simultaneously melding his own prophetic inspiration into the resulting text."

That seems to cover the attitude of all the new stuff coming out. Totally different than producing the Book of Mormon by reading words off a stone.

[_Philo Sofee]

They appear to be modernizing all right. But the church today has nothing to do with Joseph Smith's vision of what the church is or was to be.

[_DonBradley]

I just saw this genius post from several months ago from kishkumen. I especially love the following. Bravo!

Plagiarism is what a person with no ideas does. Art is skillful theft sanctified by genius. Individual parts of Joseph Smith’s career may look like plagiarism, but step back and examine the whole, and the art becomes visible.

[Guest]

I just saw this genius post from several months ago from kishkumen. I especially love the following. Bravo!

Plagiarism is what a person with no ideas does. Art is skillful theft sanctified by genius. Individual parts of Joseph Smith’s career may look like plagiarism, but step back and examine the whole, and the art becomes visible.

Fraud genius? Maybe. A beautiful crime I guess can be admired, if your parents, friends and other family don't have to suffer because their retirement was taken away due to it. Joseph Smith crap on a lot of people with his polygamy scheme. I guess we can admire how he used his "genius" to “F” many of our ancestors' young daughters and wives? I for one am pleased as punch that Brgham Young screwed my ancestors' daughters, when he wasn't busy murdering native americans and those poor people from Arkansas, of course. Real continued genius.

Maybe Joseph should have told everyone what he was doing instead of pretending that God was involved demanding the huge sacrifices they made going to Missouri and Illinois in the middle of the night to be met by sickness upon arrival or to be tricked into crossing the plains, etc., etc.? Perhaps then we could have gloried in that “F”'s supposed genius had he been a little less fraudulent and a little more open?

[_Nevo]

So, Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon found hundreds of instances of borrowing, yet have only shared 15 with the public as of this printing? It's been what, a year since the abstract? How many hundreds are we talking about here? Is it 800 or 200? Assuming plural hundreds means at least 200, then the 15 examples shared here constitute less than 7.5% of the total number discovered. Is Wayment really not going to share ANYTHING more about the remainder?

Wayment shares some more examples in his July 2020 JMH article:

2 Chronicles 22:2
Exodus 22:28
Psalm 33:2
1 Corinthians 11:10
1 John 5:13
Matthew 6:13
Matthew 19:19
Romans 9:25
1 Corinthians 15:52
1 Corinthians 15:26
James 1:2
1 John 3:16
Revelation 12:9
1 John 2:7
Revelation 19:15
Revelation 19:21

He writes: "Although an exact percentage of how often Smith drew upon Clarke is difficult to generate, my own research has demonstrated that in the Gospel of Matthew, for example, Smith engaged Clarke for 36 verses of approximately 639 verses that he altered in his revision. If that percentage holds throughout the process, then it is possible to suggest that Smith relied on Clarke about 5 percent of the time" (Thomas A. Wayment, "Joseph Smith, Adam Clarke, and the Making of a Bible Revision," Journal of Mormon History 46, no. 3 [July 2020]: 13).

Wayment also notes that "the changes made as a result of Clarke’s commentary . . . are not slavish reproductions, but deliberative changes that were made randomly with the appearance that each change was determined on its own merits after having consulted what Clarke wrote. Smith certainly borrowed wording from Clarke, but he simultaneously rejected the vast majority of Clarke’s suggestions for textual emendation" (14).

He describes the JST as "a hybrid endeavor combining Joseph Smith's prophetic interests with openly academic interests." "Ultimately, Smith acted as a seer in parts of the revision and as an academic in others, perhaps even deliberately academic. Smith openly and directly used Adam Clarke's scholarship to his own benefit, and he seemed to characterize that effort positively in a revelation received at Kirtland, Ohio, March 8, 1833, that commanded the saints to 'become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people' (D&C 90:15)" (22).

[_Physics Guy]

It would be convenient for a faithful Mormon scholar to be able to exonerate Smith of the kind of wholesale plagiarism that the most foolish undergraduates perpetrate. That's kind of like exonerating a suspected Mafia don of murder. In fact nobody really thought that the guy was going to get his own hands that dirty; the crimes of which he's seriously suspected are more subtle.

In this case Smith might never have thought in terms of modern academic codes of conduct, but if he were surreptitiously larding his supposedly inspired translation with scholarly insights from Clarke, in order to score impressive hits of seemingly prophetic insight, then he would have been deliberately deceiving people by any standards.

It seems to me that this is how a lot of Mormon apologetic scholarship thrives, in fact. It takes advantage of the fact that academic disciplines like history and religious studies do not normally focus on fraud. So the kinds of question that are established as academically appropriate, and their corresponding kinds of answer, simply don't address issues like whether Smith was pulling a con. Smith is always getting tried on the wrong charge. He gets off comfortably, with no more than a warning, and everybody's faith is supported.

It's a form of straw man fallacy in which the straw man is dignified by an academic gown. If instead of thinking like a scholar you think like a used car buyer, Smith doesn't look innocent at all, but careful scholarly inquiry into all the things that Smith didn't do is a great distraction from that uncomfortable common-sense fact.

The espectably diligent kind of apologetic scholarship not only pays no attention to the man behind the curtain. It reminds everyone, with a patience-tried scholarly cough, that poking around behind dubious curtains like that one is not scholarly practice.

[_Dr Moore]

careful scholarly inquiry into all the things that Smith didn't do is a great distraction

QFT