Carmack takes on the Late War

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Gadianton
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Carmack takes on the Late War

Post by Gadianton »

Stanford Carmack has a new https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... haic-text/ paper on the Late War, or more generally, pseudo-Bible writing and the Book of Mormon.
Carmack wrote:A number of LDS scholars believe that because Joseph Smith’s mind was saturated with biblical language, he could have produced the text of the Book of Mormon from a mixture of biblical language and his own dialect
I haven't read the whole article yet, but he says this as if he's going to show that Joseph couldn't have. That's pretty ambitious. I always thought everyone agreed he could have, but did he or didn't he?
Carmack wrote:A significant flaw in the comparisons they made was failing to incorporate many Early Modern English texts — regularized for spelling and morphology — in their large corpus.1 Nor is it clear that they used the critical text, the text closest to Joseph Smith’s 1829 dictation.
How dare they be unaware of your work. Actually, That they picked out other pseudo-Bible texts and only those is interesting. It seems as if the author's mind really was saturated with "Bible writing".
Carmack wrote:An example of this is the passive construction “commanded of/by.” The King James Bible has four examples of “commanded by” but no [Page 189]examples of “commanded of”; the Book of Mormon has nine examples of “commanded of” and three examples of “commanded by.” This means it is not inaccurate to state that the Book of Mormon’s agentive of usage approaches but is independent of biblical usage. This is statistically verifiable.24
Statistical proof, eh?
Carmack wrote:Hunt’s text (1816) has only one example of agentive of: “the king was possessed of an evil spirit” (1:14). The estimated agentive of rate in this text is 2.5% (1 of 40 regular verbs).
Well, that might be one example, but I'd say it's a pretty impressive one.

For the Book of Mormon:

examples of 'commanded by'

['at I Omni being commanded by my father ', 'd1089 they were commanded by Ammoron to', 'ich it had been commanded by Alma shoul']

examples of 'commanded of'

[again & being commanded of the Lord t', ' that Moses was commanded of the Lord t', 'hat I should be commanded of the Lord t', 'hat I have been commanded of him to wri', 'hem having been commanded of God & they', 'lma having been commanded of God that I', 'ords which I am commanded of the Father', 'ngs I have been commanded of my Father ']

There isn't a huge amount of data here, but it is interesting that all examples "by" are mortals, and "of" is always god. Even "of my father" vs. "of my Father".

There are no examples of "commanded by the Lord" in Late War.

Are there possibilities other than the Book of Mormon being a 15th century text translated by a committee in the Spirit World?

Well, it could be "of the" connotates additional holiness. Interestingly, I see "of the Lord" only a couple times in the other standard works, it is usually "by the Lord" -- I'm surprised Carmack didn't mention that. But, one of those instances is interesting, as I found it online but couldn't find it in my text dump.

Here is President Newsroom:
A bishop is appointed of the Lord, D&C 72.
ccount of their stewardship
unto the bishop, who shall be
appointed of me
This example does use "of" instead of "by", but it's not a direct quote so interesting the modern bibliographer went with "of the Lord".

Another possibility is repetition. "of the Lord" appears 476 times in the Book of Mormon. That might influence your brain if "by" or "of" could be used and you're used to saying "of the Lord" constantly.

Late War:

['the angel of the Lord whisper', 'he temple of the Lord, and he', ' judgment of the Lord fell up', ' the hand of the Lord was str', 'e temples of the Lord were op']

There are no instances where he needs to say "by the Lord", so we don't know how he'd put it. But, isn't it interesting he could just say "the Lord's temple"? I guess that argument is Hunt was the B student with these easy ones, but not as many advanced examples. It just seems to me that there are going to be too many other possibilities to explain the similarity.

Anyway, we'll see what others have to say about this. I might try another example later.
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Here is what Brant Gardner said about Carmack/Skousen's approach:
I disagree. While Skousen and Carmack have found forms that were in printed texts from Early Modern English, their argument entirely rests upon not finding them later than that. Both Skousen and Carmack know that this is not correct, and have indicated in various places that there is even on form in the Book of Mormon that wasn't found until literarure written after 1830. The principle of dating from the latest known dates is not used. They assume the earlier dating, and adjust their arguments to show why one might still accept the Early Modern English Book of Mormon.

The second methodological problem is that they compare the the Book of Mormon (typically) to regular texts, and not to those using pseudo-KJV. That is a smaller sample, but an important one because there were many writers using those forms--and not doing them correctly. Carmack looked at those and concluded that many of them do use the same kind of Early Modern English forms as the Book of Mormon, but there are statistically more in the Book of Mormon. The argument about statistics misses the point. If other contemporaries of Joseph produced those forms when imitating KJV language, then there is no reason to believe that Joseph did not our could not. Statistically, it simply indicates that he made more grammatical mistakes that contemporary writers.
This was in response to Robert Smith's effusive cheerleading about how the sheer complexity of Early Modern English and it being found in the Book of Mormon changes the playing field. The critics surely must be shaking in their boots over this. https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/73 ... 1210010893

Here is where Carmack admits that there is Early Modern English in the D&C and the Temple Plot revelation, later compositions. (Carmack attempted to discount this by claiming that Early Modern English was supposedly the language of revelation) https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... t-of-zion/ Maybe, just maybe, the Early Modern English is Joseph trying, however imperfectly, to sound biblical and impressive to his dupes? Incidentally, the Early Modern English leave as Joseph gets more educated and is appealing to a more intelligent audience.

Also, I don't think Carmack can answer the question of Joseph making more grammatical mistakes and that being why the Book of Mormon supposedly has more of these archaic constructions. He is looking in the clouds for a complex argument to save the impossible to save.

Here is another critique of the Early Modern English nonsense put forward by Clark Goble: https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchiv ... of-Mormon/

Clark points out that Carmack/Skousen don't take account of spoken language and the applachian dialect that is the closest to Elizabethian english or Early Modern English around. Joseph spoke it and perhaps that is the source of the Early Modern English.
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Yeah, Brant went to town and made some good points.

They say a sucker is born every minute, and I guess it was my turn to be born. It's been pointed out to me in private, to save from the embarrassment, that this is an old article.

It was linked to over at SeN on the latest 'post' and in my haste to get to past the rubbish and get to the comments, I was left looking at the description of this article while at the same time reading the first comment, which was by Sledge.

I should know better at this point to check first.

Okay, I heard this joke the other day.

How do you find out what's in volumes 2-7 of "A reasonable leap into the light" without buying the books or obtaining illegal copies?
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Jun 26, 2021 7:11 pm
Here is where Carmack admits that there is Early Modern English in the D&C and the Temple Plot revelation, later compositions. (Carmack attempted to discount this by claiming that Early Modern English was supposedly the language of revelation) https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... t-of-zion/ Maybe, just maybe, the Early Modern English is Joseph trying, however imperfectly, to sound biblical and impressive to his dupes? Incidentally, the Early Modern English leave as Joseph gets more educated and is appealing to a more intelligent audience.
It could also be that Joseph Smith, like many religious people throughout history, associated a special register of language with the divine. Just as church architecture differs in certain ways from the architectural choices employed in other kinds of buildings, people have often adopted a special language for "sacred" contexts. In Ancient Rome, there were special archaic prayers with language no one understood but which were used in the most ancient Roman cultic practices to distinguish them especially from other rites.

There are countless examples of this kind of thing, and I don't see what it has to do with "duping" people.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Kishkumen wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:39 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Jun 26, 2021 7:11 pm
Here is where Carmack admits that there is Early Modern English in the D&C and the Temple Plot revelation, later compositions. (Carmack attempted to discount this by claiming that Early Modern English was supposedly the language of revelation) https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... t-of-zion/ Maybe, just maybe, the Early Modern English is Joseph trying, however imperfectly, to sound biblical and impressive to his dupes? Incidentally, the Early Modern English leave as Joseph gets more educated and is appealing to a more intelligent audience.
It could also be that Joseph Smith, like many religious people throughout history, associated a special register of language with the divine. Just as church architecture differs in certain ways from the architectural choices employed in other kinds of buildings, people have often adopted a special language for "sacred" contexts. In Ancient Rome, there were special archaic prayers with language no one understood but which were used in the most ancient Roman cultic practices to distinguish them especially from other rites.

There are countless examples of this kind of thing, and I don't see what it has to do with "duping" people.
Take away the rock and the hat, the disappearing plates, the countless "revelations" in the D&C where Joseph Smith proclaims that God chose him, inventing Zelph, etc., and you may have something. However, those things are part of the history, pushing Joseph Smith's works more into the fraud category. Perhaps he had some good intentions in inventing the religion, but it looks fabricated nonetheless. So, of course he tried to sound biblical.
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Wouldn’t there be merit in investigating local dialect as a control group? Why wouldn’t the most reasonable explanation be that Joseph simply preferred the sound of “commanded of” because that’s how one of the preachers spoke in sermons.
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Dr Moore wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 4:27 pm
Wouldn’t there be merit in investigating local dialect as a control group? Why wouldn’t the most reasonable explanation be that Joseph simply preferred the sound of “commanded of” because that’s how one of the preachers spoke in sermons.
Clark Goble proposed a test of the local dialect by searching court records in the Palmyra area from Joseph Smith's time. If the records were word for word testimony as the witnesses spoke, then perhaps a good comparison could be made. However, most trial testimony from back then may be summaries only like those records from Joseph Smith's first trial.

There are linguists who study the Appalachian dialect that included Palmyra and they say it could be close to Elizabethian or Early Modern English. https://daily.jstor.org/the-legendary-l ... an-holler/
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Kishkumen wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:39 pm
It could also be that Joseph Smith, like many religious people throughout history, associated a special register of language with the divine. Just as church architecture differs in certain ways from the architectural choices employed in other kinds of buildings, people have often adopted a special language for "sacred" contexts.
Well, yes. I was not raised by any kind of Biblical fundamentalist fanatics, but during my schooling and on Sundays at church the King James translation of the Bible was so frequently read aloud, and prayers recited in similar language that even if I had not later taken up the habit of reading the text myself I would have been naturally soaked in its grammar, diction and vocabulary.

The same applied to many of my schoolmates. Many of us could fall into parodic Biblical language at the drop of a hat "Smith - Behold it is break time, and I am an hungered. Give me therefore I pray thee of thy jam doughnut, or peradventure I may twist thy arm so that thou lamentest mightily " And so on.

Given the small range of reading matter available in a rural environment in early 19th century upstate New York, I would think that talking or writing 'Bible English' involved no more than a very simple change of gear for a fluent talker like Joseph Smith. (Not that he always got things right, of course: but then his modern English seems to have had its faults too.)
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Dr Moore wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 4:27 pm
Wouldn’t there be merit in investigating local dialect as a control group? Why wouldn’t the most reasonable explanation be that Joseph simply preferred the sound of “commanded of” because that’s how one of the preachers spoke in sermons.
Yes. These guys are a walking lesson in confirmation bias and why apologists need to listen to Philo about Bayes Theorem.

While an excellent example in its own right, the broader point is control, control, control to rule out other possibilities, especially when dealing with such a fluid topic.
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Re: Carmack takes on the Late War

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Dr Exiled wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 4:23 pm
Take away the rock and the hat, the disappearing plates, the countless "revelations" in the D&C where Joseph Smith proclaims that God chose him, inventing Zelph, etc., and you may have something. However, those things are part of the history, pushing Joseph Smith's works more into the fraud category. Perhaps he had some good intentions in inventing the religion, but it looks fabricated nonetheless. So, of course he tried to sound biblical.
I don’t think any of these things need to be taken away for me to have a valid point. Those things are, in fact, part of the point. Your rock in the hat was his seer stone. He was not the only or the first person to have one. Your “disappearing” plates were his sacred text hidden up by an angel. I get that most everyone here is comforted by the economy of saying he was a fraud, but these kinds of religious claims have a very old pedigree. He was not the only person in history to do this kind of thing. So perhaps it is much more complex and interesting a phenomenon than a simple fraud, or even a “pious” fraud. There have always people who do these kinds of things, and then there are those who, like you, dismiss them. The whole thing is fascinating, and there is a lot more to it than such pallid dismissals capture.

It is one thing not to believe the claims, but I don’t see the need to mischaracterize or misrepresent the phenomenon. But that’s just me. I suppose it makes one’s liberation feel definitive to say it is all just garbage or a fraud. Simple, comforting . . . .

Inadequate. But, sure, YMMV.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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