Beastie,
Is the issue that when the Book of Mormon mentions horses, it presents a problem because horses didn't exist at the time period in America under consideration? Assuming that's a yes I fail to appreciate D.B.'s argument.
Looking at the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi 18:25 in which the word "horse" is used "...that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse and the goat...and all manner of wild animals, where were for the use of men.", 'horsemen could not be substituted and appropriately fit within the context of the sentence. Yes or no?
Whack a Mole, err. Horse
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_Enuma Elish
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_marg
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_beastie
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David isn't saying that it has to be "horsemen" every time, but that it could be, sometimes. I think the only use of the word horse that could be horsemen would be in the "horse and chariot" phrase, which is problematic for apologists who insist that the Book of Mormon simply portrays the "horse" as a food product.
So God tutored Joseph Smith in the specific language, not just helping him tell the story? And God taught Joseph Smith that "parash" means "horse", but didn't mention it also means "horsemen"? So Joseph Smith had his notes somewhere, where God told him that "parash" meant horse, so when he "saw" the word "parash" again, he just said, oh, "horse"? So God told Joseph Smith the meanings of X number of words, and then he figured the rest out?
Aside from the fact that this is an awkward, clearly ad-hoc argument, Joseph Smith wasn't even looking at the plates most of the time he "translated". He wasn't even looking at the word "parash". So whatever prompted him to write "horse" instead of "horsemen", it wasn't the word "parash."
Who taught him? I believe that the Lord taught Joseph Smith throughout the entire process. However, if Joseph was truly struggling to try to interpret an authentic, ancient script, then no doubt the Prophet would have picked up many issues on his own and some of these elements, in fact, might represent the "mistakes of men," allotted for in the very title page itself.
So God tutored Joseph Smith in the specific language, not just helping him tell the story? And God taught Joseph Smith that "parash" means "horse", but didn't mention it also means "horsemen"? So Joseph Smith had his notes somewhere, where God told him that "parash" meant horse, so when he "saw" the word "parash" again, he just said, oh, "horse"? So God told Joseph Smith the meanings of X number of words, and then he figured the rest out?
Aside from the fact that this is an awkward, clearly ad-hoc argument, Joseph Smith wasn't even looking at the plates most of the time he "translated". He wasn't even looking at the word "parash". So whatever prompted him to write "horse" instead of "horsemen", it wasn't the word "parash."
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
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_Sethbag
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David, and I think others in this thread, I think there's a real problem here. Horseman would not have meant charioteer. Even if "horse" in the Book of Mormon context should be read as "horsemen and chariots", there's no reason to read "horsemen" as charioteers. Charioteers are drivers of a vehicle. Horsemen have always been men mounted on... (drumroll) horses.
There ar e plenty of examples in English of the word "horse" and "horsemen" being synonymous in English in the last couple hundred years. It would not be unexpected for a text discussing the order of battle for some pre-1900s battle to use language such as "General X had three regiments of horse and five regiments of foot", and it is obvious that there weren't literally a few thousand horses doing battle alongside a few thousand more disembodied human feet. It meant three regiments of cavalry and five regiments of unmounted infantry.
So I have no problem at all, in English, with the idea of "horse" and "horsemen" being synonymous in some contexts in English.
The problem I have is divorcing the notion of "horseman" from actual horses. In every English context (outside of the Book of Mormon at least), horsemen were mounted cavalry, and if I must spell it out, they were mounted on horses. There is no English "horse" meaning "horsemen" without the direct implication of actual beasts of the equine species.
So, at least in English, arguing that "horse" can mean "horsemen" and that that gets one out of the need to include literal horse animals in that meaning, is simply not viable.
And I cannot see how it is viable in David's Old Testament examples either. I would challenge David to show where, in the Old Testament, "horsemen" actually referred to the drivers of chariots, and not mounted cavalry. I believe David's advisors, and Old Testaments scholars everywhere, would raise an eyebrow at the notion of "horsemen and chariots" meaning anything other than "mounted cavalry and chariots", two separate components of some ancient battle force.
I don't believe that, even assuming David is correct about the Hebrew word meaning "horse" or "horseman" depending on the context, he gets out of the requirement for actual horse animals to be involved. You don't have "horsemen" without horses. You don't in English, and from the simple, direct reading of the Old Testament passages, I don't believe you do in the Old Testament or in Hebrew either.
There ar e plenty of examples in English of the word "horse" and "horsemen" being synonymous in English in the last couple hundred years. It would not be unexpected for a text discussing the order of battle for some pre-1900s battle to use language such as "General X had three regiments of horse and five regiments of foot", and it is obvious that there weren't literally a few thousand horses doing battle alongside a few thousand more disembodied human feet. It meant three regiments of cavalry and five regiments of unmounted infantry.
So I have no problem at all, in English, with the idea of "horse" and "horsemen" being synonymous in some contexts in English.
The problem I have is divorcing the notion of "horseman" from actual horses. In every English context (outside of the Book of Mormon at least), horsemen were mounted cavalry, and if I must spell it out, they were mounted on horses. There is no English "horse" meaning "horsemen" without the direct implication of actual beasts of the equine species.
So, at least in English, arguing that "horse" can mean "horsemen" and that that gets one out of the need to include literal horse animals in that meaning, is simply not viable.
And I cannot see how it is viable in David's Old Testament examples either. I would challenge David to show where, in the Old Testament, "horsemen" actually referred to the drivers of chariots, and not mounted cavalry. I believe David's advisors, and Old Testaments scholars everywhere, would raise an eyebrow at the notion of "horsemen and chariots" meaning anything other than "mounted cavalry and chariots", two separate components of some ancient battle force.
I don't believe that, even assuming David is correct about the Hebrew word meaning "horse" or "horseman" depending on the context, he gets out of the requirement for actual horse animals to be involved. You don't have "horsemen" without horses. You don't in English, and from the simple, direct reading of the Old Testament passages, I don't believe you do in the Old Testament or in Hebrew either.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
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_marg
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_beastie
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Marg,
This is a form of the "translation error/artifacts" argument. One of the biggest problems for the Book of Mormon is that it is stuffed full of anachronisms of various sorts. So one of the challenges for apologists is to justify the existence of all those plainly erroneous anachronisms, particularly in the book Joseph Smith declared as the "most correct" on earth (whatever that meant to him, who knows)
It is known that when a regular old human being - you know, one who had to learn to translate the hard way, as in actually learn the foreign language, have the text of the foreign language in front of him, and then write the translation based on his/her knowledge - translates ancient text it is quite possible that the translator will inadvertently insert anachronisms in an attempt to capture the significant meaning of the foreign text. So perhaps the translator will translate a foreign idiom in an expression that retains the meaning but is familiar to the target audience, whereas the word-by-word translation of the idiom would make no sense to the target audience. That's how language works. So word-for-word translations aren't the best translations, and it is possible to inadvertently insert anachronisms. Perhaps the idiom in the target language contains a reference to an item that didn't exist in the culture of the ancient language.
So, in my opinion, David is trying to explain why Joseph Smith used the word "horse" in his translation so many times when there were no horses (other than the pre-historic type that went extinct around 10,000 years ago) in precolumbian america. He's saying that the real ancient text didn't really mean "horse", but "horsemen". The assumption some of us are making, although David is not absolutely clear on this point, is that this would remove the anachronism from the text because we know that, in ancient Mesoamerica, royalty were carried on litters that were carried by human transporters.
David, so far, has not really addressed the core problems that we are demonstrating exists with this approach. Joseph Smith wasn't looking at the word "parash" in the first place. And, as sethbag points out, a horseman was actually a term for someone riding a horse.
To be honest, this type of apologia is well suited for those who already believe and simply want to feel good, intellectually, about that belief. It is full of holes that anyone who is not already predisposed to believe will immediately recognize. But believers generally lap it up, just like they tend to lap up a page like Chapman's, which includes known hoaxes as "proof" of horses. If anyone read that page with even the slightest bit of skepticism, which would lead them to do even a minor bit of background investigation into the claims, they would find out within minutes that it is unreliable and actually laughable. But believers don't possess that degree of skepticism - at least most of them don't. They possess a remarkable determination to believe despite contrary evidence, and are therefore extremely eager for any academic-based argument that allows them to feel good about that belief.
Of course, this is human nature, and we are all prone to it. I do think that religious belief, due to its nature, tends to exaggerate the predisposition.
This is a form of the "translation error/artifacts" argument. One of the biggest problems for the Book of Mormon is that it is stuffed full of anachronisms of various sorts. So one of the challenges for apologists is to justify the existence of all those plainly erroneous anachronisms, particularly in the book Joseph Smith declared as the "most correct" on earth (whatever that meant to him, who knows)
It is known that when a regular old human being - you know, one who had to learn to translate the hard way, as in actually learn the foreign language, have the text of the foreign language in front of him, and then write the translation based on his/her knowledge - translates ancient text it is quite possible that the translator will inadvertently insert anachronisms in an attempt to capture the significant meaning of the foreign text. So perhaps the translator will translate a foreign idiom in an expression that retains the meaning but is familiar to the target audience, whereas the word-by-word translation of the idiom would make no sense to the target audience. That's how language works. So word-for-word translations aren't the best translations, and it is possible to inadvertently insert anachronisms. Perhaps the idiom in the target language contains a reference to an item that didn't exist in the culture of the ancient language.
So, in my opinion, David is trying to explain why Joseph Smith used the word "horse" in his translation so many times when there were no horses (other than the pre-historic type that went extinct around 10,000 years ago) in precolumbian america. He's saying that the real ancient text didn't really mean "horse", but "horsemen". The assumption some of us are making, although David is not absolutely clear on this point, is that this would remove the anachronism from the text because we know that, in ancient Mesoamerica, royalty were carried on litters that were carried by human transporters.
David, so far, has not really addressed the core problems that we are demonstrating exists with this approach. Joseph Smith wasn't looking at the word "parash" in the first place. And, as sethbag points out, a horseman was actually a term for someone riding a horse.
To be honest, this type of apologia is well suited for those who already believe and simply want to feel good, intellectually, about that belief. It is full of holes that anyone who is not already predisposed to believe will immediately recognize. But believers generally lap it up, just like they tend to lap up a page like Chapman's, which includes known hoaxes as "proof" of horses. If anyone read that page with even the slightest bit of skepticism, which would lead them to do even a minor bit of background investigation into the claims, they would find out within minutes that it is unreliable and actually laughable. But believers don't possess that degree of skepticism - at least most of them don't. They possess a remarkable determination to believe despite contrary evidence, and are therefore extremely eager for any academic-based argument that allows them to feel good about that belief.
Of course, this is human nature, and we are all prone to it. I do think that religious belief, due to its nature, tends to exaggerate the predisposition.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
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_The Dude
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beastie wrote:To be honest, this type of apologia is well suited for those who already believe and simply want to feel good, intellectually, about that belief. It is full of holes that anyone who is not already predisposed to believe will immediately recognize.
How can someone "feel good, intellectually" about such blatant opportunism from one page to the next? When there's an anachronism, David calls on "loose" translation where Joseph Smith studies it out in his mind and "oops!" inserts an anachronism. On the very next page of text where there's an opportunity to highlight an oh-so-subtle textual link to the ancient Near East, then he calls on the necessary "tight" translation where the seer stone gives Joseph Smith knowledge he couldn't have gotten by any other means (well, except that Joseph Smith was well-versed in the Bible which carries not a few links to the ancient Near East). In other words, cut loose from intellectual constraints and make it up as you go along.
"And yet another little spot is smoothed out of the echo chamber wall..." Bond
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_marg
beastie wrote:
So, in my opinion, David is trying to explain why Joseph Smith used the word "horse" in his translation so many times when there were no horses (other than the pre-historic type that went extinct around 10,000 years ago) in precolumbian america. He's saying that the real ancient text didn't really mean "horse", but "horsemen". The assumption some of us are making, although David is not absolutely clear on this point, is that this would remove the anachronism from the text because we know that, in ancient Mesoamerica, royalty were carried on litters that were carried by human transporters.
So he's attempting to argue that if one can plug in "horsemen" into a sentence of a Book of Mormon where the word "horse" exists, then it would be acceptable ..because a horseman is a man and men existed at the time.
Well it seems to me to be a ludicrous argument/discussion. For one, "horsemen' can not always be used as a replacement for "horses" ..as in the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi 18:25 which I mentioned previously. It just doesn't fit within the context of the sentences. And as Sethbag points out one wouldn't use the word horsemen...if those being referred to didn't have any horses. Without horses, the men are not horsemen.
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_cksalmon
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The Dude wrote:beastie wrote:To be honest, this type of apologia is well suited for those who already believe and simply want to feel good, intellectually, about that belief. It is full of holes that anyone who is not already predisposed to believe will immediately recognize.
How can someone "feel good, intellectually" about such blatant opportunism from one page to the next? When there's an anachronism, David calls on "loose" translation where Joseph Smith studies it out in his mind and "oops!" inserts an anachronism. On the very next page of text where there's an opportunity to highlight an oh-so-subtle textual link to the ancient Near East, then he calls on the necessary "tight" translation where the seer stone gives Joseph Smith knowledge he couldn't have gotten by any other means (well, except that Joseph Smith was well-versed in the Bible which carries not a few links to the ancient Near East). In other words, cut loose from intellectual constraints and make it up as you go along.
Hey Dude--
I know we disagree on some fairly basic issues, but I'm at a loss to provide a better summary than you have of the proposal under consideration: loose if and when its beneficial; tight if and when it's beneficial. Both/and, depending on which provides the best possible apologetic outcome. I think DB might actually cop to this apparently methodogically-treacherous approach and punt to some sort of divine command theory of truth. He seems to come perilously close to Bob McCue's take on future Book of Mormon apologetics: historicity plays second fiddle to relative "truth."
I dunno.
I'm curious as to his response.
Best.
CKS