Shulem wrote: ↑Fri Mar 25, 2022 11:05 am
It's a very, very, simple answer and there is ONLY one. It's a 1 or a 0 or a yes or a no. Keep the word or replace it with something else. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, complex about the outcome of this choice. I don't doubt at all that Smith would have scrubbed START on the manuscripts and penciled in an alternative had he realized what he had said. His task was to make his work look as genuine as possible and dress it in the official language of the English Bible. The fact that he let
adieu into his novel is an anomaly that is hard to explain. But the Bible's main thrust
starts at the very
beginning of Genesis and Joseph Smith was keen on that. But Smith was not perfect and neither was his Book of Mormon which he wanted to be the most correct book on earth. But the use of START is 5 errors he made while making up stories.
Are you telling me that Joseph Smith did not realize that "adieu" was not in the Bible? The problem here is your foundational assumption that, because Joseph Smith emulated King-Jamesian language, he must have felt it was important to emulate it precisely. All of that assumes a certain approach to the Book of Mormon project that I just don't know is true, and I am not confident that your assumptions are right. The questions you ask will determine the kind of answers you come up with. In the search, you will look at things that are valuable to people who are not asking your particular question, so, even if they don't agree with your assumptions, they can benefit from what you are doing.
Very few people really understand Joseph Smith's thought process. They just fill in their rough psychological and criminal profiles and call it good. Your whole project begins with the assumption that Joseph Smith is mostly just a lying fraud, and so every research project you undertake looks for evidence to prove that point. Honestly, I think that is a very boring question, but you don't care what I think in that regard. I just find it somewhat funny that you get upset with me for not finding that to be an interesting way to go. Still, you do a lot of interesting and useful work in the service of answering that boring question.
I am thankful you are doing it.
You want to show others that Joseph Smith was a fraud. I want to understand Joseph Smith. Those are very different ways of approaching the same material. Your project will yield a lot of interesting data and observations. And then you will say, "See? Joseph Smith was a fraud!"
I have seen you do it over, and over, and over, and over, and over . . . . . . .
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.