This.Lem wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:21 pmIt really does. In fact, Kyler Rasmussen’s rendition of it even worse than just asserting there is Early Modern English language. This is his actual hypothesis:Dr Exiled wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:42 pmThis Early Modern English theory really needs to be jettisoned. However, I guess so much money was spent on motivated reasoning that it's hard to back out now. Even so, the theory is a joke and should be a cause for embarrassment, but belief in magic rocks still persists. So, why not bring out more nonsense for our enjoyment?
Let me guess without having read Dr. Rasmussen's latest. He picks numbers out of his _______ (ones that work of course) and then voila Early Modern English is a success story.“Very large proportion is NOT true, by Carmack and Skousen’s own latest admission.
…But there are a couple things that would be required here to be consistent with the Early Modern English evidence. The first is that Joseph is not involved in producing the wording of the text, or at least any of the words that involve Early Modern English syntax or word meanings (which, when you get down to it, covers a very large proportion of the book).
Oh. So… NOT Early Modern English. A “filtered or managed” version. For example, like how a story teller in Smith’s time would try to make his story sound ancient, while mostly retaining his own language so that his contemporaries can understand?The second is that the text is not actually a true Early Modern English text. Regardless of how the text was produced, the hypothesis is that it’s been filtered or managed in some way so that the words and spellings themselves would remain recognizable to nineteenth-century readers.
This would explain how the underlying syntactic structure of the text could show Early Modern English forms, and how many recognizable words could have truly archaic meanings, while sparing us the true strangeness of Early Modern English.
So that’s his hypothesis. More later, I have to go but really, this is just getting worse and worse.
Joseph Smith was riffing on the mound builder myth that put ancient israel into the americas. He wanted to sound like he thought his readers would assume ancient native american israelite prophets would sound and so used the Bible as a guide. A big portion of the stories in the Book of Mormon are reworked stories from the Bible. Any believer reading this need only read Acts side by side Alma when Alma and Amulek are doing their thing to see this. Isaiah is directly quoted probably due to laziness. He riffs on Matthew in 3 Nephi and uses Paul's writings on charity, putting them into Mormon's mouth.
No, the clear answer to the oversold and overhyped Early Modern English riddle, in my mind, is that any Early Modern English, if any, is from Joseph Smith trying to sound old-worldly and biblical at the same time.