Stem wrote:I remember seeing this article before, but what caught me this time, was Stanford Carmack's work might be more useful than I thought. Perhaps as it grows and expands we'll be able to find the sources of the Book of Mormon. What Carmack is doing is helping to identify phrases from Bunyan and others. Carmack's conclusion has remained that Joseph could not have come up with is Early Modern English elemetns because publications of his era didn't contain it. Well, Pilgram's Progress was front and center for him. Could it not contain Early Modern English? Aapparently so.
Davis says:
Bunyan wrote upwards of 60 books, tracts, and pamphlets, including Grace Abounding, A Few Sighs from Hell, Holy War and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, and these texts provide extensive narrative parallels to the Book of Mormon, often containing unique characteristics shared only by Bunyan and Smith.
I guess we'll see how this all unfolds. But I find this to be a very intriguing piece. I hope to see others build on it.
The conscious adoption of archaic language is a feature of the epic tradition (you find this in Homer). In addition to suggesting that Book of Mormon dictation was an oral performance, I have also recommended placing it in the epic tradition, which includes such Christian works as Jerusalem Liberated and The Lusiads.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Stem wrote:I remember seeing this article before, but what caught me this time, was Stanford Carmack's work might be more useful than I thought. Perhaps as it grows and expands we'll be able to find the sources of the Book of Mormon. What Carmack is doing is helping to identify phrases from Bunyan and others. Carmack's conclusion has remained that Joseph could not have come up with is Early Modern English elemetns because publications of his era didn't contain it. Well, Pilgram's Progress was front and center for him. Could it not contain Early Modern English? Aapparently so.
I think this might be where Carmack's work proves useful. He probably won't ever agree with the non-faith promoting conclusions his work will produce (he is still reluctant to admit that the book was an oral composition and not written and doesn't want to consider the implications), but others willing to follow the evidence will benefit from it.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Grudunza wrote:I just looked up Pilgrim’s Progress, and the very first sentence contains the phrase “I dreamed a dream.” Same thing Lehi says in Nephi 1:8. As I recall, Mormon scholars used to consider that as evidence of Hebraic phrasing. Um. Apparently, more like Bunyanic phrasing.
That article is from 2012, and I recall hearing about that PP connection before, but yeah, that really should be explored more. I wonder if the Johnsons (who did the study that found phrasing parallels in The Late War, First Book of Napoleon, etc.) ever looked at Bunyan’s work.
Yeah, didn't that used to be one of Hugh Nibley's 'signs' that the Book of Mormon was of ancient Jewish origin? I would call that "Patty cake... Laffy taffy" scholarship.
Joseph was a genius at taking many religious ideas and synthesizing them into something new. While perhaps not standing on the shoulders of giants, he at least stood on the shoulders of writers of unusual size.
