Thats known as a strawman DS and it has no place in this context.
It's known as a mistake, that's all. I misunderstood your position. I truly appreciate you pointing out my errors, though--frubals to you! It's your tone that can be taken as insulting. You don't give any benefit of the doubt that this was a simple mistake.
it would be like whatever was written on Moronis golden plates and not like a text that was written centuries later.
Then this is a double bind. If you can't state a condition as to what the translation ought to look like, then what you have here is a double (or multiple) bind, i.e. a choice with no right answer: if the translation looks exactly like the KJV passages, it's a forgery. If it doesn't look anything like the KJV passage, it's a forgery. If it's half and half, its a
complex forgery. Unless you can explain circumstances under which the BoM Isaiah passages could
not be a forgery, then your approach is unfalsifiable and unscientific.
I have no need to because yet again you attempt to change the debate.
I'm merely trying to find out what condition the translation would have to be in in order to be declared correct. As far as I can tell, there is no such condition. I was asking you--as the starter of this thread and one of the directors of its dialogue--to help me find such a condition. What if we compared it to earlier translations of Isaiah, would that help? Does anyone know if Isaiah passages were found among the scrolls at Qumran?
I cannot know what the translation should have looked like because I have never had access to the Golden Plates.
It`s my assertion that no one ever had access to Moronis golden plates because they did not exist.
This is called confirmation bias, while we're pointing out each other's fallacies. You have to fail to disprove your hypothesis in order to truly confirm it. This requires you to have
a criteria for failure that the hypothesis does not meet. (Margaret W. Matlin,
Cognition, Harcourt College Publishers, 1998, p 394.)
If they did exist it is highly unlikely that the tone, context, and verse structure of a text translated from reformed Egyptian(whatever that is) would be exactly the same as KJV english which is unique in itself for the time.
However what we find is what appears to be someone following their concept of KJV English in the BoM.
The problem here is that we already know that Joseph's influence is evident in the translation--the Nephites didn't speak in KJV English! We should expect to find the influence of a 19th century American in these passages, chosing the words that most closely resemble the passagese he's familiar with.
I have a question.
Has "reformed Egfyptian" ever been found to be used in Egyptian culture at any time?
If you're done answering your own question, the answer is "yes." Egyptian has been "reformed" from time to time. In addition to demotic and heiratic, the Caananites under Egyptian rule had a practice of altering Egyptian names so they could be adapted to Caananite speech. Their name for this adaptation, according to the Amarna letters, is "reformed Egyptian." (Knudtzon,
Amarna-tafeln 117, 123, 132, 1566, 1222.)
This is Egyptian reformed for Caananite speech; Egyptian reformed for Hebrew speech would be much different. For example, it would have to create a character for "l" so that the Her-Amon could be rendered "Helamon" or "Helaman." Further, the reformation process would be exclusive to the group, thus the Book of Mormon is perfectly accurate in saying no one else knows their language. How did Joseph Smith know that this term already existed for adapting Egyptian, when it was discovered in the Amarna letters over fifty years after the Book of Mormon was published?
Thats a bit dishonest, just a bit.
A large archeological find was uncovered in 1887 but Amarna was known of well before .
According to Wikipedia at least 1714.
Again, it could have been a simple mistake. You're right about the discovery of Amarna, Linwood, but I don't see what this gains you: the Amarna
letters--which were the sources of names I was referring to, as cited on the "Faking History" thread--were not discovered until long after the Book of Mormon was published. How did Joseph use proper names or political references
from these letters? The same applies to Elephantine; it may have been known about before the BoM was published, but the Elephantine
papyri were not discovered until afterward. This still begs the question, how did Joseph know to avoid Baal-names as he was "plaigerizing" Hebrew names from the Bible?
Both Elephantine and Amarna were well known archeological find before the BoM was written in 1830.
Yes, but the actual documents I've been referencing were discovered afterward, namely the Amarna letters (1887 according to your data) and the Elephantine papyri (unearthed at various times, all after 1890.)
What I am doing is shedding light on an outright lie told by those who would defend their faith.
An "outright lie?!" ROTFL! Jonny can defend himself, but I was guilty of nothing more than an obscure pronoun. The "they" in your quote refers to the
names, not the sites.
For someone who doesn't cite his own source when repeatedly asked, Linwood, you hold a pretty high standard for your opponents. To hear you talk, all mistakes--even grammatical ones--are part of a conspiracy! I hope you don't work for the NSA! Fnord.
When one must fabricate evidence to defend their faith their faith is weak.
Who said anything about defending faith?! As for me, this has never been about faith at all.
No amount of evidence could ever fully prove the Book of Mormon is the Word of God! Even if we found all the archaeological evidence we ever wanted, one could still claim that Joseph and his cohorts had the help of time travelers, aliens, or recalled memories from past lives. When chiasm were discovered in the Book of Mormon, several students in the discoverer's class immediately suggested that Joseph Smith was a reincarnated Hebrew scribe. I can't refute that, nor the claim that Satan helped Joseph write the book.
Furthermore, even if Joseph Smith was a true prophet and the plates were delivered to him by an angel, that doesn't mean the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is anything it claims to be. Joseph could have fallen from grace after the translation, and if not him, any of the subsequent prophets could have fallen astray and led the church into apostasy.
My testimony of the Book of Mormon has never rested on archaeological data, but on my personal relationship with God through the book.
The issue is the assertion that they were "unknown" prior to the BoM is a lie or at best a convenient misunderstanding.
Again, the "they" here is the names, Linwood, not the sites. These names, along with certain political and naming conventions, were unknown prior to the discovery of the Amarna
letters and the Elephantine
papyri. Saying the
sites were known beforehand is a pointless distraction from the facts.