CP3S said:
Ooh, this could be a fun discussion. If we do proceed down this road, I will definitely move my responses to the Mormon thread. But for now, I will offer you this outdated article:
Wordprint is an extremely questionable method. It is far from conclusive, and really determines nothing.
Well clearly, or else everyone who ever studied it would know the Book of Mormon is true. But your offhand dismissal is not evidence to the contrary, but rather a lack of research. It's not like it'd hold up in court, but it's more compelling than you realize. It's been used to verify more than just Book of Mormon authorship.
Usually, translated works by different authors but the same translator are shown to be of the same author by the wordprint method, but not always. The inconsistency there goes along way in telling us that, ultimately, this study on the Mormon books really tells us nothing.
No, and no. Look at the article again, as it shows that many of the wordprint characteristics are retained after translation. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to alter one's style, even more so to alter it numerous times in the same work without repeating one's style.
This article is also an interesting read.
We even have the "Book of Abraham" (that's the one, right?) written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, that has no correlation whatsoever to what Smith claims to have translated from that same piece of papyri. This is the point where you start talking about the necessity of faith, which would be an obvious requirement.
Yes, this would be worth discussion as well. Perhaps I will address in the Mormon thread.
We actually discussed it a bit last time.
I still feel that the Book of Abraham and the revelation that it is nothing of the sort, should have been the end of Mormonism.
I could certainly go to greater lengths to explain my personal views on this topic, but they correlate with at least some of the ideas in this article, so I will provide this for your extensive reading pleasure, and you may probe further if you wish, and I will then give you more specific answers:
http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Abraham
To his credit as well, he spent relatively little time working on the Book of Mormon, approximately two months of actual reading with transcribers.
That is hardly unreasonable. With people to do the transcription work, this would be very doable.
For a purely fictitious book without any subsequent editing (aside from a largely minor corrections after the first printing, mostly in terms of spelling and punctuation), that's pretty darn fast.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=71&chapid=767
It seems like you brought up another point recently regarding Mormonism specifically that I have not addressed, but I can't seem to find it. I'm calling it a night.