contention

The prevalence of a spirit of contention amongst a people is a certain sign of deadness with respect to the things of religion. When men's spirits are hot with contention, they are cold to religion. - Jonathan Edwards “The Book of Mormon does not supplant the Bible. It expands, extends, clarifies, and amplifies our knowledge of the Savior. Surely, this second witness should be cause for great rejoicing by all Christians.” - Joseph B. Wirthlin

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Book of Mormon Grammar - Kudos to BOMC

On March 14, 2015, there was a conference at BYU titled "Exploring the Complexities in the English Language of the Book of Mormon." We were in New Zealand at the time so I missed the conference, but I really like what Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack are doing with the text. I was delighted that Book of Mormon Central uploaded the video recently. Here's the link.

This is the kind of resource that BOMC excels at making available. I recommend the video to anyone interested in Book of Mormon scholarship. The topic might seem a little arcane and narrow, but it's not. Carmack does a great job explaining why we have some of the odd grammar in the Book of Mormon text.

Here's the abstract:

"The grammar of the Book of Mormon has been naively criticized since its publication in 1830. The supposedly bad grammar is a match with language found in the Early Modern English textual record. Syntactic usage, especially past tense with did and the command construction, points only to that era. Book of Mormon language exhibits well-formed variation typical of the 16th and 17th centuries."

I'd like a transcript--maybe there is one that I don't know about yet--but for now the video is fantastic.

Go watch it.

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