The Interpreter Foundation’s bizarre obsession with Brigham Young — it’s all Brigham, all the time, right? — unabashedly continues with the Foundation’s latest publications, which were made available today:
I’ve been looking forward to the appearance of this article since Josh Coates first told me that he was working on it: “A Combinatorial Approach to Modeling All Possible Golden Plates”:
Abstract: Historical reports containing information about the properties of the golden plates provide upper and lower bounds for calculating possible configurations of their size, weight, and material composition, as well as the possible properties of reformed Egyptian. This study employs a two-part process to analyze these configurations. First, it examines the physical properties of the plates, generating over 4 billion possible combinations. Second, it analyzes the nature of the writing on the plates, assuming the translated English text of the Book of Mormon is directly representative of the reformed Egyptian engravings. This process involves calculating and filtering combinations based on historical accounts, physical constraints, and linguistic considerations. The study demonstrates that while most configurations are unworkable, nearly one million configurations remain both physically possible and consistent with the documentary record. Key findings suggest the plates likely had less than 20% gold content, weighed more than 54 lb., contained between 187 and 259 plates, and had dimensions slightly smaller than, but within 10% of, Joseph Smith’s description. The writing on the plates likely averaged less than 5 mm square, with each character representing at least three English characters, similar to Egyptian Demotic. Although there are inherent limitations in historical analysis of this kind, this mathematical approach provides a novel perspective on the physical reality of the plates.
“Interpreting Interpreter: Combinatorial Plates,” written by Kyler Rasmussen:
This post is a summary of the article “A Combinatorial Approach to Modeling All Possible Golden Plates” by Josh Coates in Volume 66 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https:/interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.
A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://youtube.com/shorts/cGCXaR_Jf3I.
The Takeaway: Coates provides an analysis of the physical characteristics of the gold plates as well as the script they contained, scouring the historical record to identify the plausible ranges those characteristics could’ve taken. This helps him draw conclusions about the gold content, weight, dimensions, and number of plates, as well as the physical and linguistic density of Reformed Egyptian script.
And I eagerly anticipated the book-length series of articles from Matthew Roper on Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms, of which this is the latest installment: Chapter 8: “Events in Third Nephi,” written by Matthew Roper:
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to present chapter 8 from a book entitled Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms. It is presented in serialized form in this volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.
“Interpreting Interpreter: (Non-)Anachronisms – Cataclysmic Destruction,” written by Kyler Rasmussen:
This post is a summary of the article “Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Chapter 8: Events in Third Nephi” by Matthew Roper in Volume 65 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https:/interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.
A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://youtube.com/shorts/DI-4GApe688.
The Takeaway: Roper continues his examination of claimed Book of Mormon anachronisms, looking at 16 items related to the destruction and other events described in 3 Nephi. He concludes that 88% of these supposed anachronisms have received subsequent confirmation in the archaeological record, with the remaining two trending toward confirmation (destruction at the time of Christ and the night without darkness).
It’s a pretty good time, I think, to be involved with the completely comatose Interpreter Foundation. Today, here in western Missouri, our Interpreter filmmaking team — which, for this project, includes me — worked mostly indoors at the Independence Missouri Visitors Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although we later did a short bit of filming on a street in Independence. It was nice to be out from under the sun and in an air-conditioned space. The missionaries, both the younger sisters and the senior couples, were very accommodating, as was the site manager from the Church Historical Department. (Clearly, as my anonymous critics have surmised, this project is being carried out in brazen defiance of the leaders of the Church.) Coincidentally, for that street scene, we walked alongside the First Presbyterian Church, where young Harry Truman met Bess Wallace, the future First Lady of the United States, in a Sunday School class in 1892 when they were both young children. (Having recently read David McCullough’s admiring biography of Harry Truman, I’m much more appreciative of such places than I would have been a year ago.) Afterwards, everybody except me worked on some voiceovers. I haven’t been getting enough sleep on this trip, so it was wonderful to have a little time for a short nap.
We had left some time tomorrow (Saturday) for any needed footage that we might not have acquired by the end of the day today. But we’ve worked fairly efficiently, and all that remains for tomorrow is recording some B-roll. So, as has become traditional at the end of these expeditions, we celebrated this evening with pizza and a “movie night.” (Everybody in this group has a strong interest in cinema. Who would have thought it?) Our director, Mark Goodman, recommended a 2016 Irish film that he had seen a while ago during a long airline flight: Sing Street. I enjoyed it, though it contained a little bit of language that he probably didn’t encounter when he was watching it on a commercial airliner.
Posted from Independence, Missouri
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