Timothy Monday

Sir Timothy John Paul Platt Monday, 4th Baronet of Carrickfergus. FRPSL. Philogynist. Runemaster. Philology & Grammar. Flerf, Holy Grail seeker born in Ulster.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

Just me, a stylish Northern Irish dandy by birth, a Cumbrian by adoption, drifting through life quite convinced the world would improve if it obeyed my wardrobe.

https://t.co/46uXPQSOiW

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

I confess I have never quite understood why the notion of God possessing a body, or taking bodily form, is presented as some spectacular affront to mainstream Christianity.

After all, Christians have spent two millennia proclaiming that Jesus Christ was not a phantom, a metaphor, or a particularly vivid theological illustration. He possessed flesh and bones. He ate, walked, slept, suffered, bled, died, and rose again.

If the Incarnation itself is the very heart of the Christian faith, why should the mere concept of embodiment suddenly be treated as scandalous? One may certainly dispute *how* God relates to a body, or *what* is meant by divine embodiment, but to react as though the idea were self-evidently absurd seems rather odd for a religion whose central proclamation begins with, "The Word became flesh."

The real question is not whether embodiment can be associated with God. Christianity settled that question long ago. The question is what precisely we mean when we speak of God's nature, Christ's humanity, and Christ's divinity. Those are difficult theological questions. Pretending that the Incarnation never happened is not a solution to them.

Christians: "The eternal God became man, took flesh, walked among us, and rose bodily from the dead."
Also Christians: "God having a body? What a shocking and unprecedented idea!"

One cannot help feeling that somebody has misplaced a chapter or two of the New Testament.

[ThinkingWest @thinkingwest]

In 1942, C.S. Lewis predicted a future dystopia where:

-Education is leveled to a mediocre state to avoid hurt feelings
-The middle class is hollowed out, removing the primary champions of private excellence
-"Avoiding trauma" becomes the excuse to stop pushing students to their full potential

The obsession with perfect equality ends up destroying human greatness — and it’s fueled by state education, where schools become more like nurseries than academic institutions.

Seems like Lewis’s dystopia is already here.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

Perhaps. But there is a curious asymmetry between our positions.

I cannot yet prove that I possess a soul. I freely concede the point.

The difference is that, if I am right, I shall eventually discover the fact for myself. If there is indeed a life beyond death, the matter will be settled rather decisively from my perspective.

Unfortunately, if that turns out to be the case, I shall be deprived of the immense pleasure of returning to say, 'I told you so,' because will you no longer exist to hear it.

If, on the other hand, you are right, then neither of us will be around to celebrate your victory.

It is one of the peculiar disadvantages of materialism: even if it wins the argument, there is nobody left to enjoy being correct.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

@mig23477526 @aigkenham Excuse me, are you one of those AI bots lately claiming to have aquired a soul?

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

Dear Fellow,
The matter is not altogether straightforward, mind you. It remains uncertain whether the deep and the waters are presented as pre-existing realities, or whether they belong to the very earth whose creation is declared in Genesis 1:1. The text permits both readings more readily than some interpreters are willing to admit.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

VERY, VERY BRIEF PHILOLOGICAL AND STYLOMETRIC CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING AUTHORSHIP, REDACTION, AND LITERARY VOICE IN THE BOOK OF MORMON.

BY TIMOTHY MONDAY, AN ANGLICAN PHILOLOGIST SPECIALISING IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The Book of Mormon presents itself as a compilation of records written by numerous prophets and record-keepers over roughly a thousand years. Some of the principal contributors include:
Nephi
Jacob
Mosiah
Alma
Helaman
Mormon
Moroni

In the narrative, Mormon plays a particularly important role. He is said to have abridged centuries of earlier records onto the gold plates. In that sense, much of the Book of Mormon is presented as Mormon's compilation of many earlier sources, much as a historian might compile quotations and records from earlier authors.

The final sections are then said to have been completed by his son Moroni after Mormon's death.
From the book's internal perspective, therefore, it is somewhat analogous to the Bible:

Many books
Many authors
Many centuries
One compiled volume

Critics, however, often argue that the text exhibits a relatively uniform style and vocabulary, suggesting a single nineteenth-century author or a small group of authors. Latter-day Saint scholars respond that a translator's language can naturally produce stylistic consistency across multiple underlying sources.

One encounters here a curious spectacle. The critic opens the Book of Mormon, discovers that its various authors sound rather similar, and triumphantly announces that they therefore must be the same person. The Mormon, meanwhile, replies that a translator can produce stylistic uniformity, and triumphantly concludes that no further questions need be asked. Both parties then retire satisfied, having proved rather less than they imagine.
He would then distinguish style, voice, and authorship, which are not the same thing.

The Translator Problem:

Suppose that one translate Homer, Plato, Aristotle,
and Plutarch into elegant Victorian English.

What happens?

The resulting works acquire a common linguistic surface.

Words recur.

Phrases recur.

Sentence structures recur.

To some extent, they all begin to sound Victorian.

This is not evidence that Homer and Aristotle were the same man. It merely reflects the translator's hand.

The King James Bible provides an obvious example. In English, Moses, David, Isaiah, Matthew, Paul, and John often sound remarkably alike. Yet nobody supposes that they were all secretly written by the same individual.

The English reader is frequently hearing not merely Isaiah, but Isaiah filtered through the committee room of seventeenth-century Anglican scholarship.

A Mormon could therefore reasonably argue:
"If Joseph Smith translated ancient records into his own biblical idiom, one would expect a certain stylistic consistency."

That is not an absurd defence.

The Critic's Counterargument:

However, critics are not merely observing biblical language.

They often point to deeper features:
recurring theological themes,
recurring rhetorical habits,
recurring phraseology,
recurring narrative patterns,
and similar modes of argument across supposedly different centuries and cultures.

The question becomes:

Why do Nephi, Alma, Mormon, and Moroni often seem to inhabit a remarkably similar conceptual world?

A critic might argue that genuine records spanning a millennium ought to display more obvious
development and diversity.

After all, compare:
the Book of Genesis,
the Psalms,
Ecclesiastes,
Isaiah,
and Paul's epistles.

The differences are immediately apparent.

Different personalities emerge.

Different concerns emerge.

Different literary forms emerge.

The Bible feels less like a single voice than a cathedral built over centuries.

Some critics contend that the Book of Mormon feels more like a single architect deliberately designing an entire building.

The Difficulty of Measuring Ancient Voices:

We have to be cautious about excessive confidence.

The Book of Mormon is relatively short compared to the Bible.

Moreover, if Mormon truly abridged centuries of records, then readers are not encountering the original documents directly.

They are reading material already filtered through Mormon's editorial process.

In other words:
One cannot easily distinguish the voice of the prophet from the voice of the editor when one possesses only the editor's version.
This complicates the matter considerably.

Even if ancient authors existed, Mormon's abridgment could naturally produce a degree of uniformity.

The Real Question:

At this point I would probably grow slightly impatient with stylometric triumphalism.

The modern world has developed a touching faith in vocabulary counts. One occasionally gains the impression that if enough adverbs are tabulated, the mysteries of history will surrender themselves.
Stylometry can be useful.
It can suggest patterns.
It can raise questions.
But it rarely settles questions of this magnitude by itself.

The deeper issue is not whether two passages use similar words.
The deeper issue is whether the historical claims of the book are credible.
If the historical foundations fail, stylistic diversity cannot save the text.
If the historical foundations stand, stylistic similarity does not destroy it.

In the end, the uniformity of the Book of Mormon's style is a legitimate observation, but not a decisive argument. A translator may indeed impose a common linguistic dress upon many authors. Equally, a genuinely single author may create the illusion of multiple voices.

The question therefore cannot be settled merely by counting phrases and comparing sentence lengths. Literature is more complicated than mathematics, and history more complicated still.

The real dispute lies elsewhere: not in whether Nephi sounds too much like Moroni, but in whether Nephi and Moroni existed at all.

And here, I would suspect, the argument finally reaches the point at which both believers and critics must leave linguistics behind and confront the larger historical and theological claims themselves.

#Mormonism
#philology
#LDS
#LatterDaySaints

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

My dear fellow,
This is very flattering, but I hope not entirely true.
It is a rare pleasure to meet another traveller who loves the same books, cherishes the same truths, and is irritated by precisely the same absurdities.
Yet, I hope we're not merely men after one another's hearts. That would be a rather small pilgrimage.
Better, perhaps, thst we are fellow pilgrims after a higher one, for only then is our agreement founded upon something more substantial than our own preferences.
Until then, may your shelves remain well-stocked, your conscience well-formed, your tea properly brewed, and your prayers faithfully offered.
Kind regards,
TM

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

A fascinating proposition. One wonders what became of St Peter, then. He preached at Pentecost, founded churches, suffered imprisonment, and was eventually crucified for Christ, all while remaining blissfully unaware that the Council of Nicaea would not convene for another three centuries.

The same difficulty afflicts St James, St John, and St Paul. They managed, through some extraordinary oversight, to write the New Testament without once quoting the Nicene Creed. Not because they disagreed with it, of course, but because it did not yet exist.

Indeed, if acceptance of the Nicene Creed is the criterion of being Christian, then the Apostles themselves spent their entire earthly lives in the regrettable condition of not being Christians.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

@TheBarmyArmy Hurricane.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

@Machi1Nne Quite the contrary, ma'am. History suggests that war criminals are very often men tragically short of words, and therefore disastrously reliant upon artillery to complete their arguments.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

@Machi1Nne Quite so, ma'am. Civilization itself is largely the history of people taking enough time to form complete sentences.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

There is something magnificently anticlimactic about expecting the restorer of primordial cosmic truth and discovering he is called “Joseph Smith.” One anticipates a name echoing from desert caves — Ezekiel, Malachi, perhaps something wrapped in thunder and camel hair — not a gentleman who sounds as though he ought to be balancing ledgers in rural Vermont.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

@jefe_tweets The mere repetition of a name proves remarkably little. Book of Mormon mentions Jesus Christ constantly; Mein Kampf mentions the Jews constantly. Presence in the text is not the same thing as fidelity to the subject.

[Timothy Monday @TimothyMondayBt]

@j_divis The Church of Jesus Christ being called non-Christian sounds absurd only until one remembers that nearly every regime calling itself a “People’s Democratic Republic” turned out to be neither popular nor democratic. Names, alas, are cheap.