In The Nature of the Original Language [of the Book of Mormon] (hereafter, NOL), Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack indicated that additional research into the language of the Book of Mormon might discover that some of the archaic words, phrases, and expressions identified at the beginning of NOL had also occurred later in the 1700s. Unfortunately, they were hampered at the time by an inability to fully use the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) database.
However, much of that difficulty has since been overcome. Carmack has spent the past year or so reviewing the potentially archaic words, phrases, and expressions discussed in NOL, and, having thoroughly weighed that initial re-analysis, Skousen has now written a fresh report on the subject.
We have already posted a pre-print of their revised discussion of apparently archaic vocabulary at https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-pre-print-of-revisions-in-the-analysis-of-archaic-language-in-the-book-of-mormon/.
In what follows — which is likewise a pre-print of material that will appear in part 8 of volume 3 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project — Skousen and Carmack report the results of their renewed inquiry into seemingly archaic phrases. Again, some of the phrases treated in NOL persisted longer than they had originally proposed. But a number of solid examples remain as probably if not certainly archaic.
These revisions illustrate the care and integrity with which the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project has been conducted from its inception. The Interpreter Foundation is honored to be associated with this effort.
— Dan Peterson
Links to the databases mentioned in this write-up:
| OED | Oxford English Dictionary: online, third edition [in progress] https://www.oed.com/ |
| EEBO | Early English Books Online (texts from the late 1400s up through 1700) https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebogroup/ Search Engine: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?page=simple;g=eebogroup |
| ECCO | Eighteenth Century Collections Online (texts from 1700 through 1800) https://www.gale.com/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online |
| DOST | A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (texts from before 1700) https://dsl.ac.uk/ |
| Google Books | Advanced Book Search https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search |
NOTE: This is a pre-print of what will appear in part 8 of Volume III: The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon. As such, we have not made it available for downloading or printing. Please refrain from bypassing these restrictions.
Your thoroughness and hard work is appreciated.
Thank you.