Steve Farmer (see http://www.safarmer.com/Farmer.Beijin…) is a former Harvard prof who uses a complexity based computer program to help date ancient documents. He has told me that he thinks he may be able to shed new light on when the B of M was written. I am aware of another similar complex pattern finding system that is right now being applied to assist in determining where the B of M came from, who likely wrote it, etc.
Does anyone else sense a noose tightening? Or maybe I am a hopeless optimist.
And we can thank Mitt for the fact that countless people who knew nothing about Mormonism until recently (including most Mormons) are now hearing lots about it. This news should soon include the kind of issue I am raising here.
As probable reality’s noose tightens, I predict that concepts related to “mythic truth” being almost as good as literal truth (per Santayana and other post modernish thinkers (seehttp://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~kerrlaw…) will begin to circulate more broadly within Mormonism. LDS Church historian Leonard Arrington used to quote Santayana as his authority for the proposition that whether something is mythically true or literally true is not important. This is part of what got him fired as the only real historian ever to hold the position of official LDS church historian. As a result, he and the entire “church history” (an oxymoron is there ever was one) department were moved to BYU where they could be more easily controlled and ignored, as it suited those at the top of the Mormon power pyramid.
Who was it who said something about the truth not needing our help because it cuts its own way?, and the silliness of a puny human arm attempting to hold back the mighty Mississippi River?
I guess some things take a while to sort out. 200 hundred or so years is not so long in the big scheme of things. Right?