Deletion of Linguistics and the Book of Mormon (2nd nomination)

Comment: The wp:Lede should be cleaned up to spell out concisely and clearly what the article is about. ringe concerns are also clean-up issues and not really an AfD concern. I would ask for guidance on the fringe board if there is some ownership or seemingly insurmountable POV concerns. This does seem to be a notable subject as well as one for which reliable sources are available
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Non-free content (WP:F)

Comment: That's not the entire issue.  There just isn't any such thing as a truly reliable source in this issue.  The whole article hinges on assuming that the BOM is a translation from some language about which we know nothing other than it was (perhaps) a descendant of Pre-Exilic Hebrew 900 years later.  If we had an Arabic translation from Aristotle, we could discuss the underlying language because we know that language and have other texts in that language.  We could discuss the features of that text based on Greek because we know the Greek that Aristotle spoke and we could prove that it was a translation because we could compare Greek with the Arabic text.  We cannot do this with the BOM text because we have no idea what the "original language" was (assuming it was a translation).  The issue is also a classic ringe position--only LDS scholars are interested in the issue and even they are divided on how much importance to place upon "linguistic" studies of the BOM.  Non-LDS scholars just aren't interested in a topic with no scientific basis and don't spend time publishing on the topic.  Thus, a bibliography of the topic includes many LDS references and virtually no non-LDS references.  (Note that this comment has nothing to do with the BOM's value as a book of faith.)  We don't have articles here on other non-linguistic "linguistics" such as "Hebrew as Adam's language" or "All languages spring from Sanskrit", even though there are surely many publications by partisans espousing these POVs "scientifically
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Non-free content (WP:F)