Another Wordprint-type Study

[emeliza]

Wouldn't it have made more sense to use another text that none of the men had any connection to as a control?

I believe the last two the other men have no connection to, they are just from the same time period. It would make sense to use the same time period because even though I personally don't believe the BoM was written by someone from that time period, it was translated then and you can definitely find things the crept in because of who was translating it.

[Duncan]

I wonder why Bob McCue even posts here, he did say it was a waste of time by the way. Reminds me of a quotattion from Elder Maxwell, It may well be, as our time comes to "suffer shame for his name" (Acts 5:41), that some of this special stress will grow out of that portion of discipleship which involves citizenship. Remember that, as Nephi and Jacob said, we must learn to endure "the crosses of the world" (2 Nephi 9:18) and yet to despise "the shame of [it]" (Jacob 1:. To go on clinging to the iron rod in spite of the mockery and scorn that flow at us from the multitudes in that great and spacious building seen by Father Lehi, which is the "pride of the world," is to disregard the shame of the world (1 Nephi 8:26â??27, 33; 11:35â??36). Parenthetically, why--really why--do the disbelievers who line that spacious building watch so intently what the believers are doing? Surely there must be other things for the scorners to do--unless, deep within their seeming disinterest, there is interest.Elder Neal A. Maxwellâ??Meeting the Challenges of Todayâ?Oct 1978 BYU Devotional Boldness minesorry, "Quotation"

[Bill Hamblin]

Another rather odd thing about these claims is that JS is obviously the dynamic religious genius when compared to the other candidates such as Spaulding, Cowdery and Rigdon. However one interprets JS and the BOM, he was the one who consistently came up with scripture such as the PGP, DC, and other restored scripture and teachings. Compare that with the known writings of Spaulding, Cowdery and Rigdon, we can see the difference between a religious genius/prophet and ordinary religious preachers and writers.

So, we are supposed to believe that Spaulding-Cowdery-Rigdon came up with the BOM. Then by some peculiar stroke of luck found an obscure Farm-boy to be their front-man. (Why they would need a front-man is unclear, since they could have made the same claims as JS did. Why didn't Rigdon or Cowdery just claim the angel came to them?) Then, as it turns out, the obscure farm-boy they selected just happens to turn out to be a religious genius of the first magnitude--something that comes along quite rarely--who goes on to produce reams of scripture. Meanwhile, the true authors of the BOM continue on through their lives never again producing anything like the BOM.

The other question, of course, is why Cowdery-Rigdon would produce a manuscript with numerous strange grammatical features, when they were obviously capable of writing standard English.

Does any of this make any sense?

[Luigi]

Looks like we have more wordprint-like proof of the book of mormon! Only this time it "proves" that Spaulding, Rigdon, and Cowdery wrote it.

http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/papbyrecent.dtl

Abstract:

http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/fqn040v1

The paper costs 28 dollars.

I never thought much of the wordprint studies either way. If anything this will hopefully dampen the wordprint enthusiasts who felt that wordprinting offered such great evidence of the Book of Mormon's authenticity.

[Luigi]

Parenthetically, why--really why--do the disbelievers who line that spacious building watch so intently what the believers are doing? Surely there must be other things for the scorners to do--unless, deep within their seeming disinterest, there is interest.Elder Neal A. Maxwellâ??Meeting the Challenges of Todayâ?Oct 1978 BYU Devotional Boldness minesorry, "Quotation"

I suppose if many people in your family, friends and community were members of something which you did not believe in and which you felt was partially positive but partially destructive to emotional well-being and that you were constantly dealing with them expressing or acting like you were the one that was lost and deluded that you'd keep that all to yourself.

[juliann]

I also note that I have personal correspondence with Steve Farmer in which he indicated, after spent many hours looking at the Book of Mormon as a potential academic project for him and his colleagues, that the result of their analysis was so obvious to him that they could not justify the time it would take the perform the formal analysis. That is, a reading of the texts in the BofM alleged to by produced by different authors in the same culture 1,000 years apart made it obvious to him this was not real historical material. As he put it to me, why would a geologist take the time to prove yet again that the Earth is far more than 6,000 years old? That fact is already well established for those who have taken more than a cursory look at the data and are not encumbered by social constructs that make it hard to see what they are looking at. And more research done in that field will not likely have any effect on those who have not been swayed by what it already available on that point. And more importantly from his perspective, there are other far more important questions on which he and his group are spending their time.

I think it is of interest that Bob is on record that Farmer only spent "many hours looking" to determine the result was "obvious". Thiis what the authors claim publicly:

We examine the entire 1830 Book of Mormon without any a priori assumptions

[Uncle Dale]

Another rather odd thing about these claims is that JS is obviously the dynamic religious genius when compared to the other candidates such as Spaulding, Cowdery and Rigdon. However one interprets JS and the BOM, he was the one who consistently came up with scripture such as the PGP, DC, and other restored scripture and teachings. Compare that with the known writings of Spaulding, Cowdery and Rigdon, we can see the difference between a religious genius/prophet and ordinary religious preachers and writers.

Certainly we Latter Day Saints mostly view Smith as a "dynamic religious genius;"

and since Brodie's day, at least, many of the non-Saints have come to a similar

conclusion. The convergence of perceptions on this point has been a contributing

factor in bringing non-LDS/RLDS contributors into the ranks of modern groups

such as the Mormon History Association, etc. At least we are mostly all agreed

(in such professional associations) that Mormonism does not arise out of any sort

of 1820s conspiracy (not speaking for myself here, obviously).

Whether or not Smith outranks Rigdon as a "dynamic religious genius;" is another

matter -- and I do not believe that a final verdict has been rendered on that.

Obviously Smith was far more successful than Rigdon, and the results of his

efforts proved to be far more substantial than Rigdon's. But I believe that

Elder Sidney Rigdon was also a remarkable religious innovator and leader.

I would not cut him off from consideration quite so quickly as you seem to do.

So, we are supposed to believe that Spaulding-Cowdery-Rigdon came up with the BOM. Then by some peculiar stroke of luck found

an obscure Farm-boy to be their front-man. (Why they would need a front-man is unclear, since they could have made the same

claims as JS did.

This is the sort of discussion that will be ongoing from here on out, I think.

Whether or not Rigdon made use of Spalding writings is somewhat beside

the point, when the greater import of your question is considered. The

more important question, is whether or not there is any conceivable scenario

in which Rigdon and Smith might have cooperated in compiling/developing

the BoM text, no matter how few (or many) other people were involved?

I think there are some reasonable scenarios for such a clandestine cooperation,

beginning with a Rigdon visit to the Manchester, NY Baptist church in 1823-24,

and continuing with a Smith visit to Auburn twp., Geauga Co., Ohio in 1826.

My starting point in entering into such theorizing is that the two men would have

had a shared religious purpose, involving the restoration of apostolic Christianity,

though the advancement of a new Divine revelation and additional scriptures.

In such a cooperation, Smith would not have been a "front man," so much as a

silent partner in a visionary enterprise which demanded considerable secrecy

and public misdirection.

Consider (or dismiss) such a starting point, as you best see fit. However, it is

the only starting point for such a clandestine relationship that makes sense to me.

Why didn't Rigdon or Cowdery just claim the angel came to them?)

Dunno -- Why didn't Rigdon just say that the entire BoM came to him in a vision,

and that he was the prophet of the final gospel dispensation? Whatever the case

may have been, we can see how unsuccessful Rigdon was in attempting to promote

himself as a revelator in the post-Nauvoo period. Rigdon seems to have always

believed in a Moses/Aaron sort of relationship between two necessary latter day seers,

one of which was to be the primary oracle, and the other "a spokesman."

Then, as it turns out, the obscure farm-boy they selected just happens to turn out to be a religious genius of the first magnitude--

something that comes along quite rarely--who goes on to produce reams of scripture. Meanwhile, the true authors of the BOM

continue on through their lives never again producing anything like the BOM.

I assume that you have looked at Rigdon's contributions to the JST, as well as his

various published writings and his post-Nauvoo "revelations." Much of this stuff is

available in the Stephen Post collection at BYU. At any rate, Rigdon was a prolific

religious writer and a noted "backwoods" restorationist theologian. How much, or

how little, he may have contributed to D&C sections, the BoA text, the Lectures on

Faith, the Joseph Smith History, etc., remains debatable.

Did Rigdon ever produce "anything like the BoM?" -- His unpublished manuscripts were '

burnt by his family following his death, so that is uncertain. He claimed to have a

knowledge of the "sealed" pages of the Nephite Record. So, considering the other

oddities of his post-Nauvoo religious efforts, I'd not be surprised if one day some sort

of Rigdonite manuscript surfaces, along exactly those lines. We shall see.

The other question, of course, is why Cowdery-Rigdon would produce a manuscript with numerous strange

grammatical features, when they were obviously capable of writing standard English.

Does any of this make any sense?

Were I living in 1828, and wanted to produce new scriptures, which would convince the

American Indians and others, that there had once been a great Nephite civilization in

the Americas, I suppose I would have written a book very much like the BoM -- one that

would prove interesting and compelling to common folks, but which would go against the

secular wisdom of the learned.

Still -- I'd have to suppose that the English would be of a higher quality -- at least in

the "rough draft" stage of the compilation.

So, your final question seems to be one of your best ones. Hopefully we can one day

discover a mutually agreeable answer.

UD

.

[consiglieri]

Thanks for the quote, Uncle Dale!

I see something odd here.

First, the authors say that the question of Book of Mormon authorship remains unresolved, because "historical and stylometric research has so far not give us a reliable answer."

But why is the answer given by stylometry not "reliable"? I get the impression the reason it is deemed unreliable is because of the conclusions obtained. If the results obtained by stylometry had been consistent with 19th century authorship, something tells me they would have suddenly shifted to the "reliable" category.

But not to fear. The authors are clear that they examined the entire 1830 Book of Mormon "without any a priori assumptions."

Whew! I was worried there for a minute.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

A New Approach

For many, the question of who wrote the Book of Mormon remains unresolved. Historical and stylometric research has so far not given us a reliable answer. We offer here a new approach that differs from past work both in source selection and methodology.

We examine the entire 1830 Book of Mormon without any a priori assumptions, modifications or pre-selection, and compare it to new, candidate-author samples. Our methodology does not isolate word categories (i.e. contextual or non-contextual nouns), but instead uses the entire corpus as a starting point and a mathematically based selection process to define the features of the author samples and the Book of Mormon that we will compare.

[Duncan]

I suppose if many people in your family, friends and community were members of something which you did not believe in and which you felt was partially positive but partially destructive to emotional well-being and that you were constantly dealing with them expressing or acting like you were the one that was lost and deluded that you'd keep that all to yourself.

That would be true if they were involved in some destructive lifestyle but I don't see Mormonism as destructive to emotional well being, quite the opposite. I have Non-Mormon relatives and religion hardly evers come up.

[juliann]

I wonder why Bob McCue even posts here, he did say it was a waste of time by the way.

From the article:

The authors thank David L. Marshall for a transcript of the Rigdon revelations in the Post Collection and for a careful review of a draft of this manuscript;

Robert McCue and Denise Gigante for their thoughtful reviews of the manuscript, and Amy Kapp for her early contributions to our thinking about this project.

I note that Bob said above that he is "not a scientist" and the article was "peer reviewed".

These interesting asides aside, I look forward to an analysis of the article itself.

[Uncle Dale]

...

But why is the answer given by stylometry not "reliable"? I get the impression the reason it is deemed unreliable is because of the conclusions obtained. If the results obtained by stylometry had been consistent with 19th century authorship, something tells me they would have suddenly shifted to the "reliable" category.

...

The researchers (and their publication editors) seem to have thought

this matter was well considered, but it is not.

As for me (and you) -- their wording is at the very least, vague and misleading.

If they had a prejudgment of the Nephite Record being authentic, they obviously

would have conducted their research and reporting differently.

Same goes for the situation of their (supposedly) having no prejudgments whatsoever.

So, while they do not quite admit the fact, the three Stanford researchers obviously

began their study with the assumption that there was no authentic Nephite Record,

and that past stylometry was not reliable (in some larger opinion than their own).

The journal's editors should have demanded more exact reporting in this section.

Now we are left to debate the writers' exact and full opinion/meaning.

UD

.

[John Larsen]

From the article:

I note that Bob said above that he is "not a scientist" and the article was "peer reviewed".

These interesting asides aside, I look forward to an analysis of the article itself.

When Bob said the article was Peer Reviewed, he was referring to something else beside the acknowledgment or thanks. It is very common to distribute an article among colleges before submitting it the formal peer review process, which is blind to the submitter. It is also common to acknowledge this assistance.

[juliann]

When Bob said the article was Peer Reviewed, he was referring to something else beside the acknowledgment or thanks. It is very common to distribute an article among colleges before submitting it the formal peer review process, which is blind to the submitter. It is also common to acknowledge this assistance.

I guess I wasn't clear. Aren't you interested in who those peers are if these authors consider a hostile anti-Mormon (so angry that he can't speak respectfully on a message board) an appropriate person to assist people with "no apriori assumptions"? Again, an irrelevant aside...but I think worthy of note.

[4truth]

Uncle Dale:

I suggest that we expand that geographical field to include adjacent Auburn

township -- and that we limit the time frame here to the years 1825-1828.

Why 1825 as opposed to 1823 when Smith claims to have first seen Moroni?

In response to Bill Hamblin, you wrote....

Why didn't Rigdon or Cowdery just claim the angel came to them?)

Dunno -- Why didn't Rigdon just say that the entire BoM came to him in a vision,

and that he was the prophet of the final gospel dispensation? Whatever the case

may have been, we can see how unsuccessful Rigdon was in attempting to promote

himself as a revelator in the post-Nauvoo period. Rigdon seems to have always

believed in a Moses/Aaron sort of relationship between two necessary latter day seers,

one of which was to be the primary oracle, and the other "a spokesman."

If Rigdon's means of implementing a restoration was a relatively religious-free Spalding manuscript into which he injects his religious views, then he was likely cognizant of the fact that his connection to Spalding would be too easily detected and doom the true goal--restoration--from the start. If people were associating Rigdon with BOM production as soon as he officially joined Smith, then how much more easily would the masses have concluded Rigdon's association with Spalding was obvious if he had chosen to do it himself? I suggest we wouldn't even be discussing it today. Rigdon needed a Smith.

[Uncle Dale]

Uncle Dale:

Why 1825 as opposed to 1823 when Smith claims to have first seen Moroni?

...

Perhaps there are some students of our history who may wish to go back that far --

but, for me, doing so greatly compounds the problem of searching for evidence.

The two or three early sources that place Smith and Rigdon together, locate

their joint writing efforts in the Bainbridge/Auburn area of southwestern Geauga Co.,

Ohio --- so, I'd begin my search there, after Rigdon had moved to the area.

However, the visionary religious enthusiasm centered in and around Palmyra, NY

was reported by Alexander Campbell, in 1824:

I read, some time since, of a revival in the State of New-York in which the

Spirit of God was represented as being abundantly poured out, on

Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. I think the converts in the order

of the names were about three hundred Presbyterians, three hundred

Methodists, and two hundred and eighty Baptists. On the principles of Bellamy,

Hopkins, and Fuller, these being all regenerated without any knowledge of the

Gospel, there is no difficulty in accounting for their joining different sects. The

spirit did not teach the Presbyterians to believe that "God had foreordained

whatsoever comes to pass;" nor the Methodists to deny it. He did not teach

the Presbyterians and the Methodists, that infants were members of the

Church and to be baptized, nor the Baptists to deny it. But on the hypothesis

of the Apostle James, viz. "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth."

I think it would be difficult to prove that the spirit of God had any thing to do

with the aforesaid revival.

Enthusiasm flourishes, blooms under the popular systems. This man was

regenerated when asleep, by a vision of the night. That man heard a voice

in the woods, saying, "thy sins be forgiven thee." A third saw his Saviour

descending to the tops of the trees, at noon day....

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/VA/harb1830.htm#030124

The visionary Sidney Rigdon certainly was reading Alexander Campbell's

newspaper at this time, and Rigdon had a documented history of travling

large distances to visit other Baptist congregations.

So, if you want to look for evidence of Sidney Rigdon having visited the

Baptist churches at Palmyra and Manchester, in search of fellow revival

visionaries, etc., by all means begin there.

As for me, I'll be looking westward from Palmyra, in the direction of Ohio,

a couple of years later.

UD

[Luigi]

That would be true if they were involved in some destructive lifestyle but I don't see Mormonism as destructive to emotional well being, quite the opposite. I have Non-Mormon relatives and religion hardly evers come up.

I am not talking about 'destructive lifestyle' I am talking about thinking which can be destructive to one's emotional welfare. I'd go into this more but I really don't want to derail the thread further.

[Benjamin McGuire]

I have to say that I am a bit disappointed in the article. It starts off nice, but then really boggs down and becomes meaningless once we dig into the methodology. It's results don't mean a whole lot. I spent a couple of minutes and using their method put together a vocabulary list from a number of different authors:

Warren, Ramsey, Hoffman (in translation of course), Ethan Smith, Verne, and of course Spalding. And when I got done, I had virtually the same vocabulary list. In fact, the more authors you include, the closer the vocabulary list comes to looking like the most frequently used 100 words in 19th century English. So we simply sample a set of authors, get a list of vocabulary, and then we run it throught the statistical mill, and we can then rank those authors (and it really doesn't matter which ones we chose) as to their relative likelihood - that is which of the (in this case seven) authors is most likely relative to the other six to be the author of the chapter in question. And it doesn't really matter which seven authors we use. The vocabulary list will be very nearly the same. And one of them will be more likely to be the author of any particular chapter than any of the other six ... so unless we start with the assumption that Rigdon and Spalding and so on are the authors, we have no reason to suspect them - and of course, the evidence simply feeds back to us what we put into it. In this case its a win-win for the critic. After all, using the "control" texts wasn't going to get anywhere (and since its entirely driven by computer code, it doesn't take long to throw texts in until you get the results you want - shoot, I ran a few million words through my impromptu test this morning in about 10 minutes). I would have been more interested in seeing a different set of control texts than ones that seem to me obviously chosen for other reasons, since the reasons they give seem to have no real meaning when we are looking purely at vocabularly and not form or structure, and so on.

Ben McGuire

[LifeOnaPlate]

Could this be Uncle Dale's last stand?

[selek]

Could this be Uncle Dale's last stand?

Nah..........he will rise once again, pheonix-like, from the word-processor.

[Uncle Dale]

Could this be Uncle Dale's last stand?

Probably so.

I no longer engage in active library research and am in the process of

turning over my web material to other interested people.

Perhaps, by the end of 2009, I'll be out of this hobby altogether. At least

my doctor advises a less active lifestyle now.

If the LDS can account for JS's activities after John Reed saw him leave the

Colesville area early in 1826, perhaps I'm finished.

http://sidneyrigdon.com/books/2006Smth.htm#ohio4

We'll see.

UD

[Joseph Antley]

I would be a lot less skeptical if I saw other controls in this experiment. I would like to see the same 19th century authors against a text that none of them had any connection to and see how the results compare.

[emeliza]

Probably so.

I no longer engage in active library research and am in the process of

turning over my web material to other interested people.

Perhaps, by the end of 2009, I'll be out of this hobby altogether. At least

my doctor advises a less active lifestyle now.

That is just sad. I think we will never find anything on John Reed if it means you will leave.

I love ya man.

[Uncle Dale]

...I think we will never find anything

...

On the cosmic scale of importance, I'd say that where Joseph Smith, Jr.

was in April of 1826 ranks just below our finding a cure for toenail fungus.

However, we all have our respective reasons for being in The Kingdom;

(or electing ourselves out of it). If learning something new about BoM origins

makes some folks uneasy, or impairs their testimonies, THAT is the sad part.

As for me, I expect to still be around for a while -- fulfilling my calling as

a rough burr under the saddle blankets of the Mormons.

Gives me something to do before I put the cat out at night.

Yer everlovin' Uncle and fellow traveler on life's highway.

UD

[Uncertain]

Interesting, I myself have some experience working with machine learning/classification techniques. Although I am only vaguely familiar with nearest shrunken centroid. I would love to get my hands on a copy of this paper. Unfortunately my institution does not subscribe to the referenced journal. As the prototypical starving student I am not yet desperate enough to spring for a copy. I figure given the nature of the publication there will be free copies floating around sooner or later .

All the Best,

Uncertain

[Uncertain]

After all, using the "control" texts wasn't going to get anywhere (and since its entirely driven by computer code, it doesn't take long to throw texts in until you get the results you want - shoot, I ran a few million words through my impromptu test this morning in about 10 minutes). I would have been more interested in seeing a different set of control texts than ones that seem to me obviously chosen for other reasons, since the reasons they give seem to have no real meaning when we are looking purely at vocabularly and not form or structure, and so on.

Ben McGuire

Hi Ben,

I have not read the paper so take my comments with the required set of qualifiers. But I find it hard to believe they simply swapped out different texts to use as controls until they found a set of texts that produced the desired results. This would be an outrageous methodology flaw to the point that it would damage the reputation of anyone engaging in such shenanigans and would probably lead to the journal withdrawing the article if it could be proven. Now I suppose it's remotely possible Craig is so blinded by his biases he would undertake such tomfoolery but I really doubt his co-authors would take such a risk. Especially for a manuscript that is sure to come under scrutiny and attack. I mean it does not help ones academic career when a paper is withdrawn due to gross methodology flaws. Now as mentioned I have not read the manuscript and it could be the authors offer some justification for such an approach (although I can't imagine what it could be). Do they offer any defense of the above methodology? Or maybe I am just misunderstanding your above point.

All the Best,

Uncertain