122 replies to this topic

[Uncle Dale]

We all remember Metcalfe's momentous (?) discovery of a
wherefore / therefore use dichotomy in the Book of Mormon...

... right?

Somehow, he and Dan Vogel used this data to bolster their
claims that Joseph Smith must have written the Book of Mormon,
(with a new start at Mosiah), and that Spalding and Rigdon
could have had no role in composing the text.

Although Matcalfe's discovery was never refuted, the meaning
and source of the wherefore / therefore use dichotomy has never
been explained to the satisfaction of all.

There are other oddities in the Book of Mormon language that we
might take a look at and scratch our heads over. For example,
what appears to be something close to a "that" / "was-were"
occurrence dichotomy.

"Was" is sometimes found in the 1830 BoM, where a modern, literate
reader would expect to find "were" -- and vice-versa. We could
easily calculate the number of these seeming "errors" in the text,
and graph them out in a ratio of 1 occurrence per 1,000 words --
say, in red and yellow bars.

"That" is sometimes misused in the 1830 BoM -- being inserted into
the text where a modern, literate reader would not expect to see it.
We could easily calculate the number of these seeming "errors" in the
text, and graph them out in a ratio of 1 occurrence per 1,000 words --
say, in blue bars.

And -- in any particular BoM chapter, we might find instances where
BOTH of these types of errors pop up. In which case, we might overlay
our colored bars in each chapter, occasionally producing a purple or
green "combination" on a bar.

Something like this:



Notice that there are numerous chaptres in which NO ERRORS of this
type can be found. There "errorless" BoM chapters include the copies
of biblical texts (mostly from Isaiah and Malachi) as well as many
of the BoM chapters that Mr. Jockers attributes to Solomon Spalding.

Notice also that the blue (misuse of "that") occurrences essentially
disappear, when we read through the MIDDLE of the Book of Mormon.

In this way, the misuse of "that" looks a bit like a text map of
Metcalfe's discovery of the wherefore / therefore use dichotomy.

Nephites?
Joseph Smith?
Spalding and Rigdon?

Take your pick -- the compilation of the BoM introduced some strange
textual artifacts, not easily explained, I'd say.

Your reactions???

UD

[Brant Gardner]

Uncle Dale, on 07 September 2010 - 07:36 PM, said:

We all remember Metcalfe's momentous (?) discovery of a
wherefore / therefore use dichotomy in the Book of Mormon...

I made the same mistake--assuming that this was Brent's discovery. It wasn't. He was summarizing a paper by Arthur Glen Foster, Jr.

As for the meaning of that particular issue, it is entirely dependent upon your opinion of translation and/or authorship. The point is precisely that it doesn't matter, and that it can be accounted for by simple preference. There is no reason to create any conspiracy to explain that someone favors certain vocabulary items at one time over another. I have done it often enough myself to not find it at all surprising.

[Uncle Dale]

Brant Gardner, on 07 September 2010 - 07:46 PM, said:

...
He was summarizing a paper by Arthur Glen Foster, Jr.
...

Good to know that.

Those few of us who take the trouble to construct language
maps of the Book of Mormon, know in advance that few people
will take an interest -- and that those who do so may only
stop for a moment to tell us that we are wasting our time.

That's OK. The average Mormon would have no reason to want
to know where Mormon edited Helaman's account; or where
Moroni added a comment or two into Ether's story.

And the "Smith authorship" advocates are not much interested
in patterns of variation throughout the book, either. Their
main rhetoric centers around how much the text sounds like
the pioneer vernacular of Joseph Smith, Jr.

But that still leaves a few of us who read Skousen like a
mystery novel, and love to discover patterns in the book --
especially those occurrence patterns which either fall atop
sections attributed to Spalding/Rigdon, or which manage to
always avoid falling atop the attributions of those fellows.

I could offer up a dozen more charts of a similar nature --
mostly what we modern readers would think of as grammar errors,
but which were more easily accepted by our ancestors.

There were (back at the beginning of the 19th century) some
dialects which preserved large amounts of archaic English.
Add to that the forced "thees" and "thous" of the Quakers
and numerous pulpit orators, and it is no surprise that new
"scriptures" of that era sounded a lot like the KJV Bible.

But there is authentic archaic English and there is emulated
language, produced by amateurs who wished to sound like
Queen Elizabeth or Shakespeare. Both varieties of old-fashioned
English can be found in the Book of Mormon.

Charting out the grammar mistakes in emulated KJV English in
the BoM also results in some separated dichotomies. Perhaps
I'll take the trouble to reproduce the graphics here.

Or --- perhaps not; since interest in such stuff is so low here.

UD

[Uncle Dale]

Uncle Dale, on 07 September 2010 - 08:02 PM, said:

...
Or --- perhaps not; since interest in such stuff is so low here.
...

Ah, what the heck!

There must be at least a few Oliver Cowdery fans out there, right?

If he was a Book of Mormon contributor, then his insertions into
the text may well have been the most literate and correct.

Notice this chart, comparing chapters of the BoM attributed to
Oliver's pen, alongside those chapters with the least grammar errors:



God must enjoy "coincidences;" He's given us so many of them.

Uncle Dale

[Robert F. Smith]

U.D.
Which source are you using?  1830 ed., Printer's MS, or Skousen's Earliest Text (Yale, 2009)?  Or some other formulation?

Also, what did you make of my own foray into this sort of analysis, "'It Came To Pass' in Bible and Book of Mormon," FARMS Preliminary Report SMI-80 (Provo: FARMS, 1980)??  Have you done anything along those lines with that notorious phrase?

[Uncle Dale]

Robert F. Smith, on 07 October 2010 - 01:54 PM, said:

U.D.
Which source are you using?  1830 ed., Printer's MS, or Skousen's Earliest Text (Yale, 2009)?  
Or some other formulation?

I generally used the 1908 RLDS edition for all my
"quick" referencing.

For the BoM charts and analysis at my web-sites, the text
is almost always the 1830 edition -- which has its same
chapter divisions preserved in the RLDS version.

The Stanford research team (including Craig Criddle) use the
1830 text, separated into sections matching Orson Pratt's
1878 divisions.

I consult Skousen now and then, for problematic text sections.

Quote

Also, what did you make of my own foray into this sort of analysis, "'It Came To Pass' in Bible and Book of Mormon," FARMS Preliminary Report SMI-80 (Provo: FARMS, 1980)??  Have you done anything along those lines with that notorious phrase?

I don't have a copy. If it is on the web, I'd be happy to download
and read it.

Craig Criddle has charted out all the "A-I-C-T-Pass" occurrences
in the 1830 text (which, as you know, are very numerous) and has
shared his chart with me. I can try obtain permission to reproduce it.

Craig has also charted out the percentage of KJV English (archaic English)
in the 1830 BoM -- along with a chart of the distribution of grammar errors,
and specifically grammar errors associated from crude KJV emulation.

His contention is that all of these various language distribution patterns
in the Book of Mormon overlap in such a way as to help determine authorship.
I do not know what critical reception his work in this area has received.

UD

[noel00]

Dale, another interesting phrase  "children of men"

Craig wrote "Chapters attributed to Rigdon are more likely to contain the phrase "children of men" than chapters that are not attributed to him.  In our most recent attributions, one third of the non-Biblical chapters in the Book of Mormon were attributed to Rigdon, but we find 57% of all usages of the phrase "children of men" in  chapters attributed to Rigdon.


We also know that Rigdon used that phrase.  For example, in his third person autobiography, he described himself as:  “someone who always gladly received, and treasured up in his mind…” “any sentiment…advanced by any one”… “that was new, or tended to throw light on the scriptures, or the dealings of God with the children of men”."

What about "and it came to pass"? Does this appear more often in the sections attributed by Jockers to(Mr old and it came to pass) Spalding?

[Uncle Dale]

noel00, on 07 October 2010 - 03:56 PM, said:

...
What about "and it came to pass"? Does this appear more often in the sections
attributed by Jockers to(Mr old and it came to pass) Spalding?

Yes -- but not exclusively in those sections of the text.

Suppose that you were a later editor, who wished to emulate
some of Spalding's prose -- so that you could inject some
material of your own into his writings. How could you best
"fake" Spalding's writing style? Perhaps your throwing in a
bunch of "and it came to pass" word-strings would help
accomplish the task.

If Spalding wrote major sections of the Book of Mormon, and if
a later writer wished to copy his literary style, phrases like
"and it came to pass" would be useful additions. Besides which,
other, non-biblical publications of that period repeated the
phrase in an attempt to sound like the Chronicles of the KJV.
It was not that unusual of a pseudo-antique affectation.

UD

[Mortal Man]

Uncle Dale, on 07 September 2010 - 08:02 PM, said:

And the "Smith authorship" advocates are not much interested
in patterns of variation throughout the book, either. Their
main rhetoric centers around how much the text sounds like
the pioneer vernacular of Joseph Smith, Jr.

The best evidence for Smith authorship are the autobiographical chapters.

[Uncle Dale]

Mortal Man, on 07 October 2010 - 10:09 PM, said:

The best evidence for Smith authorship are the autobiographical chapters.

Perhaps so.

Then again, the Spalding-Rigdon explanation does not leave Smith out
of the equation. And the latest Jockers study attributes several chapters
to Smith and a few more for which he scores as the second most likely
author. So, there is plenty of leeway for Smith autobiographical entries,
and especially so in the replacement chapters for the lost 116 pages,
originally composed (it is claimed) by Solomon Spalding.

Did Smith incorporate any pre-existing literary material into his
1828-1829 dictation? That is the important question.

I propose that he inserted existing blocks of text from Isaiah,
Malachi, and Matthew, as well as a few "others."

If I am wrong, then future word-print studies should attribute many
more BoM chapters to author Smith's ink-stained fingers.



We shall see.

UD

[Bruce Schaalje]

Uncle Dale, on 07 September 2010 - 08:25 PM, said:

There must be at least a few Oliver Cowdery fans out there, right?

If he was a Book of Mormon contributor, then his insertions into
the text may well have been the most literate and correct.

Notice this chart, comparing chapters of the BoM attributed to
Oliver's pen, alongside those chapters with the least grammar errors:

I think I’m starting to see why you are so closed-minded about criticisms of the Criddle study. You seem to view all of your findings through the lens of that flawed study.

Uncle Dale, on 07 September 2010 - 08:25 PM, said:

God must enjoy "coincidences;" He's given us so many of them.

One of the messages that I hope my Intro Stats students remember after the semester is that apparently-weird stuff happens. The classic example is of a guy, call him Bob, who won a million dollar lottery twice in a seven year period. The probability seems way small. The probability of winning once is 1 in 13 million, so the probability of winning twice would seem to be 1/13M squared, or about 1 in half a quintillion. That just couldn’t happen, so Bob must be a cheater. However, this calculation is misleading. The question is not about Bob winning the lottery twice in a seven-year period, it’s about someone, somewhere winning a million-dollar lottery twice in seven years. Bob wasn’t identified before he started playing the lottery, and then followed up. He was indentified after the thing happened. It turns out that, given all the people who repeatedly buy lottery tickets, the probability of someone-somewhere winning the lottery twice in a seven year period is over 90%.

This is the crux of the problem of parallelomania (I like the word) that Ben Maguire has described so well in other threads. You eagerly seek any parallel between Spalding and the Book of Mormon or in fact any coincidence that could be construed as consistent with the very malleable Spalding-Rigdon-Cowdery-Pratt-Smith conspiracy theory, and when you find one - or even several - you act (mistakenly, not maliciously) as if you had had that exact coincidence in mind before you started looking. The real probability that, among all of the weird-seeming parallels and coincidences you could possibly find or devise, you would actually find a bunch is actually very high. This is especially true when the theory can be adapted as needed (eg. the hypothetical second manuscript).


I know I’ll be sorry I asked this, but why do you think that the stylometric structure in the Book of Mormon is due to the Spalding-Rigdon-Cowdery-Pratt-Smith conspiracy theory? Look, for example, at your k-means clustering plot of a few threads back (the other chapters in the cluster containing what you call the 'Spalding chapters' are the historical chapters in Mosiah and Helaman – the history as abridged by Mormon). The structure seems to me to be completely consistent with genres, multiple authors, and multiple compilers/editors – the things that the book internally claims about itself. Even from a purely naturalistic point-of-view (that is, viewing the internally-claimed structure as deliberately imposed somehow in the 19^th century), and even without the malleability of the S/R/C/P/S theory, this seems to me to be an obviously better explanation for the structure.

[Uncle Dale]

Bruce Schaalje, on 07 October 2010 - 11:34 PM, said:

...

This is the crux of the problem of parallelomania...

Perhaps you forget that I am a Latter Day Saint. I cut my teeth on
so-called "elephant mounds" and came of age comparing Mayan ruins
to Palestinian excavations. As late as 1970 I was still traveling
to Palenque and Uxmal, comparing toucan carvings to elephant trunks.

I was steeped and sauteed in pro-Nephite parallelomania. It's in my blood

Quote

I know I’ll be sorry I asked this, but why do you think that the stylometric
structure in the Book of Mormon is due to the Spalding-Rigdon-Cowdery-Pratt-Smith
conspiracy theory?

I don't consider it a "conspiracy," any more than I consider the
secretiveness of Nauvoo polygamy a "conspiracy," or the secret
crowning of Bro. Joseph a "conspiracy," or the suppression of the
written minutes of the Council of Fifty a "conspiracy," or the
studied inaction of Apostle George A. Smith in the years after the
massacre at Mountain Meadows a "conspiracy."

People keep secrets -- entire churches keep secrets as best they can.

I'm sure that the 19th century proto-Mormons felt that they were doing
God's work, in a world thoroughly corrupted by apostasy -- that they were
were setting the stage for the Second Coming and the Millennium. For all
I know, they actually believed in Mulekites, Jaredites, Lehites, etc. At
least their first converts totally believed such fantasies.

No -- not a "conspiracy," but rather a hypothetical historical reconstruction
which may or may not ever be provable. Could the true origins of Scientology
or Spiritualism ever be fully explicated? Probably not.

If you have read my 1980 and 1982 papers (on-line at my Spalding site)
you already have your answers. Those early statements were offered as
theory. It has been my extended interaction with Craig Criddle that has
at last moved me out of the realm of theory and into the realm of
"best possible fit to the available evidence."

If the Smith-alone authorship explanation can better fit new evidence,
brought forth in the future, I'll be more than happy to re-read Vogel.

Quote

Look, for example, at your k-means clustering plot of a few threads back
(the other chapters in the cluster containing what you call the
'Spalding chapters' are the historical chapters in Mosiah and Helaman –
the history as abridged by Mormon). The structure seems to me to be
completely consistent with genres, multiple authors, and multiple
compilers/editors – the things that the book internally claims about
itself.

Yes, and one day a Mormon smarter than me will word-print the "Nephites"
and run NSC and Delta classification analysis upon that text and swear
that he has uncovered Zarahemla. I wish that future researcher well, even
though my tenure this side of the veil may expire before he ever publishes.

Quote

Even from a purely naturalistic point-of-view (that is, viewing the
internally-claimed structure as deliberately imposed somehow in the
19^th century), and even without the malleability of the S/R/C/P/S
theory, this seems to me to be an obviously better explanation for the structure.

Perhaps there is. Perhaps Smith really did write it all himself.

Why not include him and his 1830 edition "Preface" in another round
of word-print analysis -- to see if that is the only section of the
text where he scores a 99% probability?

That would at least undercut Jockers' 2010 expanded study, with his
Smith-wrote-the polygamy-and-slippery-treasures-and-Gazelam-stuff
conclusions.

If Jockers' 2010 Smith attributions are as faulty as some folks
claim for his 2008 conclusions, then your own paper -- demonstrating
that Smith wrote only that Preface -- should be well received by
at least 13,000,000 people. Not a paltry audience by any means.

I could ask you why a belief in Nephites best fits the available
evidence; but I fear I'd have to re-read the statements of the
three and eleven witnesses for the zillionth time -- and I've
sworn off that endless, mind-numbing exercise in recurrence.

UD


.

Edited by Uncle Dale, 08 October 2010 - 01:20 AM.

[4truth]

Bruce:

I know you were posting this to Dale and, no doubt he will produce a better response than this one, but in the meantime, I'll take a stab or two.

Quote

This is the crux of the problem of parallelomania (I like the word) that Ben Maguire has described so well in other threads.

It is a cute word, no doubt about it.

Quote

You eagerly seek any parallel between Spalding and the Book of Mormon or in fact any coincidence that could be construed as consistent with the very malleable Spalding-Rigdon-Cowdery-Pratt-Smith conspiracy theory, and when you find one - or even several - you act (mistakenly, not maliciously) as if you had had that exact coincidence in mind before you started looking.

I'm not sure objective reporting is your goal, but, for whatever it's worth, I don't think you've achieved it here. The fact is Dale predicted the very type of clustering your PCA chart shows decades back. So either Dale is statistically one of those lucky lottery winners you mention, or he was on to something.

Quote

The real probability that, among all of the weird-seeming parallels and coincidences you could possibly find or devise, you would actually find a bunch is actually very high. This is especially true when the theory can be adapted as needed (eg. the hypothetical second manuscript).

Well then, if that's the case, then let me issue the same challenge to you that I put to Ben... can you find another text written in the pre-1830 to 1800 time frame that contains battle parallels with the BOM many of which come in a sequential order? Once you have identified a text that meets that criteria, check to see if that same text also mentions seer-stones. There will also need to be parallels to a sea voyage (which should be easy enough), a wise teacher, stolen daughters, a fair amount of vocabulary overlap, an exchange of letters between kings, fraudulent stories invented by a king in order to provoke war, have a last, great battle with many parallels including something like this:

Quote

After the great battle, Spaulding's story teller, who was [quoting] an eyewitness to the destruction, says "It is impossible to describe the horror of the bloody scene . . . the blood and carnage of so many brave warriors." The Nephite writer, who was an eye-witness to the destruction, says: "And it is impossible for the tongue to describe . . . the horrible scene of the blood and carnage . . . of the Nephite and of the Lamanites" (Manuscript Story p. 105; cf. Mormon 4:11).

http://solomonspaldi...vernP1.htm#pg12

And finally, the text will need to present itself as a translation into English of an ancient record that was discovered by the author while walking near his home who used a lever to move a stone which allowed access to the ancient document.


Since:

"The real probability that, among all of the weird-seeming parallels and coincidences you could possibly find or devise, you would actually find a bunch is actually very high"

...then finding a text from the right time period that meets all the above criteria might be easy, for all we know. Once you've found a text that meets that standard, you'll need to check and see whether credible witnesses in the 1830's claimed there was connection between it and the BOM before those "coincidences" came to light.

And then when all those criteria are met, we can run NSC tests on the text and see how it compares to the BOM.

Needless to say, I think your chances of finding a text like that are zero. But if one guy can win the lottery twice, who knows? Please let me know if you find one.  

All the best.

Edited to add: apparently Dale was working on his response as I was working on this one. I guess coincidences are a dime a dozen.

Edited by 4truth, 08 October 2010 - 01:35 AM.

[Bruce Schaalje]

4truth, on 08 October 2010 - 01:28 AM, said:

I'm not sure objective reporting is your goal, but, for whatever it's worth, I don't think you've achieved it here. The fact is Dale predicted the very type of clustering your PCA chart shows decades back. So either Dale is statistically one of those lucky lottery winners you mention, or he was on to something.

Dale predicted that Spalding’s and Rigdon’s writings would cluster completely separately from the Book of Mormon chapters? Then why does he persist with his stuff?

Let’s talk about objectivity. I’m sure I’m not (nor are you). But Dale completely ignored the most glaring feature of the PCA plot to wax poetic about the clustering of Alma 47-53 within the larger Book of Mormon cluster. I don’t understand the fuss about this. The stylistic clustering of sequential narrative chapters, all purportedly written by one man (whether it’s Mormon or some 19^th century author) is no earth-shattering prediction. This is absolutely nothing like winning a lottery.

The PCA chart (and Dale's k-means clustering graph) shows clustering within the Book of Mormon chapters due to genre and purported author/editor. It clusters in the way that it internally says it should: doctrinal chapters of the small plates, narrative chapters of the small plates, doctrinal chapters of the large plates, narrative chapters of the large plates, writings of Moroni, etc. I find this striking. You have to ignore all of this to conclude that Dale was on to something decades ago.

4truth, on 08 October 2010 - 01:28 AM, said:

Well then, if that's the case, then let me issue the same challenge to you that I put to Ben... can you find another text written in the pre-1830 to 1800 time frame that contains battle parallels with the BOM many of which come in a sequential order? Once you have identified a text that meets that criteria, check to see if that same text also mentions seer-stones. There will also need to be parallels to a sea voyage (which should be easy enough), a wise teacher, stolen daughters, a fair amount of vocabulary overlap, an exchange of letters between kings, fraudulent stories invented by a king in order to provoke war, have a last, great battle with many parallels including something like this:
And finally, the text will need to present itself as a translation into English of an ancient record that was discovered by the author while walking near his home who used a lever to move a stone which allowed access to the ancient document.

You have missed the point. I concede; your challenge is impossible. It’s as impossible as identifying someone in advance who will eventually win the lottery twice in a seven-year period.

However, I am very confident that I could find two unrelated books with the same number of spooky parallels as Spalding and the Book of Mormon.

4truth, on 08 October 2010 - 01:28 AM, said:

And then when all those criteria are met, we can run NSC tests on the text and see how it compares to the BOM.

Using Criddle’s closed-set NSC, you can attribute anything to anyone. Seriously.

Edited by Bruce Schaalje, 08 October 2010 - 07:24 AM.

[Brennin]

I don't know why someone would use PCA for this. It seems to me that cluster analysis would be more appropriate. In any event, this is ultimately superfluous. I don't care which 19th century person or persons wrote the BoM, I just know at least one wrote it. The idea that it is the product of transoceanic, Reformed-Egyptian-writing, Christians-before-Christ New World Jewry is manifestly false. I don't need to conduct a two arm, randomized trial to know that dropping an anvil on someone's head has a deleterious effect and you don't need statistics to demonstrate the Book of Mormon is 19th century fiction.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Brennin, on 08 October 2010 - 07:40 AM, said:

I just know at least one wrote it. The idea that it is the product of transoceanic, Reformed-Egyptian-writing, Christians-before-Christ New World Jewry is manifestly false.

So you have said on occasion. I wish you could post something of more substance then you have.

I would like for you to demonstrate who that person is that wrote it.

[Uncle Dale]

Bruce Schaalje, on 08 October 2010 - 07:20 AM, said:

...
I am very confident that I could find two unrelated books with the
same number of spooky parallels as Spalding and the Book of Mormon....

Probably you can do that -- given some free time and a vigorous
application of the pre-1830 advanced search function at the
Google Books web-site.

But if you try to do that, please limit your publication-candidates
to those written/published in English and those which we can reasonably
assume would have been available for consultation in the USA between the
years 1492 and 1829.

If you are going to refute the old Spalding authorship claims, I suggest
that you confine your efforts to locating a text that Joseph Smith had
at least a small chance of encountering and incorporating into his book.

We know that he was able to do this with some excerpts from Isaiah,
Malachi and Matthew. Even if we adhere to the LDS party line, we say
that he consulted a certain KJV edition in order to "translate" these.

So -- use the same criteria in your search as you would grant to an
edition of the KJV Bible, available in New York in 1829.

If you start by looking for transoceanic ship voyages which bring
Old World migrants (adherents of the biblical religion) to the
Americas prior to Columbus, then your selection of candidate
texts available in English in 1829 will be rather limited.

But here is one possibility worthy of your attention --- it even has
a preColumbian ocean crossing in a submersible boat, lit within its
sealed interior by the supernatural glow of a seer-stone:

Robert Southey's Madoc, available in the USA during the early
19th century in various editions -- replete with Indian battles, the
introduction of preColumbian Christianity to the Americas, and the
eventual extermination of the descendants of its ocean-crossing
Old World settlers:

http://olivercowdery...ts/1805sout.htm
http://olivercowdery...5sout.htm#pg175

As you probably know, the legendary Madoc voyage to ancient America
was frequently applied as an explanation for America's ancient ruins,
occasional light-skinned Indians, the reporting of preColumbian crosses
in the Americas, the story of St. Thomas traveling to the Americas, etc.

In Southey's Madoc, you'll find all the "genre" matches you could
wish for. Great armies travel through the wilderness to meet in horrific  
battles, with masses of the slain heaped up to form earth-covered mounds --
even a hero who, Teancum-like, steals into the enemy camp by night to
perform an assassination.

Apply the Delta and NSC classifications to Southey's Madoc, and your
results may merit yet another LLC paper.

But you need not go even THAT far. Just take an afternoon browsing the
Southey book and you can compile a list of thematic parallels and
story-line resemblances to the Book of Mormon that might convince even
skeptical Roger to repent and seek a Mormon baptism.

I'll not spoil your fun by disclosing whether or not the Madoc record
was discovered by a wandering translator, atop a hill near his home,
who had to use a lever to raise a flat stone, in order to take possession
of the ancient record ----- but you may wish to look for that part also.


In fact, a clever LDS apologist could offer up the explanation that
Solomon Spalding had actually been reading Southey's Madoc, to
his Conneaut neighbors in 1812, and it was their recollections of THAT
tale which they later confused with the very similar narrative found
in the Book of Mormon.

Uncle Dale

.

Edited by Uncle Dale, 08 October 2010 - 09:58 AM.

[Uncle Dale]

Uncle Dale, on 08 October 2010 - 09:37 AM, said:

...
Just take an afternoon browsing the
Southey book and you can compile a list of thematic parallels and
story-line resemblances to the Book of Mormon that might convince even
skeptical Roger
...

And what, exactly, are we here attempting to convince our friend Roger of?

Why, that any number of pre-1830 stories may have resembled the
genre, location and timing of the Book of Mormon's narrative.

Southey's book would perhaps top the list of that "any number of matches,"
but, if we can find one seashell on the beach of pre-1830 literature, we
can probably find more such shells through more searching.

But, for our purposes, we need only find ONE such story, and we have it
conveniently pre-packaged for us in the digitized Southey text.

If Solomon Spalding's rude scribblings resembled the Nephite Record no
better than the elegant creations of England's famous Poet Laureate, then no
need to read the Leatherstocking tales or Diedrich Knickerbocker's histories.

Roger's inquiry is thus answered and LDS apologists can sleep well tonight.

UD

[Bruce Schaalje]

Uncle Dale, on 08 October 2010 - 09:37 AM, said:

But if you try to do that, please limit your publication-candidates
to those written/published in English and those which we can reasonably
assume would have been available for consultation in the USA between the
years 1492 and 1829.

If you are going to refute the old Spalding authorship claims, I suggest
that you confine your efforts to locating a text that Joseph Smith had
at least a small chance of encountering and incorporating into his book.

  Your scenario is still like Roger’s. You’re putting all kinds of restrictions on me: what time period and types of writings and topics (transoceanic voyages) and geographical locations I can consider. Then you say, now find a book with as many parallels to the Book of Mormon as I have found. You are putting me in an impossible situation that in no way replicates the actual situation of Hurlbut.

  Hurlbut could have travelled almost anywhere in New England or Ohio (because a theory about strangers around the house before translation of the Book of Mormon and a plan to foist a new scripture on the unsuspecting public could have been hypothesized for lots of early converts – Oliver Cowdery, W W Phelps, Solomon Chamberlain), he could have found any book that had parallels to any part of the Book of Mormon, and it wouldn’t have necessarily had to deal with transoceanic voyages.

  An equivalent assignment for me would be one in which you gave me a specific book and asked me to find another book, published or in draft form before the publication of the book in question, that had as many parallels as have been proposed for the Spalding manuscript and the Book of Mormon. A conspiracy or plagiarism or secret collaboration scenario could be cooked up for anyone, so that can’t be part of the constraints. Also, to be perfectly frank, all I have to find is a book that has a smaller number of parallels than Spalding theorists cite, because I can hypothesize that there is another lost book written by the same author that has several more parallels.

  I really don’t think this would be too hard of a task. I guess the task is a bit harder now that you have found a second book with some parallels. So I guess my task is to find 2 books, each with some parallels to the specified book. I still think this is not too hard.

Uncle Dale said:

  

No -- not a "conspiracy," but rather a hypothetical historical reconstruction
which may or may not ever be provable. Could the true origins of Scientology
or Spiritualism ever be fully explicated? Probably not.

If you have read my 1980 and 1982 papers (on-line at my Spalding site)
you already have your answers. Those early statements were offered as
theory. It has been my extended interaction with Craig Criddle that has
at last moved me out of the realm of theory and into the realm of
"best possible fit to the available evidence."

      OK, I’ll drop the word conspiracy. But I still haven’t gotten an answer to my question about why you think that the stylometric structure in the Book of Mormon is due to the Spalding-Rigdon-Cowdery-Pratt-Smith theory rather than a reflection of the internally claimed structure of the book (small plates, large plates, narrative, doctrinal). You don’t have to believe in angels for this, just that whoever wrote the book wrote in a consistent but different style in the large plates section than in the small plates section.

  So I want to ask you straight out: Do you agree that both the PCA plots (including more than just the first two components if you want) and your own k-means clustering results are consistent with the internally claimed structure of the Book of Mormon?

[4truth]

Hi Bruce:

Quote

You have missed the point. I concede; your challenge is impossible. It’s as impossible as identifying someone in advance who will eventually win the lottery twice in a seven-year period.

However, I am very confident that I could find two unrelated books with the same number of spooky parallels as Spalding and the Book of Mormon.

And you seem to have missed the point as well... that's exactly what the Conneaut witnesses did. They made their identification of Spalding as the lottery winner before any possible measure was discovered--before Hurlbut removed anything from the trunk... in fact before he even knew about a trunk. In fact, some witnesses identified the lottery winner before Hurlbut was even an apostate.

Not only that, but Hurlbut himself as well as his partner in crime Howe BOTH rejected the winning lottery ticket because they didn't think it was a match!

Now, after decades of careful analysis by people like Holley and Broadhurst, with so many parallels to account for, other S/R skeptics like Chris Smith argue that it is those parallels--not even discoverd by Hurlbut or Howe--(that you concede are impossible to duplicate but Ben thinks are a dime a dozen) that were the basis on which the Conneaut witnesses rested their false memories.

There is no doubt Ben can produce impressive parallels. Even Uncle Dale mentions a promising potential lottery winner. But the Conneaut witnesses identified a lottery winner before his ticket was available to evaluate. And now, he wins again thanks to Jockers. You're right, I don't believe that could ever be replicated.

All the best,

Roger

Edited by 4truth, 08 October 2010 - 01:09 PM.