More Book of Mormon Studies

[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]

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]

...

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]

...

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]

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.

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:

[Uncle Dale]

...

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]

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]

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]

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

[Uncle Dale]

...

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

I know I

[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.

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.

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.

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:

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://solomonspalding.com/docs2/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.

[Bruce Schaalje]

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

[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]

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]

...

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.com/texts/1805sout.htm

http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1805sout.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

.

[Uncle Dale]

...

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]

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

[4truth]

Hi Bruce:

You have missed the point. I concede; your challenge is impossible. It

[Uncle Dale]

Your scenario is still like Roger

[Bruce Schaalje]

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.

Roger,

That

[Bruce Schaalje]

I find it interesting that NONE of the 19th century writers' texts

plot within the Book of Mormon "cloud;" and that within the "cloud"

itself, the texts of Moroni, etc. plot out as extended archipelagos

and nebulous clouds themselves.

Some factor must obviously be at work, which pulls the "small plates"

chapters upward on the y-axis, and the "large plates" chapters downwards.

But whatever that "force" may be, it is not entirely consistent. It

appears to me that the Nephite Record splits roughly into three divisions,

the beginning (up to Enos); the middle (over to mid-3rd Nephi) and the end.

But, by "roughly," I mean just that -- and not precisely. Looking at

the pc1/pc2 chart and the pc2/pc3 chart, we see the oddities of chapters

being located outside of their logically expected domains. The reasons

for this distribution remain obscure, but it fades more and more with

the addition of each new pc#/pc# chart we add to the series.

I

[4truth]

Bruce:

First of all, thanks for your responses. I especially enjoyed your last one. (I mean that sincerely.)

That

[Glenn101]

Bruce:

First of all, thanks for your responses. I especially enjoyed your last one. (I mean that sincerely.)

Bruce, with all due respect, that's exactly what they did. This is the point I keep trying to get Ben & Chris and others to see. As Dale has pointed out numerous times, Hurlbut did not invent the Spalding claims. And the testimony he gathered was recorded BEFORE he pulled anything out of any trunk. There is no reason that anything should have been pulled out of that trunk that even remotely resembled the BOM--much less an incomplete rough draft of less than 200 pages--and in fact that is exactly what critics of the S/R theory back in 1884 claimed when the manuscript was brought to light--there is no resemblance, said they, the dead horse is finally dead. But the witness testimony had been sitting there in Howe's book since 1834 and was recorded even earlier in 1833 before Hurlbut had discovered any manuscript. That is very significant.

Agreed Hurlbut did not "invent" the Spalding claim. However, his Conneaut witnesses show all of the earmarks of being led. Their statements, as pointed out by Ben, are so similar that more than a little leading is indicated. The fact that non of the Book of Mormon names described by those witnesses is present in the Oberlin manuscript is fatal to that theory.

The fact that all the Conneaut witnesses described almost exactly the same "historical" events generically, but left out many other striking historical events is also highly suspect.

The only item that half-way makes a Spalding connection plausible is the Jockers NSC study. Bruce has gone to great lengths to explain why the conclusions that were drawn from the data are flawed, but there are a few who either do not understand the import of the things Bruce has said, or think he does not know what he is talking about.

So we will have to wait for the peer reviewed article before those parallels once again bite the dust.

Glenn