Book Of Mormon: New Evidence Of 19Th Century Origin

[Tacenda]

I was interested by this, so I decided to search on the Internet and see if there's any web pages pre-2013 that mention both mormonism and 'Gilbert J Hunt'. I found an article someone wrote up in 2008 suggesting that Joseph Smith used a dictionary of some sort by John Walker to help write the Book of Mormon. It casually mentions that there were advertisements for John Walker's dictionary at the end of The Late War: http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp453.pdf

I did a search in this thread to see if this has been discussed yet, and couldn't find anything, but I apologize if everybody knew this already. Just interesting that a book that some people believe influenced the Book of Mormon was in the publisher's ads at the end of a different book that some people believed influenced the Book of Mormon.

"Palmyra Herald" that hit pretty close to home. Edited October 24, 2013 by Tacenda

[canadaduane]

But wait, there's more! A Google Books search confined to the years 1700 - 1829 returns over a dozen publications with the very phrase "of curious workmanship and," with most of them occurring in genitive of-constructions!  

 

Our baseline sample indicates that "of-curious-workmanship-and" occurs 7 times per 5000 books. So it is unusual, but not the rarest of 4-grams. There are 159 non-biblical 4-grams shared by both The Late War and The Book of Mormon that occur 4 times or fewer in a sample of 5000 books from this period. In the future, I would like to extend our baseline to more books, and remove the "4 times or fewer" constraint so that we can get better precision in our weightings.

[canard78]

Okay, here are the first 10 verse of both books posted side-by-side. Would cognaitiveharmony and Sethbag and John and Canard78 and Grimace or anyone else please begin pointing out the dumbfounding and uncanny and striking similarities in writing styles, phrasing, concepts, subjects, content, language, themes, and parallels. Please help me see that the Book of Mormon was as if it were a song that had already been written in the book, Late War.

 

 

Once the dumbfounding similarities have been pointed out for these 10 verses, I will post the next 10 verses.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

 

LOL.

 

Because of course what I accused Joseph of doing was sitting with a copy of the late war and copying it out verbatim while simply replacing names and places for ones he picked out of maps or his head. Oh wait... it wasn't Nice try, but that's not remotely the point.

 

I'm not calling it a plagiarism at all. But I am saying that Joseph's choice of dictated words were likely heavily influenced by his environment. Even Brant Gardner says that. I would suggest that The Late War... or literary styles like it were some of his influences.

 

That doesn't prove or disprove the existence of an historical Nephi, but it does knock a hole in the persistent "tight translation" advocates. And it also undermines Skousen's argument that it was a 16thC translation being beamed into Joseph's rock/hat/head.

[Calm]

I would suggest that The Late War... or literary styles like it were some of his influences.

You mean like the KJV?

[canard78]

You mean like the KJV?

 

Yes, absolutely the KJV of the New and Old Testament. But not only that. There are distinctive phrases and expressions used in the Book of Mormon that are not from KJV that a "loose" translation proponent needs to find an origin for. I don't mean he made the Book of Mormon up, but that he structured words to fit the impression and dictated them. But the words chosen needed to come from somewhere. Some may have simply been an invention of Joseph's mind and then dictated as an appropriate expression of the revelation/impression. Others are more likely to be phrases that were in his mind from other sources.

 

The Late History has additional phrases not found in the KJV that may have been sources for the chosen words or examples of the types of expressions used in 1810s and 20s.

[canard78]

Bob, I respect your sensitivity to the issue of plagiarism. However, I don't think anyone on either side is suggesting plagiarism. At best, they are suggesting "significant influence," in blocks of four words scattered throughout the text, which is a far cry even from the 10% block of text in your case.

 

As explained above, my intent isn't just to look at the presence of dissimilarities, but rather to determine at what level, if any, there is "significant influence," keeping in mind the sequence in which the Book of Mormon was produced. According to some of the participants here, as they began reading through the Late War, they were dumbfounded at the similarities. As I began reading through it, the opposite perception occurred. I am just trying to reconcile the two.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

 

Then say that; don't weaken it with an example that undermines your argument.

 

I heard another apologist had noticed the book had been micro-fiched in the mid 1980s and suggested it was just another Hoffman forgery. Pretty ludicrous assertion given there are multiple editions of the book available in their original form.

 

Besides which, "...keeping in mind the sequence in which the Book of Mormon was produced." Then why did you compare 1 Nephi 1:1 given that was translated much later (after the large plates had been translated).

Edited October 24, 2013 by canard78

[The Grimace]

See my response to cognitiveharmony above. There isn't any ridicule or intended difficulty in me logically and methodically challenging the hypothesis.  If my posting the texts side-by-side makes the hypothesis appear ridiculous, that is not my fault, but a function of self-evidence. Please have a little patience and take your own advise about thoughtfulness in return.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

 

You were challenging a hypothesis that you have invented. That aside, we both know that another board has almost 40 pages that are filled with example after example of verses that have weak comparisons (the words match, but not the concepts) and strong comparisons (the words match, and so do the concepts). I don't have the time to cut and paste the good work others are doing, but you are free to go and challenge those works.

 

I'm loathe to put a link to that site here, mainly because I don't want to get in trouble. All you have to do is go look. 

[jkwilliams]

So now that the study has identified a potential book (btw there always will be a book in any comparison that is most like another whether the list it is compared to is 2 or 2 million, the question for me is whether that comparison results in significant findings or not), one can dispense with any scientific process and go off of gut reaction to the book?

Nope. I'm just saying that the Johnsons are still working on their study, so why comment on something they haven't finished?

I am not sure what you are saying, but it does appear to be what many are doing. And if so, how is this different than any number of other books that have been claimed to be sources and then people feel that the content sure looks like what the BoM holds? I would be more impressed if there was some evidence of textual analysis (if that is the right term) of the content and themes instead of jumping off of a study that appears at this point to me to be incomplete based on what one of the authors has said here.

I would be more impressed, too. But we don't have anything like that, yet, so all I have to go on is my reading of the book and my initial impressions. I'm sorry that's not scientifically rigorous, but it's about what I expect from an initial reading.

Why bother referring to the study at all in this thread if it is not about the study itself?

Other people have referred to it. I haven't. Sorry for the confusion.

[cdowis]

But I am saying that Joseph's choice of dictated words were likely heavily influenced by his environment. Even Brant Gardner says that. I would suggest that The Late War... or literary styles like it were some of his influences.

 

What an astonishing insight.  JS actually wrote in English, using phrases of his time period.

 

That doesn't prove or disprove the existence of an historical Nephi, but it does knock a hole in the persistent "tight translation" advocates. And it also undermines Skousen's argument that it was a 16thC translation being beamed into Joseph's rock/hat/head.

 

In what way does it "undermine" that theory?  See DC 1: 24 Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding

I would see this as a confirmation of this scripture, but I guess you disagree.

 

Your argument is based on the premise, "If I were God, this is how I would do things."

[canard78]

That doesn't prove or disprove the existence of an historical Nephi, but it does knock a hole in the persistent "tight translation" advocates. And it also undermines Skousen's argument that it was a 16thC translation being beamed into Joseph's rock/hat/head.

 

In what way does it "undermine" that theory?  See DC 1: 24 Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding

I would see this as a confirmation of this scripture, but I guess you disagree.

 

Your argument is based on the premise, "If I were God, this is how I would do things."

 

It's an oft used reply by posters on this board to suggest that I'm saying "If I were God..." and it gets tiresome. I've clearly said nothing of the sort.

Edited October 24, 2013 by canard78

[jkwilliams]

What an astonishing insight.  JS actually wrote in English, using phrases of his time period.

I don't find it astonishing that he used KJV phrases to develop themes in the same way that Hunt did, but it does explain some things to me. But dismissing this find as just "wow, they both wrote in English" is as silly as Wade's "comparison" of the texts.

 

In what way does it "undermine" that theory?  See DC 1: 24 Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding

I would see this as a confirmation of this scripture, but I guess you disagree.

 

Your argument is based on the premise, "If I were God, this is how I would do things."

I think maklelan explained last night why this undermines a "tight translation." Perhaps you missed that. I'd like to hear your comments about that. Is it wrong for a believer to reach the same tentative conclusions that we apostates have reached?

[cdowis]

It's an oft used reply to suggest that I'm saying "If I were God..." and gets tiresome. I've clearly said nothing of the sort.

 

OK, then help me understand how it undermines Skousen's argument. 

Edited October 24, 2013 by cdowis

[cdowis]

I don't find it astonishing that he used KJV phrases to develop themes in the same way that Hunt did, but it does explain some things to me. But dismissing this find as just "wow, they both wrote in English" is as silly as Wade's "comparison" of the texts.

 

I think it is silly to misrepresent my post. 

 

I think maklelan explained last night why this undermines a "tight translation." Perhaps you missed that. I'd like to hear your comments about that. Is it wrong for a believer to reach the same tentative conclusions that we apostates have reached?

 

Did you notice to whom I addressed this post?  Hint: it was not makelan.

 

JK, let me frank -- this is becoming very tiresome. 

 

In the future, it is my intention  to respond only to substantive posts from yourself.  Hopefully, this will increase the frequency of such posts.

Edited October 24, 2013 by cdowis

[jkwilliams]

I think it is silly to misrepresent my post.

Then I'll just quote you: "What an astonishing insight. JS actually wrote in English, using phrases of his time period." Better? 

Did you notice to whom I addressed this post?  Hint: it was not makelan.

No, it wasn't maklelan. My point is that you asked why the Hunt book undermined a tight translation, and I referred to you maklelan's explanation. I didn't realize that was a dastardly thing for me to do.

 

JK, let me frank -- this is becoming very tiresome.  In the future, I will only respond to substantive posts from yourself.  Hopefully, this will increase the frequency of such posts.

I was simply asking for your opinion about what maklelan wrote. Sorry if that's not substantive and is tiresome to you. I'm interested in your perspective, that's all.

The bottom line for me is that over the years we've been told that specific phrases and word usage in the Book of Mormon are evidence of "Hebraisms" in the original text. Assuming that Joseph Smith had no knowledge of ancient Hebrew, this is astonishing evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon. For the Hebraisms to work, one must assume a tight translation, meaning that Joseph had little input and there was little 19th-century influence on the book, other than its being published in English.

With the Hunt book, we see many of those same phrases and words used in exactly the same way, meaning either that Hunt's book reflects an ancient Hebrew origin or that the Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon were not as unknown as previously thought. As maklelan said, given that we now have a contemporary source for these linguistic patterns, it's less likely that these are genuine examples of Hebraisms that Joseph Smith could not have known about. It's more likely that the text had contemporary influence, and that suggests a loose translation.

The Book of Mormon doesn't stand or fall on any of this, but to me the Hunt book gives more insight into how Joseph Smith's environment influenced the translation or production, depending on your point of view.

[jkwilliams]

See my response to cognitiveharmony above. There isn't any ridicule or intended difficulty in me logically and methodically challenging the hypothesis.  If my posting the texts side-by-side makes the hypothesis appear ridiculous, that is not my fault, but a function of self-evidence. Please have a little patience and take your own advise about thoughtfulness in return.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I'm trying to figure out what the point of the side-by-side comparison is. What exactly is to be gained from such a comparison? I can't see any point to it.

Have you ever seen the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" The Coen brothers deliberately modeled their script on the Odyssey, but if you did a line-by-line comparison of the script to Homer, it wouldn't tell you much. Here, no one is talking about a deliberate modeling, let alone plagiarism, so the comparison is even less apt.

In short, what was your point?

[cdowis]

The bottom line for me is that over the years we've been told that specific phrases and word usage in the Book of Mormon are evidence of "Hebraisms" in the original text.

 

FWIW, I have never been particularly impressed by "words and phrases" argument.  More interesting is the pecularities in grammar and the indication of the use of formulaic phrases as substitute for punctuation.  Basically each book in the BOM is one long sentence, using special words to indicate breaks.

 

Assuming that Joseph Smith had no knowledge of ancient Hebrew, this is astonishing evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon. For the Hebraisms to work, one must assume a tight translation, meaning that Joseph had little input and there was little 19th-century influence on the book, other than its being published in English.

 

Certainly if you find such hebraic grammar.  But that is another thread.  With a background in greek, I do recognize some non-english grammar in the text.

With the Hunt book, we see many of those same phrases and words used in exactly the same way, meaning either that Hunt's book reflects an ancient Hebrew origin or that the Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon were not as unknown as previously thought. As maklelan said, given that we now have a contemporary source for these linguistic patterns, it's less likely that these are genuine examples of Hebraisms that Joseph Smith could not have known about. It's more likely that the text had contemporary influence, and that suggests a loose translation.

 

Perhaps, but that argument is based on a couple of assumptions. I had accepted the loose translation theory, but there is alot of evidence for the tight theory.  I need more evidence than this to go back to the loose theory.

The Book of Mormon doesn't stand or fall on any of this, but to me the Hunt book gives more insight into how Joseph Smith's environment influenced the translation or production, depending on your point of view.

 

 

[volgadon]

Nevermind.

Edited October 24, 2013 by volgadon

[maklelan]

Do you really not see the matching themes here? 

It's essentially the same story.

 

Yes, I see matching themes, but they're so generic as to render a genetic relationship indeterminable. I thought I made that pretty clear. It would be like saying "See, it's boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. It's the same story! It couldn't possibly have been thought up independently!" A siege on a fortified city that fails and results in a retreat, with bodies filling up the ditch around the city? That's not a situation that can't be drummed up without the help of The Late War. 

 

There are many word matches

 

Yes, many word matches that happen to be found in a lot of stories about battles. Words like "prepared" and "slain" and "wounded" and "fled." These are all quite generic war narrative terms. The matches do not extend beyond discreet and atomistic concepts. There are no clause or sentence matches at all, only individual words or incomplete phrases.

 

but even more compelling is that the major details of the battle sequence are essentially the same.

 

And these "major details" are similar in stories of battles the world over. The fact that these "major details" are confined to similarly short narratives is not indicative of borrowing. There are quite strict standards that have long been employed by textual and literary critics regarding what kinds of parallels do and do not indicate a genetic relationship, and I'm afraid these kinds of broad thematic outlines simply don't meet them. 

 

You then add to this that the secondary text appears to expand the primary text and you're left with what appears to be a direct influence.

 

No, it doesn't appear to be direct influence at all. The expansion also includes a change in order (flight of enemy then number of dead > number of dead then flight of enemy), and a lot of the details are different. The similarities are in very broad themes, which is never a good place to start when trying to assert influence. The two stories are similar, but not nearly so similar that we are compelled to conclude there is a genetic relationship.

 

So if this sequence

 

First, your sequence doesn't match. The only two direct lexical matches that actually occur in order are "were prepared" and "slaughter," but the context of neither suggests direct lexical borrowing:

 

But the men of Croghan were prepared for them

Thus they were prepared

 

and smote the men of Britain, hip and thigh, with great slaughter.

insomuch that they were slain with an immense slaughter.

 

The "hip and thigh" phrase is taken from the book of Judges. You'd think that would be a nice phrase to borrow, but no such luck. The exact word matches are simply no indication of borrowing at all. They appear within wholly distinct grammatical constructions, and there's nothing in their usage that demands we conclude they've been plucked from those constructions to be reinserted in distinct ones. So you're left trying to assert that the broad outline was borrowed, but even then the order doesn't match. This is how the TLW narrative progresses, thematically:

 

preparation > defenders attack > ditch strewn with slain and wounded > attackers flee > loss of attackers great, loss of defenders few

 

Then from Alma:

 

preparation > attackers attack > attackers attack again > ditch filled with dead and wounded > loss of attackers great, loss of defenders few > attackers flee

 

Do we need to go broader?

 

preparation > attack > ditch has bodies > attackers flee > great losses v. few losses

preparation > attack > ditch has bodies > great losses v. few losses > attackers flee

 

So we've reduced it down to five broad themes, and the order doesn't match. So Joseph Smith was obviously not copying the battle right out of the book. There is a degree of disparity that does not suggest direct real time copying. So did he read the story one night and then the next day kinda remember the story as he was coming up with this battle sequence? If he's almost 30 chapters deep in this book, why no such influence in other pericopae? Did he sit down with the book and hash out an adaptation of the battle with Cowdery? Why only with this battle? Why does he suddenly need that level of planning for his narrative? Can you account for the way the narrative has been adapted? Is there a rational scenario for how it happened?

 

What about these individual themes elsewhere in the Book of Mormon? The phrase "fled into the wilderness" occurs five other time in the Book of Mormon prior to Alma 49. The phrase "were prepared" in reference to defense in battle occurs four times in the Book of Mormon prior to Alma 49. "Great slaughter" (this is directly parallel to TLW in this chapter, while Alma 49 uses a distinct phrase) occurs twice prior to Alma 49. "Bodies" being "heaped up" occurs twice prior to Alma 49. Comparisons of the numbers of soldiers slain also take place multiple times prior to Alma 49. Really, the only concept from this pericope that is not repeated multiple times prior to the narrative here in Alma 49 is the ditch being filled with bodies.  

 

and theme are so common, would you be willing to provide another example? Surely you could do that? It would need to be actual history of course and you would get bonus points if it is written in a 19th century adaptation of King James english. Even more bonus points if it's within a decade of these two texts.

 

It would be quite difficult to craft a Google Books search that could find such broad battle themes, and I'm not going to waste a bunch of my time trying right now.

 

You can't prove plagiarism even in this instance, but a rational mind sees the similarities of these two texts especially in sequences like this and acknowledges that the first text very likely had influence on the second or there were other texts that influenced both of these texts similarly.

 

It's easy to say that, but only if you've never had experience actually arguing for literary influence in an academic environment. Once you've had that experience, and have seen just how clear the evidence for specific influence has to be, you will see how flimsy this case is. "It just seems so likely to me" is not a legitimate argument. I once tried to argue for direct borrowing between two psalms that shared multiple absolutely identical Hebrew phrases, progressed along the same thematic arc, and addressed the exact same historical events, and I still had plenty of people saying the connections were not clear enough. I think you'd be surprised what it takes to pass muster in this kind of argument.

 

I know that you've said that you already believe in a loose translation theory, so I'd really like to hear your take on what justifies this theory aside from texts like these that make a tight translation very unlikely.

 

Well, there are the numerous and flippant changes to the text on the part of Joseph Smith, the conceptual and linguistic influence of the New Testament, the inconsistencies in the spelling of proper names, and lots of other stuff. This isn't really the place where I'm going to unfold an argument for a loose translation theory, though.

 

Don't go out of your way on my account if your busy though, I know I'm just some anonymous yahoo on a forum to whom you owe nothing.

 

Well, I will do my best to back up the claims I make, but that's an argument for another day when I do have more time. 

[maklelan]

Our baseline sample indicates that "of-curious-workmanship-and" occurs 7 times per 5000 books. So it is unusual, but not the rarest of 4-grams. There are 159 non-biblical 4-grams shared by both The Late War and The Book of Mormon that occur 4 times or fewer in a sample of 5000 books from this period. In the future, I would like to extend our baseline to more books, and remove the "4 times or fewer" constraint so that we can get better precision in our weightings.

 

Is that list available on your website? I am curious if you've accounted for the conceptual integrity of these independent 4-grams. As I explained, "of curious workmanship and" is not really a phrase that someone is going to intentionally lift verbatim from one text and insert into another. A genetic relationship there is going to be difficult to show if the phrases occur in distinct grammatical contexts, as we have with the Book of Mormon occurrences. Borrowings usually occur when entire sense units are lifted from one text and inserted into another. Individual words and incomplete clauses are not that commonly borrowed, and you'd have to be able to show more evidence than simply the existence of the string of words from an incomplete clause, no matter how rare. The existence of the four exact words "of curious workmanship and" in two separate texts, within entirely distinct grammatical contexts, is a coincidence, not a borrowing.

 

Do you have any kind of control books that you're using to compare these relationships, so we can see exactly what kinds of links are found when a book has demonstrably been written under the direct influence of another? The connections between The Late War and the Bible, for instance. As an example, "hip and thigh" in chapter 29 is a phrase that corresponds nicely with Judg 15:8:

 

And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter

 

smote the men of Britain, hip and thigh, with great slaughter

 

It's a single and complete adverbial phrase that fits perfectly into the grammatical context of TLW. This is a demonstrable borrowing. The only differences are the substitution of "the men of Britain" for "them," and the dropping of the indefinite article. 

[wenglund]

Who's hypothesis do you think you're methodically challenging?

 

See my post #291.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Benjamin McGuire]

There are several major flaws to the statistical model methods I have read about here and in the linked sites. I think that part of this is the direction that some people take in coming to the question of authorship attribution and describing the relationship between texts. So let me offer a couple of reading recommendations. The first is anything on this topic by Julia Kristeva. Kristeva coined the term "intertextuality" in 1966. She refers to all texts as mosiacs of quotations. This means, of course, that every text can be presented in four word chunks which can be found in other texts. In fact with the exception of potentially unique names, we could break the entire Book of Mormon into four word chunks found in other texts. It is the nature of our language. So being able to find these chunks isn't particularly unusual. However, in the case for authorship attribution, I recommend Harold Love's Attributing Authorship: http://www.amazon.com/Attributing-Authorship-Introduction-Harold-Love/dp/B004JZX2UC

 

Love devotes some time to discussing the benefits and problems of searches on digital archives. This is one of those fascinating parts of this discussion. What seems so novel sometimes to Book of Mormon studies is only novel because we aren't (as a group) all that interested in other literature and its authorship. For some, the similar study of Shakespeare is a life's work. And there is a great deal of literature about this. At any rate, Love first makes this comment on digital archive searching:

When Byrne wrote, the accumulation of parallels was a labour-intensive business which depended on incessant reading of the works concerned. Today a phrase can be pursued almost instantaneously through the magnificent on-line LION archive, which covers all fields of English and American drama and of authored volumes of poetry up to 1900, and in many cases beyond, and is rapidly expanding into prose. Greatly welcome though this is, it is noteworthy that a whole genre of 'leonine' scholarship has arisen in which a claim is buttressed by a huge list of extracted quotations ... the capacity to multiply parallels - most of which will be misleading - is almost unlimited.

The point is clear for this discussion right? Most of the parallels uncovered by digital comparison are misleading. The second quote explains in more detail the problem:

Here LION, Gutenberg and similar electronic archives come into their own, since as well as providing illusory parallels they also assist mightily in shooting down those which arise from the common parlance of time. Once we have encountered an unusual expression in the writings of three or four different authors it ceases to have any value for attribution. What we are looking for is occurrences restricted to two sources only: one the anonymous work and the other a signed one!. Even that might not be final: if the two authorial corpora are both large enough, chance along would dictate that they should contain a few exclusive parallels.

The moment we find a parallel in only three of four sources - that is the moment that phrase no longer has any value at all for authorship attribution. Significant rarity isn't (as this statistical model suggest) found in relative rarity, but rather in absolute rarity. I have a couple more comments on this in a moment. Where electronic databases really shine is in the negative check. So, for example, its easy for us to see how well your list of 5,000 (randomly selected) texts do, right? Apart from the fact that you have already eliminated the best evidence for comparison (in getting rid of all the rare items occurring in fewer than a frequency of four), your rarest phrases (given the most weight - one of them would equal the equivalent of 600 phrases at the frequency of the copyright statements) all occur in only four instances. So we can do a search. Like, for example, "with-his-army-against". So we dig up an archive (like Google books), run a search - follow your dating criteria (from 1500 to 1830 - easy enough to program in), do a search on the exact quote, and voila

 

29 texts. This phrase apparently isn't so rare.

 

I wonder how many of the almost 200 phrases you provide really aren't that rare. If we want to look at a snapshot of the language in 1830, we don't start with international texts in 1500. We look at maybe +/- 50 years (and both directions is important - the language doesn't simply stop with the publication of the Book of Mormon) and focus where possible on American texts preferably in New York. I imagine that the significance rating of a book published in 1819 in New York is going to plummet like a stone in water. So while you suggest that you are interested in placing it in a certain time and place, that's not what you are actually doing - in limiting it to texts prior to, you seem to be expecting a source. And of course the Book of Mormon, if your theory is right, isn't simply something to compare to literature in that time period, it is a part of it.

 

And then I have issues with the removal of the King James Language. By the way, I ran my own sequencing on the two texts. Yes, I have been managing to do locution sequencing on texts for about a decade now with my own tool set. See my original response to Donofrio here:

 

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/parallels.htm

 

One of the interesting features is that in trying to copy the language of the KJV, Hunt manages to get in 2,341 shared four word phrases with the KJV. This amounts to roughly 4.6% of all of the four word phrases in Hunt's book (there is a total of 51,221 unique four word locutions in the book - not a lot of repetition actually). That's quite a few. The Book of Mormon on the other hand shares 25,020 four word phrases with the KJV. Thats 12.3%. The Book of Mormon doesn't so much imitate the KJV as it uses it (which we already knew). What makes this interesting is that if we don't exclude the biblical phrasing (that is, we include all of it) then the comparison between the Book of Mormon and Hunt's work yields 1,478 shared four word phrases. That amounts to 0.73% of the Book of Mormon. Of that 1,478 phrases, 847 of them are shared but come from the KJV (that's just about 60%). Leaving me with my estimate of 631 shared phrases between Hunt and the Book of Mormon that are not found in the KJV. That comes to 0.31% of the total unique four word phrases in the Book of Mormon. This is not a large footprint by any stretch of the imagination. By comparison, in the link above, we can see that Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days translated into English in 1873 has a larger footprint, since 0.8% of the phrases found in that book also can be found in the Book of Mormon.

 

So in my estimation, while the creation of the baseline data is an interesting idea, it fails in the fact that apparently 5,000 may not be a large enough random sample (in that it apparently doesn't extrapolate well - and yes, I looked at a number of other phrases and came up with a relatively high frequency of phrases that were simply not as rare as your data collection suggested). And without the weighting that you get, Hunt's book isn't actually very statistically close to the Book of Mormon. Really, it's quite a ways away. Compare that 0.31% number to two texts that I compared in the short essay linked above. Mercy Warren's book (which admittedly uses Ramsay's History) comes in at 4.4%. That is an entire statistical magnitude above the relationship here. And compare that 0.31% to Hunt's own 4.6% (remarkably close to that 4.4% figure) with its admitted reliance on the Bible. And the Book of Mormon with its whopping 12.3%. No, I don't think that 0.3% is actually a useful number to look at when trying to establish a connection. Without the bias introduced by the weighting system, where are we left? A couple of other comments:

 

Canadaduane noted this:

These phrases are found in the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. Copyright was not a well-understood concept at the time, so most books that I've seen in this era refer to the act of congress that established rights for the author:

What Duane doesn't seem to be aware of (although this is easily accessible information) is that the copyright statement in the Book of Mormon isn't written by the author. It is quoted (as was customary) verbatim from the copyright application. The original copyright application for the Book of Mormon still exists (as I assume does Hunt's). It wasn't handwritten. It was a printed form with a fill in the blank approach - and so, the copyright statement in the Book of Mormon as published quotes verbatim the copyright application made in mid-1829. Hunt's book was also published in New York, and had a copyright filed with the state in the same manner, and so it also includes a verbatim copy of that copyright application. This is actually a fascinating thing. Of the list of parallels presented on the blog, 75 of them are taken from that copyright statement (that's a little more than 13%). Yes, it has little impact on the final scoring. But then, it has a huge impact on the overall number of parallels found in that list. And all 75 parallels are found in a tight space - closely connected. And from this we would easily infer intertextuality. But that intertextuality isn't directional. Because of course both are taken from a common source (quite identifiable).

 

Just as much to the point, that copyright statement is itself a pastiche of quotes. And with the quote marks (and other punctuation) removed, we have no idea looking at the various fragments where a text by one author ends and another begins. The database working strictly with n-grams (a computational terms that doesn't reflect the same sort of implications as the literary counterpart 'locutions') doesn't actually present any picture of literature - because it doesn't have any way of dealing with natural boundaries that occur within the text. Those boundaries of necessity having been stripped out. The text isn't a string of phrases any more. And the data set used by Duane isn't actually a data set comprised of phrases used in English. It is a n-gram sequence - a sequence of words and characters that only sometimes actually resembles phrases in English. This is another problem that we can see from these searches. The search itself doesn't give us usable information, it only tells us where to go look. And so we go and look and we see that 75 parallels come from the prepared form copyright application potentially used by both authors. And there we have clear intertextuality, not due to random chance, completely describable. And also completely irrelevant to the question of authorship or influence on the text of the Book of Mormon.

 

Yes we can find interesting textual parallels. I discuss this in great detail in my review of Grunder's mammoth work. I think someone already linked to it. It's worth reading.

 

But what I don't see here is the rehabilitation of a search on an electronic text repository that fixes the problems that have been established for many years now. And so I am quite certain that this weighted distribution is rather meaningless. Yes, we all already know that the Book of Mormon is a text produced in the 19th century. It was produced in New York. It was published in 1830. It has all the earmarks of being from that area. This isn't a surprise to anyone.

 

There's more to my concerns. I expect I will have a blog post about it ready by the end of the week that has a more complete discussion on my problems with the statistical part of this issue. If Duane can find a way to give me access to his baseline data collection, I would be happy to offer up some suggestions and look for ways to make it more effective (but I am not sure he will be terribly interested in my perspective).

 

Ben M.

[jkwilliams]

And, so, I thought it would be helpful to go verse by verse through both books and have these good folks point out the dumbfounding and uncanny and striking similarities in writing styles, phrasing, concepts, subjects, content, language, .themes,  and parallels. (See my next post)

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

How would that be helpful? I'm really trying to understand what you're talking about, but to borrow a phrase from you, I'm left scratching my head.

West Side Story is heavily influenced by Romeo and Juliet.

The Lion King borrows its plot and themes from Hamlet.

Ran is a variation on King Lear.

Forbidden Planet is based on The Tempest, with Robby the Robot covering Ariel.

And so on.

Would you find it valuable to go line by line comparing the film scripts with the plays?

There's already been some interesting discussion here and elsewhere about common language and themes, but IMO, what you're proposing adds little or nothing to the conversation.

[wenglund]

LOL.

 

Because of course what I accused Joseph of doing was sitting with a copy of the late war and copying it out verbatim while simply replacing names and places for ones he picked out of maps or his head. Oh wait... it wasn't Nice try, but that's not remotely the point.

 

I'm not calling it a plagiarism at all. But I am saying that Joseph's choice of dictated words were likely heavily influenced by his environment. Even Brant Gardner says that. I would suggest that The Late War... or literary styles like it were some of his influences.

 

That doesn't prove or disprove the existence of an historical Nephi, but it does knock a hole in the persistent "tight translation" advocates. And it also undermines Skousen's argument that it was a 16thC translation being beamed into Joseph's rock/hat/head.

 

Laugh all you want, but earlier in the thread you were the one who said: "I've only reached chapter 4 and... yes... strikingly similar!"

 

What I am attempting to do now, in part, is have you point out the "striking similarities" and the "heavy influence" since I didn't and don't see them. I am trying to determine at what level (verse, semi-chapter, chapter, bi-chapter, etc.) you believe the "striking similarities" and "heavy influence" exist.

 

Furthermore, I am attempting to determine how, given the sequence in which the Book of Mormon was produced, you and others suppose the Book of Mormon was "heavily influenced" by the Late War. If, as you say, you don't believe Joseph copied the Late War verbatim (with name and place changes), then what do you believe about how Joseph allegedly used the Late War during the Book of Mormon translation?

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Then say that; don't weaken it with an example that undermines your argument.

 

I am not making an argument. I am scrutinizing your claim that: "I've only reached chapter 4 and... yes... strikingly similar!"

 

Besides which, "...keeping in mind the sequence in which the Book of Mormon was produced." Then why did you compare 1 Nephi 1:1 given that was translated much later (after the large plates had been translated).

 

I don't know for certain that it was translated later. I am familiar with the Mosiah Priority theory, and I don't necessarily reject it. If you prefer to begin the comparison in Mosiah, or wherever, I am fine with that. Just let me know.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited October 24, 2013 by wenglund

[jkwilliams]

Furthermore, I am attempting to determine how, given the sequence in which the Book of Mormon was produced, you and others suppose the Book of Mormon was "heavily influenced" by the Late War. If, as you say, you don't believe Joseph copied the Late War verbatim (with name and place changes), then what do you believe about how Joseph allegedly used the Late War during the Book of Mormon translation?

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I know you didn't address this to me, but I am not arguing for a heavy influence, and certainly not for Hunt's book as a source. What it offers me is another point of reference for a contemporary document that uses KJV-style language to develop certain religious and, oddly enough, military themes. For example, I'd never seen anything other than the Book of Mormon from that era that so thoroughly weds righteousness/liberty and military battles.

Does this mean the book is a source for the Book of Mormon? No, but it shows me that someone else was using the same linguistic choices to develop similar themes, thus giving another tidbit of information about the environment into which the Book of Mormon emerged.

Let me give you an analogy. I read Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling when it first came out, and then read Brodie's book a few months later. Unlike Bushman, Brodie spent time talking about different people in Joseph Smith's time and place who had claimed similar religious epiphanies. I'd never heard about these people before, so to me, Brodie's book gave me a better picture of the environment that produced Joseph Smith than Bushman's book did. Does that mean that Joseph Smith merely copied these other religious experiences? No, but it tells me that the First Vision fits in nicely with the context, and it provided more context than I had previously understood. That's how I feel about the Hunt book. It's not "proof" either way, but it helps me contextualize the Book of Mormon.