Wordprint Studies On The Book Of Mormon

[Chris Smith]

You're dead wrong in my opinion.

Well, we shall have to revisit the question when I have time.

[Glenn101]

Well, we shall have to revisit the question when I have time.

Well, we seem to have really gotten far away from the word print studies. While many of us may have our opinions pro or con, the word print studies have been shown to work, and work better than most any other type of textual analysis. I am waiting for some one with qualifications on a par with the Berkley group to come up with something better which will show the methods used with the Book of Mormon texts to be invalid.

There are those who have conjectured for a mismash of text injected into the Book of Mormon texts which would invalidate those studies. However, that would seem to be more wishful thinking than scientific. The reason I say this is because the Berkley group did internal validations of the text, i.e. they compared two authors, Alma and Nephi against each other and against themselves.

The results were that Nephi and Nephi were consistent, Alma and Alma were consistent, but Nephi and Alma were not consistent, i.e. their wordprints were not the same. I would like for anyone to show me logically how Joseph Smith, or anyone else could have injected text from other books, say the Bible, and kept the text consistent (wordprint wise) from within one author's writings, yet changed it when changing authors.

The conclusion of those wordprint studies did not even attempt to assign authorship to any portion of the Book of Mormon texts that they used. But they did conclude that Signey Rigdon, Solomon Spaulding, Olivery Cowdery, nor Joseph Smith could be the authors of thoses passages.

(Sigh) But they did not even attempt to check to see if Emma Smith, Martin Harris, or David Whitmer were possible authors.

Now there are theories that each days texts were made up beforehand, then dictated by Joseph, then destroyed so that they would never be found. But if that were the case, why destroy any of them? Just present them to the world as being dictated by Joseph. But then, maybe the scribe was not in on the conspiracy. Joseph was dictating while reading the text from pages concealed in his hat. Of course that makes perfect sense.

The main part of the Book of Mormon was translated in about 63 days. The estimates is that from seven to ten pages were done per day. Can you picture Joseph Smith with his face stuck in his hat along with ten pages of text to an unsuspecting Oliver Cowdery. According to the information I have, Joseph and Oliver were in the same room when the dictation was taking place. There was a curtain hung in the room to separate the translation area from the rest of the house, but the Joseph and his scribe were in sight of each other.

This would have had to be a monumental conspiracy. Emma Smith, Martin Harris, Davis Whitmer, and Signey Rigdon would all have had to be in on it. It is singular that none of them ever confessed, especially after several of them became estranged from the Church.

And there are some who call my belief in the LDS church a belief in fairy tales!

Glenn

[Chris Smith]

they did conclude that Signey Rigdon, Solomon Spaulding, Olivery Cowdery, nor Joseph Smith could be the authors of thoses passages.

Actually Sidney Rigdon was not included in the study.

I will not trust this wordprint study until it is independently verified. It's really that simple. And I am still thoroughly convinced that the absence of some of these words in Hebrew poses a real problem for the ancient-authorship theory. I don't know what's going on here, but I feel fairly confident that ancient authorship isn't it.

[Fly Fisherman]

Can you cite the full title and maybe give a link?

Go ahead and start a thread --- you never know who will pop in to discuss it. You can invite people in saying you want to learn more from them.

Here you go:

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index.php?showtopic=28068

[Obiwan]

The question is how "deep" is gone into the text to determine authorship.

1. You have Joseph using his language.

2. You have Mormon that compiled it.

3. Then you have all the different actual authors.

Basically, when I read it, I see elements of all the levels of contribution. The end point being of course, no, one (or a couple) person/s wrote it, it has many that contributed to it's creation at several levels of textual construct. So in this case, a FULL wordprint study would need to incorporate all of these elements. Simply because some study's already done where not so detailed, that doesn't make the text invalid, nor their being disagreement per-se. It's simply a matter of thoroughness. And unlike anti-mormonism, not being thourough in this case is simply human variance, doing little to change the ultimate conclusions. Whereas anti-mormonism completely misuses information resulting in completely false conclusions.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

CK said of Abraham...

Abraham didn't claim that God told him to do so.

He did claim that God told him to kill his son...

The rest of the story is that there probably never was any such person as Abraham,

What! Take a look at Gal 3: 26-29. When we accept Christ as Saviour we become the seed of this "non-person" you just spoke (wrote) of...We become the seed of a pologamist...potentional child killing...bad father and husband, etc. (As related using your JS measuring rod). Again we don't know the whole story. I doubt that JS narritive could be worse that Decker, Tanner and others have already stated. By the way my take on Abraham...if God is willing to identify himself with him so am I!

and in any case this is a text that hails from a less enlightened age.

Men have always know Gods commands.

Pa Pa

[cdowis]

Actually Sidney Rigdon was not included in the study.

I will not trust this wordprint study until it is independently verified. It's really that simple. And I am still thoroughly convinced that the absence of some of these words in Hebrew poses a real problem for the ancient-authorship theory. I don't know what's going on here, but I feel fairly confident that ancient authorship isn't it.

I am sure that you realize how few studies are "independently verified", especially in the soft sciences. By the time they try to verify the study, they have twiddled and tweaked the methodology that it becomes an entirely different study.

This study is already a re-test of a previous study, and conducted by a group with a wide range of background, LDS and nonLDS. Holmes made a similar attempt, but, by his own admission, it was flawed.

Now, what exactly do you mean by "verified"? Are you suggesting that the identical study be conducted? That the computer analysis, using the same data, be run again? That there is a computer glitch, that the researchers lied about the results?

What exactly do you mean.

BTW, I note that for someone too buzy to talk about 19th century parallels in the BOM, you seem rather actively engaged in this conversation. Are you prepared to discuss this issue, that you yourself brought up and promptly dropped?

[Chris Smith]

BTW, I note that for someone too buzy to talk about 19th century parallels in the BOM, you seem rather actively engaged in this conversation. Are you prepared to discuss this issue, that you yourself brought up and promptly dropped?

I'm unfortunately compulsive about checking in here. But to discuss 19th c. parallels would require hours. This requires minutes. I can't spare hours at present. Sorry.

[cdowis]

I'm unfortunately compulsive about checking in here. But to discuss 19th c. parallels would require hours. This requires minutes. I can't spare hours at present. Sorry.

I'm just shaking your chain.

Actually I am in the same situation. I can get in and make short posts, but my time is pretty booked up at the present.

[Kevin Christensen]

Imagine a Book of Mormon that had no parallel to the early 19th century at all. How much more effective and persuasive it would be if it were irrelevant and incomprehensible.

Hypothetical Mormon convert. "I don't understand a bit of it. It makes no difference whatsoever to my life and understanding, and casts no light whatsoever on the Bible. It must be inspired. Only a God could have conceived such utter irrelevance!"

A book without wars or peace, crops, governments, lawyers, preachers, christianity, Judiasm, life, death, ritual, marriage, children, family, rivalry or reconciliation, violence or healing, without preaching or controversy. A book without relevance to any human issues or concerns. A book that resolved none of the great controversies, instead of a Book that, as Alexander Campbell complained, resolved all the great controversies.

Well, we don't have that kind of irrelevant Book of Mormon. But I find it most interesting that the one that we have fits better in the ancient settings than in the translation setting. (For example, Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem, Lehi's Journey, and Sorenson and Gardner on the New World setting.) I find it interesting that the expectations that people brought to the book frequently distorted the text. For instance, the surprisingly persistent claim that it described the Lost 10 Tribes, or that it described a continent-wide geography, or a complete history, or that it described coins, and military cavalry. Much that people expected to see simply wasn't there. Much that is there, scholars only recently learned how to see. (For instance, Welch on Temples in the Book of Mormon, or the recent work on Survivor Witness in the Book of Mormon, Oral and Literate culture, the significance of the destruction accounts in 3 Nephi compared to modern vulcanology, and ancient year rites, varous Mesoamerican themes, etc.) Much that Alexander Campbell complained about as being most obviously wrong turns out to be surprisingly correct. (See my long essay in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem on this.)

I don't think I'll worry about suspending my tithing until the next batch of 19th Century parallels comes marching in (none have impressed me thus far--Campbell, Brodie, Tanners, Roberts, Vogel, Metcalfe, Wright, Palmer, etc.). I feel no need to wait to get permission, validation, and approval from some "objective" skeptics who have been finally found a God willing to compell them to believe against their will.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[why me]

I have thought through a number of different possibilities. The one that seems to make the most

sense to me, is that JS could have been dictating directly from a prepared manuscript, or paraphrasing

such a manuscipt, in short segments, from memory. I also postulate that such a prepared manuscript

would have been largely in the handwriting of Rigdon, Cowdery and perhaps Smith himself -- and that

this source had to be destroyed, perhaps page-by-page, as it was dictated.

If that were the case -- that a prepared text had been dictated and then partly destroyed, the loss

of the "Book of Lehi" would have been a great problem. That part of the Nephite history had to be

re-dictated, in at least a narrative that resembled the lost one, enough that Martin Harris would not

have objected (that the new text was totally unlike the one he had lost).

It took quite a while before the replacement for the "Book of Lehi" was dictated. I postulate that

during the interval Smith continued dictating Mosiah, etc., down to Moroni -- and that Moroni,

1 & 2 Nephi and Jacob were the final additions to the book. I also postulate that the replacement

text depended only a little upon some retained Spalding writings, and greatly upon the insertions of

Sidney Rigdon, accompanied by a lesser contribution from Oliver Cowdery and editorial work by JS.

My hopes are to see the "word-printing" broken down to a chapter-by-chapter tabulation of "matches"

and "non-matches" with Spalding, Rigdon, Cowdery and Smith.

UD

.

This is interesting Uncle Dale. But I must confess, that the work involved in doing all this would be extreme to say the least. I am referring to the characters that you have listed as involved in book of mormon compostion. I still have a difficult time as to why such gentlemen would be involved in such an endeavor. I can see it done as a joke but not as a serious event to influence people at that time in history.

The brain power you have ensembled would have been much more productively engaged in organizing a religion without the book of mormon. The plucking that they could have accomplished without the book of mormon would have bore better results than with the book of mormon. The book of mormon was definitely a hindrence for all concerned if you are correct.

To begin a protestant sect without the book and have all these people engaged in such an enterprise would have bore many converts and saved JS and all the rest much pain.

The point: the history as experienced by all the names you listed was not at all positive. More pain and suffering than wonderment and beauty. All suffered from their involvement with the book. It was a wasted enterprise if all had a hand in its composition.

And yet, something tells me that they didn't have a hand in it.

[phaedrus ut]

Holmes made a similar attempt, but, by his own admission, it was flawed.

cdowis,

You keep repeating this like it's some sort of a fact. Yet you have never been able to show anything to back up your statements.

I am specifically calling for references for you to back up this or any of your previouis assertions.

Phaedrus

[LifeOnaPlate]

This is interesting Uncle Dale. But I must confess, that the work involved in doing all this would be extreme to say the least. I am referring to the characters that you have listed as involved in book of mormon compostion. I still have a difficult time as to why such gentlemen would be involved in such an endeavor. I can see it done as a joke but not as a serious event to influence people at that time in history.

The brain power you have ensembled would have been much more productively engaged in organizing a religion without the book of mormon. The plucking that they could have accomplished without the book of mormon would have bore better results than with the book of mormon. The book of mormon was definitely a hindrence for all concerned if you are correct.

To begin a protestant sect without the book and have all these people engaged in such an enterprise would have bore many converts and saved JS and all the rest much pain.

The point: the history as experienced by all the names you listed was not at all positive. More pain and suffering than wonderment and beauty. All suffered from their involvement with the book. It was a wasted enterprise if all had a hand in its composition.

And yet, something tells me that they didn't have a hand in it.

Uncle Dale's theory is as "unbelievable" as an angel delivering the plates to Joseph. Why did these men DO this? And why, after estrangement, didn't they declare the truth of the matter? Sidney Rigdon wanted nothing more than to be the guardian of the chruch, yet never mentioned his "key role" in the early days of the Church when he supposedly lurked about in the background waiting until the time was right to be baptized.