Another Wordprint-type Study

[Benjamin McGuire]

Danna writes:

For example, large chunks of Alma are attributed to three different people (Rigdon, Cowdery, Spaulding) - testing only Chapters 1-44 when his son took over the plates.

Internally, Mormon is the writer of Alma. Yes, he certainly redacts other sources, but he has an editorial hand. If we take the text as consistent with its own description of the process of production and the internal evidence, we would expect several voices. This is simply an aside though.

Spaulding is the most interesting author, since there can be no claim he was influenced by the BoM later (as could be claimed with the Mormon authors). There should be no reason to see his word profile in the book more than Longfellow or Burrows.

I think that there is. A lot of this has to do with vocabulary. Spalding and the Book of Mormon have a very high degree of vocabulary overlap (about 40 percent in either direction). While the BoM shares about 40% of the BoMs vocabulary, the Longfellow text shares only about 30 percent of the BoMs vocabulary. The Longfellow text and the Spalding text are pretty close to the same length, and yet the vocabulary of the Longfellow text is quite small by comparison (the Book of Mormon also has a relatively small vocabulary for such a lengthy work).

There are some notable differences. Among them is the fact that the Spalding text shares far more locutions with the Book of Mormon than does the Longfellow text (nearly twice as many 3-word locutions for example). And if the Book of Mormon is taken apart a chapter at a time, this will dramatically affect the clustering and likewise the predictions of the study. If the Book of Mormon were to be cut into larger chunks, I am not sure this distinction would be quite so pronounced. The shared locutions is quite an interesting thing though. Spalding, for example, duplicates about 1.5 % of all unique 3 word locutions in the Book of Mormon (this is, by the way, quite low by comparison for other contemporary works that I have looked at - Warren's _The Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution_ by comparion duplicates just over 5% of all the unique locutions in the Book of Mormon: a number which is higher than the average I would also expect to see of about 3%). By comparison, the Longfellow text duplicates about .8% of the unique 3 word locutions of the Book of Mormon - significantly less than any other text of I had previously analyzed (Spalding had previously had one of the lower values - and Longfellow is about half of Spalding). As a comparison, perhaps, Jules Verne's _Around the World in 80 Days_ yielded nearly as many unique 3-word locutions in common with the Book of Mormon as did Spalding and Longfellow combined.

The point I am getting at here is that I suspect (and am working slowly at building up the data I need to run the tests here) that I can produce a list of a half dozen authors which, when included with Spalding in this kind of study, for the most part completely eclipse spalding. It isn't hard to do this when you select texts based on anticipated models of vocabulary overlap. Longfellow is the perfect kind of choice to create bias in this kind of study, and I personally believe it was included because of the bias that it generated.

In response to a question elsewhere, I had a tutu with MS excel to do a simple binomial probability test of 'Spaulding' against 'NotSpaulding'. Once you remove the 21 known Isaiah/Malachi chapters you are left with 218 BoM chapters, claimed by an assortment of Nephites. There is no reason any given Nephite should resemble Spaulding more than the others so a test of authorship would identify Spaulding about 1/7 times (about 14%) or 31 chapters (+/- 3 given the margin of error). [Actually I would expect the redacted Nephites to resemble redacted I/M more than a modern author, thus lowering Spaulding's chances, but I am being conservative here; also if the Mormons adopted a Nephite 'style' Spaulding's chances would be lower still].

I don't think your method here comes anywhere near close to justifying your conclusions. Perhaps you would provide us with the calculations you used so that we can apply them to other texts to see what those results might be.

Ben

[Uncle Dale]

...

why so many people would be in on the fraud, have a fallen out with Smith and still stick to the story line that the book

came from gold plates.

...

It is certainly hard to thus account for Parley P. Pratt's tenacious

defense of Rigdon, the BoM, and the associated history, if Pratt

were indeed one of the writers.

He specifically testifies that the first time Sidney Rigdon ever saw

"Elder Joseph Smith" was when Rigdon went to visit Smith in 1830.

At Kirtland Pratt felt very much cheated by Smith over certain

real estate and financial dealings. He was probably just about ready

to leave the Church -- but said nothing about a BoM conspiracy.

In 1839 Pratt evidently led the effort to get Elder Jesse Haven into

the home of Spalding's widow, to interview her and (according to

the family) obtain some of Spalding's writings. Again, at that time,

Pratt was a very vocal defender of the BoM in NYC newspapers.

So, based upon his own post-baptismal experiences. perhaps we

should eliminate Pratt as a possible contributer. He certainly never

admitted to any such role.

On the other hand, Pratt produced some entertaining fiction, including

the only known Mormon literary creation in which Joseph Smith

refutes the Spalding authorship claims. Pratt was capable of writing

something like the BoM (or parts of it). But, since he never admitted

to any such thing, I guess we can say he was not involved.

UD'

[Uncle Dale]

...

Joseph Smith was largely unaware of those cities until drawings and descriptions of

Mesoamerican cities such as Palenque were published and circulated by

Frederick Catherwood in his 1842 work

...

Then again:

http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1822-pg2.htm

1822 The Times

1822 Literary Gazette

1822 Eclectic Review

1822 New Monthly Magazine

1823 History of Guatemala

-------> 1824 History of New-York <---------

-------> (especially see these pages) <---------

1825 Recueil de Voyages

1825 Asiatic Journal

1826 New York American

1827 Historical Researches

1828 Quarterly Journal of Lit.

1829 Hope of Israel

A Mesoamerican city's Nephite (?) watchtower, from the above-listed 1825 source:

(see also 1822 original, advertised for sale in Albany, NY)

Such images and reports were frequently reprinted in American periodicals --

See the Saturday Evening Post for this period, etc. etc.

Also this Lamanite (from the British edition):

Von Humboldt 1814

UD

[Benjamin McGuire]

NorthboundZax writes:

So what does it mean that the results are not flat? For starters, that seems to me to rule out a tight translation (I doubt many here would concern themselves with that). So what to with the strong Rigdon-Spalding pairing? Maybe one could suppose that the unaccounted for JS signal preferentially mapped there, indicating a loose translation. Personally, that particular pairing is a little too striking for me to chalk up that way, and seems that I should take the Rigdon-Spalding hypothesis more seriously than I have in the past. Clearly, not the only way they must be interpreted (especially in the absence of a Smith centroid), and it will be interesting to see how robust the signal remains in future studies, particularly when Joseph Smith can be reliably included. But at the moment, we have a quantitative result that points to the Rigdon-Spalding connection of BoM origins that has a great deal more weight to it than most here seem willing to grant.

I don't think we can draw anything serious in terms of the results of this study. What appears to be a signal is only a signal relative to the other tested authors - it doesn't have any meaning outside of that specific test environment. Unless we start from the position that this limited group of 5 or 7 authors were the only ones who could possibly have been involved in the writing process, the end results don't actually tell us anything at all.

What the original shrunken centroid method was used for was to provide a statistical model whereby you could determine which cancer was present based on a genetic signature. Using all of the several thousand genes would provide a completely accurate prediction. But, with this model, the goal was to see if a reduced set of genes could provide the same accuracy - and in fact, they found out that it could. The problems with the paper (as I get into it a bit more) hinge around the ways in whcih this particular kind of study are so different from the original purposes to which this statistical model were applied. In dealing with the cancer genes, you had a complete list of cancer types. So all comparisons would be seen as absolute. And of course you have the options (download the examples and you will see this) of applying the comparisons across all of the genes. In this case, the equivalent to a gene is a word in a text. There is a fair amount of overlap (the Spalding text for example contains about 40% of the vocabulary of the Book of Mormon and vice versa), but there is a lot where there is no overlap. So the study made some decisions about how to shrink the test data in a rather subjective fashion. The end result looks much like the most common words list in the English language. But in chosing to go this route, they made the test much more relative than it might have been otherwise. We can tell that a piece of text is much more likely to have be written by Rigdon, for example, than by, say, Spalding - but this information is completely relative. If we were to add in another author we might just as likely find that both Spalding and Rigdon are completely eclipsed by this new author.

So unless we start from the assumption that the tested author list actually contains the real authors, the results are completely meaningless and of no value. I am not even sure it can tell us reliably that there is more than one author. The preferential mapping that you speak of is only a preferential mapping considering exactly the seven authors used in the study and none others.

Now in terms of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I have suggested that this approach would be ideal in an environment where we ar pretty certain that we know the complete list of potential authors (like some of the disputed Federalist papers for example).

Ben M.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Uncle Dale -

I think one issue that I try to deal with from time to time is this idea that you have of "coincidence". Exactly what would coincidental data look like? If you remember my response in my essay Parallelomania, I point out that from certain perspectives, the Spalding comparisons are in fact within what seems to be a normal range for coincidence. How we determine that it is not coincidental is more the concern than whether or not we should have to demonstrate that it is.

Ben M.

[Uncle Dale]

Uncle Dale -

I think one issue that I try to deal with from time to time is this idea that you have of "coincidence". Exactly what would coincidental data look like? If you remember my response in my essay Parallelomania, I point out that from certain perspectives, the Spalding comparisons are in fact within what seems to be a normal range for coincidence. How we determine that it is not coincidental is more the concern than whether or not we should have to demonstrate that it is.

Ben M.

You may be right -- or at least partly right.

Even when I put on my Spalding advocate's hat, and argue for some sort of

substantial connection here, I must keep the thought in the back of my mind,

that my very best examples may be nothing other than remarkable coincidences.

If some LDS researchers can map out a Solomon Spalding word-print in the BoM,

relative to, say, 100 other possible authorship candidates from that time and region,

then I would be very curious to see if my much-talked-about "cluster" in the latter

part of Alma is simply a literary coincidence, based upon war-story phraseology

looking much the same in one text as in another.

If you come up with some sample/experimental findings, along these lines;

please share the results here. You and I can even enter into another

author/publisher arrangement, for a "Parallelomania 2," if that interests you.

UD

[NorthboundZax]

I don't think we can draw anything serious in terms of the results of this study. What appears to be a signal is only a signal relative to the other tested authors - it doesn't have any meaning outside of that specific test environment. Unless we start from the position that this limited group of 5 or 7 authors were the only ones who could possibly have been involved in the writing process, the end results don't actually tell us anything at all.

True that the signal is relative to the others, but that does not make it meaningless or even less valuable. The problem you bring up of possibly having authors outside the target group is a valid criticism and will lead to a flat distribution. Although it necessarily means considering false negatives (like Joseph Smith), it is far less likely to produce false positives. If all actual authors were outside the target author list, we would expect to see the spectrum to be relatively flat, i.e., doesn't preferentially look relatively more like one target author than any of the others. The only way to produce the observed strong peaks as false positives is if an unaccounted contributer happens to have a voice statistically more similar to one or more of the target authors than the others - in this case Rigdon and Spalding. I do suspect that the Cowdery peak is a false positive from the unaccounted Joseph Smith. If you think the Rigdon-Spalding peaks are false positives, it would be interesting to know where you think the power is coming from.

At a minimum, you should be able to predict what the spectrum should look like for your preferred author list against this particular chosen target author list. Unless you have reason to believe the voice of Mormon, Nephi, etc (or JS for a loose translation) will be statistically more like Rigdon or Spalding than any other author, one should predict a flat distribution. As I have pointed out on the MDB thread most problems that people may have with imprecise chapter divisions or genre issues will also lead to flatter distributions as they would have the effect of making the data noisier. IOW, a flat distribution may be real or just noisy, but statistically significant peaks are unlikely to be generated in any other way than in the presence of a particular author's voice (or statistically similar voice relative to the others).

Exactly what would coincidental data look like? If you remember my response in my essay Parallelomania, I point out that from certain perspectives, the Spalding comparisons are in fact within what seems to be a normal range for coincidence. How we determine that it is not coincidental is more the concern than whether or not we should have to demonstrate that it is.

I'm not sure if you are talking abut the centroid method here or not, but assuming you are, Parallelomania is all about tricking ourselves into seeing patterns in noise. Statistical methods don't have this problem. If the text just 'coincidentally' looks like Spalding in places, a statistical method will not put nearly as much weight on as we as individuals might. In short, coincidences will map to an overall flat spectrum. If you weren't referring to that, my apologies.

[Uncertain]

True that the signal is relative to the others, but that does not make it meaningless or even less valuable. The problem you bring up of possibly having authors outside the target group is a valid criticism and will lead to a flat distribution. Although it necessarily means considering false negatives (like Joseph Smith), it is far less likely to produce false positives. If all actual authors were outside the target author list, we would expect to see the spectrum to be relatively flat, i.e., doesn't preferentially look relatively more like one target author than any of the others. The only way to produce the observed strong peaks as false positives is if an unaccounted contributer happens to have a voice statistically more similar to one or more of the target authors than the others - in this case Rigdon and Spalding. I do suspect that the Cowdery peak is a false positive from the unaccounted Joseph Smith. If you think the Rigdon-Spalding peaks are false positives, it would be interesting to know where you think the power is coming from.

Hi Northbound Zax,

After some thought I am no longer sure the distribution of assigned authorship would necessarily be flat in the case of seven authors who have nothing to do with a given text. Suppose the BOM authorship is more or less as claimed by the book itself. If we look at our set of seven authors there will be small variations in how closely their writing style compares to say Nephi such that some of them are closer than others. This is just due to natural random statistical deviations it would be extremely improbable for all seven authors to have exactly the same degree of similarity to Nephi's writing. Now what the NSCC method will tell us is which author more closely resembles Nephi out of the pool of seven. That is suppose author 3 just by random chance had the closest writing style to Nephi. Author 3 will most of the time be the author that is selected as the author "closest" to Nephi even though author 3 is completely unrelated to Nephi. This process would produce a "peak" of authorship for author 3 for those parts of the BOM written by Nephi. That is the NSCC method in the case of seven authors who are completed unrelated to a given text will "amplify" the existing random statistical deviations in how similar the seven authors are to a given BOM author to produce a set of peaks and valleys of assigned authorship. But these peaks and valleys do not represent an underlying signal simply amplified noise.

Now if this was the case I would expect the probabilities assigned to the relative rankings to be very similar. That is the first place author might have a probability of .3 the second place .25 the third .2 etc. This is because compared to the other authors the first author is not all that much more similar to Nephi than the others.

I myself would love to see the same seven authors tested on say the KJV of the Bible to see if the distribution of assigned authorship would be flat.

All the Best,

Uncertain

[Cold Steel]

I can grant that the most impressive evidence I've seen to support the BOM is in the Yemen connection, but when it comes to American geography, you simply have no BOM geography. There is no such thing.

Really? Have you read any of the many books that have been written on it? Have you seen the Journey of Faith videos? I've been reading a number of books on it, including John Lund's book, Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon and Jerry Ainsworth's The Lives and Travels of Mormon and Moroni, which contains numerous maps and geographical representations of Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon times. There are very small details that no one knew about this area in 1830 that are reflected in the Book of Mormon, which means that the chances of anyone, or any group of people, writing the book in that time period is extremely remote.

Why? If Nephites were real, then Nephite cities should be real. Cities don't just disappear. Reformed Egyptian should be a real languageâ??even if its a dead one.

The Nephites and Lamanites were very real, and the Mesoamerican cultures during Book of Mormon times fully reflect the probability that they were there. In fact, enough is known to actually name a number of these cities. Unfortunately, we cannot discuss this if you've never read anything about it. As far as Reformed Egyptian goes, I don't think this was a language that was widely used by the Lehites. They spoke and wrote Hebrew, and as they were assimilated into other cultures and moved away from their own language, I suspect Reformed Egyptian was kept alive only by the prophets who passed the records down. In short, I believe it was used primarily for those dynastic records and that the Nephites adopted the language and writing of the dominant civilized cultures already here.

At the time the Book of Mormon was published, very little was known about people adopting and using Egyptian cursive styles as described by Nephi. Yet we now know that this happened throughout the Middle East.

What you are admitting, though, is if John Spalding was telling the truth, there is a definite case to be made. I agree. The thing of it is, of course we're not going to see any pre-1830 quotes about a Spalding BOM connection because Spalding was not a household name until after the BOM was published and the similarities began to be noticed.

Yes, or manufactured. Still, how would Spalding have known about the "valley, firm and steadfast, and immovable" featuring a "river, continually running" (1 Nephi 2:9â??10)? For years people have waved this under my nose, telling me in no uncertain terms that there were no such valleys, nor "rivers of water" in that part of Arabia. But once there were boots on the ground, or rather, tires on the sand, we found, yes, there is such a valley. There is such a stream of water. Not only that, there's evidence of there being more than one, though I'm still a big believer in Wadi Tayyib al-Ism, which Kent Brown says fits "snugly with Nephi's description."

So now instead of asking, "How did Joseph Smith know?" we can ask, "How did Solomon Spalding know?" How did he know about Nahom? How did he know it was a burial community (something no one knew recently until the mid-1990s)? How did he know to write about white fruit and shining stones, which have appeared in apocryphal literature discovered long after both Smith and Spalding were dead? How did he know about the "narrow pass" in the narrow neck of land in Mesoamerica? Or the Lamanite/Mayan fascination with blood? Or cement, level roads and highways? These would be very impressive achievements for a guy who wrote romantic novels in his spare time.

Like I said, the Yemen connection is the best evidence I've seen in support of the BOM, but I still think it's weak. Too much is made of the NHM connection. You want an 1829 date before you'll be impressed, and I want a group of secular archeologists to agree that Lehi traveled through Yemen.... then I'll be impressed.

If you can dismiss NHM, saying "too much is made" of it, then I doubt any evidence will ever impress you. Non-Mormon scholars like Margaret Barker have been very impressed by what Joseph Smith produced, yet she has never joined the church. If secular archeologists agreed there was a Lehi, they'd probably be Mormons. Secular research will never prove anything of a spiritual nature. And in what way is too much made of Nahom? It's in the right place at the right time and was called the right name, and it was a burial community. How in the world can we make too much of that? If this supported Biblical history, scholars would be having a field day. But since it's evidence for the Book of Mormon, it may as well be a hairball.

Think about what you're claiming.... you're saying that John Spalding obviously must have guessed right about the BOM "geography" in 1851 because by then Frederick Catherwood, etc, had published meso-American discoveries that even had Joseph Smith thinking the BOM geography might have included Central & South America.

I'm saying it reflected his faulty memory. Spalding couldn't have written about such cities in Mesoamerica to explain those civilizations if they weren't really known about in any detail until 1842. I'm saying that whoever wrote the Book of Mormon had an intimate knowledge of those civilizations and the geography, which, of course, was impossible for anyone in the 1830s.

The other thing is that John Spalding mentions things we don't find in the BOM. The claimâ??from your sideâ??is that Hurlbut was implanting false memories in their brains from the BOM... John Spalding specifically mentions the "isthmus of Darien" whereas the BOM does not. He identifies Lehi's father as "Japheth" whereas the BOM does not. Those items were therefore NOT influenced by either Hurlbut or the BOM. There may be more where that came from, but I haven't studied it enough to find them yet.

Just examine Spalding's existing writings and compare them to the Book of Mormon. I suspect that John Spalding had motives for discrediting Smith and the Book of Mormon that had nothing to do with his father's writings. I can't pretend to know what I don't know, so I don't know what was in his mind or in his heart. I do know, however, that Solomon Spalding did not have nearly enough information to write the Book of Mormon. Neither did Joseph Smith or any of his contemporaries.

As far as Cumorah and it's location? Some say it's in New York, which is ridiculous in my view. Others say it's Cerro Vejia in Mexico. I personally believe it's Cerro Bernal (below), as Jerry Ainsworth believes. I don't believe Cerro Vejia would offer the tactical advantage that Cerro Bernal does and I think it's too close to the sea. There are vast areas surrounding Cerro Bernal that make it tactically superior, but then, I'm no expert and have never been to either site.

Why Cerro Vejia is Not Cumorah

Video of Cerro Bernal

[Uncle Dale]

...

Spalding couldn't have written about such cities in Mesoamerica to explain those civilizations if they weren't really

known about in any detail until 1842.

...

On the other hand:

Acosta - English Edition, 1604

Clavigero - English Edition, 1804

Von Humboldt - English Edition, 1814

Also, this famous Aztec image, from Von Humboldt:

Who also wrote/published about Palenque years before Spalding's death --

Who also wrote about ancient Latin American god-men, like Bochica

(the inspiration for Spalding's "Baska")

The English translation of Von Humboldt was not published until 1814, and

yet Spalding was writing about his ancient Baska/Lobaska at Conneaut, c. 1811.

How is that possible? The Boston newspapers featured English excerpts from

Von Humboldt's European editions, prior to the War of 1812. If Spalding read

the New England newspapers, he could have learned much about ancient

Meso-American and Latin American civilzations.

Ethan Smith also cited these old sources -- though his main book

referring to them was not published until 1823 -- see his earlier books

for some brief mentions, here and there, as early as Spalding's day.

Solomon Spalding knew Ethan Smith -- they had a similar education/interests.

UD

.

[NorthboundZax]

Hi Northbound Zax,

After some thought I am no longer sure the distribution of assigned authorship would necessarily be flat in the case of seven authors who have nothing to do with a given text. Suppose the BOM authorship is more or less as claimed by the book itself. If we look at our set of seven authors there will be small variations in how closely their writing style compares to say Nephi such that some of them are closer than others. This is just due to natural random statistical deviations it would be extremely improbable for all seven authors to have exactly the same degree of similarity to Nephi's writing. Now what the NSCC method will tell us is which author more closely resembles Nephi out of the pool of seven. That is suppose author 3 just by random chance had the closest writing style to Nephi. Author 3 will most of the time be the author that is selected as the author "closest" to Nephi even though author 3 is completely unrelated to Nephi. This process would produce a "peak" of authorship for author 3 for those parts of the BOM written by Nephi. That is the NSCC method in the case of seven authors who are completed unrelated to a given text will "amplify" the existing random statistical deviations in how similar the seven authors are to a given BOM author to produce a set of peaks and valleys of assigned authorship. But these peaks and valleys do not represent an underlying signal simply amplified noise.

Now if this was the case I would expect the probabilities assigned to the relative rankings to be very similar. That is the first place author might have a probability of .3 the second place .25 the third .2 etc. This is because compared to the other authors the first author is not all that much more similar to Nephi than the others.

Hi Uncertain,

Thanks for your comments. The kind of variation you talk about will definitely result in small variations in relative probabilities. However, I would call what you are describing as statistically flat i.e., variations that can be attributed entirely due to chance. So we're actually in agreement here, just my sloppy usage of the term 'flat'.

I myself would love to see the same seven authors tested on say the KJV of the Bible to see if the distribution of assigned authorship would be flat.

All the Best,

Uncertain

Excellent suggestion for a test. I'd love to see that, too.

[Cold Steel]

Well, again, the cities, the towers (pyramids), the roads and highways and much more were still largely unknown in 1830, as was the overall geography. The Dresden Codex was available and known about in the late 1700s (1744 when it was given to the Royal Library), but still, little was known of the great cities and intricate civilizations. Columbus, on his first voyage, encountered mostly naked village folk, but news reached him some time later of a more civilized people who were clothed in what is now the Yucat

[Uncle Dale]

Well, again, the cities, the towers (pyramids), the roads and highways and much more were

still largely unknown in 1830, as was the overall geography.

....

You might begin your reading here, with this popular history textbook:

THE

HISTORY OF AMERICA,

BY WILLIAM ROBERTSON, D. D.

PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, HISTORIOGRAPHER

TO HIS MAJESTY FOR SCOTLAND, AND MEMBER OF

THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF HISTORY AT MADRID.

FIRST AMERICAN,

FROM THE TENTH LONDON EDITION:

IN WHICH IS INCLUDED

THE POSTHUMOUS VOLUME,

CONTAINING

THE HISTORY OF VIRGINIA, TO THE YEAR 1688;

AND OF NEW-ENGLAND, TO THE YEAR 1652.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

PHILADELPHIA :

PUBLISHED BY JOHNSON & WAENEfc.

WILLIAM GREER, PRINTER

1812.

Robertson gives a fairly detailed picture of pre-Columbian culture and history -- talks about

ancient cities from Tula south to Cuzco, etc. -- hieroglyphics -- the Spanish conquest.

All of this history and culture was known in Spalding's day -- though perhaps not to

illiterate backwoodsmen.

It was at Cozumel (now a famous resort) that Cortez and company first encountered

"civilized" (Maya) people, culture and complex structures (some in ruins).

After conquering the Valley of Mexico. Cortez send an army south through Chiapas,

Yucatan, towards Guatemala. The fact that ancient cities (mostly in ruins) existed there

was common knowledge in Latin America, Spain, and much of Western Europe. The

French kept track of this knowledge in their professional society journals -- offering

cash prizes during the 1820s for more detailed reports on Mayan ruins, etc.

While the Mayan/Olmec cultural area was little explored, it was not unknown. See my

previous reference to Yates' 1820s "History of New York," etc.

To say that nobody before 1830 knew of the Aztecs' Mexico City, or the Incan rulers'

Cuzco, or of several dozen ruined cities spread out between those extremes is

simply ridiculous.

Again -- browse through Robertson, at the Google Books web-site, for an overview.

UD

[Uncle Dale]

...

After conquering the Valley of Mexico

...

Of course the story of ancient Mexico, well before the Spanish conquest,

also circulated in the USA, decades before 1830.

See Josiah Priest's "Wonders of Nature" from 1826, which was peddled

door-to-door in the Palmyra area at that time, for Aztec stories:

excerpts here -- see Google Books for full text

In fact, Robert Southey wrote a multi-volume epic of Europeans

colonizing Mexico and battling the Aztecs, way back in Spalding's day:

full text here -- see Aztlan section especially

I have good reason to believe that Solomon Spalding read and plagiarized

Southey's ancient American colonization stories.

Also, see the reference in Spalding's Roman story, where he speaks

of the ancient mound-builders obtaining their cotton fabrics, etc., in

trade with civilizations far to the South (Toltecs or Aztecs).

UD

[Danna]

I don't think your method here comes anywhere near close to justifying your conclusions. Perhaps you would provide us with the calculations you used so that we can apply them to other texts to see what those results might be.

Ben

Ummm, what part of a binomial probability do you think I left out?

[Uncle Dale]

...

Also, see the reference in Spalding's Roman story, where he speaks

of the ancient mound-builders obtaining their cotton fabrics, etc., in

trade with civilizations far to the South (Toltecs or Aztecs).

UD

So, folks -- why all of this talk of ancient Latin American Indian cultures/civilizations,

in a thread ostensibly aimed at discussing the recent Stanford researchers' paper

reporting on sundry "word-prints" in the Book of Mormon?

Bear with me on this one for a moment, because the question at hand is indeed

important for this particular topic.

If we begin to eliminate various 19th century writers, as not possibly having been

able to somehow contribute their "word-prints" to the Book of Mormon, the basis

for that screening and elimination must be a consensus one. In other words, we

mostly must all agree NOT to allow the writing samples of these particular writers

into the testing process.

Otherwise, we (as an interested readership and reviewers) immediately split

ourselves into partisan groups, over the issue of what writer is eligible for BoM

word-print testing, and what writer is not eligible.

If some of us say that Solomon Spalding (or some other 19th century writer)

is ineligible for word-print testing, because he or she knew nothing about the

Jaredite/Nephite/Mulekite civilizations, etc., that decision sets up a sort of

road-block to any further word-print testing and analysis -- an unnecessary

and problematic roadblock, which sets partisan Mormons against non-Mormons,

in deciding how word-print studies can be conducted.

If some of us determine that Joseph Smith, Jr. is ineligible for BoM word-print

testing, because he could not (in 1826-29) have known of ruined cities in

Latin America, etc., the problem immediately presents itself, that the loyal

LDS group themselves on one side of an impeding argument, and the non-LDS

will tend to group themselves on the other side, saying "We cannot know today

what any particular author/writer knew about the PreColumbian Americas, etc."

So, please folks -- let's keep the LDS religious arguments over what Nephites

were, and related "faith" issues, out of these word-printing efforts/discussions.

As for my own investigation of the matter, I am convinced that numerous

informed Americans, in the early part of the 19th century, could have known

enough about the mound-builder artifacts, the Spanish conquest of Aztec and

Inca cultures, and the general distribution of Indian cultures throughout the

Americas, to have composed the basic story-line found in the Book of Mormon.

Let's leave religious rhetoric and beliefs about ancient America out of the

effort to study Book of Mormon word-prints, OK?

Dale R. Broadhurst

web-host

Oliver's Bookshelf

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[Uncertain]

Hi Uncertain,

Thanks for your comments. The kind of variation you talk about will definitely result in small variations in relative probabilities. However, I would call what you are describing as statistically flat i.e., variations that can be attributed entirely due to chance. So we're actually in agreement here, just my sloppy usage of the term 'flat'.

Excellent suggestion for a test. I'd love to see that, too.

Hi NorthboundZax,

Ah I see what you are saying. The Jockers et al study does explicitly mention for most chapters there is a large difference in relative probability from the first to the second place author. Which is not what you would necessarily expect if all authors had absolutely nothing to do with the BOM. Still I think in order to build a convincing case I would like to see that the distribution of authorship really is flat for the same authors compared to a text it is known they had nothing to do with.

All the Best,

Uncertain

[Jersey Girl]

From a source on the Internet, Dr. Criddle addresses the "History of the Stanford Book of Mormon text analysis project." 12-12-08

Over the past week, Iâ??ve been tracking some of the on-line threads written on our publication. Some of the posts Iâ??ve seen have included speculation about my colleagues, about me, and about our motives.

In this post, I would like to explain how we came to work together, who did what, and why.

I would also like to make a request of those who cite this paper in future posts.

In the Fall of 2005, I posted an essay â??Sidney Rigdon: Creating the Book of Mormonâ? at two locations on the internet. In that essay, I explained my background and biases with respect to the Book of Mormon, and I explained how I came to the conclusion that Sidney Rigdon was its likely architect. I based my conclusion on the evidence summarized in that essay. Among other things I had noticed word usage patterns in the Book of Mormon that seemed to me to be consistent with Rigdon's style.

While I found some intriguing patterns, I did not have the expertise to carry out a more detailed text analysis. In particular, I was not knowledgeable in computerized text analysis. I was actually manually calculating word frequencies, using the word count feature of Microsoft Word, combined with Excel tables.

Frustrated by that process, I typed the key words â??computer text analysis Stanfordâ? into Google, to see whether a colleague at Stanford might have the necessary expertise. I received hits for Matthew Jockers in the English Department. So I emailed Matt. I told him that I had a hypothesis regarding the authorship of the Book of Mormon, and that I was looking for a collaborator with expertise in computer text analysis. He was interested. So we met, and I showed him what I had. Matt knew very little about Mormonism and nothing about the Mormon scriptures, but he was familiar with authorship attribution scholarship and intrigued by my hypothesis that one or more 19th century authors potentially authored the Book of Mormon. He was also very knowledgeable in text analysis and had the computer tools and know-how needed to understand the problem and extract the word frequency data from texts. After some discussion, he agreed to do the analysis for me; at that point we had not discussed co-authoring a paper.

With the help of friends, I was able to obtain most of the texts we needed for analysis, but I was not successful in obtaining reliable text for Joseph Smith (which we are still hoping to obtain). Matt took the texts I provided, segmented and encoded them into the xml that his tools require. He did the same with two control texts that he obtained.

Initially, Matt provided me some lists of frequently used words, bigrams, and phrases in the Book of Mormon and in the other texts. I ran some tests using my amateur methods, and Matt ran some tests of his own using his methods. We had some similar outcomes, with Rigdon appearing as a likely major contributor. This led Matt to believe that the theory was worth rigorous testing using more sophisticated methodologies. He decided to organize and lead a team effort with an eye toward publication of the research. We both understood the need for a bona fide statistician, and Matt recruited Daniela Witten, a doctoral student in Statistics with expertise in machine learning and classification.

Matt organized and directed regular meetings of the three of us in which we discussed how to proceed. Matt wanted to conduct tests using the Delta method, a method commonly used for authorship attribution. Daniela proposed additional testing using the method of Nearest Shrunken Centroids (NSC), a pattern classification technique developed at Stanford.

Matt and Daniela then did the analysis, applying both Delta and NSC. I was not involved in that part of the work. We all recognized that I had a bias issue, and we agreed that we would let the chips fall as they would: if the results came back negative for Spalding-Rigdon theory then thatâ??s what we would report. But the results came back supportive of the Spalding-Rigdon Theory.

Matt then wrote the first draft of our manuscript and sent it to me and to Daniela for our additions. I added my expertise in Mormonism and the historical context. Daniela wrote the sections on statistics and NSC. The manuscript went through more than 20 revisions thereafter. We also solicited help from a small group of informal reviewers and incorporated their suggestions.

On April 5, 2008, Matt submitted the manuscript to the Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing. The anonymous peer review process took six months. On October 7, 2008, we finally received notification that the paper was accepted pending an adequate response to the reviewer comments. We completed our response to the reviewer comments and submitted the corrected manuscript on November 6. On November 24, we received word that the manuscript was accepted. At the same time we received page proofs. We corrected them and returned the article on November 27. It was published electronically on December 6.

I would like to make a couple of points.

First, this manuscript should be referred to as the "Jockers et al. (2008) study" or as the "Stanford authorship study," not as the â??Criddle wordprint studyâ?. Yes, I did contribute significantly, but Matt led and coordinated the team, and he is the corresponding author. That is as it should be. Without him, nothing would have resulted. Danielaâ??s expertise as a statistician and skills as a writer were critical to the paper, so her contribution should not be discounted either. This is important for all to understand.

One reason I am making these points is because, as many apologists have already (correctly) pointed out, I am the team member with bias. Matt and Daniela were unbiased, and had very little knowledge of Mormonism before they became involved with this project.

While I contributed expertise as a former Mormon, Matt and Daniela carried out the data analysis and the results are what they are, independent of my participation in the research.

I am hoping that by providing this background, it will become clear to all that this work should not be referred to as "the Criddle word print studyâ?: it was a team effort led by Matthew Jockers. I was a member of that team, and, while my expertise was important, I did not carry out the analysis itself.

Craig Criddle

[Uncle Dale]

...

Here's my excerpt (40% and above) from that paper's Spalding chart, Part A:

...

After receiving a couple of requests, for a better graphic, I came up with this:

Anybody wish to offer some speculation on why we are seeing these

particular word-print distribution patterns for Spalding and Rigdon in the BoM?

UD

[Vex]

Anybody wish to offer some speculation on why we are seeing these

particular word-print distribution patterns for Spalding and Rigdon in the BoM?

UD

I may be jumping in this late (so some of these questions may have already been addressed), but what exactly constitutes matches from those authors? Is it looking at the use of specific words, constructs and patterns in grammar? Is it analyzed per verse or contextually over the entire chapter?

I'm curious because I would need to see a comparison analysis of another text perhaps to make a direct comparison (confusing and counter intuitive if I may say so myself). What would happen if we used the OT as the book to be analyzed. Would we see the same distribution? What about another work, say the illiad or the odessy. What would the distributions of hits be?

What I'm thinking is that even under combined authorship none add up to 100% but come close on some instances, but are extremely absent in others. Would we see similar marks when analyzing another text of similar nature? Why isn't Joseph Smith Jr, considered in the wordprint study?

There's alot of things i'd like to see, any possibility in them being made available here?

[Uncle Dale]

I may be jumping in this late (so some of these questions may have already been addressed), but what exactly constitutes matches from those authors? Is it looking at the use of specific words, constructs and patterns in grammar? Is it analyzed per verse or contextually over the entire chapter?

I'm curious because I would need to see a comparison analysis of another text perhaps to make a direct comparison (confusing and counter intuitive if I may say so myself). What would happen if we used the OT as the book to be analyzed. Would we see the same distribution? What about another work, say the illiad or the odessy. What would the distributions of hits be?

What I'm thinking is that even under combined authorship none add up to 100% but come close on some instances, but are extremely absent in others. Would we see similar marks when analyzing another text of similar nature? Why isn't Joseph Smith Jr, considered in the wordprint study?

There's alot of things i'd like to see, any possibility in them being made available here?

Rather than using non-contextual words (the, it, and, but, etc.), these researchers determined

a number of the most frequent words used by seven different writers, and then used that

information in order to determine which potential author out of that group could have

written each chapter in the modern LDS edition of the Book of Mormon.

If the LDS Church officials/scholars can come up with a lengthy text sample that they

can reliably assign to the young Joseph Smith, Jr., it sounds like the writers of this new

paper would be pleased to map out Smith's word-print in the Book of Mormon. When

they conducted their study they could not obtain a lengthy, reliably "Smith" text sample.

Probably other researchers will conduct more studies, testing a wider variety of old authors,

to determine whether or not this latest word-print analysis has any validity.

At least that is what I hope will happen in the coming year.

UD

[John Williams]

As for my own investigation of the matter, I am convinced that numerous

informed Americans, in the early part of the 19th century, could have known

enough about the mound-builder artifacts, the Spanish conquest of Aztec and

Inca cultures, and the general distribution of Indian cultures throughout the

Americas, to have composed the basic story-line found in the Book of Mormon.

You are quite right, Dale. Enough was known in the popular culture, even in backwoods places like upstate New York, about Mesoamerica and the Mound Builder myths to construct the basics of the Book of Mormon story. Those who would argue against that need only peruse the contemporary newspaper articles from Palmyra and its environs you have collected on your web site.

[Daniel Peterson]

I'm not even remotely convinced that enough was known in the early nineteenth century to account for even 1 Nephi.

(I hate to insert the voice of doubt here in this little testimony-fest of unbelievers, but, well, there you have it.)

[John Williams]

I'm not even remotely convinced that enough was known in the early nineteenth century to account for even 1 Nephi.

(I hate to insert the voice of doubt here in this little testimony-fest of unbelievers, but, well, there you have it.)

Sounds like a counter-testimony to me, Dan.

[Uncle Dale]

I'm not even remotely convinced that enough was known in the early nineteenth century to account for even 1 Nephi.

(I hate to insert the voice of doubt here in this little testimony-fest of unbelievers, but, well, there you have it.)

I think you are missing the point here, Dan. We each have our private opinions

about what could or could not have been sought out and compiled by an early

18th century writer. But our private opinions/testimonies should not get in the

way of our conducting such word-print studies (or, at least allowing others who

are interested in the subject to pursue it).

Hopefully our private opinions will be kept to a minimum in scholarly reporting

on these matters. Then again, perhaps it is unavoidable that we will sort ourselves

out into two opposing groups; each deriding the efforts and conclusions of the other.

But I hope not.... I am so t-i-r-e-d of replaying that old game.

Dale

.