Two voices in the Book of Mormon

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

How so?

Not only are you to write a book that includes a lot of things that are authentic and hard to explain with in the text. Now you need to write it in such a way that in the future any word print study will show that you are not the author.

[Uncertain]

Uncertain and/or Chris,

I apologize for my ignorance, but

[Chris Smith]

Now you need to write it in such a way that in the future any word print study will show that you are not the author.

No, you just need to write it in imitation of the style of the KJV.

[Vance]

No, you just need to write it in imitation of the style of the KJV.

Does the KJV have a uniform style?

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

No, you just need to write it in imitation of the style of the KJV.

That is so simple to do huh? I would be most interested in seeing you do this and we do these studies and see if you could fool them? That might actually be valuable in many ways regardless of the outcome.

ACtually what I think might be of value in these studies is to look at translated works. Run the study on the translator to see if the study think the translator is the author. Maybe that has been done. I am some what ignorant of what all has been done.

[mfbukowski]

Not to mention Alvin, Hyrum, Joseph Sr., Lucy...

One wonders if there is any useful information here at all.

[USU78]

Not to mention Alvin, Hyrum, Joseph Sr., Lucy...

One wonders if there is any useful information here at all.

Why stop there? Let's add Julia M. and Sophronia to the list!

USU "And Washington Irving . . . and Irving Lipschitz . . . and Mary Margaret Truman" 78

[DonBradley]

One wonders if there is any useful information here at all.

Look at it this way, if you want to rule out 19th century authors, wouldn't you want to have all the plausible candidates, including family, tested? Otherwise, you'd leave your study open to the charge that 19th century authors were not identified only because the right ones weren't included.

Don

[Glenn101]

By the way, what has happened to robuchan, the OP of this thread?

Glenn

[DonBradley]

By the way, what has happened to robuchan, the OP of this thread?

Glenn

Just another of the mysteries of the Spalding Enigma.

Don

[Uncle Dale]

By the way, what has happened to robuchan, the OP of this thread?

Glenn

He (she?) has been lurking here at times.

I think Ben's initial response pretty much answered the thread's

initial questions -- so it has moved on into other areas.

robuchan did raise one good point, that has not been disposed of

yet -- and that is the possibility of multiple authors for individual

Book of Mormon chapters.

Multiple authorship could occur in various ways, but the two most

likely scenarios would be: (1) A second writer adds to or re-writes

material initially authored by an earlier writer; or, (2) two writers

cooperate in a joint effort to compose the text.

The Spalding-Rigdon authorship theory predicts that such multiple

authorship will occur in at least some of the sections originally

written by Spalding, and later engrafted into the BoM narrative.

That would entail instances of multiple authorship type #1.

Another possibility for multiple authorship would be some variation

in the sort of process Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith cooperated

together in, while at Hiram, Ohio in March of 1832 -- type #2.

robuchan could develop questions along these lines, with some

relevance, since Bruce's pca chart does not consider the possibility

of multiple authorship of any single chapter. The Stanford team's

reporting addresses that possibility indirectly, by listing the

second most probable author for attributed BoM chapters. That can

be a very rough way of saying that perhaps two "voices" are present.

A better way to look for multiple authorship would be the creation

of some artificial surrogate "voices," consisting of calibrated

percentages of two word-prints mixed together. If word-prints for

the supposed Jaredite/Nephite authors could be derived from the

BoM text, mixtures of their "voices" might even be matched to

the Book of Mormon, in a search for Nephite redaction.

There are a number of interesting possibilities we might be looking

for here, in light of Bruce's presentation.

Of course one way of reacting would be for the observer to simply

say: "This proves to me that the Book of Mormon could not have

been written by any 19th century authors -- and therefore it must

be true!" -- I'd guess that is the reaction experienced by many

of the readers of robuchan's thread -- including himself????

UD

[Bruce Schaalje]

Dale,

Just for you. I carried out PCA for the Book of Mormon chapter data from the Criddle study. I did not include Rigdon or Spalding, or other than BOM chapters. This is a crude attempt to learn something about the internal authorship structure of the Book of Mormon.

Rather follow your advice on how to display the results, I decided to carry out an average linkage cluster analysis of the BOM chapters based on the first 10 principal components. Using the cubic clustering criterion, it appeared that there were about 30 real clusters of the 239 BOM chapters. I present below the 30 clusters with chapter numbers and a short 3-letter coded description of the chapters assuming that Criddle numbered them sequentially. The 3-letter descriptions are as follows (the decision as to whether the chapter was manly historical or mainly doctrinal was completely mine and pretty arbitrary, but done before I did any analysis):

1Nh = 1^st Nephi historical, 1Nd = 1^st Nephi doctrinal matter, 2Nh = 2nd Nephi historical, 2Nd = 2nd Nephi doctrinal, I/M = Isaiah/Malachi, JBh = Jacob historical, JBd = Jacob doctrinal, ZEN = Zenos, End = Enos doctrinal, JAh = Jarom historical, OMh = Omni historical, W_M = Words of Mormon, KBd = King Benjamin doctrinal, MSh = Mosiah historical, MSd = Mosiah doctrinal, ALh = Alma doctrinal, ALd = Alma historical, HEd = Helaman doctrinal, HEh = Helaman historical, 3Nh = 3^rd Nephi historical, 3Nd = 3^rd Nephi doctrinal, MAT = Matthew, 4Nh = 4^th Nephi historical, MMh = Mormon historical, MMd = Mormon doctrinal, ETh = Ether historical, ETd = Ether doctrinal, MRh = Moroni historical, MRd = Moroni doctrinal.

A few words of warning before I give the clusters. Some of the chapters were extremely short (e.g. the early Moroni chapters), so they might have weird and random word usage patterns just because of their size. The descriptions were pretty arbitrary

[noel00]

When is this paper being published?

http://statistics.byu.edu/LLC_paper7.pdf

You don't deal much with the historical issues that Jockers and Criddle include. Craig is awar eof this paper.

[Bruce Schaalje]

When is this paper being published?

http://statistics.by.../LLC_paper7.pdf

You don't deal much with the historical issues that Jockers and Criddle include. Craig is awar eof this paper.

Is the word "awar" a Freudian slip?

Sad to say, I have no idea when it is being published. The last I heard from the editor (6 months ago) was that they were waiting for a second review. The paper is not about the historical issues, but rather is about ways to extend NSC to deal more appropriately with complicated authorship attribution situations. There is a short appendix about historical issues. But I'm no historian. Matt Roper has published excellent historical replies to recent work on the Spalding-Rigdon theory.

By the way, this is not the paper that I referred to in my response to Craig as being accepted to a statistics journal. I'll send that link when revisions are complete.

Please tell Craig that I look forward to Craig's rejoinder to my response above.

(Dale: I guess the cat's out of the bag. You can uncross your fingers now.)

[Uncle Dale]

Dale, Just for you. I carried out PCA for the Book of Mormon chapter data from the Criddle study....

Looks very, very interesting, Bruce.

Do you have some coordinates and graphics to accompany the text items

listed in these cluster tabulations?

UD

.

[noel00]

Dale what is your response to this "Matt Roper has published excellent historical replies to recent work on the Spalding-Rigdon theory" I notice many LDS seem to assume every response by a LDS historian or scholar has demolished the arguments of the enemy.An yet one does not have to be a professional historian to notice certain things. For example Bushman ommitts his Spring 1969 Dialogue article in his RSR. Why? Was it because Walters demolished his arguments? Backman the supposed authority of the issue makes no mention at all of the the papers in Spring 1969 Dialogue. I know it's off the topic, I just thought I would throw my two cents worth in.

[Bruce Schaalje]

Looks very, very interesting, Bruce.

Do you have some coordinates and graphics to accompany the text items

listed in these cluster tabulations?

UD

.

Sorry, no. The tree diagram looked horrible since it involved 239 chapters. I couldn't think of a readable way to display 239 3-digit chapter lables on the PCA plots, and still give some information about the cntent of the chapters.

By the way, I have done analyses with my own data, including different texts, different stylometric features, and different dividsions of the Book of Mormon into texts. You'll just have to wait until these get published.

[Uncle Dale]

Dale what is your response to this "Matt Roper has published excellent historical replies to recent work on the Spalding-Rigdon theory" I notice many LDS seem to assume every response by a LDS historian or scholar has demolished the arguments of the enemy.An yet one does not have to be a professional historian to notice certain things. For example Bushman ommitts his Spring 1969 Dialogue article in his RSR. Why? Was it because Walters demolished his arguments? Backman the supposed authority of the issue makes no mention at all of the the papers in Spring 1969 Dialogue. I know it's off the topic, I just thought I would throw my two cents worth in.

I've talked to Matt a little about his work -- have considerable

respect for his professional abilities. He has been responding

mostly to Vanick and crew; and so I've stayed out of that tiff.

If Matt has something to say about my own work, you can be sure

that I'll respond.

Other than that, the best I can do is to comment on any particular

aspect of his reporting that anybody wishes to raise for discussion.

I'm not much interested in attempting to characterize the whole of

it. For me, at least, the S-R authorship explanation is a composite

of sundry factors -- some of which are more reliable or better

documented than are the others.

UD

[Uncle Dale]

...

a readable way to display 239 3-digit chapter lables on the PCA plots

...

Super-enlarge your bit-map image and transfer it into vector graphics

in Adobe Illustrator, Autocad, or some other line drawing program.

The results will be scalable without loss of resolution or

relationships between the plot points, one to another.

Or -- just skip the bit-map altogether and have your numeric data

fed into a drawing program directly.

You'll be pleased with the results, I assure you.

UD

[Bruce Schaalje]

Dale what is your response to this "Matt Roper has published excellent historical replies to recent work on the Spalding-Rigdon theory" I notice many LDS seem to assume every response by a LDS historian or scholar has demolished the arguments of the enemy.An yet one does not have to be a professional historian to notice certain things. For example Bushman ommitts his Spring 1969 Dialogue article in his RSR. Why? Was it because Walters demolished his arguments? Backman the supposed authority of the issue makes no mention at all of the the papers in Spring 1969 Dialogue. I know it's off the topic, I just thought I would throw my two cents worth in.

Noel,

Sorry to break into your private discussion with Dale, but exactly what "certain things" do you disagree with in Matt's papers? I've read them, by the way, not just heard about them. He presents thoughful evidence in his last paper that there is only one Spalding manuscript. Craig, in a "non-pro Mormon" (that's PC) blog said he didn't feel a response was necessary to Matt's latest paper. But that's all he said. Nothing else. What kind of dialogue is that?

I've also slogged through Craig's overly long diatribes on the Internet about the Rigdon-Salding theory. I even listened to his ex-mo presentation.

Have you read and thought about Matt's papers?

It seems to me that you might suffer from a reverse form of the malady that you accuse me (and "many LDS") of. You assume that every theory by a 'non-pro-Mormon' is autmatically unassailable.

Best,

Bruce

[noel00]

With respect your the one who believes that Smith translated some goldplates by looking into a stone in a hat. At least the S/R theory seems to me to be more plausible. I'll leave it to yourself and Jockers etc all to battle out the statistics. What's that saying ""There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" But then I know zilsh about stats except some I did for a introductory psychology class

[Bruce Schaalje]

With respect your the one who believes that Smith translated some goldplates by looking into a stone in a hat. At least the S/R theory seems to me to be more plausible. I'll leave it to yourself and Jockers etc all to battle out the statistics. What's that saying ""There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" But then I know zilsh about stats except some I did for a introductory psychology class

Guilty as charged. But, in your original post you asked if I had dealt with the historical issues in the Jockers-Criddle paper. When I answered that Matt Roper had taken on that task in a different venue (Matt and I talk - he's a co-author with me on the paper you referenced), I was simply answering your question. Then I'm ridiculed for answering. How was I supposed to answer your question? I apologize if my use of the adjective 'excellent' offended you.

Sheesh.

[mfbukowski]

Look at it this way, if you want to rule out 19th century authors, wouldn't you want to have all the plausible candidates, including family, tested? Otherwise, you'd leave your study open to the charge that 19th century authors were not identified only because the right ones weren't included.

Don

Of course if one is to stick to the naturalistic explanation, it is impossible to exhaust all those who might have helped him- there could be the odd unknown librarian or secret companion.

It would be helpful to rule out every reasonable known co-conspirator, but even if we did that, would it "disprove" the naturalistic assumption?

I don't think so. There could always be someone who was missed.

I still like the possibility that "Smith had help".

Of course he had help- the problem is that it was not "naturalistic". But that's just my prejudice!

[Uncle Dale]

With respect...

I more or less grew up attending Sunday meetings, sitting next to

folks who believed in golden plates -- and all of us singing

"Redeemer of Israel." It never much bothered me and I felt little

inclination to argue with them.

That part went along swimmingly.

It was when the guys up front, at the podium, started quoting

out of Fawn Brodie and Dan Vogel, that I got miffed. They should

have known better -- seminary educated CoC elders that they were.

I guess my default comfort level is back in the benches with

the believers in the "latter day glory." (Easier to take the boy

out from the Saints, than to take the saint out of the boy, I guess).

Uncle Dale

[DonBradley]

Of course if one is to stick to the naturalistic explanation, it is impossible to exhaust all those who might have helped him- there could be the odd unknown librarian or secret companion.

It would be helpful to rule out every reasonable known co-conspirator, but even if we did that, would it "disprove" the naturalistic assumption?

I don't think so. There could always be someone who was missed.

No, I think you're missing the point (well, mine anyway). If all the known, plausible 19th century authors were excluded by such studies, this would put the Book of Mormon in a more defensible position. Of course this wouldn't satisfy those for whom only the naturalistic explanation was a live option, but the relevant audiences for discussion on Book of Mormon historicity are not exhausted by the complete naturalists and those with testimonies such that they would ignore any counter-evidence.

Besides, Chris's implicit suggestion that other family members could have contributed to the book would not, on a naturalistic explanation, be the least bit unreasonable. So, both for secular-explanatory purposes and apologetic purposes, the net gathering wordprint candidates should be cast wide enough to cover these folks.

Cheers,

Don