Criddle, Jockers, et al., on Book of Mormon Authorship

[Daniel Peterson]

A year or two ago, the Oxford University Press journal Literary and Linguistic Computing published a statistical argument for the Spalding theory of Book of Mormon authorship. While it has not received anywhere near the attention that I had expected it to receive, a few critics have seen it as the definitive death-blow to claims of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. (After all, it appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.) An "Advance Access" version of a reply to that paper is now available on-line:

G. Bruce Schaalje, Paul J. Fields, Matthew Roper, and Gregory L. Snow, "Extended Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification: A New Method for Open-Set Authorship Attribution of Texts of Varying Sizes," Literary and Linguistic Computing.

http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent

.

[Glenn101]

For the information of anyone interested, Bruce Schaalje's paper on extending and enhancing the NSC methods for authorship attribution is available now for perusal. I do not know if this will end the debate or simple send it off in different directions, but his paper has been peer reviewed for those who feel that such is necessary for it to be meaningful.

Glenn

[Uncle Dale]

For the information of anyone interested, Bruce Schaalje's paper on extending and enhancing the NSC methods for authorship attribution is available now for perusal. I do not know if this will end the debate or simple send it off in different directions, but his paper has been peer reviewed for those who feel that such is necessary for it to be meaningful.

Glenn

Yes -- some of us have been reading it.

We already had a heads-up on his pca charts -- so that part of the

discussion has been ongoing. I think that it would be fair to say

that the three Stanford researchers DO have an argument with

Dr. Schaalje, when it comes to using a single pca chart as the

determining filter, on whether an author-candidate even merits

serious consideration, for a series of texts emulating Early Modern

(KJV) English, etc.

I think that most people will also agree that more

reliable authorship results will be obtained, if the

author-candidates for a body of texts are comprised of

the actual authors (or, at least include the "real" authors).

Another point which Jockers continues to stress, regarding

his earlier reporting, is that the accusations made against

Rigdon, Cowdery, and Spalding, at a very early date, naturally

lends their names to a list of author-candidates to be tested.

That does not mean that Jockers' earlier reporting "proves"

that those three men were among the "real" selected author-candidates;

but it does help explain why those three names ended up ranking

high in terms of RELATIVE probable authorship for certain

BoM sections.

I think that it would be fair to say that the three Stanford researchers

DO NOT have an argument with Dr. Schaalje, on the issue of a "closed author set"

in relation to an "open author set." The latter is clearly that a limitation

of the 2008 Stanford study (an of Dr. Jockers' more recent study, which

included the word-print of Joseph Smith, Jr.).

Now we see a new paper that presents a different application of

the authorship attribution methodology, but with what results?

If Joseph Smith did not write the Preface to the 1830 BoM,

then who did? If Oliver Cowdery did not write the witness

statements for that same volume, then who did? If Sidney

Rigdon did not write the 1835 Lectures on Faith, then who did?

In other words -- now that Dr. Schaalje has presented his

views on proper and improper methods of authorship attribution,

where is his chart of the 239 chapters in the 1879 LDS edition,

with the various authors' names attached, in terms of percentages

of probability?

Can we say with 100% certainty that Helaman the son of Alma wrote

the Record of Helaman, found in Alma 45-62?

If even a 70%, or a 60% probability of authorship attribution

can be assigned to the non-Isaiah, non-Malachi, non-Matthew,

Book of Mormon chapters, I am very interested in obtaining that report.

UD

[Glenn101]

------------

I think that most people will also agree that more

reliable authorship results will be obtained, if the

author-candidates for a body of texts are comprised of

the actual authors (or, at least include the "real" authors).

Yes, if the real author or authors are not included, the results are meaningless.

Another point which Jockers continues to stress, regarding

his earlier reporting, is that the accusations made against

Rigdon, Cowdery, and Spalding, at a very early date, naturally

lends their names to a list of author-candidates to be tested.

That does not mean that Jockers' earlier reporting "proves"

that those three men were among the "real" selected author-candidates;

but it does help explain why those three names ended up ranking

high in terms of RELATIVE probable authorship for certain

BoM sections.

What Bruce's paper does show is that without some type of control to determine if any of the selected candidates are viable, those relative probabilities are meaningless.

I think that it would be fair to say that the three Stanford researchers

DO NOT have an argument with Dr. Schaalje, on the issue of a "closed author set"

in relation to an "open author set." The latter is clearly that a limitation

of the 2008 Stanford study (an of Dr. Jockers' more recent study, which

included the word-print of Joseph Smith, Jr.).

Now we see a new paper that presents a different application of

the authorship attribution methodology, but with what results?

If Joseph Smith did not write the Preface to the 1830 BoM,

then who did? If Oliver Cowdery did not write the witness

statements for that same volume, then who did? If Sidney

Rigdon did not write the 1835 Lectures on Faith, then who did?

In other words -- now that Dr. Schaalje has presented his

views on proper and improper methods of authorship attribution,

where is his chart of the 239 chapters in the 1879 LDS edition,

with the various authors' names attached, in terms of percentages

of probability?

You'll have to ask him.

Can we say with 100% certainty that Helaman the son of Alma wrote

the Record of Helaman, found in Alma 45-62?

That doesn't matter for this exercise. With the evidence that we have, we can really only deal with the writings of people that we do know.

If even a 70%, or a 60% probability of authorship attribution

can be assigned to the non-Isaiah, non-Malachi, non-Matthew,

Book of Mormon chapters, I am very interested in obtaining that report.

UD

From what I can understand from Bruce's paper and his earlier comments, none of the tested authors would approach those relative probabilities.

Glenn

[Bruce Schaalje]

We already had a heads-up on his pca charts -- so that part of the discussion has been ongoing. I think that it would be fair to say that the three Stanford researchers DO have an argument with Dr. Schaalje, when it comes to using a single pca chart as the determining filter, on whether an author-candidate even merits serious consideration, for a series of texts emulating Early Modern (KJV) English, etc.

You have grumped about this a lot, but have never given any evidence. I challenge to you and/or the Stanford group to show me any example of writings by different authors in which an observed consistent difference in author clusters evident in the plot of the first two principal components is misleading and overturned by plots of other components.

By the way, the suggested

[Uncle Dale]

...I challenge to you and/or the Stanford group to show me any example of writings by different authors in which an observed consistent difference in author clusters evident in the plot of the first two principal components is misleading and overturned by plots of other components.

I predict that this will be a fruitful area for ongoing textual

comparisons research. That is, finding examples of texts written

by the same author which do NOT group neatly in a pca-1 chart,

due to emulation of some other writer.

The examples we should look at first of all, would be the output

of 19th authors who produced some KJV/Shakespearean English texts,

apart from their "regular" corpus of writings. If we charted out

the deviations from the mean for a group of those writers' texts,

how would the results spatially compare with plots for actual KJV

chapters? Would the Early Modern English emulations plot close to

the actual biblical items, or would they still plot with the authors'

"regular" output?

As a very rough experiment, try determining the word-prints for

Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and plot them out on

a pca-1 chart, along with some actual text by Thomas Mallory. Will

Twain's Yankee book's chapter plots fall nearer the Mississippi texts,

or nearer the Mallory texts?

I'd suggest doing that sort of experiment with a few dozen different

sets of appropriate writers, and then quantifying the results, as

providing a context for your own conclusions.

Why do the "Nephite" chapters more or less congregate around the BoM's

reproduction of Isaiah, Malachi and Matthew? It cannot be because

Nephites wrote the KJV Bible. Some other determining factor must be

causing the plot distribution -- discover what that factor is.

Our point in the paper was simpler than that. You get more reliable authorship results if you just mathematically allow the possibility that the real author is not in your set of candidates. If the real author is in fact in the set of candidates, allowing for this possibility does not diminish the ability of the attribution method to identify that author.

Yes, I understand. This allowance will naturally diminish the

attribution percentages. I suppose that even a lay person like

myself can grasp that fact, without expertise in mathematics.

...

It does not help explain this at all. High relative probabilities can be obtained in nonsense closed set attributions, as shown by our Hamilton-Rigdon-Smith-Spalding-Cowdery-Pratt example.

You misunderstood me. I said that the appearance of those particular

authors in the Jockers' testing results came about because they had

earlier been accused of contributing to the text. So, it was natural

for them to be included in the results. Why they did not show up as

low-ranking author-candidates, I leave for others to explain.

This is good news indeed.

I'm fairly certain that you will discover that the three Stanford

researchers will agree with some of your basic, technical points,

and then argue that you and they come up with differing results for

different reasons -- and that their reasons are defensible. Such an

admission is rather like having your debating partner agree that

both of you have a side to present, but that your side is irrelevant.

We redid the chapter-by-chapter Book of Mormon attribution study taking into account the open-set problem, the text-size problem, and the multiplicity problem. The results were dramatically different. The absolute (better than relative) authorship probabilities for Rigdon and Spalding were very low for essentially all of the chapters.

I must have missed seeing those results. Just off the top of

your head, which are the ten BoM chapters most like Spalding?

Or, the ten BoM chapters in which he scores the highest percentages?

Do they form a cluster pattern, or are their occurrences random?

I would very much like to look at these other things with proper methodology. Is the preface to the 1830 Book of Mormon on your new website? If so, I

[Uncertain]

I read over the manuscript excellent work in my opinion.

I did have a couple of questions/comments that occurred to me as I read the paper.

First, the pca plot of the the BOM text shows a much higher variability than the single authorship clouds. Schaalje et al attribute this in part to differences in word frequencies between purported authors of the BOM i.e.(Moroni, Nephi, Alma etc.). This is a reasonable possible explanation if it were true then a pca plot of the different authors should show discrete and tight clouds for each separate author. That is most of the text purported to be written by Moroni should cluster together and be somewhat separate from the texts purported to be written by Nephi. So when these two sets of texts are lumped together you would see the kind of picture in Fig 10. With the pca plot of the texts showing high variability since multiple authors are being plotted together under the same label. I would love to see a pca plot of the BOM text by author. That is text attribute to Moroni plotted in a different color/symbol than Nephi etc. If say Moroni's etc. pca plot mirrors the BOM pca plot as a whole that is shows similar high variability. This would significantly weaken the hypothesis that the variability in the BOM text is explained by differences in purported authors. If Moroni's etc. pca plot on the other hand is much tighter than the BOM pca plot then the hypothesis would be considerably strengthened.

Second, we know things like genre and time i.e.(early Rigdon versus late Rigdon) influence a persons word print. Is it known to what extent dictation versus writing influences a persons word print? Understandably Schaalje et al only use letters written in JS handwriting to derive his word print. The BOM on the other hand was almost entirely dictated so even if JS was the sole author of the BOM would his dictated word print be the same as his written word print? Now I am no historian neither am I an expert in stylometrics. However it is my understanding a good portion of the D&C was dictated by JS the D&C like the BOM frequently uses archaic language. Is it possibly using carefully selected sections from the D&C to derive JS dictated wordprint and hence control for both archaic language and dictation?

Third, I am starting to lose faith in the very concept of "non-contextual" words. It might be a good idea to perform feature selection on the vectors of word frequencies to see if the words that carry the most weight in classification are reasonable. If I recall correctly nearest shrunken centroid assigns weights to each element of the input vectors i.e.(the "shrunken" part of the algorithm). If you rank the words according to these weights which words are assigned the highest weights and are these words reasonably viewed as "non-contextual"? Or are they instead best viewed as artifacts of archaic language or dictation or genre?

All in all as mentioned I thought the Schaalje et al manuscript was well written and well researched a strong response to Jockers et al.

Best,

Uncertain

[Uncle Dale]

...

I am starting to lose faith in the very concept of "non-contextual" words.

...

I share your skepticism. However, as a researcher, I'll try to make use of

any inquiry tool available. While word frequency distributions may not

PROVE any particular controversial historical assertion, they may still

end up being useful in basic investigation.

If I have a text by an unknown writer, and word-print analysis appears

to narrow the author down to a handful of "suspects," out of a large

population of possible writers, I'll consider those results.

Without making a firm prediction, I strongly suspect that a word-print

analysis of the 1835 "Lectures on Faith" will attribute all but one of

those lectures to the pen of Sidney Rigdon --- even if ten dozen different

author-candidates are included in computerized testing.

So, while I too am starting to lose faith in the very concept of

"non-contextual" words, I'll accept that Rigdon authorship attribution

as a provisional finding, subject to extension and correction

by other means.

A series of investigative tests upon those same lectures may convincingly

demonstrate that they are composite texts, mostly written by Rigdon, but

with some discernible Joseph Smith contributions.

Will such a determination prove that Sidney Rigdon authored a

major portion of the 1835 D&C? No -- it will not. But it might be a

compelling conclusion nevertheless, and thus offer a paradigm for our

understanding the past (subject to later updates).

That's about as far as the methodology seems applicable, in my view.

UD

.

[Uncertain]

I share your skepticism. However, as a researcher, I'll try to make use of

any inquiry tool available. While word frequency distributions may not

PROVE any particular controversial historical assertion, they may still

end up being useful in basic investigation.

If I have a text by an unknown writer, and word-print analysis appears

to narrow the author down to a handful of "suspects," out of a large

population of possible writers, I'll consider those results.

Without making a firm prediction, I strongly suspect that a word-print

analysis of the 1835 "Lectures on Faith" will attribute all but one of

those lectures to the pen of Sidney Rigdon --- even if ten dozen different

author-candidates are included in computerized testing.

So, while I too am starting to lose faith in the very concept of

"non-contextual" words, I'll accept that Rigdon authorship attribution

as a provisional finding, subject to extension and correction

by other means.

A series of investigative tests upon those same lectures may convincingly

demonstrate that they are composite texts, mostly written by Rigdon, but

with some discernible Joseph Smith contributions.

Will such a determination prove that Sidney Rigdon authored a

major portion of the 1835 D&C? No -- it will not. But it might be a

compelling conclusion nevertheless, and thus offer a paradigm for our

understanding the past (subject to later updates).

That's about as far as the methodology seems applicable, in my view.

UD

.

Hi Uncle Dale,

Well it is the rare scientific tool that is without flaw. When I go in and take a blood test to see if I have malaria. I don't expect the test to be 100% accurate 100% percent of the time. And indeed the test does not have to be such in order to be highly useful. However the devil as they say is in the details. A certain amount of error can be tolerated but at some point the error becomes so great the results produced are not useful. Whether the error introduced by using words that are contextual is so great as to produced non useful results I don't know but I suspect in some cases the answer is yes. I would say any study whose conclusions strongly depend on using truly non contextual words should provide strong evidence that the words used are really non contextual. Otherwise an unknown amount of error is being introduced depending on how contextual the purported non contextual words are. How easy this is to do I don't know I imagine not easy.

Best,

Uncertain

[Cold Steel]

The Jockers abstract notes: "Our results indicate that likely nineteenth century contributors were Solomon Spalding, a writer of historical fantasies; Sidney Rigdon, an eloquent but perhaps unstable preacher." In recent years, some scholars like Truman Madsen have pointed out that Rigdon only became "unstable" after the March 24, 1832 mobbing, during which Rigdon was dragged a considerable distance by his feet, causing his head to be repeatedly hammered by rocks, frozen terrain and manmade implements. Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker described what happened thus:

March 24: In the middle of the night, a mob seized Rigdon in Hiram, Ohio, dragged him by the heels across the frozen ground, and tarred and feathered him. In the morning, Joseph Smith, who had also been assaulted, found Rigdon out of his mind, asking his wife to bring a razor so he could kill the Prophet. When she refused, he asked Joseph for a razor so he could kill her. Church leaders later speculated that the Hiram mobbing caused Rigdon's periodic instability. (A Book of Mormons, Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, 1982, Signature Books)

In July, according to the above source, "while Joseph Smith was out of Kirtland, Rigdon announced to a stunned congregation that God had taken 'the kingdom' from Joseph and had given it to him." Smith later told Rigdon, "You had better give up your license and divest yourself of all the authority you can, for you will go into the hands of Satan, and he will handle you as one man handleth another, and the less authority you have the better for you."

Despite his injury, his stability since seemed intermediate, and in October 1833, the Lord called him to be "a spokesman unto this people; yea, verily, I will ordain you unto this calling, even to be a spokesman unto my servant Joseph" (D&C 100:9). This appears to me a case of Joseph keeping Sidney close at hand.

Did Rigdon's 1832 beating alter his language as well as his behavior? I don't know, but Rigdon (before his vicious beating) appeared to be a sincere seeker of truth. He began as a Baptist preacher, but he saw the failings in that religion and became a Campbellite preacher in an attempt to get as close to the apostolic religion as he could. But though Alexander Campbell sought to "restore" ancient Christianity by emulating it, he embraced the LDS faith because it lacked what Campbell's church lacked, and that was prophecy.

In addition to Rigdon's 1832 injury, F. Mark McKiernan noted in his book: "As a young boy Sidney Rigdon was thrown from a horse, and 'his feet entangling in a stirrup he was dragged some distance before relieved.' His brother Loammi stated that 'in this accident he received some concussion to the brain as ever afterward seriously affected his character, and in some respect his conduct.' According to [Rigdon's father], 'His mental powers did not seem to be impaired, but the equilibrium of his intellectual exertion seems thereby to have been sadly affected.'" Even so, "Rigdon did not share many of the common interests of the other farm youths in his neighborhood. 'He was never known to play with the boys; reading books was the greatest pleasure he could get.' John Rigdon commented on his father's abilities: 'He became a great historian, the best I ever saw. He seemed to have the history of the world on his tongue's end and he got to be a great Biblical scholar as well.'"

McKiernan also observed:

Rigdon became one of the most important converts that Mormonism has ever gained. His acceptance of Mormonism gave the sect the prestige which allowed its missionaries to obtain audiences throughout the Western Reserve, and soon the church, through Rigdon's influence, moved its headquarters to Kirtland, Ohio, where rapid growth ensued.

And:

Rigdon was a dynamic and charismatic leader who always gathered around him a personal following whose loyalty belonged first to him and then to the religious movement he represented. Wherever his religious conscience led him these faithful individuals followed. His quest for the fullness of the gospel compelled him to abandon positions of prestige, power, and financial security. Joseph Smith caught the essence of Rigdon's long and complex quest when he stated, "Truth was his pursuit, and for truth he was prepared to make every sacrifice in his power." [[1 Journal History, III, No. 1, 7-8.]] (The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness: Sidney Rigdon, Religious Reformer, 1971, Coronado Press)

To me, it's always been cynical to assume that if Rigdon could not find Biblical Christianity, that he would create it. It never made sense. His entire life was dedicated to finding the truth. To now assume that he would have anything to do with the theft of another man's manuscript, change it into a religious history and publish it through another man just doesn't make sense. If Rigdon was such a remarkable scholar and such a gifted speaker, why did he need Joseph Smith? I'm also troubled by the fact that Rigdon suffered two serious injuries to his head; and that the second one seemed to induce a far more significant change to his personality. How his writings would be affected by the second injury also is a question mark.

Any of these word print studies need to demonstrably identify other texts with unassailable accuracy. Has the Jockers methodology been able to do this? (And this is not a rhetorical question, I really want to know.)

.

[Bruce Schaalje]

I did have a couple of questions/comments that occurred to me as I read the paper.

First, the pca plot of the the BOM text shows a much higher variability than the single authorship clouds. Schaalje et al attribute this in part to differences in word frequencies between purported authors of the BOM i.e.(Moroni, Nephi, Alma etc.). This is a reasonable possible explanation if it were true then a pca plot of the different authors should show discrete and tight clouds for each separate author. That is most of the text purported to be written by Moroni should cluster together and be somewhat separate from the texts purported to be written by Nephi. So when these two sets of texts are lumped together you would see the kind of picture in Fig 10. With the pca plot of the texts showing high variability since multiple authors are being plotted together under the same label. I would love to see a pca plot of the BOM text by author. That is text attribute to Moroni plotted in a different color/symbol than Nephi etc. If say Moroni's etc. pca plot mirrors the BOM pca plot as a whole that is shows similar high variability. This would significantly weaken the hypothesis that the variability in the BOM text is explained by differences in purported authors. If Moroni's etc. pca plot on the other hand is much tighter than the BOM pca plot then the hypothesis would be considerably strengthened.

The Larsen/Rencher paper of 1980 (BYU Studies) looked at this pretty closely. They used discriminant analysis based on 38 non-contextual words. Their question was whether texts internally (within the Book of Mormon) attributed to a particular writer were consistent in style, but distinct from texts attributed internally to other writers. For all writers that had sizable writings attributed to them, it was true. Nephi's texts were consistent with each other but distinct from, say, Alma's writings. They also used cluster analysis which is similar to pca plotting in that it finds clusters defined by style characteristics, ignoring information about who the purported author was. They found the same results with cluster analysis as with discriminant analysis. We have also done pca plots with labels of the purported authors as plotting characters, and found the same thing. I'll see if I can find them.

Second, we know things like genre and time i.e.(early Rigdon versus late Rigdon) influence a persons word print. Is it known to what extent dictation versus writing influences a persons word print? Understandably Schaalje et al only use letters written in JS handwriting to derive his word print. The BOM on the other hand was almost entirely dictated so even if JS was the sole author of the BOM would his dictated word print be the same as his written word print? Now I am no historian neither am I an expert in stylometrics. However it is my understanding a good portion of the D&C was dictated by JS the D&C like the BOM frequently uses archaic language. Is it possibly using carefully selected sections from the D&C to derive JS dictated wordprint and hence control for both archaic language and dictation?

This is a good suggestion. I will look into it. I do know that, for example, the July 4th sermon by Sidney Rigdon (presumably dictated) matches his other early writings in style.

Third, I am starting to lose faith in the very concept of "non-contextual" words. It might be a good idea to perform feature selection on the vectors of word frequencies to see if the words that carry the most weight in classification are reasonable. If I recall correctly nearest shrunken centroid assigns weights to each element of the input vectors i.e.(the "shrunken" part of the algorithm). If you rank the words according to these weights which words are assigned the highest weights and are these words reasonably viewed as "non-contextual"? Or are they instead best viewed as artifacts of archaic language or dictation or genre?

I agree that 'non-contextual words' are probably not as non-contextual as we think. But they are surely useful as stylometric features in many authorship attribution studies. NSC doesn't actually assign weights to the different features, but the thresholding does have the effect of removing non-informative variables from the analysis.

All in all as mentioned I thought the Schaalje et al manuscript was well written and well researched a strong response to Jockers et al.

Thank you.

[Uncertain]

The Larsen/Rencher paper of 1980 (BYU Studies) looked at this pretty closely. They used discriminant analysis based on 38 non-contextual words. Their question was whether texts internally (within the Book of Mormon) attributed to a particular writer were consistent in style, but distinct from texts attributed internally to other writers. For all writers that had sizable writings attributed to them, it was true. Nephi's texts were consistent with each other but distinct from, say, Alma's writings. They also used cluster analysis which is similar to pca plotting in that it finds clusters defined by style characteristics, ignoring information about who the purported author was. They found the same results with cluster analysis as with discriminant analysis. We have also done pca plots with labels of the purported authors as plotting characters, and found the same thing. I'll see if I can find them.

Hi Bruce,

I appreciate your time it is certainly helpful to have one of the authors available for questions. If it would not be a hassle to post those pca plots I would certainly be interested in seeing them. If it would be at all bothersome then don't worry about it.

This is a good suggestion. I will look into it. I do know that, for example, the July 4th sermon by Sidney Rigdon (presumably dictated) matches his other early writings in style.

Certainly it is good to know that Rigdon's July 4th sermon matches his written style. I am not sure this alone is sufficient justification to assume dictated text will always or mostly match written text. I imagine this is potentially much more of an issue with extemporaneous dictation as compared to dictating previously composed work. Was Rigdon's July 4th sermon based on a previously composed text or was it entirely extemporaneous?

I agree that 'non-contextual words' are probably not as non-contextual as we think. But they are surely useful as stylometric features in many authorship attribution studies. NSC doesn't actually assign weights to the different features, but the thresholding does have the effect of removing non-informative variables from the analysis.

Thank you.

I appreciate the clarification. So NSC performs feature selection but not feature ranking. That is presumably only informative features are retained and uninformative ones discarded. In any case it might be helpful to take a look at those words being used to see if there are any obvious patterns due to potential sources of bias. This is merely a suggestion feel free to disregard it .

Best,

Uncertain

[Uncle Dale]

...

To me, it's always been cynical to assume that if Rigdon could not find Biblical Christianity, that he would create it. It never made sense.

...

And yet, at his 1844 trial in Nauvoo he was accused by some of

his longstanding religious associates of secretly trying to promote

heretical doctrines and false religion, in an attempt to form

his own latter day following.

By consulting his post-Nauvoo news items, published writings,

and unpublished "revelations," we can see that Rigdon was secretly

(and later openly) promoting something different than orthodox

Mormonism -- or, at least different from mid-1840s Mormonism.

Whether he engaged in this sort of activity because he truly

believed his periodic visions were real -- or, whether he lied

in the name of the Lord simply to gain a house at Kirtland,

a secret following at Nauvoo, and a splinter group of his own

thereafter, is a matter for the psycho-biographers to determine.

According to those who knew him personally, his pretensions to

holy visions dated to the period prior to his Mormon baptism.

And, according to LDS authorities, some of his visions were

true divine revelations (such as at Hiram, Ohio in 1832).

I operate on the assumption that Sidney Rigdon actually believed

that he was receiving supernatural communications -- whether from

dead prophets (as asserted in some of his post-Nauvoo revelations)

or from God Almighty, really makes no difference to me. I cannot

hope to discover his actual source for purported revelation by

scholarly means. Perhaps those Latter Day Saints gifted with the

discernment of the Spirit can perform that task better than a scholar.

But, no matter the source, it seems to me that Rigdon actually

believed his "revelations" -- at least part of the time. At other

times he seems to have been just as dishonest and deceitful as

Jedediah M. Grant and Orson Hyde documented in 1844-45.

UD

[Uncle Dale]

...

Figure 11 of the paper is such a chart for the 1830 text divided by the 1879 chapter designations.

We then carried out the extended open-set NSC procedure. Of the 239 Book of Mormon chapters, 175 (73.2%) were classified to one or more unobserved authors, 35 (14.6%) were classified to Isaiah, 17 (7.1%) were classified to early or late Rigdon, 8 (3.4%) were classified to Smith, 2 (0.8%) were classified to Spalding, and 2 (0.8%) were classified to Cowdery (Fig. 11). Seventeen of the 20 Book of Mormon chapters that were essentially verbatim quotations of Isaiah or Malachi were correctly classified. Chapters classified to Rigdon, Smith, or Cowdery appeared to occur essentially at random in the sequence of chapters.

Can I get your permission to enlarge that figure, and post the enlargement

here in this thread? Perhaps if I did that, we could see which chapters

you have assigned to Rigdon, and at what percentage of reliability. I'd

also like to include the secondary attributions for the Rigdon chapters,

along with the percentages you assigned to them.

UD

[Uncle Dale]

Can I get your permission to enlarge that figure, and post the enlargement

here in this thread?

...

I've taken the liberty of enlarging just the left hand side of

the Isaiah attributions portion of the chart.

However -- unless my subdivisions of the chapters scale at

the bottom are in error, the chart's bars do not appear to

line up with the known BoM Isaiah reproductions:

???

UD

[Bruce Schaalje]

However -- unless my subdivisions of the chapters scale at

the bottom are in error, the chart's bars do not appear to

line up with the known BoM Isaiah reproductions:

For some reason the R graphing function I used did not space the spikes perfectly evenly. However, if you count the number of dots or spikes between (and including) 20 and 50, you will see that there are 31 of them as there should be. The Isaiah chapters in the range of chapters 1-100 are chapters 20-21, 29-30, 34-46, and 80. The Isaiah chapters correctly assigned to Isaiah by open-set NSC were chapters 21, 30, 34-38, and 40-46. In other words, of the 18 Isaiah chapters in this range, 14 (78%) were correctly assigned to Isaiah. Not perfect, but not bad. There were also some false positives in this range of chapters, namely chapters 22, 25, 31, 32, 47, 48, 50, 52, 64, 69, and 78. This is not surprising given the pca plot in Figure 10. Also, keep in mind that we did not use the separate KJV Isaiah chapters as training texts. Rather, we composited sequential chapters until we had at least 1000 words in each training text.

Another way of looking at it is that in the first 100 chapters, 14 of the 18 Isaiah chapters were correctly assigned to Isaiah, and 71 of the 82 non-Isaiah chapters were correctly assigned as not being Isaiah, for an overall correct-classification rate of (14+71)/100 = 85%. This rate is even higher if you consider all 239 chapters of the Book of Mormon.

For the sake of comparison, Jockers/Criddle assigned 63 chapters to Isaiah/Malachi (compared to our total of 35 chapters). I don't know how many actual Isaiah chapter they misclassified, but in any case they had a lot more false positives than we had.

[Uncle Dale]

For some reason the R graphing function I used did not space the spikes perfectly evenly. However, if you count the number of dots or spikes between (and including) 20 and 50, you will see that there are 31 of them as there should be. The Isaiah chapters in the range of chapters 1-100 are chapters 20-21, 29-30, 34-46, and 80. The Isaiah chapters correctly assigned to Isaiah by open-set NSC were chapters 21, 30, 34-38, and 40-46. In other words, of the 18 Isaiah chapters in this range, 14 (78%) were correctly assigned to Isaiah. Not perfect, but not bad. There were also some false positives in this range of chapters, namely chapters 22, 25, 31, 32, 47, 48, 50, 52, 64, 69, and 78. This is not surprising given the pca plot in Figure 10. Also, keep in mind that we did not use the separate KJV Isaiah chapters as training texts. Rather, we composited sequential chapters until we had at least 1000 words in each training text.

Another way of looking at it is that in the first 100 chapters, 14 of the 18 Isaiah chapters were correctly assigned to Isaiah, and 71 of the 82 non-Isaiah chapters were correctly assigned as not being Isaiah, for an overall correct-classification rate of (14+71)/100 = 85%. This rate is even higher if you consider all 239 chapters of the Book of Mormon.

For the sake of comparison, Jockers/Criddle assigned 63 chapters to Isaiah/Malachi (compared to our total of 35 chapters). I don't know how many actual Isaiah chapter they misclassified, but in any case they had a lot more false positives than we had.

This is interesting -- thanks for the clarification.

I see that two of the attributions only plot at the 80% level. So, I suppose

that you also came up with a secondary attribution at 20% or below?

Would you mind posting on the web all of your Fig. 11 percentages, by chapter?

Dale

[PaulBoyerFan]

I've always found the Criddle et al. analysis to be superficial. My sense was that they generally showed that there were sections of the Book of Mormon that were historical and descriptive in nature, which inevitably bore some superficial resemblance to Spalding, and other sections that were more theological, and had some resemblance to Rigdon.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure if Smith's letters are completely adequate in this analysis. We would expect differences in rhetorical style and diction between the letters and any proposed scripture, due to differences in intent as well as subsequent editing prior to publication. I would think that sections of the Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price known to be written, dictated, or translated by Smith would be a more interesting comparison.

[Uncle Dale]

...they generally showed that there were sections of the Book of Mormon

that were historical and descriptive in nature, which inevitably bore

some superficial resemblance to Spalding

...

However, the charting of distribution patterns of non-contextual words

theoretically should alleviate such superficial cooincidences.

For example -- let's say that I write a treatise on apples in New Zealand,

and another text about my grandfather's life as a young man.

Just because you also write about apples in New Zealand, should NOT

make your word-print match up well with mine.

But, my grandfather's biography should demonstrate essentially the same

word-print analysis (authorship attribution) as does my apples text.

The fact that Jockers attributes Spalding authorship to some BoM chapters

of an historical nature, should not depend upon non-contextual words.

If those attributions are partly coincidental -- based upon superficially

similar ancient American "lost race" wars and contentions -- then we really

ought to figure out the linguistic mathematics causing such a match up.

I'm open to the idea you mention -- but have yet to see it documented

in any detailed, compelling reporting.

UD

.

[Cold Steel]

And yet, at his 1844 trial in Nauvoo he was accused by some of his longstanding religious associates of secretly trying to promote heretical doctrines and false religion, in an attempt to form his own latter day following.

Rigdon's subsequent activities may be attributed to both his apostasy and not being quite right after the 1832 attack, or it can be attributed to either. But then, I'm a believer. One cannot accept Mormonism and reject some of Rigdon's revelations. One also cannot be a believer and accept some of the heretical "revelations" he claimed to have after his apostasy.

One of the things Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon experienced following some of their common revelations with Joseph Smith is an inflated opinion of their own self worth. Cowdery told Smith that if he left the church that it would go to hell. Smith's reply to him was to try it. Their revelations were, I think, part of their feelings of entitlement. But Cowdery eventually thought things out and came back. If Smith was making everything up about Mormonism, then both Cowdery and Rigdon were complicit, as well as Martin Harris and others. It's clear to me, having read the Book of Mormon, that it was written by numerous authors -- and some of them quite bad, especially some of the texts that Moroni was dealing with in the Book of Ether.

One of the things that people wonder about is Rigdon's state of mind. Was he rendered mad by his brutal beating or was it his apostasy that caused him to lose sight of the truth and be misled? Or was he a hoax and imposter all along? He took a pretty bad beating and then there was that accident years before. How did the beating affect his mind? It clearly drove him insane, at least temporarily, and did it have any long term effects? How did it affect his thinking, his writing, the way he thought? And again, was his later thinking driven by his beating, his apostasy or both? Or was he always a loon?

We can only speculate. Rigdon was one of the greatest forces within Mormonism, though.

.

[Uncle Dale]

...One of the things Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon experienced following some of their common revelations with Joseph Smith is an inflated opinion of their own self worth.

...

This is a very strange outcome, to being born again and to

encountering God face-to-face.

In all my experience, to come into God's kingdom is to die to

one's self -- to become a new creature in the Body of Christ.

It is exceedingly strange to my understanding, that a true

apostle could walk away from such a re-birth and re-dedication.

But --- I suppose it does happen. If the Bible can be relied

upon for accuracy, then both Moses and David were backsliders

at various times -- and Judas strayed so far as to betray Jesus.

Thus, I do not say that it is impossible to lose the continual

presence of the Holy Spirit -- but that it is a remarkable thing,

and we ought not to condemn early "leavers" like David Whitmer,

without first of all listening to their side of the story.

Ebenezer Robinson was one such early follower of Joseph Smith,

who eventually condemned the man as a tyrant and something like

an egomaniac. Without ever spelling out all of the unhappy details,

this was the consensus among the Church of Christ (Temple Lot),

the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), the Whitmerites, the

Rigdonites, and, of course, the Reorganized LDS.

Whether or not we were right or wrong in our estimations of

Smith's evolution in the First Presidency, our dissenting views

have been both sincere and longstanding.

No matter any of that, however, if we are speaking of Oliver Cowdery

and Sidney Rigdon before they ever came under any latter day condemnation

(and before they ever accused Smith of transgression) --- In those early

days, I think it is a modern consensus opinion that such men were

sincerely religious and looking for the coming of an early millennium.

Any modern historian who concludes that they were also dishonest, has a

tough row to hoe. Pious frauds have always existed, but they generally

have not conspired to write golden bibles.

I accuse them of such, based upon limited and controversial evidence --

and I'm sure that many here will argue that I have yet to present my

evidence in such a way as to convince them that I am right.

Uncle Dale

[Mordecai]

In one of the first studies done on word print in the BoMormon, I recall them discussing whether Jeremiah would be close to the word print of the BoMormon and 1 Nephi in particular, seeing as he was a contemporary of Nephi. Anyone look at that recently? It would be kind of humorous if Jeremiah turned out to be the closest match for 1 Nephi compared to the posited closed set.

[Cold Steel]

This is a very strange outcome, to being born again and to encountering God face-to-face. In all my experience, to come into God's kingdom is to die to one's self -- to become a new creature in the Body of Christ. It is exceedingly strange to my understanding, that a true apostle could walk away from such a re-birth and re-dedication.

But -- I suppose it does happen. If the Bible can be relied upon for accuracy, then both Moses and David were backsliders at various times -- and Judas strayed so far as to betray Jesus.

Moses did pretty well for someone who had absolute power and had it for so long. It's almost inevitable that at some point he would have angered the Lord in some way. But he never rebelled against the Lord like Balaam. Judas not only rebelled against the Lord, he did so even after several warnings. He was motivated, perhaps, to force Jesus into using his power to bring about the prophecies in Zechariah in defeating the Romans and bringing about the rule of the Messiah. But I think there was an evil aspect to Judas, who was often critical of the other apostles and even of the Lord, himself. And there was the famous admonition of Joseph Smith, that "even though a man may receive many revelations, if he sets himself up in his own strength or follows his carnal desires he will incur the displeasures, even the vengeance, of a just God."

He also taught that as the heavens were opened to a man and the power of God came upon him, that the Adversary also was given greater power. In the cases of Rigdon and Cowdery, it must have been a heady experience to see into the heavens and to converse with prophets such as John the Baptist, John the Revelator, Peter, James, and Moroni, to name but a few. To be put in that company by the revelations they received may have caused them to walk away with an inflated view of their own importance. Joseph had had these experiences since he was a boy; however, the others had not.

Solomon was a great king and prophet who asked for wisdom, but as he sinned, he not only lost his wisdom, he seemed to have suffered a form of dementia. Some have argued that the dementia led to his sinning, while others say that it was just the reverse. If he did suffer from it, then he can't very well be blamed for his indiscretions. With Rigdon, the same issues can be raised. If it can be shown that Rigdon was a manufacturer of his own visions and that he was an opportunist, then what does that say about Joseph Smith? Was Rigdon the kind of man that would steal another man's manuscript, rewrite it and palm it off on his own? Wouldn't he have at least changed the names? To those of us who can't do the math and evaluate word print analyses, Rigdon's character is the only thing we have to go on.

Thus, I do not say that it is impossible to lose the continual presence of the Holy Spirit -- but that it is a remarkable thing, and we ought not to condemn early "leavers" like David Whitmer, without first of all listening to their side of the story.

In light of the Kirtland apostasies, Truman Madsen states that at first the Spirit of God was poured out so heavily on the people that they thought the Millennium had come. At the dedication of the temple, many saw angels, prophesied and spoke in tongues. But following this came the brutal ravages of the Adversary. It was during this time that even many of the faithful fell and Joseph said he felt that the church was being purged. Again, it's revelation followed by temptation, just as it was with Moses. But you're right when you say that we should attempt to gauge why those who left did. The banking issue took a huge toll, and Joseph Smith wasn't always right in his condemnations.

Ebenezer Robinson was one such early follower of Joseph Smith, who eventually condemned the man as a tyrant and something like an egomaniac. Without ever spelling out all of the unhappy details, this was the consensus among the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), the Whitmerites, the Rigdonites, and, of course, the Reorganized LDS.

Yes, but overall one must go with the majority of Smith's confidants. Those who did not follow the Twelve, but who remained and tried to form reorganizations and new churches frequently bickered (no pun intended) and fought amongst themselves. I'm not saying people like Robinson had no basis in their criticisms (you can't please everyone), but many of the people who stayed behind weren't even able to work with each other. And the organizations they formed crumbled in many cases because they couldn't get along with themselves. It's like people who are always getting married and divorced. Once is somewhat understandable. Twice may be bad luck; but then it becomes a bit symptomatic. There were LDS stalwarts who briefly left the church and returned -- men like Orson Hyde, Parley P. Pratt and others -- and I put more value in what they said. That's not to say that Joseph Smith was beyond criticism, but in many cases, like the Zion's Camp march, the Lord upheld his servant:

"You consider me a boy with the rest of you. You have not realized my position before the Lord. But there is a chastisement before this camp." He told us that this would come upon us because he had not been obeyed in his counsels. In one hour after we landed in Missouri and pitched our tents at Mr. Burkett's, one man began to fail here, another there, and in a few moments we had a dozen of our camp stretched upon blankets with the cholera. The Prophet of God, when he saw this, felt to sympathize with them, and he and Hyrum laid their hands upon Brother Carter, the first man that was taken sick, but as soon as they did it they were seized themselves, and they both had to leave the camp. He said afterwards: "I told you what was coming to pass, and when affliction came I stretched out my hand to stay it, and I came very near falling by it myself." That mission was very interesting to me. President Wilford Woodruff, Conference Report, April 1898, Second Day-Morning Session

President Woodruff also said:

I look upon Joseph Smith as the greatest Prophet that ever breathed the breath of life, excepting Jesus Christ. Father Adam, as I have said, stands at the head; but Joseph Smith was reserved to lay the foundation of this great Kingdom and dispensation of salvation to the whole human family in these last days, to build up Zion, to establish God's Kingdom, and to prepare it for the coming of the Son of Man. He held those keys. Brother Cannon has told you the truth. No other man held those keys while he lived. After him, as has been said, came Brother Brigham. I have traveled with Joseph Smith thousands of miles. There are some here tonight who were in Zion's Camp. He was a boy, in one sense of the word. He was but a young man when he was martyred and passed into the presence of God. His days were comparatively few. But he was a great man. He lived a long life for a few days. He performed an almighty work-as great a work as any man, save Jesus Christ, that ever lived on the earth. Priesthood Meeting, held in Provo, Sunday Evening, March 3, 1889

Woodruff left the most comprehensive journal in the church, and though it's very orthodox, many of the prophet's closest confidants shared Woodruff's views.

Whether or not we were right or wrong in our estimations of Smith's evolution in the First Presidency, our dissenting views have been both sincere and longstanding.

No matter any of that, however, if we are speaking of Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon before they ever came under any latter day condemnation (and before they ever accused Smith of transgression) -- In those early days, I think it is a modern consensus opinion that such men were sincerely religious and looking for the coming of an early millennium.

Yes, but to me it's a major step to go from "sincerely religious" to becoming a fraud. Some may begin as frauds, and you look at people like Ellen G. White and wonder what was behind their visions. I don't concentrate on White's methodology, but what she claims to have seen and heard. And it's nowhere nearly as comprehensive and profound as what Joseph Smith produced. (In fact, it's kind of silly, with visions of Jesus swinging open the pearly gates with his mighty arm.) In Joseph Smith's case, whoever produced his revelations, it's kept ancient scripture scholars and archeologists busy for 170 years, and it's held up remarkably well.

Any modern historian who concludes that they were also dishonest, has a tough row to hoe. Pious frauds have always existed, but they generally have not conspired to write golden bibles.

Not only do scholars have the translation to study, there are also witnesses, and the witnesses are often too easily dismissed by our critics. I haven't met anyone to date who has friends that are so dedicated to them that they would sign a false statement and enthusiastically stand by it for the rest of their lives. People witnessed Ellen White having her visions, but no one ever shared those visions.

I accuse them of such, based upon limited and controversial evidence -- and I'm sure that many here will argue that I have yet to present my evidence in such a way as to convince them that I am right.

Evidence is subjective. We process the available data and get different outputs. I'm totally convinced that Wilford Woodruff's view is the correct one, but there are many people who disagree. The producers of the film MacArthur contacted a late friend of mine, who was General George C. Marshall's official biographer, and offered to fly him out to the location so he could talk to the actor Gregory Peck. The problem was that Peck was becoming infatuated with his character, General Douglas MacArthur. My friend declined, telling the producers that he's talked to those who admire MacArthur and that there's no way to change their views any more than it is to change the views of those who are critics of General Marshall. He told them it's all in how people process the information they read. I think he was absolutely correct. (As much as I liked and admired my friend, I, too, was a MacArthur fan, not a Marshall fan.) I still have my autographed volumes he wrote about Marshall, and an autographed copy of his blistering review of American Caesar, a popular book about MacArthur by William Manchester. But I've never changed my opinions, except that I have a greater understanding of Marshall than I did before.

.

[Cold Steel]

I've always found the Criddle et al. analysis to be superficial. My sense was that they generally showed that there were sections of the Book of Mormon that were historical and descriptive in nature, which inevitably bore some superficial resemblance to Spalding, and other sections that were more theological, and had some resemblance to Rigdon.

My problem with it is that, as far as I can tell, the methodology has not been used on other texts or other authors. To use any word print analysis, I think it should be used in a classroom where controls can be used against students' writings, as standard texts and disguised texts. When a methodology is developed that can 1) distinguish the controls from the standard texts, 2) distinguish the standard texts from each other and 3) match the standard texts with the disguised texts. Once it can do all that, then it can be used in a Book of Mormon analysis.

I recall that earlier word print methodologies claimed to be able to determine authorship of the Federalist Papers and the place in "unfinished novels" that were finished by other people. These were used in early Book of Mormon studies with favorable results for those who believed in the Book of Mormon. The later methodologies seemed developed to specifically discredit the earlier ones by making them more precise. But are they? I have no idea. I'm troubled by the fact that the later ones, while peer-reviewed, were not validated by controls outside the LDS community.

These things are kind of like the Bible Code. They look impressive at the onset, but they don't age well.

.

[Uncle Dale]

My problem with it is that, as far as I can tell, the methodology has not been used on other texts or other authors.

...

I would very much like to see what would happen, were we to add some of the writings of

John Leacock to Bruce's pc1 chart. Leacock wrote a six chapter "American Chronicles"

in pseudo-biblical style -- but he also wrote a stage play and other works. Were these

texts added in to Bruce's pca chart (that is, the plots of their word-prints) -- I have

the strong suspicion that Leacock's "Cronicles" chapters would cluster closer to the

BoM biblical texts (and thus to the BoM plots' "cloud" itself) than to Leacock's other,

more regular writings.

Part of his "Chronicles" is reproduced here:

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/SO/miscsou1.htm#011275

Of course Leacock was not the only late 18th / early 19th century writer

to turn out prose in the KJV style -- and some of the other writers of

those times emulated the biblical style far more minutely than did Leacock.

Eran Shalev has made a study of this almost forgotten literary genre, and

offers a report on it in his "Written in the Style of Antiquity:

Pseudo-Biblicism and the Early American Republic, 1770-1830" in the

December, 2010 issue of Church History.

http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201012/2223320001.html

Here's a short excerpt from that paper:

Although the use of the Bible's language for non-religious ends would not have been possible before the

eighteenth century when novel attitudes eased restraints for applying scripture to non-religious arenas,

it would be wrong to see the flourish in pseudo-biblical writing as part of a straightforward process of

secularization in America: the story of its use is not the story of the diminishing religious sentiment but

of a transformation and reconstruction of beliefs and understandings of America's meaning and collective

identity.

The usefulness of a refined language such as Elizabethan English diminished once the United States embraced

the ethos of popular democracy. It became evident that the formal biblical language belonged more to the

eighteenth century than to antebellum America, and more to an age of genteel politics of prudent gentlemen

than to the public discourse of democracy and evangelism. Only a text in biblical style that adapted to,

and embodied the deep cultural transformations of the Jacksonian era could thrive in a world of democratic

coarseness, of mass revivals, and of relentless industrialization. The tradition of writing in biblical style

paved the way for the Book of Mormon by conditioning Americans to reading American texts, and texts about

America, in biblical language. Yet the Book of Mormon, an American narrative told in the English of the

King James Bible, has thrived long after Americans abandoned the practice of recounting their affairs in

biblical language. It has thus been able to survive and flourish for almost two centuries, not because,

but in spite of the literary ecology of the mid-nineteenth century and after. The Book of Mormon became

a testament to a widespread cultural practice of writing in biblical English that could not accommodate to

the monumental transformations America endured in the first half of nineteenth century....

UD

.