Book Of Mormon: New Evidence Of 19Th Century Origin

[webbles]

I've very limited time so will get back to you in more detail. 

 

I've already stated that I don't consider The Late War to be something Joseph plagiarized. I'm interested in evidence for/against a loose or tight translation.

 

Certainly a 'tight' translation argument can simply say "well... God made the words appear on the stone. So he made words appear that would sound like the other pseudo-biblical literature of the day so it would fit in." A tight translation proponent can actually adapt to any issue that arises (such as the issue of Moroni 9 quoting the unoriginal and interpolated verses of Mark 16) by saying "he read the words of a stone in his hat, so don't blame Joseph."

 

On the other hand, those who argue for a loose translation have to find evidence of linguistic patterns and structures that could have lead to Joseph choosing the particular words that he did. Rather than assume I'm accusing Joseph of a verse by verse copy (I'm not) I'm more interested to explore whether there are books in his day that could have influenced and guided the words he chose.

 

I don't  consider Joseph an outright fraud. From the evidence available I think he genuinely believed he was dictating inspired/revealed text but I also think the way he taught Cowdery to try to translate shows that he first formulated the words in his mind, felt they were right and then spoke them out loud. 

 

So if Joseph is choosing the words of either a loose translation of an ancient document or a modern dictation of inspired scripture (and both remain options to me) I would need to show that there were contemporary sources that could influence the choice of words, sentence structures.

 

For example:

Late War: 

Page 81

38 Instead of protecting the tender women, the fairest work of God, the life of the world; behold! What hast thou done?

39 See! The shrieking matron cast herself into the waters that she may escape thy brutal violence: but all in vain; her garments are torn from her; she becomes a prey to they savage lust.

40 Not she alone, but her daughter, and her fair sisters, have fallen into the unhallowed hands, and been defiled!

41 Oh, Britain! The voice of violated chastity riseth up against thee; the mark of the beast is indelibly printed in thy forehead:

Does that sound like anything in the Book of Mormon? Could the phrasing have influenced Joseph's choice of words in dictating?

 

Mosiah 19:13-15

Or

Jacob 2:7, 32-35

Or

Moroni 9

 

I'm not claiming a verse by verse plagiarism (and never have). I'm saying the Late War has both themes and phrases that are also found in the Book of Mormon and can be offered as evidence for the sources that influenced Joseph's choice of language in dictating a loose translation or inspired modern scripture.

 

There are also multiple examples of "Hebraisms" in The Late War which have been long used as evidence for the Book of Mormon's tight translation of an ancient Hebrew book (written in reformed Egyptian). I'd say many of those evidences have been challenged by these finds.

 

Reading that verse from the Late War might have reminded me about Moroni 9 and, with an extremely large stretch, Jacob 2:7, 32-35.  But it definitely wouldn't have been Mosiah 19:13-15.  Using their wives beauty to subdue the army is a lot different from having your wives raped and defiled.  I see the language for all three of the Book of Mormon versus to be more similar to the language in the Old Testament then to the language in those Late War versus.  And the only one with similar theme would be Moroni 9.

[canadaduane]

Duane - a few further comments:

 

...

 

And from my perspective - without access to the raw data, or the baseline data, what I see is a weighting system that cannot provide reliable results - and so its outcome is pointless. Of course, since you rank all the books, one of them has to be the winner (any complex weighting system will always yield one) but, nothing in the process the way it has been described or provided gives me any sense that the results mean anything at all. This has given you the sense that perhaps this book is much more similar to the Book of Mormon than the others - and if you only look through the lens of those 159 "rare" phrases, you might be right. But you would be ignoring the other more than 200,000 phrases of which the Book of Mormon is primarily constructed.

 

Ben M.

 

Ben, again, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I think you're right in several areas--we haven't proven whether or not Joseph had the book and read it. I also appreciate your criticism about textual transmission and rarity of phrases. I'm very curious to see the results after we improve our baseline data.

 

Perhaps you have compared other texts where we already know influence happened? This is the sort of baseline we need to go along with your baseline.

 

We will be attempting this as well. It definitely should be done before any firmer claims of significance can be made (if they can be).

 

So to summarize where we're at:

 

1. The existence of The Late War shows that the Book of Mormon language, even while containing what appear to be Semitic language and Hebraisms, could very well have been a product of the 19th century, just like The Late War. The Book of Mormon does not need an ancient origin to explain its language.

 

2. A search algorithm that has nothing to do with detecting Semitic language, Hebraisms, biblical phraseology, or other Book of Mormon-specific language was able to turn up The First Book of Napoleon and The Late War, which both have more than just n-gram matches--thematic and other parallels exist. This may be an indicator of influence, but the case is still open, research is ongoing.

 

3. There is weak evidence of direct textual transmission--since we haven't been able to show long non-biblical quotations, or phrases that are so rare that they appear in a pair of books only, it could be that these books were simply a part of the "genre" and not read by Joseph.

 

The raw baseline data, BTW is about 500 MB if you're interested. Send me a PM and we can set up a download for you. We're working on better ways of distributing data for everyone.

[wenglund]

It's very clear what you're aiming to do. I just don't agree with your methodology. If you're defending the accusation that Joseph made it up (which isn't coming from me) then I can understand you're trying to illustrate the BoM contains different structures, themes and sequence to The Late War.

 

I am not defending that accusation. I have said nothing about "made it up." I have no idea where you came up with this.

 

What I am scrutinizing here is the somewhat popular claim that the Book of Mormon was "heavily influenced" by the Late War.

 

I am challenging not only the adverb "heavily," but I am also raising the question of HOW the Book of Mormon was supposedly "heavily influenced" by the Late War.

 

My methodology puts the popular claim into perspective.  Even if it could be shown that a couple of hundred 4-word phrases came from the Late War and no-where else (good luck with that, particularly given the KJV and other religious books and books that include large sections on wars, not to mention all the unmeasurable unwritten linguistic and thematic influences of Joseph's day), in a relative sense it could hardly be considered "heavy" if those 4-word phrases are scattered seemingly indiscriminately amongst hundreds of thousands of 4-word phrases. We start to get a sense of this within the first 10 verses comparison that I posted earlier in the thread. So obvious was the lack of "heavy influence" in those first 10 verses that it animated all sorts of misguided and errant objections and dismissals of my method, and a return to an unscientific appeal to selective and seemingly randomly placed parallels.

 

Furthermore, my methodology raises the question of how the alleged "heavy influence" occurred (did Joseph read through sections of the Late War prior to dictating, each day, sections of the Book of Mormon, so that the language of the Late War was fresh in his mind? Or, did he copy snippets of phrases from the Late War and embellish them in the Book of Mormon? Etc., etc.?).

 

It also challenges the feasibly of the "heavy influence" claim by examining it in light of the production sequence for the Book of Mormon. As explained earlier, it is reasonable to expect that the "heavy influence" of a single book on the production of another, would manifest itself logical and orderly in accordance with the production sequence of the dependent book--from beginning of the book to the end, or from beginning points within the book and moving towards the end.

 

Now, you may not like my methodology because it undermines your pet hypothesis, but there it is.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited October 27, 2013 by wenglund

[Capitalis]

It's interesting. Of course one of the problems with "big data" is that it makes big assumptions and big errors. An algorithm is only as good as the inputs that make it up. Maybe I'm just jaded bc I deal with search engines all day long. 

 

What I get from this (and I read their whole post) is that language of a certain time and genre resembles language of a certain time and genre. I would like to see them do the same thing with the Old/New Testament, D&C, etc.

 

Or maybe the BoM was created by Joe Smith as his research project at Stanford?

[Tacenda]

Just watched Chris Johnson's presention on Youtube, it is frightening if what he says is true and how many will be devastated.

[Tacenda]

I am not defending that accusation. I have said nothing about "made it up." I have no idea where you came up with this.

What I am scrutinizing here is the somewhat popular claim that the Book of Mormon was "heavily influenced" by the Late War.

I am challenging not only the adverb "heavily," but I am also raising the question of HOW the Book of Mormon was supposedly "heavily influenced" by the Late War.

My methodology puts the popular claim into perspective. Even if it could be shown that a couple of hundred 4-word phrases came from the Late War and no-where else (good luck with that, particularly given the KJV and other religious books and books that include large sections on wars, not to mention all the unmeasurable unwritten linguistic and thematic influences of Joseph's day), in a relative sense it could hardly be considered "heavy" if those 4-word phrases are scattered seemingly indiscriminately amongst hundreds of thousands of 4-word phrases. We start to get a sense of this within the first 10 verses comparison that I posted earlier in the thread. So obvious was the lack of "heavy influence" in those first 10 verses that it animated all sorts of misguided and errant objections and dismissals of my method, and a return to an unscientific appeal to selective and seemingly randomly placed parallels.

Furthermore, my methodology raises the question of how the alleged "heavy influence" occurred (did Joseph read through sections of the Late War prior to dictating, each day, sections of the Book of Mormon, so that the language of the Late War was fresh in his mind? Or, did he copy snippets of phrases from the Late War and embellish them in the Book of Mormon? Etc., etc.?).

It also challenges the feasibly of the "heavy influence" claim by examining it in light of the production sequence for the Book of Mormon. As explained earlier, it is reasonable to expect that the "heavy influence" of a single book on the production of another, would manifest itself logical and orderly in accordance with the production sequence of the dependent book--from beginning of the book to the end, or from beginning points within the book and moving towards the end.

Now, you may not like my methodology because it undermines your pet hypothesis, but there it is.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

According to Chris Johnson he would have used the book often since it was a school book in his time.

[canard78]

Just watched Chris Johnson's presention on Youtube, it is frightening if what he says is true and how many will be devastated.

 

The content and research is interesting but I thought he made a pretty botched job of the actual presentation that did little to enhance the credibility of his research.

[Tacenda]

The content and research is interesting but I thought he made a pretty botched job of the actual presentation that did little to enhance the credibility of his research.

He seemed to act very nervous and needed to drink a lot of water. I wonder why....maybe he tried too hard not botch it but did anyway.

I wonder if the church was aware of any of this stuff long ago. Surely people surrounding JS would have picked up on it if they went to school with that book in their classrooms. It seems strange this is coming out now. Did anyone even read the BoM through back then? I read somewhere that Joseph quoted more from the bible back then.

Maybe technology is so advanced now that it will debunk a lot of religious myths, if that is what the BoM is, and even the Bible, makes it kind of a reality that we are going to have to face and that is...to keep the faith. It seems like the church is hastening the work before the stuff on the internet completely takes over.

[stemelbow]

The content and research is interesting but I thought he made a pretty botched job of the actual presentation that did little to enhance the credibility of his research.

 

I watched it too and I think he did a terrible job as well.  This was somewhat intriguing when I started to read about it, but the more I do the more I look into the less intrigued I am. 

 

One question that arose in his presentation is why not the Bible?  He said the Bible is far ahead in significance then anything else when it comes to the Book of Mormon.  Huh?  We already knew that.  The BoM quotes it in a lot of places, after all.  Why not then take out the quotations and run it again?  Would it not be wise to do that if you want to treat the TLW as anything significant? 

 

And many of the parallels between TLW and The BOM seem run of the mill phrases--in the presentation.  It would amount to Joseph Smith or someone else who helped him searched for certain phrases and ideas within TLW to make the BoM sound more credible?  Not sure how there is any real conclusion to make on this. 

 

He started out suggesting that after his presentation people will have a better source for where the BoM came from.  I can't see how he did much of anything other than to suggest View of the Hebrews and Solomon Spaulding don't appear to have much influence at all.  In a sense all that was gained from this, it seems, is some of the pet theories of how Joseph Smith came up with the BoM are less likely than they were. 

[Kevin Christensen]

I've seen nothing to panic about in the study because I had read Ben's studies on the topic, and knew therefore, exactly the inherently flawed nature of this approach. I was pleased to see Ben join the conversation.

And secondly, long ago, I had read and comprehended the implications of Nibley's 1953 discussion of the science of textual criticism:

One of the best-established disciplines in the world is the critical examination of written texts to detect what in them is spurious and what is genuine. The revival of learning came with the discovery of quantities of ancient documents resurrecting the glories of classical antiquity, but not one of these manuscripts was an original; all without exception were copies of copies. For four hundred years the main business of "scholarship" has been to produce from the materials at hand texts which would most closely correspond to the lost originals, sifting the true from the false by a strenuous and exacting discipline. 2 With the accumulated wisdom and technical experience of centuries it should be possible in our day—as it should have been in Joseph Smith's—to give the Book of Mormon the full treatment. It seems strange that such a controversial book should never have been subjected to a systematic application of the rules of textual criticism. That may be because critics are very few in number and have always thought they have had more important work at hand. But whatever the reason, the fact is that all criticism of the Book of Mormon in the past has been suspiciously superficial.

To illustrate this claim and not to undertake a thorough investigation at this time, let us briefly apply to the Book of Mormon the main rules put forth by Friedrich Blass in his classic work on hermeneutics and criticism, which remains the "standard work" on the subject.3 The rules given by Blass are all obvious enough to experience and reflection, but every one of them is a stumbling block to the superficial critic, and they have all been scrupulously avoided by those attacking the Book of Mormon.

To begin with, says Blass, "We have the document, and the name of its author; we must begin our examination by assuming that the author indicated really wrote it." You always begin by assuming that a text is genuine. 4 What critic of the Book of Mormon has ever done that? One can hear the screams of protest: "How unscientific! How naive! How hopelessly biased!" Yet to the experience of the centuries Blass adds perfectly convincing reasons for his shocking rule. It is equally biased to accept or reject a text at first glance, but still one must assume at the outset that it is either spurious or genuine if one is to make any progress.

Jacoby, the foremost authority on Greek historical writing, observes that no great historical writing was ever produced "sine ira et studio" 5—in other words, without partiality—one must take a stand on something if one is to lift or move anything. An open mind is not a mind devoid of opinions, but one that is willing to change opinions in the face of new evidence. If we must assume something about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon at the outset, why not assume that it is false, as its critics regularly do? Because, says Friedrich Blass, once you assume that a document is a fake, no arguments and no evidence to the end of time can ever vindicate it, even if it is absolutely genuine. Why is that? Because "there can be no such thing as an absolutely positive proof."6 The only possible certainty lies in the negative; for example, if we know for sure that a crime has been committed by a woman, the negative fact that a suspect is not a woman completely exonerates him; but on the other hand the fact that one is a woman proves neither guilt nor innocence. Thus, while we can never prove absolutely that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be, we are justified at the outset in assuming that it is what it claims to be. If one assumes that it is true, its features at least become testable.

Whoever refuses to accept the original claim of a document's origin "is under obligation," says Blass, "to supply in its place a credible explanation" of its origin. In doing so, he warns us, we must be on our guard against "assuming the existence of forgers who are at one moment so clever and adroit as to imitate the writing of Plato or Demosthenes with deceptive skill, and in the next moment are so idiotic and stupid as to let themselves get caught red-handed in the most colossal blunders. Nor is the existence of forgers of genius believable, nor of highly gifted writers who are at the same time completely uninformed, such as those to whom the Phaedo and the Gospel of John have been attributed. All this sort of thing represents no true cause, and any explanation that requires such an hypothesis is to be put aside without hesitation in favor of the simple appeal to the preserved writings of the writer."7

Even in explaining mistakes and blunders in a document, we are told, fraud is always the last theory to turn to, for forgery "must always be based on the assumption that we are dealing with vicious jugglers and coiners, to whom the critic, whenever it suits his interest, imputes a degree of cunning equal to his own. In reality such a breed of forger is simply a product of fantasy, a race of spooks with which the critic peoples his world, and which are at his disposal when and as he wants them, taking every form, like Proteus, which occasion demands appearing now as stupid idiots and now as incredibly sly deceivers. Before the sober eye these ghosts vanish."8

Now is not this sly but ignorant forger who never existed the very image of the "Joseph Smith" who is now being put forward as the only possible explanation for the Book of Mormon?

The critics who think they have at last found a plausible explanation for the book have simply fallen into the oldest booby trap of all, the one which the critic, according to Blass, must avoid before all others as the easiest but silliest solution of the problem.

But how can we be certain about anything in criticizing the Book of Mormon? To this Blass gives us the answer: the nearest we can get to certainty, he says, is when we have before us a long, historical document, for it is "improbable in the highest degree, and therefore to be regarded at all times as inadmissible that any forger coming later [than the pretended date of authorship] can have the knowledge and diligence necessary to present any quantity of historical data without running into contradictions." In this, the one sure way of detecting a falsifier, according to our guide, is by those things which he cannot well have succeeded in imitating because they were too trifling, too inconspicuous, and too troublesome to reproduce.9

In Lehi in the Desert we said: The test of an historical document lies, as we have so often insisted, not in the story it tells, but in the casual details that only an eyewitness can have seen.10 It is in such incidental and inconspicuous details that the Book of Mormon shines. Blass, then, notes that when these details occur in considerable numbers (as they certainly do in the Book of Mormon), we can confidently assume a genuine text; and, above all, when the large numbers of details fit together and prove each other, we have the strongest proof of all, for difficulties increase not mathematically with the length of a document, but geometrically.11

Speaking of the Jaredites, the author has said: "Individually, I find the parallels between the Jaredites and the early Asiatics very impressive, but taken together their value increases as the cube of their number. In the Book of Ether they are woven into a perfect organic whole, a consistent picture of a type of society the very existence of which has come to be known only in recent years."12 For Blass this is the final test.

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1112&index=5

From my perspective, the business of looking for four word phrases and such from texts like The Late War as an explanation of the Book of Mormon is inherently misdirected and completely inadequate to explain the Book of Mormon. As Ben has ably shown, it cannot tell the difference between natural parallels and telling ones. And as the scholars who developed science of textual authentication learned, only by assuming a text is authentic can you test its historical features. This method presumes that the Book of Mormon is nothing more than a 19th century fiction, and does not test its own presumption.

How much searching of 19th Century archives for four word phrases would be required to test whether the Book of Mormon contains eye-witness details of Jerusalem 600 BCE, of the journey through the desert to Bountiful, and of the New World? Where on the list of four word phrases would that kind of information ever emerge? Could this method ever generate Sorenson's Mormon's Codex? Or even Mormon's Map? Or for that matter, my essay on NDE research and the Book of Mormon? Or Nibley on qasida or his comparison of Magur boats and the Jaredite barges?

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[pmccombs1]

...

Or maybe the BoM was created by Joe Smith as his research project at Stanford?

 

I don't think we realize how the 19th century mind worked. Neil Postman once called it the "typographical mind," pointing out how the written word informed the epistemology of that entire age. Whether or not one was particularly schooled, it was through writing that one came to know things.

 

The pedagogue, John Taylor Gatto, observed the following:

 

Here are the words of a little eight-year-old girl...who worked as a coal miner a hundred years ago...:

 

I’m a trapper in the Gamer Pit. I have to trap without a light and I’m scared. I go at four and sometimes half past three in the morning and come out at five and a half past. I never go to sleep. Sometimes I sing when I’ve light, but not in the dark, I dare not sing then.

 

Isn’t the most incredible part of that the fact she could write so eloquently with no formal schooling at all? The year was 1867.

 

The people of frontier America were a literate people, and it was not because of some well-developed, formal system of schooling. 

 

In Joseph Smith's time, the dignified language of King James' bible permeated the religious world, and it is not surprising to see men who could slip into that mode with facility. While Joseph may not have had much proficiency with a quill, the fact that he was well-acquainted with the bible, and read out of it (on his own!) from an early age, puts him in a category of literacy that many of our own college-educated peers never achieve.

 

Now, I think the critics who believe that The Late War represents some sort of template for the Book of Mormon commit the same error that is very frequently made by apologists who demand that Joseph must have been illiterate. They fail to give him sufficient credit.

 

Wherever Joseph got the ideas for the Book of Mormon--whether through revelation from God or from a man's imagination--it is entirely plausible that the words, at least, were his own.

[canard78]

I watched it too and I think he did a terrible job as well. This was somewhat intriguing when I started to read about it, but the more I do the more I look into the less intrigued I am.

One question that arose in his presentation is why not the Bible? He said the Bible is far ahead in significance then anything else when it comes to the Book of Mormon. Huh? We already knew that. The BoM quotes it in a lot of places, after all. Why not then take out the quotations and run it again? Would it not be wise to do that if you want to treat the TLW as anything significant?

And many of the parallels between TLW and The BOM seem run of the mill phrases--in the presentation. It would amount to Joseph Smith or someone else who helped him searched for certain phrases and ideas within TLW to make the BoM sound more credible? Not sure how there is any real conclusion to make on this.

He started out suggesting that after his presentation people will have a better source for where the BoM came from. I can't see how he did much of anything other than to suggest View of the Hebrews and Solomon Spaulding don't appear to have much influence at all. In a sense all that was gained from this, it seems, is some of the pet theories of how Joseph Smith came up with the BoM are less likely than they were.

It would be interesting to see what score both TLW and BoM would get on this analysis. Perhaps the TLW and BoM are both (linguistically) children of the KJV. As such they look like each other because they are siblings that share a parent.

Bushman proposed that the BoM be considered a child of the bible.

This "episode" serves to underscore how reliant the text of the BoM is on the bible.

Edited October 28, 2013 by canard78

[cdowis]

It's interesting. Of course one of the problems with "big data" is that it makes big assumptions and big errors. An algorithm is only as good as the inputs that make it up. Maybe I'm just jaded bc I deal with search engines all day long. 

 

What I get from this (and I read their whole post) is that language of a certain time and genre resembles language of a certain time and genre. I would like to see them do the same thing with the Old/New Testament, D&C, etc.

 

 

I think a good analysis would include *modern* texts.  If you are trying to demonstrate a 19th century production, what happens if you include 20th century texts as well.  You can then demonstrate that it is from the 20th century, right?! 

 

Excluding texts later than 1830 jams up the analysis.  You need the later texts as a control group.

 

(I have not read the entire thread, so you may have already done this)

Edited October 28, 2013 by cdowis

[volgadon]

According to Chris Johnson he would have used the book often since it was a school book in his time.

 

The school book version ranks lower than the original book on their list.

[Nevo]

.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Nevo

[volgadon]

I think a good analysis would include *modern* texts.  If you are trying to demonstrate a 19th century production, what happens if you include 20th century texts as well.  You can then demonstrate that it is from the 20th century, right?! 

 

Excluding texts later than 1830 jams up the analysis.  You need the later texts as a control group.

 

(I have not read the entire thread, so you may have already done this)

 

Good point.

[jkwilliams]

I have yet to see any evidence that The Late War (repackaged as The Historical Reader) was ever used as a school text. It should not be assumed that it was widely used in schools just because the author hoped it would be. The fact that it was never printed again after 1819 suggests that it wasn't widely used, if used at all.

Quite right. Whether or not Joseph Smith had access to the book is relevant to whether the Book of Mormon is textually dependent on the Hunt text, but I'm not sure you could "prove" anything either way. To me, the Hunt book is interesting because it shows me what a book about freedom, war, and religion from that time period would look like if it consciously imitated the KJV Bible style.

[wenglund]

According to Chris Johnson he would have used the book often since it was a school book in his time.

 

This makes perfect sense since Joseph had but a third grade education and had been instructed only in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic (Bushman 2005, pp. 41–42), and the Book of Mormon was dictated years after Joseph attending a couple of years of school in Palmyra.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

It would be interesting to see what score both TLW and BoM would get on this analysis. Perhaps the TLW and BoM are both (linguistically) children of the KJV. As such they look like each other because they are siblings that share a parent.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but as I read through the first portion of TLW, I got the distinct sense that it had borrowed linguistically more from the New Testament than the Old. If so, it may have some interesting implications that could undermine the "heavily influenced" hypothesis.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[jkwilliams]

This makes perfect sense since Joseph had but a third grade education and had been instructed only in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic (Bushman 2005, pp. 41–42), and the Book of Mormon was dictated years after Joseph attending a couple of years of school in Palmyra.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

It might possibly be relevant that Oliver Cowdery and Emma Smith were school teachers.

[Tacenda]

This makes perfect sense since Joseph had but a third grade education and had been instructed only in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic (Bushman 2005, pp. 41–42), and the Book of Mormon was dictated years after Joseph attending a couple of years of school in Palmyra.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Have you ever heard of home schooling?

[stemelbow]

It might possibly be relevant that Oliver Cowdery and Emma Smith were school teachers.

 

And what influence did Oliver and Emma have on the BoM, I suppose. 

[canard78]

This makes perfect sense since Joseph had but a third grade education and had been instructed only in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic (Bushman 2005, pp. 41–42), and the Book of Mormon was dictated years after Joseph attending a couple of years of school in Palmyra.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

The following people close to Joseph were school teachers:

- Oliver Cowdery

- Emma Hale Smith

- Joseph Smith Snr

Does that mean they had copies of TLW? No evidence that they did. But simply citing his 3rd grade education is a convenient shortcut and doesn't tell the whole story. He was not uneducated and had educational influences around him in both early years and at the time of the Book of Mormon's publication.

[canard78]

It might possibly be relevant that Oliver Cowdery and Emma Smith were school teachers.

You beat me to it

I added his father to the list.

[jkwilliams]

And what influence did Oliver and Emma have on the BoM, I suppose.

I don't think it's possible to know that, for sure, but one also cannot rule either of them out as having an influence.