Book Of Mormon: New Evidence Of 19Th Century Origin

[volgadon]

Presumably?

 

Yes, presumably. I haven't done the research yet, but it seems logical that the version intended as a textbook would be more widespread.

[WmLaw]

I think Wm Law's post was a joke, hence my "spike" in response.

I prefer to think of it as a full court pass, leading to your layup.

[EllenMaksoud]

Agreed. You can find parallels with all kinds of things if you want to. I once did a joke post on how the Three Stooges were obviously a product of ancient Mesoamerica. The problem works both ways: here we have a text that is strikingly similar in style and word usage to the Book of Mormon, and that's waved off. But some people have created a cottage industry around finding extremely tenuous parallels between the Book of Mormon and ancient America. If we are going to dismiss the one, it's hard not to dismiss the other.

My faith in Heavenly Father and the validity of most Mormon claims does not hinge on the truth of the Bom. So many things have happened to me since March of 2011, that I found it impossible to walk away from the faith, and they keep happening.  My experience with Heavenly Father through the Mormons is such that I shudder at the prospect of not following him.

[helix]

But some people have created a cottage industry around finding extremely tenuous parallels between the Book of Mormon and ancient America. If we are going to dismiss the one, it's hard not to dismiss the other.

 

Oh I agree there.  I'm not a fan of any parallelomania at all.  It's what spawns nutty ideas like The Bible Code. 

[jkwilliams]

My faith in Heavenly Father and the validity of most Mormon claims does not hinge on the truth of the Bom. So many things have happened to me since March of 2011, that I found it impossible to walk away from the faith, and they keep happening.  My experience with Heavenly Father through the Mormons is such that I shudder at the prospect of not following him.

That's as it should be. Most people I've met on these boards are genuinely doing what they believe is the right thing, based on their experiences, spiritual and otherwise. I'm glad Mormonism makes you happy and spiritually fulfilled.

[cognitiveharmony]

A couple of points. This book pre-dates the Book of Mormon and there are many phrases and concepts from this book that are mimicked in the BOM but are NOT found in the KJV. This completely rules out any tight translation theory. You're strictly left with the loose translation theory which is very problematic in and of itself because of the "revelations" concerning the book and also many of the descriptions of the translation process. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a smoking gun either but as soon as you read it, you'll realize that it can't be dismissed as "nothing new' or a statistical illusion.

[volgadon]

A couple of points. This book pre-dates the Book of Mormon and there are many phrases and concepts from this book that are mimicked in the BOM but are NOT found in the KJV. This completely rules out any tight translation theory. You're strictly left with the loose translation theory which is very problematic in and of itself because of the "revelations" concerning the book and also many of the descriptions of the translation process. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a smoking gun either but as soon as you read it, you'll realize that it can't be dismissed as "nothing new' or a statistical illusion.

 

That really only works if the phrases are unique to Hunt's work.

[volgadon]

That's as it should be. Most people I've met on these boards are genuinely doing what they believe is the right thing, based on their experiences, spiritual and otherwise. I'm glad Mormonism makes you happy and spiritually fulfilled.

 

Completely off topic, but I'm looking forward to reading your book.

[jkwilliams]

Completely off topic, but I'm looking forward to reading your book.

I hope you enjoy it. When I wrote it I wanted it just to be honest and true to what I did and what I was feeling and thinking as a missionary, without spin either way. So far, I have had only one negative reaction, and that was from a guy I knew from my mission, and he hasn't read it. I've been pleased that everyone from active, believing members to hardened apostates has enjoyed the book. That tells me I did something right.

[nealr]

I don't think it's shocking, either. But it does give me pause in regards to those who insist on finding "Hebraisms" in the Book of Mormon. For years, I've been told that the repetition of "and it came to pass" is evidence of antiquity.

For example: http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Evidences/And_it_came_to_pass

Clearly this apologetic argument and similar ones don't work very well when you look at the Hunt text.

I don't know why I have to say this yet again, but this isn't a nail in any coffin. It just puts the book in context. If anything, it is problematic only for those apologetic arguments that rely on a tight translation.

 

You don't have to keep saying it, though you do. I wasn't presuming that you thought it was. I appreciate that you have such restraint. I agree that it puts some things in context, and think that whether you see it a "origin context" or "translation context" is ultimately going to be boil down to the assumptions you start with.

 

I was simply pointing out that, contrary to what you said or implied, this really does nothing to arguments about uniqueness, because the books KJV style has never book what was unique about it. In fact, it has long been argued that that is normal. 

 

As for Hebriasms, this certainly weakens those arguments. But I do not think this entirely eliminates them (I'm not saying that you think it does either. I quite agree that it merits some "pause" before we accept them as legitimate examples of ancient constructs.) James R. Edwards, in his book The Hebrew Gospel and the Synoptic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2009) argues that the gospel of Luke is based on an original, but now lost, Hebrew Gospel. Part of his argument is "Semiticisms" in the text. However, the Septuagint also contained Semiticisms, and it was common for Hellinized Jews to imitate that language. So the situation is not to dissimilar than the Book of Mormon's English environment with the KJV. I haven't read Edwards book yet, but I understand he advances arguments for why he thinks the usage of Simiticisms in Luke can be set apart from the Septuagint mimicking going on at the time and instead indicate an actual Semitic original behind the text. The questions I have (for when I get the chance to read it) are these: (1) Does Edwards make an effective arrgument, and (2) can similar methods be employed to see if the Book of Mormon Hebarisms can be distinguished from KJVisms?

 

The question then arises, Do Book of Mormon Hebriasms reflect distinct usage from the KJV (and other texts that mimic it)? I don't know. But, I hope that I can explore that question at some point. In the meantime, Hebraisms should probably only be used cautiously, if at all. I myself I tried to restrict my usage of them to (1) Hebraisms that are not in the KJV, and (2) where the subtle Hebrew usages appear to be consistently reflected in the Book of Mormon (the kind of things I would expect to see being incorrectly used by someone copying KJV language without knowing any better). Even these might have other explanations in non-standard English and what have you, and so must be used with restraint, but I think such arguments do have some merit, even in the face of texts like The Lost War, etc. 

[cognitiveharmony]

That really only works if the phrases are unique to Hunt's work.

How so? I'm not sure I follow your logic here. If the phrases are found in other contemporary works, it still supports the premise. He used words and phrasings from things around him that he was familiar with to render the translation. Thus a "loose translation". As opposed to being given the translation word for word which would be a "tight translation".

[jkwilliams]

You don't have to keep saying it, though you do. I wasn't presuming that you thought it was. I appreciate that you have such restraint. I agree that it puts some things in context, and think that whether you see it a "origin context" or "translation context" is ultimately going to be boil down to the assumptions you start with.

Well, sorry for being a little defensive, but it seemed like people were taking what I had to say as something stronger than I was saying.

 

I was simply pointing out that, contrary to what you said or implied, this really does nothing to arguments about uniqueness, because the books KJV style has never book what was unique about it. In fact, it has long been argued that that is normal.

Agreed.

 

As for Hebriasms, this certainly weakens those arguments. But I do not think this entirely eliminates them (I'm not saying that you think it does either. I quite agree that it merits some "pause" before we accept them as legitimate examples of ancient constructs.) James R. Edwards, in his book The Hebrew Gospel and the Synoptic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2009) argues that the gospel of Luke is based on an original, but now lost, Hebrew Gospel. Part of his argument is "Semiticisms" in the text. However, the Septuagint also contained Semiticisms, and it was common for Hellinized Jews to imitate that language. So the situation is not to dissimilar than the Book of Mormon's English environment with the KJV. I haven't read Edwards book yet, but I understand he advances arguments for why he thinks the usage of Simiticisms in Luke can be set apart from the Septuagint mimicking going on at the time and instead indicate an actual Semitic original behind the text. The questions I have (for when I get the chance to read it) are these: (1) Does Edwards make an effective arrgument, and (2) can similar methods be employed to see if the Book of Mormon Hebarisms can be distinguished from KJVisms?

 

The question then arises, Do Book of Mormon Hebriasms reflect distinct usage from the KJV (and other texts that mimic it)? I don't know. But, I hope that I can explore that question at some point. In the meantime, Hebraisms should probably only be used cautiously, if at all. I myself I tried to restrict my usage of them to (1) Hebraisms that are not in the KJV, and (2) where the subtle Hebrew usages appear to be consistently reflected in the Book of Mormon (the kind of things I would expect to see being incorrectly used by someone copying KJV language without knowing any better). Even these might have other explanations in non-standard English and what have you, and so must be used with restraint, but I think such arguments do have some merit, even in the face of texts like The Lost War, etc.

Agreed. The issues are complicated and require restraint and fairness.

[Kevin Christensen]

As I said in my thread about moundbuilders, you can pretty much find parallels with whatever you wish. What I find interesting here is not so much specific parallels but that the stylistic choices of the Book of Mormon make more sense when you know the context, and Hunt's book, IMO, provides some context. A lot of apologetic effort seems to be expended trying to show that the Book of Mormon is unique for its time and place. That's a difficult case to make.

Does any of this have any bearing on the book's spiritual value? Obviously not.

So it only took you three minutes to read Ben's essays and digest the implications of his argument and observations? I'd say wow if I believed you'd read and digested the significance of his work.

Ben approaches the question of assessing the significance of parallels. Finding parallels is easy. Assessing significance in a meaningful way takes considerably more thought. That a translation of a book by a 19th century person in his language contains 19th century language does not strike me as scandalous. It is prescribed. Why not just look for parallels with Webster's dictionary and say, "Joseph just took a bunch of words from the dictionary, made up a few names, mixed them up, and there you have the Book of Mormon. Easy. Just like any number of other 19th century books that also 'borrowed' words from the dictionary." Nothing special here. Nothing to see. Move along.

There are several different levels of abstraction to work with. If you look for parallels with the alphabet used, you don't even have to restrict yourself to the same language, but the matter of assigning significance is quite another thing. Word parallels take things up to a different level, to meanings that do not exist at the level of the individual alphabetic symbols used, but again, the methods of assigning significance come up. Verbal phrases? Ben talks about ways to discern the significance of those.

He also talks about the way narrative and context involve considerations that don't exist at the level of verbal parallels, in the same way that meaning in words does not exist at the level of individual alphabetic characters.

How about narrative? How significant are verbal parallels in different sorts of narrative? Or when the words or phrases have different meanings in the different narratives?

How about assessing the significance of a type scene, in which a parallel is deliberate, versus coincidental parallels? And there are certain kinds of human behavior that repeat over and over again independently. Birth, death, eating, sleeping, walking, hiding, making war, making love, elections, revolutions, migrations, battles, government, grave digging, etc. That some things repeat over and over in human experience is why Joseph Campbell can write Hero with a Thousand Faces. Rituals promote repetition and parallels, whether they are football seasons, elections, revolutions, wars, or calls to repentance.

Nibley, 60 years ago talked about how the best test for a purported historical document is to place it into the context it claims for itself. How well does it fit? The longer the historical document, the more foolproof the test.

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

That is the context in which the presence of eye-witness details matter. And it matters most of the eye-witness details converge in complex interacting patterns. Brant has talked about that in his books and FAIR presentations.

The test is limited in some respects, based on the limits of our knowledge of the past. So trends matter more than open questions considered in isolation from the larger picture.

And of course, comparisons of the Book of Mormon with 19th Century parallels is a method is entirely unsuited to to discerning the presence of eye-witness details. Such a method can only point to parallels. View of the Hebrews begins with a destruction of Jerusalem, as does the Book of Mormon. But they are different destructions. One by Babylon, around 600 BCE and the other by the Romans, about 70 AD. Is that parallel worth getting excited about? Or does it make more sense to look for eye-witness details that inside Jerusalem 600 BCE as distinct from 70 CE, and on the journey to the desert, and into the New World. As Kuhn says, "It makes a great deal of sense to ask which paradigm is better." Are the lost Romans in Spalding's Manuscript Found a good parallel for Lehi's group from First Temple Jerusalem? Better requires comparison. None of the 19th century approaches I have read impress me as "better." Only rarely do they attempt a serious comparison, and never, in my experience, a genuinely comprehensive one. And since no two paradigms solve all the same problems, we also have to decide for ourselves "which problems are more significant to have solved." At stake is which paradigm are we going to use to approach unsolved problems.

With the Book of Mormon, we are dealing with a translation, that adds a layer of complexity, particularly evident on the level of alphabet and vocabulary, where parallels of that sort come in because of the translation layer. And in the case of Hidden in Plain sight, the list includes parallels from introductory material, legal notices and such. United State of America? Really? Authors and proprietors? The comparison is supposedly of exact phrases, yet the exactness in the highlighted phrases is notably lax.

I do believe that people ought to be able to find spiritual value in the Book of Mormon, even if they do not accept historicity. I'm still looking for someone to write in such a way that I really believe they mean it, and are not more interested in justifying their own distance. For instance, I was not impressed with Thomas' Digging in the Book of Mormon, which does far more undermining than appreciating. But it should be possible and I would like to see it done.

But the difference between an inspired fiction and an authentic Book of Mormon is whether its claims are binding. I find King Lear and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows inspiring. But they are not the basis upon which I make covenants with God.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[WmLaw]

Courtesy of another discussion board:

 

 

Quote:

Late History, Chapter 19:57-60:

Oh! earth, how long shall thy inhabitants delight in warfare? when shall the old men cease to weep for their children? 

Behold you lonely widows; they weep for their husbands and their children; but they shall see their faces no more!

The fair daughters of Columbia sigh for the return of their beloved.

Seest thou those little ones? they fly to their disconsolate mother, they leap with joy at the name of the father! but he shall never return!

as compared to:

Quote:

Mormon 6:16-20:

16 And my soul was rent with anguish, because of the slain of my people, and I cried:

17 O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you!

18 Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss.

19 O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen!

20 But behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return.

 

[volgadon]

 

Courtesy of another discussion board:

 

 

Quote:

Late History, Chapter 19:57-60:

Oh! earth, how long shall thy inhabitants delight in warfare? when shall the old men cease to weep for their children? 

Behold you lonely widows; they weep for their husbands and their children; but they shall see their faces no more!

The fair daughters of Columbia sigh for the return of their beloved.

Seest thou those little ones? they fly to their disconsolate mother, they leap with joy at the name of the father! but he shall never return!

as compared to:

Quote:

Mormon 6:16-20:

16 And my soul was rent with anguish, because of the slain of my people, and I cried:

17 O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you!

18 Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss.

19 O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen!

20 But behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return.

 

 

 

All that shows is the genre lament.

[jkwilliams]

So it only took you three minutes to read Ben's essays and digest the implications of his argument and observations? I'd say wow if I believed you'd read and digested the significance of his work.

I've known Ben a long time and have read his stuff before.

 

Ben approaches the question of assessing the significance of parallels. Finding parallels is easy. Assessing significance in a meaningful way takes considerably more thought. That a translation of a book by a 19th century person in his language contains 19th century language does not strike me as scandalous. It is prescribed. Why not just look for parallels with Webster's dictionary and say, "Joseph just took a bunch of words from the dictionary, made up a few names, mixed them up, and there you have the Book of Mormon. Easy. Just like any number of other 19th century books that also 'borrowed' words from the dictionary." Nothing special here. Nothing to see. Move along.

Lest anyone misunderstand my position, it is this: the Book of Mormon's value comes in its spiritual power, which even a cynical apostate like me recognizes. Do I think Joseph Smith "just took a bunch of words from the dictionary, made up a few names, mixed them up, and there you have the Book of Mormon"? No, definitely not.

 

There are several different levels of abstraction to work with. If you look for parallels with the alphabet used, you don't even have to restrict yourself to the same language, but the matter of assigning significance is quite another thing. Word parallels take things up to a different level, to meanings that do not exist at the level of the individual alphabetic symbols used, but again, the methods of assigning significance come up. Verbal phrases? Ben talks about ways to discern the significance of those.

I'm aware of that.

 

He also talks about the way narrative and context involve considerations that don't exist at the level of verbal parallels, in the same way that meaning in words does not exist at the level of individual alphabetic characters.

How about narrative? How significant are verbal parallels in different sorts of narrative? Or when the words or phrases have different meanings in the different narratives?

How about assessing the significance of a type scene, in which a parallel is deliberate, versus coincidental parallels? And there are certain kinds of human behavior that repeat over and over again independently. Birth, death, eating, sleeping, walking, hiding, making war, making love, elections, revolutions, migrations, battles, government, grave digging, etc. That some things repeat over and over in human experience is why Joseph Campbell can write Hero with a Thousand Faces. Rituals promote repetition and parallels, whether they are football seasons, elections, revolutions, wars, or calls to repentance.

Nibley, 60 years ago talked about how the best test for a purported historical document is to place it into the context it claims for itself. How well does it fit? The longer the historical document, the more foolproof the test.

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

That is the context in which the presence of eye-witness details matter. And it matters most of the eye-witness details converge in complex interacting patterns. Brant has talked about that in his books and FAIR presentations.

The test is limited in some respects, based on the limits of our knowledge of the past. So trends matter more than open questions considered in isolation from the larger picture.

And of course, comparisons of the Book of Mormon with 19th Century parallels is a method is entirely unsuited to to discerning the presence of eye-witness details. Such a method can only point to parallels. View of the Hebrews begins with a destruction of Jerusalem, as does the Book of Mormon. But they are different destructions. One by Babylon, around 600 BCE and the other by the Romans, about 70 AD. Is that parallel worth getting excited about? Or does it make more sense to look for eye-witness details that inside Jerusalem 600 BCE as distinct from 70 CE, and on the journey to the desert, and into the New World. As Kuhn says, "It makes a great deal of sense to ask which paradigm is better." Are the lost Romans in Spalding's Manuscript Found a good parallel for Lehi's group from First Temple Jerusalem? Better requires comparison. None of the 19th century approaches I have read impress me as "better." Only rarely do they attempt a serious comparison, and never, in my experience, a genuinely comprehensive one. And since no two paradigms solve all the same problems, we also have to decide for ourselves "which problems are more significant to have solved." At stake is which paradigm are we going to use to approach unsolved problems.

With the Book of Mormon, we are dealing with a translation, that adds a layer of complexity, particularly evident on the level of alphabet and vocabulary, where parallels of that sort come in because of the translation layer. And in the case of Hidden in Plain sight, the list includes parallels from introductory material, legal notices and such. United State of America? Really? Authors and proprietors? The comparison is supposedly of exact phrases, yet the exactness in the highlighted phrases is notably lax.

I do believe that people ought to be able to find spiritual value in the Book of Mormon, even if they do not accept historicity. I'm still looking for someone to write in such a way that I really believe they mean it, and are not more interested in justifying their own distance. For instance, I was not impressed with Thomas' Digging in the Book of Mormon, which does far more undermining than appreciating. But it should be possible and I would like to see it done.

But the difference between an inspired fiction and an authentic Book of Mormon is whether its claims are binding. I find King Lear and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows inspiring. But they are not the basis upon which I make covenants with God.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Kevin,

I am not disputing any of this. I'm not sure what you think I'm saying, but I'm not being dismissive of the Book of Mormon at all. I am also not commenting on the statistical analysis Chris and Duane Johnson are doing. My point is simply that it is quite obvious that the Book of Mormon follows a certain style common to the time and place. To me, that has implications for assuming a tight or loose translation, hence my saying it's not a nail in any coffin. I'm not saying anything is "better," either, btw.

I do remain deeply doubtful of Brant Gardner's arguments; I respect very much what he's doing, but I don't find it compelling. I'm not an expert, but I do have a degree in a pertinent area of study.

Edited October 21, 2013 by jkwilliams

[Hashbaz]

Anyone else notice that many of the four-word phrases they claim are from the Book of Mormon are not actually found in the Book of Mormon?

Just from the first ten examples, I couldn't find five of them in the Book of Mormon:  "an act for the", "act entitled an act", "the united states of", "United States of America", "an act entitled an". Three of the remaining five phrases are essentially straight from the Bible, "for the purpose", "the benefit of" "as well as a". The only two of the other five not attested to in the Bible is "the commencement of the" and "at the close of". So 2 out of 10 is not that impressive to me, especially when those two likely just represent common language in Joseph's day (as the entry for "commencement" in the 1828 Webster's seems to indicate). And many of the four-word examples are essentially five-word blocks that are double-dipping, like "an act entitled an"/"act entitled and act", which makes the list look artificially long. First step, someone needs to go through and throw out all of the examples that aren't actually in the Book of Mormon; a cursory glance at the rest of the list indicates that there are many (like "arts of designing engraving and etching", which is actually listed as three different examples for the reason mentioned above). 

[jkwilliams]

All that shows is the genre lament.

It was me who said the two struck me as similar, and they do. That doesn't prove anything to me, just that I went to a random page and it sounded familiar.

[Bob Crockett]

 

Courtesy of another discussion board:

 

 

Quote:

Late History, Chapter 19:57-60:

Oh! earth, how long shall thy inhabitants delight in warfare? when shall the old men cease to weep for their children? 

Behold you lonely widows; they weep for their husbands and their children; but they shall see their faces no more!

The fair daughters of Columbia sigh for the return of their beloved.

Seest thou those little ones? they fly to their disconsolate mother, they leap with joy at the name of the father! but he shall never return!

as compared to:

Quote:

Mormon 6:16-20:

16 And my soul was rent with anguish, because of the slain of my people, and I cried:

17 O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you!

18 Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss.

19 O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen!

20 But behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return.

 

 

"Fair ones" is from As You Like It, IV:3, and Henry VIII, I, 4

 

"Fair sons" is from Comedy of Errors, V, 1.

 

"Fair daughter" is from Hamlet, II, 2.

 

Or, "fair King Richard" from Henry IV, pt. II, I, 1.

 

Or "fair Queen Isabel," Henry IV, I, 2.

 

There are plenty of other examples; fair virgin, fair niece and so forth.

 

"Little ones" is from Pericles II, 2.

 

"Disconsolate mother" is a phrase from the Arabian Nights.

 

"Rent with anguish" is a phrase from the 1818 memoirs of Sophia Charlotte, the Queen of Meclkenberg.

 

"Delight in warfare" is a phrase describing the Indians in Thomas Palmer's "The Historical Register of the United States," 1814.

 

Ahh, Google Books.

 

I agree with Brant Gardner that the Book of Mormon is a product of its times, in part, and the Joseph Smith translated it with language abundant at the time.

Edited October 21, 2013 by Bob Crockett

[canadaduane]

Anyone else notice that many of the four-word phrases they claim are from the Book of Mormon are not actually found in the Book of Mormon?

Just from the first ten examples, I couldn't find five of them in the Book of Mormon:  "an act for the", "act entitled an act", "the united states of", "United States of America", "an act entitled an". Three of the remaining five phrases are essentially straight from the Bible, "for the purpose", "the benefit of" "as well as a". The only two of the other five not attested to in the Bible is "the commencement of the" and "at the close of". So 2 out of 10 is not that impressive to me, especially when those two likely just represent common language in Joseph's day (as the entry for "commencement" in the 1828 Webster's seems to indicate). And many of the four-word examples are essentially five-word blocks that are double-dipping, like "an act entitled an"/"act entitled and act", which makes the list look artificially long. First step, someone needs to go through and throw out all of the examples that aren't actually in the Book of Mormon; a cursory glance at the rest of the list indicates that there are many (like "arts of designing engraving and etching", which is actually listed as three different examples for the reason mentioned above). 

 

These phrases are found in the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. Copyright was not a well-understood concept at the time, so most books that I've seen in this era refer to the act of congress that established rights for the author:

 

In conformity to the act of Congress of the United States, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also the act entitled, "An act supplementary to an act entitled, 'An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."     R. R. LANSING,

Clerk of the Northern District of New-York.

 

 

Most of the phrases you cite, however, are insignificant in their impact on the matches, however. If you look at the right-hand column of our work, you'll see a "significance score" which weights the matched phrases according to the inverse of the frequence of the phrase in a baseline sample of 5000 contemporary books. So for example, "united states of america" is likely to occur ~2504 times in a sample size of 5000 books, so it only gets a weight of 1/2504 = 0.000399361.

 

As to the "double dipping" comment, I think this is a legitimate concern. We would like to do larger phrase sequences (we call them 3-word-sequences "3grams", and 4-word-sequences "4grams" etc.) however, it's a little more complex to remove strings without taking quite a bit more computation. Several people wanted to see our results now, so rather than trying to be 100% sure of ourselves before peer review, we opted for earlier release and welcome others to participate in vetting our data and process.

[canadaduane]

So 2 out of 10 is not that impressive to me, especially when those two likely just represent common language in Joseph's day (as the entry for "commencement" in the 1828 Webster's seems to indicate).

 

I forgot to mention that I've explained more of the algorithm in better detail here: http://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1ow284/first_big_data_analysis_completed_on_the_book_of/

[Calm]

Why include the numbers if they have such a low significance?  It looks like an attempt to inflate their importance just by increasing the list size.

 

These phrases are found in the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon.

 

The chances of such words showing up in something describing an official process such as obtaining a copyright (where similarity to other documents would be seen as necessary) is significantly different than chances of words showing in a text purporting to be an ancient religious scripture.  Combining what two very different genres as if they were the same text seems like poor textual analysis to me and merely an attempt to be able to find similar words between the two.

 

It seems to me to make as much sense as including the page numbers and chapter headings as evidence of modern composition.

 

At the very least, the part that is claimed to be modern should be separated from that part of the text claiming to be of ancient origin.

Edited October 21, 2013 by calmoriah

[canadaduane]

Why include the numbers if they have such a low significance?  It looks like an attempt to inflate their importance just by increasing the list size.

 

We aren't interested in list size. We are interested in the total score at the bottom.

[The Grimace]

Why include the numbers if they have such a low significance?  It looks like an attempt to inflate their importance just by increasing the list size.

 

The chances of such words showing up in something describing an official process such as obtaining a copyright is significantly different than chances of words showing in a text purporting to be an ancient religious scripture.  Combining what two very different genres as if they were the same text seems like poor textual analysis to me and merely an attempt to be able to find similar words between the two.

 

Transparency.

[name]

Other than both being books, I see no real similarities that would lend weight to this anti-Mormon suggestion.