Word patterns in the Book of Mormon

[JAHS]

There have been many studies about word patterns in the Book of Mormon to try and establish the existence of multiple authors for each of the books. And there has been some success with this approach. There is of course the fact that Mormon (Mosiah to 4th Nephi) and Moroni (Ether and Moroni) abridged most of the books, so it's sometimes hard to know which are the actual words of the original various prophets. 
I have personally looked at the patterns of usage of certain words and phrases. For example, the phrase "it came to pass" occurs approximately 1297 times in the Book of Mormon. There are actually no sentences or verses that begin with this phrase by itself.  The introductory phrase "And it came to pass" in some form, accounts for 1068 of the instances of this phrase, used as an introductory for a sentence or verse. 
I have combed through the Book of Mormon and found 18 variances of this phrase in different books of the Book of Mormon. 
One interesting variant is the use of the word "now" in some form of the phrase (eg "and now it came to pass", "Behold, now it came to pass", etc.) occurs 164 times in almost all books in the Book of Mormon, but nowhere in the book of Ether. Out of 153 times the phrase "it came to pass" occurs in the Book of Ether; nowhere is the word "now" associated with any forms of the phrase. In fact most of the Book of Ether only uses the exact phrase "and it came to pass" and only a couple other of the 17 variants of the phrase. For a book as large as Ether is, this difference tends to suggest that the Book of Ether had a different author than the rest of the Book of Mormon. There may be other patterns I haven't noticed yet.
There are no forms of the phrase "it came to pass" found in the Book of Moroni; although this might be expected since the Moroni scriptures are more instructional rather than historical writings. That or Moroni got tired of his father using the phrase so much. I realize that the characters used to represent the different forms of "and it came to pass" may be so similar that it might have been up to the translator to decide on what the exact translation should be. 
 
Another interesting find regards the use of the words "whoso" and "whosoever". 
Whosoever is found 73 times in the Book of Mormon; 53 of those times in the books of Alma and Mosiah; whereas the word "whoso", is not found at all in these two books, but it is found 40 times in other books. The book of Ether uses "whoso" (8 times) exclusively, but not "whosoever" at all. "Whoso" is also used 8 times in 1st and 2nd Nephi, but "whosoever" is not used at all in these books.
See chart below. 

[Robert F. Smith]

You may want to take a look at my “’It Came To Pass’ in the Bible and the Book of Mormon,” FARMS Preliminary Report SMI-80b (Provo: FARMS, 1980/updated 1981, 1983, 1984); online at  https://www.scribd.com/doc/39997996/It-Came-to-Pass-in-the-Bible-and-Book-of-Mormon ; and enhanced version online at  http://premormon.com/resources/r003/003Smith.pdf .

The appearance and use of "it came to pass" in both Bible and BofM is due to the specific genre of literature.  This is particularly true of narrative texts.  The reason, for example, why the phrase doesn't show up at all in Moroni is because it is not a narrative text (many biblical books also lack the phrase).  You may also be interested to know that the rate of appearance in Mormon and Words of Mormon is exactly the same -- by the same author.  Finally, the rate of use in the Bible and BofM is the same when the same sorts of texts are compared.

[Freedom]

51 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 

The appearance and use of "it came to pass" in both Bible and BofM is due to the specific genre of literature.  This is particularly true of narrative texts. 

 

 

This is why books like the Book of Job need to be considered differently. 

[JAHS]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You may want to take a look at my “’It Came To Pass’ in the Bible and the Book of Mormon,” FARMS Preliminary Report SMI-80b (Provo: FARMS, 1980/updated 1981, 1983, 1984); online at  https://www.scribd.com/doc/39997996/It-Came-to-Pass-in-the-Bible-and-Book-of-Mormon ; and enhanced version online at  http://premormon.com/resources/r003/003Smith.pdf .

The appearance and use of "it came to pass" in both Bible and BofM is due to the specific genre of literature.  This is particularly true of narrative texts.  The reason, for example, why the phrase doesn't show up at all in Moroni is because it is not a narrative text (many biblical books also lack the phrase).  You may also be interested to know that the rate of appearance in Mormon and Words of Mormon is exactly the same -- by the same author.  Finally, the rate of use in the Bible and BofM is the same when the same sorts of texts are compared.

 

 

Yes I saw this interesting study, but it doesn't address the variant forms of "it came to pass" and where they appear in the Book of Mormon. I realize I may be nitpicking by calling attention to the word "now", but it was interesting to me that it is not used at all in the book of Ether.