Light and Truth Response pt 2: The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon

[very rough draft]

[analogy about the person who is murdered and it’s not at all clear how it was pulled off. But what is without dispute is that the person is murdered. This is how most critics view discussion about how the BoM was created. It is an interesting historical curiosity. There is no question the book is the product of an early 1800s mind, so exactly how it was created is relatively inconsequential.]

Where did the Book of Mormon come from?

The Book of Mormon haunted me when I attempted to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No matter how hard I tried, I could not develop a working naturalistic theory explaining the Book of Mormon that made sense. There is a large, divine-sized gap between Joseph Smith in 1829 and the Book of Mormon. Any theory asserted by critics only brought up more questions.

There are several viable theories.

Who wrote the Book of Mormon?

Joseph Smith was a poor farm boy from upstate New York with a limited frontier education. …

The data point to Joseph Smith coming from a highly rich educational environment:

1. Joseph Smith’s father had “been a merchant and a teacher.” (Ensign 1971).
2. Hyrum attended Moor’s Indian Charity School which was co-located with Dartmouth College. Students attended “daily chapel services at the White Church on campus” and Hyrum may have been exposed to the teachings of Professor John Smith who had recently died after 23 years as Hanover’s minister and influential Dartmouth professor.[^hyrum_smith_at_moor]
3. Joseph’s grandmother had been a schoolteacher and had taught Joseph’s mother. (source)
4. Joseph Smith had 3 years of “formal” education. Compare that with other prolific authors of his era:
   • Andrew Jackson Davis: claimed 5 months—dictated the 320,000 word volume “The Principles of Nature” at the age of 20.
   • Jane Austen: about 2.5 to 3 years of formal education[^austen_formal_education]—completed First Impressions (precursor to Pride and Prejudice) at the age of 21.
   • Abraham Lincoln: about 1 year of “formal” education
   • Walt Whitman: 6 years
   • Mark Twain 5 years
   • Herman Melville 6 years

   Each of the above had similar levels of formal education and it goes without saying that they were able to compose works of outstanding literary quality.

5. A recent analysis of Joseph’s education puts the number of years at possibly closer to seven (Reassessing Joseph Smith Jr.’s Formal Education in the Winter 2016 Dialogue).
6. In Joseph Smith’s time it was commonplace to downplay “a person’s education in order to accentuate the miraculous nature of his or her accomplishments.” (see pgs 62–65 of William Davis’s Dissertation for many examples)
7. Palmyra was rich in books, generally.

See the document Was Joseph Smith intellectually and educationally capable of authoring the Book of Mormon? for more.

Until the Book of Mormon, he had never written a book or demonstrated a knack for long dictation.

[Lucy Mack Smith; methodist exhorter]

When the original manuscript was finished in the summer of 1829, Joseph was 23 years old.

See Was Joseph Smith intellectually and educationally capable of authoring the Book of Mormon?

Critics attempt to explain the Book of Mormon with far-fetched and contradictory claims.

There isn’t a lot of data to work from, and the Book of Mormon is impressive in its size and scope. Data poor situations lend themselves to multiple, contradictory claims.

But this shouldn’t automatically disqualify one or more of these theories from being correct. For instance, many of the statements we have about how the Book of Mormon came about are contradictory ([Skousen quote about JS and Oliver]).

If not by divine means, how did Joseph Smith come up with the Book of Mormon? If it wasn’t from God or Joseph, then where did it come from? Who wrote it?

Virtually all of the textual data point to the mind of one or more early 1800s person(s). Certain segments of the Book of Mormon bear a clear signature of having been composed by Joseph Smith. Arguably, the simplest explanation is that JS composed the book.

Historians concede that Joseph Smith had metal plates. Where did he get them from?

The Kinderhook plates give us a template for how this can happen. He could have made them. He could have had them made [elaborate on the blacksmith situation].

The fact that he was typically guarded about how much he let people inspect them (always under very controlled circumstances to controlled groups) [especially compared with the BoA] suggests that they would NOT have survived deep scrutiny. They were enough to convince people who wanted to believe in them.

Copper, brass, and tin plates seem to have been fairly common during this time.

[Need a page devoted to metalwork from this era to demonstrate its ubiquity and how, relatively speaking, simple the construction and engraving of plates would have been compared to all the kinds of things being produced in that era by skilled smiths and engravers.]

Brass plates were commonly made/engraven and put into (on??) cornerstones (h/t https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1flbeum/til_that_1800s_freemasons_made_stone_boxes_to/):

https://www.unc.edu/posts/2016/10/10/the-most-important-artifact-that-we-have/

[supposed to cover engraving and metalwork] https://archive.org/details/cyclopaediaoruni08rees/page/4/mode/2up?q=engraving

An 1841? book on engraving that includes a section on metallic engraving.

If someone else wrote the Book of Mormon, why did no one come forward?

Joseph Smith was the likely author.

Sidney Rigdon was an educated preacher and an early church leader. Critics sometimes say that he wrote the Book of Mormon or provided material for it. If that is true, how was he converted in November 1830 by the book “he wrote” in 1829? Then, he never took credit for it?

Sidney Rigdon probably did not write it. Had he written it (which I’m not arguing for), then he could have pretended to be converted.

Others claim that Oliver Cowdery wrote or gave Joseph Smith ideas about the Book of Mormon. If that is true, why did he never admit it? Wasn’t he estranged from Joseph Smith and the Church for years?

Oliver may have been convinced of the book’s divineness.

In any event, just because someone is estranged does not mean that the calculus immediately shifts towards wanting to calling things out (there is still a loss of credibility involved).

Finally, we do have a clear case of OC obfuscating the story on some level.

If Joseph Smith used other sources, why did he have nothing else with him during the translation process?

The historical record provides lots of instances and means where JS could have consulted other material (although the oral composition model does not require it).

1. Whitmer farm (they had a private room). This was probably when they were hitting 2nd Nephi.
2. Curtain dividing.
3. The hat provided means for notes to be consulted without observation.

Also, having a Bible lying around would not have been remarkable and Emma’s statements were probably in reference to the Spaulding manuscript and were directed at that manuscript/notes being available.

If Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, how did he dictate a complicated 580-page, 269,320-word religious book with a compelling narrative, consistent geography, and brilliant lectures/sermons/allegories/poetic structures in less than three months?

How could Joseph Smith have composed the Book of Mormon?

Joseph Smith was not formally educated beyond basic primary education in reading, writing, and math.

As demonstrated earlier, he grew up in a rich educational environment and there is modest evidence of his ability to speak well.

He had no documented experience writing books

The BoM was orally dictated. The BoM was mostly modular in construction.

and was not known to be a prolific reader.

Some accounts suggest that he did read a lot [cite]. And, by his own admission, he was reading the Bible and having discussions with local ministers about it at the age of ~14.[cite] A great deal of textual evidence demonstrates that he was very familiar with the Bible.

He had no formal preaching experience

He had informal preaching experience.

and was not well-traveled.

The BoM does not require the author to have been well traveled.

He had limited life experience beyond the hardship of planting and harvesting crops.

Rich family environment. Moved several times. Brother at Moor’s, etc. Can glean much from reading.

How could Joseph create a work like the Book of Mormon?

The kinds of things the BoM discusses and how it discusses them are proportional to that milieu, of which Joseph had been raised and participated in.

In the 173 public Nauvoo discourses, Joseph Smith only referenced two Book of Mormon scriptures, whereas dozens of biblical scriptures were quoted. Joseph seems unacquainted with the Book of Mormon, especially compared to the Bible.

If Joseph Smith is the author of the Book of Mormon himself, why is he so unfamiliar with it compared to the Bible?

He grew up reading and seriously studying the Bible. He did not grow up reading and studying the Book of Mormon.

But this may also suggest that JS appreciated that the BoM was not the source of wisdom that the Bible was, so he continued to study the Bible (e.g., with the JST) and NOT the BoM.

Finally, virtually none of the early Saints seemed to really read from or use the BoM much, so this is consistent with how the book was received generally (as a sign of God’s continual involvement but not necessarily as scripture to be studied as vigorously as the Bible).

How did Joseph Smith dictate the Book of Mormon in 65 (or perhaps 90) days9 in one draft with his limited experience and education?

How could Joseph Smith have composed the Book of Mormon?

How did Joseph Smith create a complex narrative with consistent geography within the book?

Most humans are really good at spatial reasoning (and probably moreso at that time). London taxi drivers must pass a test known as The Knowledge requiring them to memorize 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks. A typical pneumonic technique is using (method of loci) is to use location to retrieve information (since we are so intrinsically good at this).

There are 100 unique names of places in the Book of Mormon.

How many of them are relevant to the story?

It contains around 600 references to place names.

How many of these factor into the geography?

The distances, relative locations, and topography are consistent throughout the text.

Once a person has a fixed geography in mind, then it does not seem that remarkable that they remembered that geography.

Other authors like JRR Tolkien have sprawling geographies,

Yes, it’s very possible to create geographies far more impressive than that found in the Book of Mormon.

but how did Joseph Smith do it in 65 days?

The way this question is posed seems not to acknowledge the known timeline of how the BoM came to be. The author had years during which he could have planned or prepared aspects of the text. One of those things he could easily have worked out beforehand was the geography.

Other prolific authors have written fictional stories and characters, whereas the Book of Mormon purports to be a historical, not fiction, book. If Joseph Smith is making up the Book of Mormon, why are so many of its claims proving more true as time goes on?

Math. LDS scholars have been working to find any possible fit to the BoM and are using a vast number of cultures, times, and places to call something a “match”. Because the BoM makes a huge number of claims, we expect that such research will yield additional hits over time, even if the book were fictional. However, we also see a massive increase in the number of ways in which it is now known that the BoM matches the early 1800s milieu (this has increased at a far greater pace!). Even despite all the research, there still are a number of issues remaining. This is precisely the outcome we would expect for a fictional book with hundreds of researchers spending decades attempting to find any possible match to various sticking points.

In reality, not a single culture, time, or place satisfies the requirements for the Book of Mormon to have been veridical. various requirements.

If the Book of Mormon comes from the imagination of a 23-year-old farm boy, how have millions of members been touched by it and joined the Church?

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. The book sold millions of copies worldwide and is a cornerstone of science fiction today. Perhaps the reason these books were both so impactful (both then and now) is that they addressed topics very timely for the modern era.

Some authors have written short books quickly. How many uneducated and inexperienced authors have written something close to 269,320 words in one draft in less than three months? Is there any example of a feat remotely close to what critics say Joseph Smith did?

Addressed the idea about education above (see here). How many knew the Bible like Joseph Smith? How many had experience storytelling and preaching like he did? There are no end to amazing, idiosyncratic feats (see especially William Davis’s The Book of Mormon and the Limits of Naturalistic Criteria: Comparing Joseph Smith and Andrew Jackson Davis), but we do not immediately require supernatural intervention to try to explain them. There is ample documentation pointing to the fact that human minds are incredibly powerful.

Critics write off the “one draft” argument by pointing out the approximately 4000 authorized changes made in the 1837 and 1840 editions of the Book of Mormon, compared to the 1830 edition.

The draft was remarkable in how few corrections were needed, but a few corrections (e.g., Benjamin to Mosiah) were indeed needed. The manuscript itself captures other corrections [cite William Davis’s set]

Weren’t the vast majority of the changes typographical in nature? The changes were for the purpose of aligning the printer’s manuscript with the original translation, correcting spelling, or clarifying the intended meaning. Sentence structures and order were unchanged, and no more than 4-5 words were changed in any given passage.

Yes, this is my understanding.

Isn’t that feat incredibly impressive for an inexperienced, uneducated, and unknown farmer in upstate New York in the 1830s?

Yes, it’s impressive. [JS was not uneducated, as mentioned before.]

Could Joseph Smith have written or dictated the Book of Mormon by using another, non-divine source? If critics answer “yes,” then they are burdened with developing a working theory for where it came from. The most common candidates are the … , View of the Hebrews, the Late War, The First Book of Napolean [sic], and the Bible.

The Spaulding Manuscript

As stated, this approach seems to misunderstand how most scholars view the creation of the BoM. They see books like View of the Hebrews, the Late War, and the First Book of Napoleon as representative of the kinds of things present in the early 1800s milieu. They are books that the author of the Book of Mormon might have read at some point, but the typical theory does not require Joseph Smith to have even read any of them. [cite Davis, Vogel and Hamer]

The most common candidates are the Spaulding Manuscript …

Most scholars today do not view favorably the Spaulding Manuscript theory. The manuscript we have today is clearly reminiscent of the Book of Mormon in some ways, but no genetic relationship between the two is evident (i.e., it’s not clear that the author of the BoM had ever seen or read that manuscript).

In early church history, critics of the Church gave no credence to Joseph Smith’s intelligence. They presumed someone else wrote the Book of Mormon. The most common source proposed was a lost manuscript by then-deceased Reverend Solomon Spaulding.

Although they had access to other kinds of information and the benefit of sharing that time and place, critics of that era did not have the set of tools we have today for assembling and accessing all available documents on a topic. The notion that JS was incapable of producing the BoM was culturally advanced by LDS members and supported the LDS narrative. I feel no obligation to accept uninformed critical narratives advanced during a time where access to data was so limited.

Initially, there were no copies of the manuscript to compare to the Book of Mormon. Years later, affidavits by critics said that Sidney Rigdon gave Joseph Smith the Spaulding Manuscript, and it was the primary inspiration for the Book of Mormon.13 A manuscript was finally found years later and published in 1885. It was apparent then and now that the Book of Mormon and the Spaulding Manuscript have virtually nothing in common.

If you read it (and are familiar with the BoM), you’ll find they actually share many similarities. Regardless, it is obvious that Manuscript Found is not the source for the BoM.

Manuscript Found14 or the Spaulding Manuscript, is a draft of a pseudo-pirate romance novel about Romans. I have read the manuscript. Any similarity is general and superficial.

When thinking about the book as a source for the BoM, I totally agree. But there are a number of similarities when thinking about the manuscript as the sort of thing that people were producing at that time (themes and approaches, etc). [list out some of these]

Plus, the manuscript is considerably shorter than the Book of Mormon.15

We agree that the manuscript was not the/a direct source for the BoM.

Why do many critics still reference the Spaulding Manuscript as a source for the Book of Mormon? Why talk about a claim that has been debunked since 1886?

Who is doing that? Please list them so we can see the manner in which they are invoking the manuscript. As I understand it, most of them are advancing the idea that another manuscript exists and that was the source for the BoM (cite Criddle and Kircher guy).

Why do critics still maintain that there must be a missing “2nd manuscript”?

Which critics still maintain this? Are they the critics with historical training?

What are the odds that the mysterious (likely non-existent) second manuscript is the Book of Mormon?

The odds are very small but probably non-negligible.

If the first draft was pirate romance fiction, what are the chances that the second draft is the Book of Mormon?

Probably not high. But there are some similarities in concept that do not make the idea that the first manuscript inspired the BoM a possibility (however remote).

Why does the CES Letter omit the Spaulding Manuscript theory? Isn’t the Spaulding Manuscript source theory among the most widely believed critical theories since the publication of the Book of Mormon?

I do not know, but you could ask Jeremy (/u/kolobot). I suspect that it’s because he was aware that the leading scholars/historians do not think it is a very viable theory.

Is there any evidence at all that Joseph Smith used the Spaulding Manuscript? Do we have an eyewitness who saw Joseph using that book? Did he have a copy? Did anyone he knew have a copy?

No, there’s no evidence of this.

Why did the Church of Jesus Christ publish the Spaulding Manuscript if it was a source for the Book of Mormon?

It was clearly not a source for the BoM, so there was no threat in publishing it (if we were to assume the LDS Church would not publish a source for the BoM if there were some kind of direct link [as the question implies]).

Update: Critics labeled the Book of Mormon as heretical gibberish immediately after publication. However, critics had to change tactics once people started reading it, and thousands converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dismissing Joseph Smith as a fool bolstered the Book of Mormon’s claim of divine origin. In the first major anti-Mormon book, Mormonism Unvailed (1834), Eber Howe explains the Book of Mormon’s sophistication by claiming that the lost Spaulding Manuscript was the source. This theory dominated critical circles for decades as it maintained the ignoramus, treasure-seeking Joseph narrative while still explaining the Book of Mormon. Critics held on to that narrative until the publication of the manuscript in 1885.

These are interesting historical trajectories. I feel no obligation to account for poor theories from times past.

View of the Hebrews

Seventy-two years after the Book of Mormon was published, I. Woodbridge Riley (1902) was the first person to theorize that the View of the Hebrews was a source for it.

Why did none of the critics that were contemporary to the publication of the Book of Mormon think of the View of the Hebrews as a source? Wasn’t the View of the Hebrews widely available in 1830? None of the eager early church critics put two and two together?

The main ideas in View of the Hebrews were common to the milieu. There’s also no direct, textual linkage between VoH and the BoM.

View of the Hebrews was published in Poultney, Vermont, in 1823 and 1825. The Book of Mormon was published in Palmyra, New York, in 1830. Why does the CES Letter falsely relay that the Book of Mormon was published in Sharon, Vermont (a county neighboring Poultney, Vermont), despite its publication being 300 miles away in Palmyra, New York?

It’s important to get facts correct, but I’m not sure why Jeremy wrote this. You should ask Jeremy (/u/Kolobot). However, the idea that the VoH is representative of ideas in JS’s milieu is not dependent on the exact publication location. JS definitely was around the same vicinity at one point in his life, so it’s fair to say that there was at least broad geographical correspondence between the authors of the two works.

The CES Letter insinuates, without evidence, that Oliver Cowdery used the View of the Hebrews as source material for the Book of Mormon.

“This direct link between Joseph and Oliver and View of the Hebrews demonstrates that Joseph is very likely to have been aware of the theme and content of that book.”20 – CES LETTER, section on the View of the Hebrews

I think this is a misreading of the CES Letter. I do not think those words imply that “that Oliver Cowdery used the View of the Hebrews as source material for the Book of Mormon”. Rather, I think the CES Letter words imply that OC may have been responsible for sharing ideas and/or themes with JS that then found their way into the BoM (via influence, not as “source material”).

The CES Letter is vague on exactly how it suggests the VoH influenced the BoM. The loosest version of this influence (which is advanced after a discussion of BH Roberts) is one that I am comfortable defending:

… While this does not prove that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from the View of the Hebrews [there’s no good evidence for direct plagiarism at all], it does demonstrate that key elements of the story of the Book of Mormon – i.e. Native Americans as Hebrew descendants, ancient records of natives preserved, scattering and gathering of Israel, Hebrew origin of Native American language, etc. pre-dated the Book of Mormon and were already among the ideas circulating among New England protestant Americans.

Many ideas that appear in the BoM were clearly represented in that milieu and that milieu is captured in the VoH.

If this scenario is correct, how do critics explain the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon? Wasn’t that dictated in 1828, months before Joseph Smith met Oliver Cowdery? Joseph Smith met Oliver Cowdery for the first time on April 5th, 1829.21 Oliver Cowdery was Joseph Smith’s primary scribe during the translation of the Book of Mormon from April 7th 1829, to the last week of June 1829, when the dictation was completed. Joseph Smith met Oliver Cowdery for the first time on April 5th, 1829.21 Oliver Cowdery was Joseph Smith’s primary scribe during the translation of the Book of Mormon from April 7th 1829, to the last week of June 1829, when the dictation was completed.

As mentioned above, the ideas were common to that milieu. A theory where the ideas in the VoH were common to JS’s milieu do not require any of the above mentioned elements.

Parallels shown side by side can seem compelling. Such is the case with the Book of Mormon and the View of the Hebrews. Critics use expressive language like “striking parallels” to drive home the point. There seem to be around 26 possible parallels between the two books. How strong of a correlation is that in a 269,320-word book?

Parallels can certainly be spurious. The more that we find together, the more likely they are not due to chance alone (in this case, I’m holding that they are not chance alone because they both derived from the same milieu). How many themes exist in the Book of Mormon? The particular themes shared between them seem significant to me.

Are parallels convincing evidence?

It depends on the strength of the parallels. The more specific and the more copious the parallels the less likely they are to have occurred by chance alone.

If so, do critics give credence to the Book of Mormon for its 35 parallels with the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls found 100 years after the publication of the Book of Mormon?22

Where are these parallels published so that we can understand their strength? [I skimmed the referenced video but didn’t see a slide on them so maybe they were just mentioned in passing?] In a review of the impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on LDS perspectives, BYU scholar Dana Pike does not reference any (only problems raised by the Dead Sea Scrolls for the BoM). Please reference primary research, where possible.

At first, looking at an official-looking table of parallels seemed convincing. Then, as I started reading the View of the Hebrews, the matches characterized as “bullseyes” looked more like a stretch.

Quotations usually indicate a direct quotation. I do not find the word “bullseye” (or any variant) in the CES letter section on the Book of Mormon (including VoH). While acknowledging your experience (you anticipated tight correspondence and found less similarity when examining the book yourself), I do not think it undermines the broad similarities that exist? If you provided a specific example of a theme you did not find compelling then that would make it easier to discuss with resolution.

If the View of the Hebrews was a major source for the Book of Mormon, why did no one notice the loose parallels between them until 1902? Among the people who did not notice the connections was the View of the Hebrews author Ethan Hill, who was alive for 19 years after the publication of the Book of Mormon.

The ideas were ubiquitous and the BoM was not directly plagiarizing.

The reality is that any parallels with the View of the Hebrews are tenuous at best. High-level parallels are not a source.

The major (and most defensible) claim is evidence of a shared milieu. Runnells never argues that the BoM was a “source” for the BoM, and if he does not mention it explicitly, I make the statement now–it seems unlikely that VoH was any kind of direct source for the BoM. This does not undermine the similarities in themes as evidence of a shared milieu.

Many of the “parallels” are not parallels once they are thoroughly examined:

The chart shows 7 instances where a parallel is actually dissimilar on some level. These kinds of dissimilarities do weaken the specificity of these examples, but a dissimilarity does not necessarily erase the correspondence that still exists. For example, we find that the Egyptian language functions differently in the two books, but the influence of Egyptian in both books is still present. These dissimilarities underscore the fact that VoH was likely not any kind of direct source for the BoM, but that is not what most informed historians are arguing. Similarly the two examples demonstrating that ideas in VoH were also found in the Bible weakens the argument for specific influence, but the Bible has an enormous number of themes within it, so shared themes that happen to exist in the Bible still give some strength to an influence argument (although that is not the argument I am defending).

Why do critics still cite the View of the Hebrews as a source for the Book of Mormon?

They are uniformed.

The View of the Hebrews is around 57,000 words long. If Joseph Smith used the View of the Hebrews as his primary source for the Book of Mormon, where did the other 200,000 words come from?

The CES Letter does not advance this (at least explicitly), and no informed critics are advancing this.

Is there any evidence that Joseph Smith used the View of the Hebrews as a source?

No (unless we view loose thematic similarities as evidence of influence). No. No. We don’t have g

Do we have an eyewitness of Joseph using the book?

No.

Did he have a copy of it?

Not that we are aware, but we do not have a record of all the books he owned (we do know the kinds of books Joseph Smith gave away).

Did anyone else he knew have a copy of it?

We have very few records of the books that others around JS owned.

Do we have anyone in letters or journal entries mentioning him referencing it?

Not that I am aware.

If Oliver Cowdery was involved, why didn’t he admit it when he was estranged from Joseph Smith for years?

Most models do not require OC to be actively involved. He may have believed. [also, costs of whistleblowing]

If View of the Hebrews was a source for Joseph, why did the BYU re-publish and make it available for free to read online?

It’s clearly not a direct source, so publishing it was probably viewed as helpful to their cause (and they may have published it regardless since it’s relevant to the scholarship).

The First Book of Napoleon

From the CES Letter (emphasis added) – “The following is a side-by-side comparison of selected phrases the Book of Mormon is known for from the beginning portion of the Book of Mormon with the same order in the beginning portion of The First Book of Napoleon (note: these are not direct paragraphs).”

The wording “selected phrases,” “known for,” and “from the beginning portion” are suspicious, right? Here is the critic’s attempt to make the Book of Mormon and the First Book of Napolean seem similar.

“Condemn not the [writing] … (skip a page) an account…(skip a page) the First Book of Napolean (skip two pages)… upon the face of the earth…(skip four pages) it came to pass… (next paragraph) the land…(skip a page) their inheritance, their gold and silver… (skip two pages) the commandments of the Lord… (skip five pages) the foolish imaginations of their hearts… (skip two pages) small in stature… (skip two pages) Jerusalem… (skip four pages) the wickedness and perverseness of the people”

With all due respect, what?

The goal of this presentation was to highlight how the First Book of Napoleon is somewhat similar to the beginning of the Book of Mormon. Some people were misled based on how it was presented to believe the connections between the two were stronger than what they really were. Adding page numbers (or skip pages as you have done) gives a comparison that appreciates the context much better (since the parallels are not direct). It should be noted that the pages of the the First Book of Napoleon are fairly small (i.e., not a lot of words on each page) and these are fairly unique phrases all clustered in the beginning of the BoM. So, even after properly contextualizing the phrases, it should be evident that there is some signficant similarity there. The comparison suggests that the BoM is not unique in its tone or psuedo-biblical register, and comparing the two makes it easier to view the BoM as an example of psuedo-biblical literature from the early 1800s.

Why do Jeremy Runnells and other critics claim that the beginning of the First Book of Napolean is similar to the start of the Book of Mormon?

If you read the first 6 verses of the FBoN, then they do sound similar to phrases and themes from the BoM.¹ This is presumably why Jeremy quoted them.

But the similarity between the two books is not entirely subjective. Chris and Duane Johnson showed the similarity (compared with all other books) using 4-gram matches here.

Doesn’t the critic need to use words and phrases from 25 different pages in the First Book of Napolean and several from the Book of Mormon to make them look similar?

No. The similarities are intrinsic to the text. Runnells’ presentation (problematic though it may be), is merely one way to highlight some of these similarities.

Isn’t that connection dishonest?

It is dishonest if the author meant to convey more than what the data allow for? It’s not dishonest if he were merely trying to hightlight (or call attention to) the similarity? The presentation in the CES Letter could definitely be more clear, though, and the implications of that connection made more explicit.

Why include it in the CES Letter?

Presumably because it is a piece of evidence pointing towards the idea that the BoM is a good fit for having been composed in the early 1800s since it is similar to other kinds of pseudo-biblical literature.

You can ask Runnells (/u/kolobot) why he included it.

If I can select words and phrases from dozens of pages, couldn’t I make almost any two books seem similar with this logic?

Sure. But in this case there is more substance to the similarities than any two books pulled at random (again, see here).

Isn’t the First Book of Napolean a quasi-biblical work that describes the French Revolution and Napolean Bonaparte’s rise to power? Isn’t Napolean the central figure of the First Book of Napolean, whereas Christ is the central figure of the Book of Mormon? Aren’t the themes radically different?

This is not how influence works. Many aspects of a particular work may be changed substantially (or ignored) when they influence the author of another work. Differences do not negate similarities (by themselves). See appendix: Why Dissimilarities are Poor Grounds for Rejecting Influence [need to write and/or quote/credit chatgpt4o’s answer to this, which is quite sensible AFAICT].

Did any contemporaries of Joseph Smith notice the parallels between the First Book of Napolean and the Book of Mormon? Why not?

No, not that we have any record of. Perhaps because they had not read it, or because nobody viewed the FBoN as having been a direct source for the BoM.

The First Book of Napoleon has around 22,500 words. If Joseph Smith used the First Book of Napolean as a primary source, where did the other 230,000 words of the Book of Mormon come from?

The CES Letter does not claim the FBoN was a “primary source.” And, by its nature, influence does not work like this. It’s clear that the FBoN did not provide a direct scaffold for the BoM, but the author of the BoM may have read it and some of the ideas and phrasing influenced the way the BoM was written. It’s also possible that both books are mere reflections of a milieu that produced pseudo-biblical registers and were occupied with similar kinds of themes.

Is there any evidence that Joseph Smith used the First Book of Napolean as a source?

No.

Do we have an eyewitness of Joseph using that book?

No.

Did he even have a copy of it?

No, but we don’t know the extent of the books they owned or had exposure to.

Did anyone else he knew have a copy of it?

No, but we don’t have good records of all the books everyone owned.

Do we have anyone in letters or journal entries mentioning him referencing it?

No.

The Late War

In 2013, Chris and Duane Johnson presented results from a breakdown comparing the Book of Mormon with 100,000+ books. Computing power allows for this sort of analysis to happen in modern days. They found that the book most correlated with the Book of Mormon was a textbook published in 1819 called The Late War. The textbook uses a scriptural writing style to describe the War of 1812. Until 2013, no one had made this connection with the Book of Mormon, including anyone in Joseph Smith’s day.

The last sentence is factually incorrect. Rick Grunder had noticed the parallel between the Late War and the Book of Mormon and published it in his book Mormon Parallels in 2008. This is noted by McGuire (and is quoted on the FAIR page you referenced as of 2024-09-10). I own the second edition and Grunder spends nearly 50 pages analyzing the similarities between the two (but I do not know how extensive the comparison was in the first edition).

It is the case, as far as is known, that no one in JS’s day had made the observation or connection. This may be because the book did not have wide circulation (Grunder argues from printings that it was “wildly” circulated while the blog author of Book of Mormonism argues it was much more modest). It may also be because pseudo-biblical texts were somewhat common. Finally, it’s probably also the case that even were someone to notice their similarity, there is not enough there to argue that TLW was a direct source for the BoM.

The Johnsons’ analysis showed 74 parallels between the books; how strong of a correlation is that in a 260,000-word book?

One can compare the strength of the correlations visually here. They seem significant. However, they are of such a nature that the study’s authors eventually decided against the idea that there was necessarily direct influence between TLW and the BoM [cite].

Don’t many of those correlations also correlate with the King James Version of the Bible?

Yes. But many do not.

Isn’t it true that something else would have been the most correlated if not the Late War?

Yes. Something would have been most correlated. Most closely correlated does not indicate direct influence (as you imply by this question).

Why isn’t The View of the Hebrews, The First Book of Napolean, or the Spaulding Manuscript more correlated?

Because of the similarity of the 4 grams. Let’s assume direct influence (which I am not). It’s possible for a work to have been directly influenced by more than one work. One of the direct influences would be most correlated, but that is not mutually exclusive with other books being correlated. See componential creativity [cite]. If we are merely arguing these books were indicative of the milieu that the BoM came about in, then it is equally simple to argue that multiple works may be indicative of the milieu.

Is there any proof that Joseph Smith had read The Late War or even had access to it?

No. [Grunder arguments, though]

Since 2014, after several debunkings, the Johnsons have not followed up on their study. Why?

They concluded that the Late War was not a direct influence on the Book of Mormon (matter of public record) and lost interest (what I inferred from a private conversation with Duane Johnson years ago). Despite the claim that they can leave but they cannot leave it alone, most exmormons I know lose any deep interest in LDS studies after a few years (just starts to be less relevant to their lives).

The Late War has 56,632 words. Where did the other 200,000 words in the Book of Mormon come from if Joseph Smith used The Late War as a source?

The best argument is not that it was used as a source, so the question misunderstands the way literary influence (direct or indirect) works.

Is there evidence that Joseph Smith used The Late War as a source?

No.

Do we have an eyewitness of Joseph using the book?

No.

Did he even have a copy of it?

Not that we know of, but we do not have a record of the books JS owned (besides those he gave away at one point).

Did anyone else he knew have a copy of it?

No.

Do we have anyone in letters or journal entries mentioning him referencing it?

No, but how many books have you used or read and not recorded a journal entry about reading them? We do have statements about him reading in the bookstore [cite].

Is it reasonable to think that Joseph Smith used all these listed sources (and much more) from memory to dictate the Book of Mormon in 65 days?

No. But the question misunderstands the way creativity and influence operate.

Is there any proof that he used any of these sources?

No.

Has anyone ever mentioned seeing Joseph Smith using them or even having them?

No. But how many books have you read that escaped mention by your peers or family?

Were they in Joseph Smith’s library?

We do not know what books were in his library (except a few he gave away at one point).

Did Joseph Smith ever reference these books in casual conversation at all?

Perhaps. We do not have record of most of his conversations.

The Bible

The Book of Mormon and the Bible have parallels for more obvious reasons. Depending on the method used, between 5% and 10% of the Book of Mormon is from the Bible, or 15% at the very most.

Isn’t more than 10% of the New Testament a citation or allusion to an Old Testament scripture? Don’t the biblical parallels make a better, not weaker, case for the Book of Mormon’s divine origin?

Citation or allusion alone is not problematic and could indeed strengthen the case for ancientness. When we examine the usage, it appears to mimic what we’d expect from an early 1800s source and not from what we’d expect from an authentic ancient source. [details]

If 5%-15% of the Book of Mormon is from the Bible, where did the other 85%-95% come from?

The Book of Mormon was a creative work that transcended the Bible.

Is there any evidence that Joseph Smith referenced the Bible during the translation?

The textual evidence is strong [quotation and italics]. It also seems that he was in more private quarters when he was working on the Isaiah chapters. Finally, it’s not clear that anyone would have mentioned the Bible since it lying around may have simply . But OC and JS both were not clear on the instruments, so perhaps they also did not feel like it was inappropriate to use the Bible as reference during the dictation. Regardless, the quotations are not typically word for word, [and italics]

Update: To make all the naturalistic source theories work, critics must suspend belief and imagine Joseph Smith had memorized or memorialized a library of books.

This misunderstands the most common theories of how JS created the BoM. To be influenced (or even inspired) by a source is not to memorize it.

In Fawn Brodie’s biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History (1945), she popularized the “Joseph was a religious genius” theory that is still prevalent today.

Virtually all of JS’s significant output was religious in nature (most of it what members would call “inspired”), so it’s difficult to find the proper control to appreciate his genius outside of this setting.

• Colesville letters
• Saxton letter
• textual metrics comparison of letter to OC

So, in a little over 100 years, critics went from Joseph being an ignorant fool to someone else writing the Book of Mormon to Joseph being a religious genius.

I feel no responsibility to account for theories advanced by people with very partial data to work from.

My Questions

[extend the analogy from the first chapter. Even if were able to know enough about the situation to believe very clearly the creation of the BoM was miraculous we are still left with a book that is very clearly an early 1800s work. How or for what purpose would God (or some other supernatural being) intervene in order to produce a work like that? ]

My questions

• Colesville letters, Saxton letter?
• Pearl of great price, JST with massive insertions?

1. I asked chatgpt4o (2024-09-10) to find similarities between the first six verses of the FBoN, as quoted in the CES Letter, and the Book of Mormon. I validated that each verse was similar on some level as advertised (some or more similar than others).

   1. Verse 1: 3 Nephi 6:18-20 and Ether 8:24
   2. Verse 2: Mosiah 29:36-37
   3. Verse 3: Alma 8:9 and Alma 45:12
   4. Verse 4: Ether 9:4-6
   5. Verse 5: Ether 14:17-18
   6. Verse 6: Helaman 6:31 and Ether 11:7

   ↩