Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_Shulem]

The Hebrew Background of the Book of Mormon, by John A. Tvedtnes

Construct State

When English shows a possessive or descriptive relationship between two nouns, it usually puts the possessive or descriptive noun first: the king's house or wood house. Hebrew, however, uses the opposite order: house the king (which would usually be translated house of the king) or house wood (house of wood). If the Hebrew word order is kept in the English translation, the word of must be added, even though it does not exist in the Hebrew.

The Book of Mormon contains a large number of what appear to be translations from the Hebrew preserving the Hebrew word order:
"plates of brass" instead of brass plates (1 Nephi 3:24)
"works of righteousness" instead of righteous works (Alma 5:16)
"words of plainness" instead of plain words (Jacob 4:14)
"chains of hell" instead of hell's chains (Alma 5:7)
"voice of the Spirit" instead of the Spirit's voice(1 Nephi 4:18)
"skin of blackness" instead of black skin (2 Nephi 5:21)
"night of darkness" instead of dark night (Alma 34:33)
"rod of iron" instead of iron rod (1 Nephi 8:19)

Ch. XXVI, p. 141

18 Now there were some amongst the tribes of the savages, who had been instructed in the ways of God, and taught to walk in the path of righteousness.

Ch. III, p. 28

33 Now the smooth words of Satan tickled Caleb mightily, and he hearkened unto the counsel of the wicked one;

Ch. III, p. 23

4 Then will we rule them with a rod of iron; and they shall be, unto us, hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Ch. XV, p. 81

17 And the winds moved the vessels about, and they strove to avoid the balls of lead, and the heavy balls of iron, that whistled about them in multitudes.

Ch. XXI, p. 119

38 Thy wickedness shall be written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond.

And so we see that all of the LDS apologetic faith promoting excuses for the Book of Mormon are crashing town before them. Yes, the house of cards is coming down, folks! All the garbage spewed by the flattering lips of the school teacher from BYU are about to become as a thing of naught. They tickled the ears of their hearers and they were fooled -- but no more! The apologists will hide their faces in shame and flee from the face of truth. The whole world will learn of this and the knowledge of the Book of Mormon being a faked book will be common before all.

Rejoice ye sons of men! I say rejoice!

Paul O

[_Spanner]

An MDB participant gave me permission to share the following account of Chris Johnson's presentation:

I attended his presentation (Johnson's) and it was very interesting. I feel that he had to cram a whole lot of information into a shorter amount of time than he really needed, but he did a great job.

Chris is the brother of D. William Johnson who has done the "I Am An Ex-Mormon" videos (who was also a presenter at the conference and both of these men are extremely impressive and also very humble and nice). They are also both incredibly intelligent. I know that Chris has put untold hours into his research and data collecting.

One thing I should add that you didn't mention above XXXX is that Solomon Spaulding does show as being a contributor to the Book of Mormon (along with the View of the Hebrews and the other two new books: The Late War, Between The United States and Great Britain (it states on the title page of this book "In The Scriptural Style") and it was published in 1816; and The First Book of Napoleon, published in 1809).

If I recall correctly, this is the order in which these 4 came up as showing to be contributors: the strongest one was the Late War book, then the Napoleon book, then Hebrews, then Spaulding.

We need to remember that we do not have a copy of Spaulding's book Manuscript Found (and Chris made a point to state that there are no copies of it to use). The "Found" manuscript is the one that witnesses stated was near identical to the Book of Mormon when they read it (same names, story, lots of "And it came to passes", etc.). I believe that the church may have a copy of this manuscript in their archives (possibly the last available copy was purchased by them....but there is no way to know for sure unless they admit that). So, Chris only had Spaulding's Manuscript Story (also referred to as Manuscript Lost) to use for this study and it still came up that Spaulding was a contributor.

I hope that Chris will write this up as a paper and have it submitted so it can be peer reviewed. This will force scholars (and apologists, etc.) to take it seriously and not dismiss it (as I'm sure they will attempt to do). One of the ladies I attended the conference with talked to him about doing this and I think this is in his plans. He's going to be one very busy young man (as if he hasn't already been). I was impressed!"

This isn't surprising given the results of Uncle Dale's painstaking comparison of word sequences between the Book of Mormon and Manuscript Story. Chris' results using thousands of texts from the period will be able to show how expected or not these matches are.

[Guest]

The Hebrew Background of the Book of Mormon, by John A. Tvedtnes
Compound Prepositions
Hebrew often uses compound prepositions, made up of a preposition plus a noun, in places where English would normally use just a preposition. For example, Hebrew uses compound prepositions that would be translated literally as by the hand of and by the mouth of. English would normally use just by. The Book of Mormon contains many examples that appear to show the influence of this Hebrew use of compound prepositions:
"ye shall be taken by the hand of your enemies" (Mosiah 17:18)
"I have also acquired much riches by the hand of my industry" (Alma 10:4)
"sold into Egypt by the hands of his brethren" (Alma 10:3)
[...]

Ch. XLIII, p. 222

2 But it was lighted up by the hand of heaven, and not to be extinguished by the insignificant and self-created gods of the earth.

Hebrew uses another compound preposition that would be translated literally as from before the presence of or from before the face of. English would normally use simply from. The influence of the Hebrew can be seen in these Book of Mormon passages:
"they fled from before my presence" (1 Nephi 4:28)
"he had gone from before my presence" (1 Nephi 11:12)
"they were carried away . . . from before my face" (1 Nephi 11:29)

Ch. XLVIII, p. 255

34 Now when the men of Columbia heard that Ross, the chief captain of the king, was slain, and the host of Britain was compelled to flee from before the city, they were exceedingly rejoiced.

[_Kevin Graham]

I remember one of our district leaders on my mission made the comment that Joseph Smith was such a genius that he came up with new words that others started using. His primary example was "inasmuch".

[_SteelHead]

The idea that the hebriasms of the Book of Mormon serve as evidence for its veracity has been completely destroyed. They are naught but stylistic elements common to a genre of that time.

[_Kishkumen]

The idea that the hebriasms of the Book of Mormon serve as evidence for its veracity has been completely destroyed. They are naught but stylistic elements common to a genre of that time.

This certainly sets back that argument quite a way.

[_Quasimodo]

I remember one of our district leaders on my mission made the comment that Joseph Smith was such a genius that he came up with new words that others started using. His primary example was "inasmuch".

Inasmuch as Joe was a renown wordsmith and phraseologist, I'm surprised he wasn't given credit for "itcametopass".

[_renewed]

However, If they were already aware of Late War already, and if they picked phrases already knowing the contents of the late war, it will be interesting to learn what kind of controls were used to avoid cherry picking.

Either way, the find is astounding. But I do tend to be on the skeptical side for any formal studies like this.

Q: Did you start with the Hunt book in mind or did it simply come up in the results of yoru analysis?
A: [From one of the authors of the study at reddit] I had no idea it existed prior to this analysis. In fact, I tried to ignore it when it came up on top, because I kind of liked the First Book of Napoleon better. FBoN was fascinating to me after reading it when it showed up in our top 10.

http://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/commen ... e_book_of/

[_Doctor Scratch]

A few thoughts:

--I agree with those who've already said that these finds won't matter very much to the average TBM. Instead, this new evidence matters primarily to (a) The institutional Church, which will want to limit exposure to this information as much as possible, and (b) the Mopologists, who even now, I'm told, are scrambling to put together some kind of ad hoc response.

--Someone above asserted, "This isn't plagiarism!" It's not the sort of verbatim, word-for-word cut-and-paste that a lot of people assume is the "According to Hoyle" definition of plagiarism, but it *is* the sort of plagiarism that would land you in hot water in most college courses: this appears to be a pretty serious "lifting" of ideas, phraseology, plot points, characters, and all kinds of other ideas. My point being: it's important to remember that there are different "flavors" of plagiarism--stealing word-for-word text isn't the only way to do it.

--I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I'm on pins and needles in anticipation of the "official" Mopologetic response to this. It seems that there has been some chatter on Facebook about this being a Hoffman forgery--something that's bee quickly dispelled. But, of course, it's always kind of fun to try and place odds on something like this. Matters are complicated by the fact that the Mopologists can no longer give a "Church-sanctioned" response like they might have been able to prior to June 2012. So, let me see if I might handicap the Mopologists actions over the course of the next couple of weeks:

1. An emergency meeting of some sort is convened, complete with angst-ridden teleconferencing. 1:1 - I'm pretty sure this already happened earlier today.

2. Something is pounded out in time for the weekly posting on Mormon Interpreter this Friday. 13:1 - You might argue that Steve Smoot's post was some kind of "response." Maybe it was, but if so, are they telling us that this is their version of "bringing out the big guns" on this issue? Are the people most likely to be rattled by this--e.g., the Ben McGuires, Kevin Christensons, Nevos, etc.--going to turn to Smoot as their "savior"? I set the odds here at 13:1 because I think that, hasty as the Mopologists are, and as much as they're fond of boasting about "posting something new, like clockwork!" on Mormon Interpreter, the fact remains that the people best equipped to respond to this--Gardner, say, or Tvedtnes, or perhaps Matt Roper--would need time to study the issue in-depth. And there isn't enough time between now and Friday for them to do anything.

3. DCP posts a response on his blog. 15:1 - Again, you could argue that the Smoot posting *was* his "response," though here I mean a case of DCP himself trying to soothe rattled testimonies. Posting something would post a risk to him, I think, since it would expose more TBMs to something that they otherwise wouldn't hear about. It also could potentially put him in the spotlight such that it draws the attention (or ire?) of the Brethren and/or his enemies over at the Religious Studies department at BYU. So, as much as Prof. P. enjoys being in the spotlight--as much as he enjoys polemics, debate, and the idea of being able to defend the Church against criticism--my guess is that he's going to stay absolutely, paralytically silent on this issue. Though I could be wrong--I just see it as something of a long-shot.

Looking ahead, a bit more long-term (i.e., we should expect to see signs of this within 6 months or so):

4. The apologists re-affirm the ancientness of the Book of Mormon, and deal with these new findings via character assassination, rumor-mongering, and made-up tests--sort of like what they tried to do with the documentary hypothesis and Biblical source criticism: 3:1 - I doubt I have to explain this further.

5. They adopt the "Gadianton Turn"--they begin siding more explicitly with Grant Hardy and others, who seem to prefer focusing on what Bill Hamblin called "the apologetics of richness." Rather than staying hung up on the Book of Mormon's historicity, they choose instead to deal with it purely in terms of its spiritual, metaphorical, and scriptural value. 500:1 - Again, history is on our side here (even if it's not on the Book of Mormon's).

[_Gadianton]

However, If they were already aware of Late War already, and if they picked phrases already knowing the contents of the late war, it will be interesting to learn what kind of controls were used to avoid cherry picking.

Either way, the find is astounding. But I do tend to be on the skeptical side for any formal studies like this.

Q: Did you start with the Hunt book in mind or did it simply come up in the results of your analysis?
A: [From one of the authors of the study at reddit] I had no idea it existed prior to this analysis. In fact, I tried to ignore it when it came up on top, because I kind of liked the First Book of Napoleon better. FBoN was fascinating to me after reading it when it showed up in our top 10.

http://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/commen ... e_book_of/

OMG