Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_Kishkumen]

One thing that does tell against the ancient Hebrew roots of Hunt's work, in my opinion, is the superabundance of the word peradventure. In Hunt it is all over the place. A genuinely ancient work of curious ancient Hebraic workmanship like unto the Book of Mormon would have fewer such instances of this word.

And the Book of Mormon accordingly only has a single one, at Alma 37:27:

27 And now, my son, I command you that ye retain all their oaths, and their covenants, and their agreements in their secret abominations; yea, and all their signs and their wonders ye shall keep from this people, that they know them not, lest peradventure they should fall into darkness also and be destroyed.

Clearly Hunt's work, unlike the Book of Mormon, cannot be a work of ancient Hebraic culture with its superabundance of peradventures.

[_Spanner]

From one of the authors of the study (Duane Johnson) at reddit about Manuscript Found (the available version) as a source:

We haven't yet created a tool that compares similarity of all books--what we've written is essentially a ranking algorithm: given book A, show me all books, in sorted order, that are most similar. So naturally we chose the Book of Mormon as "book A" :) We did create similarity rankings for other books such as the Book of Nullification and the Chronicles of Eri. Same with View of the Hebrews and Manuscript Found. I think our most surprising discovery outside of The First Book of Napoleon and "Historical Reader: containing the Late War Between the United States and Great Britain" was that Manuscript Found (Solomon Spalding) is only very weakly connected with the Book of Mormon. In fact, I don't really think it was a source at all--more likely, its author shared a seat in the same lecture hall at university with Ethan Smith or something like that. View of the Hebrews, on the other hand, is a stronger match than Manuscript Found, but still, not anywhere near as strong a match as The Late War.

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

They didn't test Manuscript Found of course, only Manuscript Story (the Oberlin manuscript). No one is suggesting Manuscript Story as a source of the Book of Mormon. Given that MS is not written in Jacobean English and is not a direct source, the "weak connection" is worth further investigation. It would be interesting to run the analysis on the separate parts of the Book of Mormon identified by the Mormonleaks team as Spalding material against MS, and the Joseph/Oliver material against VotH. The point is that absent the attempt at Jacobean English, that there are similarities is very interesting for both of these texts.

I think the critical points this analysis raises are those that Darth J has been highlighting - the demolishing of an assortment of apologetic theses concerning Hebraicisms.

[_Joe Geisner]

I am very excited to read this Kish. A great find.

One of the great experiences of my life has to become friends with people who are much better read and much more thoughtful than myself. I think of you Kish as one of those folks. One other person who fits in this category is Rick Grunder. he has helped me through many of these kind of works that could have played a part in Smith's environment. His Mormon Parallels http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels.htm is unmatched in its breadth and depth.

Luckily, Rick has put his entry from Mormon Parallels about Gilbert Hunt's book in pdf form on his website. It can be found here:

www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp193.pdf

I will be curious what you, Kish, and others think of Rick's entry?

[Guest]

Here is an interesting parallel:

Hunt, Ch. 3.17:

Moreover, Satan entered into the heart of one of the governors of the east, and he was led astray by the wickedness thereof, even Caleb the Strong.

Helaman 5:45

And behold, the Holy Spirit did come down from heaven, and did enter into their hearts, and they were filled as with fire, and they could speak forth marvellous words.

It appears that this language about a spiritual being entering into the heart of a person does not occur in the Bible, but it does occur in Hunt and the Book of Mormon.

[Guest]

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[_Kishkumen]

I am very excited to read this Kish. A great find.

I appreciate the kind words, Joe. Unfortunately, I can't take the credit. It is Chris Johnson who found this work. I am merely reporting what I noticed on my news feed at Facebook.

[_Kishkumen]

So in both books we have references to: thunder, large groups of people falling to the earth, rocks being raised and falling causing deaths, fragments of rocks, the face of the earth, and thick darkness which prevents anyone from seeing each other or anything around them. It is also interesting that there are mentions of sinking and drowning in the Book of Mormon which would make more sense if The Last War was being used since it includes descriptions of water battles....

Holy smokes, Hasa!

What an amazing find!

Thanks for that.

Kudos! Kudos!

Cassius University will find an appropriate way to recognize your excellent research.

[_Nevo]

This is different in that the phrasing and content, in context, is so similar to Book of Mormon at points that it is a good potential candidate to establish direct narrative influence. I don't think we've realistically seen that before. It plainly is something deserving further study. To hand-wave it as nothing new, especially with some very weak references, seems desperate and beneath the usual quality of Nevo's comments.

Sorry to be a disappointment, EAllusion. I thought some of the references I gave were pretty strong. I think Eran Shalev's new book should be the starting point for any serious discussion of similarities and differences between the Book of Mormon and other pseudo-biblical writing in the post-Revolutionary period.

I can understand why the ex-Mormon crowd is salivating over this, particularly those whose knowledge of Joseph Smith's cultural context is next to nil, but I'll be very surprised if this "find" (Rick Grunder should be suing!) gets any traction among serious students of the period (I'm thinking here of folks like Jared Hickman).

So far I haven't seen anything to persuade me that Hunt's book is the source, or even a source, for the Book of Mormon. The linguistic and thematic similarities I have seen pointed out so far do not rise to the level of establishing literary influence, much less dependence. Most strike me as superficial (e.g., "curious workmanship"). Perhaps a cumulative case can be made. Time will tell. But I'm not holding my breath.

Is there nineteenth-century influence in the Book of Mormon? I think there plainly is. Blake Ostler, Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, Philip Barlow, Mark Thomas, Dan Vogel, and numerous other scholars have pointed this out. I myself have pointed out such things (see, for example, here and here). Is this a problem for believers? Not really. If God wanted to tailor the Book of Mormon to a nineteenth-century readership (cf. 1 Nephi 19:24; Mormon 8:35), why should it be otherwise? As Terryl Givens has written, "nineteenth-century parallels . . . are part and parcel of the self-proclaimed prophetic texture of the work."

[_Joe Geisner]

I appreciate the kind words, Joe. Unfortunately, I can't take the credit. It is Chris Johnson who found this work. I am merely reporting what I noticed on my news feed at Facebook.

You are welcome Kish. Maybe you can pass on the link for Rick's excellent work to Chris. I am sure he will find it interesting.

[_RockSlider]

Clearly Hunt's work, unlike the Book of Mormon, cannot be a work of ancient Hebraic culture with its superabundance of peradventures.

wow, close call there! thanks kish, I must remember ... doubt doubt