Nevo wrote:Tim the Enchanter wrote:To me, the textual parallels, the similar bibical style, the Late War's location at a time and place where Joseph Smith was located, the Late War's intended use in schools at a time when Joseph Smith was of school age, all combine to make a very compelling case that the Late War was a direct influence on the Book of Mormon.
This sounds convincing enough until you look more closely at each element. The textual parallels, though numerous, are not particularly strong. Both books adopt a style that imitates the KJV, but
The Late War clearly belongs within the genre of American pseudobiblical writing (and closely adheres to that genre's conventions) whereas the Book of Mormon is much more awkward fit. Finally,
The Late War was not written to be used in schools and there's no evidence that it ever was. It seems to have been largely a vanity project of the author's and does not appear to have found a wide readership. Furthermore, Joseph Smith had only rudimentary formal schooling and no one remembered him as a bookworm. Isaac Hale found him "not very well educated" when he met him at the end of 1825 and this seems to have been the universal opinion of those who knew him in the 1820s. As Richard Bushman notes, if Joseph Smith was voraciously consuming books during this period—particularly obscure, little-read ones—he did so without anyone knowing it.
On page 21 of this thread, you said this:
Nevo wrote: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."
Taking this and your current statement together, apparently we would naturally expect to find the Book of Mormon being influenced by 19th-century literature that Joseph Smith never read. And of course the Creator of the Universe would choose to tailor the Book of Mormon to a 19th-century audience through the instrumentality of a semi-literate hillbilly who have no particular familiarity with the literature of the time that God decided to stylistically and thematically incorporate into the ancient Nephite record.
So it was just tight enough of a translation for Joseph Smith to transliterate words he didn't know like "curelom" and "Ripleancum," but just loose enough for the Holy Ghost not to have him translate "jaguar" or "tapir." It was tight enough to preserve purported complex chiasmus, but loose enough that Joseph Smith could reach into his own mind to adopt tropes from contemporary literature he did not read. The parallels to other ancient writings that have nothing to do with pre-Columbian Hebrews are intriguing hits that Joseph Smith could not possibly have known about. The parallels to literature from his exact time and place are unimpressive random coincidences. Evidences of the Book of Mormon narrative occurring in Mesoamerica are clear, as long as you change what the Book of Mormon says and start asserting random parallels with no discernible methodology. Evidence of the Book of Mormon being entirely explainable with reference to 19th-century Yankee America, with reference to exactly what the text actually says, is exactly what we would expect to see in an ancient record written by Hebrews with no concept of post-revolutionary political ideals. It's implausible to assume that Joseph Smith would freely lift story elements from contemporary pseudo-biblical works, even though he shamelessly lifted story elements from the actual Bible (Alma the Younger's conversion is precisely Paul's conversion; the three Nephites have the exact fiery furnace experience as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; etc.).
Or, alternatively:
Nevo, let me assist you somewhat here. First, you don't have to explain exactly how a hoax or a fraud was carried out to recognize a hoax. For example, the Boston Post did not know how exactly Charles Ponzi was carrying out his financial scheme when it started printing stories indicating that Ponzi could not possibly be solvent enough to pay out his promised returns to investors. The famous Surgeon's Photo of the Loch Ness Monster, for another example, was known for years to be a hoax, but it was not until decades after it was published that it was discovered how exactly he did it.
Second, you're characterizing this as necessarily Joseph Smith alone wrote the Book of Mormon. You don't have to accept that, nor do you have to accept the elaborate Spalding theory, to conclude that a person or persons in Joseph Smith's time period wrote it. If the evidence of 19th-century authorship cogently explains the existence of the Book of Mormon, that alone resolves the issue. Who exactly it was is relevant to that issue, but it is not necessary to answer it. You've heard of necessary but not sufficient? In this case it's sufficient but not necessary.
All that matters regarding the Book of Mormon's truth claims is whether it was written by ancient Hebrews in America, or someone else. If it wasn't the former, then it's a hoax. The apologetic argument from Maklelan (which contradicts his assertion from a couple years ago that the cognate accusative wasn't known in Joseph Smith's time and place), Ben McGuire, you, and others are implicitly attempting to invoke Occam's Razor. Unfortunately, Occam's Razor really is not your friend. That's because your choices are:
1. An ancient, advanced pre-Columbian Hebrew civilization endured for 1,000 continuous years, yet not a shred of evidence of its existence has been found in 183 years. (And as board member Beastie has put it, there is no "Nephite-sized hole" in the pre-Columbian Americas.) They wrote their record on golden plates, which were buried conveniently nearby Joseph Smith's family home, just in case he might live there 14 centuries later. He translated this record---and we can't quite decide what that translation entailed---with the help of the same magic rock he used for fraudulent treasure hunts with gullible local farmers. Every single contemporary of Joseph Smith's, including people who acted as his scribes, explained what Joseph Smith purported to be doing when he translated, but modern LDS apologists know better than they do what Joseph Smith was claiming to do. The contents of this Book reflect a 19th-century post-Enlightenment, post-Revolution worldview (ancient Hebrews practicing the Law of Moses somehow adopted the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, etc.), and an understanding of the pre-Columbian Americas that does not match its purported setting, but does match the Bible transplanted to the western hemisphere. And this is the authentic historical record of this ancient civilization that remains invisible to archaeologists and historians.
2. The Book of Mormon looks the way it does because it is a work of fiction written by someone living in early 19th-century America.
When you consider the elaborateness of the competing explanations, Occam's Razor probably is not your best bet to defend the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
And while you're wondering how Joseph Smith (or whoever) could have encountered all of these various works of his time, let's think about Star Wars. The original Star Wars is obviously and explicitly influenced by Flash Gordon serials, space opera in general, the film The Hidden Fortress, and Campbell's work on the hero's journey. If someone grew up in a culture with Star Wars, he's going to pick all that up whether he's aware of it or not, because it was incorporated in another source. So all those tropes got collected and passed on not because some kid in Generation X or later studied all those sources, but because he saw Star Wars. Your argument about expecting to find tropes from a specific 19th-century genre in an ancient Hebrew historical record answers your own question.