Word frequency analysis in Book of Mormon and Bible etc

[_Markk]

I predict that the 'meeting' will end with the TBM telling you to put to one side the evidence in favour of reading The Book of Mormon and then praying about it.

It's how it always ends.

Which is how it should end. Religion will always be a matter of faith even though the LDS religion is the most internally consistent of all of them and virtually all critical attempts against it have met with failure because of reliance on poor sources, yellow journalism, unsustainable premises, etc.

Being that the LDS faith is in crises of faith and activity is at the lowest point percentage wise since BY...especially with younger generations and with folks outside of Utah...It would seem critical attempts are doing very well.

Belief in God is by faith, the question is, how firm is your basis for your faith? I honestly can not think of one aspect of the LDS faith ( the body of information one believes as truth)that does not have a 'internal' and/or external problem in both history and theology.

I would love to make a list and discuss if you like?

[_Always Changing]

Divisions among critics on the authorship issue are silly when we look at the multitude of problems with Mormonism as a whole.

[_bcspace]

Which is how it should end. Religion will always be a matter of faith even though the LDS religion is the most internally consistent of all of them and virtually all critical attempts against it have met with failure because of reliance on poor sources, yellow journalism, unsustainable premises, etc.

I always love bcspace for his consistent bald assertions.

I've proven virtually all of them over time, over and over again, virtually every time I post on this board.

Being that the LDS faith is in crises of faith and activity is at the lowest point percentage wise since BY...especially with younger generations and with folks outside of Utah...It would seem critical attempts are doing very well.

It is true that many people are seduced by yellow journalism or suffer from Fortigurn's Lazy Research, but the failure I'm talking about is the actual logic of the thing.

Belief in God is by faith, the question is, how firm is your basis for your faith? I honestly can not think of one aspect of the LDS faith ( the body of information one believes as truth)that does not have a 'internal' and/or external problem in both history and theology.

The basis for faith is far better than the criticism.

I would love to make a list and discuss if you like?

I discuss the various issues and aspects everyday on this board.

[_Themis]

I've proven virtually all of them over time, over and over again, virtually every time I post on this board.

More bald assertions. LOL Keep it up bcspace.

[_Themis]

Divisions among critics on the authorship issue are silly when we look at the multitude of problems with Mormonism as a whole.

People can have different opinions on it. We don't have as much evidence regarding it since Joseph or others would be hiding and destroying any evidence, but then we don't need to know how a 20 dollar bill was counterfeited to know it is a counterfeit.

[_bschaalje]

The Larsen study was deeply and hopelessly flawed, so I'm surprised to see you making reference to it. Hilton's study was better, and he did find that Nephi and Alma have different authors. I'm not convinced. There are too many complicating factors that remain unaccounted for. Here are a few examples:

Chris,
It’s been a while. Good to interact with you again (I think). You raise some good points.
Part of it is that I actually repeated Larsen’s study (with his non-contextual words) using Hilton’s genre-restricted Alma and Nephi texts. The results were the same. Consistent differences.
Hilton found that the speakers designated as Alma and Nephi have significantly and consistently unique styles. He also found that a set of control authors have unique but consistent styles in terms of the same measures. The conclusion of different authors is not a lock, but seems reasonable to me. If I understand your arguments below, they actually make this conclusion more (not less) convincing.

1) An author's writing style is less stable when he produces his first literary work. Is the method able to correctly attribute works written early in an author's career when his style is still evolving?

2) Does the method correctly attribute works that are intentionally written in different narrative voices?

To me, it would be even more impressive if an author with an unstable evolving style in his first literary work was able to intentionally write consistently in multiple styles, unique to the different speakers. Hilton looked at some cases of seasoned authors intentionally attempting to do this. William Faulkner could; Mark Twain couldn’t. In your first post you showed that some unseasoned authors could fool certain stylometric tests, but the writings and the tests were pretty limited. The paper pointed out that most of the participants wrote in another voice by dumbing down, and the measures involved things like synonyms that are sensitive to dumbing down.

3) Is the method robust against the presence of quotations? (Hilton controlled for chapter-length quotations, but he doesn't seem to have realized how pervasively the Book of Mormon uses Bible quotations or paraphrases of shorter length.)

At least empirically the method is robust to quotations. Given the demonstrable consistent differences between Alma and Nephi and your observation of consistent paraphrasing by both, the conclusion must be that not only does Alma consistently write differently than Nephi, but he also quotes and paraphrases the Bible differently than Nephi. It would take an impressive single evolving writer to be able to mimic this.

4) Hilton excluded "and it came to pass," but can you really do that? He's assuming that the presence of an introductory "and it came to pass" wouldn't change the syntax of the rest of the sentence.

I don’t agree. Check out Hilton's word-pattern ratios. I could only identify one of the 65 word-pattern ratios that might be influenced by removing ‘and it came to pass’ from the start of a sentence. I can’t see how the other 64 are affected at all.

I could go on, but suffice to say that I have serious reservations about drawing any conclusions from these kinds of studies. David Holmes found that the Book of Mormon had a unitary author. I agree with that finding, but I don't think his study is any more useful for proving the point that Hilton's study is for proving the opposite.

I also am cautious about drawing conclusions based these studies. As for the Holmes study, I think he showed that all Book of Mormon speakers have about the same vocabulary richness, but lots of research has shown that many, many authors have similar vocabulary richness. It’s harder to brush off findings like Hilton’s that actually show a consistent difference between authors. We’ll just have to disagree about whether the Hilton study provides useful information.
Your point about Hebrew is good point. Hilton’s word pattern ratios do not likely correspond directly to any Hebrew structures. That doesn’t change the conclusion that there were multiple authors, but does raise hard questions about how translation relates to all of this.

[_Always Changing]

People can have different opinions on it. We don't have as much evidence regarding it since Joseph or others would be hiding and destroying any evidence, but then we don't need to know how a 20 dollar bill was counterfeited to know it is a counterfeit.

Exactly.

Just as one time I suspected that the lost pages story was all made up. Well, it fit the pattern, didn't it??

[_CaliforniaKid]

Bruce,

Thanks for your reply. Just a few comments on your rejoinder, and then a few additional points to consider.

I notice you didn't respond to my first point concerning the instability of Joseph Smith's early style. I consider this to be a very significant issue, since Nephi and Alma were produced at nearly opposite ends of the dictation process. You're probably familiar with Brent Metcalfe's work showing Joseph Smith's wherefore/therefore shift during the course of dictation. I've found similar shifts in Smith's use of other terms, such as inasmuch/insomuch and whoso/whosoever. You may also recall my time-dependence analysis which found a similar result using the frequencies of common and non-contextual words. To provide another example, note that in D&C 3 (dated 1828) Joseph spoke about God in the third person, whereas in later revelations he switched to first person. In 1828, he appears to have still been finding his prophetic "voice." His style is more stable in the later revelations.

This is perfectly consistent with my own experiences. My writing style, including my syntax, has evolved considerably over time. The changes were especially dramatic in my early writings, when I was still finding my "voice" as a writer. This could lead Hilton's method to "reject" me as an author for my own early writings. Hilton claims to have controlled for "position in an author's career," but I rather doubt his controls included writings produced while the author was still a teenager.

Concerning the second point, you suggest that it would be "impressive" if Joseph could affect sufficiently different voices to fool a Hilton-style wordprint analysis. Well, Joseph was an impressive person. This is undeniable even if you don't believe he authored the LDS scriptures. Furthermore, the third-person narration of the Book of Alma lends itself to a quite different "voice" than the first-person narration of Nephi. Hilton never actually tells us which sections of text he used, so I can't comment much beyond that, but it's something to keep in mind.

At least empirically the method is robust to quotations. Given the demonstrable consistent differences between Alma and Nephi and your observation of consistent paraphrasing by both, the conclusion must be that not only does Alma consistently write differently than Nephi, but he also quotes and paraphrases the Bible differently than Nephi. It would take an impressive single evolving writer to be able to mimic this.

Interesting. Can you point me to the empirical evidence you're referring to?

I don't think he would necessarily need to quote or paraphrase the Bible differently. It might be enough to quote and paraphrase different parts of the Bible.

I don’t agree. Check out Hilton's word-pattern ratios. I could only identify one of the 65 word-pattern ratios that might be influenced by removing ‘and it came to pass’ from the start of a sentence. I can’t see how the other 64 are affected at all.

Perhaps I don't understand well enough how the method works, but it appears to me that the presence of an initial "and it came to pass" heavily influences at least the next several words in the sentence, often "that" or "in". Several of Hilton's non-contextual word patterns involve these words, especially in the "first word" position in a sentence.

Your point about Hebrew is good point. Hilton’s word pattern ratios do not likely correspond directly to any Hebrew structures. That doesn’t change the conclusion that there were multiple authors, but does raise hard questions about how translation relates to all of this.

That is a crucial issue, yes.

A couple other points of interest:

5) If Welch and others are correct that the Book of Mormon includes highly complex and deliberate poetic structures such as chiasmus, these sorts of structures seem very likely to alter the structure of the Book of Mormon's syntax.

6) The Hilton method depends upon being able to identify the ends of sentences (defined as "full logical stops"). I can't imagine how he could have reliably done so, given the frequently rambling, run-on nature of the Book of Mormon text. This is especially problematic in the didactic portions of the text (such as those used by Hilton), which have a highly oral, sermonic quality to them that defies punctuation and sentence diagramming. (A good example of this problem is Royal Skousen's recent "original text" publication, the work of a brilliant text-critic who nevertheless does an abominable job of punctuating the text.)

Peace,

-Chris

P.S. I was surprised to see you say you "think" it's good to interact with me again. I'm not sure what I did to warrant that reaction, but I'm sorry for whatever it was. Maybe you just meant that you're not sure if we've interacted in the past?