Hiding in Plain Sight: The Origins of the Book of Mormon

[_Simon Southerton]

I think this guy is onto something.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hid ... f-mormon/#!

An excerpt

"...based on my years of extensive research and discoveries, Holy War provides what may be the most comprehensive collection of parallel narratives bridging the Book of Mormon to Bunyan’s texts: battles between light- and dark-skinned combatants to the point of annihilation, siege warfare and battle strategies, seditious factions and civil strife, secret cabals attempting to seize government control, righteous men who are heroic captains of war, and even a personal visitation of Jesus Christ and his establishment of a righteous society. The parallel narratives are ubiquitous and systemic, appearing with sustained consistency throughout the entire narrative of the Book of Mormon. Indeed, reading the Book of Mormon is tantamount to reading John Bunyan’s many works condensed into a single volume."

Powerful stuff.

[_sunstoned]

This is a good find Simon. The linked information is very interesting.

[Guest]

I just looked up Pilgrim’s Progress, and the very first sentence contains the phrase “I dreamed a dream.” Same thing Lehi says in Nephi 1:8. Didn’t Mormon scholars used to consider that as evidence of Hebraic phrasing? Um. Apparently, more like Bunyanic phrasing.


That article is from 2012, and I recall hearing about that PP connection before, but yeah, that really should be explored more. I wonder if the Johnsons (who did the study that found phrasing parallels in The Late War, First Book of Napoleon, etc.) ever looked at Bunyan’s work.

[_Kishkumen]

His argument looks pretty persuasive at first glance. This is a very exciting development. One would think that this should have received more attention by now. I am tempted to say it has been practically ignored, but I am not well traveled enough in Mormon Studies circles to know whether it is being discussed already.

While martyrdom narratives are common in the Christian tradition (as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs attests), no other narrative follows Bunyan’s variation of the story in all of these fourteen elements as closely as Smith’s account of Abinadi. Furthermore, the parallels tying the stories together occur on multiple levels, both in the underlying structural framework and in the specific language used to express ideas and events (which accounts for the unusual appearance of a sixteenth-century, Protestant reconfiguration of traditional martyr narratives in the year 148 B.C.E., the time of the Prophet Abinadi’s purported martyrdom in the Book of Mormon). In comparative terms, the stories of Abinadi and Faithful are far more similar to each other, both in content and expression, than, say, West Side Story is to its narrative source in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

[_Physics Guy]

I seem to recall that Bunyan was enormously popular in Smith's time, and Wikipedia seems to suggest that this was not so much a long tradition as a Romantic boom for Bunyan in the early 1800s. If so, then not only would Smith have been familiar with all Bunyan's themes. He would also have known that his audience knew and admired Bunyan's themes, without yet being bored with them, and would therefore be well prepared to receive a revelation that followed them. Even if he didn't think that through consciously, the good con artist's instinct for popular expectations would have told him that a Bunyan-esque story had the right stuff to go over big.

[_Maksutov]

For me this gives weight to the idea of the Book of Mormon as inspired fiction. If Smith was producing a new Pilgrim's Progress sort of allegorical work, mixed with speculations about native Americans, it could be that the supernatural backstory was added later, with the attendant confusion of props, processes and events.

[_Bret Ripley]

This one may be too easy for anyone familiar with the Rube Goldberg School of Apologetics: just include Bunyan in Skousen's Ghost Committee and Bob's your uncle.

[_Stem]

if you type Bunyan as a search over at Mormon Interpreter you get these results:

Too Little or Too Much Like the Bible? A Novel Critique of the Book of Mormon Involving David and the Psalms
Jeff Lindsay | May 25, 2018 | 24 Replies

Barlow on Book of Mormon Language: An Examination of Some Strained Grammar
Stanford Carmack | November 17, 2017 | 13 Replies

The Great and Spacious Book of Mormon Arcade Game: More Curious Works from Book of Mormon Critics
Jeff Lindsay | January 13, 2017 | 6 Replies

Turning to the Lord With the Whole Heart: The Doctrine of Repentance in the Bible and the Book of Mormon
Loren Blake Spendlove and Tina Spendlove | June 10, 2016 | 3 Replies

The one of these that discusses Bunyan most is Jeff Lyndsay's article The Great and Spaious Book of Mormon Arcade Game: More Curious Works from Book of Mormon Critics.

We find this reasoning:

I mention this because an important observation about the language of the Book of Mormon — not a theory that we Mormons need to buttress our faith but a fact-based observation that we are struggling to understand — is that much (not all) of the language of the Book of Mormon shows strong apparent influence from Early Modern English in ways that are not readily derived from the kjv Bible, almost as if there were some form of tight control in the translation to give an English text that was often moved away from the English of Joseph’s day or from kjv English into something slightly earlier and strangely different, yet plain and familiar, readily understandable to English speakers (unlike some Early Modern English). With this came grammar that is bad by modern standards but acceptable in Early Modern English, a story that has been well covered before.151 For now, the important thing is that “straight and narrow,” though related to the kjv, is not a direct kjv phrase, but was an established phrase before Bunyan came along. While its presence in the Book of Mormon may come from Joseph’s own vernacular, as we might expect with a translation, it is also consistent
[Page 205]
with the unexpected observation that there are many instances of text in the Book of Mormon showing Early Modern English influence.

I know Carmack and Skousen have insisted that it's nearly impossible for Joseph to have found these types of phrases thus it lends support to the idea of translation, but I'd wonder if as these studies get fleshed out, more get involved and all of that, if we find out most if not all of the Book of Mormon's Early Modern English phrases came from works read prominently in Joseph's day? I think we'll see them steer further away from a tight control int he process at the very least.

[_Kishkumen]

The one of these that discusses Bunyan most is Jeff Lyndsay's article The Great and Spaious Book of Mormon Arcade Game: More Curious Works from Book of Mormon Critics.

Thanks for sharing these, Stem. I noticed that William Davis appears in the comments of the article above to correct Jeff for calling the author of Pilgrim's Progress Paul Bunyan.

[_Stem]

The one of these that discusses Bunyan most is Jeff Lyndsay's article The Great and Spaious Book of Mormon Arcade Game: More Curious Works from Book of Mormon Critics.

Thanks for sharing these, Stem. I noticed that William Davis appears in the comments of the article above to correct Jeff for calling the author of Pilgrim's Progress Paul Bunyan.

lol.

I remember seeing this article before, but what caught me this time, was Stanford Carmack's work might be more useful than I thought. Perhaps as it grows and expands we'll be able to find the sources of the Book of Mormon. What Carmack is doing is helping to identify phrases from Bunyan and others. Carmack's conclusion has remained that Joseph could not have come up with is Early Modern English elemetns because publications of his era didn't contain it. Well, Pilgram's Progress was front and center for him. Could it not contain Early Modern English? Aapparently so.

Davis says:

Bunyan wrote upwards of 60 books, tracts, and pamphlets, including Grace Abounding, A Few Sighs from Hell, Holy War and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, and these texts provide extensive narrative parallels to the Book of Mormon, often containing unique characteristics shared only by Bunyan and Smith.

I guess we'll see how this all unfolds. But I find this to be a very intriguing piece. I hope to see others build on it.