Roman Story & Book of Mormon Similarities

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Karl61 writes:

Did he write in in English or French and how many words were in only Around the World in 80 days and the Book of Mormon.

Oh, good point on the French issue. I was using an early translation. Well there are other texts to use that provide similar numbers. As far as the other, it kind of becomes an irrelevant issue don't you think? The more texts we add, the smaller that number is going to get. And, it misses the point that a majority of words in the Book of Mormon (my math was off - 5,500 - 2,250 = 3,250 not 2,250) are not found in Spalding's known material. So, the fact that we come up with a few words when comparing a small number of texts doesn't seem to me to be all that surprising. The question comes up as to why this kind of figure is considered important. Does Dale present evidence to show that this is unusual?

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Marg writes:

You know there is no statement from N. King, you probably know that by the time Hurlbut began gathering signed statements Nehemiah was dead.

Yet you call this evidence.

"the first time that Mr Hyde a Mormon Preacher from Kirtland preached in the centre School house in this place the Hon Nehmiah King attended as soon as Hyde had got through King left the house and said that Hide had preached from the writings of S Spalding"

Heresay, right?

This is great - you know, I call you on the fact that you are using an unverifiable claim as evidence, and you suggest that I am being dishonest?

You simply are not intellectually honest Ben, because you have an entirely different standard of critical evaluation for Book of Mormon witness statements as you do for Spalding witness statements. That inconsistency shows your lack of intellectual honesty.

Let's get this straight. I am not talking about faith. I am not talking about belief. I am talking about how a single theory could be proven or disproven. I haven't mentioned the witnesses of the Book of Mormon. I think they are irrelevant to the question at hand. In fact, it doesn't take belief in the Book of Mormon to challenge the Spalding theory as evidenced by Vogel, Palmer, et al. The theory can be challenged without appealing to some kind of faith tradition.

I haven't suggested that the only way to understand the Book of Mormon is through some kind of faith process. What I have done is to specifically attempt to deal with claims of plagiarism by Joseph Smith from Spalding - and this question can be answered without having to make claims of ancient origins for the Book of Mormon. In other words, you are doing what I have had happen to me elsewhere many times - you are trying to invoke the angel in what has to this point been an argument about literary concerns. And to be quite honest, I have no desire to talk about the angel.

But you discount Spalding witnesses, and evidence such as Nehemiah King because unlike the nice neat package of the Book of Mormon witnesses who all signed that prepared statement for them, the Spalding data is not all packaged nice and neat.

But Nehemiah isn't a witness. You don't have anything by Nehemiah. What you have is a later statement made by someone else containing their recollections - in a way that is inseperably connected to Howe. So the evidence from N. King comes from 1833. When quibbling over dates, how could you fail to neglect to mention this?

Whether or not the 3 witnesses are telling the truth is irrelevant to the question of whether or not Joseph Smith used Spalding. This is nothing more than a distraction. And it isn't a good one at that. Vogel, for example, who is not LDS, is not a believer, also challenges the Spalding theory - and does so without an appeal to the three witnesses - just as I am doing now. Let's get back to the real subject shall we?

Ben

[_marg]

Wade while the existing Spalding manuscript obviously was not plagiarized from to write the Book of Mormon that doesn't preclude using it for data which would pertain to the Spalding theory. Obviously if there is one author of 2 historical novels it would be likely that there might be some similarities especially if one was written for amusement purposes and the other for publication but they had similar themes..and there is good reason to believe that is the case.

The discovery narrative of finding an ancient historical record makes for an interestng opening in a fictious novel. It makes for absurdity when presented as nonfiction. It makes for absurdity when J. Smith uses such a strikingly similar account, but in which he doesn't just stumble across this ancient record he has an angel directing him to it, and has God helping him translate from an unknown to this day language and wouldn't you know it, the physical evidence of those ancient records the plates are gone..taken back to heaven by an angel, because I guess God or that angel is against having evidence available which would support those extraordinary claims Smith and Company made.

Since from the inception of Mormonism...there has been speculation of the Spalding theory, the narrative discovery similarities between Spalding's work and Smith's account, is just another piece of data to add to the bigger picture of the S/R theory. If Smith plagiarized using Spalding's work, and if Spalding's work that Smith may have plagiarized from had a discovery narrative which is likely given that the Roman story has one which we know for a fact...then it appears that Smith likely got the idea from a work by Spalding. It simply is another connection, another piece of data to be considered in developing a big picture theory.

[_karl61]

why is Marge so easy to follow and those who don't agree with her, not.

[_marg]

why is Marge so easy to follow and those who don't agree with her, not.

LOl. You are setting them up for a good punch line.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

marg writes:

It makes for absurdity when J. Smith uses such a strikingly similar account,

It's not strikingly similar.

Since the inception of Mormonism there have been many theories. You simply have latched on to one of them.

[_Jersey Girl]

Essentially, what some of you are suggesting is, we take an extant manuscript that we each agree wasn't plagerized, and which we agree isn't written in the same style as the Book of Mormon, and rather than using proven scholarly methods of textual critical analysis or even wordprint studies, cherry-pick phrases from the extant manuscript in hopes of determining if merely the historical portions of the Book of Mormon was plagerized from a non-extant, hypothesized book allegedly written by the same author as the extant manuscript.

Furthermore, you propose that we use the same extant manuscript to determine if the discovery narrative for the Book of Mormon, which, unlike the extant manuscript, was not included in the Book of Mormon, but published separately and 8 years after the Book of Mormon and a few years after the accusations of plagerism first surfaced and testimonies taken, to determine if the discovery narrative was plagerized from the hypothesize manuscript that is conjectured to have a similar discovery narrative as the extant manuscript.

As mindboggling as this approach may seem to those of us who think it wise to employ scholarly and proven textual critical methodologies, we are then treated to this boards version of the Twilight Zone when some of those advocating the above insipid approach portend to style themselves as the ones who truly are "seekers of truth", while decrying those of us with opposing views are "intellectually dishonest". Up is down, and down is up.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

The Roman Story/Oberlin Manuscript WAS used for wordprint analysis. It produced signals for Solomon Spalding in the Book of Mormon demonstrated in the Jockers et all (2008) wordprint study.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Jersey Girl writes:

The Roman Story/Oberlin Manuscript WAS used for wordprint analysis. It produced signals for Solomon Spalding in the Book of Mormon demonstrated in the Jockers et all (2008) wordprint study.

No, it didn't do this. I think you have some misunderstandings about what the Jockers et al study was able to demonstrate.

[_marg]

Yet you call this evidence.

Ben do you consider the 3 witness Book of Mormon statement to be evidence and if so what is it evidence of?

[_Benjamin McGuire]

The statements of the 3 witnesses would probably be evidence as to what they believed regarding the gold plates and the other events they discuss.

That's not the issue here, where we are talking about texts, comparing texts, and charges of plagiarism, etc.