Benjamin McGuire wrote: And yet he fails to deal with the issue of the circular logic particularly in this case.
In other words, you have to make a whole seried of assumptions to include all of this together in a single argument. Which is fine if you accept those assumptions, but isn't if you don't. You can't, for example, use the similarities of these narratives to bolster claims of the reliability of these Spalding witnesses while at the same time using the Spalding witnesses to bolster claims that you are right in comparing the texts.
Ben I don't see anyone using the parallels of the discovery narratives between Spalding's Ms and Smith's later account as bolstering the reliability of the Spalding witnesses. If it does I'm failing to understand why.
Before this thread, I was unaware of the discovery narrative parallel between the Roman Story and Smith's account. But it's now for me another piece of data further strengthening the S/R theory and quite a relatively strong one by the way. If there was no disc. narr. parallel, I'd still think the Spalding witness statement were reliable.
But isn't this what is happening here? I think that you are ignoring a very large body of literature which supports both a competing and exclusive theory of production for the Book of Mormon. Has Roger adequately addressed Dan Vogel's comments?
Well I participated slightly and read Dan Vogel's perspective in a thread on this board in Celestial and I didn't find his arguments to discount Spalding witnesses ...a good one.
From my perspective, as never Mormon individual, never religious for that matter...it makes no difference to me if Smith wrote the Book of Mormon on his own or Spalding's work was used. And to most non-believers it would make little difference. If the evidence pointed strongly to a Smith alone..then that would be fine with myself and I'm sure with exmormon Spalding theoriest. You bring up Dan Vogel probably because he's an exmormon historian, so I suppose that you think gives greater credence to the Smith alone theory than having a Mormon believer argue that perspective. But not only did I find Vogel not give adequate justification for dismissing Spalding witnesses but I noted when he participated on RFM to give his perspective the majority there were not in agreement with him. Now it so happens there are quite a few Spalding theorist there. But rather than bring up Vogel, Ben, feel free to argue his points, bringing up his name does no good, at least not for me.
I focused on that issue specifically because, as you yourself noted, there are no statements from Nehemiah King. N. King cannot be effectively used to support claims of borrowing or plagiarism. Which is directly relevant to the discussion here of parallels (at least as far as it has evolved). Realistically, it has no real value to the real discussion which is over the significance of the parallels suggested between the Spalding Roman Manuscript and one of Joseph's narratives of the discovery of the Gold Plates.
You set up a post directed to me specifically with the intent to bring up the fact that there is no signed statement by N. King. and that was your focus. I believe the reason N. King came up was because of the draft letter evidence which points to Aaron Wright likely making a statement to Hurlbut that the M.S. Roman story was not the one he had referenced in his earlier statement. I believe the point was that there were likely 2 Spalding historical manuscripts..that although the discovery narrative may have been duplicated by him in 2 similar stories because they dealt with the same subject matter of the historical past of Indians that the content matter and style of language may have differed fairly significantly enough to appreciate the Roman story could not have been plagiarized from.
So there was a connection and I'll put it in point form
- speculation that Book of Mormon plagiarized from a spalding manuscript based upon witnesses's statements
- evidence points to 2 similar Spalding historical manuscripts
- likely Spalding duplicated or wrote a very similar disc. narr. for both..because one was not meant for publication and was a reworked version of the other
- 1833 Hurlbut hands over Spalding MS. to Howe, likely Smith never saw it ..there's no evidence that he did
- 1838..Smith gives a detailed discovery narrative of finding plates remarkably similar to Roman story..which was lost but resurfaced 1884..lever used, stone box.,hidden ancient historical find etc
Hypothesis: Smith in 1838 had in his possession a Spalding manuscript, unlikely to be Roman story which Howe had. It also is unlikely that Smith was aware of any disc. narr in detail of Roman story and that wasn't public knowledge. So Smith likely had another manuscript the one witnesses remembered called Manuscript Found about lost Jews coming to America. I believe Hurlbut had a working copy and ended up giving it to Smith. I think Smith feeling confident that no other copy of Manuscript Found would surface..felt confident is using the Spalding's storyline as in M.F.
Without the S/R hypothesis, and without the data supporting that hypothesis, the parallels may be coincidences, but as evidence accumulates those parallels statistically become less likely to be mere coincidences.
But this is only the case if you can prove the S/R hypothesis without circularly referencing this borrowing. Otherwise you simply produce a structure made of cards ...
No that's not the case Ben. One doesn't have to prove the S.R hypothesis. The S/R hypothesis is inductively arrived at. The S/R hypothesis does not need the disc. narrative parallel. But because an usual parallel exists which is not likely to happen coincidentally, the odds are extemely small given that the S/R theory came before the disc. narr. parallel, so it's not a matter of searching the world's texts to find a similar parallel it's a matter of being limited to a suspect author who Smith and company are accused of plagiarizing from and low and behold later when quite possibly Smith appreciated no Manuscript Found would surface he could freely plagiarize from for his version of discovery of plates. It's not circumlar reasoning Ben, which deductive reasoning is to some extent, but rather it's inductive reasoning. We don't have conclusive evidence so we look at all the evidence and hypothesize to a best fit scenario.
Right - and all that matters is how it appears to you, right? There isn't really enough exact words to make your point stick though.
Ben your hypthesis that the discovery narrative Smith gave in 1838, is merely coincidentally strikingly similar to the Roman story, despite that since soon after the Book of Mormon publication in 1830 ...the Spalding plagiarism theory had been circulating...is what doesn't stick. Your coincidental hypothesis is weaker to explain the data than the one from the very beginning before evidence was even gathered..that a Spalding work had been plagiarized to write the Book of Mormon.
I love the mythical manuscript. Roger, of course, just suggested that Joseph was merely lazy. Why do you think he needed to use Spalding to describe his own discovery?
First, do you think Smith related an actual personal discovery or a fictional one?
I don't for one second believe it's actual given the data and it being too extraordinary..so it's fictional.
I don't think at the time of publishing the Book of Mormon Smith had seen M.F. otherwise he likely would have developed a more indepth disc. narr. I think Rigdon gave him a reworked copy which didn't include Spalding's discovery narrative details.
in my opinion..Hurlbut obtains both M.s. & M.F. stop in Palmyra on his way back to Painsville, tells newspaper editor P.Tucker to inform readers he has succeeded in accomplishing his mission.
Get's back to Paineville, shows a few of the Citizen's Com. briefly what he has. Next day at public meeting brags he's going to "kill Smith" meaning kill Mormonism. He gets sued and I believed threatened unless he hands over M.F...probably offered a financial reward if he does.
There is no incentive to give M.F. over to Howe, financial agreement already finalized, no additional money if he does and if he does likely his life is in danger.
He hands over M.F. to Smith, keeps MS. because that is evidence he brought something back which he had made public knowledge by informing Tucker and publically in Painesville. By handing over M.S. to Howe, and by showing to witnesses the M.S...there is also confirmation that the manuscript was not plagiarized from..which would satisfy Smith. Hurlbut can collect reward from Smith, and his life won't be in danger.
With anti-Mormon material such as S/R theory circulating, there is pressure on Smith to be specific with his account of Mormonism which includes vision and how he discovered plates. The disc. narr idea though comes from reading M.F. not form him. 1838 writes about vision and discovery of plates, figures there is no other M.F. circulating ..he had working copy and he knows either from Rigdon or by his own doing that the good copy version is also not available. So he figures, the Spalding narrative would be good to use, unaware the the M.S. that Hurlbut gave Howe contained a strikingly similar one.
It wasn't a question of need. It was a matter of convenience. And the narrative which was from his perspective was fictional anyhow matched with the premise of the Book of Mormon which was plagiarized Spalding's M.F.
And, of course those witnesses had to backpedal some. After all, it was clear to everyone that the Spalding manuscript didn't use names like Nephi, or Lehi, or Moroni, or even Zarahemla.
Ben your arguement here fails. The witnesses said they had the Book of Mormon and had look at and/or read it before giving their statement. Hurlbut the one you think was coaching them was very familiar with the Book of Mormon storyline. So witnesses mentioning specific names in Book of Mormon proves nothing.
Lehi, as you said was a minor character but it's quite conceivable that in the first part of Spalding's book that Lehi played the biggest part and it was the first part that Harris lost.
Perhaps, having been caught in a lie and were simply covering their backsides ...
There's too many of them to all be lying. And they had more credibility than Smith. Hurlbut had collected over 80 statements in Palmyra testifying to Smith's poor quality character traits. Other than Hurlbut these witnesses were not anti Mormon. They didn't approach Hurlbut, he approached them. The one who could be consider anti Mormoni ..Hurlbut ends up giving Howe evidence which goes against the S/R theory, if he was so antiMormon he would have been better off to destroy the M.S. And no one ever complained that Hurlbut misrepresented them, and no one ever said who knew these witnesses that they weren't trustworthy or they were simply fabicating their statements.
It’s just a little too coincidental that the very same author's work that Smith and Rigdon are conjectured to have plagiarized from in order to write the Book of Mormon, happens to have a strikingly similar discovery narrative to a manuscript Smith probably never saw.
quote]Did you actually read this after you typed it? Why does it need to be a conjecture? I mean, if we have both texts, certainly you ought to be able to demonstrate plagiarism, and not just conjecture it, right?
It works like this Ben when you don't have conclusive proof, then you must use inductive reasoning, which involves conjecturing.
by the way, the Smith alone theory is conjecture...there's no conclusive proof that Smith was the sole author of the Book of Mormon and of course no conclusive proof of god and angels involved...that too is conjecture.
It is still funny to me that you think that Joseph had to have had access to this manuscript to come up with the discovery narrative.
No I didn't say he had to, in fact I said he could have easily come up with a similar narrative..but when you had the other data, it points to plagiarism being the likely hypothesis, not Smith developing his own dis. narr.
It should be intuitively obvious, that in evaluating data, one can not simply look at one piece to the exclusion of other relevant information.
But this is exactly what you are doing. You are suggesting that because it appears to you to be strikingly similar, it must be so. But in fact, its not that strikingly similar - to the point that you have to include all of the other data just to try and make an argument. But, this isn't sound reasoning. Its circular, subjective, and doesn't get you to the point of actually comparing the texts to see how similar they really are.
Ben it is strikingly similar. An objective individual would acknowledge that. You hypothesize coincidence, others don't think that adequately accounts for the data.
Nor does it even come close to attempting to answer the questions of why it was necessary that Joseph used the text in his own narrative (and that particular text - instead of the other mound discovery narratives that Vogel for example points out).
No one said it was necessary for Smith to use that particular discovery narrative, they are saying it was available for him to use, he obviously wasn't worred that a Spalding dis. narr. would surface, it doesn't look like he was familiar with the disc. narr in the Roman story. As far as some other narrative which Vogel points out..you'd have to link to it or give details.