Roman Story & Book of Mormon Similarities

[_karl61]

Ben writes:

"And the point is? The translation was made in 1830 right? The KJV was widely available. In fact, as I pointed out to Marg, a translation of the biblical texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in the early 1990s used the KJV almost exclusively to translate them (varying in less than 5 percent of the text from the KJV). There were reasons this was done. It turned out to be quite useful for the purpose of that project and was apparently a measured decision - with those reasons in mind. The point is, though, that you are making some fundamental mistakes in trying to distinguish between the source text and the translation of that source text."

Please tell me who this was done by? Was the person or team Christian?

[_mikwut]

Ben,

I am sure it won't be effective, but correct me where I am wrong. Couldn't you use marg's post to answer Roger's inquiry and doesn't end up doing the exact opposite of what she is intending?

regards, mikwut

[_marg]

Ben I just took a look at your web site. On it you say

Donofrio suggests that Joseph used the following sources in the production of the Book of Mormon:

1) Mercy Otis Warren's History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805

2) David Ramsay’s History of the American Revolution, 1789

3) David Ramsay’s Life of George Washington

4) Samuel Adams, American Independence speech to the State House in Philadelphia on August 1, 1776.

5) Thomas Jefferson’s first and second inaugural addresses.

6) Thomas Paine, Common Sense in 1776.

7) Samuel McClintock's sermon on the New Hampshire constitution, given June 3, 1784.

8) Abraham Keteltas, a sermon on October 5, 1775 entitled, God Arising and Pleading His People's Cause.

9) Samuel Sherwood, The Church's Flight into the Wilderness, a sermon delivered on January 17, 1776.

10) Timothy Dwight, from his sermon The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis (1789)

11) Jonathon Edwards from assorted sermons.

12) George Whitefield from assorted sermons.

13) Jonathon Edwards, Jr. from assorted sermons.

Nowhere is addressed the question of how likely it was that Joseph was exposed directly to these sources.

A couple of questions and points.

1)Do you think given the extensive list of parallels, that is exact word strings that Donofrio shows between the Book of Mormon and the various books you mention above...that those parallels indicate borrowing from those for the Book of Mormon?

2) I've missed it in the my reading, can you tell me where Tom says that Smith must have borrowed those parallels to write the Book of Mormon?

3) Your argument that Smith didn't have access or there is no proof he had access to those books is not an argument again the S/R theory ...in which the parallels support it because parallels indicate Spalding borrowed from various authors ..definitely from Warren and the Book of Mormon borrows from Warrenas indicated by parallels.. So it likely the Warren's borrowing in the came from being inbedded in Spalding's writing which carried over to the Book of Mormon. But the person who was an avid reader, good memory and interested in history was Rigdon. So it's also possible he may noticed Spalding's borrows and added some of his own..from authors writing about same theme Am. Rev...although borrowings could have come solely via Spalding.

[_Roger]

Ben:

I am still waiting on the list of texts which you will agree meet your criteria. It seemed to me that your criteria excluded all other texts. I might have misread you though.

Any pre-1838 text that parallels Smith's 1838 discovery narrative will work so long as the author of that text was accused by several---shall we say at least 8?--witnesses of writing material that was the basis for the Book of Mormon.

I have stated it before, but apparently it bears repeating.... I do not doubt that you can offer up texts that have parallels. The problem is that really says nothing about the parallels we are discussing here. In other words, I do not deny that parallels sometimes happen by coincidence. All I am stating is that in this case it is too coincidental. Why? Because we find parallels in a text that was written by an author people had already been associating with Joseph Smith for years before Smith wrote his discovery narrative.

It is simply not good enough for you to claim the parallels are not significant because they are not significant to you. That is a judgment call. You can state that the parallels are not significant for you, but they are significant for others.

It is not good enough for you to state that the witnesses are not credible because you don't think they're credible. Other people do.

Yes, but as I keep insisting, those parallels are meaningless - there is no case for special significance. And I went through the first several one at a time, and explained why they weren't significant. For you to keep beating me on the head with the fact that I see the parallels too is inappropriate, since I certainly don't value you them the same way that you do

Of course you don't value them. That is patently obvious. I never stated that you do. I merely point out that you acknowledge that they are indeed parallels.

I can use Caps too. EVEN IF THERE ARE PARALLELS, THEY DON'T HAVE TO COME FROM SPALDING.

Yes but the point is only Spalding was previously associated with Joseph Smith. As far as I am aware, only Spalding. There are certainly parallels to View of the Hebrews, for example, but people in 1833 weren't accusing Joseph Smith of borrowing from Ethan Smith. They were accusing him of borrowing from Spalding.

So, no, as you say, the parallels do not have to come from Spalding. They don't have to come from Ethan Smith. There doesn't have to be any parallels at all. But there are. And they exist between Smith & Spalding. A fact you can attempt to downplay, but you can't deny.

Sure - but that doesn't mean that it has to automatically come from Spalding. As Dan Vogel pointed out, there are plenty of traditions of finding stone boxes in indian mounds. In fact, there is even a category of indian mounds referred to as "stone-box graves". You don't get a free pass on Spalding.

Fine. Putting aside the testimony for the moment, why don't you cite what you believe is the best example of parallels to Smith's discovery narrative and we'll compare it with Spalding's and see if one has closer parallels.

THE PARALLELS ARE SO GENERIC AND AMBIGUOUS AS TO BE ABLE TO SAY QUITE EASILY THAT THE ONE DOES NOT HAVE TO COME FROM THE OTHER.

Seems to me that is a judgment call. Are you saying you can merely examine two texts and determine whether one comes from the other or not?

Not the slightest. If we were to apply this same logic here, then we could claim dependance between any two texts where we could put together a list of parallels.

No Ben, we could not. Because my criteria requires that one of the text's authors had to have already been associated with the primary work of the other author at the time the second author wrote the piece under consideration. I know you want to ignore that, but the concept really is not that difficult.

Because witnesses told us prior to 1838 there is a connection between Spalding and Smith.

And if they were wrong?

Now see finally you ask a fair question. If they are wrong, then it is an amazing coincidence that Smith would produce a discovery narrative in 1838 that closely parallels that of Spalding. If they are wrong, I would have to say that Smith writing his d.n. in 1838 the way he did is just really, really bizarre. That's one of the reasons I don't think they are wrong. But let's think about this from both of the other points of view....

1. Believer's

According to this perspective, there really were plates and Smith was telling the truth in 1838. Given that--as you love to point out--parallels between texts can happen randomly, we might expect some minor parallels to crop up between the DN and one or two otherwise not-connected-to-Smith texts. But it would truly be remarkable that parallels should crop up coincidentally between the genuine DN of Smith and a fictional Spalding work written previous to it, precisely because of the prior accusations of a connection between the two. You would have to believe--and in fact this is what you want me to believe--that not only are the parallels coincidental but the fact that their author was previously associated with Smith is also coincidental. Hence the convergence of two coincidences.

2. Smith-alone skeptic

Here we would have the same problem of postulating converging coincidences, but with the added difficulty of understanding that there never were any plates to begin with. This position is even more difficult to defend since it allows for the DN to be manufactured. So not only does this position recognize that Smith had to come up with a DN from somewhere, it must also maintain that the one author that people who were there claimed was indeed associated with Smith was in fact not so associated. As you pointed out, Ben, such a person--like say Vogel--is quite open to plagiarism. In fact, as you also point out, Vogel mentions several different possibilities. And yet he still somehow manages to exclude the one possibility that people who were there claimed had something to do with this! I don't see the justification. How does Vogel deal with the same converging parallels without the benefit of a genuine DN to believe in? I don't know, but apparently by simply brushing them off like the believer does.

I think you put too much faith in these witnesses as opposed to acutally critically examining the evidence which is the texts.

That may indeed be a fair criticism. I will give you that. I might "put too much faith in these witnesses" however, my acceptance of the S/R claims goes deeper than merely resting entirely on the backs of the witnesses. But I will be candid--as I have stated before--if you can seriously damage the credibility of the witnesses, then I think you can do serious damage to the Spalding/Rigdon claims. The trouble is, Brodie's type of reasoning--which is simply what you and mikwut are parroting--does not seriously damage their credibility. Frankly I have seen no good reason to reject the testimony of the S/R witnesses.

You want the witnesses to be right.

Correct. I do. Because S/R explains a lot of things.

You have every faith that they are.

I wouldn't put it that way. Instead I would say, at this point I have seen no good reason not to trust them.

And so you think that really anything that you find in the texts must confirm those witnesses.

No that's really not accurate at all, which is why I keep pointing out that you see the same things in the texts that I see (parallels) we just disagree on how much meaning to ascribe to them.

Well, I happen to disagree.

Obviously. And to my knowledge the world is not ending.

What's also fascinating to me is that wherever the idea came from (that there was plagiarism), it is clear that ever since people have been trying to come up with evidence to prove it. In other words, you are actively looking for this evidence. Why didn't anyone in 1838 point out that that there was this similarity between Joseph's discovery narrative and the Spalding manuscript? Surely that's not that much longer than 1833 to remember ....

Well maybe you have forgotten that Howe had the Roman story. He had printed his book in 1834 and I'm not sure of the timeline but somewhere in there he sold-out and moved on. The Roman story did not resurface again until 1884. And people then were focused on whether the Roman story paralleled the Book of Mormon to the extent claimed by the witnesses. Obviously it does not, so that fact was seized upon and no one really considered much about the discovery narratives until later... Dale knows this history better than I, but Dale may have been one of the first ones to notice similarities.

I'm about out of time, but I want to address this before I sign off for tonight:

Neither do I. The question is did Mormon or Nephi? I would imagine you would answer sure because they had taken scrolls from Jerusalem. But they sure wouldn't be quoting the mistakes of an apostate King's translators that hadn't even been born yet

And the point is? The translation was made in 1830 right? The KJV was widely available. In fact, as I pointed out to Marg, a translation of the biblical texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in the early 1990s used the KJV almost exclusively to translate them (varying in less than 5 percent of the text from the KJV). There were reasons this was done. It turned out to be quite useful for the purpose of that project and was apparently a measured decision - with those reasons in mind. The point is, though, that you are making some fundamental mistakes in trying to distinguish between the source text and the translation of that source text.

Of course the KJV was widely available but you know as well as I that the translation witnesses claim that every word--every character--came from God and that God himself would not allow the translation to proceed until he had corrected the errors. (This of course raises the question of why would there be thousands of grammatical errors in a text the witnesses are claiming was corrected by God, but I'm not even going there at this point). The point is that if God gave the translation to Smith in exactly the manner claimed by the witnesses--sentences would appear in the stone and God provides the translation--then there should be no Bible referencing at all. The source text is allegedly sitting there, written on plates in reformed Egyptian and God is allegedly translating it as it comes off the plates. So even when Nephi is allegedly "quoting" Isaiah, he's not quoting King James, he's quoting Isaiah.

But King James' translators erred by writing "seraphims" when they should have written "seraphim" because seraphim is already plural. Same thing with "cherubims." It's like saying "geeses" or "mices."

If the witnesses are telling the truth then God had the words "seraphims" and "cherubims" appear in the stone. Most LDS--even LDS apologists, are willing to agree that God is not responsible for so basic and unnecessary an error, so they agree that the KJB was referenced for that section of the Book of Mormon.

But this does not agree with the witnesses at all. The witnesses unanimously claim that every word came from God and Smith merely read what he saw. Skousen calls this "ironclad control." He's right. Anything less and you're admitting you think the witnesses are wrong or at least that material got into the Book of Mormon that did not appear in the stone.

When you open the door to that, you open the door to plagiarism, and when you open the door to plagiarism you open the door to Spalding.

The only way I can see that you as a believer can avoid that is to conclude that God provided the translation to Smith mistakes and all and to argue that even though it looks like plagiarism, it really isn't. You seem comfortable arguing that, so I would expect you to take that approach, and yet you surprise me a bit by acknowledging "obvious quoting of the Bible" and "copying the King James text."

In so doing you are going against the unanimous testimony of the Book of Mormon translation eyewitnesses.

But Vogel--in my opinion--has an equally difficult time, if not more so, because he already accepts that plagiarism is occuring all over the Book of Mormon text. He is fine with plagiarism from VOTH or Swedenborg or whatever---so long as it's anyone but Spalding.

So what logical reason would Vogel have for rejecting plagiarism from Spalding when he accepts it from everyone else? I honestly don't know.

Ben, I've got to sign off... I know we're in adverserial roles, but, for what it's worth, I wish you the best.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Marg writes:

Then Tom Donofrio points out that Warren likely borrowed from David Ramsay, because she often uses exact phrases of his.

I would agree that Warren likely was influenced by Ramsay.

I don't agree with the rest of his material. In fact, I have already linked to a preliminary essay hosted on Dale's website where I deal with Donofrio's claims. What I did do was to randomly choose a series of contemporary texts, and then find the same parallels (at least the first several) repeated in most of these texts. Because the phrases which Donofrio points out are quite common in early 19th century literature and in particular in early 19th century literature dealing with warfare, they aren't particularly noteworthy to be found in the Book of Mormon. In fact, from a lexical standpoint, the Book of Mormon is no more closely related to any of the texts which Donofrio uses than it is to an English translation of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and this includes its relationship to Ethan Smith's book, and the Spalding manuscript as well.

There is no evidence that the author of the Book of Mormon borrowed heavily from Warren. Again, it is a problem with your flawed assumptions on how texts actually are, an how they are related to each other. One of the interesting issues is that we can keep adding texts to this list - if all we have to do is find parallels, its easy to do. And shoot, if we take Donofrio's method, and start looking at single words for parallels (which he does in some instances), well, the Book of Mormon has a vocabulary of more than 5,000 words, and I expect that nearly all of them can be found in contemporary accounts .... but lets just keep up with the parallelomania.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Karl61 writes:

Please tell me who this was done by? Was the person or team Christian?

Why don't you look it up ... it was published by a scholarly publication group, and under the authority of the Israeli Antiquities department.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

marg writes:

Do you think given the extensive list of parallels, that is exact word strings that Donofrio shows between the Book of Mormon and the various books you mention above...that those parallels indicate borrowing from those for the Book of Mormon?

No, it doesn't indicate this. Most of his parallels are not exact, most are short (some are a single word long), and most are actually quite common phrases that were used in lots of texts. The best that we could say is that the Book of Mormon draws

3) Your argument that Smith didn't have access or there is no proof he had access to those books is not an argument again the S/R theory ...in which the parallels support it because parallels indicate Spalding borrowed from various authors ..definitely from Warren and the Book of Mormon borrows from Warrenas indicated by parallels.. So it likely the Warren's borrowing in the came from being inbedded in Spalding's writing which carried over to the Book of Mormon. But the person who was an avid reader, good memory and interested in history was Rigdon. So it's also possible he may noticed Spalding's borrows and added some of his own..from authors writing about same theme Am. Rev...although borrowings could have come solely via Spalding.

This is, of course, nothing but pure speculation. Actualy, Smith doesn't need to borrow at all to use these phrases. That is more the core issue. One of the longstanding issues of Book of Mormon criticisms involving parallels is that no one ever does any kind of environmental study. When you can find these words, and phrases, in their various forms in not just one or two books in the 19th century, but in hundreds of them, it really reduces the actual likelihood that borrowing is really going on.

In this case - following your suggests, couldn't we say that it is just as likely that Smith "borrowed" from one of these same authors that you suggest Spalding borrowed from - and that the witnesses simply saw the similar language and made assumptions?

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Roger writews:

Any pre-1838 text that parallels Smith's 1838 discovery narrative will work so long as the author of that text was accused by several---shall we say at least 8?--witnesses of writing material that was the basis for the Book of Mormon.

Ok. So, how many texts does this actually include? You understand, of course, why I am laughing at your suggestion. You go on to say this:

I have stated it before, but apparently it bears repeating.... I do not doubt that you can offer up texts that have parallels.

So, I did make my point. Let's not beat around the bush. You think that somehow these other claims which you have (contested, not proven), priviledge your account. Now, stop asking me about your completely nonsensical challenge.

It is simply not good enough for you to claim the parallels are not significant because they are not significant to you. That is a judgment call. You can state that the parallels are not significant for you, but they are significant for others.

This is what you are saying though. That they are just significant to you. There is no difference. And this is why I suggest that you adopt some formal methodology and criteria for distinguishing between accidental parallels and significant ones.

It is not good enough for you to state that the witnesses are not credible because you don't think they're credible. Other people do.

So what? The problems I listed still remain - and are a reasonable basis to challenge their credibility. Why is it that your witnesses all use the same concepts and even the same language? They all have a connection through Hurlbut. That seems way more than a coincidence, wouldn't you say? And yet you don't want to apply the same standards here as you use with the Book of Mormon/Roman Story. Why not?

Of course you don't value them. That is patently obvious. I never stated that you do. I merely point out that you acknowledge that they are indeed parallels.

Yes, but you will agree with me that finding parallels is nothing special. After all, nearly all texts use the words: and, to, the, is, from, of ... do we think that parallels based on this kind of comparison are signficant? I would suggest that you don't. What is the basis that you use for a parallel that is significant and one that isn't?

Yes but the point is only Spalding was previously associated with Joseph Smith. As far as I am aware, only Spalding. There are certainly parallels to View of the Hebrews, for example, but people in 1833 weren't accusing Joseph Smith of borrowing from Ethan Smith. They were accusing him of borrowing from Spalding.

But this is all irrelevant. The association is irrelevant. You keep thinking that it somehow adds some weight to the argument - but what if they were mistaken (for lots of reasons). And then we still do in fact have reliability issues. You can't keep using these witnesses until you resolve these problems - and simply suggesting that you personally trust them make work for you personally, but it certainly doesn't work for anyone else ....

There doesn't have to be any parallels at all.

It would be unbelieveably rare to find two contemporary texts with no parallels at all. So rare, that given a suitable sample size, I don't think you can do it ...

Fine. Putting aside the testimony for the moment, why don't you cite what you believe is the best example of parallels to Smith's discovery narrative and we'll compare it with Spalding's and see if one has closer parallels.

Because I am not in the business of parallelomania. Actually, I have provided in this thread, and in the article which has been linked, numerous parallels. I don't want to focus on finding more. I want to focus on looking at the ones that you have proposed - that you think are significant. I responded to some of those going from Dale's pages that you linked. Why don't we start there.

The problem of course that I want to avoid is the "my parallels are better than your parallels" - because without some kind of formal method or criteria, its just going to be a subjective argument in any case - and you will have your opinion and I will have mine. Now, if you want to come up with a method or some criteria (at this point, I would be happy to settle for just about anything published in a scholarly publication - to get the discussion moving along), then we can go through this exercise.

Seems to me that is a judgment call. Are you saying you can merely examine two texts and determine whether one comes from the other or not?

This is normally how the process works, yes.

No Ben, we could not. Because my criteria requires that one of the text's authors had to have already been associated with the primary work of the other author at the time the second author wrote the piece under consideration. I know you want to ignore that, but the concept really is not that difficult.

You haven't actually established association. You have established speculation. And this is a completely nonsensical argument. I think you think the concept is worthwhile. But I don't. Perhaps if you actually had a Spalding manuscript with the names Lehi, and Nephi, and Zarahemla in it, it would be different. But you don't. And in fact, no one in 1838 or earlier actually connected Joseph's discovery narrative of 1838 to Spalding. So I am not sure that in this discussion of the Roman Story and the discovery narrative of 1838, that your demands are even necessary.

Now see finally you ask a fair question. If they are wrong, then it is an amazing coincidence that Smith would produce a discovery narrative in 1838 that closely parallels that of Spalding. If they are wrong, I would have to say that Smith writing his d.n. in 1838 the way he did is just really, really bizarre. That's one of the reasons I don't think they are wrong. But let's think about this from both of the other points of view....

Do you see how problematic this is for me? For you, what makes the coincidence astonishing isn't actually the parallels - but your "association". The texts themselves aren't really all that close.

Of course the KJV was widely available but you know as well as I that the translation witnesses claim that every word--every character--came from God and that God himself would not allow the translation to proceed until he had corrected the errors.

There you go, making assertions about God. I think you are mixing up more than one issue here. This is such an interesting point. And it goes back to the assmuptions you are making about a God figure translating. Suppose that Nephi as an author makes a mistake when writing (that is, he uses a wrong word, changing the meaning from what he intended to something else). How should God translate this?

The source text is allegedly sitting there, written on plates in reformed Egyptian and God is allegedly translating it as it comes off the plates. So even when Nephi is allegedly "quoting" Isaiah, he's not quoting King James, he's quoting Isaiah.

And now we know how little you actually know of the Book of Mormon. The source text is written in Egyptian (not reformed Egyptian). Nephi s quoting it. We aren't quite sure what language Nephi is using. The notion of reformed Egyptian comes from Moroni and Mormon - who don't actually edit Nephi's materia. It is simply put in the way it was written and not copied or redacted. So Nephi is reading an Egyptian Isaiah, which is presumably somewhat different than a Hebrew original. And perhaps Nephi is translating it into something else that he writes with. And of course that would add differences. So .... but getting back to your comments:

If the witnesses are telling the truth then God had the words "seraphims" and "cherubims" appear in the stone. Most LDS--even LDS apologists, are willing to agree that God is not responsible for so basic and unnecessary an error, so they agree that the KJB was referenced for that section of the Book of Mormon.

By the way, I am perfectly happy letting God be responsible for this error.

[_marg]

Ben you say on your web site that Donofrio suggests that Joseph used the following sources in the production of the Book of Mormon. And after listing those sources, you conclude as an argument against Donofrio's research work that "Nowhere is addressed the question of how likely it was that Joseph was exposed directly to these sources."

And I asked you, in my 2nd question.

"2) I've missed it in the my reading, can you tell me where Tom says that Smith must have borrowed those parallels to write the Book of Mormon?"

and you ignored that question but answered #1 & #3. Is that because you couldn't find that Donofrio had suggested only Smith to have written the Book of Mormon? So is your accusation and criticism against what Donofrio said,...wrong?

[_marg]

Marg previously:
Do you think given the extensive list of parallels, that is exact word strings that Donofrio shows between the Book of Mormon and the various books you mention above...that those parallels indicate borrowing from those for the Book of Mormon?

Ben: No, it doesn't indicate this. Most of his parallels are not exact, most are short (some are a single word long), and most are actually quite common phrases that were used in lots of texts. The best that we could say is that the Book of Mormon draws

Well then Ben what you say above indicates once again your intellectual dishonesty. And there is no point in discussing with someone unless they are intellectually honest. Maybe to your fellow Mormons this works, you delude yourself and will deny the obvious and somehow think this is rational argumentation. This is nuts Ben. Tom wrote 61 pages that I printed out for myself, most of it parallels with about 20 listed on each page. They are very unique phrasing in most cases, not common phrasing. Some of the writers borrowed from others such as Warren borrowed from David Ramsay..so of course between those writers phrases will be found common. Their works dealt with same subject matter.

http:www.mormonthink.com/influences.htm

If you are going to deny the parallels even exist deliberately, and belittle them as you have...then there is no point in discussing this with you. And I have no interest in looking at your web site further. You come across to me as a liar. I even suspect you are getting paid to spew your nonsense because I don't get the sense you are truly illogical, only when you want to argue as a Mormon apologist. Are there any honest Mormon apologists or is that an automatic oxymoron because of what is required to argue on behalf of Mormonism?