Was there a Gold Bible Company conspiracy?

[_Uncle Dale]

...
It just struck me that someone might assume that Lucy was Oliver's daughter and an eyewitness. She was a half-sister, plural wife of Phineas, the brother of Brigham Young.

Of all of the eye-witnesses, it was Lucy who COULD have offered the most useful
testimony. She could have related what her half-brother's religious life was like
before he ever left Vermont. She could have told when it was that he first ventured
away from the home of the cousins in Vermont where he was raised. She could have
informed us of when it was that Oliver first visited the Palmyra area.

Instead of providing any of that useful kind of information, Lucy gave a bare-bones
account which looks as if it were constructed to meet the minimal declaration that
the Brighamite leaders in Utah wished to see divulged -- and not a word more.

I am not saying that her account was a totally false fabrication -- but I am saying
that it is practically useless in our quest to document Oliver's religious experiences
and activities, c. 1822-1828.

We'll have to look elsewhere for that sort of information.

UD

[_Uncle Dale]

...
We'll have to look elsewhere for that sort of information.

I've just browsed the contents of part 4 of Criddle's on-line
Book of Mormon origins presentation. I assume that it will be
ready for public release within a day or so.

He devotes considerable space to the matter of Oliver Cowdery's
pre-1830 years -- which I found to be very interesting.

And, yes, Craig Criddle does point to Oliver as a contributor:



If Jeff Hammel is looking in -- he may be interested to see how far
Criddle's investigations have progressed in the last year:

http://mormonleaks.com/

UD

[_MCB]

Very nice "Big Picture" graphic. Too bad we don't have a real picture of Sol'

[_Uncle Dale]

Very nice "Big Picture" graphic. Too bad we don't have a real picture of Sol'

The silhouette graphic was taken from an actual c. 1800
paper cut-out of Solomon, preserved in his family and
eventually purchased by Rick Grunder, c. 1999.

Since Solomon died before photography was invented, I
guess that's the best image we can hope for.

UD

[_MCB]

The silhouette graphic was taken from an actual c. 1800 paper cut-out of Solomon, preserved in his family and eventually purchased by Rick Grunder, c. 1999.

Cool. I didn't know that. Gunder has really come across some valuable documents. What is his religious persuasion?

[_jhammel]

Did someone say my name?

Hi Dale, I've been watching things from the sidelines for quite a while. I've been holding out for lack of time rather than lack of interest.

I've seen the prior episodes and will be looking at #4 when it's up.

[_Uncle Dale]

Did someone say my name?

Hi Dale, I've been watching things from the sidelines for quite a while. I've been holding out for lack of time rather than lack of interest.

I've seen the prior episodes and will be looking at #4 when it's up.

If I understand correctly, Criddle is out of the country attending
some scientific meeting and will not return and make public his
presentation's part 4 until the end of this week.

I got a look at the contents a couple of days ago. One of the
more important items included in his part 4 are depictions of the
data derived by Matt Jockers, from the computerized analysis
of the Book of Mormon, that included Smith and Pratt:



Here's a larger version of the same chart:
http://premormon.com/resources/r001/Slide04-003big.jpg

I do not suppose we will be seeing anything more detailed, in the
way of an across the board break-down of the Book of Mormon
authorship, until new studies are undertaken.

Criddle says that the Cowdery and Smith "signals" are so similar
in the Book of Mormon text, as to suggest that the two writers
corroborated in the authorship of practically all the instances
where one of the two contributors is credited in the chart.

Hopefully we can see part 4 in a couple of days, and see the
entire presentation within the next few months.

Dale

[_DrW]

UD,

It was mentioned in the presentation you linked to that Matt Jockers has done some additional work on 96 documents attributed to Joseph Smith and found that only 15 were reasonable word print (shrunken centroid?) matches with work known to have been written by him.

Such data would certainly support the decision to not include Joseph Smith as a candidate author in the 2008 JLLC paper.

In the presentation it was stated that the 2010 work to been accepted for a publication to appear in 2012.

Do you know if this is to be published in JLLC again?

Do you know when it will appear in print (if it has not already)?

Any idea how the BYU group might respond Jocker's latest findings?

[_Uncle Dale]

UD,

It was mentioned in the presentation you linked to that Matt Jockers has done some additional work on 96 documents attributed to Joseph Smith and found that only 15 were reasonable word print (shrunken centroid?) matches with work known to have been written by him.

Such data would certainly support the decision to not include Joseph Smith as a candidate author in the 2008 JLLC paper.

In the presentation it was stated that the 2010 work to been accepted for a publication to appear in 2012.

Do you know if this is to be published in JLLC again?

Do you know when it will appear in print (if it has not already)?

Any idea how the BYU group might respond Jocker's latest findings?

My understanding is that Jockers has reached the end of his
publishing interests on this topic. Unless some significantly new
and unusual document texts are compiled, for some additional
computerized study, I would not expect much more from him.

He does, however, teach the methodology he has used, and I
would not be surprised to eventually see some more computerized
textual studies published, using his textual comparison methods.

Two studies that were at least experimented with were comparisons
of the 1824 "Third Epistle of Peter" and the 1835 "Lectures on Faith,"
with the known writings of Sidney Rigdon. Perhaps full-blown
examinations of those texts will be conducted in the future.

As for the Mormons -- I suppose that they feel they have responded
sufficiently to Jockers, Criddle, etc., and I know of no plans on their
behalf to add to past computerized authorship studies.

My thoughts are -- that the authorship breakdown given by Criddle,
may be less accurate and reliable in the cases of Smith, Cowdery and
Pratt, than for the KJV Bible, Spalding and Rigdon.

I can only hope that some other computerized authorship analyst
eventually becomes interested in the subject, and improves upon it.

Besides the authorship attributions, Craig Criddle has compiled quite
a lot of historical information into his "part 4." So far, at least, it is
the series episode that has most caught my interest.

UD

[_DrW]

UD,

It was mentioned in the presentation you linked to that Matt Jockers has done some additional work on 96 documents attributed to Joseph Smith and found that only 15 were reasonable word print (shrunken centroid?) matches with work known to have been written by him.

Such data would certainly support the decision to not include Joseph Smith as a candidate author in the 2008 JLLC paper.

In the presentation it was stated that the 2010 work to been accepted for a publication to appear in 2012.

Do you know if this is to be published in JLLC again?

Do you know when it will appear in print (if it has not already)?

Any idea how the BYU group might respond Jocker's latest findings?

My understanding is that Jockers has reached the end of his
publishing interests on this topic. Unless some significantly new
and unusual document texts are compiled, for some additional
computerized study, I would not expect much more from him.

He does, however, teach the methodology he has used, and I
would not be surprised to eventually see some more computerized
textual studies published, using his textual comparison methods.

Two studies that were at least experimented with were comparisons
of the 1824 "Third Epistle of Peter" and the 1835 "Lectures on Faith,"
with the known writings of Sidney Rigdon. Perhaps full-blown
examinations of those texts will be conducted in the future.

As for the Mormons -- I suppose that they feel they have responded
sufficiently to Jockers, Criddle, etc., and I know of no plans on their
behalf to add to past computerized authorship studies.

My thoughts are -- that the authorship breakdown given by Criddle,
may be less accurate and reliable in the cases of Smith, Cowdery and
Pratt, than for the KJV Bible, Spalding and Rigdon.

I can only hope that some other computerized authorship analyst
eventually becomes interested in the subject, and improves upon it.

Besides the authorship attributions, Craig Criddle has compiled quite
a lot of historical information into his "part 4." So far, at least, it is
the series episode that has most caught my interest.

UD

UD,

Thanks. But your response leaves me a bit confused.

As you know, "accepted for publication" normally means that a manuscript has been submitted, peer reviewed and approved for publication by the journal editor (often pending a few minor fixes by the author(s)).

At this point, the editor often schedules the paper for an upcoming issue and advises the author(s) to return the ms with edits (or sometimes even marked up galleys) by a certain date if they wish to make it into that issue.

In Episode 2, it states that the 2010 work I referred to by Jockers had been accepted for publication and would appear in 2012. I assume that if they had an accepted ms with a 2012 publication date, they were at least this far along in the process.

Is that now not the case?

Has the paper appeared in print already?

If not, has Jockers lost interest in the subject area to the point that he will not even go to the trouble of doing the revisions on an accepted ms? (Hard to imagine for an active academic.)

What am I missing here?