Book of Mormon Borrowings from the New Testament

[_Roger]

Hi Tobin:

marg is correct. I don't give all accounts about the translation of the Book of Mormon the same weight and I don't think it is reasonable to do so. I don't think one can blindly accept claims or accounts just because someone was there or not.

But that is a pretty dangerous position to take, don't you think? How can you distinguish between "blindly" accepting the claims of David Whitmer when he claims that words appeared in the stone, and not "blindly" accepting the claims of David Whitmer when he claims to have seen the plates?

It's not just that David Whitmer was there. It's that he believes in the Book of Mormon, just like you. He claimed Joseph was prophet, (at least when he was translating the Book of Mormon), he claims he saw the plates, he provides an explanation of how the Book of Mormon was translated that agrees with other early Mormon witnesses and Joseph Smith never refuted.

You need to also consider what information the source could possibly have and whether or not their perceptions could be correct. I apply this same standard to many accounts in Mormon history and the scriptures themselves.

Do I need to do this when David tells me he saw the plates? (edited to add:) And should I also not consider the possible motives that the source might have for making the statement?

Just so I'm being clear. I think only comments from Joseph Smith (or Joseph Smith speaking for the Lord or pretending to, as the critics charge) are relevant.

So David Whitmer's testimony of the plates is irrelevant?

However, I do also discount what Joseph Smith says because he may not have known how things worked exactly and was learning as he went along as well. I don't think an uncritical and thoughtless acceptance of what someone says is ever a good idea and I reject such notions.

It sounds like you're saying: Tobin knows better than early TBMs and even in some cases, than Joseph Smith.

Is that what you're saying?

[_Roger]

vessr wrote:

Maybe one of you can provide an object methodology for determining whether a parallelism has occurred and how sequences within a parallelism could be determined.

I'm not sure an objective methodology exists. Or, I suppose I should say that objective (or scientific) methodologies for evaluating relationships between texts may exist, but the results will always need interpretation and that is subjective.

There are probably a lot of methods for examining relationships between texts. I suppose scholars have accepted methods. But I doubt that we amateurs are going to come up with something very sophisticated and/or reliable. Experimenting might be fun, however.

A Google search provided this:

The Levenshtein distance between two strings is defined as the minimum number of edits needed to transform one string into the other, with the allowable edit operations being insertion, deletion, or substitution of a single character. It is named after Vladimir Levenshtein, who considered this distance in 1965.[1] It is closely related to pairwise string alignments.

For example, the Levenshtein distance between "kitten" and "sitting" is 3, since the following three edits change one into the other, and there is no way to do it with fewer than three edits:
kitten → sitten (substitution of "s" for "k")
sitten → sittin (substitution of "i" for "e")
sittin → sitting (insertion of "g" at the end).

So this method, for example, could be considered "objective" but when one tries to apply it to your parallels, it would get pretty time-consuming without a computer program to run it, and even then, the results would be subject to interpretation.

Apparently there is a method for comparing texts using Google docs:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/go ... ware/2414/

This compares the differences between two texts after revisions have been made, but I'm not sure that would work here.

There is a way to check the differences (changes) in two Word documents:

Compare two copies of a document
Open the edited copy of the document.


On the Tools menu, point to Track Changes, and then click Compare Documents.


Open the original document.


If neither the edited version nor the original version of the document has tracked changes, Microsoft Word displays the edited copy of the document with revision marks indicating what changed from the original.
If either version of the document has tracked changes, Word displays a message box. Click Yes to compare the documents.

Note If you've used the Versions command on the File menu to save multiple versions of the document in one file, and you want to compare the current version with an earlier one, you must first save the earlier version as a separate file under a different name.

But again, not sure how practical that would be with a lot of parallels or whether the results could be interpreted objectively.

[_vessr]

vessr wrote:

Maybe one of you can provide an object methodology for determining whether a parallelism has occurred and how sequences within a parallelism could be determined.

I'm not sure an objective methodology exists. Or, I suppose I should say that objective (or scientific) methodologies for evaluating relationships between texts may exist, but the results will always need interpretation and that is subjective.

There are probably a lot of methods for examining relationships between texts. I suppose scholars have accepted methods. But I doubt that we amateurs are going to come up with something very sophisticated and/or reliable. Experimenting might be fun, however.

A Google search provided this:

The Levenshtein distance between two strings is defined as the minimum number of edits needed to transform one string into the other, with the allowable edit operations being insertion, deletion, or substitution of a single character. It is named after Vladimir Levenshtein, who considered this distance in 1965.[1] It is closely related to pairwise string alignments.

For example, the Levenshtein distance between "kitten" and "sitting" is 3, since the following three edits change one into the other, and there is no way to do it with fewer than three edits:
kitten → sitten (substitution of "s" for "k")
sitten → sittin (substitution of "i" for "e")
sittin → sitting (insertion of "g" at the end).

So this method, for example, could be considered "objective" but when one tries to apply it to your parallels, it would get pretty time-consuming without a computer program to run it, and even then, the results would be subject to interpretation.

Apparently there is a method for comparing texts using Google docs:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/go ... ware/2414/

This compares the differences between two texts after revisions have been made, but I'm not sure that would work here.

There is a way to check the differences (changes) in two Word documents:

Compare two copies of a document
Open the edited copy of the document.


On the Tools menu, point to Track Changes, and then click Compare Documents.


Open the original document.


If neither the edited version nor the original version of the document has tracked changes, Microsoft Word displays the edited copy of the document with revision marks indicating what changed from the original.
If either version of the document has tracked changes, Word displays a message box. Click Yes to compare the documents.

Note If you've used the Versions command on the File menu to save multiple versions of the document in one file, and you want to compare the current version with an earlier one, you must first save the earlier version as a separate file under a different name.

But again, not sure how practical that would be with a lot of parallels or whether the results could be interpreted objectively.

I wasn't aware of the Levenshtein method, but I've used the "track changes" tool to compare Word documents many times. In either case, I'm sure you end up with objective methodologies that require subjective interpretations, as you suggest.

The only way I know how to handle my parallelisms is to determine subjectively what is a "hit" when comparing elements of one scripture against another.

So for the following:

1. 1 Nephi 1:14: “Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty”; “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty”: Revelation 15:3.

you can count all the words in 1 Nephi 1:14 against all the words in Rev. 15:3. You get 9 words out of 10 in the exact sequence. That's objective. But to say that is a meaningful test is subjective. To me it is a hit (comparing 10 words against 9 words results in 9 of the 10 words in exact order being the same). To me that is significant. How many similar parallels would it take to prove anything? That again is subjective.

So, I guess there is not objective test to apply. There are other standards that might be applied however. Is it "beyond a shadow of a doubt" this parallel between 1 Nephi and Revelation is significant. Prabably not. Could "reasonable minds" disagree on the significance? Probably. But why can't Tobin's test apply? One studies these parallels out in his mind and then he is suppose to be able to "feel" what is the right answer (including prayer in the formula if one is so inclined). That, to me, creates an interesting test. As I have analyzed and pondered these things, and studied them out in my mind, I "feel that it is right" that these parallelism are relevant to the question of borrowings. If I add on top of that the interesting fact that most of the parallels are not crossed referenced in the Mormon scriptures, that adds another element of convincing to my theory. I come out, subjectively, saying that there must be borrowing going on and there may be a basis for concluding the borrowings were suppressed to some degree. I can't prove it to a Mormon. So I guess I've done nothing by my analysis except get comfortable with how I come out in the end.

[Guest]

Vessr my post is addressed to Brad but really it also addresses your previous post. I disagree with anyone who says the parallels are meaningless. They are evidence..given all the known data are they likely to be a result of randomness, a result of copying from the KJB, or a result of translation. I think it's obvious that the most likely explanation and best fit for the data is that the parallel phrases are likely to be a result of copying from the KJB.

I don't disagree with Ludwig. However, suppose we compare with KJV with more modern translations of the Bible. How many exact parallels would we expect? I'm saying that I simply don't know. And I'm not willing to reach any conclusion based on data mining without a factual baseline on which to base my opinions.

First off Brad I'm not all that familiar with the Book of Mormon nor the Bible. I'm going by the arguments presented in this thread and the impression I have is the issue is being over-analyzed. The issue being 'what do lots of parallels in phrasing between KJB and Book of Mormon likely indicate?'. I refuse to assume a God and I'm only interested in most likely explanation.

Ludwigm in my opinion demonstrated that 1 step translations of a source text are not likely to yield significant parallel phrases. viewtopic.php?p=679144#p679144

And his conclusion was simply that parallel phrasing between KJB and Book of Mormon indicated that whoever wrote the Book of Mormon likely copied the phrasing at times from the KJB. That's not an unreasonable conclusion given the evidence. Is there a more probable explanation?

What we have are 2 books claiming to be scripture and translations.

KJB - (I believe) is a 1 step translation from Hebrew or Greek into Elizabethan English

BoM- (I believe) is a allegedly a 2 step translation from Hebrew or Greek into Reformed Egyptian and then into Elizabethan English. re Issiah

- and (I believe) also allegedly a 1 step translation from Reformed Egyptian into Elizabethan English

In both the 1 step & 2 step alleged translations for the Book of Mormon there exist parallel phrasing with the KJB.

What other scenario is just as or more probable than what Ludigm suggested..which is that the KJB was used and copied from at times by the authors of the Book of Mormon when writing it. Given the number of parallels vesser has stated assuming copying was done..is it more likely the KJB was on hand and copied at times or not on hand but copied via memory?

[_Roger]

Hi Brad:

I think Marg has put her finger on a part of this whole exercise that has been bothering me. If we start out by saying that God is not a part of what Smith did in writing the Book of Mormon, then parallelisms may be able to tell us something about how he wrote the book. But if God, is included as a possibility, then the parallels can't tell us anything.

So, as long as we aren't using the parallels as a test for the involvement of God in the process, I think we may be able to do something.

I don't believe God was a part of the process, so I'm fine looking at it without including God as a possibility. But I'm still not following why you think this is true. Is the ultimate reason because we can't agree on how God would behave?

So, when you say God has three options but Smith has two, therefore the odds lean toward Smith being the author because 1/2 is greater than 1/3, that simply isn't the case. It looks that way because you arbitrarily assigned the initial odds of God v. Smith at 50-50. But, there is no basis for doing so. Note, you could have just have easily said: "we have five options, each of equal possibility. Joseph is the author of two, God of three. Therefore, the odds lean toward God being the author." That would also be wrong, for the same reason that your original statement was wrong: unknown odds does not mean equal odds.

I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean. (Or maybe I misunderstand myself!) I'm not claiming that we consider the possibility that God authored the Book of Mormon. I'm just saying that we should be able to critically examine the parallels in light of what Mormons claim about how the book came to exist. They don't claim God wrote it. They claim ancient humans wrote it and then Joseph Smith translated it into English with the assistance of God. Without that divine assistance, he could not have done it, because he didn't know how to speak reformed Egyptian. So I think there is value in looking at the text as we find it in 1830 and comparing the parallels to the KJV and asking whether the LDS version of how the Book of Mormon came to be better explains the parallels or whether there is some other explanation that better explains the parallels. If we rule the LDS version out of our analysis from the beginning, then LDS are just going to say we're doing so because we're biased against Joseph or Mormonism or God.

When we get to vessr's 500 parallels, what we don't know is the answer to this question: how many parallels should we expect to find? Let's say, for instance, we took a copy of Stephen King's The Stand. Start with the first four words. Search the KJV for that sequence of words. Repeat with words 2-5. And so on. How many would we expect to find? I don't know. So, out of the gate, we don't know what 500 parallels really means? If we find 500 between the Bible and The Stand, would we conclude that King copied from The Bible?

It would probably be a worthwhile effort if someone could do it on a computer. LDS apologist Jeff Lindsay humorously and sarcastically shows that Joseph Smith plagiarized from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass which was published 25 years after the Book of Mormon.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/bomsource.shtml

I love his comparison of:

"Idiot" to "Moron"

Commenting on Lindsay's effort to downplay parallels, Tom Donofrio writes:

His style of logic was meant to render my research inert, but Mr. Lindsay failed to realize that, by his own logic, the Book of Mormon falls into the same era as the Revolutionary War comparisons.

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/parallel2.htm

Donofrio also states:

It borders on the ridiculous to think that ancient Nephite writers used the same phraseology (often the exact same language) as Revolutionary Americans. If God was giving Joseph Smith each word, or even directing him in a slightly less robotic way, then the defenders must assume that God was directing the interpreting. Logically, God is thus forced into the role of a textual borrower -- but there is no logic in any of this scenerio.

Substitute "King James's translators" for "Revolutionary Americans" and you've got the criticism we are discussing here.

Now, if I understand you correctly Roger, you want to extend this analysis to parallels in Spaulding's writings. That sound like an easier problem to me because there's no reason to think Smith was attempting to write in the same "voice" as Smith. So perhaps we could compare the Book of Mormon to other writings of the same era that are roughly the same length as the Spaulding manuscript to get a baseline for what we should expect. Then we could contrast those results to the Book of Mormon v. Spaulding.

You wrote: "there's no reason to think Smith was attempting to write in the same "voice" as Smith." I think you meant there's no reason to think Spalding was attempting to write in the same "voice" as Smith... ?

What might be fun is to challenge those here who are skeptical of parallels to produce a set of maybe three or four or five 19th century parallels that we know are not related to each other and let's see how close they can be. Then let's compare that set with some of vessr's best and mine (which are actually Holley's) from Spalding. Anyone game?

[_ludwigm]

I thought I've finished with this thread...

To take God out of the discussion, it would only be reasonable to not have this discussion at all.

No, ma'am.
If we include any god, then this discussion wouldn't make sense.
Why?
God can do anything and the opposite of that. If he/she/it wants to twist or straighten a text, then it is his/her/its will, and any parallel gives nothing to our knowledge.
(This gender thing makes any translation between English and Hungarian boring - sometimes improper. I've remember an Agatha Christie story, where the keyword - literally the keyword - was that she can become he, if the letter s was torn from a letter...
So much about translation.)

This would leave you with discussing two different FICTIONAL books which happened to have influenced the history of mankind for over 2000 years (the Bible), and for 173 years (the Book of Mormon).

As an atheist, the only way I can handle the topic.
(In the case of Book of Mormon the word mankind seems to be a little overstatement...)

The KGB is

Freud again?

Ah, back from the dead. (Or, rather, the head cold from hell.)

I think Marg has put her finger on a part of this whole exercise that has been bothering me. If we start out by saying that God is not a part of what Smith did in writing the Book of Mormon, then parallelisms may be able to tell us something about how he wrote the book. But if God, is included as a possibility, then the parallels can't tell us anything.

So, as long as we aren't using the parallels as a test for the involvement of God in the process, I think we may be able to do something.

I wrote my opinion above, before I read this.
Seems to be the same opinion with different wording.
Apparently if the interlocutors have different background and/or different linguistic ability (or disability in my case), the message sounds differently.

For example 40+ theologist who know hebrew/greek/latin (the translators of KJV) would use different wording than an uneducated farmboy.

We are talking about translations. Translations of what exactly? Translations of exact words or translations of a message?

The most important thought!
Sometimes people forget this or doesn't know at all.

The scheme of a communication consists three blocks, the sender, the channel, and the receiver.
I am sorry, if I had the blessing of picture, I could show the scheme - without any depiction, whether in photographic or cartoon format, of genitalia of either sex or female nipple or areola.

Today, on March 6, 2013 Ludwigm revealed before us - we should confess, He did it without solemnity - that He will never again post any depiction, whether in photographic or cartoon format, of genitalia of either sex or female nipple or areola.

We declare with soberness that Ludwigm has now made known his promise for the blessing of all his children throughout the forums who will hearken to the voice of the authorized moderators, and prepare themselves to receive every blessing of this place of free discussion.

Sincerely yours,
Kovács József
Szabó János
Hó Lőrinc
Three witness at hand.

[/off topic...]

This scheme doesn't say anything the message itself. There are magic words as coding, decoding, time-division, multiplexing.

This thread is about coding and decoding - with common words, it is about language.

I have always held that all of scripture is a translation of a message from God. That is the foundation.

I am sorry, Franktalk...
My foundation is not Your foundation...
Please see John 18:36

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

What is involved with Vessr's noted parallels is they are from a text known i.e. a King James version translated from original texts written in Hebrew and Greek...and this can be verified.

The original text of Old Testament is from Hebrew - checked.
The septuagint (=Old Testament) is Greek - a translation from Hebrew (one step away from the original).
The original text of New Testament is Aramaic ???

During its 3,000-year written history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BC – 70 AD), the language that Jesus Christ probably used the most, the language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and is the main language of the Talmud. However, Jewish Aramaic was different from the other forms both in lettering and grammar. Parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Jewish Aramaic showing the unique Jewish lettering, related to the unique Hebrew script.

You have forgotten to mention the Latin Vulgata. Without Latin, KJV wouldn't use "lucifer". (Yes, I like Lucifer. I am a luciferish character...)

Under this scenario the question to ask is ..is it likely that translations from Hebrew & Greek into english and Reformed Egyptian into english of the same text would result in over 500 exact phrasing parallels? If it's not likely as Ludwigm illustrated due to the nature of translation..then what do the parallels likely indicate? Or what is the best most probable explanation for the parallels? And the answer to that is..that the most likely probable explanation for the parallels indicate the Book of Mormon writer/writers used the King James Bible ..that they did not translate as Smith claimed from another source written in Reformed Egyptian and that the Book of Mormon author either copied from it directly or less likely from memory.

Too many question.

I have one answer.

No, Joseph Smith didn't translated anything.
(Warning: translation = conversion of text from one language to another.
Nothing to do with other thousand meaning. Nothing to do with Mormon language. Or with Prophet Newsroom...)

I don't disagree with Ludwig.

Does it mean that You agree?

OK...

However, suppose we compare with KJV with more modern translations of the Bible. How many exact parallels would we expect? I'm saying that I simply don't know.

Suppose we compare the translation Hungarian translations of Book of Mormon --- before and after 2005.

The previous one is the translation of the message (if I assert there is any of that thing...).
The later one is a word-by-word translation, sometimes sounds as a lawyer-talk (I am sorry, nothing despising, only the description of the style) or as talk of a speaker of police. Sometimes it is weird as Hungarian, sometimes the reader can ask "who does what with whom" - and it is 20% longer than the previous version.

No parallels can be found with any comparison with any logic/algorithm.
But... if You want to understand what was said...

... then You are lost. Forever...



Sorry, folks. You have to separate of Your part to answer..
An excercise of copy/paste and BBCodes as [img] - which I haven't.

[_Res Ipsa]

Vessr my post is addressed to Brad but really it also addresses your previous post. I disagree with anyone who says the parallels are meaningless. They are evidence..given all the known data are they likely to be a result of randomness, a result of copying from the KJB, or a result of translation. I think it's obvious that the most likely explanation and best fit for the data is that the parallel phrases are likely to be a result of copying from the KJB.

My point is that we can't reject "random" unless we know the extent to which parallels occur randomly in two texts, one deliberately written in the archaic style of the other.

I don't disagree with Ludwig. However, suppose we compare with KJV with more modern translations of the Bible. How many exact parallels would we expect? I'm saying that I simply don't know. And I'm not willing to reach any conclusion based on data mining without a factual baseline on which to base my opinions.

First off Brad I'm not all that familiar with the Book of Mormon nor the Bible. I'm going by the arguments presented in this thread and the impression I have is the issue is being over-analyzed. The issue being 'what do lots of parallels in phrasing between KJB and Book of Mormon likely indicate?'. I refuse to assume a God and I'm only interested in most likely explanation.

Ludwigm in my opinion demonstrated that 1 step translations of a source text are not likely to yield significant parallel phrases. viewtopic.php?p=679144#p679144

And his conclusion was simply that parallel phrasing between KJB and Book of Mormon indicated that whoever wrote the Book of Mormon likely copied the phrasing at times from the KJB. That's not an unreasonable conclusion given the evidence. Is there a more probable explanation?

What we have are 2 books claiming to be scripture and translations.

KJB - (I believe) is a 1 step translation from Hebrew or Greek into Elizabethan English

BoM- (I believe) is a allegedly a 2 step translation from Hebrew or Greek into Reformed Egyptian and then into Elizabethan English. re Issiah

- and (I believe) also allegedly a 1 step translation from Reformed Egyptian into Elizabethan English

In both the 1 step & 2 step alleged translations for the Book of Mormon there exist parallel phrasing with the KJB.

What other scenario is just as or more probable than what Ludigm suggested..which is that the KJB was used and copied from at times by the authors of the Book of Mormon when writing it. Given the number of parallels vesser has stated assuming copying was done..is it more likely the KJB was on hand and copied at times or not on hand but copied via memory?

I think that, from the perspective we share (no God), the issue of "translation" is a red herring. Whatever Smith was doing, he wasn't "translating" anything. He was writing a new book of scripture. (Leaving aside for now the issue of multiple authorship.) He also chose to write that new book of scripture using the "voice" of the KJV. So, the question reduces to the extent to which any parallels in language, sentence structure, etc. are a result of deliberate copying (hypothesis) or something else, including an artifact of the attempt to copy the "voice" (null hypothesis). What I'm saying is that, unless we know what the null hypothesis looks like, we have nothing to compare vessr's parallels to.

[_Res Ipsa]

Hi Roger:

I don't believe God was a part of the process, so I'm fine looking at it without including God as a possibility. But I'm still not following why you think this is true. Is the ultimate reason because we can't agree on how God would behave?

Yes. When it comes to how an omniscient, omnipotent being would behave in specified circumstances, I think we're just throwing darts.

I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean. (Or maybe I misunderstand myself!) I'm not claiming that we consider the possibility that God authored the Book of Mormon. I'm just saying that we should be able to critically examine the parallels in light of what Mormons claim about how the book came to exist. They don't claim God wrote it. They claim ancient humans wrote it and then Joseph Smith translated it into English with the assistance of God. Without that divine assistance, he could not have done it, because he didn't know how to speak reformed Egyptian. So I think there is value in looking at the text as we find it in 1830 and comparing the parallels to the KJV and asking whether the LDS version of how the Book of Mormon came to be better explains the parallels or whether there is some other explanation that better explains the parallels. If we rule the LDS version out of our analysis from the beginning, then LDS are just going to say we're doing so because we're biased against Joseph or Mormonism or God.

I don't think the difference between "god wrote" and "god translated" helps you out here. I think it would help to precisely state a hypothesis. It sounds to me like your hypothesis is something like: parallels in phrase/sentence structure between the KJV and the Book of Mormon is evidence that the Book of Mormon is not bona fide scripture. How would you word your hypothesis?

As you've pointed out, the eyewitness accounts we have of the translation process generally agree that the words appeared to Smith on a rock. And several accounts state that the words would not change until the scribe got them right. So, who chose the words that appear in the Book of Mormon? It sounds like God did, if you don't rule him out on other grounds. That brings one back to the question of why God would choose the words that he chose to appear in the rock, which brings us back to trying to read the mind of an omniscient and omnipotent being.

It would probably be a worthwhile effort if someone could do it on a computer. LDS apologist Jeff Lindsay humorously and sarcastically shows that Joseph Smith plagiarized from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass which was published 25 years after the Book of Mormon.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/bomsource.shtml

I love his comparison of:

"Idiot" to "Moron"

Commenting on Lindsay's effort to downplay parallels, Tom Donofrio writes:

His style of logic was meant to render my research inert, but Mr. Lindsay failed to realize that, by his own logic, the Book of Mormon falls into the same era as the Revolutionary War comparisons.

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/parallel2.htm

Donofrio also states:

It borders on the ridiculous to think that ancient Nephite writers used the same phraseology (often the exact same language) as Revolutionary Americans. If God was giving Joseph Smith each word, or even directing him in a slightly less robotic way, then the defenders must assume that God was directing the interpreting. Logically, God is thus forced into the role of a textual borrower -- but there is no logic in any of this scenerio.

Substitute "King James's translators" for "Revolutionary Americans" and you've got the criticism we are discussing here.

i'm not sure I understand Donofrio's point. Is God required to conform to Donofrio's standard of logic? Even so, I think Lindsay's "parallels" analysis of the Book of Mormon v. Leaves of Grass is instructive -- it demonstrates that we should expect a baseline of parallels in two unrelated literary works due to something other than copying.

Now, if I understand you correctly Roger, you want to extend this analysis to parallels in Spaulding's writings. That sound like an easier problem to me because there's no reason to think Smith was attempting to write in the same "voice" as Smith. So perhaps we could compare the Book of Mormon to other writings of the same era that are roughly the same length as the Spaulding manuscript to get a baseline for what we should expect. Then we could contrast those results to the Book of Mormon v. Spaulding.

You wrote: "there's no reason to think Smith was attempting to write in the same "voice" as Smith." I think you meant there's no reason to think Spalding was attempting to write in the same "voice" as Smith... ?

The other way around. There is no reason to think that Smith was attempting to write in the "voice" of Spaulding.

What might be fun is to challenge those here who are skeptical of parallels to produce a set of maybe three or four or five 19th century parallels that we know are not related to each other and let's see how close they can be. Then let's compare that set with some of vessr's best and mine (which are actually Holley's) from Spalding. Anyone game?

I might be, although the process is very time consuming.

[_Res Ipsa]

I thought I've finished with this thread...

I have one answer.

No, Joseph Smith didn't translated anything.
(Warning: translation = conversion of text from one language to another.
Nothing to do with other thousand meaning. Nothing to do with Mormon language. Or with Prophet Newsroom...)

I agree.

I don't disagree with Ludwig.

Does it mean that You agree?

OK...

You caught me in lawyertalk. Yes, I agree.

However, suppose we compare with KJV with more modern translations of the Bible. How many exact parallels would we expect? I'm saying that I simply don't know.

Suppose we compare the translation Hungarian translations of Book of Mormon --- before and after 2005.

The previous one is the translation of the message (if I assert there is any of that thing...).
The later one is a word-by-word translation, sometimes sounds as a lawyer-talk (I am sorry, nothing despising, only the description of the style) or as talk of a speaker of police. Sometimes it is weird as Hungarian, sometimes the reader can ask "who does what with whom" - and it is 20% longer than the previous version.

No parallels can be found with any comparison with any logic/algorithm.
But... if You want to understand what was said...

... then You are lost. Forever...

But what happens if you do this? Take the first three words of translation 1. Search the entire text of translation 2 for those three words. Repeat for the words 2-4 of translation 1. Then 3-5. And so on. Just because of the sheer volume of text, won't there be words of the same order found in both?

[_marg]

My point is that we can't reject "random" unless we know the extent to which parallels occur randomly in two texts, one deliberately written in the archaic style of the other.

You seem to be arguing that if Smith/or other Book of Mormon author was trying to imitate the KJB that they are likely to write phrases similar and identical to what's in the KJB. I'd agree with that, if they were so familiar with it that without specifically copying with a KJB on hand that many phrases were so ingrained in their mind, that they could duplicate phrasing. But really that's not random, it's still a function of their knowledge and memory of the KJB. And we already know (I believe) that Issiah from the KJB was a deliberate copy in the Book of Mormon..so that wasn't random.

So all the other parts besides the material copied from Issiah in which parallels occur ..why assume that the best fit explanation is due to being random occurrences..as opposed to the Book of Mormon writer/Smith either deliberately copying.. with text in hand or from memory.

This is not the same situation in which one takes a book..and then searches other books to find if there exist parallel phrases. This isn't as random a situation as that. Given the data in this situation that Issiah was acknowledged as copied (within the Book of Mormon itself)..then on what basis should you reject other parallels in phrasing occurring the same way.. by a Book of Mormon writer copying either directly with the KJB in hand or via memory?

I think that, from the perspective we share (no God), the issue of "translation" is a red herring. Whatever Smith was doing, he wasn't "translating" anything. He was writing a new book of scripture. (Leaving aside for now the issue of multiple authorship.) He also chose to write that new book of scripture using the "voice" of the KJV. So, the question reduces to the extent to which any parallels in language, sentence structure, etc. are a result of deliberate copying (hypothesis) or something else, including an artifact of the attempt to copy the "voice" (null hypothesis). What I'm saying is that, unless we know what the null hypothesis looks like, we have nothing to compare vessr's parallels to.

I agree with you that the hypothesis of Smith translating should be rejected.

I disagree with your reasoning for rejecting parallels in this situation. The likelihood that a Book of Mormon writer in trying to sound like the KJB would write exact phrasing as a function of randomness decreases as the parallels increase. But on what basis is that the preferred best fit explanation? On what basis do you reject copying? Because of the witnesses statements..the witnesses whose statements are extremely unreliable, who have a vested interest in the Book of Mormon's success?

Even if a Book of Mormon writer was so familiar with the KJB that he pretty much knew it from memory and didn't need a copy in front of him ..even in that case though, it's not a random situation, the KJB is still being copied.