Book of Mormon Borrowings from the New Testament

[_Res Ipsa]

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.

You're right. I've been using "random" as a placeholder for "not copying." I think some parallels may be random, i.e., pure coincidence, and that's what we'd find by studying two books of the same era that we have no reason to believe had any connection. Others may be simply an artifact of trying to copy the style. Still others may be phrases learned from the KJV but not intentionally inserted as such into the book. And others may be attempts to reconstruct memorized passages from the KJV. I've lumped them together because I've understood the hypothesis to be "Copying." That makes the null hypothesis "Not Copying."

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.

I'm not assuming a best fit explanation. I'm saying that, before we conclude that "copying" is the best fit explanation, we have to understand the role of chance.

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?

The problem is, there are several possible causes of identical sequences of words in the two books. One is copying/memorization. Given the length of the Isaiah passages in 2 Nephi, I would agree that the only plausible explanation is copying/memorization. But what does that mean about vessr's list? I think there is still a baseline of "chance" that needs to be evaluated before we conclude anything from vessr's parallels. Just to pick on one example, vessr lists "puffed up" as a parallel. Is this evidence of copying? Did Joseph Smith really think "puffed up -- I like that two word clause in the Bible so I'm going to throw it in to the Book of Mormon somewhere?" I dunno. But what I'm fairly sure of is that chance plays a role in the occurrence of identical word sequences and that we haven't attempted to identify what it is.

And I am reacting somewhat to where Roger wants to take the argument: parallels between the Spaulding manuscript and the Book of Mormon.

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.

I don't think I'm rejecting copying. I'm trying to evaluate copying as a hypothesis and not copying as the null hypothesis, and then evaluate how vessr's parallels fit as evidence. Vessrs parallels are sequences of words that appear in the same order, or nearly in the same order. If we take any two books of sufficient volume, I suspect there is some chance that these types of parallels will occur for reasons other than copying. The longer the two books are, the greater the odds of an unintentional parallel. If I'm going to confirm a hypothesis, one of the things I must do is understand the role of chance in what I'm doing. That's what I don't understand here, because no one's presented any relevant data on it. So, I see this as a flaw in the experimental design that needs to be addressed.

Yes, all other things being equal, more parallels would be a stronger indication of copying than fewer parallels. But go with me here for a minute. You and I are going to conduct an experiment testing ESP. We're going to do it with a deck of cards that has five symbols on it. The "projector" looks at the card and pictures the symbol in his mind. The "receiver" knows the five possible symbols, and writes down which one he thinks it is. So, by chance, I expect a 20% success rate for the predictions.

As we go, I come to you and say: "Here's a guy who got 80% right. And here's one with 75%. And one with 85%." Now, is it true that, the more people with high percentages I find, the stronger the evidence for ESP? It depends entirely on how many trials we've run. If we know how many trials we've run, we can evaluate whether those three results are likely due to chance or likely due to something else. That's what we don't know here -- the probability that words in the same sequence is due to something other than copying.

So, I'm not rejecting copying as an explanation. I'm skeptical about the evidential value of vessr's parallels because we haven't attempted to assess the role of chance. Yes, we can say "500 sounds like a lot." But compared to what? We can't make a comparison unless we look.

The witness statements are a whole other issue. But I'm not rejecting copying based on the witness statements. I think that copying or memorization are the best fit explanations for the match between 2 Nephi and Isaiah and 3 Nephi and the Sermon on the Mount. But those aren't what vessr is talking about -- he's looking at other identical word sequences, some as small as two words. And before attempting to evaluate those, I think we need to have examined the role of "chance."

[_marg]

You're right. I've been using "random" as a placeholder for "not copying." I think some parallels may be random, i.e., pure coincidence, and that's what we'd find by studying two books of the same era that we have no reason to believe had any connection. Others may be simply an artifact of trying to copy the style. Still others may be phrases learned from the KJV but not intentionally inserted as such into the book. And others may be attempts to reconstruct memorized passages from the KJV. I've lumped them together because I've understood the hypothesis to be "Copying." That makes the null hypothesis "Not Copying."

So we are talking now about something specific and that is whether the parallels indicate or can indicate if the KJB was copied directly with it in hand..as opposed to memory.

I'm not assuming a best fit explanation. I'm saying that, before we conclude that "copying" is the best fit explanation, we have to understand the role of chance.

It's not a matter of chance, if the Book of Mormon has many parallels with the KJB..and it's a function of memory.

let's take a look at this one from Vessr's list.

8. 1 Nephi 10:8-10: “for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. And much spake my father concerning this thing. And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water. And after he had baptized the Messiah with water, he should behold and bear record that he had baptized the Lamb of God, who should take away the sins of the world”; “but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”: John 1:26-27.

This is not chance that the Nephi passage parallel's John's in the KJB. Not only are many of the words similar but the concepts and names as well.

The problem is, there are several possible causes of identical sequences of words in the two books. One is copying/memorization. Given the length of the Isaiah passages in 2 Nephi, I would agree that the only plausible explanation is copying/memorization. But what does that mean about vessr's list? I think there is still a baseline of "chance" that needs to be evaluated before we conclude anything from vessr's parallels. Just to pick on one example, vessr lists "puffed up" as a parallel. Is this evidence of copying? Did Joseph Smith really think "puffed up -- I like that two word clause in the Bible so I'm going to throw it in to the Book of Mormon somewhere?" I dunno. But what I'm fairly sure of is that chance plays a role in the occurrence of identical word sequences and that we haven't attempted to identify what it is.

The example above which I copied from Vessr's list ..shows chance was not at play. Your particular example...may have occurred because of chance..but that doesn't eliminate other examples which could not have occurred(for practical purposes) by chance.

And I am reacting somewhat to where Roger wants to take the argument: parallels between the Spaulding manuscript and the Book of Mormon.

But that's another step with regards to parallels...and not what is at issue atm. We are well beyond considering God as a possibility and considering Smith translated Reformed Egyptian..and perhaps that's where Vessr's main interest lies...I'm not sure.

So with regards to the issue we are dealing with, was the KJB on hand at the time the Book of Mormon was being written, I see no reason to rule out the KJB being on hand if we both assume Issiah copying indicates that scenario as the best fit most likely explanation.

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.

As I pointed out with Vessr's example above ..it is so specific that's it's not simply someone trying to write using the "voice" of the KJB but rather they are copying the KJB.

I don't think I'm rejecting copying. I'm trying to evaluate copying as a hypothesis and not copying as the null hypothesis, and then evaluate how vessr's parallels fit as evidence. Vessrs parallels are sequences of words that appear in the same order, or nearly in the same order. If we take any two books of sufficient volume, I suspect there is some chance that these types of parallels will occur for reasons other than copying. The longer the two books are, the greater the odds of an unintentional parallel. If I'm going to confirm a hypothesis, one of the things I must do is understand the role of chance in what I'm doing. That's what I don't understand here, because no one's presented any relevant data on it. So, I see this as a flaw in the experimental design that needs to be addressed.

I think though you are missing something here. by the way I underlined the above because I disagree with your assumption. If you take 2 books at random it is not likely there are going to be many parallels such as we see with Vessr's list between KJB and Book of Mormon. However if one take any book with substantial narrative and then searches through the millions of books written..it is likely that one could find strings of words between a book or some books that parallel strings of words in the main book one is comparing to. Particularly because in the english language there are common phrases used.

I understand you are saying that the Book of Mormon writer was trying to write in the "voice" of the KJB..basically Elizabethan English, but unless they are very familiar with the wording in the KJB..it's not likely they would duplicate strings of words. If lots of parallels were found it would only be because of familiarity or memory. But if all we care about is whether they likely had the KJB on hand and we've already said they likely did for the Isaiah..then there is little reason to assume it wasn't on hand for other passages as well.

Yes, all other things being equal, more parallels would be a stronger indication of copying than fewer parallels. But go with me here for a minute. You and I are going to conduct an experiment testing ESP. We're going to do it with a deck of cards that has five symbols on it. The "projector" looks at the card and pictures the symbol in his mind. The "receiver" knows the five possible symbols, and writes down which one he thinks it is. So, by chance, I expect a 20% success rate for the predictions.

As we go, I come to you and say: "Here's a guy who got 80% right. And here's one with 75%. And one with 85%." Now, is it true that, the more people with high percentages I find, the stronger the evidence for ESP? It depends entirely on how many trials we've run. If we know how many trials we've run, we can evaluate whether those three results are likely due to chance or likely due to something else. That's what we don't know here -- the probability that words in the same sequence is due to something other than copying.

So, I'm not rejecting copying as an explanation. I'm skeptical about the evidential value of vessr's parallels because we haven't attempted to assess the role of chance. Yes, we can say "500 sounds like a lot." But compared to what? We can't make a comparison unless we look.

If you are trying to determine mathematically whether the KJB was on hand or not..I don't see the point when we've already agreed it likely was when Isaiah was copied.

The witness statements are a whole other issue. But I'm not rejecting copying based on the witness statements. I think that copying or memorization are the best fit explanations for the match between 2 Nephi and Isaiah and 3 Nephi and the Sermon on the Mount. But those aren't what vessr is talking about -- he's looking at other identical word sequences, some as small as two words. And before attempting to evaluate those, I think we need to have examined the role of "chance."

Part of the data in evaluating Vessr's list is what was likely done in writing other parts in the Book of Mormon. One determines the best fit explanation based on all the data one has to try to determine the big picture...as opposed to evaluating isolated bits of data.

[_Res Ipsa]

Marg, I think the only thing we disagree about is this:

If you take 2 books at random it is not likely there are going to be many parallels such as we see with Vessr's list between KJB and Book of Mormon.

I'm unwilling to say this because I've never looked, and I can't find anyone else who has looked.

[_marg]

Marg, I think the only thing we disagree about is this:

If you take 2 books at random it is not likely there are going to be many parallels such as we see with Vessr's list between KJB and Book of Mormon.

I'm unwilling to say this because I've never looked, and I can't find anyone else who has looked.

ok, if you take any book and then search for other books to find parallel strings of identical words...you are able to look through millions perhaps hundreds of millions of books..to find parallel strings of words. But you limit your chances of finding parallels the fewer the number of books you can look through. If you are instead of searching through many millions of books, down to just searching through one other random book you are obviously limiting the chances significantly...especially the more parallel word strings you are expecting to find.

The situation between the KJB and Book of Mormon though is they aren't 2 random books. We know because I believe even the Book of Mormon it says this..that passages from Isaiah in KJB was copied. With that piece of data..why would we assume other parts of the KJB weren't copied as well, producing additional parallel word strings..such as Vessr (and others) find?

[_Res Ipsa]

marg, I'm sorry, I must really be explaining my point poorly. I'm not proposing that we take the Book of Mormon and look through millions of books so that I can cherry pick the one with the most matches. I'm just looking for a baseline. If I could do it from scratch, I'd take a number of pairings of books written in the same time period in roughly the same location, look for every identical sequence of words from three words up, and then take an average. Then I'd have data on the number of identical word sequences I should expect due to chance.

I'm not assuming anything other than that skeptical thinking requires understanding the role of chance before basing a conclusion solely on the existence of parallel word sequences.

[_ludwigm]

...

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 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?

It doesn't work. I've tried it.
I wrote a small program (in Delphi - yes I am a Pascal fan, C and C++ are of the satan...), and used it on one chapter.
2Nephi24.pre2005, 2Nephi24.past2005 and Isaiah14.hungarian are three different text. They are synonymous if somebody - who speak Hungarian - reads them, but te suffixes and prefixes we use, the conjugation, declension and inflection we use make the text uncomparable by any computerized method.
One should understand to detect them as having the same meaning.

I don't want to teach Hungarian, so I don't - and can't - explain anything written in Hungarian...
The differences can be seen in English by my "The Tragedy of Man" example.

If the two different Hungarian translation of 2Nephi24 can be as different as they are - translated by the same branch of people who have the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth (The Articles of Faith 7) - then the Book of Mormon and the King James Version of Bible should be more different.



How many match can prove the copy?

Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes:
Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.
And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake.
And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.
And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake.
And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake.

TEN.

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks, Ludwig. Is eleven "right out?" ;-)

Here is the thing with vessr's parallels: they aren't two different translations from the same ultimate source. (As with the Isaiah/2 Nephi example.) They are just the same (or similar) words that appear in the same (or similar) sequence, regardless of the source material. So to address the issue that I'm raising, you'd have to look at every three word sequence in translation 1 and see if it appears anywhere in translation 2. A little bit of apples and oranges problem.

[_marg]

marg, I'm sorry, I must really be explaining my point poorly. I'm not proposing that we take the Book of Mormon and look through millions of books so that I can cherry pick the one with the most matches. I'm just looking for a baseline. If I could do it from scratch, I'd take a number of pairings of books written in the same time period in roughly the same location, look for every identical sequence of words from three words up, and then take an average. Then I'd have data on the number of identical word sequences I should expect due to chance.

I'm not assuming anything other than that skeptical thinking requires understanding the role of chance before basing a conclusion solely on the existence of parallel word sequences.

We know Smith and co. were not just familiar with the KJB but they were trying to imitate it..and in addition the Book of Mormon itself makes it known it's copying Isaiah...therefore "chance" isn't the main likely function in play in finding parallels between KJB and Book of Mormon.

This is a different situation than with regards to Spalding or other books contemporary with the Book of Mormon (1830). We don't know whether the Book of Mormon writer/writers was/were familiar with contemporary books which contain parallel examples....so estimating "chance" of parallels in order to establish it as the unlikely explanation would be beneficial to a best fit theory hypothesizing copying such Donofrio presented. Though I don't know whether any sort of mathematical estimation of probability is possible in that case..and I don't know because I lack the knowledge/education to comment on it. And apparently to add further complexity at that time period (1800's) it was common for writers to copy other writer's work, hence phrases in the Book of Mormon could be a copy of phrasing from one book which may have been copied from another book.

[_Res Ipsa]

Ludwig, I looked around to find a good example of what I'm talking about. Let's use The Tragedy of Man I picked the Szirtes translation because it was listed first in the wiki footnote and the Tomschey translation because I found it all in one HTML document, which meant I could search it easily. (Translation: I'm lazy :P) So, I start with words 1-3 of the Szirtes and search the entire text of the Tomschey for that three-word string. I found the first "hit" in the second line: "heaven and earth." It appears in Scene 1 of the Szirtes, and in Scene 3 of the Tomschey. Is this evidence that one translator copied the other? Or is it due to chance? And how many words are there in The Tragedy of Man when compared to the Bible or Book of Mormon? I'm saying that we should expect some amount of this type of unintentional "parallel" when we compare two books, and we don't know what that baseline is.

[_vessr]

Thanks, Ludwig. Is eleven "right out?" ;-)

Here is the thing with vessr's parallels: they aren't two different translations from the same ultimate source. (As with the Isaiah/2 Nephi example.) They are just the same (or similar) words that appear in the same (or similar) sequence, regardless of the source material. So to address the issue that I'm raising, you'd have to look at every three word sequence in translation 1 and see if it appears anywhere in translation 2. A little bit of apples and oranges problem.

Brad, what we have been focused on is, in effect, simply a matter of burden of proof. You have placed a heavy burden of proof upon my parallelisms. The question is whether your burden of proof is the right burden of proof. I propose that it is not.

In criminal cases, where peole can be executed or put into a prison, the legal standard has always been "beyond a reasonable doubt"; that is, the prosecutor must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant commited the crime he has been charged with.

That is not the burden of proof required in a case of plagiarism, which I would argue is the case we are dealing with, although the New Testament is in the public domain and can't legally be plaiarized. Nevertheless, if we are asked to prove whether Joseph Smith plagiarized the New Testament while writing the Book of Mormon, the standard is different from "beyond a reasonable doubt," which I believe is the standard you have been arguing in this case.

The standard is proof by a preponderance of the evidence. In other words, is a parallism, such as the one Marg pointed out below, proved more likely than not to have been based on borrowing the wording from the New Testament, as follows:

"let's take a look at this one from Vessr's list.

"8. 1 Nephi 10:8-10: “for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. And much spake my father concerning this thing. And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water. And after he had baptized the Messiah with water, he should behold and bear record that he had baptized the Lamb of God, who should take away the sins of the world”; “but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”: John 1:26-27."

"This is not chance that the Nephi passage parallel's John's in the KJB. Not only are many of the words similar but the concepts and names as well."

You would be taken off a jury by the defendant's attorney if you couldn't apply a preponderance of the evidence test to an example of an alleged plagiarism, rather than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" test that you have been using, I would ague.

I believe reasonable minds could only conclude that the above parallelism cited by Marg was based on misappropriation from the writing in the book of John. Again, it's not beyond a reasonable doubt, but it is more likely than not that that specific parallelism involves borrowing the Book of John language and appying it to the Book of Mormon context.

I believe there are many more cases like this among my 500 examples, sufficient, again, to prove it is more likely than not that language in the New Testament was used in writing the Book of Mormon.

Now, if you took each such instance from among the parallelisms I've found, I think reasonable minds could only conclude that the Book of Mormon was written with reliance on the New Testament. If you can only apply a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard here, then you should be thrown off the case, because we are not talking about putting Joseph Smith in prison, or executing him. We just believe, those of us who have looked at these parallelims that Smith was guity by a preponderance of the evidence.

If you took each parallel phraseology from the New Testament and applied it to any other book, I believe reasonable minds could only conclude that the New Testament was used when another book comes up with the same words and sequences as we've found in the strongest of the parallelisms from the Book of Mormon.

Make any sense? If it doesn't, then I will ask the court to have you dismissed from the case for failure to apply the appropriate standard of proof : )