Arrakis wrote:Count me among those requiring assistance.
This is cool:
Our main research consisted of comparing the Book of Mormon to the pre 1830′s “Big Data” set made generously available by Archive.org, Google.com and participating Universities worldwide. We’re still verifying the results and working on getting it peer reviewed, we encourage your involvement.
This is a great opportunity for the apologists to go after it. If anyone has a vested interest in debunking this now, it's the apologists. Let's see if someone takes up the challenge.
Everybody Wang Chung wrote:Is this methodology sound? Are the statistics sound? Could someone describe this to me in lay person's terms?
I don't know, but the cool part of this is that link claims they will be putting their "code" on gethub, which is a premier software sharing/open source technology and means that any programmer in the world can pick up this code base and become a contributor to it.
I will be interested to see if its written in Java
Our main research consisted of comparing the Book of Mormon to the pre 1830′s “Big Data” set made generously available by Archive.org, Google.com and participating Universities worldwide. We’re still verifying the results and working on getting it peer reviewed, we encourage your involvement.
Once again, opening the code base up with github will encourage involvement on the software/algorithm aspects of this was well ... very cool indeed.
It seems to me with so much commonality of 4-word phrases between the Late War (1816) and the Book of Mormon (1829-30), one might conclude that unless one agrees that JSJr (and OC) used the Late War as sort of a template for their crafting the Book of Mormon, the LDS ought to consider Gilbert J Hunt the second coming of Jesus. After all, it the Book of Mormon is Jesus' voice coming through the Book of Mormon prophets and Hunt talks just like the Book of Mormon 14 years before the Book of Mormon was translated into English and made available, then it only seems logical that Gilbert J Hunt was the second coming of Jesus.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
Darth J wrote:Brant Gardner has informed us that "it came to pass" is evidence of the Book of Mormon's ancient Mesoamerican origins. He even refers to Maya glyphs that parallel the "it came to pass" phrasing of the Book of Mormon.
Therefore, the logical conclusion is that The History of the Late War between the United States and Great Britain is a translation of an ancient Mesoamerican document.
Thus saith the Lord, and it came to pass the Lord caused a book to be written in the spirit of the Mesoamerican tongue and he called it the Late War. And it came to pass, the Lord caused another book to be written out of his own mouth in the spirit of the Mesoamerican tongue and he called it the Book of Mormon which bears witness of the first book. And these books shall become one in thine hand. Amen
The paper covers new ground in showing that Professor Samuel L. Mitchill, formerly of Columbia College, had concluded that two main groups of people once dominated the Americas—the Tartars of northern Asia and the Australasians of the Polynesian islands. Furthermore, they fought one another for many years, culminating in great battles of extermination in what later became upstate New York. This New York theory has much in common with the Book of Mormon. While visiting Professor Charles Anthon in New York in 1828, Martin Harris also met with Mitchill, an encounter that lent support to Harris’s work on the Book of Mormon.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
RockSlider wrote: Once again, opening the code base up with github will encourage involvement on the software/algorithm aspects of this was well ... very cool indeed.
Once the code is uploaded, we'll have a better idea of what the scores mean, as shown on the website. Will be interesting to see if the comparison holds up under others types of textual analysis (Criddle's analysis, for instance).
H.
"Others cannot endure their own littleness unless they can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level." ~ Ernest Becker "Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death." ~ Simone de Beauvoir
Runtu wrote:I don't see this as a smoking gun, but it answers a couple of questions:
1. Why did Joseph Smith mimic language of the KJV?
The author having adopted for the model of his style the phraseology of the best books, remarkable for its simplicity and strength, the young pupil will acquire, with the knowledge of reading, a love for the manner in which the great truths of Divine Revelation are conveyed to his understanding, and this will be an inducement to him to study the Holy Scriptures.
Mitchill says the same thing:
It seems to me one of the best attempts to imitate the biblical style; and if the perusal of it can induce young persons to relish and love the sacred books whose language you have imitated, it will be the strongest of all recommendations.
2. Why did Joseph Smith send Martin Harris to Samuel Mitchill?
The endorsements are clearly an effort to give the book legitimacy, hence improving its marketability. Hunt is quite wise in getting the endorsement of Mitchill, who was well-known as a sort of human encyclopedia. The endorsement from Picket would get him into the educational market, as well. Joseph Smith may well have thought that such an endorsement from Mitchill and Anthon would legitimize the book. Failing that, he drafted the witness statements.
Now this IS an interesting coincidence and makes perfect sense that if Joseph Smith used this book as an inspiration for his Book of Mormon that he would seek this same kind of endorsement for his book...
"...The official doctrine of the LDS Church is a Global Flood" - BCSpace
"...What many people call sin is not sin." - Joseph Smith
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - Phillip K. Dick
“The meaning of life is that it ends" - Franz Kafka
