Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_schreech]

Joseph Smith's character in its known entirety is harder to reconcile with your pov, simple as that. I don't see nobility in the scammers, the knowing ripoff artists, the frauds posing as preachers, et al. that you so righteously disdain or even hate. Joseph Smith's character is more noble than those. His weaknesses become even more glaring as a result of the much larger nobility of character that was Joseph Smith. Ditto BY's noble character, he was a giant among spiritual pygmies.

That's how it is with the world's genuine religion makers. You lump them together with the frauds, disallowing that genuine belief of the religion makers in themselves is even a possibility.

I am not suggesting that there is or ever was or ever will be a "true faith" beloved by "God" above all others. What I am suggesting for your perusal is the very real possibility that ALL such persons who genuinely seek to bond with "God" above all other things in life get what they are looking for. Their human weaknesses corrupt that quest into something less than perfect, and the results become part of religious history.

Much good, much reward, can come from a genuinely religious life and the faith it promotes. The opposite is also true: much harm can derive from religious (as in any) fraud. The genuine and fraudulent are the possession of the individual. Nobody and nothing can take away from you what you really are. And nobody can lie to himself and change the reality of what he is.

I believe that Joseph Smith tried to not lie to himself. He was a man wholly devoted to the truth. He was also (like all of us) possessed by his milieu, which molded his expectations and the outcomes that he accepted. There is good evidence that very close to the end, Joseph Smith rejected the entire "plurality of wives" doctrine. He was "removed" before he could plunge into recidivism, which is evidence of the mercy of "God", imho. I believe that if Joseph Smith had continued on and lived to "the age of a tree" as most men do, that he would have largely or entirely unraveled his religion, to the detriment of following generations. Mormonism is and has always been a good force in the world. I believe that "God" promotes good forces to combat the anarchy of "Nature" inherent in the system, which tends to evil uses....

[_beastie]

I believe that Joseph Smith tried to not lie to himself. He was a man wholly devoted to the truth. .

Was Joseph Smith telling the truth when he claimed to see treasures buried underground, guarded by spirits who made them slip beyond reach into the ground?

[_son of Ishmael]

If you live believing that there is no God, and dying, discover that there is one; and I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that my belief was correct, who is better off?

If I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that there is no God, I really don't believe that I have suffered for that belief (except from the bigotry of those who believe in a less perfect god, and atheists).

I'm just not a gambler. YMMV.

I don't believe there is a god, but I admit that it is possible that there is one. Even if there is a god, how do we know that he/she/it even cares about us at all? Who is to say that the god who created us is even around anymore. And if there is a god, why does that mean that there is life after death for us? Maybe god's real chosen ones are the dolphins and we were just some crazy off-shoot that she/it/he doesn't even care about.

[_Flaming Meaux]

If you live believing that there is no God, and dying, discover that there is one; and I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that my belief was correct, who is better off?

I'd wager you don't actually know enough about whatever you conceive your God to be that you could possibly take a reasoned position on this issue. I'm not just a gambler, either.


Homer: Hey, what's the big deal about going to some building every Sunday? I mean, isn't God everywhere?
Bart: Amen, brother!
Homer: And don't you think the Almighty has better things to worry about than where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week?
Bart: Tell it, daddy!
Homer: And what if we pick the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder and madder.
Bart: Testify! [Waving hands about in air in penecostal fashion.]

Later...

God: Thou hast forsaken my church?
Homer: Well, kind of, but . . .
God: But WHAT?
Homer: I'm not a bad guy. I work hard and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to hell?
God: Hmm . . . you've got a point there.
...
Homer: So I figure I should just live right and worship you in my own way.
God: Homer, it's a deal. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to appear on a tortilla in Mexico.

[_son of Ishmael]

If you live believing that there is no God, and dying, discover that there is one; and I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that my belief was correct, who is better off?

If I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that there is no God, I really don't believe that I have suffered for that belief (except from the bigotry of those who believe in a less perfect god, and atheists).

I'm just not a gambler. YMMV.

Who lived a better life?

Group A: Spent their life trying to do the right thing, did their best to be good people, spouses, parents, workers etc. Gave to charities and volunteered to help whenever they could. These people did this believing that they were helping their fellow human beings and would one day they would get to live forever with a kind loving god.

Group B: Spent their life trying to do the right thing, did their best to be good people, spouses, parents, workers etc. Gave to charities and volunteered to help whenever they could. These people did this believing that they were helping their fellow human beings and had no expectations that they would be blessed if they did these things or cursed if they did not.

If there is a god, don’t you think that he/she/it would be just as happy (maybe even more so) with a person who led a good life without expecting something in return?

Or is god such a douche that if you don’t believe in him/her/it, he/she/it is going to punish you regardless of how you lived?

[_EAllusion]

If I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that there is no God, I really don't believe that I have suffered for that belief (except from the bigotry of those who believe in a less perfect god, and atheists).

I'm just not a gambler. YMMV.

What if God punishes those who believe in a diety but rewards those who do not? Maybe it turns out this life is a test, but not in the way you think. Don't gamble! Disbelieve!

[_Fence Sitter]

If you live believing that there is no God, and dying, discover that there is one; and I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that my belief was correct, who is better off?

If I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that there is no God, I really don't believe that I have suffered for that belief (except from the bigotry of those who believe in a less perfect god, and atheists).

I'm just not a gambler. YMMV.

You're still gambling and your odds are not much better than the atheist.You are not only gambling that God does exist, you're gambling he exist the way you think he does. In the end your odds are not much different than the non believer and yet your belief in this remote chance controls your life. In effect you are betting the only life you may have on a small chance that your concept of God is correct while the non believer is free to make decisions based on this life being all there is. I'd say the non believer is the one making the safer bet because in the end, when it turns out you are both wrong, at least he hasn't wasted his life following a non existent being.

[_Equality]

Much of the discussion on Gilbert Hunt’s The Late War over the last ten days has focused on the question of the extent to which that work may have “influenced” the Book of Mormon. Some among both faithful Mormons and critics of the LDS church have suggested that the computer analysis performed by the Johnson brothers suggests that the author of the Book of Mormon must have read the book and perhaps even consulted it as the Book of Mormon text was being produced. It is certainly possible that the Book of Mormon author had a copy of The Late War or other works in hand during the writing process, but the evidence for direct copying from the text appears weak to me. The only book for which I have seen evidence for direct copying of substantial amounts of text is the King James Version of the Bible. Even then, however, I still think it is possible that no actual text was consulted during the writing of the Book of Mormon. I think it is possible that the Book of Mormon author of the KJV passages that are found in the Book of Mormon had large portions of the Bible committed to memory. Yet I think that books such as The Late War did have an influence on the composition of the Book of Mormon.

Different Types of Influence

Direct (Conscious) Influence: For purposes of this discussion, I should explain what I mean by “influence.” I think there are two kinds of influence that one work can have on a subsequent work: direct or indirect. And within the “direct” category itself, I think there are two types: “conscious” and “unconscious.” A direct (conscious) influence is one in which a creator of a work is aware of a particular element found in an earlier work and knowingly, intentionally adopts it into a new work. Examples of direct (conscious) influence include something like Vanilla Ice adopting the bass line from “Under Pressure” into “Ice, Ice Baby,” or MC Hammer adopting the hook from “Superfreak” into “You Can’t Touch This,” or countless other cases where a musical artist “samples” directly from an earlier work and incorporates it into something new. Similar direct (conscious) influence can be seen in various forms in literature as well: fan fiction perhaps being the most obvious example.

Direct (Unconscious) Influence: A direct (unconscious) influence is one in which the creator of a work unintentionally uses something unique from a prior work without being aware of the borrowing. This is what I think Jack White was getting at in the excerpt from an interview with Rolling Stone I posted on another thread: “Q: What Paramount records or artists were important to you as a young musician, on your way to and in the White Stripes? A: I had to be careful of not being too much a collector of records. I had to keep one foot in that water, one foot out. It's dangerous for me, as a creative person, as a songwriter. When I came up, a lot of people who worked in record stores were in bands, and they couldn't seem to write a song that wasn't a reference point to something else. I tried to push myself to do something else, that was coming from inside my own brain. Of course, it will sound like something. But I didn't want to write a song like Big Bill Broonzy. I wanted to write a song that sounds like I wrote it.” I think White is describing the kind of direct but unconscious borrowing that he had to consciously struggle against. Another example from music of a direct (unconscious) borrowing might be some of the guitar riffs and lyrical phrases that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin borrowed from old blues records. Some of those might have been conscious, but many of them were probably simply the result of having listened to so many old blues records that bits and pieces managed to creep into their own works. As Bono said (ironically quoting someone else without attribution): “every poet is a thief.”

Indirect Influence: Indirect influence is just what it sounds like: elements that are not unique to any single identifiable previous source but are representative of ideas, themes, or phrases present in the general cultural milieu and adopted by the creator of a new work. Keeping with the musical theme for examples, think of different eras of music and how easy it is to identify even songs from artists with whom you are unfamiliar as coming from a specific era. When the producers of That Thing You Do wanted to create new music for a fictional band from the early 60s British Invasion, the elements to include were obvious. When the members of the faux rock band Spinal Tap wrote songs spanning the band’s fictional 30-year history, it was funny because everyone knew the time period being represented by, say, “(Listen to the) Flower People.” The band did not have to directly lift precise lyrical phrases or sample actual chords and riffs from any specific song to create something new that was infused with elements clearly influenced by multiple earlier works.

None of what I have written so far is particularly earth-shattering. But I think that viewing influence in this way helps us put the Johnsons’ recently revealed computerized research into some perspective. I think that the new research allows us to parse out some of the influences on the Book of Mormon that we hitherto had been unable to do with as much precision. With respect to the Book of Mormon, there is no question that the KJV Bible had a direct (conscious) influence—the author must have been aware that entire chapters of the Bible were being reproduced in the text (I think this is probably an uncontroversial point, but over the years I have been sometimes surprised at some of the things people will argue about when it comes to Mormonism).

Having looked at both the Napoleon book and The Late War, I do not think either can be said to have had a direct (conscious) influence on the writing of the Book of Mormon in the way that the KJV certainly did. I think it is fair to say, however, that The Late War did have a direct (unconscious) influence on the Book of Mormon. I think it is highly likely that the author of the Book of Mormon had read The Late War and incorporated parts of it, including short phrases, a similar linguistic style, themes, and story outlines into the Book of Mormon text. As with my Led Zeppelin example, a few of these items may have been consciously done (one example from a Zeppelin song would be Plant’s famous caterwauling in “The Lemon Song” to “squeeze my lemon ‘til the juice runs down my leg” which almost certainly was a conscious borrowing from Robert Johnson (who had, himself, borrowed it from Arthur McKay)). Perhaps the “curious workmanship” or the 2000 “striplings” are the best candidates for a direct (conscious) influence. Still, on the whole, it appears to me that the great majority of the direct similarities between the two works are of the unconsciously direct variety. Statistically, it seems there are too many similar or identical phrases for the influence of The Late War to be dismissed as purely indirect. But at the same time, there seems to be too little to conclude that there was substantial conscious direct borrowing from The Late War by the author of the Book of Mormon.

As others have said in recent pages in this thread, identifying indirect influences or direct but unconscious influences is no more an indictment of Joseph Smith as a plagiarist than for Jimmy Page to admit to being influenced by Link Wray or for, I don’t know, every single person who formed a band in the 1970s and 1980s to speak of Lou Reed’s influence on their music. The apologists arguing so vociferously against the idea that there might be literary connections between The Late War and the Book of Mormon are really misunderstanding (or deliberately misstating) the argument being advanced by those who have found the evidence for some connection between the works interesting or even compelling. The argument is not, as the Jeff Lindsays of the world seem to think, that Joseph Smith (or his collaborators if he had any) had a stack of books strewn about the room where they wrote the Book of Mormon text. It is not that he (or they) leafed through these various source materials, borrowing a phrase or two from this book, a storyline from that one, some proper names slightly modified from another one over there, and so forth. No, the argument is this: the ideas, themes, and stories found in the Book of Mormon permeated the cultural milieu of the 19th-century American frontier out of which the book sprang. This is true of the historical ideas found in the book as well as the religious ones.

Some critics have pounced on this fact as evidence that Joseph Smith was a “plagiarist” or an uncreative fraud—that he never had an original thought. But I think that misses the point. In fact, I think that the Johnsons have performed an invaluable service in identifying so many printed works that provide a glimpse into the cultural world of the early republic in the American northeast. Indeed, an argument can be made (and I will even do it) that studying the list of works identified by the Johnsons actually may increase appreciation for the Book of Mormon. One example: I was reading through one of the works that the Johnsons’ algorithm identified, The Christian Experiences, Gospel Labours and Writings, of that Ancient Servant of Christ, Stephen Crisp, a 17th-century Quaker missionary, and I was struck by how similar parts of it were to Joseph Smith—History and to 2 Nephi 4 (Nephi’s Prayer or Nephi’s Lament). But in comparing the two, in both instances, the language in the Mormon writings is more elegant, compact, and impactful. Even if the ideas are similar, the expression of them in the Mormon sources is distinct and, in my opinion, more impressive, memorable, and, dare I say it, original.

The bottom line is this: there may be bits and pieces here and there in the Book of Mormon that were lifted directly from some previously published work. But the author(s?) of the Book of Mormon still did something quite remarkable in taking the flotsam and jetsam floating in the cultural sea and constructing something unique and influential in its own right. I think it is fun to look for influences both direct and indirect in the Book of Mormon. And I think that our understanding of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the early American republic, and early Mormonism and its converts all will be greatly enhanced by the work of the Johnson brothers and the work that will flow from it.

I see many potential avenues for obtaining further light and knowledge in this arena. Just a few possibilities:

• Refined computer algorithms and searches that yield additional candidates of influence on the Book of Mormon.

• Refined analytical techniques to illuminate the “multiple authors” question and questions about the order in which the Book of Mormon was composed.

• The identification of previously unknown or rarely considered possible influences on the Book of Mormon in addition to The Late War. For example, the identification of the 1822 Koran by the Johnsons is fascinating. I have never seen it discussed before. We have all been focused on TLW and the Napoleon book, but the Koran stuff is a goldmine waiting to be explored. The number of Quaker works that show up on the Johnsons’ list is also intriguing. Historians have long recognized the influence of the Campbellites on Joseph Smith and early Mormonism, and some Quaker connections have been noted previously. But could the Quaker influence have been stronger than previously understood?

The mopologists who have foolishly claimed “victory” in the 50-page debate completely miss the point. No, the Johnsons’ research does not stick a fork in Mormonism. It’s not a silver bullet against the Book of Mormon or any other exhausted metaphor. It is, instead, an exciting development in Mormon studies. The kneejerk negative response from the mopologists who have been alternatively trying to discredit the study or accept its findings while downplaying their significance reveals an unjustifiably intense insecurity about the strength of the position they advocate.

[_mentalgymnast]

I'm pretty sure everyone is an agnostic whether they know it or not (yes, that is a play on words). I'm sure you know that the word "agnostic" means unknowable or an admission by someone that they don't know. On the subject of God, I think this is the only honest position to take. Whether you believe in a God or not, you really don't know.

Many people have their own beliefs (such as you), but believing and knowing are very different things. I suppose it's possible that there may be some people in the world that do know, but I've never met one or heard of one that I believe.

Yes, I am agnostic on the topic of knowing "God". My pet description of myself where "knowledge" is concerned is: "I know practically nothing about almost everything", which pretty well describes the whole world of humans and always will. We are ALL agnostic on practically everything about everything. We, don't, know. We believe, and act according to our experience based on what we believe.

I KNOW that "God Exists", because Existence is inarguable. I know that "God" is manifesting as me, because, well, here I AM, after all. Beyond that much, I hardly have a clue, and expect that comparatively I never will amount to more than that. Relative to where I personally have been, or what I personally have been, I am far advanced in knowledge and experience and even wisdom. Relative to "God", i.e. "Infinite Existence", my manifested, finite existence does not even form the beginning of a quantifiable entity. ALL of creation in the world of humans when compared to "God" (Infinite Existence) does not even "statistically" exist: which simply echoes what an astro physicist said in a lecture that I heard on YouTube years ago, when he asserted that dark energy accounts for c. 75% and dark matter for c. 25% of what makes up the universe, so statistically "we", that is to say, all things material, do not exist. Yet, here we are, with our finite minds eternally getting "bigger". And the more we find out the more we see how little we know. That will also never go away or change....

Uncle Ed, I find your view points fascinating. Thanks for your efforts.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

If you live believing that there is no God, and dying, discover that there is one; and I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that my belief was correct, who is better off?

If I live believing that there is a God, and dying, I discover that there is no God, I really don't believe that I have suffered for that belief (except from the bigotry of those who believe in a less perfect god, and atheists).

I'm just not a gambler. YMMV.

I don't believe there is a god, but I admit that it is possible that there is one. Even if there is a god, how do we know that he/she/it even cares about us at all? Who is to say that the god who created us is even around anymore. And if there is a god, why does that mean that there is life after death for us? Maybe god's real chosen ones are the dolphins and we were just some crazy off-shoot that she/it/he doesn't even care about.

You may be spot on. But as a sentient human being who loves and desires love, I hope you're wrong. I'd really like to think that man/woman sit at the top of God's creations and are created in His image. I can't see God as dolphin. Even more I can't picture God as an immortal human like being who then created dolphins as his ultimate creation. But that's just me...a human being. Who am I to talk, except for the fact that I am a sentient being who has a yearning to become more like an all wise and perfect Creator? I hope and have faith that God cares for me just as much, if not even more, than dolphins. Not that He doesn't have those critters worked into his overall plan too.

Regards,
MG