Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_GlennThigpen]

It would not surprise me, either. Bruce probably chose to not publish such a study.

Would it not be more charitable to ascertain the actuality of Bruce already making such a study than to state as a probability that he has made such a study and, presumably because the results are not good for the LDS, not to publish the results?

Glenn

[_MCB]

Yes. Thank you for the correction.

[Guest]

OK. I have a list of Calvinesque words to map.

infern, evil, diabolic, wicked, damn, abominat, iniquity, deprav, foul, filth, curse, contempt, fiend. Short forms for search function.

If anyone wants to suggest more, please do. Or, Dale, does Craig already have these words listed by chapter? That would save me time.

[_marg]

post reference: link

Aye, some of them did say they were familiar with Spalding's romance. Some of them after only seeing it the once, such as Artemas Cunningham. John Spalding notes only that Solomon read "many passages" to him while he was on a visit with Solomon not long before he moved to Pittsburgh. His wife evidently was with him on the visit. What the work of Loftus and others have done shows us that mamory is malleable and oftimes many of the things we think we remember clearly may not have been as we remember them. That is all I am using the Loftus work for.

I believe only one witness claimed brief exposure of a few days, Artemas Cunningham. However from the sounds of it evenin his case, a good deal of time over 2 days was spent with Spalding doing nothing else than discussing the book because apparently Spalding was trying to convince him that when he sold the book he'd be able to pay off the debt owed Artemas whose purpose there was to collect it.

You are distorting what Loftu's work does show. Keep in mind Glenn that the study which most corresponds to the Conneaut witnesses is the long term memory one involving trying to implant a memory in subjects that they at the age of 5 got lost in a shopping mall. Even with enlisting the help of parents to verify that such an event happened and even after she'd had 3 sessions with them, her studies yielded a 25 % success rate..in other words 3/4 of the people would not accept that the event happened even though their parents said it had. This does not indicate that memory is all that malleable for people's long term memory who are confident in what they remember and who have not been put under undue pressure to recount it.

Her other studies involving short term memory of scenes is too dissimilar to the conneaut witness situation. For one subjects were only given very brief exposure to a scene much like a witness of an actual scene might experience. That's simply not the situation with the Conneaut witnesses.

You keep talking in general terms about how terrible memory is and then you assume that's the findings of Loftus's work. With Loftus she shows some weaknesses of memory under particular circumstances. But her studies do not show that long term memory of individuals confident in what they remember can easily be manipulated..in fact it's the opposite, they are not likely to be manipulated if there are few sessions involved.

You're stretching it too far to be solely concerned with possibility and remote at that. If it if highly improbable and not backed up by studies you are using and your main motive for using Loftus's name is to warrant dismissal of the Conneaut witnesses then you aren't being intellectually honest.

You are a bit incoherent here. I am not asserting that any of the Conneaut witnesses had false memories of events etc. implanted. Rather, I am suggesting that there is a good possibility that the witnesses had memory confabulations by ideas being discussed much more recently such as the Indians being descendants of the lost tribes and exposure to the Book of Mormon in conjunction with Hurlbut's questioning.

If they remembered Spalding's story being about Indians being descendants of some lost ancient jewish tribes then that's likely what his story contained. What's your problem with that?

Marge, you are disregarding his statements here. And those of three of the other Conneaut witnesses about the lost tribes. Four of the eight witnesses identified the lost tribes motif in Spalding's romance. All of the witnesses said that the historical part of the Book of Mormon read the same as Spalding's romance. Aron Wright goes so far as to say

I find much of the history and the names verbatim

The fact that they knew Spalding's story was about some lost ancient Jewish tribes getting to america and being the ancestors of American indians doesn't mean the historical part wouldn't read the same. It would be easy to change the storyline slightly to accommodate a focus on one tribe initially as opposed to a few.

No, the lost tribes is supposed to be a historical part of the Spalding romance. In it he was supposed to show how the lost tribes, the Northern Kingdom of Israel conquered by the Assyrian King Shalmaneser V and exiled to upper Mesopotamia sometime around 722 N.C., had come to the Americas and become the ancestors of the American Indians. The point is that four of the eight witnesses clearly identified the lost tribes as being part of the Spalding story.

The fact that Spalding mentions some lost tribes initially in the storyline does not mean that "lost tribes" kept being mentioned throughout. It would be easy to change the initial storyline set up.

All eight of the witnesses said that the Book of Mormon read the same as Spalding's story except for the religious aspects. If some of the writers of the Book of Mormon had taken out anything about the lost tribes, the witnesses would not find much of the history and the names verbatim".

Why would spalding throughout the story have to keep mentioning where the characters came from? Once the stage is set..the story would progress with no need to keep mentioning Lost tribes throughout.

For those witnesses to be found credible, after four of them had mentioned the theme as a main part of the romance, the lost tribes motif should be in the Book of Mormon. It is not.

Well there is a bit of a mention of lost tribes in it. But spalding's story would only need focus on different factions evolving from a few tribes initially. So the characters involved in Spalding's would not have to all descend from one character/parent Lehi as in theBoM.

[_marg]

However I have read the Book of Mormon. Frankly it's a blur and I can remember very little of it...

So much for your arguments against memooy issues and your defense of the distant recollections of the Conneaut and other Spalding witnesses.

Wade I have virtually nil interest in the Book of Mormon's storyline. The conneaut witnesses may have had little other entertainment available, perhaps Spalding's story they found interesting. Perhaps it was less drawn out than the Book of Mormon and less repetition. What they remember of their friend, or spouse, or dad, or neighbour, or employer's book... someone they knew personally versus what I remember of a boring long drawn out religiously infused Book of Mormon are not particularly comparable.

Here's a potentially enlightening question: How many of the Spalding witnesses read the Book of Mormon all the way through so as to credibly make the kind of comparative analysis they witnessed to?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

It's not a good question because they don't make claims to know the Book of Mormon well, and I doubt very much they read it closely as it is rather painful to read if one doesn't take it seriously as a religious text. But key names they could easily pick out, place names, repeated phrasing, general storyline of wars between tribes those sorts of things they could easily recognize as being the same.

You're welcome - marg

[_Roger]

Glenn:

I'm pressed for time at the moment and have not read all the posts on this thread yet, but I do notice you keep harping about the lost tribes thing....

How do you explain this quote from Edward Stevenson attributed to Martin Harris:

Brother Harris said that the angel stood on the opposite side of the table on which were the plates, the interpreters, etc., and took the plates in his hand and turned them over. To more fully illustrate this to them, Brother Martin took up a book and turned the leaves over one by one. The angel declared that the Book of Mormon was correctly translated by the power of God and not of man, and that it contained the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Nephites, who were a branch of the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and had come from the land of Jerusalem to America.

http://www.gapages.com/harrim1.htm

[_Uncle Dale]

OK. I have a list of Calvinesque words to map.

infern, evil, diabolic, wicked, damn, abominat, iniquity, deprav, foul, filth, curse, contempt, fiend. Short forms for search function.

If anyone wants to suggest more, please do. Or, Dale, does Craig already have these words listed by chapter? That would save me time.

Criddle has composed a massive spreadsheet.

Across the top are the 239 Book of Mormon chapters,
as column headings.

Down the side are many hundreds of vocabulary words,
in order.

You can thus see which words occur in which chapters --
but you cannot determine how many times they occur.

I'm sure he will give you a copy, if you ask him.

Dale

[Guest]

Well there is a bit of a mention of lost tribes in it. But spalding's story would only need focus on different factions evolving from a few tribes initially. So the characters involved in Spalding's would not have to all descend from one character/parent Lehi as in theBoM.

marge, I am going to quote the relevant portions of the statements:

It was a historical romance of the first settlers of America, endeavoring to show that the American Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost tribes.

John later made aditional statements to saying Lehi coming from Chaldea as the leader of the Jaredites and Nephi coming from Jerusalem much later.

He had for many years contended that the aborigines of America were the descendants of some of the lost tribes of Israel, and this idea he carried out in the book in question.

This book represented the American Indians as the descendants of the lost tribes

When at his house, one day, he showed and read to me a history he was writing, of the lost tribes of Israel, purporting that they were the first settlers of America, and that the Indians were their decendants.

The lost tribes, according to those witnesses, was the main theme of Spalding's story. If those witnesses were remembering correctly, that should have been the main historical theme of the Book of Mormon, not a "bit of a mention" since all eight of the Conneaut witnesses averred that the historical parts of the Book of Mormon read identical, the same as, verbatim, to Spalding's story. If you have some plausible explanation of how all eight of those witnesses could have missed a story shift so great, i.e. the lost tribes of Israel, of which there are ten, to a small group of people fleeing Jerusalem, please enlighten me.

Glenn

[_MCB]

I have up to three of "wicked" in several chapters. Where there is one, there are likely to be others. I will have to look up his e-mail, unless you can PM it to me.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
who were a branch of the lost sheep of the House of Israel
...

Lehi was supposed to be of the tribe of Joseph -- a northerner,
and thus heir to Divine promises given to some of the Israelites
who were not of Judah (not ancestors of the Jews).

It has been speculated that Lehi's wife may have been from
another northern tribe -- and that Mulek brought representatives
of some northern tribes with him on his migration to America.

There was an RLDS patriarchal blessing given to an American
Indian during the 19th century, saying that he was of the
"Tribe of Yissachar" -- a northern Israelite group, some of
which must have come with Mulek (as Lehi's wife would not
have passed down the tribal lineage, according to the RLDS).

However -- in Israelite tradition, membership in the tribe can
also be passed down through the mother. Today the children
of a Jewish mother are Jewish.

Or -- perhaps the Book of Mormon is not true.

UD