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

[_Dan Vogel]

Marg,

I don't think one can conclude Spalding's and Smith's were the same genre. Spalding was writing a historical account grounded in naturalism. Smith was writing a fantasy/religious account, in which in the storyline..angels and God intervene physically and according to Smith outside the storyline of the Book of Mormon they intervene physically in his life.

Naturalism and supernaturalism are larger sets, and therefore less meaningful, than the genre of Mound Builder history.

Smith did not need that discovery narrative, in fact it doesn't really mesh with the storyline capabilities of his characters. God helps him translate through miraculous means and the plates are not even necessary. Angels appear and physically take the plates away. If God and the angels have these powers there is absolutely no need to hide plates in the earth or to have Smith go dig them up. The plates were redundant to the storyline Smith presented to the world.

If you read the Book of Mormon, you would know that it ends with Moroni burying the plates, so an angel just handing the plates to Joseph Smith is not an option.

So when one critically evaluates what was claimed and the data ..it appears that Smith may have started out with a discovery narrative taken from Spalding but as time went on appreciated he had God, angels and magic on his side, so why bother with the plates ...what a nuisance they are, just say the angel took them away.

This makes no sense, mostly because it conflicts with Roger’s assertion that Joseph Smith didn’t have a discovery narrative that matched Spalding’s narrative until 1838. He’s arguing plagiarism. I’m arguing that the 1838 history is just a sanitized version of what he had been telling since 1823. He couldn’t keep the plates around because in either case they weren’t real.

The fact that there are very close similarities between Spalding's discovery narrative in MSCC and Smith's 1838 version.. does not in an of itself mean one was used for the other. But when you consider that fact in relation to other data, such as the fact that the Conneaut witnesses did not suggest the discovery narrative as a factor in why they thought Smith employed Spalding's MF and they likely were completely unaware of Smith's discovery narrative .. then the data that there are lots of similarities between Spalding's MSCC & Smith's discovery narrative gives added weight to the claim the witnesses made of recognizing Spalding's manuscript in the Book of Mormon. It increases the likelihood of their credibility because if Smith did use Spalding's MF..then that would explain where the idea for his discovery narrative came from. And when we consider as additional data that Smith did not need that discovery narrative given that he had God and angels involved with supernatural abilities to help him read off of a stone the ancient stories..that continues to build a picture that Smith likely was aware and used that discovery narrative from Spalding..before realizing it really wasn't necessary to his claims.

This also makes no sense. The witnesses’ testimonies are more credible because they didn’t mention the similarities between Spalding’s and Joseph Smith’s discovery narratives, even though according to you they didn’t know about Joseph Smith’s. This is strengthened further by Joseph Smith’s not needing a discovery narrative, but stupidly borrowed Spalding’s anyway, but then realized he didn’t need it so he dispensed with it. This is nonsense. He got rid of the plates long before writing his 1838 history. As I mentioned above, the discovery narrative was essential to his story. You are missing an important and obvious element of Joseph Smith’s method. It was to provide physical evidence for his claims—hence, the plates and witnesses. These plates were brought home from the hill in 1827, handed to Josiah Stowell, felt by the Smith family through a cloth covering, place in a box, then under hearth, later under the shed, then in a barrel of beans, taken to Harmony, moved by Emma while dusting, hidden in the woods, etc. The plates were important to Joseph Smith’s claims.

Spalding's MSCC would probably have not been the one Smith would have likely seen, he would have likely seen the one connected to MF. However MF being of the same genre and author would likely have had a similar discovery narrative.

The existence of such a MS is highly questionable, the contents even more so. As I have argued, the similarities in the discovery narratives are predictable given the limited choices. Joseph Smith didn’t need Spalding’s MS for his narrative, which he began giving in 1823.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
Smith did not need that discovery narrative
...

Perhaps not -- but by the year 1827 he needed a miracle in his life that
was not based upon money-digging. Rather than pockmarking the hills
with fruitless excavations, he needed to evolve into something more
than a failed treasure seer.

Notice that in PGP narrative allows Smith practically no digging. He is
no longer a pick and shovel man (if he ever had even tried to be) --
but something more like a gentleman puttering in his garden, without
a trace of dirt on his hands. Martin Harris must have scratched his
head several times over, when he read THAT in the Times & Seasons.

In 1835 Oliver had to meliorate the story, by pretending that the
stone box had once been buried deeper in the hill, and had only
been eroded into sight relatively recently -- alleviating any need
for dirty money-digging.

In Spalding's case, he may have been seeking to portray a bit of
verisimilitude, by having his semi-invalid fictional-self find the ancient
record without much need for exertion. At any rate, Spalding's story
is more believable, in that his discovery was made deeper in the
mound -- in a chamber reminiscent of Enoch's secret hiding place
under the Jerusalem Temple -- for a single golden plate. Royal Arch
Masonry was just making its appearance in North America at the
time; but it may have supplied some inspiration for Spalding's record
being discovered in a hollow spot in the Ohio hill.

I suppose that the Smith family's professions regarding a magical
book began well before 1827 -- but I'm not convinced that the
story started out as a buried magical book -- nor even a "Bible."
At some point, however, the Smith account took on the trappings
of a money-diggers' discovery -- perhaps a "gold book." I do not
suppose this development came much before March of 1826.

When did the Smith tale evolve into a buried gold Bible? In 1827?
And when did the golden plates morph into metal plates that only
had the "appearance" of gold? Late in 1827 -- so as to discourage
persecution from fellow money-diggers?

If there was such an evolution in Smith's story, we might be lucky
enough to find traces of the external story development whilst
reading through Mosiah -- or even as late in the game as Helaman.

Can we identify parts of the "Nephite record" which do not require
an 1827 cover-stone lifting by a non-digger?

It might prove interesting to re-read the book, looking for such hints.

UD

[_Dan Vogel]

Marg,

Dan it's rhetorical gamesmenship on your part with your frequent remarks how Roger or myself are not logical and you are..and as well Roger doesn't value logic..which by the way he didn't say and although he's corrected you..still persist. His objection is that you use obscure fallacies.. to display one-upmanship.

When you and Roger make blatant logical errors while at the same time accusing your opponents of being illogical and stupid, I decided not to hold back. I would have mentioned logic anyway, but not so strongly. You and Roger talk about what you think is logical or reasonable, only without any real knowledge of it. What started my comments about Roger is the following statement:

And I told you from the beginning that I am not concerned about following pre-determined rules for the formal structure of arguments or formally identifying logical fallacies.

My pointing out logical errors is gamesmanship and one-upmanship? Strange attitude for someone engaged in debate. I’m not allowed to correct your logic? I don’t know about you, but I believe logic is an important aspect of finding the truth. It’s not a game. Those who engage in polemics and wildly speculate are the ones playing games.

Roger's writes: "While I agree that Joseph Smith is the most likely contributer for certain portions of the Book of Mormon text, he is not the most likely contributer for all of it. But Dan's assumption only allows for gaining insight into what Joseph Smith "thinks and feels about himself and the world" because his assumption is that only Joseph Smith contributed content to the text."

You write: "That’s only true if we assume you are right. If I’m right that Joseph Smith was sole author, then I’m on the right track. My method isn’t a way a determining authorship, except in rare instances. The only reason I can analyze the Book of Mormon the way I do is because Joseph Smith believed what he was writing, not just making stories up like a novelist. With Spalding’s authorship, you will run into the intentional fallacy, because a novel doesn’t necessarily tell you about what the author believes."

You are not making sense here, and you a putting things together that don’t belong.

So you justify your interpretation of the Book of Mormon via Smith as author as being valid because according to you, you aren't violating the "intentional fallacy". I don't think intentional fallacy has anything to do with this. My best guess is the intentional fallacy is applied to one who evaluates literature using as the assumption that it will reflect an author's personal life..when they shouldn't because the literature may be a novel and completely unrelated to the author's life. But you don't think the Book of Mormon is a novel you think the writer Smith thought it was true or it was a true reflection of himself.

Let's look at the logic involved. You have no basis for your assumption Smith believed what he wrote. Smith did not claim he wrote the Book of Mormon, in fact he said it was written by ancient prophets. In addition there is no reason to assume the writer/writers actually believed the contents of the Book of Mormon were true. All they were interested in was a scriptural book to be used as the basis to a new religion, the contents did not need to be true, and obviously Smith knew they weren't.

Of course Joseph Smith knew ancient prophets didn’t write the book, but he still believed its teachings, and he may have believed it was inspired, given the definition of inspired in the book itself. That’s what pious fraud means. There is no definitive way to settle the sincerity issue; to question it requires mind reading. The point you seem to miss is: if the Book of Mormon was written by Spalding, it’s just a novel and it tells you nothing about the author; if Joseph Smith was the author and it was written to found a religion, it was written didactically, to be believed, and is not just a novel. It is therefore legitimate to read it as a reflection of Joseph Smith’s beliefs.

So Roger was correct. And your use of throwing out "intentional fallacy" was a rhetorical game of one upmanship on your part. Intentional fallacy is irrelevant to this situation. With most novels it is assumed the author is the author. In this case, the claimed writer/translator J. smith does not claim to be the author, so it's not an automatic presumption that he is... especially given the manner in which it was claimed to have been written.

Roger and I went talking about authorship at this point. We were talking about reading the text to find out what an author believed. I was warning him of potential problems with trying to read the Book of Mormon with the assumption that Spalding wrote it. You haven’t said anything to change that. It’s not one-upmanship, it’s a legitimate point.

[_GlennThigpen]

It’s tempting to want to nail the Book of Mormon to a specific text and prove its fraudulent nature in a coup de grace. That’s the appeal of the Spalding theory

No, the appeal to the S/R theory is it's the best fit explanation of the data. It's the most complex and extremely difficult to appreciate and perhaps will never be accepted or understood ..but the smith alone theory violates good reasoning. People are going to believe in the Book of Mormon as true based on faith no matter what. That's their business. But for those interested in true history, in intellectual honesty..the S/R theory is the most satisfying.

The Spalding/Rigdon theory violates logic and reason also. It requires interpreting statements in ways that violate the normal understanding of the era to try to make it fit with the facts. It also endows Sidney et al with some superhuman capabilities to be able to collaborate so well on such a complex narrative without leaving any type of evidence. It endues Solomon with a literary skill he never exhibited in any of his writings.
Most of the theory is backported to try to fit the realities of the Book of Mormon while ignoring any inconvenient contrary evidence.

Glenn

[_MCB]

Glenn, I therefore respond that your beliefs egregiously ignore any contrary evidence. Do you ever take a look at the logic of what you write?

[_marg]

Of course Joseph Smith knew ancient prophets didn’t write the book, but he still believed its teachings,

Dan,

What teachings are you referring to in the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith would have believed?


(I can't spend time today on the computer)

[_marg]

It also endows Sidney et al with some superhuman capabilities to be able to collaborate so well on such a complex narrative without leaving any type of evidence.

Yet on the other hand it was all done very secretively. If Smith could write off the top of his head without any material in front of him, why not have scribes who are not family or who have no vested financial interest like Harris..(though with Harris I think he used a blanket to separate them so I don't think Harris was in on it as the rest of them)? Why claim a charade of a head in the hat dictation process, or having scribes say he read off a stone which glowed words? Why wasn't there consistency in the scribes explanation of what occurred?

On the whole there was little transparency based on the scribes' statements of what truly went on. None of them were skeptical enquirers. It didn't bother any one of them to not see or examine the plates for themselves. Emma, didn't seem curious in the least, didn't she just dust around them as they supposedly were covered up on a table?

[_Uncle Dale]

...
The Spalding/Rigdon theory violates logic and reason
...

I've never heard anybody say that the Smith-alone authorship
violates logic and reason. What I have heard said, however, is
that he was a largely uneducated, ignorant farm-boy who
could barely write his own name in 1827. The Reflector
in Palmyra, mentioned that Smith did not even know the
meanings of many of the words printed in his new Book.

If Smith truly did write the entire Book by himself, we should
be able to detect some linguistic evidence for that fact.
Say, we tabulate all the words in the Book and compare
them with the vocabulary we know Smith employed in his
personal letters -- that would provide us with a list of
his "shared vocabulary" in the Book of Mormon.

Of course we can (and have) accomplish the same task
for Cowdery, Rigdon, Spalding, etc. We can thus construct
a master list of all the Book of Mormon words, and mark
up that list to show which of those writers' output overlaps
the Book's vocabulary. We can thus also determine which
of the 19th century writers' words fall into the unique
category of being shared with the Book's vocabulary, but
NOT shared with the other tabulated writers' language.

What happens when we map Joseph Smith's vocabulary
across the entire Book of Mormon, and then look ONLY
at those words which are NOT also used by Rigdon, etc.?

If Smith truly wrote the Book, we might expect that bunch
of unique words to occur spread out, more or less evenly,
throughout the entire text. Perhaps we would see the
distribution drop off a little, in those chapters copied from
the Bible -- but the "Smithesque" vocabulary should occur
in something approaching a uniform pattern, with few ups
and downs in the average word-count.

On the other hand, if Smith incorporated some hunks of text
from other writers, we might expect the discover their own
"unique words" bunched up in discrete blocks of the Book's
narrative. And that is exactly what happens when we map
out Spalding's words and Rigdon's words. Unique words,
specific to Spalding, tend to show up in clusters in places
like the last part of Alma -- where we finds examples like
"forts," "fortify," "fortified," etc. Unique words, specific to
Rigdon, tend to show up most frequently in the sections
of Nephite commentary, right after lengthy biblical quotes
are reproduced in the Book of Mormon.

But words specific to Oliver Cowdery appear clustered
with Smith's own unique words in the Nephite record. We
might find two Smith words in close proximity, followed by
a Cowdery word -- and then, close by, a few more words
unique to each of those two 19th century Mormons.

We can take the process a step beyond that -- and also
map out the Book of Mormon vocabulary shared by BOTH
Smith and Cowdery, but NOT used by Spalding or Rigdon.

Once again, the Smith-Cowdery words cluster, intermingled
amongst the Smith-only words and the Cowdery-only words;
while the Spalding-only and Rigdon-only clusters remain
fairly separated from the Smith+Cowdery phenomenon.

The more I look at these patterns, the more I'm beginning
to think it would be worthwhile to produce a bar chart for
the entire 239 chapters in the Book of Mormon, in order to
demonstrate how the Smith+Cowdery vocabulary occurs
more or less separate from the biblical chapters, and even
more distinctly separated from the Rigdon-only and the
Spalding-only sections of the Book of Mormon.

I think that LDS scholars can probably live with this sort of
discovery -- since they already agree that the text came
from multiple authors, and because Smith's language cannot
be expected to match up with each and every Nephite's ---
but how the Smith-alone sect will explain the phenomenon,
I can only guess. "Coincidence," I suppose will be their reply.

UD

[_GlennThigpen]

The more I look at these patterns, the more I'm beginning
to think it would be worthwhile to produce a bar chart for
the entire 239 chapters in the Book of Mormon, in order to
demonstrate how the Smith+Cowdery vocabulary occurs
more or less separate from the biblical chapters, and even
more distinctly separated from the Rigdon-only and the
Spalding-only sections of the Book of Mormon.

UD

And how is the method you are proposing better than the NSC open set method?

Glenn

[_Uncle Dale]

The more I look at these patterns, the more I'm beginning
to think it would be worthwhile to produce a bar chart for
the entire 239 chapters in the Book of Mormon, in order to
demonstrate how the Smith+Cowdery vocabulary occurs
more or less separate from the biblical chapters, and even
more distinctly separated from the Rigdon-only and the
Spalding-only sections of the Book of Mormon.

UD

And how is the method you are proposing better than the NSC open set method?

Glenn

I don't know that the "open set" method will tell me which
parts of the Book of Mormon most resemble Smith, Cowdery,
etc. For example, it returns a 100% probability that Smith
wrote Enos, and a 0% probability that he wrote the "Preface."

If I understand what I've heard from a guy applying that same
method to examining Smith's preserved correspondence, it
also tends to provide 0% or 100% values for different letters
we are fairly certain were Smith's own composition, in his
own handwriting, etc.

So -- if I'm looking for a spectrum of values, to inform me
how much or how little a section of the Book of Mormon
actually resembles the 19th century writers' work, my mapping
their "unique words" across the entire Book seems to provide
one useful method. Unless my calculated values are somehow
off, there is a very, very good chance that Smith wrote the
1830 "Preface," with perhaps a sentence added by Cowdery.

I'll post my entire chart here (probably in another thread)
when I have it all worked out in easy to read format.

UD