Surviving Another Book of Mormon War (of Statistics)
by Jeff Lindsay
Part
One: The Late Not-So-Great War Against the Book of Mormon
By
now you may have already seen Ender’s Game enough times
that you may be ready for some other form of ultimate excitement.
Just in the nick of time comes another intriguing war story, but in
place of conventional 3D computer graphics, you get to enjoy the raw
thrill of full-contact statistics as applied to the Book of Mormon.
Yes,
another statistical squabble is underway in Mormondom. You can dig
into the details in Benjamin L. McGuire's excellent article, "The
Late War Against the Book of Mormon"
over at one of the leading sources for LDS scholarship and Mormon
studies, The
Mormon Interpreter.
McGuire
takes on yet another attempt by critics to explain away the Book of
Mormon as some sort of plagiarism from modern sources. For some
background on this theme, see my LDSFAQ
page on plagiarism and the Book of Mormon.
In
this newest attack, a highly questionable method has been used to
look for "influence" between texts based on four-word
strings that they have in common. An allegedly strong influence for
the Book of Mormon is found in a text published in 1816: The
Late War Between the United States and Great Britain
by Gilbert J. Hunt.
Read or download it at Archive.org.
As
is fairly typical for the many books alleged to have influenced the
imagined bookworm Joseph Smith or to have been sources for material
in the Book of Mormon, there is no evidence that he actually ever saw
this book, much less relied on it whenever he needed, say, a
four-word phrase such as, say, "entitled an act supplementary."
Oh,
my mistake (and that of a vocal critic using “big data”
to reveal the real origins of the Book of Mormon): that phrase was
one of the 75 four-word matches out of 479 total between the two
texts that actually come from the irrelevant boilerplate copyright
statement at the beginning of the books. There are quite a few even
more serious problems with the new statistical attack that McGuire
skewers nicely.
However,
I'd like to add a couple of my comments. Books like The Late War,
by virtue of being deliberately written in scriptural style with
Elizabethan English, would seem to be much more likely to use
different words and grammar patterns than others in normal prose.
Even
after direct matches from the Bible are subtracted, the higher
incidence of words like "unto" instead of "to,"
"verily," “hath” instead of “has,”
and so forth have got to make it more likely to find many short
strings of matching phrases when there may be zero actual influence.
That
both of these Bible-infused books have extended discussions of the
details of war will further lead to many of the scattered parallels
that critics are finding. Random parallels from related subject
matter and the choice of Elizabethan language does not prove
plagiarism or derivation, nor disprove the ancient origins of the
Book of Mormon.
McGuire’s
response is useful in better understanding the weakness of the late
great “smoking gun” that is the source of exceedingly
great rejoicing in the camps of the critics.
The
work discussed by McGuire emphasizes four-word parallels found by
computer analysis of texts. The Tanners have previously pointed out a
number of three and four-word parallels in the Book of Mormon with
other texts, alleging plagiarism.
I
had some fun with the weakness of their argument by showing what I
felt are more
impressive Book of Mormon parallels with another text, Whitman's
Leaves of Grass.
Since Leaves of Grass was published after the Book of Mormon, it’s
an impossible source, of course, which illustrates how strong
parallels can arise by chance. (My apologies to those whose faith was
shaken by my little spoof.)
A
few parallels, even occasional impressive ones, don’t
necessarily explain anything about the origins of the Book of Mormon,
though they can be interesting.
Ah,
but if we Mormons are now discounting parallels, aren’t we
discounting much of the evidence for the Book of Mormon as an ancient
book since much of that is based on parallels as well?
Parallels,
like experimental data in scientific research (e.g., individual
positive or negative results in a pharmaceutical trial), can be
meaningful and give insight, when the right experiment is conducted,
when the right questions are being asked, and when the right analysis
is done.
To
argue against the irrelevance of bad data based on flawed work and
errant assumptions is not to discount all research and data per
se. When loose parallels and some similar phrasing found
throughout might theoretically account for, say, less than 1% of a
text, the work of explaining the origins of that text is hardly done.
There
is much more to say on the proper applications of parallels and data
to Book of Mormon studies that I will address later.
For
now, go ahead and read
the text of The Late War at Archive.org
(not yet available on Google Books). You might, if you read long
enough, find some interesting, non-trivial parallels such as the
phrase "curious workmanship" and many other short tidbits,
plus interesting parallels in some of the military conflicts.
Maybe
not as interesting as the parallels in The Leaves of Grass,
but that's for you to decide. The question is, what do these
parallels mean? What do they explain? What does The Late War
actually tell us about the Book of Mormon?
Meanwhile,
over at BYU
Studies,
you can also scan
the list of books that were in the Manchester library,
potentially available to Joseph Smith during preparation of the Book
of Mormon, and see that The
Late War
was not there. There is one more fair question to ask: Is there any
evidence that Joseph or anyone close to him was familiar with that
book? None so far.
Some
claim that Gilbert Hunt’s book was used in public schools, but
that is based on Hunt’s hopeful title page proclaiming his
intent to have it so used. That was just marketing, not
reality.
His
goal does not appear to have been realized, and so far there does not
appear to be any evidence that this book was used in schools or had
any other notable scope. I almost wonder if the people it has
influenced most are modern critics of the Book of Mormon.
As
we must add one more obscure tome to the ever-growing list of books
that Joseph the non-bookworm allegedly used in his passionate quest
to plagiarize (but not in a way that made writing any easier!), one
can wonder if Joseph had some kind of vast
frontier library
hidden in the woods somewhere where he and his team of scholars
concocted the intricate Book of Mormon. That seems wildly
far-fetched, but on the other hand, when it comes to the Book of
Mormon, I guess miracles are possible.
Part
Two: Curious Parallels
One
critic, convinced that The
Late War
was an important source for the Book of Mormon, provides a
lengthy list of parallels over at Patheos,
some of which may seem impressive. But some of these, I must warn
you, are a bit of a stretch.
The
Patheos article begins its list with this star parallel:
A
battle at a fort where righteous white protagonists are attacked by
an army made up of dark-skinned natives driven by a white military
leader. The white protagonists are prepared for battle and slaughter
their opponents to such an extent that they fill the trenches
surrounding the fort with dead bodies. The surviving elements flee
into the wilderness/forest (pp. 102-4, 29:1-23) Alma 49:10-25
As
with most of the parallels, much of the content is a fairly natural
description of details of war. Forts, walls, and ditches are not that
unusual (though I’ll admit it was only recently that scholars
recognized how important they were in ancient Mesoamerica). Further,
preparing for battle, fighting, suffering casualties and fleeing —
these are not very unique nor impressive.
The
filling of the ditch with the wounded is getting a bit more unique
because it is so extreme and memorable. But is that what The Late
War actually says? Pages 102-104 describe a battle at a fort with
a deep ditch around it.
As
in many battles there are casualties, as we read in the key sentence
on page
104:
“And the deep ditch that surrounded the fort was strewed with
their slain and their wounded.”
The
word “strewed” does not convey the “filling”
by numerous bodies as in the Book of Mormon, but can have more of a
sense of bodies scattered around the ditch, not bodies piled high.
Hmm,
rephrasing that as “filling” the ditch and scoring it as
a strong parallel suggests we may be dealing with a less than
objective approach by the author. Indeed, it may give us a taste of
what is to come in the parallels that follow.
Then
the defeated troops fled into the forest and straight back to their
vessel. Does that really equate with the wilderness of the Book of
Mormon?
The
vast majority of the parallels from The Late War naturally
involve war, and often the details of war, with parallels generally
found in Alma’s detailed accounts of some wars the Nephites
fought.
While
critics feel that their often contrived parallels somehow explain the
authorship of the Book of Mormon based upon the cumulative impression
these parallels create, mingled with statistics, there is a severe
absence of clearly plagiarized material of the kind that would make
life easier for a lazy plagiarist.
The
Book of Mormon is “explained” by plagiarism from The
Late War even less than the New Testament is “explained”
as a work of plagiarism from, say, Isaiah (and in that case, we know
Isaiah was actually quoted frequently).
Detailed
accounts of actual war have parallels with the Book of Mormon because
the Book of Mormon text has intricate details steeped in the
realities of real war, something Joseph Smith was not personally
acquainted with.
The
issues of recruiting, chain of command, supply chains, managing
prisoners, negotiations with the enemy, deception, strategy of many
kinds, the challenges of marches and terrain, the relationship
between seasons and warfare, morale of the troops, weaponry, armor,
fortifications, wounds, and numerous other details that we often miss
provide a consistent and remarkable tapestry that speaks of
authorship from someone besides Joseph Smith, and besides Gilbert
Hunt.
There
is an entire book of warfare in the Book of Mormon, available
online at the Maxwell Institute,
that only partially explores the deep war-related content of that
ancient book.
While
many of the realities of war apply to any setting, including the war
of 1812, much of what is in the Book of Mormon has an ancient flavor
that Joseph could not have fabricated. The chapter on warfare in John
Sorenson’s recent Mormon’s Codex also should be read by
anyone even mildly impressed with The Late War as a possible
explanation for the Book of Mormon.
The
Mesoamerican elements consistent with the Book of Mormon, and foreign
to what Joseph might have known, deserve serious consideration. But
the common elements with almost all war will make for easy parallel
hunting, but none of these parallels explain authorship.
Something
Curious about That Book
One
of the parallels that I felt was most interesting, at least
initially, involves a phrase that one might easily think is a
distinctive Book of Mormon term: “curious workmanship.”
If you Google that phrase, the first page of hits will be dominated by
links related to the Book of Mormon and LDS lore. Here are the
related parallels mentioned at Patheos, which definitely caught my
interest:
A
man builds a boat of “curious workmanship”, despite the
mocking and scoffing of others. The latter are humbled when they see
the completed product. (pp. 192-193, 50:2-7, 12) 1 Nephi
17:17-18; 18:1-4
A
“ball” made out of “brass” of “curious
work” with clocklike spindles (p. 195, 50:28) 1 Nephi 16:10
Swords
of fine/curious “workmanship” (p. 42, 12:12; p. 44,
13:13; p. 58, 16:24) 1 Nephi 4:9
The
Book of Mormon references are:
1 Nephi 16: 10 And
it came to pass that as my father arose in the morning, and went
forth to the tent door, to his great astonishment he beheld upon the
ground a round ball of curious workmanship; and
it was of fine brass. And within the ball were two spindles; and the
one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness.
1 Nephi 18:1 And
it came to pass that they did worship the Lord, and did go forth with
me; and we did work timbers of curious workmanship.
And the Lord did show me from time to time after what manner I should
work the timbers of the ship.
Ether 10:27 And
they did make all manner of weapons of war. And they did work all
manner of work of exceedingly curious workmanship.
(Note:
1 Nephi 4:9 is presented as sort of a “curious workmanship”
hit at Patheos, but that verse doesn’t use the word curious.
Instead, Nephi observes that “the workmanship” of Laban’s
sword was fine. But Ether 10:27 refers to curious workmanship right
after a mention of weapons. )
How
impressive are the parallels cited at Patheos?
I’ve
already noted that the last parallel cited isn’t completely
fair since the Book of Mormon doesn’t use “curious
workmanship” in the cited verse. But things are better in the
first parallel. Here is The
Late War text, pp. 192-193,
featuring chapter 50, verses 2-7, 12:
2
Among these there appeared one whose ingenuity was exceedingly great
inasmuch as it astonished all the inhabitants of the earth :
3
Now the name of this man was Robert, sir-named Fulton; but the cold
hand of death fell upon him, and he slept with his fathers, on the
twenty and third day of the second month of the eighteen hundred and
fifteenth year of the Christian era.
4
However, the things which he brought into practice in his life time
will be recorded, and his name spoken of by generations yet unborn.
5
Although, like other men of genius, in these days, he was spoken of
but slightly at first; for the people said, Lo ! the man is beside
himself! and they laughed at him; nevertheless, he exceeded their
expectations.
6
For it came to pass, that (assisted by Livingston, a man of wealth,
and a lover of arts and learning) lie was enabled to construct
certain curious vessels, called the vernacular tongue, steam-boats.
7
Now these steam-boats were cunningly contrived and had abundance of
curious workmanship therein, such as surpassed the
comprehension of all the wise men of the east, from the beginning to
this day.
12
But when the scoffers, the enemies of Fulton, and the gainsayers, saw
that the boats moved pleasantly upon the river, they began to be
ashamed of their own ignorance and stupidity, and were fain to get
into the boats themselves; after which, instead of laughing, they
gaped at the inventor with astonishment.
Yes,
Robert Fulton built a boat all right, and some folks laughed at him.
But is there anything about this story that makes it helpful to an
eager plagiarist in need of material, lots of material, for his book?
If this is THE SOURCE that Joseph relied on above all other sources,
why is so little of the material used?
Maybe
things will be more clear with the remaining “curious”
parallel above, the one that looks most impactful with its kinship to
the Liahona. Here is the cited text from The
Late War, verse 28 of chapter 50, p. 195:
26
And now, also, the cunning and witchcraft of these Yankees, these
sons of Belial, these children of Beelzebub, have invented another
instrument of destruction, more subtile than all the rest :
27
Yea, these are mighty evil things, and they are called torpedoes,
which may be said to signify sleeping devils ; which come, as a thief
in the night, to destroy the servants of the king ; and were
contrived by that arch fiend, whose name was Fulton.
28
Now these wonderful torpedoes were made partly of brass and partly of
iron, and were cunningly contrived with curious works, like
unto a clock; and as it were a large ball.
29
And, after they were prepared, and a great quantity of the black dust
put therein, they were let down into the water, nigh unto the strong
ships, with intent to destroy them;
30
And it was so, that when they struck against the bottom of the ship,
the black dust in the torpedo would catch fire, and burst forth with
tremendous roar, casting the vessel out of the waters and bursting
her in twain.
Maybe
it’s just my Mormon faith getting in the way of cognitive
dissonance of something, but I’m still struggling to see the
faith-demolishing power of this. It’s not even “curious
workmanship,” but just “curious works.”
Where
is the scene of Lehi finding the ball outside his tent? Where is the
device that guides them through the wilderness? Why, Gilbert Hunt’s
“large ball” is nothing like the Liahona, but is, of all
things, a torpedo. (The torpedoes of the War of 1812 were more
like tethered mines and could be described as balls.)
Now
if Lehi had found a sacred torpedo outside his tent and
marched across the desert with it, the anti-Mormons would have a
better case. Further, for this parallel, where are the promised
spindles in the Liahona?
Is
the reference to “clock” in verse 28 supposed to
magically provide the direction-giving spindles in a divine
compass/torpedo? I guess with a little faith, all things are
possible. But I’m thoroughly disappointed.
Yes,
there are parallels, but scattered, weak, and not very helpful to a
would-be plagiarizer. The relationship between The Late War
and the Book of Mormon does not appear to offer a serious explanation
for Book of Mormon origins, and not much substance and density as an
alleged influencer of some kind, though the relationship may be
statistically stronger than with many other books that also were not
used as sources by Joseph Smith. But where does that get us actually?
Yet
isn’t it a strange coincidence that both books repeatedly use
this odd phrase, “curious workmanship”?
“Curious
workmanship” is not in the Bible and is certainly not a common
phrase in the English of today, but yes, there it is in both the Book
of Mormon and The Late War. If you Google that word, the first
page of hits are dominated by links related to the Book of Mormon, so
it seems like a pretty distinctive and unusual Mormon term.
Smoking
gun? Well, if smoke is what you want, we’ve come to the right
place. While “curious workmanship” may not be part of our
modern working vocabulary, get past the first page of Google results
and look at other works using that phrase. You’ll soon see a
plethora of works from the 1700s and early 1800s invoking that term.
Forgottenbooks.org
has a page for the bigram “curious workmanship” at
http://www.forgottenbooks.org/worddata/curious_workmanship
where they explore its use in books. We can see that this phrase was
not exceedingly rare in Joseph’s day, and that over 1% the
books published in the years around and prior to the Book of Mormon
used this phrase (some years had 4% or more of their published books
incorporating the phrase).
No,
it was not used in most books, but it was used enough that finding it
in one book does not necessarily have any bearing on issues of
derivation.
“Curious
workmanship” is actually part of a four-word phrase
found in both texts. But don’t be too highly impressed. The
other words are trivial: “of” and “and,” as
in “of curious workmanship and.” In TheLate
War, the “and” is part of a single sentence,
logically joining workmanship with other elements.
In
the Book of Mormon, it’s a little different, being separated
from workmanship with a semicolon or a period. Not all that
impressive. What really counts is the concept of “curious
workmanship,” which almost always will be preceded by “of.”
To
see how “curious workmanship” was used in Joseph’s
day and before, Google Books is a useful tool, as is the Google
search engine. Google, of course, has a vast library of old books
under its cyber belt. Just about every old book of significance and
thousands of highly obscure ones seem to be there — with the
apparent exception of The Late War.
In
Google Books, we find the following examples, in order (no date
filter was applied, but very recent books such as LDS-related books
have been manually excluded), and with a touch of tongue-in-cheek
commentary explaining “exactly” how these sources could
have been used to fabricate the Book of Mormon. You’ll see just
how easy it can be to turn random parallels into “smoking
guns.”
Naturally,
I’ll provide some of the smoke to help things along. Let’s
look at the top candidates from my initial search (renumbered after
excluding modern books):
First:A
history and description of the royal abbaye of Saint Denis,
London: J.S. Jordan, 1795. Here the very title page of the book, much
more likely to be read and noticed than anything inside, speaks of
“pieces of
curious workmanship and
antiquity.”
There
is our four-word phrase in full glory, prominently displayed in a
book predating The Late War. Had Joseph but glanced within, he
might well have landed upon page 50, where we read of a great warrior
who, like Captain Moroni, faced “enemies” with his “pious
attitude,” relying on divine protection and guidance “in
the day of battle” when he “led on his Knights and his
armies to victory; whilst, in his councils, he ceased not to look up
to them [the holy Martyrs in heaven] for their heavenly aid and
influence.”
Councils,
armies, battle, victory, seeking divine help — that’s
pretty much the Book of Mormon in a nutshell. Through such heavenly
help, the hero found success in battle and, like the wounded Alma
after leading his people to victory, also found “recovery of
his health.”
Yes,
this could have been an important source that Joseph used, not
through digesting hundreds of pages, but a mere glance or two,
perhaps in just a few moments of wandering in his vast frontier
library.
One
further hint of the potential significance of this source: there is a
reference to the Restoration of pure Christianity in its foreword, p.
iv. After a reference to Saints and “their Church” at the
top if the page, we have a revealing — or shall we say
“revelatory”? —passage condemning the apostasy seen
among the clergy and men of learning in France, and expressing hope
for that day “When mankind shall have withdrawn from
Christianity, all that they have added to it, genuine religion
itself only will remain, as simple in its doctrines, as pure in
its morality.”
That’s
what the Restoration was all about: reversing apostasy and bringing
back pure religion. Could this have been the book that sparked
Joseph’s dream — and his visions? I will leave it as an
exercise to the reader to find the many other Book of Mormon terms
embedded in this book, such as Isaiah, prophet, temple, and so forth.
Of
course, one must understand that the church being described was no
ordinary church, but one blessed with remarkable sacred relics such
as “the real tooth” of the Apostle John (p. 13) and the
shoulder blade of John the Baptist (p. 16), not only serving as
inspiration for the angelic visitation of those holy men as angels to
Joseph Smith, but also raising difficult questions about missing
elements in the possibly incomplete resurrection of those saints, if
the relics have been accurately catalogued.
Second:Keating's
general history of Ireland
by Geoffrey Keating and Dermod O'Connor, 1865, on page 487 we
encounter “ten coats of mail, two cloaks richly adorned, and
two pair of chess-boards of
curious workmanship.”
A three-word parallel!
Coats
of mail and chess-boards both invoke military concepts and battles,
an important Book of Mormon theme. This is followed by another
instance on the same page with even stronger military ties: “six
swords, six shields of curious workmanship, and six scarlet
cloaks.”
And
there you have it, all 4 words, in the context of weaponry made of
metal. Nearly a perfect fit for explaining the Book of Mormon’s
use of that phrase, though the slightly late publication date could
give Mormon apologists some unfortunate talking points.
Third:The
border antiquities of England and Scotland
by Sir Walter Scott, vol. 1, 1814, page 8, has two relevant
instances. One occurs as “ruins of some curious workmanship”
and the other is “a piece of
curious workmanship,
as is visible to this day, and...”
which would be a perfect four-word match were it not for a brief
parenthetical remark. The context, interestingly, is that of
describing a castle, or, equivalently, a great and spacious building.
Since
this book does not appear on the list of books at the Manchester
Library that Joseph might have had easy access to, we must assume
that this book was one of the many smuggled into Joseph’s
frontier library.
While
this book is filled with numerous themes that have relation to the
Book of Mormon, we do not expect Joseph to have read and extracted
them all, but perhaps only a choice page or two in his random
perusing. After all, he was not a bookworm and rarely read before
publishing the Book of Mormon, so his plagiarism surely must have
been based upon very brief episodes of gleaning material from
selected sources.
Had
he flipped upon Scott’s work, surely his eyes must have fallen
upon page 90, where we find an astonishingly high density of Book of
Mormon parallels, enough to surely settle the case the Walter Scott’s
Border Antiquities was a vital Book of Mormon source. Look at
the concepts, in order:
“Four
sons” (like Lehi!)
“his
castle” (defensive fortifications)
King
John (introducing the concept of kings)
“pledges
his fidelity” (making oaths)
“joining
with the barons in that holy war of patriotism”
“the
fickle tyrant” (King Noah and others)
“his
castles and lands were given to” another (as happened several
times in the Book of Mormon)
“In
the succeeding reign, however, he obtained a restitution of them”
(The Book of Mormon refers to Nephites obtaining a “restitution”
of their lands from the Lamanites. Perfect match.)
His
son Gilbert succeeded to his barony (as sons succeeded fathers to
positions of leadership among the Nephites)
“To
him succeeded a son of the same name” (a common Nephite
practice: Nephi and Nephi, Alma and Alma, etc.)
“endowed
it with . . . land . . . for the maintenance of two chaplains to
perform divine service daily”
And
that is just warming up for the most relevant paragraph at the bottom
of page 90.
“The
present condition of this mansion remains to be described. It is
guarded by an outward wall towards the Tyne, built on the
brink of the cliffs, in this place not less than sixty perpendicular
feet in height, above the plain which intervenes between the castle
and the river. This wall, at intervals, is defended by square
bastions. The entrance to the castle is from the south: when
viewed from the heights, the whole structure has a very noble and
formidable appearance. Mr. Hutchinson, who seems to have examined
very minutely the actual state of this mansion, has given the
following description of it: “The narrow neck of land,”
says he, “leading to the entrance, was formerly cut through by
a deep ditch, over which a drawbridge has given access to the
outward gate: the water which anciently supplied the ditch
is now collected by a reservoir before the gate, and serves a mill:
the outward gate was originally defended by several
outworks and a tower, as appears by their ruins. From
the situ- {end of page 90, continues on page 91} ation in which I
drew my view of this place, I could overlook the top of the first
gate, and the eye penetrated the inner gateway; the superstructure of
which is a lofty embattled square tower, about sixty
feet high.... The outward wall to the left, from the inner gateway,
extends to a considerable distance without any turret or bastion,
over which several interior buildings, and among them, the remains of
the chapel, were discovered in all the confusion of ruin ... above
all which objects, a square tower, the keep of the fortress
... overlooked the castle....”
Narrow
neck of land? Curious workmanship? Fortresses, walls, ditches,
outworks (breastworks), towers, gates, and many more Book of Mormon
concepts — all on just a page or two of one book? Could this be
the smoking gun?
But
what, there’s even more smoke to come! Continuing onto page 91,
as Joseph may well have done once page 90 captured his limited
attention, we read again of a “narrow path” (as in the
narrow paths the Nephite had to traverse) and walls, with a gate
flanked with various structures and a tower, reminiscent of King
Benjamin’s tower and the defensive works of Moroni.
“This
gate gives admittance to a covered way, leading to the inner gate,
about 30 paces in length; a sallyport opening on each side, to flank
the walls and defend the ditch.”
The
ditch concept occurs again on page 92, where a ditch “guards
the southern side” near a tower and walls. “Steps ascend
from the area to the top of the walls in several places, which is
broad enough to allow armed men of the garrison to pass each other,
covered by a rampart.”
So
wooden structures on top of the walls further protect the armed
soldiers, with a ditch outside the wall helping to defend the
fortress. Eerily similar to Book of Mormon descriptions of Captain
Moroni’s defensive works. The search for a smoking gun could
well stop here, but there are other treasures to be mined with a
little more effort.
By
the way, Mormon apologists might try to dilute the shock value of
this discovery by arguing that a few other works prior to 1830 also
used the phrase “narrow neck of land.” (See, for example,
the Google search at the shortcut http://tinyurl.com/narrowneckofland
which finds 25 books with that very phrase.) In doing so, they may
only shoot themselves in the foot as they offer more evidence for
plagiarism.
See,
for example, the reference in page 67 of An
Account
of the expedition to Carthagena
by Sir Charles Knowles,
which refers to military men defending themselves as they “throw
up a Breast-work upon the narrow Neck of Land; Soldiers to be there
posted....”
That
is exactly how the Book of Mormon has it: soldiers “throw up”
or cast up their defensive structures, and they add breastworks upon
the walls that they have thrown up, and then they are posted there.
Numerous
such parallels are waiting to be discovered in virtually any
reference that Mormon apologists might “throw up” to
create a desperate defense for the Book of Mormon under siege.
As
we find parallels of any kind in modern texts, we can take these as
further proof that the Book of Mormon is a product of its day,
written with words and phrases found scattered throughout modern
English writings.
We
have already noted that the Book of Mormon shares 60% of its
vocabulary with the Leaves of Grass. More astonishing still,
over 90% of its vocabulary is shared with Noah Webster’s famous
little dictionary, but that intricate story is for another day.
True,
Joseph’s plagiarism may been of the tedious sort, searching
through vast volumes of books to come up with words and brief phrases
that he gradually cobbled together to form entire verses and, slowly,
whole pages of text, but that was his problem, not ours.
Fourth:The
Memoirs of Charles-Lewis, Baron de Pollnitz
by Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Pöllnitz, 1738, which was at the top
of the 2nd
page of basic Google results for my initial search on “curious
workmanship,” has this on page 48: “Andirons being of
most curious Workmanship” and then, later, this sentence: “The
Prince has a magnificent Garden in the Suburb of Vienna, which has a
Court before it, that is separated from the Street by an Iron Grate
of very curious Workmanship.”
Again,
we see curious workmanship in the context of metal, as in the Book of
Mormon.
But
we also have reference to royalty and courts, as occur in the Book of
Mormon, and it is in the context of Noah’s court where we see
iron being used as a precious metal in the Book of Mormon.
Further,
we have reference to a garden in the suburbs of a city, where a
street passes by it, associated with a prominent leader. Clearly this
is a strong parallel with the account of the leader Nephi in the Book
of Helaman who had a garden in a suburb of Zarahemla by the highway
leading to the chief market.
Certainly
we cannot disregard this book as one of several possible sources for
the Book of Mormon.
Fifth:
A
View of All Religions
by Thomas Robbins, 1824, page 43, describes “a crucifix, in
alto relievo, on the altar; which is generally of
curious workmanship.”
Interestingly, a sacred religious relic is the subject, as is the
case in the initial instance of this three-word phrase in the Book of
Mormon.
That
is curious enough, but then, on the same page, we find this smoking
gun: “The altar is inclosed within rails generally of
curious workmanship, and the whole service is conducted with
solemnity and great ceremony.”
Wow,
not just four words, but in the context of sacred objects, of altars
and prayer, of religious services and a “great ceremony”
— invoking King Benjamin’s speech and other key moments
in the Book of Mormon. And, yes, all done in a book on religions,
much as the Book of Mormon is a book on religion. Curious and
curiouser!
In
fact, Robbins’ following sentence leaves other fingerprints
pointing to Book of Mormon origins: “the mist of antiquity”
(as in the “mists of darkness” in 3 Nephi), “ceremonies,”
“vestments,” “priests” and “solemn
occasions.”
That
paragraph goes on to again mention ceremonies, churches, “edification
of the faithful,” “praying with uplifted hands, in
imitation of Moses” which “mystically expresses the
elevation of our thoughts to God,” and then “altars of
mediation between heaven and earth.”
Robbins’
work appears to provide inspiration not only for the Book of Mormon
but also the LDS Temple ceremony. Please note that we find all this
in a couple of adjacent paragraphs, not scattered across hundreds of
pages requiring statistical analysis to fish out chance
relationships.
In
fact, it is known that Joseph was not a bookworm and read very few if
any books, so we should expect that his sources probably came from a
page or two that he casually or even accidentally glanced and
digested for subsequent regurgitation.
Here
we are uncovering the very bars and ingots used to hammer out the
gold plates, not a few gold flakes dispersed in tons of worthless ore
to be gradually extracted by a statisticians’ sluice.
With
the level of “concept density” and direct relevance we
find on pages 43 and 44 of Robbins, surely this portion of that work
must rate more highly than the diluted sources previous scholars have
proposed as a source for the Book of Mormon, with the exception of
the impeccably researched and well-document links to Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass.
Not
convinced? Then try the text that follows on the remainder of page
44, where in the next paragraph we encounter “sacred
vestments,” “garments” (yes, garments!), “the
offices of religion”, and then specific elements of these
sacred vestments such as the “cope” or cloak, the frock,
the stole, a mantle, a girdle which was a cord going around the body
(apron-like one might say), “white dress,” and the “alb,”
described as the “universal under garment.”
In
addition to the detailed description of what may be called LDS temple
clothing, the author then introduces another race with darker skin as
reference is made to the “Asiatics,” bringing us back to
Book of Mormon themes, shortly followed by a mention of clothing made
from “the fur and hair of animals,” an obvious source for
the clothing of the Lamanites and also the Gadianton robbers.
Then
comes another paragraph mentioning “divine service,”
prayers, “holy lessons,” reading from sacred texts,
clergy, “ordained,” the church, and, completing the
details needed for Joseph’s temple clothing project, we
encounter:
“the
amice or head-cloth ... compared to the protecting helmet of
spiritual grace and salvation. The long alb, or white linen
garment, was supposed to be emblematical of future glory and
immortality ... and the chasuble, dalmatic, &c. to
express the yoke and burden of the gospel.”
Two
pages from Robbins and a handful of pages from Whitman gives us much
of what was needed for the LDS Restoration. But there are other
sources that may have helped, so let us continue our brief survey.
At
this point, we have gone through the relevant hits on just the first
page of Google results for the book search of “curious
workmanship.” One more sample:
Sixth:Chapters
in the History of Old St. Paul'sby
William Sparrow Simpson, 1881 (see page 64). This describes the
“curious workmanship” of the monuments of “sundry
persons, some of worship, and some of honour” in a cloister at
Pardon Church Haugh.
Ah,
“curious workmanship” is used in the context of
remembering and honoring righteous people of the past, aligning with
the role the Book of Mormon’s curious relics, the brass plates
and the Liahona.
Some
of the hits further down the list in my initial search are of rather
famous works that Joseph might have at least heard about, such as
Edward Gibbon’s The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1820),
vol. 5, where a single page, p. 310, not only mentions “curious
workmanship” in the context of silver and gold, but also refers
to “ecclesiastical writers,” barbarians who have attacked
a city, a virgin, the service of the altar, conscience and awareness
of sin, defense, reverential awe, a king, treasure, a consecrated
plate, and “the church of the apostle.”
That
represents a fairly high density of potential parallels to be drawn
by a slightly creative mind, arguably more interesting than many of
the parallels normally found by critics in their quest to explain
away the ever uncooperative Book of Mormon.
Next
comes The
Iliad of Homer,
translated by James Morrice (1809). On page 319 we find “curious
workmanship” referring to shields with “brazen folds,”
associating the workmanship with metals as in the initial occurrences
of curious workmanship in Book of Mormon, but also reminiscent of the
curious workmanship of Moroni’s defenses.
The
following line has a shocker, mentioning an “orb with studded
gold / Encircled shone, high polish’d, beautiful / Wrought by
no common hand.” And on the same page is a mention of “two
spears,” much like the “two spindles” of Nephi’s
mysterious device.
If
you want to explain the Book of Mormon as a work of plagiarism drawn
from available sources in Joseph’s day, The Iliad might
be a better candidate than The Late War’s crude
ballistic “balls” in “explaining” the
Liahona, that metallic orb of curious workmanship definitely wrought
by no common hand.
And
The Iliad is filled with scenes of warfare in which,
surprisingly, people attack, other defend, some are killed, others
are wounded, and some flee, etc., etc., all just like in the Book of
Mormon.
Some
critics, as I recall, have even suggested The Iliad as one of
the many sources Joseph may have “plagiarized.” But
please, all these parallels, as interesting and sometimes curious as
they are, explain nothing about the Book of Mormon and its
intricacies and power other than the fact that it was written in the
English language (yes, with words and even phrases used by other
writers — many others! — because that was part of the
language) and has a realistic description of the details of war.
One
more quick mention: next on the list is Plutarch’s
Lives
by Francis Wrangham, 1813, where “curious workmanship” on
p. 54 of vol. 6 describes a sword, fitting in well with the Book of
Mormon and Laban’s sword. Other curious parallels in that
chapter are left as an exercise to the reader.
Note:
Plutarch’s Lives was listed in
the Manchester Library
that Joseph could have accessed, but the edition of the book recorded
in its records wasn’t printed until 1834. But perhaps someone
could have smuggled a copy into his secret frontier library.
The
results above came from my initial simple search. A more efficient
search strategy with Google is to search only on books of a specific
time period, such as from 1500 to 1830.
The
following shortcut will take you to a Google search for the four-word
phrase “of curious workmanship and” in books from 1500 to
1830: http://tinyurl.com/curiousbooks.
You can then adjust the date and search string as you wish.
Google
finds 32 books, most relatively near to Joseph’s time frame.
Undoubtedly there are vastly more occurrences in magazines, speeches,
and the many other publications not included in Google’s
search.
Special
mention is needed for of those search results near the top of
this second search (at least near the top the first time I did the
search — results with Google can vary depending on where, when,
and even who you are).
On
page
275 of Robert Plot’s The natural history of Oxford-shire
published in 1696,
we have another reference to curious workmanship in a religious
setting, but there is much more. The searched phrase occurs in this
sentence: “There is an Altar-rail at All-Souls-College of
curious workmanship; and to this place belongs the Tomb of St.
Frideswide, still remaining at Christ-Church, and the Top whereof is
Wood, and a fine old piece of Work: But not comparable to the Tomb of
fair Roasamun at Godflow, in the Chapter-house of the Nuns there….”
It is interesting that we have references to an altar, souls, Christ,
church, etc.
But
vastly more significant than the weak parallels of The Late War,
the page begins with this fragment of a sentence: “what Quarter
the Wind blows, upon the 32 Points of the Compass, depicted on a
Cylinder of Stone, was an ingenious Contrivance.”
A
compass, a round cylinder, an ingenious contrivance, all on the same
page as “curious workmanship.” Could this old book have
been the source for the entire concept of the Liahona, that
cylindrical compass of curious workmanship, an ingenious contrivance,
which was used to guide Nephi in sailing his ship, very much
concerned about “what quarter the wind blows”?
Combine
this book with The Iliad and the plot certainly thickens.
Perhaps it’s even a, uh, Homer run.
Yet
there is more. Plot goes on to write of “many lofty spires
about the Country as well as City, built of Free-stone, and of
exquisite Workmanship” followed by a reference to “the
Battlements where were repaired, and thus thick set with Pinnacles”
and then a reference to “Towers … large and well built.”
Then
follows “Orders of Pillars” and “the top with well
proportion’d Pinnacles.” Though taken from a single page
of a 1696 work, this could well be a page out of Captain Moroni’s
defensive manual. Battlements, pinnacles, towers. All that seems to
be missing is a reference to timberwork.
Timberwork?
Gasp! In the sentence after the description of pinnacles, which is
also the sentence immediately before “curious workmanship,”
we encounter this startling phrase: “Among the Curiosities in
Timber-work, we may reckon …” And then on the following
page, we not surprisingly encounter the word “fort,”
cementing our suspicions of plagiarism.
But
that is still not all. In the same phrase as “fort,” we
also have a reference to a “Looking-glass” (possible
inspiration for the Urim and Thummin or seerstone of the Book of
Mormon?) and “ancient MS” (ancient manuscript), more key
Book of Mormon themes.
The
“looking glass” is not any ordinary object, but is
described immediately thereafter in more mystic terms by the
above-mentioned ancient manuscript with a Latin title, “Speculum
in quo uno visu apparebunt multae imagines moventes se” or
“mirror in which one sees many moving images” — a
reasonable description of a seerstone.
Amazingly,
two sentences later we have this gem: “Take, says the Author, a
deep Box, and place it in the Bottom of …” It takes but
little imagination, from the perspective of a sufficiently dedicated
critic, to see how this phrase could inspire Joseph to write of
Moroni, author of the Book of Mormon, who took his ancient manuscript
and Urim and Thummin, and placed them in a deep stone box in the
bottom of a shallow pit on the Hill Cumorah.
A
natural history of Oxfordshire, England would not seem like the kind
of book to gather much attention in frontier New York, and I am
guessing that it is even less likely that Joseph could have bumped
into a copy of it or in any way been influenced by it, whereas
there’s a more reasonable chance of some kind of exposure to
The Late War.
Yet
Plot’s book on Oxfordshire offers a remarkably high density of
interesting parallels on a single page. Still not worthy of being
called plagiarism, and still doing nothing to explain the depth and
intricacies of a distinctly ancient, not modern, Book of Mormon.
Plot’s
book has the advantage of a pretty concentration of intriguing
parallels on one page in contrast to the widely scattered and not
especially shiny nuggets ascribed to The Late War.
Those
chance parallels in Plot remind us, as we have learned from The
Leaves of Grass, that interesting parallels can happen by chance
and that caution is needed in making conclusions of derivation or
influence.
But
if you’re duty-bound to find plagiarism to fortify or justify
your dislike of Mormonism, go ahead and use The Late War, but
be sure to add some more interesting and fruitful sources such as
Robert Plot’s delightful work on Oxfordshire, neglected far too
long by anti-Mormons (but I can’t blame them for that: like The
Late War, it has been neglected by nearly all Americans, both
today and in Joseph’s day).
And
for best results, throw in some Homer, some Plutarch, some Thomas
Robbins, a handful of Walter Scott’s border antiquities and
certainly a dose of J.S. Hordan and his obscure history of the “royal
abbaye of Saint Denis,” and please, don’t forget that
poetic gem and one of the best treasures for “explaining”
the Book of Mormon, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Give
it your best, but don’t expect any serious cooperation from the
ever uncooperative and truly ancient Book of Mormon. Good luck!
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.