28 comments on ““Healthy Bucksom Lassies”: “ Spalding’s “Manuscript Found” Part 2”

1. David J. West October 20, 2009 at 12:49 am

   I think there are plenty of places where Mormon could have written “healthy buxom lasses” and for some reason he just didn’t. I’ll have to put some in mine.

2. DCL October 20, 2009 at 12:28 pm

   Some of these spelling errors – orang-outang, stept, and I think jesticulation – are valid old forms of the words.

3. Dale Broadhurst October 21, 2009 at 1:38 pm

   >The storm continues, and Fabius feels inspiration.
   >…
   >Does this sound at all like the Book or Mormon?

   Is it Fabius who “feels inspiration;” or does one of the Christians on
   the ship, being driven towards the Americas, receive a revelation
   directly from Almighty God? When these survivors reach the landing
   promised unto them by God, is their establishment of a Christian
   church in ancient America done in thanksgiving for their salvation,
   from “a watery grave,” or is it a mere formality by unbelievers?

   Is this meant to represent the first building of of Christ’s Church
   in the Americas, or did Spalding make references in his story to some
   earlier godly religion in the land promised unto them by God?

   How many other books and stories in circulation during the early years
   of the 19th century gave an account of preColumbian Christianity in
   the Americas? Were Solomon Spalding and Ethan Smith the only American
   writers who had an interest in this possibility, or do we see the same
   theme made use of by other pre-1830 writers?

   Does Spalding’s mention of ancient American Christianity owe its place
   in his story, as an attempt to account for Clavigero’s references to
   ancient crosses and other signs of Christianity in preColumbian times
   in the Americas — or was it just a transitory thought Spalding had,
   in writing his fictional story?

   Dale R. Broadhurst

4. Dale Broadhurst October 21, 2009 at 1:51 pm

   >I never saw Droll Tom, Fabius, Brittian, healthy bucksom lassies,
   >Deliwanucks, enimies, or Neptune in the Book of Mormon.

   Let’s say I handed you two piles of excerpted pages from two anthologies
   of 19th century literature. In the pages of one pile you find selections
   from Robert Lewis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” Mark Train’s “Huckleberry
   Finn,” along with some other similar pieces of fiction. In the pages of
   the other pile you find selections from Stevenson’s “Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde,”
   as well as from Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Authur’s Court.”

   Now, since you KNOW IN ADVANCE who the writers are, you can probably
   point out some examples of how the two Stevenson stories are similar
   and how the two Twain stories are similar — you can perhaps even give
   examples from the piles of pages proving that the same two authors’
   writings are to be found in both of the stacks of excerpts.

   But what if you’d never before read Stevenson and Twain, and their
   names DID NOT appear in those piles of fiction excerpts? —- Are you
   100% certain that you could still recognize unsigned stories from
   the same writers’ pens?

   Rather than talking about how examples from the two hypothetical stacks
   are very different, shouldn’t we begin by looking for parts of the
   texts which show similarities — signs of a possible common authorship?

   Dale R. Broadhurst

5. Mormon Heretic October 21, 2009 at 10:48 pm

   David, I suppose that when Nephi talks about how the women gave “plenty of suck” to the babies in the wilderness, these women were “healthy bucksom lassies”, but I wonder why he didn’t use Spalding’s choice of words… 🙂

   DCL, I’ll take your word that some of these spellings are correct, though I’m sure I could replace them with plenty of other obviously wrong spellings. I do find it interesting that the Book of Mormon people “stepped”, though Spalding’s Indian King “stept”. Knowing that the Jocker Wordprint study had a hard time telling that “wherefore” and “–wherefore” were the same word, it seems that Spalding’s inconsistent spelling of Britain and Brittian would have caused some problems with the computer as well.

   Dale, I tried to be fair and show that there was some religion in the Oberlin document (to counter Brodie’s claim that it was devoid of religious material.) But if you’re trying to claim that Fabius’ inspiration makes him the same status of a prophet like Nephi was, I think you’re seeing too many similarities here, and getting a little too Oliver Stone conspiracy here.

   If we’re going to point to similarities between the Oberlin document, then we also need to look at the MULTITUDE of differences. The Nephites were “civilized”, while Fabius referred to the Indians as “savages.” That’s quite a difference. Spalding talks of wigwams–no mention of those in the BoM. So, it’s not enough to compare similarities–heck I can find similarities between Spalding and Gilligan’s Island or between the BoM and Lost in Space if I really try hard enough.

   This Jocker’s study doesn’t seem entirely convincing either. So Rigdon and Spalding have the highest probability of similarity with the BoM, but the probability is less than 50%? That means that if they both have ~ 46% chance of similarity, but a 54% chance of dissimilarity. That’s not convincing to me.

   If I asked you who won the Super Bowl last year, and didn’t even pick a playoff team, that’s the problem with the Jocker study. The Patriots (Spalding) may have been 11-5, and looked like a team to beat, but they didn’t even make the playoffs. Perhaps the Patriots percentage was 46% to win the Super Bowl, but when we leave the Steelers (Joseph Smith) out of the list, none of the choices will give us the correct answer. Of course there might have been other possibilities like the Packers 13-3 (Ethan Smith) that were never even considered. That study seems seriously flawed.

   Using your example, if I have “Treasure Island” and “Huckleberry Finn”, yet leave out both Twain and Stevenson, I’m never going to get the right answer. I don’t care who comes up with 46% probability–it’s going to be wrong, and the 54% seems to indicate it is not a good match, even it I pick Dan Brown.

6. Dale Broadhurst October 21, 2009 at 11:25 pm

   >Dale, I tried to be fair and show that there was some religion in
   >the Oberlin document (to counter Brodie’s claim that it was devoid
   >of religious material.) But if you’re trying to claim that Fabius’
   >inspiration makes him the same status of a prophet like Nephi was,
   >I think you’re seeing too many similarities here, and getting a
   >little too Oliver Stone conspiracy here.

   No — I was correcting your error, saying it was Fabius who
   received the revelation from God. Fictional writings portraying
   such scenes were rare at the time — and especially rare among
   New England Calvinist writers, who denied post-Apostolic gifts
   of the Spirit. Spalding had obviously evolved away from his early
   Congregationalist roots, but the fact that he would insert such
   a scene in a c. 1812 fictional story is remarkable.

   >If we’re going to point to similarities between the Oberlin document,
   >then we also need to look at the MULTITUDE of differences.

   Yes, and that is where you have begun — it is a beginning. Besides
   pointing out the differences in story theme, you could also count up
   the number of words Spalding shares with the Book of Mormon, and see
   that parts of his Roman story have a relatively low vocabulary overlap
   with the Book of Mormon. You could also go through his text, looking
   for 3-word, 4-word and 5-word phases also found in the BoM. Again the
   parts of his Roman story you point out have a low instance of phrase
   overlap with the Nephite Record. It is no coincidence that the themes,
   vocabulary and phraseology (shared word-strings) are all at “low ebb”
   in the same parts of his story. We might reasonably expects that.

   >The Nephites were “civilized”, while Fabius referred to the Indians
   >as “savages.”….

   Once again, you are pointing out a part of his story where the themes,
   vocabulary and phraseology overlaps with the Book of Mormon occur at
   a relatively low rate. The distribution of those linguistic elements
   is not uniform in the “Roman story,” however. Some pages in its first
   part have a higher correspondence to BoM themes, vocabulary and phrases;
   then there is a great void of similarities throughout his “love story.”
   In the war that follows, the distribution of high correspondence with
   the BoM text increases to a high degree — especially near the end.

   >That’s quite a difference.

   Yes — It is quite a difference. If you compare 2nd Nephi to Spalding’s
   “love story” pages, the thematic, vocabulary, and phraseology overlap
   drops down to very low levels. But, if you compare the latter part of
   Alma to the last few chapters of Spalding’s Roman story, the overlap
   in story themes, shared vocabulary and shared word-strings of three or
   more words takes a dramatic jump. It matters VERY MUCH which parts of
   Spalding we choose to compare with the BoM — and it matters VERY MUCH
   which parts of the BoM we select to compare and contrast with Spalding.

   >This Jocker’s study doesn’t seem entirely convincing either.

   It is a beginning. It points out part of Mosiah, part of Alma and
   part of Ether, as having the highest degree of correspondence with
   Spalding’s Roman story, when it comes to the distribution of such
   “frequently used words” as “but, with, or, if, etc. etc.” Now this
   is a fourth type of textual measurement, not directly related to the
   three methods I summarized above. The mapping out of these short
   words in the Book of Mormon (when compared to Spalding’s use of
   those same short words) produces a distribution pattern very similar
   to the three methods I mentioned. In all four investigations it is
   parts of Mosiah, Alma and Ether which most closely correspond with
   Spalding’s use of language in his “Roman story.”

   >So Rigdon and Spalding have the highest probability of similarity
   >with the BoM, but the probability is less than 50%? That means that
   >if they both have ~ 46% chance of similarity, but a 54% chance of
   >dissimilarity. That’s not convincing to me.

   Let’s what and see what professional statisticians have to say.
   I have not yet seen any peer-reviewed rebuttals to Jockers, et al.

   >Using your example, if I have “Treasure Island” and “Huckleberry Finn”,
   >yet leave out both Twain and Stevenson, I’m never going to get the
   >right answer.

   Possibly so. But I’m told that word-print analysis of my hypothetical
   two stacks of literary excerpts would almost certainly match up the
   two Twain stories with each other, and distinguish them from the two
   Stevenson stories. What you would see in front of you, in the readout
   of such a computerized comparison, would be a page-by-page comparison,
   mapped out to show visually that the writer of what we know to the
   the two Twain stories was very unlikely to be the writer of the two
   Stevenson stories. Here and there a page or two might show an unclear
   statistical result — but the overall pattern, throughout all of the
   pages, would distinguish the two writers.

   And, if we had other samples of those two authors’ stories, with their
   names attached, we would certainly be able to sort their writings out,
   from my two hypothetical stacks of pages. The exact method Jockers
   used may be subject to debate, but the over-all concept of analyzing
   unknown authorship by similar methods is firmly established. The
   journal Jockers published in specializes in that sort of reporting.

   But, I have only mentioned four methods of determining which BoM pages
   most closely match Spalding. There are at least three other methods
   that I’m working on right now. I suspect (but am not yet certain)
   that those methods will also document Spaldingish “hot spots” in the
   same sections of Mosiah, Alma and Ether.

   Perhaps other researchers can eventually explain that pattern of
   textual similarity distribution, in ways that do not support the
   Spalding-Rigdon explanation for BoM origins. I do not know.

   What I do know, is which pages of the Book of Mormon most resemble
   Spalding’s known writings. That knowledge may be of some use in the
   future — if anybody asks how the “theory” originated in the first place.

   Dale R. Broadhurst

7. MH October 23, 2009 at 12:04 am

   Dale, I think I have to take a few issues here.

   Fictional writings portraying such scenes were rare at the time — and especially rare among New England Calvinist writers, who denied post-Apostolic gifts of the Spirit.

   With all the fervor going on in Joseph Smith’s day, I believe the area was known as the “Burned Over District” with all the preachers preaching hell-fire and damnation. The period from 1800-1850 produced several new movements, some of which we would refer to as “charismatic” today, including,

   * The LDS (they were much more charismatic than today)
   * The Fox sisters conducted séances in Hydesville, New York, which led to the movement of Spiritualism.
   * The Millerites. William Miller preached that the literal Second Coming would occur “October 22, 1844.” Millerism was popular in western New York State.
   * The Shakers were very active in the area. (They’re even mentioned in the D&C)

   Now, if they’re having seances in real life, I would imagine fiction writers would employ this technique as well.

   I guess I didn’t understand what you were trying to say about Fabius inspiration. Yes, you are right, on page 16 “a Mariner stept {illegible} the midst and proclaimed….A voice from on high…” I’ll fix the original post so it more accurately reflects what Spalding wrote.

   “Let’s what and see what professional statisticians have to say. I have not yet seen any peer-reviewed rebuttals to Jockers, et al.

   Well, Dale, I may be able to help you here. I am a professional statistician, though I have not had training in wordprint studies, and I’m too cheap to pay $28 for 1 day access to read the actual article. (Perhaps someone would be willing to send me their copy?) 🙂 I think I may have to see if I can find it at the university library so I can review the article more in-depth. Craig Criddle left a comment here a few weeks ago, but then vanished. I don’t know if you know him, but I’d love to have him answer some of the questions I posed about the abstract, though I note he is not a professional statistician either (only one of the author’s was.)

   As I’ve been thinking about it, the 2 poets were thrown in as controls. It’s not surprising they did not match in wordprint, so that cuts us down from 7 to 5. Malachi/Isaiah are obvious matches for sections, so now we’re down to 4. Parley P Pratt wasn’t a scribe, and didn’t learn of the church until after the publication, so I think it’s not surprising that he wasn’t part of it, so now we’re down to 3 possibilities: Oliver, Sidney, and Solomon. I guess I’m a little surprised that Oliver didn’t fare as well as the other two, but as I stated before, why wasn’t Ethan Smith considered? I’m a little sympathetic to the author’s contention that Joseph had scribes write for him, but even still, I think there should have been a better attempt to include him in the study. Emma was a scribe as well. Perhaps now that the “Joseph Smith Papers” have been produced, there might be some better access to Joseph’s actual writing? (Once again, I haven’t read or purchased these–I’m on a budget, but my birthday is coming up!) I’m trying to remember if Martin Harris ever served as a scribe. Suffice it to say, I think the pool needs to be expanded.

   Quoting from the Oxford Website:
   We offer a new approach that employs two classification techniques: ‘delta’ commonly used to determine probable authorship and ‘nearest shrunken centroid’ (NSC), a more generally applicable classifier. We use both methods to determine, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, the probability that each of seven potential authors wrote or contributed to the Book of Mormon.

   …

   With the corrected data, NSC ranked Rigdon at 0.4626 and Spalding at 0.46525.

   It sure sounds like we’re talking probabilities here, and there is less than a 50% probability that Rigdon or Spalding wrote this. Like I said, I haven’t read the article, so I may have some mistaken conclusions. If we were to compare 2 Mark Twain novels, I would expect a much higher probability than 0.46525 that Twain wrote both. Does anybody know probabilities of wordprint tests where the authors are known? I’d be surprised if they were this low.

8. Dale Broadhurst October 23, 2009 at 1:58 am

   >I’d be surprised if they were this low.

9. Dale Broadhurst October 23, 2009 at 1:58 am

   >why wasn’t Ethan Smith considered?

   Yes, he should have been — since his grandson charged that Ethan
   loaned the story to Spalding at an early date:
   http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/OH/miscoh07.htm#042487

   But, the best answer to your question would be for you, or somebody
   else to re-run the Jockers’ methodology with other authors’ wordprints,
   or re-run the testing using alternative methods. Whatever results
   are thus found can be published in the same journal. If you are a
   statistician I’m sure you can gain the credentials necessary for
   consideration on a publishable article. So far that sort of thing
   has not been done. When the peer-reviewed professional literature
   again takes up the subject, we can discuss the issue again.

   >Does anybody know probabilities of wordprint tests where the authors
   >are known? I’d be surprised if they were this low.

   Daniel C. Peterson says folks at the Maxwell Institute are running
   their own computerized analysis of the texts. Perhaps you’ll feel
   better about whatever results they come up with.

   If they say DIFFERENT parts of the BoM better match the wordprints
   of Spalding and Rigdon, than do the sections Jockers points out,
   I’ll be most happy to examine the BoM pages they point me to. In
   the meanwhile, my guess is that this is the most “Spaldingish”
   page in the BoM:

   http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/MEDIA/BookSol0.htm#374a
   http://www.inephi.com/375.htm

   Dale R. Broadhurst

10. Dale Broadhurst October 23, 2009 at 2:00 am

    >I think I may have to see if I can find it at the university library
    >so I can review the article more in-depth

    You can no doubt order it through inter-library loan. Here’s my page:
    http://solomonspalding.com/Lib/Jock2008.htm
    Try this for an e-text of the article:
    http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/23/4/465

11. Dale Broadhurst October 23, 2009 at 2:20 am

    Yes, he should have been — since his grandson charged that Ethan
    loaned the story to Spalding at an early date:
    (NEW URL):
    http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/OH/miscoh05.htm#042487

    Dale R. Broadhurst

12. Mormon Heretic October 23, 2009 at 11:37 pm

    Dale, you said, ‘I suspect (but am not yet certain) that those methods will also document Spaldingish “hot spots” in the same sections of Mosiah, Alma and Ether.’

    Now, are you saying that Spalding only wrote these (or parts of these) three books in the BoM? I don’t know if you saw Margie Miller’s comment which claims to have recreated the Spalding document, but from what I understood, it seems she uses a different technique and removes all the religious parts of the BoM to come up with an underlying story that means Spalding is laced throughout the BoM. I’m not sure if that hurts or helps this wordprint study if they’re only claiming similarities in 3 books of the BoM.

13. Mormon Heretic October 23, 2009 at 11:47 pm

    Dale, I’m also curious to hear your opinions on Ethan Smith’s “View of the Hebrews.” I’ll bet you’ve studied it more than I have. I expect you think the Spalding Theory is better, and I’d like to know what you think of Ethan’s strength’s and weaknesses in comparing this theory to the Spalding theory.

14. Dale Broadhurst October 24, 2009 at 12:37 am

    >Now, are you saying that Spalding only wrote these (or parts of these)
    >three books in the BoM? I don’t know if you saw Margie Miller’s comment
    >which claims to have recreated the Spalding document, but from what I
    >understood, it seems she uses a different technique and removes all
    >the religious parts of the BoM to come up with an underlying story
    >that means Spalding is laced throughout the BoM.

    Yes, I’m in contact with Margie. Although I find their approach to the
    text interesting, I do indeed use “a different technique.” My approach
    is to allow the texts to speak for themselves, and not to force too
    many preconditions upon them. Margie and Ron start with the premise
    that Spalding wrote a lost story, much like that described by the first
    “Conneaut” witnesses — one that had little or no “religious” content.
    Perhaps Spalding did write such a story. The Mormon elder Erastus Rudd
    said he did — but it was not much like the Book of Mormon. How am I
    to reconcile such contradictory testimony? I cannot — so I mostly look
    at the texts themselves.

    Most of what we find in the two texts, wherein Spalding’s use of language
    is mirrored in the Book of Mormon, are war narratives, involving leaders,
    stratagems, battles, troop movements, massive slaughters, burial of the
    fallen warriors, etc. etc. But — just because that is what we have on
    hand to compare with the BoM, we need not suppose that Spalding was fully
    incapable of writing religious fiction.

    One account says that he revised one of his manuscripts, while staying in
    the Washington, PA home of Hugh Wilson, an early associate of Alexander
    Campbell and a later acquaintance of Sidney Rigdon. Residing in such a
    religious environment, in 1813-14, I speculate that Spalding could have
    introduced religious themes into his preColumbian American pseudo-history.
    If so, then it would be a mistake to cut out all of the Christianity from
    the Book of Mormon and expect to find Spalding’s story preserved more or
    less as it was originally written.

    In looking at the Jockers-Criddle distribution of Spalding’s “voice” in
    the BoM, I see that they attribute some of the “religious” text to him,
    at least as their second choice writer for some BoM chapters. I am looking
    into this possibility as we speak. If you go back and read one of my
    previous postings, you’ll see that I feel a Solomon Spalding creation of
    King Benjamin seems “absurd.” And yet the Spalding “signal” is to be
    found in the first chapters of Mosiah — but three or four different
    quantitative methods of deconstructing the narrative. That troubles me.
    If Spalding originally wrote a precursor to the Benjamin sermon, I must
    go back and re-think my entire hypothesis for Rigdon’s textual redaction.

    I am uncertain of the results, and am applying some other investigative
    methods (including grammatical analysis) to determine if Mosiah and
    Ether show signs of editing, in such a manner as to preserve traces of
    a Spalding “religious” story.

    >I’m not sure if that hurts or helps this wordprint study if they’re
    >only claiming similarities in 3 books of the BoM.

    No — what you are hearing is their summary of where the strongest and
    most wide-spread instances of a Spalding “signal” are to be found. That
    would be The Zeniff narrative in Mosiah, the Moroni wars in Alma, and
    the Coriantumr period of Jaredite history. But shorter, weaker instances
    of Spalding’s word-print occur in 1st Nephi and Helaman — with minor
    traces in the first part of Alma, Book of Mormon and 1st Nephi.

    Dale R. Broadhurst

15. Dale Broadhurst October 24, 2009 at 12:53 am

    >Dale, I’m also curious to hear your opinions on Ethan Smith’s
    >”View of the Hebrews.” I’ll bet you’ve studied it more than I have.
    >I expect you think the Spalding Theory is better, and I’d like to
    >know what you think of Ethan’s strength’s and weaknesses in comparing
    >this theory to the Spalding theory.

    If you go back and look at my previous postings here, you’ll see that
    I included a link to Ethan Smith’s grandson’s allegations — that his
    grandfather and Spalding were assoviates and correspondents. Both men
    evidently studied under Prof. John Smith at Dartmouth College. The
    account attributed to Ethan S. Smith mixes in this Dr. Smith with his
    own grandfather Smith — so the chronology comes out looking strange.
    But I think it is possible that the two Congregational ministers knew
    each other in tiny New England.

    Ethan Smith and Solomon Spalding evidently overlapped in their studies
    at Dartmouth by a semester or two. It was then a small school and they
    might have become acquainted. The grandson says that Ethan Smith lent
    Solomon Spalding a fictionalized account of Israelite Indians, but that
    Spalding never returned it and that it somehow was incorporated into
    the later Book of Mormon. An unpublished Spalding manuscript reportedly
    surfaced at Middleton (within walking distance of Ethan Smith’s church
    at Poultney) Vermont in the 1870s. Perhaps it somehow relates to the
    grandson’s allegations.

    From what we read of Ethan Smith’s non-fictional writings, he was ready
    to attribute preColumbian American religious history to a visit of Moses
    under the guise of Quetzalcoatl. That’s an incredible notion, but maybe
    Ethan Smith also believed that the Apostle Thomas brought Christianity
    to the ancient Americans — I do not know.

    Like the later Mormons, Ethan Smith makes use of numerous “proof-texts”
    in Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc. to demonstrate and Israelite origin for Indians.
    Unlike the the later Mormons, Ethan Smith did not see America as the
    latter day Zion. He advised converting the “Hebrew” Indians and sending ‘
    them to Palestine, in anticipation of a gathering of Israel there.

    So — Ethan Smith’suse of the same biblical prophecies, etc., led him to
    a different expectation for an Israelite gathering than the Latter Day
    Saints professed. On this basis alone, I would say that Ethan Smith
    cannot have been the source for several of the key precepts in the BoM.

    Still, based upon his grandson’s account, I’d like to see somebody try
    and match Ethan’s wordprint with the Book of Mormon. According to David
    Persuitte (who published the Ethan S. Smith statement in his book) the
    first place to look for a match would be in Mosiah ch. 28 (LDS ed.)

    Dale R. Broadhurst

16. Mormon Heretic October 24, 2009 at 12:57 am

    So, I take it you’re not impressed with Grant Palmer’s book which ties Ethan Smith to the BoM?

17. Dale Broadhurst October 24, 2009 at 1:12 am

    >So, I take it you’re not impressed with Grant Palmer’s book which ties
    >Ethan Smith to the BoM?

    For some reason my reply of three minutes ago did not show up here.

    ???

    I’m not a big Palmer fan. I like Persuitte better.

    Dale R. Broadhurst

18. Roger October 24, 2009 at 2:16 am

    Dale:

    An unpublished Spalding manuscript reportedly
    surfaced at Middleton (within walking distance of Ethan Smith’s church
    at Poultney) Vermont in the 1870s. Perhaps it somehow relates to the
    grandson’s allegations.
    

    I’ve never heard that one before! What became of it?

    Also, what do you think of all the Dartmouth coincidences? Apparently Hyrum attended Moors Academy which I recently found out is connected to Dartmouth. And according to Margie and Ron a student there, while Hyrum was attending, gave an account remarkably similar to Joseph’s first vision account. Coincidence?

19. Mormon Heretic October 24, 2009 at 9:08 am

    Dale, I’m not sure what happened to that post that disappeared. I checked my spam filter, and saw another comment you had posted multiple times for the other post (where you mentioned Cochran), but nothing else. (I released one of those.) As an FYI, if you put more than 1 or 2 links in a single comment, it is often caught by a spam filter.

    Roger, as I said before, all these rumors of unpublished manuscripts seem unconvincing to me. If they are unpublished, it is probably due to their poor quality–the Oberlin document seems to confirm Spalding’s poor writing ability, and I can’t imagine why such a poor writer would be so prolific to write so many bad novels as Spalding advocates seem to think.

20. Dale Broadhurst October 24, 2009 at 10:58 am

    >the Oberlin document seems to confirm Spalding’s poor writing ability,
    >and I can’t imagine why such a poor writer would be so prolific to
    >write so many bad novels as Spalding advocates seem to think.

    The writer(s) of the Book of Ether go on and on about their own poor
    writing ability — the awkwardness of their writing hands, etc. In
    My opinion, the Jaredite portion of the Book of Ether represents just
    as bad a “novel” as do the pages on file at Oberlin College.

    The Library of Congress has a manuscript catalogued under Spalding’s
    name (“Romance of Celes”) which is about as poorly writen — all about
    secret combinations for murder and to get gain, angelic visitations,
    a magical device for communication with the heavens, plurality of the
    gods, eternal progression to godhood, celestialization of planets, etc.
    But the “bad novel” at the Library of Congress has its occasional
    interesting points. It is not as bad as the “Roman story,” and at least
    shows a little more polish, in not including crossed-out sections,
    extraneous sheets of paper, gross spelling errors, etc.

    My opinion is that the Library of Congress Spalding story was edited and
    revised by Arvilla Ann Harris after Solomon Spalding of Ashford CT died.

    But, it little matters what you or I might think of Spalding’s poor
    writing abilities — he at least occasionally imagined interesting fiction
    (such as Lobaska’s flying machine, or an ancient seer-stone). If his
    ability to communicate his imagination was poorly developed, at least
    he tried to be an early American author. There were not many of those in
    his day — so I do not judge him too harshly.

    Our opinions of what could or could not have happened are probably less
    important than what historical and textual evidence presents to the
    modern reader. Will the S/R explanation of BoM origins one day reach the
    same level of acceptability among the Gentiles (and apostates like me)?
    That is probably a more important consideration.

    Dale R. Broadhurst

21. Dale Broadhurst October 24, 2009 at 11:31 am

    >I’ve never heard that one before! What became of it?

    Last anybody knew, it was filed away in the Town Clerk’s office
    in Middleton. For all I know it may still be there. Middleton was
    founded by the Spalding family and Solomon may have visited there
    at an early date. Ethan Smith did not come to the area until after
    Solomon Spalding died — so perhaps the manuscript was actually
    an Ethan Smith document, that Salmon S. Osborn mistook for a story
    by Spalding. Maybe Spalding’s name was written on its envelope or
    some such thing. I do not know. See Deming’s “Naked Truths” paper
    at my web-site, for the Osborn statement.

    >Also, what do you think of all the Dartmouth coincidences? Apparently
    >Hyrum attended Moors Academy which I recently found out is connected
    >to Dartmouth. And according to Margie and Ron a student there, while
    >Hyrum was attending, gave an account remarkably similar to Joseph’s
    >first vision account. Coincidence?

    The account given by the Dartmouth guy was not really much like
    Smith’s account. I chalk that up to coincidence. Hyrum Smith may
    have had some of the same teachers as did Solomon and Ethan —
    since the Moor’s professors taught both in the College buildings
    and in the Academy building. But, if so, they must have been
    rather old, by the time Hyrum showed up on campus.

    I’m not quite sure how to embed images into this thread. If you
    are able to do that, please make this map show up here:

    

    Dale R. Broadhurst

22. Mormon Heretic October 25, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    After reviewing the Martin Harris incident where he lost the 116 pages, I think he would be another person to include in the wordprint analysis. He did act as a scribe at the beginning of the process. Perhaps Alexander Campbell would be interesting, to see if he influenced some of Sidney Rigdon’s thoughts as well. Are there any other scribes of Joseph I am leaving out? William Clayton would be one, but of course he shouldn’t match due to his later conversion and arrival from England.

23. Mormon Heretic October 25, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    Perhaps the entire Smith family should be added: Hyrum, Lucy, Emma, Sam, William, Joseph Sr. All should be likely co-conspirators since they supported Joseph through everything.

24. Dale Broadhurst October 25, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    >After reviewing the Martin Harris incident where he lost the
    >116 pages, I think he would be another person to include in
    >the wordprint analysis. He did act as a scribe at the beginning
    >of the process.

    I’m not sure that a suitable source text survives from Martin. If I
    understand correctly, several thousand contiguous words, certifiably
    from the identified author are needed, to set up the basic data for
    word-print comparisons against other, unattributed texts.

    >Perhaps Alexander Campbell would be interesting, to see if he
    >influenced some of Sidney Rigdon’s thoughts as well.

    At least we have a large amount of Campbell-authored texts to work from.
    But I think it almost impossible that one writer can influence another
    writer’s use of frequently repeated “non-contextual” words, such as
    “if, but, so, or, it,” etc. etc. What Campbell might have influenced
    was Rigdon’s phraseology. For example, Campbell was a big advocate of
    the “word alone” method of Christian conversion (using the Bible, with
    no expectations of miraculous manifestations). In Mosiah we find Alma
    speaking of conversion by “words alone.” This is in the same section
    that Jockers attributes to Sidney Rigdon. Of course one such phrase
    could occur by sheer coincidence. If somebody pointed out two dozen
    unique Campbellite phrases on a single page of the BoM, attributed to
    Rigdon’s word-print, THEN my interest might be aroused.

    >Are there any other scribes of Joseph I am leaving out?

    W.W. Phelps was not usually a “scribe,” but he wrote a novel-length
    story about very early American history, before 1830. Plenty of his
    writings survive — so his word-print could be tested against the BoM.

    >Perhaps the entire Smith family should be added: Hyrum, Lucy, Emma,
    >Sam, William, Joseph Sr. All should be likely co-conspirators since
    >they supported Joseph through everything.

    There may be enough of William’s writings available to test his
    word-print against the Book of Mormon. I am not entirely convinced
    that Lucy Mack Smith’s original manuscript(s) contain her pure writings,
    without help from some ghost-writer — but enough text survives to
    test Lucy against the BoM. For the other family members, I’d say no.

    If such additional authorship candidates are included in future testing
    and mapping of word-prints, against the BoM, I’d advise using about 90
    contemporary writers, whose words might possibly have somehow been
    injected into the “Nephite record,” along with about 10 writers of that
    era, whom we are absolutely certain could not have contributed.

    I say we need about 100 such authorship candidates for testing, because
    the results of the Jockers-style word-print analysis methods (2 of them)
    only return percentages of word-print matching RELATIVE to the other
    authorship candidates included in the testing.

    Let’s say we test LDS BoM 2Nephi 7, against 100 such authors, among
    whom we include the biblical Isaiah. Perhaps the computerized analysis
    would produce a 97% match with Isaiah, a 2% match with Rigdon and a
    1% match with Alexander Campbell. Such results do NOT mean that there
    is a 1% chance that Campbell wrote 2Nephi 7 —- the results only mean
    that AMONG THOSE WRITERS TESTED, Campbell’s match ranks far, far below
    that of the biblical Isaiah.

    Dale R. Broadhurst

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