Category Archives: Book of Mormon

Mining terms from the Book of Mormon

Book of Mormon, Main

Language Log is one of my favorite daily blog reads, and today it had among other things a post about an online “term mining” tool (Termine) that analyzes text to attempt to identify multi-word terms (e.g., technical terms) within the text. The intended target for this tools is biomedical documents (the default setting for the online tool presumes that you’re submitting such a document), but I thought it might be fun to run the Book of Mormon (1830 text) through it. I tracked down an online version of the 1830 text (with no modern versification, etc.), saved it as a text file on my hard drive, then uploaded it to the online tool (changing the POS Tagger setting to “Tree Tagger 3.1”, described as “more suited to generic text”).

The results are after the jump. The “Score” (value to the right) is not just a straight frequency count but also indicates how often the term (or portions thereof) appears in other terms, which is why you end up with fractional values for some terms. It’s explained in more detail at the website for the tool (where it’s referred as the “C-Value”).

The results are interesting, if a bit mixed. Termine obviously assumes that it is parsing modern technical English and so trips up a bit when trying to parse archaic English in the Book of Mormon. So, for example, the single most frequent ‘term’ is “thou hast” (with “thou art” coming in at #6).  Likewise, sequences such as “thy <noun>”, “o <noun>”, “<verb> ye/thou” and “art <word>” are mistakenly identified as terms and show up in the list.

(Also, for reasons that totally baffle me, in Termine’s results all the terms based on kings’ names [“King Benjamin”] have the word “king” replaced with “kingbolt” [e.g., “kingbolt benjamin”]. I have no idea why — it’s certainly not in the text — and I may contact the tool’s authors to find out what’s happening. I’ve change those back in the table below.)

There are no great surprises in the results, though there are some interesting terms high on the list.  After the top ones that you would expect — “Lord God”, “Holy Ghost” and “Jesus Christ” — comes “beloved brethren”. And the socio-political nature of the Book of Mormon is reflected in the next two top terms: “judgment seat” and “chief judge”. Interestingly, from what I can tell, “judgment seat” is used strictly as a religious term (“judgment seat of God/Christ”) by in the personal writings, sermons, and editorial comments of Nephi1, Jacob, Mormon2 and Moroni, and strictly as a political term in the sections in-between (Alma 1 through 3 Nephi 7).

A bit further down the list is “foolish traditions”, which only appears within a subsection of the book of Alma (chapters 8, 21, 30 and 31) but is used by four different groups/individuals — the people of Ammonihah, an Amalekite [probably “Amlicite”; cf. this article] living among the Lamanites, the antichrist Korihor, and the Zoramites — in describing the Christ-centered Nephite religious beliefs. Apparently, it was a popular, if short-lived, derogatory phrase among those not of or opposed to the Nephite “Church of God“. I also have to wonder if the phrase wasn’t originally used or popularized by Alma2 and the sons of King Mosiah during their rebellious phase, since all four recorded incidents of its use are aimed at Alma2 or one of the sons of Mosiah. (To be strictly accurate, Korihor uses “foolish traditions” with some other leaders, then talks about “silly traditions” to Alma2). On the other hand, the Nephites tend to refer to the traditions of the Lamanites as “incorrect” or sometimes “wicked”, so there may be a bit of tit-for-tat going on here.

Anyway, have fun! The complete table is after the jump. ..bruce..

Continue reading Mining terms from the Book of Mormon →

A few curious absences in the Book of Mormon

Book of Mormon, Main

Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

— “Silver Blaze“, Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)

One of the standard secular explanations for Joseph Smith’s production of the Book of Mormon is that he cribbed from the Bible, in particular from the Old Testament — not just in taking direct quotes from Isaiah and Malachi, but in themes, events, situations, and the like. In my opinion, there are profound flaws with such an explanation, which could (and do) fill several books, but there you go.

Along those lines, there are two themes commonly found through the historical sections of the Old Testament that are curious by their absence (or near-absence) in the Book of Mormon — at least, curious if you consider the Book of Mormon to have been “inspired by” the Old Testament. Those themes are burial locations and romance/marriage.

The Old Testament history is full of details about the burial of various major and minor characters, including the names of the places of where they were buried (check out these references). Yet the Book of Mormon is quite silent on that matter, with only one real exception: Ishmael being buried at Nahom. Make no mistake — the Book of Mormon talks a lot about burial per se, usually mass burials of soldiers or victims of wars and other disasters; it also talks about the deaths of key individuals quite frequently. What it rarely does, unlike the Old Testament, is talk about the burial of a given dead individual. Lehi is the only other person whose burial is explicitly mentioned, though no location is named; on the other hand, the disappearance of Alma2 leads to speculation that he was either “taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord.” (Alma 45:19).

The second curious absence involves marriage and romance. The Old Testament history is full of marriages and not a little romance as well (notwithstanding the meme that “romance” is a relatively modern invention). Time and again, the Old Testament record names wives and in some cases records details about how the marriage came to be and about the marriage itself. Indeed, these are some of the best known stories out of the Old Testament: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and so on.

The Book of Mormon, by contrast, is profoundly silent on wives, marriage, and romance. Of Lehi’s initial party, we know Sariah’s name, but not that of any of the other women, includng Ishamel’s and Nephi’s own wives. And after Sariah, not another wife is named in the Book of Mormon. There are references to marriage (usually as groups, much as with burials) and to wives (ditto), but there are only a few references to one individual marrying another — and the wife is never named.

============================

Having just written the above, and while doing a bit of online searching, I ran across this essay by Orson Scott Card, which I’m sure I have read at one time or another. In the section titled “American Culture and the Book of Mormon” and in the subsection titled “Women”, he makes the same point, but more broadly, more eloquently and in more detail. He even points out that there are only three named women in the entire Book of Mormon [i.e., within its historical record, as compared to mentions of Eve, Sarah, and Mary]: Sariah, the harlot Isabel, and the servant woman Abish. Again, this stands in stark contrast to the many women named — and often playing an important role — in the Old Testament.

Along those lines, here are a few more links:

Just my thought for the day.  ..bruce..

Jaredite update

Book of Mormon, Main, REPO

Before I post more on the Jaredites, I want to finish my review of LDS scholarship on them. This largely means Nibley and Sorenson, since few other scholars have tackled them at length.

Re-reading The World of the Jaredites and There Were Jaredites, both of which were published over 50 years ago, I’m struck as usual about how far ahead of the curve Nibley was, particulalry in emphasizing how complex the Book of Mormon narrative is, how the Book of Mormon does not describe the ancestors of all native Americans, how different the culture and history in Ether is from the Lehite narrative, and how Ether contains element after element found in the ancient world. And Nibley even then is clearly trying to pry us away from classic, conservative Christian interpretation of such things as the great tower, warning us not to confuse cause and effect (e.g., languages may have diverged due to forced migrations, not the other way around) or over-interpret phrases such as “the whole earth” (kol ha-aretz, which can also mean “the whole land”).

Likewise, anyone inclined to mock the Jaredite ships needs to spend some time with the chapter “The Babylonian Background” in There Were Jaredites and explain just why there are so many correlations between the description of the Jaredite ships in Ether and the description of boats from various Babylonian flood stories (including, yes, shining stones and crescent-shaped, tightly-sealed boats that have waves covering them).

And, of course, by emphasizing the Asiatic origins and likely route (across Asia to the Pacific and thence to the Americas), Nibley preempted arguments citing Asiatic blood types (and later Asiatic DNA haplogroups) among native Americans.

Anyway, I hope to have a few more posts on the Jaredites later this week. Back to my reading.  ..bruce..

The REPO Atlas: the Jaredites (part 1)

Belief systems, Book of Mormon, Main, Politics, REPO

[Here is an introduction to the REPO postings. Also I’ve made a few updates below.]

It’s hard to mine any detailed information about the Jaredites out of the book of Ether itself. What we have is Joseph Smith’s translation of Moroni’s highly selective and condensed abridgment of his (or Mosiah[2]’s) translation of Ether’s very condensed (“twenty-four gold plates“) and late summary of somewhere from 2000 to over 3000 years of Jaredite history. Outside of the brother of Jared’s theophany of the premortal Messiah, and the occasional speculation on just how those barges were built, most of our quotes from the book of Ether tend to come from Moroni’s commentary rather than anything the Jaredites did or said.

Ether becomes a bit more interesting, however, when we ask ourselves just how the Jaredite civilization(s) splintered, interacted (usually by fighting), and re-merged, and what kind of religious behavior and institutions existed. It’s particularly interesting to note how different the Jaredite narrative reads from the Lehite narrative in both political and religious aspects.

Continue reading The REPO Atlas: the Jaredites (part 1) →

The Book of Mormon REPO postings: an introduction

Belief systems, Book of Mormon, Politics, REPO

“The first rule of historical criticism in dealing with the Book of Mormon or any other ancient text is, never oversimplify. For all its simple and straightforward narrative style, this history is packed as few others are with a staggering wealth of detail that completely escapes the casual reader. The whole Book of Mormon is a condensation, and a masterly one; it will take years simply to unravel the thousands of cunning inferences and implications that are wound around its most matter-of-fact statements. Only laziness and vanity lead the student to the early conviction that he has the final answers on what the Book of Mormon contains.”

– Hugh Nibley, 1952 (The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 5: Lehi in the Desert / The World of the Jaredites / There Were Jaredites [Deseret Book/FARMS, 1988] p. 237.)

Some months back, I had a lengthy back-and-forth discussion in the comments to a posting I made over at Mormon Mentality. The starting point was Dan (of The Good Democrat) taking issue with a comment I made about the Book of Mormon’s applicability to current world situations. Dan’s contention (see comment #8) was that the Book of Mormon dealt strictly with a bipolar situation (Nephites v. Lamanite), which had little bearing on today’s multi-polar world. I strongly disagreed with Dan’s bipolar characterization of the religious-political situation described in the Book of Mormon and expressed my opinion that a careful reading showed a very complex, multipolar situation instead.  The argument went back and forth for several postings, with neither of us convincing the other.

However, it did trigger my desire to do a series of postings discussing the religious-political (REPO) “atlas” (if you will) of the Book of Mormon. I’m not breaking any new ground with this; real Book of Mormon scholars (starting, as always, with Nibley) have been doing this for years.

But I think it’s worth taking the time to see what the Book of Mormon has to say about the very complex religious and political elements of the peoples it discusses. As Nibley and others have noted, the Book of Mormon record is far from simple or simplistic. We tend to read it that way because Nephi and Mormon — who account for the vast majority of the Book of Mormon text — both followed the theme of the ultimately doomed Nephites vs. the ultimately redeemed Lamanites.  (See this article by Steven L. Olsen for an interesting discussion on whether Mormon consciously patterned his abridgment of Nephite records after Nephi’s small-plates writing.) But in spite of that, the Book of Mormon text itself reveals and suggests a far more complex religious, political, and social milieu. The goal of these postings will be to point out some of that.

Some of my observations may be original, but I tend to doubt it. 🙂 I own and have read over three dozen volumes dealing with the Book of Mormon; I also have read just about every issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. Most of my insights are likely ones that I have gained elsewhere. Where I can and am willing to dig back in, I will offer specific cites (such as the Olsen article above), but my intent at this point is not a scholarly work; it is merely to suggest complexities that may be easily overlooked in a normal reading of the Book of Mormon.

I’m going to start with the Jaredites for three reasons. First, they predate the Lehite arrival and set up a context for it. It’s pretty clear that there were Jaredite/Lehite interactions well before Coriantumr staggered into Zarahemla, given some 400 years of geographical coexistence and the occasional Jaradite name showing up in Lehite circumstances. Second, the Jaredites represent something unique in the scriptural canon: God’s dealings over a few thousand years with a post-deluvian, pre-Abrahamic (and pre-Melchizedek) people.  Third, we (as members and even as LDS scholars) really tend to ignore the Jaredites, so it’s good for them to get a little more attention.

Now to go write that Jaredite posting.  ..bruce..

Baptism and restoration in the Book of Mormon (part 3)

Book of Mormon, LDS Doctrine, Main

I have written previously here about the practice of baptism among the Lehites (see here and here). To briefly summarize:

— About 50 years after leaving Jerusalem, both Jacob and Nephi1 teach about the universal need for baptism, though the record doesn’t talk about them actually baptizing anyone.

— For the next 400 years, there is no further mention of baptism at all in the Book of Mormon record as we have it (recognizing that we’re missing the Book of Lehi) — either as a doctrinal subject or as actually being practiced.

— After that 400 years, Alma1 reintroduces baptism among the Nephites, at the same time establishing a “church of anticipation” (called by the Lehites “the church of God”) that appears to be quite distinct from the kingly reign implementing the law of Moses that appears to have dominated among the Nephites during those 400 years. Note that it is never clear where Alma gets his authority to baptize; he is one of the unrighteous priests appointed to their positions by King Noah, so it’s unclear where his priesthood authority to administer baptism comes from[1].

— Baptism is then actively practiced among both Nephites and Lamanites for over 180 years right up until the destruction that occurs at the time of the Savior’s crucifixion, with Nephi3 leading the way up to the end and ordaining others to baptize as well.

Now comes the curious part. The great destruction occurs, the survivors gather at the temple at Bountiful (including Nephi3 and other disciples), the Savior appears — and He reintroduces baptism. The Savior explicitly states that he is giving Nephi3 and others “power that ye shall baptized this people when I am again ascended into heaven” (3 Nephi 11:18-22). The Savior goes on to explain the exact procedure by which baptism should occur and even gives the words of the baptismal prayer (3 Nephi 11:23-28), twice stating that “there shall be no disputations among you” regarding baptism (see verses 22, 28).

This immediately raises a few questions:

Continue reading Baptism and restoration in the Book of Mormon (part 3) →

“Tablet ignites debate on Messiah and resurrection”

Belief systems, Book of Mormon, LDS Doctrine, Main, World Religions

The “debate” cited in this New York Times article is triggered by a stone tablet — apparently predating Christianity — that talks of a Messiah rising from the dead after three days:

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Of course, that’s not going to faze Latter-day Saints much, since we believe that Jewish prophets were fortelling the Messiah’s death and resurrection (after three days) several centuries before Christ’s birth. Worth reading the whole article.  ..bruce..

P. S. Sorry for the lack of posting; it should be picking up a bit more this week.

Book of Mormon origins (cont.)

Book of Mormon, LDS Doctrine, LDS History, Main, Military

For those who did not read my previous posting (“New light on Book of Mormon origins!“) closely enough, let me state plainly: it was a satire. It was, however, satire with a point, and (IMHO) a very sharp one at that. (Sadly, I predict that this information may show up — as a serious argument — on some anti-Mormon websites, as has happened elsewhere on the net with other satirical efforts.)

That post came about because I happen to be re-reading Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander at the same time that my wife and I — in our nightly joint reading of the Book of Mormon — are working our way through the ‘war’ chapters in Alma (Alma 45-63). In fact, the pattern for the past few weeks has been that I come to bed, read a chapter out of Alma out loud to my wife, and then (as she turns over to go to sleep) I read quietly out of Arrian for a while before going to sleep myself. Night after night, I was struck at the points of similarities between the two accounts — not the overall narrative, obviously, but much of the details and incidental points.

And while my previous post is written satirically, make no mistake: all of the similarities I list between Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandri and the Book of Mormon are real, and there’s quite a few more, to boot (which I will continue to add to the original post).

For me, the question is: how could a 19th Century farm boy with little education — and with no access whatsoever to the century-plus of movies and TV shows that we take for granted — so accurately describe various aspects of pre-Christian era warfare as they would appear and be chronicled in an ancient historical document? It really is quite striking how much Arrian’s account of Alexander’s campaigns sounds like Mormon’s account of Moroni’s and Helaman’s campaigns.

I have read both the Spaulding manuscript and Views of the Hebrews, and have seen the attempts (profoundly unconvincing, in my opinion) to draw parallels between them and the Book of Mormon. Jeff Lindsay just wrote about an even more laughable attempt to draw general (categorical, not detailed) parallels between the Book of Mormon and works of fiction, such as The Lord of the Rings. The Book of Mormon reads like none of these.

I have also seen the rather contorted efforts to show that Joseph Smith somehow could get access in upstate New York to various obscure, rare, or even not-yet-extant works (atlases, translated documents, etc.), often available only in Europe at the time of the Book of Mormon’s translation, in order to put passing references (e.g., “Nahom”) into the Book of Mormon. I don’t remember whether it was Wilfred Griggs or Kent Brown who — in reference to such efforts — joked about wanting to write an article, “Joseph Smith in the British Museum: The Lost Years”, so I gave both of them credit in my footnote.

And, of course, there are the efforts to explain the Book of Mormon as somehow being a natural production of Joseph Smith’s background, 19th Century Northeast America. Others have done a far better and more scholarly refutation of such claims than I can; my point is that, again, Mormon sounds far more like Arrian than like anything coming out of the early 1800s in upstate New York.

I appreciate the dilemma of those seeking a purely naturalistic explanation for the Book of Mormon, but it’s a dilemma of their own choosing. It reminds me very much of pre-Corpernican efforts to account for movements of the planets — with the unnegotiable foundational premise that the whole universe revolved around the Earth. This model ended up going through tremendous contortions, epicycles upon epicycles, but with this difference: the pre-Corpernican epicycles actually predicted planetary motion with great accuracy. In my opinion, the various naturalistic ‘models’ of the Book of Mormon fall apart once you move outside of their careful set of special pleadings. The simplest, most consistent, and most effective explanation of the Book of Mormon is the one Joseph Smith — and the book itself — gives.

So, no, I don’t think Joseph Smith somehow got hold of Rooke’s 1812 translation of Anabasis Alexandri and drew upon it in writing the Book of Mormon. I think that Joseph Smith translated a genuine ancient document, and that the Book of Mormon and Anabasis Alexandri sound a lot alike because they share a common focus, milieu and era. ..bruce..

New light on Book of Mormon origins!

Book of Mormon, Humor, Main

[UPDATED 06/10/08: I fear that a lot of people coming in here are missing the point that, while all the parallels below are quite real, the post itself is satirical; I do not really believe that Joseph Smith relied upon Arrian’s work in bringing forth the Book of Mormon. See the ‘Humor’ tag? Sigh.]

After careful study and research, I have determined the actual source literature that Joseph Smith drew upon in fabricating the Book of Mormon: Anabasis Alexandri (“The Campaigns of Alexander”) by Arrian, written in Greek in the early 2nd century AD. The parallels are uncanny and abound on virtually every page. And since there was an English translation (by J. Rooke) published in England in either 1812 or 1814, it’s clear that Smith would have had access to this document.1

Here are some of the striking similarities that I have found (and I reserve the right to keep adding to and editing this list):

Both volumes describe (inter alia) events in the Middle East and Asia centuries before Christ.

Both volumes focus heavily on a series of battles stretching out over years between two major civilizations that have long-standing conflicts with one another. These battles involve large armies, each under the direction of a major political/military leader. These armies directly clash with each other in a series of major battles; some of the battles take place at or across a major river.

Both volumes are written several hundred years after the campaigns in question and are based on contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous records of the campaigns themselves.

Both volumes describe an army led by a young, brilliant, brave military commander in his 20s who inspires his men, who wins virtually all of his battles, usually with much fewer losses than the other side, who is himself upon occasion wounded, and who dies at a relatively young age.

Both volumes are written by authors who have a very high opinion of said military commander.

Both volumes contain the complete text of letters exchanged between two major military/political leaders currently at war with one another. These letters deal specifically with exchange of prisoners and with each side calling upon the other to come to terms.

Both volumes deal with a complex set of city-states with changing allegiances. The two major armies (or forces detached from them) also attack, lay siege to, and capture cities controlled or loyal to the other side.

Both volumes describe intricate army maneuvers, including forced marches, night marches, ambushes, dividing up of forces, attacks from multiple sides, brief and extended sieges, and so on.

Both volumes describe armies waiting for and receiving (or not receiving) supplies and reinforcements.

Both volumes describe battles with casualties numbering over 200,000.

Both volumes describe cities and camps that are defended by digging trenches, piling up earth, and setting up a palisade (breastwork).

Both volumes describe attacks upon bandit-like peoples in mountain fortifications.

Both volumes describe one ruler offering his daughter in marriage to the ruler of a hostile civilization.

Both volumes describe the murder of a civilization’s ruler by a usurper who assumes his kingship, as well as other plots to kill or overthrow a ruler.

Both volumes describe the act of proskynesis (stretching one’s self full length upon the ground before a superior being).

Both volumes deal with religious issues and themes, including signs (some of which are astronomical) and prophecies (some of which are fulfilled).

Both volumes describe the chief capital city discussed in the volume as being destroyed by fire.

Both volumes describe key religious ceremonies being performed near a body of water in a wilderness.

Both volumes describe incidents of troops getting drunk, with unfortunate results.

Both volumes describe one civilization adopting more and more trappings of the other civilization, not always to its benefit.

Both volumes describe new cities being founded, and often being named after the leader who founded them.

Both volumes describe a variety of temples and specific forms of worship at those temples. Both volumes also describe animal sacrifice as part of a religious ceremony.

Both volumes describe a variety of types of governments, including hereditary kingships, non-hereditary kingships, democracies (of a sort), and others.

Both volumes mention horses, elephants, swords, spears, bows, arrows, javelins, chariots, and armor.

Both volumes describe long-distance travel via ships, as well as long treks overland.

Both volumes describe events taking place in a variety of geographical settings, including oceans, coastlines, mountains, deserts, valleys, hills, rivers, lakes, and jungles.

Some identical proper names (people and places) occur in both volumes, such as “Ammon”, “Babylon”, and “Egypt”.

Clearly, this is too much to attribute to coincidence! In fact, I believe a careful comparison of Anabasis Alexandri and the Book of Mormon will reveal far more similarities, big and small, than can be found between the Book of Mormon and, say, View of the Hebrews or the Spaulding manuscript.

Likewise, I would posit that there are far more similarities, page after page, between Anabasis Alexandri and the Book of Mormon than between the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s own early 19th Century American milieu.

So, clearly, Smith must have drawn upon Anabasis Alexandri in creating the Book of Mormon, rather than the usual sources cited by those seeking a naturalistic explanation for the Book of Mormon. QED. ..bruce..

================================

[1] Griggs, C. Wilfred and Brown, S. Kent. “Joseph Smith in the British Museum: The Lost Years”, publication pending.

OK, this was interesting

Book of Mormon

First off, let me be perfectly clear: I’m not claiming anthropological evidence of anything. But it was still a bit funny/startling to run across this news article about a possibly uncontacted tribe found in Brazil:

Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away.

Behind the two men stands another figure, possibly a woman, her stance also seemingly defiant. Her skin painted dark, nearly black.

And here’s one of the accompanying photos:

Of course, what this called to mind were passages such as this in the Book of Mormon:

And the Amlicites were distinguished from the Nephites, for they had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites; nevertheless they had not shorn their heads like unto the Lamanites.

Now the heads of the Lamanites were shorn; and they were naked, save it were skin which was girded about their loins, and also their armor, which was girded about them, and their bows, and their arrows, and their stones, and their slings, and so forth.

And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men. (Alma 3:4-6)

Explanations of the Lamanite ‘curse’ tend to fall into one of three categories: a divine change of melatonin; a natural darkening due to more time outdoors plus wearing less clothing; or a cultural exaggeration (cf. Nibley et alis). Maybe the Lamanites just painted themselves.

In any case, it was startling to see a very recent photograph that looked so much like something straight out of the Book of Mormon.  ..bruce..