I work in mental health and, often have worked with people diagnosed PTSD from a wide variety of jobs (soldiers, police, and civilians) . There is a similarly in tone with how they talk and with how Moroni speaks. His heaviness in speaking sounds so familiar to me as a mental health therapist. You read about what he experiences, and you think, "Why wouldn't he struggle with that?".
I am one of the hosts on the Interpreter Foundation radio show. This past Sunday (12/8) on the show, one of the other hosts (Kevin Christiansen) referenced a recent paper showing how Moroni in his writings exhibits symptoms of survivor syndrome.
My dad always said something to the effect of: If you believe that Joseph Smith made up the BoM then you have to believe in miracles because if he was able to do that it’s literally miraculous.
Uhm no. His mother wrote in her journal that from a young age, Joseph Smith told the families amazing stories about ancient people when the family gathered in their home. In such a detailed and amazing way as if he had lived among them, describing their clothes, weapons and all. He's always had a talent for telling stories. Miraculous is to ignore the many historical mistakes found in the BoM.
@ Here are just a few: 1: The Book of Mormon is not fiction, and only more evidence for it happening is continuing to be found. (For example, Joseph was laughed at by “experts” for writing and saying that an advanced civilization lived in cities of cement here in America anciently. Now the fact that Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayans, etc. lived in cities of cement is common knowledge) 2: Joseph Smith was known by his family, friends, and enemies to be nearly illiterate, (he could hardly write letters and there were tons of mistakes) and yet we have the Book of Mormon which has complex grammar uses. 3: He produced the Book of Mormon (a 500+ page work) in a matter of months. The other books you’ve mentioned took years and they are *professional* highly-acclaimed top writers. I could go on, there’s so much.
Okay, and? Statistical probability is not itself evidence. It’s a classic case of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Probability based on writing styles is not that.
@@jcf2322I think you meant to say that it's not proof. It absolutely is evidence. Extremely strong evidence. That's what statistical probability is, by nature.
@@jcf2322I’m not sure you understand, but it doesn’t matter. The only way you’ll ever know whether the Book of Mormon is all it claims to be is if you give it a chance it might be true, read it several days for 15-20 minutes, ponder its teachings and witnesses of Christ, then ask God in prayer whether it is true.👍🏽
This is genuinely one of the best Book of Mormon videos I’ve seen. I love how he kept tying it back to the evidence of the individuality and experiences of each author, not just the “Joseph Smith couldn’t have done this” point The part where he talked about the different voices of God the Father and Jesus Christ gave me chills. Really cool stuff.
As I continue to read the comments here, a thought came to me: the reason why the Lord chose Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon, even though he did not finish grade school, is that Joseph Smith Jr. could have altered or corrected any information he thought was wrong or contradicted his knowledge. However, he didn’t do this. If he had been that much of a genius, he might have had the pride to correct any mistakes he thought were there, but he didn’t, because he was innocent in the sense that he did not know everything about the Book of Mormon. In short, our prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith Jr., was chosen to do this great and marvelous work because he was humble. Indeed, “the Lord uses the unlikely to accomplish the impossible” (President Russell M. Nelson).
And by translating in such poverty that he couldn't even afford to buy the paper to write on, it made it impossible for him to have written and hidden a stash of notes and first drafts before dictating the text in a single draft at such astonishing speed.
Or Satan deceived Joseph Smith, and he was "inspired" by the adversary himself. How did he fool Eve into eating from the tree of life? He convinced her God's word wasn't true. What do members of the LDS say about the Bible, which is the word of God? That it can only be trusted as long as it's translated correctly. So basically saying the word of God isn't true and can't be trusted as we believe it.
One of the problems with the claim that the BofM is a direct and tight translation from Reformed Egyptian to English by the power of God, that Joseph Smith simply read the words that God presented to him on the stone in the hat, and that he then ensured the exact words presented to him were written down and spelled correctly by his scribe before the translation could continue, is all the grammatical errors in the 1st edition that were later corrected by men. Commenting on the BofM’s folksy nineteenth-century New England vernacular, B. H. Roberts, LDS historian and President of the First Council of the Seventy, wrote: “Sometimes it takes on almost childish expression.” (Studies of the Book of Mormon, 263) Here is a sample of grammar common to nineteenth-century New England speech found in the first edition of the Book of Mormon (later modified in the 1837 edition): 1 Nephi 4:4 - “they was yet wroth” Mosiah 2:12 - “have not sought gold nor silver, nor no manner of riches of you” Mosiah 10:15 - “had arriven to the promised land” Alma 10:7 - “As I was a journeying to see a very near kindred” Alma 10:8 - “And as I was a going thither” Alma 17:1 - “he met with the sons of Mosiah, a journeying towards the land of Zarahemla” Alma 17:26 - “with the Lamanitish servants, a going forth with their flocks” Alma 20:8 - “as Ammon and Lamoni was a journeying thither” Helaman 7:8 - “in them days” Helaman 13:37 - “in them days” 3 Nephi 3:5 - “I have wrote this epistle” Ether 9:29 - “they done all these things” Do such verses read like ancient, literate Native Americans of Hebrew descent? Or, do they read like a nineteenth-century orator telling a story? Joseph’s folksy manner of speech in the BofM suggests Joseph controlled the diction of the book and that it was not a tight translation where Joseph simply, “read aloud the English words that appeared” like the church claims in the Gospel Topics Essays: Book of Mormon Translation. A word-for-word English rendition translated by the power of God from ancient American writers where Joseph read aloud the words that appeared on the stone would not have resulted in passages resembling nineteenth-century New England vernacular which would need to be corrected later by men. Unless, God intentionally put errors into the BofM while He controlled the translation process, knowing that those errors he was putting in would be corrected by men later.
@@adamholloway7963, Perhaps the reformed Egyptian wasn’t translated into Standard English. Maybe it was translated into the language the translator understood. Furthermore, maybe Mormon and Moroni were country folk themselves. One of the reasons that God brought forth the book of Mormon is to warn about pride. If you think that your language is so superior to another person’s language that God would use your language, but never use the other person’s language, you’re going to have a hard time when you are judged on the same scale that you use to judge others with some day. Edited to adjust for grammar
@@explorerofmind You said, "Perhaps the reformed Egyptian wasn’t translated into Standard English. " Perhaps there was no "reformed Egyptian" translated at all. Perhaps Joseph just made it up. Perhaps Joseph was a con-man. Oh, wait, we do have evidence of that from his treasure digging endeavors. So, Joseph being a con-man isn't just speculation, but is supported with historical evidence.
I don’t know why but hearing how much the Lord emphasizes the invitation to baptism fills me with emotion. I love that he is so eager to have us yoked with him. He loves us so much and wants us to let our sin go!
Was in college and witnessed severe suffering by children in a third wold country. Went to bed telling god he was "unfair" and woke up the next morning and he told me this in the BofM: 13 And thus we see how great the inequality of man is because of sin and transgression, and the power of the devil, which comes by the cunning plans which he hath devised to ensnare the hearts of men. 14 And thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing-sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life. I honestly don't know how someone can read the BofM and believe JS wrote it. Light gathers around my eyes, a warmth is in my heart each time a read it. I don't need any evidence from scholars but it's cool when they show it to me.
The thing the astounds me is that whenever anyone from Mosiah to Moroni is quoting Nephi and Jacob Joseph hadn't translated that portion of the plates yet. If he was making it up he would have to remember to include them all when writing Nephi . Just Astounding .
Around 45 years ago statistical word print analysis proved mutiple authorship of the Book of Mormon. The findings were so strong that they were carried in the statistical professional journal at the time. So, this had been known for many years.
Chat gpt Creating multiple distinct styles is even more challenging in a longer work like the Book of Mormon, which spans hundreds of pages. The longer the text, the more difficult it is to maintain distinct and consistent styles throughout.
Excellent analysis. When an anti-Mormon confronted me and said Joseph Smith wrote the BOM I said, then at least admit he was an absolute genius. You have to give him that. He wouldn’t 😂 because it doesn’t match his education or writing ability demonstrated his entire life.
One of the things I find enjoyable about the BOM is the personality and strength of the different authors. Even the ones who say something like, "I haven't been righteous, but I kept these plates according to my promise to my Father. I now pass them to my Son." Then the personality changes again in the following texts.
The fact that there are so many comments suggesting that we should have a non-biased party replicate or check this research seems to me to be an indicator of how truly compelling this evidence actually is (or would be, if trusted) in favor of the Book of Mormon. Regardless of whether such research is ever done, to me, Dr. Hilton’s research should serve as just another reason (of many) for more people to take the Book of Mormon seriously and put it to the ultimate test: does it bring you closer to Christ? Does God speak to you through it? Does it bring you the peace it promises it can? Can it be confirmed by God’s spirit that it is true?
When the video started and I saw the guest and topic, I thought, “Oh, this might be John Hilton’s son.” No, it’s his grandson. As someone who read John Hilton’s work when it first came out, I now feel old. 😂
Interestingly Alma was known for talking about “souls.” Alma, the name itself, in Spanish, translates to “Soul.” Not sure it contributes anything, but it’s interesting!
It is also interesting when you consider that Egyptian is the grandfather language of Latin. So Alma in Spanish may be closer to the meaning of "soul" than we think.
Latin languages include French, Spanish, Italian, English. Latin originated from the Phoenecian alphabet (Northern Israel), which is a form of Reformed Egyptian. That will also tell you that native Latin speakers are genetic descendants of both the Levant and Egypt. Language always follows people.
@@picklesadventures I wasn’t saying they knew Spanish, sorry, I might not have been clear on that. I was just mentioning that it was an interesting coincidence was all. I didn’t mean to imply that they were speaking Spanish, or had extensive knowledge of it, haha, they definitely were not. Are you a Sunday School teacher?
Perhaps the most significant work of literature in the last 1000 years but it’s so shrouded in accusations and false a narratives to many never crack it open even for a quick glance.
@@picklesadventures 1. The account of Alma was written partly by Alma himself, and was also largely abridged by Mormon. As Mormon mentions many times, "a hundredth part" of the Nephite records weren't included in his abridgement. He summarized the stories. So Alma was written by Alma and Mormon's summaries/commentaries. 2. The Boon of Mormon never teaches the Trinity. Any time it uses words like "one" or, more specifically, "which is one God", we interpret it as symbolism. We believe Heavenly Father, Christ, and the Spirit are one in purpose, not one being literally. 3. Due to the fact that we believe the Book of Mormon was TRANSLATED, the issue of words such as Adeiu and Christian are irrelevant. God probably told Joseph that those words were the best fit/match for the translation into English. obviously the Nephites didn't say the words Adeiu and Christian because they spoke another language than us. 4. The killing of the king-men found throughout Alma was only justified because the king-men were physically hindering the Nephites' survival as a nation. Their protests rose up in the midst of a war, so the Lamanites and the king-men combined threatened the very existence of the Nephite country. This left the Nephites no choice but to defend themselves by going to war with the king-men. As for Korihor in Alma ch. 30, the Nephites weren't the ones that killed him--the Zoramites were, and they were wicked Nephite dissenters/rebels. The Nephites were uninvolved and had nothing to do with his death. 5. As for the person tense changes and other grammar issues (keep in mind i am no linguistic or language expert in any way so take this with a grain of salt), the book is written in old english, which is much different grammar-wise than modern english. If the errors you found can't be explained by that, Mormon 9:31 comes to mind: Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been. Also, about the Joseph Smith quote where he says that the Book of Mormon is the most correct on Earth, we believe what he was saying was that it is the most correct religion- and ideal-wise, not literary-wise. I will admit, as an LDS member myself, that these videos tend to be biased. It is nearly, if not totally, impossible to find an unbiased video about these kinds of topics which is an awful thing. if you want there is an LDS discord server if you're into that that attempts to discuss these topics through an unbiased lens. You can discuss your thoughts there if you want Hopefully this helped
@@picklesadventures The people that lived in the Book of Mormon (before 3 Nephi) kept the Law of Moses. Any teachings before then are useful but some of them we don't practice any more since they've been fulfilled. For example, there are many teachings in the Old Testament that we don't practice anymore. That doesn't mean we reject it as a false document. Look, I know you keep getting the same answers over and over, and that's because humans don't have all the answers. you can't expect to know everything right off the bat. Ether 12:6: faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. The truth is, humans don't have all the answers. That's the reason we need faith. Also, I bet you very few members of our church converted because of physical evidence, and if any did then their testimony probably isn't very strong. God WANTS you to convert spiritually. if all the evidence was just out there, then everyone would know the true Church and faith would be pointless. The reason members of our church don't care about physical evidence is because they have a spiritual testimony. If you have a very powerful and personal spiritual experience, are you going to care if there's a person tense change in a few verses? no.
I’m curious about Dr Hilton’s description of Jesus as a distinct voice in the BoM. I assumed in 3 Nephi I was reading an editorial abridgment of Nephi’s words by Mormon. So unless Nephi remembered and captured Jesus’s words verbatim, I’d expect to see primarily Mormon’s word prints. As for the capitalization of the word “father,” it seems like that would have been an editorial decision, possibly by Mormon, but more likely at the point where it was translated into the English word “father” by Joseph and/or his scribe. Or even by Grandin when he set the type for the press.
I'm willing to accept Nephi capturing Jesus' words accurately, to the same extent I'm willing to accept Alma Sr remembering and capturing Abinadi's words, and Alma Jr capturing Zeezrom's words. At the same time, I wonder how much the translating agent could have enhanced the word print, since the translating agent sprinkled little KJV quotes all throughout with an almost smugly gleeful erudition. You're right about the capitalization: it was not in the original dictation. Certainly neither Hieratic nor Hebrew had capital letters.
Jesus being a distinct voice in the Book of Mormon is a great question. Issues around maintaining unique voices in translation are currently being studied by scholars today (initial findings show that unique voices can survive through translation). The reality is, Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon clearly has a distinctive voice relative to other Book of Mormon authors.
@@weightelk I wouldn’t be so harsh. Critical thinking is something that’s learned. On that journey, apologetics is a reasonable place to start. That’s where I began, moving from bad apologetics (that, to paraphrase an Andrew Lang quote, use data like a drunk man uses a lamppost-for support rather than illumination) to much more even handed apologetics. From there I got deep into Biblical then BoM scholarship, which has been both challenging and amazing. Many assumptions, presuppositions and traditional views posing as revealed doctrine have melted away. It’s not easy to reposition your testimony to a place downstream of scholarship and have it be stronger than ever. In my experience it takes faith and is slow, thoughtful work. Better that than rushing it, encountering something shocking, jumping to the most negative binary conclusions, abandoning testimony…and still not being an inch closer to thinking critically.
If there is new evidence showing up all the time for the validity of the book, isn't it possible that there is a solid explanation for your concern? We're it me, I'd ask God if the book is true.
@@perryewell5395it is possible that there is a solid explanation, and that’s what I’m trying to find. The counsel to “ask God” is correct, but let’s not forget the “study it out” clause that precedes it. To this end, “Good inspiration is based upon good information” - Russell M. Nelson “Information brings inspiration,” Elder Uchtdorf said. “You have to collect information and then you are in a position to receive revelation when you connect to the Spirit.”
In his book, does he talk about how "Christ" is used vs. "Messiah"? I recently learned something cool. Some people criticize the Book of Mormon for using both words "Christ" and "Messiah" when they mean the same thing. However, it's not that simple. I was taught that "Messiah" is the Hebrew version of Annointed One used in the Old Testament, and "Christ" is the Greek version of Annointed One used in the New Testament. And, that's fine, right? They are just two different words that mean the same thing. If I was translating some other language and sometimes I use the word "fall" and sometimes I use the word "trip" and sometimes I use the word "stumble," that's fine. As the translator, I could use whichever word seems to make the most sense in context, even if I'm translating the same word. But, that cannot be the full story! First of all, the New Testament people seemed to be familiar with and used both words. One example is in John 4:25-26 where the Samarian woman at the well says, "I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ." So, either this woman and/or John were familiar with both terms and felt comfortable using both. It's not true that "Christ" is only used in the New Testament. Next, "Christ," although clearly a title meaning Anointed One started to become the name of Jesus, as explained in an article titled, "How Did Jesus Get The Name Christ?" by Amanda Williams. This is particularly interesting because of how the Book of Mormon first uses the word "Christ" and then begins using it more than "Messiah" as explained in an article titled "Taylor Halverson: Finding the first use of the name Christ in the Book of Mormon." That is a lot by itself for Joseph Smith to keep straight and keep consistent.
I have heard John say some of this but the curtain call and on are mind blowing. Like John always says, don’t base your testimony on it but it is so cool.
More long format my guy! Love this stuff! You should get the Uto-aztecan language scholar on here that proves semitic language and uto-aztecan are conjugal (conjugates? Congegrate? I can't remember but y'all knaw'mean)
Alma the Younger has a "spice" to his preaching that shows that he's read the Small Plates. Abinadi expounds on Isaiah, but he shows no sign of having read the Small Plates. After reading Skousen's edition of the earliest text, I noticed that the word "counsel" is used differently in Mormon's quotation of Alma from in the Small Plates. Twice in Jacob the word is used in its current sense. 4:10 "seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand." 5:22 "And the Lord of the vineyard saith unto him: Counsel me not." In Alma the word is used in its obsolete sense. 37:37 "Counsel the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good." It got changed to "counsel with" in later editions for clarity. I'd like to see some research into the use of the word "dwindle." When Mormon uses it in 4 Nephi (verse 38) it's clumsy, with conflicting meanings. I have a sort of hypothesis that Mormon found the word or phrase (and Hieratic glyph) translated as "dwindle" in the Small Plates and liked it and wanted to use it, but maybe it was archaic. I'm not sure if that really squares with its use by Samuel the Lamanite and Jesus. Anyway, it's part of a curiosity I have about the Egyptian writing system that Moroni complained about. Which is another thing: Moroni complains about having to use a complicated and arcane script that included logograms and determinatives as well as phonetic and syllabic characters, which would have been handed down from a limited corpus over a millennium, and wishes he could write in Hebrew - _believing that that would eliminate flaws or ambiguity in the writing._ Obviously this is a scribe who has never had the luxury of writing in a full alphabet, which Hebrew is not. Hebrew writing has its own ambiguities. Moroni just thinks that if he could write in his familiar vernacular, he could make himself clearer. The translation itself is part of the wonder: Skousen's and Carmack's work illuminate a translation that is very deliberate, and to me shows a delight in wordplay.
I bought Dr. Hilton’s book a couple months ago, and I really like it. He is very grounded. Obviously he can’t offer true “proof,” but this is clearly very strong evidence.
Dr. Hilton should write a sequel called Voices in Doctrine and Covenants. I’d be curious to see how the wordprints of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ applied to Doctrine and Covenants where some of the sections seem to be Joseph quoting Jesus verbatim in the first person whereas others seem to be Joseph being a mouthpiece and saying the revelation in his own words. It would be interesting to see where the wordprints might delineate them. This would be a different approach than you took for the Book of Mormon because you had to select who the speakers were before you put them into the Word Cruncher software. This would be more like how they incriminated the Unabomber in that you take an established wordprint and apply it to the text. These wordprints would also be interesting for the sections with semi controversial origins such as section 132. (I don’t think the origin of section 132 is questionable, but it would be nice additional evidence to help silence the annoying people who do.)
Stylometric analysis of the D&C has actually been done already; at least for D&C 132 compared to other, less controversial sections. The style is actually very noticeably different.
Some people might claim that looking into the Book of Mormon with this level of detail misses the point or looks beyond the mark. But as you learn about this complexity of the book of Mormon in how certain forms of speech are used, or how certain vocabulary is emphasized, or how prophecies have been reminded and cited across hundreds of pages, I've found that it fulfills the prophecy in the book of Mormon itself about how it will be as if a voice hissed from the dust. Looking at this research, I would consider it impossible to still wonder whether or not Joseph Smith translated this or if he instead invented it out of whole cloth from multiple personality disorder of a hundred different personalities. He had to have translated it. Whether or not it was of God or of the devil can still be up for debate for some people, but for me, the way to get closer to Christ is through the book of Mormon, better than any other way.
Re-watch the video guys and go read the word print studies. You are only seeing what you want to see because the alternative means that the truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are correct and you just can’t stand that. The fact of the matter is multiple word print studies show multiple authors of the Book of Mormon that are unique to each writer: Nephi’s writing style is different from Alma’s, who is different from Mormon’s, who is different from Jesus’s, etc. This shows that either Joseph was a literary genius beyond the capacity of almost all writers, or the Book is what it claims to be - A compilation of writings from ancient prophets. Given the time constraints, the education level, youth, and inexperience in writing of Joseph, the writing in one draft, the length and complexity of the book, the use of no notes as reported by multiple witnesses, and this approaches an impossibility that anyone could have pulled this off. But if you want to ignore most of the evidence and eyewitness accounts because it helps you sleep better at night, that is on you. But I feel you owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself and seriously consider strong evidence when you come across it. I try to do this. I’ve come across evidence for certain things that challenges my preconceptions and causes me to reconsider what I think to be true, even if I don’t like it. If the evidence is great enough, I have to modify my belief system to accommodate the new information. This is part of learning and growing I suppose. All your scoffing doesn’t refute this evidence. Provide for me a cogent response to this evidence after doing your homework rather than making glib remarks and I will take you more seriously. Otherwise, you are convincing nobody but yourselves and those who are looking for reasons to disbelieve. An honest seeker of truth would put in the time it takes to be as certain of their position as they can be.
I don’t assume that all dissenting opinions are from dishonest, lazy people. That is an assumption you made about me. If someone has a persuasive argument, present it. The only comments to my first comment were glib and/or conclusory. I can understand how an intelligent and well meaning person can arrive at conclusions that differ from mine. I don’t think this evidence is as suspect as you might think. When you read the actual studies, it is pretty hard to pass this off as seeing things that aren’t really there. Especially when combined with all the other things the Book of Mormon gets right about the ancient world. Things that nobody knew in Joseph Smith’s day. I don’t understand your Bruce R McConkie reference. Are you saying I wax verbose?
@@tylerahlstrom4553 I went ahead and did my own word study on the Book of Mormon which used straightforward criteria and is easy to repeat by anyone who is patient enough to do so. I looked at all number words in the text and then compared the percentages with other books within the LDS cannon. It was a great learning experience and my results are self-published if you would like to read them. The conclusion was pretty simple: the number patterns used in the Book of Mormon demonstrate that it is a modern Christian text. We would expect the number 7 to stick out if it was an ancient, pre-christian text. In the new testiment, we get the numbers 12, 3, and 7 all sticking out. But in the Book of Mormon while 3 sticks out (trinity, etc) and there is a slight bump in 12, there are actually fewer 7's than 6's. This is a clear indication that the author is trying to mimic christian texts (i.e. they get the 3) but that they do not understand or appreciate the importance of 7 within ancient Hebrew culture. The other thing that sticks out is how certain numbers just get huge during the wars. There isn't a roll-off in the large numbers as you would expect. This seems to indicate that they are not based on actual figures but rather that it is a work of fiction. Happy to discuss further if you're interested in what happens when you look at the text objectively.
The Book of Mormon is a modern miracle. It's coming about is one of the greatest miracles ever. I could never figure out any plausible explanation as to how it exists. The only explanation of it's existence is how Joseph said it came about.
I think the reason (or at least one of the reasons) Christ focuses on baptism is because his prophets focus on having faith in and coming to Christ. So it makes sense that when the people actually come to Christ, he would give them the next step in their salvation, that is baptism. They already have faith in him, they have already come to him, so now it’s time for baptism.
What amazes me is that these prophets studied the words of the prophets before them and the words of God from the spirit so much that those words became their own words. So much so they just by speaking as they normally would, the words of God came out. Amazing. They fulfilled (at least in part) the commandment to, “be even as God is”.
Two Sundays ago, I started reading the Book of Mormon with the intent of highliting every time God (be it Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Ghost) and their actions to someone (ie. thus the Lord spoke unto me; keep the commandments of the Lord God, etc.). I am currently in 2nd Nephi. And yes! I've noticed that Nephi uses Lord more often than his brother! Beyond that, every time Satan and his doings are mentioned, God is not in the picture at all! Also when Laman and Lemuel speak, God isn't mentioned at all, all but one time when Laman and Lemuel are murmuring, saying that the Jews at Jerusalem were righteous people because they kept statutes of God. (Notice they didn't say anything about the commandments of God. . .I could be wrong on that account. I'll have to read it again.) And when Nephi is speaking with his two eldest brothers, Nephi hits them back with talking of God several times over.
This is an interesting video. I am not a member of the LDS church, but I do read the BOM, along with the Bible, on a regular basis. For the most part, I like the book and find it an interesting companion to the Bible. The reason why I don't think the BOM is likely inspired is the Is Isaiah chapters. If Joeseph Smith had translated those chapters in a different style than literally reproducing them verbatim from the King James Bible, I may think differently. I mean the above comments with no disrespect to those members of the LDS church. I consider them fellow Christians with myself and will continue to read the BOM, simply not in the same light as LDS members.
I get that. I recently joined the church after reading for a couple years. The Isaiah verses for me are because 1. they had Isaiah and the story stays the same. 2. when the bom was being given to joseph smith. it was given in a language that he and that era of people could understand. it’s hard to think that the ancient language could be 1:1 translated into modern english. I think christ filled in the blanks
There are some very interesting differences between the KJV Isaiah and the Book of Mormon text. A careful analysis of both, you might find interesting. An example is 2 Nephi 12:16. Note the footnote.
@@zutharthirteenAlso, if there were any such differences, the more obsessive among us would likely have fixated on interpreting the subtle grammatical nuances of each one, even when those differences were irrelevant and not in Isaiah's intent. This could have generated a lot of unnecessary noise, not least from skeptical critics and the prevailing bible-only culture.
Joseph Smith didn't reproduce them from the Bible. Book of Mormon authors made it clear they were borrowing from the Bible. The Book of Mormon was translated by the Lord through Joseph Smith.
@kjcdb8er that's a good point. There was no great way to do this. Keeping it the most recognizable version both solves and creates problems, but so does every other path.
I'm not a skeptic, but is there any distinction made in research between Jesus mention of baptism that can be attributed to supposed new testament plagiarism vs book of Mormon original material? If it's more unique to BOM that feels like a stronger argument to me.
Great question! Short answer is that Jesus speaks about baptism differently in the Book of Mormon than the Bible. See this article for more details: archive.dev-bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/hilton/2018-06-18/john_l._hilton_iii_and_jana_johnson_the_word_baptize_in_the_book_of_mormon_2018.pdf
I think it is really interesting that Lehi names his two youngest sons after Jacob and Joseph from the Bible, AFTER he learned of his family's genealogy linking them back to them in the Brass Plates. Little touches like that make me believe the BoM is true. Lehi had mad respect for Jacob, the polygamist apparently!
Lehi was absolutely thrilled when he found out his family was descended from Jacob the polygamist. The Book of Mormon wouldn't exist unless Jacob had married Rachel, his second wife. "By their fruit ye shall know them."
The criticism I often hear about using principle component analysis for the purposes of stylometry is that it is not mature enough to tackle these questions. Yet, I never hear them go into detail about why precisely it is ineffective in discerning authorship. At most there is mention of authorial stylistic drift, but no meaningful analysis of the Book of Mormon stylometric data and whether it has signatures of stylistic drift which would explain the larger principle component volume. It would be good to have another interview that tackles exactly what critics of this technique have against it, and whether it is a case of "it doesn't say what I think it should say, so it's wrong", or whether the complaints have merit.
Is there a text of the Book of Mormon with the speaker clearly denoted? It's often clear, but there are times i miss a transition or wonder if I'm getting the speaker right. I'd also be interested to know if there were times that Dr. Hilton discovered that the speaker was nor who they'd previously thought.
There’s a color-coded version (of the open source 1920 edition of the BoM) that Brian Stutzman(..? S- something..) put out, with help from scholars and such. I believe it’s on Amazon, but it’s like $60. That’s the cheapest he could have it sell for because of all the different colors and ink (he says he makes no money off of it.) But basically he went through and assigned a color to each “voice” in the Book of Mormon. I dunno how discernible the differences between like 120 shades of the rainbow are, but it seems to work! I know there’s a past episode of Brian on Ward Radio discussing it.
Love the podcast and love the topic. One interesting thing to maybe look into is how much of the voice is retained when being transcribed. Whenever I write down words given by someone else, I typically miss a bunch or even paraphrase. When do the authors have the time to write in the scriptures. Is it that same night, is it days after? It's an aspect I feel being neglected here. How much of the Book of Mormon is being transcribed that isn't directly the words of the authors? Jesus would be one of them, as well as Zeezrom, Korihor, and others.
I wonder if we can compare the direct words of Jesus Christ in D&C and BofM and draw any conclusions in familiarity with each other? Or if two different texts with different purpose wouldn't show much...
Possibly. As someone who has read the newest LDS release of the Book of Mormon alongside the 1830 manuscript, the changes are mostly grammar, spelling, punctuation, and wording. There are no changes to the context, really. So either way, this video's points still stands.
Great question. From John's book: "Throughout this book I use the 2013 version of the Book of Mormon. I have compared textual details with Royal Skousen's 'The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text' and note significant differences when they occur."
Do you want to see something interesting, that no author would have thought of? Read Alma 5: 5 and see if you can spot the hidden birth announcement. The stone in a hat may have been used for other revelations, but it contradicts the description of translation given in Doctrine & Covenants when Oliver Cowdrey tried to translate. It makes it very clear that the words don't just appear exactly how they are supposed to be, or there would be no reason to "Study it out in your mind whether it be correct."
I don’t have enough faith to believe Joseph made this up or guessed so much stuff. Even logic says this to me. Add to that my testimony and I’m there 🙏🙏
This is impossible. He could not have guessed in such an exact way and also have a real town in Europe (Nahom) mentioned that was undiscovered in the 1800s.
This also speaks to some of the doctrinal questions that we have and some things to see. When language is corrupted (as all of our own languages), it leads to misunderstanding and confusion. Perhaps one day we will speak via language, and then we will have a pure understanding of all of these things in a greater light
I think Dan Vogel said it best. "People think the Book of Mormon is more amazing than it actually is, and people think Joseph Smith was a lot dumber than he actually was."
Somewhere I heard it suggested that Zenock could be Enoch and Zenos could be Enos. I haven't researched it to see if there is any merit to this idea, but has anyone studied the words of Enoch and Enos in comparison to Zenock and Zenos?
Can Dr. Hilton speak Mandarin? I’m asking because I am serving in mandarin speaking branch right now in California, and I think it would be good to be able to produce these kinds of videos in Mandarin as well. Of course, I could just use the transcript from these videos, translate them, and edit them myself. But I’m wondering if it would be better to collaborate with others on something like this, that are already successful in their channels.
This last time I read the prophecy of Samuel the Lamanite I was struck by its distinct style: very repetitive. It makes sense to me that the text is not from Samuel's own record of his words, but from an observer writing down at or soon after the time that he spoke. That, and the circumstances in which he spoke - shouting to be heard above a milling crowd - would account for the repetition. If Joseph Smith was making this up, that would be yet one more authorial artifice and complication to keep track of. If he were a medium channeling a work of automatic writing, I doubt that the source would take such care to build such details either: my hypothesis is that automatically-written books that claim to be scripture use an omniscient narration. A further hypothesis: that comes from a Protestant view of scripture. Taking the Book of Mormon seriously entails remembering that its authors were *not* omniscient narrators, any more than Biblical authors were. I'm hungry for more scholarly attention into the different circumstances of the various sermons and dialogues in the Book of Mormon, and how that shows up in their style.
I think if some young guy came to me today and said he translated a whole book of scripture from God using a stone in a hat, I would not believe him. Infact I would think him crazy. I think 90% of us probably would too. These arguments are really clutching at at straws.
If someone today told me that they received more scripture from God through some strange means, and they presented me with something equivocal to the Book of Mormon, I would think twice about what I considered strange.
@@michaelgrey7854 A lot of people make a lot of strange claims. What they end up amounting to is something else; that's what's great about Jesus Christ's instruction about knowing the true prophets from the false. As He said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."
The wordprint argument doesn't work. I will use Alma as an example. We will need a separate source independent of the Book of Mormon written by Alma to identify his unique wordprint. Then, we can compare Alma's sermons in the Book of Mormon with the independent source to see how well they match up. Of course, we will never find the independent source. John Hilton III's argument assumes that Mormon perfectly captured Alma's word print when he edited the record. John' argument is unfalsiable, so it is not a scientific argument.
I had read many comments denigrating Joseph Smith for using a stone in a hat to read the translation of The Book of Mormon, until one day I was trying to read something on my phone in a sunny kitchen. "I wish I had Joseph Smith's hat to put my phone in," I thought. Knowing that God is the ultimate scientist, is it any surprise that He can use a stone (or a wall, as in the message "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPARSIN" ) to transmit any writing He wishes to convey?
If Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon with his face in a hat, it makes it awfully hard to believe he just plagiarized it from various other sources. How can you read notes from a dark hat?
@@dr33776 He was a kid when he wanted to find treasure, and it doesn't have anything to do with God giving him power to translate scripture via revelation except that he eventually found the seer stone to be a useful tool. It was common to the culture to be interested in buried treasure, but he grew out of it, especially as he came to understand real revelation and truth. There's no point in worrying about the immature ideas that Joseph Smith gave up on as he matured.
@@dr33776 You are enormously incorrect. I know about all of those subjects, and I've evidently studied them more than you have. I'll help you out a bit. 1. He was hired by Josiah Stowell and part of what Stowell wanted was for Joseph Smith to find treasure. Joseph was older by this time and believed nothing would come of it. He eventually convinced Stowell to give up the effort but Stowell continued to employ him for other tasks. A grumbling relative took Joseph Smith to court over it and nothing came of the case. There's nothing about it for anyone to care about. 2. Yes, he had the stone long before he used it for translation. I don't know why you mention this. 3. It was part of the culture, and it still is a part of U.S. culture in some pockets. Again, he was young when trying this. If you're intellectually honest you will recognize that young people do a lot of foolish stuff. The more he learned, the more he turned away from it. Condemning a kid for being interested in buried treasure is ridiculous. 4. The Book of Abraham is scripture given by revelation. There's a lot we don't know about it--and that's normal for things that occurred in the past. Those who make silly claims of it being "proven a complete fraud" are always basing such statements in false premises. You want to disbelieve in Joseph Smith being a prophet, so you look for any evidence against him, no matter how bad it is. You're free to do so. Just don't expect people of faith and reason to fall for it.
@@dr33776 Sigh. This probably won't do any good, but: 1. I looked up actual records for the Stowell case a while back, and no, he wasn't condemned for it. Provide your source if you want to claim otherwise. 2. I said he found it to be a useful tool. It's not unlike Moses using a staff to perform his miracles. That's it. 3. He was a kid who wanted to believe in magic. I haven't seen any source documents that indicated that he "used magic parchments", but so what if he did? Young people do dumb things. Sacrificing animals? Again, I'm curious about what real source documents you have. "Scam"? Hardly. And again, he explicitly gave all of it up as he came to know truth from God. How can you even try to condemn someone for turning away from falsehood? If, after taking on his tasks from God and restoring the Church of Jesus Christ, he still was interested in magic and treasure, that would be a problem. Turning toward God is not. 4. The Book of Abraham is a translation. Translation means that you have a source text in one language and then you have it in another. People typically study language academically to be able to do it. Computers have very different methods. Revelation is yet another different method. Joseph Smith possessed more papyri than what remains now after some was lost, including being burned in a fire. The exact relationship between the remnants and the existing text of the Book of Abraham isn't quite certain. Some people look at what is left and say, "That's not the Book of Abraham," and we say, "Right. That is obvious." I don't think it was as obvious earlier. There is a whole lot more to this, but why would I bother to explain more to someone who doesn't want to accept it anyway?
This intertextuality shows more how seriously the prophets of the Book of Mormon took their task to be. Just a side note; Why do we perpetuate the "face in the hat" thing, when Joseph never said that was what happened?
@@perryewell5395 There was a lot that Joseph Smith didn't write down, not because it didn't happen but because he didn't get around to it before being murdered. It's useful to consider multiple historical sources to learn more about the past.
Will you do an episode on the following research? “Book of Mormon Names: A Collection that Defies Expectation“ in Perspectives on Latter-day Saint Names and Naming (Routledge, 2023) “Comparing Phonemic Patterns in Book of Mormon Personal Names with Fictional and Authentic Sources: An Exploratory Study” (Interpreter, 2019) “Absence of ‘Joseph Smith’ in the Book of Mormon: Lack of the Name Letter Effect in Nephite, Lamanite, and Jaredite Names (Religious Educator, 2016) “Identifying Authors by Phonoprints in Their Characters’ Names: An Exploratory Study,” (Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 2013) “188 Unexplainable Names: Book of Mormon Names No Fiction Writer Would Choose” (Religious Educator, 2011)
In more extended explanations of their methodology they compare the Book of Mormon to several works of fiction and show that it has a greater stylistic breadth than any of those works.
@@TheYgdsadding on to this idea: it actually has more sylistic breadth than the collective works of Jane Austin and the collective works several other contemporary authors. In fact, its more stulistically diverse than a set of 5 books from the 5 distict contemporary authors. I cant recall the names of the authors... But they are all quite prolific. Would be more punchy if i remembered :/
@@TheAlchemist1 The data is very compelling, but being a scientist myself, I do see gaps. One leering gap, unless its been done since, is a lack of comparison to the D&C, which would help distinguish Joseph's prophetic voice from that of the Book of Mormon. I am always a bit thrown off by detractors that say the data isn't compelling. I can see someone saying it needs more work, but as is, the analysis demonstrates clearly that the Book of Mormon has more than one voice, even if you have to insist all of those voices are just different reflections of Joseph and his colleagues. However, that also isn't really viable since the three largest voices (Nephi, Mormon and Moroni) each have their own signatures.
I am continually amazed at people's lack of understanding of baptism. Even this very highly educated professor and perhaps a scholar of the Book of Mormon does not even acknowledge the depth of what true and complete baptism is. It's not about immersing yourself in the water and making covenants when you're 8 years old. A true and complete baptism is three in one. It is water, fire, and the spirit incomplete immersion. Dare I say that too many Latter-day Saints are all too comfortable with sprinkling of the spirit, and not enough are seeking an immersion in the spirit. Jesus Christ gave his doctrine that culminates in the reception of the record of the father and the Son by the spirit through complete immersion being baptized by fire and by the Holy Ghost. He hardly emphasizes water baptism, yet that is all that everyone seems to think about when they consider baptism. If you truly knew what the ordinance of being baptized by fire and by the Holy Ghost was, meaning you indeed had that experience, then you would realize how exciting of a topic it truly is and how marvelous that covenant is. It's not so much about making and keeping covenants, but it is about receiving the everlasting covenant from heaven.
That would be great, though you will be hard-pressed to find any researchers that are interested in doing this work that *aren't* biased in one direction or the other. I think it's definitely important to acknowledge bias, but it's also important not to fall into the fallacy of dismissing research simply because it came from a source that has bias. It seems to me that, biased or not, Prof. Hilton's research can stand on its own two feet.
@@johnhiltoniii It's not that I don't trust this type of research but to a layman who knows nothing about the details of such things it is very hard to determine how legitimate any of it is. Is this a significant piece of evidence or are we just splitting a few hairs. Now if a more neutral party were to also corroborate these findings that would certainly give it more weight. I've read through a lot of apologetic material lately including a lot of the work by Daniel Peterson and other like minded individuals and it always seems to me that they are literally grasping at straws, their arguments are flimsy at best on so many topics. Why do we need to jump through so many hoops and do so much mental gymnastics to make the Book of Mormon work? In my mind the evidence both physical and linguistic should really be a bright as day if it was there, but for whatever reason is seems very elusive. I'm really beginning to wonder...
It would be nice for anyone in the rest of the world, outside of the LDS bubble to confirm anything about the BoM... you know, because it's supposedly the one true church, which means it's for everyone. But alas... the echochamber evaluation and "study" is all we seem to get.
@@nathanielwilkerson6217 @johnhiltoniii lays out the research quite transparently in his book. I suggest you take a look and come to your own conclusions! Regarding proof that the Book of Mormon is true, though, I don't expect for anyone to be able to categorically prove it to be true. Similar to the miraculous claims of the Bible (which also can't be categorically proven to be true), I think God wants us to express faith. I love this quote from Terryl & Fiona Givens, “The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it to resonate in sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true and which we have reasonable but not certain grounds for believing to be true. There must be grounds for doubt as well as belief, in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and therefore the more deliberate, and laden with personal vulnerability and investment. An overwhelming preponderance of evidence on either side would make our choice as meaningless as would a loaded gun pointed at our heads. The option to believe must appear on one’s personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension.” I think studies like these add to the "reasonable but not certain grounds" category. At the same time, I find it very unreasonable that a young, poorly educated farm boy could have put this all together on his own. It's ironic that both Joseph's friends and enemies said he was not the brightest bulb in the box as a youth, and yet critics today assert that he had the brains to dictate a rich, complex 531 page book like this in one draft, about 8 pages a day, picking up exactly where he left off each day, over the course of about 63 working days, with no notes or reference materials, with his face in a hat. I certainly still have questions about the Book of Mormon (I think that's totally OK and normal), but frankly, based on the evidence, it's easier for me to believe Joseph's miraculous claims than it is for me to believe that he was just a secret literary genius or an impossibly lucky guesser. Just my two cents, though. Happy to chat privately about this if you'd like.
How do you remove the editorialization layer (Oliver/Sidney/Joseph) from the original text (Nephi/Mormon/Alma)? Maybe try counting the number of grammatic errors (run-on sentences) in the original text (Royal Skousen's work). Sidney the grammarian was clearly involved. Apologetics is not going to lead to any significant breakthroughs. I would have liked to discuss this with your father, a mathematician. Latent Semantic Analysis is a way to go. "My soul delights in..." is a very nice example. The goal for advancement would be to back-translate into Egyptian to understand the literary poetry of Nephi. "And my father dwelt in a tent" is one such example. As is "Shazer". A Master Class would emphasize such things. An hour with the Budge-Egyptian dictionary gives me the following: ### For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children. SPANISH pronunciation: ba-i (my soul) netchem (to delight in) sesh metut neter (sacred writings) ab-i (my heart) neser / meqmeq / m'khai / mau (to ponder) ari metcha (to write a book) / sesh metcha-t (writer of books) khensu-nefer (all learning) / sbau (learning) / shesa (learned) / nekhen (learning) / seshta (learned) sha-t (profit/benefit) mesu / nesu / au (children) / mesu seru (noble children) / meriu (beloved) ### The small plates of Nephi were an educational device, analagous to the Noah Webster Blue-Backed Speller of the Joseph Smith era. Certainly, the separation from Hebrew Egyptian and Classic Egyptian would need to be explored. There is enough data to make this happen. If your objective is to demonstrate Joseph Smith did not craft this, the evidence (during this process) will become overwhelming. That is not my objective as it is the foundation of polemics. Once we can remove the filters of the editorialization, the back-translation will unlock many, many things to advance light/truth agnostic to a specific religious movement. This is not *incidental*; rather, it is an imperative duty (D&C 123).
David, in videos like this i often hear you say things like "[fill in the blank evidence] and Joseph could never have done this because x, y, z." Frankly, i dont understand how any real critic of the Book of Mormon could possibly argue that Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, not to mention recited it with his head in a hat. What i imagine more critics doing, and i know many have done this, is contending that the Book of Mormon is the result of a conspiracy involving multiple people (a conspiracy that there is absolutely no evidence for but it's something to hold to thats better than the idea that it was all Joseph). Therefore, in videos like this, rather than say "[fill in the blank evidence] Joseph could never..." I personally would say "no one, or group of people, in early 19th century America could have..." Because i think there is little use to compiling evidences that Joseph didnt write the Book of Mormon. But there is use to compiling evidences, like those discussed in this video, that no one could have done this unless God were behind it.
How many people (within the BoM time frame) actually edited or "condensed" the records? According to the LDS church website: "Mormon condensed all the writings into one volume". How do you know what was actually written by Nephi, Lehi, Jacob or Enos? How do you know it wasn't all just fiction written by Mormon or Moroni? Assuming the latter 2 are not fictional characters themselves.
@@chriscb Mormon quoted directly from the small plates when he was compiling the Book of Mormon. He included some of his own summary in the Words of Mormon, and then he abridged other writings from Mosiah to 4th Nephi. Sometimes he identifies himself, but it's not always 100% obvious when the words are taken from previous authors or when they're his. As to the idea that Mormon and Moroni might have written a fictional account, not only is it extremely unlikely given the distinct voices, but they wouldn't have any reason to do so anyway. But when it comes to how we know any spiritual truth, the answer is always the same: we study and ask God directly in sincere prayer.
I come from the background of reading the Bible multiple times over the years and then reading the Book of Mormon. I was thinking many, many times about how many of the phrases I was reading in the bom are from the Bible. The Bible is made up of many different authors so for the sake of argument, if someone was copying ideas/passages from the Bible (with mult authors) or using those phrases then the end result would be thinking the bom had different authors. I think if you are intellectually honest then this would be a possibility. You don’t have to believe it but it would be a legitimate reason why it seems like there are different authors.
The distinction is that the analysis shows that there were different authors where there are expected to be different authors. It’s not random just because the Book of Mormon quotes from ancient prophets on a regular basis. When Mormon is quoting the savior the text surrounding it is styled different than when Moroni quotes the savior. When Nephi is quoting Isaiah the text surrounding it is stylistically different than when Jacob quotes Isaiah, etc.
I find it interesting that you first defined who was speaking then put it through the system…try putting it through a system to allow the system to define where the voices or writing styles are the same. This is a classic Texas sharp shooter if I ever saw one. This is what passes for scholarship when you are funded by the organization that needs the scholarship to align with their narrative.
The stone gave Joseph a physical way to focus his mind on what he was receiving spiritually. Several authors have signs like rolling a penny between their fingers or an unlit pipe in their mouth etc.
You will want to look at Deseret news on 1996.03.29 "team says anonymous left a print". Compare this article with the wikipedia article on "Primary Colors, novel#identity_of_the_author". And there, in black and white it becomes clear that this method (as employed by brother Hilton) fails miserably to detect the author even though they had only about 5 options. It got the author wrong (and the second most likely option was also wrong). So there's some pretty good evidence regarding how effective this method is when used in real life.
They ran the same analysis with other contemporary authors who wrote fiction using different voices and the result was far less distinct than the Book of Mormon. If Joseph wrote it,he was far better at it than Mark Twain.
I don't think it "proves" anything outright. Just another example of impressive complexity in the BoM that might serve as evidence pointing to divine origin.
I work in mental health and, often have worked with people diagnosed PTSD from a wide variety of jobs (soldiers, police, and civilians) . There is a similarly in tone with how they talk and with how Moroni speaks. His heaviness in speaking sounds so familiar to me as a mental health therapist. You read about what he experiences, and you think, "Why wouldn't he struggle with that?".
Wow, yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
I am one of the hosts on the Interpreter Foundation radio show. This past Sunday (12/8) on the show, one of the other hosts (Kevin Christiansen) referenced a recent paper showing how Moroni in his writings exhibits symptoms of survivor syndrome.
@@bfwebster thanks for that, I will definitely check that out.
My dad always said something to the effect of: If you believe that Joseph Smith made up the BoM then you have to believe in miracles because if he was able to do that it’s literally miraculous.
Not when he has Sydney Rigdon and a pre-written manuscript telling the whole story.
@@tabandken8562 Sydney Rigdon met Joseph Smith AFTER the Book of Mormon was published.
But, this fact likely won’t deter you.
Uhm no. His mother wrote in her journal that from a young age, Joseph Smith told the families amazing stories about ancient people when the family gathered in their home. In such a detailed and amazing way as if he had lived among them, describing their clothes, weapons and all. He's always had a talent for telling stories.
Miraculous is to ignore the many historical mistakes found in the BoM.
How would him writing this be any different than worlds like A Song of Ice and Fire, Dune, Star Wars, and LOTR?
@ Here are just a few:
1: The Book of Mormon is not fiction, and only more evidence for it happening is continuing to be found. (For example, Joseph was laughed at by “experts” for writing and saying that an advanced civilization lived in cities of cement here in America anciently. Now the fact that Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayans, etc. lived in cities of cement is common knowledge)
2: Joseph Smith was known by his family, friends, and enemies to be nearly illiterate, (he could hardly write letters and there were tons of mistakes) and yet we have the Book of Mormon which has complex grammar uses.
3: He produced the Book of Mormon (a 500+ page work) in a matter of months. The other books you’ve mentioned took years and they are *professional* highly-acclaimed top writers.
I could go on, there’s so much.
Peer reviewed research from the Berkeley group confirm only a 1 in a 15 trillion chance that Nephi and Alma were written by the same author.
Okay, and? Statistical probability is not itself evidence. It’s a classic case of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Probability based on writing styles is not that.
Jstor link?
@@iridiumionGoogle Word Print Studies Of the Book of Mormon FAIR.
@@jcf2322I think you meant to say that it's not proof. It absolutely is evidence. Extremely strong evidence. That's what statistical probability is, by nature.
@@jcf2322I’m not sure you understand, but it doesn’t matter. The only way you’ll ever know whether the Book of Mormon is all it claims to be is if you give it a chance it might be true, read it several days for 15-20 minutes, ponder its teachings and witnesses of Christ, then ask God in prayer whether it is true.👍🏽
This is genuinely one of the best Book of Mormon videos I’ve seen. I love how he kept tying it back to the evidence of the individuality and experiences of each author, not just the “Joseph Smith couldn’t have done this” point
The part where he talked about the different voices of God the Father and Jesus Christ gave me chills. Really cool stuff.
Thanks so much!
The church should pay Dr. Hilton to add to the Book of Mormon’s footnotes to get all these intertextual references.
This would be amazing
Haha, I'm not sure anybody would want that!!! They can have them for free!
@johnhiltoniii I would, and you can tell Pres. Nelson I said so. "So, Russell, this one dude on UA-cam..."
@@andrewh7868two dudes on UA-cam.
The church should pay for a lot of things
As I continue to read the comments here, a thought came to me: the reason why the Lord chose Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon, even though he did not finish grade school, is that Joseph Smith Jr. could have altered or corrected any information he thought was wrong or contradicted his knowledge. However, he didn’t do this. If he had been that much of a genius, he might have had the pride to correct any mistakes he thought were there, but he didn’t, because he was innocent in the sense that he did not know everything about the Book of Mormon. In short, our prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith Jr., was chosen to do this great and marvelous work because he was humble. Indeed, “the Lord uses the unlikely to accomplish the impossible” (President Russell M. Nelson).
And by translating in such poverty that he couldn't even afford to buy the paper to write on, it made it impossible for him to have written and hidden a stash of notes and first drafts before dictating the text in a single draft at such astonishing speed.
Or Satan deceived Joseph Smith, and he was "inspired" by the adversary himself. How did he fool Eve into eating from the tree of life? He convinced her God's word wasn't true. What do members of the LDS say about the Bible, which is the word of God? That it can only be trusted as long as it's translated correctly. So basically saying the word of God isn't true and can't be trusted as we believe it.
One of the problems with the claim that the BofM is a direct and tight translation from Reformed Egyptian to English by the power of God, that Joseph Smith simply read the words that God presented to him on the stone in the hat, and that he then ensured the exact words presented to him were written down and spelled correctly by his scribe before the translation could continue, is all the grammatical errors in the 1st edition that were later corrected by men. Commenting on the BofM’s folksy nineteenth-century New England vernacular, B. H. Roberts, LDS historian and President of the First Council of the Seventy, wrote: “Sometimes it takes on almost childish expression.” (Studies of the Book of Mormon, 263)
Here is a sample of grammar common to nineteenth-century New England speech found in the first edition of the Book of Mormon (later modified in the 1837 edition):
1 Nephi 4:4 - “they was yet wroth”
Mosiah 2:12 - “have not sought gold nor silver, nor no manner of riches of you”
Mosiah 10:15 - “had arriven to the promised land”
Alma 10:7 - “As I was a journeying to see a very near kindred”
Alma 10:8 - “And as I was a going thither”
Alma 17:1 - “he met with the sons of Mosiah, a journeying towards the land of Zarahemla”
Alma 17:26 - “with the Lamanitish servants, a going forth with their flocks”
Alma 20:8 - “as Ammon and Lamoni was a journeying thither”
Helaman 7:8 - “in them days”
Helaman 13:37 - “in them days”
3 Nephi 3:5 - “I have wrote this epistle”
Ether 9:29 - “they done all these things”
Do such verses read like ancient, literate Native Americans of Hebrew descent? Or, do they read like a nineteenth-century orator telling a story? Joseph’s folksy manner of speech in the BofM suggests Joseph controlled the diction of the book and that it was not a tight translation where Joseph simply, “read aloud the English words that appeared” like the church claims in the Gospel Topics Essays: Book of Mormon Translation. A word-for-word English rendition translated by the power of God from ancient American writers where Joseph read aloud the words that appeared on the stone would not have resulted in passages resembling nineteenth-century New England vernacular which would need to be corrected later by men. Unless, God intentionally put errors into the BofM while He controlled the translation process, knowing that those errors he was putting in would be corrected by men later.
@@adamholloway7963, Perhaps the reformed Egyptian wasn’t translated into Standard English. Maybe it was translated into the language the translator understood. Furthermore, maybe Mormon and Moroni were country folk themselves.
One of the reasons that God brought forth the book of Mormon is to warn about pride. If you think that your language is so superior to another person’s language that God would use your language, but never use the other person’s language, you’re going to have a hard time when you are judged on the same scale that you use to judge others with some day.
Edited to adjust for grammar
@@explorerofmind You said, "Perhaps the reformed Egyptian wasn’t translated into Standard English. "
Perhaps there was no "reformed Egyptian" translated at all.
Perhaps Joseph just made it up.
Perhaps Joseph was a con-man. Oh, wait, we do have evidence of that from his treasure digging endeavors. So, Joseph being a con-man isn't just speculation, but is supported with historical evidence.
I don’t know why but hearing how much the Lord emphasizes the invitation to baptism fills me with emotion. I love that he is so eager to have us yoked with him. He loves us so much and wants us to let our sin go!
Was in college and witnessed severe suffering by children in a third wold country. Went to bed telling god he was "unfair" and woke up the next morning and he told me this in the BofM:
13 And thus we see how great the inequality of man is because of sin and transgression, and the power of the devil, which comes by the cunning plans which he hath devised to ensnare the hearts of men.
14 And thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing-sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life.
I honestly don't know how someone can read the BofM and believe JS wrote it. Light gathers around my eyes, a warmth is in my heart each time a read it. I don't need any evidence from scholars but it's cool when they show it to me.
The thing the astounds me is that whenever anyone from Mosiah to Moroni is quoting Nephi and Jacob Joseph hadn't translated that portion of the plates yet.
If he was making it up he would have to remember to include them all when writing Nephi .
Just Astounding .
Amen!
With his face buried in a hat no less. It's hard to refer to notes or cheat like that. Pretty amazing.
I hadnt considered that. What a great thought!
@@davegray8542 Exactly!
You think it's too difficult to refer back to his own writings?
Around 45 years ago statistical word print analysis proved mutiple authorship of the Book of Mormon. The findings were so strong that they were carried in the statistical professional journal at the time. So, this had been known for many years.
Chat gpt
Creating multiple distinct styles is even more challenging in a longer work like the Book of Mormon, which spans hundreds of pages. The longer the text, the more difficult it is to maintain distinct and consistent styles throughout.
What did you ask gpt to do?
@@TheSaltyMormon-z5x I asked how hard it would be for somebody to create distinct writing styles in a book such as a book of Mormon.
@@brannonburton5494 even chat gpt admits to the veracity of the Book of Mormon. Thank you for that!
Excellent analysis. When an anti-Mormon confronted me and said Joseph Smith wrote the BOM I said, then at least admit he was an absolute genius. You have to give him that. He wouldn’t 😂 because it doesn’t match his education or writing ability demonstrated his entire life.
This episode was mindblowing and insightful. I, especially was intrigued by personal invitation from the Lord to be baptized. Thank you guys.
It is powerful to see that Jesus Christ is the main individual who invites people to be baptized!
One of the things I find enjoyable about the BOM is the personality and strength of the different authors. Even the ones who say something like, "I haven't been righteous, but I kept these plates according to my promise to my Father. I now pass them to my Son." Then the personality changes again in the following texts.
The fact that there are so many comments suggesting that we should have a non-biased party replicate or check this research seems to me to be an indicator of how truly compelling this evidence actually is (or would be, if trusted) in favor of the Book of Mormon.
Regardless of whether such research is ever done, to me, Dr. Hilton’s research should serve as just another reason (of many) for more people to take the Book of Mormon seriously and put it to the ultimate test: does it bring you closer to Christ? Does God speak to you through it? Does it bring you the peace it promises it can? Can it be confirmed by God’s spirit that it is true?
Thanks!
Thank YOU!
When the video started and I saw the guest and topic, I thought, “Oh, this might be John Hilton’s son.”
No, it’s his grandson.
As someone who read John Hilton’s work when it first came out, I now feel old. 😂
Interestingly Alma was known for talking about “souls.” Alma, the name itself, in Spanish, translates to “Soul.” Not sure it contributes anything, but it’s interesting!
It is also interesting when you consider that Egyptian is the grandfather language of Latin. So Alma in Spanish may be closer to the meaning of "soul" than we think.
@@fightingfortruth9806 Spanish is related to Egyptian?! Why hadn’t I ever heard this?! 😮
Latin languages include French, Spanish, Italian, English. Latin originated from the Phoenecian alphabet (Northern Israel), which is a form of Reformed Egyptian.
That will also tell you that native Latin speakers are genetic descendants of both the Levant and Egypt. Language always follows people.
@@picklesadventures I wasn’t saying they knew Spanish, sorry, I might not have been clear on that. I was just mentioning that it was an interesting coincidence was all. I didn’t mean to imply that they were speaking Spanish, or had extensive knowledge of it, haha, they definitely were not. Are you a Sunday School teacher?
In some Mayan languages Alma means to speak not. Which is interesting as when Alma had his conversion story he couldn't speak after seeing the angel
Perhaps the most significant work of literature in the last 1000 years but it’s so shrouded in accusations and false a narratives to many never crack it open even for a quick glance.
@@picklesadventures 1. The account of Alma was written partly by Alma himself, and was also largely abridged by Mormon. As Mormon mentions many times, "a hundredth part" of the Nephite records weren't included in his abridgement. He summarized the stories. So Alma was written by Alma and Mormon's summaries/commentaries.
2. The Boon of Mormon never teaches the Trinity. Any time it uses words like "one" or, more specifically, "which is one God", we interpret it as symbolism. We believe Heavenly Father, Christ, and the Spirit are one in purpose, not one being literally.
3. Due to the fact that we believe the Book of Mormon was TRANSLATED, the issue of words such as Adeiu and Christian are irrelevant. God probably told Joseph that those words were the best fit/match for the translation into English. obviously the Nephites didn't say the words Adeiu and Christian because they spoke another language than us.
4. The killing of the king-men found throughout Alma was only justified because the king-men were physically hindering the Nephites' survival as a nation. Their protests rose up in the midst of a war, so the Lamanites and the king-men combined threatened the very existence of the Nephite country. This left the Nephites no choice but to defend themselves by going to war with the king-men. As for Korihor in Alma ch. 30, the Nephites weren't the ones that killed him--the Zoramites were, and they were wicked Nephite dissenters/rebels. The Nephites were uninvolved and had nothing to do with his death.
5. As for the person tense changes and other grammar issues (keep in mind i am no linguistic or language expert in any way so take this with a grain of salt), the book is written in old english, which is much different grammar-wise than modern english. If the errors you found can't be explained by that, Mormon 9:31 comes to mind:
Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been.
Also, about the Joseph Smith quote where he says that the Book of Mormon is the most correct on Earth, we believe what he was saying was that it is the most correct religion- and ideal-wise, not literary-wise.
I will admit, as an LDS member myself, that these videos tend to be biased. It is nearly, if not totally, impossible to find an unbiased video about these kinds of topics which is an awful thing. if you want there is an LDS discord server if you're into that that attempts to discuss these topics through an unbiased lens. You can discuss your thoughts there if you want
Hopefully this helped
@@picklesadventures The people that lived in the Book of Mormon (before 3 Nephi) kept the Law of Moses. Any teachings before then are useful but some of them we don't practice any more since they've been fulfilled. For example, there are many teachings in the Old Testament that we don't practice anymore. That doesn't mean we reject it as a false document.
Look, I know you keep getting the same answers over and over, and that's because humans don't have all the answers. you can't expect to know everything right off the bat.
Ether 12:6: faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
The truth is, humans don't have all the answers. That's the reason we need faith.
Also, I bet you very few members of our church converted because of physical evidence, and if any did then their testimony probably isn't very strong. God WANTS you to convert spiritually. if all the evidence was just out there, then everyone would know the true Church and faith would be pointless. The reason members of our church don't care about physical evidence is because they have a spiritual testimony. If you have a very powerful and personal spiritual experience, are you going to care if there's a person tense change in a few verses? no.
I’m curious about Dr Hilton’s description of Jesus as a distinct voice in the BoM. I assumed in 3 Nephi I was reading an editorial abridgment of Nephi’s words by Mormon. So unless Nephi remembered and captured Jesus’s words verbatim, I’d expect to see primarily Mormon’s word prints. As for the capitalization of the word “father,” it seems like that would have been an editorial decision, possibly by Mormon, but more likely at the point where it was translated into the English word “father” by Joseph and/or his scribe. Or even by Grandin when he set the type for the press.
I'm willing to accept Nephi capturing Jesus' words accurately, to the same extent I'm willing to accept Alma Sr remembering and capturing Abinadi's words, and Alma Jr capturing Zeezrom's words. At the same time, I wonder how much the translating agent could have enhanced the word print, since the translating agent sprinkled little KJV quotes all throughout with an almost smugly gleeful erudition.
You're right about the capitalization: it was not in the original dictation. Certainly neither Hieratic nor Hebrew had capital letters.
Jesus being a distinct voice in the Book of Mormon is a great question. Issues around maintaining unique voices in translation are currently being studied by scholars today (initial findings show that unique voices can survive through translation). The reality is, Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon clearly has a distinctive voice relative to other Book of Mormon authors.
@@weightelk I wouldn’t be so harsh. Critical thinking is something that’s learned. On that journey, apologetics is a reasonable place to start. That’s where I began, moving from bad apologetics (that, to paraphrase an Andrew Lang quote, use data like a drunk man uses a lamppost-for support rather than illumination)
to much more even handed apologetics. From there I got deep into Biblical then BoM scholarship, which has been both challenging and amazing. Many assumptions, presuppositions and traditional views posing as revealed doctrine have melted away. It’s not easy to reposition your testimony to a place downstream of scholarship and have it be stronger than ever. In my experience it takes faith and is slow, thoughtful work. Better that than rushing it, encountering something shocking, jumping to the most negative binary conclusions, abandoning testimony…and still not being an inch closer to thinking critically.
If there is new evidence showing up all the time for the validity of the book, isn't it possible that there is a solid explanation for your concern?
We're it me, I'd ask God if the book is true.
@@perryewell5395it is possible that there is a solid explanation, and that’s what I’m trying to find. The counsel to “ask God” is correct, but let’s not forget the “study it out” clause that precedes it. To this end, “Good inspiration is based upon good information” - Russell M. Nelson
“Information brings inspiration,” Elder Uchtdorf said. “You have to collect information and then you are in a position to receive revelation when you connect to the Spirit.”
In his book, does he talk about how "Christ" is used vs. "Messiah"? I recently learned something cool. Some people criticize the Book of Mormon for using both words "Christ" and "Messiah" when they mean the same thing. However, it's not that simple.
I was taught that "Messiah" is the Hebrew version of Annointed One used in the Old Testament, and "Christ" is the Greek version of Annointed One used in the New Testament. And, that's fine, right? They are just two different words that mean the same thing. If I was translating some other language and sometimes I use the word "fall" and sometimes I use the word "trip" and sometimes I use the word "stumble," that's fine. As the translator, I could use whichever word seems to make the most sense in context, even if I'm translating the same word. But, that cannot be the full story!
First of all, the New Testament people seemed to be familiar with and used both words. One example is in John 4:25-26 where the Samarian woman at the well says, "I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ." So, either this woman and/or John were familiar with both terms and felt comfortable using both. It's not true that "Christ" is only used in the New Testament.
Next, "Christ," although clearly a title meaning Anointed One started to become the name of Jesus, as explained in an article titled, "How Did Jesus Get The Name Christ?" by Amanda Williams.
This is particularly interesting because of how the Book of Mormon first uses the word "Christ" and then begins using it more than "Messiah" as explained in an article titled "Taylor Halverson: Finding the first use of the name Christ in the Book of Mormon."
That is a lot by itself for Joseph Smith to keep straight and keep consistent.
I don't specifically remember much talk of this specific dynamic in the book, but that's fascinating! Thanks for sharing!
These are wonderful fruits of "study" of the Book of Mormon. I love all the knowledge and insight.
Such a great video! I'm so glad I found this channel today.
I have heard John say some of this but the curtain call and on are mind blowing. Like John always says, don’t base your testimony on it but it is so cool.
The curtain call is so amazing!!!!!
Imagine that, kind of like the Bible.
Keep inviting this guy for more discussions, he is great
Oh my gosh I love John Hilton, great video thank you for this video!! I didn't know he had a book out - I'm going to buy it now!
Well, yeah!
THIS IS JUST A REALLY DEEP DIVE INTO THE BOOK OF MORMON.
IT JUST OPEN UP MY MIND, INTO MORE THINGS THAT I NEED TO LEARN.
This is amazing. Love it 👍🏻
More long format my guy! Love this stuff! You should get the Uto-aztecan language scholar on here that proves semitic language and uto-aztecan are conjugal (conjugates? Congegrate? I can't remember but y'all knaw'mean)
Thanks for the feedback and suggestion!
Brian Stubbs. His work deserves more attention.
I absolutely love Bro John Hilton lll he's incredible!
Thanks Dino!
Alma the Younger has a "spice" to his preaching that shows that he's read the Small Plates. Abinadi expounds on Isaiah, but he shows no sign of having read the Small Plates.
After reading Skousen's edition of the earliest text, I noticed that the word "counsel" is used differently in Mormon's quotation of Alma from in the Small Plates.
Twice in Jacob the word is used in its current sense. 4:10 "seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand." 5:22 "And the Lord of the vineyard saith unto him: Counsel me not."
In Alma the word is used in its obsolete sense. 37:37 "Counsel the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good." It got changed to "counsel with" in later editions for clarity.
I'd like to see some research into the use of the word "dwindle." When Mormon uses it in 4 Nephi (verse 38) it's clumsy, with conflicting meanings. I have a sort of hypothesis that Mormon found the word or phrase (and Hieratic glyph) translated as "dwindle" in the Small Plates and liked it and wanted to use it, but maybe it was archaic. I'm not sure if that really squares with its use by Samuel the Lamanite and Jesus. Anyway, it's part of a curiosity I have about the Egyptian writing system that Moroni complained about.
Which is another thing: Moroni complains about having to use a complicated and arcane script that included logograms and determinatives as well as phonetic and syllabic characters, which would have been handed down from a limited corpus over a millennium, and wishes he could write in Hebrew - _believing that that would eliminate flaws or ambiguity in the writing._ Obviously this is a scribe who has never had the luxury of writing in a full alphabet, which Hebrew is not. Hebrew writing has its own ambiguities. Moroni just thinks that if he could write in his familiar vernacular, he could make himself clearer.
The translation itself is part of the wonder: Skousen's and Carmack's work illuminate a translation that is very deliberate, and to me shows a delight in wordplay.
I bought Dr. Hilton’s book a couple months ago, and I really like it. He is very grounded. Obviously he can’t offer true “proof,” but this is clearly very strong evidence.
I'm happy to hear that you like the book!
So... You're saying Joseph Smith was schizophrenic?
Dr. Hilton should write a sequel called Voices in Doctrine and Covenants. I’d be curious to see how the wordprints of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ applied to Doctrine and Covenants where some of the sections seem to be Joseph quoting Jesus verbatim in the first person whereas others seem to be Joseph being a mouthpiece and saying the revelation in his own words. It would be interesting to see where the wordprints might delineate them. This would be a different approach than you took for the Book of Mormon because you had to select who the speakers were before you put them into the Word Cruncher software. This would be more like how they incriminated the Unabomber in that you take an established wordprint and apply it to the text.
These wordprints would also be interesting for the sections with semi controversial origins such as section 132. (I don’t think the origin of section 132 is questionable, but it would be nice additional evidence to help silence the annoying people who do.)
This is a cool idea!
Stylometric analysis of the D&C has actually been done already; at least for D&C 132 compared to other, less controversial sections. The style is actually very noticeably different.
@@rowleskids You left me hanging. What’s the source?
Some people might claim that looking into the Book of Mormon with this level of detail misses the point or looks beyond the mark. But as you learn about this complexity of the book of Mormon in how certain forms of speech are used, or how certain vocabulary is emphasized, or how prophecies have been reminded and cited across hundreds of pages, I've found that it fulfills the prophecy in the book of Mormon itself about how it will be as if a voice hissed from the dust. Looking at this research, I would consider it impossible to still wonder whether or not Joseph Smith translated this or if he instead invented it out of whole cloth from multiple personality disorder of a hundred different personalities. He had to have translated it. Whether or not it was of God or of the devil can still be up for debate for some people, but for me, the way to get closer to Christ is through the book of Mormon, better than any other way.
Thanks for these insights!
Great episode!
Well…. now I have to buy a book. Worse. Day. Ever. (Sarcasm intended, I’m super intrigued)
First! Yes. I did it. Great episode. Just more evidence that the Book of Mormon is ancient and authentic.
@@richarner3856so who wrote it?
@@richarner3856 Why are you claiming 1820? There's no good evidence that the Book of Mormon was composed in a final sense prior to 1827-1829.
Re-watch the video guys and go read the word print studies. You are only seeing what you want to see because the alternative means that the truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are correct and you just can’t stand that. The fact of the matter is multiple word print studies show multiple authors of the Book of Mormon that are unique to each writer: Nephi’s writing style is different from Alma’s, who is different from Mormon’s, who is different from Jesus’s, etc. This shows that either Joseph was a literary genius beyond the capacity of almost all writers, or the Book is what it claims to be - A compilation of writings from ancient prophets.
Given the time constraints, the education level, youth, and inexperience in writing of Joseph, the writing in one draft, the length and complexity of the book, the use of no notes as reported by multiple witnesses, and this approaches an impossibility that anyone could have pulled this off. But if you want to ignore most of the evidence and eyewitness accounts because it helps you sleep better at night, that is on you. But I feel you owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself and seriously consider strong evidence when you come across it. I try to do this. I’ve come across evidence for certain things that challenges my preconceptions and causes me to reconsider what I think to be true, even if I don’t like it. If the evidence is great enough, I have to modify my belief system to accommodate the new information. This is part of learning and growing I suppose.
All your scoffing doesn’t refute this evidence. Provide for me a cogent response to this evidence after doing your homework rather than making glib remarks and I will take you more seriously. Otherwise, you are convincing nobody but yourselves and those who are looking for reasons to disbelieve. An honest seeker of truth would put in the time it takes to be as certain of their position as they can be.
I don’t assume that all dissenting opinions are from dishonest, lazy people. That is an assumption you made about me. If someone has a persuasive argument, present it. The only comments to my first comment were glib and/or conclusory. I can understand how an intelligent and well meaning person can arrive at conclusions that differ from mine.
I don’t think this evidence is as suspect as you might think. When you read the actual studies, it is pretty hard to pass this off as seeing things that aren’t really there. Especially when combined with all the other things the Book of Mormon gets right about the ancient world. Things that nobody knew in Joseph Smith’s day.
I don’t understand your Bruce R McConkie reference. Are you saying I wax verbose?
@@tylerahlstrom4553 I went ahead and did my own word study on the Book of Mormon which used straightforward criteria and is easy to repeat by anyone who is patient enough to do so. I looked at all number words in the text and then compared the percentages with other books within the LDS cannon. It was a great learning experience and my results are self-published if you would like to read them. The conclusion was pretty simple: the number patterns used in the Book of Mormon demonstrate that it is a modern Christian text. We would expect the number 7 to stick out if it was an ancient, pre-christian text. In the new testiment, we get the numbers 12, 3, and 7 all sticking out. But in the Book of Mormon while 3 sticks out (trinity, etc) and there is a slight bump in 12, there are actually fewer 7's than 6's. This is a clear indication that the author is trying to mimic christian texts (i.e. they get the 3) but that they do not understand or appreciate the importance of 7 within ancient Hebrew culture.
The other thing that sticks out is how certain numbers just get huge during the wars. There isn't a roll-off in the large numbers as you would expect. This seems to indicate that they are not based on actual figures but rather that it is a work of fiction. Happy to discuss further if you're interested in what happens when you look at the text objectively.
The Book of Mormon is a modern miracle. It's coming about is one of the greatest miracles ever. I could never figure out any plausible explanation as to how it exists. The only explanation of it's existence is how Joseph said it came about.
Alma’s use of the word “soul” is interesting in that “alma” means “soul”.
I think the reason (or at least one of the reasons) Christ focuses on baptism is because his prophets focus on having faith in and coming to Christ. So it makes sense that when the people actually come to Christ, he would give them the next step in their salvation, that is baptism. They already have faith in him, they have already come to him, so now it’s time for baptism.
He must have been a multi-personality genius if he wrote it himself.
What amazes me is that these prophets studied the words of the prophets before them and the words of God from the spirit so much that those words became their own words. So much so they just by speaking as they normally would, the words of God came out. Amazing.
They fulfilled (at least in part) the commandment to, “be even as God is”.
Two Sundays ago, I started reading the Book of Mormon with the intent of highliting every time God (be it Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Ghost) and their actions to someone (ie. thus the Lord spoke unto me; keep the commandments of the Lord God, etc.).
I am currently in 2nd Nephi. And yes! I've noticed that Nephi uses Lord more often than his brother! Beyond that, every time Satan and his doings are mentioned, God is not in the picture at all!
Also when Laman and Lemuel speak, God isn't mentioned at all, all but one time when Laman and Lemuel are murmuring, saying that the Jews at Jerusalem were righteous people because they kept statutes of God. (Notice they didn't say anything about the commandments of God. . .I could be wrong on that account. I'll have to read it again.)
And when Nephi is speaking with his two eldest brothers, Nephi hits them back with talking of God several times over.
Great insights!
This is an interesting video. I am not a member of the LDS church, but I do read the BOM, along with the Bible, on a regular basis. For the most part, I like the book and find it an interesting companion to the Bible. The reason why I don't think the BOM is likely inspired is the Is Isaiah chapters. If Joeseph Smith had translated those chapters in a different style than literally reproducing them verbatim from the King James Bible, I may think differently. I mean the above comments with no disrespect to those members of the LDS church. I consider them fellow Christians with myself and will continue to read the BOM, simply not in the same light as LDS members.
I get that. I recently joined the church after reading for a couple years. The Isaiah verses for me are because 1. they had Isaiah and the story stays the same. 2. when the bom was being given to joseph smith. it was given in a language that he and that era of people could understand. it’s hard to think that the ancient language could be 1:1 translated into modern english. I think christ filled in the blanks
There are some very interesting differences between the KJV Isaiah and the Book of Mormon text. A careful analysis of both, you might find interesting. An example is 2 Nephi 12:16. Note the footnote.
@@zutharthirteenAlso, if there were any such differences, the more obsessive among us would likely have fixated on interpreting the subtle grammatical nuances of each one, even when those differences were irrelevant and not in Isaiah's intent. This could have generated a lot of unnecessary noise, not least from skeptical critics and the prevailing bible-only culture.
Joseph Smith didn't reproduce them from the Bible. Book of Mormon authors made it clear they were borrowing from the Bible. The Book of Mormon was translated by the Lord through Joseph Smith.
@kjcdb8er that's a good point. There was no great way to do this. Keeping it the most recognizable version both solves and creates problems, but so does every other path.
I'm not a skeptic, but is there any distinction made in research between Jesus mention of baptism that can be attributed to supposed new testament plagiarism vs book of Mormon original material? If it's more unique to BOM that feels like a stronger argument to me.
Great question! Short answer is that Jesus speaks about baptism differently in the Book of Mormon than the Bible. See this article for more details: archive.dev-bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/hilton/2018-06-18/john_l._hilton_iii_and_jana_johnson_the_word_baptize_in_the_book_of_mormon_2018.pdf
Agreed. How much of this research confirms multiple sources were plagiarized or influential in the authorship of the Book of Mormon
I think it is really interesting that Lehi names his two youngest sons after Jacob and Joseph from the Bible, AFTER he learned of his family's genealogy linking them back to them in the Brass Plates.
Little touches like that make me believe the BoM is true.
Lehi had mad respect for Jacob, the polygamist apparently!
Ironically Lehi's son, Jacob, had mad disrespect for polygamists (see Jacob 2).
Lehi was absolutely thrilled when he found out his family was descended from Jacob the polygamist.
The Book of Mormon wouldn't exist unless Jacob had married Rachel, his second wife. "By their fruit ye shall know them."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is so complex and exhausting to me. Just give me Jesus without all the attachments. Please!
This demonstrates that Joseph Smith was absolutely correct when he said the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book on earth!
The criticism I often hear about using principle component analysis for the purposes of stylometry is that it is not mature enough to tackle these questions. Yet, I never hear them go into detail about why precisely it is ineffective in discerning authorship. At most there is mention of authorial stylistic drift, but no meaningful analysis of the Book of Mormon stylometric data and whether it has signatures of stylistic drift which would explain the larger principle component volume. It would be good to have another interview that tackles exactly what critics of this technique have against it, and whether it is a case of "it doesn't say what I think it should say, so it's wrong", or whether the complaints have merit.
Is there a text of the Book of Mormon with the speaker clearly denoted? It's often clear, but there are times i miss a transition or wonder if I'm getting the speaker right.
I'd also be interested to know if there were times that Dr. Hilton discovered that the speaker was nor who they'd previously thought.
There’s a color-coded version (of the open source 1920 edition of the BoM) that Brian Stutzman(..? S- something..) put out, with help from scholars and such. I believe it’s on Amazon, but it’s like $60. That’s the cheapest he could have it sell for because of all the different colors and ink (he says he makes no money off of it.)
But basically he went through and assigned a color to each “voice” in the Book of Mormon. I dunno how discernible the differences between like 120 shades of the rainbow are, but it seems to work! I know there’s a past episode of Brian on Ward Radio discussing it.
@@gingersnaps215 Oh, that's awesome. Thank you very much.
Also there is brand new audio voice recordings that have different actors playing different characters
@@cameronielsen oh, nice. I'll look for that.
@@gingersnaps215 Thanks again for this recommendation. I am holding my copy right now.
Love the podcast and love the topic. One interesting thing to maybe look into is how much of the voice is retained when being transcribed. Whenever I write down words given by someone else, I typically miss a bunch or even paraphrase. When do the authors have the time to write in the scriptures. Is it that same night, is it days after? It's an aspect I feel being neglected here. How much of the Book of Mormon is being transcribed that isn't directly the words of the authors? Jesus would be one of them, as well as Zeezrom, Korihor, and others.
I wonder if we can compare the direct words of Jesus Christ in D&C and BofM and draw any conclusions in familiarity with each other? Or if two different texts with different purpose wouldn't show much...
16:50 Just curious, did you compare the voice of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon with the voice of Jesus Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants?
Joseph Smith was either a prophet or a really smart guy.
Or he didn't work alone.
You mention your grandfather's amazing contribution to this idea, but you never tell us his name so he can get some credit for his work.
Was this done with the original 1830 version of the Book of Mormon?
Possibly. As someone who has read the newest LDS release of the Book of Mormon alongside the 1830 manuscript, the changes are mostly grammar, spelling, punctuation, and wording. There are no changes to the context, really. So either way, this video's points still stands.
Great question. From John's book: "Throughout this book I use the 2013 version of the Book of Mormon. I have compared textual details with Royal Skousen's 'The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text' and note significant differences when they occur."
You need to invite Jonathan Neville on your show about the "stone the hat" narrative.
Do you want to see something interesting, that no author would have thought of? Read Alma 5: 5 and see if you can spot the hidden birth announcement. The stone in a hat may have been used for other revelations, but it contradicts the description of translation given in Doctrine & Covenants when Oliver Cowdrey tried to translate. It makes it very clear that the words don't just appear exactly how they are supposed to be, or there would be no reason to "Study it out in your mind whether it be correct."
27:38 the curtain call.. comparison ends at 28:06
Interesting would be to identiry Jesus from the New Testament in the BOM, that were really awesome :)
This only proves that Joseph was the greatest genius/guesser of our time!
It is possible but not probable.
I don’t have enough faith to believe Joseph made this up or guessed so much stuff.
Even logic says this to me.
Add to that my testimony and I’m there 🙏🙏
This is impossible. He could not have guessed in such an exact way and also have a real town in Europe (Nahom) mentioned that was undiscovered in the 1800s.
@@davidgillis950Nahom is in Yemen, not Europe.
@@DesertPrimrose thanks for the correct 😁
Amazing, thanks!
I would like to see a comparison of the voice of Jesus Christ in the BoM, Bible and Doctrine and Covenants and see if they are the same 'voice'.
This also speaks to some of the doctrinal questions that we have and some things to see. When language is corrupted (as all of our own languages), it leads to misunderstanding and confusion. Perhaps one day we will speak via language, and then we will have a pure understanding of all of these things in a greater light
I think Dan Vogel said it best. "People think the Book of Mormon is more amazing than it actually is, and people think Joseph Smith was a lot dumber than he actually was."
Somewhere I heard it suggested that Zenock could be Enoch and Zenos could be Enos. I haven't researched it to see if there is any merit to this idea, but has anyone studied the words of Enoch and Enos in comparison to Zenock and Zenos?
Very interesting. I’ve never heard that before. I would love to see this study.
Can Dr. Hilton speak Mandarin? I’m asking because I am serving in mandarin speaking branch right now in California, and I think it would be good to be able to produce these kinds of videos in Mandarin as well.
Of course, I could just use the transcript from these videos, translate them, and edit them myself. But I’m wondering if it would be better to collaborate with others on something like this, that are already successful in their channels.
The curtain call blew my mind. God is good.
This last time I read the prophecy of Samuel the Lamanite I was struck by its distinct style: very repetitive. It makes sense to me that the text is not from Samuel's own record of his words, but from an observer writing down at or soon after the time that he spoke. That, and the circumstances in which he spoke - shouting to be heard above a milling crowd - would account for the repetition.
If Joseph Smith was making this up, that would be yet one more authorial artifice and complication to keep track of. If he were a medium channeling a work of automatic writing, I doubt that the source would take such care to build such details either: my hypothesis is that automatically-written books that claim to be scripture use an omniscient narration. A further hypothesis: that comes from a Protestant view of scripture. Taking the Book of Mormon seriously entails remembering that its authors were *not* omniscient narrators, any more than Biblical authors were.
I'm hungry for more scholarly attention into the different circumstances of the various sermons and dialogues in the Book of Mormon, and how that shows up in their style.
I think if some young guy came to me today and said he translated a whole book of scripture from God using a stone in a hat, I would not believe him. Infact I would think him crazy. I think 90% of us probably would too. These arguments are really clutching at at straws.
If someone today told me that they received more scripture from God through some strange means, and they presented me with something equivocal to the Book of Mormon, I would think twice about what I considered strange.
@@michaelgrey7854 A lot of people make a lot of strange claims. What they end up amounting to is something else; that's what's great about Jesus Christ's instruction about knowing the true prophets from the false. As He said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."
The wordprint argument doesn't work. I will use Alma as an example.
We will need a separate source independent of the Book of Mormon written by Alma to identify his unique wordprint.
Then, we can compare Alma's sermons in the Book of Mormon with the independent source to see how well they match up.
Of course, we will never find the independent source.
John Hilton III's argument assumes that Mormon perfectly captured Alma's word print when he edited the record.
John' argument is unfalsiable, so it is not a scientific argument.
Complexity isn’t a test of truth.
No, but the truth is often complex
I had read many comments denigrating Joseph Smith for using a stone in a hat to read the translation of The Book of Mormon, until one day I was trying to read something on my phone in a sunny kitchen. "I wish I had Joseph Smith's hat to put my phone in," I thought. Knowing that God is the ultimate scientist, is it any surprise that He can use a stone (or a wall, as in the message "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPARSIN" ) to transmit any writing He wishes to convey?
Joseph smiths job was to translate, not treasure hunt. It was NOT the ultimate tool he could use for whatever he wanted.
If Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon with his face in a hat, it makes it awfully hard to believe he just plagiarized it from various other sources. How can you read notes from a dark hat?
@@dr33776 He was a kid when he wanted to find treasure, and it doesn't have anything to do with God giving him power to translate scripture via revelation except that he eventually found the seer stone to be a useful tool. It was common to the culture to be interested in buried treasure, but he grew out of it, especially as he came to understand real revelation and truth. There's no point in worrying about the immature ideas that Joseph Smith gave up on as he matured.
@@dr33776 You are enormously incorrect. I know about all of those subjects, and I've evidently studied them more than you have. I'll help you out a bit.
1. He was hired by Josiah Stowell and part of what Stowell wanted was for Joseph Smith to find treasure. Joseph was older by this time and believed nothing would come of it. He eventually convinced Stowell to give up the effort but Stowell continued to employ him for other tasks. A grumbling relative took Joseph Smith to court over it and nothing came of the case. There's nothing about it for anyone to care about.
2. Yes, he had the stone long before he used it for translation. I don't know why you mention this.
3. It was part of the culture, and it still is a part of U.S. culture in some pockets. Again, he was young when trying this. If you're intellectually honest you will recognize that young people do a lot of foolish stuff. The more he learned, the more he turned away from it. Condemning a kid for being interested in buried treasure is ridiculous.
4. The Book of Abraham is scripture given by revelation. There's a lot we don't know about it--and that's normal for things that occurred in the past. Those who make silly claims of it being "proven a complete fraud" are always basing such statements in false premises.
You want to disbelieve in Joseph Smith being a prophet, so you look for any evidence against him, no matter how bad it is. You're free to do so. Just don't expect people of faith and reason to fall for it.
@@dr33776 Sigh. This probably won't do any good, but:
1. I looked up actual records for the Stowell case a while back, and no, he wasn't condemned for it. Provide your source if you want to claim otherwise.
2. I said he found it to be a useful tool. It's not unlike Moses using a staff to perform his miracles. That's it.
3. He was a kid who wanted to believe in magic. I haven't seen any source documents that indicated that he "used magic parchments", but so what if he did? Young people do dumb things. Sacrificing animals? Again, I'm curious about what real source documents you have. "Scam"? Hardly. And again, he explicitly gave all of it up as he came to know truth from God. How can you even try to condemn someone for turning away from falsehood? If, after taking on his tasks from God and restoring the Church of Jesus Christ, he still was interested in magic and treasure, that would be a problem. Turning toward God is not.
4. The Book of Abraham is a translation. Translation means that you have a source text in one language and then you have it in another. People typically study language academically to be able to do it. Computers have very different methods. Revelation is yet another different method. Joseph Smith possessed more papyri than what remains now after some was lost, including being burned in a fire. The exact relationship between the remnants and the existing text of the Book of Abraham isn't quite certain. Some people look at what is left and say, "That's not the Book of Abraham," and we say, "Right. That is obvious." I don't think it was as obvious earlier. There is a whole lot more to this, but why would I bother to explain more to someone who doesn't want to accept it anyway?
Amazing!
This intertextuality shows more how seriously the prophets of the Book of Mormon took their task to be. Just a side note; Why do we perpetuate the "face in the hat" thing, when Joseph never said that was what happened?
@@perryewell5395 There was a lot that Joseph Smith didn't write down, not because it didn't happen but because he didn't get around to it before being murdered. It's useful to consider multiple historical sources to learn more about the past.
I knew that the Book of Mormón was true by the Holy Ghost.
Extra information is a plus.
Thank you John and David for continually increasing my testimony of the BoM. ❤🕊️
Will you do an episode on the following research?
“Book of Mormon Names: A Collection that Defies Expectation“ in Perspectives on Latter-day Saint Names and Naming (Routledge, 2023)
“Comparing Phonemic Patterns in Book of Mormon Personal Names with Fictional and Authentic Sources: An Exploratory Study” (Interpreter, 2019)
“Absence of ‘Joseph Smith’ in the Book of Mormon: Lack of the Name Letter Effect in Nephite, Lamanite, and Jaredite Names (Religious Educator, 2016)
“Identifying Authors by Phonoprints in Their Characters’ Names: An Exploratory Study,” (Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 2013)
“188 Unexplainable Names: Book of Mormon Names No Fiction Writer Would Choose” (Religious Educator, 2011)
Thanks for the suggestions, Matt! Good to hear from you.
A very close comparison would be The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Does this same thing happen, at the same levels as the book of Mormon?
In more extended explanations of their methodology they compare the Book of Mormon to several works of fiction and show that it has a greater stylistic breadth than any of those works.
@@TheYgdsadding on to this idea: it actually has more sylistic breadth than the collective works of Jane Austin and the collective works several other contemporary authors.
In fact, its more stulistically diverse than a set of 5 books from the 5 distict contemporary authors. I cant recall the names of the authors... But they are all quite prolific.
Would be more punchy if i remembered :/
@@TheAlchemist1 The data is very compelling, but being a scientist myself, I do see gaps. One leering gap, unless its been done since, is a lack of comparison to the D&C, which would help distinguish Joseph's prophetic voice from that of the Book of Mormon. I am always a bit thrown off by detractors that say the data isn't compelling. I can see someone saying it needs more work, but as is, the analysis demonstrates clearly that the Book of Mormon has more than one voice, even if you have to insist all of those voices are just different reflections of Joseph and his colleagues. However, that also isn't really viable since the three largest voices (Nephi, Mormon and Moroni) each have their own signatures.
@@TheYgds I'm something of a scientist myself
@@TheAlchemist1 If you're ever feeling like you need to experiment on yourself to ensure continued military funding...just say no.
I am continually amazed at people's lack of understanding of baptism. Even this very highly educated professor and perhaps a scholar of the Book of Mormon does not even acknowledge the depth of what true and complete baptism is. It's not about immersing yourself in the water and making covenants when you're 8 years old. A true and complete baptism is three in one. It is water, fire, and the spirit incomplete immersion. Dare I say that too many Latter-day Saints are all too comfortable with sprinkling of the spirit, and not enough are seeking an immersion in the spirit. Jesus Christ gave his doctrine that culminates in the reception of the record of the father and the Son by the spirit through complete immersion being baptized by fire and by the Holy Ghost. He hardly emphasizes water baptism, yet that is all that everyone seems to think about when they consider baptism. If you truly knew what the ordinance of being baptized by fire and by the Holy Ghost was, meaning you indeed had that experience, then you would realize how exciting of a topic it truly is and how marvelous that covenant is. It's not so much about making and keeping covenants, but it is about receiving the everlasting covenant from heaven.
Have they measured storytellers ability to produce different stylometry characters? I’d bet talented story tellers can do this actually.
This is addressed in the interview.
@@keystonelds I'm considering "authors" different from verbal "storytellers"
The problem is that every one of these researchers are biased. I would love to see a study by a neutral third party that comes to similar conclusion.
That would be great, though you will be hard-pressed to find any researchers that are interested in doing this work that *aren't* biased in one direction or the other. I think it's definitely important to acknowledge bias, but it's also important not to fall into the fallacy of dismissing research simply because it came from a source that has bias. It seems to me that, biased or not, Prof. Hilton's research can stand on its own two feet.
I agree that it would be great to have third party research on this topic!
@@johnhiltoniii It's not that I don't trust this type of research but to a layman who knows nothing about the details of such things it is very hard to determine how legitimate any of it is. Is this a significant piece of evidence or are we just splitting a few hairs. Now if a more neutral party were to also corroborate these findings that would certainly give it more weight.
I've read through a lot of apologetic material lately including a lot of the work by Daniel Peterson and other like minded individuals and it always seems to me that they are literally grasping at straws, their arguments are flimsy at best on so many topics. Why do we need to jump through so many hoops and do so much mental gymnastics to make the Book of Mormon work? In my mind the evidence both physical and linguistic should really be a bright as day if it was there, but for whatever reason is seems very elusive. I'm really beginning to wonder...
It would be nice for anyone in the rest of the world, outside of the LDS bubble to confirm anything about the BoM... you know, because it's supposedly the one true church, which means it's for everyone. But alas... the echochamber evaluation and "study" is all we seem to get.
@@nathanielwilkerson6217 @johnhiltoniii lays out the research quite transparently in his book. I suggest you take a look and come to your own conclusions! Regarding proof that the Book of Mormon is true, though, I don't expect for anyone to be able to categorically prove it to be true. Similar to the miraculous claims of the Bible (which also can't be categorically proven to be true), I think God wants us to express faith. I love this quote from Terryl & Fiona Givens,
“The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it to resonate in sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true and which we have reasonable but not certain grounds for believing to be true. There must be grounds for doubt as well as belief, in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and therefore the more deliberate, and laden with personal vulnerability and investment. An overwhelming preponderance of evidence on either side would make our choice as meaningless as would a loaded gun pointed at our heads. The option to believe must appear on one’s personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension.”
I think studies like these add to the "reasonable but not certain grounds" category. At the same time, I find it very unreasonable that a young, poorly educated farm boy could have put this all together on his own. It's ironic that both Joseph's friends and enemies said he was not the brightest bulb in the box as a youth, and yet critics today assert that he had the brains to dictate a rich, complex 531 page book like this in one draft, about 8 pages a day, picking up exactly where he left off each day, over the course of about 63 working days, with no notes or reference materials, with his face in a hat. I certainly still have questions about the Book of Mormon (I think that's totally OK and normal), but frankly, based on the evidence, it's easier for me to believe Joseph's miraculous claims than it is for me to believe that he was just a secret literary genius or an impossibly lucky guesser. Just my two cents, though. Happy to chat privately about this if you'd like.
I think it would be wonderful to watch Dr. Hilton with Dr. Tyler Griffin’s come follow me insights on Scripture Central….
How do you remove the editorialization layer (Oliver/Sidney/Joseph) from the original text (Nephi/Mormon/Alma)? Maybe try counting the number of grammatic errors (run-on sentences) in the original text (Royal Skousen's work). Sidney the grammarian was clearly involved.
Apologetics is not going to lead to any significant breakthroughs.
I would have liked to discuss this with your father, a mathematician. Latent Semantic Analysis is a way to go.
"My soul delights in..." is a very nice example. The goal for advancement would be to back-translate into Egyptian to understand the literary poetry of Nephi. "And my father dwelt in a tent" is one such example. As is "Shazer". A Master Class would emphasize such things.
An hour with the Budge-Egyptian dictionary gives me the following:
###
For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children.
SPANISH pronunciation:
ba-i (my soul) netchem (to delight in) sesh metut neter (sacred writings)
ab-i (my heart) neser / meqmeq / m'khai / mau (to ponder)
ari metcha (to write a book) / sesh metcha-t (writer of books)
khensu-nefer (all learning) / sbau (learning) / shesa (learned) / nekhen (learning) / seshta (learned)
sha-t (profit/benefit)
mesu / nesu / au (children) / mesu seru (noble children) / meriu (beloved)
###
The small plates of Nephi were an educational device, analagous to the Noah Webster Blue-Backed Speller of the Joseph Smith era.
Certainly, the separation from Hebrew Egyptian and Classic Egyptian would need to be explored. There is enough data to make this happen. If your objective is to demonstrate Joseph Smith did not craft this, the evidence (during this process) will become overwhelming.
That is not my objective as it is the foundation of polemics.
Once we can remove the filters of the editorialization, the back-translation will unlock many, many things to advance light/truth agnostic to a specific religious movement.
This is not *incidental*; rather, it is an imperative duty (D&C 123).
David, in videos like this i often hear you say things like "[fill in the blank evidence] and Joseph could never have done this because x, y, z." Frankly, i dont understand how any real critic of the Book of Mormon could possibly argue that Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, not to mention recited it with his head in a hat. What i imagine more critics doing, and i know many have done this, is contending that the Book of Mormon is the result of a conspiracy involving multiple people (a conspiracy that there is absolutely no evidence for but it's something to hold to thats better than the idea that it was all Joseph). Therefore, in videos like this, rather than say "[fill in the blank evidence] Joseph could never..." I personally would say "no one, or group of people, in early 19th century America could have..." Because i think there is little use to compiling evidences that Joseph didnt write the Book of Mormon. But there is use to compiling evidences, like those discussed in this video, that no one could have done this unless God were behind it.
How many people (within the BoM time frame) actually edited or "condensed" the records? According to the LDS church website: "Mormon condensed all the writings into one volume".
How do you know what was actually written by Nephi, Lehi, Jacob or Enos? How do you know it wasn't all just fiction written by Mormon or Moroni? Assuming the latter 2 are not fictional characters themselves.
@@chriscb Mormon quoted directly from the small plates when he was compiling the Book of Mormon. He included some of his own summary in the Words of Mormon, and then he abridged other writings from Mosiah to 4th Nephi. Sometimes he identifies himself, but it's not always 100% obvious when the words are taken from previous authors or when they're his. As to the idea that Mormon and Moroni might have written a fictional account, not only is it extremely unlikely given the distinct voices, but they wouldn't have any reason to do so anyway. But when it comes to how we know any spiritual truth, the answer is always the same: we study and ask God directly in sincere prayer.
I would love to see this done in the Bible if at all possible. Old or New just to see
I come from the background of reading the Bible multiple times over the years and then reading the Book of Mormon. I was thinking many, many times about how many of the phrases I was reading in the bom are from the Bible. The Bible is made up of many different authors so for the sake of argument, if someone was copying ideas/passages from the Bible (with mult authors) or using those phrases then the end result would be thinking the bom had different authors. I think if you are intellectually honest then this would be a possibility. You don’t have to believe it but it would be a legitimate reason why it seems like there are different authors.
The distinction is that the analysis shows that there were different authors where there are expected to be different authors. It’s not random just because the Book of Mormon quotes from ancient prophets on a regular basis. When Mormon is quoting the savior the text surrounding it is styled different than when Moroni quotes the savior. When Nephi is quoting Isaiah the text surrounding it is stylistically different than when Jacob quotes Isaiah, etc.
I find it interesting that you first defined who was speaking then put it through the system…try putting it through a system to allow the system to define where the voices or writing styles are the same. This is a classic Texas sharp shooter if I ever saw one. This is what passes for scholarship when you are funded by the organization that needs the scholarship to align with their narrative.
Am I the only one who assumed all along it was written by that many people?! Lol
The stone gave Joseph a physical way to focus his mind on what he was receiving spiritually. Several authors have signs like rolling a penny between their fingers or an unlit pipe in their mouth etc.
@@randyjordan5521weird that it says it was spelt out for him but thousands of grammar fixes had to be made
@@matthewjohnson3656 Really, do I have to spell it out to you? ;)
Evidence? Where was this evidence? Point me to the peer reviewed journal. Not BOM central; a real academic journal.
You will want to look at Deseret news on 1996.03.29 "team says anonymous left a print". Compare this article with the wikipedia article on "Primary Colors, novel#identity_of_the_author". And there, in black and white it becomes clear that this method (as employed by brother Hilton) fails miserably to detect the author even though they had only about 5 options. It got the author wrong (and the second most likely option was also wrong). So there's some pretty good evidence regarding how effective this method is when used in real life.
What’s the relationship between genius and college degree?
I don’t understand how different writing styles or voices proves different authors? When a single author could do the same right?
Especially when that one author pulls from multiple different sources such as the KJV, View of the Hebrews, Clarke Bible Commentary, etc.
They ran the same analysis with other contemporary authors who wrote fiction using different voices and the result was far less distinct than the Book of Mormon.
If Joseph wrote it,he was far better at it than Mark Twain.
I don't think it "proves" anything outright. Just another example of impressive complexity in the BoM that might serve as evidence pointing to divine origin.
Proof is subjective, but it absolutely indicates multiple different authors.
Interesting
Why would anyone think it was one author 😅
Yes it did have many writers. The brass plates were passed down to several prophets...BOM states as much.