To get to the book of mormon from spauldings manuscript would. The thing is, the way they conducted the study, they had no reason to expect any of the authors they used would match any passages in the book of mormon. Oct 08, 2005 the hilton wordprint study of the book of mormon i was pleased to find a copy of john hiltons article, on verifying wordprint studies. Testing authorship in the personal writings of joseph smith. A new wordprint study on the book of mormon breathes new life to a longchallenged theory for book of mormon authorship, the theory that its real author was solomon spalding secretly assisted by sidney rigdon. Since the book of mormon includes writings of isaiah and malachi, these portions should easily match, and the jockers study concludes these portions match. For purposes of comparability with the jockers study, we used the same list of 110 characteristic words as jockers et al. The joseph smith translation is simply an edited version of the king james version of the bible, with changes made by joseph smith.
In march, 2019, i studied 20 different names or titles of jesus christ which appear in the book of mormon. The hilton study s innovative stylometric approach, combined with its thorough statistical controls, make it a landmark study on book of mormon authorship. Using a slightly different method, researchers from utah state university essentially reproduced the results of. Mormon prophet joseph smith 180544 claimed that more than two dozen ancient. Thus, the fields research team offers a third stylometric study on the book of mormon which independently contradicts theories of 19th century authorship. Dec 09, 2008 a new wordprint study on the book of mormon breathes new life to a longchallenged theory for book of mormon authorship, the theory that its real author was solomon spalding secretly assisted by sidney rigdon. Book of mormon study squares the red headed hostess. A comparative study ofmachine learning methods for authorship attribution. Come, follow me latest posts names and titles of jesus christ in march, 2019, i studied 20 different names or titles of jesus christ which appear in the book of mormon.
Roberts 18571933, a general authority of the church of jesus christ of latterday saints lds church, which examine the validity of the book of mormon as a translation of an ancient american source. The book of mormon study guide that got me reading scriptures. Book of mormon stylometry in pictures and tables rational. I have seen its transformative power in my life and many others. Oct 25, 2006 ryan larsen lds response to jockers et al book of mormon authorship post by jersey girl mon nov 09, 2009 1. The book of mormon computerized authorship study was conducted at stanford university, by matthew l. Jan 19, 2011 a year or two ago, the oxford university press journal literary and linguistic computing published a statistical argument for the spalding theory of book of mormon authorship. Wordprint analysis and the book of mormon deseret news. You will find the power to stay on the strait and narrow path. Using a slightly different method, researchers from utah state university essentially reproduced the results of the hilton study in 2006. This first article explains what stylometry is and gives readers a short history of stylometric studies performed on the book of mormon.
Ive read a number of the wordprint studies, so i responded to it. The historical case against sidney rigdons authorship of. I bring to my study this time the experience of a father of large family, and the experience of being a faithfully committed marriage partner. Reassessing authorship of the book of mormon using delta and. Feb, 2020 the joseph smith translation is simply an edited version of the king james version of the bible, with changes made by joseph smith. There is a power in the book of mormon which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of it. Who wrote the book of moses and the joseph smith translation. The book of mormon records the visit of jesus christ to people in the americas following his resurrection.
Ryan larsen lds response to jockers et al book of mormon authorship post by jersey girl. The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. My daily book of mormon devotional 365 day personal study guide book. Ever since the book of mormon was published in 1830, critics have tried to show that it came forth as the result of fraud. Reassessing authorship of the book of mormon using delta and nearest shrunken centroid classification. Review of books on the book of mormon 19892011 volume 23number 1 article 8 2011 examining a misapplication of nearest shrucnken centroid classification to investigate book of mormon authorship paul j. Fields study scrutinizes a 2008 paper published in the journal of literary and linguistic computing, written by matthew jockers, craig criddle. The deliberate archaic language of the book of mormon may have something to do with this, but that was not anything discussed by jockers and criddle. At the same time, i renewed my study of the book of mormon, hoping to find. Though i disagree with the book of mormon centrals analysis of the roper study chart, i hope my contribution is seen as faith building.
Jockers noted the problem, but did not investigate further, feeling confident that. In the past, ive never been able to stick to reading. While it has not received anywhere near the attention that i had expected it to receive, a few critics have seen it as th. We have taken every chapter in the book of mormon and provided study pages to help you really dig in and study every single verse. It is a record of gods dealings with ancient inhabitants of the americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel. As the theory goes, solomon spaulding wrote an unpublished novel about a group of romans from the time of constantine that were. The book of mormon is a religious record of three groups of people who migrated from the old world to the american continents. Examining a misapplication of nearest shrunken centroid classification to investigate book of mormon. In this regard the measures are potentially more powerful, but the samples in this study are much smaller, on average, and vary in length. It shows the number of the 96 texts dictated by joseph with the author identified by stylometry that had a style most similar, or second most similar, to the text. We first reproduced the jockers study results using the same set of candidate authors to confirm that our implementation of nsc was.
Mormon prophet joseph smith 180544 claimed that more than twodozen ancient individuals nephi, mormon, alma, etc. In the jockers study, the researchers hypothesis was that the book of mormon is the collaborative work of multiple nineteenthcentury authors. The hilton wordprint study of the book of mormon mormanity. Book of mormon study notes insights from my daily study of. Jockers noted the problem, but did not investigate further, feeling confident that isaiahmalachi was correct in 20 of 21 chapters. Journal of the book of mormon and other restoration scripture. Later researchers who analyzed selections from the book of mormon concluded that differences between selections supported smiths. Among those evidences was a reference to wordprints. For years ive looked for a book of mormon study guide to help me read the book of mormon every day. Examining a misapplication of nearest shrunken centroid. At the fair conference, statistical analyst paul fields presented an assessment of one of the latest attempts to validate the spauldingrigdon theory, a stylometric, or wordprint, analysis of the book of mormon.
That is how several distinguished professors of religion at brigham young university and teachers at seminaries and institutes have described a companion to your study of the book of mormon. The most helpful guide to studying the book of mormon that is now available. In light of the above studies, it can be responsibly concluded that the book of mormons internal claims about its authorship are. Pdf reassessing authorship of the book of mormon using delta. For example, longfellow one of the 2 control authors was listed as an author of the isaiahmalachi chapters in the book of mormon. I ordered 5 more last week for my sisters friends because the printer is close to me and we can met up to avoid shipping costs. The spalding signal was weak in those parts of the book of mormon likely produced after the lost pages incident 1 nephi, 2 nephi, some of the middle part of 3 nephi, moroni.
The jockers study s use of nsc required access to sample texts other than the book of mormon that are certainly known to have been written by the candidate authors in its closed set. These groups were led by prophets who recorded their religious and secular histories on metal plates. Journal of the book of mormon and other restoration. To date, ive read through the book of mormon perhaps a dozen times or so. This book presents a manuscript written by president of the first quorum of the seventies and church historian b. While the jockers study fell short settling the authorship question, the paper itself opened up what i believe to be a valuable investigation into the origins of the book. In another post, there was a challenge to explain away a number of evidences of the book of mormon.
The hilton studys innovative stylometric approach, combined with its thorough statistical controls, make it a landmark study on book of mormon authorship. Following the book of mormon from beginning to end, this comprehensive, questionandanswer commentary draws from thousands of the very best insights on the scriptures including those from general authorities, church magazines and manuals, the most respected scholarly commentaries, scripture reference books, and other publications. Once you have read the book of mormon and you have had the confirmation of its truthfulness, how do you effectively study so that you gain the greatest benefit from your study time. Dec 23, 2008 that new book of mormon wordprint study. Matthew jockers center for digital research in the. Book of mormon central archive examining a misapplication of nearest shrunken centroid classification to. Book of mormon authorship on the web, as printed in byu studies, 30 summer 1990. Of course, for those convinced that the book is of ancient authorship, the study is not very valuable as bruce pointed out. Testing authorship in the personal writings of joseph. Jockers 50 that purported to produce evidence using sophisticated linguistic computer modeling 50 that sidney rigdon was the chief author of the book of mormon, yet does not cite the work done by paul fields and others. This knowhy is the first in a series which discusses stylometry and its relevance to questions of book of mormon authorship. I was particularly interested in the way each name was used, both in the book of mormon and in the bible. November 27, 2017 what can stylometry tell us about book.
Im blogging about it simply because of how much its helped my spiritual life. Mormon prophet joseph smith 180544 claimed that more than twodozen ancient. The hilton wordprint study of the book of mormon i was pleased to find a copy of john hiltons article, on verifying wordprint studies. Jockers was able to compare 106 noncontextual words rather than the approximately 40 considered in the earliest book of mormon stylometry paper. Thus, potential authors like nephi, alma, and mormon couldnt be included in the study because none of their writings, except those contained in the book of mormon itself, have been preserved for comparison. Gutjahrs own book is a terrific example of a work typifying legitimate academic study, particularly as compared with most of the poor mistreatments of mormon studies. While the results of the oldest book of mormon stylometry study overstate the evidence for multiple authorship not intentionallythe field has progressed a lot since 1980, it too found multiple authorship and a lack of 19 th century authorship. Picking probabilities as done in the jockers study is not rolling the dice to. The scriptures are called the words of life, and nowhere is that more true than it is of the book of. The historical case against sidney rigdons authorship of the. Roberts that he wrote to answer a young members questions about the book of mormon in, i believe 1930. Its hard for me to read any book all the way through, let alone a book ive read so many times.
In 2008, matthew jockers, daniela witten, and craig criddle applied two statistical methodsdelta and nearest shrunken centroid. Book of mormon study notes insights from my daily study. We did not include mormon prophet joseph smith in our analysis because we determined that there was not. Studies of the book of mormon is a collection of essays written at the beginning of the 20th century though not published until 1985 by b. My daily book of mormon devotional 365 day personal. November 27, 2017 what can stylometry tell us about book of. One of the earliest theories was the spaulding theory. Mormonleaks is a research project that seeks to reconstruct the authentic narrative of the origins of the mormon canon by combining macroanalytic computing tools with contemporary historical evidence the historical records reveal a small pool of candidate authors collaborating in western new york and northern ohio to create the mormon scriptures. This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies. On the other hand, in their study of the book of mormon, jockers et al. Mar 25, 2020 how to effectively study the book of mormon. Jan 18, 2016 once again, multiple authors in the book of mormon. This book of mormon study guide is designed to fit the needs of various ages and study habits and is ideal for personal, class or family study.
A comprehensive resource for the study of the book of mormon. Lies, expletive deleted lies, and statistics fairmormon. I presently find myself well engulfed in a sequential study of the book of mormon in both english and spanish. In the jockers study, they noted some false positives. We carry a variety of book of mormon books, from 1830 heritage editions to journals and study guides. The scriptures are called the words of life, and nowhere. Reassessing authorship of the book of mormon using delta. Word text analysis implicating rigdon jockers et al. Reassessing authorship of the book of mormon using delta and nearest shrunken. And they indeed had a few falsepositives from the control authors they used, if i recall correctly. We redid the chapterbychapter book of mormon attribution study taking into account the openset problem, the textsize problem, and the multiplicity problem. Reassessing authorship of the book of mormon using delta andnearestshrunken centroid classification.
Barlow and longfellow are poets thrown in as control, so it shouldnt be a surprise that they didnt match. Fields study scrutinizes a 2008 paper published in the journal of literary and linguistic computing, written by matthew jockers. He discusses a 2008 study conducted by a group of scholars at stanford university led by matthew l. I love the book of mormon more of of my testimony on that here. A comparative study of machine learning methods for authorship attribution. Spaldingrigdon theory of book of mormon authorship. They submitted their report to literary and linguistic computing april of 2008 and a prepublication version of the reassessing authorship paper appeared on the oxford journals website that summer. The jockers study found a strong spalding signal in the books of mosiah, alma, and ether and the first half of the book of helaman.
Spaldingrigdon theory of book of mormon authorship wikipedia. Examining a misapplication of nearest shrucnken centroid. The book of mormon has now emerged as a legitimate focal point of academic study 151. Bruce schaalje matthew roper follow this and additional works at. For jockers and criddles book of mormon chapter data, it turns out that the absolute probabilities of authorship by spalding or rigdon are, almost without exception, very small. Nobody disputes that what is debatable is whether the changes were inspired or not. The book of mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the bible. I bought one for each of my family members, then my sisters and mom wanted one, and then my friends and then their friends.
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