What does literary analysis have to say about the book of Mormon? Would an expert who knew nothing about the history of the LDS church, going only by the text of the book, conclude it was a 19th century forgery?
You realize you’re likely to get completely different answers depending on whether the poster is Mormon or not, right? I was raised Mormon and I remember being told in either Sunday school or seminary that analysis of the language patterns used in the Book of Mormon provide support for the claim that it’s a translation of an ancient text. Supposely the patterns are not consistent with American English in the early 19th century. I don’t know whether that’s accurate or not. There could actually have been such a study done or this could be the Mormon equivalent of an urban legend that’s been passed from person to person and just accepted because you trust the person who told it to you.
At any rate I expect it would be difficult to find the kind of blinded study of the text that you describe but I’m now curious whether it’s been done.
See this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics_and_the_Book_of_Mormon
I’d be happier about that article if it didn’t claim that there were no grapes in the pre-Columbian Americas.
here This is common knowledge among anyone with a passing interest in botany.
Well, it’s the Wikipedia – you (or anybody) can edit the article, or chime in on the attached discussion page.
Your main problem is that no serious academic outside of LDS circles would take such a study seriously enough to entertain the notion that the Book of Mormon might not be a 19th century document. It is a subject that pretty much cannot be treated neutrally. Virtually anyone who studies the language is either already convinced of its authenticity and working from that premise, or looking for ways to debunk it. Can you really imagine a normal ordinary professor with degrees in, say, Hebrew and some other subjects, doing a truly even-handed, objective study on it and saying, “You know, I really can’t explain some of this stuff from 19th-century knowledge available to Joseph Smith, and the explanation may well be that this is an authentic document, given to Smith by an angel, and translated by miraculous means.” It would not exactly go down well in most academic circles, would it? No one would entertain the thought of such a possibility, and so the only people who do such studies are generally already convinced.
Now, it so happens that I am LDS and am convinced of the BoMs truth, but I have only the most cursory knowlege of things like Hebrew and ancient Israelite culture and all the things that would make such a study feasible. I have heard, here and there, of non-LDS academics taking an interest in the BoM and discussing Middle Eastern influences and such. There are certainly plenty of LDS academic papers on the subject–it’s become huge in the past 40 years or so–and a very few serious papers from opposing factions (but they are largely still sticking to 19th-century ULs for their tracts, I suppose because they’re so much more exciting than reality).
What I know of the subject boils down to a few factoids: for example, that there is a certain literary structure in Hebrew writing called chiasmus, which is found throughout the BoM, but which has been almost eliminated from the English-language Bible through translation. Naturally, LDS see this as confirming evidence, and everyone else thinks it has to be a coincidence, because there’s no other explanation that doesn’t involve God. I have some other things like that lying around somewhere, if you want to know about them. Apparently there are a lot of Hebrew language structures in the BoM in various forms.
If you’re really interested in what various people have to say, I can look up some online papers for you or something. The bigger names in the field are Hugh Nibley and John Tvedtnes. The newest secular academic tome is Terryl Givens’ By the hand of Mormon, which covers a lot of ground and which I have not yet read.
You should know that Mormons, on the whole, tend to treat ‘proving’ the BoM as a fun academic exercise. It’s nice, but not important to the core principle, which is that the BoM is a life-changing book inspired of God, and only useful if you treat it as such. We do not rely on empirical evidence–but it’s a fun game, and you learn a lot from it, and we’ve removed some of the misinformation surrounding the subject. Hugh Nibley used to say that anti-mormons are good for us, since they keep us on our toes. 
I heard someone debunked the Pearl of Great Price by actually translating hieroglyphics. If the Pearl of Great Price doesn’t hold water, do you think the Book of Mormon does?
I’ve read the Book of Mormon and was a member of the RLDS church years ago.
In researching it lately I found a few interesting things.
During Joseph Smiths time there were several theories about the American Indians being decendents of Hebrew tribes. One in particular.
“View of the Hebrews” was published in 1823 and a second edition was published in 1825.
The Book of Mormon was published in 1830.
“View of the Hebrews” flooded the area in which Joseph Smith lived.
The author (Ethan Smith) was the pastor of the religious congregation in which the (Oliver) Cowdrey family attended.
The (Oliver) Cowdrey family was related to the (Joseph) Smith family, and Oliver Cowdrey assisted in the “translation” of the Book of Mormon.
On what was probably a promotional tour for his book, Ethan Smith visited the small hometown (Palmyra) of Joseph Smith in late 1826.
Josiah Priest’s The Wonders of Nature and Providence, Displayed (1825), which also includes numerous parallels to the Book of Mormon, quotes extensively from Ethan Smith’s book and is known to have been available in the local Manchester Rental Library when Joseph Smith lived in the village.
I think it is probable that Joseph Smith and friends compiled the Book of Mormon from several sources.
There are passages in the Book of Mormon that I still love.
My experience has been that God can use spiritual insight offered in the Book of Mormon to uplift and enlighten even if the source is less than sincere.
Another example would be Eckenkar. The man who started it “borrowed” the teachings from a little known form of Yoga. He was bogus but the teachings had value for many. I’ve known many wonderful sincere spirit seeking people from RLDS and LDS
From what I understand the problem with scholarship and the BoM is that there is really not much there to study. With the bible you have the original texts there fore people to look at. With the BoM the original reformed hieroglyphics texts were taken back to heaven, so really all you have is Joseph Smith’s “translation”.
Since there is only that there isn’t really much that you can do scholarship on. Also you have to add into the mix that Joseph Smith may have been intentionally deceptive in his writing of the BoM. Even if it doesn’t look like a 19th century document, that may well just be becuase Joseph Smith intentially wrote it so that it would look older then it really was.
So since there is only a translation of the original, and since so much of higher criticism relies on intracies of the original language, there is simply nothing there to really analyse.
Onesimus.
Except, of course, for corroborating archeological evidence, which has yet to be conclusively found. Except, as I understand it, by mormons seeking said evidence. Of course, I may be wrong.
Have you got anything more concrete than “I heard?” Here is the story as I know it:
After Joseph Smith’s death, his widow and mother stayed in Nauvoo as the rest of the Mormons moved west. They kept the papyrus scrolls, and earned some money by showing them to the public. Eyewitnesses said that there was a large collection of these scrolls, and described the floor being covered with long, unrolled papyrus. Earlier, Joseph Smith had described the particular papyrus he used as being covered with small script in black ink, rubricated with red.
No one is quite sure what happened to them after that, but it seems that they evenutally wound up in the museum in Chicago, where they were destroyed by the great fire.
In (IIRC) the late 60’s, a few pieces of this collection showed up in the back rooms of the Chicago museum. They turned out to be some fragments of ordinary Egyptian funeral texts, plus an (IIRC) entire copy of the Book of Breathings. (A series of articles was published in Church magazines ASAP, as well as some other stuff.) Critics of the LDS Church called this proof that Joseph Smith was a fraud. LDS see it as no such thing, pointing out that the surviving papyrus, which is covered in large writing with no rubrication, does not match the description given by Smith and that the collection is nowhere near the size it should be if it were complete. LDS therefore conclude that the majority of the formerly large collection of scrolls must have been lost in the fire, including the ones Smith used.
This covers only the Book of Abraham as contained in the Pearl of Great Price; the Book of Moses was not claimed to have been translated from the scrolls, and the PoGP also contains a summary of the beginning of the Church and the Articles of Faith, both written by Joseph Smith.
I hope that helps clear up the history there.
This site asks most of the stylistic, historical, and archeological questions. I do not wish to insult my Saintly friends but, for me, once one has read the book and asked the questions, the question in the OP stops being “Would an expert conclude it was a 19th century forgery?” and becomes “How could he or she conclude otherwise?” 
I have been immersing myself in 19th century hoaxes and imagined lands lately and this isn’t even all that good a one.
No I haven’t, mostly because I’m not LDS, and have spent very little time studying the LDS doctrines. Because I don’t have anything more concrete than hearsay, I tried to eschew anything resembling an accusatory manner when asking.
Yes, that helped some. Thanks.
Not to doubt the sincerity of the BoM, but I wonder how closely it parallels 16th/17th century British English. From the standpoint of someone with no background whatsoever in linguistic analysis who has only read the book once, it reads quite a bit like the King James Version of the Bible.
dangermom: I’ve been looking through the FARMS website, is there anything you might suggest from there to start with reading? (General note: the linked site is pro-LDS.)
Actually dropzone it hardly covers any. Most of the questions amount to basically: “I don’t think God would have done things that way.”
Pretty weak really. When reading through anti-Mormon sites, you should assume we LDS have seen the arguments as well and that there’s usually an apologist response. A little more effort would usually lead you to the response, and then you could evaluate both sides.
That particular site for instance has the “Shakespeare” question. See the response here. As for the “4000 changes” see here.
The quote from B. H. Roberts is typical anti-Mormon selective editing. See here and here for more about Roberts.
Etc.
What I’d love to see is anti-Mormons’ response to objections that have been silenced because the objections were proven wrong. For example, when the Book of Mormon first appeared, Joseph Smith was ridiculed for stories about people writing their history on metal plates. Then other (non-religious) records were found written on metal plates. The Book of Mormon was criticized because the character named “Alma” was male, yet the name was “obviously” female. Until an ancient document was found which used “Alma” as a masculine name. Then the objection disappeared.
While you’re at Jeff Lindsay’s site, check out his list of questions for the critics. They’re by no means complete or somehow a proof of Mormonism, but they are food for thought, and try as I might I’ve never seen a response from critics.
Here’s one comparison of Isaiah of the KJV to the smae passages quoted in the Book of Mormon.
I think most LDS assume that Joseph Smith used the KJV style because it was what he thought was the language of scripture. Translators make choices like that all the time. AFAIK there’s no definitive statement on the subject however, so I don’t think we’ll ever know the why for sure (at least until I get the chance to ask someone after this life).
Hope it isn’t too far aside, but the BoM was a translation by J. Smith? I’d always thought of it more as being not so much translated as dictated to him via the Urim and Thummim. (For example, instead of appearing in Reformed Egyptian, it would appear to him with all thought and language preserved in English.)
How then did the Urim and Thummim work in translating/dictating the BoM?
Both the introduction and “A Brief Explanation About The Book of Mormon” refer to the book as a translation. Joseph Smith himself says he translated it.
There are no references by Smith himself detailing that. Some of the people close to him described the process, but their descriptions are conflicting. Some textual analysis (principally by Royal Skousen of FARMS) suggests that in some places there was more divine assistence than in others. See here for more.
Gee. You know, there’s a whole 'nother site, too: FAIR also does this kind of thing, on a more casual level. (Wasn’t that helpful?)
FARMS is all categorized according to subject, so you can choose “Book of Mormon” and then go down and pick, say, “Linguistics” and then “Literary Features.” That will get you a list of articles from their journal that address that topic. It won’t get you a complete account of BoM linguistics; the books and essays aren’t all online. I have, for example, a FARMS books that contains several essays explaining various types of Hebraisms (word usage, poetry, idiom, all kinds of stuff) in the BoM, but I don’t see a lot of that information on the site.
FAIR is also according to subject, and has a bunch of essays by various academic types. Try clicking on “Topical Guide” in the left frame. It lists 719 articles on the BoM alone. Whee! (They also have a discussion forum, but it has a bit more static than exists here.)
I can’t pretend to be able to keep up with both of these foundations enough to be able to recommend particular essays. For linguistics, look for stuff by John Welch, John Tvedtnes, and a fellow called Perry. Hugh Nibley is a bit hit or miss; he wrote about everything, and since his brain went about 100x faster than normal peoples’ it’s not always very easy to fathom just what the heck he’s talking about. He’s a lot of fun, though, very biting.
So, that wasn’t very helpful, was it? Sorry.
Not really. Just some of them. And that is not necessarily the best website for this but it covers the most bases for the least amount of my typing. 
But I look at it from the viewpoint of a historian and archaeologist and from there the BoM comes off as inaccurate, but in agreement with some beliefs of the early 19th century. THAT, specifically, is what make me assume it is a hoax. Smith was not alone in believing that the American Indians descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel but his followers are about the only people who STILL believe it, despite the masses of evidence otherwise.
Smith’s 1826 conviction for disorderly conduct and fraud (the court records were found in 1971), using a “peep stone” or “seer stone” to find lost goods, buried treasure, and gold mines and convincing others to finance the digs, leads me to view any of his claims with a jaundiced eye, especially since he used the same stone to translate the tablets.
It is unfortunate that most analyses of the Book of Mormon come from either ardent Mormons or angry former Mormons. I do not consider myself anti-Mormon and any faith that has produced so many good people obviously has value, but the Book of Mormon cannot be taken as a literal history or as the revealed word of God.