Joseph Smith Didn't Write the Book of Mormon | Stylometry with Paul Fields

Can you illustrate the visuals juxtaposing the Bible with the Book of Mormon? (Maybe break apart New Testament vs old for their own colors)

Everything makes sense once you realize the BOM was written by Ancient Ethiopian Jews. The claim that it was Ancient American Jews is where everything falls apart. The geography, culture, history, religion, themes, etc., ALL of it fits Ethiopian and none of it fits America. Joseph Smith published a book found in Ethiopia, not America. This means Joseph Smith was not telling the full truth about the BOM. He felt publishing an Ethiopian history as a parable for America was worth the "little white lie".

Joseph Smith was a Rosicrucian and his words have a different meaning than the average person realizes. "Translation" does not mean what you think it means. "Gift" does not mean what you think it means. "Power" does not mean what you think it means.

This is why the controversy over the BOM has raged for hundreds of years and will continue for hundreds more. People see what they want to see and can't see another point of view.

Most active LDS see this evidence and it confirms Joseph Smith's words even though it shouldn't. I see this evidence and it confirms the "truthfulness" of the BOM but not the words of Joseph. Smith.

I wish people would educate themselves on this "Ethiopian Theory". It's quite beautiful and will bring a new perspective to the words in the BOM.

For example: Ethiopian Jews believe their homeland, Ethiopia, is the Garden of Eden. They get this idea from a couple of reasons.

#1: It is supported by Genesis 2:13.
#2: It's fertile and lush (compared to the Sahara/Egypt below).
#3: Its the elevated highlands of Africa (compared to the Sahara/Egypt below).
#4: It is the source of the Nile river. (the Blue Nile).
#5: Jews have found safety and freedom there since at least King Solomon. Some are still there, others migrated to Israel after WWII.

Once you wrap your mind around this concept you can then see how Lehi migrated to Egypt, had the Tree of Life Vision and that Vision showed him the way to Ethiopia. The Vision was a literal roadmap out of Egypt and up the Nile to Ethiopia. The Nile is the river in the vision. The dangers in Egypt are the same as you can read in Jeremiah 44. The "head" of the river is the source of the Nile in Ethiopia. Lehi escaped to Ethiopia and became an Ethiopian Jew.

The angel tells Nephi his seed will be destroyed on the "same" river as the one in the vision. If you believe the Nile is the one in the vision then it makes sense that the Angel is repeating the dangers in Egypt that are in Jeremiah 44 and the ones happening to the Jews in the Vision that "fall away" from the Iron Rod.

Now you can understand that Helaman 3 is describing Egypt. The migration in Helaman 3 is to Egypt. It even calls it "Desolation " just like Jeremiah 44.

Now compare the book of mormon to the Bible that was always written by many people in a different time

.......the visual does a good job demonstrating the wide variation in style of the 28 authors and the wide variation in the semantic content of some 6600 verses of text in the Book of Mormon........the Book of Ether has always been the most amazing text of all for me considering the practice of regicide and the cultural anomalies and traditions recorded in the text. Not to mention Joseph Smith had the good sense to copywrite the book in 1830 ensuring no one could ever adulterate it!!!!!gh

Of course Joseph didn’t write the Book of Mormon, he translated it.

It would have been cool if he had had all the verses that mention Jesus Christ flash, for a visual of the importance of Jesus Christ in The Book Of Mormon.

That’s correct, Joseph didn’t write it, he translated it.

Wow this was awesome ! This definitely strengthens our faith that the Bom is true and that JS was telling the truth !

I'd be curious to know how the Bible compares as well. I'd like to know, for example, if this method could settle the theory that the book of Isaiah wasn't all written by the same author.

It is difficult to watch you wander around the sudo evidence each week. Why have you never visited prophets and apostles in SLC to discuss BOM evidences.

You seem to be satisfied with theory after theory from random members.

Your are wasting time and money trying to present theory’s that do nothing to actually prove that a literate bilingual people (reformed Egyptian and Hebrew) even had a civilization on the American continent.

Sounds very biased to me.

Will you please use this same analysis on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible?

If Joseph Smith was not a prophet, then He was a genius.

That's a dude with his eyes covered
blind & blindly being given a "vision"

I've always known that more and more proof of the Book of Mormon being true is going to come out. Unfortunately, evil is going to do everything possible to discredit these truths.

Would you be willing to do this same study, but comparing writings from Solomon Spaulding and Dr. John Smith of Dartmouth? 🤔

There are recent discoveries that show unique things from Anathenis Kircher's life/writings (1600's) in the Book of Mormon, including the character Nephi, Brass Plates, Reformed Egyptian, etc

I'm currently reading the book, "How the Book of Mormon Came to Pass", and it is fascinating!

It would be very interesting to see how the findings in this book would match on this model. The author discusses the exact things mentioned here about fingerprints from authors based on the filler words.

Well indeed a valid question. Take it up with the Lord and ask him if it true and you will know by the Spirit of God that will manefest the truthfulness unto you. If you are asking with a sincere heart. That will be the question. ❤️

You were there so you oughta know !!¡

I don't understand the people who disbelief the Book of Mormon , how a man can orchestrate a book from his mind and say is the word of God if it isn't, it is a big responsibility to write something and say it is from God I wouldn't do that unless the Lord has commanded it , I do believe Joseph Smith was command ed to do so . What I see is jealousy from other denominations why he was shosen to do this work and not them , but the thing is God does what ever he wants it is his work 😊!!!

We need to see this versus King James Bible, book of Napoleon we're similar work is previously shown tremendous correlation

You also need to throw on the writings of james Smith, is outlined in the new book how The book of Mormon came to pass

The argument of this video assumes Joseph Smith to have written the BOM to reach the absurd conclusion that he was a better, brighter author than all of his contemporaries. Since the conclusion is absurd, the logical negation must be true: therefore conclude we that Joseph Smith could not have written the book himself.

Moreover, the separation in data from the BOM to the other works sets the BOM as distinct from contemporaries, perhaps indicating translation of ancient texts over composition in the 19th century.

While at face value compelling, there are multiple issues with this argumentation that I encourage the reading to consider.

1. The other authors of the 19th century were, in large part, not trying to create distinctive authorial voices. Again to follow the promise of the argument presented in the video, if Joseph Smith composed the BOM, he had incentive to do so with a varied voice in a way no other contemporary herein mentioned. For a fair comparison, the BOM would need to be compared to authors that had reason to create varied voices.

2. While there were multiple contemporaries analyzed, not all were. Many authors composed in the 19th century. Just because some were famous, as those considered here, that does not make them the most brilliant.

3. As for the separation from contemporary, the BOM was written in an archaic style. Thou, he, without, suffer, ye, the purpose clause introduced with “that,” among a plethora of other English archaisms were employed in the BOM’s text. The contemporary authors to Joseph Smith largely did not compose with such archaisms. By the 19th century, only liturgical texts used such diction.

4. Even with the argument presented herein as accepted, the BOM may be discredited on grounds of Joseph Smith’s low credibility: he claimed to have translated the book of Abraham from Egyptian fragments that we still have today. In his day, the western world did not yet understand hieroglyphics. Smith’s personal notes detail his assertion that he understood, through a gift or the Spirit, these writing. However, what he claimed to have been the Book of Abraham turns out to be a book filled with pagan death rituals: for we now know how to translate hieroglyphics. Therefore, whereas we cannot verify Smith’s ostensible translation of the BOM because the plates are gone, we can verify his work with the Book of Abraham and he does not pass: he lied about his ancient translation.

5. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, made final atonement for the sins of all who would believe in him. There is no ritual to be undertaken for one’s salvation. Read the book of Hebrews. Clearly, the work of salvation was accomplished at Calvary when Christ died for the sins of the world. In Ephesians 2 it says that we are saved by grace through faith, not of ourselves, but by a gift of shod, not of works. The book of Romans, chapter 10 verse 13, says that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Even Abraham was called righteous not for his works but because he believed (Genesis 15:6)

Reject the false gospel of the Mormon Church, confess that Christ alone can save you, and receive forgiveness of sins, that you may live for eternity glorifying the Lord God in heaven.

Stop being so goofy

It does answer a simple question. Joseph may have dictated it but the authors were all very district.

I wish he could have compared it to the Joseph Smith papers where Joseph wrote his personal journal. I´m not a specialist in this area, but I can clearly see that the way Joseph wrote in his journal was completely different and way more simple than the Book of Mormon. Seemed to me that Joseph wouldn´t have the grammar and cultural knowledge to write such a complex book as the Book of Mormon. Besides, for writing such a complex book, Joseph would have not only to be intellectually so much better than every other writer of his generation, but how in the world would he write a content that would literally makes us feel closer to God the way this book does. God answers our prayers and communicates with us through the words of this sacred book, we feel closer to Jesus, we love him more, we feel a greater desire to repent, to forgive, to serve, to love, to believe, to be good people, this book changes the way we feel, it draws us nearer to God and strengthen our faith in Jesus. How could anyone have invented that? and if someone actually invented that, how would someone lie in order to draw people nearer to God? The fruits are good, in the end, that´s all we need to know.

What a fantastic to bring the complexity of the book of mormon!

He didn't write it, ancient prophets did, but you know that!

What variation does the Bible have?

I would like to know the semantic content of the huge number of light blue dots all across the plot.

Very well done! I love the visual representation using technology. Fascinating!

He didn’t write it he translated it

This is very interesting. I'm curious to see a bit further into the research. We see that each dot represents the individual speakers of the book of mormon and classic 19th century literature but that dot doesn't show us the variation in an individual speaker's style. I want to see if you were to take a random sample for each speaker and plot the results on the graph, how close the samples would be to each other. Could it be that overall there is a lack of consistency in style and not just from author to author? The data analyst in me is curious to know.

That being said, I'm grateful that I already know the Book of Mormon is inspired and this I know because of how it has changed my life and how it influences me to follow the Savior Jesus Christ. While the evidence is cool, my testimony does not rely on it.

Have they done this for the Mormon’s Doctrine and Covenants?

Is there a link to the code they use? I want to check their program.

It’s kind of funny how they didn’t compare it to the view of the Hebrew’s or the Spaulding manuscript. These two books were written before the bom and they have so many of the same words and stories….

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Does this channel address the question of modalism in the Book of Mormon.

JS translated the BofM, word for word as shown him through the seer stone in a hat. The words were shown him one at a time, and only disappeared from view when it was translated and transcribed correctly. Yet, there have been many corrections made to the BofM.

The BofM is a compilation of "historical" events given by many authors. When compared to "The Late War" by Gilbert Hunt published in 1816, the parallels are quite striking. This was 14 years before the BofM was translated, Joseph would have been 12 years old at the time. Considering the similarities, I would conclude that someone was plagiarizing someone else's work.

That is an interesting study, though it would be helpful to know more about what the variables that they are graphing mean. This shows that there are clear visual differences, but what are those specific stylistic differences? That’s the thing I would most like to explore.

…then we have Jane Austen- Pride and Prejudice…

“YES, I love that movie!”

😂 He’s a hoot

“Is that the Liahona guiding the way?” 😂 you are so pleasant!

“He’s awesome”….sigh hahaha

Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. - 2 Corinthians 11:14

I'm not asking this as a doubter. Has this analysis been done on the book of Isaiah? I've read there is evidence of 3 authors to Isaiah from 3 time periods. And then the question related to the B of M was how was Nephi able to have the different authors available c. 600 BC.?

So I'm reading the Book of Mormon and I remember what Joseph Smith Jr wrote about his feelings on it, writing, "...the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book", as if he's studied ever sacred book ya know?!

Well I want to be able to identify all the precepts in the Book of Mormon so that not only can I live and abide by them but I can share with others what they are exactly.

And I read up to the account of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis in Alma 24 where they had a mighty change of heart. Even a spiritually-radical change of heart and thereafter they refused to ever take up weapons again to distance themselves as far as spiritually possible from the sin of killing even if it meant self defense. Understanding that killing in any form was just that serious. Even more serious than they had understood about "Thou shalt not kill" than they had ever before understood.

But then I couldn't help but think of all the heroic rhetoric I grew up seeing in pictures and in Sunday school classes and seminary about Moroni and what it meant exercise the actions behind his Title of Liberty banner which teaches a complete inverse of the precept that is taught to us from the Anti-Nephi-Lehis.

Can someone please help me to reconcile between the precepts taught here? 🙏

Thank you. God bless. And all glory to God ✝️ 🕊 ☯️

Good job Scripture Central!

I am far more inclined to believe Joseph Smith was an extremely talented fiction author before I’ll believe he is a prophet of God. Why? Because God does not contradict Himself, and Smith contradicts the Bible

The visual is fantastic. It really helped me visualize the different topics and writing style.