P
ParkerD
Guest
Since one of the discussion points in several recent threads is the writing of Solomon Spaulding, any serious student of the question of Book of Mormon authorship would of course compare the available texts in all the literary comparisons that normal scholarship entails.
When scholars try to discover if William Shakespeare was really the author of the plays and sonnets that have his name on them, for example, they will look for other writing of the period that are representative of possible authors since one of the sonnets hinted that the real “Shakespeare” may have been submitting his work through the use of that name because he wanted to keep his real name hidden. When scholars do that, they find “word prints” that show similar word usage, ideas, style, syntax, literary complexity, use of metaphorical language and other literary devices, apparent historical knowledge of the author, and so forth.
For anyone to have seriously taken that approach when taking any proposed “author” of the Book of Mormon and come up with the name of “Solomon Spaulding” or “Sidney Rigdon” or “Oliver Cowdery” to be the author, shows merely that that person making that supposition has not the slightest ability to make the kind of literary “word print” comparison that a serious scholar makes.
There is no comparable literary work in existence–not one, when one takes the whole scope of the Book of Mormon and does a fair and thorough comparison.
If someone is so bent on trying to disprove that the Book of Mormon was written through divine help, then if that person is being sincere within themselves they ought to take out some paper and start writing a book and see how easy it is to be authentic and have the same literary complexity and show different authors’ distinctive stylistics. (Let them use the Bible, fine, to add what they suppose “Joseph Smith added to the text” to show that the Biblical texts were known as sources for study by the Nephite prophets, and were loved by those prophets, but they will need to add other source prophetic texts that were at one time in Jerusalem and that are not in the Bible since the Book of Mormon does that.)
Anyone who tries to do that will soon find that realistically, they are in way over their head, particularly since they wouldn’t be able to use a computer or the internet and say that they have produced a manuscript that replicates in stylistics, word usage, literary complexity, and multiple authorship “word prints”–what Joseph Smith or the supposed “hidden author” did.
If anyone is going to take issue with the above and thinks I ought to respond to other questions raised here, then the only reason I will respond is if they show they have successfully done that with several paragraphs of their own writing, and present those paragraphs to show their work and how it matches the content and complexity of the Book of Mormon. And I’m not talking just putting together a few “it came to pass” sentences. They would at least need to show they have successfully authenticated their own version of a “tree of life” dream, and many sentences with real gospel “meat” in them–not to mention showing flashbacks and different authors’ distinctive writing styles.
Peace to you, readers. Have a good Sunday.
When scholars try to discover if William Shakespeare was really the author of the plays and sonnets that have his name on them, for example, they will look for other writing of the period that are representative of possible authors since one of the sonnets hinted that the real “Shakespeare” may have been submitting his work through the use of that name because he wanted to keep his real name hidden. When scholars do that, they find “word prints” that show similar word usage, ideas, style, syntax, literary complexity, use of metaphorical language and other literary devices, apparent historical knowledge of the author, and so forth.
For anyone to have seriously taken that approach when taking any proposed “author” of the Book of Mormon and come up with the name of “Solomon Spaulding” or “Sidney Rigdon” or “Oliver Cowdery” to be the author, shows merely that that person making that supposition has not the slightest ability to make the kind of literary “word print” comparison that a serious scholar makes.
There is no comparable literary work in existence–not one, when one takes the whole scope of the Book of Mormon and does a fair and thorough comparison.
If someone is so bent on trying to disprove that the Book of Mormon was written through divine help, then if that person is being sincere within themselves they ought to take out some paper and start writing a book and see how easy it is to be authentic and have the same literary complexity and show different authors’ distinctive stylistics. (Let them use the Bible, fine, to add what they suppose “Joseph Smith added to the text” to show that the Biblical texts were known as sources for study by the Nephite prophets, and were loved by those prophets, but they will need to add other source prophetic texts that were at one time in Jerusalem and that are not in the Bible since the Book of Mormon does that.)
Anyone who tries to do that will soon find that realistically, they are in way over their head, particularly since they wouldn’t be able to use a computer or the internet and say that they have produced a manuscript that replicates in stylistics, word usage, literary complexity, and multiple authorship “word prints”–what Joseph Smith or the supposed “hidden author” did.
If anyone is going to take issue with the above and thinks I ought to respond to other questions raised here, then the only reason I will respond is if they show they have successfully done that with several paragraphs of their own writing, and present those paragraphs to show their work and how it matches the content and complexity of the Book of Mormon. And I’m not talking just putting together a few “it came to pass” sentences. They would at least need to show they have successfully authenticated their own version of a “tree of life” dream, and many sentences with real gospel “meat” in them–not to mention showing flashbacks and different authors’ distinctive writing styles.
Peace to you, readers. Have a good Sunday.
