Oh Say What Is Truth

I wrote the following letter to my dad 13 years ago. I have edited it very slightly because of changes in my beliefs regarding one detail, but I find it inspiring to see what I believed.

2 July, 2001

Dear Dad,

I found your letter this morning. It must have come on Saturday. It was a good way to start my day. I’ve been thinking about the question of the man from the state penitentiary. How can I love truth when my personal truth is so ugly? I know he asked it in a slightly different way, but I think it is nearly the same question. I have always felt something in me thrill when the scriptures or the hymns or the prophets speak about truth. A couple of years ago I wanted to write a poem about truth. I wanted to write something beautiful and powerful like “Oh Say, What Is Truth?” or Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” I didn’t succeed, but I had a few thoughts about truth in the process that I will share.

I am about to give a definition of truth that does not apply every time the word is used. I’m going to define it as I think it is often intended scripturally, and as I think it is used ideally in the understanding of science. As Poincare’ says, they are not really different. Since at times I will deviate from things we know to things I think, I will italicize truth when I am formulating my definition and I will leave the normal text when I am quoting someone else or presenting another definition.

Although I don’t understand all truth, I have decided that truth is not simply the collection of all facts. I think this is made clear in the scriptures: “Thou desirest truth in the inward parts” (Ps. 51:6). “Buy truth and sell it not” (Prov. 23:23). “but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord” (Jer. 9:3). These are not just talking about desiring or living by facts. We hear of men “ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 3:7). Truth must be something different than a list of facts.

More explicitly we have truth tied to Jesus Christ: “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). “He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (John 3:21). “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). We know that charity, the pure love of Christ, “rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6).

We know that truth and light are related: “he that receiveth the word [of truth] by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth[.] Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together. And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness. That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. And again, verily I say unto you, and I say it that you may know the truth, that you may chase darkness from among you. . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 50:21-25). Then we have the direct statement, “whatsoever is truth is light” (D&C 84:45).

Last of all we know that “truth abideth and hath no end” (D&C 88:66). “The truth of the Lord endureth forever” (Psalms 117:2). “Truth abideth forever and ever” (D&C 1:39).

Now I come to my thoughts and interpretation, and perhaps it is the wisdom of a man mingled with scripture, but I hope that it is true. If truth is light then works of darkness are not true however real they may be. Secret combinations are real, men conspire to destroy other men, men take facts and then claim they are true. They say that antisocial tendencies are genetic, they say that it is in man’s nature to help himself at the expense of others, they say that violence in the media doesn’t make everyone act violently, they say that people are cruel to each other, they say that their bodies are their own and no one else has a right to control them in any way. They say this is just how it is and by implication how it should be. Each of these things is a fact, but none of them are true. None of them add light to the world but only increase the darkness of confusion and suspicion.

What about abiding forever? Evil will be done away. Satan and his followers will be sent where they can never again influence men. All secret works will be revealed. Men will no longer be able to abuse their children. They will no longer be able to hurt one another. They will no longer be able to hurt the earth. After this time of testing, the earth will be cleansed and power to do harm will be taken from all who still desire to hurt another being or creation. The earth will be perfect and there will be no more floods, no more earthquakes, no more tornadoes, no more hurricanes, no more fires, no more famine. Our bodies will be immortal, there will be no more disease, no more crippling injuries, no more mental retardation or mis-function, no more pain of any kind. All of the things I have just listed are facts. Evil, cruelty, sin, abuse, natural disasters, sickness, and pain are all very real. But they are not true. They will not abide forever. They will not endure.

Jacob taught us: “I know that the words of truth are hard against all uncleanness; but the righteous fear them not, for they love the truth and are not shaken” (2 Nephi 9:40). Who are the righteous that Jacob speaks of? I don’t think they are perfect people, or even people who have only committed “small” sins. I don’t think these are people who have only lived normal lives with loving families and helpful people around them, with enough food to eat and friends they can trust, who have only hurt people in little ways and have always served in church. I believe the righteous that Jacob speaks of are the people who want to live according to the truth. Loving the truth will not take away the pain of disease. Loving the truth will not save your family from losing its home to an earthquake. Loving the truth will not take away the pain you have caused by lying to your friend. Loving the truth will not make it easier for a man who is genetically an alcoholic or a homosexual or a kleptomaniac or shy or dyslexic to overcome the trials he faces. None of these realities, none of these facts, will disappear just because we love truth. I believe the wicked are those who want to keep the darkness in their lives, and the righteous are those who want to fill their lives with light. The righteous will still experience the pain caused by their dark acts, but they will turn towards the light and not continue forever in the dark.

As a young boy Joseph Smith asked, “If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?” (Joseph Smith History 1:10). Later he revealed “There are many. . . who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it” (D&C 123:12). As I said before, I don’t know all truth, but here is something true I read this morning:

Mosiah 15:8-12

v. 8 And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory

over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of

men--

v. 9 Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled

with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and

justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity

and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of

justice.

v. 10 And now I say unto you, who shall declare his generation? Behold, I

say unto you, that when his soul has been made an offering for sin he shall

see his seed. And now what say ye? And who shall be his seed?

v. 11 Behold I say unto you, that whosoever has heard the words of the

prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the

coming of the Lord--I say unto you, that all those who have hearkened unto

their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have

looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins, I say unto you,

that these are his seed, or they are heirs of the kingdom of God.

v. 12 For these are they whose sins he has borne; these are they for whom he

has died, to redeem them from their transgressions. And now, are they not

his seed?

All of the facts of our pain in this life, all of the reality of our sins and the suffering we have caused others will be wiped away eventually. They will not abide forever. God will remember our sins no more. We will remember our pains no more. These things are true. These are the truths we must live for and never fear. We know it was said of the sons of Helaman: “They were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted” (Alma 53:20). This is what I want to become.

I suspect you have probably thought much of this already, but I think truth is beautiful and I am glad you asked me to share some of my feelings about it with you. I love you. I hope that these thoughts can help.

Love, Jonathan

Oh say, what is truth? ‘Tis the fairest gem

That the riches of worlds can produce,

And priceless the value of truth will be when

The proud monarch’s costliest diadem

Is counted but dross and refuse.

Yes, say, what is truth? ‘Tis the brightest prize

To which mortals or Gods can aspire.

Go search in the depths where it glittering lies,

Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies;

‘Tis an aim for the noblest desire.

The sceptre may fall form the despot’s grasp

When with winds of stern justice he copes.

But the pillar of truth will endure to the last,

And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast,

And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.

Then say, what is truth? ‘Tis the last and the first,

For the limits of time it steps o’er.

Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst,

Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,

Eternal, unchanged, evermore.

Book of Mormon historicity favors progressive ideals

I am a stronger believer than I was, even as a young, indoctrinated teenager, that the Book of Mormon was written by real life, historical people who actually saw and did what they said they did. However, anyone who reads some of my past blog posts, sees some of my more private online conversations, or talks with me about Mormonism for long, will realize that I hold many views that don't line up with typical teenage indoctrination among Latter-day Saints. I spend a fair amount of intellectual time and energy around more liberal or progressive (or cultural) Mormons, although I tend to tune out those focused on being critical of the LDS church. Most of these people recognize problems with understanding what Joseph Smith actually meant by 'translating', and examine pronouncements given with prophetic authority very critically. A common (but not universal) sentiment among them is that the Book of Mormon is valuable simply because we, as the readers, find moral value in it. It has shaped our lives and history whether or not it is truly a historical record. I think they are largely correct. A number go so far as to say they don't believe it is a historical record, and that trying to demonstrate Book of Mormon historicity is a waste of time and a losing battle. I think progressive Mormons are hurting their efforts to shape the future of the church by rejecting Book of Mormon historicity. Instead, they should embrace it and push the idea that the Book of Mormon is truly an ancient historical document. Here are some reasons.

Skip these reasons--I'm venting

First, and perhaps least important, it's not a losing battle. Reasons against believing historicity are completely based on subjective arguments or the absence of evidence, every one of which is undermined by closer readings of the Book of Mormon text or by positive evidences from culture history (archaeology plus other stuff; for easily accessible examples see here). I think critics of historicity will find their resistance to it mildly embarrassing in 50 years. That's me being an uninspired prophet, so we won't dwell on it.

Second, Joseph Smith taught so much stuff that can be used to promote progressive ideals, and it is much easier to justify Joseph Smith as a prophet--and thus someone worth listening to--if he wasn't just imagining that he was translating a historical work. I think this is an important point, but it is highly debatable and won't be discussed here.

Historicity Empowers

Third, scholars who accept Book of Mormon historicity bring in information from many scholarly disciplines. This places limits on the Book of Mormon, turning the game of choosing the best interpretations from a superficial, mystical exercise shaped solely by our 21st (or 20th, or 19th) century views, into an endeavor potentially shaped by the best advances in the scholarship of cultural history, literary theory, etc. This changes the entire discourse around what the Book of Mormon teaches. I want to outline a few ways this favors progressive ideals.

Historicity Empowers Scholarship

Believing the Book of Mormon was written by historical figures--people we can potentially learn about through the study of cultural history--effectively weakens the absolute interpretive control of the religious hierarchy. I believe this control is more culturally assumed than doctrinal, anyway, and that many prophets don't feel it is their job to give absolute interpretations of scripture. Many prophets think we should all be doing it ourselves, and have said as much, although others would restrict personal interpretation more. But accepting the text as belonging in a particular historical and cultural context gives anyone who develops expertise in that history an added authority in scriptural interpretation regardless of their ecclesiastical position. Scholarly experts have more sway in how we understand scripture, and the door is opened for science to influence Mormonism a little more.

Allowing science to encroach upon a religious text will have serious consequences and will meet with a lot of resistance, but it will likely have a similar effect to Biblical scholarship. There will be fundamentalist Mormons who resist the liberalized understanding, seeing it as eroding moral values, but there are few mainstream Christian churches which don't recognize many of the difficulties with literal interpretation of the Bible. I'm unaware of any that still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, although some still seek to justify a global flood. The same will happen with Mormonism. It will take a generation for each significant shift, but changes will happen, and they will happen in the direction of supporting measurable truths.

Historicity Witnesses for Christ

In contrast to the effect of Biblical scholarship causing many students to doubt the divinity and resurrection of Christ, embracing the Book of Mormon as historical has the opposite effect. Whatever biases its authors may have had, the Book of Mormon is a witness of the risen Christ. Biases don't eliminate the lived experiences of thousands, and the transmission of those experiences is much less convoluted than for the Bible. People who saw Christ wrote about it. Mormon had their writings. Joseph Smith translated those writings. Three steps with no gap of a generation or two between the events and their recording. In addition, it's difficult to argue away the Sermon on the Mount as a collection of wisdom sayings. It comes from Christ in its full force with its injunctions to love your enemies and do good to them that hurt you.

Historicity Empowers Moral Responsibility

If the Book of Mormon is historical, ancient prophets are as human as modern ones, with all of their biases and limitations of knowledge and experience. This gives greater justification for the serious care progressive Mormons give to listening to modern prophets and then carefully examining what they teach. It gives greater strength to the claim that we should claim responsibility for our own moral choices, and not simply rely on anyone else. Instead of having to convince Latter-day Saints that the Book of Mormon shouldn't be read historically, you only need to convince them to read it more literally. To read the subtext illuminated by faithful, church sponsored, Book of Mormon scholars. Nephi got the history right--from his own perspective. When we insist he got it right from all perspectives, we become vulnerable to outside (and inside, for that matter) critics who would show that the Book of Mormon is a hoax perpetrated by Joseph Smith. Mormon compiled the Book of Mormon from the perspective of a lifelong soldier fighting an overwhelmingly losing battle. Thank goodness he and Moroni had visions of the future, or this could be an irredeemably morbid text. When we limit the Book of Mormon to this more human (not completely human) dimension, as the scholars of the Maxwell Institute (and Sunstone and Dialogue) regularly do, then our claims are more defensible--and lots of faithful members like defensible claims (some examples). Show these members how making more modest, careful, historical claims about the Book of Mormon strengthens it against attack and props it up in its most important role--testifying of Christ--and they will begin to think and talk in more modest, careful ways. They will begin to give up a degree of scriptural inerrancy and prophetic hero worship because they will see how liberalizing these beliefs strengthens their testimony of Christ.

Those are some of my reasons. For progressive or cultural Mormons who want to stay in the LDS church, I think you are shooting yourselves in the foot to fight against Book of Mormon historicity. You should be embracing it to give you greater hope for the future of the LDS church, greater power to shape that future, and greater hope in the resurrection.

(Nephi != Alma) && != Joseph Smith

We've looked at all of the later studies, found some good things and some bad things about them, but we've consistently seen evidence supportive of multiple authorship for the Book of Mormon. Supposedly since the later studies were later, they should have built upon and improved upon the earlier studies, giving us new information. Unfortunately, neither Holmes nor Jockers et al. did enough controls to adequately interpret their data, since both assumed a priori that authorship was 19th century. Schaalje and Fields targeted their studies to a broader academic audience and resisted making any claims about Book of Mormon authorship beyond its not being from the proposed 19th century authors. So if we want to conclude anything about the authors who did write the Book of Mormon, we have to go back to the papers published primarily for an LDS audience. Here is the later of those:

On Verifying Wordprint Studies: Book of Mormon Authorship
John L. Hilton
http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1099&index=12

I'm still working on acquiring the paper that justifies the details of the methods employed here, but having read other books and papers on stylometry I'm quite confident that the methods are solid. So here's the summary:

1. Use blocks of 5000 words. This is a substantial sample size, but not too large. Many papers refer to sizes of 2,000-6,000 words being sufficient or ideal for authorship identification. Holmes used 10,000 words for vocabulary richness.
2. Use pairs of non-contextual words because such word pairs are known to be sensitive measures of authorship and very difficult to imitate, even for skilled authors.
3. Choose texts of the same genre. Genre shifts have the biggest influence on contextual words, but also influence non-contextual word patterns in some cases. Just to be safe Hilton focused on didactic religious writings.
4. Do lots of controls. Make 325 pairwise comparisons of 26 texts by 9 authors. Determine how many of the stylometric features agree and how many disagree between each pair of texts.
5. Compare works translated into English all by the same translator, and also compare them with original works written by the translator.
6. Once you know what your method can and can't tell you, apply it to texts in the Book of Mormon and by 19th century proposed authors.

The results follow. First is this figure showing the 325 control comparisons:

What this shows is a simple count of how many of the 40-47 stylometric features capable of comparison between each pair of texts don't match. If a stylometric feature doesn't match it is called a "rejection" and counted. The black bars are comparisons between works by the same author. The grey bars compare works by different authors. First note the overlap between the grey bars and the black bars. You are seeing that texts by the same author can be a little different in their stylometric features, averaging statistically significant differences in 2-3 features. Also, texts by different authors can be stylometrically similar, with as few as one or two rejections in unusual cases. This means we can only be completely confident that two texts are by the same author if there are zero rejections. But if there are more than seven rejections it is nearly certain that the two texts are written by different authors. This means that Hilton's methods aren't all that great at telling us if texts are by the same author (although they probably aren't worse than other methods if there is a closed-set of candidates). Fortunately, we can test several Book of Mormon authorship hypotheses by figuring out who didn't write it. Once you have identified 7 statistically significant differences between stylometric features, there isn't a single case of the two texts having been written by the same author. In fact, if there are 7 or more differences, the chance that the texts were written by the same author is much less than 1%.

Only two authors in the Book of Mormon wrote 10,000 or more words in the same genre--Nephi and Alma. The Book of Mormon attributes to each approximately 15,000 words of didactic religious writing, allowing for three, pairwise comparisons of blocks of text for each author.

None of the comparisons agreed in all of the stylometric features (black bars), so it's remotely possible that a single author didn't write all the words attributed to Nephi, and that Alma didn't write all of his words, either, but none of the pairs differ in more than five features, and the distribution parallels the distribution of rejections consistent with single authorship for each set of texts. More interesting are the nine, between author comparisons.

Notice in this graph that four of the nine comparisons show 7 to 10 rejections. This is as good as certainty that the writings of Nephi and Alma were at least two separate authors. Remember, that while Holmes criticized this work, his data also show Nephi and Alma as distinct. Jockers et al. identified a stronger signal for Rigdon in 1st Nephi and a signal for Spalding in Alma, again confirming multiple authorship styles, even if the data don't really support the Rigdon-Spalding hypothesis. That's three independent groups identifying Nephi and Alma as different authors, with Schaalje and Fields refraining from comment.

Unfortunately, as regards the ability of a translator to maintain different styles for the translated authors, we are for the moment left to believe the reports that stylometric features can survive translation. This is supported by a study in stylometric obfuscation (related studies can be found at https://psal.cs.drexel.edu/index.php/Main_Page). Some have argued that certain stylometric features measured by Hilton and others would not have existed in the original reformed Egyptian or Hebrew. It is worth noting that the automated translation in the linked study went from English to German to Japanese and back to English. Despite these changes through grammatically distinct languages, many stylometric features survived the process in tact.

This final table summarizes the 19th Century author and Nephi/Alma data.

While there may be a little question as to whether Nephi is like Nephi, it is very clear that Nephi is not Alma, Smith, Cowdery, and especially not Spaulding. It's remotely possible that Alma is not like Alma, but it is statistically indisputable that Alma is not Nephi, Smith, Cowdery, or Spalding. It is unfortunate in some respects that Rigdon was not included here, but the work of Schaalje and Fields remedied that oversight, as we saw previously.

Summing it up

Nephi is not Alma is not Joseph Smith is not Oliver Cowdery is not Solomon Spaulding. The data of every study we have examined thus far either supports these conclusions or does not contradict them. This is true with various statistical methods and three different types of stylometric features: non-contextual words (Jockers et al.), vocabulary richness (Holmes), non-contextual word pairs (Hilton), and all three combined (Schaalje and Fields).

Hilton did continue to look for an author who could change his style to fool stylometry, and we will look at how William Faulkner succeeded and Mark Twain and Robert Heinlein both failed in another post.

Literary Detection: Part 2

Oversimplifying the Complex

Regarding the authorship of the Homeric poems, A. Q. Morton wrote:

“. . . his role is not that of the composer but, at least in part, that of the compiler. The role of the compiler, as of the modern editor, can range from literally using scissors and paste to make a narrative from fragments of other sources without adding one word of original composition, to the other extreme of taking material and completely digesting it so that even when the source is known and exists separately the version included in the compilation cannot be distinguished from an original composition of the redactor. . . . “Between these extremes of altering nothing or transforming everything, there lies a complete spectrum. . . . So before anyone can ask the question, Did Homer create the Iliad and/or the Odyssey? must come a preliminary question--Who do you define Homer to be?” p. 159

Questions of style changes due to author/editor/scribe interactions is immensely relevant to Book of Mormon stylometry. Instead of asking who we define Homer to be, we are faced with defining, Who wrote the Book of Mormon? Just Joseph Smith doesn't match the stylometric evidence. Scribes can't explain differences within the Book of Mormon, but can they explain differences between the Book of Mormon, Joseph's personal writings, and other LDS scripture? If we accept the Book of Mormon's own narrative, how did scribes and abridgements affect the style? The questions for Homer are very relevant, although the answers are quite different.

In discussing authorship of the Illiad and the Odyssey, Morton illustrates how the mode of composition can constrain stylometric features so that two authors appear to be the same in some features simply because they are using the same mode of composition (e.g. iambic pentameter, listing ships and armies, etc.). This observation strengthens the assertion that Book of Mormon language appears 19th century because Joseph was dictating with pseudo-biblical language. It also suggests an explanation for why the war chapters would have so many superficial similarities with a book on the war of 1812 written imitating the same biblical style. Certain features are going to match. Discovering that they do is not a grand revelation, but a confirmation of what would have been predicted from earlier stylometric studies.

But getting back to Morton's conclusion regarding the Homeric poems: Statistically there is not evidence of multiple authorship for the majority of the books in the Homeric poems. There are two exceptions. The first (Iliad Book 2) is a list of ships and armies involved in the war, and is believed to predate Homer. The second (Iliad Book 11), it is not possible to decide through statistics if it was a later addition or an undigested source.

“It may seem a very negative attitude to take, to say that the problem of authorship and integrity in Homer is unique and so a scientific answer to either question is unlikely to emerge, but this is the case. The poems are composed in a manner quite different from any others which have survived, and without comparable material the differences which are detectable cannot be separated into those due to the mode of composition and those due to a difference in authorship or of origin. The best service which an investigation of this kind may do is to show that many scholars have been too simple-minded in their approach to Homer. The poems contain many more problems than some people have supposed.

“It may well be that one of the oldest arguments, one with some scientific basis, is the best. No one knows what the population of ‘Greece’ in Homer’s day was, but that the country should nourish two geniuses of such stature at much the same time is a coincidence beyond acceptance. Against this can be set the view that the poems have no author, but are the result of generations of accretion and adaptation. Of this hypothesis it can be said that it is a scholar’s dream. It can be endlessly argued but never resolved.” p. 164

From stylometry alone, with minimal reference to content, value, or date of creation, we have a similar choice with the Book of Mormon. Was it translated from the writings of multiple ancient authors with their varied styles preserved, or was it constructed in a matter of months by a genius young man who absorbed and synthesized in some unexplained way ideas from a vast variety of sources and then dictated without revision in several self-consistent authorship styles? If the second hypothesis weren't competing with people's disbelief in Mormonism, there would be no debate between the two.

Jane Austen and the Other Lady 

“. . . the foundations of stylometry are habits shown not to change under the circumstances of the particular problem being investigated.” p. 189

In the 1970s, an unknown writer and great fan of Jane Austen completed a book which Austen had left unfinished. Stylometry was able to clearly distinguish between the portions written by Austen and those written by the "Other Lady". After reading how relatively easily stylometric measurements were fooled through imitation of a different author in the adversarial authorship studies I reviewed, I wondered how stylometry could so confidently distinguish Jane Austen's writing from a skilled writer carefully crafting an imitation. In the adversarial studies, most of the authors were minimally trained (college education, but not typically in writing), and they only had a short time to write the passages. How could they fool stylometry while the "Other Lady" failed? I can identify a few differences:

• The Austen study made absolute comparisons rather than forcing a choice of the closest match. In other words it was an open-set analysis which asked, "Is this passage like Jane Austen or not?" rather than a closed-set analysis which asked, "Which of these five authors is this passage most like?"
• The numbers of words used in the test samples were probably a few thousand words written by the "Other Lady" rather than the 1,000 words written by the imitators in the other study. This meant that fewer meaningful stylometric features could be extracted from the adversarial authorship tests than from the Austen texts. 
• Noncontextual word pairings were analyzed in the Austen study. The automated programs tested in the adversarial authorship study did not use word pairings. 
• The adversarial authorship study selected an author with an unusually distinct prose style from which the untrained imitators extracted obvious traits. The obvious traits included long words and descriptive language (I'm interpreting a little). Word and sentence lengths and vocabulary richness were among the features measured, and all would be affected by such an attempt at imitation. The Austen study did not use such intuitively reproducible features for analysis.

In other words, the adversarial authorship study was in some ways designed to give the imitators the greatest chance of success. They didn’t have to match the target author’s style, they just had to get closer to that style than to their own. They only had to write 1000 words, so stylometric features that might have given them away in 5000 words would not have been an issue. The study employed Method 1: word lengths, letter usage, and punctuation; Method 2: number of different words, lexical density, Gunning-Fog readability index, character count without whitespace, average syllables per word, sentence count, average sentence length, and an alternative readability measure; Method 3: a measure of vocabulary richness. None of these methods employed the noncontextual, function words or word pairings because such pairings typically require larger text sizes to be statistically significant, and they are not as easily automated. The “Other Lady” did match some characteristic punctuation habits and other features, but missed enough noncontextual word pair frequencies to be clearly identified as different.

Imitating Sherlock Holmes

Another example where imitation was distinguishable from the original was in the attempt of two writers and Sherlock Holmes fans to write a new Sherlock Holmes story. Many knowledgeable readers agreed that the two imitators had successfully copied the style of Holmes, yet Morton reports the following results of stylometric examination of the imitation:

“. . . when perpetrating a counterfeit which a number of people well qualified in literary criticism regard as being very like Holmes, neither imitator can reproduce the habits of Holmes which are of value to the stylometrist nor can he apparently suppress his own habits.” p. 193 

It was known from the beginning that the text was an imitation, and even that the first part was written by one author and the second by another. However, noncontextual word pairings easily differentiated the imitators from the original, and were also able to differentiate between the two different imitators. The study was further able to assign the portions of the text to the appropriate imitators through comparison with stories published by one of the imitators. As might be expected, Morton touts the value of careful statistical work and criticizes those who are overconfident in their non-statistical literary analysis--even if they are highly skilled at it:

“It is not what we do not know that causes us to remain ignorant, it is what we assume that we know when we do not know. In the resolution of cases of disputed authorship a feeling for literature is not without value but it comes a long way after a few well chosen experiments.” p. 194

The Book of Mormon Fraud Debate

The Book of Mormon, it seems, falls firmly with the Austen and Holmes studies rather than with the adversarial authorship studies in a number of regards. It is an open-set question, and the LDS researchers have treated it as such. Text sizes are large enough to extract features that appear very hard to imitate, including noncontextual word pairings, and LDS researchers have examined these features and thoroughly reported their results. Additional factors further support our confidence in stylometric findings regarding the Book of Mormon. In many ways it is not unique linguistically. We have examples of hundreds of texts written in the early 19th century using pseudo-biblical language, so we have great potential to control for how using pseudo-biblical language affects shifts in stylometric features. Joanna Southcott failed to produce such a wide range of styles, but the potential is there for a critic to show that stylistic imitation could explain the variety of styles evident in the Book of Mormon. I personally think, based solely on objective stylometric measurements and nothing else, that it's generous to give the chances of authorial fraud at one in a million, but show me statistics that disagree and I will reconsider.

Literary Detection: a Book of Mormon-centric Review

“If the odds for or against some event are prodigious, particularly if they support some conclusions uncongenial to us, then they will only appear to be ludicrous. So there are really two problems and not one. The first is what odds are required to settle the dispute? And the other is what odds will convince the scholar that it has been settled? Rather surprisingly it appears that the first odds may be larger than the second.” A. Q. Morton. Literary Detection: How to prove authorship and fraud in literature and documents. A. Q. Morton. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1978, p. 154.

In trying to understand stylometry, I followed the footnotes back to an early book on the subject. A. Q. Morton wrote a mid-sized book that is an introduction to and a review of stylometry up to the 1970s. He takes time to not only explain stylometry, but to help the reader sort through the statistical methods employed. It's a little less than a thorough explanation of the statistics, and a lot more than a discussion aimed at experts only. While I found many things in the first 2/3 of the book useful, it is the last 1/3 where he explores specific applications of stylometry which really grabbed my attention.

Near the beginning of the section on applications, Morton wrote the sentences I quoted above. He was bemoaning the same fact that so many encounter when the become 'scientifically enlightened' on a subject. Statistics can show something to be true with 95, or 99, or 99.9999999% certainty, and people will still refuse to believe it if "some conclusions are uncongenial to us". 95% certainty, with all the proper controls performed and all variables accounted for, is enough to convince most experts that the dispute is settled, but 99.9999999% certainty may be insufficient to end the dispute if strong sentiment is attached to related conclusions. This discrepancy comes up most strongly in Morton's discussion of authorship of the Pauline Epistles.

Pauline Epistles 

In many ways the Pauline Epistles are good candidates for stylometry. They are composed of ~50,000 words, and they can be compared with epistles on similar topics by other Greek authors of the same time period. As Morton puts it:

“There are numbers of letters from the same period, from earlier and later periods too. The mode of composition and of reproduction is unremarkable. Any claim that the letters might have been based on other sources is stoutly contested.” 

Stylometry studies using these resources conclude that only four (or five) of the epistles share the same stylometric signature. To explain the varieties of style some biblical scholars have followed this tack:

“a special case was made that Paul had used an amanuensis to write down what he wished to say and that this was the cause of the differences. This argument has two fatal defects. The first is the question--If an amanuensis gives us something quite unlike Paul, what right has anyone to call it Paul’s? The second objection is that though amanuenses were commonly employed, only in this case has it to be argued that the use made any difference to the text.” p. 166

The last observation is not quite true, today. As we saw from his 2013 study, Jockers has made the claim that scribal influence on Joseph Smith's writings have made it impossible to identify a uniform style for Joseph, but that the writings are still meaningfully from the Prophet. Of course, if Jockers were correct Biblical scholars would be in a bit of a bind. We would have historical evidence of religious documents all coming from the same author but having multiple distinct styles. Those would continued to claim multiple authorship for Pauline epistles would have lost their objective, statistical evidence for it and would be stuck with their more methodologically driven evidence. Fortunately for them, Jockers's conclusions are contradicted by the results of Holmes, Schaalje, and the other two groups that have measured Joseph Smith's style, and he does have a consistent enough style in his dictated writings to separate it from many authors. But back to Morton and Paul:

“The Pauline letters are Greek prose and every feature of them can be paralleled in Greek prose writing. There is no reason why they should not be treated as a particular example of a general problem, the authorship of Greek prose. Yet this is just what many scholars cannot bring themselves to accept. Their resentment is clear, but it is seldom clear which object it is directed against; it may be that mere human agency and intelligence presumes to measure the word of God, or that the results of such enquiries do not support their own published views. . . . Whatever the source of the animus, the consequences are the same; hypotheses are ridiculed rather than tested, the normal imperfections of publication, printer’s errors and omissions, are blamed on the author, challenges are thrown down but refused when the gauntlet is picked up. In 1965 the Bishop of London wrote a letter to The Times saying he would believe this kind of science only when it was shown that Henry James had stable habits in his range of writings. Evidence of this having been available for more than two years, the Bishop has not been heard from.” p. 166

I'm proud to view the efforts of LDS scholars in this regard. The stylometric gauntlet has been thrown down several times and they have taken it up each time by publishing more and more rigorously controlled analyses of our own historical texts. As to the interesting conclusions of Morton regarding the Pauline epistles, he concludes that stylometry supports the view that four epistles (Romans, I and II Corinthians, and Galatians) are by a single author. Philemon is too short to say anything about. Other epistles appear to be stylistically different necessitating other explanations of their origins than purely Pauline. Referring not only to the stylometric evidence, but to a larger sum of evidence:

“The weight of evidence accumulated about the authorship of the Pauline epistles is impressive. So far, attempts to counter it have involved special pleading, but each piece of such pleading further complicates the simplicity which alone would commend the traditional position. If you assume all fourteen letters are by Paul and any difference must have an explanation which shows that special circumstances applied to modify the pure Paul, then you are really in the same position as the Ptolemaic astronomers who argued that all the planets followed the sun round the earth. Every discrepancy needed another complication to be added to the theory, until it collapsed under its own weight and it was at last conceded that the sun was the centre of the system and not the earth. . . . The most salutary experience for the advocates of such refinements is to look at the historical records and see what has been attributed to Paul and why. They might well begin with the museum in Tarsus which showed the boots in which Paul walked the Mediterranean world or the Italian village which had on display both skulls of the Apostle, one as a man and the other as a boy. Many traditions last a long time for reasons other than verity.” p 183

So biblical authorship is a complicated mess. Clear origins are lost to history, and available evidence makes clear that they are more complicated than the traditional story. While I enjoy Morton's poke at the superstition and stupidity that can accompany religious belief, I don't find these observations so simple to apply to Book of Mormon origins, and such belittling tends to polarize emotions more than is useful. For example, one set of arguments points out apparent 19th century influences on the Book of Mormon, emphasizes the supernatural elements of Joseph Smith's story, and eventually implies that we historical believers are superstitious fools who haven't faced the hard evidence (even if they refrain from saying as much). I, on the other hand, see apparent ancient elements in the Book of Mormon and take Joseph Smith's story seriously as it applies directly to the text. I thus eliminate the seemingly supernatural from the equation, since no one can test if Joseph Smith saw an angel, and no one can go back and see what Joseph Smith was seeing with his head in a hat as he dictated. What we can examine is his claims that the Book of Mormon is a translation, that it was written by multiple authors, and that it plausibly captures views of ancient life rather than Joseph Smith's (or his supposed 19th century sources) imaginations stemming from 19th century life and understandings.

Another Book of Mormon Challenge

Stylometry has answered the second of these questions. Every study has shown multiple authorship, including the critical ones that weren't trying to. They didn't calculate the probabilities of different numbers of authors because they were committed from the outset to limiting authorship to Joseph Smith or to a few of his contemporaries, but they supported multiple authorship nonetheless. An insufficiently controlled, informal stylometry study has shown that large numbers of unusual, 19th century, pseudo-biblical phrases are in the Book of Mormon. This observation is superficially easily explained by claiming Joseph Smith plagiarized large portions from early 19th century sources. It is also easily explained by viewing the Book of Mormon as a translation into 19th century, pseudo-biblical language. I suppose it's my turn to throw down the gauntlet for stylometrists who are critical of Joseph's story--statistically show the plagiarism, please. You don't have any historical evidence to show that Joseph copied any book (not even the Bible, and that's clearly in the Book of Mormon). No passage in the Book of Mormon is a direct copy of any of the proposed sources, but rather an intricate, coherent pastiche of at least a dozen unrelated and incoherent sources. Since Joseph didn't copy either the exact words (other than short, disjointed phrases) or exact stories (other than short groupings of significantly modified but sequentially similar events), and he used a single scribe for most of it, and all the scribes wrote his dictation word for word, and we have most of the original manuscript, please explain statistically why there are multiple, distinct authorship styles? Whose styles was Joseph copying? Why was he changing it up? We have statistical and objective evidence that he did. Objectively incorporate it into your story. At least show us other documents where these things have been done, in whole or in part. If it weren't tied up in religious feeling, like the Pauline epistles, I suspect that the question of multiple authorship for the Book of Mormon would be long since resolved. Joseph didn't write it, and no single person did. It is a translation of something into 19th century, pseudo-biblical English. That is what stylometry shows, and it is only the religious (or anti-religious) fervor that keeps most people from accepting it. We are unable or unwilling on all sides of the debate to separate these objective observations from manifold ideological conclusions.

Next time . . .
 
When I continue the review, we will examine Morton's evidence for the difficulty of stylometric fraud in authorship and see how it differs from the later, adversarial authorship studies previously discussed.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Reality Flow Chart (take 2)

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