The Pseudo-Biblical Texts Examined

The four pseudo-biblical texts examined for this study have been chosen based on frequent comparison to the Book of Mormon and/or being prominent, worthy specimens of the genus. The four texts include John Leacock’s The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times (1774–1775), Richard Snowden’s The American Revolution (1793), Michael Linning’s The First Book of Napoleon (1809), and Gilbert Hunt’s The Late War (1816). These four pseudo-biblical texts are freely available in the WordCruncher library.

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Summary of Findings

Areas addressed in this study have included the following items of linguistic usage: agentive of and by, lest syntax, personal that, which, and who(m), periphrastic did, obsolete more–part phraseology, pluperfect had spake, the {-th} plural, and patterns of verbal complementation governed by the verbs cause, command, desire, make, and suffer (also the adjective desirous). Here is a summary of the comparative grammatical findings:

Agentive of and by: The Book of Mormon is broadly archaic in this regard, approaching King James levels; pseudo-biblical writings have little agentive of usage.

Lest syntax: The overall Book of Mormon pattern is not biblical, pseudo-biblical, or modern; shall is used as a modal auxiliary more than a dozen times and there is rare, mixed should/shall use; the entire King James Bible has only one passage with shall (three instances) and no mixed should/shall use; pseudo-biblical writings do not have any examples with shall.

Relative–pronoun usage with personal antecedents: The Book of Mormon’s overall personal relative-pronoun usage pattern is not biblical, pseudo-biblical, or modern; this solid authorship marker argues strongly against Joseph Smith wording the earliest text.

Periphrastic did: Joseph Smith was unlikely to have produced the ubiquitous past-tense syntax of the Book of Mormon; its high rate and syntactic distribution are 16th-century in character, not pseudo-biblical or biblical.

More–part phraseology: Book of Mormon usage is similar to what we see in several writings of the first half of the early modern era; we don’t find this obsolete phrase in pseudo-biblical writings; scant King James usage left no impression on them in this regard.

Had (been) spake: This leveled past-participial form is absent from the King James Bible and pseudo-biblical writings; the Book of Mormon’s use of “had been spake” and “of which hath been spoken” — rare and very uncommon usage of the 17th century, respectively — strongly suggest that the 12 instances of had spake in the earliest text are best classified as Early Modern English morphosyntax.

The {-th} plural: The Book of Mormon provides a nearly complete view of the diverse possibilities of {-th} inflection in earlier English; neither the King James Bible nor pseudo biblical writings do.

Verbal complementation: One cannot generate the Book of Mormon’s heavy finite complementation rates from biblical, pseudo-biblical, or modern syntactic patterns; only deep knowledge of Early Modern English possibilities generates its archaic auxiliary usage, heavy doses of ditransitive syntax, and principled variation.

The above comparative linguistic evidence indicates that the Book of Mormon was not fashioned in the image of pseudo-biblical writings, or in the image of the King James Bible, or in the image of Joseph Smith’s own language. Nevertheless, Book of Mormon language contains a wealth of archaic forms and structures. This runs counter to the received view of many commentators who have imagined it to be a flawed imitation of biblical language. A variety of substantive linguistic evidence argues that Book of Mormon grammar is deeply and broadly archaic and very different, in one case after another, from both pseudo-biblical grammar and King James style. Many more types of syntax could be given, but the above is sufficient to dismiss the view that pseudo-biblical writings approach the Book of Mormon in archaic form and structure. Those who espouse such a view have ignored crucial syntactic and morphosyntactic evidence.

Biblical Hypercorrection

It is often possible to come up with creative links between Book of Mormon and King James usage. It would be no problem for me to do so in many instances. However, if biblical hypercorrection is properly constrained to cases of actual biblical usage, then it ultimately lacks explanatory value vis-à-vis Book of Mormon grammar, as it fails to explain many individual cases and plenty of systematic usage. In the following list, I mention a few of the issues beyond a lack of pseudo biblical support (which is generally the case):

Agentive of and by: This is a potential case of considerable biblical influence rather than hypercorrection. Joseph Smith outperformed the four pseudo-biblical authors in this domain.

Lest syntax: The Book of Mormon’s heavy lest–shall usage is a candidate for biblical hypercorrection, but there is mixed should/shall use to account for. If this is a hypercorrection, then Joseph was successful in noticing and expanding on rare biblical usage and matching rare Early Modern English variation.

Relative–pronoun usage with personal antecedents: If one views the Book of Mormon’s heavy personal which usage as a biblical hypercorrection, then one must (1) ignore the more likely hypercorrection of personal that, (2) accept Joseph being able to dictate about 1,000 times against subconscious preferences, (3) disregard correspondence with some less-[Page 229]common Early Modern English usage, and (4) dismiss counterevidence from Joseph’s 1832 History, which has archaizing elements in it.

Periphrastic did: Bowen views this as a biblical hypercorrection. Things to be explained are the Book of Mormon’s possibly unmatched rate of did infinitive adjacency (in the 19th century) and the good correlation with individual verb tendencies of the early modern period, as discoverable in the EEBO database.

More–part phraseology: The case for biblical hypercorrection must be weighed against Book of Mormon usage of “the more parts of his gospel,” “the more parts of the Nephites,” and “a more part of it.” Joseph was successful in consistently modifying the phraseology against rare biblical usage as well as matching rare Early Modern English variants.

Had (been) spake: There is no direct biblical support for this morphosyntax: the King James Bible doesn’t employ leveled past participles (although the American pseudo biblical authors do occasionally, with other verbs). As a result, it’s a stretch to say that the use of past-tense spake as a past participle is a biblical hypercorrection.

The {-th} plural: There is partial pseudo-biblical support but virtually no biblical support (a handful of potential cases that are less than clear). The case for biblical hypercorrection is weakened by, among other things, the Book of Mormon’s high usage rate compared with that of the 18th-century pseudo-biblical texts and its non-biblical use of {-th} forms with plural pronouns, as occurred in earlier English.

Verbal complementation: Biblical hypercorrection cannot explain several features of the Book of Mormon’s extended cause syntax without recourse to analogy, and there is no biblical precedent for the ditransitive causative with a repeated it. In addition, there are quite a few grammatical features and patterns associated with the other four verbs that lack a direct biblical connection. Finally, the Book of Mormon’s finite complementation rates with four of these verbs are drastically different from biblical and pseudo biblical rates.

If one decides to view Book of Mormon grammar as a case of biblical hypercorrection, then one must have a liberal interpretation of hypercorrection in order to place so much extra-biblical Early Modern English usage under this umbrella. An analyst must be quite creative to argue that Joseph could have produced all the archaic grammar.

The pseudo-biblical texts indicate that each of the following Book of Mormon features was unlikely to have been produced by Joseph Smith: robust agentive of, lest–shall syntax, heavy personal which, high rates of did–infinitive adjacency, indefinite and plural more-part phraseology, “had been spake” and “of which hath been spoken,” diverse {-th} plural usage, and syntactically rich verbal complementation. The multiplication of unlikely features is a textual scenario that was extremely unlikely for Joseph to produce. In every case listed above, and in many others not discussed here, he outperformed the pseudo-biblical authors in generating archaisms of earlier English, both biblical and non-biblical.

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Conclusion

This data-driven study has provided substantial linguistic evidence against the view that at least one pseudo-biblical writing — usually thought to be Gilbert J. Hunt’s The Late War — had a noticeable influence on the composition of the Book of Mormon. Ultimately, I find this position to be indefensible because of a large amount of contradictory descriptive linguistic data of the kind that has high probative value. Relevant (morpho)syntactic analysis tells us that the form and structure of the Book of Mormon could not have been produced from a knowledge of pseudo-biblical writings, or for that matter from a knowledge of only late modern English and biblical English. As a result, even if Joseph had grown up reading and re-reading The Late War, it would not have given him the ability to produce Book of Mormon grammar. That required extensive knowledge of a wide range of extra-biblical earlier English, mostly 16th- and 17th-century in character, but also including usage from before and after the early modern period.

In a nutshell, the Book of Mormon text exhibits high levels of archaic (morpho)syntax; the pseudo-biblical texts exhibit much lower levels of archaic (morpho)syntax.

A sufficient and accurate knowledge of the form and structure of the earliest text of the Book of Mormon reveals that The Late War pales in comparison with the Book of Mormon in terms of archaic usage. In fact, the other three pseudo-biblical texts are more archaic than Hunt’s text in many different linguistic domains. In view of these linguistic facts, had Joseph created literature like The Late War, or had this pseudo-biblical writing or another comparable text taught Joseph how to fashion older, biblical language (or influenced his dictation to scribes, etc.), the form of the earliest text of the Book of Mormon would be very different. It would be both more biblical and more modern in character, as we find is the case with the four pseudo-biblical writings considered in this study.

Because the Book of Mormon has so much extra-biblical vocabulary and syntax, its usage cannot be classified as a biblical–dialectal mixture either. Furthermore, there is plenty of “bad grammar” not attributable to Joseph Smith. In addition, as shown in a recent paper, Joseph’s 1832 History is different syntactically from the earliest text in three important ways.71 Moreover, the suspect verb agreement and forms that have led LDS scholars to attribute the language to Joseph for so many years have turned out to be a good fit with some language of the early modern period. Newly available digital databases make this clear. Because we now have a critical text and searchable databases of earlier English, the Book of Mormon can be shown to be genuinely archaic. Although these facts may clash with favored ideologies, the view that the Book of Mormon is, in its form and structure, a “clumsy parody of the King James Bible” no longer holds up to scrutiny.