On the Alleged Similarities between The Late War and the Book of Mormon

From the earliest days of the church, critics have charged Joseph Smith with plagiarism in writing the Book of Mormon. Because these critics assume the text’s naturalistic origin (as opposed to a supernatural or divine origin), and because Joesph Smith was a backwoods rube, or a confidence man—or both—he must have had a source text.  The earliest charge was an alleged dependence on Solomon Spalding’s unpublished manuscript, Manuscript Found, about a group of Roman sailors who landed in America after being blown off course during their journey to Britain. Later, Ethan Smith’s A View of the Hebrews (1823) was proposed as a candidate. To date, no one, including Fawn Brodie and Richard Bushman, has been able to prove that Joseph Smith had access to or read A View of the Hebrews when work on the Book of Mormon began in 1827.  One of the more amusing claims is that Sidney Rigdon wrote the Book of Mormon (based on the Spalding manuscript), which would be quite a feat considering Rigdon didn’t meet Joseph Smith until December 1830, or eight months after the Book of Mormon was published. Rigdon swore to his dying breath that he didn’t write it.

THE LATE WAR

A relative newcomer to the “Book of Mormon Source Text” game is Gilbert Hunt’s 1816 book, The Late War Between the United States and Britain. I was familiar with the allegations that Joseph drew from The Late War, but before this past weekend I had never investigated the specifics. I’m glad I took the time to do just that. It was a really fun study, and I learned a lot of neat things.  So, let’s talk about this alleged source text.

The Late War Between the United States and Britain is a retelling of the War of 1812 in the King James Bible style, complete with chapters breaks, versification and a lot of “it came to pass[es].” Interestingly, the original 1830 Book of Mormon had very few chapters breaks and no versification.  (We can [not] thank Orson Pratt for the current formatting, which in my opinion has had a disastrous effect on the text.) My first question was the title: what does the “late” in The Late War mean? Well, as it turns out, “late” is another way of saying “recent.”  I did a little digging and found a number of books going back to the 1600s with similar titles.  You can substitute “recent” for “late” in the following examples,

• The History of the Late War with the Turks, During the Siege of Vienna, and the Great Victory Obtain’d Against Them, at the Raising the Siege (1684)
• The General History of the Late War, Containing its Rise, Progress and Event, in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. (The Reverend John Entick, 1763, writing about the French and Indian War)
•  The History of the Late War in Germany Between the King of Prussia, and the Empress of Germany and Her Allies (Henry Lloyd, 1781)
• A History of the Commencement, Progress, and Termination of the Late War Between Great Britain and France (John Young, D.D., 1802)

This practice continued well into the 1800s and Hunt wasn’t the only person to use this similar titling in writing about the War of 1812. Other books from the era include,

• The Late War Between the United States and Britain. Containing an Accurate Account of the Most Important Engagements by Sea and Land (J.C. Gilleland, 1818)
• History of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America (David Thompson, 1832)
• History of the Late War Between the United States and Great Britain, Comprising a Minute Account of the Various Military and Naval Operations (H.M. Brackenridge, 1836)

These histories are serious treatises of their titular conflicts. I’m sure great care went into writing and producing them. And to me, it’s surprising just how quickly there were released after the conflicts ended. Hunt’s book was published less than four years after the War of 1812 ended, but what sets his book apart is his motive. He expressly declared his intent in his Bible-inspired retelling of the War of 1812,

“The author having adopted for the model of his style the phraseology of the best books, remarkable for its simplicity and strength, the young pupil will acquire, with the knowledge of reading, a love for the manner in which the great truths of Divine Revelation are conveyed to his understanding, and this will be an inducement to him to study the Holy Scriptures.” (Emphasis added.)

This is an important statement and one that needs to be seriously considered in relation to the Book of Mormon. Hunt is drawing from the rich, literary tradition of the time. I can’t help but see the irony of critics using a book whose author admits to borrowing from established sources while simultaneously criticizing Joseph Smith of borrowing from said book. I view both works as products of the same time period, using the common language of the time. People are products of their culture. Literature is product of its culture. Music, art, and theatre are all products of their culture. Similarities are inevitable.

I then wondered how many copies of The Late War were published and how widely was it dispersed. Could a copy have made it all the way to Joseph Smith in Manchester, NY some 325 miles away?  According to Rick Grunder,

“[The Late War] went through at least sixteen editions or imprints 1816-19, all but two in 1819. All were published in New York City, under a total of ten different publishers’ names…There was no edition in 1818, but in 1819 there appeared no fewer than six separate editions or imprints under the original title and eight more editions or imprints as The Historical Reader. All fourteen of these 1819 publications called themselves the third edition. In five instances that year, both of the titles were published by the same parties, including the author himself. Furthermore, most of the 1819 editions (irrespective of title) seem to have had the same pagination (233 pp., with possible differences in plates and ads). (Emphasis added.)

Grunder adds, “no further editions of this wildly-published textbook appeared” after 1819.  I don’t know if he meant “widely” instead of “wildly,” but in either instance, it doesn’t necessarily mean a large number were printed (though it doesn’t preclude it, either.) Printing was an expensive enterprise. E.B. Grandin secured the rights to print 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon for $3,000, or roughly $100,000 in today’s dollars.  If Gilbert were self-publishing hundreds or thousands of copies, I suspect it would have cost him a considerable sum. Did he have the money to do this? Perhaps we’ll never know. Today there about 160 copies of The Late War in the library system with undoubtedly more in private collections. The church estimates there are only 700 first editions of the Book of Mormon today, or just 14% of the original run. They aren’t perfectably comparable, but these numbers might give us some insight into how many copies of The Late War were in print.

In 1819 Hunt repurposed the third edition of The Late War for schools, writing,

 “The reception of it into schools, will render familiar to children the chief actions in the contest (the war), and teach them, at the same time, to respect their country and its institutions.”

And here’s where we get the allegation that Joseph Smith borrowed from The Late War.  According to the authors of a 2013 study,

“It seems the book was widely available at the right time and in the right location, but did it reach Joseph Smith in particular? The probabilistic evidence for this is clear from this research; however, there is further reason to believe that Joseph had access to the book: he was closely connected to at least 3 teachers. His father, Joseph Smith Sr. was a teacher during the off season. His wife, Emma Hale Smith, was also a teacher. In addition, Oliver Cowdery’s involvement began when as a traveling teacher he lodged with the Smiths.” (Emphasis added.)

We can probably eliminate Oliver Cowdery right away. He started work as scribe on April 7, 1829.  By this point, the 116 pages were already lost.  We can also neither confirm nor deny Joseph Smith, Sr. or Emma had a copy of The Late War.  But just as with A View of the Hebrews, to my knowledge no one has been able to put The Late War in Joseph’s hands or orbit.

ALLEGATIONS OF PLAGIARISM

The authors highlight what they called “Rare Phases” in both texts.  These are called “4grams,” or a matching series of four words. They claim to have discovered over 100 of these “rare phrases” common to both books.  They write,

“These phrases are rare—meaning that they are not found in other contemporary books of Joseph’s time, and that they are not found in the King James Version of the bible. The strength of the argument that The Book of Mormon is a remix of The Late War rests on the cumulative improbability of finding all of these phrases somewhere else. No other book, aside from The First Book of Napoleon, approaches the density of rare phrases (4grams, specifically) that are shared by The Book of Mormon.” (Emphasis added.)

I spent about 18 hours over the weekend scouring Google Book for these phrases. The two main claims are demonstrably false.  I went through all 100 of the so-called “rare phrases” and found, in many instances, dozens of contemporary books with the exact same phrase. Sometimes the same phrase described two different things. Context matters. I also found a fair number in the Bible.  Granted, in some instances one of the words might have been different, but they are very clearly the same phrase. Misquoting scripture is a tried-and-true practice. Have you ever said, “the lion shall lie down with the lamb?” Congratulations, you quoted it incorrectly.  The correct quotation is “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6). But it’s not a big deal, we know what you meant. Over time these minor tweaks and misquotes become part of the popular cultural lexicon, both in 1830 and 2023.

Before diving in to these 100 phrases, a little background. Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack have proposed that the Book of Mormon is likely an Early Modern English (~1500-1700) translation.  I highly recommend Carmack’s article, “The More Part of the Book of Mormon is Early Modern English.” If you prefer video, I recommend Skousen’s lecture, “The Nature of the of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon.” In short, they have been able to demonstrate that the clunky grammar of the Book of Mormon’s first edition is frequently attested in Early Modern English period.

Also, the Book of Mormon is an English translation of a Reformed Egyptian text written by a people who spoke Hebrew.  The written and spoken language was corrupted over time. This happens to all languages and it’s how scholars can determine with very high accuracy when parts of the Bible were written. (Did you know Genesis 1 was likelywritten during the Babylonian Exile? True story.) I also believe the Book of Mormon was translated for an 1830s audience.  As such, the English language translation of Book of Mormon had to be culturally decipherable to that original audience. Whatever expressions, sayings and idioms the Nephites may have used would be incomprehensible to contemporary readers. The primary responsibility of the translator is to convey meaning. One does that by using common expressions, phrases, idioms, grammar and syntax of the target audience. Scripture is no different. As Nephi wrote,

“For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.” (2 Nephi 31:3)

Because the Book of Mormon is very much a product of its time, we should find language similarities in contemporary books. This doesn’t trouble me in the least and hopefully it doesn’t trouble you. There are also substantial differences between the two. The Late War covers a single war over period of four years. The Book of Mormon covers dozens of conflicts over 1,000 years.  The Late War has 59,679 words. The Book of Mormon has 272,004 words. The Late War is military history. The Book of Mormon is primarily a book of theology. They really aren’t all that similar.

Before wrapping up, I want to highlight the most interesting one I found.  According to the authors of the study, these two passages are similar:

“The huge engines of destruction roared as the loud thunder, and the blaze thereof was like unto flashes of lightning.” (TLW, 41:10)

“…and the brightness thereof was like unto the brightness of a flaming fire, which ascendeth up unto God forever and ever, and hath no end.” (1 Nephi 15:30)

First of all, they aren’t really that similar. Not even close. Second of all, The Late War seems to be drawing from Ezekiel 1:13,

“As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.”

The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is very clearly drawing from Isaiah 4:5, but not the King James Version.  The King James version reads,

“And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.”

Surprisingly, I found the phrase as it appears in the Book of Mormon in the Douay–Rheims Bible which was translated from the Latin Vulgate and published in 1750:

“And the Lord will create upon every place of mount Sion, and where he is called upon, a cloud by day, and a smoke and the brightness of a flaming fire in the night: for over all the glory shall be a protection.” (Isaiah 4:5)

All five words are the same.  I don’t know what it means or if it means anything at all, but it sure is interesting. This was the most surprising discovery and I have since found a number of other surprising things outside of this study that we’ll get to in the very near future.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a trained linguist or statistician. I’m just an idiot with an internet connection and I’m only mildly exaggerating. My only purpose in doing this study was to find out if the alleged “rare phrases” are actually rare. I can confidently say they are not. Some phrases in the study date to the 1600s and many were found well after the Book of Mormon was published. This doesn’t surprise me one bit. Common language. Some phrases such as “weapons of war” and “lasted the space of” were so common I didn’t list them.

It wasn’t easy to format or read these “rare phrases” on a blog, so I compiled them all into one very long document (20+ pages and nearly 10,000 words).   I wasn’t quite sure how to best present this information, but decided on the following:

CLAIM

The Late War Example
The Book of Mormon example

COMMENT: (if necessary)
SOURCE: (if applicable)

CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLES:

You can download a .pdf of the study here. I think I’ve caught the majority of typos, but undoubtedly some remain. I was up until three and four a.m. on Saturday and Sunday night, so I was a bit delirious. I hereby relinquish all claims of ownership of this work. You are free to use this information as you see fit. I don’t want or need any credit.