Many thanks to Ben McGuire not only for his painstaking rebuttal of the “Late Great War Against the Book of Mormon,” but also for responding to my inquiries about statistics of various texts. He kindly ran some analysis on Leaves of Grass (using the text at Gutenberg.org) and the Book of Mormon, since I have previously pointed to Leaves of Grass as a superior albeit impossible candidate for plagiarism compared to the sources critics have been offering as smoking guns. I was hoping that the techniques used by critics to promote The Late War as the ultimate best modern source for Book of Mormon plagiarism would make the Leaves of Grass look even better, but my hopes were not quite fulfilled. Naturally, there is a huge difference in style that will result in far fewer four-word matches in Whitman’s writing because he was NOT writing in redundant scriptural style with Elizabethan English, but was writing fresh, modern poetry loaded with fresh and original phrasing and built of a huge vocabulary.  But the statistics are still interesting.

Here is what Ben reported from his analysis:

Word Count:

BoM: 269,551

LoG: 126,543

Vocabulary:

BoM: 5,638 (very small for a book its size)

LoG: 12,399 (huge for a book its size)

Shared Vocabulary: 3,054 (marginally higher than expected - this probably helps account for some of your similarities)

Unique three-word Locutions

BoM: 141,342

LoG: 113,608

Shared three-word Locutions: 3,846

Unique four-word Locutions:

BoM: 202,830

LoG: 123,470

Shared four-word Locutions: 609

Of those 609 occurrences, 360 of them are had in common with the KJV [leaving 249 four-word locutions shared between Whitman and the Book of Mormon that are not also in the KJV].

Interestingly enough, only 206 four-word parallels show up between Whitman and The Late War. This in itself wasn't as fascinating as the other issue – of those 206, zero were in common with the KJV. This is actually a fairly startling since Whitman has 1,243 parallels in common with the KJV – The Late War had 2,341 four-word phrases in common with the KJV – but it was trying to imitate that text. So that is certainly an oddity.

These are highly interesting, but The Great War has even more four-word and higher count shared locutions, which is really not surprising since it’s using Elizabethan English.

Ben impressed me with his careful commentary and observations. Instead, let me add mine, which are slightly more tongue-in-cheek, to illustrate some of the dangers of looking too hard for things that aren’t there. Here we go:

How curious that Whitman’s unique, modern poetic style would give so much in common with the Book of Mormon. Is that just due to chance? Well, sure, the Mormon apologist might say. But look at what we have.

Amazingly, 3,054 of the Book of Mormon’s 5,638 unique words are found in the Leaves of Grass. That’s well over half the text! These words aren’t all just randomly scattered, but often occur in lengthy phrases shared between the two texts. There are 609 four-word phrases shared by Leaves of Grass and the Book of Mormon!  If we exclude phrases also found in the Bible (KJV), there are still 206 shared four-word phrases, which is remarkable when one considers that Whitman was not writing in Elizabethan English and was not trying to imitate the Bible. Had he done so, the number would be much higher.

Of course, the parallels become much higher when one examines the text directly, as we will do in a moment. The computerized method might miss plain connections due to changes in spelling, poetic tweaks of word (til versus until, etc.) and the differences between KJV language and Whitman’s modern English (start changing “has” to “hath” and so forth, and watch the stats pile up in favor of Walt).

I then asked Ben about phrases with even more shared words. Here is what he found:

five words: 74 entries

all_the_inhabitants_of_the

all_the_land_of_the

all_the_lands_of_the

am_i_that_i_should

and_all_that_in_them

and_i_know_that_the

and_i_will_make_a

and_in_all_these_things

and_in_the_name_of

and_that_they_are_the

are_the_children_of_the

as_he_did_in_the

at_the_feet_of_the

at_the_head_of_the

born_of_a_woman_and

by_day_and_by_night

by_the_light_of_the

by_the_mouths_of_the

from_the_face_of_the

from_the_top_of_the

i_am_the_son_of

i_do_not_deny_the

i_do_not_know_what

i_know_not_but_the

i_speak_the_word_of

i_will_tell_you_what

if_they_are_not_the

in_the_midst_of_the

in_the_midst_of_you

men_of_that_city_and

of_me_i_am_the

of_the_body_or_the

of_the_earth_all_the

of_the_earth_and_i

of_the_earth_and_the

of_the_earth_cannot_be

of_the_first_year_of

of_the_justice_of_the

of_the_land_and_the

of_the_sea_and_the

of_the_souls_of_men

of _the_women_and_children

of_the_world_and_all

of_the_world_for_all

on_the_face_of_the

out_of_the_earth_and

out_of_the_land_and

out_of_the_land_of

see_that_the_word_of

some_of_the_words_of

son_of_god_shall_come

stand_in_the_presence_of

that_there_is_no_god

the_beginning_and_the_end

the_face_of_the_earth

the_inhabitants_of_the_earth

the_lands_of_the_earth

the_meaning_of_all_things

the_men_of_that_city

the_midst_of_the_sea

the_rest_of_the_earth

the_righteous_and_the_wicked

the_three_hundred_and_sixty

the_west_to_the_east

the_world_i_do_not

them_and_i_will_make

this_is_what_i_have

those_who_do_not_believe

thou_hast_given_us_a

to_sing_the_song_of

to_stand_in_the_presence

upon_the_hearts_of_the

we_know_not_but_that

who_do_not_believe_in

six words: 7 occurrences

all_the_inhabitants_of_the_earth

all_the_lands_of_the_earth

in_the_midst_of_the_sea

out_of_the_land_and_the

the_men_of_that_city_and

those_who_do_not_believe_in

to_stand_in_the_presence_of

And of course, you need to look at the remarkable 7-word occurrence I report in my Leaves of Grassessay, though it was not found by his computer program.

Now one can begin to see how Joseph composed the Book of Mormon. As he was writing, he recognized that he needed a chunk of text, maybe 3, 4, 5, or 6 words long to complete a sentence or something. So naturally, he opened up a text, perhaps the Leaves of Grass, or some other text as he wished, and snatched a handy phrase like “them and I will make” or “see that the word of”. Rinse, lather, repeat, over and over. Tedious, I know, and perhaps harder than ordinary plagiarism, but remember, when it comes to plagiarism, Joseph may have had some kind of supernatural gift. Let’s grant him that much.

But that only accounts for chunks of text. How about the story line?

We can better appreciate the power of chance (?) parallels in works like that of Whitman by analyzing the text directly, rather than relying on a computer to sift out random matching phrases with a statisticians sieve.  I have done this to some degree in my previous work, but allow me to provide some new material where we take a passage or two and show how the art of parallel finding (also known as parallel creating) can be done. I will leave it to the reader to determine if this represents the kind of thing that can simply occur by chance, coupled with creative twisting of the text to create the illusion of plagiarism, or if, in fact, Joseph Smith plagiarized from Walt Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass, perhaps aided by a bit of time travel or other miraculous means. First we turn to Book III, Song of Myself, and look at Section 33. This was selected rather casually because it was one of several passages using the word "ball," but, not surprisingly, there was much more:

Here is a reference to a journey on foot, walking to a beach (that of Bountiful) in a trek that will reach a new continent, led by a vision. It is in the morning when Lehi will find the ball, as hinted at with the word ballasts.

They live in tents (huts) and camp as they march across the Arabian Peninsula, ably described as “along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, . . . crossing savannas.” They are experienced metallurgists, as many LDS scholars have noted, here able to prospect and dig for gold and other ores, as Nephi does. Then, after traveling across hot sand, they come to the “trees of a new purchase,” a new, beautiful place where Nephi will soon be able to make and haul his boat, “my boat,” down the shallow river or lagoon at Wadi Sayq, as Mormon scholars have noted. In other words, they have come to Bountiful. It is a beautiful, wonderful place with water, meadows, honey, and so forth, as Nephi noted and as Whitman more ably wrote when he described that place:

Yes, Bountiful is beautiful, and has a mountain that Nephi will scale. It has water, trees, paths, honey, vegetation, and, again, a reference to a mystical ball/balloon.  Then, of course, comes the time to embark in a boat and travel across the waters on unknown currents:

Lehi was nearly brought to death on the ship, and was about to be sent below to a watery grave. Whitman’s idea, of course. And to where are they sailing as they ride on unknown currents to a new continent? Of, course, it’s the New World, as Whitman next describes, a place where they will discover, of course, the horse. But on the way, there is trouble as Nephi’s brothers engage in dancing, laughter, and drinking:

And again, a subtle reference to a ball, which plays a role both in crossing the dessert and in sailing to the New World. Next Whitman recalls the death and burial of Ishmael back at the ancient burial place in the Old World, known to Mormon scholars today as Nahom or Nehem:

Whitman backtracks at this point and provides Joseph with the inspiration for the First Vision, where the words of a preacher at a camp meeting stir him to look for truth, to look toward heaven, and then to be visited by two divine Friends:

Next we return to Nephi, who faces constant opposition and dickering from his brothers and their families (truly a fickle crowd) as they sail to adventure, aiming for an unknown port in the New World.  The problem with his brothers is so bad that Nephi struggles with hatred for his enemies and feels alone, lost in thought, as he writes in 2 Nephi 4. Whitman put it all this way:

Whitman’s next words again recall Nephi’s journey in the Old World, the day and night travel across long roads. This takes us back to the beginning--something of a chiasmus, I suppose, and also recalling the magnitude of his overall journey. Then finally, plainly, he mentions a spectacular, celestial ball, here likened to a heavenly “fire-ball” associated with travel, and a sphere that helps him see vast numbers (quintillions!) of other things (is this the Urim and Thummin as well?):

Balls, spheres, and a pointed staff – the spindles within the ball, of course. It is the famed Liahona. The messengers are the angels who have visited or helped Nephi, and of course, he is the hunter who provides food for the group in their travels. There is much, much more in this section. But let us look ahead, still in Chapter 33, and note some parallels to the military sections of the Book of Mormon, including battles, weaponry, forts, entrenchments, damage and repair of defenses, wounded soldiers, use of materials like stone, wood and iron- - these parallels to the Book of Mormon are extraordinary (perhaps even the name Amalickiah or Amulon is found in “ambulanza”):

Whitman ends this chapter much as the Book of Mormon ends, with a terrible war of destruction and the tragic death of a great general, General Mormon himself. From the journey across the desert and Nephi’s walk that began in Judea with the aid of God, to the sailing to the New World and the wars and chaos of later centuries, down to the final tragic death of the great Nephite general, a few pages of Whitman has it all. This is the kind of density of parallels that is sorely missing in the purported smoking guns offered by previous scholars trying to explain the origins of the Book of Mormon. Whitman, as I have shown, provides a much more sensible match. And as a bonus, he prefigures the whole concept for the First Vision. Defenders will offer the pathetic excuse that “Leaves of Grass came long after the Book of Mormon and is an ‘impossible source.’ The parallels simply illustrate what chance can do when two people discuss related broad topics.”

Those apologists always manage to come up with some kind of convenient excuse, don’t they?

To add to their argument, the apologists may protest that while Chapter 33 of Whitman’s Leaves of Grassmay have a few strong parallels to war stories and the Liahona in the Book of Mormon, it still does nothing to explain things such as Book of Mormon name “Alma” nor the many stories of the Book of Alma such as the hundreds of young stripling warriors of Alma 53, the marching of prisoners of war, the ability of young soldiers to take many times their number in enemy lives with their matchless use of weapons, the use of defensive breastworks on key fortifications, rites of surrender, and the giving up of arms. Yes, I must admit they are right, Whitman’s brief Section 33 in "Song of Myself" does not offer obvious parallels for all of these points to meet the unreasonable demands of apologists. For that, we must turn the page to the even briefer Section 34, where in the opening lines we immediately see further inspiration for much of what is in the Book of Alma, or, shall we say, the Book of Alamo?

Those stripling warriors of Whitman were matchless with rifles, just as Whitman is matchless when it comes to smoking guns. Hey, that looks like Hebraic parallelism that just fell from my lips. See how easy it is to forge scripture when you’ve got Whitman for inspiration? And when you’ve got a touch of imagination, a bit of persistence, and the kind of curious, furious faith that enables one or drives one to see very big things that probably are not there.

Whitman, of course, does nothing to explain the origins of the Book of Mormon, though I feel it does it much better than The Late War.