Book of Mormonlate warplagiarismnapoleonn-grams

The Late War and Other ‘Source’ Books

Didn’t Joseph plagiarize The Late War, The First Book of Napoleon, or a shelf of 1800s books?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · Ecclesiastes 1:9

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

NRSVUE
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.

Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon answers

2 Nephi 29:8
Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God?

Faithful answers

FAIR

Plagiarism accusations

FAIR Latter-day Saints

The Late War is a War of 1812 reader in pseudo-biblical English. Of course it shares stock phrases with a translation Joseph rendered into biblical English. So does the KJV with itself. Chiasmus, Nahom, and a hundred named new places are not in Hunt’s schoolbook. If your method would also ‘prove’ Isaiah copied the newspaper, retire the method.

Shared idiom is not stolen plot. The Book of Mormon’s story is not the War of 1812 with extra barges.

Pseudo-biblical style was a genre. Genre is not plagiarism.
Joseph’s scribes describe continuous dictation, not a desk of open sources.
The ‘source’ list keeps growing because none of them actually is the book.

Read the original

Keep going

Rate this answer

Be the first to tell us if this case is strong.