VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE FOR THE BOOK OF MORMON: Proof of Deliberate Design Within a Dictated Book

Also by Edward K. Watson

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See www.edwardkwatson.com for more information.

Copyright © 2022 by Edward K. Watson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-7779119-4-2

ISBN: 978-1-7779119-3-5 (e-book)

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

The Unique Book of Mormon

What the Book of Mormon Is and Is not

Dictation Output

Two Papers

PART 1: ARGUMENTATIVE AND PERSUASIVE ESSAYS IN THE BOOK OF MORMON

Evidence #1: 2 Nephi 2

Evidence #2: Alma 32

Evidence #3: Alma 33

Evidence #4: Alma 34

Part 1: Conclusion

Appendix 1: Glossary

Appendix 2: The Book of Mormon’s Structured Essays Table

Appendix 3: Proposed Empirical Study

Appendix 4: Argumentative and Persuasive Essay Tools

PART 2: ALMA 36’S MULTIFACETED STRUCTURE

Facet 1: Alma 36 as a Persuasive Essay

Facet 2: Alma 36 as a Modified Public Speech

Facet 3: Alma 36 as a Thematic Chiasm

Part 2: Conclusion

CONCLUSION

Take the 1200-Word Alma 36 Dictation Challenge

POSTSCRIPT: JOSEPH SMITH’S SEER STONE AND INTERPRETERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

List of Figures

Figure 1: Argumentative and Persuasive Essays Compared to Prose and Poetry

Figure 2: Argumentative Essay Structure

Figure 3: Persuasive Essay Structure

Figure 4: The Book of Mormon’s Structured Essay Rhetorical Modes and Content Styles

Figure 5: The Scope of Jesus Christ’s Atonement

Figure 6: The Brilliance of 2 Nephi 2:26

Figure 7: 2 Nephi 2’s Persuasive Essay Structure

Figure 8: Alma 32’s Blessed Progression and Segue Into His Prepared Essay

Figure 9: Alma 32’s Argumentative Essay Structure

Figure 10: Alma 33’s Argumentative Essay Structure

Figure 11: Christ’s Infinite Atonement Resolves the Just and Merciful God Contradiction

Figure 12: Alma 34’s Argumentative Essay Structure

Figure 13: Alma 36’s Challenge to the World

Figure 14: Alma 36’s Persuasion Essay Structure

Figure 15: Alma 36’s Efficient Structure

Figure 16: Alma 36’s Chiastic Structure Based on Primary Themes

Figure 17: Alma 36 Thematic Progression

Figure 18: Alma 36’s Thematic Chiasm Using the Concentric Model

Figure 19: Alma 36’s Chiastic Structure With Paired Unsequenced Concept Elements

Figure 20: Joseph Smith’s Seer Stone

Figure 21: Artist Concept of the Interpreters

List of Tables

Table 1: Alma 33:22 – the Most Condensed Description of the Gospel in the Scriptures

Table 2: Side-by-Side Comparison of the Public Speech Version and the Personalized Version of Alma 36

Table 3: Paired and Unpaired Text Within the Alma Themes

Table 4: Alma 36 Conceptual Pairings and Types

INTRODUCTION

What does a subject matter expert do when observing something they know from experience is an objective impossibility?

• A nuclear physicist witnesses a shaman transmute lead into gold.

• A biologist sees a child’s toy change into a living bird.

• A medical examiner watches someone come back to life after being dead for three days.

The first reaction is disbelief – there must be a trick or fraud – some things are known to be impossible.

What if experts can examine and test this objective thing using the best equipment only to see the miracle repeated again and again under controlled conditions?

The worldview changes – what was thought to be a known-known turns out to be a known-unknown (we know that we do not know) or perhaps even an unknown-unknown (we do not know what we do not know). One’s perception of reality is now suspect.

Suppose the producer of the miraculous object alleges that they created it as proof that they represent God. Wouldn't their claim become credible? Shouldn't the subject matter expert take the allegation seriously?

This is what we have with the Book of Mormon. It exists. Anyone can hold a physical copy in their hands and read it. The book claims to have been written so that the world may believe that "Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God" (Title Page, 2 Nephi 26:12) and for the world to believe that the Holy Bible’s teachings are true (1 Nephi 13:38-40; Mormon 7:9).

The causal logic is:

If the Book of Mormon is true, then Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God. If the Book of Mormon is likely true, then it is likely that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God.

Speaking personally, my core competency is in structural linguistic semantics. I am a subject matter expert on qualitative documentation analytics and composition—the analysis, creation, and organization of complex documents—and have been doing so for more than three decades. I have created and overseen hundreds of proposals, RFP responses, project execution plans, procedures, and user manuals for dozens of clients.

What makes the Book of Mormon credible as an impossibility comparable to the abovementioned three examples? There are many, but this book only delves into my area of expertise, which includes using a Formalism-Structuralism approach to analyzing a document’s:

• Internal structure – how thought modules are connected to make a larger point

• Concept development – how thought components are phrased, expanded, reinforced, and segmented

Conducting a qualitative document analysis of the Book of Mormon’s internal structure and concept development shows the text’s layout was purposely set. Whoever created it wrote down the text, edited it, rearranged its sentences, and rewrote it, in some places, multiple times.

The Book of Mormon’s internal evidence shows deliberate design. Thought modules are coordinated, in many cases, three-dimensionally, and lack the meandering, disorganized nature of dictated writings.

Every rational book follows the same iterative creation process.

This observation is important because, unlike every other rational book, the Book of Mormon’s creation was unique—it was a dictation process, where Joseph Smith dictated the entire text to his scribes without the aid of a written source.

The Unique Book of Mormon

Suppose when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969 that they discovered a book in a depression a slight distance from the Lunar Module. The book was written in English, and its cover contained a message: "This is written to convince both Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God."

They reported the discovery to the world, only to be met by skepticism and disbelief. But regardless of the mockery and dismissal, they insisted that they found the book precisely as they reported. And all evidence points to it being a genuine discovery.

Although the moon book’s contents may be unexceptional compared to the millions of others on Earth, it, nonetheless, would be unique. Its existence demands a rational explanation because it should not exist. But it does. What explains it, and should its raison d'être be taken seriously?

People lose sight of what makes the Book of Mormon exceptional. Out of the millions of books in existence, it is the only one produced by a static dictation process.¹ Joseph Smith dictated the entire 269,318-word manuscript² to his scribes without making any substantial changes to the text after the words from his mouth were first written down.³

We know this not just from the eyewitness accounts but because we still have 28% of the Original Manuscript⁴ (the text written by the scribes from Joseph’s lips) and nearly 100% of the Printer’s Manuscript (the version mainly used by the printer of the 1830 first edition).⁵ They show no layout changes or resequencing. No paragraphs were inserted or moved elsewhere. No sentences were reworded or had their primary thought changed.

In short, the version of the Book of Mormon today, with its complex contents, is virtually identical to the version straight from the dictation process, save for nonstructural changes (mostly spelling, grammar, and mechanics).

This feat may not seem like much to the non-writer, but to those with a lot of experience in structured non-prose and non-poetry writing, this "dictated first draft is the final draft" is an accomplishment none of us can equal. We all need to revise our first draft to correct errors and omissions and improve it. And for an uneducated 23-year-old man in 1829 to produce a 269,318-page work that did not need structural and layout enhancement on his first attempt at writing is something none of us can comprehend.

What the Book of Mormon Is and Is not

The Book of Mormon is not a work of creative writing. It lacks plot and character development with powerful and vivid descriptions. It lacks the rhythm and artistic beauty of elegant prose that make a reader want to continue reading. Famous books such as To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tale of Two Cities, The Color Purple, Moby-Dick, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and The Lord of the Rings are all much more enjoyable to read because they are designed to encourage the reader to keep reading them.

The Book of Mormon is utilitarian and not concerned with style or appearance. While its overall structure is narrative,⁶ its sole concern is to provide information to the reader without caring about how the text reads. Over a third of the book consists of structured essays, a ratio more common to textbooks than novels.

Dictation Output

Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon while looking at his seer stone,⁷ a process that critics for two centuries have condemned to be occultic or demonic despite using objects to convey revelation and miracles is commonplace in the Bible.⁸

Observers could not see the words that Smith saw on the stone. To him, he was merely dictating the words he saw, but to observers, the words solely came from his mind. Objectively, over 500 pages of coherent, complex, and consistent text were produced from a dictation process without an observable written source.⁹

If Joseph Smith’s dictation process occurred – as all