The oral composition model is discussed in some detail by William Davis in his dissertation, Performing Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Creation of the Book of Mormon, and book Visions in a Seer Stone:
Cultural immersion: Joseph was immersed in a cultural and religious milieu that seems proportional to the contents of the Book of Mormon.
Oral composition capability: Joseph was highly intelligent and demonstrated significant oral compositional ability (e.g., Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, Revelations in the D&C, extensive sermons). Since most in the developed world of the 21st century organize their thoughts via writing, it may be difficult to imagine others composing extensive structure primarily in their minds, but this was not an uncommon ability in that era (e.g., regularly demonstrated among preachers). The available time to compose the book (~65 working days) is not inconsistent with some kind of oral composition event.
Preparation and practice: The timeline provides room for years of rumination and planning to have preceded the final compositional event. And, even though this was not likely according to plan, the initial dictation of the lost 116 pages would have served as a warm-up period allowing Joseph significant practice in order to develop and refine his compositional abilities before dictating the text we now know as the Book of Mormon.
Mostly modular construction: The Book of Mormon is mostly modular in its construction (i.e., it has few dependencies from section to section generally). Where dependencies exist, those can be explained by him and/or Oliver going back over the existing manuscript, or perhaps simply due to his oral compositional abilities.
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More modern scholarship favoring a modern origin
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LDS Scholar observations
Nick Frederick, BYU Religion Professor — The Book of Mormon contains at least 650 phrases that can convincingly be shown to be from the New Testament (i.e., not accidental). Language and themes from the New Testament are deliberately used in the Book of Mormon.
what we have here is a conscious attempt to bring the language of the Book of Revelation into the Book of Mormon.
other times the sequence of those proximity phrases will follow the same sequence in both the New Testament and in the Book of Mormon, which, again, suggests to me that we have a conscious attempt to draw upon the language of the New Testament in the Book of Mormon.
Significance: We do not expect ancient authors to be pulling extensively from New Testament phraseology and themes in such a manner since the NT had not even been written at the time ancient authors were first engraving the plates and the books being pulled from were not transmitted by Jesus in the New World, at least based on the record of what was transmitted.
Deleted User — 08/17/2023 7:10 PM
Richard Bushman, famous LDS Historian and advisor of the Joseph Smith Papers Project made two public observations about the early 1800s literature in the Book of Mormon:
… there is phrasing everywhere–long phrases that if you google them you will find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament.
The Book of Mormon has a lot of nineteenth-century Protestant material in it, both in terms of theology and of wording. I am looking for an explanation of how and why it is there.
Grant Hardy, a foremost LDS Scholar on the Book of Mormon — The Isaiah we see in the Book of Mormon is not what we would expect to see from someone who came from Jerusalem in 600BC.
Latter-day Saints sometimes brush such criticism [that the Book of Mormon pulls from deutero-Isaiah] aside, asserting that such interpretations are simply the work of academics who do not believe in prophecy, but this is clearly an inadequate (and inaccurate) response to a significant body of detailed historical and literary analysis.
Recent Isaiah scholarship has moved … in favor of seeing the book of Isaiah as the product of several centuries of intensive redaction and accretion. In other words, even Isaiah 2–14 would have looked very different in Nephi’s time than it did four hundred years later at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when it was quite similar to what we have today.
Significance: We do not expect KJV Isaiah (even in its slightly modified form) to be in the Book of Mormon as it is represented were it a representation of an ancient text.
Lincoln Blummell, BYU Religion Professor — notes that the end of Mark, which is quoted in the Book of Mormon by Moroni, is of dubious origin:
Mark 16:8 is currently the earliest attested ending for Mark’s gospel (appearing in Codex Sinaiticus [א] and Codex Vaticanus [B] [the earliest complete manuscripts of Mark]), its abruptness is problematic …
… others [of the early Christian fathers] seem not to have known about them [Mark 16:9–20] or were unsure of their authenticity …
Significance: Moroni states that Jesus spoke to the disciples in the New World using the exact verbiage from a section of Mark that is thought by most Bible scholars today to be a later addition to the book of Mark.
Thomas Wayment, BYU Religion Professor — Joseph Smith was influenced by Adam Clarke’s famous commentary on the Bible in production of the JST (from here).
Our research has revealed that the number of direct parallels between Smith’s translation and Adam Clarke’s biblical commentary are simply too numerous and explicit to posit happenstance or coincidental overlap. The parallels between the two texts number into the hundreds, a number that is well beyond the limits of this paper to discuss. A few of them, however, demonstrate Smith’s open reliance upon Clarke and establish that he was inclined to lean on Clarke’s commentary for matters of history, textual questions, clarification of wording, and theological nuance.
Significance: Joseph Smith was both willing and able to weave external works from his time into religious documents, and he relied on Clarke without drawing mention from any of his scribes.
Stan Spencer, Interpreter Contributor — in every case where the Revised Version offers a “more accurate translation” the Book of Mormon follows the King James Version:
If the Book of Mormon’s rendering of Isaiah 6 and 7 constituted a more accurate translation than the KJV, it would be expected to differ from the KJV in ways that parallel at least some of these revisions. It does not. In every case it more closely follows the KJV. (emphasis added)
Royal Skousen, BYU linguistics and English Professor — the BoM grapples with nuances in late 1600s theology.
there is considerable evidence that the issues and the cultural milieu of the text date more from the late 1600s than the early 1800s
And from The Language of the Original Text of the Book of Mormon:
there are numerous issues which show that the Book of Mormon is concerned with what the Protestants dealt with and argued over during the 1500s and 1600s
And Skousen now concedes that the process “involve[d] considerable intervention by the translator” (emphasis added):
Is the Book of Mormon English translation a literal translation of what was on the plates? It appears once more that the answer is no. The blending in of specific King James phraseology, from the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, tells us otherwise. The Book of Mormon is a creative translation that involves considerable intervention by the translator (or shall we say translators, since we’re in a speculative mood). There is also evidence that the Book of Mormon is a cultural translation. Consider, for instance, the interesting case of the anachronistic use in the Book of Mormon of the noun bar, which consistently refers to the bar of judgment that we will stand in front of (and hold on to) on the day of judgment. The judgment bar is not a biblical or ancient term, but instead dates from medieval times.
Significance: We do not expect ancient authors to have the context by which to weigh in on these debates with any sophistication. [However, there are numerous reasons we might expect reference to older theological debates from someone writing in the 1800s about religious matters, though.]
