Statistical Authorship Attribution and the Urantia Book

Over at Scribd, I've uploaded a paper I wrote this semester called "The Urantia Book as a Test Case for Statistical Authorship Attribution of Genre-Distinctive Texts." In case you're not familiar with the Urantia Book, it is an American scripture produced in the early twentieth century that claims to have been written by celestial beings-- various kinds of angels and divine messengers, who live on other planets. It's a very unique and interesting text.

My study applies the Delta method of authorship attribution to the text, in order to see whether the method could shed any useful light on the authorship question. It finds that there are too many complicating variables for the method to be really useful in attributing a distinctive pseudepigraphon. For the most part, it produces nonsensical results. However, I do pioneer a new approach that might prove useful if properly controlled.

One reason these results are important is because of their implications for the Jockers, et. al. wordprint study of the Book of Mormon. Jockers applied the Delta method to the Book of Mormon and found that the Book had multiple authors, including Sidney Rigdon and Solomon Spalding. If the method is ineffective for attributing distinctive pseudepigrapha, then the Jockers, et. al. results cannot be considered reliable.

Do Apologetics Have a Place in Religious Studies?

"Apologetics" (from the Greek apologia, meaning "defense") are that brand of scholarship that sets out to prove or defend a particular religious perspective, tradition, or community. Although apologetic works are occasionally published by mainstream Religious Studies presses and journals, they are much more likely to be published in venues explicitly devoted to that purpose. This raises an interesting question. Do apologetics constitute a legitimate subdiscipline of Religious Studies? Or a separate discipline entirely?

To adequately answer this question, I think we need to make an important distinction between confessionalist and rationalist apologetics.

Confessionalist (also known as "presuppositional") apologetics are those that begin with a certain set of non-negotiable religious propositions and then seek to reconcile those propositions with the evidence. Here the goal is not so much to make a strong evidentiary case for one's religious beliefs as to show that those beliefs have not been absolutely falsified. Confessionalist apologists select not the most probable reading of the evidence, but the most probable one that harmonizes with those religious propositions that they consider non-negotiable. This sort of apologetic scholarship is designed only to remove obstacles to the operation of supernatural faith in converting or retaining the believer.

Rationalist apologetics are quite different. A rationalist believes things because they seem probable, given the available evidence. S/he makes no distinction between religious and scientific propositions, preferring to subject both kinds to the same epistemological standard. Rationalist apologists set out to make a strong rational and empirical case for religion, in order to show logically or scientifically that religious propositions are more likely to be true than untrue. When a rationalist becomes persuaded that the weight of logic or evidence are against a particular religious proposition, s/he will tend to either abandon that proposition or retreat to a confessionalist stance.

Rationalist apologetics, I think, clearly do constitute at least a subdiscipline of Religious Studies. They deal with Religious Studies subject matter, and do so according to Religious Studies standards. (Whether they do so well, of course, varies from case to case.) Confessionalist apologetics, however, do not follow the standards of Religious Studies in their treatment of their subjects, and therefore fall outside that discipline.

This is not to say that confessionalist apologetics are illegitimate. Just that they are illegitimate as Religious Studies scholarship. Probably confessionalist apologetics should be seen as a form of religious practice. They actively contribute to religious traditions, helping keep them alive and relevant to the modern world. When we classify them this way rather than judging them by the standards of secular scholarship, they take on a different kind of legitimacy: the legitimacy of liturgy. They also become an object rather than a subject of Religious Studies.

New Paper Posted at BCC

I submitted my paper from the CMSSA conference to BCC Papers, and they accepted and posted it.  Here is the citation and link:

“Is ‘Suspensive’ Historiography the Only Legitimate Kind?” BCC Papers 5, no. 2 (2010), available from http://bycommonconsent.com/2010/05/25/bcc-papers-5-2-smith-suspensive-historiography/.

Joseph Smith's Interpretation of Book of the Dead 125

When anti-Mormon author Henry Caswall visited Nauvoo in the early 1840's, he was shown the Joseph Smith papyri by a Mormon guide, and the vignettes on the papyri were interpreted for him. The following description is particularly entertaining:

Turning to another of the drawers, and pointing to a hieroglyphic representation, one of the Mormons said, "Mr. Smith informs us that this picture is an emblem of redemption. Do you see those four little figures? Well, those are the four quarters of the earth. And do you see that big dog looking at the four figures? That is the old Devil desiring to devour the four quarters of the earth. Look at this person keeping back the big dog. That is Christ keeping the devil from devouring the four quarters of the earth. Look down this way. This figure near the side is Jacob, and those are his two wives. Now do you see those steps?" "What," I replied, "do you mean those stripes across the dress of one of Jacob's wives?" "Yes," he said, "that is Jacob's ladder." "That," I remarked, "is indeed curious." (Henry Caswall, City of the Mormons, 23.)

The vignette to which Caswall was referring is from chapter 125 of the Neferirnub Book of the Dead. Here is a reproduction from pages 40-B and 40-C of the February 1968 Improvement Era.  (Click to enlarge.)

The vignette is a judgment scene, in which the deceased lady Neferirnub is introduced by the Two Maats into the presence of the judge, Osiris. The "big dog" is the monster Ammit. Here is what Wikipedia says about Ammit:

In ancient Egyptian religion, Ammit (also spelt Ammut and Ahemait, meaning Devourer or Bone Eater) was a female demon with a body that was part lion, hippopotamus and crocodile. A funerary deity, her titles included “Devourer of the Dead,” “Eater of Hearts,” and “Great of Death.”

Ammit lived near the scales of justice in Duat, the Egyptian underworld. In the Hall of Two Truths, Anubis weighed the heart of a person against Ma'at, the goddess of truth, who was sometimes depicted symbolically as an ostrich feather. If the heart was judged to be not pure, Ammit would devour it, and the person undergoing judgement was not allowed to continue their voyage towards Osiris and immortality. Once Ammut swallowed the heart, the soul was believed to become restless forever; this was called "to die a second time". Ammit was also sometimes said to stand by a lake of fire. In some traditions, the unworthy hearts were cast into the fiery lake to be destroyed. Some scholars believe Ammit and the lake represent the same concept of destruction.

The figure standing behind Ammit is the deity Thoth, who is recording the proceedings.

As for Jacob's Ladder, here is a close-up of that portion of the vignette:

Caswall appears to have been correct that this is merely the front of Neferirnub's dress.  Perhaps the interpretation of it as "Jacob's Ladder" stemmed from the awkward way that the dress is drawn, in combination with the little human-shaped hieroglyph off to the side that appears to be climbing the "ladder".  I can't help but think that the close association of Jacob's ladder with polygamy in Joseph Smith's understanding of this vignette reflects his sense of the importance of polygamy as a means of deification and celestial ascent.

A "Wave" Model of Terrorism

UCLA political scientist David C. Rappoport proposed a wave model of terrorism that has been tested, extended, and revised by William Thompson (in Devezas, ed., Kondratieff Waves, Warfare and World Security, 2006).  It's a pretty interesting model, so I thought I'd share.

Thompson argues that terrorism and global warfare have evolved together, for several reasons.  First, both terror and global warfare are linked to economic "long waves" that bring new technologies and greater alienation due to industrialization.  This has led to a gradual increase in the scale and intensity of both global warfare and terrorism as both have evolved.  Second, global war is fought by professional armies using conventional tactics.  These are precisely the conventions that terrorism seeks to disrupt, so that terrorism is always to some degree a response to conventional warfare.  Third, to some extent global war has blurred the line between combatants and non-combatants.  (The non-combatant death toll in World War 2 was higher than the death toll for combatants.)  And fourth and most importantly, global wars are fought to change the international system and to determine who the new system leader will be.  Thus, global wars change the targets and goals of terrorism and the norms under which they operate.

Rappoport believed that terrorism began in 1870's Europe, but Thompson pushes its origins back to 1790's France.  In any case, Rappoport and Thompson agree that there have been basically four waves of terrorism-- each lasting roughly a generation, or about 40 years-- since 1870.  The first wave was an "anarchist" wave consisting mostly of political assassinations.  This wave was brought to an end by WWI.  The second wave sought decolonization through guerilla warfare, and was ended by WWII.  The third wave was a "Marxist revolution" wave that ended with the collapse of the USSR.  And the fourth and final wave has been a religious fundamentalist (and especially Islamist) wave that employs suicide bombers and attacks on symbolic targets.  This wave is currently in progress.

Thompson tests these propositions empirically and finds that yes, the motives of terrorism have shifted from nationalism to ideology to religion over the course of the twentieth century, and yes, we can empirically measure the compressions of terror "waves" in terms of the number of active terrorist groups operating at any given time.

This model is interesting because it illustrates that terrorism isn't anything new.  It has been around for a long time, and owes as much to systemic factors as to specific circumstances or ideologies.  There will probably always be terrorists, no matter who is running the international system and no matter how hard they try to defeat the terrorists or to redress their grievances.  We can expect the makeup of terrorism to change over time, though, especially as China and India become the dominant global powers (either through warfare or peaceful transition).  I, for one, won't be sorry to see that responsibility shifted from American shoulders.  Let the Asians deal with it.  Good riddance!