A few months ago, I investigated every known example of Psalms references in the Book of Mormon. This study was a profoundly faith-affirming experience.
I still find myself fascinated by the use of Psalms, even if I don't believe I know the full extent of how and why this was accomplished.
Over the past few days, I have been working on a new digital tool to allow me to study the voices in the Book of Mormon in greater detail. My study began with the Book of Alma. Since the Book of Alma contains at least 25 known examples of Psalms references, I decided to map those into my digital tool.
Below are some of the results:
As you can see in the chart, although Mormon's voice comprises just over 50% of the total words in the Book of Alma, he never references the Psalms. In contrast, Ammon's words comprise under 3% of the whole, but he accounts for 24% of the references to Psalms.
Clearly, the vast majority of the Psalms references occur in Alma-2's words. In fact, the single Psalms reference attributed to Zenos is found in the middle of one of Alma-2's sermons (in Alma 33:11), so he seems to be responsible for that one as well.
I established in this post that the pair of Psalms references found in Alma 60-61 seem to be intentional subtext between Moroni and Pahoran.
I also demonstrated in this post that Alma-2, who produces the majority of the Psalms references in the Book of Mormon, almost always quotes Psalms which were also quoted by Nephi and Jacob. Ammon, by contrast, only does this once (and that example is also quoted by Alma-2 while recounting his conversion experience, of which Ammon was a witness).
The raw data for the chart is here:
What can we conclude from this?
If the Book of Mormon is a modern work of fiction, as some claim, these findings require an explanation. Here are a few questions I'd like someone with a naturalistic hypothesis for the origin of the Book of Mormon to answer:
- How did the modern author of the Book of Alma manage to work in these references to the Psalms in a single draft without any notes?
- Was this deliberate or inadvertent?
- If inadvertent, how can we explain the non-random distribution of Psalms references among voices in the book?
- If deliberate, what was the purpose of doing this?
- How did the author keep track of which Psalms references would need to later become part of the small plate record versus those which would not?
If Mormon was the author of the Book of Alma, as I believe, and Joseph Smith served as the divine translator rather than the composer, the process is easier to explain:
- Mormon did not introduce Psalms references into the text and may or may not have been aware of the Psalms references in the primary materials he quoted from in the book (sermons of Alma, record of Ammon, letter between Moroni and Pahoran, etc.). It is worth noting that Mormon does reference the Psalms eight times outside of the Book of Alma, so he seemed to be familiar with them. I'll discuss his use of Psalms in a separate post.
- Of the 25 references to Psalms in the chart above, it seems most obvious that Moroni and Pahoran were using them to send intentional covenant-related subtext to each other, as discussed in the post linked above. Moroni not-so-subtly intimates a bad outcome for Pahoran if he doesn't keep his covenant obligation to support his people. Pahoran reassures Moroni that he is doing all he can to keep his covenant and if they trust in God, He will deliver them (which He does).
- This exchange between Moroni and Pahoran is found in Alma 60-61. Prior to this, we get over 31,000 words without a Psalms reference -- mostly war chapters. This reinforces the conclusion that these references are both intentional and voice-dependent.
- Alma and Ammon have the highest number of Psalms references, and this also seems quite intentional. It could be that Mormon recognized the references and included excerpts with high concentrations, or it could be that everything Alma and Ammon said contained abundant Psalms references.
- As for the finding that Alma seems to preferentially quote Psalms which are also quoted by Nephi and Jacob, this is explained by the fact that he was a Nephite record-keeper and thus had the small plates in his possession for many years. Ammon, though faithful and certainly well-acquainted with the scriptures (see Alma 18:36, for example), did not have the same access to the small plates.