Is Stylometry the Ultimate Proof that Joseph Smith Did Not Write the Book of Mormon? Multiple Voices: New Stylometric Evidence for the Book of Mormon

At a recent Book of Mormon conference in Provo, researchers Matt Roper and Paul Fields presented a compelling study that uses modern data science to address an old question: Who wrote the Book of Mormon? Using a method called stylometry, they provided new evidence suggesting the book’s complex internal authorship is far beyond the reach of a 19th-century novelist.

What is Stylometry?

Stylometry, or computational stylistics, is the statistical analysis of literary style. It operates on the premise that every writer has a “wordprint”—a unique, subconscious pattern of word usage that acts like a linguistic fingerprint. By measuring the frequency of specific word groupings, researchers can distinguish between different authors with high mathematical “confidence.”1

The “Twain Test”: Comparing the Book of Mormon to Contemporary Novels

To provide context, Roper and Fields compared the Book of Mormon to eight major 19th-century novels (two each from Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, James Fennimore Cooper, Mark Twain). Collectively, these books match the word count of the Book of Mormon but offer a stark contrast in “voice” and character complexity.

Using 3-D computer modeling, the researchers found:

• Author Unity: In secular novels, characters like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have distinct voices, but they still remain more similar to each other (and to Mark Twain) than to characters created by Dickens or Austen.

• The Character Gap: While the contemporary novelists managed a handful of distinct narrative voices, the Book of Mormon features 119 distinct characters.

• Internal Diversity: The Book of Mormon identifies four primary authors/abridgers—Mormon, Nephi, Alma, and Moroni—each with a unique stylistic “fingerprint” and central theme:

  • Mormon (36% of the text): Focused on war and history.

  • Nephi: Focused on family and prophecy.

  • Alma: Focused on faith and ministry.

  • Moroni: Focused on ordinances and governance.

The data shows that these figures don’t just have different themes; they have different wordprints. The sheer number of distinct writing styles (including 24 additional sub-styles) would be statistically nearly impossible for a single author like Joseph Smith to maintain consistently over a 60-day translation period.

Challenging the “Smouching” Theory

Critics have long claimed that Joseph Smith either wrote the book himself or “cobbled” it together from contemporaries like Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, or Solomon Spaulding. Mark Twain famously joked in Roughing It that Smith had “smouched” (stolen) much of the text from the New Testament.

However, the data tells a different story. In a 2011 study, Fields, Roper, and Bruce Schaalje tested the “wordprints” of all the suspected 19th-century candidates against the Book of Mormon. Their findings were startling:

When allowing for “unknown authors” outside the suspected circle, the probability that the Book of Mormon was written by an author not included in the 19th-century set (including Joseph Smith) was 93%.

Conclusion

For many in the audience, the presentation reinforced a powerful point: the Book of Mormon is a “literary impossibility” for a 23-year-old with limited formal education. The stylometric data suggest that the book is exactly what it claims to be—a complex compilation of many ancient voices, none of whom share a linguistic profile with Joseph Smith or his peers.

Other Related Articles

• Stylometry and the Multiple Isaiah Theory

¹ Matthew Roper, Paul J. Fields, and G. Bruce Schaalj, “Stylometric Analyses of the Book of Mormon: A Short History,” BYU Maxwell Institute, 2012
² Louis C. Midgley, “Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The Critics and Their Theories,” in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1997), 101–39.