The Book of Mormon and The Late War

A Catalog of the Shared Language, Phrases, and Themes

This document catalogs the parallels between the Book of Mormon (1830) and The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain (Gilbert J. Hunt, 1816) — a school textbook that retold the War of 1812 in deliberate King James “scriptural” style. The comparison combines a 2013 computer-aided study by the WordTree Foundation (Chris and Duane Johnson) with earlier manual work by antiquarian bookseller Rick Grunder (Mormon Parallels, 2008) and literary analysis by Ryan Thomas.

Both source texts are in the public domain. The parallels below are presented so the shared wording can be examined directly; distinctive phrases shared between the two books are shown in bold.

What the study found

The WordTree Foundation compared the Book of Mormon against more than 110,000 books published before the 1830s, tallying shared four-word phrases (“4-grams”).

A phrase was counted as rare if it appeared in fewer than one in a thousand of those books. After removing every phrase that also occurs in the King James Bible, the algorithm still found over 100 rare, non-biblical 4-grams shared by the two texts.

The Late War shared more of these rare phrases with the Book of Mormon than 99.999% of all other pre-1830 books tested. (For scale, a control comparison against Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice produced very few rare matches.)

Beyond isolated phrases, the two books share a long list of specific narrative details and themes — catalogued below.

Note: the point does not require proving Joseph Smith copied the book line-by-line. It shows that the Book of Mormon’s most “distinctive” features — King James cadence, war narratives, and even the Hebraisms apologists cite as proof of ancient origin — were already circulating in a popular schoolbook in his own time and place.

“And it came to pass”

The Book of Mormon’s signature phrase appears far more densely than in the King James Bible; The Late War sits between them, sharing the same scriptural mannerism.

The parallels

Each entry pairs a passage from The Late War with a passage from the Book of Mormon. Shared distinctive wording is bold; chapter/verse references follow. Excerpts are trimmed for readability; ellipses (…) mark omitted text.

1. Describing the Americas — metals, food, and elephants

Both books introduce the land with the same categories — abundant gold and silver, “all manner of” creatures used for food — and, remarkably, both mention the elephant. The Book of Mormon lists Old World animals (and the unknown “cureloms and cumoms”), which Joseph Smith’s associate Orson Pratt identified as mammoths.

2. Battles at forts — prepared men, ditches filled with the slain

A near-identical battle template: the defenders are prepared at their fortifications, loose their weapons, slay the attackers “with great/immense slaughter,” the ditches around the fort fill with the enemy’s dead and wounded, and the survivors flee into the forest/wilderness.

3. A battle at a river — the waters run red with blood

In both, an army is stopped from crossing a river; the enemy is slain and driven back; bodies are cast into the water. The Late War names the river Saranac (whose waters are “dyed with blood”); the Book of Mormon names the river Sidon (into which the slain are thrown).

4. Two thousand soldiers, and “striplings”

The distinctive Book of Mormon story of Helaman’s two thousand young “stripling” warriors — volunteers of dauntless courage who fight for their country against a king — has a close analogue in The Late War, which repeatedly pairs “two thousand” volunteers, a “small/little band” that “fought desperately,” and youths called “striplings.”

5. A band of robbers, pursued and destroyed

The Book of Mormon’s Gadianton “band of robbers” — hunted down and destroyed — has no parallel in the Bible, but does in The Late War’s “band of sea-robbers” who are scattered and destroyed.

6. Weapons “of curious workmanship”

The phrase “curious workmanship” recurs in both for weapons and finely wrought objects.

7. The Liahona and the clockwork “ball”

The Book of Mormon’s Liahona — a round ball of fine brass, of curious workmanship, containing spindles — mirrors The Late War’s description of an early torpedo: brass, a large ball, with “curious works, like unto a clock.”

8. Building a ship, mocked by the people

Nephi is told to build a ship and is mocked (“our brother is a fool”) before succeeding; The Late War’s Robert Fulton is likewise “beside himself” and “laughed at” before his curious “vessels” (steamboats) exceed expectations.

9. Barges / vessels tight like a dish, with windows

The Jaredite barges — tight vessels with windows, likened to the ark, crossing the deep like a whale — echo The Late War’s vessels built with “stories” and “windows,” pitched “after the fashion of the ark,” from which whales flee.

10. One ship sails away to an unknown land

Nearly the same sentence: a strong ship departs to a far-off land whose fate is unknown.

11. Cataclysm — thunder, quaking earth, cities overturned, thick darkness

Both describe a catastrophe with thunder(s), the whole face of the earth shaken, rocks falling, cities overturned/sunk, and a darkness so thick men cannot see one another.

12. Burned martyrs whose deaths “stand recorded”

Both describe innocents burned alive in fire/flames, their fate standing as a recorded witness against the killers.

13. Mourning the fallen — “they shall return no more”

A lament over the war dead: the fair ones are gone, the mourners cry, and the dead will not return.

14. Pitching tents on the borders

Armies pitch their tents on the borders of the land by the water.

15. Casualty reports — the righteous few, the many slain

Both tally battle losses in the same style (“slain” rather than “dying/missing”), and both repeatedly report a near-miraculous imbalance: hundreds or thousands of the enemy slain against a mere handful — or none — of the righteous.

16. Righteous natives vs. savage natives

Both divide the native peoples into a savage, war-making party (stirred up to spill blood) and a converted, peaceable party who have been “instructed in the ways of God.”

17. Converted pacifists who will not take up arms

The Book of Mormon’s Anti-Nephi-Lehis, converted natives who refuse to take up arms and bury their weapons, have a striking analogue in The Late War’s Christianized “Six Nations of New-York Indians,” who “raised neither the tomahawk nor the scalping knife.”

18. Three chosen ones

After a climactic event, both single out “three” holy figures — “three of the Indian prophets” in a place called the Holy-Ground; the “three” Nephite disciples who would never taste death.

19. A spirit / Satan enters into the heart

The same idiom of a spiritual being entering a person’s heart — Satan in one, the Holy Spirit in the other.

20. Flocking to a standard of liberty

A multitude “flocks” to a banner/standard; and both books wave a symbol of liberty. The Late War even prints the Star-Spangled Banner; the Book of Mormon raises Moroni’s “title of liberty.”

21. Freemen vs. king-men

Both stage a civil conflict between “freemen” defending a free government and a pro-monarchy faction (“Tories” / “king-men”).

22. The “cause of liberty” and “our lives and our liberties”

Shared political vocabulary of the age, appearing in both as fixed phrases.

23. Christopher Columbus, the inspired discoverer

Both hold Columbus in high, providential regard: The Late War calls him a “righteous man” wrought upon against ignorance; 1 Nephi describes the Spirit of God coming down upon “a man among the Gentiles” who crosses the many waters to the promised land.

24. The 4th of July — a date in scriptural form

Both express Independence Day in the same unusual construction, “the fourth day of the seventh month, which is…” — and the four-gram “seventh month, which is” is itself rare.

25. Counting years from the birth of a free government

Both replace a monarchy with a “free government” and then date events by counting the years since that transition, in closely matching phrasing.

26. Teancum / Tecumseh at Moravian Town / Morianton

A war leader whose name closely resembles the other’s, connected to the same place-name, and slain in a similar manner. In The Late War, Tecumseh’s army goes to Moravian Town and he is slain; in the Book of Mormon, Teancum (near the people of Morianton) slays and is slain.

27. Silver plates and records engraved in brass

Engraving records on metal — not a biblical practice — is central to the Book of Mormon (the brass plates of Laban); The Late War speaks of deeds “graven in brass” and a “silver plate” with “gravings” of a hero’s deeds.

28. False prophets — struck / smitten and slain

Both books feature a false prophet or preacher who preaches for lucre, leads people astray, and is struck (dumb/in the mouth) and slain.

29. “Lion” used figuratively

Both use the lion as a figure for fierce fighters / predators — notable because lions did not exist in the ancient Americas, making the figure natural for a 19th-century author but odd for ancient Nephite writers.

30. A leader troubled by an unprecedented problem

A near-verbatim frame: a leader is “troubled in his mind/spirit” because a thing has happened that “had not” before, and refers the matter to the king.

Selected rare shared phrases

The study’s central finding was over 100 rare, non-biblical four-word phrases shared by the two texts. The complete computational enumeration is hosted by the WordTree Foundation (linked in Sources). Below is a sample of the distinctive shared phrasing drawn from the parallels above — phrasing that is uncommon or absent in other books of the era once King James Bible matches are excluded:

Presented as distinctive shared phrasing documented in the study’s parallels; see the WordTree source for the full computational list of rare 4-grams and exact frequencies.

Why this undercuts the “Hebraisms prove ancient origin” argument

A common apologetic claim is that the Book of Mormon contains Hebrew-language features (“Hebraisms”) — chiasmus, the cognate accusative, construct-state phrasing, and the “and it came to pass” construction — that Joseph Smith could not have produced without an ancient Hebrew source. The Late War is decisive here: written in 1816 by a New York schoolmaster deliberately imitating the King James Bible, it contains those same features, including chiasmus. This shows the “Hebraisms” are a by-product of imitating biblical English, not evidence of an ancient Semitic original. As antiquarian Rick Grunder put it, the presence of these forms in a popular children’s textbook so close to Joseph Smith “must sober our perspective.”

Could Joseph Smith have known the book?

The Late War was marketed “for the use of schools throughout the United States” (retitled The Historical Reader, 1817–1819) — a common New York schoolbook when Joseph Smith was a boy.

The OCLC library system still lists ~158 copies across its 1816–1819 editions; surviving copies show heavy wear, implying many more were printed and “read to death.”

Joseph Smith was closely connected to at least three teachers — his father (a seasonal schoolteacher), his wife Emma Hale Smith, and his scribe Oliver Cowdery (a traveling teacher who lodged with the Smiths).

Samuel L. Mitchill, who endorsed The Late War in its preface for imitating “the biblical style,” is the same New York scholar Martin Harris later visited to authenticate the Book of Mormon characters — and Mitchill’s theory of ancient American origins closely resembled the Book of Mormon’s.

Criticism and response (for balance)

This companion is meant to be as fair as the main document. The strongest objections to the study, and the reasonable replies, are:

“The method is a ‘Texas sharpshooter’ — comparing against so many books guarantees some top match.”

Latter-day Saint analysts (e.g., in the Interpreter journal) note that scanning 100,000+ books will always yield a “closest” book, and that raw 4-gram tallies can’t judge whether a parallel is meaningful. Response: the objection has force for the bare statistic, but it does not explain the dozens of specific, independently-noticed narrative parallels above — stripling soldiers, a river running red with blood, a title of liberty, converted pacifists who bury their weapons — which were catalogued by hand (Grunder, 2008) before any algorithm ran.

“Many ‘rare’ matches come from the two books’ copyright notices.”

Critics point out that some shared phrasing traces to the boilerplate copyright/legal language both books carried. Response: this is a fair caution about inflating the raw count, and it is why the thematic parallels — not the bare 4-gram number — carry the weight here.

“Correlation is not causation; there’s no proof Joseph read this exact book.”

True, and the WordTree authors themselves do not claim word-for-word plagiarism. Response: the argument does not depend on this one book. Whether or not Joseph read The Late War specifically, it demonstrates that the Book of Mormon’s defining style and content — scriptural cadence, Hebraisms, mound-builder wars, records on metal plates — were an established popular genre in his environment (alongside View of the Hebrews and Solomon Spalding’s romance). That is the point that survives every methodological objection.

Sources & further reading

WordTree Foundation — “The Book of Mormon and The Late War” (full study, all parallels, and the complete rare-4-gram data)

The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain (Gilbert J. Hunt, 1816) — full text on the Internet Archive

The Historical Reader (the schoolbook re-issue of The Late War, 1817–1819)

WordTree Foundation — documentation of the 2013 four-gram study (methodology & tools)

Rick Grunder, Mormon Parallels: A Bibliographic Source (2001) — the earlier manual catalog of Late War / Book of Mormon parallels.

Ryan Thomas, “The Book of Mormon and The Late War: Direct Literary Dependence?” (literary analysis)

Benjamin McGuire, “The Late War Against the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter 7 (2013) — a critical (LDS) response

FAIR (Latter-day Saint apologetics) — “The Late War theory of Book of Mormon authorship”