Literature: The conversion stories of Lamoni and of his father are remarkably parallel. Both cases involve being overcome by the Spirit in such a way that witnesses assume that they are dead and attempt to kill the righteous messenger or issue orders to that effect. Mark Thomas has noted that these experiences also parallel much of Alma’s conversion and suggests that the Book of Mormon records a particular conversion “form.” The presence of similar elements certainly stands out. The question is what these parallels mean.
Of course, it is possible that they are completely accurate descriptions of precisely what happened. It is also important to remember, particularly in the case of Lamoni and his father, that Alma is telling the story. Even in the case of historical information, certain literary forms might inform the way a particular author shapes a tale.
One important literary form that appears to underlie many biographies is the set of traits that Lord Raglan described as “The Hero.” This discussion of the elements of the hero tale have been analyzed and reanalyzed to expand the examples of this set of traits that appear to provide a somewhat structured and ready-made biographical outline for the lives of multiple figures. Lord Raglan gives the structured biographies of Oedipus, Theseus, Romulus, Heracles, Perseus, Jason, Bellerophon, Pelops, Asclepios, Dionysos, Apollo, Zeus, Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Watu Gunung, Nyikang, Sigurd, Llew Llawgyffes, Arthur, and Robin Hood. Probably the most famous exposition of the hero tale structure is Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell expands on the structural elements of the hero tale and also expands the number of “heroes” whose biographies fit this structure.
While the situations are not precisely parallel, they are sufficiently similar to be illuminating about similarities in the Book of Mormon conversion stories. What we have in the hero tales are separate biographies that tend to share recognizable patterns. A possible conclusion is that the similarities suggest that they are all myths and have no relationship to history, which we do not expect to have such regularity. Nevertheless, Lord Raglan specifically noted that he did not consider that the “heroes” were necessarily ahistorical, but only that they share common biographical traits.
When biographies and stories are written down, structural patterns embedded in society tend to dictate the form in which we prefer to see those stories. Vladimir Propp, the pioneering Russian folklorist, investigated Russian folktales and found in them a common plot. This commonality of preferred forms can sometimes create structures where they are least expected. Alan Dundes, professor of folklore and anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, observes of fellow folklorist Francis Lee Utley:
Utley applied the pattern [of Lord Raglan’s hero] somewhat tongue-in-cheek to the biography of Abraham Lincoln and found that Lincoln scores no less than the full twenty-two points [of Lord Raglan’s marks of the hero tale]. The significance of Utley’s essay is that it underscores the distinction between the individual and his biography with respect to historicity. The fact that a hero’s biography conforms to the Indo-European hero pattern does not necessarily mean that the hero never existed. It suggests rather that the folk repeatedly insist upon making their versions of the lives of heroes follow the lines of a specific series of incidents.
Combining all of this information on the literary structures of folklore and remembering that we have both a common tradition and a common redactor in the conversion stories of Lamoni and his father, there is every reason to see the commonalities as preferred structures. Richard Rust, professor of English and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, approaches the issue from literary forms rather than folklore structures, but the similarities are clear:
Repetition appears purposefully within Book of Mormon narratives as a principle of reinforcement and confirmation. It seems that every important action, event, or character is repeated in the Book of Mormon. These repetitions emphasize the law of witnesses at work within the book.… They link narratives together with what Robert Alter calls “type-scenes.”… Larger repeated narratives treat escape and travel to a promised land; repentance; and the nature, rise, and effect of secret combinations.
The stories are parallel because they are made to appear as parallel as possible—not because they were invented, but because the literary expectation was to link such conversion events into an understandable and acceptable pattern.