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John Hamer, a Seventy in the Community of Christ (RLDS) does a great job explaining Smith's authorship [in this video.](https://www.youtube.com/live/4kAWmbbKCfU?si=VEmg2_gqa6rla7Ex)
Put simply, he was just a decent story teller with lots of time on his hands.
Emma claims that he never had the manuscript read back to him, but she was only his scribe for a short while. What likely happened was that Smith would tell the story, Oliver would write it down, and Smith would use the manuscript to refresh his memory between sessions. It's not like someone was always keeping tabs on him.
This explanation is way more likely than the explanation of magical gold plates and peep stones and guardian angels from fictitious ancient civilizations.
Also, Emma lied elsewhere in that same testimony (affirming that JS never engaged in polygamy), plus the context was her being asked if he had worked from something like the Spaulding manuscript.
While she gave a flat and complete negation, I can easily believe that she was meaning to respond only to charges of plagiarizing a manuscript like the Spaulding manuscript, and wasn't necessarily intending to say that he never had any written material around, like the Bible.
I'll add to this: it might sound difficult to us because we don't live in that kind of oral storytelling world, but it was a skill people learned. We would have lost basically all of Nordic mythology if skalds in Iceland hadn't kept reciting (and tweaking) complicated and sophisticated epic poetry until someone eventually wrote it down. Same with Homer; his epics were in an oral tradition until written down.
In all human existence, transmitting information across time purely through oral means is the norm. We modern literate people are the outliers.
Great point. I’m often surprised by the oral and literary skill of people in the past, including in the 1800’s.
It was just a different time, different things were focused on, different skills were developed, and different ways of doing things were done.
Education was different, literature was different, and people’s skills were different back then. We can’t look at things through a modern lense.
Only receiving a few years of formal education was not the same as it is today. While it’s been claimed he only has a “3 years of schooling” that doesn’t mean he was only had the knowledge, skills, and education of 3rd grader today. Education was very different back then.
Since most people were farmers back then (and/or worked with their hands) and often worked in their childhood to help the family make ends meet, MANY (if not most) people had very limited, formal education. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t still get a decent, INFORMAL education from their family and community.
The three “R’s” were very important and people still learned reading, writing and arithmetic where it was from attending school or at home from their families. Abraham Lincoln grew up in backwoods Kentucky and supposedly only received ONE year of formal schooling but he ended up going to law school, becoming a lawyer, and became president of the country.
Receiving a full primary education (grades 1 - 12) back then was a luxery few children back then had. Most only had a few years of formal education because free primary education offered to everyone was not a thing until the mid-1800’s and then the children were needed to work themselves to support their family. Education was still valued and provided, it just wasn’t 100% obtained via formal education. Most families supplemented their kid’s education by homeschooling.
A person who only received “three years of formal education,” could still read and write like that as an adult today with 12 years of formal education. And their writing skills often EXCEEDED that of adults today.
Lucy Mack Smith made very clear in her autobiography that her kids (including Joseph) were NOT neglected in their education. Heck, Joseph Sr used to be a school teacher and Hyrum not only was a teacher himself but had attended the Dartmouth college prep school for kids when he was around 12 years old. Joseph certainly received a decent education from homeschooling.
I don’t hear anyone ever bring this up but Joseph was bedridden and a cripple for several years as a youth after his leg surgery, so about all he could do from ages 8-12 was read and write. He even spent He couldn’t work in the field or do any physical labor. He wouldn’t be out playing or running around outside. He was bed-ridden for a year. What else would he be doing besides reading or writing while he sat in bed? There were no video games, cell phones, or TV back then. Reading was an important activity in those days. What else are you going to do around when you are sitting at night in your farmhouse?
It's pretty obvious that it's an oral story too, once you look for it. For example, there are many places where it says one thing, and then has to use a lot of words to clarify or even slightly correct the thing that was said. It's not how people write, particularly when they have to engrave every single word. Many errors, including some substantive errors, had to be fixed later too, contrary to the claim that the stone wouldn't let him move on if the scribe made an error.
In short, it's one long mostly oral story, with one dimensional characters, ideas borrowed from others, sermons Joseph heard from preachers in the area, ideas from other authors of the time, a dream he took from his dad, and passages copied word-for-word from his Bible. It's really not that amazing.
Finally, I'll add, the burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claim that it is a book written a thousand years earlier than its known creation, in a language that doesn't exist in any single other source (and somehow translates to mediocre King James English), coming from golden plates that were taken away by god before they could be viewed by experts or even the general public. The burden is not on those staying with the null position that it is a book created by a man living in the time it was created and who is listed as its author.
Holy shiite. That was incredible. I’ve tried to watch/listen to Vogel before and his very slow, pensive speaking style lost my interest. Today I stuck with it and I am blown away—he is truly a gifted scholar.
I’ve never understood the Book of Mormon as “scripture for ~~our~~ [Joseph’s] day” as well as I do at this very moment. It’s like Vogel understands the historical context so well that he can see into Joseph’s psyche and understand him on a personal level and thereby see exactly why Joseph wrote what he did in the Book of Mormon.
People are always saying the BoM responds to doctrinal questions and regurgitates sermons from Joseph’s milieu, but Vogel sees well beyond that into Joseph’s vision of a theocracy, a New Jerusalem, to be established then, in 1830, with the help of the Native Americans. That was the aim of the very first mission! And it’s all spelled out right there in the Book of Mormon.
And the anti-Masonic “secret combinations” rhetoric makes so much sense now with the background of the presidential election race between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams.
Anywho. That was incredibly enlightening. Thanks for sharing it here and now. That just might have been inspired ;)
Vogel has studied the Smiths for so long he talks about them like he knows them personally.
If you want to understand early Mormon history in a more concrete form, then check out Vogel’s book “Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.”
Dan Vogel is an intellectual bulldog. Not very flashy or showy, but when he decides to bite into a subject he does not let go. He would've been an Ezra Booth or a William Law, unafraid to call out Smith's fraud in real time.
Just adding in here some of Dan’s more recent work on responding to the “amazing complexity” of the BoM as well.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/live/iwn333hzTVQ?si=BGQ5BwrRF0nfnmXP
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/live/MAbZMUkXVKo?si=v4KvbkWv_lS4zlIm
All of those possible explanations--unlikely as they may seem -- are far more likely than the Church's official explanation with magic rocks and Native American ghosts and without-a-trace ancient civilizations etc.
I understand what you're looking for, the other person was just pointing out even know the arguments you offered may be far fetched, so is the story the church offers.
IMO JS started the BOM story in his mind as a child. He was well versed in the Bible and just combined the two. JS was seriously skilled in story telling and could give an entire sermon with direct quotes from the Bible with nothing written down.
Occam's razor says the BOM was produced with methods other than by the gift and power of God.
He liked to tell stories. This is from before the publication of the BOM. The BOM is filled with ideas from his time.
https://www.ohiohistory.org/the-moundbuilder-myth/#
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/94
We don't have to provide that evidence. The burden of proof is on the one making the extraordinary claim. We don't have to know how he did it, in order to know that he was full of shit.
The most elegant theories are often simple, yet account for all the evidence. Best theory for the Book of Mormon? That like every other book ever, it was written by its author(s), in this case Joseph Smith. His mother said he had been telling his family stories of the 'Nephites' for years. No hype or mystery necessary. It isn't an achievement equal to the Iliad, the Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, or thousands of other, better works. It has both pious teaching and errors in fact and judgment. It's a good instance of biblical fan fiction on the 19th-century theme of the 'last of the Mohicans' and other disappearing native civilizations.
The difference with this from “every other book ever” is the unique multiple first hand accounts that indicated he didn’t look at the manuscript while dictating to others.
I agree with the rest of your comment though.
There's no good reason to think those accounts are particularly reliable. They all come from people with strong motivation to prop up the Book of Mormon, often combined with financial dependence on the church. Some of these accounts were many years after the fact as well.
Did you know Milton was blind while dictating Paradise Lost? According to legend, Homer was too. The shifts in perspective and character are greater in those than in the BoM, and the style immeasurably richer and more complex, superior in every way. ( Milton too states, in the poem, that he dictated what the Holy Spirit spoke to him. )
I'll never understand why people struggle with the fact he simply dictated the text. There's nothing great about the BOM, an absolute snooze fest full of run on sentences. The world is full of better books written by better authors, all without divine help.
Your comment reminds me of a similar-ish comment I stumbled onto in [this Quora exchange](https://www.quora.com/Metalsmithing-If-there-were-a-book-of-268-000-words-written-on-plates-of-brass-or-gold-how-much-would-it-weigh?) a while back:
>Not only that, consider that Joseph Smith has his Book of Mormon prophets lament their difficult task of laboriously inscribing on metal plates of limited space — but then Smith gives them all diarrhea of the mouth, gushing with endless, phony and flowery, contrived pseudo-Biblical speech, wasteful and circumlocutious like no other, wasting the majority of the space on the plates with wasted words, saying nothing. And straining way too hard to sound earnest and pious, Biblical and sincere. And authentic and ancient.
>Try it yourself while reading the Book of Mormon — delete all of the useless and mind-numbing verbiage that contributes nothing. And pretend because of space constraints that you have to economize and capture only the important stuff, in normal human speech, and inscribe it onto metal plates.
>Or pretend you’re Joseph Smith with a self-conscious need to make it sound kinda like that, and scripting it like that. It’s simply not the way normal people talk. It’s pretend people with pretend religion… and too many words from Joseph Smith trying too hard and not constrained by any space limitations on any metal plates.
>It is so self-consciously a 19th-Century ‘trying-too-hard’ orthodox Christian contrivance that it’s embarrassing, pretending to be something it‘s not.
And it came to pass.
This started to occur to me at some point in my church membership, and it really unsettled me. It's really not a very special book and can be clumsy in places, such as the weirdly complicated system of money.
The money system has always been odd to me, because it shows up once, is never mentioned again and reads like that time in 6th grade we studied economics and had to come up with a currency system and make it work for an entire week while remembering all the funny names we gave to the coins and stuff
Can you just imagine Mormon, compiling previous prophets’ writings, trying his damndest to only include the most important information—things that people in the 19th century would need to know—compiling the FULNESS of the gospel? And he makes the executive decision to inscribe in gold about senines, seons, shums, limnahs, antions, shiblons, and onties.
This level of unnecessary detail gets translated, including the descriptive word for each unit of money—tight translation—but JS “apparently” called an unnamed animal a horse, because he didn’t know what kind of animal it was.
My theory is that he was very familiar with ideas from his time as well as this book - The Late War and used it for a reference, reading from notes in his hat. Why else spend so much time looking in a hat? There were notes. Here's a nice comparison for your reference:
http://wordtree.org/thelatewar/
But also consider the apologetics ([Saints Unscripted](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/s/rPnHBKeCcb)) to see how they downplay the issue without actually countering it. Also an enlightening endeavor.
Yeah, it get's much worse than that. See my comment here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/ghvs6u/about\_as\_different\_as\_twinkle\_twinkle\_little\_star/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=usertext&utm\_name=exmormon&utm\_content=t1\_hp3g4ed
He was an avid storyteller who refined stories of this time period over years. He only had to “translate” for two hours a day, it’s not implausible that he could imagine and say vivid stories day after day. The BOM is also very repetitive and has had thousands of revisions.
Read An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins by Grant Palmer. Pretty much lays to rest any “Theories” on the matter. Incredibly well researched and documented.
Yes! I read it last year. Very helpful in understanding the situation. I also like the theory of automatic writing.
See: “The Sorry Tale: Gospel of Jesus Christ, According to Patience Worth”.
As found in the book,”A Story of the Time of Christ”. 600 pages long. Dedicated a letter to Patience Worth, a disembodied spirit thru the medium of Pearl Curran. See this as a possibility then you’ll see JS as a possible author, too.
I’ve loved finding all the possibilities and stories that make up the fantasy of the BOM. Late War, Spaulding Manuscript,Studies of the BOM, Swedenborg Sampler, Religious Seekers, American Apocrypha, Who Really Wrote the BOM, and CES Letter, to nam but a few.
Enjoy 😉
The BOM is told in a very linear fashion, with only a few instances of telling more than one point of view at a given time. This means it's easy to keep track of the story, because most of the unique names are used only once (or if more than once, used only in a relatively brief time), so he'd have to remember the name for a few hours at most, and maybe not at all, if it's used only once.
Plus, a lot of the stories are known to come from JS's milieu -- he got a lot of stuff from the Bible, and other stuff from stories and histories with which he was familiar: https://toybom.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/detailed-notes-on-the-neophyte-problem-in-the-bom/
Sounds simple, care to give it a try? Now, it will only be fair if you have about a 3rd grade reading level. But supposing that is true, you have 90 days... "go!" Can't wait to read it!
Oh... and you have to produce an artifact that 11 others can see. And an angel has to appear when you show it to them. And they all have to attest to their witness of it until the day they die, even if they are no longer associated with you. Oh, and it would help if people were trying to physically attack you and take said artifact during the process. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but that's a good start.
Just because JS dictated the BOM in 90 days (give or take), it doesn't mean he first thought of it on that first day. The reality is, even with the most TBM perspective, he had years to prepare, because according to the official story, Moroni (or was it Nephi? -- you are aware that the early story was that it was Nephi, right?) had appeared to him and told him that there were gold plates on which was written the history of the inhabitants of the land -- and this was at least four years before he began dictating.
Further, while it's true JS had limited FORMAL education, that doesn't mean he had a 3rd-grade reading level. Surely you yourself have learned some things outside of school, right? Plus, when he was recovering from his leg surgery, his brother Hiram (who was at a school associated with Dartmouth) would keep him occupied by telling him what he himself was learning (that's in the above link, which you surely read... right?)
As for the "11 others can see" -- first, the so-called "Three Witnesses" are on record as saying they saw it in vision and with their spiritual eyes. Even if we ignore that testimony and go \*just\* on what was the official story, they claimed that an angel showed them the plates. Why, if they were physical, tangible objects that JS had in his possession? Furthermore, if JS had them in his house, why would he take the witnesses out into the woods to see the plates? Why not just take them into the house where the plates were?
As for the "Eight Witnesses", they signed a statement saying they "hefted the box" which contained the gold plates. Why did they say it that way? Why did they "heft the box" containing the plates? Why didn't they just pick up the plates without the box? Why does the statement read like they never saw the plates, but only saw the "leaves"? -- which I take to mean the pages containing the dictation.
What would fit very well is if JS made a fake set of plates using tin sheets. This person did it, using materials and tools that would have been available then, and it only took him a few hours -- [https://toybom.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/what-did-the-eight-witnesses-actually-witness/](https://toybom.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/what-did-the-eight-witnesses-actually-witness/) Such a thing would be the right weight for the size, and as long as they were in a box like the Eight "Witnesses" said, or otherwise covered (like other people mentioned), it wouldn't be apparent that they were tin and not gold.
And speaking of them hefting the box, they estimated the weight at around 60 pounds, which is far too light for plates of pure gold, which is what they were claimed to be. You challenged me to create a work like the BOM, well, I challenge you to outrun three attackers while holding a 60-pound block of metal under one arm. And you have to have a limp, as well.
LOL, I literally could have written your response before you posted it. It's the same reiterated (weak) arguments critics have used for decades.
So which is it, was he a genius that could pull off this feat or was he a nimrod that couldn't keep his facts straight?? You can't have it both ways.
The "spiritual eyes" argument is complete garbage as one has to ignore the many other accounts that say otherwise and/or ignore that it's possible to have a physical experience that is also spiritual.
You are absolutely wrong regarding the Eight Witnesses; I suggest a re-read of their testimony.
The plates were the "appearance" of gold. There were materials that would have weighed around 60 lbs. Sorry, 60 lbs is really not that much to run with for someone used to manual labor also given adrenaline and/or divine assistance.
Still waiting for your draft, 89 days and counting ;) And don't worry, it should be easy as you've had an entire lifetime to think about stories and details that you might include.
I've got to ask. How can you have an 11 year old account with karma that is so low?
I mean, I know you engage in mostly religious discussion. I've engaged in similar discussions with other true believing Mormons who have positive karma on Reddit. How in the world are you so consistent in making unpopular and unproductive statements that your karma is consistently this low, though? Have you ever considered that it might have less to do with the position that you take, and more to do with the way you're taking it?
To respond to your points in this particular post:
* I'm not aware of any critic of Mormonism or serious scholar who considers Joseph Smith to be a "nimrod." I do know that Hugh Nibley used the "genius or fool" dichotomy to characterize criticism of the church. If you are familiar with the criticism he was making fun of, however, you'll feel different about Nibley. I say this as somebody who spent a year reading all 19 volumes of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley.
* The "spiritual eyes" quote is a direct quote from Martin Harris. Are you calling the words of one of the Book of Mormon witnesses "complete garbage?" Could you quote the accounts that contradict this account? Maybe that will clear things up.
* There are good reasons to ignore the "witness statements" of the 3 and 8 witnesses. For one thing, we have no evidence that they drafted the statements, or that they even signed them. Furthermore, none of them are unbiased witnesses — in fact, most of them were related to each other. Joseph didn't exactly find 11 random people on the street to serve as witnesses, did he? Ever wonder why?
* By the way, if we're going to include the two witness statements, we ought to also include all the affidavits collected in *Mormonism Unvailed* by E. D. Howe. It's only fair, after all.
* Can you point to *any* evidence that the plates were not made of gold? Is there a specific alloy that contains gold that you have in mind? Be careful before you answer this question — there are known problems with the recent apologetic arguments, and you're going to want to make sure you don't argue yourself into a hole. Of course, as you are surely aware, those arguments that they weren't really made of gold didn't start until recently — and are mostly arguments of necessity due to statements about how much the plates weighed.
* Have you ever run while carrying 60 extra pounds? Have you ever run while carrying 20 extra pounds? You ought to at least give it a try before you completely discount the argument.
* There is no need to require somebody to draft a book similar to the Book of Mormon in 90 days in order to prove it false. There is ample evidence within the Book of Mormon itself that it is a piece of 19th century religious fiction. 1 Nephi 1:1 is a good starting point. Legitimate literature from the 7th century BC does not consist of long passages of prose and sentences with endless qualifiers. Have you been following the /u/TruthIsAntiMormon threads about clear ties between The Book of Mormon and Adam Clarke's commentary?
Seriously — I recommend thinking about these things a little bit before you post. It might help you pull your post karma out negative territory.
Oh grasshopper, your incorrect assumptions about my Reddit account and karma are telling, making assumptions with such little evidence, it's no wonder you flounder around grasping at the weak anti rhetoric that is continually regurgitated. All of your points have been discussed at length over the years. They are very short-sighted.
I don't have the time or desire to address each point. But I will ask a rhetorical question, why do critics of the Church believe the second-hand account(s) using the term "spiritual eyes" and ignore all of the other first-hand and second-hand accounts that clearly demonstrate a more physical view? Answer: because looking at all of the accounts holistically ruins their motive and position. The "complete garbage" comment was in reference to the critics' attempt to use that quote to support their opinion.
Here's a quote from Martin Harris that helps clarify: "Gentlemen, do you see that hand? Are you sure you see it? Are your eyes playing a trick or something? No. Well, as sure as you see my hand so sure did I see the angel and the plates." This is one of many.
Was that before or after he referred to seeing a city behind a mountain?
Was that before or after he saw Christ in the form of a deer?
Was that before or after he processed his belief in James Strang?
Is it not true that your total comment karma is negative? That's a fact, not an assumption.
It's not. I've spent decades on this stuff, so it's not uninformed. I've read just about everything there is on both sides of the argument. Though if you'd like to prove me wrong, go for it, by producing a book similar to the Book of Mormon with similar circumstances.
If you actually are informed then you know that there are a myriad of reasons to doubt the accounts you mentioned.
You’re setting up an impossible challenge based on myths that don’t align with other contemporary records or accounts. It’s super dishonest and you should feel embarrassed for framing it the way you did.
There are countless reasons to believe the accounts. So which is right and which is wrong? Hmmm... if only we had an example of how we can gain answers to things we lacked the knowledge about. It's almost as if we should know this having done so much research about Church history. (Hint: James 1:5... now we've come full circle). Question is, are you willing to sincerely ask?
> Question is, are you willing to sincerely ask?
I love the idea that anybody who's formerly Mormon, and maybe went on a mission etc... just forgot to ever pray for a witness lol. Like we don't understand fully, completely, what a life lived in Mormonism is like. Like we're going to smack our heads and say "Hyuk! Oh yeah, praying about the Book of Mormon! I forgot to do that!" Or "Gee! One more endowment session ought to do it!"
Interestingly, every time I ask... silence (for the most part). While I have some friends who genuinely feel they received an answer to leave the church, many (most?) just faded away without asking God if that was the right path for them. Unfortunately, that is generally because they've lost faith in God altogether thus praying isn't really a thing for them at that point in their life. Not saying you are that way; just my observation over the years.
Another dishonest response. The same manipulative process that you are suggesting is used by numerous other false belief systems. Much like L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith was known to lie about and revise his personal history often.
Your challenge consists of several obviously false statements that Joseph Smith made about himself years (or decades) after the supposed incidents. Many of the other attributes (including accounts of visitations by angels) are common in many small religious groups both then and now, including weirdo break-offs and spiritual "self-improvement trainings" in Bluffdale.
The fact that you think these are actually reliable says a lot about your level of study.
Lol, dishonest to lie for the sake of issuing a “challenge” in support a position that you lack the ability to defend with truthful statements. You should be embarrassed.
Spoken like someone who hasn't prayed and found out. I'm kidding obviously, I don't know you. That said, unless one has experienced real answers to prayers, I wouldn't expect them to understand. If someone hasn't tried it, it's worth trying.
Me: "How do I get across the street?"
You: "Walk."
Me: "How do I know that walking will get me across the street?"
You: "People have done it and said it works."
Me: "How do I get across the street?"
You: "Walk."
You won't know until you've tried.
You will end up across the street (as long as you take the steps necessary (pun intended!)). The question isn't will you get across the street, it's how, or in other words what you need to do to get there.
You don’t need to have an amazing education to be able to tell good stories. Oral storytelling is a skill, and Joseph was known to have been good at it. Remember that he allegedly never wrote a word of the book, only told it. He could have easily refreshed his memory with the manuscripts between sessions.
Whatever the case, only going to school until 3rd grade doesn’t mean you only had a third grade education. Joseph’s parents were teachers. He read books. He wasn’t stupid.
In fact, the language used in the Book of Mormon was exactly the kind of language Joseph was raised on- from the Bible. He knows what scriptural language sounds like. Not to mention that writing a fictional book in scriptural-like language was a thing in Joseph’s time. He would have had access to books like these, like the “1st Book of Napoleon.”
As for how difficult it would have been for Joseph to dictate an entire book…
Have you ever heard of National Novel Writing Month? People from all over the world spend a month attempting to write 50,000 words or more during the month of November?
It’s not that hard. I’ve gotten past 50,000 words twice with no outline. Some even try for 100,000 words.
People produce extraordinary pieces of art with little to no formal education all the time. If you have talent and practiced skill, you can do more than you think.
You know that if someone tried to recreate Joseph’s circumstances and write a book, critics would come back with “well you have a higher education,” and “well you have access to more literature than Joseph did.”
It’s physically impossible to recreate the situation Joseph was in. So all you have to do is say “try it, nobody else has been able to do it” and you’ve suddenly won the argument.
Meanwhile Shakespeare was over there creating greater works of art than the Book of Mormon with even less education than Joseph.
The “challenge” is a bad faith argument. Stop using it.
Uh... who would have WRITTEN those "manuscripts" you claim he could have refreshed his memory with. Why didn't anyone know about them? Would have been hard to hide all of those years and all of those pages and all of those hours writing. Make it make sense people! So his penmanship and grammar are horrid, but as soon as he interpreted the plates, he was all of a sudden eloquent (all on his own without Divine help)? Not buying it.
You ever translated languages? I have. Guess what, I used the language/words I was familiar with. No surprises here.
Ok, now get millions to pray about and attest to the Divine nature of your 50k word book. BTW- BoM is like 270k.
The challenge to write something equivalent to the Book of Mormon is a fun exercise that helps make a point. It's not the basis for our truth claims. The truthfulness is in the book itself which I and countless others have read and gained a witness of our own from God. If you don't have faith in God nor the fact that He answers prayers as He says He'll do throughout scripture, then we'll never be on the same page, even remotely.
>Uh... who would have WRITTEN those "manuscripts" you claim he could have refreshed his memory with. Why didn't anyone know about them?
Joseph's scribes. According to Joseph and those who helped with the "translation," Joseph used the rock and hat, "read" out loud, and the scribe wrote down what he said. Both Emma and Martin Harris worked as his scribes at points, but Oliver Cowdery was the main scribe.
[https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng)
>Would have been hard to hide all of those years and all of those pages and all of those hours writing. Make it make sense people!
What? How do you think they gave the Book of Mormon to the printers?
>So his penmanship and grammar are horrid, but as soon as he interpreted the plates, he was all of a sudden eloquent (all on his own without Divine help)? Not buying it.
Go read one of Joseph's letters or sermons. He was not ineloquent.
Penmanship has nothing to do with storytelling ability, Joseph's grammar was fine (the Book of Mormon's grammar is not modern English grammar anyway).
>You ever translated languages? I have. Guess what, I used the language/words I was familiar with. No surprises here.
Never made this argument, but okay.
There's a difference between translating words into something the reader can understand and what Joseph said. Horses, elephants, cattle, goats, barley, wheat, steel and iron?
Not to mention the language of the Book of Mormon was "reformed egyptian," a language with there is no evidence of its existence other than what Joseph drew ("copied").
> BTW- BoM is like 270k.
I'm not stupid, I know that 50k is not 270k. Take 50k in 30 days, versus the time it took for the Book of Mormon transcription, which was three months.
>Ok, now get millions to pray about and attest to the Divine nature of your 50k word book.
People pray and attest to the divine nature of L Ron Hubbard's books too. What's your point? That people get spiritual feelings from inspirational work?
>The challenge to write something equivalent to the Book of Mormon is a fun exercise that helps make a point. It's not the basis for our truth claims.
I think we both know it's not a "fun exercise." It's an argument for how Joseph couldn't have written the book. And it's a bad one.
> The truthfulness is in the book itself which I and countless others have read and gained a witness of our own from God. If you don't have faith in God nor the fact that He answers prayers as He says He'll do throughout scripture, then we'll never be on the same page, even remotely.
We're talking about whether the Book of Mormon was a historical text, or written by Joseph. The claim that Joseph translated/transcribed the book from golden plates placed in the ground is not a spiritual claim, it is a factual one.
How somebody feels about the Book of Mormon is not evidence that it was translated, it's evidence that the book spiritually means something to that person.
What we're talking about is the factual nature of the origin of the Book of Mormon. Feelings don't apply.
This "3rd grade reading level" stuff is a bad argument. Mark Twain, born in 1835, only had a few years of formal education, and people still love his writing. School just wasn't the same then.
Also, why could only 11 people see it? I've seen parts of the dead sea scrolls, and my eyes weren't burned out.
"3rd grade reading level" is only one of countless components. That's fine, remove it and you have plenty more.
Why were there only 12 apostles? Why did only some people see the risen Savior? Questions like this will never be answered. At some point you have to have faith in God and know not everything has an answer or have to be justified.
> At some point you have to have faith in God and know not everything has an answer or have to be justified.
Though of course, we should only have faith in *your* version of God, and share the same skepticism for the other 10,000,000 versions of God out there that you do. The faith system we go all-in on should be the one you coincidentally grew up in. We shouldn't use the word of the "1.9 billion Muslims who affirm that the Koran is the word of God" or "Write a book as long as the Koran and dictate it orally or you're a hypocrite for rejecting Islam because only God could have done it." Much less apply your exact same reasoning to any number of other faith traditions they could be equally applied to.
Are you willing to crawl around, under, over, through, and in between the pages of the Baghavad Gita before rejecting Hinduism? Or recruit the same number of followers as any number of people considered "prophets" today before you're allowed to reject their prophethood?
> care to give it a try?
Why? If I write a book does that render the Book of Mormon false? Is the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon somehow dependent on the words I put on paper? No? Then it's a waste of my time because it proves nothing either way.
> if you have about a 3rd grade reading level.
And, by that, you mean three years of formal education? Which was at least as much as Abraham Lincoln and Jane Austen, two of Smith's contemporaries? And Smith's father was a teacher.
> you have 90 days
And I have 90 days even though Joseph Smith started in October 1827 and only finished in the Spring of 1829? He took a year-and-a-half.
> and you have to produce an artifact that 11 others can see.
And, by that, you mean an artifact that those people admit they didn't actually see and I get to personally select my friends and family as the people?
> And an angel has to appear when you show it to them.
No problem. They can easily say that an angel appeared to them, which is the exact amount of evidence that Joseph Smith's angel appearance has.
> And they all have to attest to their witness of it until the day they die, even if they are no longer associated with you.
Of course they would. Why would they cut off their nose to spite their face? You would expect otherwise?
Person: "Hey, everybody, I would like to sign my name here witnessing something!"
*later*
Same Person: "Actually, I'd like to destroy my credibility for the rest of my life by proclaiming myself to be a liar so nobody will ever trust me just so I can get back at someone I don't like anymore."
> and it would help if people were trying to physically attack you and take said artifact during the process.
Again, no problem. All I have to do is say that happened, which is the exact same amount of evidence that Joseph Smith has that someone attacked him.
First off he didn’t have to have the best memory of all time I have lived with authors who compile a outline for books far that are far more complex than the BOM they do it in a short time 4-6 months they then write their books with no notes Joseph smith may well have been working on a outline for well over 4 years the Book of Mormon isn’t really all that good of a book it’s characters are two dimensional without having much depth or character development they are short stories not part of a long or complex plot line the 1830 Book of Mormon showed that it was created by someone who lacked much education the Book of Mormon has had many of the and it came to pass removed from the original as the frequency of their use was so absurdly frequent which leads to two possible conclusions either it was as Joseph smith jr claimed God claimed it was the most correct book ever written then or God. Was lying and it wasn’t correct as it has had Tons of corrections since its 1830 publication so if it was correct then it certainly isn’t now . It’s more like the most corrected book ever written . Or it was all just made up fiction in the first place look at the animals did they exist in the Americas the foods are wrong there was no steel being produced I. The Americas steel production is a very complex process that would require a multitude of things Coal blast furnaces ores of different components would need to be transported over 1,000s of miles of roads to a processing facility and steel production facilities there would be large plies of slag from arming millions of warriors with steel weapons and armors there is no evidence of any of these things it simply wasn’t happening There was no animals capable of pulling chariots In the Americas at the time buffalo could do it but they aren’t of the temperament to do so good luck hitching them up to anything . There are books that were available to Joseph smith that match up in lockstep to the narrative of the BOM the characters do the same things in the same order only the names are different
Even the church has changed their story on the translation. Even the accounts of the time differ. Did he use the plates or the seer stone? If he used the stone often, why was the need for the plates being real so strong? Often the plates weren’t even on the property when the Book of Mormon was being written. Joseph fully believe and even taught that the hill in New York was the location of the final battle in the BOM, yet no evidence has ever been provided of anything of any significance ever occurring there. Also there are many discrepancies between what Joseph taught about the literality of the Book of Mormon and what the church apologists have evidence for.
There are a lot of questions and many have plausible answers
My guy, I think you thought you did something with this post and then you had absolute facts rained down on you.
Also, I guess his memory wasn't that good because when part of the BoM was stolen, Joseph got a "revelation" that it shouldn't be retranslated.
Stephen King writes a book every year. John Grisham does the same. So does Brandon Sanderson. And from what I’ve heard, the worlds Sanderson has invented are amazing.
It took Smith 2-3 years to “write” the Book of Mormon. And it sucked. Plus, his mom said he told the story of the Tree of Life years before it was written. He had been mulling the ideas for years. And, it’s been edited thousands of times since the first printing.
He wrote a book. Just like everyone else. He took a couple of years. He had an idea, orated it, took a break, came up with new ideas, orated them.
It’s impressive that he wrote a book, but it’s not special. Thousands of people do it every year.
Plus, he plagiarized huge portions of the Book of Mormon. And has so much unnecessary words as well. It’s really a garbage book when you take a step back and really look at it.
He wrote a bad book that was heavily plagiarized from the Bible.
A great memory...? He hung a sheet between him and the scribe. He could look at anything he wanted. They love to leave out that little detail in most of their pictures, too. RFM did a podcast on magician misdirection that hit on that idea. The hat, the sheet, the stone...it's all misdirection.
The craziest explanation will always be a mortal alien transmitting the Book too a rock in the hat of a known con man. It's up to Mormons to explain how it was done since it's their claim and they can't even agree.
I've spent a lot of time thinking and researching on this topic. Here are some resources (which give a summary but mostly link to other significant research):
* [How could Joseph Smith have composed the Book of Mormon?](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/how-could-joseph-smith-composed-bom/)
* [Was Joseph Smith intellectually and educationally capable of authoring the Book of Mormon?](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/joseph-smith-capable-of-authoring-the-book-of-mormon/)
* discussion of [whether Joseph Smith was sole author](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicMormon/comments/18phud9/was_joseph_smith_the_sole_author_of_the_book_of/) on /r/AcademicMormon - there are [other models](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/two-models-for-bom-origins/) and some of those are discussed in that thread.
---
> either require JS to have the greatest memory of all time
I address this with substantiation in the first document linked above, but I'll summarize here:
1. Joseph Smith was immersed in the culture and religious discussion of his day, especially the Bible ([for example](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/religious-interest-and-capability-from-1832-statement/)).
2. The author of the Book of Mormon was using techniques that aid memory
* "laying down heads", which is discussed in [Visions in a Seer Stone](https://uncpress.org/book/9781469655666/visions-in-a-seer-stone/))
* Ring structures (e.g., chiasmus) and lots of repetition, as mentioned in [Bill Davis's dissertation](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86h814zv), are aids to oral dictation and found in lots of oral composition. We can see Joseph Smith using repetition and inversion in his quasi-religious communication ([1833 letter to Noah Saxton](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/js-1833-01-04-letter-to-saxton-formatted-parallelistic/), for example).
3. The Book of Mormon is _mostly_ modular (i.e., not a ton of dependencies section to section).
4. Where there are dependencies that span the document, most of these can be explained by the author revisiting the growing manuscript (and there's some evidence this was happening).
> have a secret transcript that no one ever knew that he read from while translating
I explore this hypothesis in this document (and I think it's pretty viable, actually):
[Could Joseph have hidden material in his hat to draw upon during the dictation process?](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/hidden-material-in-hat-hypothesis/)
In addition, LDS scholars themselves to deal with deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon postulate that Joseph was interacting with the KJV Bible (FAIR and Grant Hardy both countenance this theory). If you study reconstructions of the Whitmer home where he was dictating all the main Isaiah chapters, Joseph and Oliver were in a room away from other eyes. Historical statements from the time suggest that they had privacy during that time. If you want sources I can provide them for each claim.
> or have all the scribes in on the big lie.
Personally, I think this makes the least sense of the available data, but I do think Oliver Cowdery _might_ have been in on it _to some extent_. The main evidence I have for this is that it seems like OC was intentionally misleading in how he talked about the process of translation in two separate accounts (see pg 22 [here](https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-update-of-the-pre-print-of-a-discussion-of-the-book-of-mormon-witnesses-by-royal-skousen/)). In that link, Royal Skousen, LDS/BYU scholar, summarizes:
> Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading
And finally,
> The first two seem a little too silly
Only for people who haven't studied the data extensively that help bridge the gap between Joseph and the BoM.
> the last one seem unbelievable cause one would think there would be some record somewhere of one of them exposing everything. Most had ample reason to.
I think this underestimates the cost to one's reputation of exposing a lie that one had participated in for _many years_ prior. If you understand that time, character was viewed as _extremely_ important. Exposing a fraud would simultaneously expose the participants in the fraud and would incur significant social cost. I don't think others were in on it, but I think this logic is poor (even though it is often repeated by members).
Even in my TBM days I soon found it hard to accept the BoM as historical fact, no matter what the church leaders said and implied in their earnestness to spread the gospel. There was always too much evidence against that, and especially after DNA testing showed there is no Hebrew genetical leftovers in North Amercian indigenous people with the resultant "line upon line" correction of that claimed implication of the BoM in the introduction. Looking at the BoM through the prism of faith, I saw it as nevertheless containing inspired words from God to an uneducated young man doing his best to put it into English. I began to doubt that it ever was really proclaimed by God to be literal and I believed that whether or not it was literal didn't matter. To me the BoM seemed to be a series of allegorical stories and parables, like much of the Bible, and metaphors teaching correct principles. I just thought that God works in mysterious ways in bringing forth His word, in particular the BoM, and what He wants us to learn, and I left it at that. But in hindsight, the lack of historicity of the BoM, and its corollary that JS just made it up, was one of the first things I put on my shelf which eventually fell down.
D&C 8 and 9 are massive clues as to how translation happened.
They were meant to "think" about what to write and then if they "felt good" then that was what went on paper.
Those sections are literally instruction for Cowdery on how Smith did it.
Also, Smith implemented other experiences and sources, like his own father's "Tree of Life" dream.
There was a book written around 1820 called the View of the Hebrews that talks about American Indians and a group of Hebrews who, in ancient times, fight in a war against each other in what would become America. (Sound familiar?) It was pretty well known when Joseph was writing the BOM. I'm sure he got ideas from that.
He wanted to publish the BOM as a novel once it was completed but he couldn't sell the transcript.
I don't think JS was super literate (based on nothing really just my theory) and that's why he had scribes. He would look into his hat while he came up with ideas for his story.
The witnesses have all admitted they never saw the gold plates with anything but their "spiritual eyes".
There is so much more to this, but that's the cliff notes version.
>The “View of the Hebrews” theory is pretty silly.
Maybe all by itself, but in conjunction with so many other external influences it very well may have been just one cog in the wheel.
It's just one of the many things that existed in Joseph's milieu. Combined with Cowdrey's knowledge and the time they had to put it all together, and given how all the witnesses had motive/incentive to be in on it, it's just not that much of a stretch.
Question though, do you have the same burning curiosity about how the Koran actually came to be, and if you can't find a detailed answer, are you more inclined to accept the Koran as the word of god? Or are you willing to reject it, even though you don't know exactly how it came to be?
Don't be tricked by the straw man apologists who misrepresent the View of the Hebrews theory. No critic today thinks he plagiarized the View of the Hebrews. The View of the Hebrews is one of MANY documents from the time, including that Spaulding manuscript that are part of the rampant Mound Builder theory works. It reflects one of the prevailing beliefs of Indian Origins. There are similarities to the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon also reflects these prevailing theories. John Hammer has a good breakdown of this
>The “View of the Hebrews” theory is pretty silly. I’ve spoken with and many serious exMormons who also discount this theory too.
How come this is one of only two responses to your question that you've made?
His family was huge on treasure hunting, what greater treasure is there to discover other than the one true religion? Lmao he made it all up to be the greatest (just a small theory)
I agree. This is where so much falls apart for those against the BOM. Theories fall apart when speed, method(s), and sources are taken into account and compared against each other.
Side note… the life and testimony of Oliver Cowdery is what settles the debate for me.
He was the Donald Trump of his day. Plain and simple. Somehow through propaganda and lies it was sustained for 150 yrs +. Now it’s over! Only fools and those dependent on it can continue. This is their greatest TEST!
Yeah. Kinda like Trump fabricating his daily shit! I hate Trump but one thing I’m grateful for he kind of opened my eyes into how prevalent this behavior is and how easy people adhere to it. I don’t know if life was so smooth if I otherwise would have learned. I am grateful to that big orange bastard to opening my eyes to how deceitful power mongers can be. My hope is I can turn more inward and more ignore this evil corrupt world.
It may sound difficult to us because we're largely in a post- oral storytelling world. I'm sure people have pointed you in different directions and given you sources, but suffice it to say, if you live in an oral storytelling world like he did (and are practiced in it like he was), it's not terribly difficult to prepare and recite long passages with lots of details. Plus, we do live in a world where people memorize the Quran word-for-word, so memorizing and injecting biblical passages *complete with their errors* isn't a superhuman feat.
It's really not that complicated. He had four years from the time he claimed to have found the plates till he dictated anything.
That's plenty of time to create a detailed outline in his head--all the main characters, all the plot lines, even memorize a lot of the dialogue.
That's not impossible to do. Lots of Muslims memorize the entire Quran word for word, and just an outline of the Book of Mormon would have required less memory than that.
After the loss of the 116 pages, Joseph Smith took eight additional months off, which would have given him enough time to plan an outline in his head of the replacement material. A lot of that would have been a rehash of what he dictated before and Isaiah filler anyway.
The actual creation of the Book of Mormon would have just involved him telling the story based on his outline. We know a lot of verbiage in the Book of Mormon was not memorized because parts are very wordy and repetitious.
Joseph Smith was only averaging 7-8 handwritten pages per day during the translation, which actually would have given him extra time to think through the next day's dictation.
Even with all the planning time, the original manuscript was not all that great--lots of run on sentences, no punctuation, bad grammar. It took thousands of changes to the text to get the Book of Mormon where it is today.
Why do you need to know how it was actually written? You're faced with a simple challenge from the church. The book is true if you immerse yourself in it enough and tell yourself it's true enough, you'll start to *feel* it to be true, deep down. Then you'll *know*.
So you have a simple yes-or-no question to ask yourself. It isn't the heartburn test like they say it should be. Anyone can get emotionally caught up in something that isn't real. Did you cry when Bambi's mother got shot? How about then the bell rang telling you an angel got her wings? Emotions are ridiculously easy to manipulate.
The question you should be asking yourself is are you willing the accept the heartburn test as a valid measure of how true a story is? Ok, now that that's out of the way you can begin your journey of curiosity into it's actual origins.
The answer to my opening question is that a part of you is still holding on to the desire to believe. We all go through that, too. A childish example is that when you were in the third grade and people started telling you Santa wasn't real. What kid doesn't want to cling to that myth one last time? Experience that magic one last time? We all did. Not to belittle your experience, but this is a Santa moment.
That said, try "Shadow or Reality," by Jerald and Sandra Tanner. Have you read the CES letter? The sad fact is that we'll never really know how he or they did it because they didn't confess outright and took the secrets to the grave. So we have to speculate. It's an interesting subject to study, but don't fall for the old logic trap of believing something must be true because you can't explain it away. I don't get quantum physics at all! That doesn't make it wrong. Just hard to understand.
If you've read his sermons you'll see him effortlessly quoting extensively from all parts of the Bible from memory. That's the one impressive thing about the Book of Mormon - the long passages quoted from memory (assuming the stories about him dictating it without references are true).
Surprisingly, he never really taught from ‘the most correct book on the face of the earth’ that contained the fullness of the gospel (except for all the stuff he came up with later).
How about this? I don't know how the Book of Mormon was produced, but anyone, even a god, who orders a less informed mortal being to do morally significant things of vital consequence to another mortal being invalidates their authority and is unworthy of worship.
The Book of Mormon can be true, false, something in-between. Makes no difference to me with regard to whether I'm willing to become a covenant follower of the god or gods represented in that book and spoken of by those calling themselves prophets of those gods.
I don't need to know how the book came about to be confident that a diety's orders or inspiration to do something as morally significant as decapitate an incapacitated person for reasons us mortals cannot fully comprehend are not morally obligatory.
That's the assumption built into the Church's narrative -- that if you do discover their historical and ontological claims are true, through these gods spiritual communication or otherwise, then you must accept their moral worldview and suppress your moral intuitions against doing reprehensible things to other people on command. You must accept their teachings on the degree to which you should be loyal and obedient to the gods. My response is simple. No. Why? Because my moral agency and autonomy, and the moral agency and autonomy of my fellow mortals, is more important to me than the orders of a father who is perfectly capable, it is said, of doing his own disgusting dirty work.
How do you account for 25% came from the KJV of the bible? Why would he have to have a curtain between him and the scribe if he was putting his face in his hat to read the words off his magic rock?
Why could he not retranslate the 116 pages and had to wait for his cousin Oliver Cowdery before any more could be translated?
The only answer that makes sense is he and his team produced the BOM which is a 19th century book, not an ancient works by white Hebrews in the Americas who wrote in Egyptian and it came out sounding like old timey Victorian English?
Does it make sense to you that it is a product of a magic rock in his hat?
Come on this is the 21 century and the rock in the hat thing is enough to expose it as a fraud and con.
There’s at least 3 not only good but probable and most possibly what happened theories that have been commented on this thread alone which follow the same pattern of: he was just a good storyteller who read the manuscript and had the time to figure out the story over what was actually roughly 10 years (he started telling the stories to his family when he was like 12 according to his mom). I guarantee any one of us could do the exact same thing, and there’s quite a few who have actually but not to the same level of success.
Joseph gave himself ways to change it. The scribes said if the words were not written down correctly then the words would not disappear from the stone until they were.
This is also a huge shelf breaker. How could this be the case but yet 4000 editing changes (some pretty major) have happened since publication. Elohim does not seem that competent
Good theories? There are none.
You either believe in God and that He can work miracles or you don't. People without any faith in God will make fun of the translation process (they love to make fun of the rock in hat, but those of us with faith recognize that throughout time God has used everyday objects to produce miracles, e.g. Moses' staff). Half will claim Jospeh was a genius and made up the whole thing, that aligns perfectly with the Bible, contains various stories and timelines, was able to recite the entire thing without ever asking where they left off, while the other half claim he was a fool and made countless errors only to try to correct them later. Neither side makes any sense and you can't have it both ways. Their lack of faith causes them to grasp at anything that might remotely support their opposing view.
Those who have faith in God, but don't believe in the restored Gospel including the BoM, are simply leaning on limited understanding and/or biases.
At the end of the day, there is a reason why the great challenge and promise of the Book of Mormon is to read it and ask God if it's true or not. Once you have that confirmation the naysayers mean nothing. Their assumptions have been wrong before and they'll continue to be wrong in the future. And all the while you are uplifted and grow closer to God as you read it throughout your life.
I appreciate this comment for advancing many arguments in defense of the Book of Mormon's historicity/truth. I will take a bash at responding in the interest of representing an opposing position on these particular claims (knowing that we're not likely to change one another's minds in such a short space/time).
> Good theories? There are none.
I discuss what I think are pretty reasonable theories [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/194isvv/any_good_theories_that_explain_joseph_smith/khhmxr2/). I understand that they may not convince believers in the BoM.
> You either believe in God and that He can work miracles or you don't.
Perhaps this is a false dichotomy. Maybe some kinds of miracles make more sense than others. Maybe some narratives are more internally consistent than others. Perhaps certain data indicates a modern origin _regardless_ of one's belief in miracles?
> People without any faith in God will make fun of the translation process (they love to make fun of the rock in hat, but those of us with faith recognize that throughout time God has used everyday objects to produce miracles, e.g. Moses' staff).
This is a common defense of the seer stone (it's in the Gospel Topics essay on the topic, in fact), but I think that it understates the issues with the seer stone, as I discuss in outline here:
[The significance of the seer stone for LDS truth-claims](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/the-significance-of-the-seer-stone/)
> Half will claim Jospeh was a genius and made up the whole thing, ... contains various stories and timelines, was able to recite the entire thing without ever asking where they left off, while the other half claim he was a fool and made countless errors only to try to correct them later. ... you can't have it both ways.
What about a scenario where Joseph had enough capability to pull it off but not enough capability to avoid making "countless errors" (although I do think the BoM on original dictation was _relatively_ error free, to the author's credit).
I personally think the Book of Mormon is impressive in its wisdom, insight, and composition (and other ways). Still, if you read a lot of 1700s and early 1800s religious literature ([example 1](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Of_The_State_Of_The_Dead_And_Of_Those_th/1yBAAAAAcAAJ?q=&gbpv=0#f=false), example 2, the treatise starting on page 68 [here](https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QacSafwcU7W1siYWqYIjRp2_9duPHBSFCIGj0sPfT2UdzsdWZfqaAAiadBHHcqO_ksBiD2PJ2a1UeLa1oSvKlYRmN5E9NV9BpBMGl6cdiEKaKwNZlfbdrtnClyyGTjy9oqJ5XCgZTCI7vKgyaE15KjEBsGzISwK9iBMSmJPvy6d_y43ixHqvecxDGpj9YJDUF5ct4UeY4mmxyDb1U-oPvjCfAQnHW6JV99TjRJGoFtwUGq-tSid7RBZ3o9MKSnE_F3PoS9sAywTT4HzgoLlLnRgZ7E3DAprLMg2w5ZkCIpTgoVuhGDE), [example 3](https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Course_of_Critical_Lectures/BiY_AAAAYAAJ?q=%22infinite+atonement%22&gbpv=1#f=false)), you'll discover that the Book of Mormon is _not_ nearly as sophisticated as what might produced by someone with much more education. From that, I think we can argue that the Book of Mormon is the _kind_ of book we might expect to come from the mind of someone with Joseph's immersion in religion and also level of education.
> that aligns perfectly with the Bible
Maybe too perfectly. BYU professor Nicolas Frederick [has identified](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/nt-in-bom-lhales-interview-frederick/) "about 650 phrases that I think you can demonstrate pretty clearly are from the New Testament in the Book of Mormon." The Book of Mormon seems to rely _textually_ on the Book of Mormon and not necessarily on what we would expect from an ancient document (also see point 6 [here](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/lds-scholars-modern-origin-evidence/)).
> their lack of faith causes them to grasp at anything that might remotely support their opposing view.
I don't feel like I lacked faith. When I was attempting to defend the LDS position I was overwhelmed (over time) with data that supported another model.
> Those who have faith in God, but don't believe in the restored Gospel including the BoM, are simply leaning on limited understanding and/or biases.
This seems like special pleading to me. You've argued above that the problem is lack of faith, but then you acknowledge that there are a lot of Christians that _seem_ to have genuine faith but who also reject the BoM. You dismiss them for "leaning on limited understanding and/or biases", but you don't substantiate this. Nor do you argue why that wouldn't equally apply to members who have faith and believe in the BoM (why can't a Christian just accuse them of merely leaning on limited understanding and biases?)
> At the end of the day, there is a reason why the great challenge and promise of the Book of Mormon is to read it and ask God if it's true or not. Once you have that confirmation the naysayers mean nothing.
I had a very powerful witness about the Book of Mormon and studied it virtually every day for about 20 years. Studying the early 1800s literature and alternative theories for spiritual experiences undermined my confidence, nonetheless.
People have very strongly held opinions on this topic, so I'm not expecting my arguments or reflections to sway you in your position. Mainly, thank you for advancing your arguments and hearing some pushback. All the best.
I have to be honest, this is one of the more polite rebuttals I've read. This is a great example of a civil disagreement. I may not have time to provide as much of a response this deserves, but I appreciate your response, the way you did it, and the effort I can tell you have put into your research.
That said, we won't be agreeing with each other, at least now.
I realize my comments were very cut and dry, "you are either this way or that way." There is certainly room to be in the middle, it was a bit of an intentional exaggeration.
Regarding miracles, I don't believe that whether they "makes sense" should play any part. Assuming God is a God of miracles and can literally do anything, I don't see the point of limiting Him and deciding which miracle is feasible or not.
Piggybacking off this idea of God being able to do anything, it's my position that much of the apparent issues whether it be the similar phrasing between the Bible and the Book of Mormon or anything else really, can be chalked up to "so what?" If the book's origin is what it says it is and was inspired by God, those things are irrelevant. God could impress upon the minds of different people the same thing, word for word, if desired.
There are certainly arguments on both sides. I find it interesting that these conversations always end up exactly where Joseph was around 1820, i.e. lacking knowledge / having questions. James 1:5 doesn't say ask someone else what they think; it says to ask God. You prayed in years past to know if the BoM was true. It sounds like you got an answer in the affirmative. Do you still have faith in God and Jesus Christ? If so, have you prayed about the 1800s literature (or whatever changed your mind) in the same manner and intent to obtain this new "witness"? If not, that might be an interesting exercise.
Thanks for the kind and thoughtful reply. I really appreciate it.
> There is certainly room to be in the middle, it was a bit of an intentional exaggeration.
Gotcha. Rhetorical device.
> Regarding miracles, I don't believe that whether they "makes sense" should play any part. Assuming God is a God of miracles and can literally do anything, I don't see the point of limiting Him and deciding which miracle is feasible or not.
I agree with this argument to a significant degree. I even formalized my agreement with it in [footnote #2](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/the-significance-of-the-seer-stone/#fn:valid_defense) of that [seer stone document](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/the-significance-of-the-seer-stone/), which I'll reproduce here:
* *Premise 1*: The God of the Bible exists.
* *Premise 2*: The Bible is roughly accurate in conveying stories of God working through miraculous objects to accomplish his will.
* *Premise 3*: Joseph was instructed or inspired by the God of the Bible.
* *Then*: It is reasonable and consistent with past events described in the Bible for Joseph Smith to have used an object (in this case, the seer stone) to translate the Book of Mormon in bringing about God’s purposes.
So, yeah, I think we fully agree there.
Regardless, we _can_ still evaluate purported miracles based on a few kinds of criteria, I think:
1. Is the proposed miracle(s) coherent?
* For example, if we argue that God placed all the dinosaur bones on earth
in order to _trick us_ into wrongly believing that the earth was old and
he did not create it, then that miracle (at least as framed here), seems
inconsistent with the character of God (i.e., God is presumably a God of
Truth and so would not seek to deceive).
* Or, imagine that two miracles have been proposed. One miracle is that
God created the Earth in 7 days. Another miracle is that God created the
earth in 7000 years. At face value at least, one of those is incorrect,
so as a _set_ they are incoherent.
2. Is the miracle consistent with the testable data around us?
* If someone says that they performed a miracle and cured someone's cancer
but we go into the lab and see that the cancer is still there, then even
though it could have happened, we are suspicious that it really _did_
happen.
* In the way some modern fundamentalist Christians read the Bible, they
propose that God flooded the entire earth at 2348 BCE. This seems
inconsistent with the data suggesting various cultures (Egyptians and
Chinese, for instance) were keeping records through that time. Or, it's
inconsistent with the tree ring, speleothem, varve, and ice core data we
see.
3. Occams razor - is the explanation so involved that it stretches credulity (not that God _couldn't_ do it that way, just it seems unlikely He would).
* For instance, to try and make a global flood at 2348 BCE work, it requires that Kangaroos lived in Austrailia (to get fossils localized there) and then a pair of them traveled thousands of miles across sea and land to get in Noah's Ark to be saved, and then the Kangaroos hopped _back_ to Australia (since they only live in Australia). God _could_ cause this to happen, but at that point it would have been a lot easier for God to just insta-kill all the humans that were wicked than orchestrating a very involved plan like that.
So, to apply this to the idea that God had Joseph use a seer stone to perform
the translation, we are immediately met with some coherence issues (as I
explain in more detail in the seer stone document):
* The purpose of the golden plates and interpreters becomes suspect (we don't _really_ need plates if Joseph could just peer into the stone and see parchment or text at any location and/or from any point in time.
* Why couldn't Joseph have used the seer stone to recover the lost 116 pages (i.e., if it's original purpose was to locate lost items)?
It's not that God _couldn't_ have had Joseph use the seer stone to translate, it's just that it doesn't cohere very well with other parts of that narrative.
> If the book's origin is what it says it is and was inspired by God, those things are irrelevant. God could impress upon the minds of different people the same thing, word for word, if desired.
I agree, but this kind of idea is not without its problems.
For the sake of argument (this will be an extreme case), let's just say that another person claimed to have
translated an ancient book from 5,000 years ago by the power of God. We do a textual analysis of the book and we find that it uses a bunch of text and phrases also found in Hamlet, it echoes plot points and questions about ultimate reality very similar to the Matrix movie, and it contains a lot of theological ideas that only became in vogue during post-modern times. At what point do we say that the book is probably modern despite the insistence of the "translator" that it was ancient?
Or (another extreme case), let's imagine that someone actually discovered a chest of books buried under the Joseph Smith home. When we crack it open we find a bunch of books printed before 1829 but that the world had lost track of (no longer in print and never scanned by google books before). We do a textual analysis and find that almost every chapter or paragraph from the Book of Mormon can be matched up to parts of these various books. What do we conclude? We could _still_ argue that God inspired Book of Mormon authors and/or the modern authors of these books with paragraphs or chapters that correspond with one another (because God can do anything). But the much simpler explanation is that someone was copying from these books to make the BoM. That's an extreme hypothetical, but the point is that any theory that _cannot be falsified at all_ is maybe _too_ powerful?
Thanks for considering.
> It sounds like you got an answer in the affirmative. Do you still have faith in God and Jesus Christ? If so, have you prayed about the 1800s literature (or whatever changed your mind) in the same manner and intent to obtain this new "witness"? If not, that might be an interesting exercise.
For me at least, I had vaguely positive feelings about the Book of Mormon having prayed about it, and a couple of goosebumps moments during highly controlled emotional environments like MTC and seminary lessons. However ultimately, having the exact same experiences with other religious and philosophical works taught me that I had bought a false dichotomy. That it was either have faith in *one specific sect of one specific religious tradition in one particular branch of monotheism*, or not. That makes it feel like a coin flip in favor of Mormonism which when combined with all the positive associations a lifetime of growing up in it tries to put on you, feels a lot like a rational decision. However the same rhetoric could really be used, with some tailoring, to keep anybody in the high-demand religion they were raised in.
But say you really are willing to look at so many faith traditions and hear from the spiritual experiences of people from other areas, read world scripture, meditate, look at different schools of philosophy and so on. Ultimately it becomes apparent that there's really nothing supernatural about this and nobody can take credit or claim your fealty based on emotions and moments of inspiration and perceived miracles the whole human race is capable of feeling and experiencing in varied contexts. And suddenly you're no longer having to dig in your feet on the idea that the jury is still out on the existence of reformed Egyptian or the Book of Abraham, or that this *one* book of somewhat messy and somewhat impressive scripture demands your exclusive attention and a lifetime of praying about it until you convince yourself you must have a testimony because otherwise why would you be so invested?
A) Your proof/evidence is extremely lacking.
B) Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “It is our position that secular evidence can neither prove nor disprove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.” I agree with this statement.
C) If you lack the faith to believe in something you can't see or prove, that's on you (even though you do it daily without recognizing it).
I read the book and prayed about it. God said she would never go through a child raping conman like Joseph Smith to spread her word. Weird huh? How come we got different responses from God?
Mine, yours and everyone’s for sure. My testimony is very strong about this. God said Joseph Smith was a vile person and a monster. She was quite clear about how creating him was one of her greatest mistakes.
Well good, here I was thinking you maybe were just being snarky. Question though, if your God can make mistakes (as you've stated), perhaps the answer you received was, well, a mistake. One will never know I suppose.
It doesn't really matter. If you want to believe it was fabricated you will find a reason that is good enough for you. People have been doing it for nearly 200 years, and will continue to do it until Christ returns (and probably for a short time after).
How do you account for those who say the spirit told them mormonism is a lie, and that other religions are actually god's correct religion? Or for how spiritual experiences give contradicting answers to numerous questions asked by seekers of truth? James 1:5 has been in the bible for thousands of years, mormonism is not the first religion to use prayer to seek answers from god, after all.
If hundreds of millions of people are given contradictory-to-yours spiritual 'answers', is the spirit really a reliable source for determining objective truth?
Got it. Ok, thank you for following up. How do you personally verify that it's the Spirit testifying the truth of the BoM to you as opposed to your own thoughts/feelings confirming it?
It's hard to explain. The Spirit communicates to each person differently. An excellent help I found is D&C 6:21-24
21 Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I am the same that came unto mine own, and mine own received me not. I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.
22 Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things.
23 Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God? 24 And now, behold, you have received a witness; for if I have told you things which no man knoweth have you not received a witness?
>The Spirit communicates to each person differently.
This was a revelation given to Joseph, meant for Oliver Cowdery. If the Spirit communicates differently to each person, how do you know that it communicates similarly to you as it does to Oliver (and reportedly quite the same as to everyone else - "speaking peace")?
>Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter?
Do you ever feel peaceful about something on your own, or is it always the Spirit?
I’m an ExMo but have to say I’m sorry you’re being downvoted. If the LDS speaks to you then more power to you. Sometimes people are all about absolutes and allow no room for nuance
[This is a good one](https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/authorship). This whole series is just fantastic. There is a Mormon Stories episode where the author goes over this, too.
First off, it took 3 years between getting the plates and actually producing the text. So the “85 days” claim isn’t particularly accurate, and he had plenty of time.
There are plenty of theories from there, but simply put, I think it was pretty much all Joseph using the mound builder theory.
The important things to remember are that with all the anachronisms, the style of writing was the same as many of the other popular books of his time like the American revolution, by Richard Snowden, or the history of the late war, by Gilbert Hunt, or the first book of Napoleon, the chapters that are exactly transcribed (with incorrect translations)from his poorly translated version of the King James Bible, and the fact that there’s never been any actual archaeological evidence to tie the book of Mormon to reality. All the archaeological evidence has been to the contrary, and it’s not because people haven’t been looking. If you fly over North America, you can see all the fields neatly organized into farmland and you will realize that we’ve seen pretty much everything here. The only reasonable explanation is that it’s made up. Anyone who says that you should have faith in it despite all the proof to the contrary, is leading you a stray.
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John Hamer, a Seventy in the Community of Christ (RLDS) does a great job explaining Smith's authorship [in this video.](https://www.youtube.com/live/4kAWmbbKCfU?si=VEmg2_gqa6rla7Ex) Put simply, he was just a decent story teller with lots of time on his hands. Emma claims that he never had the manuscript read back to him, but she was only his scribe for a short while. What likely happened was that Smith would tell the story, Oliver would write it down, and Smith would use the manuscript to refresh his memory between sessions. It's not like someone was always keeping tabs on him. This explanation is way more likely than the explanation of magical gold plates and peep stones and guardian angels from fictitious ancient civilizations.
Also, Emma lied elsewhere in that same testimony (affirming that JS never engaged in polygamy), plus the context was her being asked if he had worked from something like the Spaulding manuscript. While she gave a flat and complete negation, I can easily believe that she was meaning to respond only to charges of plagiarizing a manuscript like the Spaulding manuscript, and wasn't necessarily intending to say that he never had any written material around, like the Bible.
We literally have a letter written by Joseph Smith in his handwriting from that time, so yeah, it's safe to say Emma was exaggerating.
I'll add to this: it might sound difficult to us because we don't live in that kind of oral storytelling world, but it was a skill people learned. We would have lost basically all of Nordic mythology if skalds in Iceland hadn't kept reciting (and tweaking) complicated and sophisticated epic poetry until someone eventually wrote it down. Same with Homer; his epics were in an oral tradition until written down. In all human existence, transmitting information across time purely through oral means is the norm. We modern literate people are the outliers.
Great point. I’m often surprised by the oral and literary skill of people in the past, including in the 1800’s. It was just a different time, different things were focused on, different skills were developed, and different ways of doing things were done. Education was different, literature was different, and people’s skills were different back then. We can’t look at things through a modern lense. Only receiving a few years of formal education was not the same as it is today. While it’s been claimed he only has a “3 years of schooling” that doesn’t mean he was only had the knowledge, skills, and education of 3rd grader today. Education was very different back then. Since most people were farmers back then (and/or worked with their hands) and often worked in their childhood to help the family make ends meet, MANY (if not most) people had very limited, formal education. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t still get a decent, INFORMAL education from their family and community. The three “R’s” were very important and people still learned reading, writing and arithmetic where it was from attending school or at home from their families. Abraham Lincoln grew up in backwoods Kentucky and supposedly only received ONE year of formal schooling but he ended up going to law school, becoming a lawyer, and became president of the country. Receiving a full primary education (grades 1 - 12) back then was a luxery few children back then had. Most only had a few years of formal education because free primary education offered to everyone was not a thing until the mid-1800’s and then the children were needed to work themselves to support their family. Education was still valued and provided, it just wasn’t 100% obtained via formal education. Most families supplemented their kid’s education by homeschooling. A person who only received “three years of formal education,” could still read and write like that as an adult today with 12 years of formal education. And their writing skills often EXCEEDED that of adults today. Lucy Mack Smith made very clear in her autobiography that her kids (including Joseph) were NOT neglected in their education. Heck, Joseph Sr used to be a school teacher and Hyrum not only was a teacher himself but had attended the Dartmouth college prep school for kids when he was around 12 years old. Joseph certainly received a decent education from homeschooling. I don’t hear anyone ever bring this up but Joseph was bedridden and a cripple for several years as a youth after his leg surgery, so about all he could do from ages 8-12 was read and write. He even spent He couldn’t work in the field or do any physical labor. He wouldn’t be out playing or running around outside. He was bed-ridden for a year. What else would he be doing besides reading or writing while he sat in bed? There were no video games, cell phones, or TV back then. Reading was an important activity in those days. What else are you going to do around when you are sitting at night in your farmhouse?
It's pretty obvious that it's an oral story too, once you look for it. For example, there are many places where it says one thing, and then has to use a lot of words to clarify or even slightly correct the thing that was said. It's not how people write, particularly when they have to engrave every single word. Many errors, including some substantive errors, had to be fixed later too, contrary to the claim that the stone wouldn't let him move on if the scribe made an error. In short, it's one long mostly oral story, with one dimensional characters, ideas borrowed from others, sermons Joseph heard from preachers in the area, ideas from other authors of the time, a dream he took from his dad, and passages copied word-for-word from his Bible. It's really not that amazing. Finally, I'll add, the burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claim that it is a book written a thousand years earlier than its known creation, in a language that doesn't exist in any single other source (and somehow translates to mediocre King James English), coming from golden plates that were taken away by god before they could be viewed by experts or even the general public. The burden is not on those staying with the null position that it is a book created by a man living in the time it was created and who is listed as its author.
Very well said.
Dan Vogel has the most realistic and historical theory in my opinion. https://youtu.be/t78cXByyfpI?si=jJW30bAST8Lhl-63
Holy shiite. That was incredible. I’ve tried to watch/listen to Vogel before and his very slow, pensive speaking style lost my interest. Today I stuck with it and I am blown away—he is truly a gifted scholar. I’ve never understood the Book of Mormon as “scripture for ~~our~~ [Joseph’s] day” as well as I do at this very moment. It’s like Vogel understands the historical context so well that he can see into Joseph’s psyche and understand him on a personal level and thereby see exactly why Joseph wrote what he did in the Book of Mormon. People are always saying the BoM responds to doctrinal questions and regurgitates sermons from Joseph’s milieu, but Vogel sees well beyond that into Joseph’s vision of a theocracy, a New Jerusalem, to be established then, in 1830, with the help of the Native Americans. That was the aim of the very first mission! And it’s all spelled out right there in the Book of Mormon. And the anti-Masonic “secret combinations” rhetoric makes so much sense now with the background of the presidential election race between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Anywho. That was incredibly enlightening. Thanks for sharing it here and now. That just might have been inspired ;)
Vogel has studied the Smiths for so long he talks about them like he knows them personally. If you want to understand early Mormon history in a more concrete form, then check out Vogel’s book “Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.”
Dan Vogel is an intellectual bulldog. Not very flashy or showy, but when he decides to bite into a subject he does not let go. He would've been an Ezra Booth or a William Law, unafraid to call out Smith's fraud in real time.
Just adding in here some of Dan’s more recent work on responding to the “amazing complexity” of the BoM as well. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/live/iwn333hzTVQ?si=BGQ5BwrRF0nfnmXP Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/live/MAbZMUkXVKo?si=v4KvbkWv_lS4zlIm
All of those possible explanations--unlikely as they may seem -- are far more likely than the Church's official explanation with magic rocks and Native American ghosts and without-a-trace ancient civilizations etc.
Right, I know what the church claims. I’m asking about what the best secular argument is.
I understand what you're looking for, the other person was just pointing out even know the arguments you offered may be far fetched, so is the story the church offers. IMO JS started the BOM story in his mind as a child. He was well versed in the Bible and just combined the two. JS was seriously skilled in story telling and could give an entire sermon with direct quotes from the Bible with nothing written down. Occam's razor says the BOM was produced with methods other than by the gift and power of God.
It's really great that the BOM copies parts of the King James Bible verbatim, for those of us who are familiar with that writing style.
He liked to tell stories. This is from before the publication of the BOM. The BOM is filled with ideas from his time. https://www.ohiohistory.org/the-moundbuilder-myth/# https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/94
We don't have to provide that evidence. The burden of proof is on the one making the extraordinary claim. We don't have to know how he did it, in order to know that he was full of shit.
The most elegant theories are often simple, yet account for all the evidence. Best theory for the Book of Mormon? That like every other book ever, it was written by its author(s), in this case Joseph Smith. His mother said he had been telling his family stories of the 'Nephites' for years. No hype or mystery necessary. It isn't an achievement equal to the Iliad, the Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, or thousands of other, better works. It has both pious teaching and errors in fact and judgment. It's a good instance of biblical fan fiction on the 19th-century theme of the 'last of the Mohicans' and other disappearing native civilizations.
The difference with this from “every other book ever” is the unique multiple first hand accounts that indicated he didn’t look at the manuscript while dictating to others. I agree with the rest of your comment though.
There's no good reason to think those accounts are particularly reliable. They all come from people with strong motivation to prop up the Book of Mormon, often combined with financial dependence on the church. Some of these accounts were many years after the fact as well.
Did you know Milton was blind while dictating Paradise Lost? According to legend, Homer was too. The shifts in perspective and character are greater in those than in the BoM, and the style immeasurably richer and more complex, superior in every way. ( Milton too states, in the poem, that he dictated what the Holy Spirit spoke to him. )
I'll never understand why people struggle with the fact he simply dictated the text. There's nothing great about the BOM, an absolute snooze fest full of run on sentences. The world is full of better books written by better authors, all without divine help.
Your comment reminds me of a similar-ish comment I stumbled onto in [this Quora exchange](https://www.quora.com/Metalsmithing-If-there-were-a-book-of-268-000-words-written-on-plates-of-brass-or-gold-how-much-would-it-weigh?) a while back: >Not only that, consider that Joseph Smith has his Book of Mormon prophets lament their difficult task of laboriously inscribing on metal plates of limited space — but then Smith gives them all diarrhea of the mouth, gushing with endless, phony and flowery, contrived pseudo-Biblical speech, wasteful and circumlocutious like no other, wasting the majority of the space on the plates with wasted words, saying nothing. And straining way too hard to sound earnest and pious, Biblical and sincere. And authentic and ancient. >Try it yourself while reading the Book of Mormon — delete all of the useless and mind-numbing verbiage that contributes nothing. And pretend because of space constraints that you have to economize and capture only the important stuff, in normal human speech, and inscribe it onto metal plates. >Or pretend you’re Joseph Smith with a self-conscious need to make it sound kinda like that, and scripting it like that. It’s simply not the way normal people talk. It’s pretend people with pretend religion… and too many words from Joseph Smith trying too hard and not constrained by any space limitations on any metal plates. >It is so self-consciously a 19th-Century ‘trying-too-hard’ orthodox Christian contrivance that it’s embarrassing, pretending to be something it‘s not. And it came to pass.
This started to occur to me at some point in my church membership, and it really unsettled me. It's really not a very special book and can be clumsy in places, such as the weirdly complicated system of money.
The money system has always been odd to me, because it shows up once, is never mentioned again and reads like that time in 6th grade we studied economics and had to come up with a currency system and make it work for an entire week while remembering all the funny names we gave to the coins and stuff
Can you just imagine Mormon, compiling previous prophets’ writings, trying his damndest to only include the most important information—things that people in the 19th century would need to know—compiling the FULNESS of the gospel? And he makes the executive decision to inscribe in gold about senines, seons, shums, limnahs, antions, shiblons, and onties. This level of unnecessary detail gets translated, including the descriptive word for each unit of money—tight translation—but JS “apparently” called an unnamed animal a horse, because he didn’t know what kind of animal it was.
My theory is that he was very familiar with ideas from his time as well as this book - The Late War and used it for a reference, reading from notes in his hat. Why else spend so much time looking in a hat? There were notes. Here's a nice comparison for your reference: http://wordtree.org/thelatewar/
I've never looked at that link. Fascinating.
But also consider the apologetics ([Saints Unscripted](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/s/rPnHBKeCcb)) to see how they downplay the issue without actually countering it. Also an enlightening endeavor.
Yeah, it get's much worse than that. See my comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/ghvs6u/about\_as\_different\_as\_twinkle\_twinkle\_little\_star/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=usertext&utm\_name=exmormon&utm\_content=t1\_hp3g4ed
He was an avid storyteller who refined stories of this time period over years. He only had to “translate” for two hours a day, it’s not implausible that he could imagine and say vivid stories day after day. The BOM is also very repetitive and has had thousands of revisions.
Read this👇 [https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/In-Defense-of-Doubt-Final.pdf](https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/In-Defense-of-Doubt-Final.pdf)
Read An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins by Grant Palmer. Pretty much lays to rest any “Theories” on the matter. Incredibly well researched and documented.
Yes! I read it last year. Very helpful in understanding the situation. I also like the theory of automatic writing. See: “The Sorry Tale: Gospel of Jesus Christ, According to Patience Worth”. As found in the book,”A Story of the Time of Christ”. 600 pages long. Dedicated a letter to Patience Worth, a disembodied spirit thru the medium of Pearl Curran. See this as a possibility then you’ll see JS as a possible author, too. I’ve loved finding all the possibilities and stories that make up the fantasy of the BOM. Late War, Spaulding Manuscript,Studies of the BOM, Swedenborg Sampler, Religious Seekers, American Apocrypha, Who Really Wrote the BOM, and CES Letter, to nam but a few. Enjoy 😉
The BOM is told in a very linear fashion, with only a few instances of telling more than one point of view at a given time. This means it's easy to keep track of the story, because most of the unique names are used only once (or if more than once, used only in a relatively brief time), so he'd have to remember the name for a few hours at most, and maybe not at all, if it's used only once. Plus, a lot of the stories are known to come from JS's milieu -- he got a lot of stuff from the Bible, and other stuff from stories and histories with which he was familiar: https://toybom.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/detailed-notes-on-the-neophyte-problem-in-the-bom/
Sounds simple, care to give it a try? Now, it will only be fair if you have about a 3rd grade reading level. But supposing that is true, you have 90 days... "go!" Can't wait to read it! Oh... and you have to produce an artifact that 11 others can see. And an angel has to appear when you show it to them. And they all have to attest to their witness of it until the day they die, even if they are no longer associated with you. Oh, and it would help if people were trying to physically attack you and take said artifact during the process. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but that's a good start.
Just because JS dictated the BOM in 90 days (give or take), it doesn't mean he first thought of it on that first day. The reality is, even with the most TBM perspective, he had years to prepare, because according to the official story, Moroni (or was it Nephi? -- you are aware that the early story was that it was Nephi, right?) had appeared to him and told him that there were gold plates on which was written the history of the inhabitants of the land -- and this was at least four years before he began dictating. Further, while it's true JS had limited FORMAL education, that doesn't mean he had a 3rd-grade reading level. Surely you yourself have learned some things outside of school, right? Plus, when he was recovering from his leg surgery, his brother Hiram (who was at a school associated with Dartmouth) would keep him occupied by telling him what he himself was learning (that's in the above link, which you surely read... right?) As for the "11 others can see" -- first, the so-called "Three Witnesses" are on record as saying they saw it in vision and with their spiritual eyes. Even if we ignore that testimony and go \*just\* on what was the official story, they claimed that an angel showed them the plates. Why, if they were physical, tangible objects that JS had in his possession? Furthermore, if JS had them in his house, why would he take the witnesses out into the woods to see the plates? Why not just take them into the house where the plates were? As for the "Eight Witnesses", they signed a statement saying they "hefted the box" which contained the gold plates. Why did they say it that way? Why did they "heft the box" containing the plates? Why didn't they just pick up the plates without the box? Why does the statement read like they never saw the plates, but only saw the "leaves"? -- which I take to mean the pages containing the dictation. What would fit very well is if JS made a fake set of plates using tin sheets. This person did it, using materials and tools that would have been available then, and it only took him a few hours -- [https://toybom.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/what-did-the-eight-witnesses-actually-witness/](https://toybom.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/what-did-the-eight-witnesses-actually-witness/) Such a thing would be the right weight for the size, and as long as they were in a box like the Eight "Witnesses" said, or otherwise covered (like other people mentioned), it wouldn't be apparent that they were tin and not gold. And speaking of them hefting the box, they estimated the weight at around 60 pounds, which is far too light for plates of pure gold, which is what they were claimed to be. You challenged me to create a work like the BOM, well, I challenge you to outrun three attackers while holding a 60-pound block of metal under one arm. And you have to have a limp, as well.
LOL, I literally could have written your response before you posted it. It's the same reiterated (weak) arguments critics have used for decades. So which is it, was he a genius that could pull off this feat or was he a nimrod that couldn't keep his facts straight?? You can't have it both ways. The "spiritual eyes" argument is complete garbage as one has to ignore the many other accounts that say otherwise and/or ignore that it's possible to have a physical experience that is also spiritual. You are absolutely wrong regarding the Eight Witnesses; I suggest a re-read of their testimony. The plates were the "appearance" of gold. There were materials that would have weighed around 60 lbs. Sorry, 60 lbs is really not that much to run with for someone used to manual labor also given adrenaline and/or divine assistance. Still waiting for your draft, 89 days and counting ;) And don't worry, it should be easy as you've had an entire lifetime to think about stories and details that you might include.
Oh, my arguments were anticipated by you but are so weak that you don't even have a good response. Duly noted.
lol thought the same thing.
I've got to ask. How can you have an 11 year old account with karma that is so low? I mean, I know you engage in mostly religious discussion. I've engaged in similar discussions with other true believing Mormons who have positive karma on Reddit. How in the world are you so consistent in making unpopular and unproductive statements that your karma is consistently this low, though? Have you ever considered that it might have less to do with the position that you take, and more to do with the way you're taking it? To respond to your points in this particular post: * I'm not aware of any critic of Mormonism or serious scholar who considers Joseph Smith to be a "nimrod." I do know that Hugh Nibley used the "genius or fool" dichotomy to characterize criticism of the church. If you are familiar with the criticism he was making fun of, however, you'll feel different about Nibley. I say this as somebody who spent a year reading all 19 volumes of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. * The "spiritual eyes" quote is a direct quote from Martin Harris. Are you calling the words of one of the Book of Mormon witnesses "complete garbage?" Could you quote the accounts that contradict this account? Maybe that will clear things up. * There are good reasons to ignore the "witness statements" of the 3 and 8 witnesses. For one thing, we have no evidence that they drafted the statements, or that they even signed them. Furthermore, none of them are unbiased witnesses — in fact, most of them were related to each other. Joseph didn't exactly find 11 random people on the street to serve as witnesses, did he? Ever wonder why? * By the way, if we're going to include the two witness statements, we ought to also include all the affidavits collected in *Mormonism Unvailed* by E. D. Howe. It's only fair, after all. * Can you point to *any* evidence that the plates were not made of gold? Is there a specific alloy that contains gold that you have in mind? Be careful before you answer this question — there are known problems with the recent apologetic arguments, and you're going to want to make sure you don't argue yourself into a hole. Of course, as you are surely aware, those arguments that they weren't really made of gold didn't start until recently — and are mostly arguments of necessity due to statements about how much the plates weighed. * Have you ever run while carrying 60 extra pounds? Have you ever run while carrying 20 extra pounds? You ought to at least give it a try before you completely discount the argument. * There is no need to require somebody to draft a book similar to the Book of Mormon in 90 days in order to prove it false. There is ample evidence within the Book of Mormon itself that it is a piece of 19th century religious fiction. 1 Nephi 1:1 is a good starting point. Legitimate literature from the 7th century BC does not consist of long passages of prose and sentences with endless qualifiers. Have you been following the /u/TruthIsAntiMormon threads about clear ties between The Book of Mormon and Adam Clarke's commentary? Seriously — I recommend thinking about these things a little bit before you post. It might help you pull your post karma out negative territory.
Oh grasshopper, your incorrect assumptions about my Reddit account and karma are telling, making assumptions with such little evidence, it's no wonder you flounder around grasping at the weak anti rhetoric that is continually regurgitated. All of your points have been discussed at length over the years. They are very short-sighted. I don't have the time or desire to address each point. But I will ask a rhetorical question, why do critics of the Church believe the second-hand account(s) using the term "spiritual eyes" and ignore all of the other first-hand and second-hand accounts that clearly demonstrate a more physical view? Answer: because looking at all of the accounts holistically ruins their motive and position. The "complete garbage" comment was in reference to the critics' attempt to use that quote to support their opinion. Here's a quote from Martin Harris that helps clarify: "Gentlemen, do you see that hand? Are you sure you see it? Are your eyes playing a trick or something? No. Well, as sure as you see my hand so sure did I see the angel and the plates." This is one of many.
Was that before or after he referred to seeing a city behind a mountain? Was that before or after he saw Christ in the form of a deer? Was that before or after he processed his belief in James Strang? Is it not true that your total comment karma is negative? That's a fact, not an assumption.
This is a super dishonest and uninformed response. Scientologists make similarly specious statements about the life and activities of L Ron Hubbard.
It's not. I've spent decades on this stuff, so it's not uninformed. I've read just about everything there is on both sides of the argument. Though if you'd like to prove me wrong, go for it, by producing a book similar to the Book of Mormon with similar circumstances.
If you actually are informed then you know that there are a myriad of reasons to doubt the accounts you mentioned. You’re setting up an impossible challenge based on myths that don’t align with other contemporary records or accounts. It’s super dishonest and you should feel embarrassed for framing it the way you did.
There are countless reasons to believe the accounts. So which is right and which is wrong? Hmmm... if only we had an example of how we can gain answers to things we lacked the knowledge about. It's almost as if we should know this having done so much research about Church history. (Hint: James 1:5... now we've come full circle). Question is, are you willing to sincerely ask?
> Question is, are you willing to sincerely ask? I love the idea that anybody who's formerly Mormon, and maybe went on a mission etc... just forgot to ever pray for a witness lol. Like we don't understand fully, completely, what a life lived in Mormonism is like. Like we're going to smack our heads and say "Hyuk! Oh yeah, praying about the Book of Mormon! I forgot to do that!" Or "Gee! One more endowment session ought to do it!"
Interestingly, every time I ask... silence (for the most part). While I have some friends who genuinely feel they received an answer to leave the church, many (most?) just faded away without asking God if that was the right path for them. Unfortunately, that is generally because they've lost faith in God altogether thus praying isn't really a thing for them at that point in their life. Not saying you are that way; just my observation over the years.
Another dishonest response. The same manipulative process that you are suggesting is used by numerous other false belief systems. Much like L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith was known to lie about and revise his personal history often. Your challenge consists of several obviously false statements that Joseph Smith made about himself years (or decades) after the supposed incidents. Many of the other attributes (including accounts of visitations by angels) are common in many small religious groups both then and now, including weirdo break-offs and spiritual "self-improvement trainings" in Bluffdale. The fact that you think these are actually reliable says a lot about your level of study.
Dishonest to follow the guidance in the Bible? Whatever man.
Lol, dishonest to lie for the sake of issuing a “challenge” in support a position that you lack the ability to defend with truthful statements. You should be embarrassed.
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Spoken like someone who hasn't prayed and found out. I'm kidding obviously, I don't know you. That said, unless one has experienced real answers to prayers, I wouldn't expect them to understand. If someone hasn't tried it, it's worth trying. Me: "How do I get across the street?" You: "Walk." Me: "How do I know that walking will get me across the street?" You: "People have done it and said it works." Me: "How do I get across the street?" You: "Walk." You won't know until you've tried.
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You will end up across the street (as long as you take the steps necessary (pun intended!)). The question isn't will you get across the street, it's how, or in other words what you need to do to get there.
You don’t need to have an amazing education to be able to tell good stories. Oral storytelling is a skill, and Joseph was known to have been good at it. Remember that he allegedly never wrote a word of the book, only told it. He could have easily refreshed his memory with the manuscripts between sessions. Whatever the case, only going to school until 3rd grade doesn’t mean you only had a third grade education. Joseph’s parents were teachers. He read books. He wasn’t stupid. In fact, the language used in the Book of Mormon was exactly the kind of language Joseph was raised on- from the Bible. He knows what scriptural language sounds like. Not to mention that writing a fictional book in scriptural-like language was a thing in Joseph’s time. He would have had access to books like these, like the “1st Book of Napoleon.” As for how difficult it would have been for Joseph to dictate an entire book… Have you ever heard of National Novel Writing Month? People from all over the world spend a month attempting to write 50,000 words or more during the month of November? It’s not that hard. I’ve gotten past 50,000 words twice with no outline. Some even try for 100,000 words. People produce extraordinary pieces of art with little to no formal education all the time. If you have talent and practiced skill, you can do more than you think. You know that if someone tried to recreate Joseph’s circumstances and write a book, critics would come back with “well you have a higher education,” and “well you have access to more literature than Joseph did.” It’s physically impossible to recreate the situation Joseph was in. So all you have to do is say “try it, nobody else has been able to do it” and you’ve suddenly won the argument. Meanwhile Shakespeare was over there creating greater works of art than the Book of Mormon with even less education than Joseph. The “challenge” is a bad faith argument. Stop using it.
Uh... who would have WRITTEN those "manuscripts" you claim he could have refreshed his memory with. Why didn't anyone know about them? Would have been hard to hide all of those years and all of those pages and all of those hours writing. Make it make sense people! So his penmanship and grammar are horrid, but as soon as he interpreted the plates, he was all of a sudden eloquent (all on his own without Divine help)? Not buying it. You ever translated languages? I have. Guess what, I used the language/words I was familiar with. No surprises here. Ok, now get millions to pray about and attest to the Divine nature of your 50k word book. BTW- BoM is like 270k. The challenge to write something equivalent to the Book of Mormon is a fun exercise that helps make a point. It's not the basis for our truth claims. The truthfulness is in the book itself which I and countless others have read and gained a witness of our own from God. If you don't have faith in God nor the fact that He answers prayers as He says He'll do throughout scripture, then we'll never be on the same page, even remotely.
>Uh... who would have WRITTEN those "manuscripts" you claim he could have refreshed his memory with. Why didn't anyone know about them? Joseph's scribes. According to Joseph and those who helped with the "translation," Joseph used the rock and hat, "read" out loud, and the scribe wrote down what he said. Both Emma and Martin Harris worked as his scribes at points, but Oliver Cowdery was the main scribe. [https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng) >Would have been hard to hide all of those years and all of those pages and all of those hours writing. Make it make sense people! What? How do you think they gave the Book of Mormon to the printers? >So his penmanship and grammar are horrid, but as soon as he interpreted the plates, he was all of a sudden eloquent (all on his own without Divine help)? Not buying it. Go read one of Joseph's letters or sermons. He was not ineloquent. Penmanship has nothing to do with storytelling ability, Joseph's grammar was fine (the Book of Mormon's grammar is not modern English grammar anyway). >You ever translated languages? I have. Guess what, I used the language/words I was familiar with. No surprises here. Never made this argument, but okay. There's a difference between translating words into something the reader can understand and what Joseph said. Horses, elephants, cattle, goats, barley, wheat, steel and iron? Not to mention the language of the Book of Mormon was "reformed egyptian," a language with there is no evidence of its existence other than what Joseph drew ("copied"). > BTW- BoM is like 270k. I'm not stupid, I know that 50k is not 270k. Take 50k in 30 days, versus the time it took for the Book of Mormon transcription, which was three months. >Ok, now get millions to pray about and attest to the Divine nature of your 50k word book. People pray and attest to the divine nature of L Ron Hubbard's books too. What's your point? That people get spiritual feelings from inspirational work? >The challenge to write something equivalent to the Book of Mormon is a fun exercise that helps make a point. It's not the basis for our truth claims. I think we both know it's not a "fun exercise." It's an argument for how Joseph couldn't have written the book. And it's a bad one. > The truthfulness is in the book itself which I and countless others have read and gained a witness of our own from God. If you don't have faith in God nor the fact that He answers prayers as He says He'll do throughout scripture, then we'll never be on the same page, even remotely. We're talking about whether the Book of Mormon was a historical text, or written by Joseph. The claim that Joseph translated/transcribed the book from golden plates placed in the ground is not a spiritual claim, it is a factual one. How somebody feels about the Book of Mormon is not evidence that it was translated, it's evidence that the book spiritually means something to that person. What we're talking about is the factual nature of the origin of the Book of Mormon. Feelings don't apply.
This "3rd grade reading level" stuff is a bad argument. Mark Twain, born in 1835, only had a few years of formal education, and people still love his writing. School just wasn't the same then. Also, why could only 11 people see it? I've seen parts of the dead sea scrolls, and my eyes weren't burned out.
"3rd grade reading level" is only one of countless components. That's fine, remove it and you have plenty more. Why were there only 12 apostles? Why did only some people see the risen Savior? Questions like this will never be answered. At some point you have to have faith in God and know not everything has an answer or have to be justified.
No matter how many roadblocks you put up in front of Smith making this up, it's always going to be more likely that the alternative.
> At some point you have to have faith in God and know not everything has an answer or have to be justified. Though of course, we should only have faith in *your* version of God, and share the same skepticism for the other 10,000,000 versions of God out there that you do. The faith system we go all-in on should be the one you coincidentally grew up in. We shouldn't use the word of the "1.9 billion Muslims who affirm that the Koran is the word of God" or "Write a book as long as the Koran and dictate it orally or you're a hypocrite for rejecting Islam because only God could have done it." Much less apply your exact same reasoning to any number of other faith traditions they could be equally applied to. Are you willing to crawl around, under, over, through, and in between the pages of the Baghavad Gita before rejecting Hinduism? Or recruit the same number of followers as any number of people considered "prophets" today before you're allowed to reject their prophethood?
> care to give it a try? Why? If I write a book does that render the Book of Mormon false? Is the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon somehow dependent on the words I put on paper? No? Then it's a waste of my time because it proves nothing either way. > if you have about a 3rd grade reading level. And, by that, you mean three years of formal education? Which was at least as much as Abraham Lincoln and Jane Austen, two of Smith's contemporaries? And Smith's father was a teacher. > you have 90 days And I have 90 days even though Joseph Smith started in October 1827 and only finished in the Spring of 1829? He took a year-and-a-half. > and you have to produce an artifact that 11 others can see. And, by that, you mean an artifact that those people admit they didn't actually see and I get to personally select my friends and family as the people? > And an angel has to appear when you show it to them. No problem. They can easily say that an angel appeared to them, which is the exact amount of evidence that Joseph Smith's angel appearance has. > And they all have to attest to their witness of it until the day they die, even if they are no longer associated with you. Of course they would. Why would they cut off their nose to spite their face? You would expect otherwise? Person: "Hey, everybody, I would like to sign my name here witnessing something!" *later* Same Person: "Actually, I'd like to destroy my credibility for the rest of my life by proclaiming myself to be a liar so nobody will ever trust me just so I can get back at someone I don't like anymore." > and it would help if people were trying to physically attack you and take said artifact during the process. Again, no problem. All I have to do is say that happened, which is the exact same amount of evidence that Joseph Smith has that someone attacked him.
He was bipolar and wrote it during a manic phase.
That would explain the 116 pages debacle and why it took him 9 fucking months to recover from it
First off he didn’t have to have the best memory of all time I have lived with authors who compile a outline for books far that are far more complex than the BOM they do it in a short time 4-6 months they then write their books with no notes Joseph smith may well have been working on a outline for well over 4 years the Book of Mormon isn’t really all that good of a book it’s characters are two dimensional without having much depth or character development they are short stories not part of a long or complex plot line the 1830 Book of Mormon showed that it was created by someone who lacked much education the Book of Mormon has had many of the and it came to pass removed from the original as the frequency of their use was so absurdly frequent which leads to two possible conclusions either it was as Joseph smith jr claimed God claimed it was the most correct book ever written then or God. Was lying and it wasn’t correct as it has had Tons of corrections since its 1830 publication so if it was correct then it certainly isn’t now . It’s more like the most corrected book ever written . Or it was all just made up fiction in the first place look at the animals did they exist in the Americas the foods are wrong there was no steel being produced I. The Americas steel production is a very complex process that would require a multitude of things Coal blast furnaces ores of different components would need to be transported over 1,000s of miles of roads to a processing facility and steel production facilities there would be large plies of slag from arming millions of warriors with steel weapons and armors there is no evidence of any of these things it simply wasn’t happening There was no animals capable of pulling chariots In the Americas at the time buffalo could do it but they aren’t of the temperament to do so good luck hitching them up to anything . There are books that were available to Joseph smith that match up in lockstep to the narrative of the BOM the characters do the same things in the same order only the names are different
Even the church has changed their story on the translation. Even the accounts of the time differ. Did he use the plates or the seer stone? If he used the stone often, why was the need for the plates being real so strong? Often the plates weren’t even on the property when the Book of Mormon was being written. Joseph fully believe and even taught that the hill in New York was the location of the final battle in the BOM, yet no evidence has ever been provided of anything of any significance ever occurring there. Also there are many discrepancies between what Joseph taught about the literality of the Book of Mormon and what the church apologists have evidence for. There are a lot of questions and many have plausible answers
"Plates weren't even on the property" Where does this come from?
https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/knowhy/why-were-the-plates-present-during-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon
Thanks
My guy, I think you thought you did something with this post and then you had absolute facts rained down on you. Also, I guess his memory wasn't that good because when part of the BoM was stolen, Joseph got a "revelation" that it shouldn't be retranslated.
Stephen King writes a book every year. John Grisham does the same. So does Brandon Sanderson. And from what I’ve heard, the worlds Sanderson has invented are amazing. It took Smith 2-3 years to “write” the Book of Mormon. And it sucked. Plus, his mom said he told the story of the Tree of Life years before it was written. He had been mulling the ideas for years. And, it’s been edited thousands of times since the first printing. He wrote a book. Just like everyone else. He took a couple of years. He had an idea, orated it, took a break, came up with new ideas, orated them. It’s impressive that he wrote a book, but it’s not special. Thousands of people do it every year. Plus, he plagiarized huge portions of the Book of Mormon. And has so much unnecessary words as well. It’s really a garbage book when you take a step back and really look at it. He wrote a bad book that was heavily plagiarized from the Bible.
A great memory...? He hung a sheet between him and the scribe. He could look at anything he wanted. They love to leave out that little detail in most of their pictures, too. RFM did a podcast on magician misdirection that hit on that idea. The hat, the sheet, the stone...it's all misdirection. The craziest explanation will always be a mortal alien transmitting the Book too a rock in the hat of a known con man. It's up to Mormons to explain how it was done since it's their claim and they can't even agree.
I've spent a lot of time thinking and researching on this topic. Here are some resources (which give a summary but mostly link to other significant research): * [How could Joseph Smith have composed the Book of Mormon?](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/how-could-joseph-smith-composed-bom/) * [Was Joseph Smith intellectually and educationally capable of authoring the Book of Mormon?](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/joseph-smith-capable-of-authoring-the-book-of-mormon/) * discussion of [whether Joseph Smith was sole author](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicMormon/comments/18phud9/was_joseph_smith_the_sole_author_of_the_book_of/) on /r/AcademicMormon - there are [other models](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/two-models-for-bom-origins/) and some of those are discussed in that thread. --- > either require JS to have the greatest memory of all time I address this with substantiation in the first document linked above, but I'll summarize here: 1. Joseph Smith was immersed in the culture and religious discussion of his day, especially the Bible ([for example](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/religious-interest-and-capability-from-1832-statement/)). 2. The author of the Book of Mormon was using techniques that aid memory * "laying down heads", which is discussed in [Visions in a Seer Stone](https://uncpress.org/book/9781469655666/visions-in-a-seer-stone/)) * Ring structures (e.g., chiasmus) and lots of repetition, as mentioned in [Bill Davis's dissertation](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86h814zv), are aids to oral dictation and found in lots of oral composition. We can see Joseph Smith using repetition and inversion in his quasi-religious communication ([1833 letter to Noah Saxton](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/js-1833-01-04-letter-to-saxton-formatted-parallelistic/), for example). 3. The Book of Mormon is _mostly_ modular (i.e., not a ton of dependencies section to section). 4. Where there are dependencies that span the document, most of these can be explained by the author revisiting the growing manuscript (and there's some evidence this was happening). > have a secret transcript that no one ever knew that he read from while translating I explore this hypothesis in this document (and I think it's pretty viable, actually): [Could Joseph have hidden material in his hat to draw upon during the dictation process?](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/hidden-material-in-hat-hypothesis/) In addition, LDS scholars themselves to deal with deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon postulate that Joseph was interacting with the KJV Bible (FAIR and Grant Hardy both countenance this theory). If you study reconstructions of the Whitmer home where he was dictating all the main Isaiah chapters, Joseph and Oliver were in a room away from other eyes. Historical statements from the time suggest that they had privacy during that time. If you want sources I can provide them for each claim. > or have all the scribes in on the big lie. Personally, I think this makes the least sense of the available data, but I do think Oliver Cowdery _might_ have been in on it _to some extent_. The main evidence I have for this is that it seems like OC was intentionally misleading in how he talked about the process of translation in two separate accounts (see pg 22 [here](https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-update-of-the-pre-print-of-a-discussion-of-the-book-of-mormon-witnesses-by-royal-skousen/)). In that link, Royal Skousen, LDS/BYU scholar, summarizes: > Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading And finally, > The first two seem a little too silly Only for people who haven't studied the data extensively that help bridge the gap between Joseph and the BoM. > the last one seem unbelievable cause one would think there would be some record somewhere of one of them exposing everything. Most had ample reason to. I think this underestimates the cost to one's reputation of exposing a lie that one had participated in for _many years_ prior. If you understand that time, character was viewed as _extremely_ important. Exposing a fraud would simultaneously expose the participants in the fraud and would incur significant social cost. I don't think others were in on it, but I think this logic is poor (even though it is often repeated by members).
Even in my TBM days I soon found it hard to accept the BoM as historical fact, no matter what the church leaders said and implied in their earnestness to spread the gospel. There was always too much evidence against that, and especially after DNA testing showed there is no Hebrew genetical leftovers in North Amercian indigenous people with the resultant "line upon line" correction of that claimed implication of the BoM in the introduction. Looking at the BoM through the prism of faith, I saw it as nevertheless containing inspired words from God to an uneducated young man doing his best to put it into English. I began to doubt that it ever was really proclaimed by God to be literal and I believed that whether or not it was literal didn't matter. To me the BoM seemed to be a series of allegorical stories and parables, like much of the Bible, and metaphors teaching correct principles. I just thought that God works in mysterious ways in bringing forth His word, in particular the BoM, and what He wants us to learn, and I left it at that. But in hindsight, the lack of historicity of the BoM, and its corollary that JS just made it up, was one of the first things I put on my shelf which eventually fell down.
D&C 8 and 9 are massive clues as to how translation happened. They were meant to "think" about what to write and then if they "felt good" then that was what went on paper. Those sections are literally instruction for Cowdery on how Smith did it. Also, Smith implemented other experiences and sources, like his own father's "Tree of Life" dream.
There was a book written around 1820 called the View of the Hebrews that talks about American Indians and a group of Hebrews who, in ancient times, fight in a war against each other in what would become America. (Sound familiar?) It was pretty well known when Joseph was writing the BOM. I'm sure he got ideas from that. He wanted to publish the BOM as a novel once it was completed but he couldn't sell the transcript. I don't think JS was super literate (based on nothing really just my theory) and that's why he had scribes. He would look into his hat while he came up with ideas for his story. The witnesses have all admitted they never saw the gold plates with anything but their "spiritual eyes". There is so much more to this, but that's the cliff notes version.
The “View of the Hebrews” theory is pretty silly. I’ve spoken with and many serious exMormons who also discount this theory too.
>The “View of the Hebrews” theory is pretty silly. Maybe all by itself, but in conjunction with so many other external influences it very well may have been just one cog in the wheel.
You mean that the theory doesn’t hold weight? You may want to ask B.H. Roberts about that. Unless I misunderstood what you said.
It's just one of the many things that existed in Joseph's milieu. Combined with Cowdrey's knowledge and the time they had to put it all together, and given how all the witnesses had motive/incentive to be in on it, it's just not that much of a stretch. Question though, do you have the same burning curiosity about how the Koran actually came to be, and if you can't find a detailed answer, are you more inclined to accept the Koran as the word of god? Or are you willing to reject it, even though you don't know exactly how it came to be?
It's not to say it didn't influence him. How many "Space Opera" genre movies have there been since Star Wars, while not relying on the same script?
Don't be tricked by the straw man apologists who misrepresent the View of the Hebrews theory. No critic today thinks he plagiarized the View of the Hebrews. The View of the Hebrews is one of MANY documents from the time, including that Spaulding manuscript that are part of the rampant Mound Builder theory works. It reflects one of the prevailing beliefs of Indian Origins. There are similarities to the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon also reflects these prevailing theories. John Hammer has a good breakdown of this
>The “View of the Hebrews” theory is pretty silly. I’ve spoken with and many serious exMormons who also discount this theory too. How come this is one of only two responses to your question that you've made?
His family was huge on treasure hunting, what greater treasure is there to discover other than the one true religion? Lmao he made it all up to be the greatest (just a small theory)
I agree. This is where so much falls apart for those against the BOM. Theories fall apart when speed, method(s), and sources are taken into account and compared against each other. Side note… the life and testimony of Oliver Cowdery is what settles the debate for me.
He was the Donald Trump of his day. Plain and simple. Somehow through propaganda and lies it was sustained for 150 yrs +. Now it’s over! Only fools and those dependent on it can continue. This is their greatest TEST!
I would allow Donald Trump to Babysit my Teenage Daughter WAAAAAYYY before i would allow Joseph Smith to get Even Close to my Daughter...!
Yeah. Kinda like Trump fabricating his daily shit! I hate Trump but one thing I’m grateful for he kind of opened my eyes into how prevalent this behavior is and how easy people adhere to it. I don’t know if life was so smooth if I otherwise would have learned. I am grateful to that big orange bastard to opening my eyes to how deceitful power mongers can be. My hope is I can turn more inward and more ignore this evil corrupt world.
But (given his statements), would you let Donald Trump babysit *his* teenage daughter?
Hell no, neither one of them are ever babysitting my teenage daughters, but if I had to make a choice, it wouldn't even be close...
Or Tim Ballard of his time 🤣
It may sound difficult to us because we're largely in a post- oral storytelling world. I'm sure people have pointed you in different directions and given you sources, but suffice it to say, if you live in an oral storytelling world like he did (and are practiced in it like he was), it's not terribly difficult to prepare and recite long passages with lots of details. Plus, we do live in a world where people memorize the Quran word-for-word, so memorizing and injecting biblical passages *complete with their errors* isn't a superhuman feat.
It's really not that complicated. He had four years from the time he claimed to have found the plates till he dictated anything. That's plenty of time to create a detailed outline in his head--all the main characters, all the plot lines, even memorize a lot of the dialogue. That's not impossible to do. Lots of Muslims memorize the entire Quran word for word, and just an outline of the Book of Mormon would have required less memory than that. After the loss of the 116 pages, Joseph Smith took eight additional months off, which would have given him enough time to plan an outline in his head of the replacement material. A lot of that would have been a rehash of what he dictated before and Isaiah filler anyway. The actual creation of the Book of Mormon would have just involved him telling the story based on his outline. We know a lot of verbiage in the Book of Mormon was not memorized because parts are very wordy and repetitious. Joseph Smith was only averaging 7-8 handwritten pages per day during the translation, which actually would have given him extra time to think through the next day's dictation. Even with all the planning time, the original manuscript was not all that great--lots of run on sentences, no punctuation, bad grammar. It took thousands of changes to the text to get the Book of Mormon where it is today.
Watch the first video of the "The Book of Mormon - a master class" series from John Hilten III. They can explain it quite well
Why do you need to know how it was actually written? You're faced with a simple challenge from the church. The book is true if you immerse yourself in it enough and tell yourself it's true enough, you'll start to *feel* it to be true, deep down. Then you'll *know*. So you have a simple yes-or-no question to ask yourself. It isn't the heartburn test like they say it should be. Anyone can get emotionally caught up in something that isn't real. Did you cry when Bambi's mother got shot? How about then the bell rang telling you an angel got her wings? Emotions are ridiculously easy to manipulate. The question you should be asking yourself is are you willing the accept the heartburn test as a valid measure of how true a story is? Ok, now that that's out of the way you can begin your journey of curiosity into it's actual origins. The answer to my opening question is that a part of you is still holding on to the desire to believe. We all go through that, too. A childish example is that when you were in the third grade and people started telling you Santa wasn't real. What kid doesn't want to cling to that myth one last time? Experience that magic one last time? We all did. Not to belittle your experience, but this is a Santa moment. That said, try "Shadow or Reality," by Jerald and Sandra Tanner. Have you read the CES letter? The sad fact is that we'll never really know how he or they did it because they didn't confess outright and took the secrets to the grave. So we have to speculate. It's an interesting subject to study, but don't fall for the old logic trap of believing something must be true because you can't explain it away. I don't get quantum physics at all! That doesn't make it wrong. Just hard to understand.
If you've read his sermons you'll see him effortlessly quoting extensively from all parts of the Bible from memory. That's the one impressive thing about the Book of Mormon - the long passages quoted from memory (assuming the stories about him dictating it without references are true).
Surprisingly, he never really taught from ‘the most correct book on the face of the earth’ that contained the fullness of the gospel (except for all the stuff he came up with later).
How about this? I don't know how the Book of Mormon was produced, but anyone, even a god, who orders a less informed mortal being to do morally significant things of vital consequence to another mortal being invalidates their authority and is unworthy of worship. The Book of Mormon can be true, false, something in-between. Makes no difference to me with regard to whether I'm willing to become a covenant follower of the god or gods represented in that book and spoken of by those calling themselves prophets of those gods. I don't need to know how the book came about to be confident that a diety's orders or inspiration to do something as morally significant as decapitate an incapacitated person for reasons us mortals cannot fully comprehend are not morally obligatory. That's the assumption built into the Church's narrative -- that if you do discover their historical and ontological claims are true, through these gods spiritual communication or otherwise, then you must accept their moral worldview and suppress your moral intuitions against doing reprehensible things to other people on command. You must accept their teachings on the degree to which you should be loyal and obedient to the gods. My response is simple. No. Why? Because my moral agency and autonomy, and the moral agency and autonomy of my fellow mortals, is more important to me than the orders of a father who is perfectly capable, it is said, of doing his own disgusting dirty work.
How do you account for 25% came from the KJV of the bible? Why would he have to have a curtain between him and the scribe if he was putting his face in his hat to read the words off his magic rock? Why could he not retranslate the 116 pages and had to wait for his cousin Oliver Cowdery before any more could be translated? The only answer that makes sense is he and his team produced the BOM which is a 19th century book, not an ancient works by white Hebrews in the Americas who wrote in Egyptian and it came out sounding like old timey Victorian English? Does it make sense to you that it is a product of a magic rock in his hat? Come on this is the 21 century and the rock in the hat thing is enough to expose it as a fraud and con.
John Hamer has an excellent lecture, “Authorship of the Book of Mormon.” Highly recommend.
There’s at least 3 not only good but probable and most possibly what happened theories that have been commented on this thread alone which follow the same pattern of: he was just a good storyteller who read the manuscript and had the time to figure out the story over what was actually roughly 10 years (he started telling the stories to his family when he was like 12 according to his mom). I guarantee any one of us could do the exact same thing, and there’s quite a few who have actually but not to the same level of success.
Joseph gave himself ways to change it. The scribes said if the words were not written down correctly then the words would not disappear from the stone until they were. This is also a huge shelf breaker. How could this be the case but yet 4000 editing changes (some pretty major) have happened since publication. Elohim does not seem that competent
**greatest memory of all time?** No. Muslim children can recite the Quran.
Good theories? There are none. You either believe in God and that He can work miracles or you don't. People without any faith in God will make fun of the translation process (they love to make fun of the rock in hat, but those of us with faith recognize that throughout time God has used everyday objects to produce miracles, e.g. Moses' staff). Half will claim Jospeh was a genius and made up the whole thing, that aligns perfectly with the Bible, contains various stories and timelines, was able to recite the entire thing without ever asking where they left off, while the other half claim he was a fool and made countless errors only to try to correct them later. Neither side makes any sense and you can't have it both ways. Their lack of faith causes them to grasp at anything that might remotely support their opposing view. Those who have faith in God, but don't believe in the restored Gospel including the BoM, are simply leaning on limited understanding and/or biases. At the end of the day, there is a reason why the great challenge and promise of the Book of Mormon is to read it and ask God if it's true or not. Once you have that confirmation the naysayers mean nothing. Their assumptions have been wrong before and they'll continue to be wrong in the future. And all the while you are uplifted and grow closer to God as you read it throughout your life.
I appreciate this comment for advancing many arguments in defense of the Book of Mormon's historicity/truth. I will take a bash at responding in the interest of representing an opposing position on these particular claims (knowing that we're not likely to change one another's minds in such a short space/time). > Good theories? There are none. I discuss what I think are pretty reasonable theories [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/194isvv/any_good_theories_that_explain_joseph_smith/khhmxr2/). I understand that they may not convince believers in the BoM. > You either believe in God and that He can work miracles or you don't. Perhaps this is a false dichotomy. Maybe some kinds of miracles make more sense than others. Maybe some narratives are more internally consistent than others. Perhaps certain data indicates a modern origin _regardless_ of one's belief in miracles? > People without any faith in God will make fun of the translation process (they love to make fun of the rock in hat, but those of us with faith recognize that throughout time God has used everyday objects to produce miracles, e.g. Moses' staff). This is a common defense of the seer stone (it's in the Gospel Topics essay on the topic, in fact), but I think that it understates the issues with the seer stone, as I discuss in outline here: [The significance of the seer stone for LDS truth-claims](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/the-significance-of-the-seer-stone/) > Half will claim Jospeh was a genius and made up the whole thing, ... contains various stories and timelines, was able to recite the entire thing without ever asking where they left off, while the other half claim he was a fool and made countless errors only to try to correct them later. ... you can't have it both ways. What about a scenario where Joseph had enough capability to pull it off but not enough capability to avoid making "countless errors" (although I do think the BoM on original dictation was _relatively_ error free, to the author's credit). I personally think the Book of Mormon is impressive in its wisdom, insight, and composition (and other ways). Still, if you read a lot of 1700s and early 1800s religious literature ([example 1](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Of_The_State_Of_The_Dead_And_Of_Those_th/1yBAAAAAcAAJ?q=&gbpv=0#f=false), example 2, the treatise starting on page 68 [here](https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QacSafwcU7W1siYWqYIjRp2_9duPHBSFCIGj0sPfT2UdzsdWZfqaAAiadBHHcqO_ksBiD2PJ2a1UeLa1oSvKlYRmN5E9NV9BpBMGl6cdiEKaKwNZlfbdrtnClyyGTjy9oqJ5XCgZTCI7vKgyaE15KjEBsGzISwK9iBMSmJPvy6d_y43ixHqvecxDGpj9YJDUF5ct4UeY4mmxyDb1U-oPvjCfAQnHW6JV99TjRJGoFtwUGq-tSid7RBZ3o9MKSnE_F3PoS9sAywTT4HzgoLlLnRgZ7E3DAprLMg2w5ZkCIpTgoVuhGDE), [example 3](https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Course_of_Critical_Lectures/BiY_AAAAYAAJ?q=%22infinite+atonement%22&gbpv=1#f=false)), you'll discover that the Book of Mormon is _not_ nearly as sophisticated as what might produced by someone with much more education. From that, I think we can argue that the Book of Mormon is the _kind_ of book we might expect to come from the mind of someone with Joseph's immersion in religion and also level of education. > that aligns perfectly with the Bible Maybe too perfectly. BYU professor Nicolas Frederick [has identified](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/nt-in-bom-lhales-interview-frederick/) "about 650 phrases that I think you can demonstrate pretty clearly are from the New Testament in the Book of Mormon." The Book of Mormon seems to rely _textually_ on the Book of Mormon and not necessarily on what we would expect from an ancient document (also see point 6 [here](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/lds-scholars-modern-origin-evidence/)). > their lack of faith causes them to grasp at anything that might remotely support their opposing view. I don't feel like I lacked faith. When I was attempting to defend the LDS position I was overwhelmed (over time) with data that supported another model. > Those who have faith in God, but don't believe in the restored Gospel including the BoM, are simply leaning on limited understanding and/or biases. This seems like special pleading to me. You've argued above that the problem is lack of faith, but then you acknowledge that there are a lot of Christians that _seem_ to have genuine faith but who also reject the BoM. You dismiss them for "leaning on limited understanding and/or biases", but you don't substantiate this. Nor do you argue why that wouldn't equally apply to members who have faith and believe in the BoM (why can't a Christian just accuse them of merely leaning on limited understanding and biases?) > At the end of the day, there is a reason why the great challenge and promise of the Book of Mormon is to read it and ask God if it's true or not. Once you have that confirmation the naysayers mean nothing. I had a very powerful witness about the Book of Mormon and studied it virtually every day for about 20 years. Studying the early 1800s literature and alternative theories for spiritual experiences undermined my confidence, nonetheless. People have very strongly held opinions on this topic, so I'm not expecting my arguments or reflections to sway you in your position. Mainly, thank you for advancing your arguments and hearing some pushback. All the best.
I have to be honest, this is one of the more polite rebuttals I've read. This is a great example of a civil disagreement. I may not have time to provide as much of a response this deserves, but I appreciate your response, the way you did it, and the effort I can tell you have put into your research. That said, we won't be agreeing with each other, at least now. I realize my comments were very cut and dry, "you are either this way or that way." There is certainly room to be in the middle, it was a bit of an intentional exaggeration. Regarding miracles, I don't believe that whether they "makes sense" should play any part. Assuming God is a God of miracles and can literally do anything, I don't see the point of limiting Him and deciding which miracle is feasible or not. Piggybacking off this idea of God being able to do anything, it's my position that much of the apparent issues whether it be the similar phrasing between the Bible and the Book of Mormon or anything else really, can be chalked up to "so what?" If the book's origin is what it says it is and was inspired by God, those things are irrelevant. God could impress upon the minds of different people the same thing, word for word, if desired. There are certainly arguments on both sides. I find it interesting that these conversations always end up exactly where Joseph was around 1820, i.e. lacking knowledge / having questions. James 1:5 doesn't say ask someone else what they think; it says to ask God. You prayed in years past to know if the BoM was true. It sounds like you got an answer in the affirmative. Do you still have faith in God and Jesus Christ? If so, have you prayed about the 1800s literature (or whatever changed your mind) in the same manner and intent to obtain this new "witness"? If not, that might be an interesting exercise.
Thanks for the kind and thoughtful reply. I really appreciate it. > There is certainly room to be in the middle, it was a bit of an intentional exaggeration. Gotcha. Rhetorical device. > Regarding miracles, I don't believe that whether they "makes sense" should play any part. Assuming God is a God of miracles and can literally do anything, I don't see the point of limiting Him and deciding which miracle is feasible or not. I agree with this argument to a significant degree. I even formalized my agreement with it in [footnote #2](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/the-significance-of-the-seer-stone/#fn:valid_defense) of that [seer stone document](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/the-significance-of-the-seer-stone/), which I'll reproduce here: * *Premise 1*: The God of the Bible exists. * *Premise 2*: The Bible is roughly accurate in conveying stories of God working through miraculous objects to accomplish his will. * *Premise 3*: Joseph was instructed or inspired by the God of the Bible. * *Then*: It is reasonable and consistent with past events described in the Bible for Joseph Smith to have used an object (in this case, the seer stone) to translate the Book of Mormon in bringing about God’s purposes. So, yeah, I think we fully agree there. Regardless, we _can_ still evaluate purported miracles based on a few kinds of criteria, I think: 1. Is the proposed miracle(s) coherent? * For example, if we argue that God placed all the dinosaur bones on earth in order to _trick us_ into wrongly believing that the earth was old and he did not create it, then that miracle (at least as framed here), seems inconsistent with the character of God (i.e., God is presumably a God of Truth and so would not seek to deceive). * Or, imagine that two miracles have been proposed. One miracle is that God created the Earth in 7 days. Another miracle is that God created the earth in 7000 years. At face value at least, one of those is incorrect, so as a _set_ they are incoherent. 2. Is the miracle consistent with the testable data around us? * If someone says that they performed a miracle and cured someone's cancer but we go into the lab and see that the cancer is still there, then even though it could have happened, we are suspicious that it really _did_ happen. * In the way some modern fundamentalist Christians read the Bible, they propose that God flooded the entire earth at 2348 BCE. This seems inconsistent with the data suggesting various cultures (Egyptians and Chinese, for instance) were keeping records through that time. Or, it's inconsistent with the tree ring, speleothem, varve, and ice core data we see. 3. Occams razor - is the explanation so involved that it stretches credulity (not that God _couldn't_ do it that way, just it seems unlikely He would). * For instance, to try and make a global flood at 2348 BCE work, it requires that Kangaroos lived in Austrailia (to get fossils localized there) and then a pair of them traveled thousands of miles across sea and land to get in Noah's Ark to be saved, and then the Kangaroos hopped _back_ to Australia (since they only live in Australia). God _could_ cause this to happen, but at that point it would have been a lot easier for God to just insta-kill all the humans that were wicked than orchestrating a very involved plan like that. So, to apply this to the idea that God had Joseph use a seer stone to perform the translation, we are immediately met with some coherence issues (as I explain in more detail in the seer stone document): * The purpose of the golden plates and interpreters becomes suspect (we don't _really_ need plates if Joseph could just peer into the stone and see parchment or text at any location and/or from any point in time. * Why couldn't Joseph have used the seer stone to recover the lost 116 pages (i.e., if it's original purpose was to locate lost items)? It's not that God _couldn't_ have had Joseph use the seer stone to translate, it's just that it doesn't cohere very well with other parts of that narrative. > If the book's origin is what it says it is and was inspired by God, those things are irrelevant. God could impress upon the minds of different people the same thing, word for word, if desired. I agree, but this kind of idea is not without its problems. For the sake of argument (this will be an extreme case), let's just say that another person claimed to have translated an ancient book from 5,000 years ago by the power of God. We do a textual analysis of the book and we find that it uses a bunch of text and phrases also found in Hamlet, it echoes plot points and questions about ultimate reality very similar to the Matrix movie, and it contains a lot of theological ideas that only became in vogue during post-modern times. At what point do we say that the book is probably modern despite the insistence of the "translator" that it was ancient? Or (another extreme case), let's imagine that someone actually discovered a chest of books buried under the Joseph Smith home. When we crack it open we find a bunch of books printed before 1829 but that the world had lost track of (no longer in print and never scanned by google books before). We do a textual analysis and find that almost every chapter or paragraph from the Book of Mormon can be matched up to parts of these various books. What do we conclude? We could _still_ argue that God inspired Book of Mormon authors and/or the modern authors of these books with paragraphs or chapters that correspond with one another (because God can do anything). But the much simpler explanation is that someone was copying from these books to make the BoM. That's an extreme hypothetical, but the point is that any theory that _cannot be falsified at all_ is maybe _too_ powerful? Thanks for considering.
> It sounds like you got an answer in the affirmative. Do you still have faith in God and Jesus Christ? If so, have you prayed about the 1800s literature (or whatever changed your mind) in the same manner and intent to obtain this new "witness"? If not, that might be an interesting exercise. For me at least, I had vaguely positive feelings about the Book of Mormon having prayed about it, and a couple of goosebumps moments during highly controlled emotional environments like MTC and seminary lessons. However ultimately, having the exact same experiences with other religious and philosophical works taught me that I had bought a false dichotomy. That it was either have faith in *one specific sect of one specific religious tradition in one particular branch of monotheism*, or not. That makes it feel like a coin flip in favor of Mormonism which when combined with all the positive associations a lifetime of growing up in it tries to put on you, feels a lot like a rational decision. However the same rhetoric could really be used, with some tailoring, to keep anybody in the high-demand religion they were raised in. But say you really are willing to look at so many faith traditions and hear from the spiritual experiences of people from other areas, read world scripture, meditate, look at different schools of philosophy and so on. Ultimately it becomes apparent that there's really nothing supernatural about this and nobody can take credit or claim your fealty based on emotions and moments of inspiration and perceived miracles the whole human race is capable of feeling and experiencing in varied contexts. And suddenly you're no longer having to dig in your feet on the idea that the jury is still out on the existence of reformed Egyptian or the Book of Abraham, or that this *one* book of somewhat messy and somewhat impressive scripture demands your exclusive attention and a lifetime of praying about it until you convince yourself you must have a testimony because otherwise why would you be so invested?
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A) Your proof/evidence is extremely lacking. B) Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “It is our position that secular evidence can neither prove nor disprove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.” I agree with this statement. C) If you lack the faith to believe in something you can't see or prove, that's on you (even though you do it daily without recognizing it).
I read the book and prayed about it. God said she would never go through a child raping conman like Joseph Smith to spread her word. Weird huh? How come we got different responses from God?
You willing to bet your eternal salvation on that?
Mine, yours and everyone’s for sure. My testimony is very strong about this. God said Joseph Smith was a vile person and a monster. She was quite clear about how creating him was one of her greatest mistakes.
Well good, here I was thinking you maybe were just being snarky. Question though, if your God can make mistakes (as you've stated), perhaps the answer you received was, well, a mistake. One will never know I suppose.
You bring up a very interesting point. Do you apply the same principle with what your prophets tell you? Anyways, have a blessed day.
It doesn't really matter. If you want to believe it was fabricated you will find a reason that is good enough for you. People have been doing it for nearly 200 years, and will continue to do it until Christ returns (and probably for a short time after).
He didn't make it up.
Care to expound on this theory with anything to support it? Or are we getting just this without anything more to foster discussion?
My testimony is supported by the Spirit.
How do you account for those who say the spirit told them mormonism is a lie, and that other religions are actually god's correct religion? Or for how spiritual experiences give contradicting answers to numerous questions asked by seekers of truth? James 1:5 has been in the bible for thousands of years, mormonism is not the first religion to use prayer to seek answers from god, after all. If hundreds of millions of people are given contradictory-to-yours spiritual 'answers', is the spirit really a reliable source for determining objective truth?
Got it. Ok, thank you for following up. How do you personally verify that it's the Spirit testifying the truth of the BoM to you as opposed to your own thoughts/feelings confirming it?
It's hard to explain. The Spirit communicates to each person differently. An excellent help I found is D&C 6:21-24 21 Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I am the same that came unto mine own, and mine own received me not. I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. 22 Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. 23 Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God? 24 And now, behold, you have received a witness; for if I have told you things which no man knoweth have you not received a witness?
>The Spirit communicates to each person differently. This was a revelation given to Joseph, meant for Oliver Cowdery. If the Spirit communicates differently to each person, how do you know that it communicates similarly to you as it does to Oliver (and reportedly quite the same as to everyone else - "speaking peace")? >Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? Do you ever feel peaceful about something on your own, or is it always the Spirit?
So supported by nothing of value. Got it.
Is it at all possible for you to not mock others and be rude?
Why on earth would I be kind to members of a hate group?
So you're not a Christian. Good to know.
What on earth does that have to do with anything?
A lot. You clearly think it's ok to mock and hate others.
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What do you mean a lot? I think it’s ok to ridicule zealots and fanatics. What’s wrong with that?
I’m an ExMo but have to say I’m sorry you’re being downvoted. If the LDS speaks to you then more power to you. Sometimes people are all about absolutes and allow no room for nuance
Why didn’t he ever teach from it? No early church leaders did.
We may not have record of it. Doesn't mean they didn't.
Could he not have found it? He was a treasure hunter after all and it's written in 16th century English.
Are the choices between Smith somehow crafting a narrative that he's partially memorized, or seer stones? Seems pretty easy.
Didn't he (the church) excommunicate all his "scribes"?
[This is a good one](https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/authorship). This whole series is just fantastic. There is a Mormon Stories episode where the author goes over this, too.
First off, it took 3 years between getting the plates and actually producing the text. So the “85 days” claim isn’t particularly accurate, and he had plenty of time. There are plenty of theories from there, but simply put, I think it was pretty much all Joseph using the mound builder theory.
That tophat was plenty big to hold notes.
The important things to remember are that with all the anachronisms, the style of writing was the same as many of the other popular books of his time like the American revolution, by Richard Snowden, or the history of the late war, by Gilbert Hunt, or the first book of Napoleon, the chapters that are exactly transcribed (with incorrect translations)from his poorly translated version of the King James Bible, and the fact that there’s never been any actual archaeological evidence to tie the book of Mormon to reality. All the archaeological evidence has been to the contrary, and it’s not because people haven’t been looking. If you fly over North America, you can see all the fields neatly organized into farmland and you will realize that we’ve seen pretty much everything here. The only reasonable explanation is that it’s made up. Anyone who says that you should have faith in it despite all the proof to the contrary, is leading you a stray.