History Analysis / TheBookOfMormon

Arnold Cunningham is more or less the opposite. He's shy and socially awkward--a follower, not a leader. He hasn't even read his own holy text, and he isn't totally clear on a lot of it: he frequently gets it confused with ''LordOfTheRings'' and ''StarWars'', and he thinks "latter day" means "tomorrow". However, Arnold is genuinely kind and caring, and always puts himself last. He takes a BroadStrokes approach to his religion: he may not be able to quote chapter and verse, but he's pretty sure that God doesn't want you to rape babies.

!! ''Theatre/TheBookOfMormon'', faith, and morality

--Tropers/{{Troacctid}}

! The Literature

'''Origins Of The Book of Mormon''' - One view

Joseph Smith's story of the origin of the Book of Mormon leaves little room for a middle ground. Either he was telling the truth of its origin, which would mean that he was a genuine latter-day prophet tasked with restoring Christ's true Church, or he was an exceptionally talented con-man who saw an opportunity during a period of great religious excitement and used an outlandish story to create a religious movement in order to support him. Even if he had stumbled across an authentic ancient record it is very unlikely, without divine aid, that a man of his limited education could have translated it into an English text. Work on the Rosetta stone was just barely allowing translators in Europe to begin reading Egyptian hieroglyphs, a variation of which is what the golden plates were supposedly written in.

There are many, many sites on the internet which go into considerable analysis of the book's supposed blunders and slightly fewer other sites which defend it from the Mormon point of view. TV Tropes is not really the place for such a discussion, and the RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement certainly applies. The LDS Church is well aware of the extraordinary nature of its claims, and it has never backed off from supporting Joseph Smith's story of the Book of Mormon's origin as the authentic one (as one might expect).

The book itself anticipates challenges as to its authenticity or value. In the final pages of the book the promise is given that any seeker of the truth who reads the book, earnestly ponders what it contains, and then asks God through sincere prayer if it is true will receive an affirmative answer through the power of the Holy Ghost. Many claim that this promise has been fulfilled for them, and many others say that for them it has failed. We will leave things at that.

'''Origins Of The Book Of Mormon''' - Another view
(The initial version of these passages were written by Tropers/{{MAI742}}. They do not reflect the views of the TvTropes community as a whole)

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Odds Of Authenticity]]

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith made it up''
# Joseph Smith wanted to make it up. [Possible]
# He did. [Possible]
# The 11 people who 'saw' the Book Of Mormon in its original form did not literally/actually see it but saw it 'spiritually/mystically' in a way that was very common at the time - using mystical/meditative 'second-sight' which they usually used to perceive magical auras and fields - and/or they pretended it was real because they were all lifelong Mormon believers (with brief relapses from some) who were very closely related to and involved with Mister Smith's most devoted followers[[note]] While its true that there's no record of them condemning the authenticity of the original text, they had nothing to gain (and some of them much to lose) by doing so. Even if they hadn't quite believed it at first, it's worth noting that the human mind's ability to 'manufacture' memories could have made up the difference - one's capacity for deceiving onself and effectively creating memories from scratch (given enough time) is indeed remakable. It's worth noting that at least one of the 'witnesses' openly voiced doubts about whether or not he had actually/literally (as opposed to spiritually/mystically) seen the text. [[/note]]. [Possible]
** Conclusion: Possible x Possible x Possible = Very Unlikely.

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith told the truth''
# Christianity was right about God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit existing and everything in The Bible (including 'Genesis') really happened. [Extremely unlikely[[note]] There's an awful lot of physics-defying stuff in there, plus the whole 'earth made in six days' stuff mentioned in 'Genesis'. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if Joseph Smith hadn't been quite so insistent that The Bible was every bit as true as The Book Of Mormon itself. [[/note]].]
# There were Ancient Jewish Civilisations in The Americas that we have no evidence for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon) [Extremely Unlikely[[note]] Statisticaly it's impossible for there to be zero evidence of millenia-old civilisations with peak-populations of at least several hundred thousand (which would give several million sets of skeletons, if nothing else). Furthermore, there's also no evidence of contact between these civilisations we ''do'' know existed and ''do'' have evidence for. A single blade or pot (of the right age) would be all the evidence we need, but there is none whatsoever.[[/note]]]
# Joseph Smith was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of these Ancient Jewish Civilisations from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English. [Assuming that 1# and 2# are true, unlikely[[note]] Archaeology has come a long way since the 1830s. It's ''extremely'' unlikely that there's any (widely-used) Egyptian script of the 6th century BC we have no knowledge of, which is what this script is supposed to be.[[/note]]]
# When Joseph Smith claimed to be empowered by the Christian God to 'translate' an Egyptian text into what became a Mormon sacred text named The Book Of Abraham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham), in the same manner as he did the Ancient American Jews' historical record, he wasn't actually empowered to do so. [Unlikely]
# Professor Anthon, a contemporary of Joseph Smith and professor of Classical Studies (inc. Ancient Egyptian) at the USA's Columbia University, lied about receiving a letter from Joseph Smith containing fake/gibberish hieroglyphs supposedly copied from the unkown/undocumented Egyptian script used in the historical record of the Ancient Jewish Civilisations of The Americas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_Transcript). [Possible]
** Conclusion: Extremely Unlikely x Extremely Unlikely x Unlikely x Unlikely x Possible = Statistically Impossible

While I don't dismiss the possibility that The Book Of Mormon is genuine, [[OccamsRazor the simpler explanation is that it isn't]].

--Tropers/{{MAI742}}

[[/folder]]


[[folder: A Book With A Context]]

'''The Book Of Mormon is a fascinating insight into Joseph Smith's life and times, though it is easy to see why Christian denominations dismiss it as heresy.'''

The Book Of Mormon's claim that all or even part of the Amerindian population is of Jewish descent is incorrect, there is no archaeological evidence of the great agricultural civilisations which the book describes (at length) ever having existed, and there are no accounts of the plants and animals which they are said to have brought with from the Old World[[note]] Wheat, Goats, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, Elephants[[/note]] existing upon their actual introduction in the 16th and 17th centuries by European settlers[[note]] Though the Mormons' church has never taken an official position on this, some Mormons have taken the view that these nouns were all 'placeholders' for domestic equivalents - 'wheat' for 'corn', 'horse' for 'llama' (leaving aside the fact the latter can't be ridden or used in agriculture), etcetc. The response to the revelation that, no, Amerindians ''aren't'' Jews seems to have been met with a response that perhaps the Jewish Amerindians died out and/or didn't have kids with the regular Amerindians. This could be the case, but the 'burden of proof' (that there were Jewish Amerindian Civilisations that we have zero evidence for) still rests with the Mormons.[[/note]]. Moreover, no non-believer has ever seen the 'Golden Plates' and The Book Of Mormon does not read like the text it is supposed to be - a perfectly/divinely-translated, eloquent and concise history of several great civilisations - so much as it does the text non-believers suppose it to be - an improvisation by a man with a vivid imagination but a limited education (it has the most meaningless/'filler' phrases as a percentage of its total word-count of ''any'' religious text to date, the phrase '(and) so it came to pass' being used 1404 times)[[note]] The text is in many ways an imitation of The Old Testament - something the use of the phrase 'and so it came to pass' reflects. Curiously has been suggested that this similarity of style 'proves' that The Book Of Mormon is in fact a genuine Jewish text. [[SincerityMode It doesn't]]. [[/note]]. The dubious origins of the book do much to explain the continued existence of Christian groups outside the Mormon umbrella.

Its also important to note the environment in which the book was printed and Mr Smith's religion was founded. While some may wonder at Mr Smith's use of a 'seeing-stone' and 'second-sight' to read the Golden Plates of legend, Mr Smith and many of his contemporaries genuinely believed in what they thought to be 'magic'. The Book Of Mormon was written at a time of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chug6f0tnFg flourishing religious and magical orders and (secret) societies]][[note]] This time also gave us the idea of Elves and Fairies being child-friendly (rather than child-torturers/killers), druids, paganism, witchcraft, astrology, and ectoplasm. The more 'scientific' alternatives to this were Scientific Racialism (the 'science' of using confirmation-bias to 'prove' your own 'race' was the best in the world at xyz/everything) and the study of head-shape as an indicator of personality and intelligence ('Phrenology'). The 19th Century was not a good time for logic. [[/note]]. These new (splinter-)groups were a side-effect of the massive upswell in religious observance and participation throughout the English-speaking world at the time, a movement which resulted from the feelings of alienation and displacement that came with industrialisation and urbanisation. This uspswell crashed ''hard'' in the mid-latter 19th Century when the theory of Evolution was first proposed, disseminated, and determined to contradict the first chapter of the Bible ('Genesis').

That said, Mormon believers like sci-fi writer OrsonScottCard [[http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html have made some very heart-felt claims]] that the text ''is not'' a product of its time (or Mr Smith), Mr Card's argument essentially being that The Book Of Mormon book doesn't read like an average 19th century magical/religious-text (of which there were many, though almost all of them have since faded into obscurity).
[[/folder]]

'''Origins Of The Book Of Mormon ''' - A Response (The initial version of these passages were written by ''Bense''. They do not reflect the views of the TvTropes community as a whole)

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Odds Of Authenticity]]

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith made it up''

Assuming he made it up, Joseph Smith accomplished all of the following with only a third grade education:

# Over a three-month period he created a narrative of approximately 480 pages with a consistent internal chronology and geography written in several different narrative voices by dictating to a scribe. According to the scribes he used no written notes.
# Joseph Smith managed to use authentic Hebrew literary techniques in his composition, such as the common use of the phrase “it came to pass”, chiasmus, and syntax that appears Semitic in origin.
# He managed to use a real world location – Nahom – in the narrative that he could not have known really existed in the proper place. Lucky guess?
# He convinced three witnesses of the golden plates that they saw a vision of an angel showing them the plates. These people all left the LDS Church afterwards when they had a falling out with Joseph Smith. Two of them eventually returned, one did not, but none of them ever claimed it was a hoax. Either he convinced them that they did actually see an angel or managed to convince them all to lie and stick with that lie the remainder of their lives.
# Eight witnesses of the golden plates saw and were allowed to handle the plates. Four of these witnesses later were excommunicated from the LDS Church, yet none of them ever claimed the plates were a hoax. Joseph Smith either convinced them all to lie through the remainder of their lives or was able to produce a convincing prop to show them.
# This book has continued to convince people that it is authentic and of real spiritual worth for almost two centuries after its composition.

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith told the truth''

Assuming the Book really is a translation of an ancient record, all of the following must be true:

# Christianity was right about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit existing and many of the events described in The Bible (including the Flood and the Tower of Babel) really happened.
# There was an ancient Israelite Civilisation in The Americas that has left no distinctly Hebrew artifacts or ruins, and no place names or other written records confirming their existence survived.
# Likewise genetic studies of Native Americans have failed to find identifiably Hebrew genetic markers.
# Animals such as cattle, elephants, horses, goats, and sheep existed in the Americas between 600 BCE and 400 CE and were used by this Israelite civilisation, yet did not leave any definitive archaeological evidence of their existence. Wheat as well.
# Joseph Smith, an obscure and almost illiterate farm boy (in his mid-20s), was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of this Ancient Isrealite Civilisation from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English.
# Professor Anthon, a contemporary of Joseph Smith and professor of Classical Studies (inc. Ancient Egyptian) at Columbia University lied about initially authenticating a transcript of characters copied from the plates containing the record (he later claimed that he spotted a hoax immediately).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: A Book With A Context]]

'''The Book Of Mormon is a fascinating insight into Joseph Smith's life and times, though it is easy to see why Christian denominations dismiss it as heresy.'''

It is important to note the environment in which the book was initially printed and the Mormon religion was begun. While Joseph Smith's use of a 'seeing-stone' and divine aid to read golden plates may seem outlandish to a modern audience, the contemporary early 19th century was a very different place. The Book Of Mormon was written at a time of flourishing religious and magical orders and secret societies[[note]] This time also saw a rise in interest of elves, fairies, druids, paganism, witchcraft, astrology, mediums, and phrenology (studying the size and shape of a person’s head to determine their intelligence)[[/note]]. The Mormon movement and similar Christian splinter-groups were a side-effect of the massive upswell in religious observance and participation throughout the English-speaking world at the time, a movement which is believed to have resulted from the feelings of alienation and displacement that came with industrialisation and urbanisation. This uspswell died down again in the mid-latter 19th Century when more modern scientific theory began to be developed and gain widespread acceptance, including the Theory of Evolution which seemed to directly contradict the Bible.

That said, Mormon believers like sci-fi writer OrsonScottCard [[http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html have made some very heart-felt arguments]] that the text ''is not'' a product of its time (or Mr. Smith), Mr. Card's argument essentially being that The Book Of Mormon book doesn't read like an average 19th century magical/religious-text, of which there were many, though almost all of them have since faded into obscurity.
[[/folder]]




! The Broadway Show

# The 11 people who 'saw' the Book Of Mormon in its original form did not literally/actually see it but saw it 'spiritually/mystically' in a way that was very common at the time - using mystical/meditative 'second-sight' which they usually used to perceive magical auras and fields - and/or they pretended it was real because they were all lifelong Mormon believers (with brief relapses from some) who were very closely related to and involved with Mister Smith's most devoted followers[[note]] While its true that none none of them ever specicially denied seeing the original text, they had nothing to gain (and some of them much to lose) by doing so and indeed may actually have come to believed it - the human mind's ability to deceive itself and effectively create memories from scratch (given enough time) is indeed remakable. It's worth noting that one of the 'witnesses' did later openly voice doubts about whether or not he had actually/literally (as opposed to spiritually/mystically) seen it. [[/note]]. [Possible]

The Book Of Mormon's claim that all or even part of the Amerindian population is of Jewish descent is incorrect, there is no archaeological evidence of the great agricultural civilisations which the book describes (at length) ever having existed, and there are no accounts of the plants and animals which they are said to have brought with from the Old World[[note]] Wheat, Goats, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, Elephants[[/note]] existing upon their actual introduction in the 16th and 17th centuries by European settlers. Moreover, no non-believer has ever seen the 'Golden Plates' and The Book Of Mormon does not read like the text it is supposed to be - a perfectly/divinely-translated, eloquent and concise history of several great civilisations - so much as it does the text non-believers suppose it to be - an improvisation by a man with a vivid imagination but a limited education (it has the most meaningless/'filler' phrases as a percentage of its total word-count of ''any'' religious text to date, the phrase '(and) so it came to pass' being used 1298 times). The dubious origins of the book do much to explain the continued existence of Christian groups outside the Mormon umbrella.

# The 11 people who 'saw' the Book Of Mormon did not literally/actually see it but saw it 'spiritually/mystically' in a way that was very common at the time - using mystical/meditative 'second-sight' which they usually used to perceive magical auras and fields - and/or they pretended it was real because they were all lifelong Mormon believers (with brief relapses from some) who were very closely related to and involved with Mister Smith's most devoted followers. [Possible]
** Conclusion: Possible

# Christianity was right about God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit existing and everything in The Bible (including 'Genesis') really happened. [Extremely unlikely]
# There were Ancient Jewish Civilisations in The Americas that we have no evidence for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon) [Extremely Unlikely]
# Joseph Smith was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of these Ancient Jewish Civilisations from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English. [Assuming that 1# and 2# are true, unlikely]

** Conclusion: Extremely Unlikely

'''Origins Of The Book Of Mormon - A Response'''
(The initial version of these passages were written by ''Bense''. They do not reflect the views of the TvTropes community as a whole)

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith made it up''

Assuming he made it up, Joseph Smith accomplished all of the following with only a third grade education:

# Over a three-month period he created a narrative of approximately 480 pages with a consistent internal chronology and geography written in several different narrative voices by dictating to a scribe. According to the scribes he used no written notes.
# Joseph Smith managed to use authentic Hebrew literary techniques in his composition, such as the common use of the phrase “it came to pass”, chiasmus, and syntax that appears Semitic in origin.
# He managed to use a real world location – Nahom – in the narrative that he could not have known really existed in the proper place. Lucky guess?
# He convinced three witnesses of the golden plates that they saw a vision of an angel showing them the plates. These people all left the LDS Church afterwards when they had a falling out with Joseph Smith. Two of them eventually returned, one did not, but none of them ever claimed it was a hoax. Either he convinced them that they did actually see an angel or managed to convince them all to lie and stick with that lie the remainder of their lives.
# Eight witnesses of the golden plates saw and were allowed to handle the plates. Four of these witnesses later were excommunicated from the LDS Church, yet none of them ever claimed the plates were a hoax. Joseph Smith either convinced them all to lie through the remainder of their lives or was able to produce a convincing prop to show them.
# This book has continued to convince people that it is authentic and of real spiritual worth for almost two centuries after its composition.

Assuming the Book really is a translation of an ancient record, all of the following must be true:

# Christianity was right about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit existing and many of the events described in The Bible (including the Flood and the Tower of Babel) really happened.
# There was an ancient Israelite Civilisation in The Americas that has left no distinctly Hebrew artifacts or ruins, and no place names or other written records confirming their existence survived.
# Likewise genetic studies of Native Americans have failed to find identifiably Hebrew genetic markers.
# Animals such as cattle, elephants, horses, goats, and sheep existed in the Americas between 600 BCE and 400 CE and were used by this Israelite civilisation, yet did not leave any definitive archaeological evidence of their existence. Wheat as well.
# Joseph Smith, an obscure and almost illiterate farm boy (in his mid-20s), was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of this Ancient Isrealite Civilisation from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English.
# Professor Anthon, a contemporary of Joseph Smith and professor of Classical Studies (inc. Ancient Egyptian) at Columbia University lied about initially authenticating a transcript of characters copied from the plates containing the record (he later claimed that he spotted a hoax immediately).
[[/folder]]

It is important to note the environment in which the book was initially printed and the Mormon religion was begun. While Joseph Smith's use of a 'seeing-stone' and divine aid to read golden plates may seem outlandish to a modern audience, the contemporary early 19th century was a very different place. The Book Of Mormon was written at a time of flourishing religious and magical orders and secret societies[[note]] This time also saw a rise in interest of elves, fairies, druids, paganism, witchcraft, astrology, mediums, and phrenology (studying the size and shape of a person’s head to determine their intelligence)[[/note]]. The Mormon movement and similar Christian splinter-groups were a side-effect of the massive upswell in religious observance and participation throughout the English-speaking world at the time, a movement which is believed to have resulted from the feelings of alienation and displacement that came with industrialisation and urbanisation. This uspswell died down again in the mid-latter 19th Century when more modern scientific theory began to be developed and gain widespread acceptance, including the Theory of Evolution which seemed to directly contradict the Bible.

That said, Mormon believers like sci-fi writer OrsonScottCard [[http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html have made some very heart-felt arguments]] that the text ''is not'' a product of its time (or Mr. Smith), Mr. Card's argument essentially being that The Book Of Mormon book doesn't read like an average 19th century magical/religious-text, of which there were many, though almost all of them have since faded into obscurity.

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith made it up''
# Joseph Smith wanted to make it up. [Possible]
# He did. [Possible]
# The 11 people who 'saw' the Book Of Mormon did not literally/actually see it but saw it 'spiritually/mystically' in a way that was very common at the time - using mystical/meditative 'second-sight' which they usually used to perceive magical auras and fields - and/or they pretended it was real because they were all lifelong Mormon believers (with brief relapses from some) who were very closely related to and involved with Mister Smith's most devoted followers. [Possible]
** Conclusion: Possible

# Christianity was right about God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit existing and everything in The Bible (including 'Genesis') really happened. [Extremely unlikely]
# There were Ancient Jewish Civilisations in The Americas that we have no evidence for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon) [Extremely Unlikely]
# Joseph Smith was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of these Ancient Jewish Civilisations from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English. [Assuming that 1# and 2# are true, unlikely]
# When Joseph Smith claimed to be empowered by the Christian God to 'translate' an Egyptian text into what became a Mormon sacred text named The Book Of Abraham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham), in the same manner as he did the Ancient American Jews' historical record, he wasn't actually empowered to do so. [Unlikely]
# Professor Anthon, a contemporary of Joseph Smith and professor of Classical Studies (inc. Ancient Egyptian) at the USA's Columbia University, lied about receiving a letter from Joseph Smith containing fake/gibberish hieroglyphs supposedly copied from the unkown/undocumented Egyptian script used in the historical record of the Ancient Jewish Civilisations of The Americas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_Transcript). [Possible]
** Conclusion: Extremely Unlikely

While I don't dismiss the possibility that The Book Of Mormon is genuine, [[OccamsRazor the simpler explanation is that it isn't]].

--Tropers/{{MAI742}}

[[/folder]]

The Book Of Mormon's claim that all or even part of the Amerindian population is of Jewish descent is incorrect, there is no archaeological evidence of the great agricultural civilisations which the book describes (at length) ever having existed, and there are no accounts of the plants and animals which they are said to have brought with from the Old World[[note]] Wheat, Goats, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, Elephants[[/note]] existing upon their actual introduction in the 16th and 17th centuries by European settlers. Moreover, no non-believer has ever seen the 'Golden Plates' and The Book Of Mormon does not read like the text it is supposed to be - a perfectly/divinely-translated, eloquent and concise history of several great civilisations - so much as it does the text non-believers suppose it to be - an improvisation by a man with a vivid imagination but a limited education (it has the most meaningless/'filler' phrases as a percentage of its total word-count of ''any'' religious text to date, the phrase '(and) so it came to pass' being used 1298 times). The dubious origins of the book do much to explain the continued existence of Christian groups outside the Mormon umbrella.

Its also important to note the environment in which the book was printed and Mr Smith's religion was founded. While some may wonder at Mr Smith's use of a 'seeing-stone' and 'second-sight' to read the Golden Plates of legend, Mr Smith and many of his contemporaries genuinely believed in what they thought to be 'magic'. The Book Of Mormon was written at a time of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chug6f0tnFg flourishing religious and magical orders and (secret) societies]][[note]] This time also gave us the idea of Elves and Fairies being child-friendly (rather than child-torturers/killers), druids, paganism, witchcraft, astrology, and ectoplasm. The more 'scientific' alternatives to this were Scientific Racialism (the 'science' of using confirmation-bias to 'prove' your own 'race' was the best in the world at xyz/everything) and the study of head-shape as an indicator of personality and intelligence ('Phrenology'). The 19th Century was not a good time for logic. [[/note]]. These new (splinter-)groups were a side-effect of the massive upswell in religious observance and participation throughout the English-speaking world at the time, a movement which resulted from the feelings of alienation and displacement that came with industrialisation and urbanisation. This uspswell crashed ''hard'' in the mid-latter 19th Century when the theory of Evolution was first proposed, disseminated, and determined to contradict the first chapter of the Bible ('Genesis').

That said, Mormon believers like sci-fi writer OrsonScottCard [[http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html have made some very heart-felt claims]] that the text ''is not'' a product of its time (or Mr Smith), Mr Card's argument essentially being that The Book Of Mormon book doesn't read like an average 19th century magical/religious-text (of which there were many, though almost all of them have since faded into obscurity).

# Over a three-month period he created narrative of approximately 480 pages with a consistent internal chronology and geography and in several different narrative voices by dictating to a scribe. According to the scribes he used no written notes.

# Animals such as cattle, elephants, horses, goats, and sheep existed in the Americas between 600 BCE and 400 CE and were used by this Israelite civilisation, yet did not leave any definitive archaeological evidence of their existence. Likewise wheat.
# Joseph Smith, and obscure and almost illiterate farm boy (in his mid-20s), was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of this Ancient Isrealite Civilisation from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English.

(These passages contain the personal views of Tropers/{{MAI742}} and do not reflect the views of the TvTropes community as a whole)

''Things that are all true if Joseph Smith made it up''
# Joseph Smith wanted to make it up. [Possible]
# He did. [Possible]
# The 11 people who 'saw' the Book Of Mormon did not literally/actually see it but saw it 'spiritually/mystically' in a way that was very common at the time - using mystical/meditative 'second-sight' which they usually used to perceive magical auras and fields - and/or they pretended it was real because they were all lifelong Mormon believers (with brief relapses from some) who were very closely related to and involved with Mister Smith's most devoted followers. [Possible]
** Conclusion: Possible

# Christianity was right about God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit existing and everything in The Bible (including 'Genesis') really happened. [Extremely unlikely]
# There were Ancient Jewish Civilisations in The Americas that we have no evidence for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon) [Extremely Unlikely]
# Joseph Smith was chosen, guided, and empowered by the Christian God to translate a history of these Ancient Jewish Civilisations from an unknown/undocumented Ancient Egyptian script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) into English. [Assuming that 1# and 2# are true, unlikely]
# When Joseph Smith claimed to be empowered by the Christian God to 'translate' an Egyptian text into what became a Mormon sacred text named The Book Of Abraham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham), in the same manner as he did the Ancient American Jews' historical record, he wasn't actually empowered to do so. [Unlikely]
# Professor Anthon, a contemporary of Joseph Smith and professor of Classical Studies (inc. Ancient Egyptian) at the USA's Columbia University, lied about receiving a letter from Joseph Smith containing fake/gibberish hieroglyphs supposedly copied from the unkown/undocumented Egyptian script used in the historical record of the Ancient Jewish Civilisations of The Americas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_Transcript). [Possible]
** Conclusion: Extremely Unlikely

While I don't dismiss the possibility that The Book Of Mormon is genuine, [[OccamsRazor the simpler explanation is that it isn't]].

--Tropers/{{MAI742}}

[[/folder]]

The Book Of Mormon's claim that all or even part of the Amerindian population is of Jewish descent is incorrect, there is no archaeological evidence of the great agricultural civilisations which the book describes (at length) ever having existed, and there are no accounts of the plants and animals which they are said to have brought with from the Old World[[note]] Wheat, Goats, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, Elephants[[/note]] existing upon their actual introduction in the 16th and 17th centuries by European settlers. Moreover, no non-believer has ever seen the 'Golden Plates' and The Book Of Mormon does not read like the text it is supposed to be - a perfectly/divinely-translated, eloquent and concise history of several great civilisations - so much as it does the text non-believers suppose it to be - an improvisation by a man with a vivid imagination but a limited education (it has the most meaningless/'filler' phrases as a percentage of its total word-count of ''any'' religious text to date, the phrase '(and) so it came to pass' being used 1298 times). The dubious origins of the book do much to explain the continued existence of Christian groups outside the Mormon umbrella.

Its also important to note the environment in which the book was printed and Mr Smith's religion was founded. While some may wonder at Mr Smith's use of a 'seeing-stone' and 'second-sight' to read the Golden Plates of legend, Mr Smith and many of his contemporaries genuinely believed in what they thought to be 'magic'. The Book Of Mormon was written at a time of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chug6f0tnFg flourishing religious and magical orders and (secret) societies]][[note]] This time also gave us the idea of Elves and Fairies being child-friendly (rather than child-torturers/killers), druids, paganism, witchcraft, astrology, and ectoplasm. The more 'scientific' alternatives to this were Scientific Racialism (the 'science' of using confirmation-bias to 'prove' your own 'race' was the best in the world at xyz/everything) and the study of head-shape as an indicator of personality and intelligence ('Phrenology'). The 19th Century was not a good time for logic. [[/note]]. These new (splinter-)groups were a side-effect of the massive upswell in religious observance and participation throughout the English-speaking world at the time, a movement which resulted from the feelings of alienation and displacement that came with industrialisation and urbanisation. This uspswell crashed ''hard'' in the mid-latter 19th Century when the theory of Evolution was first proposed, disseminated, and determined to contradict the first chapter of the Bible ('Genesis').

That said, Mormon believers like sci-fi writer OrsonScottCard [[http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html have made some very heart-felt claims]] that the text ''is not'' a product of its time (or Mr Smith), Mr Card's argument essentially being that The Book Of Mormon book doesn't read like an average 19th century magical/religious-text (of which there were many, though almost all of them have since faded into obscurity).

--Tropers/{{MAI742}}

'''Origins Of The Book of Mormon''' - Mormon-friendly edition

-Bense

'''Origins Of The Book Of Mormon''' - Secular/Rational Edition

'''The Book Of Mormon is a fascinating insight into Joseph Smith's life and times, though it is easy to see why Christian sects dismiss it as heresy.'''

The Book Of Mormon's claim that all or even part of the Amerindian population is of Jewish descent is incorrect, there is no archaeological evidence of the great agricultural civilisations which the book describes (at length) ever having existed, and there are no accounts of the plants and animals which they are said to have brought with from the Old World[[note]] Wheat, Goats, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, Elephants[[/note]] existing upon their actual introduction in the 16th and 17th centuries by European settlers. Moreover, no non-believer has ever seen the 'Golden Plates' and The Book Of Mormon does not read like the text it is supposed to be - a perfectly/divinely-translated, eloquent and concise history of several great civilisations - so much as it does the text non-believers suppose it to be - an improvisation by a man with a vivid imagination but a limited education (it has the most meaningless/'filler' phrases as a percentage of its total word-count of ''any'' religious text to date, the phrase '(and) so it came to pass' being used 1298 times).

[[folder: Likelihood of Veracity]]

This is not to say that The Book Of Mormon is a fabrication, [[OccamsRazor but the simplest explanation is that it is]].