The stories are way too complicated and he was too uneducated. What would you respond to that?

He wasn't that young and he wasn't that uneducated. Besides the original BofM was filled with grammatical errors. Another theory is that he plagiarized it. Besides, if Mozart and Bernini could write symphonies or carve great works of art as kids, why couldn't a guy in his early 20s write a bad novel? Another point is that his mother said he spent hours as a boy telling the family detailed stories of the early inhabitants of America, Sounds like he had practice

Simple answer: He didn't write it. Someone else did.

Why do TBMs think this argument proves the BoM is true? If it is true, it just proves someone else wrote it and he took the credit. Ever hear of plagiarism or ghost writers?

And he didn't do it alone.

They also cream themselves because the book contains a bunch of ripped off 19th century Cambelite preachings.

One of my good friends got his PhD in History on 19th century American religions.

Two classes in, one more reading of the BoM and he was out.

written by younger people. Those who've run it through an analysis find it is written at a ninth grade comprehension level.

Have you ever looked at the original 1830 edition before the 3000-4000 changes and edits? It's online for free, or about $25 from Amazon. It is written in hilarious hillbilly Elizabethan English.

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/MEDIA/bm.htm


The stories aren't that complicated. Every prophet starts over with new stuff. The geography doesn't add up or match to anything real. Many of the stories, like chopping off the head of drunk to steal his stuff are ridiculous in intent and execution.

Smith wasn't uneducated. His father and one brother were sometime teachers. One of his brothers was on a school board. They read a lot. He had the opportunity to go to school, but didn't have the discipline. The rest of his family did go to school.

He was bright enough, you have to give him that. His mother said he used to entertain the family around the fire at night by telling tall tales about the local Indians. He in fact was making up the book from the time he was very young.

There are some great websites where this topic has been worked through in detail if you want even more information. Richard Packham's site has a great writeup.

His dad and his brother were teachers. So how is it he was uneducated? He had access to a library and the book of Mormon is loaded with anachronisms reflecting commonly accepted beliefs of his day.

This is an uneducated question to ask about Joseph Smith jr.

Thinking points for the willfully ignorant used to work on me. I think the Sunday school lesson went something like this...

"Joseph Smith was a poor uneducated farm boy who at 14 prayed in the woods and asked what church to join then was visited by God and Jesus and was told that all churches were an abomination. Then Moroni came to him in his room in the middle of the night and told him where to findthe Golden Plates which he translated into the Book of Mormon the most true book in the world...

Oh look over there....Squirrel!"

I thought he wrote the Book of Mormon when he was 14 too.

First of all, he wasn't uneducated. He was simply home-schooled, which most people were back then. There's a huge difference. They sneakily try to say he wasn't public-school taught, but students who are home-schooled can do better on test scores than children in public school.

Joseph Smith was studying Hebrew and is said to have known the Bible inside and out.

It's also ridiculous to state that he couldn't have written it. How about J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter? Or Lord of the Rings, or War and Peace, for that matter?

They're much more complicated than the Book of Mormon, where a huge chunk of that book was simply copied right out of the King James Bible, errors and all.

What about the kid who wrote "Eragon"? He was actually a young teen when he wrote that book, and it is pretty complicated too, altho cliched (as is the BOM).

Man, that is a terrible book. Horribly written. Ugh. And, it's sort of a rip off of Star Wars and Tolkien. Anyone can write a bad book anyway.

Smith was a con man who used a peep stone in a hat in a money digging scam. Then he used the same peep stone in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon and bring forth the truths of the restored gospel. Then he used the peep stone in a hat again to pretend to translate the Book of Abraham from some Egyptian papyri. Whoops! But then the papyri showed up, and we can prove that to be a fraud.

I can't prove where the Book of Mormon came from, but the burning in my bosom says that Smith never took a break from his career in fraud and bilking people out of their money.

I disagree. He did take a few breaks from his fraud work to have some fun.

a manuscript by Solomon Spaulding. I love this theory myself and have read a lot about it.

I wouldn't bring it up with most Mormons. It's easier for them to digest the idea that anyone could have written it. The Spaulding theory is more advanced, and somewhat easier for them to dismiss. If you get interested however, it's quite an entertaining concept.

Well let's see. The author of the BoM is in love with the words "yea," "behold," and the phrase, "it came to pass." He is obsessed with semicolons. He came up with the word "stiffneckedness" which is rather amusing in its pomposity. The brass plates contained records of "Adam and Eve, which was our first parents". This is great literature?

Joseph Smith could not have written "The Lord of the Rings." But the BoM? Sure. He could have written it, or his friends and associates could have written it.

http://www.inephi.com/Search.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2011 12:25AM by summer.

I always chuckle when I hear this theory. Let's say the BOM is true (which it is not), then it was authored by a host of poorly educated prophets, some like Nephi no older then Smith. If they could author sections of the book, why couldn't Smith have authored it?

I also have many Muslim friends, who actually make the very same argument about Islam. They claim that Mohamed was an illiterate (he probably really wasn't) who couldn't possibly have authored the Koran. Is the Koran true, simply because its followers believe it is too special to have come from the hands of man? That isn't fact, but a culturally biased opinion.

Personally, I believe that Smith was the primary author, assisted by his closest friends and family members who collaborated with him on the project.

As for all the special witnesses who never recanted their testimonies, they had signed affidavits. Admitting they had lied would have destroyed their reputations, thus ruining them, since such an admission would have made it impossible for them to conduct business in the 19th century. Most of their non-mo neighbors would have just assumed they had been good people temporary deceived by the devil. At least that is my theory based on what I have gleamed on the culture of the time. I could be wrong.

The best prediction of future behavior is past behavior.

Apply this to JS. What do you get?

There are some truly excellent comments above. Some point to the strong evidence that others were involved, and two sources, Spaulding's "Manuscript Found" and Ethan Smith's "View of the Hebrews" were probably extensively plagiarized whoever authored the BOM...

Mark Twain, in "Roughing It" pointed to extensive borrowings from the King James Bible and Shakespeare (and Twain was a self-taught expert on the Bard). His comments on the credibility of the witnesses are marvelous examples of his talents for lampooning certain sacred subjects as well.

(1) Wrong -- He COULD have written it all by himself.

(2) It is also possible that he had help from others.

So this argument crashes and burns twice in one lap.

http://mormonthink.com/josephweb.htm

Also, the same claim is used to justify Islam.

"The central miracle of Islam was, and remains the Quranic revelation. To this day no one has put forward a defensible explanation of how an unlettered caravan merchant of the early seventh century might have been able, by his own devices, to produce a text of such inimitable beauty, of such capacity to stir emotion, and which contained knowledge and wisdom which stood so far above ideas current among mankind at that time. The studies carried out in the West which try to determine the 'sources used by Muhammad', or to bring to light the psychological phenomenon which enabled him to draw inspiration from his 'subconcious', have demonstrated only one thing; the anti- Muslim prejudice of their authors." (Roger du Pasquier, Unveiling Islam, pg 53)

Took the words right out my mouth.

Also, the stories are not complicated at all. They are rather shallow, infantile, black-and-white, and repetitive.

As far as the uneducated argument goes, just print a page of Joe's rather neat handwriting and ask if that looks like the handwriting of an uneducated boy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2011 09:03AM by rt.

that an angel carried the plates back up to Heaven.

that's far more believable.

wooden submarines.

Around 1920 Mormon historian B.H. Roberts (who was mormon and I believe a GA) addressed this question and concluded Joseph Smith could have written the BoM. Roberts also presented his findings to church leaders (i think the big 12) who he says never answered his questions and concerns. When he presented his findings to the leaders, rather than discuss it, they each gave their testimony regarding the truthfulness of the BoM - one of them reportedly was in tears.

B.H. Roberts wrote extensively on the subject. Here is a snippet:

"If...the view be taken that the Book of Mormon is merely of human origin; that a person of Joseph Smith's limitations in experience and in education, who was of the vicinage and of the period that produced the book - if it be assumed that he is the author of it, then it could be said there is much internal evidence in the book itself to sustain such a view. In the first place there is a certain lack of perspective in the things the book relates as history that points quite clearly to an undeveloped mind as their origin. The narrative proceeds in characteristic disregard of conditions necessary to its reasonableness, as if it were a tale told by a child, with utter disregard for consistency."

"The allusions here to absurdities of expressions and incidents in the Book of Mormon are not made for the purpose of ridiculing the book, or casting undue aspersions upon it; but they are made to indicate what may be fairly regarded as just objects of criticism under the assumption that the Book of Mormon is of human origin, and that Joseph Smith is its author. For these absurdities in expression; these miraculous incidents in warfare; those almost mock - and certainly extravagant - heroics; these lapses of the main characters about conditions obtaining, are certainly just such absurdities and lapses as would be looked for if a person of such limitations as bounded Joseph Smith undertook to put forth a book dealing with the history and civilization of ancient peoples."



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2011 12:23PM by thingsithink.

If there had never been a religious history book written, and the BoM was the first, that could be a game changer.

I read a lot of book reviews. Many that I read in the New York Times begin by telling you that the book about to be reviewed is just a re-telling of such and such classic. Just a new spin on the old.

A lot of authors purposely avoid other books of the same genre when writing so as to not be influenced. But what if you wanted to be influenced? What if you had a talent for taking a lot of information and putting into a new form? What if you had to come up with something to keep your agenda going?

The BoM is a quilt.

Even after I say "that's because Sydney Rigdon and possible Solomon Spaulding wrote it, and Oliver Cowdery definitely was complicit" they still seem to turn right back to "Joseph Smith couldn't possibly have written it by himself."

I want to yell "YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO WHAT I JUST SAID!"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2011 12:35PM by kimball.

"Joseph Smith as author of the Book of Mormon"
http://packham.n4m.org/jsauthor.htm

...one of several threadbare responses that essentially mean, "Move along. Nothing to see here." It doesn't answer the question. It's just to get you to stop asking questions.

I will point out that they did not have TV or any other electronic media in JS day. You'd be surprised what you can achieve under those circumstances.

It makes me crazy when people think he wrote it ALL by himself. He had the help of some really, really cool rocks and a hat. If Harry Potter has taught us anything it's that hats can talk and help you figure out problems.

Absolutely no evidence of the BoM peoples has ever been found anywhere in mesoamerica. If they ever existed then they certainly would've been found by now.

From what his mother said about him, Joseph Smith certainly had the imagination to pull off writing something like that. But he's still no J.K. Rowling.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2011 11:31PM by possiblypagan.

LOL It's supposed to highlight a contrast, not make a comparison.

I will give him this, the BOM is slightly better written then Stephanie Meye's piece of garbage. (Then again I never read the orriginal version of the BOM) Twilight proves that Mormons are deluded when it comes to judging great books, because that is one of the worst novels ever written, but to hear Mormons talk you would think it was right up there with the Great Gatsby.