...learn about Adam & Eve and bible stuff and what it means to be jewish? Like they hadn't handed that sort of teaching & tradition down through the generations anyway, like jews (and most tribes) are famous for?

That's a big red flag right there, and we're only at the beginning of the book....

Yeah, it's kind of weird that Lehi, a prophet of the Lord, wouldn't have had a few scrolls laying around. It also doesn't make sense that the records had to be one brass, since copying text from old scrolls onto new ones was how the ancients learned about them in the first place.

The Brass Plates raise a great many questions besides this one.

See my summary at http://packham.n4m.org/brassplates.htm

Normally I'd feel sorry for someone getting their head sliced off as an ending to their human life. However in the case of Laban I just don't feel sorry. It's like feeling sorry for Santa Claus getting frostbite on Xmas eve while he's speeding along in his flying sleigh in the frigid air yelling at his reindeers to go faster so they can get all the presents delivered before the kids wake up Xmas morning.

Simple. Modern prophets aren't good enough to keep the truth alive. You have to have scriptures that can keep the prophets from changing the truth...

Either Lehi was a crappy prophet, or god was a real dufus because, despite all his miracle-osity and omnipotent-ness, he forget to tell Lehi to grab the plates/scrolls/DVD's/whatever on the way outta town and had to send some other knuckleheads back to do some lord-sanctified whackin' & grabbin'...

I get the feeling the current prophet and some of GA's are not comfortable with this religion and all it claims. It's a hard sell in the internet age. Selling crazy and irrational takes some finesse and you had better be careful what shit you step in, because taking it back is almost impossible.