Book of Mormon

QUESTION: What is the Book of Mormon? - Is it True?

ANSWER:

According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. "The Mormons"), the Book of Mormon was written c. 400 AD by, among others, a prophet named Mormon and finished by his son, an angel named Moroni. Supposedly, it was originally recorded in reformed Egyptian on several gold plates which were discovered in the back woods of New York state by Joseph Smith, a young farm boy at the time.

It was the angel Nephi who was said to have appeared to Smith up to the printing of the 1851 Pearl of Great Price. It is now accepted as the Angel Moroni who appeared to Smith in 1823 and told him that he would be able to find these golden plates at a hill near his home four years later, in 1827. Smith spent the next three years translating the plates into what is now known as the Book of Mormon, published in 1830. Interestingly, Mormon literature records a story of Joseph Smith running through the woods while carrying these golden tablets to avoid being discovered by those he'd heard in the distance. This seems rather impossible in light of the fact that the total weight of the gold has been calculated to be 276 pounds. It is alleged that Smith ran about 5 miles while carrying the golden tablets.

The claims of the Book of Mormon depend on verifiable truth and the veracity of its sources. Joseph Smith was known in his town as a person given to wild enthusiasms and had a reputation as a person with an overactive imagination. He died in a gunfight while in jail.

The people described in the text, the Nephites and the Lamanites, have no other historical documents or texts from their era (c.600 BC) making mention of them - these people groups are literally unheard-of in history outside the writings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

According to official church position, all one would need to do in order to verify its truthfulness is to read the book, pray about it, and ask God if it is true and indeed from His hand. This is obviously an exercise in subjectivism and has serious implications if the same practice were applied to such historical documents as "Mein Kampf," "The Kama Sutra," or "Alice in Wonderland," for that matter.