The Book of Mormon
was published in 1830 purporting to have been miraculously translated by Joseph
Smith from golden plates. The book
claims to be part of the Bible and the word of God.
* “If Smith had written the Book of
Mormon he would have needed to learn it off by heart in order so as to be able
to remember what to tell the scribes to write when he pretended to translate
through the seer stone when he stuck his face in the hat. That was an impossible feat so Smith did not
do this.”
No evidence is
given that there were no notes in the hat or that Smith could not have reached
inside when the scribe was not looking to turn the pages. We know that most of Smith’s revelations were
dictated (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Autumn 1966, page
35). He was capable of learning a fair
amount of material off by heart to regurgitate it as a revelation. Perhaps he
was looking out the side of the hat at pages attached to the wall?
Perhaps Smith
sometimes sat in the sight of the secretary but there was a curtain or
something between them so nobody could see his feet. There could have been a hole in the hat and
Smith could have been reading a manuscript lying on the floor and turning it
with his foot. But nevertheless in the
early stages Smith would have had to learn off the “translation” to convince
the secretary that he was seeing the translation in the stone. When Smith and his God took no precautions to
disprove anybody who would think magic tricks were happening it shows that
either God was not involved or God is as bad as Smith. Mormons answer that even if certain forms of
conjuring were ruled out people would still be saying
it could have been magic and thinking of ways how it might have been done. But still the more magic methods are ruled
out the better.
Smith often
“translated” from behind a curtain which made it easier for him to produce the
Book of Mormon by dictation for he could have had a page in front of him and
when the plates were rarely present he did not need the curtain and the stones
he used to see the text did not need the plates to be exposed for the text
appeared on them. A magician always uses
needless props – for example, if a magician can really make a rabbit appear out
of thin air what does he need the hat for?
They always serve some purpose.
Smith had a hat and a curtain which evidently proves he was up to
something.
There are proofs
that Smith or somebody he knew wrote the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon claims to be an abridgment
but yet in several places there is needless repetition and makes many silly
statements that are so obvious they are not worth making. It contains verbatim chunks out of the King
James Bible with errors and all. It
contains explicit prophecies about Jesus and his life that were too detailed to
have been written before they happened.
It contains plagiarised verses from the New Testament. It says there were many things taken away
from the Bible by the Catholic Church and that it replaces many of these things
but one can’t see what the Catholic Church would find so offensive about
detailed prophecies of Christ which is the major difference between the Bible
which is not that explicit and the Book of Mormon! The Book of Mormon claims to be the word of
God and yet it confesses that mistakes have been made even on the Title Page
and throughout the book (Mormon
The Book of Mormon
conflicts with archaeology and repeats the same plot over and over again and
contains plots and sentences stolen from the King James Bible of 1611. It has parallels with nineteenth century
books like View of the Hebrews and other items.
View of the Hebrews has had an influence on nearly every major
historical statement in the Book of Mormon.
Smith thought that the book was scientific and historical but it was
seldom right. Most people thought the
book had authority in his day. The Book
of Mormon is a product of the nineteenth century. Smith used several sources to create it. The work of the Tanners shows that
* “If Smith wrote the Book of Mormon
then why could he not reproduce the lost 116 pages comprising the Book of Lehi? This is unanswerable so the Book of Mormon is
the word of God.”
Smith dictated the
translation to a scribe from behind a curtain.
This argument is very weak. Maybe
Smith himself burned the original after dictating it to his scribe.
Smith himself
claimed that he could not do this for the original pages could turn up and be
different to what he translated. He said
the Devil would see to it that evil persons would change the lost manuscript or
forge a new one to discredit his translation powers. The Devil never did this. He then said that God told him to translate a
different part of the plates instead which covered the same period as the
missing pages. The reason was that the
replacement for the Book of Lehi would have to be
different to that book so that the altered or forged manuscript of Lehi would not discredit it when it happened. The wording of the stories in both books
would be different and there would be some different stories but they would share
the main structure. For example, both
would mention Lehi and co being driven out of
One wonders why it
never occurred to Satan to create a manuscript that had more than just different
words from the real 116 pages but a totally different story or at least one
with some major changes in it. For example,
the new Lehi could have Lehi’s
son Sam being slain in
What Smith said
lacks credibility in every way and shows he was untruthful and that his witnesses
to his plates were going to believe in him no matter what the real truth
was. The reason Smith could not
reproduce Lehi was because he might have been
memorising what he had written in secret and sticking notes full of reminders
in his hat to assist him in remembering what he had learned which were promptly
burned after the translation session. Or
he could have been using slips of paper with the book written on them and then
destroying them in case he would get caught.
He probably destroyed the notes as soon as they were used in case
hostile neighbours would happen upon them.
He did not need them once the “translation” was on paper.
This way of
working would have spelled disaster should the manuscript be lost.
It may have been
that Smith put the story he had learned off into King James Bible language as
he went along so he had no notes to fall back on if anything was lost. The Book of Mormon has a limited and short
vocabulary which made this easy and also was intended to appeal to churchgoers
so that it would sound like the Bible.
This would have led to differences between what he told the secretary to
write and what he had learned off. Perhaps when Smith had to think hard and carefully he just called,
“And it came to pass”, to keep the pace up as well as he could while he
struggled. That would explain the
nauseating and endless repetition of this useless phrase throughout the whole
book. God knew that poor Martin Harris
had enough to pay for without paying a typesetter to work with that which shows
it is a mark of inauthenticity. Smith said that God took the plates from him
after the 116 pages were lost. God had
no need to do that. He had only to cut
off the power to translate. Smith talked
foolishness just to cover up for the fact that he had to plan the whole thing
from start to finish again.
The Book of Lehi was the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon that were lost
and never retranslated for Smith said God forbade it because the new
translation would be different from the old manuscript should it turn up for
evil persons would change the old one.
Funny that God never thought of allowing Smith to reproduce it when it
was safe to for such a time had to come up.
God didn’t know either that Abigail Harris had burned the pages during
an argument about them with her husband Martin who had agreed to mortgage his
farm to pay for the publication of the Book of Mormon.
Mormon was the
author of the Book of Lehi for he abridged it. Soon after these pages were stolen we find
Mormon, according to the Words of Mormon, discovering all of a sudden other
plates, the small plates of Nephi that he and Smith were able to use instead of
Mormon’s abridgement. These small plates
contained an abridgement of Lehi by Nephi – an alternative! Obviously, up to then Smith was claiming that
there was only one golden Bible that was abridged and had to invent a new one
as an excuse for translating the time period covered in the Book of Lehi over again but which was different in many ways from
the lost 116 pages.
* “Joseph Smith knew that he could not
expect to make much money out of the printing of the Book of Mormon”.
I agree with this
but he did like to be important. He had
worked as a treasure-hunter before that so could it be that he wanted to
inflate his credentials with the Book of Mormon? He had nothing to lose for Martin Harris was
paying for the publication.
* “The miraculous origin of the Book of
Mormon shows that it is the word of God.”
The Book of Mormon
itself warns that the Devil can fool us very well and that God will allow those
who want to be deceived to be deceived by the perfect deception. Mormons agree with the scriptural doctrine of
There were far
more witnesses to a Shaker scripture than the Book of Mormon therefore if any
book should be believed it should be the former. The Mormons say, “The Shakers had several
witnesses to a magic book and roll from Heaven later which became a new
Bible. But their book was full of errors
so it was not from God. The Shakers were
different from the first Mormons for they had had years of conditioning to have
mystical experiences. Martin Harris had
been a Shaker to some extent but that is no proof that he would have lied or
deluded himself about the Book of Mormon.
First, he did not see the Shaker magic book and roll in visions and
secondly nobody could blame him if he believed in it because of all the witnesses
and thirdly not all Shakers believed in the book. Moreover, most of the witnesses of the holy
book came to doubt their own visions and most of the Shakers lost faith in it.”
The Mormons only
assume there is no error in the Book of Mormon.
There is plenty. And if visions
come from Heaven to verify lies then how can we trust the visions in relation
to the Book of Mormon?
There is no proof
that all the Shakers were conditioned.
Many Shakers never saw visions.
The Book of Mormon witnesses had been involved with Smith for a long
time before they had their visions and it was certainly their intent and will
to receive visions and they had attempted to have them. The Mormon Church says that many visionaries
thought afterwards that they had made a mistake. But what about the hundreds of Book of Mormon
visionaries who Brigham Young said, said the same thing? The Church then says the Shaker book got a
bad name among most Shakers. But that
only proves that some of the revelations were dubious or that the errors were
only mistaken for errors. Perhaps all the book needed was a good clean up. Most of the book is just as good as the Book
of Mormon. If you cut pieces off the
book and select some witnesses to the Shaker book who never denied their
testimony you get as good a book as the Book of Mormon. I am surprised that the Mormon Church
denigrates the miraculous origin of the Shaker book for the witnesses were
doubting the visions they had for the apostles doubted Jesus a lot and the Book
of Mormon has the Nephites having loads of stupendous
miraculous experiences and rapidly falling into something deeper than doubt:
denial. Yet this religion says the
witnesses to the Book of Mormon didn’t doubt as if that was important!
Mormons say that
Harris’ testimony to the Book of Mormon must be accepted for there is no
evidence that he ever denied it. But
respected Mormon, Phineas H Young in a letter to
Brigham Young stated that Harris had claimed that his testimony to the Shaker
scripture revealed by angels and spirits from Heaven but not to him was
stronger than that of the Book of Mormon.
This is an admission that his visions of the plates were imaginary for
he never had visions to verify the Shaker book.
The Mormon boast that Harris never denied his own visions of the plates
is countered by the fact that he never denied his testimony to the Shaker book
either. The Church replies that Harris
testified to the truth of the Book of Mormon after that so he must have been
misunderstood. But Harris never ever
retracted his statement that his faith in the Shaker book was more convincing
and his testifying to the Book of Mormon does not mean that he was taking back
what he said about the Shaker book.
The Mormons
sometimes say that Harris’ belief in the Shaker book is not a problem for the
Shakers encouraged belief in alleged revelation from Heaven even the Book of
Mormon. But the Book of Mormon claimed
to be unique and the Shaker Book drastically contradicted its doctrine
including denying the Book of Mormon doctrine that Christ would come again physically
for Shakers taught that the second coming of Jesus is spiritual and hidden and
in his Church. Harris knew that. When he testified to the Shaker book being
the truth he was repudiating the Book of Mormon implicitly but just as clearly
as it would be if he was doing it explicitly.
Conclusion
The main evidences for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon are spurious.
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