Is the Book of Mormon History?
LINKS:
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Chapters for this site
IS THE BOOK OF MORMON AN ABRIDGMENT?
The Book of Mormon
claims to be a record of life in ancient
Be careful that
you do not see historical errors in the Book of Mormon that are not there.
Helaman 14:20 is supposed to make the error of
saying the whole world will be cloaked in darkness for three days at the time
of the death of Jesus. But the verse
never actually says that the entire world will see it but that all
In 1 Nephi 16 we
are told that Nephi and his companions began to starve because their bows and
arrows became useless for hunting in the wilderness. He complains that it is exceedingly hard to
get food until it occurs to him to make new bows and arrows. Is this believable?
2 Nephi 5 says
that there was a huge abundance of precious metals in the land where Nephi and
co landed in
Mormons explain
that there was a great abundance but not enough for the temple or not enough
was accessible. Nephi says that the
temple was like that of Solomon which does not mean that it was necessarily the
same size as Solomon’s. But maybe it did
contradict itself? The solutions are
just speculation. There is no evidence
that the solutions were intended therefore at worst there is a contradiction
and at best we don’t know if there is one or not which undermines
credibility. When God could not manage
to be clearer and avoid this imperfection it shows that there probably is a
contradiction for the account is purely man-made.
There is a problem
with a few men arriving in
The story is
implausible for the swords were not needed.
Mormons reply that they needed the swords because the Lamanites were beginning to separate from the Nephites making both sides enemies (2 Nephi 5:14). This still makes no sense. Didn’t they hear of clubs? Besides we still have only a small number of
people here.
Presumably God
gave them the equipment to make the swords.
But the story doesn’t say that.
If we assume miracles all the time to explain contradictions or implausibilities we will not be able to see contradictions
when they are staring us in the face. It’s
an irrational thing to assume miracles for miracles by nature must be very
improbable. Christians agree that they
are improbable and that that is why they are called miracles.
Some Mormons say
it is easier to assume that the swords were crude metal ones so the long process
of making them wasn’t needed. But they
still needed to mine for the metal and that is hard work. Why go to all that trouble? Was
The Liahona was the compass the Nephites
used to reach the Promised Land long before Jesus was born. But compasses didn’t exist before Jesus and not
for centuries after. Mormons say this
would not be an anachronism if there is a God for he would know how to make a
compass before man would find out. Again
this is assuming miracles something that even God cannot ask us to do.
And Mormons may
then say that the Liahona was able to point the Nephites to the places where food was to be found in the
wilderness therefore it was not a real compass for a compass works by
magnetism. This was a ball with magic
pointers in it and not a compass. But the
Book of Mormon calls the device a compass (2 Nephi 5:12).
Mormons will then
answer, “Some have a problem with this.
But say the Nephites called it a pointer there
would be nothing wrong if Smith or God chose to translate it as compass a
modern word for that is what it is.”
At the same time,
anybody could write a holy book full of anachronisms and cover up the errors by
saying that God knows all things and all about science so the things existed
thanks to him before they were invented. The Mormon answers may appear as if they get
the book out of charges of having made errors but they leave us very
unconvinced. It is easier to believe the
Book makes errors than to believe in miracles to solve the errors.
In Jacob 4, the
writer says he cannot write much for it is hard to engrave on metal plates and
then he says that we labour hard to do engraving for it is so important! A complete contradiction for with all that
help he could have got more written!
The Book of Mormon
has a theology of the devil as a fallen angel which it claims was fully
developed in Old Testament times in
Alma 12 discusses
the atonement made by Christ and understands it in exactly the same way as St
Anselm who was born in 1033 AD did, the idea of God being infinite and Jesus
being God so anything he did was infinite in merit and he offered his life on
the cross which was infinite in merit to pay for our sins in our place. The problem is that Anselm was the first to
teach this theology and before that the common view was that Jesus paid the
atonement to the Devil.
In Mosiah 2:7 we are told that since the people were too
numerous to hear King Benjamin’s sermons he had to have a tower built to shout
from. Not surprisingly, this did not
help much and he had to get his sermons written down and the transcripts handed
out. What makes this story so absurd is
that he would have known that the tower would be no help from the start. We are told that he began to speak from the
tower and the people could not hear. How
dumb was he? No wonder he told them that
anybody who dies in sin goes to burn in Hell forever and ever (Mosiah
There were no
silkworms or mulberry trees for their larvae to live on in
Mormons say that Helaman 12 which cites John’s gospel before it was written
could have come from a book that Lehi had and John
used the same book when writing the gospel.
Or they say that God dictated the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon
and so similarities were inevitable. But
there is no evidence for such a book and besides Lehi
and John were continents and centuries apart and copies were rare. It is too unlikely and when the Book of
Mormon was translated centuries later it is easier to believe that somebody
familiar with John put the verse in during this translation.
Mormons believe
that God wrote the Book of Mormon like he wrote the Bible and so are not
bothered about the fact that the book shows great knowledge of the New
Testament which it would have known nothing about. Jesus dictated the Sermon on the Mount as it
was in the 1611 King James Bible so he might have dictated what he intended the
gospellers and co to write before it was written so Mormon was influenced by
what he dictated. It is only right to
accept all this if you can find evidence that the book is from God. If you can’t then you must believe that
whoever wrote the book stole from the King James Bible to compose it. Textual evidence is the strongest evidence
for it is physical. It is not just
testimony or anything like that. So when
you see a book written in 1611 being cited in a book that claims to have been
finished in 421 AD you know that speculation that this does not refute
antiquity is no good for the strongest witness says it is not ancient.
There are many
absurd super-miracles in the Book of Mormon.
Mormons would not see them as silly so we must show them absurdities of
a natural kind.
The scenario of
thirty-two people following Shiz battling to near
extinction with the twenty-seven followers of Coriantumr
(Ether
Ether 5:6 has
The resurrected
Jesus Christ appears to all the people of Nephi when he only appeared to a
handful in
Moroni 7 contains teaching on charity that is
almost straight out of St Paul’s teaching on charity in 1 Corinthians 13.
The Book of Mormon
is full of miracles that were not seen in Smith’s day. He couldn’t do any miracles even though he
was supposed to be the best prophet of them all.
The Book of Mormon
claims to be an abridgment of records made by the Nephites. Mormon and later his son
But there are
several indications that the book was not written on plates that were too small
for much space is wasted and the book frequently fails to live up to being an
abridgment.
First, there is
the nauseous repetition of the phrase, “And it came to pass”. There is no need for it at all.
Secondly, several
places contain unnecessary detail and elaboration and take too long to say what
could be said in four or five words.
Helaman
There was no need
for any of this at all. And why didn’t
he make the first sentence, “in the end of this book of Nephi ye shall see”
etc? That would have been shorter and
the clumsiness of the passage looks like Joseph Smith made a mistake and said
the latter stuff as an afterthought.
Mormons blame Mormon for this mistake but he would have been undoubtedly
extremely careful for engraving on the plates was a laborious task. The mistake is more probably one of Joseph
Smith’s and it shows that the passage was written in a hurry. Since God allegedly wrote the Book of Mormon
God forgot then what he was writing about!
Mosiah 12:18,19 could have been condensed into:
“They asked the king to bring him before them for questioning and this was done
and he was able to defend himself and they were astonished.” The original takes 82 words to say this! What do you make of this: “but he answered
them boldly, and withstood all their questions, yea, to their astonishment; for
he did withstand them in all their questions, and did confound them in all
their words”?
3 Nephi
And why does the
Book of Mormon have large portions of the Old Testament from the King James
Bible in it when God knew these portions would not be lost to the future
generations? There is no evidence that
these texts have much relevance to the Nephites in
1 Nephi has Nephi
saying that he makes an abridgment of the record of Lehi. The needless detail surrounding Lehi seeing a pillar of fire and having visions that were
not disclosed appears in 1:6,7. That
could have been left out.
After 116 of the
Book of Mormon were translated from a part known as the Book of Lehi they were lost forever and it is believed that an
enemy of Smith burned them.
What was the point
of Nephi explaining why he never gave the genealogy of Lehi
in 1 Nephi 6:8 because it was on the record made by Lehi? Nephi must have thought the Book of Lehi, which comprised the 116 missing pages of the Book of
Mormon, would be translated or be found again if it was lost so this is a false
prophecy. After all this Nephi writes
that a full account of Lehi “cannot be written upon
these plates, for I desire the room that I may write of the things of God”
(6:3). His assertion then about the book
of Lehi must have been a thing of God.
Ether 8:20.
Close to the
liquidation of the Nephite people, Mormon declared
that he gave his son a few plates to write on (Mormon 6:6). But
Ether 1 contains a
genealogy. What need was there for it
when the names appeared in the story anyway?
And who cares who was who’s father?
There is another
problem too. The Book of Mormon makes
522-531 pages and it is made up of only one third of the golden plates which
were eight by six and six inches thick.
Mormons believe that the translated portion had about 45 plates in
it. That would mean 135 plates
altogether. Smith said the plates were
less thick than common tin (History of the Church, Vol
4). Whitmer
said they were as thick as common tin.
This would imply that one side of the plates was used for engraving for
the engraving had to be deep and gold was a soft metal and bumps would appear
on the other side to destroy the writing.
Yet the Mormons need both sides to be engraved and in the tiniest characters
to get the whole Book of Mormon on them (The Restored Church, page 41, Salt
Lake City, 1956). The tiny characters
would be too hard to engrave. The Book
of Mormon is just too long. Charles
Anthon wrote that what he saw on the sheet copied from the plates that Martin
Harris showed him was in perpendicular columns which ended in a rough drawing
of a circle with divisions inside it.
There were drawings on a forged version that the Church recognised as
the real version showing that the real version would probably be something the
same. This drawing and stuff would take
up even more space on the plates so we conclude that the Book of Mormon is just
too long.
The Book of Mormon
is not history but fiction. Mormons use
lies and distortion to cover up its errors and that it is not the word of
God. When a major world religion that is
so respected is so full of untruth and whitewash and exploitation, what does
that say about other world faiths such as Catholicism and Jehovah’s Witnesses? Mormonism is not the only religion known to
have deployed serious deception.
A GATHERING OF
SAINTS, Robert Lindsay, Corgi,
A MARVELLOUS WORK
AND A WONDER, LeGrand Richards,
AN ADDRESS TO ALL
BELIEVERS IN CHRIST, David Whitmer, Board of
Publications of The Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Lacy Road,
Independence, Missouri
ARE THE MORMON
SCRIPTURES RELIABLE? Harry L Ropp, IVP,
ASK YOUR BISHOP,
Ira T Ransom, 317 W 7th South,
CHANGES IN JOSEPH
SMITH’S HISTORY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1965
CHANGING OF THE
REVELATIONS, Apostle Daniel McGregor,
GOD’S WORD FINAL
INFALLIBLE AND FOREVER, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth
Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
CONCISE GUIDE TO
TODAY’S RELIGIONS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks,
1983
HOW TO ANSWER A
MORMON, Robert A Morey, Bethany House Publishers,
JOSEPH SMITH AND
MONEY DIGGING, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1970
JOSEPH SMITH’S
BAINBRIDGE NY COURT TRIALS, Wesley P Walters, Utah
Lighthouse Ministry,
LARSON’S BOOK OF
CULTS, Bob Larson, Tyndale,
MORMONISM SHADOW
OR REALITY? Jerald and Sandra Tanner,
Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1972
MORMONISM, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press,
MORMONISM, MAGIC
AND MASONRY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1988
MORMONISM, MAMA
AND ME, Thelma Geer,
MORMONISM, THE
PROPHET, THE BOOK AND THE CULT, Peter Bartley, Veritas,
NEW LIGHT ON
MORMON ORIGINS, Rev Wesley P Walters,
NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, Fawn M Brodie, Vintage, New York, 1995
SOME MODERN
FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J
THE BIBLE
UNEARTHED,
THE BOOK OF
COMMANDMENTS,
THE BOOK OF MORMON,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Deseret
Enterprises Ltd, Manchester, UK, 1972
THE CASE AGAINST
MORMONISM, VOL 2, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah
Lighthouse Ministry, 1968
THE FACTS OF
MORMONISM ARE STRANGER THAN FICTION, Charles Crane and J Edward Decker,
Christian Information Outreach,
THE HUMAN ORIGIN
OF THE BOOK OF MORMON, Wesley P Walters, Ex-Mormons for
WHY THE
THE WEB
THE BOOK OF MORMON
WITNESSES
Excellent
refutation of the claims of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon
Barry R Bickmore
www.geocities.com/Athens/parthenon/2671/EC.html
MORMON
SCHOLARSHIP, APOLOGETICS AND EVANGELICAL NEGLECT, Carl Mosser
and Paul Owen,
www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/cpoint10-2.html#mosserowen
BOOK OF MORMON
QUESTIONS
www.lds-mormon.com/bookofmormonquestions.shtml
MORMONISM UNVAILED: MORE EVIDENCE THAT IT IS TRUE. Christian Apologetics and Research
Ministry
www.carm.org/lds/unveiled_defended.htm
THE ABRIDGEMENT OF
D&C 137
www.saintsalive./com/mormonism/falseprophetjs/htm
THE BOOK OF
MORMON: ONE TOO MANY M’S Stephen Van Eck
www.infidels.org/library/modern/stephen_eck/toomany.html
EGYPTIAN
CHARACTERS
www.mormonstudies.com/seer2.htm
This shows that
when Smith translated the book of Abraham he invented hieroglyphics where there
was a piece missing from the papyri. The
characters Smith added make no sense to translators. Yet he translated these imaginary hieroglyphics! His mother and close associate David Whitmer spoke of Joseph copying characters of the gold
plates of the Book of Mormon before he translated and that like the Book of
Abraham Smith often produced two lines in the manuscript with the translation
of a single character which shows that the whole Book of Mormon thing was a
hoax.
MORMON FARMS
www.xmission.com~country/reason/farms_1.htm
by Jerald and
Sandra Tanner. Gathers evidence that
indicates that it was possible that Smith was insane and had manic
depression.
DR CHARLES ANTHON
RE AUTHENTICITY OF WRITING SAMPLES ALLEGEDLY COPIED FROM THE GOLDEN PLATES
www.mormonism-web.com/anthon.htm
INTERVIEW OF
MARTIN HARRIS
www.xmission.com/~research/about/docum4.htm
COMMENTS ON THE
BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES: A RESPONSE TO JERALD AND SANDRA TANNER
www.mormons.org/response/bom/witnesses_Roper.htm
A ridiculous
rebuttal that has been taken into account for this book and refuted.
FACTS ON THE BOOK
OF MORMON WITNESSES, PART 1
Excellent
refutation of the reliability of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon
THE STOLEN
MANUSCRIPT
www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/goldenbible_stolenmanuscript.htm
Friday, 07 March 2008