Is the Book of Mormon Historical?” grego (c) 2009 Is the Book of Mormon “real”, “based on a true story”, “inspired”, or “made up”?
Real. That’s the simple answer. Some argue otherwise. Not much evidence, though, just a lot of “theory”. Some feel that since we don’t know quite how, it’s all open to speculation. Not really. Some things are–the use of the KJV of the Bible, how much of the record exactly was translated word-for-word vs. how much was slightly commented on for clarity, etc. (I wonder about how complicated, long sentence structure could hold up in translating straightforward, unless it was written exactly as in English (hard to believe), or if unless there were easy and clear markers that Joseph Smith quickly caught on to, similar to Japanese (and since we don’t have the first translation pages, that makes it much more difficult).) That the Book of Mormon plates were real, and that prophets and others wrote real history and events on them (though strongly chosen and crafted), that Moroni was who he said he was and that other Book of Mormon prophets visited Joseph Smith and taught him; well, they are not.
