Who wrote the Book of Mormon?
No one can say with certainty who wrote it, or which author wrote which portions. It would literally take me days to write out the evidence which leads me to my current conclusions, time that I don’t have. The evidence is out there, if you care to study it. However, if your prerequisite goal of such a study is to remain a Mormon, then I daresay any evidence that would lead you away from that predetermined goal would be useless to you. The first premise that I reject is that the BOM is an ancient work, because of its insurmountable mountains of anachronisms which identify it as a modern effort, placing it squarely in the culture of the 1820s, and plagiarism from other widely available works. Therefore, I leave any idea of its “authenticity” behind from the outset. I next take a long, hard look at the church which grew from Joseph Smith. Having been an active Mormon for 35 years, and semi-active for another seven, I feel I have a pretty good picture of the LDS church, its history, and mo
— V. First off, a disclaimer. I’m a former Mormon and a returned Mormon missionary, and consider myself well versed in the religion even though I am no longer a member. I’ll attempt to present both sides as objectively as possible. We’ll start with the version told by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), as the Mormon religion is formally known. The church’s founder, Joseph Smith, was born in 1805 in Vermont. His father was an impoverished farmer, but his mother, Lucy Mack Smith, managed to instruct him in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic. After moving from Vermont around 1816, the Smiths first settled in the town (township) of Palmyra in Wayne county, western New York, and lived there about four years. Then they moved a few miles south of Palmyra village to the town of Farmington in Ontario county. The part of Farmington where they lived, called even then Manchester, has since become a separate town, still in Ontario county. Palmyra remained the n
May I add some clarification to the first regarding the American Indian; their ancestors, the Lamanites, had no part in writing any of the books contained in the present abridged Book of Mormon, nor any of the records which are far too numerous to be included in the book that is now used by the church. These records will be made known to man in the Lord’s own time.
