Book of Mormon Issues
In this section we want to give a wide-ranging discussion about issues with the Book of Mormon and why they put into question the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as well as Joseph Smith's status as a prophet of God. This section will go into many different areas of the Book of Mormon in order to get a fuller picture of both the problems surrounding the scriptures as well as some of the common apologetic responses and where they are being fair and where they are being dishonest.
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Book of Mormon Overview Topics:
Book of Mormon Overview, Part 1: Joseph Smith and Treasure Digging: We begin our Book of Mormon overview topics with a look at Joseph Smith's involvement in treasure digging, and how his magical worldview is embedded in both obtaining the Book of Mormon plates and the translation of the text using his peep/seer stone in a hat, just as he claimed to see buried treasure with.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 2: The Gold Plates: We continue our Book of Mormon overview topics with a look at the gold plates for the Book of Mormon, taking a deep dive into the different accounts to see how treasure digging impacted almost every impact of the gold plates story from the visitation by a guardian spirit, to the retrieval of the plates, and even the story of how the "spectacles" or "Nephite Interpreters" were created during a visit to Hill Cumorah.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 3: The Translation: We continue our Book of Mormon overview topics with a look at the translation process for the Book of Mormon. We continue to look at how treasure digging impacted the translation process along with some of the basic problems that arise from the translation accounts, the literary dependence on the King James Bible, and what it means that the gold plates were never used for the Book of Mormon as we have it today.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 4: The Lost 116 Pages: We continue our Book of Mormon overview topics with a look at the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon taking a look at the event itself, Joseph Smith's revelation of D&C 10 unveiling the 'small plates' of Nephi, the vagueness of the replacement text, and what clues the dictation order gives us about the authorship of the Book of Mormon.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 5: DNA and the Lamanites: Our Book of Mormon overviews continue with DNA studies and what they can tell us about the Book of Mormon's claims of being a literal, historical record. We look not just at DNA, but the text of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's claimed revelations from God as to who the Lamanites are, and if there were other populations that could have swallowed up the Lehites as the current apologetics insist.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 6: Surrounding Influences: Part six of our Book of Mormon overviews looks at the surrounding influences that are embedded in the text of the Book of Mormon including Joseph Smith's treasure digging and the King James Bible from previous sections along with the Moundbuilder myth, the Masons, Joseph Smith Sr.'s dream, and events happening while the Book of Mormon was being produced such as the Charles Anthon visit and the loss of the 116 pages.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 7: Anachronisms: Our overview continues, looking at how anachronisms and biblical scholarship can help scholars date the Book of Mormon to the 19th century, showing how the Book of Mormon's reliance on the King James Bible is so significant, and what should be in the Book of Mormon but isn't.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 8: Tight vs Loose Translation Theories: As we begin wrapping up the overviews on the Book of Mormon, we look at the two different theories of translation - the tight and loose translations. We look at which problems cannot exist with a tight translation, which ones cannot exist with a loose translation, and what those around Joseph Smith told us about the process of translating the Book of Mormon.
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Book of Mormon Overview, Part 9: How the Book of Mormon was Composed: We wrap up the Book of Mormon portion of our overviews with a look at how the Book of Mormon was composed, using Jacob 5 and the parable/allegory of the olive tree as an example of how we can show where the author of the Book of Mormon was pulling from, along with other fingerprints that were left on the text that tell us both when it was written and who wrote it.
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We highly encourage you to read through all sections as we discuss the following elements of the Book of Mormon and its origin:
-Official LDS Essay "Book of Mormon Translation" with Discussion Notes
-Official LDS Essay "Book of Mormon DNA Studies" with Discussion Notes
-Deutero-Isaiah and King James Bible Problems