How Did We Get The Book Of Mormon

An LDS missionary friend of mine once asked me, “Paul, I got a question for you: Where do you believe the Book of Mormon came from?” To start, we know that Joseph Smith was the seer/translator while Oliver Cowdry, John Whitner and Emma Smith were the scribes. However, I believe that a fair and unbiased position for us to start at would be admitting that no one 100% knows where Joseph Smith got most of the Book of Mormon from. This is largely because no supporting manuscript or plate has ever been discovered, unlike the Bible which has over 26,000 manuscripts for the New Testament alone.

In any case, we can start by examining the source of the Book of Mormon. What do we know about Joseph Smith and his background? To start, we know that he was a poor farm boy and that his family was destitute. This is one factor that led both Joseph and his father into the business of treasure digging. Church history also tells us that Smith and his family were also into folk magic and occultic like practices. There are accounts of Smith and his dad killing dogs and sprinkling its’ blood to appease the spirits that were “guarding the buried treasure” in hopes that the spirit would allow them to take the treasure. Below are a few quotes from LDS history on the matter:

• “The facts are that the sacrifice of white dogs, black sluts, black cats, and such like was an indispensable part or appendage of the art which Smith, the embryo prophet, was then practicing.” (Early Mormon Documents, Dan Vogel, 4:308-309)
• “For in the time of their digging for money and not finding it attainable, Joe Smith told them there was a charm on the pots of money, and if some animal was killed and the blood sprinkled around the place, then they could get it. So they killed a dog and tried this method of obtaining the precious metal; Still, they dug and dug, but never came to the precious treasure.” (Life Among the Mormons, Emily M Austin, 1882).

When Smith found a seer stone, it was right up his ally. He would then convince others that he was a seer and charge them money in exchange for him using his seer stone to help them find the buried treasure.

He would tell his customers where to dig, and after digging all around that area for a very long time, Smith would then look into his hat again to verify where the treasure was located. But there was a problem: As he lifted his head from the hat, he would say something along the lines of, “Sorry guys. The spirit caused the treasure to sink deeper into the earth…but we were so close!” Smith was never able to come through and find any treasure for any of his paying customers. Below are a few quotes on this:

• “On accounting of an enchantment, the trunk (treasure) kept settling away from under them while digging.” (Docket Entry from a court hearing, 1826)
• “He (Isaiah Stowell) positively knew that the prisoner (Joseph Smith) could tell, and professed the art of seeing those valuable treasures through the medium of said stone…that said Stowell and prisoner thereupon commenced digging, found a tail-feather, but money was gone; that he supposed that money moved down (sank into the earth);” (Miss Pearsall’s account of Josiah Stowell’s statement)

This question must be considered:

• If Smith was poor and if he had a magic seer stone that truly could guide him to find the buried treasure…why wouldn’t he just go and dig up the treasure for him and his family?

Moving on, Smith eventually met Emma. Smith asked Emma’s dad for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Emma’s dad believed that Smith was a con man. He did not approve of Smith’s treasure digging business and believed that he was intentionally fooling people into giving him their money. But Joseph and Emma eloped and got married anyways. After this happens, Smith returns and is in the process of moving Emma’s things from her parent’s house. Joseph Smith hired a young man named, Peter Ingersoll to help him move the furniture and records a conversation that took place between Joseph and Emma’s father.

READ THIS VERY CLOSELY!

• “In the month of August, 1827, I was hired by Joseph Smith, Jr. to go to Pennsylvania, to move his wife’s household furniture up to Manchester, where his wife then was. When we arrived at Mr. Hale’s, in Harmony, Pa. from which place he had taken his wife, a scene presented itself, truly affecting. His father-in-law [Emma’s dad] addressed Joseph, in a flood of tears: “You have stolen my daughter and married her. I had much rather have followed her to her grave. You spend your time in digging for money – pretend to see in a stone, and thus try to deceive people.” Joseph wept, and acknowledged he could not see in a stone now, nor never could; and that his former pretensions in that respect, were all false. He then promised to give up his old habits of digging for money and looking into stones.” (Peter Ingersoll, 1833)

To summarize: Emma’s dad calls Smith out for scamming people and pretending to be able to use the seer stone, and then Smith admits to it. That he had been deceiving people and pretending to use a seer stone but was never actually able to use it.

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With this background in mind, we can now pivot and move on to the translation of the Book of Mormon. Smith claims that an angel Moroni appeared to him. Moroni told him where the gold plates are buried. Smith goes to the hill Cumorah to get the gold plates but Moroni would not allow Smith to take the gold plates yet. Think of the parallel here:

• Instead of treasure being guarded by spirits, Smith is now telling us that there are gold plates that are being guarded by an angel. A skeptic might connect the dots and say, “Well, it looks like Smith just took the scenario from treasure digging and repackaged it in a religious wrapping.”

After Smith received the gold plates, he translated the Book of Mormon then Moroni took the gold plates up to heaven without a trace. Yet another parallel with treasure digging: First, we have guardian spirits that could move the treasure so that it can’t be found, and now we have an angel taking the gold plates so that they can’t be found.

When translating the Book of Mormon, Smith didn’t even look at the gold plates. Once again, he used the same seer stone in the hat. The biggest concern here is this: if Smith previously admitted to being a fraud, is it wise for us to trust that now all of the sudden, Smith can accurately and divinely use this same seer stone when it failed to find him any treasure before? If he deceived people and pretended to have the ability to use the seer before, what reason do we have to trust him now?

In connection to Smith being poor and destitute: his business associate, Martin Harris, sold his farm to publish the Book of Mormon. Here we have two primary people who are highly motivated by finances for this religious book to succeed. Just after writing the BOM in 1830, Smith even tried to sell the copy wright in Canada but was unsuccessful. On this matter, former BYU professor Marvin Hill writes:

• “The economic situation of the Smith families was so desperate at this time that Joseph tried to sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon…Page indicated that they hoped to get $8,000 (equivalent to $272,500 today) for the copyright and that they traveled to Canada covertly to prevent Martin Harris from sharing in the dividend. Smith evidently believed that Harris was well enough off while his own family was destitute.”

Then the last thing I have to touch on is how this story of how Smith translating the BOM was portrayed to LDS members before the internet and also how it is still being portrayed to investigators today. LDS missionaries have a set of pamphlets that they hand out to people. One of them is called “The Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” It briefly talks about Smith translating the BOM and says, “By the power of God, Joseph Smith translated this book from an ancient record written on gold plates.” In people’s minds, this naturally leads them to picture Smith sitting at a desk while diligently studying and translating the gold plates.

This picture above is currently on the Church website today. The name of the article is: “Joseph Smith Translates the Gold Plates.” However, Emma Smith specifically stated that the gold plates weren’t even in the same room when Smith was translating the BOM. This picture never happened. The LDS Church leaders never publicly came clean to their members by stating that Smith used a seer stone in a hat until after 2010. The seer stone and the hat are very often omitted by missionaries unless the investigator brings it up.

I once asked a missionary, “How did Smith translate the Book of Mormon?” He responded by asking, “What do you know about it?” The thought entered my mind, “Does the way you answer my question depend on what I am aware of?” I was honest with him and said that I know about the seer stone and the hat, but if I was someone who hadn’t done any research on the topic, would he have mentioned the seer stone at all? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that if investigators were aware of how this translation process accurately took place, then that would significantly decrease the number of converts to the LDS Church…and the LDS Church leaders obviously don’t want that to happen.

This brings us back to my beginning point: we can’t say for sure where Smith might have gotten his ideas from. He might not have been super intellectual or formally educated, but he could have been very street savvy. The evidence for this lies in the fact that he was able to fool people into believing that he was a real seer who could find treasure. It takes people skills and charisma to have the ability to convince people that you are the real deal when you are truly a fraud.

While we can’t say for sure where Smith got most of the BOM from, we do know for sure where he got some of it from: the King James Bible. Specifically, chapters from Isaiah that are recorded in 2 Nephi. In the King James Bible, there are a couple verses in these chapters where the translators mistranslated a word.

Example: Isaiah 2:16 “And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.”

The misinterpreted word at the end is “pictures,” but it should be “ships.” There are some other unique errors like this that are only found in the King James Bible. We know that Joseph Smith took these passages right out of the King James Bible and pasted them into the Book of Mormon because the 1830 version of the Book of Mormon had these exact same errors. The Book of Mormon has had over 3,000 changes since it was published in 1830. In the current 2013 edition, those errors have been fixed. But if God truly gave Smith those gold plates, and if Smith truly had the gift of translating them, it would seem to make sense that those identical errors wouldn’t be there in the BOM.

There allegedly were 11 eyewitnesses (the 3 and the 8) who saw the gold plates. To learn more about this claim, check out the article: “The 3 Witnesses: Can We Trust Their Testimonies?” (https://jllds.org/2024/04/19/the-3-witnesses-can-we-trust-their-testimonies-2/)

Instead of asking, “Where did the Book of Mormon come from?” I think a better question we should ask is this:

• Is it wise for me to trust that what Joseph Smith has presented was truly from God? Or was it another scam?

I encourage you to put for trust in the Word of God, and not in the words of men claiming to speak on behalf of God. Thank you for reading, God bless and remember to never stop chasing after Jesus!