Section 3: The Book of Mormon — Production and Claims

Between 1823 and 1827, Smith reports that the angel Moroni appeared to him multiple times, eventually directing him to golden plates buried in a hill called Cumorah near his home. Beginning in 1828, Smith produced a translation of these plates. The method, according to multiple eyewitness accounts, involved Smith placing a seer stone into a hat, burying his face in the hat to block the light, and reading aloud the English words that appeared on the stone. The plates themselves were often not present during the translation process.

The result was the Book of Mormon, published in 1830. It claims to be a history of peoples who migrated from the Near East to the Americas — the Jaredites from the Tower of Babel, and later the family of Lehi from Jerusalem around 600 BC. These peoples, identified as Nephites and Lamanites, are the main subjects of the narrative. Jesus appears to the Nephites after his resurrection. The book ends around AD 421 with the Lamanites destroying the Nephites. The eleven witnesses to the plates — three who saw them in vision and eight who claim to have handled them physically — signed statements that appear in the book's front matter. Several of these witnesses later left the church; at least one repudiated his testimony.

Archaeological and genetic evidence for the Book of Mormon's historical claims is absent. The peoples, animals, plants, and technologies described in the text — horses, chariots, wheat, barley, steel, elephants, silk — have not been found in pre-Columbian American archaeology in the times and places the narrative requires. DNA studies of indigenous American populations show their origins in migrations from Asia via the Bering land bridge, not from Near Eastern peoples. The LDS church's own Gospel Topics Essays acknowledge these evidential difficulties.

ERROR IDENTIFIED: The Book of Mormon presents itself as an ancient historical document with specific geographical and archaeological implications. The evidence does not support those implications. Horses, steel, chariots, and wheat are not attested in pre-Columbian America during the periods the text requires. The DNA evidence does not show Near Eastern origins for indigenous American populations. More fundamentally: the translation methodology described by eyewitnesses — seer stone in a hat, face buried to exclude light, plates not present — is not translating a physical document. It is the production of a text by claimed supernatural means. This is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. The evidence runs in the opposite direction.