The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.
The book is one of the earliest and most well-known unique writings of the Latter Day Saint movement. The denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement typically regard the text primarily as scripture (sometimes as one of four standard works) and secondarily as a record of God's dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas. Most Latter Day Saints view the book as a record of actual history, though perspectives vary by denomination: some emphasize its spiritual inspiration rather than literal history, while others—particularly the LDS Church—regard it as both literal history and the central "keystone" of their faith. Independent archaeological, historical, and scientific communities have discovered little evidence to support the existence of the civilizations described therein. Characteristics of the language and content point toward a nineteenth-century origin of the Book of Mormon. Various academics and apologetic organizations connected to the Latter Day Saint movement nevertheless argue that the book is an authentic account of the pre–Columbian exchange world.
The Book of Mormon has a number of doctrinal discussions on subjects such as the fall of Adam and Eve,E.g. the nature of the Christian atonement,E.g. eschatology, agency, priesthood authority, redemption from physical and spiritual death,E.g. the nature and conduct of baptism, the age of accountability, the purpose and practice of communion, personalized revelation, economic justice, the anthropomorphic and personal nature of God, the nature of spirits and angels, and the organization of the latter day church. The pivotal event of the book is an appearance of Jesus Christ in the Americas shortly after his resurrection. Common teachings of the Latter Day Saint movement hold that the Book of Mormon fulfills numerous biblical prophecies by ending a global apostasy and signaling a restoration of Christian gospel.
The Book of Mormon is divided into smaller books—which are usually titled after individuals named as primary authors—and in most versions, is divided into chapters and verses. Its English text imitates the style of the King James Version of the Bible. The Book of Mormon has been fully or partially translated into at least 112 languages.Translations of the Book of Mormon at LDS365.com
Origin
According to Smith's account and the book's narrative, the Book was originally engraved in otherwise unknown characters on golden plates by ancient prophets; the last prophet to contribute to the book, Moroni, had buried it in what is present-day Manchester, New York, and then appeared in a vision to Smith in 1827, revealing the location of the plates and instructing him to translate the plates into English. A different view is that Smith authored the Book, drawing on material and ideas from his contemporary 19th-century environment, rather than translating an ancient record.
Conceptual emergence According to Joseph Smith, in 1823, when he was seventeen years old, an angel of God named Moroni appeared to him and said that a collection of ancient writings was buried in a nearby hill in present-day Wayne County, New York, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets. The writings were said to describe a people whom God had led from Jerusalem to the Western Hemisphere around 600 years before the birth of Jesus. Smith said this vision occurred on the evening of September 21, 1823, and that on the following day, via divine guidance, he located the burial location of the plates on this hill and was also instructed by Moroni to meet him at the same hill on September 22 of the following year to receive further instructions, which repeated annually until 1827. By the following night, Smith had told his entire immediate family about this angelic encounter and his brother William reported that the family "believed all he [Joseph Smith] said" about the angel and plates.
Smith and his family reminisced that as part of what Smith believed was angelic instruction, Moroni provided Smith with a "brief sketch" of the "origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments... righteousness and iniquity" of the "aboriginal inhabitants of the country" (referring to the Nephites and Lamanites who figure in the Book of Mormon's primary narrative). Smith sometimes shared what he said he had learned through such angelic encounters with his family as well.
In Smith's account, Moroni allowed him, accompanied by his wife Emma Hale Smith, to take the plates on September 22, 1827, four years after his initial visit to the hill, and directed him to translate them into English.The materiality of the plates Smith said he translated from has long been a matter of controversy in historical studies of Smith and the Book of Mormon. Those who for religious reasons accept Smith's account of the book as having miraculous and ancient origins by corollary also have tended to believe there were authentic, ancient plates. Meanwhile, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, naturalistic interpretations of Smith's history and the Book of Mormon generally took for granted the plates had no material existence and were fictitious due to either delusion or deception, or otherwise existed only in the religious imaginary. However, "believing historians" have argued that the documentary evidence points to Smith and eyewitnesses to him consistently behaving as though he did possess material plates. Religious studies scholar Ann Taves summarizes, "that there were no actual golden plates... is so obvious to some historians that they are taken aback when they discover that many Mormon intellectuals believe there were", while "Many believing historians... in turn wonder how well-trained, non-believing historians can dismiss so much evidence" (2). In the twenty-first century, naturalistic interpretations have posited that the plates were materially real, but that Smith crafted them himself (possibly out of tin or copper), either to match his vision of the plates or after being inspired by seeing copper stereotyped printing plates (perhaps at a printing shop or, by happenstance, literally buried in the ground). Taves argues Smith nevertheless believed the plates constituted an authentic, ancient record and that crafting plates himself "can be understood as representing or even co-creating the reality of the plates... the way Eucharistic wafers are thought to be transformed into the literal body of Christ" (9). For this historiography and an argument that Smith crafted the plates in a process of materialization, see . For another view on this historiography and an argument that an encounter with printing plates inspired or shaped Smith's concept of the Book of Mormon plates, see Smith said the angel Moroni strictly instructed him to not let anyone else see the plates without divine permission. Neighbors, some of whom had collaborated with Smith in earlier treasure-hunting enterprises, tried several times to steal the plates from Smith while he and his family guarded them.
Dictation
As Smith and contemporaries reported, the English manuscript of the Book of Mormon was produced by scribes recording Smith's dictation throughout multiple sessions between 1828 and 1829.Emma Smith, Reuben Hale, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and John and Christian Whitmer all scribed for Joseph Smith to varying extents. Emma Smith likely scribed the majority of the early manuscript pages that were lost and never reproduced; Harris scribed about a third. Cowdery scribed the majority of the manuscript for the Book of Mormon as it was published and exists today. See ; ; . The dictation of the extant Book of Mormon was completed in 1829 in between 53 and 74 working days.
Descriptions of the way in which Smith dictated the Book of Mormon vary. Smith himself called the Book of Mormon a translated work, but in public he generally described the process itself only in vague terms, saying he translated by a miraculous gift from God. According to some accounts from his family and friends at the time, early on, Smith copied characters off the plates as part of a process of learning to translate an initial corpus. For the majority of the process, Smith dictated the text by voicing strings of words which a scribe would write down; after the scribe confirmed they had finished writing, Smith would continue.Joseph Smith may have developed this dictation process with Emma Smith, who was his first long-term scribe. See .
Smith, all claimed that Joseph dictated by translating the ancient text through the use of the Urim and Thummim that accompanied the plates, prepared by the Lord for the purpose of translation. This "Urim and Thummim", named after the biblical divination stones, also called "Nephite interpreters" were described as two clear seer stones which Smith said he could look through in order to translate, bound together by a metal rim and attached to a breastplate.
Other accounts say that Smith used a seer stone he already possessed placed inside of a hat to darken the area around the stone.