Historicity of the Book of Mormon

The historicity of the Book of Mormon, the claim that the book is ancient record of historic events, is an article of faith for most, but not all, members of the Latter Day Saint movement. Non-Mormon sources, in contrast, universally accept that the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century creation, and not an ancient record of pre-Columbian America. Its narrative conflicts with a broad spectrum of archaeological, historical, and scientific evidence regarding plants, animals, civilizations, and technology found in the New World before the Age of Discovery.

Book of Mormon origin

In the early 19th-century United States, settlers encountered the remnants of ancient mounds, or earthenworks. Locals speculated about who had constructed the mounds, how they arrived in the Americas, and their relationship to contemporary indigenous populations.

Joseph Smith, a young folk magic practitioner, reported a vision of treasures buried by ancient Mound Builders near his family home in New York. In subsequent years, Smith claimed he had obtained the treasure, including a set of golden plates containing historical records and artifacts allowing the plates to be miraculously translated. Smith published an English-language volume titled "The Book of Mormon" which purported to be a historic record of the ancient Americas.

The Book of Mormon proposed to answer the questions of the day, explaining the transit of peoples to the Americas as a miraculous ocean voyage and narrating the destruction of mound builders at the hands of dark-skinned Americans. The Book of Mormon claims that shortly after God's miraculous confusion of tongues as punishment for the Tower of Babel, a group called the Jaredites undertook a miraculous transoceanic voyage to the Americas. The book further claims to describe the events in America after the fall of Jerusalem around 600 BCE, describing the righteous light-skinned Nephites who ultimately die at the hand of the Lamanites, a people cursed with dark skin by God for their wickedness. Archaeology has since concluded the mounds were constructive by a diverse set of ancient Native Americans, not a distinct culture or people.

Founding a church and becoming its "Prophet, Seer, and Revelatory", Smith later began issuing statements he claimed were authored directly by God, without relying on claims of plates or artifacts.

Mainstream views

Though purportedly a translation of ancient records, the Book of Mormon is regarded as a 19th-century work dictated, edited, and published by Joseph Smith. Archaeologist Michael D. Coe wrote:

I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the foregoing to be true [...] nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon, as claimed by Joseph Smith, is a historical document relating to the history of early migrants to our hemisphere.

Historical errors in the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon contains extensive verbatim content taken from the 1769 edition of the King James Bible, even replicating translation errors found in that specific edition.

The Book of Mormon mentions several animals, plants, and technologies that did not exist in the pre-Columbian Americas. These include asses, cattle, horses, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheat, barley, silk, steel, brass, breast plates, chains, iron working, plows, swords, scimitars, and chariots.

While Smith and the Book of Mormon hold that Cumorah was a human-made mound, the hill is actually a naturally occurring glacial drumlin. Though the book claims Cumorah was the site of a battle with 200,000 deaths, there is no evidence that the hill was ever a settlement, fortification, or battle site.

In Smith's era, there was a widespread belief that a "lost white race" had been responsible for building the large mounds throughout North America. The Book of Mormon adopts this viewpoint, claiming white pre-Columbian Americans like Moroni had been responsible for the mounds before being killed. Similarly, in Smith's era, some authors subscribed to the Jewish Indian theory, the idea that Native Americans had originally come from the Middle East. The Book of Mormon adopted this theory, claiming that Native Americans were descended from the Lamanites: migrants who journeyed from the Middle East to the Americas in 600 BCE and were later cursed with dark skin for their wickedness. In fact, the Americas had been inhabited for at least 15,000 years after migrants arrived from Asia, not the Middle East. Dark skin is modernly considered advantageous in a high-sun environment, not a divine curse. Beginning in 2007, the Book of Mormon's introduction was revised: it no longer claimed that the Lamanites were the "primary ancestors of the American Indians"; the revised text claims only that the Lamanites were "among the ancestors" of Native Americans.

Lack of provenance

Claims of the book's provenance further cast doubt upon its historicity. The receipt of the plates and their "translation" was described as magical or miraculous in nature. Smith did not permit others to view the plates and did not himself view the plates during the dictation of the Book of Mormon, instead looking at a seer stone in a hat. All twelve witnesses to the gold plates reaffirmed the truth of the Book of Mormon throughout their lives even though some were in and out of church fellowship over their lifetime. Smith reported he returned the plates to an angel.

Smith's later life

Smith went on to be indicted for violating banking laws and to produce other ahistorical texts.

In 1837, Smith and his followers began issuing bank notes not backed by assets through the Kirtland Safety Society. Found guilty in absentia of illegally operating an unlicensed bank, Smith fled Ohio after being indicted on charges of banking fraud.

In 1835, Smith acquired Egyptian scrolls from a traveling mummy exhibit and began composing The Book of Abraham, which he purported to be a translation of the scrolls. By the 1850s, advances in decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts made it possible to fully translate ancient Egyptian texts. In contrast to Smith's claimed translation, all surviving portions of the papyri merely contained a common Egyptian funerary text. Other manuscripts related to the Book of Abraham project also showed no evidence of understanding of the Egyptian language or writing system.

In 1843, Smith acquired a set of plates from Kinderhook, Illinois, and claimed to be able to interpret the supposedly ancient text recorded on them, briefly summarizing their content. In reality, the Kinderhook plates were a 19th century hoax, and their inscriptions were entirely asemic.

Throughout his life, Smith and his closest associates made public denials of the practice of polygamy and polyandry. In fact, Smith privately had dozens of wives.

Faith-based views

The dominant and widely accepted view in the Latter Day Saint movement is that the Book of Mormon is a true and accurate account of these ancient American civilizations whose religious history it documents. Joseph Smith, whom most Latter Day Saints believe to have translated the work, stated, "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."

As historic

The Gospel Topics essays section of the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the largest denomination in the movement, has two essays entitled "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies" and "Book of Mormon Translation". In them, the church affirms the literal historicity of the Book of Mormon. In the essay on DNA studies, the church argues for "a more careful approach to the data," and states that

The conclusions of genetics, like those of any science, are tentative, and much work remains to be done to fully understand the origins of the native populations of the Americas. Nothing is known about the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples, and even if their genetic profile were known, there are sound scientific reasons that it might remain undetected.

Meanwhile, in the essay on the Book of Mormon's translation, the church affirms that "the Book of Mormon came into the world through a series of miraculous events."

As inspired creation

Unresolved issues of the book's historicity and the lack of supporting archaeological evidence have led some adherents to adopt the position that the Book of Mormon may have been Smith's creation, but it was nevertheless divinely inspired. Between these two views is the view held by some Latter Day Saints that the Book of Mormon is a divine work of a spiritual nature, written in ancient America, but that its purpose is to teach of Christ and not to be used as a guide for history, geology, archaeology, or anthropology.