The LDS Restorationist Movement, including the Mormon churches

Part 2: Who wrote the Book of
Mormon? Various viewpoints

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This topic is continued from an earlier essay

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Material copied from a forgery added to Mark 16:

Mormon 9:22-24 appears to be copied, almost word-for-word, from the "longer ending" of the Gospel of Mark, found in many Bible translations as Mark 16:15-18. However, the verses 9 to 20 appear to be a forgery:

	A note in recent copies of the New International Version of the Bible states: "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20."
	Most biblical translations contain a footnote indicating that the verses were not written by the author of Mark.
	Mohamed Ghounem & Abdur Rahman comment: "...approximately 100 early Armenian translations, as well as the two oldest Georgian translations, also omitted the appendix." ₉
	R.E. Brown, et al., authors of "The New Jerome Biblical Commentary," wrote:

"The longer ending...differs in vocabulary and style from the rest of the Gospel, is absent from the best and earliest mss. now available, and was absent from mss. in patristic times. It is most likely a 2nd-cent. compendium of appearance stories based primarily on Luke 24, with some influence from John 20." ₁₀

If God carefully preserved the golden plates on which the Book of Mormon was written, it seems most unlikely that they would contain a forgery that was not in the original Gospel of Mark. More details.

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Related essay on this web site:

Computer analysis of the Book of Mormon to determine its authorship

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Two books on the origin of the Book of Mormon:

These books reach totally different conclusions about the book's origins:

David Persuitte, "Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon" (2nd Edition, paperback)

Excerpt from an Amazon.com review:

"This impressive work, now in an expanded and revised second edition incorporating new findings, presents new biographical information about Smith and resolves many of the controversies concerning his character. Through an extensive comparative analysis it posits as a probable conceptual source for The Book of Mormon, a book written by New England minister Ethan Smith entitled View of the Hebrew; or the Tribes of Israel in America. The results of this research were presented together for the first time ever in the first edition of this work and are instrumental in shedding much new light on the path Joseph Smith took toward founding the Church of the Latter-day Saints.'

Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store

Noel B. Reynolds, Ed., "Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins"(Paperback)

Excerpt from an Amazon.com spotlight review by Robert Boylan:

"This is perhaps one of the best books on the Book of Mormon I have ever read. Apart from being an absolute must on the shelves of every LDS bookshelf, this collection of well-researched essays provides overwhelming evidence that critics cannot honestly ignore or nit-pick against as they have for years now.

Examples of what is discussed are as follows:

A brief analysis and discussion of the geography of 1 Nephi 16 and 17 in the Book of Mormon and the discoveries of plausible locations for Nahom and Bountiful in the Ababian Peninsula that, on its own, disprove that theory that Joseph Smith or anyone else from 1830 authored the Book of Mormon.

How the Book of Mormon can plausibly be understood as an ancient Mesoamerican text, with it fitting perfectly into the cultural milieu of that age and locality.

The authentic Semitic nature of the text as a result of the strong presence of chiasmus and other forms of Hebraic poetry that permeate the text ...

I have only scratched the surface with this synopsis. This book is a must-read for anyone, LDS or otherwise, to understand the evidence supporting the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon volume.

Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store

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References:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

Ethan Smith, "View of the Hebrews," Mormons in Transition, at: http://www.irr.org/
"View the 1830 Book of Mormon," Mormons in Transition, at: http://www.irr.org/
Wayne Cowdrey et al., "Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? : The Spalding Enigma," Concordia Publishing House , at: http://www.cph.org
D.I. Holmes, "A Multivariate Technique for Authorship Attribution and its Application to the Analysis of Mormon Scripture and Related Texts," Oxford University Press.
"Salt Lake City Messenger," Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Issue 84, 1993-April, P. 9-10.
"The Hill Cumorah Pageant: America's Witness for Christ," at: http://www.lds.org/
Wayne Cowdrey et al., "Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? : The Spalding Enigma," Concordia Publishing House (2005). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
"Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith as Author," Wikipedia, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/
Mohamed Ghounem & Abdur Rahman, "Gospel of Mark?," at: http://www.geocities.com
R.E. Brown, et al., "The New Jerome Biblical Commentary," Pearson PTP, (Reissued 1989). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
The text of the Book of Mormon is available online at: http://etext.virginia.edu/