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From: jonw@tekmdp.UUCP (Jonathan White)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: The case against The Book of Mormon
Message-ID: <2109@tekmdp.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Aug-83 11:28:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekmdp.2109
Posted: Tue Aug  2 11:28:55 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Aug-83 02:48:59 EDT
Lines: 111

Russ (dadla-a!russ) has presented net.religion readers with a series of
articles that explain why he thinks that the Book of Mormon is a legitimate
work (and therefore why the Mormon religion itself is not a fraud).  However,
I think that it can fairly easily be shown that the creation of the Mormon 
church and all of its "divinely inspired" scripture were part of an elaborate 
hoax perpetrated by Joseph Smith and a couple of accomplices.  But before 
presenting this other side of the picture, I would like to say that I hope 
that none of the Mormons out there take this personally.  Just because the 
origins of their belief system are fraudulent is no reason to believe that 
present-day Mormons are somehow dishonest (except maybe with themselves).

Most of the following information is paraphrased from a book entitled "The 
Kingdom of the Cults" by Walter R. Martin, although I have quoted some of his 
sources.

The Mormon church had its beginnings back in 1820 when young Joseph Smith was
visited by two "personages" as he was praying in the woods.  They told him that
he had been chosen to launch a restoration of true Christianity, although it
wasn't until seven years later that he was given the gold plates from which he
translated the Book of Mormon.  All historical evidence from this time period
indicates that Joe Smith was a reprehensible character from a family of equally
reprehensible characters.  They were widely regarded as rip-off artists and
"money diggers" (treasure hunters) by their neighbors (sixty-two of whom
testified to this effect in a sworn affidavit).  Also, the proceedings of a
court trial dated March 20, 1826 -- New York vs. Joseph Smith -- revealed that
Joe "had a certain stone which he occasionally looked at to determine where
hidden treasures in the bowels of the earth were...and had looked for Mr. Stoal
several times."  On this occasion Joe was found guilty of money digging.
There exists absolutely no pro-Mormon statements from reliable and informed 
who knew the Smith family intimately.

Joseph Smith later tried to deny that he had ever been a money digger, but his
story is inadvertently refuted by his own mother, Lucy Smith, who in a later 
writing described how Mr. Stoal "came for Joseph on account of having heard 
that he possessed certain keys [peep stones -JW] by which he could discern 
things invisible to the natural eye."

In 1827 the location of the golden plates was revealed to Joe, and he set to
work digging them up and translating them into English.  They were supposedly
written in "reformed Egyptian," but he was conveniently provided with two magic
stones (sound familiar?) that he used as spectacles for translating.  No 
independent witness ever laid eyes on the gold plates, but Joseph Smith later 
wrote in his book "Pearl of Great Price" that he sent Martin Harris to see 
Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia University for the purpose of verifying 
the authenticity of some of the characters which Smith had drawn from the 
plates.  Smith quoting Harris:

"Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than he had
ever seen translated from the Egyptian.  I then showed him those which were not
yet translated, and he said they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic;
and he said they were true characters" (Section 2, verses 62, 63, 64).

One of several problems with the above story is that Professor Anthon never
said any such thing, and went on record in a letter to E. D. Howe dated Feb.
17, 1834.  I will only quote only two parts of this lengthy letter.

"The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be
'reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics' is perfectly false...  Upon examining the
paper in question, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick,
perhaps a hoax". 

The preceding story raises more than a few problems concerning the
authenticity of the Book of Mormon and the veracity of Smith and Harris.  How
could the golden plates contain "Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic" characters
when the Book of Mormon itself declares that the characters were "reformed
Egyptian?"  And since reformed Egyptian was known to "none other people,"
why would Smith think than Anthon could verify the translation?  Incidentally,
no one has ever been able to find even the slightest hint of this language
called "reformed Egyptian."  All reputable linguists and Egyptologists who have
examined the evidence put forth by the Mormons have rejected it as mythical.

Probably the most damaging evidence to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon
is found in the lack of archeological evidence to supports its claims.  The
book purports to be a history of two great civilizations who built ships,
temples, synagogues, sanctuaries, and at least 38 different cities.  These
civilizations also made extensive use of metal (see Ether 15:15 and Alma 43:18)
and domesticated animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, and goats.  They even 
had elephants!  (See Ether 9:17-19).  You would naturally expect there to be a 
wealth of archeological finds, but such is not the case.  A letter from no 
less an authority than the Smithsonian Institution (published in "The Book of 
Mormon Examined" by Arthur Budvarson) contains the following information:

"There is no correspondence whatever between archeological sites and cultures
as revealed by scientific investigations, and as recorded in the Book of
Mormon.  ...Smithsonian archeologists see no connection between the New World
and the subject matter of the book... ...thus far no iron, steel, brass, gold
and silver coins, metal, swords, breast-plates, arm shields, armor, horses and
chariots, or silk have ever been found in pre-colonial archeological sites.
...Furthermore, cattle, sheep, swine, horses, and asses, such as we know them,
were introduced in the Americas by Europeans in post-Columbian times.  No
actual elephants have ever been found in any archeological site."

Another indication of the shaky nature of the Book of Mormon is revealed in 
the fact that there have been over 2,000 changes to the book over a period of 
131 years.  Evidently, the inspired word of God wasn't so inspired.  Also, the
Book of Mormon contains at least 25,000 words plagiarized from the King James 
Bible.  Some of these are verbatim quotes of considerable length.  Mormons 
have suggested that when Christ allegedly appeared in North America after the 
resurrection he quite naturally used the same language as in the Bible.  The 
only problem with this is that the gold plates were written 1,000 years before
the King James version, but Smith's translation came out in perfect King James 
English (complete with a few KJ errors that have been corrected in later 
editions, but remain in the Book of Mormon.)

So if the Book of Mormon is obviously fake, where did it really come from?
Well, that will be the subject of a future article, even though it really
makes little difference.

					Jon White
					Tektronix
					Aloha, Ore