Concept

Book of Mormon

The founding scripture of the Latter-day Saint movement, which Latter-day Saints receive as an ancient American record translated by Joseph Smith, and which Christians assess as a nineteenth-century book.

Intro

The Book of Mormon is a book of scripture published in 1830 by Joseph Smith in upstate New York. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe it is a true history of people who lived in the ancient Americas, written on metal plates and translated by Joseph Smith "by the gift and power of God." They read it alongside the Bible and call it "Another Testament of Jesus Christ."

The story begins around 600 BC, when a prophet named Lehi leads his family out of Jerusalem and across the ocean to a new land. His descendants split into two peoples, the Nephites and the Lamanites, who fight and make peace for about a thousand years. The high point comes after Jesus rises from the dead, when he appears to the Nephites, teaches them, and blesses their children. The book ends with the last Nephite prophet, Moroni, burying the record. Joseph Smith said that the same Moroni, now an angel, showed him where the plates were buried.

The book's last chapter invites every reader to pray and ask God whether it is true. Many Latter-day Saints say they received that answer.

This page explains what the book is, the story it tells, how it came about, what it teaches, and the questions historians and archaeologists have asked about it, the way Latter-day Saints themselves describe it first. Then it gives the Christian assessment.

◎ See this page's graph and discover linked topics →

In full

The Book of Mormon is the first and central addition to the Latter-day Saint canon, published in March 1830 at Palmyra, New York, and presented by Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844) as his translation of an abridged record engraved on gold plates by ancient prophets in the Americas. It narrates the migration of a Hebrew family from Jerusalem around 600 BC, the history of their Nephite and Lamanite descendants to about AD 400, an earlier migration (the Jaredites) from the time of the Tower of Babel, and a post-resurrection ministry of Jesus Christ in the Americas. Latter-day Saints regard it as scripture of equal standing with the Bible, and Smith called it "the keystone of our religion." Its theology of God is closer to traditional Christian monotheism than the doctrines Smith taught later, and its historical claims are open to testing by archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Christian assessment turns on those historical claims, on its relationship to the Bible, and on the test it offers its readers.

What the Book of Mormon is, in the Latter-day Saint view

• An ancient record. Latter-day Saints believe the book is a genuine history written by prophets in the Americas, abridged mainly by a prophet named Mormon (hence the name) and completed by his son Moroni.
• Translated, not composed. Joseph Smith said he translated it "by the gift and power of God" from plates inscribed in what the book calls "reformed Egyptian" (Mormon 9:32). Latter-day Saints do not regard him as its author.
• A second witness for Christ. Its title page states that it was written in part "to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God." Since 1982 its English editions have carried the subtitle "Another Testament of Jesus Christ."
• Scripture alongside the Bible. The eighth Article of Faith states: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." The book itself anticipates the objection that the Bible is enough (2 Nephi 29:3 begins "A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible") and answers that God speaks to more than one nation. It also teaches that plain and precious things were taken from the Bible (1 Nephi 13:26-29), which it presents itself as restoring.
• The keystone. Joseph Smith said in 1841 that the Book of Mormon was "the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion." Latter-day Saints reason that if the book is true, Smith was a prophet and the church he restored is true.

It is one of four "standard works," with the Bible (King James Version in English), the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. See Mormonism.

The story it tells

The book contains fifteen books named mostly after their main prophet-writers: 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, Words of Mormon, Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, 3 Nephi, 4 Nephi, Mormon, Ether and Moroni.

• Lehi's departure (c. 600 BC). The prophet Lehi is warned to flee Jerusalem before its destruction by Babylon. His sons obtain a record on brass plates, which contain scripture and genealogy, from a man named Laban. The family crosses the wilderness, builds a ship, and sails to a promised land in the Americas.
• Nephites and Lamanites. After Lehi's death his son Nephi leads the faithful, who become the Nephites. His older brothers Laman and Lemuel lead the rest, who become the Lamanites. The book traces centuries of preaching, apostasy, reform and war between the two peoples, with prophets such as King Benjamin, Abinadi, Alma and Samuel the Lamanite foretelling the coming of Christ.
• Other peoples. The Nephites join a people at Zarahemla descended from Mulek, a son of King Zedekiah (Omni). The Book of Ether, abridged by Moroni, tells of the Jaredites, an earlier people who came from the Tower of Babel and destroyed themselves in civil war.
• Christ in the Americas (3 Nephi). At Christ's death the Nephite lands suffer storms, earthquakes and three days of darkness. After his resurrection Jesus descends to a gathering at the temple in the land Bountiful (3 Nephi 11), lets the people feel the wounds in his hands and feet, gives a sermon closely parallel to the Sermon on the Mount (3 Nephi 12-14), calls twelve disciples, heals the sick, and blesses the children (3 Nephi 17). For Latter-day Saints this visit is the heart of the book.
• Peace and collapse. 4 Nephi describes about two centuries of peace in which the people share all things in common, followed by renewed division. The Nephites are finally destroyed by the Lamanites in a great battle at the hill Cumorah around AD 385 (Mormon 6).
• Moroni. Mormon's son Moroni, the last Nephite prophet, finishes the record, adds his own book, and buries the plates. His last chapter closes the volume with an invitation to the reader (Moroni 10).

How it came about

The Latter-day Saint account, drawn from Joseph Smith's own histories:

• Moroni's visits. In September 1823 Smith reported that an angel named Moroni appeared to him and told him of a record buried in a hill near his home in Manchester, New York. He said he received the plates in September 1827, after annual visits to the hill.
• The translation. Smith dictated the text to scribes, principally his wife Emma Smith, Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery. Accounts describe him using instruments called interpreters, later called the Urim and Thummim, and a seer stone placed in a hat to exclude light, often with the plates covered or not in view. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acknowledged the seer stone and the hat in its 2013 Gospel Topics essay "Book of Mormon Translation." In 1828 the first 116 pages of manuscript were lost while in Martin Harris's keeping. Most of the present text was dictated in a few months in 1829.
• The witnesses. Every edition prints two statements. The Testimony of Three Witnesses (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris) says an angel showed them the plates and that God's voice declared the translation true. The Testimony of Eight Witnesses (members of the Whitmer and Smith families and Hiram Page) says they saw and handled the plates. All three of the Three Witnesses later broke with Smith for a time, and Cowdery and Harris returned to the church. Latter-day Saint writers stress that none of the three ever denied his testimony; critics question what the witnesses saw and under what conditions.
• Publication. The book was printed by E. B. Grandin in Palmyra and went on sale in March 1830, financed by Martin Harris, who mortgaged his farm. The church was organized the following month. Smith said he returned the plates to Moroni, so they are not available for examination.

What it teaches, and how that relates to later LDS doctrine

Much of the Book of Mormon reads as Christian preaching in a biblical idiom: repentance, faith in Christ, baptism, the atonement, the resurrection and the final judgment.

• On God. The book is closer to traditional monotheism than later Latter-day Saint teaching. In Alma 11:26-31 the prophet Amulek answers the question whether there is more than one God with a plain no. 2 Nephi 31:21 speaks of the doctrine of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, which is one God, and the Testimony of the Three Witnesses ends with the same phrase. Moroni 8:18 calls God unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity. Some passages (for example Mosiah 15:1-5) speak of Christ as both Father and Son in a way many readers have found close to modalism. Several of these Father and Son phrasings were adjusted in the 1837 edition; for example 1 Nephi 11:18, which first called Mary "the mother of God," was changed to "the mother of the Son of God."
• What it does not teach. The distinctive later doctrines, that God the Father was once a man and has a body of flesh and bones, a plurality of gods, eternal progression to godhood, temple endowment, eternal marriage and baptism for the dead, are not taught in the Book of Mormon. They arose in Joseph Smith's later revelations and sermons, collected in the Doctrine and Covenants and in the King Follett Discourse of 1844. Jacob 2:24 calls the many wives of David and Solomon abominable, though Jacob 2:30 allows that God may command otherwise.
• On salvation. The best-known verse on grace, 2 Nephi 25:23, says that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. Latter-day Saints today often explain it as meaning grace is needed in spite of all we can do; many Christians read it as making grace follow works.

Latter-day Saints read the book in harmony with later revelation, holding that it was never meant to contain every doctrine and that revelation continues. Fairness requires stating both sides: the book's theology of God is not the theology of the King Follett Discourse, and Latter-day Saints do not see that as a contradiction. See Mormonism vs the Christian God.

Moroni 10:4-5, the prayer test

The book closes by inviting the reader, after reading it, to ask God the Father in the name of Christ, with a sincere heart, real intent and faith in Christ, whether these things are true, and promises that God will make their truth known by the power of the Holy Ghost (Moroni 10:4-5). Latter-day Saint missionaries invite people to take this test, and many members describe their testimony of the book as resting on that answer. A separate text, Doctrine and Covenants 9:8, describes a confirming feeling as a burning in the bosom.

Christians also believe in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. The difference lies in where each faith places its decisive test. See Witness of the Holy Spirit and Falsifiability Across Worldviews.

Historical and archaeological questions

The Book of Mormon makes specific claims about peoples, places and things in the ancient Americas, so it can be checked against the record.

• No confirmed trace of Nephite civilization. No city, ruler or person named in the book has been identified in the archaeological record of the Americas, and no inscription in Hebrew or in the book's "reformed Egyptian" has been found. Mainstream archaeologists of the Americas do not use the book as a historical source.
• DNA. Genetic studies of Native American populations trace their ancestry overwhelmingly to Asia, by way of migrations into the Americas long before 600 BC, and have found no signal of an Israelite migration. Former Latter-day Saint scientist Simon Southerton set out the case in Losing a Lost Tribe (2004). The introduction to printed editions once called the Lamanites the "principal ancestors" of the American Indians; in 2006 that wording was changed to "among the ancestors."
• Anachronisms. The book mentions things that the archaeological record does not show in the Americas in its period, including horses (for example 1 Nephi 18:25 and Enos 1:21), elephants (Ether 9:19), wheat (Mosiah 9:9), and steel (Laban's sword of steel, 1 Nephi 4:9). Critics also point to long passages from Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount that follow the wording of the King James Version of 1611.
• Latter-day Saint responses. Latter-day Saint scholars, through groups such as FAIR and Book of Mormon Central, answer in several ways. Many adopt a limited geography model, in which the events took place in a small region, often placed in Mesoamerica (John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 1985), so that Lehi's family would be a small group within much larger populations whose genetic signal could disappear. They suggest that words such as "horse" may have been applied to unfamiliar animals. They cite positive evidence they find persuasive: the place name Nahom (1 Nephi 16:34), which some connect to a tribal name attested in inscriptions in Yemen, and chiastic structures in the text studied by John W. Welch. The church's 2014 Gospel Topics essay "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies" argues that DNA evidence cannot settle the question.

Both sides are summarized here. Joseph Smith's claims are set beside those of other religious founders at Christ vs Other Religion-Founders.

The Christian assessment

What follows is the Christian evaluation. It is offered after the Latter-day Saint account above so that the two can be compared fairly.

1. The faith was once for all delivered. The New Testament does not anticipate a further testament restoring a lost gospel. Jude wrote:

   Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints. (Jude 3, ASV)

   Paul warned that even an angel bringing a different gospel was to be rejected:

   But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. (Galatians 1:8, ASV)

   The Book of Mormon by its own account was revealed through an angel and restores what it says was lost. See Canon and Sola Scriptura.

2. The book stakes itself on history, and the history has not appeared. Unlike a book of private devotion, the Book of Mormon names peoples, cities, wars, animals and metals across a thousand years. After nearly two centuries there is no confirmed trace of them, and the genetic record points elsewhere. The limited geography model shrinks the claim considerably and is a later reinterpretation of a book long read by its own church as describing the ancestors of Native Americans. By contrast, the New Testament's people and places are anchored in the known world of the first century. See Biblical Archaeology and Christ vs Other Religion-Founders.

3. The prayer test is inward, and Scripture commands outward testing too. Moroni 10:4-5 rests confirmation on an inner answer. Christians value the Spirit's witness, but the New Testament also tells believers to "prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21, ASV) and to "believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1, ASV). Paul named a public event as the point on which Christianity stands or falls: "if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14, ASV). Deuteronomy 18:22 judges a prophet by whether his word comes to pass. A sincere feeling, in a Latter-day Saint or anyone else, cannot settle a historical claim. See Witness of the Holy Spirit and Falsifiability Across Worldviews.

4. The book's own God is not the God of later Mormonism. The Book of Mormon's statements that there is one God, unchangeable from eternity to eternity, sit closer to historic Christianity than the doctrine that the Father was once a man and that men may become gods. A Christian can press this gently: the book Latter-day Saints offer as the keystone does not teach the doctrines that most divide them from historic Christianity. Isaiah, whom the Book of Mormon quotes at length, records God saying, "before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me" (Isaiah 43:10, ASV). See Mormonism vs the Christian God and Classical Theism.

5. The translation account does not match a translation. Witness descriptions of Smith dictating from a seer stone in a hat, often without the plates in view, describe something other than translation of a text in front of the translator. Where the result reproduces the King James Version, including its English phrasing, the simplest explanation is that the King James Version was the source. Latter-day Saints answer that the process was revelatory rather than linguistic, which concedes that the plates cannot be checked against the text.

Latter-day Saints are often devout, morally serious and generous people. The Christian case is against the book's claims, not against those who hold it dear. See Mormonism.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

• Francis Beckwith, The new Mormon challenge (2002). Open Library
• Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002). doi:10.1093/019513818x.001.0001
• John L. Sorenson, An ancient American setting for the Book of Mormon (1985). Open Library
• Simon G. Southerton, Losing a Lost Tribe (2004). Open Library

See also

• Mormonism, the Latter-day Saint movement, its history and doctrine
• Mormonism vs the Christian God, the side-by-side comparison of God in each faith
• Falsifiability Across Worldviews, how each faith states the test it can fail, including Moroni 10:4-5
• Witness of the Holy Spirit, the Christian doctrine of the Spirit's inner witness and the "burning in the bosom" objection
• Christ vs Other Religion-Founders, Joseph Smith set beside Jesus and other founders
• Canon, the closed biblical canon the Book of Mormon extends
• Sola Scriptura, the sufficiency of Scripture the standard works challenge
• Classical Theism, the God of historic Christianity
• Biblical Archaeology, the archaeological record of the biblical world
• Quran, another later scripture claiming to restore or complete the earlier revelation
• World Religions, the comparative-religion master hub