Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited

Book excerpt: Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints view the Book of Mormon as scripture written by ancient prophets, while critics believe that it is a 19th-century fraud. The 15 essays in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited present the latest research by LDS scholars on the question in an effort to demonstrate that the weight of scholarly evidence is on the side of authenticity. Part 1 contains essays dealing with accounts of how the book was produced in 1829 and 1830, with emphasis on the translation process and the witnesses who saw the plates. Part 2 takes a look at the logical structure of the authorship debate and reviews the history of alternative theories and criticisms of the Book of Mormon. Part 3 presents textual studies that demonstrate the plausibility of the Book of Mormon as an ancient book, and part 4 updates scholars' attempts to understand the ancient cultural and geographic setting of the book in both the Old and New Worlds.