Book of Mormon/Authorship theories

FAIR Answers—back to home page

Attempts to explain Book of Mormon authorship by non-miraculous means

Secular authorship theories for the Book of Mormon

An overview of secular authorship theories for the Book of Mormon

Summary: An overview of the various authorship theories that critics have created to explain the existence of the Book of Mormon.

Spalding manuscript

Summary: Some claim that Joseph Smith either plagiarized or relied upon a manuscript by Solomon Spaulding to write the Book of Mormon. There is a small group of critics who hold to the theory that the production of the Book of Mormon was a conspiracy involving Sidney Rigdon, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery and others. These critics search for links between Spalding and Rigdon. Joseph Smith is assumed to have been Rigdon's pawn.

View of the Hebrews

Summary: Some claim that a 19th century work by Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews, provided source material for Joseph Smith's construction of the Book of Mormon. Critics also postulate a link between Ethan Smith and Oliver Cowdery, since both men lived in Poultney, Vermont while Smith served as the pastor of the church that Oliver Cowdery's family attended at the time that View of the Hebrews was being written.

North American place names

Summary: It is claimed that Joseph Smith is clearly the author of the Book of Mormon because many Book of Mormon place names supposedly have clear evidence of "borrowing" from geographic locations in the United States and Canada.

Epilepsy

Summary: Some have claimed that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon while under the influence of an "epileptic fit," thus perpetuating a fraud without knowing it.

Automatic writing

Summary: Some attempt to explain the complexity of the Book of Mormon through appeals to "automatic writing" or "spirit writing."

The Golden Pot

Summary: Former LDS Church Education System (CES) teacher Grant Palmer argues that Joseph Smith developed his story of visits by Moroni and the translation of a sacred book from The Golden Pot, a book by German author E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Was the Book of Mormon influenced by the language and themes of "The Late War" by Gilbert Hunt?

Summary: It is claimed that Joseph Smith was influenced by Gilbert Hunt's 1819 book "The late war between the United States and Great Britain from June, 1812, to February, 1815," which was written in Biblical style.