Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Chapter 4


Claims made in "Chapter 3: From Profit to Prophet"
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Criticism of Mormonism/Books
A work by author: Richard Abanes
 Claims made in "Chapter 5: People of Zion"

Claims made in "Chapter 4: Smith's Golden Book"

Page Claim Response Author's sources
60 "This story would prove to be one of Smith's best tales."
  • Author's opinion.
62 The Lamanites were cursed with a "skin of blackness."
62 "Coincidentally, in most instances, Jesus used exactly the same wording found in the 1611 King James Version of the New Testament, even though the BOM was supposedly written more than 1,000 years before the King James Bible was published in England."
  • No source provided.
62 (HB) "By the time Columbus found them, these so-called American Indians had become a "filthy, and a loathsome people"
63, 510n15 (HB) They "had no idea that their dark-skinned appearance was a curse traceable to their failure to follow God."
  • Oliver Cowdery, "Letter VII," Messenger and Advocate, July 1835, vol. 1, no. 10, 158, reprinted in Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, vol. 2, 450.
63, 510n18 The genuineness of the Book of Mormon is "largely dependent upon the veracity of the idea that the Native Americans are descendants of the Israelites."
  • David Persuitte, Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon, p. 102.
63 Joseph was inspired by the "mound builders."
64, 511n24 (HB) "Joe Smith...loved hearing, as well as telling, tall-tales about American Indians." According to Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph "skillfully composed yarns about Native Americans while still just a teen; long before any golden plates had been found."
  • Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for many Generations [Liverpool: S.W. Richards, 1853), 85, reprinted in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996], vol. 1, 296.
66, 511n31 (HB) According to Alexander Campbell, the Book of Mormon "commented on nearly 'every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years.'"
  • Alexander Campbell, "The Mormonites," Millennial Harbinger, February 1830, 93.
68, 5121n41-43 (HB) Joseph "copied portions" of other works into the Book of Mormon, such as Josiah Priest's The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed."
  • Joseph Smith, Times and Seasons, June 1, 1842, vol. 3, no. 15, 813-14.
  • Josiah Priest, The Wonders of Nature, 598, 469, 524.
  • Book of Mormon (1830), 560, 61, 471-472.
68-70, 512n44-45 Joseph Smith contains parallels with Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews
  • Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews, 172.

Persuitte, 107, 122.

70-71 (HB) Joseph Smith plagiarized the Apocrypha
  • Reed C. Durhap, "A History of Joseph Smith's Revision of the Bible," BYU, 1965, 25
  • Jerald and Sandra Tanner, "Joseph Smith's Use of the Apocrypha," Salt Lake City Messenger (#89), December 1995.
70, 513n52 (HB) Several Bible stories were reworked for the Book of Mormon.
72, n59 "Joseph's adventures as a money-digger...are described in a section of the BOM where one character speaks of hidden treasures in the earth that 'have slipped away' back into the ground."
72, 514n61 (HB) The name "Lemuel" may have been derived from the name of the Smith's landlord, Lemuel Durfee.
  • Vogel, [Early Mormon Documents] vol. 1, 321, footnote #128.
73, 514n62 The names "Moroni" and "Cumorah" may have been taken from the "Comoros" Islands off the coast of Africa.
73, n66 The 1830 Book of Mormon contains many grammatical errors.
  • Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?, 85-88.
74 The name "Sam" in the Book of Mormon is "out-of-place."
74, 514n67 The French word "adieu" is out-of-place in the Book of Mormon.
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