(LDS.org; click to enlarge.)
The only alternative to Joseph Smith’s explanation [of the origin of the Book of Mormon] is to assume the existence of a forger who at one moment is so clever and adroit as to imitate the archaic poetry of the desert to perfection and supply us with genuine Egyptian names, and yet so incredibly stupid as to think that the best way to fool people and get money out of them is to write an exceedingly difficult historical epic of six hundred pages.
Endowed with the brains, perseverance, and superhuman cunning necessary to produce this monumental forgery, the incredibly sly genius did not have the wit to know, after years of experience in the arts of deception, that there are ten thousand safer and easier ways of fooling people than by undertaking a work of infinite toil and danger which, as he could see from the first, only made him immensely unpopular.
Hugh Nibley, The Prophetic Book of Mormon, 59
(Thanks to Marty Zee for reminding me of this passage.)
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