I hadn’t so much as thought about it for many months — I’ve scarcely heard or seen it mentioned — but I was recently reminded that there are some out there who imagine that they’ve found the “smoking gun,” the decisive evidence that proves Joseph Smith (or somebody) to have stolen the Book of Mormon from a previously published modern book.
For some, in other words, this is this generation’s “Spalding Manuscript,” or our time’s designated equivalent of Ethan Smith’s “View of the Hebrews.”
Even if adopted, of course, the suggestion wouldn’t account for the experience of the Three Witnesses, or Nahom, or the presence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon, or the many parallels to antiquity amassed over nearly three-quarters of a century by the likes of Hugh Nibley and the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), or the multiple authors apparently disclosed by statistical word print analysis, or Grant Hardy’s corroborating identification of distinct historiographical methods characteristic of Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni, or many other such things. No, each of those aspects needs to be dismissed on the basis of some other specific ad hoc justification.
For a time, though, the new discovery was hailed and celebrated in several places on the internet as the weapon that would finally bring Mormonism down. Huzzah!
Back in 2013, the ever-valuable Ben McGuire published a response to it in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:
http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-late-war-against-the-book-of-mormon/
Posted from Oslo, Norway
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