Summary for the book of Mormons?

In summary, in coming up with the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith ripped off material he found in another book.

Pastor Ethan Smith (no relation to Joseph Smith), published his book, View of the Hebrews, or the Tribes of Israel in America, in the year 1825 in Poultney, Vt., In that book he proposed that a part of the tribes of Israel had come to the Americas a great many years previously. Over time, according to Smith, a savage part of those tribes exterminated the civilized tribes after long wars between the two factions, and the savage tribes came to be the Indians that the European settlers found in America upon their arrival.

Interestingly, that is the same idea found in the Book of Mormon, dictated by con man Joseph Smith.

Not only that, many of Ethan Smith's religious ideas about those ancient Hebrews in America are also found in Joseph Smith's book.

It is clear that Joseph Smith took Ethan Smith's descriptions and ideas and--expanding on them by bringing in other material, particularly from the Bible--using his imagination, worked it all up into the Book of Mormon.

Incidentally, Oliver Cowdery, who was one of Joseph Smith's scribes, lived in Poultney when Ethan Smith published his book there, and his family belonged to Ethan Smith's church.

Ethan Smith referred to many of the pre-Columbian structures that had been found in the Americas, such as the the earthwork mounds found from Ohio to New York State, and the buildings and pyramids in Central and South America, as evidence that a people more civilized than the savage Indians had once lived in the New World. Many of Ethan Smith's descriptions about those works also have correspondences in the Book of Mormon.

Here is one of Ethan Smith's references to the earthwork mounds.

“These military works, — these walls and ditches cost so much labour in their structure; those numerous ... mounds, which owe their origin to a people far more civilized than our Indians, but far less so than Europeans..."

And here is another reference from Ethan Smith's book.

"Not far from this tumulus [earthwork mound] was a semi-circular ditch…. At the bottom lay “a great quantity of human bones.” These are supposed to be the remains of men slain in some great battle."

And here is a corresponding quote from the Book of Mormon.

"Now when they found that they could not obtain power over the Nephites ..., they began to dig down their banks of earth ...; but ... they were swept off by the stones and arrows which were thrown at them; and instead of filling up their ditches by pulling down the banks of earth, they were filled up ... with their dead and wounded bodies. (Alma 49:22)

Concerning the demise of the civilized part of the two groups at the hands of the savage part, Ethan Smith made this comment.

"It is highly probable that the more civilized part of the tribes of Israel … continued for many centuries; that tremendous wars were frequent between them and their savage brethren, till the former became extinct."

And in the Book of Mormon we find this "prophecy" about the result of the war between the two groups.

"… behold the time very soon cometh that those which are … now numbered among the people of Nephi …, shall the Lamanites pursue, even until they shall become extinct. (Alma 45:13-14)

Those are only a couple of the great many parallels between the two books.

For more information about con man Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, see my answer here.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoOs7...

Added

@joshsy, your comment about View of the Hebrews not being a source for the Book of Mormon is ridiculous.

The basic outline for the Book of Mormon can be found in View of the Hebrews, and I gave it above. A casual reading of View of the Hebrews, even online, will come up with several similarities. An in-depth study of the two books will reveal a lot more. If you have enough imagination to make all sorts of twists and bizarre interpretations to get Harry Potter out of the Book of Mormon, you should be able to get many of the real similarities with the Book of Mormon out of View of the Hebrews.

And BYU did not need to buy rights to the book, because it is in public domain.

Then there's the fact that Joseph Smith was a proven con man, as I point out in the link I supplied above.

The content of the book, Starts with an Israelity family being commanded by god to flee to the wilderness. After getting a copy of the Tanakh on brass plates God commands them to build a ship and sail to what we know as the Americas. There the family splits into two. The pious Nephetes and the not so pious Lemanites. The latter were cursed by god to have dark skin. The book of mormon goes on about a few conflicts between the nations until after his resurrection, they get a visit by Jesus, who preached as he did in Israel. He leaves and soon they are at war again, with the Lamanites able to exterminate the Nephites leaving only a record hidden by Moroni, the son of Mormon. It is from these record Smith claims to have translated the Book of Mormon from.

Basically, it's another witness of Jesus Christ.

You'll find parts of stories of their travels and voyage and then civilization - but the notion that the book can be defined by those things is way off.

The Book of Mormon's topic is religion, everything is written for the point of witnessing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that man must come to Him in order to be saved - all other stories are just back stories and so none of them are super detailed.

To the other answers, two of them are good, frankly the others are pretty ridiculous. The musical isn't even based on the book, it's about Mormon missionaries who apparently sing and dance while holding copied of the Book of Mormon. SouthPark doesn't really talk about the Book of Mormon, just how our religion was started - however you'd have to be stupid to let SouthPark be your religiuo authority. And the guy looking at similarities with Ethan Smith's book is laughable - LDS owned BYU bought the rights to his book and posted it online for people to read and compare - I could make a better case for Harry Potter being based on the Book of Mormon than they can make for it being based on E. Smiths book.

The point is, it's not about anthropology or ancient America at all, those stories just are place settings for the religion and lessons taught in it.

The Book Of Mormon Another Testament Of Jesus Christ

is a second witness of Jesus Christ.

http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng

http://mormon.org/ Chat.

God bless.

Don't forget one very, very important aspect of the Book of Mormon.

It testifies that the Bible is the true word of God, that Jesus is the Divine Son of God, the Savior of the world, and that only through Jesus Christ of the New Testament can forgiveness of sins be granted...

And critics will have you believe it was written by a con man, of limited education, able to convert millions, and to produce a church of such epic proportions as to span the globe in as little as 170 years, being as of now the fastest growing Christian sect in the world. Pretty incredible to have been a conspiracy? And pretty absurd to call it satanic as it's entire premise surrounds the Savior Jesus Christ. What do you think?

A "Cole's Note's "version will not do it justice. Read it .

Watch the south park episode. No joke. It is completely accurate to the actual book.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e...

The musical is fabulous and suggest you see it. Don't want to ruin it for you. As far as their "book", the musical pretty much nails it.

Unintentionally hilarious.

Edit:

http://www.bible.ca/mor-1830-changes.htm

This is a list of all of the errors contained in the original Book of Mormon.

Google "Errors in the Book of Mormon" and you'll also find plenty of sites that deal with the lack of historical evidence for any of the Mormon claims. Take a look at some of the detailed explanations of the way that the Book of Mormon repeats the errors in the KJV translation, too.

It makes for interesting reading.

True.

Please read it, the whole thing. You can request a free copy here:

http://www.mormon.org/