who wrote the book of mormon?

I first read it decades ago and thought it was basically written by someone who used biblical-type language to describe a bunch of similar stories in a slightly different setting. There's essentially not that much difference between the Book of Mormon and the bible that most mainstream christians accept as being "infallible." By which I mean, it's not any more or less believable. But to be sure, BOTH books were written by human beings, make no mistake about that.

Well, keep in mind that the first printing of the Book of Mormon was riddled with spelling errors, grammatical errors, and misuses of Elizabethan English. The version you see today has been cleaned up significantly. The Mormon church sold reprints of the first edition at the Temple in Salt Lake City for a while, but they had to stop because too many people read it and said, "Oh, so Joseph Smith DID write the Book of Mormon."

Then there's the fact that the plot of the Book of Mormon follows a book written by his uncle.

If you read the original manuscript, you will see that yes indeed, the writing style is that of an uneducated backwoods farm boy, written after the style of the Bible. It contains ideas that were common in Joseph's day, ideas that were already written in other books that Joseph had access to (e.g., View of the Hebrews). It also contains large sections of direct copy/paste from the KJV Bible, including known translation errors. It also contains some events that were mirrored almost exactly in Joseph's life and family. (e.g., Lehi's dream is an exact copy of a dream that Joseph's own father had a few years before the Book of Mormon was "miraculously translated".)

So, how miraculous is the Book of Mormon? As I outlined above, there is plenty of source material from which Joseph relied upon for the basic storyline. Was he working in a vacuum, writing it completely on his own? No way, he had many educated friends who worked with him on the project. The official story is that they were just scribes, dictating the words that Joseph dictated. But...these were all people who had a vested interest in this new religion, and all of them were high-ranking officers in the church after it was all started.

Further, as a historical record, the Book of Mormon doesn't hold up to physical evidence. It is full of historical anachronisms that would make any legit author of historical fiction blush. For instance, it talks of horses and chariots, advanced metallurgy, vast advanced civilizations with coinage, silk clothing, domesticated oxen, pigs, goats, horses, wheat and barley crops, and extensive written records. All of these are historical anachronisms, and did not exist in the ancient Americas. The people of the Book of Mormon have been identified by the Mormon church's prophets, apostles, and even God apparently (in many scriptural "revelations"), as the ancestors of today's Native Americans. However, any in-depth study of the origins (i.e. DNA), languages, archaeology, etc of Native Americans completely contradicts the Book of Mormon's claims. The growth rates of the populations in the Book of Mormon are completely unreasonable, requiring sustained rates of growth that simply didn't exist anywhere in the ancient world, and have only been seen very recently with the advent of modern food production, refrigeration, modern medicine, etc.

Then there's the "gold plates" themselves. Where are they? Where is the big stone box on "Hill Cumorah" in which Joseph found the plates? Where is the steel sword and brass compass/ball he found with the plates? None of these amazing items are to be found. The official story is that God took them up into Heaven, ostensibly to test our faith.

When you look at all that...the Mormon argument that "Joseph was too stupid and ignorant to write it, so it must be true!" just seems pretty weak.

there are several sources and Smiths education (or lack thereof) is often overplayed by the mormon contingent to emphasise the supposed chasm between what a farm boy could write, and the BoM.

'Lehi's dream is a copy of a tale told by smiths father. there is the obvious plagiarism from the KJV bible and the view of the hebrews would have been available to smith and also the spaulding manuscript

lets not forget that Oliver cowdrey would have had a hand in the authorship, too

Place names very similar to place names in the BoM can be found al around the area where smith lived

http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/holley/holle...

Too much evidence that the Book of Mormon is of God . But I am not a fake Utah Mormon who believe that Jesus told Joseph to practice polygamy . For Joe's own mom , son , and only wife swore till their deaths that he never did that sin .

There are several theories as to the actual origin of the Book of Mormon. Most adherents to the Latter Day Saint movement view the book as a work of inspired scripture. The most common theory accepted by adherents is that promoted by Joseph Smith, who said he translated the work from an ancient set of golden plates inscribed by prophets, which Smith discovered near his home in Palmyra, New York, in the 1820s after being told to go there by the angel Moroni, a prophet in the Book of Mormon narrative. Besides Smith himself, there were more than 11 witnesses who said they saw the plates physically (three claiming to have been visited by an angel as well) in 1829. There were also several other witnesses, some of them friendly to Smith and some hostile, who observed him dictating the text that eventually became the Book of Mormon.

BUT GOD SAYS >>>>

Gal 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Analysis has shown that there are striking similarities between the Book of Mormon and period text books and literature.

Analysis has also shown there were multiple authors with different writing styles.

Who wrote the book of mormon?

personally I don't think smith himself could've written it,there's no way a poor farm boy like him would've had

~~~ Smith was a fraud, and the people around him were gullible, naive morons!

Thus, another religion...

Smith was perfectly capable of writing the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdrey or Sidney Rigdon might have helped. Here we go again with the poor, ignorant founder myths to bolster miraculous interpretations, that I was just talking about re: Muhammad.

Joseph Smith.