Part 5 - Joseph Smith Authorship

In my previous post, I mentioned the Spalding-Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorship and a Stanford-based study that identified Sydney Rigdon, Solomon Spalding, and Oliver Cowdery as probable authors.  In this post, I will argue for the plausibility of Joseph Smith as the sole author of the Book of Mormon.  There is no need to absolutely prove that Joseph Smith was the author, only that there is a plausible alternative to his official origin story involving an angel and translating from gold plates.  One of the major fallback arguments of believing Mormons is that Joseph Smith could not have possibly produced the Book of Mormon, which is why I will argue that this is not the case.

I think that it is hardly necessary to discuss the implausibility of the official origin story, but since so many people believe in angels I will start by addressing this.  The actual existence of angels is not what interests me here.  Many religious traditions assert the existence of angels, although what they mean by this varies.  The main point I want to make here is that the existence of angels is a matter of faith which has no empirical evidence to support it.  In every case, reported visions of angels are experienced by only one person at a time.  In other words, there is no independent verification.  We must take one person's word for it.  There are explanations that are far more likely than actual angelic visions such as the person is lying, experiencing hallucinations, or creating memories after the fact of events that never happened.

Modern psychological research has revealed that memory is fluid and not objectively reliable.  Every time we recall a memory we change it, usually to fill in the gaps so that it makes more sense to us.  Studies that compare fresh memories of memorable events like 9/11 with later memories of the same event reveal significant differences even though most people have the utmost confidence in their current recollections, as described in this article in the Scientific American.  I will be returning to this theme frequently because this is one way I have found to make sense of the alleged supernatural events surrounding early Mormon history.

I believe that the strongest case against the Book of Mormon comes from archeology and DNA evidence.  This is what it took to convince me that it is not a genuine translation of an ancient record.  In my discussion of alternative explanations to the visions and heavenly visitations of Joseph Smith I am only aiming for plausibility.  I find it noteworthy that no Mormon prophet since Joseph Smith has claimed to see heavenly beings even though they have been very sincere.  If these were real events it seems that they would have continued with Joseph Smith's successors.

So the main question is, could Joseph Smith have written the Book of Mormon?  One of the reasons apologist give to argue that Joseph Smith could not have written the Book of Mormon is that he did it so fast.  According to this article the Book of Mormon was "translated" in about 85 days of which 65 were spent actually working on the "translation."  Another article  from the Maxwell Institute provides additional detail about how these figures have been worked out.  Taking the figure of 65 days and the modern length of 531 pages, that comes out to about 8 pages per day.  During some spurts. according the the Maxwell Institute article, he averaged as many as 11 pages per day.

A few qualifiers probably should be added to the above information before deciding if this is a feat so incredible that it would require divine intervention.  First of all, each page in the modern Book of Mormon contains extensive footnotes.  On many pages footnotes take as much as 1/3 of the page.  The average appears to be about 1/6.  The modern Book of Mormon also contains chapter headings and section introductions that count in the page total but were not in the first edition.  The 65 working days are not consecutive.  Joseph Smith had ample time to think about his narrative and compose the story in his head between dictation sessions with his scribes.  Furthermore, the 65 working day figure is not certain but pieced together from various historical accounts.

Another qualifier should be the extensive number of direct quotes from the King James version of the Bible.  The Book of Mormon contains 21 Isaiah chapters, the entire sermon on the mount, and 2 chapters from Malachi which alone constitute more than 10 percent of the 239 total chapters in the Book of Mormon.  Additionally, there are many other smaller direct quotes and paraphrases from the Bible.  This article discusses the extent of this feature of the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon is also more wordy than it needs to be.  A search for the phrase "and it came to pass" reveals 1070 results in the Book of Mormon.  By comparison, this phrase occurs only 60 times in the New Testament and 396 times in the entire Bible, which is over 3 times the length of the Book of Mormon.

In the first place, the 8 page per day figure is uncertain and may be exaggerated.  In the second place, even the 8 page per day figure is not as impressive as it appears given the above qualifying factors.  Even so, it would be enlightening to compare this figure with that of other authors who do not claim divine intervention.  J. K. Rowling wrote the 759-page seventh book of the Harry Potter series in four months.  Assuming that she took weekends off, that comes out to about 9.5 pages per day.  Under deadline pressure, my wife once wrote a 32-page term paper in about 16 hours, which was far more information dense than the wordy Book of Mormon.

One possible objection to this comparison is that J. K. Rowing had already written 6 other books in the series and probably had a pretty good idea of how the final story would go.  However, this is also true of the Book of Mormon.  Joseph Smith had been contemplating the Book of Mormon for at least six years before its publication, using the time when he claims to have first seen the angel Moroni as the starting point.  According to his Mother, Joseph Smith told stories about ancient American inhabitants long before the publication of the Book of Mormon.

During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelings, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life among them. (Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith The Prophet, Lucy Mack Smith).

This makes the speed issue even less astonishing given that Joseph Smith may have been merely dictating a story he had spent years creating in his mind.  I am not arguing that the writing of the Book of Mormon was not an impressive intellectual feat.  I am merely arguing that it is well within the capabilities of a creative, intelligent human without divine intervention.  Aside from the speed issue is whether Joseph Smith could have come up with the specific contents of the Book of Mormon.  Did he have the requisite background knowledge?  I will address this in an upcoming post.  The larger issue, as always, is how well the contents of the Book of Mormon match what we know about ancient America.  This is the real test for the Book of Mormon's claim of being the translation of an ancient American record.  This remains the main underlying theme of all these posts.