Any claim of revelation is outrageous. It presumes that God exists, that God speaks and that all is not lost when human beings translate that speech into ordinary language. But time mutes the outrage, or muffles it. Many of us greet the miracles of Jesus with a shrug, and there is little scandal any more in claiming that the Bible is the word of God.
Not so with the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most successful of America’s home-grown religions, may not have been hounded by paparazzi, but the scripture that he brought into the world (as translator, not writer, Mormons insist) was born in an age of newspapers and before a cloud of witnesses. In fact, before the book was typeset it was drawing defenders and detractors alike. So we probably know more about the production of the Book of Mormon, which is holy writ to the world’s 14 million Mormons, than we do about any other scripture. With the Yale University Press publication of “The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text” last month, we know even more.
The product of over two decades of painstaking labor by Royal Skousen””a Brigham Young University professor of linguistics and English language, a Mormon and an occasional spelling-bee judge””this Yale edition aims to take us back to the text Smith envisioned as he translated, according to the faithful, from golden plates that he unearthed in upstate New York.
Having spent much time digging into similar hills and dales in that neck of the woods, all I can say is that Smith was lucky (or as the faithful may say, blessed) he didn’t get a bad case of poison ivy or torn rotator cuff for all his efforts.
Hush, you’ll get some Anglican bishop apologizing for trying to convert Mormons….
I believe Mark Twain described the Mormon “Bible” best as “Chloroform in print”. (Roughing It, chapter XVI).
He goes on to say ” If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle-keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.”
So why can’t we just take a look at the golden plates?