Question: Gordon L. Weight's booklet ''Miracle on Palmyra’s Main Street" claims that the rate at which the first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed could only have occurred miraculously. Is this true?

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This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.

Question

I've heard that the rate at which the first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed could only have occurred miraculously. Is there anything to this claim?

Response

This claim was advanced by a small booklet published and circulated in the Intermountain West by LDS member Gordon L. Weight.{[ref|weight.1}}

Unfortunately, despite Weight's sincere desire to build faith in the Book of Mormon, his claims cannot be sustained by the evidence. A full review of these claims was published in 2009.^[1]

Poor arguments for the Book of Mormon's divine origins are ill-advised, since those who build their testimony on faulty reasoning may suffer spiritual damage when the errors which underlie such claims are revealed.

Endnotes

1. [note]  Gordon L. Weight, Miracle on Palmyra’s Main Street: An “Old-Time” Printer’s Perspective on Printing the Original Copies of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Gordon L. Weight, 2003).
2. {{note|farms.2009)) Donald L. Enders and Jennifer L. Lund, "Myths on Palmyra's Main Street (A review of "Miracle on Palmyra's Main Street: An Old-Time Printer's Perspective on Printing the Original Copies of the Book of Mormon" by: Gordon L. Weight)," FARMS Review 21/1 (2009): 63–77. off-site wiki