Criticism of Mormonism/Books/No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/Chapter 4
Claims made in "Chapter 4: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder"
53
Claim
- Joseph warned Martin Harris that God's wrath would strike him down if he examined the plates or looked at him while he was translating.
Author's source(s)
Response
53
Claim
- Harris once tried to trick Joseph by substituting an ordinary stone for the seer stone.
Author's source(s)
- Summary of Martin Harris' sermon in Salt Lake City, September 4, 1870, Historical Record, Vol. VI, p. 216.
Response
54
Claim
- Lucy Harris stole the manuscript and "neither pleas nor blows could make her divulge its hiding place."
Author's source(s)
Response
- Lucy states in the Hurlbut affidavits that her husband "has whipped, kicked, and turned me out of the house." Despite the fact that Lucy Harris makes no mention of the lost 116 pages of manuscript from the Book of Mormon, Fawn Brodie actually concludes that Harris beat his wife in order to get her to divulge what she had done with the lost 116 pages of manuscript.
- The Hurlbut affidavits—Lucy Harris
54
Claim
- Joseph realized that he could not duplicate the 116 pages exactly.
Author's source(s)
Response
55
Claim
- Joseph's family was counting on sales of the Book of Mormon to prevent foreclosure on their farm.
Author's source(s)
Response
- Mind reading: author has no way of knowing this.: the author presents no evidence for this claim.
55
Claim
- Once Joseph had translated the small plates of Nephi, he could go back to the old plates and carry on.
Author's source(s)
Response
58
Claim
- The Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon were "chiefly those chapters from Isaiah mentioned in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews."
Author's source(s)
Response
58
Claim
- Joseph was careful to modify primarily the italicized interpolation in the King James text.
Author's source(s)
Response
58
Claim
- Joseph incorporated one of his father's dreams into the Book of Mormon
Author's source(s)
- Lucy Smith, Biographical Sketches, pp. 58-9.
Response
59
Claim
- Early in the writing Joseph vigorously attacked the Catholic Church as the "great and abominable church" and the "whore of all the earth"
Author's source(s)
Response
60
Claim
- Lucy Smith's stories about the Golden Bible had converted Oliver Cowdery.
Author's source(s)
Response
FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources
62
Claim
- Joseph Smith's lack of education is "a favorite thesis designed to prove the authenticity" of the Book of Mormon.
Author's source(s)
Response
62-63
Claim
- Joseph Smith borrowed many stories from the Bible.
Author's source(s)
Response
63
Claim
- Joseph's sentence structure in the Book of Mormon was "loose-jointed, like an earthworm hacked into segments that crawl away alive and whole."
Author's source(s)
Response
65
Claim
- The story of the Gadianton band reflects the anti-Masonic feelings in New York at the time that the Book of Mormon was produced.
Author's source(s)
- No source given.
- Author's conjecture.
Response