RICHARD ABANES:
You can see for example, I give charts that show side by side comparisons from the Book of Mormon to the King James Bible, also to the Apocrypha that was available at the time, he plagiarized from that, also from a book called View of the Hebrews, and another book called The Wonders of Nature and you see where he just lifted these things out of these books.
The Truth about the Authorship of The Book of Mormon:
- Apocrypha—Critics claim that Joseph Smith created the story of Nephi and Laban by plagiarizing concepts and phrases from the story of Judith and Holofernes in the Apocrypha. It is also claimed that Joseph Smith copied the name “Nephi” from the Apocrypha. (Link)
- The King James Bible—Critics of the Book of Mormon claim that major portions of it are copied, without attribution, from the Bible. They present this as evidence that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon by plagiarizing the Authorized (“King James”) Version of the Bible. (Link)
- The Golden Pot—Former LDS Church Education System (CES) teacher Grant Palmer argues that Joseph Smith developed his story of visits by Moroni and the translation of a sacred book from The Golden Pot, a book by German author E.T.A. Hoffmann. (Link)
- The Westminster Confession—Critics claim that the content of Alma Chapter 40 derived from a Presbyterian document called The Westminster Confession (Link)
- The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed—Critics claim that Joseph Smith plagiarized Josiah Priest’s The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed in order to write portions of The Book of Mormon. Critics also claim that Joseph Smith plagiarized Shakespeare. (Link) [needs work]
- The Spalding manuscript—Critics claim that Joseph Smith either plagiarized or relied upon a manuscript by Solomon Spaulding to write the Book of Mormon. There is a small group of critics who hold to the theory that the production of the Book of Mormon was a conspiracy involving Sidney Rigdon, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery and others. These critics search for links between Spalding and Rigdon. Joseph Smith is assumed to have been Rigdon’s pawn. (Link)
- View of the Hebrews—Critics claim that a 19th century work by Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews, provided source material for Joseph Smith’s construction of the Book of Mormon. Critics also postulate a link between Ethan Smith and Oliver Cowdery, since both men lived in Poultney, Vermont while Smith served as the pastor of the church that Oliver Cowdery’s family attended at the time that View of the Hebrews was being written. (Link)
- North American place names—Critics claim that Joseph Smith is clearly the author of the Book of Mormon because many Book of Mormon place names supposedly have clear evidence of “borrowing” from geographic locations in the United States and Canada. (Link)
- The Comoros Islands—Comoros is a small nation made up of three islands off the southeast coast of Africa. Its capital city is Moroni. Some critics have claimed that Joseph Smith created the Book of Mormon names Cumorah and Moroni by copying them from a map of the Comoros islands. (Link)
- Joseph Smith, Sr.’s dream—Critics point to similarities between a Lucy Mack Smith’s account of a dream Joseph Smith’s father had and Lehi’s dream of the tree of life as evidence that Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon based on his own experiences. (Link)
- History of Mexico—Critics theorize that Joseph Smith could have used details from Ixtilxochitl’s History of Mexico to write the Book of Ether. (Link)
