Problems with the Book of Mormon
In these "latter days," there are few people who
haven’t been visited at least once by Mormon missionaries. At some point
in your doorstep dialogue, these earnest young men will ask you to accept
a copy of the Book of Mormon, read it, and pray about it, asking
the Lord to "send the Holy Ghost to witness that it is true." Then, very
solemnly, they’ll "testify" to you that they know the Book of Mormon
is true, that it’s God’s inspired word, and that it contains the "fullness
of the everlasting gospel."
They’ll assure you that if you read their text
in a spirit of prayerful inquiry, you, too, will receive the testimony
of the Holy Ghost. That testimony supposedly will convince you beyond doubt
that the Book of Mormon is exactly what they claim it to be.
Keep in mind that the missionaries want you to
have a feeling about the Book of Mormon after reading it. They’ll
tell you that you’ll receive the witness of the Holy Ghost in the form
of a "burning in the bosom"—a warm, fuzzy feeling—after reading and praying
about it. This feeling is the clincher for them. It’s the real "proof"
that the Book of Mormon is inspired Scripture, and everything else
follows from that conclusion.
But think about it. How often have you felt strongly
about something or someone, only to learn your feelings were misguided?
Feelings, although a part of our human makeup,
can’t be a yardstick in matters like this.
After all, some people might get a good feeling
after reading anything from the Communist Manifesto or the
Yellow Pages. They could pray about such a feeling, and they could take
the lingering of the feeling as some kind of divine approbation, but no
such sensation will prove the inspiration of Marx’s or Ma Bell’s
writings.
When you tell the missionaries you don’t need to
pray about the Book of Mormon, they’ll think you’re copping out,
that you’re afraid to learn the truth. Admittedly, you’ll seem like a cad
if you simply refuse and leave it at that. You need to provide them with
an explanation for refusing.
The devout Mormon believes this text is inspired
because Joseph Smith said it is. He believes Smith had the authority to
claim divine inspiration for the Book of Mormon because the book
itself says Smith was a prophet and had such authority.
Jesus Visited America?
Let’s take a closer look at the text the missionaries
offer. At first glance the Book of Mormon appears to be biblical
in heft and style. It’s couched in tedious "King James" English, and it
features color renderings of Mormon scenes made to look like Bible illustrations.
The introduction tells you that the "Book of
Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is
a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas
and contains, as does the Bible, the fullness of the everlasting gospel."
There it is again—the "fullness of the everlasting gospel." Naturally,
you ask yourself just what that phrase means.
According to the Mormon church, authentic Christianity
can’t be found in any of the so-called Christian churches—only, of course,
in the Mormon church.
Mormons teach that, after Jesus ascended into heaven,
the apostles taught the true doctrines of Christ and administered his sacred
ordinances (roughly the equivalent of Catholic sacraments). After the death
of the apostles, their successors continued the work of the gospel, but
with rapidly declining success. Within a few generations, the great apostasy
foretold in the Bible had destroyed Christ’s Church (contrary to Jesus’
own promise in Matthew 16:18).
The Mormon church asserts that the Church Christ
founded became increasingly corrupted by pagan ideas introduced by nefarious
members. (Sound familiar?) Over a period of years, the Church lost all
relationship with the Church Christ established. Consequently, the keys
of authority of the holy priesthood were withdrawn from the earth, and
no man any longer had authorization to act in God’s name.
From that time onward there were no valid baptisms,
no laying on of hands for the receipt of the Holy Ghost, no blessings of
any kind, and no administration of sacred ordinances. Confusions and heretical
doctrines increased and led to the plethora of Christian sects seen today.
Mormons claim that to restore the true Church and
true gospel to the earth, in 1820 God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared
to Joseph Smith in a grove of trees near his home. They told him that all
professing Christians on the face of the earth were abominable and corrupt
and that the true Church, having died out completely shortly after it began,
was to be restored by Smith.
Mormons run into no small difficulty in reconciling
the great apostasy theory with Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18: "You
are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of death
shall not prevail against it."
How could it be that Christ, who should have known
better, would promise that his Church wouldn’t be overcome if he knew full
well a great apostasy would make short shrift of it in a matter of decades?
Was Christ lying? Obviously not. Was he mistaken? No. Did he miscalculate
things? No, again. Christ’s divinity precluded such things.
What are we left with then? Could it be that Mormons
are mistaken in their interpretation of such a crucial passage? This is
the only tenable conclusion. If there were no great apostasy, then there
could have been no need for a restoration of religious authority on the
earth. There would be no "restored gospel," and the entire premise of the
Mormon church would be undercut.
The fact is that the only church with an unbroken
historical line to apostolic days is the Catholic Church. Even many Protestants
acknowledge this, though they argue that there was a need for the Protestant
Reformation in the sixteenth century.
As non-Catholic historians admit, it can be demonstrated
easily that early Church writers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, Eusebius,
Clement of Rome, and Polycarp, had no conception of Mormon doctrine, and
they knew nothing of a "great apostasy."
Nowhere in their writings can one find references
to Christians embracing any of the peculiarly Mormon doctrines, such as
polytheism, polygamy, celestial marriage, and temple ceremonies. If the
Church of the apostolic age was the prototype of today’s Mormon church,
it must have had all these beliefs and practices. But why is there no evidence
of them in the early centuries, before the alleged apostasy began?
Church History Is Catholic
The fact is that there is no historical or archaeological
indication of any kind that the early Church was other than the Catholic
Church. When dealing with Mormon missionaries, remember that all the evidence
is in favor of the claims of the Catholic Church. If you want to watch
their sails go slack quickly, ask the missionaries to produce any historical
proof to support their claim that in the early centuries the Church was
Mormon. They can’t do it because there is no such evidence.
The Book of Mormon itself suffers the same
fate when it comes to its own historical support. In a word, it hasn’t
got any.
The Book of Mormon describes a vast pre-Columbian
culture that supposedly existed for centuries in North and South America.
It goes into amazingly specific detail describing the civilizations erected
by the "Nephites" and "Lamanites," who were Jews that fled Palestine in
three installments, built massive cities in the New World, farmed the land,
produced works of art, and fought large-scale wars which culminated in
the utter destruction of the Nephites in A.D. 421. The Latter-Day Saints
revere the Book of Mormon as the divinely-inspired record of those
people and of Christ’s appearance to them shortly after his crucifixion
in Jerusalem.
The awkward part for the Mormon church is the total
lack of historical and archaeological evidence to support the Book of
Mormon. For example, after the cataclysmic last battle fought between
the Nephites and Lamanites, there was no one left to clean up the mess.
Hundreds of thousands of men and beasts allegedly perished in that battle,
and the ground was strewn with weapons and armor.
Keep in mind that A.D. 421 is just yesterday in
archaeological terms. It should be easy to locate and retrieve copious
evidence of such a battle, and there hasn’t been enough time for the weapons
and armor to turn to dust. The Bible tells of similar battles that have
been documented by archaeology, battles which took place long before A.D.
421.
The embarrassing truth—embarrassing for Mormons,
that is—is that no scientist, Mormon or
otherwise, has been able to find anything to substantiate
that such a great battle took place.
"Lifting" from the King James Bible
There are other problems with the Book of Mormon.
For example, critics of Mormonism have shown convincing proof that the
Book of Mormon is a synthesis of earlier works (written by other
men), of the vivid imaginings of Joseph Smith, and of simple plagiarisms
of the King James Bible.
The only Bible that Joseph Smith relied on was
the King James Version. This translation was based on a good but imperfect
set of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible.
Scholars now know the Textus Receptus contains
errors, which means the King James Version contains errors. The problem
for Mormons is that these exact same errors show up in the Book of Mormon.
It seems reasonable to assume that since Smith
was a prophet of God and was translating the Book of Mormon under
divine inspiration, he would have known about the errors found in the King
James Version and would have corrected them for when passages from the
King James Version appeared in the Book of Mormon. But the errors
went in.
The "Fullness" of the Gospel?
According to a standard Mormon theological work,
Doctrines of Salvation, one finds this definition: "By fullness
of the gospel is meant all the ordinances and principles that pertain to
the exaltation of the celestial kingdom" (vol. 1, p. 160). That’s an official
Mormon statement on the subject. But there’s a problem.
If the Book of Mormon contains all the ordinances
and principles that pertain to the gospel, why don’t Mormonism’s esoteric
doctrines show up in it? The doctrine that God is nothing more than an
"exalted man with a body of flesh and bones" appears nowhere in the Book
of Mormon. Nor does the doctrine of Jesus Christ being the "spirit
brother" of Lucifer. Nor do the doctrines that men can become gods and
that God the Father has a god above him, who has a god above him, ad
infinitum.
The Book of Mormon is Anti-Mormon
These heterodox teachings, and many others like
them, appear nowhere in the Book of Mormon. In fact, pivotal Mormon
doctrines are flatly refuted by the Book of Mormon.
For instance, the most pointed refutation of the
Mormon doctrine that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are actually three
separate gods is found in Alma 11:28-31: "Now Zeezrom said: ‘Is there more
than one God?’ and [Amulek] answered, ‘No.’ And Zeezrom said unto him again,
‘How knowest thou these things?’ And he said: ‘An angel hath made them
known unto me.’"
The Bottom Line
The Book of Mormon fails on three main counts.
First, it utterly lacks historical or archaeological support, and there
is an overwhelming body of empirical evidence that refutes it. Second,
the Book of Mormon contains none of the key Mormon doctrines. This
is important to note because the Latter-Day Saints make such a ballyhoo
about it containing the "fullness of the everlasting gospel." (It would
be more accurate to say it contains almost none of their "everlasting gospel"
at all.) Third, the Book of Mormon abounds in textual errors, factual
errors, and outright plagiarisms from other works.
If you’re asked by Mormon missionaries to point
out examples of such errors, here are two you can use.
We read that Jesus "shall be born of Mary at Jerusalem,
which is in the land of our forefathers" (Alma 7:10). But Jesus was born
in Bethlehem, not Jerusalem (Matt. 2:1).
If you mention this to a Mormon missionary, he
might say Jerusalem and Bethlehem are only a few miles apart and that Alma
could have been referring to the general area around Jerusalem. But Bethany
is even closer to Jerusalem than is Bethlehem, yet the Gospels make frequent
reference to Bethany as a separate town.
Another problem: Scientists have demonstrated that
honey bees were first brought to the New World by Spanish explorers in
the fifteenth century, but the Book of Mormon, in Ether 2:3, claims
they were introduced around 2000 B.C.
The problem was that Joseph Smith wasn’t a naturalist;
he didn’t know anything about bees and where and when they might be found.
He saw bees in America and threw them in the Book of Mormon as a
little local color. He didn’t realize he’d get stung by them.
Tell the Mormon missionaries: "Look, it is foolish
to pray about things you know are not God’s will. It would be wrong of
me to pray about whether adultery is right, when the Bible clearly says
it is not. Similarly, it would be wrong of me to pray about the Book
of Mormon when one can so easily demonstrate that it is not the word
of God."
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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