Probably the most glaring error of Smith’s fantasy (Book of Mormon/The Most Correct Book on Earth) is in his hysterical (historical)dating. Joseph Smith trusted his first scribe, Martin Harris with his first draft of the first 475 years of his thousand years of Nephite (Jewish?) history (Fantasy) in South America. This draft was stolen by Martin’s wife and never recovered. Smith had a warning from his God that the thieves were waiting for Smith to publish a re-translation of those 475 years. God told Smith that with the magic peep stone he could give a word-for-word retranslation but the thieves would somehow alter his handwritten manuscript without a trace and this would show glaring inconsistencies proving him a false prophet. These 475 years of history were part of what Smith called the Book of Lehi. Lehi was the supposed leader of a group of Jews who God led from Jerusalem to So. America in 600 BC. Nephi says they departed during the reign of Zedekiah who didn’t take the throne until a few years later. This was Smith’s first major error. (1Nephi 1:4)
Smith couldn’t give a word-for-word retranslation because of his many ad-libs so he decided that he would have Lehi’s son Nephi write a similar history of the same period for as long as he lived and then have this new record handed down, not through Nephi’s bloodline, but through his brother’s bloodline until he got to the timeline in the story that Smith had retained with his notes.
It is a tangled web we weave when we first attempt to deceive. Smith had a nimble. creative mind and like a lot of con artists are good until their spoken word is written down and checked for inconsistencies. The Book of Mormon is a long tedious book with many twists and turns. One is never sure of who kept the records or where and how it got to the next writer to be actual history.
Needless to say, Harris was through as scribe. Smith was lucky, it just so happened that a school teacher named Oliver Cowdery who had been boarding at Smith’s parents house and whose father, along with Smith’s, were Rods-men together before Joseph’s father left Vermont, and was eager and willing to act as scribe and eventually as second Elder to Smith in a new Church.
Together they created out of thin air the first 7 books of the current Book of Mormon. Smith got ‘revelations’ telling Cowdery that he had special gifts of the Witch Hazel stick (Rod) where he would get answers from God, and the gift to translate other ancient records that would come later.
(See original Book of Commandments corresponding to D&C Sec 8)
Somehow, they had a timetable that pushed them to finish the final ‘translation’ and rushed the replacement record with a lot of quotes from the King James version of Isaiah, and having ‘so called’ prophet/writers live two or three times longer than Nephi or King Mosiah to write two or three verses saying virtually nothing, but getting Smith past the 475 year timeframe.
The loss of the Book of Lehi made it necessary for Smith to re-think the ending of his Nephite ‘history’ and make up a very implausible situation that doesn’t pass the ‘smell test’ in the short ‘book’ called ‘The Words of Mormon’ dated 385 AD. Smith needed to have Mormon, who had no schooling, be literate in both Hebrew and Egyptian, along with his son who spoke and wrote both Hebrew and Egyptian and managed to translate a record written by people living about 2300 BC and who spoke and wrote in a dialect that Adam learned from God in the Garden of Eden. To think Moroni just pops up in Mormon’s record about 485 BC literate in two major languages (Hebrew and Egyptian) and now Smith will have him translate a record that would be a preview of everything that was to happen on earth, written in 2300 BC from Mesopotamia (Arctic Circle?) where history tells us cuneiform was used on clay tablets. But the brother of Jared was to write in still another unknown tongue all of the vision he was shown (Ether 3:24-28) Wow!
Smith had to have Mormon bring tons of gold records at least 5,000 miles from South America to Palmyra, New York in order for Mormon to find ‘extra plates which contained this small account of the prophets from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi’ (WOM vs. 3) that Smith used as a replacement record for the lost Book of Lehi, (Which meant that God, Mormon and Nephi knew in 600 BC would be stolen 2400 years later. Then have Mormon at age 70+ abridge the whole Nephite history leaving out 99% of what the prophets wrote including the words of Jesus that Jesus spoke to the Nephites. (3Nephi 26:6 “And now there cannot be written in this book even a hundredth part of the things which Jesus did truly teach unto the people; (WOM 5; 3Nephi 5:8; Helaman 3:14) Just as Smith has Nephi write his version of the book of his Father years after the purported events, Smith had Mormon and Moroni do the same thing because in Smith’s mind that was more credible that way. But if God was in charge of any of this, it makes him look stupid or inept at best.
Smith becomes ever less credible as a ‘story teller’ and writes stuff that makes God/Christ either stupid, liars or grossly uninformed. Christ told 3Nephi that he would join Jesus in heaven when he reached the age of 72. Smith has him live to be about double that age or longer. He has the last writer of the ‘original’ records, Ammaron, that ended in 320 AD, live to be over 300 years before he buried tons of gold records all by himself without beasts of burden hundreds of miles distant from where he had been keeping them. General Mormon would then find them deep in his enemy’s territory with Mormon needing to transport tons of gold plates 500+ miles through enemy lines a total of 5,000 plus miles to New York while being pursued by an overwhelming Lamanite army bent on recovering the gold and destroying Mormon and the complete Nephite/Jewish race!
The Book of Enos 521-421 BC:
Enos is the son of Jacob, the brother of Nephi, (whose family couldn’t read or write and wanted nothing to do with being historians) he turned the record over to his son Jarom in 420BC having kept the record for 104 years and writing 27 verses. This would be one verse every four years! Jarom starts in 420BC, and writes until 361BC a total of 15 verses in 59 years; similar to the ratio of his father, a verse every 4 years. Omni takes over in 361BC and writes until 317BC, a total of 44 years, with 3 verses; one verse every 14 years! We then have Amaron who writes at least until 279BC, a full 38 years with a total of 6 verses giving us a verse almost every 7 years.
We then have two writers writing 3 verses along with the last writer for a total of 149 years and a total of 21 verses, giving us a strong feeling that these ‘prophets’ must have been doing something besides writing. For 400 years none of these writers were coordinating their writing or dating with the Nephite Kings, who were supposed to be the principal historical writers for the Nephites. With this last prolific group we have again one verse every 7 years with the last writer writing 90% of the verses.
To achieve this amount of creative writing God/Smith had these ‘prophets’ live in the 200 plus year range. Can the reader imagine how much we would have if Mormon edited out his usual 99 percent? Can we assume that the lost book of Lehi contains the 400 year King’s history that God doesn’t feel is important anymore? It is strange that Nephi, the most prolific of all of ‘small record’ writers with dozens of pages dies at the age of about 70, while Mosiah, the most righteous king and prolific writer, God has him die at 63. Why then the unrealistic ages for ‘Prophets’ who don’t write? Were the lives of God’s chosen people so shallow at that time that God felt one verse every 4 yrs. was ample? Above is the table with a clear perspective.
For more on this, see “Fatal Flaws of The Most Correct Book on Earth” at Amazon.com.
As an illustration of what God has to do to make this all work is to take Omni, for whom the book of Omni was named, and if the cycle of birth is maintained in an average fashion, God needed to keep Omni alive until the age of 207 just to write 3 verses of little consequence! Above, in the book of Enos, is a reasonable ‘replenish the earth’ table for the writers from Nephi until the end of the replacement record. We see our God of miracles kept *Chemish alive 221 years to write ONE verse! His son has a few more years of longevity and writes a total of TWO verses! This chart assumes each writer begat his son at an average age of 25 yrs., which would be old.
To illustrate the grave dating problems of the replacement record: These family members are keeping the record with dating that prophesies the coming of Christ in 600 years. The lunar-solar calendar of the Israelites requires the insertion of an extra month every three years. In the space of 100 years it will make the dating short by three years if it is not added in. Since Smith was unaware of this, his characters were as well. The ages of these writers are 2 to 5 times the age of anyone else. If they add multiple years to their own life span, how can we rely on their dating of anything else? Omni is 163 years old when he receives the record in 361BC. He writes two verses and says it is 317BC reflecting 44 years that he has counted in those 3 verses making him 207 years old. He gives the record to his 182 year old son Amaron who waits another 38 years, writes one verse and says it is now 279BC, and him now, 220 yrs. old. For the next 155 years there is no fixed dating until Mosiah 6:4; this gives a date of 124BC and is relied upon for the rest of the BOM. If they didn’t add the extra month every 3 years it would be 111BC for the Nephites and 18 years short for the birth of Christ! CAN THIS BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN JS RUSHING THRU TIME TO GET TO THE KING BENJAMIN SPOT WHERE HIS DRAFTS CONTINUED? I would rather believe there is no God than believe in this inept exalted Man as God, that JS portrays.
If Smith had a more accurate time frame for his book of Lehi that was lost, we will never know. But we can be sure that the book of Lehi, covering the same time frame, would be less than half the pages of the replacement record! We also know that in 3Nephi JS extends the life spans again because he again doesn’t have enough father-to-son ‘passing of the plates’. According to the promises of Christ recorded in 3Nephi, this third Nephi (the son of Nephi) and also one of Christ’s 12 disciples chosen in America, was supposed to die and go to heaven at the age of 72. He was given the records by his father, who departed to parts unknown in 1 AD. We presume Nephi was at least 20 at the time he spoke with the spirit of Christ, the day before Christ is born in Bethlehem, unless the Nephite calendar is way off, and Christ was already a young lad. If Nephi was 20 in 1 AD he would be about 55 when chosen as a disciple and promised his resurrection at age 72. Yet, in 4Nephi, vs 10, we find 110 years has passed either from the birth of Christ making 3Nephi at least 130 yrs old or 110 years has passed from the appearance of Christ to the Nephites making 3Nephi considerably older and Christ’s promise null and void.
3Nephi passes the record to his son Amos who could easily be over 100 at that time. Vs 21 tells us that 194 years has passed from the coming of Christ (still ambiguous) but tells us that Amos is 84 years older or about 184 years old and has died. He has passed the record on to his 150 year old son Amos2 with the 194 year time frame. Mormon, who abridged the record, if not JS, writes several verses telling the same type of story with passages of time dates until the death of Amos2.
This occurs in vs 47 where he dies with 305 years having passed away making him about 265. He manages to hand over tons of records to his 260 year old brother Ammaron. Ammaron keeps the tons of buried records in their villa opposite the magnificent temple where Christ gave his second Sermon on the Mount repeating almost letter perfect Matthew’s version of what he said. Waiting 20 years until he was 285 he decided he needed to bury the tons of records in an even safer place that no one had ever heard of in a small obscure hill that he or Smith will soon call Shim. He only needed at age 285 to take tons of records three or four hundred miles and do so without horses and bury them in a manner that Mormon could easily find the plates of Nephi.
In a true story, during the days of young Mormon where Robbers were in charge for years, and according to 4Nephi vs. 45, “three hundred years had passed away, both the people of Nephi and the Lamanites had become exceeding wicked one like unto the other”. (This was 10 years before Mormon was born.) Mormon would be totally dependent on the dating of these records if we were talking about an actual history. We just have to ask: Who was teaching anyone to read and write both Hebrew and Egyptian and from what written record? Smith’s story gets murky again as to locations. We can be reasonably certain that with the burning of Zarahemla the action of Christ’s visit was at the temple in Bountiful. We know that Zarahemla was rebuilt but we hear nothing of the records returning to Zarahemla and it would not be practical to have Hill Shim in that area. It appears that Ammaron met Nephi where Ammaron lived near the temple at Bountiful and then we are told in Mormon 1:6 that his father took him to the land of Zarahemla when he was 11 yrs. old.
He was 10 years late in following his orders to retrieve the plates of Nephi and with all of the wars and battles, he wouldn’t get around to reading anything, providing he was one of those rare individuals who was home schooled and became literate when there was nothing to read. We hear nothing of his mother and he is separated from his father when he was between 10-14. He was preaching on the street corner at 15 and at 16 led a band of guerilla Nephite fighters for most of his life. Where he learned to read and write Hebrew and Egyptian to teach his son Moroni whom he never mentions until he is 75, we will never know. One would think in abridging the Book of Alma where from chapter 43 until the end of the book he records the name of the commander of the Nephite armies a total of 190 times and never mentions that it is also the name of his son, the only two in the record who have the name of Moroni! This covers a period of about 25 years.
Mormon then starts his abridgment of the next book called Helaman that mentions the city of Moroni or Moronihah that were named after General Moroni which comes another 16 times over the next 80 years with never a reference to the fact that Mormon has an only son with the same name! The reason for this is plain and simple, Smith is a story teller and he didn’t think of a son by that name for Mormon until after the great last battle where only 24 Nephites were left, one of which was a son named Moroni (Mormon 6:6) and was to be the next protagonist in Smith’s Nephite saga.
For more on this, see “Fatal Flaws of The Most Correct Book on Earth” at Amazon.com.
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